_Later._
I've been to bed, but I can't sleep, and I might as well continue this
as lie awake. The clock in Lincoln's Inn has just chimed two, and the
street-cleaners in Holborn are noisily busy. In a little while the
Covent Garden traffic will begin; there is never a silent minute from
midnight to dawn in this part of London. Not that it troubles me in the
least; it is happiness--excitement if you like--that is keeping me awake
to-night.
So far as I can see, I have come now to the end of this record. The
future seems pretty well decided; Severn will write his books on Robert
Walpole and Pontius Pilate and become as famous in literature as in
everything else that he has ever touched; Terry will marry June and live
happily ever after. It's an absurd phrase, in nine contexts out of ten,
but I really do think it's likely to be true of those two. They're such
clear-hearted people; marriage will be so tremendously simple to them.
Terry will never think of any woman but June, and June will never think
of any man but Terry. They'll live in a bungalow in some blazing
Australian suburb, and probably they'll have lots of children--far more
than Terry could possibly afford on his own income. If he gets the
chance, and I daresay he will, he'll do valuable but not exactly
epoch-making work as a bacteriologist. A well-known scientist told me
the other day that in his opinion the importance of the Karelsky
discoveries had been greatly over-rated. "They're valuable," he said,
"but they're only a beginning, and the world's been treating them as if
they were the end...."
Perhaps Terry will carry them further on from that beginning. But
whatever he does, I'm quite certain that his name will never echo across
the world. I shall never earn stray guineas by writing 'The Great Man As
I Knew Him' articles in the gossipy press.
Two are still left whose future is beyond prophecy. There's Helen....
What _will_ happen to her? When she hears the news about June and Terry,
will she still cling to that eager, scornful belief in her own power
over him? Will she keep her word for ever--will she stay with Severn as
in duty bound, not to him, but to Terry? Is it even possible that in
time there may grow in her some scrap of affection for the author of the
best short book on Disraeli that has ever been written? Frankly, I like
Severn, and I find it tremendously hard to understand how anybody else
can help liking him. Yet Helen doesn't.... Perhaps, after all, they are
incompatibles whom nothing, neither time nor calamity, can bring
together.
And then ... Mizzi.... Strange, perhaps, that I should be thinking of
her now, should see her so clearly in my mind. She writes to me from
time to time, and always with some mention of Terry; her last letter
came two months ago. The hotel, I gather, proceeds from strength to
strength, and I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear that, having
exhausted all the European languages, she's now tackling Aramaic or
Siamese.... One thing I've quite decided; I shall go to Vienna this year
and take this manuscript for her to read.
A quarter past by the clock in Lincoln's Inn.... Shall I write to her
now and book my room? If Terry has to begin the Australian job in the
autumn he'll probably be leaving England very soon, and June, I've an
idea, will want to go with him. Severn and Helen are going for a
sea-cruise during August, so I think, if I'm not to be left entirely
alone, I'd better choose that month for Vienna. It will be very hot, but
I shan't mind. I want to go to the Semmering, and up the Danube to Melk,
and perhaps, in a happier mood, to Buda-Pesth again....
I'm tired now.... I'll finish the letter in the morning, and while I'm
asleep it shall stay there on my desk with no more than the date on it
and the words:
"DEAR MIZZI,--..."