"Get up."
Stanistreet muttered wrathfully under his mustache, and she caught the words "d.a.m.ned foolery."
"Bundle out this minute." She made a grab at the rail in an undignified manner.
He doubled the reins firmly over his right hand, and with his left arm he forced her back into her seat. He was holding her there when Farmer Ashby turned out of a by-lane and followed close behind them. And Farmer Ashby had a nice tale to tell at "The Cross-Roads" of how he had seen the Captain driving with his arm round Mrs. Tyson"s waist.
That was another stone.
Stanistreet tugged at the reins with both hands and pulled the mare almost on to her haunches; her hoofs shrieked on the iron road; she stood still and snorted, her forelegs well out, her hide smoking.
When he had made quite sure that the animal"s att.i.tude was that of temporary exhaustion rather than of pa.s.sion, Stanistreet changed seats, and gave the reins to Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and Scarum burst into her second heat.
"I suppose you have a right to drive your own animal into the ditch,"
said he.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her teeth with a determined air, planted her feet firmly on the floor of the trap to give herself a good purchase; she gave the reins a little twist as she had seen Stanistreet do, she balanced the whip like a fishing-rod, with the line dangling over Scarum"s ears, and then she rattled away over the wrinkling roads at a glorious pace; she reeled over cart-ruts, she went thump over sods and b.u.mp over mud-heaps, she grazed walls and hedges, skimmed over the brink of ditches, careened round corners, and tore past most things on the wrong side; and Stanistreet"s sense of deadly peril was lost in the pleasure of seeing her do it. When she was not chattering to him she was encouraging Scarum with all sorts of endearments, small chirping sounds and delicate chuckles, smiling that indefinably malicious, lop-sided smile which Stanistreet had been taught all his life to interpret as a challenge.
Now they were going down a lane of beeches, they bent their heads under the branches, and a shower of rime fell about her shoulders, powdering her black hair; he watched it thawing in the warmth there till it sparkled like a fine dew; and now they were running between low hedges, and the keen air from the frosted fields smote the blood into her cheeks and the liquid light into her eyes; it lifted the fringe from her forehead and crisped it over the fur border of her hat; flying ends of lace and sable were flung behind her like streamers; she seemed to be winged with the wind of speed; she was the embodiment of vivid, reckless, beautiful life.
It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson"s wife, irrevocably, until one or other of them died. And Tyson was not the sort of man to die for anybody"s convenience but his own.
At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft. "Thank heaven we"re alive!" he said, as he followed her into the house.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold. "Do you mean to say you didn"t enjoy it!"
"Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don"t know that it was exactly--safe."
"I see--you were afraid. We were safe enough so long as _I_ was driving."
He smiled drearily. He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious dream--a madman driven by a fool. As if in answer to his thoughts, she called back over the banisters--
"I"m not such a fool as I look, you know."
No, for the life of him Stanistreet did not know. His doubt was absurd, for it implied that Mrs. Nevill Tyson practiced the art of symbolism, and he could hardly suppose her to be so well acquainted with the resources of language. On the other hand, he could not conceive how, after living more than half a year with Tyson, she had preserved her formidable _navete_.
At dinner that evening she still further obscured the question by boasting that she had saved Captain Stanistreet"s life. Stanistreet protested.
"Nonsense," said she; "you know perfectly well that you"d have upset the whole show if you"d been left to yourself."
Tyson stared at his wife. "Do you mean to say that he let you drive?"
"Let me? Not he! He couldn"t help it." Her white throat shook with derisive laughter. "I took the reins; or, if you like, I kicked over the traces. I always told you I"d do it some day."
Tyson pushed his chair back from the table and scowled meditatively. Mrs.
Nevill Tyson was smiling softly to herself as she played with the water in her finger-gla.s.s. Presently she rose and shook the drops from her fingertips, like one washing her hands of a light matter. Stanistreet got up and opened the door for her, standing very straight and militant and grim; and as she pa.s.sed through she looked back at him and laughed again.
"I can see," said Tyson, as Stanistreet took his seat again, "you"ve been letting that wife of mine make more or less of a fool of herself. If you had no consideration for her neck or your own, you might have thought of my son and heir."
"Oh," said Stanistreet, a little vaguely, for he was startled, "I kept a good lookout."
"Not much use in that," said Tyson.
Stanistreet battled with his doubt. Tyson had furnished him with a key to his wife"s moods. Moreover, a simpler explanation had occurred to him.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson was fond of driving; she had been forbidden to drive, therefore she drove; she had never driven any animal in her life before, and, notwithstanding her inexperience, she had accomplished the dangerous feat without injury to anybody. Hence no doubt her laughter and her triumph.
But this again was symbolism. He determined to sleep on it.
CHAPTER V
THE NIGHT WATCH
Like all delightful things, Mrs. Nevill Tyson"s laughter was short-lived.
When Tyson went up to bed that night between twelve and one, he found his wife sitting by her bedroom fire in the half-darkness. Evidently contemplation had overtaken her in the act of undressing, for her hair was still untouched, her silk bodice lay beside her on the floor where she had let it fall, and she sat robed in her long dressing-gown. He came up to her, holding his candle so that the light fell full on her face; it looked strange and pale against the vivid scarlet of her gown. Her eyes, too, were dim, her mouth had lost its delicate outline, her cheeks seemed to have grown slightly, ever so slightly, fuller, and the skin looked glazed as if by the courses of many tears. He had noticed these changes before; of late they had come many times in the twelve hours; but to-night it seemed not so much a momentary disfigurement as a sudden precocious maturity, as if nature had stamped her face with the image of what it would be ten, fifteen years hence. And as he looked at her a cold and subtle pang went through him, a curious abominable sensation, mingled with a sort of spiritual pain. He dared not give a name to the one feeling, but the other he easily recognized as self-reproach. He had known it once or twice before.
He stooped over her and kissed her. "Why are you sitting up here and crying, all by your little self?"
She shook her head.
"What are you crying about? You didn"t suppose I was angry with you?"
"No. I wouldn"t have cried if you had been angry. I"m not crying now.
I don"t know why I cried at all. I"m tired, or cold, or something."
"Why don"t you go to bed, then?"
"I"m going." She rose wearily and went to the dressing-table. He watched her reflection in the looking-gla.s.s. As she raised her arms to take the pins from her hair, her white face grew whiter, it was deadly white. He went to her help, unpinning the black coils, smoothing them and plaiting them in a loose braid. He did it in a business-like way, as if he had been a hairdresser, he whose pulse used to beat faster if he so much as touched her gown. Then he gave her a cold business-like kiss that left her sadder than before. The fact was, he had thought she was going to faint. But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was not of the fainting kind; she was only tired, tired and sick.
It was arranged that Tyson was to leave by the two o"clock train the next day. He was packing up his things about noon, when Molly staggered into his dressing-room with her teeth chattering. Clinging to the rail of the bedstead for support, she gazed at the preparations for his departure.
"I wish you wouldn"t go away, Nevill," she said.
"It"s all right, I"ll be back in a day or two." He blushed at his own lie.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson sat down on the bed and began to cry.
"What"s the matter, Moll, eh?"
"I don"t know, I don"t know," she sobbed. "I"m afraid, Nevill--I"m so terribly afraid."
"Why, what are you afraid of?" He looked up and was touched by the terror in her face.
"I don"t know. But I can bear it--I won"t be silly and frightened--I can bear it if you"ll only stay."
She slid on to her knees beside him; and while she implored him to stay, her hands worked unconsciously, helping him to go--smoothing and folding his clothes, and laying them in little heaps about the floor, her figure swaying unsteadily as she knelt.