One of the immemorial customs of New York, whenever a stranger arrives from across the sea, should he by any chance have ever done anything, anywhere, is to give him a show. When you understand the root-principle of this practice, you are on the way to understanding New York, and incidentally, America. For in spite of many cynical arguments to the contrary, I remain satisfied that New York is, after all, part of the United States. Just as Broadway is a rather over-illuminated Main Street, so the metropolitan press is a highly concentrated Local Interest. You arrive on an ocean liner instead of on the Limited, but the principle is the same. You come from foreign parts, from effete Europe; you are a distinguished stranger, and everybody, in the person of their press, turns out to stare and cheer and find out your opinion of our glorious country. It is true that, after a few days of embarrassing publicity, your photograph vanishes from the daily sheets, your hotel ceases to be besieged by public emissaries asking your opinion of Mr. Roosevelt, Baked Beans or Twilight Sleep; you discover (with a pang) that you are forgotten, and a French Scientist or an Italian Futurist, or a Russian Nihilist has taken your place. But that, after all, may be the extent of your merits. You have had your show. New York has given your hand a jovial, welcome squeeze. The most hospitable hosts cannot forever regard you as a new arrival. You pass on, and others take the floor in the spot-light and register surprise, pleasure, indignation, criticism or whatever their peculiar talent may dictate. And this custom of the town is not at all comparable with the reception accorded St. Paul when he arrived at Athens and found the citizens of that republic hankering after some new thing. It is at the other end of the scale of human motives. It is the curiosity and enthusiasm of youth rather than the prurience of age. It is, in its way, a test of character. You may have weathered adversity with credit. New York will see how you behave in prosperity. I often suspect the headline which says that So-and-So won't talk, to cover a good deal of moral cowardice. So-and-So has probably become afraid of the intoxicating fumes of publicity. Fame, he discovers, blended with the unfamiliar high-tension atmosphere of Manhattan Island, is heady stuff. He finds many of his old notions burst asunder amid so much noise and light and swift movement. He will, if he be British, feel constrained to run down England, just as later on, when he returns to London, he will write a book running down America. So-and-So flies from temptation and "refuses to talk."
All this is more or less apropos of Mr. Francis Lord's arrival in New York after having crossed the Atlantic in a sea-plane. As a matter of fact Mr. Francis Lord was making for Key West, when what is called engine-trouble caused him to descend to the surface of a perfectly smooth sea. The weekly mail-boat from Belize to New York was speeding up the Florida Channel when the officer of the watch made out a large triplane ahead of him. It was apparently trying to rise, but without success. The course of the steamer was altered to bring her more in the way of the machine. Just as they were approaching, the triplane rushed across their bows, rose out of the water, and instead of "banking," slid down side-ways, completely submerging the right-hand planes. The ship was stopped and a boat lowered. According to the laconic report of the commander, who seemed more anxious to claim a record for his boat-crew than to share the glory of salving an eminent airman's life, they had the boat up and were under way again inside of eighteen minutes. And so Mr. Francis Lord arrived in New York in the usual prosaic way, and our enterprising friends, accompanied by a score of other hunters of "scoops," had to return hastily. It does not appear, however, that they would have gained anything had they remained, because the astute Lord Cholme had provided a press-agent. This gentleman, we heard long afterwards, was in Savannah superintending the first rehearsals of a gigantic film-drama depicting the Conquest of the Atlantic. On hearing of his principal's arrival on a steamer he took the next train north, and from the moment he reached Mr. Francis Lord's hotel on Fifth Avenue, Mr. Francis Lord seemed lost to view. We found in the papers no interviews with Mr. Lord. He "refused to talk." The press-agent, however, handed out type-written statements about the trip, the islands where landings were made, the readings of the instruments, the difficulties which ended in capsizing the machine almost in sight of land, the time taken, the speed in miles per hour, the distance travelled, the records made and broken. He handed out accounts of the lives of M. D'AubignÉ, the inventor, Lord Cholme, the promoter, and Mr. Francis Lord, the airman. He handed out photographs of the three. He handed out plans of the triplane. The reporters grew tired of seeing the press-agent, for he invariably handed out some deadly-dull document without the ghost of a story attached to it. The kindly human side of the great adventure seemed non-existent. The public wanted to know what the great man really looked like, what he had for breakfast, where he went in the evening, what he thought of Fifth Avenue, of the Woolworth Building, of our glorious country. And it followed naturally that since Mr. Francis Lord maintained his silence and invisibility, it devolved upon the Press to provide imaginative replies to all these burning questions. They described Mr. Francis Lord, they drew pictures of him in original attitudes, they reported rumours of his movements, they conjectured and arranged his future plans, they concocted competitions between him and illustrious American airmen, they professed to have heard that a Swiss was already preparing to beat Mr. Francis Lord's record by a flight from Lake Geneva to Lake Erie, they used all their genius to make a public success of Mr. Francis Lord and his achievement.
And then they dropped him.
To us, reading the news day by day after breakfast, it was, of course, inevitable. I think my friend felt it more than I, for he has a profound faith in publicity. It is the secret of his success as a publicist, I suppose. His theory is, that no matter how good your article may be, you cannot sell it unless you advertise. You must boom, you must shout and show yourself and talk to people. You must "get next." He calls it "making an appeal." He thinks Mr. Francis Lord and his wonderful press-agent had not played up to the great traditions of American newspaper life. He sketched lightly for me a plan which he and Larkin agreed would have "put him across."
"But," I argued mildly, "what could he do? Do you propose he should hire a theatre and exhibit himself? Why should he want to be advertised?"
My friend made a movement of impatience.
"You miss the whole point," he retorted. "Why did Whistler wear that white lock of hair of his? Why did Wilde start that Green Carnation stunt? Why did Chamberlain wear a monocle, or Gladstone those big collars?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," I said feebly, "unless it was...."
"It was simply to fix their personalities in the public mind. If you've done a big, wise thing, the public won't take any notice of you unless you do some little, silly thing."
"I wish you'd tell the public this, old man," I said.
"The public don't give a darn," he returned grimly.
"Evidently they don't in this case. And I don't see why they should, if you ask me. Even suppose he had crossed the Atlantic, which he hasn't, for he fell into the sea—even suppose he had, what of it? Would his walking up Fifth Avenue in pink tights with an arum lily in his hand...."
But my friend was gone upstairs to his studio and my subtle sarcasm was lost. We look at this question of public performances from different angles. When we heard of a neighbour's son earning ten dollars every Saturday by going up in a balloon and descending in a parachute (very often alighting upon some embarrassingly private roof) Mac thought it very creditable of him and mighty poor pay. I contended that it was a good deal more than the job was worth, because it was worth exactly nothing. It was not worth doing. This, of course, laid me open on the flank. My friend suggested that this might be said of a good deal of literary work, and I admitted with a sigh that he was right. "There you are," said he, and we both laughed.
"Well," I said, at lunch, "I grant your premises. Why should this chap wish to fix his personality on the public mind?"
"Can't you see? To put his value up, of course."
"Doing ... why, of course, he's doing it for money. Who ever does anything in this infernal world except for money?"
"But since he failed—as he did, you remember—he hasn't any value to speak of."
Mac turned in despair to his wife.
"Did you ever see such a chap in your life? You'd think, to hear him, he'd never heard of appropriations for publicity campaigns, or advertising schemes. Things do themselves in his world—you don't even have to drop a nickel in the slot!"
Bill regarded me with attention.
"He's got something up his sleeve," she remarked, sagely. "If he keeps us guessing we'll send him to New York to have his Christmas dinner by himself."
"I'm not going to keep you guessing," I said, "but I haven't been able to get a word in edgeway yet. Leaving the great cosmic question of publicity, of which I get rather tired at times in spite of its lucrative side, I want to call your attention to something—I was going to say under our noses—something close by."
They gazed at me in doubt and then looked at each other. Mac made allusion, tapping his forehead the while, to the strain of Christmas work. And they shook their heads.
"Well, go on," humoured Bill, rising to bring in the coffee.
"What's this wonderful something you've discovered?"
"I have reason to believe," I said, without looking up from my plate, "that Mrs. Carville had a visitor last night."
"No!" they ejaculated in unison. I nodded.
"You miss something by sleeping at the back. Just as I was comfortably in bed, the room was flooded with the blinding white glare that indicates a passing automobile. This particular white glare, however, did not vanish as usual. It remained. My attention, which was only partially aware of it, gradually became undivided and led me to sit up and look out. A large car stood opposite the house next door, the two headlights showing up the roadway and sidewalk all down the street. Even as I watched, a tall figure came down from the house and the lights went out. I could see the car plainly as a dark mass under the trees. And that, for the best part of half an hour, was all I did see. I lay down again and tried to focus my mind on this problem. I don't mind admitting I am still without a solution. I lay there thinking all sorts until the white glare suddenly illuminated the room again. I looked out. The car moved, turned slowly round, and sped away down Pine Street."
They sat and looked at me.
"I know I ought to have told you before," I said, "but the fact is I was so puzzled this morning when I woke and remembered the incident, that I didn't know what to do. It seems silly, if you look at it in the cold light of day, to draw any conclusions from such a trivial thing. I mean, if we had known nothing about them...."
"You think he's visiting her?" said Bill gravely.
"I didn't say so," I answered, "but the notion was in my mind, certainly. If so, why should he not? If Mac had a brother, and he came to New York he would not hesitate to come and see you."
"Not in the middle of the night," she objected.
"No, unless he was pressed for time, and had, shall we say, more urgent claims on his attention."
"Perhaps he came to visit his brother, not knowing he was away just now."
"I thought of that too. Where is he supposed to be just now?"
"Lord? Jimmy said he was up-state visiting Gottschalk, the millionaire who is backing the Aerial Mail Company."
Nobody spoke for a minute or two. At length my friend rose and pushed his chair up against the table.
"Ah, well," he said, looking for his pipe, "we can't sit here chewing the rag all day."
I was sitting at my desk, biting my pen and staring absently at the whitey-brown vista of the garden with the cold blue ridge of the Orange Mountains showing through the delicate tracery of the wind-swept trees, when I heard Bill moving about the room behind me.
"You're not working," she observed perfunctorily. I nodded assent. I often wonder, to tell the truth, when I do work. Even when no one is by to tell me of it, I seem to spend most of my time in idleness.
"I was thinking," I said. Perhaps I was. She came up to my chair and looked out too.
"About—you know—last night?" she asked.
"Yes, I was thinking you, being a woman, would know better than I whether there is a storm brewing."
She was silent, merely looking out at the wintry landscape.
"I feel," I went on, "that being a rather dried-up old bachelor puts me at a disadvantage. What can I know of such a situation as we imagine? I, who jog along from day to day, a journeyman scribbler! What knowledge or experience have I of the heights and depths of passion? What can Peeping Tom know about it?"
"Don't!" she said. "We're all Peeping Toms, as far as that goes. I'm sure," she went on, "it's very difficult to guess what's in the mind of a woman like her. She's very handsome, you know. She's one of those women who are rather puny and pathetic in their 'teens, with appealing eyes, but who grow big and healthy later. Marriage does wonders for them."
"If the marriage is happy," I remarked casually. The silence that followed was so long that I twisted round in my chair. There was an odd expression on my friend's face, a commingling of wisdom, pity and reminiscence.
"What have I said?" I asked.
"No marriage is happy," she said gravely.
"Yes!" I responded.
"Not in the sense you understand the term. That's what we mean when we say you don't know anything about it. Marriage suits some men and women more than others, but that isn't to say the people it suits are any the happier. In fact, it's often the other way. They're frightfully unhappy at times. Very few married women haven't been on the point of—of making a dash for freedom at some time or other. Women you wouldn't accuse of a single rebellious thought all their born days. You'd say they were crazy. Perhaps so, at the time. They get all on edge. Weak, weedy women are different. They haven't the same call for freedom, somehow."
"What do you mean by this dash for freedom business?" I asked. Bill looked at me solemnly.
"Marriage is a ring-fence round a pretty small patch, as a rule," she observed. "A woman goes into it gladly. She feels young and weak and ignorant, and when she's married she feels safe. But when she grows up to her full stature of mind and body, and she's no longer weak and ignorant, it's different. It's no longer safety first with her."
"But love ..." I began. She stopped me.
"Oh, love's got nothing at all to do with it, you sentimental old thing. How old was Juliet—fourteen, wasn't she?" she asked suddenly, staring out of the window. I nodded.
"Well, there you are!" She has many of her husband's expressions. "At thirty-two, say, she would have been a fine, big, handsome woman, knowing the world and alive all round. The chances are she would have had a storm, as you call it."
"If she'd married Romeo?" I asked.
"'T wouldn't matter who she'd married," she replied, rubbing her nose. "You're thinking of love again, I'll be bound. I'm not talking about love, my good man, I'm talking about life."
"Then you make no allowance for sentiment," I said.
"Oh don't I! I make any amount of allowance for sentiment. It's just sentiment such women as we are talking about have to watch. That's what you mean by love, I suppose. It is always prowling round the house, trying to get in. As a rule, there's no chance, for married women are too busy to be eternally thinking about love, though to read novels you'd think they were."
"A married woman, according to you, is a highly complex organism," I observed smiling.
"A married woman, according to me, is precisely what her husband has made her," she retorted, and adding, "Think that over while you get on with your work," she left the room.
But I continued to stare out of the window. Somehow I was stirred. There seemed to me something ominous in my own preoccupation with these affairs, affairs in which I could not, even had I the right, to meddle. My friend's laconic exposition only deepened the dramatic quality of the situation. For an author I had been singularly luckless in meeting drama in my life. I had often had my artistic cupidity excited by Mr. Carville, by the way he was continually having stimulating adventures of the soul. And what stirred me now was a vision of that sober, drab-grey little man, going about his business on the great waters, with this portentous cataclysm hanging over his destiny. And yet, according to my friend, these perilous things were constantly on the brink in most men's lives. The smug, complacent commuting folk we knew all had these moments of almost unendurable stress, yet they gave no sign. I had a sudden sense of futility. As Mr. Carville had said on one occasion, we grope. We stumble against each other in the dark, we hear a whisper or two, or a cry, and the rest is silence. I understood, I thought, why so many writers avoid life, and content themselves with gay puppets in a puppet world. Life was too difficult, too dangerous, for play, and they can only play.
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 cumulative. 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 glass 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 Essex, 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, prone 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 attitude 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,
Essex.
"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'AubignÉ 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-aimÉe, 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 duchess, 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 AstartÉ, though he knew no more about AstartÉ 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 AstartÉ 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 glass, 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-class 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'AubignÉ 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'AubignÉ was looking through a pair of prism glasses. 'Where's Carville?' I said as I got off. He handed me the glasses and pointed up between two masses 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 passed 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'AubignÉ'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 cluster of three green lights, very small but of extraordinary brilliance, showed up above a set of instruments. D'AubignÉ 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 altitude 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'AubignÉ 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'AubignÉ 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 mass 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'AubignÉ says Carville is an ass about Art. But has he not compensations?
"We went over to their living rooms next to the workshops and D'AubignÉ 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 canals. 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'AubignÉ, 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'AubignÉ 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 NoËl! 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'AubignÉ, 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 grass 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 passion in some hearts, the skilled hand of Frank Carville might set a woman's soul vibrating with some of the old ecstasy.
