CONFESSIONAL
After all, Tyson was the first to make up the quarrel. If a sense of
justice was wanting in him it was supplied by a sense of humor, and he
was very soon conscious of something ridiculous in his attitude towards
Stanistreet. He had law and nature on his side for once, but in the eyes
of the humorist, or of impartial justice, there was not very much to
choose between them. In fact the advantage was on Stanistreet's side. He,
Tyson, had thrown his wife and Stanistreet together from the first, he
had exposed her to what, in his view, would have been sharp temptation to
nine women out of ten, and she had not wronged him by a single thought.
As for Stanistreet, he had not taken, or even attempted to take, the
chance he gave him.
His tolerance showed how far he had separated himself from her. A month
ago he would not have thought so lightly of the matter.
One evening, not long after their stormy interview, he turned up at
Stanistreet's rooms in Chelsea, much as he had turned up at Ridgmount
Gardens after his year's absence.
Stanistreet was lying back in a low chair, smoking and thinking. The
change in Louis's appearance was still more striking than when they had
last met. His clothes hung loosely, on him; his whole figure had a
drooping, disjointed look. But the restless light had gone from his eyes;
the muscles of his lean face were set in a curious repose, as if the
man's nature were appeased, as if his will had somehow resisted the
physical collapse. He rose reluctantly as Tyson came in, and stood,
manifestly ill at ease, while Tyson, ignoring the interrogation of his
air, took possession of a seat which was not offered to him.
"Look here, Stanistreet," said he, "I can't stand this any longer. You
and I can't afford to quarrel--about a woman. It's not worth it."
"That is precisely what your wife said. But it's not the way I should put
it myself. We did quarrel; and you at least had every provocation."
"Oh, damn the provocation. You don't suppose I came here to make you
apologize?"
"I'm not going to apologize. When I say you had provocation enough
to justify your putting a bullet into me, I'm merely stating the
conventional view."
"Well--yes. If I hit you hard, it was all above the belt."
"There are some vulnerable parts above the belt, though you mightn't
think it."
"If it comes to that, Stanny, I must say you got your revenge. Trust an
old friend for knowing where to hit. That fist of yours caught me in some
very nasty places. Suppose we shake hands."
They shook hands. Stanistreet's hand was cold as ice. He lowered himself
into his chair, and lit a pipe in token of reconciliation.
He was magnanimous. It was he who had done the wrong, and it was he who
had pardoned. He had always been sorry for that poor devil, Tyson.
Tyson was aware of this feeling, and he generally resented it; but at
times like the present it gave him a curious sense of moral support.
The two men sat and smoked in a silence which Tyson, as usual, was the
first to break.
"I wouldn't like to swear," said he, "that I don't go abroad again before
long. It's my only chance. I'm knocked out of the game here. It's too
quick, too hard, and the rules are too cursedly complicated."
"All the same, I'd wait a bit before I flung it up, if I were you."
"Wait? Wait? I've done nothing but wait ever since I came to this
detestable country, and my chance never turned up. It never will turn
up--here."
"Why not?"
"My own fault, I suppose. I've spent my life in going round and round the
earth passionately in a circle. I don't say that perpetual rotation is a
natural function of the ordinary human being; but it's my function--I'm
good for nothing else. And they expect a man with the world in his brain
and the devil in his blood to live decently in this damnable city of fog
and filth! And when the world-madness comes on him nobody knows anything
about this particular form of mania--the poor wretch must get into a
stiff shirt or a strait waistcoat and converse sanely with that innocent
woman, his wife. If he doesn't there's a scandal, and the devil to pay--"
Stanistreet looked grave. Whither was all this tending? To a final
abandonment of Mrs. Nevill Tyson?
"Of course, the mistake was to try. There might have been a chance for me
if I'd had a tithe of your sense. But being what I am, I must needs go
and marry. It was the deed of a lunatic."
"Isn't it rather late to go back on that now? What's the good?"
"None, you fool, none. And if there's anything that stamps a man as a cur
and a cad, it's this vile habit of slanging the women for his own sins.
All the same--I'm not blaming anybody but myself, mind--all the same, I
being what I am, there's no doubt I married the wrong sort of woman. I
don't mind making that confession to you. I believe you know more about
me than anybody, barring my Maker."
Stanistreet looked straight in front of him, terribly detached and stern.
"She was not the wrong sort," he said slowly; "but she may have been the
wrong woman for you."
"Men like you and me, Stanistreet, contrive to get hold of the wrong
woman; I don't know why."
"You must know that your marriage did nothing for you that was not very
well done before."
"Yes. It seems to me that there was a time when I had an immortal
soul. That was before the Framley episode. You remember? An edifying
experience."
Stanistreet assented. He knew the horrible story, of a mad boy and a bad
woman. Perhaps it accounted for the ugliest facts in Tyson's character.
He was warped from his youth, the bitter, premature manhood, so soon
corrupt.
"That woman was possessed of seven distinct devils, and amongst them they
didn't leave much of my immortal soul. And you hear men talk of their
'first love.' Good God!"
Stanistreet shrugged his shoulders. He had not met these men. But there
could be no doubt that if any of Tyson's loves could be called his first,
he would have talked freely enough about it. No subject was too sacred
or too vile for his unbridled tongue. He continued to talk.
"After all, at my worst, I never did as much harm to any woman as that
Framley fiend did to me. I suppose I had my revenge; but that was
Nature's justice, not mine. Right or wrong, I obeyed the law of the
cosmos. And for the life of me I don't see why I should bother about it."
If it had not been for Mrs. Nevill Tyson, Stanistreet might have been
faintly amused at the idea of this little cockney cosmopolitan persuading
himself that his contemptible vices were part of the pageant of the
world. As it was he was disgusted. He, too, was a sinner in all
conscience; but his sins and his repentance had been alike simple and
sincere. He had none of the pendantry of vice.
"If you ask me," he said, "what did for you was that low trick of the
old man Tyson when he left you his respectability. A property you really
could not be expected to manage. _That_ was your ruin, if you like."
Tyson looked up. His drowning conscience snatched at straws. "It was.
I've thought as much myself. But that doesn't square my account. I lied
when I said my marriage was a mistake. It was not a mistake. It was
a crime committed against the dearest, sweetest woman that ever lived."
"You mean--?" It was hard to tell what Tyson meant when he went off into
reminiscences. And for the moment Stanistreet's vision was obscured by a
painful memory. Three years ago a woman had come to his rooms and asked
for Tyson. She sat in that chair opposite--where Tyson was sitting now.
She said unspeakable things that were by no means pleasant for
Stanistreet to hear. It had required all his tact to break the news
of Tyson's marriage and take her home in a cab. He could see her now,
in her pitiful finery, sitting back, trying to hide her white face with
gloves that were anything but white.
But Tyson was not thinking of Mrs. Hathaway.
"I mean that baby--Molly--my wife. That was the wickedest, cruellest
thing I ever did in the whole course of my abominable life. I might have
known how it would end."
Stanistreet looked thoughtfully at his friend. He was used to these
outbursts of self-reproach, but they had never moved him greatly until
now.
"They told me I ought to have married a clever woman. _She_ wasn't
clever, thank God! Yet somehow she had a sort of originality--I don't
know what it was." (Tyson had lately fallen into the habit of talking
about his wife in the past tense, as if she were dead.) "It was something
that no clever woman ever has. _I_ know them! Upon my soul I do believe
I loved her." He paused, pondering. "I wonder how it would have answered
though if I'd married a thing with more brains?"
"Brains? They're damnation. Are you thinking of Miss Batchelor?"
"N-no. There _is_ a medium. A woman needn't be a fool or a philosopher,
nor yet a saint or a devil. It exists somewhere, that golden mean."
"Oh, no doubt."
"It's odd how that notion of the perfect woman sticks to you. How the
devil did I get hold of it, I wonder?"
Stanistreet made no answer. It was sufficiently evident that Tyson had
got it from his wife. The odd thing was that Tyson was unaware of this.
He seemed to have no doubt whatever that his marriage with the perfect
woman had been arranged for in heaven, though somehow it had failed to
come off on earth. A delusion not uncommon with men of Tyson's stamp.
"I believe," said Tyson, "it's a what d'ye call 'em--category--innate
idea--_a priori_ form of the masculine intelligence. I've never seen a
man yet who hadn't it somewhere about him. And I've seen most sorts.
Terrific bounders, too, some of them."
A year ago Stanistreet would have laughed at this, now he smiled.
Tyson lay back in his chair and fell into a waking dream. He spoke
slowly, in the curious muffled voice of the dreamer. "The perfect
woman--the eternal, incomprehensible divinity, all-wise, all-good,
all-loving, the guardian of the soul--I believe in it, I adore it; but,
unfortunately, I have never met it."
"My dear Tyson, I doubt if you and I would know it if we did meet it."
Tyson said nothing. He had closed his eyelids. He was following his
dream.
Presently he spoke.
"I say, Stanistreet, do you believe in miracles?"
Stanistreet looked down. Only the other day he had seen a miracle and
believed. And he himself was a greater miracle than the one he saw. But
the experience was not one that he cared to talk about.
"They don't happen here, where people are so damned clever. But I know
that they happen--sometimes--over there--in the East--_ex oriente lux_."
He rose. "Some day I shall go there or thereabouts, and see."
"And leave your wife here?"
"That's it. Do you think I ought to go?"
"I think it doesn't matter in the very least."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that whether you go or stay you'll kill her. But go, for God's
sake! It's the kindest way."