The Tysons | Page 7

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