The Greater Inclination Part 15

"Fortunate? Good G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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."

THE TWILIGHT OF THE G.o.d

I

_A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. Through the windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs and the sea_. Isabel Warland _sits reading_. Lucius Warland _enters in flannels and a yachting-cap_.

_Isabel_. Back already?

_Warland_. The wind dropped--it turned into a drifting race. Langham took me off the yacht on his launch. What time is it? Two o'clock?

Where's Mrs. Raynor?

_Isabel_. On her way to New York.

_Warland_. To New York?

_Isabel_. Precisely. The boat must be just leaving; she started an hour ago and took Laura with her. In fact I'm alone in the house--that is, until this evening. Some people are coming then.

_Warland_. But what in the world--

_Isabel_. Her aunt, Mrs. Griscom, has had a fit. She has them constantly. They're not serious--at least they wouldn't be, if Mrs. Griscom were not so rich--and childless. Naturally, under the circ.u.mstances, Marian feels a peculiar sympathy for her; her position is such a sad one; there's positively no one to care whether she lives or dies--except her heirs. Of course they all rush to Newburgh whenever she has a fit. It's hard on Marian, for she lives the farthest away; but she has come to an understanding with the housekeeper, who always telegraphs her first, so that she gets a start of several hours. She will be at Newburgh to-night at ten, and she has calculated that the others can't possibly arrive before midnight.

_Warland_. You have a delightful way of putting things. I suppose you'd talk of me like that.

_Isabel_. Oh, no. It's too humiliating to doubt one's husband's disinterestedness.