MR. CARVILLE SEES THREE GREEN LIGHTS
As happens on occasion the weather changed with dramatic suddenness
in the last week in November. One might almost imagine that our
august emperor of the seasons, the Indian Summer, protracting his
reign against all the wishes of the gods, stirring up the
implacable bitterness and hatred of winter, had gone down suddenly
in ruin and death. I remember well the evening of the change. I had
spent a tiring day in New York, working gradually up Broadway as
far as Twenty-third Street. Seen through the windows of the Jersey
City ferryboat, the prow-like configuration of lower Manhattan
seemed to be plunging stubbornly against the gale of sleet that was
tearing up from the Narrows. The hoarse blast of the ferry-whistle
was swept out of hearing, the panes resounded with millions of
impacts as the sleet, like thin iron rods, drove against them. An
ignoble impulse led me to join the scurrying stampede of commuters
towards the warmth and shelter of the waiting-room. There is
something personally hostile in a blizzard. In the earthquake at
San Francisco there was a giant playfulness in the power that shook
the brick front from our frame-house and revealed our intimate
privacies to a heedless mob. There was a feeling there, even at the
worst, when the slow shuddering rise of the earth changed to a
swift and soul-shattering subsidence, a feeling that one was yet in
the hands of God. But in a blizzard one apprehends an anger puny
and personal. There is no sublimity in defying it; one runs to the
waiting-room. And once there, nodding to Confield, who sat in a
corner nursing his cosmopolitan bag, pressing through the little
crowd about the news-stand, I found myself urging my body past a
man wearing a Derby hat and smoking a corn-cob pipe. I had a
momentary sense of gratification that even a seasoned seafarer like
Mr. Carville should feel no shame in taking shelter from the
inclement weather.
"Good evening, sir," he said imperturbably. "Homeward bound?"
"Sure," I said, putting down a cent and taking up the _Manhattan
Mail_, an evening journal of modest headlines. "I suppose you are
coming out, too?"
"Yes," he said, as we turned away, "I've come up from the ship. We
only got in this morning."
"You are late," I agreed. "Mrs. Carville said you might be in on
Saturday, and here it is Wednesday."
He gave me a quick glance.
"Oh! Did she tell you? Yes, we had several bad days after passing
Fastnet. The Western ocean is bad all over just now."
"I suppose you were sorry to leave the Mediterranean."
"It was Bremerhaven this time," he replied, striking a match. "Near
Hamburg, you know. They change us about now and again."
"What is your cargo?" I asked.
"I thought you knew," he said, surprised. "I'm on the _Raritan_, an
oil-tank. Standard Oil, you know. I quite thought you knew."
"I had intended to ask you," I said, "but it is a delicate subject.
One cannot very well ferret for details of a stranger's business."
"That's the genteel view, I know," he said, smiling. "There's
something to be said for it, too."
"You will come in and finish your story?" I ventured.
"Well, I did think of looking in some time...."
"After dinner to-night?"
"Much obliged. It passes the time."
We went out and climbed into the Paterson express. We are rather
proud of this train in a way, for it is the only one of the day
which confines itself to stations when contemplating a stop. I
narrated to Mr. Carville an incident of the preceding winter when a
commuter of Hawthorne, on our line, stepping out one snowy night,
found himself clinging to the trestles of the bridge over the
Pasayack River, and the train vanishing into the darkness. Mr.
Carville laughed at this, and remarked jocosely that he was "safer
at sea." We discussed for some time the comparative merits of
English and American railroads, Mr. Carville expressing the fairly
shrewd opinion that "conditions so different made any comparison
out of the question."
"After all," he remarked, "leaving out London, which has more
people in it than Canada and Venezuela put together, what _is_
England? From an American point of view, I mean. Simply Maryland!"
I appreciated this. Often during my sojourn in America, I had pored
over maps and vainly endeavoured to form some conception of so
gigantic a territory. I had failed. I had come to the conclusion
that minds nurtured in the insular atmosphere were forever
incapable of visualizing a continent. In my fugitive letters to
friends at home I had been reduced to the astronomer's facile
illustrations. "Just as," I had written in despair--"just as a
railway train, travelling at a mile a minute, takes nearly 180
years to reach the sun, so we, travelling in a tourist car at
rather less than a mile a minute, took an apparently interminable
period to reach the sun of California!" It was a poor jest, but
excusable one whose clothes, ears, mouth, eyes and nose were full
of cinder-dust, excusable in a disdainful Britisher so far from
home. To Englishmen, who had never seen a grade-crossing, a desert,
or a mountain, and for whom a short night-journey on smooth
rock-ballasted lines suffices to take them from one end of their
country to the other, my figure was vague enough, no doubt. Some
day, when I go back, I shall try to explain.
"Yes," I said, "exactly--Maryland."
I was more than ever reinforced in my already-expressed opinion
that Mr. Carville was a man of more ability than ambition. There
was to me something bizarre in his deliberate abstention from any
contact, save books, with the larger intellectual sphere to which
he by right belonged. His naive confession of culture showed that
he was aware of his latent power, but I was not sure whether he had
ever realized the stern law by which organs become atrophied by
disuse. We had reached our station and were struggling up Pine
Street through rain and wind before I ventured to hint at my
concern.
"Ah!" he said. "I daresay you're right in a way. But----" The wind
blew his voice away, so that he seemed to be speaking through the
telephone, "----I've a family to think of."
We parted at the door, and I hurried to tell the news to my
friends. They smiled when I spoke of Mr. Carville.
"We've had news, too," said Bill, helping me to spinach. "A paper
from Cecil."
"Copy of _The Morning_," added Mac. It is a rule of the house that
there be no papers on the table, so I possessed my soul in patience
until after dinner. My cigar going well, and Mac thundering the
"Soldiers' Chorus," from _Faust_, on the piano, I opened the paper
which Bill handed to me. To be honest, I was a little startled. The
chief item on the news page was headed:
AEROPHONE MESSAGE FROM CARVILLE;
OVER HELIGOLAND; ALARM IN GERMANY.
_Copyright by The London "Morning."_
The special article of the day was headed: "The Napoleon of the Air; a
Character Sketch," and the leader, signed by Lord Cholme himself, was a
paean, in stilted journalese, in praise of the _Morning's_ enterprise in
encouraging invention.
"The Empire," wrote Lord Cholme, "can no longer afford to pass by one of
her most brilliant sons. In the light of his magnificent achievement,
the daring of a Peary, the nerve of a Shackleton, the indomitable
persistence of a Marconi, dwindle and fade. We do not hesitate to say
that since the capture of Gibraltar, the Empire has secured no such
chance for consolidating her paramountcy in Europe. The present is no
time for hesitation or delay. Mr. Carville is master of the situation.
By his message from the air, three thousand feet above Heligoland, in
full view of German territory, to the office of _The Morning_, he has
demonstrated the efficiency of his machine. If that is not sufficient,
Mr. Carville's next journey will convince Europe, if not England. If the
pettifogging Radical Government turn a deaf ear to our brilliant
correspondent, if they ignore his claims and chaffer in any commercial
spirit with his accredited agents, their days are numbered. It is hardly
too much to say that the days of the Empire are also numbered...."
* * * * *
Apart from our own private interest in the affair, the news did not
thrill. In America one's withers are unwrung by such scares. The
"exclusiveness" of Lord Cholme's information, indeed, defeated his
object. Lord Cholme, I knew, was loved neither in Fleet Street nor in
Park Place. His ruthless competition with the news agencies, his
capture of numerous cable-routes, had gradually divided England into two
classes: those who read _The Morning_ and those who didn't. Everyone
remembers the exclusive description of the destruction of Constantinople
in _The Morning_. No one was surprised to find that the following day
Constantinople was still alive and well. Clever young Oxford men who had
not succeeded in getting a post on _The Morning_, satirized the paper in
other journals who never paid more than two guineas a column. No doubt,
having been a newspaper man myself, I discounted the effect of the scare
upon the public. I could imagine the delicate raillery of the other
papers, if indeed they deigned to notice Lord Cholme's exclusive
information at all.
The special biography was as accurate as such biographies usually are.
It was written in a fair imitation of Mr. Kipling's racy colloquial
style and contained numerous references to the Empire, the White Man's
Burden and our "far-flung battle line." I suspected that Monsieur
D'Aubigne had supplied the basic "facts" which had been edited by Lord
Cholme before being handed on to "Vol-Plane," as the biographer called
himself.
I set the paper down and resumed my cigar. The drums and tramplings of
Lord Cholme's organ had revealed nothing fresh. I understand now why my
friends had merely mentioned the fact of its arrival and made no
comment. After all, our real interest lay in the man, not in his
aeroplane. We had never seen an aeroplane except in the cinema films,
but we were familiar enough with current events to feel no surprise that
a man had flown over the North Sea. I think I expressed our mutual
sentiment when I observed that Cecil's story of how Frank Carville won
his bet, and Mr. Carville's own account of the voyage from the Argentine
to Genoa, told us far more about the man than "Vol-Plane's" highly-paid
hack-work.
We had been but a few minutes in the studio before Mr. Carville knocked
and Mac ran down to admit him. We heard the rumble of voices while our
visitor discarded his coat; comments on "the change," and then footsteps
on the stairs. I went to the door to welcome him.
He was standing on the landing, appraising with a quick eye the
Kakemonos and prints that covered the distempered walls. We are rather
proud of our "Japs," as Bill calls them. I even tried to learn something
of the language from the "boy" who was our servant in San Francisco. He
was not a scholarly boy, and he told lies in English, so that it is
possible his tuition was of no value. I remember Bill was ironic
because, when Nakamura was dismissed in ignominy, and wrote on the
kitchen wall for the benefit of his successor, I was unable to decipher
the message.
"Do you care for this sort of thing?" said Mac. "That's original,"
pointing to a fine Hiroshige.
"I used to," replied Carville, feeling for his pipe. "I was a good while
in that trade--coal from Moji to Singapore. I think they're best at a
distance though--the people, I mean."
Mac protested against this "narrow" view.
"Yes, yes, I know," said Mr. Carville, coming into the studio. "I read
Lafcadio Hearn when I was younger; read him again out in Japan. Humph!"
Whether his characteristic ejaculation referred to Hearn or the studio I
cannot determine. His interest was obvious, but it was interest, not of
a connoisseur, but of a man looking round another man's workshop. Von
Roon used to say in Chelsea, "There is hope for him who looks with
attention upon his neighbour's tools." Mr. Carville sank slowly into a
chair, his eyes fixed upon a recent nude study.
"We haven't any Scotch, but if you care for Rye----" said Mac, reaching
for a tray on the throne.
Mr. Carville's eye lost its vague, reflective expression as it fell upon
the tray.
"Ah?" he said, "I'd rather have good Rye than--than--well, you know what
most of the Scotch is here. No--no water, thanks. I take it as I find
it."
It was a new facet of his character, this. We watched him swallow the
neat spirit at a gulp and place the empty glass on the tray without
emotion. Mac and I sipped gently and waited for Mr. Carville to begin.
"I've been rather worried just lately, with one thing and another," he
observed, putting away his little brass tobacco-box. "Second went home
to get married last trip, and the Third, promoted, you understand, needs
an eye. Very willing and all that, but he's been in these big
hotel-ships, Western ocean all his life, and as I say, he needs an eye.
I was telling you about my brother, if I remember."
We murmured that he had, and watched Mr. Carville's obvious enjoyment of
his pipe.
"Ah!" he said, "the Brignole station in Genoa. Humph!"
"You see, my brother has something in his make-up that appeals to a
woman. I was going to say, all women. There's something spectacular, you
might say, in the way he carries on. I've never been able to decide
whether it's intentional or just fate. Anyhow, there it is; and if you
look at it in that light, it isn't so very wonderful after all that a
girl like Rosa was then should have been dazzled and carried away. When
she jumped up and stood staring at me, I hardly knew what to do. 'Rosa!'
I said, and we stood facing each other for a while. I don't know; but I
think we got to know each other better just then. For me, at any rate,
it was a revelation. They say a drowning man sees all his past life
while the water is pressing on his ear-drums. Something like that
happened to me then in that dismal, badly-lighted booking-hall. It
wasn't love, in the sugary sentimental sense, that I felt for Rosa; but
a blind, helpless sort of an emotion, a feeling that if I didn't get her
I was lost--lost! I put out my hands as though I was catching hold of
something to hold me up ... I felt her hands.
"I can hardly remember how we went away from there. I know the driver
shouted to me as we came out and I went up and paid him. And then we
were in the _Piazza Corvetto_, sitting on a seat, near where the
trolley-cars stop. How long we sat there I don't know either. I knew I'd
got her again. She was there, alongside, and we were talking, like two
children. I was very glad ... you know."
He paused, and we went on smoking and sipping, and Bill bent her head
over her needlework. I thought with a sudden and revealing vividness of
the woman who had said to me, in her gentle Italian voice, "He is a good
man." I think we were very glad too, though we did not say so.
"I can't tell you," he went on evenly, "whether my brother intended to
take her away with him and was prevented by some accident, or whether he
had changed his mind. I think he intended to. I can tell you what I did
myself. Before I left Genoa I married Rosa. She wanted it. She did not
trust herself. There are men like that. Women cannot trust themselves
unless some man will trust them.
"When we sailed out of Genoa bound for Buenos Ayres, I was a married
man, and Rosa had a flat in _Via Palestro_. I thought I knew my brother
well enough to feel sure that I needn't fear him any more. That's the
strange part of a business like that. To Rosa, to me, it was life or
death; to my brother it was the amusement of a few hours, days, perhaps
a week. It's a queer world.
"I think it was about two years after that before I saw my brother
again. When the war in South Africa started we were outward bound in
ballast for Buenos Ayres. At Monte Video we received orders to go to
Rosario and load remounts for Cape Town. It was a big business; I
believe the owners built three new ships out of the profits of that
charter. When we got up the river those bony Argentine cattle were
waiting for us and run aboard in a few hours. No time for boilers or
overhauling engines or anything. Straight out again, due east, with a
crowd of the toughest cattlemen I ever saw before or since. There was no
peace or quiet on the ship at all. They were not professional
cattle-deck tenders at all, you see. They only took the job to get to
the Cape, where the trouble was. Most of them deserted and drifted up
country. Each trip we had to get a fresh team. I can't say I enjoyed my
life very much during that charter. It was hard luck, though nothing out
of the way for a sailor-man, to go off the Genoa run now I was married,
and had a wife there.
"I saw my brother soon after Cronje was captured at Paardeberg. I was
ashore in Cape Town one evening taking a walk with the Second, just to
get out of sight of the ship for an hour, when he pulls my sleeve and
says he:
"'I say, Chief, you remember that new mess-man you got in B. A.? That
Lord? Well, ain't that him over there. You remember, don't you? That
chap who won the lottery in Genoa that time. Look!' He pointed across
the street to a party of chaps in khaki walking along and slapping their
legs with their canes. The tallest man and the finest-looking of the
lot was my brother. I couldn't be mistaken, though it would be difficult
to say exactly why. It was his air.
"He did not see me, but I turned away and went into the first saloon for
a drink. I wanted to be away from him and I wanted a drink. I had a
panicky feeling about him. While the Second recalled all the incidents
of 'that new mess-man's' career on board, I was thinking that perhaps we
were destined to cross each other all our lives, that go where I would,
I shouldn't be able to avoid him. You see how a man's imagination will
run away with him. I ought to have thanked God he was in South Africa
and likely to get himself shot fighting for his country instead of going
after women. When I was safe aboard the ship again I began to see how I
had been frightened. For it was fright and nothing else that turned me
into that saloon to avoid my brother. I thought of him rushing up to the
Brignole station at the last second and looking round for Rosa, and
finding her gone. He would know I'd had something to do with it. He
would swear to find her some day, swear in one of his hot, short
passions, passions like a West India hurricane that whips and crashes
and smashes everything around for a minute or two.
"I used to think a lot about him on the voyage back to Buenos Ayres. I
don't know what he was in, in the war, though the Second, whose brother
was a driver in the Artillery, said he was in the Mounted Infantry
uniform. Everybody was Mounted Infantry in those days. To me it seemed
strange that Frank should go out to the war, but I've come to the
conclusion he really felt the call. There was the excitement too. The
old bad Irish blood comes out in the love of a row.
"In Buenos Ayres I had a letter from Aunt Rebecca. Rosa had a baby, but
it was dead as soon as born. The old woman said I'd better come home. I
remember walking up and down the bridge-deck that night, thinking things
out under the stars. I knew Rosa would like to go to England. They hear
so much about _Inghilterra_ in Italy. For them it is a land where lords
and ladies walk about the streets and give pennies to poor people all
day long. Then again, I was not only in need of a holiday, but I was
able to afford one if I was careful and kept down expenses. To take a
holiday in England, with Rosa! To see it as though it was all fresh! The
fancy took strong hold of me. I saw myself going through St. Paul's, the
Tower, Monument and Westminster Abbey, as an alien. I saw the hungry
landlady in the Bloomsbury boarding-house trying to rook me.
'Bloomsburys' have a very bad name in Italy among educated people. I
read an article in the _Stampa_--very humorous it was. Humph!
"I talked it over with the Skipper next day. It is a strange thing to me
how men value one sentiment and underrate another. If I'd gone to the
Old Man and said, 'I want to go home, Captain, and see my wife,' he
would have asked me if I was crazy. But as soon as I said--showing him
the black-edged letter--that the kid was dead, he pulled a long face
and said he'd see the agents at once. I wrote to my old uncle in London
explaining matters. The Second got his step and they got a new Fourth
off a meat-boat of the company's that was loading at the time. When I
was paid off I took my dunnage and bought me a second-class ticket for
Genoa on a Rubattino boat.
"To a certain extent I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my success
in life. Many a man has done worse at thirty-three. I was married; I had
money in the bank; I could eat and drink and sleep well; I enjoyed
reading and smoking. Beyond that, I have grown to think a man need not
go. For you gentlemen, of course, it's different. You are out for fame.
You work at high and low pressure, whereas I work in a vacuum, so to
speak. I thought a good deal about life on that voyage to Genoa as a
passenger. It was a new experience to me, I can tell you. For the first
day or two I was lost. There seemed nothing to do. I'd walk up and down
the promenade deck listening to the beat of the twin-engines, wondering
if the Second was a good man ... habit, you see? And then I found a
little library abaft the smoking-room full-up with leather-bound books
that nobody wanted to read. They were Italian, of course, for it was an
Italian ship, and it struck me that I'd have some fun rubbing up my
knowledge of the language. For let me tell you that colloquial Genoese
doesn't take you very far into Dante or Boccaccio! I think that was one
reason why Rosa had disliked the idea of living in Italy. Although I
didn't notice it much, being a foreigner, her speech was not refined.
How could it be, down on the Via Milano with Rebecca for a teacher?
Well, I started in and every day I worked my way through a chapter or
two. Perhaps it is because I know modern Italian writing so well--for a
foreigner--that I don't take much stock in all these great men English
and Americans boom so. They seem to me smart Alecks, but the
high-pressure men are Latins. I can't help thinking, after reading the
modern men, that they are like the transformers in an electric
power-plant. The Latins are the generators of ideas, and these other
chaps are transformers. They reduce the voltage, lose a lot in leakage,
but are useful because they make the current available to the small man.
It's a rather technical illustration, but that's what I mean.
"Two men, or two books if you like, took a great hold of me on that
voyage--Mazzini's _Duties of Man_ and Cellini's _Life_. I suppose they
are about as far apart as any two books--or men--could get. You may
laugh at the notion, but I found myself in sympathy with both! Mazzini
appealed to my mind, Cellini to my imagination. If Ruskin had stuck to
his last as Mazzini did, he might have made a revolution in England. I'm
not a Socialist, never was, any more than Mazzini, and there was
something fine to me about the way he told these boiling, ignorant,
weak-minded mobs of Italian workmen that they had duties as well as
rights. There's too much talk of rights nowadays. Anybody would think
that because a man works with his hands and takes wages, he's free to
do as he pleases. I remember the Old Man once when I had trouble with a
fireman. 'All I want is justice!' says the man, putting his dirty hand
on the chart-room door. 'Justice!' roars the Old Man. 'By God, you dirty
bone-headed Liverpool Irishman, if you had justice you'd be in irons,
that's where you'd be.' Humph!
"I think I took to Cellini because in a way he reminded me of my
brother. He got away with it every time! The idea of doing anything, or
not doing anything, because it was against the law or custom, never
entered his head! Very few people who read Cellini realize that there
are men like him now. Every bit. They don't write about themselves,
that's all. There will always be a certain number of men of his kidney,
a sort of seasoning for the rest of us. They fear nothing and they
reverence nothing ... Strong men!
"All day and every day I'd sit away astern reading these books, and
gradually an idea took shape in my mind. It was this. It was my duty to
have a family, since my brother had turned out so. More than that, it
was my duty to give them a chance, when they came. I could not see how I
was to do that in England. I can't see it now. England to me is on the
crumble. Emigration has dug away the outside of the walls and revolution
is digging away inside. For men like Belvoir, men who have been to
public-schools and Oxford, and have a private income, it will be
comfortable enough for a long time to come. But it is on the crumble.
When I thought of my children I never pictured them grown up in that
genteel snobbish life that I'd been brought up in. No!
"And I knew that Rosa still had her dislike of Italy. What should we do?
Suddenly it occurred to me that since my father had come from America, I
could go back there. I believe in this country, and it's going on ten
years since I first came. There's something _electric_ in the air over
here, a feeling that things grow. My boys will have a chance here ... I
think.
"That was one part of the idea. The other was to name my boys after
those two men. It may be only fancy, but I think names have an
influence, you know. A father's fancy--let it go at that! I'd like
somehow to have one of my boys an artist, and watch him grow. I used to
dream about the future on that lazy voyage to Genoa. Every man does at
times. Pipe-dreams, you know.
"Rosa was out and about when I reached the Via Palestro. She fell in at
once with my plan to take a trip to England. We stopped at Paris for a
day or two to look round and buy things, and then on to London. I found
a quiet little private boarding establishment in Tavistock Square, where
we lived cheap and comfortable. A penny bus took us almost anywhere. I'd
been fancying myself with Rosa going about as a stranger, and if you'll
believe me it was almost a fact! London had changed very much since I'd
been in Victoria Street. You'll notice that if you go back now. Same as
New York; one can hardly recognize some parts of it now. I did enjoy
that time. Rosa was so pleased with everything she saw. It was May, you
see; London in May. We used to go down to Chelsea and watch the boats on
the river, and see the people in the grand houses on the embankment,
going out in their automobiles.
"Gradually the idea that my brother would come across me again got
fainter and I didn't encourage it. I heard nothing of him. My uncle, who
had retired, down at Surbiton, told me he had not seen him for years. We
agreed that it was best to leave him to his own devices. I didn't take
Rosa down. Somehow I didn't see her catching on to my uncle and cousins.
They were a little too genteel for her.
"For the same reason I didn't take her to Clifford's Inn when I went to
see Miss Flagg, the woman Gladys had lived with. Miss Flagg was there,
much the same as before, with her flat and peculiar furniture and her
untidy dress. She was so glad to see me and hoped I'd got another book
to print. Humph! She told me she didn't see Gladys very often nowadays;
had a flat of her own in Fulham. My brother had crooked his finger, and
away she ran. Miss Flagg told me all about it, how Gladys had taken to
paint--on her face I mean--and gone to the devil generally. I'll say
this for Miss Flagg, she never used anything to add to her beauty, much
as she needed it. We were going on very nicely when I happened to
mention I was married, and all the light went out of Miss Flagg's face.
She was finished with me. You see, even when they're after votes,
they're just the same. I left her and took Rosa to the Zoo in the
afternoon. I enjoyed that, and so did she.
"After about three months of this sort of thing, I began to hanker for
the sea again. You may wonder at that, but it's a fact. It grows on men,
me for one. I felt lost without the beat of the engine, you know. So I
applied for several jobs, and finally the builders of the ship I'm on
now, the _Raritan_, wanted a chief to take her out to New York. I got
the job and we went to Sunderland to join her. Since then I've been
crossing and recrossing the Western Ocean. And speaking in a general
way, that's all there is to it."
Mr. Carville, pinching his shaven chin with a thumb and fore-finger,
looked down meditatively at his boots. In some subtle way his manner
belied his words. I felt a lively conviction that there was in a
particular way something more to it. It seemed quite incredible that he
had no more to tell us of his brother.
"Surely," I said, "you have heard of your brother since?"
He gave me a quick look.
"That's right," he said. "I have. I was going to tell you about it. I
saw him, fifteen days ago, in the North Sea."
"Great Scott, did you really?" exclaimed Mac, and he picked up the copy
of _The Morning_. "Look here!"
Mr. Carville took the paper and read the news without exhibiting any
emotion. I saw his eyelid flicker as he glanced down the special article
by "Vol-Plane." Lord Cholme's concern for the Empire seemed to leave
him cold.
"Humph!" he remarked and handed the paper to Mac, remaining lost in
thought for a moment.
"Ah!" he said at length. "That certainly accounts for him. But it
doesn't say anything about the three green lights."
"What green lights?" I asked, little thinking that I should see these
same lights myself in the near future.
"I'll tell you," said he, and looked round for a place to knock out his
pipe. I passed him the ash-bowl that Mac brought back from Mexico when
he went down there to do a bird's-eye view for a mining company. Mr.
Carville held it up to examine the crude red and blue daub on the pale
glaze.
"I suppose," he began, "that of all the meetings I've had with my
brother, this last one was the most unusual. It was unusual enough, that
time in the _Parque Colon_, when he grabbed my neck in the dark; but
this last meeting beats that, I think. It's funny how a quiet,
respectable man like me should have such experiences, isn't it?
"I ought to explain that the _Raritan_, like all oil tank steamers, has
her engines aft. The captain and mates live amidships under the bridge,
while we engineers all live in the poop, under the quarter-deck, as they
call it in the Navy. There is a long gangway between the two houses, but
as a general thing we live apart. We have our own pantry and steward and
we can go straight out of our berths into the engine-room without coming
on deck at all.
"It was the second night after we left Bremerhaven that this happened
and about ten minutes after eight bells, midnight. I keep the eight to
twelve watch with the Fourth, you see, and it often happens that I don't
feel like turning in right away. It was a clear yet dark night without a
ripple on the sea. It had been one of those calm days that we have in
English waters in winter time, a pale sun shining through a light haze,
cold yet pleasant. I'd seen the Third tumble down the ladder and heard
the Fourth put his door on the hook. Down below there was the quick
thump of the engines, the rattle of the ashes being shovelled into the
ejector, and the click of oil-cup lids as the Third went round the
bearings. Everything seemed in fair trim for a quiet night. I walked up
and down the deck for a spell, finishing my pipe, and then I was
standing by the stern light, an electric fixed on the after side of the
scuttle. A good way to the westward was the Kentish Knock Lightship. I
was leaning against the bulkhead, smoking and thinking of things in
general, you may say, and wondering what the Second would do next, when
I saw three green lights, very low on our starboard quarter. I don't
think I was much struck by them at first. Might have been a trawler. The
Second Mate told me afterwards that after the Old Man had gone down he
saw a green light and thought it was the Harwich and Hook-of-Holland
mail-boat. He was half asleep or he'd have wondered where her
mast-lights were. I took very little notice, I say, until it struck me
that, so far from being a trawler, those lights were moving a good deal
faster than a mail-boat. Sometimes I could see only one light. I began
to wonder what it was and I stepped down to my room to get my
binoculars. I remember the mess-room was dark, and across the table and
floor was a narrow bar of light from the Fourth's door. As I came up the
stairs I heard a peculiar droning sound, as though the Third had let the
dynamo run away. I turned round intending to go down below, when I saw
the green lights coming up fast ... fast.
"As my foot touched the deck the wings were overhead and I saw the long
body and flat tail. To me, for I'd never seen an aeroplane close before,
it was a wonderful sight. I put the glasses up and watched it slide away
in the dark, dropping until it seemed to skim the water. 'So that's an
aeroplane!' I said to myself. And I saw it wheel round and the green
lights came into view again, rising, I remember. I was a bit excited and
leaned over the stern rail. I had never realized before how a man might
feel while flying. I'd always looked at the pictures as rather Jules
Verney, you might say; improbable and far-fetched. But here it was,
coming up on us again, much more wonderful than any picture! We were
doing about twelve knots, and I suppose that machine was coming up at
thirty. Just above the big triangle of three green lights was a blue
spark snapping, and in the shadow between the wings the shape of a man.
I stood there watching, watching, feeling nervous because of that
peculiar drone that the propeller made, when all of a sudden it stopped
and the whole thing swooped down to within twenty feet of the
awning-spars. I stepped back a little and looked straight up. In the
wink of an eye he was gone, but I saw him, and he me. As he swerved away
to clear the funnels, I heard him give a great shout of laughter that
rose to a small scream: '_'Pon--soul--it's--Char--ley!_' he sang out,
and dropped away astern. I heard his engine begin again, a note like an
insect; and he fled away towards Gunfleet. And that was all!
"I stood there dazed for a moment. In spite of the suddenness of it, I
don't think I had any doubt it was my brother. I saw his big hook nose
sticking out of his fur cap between the horrible goggles, his body
craning forward under the wings. And the voice, the wailing, sneering,
screaming laugh, '_Charley!_'--that was him right enough. My brother!
"I stepped along the gangway to the bridge, just as the Second Mate took
the telescope from his eye and laid it in the rack. He saw me and leaned
over the rail beckoning.
"'Say, Mister Chief, what the blazes was that?' he whispered.
"'Didn't you see it?' I asked. I knew he had been dozing on the lee side
of the chart-room.
"'See it! I _heard_ something!' he says. 'Was it you calling Charley?'
His name's Charley, you see; Charley Phillips.
"'No,' I said. 'I didn't see anything. You must have been asleep, Mr.
Phillips.'
"He looked at me, rather raw about the gills, took a look at the
Gunfleet Light and bent down again to me.
"'Did you _see_ anything?' He waved his hand towards the Essex coast.
'Yes,' I said. 'Green lights.'
"'Oh, that was the Harwich boat,' he says. 'I know that. She's gone.
Must have been going twenty-two knots.'
"'It was an aeroplane,' I said, whispering, 'flew past.'
"'_Eh!_' says he. I said it again. He straightens up and takes a turn up
and down the bridge.
"'You'd better watch out,' I said. 'It may come back.'
"'I _am_ watching out!' says he, rather savage. '_I'll_ take care of all
the aeroplanes about, Chief.'
"I went back then and took another look round with my glasses, but I saw
nothing but a couple of coasting steamers in shore. I stepped down into
the mess-room and looked through the slit of the Fourth's door. Funny
coincidence! He was on his settee in his pyjamas, asleep, and on his
stomach was a magazine he'd been reading, a magazine with a coloured
cover showing an aeroplane dropping a bursting shell on a man-o'-war.
"I lay awake for a long time, listening to the bells, watching Rosa's
picture flickering on the bulkhead as the screw below me shook the ship.
So we'd met again! I couldn't blame the Second Mate--I've kept the
grave-yard watch myself; I couldn't blame Mister Charley Phillips. But
what would he have said if I'd told him my brother was on that machine?
What if I'd said I'd seen wireless sparks spitting above it? Humph!
"I suppose I must have dozed a little, for the next thing I remember was
the whoop of our siren and the engines going dead slow. As I tumbled out
to go down it was three o'clock. The Third was standing by the reversing
gear and I saw by the vacuum gauge that the temperature of the sea was
down to forty-eight degrees. 'Fog, sir?' says the Third. 'Aye,' I said.
'Shut your injection a little. We're off the Goodwins, I suppose.'
Everything was all right, so I climbed up to look. The Old Man was out
on deck and they were heaving the lead. Every minute the siren gave a
mournful whoop and the slow thump of the propeller made me miserable. I
leaned over the side, thinking of my brother and his aeroplane. For the
life of me I couldn't be sure it wasn't all a dream. The thin whine of
the siren sounded very like his cry of '_Charley!_' I heard the Old Man
bark something, heard the tinkling of the telegraph and the siren
bellowed again. We were going full speed astern! Just as I turned away
from the bulwarks I saw a green light, the starboard light of a coaster,
rush past. I could hear some one shouting through a megaphone on the
bridge. She must have been awful close--went past our stern with an inch
to spare as we swung. And then all was quiet again as the engines
stopped and went ahead dead slow. I went down and got my overcoat and a
pipe. The Second was putting on his clothes. 'Ah, you may as well,' I
said. 'It's thick all right,' I like a man that don't have to be called.
"All night we crawled along. You see, the Straits of Dover are very like
Piccadilly Circus. You never know who you may run against in a fog, it's
so crowded and the company is so mixed. About breakfast time the Old Man
judged by soundings he was abeam of Dungeness and we went half-speed.
The fog lifted about Beachy Head.
"So you see, the fact and the fiction was so mixed up in my mind that by
the time we got into the Western Ocean I didn't feel sure which was
which. The Second Mate never said a word more about green lights, for if
he allowed there was an aeroplane about on the middle watch the Skipper
would naturally ask him why he didn't see it. And then what mixed things
in my mind still more was my picking up the Fourth's magazine in the
mess-room one day and reading that yarn. I was going to tell you about
this; but merely to show you how my brother impressed me that I dreamt
about him at sea. But now--it seems I didn't dream it after all.
"I'm not surprised," went on Mr. Carville, after a slight pause to stir
up the ash in his pipe with a pen-knife, "not surprised. My brother had
it in him always. Quite apart from any personal feeling I might have for
him or against, I was always prepared, so to say, to see him doing
something big. His trouble with his season-ticket and his bigger trouble
that put him in gaol were very much on a par. He always had an
unconventional way of getting what he wanted. It was no use talking to
him; he simply doesn't see what you mean. I--I wonder what he's going to
do next."
"He might pay a visit over here," I said tentatively. Mr. Carville gave
me a quick glance.
"I shouldn't like that at all," he said, shaking his head. "You see ...
I might be away ... I shouldn't like it at all."
He was obviously disturbed, and I felt that the suggestion had been
unwise. Obviously it would not do to tell him that his brother knew
where he was.
"So far," he remarked presently, "my little boys don't know anything
about their uncle. I've no wish that they should. I want them to grow up
in this country without any connection with Europe at all. Any debt they
owe to Europe can be paid later. My brother couldn't help them at all.
And Rosa----"
Mr. Carville stood up to go. The cover for _Payne's Monthly_ caught his
eye and he nodded approvingly.
"That's clever," he said. "I wish sometimes I'd gone in for doing
things, like you. As you said, a man's mind rusts, gets seized, if it
isn't working. I did think of doing something with a few papers I've got
in my berth on the _Raritan_, but--I don't know."
"Why not let me have a look at them?" I said. "I might act as a sort of
an agent for you, unpaid of course----"
"Much obliged," said Mr. Carville placidly, "but I don't know as you
need bother. I threw a book over the side once."
"A manuscript!" I said, aghast. He nodded, looking at his boots. "I
thought a lot of it once; called it _Dreams on a Sea-Weed Bed_, and got
a funny faced little girl in Nagasaki to type it for me. But one voyage,
when I'd been reading a book called _New Grub Street_, I got sick of the
whole thing and dumped it in the Java Sea, half way between Sourabaja
and Singapore."
"I can't approve of that, Mr. Carville," I said, standing up and
confronting him. "A foolish thing to do!"
"How's that? It might just as well be twenty fathoms deep in the Java
Sea as twenty volumes deep in the British Museum? Eh! It was mine."
"Oh yes, yes; but it's hardly fair to deprive the world of it."
"Humph! I guess the world won't sweat, sir. It would be a good thing if
a lot of modern stuff was dumped. Some of the authors too, by your
leave!"
"I quite agree," I said. We had been to see Brieux' _Damaged Goods_ in
New York a week or so before, and we were in the mood to sympathize with
Mr. Carville's doubt of modern tendencies. He stood by the door of the
studio, one hand on the jamb, the other under his coat, the plain gold
albert stretched across his broad person, the light shining on his
smooth pink forehead as he looked down at his crossed legs. It has
occurred to me from time to time that this unobtrusive man, with his
bizarre record and eccentric mentality, was evolving behind the mask of
his mediocrity a new type. That this process was only half deliberate I
am ready to believe. A man who disciplines his soul by flinging
overboard the manuscript of a book does not thereby slay his
imagination. He only drives it inward. When we first came to America we
planted all our seeds in the garden too deep and they grew downward,
assuming awful and grotesque forms. In some such way Mr. Carville's
imagination was working within him, fashioning, as I say, a new type. I
insist upon this, inasmuch as beyond it I have no mementoes of him. Both
he and his are gone from our immediate observation, and though we may
hear from him again, as a ship passing in the night, a rotund meditative
figure pacing the deck of some outbound freighter, so far I remember him
mainly by this intellectual inversion. For him the suppression of
passion had become a passion; for him individuality was cloaked by the
commonplace. In his way he made a contribution to art; he had hinted at
the possibilities underlying a new combination of human characters. He
had given strange hostages to Fortune, so that Fortune hardly knew what
to do with them. It is possible that the abrupt and dramatic
disappearance from his life (I refer to his brother) has slackened the
intensity of his hold upon this idea; but I do not know.
He left us that evening quietly and without fuss. He had, in a notable
degree, the neat movements and economy of gesture which I can imagine
indispensable to those who live in confined cabins and take their walks
upon decks beneath which their shipmates sleep. In a quiet indescribable
way there was manifest in his demeanour a gentle repudiation of all
things traditionally English. You could not possibly imagine him
vociferating "God save the King" or "Sons of the Sea." With a simple
dignity he had assumed the dun livery of the alien, and there was to me
a certain fineness in the sentiment that forbade any flaunting of his
nationality in the faces of his native-born children.
And in the midst of our musings, just before we turned out the lights,
it occurred to me quite suddenly that, since he had finished his story,
it was quite possible that we should not see him again.