Chapter EIGHT: I

I WAS out of town a good deal during that early autumn, and I saw very little of anyone. That Severn was getting more resigned to his unhappy condition I gathered from the brilliantly vivacious and epigrammatic letters he sent me from time to time. He was hard at work on the Disraeli book, which he hoped to finish soon after Christmas. "It will be something rather new in biographies," he wrote. "I shall show, if I can, that all genius has in it a touch of the flamboyant, the charlatan, if you like; and that the contrasting scrupulousness of, say, a man like Gladstone, is merely the absence of genius. No genius, for instance, can be entirely honest, or entirely truthful, or entirely faithful in marriage, or entirely anything--entireties being the stock-in-trade of the second-rate. That is why it is so astonishing to find a genius in politics, where, as everybody knows, mud is thicker than water, and a good deal easier to sling...."

Some of the letters are well worth publishing, and perhaps, some day, this may happen. The thing I remember best in them is a phrase about Terry. "He hasn't," Severn wrote, "quite got the knack of living in an imperfect world." That, I think, was the best summing-up I ever heard.

All this time Terry was still living at Hindhead, doing nothing and caring for nothing. And yet, looking back on it now, I have an idea that the sight of all his old books and papers stirred him to some sort of emotion, even though he showed none. They arrived from Vienna one roaring October afternoon of high wind and creaking trees--a Saturday, and the second unforgettable day of that autumn. I had motor-cycled from town in the morning, barely fighting through in the teeth of the gale, and after lunch Terry climbed with me to the lip of the Punch-Bowl. The wind there was terrific; the whole landscape of hill and valley seemed foundering like a ship in a wild storm. After a few shivering moments we walked briskly back to the hotel, and there, waiting for us, was Mizzi's parcel. I unpacked it for him in his room, while he sat on the bed, smoking and watching me with a curious detached interest. He made no comment except, when I had finished, an almost embarrassed: "It's awfully good of you to do all this.... The things aren't much use, but I suppose they may as well stay here as anywhere else."

We had tea, and afterwards I wrote a few letters while Terry went out, as he said, for another blow on the hill. It must have been about six o'clock when I finished writing, for I remember hurrying out into the lane to catch the last post of the day. I had walked a few hundred yards with eyes almost closed by the piercing wind, when I heard the sharp hoot of an approaching car; I should have been run down if the driver hadn't swerved smartly to avoid me. The car just grazed a gatepost and then stopped; I stopped also, composing in my mind the most handsome and abject apologies. The first thing I noticed (rather to my relief) was that the driver was a young woman; and the next thing I noticed was that the young woman was June. She climbed out of the car and viewed critically the long scratch on the door-panelling. Then she turned to me. "I suppose you know that you've had a narrow escape?" she said, before recognizing me. She added, a second later: "Oh, it's you, is it? Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

"I not only ought but am," I replied, and she said: "That's right.... I suppose you're staying at the hotel?"

"Yes."

"I'm just going there. There's something the matter with the car--apart from the scratch on the door, which is your fault--and Taplow's a bit of a car expert.... Where are _you_ going?"

"Only to post a few letters."

"Up to the cross-roads? ... Jump in, and I'll drive you up; then afterwards we'll go back to the hotel together. I can turn the car at the next corner."

"Sure it won't be too much trouble?"

"I shouldn't offer, if it were. I've just come over from Petersfield--had quite an exciting drive. Falling tree missed me by inches near Liphook, and I nearly ran over another man just before I met you.... But there was some excuse for him--he was drunk."

I got in the car and in a couple of minutes we were speeding up the hill at thirty miles an hour. We chatted desultorily during the short run, but all I remember is that when we were nearing the summit she suddenly cried out: "Ah, there he is--the man I nearly ran into.... Why doesn't somebody take him home, I wonder?" And she pointed ahead to a man who was staggering drunkenly along the middle of the road towards us.

I shouted: "Good God, it's Terry!"--and nearly, in my astonishment, jumped out of the car. She braked sharply to a standstill, and nothing, I think, was ever so typical of her as the calm way in which she did everything and said everything then. "Terry?" she echoed, and then added: "Oh, yes, I know about him. We'd better tell him to get in, hadn't we?"

She left the car and came with me, and in the end it was she herself who made the arrangements. She didn't wait for me to introduce her; as soon as we were barely within speaking distance she said: "You're Terry, aren't you? I remember you years ago--you used to do chemistry experiments in our kitchen at Hampstead.... But I don't suppose you know who I am."

He wasn't too drunk to answer; the drink had, in fact, rid him of his usual shyness at meeting a stranger. "I know who you are," he said, with a sort of truculent facetiousness. "You're the young lady who nearly ran me down just now, aren't you?"

"Serve you right," she retorted brusquely, "if you _will_ get drunk and go rolling along the roads.... Get in the car now, and I'll take you where you belong. Otherwise somebody else'll drive along and knock you down."

He obeyed without another word, and I sat with him in the rear seat while June drove us up to the post-box and then back to the hotel. She was the embodied spirit of calmness; it struck me then that she had all her father's coolness without any of his cynicism. And, incidentally, she was the only woman-driver of a car who ever made me feel perfectly safe in her charge.

At the hotel she paid little attention to Terry and me, but sought eagerly for Taplow; and the chief impression I have is of the two of them stooping to examine the car's interior mechanism and exchanging technicalities. The trouble, whatever it was, did not take long to rectify, for at seven o'clock I heard her asking Mrs. Taplow to make her some sandwiches for the journey. She wanted to be in Hampstead by nine, she said, and would have no time for dinner.

Before leaving she came hurriedly into the sitting-room where I was reading and Terry was dozing in a chair. "Good-bye," she said to me, taking off her furred gauntlet glove to shake hands. Then she went over to Terry and touched him sharply on the arm. "Wake up," she cried, "and thank me for saving your life!"

He opened his eyes and stared stupidly at her; I daresay he was as surprised as he had ever been. "Do you play tennis?" she asked, before he had time to speak.

He stammered that he didn't, and she said: "Well, you ought to--it's better than boozing, anyway ... Good-bye--I'm off now."

She waved her hand and hurried out, but even her hurry had in it some curious quality of calmness.

And that, grotesque as it may be, is a plain account of their first meeting since she was a child. Taplow told me afterwards that Terry had had no more drink than on many previous occasions--certainly not enough to make an ordinary man stagger along a road. But perhaps he had been--just then, at any rate--an extraordinary man. Perhaps, as I suggested awhile back, the receipt of Mizzi's package _had_ stirred him, and at a time when any sort of emotion was rather more than he could bear.

He made very little comment when June had gone. In no way did her visit seem to affect him; he just lived on as usual, letting the days slip idly by, with no care for what he did with them or for what they did with him. Anything, almost, would have been a welcome change from the monotony of his indifference; I would rather have had him swear vengeance on Karelsky, or even steep himself in despair because June had seen him drunk. But he had no energy for either; and all the while the bill for Severn to pay was piling up to quite a formidable sum.

Chiefly, of course, I was concerned for what Severn might think; the money itself was of small consequence. I should have tackled Terry pretty frankly, had he not been overwhelmed by a belated realization of the facts. News of that reached me from June, whom I chanced to meet one frosty morning in Piccadilly. She said instantly: "Come for a walk--I want to tell you something." We strolled into Green Park, and she told me that she had just met Terry.

"In Charing Cross Road," she said. "He was trying to sell some books, and I watched him go in and out of half-a-dozen shops without any luck. Then I went up and spoke to him. At first he wouldn't tell me what he was doing, but I asked him to tea and wriggled it out of him."

"Well?"

"It was a good job I _did_ ask him to tea. Otherwise he'd have gone without--for he hadn't a penny on him--nothing but the return ticket to Haslemere.... He'd thought he'd get quite a pile of money for the books, but the dealers wouldn't even make an offer--no market for scientific treatises in German, they said.... He couldn't understand it."

"But why did he want to sell the books at all?"

"That's what I asked him.... It seems he saw the bill that Taplow was making up for father to pay. He hadn't had any idea he was costing so much. He said he felt it couldn't go on any longer--that he must find work of some sort and put an end to it."

"But surely he would need his books for his work?"

"No.... He wasn't thinking of _that_ kind of work. He was prepared for anything--to take a job in the colonies--to go to sea--_anything_...."

"That would be no use."

"I know. I told him he had far better stay at the hotel till he was well enough to carry on with his research work."

"And what did he say to that?"

"Nothing. You can't get him even to _think_ of his work--not yet.... But I made a beginning. I said I would go down to Hindhead next Sunday and teach him tennis...."

II

There was a hard court within a quarter of a mile of the hotel, and on this she gave him his first lesson. I was away that week-end, and when I returned to town there was a short note from her awaiting me on my desk. Nothing sensational. Just to say that she had tried him, and that he would probably make a decent player after practice.

And he did practise. I don't know quite why. I don't think it was because he was at all keen to become a decent player. I don't think it was even to please _her_. Maybe he found that the hard use of his body helped to calm his mind, or perhaps it was just that he had nothing else to do.... Anyhow, he practised, and when he couldn't find a partner, he 'served' over the net by himself. As always, he went terrifically to extremes; the hours he spent on that tennis-court must have made many people wonder what had happened to him. Whenever I paid him visits, it was to the court he led me straightway; it was as if he had no thought for anything else. On those scowling December afternoons we played for hours, with hardly a word between us; he always beat me, for I am excessively bad at all games. When one set was over, we began another; and so on, until dusk made play impossible. It was martyrdom of a sort for me, but what was it for him? That's what I find so hard to decide.

June, however, seemed satisfied with the progress he was making. She spoke of it so much from the point of view of the athletic coach that I told her candidly on one occasion that it wasn't his body that needed help, but his mind. "If your tennis means nothing to him but just tennis," I said, "then it's not much better than getting drunk, or taking long walks over the hills, or other things he used to do. What he wants is a new mental eagerness--something that will send him back to his work."

That was during a motor run from Hindhead at the beginning of the following March. June, furred and gauntletted, and driving very prettily as usual, shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not such a subtle analyst as you are," she said. "I can't help being glad that he's improving his game."

"Oh, of course." And I disclaimed all intention to sneer at tennis in any way. "All I mean," I said, "is that when you tell me his volleys are getting faster, it doesn't make me want to caper about and cheer enthusiastically."

"No?" A little laugh and several miles of silence. And then, as we were nearing Ripley: "By the way, what _would_ make you want to caper about and cheer enthusiastically?"

I said it would have to be some news that showed a complete change in Terry's _mental_ attitude.

"Such as a return to work--even in a small way?"

"Well, yes. That would be the best sign, no doubt."

We travelled on a few more miles, and it was in the main street of Cobham that she remarked: "Suppose I told you that he _had_ already begun to work again?"

"I should be delighted, of course, if it were true."

"It is true."

"You _mean_ that? You mean that he's actually gone back to his books--his old research work----"

"He's _beginning_ to go."

"How--_beginning_?"

"I'll tell you in a minute."

She drove on till we were out of the village, and then, on the straight stretch of road between Cobham and Esher, she gave me details. "We were playing some hard games yesterday," she said, "and for the first time he beat me--and I'm pretty good, you know." (It was like her to say that, so calmly and confidently.) "I told him that if he went on improving he'd have to enter for some tournaments when the season began, and he said he'd most likely be at the other side of the world before then. We argued about it, and I found out he'd been answering all sorts of advertisements for jobs. Nobody, of course, would have him--without experience, references, or anything.... So after a while I just said--'Look here, Terry, why don't you carry on for the time being with your old scientific work? It's the best job you can do, and probably also it's the only job you'll get....' Better to be frank with him, I thought. He said he'd think about it, but I didn't want him to think about it--I wanted him to begin right away. So when we got back to the hotel I went up to his room (what on earth Taplow thought I don't know), and we began sorting out all his old notebooks and papers. There's at least a fortnight's job in that."

"And you really think that he intends to get on with it himself?"

"We're both of us going to get on with it. It looks to me as if he's done quite a lot of work in Vienna, only it wants getting together, classifying, typing out, and so on."

"And _you're_ going to do it?"

"No, _no_.... We're both going to do it, I tell you. I shan't do more than _my_ fair share, anyway. He'll have to dictate while I do the typing. Taplow's lent us a downstairs room, so that we shan't shock the proprieties."

And there it was, so calmly settled by this girl with the blue eyes and the reddish hair and the brown, freckled face. She did everything so simply and directly; she was an angel rushing in where fools feared to tread. I hoped, without really believing, that she would succeed.

III

I wish I had seen them at work together. Circumstances prevented me, and it is only from Taplow that I know anything of what happened. He told me that June used to come two or three times a week and stay for the whole day, alternating the typing with fierce bouts of tennis.

_Was_ she succeeding? There came an evening in early April when she banged at my door and demanded an interview. "I want to talk to you about lots of things," she said, settling herself in my bachelor-armchair and accepting a cigarette. The first thing, apparently, was Karelsky's approaching visit to England. Had I heard about it?

I hadn't.

"He's due to arrive next week. There's going to be an international medical conference, or something of the sort, and he's one of the star turns.... Another is Hermann, the spinal fellow--you've heard of him, haven't you? Father's going to consult him, and if there's the least chance of a cure by operation, he says he'll take the risk."

She went on: "I suppose I'm getting to know my father for really the first time in my life. It's queer ... I keep on thinking--'What sort of a man _are_ you?'--and I can't _quite_ make up my mind.... But I like him. He's _game_." She gave me a sharp upward glance and added: "Perhaps you think I'm heartless to be able to talk about him so calmly? Most people seem to imagine I ought to be coddling and making a great fuss over him ... I _couldn't_ do it--I'm not made that way. And neither is he."

That was as much as I ever heard her say about him. I don't think she would have said even that but for an unwillingness to drive too abruptly to the main object of her visit, which was to ask me questions about Terry. And the first question, when at last she came to it, was: "What's happened in his past life to make him like--like _this_?"

"Like what?"

She paused for a short while and then said: "It's as if he's had one blow after another until he doesn't care any more about anything--that's my impression. He does what I ask him to do, but still he doesn't care."

"And you want him to care?"

"Of course I do. And you can help me--you've known him for years. Tell me what's happened to him. What's been the real cause of his breakdown?"

I gave her as carefully as I could a summary of all that I could possibly tell her. I stressed the hard work that he had been doing, and Karelsky's shabby treatment of him, and the shock of hearing about her father's accident. And when I had got to the end, she said quietly: "Is that all?"

"I think it is."

"Won't you tell me the rest?"

"The rest? I don't know that there is any rest."

"All the same, I have an idea there is." She stared at me unflinchingly, and then added: "Never mind--if you won't tell me, then you won't. Let's talk of something else."

And we did.

IV

Throughout all the early months of that year I was almost heading for a breakdown myself. I certainly hope that I shall never have to work so hard again. In a sort of way it was Severn's fault, though he meant well enough, just as he had meant well enough in getting Terry fixed up with Karelsky. But Severn was like that; he'd help you so carelessly that unless you used remarkably shrewd judgment of your own the help might turn out to be a hindrance. On this occasion he got for me the editorship of a rather decadent weekly that had already killed or bankrupted my predecessors and would have done the same to me if I hadn't thrown up the sponge after three months' hard labour. The wretched thing gave me no proper time for meals and sleep, let alone for Hindhead week-ends and the novel about Terry. From Christmas till Easter I don't think I added a word.

There was, perhaps, another reason for this besides pressure of business. Terry's continued slackness and inertia disappointed me, and (I may as well confess it) I began to wonder if he were altogether the man I had taken him for. Anyhow, if he were going to stay on indefinitely at the Valley Hotel, I didn't see how I could write a readable novel about him, unless I chose to end it fictitiously. I remember, during the few spare moments I had during those days, making drafts of such possible endings; one of them was that Severn should die under an operation, and that Terry and Helen, after suitable novelistic adventures, should marry and end the book happily. Another dragged Mizzi back into the story, and I think this was the one I should have favoured, chiefly because the character of Mizzi always appealed to me But I hadn't time for any of them, which was perhaps just as well.

Karelsky landed, I recollect, in mid-April, and from his first moment on English soil was never without a posse of newspaper-men at his heels. I had several chances of meeting him professionally, but avoided them all; it wasn't possible, unfortunately, to avoid the constant references to him on placards, in the press, and from platform and pulpit. For over a week he had Fleet Street positively begging him for copy, and all he gave in return for fabulous cheques was a vast quantity of worthless self-advertisement. I found myself loathing the man and his methods so intensely that I even tried to persuade my proprietors to let me run a campaign against him in my paper; fortunately for me, in view of what happened subsequently, they refused.

On the opening day of the Conference the furore of newspaper adulation rose to an impassioned shriek. In my little office in Gough Square I took as small notice of it as I could; I wanted to forget, if possible, that Karelsky existed. But when I went out for my usual cup of tea in the afternoon, the newsboys were rushing up Bouverie Street with placards announcing "Karelsky's Great Speech" and "Sensational Scene at Medical Conference." For the first time for many years I didn't buy any evening paper at all; I felt that to read of some new self-advertising stunt of his would be almost unendurable. I worked at my office until nearly eight, and then strolled quietly through Lincoln's Inn to my rooms. There was a strange peace in that walk; the old Inn buildings and the trees just budding into leaf were everything that Karelsky was not.... I was calm by the time I climbed my own staircase and unlocked the door. Roebuck was out, and in the letter-box there was a telegram.

It had been handed in at Glasgow at six-thirty that evening, and ran: "Can you meet me four a.m. to-morrow Crewe Station urgent will look out for you June ..."

V

Of course I went. As I packed a small hand-bag I thought of that other telegram that had summoned me, less than a year before, to Vienna. Crewe, at any rate, was not so far, and there was a suitable express that left Euston at midnight. But I hadn't the faintest idea why June could want me, and why she had been to Glasgow, and why she was coming back to Crewe, and why, above all, she had thought the outrageous hour of four a.m. most convenient for the appointment.

Nor is Crewe Station an altogether delightful rendezvous before dawn on an April morning. My train dumped me down soon after three, and for over an hour I walked up and down enormous lengths of platform and watched mysterious shunting operations that seemed to provide the maximum of noise with the minimum of result. Then a train came in from the north, and out of it stepped June.

"I knew you'd come," she greeted me, smiling. But the odd thing was that she was nervous; I could deduce that from the way she talked. "It's so good of you," she went on, "although in the train I was wishing you wouldn't be here, and that I hadn't sent you that wire, and--oh well, you _are_ here, anyway, and it's no use arguing about it."

"The question is rather why _you_ are here."

"_Me_? Oh, that's easily explained. I've been doing business for my father in Scotland, and to-day I've got to do some more for him in Liverpool. I thought Crewe would be a good meeting-place."

"Charming," I assured her, and then we both laughed and said no more till we were at a table in the refreshment-room. There her manner altered; she became more serious and less nervous; her cheeks, too, were slightly pale beneath their open-air tan. She declined food, saying that she would take an early train to Liverpool and breakfast there. And so, over cigarettes and cups of that dark and bitter liquid sold by railway companies as coffee, she told me why she had sent for me.

"You've seen the papers, of course," she began.

I said I hadn't. The answer seemed to put her off; she replied, almost resentfully: "I never thought you'd have missed them. About Karelsky, I mean."

"_That_ man?" I told her frankly that I was sick of hearing and seeing his name, and that I had deliberately avoided the papers because I knew they were all full of it. She nodded slowly and said: "I'm afraid you'll _have_ to read about him, all the same. Unfortunately I didn't bring a paper with me.... It's this speech he made at the Conference yesterday."

"What about it?"

She stared at the table and said, after a pause: "I don't suppose you'll believe me--especially as you haven't read the papers.... But what happened--roughly--was this. Karelsky announced in his speech a new discovery--about cancer--and everybody clapped and cheered and made a hero of him. Apparently it's a big thing--this discovery."

"Well?"

She tried hard to be calm. "But the fact is--the fact is--it's not really Karelsky's discovery at all!"

"No?"

"Not his, I tell you."

Even then I wondered what she was driving at. "Then whose is it?" I asked.

"It's Terry's."

"_Terry's_? ... You mean----"

"Just exactly what I say. It's Terry's discovery."

It was minutes before I grasped what she meant, and then only hazily. She had to keep on saying: "Terry's--not Karelsky's--don't you see what I mean? Karelsky's stolen it. I've proof--loads of proof. I've been copying out for the last month the very same stuff that Karelsky gave to the Conference yesterday...." She tried to give me details, but they weren't very coherent; she could only assure me that the theft was flagrant and indisputable.

"Of course you don't believe me," she said. "I don't blame you. I hardly believed myself when I found it out.... But it's true, all the same."

"You mean that what Karelsky's getting all the fame and credit for now is something that Terry found out while he was in Vienna?"

"Presumably."

"Then, by God, we'll expose the man! We'll fight it out in the courts, and we'll----"

"I guessed you would talk like that," she interrupted, half-smiling. "But for the present there's an even more urgent matter to be settled. And that's to do with Terry himself."

"He doesn't know yet?"

"Probably not. He doesn't read newspapers--perhaps it might be weeks before he'd hear about it at all. But he's bound to know some time, isn't he?"

"He _ought_ to know--so that he can fight it out----"

Again she half-smiled, and again, so it seemed to me, she had to make a great effort for self-control. "I told you a little while ago," she said quietly, "that he gave me the impression of having suffered blow after blow. This is another blow--and perhaps the worst. How do you think he'll stand it?"

I didn't answer, and she continued: "It's rather an awful thing--to have your life-work stolen and used by somebody else. I wonder if you can imagine it. I've tried to--and I think I can--just a little.... And I pity him when he finds it out."

"How do you think he will find it out?"

"I'm going to see him the day after to-morrow."

"And tell him?"

"Yes. He'll have to learn--somehow and from somebody. And I think I can tell him better than anybody else."

Then she told me why she had sent for me. "I felt I had to tell somebody about it," she said, "and you were the only person I could think of." She added: "That's a compliment, though it mayn't sound one. You can guess how I felt--reading that speech and recognizing parts of it.... I'm so glad--_now_--that you came--it's doing me good to have this talk with you...."

We talked on, but there wasn't much else to say. The Liverpool train came in at an adjoining platform; I wanted her to stay for a later one, but she wouldn't. Then I offered to go with her to Liverpool, but she said (sensibly enough) that I had my own work to do and must get back to it. Just before the train started she leaned out of the window and touched my arm. "We mustn't let Terry go under, must we?" she said eagerly. "This _may_ seem--when he hears about it--the last straw--but he won't go under, will he?"

"Not if you can stop him, I know."

"And you," she insisted. She went on quickly: "I don't want to have all the job to myself. You've got to help--we've all got to help.... You _will_ help me, won't you?"

"All I possibly can," I answered, and she smiled happily as the train separated us.

VI

I went back to town by an express that had just come in. At Rugby the bookstalls were open and I bought half-a-dozen morning papers, of all kinds and sizes from twenty-four-page Diehard Conservative to the daily pennyworth of revolution. I don't think I realized the full significance of what June had told me till I had thoroughly digested at least a score of their closely printed columns. First of all I read Karelsky's speech verbatim in _The Times_. It was just what I expected--noisy, blatant, self-assertive, full of impertinent jibes at other investigators, and enlivened by quips that would have done credit to a Hyde Park orator. The whole thing gave me the impression of being addressed to the man in the street rather than to the Conference members; there was hardly a sentence that the layman could not _think_ he understood. Theories which most men would have advanced cautiously and modestly, Karelsky hammered out with a sort of slanging, impudent dogmatism; there never could have been, I think, such language spoken to a scientific assembly before.

In a long leading article _The Times_ struck a note of cautious approval. "The fact that Herr Karelsky's methods of obtaining publicity savour rather of the market-place than the laboratory, should not blind us to the possibility--nay, even the probability--that he has made a noteworthy contribution to the alleviation of human distress.... It would seem that, if the cases he cites are authentic, he has indeed made an important discovery.... Investigators in all countries will not be slow in examining carefully all the details, many of which, in his desire to tickle the ears of the groundlings, Herr Karelsky has doubtless withheld...."

All the other papers had leading articles, but the tone of them varied from straightforward approval to positively ecstatic adulation. It was sickening to wade through some of the pages, especially those of the picture papers, in which Karelsky's face, fat and smiling, stared out from amidst a journalistic rake-up of all his earlier stunts--rejuvenation, Thibetan monasteries, and the rest. "Hats Off To Karelsky!" shouted the _Daily Wire_ rampantly, and even went so far as to praise Karelsky for "talking to the public in words that the public can understand." The _Messenger's_ stuff was evidently the work of old 'Pot' Higgins, for it quoted Tennyson, Goethe, Peter the Great, and (incorrectly) Disraeli.... And to think that it was Saturday, and that the scribes of the Sunday papers were already at work! Oh, my God....

Perhaps it is rather silly to have written that. But I am feeling now, as I write it, what I felt during that journey from Rugby to Euston--not so much hatred of Karelsky for being a mean thief, but disgust at the way everybody was taken in by him. Perhaps I am prejudiced. Perhaps I am bound to be. And, anyhow, it doesn't matter....

I reached London in time for a very late breakfast, and in the early afternoon I went up to Hampstead to see Severn.