IX
It was impossible not to be moved with the strongest sympathy for her, and on my return to England I showed her every kindness in my power. Her mothers death had made her means sufficient, and she had gone to live in a more convenient quarter. But her loss had been great and her visitation cruel; it never would have occurred to me moreover to suppose she could come to regard the enjoyment of a technical tip, of a piece of literary experience, as a counterpoise to her grief. Strange to say, none the less, I couldnt help fancying after I had seen her a few times that I caught a glimpse of some such oddity. I hasten to add that there had been other things I couldnt help fancying; and as I never felt I was really clear about these, so, as to the point I here touch on, I give her memory the benefit of every doubt. Stricken and solitary, highly accomplished and now, in her deep mourning, her maturer grace, and her uncomplaining sorrow incontestably handsome, she presented herself as leading a life of singular dignity and beauty. I had at first found a way to believe that I should soon get the better of the reserve formulated the week after the catastrophe in her reply to an appeal as to which I was not unconscious that it might strike her as mistimed. Certainly that reserve was something of a shock to mecertainly it puzzled me the more I thought of it, though I tried to explain it, with moments of success, by the supposition of exalted sentiments, of superstitious scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it added at the same time hugely to the price of Verekers secret, precious as that mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvicks unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that was to fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of which I am 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 were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend till after the removal of the last barriers to their intimacy; then he had let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolens idea, taking a hint from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis of the renewal of such a relation? Was the figure in the carpet traceable or describable only for husbands and wivesfor lovers supremely united? It came back to me in a mystifying manner that in Kensington-square, when I told him that Corvick would have told the girl he loved, some word had dropped from Vereker that gave colour to this possibility. There might be little in it, but there was enough to make me wonder if I should have to marry Mrs. Corvick to get what I wanted. Was I prepared to offer her this price for the blessing of her knowledge? Ah! that way madness layso I said to myself at least in bewildered hours. I could see meanwhile the torch she refused to pass on flame away in her chamber of memorypour through her eyes a light that made a glow in her lonely house. At the end of six months I was fully sure of what this warm presence made up to her for. We had talked again and again of the man who had brought us together, of his talent, his character, his personal charm, his certain career, his dreadful doom, and even of his clear purpose in that great study which was to have been a supreme literary portrait, a kind of critical Vandyke or Velasquez. She had conveyed to me in abundance that she was tongue-tied by her perversity, by her piety, that she would never break the silence it had not been given to the right person, as she said, to break. The hour however finally arrived. One evening when I had been sitting with her longer than usual I laid my hand firmly on her arm.
Now, at last, what is it?
She had been expecting me; she was ready. She gave a long, slow, soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didnt prevent its hurling at me the largest, finest, coldest Never! I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow the tears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked at each other; after which I slowly rose. I was wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said as I smoothed down my hat: I know what to think then; its nothing!
A remote, disdainful pity for me shone out of her dim smile; then she exclaimed in a voice that I hear at this moment: Its my life! As I stood at the door she added: Youve insulted him!
Do you mean Vereker?
I meanthe Dead!
I recognised when I reached the street the justice of her charge. Yes, it was her lifeI recognised that too; but her life none the less made room with the lapse of time for another interest. A year and a half after Corvicks death she published in a single volume her second novel, Overmastered, which I pounced on in the hope of finding in it some tell-tale echo or some peeping face. All I found was a much better book than her younger performance, showing I thought the better company she had kept. As a tissue tolerably intricate it was a carpet with a figure of its own; but the figure was not the figure I was looking for. On sending a review of it to The Middle I was surprised to learn from the office that a notice was already in type. When the paper came out I had no hesitation in attributing this article, which I thought rather vulgarly overdone, to Drayton Deane, who in the old days had been something of a friend of Corvicks, yet had only within a few weeks made the acquaintance of his widow. I had had an early copy of the book, but Deane had evidently had an earlier. He lacked all the same the light hand with which Corvick had gilded the gingerbreadhe laid on the tinsel in splotches.
X
Six months later appeared The Right of Way, the last chance, though we didnt know it, that we were to have to redeem ourselves. Written wholly during Verekers absence, the book had been heralded, in a hundred paragraphs, by the usual ineptitudes. I carried it, as early a copy as any, I this time flattered myself, straightway to Mrs. Corvick. This was the only use I had for it; I left the inevitable tribute of The Middle to some more ingenious mind and some less irritated temper. But I already have it, Gwendolen said. Drayton Deane was so good as to bring it to me yesterday, and Ive just finished it.
Yesterday? How did he get it so soon?
He gets everything soon. Hes to review it in The Middle.
HeDrayton Deanereview Vereker? I couldnt believe my ears.
Why not? One fine ignorance is as good as another.
I winced, but I presently said: You ought to review him yourself!
I dont review, she laughed. Im reviewed!
Just then the door was thrown open. Ah yes, heres your reviewer! Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: he had come to see what she thought of The Right of Way, and to bring news which was singularly relevant. The evening papers were just out with a telegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome, had been ill for some days with an attack of malarial fever. It had at first not been thought grave, but had taken in consequence of complications a turn that might give rise to anxiety. Anxiety had indeed at the latest hour begun to be felt.
I was struck in the presence of these tidings with the fundamental detachment that Mrs. Cor-vicks public regret quite failed to conceal: it gave me the measure of her consummate independence. That independence rested on her knowledge, the knowledge which nothing now could destroy and which nothing could make different. The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two, but the sentence had virtually been written. The writer might go down to his grave: she was the person in the world to whomas if she had been his favoured heirhis continued existence was least of a need. This reminded me how I had observed at a particular momentafter Corvicks deaththe drop of her desire to see him face to face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure that if she hadnt got it she wouldnt have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a mans part than on a womans, which in my case had served as a deterrent. It wasnt however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasnt ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguisha poignant sense of how inconsistently I still depended on him. A delicacy that it was my one compensation to suffer to rule me had left the Alps and the Apennines between us, but the vision of the waning opportunity made me feel as if I might in my despair at last have gone to him. Of course I would really have done nothing of the sort. I remained five minutes, while my companions talked of the new book, and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I replied, getting up, that I detested Hugh Verekersimply couldnt read him. I went away with the moral certainty that as the door closed behind me Deane would remark that I was awfully superficial. His hostess wouldnt contradict him.
Yesterday? How did he get it so soon?
He gets everything soon. Hes to review it in The Middle.
HeDrayton Deanereview Vereker? I couldnt believe my ears.
Why not? One fine ignorance is as good as another.
I winced, but I presently said: You ought to review him yourself!
I dont review, she laughed. Im reviewed!
Just then the door was thrown open. Ah yes, heres your reviewer! Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: he had come to see what she thought of The Right of Way, and to bring news which was singularly relevant. The evening papers were just out with a telegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome, had been ill for some days with an attack of malarial fever. It had at first not been thought grave, but had taken in consequence of complications a turn that might give rise to anxiety. Anxiety had indeed at the latest hour begun to be felt.
I was struck in the presence of these tidings with the fundamental detachment that Mrs. Cor-vicks public regret quite failed to conceal: it gave me the measure of her consummate independence. That independence rested on her knowledge, the knowledge which nothing now could destroy and which nothing could make different. The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two, but the sentence had virtually been written. The writer might go down to his grave: she was the person in the world to whomas if she had been his favoured heirhis continued existence was least of a need. This reminded me how I had observed at a particular momentafter Corvicks deaththe drop of her desire to see him face to face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure that if she hadnt got it she wouldnt have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a mans part than on a womans, which in my case had served as a deterrent. It wasnt however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasnt ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguisha poignant sense of how inconsistently I still depended on him. A delicacy that it was my one compensation to suffer to rule me had left the Alps and the Apennines between us, but the vision of the waning opportunity made me feel as if I might in my despair at last have gone to him. Of course I would really have done nothing of the sort. I remained five minutes, while my companions talked of the new book, and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I replied, getting up, that I detested Hugh Verekersimply couldnt read him. I went away with the moral certainty that as the door closed behind me Deane would remark that I was awfully superficial. His hostess wouldnt contradict him.
I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd concatenation. Three weeks after this came Verekers death, and before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of my petition. Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I felt that renouncement was indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up in my obsession for evermy gaolers had gone off with the key. I find myself quite as vague as a captive in a dungeon about the time that further elapsed before Mrs. Corvick became the wife of Drayton Deane. I had foreseen, through my bars, this end of the business, though there was no indecent haste and our friendship had rather fallen off. They were both so awfully intellectual that it struck people as a suitable match, but I knew better than any one the wealth of understanding the bride would contribute to the partnership. Never, for a marriage in literary circlesso the newspapers described the alliancehad a bride been so handsomely dowered. I began with due promptness to look for the fruit of their unionthat fruit, I mean, of which the premonitory symptoms would be peculiarly visible in the husband. Taking for granted the splendour of the ladys nuptial gift, I expected to see him make a show commensurate with his increase of means. I knew what his means had beenhis article on The Right of Way had distinctly given one the figure. As he was now exactly in the position in which still more exactly I was not I watched from month to month, in the likely periodicals, for the heavy message poor Corvick had been unable to deliver and the responsibility of which would have fallen on his successor. The widow and wife would have broken by the rekindled hearth the silence that only a widow and wife might break, and Deane would be as aflame with the knowledge as Cor-vick in his own hour, as Gwendolen in hers had been. Well, he was aflame doubtless, but the fire was apparently not to become a public blaze. I scanned the periodicals in vain: Drayton Deane filled them with exuberant pages, but he withheld the page I most feverishly sought. He wrote on a thousand subjects, but never on the subject of Vereker. His special line was to tell truths that other people either funked, as he said, or overlooked, but he never told the only truth that seemed to me in these days to signify. I met the couple in those literary circles referred to in the papers: I have sufficiently intimated that it was only in such circles we were all constructed to revolve. Gwendolen was more than ever committed to them by the publication of her third novel, and I myself definitely classed by holding the opinion that this work was inferior to its immediate predecessor. Was it worse because she had been keeping worse company? If her secret was, as she had told me, her lifea fact discernible in her increasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearanceit had yet not a direct influence on her work. That only madeeverything only madeone yearn the more for it, rounded it off with a mystery finer and subtler.
XI
It was therefore from her husband I could never remove my eyes: I hovered about him in a manner that might have made him uneasy. I went even so far as to engage him in conversation. Didnt he know, hadnt he come into it as a matter of course?that question hummed in my brain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldnt return my stare so queerly. His wife had told him what I wanted, and he was amiably amused at my impotence. He didnt laughhe was not a laugher: his system was to present to my irritation, so that I should crudely expose myself, a conversational blank as vast as his big bare brow. It always happened that I turned away with a settled conviction from these unpeopled expanses, which seemed to complete each other geographically and to symbolise together Drayton Deanes want of voice, want of form. He simply hadnt the art to use what he knew; he literally was incompetent to take up the duty where Corvick had left it. I went still furtherit was the only glimpse of happiness I had. I made up my mind that the duty didnt appeal to him. He wasnt interested, he didnt care. Yes, it quite comforted me to believe him too stupid to have joy of the thing I lacked. He was as stupid after as before, and that deepened for me the golden glory in which the mystery was wrapped. I had of course however to recollect that his wife might have imposed her conditions and exactions. I had above all to recollect that with Verekers death the major incentive dropped. He was still there to be honoured by what might be donehe was no longer there to give it his sanction. Who, alas, but he had the authority?