CONCLUSION
It was a white Yule-tide that year. Late on Christmas Eve I crept
carefully and circuitously up to the house next door and deposited our
little parcel of gifts in the shadow of the porch. In an hour my tracks
were covered. Sleighs passed, in the stealthy fashion of sleighs, the
jingle of harness and bells mingling, the muffled figures of the riders
looking strangely like stuffed effigies in the white radiance of the
reflecting snow. And next morning, when I woke early, snow was still
falling. But at breakfast, rather late in honour of the day, the sky was
swept to a clean, clear transparent azure, and the sun shone with
dazzling brightness on road and roof. Working industriously with our
broad wooden shovels to clear a path from the porch to the street, I
stole a glance next door. I was rather glum, I remember, to discover no
sign of life, and later, over hot whisky, we debated whether we were
really well enough acquainted to give presents. It is a habit of ours,
however, very hard to break. Our idea is to give something which the
recipient will like, and this involves thought, which is the essence and
true spirit of giving. Some days before I had been despatched to
Chinatown for the express purpose of buying coloured tops, snakes and
kites. Bill had made Indian suits for the boys, and Mac had returned
from the stores with a coasting sled, and a small pair of roller
skates. Miss Fraenkel was to have a copy of Spenser's _Faery Queen_
bound by us in blue leather and stamped with an original design. As Bill
often says, we can make anything in the world except money. Curiously
enough, it seems to me now, we forgot Mr. Carville. Perhaps that too
helps to describe him, for he gave me the impression of being so utterly
complete in himself, so very independent of the trivial human weaknesses
and needs on which Christmas essentially depends, that a present to him
was out of the question. We did not envy him this position. We simply
forgot him in the general rush of seasonable sentiment, and put
ourselves to all sorts of delightful inconvenience in discovering what
his family would like. And when, later in the forenoon, as we were
sitting round the studio stove, we heard a clatter of skates in the
porch, and a single knock, as though some small person had stood
atip-toe to reach the Canterbury Pilgrim, I am not ashamed to say we
went down in a body to open the door. Messrs. Giuseppe Mazzini and
Benvenuto Cellini stood without, the former with his sled over his
shoulder, both muffled to the chin, their red cheeks and bright eyes
beautiful to behold.
"Hullo!" I said. "Now, where did you get those?"
Benvenuto looked down critically at the new leather straps of the
skates.
"Ma says," began Beppo, as though reciting a lesson, "Ma says, we thank
you very much for the things and"--he glanced at his brother, who was
watching him--"and we wish you a Merry Christmas."
"Thank you. Same to you," we said, filling the doorway. "Where are you
going now?"
"Pine Street," said Beppo.
"Skates not much use now, eh?"
"Oh, he's just tryin' 'em," it was explained.
"Well, good luck. Eat plenty of turkey, and come and see us again soon."
They seemed hesitating about something, looking bashfully at each other
and then at us. We all looked down at them benevolently.
"You come too," muttered Beppo, and Ben put his hand into mine with a
charming gesture.
It was my turn to hesitate. Mac laughed.
"Come on, old man," he said. "We'll both go."
And we did. For two solid hours, oblivious of churchgoers, we slid down
Pine Street and toiled up Pine Street, rejoicing in the keen air, the
flying snow, and the delighted shouts of the youngsters.
"Now come in and have some candy," said we.
As we knocked the snow off our boots in the porch Bill came to the door
looking pleasantly excited.
"She's here!" she whispered, and we entered, struck suddenly dumb like
children, took off our boots and went upstairs to the studio.
Quite naturally, Mrs. Carville had stepped in to thank her neighbour for
the little leather Renaissance purse we had made for her. She
embarrassed us yet more by rising when we came in. My friend, a most
courteous and punctilious gentleman, begged her to be seated. She was
wearing her scarlet cloak, and her eloquent dusky features were
illumined with conflicting emotions.
"I did not know," she said as I was getting the box of candy. "I did not
know that people could be so kind."
"It is Christmas," explained my friend lightly. "And we always like to
be jolly, you know. When is Mr. Carville due?"
A swift shadow crossed her face and was gone.
"How can I know?" she replied. "Perhaps next week, perhaps ... but I do
not know."
"I was just saying," said Bill hurriedly, "what a pity he couldn't have
got in for Christmas."
"Never," said Mrs. Carville, watching the children eating chocolates.
"Never can he get in for Christmas. Every year it is the same since we
are married. Always, always at sea."
She looked around at us vaguely, as though she feared, somehow, that we
did not believe, or understand her. But I think we did. I think we saw
suddenly the secret of this lonely woman's soul. We saw it as she looked
round at us, the immediate and precipitous chasm between such a life as
she led, and the life of one like my friend, ever close to her husband,
understanding his whims, his fears, his hopes, his follies and his
victories. We saw the desolation of the sea-wife, the long lonely
nights, the ever-present apprehension of loss. We understood the pathos
of the scaldino. And swift upon this new interpretation we saw the
great dangers of such a life to a woman of imperfect culture, strong
passion and yet noble aspiration. We saw, too, another and more
particular tragedy possible to her, in being forever debarred from her
husband's innermost life. That vague look of distress was pregnant with
meaning. She wished to say--how much! Yet in English she had not the
words. For a moment there was a silence, and then once more she rose,
this time to bid us adieu. We were all under an impulse, I have since
learned, to press her to stay to dinner. Each was doubtful how the
others would take it, and with reason, for this one feast of the year
has taken on a sacramental character in recent times. We prefer, without
any diminution of our Christian charity and goodwill, to eat it by
ourselves. And so Mrs. Carville bade us good-bye, and was followed
unwillingly by two young gentlemen who wanted to stay.
"I'll come over this evening and bring Ben and Beppo for an hour, may
I?" I said.
"You must not let them be in your way," she replied. The smile of the
children was reward for a good deal of inconvenience.
"Mrs. Carville, you mustn't put it that way. We shall always be glad to
have them, out of business hours. And to-night is holy to children
everywhere. They shall light the candles on our tree. You know what
Flaubert once said of children--'a little thing like that in the house
is the only thing that matters.'"
Her eyes dropped to the heads of the children in front of her, and her
face became suddenly grave, set in a pose of quiet thought.
"Did he say so?" she remarked soberly. "Well, perhaps he was right." And
she took the children by the hand and went out.
And we had them back in the evening, which became uproarious. My friend
greeted them dressed up as Santa Claus, with an immense cotton-wool
beard and motor-goggles. We initiated them into the mysteries of Hunt
the Slipper and Musical Chairs. Indeed, when neighbours began to drop
in, as they did later on, they interrupted five children playing Nuts in
May. Foolish old parlour-tricks we had forgotten since our own early
childhood came back to memory and evoked shrieks of laughter. At ten,
when I took them, well wrapped up, down our snow-trench and along the
sidewalk to their own door, they were in a trance of mingled happiness
and fatigue.
"Here they are, safe, Mrs. Carville," I said as she opened the door,
"but very sleepy."
"You are very kind," she said. "They must go to bed. But you will come
in, and drink a glass of wine? No?"
"Yes," I said, suddenly pushing aside the diffidence that years of
literature had bred. "Yes, I will take a glass of wine with you, Mrs.
Carville. To the coming year."
"Oh, but," she said, laughing over her shoulder as she led the way into
the parlour, "Have you the gift of good fortune that you bring to me for
this next year? I hope you have. Here is the wine. My husband gets it
when he goes to Ancona. The wine of Umbria. You like it?"
"To next year," I said as she filled two glasses from a large wickered
flask. "And what is left of this," I added. She sat on a white chair in
front of a wall covered with books, a brilliant, tragic, yet smiling
figure of a beautiful woman, charming in the kindly coquetry of the
moment. For that is how I interpreted her mood, that she divined my
diffidence with feminine quickness and sought innocently enough to help
me along. And I made up my mind to take the chance, should it appear,
and warn her of what we had feared. She would take it from me, knowing
of my diffidence. As she sat there, she filled one of my ideals; the
robust and beautiful mother. I will have none of your pale, puling
madonnas. I have never been under the influence of women, but I delight
in them tall and strong and with the splendid beauty of health and
maturity. Against her husband's books, which made a background of colour
and gold like old tapestry for her head, she was a wonderful complexity
of vigorous, abounding life and still decorative outline. She turned and
looked at me after setting down her glass and found me watching her. She
smiled in a friendly way.
"You know," she said, "we have bought a home on Staten Island? Well,
when we are fixed, you will come and see us--when my husband is home.
You will, all?"
"I will anyhow," I said. "I like your husband and I like your two boys,
and...."
"And me?" she inquired with a smile that pursed her lips. "You no like
me?" I laughed.
"I did not say that," I observed. "How could it be otherwise? Even
though you will be offended, I must wonder if you know how much you mean
to him."
"To him?" she echoed vaguely, in alarm.
"To your husband," I went on. "You see, he has told me a good deal of
his life. And I think you have made all the difference in it. He is not
a noisy man, you know, but he made it very clear at times how very much
you mean to him."
She was looking at me steadily while I said this, stroking little Ben's
head as he slumbered. Her eyes were very bright, and they searched my
face relentlessly.
"And you think I do not know that?" she asked slowly.
"You will think me presumptuous to have said so much. You must forgive a
shy man who means no ill. Of course, you know that. What I pray for this
coming year is that you will not forget it."
There was a long silence, and I fixed my eyes on a brass ash-tray and a
row of corn-cobs that stood on a little table by the radiator. At length
she rose and gently lifted the children to their feet, holding them
close to her.
"You think bad of me, then?" she queried in a curiously toneless voice.
"Who? I?"
"All of you."
"You know we do not. You must blame only me for this. We think bad of
you! Listen, Mrs. Carville. My business is with books and you may think
I know nothing of the life you and your husband live. But my business is
also with humanity. It is for humanity I live, for them I work, and
their praise is my reward. I am, in a way, in love with humanity. All
the time I want _people_. They are the only thing that matters. And this
gives me a light on a good deal you might think I missed. I know how
quickly people break and are carried away. I know the strongest are
often the weakest. I know we often give way just when we feel strong. I
know something of illusions. So I have spoken. To-morrow you will laugh
and say, 'It don't matter what he thinks,' And I still wish you a Happy
New Year. Will you wish me one? Because I love people, humanity, so
much?" And I made my way, rather overcome by feeling, out to the hall.
As I raised the latch to go out, I looked back at her. She stood at the
parlour door, the light of the hall-lamp throwing her features into
sharp relief.
"Wait," she said softly. I waited.
"You think bad of me?" she said again. "Why, what have I done?"
"No!" I said. "You wrong us. We should not dare ..."
"Surely," she replied, looking at me in an odd, arch manner. "So I was
thinking. Good night. It is Christmas. I do not think bad of you. Good
night."
And then I was running through the snow.
I did not recount this conversation in all its details to the supper
party I found in the studio. I wanted to think it out. I wanted to
recall and consider this--to me--very unusual interview with a married
woman. I was reminded, as I lay unsleeping that night, of Mr. Carville's
enigmatic saying that 'the things in books had always eluded him.' As
one with a certain interest in books, I had remembered his words. And it
seemed that, if I looked at life honestly, the things in books would
elude me too. The problem occupied me for days. I was aghast at my own
obtuseness, for I was unable to decide from Mrs. Carville's conduct what
her real attitude towards us might be. I did not know whether she were
wayward or not. I felt bitterly that such things could not happen in a
book, in a best seller.
And when the days passed, white shrouded, and we discussed the theories
we had made and demolished, I found to my astonishment that my friends
had taken up a remote position on the subject. They were extremely
doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a
late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable
tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With
disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some
incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation.
They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped
all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped I would keep my evil
thoughts to myself at the Festive Season.
It is here that Miss Fraenkel interposed, all unconsciously, and became
the cause of our presence at a most singular catastrophe, the collapse
of the aeroplane in the snow. For had we not gone out that night to
visit Miss Fraenkel and with her see the New Year safely born, we should
have had no vivid memory of that terrible descent, nor understood how
Fate had woven our neighbours' destinies, and how inexplicably she can
drive to ruin at the moment of victory.
My friends had been to New York during the day, I remember, visiting
friends in Lexington Avenue, and they mentioned at dinner a report in
the paper that Mr. Francis Lord was to fly from the Gottschalk grounds,
on the banks of Lake Champlain, to New York and give a demonstration of
the aeroplane over the city. New machines had come from England, hope
sprang eternal in the reporting breast, and events of staggering
scientific import were foreshadowed. Other experts were pessimistic.
They claimed their own apparatus was better than D'Aubigne's and so got
a little advertisement for themselves. Other experts again blamed the
administration in a vague way. An eminent actress was interviewed and
spoke of her new telephone play without adding much to the national
stock of wisdom. A famous evangelist of the rough-house type proposed to
use the new apparatus for reaching distant settlements.
I don't think we took the news very seriously. We are, as I have said,
inured to wonders and inclined to let science do her worst. We belong
to that class of people who, although they keep silent on the subject,
hate science very heartily. My friend trumpets science loudly enough at
times, I know; but he hates her in his heart, for he loves children and
birds and flowers, and the colours of the distant hills when evening
falls. And like us, he admires Miss Fraenkel, perhaps the most
unscientific creature in the United States. He feeds her passion for
details of English life in the most shameless way. On this particular
evening he entranced her with a description of the Scottish custom of
sitting on the plinth of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and welcoming
the new year with bottles of whisky. Every Scotsman south of the Tweed
was under oath to appear in the churchyard in kilts and tartan-plaid at
midnight. Most of them, he added, wore red beards. Miss Fraenkel's fine
hazel eyes grew round as she visualized this frightful throng gathered
among the graves of the churchyard. It occurred to me that it only
showed, after all, how difficult it is to convey in words a just notion
of a foreign land, and how easy it is for "travellers' tales" to become
incredible fabrications. How would the quiet townships of rural England,
where the names of people and places go back to Saxon days, credit us if
we told them of our tavern known as Slovitzsky's, where citizens, of all
the races of Europe, sang "Auld lang Syne"? Not in kilts, it is true,
but in costumes even more surprising to the aforesaid quiet townships.
We get a good deal of fun out of Miss Fraenkel, no doubt, but it may be
that she, without ever giving away the secret, gets a good deal of fun
out of us. Sometimes there is a whimsical glint in her hazel eyes that
makes me reflect....
We were chatting quietly, after we had left her, full of good
resolutions, and we were climbing Pine Street, the deep snow making the
passage difficult, when we heard the strange sound of the rejoicing in
New York, twenty miles away. And it was without any thought of coming
peril, without any thought of our neighbours, that we paused at the top
of the ridge and looked across the valley. Indeed, we spoke of a
previous New Year when we had sallied out from our flat and joined the
tumultuous citizens in the streets. Above us was the dark blue sky of a
wintry midnight, obscured here and there by indeterminate blotches of
moving cloud, and far away to the eastward lay a long, low glare pierced
by a single white light, the lantern of the Metropolitan Tower in New
York.
We paused and stood close together upon the immediate edge of the vacant
plot, now several feet deep in snow, our figures throwing long shadows
upon the ghostly purity of the covering. And we became aware that we
were not watching so much as listening, for on the freshening easterly
wind there was borne such a rumour as men are not often permitted to
make or to hear. It could scarcely be called a noise; it was rather a
terrible and confusing _presence_ translated into sound. So enormous was
it, and so distant, that it enfolded us like a foreboding of disaster.
It was as though one were listening to the cheering of innumerable
myriads on another planet. There was neither cessation to it nor
paroxysm, neither surging up nor dying away. It was a continuous and
prodigious drone. And the wonder of it was driven, if possible, a notch
higher when it was known that this uproar was caused, not by the moans
of a lost world falling down through inconceivable spaces to Gehenna,
but by the million tin horns which the people of New York deemed a
fitting tribute to the New Year. It was a fan-fare _in excelsis_,
defying criticism and distance. It was the apotheosis of Manhattan, a
sky-scraper of dizzy sound. It was, moreover, the expression of a primal
and singularly innocent joy, the joy of a young nation on beholding a
New Year. It was almost as though, in the cataclysm of hideous and
unlooked-for calamities, in the vanishing of cities and kingdoms, in the
irruption of mountains and the sinking of titanic ships beneath the
waves, even the recurrence of the seasons had become an adventure and a
matter of supreme wonder.
A million tin horns!
I suppose it was our preoccupation with the solemnity of the hour and
the stupendous accompaniment of it that prevented our seeing at first a
strange and disquieting signal. My friend suddenly grasped my arm and
pointed to a black bank of cloud over Newark, where there shone a tiny
constellation of three green lights. And the sound of New York's
jubilation was forgotten. With murmured exclamations we stood with our
faces raised towards this new yet familiar portent. And as we gazed the
green rays were borne beyond the cloud bank and were seen moving more
and more rapidly against the dark blue of the star-lit heavens. Moved as
by one impulse, we plunged into the snow and took a few steps, as though
to gain a nearer view of this strangely beautiful object. Almost
immediately it was above us and the thuttering roar of its machinery
came dully to our ears in waves and sharp gusts of sound. And we cried
"Oh!" involuntarily, for we could see the dark spread of the vans
plunging frantically in the air. I remember I stretched out my arms in
an impotent gesture of aid, for with the speed of a bird of prey the
dark mass lurched in a flat swaying parabola towards the earth, spinning
the while upon itself, and striking the deep bed of snow, burst into a
mass of blinding flame.
So sudden was the catastrophe that we stood there in the brilliantly
illuminated snow, rigid with stupefaction, staring at the intense glare.
A patrolman rushed up to us and asked in a scared way what it was.
Receiving no reply, he ran forward a few steps, throwing us into
temporary shadow, looked round uncertainly, and then struck with a fresh
idea, plunged into the road and made for the fire call-box at the
corner. And almost as though his presence had been the cause of the
fire, it dimmed, flickered, flared and went out, leaving us in darkness.
Slowly we moved towards it. The patrolman came back. We reached a black
hole in the snow and tripped over twisted snarls of wire. We heard the
patrolman asking urgently what had happened.
"It is finished, all finished," I said vaguely.
"Sure," he said, "but what was it anyhow?"
"I think," I replied, "that it was an aeroplane. It came down, you know,
and the gasoline caught fire, and...." I found a box of matches and
struck a light, but the wind blew it out.
And then other people began to arrive.
* * * * *
The following day was memorable to us, as I have hinted, for it revealed
to us the enterprise of a modern free and enlightened press. Bill said
no husband of her's should ever take assignments to interview people if
that was the way of it. But the day after that was memorable, to me
especially. The hue and cry was gone, our little happenings were
forgotten and some other home was besieged by the reporters. I had
started out on the frozen snow to go to the post-office with some
manuscript when I met Beppo and Ben with the sled, bound for a certain
slope which they credited with famous tobogganing virtues. They greeted
me as if I were one of them; seriously they turned their faces up to
mine as they expounded their plans. I was aware of an inward fluttering
of pride, for it is no small matter to win the confidence of small
children. I went with them towards the hill they spoke of. It lay at the
end of an avenue of superb trees whose black, leafless twigs bore their
frosting of snow like strings of jewels in the glittering air. The wind
blew up the avenue keenly in our faces as we trudged. And then, where
the trees ended, the hill fell away at our feet, the valley lay far and
wide, the steel-blue river winding below, and in the distance the domes
and towers of the Metropolis.
"Look!" I said, stooping down to them and pointing. "Do you know what
that is?" They nodded and looked at me smiling. "N'York," they
whispered.
"When is father coming home?" I asked.
"Soon," said Beppo. "Ma was cryin' this morning."
"Why," I said in astonishment. "And does she cry when he comes home?"
"Oh, no," he replied slowly. "She cheers up when he comes home. It's the
storm, I guess. When the wind blows she cries a good bit."
And the next moment they were flying, face forward, down the hill.
I was roused from the study into which this plunged me by Miss
Fraenkel's interest in the catastrophe. As I bought my stamps and posted
my letters she continued to discuss its possibilities.
"What a story it would make!" she observed. "A thing like that coming
down here, of all places, and nobody expecting it. Like Sherlock
Holmes."
"Very," I said. "I must try my hand at it some day."
"And of course," she went on, "you'll have to fix up a love interest.
You remember you told me it was absolutely necessary to have one."
"Yes, I'll try that too," I assured her. "And the post-mistress as well.
All the best stories have one."
"Don't you dare," she called after me, laughing.
My friend was busy at his easel, blocking out a poster for a
breakfast-food.
"Where's Bill?" I asked. With a movement of his head as he reached for
his matches, he indicated next door.
Presently she returned, rather pale and at first reluctant to say very
much. It came out slowly as she arranged it in her mind.
"She has seen him," she said. "And he wrote to her. It put notions in
her head. But she can't explain--in English, you know. She kept saying,
'My heart! Oh, my heart!...' And yet she's glad in a way. It would have
been splendid and awful if he had--don't you think? Just fancy!... He
was one of those men--I did what I could to soothe her ... He will be
home to-morrow, too, if all is well.... Poor thing!"
* * * * *
It is on the point of dusk as we stand at the studio-window and watch
him coming up the hill, seeking vaguely for the foot path in the snow.
He is wrapped up warmly, and his Derby hat is set firmly upon his
down-bent head. The corn-cob pipe smokes on as ever, and he pauses to
shake out the ash as he steps down upon the road. At this there is a
sudden rush across the street of two small men in scarlet jerseys and
caps. He stands and looks down at them, a quizzical smile on his face.
Then he looks up and seeing us, makes a grave gesture of salutation. His
glance sweeps over to his house, his own inviolate home, and drops once
again to his children tugging at his hands. And then, with a reflective
air, he steps across to the sidewalk, and walks sedately up to his door.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[A: The word "Kill" is Dutch in origin and signifies very much
the same as Kyle (Scot), meaning _a deep arm of the sea_.]