CHAPTER XI.
It was therefore from her husband I could never remove my eyes: I
beset 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 wasn't 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 he had been before, and that
deepened for me the golden glory in which the mystery was wrapped.
I had of course none the less to recollect that his wife might have
imposed her conditions and exactions. I had above all to remind
myself 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 stroke 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 hadn't
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 must have had from George Corvick--the
information you know, that had come to him, poor chap, in one of
the happiest hours of his life, 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'll in your turn admit me to it you'll do
me a kindness for which I shall be lastingly grateful."
He had turned at last very red; I dare say 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. Then he spoke. "I don't
know what you're talking about."
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
growled.
"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 reflexion 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 of Hugh Vereker. She'd
certainly have wished it--should it have borne 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'd 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 cigar and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker's
one descent from the clouds, I recited to him the extraordinary
chain of accidents that had, in spite of the original gleam, 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 be
trusted by his wife. So abrupt an experience of her want of trust
had now a disturbing effect on him; but I saw the 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 really moments when I feel it to be quite my
revenge.
