We were in the midst of tea when the telegraph-boy arrived. I went out into my small lobby, and when I came back she noticed the change in my face; it was stupid not to have had more control of myself.
"Good news, I can see," she said.
And I stammered hazily something about a business affair that I had been hoping would happen.... Oh, yes,quitegood news.
That telegram is before me now as I write ... Handed in at Oxford at 4.10 P.M. (What were they doing at Oxford? A motor excursion, presumably.) ... Received at London, W.1. at 4.50 P.M.... And then:
"Took your advice succeeded thanks June."
VII
Later.
I've been to bed, but I can't sleep, and I might as well continue this as lie awake. The clock in Lincoln's Inn has just chimed two, and the street-cleaners in Holborn are noisily busy. In a little while the Covent Garden traffic will begin; there is never a silent minute from midnight to dawn in this part of London. Not that it troubles me in the least; it is happiness—excitement if you like—that is keeping me awake to-night.
So far as I can see, I have come now to the end of this record. The future seems pretty well decided; Severn will write his books on Robert Walpole and Pontius Pilate and become as famous in literature as in everything else that he has ever touched; Terry will marry June and live happily ever after. It's an absurd phrase, in nine contexts out of ten, but I really do think it's likely to be true of those two. They're such clear-hearted people; marriage will be so tremendously simple to them. Terry will never think of any woman but June, and June will never think of any man but Terry. They'll live in a bungalow in some blazing Australian suburb, and probably they'll have lots of children—far more than Terry could possibly afford on his own income. If he gets the chance, and I daresay he will, he'll do valuable but not exactly epoch-making work as a bacteriologist. A well-known scientist told me the other day that in his opinion the importance of the Karelsky discoveries had been greatly over-rated. "They're valuable," he said, "but they're only a beginning, and the world's been treating them as if they were the end...."
Perhaps Terry will carry them further on from that beginning. But whatever he does, I'm quite certain that his name will never echo across the world. I shall never earn stray guineas by writing 'The Great Man As I Knew Him' articles in the gossipy press.
Two are still left whose future is beyond prophecy. There's Helen.... Whatwillhappen to her? When she hears the news about June and Terry, will she still cling to that eager, scornful belief in her own power over him? Will she keep her word for ever—will she stay with Severn as in duty bound, not to him, but to Terry? Is it even possible that in time there may grow in her some scrap of affection for the author of the best short book on Disraeli that has ever been written? Frankly, I like Severn, and I find it tremendously hard to understand how anybody else can help liking him. Yet Helen doesn't.... Perhaps, after all, they are incompatibles whom nothing, neither time nor calamity, can bring together.
And then ... Mizzi.... Strange, perhaps, that I should be thinking of her now, should see her so clearly in my mind. She writes to me from time to time, and always with some mention of Terry; her last letter came two months ago. The hotel, I gather, proceeds from strength to strength, and I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear that, having exhausted all the European languages, she's now tackling Aramaic or Siamese.... One thing I've quite decided; I shall go to Vienna this year and take this manuscript for her to read.
A quarter past by the clock in Lincoln's Inn.... Shall I write to her now and book my room? If Terry has to begin the Australian job in the autumn he'll probably be leaving England very soon, and June, I've an idea, will want to go with him. Severn and Helen are going for a sea-cruise during August, so I think, if I'm not to be left entirely alone, I'd better choose that month for Vienna. It will be very hot, but I shan't mind. I want to go to the Semmering, and up the Danube to Melk, and perhaps, in a happier mood, to Buda-Pesth again....
I'm tired now.... I'll finish the letter in the morning, and while I'm asleep it shall stay there on my desk with no more than the date on it and the words:
"DEAR MIZZI,—..."
THE END