The Technologists (16 page)

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.”

She 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.

“Quickly!” Agnes’s voice warned from outside in the corridor.

Before he could exit, the doctor entered with a purposeful march to the bed. “You,” he addressed Marcus. “What are you doing in here?”

His surprised expression seemed to carry no recognition from the previous day, for which Marcus was grateful. But he still had to say something in response. He opened his mouth but was interrupted before he could speak.

“There you are,” broke in another voice. It was Agnes, showing a frown in the doorway. “Boy, have you fetched those clean sponges yet to bring along in the carriage for the long drive? Go on, now.”

“Yes, miss.”

“And make haste for once,” she added, with a sparkle of mischief in her eye.

Marcus bowed his head slightly to the doctor and hurried out of the room. After he waited a few minutes, Agnes met him by the servants’ entrance in the back of the mansion.

“Well?”

He shook his head sadly. “It was as you said. I do not think he understood at all.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Mansfield. What will you do now?”

“I do not know. I see now how fortunate it was that Professor Eliot sent me to him when he did, or I am certain Runkle and Tobey would have disposed of his materials altogether.”

“Fortunate!” She turned on him with a questioning expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“I believe you are confused, Mr. Mansfield.”

“No, I do not think so.”

“Indeed you are! It was Professor Rogers who sent a note to Professor Eliot asking that you come to him before class. I believe he was already feeling quite ill at the time. His hand was terribly unsteady as he wrote.”

Marcus was stunned. “He asked me to come? Are you certain?”

“Quite! He even marked it ‘urgent.’ I handed the note to the messenger myself to be brought to the Institute. Rogers was waiting for you.”

“T
HREE CHEERS FOR
T
ECHNOLOGY
C
LASS OF
1868!” Bob called out. “Some class feeling for once, fellows, please?” he asked after a sputtering response.

The players were stripping down to thin cotton shirts with turned-down collars and narrow cream trousers, leather belts circling their waists.

It was afternoon break, and Bob was arranging the football game in the empty fields around the college building. Some Tech students preferred to lounge, doze, or continue studying inside, but with eight hours of sitting in classrooms and laboratories, six days a week, there were others who relished any chances for physical activity outdoors.

As the game got started, Marcus kept pace alongside Bob. “Bob, I’ve been trying all day to find a minute to speak to you alone.”

“Over here!” Bob waved a teammate for the ball. “Rats. Are you blokes blind?”

“Bob, please!”

Bob ran past him. “We’re in the middle of a game now, Mansfield! Can’t it wait?”

“It’s important.”

“You were the one to disappear this morning. And I couldn’t find that little tigress anywhere when I woke up on the chair. I hope Mrs. Page didn’t catch her leaving. Do you hear that?”

“What?” said Marcus, keeping up as they crossed the field.

“There! I heard it again, the sounds of melting hearts,” he said. “Shall we cause some trouble?”

“Could I prevent it if I said no?”

“No,” Bob replied thoughtfully, “I suppose not!”

There was no mistaking the sounds from the Notre Dame Academy on Berkeley Street as they moved closer. The ball came to Marcus and he kicked it forward until he was close enough to propel it over the high fence that marked the boundary of the Catholic academy for young women.

During free hour at the academy the young ladies, age seventeen years old down to six, would be out in the gardens strolling and chatting in the sun. A sensible plan would have sent one or two men over the fence to retrieve a ball. Instead, a column of six, then seven, now eight, climbed in pursuit.

Bob started to follow, but Marcus held him back by the sleeve.

“What’s the idea, Mansfield?” He tried to shake him off.

“Bob, listen to what I have to say. I went to see Rogers’s maid this morning, the girl called Agnes. She said that Rogers had told Eliot to send me to Temple Place the morning he collapsed.”

Bob stopped to consider this. “That would explain Eliot’s hurry for you to go there, and his annoyance, since we walked in late to class. He was concerned with being reprimanded himself. But why would Rogers send for you just then?”

“I don’t know. Judging from the fact that Rogers instructed Eliot to do it directly, and had those materials together on his desk, I think Rogers knew he was growing weaker again. Bob, I think he was going to ask for my help!”

“Why? Why you, I mean, Mansfield?”

“He noticed me during the faculty meeting. He knew I thought something should be done. He could read it in my eyes.”

“Well, speak with him, then.”

“He is in no condition, and Mrs. Rogers is taking him to Philadelphia now and will not permit any Institute business! If only I had reached Rogers a few minutes earlier. If only I had not been delayed by Miss Swallow, or by walking instead of taking the cars.”

“A pity! All of it. Come on, no more time to waste.” He started to run for the fence, but Marcus ran ahead and blocked him. “Mansfield, those lovelies are waiting for me,” Bob protested, trying to shove him aside. “You know how they applaud when I stand on my head.”

“You said last night that this could prove to be the scientific study of a lifetime.”

Bob laughed. “You know it was the liquor speaking!”

“Well, you’re sober enough now!” replied Marcus, his frustration rising. “If we can discover who and what caused these incidents, we demonstrate once and for all to the world that the kind of science the Institute teaches helps society, just as Rogers wanted. We can protect Boston
and
ensure the Institute’s future at the same time.”

Bob shook his head and became uncharacteristically serious. “There are adventures and there are adventures, Mansfield. There are experiments and there are experiments.”

“Please, Bob. Look what’s happening before your eyes. The city fears what we do here too much to ask the Institute for help. The Institute is too anxious about the public perception of us to volunteer it. So now we wait for Professor Agassiz, a man who is a brilliant practitioner of every type of tired science we seek to make obsolete, to stumble his way to a solution? Someone here has to do something. I’ll need your help. Nobody knows Boston as well as you, not to mention metals and geology.”