Ill do my best, I promise you, that your talk with me shall go no further.
Very good; do what you can.
In the meantime, I pursued, George Cor-vicks possession of the tip may, on his part, really lead to something.
That will be a brave day.
I told him about Corvicks cleverness, his admiration, the intensity of his interest in my anecdote; and without making too much of the divergence of our respective estimates mentioned that my friend was already of opinion that he saw much further into a certain affair than most people. He was quite as fired as I had been at Bridges. He was moreover in love with the young lady: perhaps the two together would puzzle something out.
Vereker seemed struck with this. Do you mean theyre to be married?
I daresay thats what it will come to.
That may help them, he conceded, but we must give them time!
I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties; whereupon he repeated his former advice: Give it up, give it up! He evidently didnt think me intellectually equipped for the adventure. I stayed half an hour, and he was most good-natured, but I couldnt help pronouncing him a man of shifting moods. He had been free with me in a mood, he had repented in a mood, and now in a mood he had turned indifferent. This general levity helped me to believe that, so far as the subject of the tip went, there wasnt much in it. I contrived however to make him answer a few more questions about it, though he did so with visible impatience. For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when I used it, and he used another himself. Its the very string, he said, that my pearls are strung on! The reason of his note to me had been that he really didnt want to give us a grain of succourour destiny was a thing too perfect in its way to touch. He had formed the habit of depending upon it, and if the spell was to break it must break by some force of its own. He comes back to me from that last occasionfor I was never to speak to him againas a man with some safe secret for enjoyment. I wondered as I walked away where he had got his tip.
V
When I spoke to George Corvick of the caution I had received he made me feel that any doubt of his delicacy would be almost an insult. He had instantly told Gwendolen, but Gwendolens ardent response was in itself a pledge of discretion. The question would now absorb them, and they would enjoy their fun too much to wish to share it with the crowd. They appeared to have caught instinctively Verekers peculiar notion of fun. Their intellectual pride, however, was not such as to make them indifferent to any further light I might throw on the affair they had in hand. They were indeed of the artistic temperament, and I was freshly struck with my colleagues power to excite himself over a question of art. He called it letters, he called it lifeit was all one thing. In what he said I now seemed to understand that he spoke equally for Gwendolen, to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently better to allow her a little leisure, he made a point of introducing me. I remember our calling together one Sunday in August at a huddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvicks possession of a friend who had some light to mingle with his own. He could say things to her that I could never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and, with her pretty way of holding her head on one side, was one of those persons whom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by themselves. She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told me that I had chilled her by my apparent indisposition to oblige her with the detail of what Vereker had said to me. I admitted that I felt I had given thought enough to this exposure: hadnt I even made up my mind that it was hollow, wouldnt stand the test? The importance they attached to it was irritatingit rather envenomed my dissent.
That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happened was that I felt humiliated at seeing other persons derive a daily joy from an experiment which had brought me only chagrin. I was out in the cold while, by the evening fire, under the lamp, they followed the chase for which I myself had sounded the horn. They did as I had done, only more deliberately and sociablythey went over their author from the beginning. There was no hurry, Corvick saidthe future was before them and the fascination could only grow; they would take him page by page, as they would take one of the classics, inhale him in slow draughts and let him sink deep in. I doubt whether they would have got so wound up if they had not been in love: poor Verekers secret gave them endless occasion to put their young heads together. None the less it represented the kind of problem for which Corvick had a special aptitude, drew out the particular pointed patience of which, had he lived, he would have given more striking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples. He at least was, in Verekers words, a little demon of subtlety. We had begun by disputing, but I soon saw that without my stirring a finger his infatuation would have its bad hours. He would bound off on false scents as I had donehe would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacs who embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeares own word for his being cryptic he would immediately have accepted it. The case there was altogether differentwe had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I rejoined that I was stupefied to see him attach such importance even to the word of Mr. Vereker. He inquired thereupon whether I treated Mr. Verekers word as a lie. I wasnt perhaps prepared, in my unhappy rebound, to go as far as that, but I insisted that till the contrary was proved I should view it as too fond an imagination. I didnt, I confess, sayI didnt at that time quite knowall I felt. Deep down, as Miss Erme would have said, I was uneasy, I was expectant. At the core of my personal confusionfor my curiosity lived in its asheswas the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would at last probably come out somewhere. He made, in defence of his credulity, a great point of the fact that from of old, in his study of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints of he didnt know what, faint wandering notes of a hidden music. That was just the rarity, that was the charm: it fitted so perfectly into what I reported.
If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea I daresay it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of Miss Ermes mamma. The hours spent there by Corvick were present to my fancy as those of a chessplayer bent with a silent scowl, all the lamplit winter, over his board and his moves. As my imagination filled it out the picture held me fast. On the other side of the table was a ghostlier form, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredly but a little wearily securean antagonist who leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his fine clear face. Close to Corvick, behind him, was a girl who had begun to strike me as pale and wasted and even, on more familiar view, as rather handsome, and who rested on his shoulder and hung upon his moves. He would take up a chessman and hold it poised a while over one of the little squares, and then he would put it back in its place with a long sigh of disappointment. The young lady, at this, would slightly but uneasily shift her position and look across, very hard, very long, very strangely, at their dim participant. I had asked them at an early stage of the business if it mightnt contribute to their success to have some closer communication with him. The special circumstances would surely be held to have given me a right to introduce them. Corvick immediately replied that he had no wish to approach the altar before he had prepared the sacrifice. He quite agreed with our friend both as to the sport and as to the honourhe would bring down the animal with his own rifle. When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said after an hesitation: No; Im ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. Shed give anything to see him; she says she requires another tip. Shes really quite morbid about it. But she must play fairshe shant see him! he emphatically added. I had a suspicion that they had even quarrelled a little on the subjecta suspicion not corrected by the way he more than once exclaimed to me: Shes quite incredibly literary, you knowquite fantastically! I remember his saying of her that she felt in italics and thought in capitals. Oh, when Ive run him to earth, he also said, then, you know, I shall knock at his door. RatherI beg you to believe. Ill have it from his own lips: Right you are, my boy; youve done it this time! He shall crown me victorwith the critical laurel.
Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might have given him of meeting the distinguished novelist; a danger however that disappeared with Verekers leaving England for an indefinite absence, as the newspapers announcedgoing to the south for motives connected with the health of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement. A yearmore than a yearhad elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had not encountered him again. I think at bottom I was rather ashamedI hated to remind him that though I had irremediably missed his point a reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Janes house, made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once saw her with Vereker at a concert and was sure I was seen by them, but I slipped out without being caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashed along in the rain, that I couldnt have done anything else; and yet I remember saying to myself that it was hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books, but I had lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike spoiled for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had liked the man still better than I had liked the books.
VI
Six months after Vereker had left England George Corvick, who made his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which imposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of some difficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise to me. His brother-in-law had become editor of a great provincial paper, and the great provincial paper, in a fine flight of fancy, had conceived the idea of sending a special commissioner to India. Special commissioners had begun, in the metropolitan press, to be the fashion, and the journal in question felt that it had passed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick had no hand, I knew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that was his brother-in-laws affair, and the fact that a particular task was not in his line was apt to be with himself exactly a reason for accepting it. He was prepared to out-Herod the metropolitan press; he took solemn precautions against priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste. Nobody ever knew itthe taste was all his own. In addition to his expenses he was to be conveniently paid, and I found myself able to help him, for the usual fat book, to a plausible arrangement with the usual fat publisher. I naturally inferred that his obvious desire to make a little money was not unconnected with the prospect of a union with Gwendolen Erme. I was aware that her mothers opposition was largely addressed to his want of means and of lucrative abilities, but it so happened that, on my saying the last time I saw him something that bore on the question of his separation from our young lady, he exclaimed with an emphasis that startled me: Ah, Im not a bit engaged to her, you know!
Not overtly, I answered, because her mother doesnt like you. But Ive always taken for granted a private understanding.
Well, there was one. But there isnt now. That was all he said, except something about Mrs. Ermes having got on her feet again in the most extraordinary waya remark from which I gathered he wished me to think he meant that private understandings were of little use when the doctor didnt share them. What I took the liberty of really thinking was that the girl might in some way have estranged him. Well, if he had taken the turn of jealousy for instance it could scarcely be jealousy of me. In that case (besides the absurdity of it) he wouldnt have gone away to leave us together. For some time before his departure we had indulged in no allusion to the buried treasure, and from his silence, of which mine was the consequence, I had drawn a sharp conclusion. His courage had dropped, his ardour had gone the way of minethis inference at least he left me to enjoy. More than that he couldnt do; he couldnt face the triumph with which I might have greeted an explicit admission. He neednt have been afraid, poor dear, for I had by this time lost all need to triumph. In fact I considered that I showed magnanimity in not reproaching him with his collapse, for the sense of his having thrown up the game made me feel more than ever how much I at last depended on him. If Corvick had broken down I should never know; no one would be of any use if he wasnt. It wasnt a bit true that I had ceased to care for knowledge; little by little my curiosity had not only begun to ache again, but had become the familiar torment of my consciousness. There are doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly more natural than the contortions of disease; but I dont know after all why I should in this connection so much as mention them. For the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion, meant life. The stake on the table was of a different substance, and our roulette was the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance. I recognised in Corvicks absence that she made this analogy vivid. It was extravagant, I admit, the way she lived for the art of the pen. Her passion visibly preyed upon her, and in her presence I felt almost tepid. I got hold of Deep Down again: it was a desert in which she had lost herself, but in which too she had dug a wonderful hole in the sanda cavity out of which Corvick had still more remarkably pulled her.
Early in March I had a telegram from her, in consequence of which I repaired immediately to Chelsea, where the first thing she said to me was: He has got it, he has got it!
She was moved, as I could see, to such depths that she must mean the great thing. Verekers idea?
His general intention. George has cabled from Bombay.
She had the missive open there; it was emphatic, but it was brief. Eureka. Immense. That was allhe had saved the money of the signature. I shared her emotion, but I was disappointed. He doesnt say what it is.
How could hein a telegram? Hell write it.
But how does he know?
Know its the real thing? Oh, Im sure when you see it you do know. Vera incessu patuit dea!
Its you, Miss Erme, who are a dear for bringing me such news!I went all lengths in my high spirits. But fancy finding our goddess in the temple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have been able to go into the thing again in the midst of such different and such powerful solicitations!
He hasnt gone into it, I know; its the thing itself, let severely alone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him like a tigress out of the jungle. He didnt take a book with himon purpose; indeed he wouldnt have needed tohe knows every page, as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some day somewhere, when he wasnt thinking, they fell, in all their superb intricacy, into the one right combination. The figure in the carpet came out. Thats the way he knew it would come and the real reasonyou didnt in the least understand, but I suppose I may tell you nowwhy he went and why I consented to his going. We knew the change would do it, the difference of thought, of scene, would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had perfectly, we had admirably calculated. The elements were all in his mind, and in the secousse of a new and intense experience they just struck light. She positively struck light herselfshe was literally, facially luminous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, and she continued: Hell come right homethis will bring him.