Aliens. William McFee
seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate with seamen.
Grant, however, I said to myself, that he looks a truth-telling man. Grant that he is, as his children said, at sea. Surely there is something romantic in this quiet-eyed man being married to such a woman as Mrs. Carville! Surely a man whose children bear names so bright on the rolls of fame must have something in him worthy of admiration! As the barcarolle swelled and died away, I felt this conviction growing within me. I felt certain that so far from demolishing the real mystery, Mr. Carville had only brought it into focus. We had not seen it before. And it promised to be a mystery on a higher plane than the rather sordid affair we had been postulating.
I decided to sleep on my conclusions, however, before broaching the matter to my friends, and having some work to finish for the morning's mail, I went back to my desk. For three hours or so I worked steadily, page after page slipping to the floor as I finished them. My friends did not disturb me, and when I ascended to the studio for a "crack" before retiring, I found the big room in darkness. So! I mused and descended. A brilliant moon threw a dense black shadow in front of the house. The porch was in gloom, but the street was nearly as bright as day. I stood on the verandah for a few minutes, filling a pipe and looking across at the Metropolitan light where it shone serenely on the horizon. As I struck a match I became aware of a figure moving slowly in front of the Carville house, up and down the gravel walk that ran below their verandah. I threw away my match and stepped down into the moonlight, intending to stroll up and down for a while on the flags of the sidewalk. I often find that if I retire immediately from a burst of writing I am unable to sleep for several hours. The pendulum of the mind should be brought to rest quietly and without shock.
I was not surprised when the figure in the shadow stepped out into the moonlight as I approached. What startled me was the undoubted resemblance to myself in figure and mass. We were both small men. Perhaps there was a shade more shoulder-breadth on his side than mine, but there was the same slight droop, the same negligible tendency to stoutness. As I turned the matter over in my mind we came face to face.
"Good evening," we said simultaneously. He waved his pipe, a corn cob, towards the east. "New York!" he remarked, and we stood side by side for a moment in silence. The simple observation seemed to me to imply a susceptibility to the sublimity of the prospect that we had not discovered to any extent among our other neighbours. To them, apparently, New York was no more than London is to Hampstead; they had the suburban sentiment in an acute form. Nevertheless I was somewhat at a loss to continue our conversation. It seemed foolish to neglect such a heaven-directed opportunity to meet this man on his own ground and obtain some light upon his career. How should I begin? Should I say to him, "Look here, it is very nice, no doubt; but we, your neighbours, are simply crazy to know who and what you are?" That might strike him in various ways. He might take offence, and one could not blame him. He might see humour in it, and a proof of the contemptible meanness of human nature. I decided that I lacked courage to blurt out my desire that way. He was so very much like myself that I could not rid myself of the notion that he might prefer a milder way of approach. And as I sorted out my stock of diplomacy he spoke of the matter himself.
"You are a seaman, I understand?" I remarked. He gave me a quick glance.
"I go to sea," he replied, "if that is what you mean. Yes, in the legal phrase of the Board of Trade, I'm a seaman, and my number is Three nine five, eight nine three." He laughed shortly and continued to look out towards New York.
"A picturesque life," I hazarded, regretting my total ignorance of it. Again he looked at me and laughed.
"You think so?" he queried. "You think so?"
"I speak from book knowledge only," I said. "It is usually described in those terms." We began to walk to and fro.
"Well," he admitted unexpectedly, "and so it is. I don't doubt that to anyone just looking at it, you understand, it is as you say, 'picturesque,' But when you have a number like Three nine five, eight nine three, you have another view of it."
"You have been for a long voyage?"
"Oh no," he said; "Mediterranean and back, that's all."
I began to realize something of the man from this. I had no knowledge of the sea, but I certainly had a mind trained by years of observation and reflection to deduce certain definite data affecting human nature. And I realized dimly that a man who regarded a run round the Mediterranean and back across the Atlantic as a trivial episode scarcely worthy of mention, might have views on literature and art radically at variance with my own.
"I should have thought," I remarked, "that you would have made your home there rather than here."
"There's some who do," he said. "Lots of the Anchor Line men do. But personally I'd rather be here."
"It is very like England," I agreed, as he broke in.
"Sure," he said. "I was just thinking as I came up the hill. I come from Hertfordshire myself. Very like the Northern Heights."
"We always think," I answered, "that it is like Essex."
He pondered for a moment, enjoying his pipe.
"Well, it is," he decided. "You mean looking over Staten Island to the sea? Yes, only they're busier here than along Mersea Flats, eh? Oh yes, I used to know that part when I was a boy. There isn't much between Chipping Barnet and Hamford Water that I didn't know in those days."
"You will go back some day?" I said as we turned. A change came over his face, and he put his hand to his chin.
"No," he said. "I'll never go back there. I'm here"—he waved his pipe—"for keeps."
I looked at him in astonishment.
"Why?" I said, a little indignantly. "Are you not an Englishman?"
For a moment he did not reply to the blunt question, but looked down at the flags. His feet were cased in red velvet slippers, I noticed, and they struck me as quite indescribably bizarre in the moonlight. His hesitation was too ominous, heavy with unimaginable complexities. His voice was muffled when he spoke.
"No," he said. "I'm—an alien."
At first I was impressed by the tone more than the words. It was mournful, with a streak of satisfaction in his condition that I felt was assumed.
"You mean," I said at last, "that you intend to take out papers?"
He looked at me queerly.
"How long would it take," he inquired with a smile, "to put in five years' residence, when I'm in the country about three days every two months? No, I don't think I'll bother about papers. When I say I'm here for keeps, I mean those belonging to me."
"There is a question I would like to ask you," I said, tentatively.
"I shall be very glad to answer it if I can," he replied.
"It refers to your little boys."
"Why," he broke in, "they haven't been annoying you, have they? I hope they haven't done that!"
"Not at all. I merely had a curiosity to know why they bear such unusual names."
He smiled.
"They told you their names, did they?"
"They were good enough to commend me for the way I played Indian," I explained, and he gave me another of his quick comprehensive glances.
"It's rather a long story you've asked for," he said.
"I am interested in stories," I put in.
"Beppo said you made pictures," he mused.
"In words," I added.
He paused again. It seemed to be a part of his mode of thinking, this occasional parenthesis of silence. It was almost as though the man were leading me down a vast and dimly-lit corridor, laying his hand at times on various doors, and then withdrawing it, from some mysterious motive, and continuing upon his way.
"An