Whats Bred In The Bone | Page 9

did, indeed, was naturally graceful
and courteous.
Guy Waring took the printed sheet from his hands without attaching
much importance to his words, and glanced over it lightly.
"At ten o'clock this morning," the telegram said, "a singular catastrophe
occurred in a portion of the Lavington tunnel on the Great Southern
Railway. As the 9.15 way-train from Tilgate Junction to Guildford was
passing through, a segment of the roof of the tunnel collapsed, under
pressure of the dislocated rock on top, and bore down with enormous
weight upon the carriages beneath it. The engine, tender, and four front
waggons escaped unhurt; but the two hindmost, it is feared, were
crushed by the falling mass of earth. It is not yet known how many
passengers, if any, may have been occupying the wrecked
compartments; but every effort is now being made to dig out the
débris."
Guy read the paragraph through unmoved, to the outer eye, though with
a whitening face, and then took up the dog-eared "Bradshaw" that lay
close by upon the little oak writing-table. His hand trembled. One
glance at the map, however, set his mind at rest.

"I thought so," he said quietly. "Cyril wouldn't be there. It's beyond his
beat. Lavington's the fourth station this way on the up-line from
Chetwood. Cyril's stopping at Tilgate town, you know--I heard from
him on Saturday--and the bit he's now working at's in Chetwood Forest.
He couldn't get lodgings at Chetwood itself, so he's put up for the
present at the White Lion, at Tilgate, and runs over by train every day
to Warnworth. It's three stations away--four off Lavington. He'd have
been daubing for an hour in the wood by that time."
"Well, I didn't attach any great importance to it myself," Nevitt went on,
unconcerned. "I thought most likely Cyril wouldn't be there. But still I
felt you'd like, at any rate, to know about it."
"Oh, of course," Guy answered, still scanning the map in "Bradshaw"
close. "He couldn't have been there; but one likes to know. I think,
indeed, to make sure, I'll telegraph to Tilgate. Naturally, when a man's
got only one relation in the whole wide world--without being a
sentimentalist--that one relation means a good deal in life to him. And
Cyril and I are more to one another, of course, than most ordinary
brothers." He bit his thumb. "Still, I can't imagine how he could
possibly be there," he went on, glancing at "Bradshaw" once more.
"You see, if he went to work, he'd have got out at Warnworth; and if he
meant to come to town to consult his dentist, he'd have taken the 9.30
express straight through from Tilgate, which gets up to London
twenty-five minutes earlier."
"Well, but why to consult his dentist in particular?" Nevitt asked with a
smile. He had very white teeth, and he smiled accordingly perhaps a
little oftener than was quite inevitable. "You Warings are so absolute. I
never knew any such fellows in my life as you are. You decide things
so beforehand. Why mightn't he have been coming up to town, for
example, to see a friend, or get himself fresh colours?"
"Oh, I said 'to consult his dentist,'" Guy answered, in the most
matter-of-fact voice on earth, suppressing a tremor, "because you know
I've had toothache off and on myself, one day with another, for the
whole last fortnight. And it's a tooth that never ached with either of us
before-this one, you see"--he lifted his lip with his forefinger--"the
second on the left after the one we've lost. If Cyril was coming up to
town at all, I'm pretty sure it'd be his tooth he was coming up to see
about. I went to Eskell about mine myself last Wednesday."

The elder man seated himself and leaned back in his chair, with his
violin in his lap; then he surveyed his friend long and curiously.
"It must be awfully odd, Guy," he said at last, after a good hard stare,
"to lead such a queer sort of duplicate life as Cyril and you do! Just
fancy being the counterfoil to some other man's cheque! Just fancy
being bound to do, and think, and speak, and wish as he does! Just
fancy having to get a toothache, in the very same tooth and on the very
same day! Just fancy having to consult the identical dentist that he
consults simultaneously! It'd drive ME mad. Why, it's clean
rideeklous!"
Guy Waring looked up hastily from the telegraph form he was already
filling in, and answered, with some warmth--
"No, no; not quite so. It isn't like that. You mistake the situation. We're
both cheques equally, and neither is a counterfoil. Cyril and I depend
for our characters, as everybody else does, upon our father