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Rather astonished, I agreed that this was sound æsthetic doctrine. "Now," went on Mr. Carville, "if you ask me how New York impresses me, I should say that it reminds me of Venice." The train stopped at Newark. For an instant I was quite unable to determine whether Mr. Carville was joking or not. One look at his face, however, precluded any such surmise.
The plastic artist has his own problems of light, and mass, and the like. And from this I came back circuitously to Mr. Carville. I was puzzled to find a name for the deliberate rejection of his responsibilities as an artist. One could not call him a renegade or a coward, for he was neither. And yet his acceptance of an obscure destiny had in it nothing of the sacredness of renunciation.
The intrepid Giuseppe Mazzini, however, had thrown his lariat about me with no mean adroitness, and I was down and captured. This thrilling dénouement was enacted near the repaired fence, and any horror I may have simulated was suddenly made real by the appearance of Mrs. Carville, who had been feeding her fowls.
Carville, for breaking off so abruptly, have taken the form of speech all at once. We were too dazed. We wanted to think. We would not, I say, have broken the silence for a long time ourselves. But Miss Fraenkel's temperament was different, and in this case surprising. With Miss Fraenkel silent thought, I imagine, is not a habit. With her to think is to speak.
We had never seen an aeroplane except in the cinema films, but we were familiar enough with current events to feel no surprise that a man had flown over the North Sea. I think I expressed our mutual sentiment when I observed that Cecil's story of how Frank Carville won his bet, and Mr.
Carville had within reach of his hand almost every convenience of civilization. At his elbow were a telephone and a speaking tube; just above him an electric fan. Electric lights were placed all over the room. His bed lay below the port-holes and a wash-basin of polished mahogany was folded up beside the bed. On the table were cigars and whisky.
In my bewilderment I nearly cut myself. And yet, supposing, as I had been supposing, that Mr. Carville had set out with the definite object of contrasting himself vividly with his prodigal brother, would he not eventually take up the rôle of dutiful parentage? The extraordinary thing was that the model father should be also the artist.
Carville, after a slight pause to stir up the ash in his pipe with a pen-knife, "not surprised. My brother had it in him always. Quite apart from any personal feeling I might have for him or against, I was always prepared, so to say, to see him doing something big. His trouble with his season-ticket and his bigger trouble that put him in gaol were very much on a par.
Carville don't like New York, that's all," he said, simply. "Personally, I shouldn't have bothered. But she's quite right." "I should think it was better for the children too," said Bill. He nodded vigorously, packing the tobacco into his pipe. "Fresh air," said Mac, who slept out on the porch half the year. "Oh there's plenty of fresh air in Atlantic Avenue," he said.
I was about twenty-five when all my ideas and prejudices slid away over side and I found I had got the disease we call love. It nearly killed me." Mr. Carville paused and leaned over to knock his pipe against the geranium-tub. We did not interrogate him.
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