THE TYSONS

(Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson)

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of _THE DIVINE FIRE_, _THE HELPMATE_, etc.

1906







CONTENTS

CHAPTER

       I. MR. NEVILL TYSON

      II. MRS. NEVILL TYSON

     III. MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON AT HOME

      IV. THE FIRST STONE

       V. THE NIGHT WATCH

      VI. A SON AND HEIR

     VII. SIR PETER'S NEW CLOTHES

    VIII. TOWARDS "THE CROSS-ROADS"

      IX. AN UNNATURAL MOTHER

       X. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

      XI. THE RETURN OF ODYSSEUS

     XII. A FLAT IN TOWN

    XIII. MRS. WILCOX TO THE RESCUE

     XIV. THE "CRITERION"

      XV. CONFLAGRATION

     XVI. THE NEW LIFE

    XVII. THE CAPTAIN OF HIS SOUL

   XVIII. A MIRACLE

     XIX. CONFESSIONAL

      XX. A MAN AND A SPHINX

     XXI. OUT OF THE NIGHT

    XXII. IN THE DESERT

   XXIII. _IN MEMORIAM_




CHAPTER I

MR. NEVILL TYSON


There were only two or three houses in Drayton Parva where Mr. and Mrs.
Nevill Tyson were received. A thrill of guilty expectation used to go
through the room when they were announced, and people watched them with
a fearful interest, as if they were the actors in some enthralling but
forbidden drama.

Perhaps, if she had been tried by a jury of her peers--but Mrs. Nevill
Tyson had no peers in Drayton Parva. She was tried by an invisible and
incorruptible jury of ideas in Miss Batchelor's head. Opinion sways all
things in Drayton Parva, and Miss Batchelor swayed opinion.

As for Mr. Nevill Tyson, he had dropped into Leicestershire from heaven
knows where, and was understood to be more or less on his trial. Nobody
knew anything about him, except that he was a nephew of old Tyson of
Thorneytoft, and had come in for the property. Nobody cared much for
old Tyson of Thorneytoft; he was not exactly--well, no matter, he was
very respectable and he was dead, which entitled him to a little
consideration. And as Mr. Nevill Tyson was an unmarried man in those
days he naturally attracted some attention on his own account, as well
as for the sake of the very respectable old man, his uncle.

He was first seen at a dinner at the Morleys. Somebody else happened to
be the guest of the evening, and somebody else took Lady Morley in to
dinner. Tyson took Miss Batchelor, and I don't think he quite liked
it. Miss Batchelor was clever--frightfully clever--but she never showed
up well in public; she had a nervous manner, and a way of looking at you
as if you were some curious animal that she would like to pat if she were
perfectly sure you were not dangerous. And when you were about to take
compassion on her shyness, she startled you with a sudden lapse into
self-possession. I can see her now looking at Tyson over the frills on
her shoulder, with her thin crooked little mouth smiling slightly. She
might well look, for Nevill Tyson's appearance was remarkable. He might
have been any age between twenty-five and forty; as a matter of fact he
was thirty-six. England had made him florid and Anglo-Saxon, but the
tropics had bleached his skin and dried his straw-colored hair till it
looked like hay. His figure was short and rather clumsily built, but
it had a certain strength and determination; so had his face. The
determination was not expressly stated by any single feature--the mouth
was not what you would call firm, and the chin retreated ever so slightly
in a heavy curve--but it was somehow implied by the whole. He gave you
the idea of iron battered in all the arsenals of the world. Miss
Batchelor wondered what he would have to say for himself.

He said very little, and looked at nobody, until some casual remark of
his made somebody look at him. Then he began to talk, laconically at
first, and finally with great fluency. It was all about himself, and
everybody listened. He proved a good talker, as a man ought to be who has
knocked about four continents and seen strange men and stranger women.
You could tell that Miss Batchelor was interested, for she had turned
round in her chair now and was looking him straight in the face. It
seemed that he had worked his way out to Bombay and back again. He had
been reporter to half-a-dozen provincial papers. He had been tutor to
Somebody's son at some place not specified. He had tried his hand at
comic journalism in London and at cattle-driving in Texas, and had been
half-way to glory as a captain of irregulars in the Soudanese war. No,
nobody was more surprised than himself when that mystic old man left him
Thorneytoft. He thought he had chucked civilization for good. For good?
But--after his exciting life--wouldn't he find civilization a
little--dull? (Miss Batchelor had a way of pointing her sentences as if
she were speaking in parables.) Not in the country, there was hardly
enough of it there, and he had never tried being a country gentleman
before; he rather wanted to see what it was like. Wouldn't it be a little
hard, if he had never--? He thought not. The first thing he should do
would be to get some decent hunters.

Hunters were all very well, but had he no hobbies? No, he had not; the
_bona fide_ country gentleman never had hobbies. They were kept by
amateur gentlemen retired from business to the suburbs. Here Sir Peter
observed that talking of hobbies, old Mr. Tyson had a perfect--er--mania
for orchids; he spent the best part of his life in his greenhouse. Mr.
Nevill Tyson thought he would rather spend his in Calcutta at once.

A dark lean man who had arrived with Tyson was seen to smile frequently
during the above dialogue. Miss Batchelor caught him doing it and turned
to Tyson. "Captain Stanistreet seemed rather amused at the notion of your
being a fine old country gentleman."

"Stanistreet? I daresay. But he knows nothing about it, I assure you. He
has the soul of a cabman. He measures everything by its distance from
Charing Cross."

"I see. And you--are all for green fields and idyllic simplicity?"

He bowed, as much as to say, "I am, if you say so."

Miss Batchelor became instantly self-possessed.

"You won't like it. Nothing happens here; nothing ever will happen. You
will be dreadfully bored."

"If I am bored I shall get something to do. I shall dissipate myself in a
bland parochial patriotism. I can feel it coming on already. When I once
get my feet on a platform I shall let myself go."

"Do. You'll astonish our simple Arcadian farmers. Nothing but good old
Tory melodrama goes down here. Are you equal to that?"

"Oh yes. I'm terrific in Tory melodrama. I shall bring down the house."

She turned a curious scrutinizing look on him.

"Yes," said she, "you'll bring down the house--like Samson among the
Philistines."

He returned her look with interest. "I should immensely like to know,"
said he, "what you go in for. I'm sure you go in for something."

She looked at her plate. "Well, I dabble a little in psychology."

"Oh!" There was a moment's silence. "Psychology is a large order," said
Tyson, presently.

"Yes, if you go in deep. I'm not deep. I'm perfectly happy when I've got
hold of the first principles. It sounds dreadfully superficial, but I'm
not interested in anything but principles."

"I'm sorry to hear it, for in that case you won't be interested in me."

She laughed nervously. She was accustomed to be rallied on her
attainments, but never quite after this fashion.

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't any principles."

She bent her brows; but her eyes were smiling under her frown.

"You really mustn't say these things here. We are so dreadfully literal.
We might take you at your word."

Tyson smiled, showing his rather prominent teeth unpleasantly.

"I wish," said she, "I knew what you think a country gentleman's duties
really are."

"Do you? They are three. To hunt hard; to shoot straight; and to go to
church."

"I hope you will perform them--all."

"I shall--all. No--on second thoughts I draw the line at going to church.
It's all very well if you've got a private chapel, or an easy chair in
the chancel, or a family vault you can sit in. But I detest these modern
arrangements; I object to be stuck in a tight position between two
boards, with my feet in somebody else's hat, and somebody else's feet
in mine, and to have people breathing down my collar and hissing and
yelling alternately, in my ear."

Again Miss Batchelor drew her eyebrows together in a friendly frown of
warning. She liked the cosmopolitan Tyson and his reckless speech, and
she had her own reasons for wishing him to make a good impression. But
her hints had roused in him the instinct of antagonism, and he went on
more recklessly than before. "No; you are perfectly wrong. I'm not an
interesting atheist. I have the most beautiful child-like faith in--"

"The God who was clever enough to make Mr. Nevill Tyson?" said Miss
Batchelor, very softly. She had felt the antagonism, and resented it.

At this point Sir Peter came down with one of those tremendous platitudes
that roll conversation out flat. That was his notion of the duty of a
host, to rush in and change the subject just as it was getting exciting.
The old gentleman had destroyed many a promising topic in this way, under
the impression that he was saving a situation.

"You'll be bored to death--I give you six months," were Miss Batchelor's
parting words, murmured aside over her shoulder.

On their way home Stanistreet congratulated Tyson.

"By Jove! you've fallen on your feet, Tyson. They tell me Miss Batchelor
is interested in you."

"I am not interested in Miss Batchelor. Who is she?"

"She is only Miss Batchelor of Meriden Court--the richest land-owner in
Leicestershire."

"Good heavens! Why doesn't somebody marry her?"

"Miss Batchelor, they say, is much too clever for that."

"Is she?" And Tyson laughed, a little brutally.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course everybody called on the eccentric newcomer when they saw that
the Morleys had taken him up. But before they had time to ask each other
to meet him, Mr. Nevill Tyson had imported his own society from Putney or
Bohemia, or some of those places.

That was his first mistake.

The next was his marriage. In fact, for a man in Tyson's insecure
position, it was more than a mistake; it was madness. He ought to have
married some powerful woman like Miss Batchelor, a woman with ideas and
money and character, to say nothing of an inviolable social reputation.
But men like Tyson never do what they ought. Miss Batchelor was clever,
and he hated clever women. So he married Molly Wilcox. Molly Wilcox was
nineteen; she had had no education, and, what was infinitely worse, she
had a vulgar mother. And as Mr. Wilcox might be considered a negligible
quantity, the chances were that she would take after her mother.

The mystery was how Tyson ever came to know these people. Mr. Wilcox was
a student and an invalid; moreover, he was excessively morose. He would
not have called, and even Mrs. Wilcox could hardly have called without
him. Scandal-mongers said that Tyson struck up an acquaintance with the
girl and her mother in a railway carriage somewhere between Drayton and
St. Pancras, and had called on the strength of it. It did great credit to
his imagination that he could see the makings of Mrs. Nevill Tyson in
Molly Wilcox, dressed according to her mother's taste, with that hair of
hers all curling into her eyes in front, and rumpled up anyhow behind.
However, though I daresay his introduction was a little informal and
obscure, there was every reason for the intimacy that followed. The
Wilcoxes were unpopular; so, by this time, was Tyson. In cultivating him
Mrs. Wilcox felt that she was doing something particularly esoteric and
rather daring. She had taken a line. She loved everything that was a
little flagrant, a little out of the common, and a little dubious. To a
lady with these tastes Tyson was a godsend; he more than satisfied her
desire for magnificence and mystery. For economical reasons Mrs. Wilcox's
body was compelled to live with Mr. Wilcox in a cottage in Drayton Parva;
but her soul dwelt continually in a side-street in Bayswater, in a region
haunted by the shabby-refined, the shabby-smart, and the innocently
risky. Mrs. Wilcox, I maintain, was as innocent as the babe unborn. She
believed that not only is this world the best of all possible worlds, but
that Bayswater is the best of all possible places in it. So, though she
was quite deaf to many of the chords in Tyson's being, her soul responded
instantly to the note of "town." And when she discovered that Tyson had
met and, what is more, dined with her old friends the Blundell-Thompsons
"of Bombay," her satisfaction knew no bounds.

At any rate, Tyson had not been very long at Thorneytoft before Mrs.
Wilcox found herself arguing with Mr. Wilcox. She herself was impervious
to argument, and owing to her rapt inconsequence it was generally
difficult to tell what she would be at. This time, however, she seemed
to be defending Mr. Nevill Tyson from unkind aspersions.

"Of course, all young men are likely to be wild; but Mr. Tyson is not a
young man."

"Therefore Mr. Tyson is not likely to be wild. Do you know you are guilty
of the fallacy known to logicians as illicit process of the major?"

Mrs. Wilcox looked up in some alarm. The term suggested anything from a
court-martial to some vague impropriety.

"The Major? Major who?" she inquired, deftly recovering her mental
balance. "Where is he?"

"Somewhere about the premises, I fancy," said Mr. Wilcox, dryly. When all
argument failed he had still a chastened delight in mystifying the poor
lady.

Mrs. Wilcox looked out of the window. "Oh, I see; you mean Captain
Stanistreet." She smiled; for where Captain Stanistreet was Mr. Nevill
Tyson was not very far away. Moreover, she was glad that she had on her
nice ultramarine tea-gown with the green _moirГЄ_ front. (They were
wearing those colors in town that season.)

At Thorneytoft a few hours later Stanistreet's tongue was running on as
usual, when Tyson pulled him up with a jerk. "Hold hard. Do you know
you're talking about the future Mrs. Nevill Tyson?"

Stanistreet tried to keep calm, for he was poised on his waist across
the edge of the billiard-table. As it was, he lost his balance at the
critical moment, and it ruined his stroke. He looked at the cloth, then
at his cue, with the puzzled air which people generally affect in these
circumstances.

"Great Scott!" said he, "how did I manage that?"

The exclamation may or may not have referred to the stroke.

Tyson looked at his friend with a smile which suggested that he expected
adverse criticism, and was prepared to deal temperately with it.

"Why not?" said he.

Stanistreet, however, said nothing. He was absorbed in chalking the end
of his cue. His silence gave Tyson no chance; it left too much to the
imagination.

"Have you any objection?"

"Well, isn't the lady a little young for a fine old country gentleman
like yourself?"

Tyson's small blue eyes twinkled, for he prided himself on being able
to take a joke at his own expense. Still it was not exactly kind of
Stanistreet to remind him of his mushroom growth.

"Come," said Stanistreet, "you are a gentleman, you know. At any rate,
you're about the only fellow in these parts who can stand a frock-coat
and topper--that's the test. I saw Morley, your big man, going into
church yesterday, and he looked as if he'd just sneaked out of the City
on a 'bus. But you always knew how to dress yourself. The instinct is
hereditary."

Louis had just made a brilliant series of cannons, and was marking fifty
to his score. If he had not been so absorbed in his game, he would have
seen that Tyson was angry; and Tyson when he was angry was not at all
nice to see.

He made himself very stiff as he answered, "Whether I'm a gentleman or
not I can't say. It's an abstruse question. But I've got the girl on my
side, which is a point in my favor; I have the weighty support of my
mamma-in-law elect; and--the prejudices of papa I shall subdue by
degrees."

"By degrees? What degrees?" Again the question was unkind. It referred to
a phase of Tyson's university career which he least liked to look back
upon.

"And how about Mrs. Hathaway?"

"Damn Mrs. Hathaway," said Tyson.

"Poor lady, isn't she sufficiently damned already?"

The twinkle came back into Tyson's eyes, but there was gloom in the rest
of his face. The twinkle was lost upon Stanistreet. He knew too much; and
the awkward thing was that Tyson never could tell exactly how much he
knew. So he wisely dropped the subject.

Stanistreet certainly knew a great deal; but he was the last man in the
world to make a pedantic display of his knowledge; and Mr. Wilcox's
prejudices remained the only obstacle to Tyson's marriage. It was one
iron will against another, and the battle was long. Mr. Wilcox had the
advantage of position. He simply retreated into his library as into a
fortified camp, intrenching himself behind a barricade of books, and
refusing to skirmish with the enemy in the open. And to every assault
made by his family he replied with a violent fit of coughing. A
well-authenticated lung-disease is a formidable weapon in domestic
warfare.

At last he yielded. Not to time, nor yet to Tyson, nor yet to his wife's
logic, but to the importunities of his lung-disease. Other causes may
have contributed; he was a man of obstinate affections, and he had loved
his daughter.

It was considered right that the faults of the dead (his unreasonable
obstinacy, for instance) should be forgiven and forgotten. Death seemed
to have made Mrs. Wilcox suddenly familiar with her incomprehensible
husband. She was convinced that whatever he had thought of it on earth,
in heaven, purged from all mortal weakness, Mr. Wilcox was taking a very
different view of Molly's engagement.

He died in March, and Tyson married Molly in the following May. The bride
is reported to have summed up the case thus: "Bad? I daresay he is. I'm
not marrying him because he is good; I'm marrying him because he's
delightful. And I'm every bit as bad as he is, if they only knew."

It was Mrs. Nevill Tyson's genius for this sort of remark that helped to
make her reputation later on.




CHAPTER II

MRS. NEVILL TYSON


Tyson took his wife abroad for six months to finish her education (as if
to be Tyson's wife was not education enough for any woman!); and Drayton
Parva forgot about them for a time.

In fact, nobody had fully realized the existence of Molly Wilcox till she
burst on them as Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

It was the first appearance of the bride and bridegroom on their return
from their long honeymoon. The rector was giving an "At Home"
(tentatively) in their honor; and a great many people had accepted,
feeling that a very interesting social experiment was about to be made.
Everybody remembers how Mrs. Nevill Tyson fluttered down into that party
of thirty women to eleven men, in an absurd frock, and with a still more
absurd air of assured welcome. Poor little woman! Her comings and goings
from one Continental watering-place to another had been the progress of a
triumphant divinity; where she found an hotel she left a temple. I
sometimes think, too, that little look of expectant gladness may have
been due to the feeling that the Rectory was in England, and England was
home. She was dressed in the most perfect Parisian fashion, from the
crown of her fur toque to the tips of her little shoes; but she had never
learned to speak three words of French correctly. She informed everybody
of the fact that afternoon, laughing with the keenest enjoyment of her
remarkable stupidity; it seemed that her _rГґle_ was to be remarkable in
everything. However that may have been, in less than half an hour seven
out of those eleven men were gathered round her chair in the corner; two
out of the seven were the rector and Sir Peter Morley, and Mrs. Nevill
Tyson was talking to all of them at once.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson--she was an illusion and a distraction from head to
foot; her beauty made a promise to the senses and broke it to the
intellect. Coil upon coil, and curl upon curl of dark hair, the dark eyes
of some ruminant animal, a little frivolous curve in an intelligent nose,
a lower jaw like a boy's, the full white throat of a woman, and the mouth
and cheeks of a child just waked from sleep. Tyson had escaped one
misfortune that had been prophesied for him. His wife was not vulgar. She
sat at her ease (much more at her ease than Miss Batchelor), and
chattered away about her honeymoon, her bad French, the places she had
been to, the people she had seen, and all without any consciousness of
her delightful self. Now it was a continuous stream of minute talk,
growing shallower and shallower as it spread over a larger surface; and
now her mind had hardly settled on its subject before it was off and away
again like a butterfly. There was one advantage in this excessive
lightness of touch, that it left great things as it found them, for great
things lay lightly on her soul. She told everybody she had been to Rome;
but imagination simply, refused to picture Mrs. Nevill Tyson in Rome. Her
presence in the Eternal City seemed something less than her footprint in
its dust or her shadow on its walls. Nothing is more irritating than to
have your dream of a place destroyed by the light-hearted gabble of some
idiot who has seen it; but Mrs. Nevill Tyson spared your dreams. The most
delicate ideal would have been undisturbed by the soft sweep of her
generalities, or the graceful flight of her fancy from the matter in
hand.

"There are a great many beautiful statues in the Vatican," said Sir Peter
in his dream.

"Oh, no end. And, talking of beautiful statues, we were introduced to the
most beautiful woman in Rome, the Countess--Countess--Countess--Nevill,
what _was_ that woman's name? Oh--I forget her name, but she was the
loveliest woman I ever saw in my life. Everybody was in love with
her--down on their knees groveling, you couldn't help it. Fancy, she
was engaged to ten people at once! I suppose she had ten engagement
rings--one for each finger, one for each man. I should never have known
which was which. But oh! I oughtn't to have told you. My husband said I
wasn't to talk about her. I don't see why--everybody was talking about
her!"

There was a chorus of protestation.

"And why shouldn't they talk about her, and why shouldn't she be engaged
to ten gentlemen at once? The more the merrier."

"And you haven't told us the lady's name, so we're none the wiser."

"I forgot it. But it would have been all the same if I hadn't. I never
can remember not to tell things. Oh--Countess--Poli--Polidori! There--you
see. My husband says I'm the soul of indiscretion."

There was a sudden silence. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's last sentence seemed to
detach itself and float about the room, and Miss Batchelor perceived with
a pang of pleasure that if Tyson's wife was not vulgar she was an arrant
fool.

"I suppose you visited all the great cathedrals?" said the Rector.
Perhaps he wished to change the subject; perhaps he felt that by talking
about cathedrals to Mrs. Nevill Tyson he was giving a serious, not to say
sacerdotal, character to a frivolous occupation.

"Well, only St. Peter's and the one at Milan."

"And which did you prefer! I am told that St. Peter's is very like our
own St. Paul's--or I should say St. Paul's--"

"Oh, please don't ask me! I know no more than the man in the moon--I mean
the man in the honeymoon" (that joke was Tyson's), "and a lot _he_ knows
about it. There's the man in the honeymoon," she explained, nodding
merrily in her husband's direction.

Meanwhile Tyson was making himself agreeable to Miss Batchelor. And this
is how he did it.

"I hear, Miss Batchelor, that you are a lady of genius."

There was a rumor that Miss Batchelor was engaged on a work of fiction,
which indeed may have been true, though not exactly in the sense
intended.

"Indeed; who told you that?"

"Scandal. But I never listen to scandal, and I didn't believe it."

"I don't suppose you believe that a woman could be a genius."

"No? I have seen women who were geniuses, before now; but in every
instance it meant--I shall hurt your feelings if I tell you what it
meant."

"Not at all. I have no feelings."

"It meant either devilry or disease." Tyson's eyes twinkled wickedly as
he stroked his blonde mustache. He felt a diabolical delight in teasing
Miss Batchelor. There was a time when Miss Batchelor had admired Tyson.
He was not handsome; but his face had character, and she liked character.
Now she hated him and his face and everything belonging to him, his wife
included. But there was no denying that he was clever, cleverer than any
man she had ever met in her life.

"Even a great intellect"--here Tyson looked hard at Miss Batchelor, and
her faded nervous face seemed to shrink under the look--"is a great
misfortune--to a woman. Look at my wife now. She has about as much
intellect as a guinea-pig, and the consequence is she is not only happy
herself, but a cause of happiness to others. There--see!"

Miss Batchelor saw. She saw Sir Peter Morley contending with the rector
for the honor of handing Mrs. Nevill Tyson her tea. They were joined by
Stanistreet. Yes, Stanistreet. The rector seemed to have drawn the line
nowhere that day. There was no mistaking the tall figure, alert and
vigorous, the lean dark face, a little eager, a little hard. And that
very clever woman Miss Batchelor sat hungry and thirsty--very hungry and
very thirsty--and Tyson stood behind her stroking his mustache. He was
not looking at her now, nor thinking of her. He was contemplating that
adorable piece of folly, his wife.




CHAPTER III

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.




CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST STONE


Tyson was much flattered by the rumor that Sir Peter Morley had
pronounced his wife to be "the loveliest woman in Leicestershire";
for Lady Morley herself was a sufficiently splendid type, with her
austere Puritan beauty. As for the rector, it was considered that his
admiration of Mrs. Nevill Tyson somewhat stultified his utterances in
the pulpit.

It is not always well for a woman when the judgment of the other sex
reverses that of her own. It was not well for Mrs. Nevill Tyson to be
told that she had fascinated Sir Peter Morley and spoiled the rector's
sermons; it was not well for her to be worshipped (collectively) by the
riff-raff that swarmed about Thorneytoft at Tyson's invitation; but any
of these things were better than for her to be left, as she frequently
was, to the unmixed society of Captain Stanistreet. He had a reputation.
Tyson thought nothing of going up to town for the week-end and leaving
Louis to entertain his wife in his absence. To do him justice, this
neglect was at first merely a device by which he heightened the luxury
of possession. In his own choice phrase, he "liked to give a mare a loose
rein when he knew her paces." It was all right. He knew Molly, and if he
did not, Stanistreet knew him. But these things were subtleties which
Drayton Parva did not understand, and naturally enough it began to avoid
the Tysons because of them.

Apparently Mrs. Nevill Tyson liked Stanistreet. She liked his humorous
dark face and his courteous manners; above all, she liked that air of
profound interest with which he listened to everything that she had to
say; it made it easy for her to chatter to him as she chattered to nobody
else, except (presumably) her husband. As for Stanistreet, try as he
would (and he tried a great deal), he could not make Mrs. Nevill Tyson
out. Day after day Mrs. Nevill Tyson, in amazing garments, sat and
prattled to him in the dog-cart, while Tyson followed the hounds; yet for
the life of him he could not tell whether she was really very infantile
or only very deep. You see she was Tyson's wife. It must be said she gave
him every opportunity for clearing his ideas on the subject, and if he
did not know, other people might be allowed to make mistakes. And when he
came to stay at Thorneytoft for weeks at a time, familiarity with the
little creature's moods only complicated the problem.

It was about the middle of February, and Stanistreet had been down
for a fortnight's hunting, when, in the morning of his last day, Tyson
announced his intention of going up to town with him to-morrow. He might
be away for three weeks or a month altogether; it depended upon whether
he enjoyed himself sufficiently.

Stanistreet, who was looking at Mrs. Nevill Tyson at the time, saw the
smile and the color die out of her face; her beauty seemed to suffer a
shade, a momentary eclipse. She began to drink tea (they were at
breakfast) with an air of abstraction too precipitate to be quite
convincing.

"Moll," said Tyson, "if you're going to this meet, you'd better run
upstairs and put your things on."

"I don't want to go to any meets."

"Why not?"

"Because--I--I don't like to see other women riding."

"Bless her little heart!" (Tyson was particularly affectionate this
morning) "she's never had a bridle in her ridiculous hands, and she talks
about 'other women riding.'"

"Because I want to ride, and you won't let me, and I'm jealous."

"Well, if you mayn't ride with me, you may drive with Stanistreet."

"_I_ may drive Captain Stanistreet?"

"Certainly not; Captain Stanistreet may drive you."

"We'll see about that," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson as she left the room.

She soon reappeared, enchantingly pretty again in her laces and furs.

It was a glorious morning, the first thin white frost after a long thaw.
The meet was in front of the Cross-Roads Inn, about a mile out of Drayton
Parva. It was neutral ground, where Farmer Ashby could hold his own with
Sir Peter any day, and speech was unfettered. Somebody remarked that Mrs.
Nevill Tyson looked uncommonly happy in the dog-cart; while Tyson spoke
to nobody and nobody spoke to him. Poor devil! he hadn't at all a pretty
look on that queer bleached face of his. And all the time he kept
twisting his horse's head round in a melancholy sort of way, and backing
into things and out of them, fit to make you swear.

She must have noticed something. They were trotting along, Stanistreet
driving, by a road that ran side by side with the fields scoured by the
hunt, and Tyson could always be seen going recklessly and alone. He could
ride, he could ride! His worst enemy never doubted that.

"It's very odd," said she, "but the people here don't seem to like Nevill
one bit. I suppose they've never seen anything quite like him before."

"I very much doubt if they have."

"_I_ think they're afraid of him. Mother is, I know; she blinks when she
talks to him."

"Does she blink when she talks to me?"

"Of course not--you're different."

"I am not her son-in-law, certainly."

"Do you know, though he's so much older than me--I simply shudder when
I think he's thirty-seven--and so awfully clever, and _so_ bad-tempered,
I'm not in the least afraid of him. And he really has a shocking bad
temper."

"I know it of old."

"So many nice people have bad tempers. I think it's the least horrid
fault you can have; because it comes on you when you're not thinking,
and it isn't your fault at all."

"No; it is generally some one else's."

"I don't think much of people's passions myself. He might have something
far worse than that."

"Most undoubtedly. He might have atrocious taste in dress, or a tendency
to drink."

"Don't be silly. Did you know him when he was young? I don't mean to say
he isn't young--thirty-seven's young enough for anybody--I mean when he
was young like me?"

"I can't say. I doubt if he was ever young--like you. But I knew him when
he was a boy."

"So you understand him?"

"Oh, pretty well. Not always, perhaps. He's a difficult subject."

"Anyhow, you like him? Don't you?"

Stanistreet gave a curious hard laugh.

"Oh yes--I like him."

"That's all right. And really, I don't wonder that people can't make him
out. He's the strangest animal _I_ ever met in my life. I haven't made
him out yet. I think I shall give him up."

"Give him up, by all means. Isn't that what people generally do when they
can't understand each other?"

Mrs. Nevill Tyson made no answer. She was trying to think, and thinking
came hard to Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

"I suppose he's had a past. But of course it doesn't do to go poking and
probing into a man's past--"

Stanistreet lifted his eyebrows and looked at the little woman. She was
sitting bolt upright, staring out over the vague fields; she seemed to
have uttered the words unconsciously, as if at the dictation of some
familiar spirit. "And yet I wish--no, I don't wish I knew. I know he must
have had an awful time of it." She turned her face suddenly on
Stanistreet. "What do you think he told me the other day? He said he had
never known anybody who wasn't either a fool or a sinner. What do you
think of that? Must you be one or the other?"

Stanistreet shrugged his shoulders. "You may be both. We are all of us
sinners, and certainly a great many of us are fools."

"I wonder. He isn't a fool."

Stanistreet wondered too. He wondered at the things she allowed herself
to say; he wondered whether she was drawing any inference; and above all,
he wondered at the shrinking introspective look on her careless face.

In another minute Mrs. Nevill Tyson had started from her seat and was
waving her muff wildly in the air. "Look--there he goes! Oh, _did_ you
see him take that fence? What an insane thing to do with the ground
like that."

He looked in the direction indicated by the muff, and saw Tyson riding
far ahead of the hunt, a small scarlet blot on the gray-white landscape.

"By Jove! he rides as if he were charging the enemy's guns at the head of
a line of cavalry."

"Yes." She leaned back; the excitement faded from her face, and she
sighed. The sigh was so light that it scarcely troubled the frosty air,
but it made Stanistreet look at her again. How adorably pretty she was
in all her moods!

Perhaps she was conscious of the look, for she rattled on again more
incoherently than before. "I'm talking a great deal of nonsense; I always
do when I get the chance. You can't talk nonsense to mother; she wouldn't
understand it. She'd think it was sense. And, you see, I'm interested in
my husband. I suppose it's the proper thing to take an interest in your
husband. If you won't take an interest in your husband, what will you
take an interest in? It's natural--not to say primitive. Do you know, he
says I'm the most primitive person he ever came across. Should _you_ say
I was primitive? Don't answer that. I don't think he'd like me to talk
about him quite so much. He thinks I never know where to draw the line.
But I never see any lines to draw, and if I did, I wouldn't know how to
draw them."

Stanistreet smiled grimly. He was wondering whether she _was_
"primitive."

"Just look at Scarum's ears! Don't tease her. She doesn't like it. Dear
thing! She's delicious to kiss--she's got such a soft nose. But she'll
bolt as soon as look at you, and she's awfully hard to hold." Her fingers
were twitching with the desire to hold Scarum.

"I think I can manage her."

"You see, somehow or the other I like talking to you. You may be a
sinner, but I don't think you are a fool; and I've a sort of a notion
that you understand."

He was silent. So many women had thought he understood.

"I wonder--_do_ you understand!"

The eyes that Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on Stanistreet were not
search-lights; they were wells of darkness, unsearchable, unfathomable.

Something in Stanistreet, equally inscrutable, something that was himself
and not himself, answered very low to that vague appeal.

"Yes, I understand."

He had turned towards her, smiling darkly, and all her face flashed back
a happy smile.

Surely, oh surely, Mrs. Nevill Tyson was the soul of indiscretion; for at
that moment Miss Batchelor, trotting past with Lady Morley, looked from
them to her companion and smiled too.

That smile was the first stone.

Miss Batchelor acknowledged them with a curt little nod, and Mrs.
Nevill Tyson's face became instantly overclouded. Louis leaned a little
nearer and said in a husky, uneven voice, "Surely you don't mind that
impertinent woman?"

"Not a bit," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson. "She's got a villainous seat."

"Then what are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking what horrid hard lines it is that they won't let me hunt.
All the time I might have been flying across country with Nevill, instead
of--"

"Instead of crawling in a dog-cart with me. Thank you, Mrs. Nevill."

"You needn't thank me. I haven't given you anything."

Again Stanistreet wondered whether Mrs. Nevill was very simple or very
profound. And wondering, he gave the mare a cut across the flanks that
made her leap in the shafts.

"That was silly of you. She'll have her heels through before you know
where you are. She's a demon to kick, is Scarum."

Scarum had spared the splash-board this time, but she was going
furiously, and the little dog-cart rocked from side to side. Mrs.
Nevill Tyson rose to her feet.

"Strikes me you can't drive a little bit," said she.

"Please sit down, Mrs. Tyson." But Mrs. Tyson remained imperiously
standing, trying to keep her balance like a small sailor in a
rollicking sea.

"Get up."

Stanistreet muttered wrathfully under his mustache, and she caught the
words "damned foolery."

"Bundle out this minute." She made a grab at the rail in an undignified
manner.

He doubled the reins firmly over his right hand, and with his left arm he
forced her back into her seat. He was holding her there when Farmer Ashby
turned out of a by-lane and followed close behind them. And Farmer Ashby
had a nice tale to tell at "The Cross-Roads" of how he had seen the
Captain driving with his arm round Mrs. Tyson's waist.

That was another stone.

Stanistreet tugged at the reins with both hands and pulled the mare
almost on to her haunches; her hoofs shrieked on the iron road; she stood
still and snorted, her forelegs well out, her hide smoking.

When he had made quite sure that the animal's attitude was that of
temporary exhaustion rather than of passion, Stanistreet changed seats,
and gave the reins to Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and Scarum burst into her
second heat.

"I suppose you have a right to drive your own animal into the ditch,"
said he.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her teeth with a determined air, planted her feet
firmly on the floor of the trap to give herself a good purchase; she gave
the reins a little twist as she had seen Stanistreet do, she balanced the
whip like a fishing-rod, with the line dangling over Scarum's ears, and
then she rattled away over the wrinkling roads at a glorious pace; she
reeled over cart-ruts, she went thump over sods and bump over mud-heaps,
she grazed walls and hedges, skimmed over the brink of ditches, careened
round corners, and tore past most things on the wrong side; and
Stanistreet's sense of deadly peril was lost in the pleasure of seeing
her do it. When she was not chattering to him she was encouraging Scarum
with all sorts of endearments, small chirping sounds and delicate
chuckles, smiling that indefinably malicious, lop-sided smile which
Stanistreet had been taught all his life to interpret as a challenge.
Now they were going down a lane of beeches, they bent their heads under
the branches, and a shower of rime fell about her shoulders, powdering
her black hair; he watched it thawing in the warmth there till it
sparkled like a fine dew; and now they were running between low hedges,
and the keen air from the frosted fields smote the blood into her cheeks
and the liquid light into her eyes; it lifted the fringe from her
forehead and crisped it over the fur border of her hat; flying ends of
lace and sable were flung behind her like streamers; she seemed to be
winged with the wind of speed; she was the embodiment of vivid, reckless,
beautiful life.

It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson's wife,
irrevocably, until one or other of them died. And Tyson was not the sort
of man to die for anybody's convenience but his own.

At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft. "Thank heaven
we're alive!" he said, as he followed her into the house.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold. "Do you mean to say you didn't
enjoy it!"

"Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don't know that it was
exactly--safe."

"I see--you were afraid. We were safe enough so long as _I_ was driving."

He smiled drearily. He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious
dream--a madman driven by a fool. As if in answer to his thoughts, she
called back over the banisters--

"I'm not such a fool as I look, you know."

No, for the life of him Stanistreet did not know. His doubt was absurd,
for it implied that Mrs. Nevill Tyson practiced the art of symbolism, and
he could hardly suppose her to be so well acquainted with the resources
of language. On the other hand, he could not conceive how, after living
more than half a year with Tyson, she had preserved her formidable
_naГЇvetГ©_.