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.