The Tysons

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The Tysons

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Title: The Tysons (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson)
Author: May Sinclair
Release Date: April 28, 2005 [eBook #15722]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TYSONS***
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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