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Carville's voice behind me, and I turned. "What do you think, sir?" he said, and waved his hand. "You are right," I replied in a low tone. "You are certainly right. As for your San Giorgio," I smiled, "I'm afraid, Mr. Carville, you are a cleverer man than I thought you!" "Come down and have a smoke," he said. "I've some letters to see to."
Unfamiliar as I was with the life of the sea, I felt instinctively that men who had their business in great waters would bear upon their persons indications of their calling, some sign which would catch one's imagination and assist one to visualize their collective existence. But Mr. Carville had nothing.
Thus it will be seen that I alone was unprejudiced in my predilections, and qualified, however inadequately, to do justice to Mrs. Carville. Mac was annoyed because she had cut down a tree. That it was her own tree made no difference. To cut down a living tree was, in Mac's view, a sacrilege. Bill had an additional grievance in the fact that Mrs.
"She's here!" she whispered, and we entered, struck suddenly dumb like children, took off our boots and went upstairs to the studio. Quite naturally, Mrs. Carville had stepped in to thank her neighbour for the little leather Renaissance purse we had made for her. She embarrassed us yet more by rising when we came in. My friend, a most courteous and punctilious gentleman, begged her to be seated.
One unconsciously surmised that somewhere within her life lay a region of unrest, a period of passion not to be confused with the quiet courtship described by her husband. "True," I assented. "By the way, is Mr. Carville due in port soon?" She turned her head and regarded me attentively. "No," she said. "Do you wish to see him?" "Oh, not particularly," I hastened to say.
Carville during that lunch, it might perhaps be discovered in the word "doubt." Without accusing him of intentional deception, he had certainly led us to believe that he would explain to us the many points of interest which his previous history had raised.
"I am glad they have been no trouble," she replied, regarding them with a preoccupied approval. "Trouble!" My friend was indignant. "We haven't enjoyed ourselves so much in years, I assure you, Mrs. Carville. You've had a good time, you chaps, eh?" he asked them and they nodded with reminiscent delight shining in their eyes.
At length she rose and gently lifted the children to their feet, holding them close to her. "You think bad of me, then?" she queried in a curiously toneless voice. "Who? "All of you." "You know we do not. You must blame only me for this. We think bad of you! Listen, Mrs. Carville. My business is with books and you may think I know nothing of the life you and your husband live.
Carville displayed no shadow either of reverence or dislike for a place which impressed itself upon me more even than San Francisco or Chicago. It seemed to me strange that a man so sensitive to detail, so conscious of the scant poetry of the commonplace, should have no feeling for that astonishing accident which we call New York City. That he was not aware of her I refused absolutely to credit.
"Full speed ahead!" said Mac, jocularly. "I ought to explain," said Mr. Carville, "that as the years had gone by, my mother and I had ceased to have very much sympathy with each other's way of thinking. We had lived together, as was natural, but we had gradually lost sight of the career my father had outlined for me.
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