"Who told you I was here?"
"Your landlady. I called at your rooms."
"But why on earth didn't you send up a message to the office? Or 'phone
me? I could have been with you half an hour ago if I'd known."
She answered: "I should have done, but--I thought you might not want to
see me."
"Not _want_ to see you? Good heavens, why shouldn't I?"
She shrugged her shoulder and then said: "Oh, never mind.... Let's go
somewhere--where we can talk."
So she wanted to talk. Looking back on it now, it seems incredible that
I didn't guess what her attitude would be. I suppose that Terry's letter
had made me feel ever so slightly a hero, with its "I shall always thank
you for what you did and said." Perhaps, subconsciously, I was in the
mood that expects congratulation; at any rate, I wasn't prepared for
censure. I looked out for a taxi, thinking I would take her to tea
somewhere in the West End; but she said impatiently: "We can go
_there_," and pointed to a Lyons tea-shop on the other side of Fleet
Street. "But surely----" I began; and she interrupted sharply: "_There_,
I tell you. This is business, not pleasure."
We threaded our way amongst the marble-topped tables, and as she passed
a waitress she gave a rather defiant order for two cups of tea. Then she
selected a table, sat down, and began immediately, with a sort of
point-blank hostility: "So--after all--you've managed to persuade him?"
"You--you mean--Terry?"
And she answered, with that peculiar greenish glint in her eyes that
made her look rather more wonderful than ever: "Yes, I mean Terry."
She was watching me mercilessly across the table; yet, even then, I
couldn't see what cause she had to be displeased with me. I said, with
genuine sincerity: "Well--honestly--don't you really think it'll be a
good chance for him--going to Vienna with Karelsky?"
And she answered, with a bitter, mocking laugh: "_Honestly_--I _don't_
think it'll be a good chance for him--and--_honestly_--I think you'd far
better have minded your own business...."
That was a bad beginning. The whole interview lasted less than ten
minutes. Then, metaphorically, it broke up in disorder. If she had been
a man, we might even have come to blows; as it was, I could do nothing
but sit and listen. She wasn't so much burning as burned with
indignation; her words came out in an even flow that seemed alternately
scorching and freezing. She was passionately certain that I had
blundered. "Terry will have _no_ chance in Vienna," she said, "except
the chance of slogging away for someone else's benefit. You reckon to be
a writer and to understand people and yet you don't understand either
Karelsky or Terry.... Geoffrey's just as stupid--he thinks it's a great
chance for Terry because, if _he_ were in Terry's place, he would _make_
it a great chance for him. No doubt it is a great chance, for anybody
who can watch that he gets as much as he can out of Karelsky, and lets
Karelsky get as little as possible out of him.... But Terry's not that
sort. It'll never occur to him that Karelsky's out to get all the things
in life that _he_ doesn't care about at all.... But it's true--I know
the Karelsky sort--I've met dozens of him before. All over the world
there is the quiet type of man like Terry, and the acquisitive type like
Karelsky and Geoffrey, and whenever they meet there's tragedy.... And
yet you've deliberately _made_ them meet."
She gave me no time either to explain or protest, but went on: "I know,
of course, _why_ you persuaded him. Not because you had any ideas at all
about Vienna or Karelsky (you wouldn't stop to think about _that_), but
simply because, with your trained, novelettish eye" (the phrase struck
me as rather good) "you scented an intrigue, and wanted to get him out
of the way at all costs. I believe you'd have banished him to the North
Pole if there hadn't been anywhere else.... As if there ever was, or
could have been an intrigue! But _you_, of course--your morality was
shocked...."
I couldn't stand that. "Look here," I said quietly, "I'm not going to
have you calling me a prig. It wasn't morality at all, though why, even
if it was, you should sneer at it, I don't know.... But, as a matter of
fact, it was nothing more than simple commonsense. You told me once that
you were in love with him. Then, after he had accepted what seemed, on
the face of it, a good post, you begged him not to go. And he gave in
and promised he wouldn't. Do you blame me if I thought the situation
rather dangerous? What _were_ you to him that he should change his mind
on such an important matter just because you asked him to?"
She answered, with a curious, far-away sadness in her voice: "I
wasn't--_anything_--to him--except a teacher. I was teaching him all
sorts of little things that he'll need to know in the world--little
tricks of the trade of living--I was trying to lessen the probability
that wherever he goes and whatever he does, he'll be the prey of men not
half as strong and not a tenth as good. And I was trying to show him how
big the world was, and how, even with his ideals, it couldn't all be
seen from a laboratory window.... I took him to all sorts of
places--educating him, in a sort of way--trying to--to----"
Oh, that talk of _teaching_ and _educating_! From her lips it
exasperated me as much as it had from his; it drove me into saying
something that I have regretted ever since. "You may have tried," I
interrupted sharply, "but you didn't succeed. Even you can't change the
nature of him, and all the time you thought he was learning to be a
social success, he was merely learning to love you.... _That's_ what you
taught him--nothing else. And that's why I judged the situation to be so
dangerous that the sooner he cleared out of it the better."
I say I have regretted it ever since, and that's the bitter truth. I
began regretting about a second after I had spoken, for she answered,
with a calm smile and a thrill of pride in her voice: "I knew, of
course, that he loved me, because he told me so. But he didn't tell
_you_ to tell me, and I despise you utterly for doing it. You have
abused his confidence.... It's no good arguing after a thing like
that.... I think you'd better get me a taxi and let me go...."