VII
Heaven knows how I got rid of the fellow after that. Perhaps I was discourteous; perhaps he thought I had been suddenly taken ill; more likely, of course, he assumed that I was merely drunk. And perhaps I was. I don't remember what I said to him, or what he said to me either; all I know is that, drunk or not, by the time he had gone, I had reached a very definite decision, and that was that, whatever happened, Terry and I must avoid a meeting with the Severns.
Terry was silent—had been silent, indeed, ever since Bentley's intrusion. As soon as we were alone together I leaned across the table and put the matter to him as carefully as I could. (The orchestra, I remember, struck up with feverish inaccuracy the overture to Ruy Blas.) We had better, I said, to avoid any possible unpleasantness, change our hotel. We could cancel the booking if we hurried, and get rooms somewhere else. It was the wisest thing to do, as he would realize if he thought about it. "After all, you can see how awkward the meeting might be, can't you?" The trouble was, of course, that I didn't want to tell him the chief reason for the awkwardness—my own seven-years' estrangement from Helen.
I argued for a quarter of an hour at least, and then, inferring from his silence that he was wholly or partly in agreement, I suggested returning to the hotel. He nodded, and I paid the bill. Not till we were outside on the pavement did he speak, and then he said quietly: "You can change hotels if you like, but I shan't."
And he was adamant. It was as hopeless to attempt to persuade him to leave the Andrassy as it had been to persuade him to come for a holiday to London. He just set his teeth and held firm. He wasn't going to alter any of his arrangements—not for her, or Severn, or anybody else. He wasn't afraid of a meeting. What had happened to him before couldn't happen to him again—he was proof against it. And he wasn't going to run away and hide as if he had anything to fear.
I pointed out that it wasn't a question of running away, but merely of avoiding possible unpleasantness. He had put an end to the correspondence between them by not answering her letters—would that make a reunion very easy? But he said: "I don't care whether it's easy or not. If she goes out of her way to meet me, that's her affair, not mine. I shan't make a scene, I promise you. But I won't, whatever's going to happen, skulk round the corner to some other place." He added, apologetically: "I hate to get my own way against your wishes, but I'm afraid you'll have to put up with it for once."
And that was so. I had to put up with it. I had to put up with his determination to have supper in the public dining-room of the Andrassy merely because "we're going to do exactly what we should have done." I couldn't make him budge an inch by persuasion, but I guessed that where argument failed altogether, guile might slightly succeed. Accordingly, when we reached the hotel I piloted him into an alcove of the gastzimmer, whence we could see the rest of the room without being too prominently on view ourselves. That was something, at any rate.
I don't think either of us enjoyed the supper very much. Terry was silent most of the time, and I found it hard to keep going a one-sided conversation. I kept looking at the swing-doors that led into the vestibule, looking at the Pesthians remorselessly picking their gold-filled teeth with fibre tooth-picks, looking at the tables as they filled and emptied; and at first hoping, and then, as time passed, even believing that the Severns must be dining elsewhere that night. It was already long past eight o'clock, and the room was getting emptier. The strain of waiting stamped its features indelibly on my memory; I can picture now its rather showy magnificence—panelled walls and gilt-and-white cornice, and so on—and, by way of contrast lower down, a wavy green smear of insecticide running all round the walls just above the floor. I remember that while the waiter was taking our order a large blue-black cockroach crawled sedately from under the table and disappeared into a hole near the skirting-board.
A quarter to nine, and still there was no sign of the Severns. And then, just when I was about to suggest leaving the table, I saw a couple of waiters detach themselves from the serving and rush to hold open the doors with an obsequiousness that seemed to indicate the approach of at least an heir-apparent of a Balkan principality.
But no ... it was Severn.