Aliens Part 27

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ash.o.r.e 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions, pa.s.sions 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.senger. 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 n.o.body 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 G.o.d, 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 sn.o.bbish 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.o.o.p, 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 gla.s.ses 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 Ess.e.x coast.