"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. But my business is also with humanity. It is for humanity I live, for them I work, and their praise is my reward. I am, in a way, in love with humanity. All the time I want people. They are the only thing that matters. And this gives me a light on a good deal you might think I missed. I know how quickly people break and are carried away. I know the strongest are often the weakest. I know we often give way just when we feel strong. I know something of illusions. So I have spoken. To-morrow you will laugh and say, 'It don't matter what he thinks,' And I still wish you a Happy New Year. Will you wish me one? Because I love people, humanity, so much?" And I made my way, rather overcome by feeling, out to the hall. As I raised the latch to go out, I looked back at her. She stood at the parlour door, the light of the hall-lamp throwing her features into sharp relief.
"Wait," she said softly. I waited.
"You think bad of me?" she said again. "Why, what have I done?"
"No!" I said. "You wrong us. We should not dare ..."
"Surely," she replied, looking at me in an odd, arch manner. "So I was thinking. Good night. It is Christmas. I do not think bad of you. Good night."
And then I was running through the snow.
I did not recount this conversation in all its details to the supper party I found in the studio. I wanted to think it out. I wanted to recall and consider this—to me—very unusual interview with a married woman. I was reminded, as I lay unsleeping that night, of Mr. Carville's enigmatic saying that 'the things in books had always eluded him.' As one with a certain interest in books, I had remembered his words. And it seemed that, if I looked at life honestly, the things in books would elude me too. The problem occupied me for days. I was aghast at my own obtuseness, for I was unable to decide from Mrs. Carville's conduct what her real attitude towards us might be. I did not know whether she were wayward or not. I felt bitterly that such things could not happen in a book, in a best seller.
And when the days passed, white shrouded, and we discussed the theories we had made and demolished, I found to my astonishment that my friends had taken up a remote position on the subject. They were extremely doubtful about my story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation. They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped I would keep my evil thoughts to myself at the Festive Season.
It is here that Miss Fraenkel interposed, all unconsciously, and became the cause of our presence at a most singular catastrophe, the collapse of the aeroplane in the snow. For had we not gone out that night to visit Miss Fraenkel and with her see the New Year safely born, we should have had no vivid memory of that terrible descent, nor understood how Fate had woven our neighbours' destinies, and how inexplicably she can drive to ruin at the moment of victory.
My friends had been to New York during the day, I remember, visiting friends in Lexington Avenue, and they mentioned at dinner a report in the paper that Mr. Francis Lord was to fly from the Gottschalk grounds, on the banks of Lake Champlain, to New York and give a demonstration of the aeroplane over the city. New machines had come from England, hope sprang eternal in the reporting breast, and events of staggering scientific import were foreshadowed. Other experts were pessimistic. They claimed their own apparatus was better than D'Aubigné's and so got a little advertisement for themselves. Other experts again blamed the administration in a vague way. An eminent actress was interviewed and spoke of her new telephone play without adding much to the national stock of wisdom. A famous evangelist of the rough-house type proposed to use the new apparatus for reaching distant settlements.