I
SHE would keep her word....
All the way down in the train to Haslemere I was thinking of that. It
was just such another day as its tragic predecessor--dry, windless, grey
with heat that towards mid-day would become almost unbearable. If London
at nine o'clock had been a tepid bath, Haslemere at eleven was a
furnace. All around the grass and furze on the hills had caught fire,
and the scorching, pungent smoke was drifting like a white mist over the
town.
She would keep her word.... Through a night of broken perspiring sleep I
had pondered over it, dreamed about it, and still there were corners of
its vast ramifications that I hadn't explored. Was it for good or bad
that things had happened as they had happened? Severn cooped endlessly
in his chair, or Severn alive again, dazzling the world, drinking life
to the full, charming, cynical, eternally young-old, with both hands
ever ready to help the struggling youngster, and a paramour, might be,
in every capital in Europe? Helen, living under his roof, but without
love for him, without even respect, with nothing but grim and fearful
rectitude; or Helen free--free to lead Terry once again into the sea of
doubt and remorse? Which was the happier picture?
The night had been full of fears. They had attacked in legions from
midnight till dawn, undermining everything that I had held true and
axiomatic. One moment I was glad because, whatever else might happen, it
was well that she should leave Terry alone. And then, the moment after,
had come the fear that she might not leave him alone, even then; that
she would see him, many more times, as a friend; that he would grow to
love her again, without willing it, without even knowing it. Perhaps he
had even begun already; perhaps that was his reason for not accepting
the Australian offer. And what did it matter whether she kept her word
or not, if the lure of her were already over him?
Such fears had grown by daylight, and were monstrous as I climbed that
morning over the sun-scorched ridge of Hindhead. Why _hadn't_ he
accepted the Australian offer?
It was one o'clock when I reached the hotel, and I was in time for lunch
with him. I told him, without much in the way of preamble, what Hermann
had said about Severn. Naturally he was shocked and disappointed. "Poor
Helen!" were his first words of comment. Not "Poor Severn!" He added
then, as if sensing my thoughts: "It will be a much greater blow to her
than to him, I know. She was hoping so much--_too_ much--from the
operation."
And June too--_she_ had been hoping. She had promised to motor down that
afternoon, he said, but perhaps, in the altered circumstances, she
wouldn't come.
We finished our meal in rather gloomy silence, but afterwards, in the
garden, I asked him about his own future. The Australian offer mightn't
remain open for long, I hinted broadly.... Had he yet made up his mind
about it?
"Not quite," he replied. "Very soon I'll let Severn know definitely....
But a few days can't matter, surely?"
It was all (to me) very disquieting, and I was glad to talk of something
else.
June came about tea-time. She had driven from town in under the hour,
and her arms, hands, and face were almost nut-brown. She seemed
depressed about her father's condition, though she said very little
about it. She said very little, in fact, about anything; I had never
known her so taciturn. After tea, though the sun was still hot, she went
with Terry to the tennis-court, while I stayed in Taplow's garden with a
pipe, a bottle of beer, and Severn's _Disraeli_. I hadn't read far
before I knew that it was easily the best thing (in the way of
literature) that he had done, and that it would cause something of a
sensation. That pleased me a great deal; it was fine to think that he
had it in him to excel in a rôle to which his condition offered no
impediment. Disraeli, of course suited his ironic treatment; there was
much in common, I thought, between the author and his subject. Both
posed strenuously all their lives, and both are still enigmas.
Yet even Severn's delightful style (more French, by the way, than
English) could not keep sleep away from me for long. I closed my eyes at
six o'clock or thereabouts, and when I opened them it was quite dark,
though not late, because the bar was still lit up. Taplow laughed when I
went in. "You was sleeping, sir," he said, "and I didn't see no reason
to disturb you. The others are out--said they didn't want any supper.
Yours is laid ready in the coffee-room.... Will you take beer or wine,
sir?"
Beer.... The coffee-room windows were wide open, and the night air,
slightly cool, drifted in with waves of flower-perfume and moths that
fluttered noisily round the lamp.... Beer, cold beef, pickles, bread,
and a dig out of a huge Stilton.... Idyllic meal, almost (but not quite)
sufficient to dispel all the fears that ever a human mind possessed.
Afterwards I sat out in a deck-chair under the blue-black sky and smoked
a cigar. It was past eleven; Terry and June would be back soon, no
doubt. Perhaps they had driven somewhere in the car, and there had been
a breakdown. Was the car in the garage? I was too lazy to go and
look....
There was no moonlight; only the silver stars. The yellow glow from the
coffee-room window died down slowly; Taplow was carrying out the
lamp.... The wind breathing idly through the trees, and the scent of
hollyhocks, and sleep-sleep-sleep again....