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Page 28
"That's odd, considering that you've made capital out of it ever since
I knew you. It supplied the point of all your witticisms that weren't
failures. I assure you your delicate humor was not lost on me."
"Considering that I've known you for at least twenty years, those
jokes must have worn a little--er--threadbare. I'm extremely sorry for
these--these breaches of etiquette. I shall do my best to repair them.
That's a specimen of the thing you mean, I imagine?" From sheer
nervousness Louis did what was generally the best thing to do after
any little squabble with Tyson. He laughed.
Unfortunately this time Tyson was in no mood for laughter. The plebeian
was uppermost in him. His wrongs rankled in him like a hereditary taint;
this absurd quarrel with Stanistreet was a skirmish in the blood-feud
of class against class. Tyson was morbidly sensitive on the subject of
his birth, but latterly he had almost forgotten it. It had become an
insignificant episode in the long roll of his epic past. Now for the
first time for years it was recalled to him with a rude shock.
How real it was too! As he thought of it he was back in the stifling
little shop. Faugh! How it reeked of shoddy! Back in the whitewashed
chapel, hot with the fumes of gas and fervent humanity. He heard the
hymn sung to a rollicking tune:--
"I am so glad that my Father in heaven
Tells of His love in the book He has given.
"I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me,
I am so glad that Jesus loves me," etc.
The hateful measure rang in his ears, racking his nerves and brain. He
could feel all the agony of his fierce revolting youth. The very torment
of it had been a spur to his ambition. He swore (young Tyson was always
swearing) that he would raise himself out of all that; he would
distinguish himself at any cost. (As a matter of fact the cost was borne
by the Baptist minister.) The world (represented then by his tutor and a
few undergraduates), the world that he suspected of looking down on him,
or more intolerable still, of patronizing him, should be compelled to
admire him. And the world, being young and generous, did admire him
without any strong compulsion. At Oxford the City tailor's son scribbled,
talked, debated furiously; the excited utterance of the man of the
people, naked and unashamed, passed for the insolence of the aristocrat
of letters. He crowned himself with _kudos_. How the beggars shouted when
he got up to speak! He could hear them now. How they believed in him!
Young Tyson was a splendid fellow; he could do anything he chose--knock
you off a leading article or lead a forlorn hope. In time he began to be
rather proud of his origin; it showed up his pluck, his grit, the stuff
he was made of. He owed everything to himself.
And that last year when he let himself go altogether--there again
his origin told. He had flung himself into dissipation in the spirit
of dissent. His passions were the passions of Demos, violent and
revolutionary. Tyson the Baptist minister had despised the world,
vituperated the flesh, stamped on it and stifled it under his decent
broadcloth. If it had any rights he denied them. Therefore in the person
of his son they reasserted their claim; and young Tyson paid it honorably
and conscientiously to the full. In a year's time he knew enough of the
world and the lust of it to satisfy the corrupt affections of generations
of Baptist ministers, with the result that his university career was
suddenly, mysteriously cut short. He had made too many experiments with
life.
After that his life had been all experiments, most of them failures. But
they served to separate him forever from his place and his people, from
all the hateful humiliating past. He could still say that he owed
everything to himself.
Then his uncle's death gave him the means of realizing his supreme
ambition. By that time he had forgotten that he ever had an uncle. His
family had effaced itself. Backed by an estate and a good income, there
was no reason why its last surviving member should not be a conspicuous
social success. Well, it seemed that he was a conspicuous social failure.
He owed that to Stanistreet, curse him! curse him! His brain still
reeled, and he roused himself with difficulty from his retrospective
dream. When he spoke again it was with the conscious incisiveness of a
drunken man trying hard to control his speech.
"Would you mind telling me who you've told this story to? Lady Morley,
for one. My wife," he raised his voice in his excitement, "my wife, I
suppose, for another?"
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