Some one—I think it was Mac—pointed to the next house.
"That's it," we managed to say.
For a moment his eyes rested upon it casually.
"Thanks," he said again, and then, "Much obliged." He stepped back to the sidewalk and walked along to the house. None of us can recall exactly what happened when he approached his door, for we were all looking away across the valley, hastily rearranging our chaotic impressions. It is to be presumed that he knocked and was admitted. When we glanced round a few moments later he was gone.
"Great Scott!" murmured Mac, and looked at us in the growing dusk. Bill rose to get dinner.
Throughout the meal we refrained from any comment. Now that he had materialized, there was no reason, in the nature of things, why we should bother our heads any more about him. In the most natural way he had appeared and innocently demolished the photo-play romances we had constructed about him. It was a warning to us to avoid nonsense, in future, when discussing our neighbours. Miss Fraenkel had fared no better. Evidently he was not "held" for something with which his wife had "got away." We were all ridiculously wrong and ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And so we were; avoiding mention of him, and devoting our attention to the fish, for it was Friday, and we kept it religiously.
But as I drank my coffee and listened to that exquisitely mournful barcarolle from the Tales of Hoffmann, the whole episode took on a different aspect. I perceived, as Schopenhauer had perceived a hundred years before me, that our first judgment upon a man or principle is probably the most correct. I saw that I had been carried away by logic and numbers and had discounted my first impression. 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. 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. I passed in mental review the details of his appearance, his blue serge suit, his dark green tie, his greying moustache, clipped short in a fashion that might be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate with seamen.
Grant, however, I said to myself, that he looks a truth-telling man. Grant that he is, as his children said, at sea. Surely there is something romantic in this quiet-eyed man being married to such a woman as Mrs. Carville! Surely a man whose children bear names so bright on the rolls of fame must have something in him worthy of admiration! As the barcarolle swelled and died away, I felt this conviction growing within me. I felt certain that so far from demolishing the real mystery, Mr. Carville had only brought it into focus. We had not seen it before. And it promised to be a mystery on a higher plane than the rather sordid affair we had been postulating.
I decided to sleep on my conclusions, however, before broaching the matter to my friends, and having some work to finish for the morning's mail, I went back to my desk. For three hours or so I worked steadily, page after page slipping to the floor as I finished them. My friends did not disturb me, and when I ascended to the studio for a "crack" before retiring, I found the big room in darkness. So! I mused and descended. A brilliant moon threw a dense black shadow in front of the house. The porch was in gloom, but the street was nearly as bright as day. I stood on the verandah for a few minutes, filling a pipe and looking across at the Metropolitan light where it shone serenely on the horizon. As I struck a match I became aware of a figure moving slowly in front of the Carville house, up and down the gravel walk that ran below their verandah. I threw away my match and stepped down into the moonlight, intending to stroll up and down for a while on the flags of the sidewalk. I often find that if I retire immediately from a burst of writing I am unable to sleep for several hours. The pendulum of the mind should be brought to rest quietly and without shock.
I was not surprised when the figure in the shadow stepped out into the moonlight as I approached. What startled me was the undoubted resemblance to myself in figure and mass. We were both small men. Perhaps there was a shade more shoulder-breadth on his side than mine, but there was the same slight droop, the same negligible tendency to stoutness. As I turned the matter over in my mind we came face to face.