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ALIENS
BY
WILLIAM McFEE
AUTHOR OF "CASUALS OF THE SEA"
[Illustration: publishers symbol]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
Doubleday, Page & Company.
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian
TO MARGERY ALLINGHAM
PREFACE
[_Publisher's Note: It should be explained that an earlier version of
"Aliens" was published in London in 1914, and some copies were also
distributed in the United States. After the issue of "Casuals of the
Sea" the present publishers purchased the rights to "Aliens" and urged
Mr. McFee to re-write the story. His account of the history of this book
is here inserted, and will undoubtedly take its place among the most
entertaining and interesting prefaces in modern literature._]
So many people are unaware of the number of works of fiction which have
been rewritten after publication. I was rather surprised myself when I
came to recapitulate them. I wouldn't go so far as to say that second
editions, like second thoughts, are the best, because I at once think of
"The Light that Failed." But I do believe that under the very unusual
circumstances of the genesis and first issue of _Aliens_ I am justified
in offering a maturer and more balanced representation of what that book
stands for.
The notion of a character like Mr. Carville came to me while I was busy
finishing "Casuals of the Sea" during the late fall of 1912. A short
story was the result. It went to many likely and unlikely publishers,
for I knew very little of the field. I don't know whether the "Farm
Journal" (of which I am a devoted reader) got it, but it is quite
probable. A mad artist who lived near us, in an empty store along with
a studio stove and three priceless Kakemonos, told me he would "put me
next" an editor of his acquaintance. I forget the name of the paper now,
but I think it had some connection with women's clothes. I sent in my
story, but unfortunately my friend forgot to put me next, for I got
neither cash nor manuscript. The next time I passed the empty store, I
stepped in to explain, but the artist had a black eye, and his own
interest was so engrossed in Chinese lacquer-work and a stormy divorce
case he had coming on shortly, that I was struck dumb. What was a short
story in comparison with such issues? And I knew he had no more opinion
of me as an author than I had of him as an artist.
But when another typed copy came back from a round of visits to American
magazines, I kept it. I had a strong conviction that, in making a book
of what was then only a rather vague short story, I was not such a fool
as the mad artist seemed to think. I reckoned his judgment had been
warped by the highly eccentric environment in which he delighted. The
empty store in which he lived, like a rat in a shipping-case, was new
and blatant. It thrust its blind, lime-washed window-front out over the
sidewalk. Over the lime-wash one could see the new pine shelving along
the walls loaded with innumerable rolls of wall-paper. Who was
responsible for this moribund stock I could never discover. Perhaps the
mad artist imagined them to be priceless Kakemonos of such transcendent
and blinding beauty that he did not dare unroll them. They resembled a
library of papyrus manuscripts. Here and there among them stood some
exquisitely hideous dragon or bird of misfortune. He had a bench in the
store too, I remember, and seemed to have some sort of business in
mending such things for dealers. And he did a little dealing himself
too, for his madness had not destroyed his appreciation of the value of
money. He would exhibit some piece of Oriental rubbish, and when one had
politely admired it, he would say pleasantly, "Take it!" One took it,
and a week later he would borrow its full value as a loan.
With his Kakemonos he was even more mystifying, for he would develop
sudden and quite unnecessary bursts of rage, and announce his refusal of
anything under a million for them. And then he would exhibit them,
taking them from a broken Libby, McNeill and Libby milk case under his
camp-bed, and holding the rolled splendours aloft. And then, with a
grandiose gesture, as of some insane nobleman showing his interminable
pedigree, he would let the thing unfold and one beheld a sad animal of
unknown species sitting in a silver winter landscape, or a purple silk
sunset. And over it glared the mad artist, a sallow fraud, yet watching
with some impatience how the stranger regarded this secret preoccupation
of his life. I knew nothing about such things and knew he scorned me for
my ignorance. Like most artists, he was an unconscious liar. He strove
also to give an impression of tremendous power. He had gestures which
were supposed to register virility, irresistible force, abysmal
contempt. And if the word had not been worked to death by people who
don't know its meaning, I would have added that he was a votary of the
_kultur_ of his race. His ideal, I suppose, was more the Renaissance
_virtu_ than our milk-and-water virtue. He made me feel that I was a
worm. In short, he was a very interesting, provocative and exasperating
humbug, and his very existence seemed to me sufficient reason for
turning _Aliens_ into a book which would shed a flickering light upon
the fascinating problem of human folly.
For that is what it amounted to. I was obsessed with the problem of
human folly, and he focussed that obsession. It often happens that the
character which inspires a book never appears in it. In all sincere work
I think it must be so. And, with the mad artist in my mind all the time,
I got a good deal of fun out of writing the book, and that, after all,
is the main reason one has for writing books. I finished the thing and
immediately became despondent, a condition from which I was raised by an
unexpected admirer. This was the elderly gentleman who did my
typewriting. He dwelt half way up a tall elevator shaft in Newark, N.
J., and, as far as I could gather, had farmed himself out to a number of
lawyers, none of whom had much to do except telephone to each other and
smoke domestic cigars. They say no man is a hero to his valet. I have
never had a valet except on ship-board, and I have no desire to compete
with the heroes of the average steward; but I have had a typist, and I
suppose it is equally rare for an author to be interesting to his
amanuensis. And when I climbed one day (the elevator being out of order)
to the eyrie where my elderly henchman had his nest, his bald head was
shining in the westering sun, and he beamed like a jolly old sun himself
as he apologised for not having finished. "He had got so interested in
the parties," he explained, "that he hadn't got on as quick as he'd
hoped to." I still like to think he was sincere when he said this.
Anyhow, I was encouraged. I bound up my copies of typescript and shoved
them out into the world. They came back. They became familiar at the
local post-office. The mad artist, meeting me with a parcel, would
divine the contents and inquire, "Well, and how's _Aliens_?" He would
also inform me that there were several books called by that title. He
would regard me with a glassy-eyed grin as I hurried on. He had no more
faith in me than he had in himself. Sometimes he would pretend not to
see me, but go stalking down the avenue, his fists twisted in his
pockets, his head bent, his brows portentous with thought ... a
grotesque humbug!
But the time came when, as I have explained elsewhere, I had had enough
of artists and books. Of art I never grow weary, but she calls me over
the world. I suspect the sedentary art-worker. Most of all, I suspect
the sedentary writer. I divide authors into two classes--genuine
artists, and educated men who wish to earn enough to let them live like
country gentlemen. With the latter I have no concern. But the artist
knows when his time has come. In the same way I turned with
irresistible longing to the sea, whereon I had been wont to earn my
living. It is a good life and I love it. I love the men and their ships.
I find in them a never-ending panorama which illustrates my theme, the
problem of human folly! Suffice it, I sent my manuscripts to London,
looked out my sea dunnage, and the publishing offices of New York City
knew me no more.
About a year later I received the proofs of _Aliens_ while in Cristobal,
Canal Zone. Without exaggeration, I scarcely knew what to do with them.
The outward trappings of literature had fallen away from me with the
heavy northern clothing which I had discarded on coming south. I was
first assistant engineer on a mail-boat serving New Orleans, the West
Indies and the Canal Zone. I had become inured once more to an
enchanting existence which alternated between bunk and engine-room. I
regarded the neatly-bound proof-copy of _Aliens_ with misgiving. My
esteemed Chief, a Scotsman in whose family learning is an honorable
tradition, suggested an empty passenger cabin as a suitable study. I
forget exactly how the proof-reading was dove-tailed into the watch
below, but dove-tailed it was, and when the job was done, the book once
more sailed across the Atlantic.
But I was not satisfied. Through the dense jungle of preoccupying
affairs in which I was buried I could see that I was not satisfied. I
was trying to eat my cake and have it. I make no complaint. If there be
one person for whom I cherish a profound dislike it is the literary
character who whines because his circumstances hinder his writing. I
was no George Gissing, cursed with a dreary distaste of common toil and
mechanical things. I love both the Grecian Isles and gas-burners. But
for the moment I had chosen gas-burners, or rather steam engines, and I
knew I could not have both. So _Aliens_ went back to London, and I went
my daily round of the Caribbean. I felt that for once I could trust the
judgment of a first-class publisher.
The publishers of this new edition will understand me when I say that an
author has no business to trust blindly to the judgment of any house,
however first-class. He has no business to do so because that outside
estimate of his work must of necessity be based on scanty data. The
publisher, for all his enthusiasm, takes a chance, sometimes a pretty
long one. An author, as I conceive it, must be his own most uneasy,
captious, cantankerous critic. He dare not delegate this job to anyone
else, for that way lies the pot-boiler and the formal romance, the
"made" book. I was busy, and let go the reins. And I place on record
here my gratitude to those who knew enough and cared enough to recall me
to my post, that I might deal with the book afresh and do justice to the
reader.
Much happened between the day when I mailed my proofs from the big Post
Office on Canal Street in New Orleans, and the day when I set out to
write this present version. I was now in another hemisphere and the
world was at war. By a happy chance I laid hold of a copy of _Aliens_,
sent previously to a naval relative serving on the same station. Up and
down the AEgean Sea, past fields of mines and fields of asphodel, past
many an isle familiar in happier days to me, I took my book and my new
convictions about human folly. It was a slow business, for it so chanced
that my own contribution to the war involved long hours. But _Aliens_
grew.
And one evening, I remember, I left off in the middle of Mr. Carville's
courtship and went to bed. We were speeding southward. It was a dark,
moonless night. The islands of the Grecian Archipelago were roofed over
with a vault of low-lying clouds, as if those ferriferous hummocks and
limestone peaks were the invisible pillars of an enormous crypt. And
since across the floor of this crypt many other vessels were speeding
without lights, it was not wonderful that for once our good fortune
failed us. For we had had good fortune. Aeroplanes had bombed, and
missed us by yards. Zeppelins had come down in flaming ruin before our
astonished eyes. Islands had loomed under the very fore-foot of our ship
in a fog, and we had gone astern in time. But this time it was our turn.
We were, in the succinct phraseology of the sea, in collision.
The story of that night will no doubt be told in its proper place and
time. Suffice it that for some weeks we were laid aside, and local
Levantine talent invoked to make good the disaster. And in spite of the
clangour of rivetters, the unceasing cries of fezzed and turbaned
mechanics, and the heavy blows of sweating carpenters, caulkers and
blacksmiths, _Aliens_ grew. There was a blessed interval, between five
o'clock, when my day's work ended, and the late cabin-dinner at
six-thirty, when the setting sun shone into my room and illumined my
study-table--a board laid across an open drawer. And _Aliens_ grew. For
some time, while the smashed bulwarks and distorted frames of the
upper-works were being hacked away outside my window, the uproar was
unendurable, and I would go ashore, note-book in pocket, to find a
refuge where I could write. I would walk through the city and sit in her
gardens; and the story grew. I found obscure _cafes_ where I could sit
with coffee and _narghileh_, and watch the Arabic letter-writers worming
the thoughts from their inarticulate clients, and _Aliens_ grew. And
later, near the Greek Patriarchate, I found that which to me is home--a
secondhand book-store. For I mark my passage about this very wonderful
world by old book-stores. London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Genoa,
Venice, New York, Ancona, Rouen, Tunis, Savannah, Kobe and New Orleans
have in my memory their old book-stores, where I could browse in peace.
And here in Alexandria I found one that might have been lifted out of
Royal Street or Lafayette Square. A ramshackle wooden building, bleached
and blistered by many a dust-storm and torrid sun, its cracked and
distorted window-panes were curtained with decayed illustrated papers in
many tongues, discoloured Greek and Italian penny-dreadfuls, and a few
shelves of cheap curios. Over the door a long shingle displayed on one
side the legend _Librairie Universelle_, while the other bore the word
[Greek: BIBLIOPOLION], which you may translate as it please your fancy.
Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and
dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They
ran up at the back in a steep _glacis_ with embrasures for curios, and
were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-glasses propped against
the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental
candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were stuffed fish of
grotesque globular proportions, and with staring apoplectic eyes. A
stuffed monkey was letting himself down, one-hand, from a thin chain,
and regarded the customer with a contemptuous sneer, the dust lying
thick on his head and arms and his exquisitely curled tail. And out of
an apparently bomb-proof shelter below several tons of books there
emerged a little old gentleman in a brilliant _tarbush_, who looked
inquiringly in my direction. For a moment I paused, fascinated by the
notion that I had discovered the great Library of Alexandria, reported
burnt so many centuries ago. For once within those musty, warped,
unpainted walls one forgot the modern world. I looked out. Across the
street, backed by the immense and level blaze of an Egyptian sunset,
blocks of Carrara marble blushed to pink with mauve shadows, and turned
the common stone mason's yard into a garden of gigantic jewels. The hum
of a great city, the grind of the trolley-cars, the cries of the
itinerant sellers of nuts and fruit, of chewing gum and lottery-tickets,
of shoe laces and suspenders, of newspapers, and prawns, and oysters,
and eggs, and bread, the rattle of carriages and all the flashing
brilliance of the palaces of pleasure, were shut out from that quiet
street near the Greek Patriarchate. I had the sudden notion of asking
for permission to sit in that Universal Library, and write. And Mr.
Bizikas, the little old gentleman in the vivid _tarbush_, who was
lighting a very dirty tin lamp to assist the one candle in the oriental
candelabrum, had no objection. I have a feeling occasionally that here I
topped the rise of human felicity, as I conceive it. Perhaps I did.
Anyhow, _Aliens_ grew.
I must be brief. It came to pass, after certain days, that _Aliens_ grew
to accomplishment, and I made my way into the city through one of the
many gates of the harbour. I sought the office of the Censor in a large
building with a courtyard. It was a large room on the top floor, with a
long table occupied by busy orderlies opening and stamping letters with
astonishing rapidity. At the back, flanking an open balcony over whose
balustrade I could see the blue Mediterranean and a flawless sapphire
sky, were two roll-top desks concealing two officers whose polished bald
heads shone above stacks of papers. At the deferential insistence of an
orderly, one of the heads rose, and a large, ruddy Yorkshire face
examined the intruder. In some diffidence I explained the delicate
nature of my mission. I opened my parcel and displayed, with the pride
of a parent, how _Aliens_ had grown. The officer rose to his feet, a
tall, strong, north-country figure, and looked keenly at me over his
glasses. Was I a British subject? What was the nature of the manuscript?
What was the name of my transport? What was my rank? And so on. To all
of which I gave courteous and, I hope, truthful answers. "Well, there's
a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having
written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing
the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable brevity
and matchless common sense.
And I called in a week's time. It appeared that the Captain had gone
through _Aliens_ and was satisfied that it divulged nothing of military
importance, nor did it provide any comfort for the King's enemies. An
orderly, a fattish person with a fine mustache and scorched knees, was
commanded to secure, seal and register the parcel. The tall officer with
the good-humoured country-gentleman's face came to the balcony and
discussed for a moment the production of literature under difficulties.
"You know, we have very strict orders," he remarked, looking down
thoughtfully. "We must be most careful ... h--m ... Neutral countries
... America." He seemed to regard the idea of America with misgiving. I
agreed that America was food for thought. "And you write books at sea?"
he inquired. Yes, I said, anywhere, everywhere. He nodded. "It is, you
know," I added slyly, "our national art." He looked grave at this and
said he supposed so. By this time the orderly had tied and sealed
_Aliens_ in so many places that I pitied anyone who tried to tamper with
it; and so, with an expression of my profound appreciation, I retired.
The officer bowed, and the orderly and I clattered down stairs and made
our way into the Rue de la Poste. He was a Londoner, and professed great
interest in literature, having a brother a news agent. We had some beer
together, when _Aliens_ had been safely bestowed. He was getting his
leave soon, he said, and I informed him I hoped to get mine in a month
or so. We drank to our three years' active service and to our safe trip
home. He was much impressed by this coinc_i_dence, as he called it, and
begged me, if I happened down Deptford way at all, to call and see him
over his brother's shop. I asked him if he knew a certain old book-store
in Deptford, where I had once gotten a Bandello's _Novelle_ for four
shillings, and he said he knew it well. But I think he only said this to
please an obvious bibliomaniac. We parted with mutual good wishes, and I
went back to the ship.
And so I send it to you, trusting to my good fortune to get it through.
It may never reach you, and I shall have had my labour in vain. It may
be, also, that ere it see the light I shall have gone away myself, an
aggrieved participant in one of the trivial disasters of the sea-affair.
But whatever betide, I shall have had my shot at the alluring yet
ineluctable problem of human folly.
WILLIAM MCFEE.
Port Said, Egypt, April 14, 1917.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
CHAP.
I. THE "SCALDINO" 3
II. HIS CHILDREN 16
III. A LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH 28
IV. MISS FRAENKEL 41
V. HE COMES 56
VI. HE BEGINS HIS TALE 70
VII. DIAPORESIS 105
VIII. HE CONTINUES HIS TALE 115
IX. WE AWAIT DEVELOPMENTS 168
X. ANOTHER LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH 279
XI. MR. CARVILLE SEES THREE GREEN
LIGHTS 296
XII. THE VISION FROM THE KILLS 327
XIII. MISCELLANY 352
XIV. DISCUSSION 374
XV. CONCLUSION 398
ALIENS
CHAPTER I
THE "SCALDINO"
Long before any of us three had seen him we had become aware of his
existence, and our brains were continually busy about him. His
appearance, his age, his gait, his history, his voice, even his ultimate
destiny, we conjectured over and over again as one by one the evidences
of his existence accumulated and developed in our consciousness. It grew
to be quite a game with us, this collection of data, and filled in much
of our leisure before we became acquainted with many of our neighbours.
I think Bill was the first to notice something unusual about the family
next door, something neither English nor American. "What do you think!"
she exclaimed, coming in one morning as I was busy writing. "She's got a
little iron grate on legs, and there's charcoal burning in it."
"Who? Where?" I asked, coming out of my work with a start. I was
composing an advertisement at the time.
"Mrs. Carville," said Bill, pointing to the window.
From the window, across the intervening plot of ground, we saw our
neighbour stooping over one of those small portable affairs so popular
in Italy and known as _scaldini_, mere iron buckets in which coke or
charcoal burns without flame, and which are carried from room to room as
occasion arises.
"I thought," I said, "that she was Italian. That is a _scaldino_."
"Is it?" said Bill. "They'll set the house on fire if they use that
here."
My friend is rather hard on the Mediterranean nations, giving as a
reason "they are so dirty," but meaning, I imagine, that they lack our
habits of order and dignified reticence. Their colonies in American
cities and country-side are not models for town-planners and municipal
idealists. And Bill has, in addition, much of the average Englishwoman's
suspicion of foreign domestic economy. The past glories of Greece and
Spain and Rome are nothing to her if the cooking utensils of the present
generation are greasy or their glassware unpolished. There is, when one
gets well away from them, quite a Dutch primness and staid
rectangularity about English ideals in the matter of front and back
yards, hen-runs, flower-beds and the like. And although her own small
tract of New Jersey woefully failed to come anywhere near those same
ideals she had a weakness for the gentle disparagement of Latin
untidiness and lack of finish.
But, firm believers as we were in the authentic picturesqueness of
American life, if we only looked for it, we had been struck more than
once by the fugitive glimpses of herself which our neighbour had so far
vouchsafed to us. To tell the bald truth, we stood in awe of her. We
discriminated between her and her environment. And we paid to her, in
spite of our prejudices and limitations, a certain homage which beauty
ever commands and receives, so potent is its inspiration to the hearts
of men.
On revision, that word "beauty" scarcely stands its own in this
connection, and for this reason. We three, deriving our entire
sustenance from art in some guise or other, had widely divergent
opinions upon the indispensable attributes of beauty _per se_. From my
experience of artists, this condition of things is not unusual. We
always agreed to differ, Bill rapturous among her flowers and revelling
in their colour; Mac catching with a fine enthusiasm and assured
technique the fugitive tints of a sunrise through a tracery of leaves
and twigs; and I, quiescently receptive, pondering at intervals upon the
sublime mystery of the human form, especially the grandiose renderings
of it in the works of Michael Angelo. Thus it will be seen that I alone
was unprejudiced in my predilections, and qualified, however
inadequately, to do justice to Mrs. Carville. Mac was annoyed because
she had cut down a tree. That it was her own tree made no difference. To
cut down a living tree was, in Mac's view, a sacrilege. Bill had an
additional grievance in the fact that Mrs. Carville not only grew no
flowers herself, but permitted her chickens to wander deleteriously
among ours.
A brief and passing glance from the street would have given a stranger
no inkling of the state of affairs. Indeed, Mrs. Carville's domain and
ours were un-American in the fact that there had at one time been a
fence between us. Even now it is a good enough fence in front; but it
gradually degenerated until, at the bottom of the yards, it was a mere
fortuitous concourse of rotten and smashed palings through which
multitudinous armies of fowls came at unseasonable hours and against
which all Bill's ladylike indignation was vented in vain. As we watched
behind the curtains a Dorking stepped through and began to prospect
among the sumach and stramonium that Bill had encouraged along our
frontiers, under an illusion that plants labelled "poisonous" in her
American gardening book would decimate the fowls.
"I wish they wouldn't," said Bill sadly, and added, "It's rotten, you
know. I shall speak to them about it one of these days."
For myself, though trained habit enabled me to make note of the Dorking,
my whole conscious attention was riveted upon the little group round the
_scaldino_ on the back porch. Mrs. Carville was, as I have said,
stooping over the brazier. Her movements were being watched not only by
ourselves, but by her two children. Fortunately, they were beyond her,
their legs planted far apart, their hands behind them, so that I could
see without stint the magnificent pose of the woman's body. Her arms
hovered over the vessel, the left resting at times upon it, the other
selecting pieces of fuel from a box at her side. The line of her back
from hip to shoulder seemed incredibly straight and long. The cold wind
that was blowing gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her
preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with
sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly,
however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head.
It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black hair and set back in the
hollow of the shoulders. Her face may be called dark too, the black
eye-brows and olive skin being unrelieved by colour in the cheeks. Her
whole expression was, you might say, forbidding, and I was not surprised
when one of the boys received a push as he bent his head over the
brazier. There was such an electric quickness in the gesture, such a
dispassionate resumption of her former pose, that one involuntarily
conceded to her a fierce and peremptory disposition. One felt that such
a woman would listen with some impatience to complaints about predatory
fowls, that she would stand no nonsense from her children either,
that....
The same thought flashed through our minds simultaneously, and in strict
accordance with our differing temperaments Bill voiced it.
"I wonder if they don't get on," she said.
"I wonder," I assented.
The brazier full, Mrs. Carville rose, the handle in her hand. Pointing
to the box, she spoke to her children, who hastily removed it to a shed
at the bottom of the yard. She turned to enter the house, her large
black eyes swept our windows in a swift comprehensive glance of
suspicion and then she vanished.
I retired hastily to my desk, acutely conscious that we had been, well,
that we had been impolite! Bill went away without speaking, and for a
couple of hours I was absorbed in my work. Growing weary of the thing, I
took up my pipe and went upstairs to the studio.
"Just in time for tea," said Bill. "Have a cookie?"
The studio was in some disorder, and the atmosphere was heavy with the
odour of printer's ink. The etching press had been dragged out from the
wall, trays of water, bottles of benzine, rags of muslin, rolls of
paper, palettes of ink, copper plates and all the _materiel_ of etching
were lying in considerable confusion about the room, and Mac himself,
draped in a blue cotton overall, stood in negligent attitude against an
easel, drinking a cup of tea. I had caught the phrase, "They're a funny
lot," and I divined that Bill's hasty offer of cookies was a mere ruse
to put me off the track of a possibly interesting conversation.
"Finished?" asked Mac, passing me a cup of tea.
"Not yet," I replied. "Another thousand words will do it, though."
Mac, in accordance with a vow made in all sincerity, and approved by us,
set apart one day a week for etching, just as I was supposed to
consecrate some part of my time to literature. At first we were to work
together, select themes, write them up and illustrate them conjointly.
This, we argued, could not fail to condense into fame and even wealth.
Our friend Hooker had done this, and _he_ had climbed to a one-man show
in Fifth Avenue. But by some fatality, whenever Mac took a day off for
high art, on that day did I invariably feel sordidly industrious. I
might idle for a week, smoking too much and getting in Bill's way as she
busied herself with housework, but as soon as the etching-press scraped
across the studio-floor, or Mac came down with camera and satchel and
dressed for a tramp, I became the victim of a mania for work, and stuck
childishly to my desk. Personally I did not believe in Hooker's story at
all. Hooker's mythical librettist never materialized. I was always on
the look-out for a secondhand book containing Hooker's letterpress. It
suited the others to believe in him, but even a writer of advertising
booklets and "appreciations" has a certain literary instinct that cannot
be deceived. And so I felt, as I have said, sordidly industrious and
inclined to look disparagingly upon a man who was frittering away his
time with absurd scratchings upon copper and whose hands were just then
in a most questionable condition.
"I thought you were going to help me," he sneered over his cup.
"The fit was on me," I explained, and my eye roved round the studio. I
caught sight of a piece of paper on a chair. Mac made a movement to pick
it up, but he was hampered by the cup and saucer, and I secured it.
"Ah--h!" I remarked, and they two regarded each other sheepishly. "Very
good indeed, old man!"
And it was very good. With the slap-dash economy of effort which he had
learned of Van Roon, when that ill-fated genius was in Chelsea, Mac had
caught the salient curves and angles of Mrs. Carville as she stooped
over her _scaldino_, had caught to a surprising degree the sombre
expression of her face and the tigerish energy of her crouched body. I
studied it with great pleasure for a moment, and then it recurred to me
that he had not been with us at the window. I say recurred, though I had
known it all along, and my ejaculation, for that matter, was but a sign
of triumph over catching him at the same game of peeping-Tom that we had
been playing in the room below. Yet so quickly and over-lappingly do our
minds work that at the same moment I had no less than three blurred
emotions. I was pleased to find my friend was guilty, I was pleased with
the sketch, yet puzzled to know how he had come to make it. Suddenly I
saw light.
"You were on the stairs?" I said, and pointed with the paper over my
shoulder. He nodded.
"Happened to look out," he remarked, setting his cup down.
It is my custom to risk a good deal sometimes by uttering thoughts which
my friends are free to disown. They may not be quite honest in this, but
none the less, according to the social contract, they are free to
disown. So, in this case, when I said, "I wonder if they are really
married," both of these generous souls repudiated the suggestion at
once.
"But you must admit we have some reason for suspicion," I went on,
looking into my cup. "Of course, I am not speaking now as a
gentleman----"
"No," said Bill, maliciously. I continued.
"----but as an investigator into the causes of psychological phenomena.
Placing them upon the dissecting-table, so to speak, and probing with
the forceps of observation and the needle of wit----"
"Rubbish!" snorted the etcher rudely, turning to his plates.
"But, my dear chap!" I urged, "let me explain. I happened to be reading
Balzac last night, that is all. You know how stimulating he is, and how
readily one falls in with his plans for forming a complete Science of
Applied Biology of the human race. Put it another way if you like. What
are the facts? _Item_: A grass widow, obviously foreign, presumably
Italian. _Item_: Two children indisputably American, one fair, the other
dark. _Item_: A _scaldino_. _Item_: Male clothing on the line. _Item_: A
reserved attitude toward her intelligent and cultivated neighbours.
_Item_: Ignorance of the well-known fact that the Indian Summer is now
setting in. _Item_:----shall I go on? Have we not here evidence
sufficiently discrepant to warrant a certain conjecture?"
"Male clothing, you said?" remarked Bill, a certain respect for my
perspicacity in her manner; "When?"
"The last time I came home with the milk," I replied. "The moon was
shining with some brilliance. As I looked out of my window before
getting into bed I saw some one moving over there. A further scrutiny
revealed to me a number of undeniable suits of pyjamas which were being
taken hurriedly from the line."
"You didn't say anything about it before?"
"No, because I attached no significance to the fact before. To tell you
the truth, I was under the impression that they were doing laundry work
and that, to conceal the fact more effectively, they were doing the male
garments at night. We had not then heard the item I was waiting
permission to enumerate."
"Is it one we know or one you're going to spring on us?" inquired the
lady, reaching out for my cup.
"You may know it," I replied. Mac was bending over his plate, rubbing
the ink in with deft fingers, and I saw his lowered glance flutter in my
direction for a moment.
"You mean Mac knows and you don't feel sure whether he's told me,"
interpreted Bill, shaking the tea-pot. I laughed.
"Into that we will not go," I said. "Suffice it that if he knows it was
because I told him."
"I _knew_ it was something you were ashamed of," she exclaimed,
triumphantly. "Go on: out with it!"
"How can I be ashamed of it since I am about to tell you?" I demanded,
incautiously.
"Why, because your love of scandal is so tremendous that you sacrifice
even yourself to it!" she answered.
"Thank you," I said. "Here is my item: They correspond."
"_That's_ nothing to go on!" cried the lady. I dared no more than smile.
Mac grinned as he lifted the plate from the gas stove and, giving it a
final polish, carried it to the press. "Oh, well!" went on Bill,
irrelevantly, "let us all be honest and say we're interested. If he
exists, he will come along some time."
The press creaked and the spokes turned. We both paused involuntarily as
Mac bent over and lifted the blankets. This is always a moment of
anxiety. It was a theory among us that when Samuel Johnson wrote "The
Vanity of Human Wishes" he had been pulling proofs from copper. Bill had
confessed to me that she could not help holding her breath, sometimes.
Her husband turned upon us with a smile of satisfaction.
"If we're all going to be honest," he remarked, "we all ought to know as
much as each other, eh? Well then, tell us about the correspondence, old
man. What do you know?"
"Miss Fraenkel ..." I began, and Bill breathed, "I knew it!"
"In the course of a casual conversation," I continued, "Miss Fraenkel
mentioned to me the fact that letters pass between them. In a way, I
suppose, she shouldn't do it. A post-mistress is in a delicate position.
And yet why not? One may say without prejudice that a certain man writes
to his wife. We might even have assumed it, since we see the postman
deliver letters with our own eyes. Miss Fraenkel, however, overstepped
the bounds of prudence when she implied something wrong. Her exact
words, as far as I can remember, were, 'It is funny he writes from New
York.'"
"Does he?" said Bill.
"So Miss Fraenkel says. So you see, your ... our unspoken thoughts were
justified, to say the least. We may recast _Item one_ and say, A grass
widow, undoubtedly Italian, with a husband in New York, twenty miles
away."
"Well, in that case it's no business of ours," said Mac, as he spread
the heavy viscid ink upon a new plate. "They may have their troubles,
but it's pretty clear they don't need our sympathy, do they?"
"No," assented Bill.
"But what becomes of our inquiry?" I protested. "My dear Mac, this does
credit to your kind heart, but since we are agreed to be honest, let us
have the fruits of our honesty. Consider that anyhow we are doing them
no harm. You are too gentle. Indeed, I think that we have been
stand-offish. Why should not Bill call and--er--leave a card?"
"Me! Call on an Italian?" The voice was almost shrill.
"A neighbourly act," I remarked. "And we may find out something."
"We're a pretty lot, us and our honesty," put in Mac, in some disgust,
rubbing his nose with the back of his wrist.
"My dear friends," I said, "I give you my word of honour that is how
modern novels are made. If you put an end to espionage the book market
would be given over entirely to such works as 'The Automobile and How to
Drive It' and 'Jane Austen and Her Circle.'"
"Then it's a very shady trade, mean and dishonourable," said Mac.
"We agreed upon that, you remember, when my novel was refused
publication," I said, laughing.
"Yes," said Bill. "But when they accepted it, you got very stuck-up and
refused to write any advertisements for a fortnight and said that
whoever had written a good book was one of a noble company, and a lot
more of it. It depends on the point of view."
"Of course it does, _ma mie_. In this case, the honest point of view is
the one we must take. We must forget for a moment that we are English
lady and gentlemen----"
"Never!" said Bill, firmly, lighting a cigarette.
"----and remember that we are students of life. What would Balzac or
Flaubert have known of life if they had been merely gentlemen? Nothing!
What does a gentleman know? Nothing. What does he do in the world?
Nothing. Of what use is he beyond his interest as a vestige of a defunct
feudalism? This is the Twentieth Century, in the United States of
America, not the----"
"Oh stop, stop!" she said, laughing. "Go down and get that thousand
words finished."
I went.