I told her then of my previous meeting with him, and she said: "It's a shame, really, to have put him next to Mildred; she'll scare him to death.... Geoffrey got to know him somehow or other last week. He says he's fearfully clever in his own line—he's a research-lecturer in bacteriology at University College."
"That sounds tremendously impressive, anyhow," I replied, and I promised I would take him under my wing when we adjourned to the drawing-room afterwards.
End House dinners were long and good, but I always liked most of all the hour or so after, when Mrs. Severn, if she were sufficiently persuaded, would play Chopin or sing. She was really more of a diseuse than a singer; indeed, the thing to do was to tell her that she reminded you of Yvette Guilbert. She did, and she just loved being told it.
That evening she yielded to persuasion earlier than usual, and it was just as she sat down at the piano that I managed to squirm my way across the room to Terrington. He was standing by the French windows examining (but hardly, I should think, admiring) a recent portrait of Severn by a celebrated artist, and when I asked him how things were going he stared at me reproachfully and replied: "I oughtn't to have come here. I don't know what on earth to say to all these people. They're all terribly big guns—except me."
"And me too," I responded cheerfully. "But then, don't forget, we represent young and unknown genius—the hope of the future and all that sort of thing. Severn's idea, you know, to give us a chance of mixing with the top-dogs."
That didn't seem to console him especially, but just then Mrs. Severn began to sing. It was an old French ballad (I remember that the chorus consisted of the word "Rataplan" repeated many times), and it was exactly what suited her voice and style. I gathered, more from the way she sang it than from the words, that it was about a court intrigue, a wicked lord chamberlain, poisoned goblets, and so on—"divinely medieval," as I heard Mildred Gorton whispering to somebody.
When it was over I looked at my companion. "Not bad, eh?" I said, and he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that might have meant anything. A few moments later, having apparently analysed himself, he remarked that it was the sort of thing that made him feel uncomfortable.
Those were the last words he spoke to anybody until he stood in the hall conventionally assuring Mr. and Mrs. Severn that he had had a most delightful time. We left the End House together about half-past ten, and walked back along the edge of the Heath. There was a frost glistening on the roadway, and a pale haze hung over the valley towards London. He was anything but talkative. I don't think we spoke a dozen words all the way down to the Tube Station. We both had return tickets, and it wasn't till we reached Mornington Crescent (my own station) that I said, feeling curiously reluctant to bid him good-bye: "Look here, I live just round the corner. Why not come in and have a drink with me before you go home? It isn't late at all, you know."
"If—if you like," he answered doubtfully.
He thawed a little when I lit the gas-fire in my room and made him sit in front of it. He said he didn't care for whisky, so I made strong coffee. Then I offered him cigarettes, but he said he didn't smoke. At last, by the simple method of not seeming to care what he did or didn't do, I got him to talk. He began abruptly: "I made a fool of myself to-night."