The Technologists: A Novel Read online

  “She is lovely,” Marcus said indifferently, slipping his coat back on and taking the portfolio.

  “Wait!” Bob said, gazing at him suspiciously. “What is that you’ve been hugging to your vest all day?”

  The leather felt hot to the touch. Maybe it was, from his gripping it so tightly from the time he returned to school until now. “What do you mean?”

  “That portfolio.”

  “Merely some papers.”

  “A fine-grain leather. I’ve never seen you with it before today.”

  “So?” Marcus asked, forcing a chuckle at his friend’s untimely curiosity.

  “Come now, Mansfield! The rule for chumming in my rooms is that there are no mysteries from each other.”

  “You hate rules, Bob.”

  But before Marcus could make it to the door, Bob had snatched the portfolio from him, holding it up like a trophy, as his new acquaintance applauded from the sofa.

  “W.B.R.,” he read the initials carved into the silver clasp with increased interest. “Say, William Barton Rogers?”

  “Give it to me, Bob!” The anger in Marcus’s voice was sharp and uncharacteristic. He wrestled his friend to the floor until the portfolio tore open and the contents flew across the floor.

  “Look what you did!”

  “Sorry, Mansfield,” Bob said contritely, bending over the mess. “I was just trying to cheer you up. I know how difficult today was.”

  “Sorry to grow warm,” Marcus said promptly, trying to sound a conciliatory note as his secrets spread out across the floor. “I can pick this up. Please, tend to your guest.”

  But Bob was already on his hands and knees peeling the pieces of paper off the floor. As time went on, he moved more and more slowly to restore the papers to the pile Marcus was making. He looked over at Marcus, opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it without a sound, then rose to his feet and directed a beaming smile to the young woman. “My little dear, do you mind waiting in the next room for me for a moment while my friend and I have a bit of a discussion?”

  When they were alone, Bob said in a searching whisper, “Mansfield, I’d rather be a chaplain than let you leave here without telling me what is really going on.”

  Marcus smoothed his mustache as he often did when reflecting over a difficulty. “This matter must be wholly between ourselves,” he said finally.

  “No doubt!” Bob was growing excited.

  Marcus finished stacking the materials on the table. “When I found Rogers, he had been feverishly at work, analyzing the scientific details of the disasters. I think he was trying to find a method for resolving them before he collapsed. He had been at the task all night, according to the maid.”

  “You took these papers from his desk?”

  “I didn’t have time to think, and didn’t know what else to do. Runkle and Mr. Tobey had entered the house directly behind me. They would have confiscated all of it if they found it first, by order of the resolution. Rogers may even have been censured by the faculty committee.”

  “You told me yourself that Rogers voted at the meeting that the Institute not become involved in any of this business. If he planned to inquire into the disasters, why did he not tell them he was going to?”

  “What would the faculty have said?”

  Bob thought about that and shrugged. “That group couldn’t agree that the grass is green. Each professor thinks himself an emperor.”

  “I’ve been turning this over in my head. I believe he saw this as the only way. Even if the faculty could somehow be persuaded, even if they agreed to make the resources of the Institute available to assist in an investigation, the college would be in jeopardy from the forces already lined against it. Rogers knew that, and Agassiz proved it at once by sending the police in to give us a scare. But William Barton Rogers could not sit and do nothing while innocent people might still be in danger. It is not in his constitution. He could not stop himself from acting, and even if he were discovered, the college itself could be shielded from the worst of the criticism, because the vote of the entire faculty was on record against the involvement.”

  “So he had to keep this secret from everyone,” Bob said, flipping through the newspaper cuttings and the pages of notes and drawings. “These may represent the scientific study of a lifetime, Mansfield.” Then he crept across the room and opened the door to the bedroom. He motioned back with a pantomime indicating their visitor was asleep, and continued in a quieter voice. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to return these to him, hopefully tomorrow. Rogers put his faith in me the day he asked me to come to the Institute, and I owe him this.”

  “Are you protecting Rogers because you owe him loyalty? Or because you agree with what he is trying to do?”

  Marcus stiffened. “I know this is the right thing, Bob.”

  Bob grabbed his temples with his fingers as though he, or the room, had suddenly begun to spin on its axis. “Wait. Have to think for a moment.” He leaned on the arm of the rocking chair, then lowered himself into it. He frowned with a new concern. “What if, Mansfield … what will you do if he does not recover?”

  Marcus looked away.

  There had been a snowy day, midway through their junior year, when Rogers had walked in on Marcus and a few other Tech boys playing cards in the mathematics room during dinner period. Instead of ordering them to stop the prohibited pastime, as most professors would have done, Rogers sat among them and without a preface began to tell them a tale of one of his geological expeditions when he was younger. His raft caught between two blocks of ice in a fast-moving stream, he had only a hatchet and thirty seconds before being taken by the current, all while being responsible for important soil and rock samples in his possession. The boys forgot about their game as they waited to hear the outcome of his adventure. One asked whether he feared for his life. Rogers looked at the young men seated around the table and answered that he had never doubted he would survive because he had a purpose.

  In his mind’s eye, Marcus could not help seeing Rogers not in his bed surrounded by doctors, but trapped in a deep valley of rocks.

  “He will recover, Bob,” Marcus said finally.

  He craved someone to agree. But Bob had rocked himself into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  AT THE REAR ENTRANCE to 1 Temple Place, a young woman was stooped over, emptying buckets of filthy water into the nearby sewer grate, her arms stretched out so her body would not be splashed by the refuse.

  “Miss Agnes!”

  Startled, she dropped her bucket and looked around with eyes wide.

  “Miss Agnes, I need to speak with you,” whispered Marcus, stepping out from the shadow of the next house.

  “Gracious! Are you—” she started to say.

  “It’s Marcus Mansfield, from the Institute,” he reminded her.

  “I was going to say, are you half mad? If I am seen by one of the other girls, what would they say of us? Walk behind me a few steps to that corner. Make haste, man.”

  She pointed and Marcus complied.

  “Stop!” she called.

  “What?”

  “I changed my mind. I don’t like you staring at the back my skirts. Walk in front of me.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  As they changed arrangements and then stopped at the end of the small lane of Temple Place, he noticed more than their last meeting the shiny chestnut hair showing from her bonnet, her bright blue eyes that she often squinted for a better view, and a nose dusted with brown freckles. Classical or elegant beauty didn’t single her out—her features were not sculpted and her fair skin seemed to flush and drain easily—but there was an alluring expression to her face. She was stamped with the permanent look of having a private song on her lips.

  “I must speak with President Rogers as soon as he is well enough, Miss Agnes. And I must do so privately. I’ll need your help arranging it.”

  She studied him for
a moment and saw he was serious before answering. “You are bold! Considering you have stolen the portfolio I handed you.”

  He held up the offending object. “Can you find a way to return it inside without anyone noticing?”

  The chambermaid slipped the portfolio into the large front pocket of her apron. “I wasn’t born in the woods to be scared of an owl, Mr. Mansfield.”

  “Miss Agnes, how did you know that President Rogers was working on analyzing the disasters before his collapse?”

  She shrugged, but a proud smile played on her lips. “I am not blind or deaf, sir. He had asked me to bring practically every newspaper in the city published in the days following each catastrophe. He inquired after every one of the domestics about what we were seeing around the city. He sent us on errands, seemingly at random, near the business district and the harbor, then asked us for our observations without ever giving his reason. I daresay he seemed unsatisfied that we looked closely enough.”

  “He was trying to explore the city while he was barely able to leave the house,” Marcus mused. “Is there any improvement since yesterday?”

  She shook her head gravely. “He can speak again, but only with a struggle. I think he is hardly aware of what has happened.”

  “Do you think you can arrange for me to see him?”

  “You are out of luck. Even if he were strong enough to stay awake long enough to converse with you, Mrs. Rogers would never allow it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she has forbidden all persons from the Institute from coming anywhere near him. She believes it is the anxiety of the Institute business and his mental work that has imperiled him, and the only way he will recover is to be away from it. She is taking him to his brother’s house in Philadelphia later this morning to recuperate.”

  “The Institute needs him here!”

  “And he needs to regain his health without someone from the Institute showing up at the door every few minutes with a new calamity,” she countered.

  “Are you going with them?”

  She raised her eyebrows at the question, then shook her head. “The downstairs girls will stay behind to keep the house in order, though we will be liberated from our labors by two or three o’clock each day. I shall have to look to hire myself out temporarily a few hours a day somewhere else to make my expenses.”

  “But Philadelphia! It is urgent I find a way to see him before that, Miss Agnes.”

  “Blessed Mother! You know I could be dismissed for how I helped you?”

  “Then why did you?”

  She sighed at his persistence. “Was it your father who taught you about science?”

  Marcus looked away. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Not with any meaning,” she said carefully at seeing his reaction. “I was only thinking of your question to me. You see, Mr. Mansfield, when I was a little girl, my father labored on the railroad. Back Bay was still a basin and it looked like a swamp to my innocent eyes. But I thought it the most wonderful place I had ever seen, because you could imagine anything you wanted being built on all that space, even a castle! When the big machines, the steam shovels, came to fill the land with gravel, he brought me to see them. There was that giant iron maw, picking a mouthful of gravel from the cargo cars and spitting it all out with the most perfect, terrible grace you could imagine. When it stopped, and was being hauled away, I tried to run after it and my father had to catch me. I cried for want of the big ugly machine and he was able to console me only by promising to return the next week—which we did, and almost every week after that.”

  Marcus laughed with her. “I remember running out of the house when I was only five years old and following the other boys of the town to a large house fire, where I stood examining the operation of the steam fire engine instead of watching the blaze like everyone else. I saw my father only a few times as a boy. I was alone much of the time and would have been idle but for my hands—my hands wanted to build things even as a boy, so I earned extra money by helping to fix sewing machines. There came a time, later in life, when it seemed to me that to use my hands could save my life. That is how it feels at Tech every day.”

  “Do you see the difference, Mr. Mansfield? Only a few years after the time of my story, when I was but nine or ten, I was no longer to watch the steam shovels or go anywhere near them. Now the machines were dangerous, dirty, and unladylike. When I hear the shovels now, I cannot help but pout like a little girl and dream.”

  “Your papa only wished to protect you.”

  “I suppose I helped you, Mr. Mansfield, because I wished I could have aided the professor with what he was doing. The portfolio feels light. You have kept the papers?”

  Marcus nodded. “I removed them until I knew I could bring them to Rogers. But they are safe.”

  “Aggie dear?” a voice called from the direction of the Rogers house.

  “Lilly!” Agnes whispered, throwing a glance over her shoulder. “Go on with you, quickly.”

  “Well, Aggie, what are you doing out here! And who is this?” She was a buxom kitchen girl whose white cap failed to contain her bright-red hair. She wore a similar uniform of white apron over black dress, though with more frills at the edges than Agnes’s, and a big, flashy bow in the back. Catching up with them before Marcus could run off, she forced a greeting out of him.

  “Marcus Mansfield, may I present to you my cousin Lilly Maguire.”

  “You,” Lilly trilled on, staring at him for a long time before continuing. “You are one of the Technology boys, aren’t you? I have seen you before calling on the professor. I always wonder what they must teach you young fellows about science! When Aggie and I were girls, the nuns taught us a little geology and mineralogy. She was a prize pupil. Do you study those?”

  “We study all facets of science and industry. Each student chooses a specialty among practical chemistry, civil and topographical engineering, building and architecture, mechanical engineering, and experimental physics. Mechanical engineering is my field.” He was so accustomed to being asked to explain the purpose of the Institute, he had begun to feel like the college catalog.

  “How fanciful a place it is!”

  “There will be others like it, I believe, someday, once Tech has the chance to show its success. In Ithaca, New York, they say there is a college of industrial science that they are attempting to organize.”

  “Tell us everything about a typical lesson, Marcus Mansfield, everything you can think of—do you hear? Tell!”

  The kitchen girl peppered him with questions and he found himself describing their laboratories, the first in the country to put the apparatus into the students’ hands. She lavished attention on his every word, though it was the stray look from the quieter Agnes that was thrilling to him. Finally, Lilly was called back to the kitchen door.

  “They are gossiping about us right now,” Agnes grumbled, her arms crossed over her chest with an air of annoyance. “There is something I wish to show you,” she added, looking around again in case they were being overheard. She removed a folded piece of paper from her apron. It appeared to have been crumpled and then straightened again. “He was holding this piece of paper when he collapsed. It fell on the floor when he unclenched his hand, and I put it in my apron, not knowing if it might be important to you.”

  He hurriedly folded back the flaps. It was a rough sketch of the Institute seal. “He had this with him when he was working at his table?”

  “Perhaps it was the closest thing to him, and he grabbed it as he suffered his attack.”

  “It is dated 1861,” he said, examining it. “This must be one of the first drawings he did when designing the college seal, before the outbreak of the war delayed the opening of the Institute.”

  “Why do you think he brought it out now?”

  “I think he was remembering, Miss Agnes. Remembering,” he said again, more to himself, “when the Institute was still an idea in his head, what that idea was.”

  Sh
e seemed moved at his reaction to the little slip of paper. “Oh! Here comes Lilly again! I can hear her whistling a mile away. Meet me back again in half an hour. Will you?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Go!”

  At the appointed time of their reunion, Agnes skillfully managed to escort him inside and upstairs without being seen. She established the signal that all was clear, picking at the side of her apron as she stood on the rear stairs. He passed her and went into a chamber she had pointed out, closing the door behind him. From the floors below, he could hear an assortment of sounds from family members, domestics, and doctors making the preparations for taking the patient away. But in the mausoleumlike bedroom, where the heavy drapes were pulled closed, the crackling of the hearth was the only sound and movement. A pair of slippers waited at the foot of the bed. The earth itself seemed to have stopped moving beneath this room.

  He forced his feet across the carpet to the bed, swallowing hard and searching for the strength to explain his audacious actions. There was a mosquito net boxing in the bed and the invalid, whose head was elevated on a pile of pillows.

  “President Rogers. It’s Marcus Mansfield. I am awfully sorry to come in like this, but I had to speak with you before your departure. Can you hear me?”

  The older man’s eyes slowly opened on him, motivating him to continue.

  “President Rogers, I have kept the papers that were on your desk from being seen. I wish you to know I only did what it seemed to me you would want. You asked for me to help, and I hope I have.”

  Footfalls came closer—but they then moved off in a different direction.

  “I mustn’t stay,” continued Marcus, hearing his voice crack. He had never seen a man whom he so respected, who had once exhibited such vitality, brought into such low condition. “Do you wish me to leave the papers, President Rogers? If you could nod, or make any movement to indicate your desire …”

  There was a short motion of respiration from Rogers’s chest, then his eyes closed again. There was no evidence of a response, no sign that he had really heard anything Marcus had said.