The Tysons | Page 3

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