Embarrassments | Page 7

less; for from the moment I was
unable to follow up the author's hint I of course felt it a point of honour
not to make use professionally of my knowledge of them. I had no
knowledge--nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear
it--they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I
accounted for my confusion--perversely, I confess--by the idea that
Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the
general intention a monstrous pose.
The great incident of the time however was that I told George Corvick
all about the matter and that my information had an immense effect
upon him. He had at last come back, but so, unfortunately, had Mrs.

Erme, and there was as yet, I could see, no question of his nuptials. He
was immensely stirred up by the anecdote I had brought from Bridges;
it fell in so completely with the sense he had had from the first that
there was more in Vereker than met the eye. When I remarked that the
eye seemed what the printed page had been expressly invented to meet
he immediately accused me of being spiteful because I had been foiled.
Our commerce had always that pleasant latitude. The thing Vereker
had mentioned to me was exactly the thing he, Corvick, had wanted me
to speak of in my review. On my suggesting at last that with the
assistance I had now given him he would doubtless be prepared to
speak of it himself he admitted freely that before doing this there was
more he must understand. What he would have said, had he reviewed
the new book, was that there was evidently in the writer's inmost art
something to be understood. I hadn't so much as hinted at that: no
wonder the writer hadn't been flattered! I asked Corvick what he really
considered he meant by his own supersubtlety, and, unmistakably
kindled, he replied: "It isn't for the vulgar--it isn't for the vulgar!" He
had hold of the tail of something; he would pull hard, pull it right out.
He pumped me dry on Vereker's strange confidence and, pronouncing
me the luckiest of mortals, mentioned half a dozen questions he wished
to goodness I had had the gumption to put. Yet on the other hand he
didn't want to be told too much--it would spoil the fun of seeing what
would come. The failure of my fun was at the moment of our meeting
not complete, but I saw it ahead, and Corvick saw that I saw it. I, on my
side, saw likewise that one of the first things he would do would be to
rush off with my story to Gwendolen.
On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by the receipt of
a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at Bridges had been
recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a magazine, on some article
to which my signature was appended. "I read it with great pleasure,"
he wrote, "and remembered under its influence our lively conversation
by your bedroom fire. The consequence of this has been that I begin to
measure the temerity of my having saddled you with a knowledge that
you may find something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't
imagine how I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never
before related, no matter in what expansion, the history of my little

secret, and I shall never speak of the business again. I was accidentally
so much more explicit with you than it had ever entered into my game
to be, that I find this game--I mean the pleasure of playing it--suffers
considerably. In short, if you can understand it, I've spoiled a part of
my fun. I really don't want to give anybody what I believe you clever
young men call the tip. That's of course a selfish solicitude, and I name
it to you for what it may be worth to you. If you're disposed to humour
me, don't repeat my revelation. Think me demented--it's your right; but
don't tell anybody why."
The sequel to this communication was that as early on the morrow as I
dared I drove straight to Mr. Vereker's door. He occupied in those
years one of the honest old houses in Kensington-square. He received
me immediately, and as soon as I came in I saw I had not lost my
power to minister to his mirth. He laughed out at the sight of my face,
which doubtless expressed my perturbation. I had been indiscreet--my
compunction was great. "I have told somebody," I panted, "and I'm
sure that, person will by this time have told somebody else! It's