Embarrassments. The figure in the carpet . Glasses. The next time. The way it came
James, Henry, 1843-1916
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Wiiv _ ^ <5 lt\A r iM l. <* \,d Pj-C-V ^ X •>-» *Y|r £ . * 1. c_^ . \ v-i Vv\*v i c<*-^ £ fL (kd'O 1 —? <~ x /)‘v~-ui U<- * •*+- <«vui' V^»w '< ’ ■ f 1 ■■ » Embar rassments BY THE SAME AUTHOR Price Six Shillings T E R M I N A TIONS THE TIMES — “ The stories are told by a ma7i 'whose heart and soul tarc in his profession of literature ." THE ATHENAEUM.—" The appearance of ' Terminations ’ will in no way shake the general belief in Mr. Henry James's accomplished touch and command of material. On the contrary , it confirms conclusions long since foregone , and will increase the respect of his readers." THE Morning POST.— “ The discriminating will not fail to recognize in the tales composing this volume , workmanship of a very high order , and a wealth of imaginative fancy that is in a measure a revelation." The Pall Mall Gazette.—" The author has rarely written with a greater precision in his efforts and with a larger sympathy." LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN gMBARRASSMENTS THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET . . GLASSES. THE NEXT TIME .. THE WAY IT CAME .. By HENRY JAMES ONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN MDCCCXCVI All rights reserved NOTE. — The first of the following Tales originally appeared in “ Cosmopolis ” ; the second in “ The Atlantic Monthly” ; the third in ‘■‘•The Yellow Book”; the last in “ Chapman’s Magazine of Fiction.” The author is indebted to the Editors of these periodicals for permission to republish. 151806 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/embarrassmentsfiOOOOjame CONTENTS The Figure in the Carpet Page . I Glasses .... • 67 The Next Time • 151 The Way It Came. 217 * THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET A V I I had done a few things and earned a few pence — I had perhaps even had time to begin to think I was finer than was perceived by the patronising; but when I take the little measure of my course (a fidgety habit, for it’s none of the longest yet) I count my real start from the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me a service. He had done more things than I, and earned more pence, though there were chances for cleverness I thought he sometimes missed. I could only however that evening declare to him that he never missed one for kindness. There was almost rapture in hearing it proposed to me to prepare for The Middle , the organ of our lucubrations, so called from the position in the week of its day of appearance, an article for which he had made himself responsible and of which, tied up with a stout string, he laid on my table the subject. I pounced upon my opportunity — that is on the first volume of it — and paid scant attention to my friend’s explanation of his appeal. What explana¬ tion could be more to the point than my obvious fitness for the task ? I had written on Hugh Vereker, but never a word in The Middle , where my dealings were mainly with the ladies and the minor poets. 4 EMBARRASSMENTS This was his new novel, an advance copy, and what¬ ever much or little it should do for his reputation I was clear on the spot as to what it should do for mine. Moreover if I always read him as soon as I could get hold of him I had a particular reason for wishing to read him now : I had accepted an invita¬ tion to Bridges for the following Sunday, and it had been mentioned in Lady Jane’s note that Mr. Vereker was to be there. I was young enough to have an emotion about meeting a man of his renown and innocent enough to believe the occasion would demand the display of an acquaintance with his “last.” Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to read it ; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring — as on precipitate reflection he judged — that he should catch the night- mail to Paris. He had had a telegram from Gwen¬ dolen Erme in answer to his letter offering to fly to her aid. I knew already about Gwendolen Erme ; I had never seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to the effect that Corvick would marry her if her mother would only die. That lady seemed now in a fair way to oblige him ; after some dreadful mistake about some climate or some waters she had suddenly collapsed on the return from abroad. Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a rush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend’s assistance, and it was my secret belief that at the sight of him Mrs. Erme would pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be called THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 5 secret ; it discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed me Gwendolen’s photograph with the remark that she wasn’t pretty but was awfully interesting ; she had published at the age of nineteen a novel in three volumes, “ Deep Down,” about which, in The Middle , he had been really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that the periodical in question should do no less ; then at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me : “ Of course you’ll be all right, you know.” Seeing I was a trifle vague he added : “I mean you won’t be silly.” “ Silly — about Vereker ! Why, what do I ever find him but awfully clever ? ” “ Well, what’s that but silly ? What on earth does ‘ awfully clever ’ mean ? For God’s sake try to get at him. Don’t let him suffer by our arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as I should have spoken of him.” I wondered an instant. “You mean as far and away the biggest of the lot — that sort of thing ? ” Corvick almost groaned. “ Oh, you know, I don’t put them back to back that way ; it’s the infancy of art ! But he gives me a pleasure so rare ; the sense of” — he mused a little — “ something or other.” I wondered again. “The sense, pray, of what? ” “ My dear man, that’s just what I want you to say 1 ” Even before Corvick had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, to prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night ; Corvick couldn’t 6 EMBARRASSMENTS have done more than that. He was awfully clever — I stuck to that, but he wasn’t a bit the biggest of the lot. I didn’t allude to the lot, however ; I flattered myself that I emerged on this occasion from the infancy of art. “ It’s all right,” they declared vividly at the office ; and when the number appeared I felt there was a basis on which I could meet the great man. It gave me confidence for a day or two, and then that confidence dropped. I had fancied him reading it with relish, but if Corvick was not satisfied how could Vereker himself be ? I reflected indeed that the heat of the admirer was sometimes grosser even than the appetite of the scribe. Corvick at all events wrote me from Paris a little ill- humouredly. Mrs. Ernie was pulling round, and I hadn’t at all said what Vereker gave him the sense of. II The effect of my visit to Bridges was to turn me out for more profundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so void of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination involved in my small precautions. If he was in spirits it was not because he had read my review ; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt sure he hadn’t read it, though The Middle had been out three days and bloomed, I assured myself, in the stiff garden of periodicals which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a station. The impression he made on me personally was such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected to this end with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the careless conspicuity of the sheet. I am afraid I even watched the result of my manoeuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain. When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, at the great man’s side, the result of his affability was a still livelier desire that he should not remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I had done him. It was not that he seemed to thirst for justice ; on the contrary I had not yet 8 EMBARRASSMENTS caught in his talk the faintest grunt of a grudge — a note for which my young experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more recogni¬ tion, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in The Middle , to see that it drew him out. He wasn’t of course popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good humour to be precisely that his success was independent of that. He had none the less become in a manner the fashion ; the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how much of that unveiling was my act ; and there was a moment when I probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then ap¬ pealed to him in a spirit comparatively selfish. It was very discouraging : I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself. I had had on my tongue’s end, for my own part, a phrase or two about the right word at the right time ; but later on I was glad not to have spoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I per¬ ceived Lady Jane, who had not been out with us, brandishing The Middle with her longest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure ; she was delighted with what she had found, and I saw that, as a mistake in a man may often be a felicity in a woman, she would practically do for me what I hadn't been able to do for myself. “ Some sweet little truths THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 9 that needed to be spoken,” I heard her declare, thrusting the paper at rather a bewildered couple by the fireplace. She grabbed it away from them again on the reappearance of Hugh Vereker, who after our walk had been upstairs to change something. “ I know you don’t in general look at this kind of thing, but it’s an occasion really for doing so. You haven't seen it ? Then you must. The man has actually got at you, at what / always feel, you know.” Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look evidently intended to give an idea of what she alwTays felt ; but she added that she couldn’t have expressed it. The man in the paper expressed it in a striking manner. “Just see there, and there, where I’ve dashed it, how he brings it out.” She had literally marked for him the brightest patches of my prose, and if I was a little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted to read something aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated her purpose by jerking the paper affectionately out of her clutch. He would take it upstairs with him, would look at it on going to dress. He did this half an hour later — I saw it in his hand when he repaired to his room. That was the moment at which, thinking to give her pleasure, I mentioned to Lady Jane that I was the author of the review. I did give her pleasure, I judged, but perhaps not quite so much as I had expected. If the author was “only me” the thing didn’t seem quite so remarkable. Hadn’t I had the effect rather of diminishing the lustre of the article IO EMBARRASSMENTS than of adding to my own ? Her ladyship was subject to the most extraordinary drops. It didn’t matter ; the only effect I cared about was the one it would have on Vereker up there by his bedroom fire. At dinner I watched for the signs of this impression, tried to fancy there was some happier light in his eyes ; but to my disappointment Lady Jane gave me no chance to make sure. I had hoped she would call triumphantly down the table, publicly demand if she hadn’t been right. The party was large — there were people from outside as well, but I had never seen a table long enough to deprive Lady Jane of a triumph. I was just reflecting in truth that this interminable board would deprive me of one when the guest next me, dear woman — she was Miss Poyle, the vicar’s sister, a robust, unmodulated person — had the happy inspiration and the unusual courage to address herself across it to Vereker, who was opposite, but not directly, so that when he replied they were both leaning forward. She in¬ quired, artless body, what he thought of Lady Jane’s “panegyric,” which she had read — not con¬ necting it however with her right-hand neighbour ; and while I strained my ear for his reply I heard him, to my stupefaction, call back gaily, with his mouth full of bread : “ Oh, it’s all right — it’s the usual twaddle ! ” I had caught Vereker’s glance as he spoke, but Miss Poyle’s surprise was a fortunate cover for my own. “ You mean he doesn’t do you justice ? ” said the excellent woman. THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET n Vereker laughed out, and I was happy to be able to do the same. “ It’s a charming article,” he tossed us. Miss Poyle thrust her chin half across the cloth. “ Oh you’re so deep ! ” she drove home. “As deep as the ocean! All I pretend is, the author doesn’t see - ” A dish was at this point passed over his shoulder, and we had to wait while he helped himself. “ Doesn’t see what ? ” my neighbour continued. “ Doesn’t see anything.” “ Dear me — how very stupid ! ” “ Not a bit,” Vereker laughed again. “ Nobody does.” The lady on his further side appealed to him, and Miss Poyle sank back to me. “ Nobody sees anything ! ” she cheerfully announced ; to which I replied that I had often thought so too, but had somehow taken the thought for a proof on my own part of a tremendous eye. I didn’t tell her the article was mine ; and I observed that Lady Jane, occupied at the end of the table, had not caught Vereker’s words. I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. “ The usual twaddle ” — my acute little study ! That one’s admiration should have had a reserve or two could gall him to that point ? I had thought him placid, and he was placid enough ; such a surface was the hard, polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, and 12 EMBARRASSMENTS the only comfort was that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out of it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies had dispersed, to carry me in the proper manner — I mean in a spotted jacket and humming an air — into the smoking-room. I took my way in some dejection to bed ; but in the passage I en¬ countered Mr. Vereker, who had been up once more to change, coming out of his room. He was hum¬ ming an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw me his gaiety gave a start. “ My dear young man,” he exclaimed, “ I’m so glad to lay hands on you ! I’m afraid I most un¬ wittingly wounded you by those words of mine at dinner to Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from Lady Jane that you wrote the little notice in The Middle." I protested that no bones were broken ; but he moved with me to my own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture ; and on hear¬ ing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my threshold and just tell me in three words what his qualification of my remarks had repre¬ sented. It was plain he really feared I was hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine, clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my 1 THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 13 youth. I don’t know what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from far within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any one. I have always done justice to the generous impulse that made him speak ; it was simply compunction for a snub unconsciously administered to a man of letters in a position inferior to his own, a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the ground of what we both loved best. The hour, the place, the unexpectedness deepened the impression : he couldn’t have done anything more exquisitely successful. Ill “ I don’t quite know how to explain it to you,” he said, “ but it was the very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence, it was just your exceptional sharpness that produced the feeling — a very old story with me, I beg you to believe — under the momentary influence of which I used in speak¬ ing to that good lady the words you so naturally resent. I don’t read the things in the newspapers unless they’re thrust upon me as that one was — it’s always one’s best friend that does it ! But I used to read them sometimes — ten years ago. I daresay they were in general rather stupider then ; at any rate it always seemed to me that they missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I’ve hap¬ pened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away — still missing it, I mean, deliciously. You miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assur¬ ance ; the fact of your being awfully clever and your article’s being awfully nice doesn’t make a hair’s breadth of difference. It’s quite with you rising young men,” Vereker laughed, “that I feel most what a failure I am ! ” THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET IS I listened with intense interest ; it grew intenser as he talked. “ You a failure — heavens ! What then may your ‘ little point ’ happen to be ? ” “ Have I got to tell you, after all these years and labours ? ” There was something in the friendly reproach of this — jocosely exaggerated — that made me, as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush to the roots of my hair. I'm as much in the dark as ever, though I’ve grown used in a sense to my obtuseness ; at that moment, however, Vereker’s happy accent made me appear to myself, and pro¬ bably to him, a rare donkey. I was on the point of exclaiming “Ah, yes, don’t tell me : for my honour, for that of the craft, dont ! ” when he went on in a manner that showed he had read my thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some day redeeming ourselves. “ By my little point I mean — what shall I call it ? — the particular thing I’ve written my books most for. Isn’t there for every writer a particular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes him apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which he wouldn’t write at all, the very passion of his passion, the part of the busi¬ ness in which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it’s that!" I considered a moment. I was fascinated— easily, you’ll say ; but I wasn’t going after all to be put off my guard. “Your description’s certainly beautiful, but it doesn’t make what you describe very dis¬ tinct.” “ I promise you it would be distinct if it should 16 EMBARRASSMENTS dawn on you at all.” I saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my companion into an emotion as lively as my own. “ But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see, be initiation.” “ What else in heaven’s name is criticism supposed to be ? ” I’m afraid I coloured at this too ; but I took refuge in repeating that his account of his silver lining was poor in something or other that a plain man knows things by. “ That’s only because you’ve never had a glimpse of it,” he replied. “ If you had had one the element in question would soon have become practically all you’d see. To me it’s exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just isn't a plain man : if he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour’s garden ? You’re anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d'etre of you all is that you’re little demons of subtlety. If my great affair’s a secret, that’s only because it’s a secret in spite of itself — the amazing event has made it one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to do so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I had I shouldn’t in advance have had the heart to go on. As it was I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work.” “And now you quite like it ? ” I risked. “ My work ? ” “Your secret. It’s the same thing.” “ Your guessing that,” Vereker replied, “ is a proof that you’re as clever as I say ! ” I was encouraged by this to remark that he would clearly be pained B i8 EMBARRASSMENTS to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him now the great amusement of life. “ I live almost to see if it will ever be detected.” He looked at me for a jesting challenge ; something at the back of his eyes seemed to peep out. “ But I needn’t worry — it won’t ! ” “You fire me as I’ve never been fired,” I returned; “ you make me determined to do or die.” Then I asked : “ Is it a kind of esoteric message ? ” His countenance fell at this — he put out his hand as if to bid me good-night. “ Ah, my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap journalese ! ” I knew of course he would be awfully fastidious, but our talk had made me feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied— I kept hold of his hand. “ I won't make use of the expression then,” I said, “ in the article in which I shall eventu¬ ally announce my discovery, though I daresay I shall have hard work to do without it. But mean¬ while, just to hasten that difficult birth, can’t you give a fellow a clue ? ” I felt much more at my ease. “ My whole lucid effort gives him the 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?” THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 19 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 eager¬ ness 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 prefer¬ ence 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.” 20 EMBARRASSMENTS “ 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 THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 21 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 intelli¬ gence 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 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 profession¬ ally 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 — THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 23 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 spite¬ ful 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 assist¬ ance 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 evi¬ dently 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, 24 EMBARRASSMENTS he replied : “ It isn’t for the vulgar — it isn’t for the vulgar I” 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, pronoun¬ cing 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 com¬ plete, 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 con¬ sequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity of my having saddled you with a know¬ ledge 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 THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 25 entered into my game to be, that I find this game — I mean the pleasure of playing it — suffers con¬ siderably. 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 a woman, into the bargain.” “ The person you’ve told ? ” “ No, the other person. I’m quite sure he must have told her.” “For all the good it will do her — or do me! A woman will never find out.” “ No, but she’ll talk all over the place : she’ll do just what you don’t want.” Vereker thought a moment, but he was not so disconcerted as I had feared : he felt that if the 26 EMBARRASSMENTS harm was done it only served him right. “It doesn’t matter — don’t worry.” “ I’ll do my best, I promise you, that your talk with me shall go no further.” “Very good ; do what you can.” “ In the meantime,” I pursued, “ George Corvick’s possession of the tip may, on his part, really lead to something.” “ That will be a brave day.” I told him about Corvick’s cleverness, his admira¬ tion, the intensity of his interest in my anecdote ; and without making too much of the divergence of our respective estimates mentioned that my friend was already of opinion that he saw much further into a certain affair than most people. He was quite as fired as I had been at Bridges. He was more¬ over in love with the young lady : perhaps the two together would puzzle something out. Vereker seemed struck with this. “Do you mean they’re to be married ? ” “ I daresay that’s what it will come to.” “That may help them,” he conceded, “but we must give them time ! ” I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties ; whereupon he repeated his former advice : “ Give it up, give it up ! ” He evidently didn’t think me intellectually equipped for the adven¬ ture. I stayed half an hour, and he was most good- natured, but I couldn’t help pronouncing him a man of shifting moods. He had been free with me in a mood, he had repented in a mood, and now in a THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 27 mood he had turned indifferent. This general levity helped me to believe that, so far as the subject of the tip went, there wasn’t much in it. I contrived however to make him answer a few more questions about it, though he did so with visible impatience. For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when I used it, and he used another him¬ self. “ It’s the very string,” he said, “ that my pearls are strung on ! ” The reason of his note to me had been that he really didn’t want to give us a grain of succour — our density was a thing too perfect in its way to touch. He had formed the habit of depending upon it, and if the spell was to break it must break by some force of its own. He comes back to me from that last occasion — for I was never to speak to him again — as a man with some safe secret for enjoyment. I wondered as I walked away where he had got his tip. V When I spoke to George Corvick of the caution I had received he made me feel that any doubt of his delicacy would be almost an insult. He had in¬ stantly told Gwendolen, but Gwendolen’s ardent response was in itself a pledge of discretion. The question would now absorb them, and they would enjoy their fun too much to wish to share it with the crowd. They appeared to have caught instinctively Vereker’s peculiar notion of fun. Their intellectual pride, however, was not such as to make them indifferent to any further light I might throw on the affair they had in hand. They were indeed of the “artistic temperament,” and I was freshly struck with my colleague’s power to excite himself over a question of art. He called it letters, he called it life — it was all one thing. In what he said I now seemed to understand that he spoke equally for Gwendolen, to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently better to allow her a little leisure, he made a point of introducing me. I re¬ member our calling together one Sunday in August at a huddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick’s possession of a friend who had some light to mingle with his own. He could say THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 29 things to her that I could never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and, with her pretty way of holding her head on one side, was one of those persons whom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by them¬ selves. She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick ; she had remarkably little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told me that 1 had chilled her by my apparent indisposition to oblige her with the detail of what Vereker had said to me. I admitted that I felt I had given thought enough to this exposure : hadn’t I even made up my mind that it was hollow, wouldn’t stand the test ? The importance they attached to it was irritating — it rather envenomed my dissent. 