Tyson

“ He could never have been found out if he had only stayed quietly at home and devoted himself to the cultivation of orchids, in the manner of old Tyson, who had managed to hoodwink himself and his neighbors into the belief that he was a country gentleman. As it was, for such a clever fellow Tyson had displayed stupidity that was almost ridiculous. For nobody ever denied that he was a clever fellow, that he could have been anything that he liked; in fact, he had been most things already. Anything he liked—except a country gentleman. The country gentleman, like the poet, is born, not made ”

“ She was glad to be delivered from the torment of the senses, to feel that the immortal human soul of her love was free. And as she was very young and had the heart of a little child, she firmly believed that her husband's emotions had undergone the same purifying regenerating process.
As for Tyson, he had not a doubt on the subject. One morning he was sitting in her room, watching her with a feverish, intermittent devotion. He noticed her right arm as it hung along the counterpane, and the droop of the beautiful right hand—the one beautiful thing about her now. ”

“ Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued him with genial irony. When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured him on with some artful feint; when Smedley thrust, Tyson dodged. Finally, when Smedley, so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt ”

“ 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. ”

“ I would have thought of her."
"In other words, you would have behaved like a scoundrel if you'd got the chance." The twinkle in Tyson's eyes intimated that he was enjoying himself immensely. He had never had the whip-hand of Stanistreet before.
"I would have behaved like a damned scoundrel, if you like. But I wouldn't have left her. Not even to marry and live morally ever after. I can be faithful—to another man's wife."
The twinkle went out like a spark, and Tyson looked at his hearth. It was dangerous to irritate Stanistreet, for there was no end to the things he knew. ”

“ Mr. Vance leaned against a pillar of cloth, like one requiring support in a very painful situation. It was agony for him to contradict Sir Peter. But truth is great. It prevailed.
"I was in the City then, sir, serving my time at Tyson's."
He dropped his eyes. He had crushed Sir Peter with proof, but he was too polite to be a witness of his discomfiture.
"Tyson's—Tyson's." Sir Peter's tongue uttered the name mechanically. His mind no longer followed Vance; it was busy with the loveliest woman in Leicestershire.
Mr. Vance smiled. "I daresay they know that name pretty well in your county, sir." ”

“ Civilization was rubbing off him at the edges; he seemed to be struggling against some primeval tendency. You expected at any moment to see a reversion to some earlier and uglier type. Across the chastened accents of the journalist there sounded the wild intemperate tongue of the man of the people. Miss Batchelor used to declare that Tyson was a self-made man, because he was constructed on such eccentric principles. ”

“ He was absorbed in chalking the end of his cue. His silence gave Tyson no chance; it left too much to the imagination.
"Have you any objection?"
"Well, isn't the lady a little young for a fine old country gentleman like yourself?"
Tyson's small blue eyes twinkled, for he prided himself on being able to take a joke at his own expense. Still it was not exactly kind of Stanistreet to remind him of his mushroom growth.
"Come," said Stanistreet, "you are a gentleman, you know. At any rate, you're about the only fellow in these parts who can stand a frock-coat and topper—that's the test. ”

“ Then she lifted up his mustache till the lip curled in a dreadful mechanical smile, showing a slightly crooked, slightly prominent tooth.
"Oh, what an ugly tooth!" said Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and she let the lip fall again like a curtain. "How could I marry a man with a tooth like that! Do you know, poor papa used to say you were just like Phorc—Phorc—something with a fork in it."
"Phorcyas?"
"Yes. How clever you are! Who was Phorc-y-as?" Mrs. Nevill Tyson made a face over the word.
"It's another name for Mephistopheles." (Tyson knew his Goethe better than his classics.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ She liked the cosmopolitan Tyson and his reckless speech, and she had her own reasons for wishing him to make a good impression. But her hints had roused in him the instinct of antagonism, and he went on more recklessly than before. "No; you are perfectly wrong. I'm not an interesting atheist. I have the most beautiful child-like faith in—"
"The God who was clever enough to make Mr. Nevill Tyson?" said Miss Batchelor, very softly. She had felt the antagonism, and resented it.
At this point Sir Peter came down with one of those tremendous platitudes that roll conversation out flat. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Stanistreet closed his eyes to shut out the sight of Tyson and his eternal cigar, and the slow monotonous movement of his lips. His friend's theological views were not exactly the supreme interest of the moment.
"Down there in the desert" (Tyson seemed to dream as he raised his eyes to the great map of the Soudan that hung above the chimney-piece) , "where there's no end to the sand and the sky, and man's nothing and woman less than nothing, this curious belief in the infinite seems the natural thing; it simply possesses you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fate looks devilish well after you, loves you or hates you, and in either case sticks to you and ruins you. Like your wife. To complete the little allegory, you can have as many chances as you like, but only one fate. Needless to say, though my chances have been many and charming, I naturally prefer my—fate."
Tyson was a master of the graceful art of symbolism, and Stanistreet had caught the trick from him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stanistreet had read him thoroughly. In plain language he had entertained serious thoughts of deserting Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Desertion? It was an ugly word. He dismissed his idea. He would dree his weird. He wasn't going to funk the thing—not he! The New Life had been found impossible. No matter. Certum quia impossibile. Nothing like a big thumping paradox when you were about it. Impossibility had the smile and lure of haunting deity, the glamor of the arcana. That night he dedicated himself with more promises and vows.
He was in that state of mind when men look out for miracles to save them. ”

“ Think of it, Louis!"
"I'm trying not to think of it. It's damnable as you say, but—other women have to stand it."
"Other women!" Tyson flung the words out like an execration that throbbed with his scorn and loathing of the sex. Other women! By an act of his will he had put his wife on a high pedestal for the moment—made her shine, for the moment, white and fair above the contemptible herd, her obscure multitudinous sisterhood. Other women! The phrase had an undertone of dull passionate self-reproach that was distinctly audible to Stanistreet's finer ear. ”

“ Tyson rose, putting her down from his knee as if she had been a baby.
"I hope you didn't tell Miss Batchelor that?"
"Yes, I did though—rather!"
He smiled in spite of himself. "What did she do?"
"Oh, she just stared—over her shoulder; you know her way."
"Look here, Molly, you must not go about saying that sort of thing. People here don't understand it; they'll only think—"
"What?"
"Never mind what they'll think. The world is chock-full of wickedness, my child. But if half the people we meet are sinners, the other half are fools. I never knew any one yet who wasn't one or the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before long he would be given over to dullness and immitigable ennui.
A perfectly sane man would have faced the facts frankly. He would have pulled himself together, taken himself out of the house, and got something to do. And under any other circumstances, this is what Tyson would have done. Unfortunately, he considered it his duty as a repentant husband to stay at home; and at home he stayed, cultivating his emotions. Ah, those emotions! If Tyson had been simply and passionately vicious there might have been some chance for him. ”

“ Let the Justice that cries out against what men have done for women remember what they have done for men.
The boy died before dawn. And now, what with sickness and much fighting, out of the fifty Tyson had brought out with him there were but twenty sound men.
When he had seen to the burying of his dead, and gone his rounds among the hopelessly dying, Tyson turned to his own affairs. The mail had come in, and his letters had been forwarded to him overnight from the nearest station. There was one from Stanistreet; it lay unopened on a box of cartridges amongst his other papers. ”

“ Tyson, the gentle cultivator of orchids, until, gradually receding from view, he became a presence, a myth, a name. But when the amazing Mr. Nevill Tyson dashed into his uncle's place, he drew all eyes on him by the very unexpectedness of his advent. And now it seemed that Tyson, the cosmopolitan adventurer, the magnificent social bandit who trampled, so to speak, on the orchids of respectability, and rode rough-shod over the sleek traditions of Thorneytoft, was after all nothing better than a little City tailor's son.
Of course it didn't matter in the very least. A man's a man for all that ”

“ Nevill Tyson was content. Though there was not a sign or a hope that her beauty would be restored to her, she was content. What was more, she was positively glad that it was gone, regarding the loss of it as the ransom for Tyson's soul.
She was growing stronger every day now, and they were full of plans for their future. No attempt had been made to repair the damage done by the fire. It was settled—so far as anything was settled—that they were to let the flat, let Thorneytoft too, and go away from London, from England perhaps, to some Elysium to be agreed on by them both. ”