Chapter FIVE: I

I DID, after all, turn up at that interview with Severn. It wasn't my intention to take sides; I was prepared to mediate, to put the brake on where necessary--in short, to keep the whole discussion well under blood-heat. Perhaps I succeeded. Perhaps it was really a compliment to my impartiality when Severn exclaimed, about half-an-hour after we had begun: "Look here, Hilton, what _are_ you in this game--prosecuting counsel, defending counsel, judge, jury, hangman, or what?"

I might have answered that I held a watching brief, but that's the sort of clever reply one doesn't think of till afterwards. And yet it absolutely summed up my position; I _was_ watching, and with a diffidence that gradually, as the affair proceeded, developed into rather dissatisfied disgust. For, as I had feared, the whole thing was almost a fiasco. Terry was sheerly defenceless against Severn; he couldn't think or talk a quarter as fast; he had none of the arts of suavity or blandness; he could only sit there, minute after minute, in a sort of dogged, stupefied silence.... Really, it was no fight at all; it was merely Severn giving a free exhibition of himself.

Perhaps you have heard Severn defending a difficult case in a court of law. He rises quickly to his feet, all smiles and courtesy to everybody; he talks calmly and suavely for a few moments, just to give the prosecution time to reflect what a charming man he is; and then, quite suddenly, he says something unexpected. Perhaps he startles by some unguessed admission, or brings forth a new and unlooked-for item of evidence. But anyhow, after politely upsetting most of the ideas you already have, he proceeds, still politely, to build up in you the ideas he wants you to have. And that is the way he earns his hundreds of pounds a week.

You can picture him, therefore, striding into the lounge of the Andrassy, bestowing on everybody a charming smile, ordering drinks, offering cigars, remarking on the hot weather, and generally, in fact, behaving as if he hadn't a ghost of an idea what we wanted him for. And you can picture Terry, clenching his hands with a queer sort of nervous firmness, declining the drink and the cigar, and going straight ahead to the vital question--was this woman, this Greek dancer, Severn's mistress?

Terry was too nervous to lead up to the question gradually. And Severn was too clever to lead down from it gradually. He answered, as sharply and instantly as a pistol-shot: "Yes. And what of it?"

II

Well, what of it? What could be said by either of us? Severn had won the first round and was fresh as ever after it, while his adversary was driven to the ropes by the suddenness rather than the strength of the blow. It was, indeed, an utterly impossible contest, for while Terry's attitude was rock-still, Severn moved his arguments continually and bewilderingly about in all directions and with all velocities. There was nowhere to grip hold, and besides, Severn was the wicked animal that, when attacked, defends itself. When, for instance, Terry asked if Helen knew what was happening, Severn answered: "Why _should_ she know? She doesn't tell me all _her_ private affairs." And when I ventured to point out that there was really no parallel at all between _her_ private affairs and this one of his, he turned on me with the lightning retort: "Well, _you_ ought to know her private affairs, Hilton, if anybody does. _You_ ought to know why she hasn't spoken to you for years, and won't even have you in the house.... She won't tell _me_, anyway."

It was a good shot, and it made the second round his as well as the first. Terry, I could see, was utterly bewildered by the revelation; and I, naturally, was nonplussed. In the interval Severn went serenely on with his little game of turning the argument upside down and inside out. It was a fascinating display of dialectic, but I wasn't in the mood to admire it; I wondered why he didn't say: "Look here, I've had enough of this discussion. My own affairs are my own, and you can both clear out and be damned to you." Perhaps he didn't say that because he was enjoying himself so much better arguing.

The interview had begun at half-past eight, and soon after nine I reminded him of his train to Warsaw. And then, with a bland smile, he replied: "Oh, never mind _that_. I'm not going to Warsaw or anywhere else just yet. It was only a blind to get me away from your valued, but in the circumstances, rather undesirable company.... Have another drink, will you?"

I declined one perhaps curtly, and he ordered one for himself. Then he went on, lighting another cigar and making himself thoroughly comfortable: "D'you know, you fellows seems so infernally interested in my affairs that I've half a mind to tell you the whole damn truth about them...."

III

This is the important part. All the rest had been a mere forensic display, and I had already had more than enough of it, dazzling though it was. And yet, even when the whole damn truth came out, it was still marvellously under his control. He played with it; he let us have it in carefully arranged doses; it was the truth only if we cared to believe it was. He began by laughing at us for our unskilful attempts to cross-examine. Logic, he told us, was the great essential, and logic was what we lacked. "If you had attacked the matter logically, you would have deduced two principal reasons why a man can leave his wife. One is that he has got tired of her, and the other is that she had got tired of him.... Why were you in such a hurry to assume the former only?"

The colour rose sharply into Terry's face, but he said nothing, and neither did I. Severn, after looking at us both enquiringly, resumed: "I'm going to tell you very simply what's been happening during the last few years. It really is very simple.... Just this. My wife and I were quite happy together until--oh, a number of years ago. Then--very suddenly--she changed--and we haven't been at all happy since. That's all it amounts to. Didn't I say it was simple?"

Of course it wasn't simple at all, and he knew that as well as we did. And that's why I won't attempt to set down the story in Severn's own words. Like most men of marked ability, he had mannerisms--lightning gestures of hand and finger, sharp changes of tone, tricks of speech, and so on--all, no doubt, accentuated and standardized by his work at the Bar. Normally, in private conversation, he suppressed them, but now, as he told us about himself and Helen, they simply broke out all over the place. It was as if he were savagely and maliciously parodying himself; he pleaded his own case with an extravagant eloquence that was perfectly absurd before an audience of two. Perhaps his most irritating and persistent trick was the rhetorical question; he would say: "Now why do you think Helen changed?" and then, when neither of us answered, continue, as he might have done to a jury: "Well, why _do_ women change? Shall we say _Cherchez l'homme_? ... I agree, but suppose you can't find any man--what then?" ... And so on, for well over half-an-hour.

And the upshot of it all was this.

First: Helen no longer loved him. He didn't know why she didn't; but then, neither had he, in former days, known why she did. Perhaps she had just grown tired.... He wasn't blaming her, of course; it wasn't her fault if she had no scrap of affection left for him. Very possibly it was his fault, although she had never said so.... Where her affection had gone to, he couldn't say--but he thought it hadn't gone to any other man. The important thing to him was that _he_ no longer possessed it. He had even, he said begun to feel that she actively disliked him, and that something essential and unalterable in him got on her nerves.... Anyhow, what was he to do? Obviously, as soon as he began to realize that she might be happier with her freedom, he must find some way of giving it her. And in law, of course, (as he of all people knew well enough) there was only one way--the way that he had taken. "It isn't," he explained, "that I'm particularly keen on her getting a divorce. It's just that I want her to feel _free_. When I get home, I shall be able to say: Look here, if you don't want me, or can't stand me, or even would rather be without me, here's your grounds for divorce all neatly arranged and documented, so that you can file your petition at once.... Incidentally, there'll be no money difficulties--I've settled enough on her to keep her comfortable, whatever she does."

"And you give it as your honest opinion," I said, "that she'll really be happier divorced from you?"

"That's just what I don't know," he answered. "But I rather think she will, and in any case, it's giving her a chance, isn't it? ... Besides, there's my own side of the question. I should hate you to feel that I'm a mere bundle of altruistic motives. I'm not.... As I used to impress on you years ago, my code of morals is the very simple one of doing more or less what I like. And one of the things I _don't_ like is being married to a woman who thinks I'm a scoundrel for being such a great big ugly success while so many other men are such divinely beautiful failures.... Understand?"

I nodded, but he said that he was sure I _didn't_ understand. I didn't wish to argue the matter, in case Terry should recognize himself as one of the divinely beautiful failures, so I said, rather curtly: "What I can't understand is why you had to come out all the way here for--for the purpose."

He laughed. "The Conference," he answered. "Didn't I mention it at breakfast? Three weeks in Bukarest, wearing a morning-coat and topper with the temperature at ninety in the shade, discussing places you've never heard of with men whose names you can't pronounce; every damned speech repeated five times, first in French, then in Serbian, then in Greek, then in Bulgarian, and then in Turkish.... God!--it's enough to drive a man to anything.... But, apart from that, I prefer foreigners. When a man is compelled to take medicine, why should he not choose the nicest medicine there is? And where in England could you meet so charming a lady as Madame--in her profession?"

"I'm afraid I don't know any English women in her profession."

He laughed again. "I don't suppose you do," he said, "especially as I haven't been altogether truthful with you about Madame. She doesn't dance--except very badly in a ball-room. Her profession is far better suited to her temperament and attainments.... Understand?"

IV

We understood. He had told us practically everything, and what little he hadn't told us we could guess. Never had the whole interview seemed more pointless than at the end of his explanations; there was simply nothing to be done or said. Except--and it was a slight exception--the matter of Bentley. Severn, most probably, had no idea that he had been seen by anyone who knew him besides ourselves, and I let him know as plainly as I could that whether Helen chose to divorce him or not, his adventures were very likely to trickle across to England through the medium of Bentley's chatter. "And then," I said, "you know as well as I do what will happen."

"Of course," he answered, almost carelessly. "It will mean the end of my political career--perhaps even the end of my legal career as well, though I rather doubt that. But, anyhow, do you think I haven't counted the cost?" His voice became eager as he went on: "My dear fellow, I've counted _all_ the costs, and my favourite maxim still holds--I'll do what I _want_ to do. I've climbed the ladder because I've enjoyed climbing it, but if the price of staying on top is too high, then damn it all, I'll come down again.... I'll take risks--I'll live dangerously--I'll do any damned thing in the world except be a slave--even to my career!"

Deadlock--complete and absolute. He had his reasons for everything, and most of what he said, whether it convinced or not, was logically unanswerable. I was tired of the whole business, and Terry's silence seemed to show that he was the same. The one thing desirable was to get him away from the brain-twisting intricacies of a situation which had nothing to do with him.

But just then he spoke. He turned to me and asked me very calmly if I would mind if he and Severn were to speak alone for a few minutes. And before I could reply he went on: "Wait for me--in the hall. I won't be long.... And you might--if there's time--look up the return trains to Vienna...."

V

_If there were time_! There was almost time to memorize the whole time-table while I waited for him. I sat in the coolest corner of the hall and tried to interest myself in a month-old copy of _Lustige Blätter_--the only non-Magyar newspaper on the premises. But it was difficult--as difficult as it is to appreciate the comic papers in a dentist's waiting-room. When a quarter of an hour passed and Terry didn't return, I began to reproach myself with having left him at all; and then, as a relief from that, I tried to analyse, in the perspective of seven years, that early episode with Helen that had so vitally affected his life. What, exactly, _had_ happened between the two of them? ...

The clock chiming the hour drove me back again from past to present. There seemed something ominous in his non-appearance--a hint of something terrible that might be happening behind the screened door of the lounge. What might not such a man as Severn do with such a man as Terry? ... The minutes drew towards the half-hour, and I think I should have boldly walked into the lounge when the clock struck, had not Terry, a minute earlier, come out to me--alone. His face was paler than ever, and his eyes--his eyes were just what I didn't like to see. It angered me to think of the strain that all this incessant listening and thinking and arguing was putting on him; it gave me a furious, unreasoning anger with Severn and Helen and Terry himself and the world in general.

His first words were an eager, disjointed apology for having kept me waiting longer than he had intended; and I replied, with perhaps a touch of curtness: "There's a fast train to Vienna at four this afternoon. Shall we go back?"

And he answered: "Yes.... And Severn's coming with us."

"_What_?"

"He's coming with us--through Vienna--on his way to England. He's going back to England--immediately.... He's promised.... He's promised absolutely.... And so--you see--after all--I mean--he--he----"

"You mean he's going back to Helen?"

"Yes--yes--that's it.... He's promised.... He's given me his word.... He wouldn't go back on his word, would he? ... Oh, I _know_ he wouldn't do _that_...."

He floundered on into positive incoherence, and then, as if feeling the hopelessness of speech, sank down into a chair beside mine and smiled.

VI

It was true enough that he had done it, but _how_ he had done it was just an enormous mystery. All he said to me when he was calm enough to tell me anything was that Severn had "promised." He didn't boast of having persuaded him, though that was what it seemed to have been. "We just talked," he said. "He was quite different after you had gone. You see, you're clever, and in front of you he likes to say clever things, but he didn't bother when he was with me alone, because he knew I wouldn't appreciate them. Of course, I'm not much good at arguing, but then, you see, we didn't argue--we just _talked_."

And that, at first, was all that I could get out of him--the admission that they had just talked. When I pressed for details he said: "Oh, we just talked about things in general, you know--about Helen, of course--and June, and Severn himself...."

The odd thing was that he was no longer even remotely angry with Severn. He was sorry for him; he wanted to help him; he talked almost as if Severn were a pathetic little weakling instead of a man who, whatever his deficiencies, could at least take care of himself. "Severn isn't really a bad fellow," he assured me, and I agreed most cordially that he wasn't. "The real truth is," he continued, "that he's unhappy. He wouldn't let _you_ see it, but he couldn't stop _me_ from seeing it. He's unhappy because he's really very fond of Helen, and always has been.... And that's why we must help him."

"It isn't much good being fond of her if she isn't fond of him," I said.

He stared uneasily at the floor. "She _might_ be fond of him," he replied, at length, "if--if somebody would _help_ her."

"In other words, they are both to be helped into each other's arms?"

"That's right!"

"And what does Severn think of the idea?"

"I--I don't know. I didn't ask him anything except to go back to Helen immediately, and he promised to do that."

"So that the reunion idea is entirely yours?"

"Yes."

"And you're going to work it out entirely by yourself?"

"No, no, I'm not. _You're_ going to _help_ me."

"Another link in this encircling chain of help!"

"Don't--_don't_ make fun."

I could have cried when he said that. I hated myself for the sarcasm, but the motive was sincere enough--just anger with him for thinking so much of everybody except himself. I saw him as he was, pale and haggard and on the verge of a breakdown; needing, above all things, rest, and yet, by sheer perversity of fate, embarking upon this grandiloquent scheme for helping people who, if they needed help at all, were very well able to help themselves. It was more than absurd; it was monstrous. And when he said "Don't make fun," it was more even than monstrous; it was pitiable.

I told him contritely that I hadn't been making fun, and that all I wanted was for him to see my point of view. I had always been perfectly frank with him, and----

"Not always," he interrupted.

"What do you mean?"

He said quietly: "You weren't frank with me about the quarrel you had with Helen."

Ever since Severn had revealed the matter, I had been preparing for Terry mentioning it, but I hadn't guessed that he would save it up with such uncanny accuracy for the awkwardest moment of all.

"Why did you quarrel?" he persisted.

I said that the word 'quarrel' wasn't a very apt one; the whole thing had been more of a "tiff"--a minor sort of thing that ought to have been forgotten long before.

"Ought to have been," he said, "but wasn't. Why not?"

"There haven't been chances. Helen's been out of England nearly all the time."

"Not one chance of reconciliation--in seven years?"

"I'm afraid that's the truth."

"It must have been a dreadful tiff."

"Oh, no."

"What was it about?"

"She objected to--to a certain attitude I had taken up. That was all. Nothing very dreadful."

He said: "I suppose the reason you won't tell me is because the quarrel was about me. And I can guess what it was. She blamed you for persuading me to go away."

I said nothing.

"Didn't she? Wasn't that it?"

"Well, if you insist on knowing, that _was_ it, more or less.... But what on earth's the good of diving back into things that happened so many years ago?"

"We can't help it," he said, uneasily. "We haven't done with the past yet.... We can't push it away and say 'That's finished with.' It never is finished with." He paused and then went on: "And so she thought that it was _you_ who persuaded me?"

"I didn't deny it."

"But why didn't you? You _should_ have denied it. It was absurd for you to be blamed. You didn't persuade me at all--I made up my mind myself. It wasn't _your_ fault."

"You thanked me in your letter for what I had said, anyhow."

"Did I? Did I?" His eyes sharpened as if searching for something inside his own head. "I don't remember that letter. I only remember sitting up all night and making up my mind that I couldn't--I _couldn't_..." Some spasm of memory seemed to give him eagerness; he went on: "Don't you see why we _must_ help Severn? ... _I_ couldn't _then_--_he_ mustn't _now_--don't you _feel_ how it is? ... We _must_ help him--he's unhappy--he's been driven into all this by his unhappiness. It's not _his_ fault."

At any rate, we had come back to the main argument. That was something. "I'm afraid," I said, "that you're in danger of flying to the other extreme about Severn. I believe, as you do, that he's fundamentally a decent fellow, but the fact remains that he's infernally clever and can lie beautifully whenever it suits him. It seems to me that it's hardly likely that the right's _all_ on his side. Most probably Helen has a case, if she were here to tell it."

"Oh, I know ... it's not _her_ fault."

"You say it's not her fault, and not Severn's fault either. Then whose fault do you suppose it is?"

I was a fool to ask that question. It made him suddenly crumple up--made him lean forward with his head in his outstretched hands and yield himself up to desolate, hysterical sobbing. "_My_ fault," he cried, as soon as he had power to utter a word. "Not his--or hers either--but mine--_mine_--all _mine_...."

VII

And that, after seven years, was what he had been driven to....

No more brave talk about putting all that part of his life away from him; no more assurances that he didn't care, that he had forgotten, that he didn't want to be reminded. He hadn't forgotten; he couldn't forget; the past was all over him, obsessing and dominating. And with the past was bound up somehow or other his own guilt. Wherever and whenever we began to argue, that was always where we ended. _He_ was guilty. _He_ had been the cause of all the trouble--of Helen's coolness to Severn, of my estrangement from Helen, of Severn's escapade with the 'other' woman, of all that had gone amiss. His guilt forced itself on him--gave him no rest or peace--was both a cause and a symptom of the disaster that was so close to him. He had never been especially religious, in the sense of attending church and so on; yet this consciousness of guilt was a thing of almost religious fervour--but without the peace of forgiveness that religion would have given him. There was some odd streak in him that would never let him do anything by halves; in love, in work, even in repentance, his spirit knew no moderation. When I tried to argue away the extremity of what he felt, he shook his head and answered: "You don't know what happened.... When we get back to Vienna you can see the letters she sent me. They'll tell you more than I ever can. They'll show you how the guilt of all this is _mine_...."

We missed lunch; we had no appetite. I packed my things, and Terry's as well; Severn was elsewhere, conducting, no doubt, somewhat delicate negotiations with Madame. The time crawled sombrely through that almost impossibly hot day; Terry and I adjourned to the writing-room, where I scribbled a note to Bentley, telling him with an air of casualness that the woman whom he had seen in Severn's company wasn't Mrs. Severn, but a Hungarian friend. Bentley would have no reason to doubt it, and it would prevent him from chattering awkwardly. Terry's idea was that only the three of us should ever know the details, and even we, he said, must try to forget. "He's going back to Helen--that's the main thing. This other business is only an incident--closed from now onwards."

"But suppose Helen doesn't want him?" I said. "What then?"

He shook his head as a theologian might shake away the momentary temptation of heresy. "She _will_ want him," he said, at length. "She _must_ want him.... When we get back to Vienna I'm going to write to her--about Severn and about you. It's terrible that she's gone on blaming him and you for what is all _my_ fault. I shall write to her and tell her _everything_."

"But you can't. You can't tell her about Severn and this woman."

"I can tell her everything _except_ that."

"If Severn's going back to her, it seems to me there's no need to write at all. Even to mention him would look suspicious. In fact, to write a letter of any kind, after your long silence, would probably make her wonder what had been happening."

He said, sombrely: "I _must_ write--but it's true what you say--I ought to have written before--long before--only I was a fool--a coward--I thought I had done with it all...."

Back again, inexorably and inevitably, at his own guilt....

VIII

Severn agreed with me that he was ill. I had a short but amazing conversation with him as we stood at the bureau counter to settle our respective bills. He began immediately: "Look here, Hilton, has it ever struck you that our friend's not quite himself at times?"

"You mean Terry?"

"Yes. I don't lay claim to be a mental expert, but I reckon I can see trouble when it's staring me in the face.... It struck me he might have been overworking--I'm told Karelsky's rather a slave-driver--and then with this affair on top of it all.... Of course it's all perfectly stupid and none of his business, but then how can you argue with a man whose eyes keep on telling you that he's trembling on the brink of the beyond? ... That's a fact--I'm not exaggerating. He was like that with me this morning when you left us--I felt I _had_ to humour him, or else he might have gone right off his head there and then.... And, as it happens, it doesn't particularly matter to me whether I go back now or next week, as I had intended."

So _that_ was what had happened. Terry _hadn't_ really conquered, and Severn _hadn't_ really given in.... I said: "And when you get to England I suppose you'll carry out your original intentions?"

He shrugged his shoulders and replied that he didn't really know what he should do. It all depended on Helen. If she wanted her freedom she'd have to have it. There wasn't much fun in staying with a woman who didn't want you, was there? It was a pity, he said, that there had been this meeting--it would have been far better if we had waited until the sensational news came in the Sunday papers--if it ever did. "You don't suppose I'd do all this without good reasons, do you? The only thing I didn't bargain for was a meeting with a mad missionary. Yes, I mean that. And the trouble is that I like him too much to be able to tell him to go to the devil.... As a matter of fact, the thing's damned serious, by the look of it. What he wants is rest--absolute rest--for weeks and months--otherwise there's going to be a serious smash-up. Know what I mean?"

I said I thought I did, and he relapsed into his semi-facetious humour. "Thank heaven," he said, "that Madame presents no problem. Dear, kind creature--she will be delighted to go back to Bukarest for a slightly larger sum than she charged me for bringing her away.... What a pity we cannot settle everything in life by money!"

Nothing of all this surprised me. It was plausibility itself compared with the theory that Terry had persuaded Severn by some miracle of eloquence or importunity.

Those few remaining hours in Buda-Pesth stay in my memory with nightmarish vividness. The heat--the dust--the smells of cooking; _Blattae Orientales_ playing hide-and-seek on the floor; porters sweating and straining under loads of luggage; the Vienna train at the platform like a row of sweltering ovens, reeking with paprika and human bodies and half-molten varnish. Shade temperature in the station--thirty-four Centigrade.... And over and around the torture of it was the tragic atmosphere of illusion--Terry thinking all the time that he had really convinced and converted Severn, and Severn, on his side, having no suspicion of the Terry-Helen episode. Their crumpled heat-soaked unawareness was an infinitely pathetic thing.

Only Severn was cheerful. He talked to us endlessly, and without getting much in the way of answers, for even to open one's mouth to speak a single word was to cause an extra bead of perspiration to trickle disagreeably down one's forehead. But Severn seemed not to care, and when we reached Vienna, with a few hours' interval before the departure of the Paris express from another station, it was perhaps inevitable that he should take command. He knew Vienna well (what city _didn't_ he know well?) and I rather wished he were staying on with us. Even the night was almost unbearably warm, and with sure instinct he led us to the cool Rathaus-Keller and ordered iced drinks. Terry spoke hardly at all, and neither did I; the ordeal of the train-journey had been too much for us. But Severn, of all the men I ever met, was the most impervious to physical surroundings; neither heat, nor train-journeys, nor even all-night sittings at the House could disturb that marvellous equanimity. He seemed, indeed, as he sat there in the Rathaus-Keller with his tankard of lager before him, a lithe and entrancingly-mannered boy; and even the stories he told of his life in Vienna twenty years before did not take away from him that extraordinary air of youthfulness. He had spent a year in the city, he said, picking up the language and having a good time. He had _lived_, and his eyes, seeing again the old familiar scenes, shone with it. This Rathaus-Keller--what times he had had there! ... And then on the wall he caught sight of an advertisement of a variety-show at Ronacher's, and it reminded him of the old Ronacher's, where he had seen Rannin, the Cingalese with the Iron Skin, who had climbed a ladder of sword-blades barefoot, and the Chevalier Cliquot, whose pastime had been to swallow twenty-two-inch cavalry sabres, and the Human Ostrich, and Madame Elise, the Parisian Strong Lady, and the rest of them.... Ah, those old days! ...

But the time drew near for the departure of the Paris train. The holiday season was at its height, and when we reached the East Station we found it packed with tourists bound for the Tyrol. Severn had not reserved a seat, and for a few moments it seemed doubtful whether he would even secure a cramped position in a first-class compartment. A berth in the _wagon-lit_ was out of the question; all had been reserved weeks before. It was then, faced with these unexpected privations, that he suggested staying in Vienna till the morning train, which would probably be less crowded. "Supposing," he said, "we look in at Ronacher's, and then I'll take you the round of the sights--the Prater's rather worth seeing after midnight...."

"Mizzi could probably give him a room," I whispered to Terry. The postponement of the journey until the morning seemed to me perfectly reasonable, apart from the attractiveness of the alternative programme that Severn had sketched out.

But Terry said: "You promised you would get back at the very earliest moment you could, didn't you?"

And Severn then, with his most charming smile, replied: "I _did_, Terry, and I'll keep my word.... Perhaps there'll be more room on the train the other side of Innsbrück. Anyhow, don't wait for it to go out--it'll probably be hours late. And besides, I'm just as anxious really to get comfortable in my seat as you are to go back to your hotel.... Ronacher's and the rest will do the next time we are all of us here together...." (But there hasn't been, so far, and probably never will be, a next time.)

I liked him at that last moment more, I think, than I had ever done before. It's true, though odd perhaps, that it's not the big things that people do that win your heart to them, but often the very smallest. And so it is that all the big important things that Severn had done to help me hadn't made me like him so much as this gay, almost nonchalant farewell, and the thought I had of him sweltering the night through in a packed train, and then sweltering through the next day and the night after that--and all for no other reason than to help Terry. His last words, as he shook hands with me, were: "Ring me up as soon as you get back to town, and we'll fix up a lunch together."

There was a curious sadness after we had left him, and the warm streets were full of it. We strolled back to the Laudon Gasse with hardly a word between us. I wondered what Mizzi would say to our unexpected return, but she wasn't there when we arrived and the hall-porter told us she probably wouldn't be back until late.

IX

He showed me Helen's letters that night. I had expected a small bundle, but there were only three; and he asked me to read them, not while I was with him, but later on when I was alone. The chance came after I had bidden him good-night; I went downstairs into the lounge, switched on one of the shaded table-lamps, lit a cigarette, and read the letters very carefully. They were none of them long, and all had been written and posted within a month of his arrival in Vienna. It was an odd sensation to sit in a hotel-lounge at two o'clock in the morning and disentangle a mystery; there was something eerie, almost, in trying to build up from a few sheets of handwriting the complete picture of what had happened seven years before. But there it was, in clear focus at last, and one glance was enough to show how wrong my ideas had been.

Those letters were a revelation. They seemed to me the sort of letters that Helen could never have written, but perhaps that is the usual experience of outsiders who read other people's love-letters. Yes, they _were_ love-letters, except that the description is a shade too temperate.... And--to put the matter quite frankly--they were _not_ the wayward, semi-harmless chits that a married woman might send to a young exile in whom she was sentimentally interested. They were, on the contrary, highly damaging and incriminating documents; and all the time I was reading them I was picturing a packed Divorce Court in which some cool, smooth-voiced advocate (like Severn) was doling them out, sentence by sentence, and pausing with uplifted eyebrows at the end of each.

The earliest of the trio had evidently been written and posted within a few hours of that quarrel with me in the Fleet Street tea-shop. There was, of course, no mention of it in the letter, and at least half the sentences were indignant questions. For instance:

"... Terry, what _does_ your scrappy little note really mean? Why have you gone after all? What need was there for you to go? I feel dazed by it, so far; I cannot understand how or why you could have done it, after what we had arranged. Surely it was wonderful enough for us to be together, meeting so often, and with all the summer before us that we had planned--how could you _dare_ to break it all to pieces by going away? Terry, I'm angry with you--I _did_ think you would keep your word to me. Tell me what made you go--tell me _why_. And for God's sake, if you find there's nothing for you in Vienna, have the courage to come back. I'm frightened to think of you with that man Karelsky--he seems to me to be everything you'll never guess he is till it's too late.... Oh, you _are_ a fool for running away like this--it was our wonderful chance, and you've bungled all of it. I don't know whether I can ever forgive you...."

A pause of ten days, and then the next, evidently in answer to a letter from him:

"Your letter arrived this morning at breakfast-time. Geoffrey said: 'Who's it from?', and I said: 'It's from Terry, saying he's arrived safely and is settling down.' Then he said 'Good!' in a loud voice, and I felt I wanted to knife him for saying 'good' when everything was so bad.... Terry, it's almost killing me to think that I could have had you that last night if only I had had the courage. I wish to God I _had_ had, but what's the good of that to me now? Terry, there _were_ difficulties--money and so on--and you oughtn't to have thought I didn't love you enough, just because I didn't agree straightway. I love you enough for _anything_, and I know it now that you've gone.... I just feel I can't endure it--it's inhuman of you to give me no second chance--and yet you always were like that, I know. Everything or nothing--and now, I suppose, it's nothing.... What you say about being sorry shows how different you are; _I'm_ not sorry, except that I didn't seize the chance when it was offered me...."

And as a postscript the single sentence: "I don't think I can ever _live_ without you, and you know what I mean by _living_, don't you?"

The third and last letter was the longest. Dated almost exactly a calendar month after Terry's departure, it began:

"Your letter made me feel that I shall never want to write to you again, and if, as you threaten, you don't reply to this, I certainly shan't. What sort of a man are you that you can change so quickly? Your letter might have been written by a parson--or did you, perhaps, get some parson to collaborate with you? Please let me inform you that the old Terry that I loved, and that I love still, was the only man on earth who could ever have made me 'live usefully,' and that the new Terry, with his moralisings and platitudes, only makes me feel I want to go straight to the Devil. How _dare_ you mention Geoffrey's career as a reason why _I_ should sacrifice my happiness? And even June--what has _she_ got to do with it? I suppose you think that the 'che-ild' comes in rather usefully, or else your parson collaborator put you up to the idea.... As for your work--devote yourself to it by all means, but why should you try to make me believe that you can't have more than _one_ thing in life? My advice to you (since you have given yours so plentifully to me) is to marry some Viennese girl who loves you and is also a business woman--someone who'll stop you from making an utter fool of yourself. I go white with rage when I read over parts of your letter. What do you mean by saying that love dies soon when the mind is occupied by work? Does _yours_? _Mine_ doesn't. And what do you mean by talking of your great sin? There _was_ no sin, and if what might have been is a sin, then it was I and not you who stopped short of it. Not that I want any credit for that.... I can't understand you. I can't understand how you could behave as you did that night and then, a month later, send me a sermon. I don't feel that it is _you_--the real _you_--that wrote me that letter at all, but somebody else--somebody I have never known. Did you ever really love me at all, I wonder, or was it, on your side, merely the passion you now profess to be ashamed of? It wasn't that on _my_ side; I really loved you, more than I could love anybody else in the world; I loved even your work and your ideals because they were yours.... I _don't_ feel ashamed, and you _do_, and there's an end of it...."

X

While I was reading over that last letter for the second time, Mizzi came in. She had seen the light through the window, and had wondered who could be staying up so late. We shook hands gravely, and she said that the porter had told her of our return, and that she was not altogether surprised since Buda-Pesth in midsummer was so hot and--and _unheimlich_. _That_--her using a German word instead of puzzling out an English one--showed me that she was perturbed; and when she asked me how Terry was, a sudden impulse made me place a chair for her opposite to mine and tell her everything about him. _Everything_. And also I showed her the letters.

Perhaps I was wrong to do that without his permission, but there are times when you risk being wrong. I wanted Mizzi to know everything about Terry because, in the end, I wanted her to marry him. I talked to her especially about the letters; they showed, I said, the tragic difference between Terry and Helen. "She was right when she said it was all or nothing with him.... Apparently she was quite willing to carry on a more or less decorous affair with him whilst still living with her husband. But he _wasn't_."

Mizzi nodded and asked me about the 'last night' mentioned in the second of the letters. I described briefly the Karelsky party and the odd way in which Terry and Helen had managed to separate themselves from the rest of the crowd. "I imagine," I said, "that sometime or other during that evening he asked her point-blank to come away with him. No doubt she either refused or else hesitated, and in the end it was arranged that he should decline the Vienna job and stay in London where they could go on meeting each other.... Then afterwards he felt the intolerableness of the situation. He couldn't bear at all what she, apparently, could bear quite easily--the having of things by halves. It wasn't in his nature.... So he cut the knot and came out here."

"I can understand ... I can understand him wanting all of her--or else none of her."

"So can I. And, in a way, I can understand _her_ side, as well. After all, he had no money, and neither had she.... It would have been sheer madness for them to run away, and it was her nature to think of that, just as it was his nature not to."

Then we discussed the third and most extraordinary of the three letters. What sort of stuff must Terry have sent her to have evoked such a stinging reply? I suggested that he might have deliberately written her a rather caddish letter in order to kill her love for him, but Mizzi thought he wasn't calculating or clever enough for that. "I think," she said, "that he was perfectly sincere. He _did_ think, then, that love would die when the mind was occupied by work. He _did_ think that he had committed a sin, and that his love for her had been just a passion.... I think he meant every word of what he wrote."

"It's a pity we can't _see_ his letter," I said, but she replied: "I don't think I want to see it. I feel I know what it would be like. Rather stiff and--and awful ... can't you imagine it?"

I tried to, but I'm afraid I hadn't, and never have had, her clairvoyant knowledge of Terry. I went on to explain the difficulties he was in, and how he felt responsible for the trouble between Helen and her husband, as well as for my quarrel with Helen, and Severn's "affair" in Buda-Pesth, and Heaven knew what else. "He's in a mood to take upon himself responsibility for all the suffering in the world," I said, "and it would be comic if it wasn't tragic. Everything is _his_ fault--nothing anybody else's."

She said: "I can so easily believe that. He has a spirit in him--that makes him try to do perfect things--and then blames him when they aren't _quite_ perfect...."

We were silent for a while, and then she went on: "All through the time I haf known him he has been like that--trying for the perfect goal and flogging himself because he couldn't reach it.... He would have made a great saint--in the Middle Ages ... but not to-day." She smiled as she added: "I remember when he taught me English--he taught me as if I were a sinner, and English the true faith...."

We talked on for a while about what we could do to help him, but at the end of it all only a few desirabilities emerged--that he should take a long holiday and make more friends and work less hard. As we shook hands at the foot of the stairs she said: "It iss so hard to help people who will not haf what they want. If only I could write to this Helen and ask her to come to him! Or if only some fate would send him back to her! ... But no--he will not haf what he wants. Nor will he want what he could haf.... He iss born to be _unglücklich_...."

XI

Sunday.

Terry looked better in the morning; I asked him if he had slept well, and he replied: "Oh, yes, I was so very tired after last night.... _Last night_! Doesn't it seem years away? And isn't it comfortable to be back here?"

"Yes," I agreed. "Mizzi has a genius for making things comfortable."

He seemed surprised at my mentioning her. "I suppose it _is_ Mizzi," he said, after a pause, and seemed to ponder over the matter.

Not till breakfast was over did he mention the letters, and then only because I took the opportunity of handing them back to him. He seemed afraid that I might discuss them with him; he told me that he didn't want me ever to mention them; but that he hoped they had made me realize. What he hoped they had made me realize he didn't say, but I presumed he meant his own overwhelming guilt.... But he wouldn't discuss the matter further. The thing of immediate importance, he said, was the letter to Helen that he was going to write.

I seized the opportunity then of giving him a straight talk about his health. I told him frankly that he seemed to me to be on the verge of a serious breakdown, and rather to my surprise he didn't indignantly deny it. He even admitted that he had been working too hard and that he needed a holiday. "I'll take one," he said, "as soon as all this business is settled. I'll go to Salzburg or Ischl or somewhere--Mizzi will advise me...." He smiled his familiar half-smile and added: "You needn't worry--_I_ shall be all right."

He didn't mention his work, and when I ventured a remark, he said: "Just now--for the time--I can't think of it. That's why I daresay you're right--I _do_ need a rest.... But before I have it, I must earn it--I must undo, if I can, some of the harm I've done...."

Soon after that I left him to compose his letter to Helen. It was something, at any rate, that he had agreed to take a holiday, but Mizzi, when I told her, was less impressed. "He has promised scores of times," she said, "but always--at the last moment--there has been an excuse."

The morning dragged on, and then literally, as well as metaphorically, came the clouds. It was raining hard at mid-day, and when I went up to his room I found him with a blank writing-pad in front of him and weariness in his eyes. For two hours he had been trying to write, and not a word would come--not a word.

Nor could I help him. The more I pondered, the more impossible seemed the idea of writing to her at all. And yet, for his own sake, it was necessary, his only hope lay in supposing that he could undo what he believed himself to have done. I urged him not to worry about it--to leave it for a while, at any rate. And he turned to me then with a look of sad finality and replied: "But you see, it must--it _must_--catch to-night's mail...."

We had lunch, and then, inexorably, he went back to his desk. I tried once or twice to make suggestions, but he seemed to mistrust them. Words, he said, came easily to me because I was a journalist, but they were no good to him unless they were the words _he_ wanted.... He didn't want her to think this ... or that ... but something in between--something elusive and perfect--something in his own mind that ever evaded pursuit. If only he could make her see everything as _he_ saw it.... If only the words would come, one after the other in a constant stream, without any agonizing search for them.... But I wondered myself if there _were_ any words for what he felt.

XII

The time of posting for the night-mail was seven at the latest, and at five I went down to fetch Mizzi. "For God's sake," I told her, "come up and tell him that letters for England don't go on a Sunday. He's trying to write something, and if he doesn't get it done in time, he'll collapse.... Tell him anything you like that'll put him off."

She did. She did it rather well. She waited for a few moments till after I had rejoined him, and then came up with some idle chatter about the weather. He was still at his desk, taking hardly any notice of anything but the paper in front of him; and at last, with an excellently assumed air of casualness, she remarked that he seemed busy. He said he was writing a letter. And then she remarked: "If it iss a letter to England, you know of course that there iss no post to-night." He turned round suddenly, astonished, but perhaps, beyond his astonishment, relieved. And she went on: "It iss a new rule. No mails for foreign lands from Saturday night until Monday night." Her tone was just right; he put down his pen, walked across the room, and said, with a sort of moody resignation: "Nothing for it but to wait, then." Then a further idea seemed to occur to him; he exclaimed sharply: "What was it you came up to see me about, Mizzi?"

She wasn't altogether prepared for that. She said: "Iss it necessary that I must always haf a special reason when I come up to see you?" And before he could reply she went on: "But of course, I _had_ a reason--it was to ask you--both of you--if you would care to come with me now to the Cathedral...."

So we went--the three of us.

It was, as she told me afterwards, the only thing she had been able to think of on the spur of the moment. She even apologized, then, and hoped that the service at the Stefans-Dom hadn't bored me. I assured her it hadn't; but all the same, she might have been surprised if she had known my thoughts during that solemn candle-lit hour. They weren't especially religious, and yet--devout Catholic as she was--Mizzi might have been thinking them too. Perhaps she also, lured by the singing and the twilight, came under the spell of the one perfect solution--that she should become Terry's wife; perhaps she also remembered Helen's advice that he should marry some Viennese girl who loved him and was a business woman.

That night, after we came back from the Cathedral, Terry seemed calmer. I even spoke to him about my return to England, and he renewed his promise that he would take a long and complete holiday "as soon as this business is settled." Then we talked about Mizzi. He thought it odd that she had invited us to the Cathedral with her. "She's rather religious," he said, "but she never talks about it or tries to force it on you. When I first came here she asked me if I were a Catholic, but that was all." He paused for a while, and then, in a different tone, continued: "I suppose a Catholic doesn't care to marry a Protestant?"

I must have shown my astonishment when he said that. "It rather depends who the Protestant is," I answered, hoping he would say more. He didn't, however, and even when I asked him why he had put the question, he only answered that there hadn't been any particular reason.

But there had.

That night was very hot, and neither he nor I was in the mood for sleep. About midnight I left him still pondering over the letter he would write to Helen; I said I would go for a short walk to make myself drowsy. But when I got downstairs the lounge was so cool and so fragrant with the scent of the flowers in the window-boxes, that I sank into one of the largest armchairs and lit a cigar. I didn't trouble to press any of the switches, for the moonlight was streaming in, and besides, I could see through the open doorway the little office in which Mizzi, that night as on most nights, was working late over her bills and ledgers. I didn't wish to interrupt her, yet I was just beginning to wonder if she would mind very much, if I did, when I heard Terry's voice in the hall. He was asking her if she could spare him a moment, and she replied, with her quiet and never-altering cordiality: "Why, of course I can. Come in and sit down."

The office was a small affair of glass partitions, and I could see as well as hear all that took place. I wasn't consciously eavesdropping at first, and later when I must confess to a certain eagerness of ear and eye, I had the excuse that it would have been impossible for me to move away without creating a distinctly awkward situation. So I sat there quiet and still, hardly daring even to smoke lest the smell of the cigar should drift across into the hall and betray me.

For he was proposing to her! There in that little hotel-office, with his face as pale as chalk and his voice half-trembling, he was asking her to marry him! At first he spoke in German, but after a short while relapsed into stammering staccato English.

Most men, when they propose, are doubtless optimists--not only about the proposal, but about themselves and the world in general. But Terry wasn't an optimist. The whole business would have been just comic, if one had allowed oneself to see the joke of it. He informed her in a series of short sentences that he was entirely ineligible--he had no money, and poorish prospects, and it might and probably would be years before he could afford to marry her. Altogether he was a pretty hopeless sort of suitor, and he even reminded her that she could always give him up if she had the good sense to change her mind while there was yet time. All he wanted, apparently, was a vague assurance that some day, if and when he could afford it, and if and when she wished, she would marry him.

While he was talking in this stumbling, sorrowful way, she was all the time sitting at her desk, pen in hand, looking up at him. She didn't say a word; she let him talk on, and then, when he had said everything, she just lifted up her hands and arms and pulled him down to her. I never saw anything so swift and sudden. A second afterwards she was in his arms and kissing him....

Where I was I could feel the sharp slackening of tension as they clung together. And then, after the ecstasy of that first embrace, she seemed to recover a certain self-protective calmness; she was the business woman again, chary of committing herself. "Terry," she whispered, "you must not ask me for an answer now. It would not be possible after this.... To-morrow I will give it you--when I have thought it over calmly...."

He didn't protest. He didn't seem to care greatly whether she gave him an answer or not. His mind and body were reeling; he could only stammer: "Oh, Mizzi--Mizzi----"

He threw himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands, and she stooped over him like a mother over a child. It was unbearable, somehow, to be spying on them then. I took the risk of tip-toeing out of the room and across to the foot of the staircase. They neither saw nor heard. And it was later--much later--when he came up to bed.

XIII

Monday....

I think I must have dreamed that Terry and Mizzi were married, for I woke up thinking of it. Even now the memory of that morning comes to me enveloped in the dream of the two of them; somehow it is all bright sunlight--the sunlight on the geraniums in the wooden boxes, the sunlight on Terry's face as I left him sleeping, and the sunlight drenching Mizzi's little office....

"_Morgen_," she said, as I entered, and I told her that Terry was asleep, and that I had come down to have a chat with her, if she wasn't too busy.

(I know now almost exactly what I was going to say to her, for I had planned it all very carefully. I was going to talk about Terry--to lead the conversation up to a point at which she might, if she cared, confide in me. I was going to say and do so many clever things, if I had had the chance. But I didn't have the chance.)

She said to me suddenly: "What was the train that your friend Mr. Severn travelled by?"

I told her; and then she said: "Do you think he would break the journey at all--at Innsbrück, say, or Zürich, or Basle?"

"I don't think so. He said he was going to get to England as soon as he could."

"And his train is due to arrive in Paris early this morning?"

"Yes ... I rather think so."

Then she said, very quietly: "I am sorry.... There iss bad news--an accident.... No details yet, but a bad accident--near Paris.... I heard on the telephone just now.... Will you sit down while I ring up again?"