The Figure in the Carpet, by Henry James

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Transcribed from the 1916 Martin Secker edition by DavidPrice,action figures for 5 year olds email [email protected]

THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET

BY HENRY JAMES

LONDON; MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

This edition first published1916
The text follows that of the
Definitive Edition

CHAPTER I

I had done a few things and earneda few pence—I had perhaps even had time to begin to think Iwas finer than was perceived by the patronising; but when I takethe little measure of my course (a fidgety habit, for it’snone of the longest yet) I count my real start from the eveningGeorge Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me aservice.  He had done more things than I, and earned morepence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought hesometimes missed.  I could only however that evening declareto him that he never missed one for kindness.  There wasalmost rapture in hearing it proposed to me to prepare for TheMiddle, the organ of our lucubrations, so called from theposition in the week of its day of appearance, an article forwhich he had made himself responsible and of which, tied up witha stout string, he laid on my table the subject.  I pouncedupon my opportunity—that is on the first volume ofit—and paid scant attention to my friend’sexplanation of his appeal.  What explanation could be moreto the point than my obvious fitness for the task?  I hadwritten on Hugh Vereker, but never a word in The Middle,where my dealings were mainly with the ladies and the minorpoets.  This was his new novel, an advance copy, andwhatever much or little it should do for his reputation I wasclear on the spot as to what it should do for mine. Moreover if I always read him as soon as I could get hold of himI had a particular reason for wishing to read him now: I hadaccepted an invitation to Bridges for the following Sunday, andit had been mentioned in Lady Jane’s note that Mr. Verekerwas to be there.  I was young enough for a flutter atmeeting a man of his renown, and innocent enough to believe theoccasion would demand the display of an acquaintance with his“last.”

Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even hadtime to read it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of newsrequiring—as on precipitate reflexion he judged—thathe should catch the night-mail to Paris.  He had had atelegram from Gwendolen Erme in answer to his letter offering tofly to her aid.  I knew already about Gwendolen Erme; I hadnever seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to theeffect that Corvick would marry her if her mother would onlydie.  That lady seemed now in a fair way to oblige him;after some dreadful mistake about a climate or a“cure” she had suddenly collapsed on the return fromabroad.  Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring tomake a rush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted ourfriend’s assistance, and it was my secret belief that atsight of him Mrs. Erme would pull round.  His own belief wasscarcely to be called secret; it discernibly at any rate differedfrom mine.  He had showed me Gwendolen’s photographwith the remark that she wasn’t pretty but was awfullyinteresting; she had published at the age of nineteen a novel inthree volumes, “Deep Down,” about which, in TheMiddle, he had been really splendid.  He appreciated mypresent eagerness and undertook that the periodical in questionshould do no less; then at the last, with his hand on the door,he said to me: “Of course you’ll be all right, youknow.”  Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: “Imean you won’t be silly.”

“Silly—about Vereker!  Why what do I everfind him but awfully clever?”

“Well, what’s that but silly?  What on earthdoes ‘awfully clever’ mean?  For God’ssake try to get athim.  Don’t let him sufferby our arrangement.  Speak of him, you know, if you can, asIshould have spoken of him.”

I wondered an instant.  “You mean as far and awaythe biggest of the lot—that sort of thing?”

Corvick almost groaned.  “Oh you know, Idon’t put them back to back that way; it’s theinfancy of art!  But he gives me a pleasure so rare; thesense of”—he mused a little—“something orother.”

I wondered again.  “The sense, pray, ofwant?”

“My dear man, that’s just what I want youto say!”

Even before he had banged the door I had begun, book in hand,to prepare myself to say it.  I sat up with Vereker half thenight; Corvick couldn’t have done more than that.  Hewas awfully clever—I stuck to that, but he wasn’t abit the biggest of the lot.  I didn’t allude to thelot, however; I flattered myself that I emerged on this occasionfrom the infancy of art.  “It’s allright,” they declared vividly at the office; and when thenumber appeared I felt there was a basis on which I could meetthe great man.  It gave me confidence for a day ortwo—then that confidence dropped.  I had fancied himreading it with relish, but if Corvick wasn’t satisfied howcould Vereker himself be?  I reflected indeed that the heatof the admirer was sometimes grosser even than the appetite ofthe scribe.  Corvick at all events wrote me from Paris alittle ill-humouredly.  Mrs. Erme was pulling round, and Ihadn’t at all said what Vereker gave him the sense of.

CHAPTER II

The effect of my visit to Bridgeswas to turn me out for more profundity.  Hugh Vereker, as Isaw him there, was of a contact so void of angles that I blushedfor the poverty of imagination involved in my smallprecautions.  If he was in spirits it wasn’t becausehe had read my review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt surehe hadn’t read it, though The Middlehad been outthree days and bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden ofperiodicals which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of astand at a station.  The impression he made on me personallywas such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected to thisend with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in thecareless conspicuity of the sheet.  I’m afraid I evenwatched the result of my manœuvre, but up to luncheon Iwatched in vain.

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I foundmyself for half an hour, not perhaps without anothermanœuvre, at the great man’s side, the result of hisaffability was a still livelier desire that he shouldn’tremain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I had done him. It wasn’t that he seemed to thirst for justice; on thecontrary I hadn’t yet caught in his talk the faintest gruntof a grudge—a note for which my young experience hadalready given me an ear.  Of late he had had morerecognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in TheMiddle, to see how it drew him out.  He wasn’t ofcourse popular, but I judged one of the sources of his goodhumour to be precisely that his success was independent ofthat.  He had none the less become in a manner the fashion;the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up withhim.  We had found out at last how clever he was, and he hadhad to make the best of the loss of his mystery.  I wasstrongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know howmuch of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when Iprobably should have done so had not one of the ladies of ourparty, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then appealedto him in a spirit comparatively selfish.  It was verydiscouraging: I almost felt the liberty had been taken withmyself.

I had had on my tongue’s end, for my own part, a phraseor two about the right word at the right time; but later on I wasglad not to have spoken, for when on our return we clustered attea I perceived Lady Jane, who had not been out with us,brandishing The Middlewith her longest arm.  She hadtaken it up at her leisure; she was delighted with what she hadfound, and I saw that, as a mistake in a man may often be afelicity in a woman, she would practically do for me what Ihadn’t been able to do for myself.  “Some sweetlittle truths that needed to be spoken,” I heard herdeclare, thrusting the paper at rather a bewildered couple by thefireplace.  She grabbed it away from them again on thereappearance of Hugh Vereker, who after our walk had beenupstairs to change something.  “I know you don’tin general look at this kind of thing, but it’s an occasionreally for doing so.  You haven’tseenit?  Then you must.  The man has actually got atyou, at what Ialways feel, you know.”  LadyJane threw into her eyes a look evidently intended to give anidea of what she always felt; but she added that shecouldn’t have expressed it.  The man in the paperexpressed it in a striking manner.  “Just see there,and there, where I’ve dashed it, how he brings itout.”  She had literally marked for him the brightestpatches of my prose, and if I was a little amused Vereker himselfmay well have been.  He showed how much he was when beforeus all Lady Jane wanted to read something aloud.  I liked atany rate the way he defeated her purpose by jerking the paperaffectionately out of her clutch.  He’d take itupstairs with him and look at it on going to dress.  He didthis half an hour later—I saw it in his hand when herepaired to his room.  That was the moment at which,thinking to give her pleasure, I mentioned to Lady Jane that Iwas the author of the review.  I did give her pleasure, Ijudged, but perhaps not quite so much as I had expected.  Ifthe author was “only me” the thing didn’t seemquite so remarkable.  Hadn’t I had the effect ratherof diminishing the lustre of the article than of adding to myown?  Her ladyship was subject to the most extraordinarydrops.  It didn’t matter; the only effect I caredabout was the one it would have on Vereker up there by hisbedroom fire.

At dinner I watched for the signs of this impression, tried tofancy some happier light in his eyes; but to my disappointmentLady Jane gave me no chance to make sure.  I had hopedshe’d call triumphantly down the table, publicly demand ifshe hadn’t been right.  The party waslarge—there were people from outside as well, but I hadnever seen a table long enough to deprive Lady Jane of atriumph.  I was just reflecting in truth that thisinterminable board would deprive meof one when the guestnext me, dear woman—she was Miss Poyle, the vicar’ssister, a robust unmodulated person—had the happyinspiration and the unusual courage to address herself across itto Vereker, who was opposite, but not directly, so that when hereplied they were both leaning forward.  She enquired,artless body, what he thought of Lady Jane’s“panegyric,” which she had read—not connectingit however with her right-hand neighbour; and while I strained myear for his reply I heard him, to my stupefaction, call backgaily, his mouth full of bread: “Oh, it’s allright—the usual twaddle!”

I had caught Vereker’s glance as he spoke, but MissPoyle’s surprise was a fortunate cover for my own. “You mean he doesn’t do you justice?” said theexcellent woman.

Vereker laughed out, and I was happy to be able to do thesame.  “It’s a charming article,” hetossed us.

Miss Poyle thrust her chin half across the cloth. “Oh, you’re so deep!” she drove home.

“As deep as the ocean!  All I pretend is that theauthor doesn’t see—”  But a dish was atthis point passed over his shoulder, and we had to wait while hehelped himself.

“Doesn’t see what?” my neighbourcontinued.

“Doesn’t see anything.”

“Dear me—how very stupid!”

“Not a bit,” Vereker laughed main. “Nobody does.”

The lady on his further side appealed to him, and Miss Poylesank back to myself.  “Nobody sees anything!”she cheerfully announced; to which I replied that I had oftenthought so too, but had somehow taken the thought for a proof onmy own part of a tremendous eye.  I didn’t tell herthe article was mine; and I observed that Lady Jane, occupied atthe end of the table, had not caught Vereker’s words.

I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck meas cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. “The usual twaddle”—my acute littlestudy!  That one’s admiration should have had areserve or two could gall him to that point!  I had thoughthim placid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hardpolished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity.  I wasreally ruffled, and the only comfort was that if nobody sawanything George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies haddispersed, to carry me in the proper manner—I mean in aspotted jacket and humming an air—into thesmoking-room.  I took my way in some dejection to bed; butin the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who had been up oncemore to change, coming out of his room.  Hewashumming an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he sawme his gaiety gave a start.

“My dear young man,” he exclaimed,“I’m so glad to lay hands on you!  I’mafraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words of mine atdinner to Miss Poyle.  I learned but half an hour ago fromLady Jane that you’re the author of the little notice inThe Middle.”

I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me tomy own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for afracture; and on hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leaveto cross my threshold and just tell me in three words what hisqualification of my remarks had represented.  It was plainhe really feared I was hurt, and the sense of his solicitudesuddenly made all the difference to me.  My cheap reviewfluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in itbecame flat enough beside the brilliancy of his beingthere.  I can see him there still, on my rug, in thefirelight and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face all brightwith the desire to be tender to my youth.  I don’tknow what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight ofmy relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lipsfrom far within.  It was so these words presently conveyedto me something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never utteredto any one.  I’ve always done justice to the generousimpulse that made him speak; it was simply compunction for a snubunconsciously administered to a man of letters in a positioninferior to his own, a man of letters moreover in the very act ofpraising him.  To make the thing right he talked to meexactly as an equal and on the ground of what we both lovedbest.  The hour, the place, the unexpectedness deepened theimpression: he couldn’t have done anything more intenselyeffective.

CHAPTER III.

“I don’t quite know howto explain it to you,” he said, “but it was the veryfact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence, itwas just your exceptional sharpness, that produced thefeeling—a very old story with me, I beg you tobelieve—under the momentary influence of which I used inspeaking to that good lady the words you so naturallyresent.  I don’t read the things in the newspapersunless they’re thrust upon me as that onewas—it’s always one’s best friend who doesit!  But I used to read them sometimes—ten yearsago.  I dare say they were in general rather stupider then;at any rate it always struck me they missed my little point witha perfection exactly as admirable when they patted me on the backas when they kicked me in the shins.  Whenever sinceI’ve happened to have a glimpse of them they were stillblazing away—still missing it, I mean, deliciously. Youmiss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance;the fact of your being awfully clever and your article’sbeing awfully nice doesn’t make a hair’s breadth ofdifference.  It’s quite with you rising youngmen,” Vereker laughed, “that I feel most what afailure I am!”

I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as hetalked.  “Youa failure—heavens! What then may your ‘little point’ happen tobe?”

“Have I got to tellyou, after all these yearsand labours?”  There was something in the friendlyreproach of this—jocosely exaggerated—that made me,as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush to the roots of myhair.  I’m as much in the dark as ever, thoughI’ve grown used in a sense to my obtuseness; at thatmoment, however, Vereker’s happy accent made me appear tomyself, and probably to him, a rare dunce.  I was on thepoint of exclaiming “Ah yes, don’t tell me: for myhonour, for that of the craft, don’t!” when he wenton in a manner that showed he had read my thought and had his ownidea of the probability of our some day redeemingourselves.  “By my little point I mean—whatshall I call it?—the particular thing I’ve written mybooks most for.  Isn’t there for every writer aparticular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes himapply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which hewouldn’t write at all, the very passion of his passion, thepart of the business in which, for him, the flame of art burnsmost intensely?  Well, it’s that!”

I considered a moment—that is I followed at a respectfuldistance, rather gasping.  I was fascinated—easily,you’ll say; but I wasn’t going after all to be putoff my guard.  “Your description’s certainlybeautiful, but it doesn’t make what you describe verydistinct.”

“I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn onyou at all.”  I saw that the charm of our topicoverflowed for my companion into an emotion as lively as myown.  “At any rate,” he went on, “I canspeak for myself: there’s an idea in my work without whichI wouldn’t have given a straw for the whole job. It’s the finest fullest intention of the lot, and theapplication of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, ofingenuity.  I ought to leave that to somebody else to say;but that nobody does say it is precisely what we’re talkingabout.  It stretches, this little trick of mine, from bookto book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over thesurface of it.  The order, the form, the texture of my bookswill perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a completerepresentation of it.  So it’s naturally the thing forthe critic to look for.  It strikes me,” my visitoradded, smiling, “even as the thing for the critic tofind.”

This seemed a responsibility indeed.  “You call ita little trick?”

“That’s only my little modesty.  It’sreally an exquisite scheme.”

“And you hold that you’ve carried the schemeout?”

“The way I’ve carried it out is the thing in lifeI think a bit well of myself for.”

I had a pause.  “Don’t you think youought—just a trifle—to assist the critic?”

“Assist him?  What else have I done with everystroke of my pen?  I’ve shouted my intention in hisgreat blank face!”  At this, laughing out again,Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show the allusionwasn’t to my personal appearance.

“But you talk about the initiated.  There musttherefore, you see, beinitiation.”

“What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposedto be?”  I’m afraid I coloured at this too; butI took refuge in repeating that his account of his silver liningwas poor in something or other that a plain man knows thingsby.  “That’s only because you’ve never hada glimpse of it,” he returned.  “If you had hadone the element in question would soon have become practicallyall you’d see.  To me it’s exactly as palpableas the marble of this chimney.  Besides, the critic justisn’ta plain man: if he were, pray, what would hebe doing in his neighbour’s garden?  You’reanything but a plain man yourself, and the very raisond’être of you all is that you’re little demonsof subtlety.  If my great affair’s a secret,that’s only because it’s a secret in spite ofitself—the amazing event has made it one.  I not onlynever took the smallest precaution to keep it so, but neverdreamed of any such accident.  If I had I shouldn’t inadvance have had the heart to go on.  As it was, I onlybecame aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done mywork.”

“And now you quite like it?” I risked.

“My work?”

“Your secret.  It’s the samething.”

“Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is aproof that you’re as clever as I say!”  I wasencouraged by this to remark that he would clearly be pained topart with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him nowthe great amusement of life.  “I live almost to see ifit will ever be detected.”  He looked at me for ajesting challenge; something far within his eyes seemed to peepout.  “But I needn’t worry—itwon’t!”

“You fire me as I’ve never been fired,” Ideclared; “you make me determined to do ordie.”  Then I asked: “Is it a kind of esotericmessage?”

His countenance fell at this—he put out his hand as ifto bid me good-night.  “Ah my dear fellow, itcan’t be described in cheap journalese!”

I knew of course he’d be awfully fastidious, but ourtalk had made me feel how much his nerves were exposed.  Iwas unsatisfied—I kept hold of his hand.  “Iwon’t make use of the expression then,” I said,“in the article in which I shall eventually announce mydiscovery, though I dare say I shall have hard work to do withoutit.  But meanwhile, just to hasten that difficult birth,can’t you give a fellow a clue?”  I felt muchmore at my ease.

“My whole lucid effort gives him the clue—everypage and line and letter.  The thing’s as concretethere as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese ina mouse-trap.  It’s stuck into every volume as yourfoot is stuck into your shoe.  It governs every line, itchooses every word, it dots every i, it places everycomma.”

I scratched my head.  “Is it something in the styleor something in the thought?  An element of form or anelement of feeling?”

He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions tobe crude and my distinctions pitiful.  “Good-night, mydear boy—don’t bother about it.  After all, youdo like a fellow.”

“And a little intelligence might spoil it?” Istill detained him.

He hesitated.  “Well, you’ve got a heart inyour body.  Is that an element of form or an element offeeling?  What I contend that nobody has ever mentioned inmy work is the organ of life.”

“I see—it’s some idea aboutlife,some sort of philosophy.  Unless it be,” I added withthe eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, “somekind of game you’re up to with your style, somethingyou’re after in the language.  Perhaps it’s apreference for the letter P!” I ventured profanely to breakout.  “Papa, potatoes, prunes—that sort ofthing?”  He was suitably indulgent: he only said Ihadn’t got the right letter.  But his amusement wasover; I could see he was bored.  There was neverthelesssomething else I had absolutely to learn.  “Should yoube able, pen in hand, to state it clearly yourself—to nameit, phrase it, formulate it?”

“Oh,” he almost passionately sighed, “if Iwere only, pen in hand, one of youchaps!”

“That would be a great chance for you of course. But why should you despise us chaps for not doing what youcan’t do yourself?”

“Can’t do?”  He opened his eyes. “Haven’t I done it in twenty volumes?  I do itin my way,” he continued.  “Go youanddon’t do it in yours.”

“Ours is so devilish difficult,” I weaklyobserved.

“So’s mine.  We each choose our own. There’s no compulsion.  You won’t come down andsmoke?”

“No.  I want to think this thing out.”

“You’ll tell me then in the morning thatyou’ve laid me bare?”

“I’ll see what I can do; I’ll sleep onit.  But just one word more,” I added.  We hadleft the room—I walked again with him a few steps along thepassage.  “This extraordinary ‘generalintention,’ as you call it—for that’s the mostvivid description I can induce you to make of it—is then,generally, a sort of buried treasure?”

His face lighted.  “Yes, call it that, thoughit’s perhaps not for me to do so.”

“Nonsense!” I laughed.  “You knowyou’re hugely proud of it.”

“Well, I didn’t propose to tell you so; but itisthe joy of my soul!”

“You mean it’s a beauty so rare, sogreat?”

He waited a little again.  “The loveliest thing inthe world!”  We had stopped, and on these words heleft me; but at the end of the corridor, while I looked after himrather yearningly, he turned and caught sight of my puzzledface.  It made him earnestly, indeed I thought quiteanxiously, shake his head and wave his finger “Give itup—give it up!”

This wasn’t a challenge—it was fatherlyadvice.  If I had had one of his books at hand I’dhave repeated my recent act of faith—I’d have spenthalf the night with him.  At three o’clock in themorning, not sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable hewas to Lady Jane, I stole down to the library with acandle.  There wasn’t, so far as I could discover, aline of his writing in the house.

CHAPTER IV.

Returning to town I feverishlycollected them all; I picked out each in its order and held it upto the light.  This gave me a maddening month, in the courseof which several things took place.  One of these, the last,I may as well immediately mention, was that I acted onVereker’s advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I could really make nothing of the business; it proved a deadloss.  After all I had always, as he had himself noted,liked him; and what now occurred was simply that my newintelligence and vain preoccupation damaged my liking.  Inot only failed to run a general intention to earth, I foundmyself missing the subordinate intentions I had formerlyenjoyed.  His books didn’t even remain the charmingthings they had been for me; the exasperation of my search put meout of conceit of them.  Instead of being a pleasure themore they became a resource the less; for from the moment I wasunable to follow up the author’s hint I of course felt it apoint of honour not to make use professionally of my knowledge ofthem.  I hadno knowledge—nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it—they only annoyedme now.  At last they even bored me, and I accounted for myconfusion—perversely, I allow—by the idea thatVereker had made a fool of me.  The buried treasure was abad joke, the general intention a monstrous pose.

The great point of it all is, however, that I told GeorgeCorvick what had befallen me and that my information had animmense effect upon him.  He had at last come back, but so,unfortunately, had Mrs. Erme, and there was as yet, I could see,no question of his nuptials.  He was immensely stirred up bythe anecdote I had brought from Bridges; it fell in so completelywith the sense he had had from the first that there was more inVereker than met the eye.  When I remarked that the eyeseemed what the printed page had been expressly invented to meethe immediately accused me of being spiteful because I had beenfoiled.  Our commerce had always that pleasantlatitude.  The thing Vereker had mentioned to me was exactlythe thing he, Corvick, had wanted me to speak of in myreview.  On my suggesting at last that with the assistance Ihad now given him he would doubtless be prepared to speak of ithimself he admitted freely that before doing this there was morehe must understand.  What he would have said, had hereviewed the new book, was that there was evidently in thewriter’s inmost art something to beunderstood.  I hadn’t so much as hinted at that: nowonder the writer hadn’t been flattered!  I askedCorvick what he really considered he meant by his ownsupersubtlety, and, unmistakeably kindled, he replied: “Itisn’t for the vulgar—it isn’t for thevulgar!”  He had hold of the tail of something; hewould pull hard, pull it right out.  He pumped me dry onVereker’s strange confidence and, pronouncing me theluckiest of mortals, mentioned half a dozen questions he wishedto goodness I had had the gumption to put.  Yet on the otherhand he didn’t want to be told too much—it wouldspoil the fun of seeing what would come.  The failure ofmyfun was at the moment of our meeting not complete, butI saw it ahead, and Corvick saw that I saw it.  I, on myside, saw likewise that one of the first things he would do wouldbe to rush off with my story to Gwendolen.

On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by thereceipt of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter atBridges had been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in amagazine, on some article to which my signature wasattached.  “I read it with great pleasure,” hewrote, “and remembered under its influence our livelyconversation by your bedroom fire.  The consequence of thishas been that I begin to measure the temerity of my havingsaddled you with a knowledge that you may find something of aburden.  Now that the fit’s over I can’t imaginehow I came to be moved so much beyond my wont.  I had neverbefore mentioned, no matter in what state of expansion, the factof my little secret, and I shall never speak of that mysteryagain.  I was accidentally so much more explicit with youthan it had ever entered into my game to be, that I find thisgame—I mean the pleasure of playing it—suffersconsiderably.  In short, if you can understand it,I’ve rather spoiled my sport.  I really don’twant to give anybody what I believe you clever young men call thetip.  That’s of course a selfish solicitude, and Iname it to you for what it may be worth to you.  Ifyou’re disposed to humour me don’t repeat myrevelation.  Think me demented—it’s your right;but don’t tell anybody why.”

The sequel to this communication was that as early on themorrow as I dared I drove straight to Mr. Vereker’sdoor.  He occupied in those years one of the honest oldhouses in Kensington Square.  He received me immediately,and as soon as I came in I saw I hadn’t lost my power tominister to his mirth.  He laughed out at sight of my face,which doubtless expressed my perturbation.  I had beenindiscreet—my compunction was great.  “Ihavetold somebody,” I panted, “and I’msure that person will by this time have told somebody else! It’s a woman, into the bargain.”

“The person you’ve told?”

“No, the other person.  I’m quite sure hemust have told her.”

“For all the good it will do her—or dome!  A woman will never find out.”

“No, but she’ll talk all over the place:she’ll do just what you don’t want.”

Vereker thought a moment, but wasn’t so disconcerted asI had feared: he felt that if the harm was done it only servedhim right.  “It doesn’t matter—don’tworry.”

“I’ll do my best, I promise you, that your talkwith me shall go no further.”

“Very good; do what you can.”

“In the meantime,” I pursued, “GeorgeCorvick’s possession of the tip may, on his part, reallylead to something.”

“That will be a brave day.”

I told him about Corvick’s cleverness, his admiration,the intensity of his interest in my anecdote; and without makingtoo much of the divergence of our respective estimates mentionedthat my friend was already of opinion that he saw much furtherinto a certain affair than most people.  He was quite asfired as I had been at Bridges.  He was moreover in lovewith the young lady: perhaps the two together would puzzlesomething out.

Vereker seemed struck with this.  “Do you meanthey’re to be married?”

“I dare say that’s what it will cometo.”

“That may help them,” he conceded, “but wemust give them time!”

I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed mydifficulties; whereupon he repeated his former advice:“Give it up, give it up!”  He evidentlydidn’t think me intellectually equipped for theadventure.  I stayed half an hour, and he was mostgood-natured, but I couldn’t help pronouncing him a man ofunstable moods.  He had been free with me in a mood, he hadrepented in a mood, and now in a mood he had turnedindifferent.  This general levity helped me to believe that,so far as the subject of the tip went, there wasn’t much init.  I contrived however to make him answer a few morequestions about it, though he did so with visibleimpatience.  For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we wereall so blank about was vividly there.  It was something, Iguessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in aPersian carpet.  He highly approved of this image when Iused it, and he used another himself.  “It’s thevery string,” he said, “that my pearls are strungon!”  The reason of his note to me had been that hereally didn’t want to give us a grain of succour—ourdensity was a thing too perfect in its way to touch.  He hadformed the habit of depending on it, and if the spell was tobreak it must break by some force of its own.  He comes backto me from that last occasion—for I was never to speak tohim again—as a man with some safe preserve for sport. I wondered as I walked away where he had got histip.

CHAPTER V.

When I spoke to George Corvick ofthe caution I had received he made me feel that any doubt of hisdelicacy would be almost an insult.  He had instantly toldGwendolen, but Gwendolen’s ardent response was in itself apledge of discretion.  The question would now absorb themand would offer them a pastime too precious to be shared with thecrowd.  They appeared to have caught instinctively atVereker’s high idea of enjoyment.  Their intellectualpride, however, was not such as to make them indifferent to anyfurther light I might throw on the affair they had in hand. They were indeed of the “artistic temperament,” and Iwas freshly struck with my colleague’s power to excitehimself over a question of art.  He’d call it letters,he’d call it life, but it was all one thing.  In whathe said I now seemed to understand that he spoke equally forGwendolen, to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently betterto allow her a little leisure, he made a point of introducingme.  I remember our going together one Sunday in August to ahuddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick’spossession of a friend who had some light to mingle with hisown.  He could say things to her that I could never say tohim.  She had indeed no sense of humour and, with her prettyway of holding her head on one side, was one of those personswhom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learntHungarian by themselves.  She conversed perhaps in Hungarianwith Corvick; she had remarkably little English for hisfriend.  Corvick afterwards told me that I had chilled herby my apparent indisposition to oblige them with the detail ofwhat Vereker had said to me.  I allowed that I felt I hadgiven thought enough to that indication: hadn’t I even madeup my mind that it was vain and would lead nowhere?  Theimportance they attached to it was irritating and quite envenomedmy doubts.

That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happened wasthat I felt humiliated at seeing other persons deeply beguiled byan experiment that had brought me only chagrin.  I was outin the cold while, by the evening fire, under the lamp, theyfollowed the chase for which I myself had sounded the horn. They did as I had done, only more deliberately andsociably—they went over their author from thebeginning.  There was no hurry, Corvick said the future wasbefore them and the fascination could only grow; they would takehim page by page, as they would take one of the classics, inhalehim in slow draughts and let him sink all the way in.  Theywould scarce have got so wound up, I think, if they hadn’tbeen in love: poor Vereker’s inner meaning gave themendless occasion to put and to keep their young headstogether.  None the less it represented the kind of problemfor which Corvick had a special aptitude, drew out the particularpointed patience of which, had he lived, he would have given morestriking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples.  Heat least was, in Vereker’s words, a little demon ofsubtlety.  We had begun by disputing, but I soon saw thatwithout my stirring a finger his infatuation would have its badhours.  He would bound off on false scents as I haddone—he would clap his hands over new lights and see themblown out by the wind of the turned page.  He was likenothing, I told him, but the maniacs who embrace somebedlamitical theory of the cryptic character ofShakespeare.  To this he replied that if we had hadShakespeare’s own word for his being cryptic he would atonce have accepted it.  The case there was altogetherdifferent—we had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I returned that I was stupefied to see him attach such importanceeven to the word of Mr. Vereker.  He wanted thereupon toknow if I treated Mr. Vereker’s word as a lie.  Iwasn’t perhaps prepared, in my unhappy rebound, to go sofar as that, but I insisted that till the contrary was proved Ishould view it as too fond an imagination.  I didn’t,I confess, say—I didn’t at that time quiteknow—all I felt.  Deep down, as Miss Erme would havesaid, I was uneasy, I was expectant.  At the core of mydisconcerted state—for my wonted curiosity lived in itsashes—was the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would atlast probably come out somewhere.  He made, in defence ofhis credulity, a great point of the fact that from of old, in hisstudy of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints of hedidn’t know what, faint wandering notes of a hiddenmusic.  That was just the rarity, that was the charm: itfitted so perfectly into what I reported.

If I returned on several occasions to the little house inChelsea I dare say it was as much for news of Vereker as for newsof Miss Erme’s ailing parent.  The hours spent thereby Corvick were present to my fancy as those of a chessplayerbent with a silent scowl, all the lamplit winter, over his boardand his moves.  As my imagination filled it out the pictureheld me fast.  On the other side of the table was aghostlier form, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredlybut a little wearily secure—an antagonist who leaned backin his chair with his hands in his pockets and a smile on hisfine clear face.  Close to Corvick, behind him, was a girlwho had begun to strike me as pale and wasted and even, on morefamiliar view, as rather handsome, and who rested on his shoulderand hung on his moves.  He would take up a chessman and holdit poised a while over one of the little squares, and then wouldput it back in its place with a long sigh ofdisappointment.  The young lady, at this, would slightly butuneasily shift her position and look across, very hard, verylong, very strangely, at their dim participant.  I had askedthem at an early stage of the business if it mightn’tcontribute to their success to have some closer communicationwith him.  The special circumstances would surely be held tohave given me a right to introduce them.  Corvickimmediately replied that he had no wish to approach the altarbefore he had prepared the sacrifice.  He quite agreed withour friend both as to the delight and as to the honour of thechase—he would bring down the animal with his ownrifle.  When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot hesaid after thinking: “No, I’m ashamed to say shewants to set a trap.  She’d give anything to see him;she says she requires another tip.  She’s really quitemorbid about it.  But she must play fair—sheshan’tsee him!” he emphatically added. I wondered if they hadn’t even quarrelled a little on thesubject—a suspicion not corrected by the way he more thanonce exclaimed to me: “She’s quite incrediblyliterary, you know—quite fantastically!”  Iremember his saying of her that she felt in italics and thoughtin capitals.  “Oh when I’ve run him toearth,” he also said, “then, you know, I shall knockat his door.  Rather—I beg you to believe. I’ll have it from his own lips: ‘Right you are, myboy; you’ve done it this time!’  He shall crownme victor—with the critical laurel.”

Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might havegiven him of meeting the distinguished novelist; a danger,however, that disappeared with Vereker’s leaving Englandfor an indefinite absence, as the newspapersannounced—going to the south for motives connected with thehealth of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement. A year—more than a year—had elapsed since theincident at Bridges, but I had had no further sight of him. I think I was at bottom rather ashamed—I hated to remindhim that, though I had irremediably missed his point, areputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me.  Thisscruple led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane’s house,made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was asecond time so good as to make me a sign, an invitation to herbeautiful seat.  I once became aware of her underVereker’s escort at a concert, and was sure I was seen bythem, but I slipped out without being caught.  I felt, as onthat occasion I splashed along in the rain, that I couldn’thave done anything else; and yet I remember saying to myself thatit was hard, was even cruel.  Not only had I lost the books,but I had lost the man himself: they and their author had beenalike spoiled for me.  I knew too which was the loss I mostregretted.  I had taken to the man still more than I hadever taken to the books.

CHAPTER VI.

Six months after our friend hadleft England George Corvick, who made his living by his pen,contracted for a piece of work which imposed on him an absence ofsome length and a journey of some difficulty, and his undertakingof which was much of a surprise to me.  His brother-in-lawhad become editor of a great provincial paper, and the greatprovincial paper, in a fine flight of fancy, had conceived theidea of sending a “special commissioner” toIndia.  Special commissioners had begun, in the“metropolitan press,” to be the fashion, and thejournal in question must have felt it had passed too long for amere country cousin.  Corvick had no hand, I knew, for thebig brush of the correspondent, but that was hisbrother-in-law’s affair, and the fact that a particulartask was not in his line was apt to be with himself exactly areason for accepting it.  He was prepared to out-Herod themetropolitan press; he took solemn precautions againstpriggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste.  Nobody everknew it—that offended principle was all his own.  Inaddition to his expenses he was to be conveniently paid, and Ifound myself able to help him, for the usual fat book, to aplausible arrangement with the usual fat publisher.  Inaturally inferred that his obvious desire to make a little moneywas not unconnected with the prospect of a union with GwendolenErme.  I was aware that her mother’s opposition waslargely addressed to his want of means and of lucrativeabilities, but it so happened that, on my saying the last time Isaw him something that bore on the question of his separationfrom our young lady, he brought out with an emphasis thatstartled me: “Ah I’m not a bit engaged to her, youknow!”

“Not overtly,” I answered, “because hermother doesn’t like you.  But I’ve always takenfor granted a private understanding.”

“Well, there wasone.  But there isn’tnow.”  That was all he said save something about Mrs.Erme’s having got on her feet again in the mostextraordinary way—a remark pointing, as I supposed, themoral that private understandings were of little use when thedoctor didn’t share them.  What I took the liberty ofmore closely inferring was that the girl might in some way haveestranged him.  Well, if he had taken the turn of jealousyfor instance it could scarcely be jealousy of me.  In thatcase—over and above the absurdity of it—hewouldn’t have gone away just to leave us together. For some time before his going we had indulged in no allusion tothe buried treasure, and from his silence, which my reservesimply emulated, I had drawn a sharp conclusion.  Hiscourage had dropped, his ardour had gone the way ofmine—this appearance at least he left me to scan. More than that he couldn’t do; he couldn’t face thetriumph with which I might have greeted an explicitadmission.  He needn’t have been afraid, poor dear,for I had by this time lost all need to triumph.  In fact Iconsidered I showed magnanimity in not reproaching him with hiscollapse, for the sense of his having thrown up the game made mefeel more than ever how much I at last depended on him.  IfCorvick had broken down I should never know; no one would be ofany use if hewasn’t.  It wasn’t a bittrue I had ceased to care for knowledge; little by little mycuriosity not only had begun to ache again, but had become thefamiliar torment of my days and my nights.  There aredoubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardlymore natural than the contortions of disease; but I don’tafter all know why I should in this connexion so much as mentionthem.  For the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not,with whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game ofskill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, andhonour meant passion, meant life.  The stake on the tablewas of a special substance and our roulette the revolving mind,but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblersat Monte Carlo.  Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with herwhite face and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of the leanladies one had met in the temples of chance.  I recognisedin Corvick’s absence that she made this analogyvivid.  It was extravagant, I admit, the way she lived forthe art of the pen.  Her passion visibly preyed on her, andin her presence I felt almost tepid.  I got hold of“Deep Down” again: it was a desert in which she hadlost herself, but in which too she had dug a wonderful hole inthe sand—a cavity out of which Corvick had still moreremarkably pulled her.

Early in March I had a telegram from her, in consequence ofwhich I repaired immediately to Chelsea, where the first thingshe said to me was: “He has got it, he has gotit!”

She was moved, as I could see, to such depths that she mustmean the great thing.  “Vereker’sidea?”

“His general intention.  George has cabled fromBombay.”

She had the missive open there; it was emphatic thoughconcise.  “Eureka.  Immense.”  Thatwas all—he had saved the cost of the signature.  Ishared her emotion, but I was disappointed.  “Hedoesn’t say what it is.”

“How could he—in a telegram?  He’llwrite it.”

“But how does he know?”

“Know it’s the real thing?  Oh I’m surethat when you see it you do know.  Vera incessu patuitdea!”

“It’s you, Miss Erme, who are a ‘dear’for bringing me such news!”—I went all lengths in myhigh spirits.  “But fancy finding our goddess in thetemple of Vishnu!  How strange of George to have been ableto go into the thing again in the midst of such different andsuch powerful solicitations!”

“He hasn’t gone into it, I know; it’s thething itself, let severely alone for six months, that has simplysprung out at him like a tigress out of the jungle.  Hedidn’t take a book with him—on purpose; indeed hewouldn’t have needed to—he knows every page, as I do,by heart.  They all worked in him together, and some daysomewhere, when he wasn’t thinking, they fell, in all theirsuperb intricacy, into the one right combination.  Thefigure in the carpet came out.  That’s the way he knewit would come and the real reason—you didn’t in theleast understand, but I suppose I may tell you now—why hewent and why I consented to his going.  We knew the changewould do it—that the difference of thought, of scene, wouldgive the needed touch, the magic shake.  We had perfectly,we had admirably calculated.  The elements were all in hismind, and in the secousse of a new and intense experience theyjust struck light.”  She positively struck lightherself—she was literally, facially luminous.  Istammered something about unconscious cerebration, and shecontinued: “He’ll come right home—this willbring him.”

“To see Vereker, you mean?”

“To see Vereker—and to see me.  Thinkwhat he’ll have to tell me!”

I hesitated.  “About India?”

“About fiddlesticks!  About Vereker—about thefigure in the carpet.”

“But, as you say, we shall surely have that in aletter.”

She thought like one inspired, and I remembered how Corvickhad told me long before that her face was interesting. “Perhaps it can’t be got into a letter if it’s‘immense.’”

“Perhaps not if it’s immense bosh.  If he hashold of something that can’t be got into a letter hehasn’t hold of thething.  Vereker’s ownstatement to me was exactly that the ‘figure’wouldfit into a letter.”

“Well, I cabled to George an hour ago—twowords,” said Gwendolen.

“Is it indiscreet of me to ask what theywere?”

She hung fire, but at last brought them out. “‘Angel, write.’”

“Good!” I exclaimed.  “I’ll makeit sure—I’ll send him the same.”

CHAPTER VII.

My words however were notabsolutely the same—I put something instead of“angel”; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the moreapt, for when eventually we heard from our traveller it wasmerely, it was thoroughly to be tantalised.  He wasmagnificent in his triumph, he described his discovery asstupendous; but his ecstasy only obscured it—there were tobe no particulars till he should have submitted his conception tothe supreme authority.  He had thrown up his commission, hehad thrown up his book, he had thrown up everything but theinstant need to hurry to Rapallo, on the Genoese shore, whereVereker was making a stay.  I wrote him a letter which wasto await him at Aden—I besought him to relieve mysuspense.  That he had found my letter was indicated by atelegram which, reaching me after weary days and in the absenceof any answer to my laconic dispatch to him at Bombay, wasevidently intended as a reply to both communications.  Thosefew words were in familiar French, the French of the day, whichCovick often made use of to show he wasn’t a prig.  Ithad for some persons the opposite effect, but his message mayfairly be paraphrased.  “Have patience; I want to see,as it breaks on you, the face you’ll make!” “Tellement envie de voir ta tête!”—thatwas what I had to sit down with.  I can certainly not besaid to have sat down, for I seem to remember myself at this timeas rattling constantly between the little house in Chelsea and myown.  Our impatience, Gwendolen’s and mine, was equal,but I kept hoping her light would be greater.  We all spentduring this episode, for people of our means, a great deal ofmoney in telegrams and cabs, and I counted on the receipt of newsfrom Rapallo immediately after the junction of the discovererwith the discovered.  The interval seemed an age, but lateone day I heard a hansom precipitated to my door with the crashengendered by a hint of liberality.  I lived with my heartin my mouth and accordingly bounded to the window—amovement which gave me a view of a young lady erect on thefootboard of the vehicle and eagerly looking up at myhouse.  At sight of me she flourished a paper with amovement that brought me straight down, the movement with which,in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves are flourished at thefoot of the scaffold.

“Just seen Vereker—not a note wrong.  Pressedme to bosom—keeps me a month.”  So much I readon her paper while the cabby dropped a grin from his perch. In my excitement I paid him profusely and in hers she sufferedit; then as he drove away we started to walk about andtalk.  We had talked, heaven knows, enough before, but thiswas a wondrous lift.  We pictured the whole scene atRapallo, where he would have written, mentioning my name, forpermission to call; that is Ipictured it, having morematerial than my companion, whom I felt hang on my lips as westopped on purpose before shop-windows we didn’t lookinto.  About one thing we were clear: if he was staying onfor fuller communication we should at least have a letter fromhim that would help us through the dregs of delay.  Weunderstood his staying on, and yet each of us saw, I think, thatthe other hated it.  The letter we were clear about arrived;it was for Gwendolen, and I called on her in time to save her thetrouble of bringing it to me.  She didn’t read it out,as was natural enough; but she repeated to me what it chieflyembodied.  This consisted of the remarkable statement thathe’d tell her after they were married exactly what shewanted to know.

“Only then, when I’m his wife—notbefore,” she explained.  “It’s tantamountto saying—isn’t it?—that I must marry himstraight off!”  She smiled at me while I flushed withdisappointment, a vision of fresh delay that made me at firstunconscious of my surprise.  It seemed more than a hint thaton me as well he would impose some tiresome condition. Suddenly, while she reported several more things from his letter,I remembered what he had told me before going away.  He hadfound Mr. Vereker deliriously interesting and his own possessionof the secret a real intoxication.  The buried treasure wasall gold and gems.  Now that it was there it seemed to growand grow before him; it would have been, through all time andtaking all tongues, one of the most wonderful flowers of literaryart.  Nothing, in especial, once you were face to face withit, could show for more consummately done.  When onceit came out it came out, was there with a splendour that made youashamed; and there hadn’t been, save in the bottomlessvulgarity of the age, with every one tasteless and tainted, everysense stopped, the smallest reason why it should have beenoverlooked.  It was great, yet so simple, was simple, yet sogreat, and the final knowledge of it was an experience quiteapart.  He intimated that the charm of such an experience,the desire to drain it, in its freshness, to the last drop, waswhat kept him there close to the source.  Gwendolen, franklyradiant as she tossed me these fragments, showed the elation of aprospect more assured than my own.  That brought me back tothe question of her marriage, prompted me to ask if what shemeant by what she had just surprised me with was that she wasunder an engagement.

“Of course I am!” she answered. “Didn’t you know it?”  She seemedastonished, but I was still more so, for Corvick had told me theexact contrary.  I didn’t mention this, however; Ionly reminded her how little I had been on that score in herconfidence, or even in Corvick’s, and that, moreover Iwasn’t in ignorance of her mother’s interdict. At bottom I was troubled by the disparity of the two accounts;but after a little I felt Corvick’s to be the one I leastdoubted.  This simply reduced me to asking myself if thegirl had on the spot improvised an engagement—vamped up anold one or dashed off a new—in order to arrive at thesatisfaction she desired.  She must have had resources ofwhich I was destitute, but she made her case slightly moreintelligible by returning presently: “What the state ofthings has been is that we felt of course bound to do nothing inmamma’s lifetime.”

“But now you think you’ll just dispense withmamma’s consent?”

“Ah it mayn’t come to that!”  Iwondered what it might come to, and she went on: “Poordear, she may swallow the dose.  In fact, you know,”she added with a laugh, “she reallymust!”—a proposition of which, on behalf ofevery one concerned, I fully acknowledged the force.

CHAPTER VIII.

Nothing more vexatious had everhappened to me than to become aware before Corvick’sarrival in England that I shouldn’t be there to put himthrough.  I found myself abruptly called to Germany by thealarming illness of my younger brother, who, against my advice,had gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a greatmaster, the art of portraiture in oils.  The near relativewho made him an allowance had threatened to withdraw it if heshould, under specious pretexts, turn for superior truth toParis—Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, theschool of evil, the abyss.  I deplored this prejudice at thetime, and the deep injury of it was now visible—first inthe fact that it hadn’t saved the poor boy, who was clever,frail and foolish, from congestion of the lungs, and second inthe greater break with London to which the event condemnedme.  I’m afraid that what was uppermost in my mindduring several anxious weeks was the sense that if we had onlybeen in Paris I might have run over to see Corvick.  Thiswas actually out of the question from every point of view: mybrother, whose recovery gave us both plenty to do, was ill forthree months, during which I never left him and at the end ofwhich we had to face the absolute prohibition of a return toEngland.  The consideration of climate imposed itself, andhe was in no state to meet it alone.  I took him to Meranand there spent the summer with him, trying to show him byexample how to get back to work and nursing a rage of anothersort that I tried notto show him.

The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomenaso strangely interlaced that, taken together—which was howI had to take them—they form as good an illustration as Ican recall of the manner in which, for the good of his souldoubtless, fate sometimes deals with a man’s avidity. These incidents certainly had larger bearings than thecomparatively meagre consequence we are here concernedwith—though I feel that consequence also a thing to speakof with some respect.  It’s mainly in such a light, Iconfess, at any rate, that the ugly fruit of my exile is at thishour present to me.  Even at first indeed the spirit inwhich my avidity, as I have called it, made me regard that termowed no element of ease to the fact that before coming back fromRapallo George Corvick addressed me in a way I objected to. His letter had none of the sedative action I must to-day professmyself sure he had wished to give it, and the march ofoccurrences was not so ordered as to make up for what itlacked.  He had begun on the spot, for one of thequarterlies, a great last word on Vereker’s writings, andthis exhaustive study, the only one that would have counted, haveexisted, was to turn on the new light, to utter—oh, soquietly!—the unimagined truth.  It was in other wordsto trace the figure in the carpet through every convolution, toreproduce it in every tint.  The result, according to myfriend, would be the greatest literary portrait ever painted, andwhat he asked of me was just to be so good as not to trouble himwith questions till he should hang up his masterpiece beforeme.  He did me the honour to declare that, putting aside thegreat sitter himself, all aloft in his indifference, I wasindividually the connoisseur he was most working for.  I wastherefore to be a good boy and not try to peep under the curtainbefore the show was ready: I should enjoy it all the more if Isat very still.

I did my best to sit very still, but I couldn’t helpgiving a jump on seeing in The Times, after I had been aweek or two in Munich and before, as I knew, Corvick had reachedLondon, the announcement of the sudden death of poor Mrs.Erme.  I instantly, by letter, appealed to Gwendolen forparticulars, and she wrote me that her mother had yielded tolong-threatened failure of the heart.  She didn’t say,but I took the liberty of reading into her words, that from thepoint of view of her marriage and also of her eagerness, whichwas quite a match for mine, this was a solution more prompt thancould have been expected and more radical than waiting for theold lady to swallow the dose.  I candidly admit indeed thatat the time—for I heard from her repeatedly—I readsome singular things into Gwendolen’s words and some stillmore extraordinary ones into her silences.  Pen in hand,this way, I live the time over, and it brings back the oddestsense of my having been, both for months and in spite of myself,a kind of coerced spectator.  All my life had taken refugein my eyes, which the procession of events appeared to havecommitted itself to keep astare.  There were days when Ithought of writing to Hugh Vereker and simply throwing myself onhis charity.  But I felt more deeply that I hadn’tfallen quite so low—besides which, quite properly, he wouldsend me about my business.  Mrs. Erme’s death broughtCorvick straight home, and within the month he was united“very quietly”—as quietly, I seemed to makeout, as he meant in his article to bring out histrouvaille—to the young lady he had loved andquitted.  I use this last term, I may parenthetically say,because I subsequently grew sure that at the time he went toIndia, at the time of his great news from Bombay, there had beenno positive pledge between them whatever.  There had beennone at the moment she was affirming to me the veryopposite.  On the other hand he had certainly become engagedthe day he returned.  The happy pair went down to Torquayfor their honeymoon, and there, in a reckless hour, it occurredto poor Corvick to take his young bride a drive.  He had nocommand of that business: this had been brought home to me of oldin a little tour we had once made together in a dogcart.  Ina dogcart he perched his companion for a rattle over Devonshirehills, on one of the likeliest of which he brought his horse,who, it was true, had bolted, down with such violence that theoccupants of the cart were hurled forward and that he fellhorribly on his head.  He was killed on the spot; Gwendolenescaped unhurt.

I pass rapidly over the question of this unmitigated tragedy,of what the loss of my best friend meant for me, and I completemy little history of my patience and my pain by the frankstatement of my having, in a postscript to my very first letterto her after the receipt of the hideous news, asked Mrs. Corvickwhether her husband mightn’t at least have finished thegreat article on Vereker.  Her answer was as prompt as myquestion: the article, which had been barely begun, was a mereheartbreaking scrap.  She explained that our friend, abroad,had just settled down to it when interrupted by hermother’s death, and that then, on his return, he had beenkept from work by the engrossments into which that calamity wasto plunge them.  The opening pages were all that existed;they were striking, they were promising, but they didn’tunveil the idol.  That great intellectual feat was obviouslyto have formed his climax.  She said nothing more, nothingto enlighten me as to the state of her own knowledge—theknowledge for the acquisition of which I had fancied herprodigiously acting.  This was above all what I wanted toknow: had sheseen the idol unveiled?  Had there beena private ceremony for a palpitating audience of one?  Forwhat else but that ceremony had the nuptials taken place?  Ididn’t like as yet to press her, though when I thought ofwhat had passed between us on the subject in Corvick’sabsence her reticence surprised me.  It was therefore nottill much later, from Meran, that I risked another appeal, riskedit in some trepidation, for she continued to tell menothing.  “Did you hear in those few days of yourblighted bliss,” I wrote, “what we desired so tohear?”  I said, “we,” as a little hint andshe showed me she could take a little hint; “I heardeverything,” she replied, “and I mean to keep it tomyself!”

CHAPTER IX.

It was impossible not to be movedwith the strongest sympathy for her, and on my return to EnglandI showed her every kindness in my power.  Her mother’sdeath had made her means sufficient, and she had gone to live ina more convenient quarter.  But her loss had been great andher visitation cruel; it never would have occurred to me moreoverto suppose she could come to feel the possession of a technicaltip, of a piece of literary experience, a counterpoise to hergrief.  Strange to say, none the less, I couldn’t helpbelieving after I had seen her a few times that I caught aglimpse of some such oddity.  I hasten to add that there hadbeen other things I couldn’t help believing, or at leastimagining; and as I never felt I was really clear about these,so, as to the point I here touch on, I give her memory thebenefit of the doubt.  Stricken and solitary, highlyaccomplished and now, in her deep mourning, her maturer grace andher uncomplaining sorrow, incontestably handsome, she presentedherself as leading a life of singular dignity and beauty.  Ihad at first found a way to persuade myself that I should soonget the better of the reserve formulated, the week after thecatastrophe in her reply to an appeal as to which I was notunconscious that it might strike her as mistimed.  Certainlythat reserve was something of a shock to me—certainly itpuzzled me the more I thought of it and even though I tried toexplain it (with moments of success) by an imputation of exaltedsentiments, of superstitious scruples, of a refinement ofloyalty.  Certainly it added at the same time hugely to theprice of Vereker’s secret, precious as this mystery alreadyappeared.  I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs.Corvick’s unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nailthat was to fix fast my luckless idea, convert it into theobsession of which I’m for ever conscious.

But this only helped me the more to be artful, to be adroit,to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit.  There wereplenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them wasdeeply absorbing.  Corvick had kept his information from hisyoung friend till after the removal of the last barrier to theirintimacy—then only had he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen’s idea, taking a hint from him, toliberate this animal only on the basis of the renewal of such arelation?  Was the figure in the carpet traceable ordescribable only for husbands and wives—for loverssupremely united?  It came back to me in a mystifying mannerthat in Kensington Square, when I mentioned that Corvick wouldhave told the girl he loved, some word had dropped from Verekerthat gave colour to this possibility.  There might be littlein it, but there was enough to make me wonder if I should have tomarry Mrs. Corvick to get what I wanted.  Was I prepared tooffer her this price for the blessing of her knowledge?  Ahthat way madness lay!—so I at least said to myself inbewildered hours.  I could see meanwhile the torch sherefused to pass on flame away in her chamber of memory—pourthrough her eyes a light that shone in her lonely house.  Atthe end of six months I was fully sure of what this warm presencemade up to her for.  We had talked again and again of theman who had brought us together—of his talent, hischaracter, his personal charm, his certain career, his dreadfuldoom, and even of his clear purpose in that great study which wasto have been a supreme literary portrait, a kind of criticalVandyke or Velasquez.  She had conveyed to me in abundancethat she was tongue-tied by her perversity, by her piety, thatshe would never break the silence it had not been given to the“right person,” as she said, to break.  The hourhowever finally arrived.  One evening when I had beensitting with her longer than usual I laid my hand firmly on herarm.  “Now at last what isit?”

She had been expecting me and was ready.  She gave a longslow soundless headshake, merciful only in beinginarticulate.  This mercy didn’t prevent its hurlingat me the largest finest coldest “Never!” I had yet,in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take fullin the face.  I took it and was aware that with the hardblow the tears had come into my eyes.  So for a while we satand looked at each other; after which I slowly rose, I waswondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not whatI brought out.  I said as I smoothed down my hat: “Iknow what to think then.  It’s nothing!”

A remote disdainful pity for me gathered in her dim smile;then she spoke in a voice that I hear at this hour:“It’s my life!”  As I stood at thedoor she added: “You’ve insulted him!”

“Do you mean Vereker?”

“I mean the Dead!”

I recognised when I reached the street the justice of hercharge.  Yes, it was her life—I recognised that too;but her life none the less made room with the lapse of time foranother interest.  A year and a half after Corvick’sdeath she published in a single volume her second novel,“Overmastered,” which I pounced on in the hope offinding in it some tell-tale echo or some peeping face.  AllI found was a much better book than her younger performance,showing I thought the better company she had kept.  As atissue tolerably intricate it was a carpet with a figure of itsown; but the figure was not the figure I was looking for. On sending a review of it to The MiddleI was surprised tolearn from the office that a notice was already in type. When the paper came out I had no hesitation in attributing thisarticle, which I thought rather vulgarly overdone, to DraytonDeane, who in the old days had been something of a friend ofCorvick’s, yet had only within a few weeks made theacquaintance of his widow.  I had had an early copy of thebook, but Deane had evidently had an earlier.  He lacked allthe same the light hand with which Corvick had gilded thegingerbread—he laid on the tinsel in splotches.

CHAPTER X.

Six months later appeared“The Right of Way,” the last chance, though wedidn’t know it, that we were to have to redeemourselves.  Written wholly during Vereker’s sojournabroad, the book had been heralded, in a hundred paragraphs, bythe usual ineptitudes.  I carried it, as early a copy asany, I this time flattered myself, straightway to Mrs.Corvick.  This was the only use I had for it; I left theinevitable tribute of The Middleto some more ingeniousmind and some less irritated temper.  “But I alreadyhave it,” Gwendolen said.  “Drayton Deane was sogood as to bring it to me yesterday, and I’ve just finishedit.”

“Yesterday?  How did he get it so soon?”

“He gets everything so soon!  He’s to reviewit in The Middle.”

“He—Drayton Deane—reviewVereker?”  I couldn’t believe my ears.

“’Why not?  One fine ignorance is as good asanother.”

I winced but I presently said: “You ought to review himyourself!”

“I don’t ‘review,’” shelaughed.  “I’m reviewed!”

Just then the door was thrown open.  “Ah yes,here’s your reviewer!”  Drayton Deane was therewith his long legs and his tall forehead: he had come to see whatshe thought of “The Right of Way,” and to bring newsthat was singularly relevant.  The evening papers were justout with a telegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome, hadbeen ill for some days with an attack of malarial fever.  Ithad at first not been thought grave, but had taken, inconsequence of complications, a turn that might give rise toanxiety.  Anxiety had indeed at the latest hour begun to befelt.

I was struck in the presence of these tidings with thefundamental detachment that Mrs. Corvick’s overt concernquite failed to hide: it gave me the measure of her consummateindependence.  That independence rested on her knowledge,the knowledge which nothing now could destroy and which nothingcould make different.  The figure in the carpet might takeon another twist or two, but the sentence had virtually beenwritten.  The writer might go down to his grave: she was theperson in the world to whom—as if she had been his favouredheir—his continued existence was least of a need. This reminded me how I had observed at a particularmoment—after Corvick’s death—the drop of herdesire to see him face to face.  She had got what she wantedwithout that.  I had been sure that if she hadn’t gotit she wouldn’t have been restrained from the endeavour tosound him personally by those superior reflexions, moreconceivable on a man’s part than on a woman’s, whichin my case had served an a deterrent.  It wasn’thowever, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of thisinvidious comparison, wasn’t ambiguous enough.  At thethought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying thererolled over me a wave of anguish—a poignant sense of howinconsistently I still depended on him.  A delicacy that itwas my one compensation to suffer to rule me had left the Alpsand the Apennines between us, but the sense of the waningoccasion suggested that I might in my despair at last have goneto him.  Of course I should really have done nothing of thesort.  I remained five minutes, while my companions talkedof the new book, and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for myopinion of it I made answer, getting up, that I detested HughVereker and simply couldn’t read him.  I departed withthe moral certainty that as the door closed behind me Deane wouldbrand me for awfully superficial.  His hostesswouldn’t contradict thatat least.

I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely oddsuccessions.  Three weeks after this came Vereker’sdeath, and before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theorythat, should she survive him long enough to be decorouslyaccessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of myplea.  Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one shewould have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach Ifelt renannouncement indeed my appointed lot.  I was shut upin my obsession for ever—my gaolers had gone off with thekey.  I find myself quite as vague as a captive in a dungeonabout the tinge that further elapsed before Mrs. Corvick becamethe wife of Drayton Deane.  I had foreseen, through my bars,this end of the business, though there was no indecent haste andour friendship had fallen rather off.  They were both so“awfully intellectual” that it struck people as asuitable match, but I had measured better than any one the wealthof understanding the bride would contribute to the union. Never, for a marriage in literary circles—so the newspapersdescribed the alliance—had a lady been so bravelydowered.  I began with due promptness to look for the fruitof the affair—that fruit, I mean, of which the premonitorysymptoms would be peculiarly visible in the husband.  Takingfor granted the splendour of the other party’s nuptialgift, I expected to see him make a show commensurate with hisincrease of means.  I knew what his means had been—hisarticle on “The Right of Way” had distinctly givenone the figure.  As he was now exactly in the position inwhich still more exactly I was not I watched from month to month,in the likely periodicals, for the heavy message poor Corvick hadbeen unable to deliver and the responsibility of which would havefallen on his successor.  The widow and wife would havebroken by the rekindled hearth the silence that only a widow andwife might break, and Deane would be as aflame with the knowledgeas Corvick in his own hour, as Gwendolen in hers, had been. Well, he was aflame doubtless, but the fire was apparently not tobecome a public blaze.  I scanned the periodicals in vain:Drayton Deane filled them with exuberant pages, but he withheldthe page I most feverishly sought.  He wrote on a thousandsubjects, but never on the subject of Vereker.  His specialline was to tell truths that other people either“funked,” as he said, or overlooked, but he nevertold the only truth that seemed to me in these days tosignify.  I met the couple in those literary circlesreferred to in the papers: I have sufficiently intimated that itwas only in such circles we were all constructed torevolve.  Gwendolen was more than ever committed to them bythe publication of her third novel, and I myself definitelyclassed by holding the opinion that this work was inferior to itsimmediate predecessor.  Was it worse because she had beenkeeping worse company?  If her secret was, as she had toldme, her life—a fact discernible in her increasing bloom, anair of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by prettycharities, gave distinction to her appearance—it had yetnot a direct influence on her work.  That only madeone—everything only made one—yearn the more for it;only rounded it off with a mystery finer and subtler.

CHAPTER XI.

It was therefore from her husband Icould never remove my eyes: I beset him in a manner that mighthave made him uneasy.  I went even so far as to engage himin conversation.  Didn’t he know, hadn’t he comeinto it as a matter of course?—that question hummed in mybrain.  Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn’treturn my stare so queerly.  His wife had told him what Iwanted and he was amiably amused at my impotence.  Hedidn’t laugh—he wasn’t a laugher: his systemwas to present to my irritation, so that I should crudely exposemyself, a conversational blank as vast as his big barebrow.  It always happened that I turned away with a settledconviction from these unpeopled expanses, which seemed tocomplete each other geographically and to symbolise togetherDrayton Deane’s want of voice, want of form.  Hesimply hadn’t the art to use what he knew; he literally wasincompetent to take up the duty where Corvick had left it. I went still further—it was the only glimpse of happiness Ihad.  I made up my mind that the duty didn’t appeal tohim.  He wasn’t interested, he didn’tcare.  Yes, it quite comforted me to believe him too stupidto have joy of the thing I lacked.  He was as stupid afteras he had been before, and that deepened for me the golden gloryin which the mystery was wrapped.  I had of course none theless to recollect that his wife might have imposed her conditionsand exactions.  I had above all to remind myself that withVereker’s death the major incentive dropped.  He wasstill there to be honoured by what might be done—he was nolonger there to give it his sanction.  Who alas but he hadthe authority?

Two children were born to the pair, but the second cost themother her life.  After this stroke I seemed to see anotherghost of a chance.  I jumped at it in thought, but I waiteda certain time for manners, and at last my opportunity arrived ina remunerative way.  His wife had been dead a year when Imet Drayton Deane in the smoking-room of a small club of which weboth were members, but where for months—perhaps because Irarely entered it—I hadn’t seen him.  The roomwas empty and the occasion propitious.  I deliberatelyoffered him, to have done with the matter for ever, thatadvantage for which I felt he had long been looking.

“As an older acquaintance of your late wife’s thaneven you were,” I began, “you must let me say to yousomething I have on my mind.  I shall be glad to make anyterms with you that you see fit to name for the information shemust have had from George Corvick—the information you know,that had come to him, poor chap, in one of the happiest hours ofhis life, straight from Hugh Vereker.”

He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. “The information—?”

“Vereker’s secret, my dear man—the generalintention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, theburied treasure, the figure in the carpet.”

He began to flush—the numbers on his bumps to comeout.  “Vereker’s books had a generalintention?”

I stared in my turn.  “You don’t mean to sayyou don’t know it?”  I thought for a moment hewas playing with me.  “Mrs. Deane knew it; she had it,as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinite searchand to Vereker’s own delight, found the very mouth of thecave.  Where isthe mouth?  He told after theirmarriage—and told alone—the person who, when thecircumstances were reproduced, must have told you.  Have Ibeen wrong in taking for granted that she admitted you, as one ofthe highest privileges of the relation in which you stood to her,to the knowledge of which she was after Corvick’s death thesole depositary?  All I know is that that knowledge isinfinitely precious, and what I want you to understand is that ifyou’ll in your turn admit me to it you’ll do me akindness for which I shall be lastingly grateful.”

He had turned at last very red; I dare say he had begun bythinking I had lost my wits.  Little by little he followedme; on my own side I stared with a livelier surprise.  Thenhe spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talkingabout.”

He wasn’t acting—it was the absurd truth.

“She didn’ttell you—?”

“Nothing about Hugh Vereker.”

I was stupefied; the room went round.  It had been toogood even for that!  “Upon your honour?”

“Upon my honour.  What the devil’s the matterwith you?” he growled.

“I’m astounded—I’m disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you.”

“It isn’t in me!” he awkwardlylaughed.  “And even if it were—”

“If it were you’d let me have it—oh yes, incommon humanity.  But I believe you.  I see—Isee!” I went on, conscious, with the full turn of thewheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poorman’s attitude.  What I saw, though I couldn’tsay it, was that his wife hadn’t thought him worthenlightening.  This struck me as strange for a woman who hadthought him worth marrying.  At last I explained it by thereflexion that she couldn’t possibly have married him forhis understanding.  She had married him for somethingelse.

He was to some extent enlightened now, but he was even moreastonished, more disconcerted: he took a moment to compare mystory with his quickened memories.  The result of hismeditation was his presently saying with a good deal of ratherfeeble form: “This is the first I hear of what you alludeto.  I think you must be mistaken as to Mrs. DraytonDeane’s having had any unmentioned, and still less anyunmentionable, knowledge of Hugh Vereker.  She’dcertainly have wished it—should it have borne on hisliterary character—to be used.”

“It was used.  She used it herself.  She toldme with her own lips that she ‘lived’ onit.”

I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew sopale that I felt as if I had struck him.  “Ah,‘lived’—!” he murmured, turning shortaway from me.

My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I beg you to forgive me—I’ve made amistake.  You don’t know what I thought youknew.  You could, if I had been right, have rendered me aservice; and I had my reasons for assuming that you’d be ina position to meet me.”

“Your reasons?” he asked.  “What wereyour reasons?”

I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. “Come and sit down with me here, and I’ll tellyou.”  I drew him to a sofa, I lighted another cigarand, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker’s one descentfrom the clouds, I recited to him the extraordinary chain ofaccidents that had, in spite of the original gleam, kept me tillthat hour in the dark.  I told him in a word just whatI’ve written out here.  He listened with deepeningattention, and I became aware, to my surprise, by hisejaculations, by his questions, that he would have been after allnot unworthy to be trusted by his wife.  So abrupt anexperience of her want of trust had now a disturbing effect onhim; but I saw the immediate shock throb away little by littleand then gather again into waves of wonder andcuriosity—waves that promised, I could perfectly judge, tobreak in the end with the fury of my own highest tides.  Imay say that to-day as victims of unappeased desire thereisn’t a pin to choose between us.  The poorman’s state is almost my consolation; there are reallymoments when I feel it to be quite my revenge.

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