Some sort of mission affair! I think he had been engaged on that all his life.
The next morning he left for Hindhead, full of eagerness for whatever the future might bring. And a few days later Helen visited him there.
I
WE found out, June and I, by the sheerest accident. At the end of that week she rang me up and asked if I would care to go with her to Hindhead. Some other engagement had fallen through at the last minute, and she had an afternoon and evening unexpectedly free. "We can take the two-seater car," she said, "and we'll just stop at the hotel for tea and then come back."
We went. The sunny ride through Richmond and Guildford and over the Hog's Back (the high, windy way that June and I always preferred) was especially entrancing on that Saturday afternoon. I don't think either of us was very much surprised to find Terry out when we reached the hotel. On such a day of sunshine and cool wind there would have been something wrong with him if he'd been in. Taplow told us that he'd gone for a walk and hadn't left word when he'd return. And then, with the curious Taplow mixture of frankness and discretion, came the remark: "As a matter of fact, sir, Mrs. Severn called this morning, and they went out together."
As a matter of fact! To him, perhaps, it was only that—a fact that might possibly interest us, or possibly might not. His casualness, anyhow, helped us to curb our own astonishment. I managed to order tea, and then June and I sat together in the little window alcove of the sitting-room, each waiting for the other to express the surprise we felt. But curiously, perhaps, neither of us did. We both pretended that Helen's visit was nothing out of the ordinary; Taplow had set us the example. When he brought our tea he said: "They'll have done quite a tidy bit of walking, I daresay, sir. Lovely weather for walking—not too hot, as you might say, sir, and not too cold either."
All June said when he had gone was: "Mother hates walking."
We had tea and tried to sustain a conversation. If this manuscript were an autobiography I should devote whole pages to the thoughts and fears that invaded my mind during that meal; and yet I believe I was quite eloquent about topics that now I can't even remember. There's a sort of talk that is especially copious when one is thinking all the time about something else.
After tea I said: "Shall we wait?"—and she answered quietly: "We'll wait—for a little while." So we waited. It was already half-past six, but June was used to night-driving and there was no particular hurry. The whole year has nothing lovelier, perhaps, than those early days of May, when twilight is like the perfect curtain descending on the perfect play. And yet to me, at any rate, the passing of that afternoon seemed ominous; for we were still waiting, and each minute gave us less to talk about and more to think about. Clouds rolled up and brought the dusk suddenly, and then came heavy, beating rain. When Taplow entered to light the swinging oil-lamps the sad yellow glow peered into all the corners of the room as if to show up rather than dispel the darkness. "This ought to bring 'em back pretty quick," he said, as he closed the windows against the downpour.
Ten minutes after that they came....
II
They came like children, laughing and scampering; they had been running till they were out of breath, and both were wet to the skin. The rain gleamed on their flushed cheeks and shining eyes, and in that small lamp-lit room they looked like wild animals brought to bay. They hardly saw us at first.
Then Helen suddenly cried "Look!"—and pointed to us.
Somehow I felt that it was June or I who ought rather to have cried "Look!" I broke the awkward silence by saying that we had arrived by car not long before.
And Helen said: "Really? Did you come over the Hog's Back or through Godalming?"
"Over the Hog's Back," I answered; and she went on: "I think I prefer the other route. Godalming is such a quaint little town."
The rain was dripping off the brim of her hat and she remarked laughingly that if Mrs. Taplow could lend her some clothes she thought she had better change. She smiled at Terry as she went out of the room.
"You'rewet through, too," I said, when she had gone, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and answered: "Oh, yes, I'll go up and change in a minute. I must talk to you first, though. I'm ever so glad you've come, but why on earth didn't you send me a card as you usually do?"
I explained the circumstances, but he still seemed inclined to protest. "If only Helen and I had known," he said, "we could have made up a party with the car and had a picnic somewhere."
"Perhaps it will do another time," I said conventionally.
He nodded with eagerness. Then he dragged a chair in front of the two of us. "D'you know," he went on, leaning forward and talking rather more to June than to me, "I've been having a great time to-day. Your mother and I have been looking all round the district for houses—or else for a good site to build a house on. We haven't quite made our choice, but we've got several ideas...." He added, with shy gentleness: "Perhaps you're surprised that I call her 'Helen?' You see, she and I are very old friends."
June spoke then for the first time since he had come in. "Thatdoesn't surprise me," she said quietly. "But the house business does. Do you mean that my mother's thinking of coming to live out here?"
"Yes.... That's it.... Isn't it splendid?"
He went on to explain. Apparently, in the beginning, it had been one of my ideas, though I had no recollection of it. Briefly, the suggestion had been that since it was no longer necessary for Severn to live within easy reach of town, the Hampstead house might be exchanged for one further out. As Terry summed it up: "It's really absurd to live near a Tube station when you have the chance of being in the heart of the loveliest county in England."
"Is that Helen's opinion?" I asked.
He smiled. "She's still rather a devotee of the town, but she sees the advantages of living out here. As a matter of fact, I think to-day has converted her. It's been her first day in the country for years."
He went on to tell us, with careful and slightly boring accuracy, exactly where they had been. Then he described several houses that were more than suitable except for their initial disadvantage of being occupied by somebody else. There were one or two good sites, however, and perhaps in the long run it would be more satisfactory to plan and build a house according to taste. "It's great fun," he said, "climbing lots of hills and wondering what houses would be like on the top."
Then Helen came in attired in the rather scarecrow clothes that Mrs. Taplow had lent her. Terry laughed heartily at her appearance, and then left to change out of his own drenched clothes. We were left with Helen.
I'm setting down all this as simply and accurately as I can. I'm reporting rather than describing what happened. It's easier, especially when I come to Helen, for she was very puzzling that night. She seemed younger, happier, triumphant, even; and yet, in some odd way, terrified. She talked copiously and irrelevantly until Terry joined us, and then was suddenly silent. We had supper, and during the meal it was suggested that she should return with June in the car, and that I should stay at the hotel overnight. The plan suited me, and I was glad to agree to it.
By this time the rain had stopped and the sky become clear. Indeed, it was bright moonlight when Terry and I stood in the roadway to give a final wave to the disappearing car. Then we strolled up the cool rain-scented lane and talked.
III
It had all happened so suddenly—to him even more than to me. Crammed into a single phrase, it was Helen's return to his life, and I think he wanted to talk about it quite as much as I did.
It had astonished him, he admitted; for he had never believed it possible that they could be friends again. And especially after the trouncing she gave him about the Karelsky business....
"She apologized for that," he told me. "Not that I wanted her to—a great deal of what she said, from her point of view, was quite true.... But she did apologize, anyway. And then, of course, we had the job of house-hunting."
I asked him if he had had any idea that she was coming, and he answered: "Not the slightest. I was reading in the garden when she suddenly came in by the side gate. She was looking for Taplow—to ask him about the houses, I suppose."
"But she knew you were staying at the hotel."
"Oh, yes, but it wasn't me she came to see. But for Taplow being out, and her looking for him, we might never have met."
"Did she suggest that you should show her round the district?"
He said: "I think we both suggested it together. She said she didn't mind walking, and so naturally...."
After a pause he went on: "I tell you candidly—I didn't think either of us could do it.... Do you remember the other day we were talking about her and I told you she was different? Well, sheisdifferent, in one way, but in another way she's just the same—just the same as if—as if nothing had ever happened.... Do you know what I mean?"
I knew what he meant.
Then he talked enthusiastically about the time when she and Severn would live idyllically on the slopes of one of those Surrey hills. He, of course, might be working hundreds—perhaps thousands of miles away, but it would be pleasant to think of the two of them in such delightful surroundings. They were lucky to have plenty of money; they could build just where they liked and how they liked. And we—he and I—would perhaps visit them from time to time.
What could I say to him? Could I tell him the fear that was in my mind? Could I warn him that the danger that had existed eight years before was still a danger? ...
Not then.... Not, at any rate, till the danger was more evident, till I had proof as well as surmising. I said merely: "Well, I hope you showed her some good places. She ought to be able to find something or other if money isn't much of a consideration."
And he answered smiling: "Oh, yes, we shall find something. She's coming again next week...."
IV
He was so frank about it. And so was Helen. The house business (despite my first uneasy fear to the contrary) proved to be absolutely genuine. June, it was true, hadn't known about it, but Severn had, for it was he who had actually suggested the Hindhead district. So there was nothing intrinsically curious in her visits of exploration.
The ordinary work-a-day person with limited money and limited leisure has no idea of the extraordinary difficulties that confront people with unlimited quantities of both. This matter of choosing a house, for instance. When you have just so much money to spend and so much time to look round in, the chances are that you solve your housing problem quite expeditiously. Far different is the troubled lot of those whose bank balance is no curb upon the gratification of every whim. They climb to the top of high hills and wonder how a house would look from here, or from there, and whether it would be better to have it facing the sun or the prevailing winds or the river tumbling in the valley below. Then there are abstruse problems about garages and gardens and conservatories and electric light and drains and so on. Finally, there is the question of architecture. Is it to be English or classic—the Elizabethan gable or the slim Ionic pediment? ... It is all a very lengthy business, as you can well imagine.
On that second excursion to Hindhead Helen quite made up her mind that no vacant house in the district was at all suitable, and that, therefore, one would have to be built. And this, of course, meant continuing the search for a site. The site was found, if I remember rightly, on the occasion of her fourth visit, but details of aspect, location, and so on, were not settled till the ninth visit, when an architect and surveyor was in attendance.
It must have been an idyllic quest, during those long lovely days of May and June. At first the two of them walked, but walking takes up a lot of time, and besides, as June had said, Helen hated walking. So one day she came down in the big Daimler car, sent the chauffeur back by train, and taught Terry to drive. She couldn't drive herself, but she knew just enough about it to teach him, and he proved such an apt pupil that he drove her safely back to town that very night. And then the next time that the house business demanded her presence at Hindhead he called for her at the End House and there was no need of a chauffeur.
The whole thing was so frank and open and, above all, so sweetly plausible that there was no chance, even if there had been any reason, to tender warning advice. Fate, like a warm sun at noonday, was blazing down on them from a cloudless sky. Terry couldn't even wonder if her days in the country were unfair to Severn, for it was on his behalf that she was taking them. Severn, it appeared, was keen about the new house, and Helen wasn't so especially, even after Terry's strenuous efforts to make her. And how charming, how subtly reassuring was her resistance to those efforts!
He said to me one night in Taplow's garden: "The past is just a big blank—we don't mention it—it doesn't even exist for us. Forgetting isn't the right word—it's rather that we don't trouble to remember something that isn't worth remembering. We were fools, maybe, both of us—and we should be bigger fools if we discussed it now.... Besides, it's so hopelessly out-of-date. All Helen wants now is to make life happier and easier for Severn. That's why she's coming to live out here—not because she's a country-lover herself. She isn't; she's told me so quite candidly. Hyde Park, not Hindhead, is her ideal."
I asked him if he though that she and Severn were getting on better, and he answered: "I'm sure of it. She doesn't always agree with him, of course—(she didn't over that Karelsky business)—but I think she's very happy. That American fellow's coming to operate on July 19th, and she's building up great hopes about it...."
V
And June ...?
I hardly know for certain, because she said so little about her own thoughts and feelings. As a novelist, perhaps I am entitled to be omniscient, but even omniscience doesn't lead me very much further than the obvious fact that June and Helen were separated by a deep and growing antagonism. I shall never forget that night at the End House when June faced her mother with that white-hot question: "Why should you interfere?"
But after that there was never another outbreak. Maybe the antagonism sank deeper; I had the constant impression that the more June felt the less she would say; until the time came when feeling would make her almost inarticulate. Anyhow, during those long midsummer days, though I saw her frequently, Helen's name was never mentioned, and even Terry's only rarely.
We went to Hindhead quite often, and Terry was always charmingly eager to see us. Never again, after that first unexpected visit, did we meet Helen there; I think June saw to that. Usually she and Terry played tennis, or else he, with his new eagerness for motor-driving, took us out in Taplow's prehistoric Ford. With this, as with most other enthusiasms, he went vastly to extremes; one afternoon a short trip to Aldershot developed into a grand tour of three counties, ending up in a breakdown and an ignominious return by train. He was always, too, immensely keen on showing us the site of the new house and giving us full and technical details of Helen's most recent visit. Never, by a word or a gesture, did June show anything but interest, but I got so bored with climbing up the same old hill and standing in the broiling sunlight to admire the same old view, that I formed the excellent habit of staying in the car while he and June made their expeditions alone. They were usually gone about half-an-hour—just time enough for a quiet smoke and a morsel of reflection.
What sort of a game was Helen playing? I thought it over, on those and other occasions, from every possible angle, and at the end of it all I had no convictions, only suspicions as before. If, at any rate, she were playing a game at all, it was a mighty clever as well as a mighty dastardly one—the cleverest and most dastardly by far that she had ever played.... But perhaps it wasn't a game. Perhaps they were both, with blindly honest footsteps, stumbling over the old ground into the trap that time had artfully concealed.... And perhaps there wasn't even a trap. Perhaps two people who had once been lovers reallycouldmeet again after a space of years and be no more than friends.... Time, at any rate, would show.
Time showed, in my opinion, when Severn obtained for Terry the offer of a job and Terry asked for a few weeks to think it over. It was a junior professorship of bacteriology in an Australian university, carrying with it a commencing salary of three hundred a year, and to me it seemed so good, in the circumstances, that Terry ought to have accepted it joyously and outright. I couldn't understand what there was to think over, and his vague replies when I talked to him about it only increased my astonishment. He admitted it was a good post. He assured me he hadn't the slightest objection to going abroad; on the contrary, he thought he would prefer it, and especially a country like Australia. Quite probably he would accept—oh, quite probably; it was just that he would prefer not to give an absolutely definite answer just then.
The matter worried me, and I had the impression that it was worrying June also. Something was worrying her, anyhow; there was a quite perceptible cloud somewhere on her horizon. One afternoon I found her lying prone in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden, and sobbing—sobbing as only people can do who aren't good at putting their feelings into words. I didn't let her see me, and went back quietly into the bar-room. Terry was there, reading a letter that the postman had just brought.
As soon as he saw he me gave a triumphant cry of delight. "It's from Helen," he said, smiling eagerly, "and she's coming down again on Thursday about the house...."
VI
That settled it. I went to Hampstead the next day.
You can imagine the mood I was in, and you can imagine, perhaps, that I hadn't any very definite plans. The weather was burningly hot, and at the Tube station, to save myself the trouble of climbing the steep hill for nothing, I rang up the End House to enquire if Helen were at home. It was she herself who answered, and asked me quite politely what I wanted. The abrupt query nonplussed me for the moment, and by the time I was stammering something about a short talk, she was telling me that she was just going out, and would it do another time?
"To-morrow?" I suggested.
She was sorry, but she was afraid to-morrow was booked up.
"The next day?"
She was sorrier than ever, but she was engaged then as well. "And on Thursday I'm going down to Hindhead.... Friday might do, if you don't mind a few others being here...."
I said it didn't matter, rang off suddenly, and walked up the hill to the house. I thought then it had been a mistake to telephone, but perhaps, after all, it wasn't. For it led to that curious meeting with her on the shaded lawn beneath the elm-trees; she was lounging in a basket-chair, reading the latest novel, and had quite obviously no more intention of going out that afternoon than I had of being tricked by her most ordinary of evasions.
She showed no embarrassment. Her smile was perfect as I crossed the lawn towards her, and I could see those summer days at Hindhead written on her face in tints of pink and brown. "Hello," she exclaimed, with casual surprise. "I thought you were in town. Didn't you telephone just now?"
"Yes, but from a call-box down the road. I was on my way here."
"But why on earth didn't you tell me?"
"Would it have made any difference?"
"Of course it would ... I wouldn't have lied about going out if I'd known you were so near. Only you said you wanted a talk, and I felt so absolutely incapable of talking that I didn't think it worth while to drag you all the way from the City."
"Nevertheless, now I'm here—if you don't mind—Idowant a talk with you."
"All right. Let's have some tea first." She rang a small silver hand-bell and then chattered languidly until the maid came. "Geoffrey's having tea in his study with that surgeon man from Chicago. I hate their scientific talk—that's why I came away."
I asked her if all the arrangements had been made for the operation, and she told me it was to take place the following Wednesday in a nursing-home.
"This afternoon is purely a social visit, I suppose?"
"Oh, purely social. They were discussing Abdominal Section when I left.... Why don't you go and join them? I'm sure you'd find their conversation much more enlivening than mine."
I said I would prefer hers, if she didn't object. Then the tea came, and we touched on other matters. She was very flippant and cynical, especially about the projected new house. "It's going to cost heaps of money, and when I've lived in it a fortnight I know I shall long for a flat in Dover Street.... I'd be bored with it already but for the excuse it gives me to see Terry."
That was how and where we began.
Looking back on it all now I find it difficult—impossible in fact—to remember the stages of the argument. Perhaps really this is because it wasn't an argument so much as a disconnected series of questions and answers. She was so overwhelmingly, so terrifyingly frank. It was disconcerting; it gave one a peculiar feeling of insecurity, like walking into an unknown house and finding all the doors closed but unlocked.
And also, she didn't care. That, I can see, makes for frankness. Having stormed her citadel, I was free to do as I chose; she offered not the slightest resistance. I asked her cautious questions at first, and she answered them; then I asked her bolder questions, and she answered them. She didn't care. I said: "I may as well tell you outright that I think you and Terry are both on very dangerous ground."
"I daresay we are," she answered. She took a cigarette from a dainty little gold case, and lit it with langorous nonchalance.
"You don't mind me giving you my opinion?"
"Not in the least."
"Will you take any notice of it?"
"Probably not."
"You just intend to do whatever you like?"
"Yes."
"As regards Terry?"
"Yes."
"But—Helen—whatisit that you're going to do?"
"I'm not certain."
"You're not going to make a fool of him again?"
That stung her out of her somnambulist calmness. She answered, with sharp passion: "Why do you say that? Why do you insult me? I didn't ask you to come here—I even tried to stop you from coming. Whydidyou come? ... If you don't like what you're hearing, go away."
I told her quietly that I didn't like what I was hearing, but that I wasn't going away.
Then she cried out: "Stay, then. Do whatever you like—I don't care. I've made up my mind what I'm going to do, and I'll do it, right or wrong.... And if you say a word to Terry, I'll deny everything and call you a liar.He'llbelieve me."
"You'd dothat?"
"I'd doanything. I'm absolutely at the limit of unscrupulousness. Whenyouwant anything badly enough—if you ever do—perhapsyou'llbe the same...."
VII
Here's where I'm in danger of going astray. I feel I must keep on reminding myself of the circumstances—forgetting Helen herself and thinking only of the case as it would be docketed in some psychologist's bureau.... A woman, aged thirty-eight, married to a charming, clever, and wealthy man who, owing to an accident, cannot move out of his chair. Eight years ago she had an "affair" with a man seven years her junior, upsetting his career and half-ruining his life altogether. Now, while her husband passes his dull eventless days as best he can, she meets this young man and amuses herself with him again....
It all sound pretty hopeless. And yet I can hear now her words, spoken amidst the dreaming haze of that summer afternoon.... "I'mnotamusing myself. I'm in earnest as I've never been before. I've been in earnest ever since that night I told him the truth about Karelsky. Do you remember how wrong we all were about him? June and you thought it would do him harm to be told how he'd been swindled, and I thought it would do him good—and we were all wrong, because it just hadn't any effect on him at all! He didn't care—he was beyond things like money or fame.... There's something in him—something that makes him the sort of man he is—something that draws me to him more than love. Itismore than love.... I could have gone without him easily but for seeing that in him.... Hilton, can't you realize? He'sstraightand he'strue, and I've been living my life up to now with a man who laughs at straightness and truth. Can't you imagine how it is—can't yousee?"
I remember how I was silent, and how, touching my arm eagerly, she went on: "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I haven't been very straight and true myself.... But Ihave. I've been true to one man, and that's all you can expect any woman to be. It isn't my fault that the man I've been true to doesn't happen to be my husband.... He might have been ifyouhadn't interfered."
"IfIhadn't interfered?"
"Yes ... that's what I said."
"You mean, I suppose, that I'm to blame for persuading Terry to go to Vienna?"
"Everything would have been different if you hadn't done so."
"You would have gone away with him?"
"Yes."
"And married him—after the divorce formalities?"
"Yes."
"And you really think that you'd have been willing to give up your life of luxury to become the wife of a man whose yearly earnings would hardly pay for your hats?"
"He would have earned more if I'd been with him."
"Perhaps a very little more. But double or treble would still have seemed poverty to you."
"I wouldn't have cared.... You think I love money and luxury, but I don't—it all means nothing to me, really. As for Geoffrey's money, it gets on my nerves—Ihateit. Even now—in his chair all day long—he's making more of it—buying and selling shares and speculating and gambling and winning—yes, winning nine times out of ten. That's his way—he's always found winning the easiest job in the world.... Yet Terry can't even get the few paltry pounds he worked himself ill for! Oh, it's all sickening and damnable, and I wish we were all naked savages in a land where there wasn't such a thing as money.... I can't bear to think of it—it makes me want to go wild and fly at somebody's throat—anybody's—yours—Terry's—even Geoffrey's...."
I interrupted her then. I said quietly: "That's all very well, Helen, but you would have cared—years ago—even if money doesn't matter to you now. In fact, youdidcare—and that was why, in my opinion, you didn't go away with him when you had the chance. He was willing, but you weren't.... I'm not blaming you, of course. But it's rather unfair of you to suggest that it was I who stood in your way, when all the time it was you yourself."
She stumbled forward a little, as if all her body had slackened. After a pause she said slowly and not very distinctly: "If it's true—evenif it's true—I couldn't help it...." It was as though she were pleading for some sort of mercy. She continued more sharply: "How do you know all this? Terry would never tell you anything, I know. Are youreallyclever enough to see into me, or was it only a lucky guess? ... Oh, things—things—as Terry used to say—what a curse they are when we want to follow our heart's desire!" After another pause she recovered a kind of cynical equanimity. "You were quite right," she said, "to smash up my heroics. I'm rather worthless, I daresay.... I married Geoffrey because he was able to give me all that a part of me craved for—charming and cultured richness—you know the sort of thing. Geoffrey alwayswasrich—even before he made any money; he had rich ideas and loved rich things. Part of me married him for that, and I never knew there was any other part of me till I met Terry.... You do realize a little, don't you? Iknowyou do—I somehowfeelyou do.... Not that I care very much whether you do or don't. I've made up my mind."
"For what?"
The abrupt question seemed to stir her. "I've made up my mind that—in certain circumstances—I'll take the short cut to happiness."
"Short cuts are apt to be dangerous."
"Danger? Who cares for that? There comes a time when nothing—nothing at all—counts but getting what you crave for."
"Well?"
"Would you condemn any woman to a whole life-time of wanting something that she could get any moment by having the courage?"
"I don't know. I don't know quite what it is you're proposing to do."
She said then: "Everything depends on next week—on Geoffrey's operation."
"How?"
She looked at me fearlessly. "I hope, for his sake and mine, that it's successful. For if it is—if he's going to get better—then I shall leave him."
"And if not?"
"Then—I suppose—I must just go onwanting...."
VIII
There wasn't in me then, and there isn't in me now when I think of it, any shred of anger with her. (That, of course is the danger, and, all the hard remorseless analysis in the world won't alter it.) I may as well confess the truth; her pleadings had stirred me to vivid sympathy with her. I felt, if it conveys anything to say so, that deep down behind all her treachery she was as true and straight as Terry himself.
And yet I wasn't on her side. I didn't agree with her. I hardly knew how much I disagreed until I began to talk about it. I remember how, as I talked, the blazing edge of the shadow crept towards us till we were in full sunlight—so hot that we had to move back. And over in another garden not far away there sounded the sharp plick-plock of crocquet-balls—delicious, enchanting accompaniment.
She might or might not leave Geoffrey, I began; that was, in a sense, her own affair. But the question of Terry was different—it was my affair, anybody's affair, as much as hers. Did she, I asked her plainly, think she was going to run straightway from Geoffrey to Terry?
She said: "Perhaps not straightway. But sooner or later—of course."
"It will just be a matter of guiding your relationship out of the Platonic paths into something more—intense?"
"Put it that way if you like."
"Of course you've been very clever. You've disguised your intentions very successfully—I'm sure he hasn't the slightest suspicion of them."
"I hope not."
I told her then the truth as I saw it. I was speaking, I urged her to believe, not as a moralist, but as a plain critic of circumstances.... She could leave Geoffrey, but—and I was quite ruthlessly frank about it—Terry would never have her. Terry, I went on, would never andcouldnever be happy with the wife of another man. There was something in his make-up—conscience (if she liked the word)—which would always intervene. And when that other man was his friend and benefactor the idea became absolutely impossible and unthinkable. Then, too, there was another point. If she left Geoffrey she would destroy the idea of her that was in Terry's mind—an idea that satisfied him more, perhaps, than any other idea of her that he had ever had. "You've been a hypocrite with him," I told her. "You've made him think that you and Geoffrey are perfectly happy, that all you care about is Geoffrey's happiness with you, and that the past is just a blank. Only the other day he told me how wonderful he thought it was that you and he could be such friends again—suchfriends, mind.... It's your only real chance—to go on acting the part you've made for yourself. If you don't—if you leave Geoffrey—I think I know what Terry will do. He'll just drop you—suddenly—without a word—as if you'd done something utterly and hopelessly caddish. It might cost him something to do it; it might shatter his faith in human nature; it might and probably would wipe out all the recovery in mind he's made so far; but he'd do it—I'm positive he'd do it. There's something in him, as you say, that makes him the sort of man he is—and that something, which you and I know but can't describe, would make him do it."
All she said was: "It wouldn't. I know him better than you. I have no fear of him."
"You think he loves you?"
"I don't know. Possibly. Probably.... But it would all come back so easily."
"And what then? Do you think he would be happy?"
"Weshould be happy." She added, with a new note in her voice: "Think of it—in all my life the happiest moments have been with Terry, and in all his life the happiest moments have been with me.... And yet you ask me such questions!"
She laid her hand gently on my arm as she went on: "Don't be angry with me for what I'm going to do. If it's wrong, then I choose to do wrong—deliberately and with my eyes open. We all have that right, haven't we?"
"It's a terrible right."
"Yes, I know. But don't preach—I'm past all that."
"I'm not preaching. It's just that I think it's such a frightful mistake from your own point of view."
"No, no...."
"Helen—don't you see?—Don't you see howimpossibleit is—howutterlyimpossible ...?"
"I know that Icando it ... and Iwilldo it...."
* * * * * * * *
The sunlit lawn, and the blue sky over it, and the End House there behind the foliage of the giant elms. Someone came out of the house through the conservatories, walked briskly under the trees, and then across the broad belt of sunlight. Small of stature, rather fat, and utterly unlike an explorer to the head waters of the Amazon, he blinked owlishly as he stepped into the shadow near us.... Mr. Hermann, of Chicago.
Helen introduced us, and the man touched my hand—just touched it—with those fat clammy fingers of his—maybe the most valuable fingers in the world, anyhow. He was vurry glad to make my acquaintance.... And then, to Helen: "Can I have a few words with you, Mrs. Severn?"
"Now?" She had obviously assumed that he had come merely to say good-bye.
"Ifconvenient."
She told him he might speak freely before me, and I wished she hadn't. Somehow I felt I wanted to get away, to walk by myself along the Spaniards Road and think over all that she and I had said; Mr. Hermann, of Chicago—(I will admit it)—jarred on me.
Then I heard him telling her that he was afraid what he had to say wasn't vurry good news.... No—she needn't alarm herself—he had just left her husband in the vurry best of health, having regard to the circumstances. It wasn't that....
"Please tell me," she said calmly.
He looked at her as if he approved and admired her directness. And he told her. I shall never forget the way her face turned ashen white as she listened; she seemed, too, in that short space of minutes, to grow years older.... He had made a careful examination of her husband, he began. It was a most complicated case, and he wouldn't use any technical language; but, to be perfectly candid, the matter was altogether different from what he had been led to expect. "You see, Mrs. Severn, how it is? Your husband's trouble is not what I thought—is not what he thought, either."
"It is more serious?" she said, still calmly.
"Oh, no. Not exactlymoreserious. Just different."
"Well?"
He coughed and cleared his throat. "The operation—if there was to have been one at all—ought to have been performed immediately after the accident. That is my opinion."
She bore it well, though she didn't—for the moment—realize all that his words implied.
"But still," she whispered, "even now...."
"Now, I am vurry sorry to say, is too late."
"Too late!Too late?" She was realizing a little—just a little. "You mean that you're not even going totry?"
"To try, Mrs. Severn, when there is no chance at all, would be plain murder."
"No chance at all!"
"I'm afraid not."
We stood round her chair, and though she didn't faint or do anything like that, we could see that her mind and everything personal in her had flown far away from that sunlit garden. Hermann, in his odd jarring manner, was bubbling with sympathy; he doubtless considered her emotion perfectly natural in the circumstances. "A vurry sad case," he muttered to me. "Vurry sad indeed. She's a brave woman—she'll get over it.... But at first—after having hoped so much.... By the way, I didn't tell Severn. Thought it best not to....Herjob, that is—or yours—do it better than an outsider...."
I nodded. "Will he always be the same?" I whispered.
"Always. Not the ghost of a chance of anything else. Never was.... Don't know how anybody calling himself a specialist could have made a mistake about it."
"He'll live, I suppose?"
"Live?" He put his soft flabby hand over my wrist in a way intended to be encouraging. "My dear sir, there's no need to betoodespondent. With luck he'll live as long as you or me—maybe longer."
IX
After Hermann had gone, we went in—Helen and I—to see Severn. Totellhim....
That which might have been the hardest thing in the world proved, after all, to be the easiest. He was reading when we entered, and as soon as he saw us he began: "I say, he's told you! I wondered if he would. I suppose he thought you'd break it gently to me...."
"You know!" I gasped.
"Know? I should know by your faces, anyhow. But as a matter of fact, I knew as soon as he'd finished prodding me in the back. Knew by the way he changed the subject when I questioned him. Knew by everything he said and looked.... Lawyers get used to reading faces."
He went on: "Don't look so terrible about it! ... After all, what the Law will lose, Literature will gain.... By the way, my book on Disraeli comes out next week. Give me a good review, won't you, Hilton? Something wistful and pathetic—in your own inimitable style. A sob in every line. Short paragraph about Disraeli. Column and a half about me. You know the sort of thing?"
I stammered something—Heaven knows what—and he asked me to reach a half-opened parcel that was on his table. "Advance copies," he said. "Give me one of them, will you? And my fountain-pen."
I obeyed, and he wrote my name with a great flourish on the fly-leaf. "There! My gift to you on this memorable occasion. Take it away and read it.... A gem of irony, sparkling with epigram and polished satire—that's what all the other critics will say. But you—you only—must see through it—must see the tragedy behind the mask.... Know what I mean?"
I didn't know. I don't know now. I don't know whether he was laughing at me, or whether, at this queer and desperate moment, emotion was seething in him. There were tears in his eyes, but they may have been tears of laughter.... I just don't know....
* * * * * * * *
Outside his room, with the sunlight streaming in upon us both, she took my hand in hers. All the time she hadn't spoken a word. She had sat beside him, pale and silent, gazing emptily at the shelves of books. When we left, he had smiled at her, and she had smiled back at him. That was all.
We walked into the quiet garden, where the shadows were conquering the last strip of sunlight on the lawn. The maid was clearing away the tea-cups. In that other garden not far off someone was still playing crocquet.... It was all, in a strange and curious way, reassuring.
"So now ..." I began, and stopped.
I think she knew what was in my mind, for she whispered: "I—shall keep—my word...."
I
SHE would keep her word....
All the way down in the train to Haslemere I was thinking of that. It was just such another day as its tragic predecessor—dry, windless, grey with heat that towards mid-day would become almost unbearable. If London at nine o'clock had been a tepid bath, Haslemere at eleven was a furnace. All around the grass and furze on the hills had caught fire, and the scorching, pungent smoke was drifting like a white mist over the town.
She would keep her word.... Through a night of broken perspiring sleep I had pondered over it, dreamed about it, and still there were corners of its vast ramifications that I hadn't explored. Was it for good or bad that things had happened as they had happened? Severn cooped endlessly in his chair, or Severn alive again, dazzling the world, drinking life to the full, charming, cynical, eternally young-old, with both hands ever ready to help the struggling youngster, and a paramour, might be, in every capital in Europe? Helen, living under his roof, but without love for him, without even respect, with nothing but grim and fearful rectitude; or Helen free—free to lead Terry once again into the sea of doubt and remorse? Which was the happier picture?
The night had been full of fears. They had attacked in legions from midnight till dawn, undermining everything that I had held true and axiomatic. One moment I was glad because, whatever else might happen, it was well that she should leave Terry alone. And then, the moment after, had come the fear that she might not leave him alone, even then; that she would see him, many more times, as a friend; that he would grow to love her again, without willing it, without even knowing it. Perhaps he had even begun already; perhaps that was his reason for not accepting the Australian offer. And what did it matter whether she kept her word or not, if the lure of her were already over him?
Such fears had grown by daylight, and were monstrous as I climbed that morning over the sun-scorched ridge of Hindhead. Whyhadn'the accepted the Australian offer?
It was one o'clock when I reached the hotel, and I was in time for lunch with him. I told him, without much in the way of preamble, what Hermann had said about Severn. Naturally he was shocked and disappointed. "Poor Helen!" were his first words of comment. Not "Poor Severn!" He added then, as if sensing my thoughts: "It will be a much greater blow to her than to him, I know. She was hoping so much—toomuch—from the operation."
And June too—shehad been hoping. She had promised to motor down that afternoon, he said, but perhaps, in the altered circumstances, she wouldn't come.
We finished our meal in rather gloomy silence, but afterwards, in the garden, I asked him about his own future. The Australian offer mightn't remain open for long, I hinted broadly.... Had he yet made up his mind about it?
"Not quite," he replied. "Very soon I'll let Severn know definitely.... But a few days can't matter, surely?"
It was all (to me) very disquieting, and I was glad to talk of something else.
June came about tea-time. She had driven from town in under the hour, and her arms, hands, and face were almost nut-brown. She seemed depressed about her father's condition, though she said very little about it. She said very little, in fact, about anything; I had never known her so taciturn. After tea, though the sun was still hot, she went with Terry to the tennis-court, while I stayed in Taplow's garden with a pipe, a bottle of beer, and Severn'sDisraeli. I hadn't read far before I knew that it was easily the best thing (in the way of literature) that he had done, and that it would cause something of a sensation. That pleased me a great deal; it was fine to think that he had it in him to excel in a rôle to which his condition offered no impediment. Disraeli, of course suited his ironic treatment; there was much in common, I thought, between the author and his subject. Both posed strenuously all their lives, and both are still enigmas.
Yet even Severn's delightful style (more French, by the way, than English) could not keep sleep away from me for long. I closed my eyes at six o'clock or thereabouts, and when I opened them it was quite dark, though not late, because the bar was still lit up. Taplow laughed when I went in. "You was sleeping, sir," he said, "and I didn't see no reason to disturb you. The others are out—said they didn't want any supper. Yours is laid ready in the coffee-room.... Will you take beer or wine, sir?"
Beer.... The coffee-room windows were wide open, and the night air, slightly cool, drifted in with waves of flower-perfume and moths that fluttered noisily round the lamp.... Beer, cold beef, pickles, bread, and a dig out of a huge Stilton.... Idyllic meal, almost (but not quite) sufficient to dispel all the fears that ever a human mind possessed.
Afterwards I sat out in a deck-chair under the blue-black sky and smoked a cigar. It was past eleven; Terry and June would be back soon, no doubt. Perhaps they had driven somewhere in the car, and there had been a breakdown. Was the car in the garage? I was too lazy to go and look....
There was no moonlight; only the silver stars. The yellow glow from the coffee-room window died down slowly; Taplow was carrying out the lamp.... The wind breathing idly through the trees, and the scent of hollyhocks, and sleep-sleep-sleep again....
II
Voices in the garden....
It was midnight, probably; itfeltmidnight. The cigar in my hand had long ago gone out. On the lawn the heavy dew was glistening faintly; there was no light anywhere but starshine, and no sound anywhere but the voices.
Terry's voice. I heard him say: "Everybody gone to bed, of course. I've got the key, though."
And then, in answer, a whisper more to be felt than heard. "Oh, the lovely—lovelynight! ... Terry, can't we go for another walk?"
That was June.... They had entered by the side-gate, and were standing, so far as I could judge, outside the back-door of the bar—perhaps thirty or forty yards away from me.
He said: "Now? Why, it's long past midnight. Hilton will be sitting up for me."
"Never mind—he won't care.... Oh, Terry—Terry—I feel so utterly miserable to-night—I don't want to go in at all."
"Wemust, June. It'stoolate to be out."
Silence for seconds—perhaps for a minute altogether.
And then: "Terry, are you going to take that job in Australia?"
I started so suddenly that my chair creaked, and I almost wondered if they would hear. But no ... the sound was drowned in a tiny murmur that swelled like a tide through the whole garden—as if the trees and the bushes and the tall hollyhocks were all stooping to listen to the answer.
It came.
"June, I've told you I must. It's a good post, June—I can't afford to let it go. It wouldn't be fair to your father."
"Hewouldn't trouble. I'm sure he wouldn't."
"Ishould, though. I've got from Taplow a full account of all I've cost while I've been here, and when I'm earning money I shall pay back every penny of it. It's only fair."
"Fair? Terry, how can youthinkit's fair, when the money that's such a lot to you is so little to him? It's absurd—he'd laugh at it."
"It doesn't matter. I can't live at his expense any longer, now there's a job been offered me."
"And you want the job?"
"Yes ... I want ... my work."
Another pause, and then, out of the velvet silence: "Terry....Don't go...."
"June! ...June! ...Whatdo you mean?"
Was it an echo to him out of the past—the past that, so he had said, was just a blank that nobody remembered?
Footsteps crunched along the gravel; the latch of the side-gate was lifted up; they had gone out again into the pale, starlit lane....
III
It was past two when he came up to bed. No longer at all sleepy, I was waiting for him in the sole armchair that our room possessed; Severn'sDisraeliwas open on my knee, but it had taken me over an hour to read five of its most fascinating pages.
He said nothing at first, beyond apologizing for his lateness. I thought he looked worried and unsettled; he went to the window, lit a cigarette, and stood there for a moment with his back towards me.
"Sleepy?" he said at last.
"Not particularly," I replied.
"Neither am I."
Was it an invitation to talk? I wondered, but I knew that if it were he would soon repeat it more definitely.
He said, after a pause: "I don't think I shall sleep at all to-night."
"No?"
The less you encouraged him the more likely he was to say what was in his mind. That had always been his way.
He swung round suddenly. "By the way, Hilton, I want to take that job in Australia."
"You do?"
"Yes....Youthink I ought to, don't you?"
I said: "From the purely personal point of view I'm just hating the thought of you taking it. But, on the other hand, you must admit it's a goodish job, as jobs go nowadays."
"Yes.... That's what I feel. And I can't go on like this...."
He dragged a small chair near to the window and sat down. "Aged thirty and beginning all over again," he went on. "No money. Heavily in debt. No position. Impossible to think of marriage—even if I wanted to.... And yet, for all that, in the things that really matter, I've succeeded. Icanfeel that, can't I?"
I nodded. "From your own point of view, undoubtedly. But there are times when the material side of life is apt to come to the front rather awkwardly."
"Yes." His voice was eager, as if he had found me interpreting his own thoughts. "Hilton, to tell you the truth, I'm in a fix.... I want to take this job, as I said—in fact, I know Imusttake it—and yet—and yet...." He hesitated, and then finished up: "There's such an odd sort of difficulty in the way."
And as always it had to be wormed out of him by degrees, though the task was easier through my fairly accurate knowledge of what was coming. June, he said, had all along been against his taking the job. She had said it was too far away, and that it wasn't good enough for him. "Of course I daresay the salary does seem ridiculous to her. She probably spends three hundred a year on her clothes."
I rather doubted that, but I made no interruption. He went on: "Anyhow, that doesn't matter.... The point is that after what she said I promised I'd think it over for a fortnight before deciding.... So now you understand why it was I couldn't give you a definite answer?"
Yes, I knew, and had guessed for over an hour, though I didn't tell him that.
"The fortnight ended to-night, and I told her I'd made up my mind to accept."
"Good."
"But then—more than ever—she seemed against the idea."
"In other words, she asked you not to go?"
"It amounted to that."
"What answer did you give?"
"I said ... I promised again ... that I'd think it over."
That, for some reason or other, made me laugh. "I'm afraid, Terry," I said, "my cross-examination of you is going to be rather stiff.... First of all, you say youwantto take the job?"
"Yes."
"And yet you told her you'd think it over?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to think it over?"
"I—I suppose so."
"So you haven't quite made up your mind?"
"Well—not absolutely."
"So it comes to this—that a woman's persuasion stands in the way of what you want to do?"
He shook his head. "No, no. I must take the job. There's no alternative—I quite see that. But—I don't like to disappoint her."
"Or yourself?"
He said, simply: "We've been very good friends, that's all I can say."
Then he began suddenly to talk in sharp jerks of words, as if speaking the thoughts that came to him.
"Of course, inanycase, it couldn't have gone on for long. She's young now—not twenty-one till next month.... Sooner or later, she's bound to marry somebody—somebody with wealth and position, most likely—and—naturally—it couldn't go on after that...."
"What couldn't go on?"
"Our—friendship."
I knew then, from the curious way he spoke the word "friendship", that he had begun to love her....
IV
Somehow I had never thought of that, had never even hoped for it.... And now, with all its train of dazzling possibilities, it was leaping towards me.... Not Helen—but June.... That wanted some realizing.... And with the realization, and the serenity of it, came just a faint flavour of sadness too. I think there is always a sadness in feeling that timedoescount, and thatgrandes passions canfade away.
Mother and daughter.... What sort of a battle had they been waging, silently, perhaps unconsciously, during the months that had passed? Helen, I know, had been scrupulously platonic, and maybe, after all, it was a just irony that he should come to desire no more than her friendship. But June? Was there more than friendship there?
I believe, if it comes to laying down a creed, that the love of Terry and June had grown very quietly and gradually until at last, in Taplow's garden that night, it had broken out into no more than those two words of hers—"Don't go..."
I don't know how exactly Terry and I got over the immense difficulty of his reserve. Perhaps we never did get over it; at any rate, he never admitted in so many words that he had grown to love June. But from a certain moment of that warm July night I began to talk to him as if hehadadmitted it, as if it were something obvious and perfectly understood between us. I said, for instance: "No man ought ever to think he has no chance with any woman." He didn't ask me what on earth I was talking about as I had half expected. He just leaned back in his chair, puffed restlessly at a cigarette, and pondered—until I thought he was never going to answer at all. And then, when the reply did come, it was spoken in another tone—as if the whole plane and angle of our conversation had been shifted. "It's as you said, Hilton.... Material things crop up at awkward moments. What chance would a penniless man approaching middle age have with a young girl of wealth and position?"
"It depends, of course. It depends on whether she loves him or not."
"She doesn't."
"Then obviously he would stand no chance at all."
Silence for a while after that. He looked—if the combination is even possible—triumphant and despondent—triumphant at having led his argument to an apparent victory, and despondent over the deeper issues of the discussion. Then, rather daringly after a pause, I introduced the personal element by asking him why he thought June had been so keen on his declining the Australian offer.
"I suppose she thought that—in various ways—it wasn't suitable."
"Even after you assured her it was? Do you think that in such a matter she would set her opinion against yours, unless she had some deeper reason as a motive?"
"What deeper reason?"
"Do you really mean to pretend it doesn't occur to you? To me it seems the most perfectly obvious thing that ever was. She doesn't want you to go to Australia because she doesn't like the thought of being without you when you've gone."
"Oh ... that's absurd...."
"Not a bit absurd. Do you think she's known you all this time without growing fond of you?"
"We've been good friends, of course."
"Friends? ... Some people would smile if you told them that. They'd say, to begin with, that she's compromised herself with you pretty hopelessly by staying here to-night.... Mrs. Taplow as a chaperon wouldn't impress them."
"What! Do you mean to say——"
I said, interrupting him: "Whatever I mean is not the slightest reflection on either you or her. I really needn't say that. We're broad-minded people—we don't bother about silly conventions.... But some people do—you'd be surprised how many—and my point in mentioning the matter is simply this.... Is it likely that June would risk getting herself talked about in connection with a man of whom she wasn't rather fond?"
"I don't think she cares whether people talk about her or not."
"Then depend upon it," I answered, "the crisis has been reached. When a woman doesn't care whether people talk about her or not, there's only one conclusion to be drawn. She's in love."
"Oh, that's nonsense—if you're trying to make out that she's in love withme...."
"Perhaps you can think of somebody else, then?"
And so it went on. It was uphill work, I can tell you, trying to convince Terry that he wasn't the meanest little worm that ever crawled on the earth.
Towards three o'clock the moment came when I judged it safe to mention the word "marriage." If, I said, he thought there was any doubt about her feeling for him, why didn't he put the matter to the obvious test? "Go to her straightforwardly and say: 'I don't want to give up your charming society, but I really must have that job. If, however, you would care to marry me and accompany me to Australia, the difficulty would be rather neatly solved.'"
Marriage? It was absurd to think of it, he said. He had never dreamed of such a thing, and he never would dream of it. He wouldn't insult her by even discussing it abstractly. What prospects had he? What sort of a life could he ask her to share with him? ... There were some things too ridiculous to be worth discussing, and that was one.
Nevertheless, I objected, he had got to discuss it, because it was the only thing left to discuss. To my mind, I said, it was only fair that heshouldgive her the chance of accepting or refusing him. She had shown pretty plainly that she didn't want him to leave her; that was quite as much as she could be expected to do on her own. It was for him to take the next step.
"But—thinkof it, man! Three hundred a year for the two of us, after the sort of life she's been used to! It'smonstrous!"
"That's for her to decide. If she thinks it is, then it is. But if she thinks it isn't—"
"Well?"
"Then it mightn't be.... You never know. Miracles have been done on three hundred a year before now."
"No man has a right to expect miracles," he said.
"Every man has a right to perform them," I answered. (Really, for three o'clock in the morning, our conversation was quite brilliant.)
But no; he wouldn't consider the matter. "Whatever you say, Hilton, you won't alter my mind. I've no right to ask for such a sacrifice—no right even tothinkof it.... If there's anything at all that I've learnt from experience, it ought to be this—that women can't bear to give upthings—especially the sort of things that I don't much care about."
In some ways, that was the nearest we ever got to talking about the past.
"IfI'velearnt anything from experience," I countered, "it's that one woman can be absolutely and entirely different from every other."
But it was still no use; he was adamant. Whatever I said, he had some rejoinder; there was no sign of his conversion. The dawn peered over the ridge of the hills before we left off talking, and I had to admit to myself that, so far as the immediate object of the discussion was concerned, I had failed altogether. The idea of proposing marriage to June seemed to afflict him with a kind of mental explosion whenever he thought about it. It was preposterous. Rather refuse or accept a thousand jobs than commit such tempestuous folly. Incredible that I should ever have seriously suggested it.... And so on.... And so on....
And then we went to bed and to sleep.
V
All that happened last night; or, to be precise, early this morning....
It is a strange thing to have caught up with the present after so long writing of the past. Ever since I arrived here I have been at my desk; I was tired when I began, but Roebuck's iced coffee and the achievement of bringing this record up-to-date have made me feel curiously fresh and exhilarated.
It is the business lunch-hour now, and all the seats in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which is just across the road from my window, are filled with office-workers enjoying their respite. They look happy; the whole world looks happy—but that, maybe, is because I am feeling happy myself. The skies have cleared miraculously during the past twenty-four hours—have shown me Terry enslaved to June's calm and inarticulate youth, and June (I think) no less attached to Terry.
Whether it comes to anything is, of course, another matter. June is very young, and Terry's prospects are certainly none too rosy. Besides that, there is all the difference in the world between being pleasantly fond of a man and wanting to emigrate with him to the other side of the world. I'm rather afraid I lost sight of that during my argument with Terry; it all seemed just a shade easier than it is. The main and incontrovertible facts are these—that Terry will never propose to her on his own, and that if he were to take the Australian job and go away, June would be left here miserable.
I always find it so hard to know what to do—whether to interfere or not. On the whole, I lean to interference; I hate minding my own business, which is usually so much less interesting than other people's. And yet, in this case, itmayhave been a mistake to write that interfering note to June.
I wrote it in an immense hurry before leaving the hotel this morning. A sudden impulse seized me while I was having breakfast; it was 7.30; my train from Haslemere was due to leave at 8.15; and Taplow's Ford was already shaking its hoary sides in the yard. I scribbled it out in pencil and gave it to the maid to take up to June along with the morning cup of tea. But the extraordinary part of it is that I can't very well remember what I wrote. The general trend, I imagine, was to give June the tip that it wouldn't be any use her expectinghimto do the proposing; but I hope to God I didn't put it quite so crudely as that. Probably I didn't; perhaps it was a marvel of tactful insinuation. Anyhow, it's done now, and can't be helped.
Helen is coming here to tea this afternoon; I asked her two days ago, thinking it would be a change for her if she felt too desperate. Now I rather wish I hadn't asked her. I am altogether out of the mood for skating on thin ice. It is bound to be difficult, and Heaven alone knows what we shall talk about. I shan't—I can't—tell her anything about Terry and June....
VI
11P.M.
I am alone now; Roebuck has gone to bed; and there is a cool south wind blowing in amongst my papers. The day has passed most wonderfully well, and I am very happy.
Helen came, and she wasn't desperate at all. She was calm—calm as if she were ten years older than when I saw her last. Or ten years younger.... I hardly know which; I only know that a touch of her old queer fascination has come back to her, making her wonderful again. Perhaps the two days that have passed since our talk on the End House lawn have really been ten years—long enough for her soul to escape from turmoil.
There was no need for me not to mention Terry. She mentioned him herself, but in such an odd way—as if, so it seemed to me, she were very old and he a long while dead. She gossiped about him, almost; anything, everything reminded her of him. When, for instance, I talked of the new house, she said: "Oh, yes, that's in the architect's hands now. There's no more for me to do. No more scrambling up hills with Terry."
Quietly—half-mockingly—likethat!
"Not that I ever liked hills," she went on. "I hated them. But Terry was never happy except when he was consuming vast quantities of energy. If it wasn't physical energy, then it was mental, and it wasn't mental, then it was moral.... Didn't you ever notice that?"
I had noticed it. And then she went on again: "You ought to have seen him years ago at those bacteriology lectures. He didn'tteachbacteriology—hepreachedit. And it was the same sort of thing with the hills—he didn'tclimbthem; heconqueredthem."
She talked about him effortlessly, as if she were somehow drifting in a strong and peaceful tide. When I put a question about Severn she had to fight the tide while she gave a slow and reluctant answer.... Geoffrey, she said, was very busy and perfectly the same.
But the oddest thing of all was her calm remark: "Of course it's quite easy to see what will happen. Sooner or later he'll marry June. She's quite in love with him, and he'll be with her after a while.... Do you remember years ago you asked me what I would do with Terry in the end, and I said I would hand him over when the right girl came along.... But I never thought that the right girl would be June."
"You think June is the right girl?" I asked; and she answered: "I think he will feel she is if he tries hard enough."
I forgave her for that mocking retort. I didn't tell her that already, without trying at all, Terry had grown to see in June what, perhaps, he had never seen in any other woman—a mirror of the future, calm and bright with happiness. It would have beentoocruel to have told her that, to have smashed her dear belief that she could have had Terry for not much more than the asking. She has kept her word, and that counts none the less because it wouldn't have greatly mattered if she hadn't kept it.