_Drop the matter_! And June was speechless. She went towards him as if
she would have hugged him, but remembering his fragility in time, kissed
him warmly on the lips. It seemed to please him; he patted her head and
told her that he quite realized her little game of throwing me into the
fray at the last minute, as Napoleon threw in his guards at Waterloo.
And all she could reply then was: "You dear--_dear_--to have given up
your beautiful trial-scene--for I know--I understand--how much you were
looking forward to it."
He said, patting her head again: "Wait till that Chicago fellow has
finished with me. Then I'll have all the trial-scenes I want."
She couldn't reply to that at all; I could see her eyes filling and
brimming over with tears. I intervened then myself, telling him how glad
and grateful I was, and how much I hoped that the future would bring
recovery to him. And when I had finished he said, quite in his old
half-mocking tone again: "That's very nice of you. Now let's be as
sentimental as we can about it--and, to begin with, let us all cry."
Perhaps we should have cried but for his saying that. As it was we
laughed, June, he and I; and then suddenly I noticed Helen. She wasn't
laughing and she wasn't crying either; she was just looking dreadfully
in front of her, with cheeks pale and lips tightened; and when she
caught my eye she said, quickly and sharply: "So you're _not_ going to
tell Terry?"
We looked at her, all of us; the centre of gravity had suddenly shifted.
"That's what we've decided," I said.
"You're satisfied for him to get what happiness he can out of
ignorance?"
"Well--if you put it that way--yes."
She bit her lips till they were almost white. Then, in the midst of the
tense, expectant silence, she retorted: "I'm _not_ satisfied, and I
never will be. And if you aren't going to tell him the truth, then I
am...."
It was a far bigger surprise than Severn's capitulation; it staggered us
all, and even Severn was less ready for it than for most things. And
before we could collect our scattered wits, she was going on--ranting,
if you like--telling us what she thought of us, of Terry, of everything
else, and of the world in general. She had hardly spoken all the
evening, and it was as if the words had been heaping themselves up
behind her barrier of silence, and that now the barrier had given way.
I wish I could have taken down in shorthand everything she said, for it
was an impressive tirade. It held us spellbound while it lasted, but the
spell is over now, and all that memory yields is a few scraps and
sentences.
"Ever since you knew him," I can remember her saying, "you've
been planning things out for him and settling things that he
ought to have settled for himself, and the result has been just
disaster--disaster--over and over again.... And now you're planning that
he shan't discover the mistakes you've made.... But he _shall_ discover
them, and the sooner the better. Let him know the truth--let's all of us
know the truth--let's know the truth about his life and your life and my
life....
"You're afraid it will make him ill? Then let him be ill--better that he
should be ill of the truth than smiling in your fool's paradise. Let him
know everything. Even if Karelsky's fooled him, _you_ shan't!"
June was white-hot. "We don't want to fool him, mother. We want to help
him. Why should _you_ interfere?"
"_Interfere_?" Her bitter laugh was more than words. "_Interfere_?
That's a strange word to use about me and Terry."
"Is it? I don't see why it is. If you deliberately tell him things that
you needn't tell him, that's interference, isn't it?"
"All right, then. I'm going to interfere."
"You're _really_ going to tell him?"
"Rather."
"When?"
"As soon as ever I can. He's staying at the hotel at Hindhead, isn't
he?"
"You'd dare to go there and tell him?"
"It doesn't strike me as particularly daring."
"Oh, but ... mother.... You _shan't_ go--you've no right to--you----"
"Haven't I? How do you know what I've a right to do? Perhaps I've a
right to do what _you're_ doing, anyway. _You_ visit him, don't you? _You_
talk to him, and tell him what you want to tell him, don't you?"
The two were facing each other dangerously--June flushed and angry, and
Helen with an ashen-pale mask of curious, half-contemptuous calmness.
And then, in the midst of the almost ugly tension, Severn thought fit to
fling his own delicate and carefully-prepared bombshell.
"You won't need to go anywhere to see him," he announced, looking at
Helen. "He'll be here any minute...."
"_Here_?"
I think we all said that. He watched our bewilderment, enjoying it as a
conjuror enjoys the mystification of his audience. But we had had
already such a surfeit of surprises that perhaps we showed less than
might have been expected. He told us then that Terry had written to him,
suggesting a visit, and that he (Severn) had invited him for that night
without any anticipation of "this delicious little family contretemps."
Helen remained calm, saying merely: "I don't care. I can tell him here
to-night as well as at any other time and place. It makes no difference
to me."
And then the butler entered and spoke the name that seemed so strange to
us because we never used it ourselves.
It was like a play--one of those rather obvious, melodramatic plays in
which, as soon as a character announces that he is expecting somebody to
call, there is always a deafening ring of the doorbell.... It was,
anyhow, far too "pat" to have been an entire coincidence; and my theory
is that Severn, who had exceptionally sharp ears, must have heard or
seen Terry approaching along the drive....
There is a sense in which the long-deferred answer to any question is
always something of an anticlimax. Often, for example, during the long
interval of years, I had thought: Will he ever see her again, and if so,
how and when and where?
And here, after a few moments, he was, standing before her with his
bronzed face and his keen eyes and his shy, boyish smile. He didn't
speak; she didn't speak; it was their first meeting since that
storm-riven night eight years before.
Then he went across to Severn. To him more than to her he seemed to show
emotion; he said, with almost a child's wistfulness: "Severn.... How
_are_ you?"
And Severn replied: "Much better for seeing you. Why the devil haven't
you come here before?"
"I couldn't," he answered simply, and then he looked round the room and
completed his salutations. To me he gave a cordial nod, and to June a
curt quick smile which she returned instantly. He was one of us again.
I remember feeling an almost overmastering desire to make some trifling
remark--something like--"Extraordinary how the years have flown, isn't
it?"--anything, however stupid, that would in some way acknowledge the
central fact of that eight years' interval. I don't know whether anybody
else felt like that--quite probably not. Except for Severn, they all
seemed stricken with a desire to say nothing at all.
Strange--that he should have met her again in that room, and with all of
us looking on.... I had pictured so many places--some flower-decked
railway-station in the Tirol, a Viennese boulevard at nighttime, some
winding, hedge-bordered English lane, even Charing Cross Station--but
never that room at the End House, with the port on the table and the
twilight creeping over the cold lawns outside. It was disappointing,
almost; it seemed to be making such poor use of a romantic
opportunity....
The situation, however, was interesting, the more so as none of us knew
what would happen.
For quite ten minutes nothing happened at all, and we just sat round the
table making remarks as conventional and featureless as if the occasion
had been the state visit of a grand-duke. Terry sat at the table with
us, and though he declined a glass of port, he pulled a pipe out of his
pocket and asked if he might smoke. We chaffed him a little about
letting go his good resolutions, and he answered, rather cryptically:
"You have to choose what you'll let go and what you'll hold on to."
For a time I allowed myself the faint hope that Helen, after all,
mightn't carry out her threat, but her attitude soon dispelled it. "So
you're working again?" she remarked, while he was filling his pipe. (And
those were her first words to him.)
He replied that he was. He also gave a perfectly natural explanation of
everything that had happened to him. "I worked a bit too hard in
Vienna," he said, "and the result was a sort of break-down. But I think
I've got over it now--at the price of a year's slacking." And he smiled.
She went on, with no more beating about the bush: "What do you think of
Karelsky's latest discoveries?"
He looked up sharply, but without perturbation. "They're interesting,"
he said, puffing contemplatively at his pipe.
And we, as spectators, looked on. June and I lacked the power to
intervene, and Severn, I think, was too fascinated by the spectacle to
wish to do so. She continued her cross-examination.
"Karelsky's been working rather on your lines, hasn't he?"
"We've been investigating the same subject."
"Do your conclusions tally with his?"
"Some of them."
Pause.... Then: "Karelsky seems to have got the most tremendous
publicity out of it."
"Yes. It's the sort of thing he likes."
"And you don't, I'm sure."
"I should hate it."
"It's a good job, then, that he never mentioned you in any of his
speeches.... I suppose you helped him?"
"Oh, yes, I was paid to help him."
She wasn't getting on as easily as she had expected; I could see that. I
could see the calmness of her eyes turning gradually to exasperation,
especially when June put in, rather coldly: "I'm sure Terry doesn't want
to answer all these questions, mother."
But it was his casual, "Oh, I don't mind in the least," that stung Helen
to absolute desperation. "You don't mind, eh?" she cried fiercely. "You
don't mind anything, do you? ... You're a fool, Terry--and I'm going to
let the truth into you even if nobody else here has the courage to do
it.... These discoveries Karelsky has made are yours, if you only had
sense enough to realize it--they're _yours_, and he's stolen them off
you, knowing what a little fool you are!"
He put down his pipe and stared at her, and I think we were all slightly
relieved that he didn't go off immediately into acute hysterics. He just
said--almost quizzically: "But really--to tell me _this_! What grounds
can you possibly have for saying such things?"
"You needn't ask me," she retorted. "Ask June--she's had access to all
your papers. It was her discovery in the beginning."
He turned to June, wordless; and June smiled at him. "Don't get alarmed,
Terry," she said quietly. "It's true what mother says, though I wouldn't
have bothered you about it if I'd been her. I _do_ think Karelsky's
stolen your work. I don't see how anybody could help thinking so who'd
gone through it all in detail as I have.... There's not much doubt about
it, Terry--you've been done ... but never mind--it doesn't really
matter...."
And then, to our complete astonishment, he replied, taking up his pipe
again: "I daresay you're right. But, as you say, it doesn't really
matter, does it?"