She had the missive open there; it was emphatic, but it was brief. Eureka. Immense. That was allhe had saved the money of the signature. I shared her emotion, but I was disappointed. He doesnt say what it is.
How could hein a telegram? Hell write it.
But how does he know?
Know its the real thing? Oh, Im sure when you see it you do know. Vera incessu patuit dea!
Its 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 hasnt gone into it, I know; its the thing itself, let severely alone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him like a tigress out of the jungle. He didnt take a book with himon purpose; indeed he wouldnt have needed tohe knows every page, as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some day somewhere, when he wasnt thinking, they fell, in all their superb intricacy, into the one right combination. The figure in the carpet came out. Thats the way he knew it would come and the real reasonyou didnt in the least understand, but I suppose I may tell you nowwhy he went and why I consented to his going. We knew the change would do it, 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 herselfshe was literally, facially luminous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, and she continued: Hell come right homethis will bring him.
To see Vereker, you mean?
To see Verekerand to see me. Think what hell have to tell me!
I hesitated. About India?
About fiddlesticks! About Verekerabout 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 wont go in a letter if its immense.
Perhaps not if its immense bosh. If he has got something that wont go in a letter he hasnt got the thing. Verekers own statement to me was exactly that the figure would go in a letter.
Well, I cabled to George an hour agotwo words, said Gwendolen.
Is it indiscreet of me to inquire what they were?
She hung fire, but at last she brought them out. Angel, write.
Good! I exclaimed. Ill make it sureIll send him the same.
VII
My words however were not absolutely the sameI 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 itthere 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 AdenI 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 wasnt 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 youll 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, Gwendolens 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 windowa 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 Verekernot a note wrong. Pressed me to bosomkeeps 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 were marriednot before, she explained. Its tantamount to sayingisnt 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 simpleit 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.