MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON AT HOME
Perhaps it was well that Mrs. Nevill Tyson took things so lightly,
otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her surroundings at
Thorneytoft. That hideous old barrack stared with all the uncompromising
truculence of bare white stone on nature that smiled agreeably round it
in lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an
impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own
very respectable fancy. The result was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak
was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with
horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge
lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you
came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax-flowers. What with antique
heraldry and utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no
place there for anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs. Nevill Tyson;
unless, indeed, her figure served to give the finishing touch to the
ridiculous medley.
The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs. Wilcox if
anything could. Mrs. Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp and fresh and
cheerful in her widow's dress. Tyson rather liked Mrs. Wilcox than
otherwise (perhaps because she was a little afraid of him and showed it);
he noticed with relief that his mother-in-law was beginning to look
almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact
that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of color.
He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds with an air of genial
worldliness. There was something about Mrs. Wilcox that evaded the touch
of sorrow; but from certain things--food, clothes, furniture--she seemed
to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human
tragedy. She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and a drawing-room
"without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know--not so
much as a flower-pot or a basket-table"--weighed heavily on her happy
soul. Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the
house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped
so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her
faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it--for a young bride, you know--just a
little--a little _triste_?" And being more than a little afraid of her
son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her
idea. Tyson said he didn't care to spend money on a place like
Thorneytoft; he didn't know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed
anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan
Cain, and he might go abroad again, or he might take a flat in town for
the season. And at the mention of a flat in town all Mrs. Wilcox's
beautiful beliefs came back to her unimpaired. A flat in town, and a
house in the country that you can afford to look down upon--what more
could you desire?
Mrs. Nevill Tyson did not take the furniture very seriously. For quite
three days after her arrival she was content to sit in that very
respectable drawing-room, waiting for the callers who never came. She
could not have taken the callers very seriously either (what _did_ Mrs.
Nevill Tyson take seriously, I should like to know?), or else, surely she
would have had some little regard for appearances; she would never have
risked being caught at four o'clock in the afternoon sitting on Tyson's
knee, doing all sorts of absurd things to his face. First, she stroked
his hair straight down over his forehead, which had a singularly
brutalizing effect, so that she was obliged to push it back again and
make it all neat with one of the little tortoise-shell combs that kept
her own curls in order. Then she lifted up his mustache till the lip
curled in a dreadful mechanical smile, showing a slightly crooked,
slightly prominent tooth.
"Oh, what an ugly tooth!" said Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and she let the lip
fall again like a curtain. "How could I marry a man with a tooth like
that! Do you know, poor papa used to say you were just like
Phorc--Phorc--something with a fork in it."
"Phorcyas?"
"Yes. How clever you are! Who was Phorc-y-as?" Mrs. Nevill Tyson made a
face over the word.
"It's another name for Mephistopheles." (Tyson knew his Goethe better
than his classics.)
"And Mephistopheles is another name for--the devil! Oh!" She took the
tips of his ears with the tips of her fingers and held his head straight
while she stared into his eyes. "Look me straight in the face now. No
blinking. Are you the devil, I wonder?" She put her head on one side as
if she were considering him judicially from an entirely new point of
view. "I wonder why papa didn't like you?"
"He didn't think me good enough for his little girl, and he was quite
right there."
"He didn't mind so much when I got engaged to Willie Payne. He said we
were admirably suited to each other. That was because Willie was a fool.
Oh--I forgot you didn't know!"
"Ah, I know now. And how many more, Mrs. Molly?"
"No more--only you. And Willie doesn't count. It was ages ago, when I was
at school. Look here." She pushed back the ruffles of her sleeve and
showed him a little livid mark running across the back of her hand. "Did
I ever tell you what that meant? It means that they shoved Willie's
letters into the big fireplace--with the tongs--and that _I_ stuck
my hand between the bars and pulled them out."
"I say--you must have been rather gone on Willie, you know."
"No. I didn't like him much. But I _loved_ his letters." Mrs. Nevill
Tyson looked at the tips of her little shoes, and Mr. Nevill Tyson looked
at her.
"So Willie doesn't count, doesn't he?"
"No. He was a fool. He never did anything. Nevill, what did father think
you'd done?"
"I really cannot say. Nothing to deserve you, I suppose."
"Rubbish! I know all that. But he said there was something, and he
wouldn't tell me what. Anyhow, you didn't do it, did you?"
"Probably not."
"Come, I think you might tell me when I've confessed all my little sins
to you." Mrs. Nevill Tyson was persistent, not because she in the least
wanted to know, but because nobody likes being beaten.
"I don't know what the dear old pater was driving at. I don't suppose he
knew himself. He was a scholar, not a man of the world. He could read any
Greek poet, I daresay, who was dead enough and dull enough; but when a
real live Englishman walked into his study, it seemed to put him out
somehow. He didn't like me, and he showed it. All the same, I think I
could have made him like me if he'd given me a chance. I don't suppose
he does me any injustice now."
"No. He knew an awful lot about those stupid old Greeks and Romans and
people, but I don't think he knew much about you. I expect he made it up
to frighten mother. That reminds me, what _do_ you think Miss Batchelor
says about you? She told mother that it was a pity you hadn't any
profession--every man ought to have a profession--keep you out of
mischief. I wasn't going to have her talking like that about _my_
husband--the impudent thing!--so I just stopped her yesterday in Moxon's
shop and told her you had a profession. I led up to it so neatly, you
can't think. I said you were going to be a barrister or a judge or
something."
"A judge? That's rather a large order. But you know you mustn't tell
stories, you little minx. Miss Batchelor's too clever to take all that
in."
"Well, but it's true. You _are_ going to be a barrister, and everybody
knows that barristers grow into judges, if you feed them properly."
"But I haven't the remotest intention of being a barrister. How did you
get hold of that notion?"
"Oh, I knew it all along. Papa said so."
"You must have been mistaken."
"Not a bit. I'll tell you exactly what he said. I heard him talking about
it to mother in the library. I wasn't listening, you know. I--I heard
your name, and I couldn't help it. He said he expected to see you
figuring in the law courts some of these days--Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty Division."
Tyson rose, putting her down from his knee as if she had been a baby.
"I hope you didn't tell Miss Batchelor that?"
"Yes, I did though--rather!"
He smiled in spite of himself. "What did she do?"
"Oh, she just stared--over her shoulder; you know her way."
"Look here, Molly, you must _not_ go about saying that sort of thing.
People here don't understand it; they'll only think--"
"What?"
"Never mind what they'll think. The world is chock-full of wickedness, my
child. But if half the people we meet are sinners, the other half are
fools. I never knew any one yet who wasn't one or the other. So don't
think about what they think, but mind what you say. See?"
"I'm sorry." She had come softly up to the window where he stood; and now
she was rubbing his sleeve with one side of her face and smiling with the
other.
He stroked her hair.
"All right. Don't do it again, that's all."
"I won't--if you'll only tell me one thing. Were you ever engaged to
anybody but me?"
"No; I was never engaged to anybody but you."
"Then you were never in love with ten gentlemen at once like the Countess
Pol--"
His answer was cut short by the entrance of Sir Peter Morley, followed by
Captain Stanistreet.