To Bryan Holt then Henrietta decided to go when she had given Clem’s few suits to the Salvation Army, and had found herself possessed of an astonishing amount of money in more than twenty banks in various cities where money had been paid into Clem’s accounts from the markets. His records were scanty but very clear indeed were certain notes on The Food, as he called it. The Food was half chemical, half natural, a final mingling of bean base with minerals and vitamins, which if he could get a chemist to work it out with him might, he had believed, make it possible for him to feed millions of people for a few cents apiece. This was the final shape of his dream, or as William had once called it, his obsession. It might be that the two were the same thing.
The first meeting with Holt had not been promising. Holt had not answered Clem’s letter because it sounded absurd. He was respectful before Henrietta’s solid presence, her square pale face and big, well-shaped hands. She had immense dignity. He tried to put it kindly but she saw what he meant. This young man was not the one she sought, but there would be another. Clem, though he had died, yet lived.
“Many people thought my husband was unbalanced,” she said in her calm voice. “That is because he was far ahead of his time. It will be twenty-five years, much more if we don’t have another war, before statesmen realize that what he said is plain common sense. There will not cease to be ferment in the world unless people are sure of their food. It is not necessary that you agree with my husband and me. I am come only to ask you questions about his formula.”
Bryan Holt wanted to get rid of her, though he was polite since he was almost young enough to be her son. So he said:
“I have a very fine scientist here working with me who has come from Europe. He will be more useful to you than I can possibly be.”
With this he had summoned from a remote desk a shambling old figure who was Dr. Berkhardt Feld, and so by accident Henrietta found her ally. When she had talked with Dr. Feld for a few hours she proposed to find a small laboratory for him alone, with an apartment where he could make his home. Then if he would teach her to help him, building upon her college chemistry, which was all she had, she would come to him every day and they could perhaps fulfill Clem’s life work.
To Dr. Feld this was heaven unexpected. None of Clem’s ideas were fantastic to him. They were merely axiomatic. It would not be too difficult to find the formula which Clem had begun very soundly upon a bean base, a matter perhaps of only a few years, by which time it might be hoped the wise men of the world would be ready to consider what must be done for millions of orphaned and starving.
“Then, then, liebe Frau Müller,” Dr. Feld said fervently, making of Henrietta as German a creature as he could, “we will be ready perhaps with The Food.”
The tears came to Henrietta’s eyes. She thanked Dr. Feld in her dry, rather harsh voice and told him to be ready to move as soon as she could go home and get her things.
That decision made, she began to clean away what was left in the house of all her years of marriage to Clem. Among the things she would never throw away was the red tin box of Clem’s letters and with them the old amulet which he had given her. It was still in the folded paper in which he had sent it to her. She opened the paper and cried out as though he were there, “I always meant to ask you about this!”
How much of him she had meant to ask about in the long last years she had expected to have with him, years that would never be! She cried a little and closed the box and put it into her trunk to go with her to New York. Someday, when she could bear to do it, she would read all his letters over again. So much, so much she would never know about Clem because he had been busy about the business of mankind!
On the night before she left, she invited Bump and Frieda to supper, that she might ask something of Bump. She did not mind Frieda, a lump of a woman, goodhearted, stupid and kind.
“I wish you would tell me all that you can remember of Clem when you first saw him on that farm. He never could or would tell me much about it.”
She soon saw that Bump could not tell her much either. “He was just about the way he always was,” he said, trying hard to recall that pallid, dusty boy who had walked into their sorrowful small world so many years ago. “The thing I do remember was that he wasn’t afraid of anybody. He’d seen a lot, I guess. I don’t know what all. But I always took it that he’d had adventures over there in China. He never talked about them, though. He pitched in right where we were. The Bergers never beat him up the way they did us. He even stopped them beating us, at least when he was around. When he decided to leave, the others were afraid to go with him. They were afraid of the Aid people catching them again and things were tough if they caught you. I was afraid, too, but after he was gone, I was more afraid to stay. I don’t think he was too pleased to see me padding along behind him, though. I’ve often thought about that. But he didn’t tell me to go back.”
There was nothing more, apparently. Clem’s outlines remained simple and angular. After Bump had gone she studied again the notes Clem had left about The Food. If she went on trying to do what he had wanted to do then perhaps she could keep his memory with her, so that she would not forget when she was old how he had looked and what had been the sound of his voice. …
It did not occur to Henrietta to find her family and tell them that she was in New York. She had not even thought to tell them of Clem’s death, but they had seen the announcement in a paragraph in the New York papers. Clem was well enough known for that. William had telegraphed his regret and Ruth had sent a floral cross to the funeral. Her mother was in England and it had been some weeks before a letter had come from her saying that she never thought Clem had a healthy color and she was not surprised. Henrietta must take good care of herself. It was fortunate there was plenty of money. If Henrietta wished, she would come and live with her, but she could not live in the Middle West. New York or Boston would be pleasant. Henrietta had not answered the letter.
Now that Clem was gone she was lonely again, but not as she would have been had he never come. He had shared with her and did still share with her in memory her alien childhood which no one could understand who had only been a child here in America. Without loving China, without feeling for the Chinese anything of Clem’s close affection, she was eternally divided in soul and spirit. It occurred to her sometimes in her solitary life that this division might also explain William. Perhaps all that he did was done to try and make himself whole. The wholeness which she had been able to find in Clem because they understood one another’s memories, William had found no one to share. Perhaps he could not be made whole through love. She would go and see Candace. Upon this decision she went to the laboratory as usual.
Dr. Feld, observing the large silent woman who worked patiently at his command, mused sometimes upon her remoteness and her completion. She needed no one, even as he needed none. They had finished their lives, he in Germany, she — where? Perhaps in China, perhaps in a grave. What more they did now was only to spend the remaining time usefully. He wished that he could have known the man who had left behind him these extraordinary though faulty notes. She had told him that her husband had had only a few years of education and no training in science.
“His knowledge must have been intuitive, dear madame,” he had replied.
“He was able to learn from human beings,” she said. “He felt their needs and based his whole life upon what he found out. He called it food, but it was more than food for the body. He made of human need his philosophy and religion. Had you met him you would have thought him a very simple man.”