"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.