"Neuralgia," said Mrs. Nevill Tyson, with a grin.
"Neur_al_gia! Why couldn"t he give her a stomach-ache for a change?"
Now, when Tyson expressed his opinion of Sir Peter with such delightful frankness, both he and Mrs. Nevill had overlooked the trifling fact that Pinker, the footman, while to all outward appearance absorbed in emptying a coal-scuttle, was listening with all his ears. Pinker was an intelligent fellow, interested in local politics, still more interested in the affairs of his master and mistress. The dust upon those visiting-cards had provided Pinker with much matter for reflection. Now men will say anything in the pa.s.sion of elections; but when it was reported that Mr. Nevill Tyson had in private p.r.o.nounced Sir Peter to be a "miserable time-server," and in public (that is to say, in Drayton Town Hall) declared excitedly--"We will have no time-servers--men who will go through any gate you open for them--we Leicestershire people want a man who rides straight across country, and doesn"t funk his fences!" And when Sir Peter remarked that "no doubt Mr. Tyson had taken some nasty ones in his time," everybody knew that there was something more behind all this than mere party feeling. Sir Peter was right: that electioneering business was Tyson"s third great mistake. It proved, what n.o.body would have been very much aware of, that Nevill Tyson, Esquire, had next to no standing in the county. As a public man he was worse off than he would have been as a harmless private individual. He could never have been found out if he had only stayed quietly at home and devoted himself to the cultivation of orchids, in the manner of old Tyson, who had managed to hoodwink himself and his neighbors into the belief that he was a country gentleman. As it was, for such a clever fellow Tyson had displayed stupidity that was almost ridiculous. For n.o.body ever denied that he was a clever fellow, that he could have been anything that he liked; in fact, he had been most things already. Anything he liked--except a country gentleman. The country gentleman, like the poet, is born, not made; and it was a question if Tyson had ever been a gentleman at all. He had all the accidents of the thing, but not its substance, its British stability and reserve. Civilization was rubbing off him at the edges; he seemed to be struggling against some primeval tendency. You expected at any moment to see a reversion to some earlier and uglier type. Across the chastened accents of the journalist there sounded the wild intemperate tongue of the man of the people. Miss Batchelor used to declare that Tyson was a self-made man, because he was constructed on such eccentric principles. His slightest movements showed that he was uncertain of his ground, and ready to fight you for it, if it came to that. And now he still met you with the twinkle in his small blue eyes, but there was a calculating light behind it, as if he were measuring his forces against yours. And you were sorry for him in spite of yourself. With the spirit of the soldier of Fortune, Tyson had the nerves and temper of her spoilt child. He had made an open bid for popularity and failed, and it was positively painful to see him writhing under the consciousness of his failure.
And the cause of it all was Mrs. Nevill Tyson. Yet he was proud of her still; proud even of the notoriety which was a tribute to her beauty. To tell the truth, her notoriety was his protection. Once the elections were over, gossip was too busy with the wife to pay much attention to the husband. He was considered to have extinguished himself for good. Miss Batchelor no longer regretted that he had no profession. To be the husband of the loveliest woman in Leicestershire was profession enough for any man.
By a further social paradox, Mrs. Nevill Tyson owed much of her present notoriety to her former obscurity. Lady Morley, had her temperament permitted, might have been as frisky or as risky as she pleased, without attracting unkind attention, much less censure. But, unless she combined the virtue of an angel with the manners of a district visitor, and contrived to walk circ.u.mspectly across the quicksands that separated her from "good society," a daughter of Mrs. Wilc.o.x was condemned already.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson had never walked circ.u.mspectly in her life. And Fate, that follows on the footsteps of the fool, was waiting, if not to catch Mrs. Nevill Tyson tripping, at any rate to prove that she must trip.
At first Fate merely willed that Sir Peter should take a journey up to town. Sir Peter"s serviceable tweed suit, that had lasted him a good five years, was beginning to go at the corners. We know Stanistreet"s opinion of Sir Peter"s taste in dress; it was only a coa.r.s.er expression of the views held by his wife. But for her frank and friendly criticism, Sir Peter, holding change in abhorrence, would have worn that tweed suit another five years at the very least.
"It"s a capital suit," said he.
"Perfectly disgraceful," said she. "Look at your elbow."
"Ordinary wear and tear."
"Particularly tear." And while she was speaking Sir Peter had rubbed the worn place into a jagged hole. Sir Peter sighed. He was much attached to that tweed suit; it knew his ways, and had adapted itself to all the little eccentricities of his figure. After five years there is a certain intimacy between a man and his suit. However, there was no blinking the fact--the suit was doomed. Sir Peter"s man seized the occasion for a general overhauling of his master"s wardrobe, with the result that Sir Peter had to go up by an early train the next morning to consult Mr.
Vance, his tailor.
Sir Peter was being measured up and down and all round him, while Mr.
Vance stood by, note-book in hand, and took minutes of his case.
"A little wider round the waist, Vance, since you made my first coat for me thirty years ago."
Sir Peter was swaying on his toes, and supporting himself by a finger-tip laid on the shoulder of Vance"s man.
"Not quite so long ago as that, Sir Peter."
"Must be, must be; you"ve been here more than thirty years."
Sir Peter prided himself on his memory, and was a stickler for the actual fact.
"I"m afraid not, sir." The voice of Vance was charged with melancholy and delicate regret. "We were only Binks and Co. in those days."
"Nonsense. Why, you measured me yourself, Vance."
"An impossibility, sir."
Mr. Vance leaned against a pillar of cloth, like one requiring support in a very painful situation. It was agony for him to contradict Sir Peter. But truth is great. It prevailed.
"I was in the City then, sir, serving my time at Tyson"s."
He dropped his eyes. He had crushed Sir Peter with proof, but he was too polite to be a witness of his discomfiture.
"Tyson"s--Tyson"s." Sir Peter"s tongue uttered the name mechanically. His mind no longer followed Vance; it was busy with the loveliest woman in Leicestershire.
Mr. Vance smiled. "I daresay they know that name pretty well in your county, sir."
"The name," said Sir Peter, blushing a little at his own thoughts, "the name is not uncommon."
"It"s the same family, though, sir."
"Really--" Sir Peter was a little startled this time--"you don"t mean to say--"
"Yes. It was a small firm, was Tyson"s. But they"re big people, I fancy, by now. Old Mr. Tyson left "em and set up by himself in the wholesale business in Birmingham. He made a mint o" money. I understand he bought one of the best properties in your county; is that so, sir?"
If Mr. Vance had not made coats for Sir Peter for thirty years, he had made them for twenty-five or thereabouts, and he was privileged to gossip.
"Yes, yes, Thorneytoft. Very good property. And a very good sort too, old Mr. Tyson."
"A little peculiar, I"m told."
"Well--perhaps. I had not much acquaintance with the old man myself, but he was very generally respected. I know his nephew, Mr. Nevill Tyson--slightly."
Sir Peter would have died rather than ask a direct question, but he was wildly curious as to Mr. Nevill Tyson"s antecedents.
An illuminating smile spread over Mr. Vance"s face.
"I remember _him_ when he was a youngster. His father chucked the business, and set up as a Baptist minister--a Particular Baptist."
"Indeed."
"An uncommonly clever fellow, Nevill Tyson; sharp as needles. But they couldn"t bring him up to the business, nor the ministry."
"Hardly good enough for him, I should imagine."
"Well--no. It wasn"t a house with any standing in his time. He"d got ideas in his head, too. Nothing but a "Varsity education suited his book."
"Ah, that always tells."
"His father was very much against it. He knew the young rascal. And just when he was at the top of the tree, as you may say, sure enough he made off--goodness knows where."
"Lived abroad a great deal, I believe." Sir Peter was anxious to throw a vaguely charitable light on his neighbor"s escapades.
"Got into some sc.r.a.pe about a woman, I fancy. Anyhow he left a pile of debts behind him, and the old man ruined himself paying them."
Bristling with curiosity, Sir Peter endeavored to look detached. But at this point Mr. Vance, remembering, perhaps, that Mr. Nevill Tyson was a great man in his customer"s county, and chilled a little by Sir Peter"s manner, checked the flow of his reminiscences. "He was a wild young scamp--another two inches round the waist, sir--but I daresay he"s settled down steady enough by this time."
"No doubt he has," said Sir Peter, a little loftily. He was disgusted with Vance.
But though Vance"s conduct was disgusting, after all he had told him what he was dying to know. The antecedents of old Tyson of Thorneytoft had been wrapped in a dull mystery which n.o.body had ever taken the trouble to penetrate. He had been in business--that much was known; and as he was highly respectable, it was concluded that his business had been highly respectable too. And then he had retired for ten years before he came to Thorneytoft. Those ten years might be considered a season of purification before entering on his solemn career as a country gentleman. Old Tyson had cut himself adrift from his own origins. And as the years went on he wrapped himself closer in his impenetrable garment of respectability; he was only Mr. Tyson, the gentle cultivator of orchids, until, gradually receding from view, he became a presence, a myth, a name. But when the amazing Mr. Nevill Tyson dashed into his uncle"s place, he drew all eyes on him by the very unexpectedness of his advent. And now it seemed that Tyson, the cosmopolitan adventurer, the magnificent social bandit who trampled, so to speak, on the orchids of respectability, and rode rough-shod over the sleek traditions of Thorneytoft, was after all nothing better than a little City tailor"s son.
Of course it didn"t matter in the very least. A man"s a man for all that; but when the man, in his brilliant oratorical way, has intimated that you don"t ride straight, and that you funk your fences, you may be forgiven if you smile a sly private smile at his expense.
And Sir Peter did more than smile, he laughed.