This is the important part. All the rest had been a mere forensic
display, and I had already had more than enough of it, dazzling though
it was. And yet, even when the whole damn truth came out, it was still
marvellously under his control. He played with it; he let us have it in
carefully arranged doses; it was the truth only if we cared to believe
it was. He began by laughing at us for our unskilful attempts to
cross-examine. Logic, he told us, was the great essential, and logic was
what we lacked. "If you had attacked the matter logically, you would
have deduced two principal reasons why a man can leave his wife. One is
that he has got tired of her, and the other is that she had got tired of
him.... Why were you in such a hurry to assume the former only?"
The colour rose sharply into Terry's face, but he said nothing, and
neither did I. Severn, after looking at us both enquiringly, resumed:
"I'm going to tell you very simply what's been happening during the last
few years. It really is very simple.... Just this. My wife and I were
quite happy together until--oh, a number of years ago. Then--very
suddenly--she changed--and we haven't been at all happy since. That's
all it amounts to. Didn't I say it was simple?"
Of course it wasn't simple at all, and he knew that as well as we did.
And that's why I won't attempt to set down the story in Severn's own
words. Like most men of marked ability, he had mannerisms--lightning
gestures of hand and finger, sharp changes of tone, tricks of speech,
and so on--all, no doubt, accentuated and standardized by his work at
the Bar. Normally, in private conversation, he suppressed them, but now,
as he told us about himself and Helen, they simply broke out all over
the place. It was as if he were savagely and maliciously parodying
himself; he pleaded his own case with an extravagant eloquence that was
perfectly absurd before an audience of two. Perhaps his most irritating
and persistent trick was the rhetorical question; he would say: "Now why
do you think Helen changed?" and then, when neither of us answered,
continue, as he might have done to a jury: "Well, why _do_ women change?
Shall we say _Cherchez l'homme_? ... I agree, but suppose you can't find
any man--what then?" ... And so on, for well over half-an-hour.
And the upshot of it all was this.
First: Helen no longer loved him. He didn't know why she didn't; but
then, neither had he, in former days, known why she did. Perhaps she had
just grown tired.... He wasn't blaming her, of course; it wasn't her
fault if she had no scrap of affection left for him. Very possibly it
was his fault, although she had never said so.... Where her affection
had gone to, he couldn't say--but he thought it hadn't gone to any other
man. The important thing to him was that _he_ no longer possessed it. He
had even, he said begun to feel that she actively disliked him, and that
something essential and unalterable in him got on her nerves.... Anyhow,
what was he to do? Obviously, as soon as he began to realize that she
might be happier with her freedom, he must find some way of giving it
her. And in law, of course, (as he of all people knew well enough) there
was only one way--the way that he had taken. "It isn't," he explained,
"that I'm particularly keen on her getting a divorce. It's just that I
want her to feel _free_. When I get home, I shall be able to say: Look
here, if you don't want me, or can't stand me, or even would rather be
without me, here's your grounds for divorce all neatly arranged and
documented, so that you can file your petition at once.... Incidentally,
there'll be no money difficulties--I've settled enough on her to keep
her comfortable, whatever she does."
"And you give it as your honest opinion," I said, "that she'll really be
happier divorced from you?"
"That's just what I don't know," he answered. "But I rather think she
will, and in any case, it's giving her a chance, isn't it? ... Besides,
there's my own side of the question. I should hate you to feel that I'm
a mere bundle of altruistic motives. I'm not.... As I used to impress on
you years ago, my code of morals is the very simple one of doing more or
less what I like. And one of the things I _don't_ like is being married
to a woman who thinks I'm a scoundrel for being such a great big ugly
success while so many other men are such divinely beautiful failures....
Understand?"
I nodded, but he said that he was sure I _didn't_ understand. I didn't
wish to argue the matter, in case Terry should recognize himself as one
of the divinely beautiful failures, so I said, rather curtly: "What I
can't understand is why you had to come out all the way here for--for
the purpose."
He laughed. "The Conference," he answered. "Didn't I mention it at
breakfast? Three weeks in Bukarest, wearing a morning-coat and topper
with the temperature at ninety in the shade, discussing places you've
never heard of with men whose names you can't pronounce; every damned
speech repeated five times, first in French, then in Serbian, then in
Greek, then in Bulgarian, and then in Turkish.... God!--it's enough to
drive a man to anything.... But, apart from that, I prefer foreigners.
When a man is compelled to take medicine, why should he not choose the
nicest medicine there is? And where in England could you meet so
charming a lady as Madame--in her profession?"
"I'm afraid I don't know any English women in her profession."
He laughed again. "I don't suppose you do," he said, "especially as I
haven't been altogether truthful with you about Madame. She doesn't
dance--except very badly in a ball-room. Her profession is far better
suited to her temperament and attainments.... Understand?"