Two children were born to the pair, but the second cost the mother her life. After this calamity I seemed to see another ghost of a chance. I jumped at it in thought, but I waited a certain time for manners, and at last my opportunity arrived in a remunerative way. His wife had been dead a year when I met Drayton Deane in the smoking-room of a small club of which we both were members, but where for monthsperhaps because I rarely entered itI had not seen him. The room was empty and the occasion propitious. I deliberately offered him, to have done with the matter for ever, that advantage for which I felt he had long been looking.
As an older acquaintance of your late wifes than even you were, I began, you must let me say to you something I have on my mind. I shall be glad to make any terms with you that you see fit to name for the information she had from George Corvickthe information, you know, that he, poor fellow, in one of the happiest hours of his life, had straight from Hugh Vereker.
He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. The information?
Verekers secret, my dear manthe general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.
He began to flushthe numbers on his bumps to come out. Verekers books had a general intention?
I stared in my turn. You dont mean to say you dont know it? I thought for a moment he was playing with me. Mrs. Deane knew it; she had it, as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinite search and to Verekers own delight, found the very mouth of the cave. Where is the mouth? He told after their marriageand told alonethe person who, when the circumstances were reproduced, must have told you. Have I been wrong in taking for granted that she admitted you, as one of the highest privileges of the relation in which you stood to her, to the knowledge of which she was after Corvicks death the sole depositary? All I know is that that knowledge is infinitely precious, and what I want you to understand is that if you will in your turn admit me to it you will do me a kindness for which I shall be everlastingly grateful.
He had turned at last very red; I daresay he had begun by thinking I had lost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my own side I stared with a livelier surprise. I dont know what youre talking about, he said.
He wasnt actingit was the absurd truth. She didnt tell you
Nothing about Hugh Vereker.
I was stupefied; the room went round. It had been too good even for that! Upon your honour?
Upon my honour. What the devils the matter with you? he demanded.
Im astoundedIm disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you.
It isnt in me! he awkwardly laughed. And even if it were
If it were youd let me have itoh yes, in common humanity. But I believe you. I seeI see! I went on, conscious, with the full turn of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor mans attitude. What I saw, though I couldnt say it, was that his wife hadnt thought him worth enlightening. This struck me as strange for a woman who had thought him worth marrying. At last I explained it by the reflection that she couldnt possibly have married him for his understanding. She had married him for something else. He was to some extent enlightened now, but he was even more astonished, more disconcerted: he took a moment to compare my story with his quickened memories. The result of his meditation was his presently saying with a good deal of rather feeble form:
This is the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must be mistaken as to Mrs. Drayton Deanes having had any unmentioned, and still less any unmentionable, knowledge about Hugh Vereker. She would certainly have wished itif it bore on his literary characterto be used.