There is no entry in my diary for the 12th. I remember why. I had got
back to my rooms very late, and was too sleepy to write anything. And
the next morning when I looked at the blank space I thought I would
leave it blank, to express and symbolize the puzzled blankness of my own
mind.
It was a small party--just the Severns, Terry, and myself. The rather
sensational Roebourne case had been concluded only that afternoon, and
all the evening papers were full of praise for Severn, whose brilliant
handling of exceptionally difficult material had brought victory to his
side. It had been a fatiguing battle between two great financial
interests, and Severn had not only consolidated his already high
reputation as a pleader, but had earned also an almost fabulous sum in
fees. Naturally his feelings were buoyant, and their buoyancy made him
talk in a way which, even for him, was amazing. Before then I had
sometimes harboured a suspicion that his knowledge of many things was
superficial, but that night the suspicion almost disappeared. He really
did seem to have been everywhere, to have read everything, and to have
met everybody. One moment he was talking about the queer sorts of
_hors-d'œuvres_ that he had sampled in various parts of the world; and
the next he was discussing medical science with Terry in a way which
would have tempted any outsider to assume that he was the master and
Terry the rather dull pupil. With the accompaniment of excellent food
and wine, the whole exhibition was a sheer delight to the onlooker like
myself, and Severn's coal-black eyes gleamed all the while as if he too
were thoroughly enjoying it. I believe he was slightly drunk, but that
only made his talk better still.
Then, somehow or other, when we were in the drawing-room afterwards, the
conversation grew personal. I don't mean "personal" in any unpleasant
sense, but merely literally; we began to talk about ourselves. Or
rather, perhaps, it was as if Mrs. Severn, Terry and I were suddenly
being forced to expose our intimate lives to the full glare of Severn's
arguments, while he alone remained aloof--interested but hardly
perturbed. It began by his telling me what ought to be the successive
stages of my advancement as a literary man. "In a few years," he said
"you must have a sub-editorship--I'll see whether I can find one for
you. You'll have to work like hell while you're at it, and in your spare
time, if you have any, you must manage to write a novel--preferably one
that will establish your reputation and bring you in not more than a
hundred pounds altogether. After that you must take a flat in either
Bloomsbury or Chelsea and decide whether you're going to plod along in
Fleet Street, earning a middling salary and work jolly hard for it, or
take to the wilder life of the professional fiction-writer, in which you
may earn nothing at all or else fabulous sums.... On the whole, I think
you had better become the successful novelist who is very shy and
unapproachable. In that case you must write a stupid novel about Very
Good People and Very Bad People, with a wedge of sex in between, and you
must take care that all your most intimate private affairs are reported
sensationally in the Press.... After your novel's in its second hundred
thousand and your bank balance is beginning to stagger you, you must
marry a society woman and arrange for your name to appear in the next
birthday honours' list...."
And so on. Then, filling up his glass, he turned to Terry. The career of
the successful scientist, he said, was in many ways a more delicate
matter, but still in the main, it was conditioned by the same general
principles. "Darwin," he said, "points the way for all scientists. His
monkey idea was so simple that only a scientist could have any doubts
about it.... Anyhow, you must do your best with the material that comes
your way. First of all, you positively must go to Paris or Berlin or
Vienna and put yourself under some fellow who, because his name isn't
Smith or Brown or Jones, is thereby held in almost mythical esteem by
the majority of Englishmen. Then, after picking the other fellow's
brains as much as you can, you must launch out suddenly on your
own--choosing a slack season when the newspapers haven't much to write
about. You must have a new discovery, or a new theory of
something--nearly anything will do, provided it is simple enough for the
man in the street to misunderstand and laugh at. You might, for
instance, discover that to crawl a quarter of a mile a day on hands and
knees is a cure of dyspepsia. Get your disciples round you and start
crawling--in public--with the cameras all round you! ... Then come back
to England and make a fierce attack on the oldest, the most innocent,
and altogether the most fatuous member of the Medical Council...."
Terry laughed and said that all that sort of thing was just what he
would most of all loathe doing.
"But you _must_ do it," Severn urged. "Of course I've been joking about
some of the details, but the principle of it all is sound enough. The
key to success _in everything_ is advertisement."
"Not _my_ sort of success," said Terry, doggedly.
"He feels," said Mrs. Severn, "that his work in itself is so important
that success doesn't matter. Of course, with you it's bound to be
different. Championing one gang of thieves against another is nothing
unless it's successful." (She was, I suppose, referring to the Roebourne
case.)
Severn retorted by a good-humoured jibe at her recently discovered
interest in bacteriology. "I'm sure a gang of thieves is as interesting
as a gang of microbes," he said, "and certainly far more remunerative."
She laughed then, but seemed afterwards to grow suddenly serious.
"Remunerative?" she echoed after a pause, and added: "Is money
_everything_? Oughtn't one to have the feeling that what one is doing is
worth while? Do you feel that about the Roebourne case?"
"I'm not sure that I feel that about anything," Severn answered.
"Not even the work Terry's doing?" she queried; and he replied suavely:
"I said I wasn't sure. That's the truth. I'm _not_ sure."
Then came the argument. I think he thoroughly enjoyed it, and all the
more because he could see and watch its effect upon Terry. Briefly, his
thesis was that there was no such thing, ultimately, as progress. We
were here in the world, and we didn't know why we were here; and there
wasn't a scrap of evidence to show that world-movements had any
permanent direction. The world had been inhabited for millions of years,
and it was merely parochial conceit to suppose that our own civilization
was the highest that had ever been known. The Greeks had excelled us in
many of the arts; why not some earlier civilization in chemistry or
engineering or medical science? It was a fascinating speculation. Quite
possibly all the great discoveries had been made and remade over and
over again throughout the ages. Nor could it be optimistically assumed
that each successive civilization touched a higher peak than its
predecessor. It was far more likely that there had been vast cycles of
civilizations--some of them with an upward trend, and others with a
downward--and that these cycles, in turn, belonged to even vaster
movements. It was all, he admitted, very hazy and speculative; but at
any rate it gave little support to those worthy Victorians who thought
that the laying of the Transatlantic cable represented another step
towards the millennium.
"Then," I said, when he momentarily paused, "we might all of us just as
well do evil as good."
He demurred to the use of the words "good" and "evil." There were no
absolute standards; the world had fashions in such things just as it had
in dress and manners. _Anything_ was fashionable sometime or somewhere
or other--murder in wartime, for instance, or bigamy in Turkey....
"Then what _are_ we to do?"
"Do what you like. That's all the advice I can give you. _I_ always do
what _I_ like. I like making speeches, for instance, and getting my name
in the papers, and making plenty of money. But tastes differ, of course.
And to those who live uncomfortably in this world in the hope of having
everything made up to them in the next, my advice is just the same--If
you _prefer_ having _that_ sort of a life and _that_ sort of a belief,
then have them by all means."
It was all very devastatingly brilliant, but perhaps it was a little too
reminiscent of an undergraduate debate. It was Severn himself, rather
than what he said, that impressed. He _had_ succeeded; he _had_ made
himself rich; those were the realest arguments. He had, in fact, done
just what he liked with the world, and it had rewarded him far more
generously than it did those who tamely let it do just what it liked
with them. Yet, for all that, I found his arguments stimulating rather
than convincing. Perhaps if he had been aiming them principally at me,
they would have been different and more effective. But they weren't
aimed at me. Terry was the target; and with him they certainly
succeeded. Terry hadn't been an undergraduate at one of the older
universities, and hadn't ever sat up till dawn shattering morality to
bits and remoulding it nearer to the heart's desire. Severn's ideas were
different not only in degree but in kind from any he had heard before,
and the result was naturally severe.
All this leads up to what Helen did. (Yes, I _must_ call her Helen.)
Severn, just before we left, had called me into his study for a farewell
whisky. He was in high good humour. "You fellows think I've been joking
all the time," he said, "but I haven't.... Only _some_ of the time." He
laughed. "For instance, when I talked about Terry going abroad to Paris
or Vienna or somewhere, I really meant it. I think it would be a
splendid chance for him.... You might ask him, as you go home, how he'd
care to have a few years working with Karelsky. He'll know who Karelsky
is."
While we were drinking and chatting he had to answer the telephone. The
matter, I gathered, was of a rather private nature, so I edged away
towards the doorway that looked into the hall.
And then I saw Terry. His back was towards me, and in front of him,
almost hidden from my sight by his tall and upright body, was Helen. The
lights in the hall were very subdued, and all I could see of her
distinctly was the knuckle of her right hand as she held the lapel of
his coat.
She had been talking to him earnestly, and I caught what was evidently a
final remark. "... and you mustn't take any notice of him, Terry--you
_mustn't_.... I'd _hate_ you to be influenced by him at all...." Only
that, whispered very eagerly.
He said nothing in reply, and then suddenly, glancing over his shoulder
with a little side-movement of her head, she saw me. I know she did,
although at that moment I had almost withdrawn myself into the study. It
was not deliberate eavesdropping, anyhow.