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Page 23
"Ha, Molly, I see Morley's looked us up again. He couldn't very well be
off it much longer."
"He called about the elections."
"Oh--I thought you were out?"
"So I was. I met him in the drive and made him come in."
"H'm. Did he say anything about my letters in the _Herald_?"
Mrs. Nevill Tyson hesitated. "N-no. Not much."
"What did he say!"
"Oh--I think--he only said it was rather a pity you'd mixed yourself up
with it."
"Damn his impertinence!"
He flicked the card with a disdainful fingernail and followed his wife
into the drawing-room. She gave him some tea to keep him quiet; he drank
it in passionate gulps. Then he felt better, and lay back in his chair
biting his mustache meditatively.
"By the way, did Morley say whether he'd support Ringwood! The fellow's a
publican, likewise a sinner, but we must rush him in for the District
Council."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Nevill Tyson, trying hard to be interested.
"Why? To keep that radical devil out, of course; a cad that spits on his
Bible, and would do the same for his Queen's face any day--if he got the
chance, I'd like to sound Morley, though." A smile flickered on his lips,
as he anticipated the important interview.
"Oh, he did say something about it. I remember now. I think he's going to
vote for the Smedley man."
Tyson's smile went out suddenly. He was scowling now. Not that he cared a
straw which way the elections went, but he liked to "mix himself up" in
them to give himself local color; and now it seemed that he had taken the
wrong shade. He had spent the better part of six weeks in badgering and
bullying Sir Peter's pet candidate.
"Morley's a miserable time-server," said he savagely. "I suppose the
usual excuses for his wife's not calling?"
"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 passion of elections; but when it was
reported that Mr. Nevill Tyson had in private pronounced 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 nobody 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 nobody 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.
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