I
I WAS out of town a good deal during that early autumn, and I saw very
little of anyone. That Severn was getting more resigned to his unhappy
condition I gathered from the brilliantly vivacious and epigrammatic
letters he sent me from time to time. He was hard at work on the
Disraeli book, which he hoped to finish soon after Christmas. "It will
be something rather new in biographies," he wrote. "I shall show, if I
can, that all genius has in it a touch of the flamboyant, the charlatan,
if you like; and that the contrasting scrupulousness of, say, a man like
Gladstone, is merely the absence of genius. No genius, for instance, can
be entirely honest, or entirely truthful, or entirely faithful in
marriage, or entirely anything--entireties being the stock-in-trade of
the second-rate. That is why it is so astonishing to find a genius in
politics, where, as everybody knows, mud is thicker than water, and a
good deal easier to sling...."
Some of the letters are well worth publishing, and perhaps, some day,
this may happen. The thing I remember best in them is a phrase about
Terry. "He hasn't," Severn wrote, "quite got the knack of living in an
imperfect world." That, I think, was the best summing-up I ever heard.
All this time Terry was still living at Hindhead, doing nothing and
caring for nothing. And yet, looking back on it now, I have an idea that
the sight of all his old books and papers stirred him to some sort of
emotion, even though he showed none. They arrived from Vienna one
roaring October afternoon of high wind and creaking trees--a Saturday,
and the second unforgettable day of that autumn. I had motor-cycled from
town in the morning, barely fighting through in the teeth of the gale,
and after lunch Terry climbed with me to the lip of the Punch-Bowl. The
wind there was terrific; the whole landscape of hill and valley seemed
foundering like a ship in a wild storm. After a few shivering moments we
walked briskly back to the hotel, and there, waiting for us, was Mizzi's
parcel. I unpacked it for him in his room, while he sat on the bed,
smoking and watching me with a curious detached interest. He made no
comment except, when I had finished, an almost embarrassed: "It's
awfully good of you to do all this.... The things aren't much use, but I
suppose they may as well stay here as anywhere else."
We had tea, and afterwards I wrote a few letters while Terry went out,
as he said, for another blow on the hill. It must have been about six
o'clock when I finished writing, for I remember hurrying out into the
lane to catch the last post of the day. I had walked a few hundred yards
with eyes almost closed by the piercing wind, when I heard the sharp
hoot of an approaching car; I should have been run down if the driver
hadn't swerved smartly to avoid me. The car just grazed a gatepost and
then stopped; I stopped also, composing in my mind the most handsome and
abject apologies. The first thing I noticed (rather to my relief) was
that the driver was a young woman; and the next thing I noticed was that
the young woman was June. She climbed out of the car and viewed
critically the long scratch on the door-panelling. Then she turned to
me. "I suppose you know that you've had a narrow escape?" she said,
before recognizing me. She added, a second later: "Oh, it's you, is it?
Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"I not only ought but am," I replied, and she said: "That's right.... I
suppose you're staying at the hotel?"
"Yes."
"I'm just going there. There's something the matter with the car--apart
from the scratch on the door, which is your fault--and Taplow's a bit of
a car expert.... Where are _you_ going?"
"Only to post a few letters."
"Up to the cross-roads? ... Jump in, and I'll drive you up; then
afterwards we'll go back to the hotel together. I can turn the car at
the next corner."
"Sure it won't be too much trouble?"
"I shouldn't offer, if it were. I've just come over from
Petersfield--had quite an exciting drive. Falling tree missed me by
inches near Liphook, and I nearly ran over another man just before I met
you.... But there was some excuse for him--he was drunk."
I got in the car and in a couple of minutes we were speeding up the hill
at thirty miles an hour. We chatted desultorily during the short run,
but all I remember is that when we were nearing the summit she suddenly
cried out: "Ah, there he is--the man I nearly ran into.... Why doesn't
somebody take him home, I wonder?" And she pointed ahead to a man who
was staggering drunkenly along the middle of the road towards us.
I shouted: "Good God, it's Terry!"--and nearly, in my astonishment,
jumped out of the car. She braked sharply to a standstill, and nothing,
I think, was ever so typical of her as the calm way in which she did
everything and said everything then. "Terry?" she echoed, and then
added: "Oh, yes, I know about him. We'd better tell him to get in,
hadn't we?"
She left the car and came with me, and in the end it was she herself who
made the arrangements. She didn't wait for me to introduce her; as soon
as we were barely within speaking distance she said: "You're Terry,
aren't you? I remember you years ago--you used to do chemistry
experiments in our kitchen at Hampstead.... But I don't suppose you know
who I am."
He wasn't too drunk to answer; the drink had, in fact, rid him of his
usual shyness at meeting a stranger. "I know who you are," he said, with
a sort of truculent facetiousness. "You're the young lady who nearly ran
me down just now, aren't you?"
"Serve you right," she retorted brusquely, "if you _will_ get drunk and
go rolling along the roads.... Get in the car now, and I'll take you
where you belong. Otherwise somebody else'll drive along and knock you
down."
He obeyed without another word, and I sat with him in the rear seat
while June drove us up to the post-box and then back to the hotel. She
was the embodied spirit of calmness; it struck me then that she had all
her father's coolness without any of his cynicism. And, incidentally,
she was the only woman-driver of a car who ever made me feel perfectly
safe in her charge.
At the hotel she paid little attention to Terry and me, but sought
eagerly for Taplow; and the chief impression I have is of the two of
them stooping to examine the car's interior mechanism and exchanging
technicalities. The trouble, whatever it was, did not take long to
rectify, for at seven o'clock I heard her asking Mrs. Taplow to make her
some sandwiches for the journey. She wanted to be in Hampstead by nine,
she said, and would have no time for dinner.
Before leaving she came hurriedly into the sitting-room where I was
reading and Terry was dozing in a chair. "Good-bye," she said to me,
taking off her furred gauntlet glove to shake hands. Then she went over
to Terry and touched him sharply on the arm. "Wake up," she cried, "and
thank me for saving your life!"
He opened his eyes and stared stupidly at her; I daresay he was as
surprised as he had ever been. "Do you play tennis?" she asked, before
he had time to speak.
He stammered that he didn't, and she said: "Well, you ought to--it's
better than boozing, anyway ... Good-bye--I'm off now."
She waved her hand and hurried out, but even her hurry had in it some
curious quality of calmness.
And that, grotesque as it may be, is a plain account of their first
meeting since she was a child. Taplow told me afterwards that Terry had
had no more drink than on many previous occasions--certainly not enough
to make an ordinary man stagger along a road. But perhaps he had
been--just then, at any rate--an extraordinary man. Perhaps, as I
suggested awhile back, the receipt of Mizzi's package _had_ stirred him,
and at a time when any sort of emotion was rather more than he could
bear.
He made very little comment when June had gone. In no way did her visit
seem to affect him; he just lived on as usual, letting the days slip
idly by, with no care for what he did with them or for what they did
with him. Anything, almost, would have been a welcome change from the
monotony of his indifference; I would rather have had him swear
vengeance on Karelsky, or even steep himself in despair because June had
seen him drunk. But he had no energy for either; and all the while the
bill for Severn to pay was piling up to quite a formidable sum.
Chiefly, of course, I was concerned for what Severn might think; the
money itself was of small consequence. I should have tackled Terry
pretty frankly, had he not been overwhelmed by a belated realization of
the facts. News of that reached me from June, whom I chanced to meet one
frosty morning in Piccadilly. She said instantly: "Come for a walk--I
want to tell you something." We strolled into Green Park, and she told
me that she had just met Terry.
"In Charing Cross Road," she said. "He was trying to sell some books,
and I watched him go in and out of half-a-dozen shops without any luck.
Then I went up and spoke to him. At first he wouldn't tell me what he
was doing, but I asked him to tea and wriggled it out of him."
"Well?"
"It was a good job I _did_ ask him to tea. Otherwise he'd have gone
without--for he hadn't a penny on him--nothing but the return ticket to
Haslemere.... He'd thought he'd get quite a pile of money for the books,
but the dealers wouldn't even make an offer--no market for scientific
treatises in German, they said.... He couldn't understand it."
"But why did he want to sell the books at all?"
"That's what I asked him.... It seems he saw the bill that Taplow was
making up for father to pay. He hadn't had any idea he was costing so
much. He said he felt it couldn't go on any longer--that he must find
work of some sort and put an end to it."
"But surely he would need his books for his work?"
"No.... He wasn't thinking of _that_ kind of work. He was prepared for
anything--to take a job in the colonies--to go to sea--_anything_...."
"That would be no use."
"I know. I told him he had far better stay at the hotel till he was well
enough to carry on with his research work."
"And what did he say to that?"
"Nothing. You can't get him even to _think_ of his work--not yet.... But
I made a beginning. I said I would go down to Hindhead next Sunday and
teach him tennis...."