The Great Adventure | Page 5

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!
PASCOE. Precisely. Not very unusual for your strong healthy man to
die of pneumonia in twenty-four hours. You ought to know, at your age,
that it's a highly dangerous thing to be strong and healthy. (Turning
away.) I'll have another look at him before I go.
CARVE. (Extremely perturbed.) But this is ridiculous. I simply don't
know what I shall do without that man.
The stage is darkened for a few moments to indicate passage of time.

SCENE 2
TIME.--The next morning but one. Slightly less disorder in the