Chapter TEN: I

NOTHING happened for nearly a week. Terry stayed at Hindhead; the Karelsky sensation died down a little; and I, after my adventures at Crewe and elsewhere, had no time to visit the End House. On Friday, however, Severn telephoned me to come to dinner the next day, and by the late evening post there came this note from June:

"DEAR HILTON,--I hear you are dining with us to-morrow, and I want you to be on your guard. Father is sure to ask your advice about the Karelsky affair. I've argued with him for hours over it, but it hasn't seemed to be much use so far; and apparently he's rooted out some discreditable part of K's past, which of course makes him keener than ever on action. He likes Terry, and wants to help him, but it's so hard to get him to understand how things are. I think, though, that if you back me up, as you promised, we may just manage it. Yours,

"JUNE."

But I _hadn't_ promised! At least, I ransacked my memory for any word or incident that might have given her such an impression, and I couldn't find any.... Even when I sat down at Severn's table the next night, I was by no means certain what I would do. There was nobody there but the four of us. Helen was very quiet and June rather nervously subdued; only Severn, in his febrile way, possessed any degree of vivacity. There was something slightly horrible in the contrast between the intense activity of his mind and the dead incapacity of his body. During dinner he talked principally politics, but afterwards, when the servants had disappeared, he announced his newest Karelsky discovery. It was pretty shady--some business about a student whom Karelsky had tricked and who, in despair, had drowned himself. The affair had been partially hushed up at the time, but under Severn's skilled manipulation it could doubtless be made to live again. "It's just the very thing we wanted," he exclaimed rapturously. "Nothing could have been better--except a scandal about a woman.... It's just possible we might even get a verdict--you never know. Anyhow, we shall certainly achieve our object, which is, I take it, to give our hero a good boost at the expense of our villain."

"No," said June quietly, and looked at me.

He smiled. "June," he went on, quite good-humouredly, "has some rather peculiar ideas on the subject. May I assume that she has hammered them into you as well as into me?"

She said (and I could feel before she said it, that it was what she was going to say): "Yes, I've told Hilton what I think. And he agrees with me, too. Absolutely."

"_What_?" And Severn laughed. "What's that? _Do_ you agree with her? Do you agree that we should all do nothing and say nothing and let Karelsky go on his way rejoicing?"

And the extraordinary thing is that I heard myself answering: "Well, you know, there is something in what she says."

It astonished me; it was as if something sudden and impulsive jerked me into position--into position by her side. I even began to argue the matter--at first as an impromptu defender of something I wasn't very certain about, but later on with conviction and even enthusiasm. I think I made an impression on Severn, for he heard me very attentively. I assured him that, from my own knowledge, Terry was quite ignorant of the fact that he had been duped. "Not only that, but he's actually delighted--because he sees that the work he did is really of value. Probably the idea that he has any proprietary right to the results of his own work has never occurred to him."

"And you don't want it to occur to him?"

"Well, as things are, I feel that I don't. The thought that's he's scored such a success has worked a miracle with him, and one's always rather afraid of a relapse after a miracle."

"Do you think he can possibly go on without knowing?"

"There's an odd chance that he might."

He made a grimace. "All these arguments, you know, Hilton, are June's. I've heard them over and over again during the past week.... Haven't you anything new--something you've only just thought of--something bright and original--anything--anything--I don't care a damn what it is so long as I haven't heard it before?"

I thought he was sneering until I saw his eyes. They were full of a curious, child-like eagerness--an eagerness that almost _tore_ through them. Something new--something bright and original--something he hadn't heard before ... it was his heart-cry always.

I said: "I'm sorry. There isn't anything new to say. It's just that, quite sincerely, June and I believe that the best service we can do for Terry is to leave things alone."

"You've changed your mind, then, since the last time we talked about it?"

"Yes, I have."

Then he said, quietly and almost casually: "Very well then, we'll drop the matter."

II

_Drop the matter_! And June was speechless. She went towards him as if she would have hugged him, but remembering his fragility in time, kissed him warmly on the lips. It seemed to please him; he patted her head and told her that he quite realized her little game of throwing me into the fray at the last minute, as Napoleon threw in his guards at Waterloo. And all she could reply then was: "You dear--_dear_--to have given up your beautiful trial-scene--for I know--I understand--how much you were looking forward to it."

He said, patting her head again: "Wait till that Chicago fellow has finished with me. Then I'll have all the trial-scenes I want."

She couldn't reply to that at all; I could see her eyes filling and brimming over with tears. I intervened then myself, telling him how glad and grateful I was, and how much I hoped that the future would bring recovery to him. And when I had finished he said, quite in his old half-mocking tone again: "That's very nice of you. Now let's be as sentimental as we can about it--and, to begin with, let us all cry."

Perhaps we should have cried but for his saying that. As it was we laughed, June, he and I; and then suddenly I noticed Helen. She wasn't laughing and she wasn't crying either; she was just looking dreadfully in front of her, with cheeks pale and lips tightened; and when she caught my eye she said, quickly and sharply: "So you're _not_ going to tell Terry?"

We looked at her, all of us; the centre of gravity had suddenly shifted.

"That's what we've decided," I said.

"You're satisfied for him to get what happiness he can out of ignorance?"

"Well--if you put it that way--yes."

She bit her lips till they were almost white. Then, in the midst of the tense, expectant silence, she retorted: "I'm _not_ satisfied, and I never will be. And if you aren't going to tell him the truth, then I am...."

It was a far bigger surprise than Severn's capitulation; it staggered us all, and even Severn was less ready for it than for most things. And before we could collect our scattered wits, she was going on--ranting, if you like--telling us what she thought of us, of Terry, of everything else, and of the world in general. She had hardly spoken all the evening, and it was as if the words had been heaping themselves up behind her barrier of silence, and that now the barrier had given way.

I wish I could have taken down in shorthand everything she said, for it was an impressive tirade. It held us spellbound while it lasted, but the spell is over now, and all that memory yields is a few scraps and sentences.

"Ever since you knew him," I can remember her saying, "you've been planning things out for him and settling things that he ought to have settled for himself, and the result has been just disaster--disaster--over and over again.... And now you're planning that he shan't discover the mistakes you've made.... But he _shall_ discover them, and the sooner the better. Let him know the truth--let's all of us know the truth--let's know the truth about his life and your life and my life....

"You're afraid it will make him ill? Then let him be ill--better that he should be ill of the truth than smiling in your fool's paradise. Let him know everything. Even if Karelsky's fooled him, _you_ shan't!"

June was white-hot. "We don't want to fool him, mother. We want to help him. Why should _you_ interfere?"

"_Interfere_?" Her bitter laugh was more than words. "_Interfere_? That's a strange word to use about me and Terry."

"Is it? I don't see why it is. If you deliberately tell him things that you needn't tell him, that's interference, isn't it?"

"All right, then. I'm going to interfere."

"You're _really_ going to tell him?"

"Rather."

"When?"

"As soon as ever I can. He's staying at the hotel at Hindhead, isn't he?"

"You'd dare to go there and tell him?"

"It doesn't strike me as particularly daring."

"Oh, but ... mother.... You _shan't_ go--you've no right to--you----"

"Haven't I? How do you know what I've a right to do? Perhaps I've a right to do what _you're_ doing, anyway. _You_ visit him, don't you? _You_ talk to him, and tell him what you want to tell him, don't you?"

The two were facing each other dangerously--June flushed and angry, and Helen with an ashen-pale mask of curious, half-contemptuous calmness. And then, in the midst of the almost ugly tension, Severn thought fit to fling his own delicate and carefully-prepared bombshell.

"You won't need to go anywhere to see him," he announced, looking at Helen. "He'll be here any minute...."

"_Here_?"

I think we all said that. He watched our bewilderment, enjoying it as a conjuror enjoys the mystification of his audience. But we had had already such a surfeit of surprises that perhaps we showed less than might have been expected. He told us then that Terry had written to him, suggesting a visit, and that he (Severn) had invited him for that night without any anticipation of "this delicious little family contretemps."

Helen remained calm, saying merely: "I don't care. I can tell him here to-night as well as at any other time and place. It makes no difference to me."

And then the butler entered and spoke the name that seemed so strange to us because we never used it ourselves.

It was like a play--one of those rather obvious, melodramatic plays in which, as soon as a character announces that he is expecting somebody to call, there is always a deafening ring of the doorbell.... It was, anyhow, far too "pat" to have been an entire coincidence; and my theory is that Severn, who had exceptionally sharp ears, must have heard or seen Terry approaching along the drive....

There is a sense in which the long-deferred answer to any question is always something of an anticlimax. Often, for example, during the long interval of years, I had thought: Will he ever see her again, and if so, how and when and where?

And here, after a few moments, he was, standing before her with his bronzed face and his keen eyes and his shy, boyish smile. He didn't speak; she didn't speak; it was their first meeting since that storm-riven night eight years before.

Then he went across to Severn. To him more than to her he seemed to show emotion; he said, with almost a child's wistfulness: "Severn.... How _are_ you?"

And Severn replied: "Much better for seeing you. Why the devil haven't you come here before?"

"I couldn't," he answered simply, and then he looked round the room and completed his salutations. To me he gave a cordial nod, and to June a curt quick smile which she returned instantly. He was one of us again.

I remember feeling an almost overmastering desire to make some trifling remark--something like--"Extraordinary how the years have flown, isn't it?"--anything, however stupid, that would in some way acknowledge the central fact of that eight years' interval. I don't know whether anybody else felt like that--quite probably not. Except for Severn, they all seemed stricken with a desire to say nothing at all.

Strange--that he should have met her again in that room, and with all of us looking on.... I had pictured so many places--some flower-decked railway-station in the Tirol, a Viennese boulevard at nighttime, some winding, hedge-bordered English lane, even Charing Cross Station--but never that room at the End House, with the port on the table and the twilight creeping over the cold lawns outside. It was disappointing, almost; it seemed to be making such poor use of a romantic opportunity....

The situation, however, was interesting, the more so as none of us knew what would happen.

For quite ten minutes nothing happened at all, and we just sat round the table making remarks as conventional and featureless as if the occasion had been the state visit of a grand-duke. Terry sat at the table with us, and though he declined a glass of port, he pulled a pipe out of his pocket and asked if he might smoke. We chaffed him a little about letting go his good resolutions, and he answered, rather cryptically: "You have to choose what you'll let go and what you'll hold on to."

For a time I allowed myself the faint hope that Helen, after all, mightn't carry out her threat, but her attitude soon dispelled it. "So you're working again?" she remarked, while he was filling his pipe. (And those were her first words to him.)

He replied that he was. He also gave a perfectly natural explanation of everything that had happened to him. "I worked a bit too hard in Vienna," he said, "and the result was a sort of break-down. But I think I've got over it now--at the price of a year's slacking." And he smiled.

She went on, with no more beating about the bush: "What do you think of Karelsky's latest discoveries?"

He looked up sharply, but without perturbation. "They're interesting," he said, puffing contemplatively at his pipe.

And we, as spectators, looked on. June and I lacked the power to intervene, and Severn, I think, was too fascinated by the spectacle to wish to do so. She continued her cross-examination.

"Karelsky's been working rather on your lines, hasn't he?"

"We've been investigating the same subject."

"Do your conclusions tally with his?"

"Some of them."

Pause.... Then: "Karelsky seems to have got the most tremendous publicity out of it."

"Yes. It's the sort of thing he likes."

"And you don't, I'm sure."

"I should hate it."

"It's a good job, then, that he never mentioned you in any of his speeches.... I suppose you helped him?"

"Oh, yes, I was paid to help him."

She wasn't getting on as easily as she had expected; I could see that. I could see the calmness of her eyes turning gradually to exasperation, especially when June put in, rather coldly: "I'm sure Terry doesn't want to answer all these questions, mother."

But it was his casual, "Oh, I don't mind in the least," that stung Helen to absolute desperation. "You don't mind, eh?" she cried fiercely. "You don't mind anything, do you? ... You're a fool, Terry--and I'm going to let the truth into you even if nobody else here has the courage to do it.... These discoveries Karelsky has made are yours, if you only had sense enough to realize it--they're _yours_, and he's stolen them off you, knowing what a little fool you are!"

He put down his pipe and stared at her, and I think we were all slightly relieved that he didn't go off immediately into acute hysterics. He just said--almost quizzically: "But really--to tell me _this_! What grounds can you possibly have for saying such things?"

"You needn't ask me," she retorted. "Ask June--she's had access to all your papers. It was her discovery in the beginning."

He turned to June, wordless; and June smiled at him. "Don't get alarmed, Terry," she said quietly. "It's true what mother says, though I wouldn't have bothered you about it if I'd been her. I _do_ think Karelsky's stolen your work. I don't see how anybody could help thinking so who'd gone through it all in detail as I have.... There's not much doubt about it, Terry--you've been done ... but never mind--it doesn't really matter...."

And then, to our complete astonishment, he replied, taking up his pipe again: "I daresay you're right. But, as you say, it doesn't really matter, does it?"

III

I felt sorry for Helen then. We were all bewildered, but for her alone bewilderment was defeat. And Terry hardly noticing her, smoked his pipe, as if embarrassed rather than upset by the turn that events had taken.

It was Severn who took up the cross-examination, but did it so calmly and sympathetically that even Terry's embarrassment was soon dispelled. Apparently he had had an idea that Karelsky "might have stolen" his work. He hadn't troubled much about it because what really mattered to him most of all was the revelation that his work was sound. "Sound enough to be stolen?" interposed Severn, and Terry replied smilingly: "Yes, if you like. Only really, you know, you can't steal _work_, can you? It's just _done_, and it doesn't very much matter who does it."

"It's easy enough to steal credit," said Severn.

"Credit? Yes, but who wants that? I should hate all this newspaper puffing--it would worry me. It's just as well Karelsky's saved me from it. If he'd asked me I'd have given him full permission to do all he has done.... And besides, do I deserve credit? I'd done all that work, and yet I hadn't enough confidence in it or myself to make it public. The world owes something to Karelsky."

"And you may be sure Karelsky will collect the debt in full," replied Severn.

Then June said laughingly: "Do you know, Terry, father had a wonderful idea that you should bring an action against Karelsky for theft or plagiarism, or whatever it is, and that he--father, I mean--would take up your case in court? It would have been rather fine, wouldn't it?"

"So fine," interposed Severn, "that the very ushers would have wept at my eloquence."

Perhaps it was as well to make a joke of it like that. June and her father were in some strange and mystic harmony--I had never been so certain of it as then. They laughed and chattered and made witticisms, and all the time Terry was growing younger and happier before their eyes. The Karelsky business didn't really matter; you had only to look at him to see that. "It's what's done in the world that matters, not who does it," was his way of summing it all up.

It was a happy ending--for all of us except Helen. She stayed, pale and silent, for a while, and then suddenly whispered something to Severn and went out of the room. He told us afterwards, with perhaps the faintest touch of cynicism, that she had begged to be excused owing to a bad headache.

And the conversation went on....

IV

June's eyes as she shook hands with me at the gate that evening were shining with delight. "It's marvellous," she whispered softly, for Terry wasn't far away. "It's wonderful to think that he knows everything now, and that we have nothing more to fear...."

The night had a glow of moonlight, and in it her eyes were shining--with delight, as I said, but also (I wondered) with something more than delight? I could even see her mother in her then--her mother as she had been years before.

Terry and I, having bidden our farewells, walked back down the moonlit lane to the Tube Station. He was staying with me for the night--indeed, for just as long as he wished, though the thought of his unfinished work made him eager to return to Hindhead.

He said, amidst the clatter of the Tube train, that Severn, despite the accident, was really just the same, but that Helen seemed to have changed. "I didn't understand her," he confessed.

I answered that eight years were bound to have made a difference, and that the last year had made perhaps the biggest difference of all. He nodded then, and was silent for a while. It was obvious that talking about her both attracted him and made him embarrassed.

He never mentioned now his old half-crazed idea, that he was personally responsible for all the misfortunes of the Severn family. But the idea was somewhere still in his mind, in essence the same though maybe transmuted into another semblance; and I could sense it easily enough behind the slow, baffled words with which he broke the silence eventually. "I'm more than ever sorry for her now," he told me.

That was all he said about her, but before going to bed we talked for hours about his work and prospects. He told me frankly that one of the chief causes of his earlier despondency had been the thought, which he never dared to express in words, that his work was no good. Karelsky's shabby financial dealings with him had increased that fear; he had begun to sink beneath the awful realization that he was a failure. It wasn't any spectacular success that he wanted; he had no envy of those who made their names prominent in the world's view. All he wanted was the secret inward conviction that he was doing something worth doing. And now he had it.

"All this may sound priggish," he added, "but I don't think it really _is_ priggish. Because, after all. I'm only choosing the easiest path for myself. I should hate Karelsky's life of fame and sensation, just as he'd hate my life of hard work and insignificance.... We're just made differently, that's all, and we can't help ourselves."

"All the same," I said, "you ought to have what you're entitled to, if only to stop others from having more than they're entitled to. You've done the work; you ought to get the credit."

"Can't you see that it doesn't matter who gets the credit?"

"Frankly," I retorted, "I'm incapable of feeling like that about it. If there's any fame or credit to be got out of my work, I'll be glad to have it. It may be a lower attitude than yours, but it's more appropriate for earning a living in the twentieth century."

That seemed to embarrass him. He assured me that he had never reckoned my attitude as 'lower' than his in any way; it was just 'different.'

"Yours is medieval," I said, laughingly. "You ought to have been a craftsman on a fourteenth century cathedral, putting your whole life and soul into the carving of a single gargoyle."

He said that gargoyles weren't much in his line. "But, anyhow, doing that would be a nobler way of spending a lifetime than lots of the things that are done to-day--selling rubbishy patent medicines, for instance, or writing rubbishy books...."

And so we argued, half-seriously, half jocularly, far into the night. One thing rather astonished me--the extent to which he had thought about things. He disliked the modern world, on the whole, and he had his reasons for it. He said that newspapers, modern advertising, and big cities, always afflicted him with a sort of terror. He felt he couldn't 'cope with them.' It was odd, really, his being a scientist, because science was supposed to be the key-note of the new age....

"Sometimes," I said, "I think you aren't a scientist at all, but a theologian gone astray."

Oh, no. He wouldn't admit that. He had no sympathy with dogmas. But he did feel that somehow you either had to accept the modern world with an easy cynical fatalism such as Severn's, or else hate it, as he did himself, and long for something warmer and simpler....

And then he made a curious confession--perhaps the most curious he ever made. "When I thought I had failed altogether at the work I liked most, I had to try to think what I would do in the future.... And I had half made up my mind that--if they'd have me--I'd join some sort of mission affair and get sent abroad."

"And how about the dogmas then?" I asked, and he answered puzzledly: "I don't know.... I _really_ don't know.... They'd have been a great nuisance, I admit--but still...."

_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.