Aliens Part 24

With Miss Fraenkel silent thought, I imagine, is not a habit. With her to think is to speak. The effervescent enthusiasm of her nature makes speech indispensable. I do not believe that, during the two-and-a-half-hour recital of Mr. Carville, Miss Fraenkel had any coherent thoughts. More than any other women the American woman avoids the cooler levels of intellectual judgment. In one moment she stands, nude of the commonest knowledge of a person or a thing. In a moment more, and she appears before your astonished eyes, panoplied in all the glittering harness of a glowing conviction. Minerva-like, her opinions and beliefs spring full-armed from the head and front of her great Jove Intuition. Logic, says the ancient plat.i.tude, hangs by the end of a philosopher's beard; and an American woman would as soon grow hair on her face as admit reason to her soul. Therein, doubtless, lies her charm, her artless allurements, her enigmatic manner, her astonis.h.i.+ng success.

Something of this was apparent in Miss Fraenkel as she leaned out of the window and met our gaze with delighted eyes.

"Isn't he just won-der-ful?" she exclaimed.

"You enjoyed it?" I asked.

"Oh sure! But listen. I've got a plan. Why can't you two make it into a book? It 'ud be perfectly lovely! You know, Mr. Legge, you're quite an artist, aren't you? And Mr. Pedderick here, he does some writing. Oh I'm sure you could do it! You know...." Miss Fraenkel made a pause luminous with bright glances, "a picture of those two, in the cafe having a dinner; a real kissing picture. I'm sure she would look so sweet!"

"Ah!" said Bill, "but what's the end of the story?"

"Why sure!" faltered Miss Fraenkel. "They get--get married! That's the end of every English story, isn't it?"

Bill cackled from the kitchen, artlessly and shrill. "----and lived happy ever after!" added Miss Fraenkel, with radiant unwinking hazel eyes.

She went away after tea, to her pew in the gaunt wooden Episcopal Church in Chestnut Street, rapt in a felicitous dream of romanticism. It was nothing to her that Mr. Carville had poured diluted vitriol upon some women who clamoured for the vote, nothing that he had barely deigned to notice her existence. Once aware that he essayed to be a spell-binder, she accepted him with utter _abandon_ in that role. She permitted him to bind the spell; and as she walked with short quick steps along Van Diemen's Avenue, her brown head held high and unswerving, I could not refrain from the fancy that she moved as one in a trance.

It was a disappointment to us that we heard the whistle of the five o'clock train before we realized that Mr. Carville was on board. The sound was the one thing needful to set our mind and tongues free to talk of him. So potent had been his atmosphere that, to be honest, we had been unable to apply judgment to his case. When we gathered at dinner the discussion was in full and amiable swing.

"It is very difficult," I said, "to distinguish the fact from the fiction, not because he is extraordinarily skilful in 'joining his flats,' but because he is so absorbed in the story himself that it would be quite inconceivable to him that anyone would _not_ be interested. He has evidently never imagined such a contingency. Such ingeniousness is more than uncommon. It is sublime."

"How about your theory that he is an artist?" argued Mac. "He can't be both conscious and unconscious of his art."

"Yes, he can," I replied. "All great artists are. Mind, I don't pretend that Mr. Carville is a great artist. I merely state the fact that he has one of their attributes. I account for it this way. We have here a man of undeniable powers but limited ambition. At certain periods in his life he has been crossed by his remarkable brother, a man whom we now know to have not only brain-power, but will-power. This brother has impressed himself upon our neighbour's imagination. You noticed almost admiration in his voice at times as he spoke of his brother? It has been his whim, therefore, to accentuate as much as possible the difference between them. He has, moreover, cultivated the habit of reticence.

Thrown by his profession among men of shrewd wit but imperfect delicacy of mind, he has kept himself to himself. In the course of years it has been almost necessary for him to speak. I can imagine him, a man of quick perceptions, and no mean gift of expression, finding silence becoming an agony. Much brooding has bitten the real and fanciful details of his life into his mind. He has, quite by accident, discovered in us a singularly acceptable audience. Without conscious premeditation he has told us his story. Every narrator of the most trivial incident can induce you to listen for something nave and individual in his utterance. Most of us disperse this quality over our days. Mr. Carville has secreted it, distilled it to a quintessence, and the result is--well, something in his tone and manner quite unusual."

"Yes, that's all right enough," a.s.sented Mac, "but I still don't quite see how his brother couples-up with that chap Cecil wrote about."

"Well, I don't either," I replied, "but you must remember that Mr.

Carville has told us so far only of the past. In his narrative he is not married. That must be at least eight years ago, a long time in the life of a man like his brother."

"I'll write to Cecil," said Bill suddenly, with one of her flashes.

"Wouldn't that be a good plan?"

"Excellent!" I exclaimed. "We ought to have thought of that before. He will be tremendously interested."

This was a true prophecy. Some three weeks later, on a day in the middle of November, we received a bulky letter with a Wigborough postmark on a two-cent stamp. The excess, I recall, was nine cents, gladly paid by me while Bill was tearing off the end of the envelope.

"Yes," she said, scanning the sheets quickly, "it seems to be.

Here----"

We adjourned to the studio. Mac seated himself before a half-finished cover for the Christmas Number of _Payne's Monthly_, Bill took up a leather collar-bag destined to be Cecil's Yule-tide present, and I began to read.

"High Wigborough, Ess.e.x.

"MY DEAR BILL,--Many thanks for your jolly letter. I write at once to tell you how awfully interested I am in what you tell me. It really is a most extraordinary thing, though, as you know, it often happens. On the very day your letter arrived I met Carville again!

Without any warning I heard the chuff-chuff of a motor in the lane, and saw him walking up to the door. I asked him in, of course. He sniffed and coughed a good bit, because I was biting a big plate, and the fumes are pretty thick even with nitric acid. He wanted to know all about what I was doing. Of course I explained, asked him to sit down and have a drink, and for a time we got on very well. I said I supposed he was touring, and he remarked:

"'Oh, no. I'm living down here just at present,'

"'What, broke again?' I asked laughing. He looked at me in that fiery d.a.m.n-your-eyes way of his and then joined in the laugh. 'No,'

he said, 'experimenting. I've taken up flying.'

"He said it just as you might say, 'I've taken up tennis.' He gives you the impression that if he remarked that he had taken up cathedral-building or unicorn-breeding, you would believe him. A most remarkable man!

"I said, 'Oh, I've heard something about your people, I believe, Carville,' and took up your letter. He put his whisky down on the floor (he was sitting in my low window seat) and glared at me. 'At least,' I said, funking, you know, 'I see it's the same name.' And I went on to tell him how I'd been so impressed with my first adventure with him that I'd written to you about it. He held out his hand for the letter. I just sat and watched him. He read the whole thing rapidly, his eyes going back again and again to some parts of it; and then he gave it back to me.

"'So that's where he is, eh?' he said, and smiled. He took out a pocket-book and made a note of the address.

"'Who,' I said.

"'Charley, dear old Charley,' he said, 'I haven't seen him or heard from him for years.'

"'Then it is your brother?' I asked. He nodded.

"'He always was a bit of a duffer,' he said. 'What's N. J.?' he asked suddenly.

"'New Jersey,' I replied, 'in the United States.'

"'Oh,' said he, 'I thought it meant New Jerusalem. It would be like Charley.'

"He shut up his pocket-book and said no more about it. Cool, eh? I wanted to ask him no end of questions about his past life, but didn't care to. He was ready enough to talk of his experiments though, and asked me to go over to Mersea Island to see his shop.

'Thanks, I will some time,' I said. 'Come now!' he rapped out, and that was what I did. Took the plates out, washed my hands, and scarcely remembered to stopper the acid-bottle. Away we went, tooling through Peldon at about seventy miles an hour. He is certainly a superb driver. Down our lane that big car of his brushed the hedge both sides, but he never slackened at all, either in his speed or his conversation. He had several wealthy people interested, he said, and he was going to do something really big in the flying line. We were nearly flying at the time. Of course, there aren't many people about this part of Ess.e.x, but it really was risky. He said this London-to-Paris and London-to-Manchester business was all 'tosh,' he was going to beat that easily. We crossed Mersea Island, turned in at a five-barred gate, and rushed up a hundred-yard plank-road that he had put down.

"It is a curious place he has there. A big shed of creosote-boards and felt roof, in the shape of a letter =L=, and at the side a small lean-to affair where he lives. One leg of the =L= is a workshop with an oil-engine to drive it; the other is for his plane, and opens at the end on the plank-road. As we came up a tall chap in a yellow leather suit all smeared with oil came out and I was introduced to his friend D'Aubigne. Can you believe it, old girl--D'Aubigne and I were in Paris together! He had a thing in the Salon the same year as I did, but having money he chucked Art and went in for motoring.

We knew each other at once. It shows you what a small and sectional thing fame is, for while he had never heard of _me_, I was equally ignorant of his tremendous importance as an authority on aerial statics. Never heard of aerial statics before, for that matter!

Carville seemed quite pleased I knew D'Aubigne, and showed no hesitation in turning me over to him.

"Well, I went all over and it was really very interesting. The position seems to be this. D'Aubigne has tons of ideas and patents and can make no end of improvements in aeroplanes, but he has no nerve. Several times, he told me, he had had narrow squeaks. Now Carville, so D'Aubigne says, has a head like a gyroscope. He doesn't know what fear is. Seeing what I had of him, I can quite believe it. So having met some years ago in Venice (D'Aubigne seemed frightfully amused at something that had happened in Venice) when Carville suddenly found himself able to command a large capital, he had D'Aubigne over, and between them they are going to boom a new long-distance machine. D'Aubigne's admiration of Carville almost amounts to wors.h.i.+p. He told me that when Carville went over his place at Avranches, he spent about ten minutes looking over a monoplane, and then climbed into the seat. 'Set it away,' he said. D'Aubigne was perplexed. 'This won't carry two,' he argued. 'No,' said Carville, 'I'm going to try it by myself. Set it away.' I have told you how domineering he is. D'Aubigne started the engine, and, so he says, crossed himself. Carville was off, and in another minute he was heading for St. Malo. D'Aubigne says some of his volplanes were agonizing to watch. When he turned he went out over, the sea, but it seems this was not because he was afraid of falling, but because he wanted to get a nearer view of a steam yacht riding off Granville. He came down on the s.h.i.+ngle and smashed the thing badly, but he was busy studying the wreck when they came up to him. It never occurred to Carville to cross himself.

D'Aubigne is a big yellow-haired Norman, and his eyes fairly goggle when he gets going on Carville. Personally I believe they've both been bad eggs in their time. When I spoke to him of your letter he pulled down the corners of his mouth and wrinkled his nose. 'Ah!'

he said. 'It's quite possible. Many things happen to men like Carville. You know he was in the war with the Boers?' I said, no I didn't, and he told me that Carville had rushed to South Africa, just as thousands of others had done. He, however, had the devil's own luck; saved an officer's life, a man in the Imperial Yeomanry, named Cholme. Cholme was a pal of Belvoir's at Charterhouse. It seems Cholme gave Carville a letter to Lord Cholme, in case anything happened, you know. Something did happen and Cholme was killed at Spion Kop. Carville never got a scratch. When he came home he took the letter to Lord Cholme, and the old chap told him to ask what he liked. The old man is a pretty rough employer (he owns _The Morning_), but he had a royal way with his son. Carville said he didn't want anything, but might have a favour to ask some day. Well, it seems it was an interview with Cholme that he was after when I met him in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, but he has his own ideas of the way to do these things. He approached Lord Cholme, not with a begging-letter, but with a proposal to finance this aeroplane scheme. Cholme jumped at it, D'Aubigne says.

"We were standing in the workshop watching a young chap fitting a piece of a new engine, when we heard the roar of the aeroplane.

Carville had started his engine before opening the doors. It was deafening. We got outside just in time to see him leave the ground.

He made straight for the sea. D'Aubigne says he always does make straight for the sea. He may come back from over Dengie Flats or St. Osyth, but he always makes for Gunfleet and Kentish Knock Lights.h.i.+p at first.

"D'Aubigne went into the drawing-office where he works out his calculations and all that, and he got out a flask of Benedictine.

Over this, he told me some rather startling things about Carville.

D'Aubigne knows nothing about the girl you say is called Rosa, but in addition to a dozen other more shadowy creatures, he says there is a Gladys not far off, a thin girl of about thirty. Of course, D'Aubigne is a Frenchman and takes the French view, but it certainly seems to be a fact that Carville makes a hobby of women.

"Since then I have seen him frequently. Sometimes he and D'Aubigne come over to tea with me, and if I would let them they would take me for long spins across England. They work in spurts, and then shut the place up for a day and tear round the country. Once I heard the roar of a car, and looked out in time to see Carville rush past, and there was undoubtedly a girl with him. Once, too, I saw him in the air, far away over Layer Marney, going towards Colchester. D'Aubigne says their machine will be ready soon. As far as I can make out, whatever they do, _The Morning_ is to have exclusive information.

"Do you know, it suddenly struck me that an aeroplane lends itself extraordinarily well to etching? Carville missed the plank-road one day in landing, and I saw the machine lying with a list in the field near a rick. I made some notes, and when it is finished I'll pull a proof and send it to you. I fancy it will be rather good. In the clear transparent afternoon light of a late October day, with the rick behind it, the great vans sprawled out over the hedge, the corrugations of the engine, the thin lines----Do you see it? I think very highly of it. An aeroplane has a personality, like Carville.

"Well, now you must send me news of your side. I wish I could tell you what he is going to do, but D'Aubigne says that is a secret.

One thing he has told me, and that is that they are going to fit the machine with a wireless telephone so that he can talk to _The Morning_ office while he is flying. Wonders will never cease!

"I like Mac's colour prints. The effect of the sky over the steamer is quite topping. Where painting in oil on a copper plate seems to fail is in the detail. The colour spreads so. The red port light of the vessel is much too large. However, I shall certainly spoil some paper trying to out-do Mac.