"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 pa.s.sed.
"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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion, she had the largest ideas of the scope and significance of friendship. She made no claims, but she exacted from Louis a mult.i.tude 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. Wilc.o.x 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. n.o.body 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."
CHAPTER XIII
MRS. WILc.o.x 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 circ.u.mstances.
Have you ever sat by the seash.o.r.e playing with pebbles in an idle mood?
You are not aiming at anything, you are much too lazy to aim; but some G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e 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. Wilc.o.x 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.
Wilc.o.x"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. Wilc.o.x"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. Wilc.o.x"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. Wilc.o.x 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. Wilc.o.x. By its magnificent unlikelihood, the idea that Sir Peter Morley, M.P., was fascinated by her daughter extinguished every other. So possessed was Mrs. Wilc.o.x 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. Wilc.o.x described Tyson"s desertion of his wife.) As for her encouraging Sir Peter in her husband"s absence, that was all nonsense. Mrs. Wilc.o.x was a woman of the world, and she would have pa.s.sed 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. Wilc.o.x 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. Wilc.o.x called on Miss Batchelor. There was nothing extraordinary in that, for the ladies were in the habit of exchanging half-yearly visits, and Mrs. Wilc.o.x 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. Wilc.o.x 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."