James Hilton

“ Do you think he could help me again?"
"What sort of a job?" I asked, and he replied confidently: "There's only one sort of a job I'll ever have, whether I starve or not. And that's the job I've been successful in already."
It was fine to hear him talk like that; and yet, when I thought of Karelsky, it was infuriating. Successful? He really thought he had been. He said: "I must work. I feel there's work that only I can do. That's conceit, I daresay, but I can't help it. I feel I must get on with the job. I'd go back to Vienna if there were nowhere else." ”

“ Of course I went. As I packed a small hand-bag I thought of that other telegram that had summoned me, less than a year before, to Vienna. Crewe, at any rate, was not so far, and there was a suitable express that left Euston at midnight. But I hadn't the faintest idea why June could want me, and why she had been to Glasgow, and why she was coming back to Crewe, and why, above all, she had thought the outrageous hour of four a.m. most convenient for the appointment.
Nor is Crewe Station an altogether delightful rendezvous before dawn on an April morning. ”

“ Not Helen—but June.... That wanted some realizing.... And with the realization, and the serenity of it, came just a faint flavour of sadness too. I think there is always a sadness in feeling that time does count, and that grandes passions can fade away.
Mother and daughter.... What sort of a battle had they been waging, silently, perhaps unconsciously, during the months that had passed? Helen, I know, had been scrupulously platonic, and maybe, after all, it was a just irony that he should come to desire no more than her friendship. But June? ”

“ He said, smiling: "You're a journalist and everything seems sensational to you. But there's nothing sensational in the work I'm doing.... You and Severn seem bent on making a howling success of me, but I don't want it. I just want to be left alone—to do my own work." He added, in a tone that robbed his words of any sting: "Please don't think I mean anything unkind."
But his summing-up of Severn's intention had been true enough. Severn always wanted to make a howling success of everybody. ”

“ I'm only choosing the easiest path for myself. I should hate Karelsky's life of fame and sensation, just as he'd hate my life of hard work and insignificance.... We're just made differently, that's all, and we can't help ourselves."
"All the same," I said, "you ought to have what you're entitled to, if only to stop others from having more than they're entitled to. You've done the work; you ought to get the credit." ”

“ 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.... ”

“ I was desperately trying to size things up for myself. He was different; the cloud had passed from him; he looked as he had looked in those old days when we had tramped for miles on those Sunday afternoons.
And at the Valley Hotel we went into the small ground-floor room where June's tidy hand had exercised careful restraint over the litter of his books and papers. But there were signs visible enough of what had been happening—a typewriter, a paper-perforator, and stacks of typed manuscript. I said, cheerfully: "Well, I see you've begun work in real earnest." ”

“ I went on, taking advantage of her silence: "Look here, I'll tell you frankly what I think about Geoffrey. He irritates me by his calmness just as much as he irritates you, but I try to look behind it all, and there I see a stoicism that bears his own misfortune just as bravely as he expects other people to bear theirs."
"That's very nicely put."
"It's true. Do you suppose the man's happy, chained to a chair for the rest of his life? Can't you forgive him his delight at the prospect of once again playing his little piece under the limelight? ”

“ I see now, as I think of it, that gold day of June, with the rippling Danube under the breeze, and the sunshine glinting on the towers and windows of Bratislava. I see the mists lifting towards midday, and the ebb of humanity from the scorching decks to the Speisesaal, where the wide-open windows are only an arm's length over the water. Everywhere, like a seething tropical incense, is the tang of paprika; paprika flavouring the soup: paprika stuffed with rice as an entrée; a slice of paprika with the veal and a wedge with dessert; rust-brown paprika pepper in all the cruets ”

“ You'll have to work like hell while you're at it, and in your spare time, if you have any, you must manage to write a novel—preferably one that will establish your reputation and bring you in not more than a hundred pounds altogether. After that you must take a flat in either Bloomsbury or Chelsea and decide whether you're going to plod along in Fleet Street, earning a middling salary and work jolly hard for it, or take to the wilder life of the professional fiction-writer, in which you may earn nothing at all or else fabulous sums.... ”

“ What might not such a man as Severn do with such a man as Terry? ... The minutes drew towards the half-hour, and I think I should have boldly walked into the lounge when the clock struck, had not Terry, a minute earlier, come out to me—alone. His face was paler than ever, and his eyes—his eyes were just what I didn't like to see. It angered me to think of the strain that all this incessant listening and thinking and arguing was putting on him; it gave me a furious, unreasoning anger with Severn and Helen and Terry himself and the world in general. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Terry's attitude astonished me, yet, in a way, it thrilled me also; it had, if the metaphor isn't too fanciful, the austere beauty of a Greek statue. What I mean is that he was thinking of nothing—nothing at all—except his work. The idea of having anything to do with the great Karelsky had stirred in him something that had always existed but had rarely permitted itself to be seen—a sort of frozen, white-hot passion for laboratory-research. It glowed in his eyes and trembled in his voice; it burned as fiercely as the art of any artist. ”

“ But of course she was no ordinary woman. She was astoundingly pretty, and I suppose that a good many of her most fervent admirers would spend hours in describing her copper-gold hair and her brown eyes with their curious, slanting glint of green; but for me there was always something beyond that. There was a way she sometimes looked, especially if you saw her face in profile against the sky or window—a way that was beyond prettiness. I'm not certain it wasn't beyond even beauty. It challenged, and yet, by some marvellous paradox, it was serene as well.
We had tea. ”

“ June and you thought it would do him harm to be told how he'd been swindled, and I thought it would do him good—and we were all wrong, because it just hadn't any effect on him at all! He didn't care—he was beyond things like money or fame.... There's something in him—something that makes him the sort of man he is—something that draws me to him more than love. It is more than love.... I could have gone without him easily but for seeing that in him.... Hilton, can't you realize? He's straight and he's true, and I've been living my life up to now with a man who laughs at straightness and truth. ”

“ After that wild scene in mid-Channel, the rest of the journey to Paris lingers in my mind as a quiet and cool aftermath. The train at Calais was packed as only a French boat-train can be packed; I managed to secure seats in the first-class coach for Helen and June, but the latter elected to surrender hers to a lady who had been very ill during the crossing. So we sat on our suit-cases in the corridor, June and I; and there wasn't much room, even there, for the holiday season was at its height, and all the well-known advertised tours to Paris were in full swing. ”

“ Terry had his alternate moods of optimism and despondency, but I was uniformly oppressed with a sort of Wehmut or Weltschmerz or whatever untranslatable thing the Germans call it. The cold dawn came as we ran into Salzburg, and by noon the sun was blazing on the red-roofed chalets above Innsbrück. All the time I was thinking far more of the past than of the future; the parting with Mizzi seemed to me far more pitiable than anything that had or could have happened to Severn. I didn't talk to Terry about it, for he, who never understood a woman at all, had certainly never understood Mizzi. ”

“ We walked from Chingford to Loughton, had lunch, walked on to Epping, had tea, and then walked on to Waltham—total, fourteen miles. But I enjoyed it more than I had expected, for the day was spring-like, full of blue sky and white clouds and the smell of earth. Most of the way as far as Epping I talked of my Lancashire adventures, and it was not until after tea that he spoke more than a few consecutive sentences. ”

“ June and her father were in some strange and mystic harmony—I had never been so certain of it as then. They laughed and chattered and made witticisms, and all the time Terry was growing younger and happier before their eyes. The Karelsky business didn't really matter; you had only to look at him to see that. "It's what's done in the world that matters, not who does it," was his way of summing it all up.
It was a happy ending—for all of us except Helen. She stayed, pale and silent, for a while, and then suddenly whispered something to Severn and went out of the room. ”

“ What a pity we cannot settle everything in life by money!"
Nothing of all this surprised me. It was plausibility itself compared with the theory that Terry had persuaded Severn by some miracle of eloquence or importunity.
Those few remaining hours in Buda-Pesth stay in my memory with nightmarish vividness. The heat—the dust—the smells of cooking; Blattae Orientales playing hide-and-seek on the floor; porters sweating and straining under loads of luggage; the Vienna train at the platform like a row of sweltering ovens, reeking with paprika and human bodies and half-molten varnish. ”

“ For it led to that curious meeting with her on the shaded lawn beneath the elm-trees; she was lounging in a basket-chair, reading the latest novel, and had quite obviously no more intention of going out that afternoon than I had of being tricked by her most ordinary of evasions.
She showed no embarrassment. Her smile was perfect as I crossed the lawn towards her, and I could see those summer days at Hindhead written on her face in tints of pink and brown. "Hello," she exclaimed, with casual surprise. "I thought you were in town. Didn't you telephone just now?" ”

“ There comes always, soon after the meeting of long-absent friends, a sudden hiatus when the first rapture of reunion is over and the quiet joy of companionship has hardly yet resumed its sway. At such a moment one says anything—anything—to break the awkward and intolerable silence. I, for example, when that moment came, made some remark about the comfort of his surroundings. "Better than Swinton Street, eh? ... And even a girl who speaks English—of a sort."
And he said: "Oh, yes, that's Mizzi." ”

“ I think I must have dreamed that Terry and Mizzi were married, for I woke up thinking of it. Even now the memory of that morning comes to me enveloped in the dream of the two of them; somehow it is all bright sunlight—the sunlight on the geraniums in the wooden boxes, the sunlight on Terry's face as I left him sleeping, and the sunlight drenching Mizzi's little office....
"Morgen," she said, as I entered, and I told her that Terry was asleep, and that I had come down to have a chat with her, if she wasn't too busy. ”

“ There was certainly no excuse for any guest being uncomfortable at the End House. Of all places I know it was the homeliest; it was, like Hampstead itself, cheerful without vulgarity. Severn's immense wealth (and he was rumoured to be making twenty thousand a year) never bullied or forced itself; it rather hid behind things and came upon the visitor at some moment when he was ready for it. Most wealthy houses make a poor man feel poorer than ever; Severn's made you feel rich. ”

“ I always do what I like. I like making speeches, for instance, and getting my name in the papers, and making plenty of money. But tastes differ, of course. And to those who live uncomfortably in this world in the hope of having everything made up to them in the next, my advice is just the same—If you prefer having that sort of a life and that sort of a belief, then have them by all means. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Terry, I went on, would never and could never be happy with the wife of another man. There was something in his make-up—conscience (if she liked the word) —which would always intervene. And when that other man was his friend and benefactor the idea became absolutely impossible and unthinkable. Then, too, there was another point. If she left Geoffrey she would destroy the idea of her that was in Terry's mind—an idea that satisfied him more, perhaps, than any other idea of her that he had ever had. "You've been a hypocrite with him," I told her. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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.... ”

“ He ignored the innuendo. "I'm not thinking of Helen alone," he went on. "Or of Severn.... In a way, they're old enough to do what they like, whatever it is. But ... I'll tell you something about myself—years ago. In those days—just before I came out here—I wanted Helen—you understand?—I wanted her. And I'd have done anything to get her, but for—one thing.... Of course I'm not defending myself—there ought to have been a hundred reasons to stop me, but in fact there was only that one.... It would have been caddish and ungrateful to Severn, but that wasn't the reason. ”

“ And that is the way he earns his hundreds of pounds a week.
You can picture him, therefore, striding into the lounge of the Andrassy, bestowing on everybody a charming smile, ordering drinks, offering cigars, remarking on the hot weather, and generally, in fact, behaving as if he hadn't a ghost of an idea what we wanted him for. And you can picture Terry, clenching his hands with a queer sort of nervous firmness, declining the drink and the cigar, and going straight ahead to the vital question—was this woman, this Greek dancer, Severn's mistress? ”

“ I don't know how exactly Terry and I got over the immense difficulty of his reserve. Perhaps we never did get over it; at any rate, he never admitted in so many words that he had grown to love June. But from a certain moment of that warm July night I began to talk to him as if he had admitted it, as if it were something obvious and perfectly understood between us. I said, for instance: "No man ought ever to think he has no chance with any woman." ”

“ Terry, there were difficulties—money and so on—and you oughtn't to have thought I didn't love you enough, just because I didn't agree straightway. I love you enough for anything, and I know it now that you've gone.... I just feel I can't endure it—it's inhuman of you to give me no second chance—and yet you always were like that, I know. Everything or nothing—and now, I suppose, it's nothing.... What you say about being sorry shows how different you are; I'm not sorry, except that I didn't seize the chance when it was offered me.... ”

“ And I can see Mizzi standing in the porch to see me off, and automatically (since it was not her nature to waste even a moment) kicking away a few dead leaves that had blown on to the step. It was the night express that I was making for, and the evening sunlight was dancing on Mizzi's sherry-coloured hair as I turned and waved to her just as the car swung us round the corner into the Skoda Gasse. And Terry said: "The next time you come you won't need to put up at the Bristol. Mizzi told me that in future she'd always be glad to find you a room." ”

“ It doesn't matter about being fair to him. He can defend himself. None better. Even stricken as he is, and with the whole world against him, I believe he'd be more than a match for it."
"You ought to admire him for that."
"Ought I? One gets tired of admiring a man for the same thing. I've admired him for his brains and his power so long that I'd like a change."
"And you don't feel sorry for him, lying in that chair all day and positively aching for something to happen?"
"I feel sorrier for Terry—giving the best years of his life to a thief and a fraud." ”

“ You think I love money and luxury, but I don't—it all means nothing to me, really. As for Geoffrey's money, it gets on my nerves—I hate it. Even now—in his chair all day long—he's making more of it—buying and selling shares and speculating and gambling and winning—yes, winning nine times out of ten. That's his way—he's always found winning the easiest job in the world.... Yet Terry can't even get the few paltry pounds he worked himself ill for! Oh, it's all sickening and damnable, and I wish we were all naked savages in a land where there wasn't such a thing as money.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Terry told me so little, and Helen told me so much; and between the two was a vast hiatus of the inexplicable. At first, the affair seemed perfectly harmless. When a man, after habitually working three times as hard as he ought, slows down to twice as hard, there doesn't seem a great deal to complain of. Nor when the same man spends a wet Sunday afternoon listening to a pretty woman play Chopin, instead of drenching himself to the skin on some miserable hillside. ”

“ Perhaps a seasoned man of the world would have jumped to the incriminating conclusion the moment he had seen them. The idea had, as a matter of fact, occurred to me, though I had at first managed to dismiss it as something that was no concern of mine. Terry's statement convinced me absolutely, yet an almost self-protective instinct made me dispute it. I remember sitting on the bed and propounding a marvellous theory that the man we had seen wasn't Severn at all, but his double—some innocent Parisian whose bona-fides, if inquiry were made, would be found perfectly correct. ”

“ What sort of a man are you that you can change so quickly? Your letter might have been written by a parson—or did you, perhaps, get some parson to collaborate with you? Please let me inform you that the old Terry that I loved, and that I love still, was the only man on earth who could ever have made me 'live usefully,' and that the new Terry, with his moralisings and platitudes, only makes me feel I want to go straight to the Devil. How dare you mention Geoffrey's career as a reason why I should sacrifice my happiness? And even June—what has she got to do with it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was even a faint undertone of admiration in his voice when he spoke of Karelsky; and my own indignation grew with his calmness. Couldn't something be done, I implored him. Was Terry to stand by helplessly and do nothing at all?
He remarked that Karelsky was clever—damned clever.
"I daresay he is," I retorted, "and I believe you admire him for that, whether he's a rogue or not!" He laughed then. "I'm afraid it's a shade more subtle than that, Hilton. You see—I like things that make me happy. Being interested makes me happier than anything. And Karelsky interests me.... ”