And we did.
IV
Throughout all the early months of that year I was almost heading for a breakdown myself. I certainly hope that I shall never have to work so hard again. In a sort of way it was Severn's fault, though he meant well enough, just as he had meant well enough in getting Terry fixed up with Karelsky. But Severn was like that; he'd help you so carelessly that unless you used remarkably shrewd judgment of your own the help might turn out to be a hindrance. On this occasion he got for me the editorship of a rather decadent weekly that had already killed or bankrupted my predecessors and would have done the same to me if I hadn't thrown up the sponge after three months' hard labour. The wretched thing gave me no proper time for meals and sleep, let alone for Hindhead week-ends and the novel about Terry. From Christmas till Easter I don't think I added a word.
There was, perhaps, another reason for this besides pressure of business. Terry's continued slackness and inertia disappointed me, and (I may as well confess it) I began to wonder if he were altogether the man I had taken him for. Anyhow, if he were going to stay on indefinitely at the Valley Hotel, I didn't see how I could write a readable novel about him, unless I chose to end it fictitiously. I remember, during the few spare moments I had during those days, making drafts of such possible endings; one of them was that Severn should die under an operation, and that Terry and Helen, after suitable novelistic adventures, should marry and end the book happily. Another dragged Mizzi back into the story, and I think this was the one I should have favoured, chiefly because the character of Mizzi always appealed to me But I hadn't time for any of them, which was perhaps just as well.
Karelsky landed, I recollect, in mid-April, and from his first moment on English soil was never without a posse of newspaper-men at his heels. I had several chances of meeting him professionally, but avoided them all; it wasn't possible, unfortunately, to avoid the constant references to him on placards, in the press, and from platform and pulpit. For over a week he had Fleet Street positively begging him for copy, and all he gave in return for fabulous cheques was a vast quantity of worthless self-advertisement. I found myself loathing the man and his methods so intensely that I even tried to persuade my proprietors to let me run a campaign against him in my paper; fortunately for me, in view of what happened subsequently, they refused.
On the opening day of the Conference the furore of newspaper adulation rose to an impassioned shriek. In my little office in Gough Square I took as small notice of it as I could; I wanted to forget, if possible, that Karelsky existed. But when I went out for my usual cup of tea in the afternoon, the newsboys were rushing up Bouverie Street with placards announcing "Karelsky's Great Speech" and "Sensational Scene at Medical Conference." For the first time for many years I didn't buy any evening paper at all; I felt that to read of some new self-advertising stunt of his would be almost unendurable. I worked at my office until nearly eight, and then strolled quietly through Lincoln's Inn to my rooms. There was a strange peace in that walk; the old Inn buildings and the trees just budding into leaf were everything that Karelsky was not.... I was calm by the time I climbed my own staircase and unlocked the door. Roebuck was out, and in the letter-box there was a telegram.
It had been handed in at Glasgow at six-thirty that evening, and ran: "Can you meet me four a.m. to-morrow Crewe Station urgent will look out for you June ..."
V
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. My train dumped me down soon after three, and for over an hour I walked up and down enormous lengths of platform and watched mysterious shunting operations that seemed to provide the maximum of noise with the minimum of result. Then a train came in from the north, and out of it stepped June.