My words however were not absolutely the same--I put something instead
of “angel”; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the more apt, for when
eventually we heard from Corvick it was merely, it was thoroughly to
be tantalised. He was magnificent in his triumph, he described his
discovery as stupendous; but his ecstasy only obscured it--there were
to be no particulars till he should have submitted his conception to the
supreme authority. He had thrown up his commission, he had thrown up
his book, he had thrown up everything but the instant need to hurry to
Rapallo, on the Genoese shore, where Vereker was making a stay. I wrote
him a letter which was to await him at Aden--I besought him to relieve
my suspense. That he found my letter was indicated by a telegram which,
reaching me after weary days and without my having received an answer to
my laconic dispatch at Bombay, was evidently intended as a reply to both
communications. Those few words were in familiar French, the French of
the day, which Corvick often made use of to show he wasn’t a prig. It
had for some persons the opposite effect, but his message may fairly
be paraphrased. “Have patience; I want to see, as it breaks on you, the
face you’ll make!” “_Tellement envie de voir ta tête!_”--that was what I
had to sit down with. I can certainly not be said to have sat down, for
I seem to remember myself at this time as rushing constantly between
the little house in Chelsea and my own. Our impatience, Gwendolen’s and
mine, was equal, but I kept hoping her light would be greater. We all
spent during this episode, for people of our means, a great deal of
money in telegrams, and I counted on the receipt of news from Rapallo
immediately after the junction of the discoverer with the discovered.
The interval seemed an age, but late one day I heard a hansom rattle up
to my door with a crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived with
my heart in my mouth and I bounded to the window--a movement which gave
me a view of a young lady erect on the footboard of the vehicle and
eagerly looking up at my house. At sight of me she flourished a paper
with a movement that brought me straight down, the movement with which,
in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves are flourished at the foot of
the scaffold.
“Just seen Vereker--not a note wrong. Pressed me to bosom--keeps me a
month.” So much I read on her paper while the cabby dropped a grin
from his perch. In my excitement I paid him profusely and in hers she
suffered it; then as he drove away we started to walk about and talk. We
had talked, heaven knows, enough before, but this was a wondrous lift.
We pictured the whole scene at Rapallo, where he would have written,
mentioning my name, for permission to call; that is _I_ pictured it,
having more material than my companion, whom I felt hang on my lips as
we stopped on purpose before shop-windows we didn’t look into. About one
thing we were clear: if he was staying on for fuller communication we
should at least have a letter from him that would help us through the
dregs of delay. We understood his staying on, and yet each of us saw, I
think, that the other hated it. The letter we were clear about arrived;
it was for Gwendolen, and I called upon her in time to save her the
trouble of bringing it to me. She didn’t read it out, as was natural
enough; but she repeated to me what it chiefly embodied. This consisted
of the remarkable statement that he would tell her when they were
married exactly what she wanted to know.
“Only when we’re married--not before,” she explained. “It’s tantamount
to saying--isn’t it?--that I must marry him straight off!” She smiled
at me while I flushed with disappointment, a vision of fresh delay that
made me at first unconscious of my surprise. It seemed more than a hint
that on 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 found Mr. Vereker deliriously
interesting and his own possession of the secret a kind of intoxication.
The buried treasure was all gold and gems. Now that it was there it
seemed to grow and grow before him; it was in all time, in all tongues,
one of the most wonderful flowers of art. Nothing, above all, when once
one was face to face with it, had been more consummately done. When
once it came out it came out, was there with a splendour that made you
ashamed; and there had not been, save in the bottomless vulgarity of
the age, with every one tasteless and tainted, every sense stopped, the
smallest reason why it should have been overlooked. It was immense,
but it was simple--it was simple, but it was immense, and the final
knowledge of it was an experience quite apart. He intimated that the
charm of such an experience, the desire to drain it, in its freshness,
to the last drop, was what kept him there close to the source.
Gwendolen, frankly radiant as she tossed me these fragments, showed the
elation of a prospect more assured than my own. That brought me back to
the question of her marriage, prompted me to ask her if what she
meant by what she had just surprised me with was that she was under an
engagement.
“Of course I am!” she answered. “Didn’t you know it?” She appeared
astonished; but I was still more so, for Corvick had told me the exact
contrary. I didn’t mention this, however; I only reminded her that I
had not been to that degree in her confidence, or even in Corvick’s,
and that moreover I was not in ignorance of her mother’s interdict. At
bottom I was troubled by the disparity of the two assertions; but after
a moment I felt that Corvick’s was the one I least doubted. This simply
reduced me to asking myself if the girl had on the spot improvised an
engagement--vamped up an old one or dashed off a new--in order to arrive
at the satisfaction she desired. I reflected that she had resources of
which I was destitute; but she made her case slightly more intelligible
by rejoining presently: “What the state of things has been is that we
felt of course bound to do nothing in mamma’s lifetime.”
“But now you think you’ll just dispense with your mother’s consent?”
“Ah, it may not come to that!” I wondered what it might come to, and she
went on: “Poor dear, she may swallow the dose. In fact, you know,” she
added with a laugh, “she really _must!_”--a proposition of which, on
behalf of every one concerned, I fully acknowledged the force.