The Tysons | Page 5

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
_rôle_ 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