Mizzi had evidently done her work well, which was fortunate in view of my sleepily dazed condition. I could only stagger to my feet and shake his hand and reply: "Oh, I'm fairly fit, I'm glad to say. How are you?"
And then I really saw him. Till then the bright glow of the sunset through the windows and the cloudiness of disturbed sleep had made me stare vaguely without seeing anything at all. But the movement out of the chair gave me sight, and as soon as I saw, I was almost dazed again. For he was different. Of course, after five years, he was bound to be different, but somehow the difference was different. It wasn't that he looked particularly ill (though he certainly didn't look well); it was just that he had a look in him of somebody else—somebody whom I had never seen before. Perhaps if I had met him then for the first time, I shouldn't have been in the least alarmed; I should have thought it was all perfectly natural—the blue eyes like sharpened swords, the short-cropped hair with its earliest streaks of iron-grey, the pale, lined cheeks, and the shoulders with their hint of a stoop.... Good God! And he was hardly thirty! He looked fifty to me as I saw him that night. He looked a genius, a poet, a madman, an eastern seer—anything and anybody except the Terry I had known.
Only his voice and mannerisms were the same. He still spoke with an air of reluctance. He still half-smiled. "Extraordinary," he said, "that you should arrive to-day. Really extraordinary...."
"Why?"
"Because to-day"—and he suddenly seemed to grow excited—"I can't explain it to you—not in detail.... But it means—almost certainly it means—success in the work I am busy on—success after all these years—after so many disappointments."
I congratulated him (though I was still too dazed to do anything with much show of fervour), and then he began a slow cross-examination. How long was I staying? Had Mizzi given me a good room? Was my business likely to occupy all or most of the time? I answered as well as I could, and then, with astonishing calmness, he said: "Don't you think that, in the circumstances, I deserve a holiday?"
He went on, before amazement gave me a chance of replying: "Well, I'm going to take one, anyhow. I'm going to take a week—at least a week. And you can combine business with pleasure and come with me. We'll go to Buda by one of the Danube steamers. You wanted to do that trip the last time you were here, didn't you? ... I think the boat leaves about eight to-morrow morning—Mizzi will tell us. And then, after our jaunt, you can go back to London and I can come back here and get to work again."
It would have been positively comic but for the wildness of his eyes and the hectic colour that had suddenly flooded his cheeks. There was I, wondering how on earth to persuade him to take a holiday; and then, before I had even time to begin, he was actually suggesting one himself.... "Look here," I exclaimed rather bewilderedly. And then, very uneloquently, I put it to him that a few days in Buda wasn't my idea of a holiday for him, and that what he needed was a far longer one—months, in fact. Why couldn't he put work on one side for a while and accompany me back to England?
I knew from the way he shook his head that it wasn't the slightest use attempting to persuade him. There was nothing in England for him, he said. He didn't care if he never saw England again. Besides, he couldn't put his work on one side for months at a time—the idea was unthinkable. He could spare a week at most—as a concession to me and in celebration of the success he had achieved—and then he must go back again to the laboratories. Because he had achieved something wasn't any reason for resting on his oars; the something was only a fraction of what was to be achieved in due course.... He exclaimed, with a curious ecstasy in his voice: "I'm wonderfully happy—just wonderfully.... There comes a time when you turn a sort of corner in life, and see all the road behind you that you have traveled. And to look round and see that, if you've slacked, is the most miserable sight on earth—but if you haven't slacked—if you've really done anything—it's great—it makes you feel"—he laughed and ended up: "that you deserve a short holiday, at any rate."
So (continuing) it must be Buda. The river-trip was very enjoyable, and he was sure we should both have a fine time. Mizzi would tell us of a good hotel in Buda....