CHAPTER VII.
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 our traveller 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 had found my letter was indicated by a telegram
which, reaching me after weary days and in the absence of any
answer to my laconic dispatch to him at Bombay, was evidently
intended as a reply to both communications. Those few words were
in familiar French, the French of the day, which Covick 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 tete!"--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 rattling 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 cabs, 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 precipitated to my door with the
crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived with my heart in
my mouth and accordingly 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 on 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'd
tell her after they were married exactly what she wanted to know.
"Only THEN, when I'm his wife--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 had found Mr. Vereker deliriously
interesting and his own possession of the secret a real
intoxication. The buried treasure was all gold and gems. Now that
it was there it seemed to grow and grow before him; it would have
been, through all time and taking all tongues, one of the most
wonderful flowers of literary art. Nothing, in especial, once you
were face to face with it, could show for more consummately DONE.
When once it came out it came out, was there with a splendour that
made you ashamed; and there hadn't 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 great, yet so simple, was simple, yet so great,
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 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 seemed
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 how little I had been on that score in her confidence, or even
in Corvick's, and that, moreover I wasn't in ignorance of her
mother's interdict. At bottom I was troubled by the disparity of
the two accounts; but after a little I felt Corvick's to be 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. She must have had resources of which I was destitute, but
she made her case slightly more intelligible by returning
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 mamma's consent?"
"Ah it mayn't 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.
