The Tysons (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson)

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 näiveté 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 à 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.

His struggles were cut short by the entrance of Tyson.

He walked into the room at half-past five, greeted Stanistreet cheerfully (his eyes twinkling), ordered fresh tea, and began to talk to his wife as if nothing had happened. If Louis had not known him so well, he would have said he was immensely improved since the remarkable occasion on which they had last met. He had quarreled with his best friend; he had betrayed his wife and then left her; and he could come back with a twinkle in his eye.

From where Stanistreet sat Mrs. Nevill Tyson's face was a profil perdu; but he could hear her breath fluttering in her throat like a bird.

"Didn't I see you two at the 'Criterion' last night?" said Tyson. "What did you think of 'Rosemary,' Molly?"

"I—I thought it was very good."

"From a purely literary point of view, eh? As you sat with your back to the stage your judgment was not biased by such vulgar accessories as scenery and acting. No doubt that is the way to enjoy a play. What are your engagements for to-night?"

"Mine? I have none, Nevill."

"Ah—well, then, you might tell them to get my room ready for me. Don't go, Stanistreet."

He had come home to stay.

CONFLAGRATION

To see his wife casually in a crowd, and to fall desperately in love with her for the second time, was a unique experience even in Tyson's life. But it had its danger. He had never been jealous before; now a feeling very like jealousy had been roused by seeing her with Stanistreet. He had followed her to the "Criterion"; he had hurried out before the end of the piece, and hung about Ridgmount Gardens till he had seen her homecoming. Stanistreet's immediate departure was a relief to a certain anxiety that he was base enough to feel. And still there remained a vague suspicion and discomfort. He had to begin all over again with her. In their first courtship she was a child; in their second she was a woman. Hitherto, the creature of a day, she had seemed to spring into life afresh every morning, without a memory of yesterday or a thought of to-morrow; she had had no past, not even an innocent one. And now he had no notion what experiences she might not have accumulated during this year in which he had left her. That was her past; and they had the future before them.

They had been alone together for three days, three days and three nights of happiness; and on the evening of the fourth day Tyson had found her reading—yes, actually reading!

He sat down opposite her to watch the curious sight.

Perhaps she had said to herself: "Some day I shall be old, and very likely I shall be ugly. If I am stupid too, he will be bored, and perhaps he will leave me. So now—I am going to be his intellectual companion."

He was amused, just as Stanistreet had been. "I say, I can't have that, you know. What have you got there?"

She held up her book without speaking. "Othello," of all things in the world!

"Shakespeare? I thought so. When a woman's in a damned bad temper she always reads Shakespeare, or Locke on the Human Understanding. Come out of that."

Though Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her little teeth very hard, the corners of her mouth and eyes curled with mischief. It was delicious to feel that she could torment Nevill, to know that she had so much power. And while she pretended to read she played with the pearl necklace she wore. It was one shade with the white of her beautiful throat.

"Who gave you those pearls?"

She made no answer, but her hand dropped a little consciously. He had given them to her that afternoon, remarking, with rather questionable taste, that they were "a wedding-present for the second Mrs. Nevill Tyson."

He leant over her chair and assailed her with questions to which no answer came, to which no answer was possible, punctuating his periods with kisses.

"Are you a conundrum? Or a fiend? Or a metaphysical system? And if so, why do you wear a pink frock! Are you a young woman who prefers a dead poet to a living husband? Are you a young woman at all? Or only a dear little, sweet little, pink little strawberry iceberg?"

He lay down on the sofa as if overcome by unutterable fatigue. "Just as you like," he murmured faintly. "You'll be sorry for this some day. Shakespeare is immortal. I, most unfortunately, am not."

He got up and threw the window open. He ramped about the room, soliloquizing as he went. Never, even in the last days of their engagement, had she seen him so restless. (But she was not going to speak yet; not she!) He stopped before the chimney-piece; it was covered with ridiculous objects, the things that please a child: there were Swiss cow-bells and stags carved in wood, Chinese idols that wagged their heads, little images of performing cats, teacups, a whole shelf full of toys. Not one of them but had some minute fragment of his wife's personality adhering to it. He remembered the insane impulse that came upon him last year to smash them, sweep the lot of them on to the floor. To-night he could have kissed them, cried over them. "T-t-t-tt! What affecting absurdity!" That was the way he went on. And now he sat down by her writing-table, and was taking things up and examining them while he talked. He never, never forgot the expression of a certain brass porcupine that was somehow a penwiper; it seemed to belong to a world gone mad, where everything was something else, where porcupines were penwipers, and his wife—

For suddenly his tongue had stopped. He had caught sight of an enormous bunch of hothouse flowers in a vase on the floor by the writing-table. Stanistreet's card was in the midst of the bunch, and a note from Stanistreet lay open on the writing-table.

There was an ominous pause while Tyson read it. It was curt enough; only an offer of flowers and a ticket for the "Lyceum." Stanistreet's mind must have been seriously off its balance, otherwise he would never have done this clumsy thing.

Tyson strode to his wife's chair and tossed the letter into her lap.

"How long has Stanistreet been paying you these little attentions?"

She looked up smiling. I am not sure that she did not think this new tone of Tyson's was part of the game they were playing together. She had never taken him seriously.

"Ever since he found out that I liked them, I suppose."

"Did it not occur to you that the things you like are rather expensive luxuries, some of them?"

"No. Perhaps that's why I hardly ever get them."

"My dear girl, I know the precise amount of Stanistreet's income. Money can't be any object to him. But perhaps you've a soul above boxes at the 'Criterion,' and champagne suppers afterwards, and the rest of it?"

"I have, unfortunately. But there wasn't any champagne." Her indifferent voice gave the lie to her beating pulses. Between playing and fighting there is only a difference of degree.

"Will you kindly tell me why you selected Stanistreet of all people for this business?"

"I didn't select him—he was always there."

"And if it hadn't been Stanistreet it would have been somebody else? I see. I hope you appreciate the peculiar advantages of his society?"

"I do. Louis is a gentleman, though he is your friend. He knows how to talk to women."

"If he doesn't it is not for want of practice. I could swallow all this, Molly, if you were a little girl just out of the schoolroom; but—I don't think you've much to learn."

Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eyes flashed. The play had turned to deadly earnest. "Not much, thanks to you," said she. Her voice sank. "Louis was good to me."

"Was he? 'Good' to you—How extremely touching! Pray, were you good to him?"

"No—no." She shook her head remorsefully. "I wish I had been."

Tyson knitted his brows and looked at her. He had not quite made up his mind.

"Do you know, I don't altogether believe in your refreshing näiveté. Stanistreet is not 'good' to pretty women for nothing. I know, and you know, that a woman who has been seen with him as you apparently have been, is not supposed to have a character to lose."

She rose to her feet and faced him. "How could you? Oh, how could you?"

He shrank from her, without the least attempt to conceal his repulsion. "If you look in the glass you'll see."

She turned mechanically and saw the reflection of her face, all flushed as it was and distorted, the eyes fierce with passion. It was like the sudden leaping forth of her soul; and Mrs. Nevill Tyson's soul, after three days' intercourse with her husband's, was not a thing to trust implicitly. Without sinning it seemed unconsciously to reflect his sin. I can not tell you how that was; marriage is a great mystery.

She understood him, though imperfectly; she understood many things now. Oh, he was right—she looked the part; no wonder that he hated her. She sat down and covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out that momentary vision of herself. Herself and not herself. What she saw was something that had never been. But it was something that might be—herself, as Tyson alone had power to make her. All this came to her as an unexplained, confused terror, a trouble of the nerves; there was no reasoning, no idea; it was all too new.

But if she did not understand her own misery, she understood vaguely what he had said to her. She got up and went to her writing-table where a letter lay folded, ready for its envelope. She gave it to him without a word.

"Do you mean me to read this?" he asked.

"Yes; if you like." She answered without looking at him; apparently she was absorbed in addressing her envelope.

He opened the letter gingerly, and read in his wife's schoolgirl handwriting:—