"Serve you right," she retorted brusquely, "if you will get drunk and go rolling along the roads.... Get in the car now, and I'll take you where you belong. Otherwise somebody else'll drive along and knock you down."
He obeyed without another word, and I sat with him in the rear seat while June drove us up to the post-box and then back to the hotel. She was the embodied spirit of calmness; it struck me then that she had all her father's coolness without any of his cynicism. And, incidentally, she was the only woman-driver of a car who ever made me feel perfectly safe in her charge.
At the hotel she paid little attention to Terry and me, but sought eagerly for Taplow; and the chief impression I have is of the two of them stooping to examine the car's interior mechanism and exchanging technicalities. The trouble, whatever it was, did not take long to rectify, for at seven o'clock I heard her asking Mrs. Taplow to make her some sandwiches for the journey. She wanted to be in Hampstead by nine, she said, and would have no time for dinner.
Before leaving she came hurriedly into the sitting-room where I was reading and Terry was dozing in a chair. "Good-bye," she said to me, taking off her furred gauntlet glove to shake hands. Then she went over to Terry and touched him sharply on the arm. "Wake up," she cried, "and thank me for saving your life!"
He opened his eyes and stared stupidly at her; I daresay he was as surprised as he had ever been. "Do you play tennis?" she asked, before he had time to speak.
He stammered that he didn't, and she said: "Well, you ought to—it's better than boozing, anyway ... Good-bye—I'm off now."
She waved her hand and hurried out, but even her hurry had in it some curious quality of calmness.
And that, grotesque as it may be, is a plain account of their first meeting since she was a child. Taplow told me afterwards that Terry had had no more drink than on many previous occasions—certainly not enough to make an ordinary man stagger along a road. But perhaps he had been—just then, at any rate—an extraordinary man. Perhaps, as I suggested awhile back, the receipt of Mizzi's package had stirred him, and at a time when any sort of emotion was rather more than he could bear.
He made very little comment when June had gone. In no way did her visit seem to affect him; he just lived on as usual, letting the days slip idly by, with no care for what he did with them or for what they did with him. Anything, almost, would have been a welcome change from the monotony of his indifference; I would rather have had him swear vengeance on Karelsky, or even steep himself in despair because June had seen him drunk. But he had no energy for either; and all the while the bill for Severn to pay was piling up to quite a formidable sum.
Chiefly, of course, I was concerned for what Severn might think; the money itself was of small consequence. I should have tackled Terry pretty frankly, had he not been overwhelmed by a belated realization of the facts. News of that reached me from June, whom I chanced to meet one frosty morning in Piccadilly. She said instantly: "Come for a walk—I want to tell you something." We strolled into Green Park, and she told me that she had just met Terry.