We did not talk for long because she had so much business to attend to.
But she had said enough--enough for anger, if there had ever been
any--to melt into compassion.
The day was very hot, and I was very sleepy after the long journey. I
didn't go out of doors except to send a reassuring telegram to Roebuck;
most of the time I spent dozing in an armchair in the cool lounge.
Towards the red-gold dusk I fell asleep, and it was Terry who waked me.
I was startled, because I hadn't expected him to arrive so soon. Mizzi
must have prepared him about me, for _his_ surprise, though obvious, was
restrained. "How are you?" he began with an odd sort of calmness. "Mizzi
says you're over here on business."
Mizzi had evidently done her work well, which was fortunate in view of
my sleepily dazed condition. I could only stagger to my feet and shake
his hand and reply: "Oh, I'm fairly fit, I'm glad to say. How are you?"
And then I really saw him. Till then the bright glow of the sunset
through the windows and the cloudiness of disturbed sleep had made me
stare vaguely without seeing anything at all. But the movement out of
the chair gave me sight, and as soon as I saw, I was almost dazed again.
For he was _different_. Of course, after five years, he was bound to be
different, but somehow the difference was different. It wasn't that he
looked particularly ill (though he certainly didn't look well); it was
just that he had a look in him of somebody else--somebody whom I had
never seen before. Perhaps if I had met him then for the first time, I
shouldn't have been in the least alarmed; I should have thought it was
all perfectly natural--the blue eyes like sharpened swords, the
short-cropped hair with its earliest streaks of iron-grey, the pale,
lined cheeks, and the shoulders with their hint of a stoop.... Good God!
And he was hardly thirty! He looked fifty to me as I saw him that
night. He looked a genius, a poet, a madman, an eastern seer--anything
and anybody except the Terry I had known.
Only his voice and mannerisms were the same. He still spoke with an air
of reluctance. He still half-smiled. "Extraordinary," he said, "that you
should arrive to-day. Really extraordinary...."
"Why?"
"Because to-day"--and he suddenly seemed to grow excited--"I can't
explain it to you--not in detail.... But it means--almost certainly it
means--success in the work I am busy on--success after all these
years--after so many disappointments."
I congratulated him (though I was still too dazed to do anything with
much show of fervour), and then he began a slow cross-examination. How
long was I staying? Had Mizzi given me a good room? Was my business
likely to occupy all or most of the time? I answered as well as I could,
and then, with astonishing calmness, he said: "Don't you think that, in
the circumstances, I deserve a holiday?"
He went on, before amazement gave me a chance of replying: "Well, I'm
going to take one, anyhow. I'm going to take a week--at least a week.
And you can combine business with pleasure and come with me. We'll go to
Buda by one of the Danube steamers. You wanted to do that trip the last
time you were here, didn't you? ... I think the boat leaves about eight
to-morrow morning--Mizzi will tell us. And then, after our jaunt, you
can go back to London and I can come back here and get to work again."
It would have been positively comic but for the wildness of his eyes and
the hectic colour that had suddenly flooded his cheeks. There was I,
wondering how on earth to persuade him to take a holiday; and then,
before I had even time to begin, he was actually suggesting one
himself.... "Look here," I exclaimed rather bewilderedly. And then, very
uneloquently, I put it to him that a few days in Buda wasn't my idea of
a holiday for him, and that what he needed was a far longer one--months,
in fact. Why couldn't he put work on one side for a while and accompany
me back to England?
I knew from the way he shook his head that it wasn't the slightest use
attempting to persuade him. There was nothing in England for him, he
said. He didn't care if he never saw England again. Besides, he couldn't
put his work on one side for months at a time--the idea was unthinkable.
He could spare a week at most--as a concession to me and in celebration
of the success he had achieved--and then he must go back again to the
laboratories. Because he had achieved _something_ wasn't any reason for
resting on his oars; the _something_ was only a fraction of what was to
be achieved in due course.... He exclaimed, with a curious ecstasy in
his voice: "I'm wonderfully happy--just wonderfully.... There comes a
time when you turn a sort of corner in life, and see all the road behind
you that you have traveled. And to look round and see _that_, if you've
slacked, is the most miserable sight on earth--but if you _haven't_
slacked--if you've really done anything--it's _great_--it makes you
feel"--he laughed and ended up: "that you deserve a short holiday, at
any rate."
So (continuing) it must be Buda. The river-trip was very enjoyable, and
he was sure we should both have a fine time. Mizzi would tell us of a
good hotel in Buda....
We had dinner in his room and talked afterwards until late, and I don't
think I ever remember him so garrulous. Yes, garrulous. But he wouldn't,
for all that, tell me what his success that day had been. He kept
throwing out obscure hints--as if the guarding of the secret obsessed
and worried him. Once I mentioned the word "cancer," but he shrugged his
shoulders rather excitedly and told me to guess that, or anything else,
if I liked. It wasn't _he_ who insisted on secrecy, he said, but
Karelsky, and of course he was under obligation to obey Karelsky's
rule.... The whole matter seemed to me just slightly childish, for if he
couldn't tell me anything of importance, why didn't he change the
subject? But he didn't; perhaps he couldn't. He kept reverting to it at
every pause in the conversation; he kept assuring me that his work had
made him wonderfully happy; there was nothing, he said, in the whole
world so wonderful as doing what was worth doing. All that sort of talk
rather surprised me; it reminded me of a revivalist's rhapsody on the
joys of salvation. I'm not sneering--don't think that. It's just that I
couldn't have imagined him saying some of the things he did say. He
_was_ different--mightily different.