Aliens Part 34

And then I heard the postman's knock, and sat waiting. Footsteps came down and went up again to the studio. Tea cups clinked. I realized that I had done nothing to the _brochure_ I was writing since lunch. Lethargy is c.u.mulative. The longer one idles the more difficult it is to make a start. I gave it up and put my pen away.

"A letter from Cecil," they said, as I appeared on the landing. Mac was crouching over an etching by the window, a big magnifying gla.s.s in his hand. I went over to him and he rose and handed the print to me.

"Oh!" I said. "This is indeed _apropos_."

It was an etching, by the painter-cousin, of the wrecked aeroplane of which he had spoken. As was fit and proper, it was a small plate, yet the effect upon the mind was of a vast open sky and infinite, rolling distances of land and sea. It brought to mind the grey flatness of Ess.e.x, the lonely reaches of mud, the solitary house and the neighbourly hedges of the narrow roads. And it did this quite independently of the bizarre structure that lay athwart the foreground, like some immense disabled insect in a moment of exhaustion. It lay there, p.r.o.ne and motionless, a sprawling emblem of despair. And aloft, high up, as though in subtle mockery of the poor human endeavour below, a sea-bird soared with wings atilt, sweeping with effortless grace towards the grey sea.

"I don't care for remarques," muttered Mac, pointing to a sketch on the margin.

"Nor I," I agreed, "but this isn't on the plate, my friend. Moreover, I think it's rather interesting. It is Carville, I believe, Mr. Francis Lord of the New York Press."

It was a sinister face that we looked on, sketched on the impressed margin, and very different from the photos in the papers. The head had been caught in an att.i.tude of leaning against a wall, so that the salience of the jaw, the flare of the nostrils, and the white of the eye were accentuated sharply. The brow was high, but (I fancied) pinched near the crown, and the large, cavernous nose gave the whole face an expression of bird-like rapacity that was corroborated by the full curved lips. And in the eye I fancied also that I detected a crazed look.

"Good gracious!" said Bill. "What a bad-looking man!"

I was silent, merely returning the print so that my friend might study the weaknesses of a brother-artist. We agreed that the ink had dragged in one corner. Bill handed me the painter-cousin's letter.

"High Wigborough, "Ess.e.x.

"DEAR BILL--

"I was in the village this afternoon and called at the post-office for some stamps, and the old lady who keeps the place, which is about seven feet square, and hardly high enough to yawn in, was sticking up a fresh notice about the Xmas mails, giving the latest dates for foreign parts. This reminded me I owed you a letter, and here it is with tons of good wishes to everybody for a happy time and no end of prosperity in the coming year. When are you coming over to spend a holiday with us? You'd love this part of the world. I'm sure you'd love the old lady at the post-office as much as you do the young lady at the post-office over there. She's a beautiful old person, really. She lives in a cottage set well back from the road, with rose-trees on each side of a narrow, flagged path, and honeysuckle all over the house right up to the thatch, which is quite a yard thick. I have a water-colour of her, sitting outside her door, with the Royal Arms and _Georgius Rex_ just showing over her cap, and a fat tabby cat asleep on the threshold. It was late summer when I did it, and the air was warm gold with purple shadows. I know it is a detestable trick to talk painter's shop, but I can't help it sometimes. I am reminded of this by the experiences I've had recently with my friend Carville, who now appears in the daily press rather frequently under his flying name of Francis Lord. There is a great row on between the papers owned by Lord Cholme (known as the Stunt Press) and the few other miserable rags which try to survive. I don't pretend to know what it's all about. There is, you know, an Aerial Telephone Company, promoted by Cholme and a lot of other guinea-pigs. Carville, I believe, wanted shares, or a seat on the board, or something, if he flew to America under their auspices. You know how jealously these moneyed people guard the sources of their wealth. Anyhow, negotiations hung fire, for Carville has D'Aubigne quite under his influence, and nothing could be done with the aeroplane or the patents until these two came in somehow. The rival newspapers go it blind, and sling all sorts of journalistic mud about. I won't bore you with it in a Xmas letter. What I was going to say was about Carville himself. He simply says 'No!' and goes on with his (to him) intensely interesting '_affaires_.' And here is one of those coincidences, as the old lady at the post-office calls them. I was at an at-home in Chelsea one Sunday not long ago, and met a Mrs. Hungerford, Carville's grand _bien-aimee_, on and off, for a long time. She had recently married a wealthy Australian, who was also present, a large, subdued creature. My hostess was Mrs.

Chase, the wealthy widow who married poor Enderby Chase the artist. I forget whether you ever met them. Superb woman, fit to be a d.u.c.h.ess, though she says her ideal existence is to be an artist's wife, and she has an astonishing house on Cheyne Walk, with stabling for nine horses on the ground floor, and a stupendous yellow family victoria that Watkyns calls a Sarsaparilla waggon. Chase died a few years ago, you know, and his widow has elevated his memory into a sort of cult. She bought in all his really good pictures--dreary landscapes of the Smeary School!--and instead of framing them, she has had them panelled into the walls of the salon. I know this is the right way to 'hang' pictures, but I'll be hanged if I like it. I kept thinking of chocolate boxes! I suppose the walnut wainscotting gave me the idea. One of Enderby's pictures, his one-time famous _Astarte_, though he knew no more about _Astarte_ than about Montezuma, was hung in a gold frame in the dining-room. Chase was no good at figures and it was Mrs. Hungerford's remark to me, that Enderby's _Astarte_ if found in Regent Street would get three months without the option of a fine, that lured me to her side later. I went with Watkyns, with whom I was having lunch in his studio on the Walk. He discovered one of Mrs. Chase's cards on his mantel-piece and as it is her rule to bring a friend, we went. In spite of her worship of painters for Enderby's sake, Mrs. Chase really adores music and musicians. She has a Bechstein grand standing on an oak floor polished like gla.s.s, with tiger and bear-skins lying about. I am rather helpless among musicians. Mrs. Hungerford is a tall, thin girl about thirty, with curious flat, grey eyes that are most puzzling to meet unless she is smiling, which is only seldom. I had made an apologetic reference to my utter ignorance of Ravel and all the new men, and she replied drily that I wasn't missing much. I said I felt the lack of musical knowledge when talking to musicians.

"'They want you to feel it,' she said. 'Musical people don't seem to have any minds, only vanity.' And, by Jove, it exactly expressed what I had often felt. After supper we became chummy and sat in a corner talking about art and all sorts of things.

She struck me as extremely _experienced_, as though her ideas were all original and had come from her own contact with life. I suppose knowing so many clever men has caused this. I mentioned Carville as one of the most remarkable men I'd ever met, and she said calmly, 'Yes, he is. I know him very well.' I suddenly remembered the other side of Carville's manifold nature and asked if I had made a mistake. She said with a laugh, 'Not at all. I understand him perfectly. We are excellent friends when we meet.'

"'Well,' I said, 'if you understand him, it is more than I do,'

and I told her how Carville would come over to my place and prowl round the studio and watch me at work. I said I thought he ought to settle down. She laughed again and her grey eyes became luminous.

"'He will never do that,' she said. 'He is under some curse, I think. He complains he is forever doomed to be under the influence of inferior women. Inferior women are quite a hobby of his.' I remarked that she seemed to know him very well and her eyes became dead blank again. I asked if she knew the family, and she nodded. He has a brother, clever too, but in a different way. 'Oh, what became of him?' I asked. 'I suppose,' she said, 'he married some worthy middle-cla.s.s creature and settled down somewhere. He wrote a book, but it didn't sell. I didn't read it. It was about machinery and the sea, and I loathe the sea. It bores me.'

"Well, my dear Bill, I'll bore you if I run on like this much longer. But I was very much struck by this girl of whom D'Aubigne had told me, especially as she mentioned your neighbour, and in view of Carville's antics. He never mentions his own affairs, as indeed why should he? But he seems, as he stands or sits watching me at work (for I have at last knocked it into his head that _light_ is more precious to an artist than conversation) he seems to be eternally bothered by the fundamental differences that exist among men. He asks 'Why do you _do_ it?' Now imagine the mind of a man who asks an artist why he paints! He will stare at my plate as I work, with his big black brows knitted, as if in a trance. And suddenly he will shrug his shoulders and take up his hat and go off without a word. Sometimes he doesn't come for several days. The last time I saw him was a week ago. I must tell you about it. I felt all cramped and muggy, and as the day was fine, biked over to the aerodrome. When I arrived D'Aubigne was looking through a pair of prism gla.s.ses. 'Where's Carville?' I said as I got off. He handed me the gla.s.ses and pointed up between two ma.s.ses of billowy clouds. I stared and finally focussed on a minute speck against the blue. It was incredible, and, I think, sublime. I must say it thrilled me to see it. It is something new in life, if not in art, this supreme triumph over gravity. I am serious!

Slowly he pa.s.sed behind the cloud and I came back to earth. 'How high is he?' I asked casually, and it was like a match to tinder. D'Aubigne's battered, sensual old face lighted up and he cackled, 'How high? How do I know! Come. We will ask him!' As you may imagine, I nearly fell over in my surprise. He led the way to a hutch on which a tall tripod carried an aerial. There were no windows, and it appeared to be a kind of sound-proof call-box, which indeed it was. We went in and as the door closed, a cl.u.s.ter of three green lights, very small but of extraordinary brilliance, showed up above a set of instruments.

D'Aubigne sat down and put a pair of receivers to his ears. I could just see a triangular hole in front of him. He began to pull plugs out of various holes and insert them in other holes, and presently he laughed and said, '_Comment!_' and laughed again. Then, 'A gentleman wishes to know your alt.i.tude at this moment. What is the reading?' A silence and then, 'Four thousand metres? So! Wait!' He got up and offered me the receivers. I sat down and put them on, and immediately seemed to be in the midst of the wildest uproar. It was like kettle-drums playing in a high wind. I could distinguish the thunder of the exhausts, for there were two engines and one of them was missing badly and making noises like gun-shots. 'Speak!' said D'Aubigne into my neck, so I said, 'Hullo, are you there, Carville?' And a thin, high, metallic voice, like a gramophone's, sounded among the noises. 'Yes, I'm here. What's up?' 'Oh,' I said, 'I'm only trying this thing. How are you?' No reply for a moment, and then, 'I say, you don't mind if I cut you out, do you.... Having a beastly time with my port engine?' 'Sorry,' I said. There was no answer. I told D'Aubigne what Carville had said, and we went out into the open air again. You know, it seems marvellous, though I don't suppose it's any more so than many other inventions. But to think of that chap, nearly thirteen thousand feet in the air, actually talking to us down on the earth while he was wrestling with a battery or sparking plug, or something!

Think of him sitting in the midst of that ma.s.s of metal and fabric, between the two thundering engines, doing six things at once, rushing along at sixty miles an hour, alone, magnificently alone, with the three lights of the instrument shining like emeralds in the sunlight! Upon my word, I was so upset with the extraordinary novelty of the whole experience that I had some difficulty in getting into harness again. Talk of Glorious Art indeed! D'Aubigne says Carville is an a.s.s about Art. But has he not compensations?

"We went over to their living rooms next to the workshops and D'Aubigne made tea. I said it was a splendid thing and he ought to be awfully bucked up at having achieved such a success. He shrugged his shoulders. 'I am depressed,' he said. 'This country,' and he waved his hand towards the landscape outside, 'is very depressing. Earth, sea, and sky. Earth, sea, and sky.

Nothing else. Flat, primitive like the day after Creation.

Look!' He pointed to where a barge, brought up on the tide, lay stranded in a field of shining mud. 'That is the Ark, but Noah and all the animals save we are dead. I have none of the Dutchman's love for dikes and ca.n.a.ls. I shall go to the Mediterranean.' 'And Carville?' I said. He cackled. 'Carville will go to the devil, I suppose. You are to blame. You have recalled memories, I understand. He talks to me of Rosa. Rosa! I am sick of the name. You would think he had learned that women are all the same. No. He has the profound illusion. He is enchanted. Rosa!'

"Of course, you must take all this with reserve. D'Aubigne, being artist and man of science, has a vivid imagination. But he understands Carville, and appreciates the difference between him and the average libertine. With Carville it is always a _grande affaire_. For the time, as D'Aubigne quaintly puts it, his love is like a red, red rose. And I relate my adventures to you because you have roused my interest in your neighbours and it is only fair for me to reciprocate.

"If it doesn't get lost on the way there is a small package coming by this mail. Bon Noel! And, by the way, you will see on the margin of the etching I send you a small sketch of Carville's head. What do you think of it? He came in while I was pulling a proof of this plate and looked at it curiously. 'My smash?' he inquired, and I said, 'Yes, your smash, old chap. How do you like it?' And he asked me, as he often does, 'Why do you _do_ it?' He seems to have some sense missing in his make-up. He can't coordinate the actions of men. Perhaps that is the key to his character. D'Aubigne, who used to paint, as a student, vast canvases depicting Prehistoric Man fighting a mammoth, or Perseus chopping up Gorgons, said it was a good plate and wished he had gone in for etching. I fear he is like many painters--he doesn't realize the drudgery and technical labour involved. Let me know your opinion soon.

"All good wishes, "Cecil."

Our canary, who rejoices in the name of Richard the Lion-hearted, chirped for his customary morsel of cake, and I rose to give it to him.

Mac was showing his wife the dragged line in the etching. Having rationed Richard, I stood looking out of the window. A keen wind was blowing and fine powdered snow drove over the open lot across the street. Coming up over the frozen gra.s.s I saw a tall figure in a scarlet cloak. The vigour of her gait deceived me at first, for it was the light trip of a girl in her teens, and then I saw that it was Mrs. Carville. I did not speak, but watched her, with lithe figure and features aglow, cross the street to her home. It seemed to me that I had no right to call attention to what I saw or imagined. Even if it were true, as my friend had said, as Mr. Carville himself, in his homely way, had remarked, that women, even more than girls, are the victims of evanescent illusions, that they abandon themselves, at times, to quite impossible and romantic dreams, I should be wise to stand aside. I felt that, after all, Miss Fraenkel's crystal-clear bromidity would be a delightful change after so much intense living and introspection. For that evening, after dinner, as I listened to the music of the Steersman's Song from the _Flying Dutchman_, it seemed only too likely that even after all these years, so deathless is pa.s.sion in some hearts, the skilled hand of Frank Carville might set a woman's soul vibrating with some of the old ecstasy.

CHAPTER XV

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 pa.s.sed, in the stealthy fashion of sleighs, the jingle of harness and bells mingling, the m.u.f.fled 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 m.u.f.fled 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 embarra.s.sed 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."