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Whether it was the card-table, or the extraordinary speed with which the Raritan was loaded, that excited his amusement, I am unable to decide. I was too familiar with the American habit of gambling in trains to take much notice of it. It is possible that Mr. Carville was less sophisticated. "That," I said, "does not give you much time on shore." "No," he said, "it doesn't.
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.
"That accounts for it," she commented, raising her eyes to mine. I agreed. "Possibly," I said. "None the less I like them. I suppose," I added, "they ought to be at school." "There is measles everywhere in the school," she informed me. "I do not want it yet." "Mr. Carville," I said, seizing an opening, "told me he did not believe in school." "That is right," she answered.
Carville smoked silently for a few moments while the card-players pursued their games and the train thundered through the flat swamps of Riverside. "Have you ever seen it," he asked, "from the Narrows?" I shook my head. The Campania had come up in a dank fog, when I had arrived seven years before. I mentioned the customs formalities that keep one below at such a time. Mr. Carville smiled gently.
The chief item on the news page was headed: AEROPHONE MESSAGE FROM CARVILLE; OVER HELIGOLAND; ALARM IN GERMANY. Copyright by The London "Morning." The special article of the day was headed: "The Napoleon of the Air; a Character Sketch," and the leader, signed by Lord Cholme himself, was a pæan, in stilted journalese, in praise of the Morning's enterprise in encouraging invention.
Carville's flat looked from the second floor on St. James' Street. One of the men who lived at Chislehurst wanted to catch the 12.6 at Victoria and mentioned casually to the servant to bring a car round. 'You won't catch the 12.6, says Carville. 'Oh, yes, I shall, said the other man. 'I bet you a fiver you won't, says Carville. 'Done, said the other.
From the angle at which I now regarded Mr. Carville I could see that, after all, his case presented certain details which we could not as yet account for.
I was more than ever reinforced in my already-expressed opinion that Mr. Carville was a man of more ability than ambition. There was to me something bizarre in his deliberate abstention from any contact, save books, with the larger intellectual sphere to which he by right belonged.
Carville, pinching his shaven chin with a thumb and fore-finger, looked down meditatively at his boots. In some subtle way his manner belied his words. I felt a lively conviction that there was in a particular way something more to it. It seemed quite incredible that he had no more to tell us of his brother. "Surely," I said, "you have heard of your brother since?" He gave me a quick look.
"I used to," replied Carville, feeling for his pipe. "I was a good while in that trade coal from Moji to Singapore. I think they're best at a distance though the people, I mean." Mac protested against this "narrow" view. "Yes, yes, I know," said Mr. Carville, coming into the studio. "I read Lafcadio Hearn when I was younger; read him again out in Japan. Humph!"
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