Aliens

"Oh goodness! Tell us what he _did_ say," she implored.

"Well, not much. He comes from Hertfordshire."

"He"s English then! I thought so," said Mac, relieved.

"He said No," I answered. "That was one of the most curious remarks he made. He said he was an alien."

"Did he, by Jove! So he is; but it"s a very strange thing to say," said Mac. Bill regarded me with interest.

"He"s going to keep us guessing," she remarked, dolefully.

"No," I said, taking another piece of toast. "He accepted my invitation to tea this afternoon, and he is going to tell us about himself."

After all I had overlooked my most telling item. I might have known that the fact of his visit would prove more thrilling than any gossip coming secondhand from me. They wished to speak with him again, this man who had come upon us so quietly yet so dramatically. We had all become sufficiently American to desire "a good look at him." And when Americans take a good look at you they go over you with a fine tooth comb. They see everything, from a knot in your bootlace to the gold-filling in your teeth. My friends "sat up" as I made my announcement. I felt that, in editorial parlance, I had made a scoop.

"Bully!" said Mac, and Bill, her chin on her hand, looked across at me with approval. After all, again, my lack of enterprise in interrogating Mr. Carville the night before was bearing fruit. It was crediting me with a sportsmanlike reluctance to steal a march on my friends. I had, unconsciously done what we English call "the right thing." I had invited him to tea. Suddenly Bill"s eyes became anxious.

"Are they both coming?" she asked.

"I--I don"t think so," I faltered. "I can"t say exactly why, but I don"t think so. You see," I went on, "the reason he offered to tell me about himself was a question of mine about his children. I said their names were curious enough to strike anyone. He said it was a long story. And he offered to step over himself. Now," I felt more certain of myself now, "the story of his children"s names may take two directions. If _he_ named them he will not want his wife to hear him tell about it. If _she_ named them, which is not likely, why, he would scarcely take the trouble to come over and tell strangers about it, would he?"

"I"m very glad to hear it," said Bill.

"So am I," I agreed. "I think it is best to get acquainted with families on the instalment plan, don"t you?"

"Rather!" said Bill, and held out her hand for my cup.

It was a perfect morning, clear and crisp, and the long sunlit vista of Van Diemen"s Avenue tempted us sorely. We went through our daily struggle. Those people who work by rote, who are herded in offices and factories, and who are compelled by the laws of their industries to remain at their posts whether the sun shines or not, often regard the lives of free lances like us as merely agreeable holidays; they would certainly be somewhat staggered to find the enormous will-power involved in resisting the calls of the open road. There are so many subtle arguments in favour of abandoning the desk for just once. "It is such a glorious day, it is a shame to be indoors," "one"s head is muggy; a good walk will clear the ideas," or "it doesn"t do to stick at it too long, you know: give it a rest." (This when you have not written a line for a week!) And so on. We knew them all, these specious lures to idleness, and strangled them with a firm hand each morning after breakfast. Well we knew that on a dark dismal rainy day we would hear the Tempter saying, "Who could work on a day like this? Leave it until the sun shines in the window. Try that interesting novel you brought home. After all, you know, you must read to see how the accepted masters do it. Read for technique ..."

By nine o"clock we would all be at work.

So it was on this bright morning in October. I remember being rather struck with the excellence of the work of the preceding evening. It was not great work, you may say, not by any means in the category of immortal cla.s.sics. It was not even signed, being an appreciation of a certain proprietary article in common use and extensively advertised.

There was to me a quite indescribable humour in the fact that this essay in admiration was eventually published in French, German, Swedish and Polish, running into a six-figure issue, while my last novel, a sincere piece of literature, hung fire, so to speak, and never got beyond the publisher"s preliminary forecast of a thousand copies. Was I not angry?

Far from it. I was no puling undergraduate with a thin broad-margined book of verse to sell. The public was at perfect liberty to buy what it pleased. If they wanted my work, the work I loved and toiled to make as perfect as possible, they would get it, all in good time. For the present I was content to wait and do the thing which could be translated into Swedish and Polish, into dollars cash. It is customary, I know, to rail at the American public, to accuse them of a material mania. An artist is better employed, in my humble view, in trying to understand them, for believe me, they are not so vile as the precious _litterateurs_ and others would have us believe. Bitterness is no preparation for sympathetic study. And without sympathy our works, however clever and lovely, are but Dead Sea apples, crumbling to ashes at the touch of a human finger.

It must not be supposed that we had arrived at this way of thinking by a sudden leap. Again, far from it! My friend and I had been undergraduates, and very proud of ourselves into the bargain, long ago in England. But we had travelled since then, in more senses than one. We had known comfort and we had known the mute impressive numbness of despair. We had made "scoops" at times and celebrated them with joyous junketings. Once we had dined at Delmonico"s, a meal of which the memory is still an absurd chaos. We had, moreover, confronted America with a blank wall of unyielding British prejudice. We had entrenched ourselves behind our conception of the thing to do and stupidly refused to do anything else. And we had been beaten to our knees. For it meant eventually either submission or flight. And we never had any intention of flight. We had fixed it firmly in our minds that we would return triumphant to England, some day as yet far off. We were aliens, yes; but we meant to win through at last, to make our dream come true; our dream of a cottage, with honeysuckle and roses, "far from the madding crowd."

And so we realized at length that, after all, the country was there before us; that they had not asked us to come; that we might as well do things the way they wanted. All this was sound physic for us. It made us, in the true sense of the word, cosmopolitan, made us broad in culture and stimulated that deep human sympathy and understanding which lay at the root of that impatience with which we awaited the story of our neighbour.

I was typing a letter about three o"clock when I heard Mac"s quick step on the stairs and the opening of the door. It is his custom to take advantage of his view of the path from the studio window to forestall the postman, and I took no further notice until I heard the hum of conversation. And so I was the last to appear.

He was standing in the middle of our room, his back to me, his Derby hat in his hand, looking curiously about the walls. I saw his glance held for a moment by the old English clock with its swinging pendulum and weights. It pa.s.sed on to the chimney-piece loaded with antique silver, bizarre bra.s.ses, candle-snuffers and snuff-boxes. It moved over to the bust of Bill that Von Roon had given her when she was married, a miracle of cunningly-arranged shadows. It fell away from water colour and etching without hint of ulterior interest, and came to rest upon the book-shelves. There was more than politeness in his glance at the books, more than mere curiosity. There was, plainly enough, connoisseurship. In the flicker of an eyelid you can tell it. He turned to meet me as I entered the room.

"I"m glad you"ve come," I said, shaking hands. His clasp was firm, almost athletic. "We tea at four, but I don"t think I told you that."

"No," he said, "you didn"t. I always have tea at three and it didn"t occur to me that the custom might be different."

"Don"t apologize," said Bill. "It only takes a minute to make. Do you like it strong?"

He smiled.

"It"s the only way I get it, at sea," he said. "Strong! Boiled would be a better word for it."

"_We_ like it strong," said Mac. "Sit down please. Here, I"ll take your hat."

He sank back in a chair and looked about him. For the first time we saw him without a hat. A wide head, full over the temples, and with thinning hair on the brow, it was in no wise unusual. The head of a professional man, shall I say? His hands lay palm downward on the arms of the chair, the knuckles white, the broad flat nails imperfectly manicured.

"You"ve got a snug little place here," he remarked. "A very snug little place. It"s very old fashioned. I got quite a start when I stepped into--into the room from the street. Like the cottages in England. Art curtains, too!"

The tea came in then, and Bill offered him a cup. I think I was a little disappointed in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear the air. The mention of "art curtains" always made Mac restive.

"Do you like pictures?" she asked.

He gave her one of his quick glances.

"Some," he replied. "I believe, if I"d been taught, that I could have done something in that line," and he pointed with his saucer towards a water-colour, a drawing of the Golden Gate from Russian Hill.

I hardly knew what to make of this new development. I really did not believe he had looked at it. Moreover the drawing was not clamant with noisy daubs to attract the attention. It was not even recognizable as a view of the Golden Gate. It was a study of colour-combination, in an unusually high key, of interest to artists, but not to the public. Only the _cognoscenti_ had remarked that picture before.

"You like it?" I said, taking it down and handing it to him.

"Ah!" he said, setting his cup and saucer on the floor. "Yes, that"s it, that"s it." He studied it. "That"s what I should have liked to tackle. Sugar-plums, eh?"

We looked at him in astonishment, and he a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of apology.

"I beg pardon," he said. "What I meant was it reminded me of old Turner, you know, messing about with coloured sugar-plums."

"A colour-scheme?" said Mac, light dawning in his puzzled face.

"That"s it, that"s the word: colour-scheme," said Mr. Carville. "I"d forgotten the word." And he handed the drawing back. "You wonder at a seafaring man coming out here to live?"

"It"s a very healthy district," I suggested.

"Mrs. Carville don"t like New York, that"s all," he said, simply.

"Personally, I shouldn"t have bothered. But she"s quite right."

"I should think it was better for the children too," said Bill.

He nodded vigorously, packing the tobacco into his pipe.

"Fresh air," said Mac, who slept out on the porch half the year.

"Oh there"s plenty of fresh air in Atlantic Avenue," he said. "I had something else in mind." He looked thoughtful, and then his face lighted up with an extremely vivid indignation. It died away again in a moment, but it transfigured him. "Automobiles," he added.

We nodded, understanding him perfectly. We had seen them, in New York as in Brooklyn, careering at maniacal speed among the children at play.

Bill, who loved children almost as much as flowers, had come in one day in Lexington Avenue, white and sick, and told us brokenly of something she had seen. So we nodded and he, seeing that we understood, said no more.

"Have you lived in America long?" I inquired.