Thank heaven, the worst had not happened. The little creature's volatile
beauty fluttered back to her from time to time; there was a purified
transparent quality in it that had been wanting before. It had still the
trick of fluctuating, vanishing, as if it had caught something of her
soul's caprice; but while it was there Mrs. Nevill Tyson was a more
beautiful woman than she had been before. Some men might have preferred
this divine uncertainty to a more monotonous prettiness. Tyson was not
one of these.
One afternoon, about a fortnight after his return from town, he found her
sitting in the library with "the animal," as he called his son. There had
been a sound of singing, but it ceased as he came in. The child's shawl
was lying on the floor; he picked it up and pitched it to the other end
of the room. Then he came up to her and scanned her face closely.
"What's the matter with you?" he said.
"Nothing. Do I--do I look funny?" She put her hand to her hair, a trick
of Mrs. Nevill Tyson's when she was under criticism. She had been such an
untidy little girl.
"Oh, damned funny. Look here. You've had about enough of that. You must
stop it."
"What! Why?"
"Because it takes up your time, wastes your strength, ruins your
figure--it has ruined your complexion--and it--it makes you a public
nuisance."
"I can't help it."
She got up and stood by the window with her back to Tyson. She still held
the child to her breast, but she was not looking at him; she was looking
away through the window, rocking her body slightly backwards and
forwards, either to soothe the child or to vent her own impatience.
Tyson's angry voice followed her. "Of course you can help it. Other women
can. You must wean the animal."
She turned. "Oh, Nevill, look at him--"
"I don't want to look at him."
"But--he's so ti-i-ny. Whatever will he do?"
"Do? He'll do as other women's children do."
"He won't. He'll die."
"Not he. Catch him dying. He'll only howl more infernally than he's
howled before. That's all he'll do. Do him good too--teach him that he
can't get everything he wants in this vile world. But whatever he does
I'm not going to have you sacrificed to him."
"I'm not sacrificed. I don't mind it."
"Well, then, I mind it. That's enough. I hate the little beast coming
into my room at night."
"He needn't come. I can go to him."
"All right. If you want to make an invalid scarecrow of yourself before
your time, it's not my business. Only don't come to me for sympathy,
that's all."
With one of her passionate movements, she snatched the child from her
breast, carried him upstairs screaming and laid him on her bed. When the
nurse came she found him writhing and wailing, and his mother on her
knees beside the bed, her face hidden in the counterpane.