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Page 63
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."
CHAPTER XX
A MAN AND A SPHINX
The idea of leaving England had occurred to Tyson more than once before.
In Stanistreet's rooms it took its first vague shape. But Louis's parting
words had a sting in them; they were at once a shock to his feelings and
a challenge to his will.
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