Terry

I FIRST met him outside the Tube Station at Hampstead; he had travelled on my train, and I had noticed him particularly because, like me, he was wearing a rather shabby overcoat over a dress-suit. At the corner of Rosslyn Hill I went into a shop for some tobacco, and when I came out he was waiting for me. He asked me in a rather shy voice if I could direct him to the End House.

I told him that I could, and that since I was going to the End House myself he had better come with me. We walked quite a long way without saying a word. Every now and then as we neared lamp-posts or brilliantly-lit shops I glanced sideways at him, and each time he was looking grimly ahead, as if life were a tremendous ordeal. He was rather good-looking, in a restrained sort of way; tall, well-proportioned, fair-haired and blue-eyed, he had all the attributes of the matinee idol except that he didn't look like one. Towards the top of Heath Street I tried to get him into conversation. "I suppose we're both guests at Severn's dinner-party to-night?" I remarked. "I suppose so," he answered rather gloomily, and then suddenly, with a sort of shy vehemence, he added: "I hate dinner-parties."

"Oh, but you won't hate this one," I assured him. "Severn's people are always interesting.... By the way, haven't you been before?"

"No. I didn't meet Severn till last week--didn't particularly want to, either. Somebody introduced us at the College--just casually, that was all--and then, a couple of days later, he sent me this invitation."

"Just what he would do. But you needn't worry--you won't be bored."

He answered, with heavy despair: "I shall be worse than bored."

And he was. It would have been funny if it hadn't been rather pathetic. Severn had just won Manchester South in a bye-election, and that, no doubt, gave the party a predominantly political flavour. But there was, all the same, a fair seasoning of art and music, and I noticed that my shy acquaintance had been put between Mildred Gorton, the novelist, and Mrs. Hathersage (Olga Trepine, of the Caucasian Ballet). At that time, of course, I didn't know anything at all about him--whether he were a writer, a painter, a politician, a pianist, or just plain nothing-at-all. All I could see was that both Mildred and Olga were having a dreadful time trying to get a word out of him.

It was Mrs. Severn who enlightened my ignorance. I was next to her, and during a sudden gust of chatter all about us, she whispered to me: "You see that man over there next to Mildred Gorton? ... His name's Terrington. I want you to talk to him afterwards. You'll find him very reserved."

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."

I replied: "I don't think you did. It's by talking a lot rather than by not talking enough, that people most often make fools of themselves."

"Severn must have thought me a complete ass."

"Nonsense. I know Severn. He'd make sure you weren't a complete ass before he invited you."

"Why did he invite me, anyway?"

"Probably because he liked you when he first met you, and because he had heard good things about you. He likes young men with no money and heaps of brains--like you and me, that's to say. (I presume you haven't any money--_I_ haven't, anyway.) He takes us up just as he might buy a low-priced share that he fancied might treble in value if he waited long enough.... Please don't think I'm being really cynical about him. He's a damned good fellow, and there isn't a trace of offensive patronage in his attitude. He's too young to be a snob."

"Young, is he?"

"Well, thirty-five. That's young for a man in his line. I suppose you know what he is--K.C., and so on?"

"I don't know anything about him at all."

"But the Stapleton case--surely you remember all that in the newspapers?"

"I don't. I never read the newspapers."

"Good Lord--you must be a hermit! ... Anyhow, Severn's quite a big man, and likely as not he'll end on the Woolsack. He knows everybody worth knowing, and positively rolls in money and influence. And all that at thirty-five, mind you, and with a wife still in her twenties and one child aged ten. He did everything early."

He seemed startled, and I went on, satisfied that he was interested: "Severn married her when she was eighteen--and a shop-girl in Paris. Still, she must have been rather an exceptional shop-girl. Severn probably spotted her just as he spots all the other winners. But his people are Eton and Oxford to the teeth, and they wouldn't look at her, or him either, for a long while afterwards. He'll tell you the whole story of his early struggles if you give him half a chance--he's awfully proud of them."

We chatted on till nearly midnight, and then, since the last tube train had gone, I walked with him to his rather dingy lodgings in Swinton Street, near King's Cross. (Evidently he was poor; perhaps even poorer than I.) "You must come to tea with me soon," I said, shaking hands with him at the door. I suggested the following Wednesday, but he answered: "I'm afraid I could never come for tea--I work at the College until seven."

"Even on Saturdays?" I queried, and he nodded.

"And Sundays?" He smiled then and said: "On Sundays I go out for the day. Next Sunday I'm going for a tramp across the hills from Dorking to Reigate, and if you'd care to come with me...."