The Tysons | Page 6

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