The Great Adventure Part 4

CARVE. Just simple shyness. Shyness is a disease with the governor, a perfect disease.

PASCOE. But everyone's shy. The more experience I get the more convinced I am that we're all shy. Why, you were shy when you came to fetch me!

CARVE. Did you notice it?

PASCOE. Of course. And I was shy when I came in here. I was thinking to myself, "Now I'm going to see the great Ilam Carve actually in the flesh," and I was shy. You'd think my profession would have cured me of being shy, but not a bit. Nervous disease, of course! Ought to be treated as such. Almost universal. Besides, even if he is shy, your governor--even if he's a hundredfold shy, that's no reason for keeping out of England. Shyness is not one of those diseases you can cure by change of climate.

CARVE. Pardon me. My esteemed employer's shyness is a special shyness.

He's only shy when he has to play the celebrity. So long as people take him for no one in particular he's quite all right. For instance, he's never shy with me. But instantly people approach him as the celebrity, instantly he sees in the eye of the beholder any consciousness of being in the presence of a toff--then he gets desperately shy, and his one desire is to be alone at sea or to be buried somewhere deep in the bosom of the earth. (PASCOE laughs.) What are you laughing at? (CARVE also laughs.)

PASCOE. Go on, go on. I'm enjoying it.

CARVE. No, but seriously! It's true what I tell you. It amounts almost to a tragedy in the brilliant career of my esteemed. You see now that England would be impossible for him as a residence. You see, don't you?

PASCOE. Quite.

CARVE. Why, even on the Continent, in the big towns and the big hotels, we often travel incognito for safety. It's only in the country districts that he goes about under his own name.

PASCOE. So that he's really got no friends?

CARVE. None, except a few Italian and Spanish peasants--and me.

PASCOE. Well, well! It's an absolute mania then, this shyness.

CARVE. (Slightly hurt.) Oh, not so bad as that! And then it's only fair to say he has his moments of great daring--you may say rashness.

PASCOE. All timid people are like that.

CARVE. Are they? (Musing.) We're here now owing to one of his moments of rashness.

PASCOE. Indeed!

CARVE. Yes. We met an English lady in a village in Andalusia, and--well, of course, I can't tell you everything--but she flirted with him and he flirted with her.

PASCOE. Under his own name?

CARVE. Yes. And then he proposed to her. I knew all along it was a blunder.

PASCOE. (Ironic.) Did you?

CARVE. Yes. She belonged to the aristocracy, and she was one of those amateur painters that wander about the Continent by themselves--you know.

PASCOE. And did she accept?

CARVE. Oh yes. They got as far as Madrid together, and then all of a sudden my esteemed saw that he had made a mistake.

PASCOE. And what then?

CARVE. We fled the country. We hooked it. The idea of coming to London struck him--just the caprice of a man who's lost his head--and here we are.

PASCOE. (After a pause.) He doesn't seem to me from the look of him to be a man who'd--shall we say?--strictly avoided women.

CARVE. (Startled, with a gesture towards back.) Him?

(PASCOE nods.)

Really! Confound him! Now I've always suspected that; though he manages to keep his goings-on devilish quiet.

PASCOE. (Rising.) It occurs to me, my friend, that I'm listening to too much. But you're so persuasive.

CARVE. It's such a pleasure to talk freely--for once in a way.

PASCOE. Freely--is the word.

CARVE. Oh! He won't mind!

PASCOE. (In a peculiar tone.) It's quite possible!

(Enter HORNING.)

HORNING. (To Carve.) I say, it's just occurred to me, Mr. Carve hasn't been digging or gardening or anything, I suppose, and then taken cold after?

CARVE. Digging? Oh no. He must have got a bad chill on the steamer. Why?

HORNING. Nothing. Only his hands and finger-nails are so rough.

CARVE. (After thinking.) Oh, I see! All artists are like that. Messing about with paints and acids and things. Look at my hands.

PASCOE. But are you an artist too?

CARVE. (Recovering himself, calmly.) No, no.

PASCOE. (To Horning.) How's he going on?

HORNING. (Shrugs his shoulders.) I'm sure the base of both lungs is practically solid.

PASCOE. Well, we can't do more than we have done, my boy.

HORNING. He'll never pull through.

PASCOE. (Calmly.) I should certainly be surprised if he did.

CARVE. (Astounded.) But--but----

PASCOE. But what?

CARVE. You don't mean to say--Why, he's a strong healthy man!