The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTerryThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: TerryAuthor: James HiltonRelease date: April 18, 2023 [eBook #70587]Most recently updated: May 17, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: T. Butterworth, 1927Credits: Dangny and Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: TerryAuthor: James HiltonRelease date: April 18, 2023 [eBook #70587]Most recently updated: May 17, 2023Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: T. Butterworth, 1927Credits: Dangny and Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)
Title: Terry
Author: James Hilton
Author: James Hilton
Release date: April 18, 2023 [eBook #70587]Most recently updated: May 17, 2023
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: T. Butterworth, 1927
Credits: Dangny and Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRY ***
by
JAMES HILTON
THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LIMITED15, BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C. 2
First Published—1927
By the Same Author:THE PASSIONATE YEARTHE DAWN OF RECKONINGTHE MEADOWS OF THE MOON
This is a work of fiction, and all the characters in the book are drawn from the author's imagination. Care has been taken to avoid the use of names or titles belonging to living persons, and if any such names or titles have been used, this has been done inadvertently and no reference to such person or persons is intended.
CHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVE
I
IFIRST met him outside the Tube Station at Hampstead; he had travelled on my train, and I had noticed him particularly because, like me, he was wearing a rather shabby overcoat over a dress-suit. At the corner of Rosslyn Hill I went into a shop for some tobacco, and when I came out he was waiting for me. He asked me in a rather shy voice if I could direct him to the End House.
I told him that I could, and that since I was going to the End House myself he had better come with me. We walked quite a long way without saying a word. Every now and then as we neared lamp-posts or brilliantly-lit shops I glanced sideways at him, and each time he was looking grimly ahead, as if life were a tremendous ordeal. He was rather good-looking, in a restrained sort of way; tall, well-proportioned, fair-haired and blue-eyed, he had all the attributes of the matinee idol except that he didn't look like one. Towards the top of Heath Street I tried to get him into conversation. "I suppose we're both guests at Severn's dinner-party to-night?" I remarked. "I suppose so," he answered rather gloomily, and then suddenly, with a sort of shy vehemence, he added: "I hate dinner-parties."
"Oh, but you won't hate this one," I assured him. "Severn's people are always interesting.... By the way, haven't you been before?"
"No. I didn't meet Severn till last week—didn't particularly want to, either. Somebody introduced us at the College—just casually, that was all—and then, a couple of days later, he sent me this invitation."
"Just what hewoulddo. But you needn't worry—you won't be bored."
He answered, with heavy despair: "I shall be worse than bored."
And he was. It would have been funny if it hadn't been rather pathetic. Severn had just won Manchester South in a bye-election, and that, no doubt, gave the party a predominantly political flavour. But there was, all the same, a fair seasoning of art and music, and I noticed that my shy acquaintance had been put between Mildred Gorton, the novelist, and Mrs. Hathersage (Olga Trepine, of the Caucasian Ballet). At that time, of course, I didn't know anything at all about him—whether he were a writer, a painter, a politician, a pianist, or just plain nothing-at-all. All I could see was that both Mildred and Olga were having a dreadful time trying to get a word out of him.
It was Mrs. Severn who enlightened my ignorance. I was next to her, and during a sudden gust of chatter all about us, she whispered to me: "You see that man over there next to Mildred Gorton? ... His name's Terrington. I want you to talk to him afterwards. You'll find him very reserved."
I told her then of my previous meeting with him, and she said: "It's a shame, really, to have put him next to Mildred; she'll scare him to death.... Geoffrey got to know him somehow or other last week. He says he's fearfully clever in his own line—he's a research-lecturer in bacteriology at University College."
"That sounds tremendously impressive, anyhow," I replied, and I promised I would take him under my wing when we adjourned to the drawing-room afterwards.
End House dinners were long and good, but I always liked most of all the hour or so after, when Mrs. Severn, if she were sufficiently persuaded, would play Chopin or sing. She was really more of adiseusethan a singer; indeed, the thing to do was to tell her that she reminded you of Yvette Guilbert. She did, and she just loved being told it.
That evening she yielded to persuasion earlier than usual, and it was just as she sat down at the piano that I managed to squirm my way across the room to Terrington. He was standing by the French windows examining (but hardly, I should think, admiring) a recent portrait of Severn by a celebrated artist, and when I asked him how things were going he stared at me reproachfully and replied: "I oughtn't to have come here. I don't know what on earth to say to all these people. They're all terribly big guns—except me."
"And me too," I responded cheerfully. "But then, don't forget, we represent young and unknown genius—the hope of the future and all that sort of thing. Severn's idea, you know, to give us a chance of mixing with the top-dogs."
That didn't seem to console him especially, but just then Mrs. Severn began to sing. It was an old French ballad (I remember that the chorus consisted of the word "Rataplan" repeated many times), and it was exactly what suited her voice and style. I gathered, more from the way she sang it than from the words, that it was about a court intrigue, a wicked lord chamberlain, poisoned goblets, and so on—"divinely medieval," as I heard Mildred Gorton whispering to somebody.
When it was over I looked at my companion. "Not bad, eh?" I said, and he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that might have meant anything. A few moments later, having apparently analysed himself, he remarked that it was the sort of thing that made him feel uncomfortable.
Those were the last words he spoke to anybody until he stood in the hall conventionally assuring Mr. and Mrs. Severn that he had had a most delightful time. We left the End House together about half-past ten, and walked back along the edge of the Heath. There was a frost glistening on the roadway, and a pale haze hung over the valley towards London. He was anything but talkative. I don't think we spoke a dozen words all the way down to the Tube Station. We both had return tickets, and it wasn't till we reached Mornington Crescent (my own station) that I said, feeling curiously reluctant to bid him good-bye: "Look here, I live just round the corner. Why not come in and have a drink with me before you go home? It isn't late at all, you know."
"If—if you like," he answered doubtfully.
He thawed a little when I lit the gas-fire in my room and made him sit in front of it. He said he didn't care for whisky, so I made strong coffee. Then I offered him cigarettes, but he said he didn't smoke. At last, by the simple method of not seeming to care what he did or didn't do, I got him to talk. He began abruptly: "I made a fool of myself to-night."
I replied: "I don't think you did. It's by talking a lot rather than by not talking enough, that people most often make fools of themselves."
"Severn must have thought me a complete ass."
"Nonsense. I know Severn. He'd make sure you weren't a complete ass before he invited you."
"Whydidhe invite me, anyway?"
"Probably because he liked you when he first met you, and because he had heard good things about you. He likes young men with no money and heaps of brains—like you and me, that's to say. (I presume you haven't any money—Ihaven't, anyway.) He takes us up just as he might buy a low-priced share that he fancied might treble in value if he waited long enough.... Please don't think I'm beingreallycynical about him. He's a damned good fellow, and there isn't a trace of offensive patronage in his attitude. He's too young to be a snob."
"Young, is he?"
"Well, thirty-five. That's young for a man in his line. I suppose you know what he is—K.C., and so on?"
"I don't know anything about him at all."
"But the Stapleton case—surely you remember all that in the newspapers?"
"I don't. I never read the newspapers."
"Good Lord—you must be a hermit! ... Anyhow, Severn's quite a big man, and likely as not he'll end on the Woolsack. He knows everybody worth knowing, and positively rolls in money and influence. And all that at thirty-five, mind you, and with a wife still in her twenties and one child aged ten. He did everything early."
He seemed startled, and I went on, satisfied that he was interested: "Severn married her when she was eighteen—and a shop-girl in Paris. Still, she must have been rather an exceptional shop-girl. Severn probably spotted her just as he spots all the other winners. But his people are Eton and Oxford to the teeth, and they wouldn't look at her, or him either, for a long while afterwards. He'll tell you the whole story of his early struggles if you give him half a chance—he's awfully proud of them."
We chatted on till nearly midnight, and then, since the last tube train had gone, I walked with him to his rather dingy lodgings in Swinton Street, near King's Cross. (Evidently hewaspoor; perhaps even poorer than I.) "You must come to tea with me soon," I said, shaking hands with him at the door. I suggested the following Wednesday, but he answered: "I'm afraid I could never come for tea—I work at the College until seven."
"Even on Saturdays?" I queried, and he nodded.
"And Sundays?" He smiled then and said: "On Sundays I go out for the day. Next Sunday I'm going for a tramp across the hills from Dorking to Reigate, and if you'd care to come with me...."
II
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't read newspapers, and he didn't ever go out to tea. Then what on earthdidhe do? I found out one thing, at any rate, on that following Sunday; hewalked. He called it tramping, but no tramp that ever lived went at his pace. By the time we reached Reigate I longed for a corner seat in a railway compartment. All he said was: "Ten miles isn't really enough. I usually do twelve or fifteen."
We didn't talk much during the walk. I was far too breathless most of the time to gasp more than a few words consecutively, but I thought a good deal. I thought, for instance: Why am I running myself out of breath on these confounded hills with a man who, so far, has shown himself to be no more than a conglomeration of abstinences? And the only answer I could arrive at was: You want to get to know him, and this, apparently, is the only way.
I believe itwasthe only way. I believe that nobody—no man, at any rate—could have become his friend without those long preliminary periods of silence. He was a locked box, and you had to believe, rather than know, that there was something in it. I believed, and later on I knew; but the revelation was very slow. Within a couple of months, perhaps, I knew the ordinary obvious things about his life that most people would have let me know within a couple of hours. Even then he didn't exactly tell me anything. I deduced, or picked up information by accident, or else asked a deliberate question and received a rather embarrassed or grudging answer. The first time I went up to his room at the College, for example, I saw "Dr. M. Terrington" painted on the outside of the door. Till then I hadn't had the least idea that he was a doctor, and nor had Severn, for at the dinner-party he had introduced him as plain "mister." Anyhow, the information on the door seemed clear enough to me, though it wasn't till a week after that I really learned the truth, and then only by chance. I had cut my hand, and he bandaged it for me very skilfully, which led me to make some complimentary remark about his "doctor's skill." He told me then that he wasn't a medical doctor at all, but a "mere Ph.D." He spoke of it as if it were quite a minor distinction instead of being (as I afterwards found out) almost unique for a man of his age.
Gradually, in such ways as this, I got to know the truth about him. It wasn't at all exciting. He had sprung from poor parents (both of them now dead), and had worked his way up to the university by a series of scholarships and exhibitions which, though distinguished enough in themselves, would be tedious to record. He had no relatives who ever troubled about him, and I think I can say that until he came into contact with me and the Severns he had no friends either. He worked hard, knew nobody, went nowhere, and cared for nothing but his microscopes and slides. Twice a week he lectured to a very small class, and the fees from this, along with certain scholarship monies, made his existence just financially possible.
He had so little to do with anybody that I can recall only three remarks made about him by people who knew him before I did. The first was made by a girl-student at his lectures; she said, very doubtfully: "He looks as if hemightbe interesting"—evidently a different thing from looking interesting. The second came quite casually from the lips of an A.B.C. waitress at the tea-shop where he took a midday roll and glass of milk. I had arranged to meet him there one day and arrived too early; whereat the waitress, who had seen us together before, looked at the clock and said: "It's only seven minutes past one, and he never comes in till ten past. We tell the time by him here." And the third remark was his landlady's. She was a faded, respectable creature burdened by a husband who drank, and to her the young gentleman lodger was clearly the one central rock of stability in a world of bewildering fluctuations. "He appreciates me," she said, with an implied resentment against the rest of the world, "and Idolike to be appreciated."
III
Mrs. Severn also liked to be appreciated. But she was so well accustomed to admiration that a compliment had to be either very adroit or very original to stir her. If I had told her that somebody had said her singing was delightful, she would probably have shrugged her shoulders and changed the subject. But instead of that, on my next meeting with her some weeks after the party, I told her that the shy man and I had become friendly as a result of our End House visit, and that he had been greatly impressed by her singing. "He said it made him feel uncomfortable."
"Did he?" She was interested. "Did he really say that? ... But—but why is he so easily made uncomfortable? I kept noticing him that night—hewasunhappy, I could see. But why?"
"He can't help it. Company and crowds make him feel like that. I shouldn't be surprised if women have the same effect."
"You know you're making him sound fearfully attractive. He isn't engaged, then—or anything of that sort?"
"Engaged? Good heavens, he never speaks to any woman except his landlady."
She paused in thought for a moment, and then said: "I think Geoffrey had better ask him here again. Don't you agree? ... Some time when we're justen famille.You'llcome, of course."
I said I should be very pleased to, but that I was rather doubtful whether he would accept the invitation. She replied then, with a touch of imperiousness: "Oh, but hemust. It is absurd for a young man to be shy. I shall ask Geoffrey to send him an invitation to-night."
The invitation was sent, and I chanced to be in his bed-sitting-room when it arrived. After reading it through very slowly and carefully, he said: "Severn wants me to go there again. On Friday. You're coming too, but there'll be nobody else.... That shows hedidnotice what a fool I was at the party."
"It also shows that he doesn't think any less of you for it," I said.
He was silent for quite a couple of minutes before he announced his decision. "I shall go," he said, "although I don't want to go."
IV
There was certainly no excuse for any guest being uncomfortable at the End House. Of all places I know it was the homeliest; it was, like Hampstead itself, cheerful without vulgarity. Severn's immense wealth (and he was rumoured to be making twenty thousand a year) never bullied or forced itself; it rather hid behind things and came upon the visitor at some moment when he was ready for it. Most wealthy houses make a poor man feel poorer than ever; Severn's made you feel rich.
At the last moment I was ill and couldn't turn up on that following Friday. But from two sources I heard what had taken place. First from Terrington himself, who said merely: "I enjoyed it, and I like Severn ... and also Mrs. Severn."
Mrs. Severn, a few days later, gave me a somewhat lengthier report. "He was quiet," she said, "and he spoke very little, but he didn't look quite so awfully miserable as before. After dinner we even got him to sing—he's got rather a good baritone voice, but he only knew songs like 'Annie Laurie' and 'Auld Lang Syne'.... And then he played with June—sheliked him. As a matter of fact, weallliked him—there seems to be something about him you can't help liking—don't you think so?"
I agreed, and she added, as if it finally clinched the matter: "Have you noticed his eyes? They are rather nice."
It was then that I first of all learned that he was at work on cancer research. Mrs. Severn had been told so by her husband, and he had learned it from one of the senior men at the College; it was typical, indeed, of my entire relationship with Terrington that I acquired this rather important information by such a roundabout route. But when I tackled him on the subject he would do no more than confirm; he wouldn't discuss. He said, smiling: "You're a journalist and everything seems sensational to you. But there's nothing sensational in the work I'm doing.... You and Severn seem bent on making a howling success of me, but I don't want it. I just want to be left alone—to do my own work." He added, in a tone that robbed his words of any sting: "Please don't think I mean anything unkind."
But his summing-up of Severn's intention had been true enough. Severn always wanted to make a howling success of everybody. I suppose, at rock-bottom, it was a form of conceit—an assumption that everybody's ideal must be his own. And yet there was nothing blatant or vulgar in him. His taste was impeccable to the point of being finicky, and he had charming manners. He never in his life bullied either judge or witness, but his suavity was deadly enough; with calm, almost friendly questions, he would lead a man to confess murder or a woman adultery. In private life he was courteous to all; in fact (as somebody once said) he always talked to you as if his life had been incomplete until he met you. It was an oriental gift, and twenty thousand a year was no more than the figure of its rarity.
I owed him then, and owe him still, more than he would ever care for me to say. He enjoyed pulling strings on behalf of his protégés; he pulled the strings for Terrington, though the latter was too innocent to realize it. Severn talked about him to various editors of scientific journals, and the result was a few commissions. He even persuaded the editor of a "daily" to start a popular science "feature," and that Terrington's contributions to this were moderately successful was due to the fact thatIwrote them.Hecould never have achieved the popular vein, but his science and my journalism made a profitable amalgam. We shared the income, devoting it to more ambitious Sunday rambles, until at last he decided that the job was taking up too much of his time. He was like that—a sudden swerve to right or left, and then an inexorable straight line.
All that time I was getting to know him, and all that time I was liking him more.
V
One afternoon of that late winter he came to my rooms and asked me if I thought he ought to return the invitations of the Severns. I told him that they knew he wasn't well off, and that they certainly wouldn't expect to be invited to dinner at an expensive hotel or anything like that. He answered that he hadn't been thinking of dinner, but of tea.
"But I thought tea was always impossible for you?"
"Not if I—if I managed it."
"I see.... Well, I think you'd better manage it. It's a good idea."
"Do you really think so?" He seemed pleased. "As a matter of fact, I met Mrs. Severn in the street just now, and I hinted at it—vaguely."
"Well? Did she accept?"
"Yes. She's coming—next Thursday. And Severn as well."
So it was all settled, and I was merely being asked to register approval. I duly registered, and was then rewarded by an invitation myself. "I'll be delighted to come," I assured him. "But where are you going to have them? You can't very well——"
I paused, hardly caring to stress the unsuitability of bed-sitting-rooms. He saw, however, that Swinton Street would not do. He could have used my own room, but it was not very much better than his; and to take them to some hotel or café would seem rather odd. In the end we decided on the laboratory. "It's a large room," I said, "and it's private, more or less, and there's water laid on, and a gas-ring, and other handy things. Besides, they'll forgive any amount of mess there."
It was fun making preparations for them. We borrowed armchairs from the lecture-platforms, and I carefully selected all my best crockery and transferred it to the top of the Physics building in a suitcase. We cleaned the windows and the lamp-shade, and made the place as habitable as possible. Then we bought the food. Last of all, from half-past three till nearly half-past four on a glowering March afternoon, we waited. He stood by the window keeping an eye on the porter's lodge, while I sat by the fire and tried to think of any possible hitch in the arrangements.
Suddenly he said: "They're here!" and went downstairs to meet them and show them the way. But when he came back there was only Mrs. Severn with him. She was profusely apologetic. She was sorry she was so late, and she was sorry Geoffrey wasn't with her (he hadn't been able to get away from the Law Courts in time), and she was especially sorry about the toasted scones. "You men oughtn't to have waited for me," she said, as she allowed me to remove her fur coat. Then she looked appraisingly round the room, as any woman will, and made remarks about it. "What a jolly little place! How comfortable you must be here—so high up among the roofs! And all those wonderful-looking instruments—really, youmusttell me about them."
And the extraordinary thing was that he did. He went round the room with her, exhibiting and explaining, answering in full and patient detail even the silliest of her questions, and all without the slightest sign of either nervousness or reticence. It looked like a miracle. I had been struggling for weeks to overcome the mere outposts of his reserve, and here was a woman who had only seen him for a few hours striding miles beyond me into the unknown territory.
But of course she was no ordinary woman. She was astoundingly pretty, and I suppose that a good many of her most fervent admirers would spend hours in describing her copper-gold hair and her brown eyes with their curious, slanting glint of green; but for me there was always something beyond that. There was a way she sometimes looked, especially if you saw her face in profile against the sky or window—a way that was beyond prettiness. I'm not certain it wasn't beyond even beauty. It challenged, and yet, by some marvellous paradox, it was serene as well.
We had tea. I listened to their talk and said very little myself. It was pleasant to sit back in a chair and, without any effort at all, to add large fragments to my scanty collection of facts about Terrington. She asked him most of the questions I had always wanted to ask him, and he answered them all. He told her, for instance, that his father had been a country parson, and that his mother had died at his birth. He told her also that the total amount he earned was two hundred pounds a year, and that he lived on it. She was astonished. "But of course you will earn a lot of money some day," she said, with vague comfort; and he answered: "I don't want to make a lot of money. I admit that two hundred isn't enough, but I don't want a lot. If I could get two hundred and fifty or three hundred I'd be perfectly satisfied and never want any more."
"You couldn't marry on that," she said.
And he replied: "I don't want to marry."
"You might do some day."
"No."
"How can you be certain?"
"I have my work, and it takes up so much of my time that it wouldn't be fair to any woman to marry her."
"She mightn't let it take up so much of your time."
"Then it wouldn't be fair to my work."
"I see.... You feel it as a sort of priesthood, with a vow of celibacy attached?"
He thought for a moment and then answered: "I don't know—maybe Idofeel that. I don't very often think about it."
But the oddest thing was yet to come. About five o'clock the tousled head of the laboratory-boy intruded itself round the corner of the door. He was a rough-mannered youngster, and, ignoring the presence of visitors, he boldly asked if he could go home. "I've cleaned all the cages," he said, "and I've fed your mice and Mr. Hensler's cats."
The permission was given him and he withdrew. But I could see instantly that the matter would not be allowed to end there. As soon as he had gone Mrs. Severn exclaimed: "I say, what's all this about cats and mice and cages? Do you keep a menagerie?"
Terrington smiled. "No—only what you said—cats and mice and cages. Oh, and a few rats also, I believe."
"But what do you have them for?"
"We—we need them, you know."
"For your work?"
"Yes."
"You mean you——" The blood rushed to her face and she bit her lip. "Vivisection," she said slowly, after a pause. Then she added: "It's only a word after all—and why should one be hypnotized by a word? I'd like to see your Chamber of Horrors. Will you take me now?"
I tried valiantly to signal him to make an excuse, but he didn't or wouldn't see. He was so transparently honest with her. He replied: "Certainly, if you're really interested. But you'll not find it at all horrible—only just a trifle smelly."
We walked down the dark stone corridor towards the room where the animals were kept. I had a sickening feeling that we were walking into catastrophe—that this part of the programme was going to prove a dreadful mistake; I had certainly seen something in Mrs. Severn's eyes that he had missed. But the room, when he unlocked it and switched on the light, was cheerful enough. It was airy and spacious, and the various cages were placed methodically on platforms all round the walls. The cats had all had their milk and were sleepily washing themselves and blinking their eyes in the sudden glow of light. They purred in joyous anticipation and rubbed their heads against the cage-bars when he went near them. (All animals took to him instantly.)
The dreadful thing was that Mrs. Severn said nothing at all. She had used the word "hypnotized," and that was exactly what she looked—hypnotized. She followed him round from cage to cage, and all the while he kept on explaining just the very things he oughtn't to have explained. "Most of them are strays," he told her. "Nobody seems to know how they're obtained, but they're nearly all half-starved when they first come here. We feed them well, of course—they have to be healthy before you can do anything with them."
Still she said nothing. But suddenly, as by an impulse, she opened the door of one of the cages, and a black-and-white cat squirmed eagerly into her arms—a small, glossy-coated animal with a large shaven patch on the underside of its body. She fondled it for a moment, and then said quietly: "I suppose you can't do anything with the fur on?"
He explained the matter in detail, while the cat purred violently, and, rearing itself up, tried to rub its head against her chin.
"What will happen to it?" she asked, almost casually, when he had finished.
He shook his head doubtfully. "I couldn't say—it's not mine, you know. One of Hensler's—he's our best biology man. I don't know what it is exactly that he's doing at present—some sort of research work, no doubt. The cats and rats are all his—I've only got the mice."
"And alltheyhave to do," I said, anxious at any cost to reduce the tension of the atmosphere, "is to feed well and propagate their species. You can't really callthemunlucky."
But she said nothing; she didn't even smile. And then, by the very greatest of good fortune, he had to rush away to a six o'clock lecture. We hadn't expected she would stay so long, and when the hour came he made rather abrupt apologies and left her in my charge. Her good-bye, as she shook hands with him, was hardly audible.
VI
We went back to his room, Mrs. Severn and I, and sat by the fire. She brought the cat with her, and all the while we were talking it sat on her knee and purred contentedly. After I had offered her a cigarette and lit it for her, she asked suddenly: "Do you think you understand him?"
"I certainly don't think I do," I answered. "But I've been wondering all the time ifyoudid."
"Whyme?"
"Because he tells you more in five minutes than he'd tell me in five years."
She half smiled. "That's true. In some ways I can twist him round my little finger.... But in other ways he's just rock—solid rock—don't you feel that?" She caressed the cat and went on: "I'm not a sentimentalist. I don't believe it's a sin to experiment on animals if by doing so you have a chance of benefiting human lives, and I'm not so absurd as to believe that vivisectors are all sadists. So it isn't anything to do withthat.... But, all the same, I feel that he's not human. I don't mean that he'sinhuman. I mean that he's justunhuman—the humanity in him hasn't ever yet been stirred. He just lives for that high ideal—at two hundred a year. It's splendid, I know, but from a woman's point of view, at any rate, it's just a shade unsatisfactory."
"I don't suppose he ever considers the woman's point of view."
"Of course he doesn't. That's part of the trouble. He's got his eyes fixed on this distant goal and he doesn't see the other things nearer his eyes. He doesn't see that if a man's going to be a success in this world he's got to make friends and go about and not be satisfied with two hundred pounds a year." (The money seemed to obsess her.)
"He'd tell you he didn't want to be that sort of success."
"But hemustbe, if he's going to be any other sort of success in addition. Even the medieval saints, who made a virtue of poverty, used to make an advertisement of it as well. He doesn't do even that. Of course I don't say he need be an absolutely worldly success like Geoffrey. He couldn't be if he tried, I'm sure. But I think he might compromise."
She added after a pause: "It would do him good to fall in love."
I laughed then. "He's not likely to do that. He's scared of women altogether, and—excepting you—I've never known him to be at ease in a woman's presence. When some of his girl students come to ask him about their work, he stammers and looks uncomfortable till they're gone."
We talked on for a short time longer, and then she said she must go. She put the cat into a chair and gave a final stroke to its sleek head. "A saucer of milk after I've gone," she said, "is the best I can do for him, isn't it? Will you give it him?" I promised I would, and then, as I helped her on with her coat, she added: "I'm going to try to convert him. Terrington, I mean, not the cat.... And I shall begin by calling him Terry. Do you think he'll mind?"
I said laughingly that I didn't suppose he would encourage the liberty. We walked out to Gower Street together, and I got her a taxi. "I daresay it'll be a hard job," she said finally, as she shook hands, "but I mean to do it."
VII
I was relieved when she had gone. The whole atmosphere had been curiously tense, and from the moment that the laboratory-boy had made his unwelcome intrusion, I had been thoroughly uncomfortable. After seeing her off I walked a short distance to buy an evening paper, and it was nearly seven when I climbed up again to the top storey of the Physics Building. The cat was asleep in front of the fire, and when, remembering my promise, I placed a saucer of milk on the floor beside it, one green eye slowly opened and then disdainfully closed again.
At seven he returned, after delivering his lecture on (I think) the Mycology and Bacteriology of Foods. The first thing he noticed was the cat and the saucer of milk. Explanations were necessary, and he accepted them as a wise adult might listen to the charming vagaries of a child. "How like her!" he said, but no more. And within half-an-hour the cat was back in its cage.
I remember that night because then, for the first time since I had known him, he permitted himself to break the iron routine of his labours. Perhaps he felt that since the tea invitation had already interfered with his day, he might just as well walk a further step on the long road to perdition. Anyhow, as I was leaving London early the following morning on some special newspaper work, I asked him if he would come with me to a show of some sort, and, to my immense astonishment, he agreed immediately.
We dined at a small, unfashionable place off Regent Street, and after trying in vain at several theatres, managed to get in at the Coliseum two or three turns late. He was very quiet at first, but the sound and colour of the music-hall roused him completely. He laughed a good deal, and at the simplest things. As we walked home afterwards a reaction set in and he was quiet again; he even went so far as to say that he disliked "gadding about" as a general rule, although it was pleasant on rare occasions. I told him that it wasn't good for anybody to work without any pleasure intermixed, and he retorted, with a curious enthusiasm in his voice: "My workismy pleasure. Imeanthat. I'm really looking forward to to-morrow—because I shall be able to work then without any interruptions."
I suppose he remembered that I was going away, for he added hastily: "I don't mean you, of course."
It was so glaringly obvious whom he did mean. Only once did he mention her by name, and that was just before we separated outside his lodgings in Swinton Street. He said then: "Do you think she was bored by all the talk about my work?"
I assured him that I thought she had been very deeply interested, and he replied: "I hope she was. She makes it so easy for me to tell her things."
VIII
I have always kept a diary of sorts, and the tattered and shabby records of those years lie before me now as I write. Many of the days are blank, thus testifying to the uneventfulness of my life in general; for I would never write, even in a diary, merely for the sake of writing. Terrington, or "Terry," as I as well as Mrs. Severn came to call him, makes his appearance on the very day I met him first; I find the record: "Went to dinner with the S's at Hampstead. Met a man there named Terrington. Scientific something at London Univ. Very shy. Took him home afterwards."
The entry for the day on which Mrs. Severn came to tea is similarly brief. "Tea in T's lab. Mrs. S. T. showed her the cats. Afterwards Mrs. S. and I talked about T. Finished up at Frigolin's and the Coliseum. Little Tich and some good wrestlers."
And for the next day: "T. waked me at 6 a.m. Wanted to know my opinion about the cat. Agreed after discussion, though surprised at T. suggesting it. Caught 9.15 to Manchester. Queen's."
The diary, you will observe, is hardly a Bashkirtseff affair. It was written in good faith, not as a literary exercise, and most of its entries are mere reminders, unintelligible to outsiders, but significant to me even to this day. Terrydidwaken me that morning at 6 a.m. And the cat business, with which I agreed after discussion, although surprised at his suggesting it, was simply this: he wanted to give the black-and-white cat to Mrs. Severn. He thought it would be a "nice" thing to do. The principal objection, as I pointed out to him, was the awkward circumstance that the cat didn't belong to him. Technically, it was the property of the University of London, but for all practical purposes it belonged to Hensler, who had prepared it especially for some work he was engaged on. To give it away would be, to say the least, a highly irregular proceeding.
But he wouldn't drop the idea. Hensler, he said, would only suffer a slight inconvenience, for there were other cats that would do just as well. Nor would the loss cause much commotion, for escapes did happen sometimes. Nobody would ever know about it except Mrs. Severn, and she would besopleased.
So we "agreed after discussion." Perhaps it would be truer to say that I was too sleepy to argue the point, especially as I could see he had quite made up his mind. He left me with great cheerfulness, and I finished my sleep. Later on in the day I had misgivings; the cat business struck me as being, on the whole, rather silly. Besides, it might easily be found out, and then there would be trouble with the authorities. I remember, as I travelled up to Manchester, working out the possibility that the cat, strolling in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath before its shaven fur had re-grown, might be met and recognized by Hensler himself....
I
IWAS away about five weeks. I wrote my special articles on the condition of the Lancashire cotton industry (Severn, by the way, had secured me the commission), and from time to time I went into Manchester and called at the post-office for letters. Terry didn't write, but I wasn't surprised at that. What did surprise me was a short note from Mrs. Severn. She wanted me to dine at the End House on the twelfth, if I were back in town on that date. Terry, she said, would be coming as well. (Had she begun calling him "Terry," I wondered?) She went on to inform me about the cat, and she wrote: "I think it is rather wonderful of him to have thought of such a thing. It shows that he isbeginningto be human."
All the rest of that sombre Manchester day I kept repeating to myself: He is beginning to be human....
When I returned to town I wondered if he was.Somethinghad happened to him, at any rate; there was a difference in him, slight, indeed, but plain enough. A sort of eagerness for something.... I reached London late on Saturday night, and early on Sunday he presented himself at my bedside and demanded that I should accompany him on one of his usual Sabbath tramps. For nobody else on earth would I have roused myself that morning, and not even for him, I believe, but for that curious, wistful eagerness.
It was Epping Forest this time. We walked from Chingford to Loughton, had lunch, walked on to Epping, had tea, and then walked on to Waltham—total, fourteen miles. But I enjoyed it more than I had expected, for the day was spring-like, full of blue sky and white clouds and the smell of earth. Most of the way as far as Epping I talked of my Lancashire adventures, and it was not until after tea that he spoke more than a few consecutive sentences. The dusk sank over us as we walked the last stage through the Forest, treading the sodden leaves of the old year and guiding ourselves by glimpses of Waltham's white tower in the valley below. But I think it was the bells that made him suddenly talk—the Abbey bells that flung us their distant echo as we descended. For he said, when a cool wave of air brought them very near to us: "It's strange how beauty, if you're in a certain mood, comes over you. You can't help it—it comes anyhow, just when and where it likes.... Those bells—to hear them like this—and all this Forest with the winding pathways through it, and the little lamp-lit town that we shall come to in half-an-hour."
A group of men and girls approached, heralded by the glow-worm brightness of the men's cigarettes, and he waited till they had gone past. Then he went on: "Don't you think it's strange that I should talk like this?"
Before I could answer he continued: "Itisstrange. Everything is strange. There's something strange in this Forest to-night—something beautiful, and yet, in a way, sad. I feel that if I didn't fight against it, it would swamp me.... Are you thinking me off my head?"
"Oh, no," I answered. "A trifle morbid, perhaps, but no more than that."
He said slowly, as if talking to himself: "Morbid? That's the wordsheused."
"Who?"
"Helen."
I think we both of us then stood suddenly still. We had entered a bright space of moonlight, and we both looked at each other, knowing exactly what we were thinking. I could see from his eyes that he hadn't meant to let me know that he called her Helen.
We took the train at Waltham, and nothing else that he said was of the least importance.
II
I suppose henceforwardIhad better call her Helen. And, as a matter of fact, the first time I saw her after my return she asked me to do so. "Mrs. Severn," she said, sounded dreadfully stiff between friends. Perhaps it did, but I found it hard to break the habit.
I had met her one afternoon on the pavement outside University College. She asked me if I were just going up to see Terry, and I replied, with perhaps an implied rebuke: "Certainly not. Have you just been to see him?"
"Why 'certainly not'?"
"Because he hates to be interrupted in his working hours. But I suppose youhavebeen to see him?"
"Yes," she answered, smiling. "But not in the way you think I have. I've been to one of his lectures, that's all."
And then she told me details. She laughed over it in a way that seemed to betray an inward nervousness. She had begun a course in bacteriology. It was interesting. One ought to havesomethingserious in one's life, oughtn't one?
"Terry says so, I daresay," I replied.
"Youcall him Terry?"
"I do. Have you any objection?"
She laughed again. "Of course not. I think the less formal we all are the better. That's what's the trouble with him—he'stooformal—he doesn't seem to believe in any pleasure, or amusement, or—or——" She couldn't, apparently, think of any third commodity that he didn't believe in. "But I think I'm managing to convert him gradually," she added.
"And he's managing to convert you a little at the same time, eh?"
She laughed again in the same curious, muffled-up manner. No, she said; Terry wasnotconverting her. Not really. He was only just showing her things that she had already felt or guessed. Bacteriology was a symbol rather than the thing itself.
I asked her whose idea it had been first of all, and she answered: "Nothis, you can be sure." He, in fact, had been anything but keen about it. Perhaps he thought that her presence would make him nervous during his lectures. (Again the curious laugh.) But of course he hadn't any power to prevent her from paying the fee and joining.
She went on: "It's rather amusing—the way he treats me. Privately, of course, we're friends. But professionally, as a member of his class, I'm nothing. Not a word or a smile. When he's finished lecturing he picks up his papers and dashes out of the room as if he's afraid somebody might follow him."
"Perhaps he is."
She admitted the possibility. "But I have such an absurd ambition to make him takesomenotice of me.Isn'tit absurd? I feel it would be good for him to be made to break all his neat little rules.... Anyhow, don't forget that you're both coming to dinner on the twelfth. And also, by the way...." And then came her request that I should join in the general informality by calling her Helen. "Or Helène," she added, "if you like to be really correct."
III
There is no entry in my diary for the 12th. I remember why. I had got back to my rooms very late, and was too sleepy to write anything. And the next morning when I looked at the blank space I thought I would leave it blank, to express and symbolize the puzzled blankness of my own mind.
It was a small party—just the Severns, Terry, and myself. The rather sensational Roebourne case had been concluded only that afternoon, and all the evening papers were full of praise for Severn, whose brilliant handling of exceptionally difficult material had brought victory to his side. It had been a fatiguing battle between two great financial interests, and Severn had not only consolidated his already high reputation as a pleader, but had earned also an almost fabulous sum in fees. Naturally his feelings were buoyant, and their buoyancy made him talk in a way which, even for him, was amazing. Before then I had sometimes harboured a suspicion that his knowledge of many things was superficial, but that night the suspicion almost disappeared. He really did seem to have been everywhere, to have read everything, and to have met everybody. One moment he was talking about the queer sorts ofhors-d'œuvresthat he had sampled in various parts of the world; and the next he was discussing medical science with Terry in a way which would have tempted any outsider to assume that he was the master and Terry the rather dull pupil. With the accompaniment of excellent food and wine, the whole exhibition was a sheer delight to the onlooker like myself, and Severn's coal-black eyes gleamed all the while as if he too were thoroughly enjoying it. I believe he was slightly drunk, but that only made his talk better still.
Then, somehow or other, when we were in the drawing-room afterwards, the conversation grew personal. I don't mean "personal" in any unpleasant sense, but merely literally; we began to talk about ourselves. Or rather, perhaps, it was as if Mrs. Severn, Terry and I were suddenly being forced to expose our intimate lives to the full glare of Severn's arguments, while he alone remained aloof—interested but hardly perturbed. It began by his telling me what ought to be the successive stages of my advancement as a literary man. "In a few years," he said "you must have a sub-editorship—I'll see whether I can find one for you. You'll have to work like hell while you're at it, and in your spare time, if you have any, you must manage to write a novel—preferably one that will establish your reputation and bring you in not more than a hundred pounds altogether. After that you must take a flat in either Bloomsbury or Chelsea and decide whether you're going to plod along in Fleet Street, earning a middling salary and work jolly hard for it, or take to the wilder life of the professional fiction-writer, in which you may earn nothing at all or else fabulous sums.... On the whole, I think you had better become the successful novelist who is very shy and unapproachable. In that case you must write a stupid novel about Very Good People and Very Bad People, with a wedge of sex in between, and you must take care that all your most intimate private affairs are reported sensationally in the Press.... After your novel's in its second hundred thousand and your bank balance is beginning to stagger you, you must marry a society woman and arrange for your name to appear in the next birthday honours' list...."
And so on. Then, filling up his glass, he turned to Terry. The career of the successful scientist, he said, was in many ways a more delicate matter, but still in the main, it was conditioned by the same general principles. "Darwin," he said, "points the way for all scientists. His monkey idea was so simple that only a scientist could have any doubts about it.... Anyhow, you must do your best with the material that comes your way. First of all, you positively must go to Paris or Berlin or Vienna and put yourself under some fellow who, because his name isn't Smith or Brown or Jones, is thereby held in almost mythical esteem by the majority of Englishmen. Then, after picking the other fellow's brains as much as you can, you must launch out suddenly on your own—choosing a slack season when the newspapers haven't much to write about. You must have a new discovery, or a new theory of something—nearly anything will do, provided it is simple enough for the man in the street to misunderstand and laugh at. You might, for instance, discover that to crawl a quarter of a mile a day on hands and knees is a cure of dyspepsia. Get your disciples round you and start crawling—in public—with the cameras all round you! ... Then come back to England and make a fierce attack on the oldest, the most innocent, and altogether the most fatuous member of the Medical Council...."
Terry laughed and said that all that sort of thing was just what he would most of all loathe doing.
"But youmustdo it," Severn urged. "Of course I've been joking about some of the details, but the principle of it all is sound enough. The key to successin everythingis advertisement."
"Notmysort of success," said Terry, doggedly.
"He feels," said Mrs. Severn, "that his work in itself is so important that success doesn't matter. Of course, with you it's bound to be different. Championing one gang of thieves against another is nothing unless it's successful." (She was, I suppose, referring to the Roebourne case.)
Severn retorted by a good-humoured jibe at her recently discovered interest in bacteriology. "I'm sure a gang of thieves is as interesting as a gang of microbes," he said, "and certainly far more remunerative." She laughed then, but seemed afterwards to grow suddenly serious. "Remunerative?" she echoed after a pause, and added: "Is moneyeverything? Oughtn't one to have the feeling that what one is doing is worth while? Do you feel that about the Roebourne case?"
"I'm not sure that I feel that about anything," Severn answered.
"Not even the work Terry's doing?" she queried; and he replied suavely: "I said I wasn't sure. That's the truth. I'mnotsure."
Then came the argument. I think he thoroughly enjoyed it, and all the more because he could see and watch its effect upon Terry. Briefly, his thesis was that there was no such thing, ultimately, as progress. We were here in the world, and we didn't know why we were here; and there wasn't a scrap of evidence to show that world-movements had any permanent direction. The world had been inhabited for millions of years, and it was merely parochial conceit to suppose that our own civilization was the highest that had ever been known. The Greeks had excelled us in many of the arts; why not some earlier civilization in chemistry or engineering or medical science? It was a fascinating speculation. Quite possibly all the great discoveries had been made and remade over and over again throughout the ages. Nor could it be optimistically assumed that each successive civilization touched a higher peak than its predecessor. It was far more likely that there had been vast cycles of civilizations—some of them with an upward trend, and others with a downward—and that these cycles, in turn, belonged to even vaster movements. It was all, he admitted, very hazy and speculative; but at any rate it gave little support to those worthy Victorians who thought that the laying of the Transatlantic cable represented another step towards the millennium.
"Then," I said, when he momentarily paused, "we might all of us just as well do evil as good."
He demurred to the use of the words "good" and "evil." There were no absolute standards; the world had fashions in such things just as it had in dress and manners.Anythingwas fashionable sometime or somewhere or other—murder in wartime, for instance, or bigamy in Turkey....
"Then whatarewe to do?"
"Do what you like. That's all the advice I can give you.Ialways do whatIlike. I like making speeches, for instance, and getting my name in the papers, and making plenty of money. But tastes differ, of course. And to those who live uncomfortably in this world in the hope of having everything made up to them in the next, my advice is just the same—If youpreferhavingthatsort of a life andthatsort of a belief, then have them by all means."
It was all very devastatingly brilliant, but perhaps it was a little too reminiscent of an undergraduate debate. It was Severn himself, rather than what he said, that impressed. Hehadsucceeded; hehadmade himself rich; those were the realest arguments. He had, in fact, done just what he liked with the world, and it had rewarded him far more generously than it did those who tamely let it do just what it liked with them. Yet, for all that, I found his arguments stimulating rather than convincing. Perhaps if he had been aiming them principally at me, they would have been different and more effective. But they weren't aimed at me. Terry was the target; and with him they certainly succeeded. Terry hadn't been an undergraduate at one of the older universities, and hadn't ever sat up till dawn shattering morality to bits and remoulding it nearer to the heart's desire. Severn's ideas were different not only in degree but in kind from any he had heard before, and the result was naturally severe.
All this leads up to what Helen did. (Yes, Imustcall her Helen.) Severn, just before we left, had called me into his study for a farewell whisky. He was in high good humour. "You fellows think I've been joking all the time," he said, "but I haven't.... Onlysomeof the time." He laughed. "For instance, when I talked about Terry going abroad to Paris or Vienna or somewhere, I really meant it. I think it would be a splendid chance for him.... You might ask him, as you go home, how he'd care to have a few years working with Karelsky. He'll know who Karelsky is."
While we were drinking and chatting he had to answer the telephone. The matter, I gathered, was of a rather private nature, so I edged away towards the doorway that looked into the hall.
And then I saw Terry. His back was towards me, and in front of him, almost hidden from my sight by his tall and upright body, was Helen. The lights in the hall were very subdued, and all I could see of her distinctly was the knuckle of her right hand as she held the lapel of his coat.
She had been talking to him earnestly, and I caught what was evidently a final remark. "... and you mustn't take any notice of him, Terry—youmustn't.... I'dhateyou to be influenced by him at all...." Only that, whispered very eagerly.
He said nothing in reply, and then suddenly, glancing over his shoulder with a little side-movement of her head, she saw me. I know she did, although at that moment I had almost withdrawn myself into the study. It was not deliberate eavesdropping, anyhow.
IV
Looking back on it all now, I can see exactly what was happening. But I couldn't then. It puzzled me that Terry had been so concerned by what had seemed to me merely a brilliant improvisation by a born improviser. But when I told him what Severn had said about Karelsky his manner changed. He seemed rather dazed with the idea, and he insisted on taking me back to his rooms that night and showing me everything he could find that had anything to do with Karelsky. Apparently he was a scientific star of the first magnitude. There was a photograph of him in a recent number ofDiscovery, and an article by him in theScience Reviewon the Function of the Nucleolus in the Life of the Animal Cell. His translated work "Eosinophilic Leucocytes in the Thymus of Postnatal Pigs" was, so Terry informed me, a monument of research; and he had also created a stir in the world of mathematics by a paper in a German journal on "Die Veranderlichkeit der Licht—und Farbe-Empfidnungen." Altogether he was undoubtedly a great man.
We sat up till nearly two in the morning discussing Karelsky and Vienna and so on. Terry's attitude astonished me, yet, in a way, it thrilled me also; it had, if the metaphor isn't too fanciful, the austere beauty of a Greek statue. What I mean is that he was thinking of nothing—nothing at all—except his work. The idea of having anything to do with the great Karelsky had stirred in him something that had always existed but had rarely permitted itself to be seen—a sort of frozen, white-hot passion for laboratory-research. It glowed in his eyes and trembled in his voice; it burned as fiercely as the art of any artist. It would be fine, he thought, to know Karelsky, and not only to know him, but to work with him and learn from him. It would be glorious to sit at the feet of the man who had discovered no fewer than three new species ofspalax monticola.
V
Helen was a lovely woman. I don't think I ever realized it more forcibly than on the afternoon that followed that End House dinner. She had asked me to tea at Rumpelmayer's, and we sat at one of the tables overlooking the plutocratic hubbub of St. James Street. "I asked Terry as well," she said, "but of course he won't come." She rather overdid the casualness of her attitude, and as soon as I looked at her she began to blush. But she kept her head, adding vivaciously: "I like Rumpelmayer's. It's the only place in London that reminds me of Ostend."
Then, quite suddenly, she began to talk to me with eagerness, bending forward across the table till her head was only a few inches from mine. "You know, Jimmy—(you don't mind me calling you that, do you?)—I believe you're rather clever. Geoffrey says you are, but I don't meanhissort of cleverness—I meanmysort, which consists in understanding people. I believe youdounderstand people, and I'm certain you notice most things that happen. You noticed, for instance, how I was talking to Terry last night. And you noticed how I blushed just now when I mentioned his name.... Didn't you?"
I admitted it.
She went on: "On the whole I'm rather glad Geoffrey talked last night as he did. I wouldn't like Terry to be really influenced by Geoffrey, but still, Geoffrey's rather good at shaking foundations. And Terry's foundationsneedshaking."
"Were they shaken?"
"Just a little, I think. ButIdid most of the shaking." She added very quietly: "I'm going to be perfectly frank with you and tell you the whole truth. I'm in love with Terry. There now—what do you make of that?"
WhatcouldI make of it? You are sitting over a cup of tea in a fashionable café when your companion, a pretty married woman, tells you quite calmly that she is in love with one of your greatest friends. What is the correct thing to say? Should you exclaim: "Really? How thrilling!" or adopt an attitude of commiseration?
I did neither. I put into words the thought that came straightway into my head. I said: "Being in love's bound to happen, I suppose. If you keep cool about it, it isn't frightfully important."
"How do you know?"
"Well ... I've always been very slightly in love with you."
"How nice of you!" she exclaimed, with genuine appreciation of what is, after all, the extremest compliment a man can pay a woman. "It's a most wonderful thing to tell me, but I'm afraid it's not much use as a comparison. For you've only got it slightly, whereas I'm in love with Terry just ... just tremendously."
"Are you really?"
"Yes."
It was then that I realized how lovely she was. The admission had brought a heightened colour into her cheeks, and as she sat there, waiting for me to say something, I saw in her again that utmost beauty that includes and yet is beyond the merely physical—a challenge rather than a statement.
She smiled at me suddenly. "Don't look so serious. Have some more tea.... That's right.... I'm glad I've told you, anyway. Do you think it'sveryawful?"
"It may be—for you," I answered.
"Forme?" She laughed. "Why, I'm not a bit afraid. It's so wonderful and interesting—so far—that I wouldn't give it up whatever happened. Do you know—" her eyes glowed with sharp excitement—"since it began to—to happen—all life seems to have caught fire.... Do you know what I mean? Everything is so—sodifferent—sosplendid...."
There were bright tears in her eyes as she spoke. She went on: "But of course you're thinking of Geoffrey. Well, you needn't worry—he'llnever need to know anything about it. He's so sure of his own powers of fascination that he'd want a lot of convincing that I could possibly be interested in anybody else."
I nodded. That was shrewd and very probably true. "Well, anyhow," I said, after a pause, "what are you going to do about it?"
"Doabout it?" she repeated. "Doabout it? Why, there's nothing to do, except to go on being in love for the first time in my life."
"Thefirst? You mean that——"
Yes, she meant it. She had begun by being frank with me, she said, and she might as well continue. No doubt I would be surprised to hear that her marriage hadn't been an affair of love—not on her side, at any rate.... She had been amidinettein the Rue de la Paix, and Severn a chance customer. He had taken her about as he would have taken about any girl if he had fancied her sufficiently. "He dazzled me—he was so very charming and delightful, and I liked him because he wasn't a snob...." After the marriage there had been trouble with the Severn family, and—"He was splendid then. I liked him most of all when he hadn't more than five pounds in the world and hewouldinsist on taking me to Claridge's. He was always like that—he never feared to do what he wanted. And, of course, you know how marvellously—howterriblysuccessful he's been." She smiled and continued: "The quaint part of it is that most people must think me the luckiest person in the world. Geoffrey's so generous—I've nothing very much to complain of. It's just that as soon as I met Terry I knew—" She shrugged her shoulders and added: "Well, you know what I knew, don't you?"
She took a chocolate éclair and delicately pierced it with her fork. "You aren't saying very much," she went on, "but I hope you're understanding.... Try to understand how terrible it is to be married to a man who always gets what he wants. Everything that he said last night was perfectly true—he doesn't believe there's anything very much worth while in the world, except to do what you like and have a good time.... And then, on the other hand, there's Terry...."
"Yes?"
She went on, after a pause: "What seems to me so strange and fine is his way of doing his work very quietly because he thinks it's worth doing, and not because of money or fame or anything like that at all. Just think of it—Geoffrey's made out of this Roebourne case in three weeks as much as Terry may earn in ten years.... It's a shame."
It was, I admitted, but I pointed out that Terry himself would probably disagree. He didn't want a lot of money, and consequently he wasn't disappointed about not getting it. He had often said that three hundred a year would completely satisfy him. To which she replied: "Yes, I told that to Geoffrey not long ago, and he said he'd settle three hundred a year on him if he'd accept it."
"Of course he wouldn't," I answered. "But it was rather decent of Geoffrey to make the suggestion."
"Was it?" She spoke rather sadly. "I suppose it was. But at the time, it just made me feel that the whole world was hopeless."
She meant, she explained, that it hurt her to think that what meant so much to Terry could be bestowed by Geoffrey as a mere whim of the moment. "But there it is," she went on, enjoying her éclair, "Terry's happy, and I'm happy, and Geoffrey's happy, so I suppose it's all right. Being in love—even tremendously in love—seems to be quite a harmless luxury if you keep your head about it. And I'm not likely to lose mine.... Besides, I want to help Terry. I want to make him a little more at home in the world."
"Which is happening faster," I asked, "your conversion of him, or his of you?"
She didn't answer. There wasn't time, for at that moment we saw Terry coming towards us.
VI
He was very shy and nervous. He had decided at the last moment to accept her invitation, but he hadn't known where Rumpelmayer's was, and several bus-conductors had failed to give adequate information. (I think he expected something about as large as Selfridge's.) Anyhow, that accounted for the delay. He was sorry, and he hoped we hadn't been waiting long.
The awkward part of it was that I had to leave them almost immediately for an unpostponable duty in Fleet Street. It was unfortunate, I thought, because Helen might think I had invented the appointment in order to leave her alone with Terry. Perhaps she did; but at any rate she seemed not to care. "I hope you won't be late," she said, smiling as she shook hands with me. And then she summoned the waitress and gave a fresh order.
As I rode back on the top of a bus to Fleet Street, the whole interview seemed almost incredible. It was queer enough to find Terry breaking his cast-iron rules by having tea with her; but it was positively sensational for her to have calmly confessed to being in love with him, and for me to have comforted her with the assurance that being in love wasn't frightfully important. But that was the sort of thing she had power to do; she could have confessed murder, I believe, and have made you feel that murder wasn't frightfully important.
Often since then I have pondered over the matter and wondered what Ioughtto have done. Whatever it was, it was probably more heroic than what I did, which was merely to wait, telling myself over and over again that neither the one nor the other of them was a fool, and that there were certain things which only fools did....
VII
And so it began. The difficulty is to saywhatbegan. Terry told me so little, and Helen told me so much; and between the two was a vast hiatus of the inexplicable. At first, the affair seemed perfectly harmless. When a man, after habitually working three times as hard as he ought, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn't seem a great deal to complain of. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a pretty woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on some miserable hillside.