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Page 14
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-glass. 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 passed 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?"
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