When I spoke1 to George Corvick of the caution I had received he made me feel that any doubt of his delicacy2 would be almost an insult. He had instantly told Gwendolen, but Gwendolen’s ardent3 response was in itself a pledge of discretion4. The question would now absorb them and would offer them a pastime too precious to be shared with the crowd. They appeared to have caught instinctively5 at Vereker’s high idea of enjoyment6. 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’d call it letters, he’d call it life, but 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 sufficiently7 better to allow her a little leisure, he made a point of introducing me. I remember our going together one Sunday in August to a huddled8 house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick’s possession of a friend who had some light to mingle9 with his own. He could say 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 themselves. She conversed10 perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably11 little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told me that I had chilled her by my apparent indisposition to oblige them with the detail of what Vereker had said to me. I allowed that I felt I had given thought enough to that indication: hadn’t I even made up my mind that it was vain and would lead nowhere? The importance they attached to it was irritating and quite envenomed my doubts.
That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happened was that I felt humiliated12 at seeing other persons deeply beguiled13 by an experiment that had brought me only chagrin14. I was out in the cold while, by the evening fire, under the lamp, they followed the chase for which I myself had sounded the horn. They did as I had done, only more deliberately15 and sociably16 — they went over their author from the beginning. There was no hurry, Corvick said the future was before them and the fascination17 could only grow; they would take him page by page, as they would take one of the classics, inhale18 him in slow draughts19 and let him sink all the way in. They would scarce have got so wound up, I think, if they hadn’t been in love: poor Vereker’s inner meaning gave them endless occasion to put and to keep their young heads together. None the less it represented the kind of problem for which Corvick had a special aptitude20, drew out the particular pointed21 patience of which, had he lived, he would have given more striking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples. He at least was, in Vereker’s words, a little demon22 of subtlety23. We had begun by disputing, but I soon saw that without my stirring a finger his infatuation would have its bad hours. He would bound off on false scents24 as I had done — he would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacs25 who embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic26 character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeare’s own word for his being cryptic he would at once have accepted it. The case there was altogether different — we had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I returned that I was stupefied to see him attach such importance even to the word of Mr. Vereker. He wanted thereupon to know if I treated Mr. Vereker’s word as a lie. I wasn’t perhaps prepared, in my unhappy rebound27, to go so far as that, but I insisted that till the contrary was proved I should view it as too fond an imagination. I didn’t, I confess, say — I didn’t at that time quite know — all I felt. Deep down, as Miss Erme would have said, I was uneasy, I was expectant. At the core of my disconcerted state — for my wonted curiosity lived in its ashes — was the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would at last probably come out somewhere. He made, in defence of his credulity, a great point of the fact that from of old, in his study of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints of he didn’t know what, faint wandering notes of a hidden music. That was just the rarity, that was the charm: it fitted so perfectly28 into what I reported.
If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea I dare say it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of Miss Erme’s ailing29 parent. The hours spent there by Corvick were present to my fancy as those of a chessplayer bent30 with a silent scowl31, all the lamplit winter, over his board and his moves. As my imagination filled it out the picture held me fast. On the other side of the table was a ghostlier form, the faint figure of an antagonist32 good-humouredly but a little wearily secure — an antagonist who leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his fine clear face. Close to Corvick, behind him, was a girl who had begun to strike me as pale and wasted and even, on more familiar view, as rather handsome, and who rested on his shoulder and hung on his moves. He would take up a chessman and hold it poised33 a while over one of the little squares, and then would put it back in its place with a long sigh of disappointment. The young lady, at this, would slightly but uneasily shift her position and look across, very hard, very long, very strangely, at their dim participant. I had asked them at an early stage of the business if it mightn’t contribute to their success to have some closer communication with him. The special circumstances would surely be held to have given me a right to introduce them. Corvick immediately replied that he had no wish to approach the altar before he had prepared the sacrifice. He quite agreed with our friend both as to the delight and as to the honour of the chase — he would bring down the animal with his own rifle. When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said after thinking: “No, I’m ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. She’d give anything to see him; she says she requires another tip. She’s really quite morbid34 about it. But she must play fair — she SHAN’T see him!” he emphatically added. I wondered if they hadn’t even quarrelled a little on the subject — a suspicion not corrected by the way he more than once exclaimed to me: “She’s quite incredibly literary, you know — quite fantastically!” I remember his saying of her that she felt in italics and thought in capitals. “Oh when I’ve run him to earth,” he also said, “then, you know, I shall knock at his door. Rather — I beg you to believe. I’ll have it from his own lips: ‘Right you are, my boy; you’ve done it this time!’ He shall crown me victor — with the critical laurel.”
Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might have given him of meeting the distinguished35 novelist; a danger, however, that disappeared with Vereker’s leaving England for an indefinite absence, as the newspapers announced — going to the south for motives36 connected with the health of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement37. A year — more than a year — had elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had had no further sight of him. I think I was at bottom rather ashamed — I hated to remind him that, though I had irremediably missed his point, a reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple38 led me a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane’s house, made me even decline, when in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once became aware of her under Vereker’s escort at a concert, and was sure I was seen by them, but I slipped out without being caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashed along in the rain, that I couldn’t have done anything else; and yet I remember saying to myself that it was hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books, but I had lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike spoiled for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had taken to the man still more than I had ever taken to the books.
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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conversed
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| v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 ) | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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humiliated
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| 感到羞愧的 | |
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beguiled
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| v.欺骗( beguile的过去式和过去分词 )；使陶醉；使高兴；消磨（时间等） | |
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chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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sociably
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| adv.成群地 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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inhale
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| v.吸入(气体等)，吸(烟) | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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aptitude
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| n.(学习方面的)才能，资质，天资 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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maniacs
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| n.疯子（maniac的复数形式） | |
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cryptic
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| adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的 | |
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rebound
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| v.弹回；n.弹回，跳回 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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36
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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37
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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