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.