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. We were fools, maybe, both of us—and we should be bigger fools if we discussed it now.... Besides, it's so hopelessly out-of-date. All Helen wants now is to make life happier and easier for Severn. That's why she's coming to live out here—not because she's a country-lover herself. She isn't; she's told me so quite candidly. Hyde Park, not Hindhead, is her ideal."
I asked him if he though that she and Severn were getting on better, and he answered: "I'm sure of it. She doesn't always agree with him, of course—(she didn't over that Karelsky business)—but I think she's very happy. That American fellow's coming to operate on July 19th, and she's building up great hopes about it...."
V
And June ...?
I hardly know for certain, because she said so little about her own thoughts and feelings. As a novelist, perhaps I am entitled to be omniscient, but even omniscience doesn't lead me very much further than the obvious fact that June and Helen were separated by a deep and growing antagonism. I shall never forget that night at the End House when June faced her mother with that white-hot question: "Why should you interfere?"
But after that there was never another outbreak. Maybe the antagonism sank deeper; I had the constant impression that the more June felt the less she would say; until the time came when feeling would make her almost inarticulate. Anyhow, during those long midsummer days, though I saw her frequently, Helen's name was never mentioned, and even Terry's only rarely.
We went to Hindhead quite often, and Terry was always charmingly eager to see us. Never again, after that first unexpected visit, did we meet Helen there; I think June saw to that. Usually she and Terry played tennis, or else he, with his new eagerness for motor-driving, took us out in Taplow's prehistoric Ford. With this, as with most other enthusiasms, he went vastly to extremes; one afternoon a short trip to Aldershot developed into a grand tour of three counties, ending up in a breakdown and an ignominious return by train. He was always, too, immensely keen on showing us the site of the new house and giving us full and technical details of Helen's most recent visit. Never, by a word or a gesture, did June show anything but interest, but I got so bored with climbing up the same old hill and standing in the broiling sunlight to admire the same old view, that I formed the excellent habit of staying in the car while he and June made their expeditions alone. They were usually gone about half-an-hour—just time enough for a quiet smoke and a morsel of reflection.
What sort of a game was Helen playing? I thought it over, on those and other occasions, from every possible angle, and at the end of it all I had no convictions, only suspicions as before. If, at any rate, she were playing a game at all, it was a mighty clever as well as a mighty dastardly one—the cleverest and most dastardly by far that she had ever played.... But perhaps it wasn't a game. Perhaps they were both, with blindly honest footsteps, stumbling over the old ground into the trap that time had artfully concealed.... And perhaps there wasn't even a trap. Perhaps two people who had once been lovers really could meet again after a space of years and be no more than friends.... Time, at any rate, would show.
Time showed, in my opinion, when Severn obtained for Terry the offer of a job and Terry asked for a few weeks to think it over. It was a junior professorship of bacteriology in an Australian university, carrying with it a commencing salary of three hundred a year, and to me it seemed so good, in the circumstances, that Terry ought to have accepted it joyously and outright. I couldn't understand what there was to think over, and his vague replies when I talked to him about it only increased my astonishment. He admitted it was a good post. He assured me he hadn't the slightest objection to going abroad; on the contrary, he thought he would prefer it, and especially a country like Australia. Quite probably he would accept—oh, quite probably; it was just that he would prefer not to give an absolutely definite answer just then.
The matter worried me, and I had the impression that it was worrying June also. Something was worrying her, anyhow; there was a quite perceptible cloud somewhere on her horizon. One afternoon I found her lying prone in a deck-chair in Taplow's garden, and sobbing—sobbing as only people can do who aren't good at putting their feelings into words. I didn't let her see me, and went back quietly into the bar-room. Terry was there, reading a letter that the postman had just brought.