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. _Didn’t_ he know, hadn’t
he come into it as a matter of course?--that question hummed in my
brain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn’t return my stare so
queerly. His wife had told him what I wanted, and he was amiably amused
at my impotence. He didn’t laugh--he 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 Deane’s want of voice, want of form. He
simply hadn’t the art to use what he knew; he literally was incompetent
to take up the duty where Corvick had left it. I went still further--it
was the only glimpse of happiness I had. I made up my mind that the
duty didn’t appeal to him. He wasn’t interested, he didn’t 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 Vereker’s death the
major incentive dropped. He was still there to be honoured by what might
be done--he was no longer there to give it his sanction. Who, alas, but
he had the authority?
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 months--perhaps because
I rarely entered it--I 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 wife’s 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 Corvick--the 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----?”
“Vereker’s secret, my dear man--the general intention of his books: the
string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the
carpet.”
He began to flush--the numbers on his bumps to come out. “Vereker’s
books had a general intention?”
I stared in my turn. “You don’t mean to say you don’t 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 Vereker’s own delight, found the very mouth of the cave. Where
_is_ the mouth? He told after their marriage--and told alone--the 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 Corvick’s 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 don’t know what you’re talking about,” he
said.
He wasn’t acting--it was the absurd truth. “She _didn’t_ 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 devil’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“I’m astounded--I’m disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you.”
“It isn’t _in_ me!” he awkwardly laughed. “And even if it were----”
“If it were you’d let me have it--oh yes, in common humanity. But I
believe you. I see--I see!” I went on, conscious, with the full turn
of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor man’s
attitude. What I saw, though I couldn’t say it, was that his wife hadn’t
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 couldn’t 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 Deane’s having had any unmentioned, and
still less any unmentionable, knowledge about Hugh Vereker. She would
certainly have wished it--if it bore on his literary character--to be
used.”
“It _was_ used. She used it herself. She told me with her own lips that
she ‘lived’ on it.”
I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew so pale that
I felt as if I had struck him. “Ah, ‘lived’--!” he murmured, turning
short away from me.
My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I beg you to
forgive me--I’ve made a mistake. You _don’t_ know what I thought you
knew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me a service; and I
had my reasons for assuming that you would be in a position to meet me.”
“Your reasons?” he asked. “What were your reasons?”
I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. “Come and sit down with
me here, and I’ll tell you.” I drew him to a sofa, I lighted another
cigarette and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker’s one descent
from the clouds, I gave him an account of the extraordinary chain of
accidents that had in spite of it kept me till that hour in the dark.
I told him in a word just what I’ve written out here. He listened
with deepening attention, and I became aware, to my surprise, by his
ejaculations, by his questions, that he would have been after all not
unworthy to have been trusted by his wife. So abrupt an experience
of her want of trust had an agitating effect on him, but I saw that
immediate shock throb away little by little and then gather again into
waves of wonder and curiosity--waves that promised, I could perfectly
judge, to break in the end with the fury of my own highest tides. I may
say that to-day as victims of unappeased desire there isn’t a pin to
choose between us. The poor man’s state is almost my consolation; there
are indeed moments when I feel it to be almost my revenge.