A few moments, and one by one, and in the case of Wederslen and Williams arm-in-arm, our neighbours hove into view out of the valley, saluted and passed. We noted the unusually friendly attitude of the two. What was Williams up to? we wondered. We knew that Williams, the ignoble designer of tonneaux, laboured under the delusion that he could paint. Of course he could not paint—we were all agreed upon that—but he had shown us various compositions done during vacation time—blood-red boulders and glass-green seas. Was it possible that he was convincing Wederslen that he could paint? We shuddered for Art as we thought of it. Their wives were not friendly, though, so Bill asserted. We placed our hopes for Art on that.
For some moments after they were gone, and Confield with his bag had passed from view down the forest path, we tried to contemplate with stoical indifference the prospect of seeing Williams hailed by the servile and blandiloquent Wederslen as a genius. Had he not said of Hooker that "he was likely, at no distant date, to be seen in all the collections of note? His rare skill with the burin, his delicate feeling for nature——" and so on. Of course we all esteemed Hooker and were glad to see him make good; but really, as Bill remarked, "A man who said Hooker had a feeling for nature would say anything." It was like speaking of Antony Van Dyck's feeling for nature. Hooker's Dutch gardens and Italian ornamental waters, his cypresses like black spearheads, his eighteenth-century precisians with their flowered waistcoats and high insteps, were as far from nature as they could conveniently get. So much for Wederslen. We might have pursued the subject indefinitely had not our attention been drawn abruptly to the path.
He came uncertainly, this new figure, pausing when he was only half revealed, as though in doubt of his direction. He wore a Derby hat, and we saw over his arm a rubber mackintosh. Making up an obviously unsettled mind, he abjured the path and struck straight across towards us, with the evident intention of inquiring the way.
There are many conceits by which men may assert their individuality in dress, even in these days of stereotyped cut. They may adhere by habit or desire to the uniform of their class, they may preserve their anonymity even to a cuff-link, yet in some occult way we are apprised of their personal fancy; we see a last-remaining vestige of that high courage that made their ancestors clothe themselves in original and astonishing vestments. And it is this fortuitous difference, this tiny leak, one might say, of their personality, that stamps them finally as belonging to an immense mediocrity. It is this subtle and microscopic change, a sixteenth of an inch in the height of a collar, a line in the pattern of a scarf, a hair's breadth in the disposition of a crease, that the psychologists of the market-place call distinction, and labour industriously to supply.
But the man who now crossed the street and stood before us bore neither in his apparel nor in his lineaments a single detail by which he could be remembered. In everything, from his black medium-toed boots to his Derby hat of untarnished respectability, from his recently-shaven chin to his steady grey-blue eyes, he betrayed not the slightest caprice which would enable an observer to distinguish him from a particular type. It was as though he had been conscious of all this and had even sought to avoid the most trivial peculiarities. In height, in feature, in dress, he was so ordinary that he became extraordinary. His intention to be unnoticed was so obvious that it predicated, in my own mind at least, a character and possibly an occupation out of the common run.
"Can you tell me," he began in a voice that gave no hint of emotion, "can you tell me if this is Van Diemen's Avenue?"
"Yes," we said all together, studying him the while. "Yes, this is Van Diemen's Avenue."
"Thanks," he replied, and withdrew his foot from our bottom step.
It seemed as though he was about to depart and leave us guessing, when he spoke again.
"Perhaps you know the house I want," he said. "Carville's the name. I," he added as if in an afterthought, "am Mr. Carville." And he looked at us gravely, apparently unaware of the turmoil of curiosity which he had aroused.