He was so frank about it. And so was Helen. The house business (despite
my first uneasy fear to the contrary) proved to be absolutely genuine.
June, it was true, hadn't known about it, but Severn had, for it was he
who had actually suggested the Hindhead district. So there was nothing
intrinsically curious in her visits of exploration.
The ordinary work-a-day person with limited money and limited leisure
has no idea of the extraordinary difficulties that confront people with
unlimited quantities of both. This matter of choosing a house, for
instance. When you have just so much money to spend and so much time to
look round in, the chances are that you solve your housing problem quite
expeditiously. Far different is the troubled lot of those whose bank
balance is no curb upon the gratification of every whim. They climb to
the top of high hills and wonder how a house would look from here, or
from there, and whether it would be better to have it facing the sun or
the prevailing winds or the river tumbling in the valley below. Then
there are abstruse problems about garages and gardens and conservatories
and electric light and drains and so on. Finally, there is the question
of architecture. Is it to be English or classic--the Elizabethan gable
or the slim Ionic pediment? ... It is all a very lengthy business, as
you can well imagine.
On that second excursion to Hindhead Helen quite made up her mind that
no vacant house in the district was at all suitable, and that,
therefore, one would have to be built. And this, of course, meant
continuing the search for a site. The site was found, if I remember
rightly, on the occasion of her fourth visit, but details of aspect,
location, and so on, were not settled till the ninth visit, when an
architect and surveyor was in attendance.
It must have been an idyllic quest, during those long lovely days of May
and June. At first the two of them walked, but walking takes up a lot of
time, and besides, as June had said, Helen hated walking. So one day she
came down in the big Daimler car, sent the chauffeur back by train,
and taught Terry to drive. She couldn't drive herself, but she knew just
enough about it to teach him, and he proved such an apt pupil that he
drove her safely back to town that very night. And then the next time
that the house business demanded her presence at Hindhead he called for
her at the End House and there was no need of a chauffeur.
The whole thing was so frank and open and, above all, so sweetly
plausible that there was no chance, even if there had been any reason,
to tender warning advice. Fate, like a warm sun at noonday, was blazing
down on them from a cloudless sky. Terry couldn't even wonder if her
days in the country were unfair to Severn, for it was on his behalf that
she was taking them. Severn, it appeared, was keen about the new house,
and Helen wasn't so especially, even after Terry's strenuous efforts to
make her. And how charming, how subtly reassuring was her resistance to
those efforts!
He said to me one night in Taplow's garden: "The past is just a big
blank--we don't mention it--it doesn't even exist for us. Forgetting
isn't the right word--it's rather that we don't trouble to remember
something that isn't worth remembering. We were fools, maybe, both of
us--and we should be bigger fools if we discussed it now.... Besides,
it's so hopelessly out-of-date. All Helen wants now is to make life
happier and easier for Severn. That's why she's coming to live out
here--not because she's a country-lover herself. She isn't; she's told
me so quite candidly. Hyde Park, not Hindhead, is her ideal."
I asked him if he though that she and Severn were getting on better,
and he answered: "I'm sure of it. She doesn't always agree with him, of
course--(she didn't over that Karelsky business)--but I think she's very
happy. That American fellow's coming to operate on July 19th, and she's
building up great hopes about it...."
V
And June ...?
I hardly know for certain, because she said so little about her own
thoughts and feelings. As a novelist, perhaps I am entitled to be
omniscient, but even omniscience doesn't lead me very much further than
the obvious fact that June and Helen were separated by a deep and
growing antagonism. I shall never forget that night at the End House
when June faced her mother with that white-hot question: "Why should you
interfere?"
But after that there was never another outbreak. Maybe the antagonism
sank deeper; I had the constant impression that the more June felt the
less she would say; until the time came when feeling would make her
almost inarticulate. Anyhow, during those long midsummer days, though I
saw her frequently, Helen's name was never mentioned, and even Terry's
only rarely.
We went to Hindhead quite often, and Terry was always charmingly eager
to see us. Never again, after that first unexpected visit, did we meet
Helen there; I think June saw to that. Usually she and Terry played
tennis, or else he, with his new eagerness for motor-driving, took us
out in Taplow's prehistoric Ford. With this, as with most other
enthusiasms, he went vastly to extremes; one afternoon a short trip to
Aldershot developed into a grand tour of three counties, ending up in a
breakdown and an ignominious return by train. He was always, too,
immensely keen on showing us the site of the new house and giving us
full and technical details of Helen's most recent visit. Never, by a
word or a gesture, did June show anything but interest, but I got so
bored with climbing up the same old hill and standing in the broiling
sunlight to admire the same old view, that I formed the excellent habit
of staying in the car while he and June made their expeditions alone.
They were usually gone about half-an-hour--just time enough for a quiet
smoke and a morsel of reflection.
What sort of a game was Helen playing? I thought it over, on those and
other occasions, from every possible angle, and at the end of it all I
had no convictions, only suspicions as before. If, at any rate, she were
playing a game at all, it was a mighty clever as well as a mighty
dastardly one--the cleverest and most dastardly by far that she had ever
played.... But perhaps it wasn't a game. Perhaps they were both, with
blindly honest footsteps, stumbling over the old ground into the trap
that time had artfully concealed.... And perhaps there wasn't even a
trap. Perhaps two people who had once been lovers really _could_ meet
again after a space of years and be no more than friends.... Time, at
any rate, would show.
Time showed, in my opinion, when Severn obtained for Terry the offer of
a job and Terry asked for a few weeks to think it over. It was a junior
professorship of bacteriology in an Australian university, carrying with
it a commencing salary of three hundred a year, and to me it seemed so
good, in the circumstances, that Terry ought to have accepted it
joyously and outright. I couldn't understand what there was to think
over, and his vague replies when I talked to him about it only increased
my astonishment. He admitted it was a good post. He assured me he hadn't
the slightest objection to going abroad; on the contrary, he thought he
would prefer it, and especially a country like Australia. Quite probably
he would accept--oh, quite probably; it was just that he would prefer
not to give an absolutely definite answer just then.
The matter worried me, and I had the impression that it was worrying
June also. Something was worrying her, anyhow; there was a quite
perceptible cloud somewhere on her horizon. One afternoon I found her
lying prone in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden, and sobbing--sobbing as
only people can do who aren't good at putting their feelings into words.
I didn't let her see me, and went back quietly into the bar-room. Terry
was there, reading a letter that the postman had just brought.
As soon as he saw he me gave a triumphant cry of delight. "It's from
Helen," he said, smiling eagerly, "and she's coming down again on
Thursday about the house...."