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Ebook has 1052 lines and 73447 words, and 22 pages

nally, and with completely bad manners, he shouted across the table in response to some remark, not addressed to him, that he chanced to have overheard. "Dat iss one goot price," he bellowed at a couple of aged professors who were discussing confidentially the amount of money they had made out of certain text-books. But it wasn't hard to believe that he was clever, and he certainly showed signs of being well-informed about other matters besides science. "I haf heard of Hampstead before," he said once. "It iss where--iss it not?--you haf your 'Arry and your 'Arriet on the holiday of the banks." That, I thought, was not bad for a Russian-born Austrian.

My own position at table was between Helen and the greatest living authority on palaeobotany, who, being dyspeptic as well as deaf, must have had a rather miserable time. But Helen talked most of the while to her other neighbour, a middle-aged professor of physics. Once she turned to me and said, very softly: "I don't think I like Karelsky very much.... Is Terry going to go to Vienna with him?"

"I think so," I answered, and then she said, lightly: "I wonder how he'll like it--being abroad...."

All that time the temperature was rising. I mean the actual, physical temperature; somebody who, as befitted a scientist, carried a pocket thermometer about with him, informed us that the mercury stood at eighty-three. Because of the heat, coffee and liqueurs were served on the lawn beyond the French windows, and there, without the artificial breeze of electric fans, the air seemed even hotter. Collars were limp; beads of sweat ran down scientific noses and beards; even scientific tempers were not too equable. Only Severn, talking more than anybody, managed to give an impression of coolness; it reminded him, he said, of an evening he had once spent in Colombo. He told an exciting story about a Cingalese who, maddened by the heat, ran amok and killed half-a-dozen passers-by. Then Karelsky discussed with him in German-English the effect of intense heat upon the human brain.... Of the whole crowd of us there in the garden, only those two seemed thoroughly alive--Karelsky with his huge face streaming with perspiration, and Severn like a lithe sharp-eyed panther. The rest were puppets, sagging in their armchairs and moving only to sip their brandy and iced coffee. The smell of vegetation rose up like steam out of the warm earth, but even the palaeobotanist was not enthusiastic about it. And Karelsky, with an immense bellow of "It iss verr hot" suddenly tore off his collar and tie and stuffed them in his pocket. I admired him for that; it was the sort of thing that needs courage of the kind that few of us possess. Severn, of course, laughed. It sounded to me like the mocking, diabolical laughter of a madman lost amidst tropical jungle; but that, no doubt, was only the combined effect of brandy, heat, and Severn's story of the maniac Cingalese.

Then at last the first streak of lightning flooded the garden and showed us the heavy trees, reaching over us like gigantic grasping arms. And it was in that sharp and blinding glow that I caught sight of Terry and Helen; they had completely separated themselves from the rest and were walking slowly across the further end of the lawns towards the kitchen-gardens....

"Yes ... Karelsky goes to Vienna to-morrow night, and Terry will accompany him, if he can make arrangements in time."

"That's rather quick work, isn't it?"

"I'll tell you this much," he went on, without waiting for my opinion, "Karelsky's a man of business as well as a man of science. He'll get his value out of Terry, you can bet your life. But then, what Terry must do is to get his value out of Karelsky. See?"

"And on the whole you think it'll be a good thing for Terry?"

I told him I hadn't seen her for some while, and soon afterwards he had to leave me to bid the first of the good-byes.

I stammered an apology and he interrupted hurriedly: "My dear chap, you needn't say all that. It has been an interesting example of what Karelsky was talking about--the effects of heat on the human brain. Or was it something else as well as the heat?... Anyhow, Professor Foljambe could hardly walk to his taxi. Even Terry the teetotaller had to clear off in a hurry."

"Did he?--Wh--why?"

It was Helen who answered. She said, very quietly: "He said the heat made him feel ill, so he just slipped away without making any fuss."

"And without even seeing me," Severn added.

I said something about calling at his lodgings to see how he was, and Helen remarked: "Oh, you needn't be alarmed about him--it was only the heat."

I wasn't alarmed, but I wanted to see him. Ten minutes later I was on my way to the tube station, and in half-an-hour I was at the door of the house in Swinton Street. It was hotter in London than at Hampstead, and the night was full of lightning and rumblings of thunder. I remember how, in the poorer districts that I passed, whole families were sitting out on the pavement, chattering amongst themselves and waiting for the storm to begin.

THE heat of that night is a sort of canvas on which everything is painted in my memory. Terry, when he came to the door and admitted me, was rather pale, and something in his eyes made me wonder if he were sorry I had come. Probably, if I hadn't been fairly drunk, I should soon have left him; but I was in a talkative, comradely mood, and hints were lost on me. He must have been very patient and forbearing.

We made coffee, I remember, and I smoked cigarettes and chattered about the party and Severn and Karelsky and so on. Perhaps he listened, but I think that he didn't. He told me that the heat had "got at him," but that after a cold bath he felt much better. All the time we talked the thunder rolled and rumbled over the roofs, and the numerous cracks in the window-blind sparkled with vivid lightning. In the green-yellow gas-light the bed-sitting-room looked dingier and more forlorn than ever. Heaped up in one corner were books and papers that he had begun to sort out in readiness for removal, and about half-past midnight, wanting an excuse to stay longer, I said: "It's not a bit of good either of us trying to sleep on a night like this. We might just as well get to work and finish packing your things. I hear you're going to-morrow night...."

"Not--not going--to-morrow?"

And he answered: "I'm not going--at all."

I think I was dazed at first. Then I was angry that he hadn't told me before, and then, for a fraction of a second, I was selfishly glad that our friendship had been reprieved. After that bewilderment came again, and finally I was calm but immensely puzzled. I asked him if he meant that the whole arrangement with Karelsky was cancelled, and he said: "Yes--that's right."

"Because I--I can't go."

"What?"

"But you told Severn to-night that you were going."

"And you've changed your mind since?"

"Yes ... I suppose I have."

"Well, I've a right to change my mind, haven't I?"

"Of course, but ..."

"Karelsky," he sharply interrupted, "had nothing to do with it."

I guessed that would stir him. He protested with sudden indignation: "I tell you it isn't a matter of money at all. Good heavens! do you think I'd let a question of money interfere with--with anything I had thought of doing?"

He shook his head. "It's just.... Oh, I can't go--I keep on telling you I can't go.... That's all."

"It isn't me you ought to be telling. It's Severn. He doesn't know yet, does he?"

"Not yet."

"Don't you think he'll be rather disappointed?"

"Perhaps. I'm sorry about that.... But all the same, I can't help it. It's nothing to do with him--the reason, I mean.... I can't help it--I shall tell him I can't help it!"

Pleasing himself, I pointed out, was a far different thing from changing his mind at the last minute. Then he said, with a touch of sharpness: "Look here, I'm fed up with all this talk. I don't understand what you're arguing about.... What's the game? Why are you so damned keen on getting me sent off to Vienna?"

I told him that I wasn't keen at all, but rather the contrary, so far as I personally was concerned. "It's just," I said, "that I don't want you to make a hash of things."

His less passive attitude made it easier for me to come to the somewhat delicate point. I asked him straightforwardly if he were going to continue seeing Helen as much as he had been doing. The question seemed to galvanize him into something like fierceness; he retorted instantly: "Yes, just as much, and perhaps even more!"

"What is utterly impossible?"

He tried to see; I could see him trying to see; but what he saw was something different--some strange and secret vision of his own. "You don't understand," he said haltingly. "There's nothing I can say to make you understand, either. You'd far better not worry about it.... Helen--in a sort of way--needs me--here, and I'm going to stay."

"She needs you?"

"Yes."

"How does she need you?"

He flashed back: "You're forcing me to say something that sounds conceited. But it's true, all the same. She needs me because--because I'm teaching her--I'm helping her to realize--that life isn't--just money--and pleasure--and idleness!"

We went out together into the street. It was nearly two o'clock, and the very slight breeze seemed only to make the night hotter. We walked down Gray's Inn Road and across Holborn and through a labyrinth of alleys and side-streets towards Fleet Street and the river. All the time there was the lightning and the heavy-rolling thunder; the storm would break very soon, and the blackness of the sky was something that could almost be seen. Everything seemed grotesquely unreal, including what he said and what I said. Perhaps we were both possessed; perhaps the whole night was agog with demons and angels, and we, with our problem, were their pitiful sport....

"I don't know what I shall tell Severn."

"You admit he has some right to object to what's going on?"

He was a shrewder disputant than I had suspected. "Look here, Terry," I said, rather more cordially, "why don't you try to see my point? It isn't just nosiness that's making me ask you all these infernally awkward questions. You know that, or at any rate, you ought to.... It's just what I feel--I have an idea--that you may be on the verge of doing something that you'll afterwards regret. Naturally, I want to warn you--to help you, if I can. But you won't let me get near the subject--you won't even let me know what it is you're going to do."

"I'm going to stay in London," he said resolutely. "That's what I'm going to do, and I've been telling you that for the last hour."

"Which you called highbrow bunkum."

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