Pascoe.  Really?

Carve.  Well, you see we’re more like brothers—­been together so long.  He gives me his best suits too.  Look at this waistcoat. (Motions the hypnotised Pascoe to take a chair.  They light their cigarettes.)

(Enter Horning.)

Pascoe. (Somewhat impatient.) He’s not worse already?

Horning.  Where’s that brandy and water?

Pascoe.  Be careful.  He’s had about enough of that.

Horning.  Seeing I’ve had no dinner yet—­I thought it might suit me. 
(Exit with tumbler.)

Pascoe. (To Carve with renewed eagerness.) So there is a special reason why you keep out of England.

Carve.  Yes—­shyness.

Pascoe.  How—­shyness?

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.