Half-an-hour later we were breakfasting and discussing, not my decision,
but his. That's the way things usually happened. To waiters and cabmen
and hotel-porters he always gave a wonderful display of submission to my
wishes, but the larger affairs of life he decided for himself. Nor was
there ever much hope of persuading him when once he had made up his
mind. He told me once that I argued too cleverly; and that he always
mistrusted cleverness in argument.
But that breakfast discussion didn't give me even the chance of being
clever. He began by telling me, with a terrible sort of earnestness,
that he had been thinking all night about Severn. (In the same tone and
with the same look might a Methodist preacher have said that he had been
wrestling all night with God.) "And--it seems to me--that to say--to be
content to say--that we can do _nothing_--is cowardly. We _must_ do
_something_--we must _help_--if we can."
"Certainly, if we _can_. But how can _we_?"
That also he had pondered over. "First of all," he said, with a slow
earnestness that went over me like a steam-roller, "we must have a talk
with Severn."
"Good God!" I muttered under my breath. For it was diabolical, almost,
the way he had planned everything during that night of sleeplessness.
Six hours before, just after his interview with the hotel-clerk, he had
been wild and excited; but now he was calm--deadly calm. And I don't
know which condition made him look more ill. It was, anyhow, a sombre
and unnerving calmness, and it somehow took the courage out of me. I
found that I couldn't think clearly in the face of it, much less talk
clearly; my mind was overburdened by the knowledge that he was ill. All
I could say, when I had to say something, was that Severn's private
affairs, however scandalous, were none of our business, and that we had
better keep out of them. After all, what could we do? Talking to him
wouldn't be much use. "As soon as he cares to tell us to mind our own
business, we shall have to slink off. Don't you see?"
"I don't think _I_ should slink off," he said, quietly, "if he told me
to mind my own business."
"Then what would you do? What _could_ you do, anyway?"
And he answered, between almost closed lips: "I know what I--what
we--are _going_ to do. We're going to make him go back to Helen."
It was the first time her name had been mentioned, and it seemed to give
us both a shock to hear it, as if, until then, she had been outside the
question--unrealised and unthought-of. Somehow, also, it took away an
atom of his calmness, and made me better able to oppose him. For,
frankly, the thought of buttonholing Severn and commanding him to return
to his wife appalled me; I suppose I wasn't ever meant to be either a
judge or a missionary. I couldn't do it. I said: "It's no good,
Terry--there are some things I won't agree to, and that's one of them.
It isn't that I don't sympathize with what you feel--it's just that it
seems to me so--so absurd to suppose that we can achieve anything....
Damn it all, if you or I were cad enough to run off with some woman, do
you think we'd welcome a lecture from an outsider about it?"