Perhaps it was well that Mrs. Nevill Tyson took things so lightly,
otherwise she might have been somewhat oppressed by her surroundings at
Thorneytoft. That hideous old barrack stared with all the uncompromising
truculence of bare white stone on nature that smiled agreeably round it
in lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an
impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own
very respectable fancy. The result was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak
was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with
horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge
lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you
came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of wax-flowers. What with antique
heraldry and utilitarian furniture, you would have said there was no
place there for anything so frivolously pretty as Mrs. Nevill Tyson;
unless, indeed, her figure served to give the finishing touch to the
ridiculous medley.
The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs. Wilcox if
anything could. Mrs. Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp and fresh and
cheerful in her widow's dress. Tyson rather liked Mrs. Wilcox than
otherwise (perhaps because she was a little afraid of him and showed it);
he noticed with relief that his mother-in-law was beginning to look
almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact
that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of color.
He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds with an air of genial
worldliness. There was something about Mrs. Wilcox that evaded the touch
of sorrow; but from certain things--food, clothes, furniture--she seemed
to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human
tragedy. She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and a drawing-room
"without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know--not so
much as a flower-pot or a basket-table"--weighed heavily on her happy
soul. Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the
house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped
so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her
faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it--for a young bride, you know--just a
little--a little triste?" And being more than a little afraid of her
son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her
idea. Tyson said he didn't care to spend money on a place like
Thorneytoft; he didn't know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed
anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan
Cain, and he might go abroad again, or he might take a flat in town for
the season. And at the mention of a flat in town all Mrs. Wilcox's
beautiful beliefs came back to her unimpaired. A flat in town, and a
house in the country that you can afford to look down upon--what more
could you desire?