Nor could I help him. The more I pondered, the more impossible seemed the idea of writing to her at all. And yet, for his own sake, it was necessary, his only hope lay in supposing that he could undo what he believed himself to have done. I urged him not to worry about it—to leave it for a while, at any rate. And he turned to me then with a look of sad finality and replied: "But you see, it must—it must—catch to-night's mail...."
We had lunch, and then, inexorably, he went back to his desk. I tried once or twice to make suggestions, but he seemed to mistrust them. Words, he said, came easily to me because I was a journalist, but they were no good to him unless they were the words he wanted.... He didn't want her to think this ... or that ... but something in between—something elusive and perfect—something in his own mind that ever evaded pursuit. If only he could make her see everything as he saw it.... If only the words would come, one after the other in a constant stream, without any agonizing search for them.... But I wondered myself if there were any words for what he felt.
XII
The time of posting for the night-mail was seven at the latest, and at five I went down to fetch Mizzi. "For God's sake," I told her, "come up and tell him that letters for England don't go on a Sunday. He's trying to write something, and if he doesn't get it done in time, he'll collapse.... Tell him anything you like that'll put him off."
She did. She did it rather well. She waited for a few moments till after I had rejoined him, and then came up with some idle chatter about the weather. He was still at his desk, taking hardly any notice of anything but the paper in front of him; and at last, with an excellently assumed air of casualness, she remarked that he seemed busy. He said he was writing a letter. And then she remarked: "If it iss a letter to England, you know of course that there iss no post to-night." He turned round suddenly, astonished, but perhaps, beyond his astonishment, relieved. And she went on: "It iss a new rule. No mails for foreign lands from Saturday night until Monday night." Her tone was just right; he put down his pen, walked across the room, and said, with a sort of moody resignation: "Nothing for it but to wait, then." Then a further idea seemed to occur to him; he exclaimed sharply: "What was it you came up to see me about, Mizzi?"
She wasn't altogether prepared for that. She said: "Iss it necessary that I must always haf a special reason when I come up to see you?" And before he could reply she went on: "But of course, I had a reason—it was to ask you—both of you—if you would care to come with me now to the Cathedral...."
So we went—the three of us.
It was, as she told me afterwards, the only thing she had been able to think of on the spur of the moment. She even apologized, then, and hoped that the service at the Stefans-Dom hadn't bored me. I assured her it hadn't; but all the same, she might have been surprised if she had known my thoughts during that solemn candle-lit hour. They weren't especially religious, and yet—devout Catholic as she was—Mizzi might have been thinking them too. Perhaps she also, lured by the singing and the twilight, came under the spell of the one perfect solution—that she should become Terry's wife; perhaps she also remembered Helen's advice that he should marry some Viennese girl who loved him and was a business woman.
That night, after we came back from the Cathedral, Terry seemed calmer. I even spoke to him about my return to England, and he renewed his promise that he would take a long and complete holiday "as soon as this business is settled." Then we talked about Mizzi. He thought it odd that she had invited us to the Cathedral with her. "She's rather religious," he said, "but she never talks about it or tries to force it on you. When I first came here she asked me if I were a Catholic, but that was all." He paused for a while, and then, in a different tone, continued: "I suppose a Catholic doesn't care to marry a Protestant?"
I must have shown my astonishment when he said that. "It rather depends who the Protestant is," I answered, hoping he would say more. He didn't, however, and even when I asked him why he had put the question, he only answered that there hadn't been any particular reason.