"So that was the goose that laid the golden eggs?" (Ha, ha! Sir Peter had made a joke.)

He went home merrily at the end of the week in his new clothes with his new idea; and as he sat in the train he kept turning that little bit of gossip over and over, and tasting it. It lasted him all the way from St.

Pancras to Drayton Parva. Sir Peter did not greatly care for women's gossip; but he liked his own. And really the provocation had been intense. It was t.i.t for tat, _quid pro quo_, what was sauce for the goose--the goose again! Ha! ha! ha! It was a good thing for Sir Peter that Vance had given him another two inches round the waist.

Now, to do Sir Peter justice, he had meant to keep that little bit of gossip entirely to himself, for solitary gloating over and nibbling.

But when an old gentleman has spent all his life uttering melancholy plat.i.tudes, and is suddenly delivered of a joke--of two jokes--it is a little hard to expect him to hide his light under a bushel. He could have buried scandal in his breast forever, but to put an extinguisher on the sparks of his playful fancy--no, these things are beyond a man's control.

And as the idea of the goose, with all its subtle humor, sank deeper and deeper into Sir Peter's mind, he was irresistibly tempted to impart it to Lady Morley (in strict confidence). Such a joke as that ought not to be kept to himself to live and die with him; it would hardly be kind to Lady Morley. She would appreciate it.

She did appreciate it. So did Miss Batchelor, to whom she also told the story (in strict confidence). So did everybody whom Miss Batchelor may or may not have confided in. And when the thing became public property, Sir Peter wished he had restrained his sense of humor.

CHAPTER VIII

TOWARDS "THE CROSS-ROADS"

It was the beginning of the hunting season, and with the hunting season Louis Stanistreet reappeared on the scene. He stayed at Thorneytoft as usual. Tyson had just bought a new hunter, a remarkable animal. It fell away suddenly in the hind-quarters; it had a neck like a giraffe and legs like a spider; but it could jump, if not very like a horse, very like a kangaroo. This creature struck wonder and terror into the soul of the hunt. At the first meet of the season Stanistreet, the Master, and Sir Peter drew up by one accord to watch the antics of Tyson and his kangaroo.

"By Jove! where does your friend pick up his hunters?" asked the Master.

"If you ask me," said Stanistreet, "I should say he buys them by the yard."

Sir Peter smiled. The Master stroked his mustache and meditated. There was a malignity about Stanistreet's humor conceivable enough--if there was any truth in history. It struck Stanistreet that his feeble jest met with an amount of attention out of all proportion to its merits. Sir Peter was the first to recover himself.

"Your friend may buy his horses by the yard, but he doesn't ride like a tailor. He rides like a man. Look at him--look at him!"

This was generous of Sir Peter, considering what Tyson had said about _his_ riding. But for all his love of gossip Sir Peter was a gentleman, and that goose weighed heavily on his conscience. The reproof he had just administered to Stanistreet relieved him wonderfully.

Stanistreet was at a loss to understand the old fellow's caustic tone.

Over billiards that night Tyson enlightened him.

Louis had been in a good temper all day; and his high spirits had infected Mrs. Nevill Tyson, a fact which, you may be sure, was not set down to her credit by those who noticed it.

"I heard your riding praised this morning, Ty," said he, beaming with beneficence. They were alone.

"Ha!" said Tyson, "did you?"

"Rather. Binfield was asking where you picked your hunters up--got his eye on the kangaroo, I fancy. I ventured to suggest, in my agreeable way, that you bought them by the yard."

Tyson looked furious. Louis went on, unconscious of his doom. "Old Morley went for me like a lunatic--said you didn't ride like a tailor, you rode like a _man_. Queer old buffer, Morley--couldn't think what was the matter with him."

Tyson laid down his cue and held Stanistreet with a leveling gaze.

"Look here, Stanistreet," said he, "I've stood a good deal, but if you think I'm going to stand that, you're a greater fool than I took you for.

What the h.e.l.l do you mean by telling everybody about my private affairs?"

"My dear Tyson, a man who rides to hounds regularly on a kangaroo has no private affairs, he is, _ipso facto_, a public character." He threw back his head and shouted his laughter. "You've built yourself an everlasting name."

"Oh, no doubt. If Morley knows it everybody knows it. You might just as well confide in the town-crier." He sat down and pressed his hands to his forehead.

"This," he said bitterly, "accounts for everything."

Stanistreet stared at him in hopeless bewilderment. "What _is_ the matter with you?"

"Nothing. I'm not going to kick you out of the house. I only ask you, so long as you are in it, to mind your own business."

"I can't. I haven't any business." No one could be more exasperating than the guileless Louis. Tyson darted another glance at him that was quite fiendish in its ferocity, and flung himself on the sofa. Sprawling there with his hands in his pockets, he remarked with freezing politeness, "I don't say much, Stanistreet, but I think a d.a.m.ned deal."

"My dear Orlando Furioso, surely a harmless jest--"

"So you think it funny, do you, to tell these people that my father was a tailor? It wouldn't be funny if it was false; but as it happens to be true, it's simply stupid."

"I never said your father was a tailor."

"Don't trouble yourself to lie about it. He _was_ a tailor. The minuteness of his business only added to the enormity of his crime. He was born in an attic on a pile of old breeches. He was a d.a.m.ned dissenter--called himself a Particular Baptist. He kept a stinking slopshop in Bishopsgate Street, and a still more stinking schism-shop in Sh.o.r.editch."

("Why the devil shouldn't he?" murmured Louis.)

"Salvation free, gratis, for nothing, and five per cent, discount for ready money."

Louis was amused, but profoundly uncomfortable. This particular detail of Tyson's biography was not one of the things he knew; if it had been, he would naturally have avoided the most distant allusion to it. As it happened, in his ignorance he seemed to have been perpetually blundering up against the circ.u.mstance. He went on clumsily enough--"If it was, I didn't know it, and if I had known it, it wouldn't have interested me in the least. _You_ interest me; you are, and always will be, unique."

"You're an awful fool, Stanistreet. By your own admission Morley is acquainted with this _charming romance_."

"What if he is?"

"The inference is obvious. You told him."

"Good G.o.d! If I did, do you suppose that Morley or any one else would care? Does anybody care what another fellow's father was? As a matter of fact I neither knew nor cared. But for your own genius for autobiography I should never have heard of it."

"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 a.s.sure 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 cla.s.s against cla.s.s. 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sions were the pa.s.sions 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 rea.s.serted 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 l.u.s.t 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.