ANOTHER LETTER FROM WIGBOROUGH
For a few moments we sat still, oblivious of the flight of time. The
afternoon sun threw long shadows across the road. Mrs. Wederslen flew
past in her automobile, inclining her haughty southern head as she sat,
erect and dominant, behind the steering-wheel. The rumble of the
trolley-cars came up on the still air from the valley. My friend and I
looked at each other and knocked out our pipes.
I do not think that, had we been left to ourselves, we would have broken
the silence for a long time. Mr. Carville's retreat had been so sudden
that we could scarcely realize he was gone, that we might not see him
again for perhaps two months. Time was needed, moreover, for us to
adjust our feelings towards him, to comprehend fully the peculiar
circumstances that, while we had been listening to the story of Rosa,
she herself had been in the next house. We had to connect the Genoese
maiden with the reserved and taciturn neighbour who had given us food
for so many conjectures. Nor would our resentment against Mr. Carville,
for breaking off so abruptly, have taken the form of speech all at once.
We were too dazed. We wanted to think. We would not, I say, have broken
the silence for a long time ourselves. But Miss Fraenkel's temperament
was different, and in this case surprising.
With Miss Fraenkel silent thought, I imagine, is not a habit. With her
to think is to speak. The effervescent enthusiasm of her nature makes
speech indispensable. I do not believe that, during the
two-and-a-half-hour recital of Mr. Carville, Miss Fraenkel had any
coherent thoughts. More than any other women the American woman avoids
the cooler levels of intellectual judgment. In one moment she stands,
nude of the commonest knowledge of a person or a thing. In a moment
more, and she appears before your astonished eyes, panoplied in all the
glittering harness of a glowing conviction. Minerva-like, her opinions
and beliefs spring full-armed from the head and front of her great Jove
Intuition. Logic, says the ancient platitude, hangs by the end of a
philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on
her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her
charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic manner, her astonishing
success.
Something of this was apparent in Miss Fraenkel as she leaned out of the
window and met our gaze with delighted eyes.
"Isn't he just won-der-ful?" she exclaimed.
"You enjoyed it?" I asked.
"Oh sure! But listen. I've got a plan. Why can't you two make it into a
book? It 'ud be perfectly lovely! You know, Mr. Legge, you're quite an
artist, aren't you? And Mr. Pedderick here, he does some writing. Oh I'm
sure you could do it! You know...." Miss Fraenkel made a pause luminous
with bright glances, "a picture of those two, in the cafe having a
dinner; a real kissing picture. I'm sure she would look so sweet!"
"Ah!" said Bill, "but what's the end of the story?"
"Why sure!" faltered Miss Fraenkel. "They get--get married! That's the
end of every English story, isn't it?"
Bill cackled from the kitchen, artlessly and shrill. "----and lived
happy ever after!" added Miss Fraenkel, with radiant unwinking hazel
eyes.
She went away after tea, to her pew in the gaunt wooden Episcopal Church
in Chestnut Street, rapt in a felicitous dream of romanticism. It was
nothing to her that Mr. Carville had poured diluted vitriol upon some
women who clamoured for the vote, nothing that he had barely deigned to
notice her existence. Once aware that he essayed to be a spell-binder,
she accepted him with utter _abandon_ in that role. She permitted him to
bind the spell; and as she walked with short quick steps along Van
Diemen's Avenue, her brown head held high and unswerving, I could not
refrain from the fancy that she moved as one in a trance.
It was a disappointment to us that we heard the whistle of the five
o'clock train before we realized that Mr. Carville was on board. The
sound was the one thing needful to set our mind and tongues free to talk
of him. So potent had been his atmosphere that, to be honest, we had
been unable to apply judgment to his case. When we gathered at dinner
the discussion was in full and amiable swing.
"It is very difficult," I said, "to distinguish the fact from the
fiction, not because he is extraordinarily skilful in 'joining his
flats,' but because he is so absorbed in the story himself that it would
be quite inconceivable to him that anyone would _not_ be interested. He
has evidently never imagined such a contingency. Such ingeniousness is
more than uncommon. It is sublime."
"How about your theory that he is an artist?" argued Mac. "He can't be
both conscious and unconscious of his art."
"Yes, he can," I replied. "All great artists are. Mind, I don't pretend
that Mr. Carville is a great artist. I merely state the fact that he has
one of their attributes. I account for it this way. We have here a man
of undeniable powers but limited ambition. At certain periods in his
life he has been crossed by his remarkable brother, a man whom we now
know to have not only brain-power, but will-power. This brother has
impressed himself upon our neighbour's imagination. You noticed almost
admiration in his voice at times as he spoke of his brother? It has been
his whim, therefore, to accentuate as much as possible the difference
between them. He has, moreover, cultivated the habit of reticence.
Thrown by his profession among men of shrewd wit but imperfect delicacy
of mind, he has kept himself to himself. In the course of years it has
been almost necessary for him to speak. I can imagine him, a man of
quick perceptions, and no mean gift of expression, finding silence
becoming an agony. Much brooding has bitten the real and fanciful
details of his life into his mind. He has, quite by accident, discovered
in us a singularly acceptable audience. Without conscious premeditation
he has told us his story. Every narrator of the most trivial incident
can induce you to listen for something naive and individual in his
utterance. Most of us disperse this quality over our days. Mr. Carville
has secreted it, distilled it to a quintessence, and the result
is--well, something in his tone and manner quite unusual."
"Yes, that's all right enough," assented Mac, "but I still don't quite
see how his brother couples-up with that chap Cecil wrote about."
"Well, I don't either," I replied, "but you must remember that Mr.
Carville has told us so far only of the past. In his narrative he is not
married. That must be at least eight years ago, a long time in the life
of a man like his brother."
"I'll write to Cecil," said Bill suddenly, with one of her flashes.
"Wouldn't that be a good plan?"
"Excellent!" I exclaimed. "We ought to have thought of that before. He
will be tremendously interested."
This was a true prophecy. Some three weeks later, on a day in the middle
of November, we received a bulky letter with a Wigborough postmark on a
two-cent stamp. The excess, I recall, was nine cents, gladly paid by me
while Bill was tearing off the end of the envelope.
"Yes," she said, scanning the sheets quickly, "it seems to be.
Here----"
We adjourned to the studio. Mac seated himself before a half-finished
cover for the Christmas Number of _Payne's Monthly_, Bill took up a
leather collar-bag destined to be Cecil's Yule-tide present, and I began
to read.
"High Wigborough, Essex.
"MY DEAR BILL,--Many thanks for your jolly letter. I write at once
to tell you how awfully interested I am in what you tell me. It
really is a most extraordinary thing, though, as you know, it often
happens. On the very day your letter arrived I met Carville again!
Without any warning I heard the chuff-chuff of a motor in the lane,
and saw him walking up to the door. I asked him in, of course. He
sniffed and coughed a good bit, because I was biting a big plate,
and the fumes are pretty thick even with nitric acid. He wanted to
know all about what I was doing. Of course I explained, asked him
to sit down and have a drink, and for a time we got on very well. I
said I supposed he was touring, and he remarked:
"'Oh, no. I'm living down here just at present,'
"'What, broke again?' I asked laughing. He looked at me in that
fiery damn-your-eyes way of his and then joined in the laugh. 'No,'
he said, 'experimenting. I've taken up flying.'
"He said it just as you might say, 'I've taken up tennis.' He gives
you the impression that if he remarked that he had taken up
cathedral-building or unicorn-breeding, you would believe him. A
most remarkable man!
"I said, 'Oh, I've heard something about your people, I believe,
Carville,' and took up your letter. He put his whisky down on the
floor (he was sitting in my low window seat) and glared at me. 'At
least,' I said, funking, you know, 'I see it's the same name.' And
I went on to tell him how I'd been so impressed with my first
adventure with him that I'd written to you about it. He held out
his hand for the letter. I just sat and watched him. He read the
whole thing rapidly, his eyes going back again and again to some
parts of it; and then he gave it back to me.
"'So that's where he is, eh?' he said, and smiled. He took out a
pocket-book and made a note of the address.
"'Who,' I said.
"'Charley, dear old Charley,' he said, 'I haven't seen him or heard
from him for years.'
"'Then it is your brother?' I asked. He nodded.
"'He always was a bit of a duffer,' he said. 'What's N. J.?' he
asked suddenly.
"'New Jersey,' I replied, 'in the United States.'
"'Oh,' said he, 'I thought it meant New Jerusalem. It would be like
Charley.'
"He shut up his pocket-book and said no more about it. Cool, eh? I
wanted to ask him no end of questions about his past life, but
didn't care to. He was ready enough to talk of his experiments
though, and asked me to go over to Mersea Island to see his shop.
'Thanks, I will some time,' I said. 'Come now!' he rapped out, and
that was what I did. Took the plates out, washed my hands, and
scarcely remembered to stopper the acid-bottle. Away we went,
tooling through Peldon at about seventy miles an hour. He is
certainly a superb driver. Down our lane that big car of his
brushed the hedge both sides, but he never slackened at all, either
in his speed or his conversation. He had several wealthy people
interested, he said, and he was going to do something really big in
the flying line. We were nearly flying at the time. Of course,
there aren't many people about this part of Essex, but it really
was risky. He said this London-to-Paris and London-to-Manchester
business was all 'tosh,' he was going to beat that easily. We
crossed Mersea Island, turned in at a five-barred gate, and rushed
up a hundred-yard plank-road that he had put down.
"It is a curious place he has there. A big shed of creosote-boards
and felt roof, in the shape of a letter =L=, and at the side a small
lean-to affair where he lives. One leg of the =L= is a workshop with
an oil-engine to drive it; the other is for his plane, and opens at
the end on the plank-road. As we came up a tall chap in a yellow
leather suit all smeared with oil came out and I was introduced to
his friend D'Aubigne. Can you believe it, old girl--D'Aubigne and I
were in Paris together! He had a thing in the Salon the same year
as I did, but having money he chucked Art and went in for motoring.
We knew each other at once. It shows you what a small and sectional
thing fame is, for while he had never heard of _me_, I was equally
ignorant of his tremendous importance as an authority on aerial
statics. Never heard of aerial statics before, for that matter!
Carville seemed quite pleased I knew D'Aubigne, and showed no
hesitation in turning me over to him.
"Well, I went all over and it was really very interesting. The
position seems to be this. D'Aubigne has tons of ideas and patents
and can make no end of improvements in aeroplanes, but he has no
nerve. Several times, he told me, he had had narrow squeaks. Now
Carville, so D'Aubigne says, has a head like a gyroscope. He
doesn't know what fear is. Seeing what I had of him, I can quite
believe it. So having met some years ago in Venice (D'Aubigne
seemed frightfully amused at something that had happened in Venice)
when Carville suddenly found himself able to command a large
capital, he had D'Aubigne over, and between them they are going to
boom a new long-distance machine. D'Aubigne's admiration of
Carville almost amounts to worship. He told me that when Carville
went over his place at Avranches, he spent about ten minutes
looking over a monoplane, and then climbed into the seat. 'Set it
away,' he said. D'Aubigne was perplexed. 'This won't carry two,' he
argued. 'No,' said Carville, 'I'm going to try it by myself. Set it
away.' I have told you how domineering he is. D'Aubigne started the
engine, and, so he says, crossed himself. Carville was off, and in
another minute he was heading for St. Malo. D'Aubigne says some of
his volplanes were agonizing to watch. When he turned he went out
over, the sea, but it seems this was not because he was afraid of
falling, but because he wanted to get a nearer view of a steam
yacht riding off Granville. He came down on the shingle and smashed
the thing badly, but he was busy studying the wreck when they came
up to him. It never occurred to Carville to cross himself.
D'Aubigne is a big yellow-haired Norman, and his eyes fairly goggle
when he gets going on Carville. Personally I believe they've both
been bad eggs in their time. When I spoke to him of your letter he
pulled down the corners of his mouth and wrinkled his nose. 'Ah!'
he said. 'It's quite possible. Many things happen to men like
Carville. You know he was in the war with the Boers?' I said, no I
didn't, and he told me that Carville had rushed to South Africa,
just as thousands of others had done. He, however, had the devil's
own luck; saved an officer's life, a man in the Imperial Yeomanry,
named Cholme. Cholme was a pal of Belvoir's at Charterhouse. It
seems Cholme gave Carville a letter to Lord Cholme, in case
anything happened, you know. Something did happen and Cholme was
killed at Spion Kop. Carville never got a scratch. When he came
home he took the letter to Lord Cholme, and the old chap told him
to ask what he liked. The old man is a pretty rough employer (he
owns _The Morning_), but he had a royal way with his son. Carville
said he didn't want anything, but might have a favour to ask some
day. Well, it seems it was an interview with Cholme that he was
after when I met him in Huntingdonshire, but he has his own ideas
of the way to do these things. He approached Lord Cholme, not with
a begging-letter, but with a proposal to finance this aeroplane
scheme. Cholme jumped at it, D'Aubigne says.
"We were standing in the workshop watching a young chap fitting a
piece of a new engine, when we heard the roar of the aeroplane.
Carville had started his engine before opening the doors. It was
deafening. We got outside just in time to see him leave the ground.
He made straight for the sea. D'Aubigne says he always does make
straight for the sea. He may come back from over Dengie Flats or
St. Osyth, but he always makes for Gunfleet and Kentish Knock
Lightship at first.
"D'Aubigne went into the drawing-office where he works out his
calculations and all that, and he got out a flask of Benedictine.
Over this, he told me some rather startling things about Carville.
D'Aubigne knows nothing about the girl you say is called Rosa, but
in addition to a dozen other more shadowy creatures, he says there
is a Gladys not far off, a thin girl of about thirty. Of course,
D'Aubigne is a Frenchman and takes the French view, but it
certainly seems to be a fact that Carville makes a hobby of women.
"Since then I have seen him frequently. Sometimes he and D'Aubigne
come over to tea with me, and if I would let them they would take
me for long spins across England. They work in spurts, and then
shut the place up for a day and tear round the country. Once I
heard the roar of a car, and looked out in time to see Carville
rush past, and there was undoubtedly a girl with him. Once, too, I
saw him in the air, far away over Layer Marney, going towards
Colchester. D'Aubigne says their machine will be ready soon. As far
as I can make out, whatever they do, _The Morning_ is to have
exclusive information.
"Do you know, it suddenly struck me that an aeroplane lends itself
extraordinarily well to etching? Carville missed the plank-road one
day in landing, and I saw the machine lying with a list in the
field near a rick. I made some notes, and when it is finished I'll
pull a proof and send it to you. I fancy it will be rather good. In
the clear transparent afternoon light of a late October day, with
the rick behind it, the great vans sprawled out over the hedge, the
corrugations of the engine, the thin lines----Do you see it? I
think very highly of it. An aeroplane has a personality, like
Carville.
"Well, now you must send me news of your side. I wish I could tell
you what he is going to do, but D'Aubigne says that is a secret.
One thing he has told me, and that is that they are going to fit
the machine with a wireless telephone so that he can talk to _The
Morning_ office while he is flying. Wonders will never cease!
"I like Mac's colour prints. The effect of the sky over the steamer
is quite topping. Where painting in oil on a copper plate seems to
fail is in the detail. The colour spreads so. The red port light of
the vessel is much too large. However, I shall certainly spoil
some paper trying to out-do Mac.
"Kind regards to all. Write soon,
"Yours ever,
"CECIL."
As I folded up the sheets and thrust them into the envelope, Mac
looked across at me. Seeing that I had no inkling of his thought he
remarked with some slight irritation:
"Wonder when the deuce that chap's coming back?"
"Where's he gone?" asked Bill, holding up the collar bag to see the
effect.
We did not even know that.
"Oh," I said, "Mediterranean, I suppose."
To us the Mediterranean is a far-off beautiful dream. We sat trying
to visualize for ourselves the incredible fate of visiting the
Mediterranean as we might take the cars for Broadway. I heard Bill
sigh softly. Mac's voice, when he spoke, was gruff.
"I'd ask the kids if I were you," he said.
"I can do that," I agreed dreamily.
Sometimes, it must be admitted, we get homesick. It generally
happens when we have letters from home. We felt rather keenly then,
the shrewd poignancy of Mr. Carville's description of himself as an
alien. But to us it implied a subdued if passionate desire to see
again the quiet landscape of England. The painter-cousin's sketch
of the aeroplane near a rick, sunk in the ditch by a hedge, in the
clear transparent afternoon light of late October, appealed to us.
To see a quickset hedge again ... we sighed.
No doubt we would have allowed the daily flow and return of life's
business to oust our neighbours' fortunes from our minds, and
waited patiently for Mr. Carville's reappearance, had not a most
exciting game of cow-boys, a game in which I for the nonce was a
fleeing Indian brave, led to an abrupt encounter with Mrs.
Carville. Benvenuto Cellini's scalp already hung at my girdle,
visible as a pocket-handkerchief; and he lay far down near the
cabbages, to the imaginative eye a writhing and disgusting
spectacle. The intrepid Giuseppe Mazzini, however, had thrown his
lariat about me with no mean adroitness, and I was down and
captured. This thrilling _denouement_ was enacted near the repaired
fence, and any horror I may have simulated was suddenly made real
by the appearance of Mrs. Carville, who had been feeding her fowls.
When one is prone on the grass, a clothes-line drawn tight about
one's arms, and a triumphant cow-boy of eight years in the very act
of placing his foot on one's neck, it is difficult to look
dignified. The sudden intrusion of an unsympathetic personality
will banish the romantic illusion.
It may be that the sombre look in Mrs. Carville's face was merely
expressive of a doubt of my sanity. For a grown man to be playing
with two little boys at three o'clock of a Tuesday afternoon, may
have seemed bizarre enough in her view. To me, however,
endeavouring to disengage myself from my conqueror and assume an
attitude in keeping with my age and reputation, her features were
ominously shadowed by displeasure.
"If I disturbed you," I said courteously, "I am sorry."
She put her hand on the paling and the basket slid down her arm.
She seemed to be pondering whether I had disturbed her or no,
eyeing me reflectively. Ben came up, no longer a scalped and
abandoned cow-boy, but a delighted child. Perhaps the trust and
frank _camaraderie_ of the little fellow's attitude towards me
affected her, for her face softened.
"It's all right," she replied slowly. "You must not let them
trouble you. They make so much noise."
"No, no," I protested. "I enjoy it. I am fond of children, very
fond. They are nice little boys."
They stood on either side of me, clutching at my coat, subdued by
the conversation.
"You have not any children?" she asked, looking at them. I shook my
head.
"I am a bachelor," I replied, "I am sorry to say."
"That accounts for it," she commented, raising her eyes to mine. I
agreed.
"Possibly," I said. "None the less I like them. I suppose," I
added, "they ought to be at school."
"There is measles everywhere in the school," she informed me. "I do
not want it yet."
"Mr. Carville," I said, seizing an opening, "told me he did not
believe in school."
"That is right," she answered. "He don't see the use of them. Nor
me," she concluded thoughtfully.
"That is a very unusual view," I ventured.
"How?" she asked vaguely.
"Most people," I explained, "think school a very good thing."
"It costs nothing," she mused and her hand fell away from the
paling. The two little boys ran off, intent on a fresh game. I
scanned her face furtively, appreciative of the regular and potent
modelling, the pure olive tints, the pose and poise of the head.
Indubitably her face was dark; the raven hair that swept across her
brow accentuated the gloom slumbering in her eyes. One unconsciously
surmised that somewhere within her life lay a region of unrest, a
period of passion not to be confused with the quiet courtship
described by her husband.
"True," I assented. "By the way, is Mr. Carville due in port soon?"
She turned her head and regarded me attentively.
"No," she said. "Do you wish to see him?"
"Oh, not particularly," I hastened to say. "He was telling us some
of his experiences at sea, you know. It was very interesting."
"I do not like the sea," she said steadily. "It made me sick ..."
"So it did me. But I enjoy hearing about foreign lands; Italy, for
instance."
"This is all right," Mrs. Carville replied in the same even tone.
"Here."
"And he will be back soon?" I said, reverting to Mr. Carville.
"Saturday he says; but it may not be till Monday. If bad weather
Monday ... Tuesday ... I cannot tell."
"I see," I said. "I hope we shall see him then. He was telling us
..." I paused. It occurred to me that she would hardly care to be
apprised of what her husband had been telling us--"of his early
life," I ended lamely.
"Of me?" She asked the question with eyes gazing out toward the
blue ridge of the Orange Mountains, without curiosity or anger. I
felt sheepish.
"Something," I faltered. She turned once more to glance in my
direction. I was surprised at the mildness of her expression.
Almost she smiled. At any rate her lips parted.
"He is a good man," she said softly, and added as she turned away,
"Good afternoon."