Tyson had not married in order to improve his social position; he had
married because he was in love as he had never been in love before. He
would have married a barmaid, if necessary, for the same reason. He was
not long in finding out that he owed his unpopularity in a great measure
to his marriage. To the curious observer this consciousness of his
mistake was conspicuous in his manner. (It was to be hoped that his wife
was not a curious observer.) And Sir Peter made matters no better by
going about declaring that Mrs. Nevill Tyson was the loveliest woman in
Leicestershire, when everybody knew that his wife had flatly refused to
call on her. By this time Tyson was quite aware that his standing in the
county had depended all along on the support which the Morleys were
pleased to give him. They had taken him up in the beginning, and his
position had seemed secure. If at that ripe moment he had chosen to
strengthen it by a marriage with Lady Morley's dearest friend, he might
have been anything he pleased. Miss Batchelor of Meriden would have
proved a still more powerful ally than Sir Peter. She would have been as
ambitious for him as he could have been for himself. By joining the
estates of Thorneytoft and Meriden, Nevill Tyson, Esquire, would have
become one of the largest land-owners in Leicestershire, when in all
probability he would have known the joy of representing his county in
Parliament. He was born for life on a large scale, a life of excitement
and action; and there were times when a political career presented itself
to his maturer fancy as the end and crown of existence. All this might
have been open to him if he had chosen; if, for instance, this clever
man had not cherished a rooted objection to the society of clever women.
As it was, his marriage had made him the best-abused man in those parts.
Since Tyson was not to mold his country's destinies in Parliament, he
turned his attention to local politics as the next best thing, thus
satisfying his appetite for action. He did what he had told Miss
Batchelor he should do; he dissipated himself in parochial patriotism.
He went to and fro, he presided at meetings, sat on committees, made
speeches on platforms. You would hardly have thought that one parish
could have contained so much fiery energy. Moreover, he found a field
for his journalistic talents in a passionate correspondence in the local
papers. Tyson could speak, Tyson could write, where other men maunder and
drivel. His tongue was tipped with fire and his pen with vitriol. Looking
about him for a worthy antagonist, he singled out Smedley, M.D., a local
practitioner given over to two ideals--sanitation and reform. Needless to
say, for sanitation and reform Tyson cared not a hang. It was a stand-up
fight between the man of facts and the man of letters. Smedley was solid
and imperturbable; he stood firm on his facts, and defended himself with
figures. Tyson, a master of literary strategy, was alert and ubiquitous.
Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued
him with genial irony. When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments
with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured
him on with some artful feint; when Smedley thrust, Tyson dodged.
Finally, when Smedley, so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in
the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of
danger. No doubt Tyson's method was extremely amusing and effective, and
his sparkling periods proved the enemy's dullness up to the hilt;
unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had
more weight with committees.