Aliens Part 29

"Good morning," I said. "You are away early."

We climbed into the smoker and took a seat not likely to incommode the card-players.

"Ah," said he, smiling, "I expect we'll be going out to-night, you see, and it wouldn't do for the Chief to miss his pa.s.sage, would it?"

"So soon!" I said, in some surprise.

Mr. Carville gave me one of his quick, good-tempered glances.

"Soon?" he echoed. "Do you know, sir, how long it takes to load the _Raritan_? Just eight hours. Humph!"

Mr. Carville was fond of using this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of his in a double sense, if I may say so. As he spoke his eyes were fixed with some interest upon four of our neighbours, who had seated themselves near us and had laid a grey mill-board card-table across their knees. Whether it was the card-table, or the extraordinary speed with which the _Raritan_ was loaded, that excited his amus.e.m.e.nt, I am unable to decide. I was too familiar with the American habit of gambling in trains to take much notice of it. It is possible that Mr. Carville was less sophisticated.

"That," I said, "does not give you much time on sh.o.r.e."

"No," he said, "it doesn't. Speaking in a general way, we're glad to get to sea. In port, at this end at any rate, it's one continual rush. Sh.o.r.e people have very little consideration for sea-going men. They come and bang at your door any time, day or night. You may be changing your shift--don't matter, in they come. Some business or other. At sea," he concluded, "we do have a little peace."

"Where are you bound for?" I asked, opening my paper.

"Oh, Savona or some Riviera port, I expect. They don't give us our orders till we're off Sandy Hook. You're going to New York, I suppose, sir, on business?"

"Not exactly. I'm going to Staten Island," I replied, "and I believe this is the quickest way."

He regarded me with astonishment.

"Is that so? I suppose you'll be taking the ferry to St. George, then?"

I said that such was my intention, and asked why.

"Why, you see, I'm going that way myself, to Communipaw. The _Raritan_ is lying down there."

"Dear me! It never struck me----" I began. He laughed quietly.

"No," he said, "I don't suppose, if you asked a thousand New Yorkers where such and such a ship was loaded, that more than one could tell you. They know the _Lusitania_ lies somewhere about Eighteenth Street and the _Oceanic_'s next to her, and that's about all. It's the same everywhere. Ask a man in the Strand how to get to Tidal Basin; he won't know what Tidal Basin is, let alone _where_ it is. As for an oil-boat--Humph!"

"I shall have your company, then?" I said. He shrugged his shoulders.

"If you don't object, sir," he said.

"I should like it above all things," I returned. "I was thinking last night that there were many things I should like to ask you, but I was afraid that possibly you might not visit us again for a long time."

"Not at all," he said. "I was very glad to step in. You've got an atmosphere ... if I can call it that. I mean there's something I don't get on a ship, or for that matter, at home ... you understand? Now and again I feel I'd like to talk to people who _do_ understand."

"That reminds me," I said, "that I have been wondering how New York impresses you. I think it is rather wonderful myself."

Mr. Carville smoked silently for a few moments while the card-players pursued their games and the train thundered through the flat swamps of Riverside.

"Have you ever seen it," he asked, "from the Narrows?"

I shook my head. The _Campania_ had come up in a dank fog, when I had arrived seven years before. I mentioned the customs formalities that keep one below at such a time. Mr. Carville smiled gently.

"I always think," he said, "that for an artist, that view is the best, because it's the first. I was looking at that picture in your friend's studio last night; that one of New York from Brooklyn, and I couldn't help noticing how heavy he'd made it. See what I mean? He was too close.

The weight of the buildings gets on one's mind. That's the trouble with Americans, anyway. They show you a building and tell you the weight of it, and then the cost of it. Even women are judged by their weight. Only last night I saw in the papers something about a suffragette. They said she weighed one hundred and fifty pounds! I think it is a mistake, myself. Tonnage is all right in a ship; but it doesn't signify much, either in a city or a woman."

Rather astonished, I agreed that this was sound aesthetic doctrine.

"Now," went on Mr. Carville, "if you ask me how New York impresses me, I should say that it reminds me of Venice."

The train stopped at Newark. For an instant I was quite unable to determine whether Mr. Carville was joking or not. One look at his face, however, precluded any such surmise. I waited until the doors banged and the train was moving before I said, "In what way, Mr. Carville?"

"Mind you, it may not impress you in any way like Venice----"

"I regret never to have been there," I interrupted.

"You may," he a.s.sented. "You may. A man can do easy enough without ever seeing Naples; but Venice----ah!"

"Yes, I can imagine that," I said, "but in what way----?"

"Well, I'll show you, as you're going to St. George--_San Giorgio_ as you might say"--he chuckled--"and you can tell me what you think."

I fell into a study at this, a study that lasted until the train slid slowly into Jersey City and we joined the throng that were hurrying towards Chambers Street Ferry. I decided to let the matter stand over for the moment. It would not do to act illiberally towards a man who combined a knowledge of seafaring with Italian literature, and who had evidently arrived, however unacademically, at certain original judgments and criteria of life. I offered no remarks as the Erie ferry bore us swiftly across the glittering and congested Hudson to Chambers Street, and I observed that Mr. Carville was absorbed in watching how the vessel was piloted among the traffic. It was natural that his imagination should be stirred by a familiar skill. As we crossed the bows of an incoming liner I saw his eyes sweep over her, keen, critical, appraising. No doubt he saw many things that escaped my landward vision.

For me ships are very much alike. I expect he realized this and forbore to bewilder me with matters of technical interest. I have a sneaking appreciation of the mystery and beauty of a ship in full sail on the open sea, an appreciation I scarcely cared to reveal to an engineer. He stood by my side on the upper deck, his corn-cob in his hand, imperturbably observant, a miracle of detached respectability. And he thought New York like Venice!

Nor did we talk very much as we walked quickly down West Street to the Battery. Once he looked at his watch and remarked that he wanted "to be aboard by ten." The sun shone on the water dazzlingly as we rounded the end of Manhattan, showing the hull of the Ellis Island ferry a black ma.s.s. The usual crowd of foreigners with their dark eyes and Slavic features, shoe-shine boys, touts and officials waited around the entrance. I put my hand on Mr. Carville's arm.

"Our steamer isn't in yet," I said. "Suppose we see them land."

He glanced up and nodded, and we paused.

As the ferry came alongside the crowd gradually drew together more closely, and some, who had been sitting in dejection on the seats, rose and joined us. A tall policeman walked to and fro, keeping us back, bending his head to listen to a woman with a baby. Young men in flashy b.u.t.ton-boots and extravagantly-cut clothes chuckled among themselves, while two serious-looking men talked German, an endless argument. Above us the Stars and Stripes fluttered and snapped in the breeze, and the trains on the Elevated Road crawled carefully round the curve. Now and again the deep bellow of a steamer's whistle smote on our ears, smears of sound on the persistent roar of the city behind us. The feet of the little crowd shuffled as they shifted to get a better view, and two boys, chewing gum, climbed on the seats and stood up. A small girl of ten or so sped past on roller-skates, uttering shrill cries to a companion beyond the gra.s.s-plot. And then the gates opened and they came out to us, a little flock of frightened animals, each with his ticket pinned on his breast, each looking round for an instant as sheep do when let out of a pen, instantly herded by officials in peaked caps. A big, unshaved man in a black sheepskin cap opened his arms and the woman with the baby hurried to him. A smart girl behind us pushed through and went up to a sullen-looking old man with a Derby hat and a high-arched nose.

The boys on the seat exchanged ribaldry that drew the eyes of the tall policeman to them, and they vanished. The little crowd of aliens began to move towards the East Side and we followed as far as the Staten Island Ferry. I turned to Mr. Carville, thinking he might have some comment to make. He shrugged his shoulders and drew out his little bra.s.s tobacco-box.

"Humph!" he said. "They've got it all to come," and began to pare the tobacco into his hand. I could detect no sympathy in his tone, only a grim humour and contempt for the credulity of those trembling peasants now hurrying to their doom. And as I thought of this, quite suddenly he began to talk of his brother.

"I've often wondered what Frank would have made of all this," he said, waving his hand towards the sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge. "Not that I'd like him to come near me and mine, but just out of curiosity, I've wondered."

"I should say he would be likely to get on well," I said.

"You're right--he would! He would take hold right away and as they say here get away with it. He's a citizen of the world, is Frank. He'd be on Fifth Avenue or in Sing Sing within a twelvemonth. But there's no need for him to come to America. He's fallen on his feet again apparently in London. I hope he stops there."

"You seem to have some secret fear of your brother, Mr. Carville----" I began.

"Secret? There's nothing secret about it, sir. I'm scared of him. You don't know him, so you can't understand how you'd feel about it. I tell you the mere presence of that chap in the room unsettles people. He's a disturbing influence. Even strangers notice it. Suppose he was over here, and me away in the Mediterranean? You've no idea how he can talk and wheedle and explain everything to suit his own ends. I do."

I did not say so, but I understood Mr. Carville's feelings. Cecil's letters bore him out very completely.

"There's another thing you may not appreciate. When you're married you will, no doubt. A man and his wife aren't always on the same dead level terms with each other. Little differences, lasting perhaps an hour or a minute, sometimes till breakfast, crop up. Even in a case like mine, here to-day and gone to-morrow, we can get on each other's nerves.

There's friction in every machine ... unavoidable. You understand me, sir?"