IV

And the next morning....

It was one of those cool, sunlit days when to leave London for the

country is more than a pleasure--it is an intoxication, an orgy. During

the journey from Waterloo there seemed but one rift in the whole sky of

optimism--and that one rift was Helen. She _had_ been getting on my

nerves. I had already learned to dislike her attitude towards Terry and

her husband, and now, it seemed, I was beginning to dislike her attitude

towards her daughter also.

Her daughter met me at Haslemere, cool and pink and smiling in the

sunshine. It is the loveliest picture in my mind (no, _nearly_ the

loveliest) that quiet country railway station with June and the sunshine

mingling together into a blaze of welcome. We conversed for a few

moments in that eager unimportant way that always heralds the important.

Had I minded coming? Should we hire a car to take us over the ridge to

the Valley? _She_ preferred walking--it was only three miles or so....

Very well, we would walk.

And we walked. Everything she said and everything I said has that

winsome background of sunlight and red roofs and green lanes. We were in

shadow when I said: "It's good news that I'm to hear, anyway. That

relieves my anxiety, but not my curiosity."

Then we came out of the shadow into a yellow blaze of roadway, and she

answered: "Yes, it's _good_ news. It's more than good--it's marvellous."

"He took it well, then, when you told him?"

"Oh." And we passed into the shadow again. "I didn't need to tell him.

He knew already."

"Really?"

"He'd seen one of the newspapers.... Odd, wasn't it?" She glanced at me

quizzically. "_You_ said he never read them."

"We both said so. The headlines must have caught his eye.... But tell me

what happened."

"I will, if you'll give me the chance." She paused, and for a moment we

walked on in a rather queer silence. Then suddenly the trees by the

roadside gave way, and a blaze of sunshine enfiladed us. That seemed to

give her impulse to continue. She said abruptly: "The fact is, Hilton,

he hasn't the remotest idea that Karelsky's been thieving from him at

all."

"But----"

"It's no good protesting. I know it all sounds incredible. But it's true

enough.... When I got here yesterday he was different--utterly

different; I knew something had happened the moment I saw him. I thought

he was hysterical at first.... Then I found he was absolutely wild with

delight."

"_Delight_?"

"Yes; and I mean it. He thinks--oh, it's so difficult to tell you

_what_ he thinks. But--somehow or other--he regards Karelsky's speech as

a sort of justification of all the work he's done. He says it shows he's

been working on the right lines."

"He recognizes his own work in Karelsky's announcements, then?"

"Oh, yes.... That's the queer part of it. Maybe he thinks Karelsky was

entitled to do what he did.... I don't know. He doesn't talk about that.

He's just pleased (he says) because his work's been worth doing."

"Worth stealing, anyhow."

"Yes, I know.... It's easy to be sarcastic. I tell you--it hasn't

occurred to him that he's been let down at all. On the contrary, he

thinks it's great that his seven years of hard labour should have led to

such a magnificent result."

"Now _you're_ being sarcastic."

She shrugged her shoulder. "I'm trying not to be. I'm trying to look at

it from _his_ point of view. He really is sincere. I'm certain of that,

because of the difference in him. _You'll_ notice that. And he's working

again like mad--trying, he says, to make up for a wasted year."

"But surely, when you put it to him, he could see what had happened?"

She said quietly: "I didn't put it to him. I didn't put anything to

him.... And that's just what I want to talk to you about...."

We talked. That quiet country lane, dappled in sunshine, wound upwards

to the windy cross-roads, and all the way we argued whether a man who

had been the unknowing victim of robbery should be told about it by his

friends. Perhaps it isn't fair to put it like that. She wasn't arguing

the general case; it was only of Terry that she was thinking. Briefly,

her idea was that we should leave things where they were. Since the

truth hadn't occurred to him, what was the use of trying to prove it to

him?

I answered her as well as I could. I told her that my whole mind and

soul revolted against letting Karelsky go scot-free. We ought to fight,

and Terry ought to fight--even if we didn't win. Severn thought so,

anyway, for he intended to back Terry in a law-suit....

Then she said: "Damn the law-suit. If father wants one to amuse him, he

can denounce Karelsky publicly and get himself sued for libel. There's

no need to bring Terry into it at all. He's happy--because he thinks

he's succeeded in something at last. What's the good of convincing him

that what _he_ thinks is a success is only another failure?"

Put like that, it sounded fairly unanswerable; nevertheless, I wasn't by

any means convinced. All I promised was that I wouldn't attempt the

process of disillusionment till I had discussed the matter with her at

least once again. She smiled and answered: "I'm satisfied with that. I'm

so certain you'll agree with me when once you've seen him."

And just then I did see him. He was coming up the lane to meet us.

V

He was different. It isn't easy at first to say anything but just that.

He came to me with outstretched hand and gave me a quick smile and a

grip of iron; with his superb physical fitness there seemed now another

and more potent sort of fitness. By God--June was right about him!....

All the way down the lane she and he were talking, but I didn't hear a

word: I was desperately trying to size things up for myself. He _was_

different; the cloud had passed from him; he looked as he had looked in

those old days when we had tramped for miles on those Sunday afternoons.

And at the Valley Hotel we went into the small ground-floor room where

June's tidy hand had exercised careful restraint over the litter of his

books and papers. But there were signs visible enough of what had been

happening--a typewriter, a paper-perforator, and stacks of typed

manuscript. I said, cheerfully: "Well, I see you've begun work in real

earnest."

And he looked almost embarrassed, as if he had been found out in a

guilty act. "I'm just gathering up the loose threads," he replied, and

changed the subject.

It was all wonderfully, _miraculously_ different. Under that clear

brightening sun we strolled over to the tennis-court, and there June and

he played a few games together with me as spectator. He wasn't dressed

for it; that, apparently, didn't matter.... I suppose the play was

rather good; but I am no judge of tennis, and the game, like most games,

bores me to desperation. All that interested me that morning was Terry's

extraordinary physical agility--yes, and June's too. It was hard to

realize that he was a decade older than she; and yet, when you did

realize it, there seemed something curiously right about the gap. A girl

of twenty _can_ be a woman, and very often is; but a man of twenty is

never very much of a man....

Then came lunch, and the sort of lunch that Taplow, alone of all the

hotel-keepers I know, can serve at short notice. During the meal the

talk was all of tennis and walking and the beauties of the locality and

nothing in particular--not a word about anything more important. But

afterwards June made an obvious excuse to leave me alone with him, and

then, at my suggestion, we went out into the sunlit lane. "Let's climb

to the Punch-Bowl," Terry said, and I agreed, as I would have agreed to

anything.

That afternoon! It was a time of almost sheer happiness, for I took

thought of nothing but the clear truth that somehow or other the miracle

had been accomplished. He was _keen_ again, filled with the old zest for

life and work; and he told me, embarrassedly at first, but with

eagerness after a while, the things that were in his mind.

First of all he thanked me for the way I had managed to put up with him.

That was rather an unnerving experience. Then he expressed his gratitude

to Severn, and said that he would visit him soon and thank him

personally. "To think," he exclaimed, "that all these months he's been

ill, and I haven't even visited him!"

"He'll certainly be glad to see you," I said, and rather oddly, perhaps,

I didn't think of Helen.

"I want to repay him," he went on. "And also--I must have a job. Do you

think he could help me again?"

"What sort of a job?" I asked, and he replied confidently: "There's only

one sort of a job I'll ever have, whether I starve or not. And that's

the job I've been successful in already."

It was fine to hear him talk like that; and yet, when I thought of

Karelsky, it was infuriating. _Successful_? He really thought he _had_

been. He said: "I _must_ work. I feel there's work that only I can do.

That's conceit, I daresay, but I can't help it. I feel I must get on

with the job. I'd go back to Vienna if there were nowhere else."

Before I could check myself I had exclaimed: "Indeed you won't do

_that_!" and he looked up with such sharp surprise that I knew then, as

June had known earlier, the utter impossibility of telling him the

truth. She had said that I should agree with her, but it wasn't exactly

that. I knew he must find out the truth in time; but I felt that _I_

couldn't tell him--not just then, at any rate. I even, in a sort of way,

joined in the deception; I felt that for the present he must be helped

and not hindered in his dream. I told him I was sure that Severn would

manage to find him the sort of post he wanted, and that probably it

would be a good deal nearer home than Vienna.

"I don't care where it is," he answered. "Anywhere will suit

me--provided the work's there." And he added, with particular intensity:

"Thank God I'm not married, or anything like that.... As it is, I'm

free--absolutely--to give my whole life to the sort of things I

want...."