CHAPTER VI.
Six months after our friend had left England George Corvick, who
made his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which
imposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of some
difficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise to
me. His brother-in-law had become editor of a great provincial
paper, and the great provincial paper, in a fine flight of fancy,
had conceived the idea of sending a "special commissioner" to
India. Special commissioners had begun, in the "metropolitan
press," to be the fashion, and the journal in question must have
felt it had passed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick had
no hand, I knew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that
was his brother-in-law's affair, and the fact that a particular
task was not in his line was apt to be with himself exactly a
reason for accepting it. He was prepared to out-Herod the
metropolitan press; he took solemn precautions against
priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste. Nobody ever knew it--
that offended principle was all his own. In addition to his
expenses he was to be conveniently paid, and I found myself able to
help him, for the usual fat book, to a plausible arrangement with
the usual fat publisher. I naturally inferred that his obvious
desire to make a little money was not unconnected with the prospect
of a union with Gwendolen Erme. I was aware that her mother's
opposition was largely addressed to his want of means and of
lucrative abilities, but it so happened that, on my saying the last
time I saw him something that bore on the question of his
separation from our young lady, he brought out with an emphasis
that startled me: "Ah I'm not a bit engaged to her, you know!"
"Not overtly," I answered, "because her mother doesn't like you.
But I've always taken for granted a private understanding."
"Well, there WAS one. But there isn't now." That was all he said
save something about Mrs. Erme's having got on her feet again in
the most extraordinary way--a remark pointing, as I supposed, the
moral that private understandings were of little use when the
doctor didn't share them. What I took the liberty of more closely
inferring was that the girl might in some way have estranged him.
Well, if he had taken the turn of jealousy for instance it could
scarcely be jealousy of me. In that case--over and above the
absurdity of it--he wouldn't have gone away just to leave us
together. For some time before his going we had indulged in no
allusion to the buried treasure, and from his silence, which my
reserve simply emulated, I had drawn a sharp conclusion. His
courage had dropped, his ardour had gone the way of mine--this
appearance at least he left me to scan. More than that he couldn't
do; he couldn't face the triumph with which I might have greeted an
explicit admission. He needn't have been afraid, poor dear, for I
had by this time lost all need to triumph. In fact I considered I
showed magnanimity in not reproaching him with his collapse, for
the sense of his having thrown up the game made me feel more than
ever how much I at last depended on him. If Corvick had broken
down I should never know; no one would be of any use if HE wasn't.
It wasn't a bit true I had ceased to care for knowledge; little by
little my curiosity not only had begun to ache again, but had
become the familiar torment of my days and my nights. There are
doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly
more natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't after all
know why I should in this connexion so much as mention them. For
the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my
anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill
meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion,
meant life. The stake on the table was of a special substance and
our roulette the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board
as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme,
for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the
very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance.
I recognised in Corvick's absence that she made this analogy vivid.
It was extravagant, I admit, the way she lived for the art of the
pen. Her passion visibly preyed on her, and in her presence I felt
almost tepid. I got hold of "Deep Down" again: it was a desert in
which she had lost herself, but in which too she had dug a
wonderful hole in the sand--a cavity out of which Corvick had still
more remarkably pulled her.
Early in March I had a telegram from her, in consequence of which I
repaired immediately to Chelsea, where the first thing she said to
me was: "He has got it, he has got it!"
She was moved, as I could see, to such depths that she must mean
the great thing. "Vereker's idea?"
"His general intention. George has cabled from Bombay."
She had the missive open there; it was emphatic though concise.
"Eureka. Immense." That was all--he had saved the cost of the
signature. I shared her emotion, but I was disappointed. "He
doesn't say what it is."
"How could he--in a telegram? He'll write it."
"But how does he know?"
"Know it's the real thing? Oh I'm sure that when you see it you do
know. Vera incessu patuit dea!"
"It's you, Miss Erme, who are a 'dear' for bringing me such news!"-
-I went all lengths in my high spirits. "But fancy finding our
goddess in the temple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have
been able to go into the thing again in the midst of such different
and such powerful solicitations!"
"He hasn't gone into it, I know; it's the thing itself, let
severely alone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him
like a tigress out of the jungle. He didn't take a book with him--
on purpose; indeed he wouldn't have needed to--he knows every page,
as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some day
somewhere, when he wasn't thinking, they fell, in all their superb
intricacy, into the one right combination. The figure in the
carpet came out. That's the way he knew it would come and the real
reason--you didn't in the least understand, but I suppose I may
tell you now--why he went and why I consented to his going. We
knew the change would do it--that the difference of thought, of
scene, would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had
perfectly, we had admirably calculated. The elements were all in
his mind, and in the secousse of a new and intense experience they
just struck light." She positively struck light herself--she was
literally, facially luminous. I stammered something about
unconscious cerebration, and she continued: "He'll come right
home--this will bring him."
"To see Vereker, you mean?"
"To see Vereker--and to see ME. Think what he'll have to tell me!"
I hesitated. "About India?"
"About fiddlesticks! About Vereker--about the figure in the
carpet."
"But, as you say, we shall surely have that in a letter."
She thought like one inspired, and I remembered how Corvick had
told me long before that her face was interesting. "Perhaps it
can't be got into a letter if it's 'immense.'"
"Perhaps not if it's immense bosh. If he has hold of something
that can't be got into a letter he hasn't hold of THE thing.
Vereker's own statement to me was exactly that the 'figure' WOULD
fit into a letter."
"Well, I cabled to George an hour ago--two words," said Gwendolen.
"Is it indiscreet of me to ask what they were?"
She hung fire, but at last brought them out. "'Angel, write.'"
"Good!" I exclaimed. "I'll make it sure--I'll send him the same."
