He was magnanimous. It was he who had done the wrong, and it was he who
had pardoned. He had always been sorry for that poor devil, Tyson.
Tyson was aware of this feeling, and he generally resented it; but at
times like the present it gave him a curious sense of moral support.
The two men sat and smoked in a silence which Tyson, as usual, was the
first to break.
"I wouldn't like to swear," said he, "that I don't go abroad again before
long. It's my only chance. I'm knocked out of the game here. It's too
quick, too hard, and the rules are too cursedly complicated."
"All the same, I'd wait a bit before I flung it up, if I were you."
"Wait? Wait? I've done nothing but wait ever since I came to this
detestable country, and my chance never turned up. It never will turn
up--here."
"Why not?"
"My own fault, I suppose. I've spent my life in going round and round the
earth passionately in a circle. I don't say that perpetual rotation is a
natural function of the ordinary human being; but it's my function--I'm
good for nothing else. And they expect a man with the world in his brain
and the devil in his blood to live decently in this damnable city of fog
and filth! And when the world-madness comes on him nobody knows anything
about this particular form of mania--the poor wretch must get into a
stiff shirt or a strait waistcoat and converse sanely with that innocent
woman, his wife. If he doesn't there's a scandal, and the devil to pay--"
Stanistreet looked grave. Whither was all this tending? To a final
abandonment of Mrs. Nevill Tyson?
"Of course, the mistake was to try. There might have been a chance for me
if I'd had a tithe of your sense. But being what I am, I must needs go
and marry. It was the deed of a lunatic."
"Isn't it rather late to go back on that now? What's the good?"
"None, you fool, none. And if there's anything that stamps a man as a cur
and a cad, it's this vile habit of slanging the women for his own sins.
All the same--I'm not blaming anybody but myself, mind--all the same, I
being what I am, there's no doubt I married the wrong sort of woman. I
don't mind making that confession to you. I believe you know more about
me than anybody, barring my Maker."
Stanistreet looked straight in front of him, terribly detached and stern.
"She was not the wrong sort," he said slowly; "but she may have been the
wrong woman for you."
"Men like you and me, Stanistreet, contrive to get hold of the wrong
woman; I don't know why."