Aliens. William McFee
she turned and swung up the steps of her porch and slammed the door.
"A letter from Cecil," said Bill as I took my seat, a little downcast at the encounter. Cecil is the painter-cousin, at Wigborough, Essex, England.
"What does he say?" I inquired.
"Read it to us," said she, and handed me a dozen sheets of tracing paper pinned together.
I began to read.
CHAPTER III
A Letter from Wigborough
DEAR BILL—At last I find myself with an hour or so to spare, so here goes! How are you all? Well, I hope. I received your little present on the anniversary. Many thanks, old girl. How on earth do you remember the date of everybody's birthday? Honestly, I should have let it pass without noticing if that wee book had not arrived two days before. So you see, you are of some use in the world after all! (This is a joke.) How's Mac getting on with the etching? Tell him I've taken to using only forty per cent. nitric acid in distilled water. This gives very good results for all ordinary work, much more certain than the nitrous, and doesn't make such a stink. There's no demand just now for modern work, in England at any rate. I can hardly believe what you say about the shows in New York. London's dead for etchers. Every dealer is clamorous for copies of the old masters. The rotten thing is that it pays better than doing original work, you know. I have a job on now—twenty plates at £50 a plate, simply copying Girtins and Bartolozzis. I shall do four plates a year. I take things pretty easily, work in the morning, potter round the garden in the afternoon, tennis and cycling when the weather permits. This has been a terrible summer. English weather gets worse, I believe. We had rain for a solid week in July. I was out on a tramp through the midlands and got caught in it, which reminds me of a most remarkable chap I met at the time. I really must tell you about him, because I don't remember anyone who has so impressed his personality upon me as this man did.
"It was this way. I had been sketching round about Market Overton, and getting rather sick of the incessant rain, so I packed up my knapsack and started home. It really is much more jolly walking in the rain than sitting in a stuffy inn parlour waiting for it to stop. Well, at Peterboro' I heard the country eastward was flooded and farmers ruined. Of course, my road lay through March and Ely to Newmarket and Colchester, and I wouldn't believe the boys who called to me that I'd be stopped; but sure enough, not two miles east of Peterboro' the road slid under water and people were punting themselves about on doors, and cooking their grub upstairs. In the fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of course, and took the London road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was getting jolly tired and wondering if I should find a decent bed before I reached Huntingdon, when I came to Saxon Cross. At the cross-roads stands a fine inn all by itself, and to judge by the names and addresses in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, being a hunting inn. But it is very comfortable, with brushes hung all round the walls and fine old engravings of sporting scenes in all the rooms.
"At first I only went into the bar-parlour to get a drink. It was rather dark in there, for it was very near sunset and the windows were small, and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird, that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said 'Good evening' too, so I suppose that it must have been just a mistaken idea of mine, but I really thought at first that he had something against me, his glance was so confoundedly malevolent. He was a tall young chap in a Norfolk suit with a soft silk collar and scarlet tie, russia-leather shoes and a watch in an alligator case on his left wrist. A gentleman evidently by the look of him and when he said to me, in the refined voice of the ordinary university man, 'Are you walking down country?' I made up my mind that he was O. K. and began to converse.
"One thing rather puzzled me, and that was the fact that he and the landlord did not speak to each other. While I was drinking my whisky they both talked to me and I to them, but they did not exchange a word. I thought it was strange that a landlord should ignore a guest like that, especially as the guest didn't look as if he would stand much ignoring. Indeed, there was a sort of glint in his dark eyes as he made the most ordinary remark that struck me as particularly baleful. However, we talked of the floods and my tramp and hunting, etc., and finally I decided to stop the night there. The landlord went off to order supper and my new friend came over and sat down beside me. Somehow or other I found myself talking over old times. On thinking the matter over I have come to the conclusion that it was his use of one or two words like 'tool,' meaning 'to run hard,' that led me to accept him as one of us. 'Topping' was another word. Before I was aware of it, and without his definitely stating the fact, I was treating him as a public-school man.
"'Do you know Surrey?' he asked me. 'It's rather jolly.'
"'I know Guildford,' I said. 'I was at school there.'
"'Were you really?' he replied, and he began to hum 'As I was going to Salisbury,' which is Winchester and nothing else as you will remember. That settled it, and I asked him whose house he was in. 'Jerry Bud's,' he told me. 'I was in old Martin's,' I said. 'Did you know Belvoir? He was in Bud's.'
"'The wine merchant's son?' he said, and I nodded.
"He gave me a curious look at this, as though he was suspicious of me. 'Seen him lately?' he asked. 'Not for years,' I said. 'What became of him?' 'Oh, I don't know,' he said as though relieved. 'I thought perhaps you'd kept it up. He went into the army, I believe.'
"We talked on like this, giving each other little items of information about different fellows we knew, and gradually I gave him my own history, what there is of it. There isn't much, as you know; Slade, Beaux Arts, Chelsea, and now Wigborough. He wasn't a bit interested, didn't seem to know what the word artist meant. Regular stereotyped public-school man in that. And he didn't offer me a drink, I noticed, after we had had a peg or two at my expense. However, when the bath was ready and I got up to go to it, he said, 'I'll take supper with you if you don't mind.' I said, 'with pleasure,' 'charmed,' of course, and all that sort of thing, and went off. I met the landlord as I was coming down and buttonholed him. He told me all about it at once.
"'Mr. Carville, sir? Yes, that's his name. Well, it's a rather curious case. I don't know what to make of it myself. He came down here with a party of university gentlemen about a month ago. Very nice gentlemen they were, sir, and were very free with their money, Mr. Carville especially. And then they all went off except him with a motorin' party that spent a week-end here. Mr. Carville he said they was coming back, you see, and he'd wait for 'em. Well, that's three weeks gone and he's still here as you see. He says that he expects a cheque any day, but up to the present——.'
"'Why, hasn't he got any money?' I said.
"'Well, at present, sir, there's a month's bill. Bein' a gentleman, of course, I knew it 'ud be all right, so I let it run.'
"'Perhaps he's overdrawn,' I said.
"'It's possible, sir,' said the landlord.
"Well, I went down to supper, full of the poor chap's story, and found him at the table walking into a hefty veal-and-ham pie, and with a bottle of wine at his elbow.
"'Come on,' he says, 'or you'll be too late.'
"We went at it and made a good meal, and he accepted one of my cigars. It suddenly occurred to me that I knew nothing definite about the man. He hadn't even told me his profession. He wasn't Church, that was clear. He wasn't Navy. I didn't think he was Bar either. Army? Yes, but you know