HE BEGINS HIS TALE
The work upon which I had been engaged during the evening did not
engross my mind that night when I retired. Over and over again I
endeavoured to measure the distance I had advanced in knowledge of my
neighbour since I stepped out into the moonlight. I wished to realize
the exact advantage I would hold over Mac and Bill when we met next
morning at breakfast. And that was just what I found myself unable to
do. Both of my friends were shrewd enough to smile if I trotted out the
startling information that he came from Hertfordshire. Of course, they
would say, he must come from somewhere. And if I remarked he had been in
the Mediterranean, they would fail to see anything amazing in a sailor
having been in the Mediterranean. And then, how was I to convey to them
the extraordinary impression he had made upon me by the simple statement
that he was an alien? Why, they would exclaim, were not _we_ aliens too?
Were not fifty per cent of our acquaintances in the United States
aliens? No, it was impossible. They would not understand. And if they
would not understand that, how could they be expected to appreciate in
all its puzzling simplicity his ejaculation: "An author? Ah!"
It occurred to me with some bitterness that a brutal editor in San
Francisco had once complained of my inability to interview people with
any success. "God A'mighty! Why the h--l didn't you _ask_, man!" And to
tell the truth, I am not designed by nature for the cut-throat business
of interviewing. To stand before a stranger, note-book in hand, and pry
into his personal record, always seems to me only a form of infamy
midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any
man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be
a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim,
no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success as an
interviewer, why I had come away from Mr. Carville without extracting
from him his age, his income, his position, the names of his employers,
his ship, his tailor or his God. Nothing of all this I knew, so ineptly
had I managed my chances to obtain it. And yet I felt that, even if I
did not possess any concrete morsel of exciting news, I had discovered
not only that he had a story, but that he was willing to tell it. And as
I fell asleep a conviction came to me that whatever his story might be,
however sordid or romantic, I would pass no judgment upon it until I
perceived in its genuine significance, the chapter that lay behind that
strange utterance, "An author? Ah!"
* * * * *
The next morning I slept late, until past seven in fact. It had ever
been an axiom with us that the indolence attributed to the "artistic
temperament" was a foolish tradition. Creative power undoubtedly comes
late in the day and in the still night-watches; often I had planned a
whole book while in bed; but there are many things to do in literature
and art besides creation--research, reading, preparing of palettes,
writing of letters and so on, that can be better done early. So we
breakfasted at half after seven as a rule. I managed to bathe and shave
before Mac's _reveille_ sounded on the piano.
As I opened my napkin I saw that Bill had something of importance to
impart, and it came out at once.
"He's mending the fence!" she exclaimed, passing the toast.
"And going about it as though he knew what he was doing," added Mac.
I was glad of this discovery of theirs. It would enable me to introduce
my own contribution modestly, yet with effect.
"I wonder," I said, "if he would approve of that tree being cut down."
Mac stirred in his chair. The daily spectacle of those two little boys
hacking slivers from the prostrate tree had been very trying to him.
"I judge not," he said with energy. "A man who----"
"I wish we knew the exact relations between them," I interrupted. "I
mean, whether they quarrel at all."
"Of course they do," said Bill without thinking. "All married people
do--at times."
Her husband looked down his nose into his egg. I smiled.
"True, since you say it," I replied, "but you must remember that just as
no two people look exactly alike, so no two couples live on exactly the
same terms. Just as----"
"Oh, what do you know about it?" said Bill. "Trust a bachelor to lay
down the law."
"Those who look on--you know," I protested.
"That isn't true in regard to marriage," she retorted, "because unless
you are married you _don't_ look on at all, see?"
I saw.
"I am going to speak to him after breakfast," announced Mac. "He seems a
very decent sort of chap. I wonder what he is at sea."
"I had quite a little chat with him last night," I began.
"You did!" they exclaimed. I nodded, enjoying their surprise.
"Yes," I said. "I found you were gone to bed when I finished, and so I
went out on the flags for a short walk. He was out there doing the same
thing."
"Go on!" said Bill.
"He didn't say anything about mending the fence," I remarked.
"Oh goodness! Tell us what he _did_ say," she implored.
"Well, not much. He comes from Hertfordshire."
"He's English then! I thought so," said Mac, relieved.
"He said No," I answered. "That was one of the most curious remarks he
made. He said he was an alien."
"Did he, by Jove! So he is; but it's a very strange thing to say," said
Mac. Bill regarded me with interest.
"He's going to keep us guessing," she remarked, dolefully.
"No," I said, taking another piece of toast. "He accepted my invitation
to tea this afternoon, and he is going to tell us about himself."
After all I had overlooked my most telling item. I might have known that
the fact of his visit would prove more thrilling than any gossip coming
secondhand from me. They wished to speak with him again, this man who
had come upon us so quietly yet so dramatically. We had all become
sufficiently American to desire "a good look at him." And when Americans
take a good look at you they go over you with a fine tooth comb. They
see everything, from a knot in your bootlace to the gold-filling in your
teeth. My friends "sat up" as I made my announcement. I felt that, in
editorial parlance, I had made a scoop.
"Bully!" said Mac, and Bill, her chin on her hand, looked across at me
with approval. After all, again, my lack of enterprise in interrogating
Mr. Carville the night before was bearing fruit. It was crediting me
with a sportsmanlike reluctance to steal a march on my friends. I had,
unconsciously done what we English call "the right thing." I had invited
him to tea. Suddenly Bill's eyes became anxious.
"Are they both coming?" she asked.
"I--I don't think so," I faltered. "I can't say exactly why, but I don't
think so. You see," I went on, "the reason he offered to tell me about
himself was a question of mine about his children. I said their names
were curious enough to strike anyone. He said it was a long story. And
he offered to step over himself. Now," I felt more certain of myself
now, "the story of his children's names may take two directions. If _he_
named them he will not want his wife to hear him tell about it. If _she_
named them, which is not likely, why, he would scarcely take the trouble
to come over and tell strangers about it, would he?"
"I'm very glad to hear it," said Bill.
"So am I," I agreed. "I think it is best to get acquainted with families
on the instalment plan, don't you?"
"Rather!" said Bill, and held out her hand for my cup.
It was a perfect morning, clear and crisp, and the long sunlit vista of
Van Diemen's Avenue tempted us sorely. We went through our daily
struggle. Those people who work by rote, who are herded in offices and
factories, and who are compelled by the laws of their industries to
remain at their posts whether the sun shines or not, often regard the
lives of free lances like us as merely agreeable holidays; they would
certainly be somewhat staggered to find the enormous will-power involved
in resisting the calls of the open road. There are so many subtle
arguments in favour of abandoning the desk for just once. "It is such a
glorious day, it is a shame to be indoors," "one's head is muggy; a good
walk will clear the ideas," or "it doesn't do to stick at it too long,
you know: give it a rest." (This when you have not written a line for a
week!) And so on. We knew them all, these specious lures to idleness,
and strangled them with a firm hand each morning after breakfast. Well
we knew that on a dark dismal rainy day we would hear the Tempter
saying, "Who could work on a day like this? Leave it until the sun
shines in the window. Try that interesting novel you brought home. After
all, you know, you must read to see how the accepted masters do it. Read
for technique ..."
By nine o'clock we would all be at work.
So it was on this bright morning in October. I remember being rather
struck with the excellence of the work of the preceding evening. It was
not great work, you may say, not by any means in the category of
immortal classics. It was not even signed, being an appreciation of a
certain proprietary article in common use and extensively advertised.
There was to me a quite indescribable humour in the fact that this essay
in admiration was eventually published in French, German, Swedish and
Polish, running into a six-figure issue, while my last novel, a sincere
piece of literature, hung fire, so to speak, and never got beyond the
publisher's preliminary forecast of a thousand copies. Was I not angry?
Far from it. I was no puling undergraduate with a thin broad-margined
book of verse to sell. The public was at perfect liberty to buy what it
pleased. If they wanted my work, the work I loved and toiled to make as
perfect as possible, they would get it, all in good time. For the
present I was content to wait and do the thing which could be translated
into Swedish and Polish, into dollars cash. It is customary, I know, to
rail at the American public, to accuse them of a material mania. An
artist is better employed, in my humble view, in trying to understand
them, for believe me, they are not so vile as the precious
_litterateurs_ and others would have us believe. Bitterness is no
preparation for sympathetic study. And without sympathy our works,
however clever and lovely, are but Dead Sea apples, crumbling to ashes
at the touch of a human finger.
It must not be supposed that we had arrived at this way of thinking by a
sudden leap. Again, far from it! My friend and I had been
undergraduates, and very proud of ourselves into the bargain, long ago
in England. But we had travelled since then, in more senses than one. We
had known comfort and we had known the mute impressive numbness of
despair. We had made "scoops" at times and celebrated them with joyous
junketings. Once we had dined at Delmonico's, a meal of which the memory
is still an absurd chaos. We had, moreover, confronted America with a
blank wall of unyielding British prejudice. We had entrenched ourselves
behind our conception of the thing to do and stupidly refused to do
anything else. And we had been beaten to our knees. For it meant
eventually either submission or flight. And we never had any intention
of flight. We had fixed it firmly in our minds that we would return
triumphant to England, some day as yet far off. We were aliens, yes; but
we meant to win through at last, to make our dream come true; our dream
of a cottage, with honeysuckle and roses, "far from the madding crowd."
And so we realized at length that, after all, the country was there
before us; that they had not asked us to come; that we might as well do
things the way they wanted. All this was sound physic for us. It made
us, in the true sense of the word, cosmopolitan, made us broad in
culture and stimulated that deep human sympathy and understanding which
lay at the root of that impatience with which we awaited the story of
our neighbour.
I was typing a letter about three o'clock when I heard Mac's quick step
on the stairs and the opening of the door. It is his custom to take
advantage of his view of the path from the studio window to forestall
the postman, and I took no further notice until I heard the hum of
conversation. And so I was the last to appear.
He was standing in the middle of our room, his back to me, his Derby hat
in his hand, looking curiously about the walls. I saw his glance held
for a moment by the old English clock with its swinging pendulum and
weights. It passed on to the chimney-piece loaded with antique silver,
bizarre brasses, candle-snuffers and snuff-boxes. It moved over to the
bust of Bill that Von Roon had given her when she was married, a
miracle of cunningly-arranged shadows. It fell away from water colour
and etching without hint of ulterior interest, and came to rest upon the
book-shelves. There was more than politeness in his glance at the books,
more than mere curiosity. There was, plainly enough, connoisseurship. In
the flicker of an eyelid you can tell it. He turned to meet me as I
entered the room.
"I'm glad you've come," I said, shaking hands. His clasp was firm,
almost athletic. "We tea at four, but I don't think I told you that."
"No," he said, "you didn't. I always have tea at three and it didn't
occur to me that the custom might be different."
"Don't apologize," said Bill. "It only takes a minute to make. Do you
like it strong?"
He smiled.
"It's the only way I get it, at sea," he said. "Strong! Boiled would be
a better word for it."
"_We_ like it strong," said Mac. "Sit down please. Here, I'll take your
hat."
He sank back in a chair and looked about him. For the first time we saw
him without a hat. A wide head, full over the temples, and with thinning
hair on the brow, it was in no wise unusual. The head of a professional
man, shall I say? His hands lay palm downward on the arms of the chair,
the knuckles white, the broad flat nails imperfectly manicured.
"You've got a snug little place here," he remarked. "A very snug little
place. It's very old fashioned. I got quite a start when I stepped
into--into the room from the street. Like the cottages in England. Art
curtains, too!"
The tea came in then, and Bill offered him a cup. I think I was a little
disappointed in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me
the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that
again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I
expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough
to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear
the air. The mention of "art curtains" always made Mac restive.
"Do you like pictures?" she asked.
He gave her one of his quick glances.
"Some," he replied. "I believe, if I'd been taught, that I could have
done something in that line," and he pointed with his saucer towards a
water-colour, a drawing of the Golden Gate from Russian Hill.
I hardly knew what to make of this new development. I really did not
believe he had looked at it. Moreover the drawing was not clamant with
noisy daubs to attract the attention. It was not even recognizable as a
view of the Golden Gate. It was a study of colour-combination, in an
unusually high key, of interest to artists, but not to the public. Only
the _cognoscenti_ had remarked that picture before.
"You like it?" I said, taking it down and handing it to him.
"Ah!" he said, setting his cup and saucer on the floor. "Yes, that's
it, that's it." He studied it. "That's what I should have liked to
tackle. Sugar-plums, eh?"
We looked at him in astonishment, and he assumed an attitude of apology.
"I beg pardon," he said. "What I meant was it reminded me of old Turner,
you know, messing about with coloured sugar-plums."
"A colour-scheme?" said Mac, light dawning in his puzzled face.
"That's it, that's the word: colour-scheme," said Mr. Carville. "I'd
forgotten the word." And he handed the drawing back. "You wonder at a
seafaring man coming out here to live?"
"It's a very healthy district," I suggested.
"Mrs. Carville don't like New York, that's all," he said, simply.
"Personally, I shouldn't have bothered. But she's quite right."
"I should think it was better for the children too," said Bill.
He nodded vigorously, packing the tobacco into his pipe.
"Fresh air," said Mac, who slept out on the porch half the year.
"Oh there's plenty of fresh air in Atlantic Avenue," he said. "I had
something else in mind." He looked thoughtful, and then his face lighted
up with an extremely vivid indignation. It died away again in a moment,
but it transfigured him. "Automobiles," he added.
We nodded, understanding him perfectly. We had seen them, in New York as
in Brooklyn, careering at maniacal speed among the children at play.
Bill, who loved children almost as much as flowers, had come in one day
in Lexington Avenue, white and sick, and told us brokenly of something
she had seen. So we nodded and he, seeing that we understood, said no
more.
"Have you lived in America long?" I inquired.
"Both the kids were born here," he replied. "Yes, that's nearly eight
years since we came. You see--but it's a long story. I don't know
whether you'd be interested----"
Bill rose.
"Let us go outside," she said. "It's beautifully warm."
We went out.
"You must take the Fourth Chair," said Bill, looking at us.
We explained to him the legend of the Fourth Chair.
"You see," I added, "we were expecting you. There is fate in this."
For a long time he sat quietly looking across the valley, as though
pondering something.
"I think I might as well begin at the beginning," he said at last, "and
work up to the kids' names gradually. Though as a matter of fact I could
tell you in two words the reasons for giving them such un-English names,
it wouldn't explain how I feel. And that I take it is what you are
after?"
"Begin at the beginning," I said.
"So I will. I told you I was born at sea. My father was a merchant
skipper of Boston. I don't remember him very well, for he died when I
was seven, but I have a vague sort of an idea that he was a big man with
big dark eyes and a great nose like the beak of a bird. _He_ had run
away to sea when--well, Napoleon was Emperor of the French when he ran
away to sea. Sailors had pigtails and all the rest of it. His brothers
did the same. At one time, in the 'sixties, there were six skippers
ploughing the ocean, all Carvilles, all big black-whiskered men. You may
hear of them yet in the ports out East.
"My father married four times. There was one peculiarity, or fatality if
you like, about the Carvilles, and that was their failure to beget sons.
Daughters came right along all the time. I have fourteen cousins, all
married, and all got boys! The first three wives my father had only
produced two daughters, who died before their mothers. You can
understand that those six big men took it badly there were no sons. When
the third wife died, childless, my father had given up the sea for a
while and had invested in a ship-yard at St. John, New Brunswick. It was
there that he met my mother.
"I can't go into details I never knew, so all I can say is that my
mother was French Canadian. They had a big farm away up the Petitcodiac
River and the girls used to come down to St. John to finish an education
that began in Moncton and really ended, in my mother's case, in London,
England.
"They built ships in those days in St. John, and some of the best were
my father's work. As I said, I don't remember him very well, but you
will understand how I felt when one day, about nine years ago, we put
into a little Spanish port for coal, and they made us fast to an old
wooden hulk in the harbour. As we came round her stern I was leaning
over the side and I saw the brass letters still on her square counter,
_Eastern Star, St. John, New Brunswick_. That was one of my father's
finest models. Pitch pine he made her of, and she's beautiful yet, for
all her disgrace. I climbed aboard of her while the Corcubion women were
trotting to and fro with the coal baskets, and looked round the poop.
There was the cuddy as good as ever, teak frames, maple panels, pine
flooring. That old hulk brought my old father before me as no
daguerreotype could do. There was his name cut on the beam, _John
Carville_. It may seem absurd to you people, but do you know, I realized
then, as I looked up and saw my father's name on that beam, nearly
smothered with countless coats of varnish, I realized how a young man of
family feels, a Cecil, say, a Talbot or a Churchill, when he sees his
ancestors' names in the history books. My father had done something, he
was something. I don't know anyone who can better that title: a builder
of ships.
"And my father did more than that, he sailed them and owned them. So far
he had been under the Union flag, but this time, when he married my
mother, and his finest masterpiece, the _Erin's Isle_, was anchored in
St. John Harbour ready for sea, the Red Ensign was flying at the gaff."
"Did your mother go too?" asked Bill.
"Surely! you think that strange? Well, it was that or a life away at the
back of everything; life on a farm, with a visit once a year to St.
John. You like the country, don't you? Yes, but if you'd been down in
the back-woods, if you'd lived in the thrifty way French Canadians have
picked up from the Nova Scotians, and _improved_, if you were young and
wanted to see something, you'd risk your soul to get away from it. You
think a woman would have an awful life at sea. My mother jumped at it.
She married a man who was sailing as skipper before she was born, and
jumped at it! Taking everything into consideration, I don't blame her.
You see, she had ambition, my mother had. Her education had been good
enough, and she wanted to find a sphere where she could use it."
"And so she went to sea?" said Bill in gentle sarcasm. Bill's aversion
to the sea amounts almost to malevolence. She is a bad sailor.
"For the time being, and to see the world," said Mr. Carville. "She had
seen nothing, remember. Well, she saw it. They were away five years. You
can imagine my father's feelings when the first child was a girl. She
was born off the Ladrone Islands in the Pacific on the way to Hong Kong.
I suppose he got over the disappointment somehow, for I never heard my
mother say anything about quarrels except on the subject of living
ashore. I told you my mother had ambitions. She wanted to live in
England and have an establishment. But my father couldn't see the use.
If she wanted to live ashore, he argued, why couldn't she live in Hong
Kong or Bombay or Colombo until he was ready to retire? She would see
him just as often. No, she had no intention of doing that. She saw
exactly how much ice a skipper's wife cut in a community of skippers'
wives. She was after higher game. She settled it finally that if she
couldn't live in London, she'd stay aboard the ship all her life.
"She got her way, but not all at once. One voyage she left the ship in
Bombay and travelled across India, rejoining at Calcutta. Then she lived
in Antwerp a good while, but got sick of it and shipped again when the
ship sailed for Callao. That was the last of her voyages, my mother's I
mean. For all I know the _Erin's Isle_ swims yet. My sister was drowned
and I was born before she dropped her anchor in London River."
"Drowned!" said Bill; "a little baby?"
"Going ashore in Callao," said Mr. Carville, turning to her, "there was
a 'roller' started. I believe it's caused by the sea-bed shifting;
slight earthquake in fact. The roller was a big wave and struck the
ship's boat as they were rowing across the harbour. Accidents will
happen, no matter how careful you are."
"Yes," we said quietly, "they will."
"They went from Callao to Brisbane and loaded again in Melbourne for
home. My mother used to say she thought they would _never_ get round the
Cape of Good Hope. My father had done the voyage once in sixty-two days,
almost a record; but this time everything went dead wrong. They were
driven as far as the Crozets, somewhere down near the South Pole, I
believe. The grub gave out, and even my mother had to eat bread from
corn that was ground in the coffee mill. The crew got restless and
sulky. I've often tried to imagine it, the Skipper and his two mates,
talking it over in the cuddy, keeping the men working to stop their
thinking, running for days under reefed courses and double reefed
topsails. And all the time with something else on his mind, something
that materialized finally, into _me_!
"My mother told me that my father nearly went crazy with joy when I was
born one Sunday morning, 18 south, 21 west, at seven bells on the
starboard watch. They were in the trade then, spanking along almost due
north for Fernando Noronha. It was rum for all hands that morning,
almost the only soft thing left on the ship, and a little tea. The tea
came in handy for their pipes, my mother told me. Poor chaps! They were
dying for a smoke. Well, I have always got a good deal of satisfaction
from knowing everybody was glad I came into the world. My father was
dancing mad to get home and tell all the folks that the curse was
lifted. He promised my mother anything; a home in London was one thing.
He said he would quit the sea, for another. And he kept his word too. He
was going on fifty-five, and had been at sea for thirty-eight years.
Think of that! I've been at it for fifteen years now, and it seems an
infernally long time. Thirty-eight years!
"So they settled in England. I don't know whether you people can see it
plainly, but if you think a little you will realize how strange those
two felt in London, with their Saratoga trunks, their sea habits and
their American prejudices. Can you?"
He looked from one to the other as we sat there, our chairs twisted a
little so that we could see his face. The question was a shrewd one. I
remember wondering if he was aware how vividly it brought back to our
minds our first few weeks in San Francisco, our mistakes, our petulant
anger with strange habits, our feeling of awful homesickness. Again we
nodded silently.
"For a time they were up against it, you would say," he went on, "and
they didn't dare to move away from their lodgings in the East India Dock
Road. It was natural for my father to think he ought to live near the
ships. The custom of living in the suburbs, commuting as they call it
here, hadn't begun in the seventies. It was my mother who fired his
ambition to live further out. It would have been all right and
everything might have been different if his ambition hadn't been fired
in another direction at the same time.
"My father had done well on the whole. He had saved for years and kept
his money in banks or in ships, which he understood. But now, when the
_Erin's Isle_ was sold and he found himself worth about fifty thousand
dollars, he began to invest in all sorts of queer ventures. He wanted to
double his fortune before he died. Others had done it, men he met in
Leadenhall Street and on the Baltic; why shouldn't he? You see, he had
got hold of the _masculine_ part of my mother's ambition all right. She
wanted to have an establishment, like a lady; he wanted to found a
family in England. The money he was to make was for me. I was, he had
settled, to be an engineer. He saw, that with steel coming in,
engineering was to be the great gold-mine of the future. So he would
provide the capital by which I was to build up a huge fortune. The
Carvilles were to be big people, understand; '_my_ son was to be Prime
Minister some day,' Humph!"
There was no bitterness in the exclamation, only a veiled irony, a
detached amusement, at this memory of a dead ambition. We did not
interrupt.
"They moved out just a little way, to Mildmay Park. You must remember
that my father had no friends outside of business friends, and he had no
idea that he would gain anything by moving west. My mother disliked what
she saw of Kensington and Bayswater, and they thought in their
simplicity that places with names like Mildmay Park, Finsbury Park, and
finally Oakleigh Park, were good enough to begin on. Each move was a
little further out, a little bigger house and a little higher rent until
at Oakleigh Park, when I was six years old, it was a big semi-detached
villa, with a garden and tennis-lawn and professional people for
neighbours. That year my brother was born and my father began to die.
"You will laugh, I suppose, at the folly of it, but in her own way, my
mother was setting up to be a fine lady. We had a cook and housemaid,
and a nurse for me, and fine things I learned from her! We had a hired
landau on Saturday afternoon to go drives in, a pew in the church, and
sometimes people to dinner. She even got my father to send to Dublin to
find out the Carville ancestry and coat-of-arms. She did, that's a fact!
So you see, she understood perfectly what was meant in England by
keeping up a position. As I said, if my father had not got a sort of
mania for turning his money over, the scheme might have gone through.
"He began to die when I was not quite six, and he went on dying and at
the same time investing money until I was nearly eight. Imagine it! A
great big man, as irritable as a child, slowly rotting away inside with
cancer and two helpless little children, one a baby. All the time it was
doctor after doctor, each one recommending a different cure; all the
time it was investment after investment, the estate getting more and
more entangled. He went to Baden one autumn and came home worse. He
tried Harrogate in the spring, but it was no use. He came back, went to
bed and never rose from it. Mind you, all the time the cancer was eating
his body, this other cancer was at his mind. He plunged into the
craziest schemes for getting twenty per cent. interest. Nothing my
mother could say was able to make him see the madness of it. She wanted
him to buy land, but he said no one but a fool would buy land unless
they had a fortune to keep it up. At last, one January, it was over and
done with. He died, and we had a grand funeral, and the real business of
life began for us.
"For me it took a shape that I never got used to for all the years I was
kept at it--school. For the life of me I can't see what use it was to me
or to anyone else. What does a child learn at school that's of any use
to him? You'll think I am talking like an ignorant fool, I dare say, but
hear me out. Between eight and seventeen I went to six different
schools. The country in those days was spotted with them. Some were
called colleges, some academies, one was called an 'Ecole' of something
or other. Each one I went to had a different badge, a different coloured
tassel, a different set of rules and subjects. Barring the last one,
which was down in Essex, near Maldon, they were simply swindles. A mile
from our house was a board-school, but it would not have been keeping up
our position to send me there. I learned to read and write, but, Great
God! curiosity will make a child do that. If he isn't curious to learn
what's the use of him learning? He just forgets it, as I forgot it, as
you did too very likely, forgot it and learned it again when you needed
to. A child ought to be outdoors learning the names of flowers and trees
and birds. I know what I'm talking about, mind! You may fancy that if a
boy is going into the professions as I was to go, as I did go, he ought
to be schooled. Well, when I entered my profession at seventeen, I had
to begin at the bottom for all my schooling. I know as much of
'professions' as most men, and I say of schools, I have no faith in
them. The men who teach them know nothing. They're frauds and they know
it. All that these schools did for me was to teach me the importance of
keeping up a position.
"Twenty per cent! Twenty per cent! The madness of it! The holes and
corners he had rushed into, in his frantic hunt for twenty per cent! A
bank in Australia, a railroad in Ecuador, a sailing ship that never by
any chance sailed into prosperity, a ginger-beer works in Denmark, a
cement works in Spain, a foolish concern which proposed to earn vast
sums by buying moribund bad debts, a drydock in Japan, and a
lunatic-scheme for shoeing horses without nails! This last invention, if
I remember rightly, was to fasten them with steel suspenders and a kind
of cuff-button over the pastern! And we couldn't even leave the infernal
things to die of inanition. Not content with paying no dividend, their
familiar demons used to wake up and demand more capital. Calls! I would
come home from school for my vacation and find my mother nearly crazy
over another call. We were so simple that at first we paid them, and my
father's old 'business friends' (he hadn't any others that I ever heard
of) saw no objection. Humph! When I read in novels how a father's
friends help the hero and heroine, succouring the widow and the
fatherless, I must smile. I recall the days of our storm and stress,
when those sleek and slippery wolves, the 'business friends' of my
father, sat round waiting for my poor distracted, gallant-hearted mother
to stumble and stagger in her struggle with those wild-cats of
investments. Wild cats! Bengal tigers were a better name for them! But
she didn't! She won out and defied the whole caboodle, as she called
them when she was roused. She won out, or I shouldn't be here now,
maybe. She was a mother fighting for her offspring, and many a shrewd
knock they had from her. And the 'business friends' slunk away and we've
never seen them since. They talk about the romance of big business. What
about the tragedy of the small business? What about the dark and dirty
meannesses of business? What about the 'business friend,' watching,
watching for the weaker ones to fall? What sort of romance is there in
battles between wolves and women, in wars without chivalry? Mercy?
Consideration for the weak and helpless? Knightly courtesy towards
women? You won't find any of them in business, I'm afraid. I remember
often sitting in the room with my book, a school-boy on his holidays,
while some smug specimen of the business-friend variety sat explaining
and domineering over my mother, who did her best to understand. Perhaps
she was difficult and stupid. It isn't every woman--or man either--who
can keep a grasp on the details of banks and railroads and cement and
ginger-beer and marine insurance and company-law and all the other
tarradiddles that were going to yield twenty per cent and didn't yield
twenty cents! I used to wonder if these men's own wives would be as
intelligent as my mother in similar circumstances. Humph! I _saw_ those
ladies in one or two instances when they were widowed and had to face
the world without a man. I was astounded. To see those proud big-bosomed
women, with their red faces and narrow hearts and silly conversation,
collapse and go down in ruin before the blasts of adversity! To see
them, who had tried in their patronizing way to get us to give up our
home and go into apartments, selling up and letting apartments
themselves! Them! They hadn't a tenth of the fight in them my little
colonial mother had, for all their big bosoms and tall brag about their
independence and the fine offers they had when they were single. Some of
the men too were in misfortune after a while. Some disaster sent up a
big wave which washed them off their little rafts. I used to wonder what
became of them. One I know died of heart-trouble. He was never troubled
with his heart when he sat in our parlour laying down the law to a
harassed widow and trying to get her money into his own rotten little
business. Oh, it used to make my heart burn within me; but what could I
do? All very fine for boys in novels to make vows to get the fortune
back. Humph! You might as well try to get butter off a dog's tongue, or
capture the steam from the kettle. Its _gone_! Besides, I always had a
dumb dislike of business. I used to moon. We were so troubled with
business-troubles we had no time to live. We never really got to know
each other. I used to think my mother was hard and unsympathetic because
her view of life wasn't mine--as if it could be. It was a miserable
tangle. There was my father, whose love for us made him leave us that
horrible legacy of investments. And my mother was so busy providing for
us she had no leisure to love us. And my brother and I were so
different in temper and age and inclination we simply ignored each
other. Love? It's easy to talk; but think of the innumerable gradations
of it! Think of how incompetent most of us are to express it! I used to
hear the servants use the word, and I would wonder. I used to read
stories about it, and wonder still more. Little Lord Fauntleroy....
Humph!
"Somehow or other, my mother did eventually get things straight. There
wasn't much to bring up a future Prime Minister on, and besides, there
was my brother. He took more after my father than I did. I was mother's
boy, but he was a dark daring little devil without much respect for
either of us. I don't know quite how it began, but between us there grew
a feeling that can't be called brotherly love. Perhaps he realized that,
according to my mother's ideas of founding a family, I was to be first
and he was to be--nowhere. As it happened this was not just. He was
clever from the very first. I was to be an engineer, and he was to
do--well, anything that came along. But he had the talent for
engineering; I hadn't. I liked it, same as any boy does, but while I
couldn't do a simple division sum without making a mess of it, he could
do it in his head, and standing on his head for that matter. Whatever he
tried, that he could do, whereas my range has always been quiet and
limited. I liked reading. He never seemed to be in the house long enough
to read anything, but he knew more than I did. He does now."
"Where is he now?" I asked. He laughed.
"That's more than I can say. I'll get to that presently. What I want you
to understand is the feeling we brothers had for each other. He didn't
detest me, you know. He didn't take the trouble to do that. He simply
laughed at me. He made friends with board-school boys and even
errand-boys. One day my mother saw him out in the baker's cart driving
it round the neighbourhood. It was a sore humiliation for her, I'm
afraid. He didn't care. There were girls, too, even when he was only ten
or eleven. Humph!
"All this time I was growing up in this sort of life, the life of the
professional classes. When I left school, at seventeen, neither my
mother nor I had much idea of the way a young gentleman became an
engineer. She had no relatives in England, my father's brothers were
either at sea or dead, and my father's business friends dropped away
when he died, a way business friends have, I've noticed since. We were
aliens still as far as real friends went. And then one day we saw an
interview in a paper called the _Young Pilgrim_, one of those mushy
papers for young people that do a lot of harm, in my opinion. It was an
interview with Sir Gregory Gotch, the great engineer. My mother, who had
a good deal of practical enterprise, decided to write to him and ask
him. I've often wondered what he thought of that letter. It ran
something like this: _Mrs. Carville presents her compliments to Sir
Gregory Gotch, and would be obliged to him if he would inform her of the
best way to article her son (aged seventeen) to the engineering
profession in a manner suitable to his position._ Something like that.
You can understand from that that my mother had grasped the principle of
gentility all right. It went down, too, for in a few days we had an
answer, in which the great man gave the names of three or four firms in
London that he recommended as reliable and old-established. We selected
one, and apparently Sir Gregory's name was an open sesame there, for we
had an invitation to go into the city and see them at once.
"We went, the gentlemanly youth and his ladylike mother, and saw the
heads of the firm. We discovered then, that there were two ways of
learning engineering, an easy way and a hard way. People say there's no
royal road to learning. Like most proverbs, it's a lie. There's always a
royal road, if you happen to be king of enough money. I might be an
ordinary apprentice or a special pupil. If I was apprenticed I should
have to start at six o'clock in the morning and work just like the men.
I would stay in one shop for seven years and be turned out an expert
mechanic. And I would have to wait six months for an opening, as they
were full-up. If I came as a pupil, however, I would be allowed to spend
so much time in each shop, including the offices; I could start at nine
o'clock in the morning and finish the whole business in three years. The
premium was nine hundred dollars, and I could start that minute. They
didn't seem to care how soon they got that nine hundred dollars.
"We talked it over in the train. Of course, I was all for the royal
road and had plenty of good arguments in favour of it. What I want you
to notice is that my mother was in favour of it, too! Think of it. She
had been brought up in a hard school. She knew what it was to live
sparingly and how useful early discipline was. She had told me often
that all great men had a hard struggle. Therefore, how could I be a
great man if I didn't have a hard struggle? And yet she was so obsessed
with this notion of gentility that she deliberately gave me a soft time.
She paid out three hundred dollars every year for three years....
"That time was what you might call a comedy of errors. I am not going to
admit that I idled, for it is not true. I was ambitious. Since I was to
be an engineer I went at it bald-headed. I went to polytechnics and
night-schools, I spent whole nights in study, and did everything that
any young chap could do. The whole of my efforts did not amount to a row
of rivets. Why? I was up against the gentility again. I met the
professional classes face to face.
"There were three other chaps there as pupils, and it so happened that
they were every one from the great public schools. One was from
Haileybury, one from Eton, and another from Winchester. When they found
I was not one of them they ragged me, of course, which was good and
proper. I often think the ragging in public schools is one of the few
useful things they do there. When these men found I intended to study my
profession they thought I was stark mad. They were all nice young
fellows and had money coming to them. Why should they bother? They
thought I ought to look at it in the same light. Eventually I did. It
was three to one. I found out that any amount of study and genuine merit
would not carry me along in a profession. It was all well enough to be
an engineer; but the main thing was to be a gentleman. Gradually I
dropped the study, took afternoons off to go down west and began to
worry my mother for more money.
"So it went on for the three years, my mother patiently waiting for me
to get through my time and start in earnest as a professional man. My
brother was at school, the one near Maldon, and was giving her a lot of
trouble. I only saw him during the vacations. He was a big fellow, while
as you see, I'm rather on the small side. I don't know that that should
cause anybody any amusement! But because I was twenty and he was
thirteen and nearly as tall as I was, he was for ever laughing. It
seemed to him a huge joke. And as I thought about it the idea came to me
that even nature was on his side and against me. It almost seemed as
though she'd not only given him the brains, but the stature to be the
great man my father and mother longed for. He was good-looking too, I
remember, even then. My mother had to pack off a servant that vacation,
a silly giggling little girl.
"I couldn't very well say anything to him, because I was getting into
hot water myself for spending money. And when he wrote in mid-term for
an extra sovereign, my mother blamed me for setting him a bad example.
Lord! I didn't have a sovereign a year when I was thirteen. Times had
changed.
"I had been drifting along for some time, expecting when my time was up
to be put on the staff, as was usual with pupils. They usually gave us a
job until we could use our influence to get an appointment somewhere.
But in my case it didn't happen so. The day my three years' term was up,
a beautiful spring day, the junior partner informed me that I could
consider myself finished, and handed me a reference that, for all the
use it was, might have gone into the waste-paper basket then and there.
"I was staggered. I had no idea of how to get a job. Why had I been
pushed out? Simply because the firm had found out I had no influence
with Sir Gregory Gotch, no standing socially at all. I was an alien in
their ranks. I went out of that office with all the externals of a
gentleman and a public-school boy, but inwardly an outsider as you may
say. One thing I had though, and that was the firm conviction that
'pull' and not merit counted. I had to get some one to 'influence' a job
in my favour. It would not have been gentlemanly to answer an
advertisement!
"My mother thought at once of one of my uncles, who had retired from the
sea and was now a marine superintendent in Fenchurch Street. I called to
see him; but he was abroad attending to a damaged ship. I think it was a
month before I happened to meet the Winchester boy who had been in the
works with me. Quite by accident it was. Let me see now----"
Mr. Carville paused again, and leaning over to one of the geranium tubs
knocked his pipe out. Suddenly he laughed.
"Why," he said, "I'm telling you the whole story."
"That's what we want you to do," I said, and the others nodded.
"The trouble is, you know," went on Mr. Carville, "one thing leads to
another. You can't understand what I am without knowing how my brother
and I came to be so--antagonistic. And to explain that it's necessary to
show you how I grew up in this professional, easy-going, snobby
atmosphere and took it all in, while he, my brother, cut out his own
course and went his own way in defiance of everything. I remember now! I
saw that Winchester chap--his father was a wine-merchant and Master of
the Tinkers' Company--at Lord's. I had nothing to do, and instead of
hunting round to get a job, I went to Lord's to see the cricket. There
was old Belvoir clumping away at the nets. Engineering! Pooh! He had
eight hundred a year his aunt left him--catch him practising as an
engineer. He was going on a tour of all the Mediterranean
watering-places with an M.C.C. team. Well, we had lunch in the pavilion,
and I mentioned in a jolly sort of way that I'd been jounced out of the
office. He said it was 'a bally shame,' Oh, I did envy that chap his
eight hundred a year! Life seemed to him one grand, sweet song.
Cricket, Riviera, dances, clubs, country houses, everything. He was
fenced in on every side, safe from the vulgarity of the world. He was
hall-marked--a public-school man. He was a citizen of his world, I was
an alien. He was rich. I had not even a savings-bank book.
"I was going away after the match when I discovered he had been thinking
about me. That was Belvoir all over. He was a gentleman, and a gentleman
to my mind is like an artist in one thing only, he is born--and then
made. That was Belvoir. He had privileges as an English gentleman, but
he had also duties. We had been together in the shop as pupils; that
gave me a claim on him. He said he had an uncle in Yorkshire who was
chairman of an engineering firm, and he would write to him. More than
that, he did write and I got an appointment in their London office in
Victoria Street. Good old Belvoir! Remember Spion Kop? That was the last
of Belvoir. Lord's, Riviera, clubs--Spion Kop....
"I settled down into that berth in Victoria Street as a cat settles into
a cushion. I was warm, comfortable, well-paid, well-dressed and had all
I wanted in reason. I lived at home and commuted to the city every day,
travelling first class, living first class. I settled down. I was on the
way to what my mother and father had in view, a comfortable position.
"My brother was at school, of course, down near Maldon. I never really
got hold of my mother's private opinion of her second son. It was a
mystery to me why she gave him so much pocket-money, I came to the
conclusion afterwards that since she considered it her duty to give me a
good start and put by all she could for my capital in business, there
would be very little later on for my brother, so she was giving him tips
now instead. She was able to say, 'I never stinted you at school,
Francis,' It might have been better for him if she had. And yet, I don't
know. I've come to think that men like my brother go their own road
anyhow. Their hereditary nature is so strong that environment makes no
difference, you might say.
"The main difference between us, when I was twenty-two and he was
fifteen, was the subject of women. That sounds strange, I suppose. But
go back. What did you know about women at fifteen? Or about yourself? My
brother knew no more, but he _acted_ on the little he did know, we were
afraid. Especially we who grow up in such a social life as I have been
talking of; we are afraid. My brother was never afraid of anything. If
he wants a thing he makes one bound and grabs it. If he hates a thing he
makes another bound and hits it. I've seen a man flinch just because my
brother looked at him. As for women, humph! He had only to hold up his
hand.
"Now I don't offer it as a proof of virtue, but at twenty-one I had not
bothered with girls much. I will explain in a minute why this was the
case. For the same reason I did not smoke or play cards. Let me get back
to my brother.
"One mid-term my mother got a letter from the head-master saying he
regretted that he had been under the painful necessity of expelling
Francis Carville from the school. He had been caught _flagrante
delicto_, as the old chap said, and one of the maids had been dismissed.
You can imagine how a thing like that upset my mother. Old Colonial
morality was pretty strict I have read, and in any case when these
things happen in your own family it is very different from reading about
them in the Press. But what raised our worry still higher was the
curious fact that although he had been expelled and put on the London
train at Maldon, he hadn't turned up."
There was another pause as Mr. Carville struck a match. It was nearly
dark and we watched his face reflecting the glow. Suddenly Bill realized
the time and rose.
"Won't you stay to dinner?" she asked.
"No thank you," he said. "Mrs. Carville's going into Newark this
evening, I believe, and we're going to take the boys to a show." He
rose. "I must get back. Good-night."
"Come in and finish your story," said Mac.
"All right. Good-night and thank you." He lifted his hat and stepped off
the porch.