“I DON’T quite know how to explain it to you,” he said, “but it was the
very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence, it was
just your exceptional sharpness, that produced the feeling—a very old
story with me, I beg you to believe—under the momentary influence of
which I used in speaking to that good lady the words you so naturally
resent. I don’t read the things in the newspapers unless they’re thrust
upon me as that one was—it’s always one’s best friend who does it! But I
used to read them sometimes—ten years ago. I dare say they were in
general rather stupider then; at any rate it always struck me they missed
my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted
me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I’ve
happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away—still
missing it, I mean, deliciously. _You_ miss it, my dear fellow, with
inimitable assurance; the fact of your being awfully clever and your
article’s being awfully nice doesn’t make a hair’s breadth of difference.
It’s quite with you rising young men,” Vereker laughed, “that I feel most
what a failure I am!”
I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as he talked. “_You_ a
failure—heavens! What then may your ‘little point’ happen to be?”
“Have I got to _tell_ you, after all these years and labours?” There was
something in the friendly reproach of this—jocosely exaggerated—that made
me, as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush to the roots of my hair.
I’m as much in the dark as ever, though I’ve grown used in a sense to my
obtuseness; at that moment, however, Vereker’s happy accent made me
appear to myself, and probably to him, a rare dunce. I was on the point
of exclaiming “Ah yes, don’t tell me: for my honour, for that of the
craft, don’t!” when he went on in a manner that showed he had read my
thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some day redeeming
ourselves. “By my little point I mean—what shall I call it?—the
particular thing I’ve written my books most _for_. Isn’t there for every
writer a particular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes him
apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which he wouldn’t
write at all, the very passion of his passion, the part of the business
in which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it’s
_that_!”
I considered a moment—that is I followed at a respectful distance, rather
gasping. I was fascinated—easily, you’ll say; but I wasn’t going after
all to be put off my guard. “Your description’s certainly beautiful, but
it doesn’t make what you describe very distinct.”
“I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn on you at all.” I
saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my companion into an
emotion as lively as my own. “At any rate,” he went on, “I can speak for
myself: there’s an idea in my work without which I wouldn’t have given a
straw for the whole job. It’s the finest fullest intention of the lot,
and the application of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of
ingenuity. I ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but that
nobody does say it is precisely what we’re talking about. It stretches,
this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else,
comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, the
texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a
complete representation of it. So it’s naturally the thing for the
critic to look for. It strikes me,” my visitor added, smiling, “even as
the thing for the critic to find.”
This seemed a responsibility indeed. “You call it a little trick?”
“That’s only my little modesty. It’s really an exquisite scheme.”
“And you hold that you’ve carried the scheme out?”
“The way I’ve carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit well of
myself for.”
I had a pause. “Don’t you think you ought—just a trifle—to assist the
critic?”
“Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen? I’ve
shouted my intention in his great blank face!” At this, laughing out
again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show the allusion wasn’t
to my personal appearance.
“But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see, _be_
initiation.”
“What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposed to be?” I’m afraid I
coloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that his account of
his silver lining was poor in something or other that a plain man knows
things by. “That’s only because you’ve never had a glimpse of it,” he
returned. “If you had had one the element in question would soon have
become practically all you’d see. To me it’s exactly as palpable as the
marble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just _isn’t_ a plain man: if
he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour’s garden? You’re
anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d’être of you all
is that you’re little demons of subtlety. If my great affair’s a secret,
that’s only because it’s a secret in spite of itself—the amazing event
has made it one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to keep
it so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I had I shouldn’t in
advance have had the heart to go on. As it was, I only became aware
little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work.”
“And now you quite like it?” I risked.
“My work?”
“Your secret. It’s the same thing.”
“Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “is a proof that you’re as clever
as I say!” I was encouraged by this to remark that he would clearly be
pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him now
the great amusement of life. “I live almost to see if it will ever be
detected.” He looked at me for a jesting challenge; something far within
his eyes seemed to peep out. “But I needn’t worry—it won’t!”
“You fire me as I’ve never been fired,” I declared; “you make me
determined to do or die.” Then I asked: “Is it a kind of esoteric
message?”
His countenance fell at this—he put out his hand as if to bid me
good-night. “Ah my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap
journalese!”
I knew of course he’d be awfully fastidious, but our talk had made me
feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied—I kept hold of
his hand. “I won’t make use of the expression then,” I said, “in the
article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though I dare
say I shall have hard work to do without it. But meanwhile, just to
hasten that difficult birth, can’t you give a fellow a clue?” I felt
much more at my ease.
“My whole lucid effort gives him the clue—every page and line and letter.
The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a
piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every volume as your
foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every
word, it dots every i, it places every comma.”
I scratched my head. “Is it something in the style or something in the
thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?”
He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions to be crude
and my distinctions pitiful. “Good-night, my dear boy—don’t bother about
it. After all, you do like a fellow.”
“And a little intelligence might spoil it?” I still detained him.
He hesitated. “Well, you’ve got a heart in your body. Is that an
element of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that nobody has
ever mentioned in my work is the organ of life.”
“I see—it’s some idea _about_ life, some sort of philosophy. Unless it
be,” I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, “some
kind of game you’re up to with your style, something you’re after in the
language. Perhaps it’s a preference for the letter P!” I ventured
profanely to break out. “Papa, potatoes, prunes—that sort of thing?” He
was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn’t got the right letter. But
his amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was nevertheless
something else I had absolutely to learn. “Should you be able, pen in
hand, to state it clearly yourself—to name it, phrase it, formulate it?”
“Oh,” he almost passionately sighed, “if I were only, pen in hand, one of
_you_ chaps!”
“That would be a great chance for you of course. But why should you
despise us chaps for not doing what you can’t do yourself?”
“Can’t do?” He opened his eyes. “Haven’t I done it in twenty volumes?
I do it in my way,” he continued. “Go _you_ and don’t do it in yours.”
“Ours is so devilish difficult,” I weakly observed.
“So’s mine. We each choose our own. There’s no compulsion. You won’t
come down and smoke?”
“No. I want to think this thing out.”
“You’ll tell me then in the morning that you’ve laid me bare?”
“I’ll see what I can do; I’ll sleep on it. But just one word more,” I
added. We had left the room—I walked again with him a few steps along
the passage. “This extraordinary ‘general intention,’ as you call it—for
that’s the most vivid description I can induce you to make of it—is then,
generally, a sort of buried treasure?”
His face lighted. “Yes, call it that, though it’s perhaps not for me to
do so.”
“Nonsense!” I laughed. “You know you’re hugely proud of it.”
“Well, I didn’t propose to tell you so; but it _is_ the joy of my soul!”
“You mean it’s a beauty so rare, so great?”
He waited a little again. “The loveliest thing in the world!” We had
stopped, and on these words he left me; but at the end of the corridor,
while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned and caught sight of
my puzzled face. It made him earnestly, indeed I thought quite
anxiously, shake his head and wave his finger “Give it up—give it up!”
This wasn’t a challenge—it was fatherly advice. If I had had one of his
books at hand I’d have repeated my recent act of faith—I’d have spent
half the night with him. At three o’clock in the morning, not sleeping,
remembering moreover how indispensable he was to Lady Jane, I stole down
to the library with a candle. There wasn’t, so far as I could discover,
a line of his writing in the house.