III
That altered everything. He staggered into Mizzi's office reading the headlines incredulously, and I left him there, believing that she would manage things better than I could.
He didn't write to Helen after all. He tried to, afterwards; but when, towards dusk, the news came through that Severn was among the seriously injured, he gave it up in despair. It was hopeless; there were no words in his vocabulary to cope with this new and more terrible situation—no words except the words he kept uttering to me in eager, half-frightened gasps. "She must help him now, Hilton—she must stay with him and help him now—oh, she must—she must—she couldn't do anything else.... She couldn't leave him now, could she?" He spoke almost as if he were pleading with himself to try to believe in the essential goodness of her. "He's never needed her before, but he'll need her now, and she'll realize it—she's bound to, isn't she? ..." And then, like the bursting of a dark cloud, came the inevitable—the feeling, deeper and blacker than ever, that he was responsible for all that had happened, and especially for all that had happened to Severn. "I made him go by that train—you remember? He wanted to go to Ronacher's and wait till the morning train—but I told him to keep to his promise—you remember that? I made him go—all this would never have happened to him but for me.... You can see how it is, can't you?"
I was almost impressed myself by the horror of the coincidence, though I took care not to let Terry see it. I told him briskly that it was absurd for him to feel responsible, and that to anybody except himself the idea would appear ridiculous. Severn would be the first to say so.
He buried his head in his hands and was silent. My assurances hadn't helped him. It didn't matter to him what anybody else in the world said or thought. It didn't matter what Severn said or thought. It was he himself who held himself responsible. He was his own accuser. It really seemed to him, in that moment of obsessing guilt, that he had encompassed the ruin entirely by his own tragic efforts—that even, in some dreadfully obscure way, the whole accident, and all its results, lay to his charge. That, of course, was madness; and I think he saw it just in time. He went to his desk and tried again—pitiably, frenziedly—to write to Helen; but everything was wordless, voiceless; there was nothing—nothing that he could put down. I said, with an attempt to comfort him, that Helen would almost certainly help Severn all she could; but he answered: "I don't want her just to help him. I want her to want to help him—I want her to"—he faced me with eyes like swords and added: "I can't tell you what I mean, but I know I could tell her."
I asked no questions, for I knew he couldn't say more than he was saying. His nerves were in shreds, racked between that dreadful sense of personal responsibility and the still passionate ideal that made him hope that by some stupendous effort he could put everything right.... And then, quite suddenly, he threw down his pen and walked across the room. "I will tell her," he said. "I must—there's no hope any other way.... I'll leave to-night—by the express—and be in London by Wednesday.... Oh, I must go—can't you see that I must—can't you?"
IV
I couldn't—I couldn't see anything for a while; it had all happened too suddenly.... And then, when I began to realize, it was too late; arguing was no use. Of the countless reasons why he shouldn't go, not one was apparent to him; he spoke of going as a sinner might speak of his conversion. "Somehow or other," he said, "I shall be able to help." He was certain of it. And with the certainty came, once again, optimism—a childish optimism that made him hope that Severn wasn't badly hurt (although the report most distinctly stated that he was), and that all would be well in some vague and shadowy future. Of course I raised objections; in fact, the more I thought of it, the more monstrous it seemed that he, of all people, and then, of all times, should meet Helen. What good, I asked him, did he think he could achieve by seeing her? He repeated that he could help. But how? Was it likely that she would fail her husband in such an emergency, and wasn't it far more likely that she would be insulted at the mere suggestion of such a thing?
He said that I hadn't understood him. He paused for a while, and I could almost see him struggling physically to put what he felt into words. Then victory came to him like a sharp explosion; he went on, with staccato excitement: "You see—I've made such a terrible hash of everything—right from the beginning. It's all led up to this—just one mistake after another.... I began it, and I've got to end it. I tell you, I've got to end it. Nobody can end it but me.... We were all friends once, and we've all got to be friends again—whatever happens. It doesn't work—to put people outside your life. You can't do it, even when you try, and you daren't do it, even if you could...."
"So it all amounts to this—that you're going to put Helen back into your life?"