SIR PETER'S NEW CLOTHES
Tyson had not married in order to improve his social position; he had
married because he was in love as he had never been in love before. He
would have married a barmaid, if necessary, for the same reason. He was
not long in finding out that he owed his unpopularity in a great measure
to his marriage. To the curious observer this consciousness of his
mistake was conspicuous in his manner. (It was to be hoped that his wife
was not a curious observer.) And Sir Peter made matters no better by
going about declaring that Mrs. Nevill Tyson was the loveliest woman in
Leicestershire, when everybody knew that his wife had flatly refused to
call on her. By this time Tyson was quite aware that his standing in the
county had depended all along on the support which the Morleys were
pleased to give him. They had taken him up in the beginning, and his
position had seemed secure. If at that ripe moment he had chosen to
strengthen it by a marriage with Lady Morley's dearest friend, he might
have been anything he pleased. Miss Batchelor of Meriden would have
proved a still more powerful ally than Sir Peter. She would have been as
ambitious for him as he could have been for himself. By joining the
estates of Thorneytoft and Meriden, Nevill Tyson, Esquire, would have
become one of the largest land-owners in Leicestershire, when in all
probability he would have known the joy of representing his county in
Parliament. He was born for life on a large scale, a life of excitement
and action; and there were times when a political career presented itself
to his maturer fancy as the end and crown of existence. All this might
have been open to him if he had chosen; if, for instance, this clever
man had not cherished a rooted objection to the society of clever women.
As it was, his marriage had made him the best-abused man in those parts.
Since Tyson was not to mold his country's destinies in Parliament, he
turned his attention to local politics as the next best thing, thus
satisfying his appetite for action. He did what he had told Miss
Batchelor he should do; he dissipated himself in parochial patriotism.
He went to and fro, he presided at meetings, sat on committees, made
speeches on platforms. You would hardly have thought that one parish
could have contained so much fiery energy. Moreover, he found a field
for his journalistic talents in a passionate correspondence in the local
papers. Tyson could speak, Tyson could write, where other men maunder and
drivel. His tongue was tipped with fire and his pen with vitriol. Looking
about him for a worthy antagonist, he singled out Smedley, M.D., a local
practitioner given over to two ideals--sanitation and reform. Needless to
say, for sanitation and reform Tyson cared not a hang. It was a stand-up
fight between the man of facts and the man of letters. Smedley was solid
and imperturbable; he stood firm on his facts, and defended himself with
figures. Tyson, a master of literary strategy, was alert and ubiquitous.
Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued
him with genial irony. When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments
with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured
him on with some artful feint; when Smedley thrust, Tyson dodged.
Finally, when Smedley, so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in
the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of
danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and
his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt;
unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had
more weight with committees.
Only two people really appreciated that correspondence. They were Mrs.
Nevill Tyson and Miss Batchelor. "At this rate," said the lady of
Meriden, smiling to herself, "my friend Samson will very soon bring
down the house."
Tyson, contemptuous of the gallery, had been playing to Sir Peter and Sir
Peter alone, and he flattered himself that this time he had caught the
great man's eye. It was in the first excitement of the elections; Tyson
had come in from Drayton, and was glancing as usual at the visiting cards
on the hall table. On the top of the dusty pile that had accumulated in
the days of his wife's illness there was actually a fresh card. Tyson's
face lost something of its militant expression when he read the name "Sir
Peter Morley," and he smiled up through the banisters at his wife as she
came downstairs to greet him.
"Ha, Molly, I see Morley's looked us up again. He couldn't very well be
off it much longer."
"He called about the elections."
"Oh--I thought you were out?"
"So I was. I met him in the drive and made him come in."
"H'm. Did he say anything about my letters in the _Herald_?"
Mrs. Nevill Tyson hesitated. "N-no. Not much."
"What did he say!"
"Oh--I think--he only said it was rather a pity you'd mixed yourself up
with it."
"Damn his impertinence!"
He flicked the card with a disdainful fingernail and followed his wife
into the drawing-room. She gave him some tea to keep him quiet; he drank
it in passionate gulps. Then he felt better, and lay back in his chair
biting his mustache meditatively.
"By the way, did Morley say whether he'd support Ringwood! The fellow's a
publican, likewise a sinner, but we must rush him in for the District
Council."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Nevill Tyson, trying hard to be interested.
"Why? To keep that radical devil out, of course; a cad that spits on his
Bible, and would do the same for his Queen's face any day--if he got the
chance, I'd like to sound Morley, though." A smile flickered on his lips,
as he anticipated the important interview.
"Oh, he did say something about it. I remember now. I think he's going to
vote for the Smedley man."
Tyson's smile went out suddenly. He was scowling now. Not that he cared a
straw which way the elections went, but he liked to "mix himself up" in
them to give himself local color; and now it seemed that he had taken the
wrong shade. He had spent the better part of six weeks in badgering and
bullying Sir Peter's pet candidate.
"Morley's a miserable time-server," said he savagely. "I suppose the
usual excuses for his wife's not calling?"
"Neuralgia," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson, with a grin.
"Neur_al_gia! Why couldn't he give her a stomach-ache for a change?"
Now, when Tyson expressed his opinion of Sir Peter with such delightful
frankness, both he and Mrs. Nevill had overlooked the trifling fact
that Pinker, the footman, while to all outward appearance absorbed in
emptying a coal-scuttle, was listening with all his ears. Pinker was an
intelligent fellow, interested in local politics, still more interested
in the affairs of his master and mistress. The dust upon those
visiting-cards had provided Pinker with much matter for reflection. Now
men will say anything in the passion of elections; but when it was
reported that Mr. Nevill Tyson had in private pronounced Sir Peter to be
a "miserable time-server," and in public (that is to say, in Drayton Town
Hall) declared excitedly--"We will have no time-servers--men who will go
through any gate you open for them--we Leicestershire people want a man
who rides straight across country, and doesn't funk his fences!" And when
Sir Peter remarked that "no doubt Mr. Tyson had taken some nasty ones in
his time," everybody knew that there was something more behind all this
than mere party feeling. Sir Peter was right: that electioneering
business was Tyson's third great mistake. It proved, what nobody would
have been very much aware of, that Nevill Tyson, Esquire, had next to no
standing in the county. As a public man he was worse off than he would
have been as a harmless private individual. He could never have been
found out if he had only stayed quietly at home and devoted himself to
the cultivation of orchids, in the manner of old Tyson, who had managed
to hoodwink himself and his neighbors into the belief that he was a
country gentleman. As it was, for such a clever fellow Tyson had
displayed stupidity that was almost ridiculous. For nobody ever denied
that he was a clever fellow, that he could have been anything that he
liked; in fact, he had been most things already. Anything he
liked--except a country gentleman. The country gentleman, like the
poet, is born, not made; and it was a question if Tyson had ever been
a gentleman at all. He had all the accidents of the thing, but not its
substance, its British stability and reserve. Civilization was rubbing
off him at the edges; he seemed to be struggling against some primeval
tendency. You expected at any moment to see a reversion to some earlier
and uglier type. Across the chastened accents of the journalist there
sounded the wild intemperate tongue of the man of the people. Miss
Batchelor used to declare that Tyson was a self-made man, because he was
constructed on such eccentric principles. His slightest movements showed
that he was uncertain of his ground, and ready to fight you for it, if
it came to that. And now he still met you with the twinkle in his small
blue eyes, but there was a calculating light behind it, as if he were
measuring his forces against yours. And you were sorry for him in spite
of yourself. With the spirit of the soldier of Fortune, Tyson had the
nerves and temper of her spoilt child. He had made an open bid for
popularity and failed, and it was positively painful to see him writhing
under the consciousness of his failure.
And the cause of it all was Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Yet he was proud of her
still; proud even of the notoriety which was a tribute to her beauty. To
tell the truth, her notoriety was his protection. Once the elections were
over, gossip was too busy with the wife to pay much attention to the
husband. He was considered to have extinguished himself for good. Miss
Batchelor no longer regretted that he had no profession. To be the
husband of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire was profession enough
for any man.
By a further social paradox, Mrs. Nevill Tyson owed much of her present
notoriety to her former obscurity. Lady Morley, had her temperament
permitted, might have been as frisky or as risky as she pleased, without
attracting unkind attention, much less censure. But, unless she combined
the virtue of an angel with the manners of a district visitor, and
contrived to walk circumspectly across the quicksands that separated her
from "good society," a daughter of Mrs. Wilcox was condemned already.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never walked circumspectly in her life. And Fate,
that follows on the footsteps of the fool, was waiting, if not to catch
Mrs. Nevill Tyson tripping, at any rate to prove that she must trip.
At first Fate merely willed that Sir Peter should take a journey up to
town. Sir Peter's serviceable tweed suit, that had lasted him a good five
years, was beginning to go at the corners. We know Stanistreet's opinion
of Sir Peter's taste in dress; it was only a coarser expression of the
views held by his wife. But for her frank and friendly criticism, Sir
Peter, holding change in abhorrence, would have worn that tweed suit
another five years at the very least.
"It's a capital suit," said he.
"Perfectly disgraceful," said she. "Look at your elbow."
"Ordinary wear and tear."
"Particularly tear." And while she was speaking Sir Peter had rubbed the
worn place into a jagged hole. Sir Peter sighed. He was much attached to
that tweed suit; it knew his ways, and had adapted itself to all the
little eccentricities of his figure. After five years there is a certain
intimacy between a man and his suit. However, there was no blinking the
fact--the suit was doomed. Sir Peter's man seized the occasion for a
general overhauling of his master's wardrobe, with the result that Sir
Peter had to go up by an early train the next morning to consult Mr.
Vance, his tailor.
Sir Peter was being measured up and down and all round him, while Mr.
Vance stood by, note-book in hand, and took minutes of his case.
"A little wider round the waist, Vance, since you made my first coat for
me thirty years ago."
Sir Peter was swaying on his toes, and supporting himself by a finger-tip
laid on the shoulder of Vance's man.
"Not quite so long ago as that, Sir Peter."
"Must be, must be; you've been here more than thirty years."
Sir Peter prided himself on his memory, and was a stickler for the actual
fact.
"I'm afraid not, sir." The voice of Vance was charged with melancholy and
delicate regret. "We were only Binks and Co. in those days."
"Nonsense. Why, you measured me yourself, Vance."
"An impossibility, sir."
Mr. Vance leaned against a pillar of cloth, like one requiring support
in a very painful situation. It was agony for him to contradict Sir
Peter. But truth is great. It prevailed.
"I was in the City then, sir, serving my time at Tyson's."
He dropped his eyes. He had crushed Sir Peter with proof, but he was too
polite to be a witness of his discomfiture.
"Tyson's--Tyson's." Sir Peter's tongue uttered the name mechanically. His
mind no longer followed Vance; it was busy with the loveliest woman in
Leicestershire.
Mr. Vance smiled. "I daresay they know that name pretty well in your
county, sir."
"The name," said Sir Peter, blushing a little at his own thoughts, "the
name is not uncommon."
"It's the same family, though, sir."
"Really--" Sir Peter was a little startled this time--"you don't mean to
say--"
"Yes. It was a small firm, was Tyson's. But they're big people, I fancy,
by now. Old Mr. Tyson left 'em and set up by himself in the wholesale
business in Birmingham. He made a mint o' money. I understand he bought
one of the best properties in your county; is that so, sir?"
If Mr. Vance had not made coats for Sir Peter for thirty years, he had
made them for twenty-five or thereabouts, and he was privileged to
gossip.
"Yes, yes, Thorneytoft. Very good property. And a very good sort too, old
Mr. Tyson."
"A little peculiar, I'm told."
"Well--perhaps. I had not much acquaintance with the old man myself,
but he was very generally respected. I know his nephew, Mr. Nevill
Tyson--slightly."
Sir Peter would have died rather than ask a direct question, but he was
wildly curious as to Mr. Nevill Tyson's antecedents.
An illuminating smile spread over Mr. Vance's face.
"I remember _him_ when he was a youngster. His father chucked the
business, and set up as a Baptist minister--a Particular Baptist."
"Indeed."
"An uncommonly clever fellow, Nevill Tyson; sharp as needles. But they
couldn't bring him up to the business, nor the ministry."
"Hardly good enough for him, I should imagine."
"Well--no. It wasn't a house with any standing in his time. He'd got
ideas in his head, too. Nothing but a 'Varsity education suited his
book."
"Ah, that always tells."
"His father was very much against it. He knew the young rascal. And just
when he was at the top of the tree, as you may say, sure enough he made
off--goodness knows where."
"Lived abroad a great deal, I believe." Sir Peter was anxious to throw a
vaguely charitable light on his neighbor's escapades.
"Got into some scrape about a woman, I fancy. Anyhow he left a pile of
debts behind him, and the old man ruined himself paying them."
Bristling with curiosity, Sir Peter endeavored to look detached. But at
this point Mr. Vance, remembering, perhaps, that Mr. Nevill Tyson was a
great man in his customer's county, and chilled a little by Sir Peter's
manner, checked the flow of his reminiscences. "He was a wild young
scamp--another two inches round the waist, sir--but I daresay he's
settled down steady enough by this time."
"No doubt he has," said Sir Peter, a little loftily. He was disgusted
with Vance.
But though Vance's conduct was disgusting, after all he had told him what
he was dying to know. The antecedents of old Tyson of Thorneytoft had
been wrapped in a dull mystery which nobody had ever taken the trouble to
penetrate. He had been in business--that much was known; and as he was
highly respectable, it was concluded that his business had been highly
respectable too. And then he had retired for ten years before he came to
Thorneytoft. Those ten years might be considered a season of purification
before entering on his solemn career as a country gentleman. Old Tyson
had cut himself adrift from his own origins. And as the years went on he
wrapped himself closer in his impenetrable garment of respectability; he
was only Mr. Tyson, the gentle cultivator of orchids, until, gradually
receding from view, he became a presence, a myth, a name. But when the
amazing Mr. Nevill Tyson dashed into his uncle's place, he drew all eyes
on him by the very unexpectedness of his advent. And now it seemed that
Tyson, the cosmopolitan adventurer, the magnificent social bandit who
trampled, so to speak, on the orchids of respectability, and rode
rough-shod over the sleek traditions of Thorneytoft, was after all
nothing better than a little City tailor's son.
Of course it didn't matter in the very least. A man's a man for all that;
but when the man, in his brilliant oratorical way, has intimated that you
don't ride straight, and that you funk your fences, you may be forgiven
if you smile a sly private smile at his expense.
And Sir Peter did more than smile, he laughed.
"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 tit 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
platitudes, 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.