And so it began. The difficulty is to say _what_ began. Terry told me so
little, and Helen told me so much; and between the two was a vast hiatus
of the inexplicable. At first, the affair seemed perfectly harmless.
When a man, after habitually working three times as hard as he ought,
slows down to twice as hard, there doesn't seem a great deal to complain
of. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a
pretty woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on
some miserable hillside.
The whole thing is difficult to put into words because to this day I
don't really know what happened. All I surmise is that the work of
mutual conversion proceeded during the months of late winter and early
spring--she attending his bacteriology lectures and he accompanying her
to theatres, pianoforte recitals, and so on. Their meetings were
frequent enough to stir gossip, no doubt, but hardly scandal, especially
as it was so obvious that Severn knew and approved. Helen had always
been in the throes of some fad or other, and he probably assumed that
Terry was an unusually congenial successor of Christian Science,
Dalcroze eurhythmics, highbrow drama, and a dozen other enthusiasms that
had had their day and one by one crept silently to rest. It was he, more
often than not, who might say to her: "Oh, by the way, I've got a card
for Wolferton's private view--it's next Tuesday at the Savile Galleries.
I shan't have time to go myself, but you might take Terry and show him
the latest painted pot-boilers...." And she would take him, of course.
When I asked him if he had enjoyed going to that or some similar
function, he would usually reply: "Yes, very much." Never more, and
hardly ever less. It was Helen who assured me that the work of
"humanizing" him was proceeding successfully.
"And," I said to her once, "you're still in love with him?"
She replied: "More than ever. Oh, _much_ more. And--as I told you
before--it's _wonderful_."
"Maybe, but is it wise?"
She pursed her lips and then answered: "Well, what harm can there be in
it? It isn't sharing anything with Geoffrey.... It's nothing to do with
anybody how I feel--nobody will ever know it except you, and you
wouldn't if I hadn't told you."
"Suppose Terry were to find it out?"
"You mean--suppose I'm a fool, eh? ... Well, I assure you, I'm not."
"All right, then--take another supposition. What will happen if Terry
falls in love with you?"
"My dear Jimmy--he _couldn't_. It wouldn't occur to him. Oh,
don't--don't--" she was beginning to laugh--"don't imagine it. It
_couldn't_ happen."
"Then what _will_ happen--eventually?"
She gave me her loveliest smile. "I shall teach him and watch over him,
and then, when the right girl comes along, I shall just hand him
over ... in good condition."
"And when do you think that will be?"
She shrugged her pretty little shoulders and laughed outright. "How can
I tell?--Perhaps in ten days--or ten months--or ten years. But it will
happen--it is bound to happen--_some day_...."
The pages of my diary about this time bear witness to the number of
times Terry and I dined at the End House. Generally we went on
Wednesdays, and as time passed the "generally" became "always" and the
dinners a habit. Once Helen was slightly unwell during one of Terry's
Wednesday lectures, and he broke his fixed rule so far as to see her
afterwards and escort her home in her car. And then, the following
Wednesday, although she wasn't unwell at all, he repeated the courtesy,
and that also became a habit.
They were always very jolly, informal affairs, those dinners. More often
than not, Severn wasn't there; he was busy at his chambers, or dining at
one of his clubs, or on duty in the House. Sometimes, by way of
compensation, June, aged eleven, was home from her boarding-school, and
Terry used often to amuse her by performing small chemical and physical
experiments. I can remember him fixing a Bunsen burner on to the kitchen
gas-stove, and to cook's amazement as well as June's, blowing a piece of
glass tubing into various shapes. On another occasion he solemnly
changed the colour of litmus-paper before our eyes.... He seemed very
fond of the child, and she, I believe, thought he was some sort of
magician.
All this happened while spring was deepening into summer. Even in my own
most unsalubrious district of Camden Town the change of season was
unmistakable; nay, even also in Gower Street, and even at the top of the
Physics Building and along the corridor where the name "Dr. M.
Terrington" rewarded the ardent bacteriological pilgrim after his six
flights of labour. But the chief sign of change along that corridor was
the fact that sometimes, and more often as the season progressed, the
pilgrim knocked at the door, looked inside, and found the room empty.