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 att.i.tude. 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 a.s.suming 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, 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.