Embarrassments | Page 6

whole lucid effort gives him a clue--every page and line and letter.
The thing's as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a
piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into every volume as your
foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word,
it dots every i, it places every comma."
I scratched my head. "Is it something in the style or something in the
thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?"
He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions to be
crude and my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear boy--don't
bother about it. After all, you do like a fellow."
"And a little intelligence might spoil it?" I still detained him.
He hesitated. "Well, you've got a heart in your body. Is that an element
of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that nobody has ever
mentioned in my work is the organ of life."
"I see--it's some idea about life, some sort of philosophy. Unless it be,"
I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, "some
kind of game you're up to with your style, something you're after in the
language. Perhaps it's a preference for the letter P!" I ventured
profanely to break out. "Papa, potatoes, prunes--that sort of thing?" He
was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn't got the right letter. But his
amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was nevertheless

something else I had absolutely to learn. "Should you be able, pen in
hand, to state it clearly yourself--to name it, phrase it, formulate it?"
"Oh," he almost passionately sighed, "if I were only, pen in hand, one
of you chaps!"
"That would be a great chance for you of course. But why should you
despise us chaps for not doing what you can't do yourself?"
"Can't do?" He opened his eyes. "Haven't I done it in twenty volumes? I
do it in my way," he continued. "You don't do it in yours."
"Ours is so devilish difficult," I weakly observed.
"So is mine. We each choose our own. There's no compulsion. You
won't come down and smoke?"
"No. I want to think this thing out."
"You'll tell me then in the morning that you've laid me bare?"
"I'll see what I can do; I'll sleep on it. But just one word more," I added.
We had left the room--I walked again with him a few steps along the
passage. "This extraordinary 'general intention,' as you call it--for
that's the most vivid description I can induce you to make of it--is then
generally a sort of buried treasure?"
His face lighted. "Yes, call it that, though it's perhaps not for me to do
so."
"Nonsense!" I laughed. "You know you're hugely proud of it."
"Well, I didn't propose to tell you so; but it is the joy of my soul!"
"You mean it's a beauty so rare, so great?"
He hesitated a moment. "The loveliest thing in the world!" We had
stopped, and on these words he left me; but at the end of the corridor,
while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned and caught sight

of my puzzled face. It made him earnestly, indeed I thought quite
anxiously, shake his head and wave his finger. "Give it up--give it up!"
This wasn't a challenge--it was fatherly advice. If I had had one of his
books at hand I would have repeated my recent act of faith--I would
have spent half the night with him. At three o'clock in the morning, not
sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he was to Lady
Jane, I stole down to the library with a candle. There wasn't, so far as I
could discover, a line of his writing in the house.

IV
Returning to town I feverishly collected them all; I picked out each in
its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a maddening month,
in the course of which several things took place. One of these, the last,
I may as well immediately mention, was that I acted on Vereker's
advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I could really make nothing
of the business; it proved a dead loss. After all, before, as he had
himself observed, I liked him; and what now occurred was simply that
my new intelligence and vain preoccupation damaged my liking. I not
only failed to find his general intention--I found myself missing the
subordinate intentions I had formerly found. His books didn't even
remain the charming things they had been for me; the exasperation of
my search put me out of conceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure
the more they became a resource the