Now and then, at the close of one of Vibart’s visits, Mr. Carstyle put
on a mildewed Panama hat and accompanied the young man for a mile or two
on his way home. The road to Mrs. Vance’s lay through one of the most
amiable suburbs of Millbrook, and Mr. Carstyle, walking with his slow
uneager step, his hat pushed back, and his stick dragging behind him,
seemed to take a philosophic pleasure in the aspect of the trim lawns
and opulent gardens.
Vibart could never induce his companion to prolong his walk as far as
Mrs. Vance’s drawing-room; but one afternoon, when the distant hills lay
blue beyond the twilight of overarching elms, the two men strolled on
into the country past that lady’s hospitable gateposts.
It was a still day, the road was deserted, and every sound came sharply
through the air. Mr. Carstyle was in the midst of a disquisition on
Diderot, when he raised his head and stood still.
“What’s that?” he said. “Listen!”
Vibart listened and heard a distant storm of hoof-beats. A moment later,
a buggy drawn by a pair of trotters swung round the turn of the road.
It was about thirty yards off, coming toward them at full speed. The man
who drove was leaning forward with outstretched arms; beside him sat a
girl.
Suddenly Vibart saw Mr. Carstyle jump into the middle of the road, in
front of the buggy. He stood there immovable, his arms extended, his
legs apart, in an attitude of indomitable resistance. Almost at the same
moment Vibart realized that the man in the buggy had his horses in hand.
“They’re not running!” Vibart shouted, springing into the road and
catching Mr. Carstyle’s alpaca sleeve. The older man looked around
vaguely: he seemed dazed.
“Come away, sir, come away!” cried Vibart, gripping his arm. The buggy
swept past them, and Mr. Carstyle stood in the dust gazing after it.
At length he drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He was
very pale and Vibart noticed that his hand shook.
“That was a close call, sir, wasn’t it? I suppose you thought they were
running.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Carstyle slowly, “I thought they were running.”
“It certainly looked like it for a minute. Let’s sit down, shall we? I
feel rather breathless myself.”
Vibart saw that his friend could hardly stand. They seated themselves
on a tree-trunk by the roadside, and Mr. Carstyle continued to wipe his
forehead in silence.
At length he turned to Vibart and said abruptly:
“I made straight for the middle of the road, didn’t I? If there _had_
been a runaway I should have stopped it?”
Vibart looked at him in surprise.
“You would have tried to, undoubtedly, unless I’d had time to drag you
away.”
Mr. Carstyle straightened his narrow shoulders.
“There was no hesitation, at all events? I--I showed no signs
of--avoiding it?”
“I should say not, sir; it was I who funked it for you.”
Mr. Carstyle was silent: his head had dropped forward and he looked like
an old man.
“It was just my cursed luck again!” he exclaimed suddenly in a loud
voice.
For a moment Vibart thought that he was wandering; but he raised his
head and went on speaking in more natural tones.
“I daresay I appeared ridiculous enough to you just now, eh? Perhaps
you saw all along that the horses weren’t running? Your eyes are younger
than mine; and then you’re not always looking out for runaways, as I am.
Do you know that in thirty years I’ve never seen a runaway?”
“You’re fortunate,” said Vibart, still bewildered.
“Fortunate? Good God, man, I’ve _prayed_ to see one: not a runaway
especially, but any bad accident; anything that endangered people’s
lives. There are accidents happening all the time all over the world;
why shouldn’t I ever come across one? It’s not for want of trying! At
one time I used to haunt the theatres in the hope of a fire: fires in
theatres are so apt to be fatal. Well, will you believe it? I was in the
Brooklyn theatre the night before it burned down; I left the old Madison
Square Garden half an hour before the walls fell in. And it’s the same
way with street accidents--I always miss them; I’m always just too late.
Last year there was a boy knocked down by a cable-car at our corner; I
got to my gate just as they were carrying him off on a stretcher. And so
it goes. If anybody else had been walking along this road, those horses
would have been running away. And there was a girl in the buggy, too--a
mere child!”
Mr. Carstyle’s head sank again.
“You’re wondering what this means,” he began after another pause. “I was
a little confused for a moment--must have seemed incoherent.” His voice
cleared and he made an effort to straighten himself. “Well, I was a
damned coward once and I’ve been trying to live it down ever since.”
Vibart looked at him incredulously and Mr. Carstyle caught the look with
a smile.
“Why not? Do I look like a Hercules?” He held up his loose-skinned hand
and shrunken wrist. “Not built for the part, certainly; but that doesn’t
count, of course. Man’s unconquerable soul, and all the rest of it ...
well, I was a coward every inch of me, body and soul.”
He paused and glanced up and down the road. There was no one in sight.
“It happened when I was a young chap just out of college. I was
travelling round the world with another youngster of my own age and an
older man--Charles Meriton--who has since made a name for himself. You
may have heard of him.”
“Meriton, the archaeologist? The man who discovered those ruined African
cities the other day?”
“That’s the man. He was a college tutor then, and my father, who had
known him since he was a boy, and who had a very high opinion of him,
had asked him to make the tour with us. We both--my friend Collis and
I--had an immense admiration for Meriton. He was just the fellow to
excite a boy’s enthusiasm: cool, quick, imperturbable--the kind of man
whose hand is always on the hilt of action. His explorations had led
him into all sorts of tight places, and he’d shown an extraordinary
combination of calculating patience and reckless courage. He never
talked about his doings; we picked them up from various people on our
journey. He’d been everywhere, he knew everybody, and everybody had
something stirring to tell about him. I daresay this account of the man
sounds exaggerated; perhaps it is; I’ve never seen him since; but at
that time he seemed to me a tremendous fellow--a kind of scientific
Ajax. He was a capital travelling-companion, at any rate: good-tempered,
cheerful, easily amused, with none of the been-there-before superiority
so irritating to youngsters. He made us feel as though it were all as
new to him as to us: he never chilled our enthusiasms or took the bloom
off our surprises. There was nobody else whose good opinion I cared as
much about: he was the biggest thing in sight.
“On the way home Collis broke down with diphtheria. We were in the
Mediterranean, cruising about the Sporades in a felucca. He was taken
ill at Chios. The attack came on suddenly and we were afraid to run
the risk of taking him back to Athens in the felucca. We established
ourselves in the inn at Chios and there the poor fellow lay for weeks.
Luckily there was a fairly good doctor on the island and we sent
to Athens for a sister to help with the nursing. Poor Collis was
desperately bad: the diphtheria was followed by partial paralysis. The
doctor assured us that the danger was past; he would gradually regain
the use of his limbs; but his recovery would be slow. The sister
encouraged us too--she had seen such cases before; and he certainly did
improve a shade each day. Meriton and I had taken turns with the sister
in nursing him, but after the paralysis had set in there wasn’t much to
do, and there was nothing to prevent Meriton’s leaving us for a day or
two. He had received word from some place on the coast of Asia Minor
that a remarkable tomb had been discovered somewhere in the interior;
he had not been willing to take us there, as the journey was not a
particularly safe one; but now that we were tied up at Chios there
seemed no reason why he shouldn’t go and take a look at the place. The
expedition would not take more than three days; Collis was convalescent;
the doctor and nurse assured us that there was no cause for uneasiness;
and so Meriton started off one evening at sunset. I walked down to the
quay with him and saw him rowed off to the felucca. I would have given a
good deal to be going with him; the prospect of danger allured me.
“‘You’ll see that Collis is never left alone, won’t you?’ he shouted
back to me as the boat pulled out into the harbor; I remembered I rather
resented the suggestion.
“I walked back to the inn and went to bed: the nurse sat up with Collis
at night. The next morning I relieved her at the usual hour. It was a
sultry day with a queer coppery-looking sky; the air was stifling. In
the middle of the day the nurse came to take my place while I dined;
when I went back to Collis’s room she said she would go out for a breath
of air.
“I sat down by Collis’s bed and began to fan him with the fan the sister
had been using. The heat made him uneasy and I turned him over in
bed, for he was still helpless: the whole of his right side was numb.
Presently he fell asleep and I went to the window and sat looking down
on the hot deserted square, with a bunch of donkeys and their drivers
asleep in the shade of the convent-wall across the way. I remember
noticing the blue beads about the donkeys’ necks.... Were you ever in
an earthquake? No? I’d never been in one either. It’s an indescribable
sensation ... there’s a Day of Judgment feeling in the air. It began
with the donkeys waking up and trembling; I noticed that and thought it
queer. Then the drivers jumped up--I saw the terror in their faces. Then
a roar.... I remember noticing a big black crack in the convent-wall
opposite--a zig-zag crack, like a flash of lightning in a wood-cut.... I
thought of that, too, at the time; then all the bells in the place began
to ring--it made a fearful discord.... I saw people rushing across the
square ... the air was full of crashing noises. The floor went down
under me in a sickening way and then jumped back and pitched me to the
ceiling ... but where _was_ the ceiling? And the door? I said to myself:
_We’re two stories up--the stairs are just wide enough for one_....
I gave one glance at Collis: he was lying in bed, wide awake, looking
straight at me. I ran. Something struck me on the head as I bolted
downstairs--I kept on running. I suppose the knock I got dazed me, for I
don’t remember much of anything till I found myself in a vineyard a mile
from the town. I was roused by the warm blood running down my nose and
heard myself explaining to Meriton exactly how it had happened....
“When I crawled back to the town they told me that all the houses near
the inn were in ruins and that a dozen people had been killed. Collis
was among them, of course. The ceiling had come down on him.”
Mr. Carstyle wiped his forehead. Vibart sat looking away from him.
“Two days later Meriton came back. I began to tell him the story, but he
interrupted me.
“‘There was no one with him at the time, then? You’d left him alone?’
“‘No, he wasn’t alone.’
“‘Who was with him? You said the sister was out.’
“‘I was with him.’
“‘_You were with him?_’
“I shall never forget Meriton’s look. I believe I had meant to
explain, to accuse myself, to shout out my agony of soul; but I saw the
uselessness of it. A door had been shut between us. Neither of us spoke
another word. He was very kind to me on the way home; he looked after
me in a motherly way that was a good deal harder to stand than his open
contempt. I saw the man was honestly trying to pity me; but it was no
good--he simply couldn’t.”
Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness.
“Shall we turn toward home? Perhaps I’m keeping you.”
They walked on a few steps in silence; then he spoke again.
“That business altered my whole life. Of course I oughtn’t to have
allowed it to--that was another form of cowardice. But I saw myself only
with Meriton’s eyes--it is one of the worst miseries of youth that one
is always trying to be somebody else. I had meant to be a Meriton--I saw
I’d better go home and study law....
“It’s a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive savage, if you like;
but from that hour to this I’ve hankered day and night for a chance to
retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I
want to prove to that man that it was all an accident--an unaccountable
deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward
doesn’t mean that a man’s cowardly... and I can’t, I can’t!”
Mr. Carstyle’s tone had passed insensibly from agitation to irony. He
had got back to his usual objective stand-point.
“Why, I’m a perfect olive-branch,” he concluded, with his dry indulgent
laugh; “the very babies stop crying at my approach--I carry a sort of
millennium about with me--I’d make my fortune as an agent of the Peace
Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that other man unconvinced!”
Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs.
Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots.
“I don’t ask you in,” she said plaintively, to Vibart, “because I can’t
answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that
she’s going to a ball--which is more than I’ve done in years! And
besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our
stuffy little house--the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance’s. Remember
me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no
longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw
the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities
are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was
younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage
no exercise is more injurious than walking.”
She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness.
“Fortunately,” she concluded, “it agrees with Mr. Carstyle.”