Aliens Part 17

"She shook her head. 'Quite impossible,' she said. 'Well, where's Frank?' I asked her.

"She didn't know. He'd dropped her just the same as he dropped anything else he had no use for, without a word. And I think it was shame more than because she didn't care for me that made her say it was impossible.

I don't know--what is a woman's pride, anyhow? See how he'd treated her; worse than I'd treat my dog. And yet when he came back, flush with money and with flash friends, and he lifted his hand, she ran to him, _ran_!

Explain it if you can. I can't.

"That was later. I got my flat and pa.s.sed my exam all right, and my uncle in Fenchurch Street said I could have a job as soon as I liked.

But I thought I'd wait a bit. I was seeing London from a fresh angle, you might say; seeing it as an outsider, as an alien. I had about a hundred pounds to spend, and in a modest quiet way I enjoyed myself. The razzle-dazzle of London doesn't appeal to a man much, when he's been on the bend in sea-ports. Humph!

"And Miss Flagg took my ma.n.u.script and went crazy about it. She said she sat up all night to read it. Knowing what I do of women now, I think she was a liar. Besides, anyone could read it in two or three hours. The point is she told the publisher that lie, and he believed it. Her enthusiasm was contagious. He said it was fine, and gave me ten pounds for it. Miss Flagg said it was a generous offer and raked off a sovereign for her commission. I often wonder how authors bear up under such generosity. But of course I know nothing about the business side of it. Only for a short time did I get bitten about the idea of being an author. I found I had nothing to say. Miss Flagg told me she knew a man who 'did fiction' at the rate of twenty thousand words a week. She might have lied, but then, how do I know? Anyway, I saw it wasn't in my line--'fiction.'

"You see, when I went to their flat and met their literary friends and heard them talking about their work, I felt out of it. I was an alien in their world. I had no interest in the details of book-writing. I'd just put down what happened to come into my mind. I wondered what they wrote about. Love I suppose. I'd sit and look about me and try to imagine what those people would have thought of the old _Corydon's_ engine-room.

Humph! Do _you_ know what those thin, half-fed men and women thought the most important thing in the world? Not husbands and wives and children, not war, nor even courage; not books nor pictures; nothing of this. No; they were wearing their souls out clamouring for a _Vote_!"

We sat very still. You could have heard a pin drop.

"There was Gladys. She was only nineteen, and ought to have been helping her mother at home; but no, she was emanc.i.p.ated, as she called it. Her experience with my brother taught her that the _Vote_ was necessary.

Miss Flagg told me that unless women got the Vote England would drop behind. They all said that. To me it was amazing. It showed me how far I'd travelled away from the old ideas. It angered me to see women acting like that, spoiling themselves, making themselves ridiculous and ugly, all for that!

"I'd been home a couple of months, not more, when I began to get restless. My mother asked me why I didn't get a job on sh.o.r.e. But I couldn't see myself going to Victoria Street every day, clean collar and umbrella, sitting at a desk dictating silly little letters to silly little people. Those who wanted it let them do it. I went to my uncle and asked for a job. His eyes twinkled when he said, 'Well, the _Corydon's_ chartered for the Mediterranean, and they want a Second.'

"'When shall I join?' I said.

"'Oh, I was only joking,' says he. 'We'll get you a better ship than that now.'

"'No,' I said, 'I'll go back to the _Corydon_. I know her and she knows me. When shall I join?'"

Again Mr. Carville paused, and appeared to be lost in thought, oblivious of our presence. An expression of gentle earnestness had settled upon his face, almost melancholy. I imagined for a moment that he was endeavouring to arrange his thoughts.

"I do hope," he remarked, without looking at us, "I do hope that anything I've said hasn't given offence." He turned to us with a slight smile. "I mix up so little with genteel people nowadays--you see?"

I nodded vaguely, and he relapsed into thought again.

"I was thinking," he observed presently, "as you are so quiet, I might have said something. I remember that was the way they signified dissent, so to speak. And--I wouldn't like to offend--anybody."

"Pray go on," I said. "We are not genteel in that sense of the word."

It was plain that, apart from any scruples concerning our gentility, he had some difficulty in picking up the thread of his story. It was a relief when he began to speak.

"I come now," he said, "to a time that I hardly know how to describe.

The next few years, taken together, were my _Wanderjahre_. You know Wilhelm Meister, of course? My apprenticeship was over, but I wasn't a man yet for all that. There's an intermediate stage, what we engineers call being 'an improver,' in a man's life. It seems strange that I should speak of myself so at twenty-seven, but there it is; I was late maturing. Again, I like to think that the Dutch are right when they use the same word for husband and man. Until he is married a Dutchman is not a 'Man.' That's how I looked at it!

"When I rejoined the _Corydon_, the Chief said the Second was going to stay on one more trip, but old Croasan was clearing out and I could go Third. I wouldn't mention these details, only they are important, because--well, you'll see.

"Old Croasan was going ash.o.r.e when I joined. Didn't even shake hands with the Chief! I thought he was going home to the bonny Scotland he always shouted about when he was canned, but the Second says, 'Na, na.

He'll never go back to Grangemouth,' and Chief says, 'He'll get a job all right, all right.' Well, I was busy enough with my own concerns, and, as usual, there was a-plenty to do on the _Corydon_; but one evening I was up at Cully's Hotel talking to Miss Bevan, when in walks a smart, tidy-looking man of, say, forty-five, and calls for a bottle of Ba.s.s. I wouldn't have given him more than a pa.s.sing glance if he hadn't looked me in the eye. 'Eh, lad,' says he. 'Will ye have a drink?'

'Croasan?' I said. 'Ah, it's me,' says he. 'Ah'm away the morn in yon big turret.'

"I was that astonished I couldn't reply, and he drank up his beer and went out with a wave of the hand. Miss Bevan asked me if I knew him.

'Sure,' I said, 'but he was old and grey three days ago.' It was my first experience of a sea-faker. He'd been up to Cardiff, had a Turkish bath, hair-cut and shave, and the barber had dyed his hair and moustache. Then he'd gone round to the offices and eventually got a job. Of course, the first green sea that went over him would add twenty years to his age, but he'd be signed on then. The Chief laughed when I told him. 'And you'll see him in Genoa,' he says; 'yon turret steamer's goin' there too,' I did see him. In a way, he introduced me to my wife."

Mr. Carville paused and struck a match. Bill's head appeared at the window.

"Oh!" she said, "I thought you were never coming to it!"

He proceeded, carefully putting the burnt match on the window-sill and blowing great clouds.

"The run to Genoa from the Tyne," he said, "takes a fortnight. It was during that voyage that I began to see how I stood with regard to Gladys. I suppose you read Ibsen? I used to, on the _Corydon_, and one of the most remarkable of his plays, in my opinion, is _Love's Comedy_.

You remember the moral of that play was that a man should never marry a girl he is madly in love with. It sounds wicked if you put it that way, but old Ibsen was right. He knew, as I knew, that a young man may be in love with a girl who is not suited to him. He knew that there isn't much difference between that sort of love and hate. He knew that you can have a contempt for a girl and her ideals and yet love her. That sort of love is like those big thin bowls they showed me in j.a.pan--beautiful, expensive and awful frail--no use at all for domestic purposes. I thought this out on the voyage to Genoa, and put Gladys, so to speak, on a shelf, where she is now. And as I thought it out, I saw how I stood.

I saw I was not only an alien wherever I went, but I was alone. I began to be afraid. I used to look ahead and tried to see myself in twenty years' time, alone. It is not good for a man to be alone. That's how I felt when we reached Genoa.

"Those who know best often say that sailormen know less about foreign countries than many people who have never travelled. I daresay that is true of many of us. It is very likely true of any uneducated people who go abroad. Most men who go to sea have very little education. They have no knowledge of their own country, let alone others. To a certain extent I was different. I had always wanted to see Italy. Years before, when I was in Victoria Street, I had read about her history and art. I had even learned a little of the language. And so, when we came into Genoa, and I saw that beautiful city, with her white palaces and green domes and fort-crowned hills, when I remembered what she'd been, and saw what she was, I could hardly wait till nightfall to go ash.o.r.e and see it all at once!

"Since then I've been to nearly every port in the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Smyrna and from Ma.r.s.eilles to Tunis, but I never experienced anything like that first night ash.o.r.e in Genoa. The next day the Chief asked me where I'd been, and I told him. 'Why,' he says, 'didn't you go into the "Isle o' Man" or the "American"?' No, I hadn't been in any of those places. He said they'd have to show me round.

"That night I went with them, leaving the new Fourth in charge, and I learned why sailormen know so little of foreign places. All along the Front, as they call it, were scores of dirty little bars with English names. I wouldn't mention them at all, only it is necessary in a way, as you'll see. We went into several and had a drink, and the Chief was known in them all. Finally the Chief says, 'Let's get on to the "Isle o'

Man,"' and we went out and walked along the Via Milano a little further.

The 'Isle o' Man' was rather bigger than most of these places, and had a very comfortable room with plush settees and marble tables shut off from the main cafe. It was kept by a big, heavy, red-haired woman, about fifty years old, who came in and sat down by the Chief and talked about old times. I found she was married to a steward in the Hamburg-American Line, who ran this show on the side. It was a mixed company in there, skippers of all nations sitting round and drinking; and a tall young chap, with a velvet coat and long hair, was playing a piano and singing songs. After every song he would come round with a tin saucer and collect pennies from us. I remember thinking how strange he looked. He had a n.o.ble face, I should call it; he looked like a gentleman and spoke like one, and there he was, collecting pennies! I was watching him coming round to our table when a girl came in, a tall, dark young girl, with a tray of gla.s.ses. 'h.e.l.lo!' says the Chief, 'that's not Rosa, is it?' The old woman nods and says, 'That's Rosa all right, Chief.' And he called out to the girl to come over to us.

"She came at once. 'Here's a friend o' yours, Rosa,' says the old woman, and the girl looks at the Chief and smiles a little. 'Why, she was only so high last time I was here,' says the Chief. 'She has shot up.' 'Yes,'

says the old woman, who was called Rebecca, 'she'll be a fine woman one o' these days.'

"They told me about her as we went back to the ship. No one knew who her parents were. She had always been at the 'Isle o' Man,' and sailormen had petted her because she was a nice little thing and would rap out a bit of slang without knowing in the least what it meant. But now, as the Chief said, it was a different matter. She was 'too big to kiss now.'

One point in her history I was very interested in, and that was the fact that neither the Chief nor anyone else I ever heard speak of her ever suggested that she wasn't straight. I liked that. There she was, living among all the draggled, dirty seaport crowd, and yet the seafaring men that took their drinks from her believed she was straight.

"I was coming down from the theatre one night about a week later, and I thought I'd look in at the 'Isle o' Man' for a drink before going aboard. There was a good few in there, Greek and Norwegian skippers; and a Belgian engineer was sitting across from me with old Croasan. The piano was going with _Little Dolly Daydream_, _Pride of Idaho_, when in comes Rosa with her tray. To get past she had to squeeze between old Croasan's table and the piano, and I saw him take hold of her waist. She was hampered by the tray, and he was pulling her down on his knee.

"I don't think it was all gallantry that made me do what I did. I'd never been a whale on that sort of thing. I'm not built on those lines.

I think it was a feeling that has always possessed me very strongly when I see an old man with a young woman--disgust. To me it is a horrible sight, the l.u.s.t of an old man. You can argue as long as you like, but that is one of my fixed eternal prejudices. I feel sick when I see an old man giving way to it. I feel that somehow or other he is debasing humanity. That was the real reason why I jumped up and went over to Croasan.

"He looked up at me as I stood over the table. I could see the crease in his cheeks, the sag under his eyes, and the grey roots of his dyed moustache. He looked up at me as I raised my hand. 'Let her go,' I said, shouting at him above the jangle of the piano, 'let her go, Mr.

Croasan.' He was holding her down on his knee.

"'Mind your own affairs!' he says to me, showing his teeth, great dirty yellow fangs; 'Is she yours?' he says. The Belgian engineer sitting near him laughed at this and looked up sneering at me. 'Let her go,' I said again. 'Rosa's a friend of mine,' says he, still holding her. Just then I saw Rebecca's head over the piano, and as I looked down again I saw a peculiar expression on Rosa's face. Her eyes were on me and she seemed to be thinking 'What are you waiting for?' It all happened, you know, in two or three seconds. I waited no more. I put the flat of my hand across Croasan's mouth, hard. He jerked back to avoid it, and the tray that Rosa was trying to set down on the table, so that she could get at him with her nails, went all over him. The old woman came round the piano and saw him. Croasan started up and I hit him again, and he fell over the Belgian.

"At first I thought I was in for a big row. But Croasan had more experience than I had. He'd been in rows before. When he started up it was not to hit me, but to get out. He crawled under the table between the Belgian's legs and ran to the door. The others were crowding all round me, arguing and shouting. The young chap at the piano was standing up and looking over the top, and Rebecca was trying to calm them. 'Easy, gentlemen!' she kept on calling. Rosa had disappeared. Then the Belgian jumped up and shouted, 'Ee interfere wis my frien'!' pointing at me, and marching out.

"When we got quiet again I began to explain to Rebecca what had happened. Do you know, I thought that was the real danger. I thought she would be the one to get on to me for interfering. Rebecca was a woman who looked more evil than she really was. She sat down at my table, and while I told her and the piano jangled away again, she kept patting my arm and saying, 'Yes, yes, I know.' What did she know? Why, the simple fact that Rosa was no longer a little girl to be petted, but a grown-up girl to be insulted. I learned a similar thing had happened once or twice in the last few months. You see, the girl was neither in one cla.s.s nor the other. A young Genoese will not look at a girl who lives in those houses along the Front. He thinks they are all rotten bad. As for the foreigners she met in the 'Isle o' Man,' I needn't tell you what an average Englishman thinks of foreign women.

"I told the Chief about it next day, and he looked up sharp from his plate when I mentioned Croasan. He said hard things of Croasan. 'Think of that?' says he. 'An old chap wi' married daughters!' 'Huh!' says the Second. 'They're aye the wurrs't. But I'm glad ye punched him, mister,'

he says. 'Many a time I'd ha' done the same, only we were on articles.

Rosa, too!'

"'Ay,' says the Chief, 'but Rosa'll have to put up with men clawin' her now.'

"It was my intention, to avoid trouble and talk, to keep away from the 'Isle o' Man' for the future, but it turned out otherwise. I'd got leave from the Chief on Thursday afternoon to go up to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo to see the Holy Grail. They keep it in the Treasury there and show it on Thursdays for a franc. Most Englishmen laugh at these tales of the Church, and even Catholics I have met tell me they don't believe in miracles. I don't know why; I'm interested in them. Sometimes I get a glimpse of the state of mind in which they are reasonable and necessary things. The more we learn the less we know. They say that saints, because they led good lives and kept away from evil, were able to perform miracles. Why should a statement like that annoy anybody? Good is a power and evil is a power. Why deny it? I read a book the other day in which the author, a German with a name like a lady's sneeze, denies the existence of good and evil. Humph! It's a long time since I read Hegel, but I don't think he was ever as mad as that!

"I was coming through the church after quitting the sacristan, when I caught sight of a girl kneeling on the steps of the Chapel of St. John.

I suppose you know that the Precursor is buried in this church? They show you a silver box with a chain round it, the chain that bound him in prison. There were other women in the church, but this girl was not in the chapel, only kneeling on the step outside. Women, you see, are not allowed to enter that chapel; on account of Salome, I suppose. I saw this girl kneeling on the step and crossed over to see what she was doing. It was Rosa, saying her prayers. There is a difference between a Catholic and a Protestant praying. You may have noticed it. A Protestant shuts his eyes and thinks hard about the money he's making or the automobile he's going to buy. A Catholic plays about with his beads and chatters all the time while he's thinking of religion. Protestants are scandalized when they see how Catholics make a sort of rough-house playground of their churches--children playing on the floor during service even. They can't understand how Catholics manage to reverence a thing and yet not hate it. Englishmen always draw wrong conclusions about an Italian's relations with G.o.d. You see, most Englishmen feel about G.o.d as they used to feel about Queen Victoria. They respected her and felt she was necessary, but all the same they felt exasperated with her for being so particular at times! Humph!