Aliens.

by William McFee.

PREFACE

[_Publisher's Note: It should be explained that an earlier version of "Aliens" was published in London in 1914, and some copies were also distributed in the United States. After the issue of "Casuals of the Sea" the present publishers purchased the rights to "Aliens" and urged Mr. McFee to re-write the story. His account of the history of this book is here inserted, and will undoubtedly take its place among the most entertaining and interesting prefaces in modern literature._]

So many people are unaware of the number of works of fiction which have been rewritten after publication. I was rather surprised myself when I came to recapitulate them. I wouldn't go so far as to say that second editions, like second thoughts, are the best, because I at once think of "The Light that Failed." But I do believe that under the very unusual circ.u.mstances of the genesis and first issue of _Aliens_ I am justified in offering a maturer and more balanced representation of what that book stands for.

The notion of a character like Mr. Carville came to me while I was busy finishing "Casuals of the Sea" during the late fall of 1912. A short story was the result. It went to many likely and unlikely publishers, for I knew very little of the field. I don't know whether the "Farm Journal" (of which I am a devoted reader) got it, but it is quite probable. A mad artist who lived near us, in an empty store along with a studio stove and three priceless Kakemonos, told me he would "put me next" an editor of his acquaintance. I forget the name of the paper now, but I think it had some connection with women's clothes. I sent in my story, but unfortunately my friend forgot to put me next, for I got neither cash nor ma.n.u.script. The next time I pa.s.sed the empty store, I stepped in to explain, but the artist had a black eye, and his own interest was so engrossed in Chinese lacquer-work and a stormy divorce case he had coming on shortly, that I was struck dumb. What was a short story in comparison with such issues? And I knew he had no more opinion of me as an author than I had of him as an artist.

But when another typed copy came back from a round of visits to American magazines, I kept it. I had a strong conviction that, in making a book of what was then only a rather vague short story, I was not such a fool as the mad artist seemed to think. I reckoned his judgment had been warped by the highly eccentric environment in which he delighted. The empty store in which he lived, like a rat in a shipping-case, was new and blatant. It thrust its blind, lime-washed window-front out over the sidewalk. Over the lime-wash one could see the new pine shelving along the walls loaded with innumerable rolls of wall-paper. Who was responsible for this moribund stock I could never discover. Perhaps the mad artist imagined them to be priceless Kakemonos of such transcendent and blinding beauty that he did not dare unroll them. They resembled a library of papyrus ma.n.u.scripts. Here and there among them stood some exquisitely hideous dragon or bird of misfortune. He had a bench in the store too, I remember, and seemed to have some sort of business in mending such things for dealers. And he did a little dealing himself too, for his madness had not destroyed his appreciation of the value of money. He would exhibit some piece of Oriental rubbish, and when one had politely admired it, he would say pleasantly, "Take it!" One took it, and a week later he would borrow its full value as a loan.

With his Kakemonos he was even more mystifying, for he would develop sudden and quite unnecessary bursts of rage, and announce his refusal of anything under a million for them. And then he would exhibit them, taking them from a broken Libby, McNeill and Libby milk case under his camp-bed, and holding the rolled splendours aloft. And then, with a grandiose gesture, as of some insane n.o.bleman showing his interminable pedigree, he would let the thing unfold and one beheld a sad animal of unknown species sitting in a silver winter landscape, or a purple silk sunset. And over it glared the mad artist, a sallow fraud, yet watching with some impatience how the stranger regarded this secret preoccupation of his life. I knew nothing about such things and knew he scorned me for my ignorance. Like most artists, he was an unconscious liar. He strove also to give an impression of tremendous power. He had gestures which were supposed to register virility, irresistible force, abysmal contempt. And if the word had not been worked to death by people who don't know its meaning, I would have added that he was a votary of the _kultur_ of his race. His ideal, I suppose, was more the Renaissance _virtu_ than our milk-and-water virtue. He made me feel that I was a worm. In short, he was a very interesting, provocative and exasperating humbug, and his very existence seemed to me sufficient reason for turning _Aliens_ into a book which would shed a flickering light upon the fascinating problem of human folly.

For that is what it amounted to. I was obsessed with the problem of human folly, and he focussed that obsession. It often happens that the character which inspires a book never appears in it. In all sincere work I think it must be so. And, with the mad artist in my mind all the time, I got a good deal of fun out of writing the book, and that, after all, is the main reason one has for writing books. I finished the thing and immediately became despondent, a condition from which I was raised by an unexpected admirer. This was the elderly gentleman who did my typewriting. He dwelt half way up a tall elevator shaft in Newark, N.

J., and, as far as I could gather, had farmed himself out to a number of lawyers, none of whom had much to do except telephone to each other and smoke domestic cigars. They say no man is a hero to his valet. I have never had a valet except on ship-board, and I have no desire to compete with the heroes of the average steward; but I have had a typist, and I suppose it is equally rare for an author to be interesting to his amanuensis. And when I climbed one day (the elevator being out of order) to the eyrie where my elderly henchman had his nest, his bald head was shining in the westering sun, and he beamed like a jolly old sun himself as he apologised for not having finished. "He had got so interested in the parties," he explained, "that he hadn't got on as quick as he'd hoped to." I still like to think he was sincere when he said this.

Anyhow, I was encouraged. I bound up my copies of typescript and shoved them out into the world. They came back. They became familiar at the local post-office. The mad artist, meeting me with a parcel, would divine the contents and inquire, "Well, and how's _Aliens_?" He would also inform me that there were several books called by that t.i.tle. He would regard me with a gla.s.sy-eyed grin as I hurried on. He had no more faith in me than he had in himself. Sometimes he would pretend not to see me, but go stalking down the avenue, his fists twisted in his pockets, his head bent, his brows portentous with thought ... a grotesque humbug!

But the time came when, as I have explained elsewhere, I had had enough of artists and books. Of art I never grow weary, but she calls me over the world. I suspect the sedentary art-worker. Most of all, I suspect the sedentary writer. I divide authors into two cla.s.ses--genuine artists, and educated men who wish to earn enough to let them live like country gentlemen. With the latter I have no concern. But the artist knows when his time has come. In the same way I turned with irresistible longing to the sea, whereon I had been wont to earn my living. It is a good life and I love it. I love the men and their ships.

I find in them a never-ending panorama which ill.u.s.trates my theme, the problem of human folly! Suffice it, I sent my ma.n.u.scripts to London, looked out my sea dunnage, and the publishing offices of New York City knew me no more.

About a year later I received the proofs of _Aliens_ while in Cristobal, Ca.n.a.l Zone. Without exaggeration, I scarcely knew what to do with them.

The outward trappings of literature had fallen away from me with the heavy northern clothing which I had discarded on coming south. I was first a.s.sistant engineer on a mail-boat serving New Orleans, the West Indies and the Ca.n.a.l Zone. I had become inured once more to an enchanting existence which alternated between bunk and engine-room. I regarded the neatly-bound proof-copy of _Aliens_ with misgiving. My esteemed Chief, a Scotsman in whose family learning is an honorable tradition, suggested an empty pa.s.senger cabin as a suitable study. I forget exactly how the proof-reading was dove-tailed into the watch below, but dove-tailed it was, and when the job was done, the book once more sailed across the Atlantic.

But I was not satisfied. Through the dense jungle of preoccupying affairs in which I was buried I could see that I was not satisfied. I was trying to eat my cake and have it. I make no complaint. If there be one person for whom I cherish a profound dislike it is the literary character who whines because his circ.u.mstances hinder his writing. I was no George Gissing, cursed with a dreary distaste of common toil and mechanical things. I love both the Grecian Isles and gas-burners. But for the moment I had chosen gas-burners, or rather steam engines, and I knew I could not have both. So _Aliens_ went back to London, and I went my daily round of the Caribbean. I felt that for once I could trust the judgment of a first-cla.s.s publisher.

The publishers of this new edition will understand me when I say that an author has no business to trust blindly to the judgment of any house, however first-cla.s.s. He has no business to do so because that outside estimate of his work must of necessity be based on scanty data. The publisher, for all his enthusiasm, takes a chance, sometimes a pretty long one. An author, as I conceive it, must be his own most uneasy, captious, cantankerous critic. He dare not delegate this job to anyone else, for that way lies the pot-boiler and the formal romance, the "made" book. I was busy, and let go the reins. And I place on record here my grat.i.tude to those who knew enough and cared enough to recall me to my post, that I might deal with the book afresh and do justice to the reader.

Much happened between the day when I mailed my proofs from the big Post Office on Ca.n.a.l Street in New Orleans, and the day when I set out to write this present version. I was now in another hemisphere and the world was at war. By a happy chance I laid hold of a copy of _Aliens_, sent previously to a naval relative serving on the same station. Up and down the aegean Sea, past fields of mines and fields of asphodel, past many an isle familiar in happier days to me, I took my book and my new convictions about human folly. It was a slow business, for it so chanced that my own contribution to the war involved long hours. But _Aliens_ grew.

And one evening, I remember, I left off in the middle of Mr. Carville's courtship and went to bed. We were speeding southward. It was a dark, moonless night. The islands of the Grecian Archipelago were roofed over with a vault of low-lying clouds, as if those ferriferous hummocks and limestone peaks were the invisible pillars of an enormous crypt. And since across the floor of this crypt many other vessels were speeding without lights, it was not wonderful that for once our good fortune failed us. For we had had good fortune. Aeroplanes had bombed, and missed us by yards. Zeppelins had come down in flaming ruin before our astonished eyes. Islands had loomed under the very fore-foot of our ship in a fog, and we had gone astern in time. But this time it was our turn.

We were, in the succinct phraseology of the sea, in collision.

The story of that night will no doubt be told in its proper place and time. Suffice it that for some weeks we were laid aside, and local Levantine talent invoked to make good the disaster. And in spite of the clangour of rivetters, the unceasing cries of fezzed and turbaned mechanics, and the heavy blows of sweating carpenters, caulkers and blacksmiths, _Aliens_ grew. There was a blessed interval, between five o'clock, when my day's work ended, and the late cabin-dinner at six-thirty, when the setting sun shone into my room and illumined my study-table--a board laid across an open drawer. And _Aliens_ grew. For some time, while the smashed bulwarks and distorted frames of the upper-works were being hacked away outside my window, the uproar was unendurable, and I would go ash.o.r.e, note-book in pocket, to find a refuge where I could write. I would walk through the city and sit in her gardens; and the story grew. I found obscure _cafes_ where I could sit with coffee and _narghileh_, and watch the Arabic letter-writers worming the thoughts from their inarticulate clients, and _Aliens_ grew. And later, near the Greek Patriarchate, I found that which to me is home--a secondhand book-store. For I mark my pa.s.sage about this very wonderful world by old book-stores. London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Genoa, Venice, New York, Ancona, Rouen, Tunis, Savannah, Kobe and New Orleans have in my memory their old book-stores, where I could browse in peace.

And here in Alexandria I found one that might have been lifted out of Royal Street or Lafayette Square. A ramshackle wooden building, bleached and blistered by many a dust-storm and torrid sun, its cracked and distorted window-panes were curtained with decayed ill.u.s.trated papers in many tongues, discoloured Greek and Italian penny-dreadfuls, and a few shelves of cheap curios. Over the door a long shingle displayed on one side the legend _Librairie Universelle_, while the other bore the word [Greek: BIBLIOPoLION], which you may translate as it please your fancy.

Inside the narrow doors were craters and trenches and redoubts and dug-outs of books. They lay everywhere, underfoot and overhead. They ran up at the back in a steep _glacis_ with embrasures for curios, and were reflected to infinity in tall dusty pier-gla.s.ses propped against the walls. High up under the mansard roof hung an antique oriental candelabrum with one candle. Hanging from twine were stuffed fish of grotesque globular proportions, and with staring apoplectic eyes. A stuffed monkey was letting himself down, one-hand, from a thin chain, and regarded the customer with a contemptuous sneer, the dust lying thick on his head and arms and his exquisitely curled tail. And out of an apparently bomb-proof shelter below several tons of books there emerged a little old gentleman in a brilliant _tarbush_, who looked inquiringly in my direction. For a moment I paused, fascinated by the notion that I had discovered the great Library of Alexandria, reported burnt so many centuries ago. For once within those musty, warped, unpainted walls one forgot the modern world. I looked out. Across the street, backed by the immense and level blaze of an Egyptian sunset, blocks of Carrara marble blushed to pink with mauve shadows, and turned the common stone mason's yard into a garden of gigantic jewels. The hum of a great city, the grind of the trolley-cars, the cries of the itinerant sellers of nuts and fruit, of chewing gum and lottery-tickets, of shoe laces and suspenders, of newspapers, and prawns, and oysters, and eggs, and bread, the rattle of carriages and all the flashing brilliance of the palaces of pleasure, were shut out from that quiet street near the Greek Patriarchate. I had the sudden notion of asking for permission to sit in that Universal Library, and write. And Mr.

Bizikas, the little old gentleman in the vivid _tarbush_, who was lighting a very dirty tin lamp to a.s.sist the one candle in the oriental candelabrum, had no objection. I have a feeling occasionally that here I topped the rise of human felicity, as I conceive it. Perhaps I did.

Anyhow, _Aliens_ grew.

I must be brief. It came to pa.s.s, after certain days, that _Aliens_ grew to accomplishment, and I made my way into the city through one of the many gates of the harbour. I sought the office of the Censor in a large building with a courtyard. It was a large room on the top floor, with a long table occupied by busy orderlies opening and stamping letters with astonishing rapidity. At the back, flanking an open balcony over whose bal.u.s.trade I could see the blue Mediterranean and a flawless sapphire sky, were two roll-top desks concealing two officers whose polished bald heads shone above stacks of papers. At the deferential insistence of an orderly, one of the heads rose, and a large, ruddy Yorkshire face examined the intruder. In some diffidence I explained the delicate nature of my mission. I opened my parcel and displayed, with the pride of a parent, how _Aliens_ had grown. The officer rose to his feet, a tall, strong, north-country figure, and looked keenly at me over his gla.s.ses. Was I a British subject? What was the nature of the ma.n.u.script?

What was the name of my transport? What was my rank? And so on. To all of which I gave courteous and, I hope, truthful answers. "Well, there's a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable brevity and matchless common sense.

And I called in a week's time. It appeared that the Captain had gone through _Aliens_ and was satisfied that it divulged nothing of military importance, nor did it provide any comfort for the King's enemies. An orderly, a fattish person with a fine mustache and scorched knees, was commanded to secure, seal and register the parcel. The tall officer with the good-humoured country-gentleman's face came to the balcony and discussed for a moment the production of literature under difficulties.

"You know, we have very strict orders," he remarked, looking down thoughtfully. "We must be most careful ... h--m ... Neutral countries ... America." He seemed to regard the idea of America with misgiving. I agreed that America was food for thought. "And you write books at sea?"

he inquired. Yes, I said, anywhere, everywhere. He nodded. "It is, you know," I added slyly, "our national art." He looked grave at this and said he supposed so. By this time the orderly had tied and sealed _Aliens_ in so many places that I pitied anyone who tried to tamper with it; and so, with an expression of my profound appreciation, I retired.

The officer bowed, and the orderly and I clattered down stairs and made our way into the Rue de la Poste. He was a Londoner, and professed great interest in literature, having a brother a news agent. We had some beer together, when _Aliens_ had been safely bestowed. He was getting his leave soon, he said, and I informed him I hoped to get mine in a month or so. We drank to our three years' active service and to our safe trip home. He was much impressed by this coinc_i_dence, as he called it, and begged me, if I happened down Deptford way at all, to call and see him over his brother's shop. I asked him if he knew a certain old book-store in Deptford, where I had once gotten a Bandello's _Novelle_ for four shillings, and he said he knew it well. But I think he only said this to please an obvious bibliomaniac. We parted with mutual good wishes, and I went back to the ship.

And so I send it to you, trusting to my good fortune to get it through.

It may never reach you, and I shall have had my labour in vain. It may be, also, that ere it see the light I shall have gone away myself, an aggrieved partic.i.p.ant in one of the trivial disasters of the sea-affair.

But whatever betide, I shall have had my shot at the alluring yet ineluctable problem of human folly.

WILLIAM MCFEE.

Port Said, Egypt, April 14, 1917.

ALIENS

CHAPTER I

THE "SCALDINO"

Long before any of us three had seen him we had become aware of his existence, and our brains were continually busy about him. His appearance, his age, his gait, his history, his voice, even his ultimate destiny, we conjectured over and over again as one by one the evidences of his existence acc.u.mulated and developed in our consciousness. It grew to be quite a game with us, this collection of data, and filled in much of our leisure before we became acquainted with many of our neighbours.

I think Bill was the first to notice something unusual about the family next door, something neither English nor American. "What do you think!"

she exclaimed, coming in one morning as I was busy writing. "She's got a little iron grate on legs, and there's charcoal burning in it."

"Who? Where?" I asked, coming out of my work with a start. I was composing an advertis.e.m.e.nt at the time.

"Mrs. Carville," said Bill, pointing to the window.

From the window, across the intervening plot of ground, we saw our neighbour stooping over one of those small portable affairs so popular in Italy and known as _scaldini_, mere iron buckets in which c.o.ke or charcoal burns without flame, and which are carried from room to room as occasion arises.

"I thought," I said, "that she was Italian. That is a _scaldino_."

"Is it?" said Bill. "They'll set the house on fire if they use that here."

My friend is rather hard on the Mediterranean nations, giving as a reason "they are so dirty," but meaning, I imagine, that they lack our habits of order and dignified reticence. Their colonies in American cities and country-side are not models for town-planners and munic.i.p.al idealists. And Bill has, in addition, much of the average Englishwoman's suspicion of foreign domestic economy. The past glories of Greece and Spain and Rome are nothing to her if the cooking utensils of the present generation are greasy or their gla.s.sware unpolished. There is, when one gets well away from them, quite a Dutch primness and staid rectangularity about English ideals in the matter of front and back yards, hen-runs, flower-beds and the like. And although her own small tract of New Jersey woefully failed to come anywhere near those same ideals she had a weakness for the gentle disparagement of Latin untidiness and lack of finish.

But, firm believers as we were in the authentic picturesqueness of American life, if we only looked for it, we had been struck more than once by the fugitive glimpses of herself which our neighbour had so far vouchsafed to us. To tell the bald truth, we stood in awe of her. We discriminated between her and her environment. And we paid to her, in spite of our prejudices and limitations, a certain homage which beauty ever commands and receives, so potent is its inspiration to the hearts of men.

On revision, that word "beauty" scarcely stands its own in this connection, and for this reason. We three, deriving our entire sustenance from art in some guise or other, had widely divergent opinions upon the indispensable attributes of beauty _per se_. From my experience of artists, this condition of things is not unusual. We always agreed to differ, Bill rapturous among her flowers and revelling in their colour; Mac catching with a fine enthusiasm and a.s.sured technique the fugitive tints of a sunrise through a tracery of leaves and twigs; and I, quiescently receptive, pondering at intervals upon the sublime mystery of the human form, especially the grandiose renderings of it in the works of Michael Angelo. Thus it will be seen that I alone was unprejudiced in my predilections, and qualified, however inadequately, to do justice to Mrs. Carville. Mac was annoyed because she had cut down a tree. That it was her own tree made no difference. To cut down a living tree was, in Mac's view, a sacrilege. Bill had an additional grievance in the fact that Mrs. Carville not only grew no flowers herself, but permitted her chickens to wander deleteriously among ours.

A brief and pa.s.sing glance from the street would have given a stranger no inkling of the state of affairs. Indeed, Mrs. Carville's domain and ours were un-American in the fact that there had at one time been a fence between us. Even now it is a good enough fence in front; but it gradually degenerated until, at the bottom of the yards, it was a mere fortuitous concourse of rotten and smashed palings through which mult.i.tudinous armies of fowls came at unseasonable hours and against which all Bill's ladylike indignation was vented in vain. As we watched behind the curtains a Dorking stepped through and began to prospect among the sumach and stramonium that Bill had encouraged along our frontiers, under an illusion that plants labelled "poisonous" in her American gardening book would decimate the fowls.

"I wish they wouldn't," said Bill sadly, and added, "It's rotten, you know. I shall speak to them about it one of these days."

For myself, though trained habit enabled me to make note of the Dorking, my whole conscious attention was riveted upon the little group round the _scaldino_ on the back porch. Mrs. Carville was, as I have said, stooping over the brazier. Her movements were being watched not only by ourselves, but by her two children. Fortunately, they were beyond her, their legs planted far apart, their hands behind them, so that I could see without stint the magnificent pose of the woman's body. Her arms hovered over the vessel, the left resting at times upon it, the other selecting pieces of fuel from a box at her side. The line of her back from hip to shoulder seemed incredibly straight and long. The cold wind that was blowing gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly, however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head.

It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black hair and set back in the hollow of the shoulders. Her face may be called dark too, the black eye-brows and olive skin being unrelieved by colour in the cheeks. Her whole expression was, you might say, forbidding, and I was not surprised when one of the boys received a push as he bent his head over the brazier. There was such an electric quickness in the gesture, such a dispa.s.sionate resumption of her former pose, that one involuntarily conceded to her a fierce and peremptory disposition. One felt that such a woman would listen with some impatience to complaints about predatory fowls, that she would stand no nonsense from her children either, that....

The same thought flashed through our minds simultaneously, and in strict accordance with our differing temperaments Bill voiced it.