Chapter SEVEN: I

FOUR days later I met Helen at Liverpool. She and June were among the first to land, and the meeting was about as casual as if we had been separated for seven hours instead of seven years. She had evidently been wirelessed concerning my arrival, for she said, almost without surprise: "You have come from Paris, I understand, and have seen him? Tell me how he is."

I recited the sentence I had carefully prepared beforehand: "It is serious, but by no means hopeless. We shall reach the hospital to-morrow morning, and you'll find him, I think, very cheerful."

June said, as we walked to the train: "It is ever so good of you to come and meet us like this," but Helen did not echo or assent to the remark. She merely asked me if I were proceeding to London, and when I replied affirmatively, she exclaimed: "I hope you aren't thinking of escorting us back to Paris. June and I have been travelling at all hours of the day and night for the past three months, so I can assure you----"

"As it happens," I interrupted, "I have business in Paris, and must return there immediately." (It was true enough, though the nature of the business would doubtless have surprised her.)

She made no answer, but June smiled and said she hoped we shouldn't have a rough crossing. She, at any rate, was disposed to be friendly.

It wasn't till we were in the railway luncheon-car, with the fields of Cheshire rolling past us, that I was able to take a real look at them both. And then the extraordinariness of it all came upon me--that we three, after seven years, should meet together again like this. June, during that long interval, had grown up; but Helen was almost startlingly the same at first sight, though a sharper glance revealed lines and contours that did not so much detract from her beauty as change the aspect of it. There was little conversation throughout the journey, and I was made to feel that the seven-years feud was by no means ended. June and I exchanged a few sentences--chiefly about America and kindred topics. Only once did she mention Severn, and that was (I noticed) while Helen had left us temporarily. June asked me then if I thought her father would get better, and I replied that it seemed to me quite possible that he might outlive the lot of us. It was a quibble, but she appeared not to notice it. She said, quickly: "Oh, I do hope so. He was always very good to me." And with just the faintest possible accent on the "me."

I am trying, you see, to set all this down as simply as I can. And here, perhaps, I ought to attempt some sort of a description of June. All I can say is that she had reddish hair and clear blue eyes and wasn't quite as good-looking as her mother. One thing she was, anyhow, that her mother had never been; she was English--the independent, honest, freckled product of the English boarding-school and college, plus that shy and unanalysable something that makes the difference between a girl and a woman. All the way to London I had the impression that she was doing what she could to put me at my ease, and that Helen was doing just the opposite.

We reached Euston at five o'clock, dined at the Belgravia, and caught the evening boat-train from Victoria. At Dover heavy rain was falling, and the omens for the crossing were distinctly bad. June was a poor sailor and went below immediately; I secured a cabin for her, and tipped a stewardess to make her comfortable. I suggested that Helen should join her, but she wouldn't; she could stand the roughest passage, she said, provided she stayed on deck in the fresh air. "If you'll leave me here," she said, "with a rug and a mackintosh, I shall be perfectly well. And now you'd better get a cabin for yourself or else stake out a claim in the men's smoking-room."

"You don't wish me to share the wind and the rain with you?"

She replied: "Well, frankly, since you ask me, I'm not particularly keen...."

II

There was no doubt about the weather; as soon as the harbour was left behind, the ship began to sway and shiver sickeningly. I chatted for a while with one of the stewards; he told me uncomfortingly that a storm in July was rather rare, but that when it did come it was usually severe. All the time we were talking I could hear the wind rising to gale ferocity; there were also intermittent rumblings of thunder. I felt an obligation to look after Helen, despite her rudeness to me, so I climbed on deck and met her dragging a deck-chair along one of the companionways; she handed it to me rather sulkily, remarking that she was looking for a spot that was better sheltered from the rain and spray. I said I would find one for her, and we staggered with difficulty along the heaving decks. With the port-lights falling on them, the waves looked like rolls of dark moorland peaked with snow. Then, quite suddenly, one of them lifted over the edge and mounted towards us in a huge black wall; we just managed to escape its full onrush, and were immediately and peremptorily ordered below by a ship's officer.

After that the terrible became merely the sordid. In the lower saloons the occupants were horridly inert and comatose; many were engulfed in the varying throes of _mal de mer_; most were grimly unhappy. The smells of oil and stale cooking were all-pervading; intermittent crashes told of casualties in the pantries; the ship's engines groaned like the breathing of a pneumonia sufferer. All this I relate, not as descriptive padding, but to show how force of circumstances drove Helen and me together that night. I suggested first of all that she should share June's cabin, but after visiting it and finding June comfortably asleep, she returned to say that she would rather do anything than lie down. "Then," I said, "there remains the bar. It's probably the most cheerful spot on the whole boat, and French beer isn't a bad sort of tonic."

She said: "You'll have to take me then," and I nodded and took her.

We hung on to the counter and heard the bartender being violently sick behind the scenes. And she said: "I suppose you think you're heaping coals of fire on my head?"

"How so?"

"By being kind to me after I've been rude to you."

"Well--you certainly _have_ been rude to me, haven't you?"

"Yes," she replied simply. And after a pause she added: "I rather loathe the sentimental way you assume that everything else is going to be forgotten just because of what's happened to Geoffrey."

"Well?"

"I suppose you thought I was going to welcome you with open arms on Liverpool landing-stage, eh?"

"Not in the least. I only hoped that our desire to help Geoffrey would enable us to treat each other civilly."

Her eyes flashed. "Yes, that sounds as if I'm in the wrong, doesn't it? But let me tell you this--that though I _am_ going to help Geoffrey, my feelings towards him remain exactly as they were before."

"And what were they?"

She said quietly: "I don't like him. I don't care what you think of me for saying it--it's the honest truth. And I'm not sentimental enough to think that a railway-accident can make any difference."

The beer came then, and a sudden lurch of the boat sent half of it spilling over our hands. The bartender, white-faced and dishevelled, retired again to endure his sufferings in solitude. She went on, more quickly: "Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of Geoffrey as _you_ know him--how decent he's been to you, and all that. He _has_ been decent to you, I'll admit--he's been decent enough to me in _that_ sort of way. But--oh, Hilton--I'm friends with you again now, and I must tell you--he's not _straight_--you know what I mean, don't you? He's not the sort of man you can _trust_!"

"Good heavens, I think I'd trust my life to him----"

She interrupted: "I daresay you would. I daresay a lot of people would.... Perhaps I ought to have said that he's not the sort of man his wife can trust."

And then, while the boat rolled so badly that once or twice we were almost battered from wall to wall, she told me. Oddly, perhaps, I didn't realize her complete meaning till she was half-way through--not till she said: "If he only had that one fault in the world (and perhaps he has), it would be enough to make me despise him--for I value faithfulness higher than anything."

_Faithfulness_! Then she knew ...? _Did_ she know? ... Could it possibly have come to her knowledge already ...?

She was telling me how, after her marriage, she had first of all trusted him implicitly. "There were several incidents that made me wonder a little, but I made myself believe that he was _good_. I knew, of course, that women flung themselves at him--_that_ wasn't his fault. And besides, he trusted me so much--he never seemed to bother where I went or who went with me. I loathed the idea of being jealous.... And so it went on--for a few years; I just had faith in him--in _us_--and if sometimes I got to hear scraps of gossip, I ignored them.... Then came an affair I couldn't possibly ignore, and there was a fearful row. I nearly left him, but he gave his promise, and I said I'd try to trust him again."

She said, rather pathetically: "You say you'll _try_ to trust somebody again, but you don't very often succeed. Personally, I don't think you ever can--it's such a far deeper matter than repentance or forgiveness. There are some people who have it in them to do certain things, and others who haven't--and if you find out that a man belongs to the first kind, then it's final--don't you think so? ... Anyhow, I stayed on with Geoffrey, and, so far as I know, he kept his promise till last year. Then I found he'd been spending week-ends with a girl at Rotterdam.... Do you know, it didn't surprise me a bit.... It didn't even hurt me.... I just felt that I hadn't a scrap of love for him, and that it didn't matter.... I didn't trouble to mention it even; I just let things go on as if nothing had happened, and then, when the fine weather came, I took June with me to America.... And I didn't ever intend to come back."

"But June--does _she_ know all this?"

"She knows nothing."

"You would have had to tell her."

"I daresay.... I hadn't made any plans about that. I just made up my mind to leave Geoffrey and never see him again. But of course the accident has altered _that_. I shall stay with him now, but I can't pretend to _like_ him any more."

"That seems a hard thing to say."

"Perhaps it _is_ hard. You must remember I'm French, and that makes me face the facts as they are."

I said that, however little affection she had for her husband, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from admiring his pluck and cheerfulness. She replied: "It won't matter whether I admire him or not. Admiration is nothing."

"And pity--is _that_ nothing?

"I have pity for anyone in misfortune. It is pity that will make me stay with him and help him."

"Perhaps, anyhow, the motive doesn't matter so much. It's what you do that will count, for it's possible--rather more than possible, I'm afraid--that he'll never be able to walk again."

That stirred her, I could see. She whispered, tremulously: "Is that really true?"--and when I nodded slowly, she just bit her lip and said nothing ... nothing at all. It was as if she _couldn't_ speak. There came just then a terrific peal of thunder, vibrant above the muffled thudding of the engines, and I think I spoke some word or phrase of reassurance. But she just stared at me blankly--stared _through_ me almost; and then, in a queerly casual voice, remarked: "That was loud. I think I'll go down to June's cabin and see if it wakened her...."

She went out, staggering against the roll and pitch of the boat, and not till we were calm in Calais Harbour did I see her again.

III

After that wild scene in mid-Channel, the rest of the journey to Paris lingers in my mind as a quiet and cool aftermath. The train at Calais was packed as only a French boat-train can be packed; I managed to secure seats in the first-class coach for Helen and June, but the latter elected to surrender hers to a lady who had been very ill during the crossing. So we sat on our suit-cases in the corridor, June and I; and there wasn't much room, even there, for the holiday season was at its height, and all the well-known advertised tours to Paris were in full swing. June had passed through Paris before, but had never stayed there or seen the city. "I should like to have done," she said, "but mother was always in a hurry to get through to somewhere else."

"That's rather odd," I remarked, "considering that Paris is your mother's native place. One would have expected her to enjoy re-visiting the old familiar scenes."

June answered quietly: "That's just the sort of thing she would hate most of all. She loathes sentiment about the past. That's why she likes America--because its beauty isn't so dreadfully steeped in memories ... Palm Beach, for instance."

"You've been there? I suppose you've travelled rather a lot?"

"Well, I've always joined mother abroad during college vacations, and now that I've finished my last year I daresay we should have practically lived abroad but for this--this awful accident...." She paused for a moment, and then went on: "Mother hates England, but _I_ don't. Do you know, there's one place more than any other that I've wanted to visit during the last few years, and I haven't had a chance yet?"

"Where's that?" I asked, and she replied:

"My own home at Hampstead. I used to love Hampstead Heath and the walk across Parliament Hill Fields to Highgate. I can remember it all from when I was a child."

"And since then you haven't been at home at all?"

"Just odd nights now and then. As soon as the terms were over at school and at Newnham, I've always had to dash away to join my mother in Sweden or Algeria or somewhere.... Of course I've enjoyed it all--immensely--but"--she smiled--"I'd have preferred a week or two in London now and again."

The dawn was stealing in from over the grey Normandy fields, and a misty rain dimmed the windowpanes. We were silent for a few miles, and then she resumed, thoughtfully: "I feel so sorry that I haven't been at home oftener."

"Why?"

"Because I would like to have known my father better."

I looked at her and saw that her blue, tranquil eyes were shining with tears. But the tears did not fall; she had perfect control of herself. She went on: "I don't think it's been quite fair to him to leave him as my mother has done. Of course, he's awfully busy, and isn't home a great deal himself, but still--we _might_ have had more to do with him."

I said nothing; there seemed nothing to say. She was evidently eager to pour out her mind on the subject, for she continued: "So you see, my father's almost a stranger to me. I've seen him perhaps once every three months or so during the past ten years, and I've always liked him.... Mostly, though, I _remember_ him--just as if he were dead. I remember him teaching me to skate on Highgate Ponds, and I remember him giving me a gold sovereign on the night when he first got elected to Parliament."

"Ah--the Manchester South bye-election. That was a good many years ago."

"But I remember it quite well. I remember you visiting us a lot in those days, and also a man called Terry, who used to do chemistry experiments in the kitchen."

"Terry!" I echoed; and then, before I knew what I was saying, I had replied: "He's in Paris now."

"Is he?" she exclaimed. "Oh, I would like to see him. He must be getting quite old."

"Thirty-one. That's not old."

"It sounds horribly old to me."

I don't know what answer I made; I only know that I was thinking furiously: She's bound to tell Helen that Terry's in Paris, and _then_ what will happen? ... The blunder was clumsy and irrevocable, for I dared not face June's puzzled eyes by asking her not to mention Terry to her mother. The only thing to hope for was that he and I would be on our way to England before any complications could ensue.

IV

And that, by the grace of God, was what happened.

We reached the Gare du Nord at breakfast-time and drove straight to the Crillon, where I engaged rooms for them. After hasty cups of coffee we went on to the hospital, and there, in the corridor outside Severn's room, I left them. The sister said that there was no change in his condition, and it seemed to me that I had better leave them to visit him by themselves. Helen barely nodded a farewell, but June, though her thoughts were obviously elsewhere, was polite enough to thank me for my escort.

And so once more to the hotel in the Place du Hâvre. Terry seemed, if anything, more tired and listless than ever; but the doctor had said he could travel and so, after lunch, we left by the afternoon train for Dieppe, stayed there overnight, and went on to Newhaven by the mail-boat the next morning. Then London at last--after his seven years of absence. I wondered, as we pushed our way into a taxi, whether it meant anything to him--to return after so long an exile. I don't think it did. I think he was too tired to notice any difference between London and Paris. As we drove into Waterloo Station we saw a weekly paper's placard advertising in large type: "Karelsky on the Life-Force," and that--only that--seemed to give him a spasm of recollection. He put his hands to his eyes and said: "I wish I hadn't worked so hard out there. I seem to have made such a hash of things--getting crocked like this and wasting all your time.... It's ever so kind of you."

Two hours later the journey was over. It had been hot and rather tiresome, but it ended at the quaintest and prettiest hotel I have ever seen. It wasn't really more than a inn, and perhaps for fifty or a hundred years it had served mugs of beer to wayfarers on the road from Hindhead to Farnham. Then had come Severn with his "controlling interest," and in a single summer's afternoon a sign-painter had turned the old Brown Cow into the new Valley Hotel. Mercifully the transformation had involved little more than that.

But the interior comfort was as astonishing, almost, as the effect produced by Severn's letter of introduction. We were more than welcomed; we were fêted; and the manager, Taplow by name, assured us with great fervency that it would be a real pleasure to look after Terry and me and, indeed, everybody and anybody else who was a friend of Severn's. Severn, he informed us stoutly, was "the finest chap who ever breathed." And forthwith he served us with a dinner that was at least as good, if not so complicated, as many I have had in first-class city hotels. Even of wines and liqueurs he could provide an amazingly wide selection. "It's Mr. Severn that manages the wine-list, sir," he told me, as he brought my _cordiale Médoc_. "Ah, he's a real good judge of wines--and of most other things too, I should say. He had his ideas about this place right from the beginning--saw it one afternoon as he was motoring past and bought it on the spot, as you might say.... Such a pity about his accident--and I do hope he gets well again. Well, really, sir, it came as such a shock to me when I read about it in the papers, I do declare I couldn't eat my dinner after it--_that_ I couldn't...."

V

There comes to me now, as I think of the Valley Hotel, a sense of strange and wonderful tranquillity. For it is here, in Taplow's garden, that I am writing these words; the furious, tragic interlude is over, and all at last seems stilled in the shadow of this English inn. Counting over the pages I have written, I find that more than half are concerned with those days in Buda-Pesth and Vienna and Paris; it would stagger me if I didn't remember how packed with happenings they were.... The miles I covered and the frontiers I crossed and re-crossed--the hotels and the trains and the steamers--the days of scurry and the long nights of wakefulness! ... But all--all are over now, quenched in the glory of this autumn day at Hindhead, with the hollyhocks waving over me and the far brown hills in the sunlight.

But Terry.... After all, this story is about him, not me. The trouble is that I can only describe what he said and did; I can't pretend to see into his mind and describe what he thought. And what he said and did during those first weeks at the Valley Hotel is so easily told; he just said and did nothing. I used to visit him at week-ends, and each time I found him a little stronger-looking, a little less thin and haggard; but in all other respects unchanged. He was cordial enough, but somehow he seemed not to care very much about anything--whether I came or went or even what news I brought him about Severn.

From Taplow came information as to how he spent his time. Apparently he still slept badly, and used often to rise at dawn and take a long walk before breakfast. Then, after that, he sometimes took another walk, but more usually sat in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden and slept for hours with the sun on his face. On wet days he would haunt the sitting-room like a lost soul. "It's like as if he was tired out," said Taplow. "And yet you wouldn't think so if you was to see him walking along the road. Four mile an hour to Farnham and back--that's what he did the other day. And then he wouldn't have any supper--nothing but a smoke and a drop of whisky...."

"Good God!" I exclaimed, "do you mean to say he's begun to smoke and drink?"

Taplow nodded. "But he don't do it like an ordinary human being. Now for myself, I like a cigar and a glass of stout every night before bedtime. But _he_ don't seem to have any proper habits--sometimes he'll come into the bar before breakfast and ask for a double. _Before breakfast_, mind you--a thing I've never done in my life. And then, after that, maybe, he won't touch a drop for days and days...."

The next time I was with Terry alone I mentioned the matter, congratulating him on having dropped what I had always considered to be the rather stupid rule of strict abstinence. He answered quickly and almost curtly: "Oh, it isn't _that_--there's no need to congratulate me. It's just that I don't care what I do."

And that, so far as I could judge, was the solemn truth. He didn't care. He had let things go, and there was no more strength of mind in him. Yet all the time, nevertheless, his strength of body was returning. After two months at the Valley Hotel he was changed, physically, almost beyond recognition; his bronzed face and arms and the broadening out of his shoulders gave a splendid impression of recovery until he began to talk. For his talk--what little of it there was--betrayed the truth--that he was tired and sad and melancholy and uninterested. The days came one after the other, an endless dull procession; his body loved the sunlight and the long walks over the hills, but his mind loved nothing, desired nothing. And I, wanting all the time to help him, was powerless to light the fire that had gone out. I remember a Sunday evening when we climbed the long hill to the cross-roads and watched the Devil's Punch-Bowl fill slowly with a vast lake of twilight. I told him then that I had had a letter from June informing me that Severn was shortly to be taken home. "She says he's wonderfully cheerful and full of plans for the future. He's going to write a book about Disraeli."

It was good news (which was the reason I had communicated it), yet it seemed to stir him painfully. He cried, in a sudden rush of words: "Oh, I know--he sent me a letter the other day--said he wouldn't ever be able to walk again.... But he doesn't care about it--or about anything.... Neither do I--it's the only way--not caring.... But _his_ not caring is somehow like bright sunlight, whereas mine's like a heavy cloud pressing down on me.... _Do_ you know what I mean?"

"Perhaps," I said, "you mean that not caring comes naturally to him, but not to you?"

He wouldn't, or couldn't, think that out. "I _don't_ care, anyway," he almost shouted. "I've done enough caring.... If I could change places with him and take his injury, I'd do so gladly, but I can't, so what's the good of caring? It won't help him, or me either."

"And is it helping you not to care?" I asked, but his burst of confidence was over, and all he gave me was a doubtful shake of the head. We walked back to the hotel with hardly another word, and later on, as I strolled down the lane to post a letter, I caught sight of him whisky-drinking in the bar.

VI

Severn was taken home at the beginning of September, and a few days later a letter from him invited me to dinner at the End House. He wrote that he had stood the journey very well, and was delighted to be back in his own home.

Helen and June were both in the drawing-room when I arrived, and if Helen's attitude was a shade cool, June's was a shade warm to make up for it. I did not see Severn himself till we went into the dining-room; the butler then wheeled him in on a specially-constructed chair and placed him at the angle of the table that was most convenient. He was a good deal paler than I had seen him before, but his spirits were high as ever. He said that of the two occupations, walking and talking, he very much preferred the latter, which was lucky, in view of what had happened. "Fortunately, also," he added, "I was always extremely lazy, and never walked an inch when I could possibly find a vehicle of any sort to ride in. Now I can even ride in and out of my own dining-room...."

The dinner itself was quite up to Severn's usual high standard. He and I lingered over our coffee while the others took theirs on the verandah. His peculiar pose (the only unusual feature of him) suited the informal stage of the meal and made him seem almost his old self again; even when he discussed his changed future with me I found it hard to believe in the tragic reality that was behind it all. He said that the accident had settled one thing, at any rate; it had put the veto on his political career. "I might fight the next election as a _tour-de-force_, but I could never dream of taking office--that goes without saying.... Anyhow, since he who runs may read, I suppose he who cannot run may write. There are a few much-maligned characters in history I've always had a fancy to defend, so now's my chance.... Disraeli for one ... and Machiavelli, and Robert Walpole ... and perhaps even Pontius Pilate...."

He went on: "There's another matter which has perhaps been settled by those scoundrelly French railways ... I mean--about Helen."

I said "Of course," hardly knowing what I meant; and he rejoined: "She won't leave me now, whatever happens--women are like that.... So perhaps, in the altered circumstances, it would be rather needlessly cruel to supply her with hotel evidence from Buda-Pesth."

I said eagerly that I was very glad, and hoped that he and Helen would learn to be very happy again, and so on. He soon interrupted me. He said: "You know, Hilton, you're too damned sentimental, that's what's the matter with you. You've still got the idea that I'm a very moral fellow at heart, and that all my talk is just a sort of cynical pose to cover up the gold underneath.... The fact is, you're born, in my opinion, to be a successful novel-writer. You've just got the right mixture of brains, sentiment, and conventionality."

We laughed together, and then he asked me to tell him all the news about Terry. I did so, and at the end of the recital he said: "He's an extraordinary puzzle. What possessed him to work himself to death in Vienna? What possessed him to preach at me like an infuriated missionary? What possesses him to do anything?"

"_Something_ possesses him," I admitted.

"You reckon you understand him?"

"A little, perhaps."

"Then perhaps you'll be able to understand this letter. It reached me yesterday."

He took it from his pocket and handed it to me. It was on Valley Hotel notepaper and ran thus:

"DEAR SEVERN,--Thanks for your letter telling me the bad news. I'm no good at writing, but you'll know what I mean when I just say I'm sorry. If there were anything I could do, I'd do it, but there isn't anything. You've been right and I've been wrong in our ways of looking at things, and I can see that now, though I couldn't years ago when we argued about progress. Please don't ask me to come to the End House yet--I don't feel I _could_ come. All you have done for me--and especially the chance you've given me of being here--makes me feel ashamed and a prig. Sincerely yours,

"TERRY."

Severn was smiling when I had finished reading. "Can you give me some or any idea what it's all about?" he asked, with a whimsical lift of his eyebrows.

I read it through once again very carefully before I replied. Somehow I _felt_ the meaning of it right enough, but to explain it to Severn was another matter. Nor was I at all sure that I would explain it, even if I could. I said at last: "I think it shows the state of his mind more than anything else."

"Do you mean that he's off his head?"

"Oh, no--not that, by any means."

"Then what?"

"I don't know that I can tell you exactly.... It seems to me that he's in a sort of slough of despond--he's overworked and over-worried himself into a state of acute mental and spiritual depression--do you know what I mean? I can imagine he's on the verge of anything--he might suddenly take to drink, or religion, or fall headlong into some love affair, or even kill himself.... Or, of course, he might--and probably will--just do nothing at all."

Severn laughed. "Your explanation is even more bewildering than Terry himself."

"I daresay it is. It's hard to put into a sentence something that could only be properly explained by giving you the whole history of the man's life."

"All right. Give it to me. I've heaps of time to listen."

"I'm afraid it would take too long.... Oughtn't we to be joining the ladies?"

"Oh, never mind the ladies. For the moment they aren't half as interesting as Terry.... You said just now that the true explanation of him is in his life-history?"

"I certainly think it is, but I didn't say I could give it you off-hand. As a matter of fact, a good deal of it's so complicated that I don't think I _could_ tell it--though I might manage to put it down on paper."

He was silent for a moment, and then the idea came to him. "My dear fellow," he exclaimed suddenly, brandishing his cigar, "the solution's staring us in the face and we haven't seen it! ... Man, it's a great notion! ... _Put_ it down on paper, as you say--put down every word of it! Then spin it out, or cut it down, as the case may be, into a full-length novel! ... I told you years ago that you'd have to write a novel some time or other--it's expected of every literary man. Now's your big chance--a novel about Terry, giving a rational and coherent account of all his virtues, vices, and vagaries!"

I laughed, and said that the trouble would begin when other people's virtues, vices and vagaries invaded the story, as they certainly would. He answered: "That doesn't matter a bit. Change all our names and nobody will be the wiser."

"Except ourselves."

"What do you mean?"

I said, rather carefully: "Well, there are certain things that you and I know, and that Helen doesn't know, aren't there?"

"I suppose there are."

"There are also--maybe--things that Helen and I know, and that you don't know."

"_Really_?" His eyes suddenly sparkled. "But, my dear chap, what a splendid reason for writing the novel! Pour all these strange and exclusive secrets into the melting-pot--let's all of us know the plain unadulterated (and, if possible, unadulterous) truth about one another, and damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough'!"

Argumentatively it sounded all right; in practice, as I could see, it bristled with dangers and objections. And yet the idea of setting down the truth about Terry began to be just slightly fascinating, and all the rest of the evening it was vaguely on my mind. So also must it have been on Severn's, for the last thing he said when I bade him good-night was: "As soon as you get home, take a pen and a clean sheet of paper and write 'Chapter One' at the top left-hand corner.... I'm serious, mind; in fact, I shall ring you up in the morning and ask if you've done it...."

VII

Of course I didn't do it. And when, as he had promised, he rang me up the next morning, I told him that even if I did tackle the novel (which was by no means decided), it was unlikely that I should begin for some time. It was a big undertaking, I said, and would need a good deal of planning and thinking over before even a word was written.

And yet I wrote the first sentence that very evening. It was Saturday, and I had motor-cycled over to the Valley Hotel. Terry was out when I arrived, so I sat in Taplow's garden waiting for him. And there and then, since there was nothing else to do, I thought I would make a few rough preliminary notes, and I wrote, on a sheet of hotel writing-paper the words: "First met him outside the Tube Station at Hampstead." After that I felt I wanted to go on in straightforward narrative form, so I stuck an "I" in front and continued. And so, on that sudden impulse, it began.

On an equally sudden impulse I decided I wouldn't tell anyone about it--not even Severn. Secrecy seemed the only way to escape a constant battery of worrying and perhaps embarrassing questions; it would also give me freedom to throw up the business if at any moment I chose to. A secret, therefore, it had to be, and when Severn asked me about it, I lied to him quite emphatically. I told him (and his hero Machiavelli, at any rate, would have condoned the falsehood) that I was really so busy that for the present I couldn't possibly undertake any additional work. He laughed and protested and told me I was missing a grand opportunity. And I laughed and said I didn't think so, and all the time went on (in secret) adding to the pile of manuscript in my bureau drawer.

But I had to lie to Helen as well. It was at the End House one evening, when I arrived and found her playing the piano alone in the drawing-room. That, in itself, surprised me, for since our talk in mid-Channel she had carefully avoided any sort of tête-à-tête. But she began, more surprisingly still: "Is it true that you are going to write a novel about Terry?"

I shook my head and asked her (rather weakly, no doubt) who had been spreading false rumours. She answered: "It isn't a rumour. Geoffrey says he's been persuading you to do it, and I know how clever he is at persuasion."

"But not clever enough to persuade an innocent journalist into attempting what is utterly beyond him."

She struck a harsh random chord with her left hand. "I'm glad you think that. It _is_ utterly beyond you." Then suddenly, swinging round on the stool to face me, she asked me how he was and whether he were getting on well.

I said that physically he was recuperating splendidly though, owing to the slowness of his mental recovery, it would be a long while before he could resume work.

"And then he'll go back again to Vienna?"

"I don't know. He hasn't any definite plans."

"Do you think he wants--he would like--to be invited here?"

"I'm rather afraid he doesn't want to go anywhere."

"Or to see anybody?"

"Not at present."

I suppose my answers gave her an impression of hostility, for she said, bitterly smiling: "You don't particularly want him to see me, do you?"

"I'm not very keen, I admit."

"Why not?"

"Need you ask?"

She laughed and retorted: "Don't be afraid.... I haven't the slightest desire to see him. There are some things I can't forgive."

"Neither can he."

"What do you mean? What are the things he can't forgive?"

"The things he has done himself."

"Such as?"

"I don't think I can tell you. As you said just now, I don't know enough about him."

"Is he sorry he ever met me?"

"Maybe," I said hastily, as the entrance of Severn in his wheeled chair put an abrupt end to our conversation. Heaven knows where and how it would have ended but for that.

I didn't understand her. Perhaps I never have understood her; perhaps, if and when this manuscript is finished, she will seem a kind of incomprehensible mystery, without clue or key.... All I can set down are the things that happened, and these, it may be, are not always very significant.... One of them, fortunately, is beyond controversy--the change that took place in her way of life from the moment that she brought her husband to England. It was extraordinary; she became all at once the model wife, avoiding all social engagements and spending most of her time dutifully at home. Severn, if he had been less abnormal in temperament, might have been gratified by the change; as it was, he did his best to persuade her to enjoy herself as usual. But she wouldn't; she would stay and look after him whether he liked it or not. He on his side accepted the novel situation in a spirit of slightly sardonic good-humour. "Women are sadists," he told me once. "They love men most when their bodies are broken and helpless...." And when I suggested that there might be some other motive besides sadism, he retorted laughingly: "Oh, yes, there _may_ be. But I wouldn't take _your_ word for it--you're such a thoroughgoing sentimentalist...."

Sentimentalist or not, I found some of those evenings at the End House almost more poignant than I could bear. They were poignant, if you know what I mean, because Severn wouldn't let them be sad. Never had he been more cheerful; never had his wit shone more brightly; never perhaps in my life had he made me laugh so much. He made Helen laugh, and June too--we all laughed. And then suddenly, there would come a second's silence, and we would glimpse him, as it were, behind and beyond the laughter--a spirit tragically brave, chained to that wheeled chair for life.

Once he gave me a long medical lecture on the injury to his spine. It was, he said, in the opinion of every leading authority save one, entirely and absolutely incurable. The exception was a young and adventurous Chicago surgeon named Hermann. "Unfortunately, Hermann's gone with an expedition to the head waters of the Amazon, and won't be available till next year at the earliest...."

VIII

And Terry, meanwhile, lived through the summer and autumn at the Valley Hotel. Every Saturday (with few exceptions) I went down to see him and every Monday I came away; and yet, even after so many visits, the picture of him will be rather blurred. Physically he was all that he had ever been, and more; the weeks of sunshine and fine air had left a splendid mark upon him. But in other ways he seemed hardly to have begun to recover at all; indeed, it was as if the full extent of the trouble were only just being revealed. He was intensely quiet and melancholy; nothing interested him or stirred him to any expressed emotion; he had the look of one who has lost his way and doesn't particularly care whether he finds it again. All his habits were listless and slack; his not-caring invaded even the most trivial things. It was not-caring, also, that had made him take to drinking; and, since his drinks were obtained from Taplow, he very obviously didn't care how much he was costing Severn. I don't think he ever troubled to realize that a record was kept of everything he had and a bill made out in the usual way. My own habit, when accepting Severn's hospitality at the hotel, was to pay for the drinks I had, and I rather wondered why Terry didn't do the same. Then I found out one reason, at any rate.

It was a Monday morning and I was preparing to leave on my motor-cycle for town. Terry walked with me as I wheeled the machine into the lane, and then, quite suddenly, he asked me to lend him half-a-crown. It was a simple, almost a half-hearted request; there was certainly no trace of either shame or truculence in it. When I had mastered my surprise I made him take a pound, and then, leaving my machine where it was, I led him away from the hotel and asked him to tell me frankly about his financial position. He confessed (as if it didn't trouble him much) that he hadn't any money at all, and after much questioning I gathered that the journey to England and the hotel expenses in Paris (of which he had insisted on paying his own share) had swallowed every penny he possessed. Then I asked him what his salary had been in Vienna, and he named a sum which a skilled artisan would have scorned.

Even my indignation didn't stir him. But after further cross-examination I found out something of more immediate importance--that Karelsky hadn't paid him for that last and unfinished quarter. "I suppose he forgot to send it on," Terry said listlessly, and was obviously prepared to let the matter drop. But I wasn't. I said I would write to Vienna as soon as I reached town, and that until Karelsky's cheque arrived he could draw on me for whatever sums he wanted.

Karelsky didn't answer my letter. After ten days I wrote to Mizzi, asking her if she would interview him on Terry's behalf, and she replied almost by return as follows:

"DEAR MR. HILTON,--I went to see K. as you asked, but he was away, so I had to talk to his chief assistant, Herr Schubert. He said there was no money at all owing to T., because he left without giving notice. I explained that he was ill, and then S. showed me an agreement signed by T. seven years ago, when he first came here. I am afraid that this agreement, though very unjust, is quite legal, and will give T. no chance at all of getting any money. S. said that T. had caused great inconvenience by leaving so suddenly, and that K. will never have him again. If you like, I will see K. personally as soon as he returns, but I do not think it will be much good.

"S. sent me some of T's books and papers that were left at the laboratory, and these are now with the rest of T's things in his room here. Shall I have them all packed up and send them to you or to T. himself? Please do not think I mind keeping his room for him; it is just that I think, if he cannot return here, he may soon want his books again in England.

"I should like to know about T., and also about Mr. Severn. Things are just the same here, and I am quite well and remain--_Deine treue, mit den herzlichsten Grüszen_,

"MIZZI."

That letter reached me on a Saturday morning, and I read it a second time by the roadside near Ripley, on my way to Hindhead. I remember smoking a cigarette and deciding that for the present, at any rate, I wouldn't tell Terry the disappointing news. I decided also that I would give him the quarter's money in cash, and let him think that Karelsky had sent it.... The plan would have been easily carried out but for a single act of carelessness; in changing my clothes when I arrived at the hotel, I chanced to drop the second sheet of Mizzi's letter on the floor of the room which Terry and I were sharing. He picked it up when he entered some time later, and, I suppose, he recognized the handwriting; anyhow, he read it and understood it quite sufficiently to learn all that I hadn't intended him to learn. He met me afterwards in the bar-parlour with a quiet, almost a bored--"So Karelsky's given me the push?" I stared at him in astonishment, and then he added: "You left part of Mizzi's letter on the floor. I didn't know it was yours till after I'd read it.... Anyhow, it doesn't really matter, does it? Have a drink?"

_He didn't care_! I don't know whether I was more glad than sorry that he didn't, or more sorry than glad. I was glad, at any rate, because I didn't want him to begin worrying about the future, and I was sorry because his not caring seemed such a tragic thing in itself. Not to care that he had lost his position, that he had been virtually swindled out of the money he had earned, and that for seven whole years he had been giving out his best and deepest in the service of an unprincipled rogue! Naturally I didn't lay stress on the matter, nor did I give my opinion of Karelsky. But I couldn't help protesting when he said, as if he were calmly thinking it out: "I suppose Karelsky found I wasn't any use. After all, I'd been seven years on the job and hadn't much to show for it."

I said sharply: "You know perfectly well that you _had_ something to show for it. You told me yourself that you'd nearly finished something important."

"Oh, never mind about it now," he replied, almost peevishly. "Take me on the back of your bike into Guildford and let's have a canoe out on the river."

We went, and the odd thing was that for the rest of the day he was actually more cheerful than I had known him since the beginning of his illness. The weather was perfect, and we splashed about in the Wey for an hour or two, had tea, and then returned along the Hog's Back and through Farnham.

"When you write back to Mizzi," he shouted into my ear as we were doing forty against a strong wind, "tell her to send on all my books and papers to the hotel, will you? ... Then on Guy Fawkes' Night we'll take them into Taplow's garden and make a damned great bonfire with the lot...."

He laughed loudly, and I think I have never heard so eerie a sound as his laughter then, borne far away from me by the wind and the speed....