And the cause of it all was Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Yet he was proud of her still; proud even of the notoriety which was a tribute to her beauty. To tell the truth, her notoriety was his protection. Once the elections were over, gossip was too busy with the wife to pay much attention to the husband. He was considered to have extinguished himself for good. Miss Batchelor no longer regretted that he had no profession. To be the husband of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire was profession enough for any man.

By a further social paradox, Mrs. Nevill Tyson owed much of her present notoriety to her former obscurity. Lady Morley, had her temperament permitted, might have been as frisky or as risky as she pleased, without attracting unkind attention, much less censure. But, unless she combined the virtue of an angel with the manners of a district visitor, and contrived to walk circumspectly across the quicksands that separated her from "good society," a daughter of Mrs. Wilcox was condemned already. Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never walked circumspectly in her life. And Fate, that follows on the footsteps of the fool, was waiting, if not to catch Mrs. Nevill Tyson tripping, at any rate to prove that she must trip.

At first Fate merely willed that Sir Peter should take a journey up to town. Sir Peter's serviceable tweed suit, that had lasted him a good five years, was beginning to go at the corners. We know Stanistreet's opinion of Sir Peter's taste in dress; it was only a coarser expression of the views held by his wife. But for her frank and friendly criticism, Sir Peter, holding change in abhorrence, would have worn that tweed suit another five years at the very least.

"It's a capital suit," said he.

"Perfectly disgraceful," said she. "Look at your elbow."

"Ordinary wear and tear."

"Particularly tear." And while she was speaking Sir Peter had rubbed the worn place into a jagged hole. Sir Peter sighed. He was much attached to that tweed suit; it knew his ways, and had adapted itself to all the little eccentricities of his figure. After five years there is a certain intimacy between a man and his suit. However, there was no blinking the fact—the suit was doomed. Sir Peter's man seized the occasion for a general overhauling of his master's wardrobe, with the result that Sir Peter had to go up by an early train the next morning to consult Mr. Vance, his tailor.

Sir Peter was being measured up and down and all round him, while Mr. Vance stood by, note-book in hand, and took minutes of his case.

"A little wider round the waist, Vance, since you made my first coat for me thirty years ago."

Sir Peter was swaying on his toes, and supporting himself by a finger-tip laid on the shoulder of Vance's man.

"Not quite so long ago as that, Sir Peter."

"Must be, must be; you've been here more than thirty years."

Sir Peter prided himself on his memory, and was a stickler for the actual fact.

"I'm afraid not, sir." The voice of Vance was charged with melancholy and delicate regret. "We were only Binks and Co. in those days."

"Nonsense. Why, you measured me yourself, Vance."

"An impossibility, sir."

Mr. Vance leaned against a pillar of cloth, like one requiring support in a very painful situation. It was agony for him to contradict Sir Peter. But truth is great. It prevailed.

"I was in the City then, sir, serving my time at Tyson's."

He dropped his eyes. He had crushed Sir Peter with proof, but he was too polite to be a witness of his discomfiture.

"Tyson's—Tyson's." Sir Peter's tongue uttered the name mechanically. His mind no longer followed Vance; it was busy with the loveliest woman in Leicestershire.

Mr. Vance smiled. "I daresay they know that name pretty well in your county, sir."

"The name," said Sir Peter, blushing a little at his own thoughts, "the name is not uncommon."

"It's the same family, though, sir."

"Really—" Sir Peter was a little startled this time—"you don't mean to say—"

"Yes. It was a small firm, was Tyson's. But they're big people, I fancy, by now. Old Mr. Tyson left 'em and set up by himself in the wholesale business in Birmingham. He made a mint o' money. I understand he bought one of the best properties in your county; is that so, sir?"

If Mr. Vance had not made coats for Sir Peter for thirty years, he had made them for twenty-five or thereabouts, and he was privileged to gossip.

"Yes, yes, Thorneytoft. Very good property. And a very good sort too, old Mr. Tyson."

"A little peculiar, I'm told."

"Well—perhaps. I had not much acquaintance with the old man myself, but he was very generally respected. I know his nephew, Mr. Nevill Tyson—slightly."

Sir Peter would have died rather than ask a direct question, but he was wildly curious as to Mr. Nevill Tyson's antecedents.

An illuminating smile spread over Mr. Vance's face.

"I remember him when he was a youngster. His father chucked the business, and set up as a Baptist minister—a Particular Baptist."

"Indeed."

"An uncommonly clever fellow, Nevill Tyson; sharp as needles. But they couldn't bring him up to the business, nor the ministry."

"Hardly good enough for him, I should imagine."

"Well—no. It wasn't a house with any standing in his time. He'd got ideas in his head, too. Nothing but a 'Varsity education suited his book."

"Ah, that always tells."

"His father was very much against it. He knew the young rascal. And just when he was at the top of the tree, as you may say, sure enough he made off—goodness knows where."

"Lived abroad a great deal, I believe." Sir Peter was anxious to throw a vaguely charitable light on his neighbor's escapades.

"Got into some scrape about a woman, I fancy. Anyhow he left a pile of debts behind him, and the old man ruined himself paying them."

Bristling with curiosity, Sir Peter endeavored to look detached. But at this point Mr. Vance, remembering, perhaps, that Mr. Nevill Tyson was a great man in his customer's county, and chilled a little by Sir Peter's manner, checked the flow of his reminiscences. "He was a wild young scamp—another two inches round the waist, sir—but I daresay he's settled down steady enough by this time."

"No doubt he has," said Sir Peter, a little loftily. He was disgusted with Vance.

But though Vance's conduct was disgusting, after all he had told him what he was dying to know. The antecedents of old Tyson of Thorneytoft had been wrapped in a dull mystery which nobody had ever taken the trouble to penetrate. He had been in business—that much was known; and as he was highly respectable, it was concluded that his business had been highly respectable too. And then he had retired for ten years before he came to Thorneytoft. Those ten years might be considered a season of purification before entering on his solemn career as a country gentleman. Old Tyson had cut himself adrift from his own origins. And as the years went on he wrapped himself closer in his impenetrable garment of respectability; he was only Mr. Tyson, the gentle cultivator of orchids, until, gradually receding from view, he became a presence, a myth, a name. But when the amazing Mr. Nevill Tyson dashed into his uncle's place, he drew all eyes on him by the very unexpectedness of his advent. And now it seemed that Tyson, the cosmopolitan adventurer, the magnificent social bandit who trampled, so to speak, on the orchids of respectability, and rode rough-shod over the sleek traditions of Thorneytoft, was after all nothing better than a little City tailor's son.

Of course it didn't matter in the very least. A man's a man for all that; but when the man, in his brilliant oratorical way, has intimated that you don't ride straight, and that you funk your fences, you may be forgiven if you smile a sly private smile at his expense.

And Sir Peter did more than smile, he laughed.

"So that was the goose that laid the golden eggs?" (Ha, ha! Sir Peter had made a joke.)

He went home merrily at the end of the week in his new clothes with his new idea; and as he sat in the train he kept turning that little bit of gossip over and over, and tasting it. It lasted him all the way from St. Pancras to Drayton Parva. Sir Peter did not greatly care for women's gossip; but he liked his own. And really the provocation had been intense. It was tit for tat, quid pro quo, what was sauce for the goose—the goose again! Ha! ha! ha! It was a good thing for Sir Peter that Vance had given him another two inches round the waist.

Now, to do Sir Peter justice, he had meant to keep that little bit of gossip entirely to himself, for solitary gloating over and nibbling. But when an old gentleman has spent all his life uttering melancholy platitudes, and is suddenly delivered of a joke—of two jokes—it is a little hard to expect him to hide his light under a bushel. He could have buried scandal in his breast forever, but to put an extinguisher on the sparks of his playful fancy—no, these things are beyond a man's control. And as the idea of the goose, with all its subtle humor, sank deeper and deeper into Sir Peter's mind, he was irresistibly tempted to impart it to Lady Morley (in strict confidence). Such a joke as that ought not to be kept to himself to live and die with him; it would hardly be kind to Lady Morley. She would appreciate it.

She did appreciate it. So did Miss Batchelor, to whom she also told the story (in strict confidence). So did everybody whom Miss Batchelor may or may not have confided in. And when the thing became public property, Sir Peter wished he had restrained his sense of humor.



CHAPTER VIII

TOWARDS "THE CROSS-ROADS"

It was the beginning of the hunting season, and with the hunting season Louis Stanistreet reappeared on the scene. He stayed at Thorneytoft as usual. Tyson had just bought a new hunter, a remarkable animal. It fell away suddenly in the hind-quarters; it had a neck like a giraffe and legs like a spider; but it could jump, if not very like a horse, very like a kangaroo. This creature struck wonder and terror into the soul of the hunt. At the first meet of the season Stanistreet, the Master, and Sir Peter drew up by one accord to watch the antics of Tyson and his kangaroo.

"By Jove! where does your friend pick up his hunters?" asked the Master.

"If you ask me," said Stanistreet, "I should say he buys them by the yard."

Sir Peter smiled. The Master stroked his mustache and meditated. There was a malignity about Stanistreet's humor conceivable enough—if there was any truth in history. It struck Stanistreet that his feeble jest met with an amount of attention out of all proportion to its merits. Sir Peter was the first to recover himself.

"Your friend may buy his horses by the yard, but he doesn't ride like a tailor. He rides like a man. Look at him—look at him!"

This was generous of Sir Peter, considering what Tyson had said about his riding. But for all his love of gossip Sir Peter was a gentleman, and that goose weighed heavily on his conscience. The reproof he had just administered to Stanistreet relieved him wonderfully.

Stanistreet was at a loss to understand the old fellow's caustic tone. Over billiards that night Tyson enlightened him.

Louis had been in a good temper all day; and his high spirits had infected Mrs. Nevill Tyson, a fact which, you may be sure, was not set down to her credit by those who noticed it.

"I heard your riding praised this morning, Ty," said he, beaming with beneficence. They were alone.

"Ha!" said Tyson, "did you?"

"Rather. Binfield was asking where you picked your hunters up—got his eye on the kangaroo, I fancy. I ventured to suggest, in my agreeable way, that you bought them by the yard."

Tyson looked furious. Louis went on, unconscious of his doom. "Old Morley went for me like a lunatic—said you didn't ride like a tailor, you rode like a man. Queer old buffer, Morley—couldn't think what was the matter with him."

Tyson laid down his cue and held Stanistreet with a leveling gaze.

"Look here, Stanistreet," said he, "I've stood a good deal, but if you think I'm going to stand that, you're a greater fool than I took you for. What the hell do you mean by telling everybody about my private affairs?"

"My dear Tyson, a man who rides to hounds regularly on a kangaroo has no private affairs, he is, ipso facto, a public character." He threw back his head and shouted his laughter. "You've built yourself an everlasting name."

"Oh, no doubt. If Morley knows it everybody knows it. You might just as well confide in the town-crier." He sat down and pressed his hands to his forehead.

"This," he said bitterly, "accounts for everything."

Stanistreet stared at him in hopeless bewilderment. "What is the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I'm not going to kick you out of the house. I only ask you, so long as you are in it, to mind your own business."

"I can't. I haven't any business." No one could be more exasperating than the guileless Louis. Tyson darted another glance at him that was quite fiendish in its ferocity, and flung himself on the sofa. Sprawling there with his hands in his pockets, he remarked with freezing politeness, "I don't say much, Stanistreet, but I think a damned deal."

"My dear Orlando Furioso, surely a harmless jest—"

"So you think it funny, do you, to tell these people that my father was a tailor? It wouldn't be funny if it was false; but as it happens to be true, it's simply stupid."

"I never said your father was a tailor."

"Don't trouble yourself to lie about it. He was a tailor. The minuteness of his business only added to the enormity of his crime. He was born in an attic on a pile of old breeches. He was a damned dissenter—called himself a Particular Baptist. He kept a stinking slopshop in Bishopsgate Street, and a still more stinking schism-shop in Shoreditch."

("Why the devil shouldn't he?" murmured Louis.)

"Salvation free, gratis, for nothing, and five per cent, discount for ready money."

Louis was amused, but profoundly uncomfortable. This particular detail of Tyson's biography was not one of the things he knew; if it had been, he would naturally have avoided the most distant allusion to it. As it happened, in his ignorance he seemed to have been perpetually blundering up against the circumstance. He went on clumsily enough—"If it was, I didn't know it, and if I had known it, it wouldn't have interested me in the least. You interest me; you are, and always will be, unique."

"You're an awful fool, Stanistreet. By your own admission Morley is acquainted with this charming romance."

"What if he is?"

"The inference is obvious. You told him."

"Good God! If I did, do you suppose that Morley or any one else would care? Does anybody care what another fellow's father was? As a matter of fact I neither knew nor cared. But for your own genius for autobiography I should never have heard of it."

"That's odd, considering that you've made capital out of it ever since I knew you. It supplied the point of all your witticisms that weren't failures. I assure you your delicate humor was not lost on me."

"Considering that I've known you for at least twenty years, those jokes must have worn a little—er—threadbare. I'm extremely sorry for these—these breaches of etiquette. I shall do my best to repair them. That's a specimen of the thing you mean, I imagine?" From sheer nervousness Louis did what was generally the best thing to do after any little squabble with Tyson. He laughed.

Unfortunately this time Tyson was in no mood for laughter. The plebeian was uppermost in him. His wrongs rankled in him like a hereditary taint; this absurd quarrel with Stanistreet was a skirmish in the blood-feud of class against class. Tyson was morbidly sensitive on the subject of his birth, but latterly he had almost forgotten it. It had become an insignificant episode in the long roll of his epic past. Now for the first time for years it was recalled to him with a rude shock.

How real it was too! As he thought of it he was back in the stifling little shop. Faugh! How it reeked of shoddy! Back in the whitewashed chapel, hot with the fumes of gas and fervent humanity. He heard the hymn sung to a rollicking tune:—

"I am so glad that my Father in heaven Tells of His love in the book He has given.

"I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, I am so glad that Jesus loves me," etc.

The hateful measure rang in his ears, racking his nerves and brain. He could feel all the agony of his fierce revolting youth. The very torment of it had been a spur to his ambition. He swore (young Tyson was always swearing) that he would raise himself out of all that; he would distinguish himself at any cost. (As a matter of fact the cost was borne by the Baptist minister.) The world (represented then by his tutor and a few undergraduates), the world that he suspected of looking down on him, or more intolerable still, of patronizing him, should be compelled to admire him. And the world, being young and generous, did admire him without any strong compulsion. At Oxford the City tailor's son scribbled, talked, debated furiously; the excited utterance of the man of the people, naked and unashamed, passed for the insolence of the aristocrat of letters. He crowned himself with kudos. How the beggars shouted when he got up to speak! He could hear them now. How they believed in him! Young Tyson was a splendid fellow; he could do anything he chose—knock you off a leading article or lead a forlorn hope. In time he began to be rather proud of his origin; it showed up his pluck, his grit, the stuff he was made of. He owed everything to himself.

And that last year when he let himself go altogether—there again his origin told. He had flung himself into dissipation in the spirit of dissent. His passions were the passions of Demos, violent and revolutionary. Tyson the Baptist minister had despised the world, vituperated the flesh, stamped on it and stifled it under his decent broadcloth. If it had any rights he denied them. Therefore in the person of his son they reasserted their claim; and young Tyson paid it honorably and conscientiously to the full. In a year's time he knew enough of the world and the lust of it to satisfy the corrupt affections of generations of Baptist ministers, with the result that his university career was suddenly, mysteriously cut short. He had made too many experiments with life.

After that his life had been all experiments, most of them failures. But they served to separate him forever from his place and his people, from all the hateful humiliating past. He could still say that he owed everything to himself.

Then his uncle's death gave him the means of realizing his supreme ambition. By that time he had forgotten that he ever had an uncle. His family had effaced itself. Backed by an estate and a good income, there was no reason why its last surviving member should not be a conspicuous social success. Well, it seemed that he was a conspicuous social failure.

He owed that to Stanistreet, curse him! curse him! His brain still reeled, and he roused himself with difficulty from his retrospective dream. When he spoke again it was with the conscious incisiveness of a drunken man trying hard to control his speech.

"Would you mind telling me who you've told this story to? Lady Morley, for one. My wife," he raised his voice in his excitement, "my wife, I suppose, for another?"

Stanistreet had every reason for not wanting to quarrel with Tyson. He liked a country house that he could run down to when he chose; he liked a good mount; he liked a faultless billiard-table; and oddly enough, with all his faults he liked Nevill Tyson. And he had a stronger motive now. Consciously or unconsciously he felt that his friendship for Tyson was a safeguard. A safeguard against—he hardly knew what. But the idea of Mrs. Nevill Tyson was like fire to his dry mood. His brain flared up all in a moment, though his tongue spoke coolly enough.

"I swear I never did anything of the sort. I haven't seen your wife for ages—till to-night. We don't correspond. If we did"—he stopped suddenly—"if I did that sort of thing at all Mrs. Tyson is the very last person—"

"Oblige me by keeping her name out of it."

Tyson's voice carried far, through the door and across the passage, penetrating to Pinker in his pantry.

"I didn't introduce it."

"All right. I'm not asking you to lie again. No doubt everybody knows the facts by this time. I'm going to turn the lights out."

Stanistreet pulled himself together with a shrug. If any other man had hinted to him, in the most graceful and allegorical manner, that he lied, it would have been better for that man if he had not spoken. But he forgave Tyson many things, and for many reasons, one of these, perhaps, being a certain shamefaced consciousness touching Tyson's wife.

"By the way," said he, "are you going to keep this up very much longer? It's getting rather monotonous."

Tyson turned and paused with his hand on the door-knob. He snarled, showing his teeth like an angry cur, irritated beyond endurance.

"If you mean, am I going to take your word for that—frankly, I am not."

He flung the door open and strode out.

Stanistreet followed him.

"I think, Tyson," said he, "if I want to catch that early train to-morrow, I'd better take my things over to 'The Cross-Roads' to-night."

"Just as you like."

So Stanistreet betook himself to "The Cross-Roads."



CHAPTER IX

AN UNNATURAL MOTHER

Next morning a rumor set out from three distinct centers, Thorneytoft, Meriden, and "The Cross-Roads," to the effect that Tyson had quarreled seriously with Stanistreet. His wife, as might be imagined, was the cause. After a hot dispute, in which her name had been rather freely bandied about, it seems that Tyson had picked the Captain up by the scruff of the neck and tumbled him out of the house.

By the evening the scandal was blazing like a fire.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson was undoubtedly a benefactor to her small public. She had roused the intelligence of Drayton Parva as it had never been roused before. Conjecture followed furtively on her footsteps, and inference met her and stared her in the face. No circumstance, not even Sir Peter's innocent admiration, was too trivial to furnish a link in the chain of evidence against her. Not that a breath of slander touched Sir Peter. He, poor old soul, was simply regarded as the victim of diabolical fascinations.

After the discomfiture of Stanistreet, Mrs. Nevill Tyson's movements were watched with redoubled interest. Her appearances were now strictly limited to those large confused occasions which might be considered open events—Drayton races, church, the hunt ball, and so on. Only the casual stranger, languishing in magnificent boredom by Miss Batchelor's side, followed Mrs. Nevill Tyson with a kindly eye.

"Who is that pretty little woman in the pink gown?" he would ask in his innocence.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Nevill Tyson. She is pretty," would be the answer, jerked over Miss Batchelor's shoulder. (That habit was growing on her.)

"And who or what is Mrs. Nevill Tyson?"

Whereupon Miss Batchelor would suddenly recover her self-possession and reply, "Not a person you would care to make an intimate friend of."

And at this the stranger smiled or looked uncomfortable according to his nature.

Public sympathy was all with Tyson. If ever a clever man ruined his life by a foolish marriage, that man was Tyson. Opinions differed as to the precise extent of Mrs. Tyson's indiscretion; but her husband was held to have saved his honor by his spirited ejection of Captain Stanistreet, and he was respected accordingly.

Meanwhile the hero of this charming fiction was unconscious of the fine figure he cut. He was preoccupied with the unheroic fact, the ridiculous cause of a still more ridiculous quarrel. Looking back on it, he was chiefly conscious of having made more or less of a fool of himself.

After all, Tyson knew men. On mature reflection it was simply impossible to regard Stanistreet as a purveyor of puerile gossip, or seriously to believe that such gossip had been the cause of his disaster. That was only the last of a long train of undignified circumstances which had made his position in Drayton Parva insupportable; it lent a little more point to the innuendo on every tongue, the intelligence in every eye. He was sick with disgust, and consumed with the desire to get out of it all, to cut Drayton Parva for good. The accursed place was trying to stare him out of countenance. Everywhere he turned there was a stare: it was on the villagers' faces, behind Miss Batchelor's eye-glass, on the bare fields with their sunken fences, and on that abominable bald-faced house of his.

No doubt this was the secret of the business that took Tyson up to town so many times that winter. He said nothing to his wife that could account for his frequent absence, but she believed that he was looking about for the long-promised flat; and when he remarked casually one morning that he meant to leave Thorneytoft in the spring she was not surprised. Neither was Mrs. Wilcox. The flat had appeared rather often in her conversation of late. Mrs. Wilcox was dimly, fitfully aware of the state of public opinion; but it did not disturb her in the least. She at once assumed the smile and the attitude of Hope; she smiled on her son-in-law's aberrations as she smiled on the ways of the universe at large, and for the same reason, that the one was about as intelligible as the other. She went about paying visits, and in the course of conversation gave people to understand that Mr. Tyson's residence in Drayton had been something of a concession on his part from the first. So large a land-owner had a great many tiresome claims and obligations, as well as a position to keep up in his county; but there could be no doubt that Nevill was quite lost in the place, and that the true sphere of his activity was town. Mrs. Wilcox's taste for vague and ample phrases was extremely convenient at times.

If his wife was the last person to be consulted in Tyson's arrangements, it may be supposed that no great thought was taken for his son and heir. Not that the little creature would have been much affected by any change in his surroundings; he was too profoundly indifferent to the world. It had taken all the delicious tumult of the spring, all the flaming show of summer, to move him to a few pitiful smiles. He had none of the healthy infant's passion and lusty grasp of life; he seemed to touch it as he had touched his mother's breasts, delicately, tentatively, with some foregone fastidious sense of its illusion. What little interest he had ever taken in the thing declined perceptibly with autumn, when he became too deeply engrossed with the revolutions taking place in his sad little body to care much for anything that went on outside it.

Hitherto he had not had to suffer from the neglect of servants. He was so delicate from his birth that his mother had been strongly advised to keep on the trained nurse till he was a year old. But Mrs. Nevill Tyson knew better than that. For some reason she had taken a dislike to her trained nurse; perhaps she was a little bit afraid of the professional severity which had so often held in check her fits of hysterical passion. Aided by Mrs. Wilcox and her own intuitions, after rejecting a dozen candidates on the ground of youth and frivolity, she chose a woman with calm blue eyes and a manner that inspired confidence. Swinny, engaged at an enormous salary, had absolute authority in the nursery. And if it had been possible to entertain a doubt as to this excellent woman's worth, the fact that she had kept the Tyson baby alive so long was sufficient testimonial to her capabilities.

But Swinny was in love—in love with Pinker. And to be in love with Pinker was to live in a perfect delirium of hopes and fears. No sooner was Swinny delivered over to the ministers of love, who dealt with her after their will, than Baby too agonized and languished. His food ceased to nourish him, his body wasted. They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would bear the change to London.

"Shall I take him, Nevill?" she asked.

"Take him if you like," was the reply. "But you might as well poison the little beast at home while you're about it."

So it was an understood thing that when Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson settled in town, Baby was to be left behind at Thorneytoft for the good of his health. It was his father's proposal, and his mother agreed to it in silence.

Her indifference roused the severest comments in the household. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was an unnatural mother. From the day she weaned him, no one had ever seen her caress the child. She handled him with a touch as light and fleeting as his own; her lips seemed to shrink from contact with his pure soft skin. There could be no doubt of it, Mrs. Nevill Tyson's behavior was that of a guilty woman—guilty in will at any rate, if not in deed.

A shuddering whisper went through the house; it became a murmur, and the murmur became an articulate, unmistakable voice. The servants were sitting in judgment on her. Swinny spoke from the height of a lofty morality; Pinker, being a footman of the world, took a humorous, not to say cynical view, which pained Swinny. Such a view could never have been taken by one whose affections were deeply engaged.

The conclusions arrived at in the servants' hall soon received a remarkable confirmation.

It was on a Monday. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was seen to come down to breakfast in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. Tyson was away; he had been up in town for three weeks, and was expected home that evening. She looked for letters. There were two—one from the master of the house; one also from Stanistreet, placed undermost by the discreet Pinker. The same thoughtful observer of character noticed that his mistress blushed and put her letters aside instead of reading them at once. At ten Swinny came into the breakfast-room, bearing Baby. This was the custom of the house. By courtesy the most unnatural mother may be credited with a wish to see her child once a day.

This morning Mrs. Nevill Tyson did not so much as raise her head. She was sitting by the fire in her usual drooping guilty attitude. Swinny noticed that the hearth was strewn with the fragments of torn letters. She put the baby down on a rug by the window, and left his mother alone with him to see what she would do.

She did nothing. Baby lay on the floor sucking his little claw-like fingers, and stirring feebly in the sun. Mrs. Nevill Tyson continued to gaze abstractedly at nothing. When Swinny came back after a judicious interval, he was still lying there, and she still sitting as before. She had not moved an inch. How did Swinny know that? Why, the tail of Mrs. Tyson's dress was touching the exact spot on the carpet it had touched before. (Swinny had made a note of the pattern.) And the child might have cried himself into fits before she'd have stirred hand or foot to comfort him. Baby found himself caught up in a rapture and strained to his faithful Swinny's breast. Whereupon he cried. He had been happier lying in the sun.

Swinny turned round to the motionless figure by the hearth, and held the child well up in her arms.

"Baby thinks that his mamma would like to see him," said Swinny, in an insinuating manner.

A hard melancholy voice answered, "I don't want to see him. I don't want to see him any more."

All the same Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned and looked after him as he was carried through the doorway. She could just see the downy back of his innocent head, and his ridiculous frock bulging roundly over the nurse's arm. But whether she was thinking of him at that moment God only knows.

The household was informed that its master would not return that evening after all; that no date was fixed for his coming.

Later on Pinker, the guardian of the hearth, finding those fragments of letters tried to put them together again. Tyson's letter it was impossible to restore. It had been torn to atoms in a vicious fury of destruction. But by great good luck Stanistreet's (a mere note) had been more tenderly dealt with. It was torn in four neat pieces; the text, though corrupt, was fairly legible, and left little to the ingenuity of the scholiast. The Captain was staying in the neighborhood. He proposed to call on Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Would she be at home on Wednesday afternoon? Now, to Pinker's certain knowledge, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had taken the letters to the post herself that morning. That meant secrecy, and secrecy meant mischief.

How was she going to get through the next two days? This was provided for. Baby was a bad sleeper. That night he cried as he had never cried before. Not violently; he was too weak for that, but with a sound like the tongue-tied whimper of some tiny animal. Swinny had slept through worse noise many a night. Now he cried from midnight to cock-crow; and on Tuesday morning Swinny was crying too. He had had one of his "little attacks," after which he began to show signs of rapid wasting.

He had got something which Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never heard of—"marasmus," the doctor called it. She hoped it was nothing very bad.

Then the truth came out piecemeal, through Swinny's confession and the witness of her fellow-servants. The wretched woman's movements had been wholly determined by the movements of Pinker; and she had been in the habit of leaving the child in the servants' hall, where the cook, being an affectionate motherly woman, made much of him, and fed him with strange food. He had had an "attack" the last time she did this, and Swinny, who valued her place for more reasons than one, had been afraid to say anything about it. Preoccupied with her great passion, she had been insensible to the signs of sickness that showed themselves from day to day. In other words, there had been shameful, pitiful neglect.

Terrified and repentant, Swinny confessed, and became faithful again. She sat up all night with the child wrapped in blankets in her lap. She left nothing for his mother to do but to sit and look at him, or go softly to and fro, warming blankets. (It was odd, but Mrs. Nevill Tyson never questioned the woman's right to exclusive possession of the child.) She had written to Nevill by the first post to tell him of his son's illness. That gave him time to answer the same night.

Wednesday came. There was no answer to her letter; and the baby was worse. The doctor doubted if he would pull through.

Mrs. Wilcox was asked to break the news to her daughter. She literally broke it. That is to say, she presented it in such disjointed fragments that it would have puzzled a wiser head than Mrs. Nevill Tyson's to make out the truth. Mrs. Wilcox had been much distressed by Molly's strange indifference to her maternal claims; but when you came to think of it, it was a very good thing that she had not cared more for the child, if she was not to keep him. All the same, Mrs. Wilcox knew that she had an extremely disagreeable task to perform.

They were in the porch at Thorneytoft, the bare white porch that stared out over the fields, and down the great granite road to London. As Mrs. Nevill Tyson listened she leaned against the wall, with her hands clasped in front or her and her head thrown back to stop her tears from falling. Her throat shook. She was so young—only a child herself! A broad shaft of sunshine covered her small figure; her red dress glowed in the living light. Looking at her, a pathetic idea came to Mrs. Wilcox. "You never had a frock that became you more," she murmured between two sighs. Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard neither murmur nor sighs. And yet her senses did their work. For years afterwards she remembered that some one was standing there in the bright sunshine, dressed in a red gown, some one who answered when she was spoken to; but that she—she—stood apart in her misery and was dumb.

"I don't understand," she said at last. "Why can't you say what you mean? Is there danger?"

Mrs. Wilcox looked uncomfortable. "Yes, there is some danger. But while there is life there is—hope."

"If there is danger—" she paused, looking away toward the long highroad, "if there is danger, I shall send for Nevill. He will come."

She telegraphed: "Baby dangerously ill. Come at once."

She waited feverishly for an answer. There was none. To the horror of the household, she gave orders that when Captain Stanistreet called she would see him. As she could not tear herself from the baby, there was nothing for it but to bring Stanistreet to her.

To his intense astonishment Louis was led up into a wide bare room on the third story: He was in that mood when we are struck with the unconscious symbolism of things. By the high fire-guard, the walls covered with cheerful oleographs, the toys piled in the corner, he knew that this was the abode of innocence, a child's nursery. The place was flooded with sunshine. A woman sat by the fire with a small yellowish bundle in her lap. Opposite her sat Mrs. Nevill Tyson, with her eyes fixed on the bundle. She looked up in Stanistreet's face as he came in, but held out no hand.

"Louis," she whispered hoarsely when he was near, "where's Nevill?"

"In London."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes."

"Is he coming?"

"I don't know. I didn't speak to him. I—I was in a hurry."

She had turned her head. Her eyes never wandered from that small yellowish bundle. Up to the last she had let it lie on the nurse's knee. She had not dared to take it; perhaps she felt she was unworthy. He followed her gaze.

"He's very ill," said she. "Look at him."

The nurse moved a fold of blanket from the child's face, and Stanistreet gazed at Tyson's son. He tried to speak.

"Sh—sh—" whispered Mrs. Nevill Tyson. "He's sleeping."

"Dying, sir," muttered the nurse. The woman drew in her knees, tightening her hold on the child. Her face was stained with tears. (She had loved the baby before she loved Pinker. Remorse moved her and righteous indignation.) Mrs. Nevill Tyson's nostrils twitched; deep black rings were round her eyes. Passion and hunger were in them, but there were no tears.

And as Stanistreet looked from one woman to the other, he understood. He picked up the bundle and removed it to its mother's knee. All her soul passed into the look wherewith she thanked him. Swinny, tear-stained but inexorable, stood aloof, like rigid Justice, weighing her mistress in the balance.

"He's dying, Molly," he said gently.

She shook her head. "No; he's not dying. God isn't cruel. He won't let him die."

She turned the child's face to her breast, hoping perhaps that his hands would move in the old delicious way.

He did not stir, and she laid him on his back again and looked at him. His lips and the hollows under his eyes were blue. The collapse had come. Louis knelt down and put his hand over the tiny heart.

A spasm passed over the baby's face, simulating a smile. Then Mrs. Nevill Tyson fell to smiling too.

"See"—she said.

But Stanistreet had seen enough. He rose from his knees and left her.



CHAPTER X

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Well, if she wouldn't look at him when he was alive, she might show some feeling now he's dead. (So Justice.)

She showed no feeling. That is to say, none perceptible to the eyes of Justice.

On Thursday morning she heard from Tyson. A short note: "I am more sorry than words can say. I wish I could be with you, but I'm kept in this infernal place till the beginning of next week. I hope the little man will pull through. Take care of yourself," and the usual formula.

She sat down and wrote a telegram, brutally brief, as telegrams must be. "Died yesterday. Funeral Friday, two o'clock. Can you come?"

Two hours later the answer came in one word—"Impossible." She flushed violently and set her face like a flint.

But she showed no feeling. None when they screwed the baby into a box lined with white satin; none when they lowered him into his grave and piled flowers and earth upon him; none when, as they drove home from the funeral, Mrs. Wilcox's pent-up emotions broke loose in a torrent of words.

Having gone through so much, it occurred to Mrs. Wilcox that the time had now come to look a little on the bright side of things. "Well," she began with a faint perfunctory sigh, "I am thankful we've had a fine day. The sunshine makes one hope. You'll remember, Molly, it was just the same at your poor father's funeral. We had a sudden gleam of sunlight between the showers. There were showers, for my new crape was ruined. And in December we might have had snow or pouring rain—so bad for the clergyman—and gentlemen, if they take their hats off. Some don't; and very sensible too. They catch such awful colds at funerals, standing about in their wet feet, and no one likes to be the first to put up an umbrella. I didn't see Captain Stanistreet in the church—did you?—nor yet at the grave. Rather strange of him. I think under the circumstances he might have come—Nevill's oldest friend. Did you know Miss Batchelor was in church! She was. Not in the chancel—away at the back. You couldn't see her. I think it showed very nice feeling in her to come, and to send those lovely roses too—from her own greenhouse. I must say everybody has been most kind, and there wasn't a hitch in the arrangements. I often think you have only to be in real trouble to know who your true friends are. I'm sure the sympathy—and the flowers—you wouldn't have known he was lying in his little coffin—and Swinny—that woman has feeling. I saw her—sobbing as if her heart would break. We misjudged her, Molly, we did indeed. Really, her devotion at the last—"

At this point Molly turned her back on her mother and looked out of the window. They were going up the village street now, and a hard tearless face was presented to a highly emotional group of spectators. All Drayton Parva was alive to the fact that Mrs. Nevill Tyson was an unnatural mother. "I'm sure the villagers did everything they could to show their respect. There was Pinker's father, and Ashby, at the gate—with their hats off. And for Baby—poor little darling, if he only knew! Well, it shows what they think of you and Nevill. You've got mud on your skirt, dear—off the wheel getting into the carriage. Pinker should have been more careful. How wise you were to get that good serge. It's everlasting. At any rate it'll last you as long as you want it. Ah-h! My poor child"—she laid her hand on Mrs. Nevill Tyson's averted shoulder—"you'll not fret, will you, now? No—you're too brave, I know. The more I think of it the more I feel that it's all for the best. Think—if he'd lived to be older you'd have cared more, and it would have been harder then—when he was running about and playing. You can't have the same feeling for a little baby. And he was so delicate, too, you really couldn't have wished it. He had your father's constitution. And if you'd tried to teach him anything, he'd just have got water on the brain. Ah-h-h-h! Depend upon it, it'll bring you and Nevill closer together."

A white rosebud, dropped on the back seat, marked the place where the coffin had rested. Mrs. Nevill Tyson picked it up and crushed it in her hand.

"Yes. I know you've had your little tiffs lately. Somebody said, 'It's blessings on the falling out that all the more endears.' Who was it? I don't know how it goes on; I've such a head for poetry. They kissed—kissed—kissed. Whoever was it now? Oh! It was poor dear Mrs. Browning. They kissed again—with tears. Ah! Are you cold, love?"

"No—no."

"I thought you shivered."

From Drayton parish church Thorneytoft is a long drive, and from beginning to end of it Mrs. Wilcox had never ceased talking. At last they reached home. The blinds were drawn up again in the front of the house; it was staring with all its windows.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson lingered till she saw her mother half-way upstairs, then she turned into the library. The room was only used by Tyson; she would be certain to be alone there.

The silence sank into her brain like an anesthetic after torture. She had closed the door before she realized that she was not alone.

Somebody was sitting writing at the table in the window. His head was bent low over his hands, so that she could not see it well; but at the first sight of his back and shoulders she thought it was Tyson.

It was Stanistreet.

He turned and started when he saw her.

"Forgive me," said he, "I—I'm leaving to-morrow, and I was just writing a note to you. I was going—I did not expect to see you—they told me-"

His manner was nervous and confused and he broke off suddenly. She sat down in the chair he had just left, and took off her gloves and her hat. She leaned her elbow on the table and her head upon her hand. "Don't go," she said. "I only came in here to get away—to think. I was afraid of being talked to. But I'd rather you didn't go." She looked away from him. "Have you heard from Nevill?"

"No."

"Do you think he's ill?"

"He wasn't ill when I saw him on Sunday."

"Then I wonder why he keeps away. You don't know, do you?"

"I do not. And I don't want to talk about him."

"No more do I!" she said fiercely. "I told him—and he doesn't care. He doesn't care!"

Her lips shook; her breast heaved; she hid her face in her hands.

"Oh, Louis, Louis, he's dead! And I said I didn't want to see him ever again!"

His hand was on the arm of her chair. "I'm so sorry," he said below his breath, guarding his tongue.

She had clutched his hand and dragged herself to her feet. She was clinging to him almost, crying her heart out.

"I know," she said at last, "I know you care."

He trembled violently. In another minute he would have drawn her to him; he would have said the stupid, unutterable word. The thing had passed beyond his control. It had not happened by his will. She was Tyson's wife. Yes; and this was the third time he had been thrust into Tyson's place. Why was he always to be with or near this woman in these moments, in the throes of her mortal agony, in the divine passion of her motherhood, and now—?

Did she know? Did she know? She stopped crying suddenly, like a startled child. She looked down at the hand she held and frowned at it, as if it puzzled her.

The door opened. She loosed her hold and went from him, brushing past the astonished Pinker in her flight.



CHAPTER XI

THE RETURN OF ODYSSEUS

Tyson returned by the end of the following week. He found his wife in the big hall. She was standing by the fireplace, with one foot on the curbstone of the hearth, the other lifted a little to the blaze. Her arms lay along the chimney-piece, her head drooped over them. Her back was towards him as he came in, and she did not turn at the sound of his footsteps. He went up to her, put his arm round her waist and led her gently into the library. She had started violently at his touch, but she made no resistance. He meant to kiss and comfort her.

"Darling," he said, "I was awfully cut up. Tell me about the poor little beggar."

He held her closer. His breath was like flame against her cheek. When he spoke he coughed—a short hard cough.

She pushed against his arm and broke from him. Then she turned. "Don't speak of him! Don't speak of him!"

"I won't, dear, if you'd rather not. Only don't think I didn't care."

"Don't tell me you cared!" She held her arms outstretched, the hands clenched. Her small body was tense with passion. "Don't tell me. It's a lie. You never cared. You hated him from the first. You kept me from him lest I should love him better than you. You would have taken me away and left him here. You were cruel. And you knew it. You stayed away because you knew it. You were afraid, and no wonder. I know why you did it. You thought I didn't love you. Was that the way to make me love you?"

"Molly," he said faintly, "I didn't know. I never thought you'd take it to heart that way. Come—" He held out his hand.

She too had said "Come." She remembered the answer: "Impossible."

"No," she said. "I won't. I can't. I don't want to have anything to do with you. What were you doing all those days when he was dying?"

He slunk from her, conscience-stricken. "My dear Molly," he said, "I'm awfully sorry, but you're a damned little fool. You'd better hold your tongue before you say something you'll be sorry for."

"I'm going to hold my tongue. If I pleased myself I should never speak to you again."

Ah, she had said something very like that not long before.

He sighed heavily. Then he drew a chair up to the fire and lowered himself carefully into it. He was shivering.

"All right," he muttered between chattering teeth. "Get me some brandy, will you? You can do that without speaking."

"Nevill—what's the matter?"

"Nothing. I've got an infernally bad chill coming here, that's all."

She flew for the brandy.

Yes; there was no mistake about it. It was an infernally bad chill, and it saved him.

Whether Mrs. Wilcox was right or wrong in her conjecture, the Tyson baby had shown infinite delicacy in retiring from a world where he had caused so many complications. He had done mischief enough in his short life, and I believe to the last Tyson owed the little beggar a grudge. He had spoiled the complexion of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire. At any rate Tyson thought he had. Other people perhaps knew better.

If she had been thin and pale before the baby's death, she was thinner and paler now. She had the look of a woman who carries a secret about with her. She trembled and blushed when you spoke to her. And when she had ceased to blush she took to dabbing on paint and powder. It was just like her folly to let everybody see she was pining. And the more she pined the more she painted. Ah, she might well hide her face!

Scandal may circulate for years before it comes to the ears of the persons most concerned in it; still, one could not help wondering how much Tyson knew. He was going to take her away, which was certainly very wise of him. Poor man, she had made Leicestershire rather too hot to hold him.

He was always going up to London now, and people who had met him there hinted that the country gentleman had become a man about town. Still, you must not believe the half of what you hear; and supposing there was some truth in the report, why, what could you expect with a wife like that?

By March it was settled that they were to leave Thorneytoft and make London their headquarters. Tyson had taken a flat in Ridgmount Gardens. This, he said, was a good central position and handy for the theatres. At any rate, he could not afford a better one so long as that infernal estate swallowed up two-thirds of his income.

It looked as if they meant to make a clean sweep of their past. They began by making a clean sweep of the servants, from the kitchen-maid upwards. Here they were forestalled. Before it could come to his turn the thoughtful Pinker gave notice. His example was followed by Swinny the virtuous. Swinny, as it happened, was a niece of Farmer Ashby's, the same who saw Stanistreet driving with his arm round Mrs. Nevill Tyson's waist; she was first cousin to the landlord of "The Cross-Roads," where the Captain retired on the night of the quarrel, and she was sister to Miss Batchelor's maid. The scandal was all in the family. It was this circumstance, no doubt, that had given such color and consistency to the floating rumor.

Swinny, having regard to her testimonials, was not openly offensive. She told Tyson that she was sorry to leave a good master and mistress, but she never could abide the town. No more could Pinker. And she must go where there was a baby. Then Swinny, having shaken the dust of Thorneytoft from her virtuous feet, called on every member of her family, and told to each the same unvarying tale. She wasn't going to stay in a place where there were such goings on; it was as much as her character was worth. The gentlemen were after Mrs. Nevill Tyson from morning till night, you couldn't keep 'em off—not that lot. She hadn't much to say to them, but she fair ran after the Captain—it was perfectly disgraceful. When Mr. Tyson sent him to the right-about, she waited till her husband's back was turned, then she wrote to him to come. And, as if nothing else would serve her, she had him up in the nursery when her little baby was dying. They were actually whispering the two of them, and making eyes at each other over the child's coffin. Why, Pinker, he caught 'em in the library the very day of the funeral. Oh, it wasn't the Captain's fault. She whistled and he came, that was all. So far Swinny.

Was that all?

On every face there was a tremendous query. But upon the whole it was concluded that Stanistreet at any rate had had regard to his friend's honor.

It is the last stone that kills; so, you see, there was a certain hesitation about hurling it. No educated person believes the evidence of servants. Besides, when it came to the point, one felt too sorry for Nevill Tyson to make up one's mind to the worst. So far Miss Batchelor.

Ah, well, he took her away. The last that was seen of Mrs. Nevill Tyson in Leicestershire was a sad little figure, shrinking away in the corner of a railway carriage, nursing her guilty secret.



CHAPTER XII

A FLAT IN TOWN

Though they had cut them dead lately, it must be confessed that some people found Drayton Parva a very dull place without Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson. They heard about them sometimes from Sir Peter, who was now in Parliament; and from Miss Batchelor, after her flying visits to the Morleys' house in town. Stanistreet, by the way, had his headquarters somewhere in London; and in London Mrs. Nevill Tyson revived. She had begun all over again. She had got new clothes, new servants, and a new drawing-room. An absurd little drawing-room it was, too—all white paint, muslin draperies, and frivolous gim-crack furniture. A place, said Miss Batchelor, that it would have been dangerous to smoke a cigarette in. And if you would believe it, she had hung up Tyson's sword over the couch in the dining-room, as a memorial of his deeds in the Soudan. So ridiculous, when everybody knew that he was nothing but a sort of volunteer (Miss Batchelor had had a brother in "the Service").

Having furnished her drawing-room, and hung up her husband's sword, Mrs. Nevill Tyson seems to have done nothing noteworthy, but to have sat down and waited for events.

She had not long to wait. By the end of the season she was alone in the flat. He had left her. She had no clue to his whereabouts; but, other people believed him to be living in another flat—not alone.

Drayton Parva was alive again with the scandal. Miss Batchelor, as became the intelligence of Drayton Parva, alone kept calm. She went about saying that she was not at all surprised to hear it. Miss Batchelor never was surprised at anything. She refused to take a part, to commit herself to a definite opinion. Human nature is a mixed matter, and in these cases there are generally faults on both sides. Mrs. Nevill Tyson had been—certainly—very—indiscreet. It was indiscreet of her to go on living in that flat all by herself. Did Miss Batchelor think there was anything in that report about Captain Stanistreet? Well, if there wasn't something in it you would have thought she would have come back to Thorneytoft; her staying in town looked bad under the circumstances.

Poor Mrs. Nevill Tyson, every circumstance made a link in a chain of evidence whose ends were nowhere.

And, indeed, she was not left very long to herself.

But though Stanistreet was always hanging about Ridgmount Gardens, he was no nearer solving the problem that had perplexed him. And yet his views of women had undergone a change; he was not the same man who had discussed Molly Wilcox in the billiard-room at Thorneytoft three years ago. One thing he noticed which was new. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was not literary; but whenever he called now he always found her sitting with some book in her hand, which she instantly hid behind the cushions of her chair. Stanistreet unearthed three of these volumes one day. They were "Barrack-Room Ballads," "With Gordon in the Soudan," "India: What it can Teach Us"—a work, if you please, on Vedic philosophy, annotated in pencil by Tyson. Now Stanistreet had brought "Barrack-Room Ballads" into the house; Stanistreet had been with Gordon, in the Soudan; Stanistreet—no, Stanistreet had not been in India; but he might have been. He was immensely amused at the idea of Mrs. Nevill Tyson cultivating her mind. Poor little soul, how bored she must have been!

There could be no possible doubt about the boredom. Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned from reading to talking with obvious relief. Their conversation had taken a wider range lately; it was more intimate, and at the same time less embarrassing. He wondered how often she thought of that scene in the library at Thorneytoft; she had behaved ever since as if it had never happened. For one thing Stanistreet was thankful—she had left off discussing Nevill with him. If she had ever been in ignorance, she now knew all that it concerned her to know. Not that she avoided the subject; on the contrary, it seemed to have floated into the vague region of general interest, where any chance current of thought might drift them to it. Stanistreet dreaded it; but she was continually brushing up against it, with a feathery lightness which made him marvel at the volatile character of her mind. Was it the clumsiness of a butterfly or the dexterity of a woman? Once or twice he thought he detected a certain reluctant shyness in approaching the subject directly. It was as if she regarded her affection for her husband as a youthful folly, and her marriage as a discreditable episode of which she was now ashamed.

On the other hand, she was always ready to talk about Stanistreet and his doings. She would listen for hours to his mess-room stories, his descriptions of the people and the places he had seen, the engagements he had taken part in. For a whole evening one Sunday they had talked about nothing but fortification. Now it was impossible that Mrs. Nevill Tyson could be interested in fortification. As for Vedic philosophy, she cared for Brahma about as much as Stanistreet did for Brahms.

He was walking with her in Hyde Park; they had turned off into the path by the flower-beds on the Park Lane side. It was April, between six and seven in the evening, and, except for a few stragglers, they had the walk to themselves. Louis had been giving her the history of his first campaign in the Soudan, and she was listening with a dreamy, half-suppressed interest, which rose gradually to excitement. He sat down and drew on the gravel with the point of his walking-stick a rude map of the country, showing the course of the Nile and the line of march, with pebbles for stations, and bare patches for battlefields. He then began to trace out an extremely complicated plan of the campaign. She followed the movements of the walking-stick with an intelligence which he would hardly have credited her with. And, indeed, it was no inconsiderable feat, seeing that for want of a finer instrument Louis's plan was hopelessly mixed up with his line of march and other matters.

"Was Nevill there?" she asked, casually, at the close of a spirited account of his last engagement.

"No. He was with the volunteers, farther south." He looked at her and her eyes dropped.

"Which is north and which is south?"

The walking-stick indicated the points of the compass.

"I see. And you were there in that great splodge in the middle. Go on. What did you do then?"

The walking-stick staggered in a wavering line eastwards. But before it could join the Nile, Mrs. Nevill Tyson had rubbed out the map, campaign and all, with the tips of her shoes.

"There's a park-keeper coming," said she, "he'll wonder why we're making such a mess of his nice gravel-walk."

The park-keeper came, he looked at the gravel and frowned, he looked at Mrs. Nevill Tyson, smiled benignly, and passed on. Perhaps he wondered.

They got up and walked as far as the Corner, where they looked at the Achilles statue. Under the shadow of the pedestal Mrs. Nevill Tyson took a bunch of violets from her waistband.

"What are you going to do with that?" said Louis.

"I'm going to stick it in Achilles' buttonhole. Oh, I see, Achilles hasn't got a buttonhole. I must put it in yours then."

She put it in.

Louis's dark face flushed. "Why did you do that?"

"I did that—Because you are a brave man, and I like brave men."

Still under the shadow of the pedestal, he took her by both hands and looked into her eyes. "What are you going to do now?" said he.

"Nothing. We must go back. We have gone too far," said she.

"Too far?" He dropped her hands.

She smiled in the old ambiguous, maddening way. "Yes; much too far. We shall be late for dinner."

They turned back by the way they had come. Near the Marble Arch a small crowd was gathered round a poor street preacher with a raucous voice. They could hear him as they passed.

"We're all sinners," shouted the preacher. (They stopped and looked at each other with a faint smile. All sinners—that was what Nevill used to say, all sinners—or fools.) "We're all sinners, you and me, but Jesus can save us. 'E loves sinners. 'E bears their sins; your sins an' my sins, dear brethren; 'e bears the sins of the 'ole world. Why, that's wot 'e came inter the world for—to save sinners. Ter save 'em from death an' everlasting 'ell! That's wot Jesus does for sinners."

Oh, Molly, Molly, what has he done for fools?

He took her to Ridgmount Gardens, and left her at the door of the flat.

She was incomprehensible, this little Mrs. Tyson. But up till now his own state of mind had been plain. He knew where he was drifting; he had always known. But where she was drifting, or whether she was drifting at all, he did not know; that is to say, he was not sure. And up till now he had not tried very hard to make sure. He was a person of infinite tact, and could boast with some truth that he had never done an abrupt or clumsy thing. By this time his attitude of doubt had given a sort of metaphysical character to this interest of the senses; he was almost content to wait and let the world come round to him. It was to be supposed that Mrs. Nevill Tyson, being Mrs. Nevill Tyson, would have fathomed him long ago if he had been of the same clay as her engaging husband. He was of clay, no doubt, but it was not the same clay; and it was impossible to say how much she knew or had divined; other women were no rule for her, or else—No. One thing was certain, he would never have betrayed Tyson until Tyson had betrayed her. As it was, his relations with her were sufficiently abnormal to be exciting; it was not passion, it was a rush of minute sensations, swarming and swirling like a dance of fire-flies—an endless approach and flight.

After all, he would not have had it otherwise. The charm, he told himself, was in the levity of the situation. The thread by which she held him was so fine that it could be broken any day. There would be no pangs of conscience, no tears, no reproaches; no tyrannies of the heart and revolutions of the soul. It was to Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eternal credit that she made no claims. Clearly, when a tie can be broken to-morrow, there is no urgent necessity for breaking it to-day.

So in the afternoon Stanistreet called again at Ridgmount Gardens.

Whether or no Mrs. Nevill Tyson ignored the possibility of passion, she had the largest ideas of the scope and significance of friendship. She made no claims, but she exacted from Louis a multitude of small services for which he was held to be sufficiently repaid in smiles. Whether she knew it or not, she had grown dependent on him. She had always shown an affecting confidence in the integrity of masculine judgment, and she consulted him about her dividends and the pattern of her gowns with equally guileless reliance.

To-day he found her in a state of agitated perplexity. She put a letter into his hands. He was to read it; he might skip the first page, it was all about calico. There—that was what she meant.

The letter was from Mrs. Wilcox imploring her to go back to Drayton "till this little cloud blows over."

"I don't want to go to Drayton, to those people. They talk. I know they talk, and I don't like them. Besides, I want to stay in London. Nobody knows me here except you."

"Do I know you?"

"Well, if you don't, you ought to—by now. I wonder if mother wants me. She might come here, though I'd rather she didn't. She talks too, you know; she doesn't mean to, but she can't help it. What I like about you is—you never talk."

"You won't let me."

"What ought I to do?" she asked helplessly. "Must I go?"

"No," said Louis emphatically. "Don't."

"Why not?"

He tossed the letter aside, and their eyes met.

"It would look like defeat."



CHAPTER XIII

MRS. WILCOX TO THE RESCUE

So Nevill Tyson had left his wife. This was the most exciting act in the drama that had entertained Drayton Parva for two years. He had brought down the house. Presently it seemed that Drayton Parva was not unprepared for the catastrophe. Miss Batchelor was sadly afraid that something of this sort had been going on for long enough. But she had not condemned Nevill Tyson wholesale and without a hearing; in these cases there are always faults on both sides. A man as much in love with his wife as he was would never have left her without some grounds. (I cannot think why Miss Batchelor, being so clever, didn't see through Tyson; but there is a point at which the cleverness of the cleverest woman ceases.) Anyhow, if Mrs. Nevill Tyson was as innocent as one was bound to suppose, why did she not come back to Drayton, to her mother? That was the proper thing for her to do under the circumstances.

Have you ever sat by the seashore playing with pebbles in an idle mood? You are not aiming at anything, you are much too lazy to aim; but some god directs your arm, and, without thinking, you hit something that, ten to one, you never would have hit if you had thought about it. After that your peace is gone; you feel that you can never leave the spot till you have hit that particular object again, with deliberate intent. So Miss Batchelor, sitting by the shore of the great ocean of Truth, began by throwing stones aimlessly about; and other people (being without sin) picked them up and aimed them at Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Sometimes they hit her, but more often they missed. They were clumsy. Then Miss Batchelor joined in; and, because she found that she was more skillful than the rest, she began, first to take a languid interest in the game, then to play as if her life depended on it. She aimed with mathematical precision, picking out all the tiny difficult places that other people missed or grazed. Amongst them they had ended by burying Mrs. Nevill Tyson up to her neck in a fairly substantial pile of pebbles. It only needed one more stone to complete the work. Still, as I said before, Mrs. Nevill Tyson's enemies were not particularly anxious to throw it.

This was reserved for another hand.

It was impossible for Mrs. Wilcox to live, even obscurely, in Drayton Parva without hearing some garbled version of the current rumor. At first she was a little shocked at finding her son-in-law under a cloud. But if there is one truth more indisputable than another, it is that every cloud has a handsome silver lining to it. (Though, indeed, from Mrs. Wilcox's account of the matter, it was impossible to tell which was the lining and which was the cloud.) The more she thought of it the more she felt that there was nothing in it. There must be some misunderstanding somewhere. Her optimism, rooted in ignorance, and watered with vanity, had become a sort of hardy perennial.

Then it came to Mrs. Wilcox's knowledge that certain reflections had been made on her daughter's conduct. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was said to be making good use of her liberty. No names had been mentioned in Mrs. Wilcox's hearing, but she knew perfectly well what had given rise to these ridiculous reports. It was the conspicuous attention which Sir Peter had insisted on paying Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Not that there was anything to be objected to in an old gentleman's frank admiration for a young (and remarkably pretty) married woman. No doubt Sir Peter had been very indiscreet in his expression of it. What with calling on her in private and paying her the most barefaced compliments in public, he had made her the talk of the county. Mrs. Wilcox went further: she was firmly convinced that Sir Peter had fallen a hopeless victim to her daughter's attractions, and she had derived a great deal of gratification from the flattering thought. But now that Molly was being compromised by the old fellow's attentions, it was another matter.

That anybody else could have compromised her by his attentions did not once occur to Mrs. Wilcox. By its magnificent unlikelihood, the idea that Sir Peter Morley, M.P., was fascinated by her daughter extinguished every other. So possessed was Mrs. Wilcox by the idea of Sir Peter that she had never thought of Stanistreet. In any case Stanistreet was the last person she would have thought of. He came and went without her notice, a familiar, and therefore insignificant, fact of her daily life.

Of course Molly was a desperate little flirt; but it was absurd that her flirtations should be made responsible for "this temporary separation." (That was the mild phrase by which Mrs. Wilcox described Tyson's desertion of his wife.) As for her encouraging Sir Peter in her husband's absence, that was all nonsense. Mrs. Wilcox was a woman of the world, and she would have passed the whole thing off with a laugh, but that, really, the reports were so scandalous. They actually declared that her daughter had been seen going about with Sir Peter in the most open and shameless manner, ever since she had been left to her own devices.

Well, Mrs. Wilcox could disprove that by the irrefragable logic of facts.

It was high time something should be done. Her plan was to go quietly and call on Miss Batchelor, and mention the facts in a casual way. She would not mention Sir Peter.

So with the idea of Sir Peter in her head and a letter from Molly in her pocket, Mrs. Wilcox called on Miss Batchelor. There was nothing extraordinary in that, for the ladies were in the habit of exchanging half-yearly visits, and Mrs. Wilcox was about due.

She stood a little bit in awe of a woman who took up all sorts of dreadful subjects as easily as you take up an acquaintance, and had such works as "The Principles of Psychology" lying about as the light literature of her drawing-room table. But Miss Batchelor was much more nervous than her visitor, therefore Mrs. Wilcox had the advantage at once.

She knew perfectly well what she was going to do. She was not going to make a fuss; that would do more harm than good. She had simply to mention the facts in a casual way, without mentioning Sir Peter. As for the separation, that was not to be taken seriously for a moment.

She began carelessly. "I heard from Molly this morning."

"Indeed? Good news, I hope?"

"Very good news. Except that she's disappointed me. She's not coming to Thorneytoft after all."

"I didn't know she was expected."

"Well, I wanted her to run down and entertain me a little, now that she can get away."

"It would be rather a sacrifice for her to leave town just at the beginning of the season."

"That's it. She has such hosts of engagements—always going out somewhere. She tells me she thinks nothing of five theatres in one week."

Miss Batchelor raised her eyebrows.

"She must be very much stronger than she was at Thorneytoft."

"She's never been so well in her life. Thorneytoft didn't agree with her at all. She's been a different woman since they left it." (This to guard against any suspicion of an attraction in the neighborhood.) "Nevill was never well there either."

"I never thought it would suit Mr. Tyson."

"No; it wasn't the life for him at all. He's got too much go in him to settle down anywhere in the country. Look how he's roamed about the world." (Now was her opportunity.) "You know, Miss Batchelor, there's a great deal of nonsense talked about this separation."

"There's a great deal of nonsense talked about most things in this place."

"Well—but really, if you think of it, what is there to talk about? He's just gone away in a huff, and—and he'll come back in another. You'll see. He has a very peculiar temper, has Nevill; and Molly's too—too suscept—too emotional. People can't always hit it off together."

"No—"

"No. And I think it's a very good plan to separate for a time. For a time, of course. It's her own wish."

(Oh, Mrs. Wilcox! But strict accuracy is an abject virtue when pride and the honor of a family are at stake.)

"That's all very well, my dear Mrs. Wilcox, but in the meanwhile people will talk."

"That won't break Molly's heart. She'd snap her fingers at them. And the more they talk, the more she'll go her own way. That's Molly all over. You can't turn her by talking, but she'd go through fire and water for any one she loves."

Poor vulgar, silly Mrs. Wilcox! But try her on the subject of her daughter, and she rang true.

Miss Batchelor smiled. She didn't know about going through fire; but Mrs. Nevill had certainly been playing with the element, and got her fingers badly scorched too.

"Well," said she, "of course, so long as Mrs. Nevill Tyson doesn't break her heart over it."

"Does it look as if she were breaking her heart? Five theatres in one week."

"No; I can't say I think it does."

"Shockingly dissipated, isn't she?"

"Well—rather more dissipated than we are in Drayton Parva. You must miss her dreadfully, Mrs. Wilcox?"

"I don't mind that so long as she's happy. You see, it's not as if she hadn't friends. I know she's well looked after."

Mrs. Wilcox felt that she was making a remarkably good case of it. And she had not once mentioned Sir Peter.

All was well so long as you did not mention Sir Peter.

"I'm very glad to hear it."

"Of course I want her to get away out of it all. I know that people are making very strange remarks about her staying—"

"They might make stranger remarks if she came, that's one consolation. Still—"

"Well, Miss Batchelor, the child is perfectly willing to come if I want her. But—er—er—a friend"—(Mrs. Wilcox was determined to be discreet, and leave no loophole for scandal)—"a friend has strongly advised her to stay."

"Oh, no doubt she is perfectly right. Sir Peter is in town again, I believe?"

Miss Batchelor said it abruptly, as if she were trying to change the subject. And at the mention of Sir Peter Mrs. Wilcox lost her head and fluttered into the trap. There are fallacies in the logic of facts.

"No, no," she said, getting up to go. "It was Captain Stanistreet I meant."

Again Miss Batchelor smiled.

This was proof positive—the last stone.



CHAPTER XIV

THE "CRITERION"

Mrs. Nevill's account of herself, though somewhat highly colored, was substantially true. When Stanistreet suggested defeat, it was his first allusion to her husband's desertion of her; and like most of Louis's utterances, it was full of tact.

Defeat? She had brooded over the idea, and then apparently she had an inspiration.

From that day, wherever there was a sufficiently important crowd to see her, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was to be seen. She was generally with Louis Stanistreet, who was not a figure to be overlooked; she was always exquisitely dressed; and sometimes, not often, she was delicately painted and powdered. Mrs. Nevill Tyson hated what was commonplace and loud; and she had to make herself conspicuous in a season when women dressed fortissimo, and a fashionable crowd was like a bed of flowers in June. Somehow she managed to strike some resonant minor chord of color that went throbbing through that confused orchestra. Everywhere she went people turned and stared at her as she flashed by; and apparently her one object was to be stared at. She became as much of a celebrity as any woman with a character and without a position "in society" can become. If she were counterfeiting a type, enough of the original Mrs. Nevill Tyson remained to give her own supernatural naeivete to the character. Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked—it looked like an innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty women were as common as paving-stones. Perhaps it was partly owing to the persistence and punctuality of her movements: she patronized certain theatres, haunted certain thoroughfares at certain times. She had an affection for Piccadilly, a sentiment for Oxford Circus, and a passion for the Strand. Louis could sympathize with these preferences; he, too, liked to walk up and down the Embankment in the summer twilight—though why such abrupt stoppages? Why such impetuous speed? He could understand a human being finding a remote interest in the Houses of Parliament, but he could not understand why Mrs. Nevill Tyson should love to linger outside the doors of the War Office.

Her ways were indeed inscrutable; but he had learnt to know them all, not a gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through the crowd. She had spirit enough for anything; but her nerves were all on edge—she was so easily tired, so easily startled.

Day after day, and night after night; it was evident that at this rate she and Tyson were bound to see each other some time, somewhere. Stanistreet wondered whether that thought had ever occurred to her. And if they met—well, he could not tell whether he desired or feared to see that meeting. In all probability it would put an end to doubt. Was it possible that he had begun to love doubt for its own sake?

At last they met, as was to be expected, and Stanistreet was there to see. He had taken her to the "Criterion" one night, and at the close of the first act Tyson came into the box opposite theirs. He was alone. The lights went up in the house, and he looked round before he sat down; evidently he had recognized his wife, and evidently she knew it. Stanistreet, watching her with painful interest, saw her body slacken and her face turn white under its paint and powder.

"Either she cares for the beggar still, or else—she's afraid for her life of him."

A horrible thought flashed across him. What if all the time she had simply been making use of him as—as a damned stalking-horse for Tyson? It might account for the enigmatic smiles, the swift transitions, the whole maddening mystery of her ways. If he had been nothing to her but the man who knew more about Tyson than anybody else? She had always had a way of making him talk about Tyson, while he seemed to himself to be most engagingly egotistic.

And he had once thought that Mrs. Nevill Tyson adored her husband for his (Stanistreet's) benefit. There was this summer, and that moment in the library at Thorneytoft—Mrs. Nevill Tyson was beyond him. And he had been three years trying to understand her. He was a man of the world, and he ought to have understood.

Ah—perhaps that was the reason of his failure!

He looked at her again. She had shifted her position, turned her back on the stage; her eyes were lowered, fixed on the programme in her lap, but they were motionless; she was not reading. One ungloved arm hung by her side, and under the white skin he could see the pulses leaping and throbbing in the arteries, the delicate tissues of her bodice trembled and shook. Was it possible that in that frivolous little body, under that corsage of lace and satin and whalebone, there beat one of those rare and tragic passions, all-consuming, all-absorbing, blind and deaf to everything but itself? In that case—well, he felt something very like awe before what he called her miraculous stupidity. But no, it was impossible; to believe it was to believe in miracles, and he had long ago lost his faith in the supernatural. Women did not love like that nowadays.

Tyson left the box before the close of the last act. She kept her place for ten minutes after the fall of the curtain, while the crowd streamed out. She stood long after the house was empty, saying nothing, but waiting—waiting. Once she looked piteously at Stanistreet. Her fingers trembled so that she could not fasten her cloak, her gloves. He helped her. A weird little ghost of a smile fluttered to her lips and vanished.

They hurried out at last along empty passages. Tyson was nowhere to be seen. They drove quickly home.

At the corner of Francis Street the hansom drew up with a jerk and waited. A crowd blocked the way. She leaned forward with a little cry. What was it? An accident? No; a fight. The great swinging lamps over the door of a public-house threw their yellow light on a ring of brutal faces, men and women, for the most part drunk, trampling, hustling, shouldering each other in their haste to break through to the center. A girl reeled from the public-house and stood on the edge of the pavement bawling a vile song. A man lurched up against the side of the hansom; a coarse swollen face flaming with drink was pressed to the glass, close to her own. As she shrank back in horror, turning her head away from the evil thing, her face sought Stanistreet, the soft fringe of her hair brushed against his cheek. She had never been so near to him, never, in the abstraction of her terror, so far away. To-night everything combined to make his own meaning clear to him, sharpened his fierce indignant longing to take her away, out of the hell where these things were possible, to protect her forever from the brutalities of life.

There was a stir; the crowd swayed forward and began to move. They followed slowly in its wake, hemmed in by the rabble that streamed towards Ridgmount Gardens, to lose itself in the black slums of Bloomsbury. On the pavement the reeling girl was swept on with the crowd, still singing her hideous song. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was leaning back now, with her eyes closed, not heeding the ugly pageant. But the scene came back to her in nightmares afterwards.

As Stanistreet's hansom turned after leaving her at Ridgmount Gardens, he thought he saw some one remarkably like Tyson standing in the shadow of the railings opposite her door. He must have seen them; and but for the delay they would probably have overtaken and so missed him.

And Stanistreet kept on saying to himself: No. Women do not love like that. And yet the bare idea of it turned Stanistreet, the cool, the collected, into a trembling maniac. He could not face the possibility of losing her, of being nothing to her. But for that he might have been content to go on drifting indefinitely, sure of a sort of visionary eternity, taking no count of time. He had been happy in his doubt. Once it had tormented him; he had struggled against it; later, it had become a source of endless interest, like a man's amusing dialogues with his own soul; now, it was the one solitary refuge of his hope. He clung to it, he could not let it go. He staked his all on the folly, the frailty of Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

He had yet to prove it.

Of course she was a little fool; that went without saying. He had known many women who were fools, and he had survived their folly. But it seemed that he could not live without this particular little fool.

He called the next day at Ridgmount Gardens.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's manner was a little disconcerting. He found her at the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he a favorite of Tyson's. The selection was another freak; it was the first time Louis had heard her sing that song since they left Thorneytoft.

This is what she sang; but Louis only came in for the last two verses.

"Oh feet that would be roving, I will not bid you stay, Though my heart should break with loving, When love is far away.

(Dim.) "Oh heart that would be sleeping, I will not wake you. No, You shall hear no sound of weeping, No footsteps come and go.

"Then come not for my calling, Roam on the livelong day; Some time when night is falling, Love will steal home and stay.

"Or sleep, and fe-ear no waking, Sleep on, the li-ights are low, Some time when dawn is breaking, Love will awa-ake—awa-ake, (Cresc.) Love will awa-ake and know."

That was the sort of song Tyson liked; and well, as Mrs. Nevill sang it, Stanistreet liked it too. And Stanistreet was not in the least musical.

"What—you here again?" said she, swinging round on her music-stool. "That's a jolly crescendo, isn't it? But they're the silliest words, don't you think? As if love ever came home to stay if he could help it. He might put up a few things in a portmanteau, and run down from Saturday to Monday, perhaps, and—the lady was very accommodating, wasn't she?"

Stanistreet frowned and champed the ends of his mustache. This was not at all the mood he desired to find her in.

"Don't be cynical," said he; "it's not like you."

"Dear me—what shall I be then? What is like me?" She threw herself back in a chair, kicked out her little feet, and yawned. It reminded Louis unpleasantly of the attitude of the woman in the Marriage a la Mode. Then she chattered; and it struck him, as it had struck him more than once before, that Tyson had found his wife's head empty and furnished it according to his own taste. She was always quoting Tyson; and as there was not the least indication of inverted commas, it was hard to tell which was quotation and which was the original text. This creature of fitful, unbalanced mind and reckless speech was certainly the Mrs. Nevill Tyson he had sometimes seen at Thorneytoft; but it was not the Mrs. Nevill Tyson of last night, nor even of the other day, that afternoon when her eyes said, as unmistakably as eyes could say anything, that she would not accept defeat.

Another moment and the expression of her face had changed again; he saw something there that he had never seen before, something unguarded and appealing. He was near the end of doubt.

He felt that if he stayed with her another moment he would lose his head, and he did not want to lose it—yet! He struggled desperately between his desire to stay and his will to go—if there was any difference between desire and will.