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<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> <h3>CONFLAGRATION</h3> To see his wife casually in a crowd, and to fall desperately in love with her for the second time, was a unique experience even in Tyson's life. But it had its danger. He had never been jealous before; now a feeling very like jealousy had been roused by seeing her with Stanistreet. He had followed her to the "Criterion"; he had hurried out before the end of the piece, and hung about Ridgmount Gardens till he had seen her homecoming. Stanistreet's immediate departure was a relief to a certain anxiety that he was base enough to feel. And still there remained a vague suspicion and discomfort. He had to begin all over again with her. In their first courtship she was a child; in their second she was a woman. Hitherto, the creature of a day, she had seemed to spring into life afresh every morning, without a memory of yesterday or a thought of to-morrow; she had had no past, not even an innocent one. And now he had no notion what experiences she might not have accumulated during this year in which he had left her. That was her past; and they had the future before them. They had been alone together for three days, three days and three nights of happiness; and on the evening of the fourth day Tyson had found her reading—yes, actually reading! He sat down opposite her to watch the curious sight. Perhaps she had said to herself: "Some day I shall be old, and very likely I shall be ugly. If I am stupid too, he will be bored, and perhaps he will leave me. So now—I am going to be his intellectual companion." He was amused, just as Stanistreet had been. "I say, I can't have that, you know. What have you got there?" She held up her book without speaking. "Othello," of all things in the world! "Shakespeare? I thought so. When a woman's in a damned bad temper she always reads Shakespeare, or Locke on the Human Understanding. Come out of that." Though Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her little teeth very hard, the corners of her mouth and eyes curled with mischief. It was delicious to feel that she could torment Nevill, to know that she had so much power. And while she pretended to read she played with the pearl necklace she wore. It was one shade with the white of her beautiful throat. "Who gave you those pearls?" She made no answer, but her hand dropped a little consciously. He had given them to her that afternoon, remarking, with rather questionable taste, that they were "a wedding-present for the second Mrs. 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. I, most unfortunately, am not." He got up and threw the window open. He ramped about the room, soliloquizing as he went. Never, even in the last days of their engagement, had she seen him so restless. (But she was not going to speak yet; not she!) He stopped before the chimney-piece; it was covered with ridiculous objects, the things that please a child: there were Swiss cow-bells and stags carved in wood, Chinese idols that wagged their heads, little images of performing cats, teacups, a whole shelf full of toys. Not one of them but had some minute fragment of his wife's personality adhering to it. He remembered the insane impulse that came upon him last year to smash them, sweep the lot of them on to the floor. To-night he could have kissed them, cried over them. "T-t-t-tt! What affecting absurdity!" That was the way he went on. And now he sat down by her writing-table, and was taking things up and examining them while he talked. He never, never forgot the expression of a certain brass porcupine that was somehow a penwiper; it seemed to belong to a world gone mad, where everything was something else, where porcupines were penwipers, and his wife— For suddenly his tongue had stopped. He had caught sight of an enormous bunch of hothouse flowers in a vase on the floor by the writing-table. Stanistreet's card was in the midst of the bunch, and a note from Stanistreet lay open on the writing-table. There was an ominous pause while Tyson read it. It was curt enough; only an offer of flowers and a ticket for the "Lyceum." Stanistreet's mind must have been seriously off its balance, otherwise he would never have done this clumsy thing. Tyson strode to his wife's chair and tossed the letter into her lap. "How long has Stanistreet been paying you these little attentions?" She looked up smiling. I am not sure that she did not think this new tone of Tyson's was part of the game they were playing together. She had never taken him seriously. "Ever since he found out that I liked them, I suppose." "Did it not occur to you that the things you like are rather expensive luxuries, some of them?" "No. Perhaps that's why I hardly ever get them." "My dear girl, I know the precise amount of Stanistreet's income. Money can't be any object to him. But perhaps you've a soul above boxes at the 'Criterion,' and champagne suppers afterwards, and the rest of it?" "I have, unfortunately. But there wasn't any champagne." Her indifferent voice gave the lie to her beating pulses. Between playing and fighting there is only a difference of degree. "Will you kindly tell me why you selected Stanistreet of all people for this business?" "I didn't select him—he was always there." "And if it hadn't been Stanistreet it would have been somebody else? I see. I hope you appreciate the peculiar advantages of his society?" "I do. Louis is a gentleman, though he is your friend. He knows how to talk to women." "If he doesn't it is not for want of practice. I could swallow all this, Molly, if you were a little girl just out of the schoolroom; but—I don't think you've much to learn." Mrs. Nevill Tyson's eyes flashed. The play had turned to deadly earnest. "Not much, thanks to you," said she. Her voice sank. "Louis was good to me." "Was he? 'Good' to you—How extremely touching! Pray, were you good to him?" "No—no." She shook her head remorsefully. "I wish I had been." Tyson knitted his brows and looked at her. He had not quite made up his mind. "Do you know, I don't altogether believe in your refreshing näiveté. Stanistreet is not 'good' to pretty women for nothing. I know, and you know, that a woman who has been seen with him as you apparently have been, is not supposed to have a character to lose." She rose to her feet and faced him. "How could you? Oh, how could you?" He shrank from her, without the least attempt to conceal his repulsion. "If you look in the glass you'll see." 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. She understood him, though imperfectly; she understood many things now. Oh, he was right—she looked the part; no wonder that he hated her. She sat down and covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out that momentary vision of herself. Herself and not herself. What she saw was something that had never been. But it was something that might be—herself, as Tyson alone had power to make her. All this came to her as an unexplained, confused terror, a trouble of the nerves; there was no reasoning, no idea; it was all too new. But if she did not understand her own misery, she understood vaguely what he had said to her. She got up and went to her writing-table where a letter lay folded, ready for its envelope. She gave it to him without a word. "Do you mean me to read this?" he asked. "Yes; if you like." She answered without looking at him; apparently she was absorbed in addressing her envelope. He opened the letter gingerly, and read in his wife's schoolgirl handwriting:— <div class="blockquot">Dear Louis,—It's awfully good of you but I'm afraid I can't go with you to the 'Lyceum' to-morrow night so I return the ticket with many thanks, in case you want to give it to somebody else. Nevill has come home—why of course you saw him—and I am so happy and I want all my time for him. I thought you'd like to know this. I'm sure he will be delighted to see you whenever you like to call.—Yours sincerely, Molly Tyson. P.S.—Thanks awfully for the lovely flowers. You can smell them all over the flat! </div> "Come here, you fool," he said gently. But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was stamping her envelope with great deliberation and care. She handed it to him at arm's length and darted away. He heard her turning the key in her bedroom door with a determined click. He read her letter over again twice. The ridiculous little phrases convinced him of the groundlessness of his suspicion. Punctuation would have argued premeditation, and premeditation guilt. "Nevill has come home—why of course you saw him." She had actually forgotten that Stanistreet had been there on the evening of his arrival. He laughed so loud that Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard him in her bedroom. An hour later he heard her softly unlocking her door. He smiled. She might be as innocent as she pleased, but she had made him make a cursed fool of himself, and he meant that she should suffer for that. He threw Stanistreet's flowers out of the window, put Molly's note up in its envelope and sent it to the post. Then he sat down to think. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's room was opposite the one she had just left. She stood for a moment before her looking-glass, studying her own reflection. She took off her pearl necklace and spanned her white throat with her tiny hands. And as she looked she was glad. When all was said and done she looked beautiful—beautiful after her small fashion. She turned this way and that to make perfectly sure of the fact. She had realized long ago how much her hold on Nevill's affections depended on it. His love had waxed and waned with her beauty. Well—She opened her door before getting into bed, and for the next hour she lay listening and wondering. She saw the line of light at the top of the drawing-room door disappear as the big lamp went out. It was followed by a fainter streak. Nevill must have lit the little lamp on the table by the window. (Oh, dear! He was going to sit up, then.) She heard him go into the dining-room beyond and stumble against things; then came the spurt of a match, followed by the clinking of glasses. (He was only going to have a smoke and a drink.) She waited a little while longer, then she called to him. There was no answer; he must be dozing on the couch in the dining-room. A light wind lifted the carpet at the door, and she wondered drowsily whether Nevill had left the drawing-room window open. He had done all that she supposed, and more. First of all, he drank a little more than was good for him; this happened occasionally now. Then he sat down and wrote what he thought was a very terse and biting letter to Stanistreet, in which he said: "You needn't call. You will not find either of us at home at Ridgmount Gardens from May to August, nor at Thorneytoft from August to May. And if you should happen to meet my wife anywhere in public, you will oblige me greatly by cutting her." This letter he left on the table outside for postage in the morning. Then he went back to the dining-room and drank a great deal more than was good for him. Of course he left the drawing-room window open and the lamp burning, and by midnight he was sleeping heavily in the adjoining room. And the wind got up in the night: it played with the muslin curtains, flinging them out like streamers into the room; played with the flimsy parasol lamp-shade until it tilted, and the little lamp was thrown on to the floor. Mrs. Nevill Tyson woke with the light crash. She sat up for a moment, then got out of bed, crossed the passage, and opened the drawing-room door. A warm wind puffed in her face; the air was full of black flakes flying through a red rain; a stream of fire ran along the floor, crests of flames leapt and quivered over the steady blue under-current; and over there, in the corner, an absurd little arm-chair had caught fire all by itself; the flames had peeled off its satin covering like a skin, and were slowly consuming the horse-hair stuffing; the pitiable object sent out great puffs and clouds of smoke that writhed in agonized spirals. The tiny room had become a battlefield of dissolute forces. But as yet none of the solid furniture was touched; it was a superficial conflagration. Mrs. Nevill Tyson saw nothing but the stream of fire that ran between her and the room where Nevill lay. She picked up her skirt and waded through it barefoot. A spark flung from the burning draperies settled on the wide flapping frills of her night-gown. Nevill was fast asleep with the rug over him and his mouth open. She shook him with one hand, and with the other she tried to beat down her flaming capes. Was he never going to wake? She was afraid to move; but by dropping forward on her knees she could just reach some soda-water on the table; she dashed it over his face. The fire had hurt the soles of her feet; now it had caught her breast, her throat, her hair; it rose flaming round her head, and she cried aloud in her terror. Still clutching Nevill's sleeve, she staggered and fell across him, and he woke. He woke dazed; but he had sense enough to roll her in the rug and crush the flames out. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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