IV

And that, by the grace of God, was what happened.

We reached the Gare du Nord at breakfast-time and drove straight to the

Crillon, where I engaged rooms for them. After hasty cups of coffee we

went on to the hospital, and there, in the corridor outside Severn's

room, I left them. The sister said that there was no change in his

condition, and it seemed to me that I had better leave them to visit him

by themselves. Helen barely nodded a farewell, but June, though her

thoughts were obviously elsewhere, was polite enough to thank me for my

escort.

And so once more to the hotel in the Place du Hâvre. Terry seemed, if

anything, more tired and listless than ever; but the doctor had said he

could travel and so, after lunch, we left by the afternoon train for

Dieppe, stayed there overnight, and went on to Newhaven by the mail-boat

the next morning. Then London at last--after his seven years of absence.

I wondered, as we pushed our way into a taxi, whether it meant anything

to him--to return after so long an exile. I don't think it did. I think

he was too tired to notice any difference between London and Paris. As

we drove into Waterloo Station we saw a weekly paper's placard

advertising in large type: "Karelsky on the Life-Force," and that--only

that--seemed to give him a spasm of recollection. He put his hands to

his eyes and said: "I wish I hadn't worked so hard out there. I seem to

have made such a hash of things--getting crocked like this and wasting

all your time.... It's ever so kind of you."

Two hours later the journey was over. It had been hot and rather

tiresome, but it ended at the quaintest and prettiest hotel I have ever

seen. It wasn't really more than a inn, and perhaps for fifty or a

hundred years it had served mugs of beer to wayfarers on the road from

Hindhead to Farnham. Then had come Severn with his "controlling

interest," and in a single summer's afternoon a sign-painter had turned

the old Brown Cow into the new Valley Hotel. Mercifully the

transformation had involved little more than that.

But the interior comfort was as astonishing, almost, as the effect

produced by Severn's letter of introduction. We were more than welcomed;

we were fêted; and the manager, Taplow by name, assured us with great

fervency that it would be a real pleasure to look after Terry and me

and, indeed, everybody and anybody else who was a friend of Severn's.

Severn, he informed us stoutly, was "the finest chap who ever breathed."

And forthwith he served us with a dinner that was at least as good, if

not so complicated, as many I have had in first-class city hotels. Even

of wines and liqueurs he could provide an amazingly wide selection.

"It's Mr. Severn that manages the wine-list, sir," he told me, as he

brought my _cordiale Médoc_. "Ah, he's a real good judge of wines--and

of most other things too, I should say. He had his ideas about this

place right from the beginning--saw it one afternoon as he was motoring

past and bought it on the spot, as you might say.... Such a pity about

his accident--and I do hope he gets well again. Well, really, sir, it

came as such a shock to me when I read about it in the papers, I do

declare I couldn't eat my dinner after it--_that_ I couldn't...."

V

There comes to me now, as I think of the Valley Hotel, a sense of

strange and wonderful tranquillity. For it is here, in Taplow's garden,

that I am writing these words; the furious, tragic interlude is over,

and all at last seems stilled in the shadow of this English inn.

Counting over the pages I have written, I find that more than half are

concerned with those days in Buda-Pesth and Vienna and Paris; it would

stagger me if I didn't remember how packed with happenings they were....

The miles I covered and the frontiers I crossed and re-crossed--the

hotels and the trains and the steamers--the days of scurry and the long

nights of wakefulness! ... But all--all are over now, quenched in the

glory of this autumn day at Hindhead, with the hollyhocks waving over me

and the far brown hills in the sunlight.

But Terry.... After all, this story is about him, not me. The trouble is

that I can only describe what he said and did; I can't pretend to see

into his mind and describe what he thought. And what he said and did

during those first weeks at the Valley Hotel is so easily told; he just

said and did nothing. I used to visit him at week-ends, and each time I

found him a little stronger-looking, a little less thin and haggard; but

in all other respects unchanged. He was cordial enough, but somehow he

seemed not to care very much about anything--whether I came or went or

even what news I brought him about Severn.

From Taplow came information as to how he spent his time. Apparently he

still slept badly, and used often to rise at dawn and take a long walk

before breakfast. Then, after that, he sometimes took another walk, but

more usually sat in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden and slept for hours

with the sun on his face. On wet days he would haunt the sitting-room

like a lost soul. "It's like as if he was tired out," said Taplow. "And

yet you wouldn't think so if you was to see him walking along the road.

Four mile an hour to Farnham and back--that's what he did the other day.

And then he wouldn't have any supper--nothing but a smoke and a drop of

whisky...."

"Good God!" I exclaimed, "do you mean to say he's begun to smoke and

drink?"

Taplow nodded. "But he don't do it like an ordinary human being. Now for

myself, I like a cigar and a glass of stout every night before bedtime.

But _he_ don't seem to have any proper habits--sometimes he'll come into

the bar before breakfast and ask for a double. _Before breakfast_, mind

you--a thing I've never done in my life. And then, after that, maybe, he

won't touch a drop for days and days...."

The next time I was with Terry alone I mentioned the matter,

congratulating him on having dropped what I had always considered to be

the rather stupid rule of strict abstinence. He answered quickly and

almost curtly: "Oh, it isn't _that_--there's no need to congratulate me.

It's just that I don't care what I do."

And that, so far as I could judge, was the solemn truth. He didn't care.

He had let things go, and there was no more strength of mind in him. Yet

all the time, nevertheless, his strength of body was returning. After

two months at the Valley Hotel he was changed, physically, almost beyond

recognition; his bronzed face and arms and the broadening out of his

shoulders gave a splendid impression of recovery until he began to talk.

For his talk--what little of it there was--betrayed the truth--that he

was tired and sad and melancholy and uninterested. The days came one

after the other, an endless dull procession; his body loved the sunlight

and the long walks over the hills, but his mind loved nothing, desired

nothing. And I, wanting all the time to help him, was powerless to light

the fire that had gone out. I remember a Sunday evening when we climbed

the long hill to the cross-roads and watched the Devil's Punch-Bowl fill

slowly with a vast lake of twilight. I told him then that I had had a

letter from June informing me that Severn was shortly to be taken home.

"She says he's wonderfully cheerful and full of plans for the future.

He's going to write a book about Disraeli."

It was good news (which was the reason I had communicated it), yet it

seemed to stir him painfully. He cried, in a sudden rush of words: "Oh,

I know--he sent me a letter the other day--said he wouldn't ever be able

to walk again.... But he doesn't care about it--or about anything....

Neither do I--it's the only way--not caring.... But _his_ not caring is

somehow like bright sunlight, whereas mine's like a heavy cloud pressing

down on me.... _Do_ you know what I mean?"

"Perhaps," I said, "you mean that not caring comes naturally to him, but

not to you?"

He wouldn't, or couldn't, think that out. "I _don't_ care, anyway," he

almost shouted. "I've done enough caring.... If I could change places

with him and take his injury, I'd do so gladly, but I can't, so what's

the good of caring? It won't help him, or me either."

"And is it helping you not to care?" I asked, but his burst of

confidence was over, and all he gave me was a doubtful shake of the

head. We walked back to the hotel with hardly another word, and later

on, as I strolled down the lane to post a letter, I caught sight of him

whisky-drinking in the bar.