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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9507-8.txt b/9507-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b28bb0e --- /dev/null +++ b/9507-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10241 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Coryston Family, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Coryston Family + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: August 5, 2012 [EBook #9507] +Release Date: December, 2005 +First Posted: October 7, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + +THE CORYSTON FAMILY + +A NOVEL + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN + +1913 + + + + + + +TO + +G.M.T. AND J.P.T. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" _Frontispiece_ + +THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS +PERORATION + +AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP + +THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL + +"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU" + +MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME + +HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE + +NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN + + + + + +Book I + + +LADY CORYSTON + + +[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.] + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing +six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the +new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet. +The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less +crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact +throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence, +almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest; +cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway +a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great +parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their +seats, like arrows drawn to the string. + +Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the +Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor +below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs +placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save +as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them--women with their faces +pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber, +endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in +their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending +forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort +to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that +no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was +close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft _frou-frou_ +of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some +lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front +bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed +filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face +emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House +struck upon it. + +The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which +seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front +of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She +rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to +enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the +author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her +hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak +to her. + +Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what +seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure +and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention +had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a +lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But +it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have +paid no attention. + +"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the +girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning. + +The girl moved toward him, and returned. + +"What is it, Marcia?" + +"A note from Arthur, mamma." + +A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with +difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter: + +"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner." + +"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively. +"It's dreadfully tiring." + +"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for +me." + +She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker +below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his +audience. + +"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to +her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower +her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door +neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail, +however, than its predecessors. + +"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?" + +The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled +lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside +her. + +"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly. + +"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion. + +Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A +country cousin, I suppose." + +But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner. +Weren't you here when he was speaking?" + +"No--I've not long come in." + +The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the +left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. + +It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a +rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke +in the ringing sentences: + +"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a +growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the +main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform +and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; +change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, +while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the +landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set +yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may +yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national +policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated +by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every +means and every device in our power!" + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR +ROSE TO HIS PERORATION] + +The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the +Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided +at once. The third began to speak. + +A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several +persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner +addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had +just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her. +"Childish!--positively childish!" + +Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity +to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory +neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair. + +"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for +years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through." + +"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of +course she knew perfectly who you were." + +"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning +to her watch. + +"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back." + +"No. I might miss his getting up." + +There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the +occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the +farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more +distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, +to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though +her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches. + +It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion +was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but +singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows. +The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These +features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and chin, +the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face, set +in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole, handsome +impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture of Elizabeth +Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been often compared; +and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her personal appearance, +did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The +likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by +her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered +hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of +many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black +silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into +the service of her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid +the large and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore +habitually a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the +lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For +the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while +loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore +seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self. + +In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being--oppressively +wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers +were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or +the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be +used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be +used. On the contrary, her husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her +daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of +her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very +much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just +as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends. + +As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of +Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as +of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances +of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain +than blows of some kind before long.... + +"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would +get him in." + +Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the +Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who +was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the +debate. + +"Has he just come in?" + +"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected +to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston, +impatiently. + +But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus unkindly +referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the House lumbered or +fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to infinity. + +"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother +among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him out +before. One can see he's on wires." + +For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening speeches, +which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had +sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom +her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in +hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the +House. His attitude gave the impression of one just about to spring to his +feet. + +But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time before +springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman--had heard him often +before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise with ease and cease +with difficulty. She would certainly have time to get a cup of tea and come +back. So with a word to her mother she groped her way through the dark +gallery across the corridor toward a tearoom. But at the door of the +gallery she turned back. There through the lattice which shuts in the +Ladies' Gallery, right across the House, she saw the Strangers' Gallery at +the other end. The man whose head had been propped on his hands when she +first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be +looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the +Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His +face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the +clear, critical eyes, their sudden frown or smile. + +"I wonder what _he_'ll think of Arthur's speech--and whether he's +seen Coryston. I wonder whether he knows there's going to be an awful row +to-night. Coryston's mad!" + +Coryston was her eldest brother, and she was very fond of him. But the way +he had been behaving!--the way he had been defying mamma!--it was really +ridiculous. What could he expect? + +She seemed to be talking to the distant face, defending her mother and +herself with a kind of unwilling deference. + +"After all, do I really care what he thinks?" + +She turned and went her way to the tearoom. As she entered it she saw some +acquaintances at the farther end, who waved their hands to her, beckoning +her to join them. She hastened across the room, much observed by the way, +and conscious of the eyes upon her. It was a relief to find herself among a +group of chattering people. + +Meanwhile at the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their +tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers--by name, Mrs. Verity +and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society +and in the precincts of the House of Commons--the Ladies' Gallery, the +Terrace, the dining-rooms--though she was but an unmarried girl of +two-and-twenty. Quite apart, however, from her own qualities and claims, +Enid Glenwilliam was conspicuous as the only daughter of the most +vigorously hated and ardently followed man of the moment--the North +Country miner's agent, who was now England's Finance Minister. + +"You saw who that young lady was?" said Mrs. Frant to Miss Glenwilliam. "I +thought you knew her." + +"Marcia Coryston? I have just been introduced to her. But she isn't allowed +to know me!" The laugh that accompanied the words had a pleasant childish +chuckle in it. + +Mrs. Frant laughed also. + +"Girls, I suppose, have to do what they're told," she said, dryly. "But it +_was_ Arthur Coryston, wasn't it, who sent you that extra order for +to-day, Enid?" + +"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his +mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother +will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's +quite a nice boy--but--" + +She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which +smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and +expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, +it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm +for its weapon. + +"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the +papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and +eyes. + +Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively. + +"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all +talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say." + +"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a +few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a +thing as _matria potestas_? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned +at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston +stands for. How splendid--to stand for anything--nowadays!" + +The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their +characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as +her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd +look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?" + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely +finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a +chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty. + +"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, +with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled--"My dear! I came to bring +you a word of sympathy." + +Lady Coryston looked at her coldly. + +"Are you speaking of Coryston?" + +"Naturally. The only logical result of those proceedings last night would +be, of course, the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner. Coryston wants our +heads! There's nothing else to be said. I took the speeches for young men's +nonsense--just midsummer madness, but I find people very angry. _Your_ +son! one of _us_!" + +"I thought the speeches very clever," said Lady Coryston. + +"I'm rejoiced you take it so philosophically, my dear Emilia!"--the tone +was a little snappish--"I confess I thought you would have been much +distressed." + +"What's the good of being distressed? I have known Coryston's opinions for +a long time. One has to _act_--of course," the speaker added, with +deliberation. + +"Act? I don't understand." + +Lady Coryston did not enlighten her. Indeed, she did not hear her. She was +bending forward eagerly. The fair-haired youth on the back benches, who had +been so long waiting his turn, was up at last. + +It was a maiden speech, and a good one, as such things go. There was enough +nervousness and not too much; enough assurance and not too much. The facts +and figures in it had been well arranged. A modest jest or two tripped +pleasantly out; and the general remarks at the end had been well chosen +from the current stock, and were not unduly prolonged. Altogether a +creditable effort, much assisted by the young man's presence and manner. He +had no particular good looks, indeed; his nose ascended, his chin satisfied +no one; but he had been a well-known bat in the Oxford eleven of his day, +and was now a Yeomanry officer; he held himself with soldierly erectness, +and his slender body, cased in a becoming pale waistcoat under his tail +coat, carried a well-shaped head covered with thick and tumbling hair. + +The House filled up a little to hear him. His father had been a member of +Parliament for twenty years, and a popular member. There was some curiosity +to know what his son would make of his first speech. And springing from the +good feeling which always animates the House of Commons on such occasions, +there was a fair amount of friendly applause from both sides when he sat +down. + +"Features the father, and takes after the mother!" said a white-haired +listener in the Strangers' Gallery to himself, as the young man ceased +speaking. "She's drilled him! Well, now I suppose I must go and +congratulate her." He rose from his seat and began to make his way out. In +the passage outside the Gallery he overtook and recognized the man whose +entrance into the House Lady Coryston and her daughter had noticed about an +hour earlier. + +"Well, what did you think of it, Lester?" + +The other smiled good-humoredly. + +"Capital! Everybody must make a beginning. He's taken a lot of pains." + +"It's a beastly audience!" said Sir Wilfrid Bury, in reply. "Don't I know +it! Well, I'm off to congratulate. How does the catalogue get on?" + +"Oh, very well. I sha'n't finish till the summer. There's a good deal still +to do at Coryston. Some of the things are really too precious to move +about." + +"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering +his voice. + +The young man smiled discreetly. + +"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her." + +"I suppose she's pressed you into the service--makes you help Arthur?" + +"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own +secretary." + +"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?" + +"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get +through." + +"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house." + +"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own +arrangements." + +"Ta-ta." + +Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to +the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been +chatting, was in some sort a protégé of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid, +indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford +historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid +work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons. +A generation earlier, Lester's father had been a brother officer of Sir +Wilfrid's, in days when the Lester family was still rich, and before the +crashing failure of the great banking-house of the name. + +Meanwhile, at the other end of the House of Commons, Lady Coryston had +been sitting pleasantly absorbed, watching her son, who lay now like a man +relieved, lolling on the half-empty bench, chatting to a friend beside him. +His voice was still in her ears: mingled with the memory of other voices +from old, buried times. For more than twenty years how familiar had she +been with this political scene!--these galleries and benches, crowded or +listless; these opposing Cabinets--the Ins and Outs--on either side of the +historic table; the glitter of the Mace at its farther end; the books, the +old morocco boxes, the tops of the official wigs, the ugly light which +bathed it all; the exhausted air, the dreariness, the boredom! all +worth while, these last, just for the moments, the crises, the play of +personalities, the conflict of giants, of which they were the inevitable +conditions. There, on the second bench above the gangway on the Tory +side, her husband, before he succeeded to the title, had sat through four +Parliaments. And from the same point of vantage above she had watched him +year after year, coming in and out, speaking occasionally, never eloquent +or brilliant, but always respected; a good, worthy, steady-going fellow +with whom no one had any fault to find, least of all his wife, to whom he +had very easily given up the management of their common life, while he +represented her political opinions in Parliament much more than his own. + +Until--until? + +Well, until in an evil hour, a great question, the only political question +on which he differed and had always differed from his wife, on which he +felt he _must_ speak for himself and stand on his own feet, arose to +divide them. There, in that Gallery, she had sat, with rage and defeat in +her heart, watching him pass along, behind the Speaker's chair, toward the +wrong division lobby, his head doggedly held down, as though he knew and +felt her eyes upon him, but must do his duty all the same. On this one +matter he had voted against her, spoken against her, openly flouted and +disavowed her. And it had broken down their whole relation, poisoned +their whole life. "Women are natural tyrants," he had said to her once, +bitterly--"no man could torment me as you do." And then had come his +death--his swift last illness, with those tired eyes still alive in the +dumb face, after speech and movement were no longer possible--eyes which +were apt to close when she came near. + +And yet, after all--the will!--the will which all his relations and friends +had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable +failure to play the man in his own household, and in which _she_, his +wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate +her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and +personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, +and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great Irish, the +great Devonshire properties, the accumulated savings of a lifetime, they +were all hers--hers absolutely. Her husband had stood last in the entail; +and with a view to her own power, she had never allowed him to renew it. + +Coryston had been furiously angry when the terms of his father's will were +revealed. She could never think without shivering of certain scenes, with +Coryston in the past--of a certain other scene that was still to come. +Well, it had been a duel between them; and after apparently sore defeat, +she had won, so far as influence over his father was concerned. And since +his father's death she had given him every chance. He had only to hold his +tongue, to keep his monstrous, _sans-culotte_ opinions to himself, at +least, if he could not give them up; and she would have restored him his +inheritance, would have dealt with him not only justly, but generously. He +had chosen; he had deliberately chosen. Well, now then it was for her--as +she had said to old Lady Frensham--it was for her to reply, but not in +words only. + +She fell back upon the thought of Arthur, Arthur, her darling; so manly, +and yet so docile; so willing to be guided! Where was he, that she might +praise him for his speech? She turned, searching the dark doorway with her +eyes. But there was no Arthur, only the white head and smiling countenance +of her old friend, Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was beckoning to her. She +hurriedly bade Marcia, who had just returned to the Gallery, to keep her +seat for her, and went out into the corridor to speak to him. + +"Well, not bad, was it? These youngsters have got the trick! I thought it +capital. But I dare say you'll have all sorts of fault to find, you most +exacting of women!" + +"No, no; it was good," she said, eagerly. "And he's improving fast." + +"Well then"--the wise old eyes beside her laughed kindly into hers--"be +content, and don't take Coryston's escapades too hardly!" + +She drew back, and her long face and haughty mouth stiffened in the way he +knew. + +"Are you coming to see me on Sunday?" she said, quietly. + +He took his snubbing without resentment. + +"I suppose so. I don't often miss, do I? Well, I hear Marcia was the beauty +at the Shrewsbury House ball, and that--" he whispered something, laughing +in her ear. + +Lady Coryston looked a little impatient. + +"Oh, I dare say. And if it's not he, it will be some one else. She'll marry +directly. I always expected it. Well, now I must go. Have you seen Arthur?" + +"Mother! Hullo, Sir Wilfrid!" + +There was the young orator, flushed and radiant. But his mother could say +very little to him, for the magnificent person in charge of the Gallery and +its approaches intervened. "No talking allowed here, sir, please." Even +Lady Coryston must obey. All she could add to her hurried congratulations +was: + +"You're coming in to-night, remember, Arthur?--nine-thirty." + +"Yes, I've paired. I'm coming. But what on earth's up, mother?" + +Her lips shut closely. + +"Remember, nine-thirty!" She turned and went back into the darkness of the +Gallery. + +Arthur hesitated a moment in the passage outside. Then he turned back +toward the little entrance-room opposite the entrance to the ordinary +Ladies' Gallery, where he found another attendant. + +"Is Miss Glenwilliam here?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"Yes, sir, in the front row, with Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. Do you wish +to speak to her, sir? The Gallery's pretty empty." + +Arthur Coryston went in. The benches sloped upward, and on the lowest one, +nearest the grille, he saw the lady of his quest, and was presently bending +over her. + +"Well," he said, flushing, "I suppose you thought it all bosh!" + +"Not at all! That's what you have to say. What else can you say? You did it +excellently." + +Her lightly mocking eyes looked into his. His flush deepened. + +"Are you going to be at the Frenshams' dance?" he asked her, presently. + +"We're not invited. They're too savage with father. But we shall be at the +Opera to-morrow night." + +His face lightened. But no more talk was possible. A Minister was up, and +people were crowding back into the Gallery. He hurriedly pressed her hand +and departed. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia +noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the +fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her +eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner--her +mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal +summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So +Arthur--evidently puzzled--had paired for the evening, and would return +from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and +Coryston had wired an hour before dinner--"Inconvenient, but will turn up." + +What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well +that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's +position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, +on a jointure; leaving their former splendors--the family mansion and the +family income--behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and +efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the +daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past +could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although +she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been +the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule +in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children +except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his +grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached +and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, +when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a +quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his +opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad +after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction +between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred +while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had +been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile. + +Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for +taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly +his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that +there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why +be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord? + +And really--of late--his behavior! Never coming to see his mother--writing +the most outrageous things in support of the Government--speaking for +Radical candidates in their very own county--denouncing by name some of +their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible! + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She +went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in +white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she +passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint +and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her +childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the +equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, +which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the +staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be +like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family +and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing +association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse +whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident +flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the +picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long +Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night. + +Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark +eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength--she +certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. +The face reminded one of ripe fruit--so rich was the downy bloom on the +delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch +of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it +perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would +see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding +prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were +rich--quite unconsciously--in that magic of sex which belongs to only +a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and +occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many +things--in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which +she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her +whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of +life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually--the +unknown!--yearning for his call, his command.... + +There were many people--witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her +mother--who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious +effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three +seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and +set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she +received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, +copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused--or +made her mother refuse for her--one or more of the men whom all other +mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one +quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned +her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural +arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained _nonchalant_ +and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of +passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. +Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's +opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out +of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long +the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed. + +As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of +Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with +certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into +the drawing-room in her mother's wake. + +The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston +strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian +pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on +wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," +held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth +looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since +1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good +enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their +ancestors were now discredited--laughed out of court--as collectors, owing +to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a +number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or +by tables holding _objets d'art_ of the same mixed quality as the +pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses +with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression +of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought +suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in +dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted +floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. +The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind +her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, +sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck +through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till +now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some +matter of family property--some selling or buying transaction--which a +mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might +well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting +in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a +recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in +the estates "--he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, +not mine." + +And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for +granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some +time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? +Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have +become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women +make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother +was an exceptional woman. + +But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, +and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews +with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts +she struck up conversation. + +"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?" + +"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help +it, she dresses so outrageously." + +"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that +kind of thing." + +Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows. + +"That's where the ill-breeding comes in--that a young girl should make +herself so conspicuous." + +"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. +People on our side--people you'd never think--will do anything to get her +for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she +says." + +"That I can quite believe! Yes--I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the +other day--dining--when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that +_man_!" + +Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her +path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself. + +Marcia laughed. + +"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he +was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't +the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a +friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it. + +"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly. + +Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant +sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and +took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large +envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her +mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a +small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other +side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky +cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, +Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt +furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That +patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the +time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer. + +In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, +then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all +kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in +front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, +"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of +the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby +greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with +indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's +all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!" + +In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also +of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both +of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, +as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial +men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions +matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not +exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the +nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection. + +He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. +And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint +lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each +other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than +the irreconcilable differences. + +Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent +political escapades--remarks which she took in complete silence--he settled +himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to +say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the +likeness--through all contrast--between mother and son. Lady Coryston was +tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing--a Lady Macbeth of the +drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet +of a man--on wires--never at ease--the piled fair hair overbalancing the +face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both +physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. _Will_--carried to +extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady +Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it +was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy. + +Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed +evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled +to read her mother--the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of +expression--from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of +nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time. + +She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of +Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" +but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to +sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded +foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid +oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia +noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an +old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints. + +"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with +a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of +business--not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will +hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, +by the family--the estates--and the country." + +At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially +when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something +peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection. + +Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt +chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his +head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; +and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was +pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. +And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what +Was going to happen. + +"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in +leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father +did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him--" + +Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an +anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking +went on: + +"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that +in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and +all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in +danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out +his ideas--the ideas he and I had held in common--and should remain the +guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had +inherited--and in which he believed--" + +Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his +elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his +mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the +slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear +of the spaniel against the other. + +"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's +death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I +cannot have satisfied _all_ my children." She paused a moment. "I have +not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury--that none of you +can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up--nothing +more. And I have certainly _wished_"--she laid a heavy emphasis on +the word--"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own +fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for +any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own +money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to +provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston--" + +She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was +certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh. + +"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and +prunella.'" + +James murmured, "Corry--old man?" Marcia flushed angrily. + +"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that +everything he could possibly have claimed--" + +"Short of the estates--which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with +an amused look. + +His mother went on without noticing the interruption: + +"--would have been his--either now or in due time--if he would only have +made certain concessions--" + +"Sold my soul and held my tongue?--quite right!" said Coryston. "I have +scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect." + +Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed +emotion. + +"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and +consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his +father's convictions--" + +"What!--you think he still has them--in the upper regions?" + +Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew +pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's +side, she took her hand. + +"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult +your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. + +Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands +on his sides. + +"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting +something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been +dishing me altogether?--cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what +you mean? Let's have it!" + +Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. + +"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way--" + +"Yes--but please _tell_ it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to +keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I +guess, from your will--which concern me--and the rest of them"--he waved +his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get +done with it." + +"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." + +With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady +Coryston took up the folded paper. + +"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which +concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, +in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily +at Coryston--"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But--" + +"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest +son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while +I'm speculating as to what's coming." + +"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that +Coryston is behaving abominably." + +But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with +lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. + +Lady Coryston began to read. + +Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing +the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his +custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, +Arthur sprang to his feet. + +"I say, mother!" + +"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. + +She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: + +"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, +her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper +which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat +dumfoundered. + +James approached his mother. + +"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." + +She turned toward him. + +"Yes, James, I shall maintain them." + +Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair +hair as though in bewilderment. + +"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to +me I shall hand it back to Corry." + +"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in +trust," said Lady Coryston. + +Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a +little distance. + +"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches +have contributed?" + +"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have +intrusted you with the estates." + +"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The +letter which he left for me said as much." + +"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly. + +"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see +how things stand." + +He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the +items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion--you cut me +out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to +buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my +present fortune--the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I +understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying +properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's +mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all--all, that +is, which would have normally come to me--or _nothing_!" + +He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features +sparkling. + +"I will have all--or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for +a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of +risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I +should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital." + +"You make it your business to wound, Coryston." + +"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been +_absolutely in my right_!" He brought his hand down with passion +on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I--the next +generation--ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no +moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. +There is always something to be said for property, so long as each +generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property +is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, +_then_ it is what the Frenchman called it, _theft_!--or worse.... +Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven +thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property--well!--I'm going to a +large extent to manage it!" + +Lady Coryston started. + +"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately. + +"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, +calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound +ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title +I can't stand for our parliamentary division--but I shall look out for +somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm +afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with +me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would +always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed--least of all +by a woman." + +Lady Coryston rose from her seat. + +"James!--Arthur!--" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will +understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish +that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it +hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and +understand me. Good night." + +"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously. + +She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm +round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding +Coryston at bay the while. + +As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and +opened it for her. + +"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I--but we'll play +fair." + +Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and +Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched +him in the ribs. + +"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! +I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you." + +Arthur grew red. + +"Of course it was nonsense to you!" + +"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?" + +"Nothing that matters to you, Corry." + +"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!" + +"Do hold your tongue, Corry!" + +"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother +will fight you for all she's worth." + +"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that." + +"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the +estates, Arthur." + +"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall +find a way of getting out of them--the greater part of them, anyway. All +the same, Corry, if I do--you'll have to give guarantees." + +"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"--Coryston gave a great +stretch--"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order +it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. +You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I +tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to +take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the +whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!" + +He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping +and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the +legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy +thousand a year. + +Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their +bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no +sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the +landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book. + +She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to +be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house +from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large +ground-floor room at the back. + +"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" +And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her +mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. +It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of +Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But +that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into +the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain +she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the +second volume of _Diana of the Crossways_. Why not? It was only just +eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had +gone to bed. + +She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she +opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, +and she heard some one moving about. + +"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment." + +A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk +heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed +toward the figure at the door. + +"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do +anything for you?" + +The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage +behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, +and blue eyes. + +"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know +where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her +volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too +strong. + +"I suppose my brothers have been here?" + +Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment. + +"They have only just gone--at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went +some time ago." + +Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase. + +"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?" + +Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did +nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled. + +"But they've told you--he and Arthur--they've told you what's happened?" + +"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them." + +"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia--"when he wants to do +something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious +plan?--of coming to settle down at Coryston--in our very pockets--in order +to make mother's life a burden to her?" + +"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll +do it." + +"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He +calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's +consciences don't matter a bit." + +Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out +impetuously: + +"You think he's been badly treated?" + +"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one." + +"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, +as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's _splendid_ +my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it." + +Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of +covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks. + +"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a +Liberal." + +"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't +agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if +I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative." + +"But you think other things matter more than politics?" + +"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially--" He stopped. + +"Especially--for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered +his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I +know." + +"Beauty--poetry--sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?" + +He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her. + +There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made +a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he +raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, +in the darkness, by the solitary light--the lines of her young form, the +delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes. + +She held out her hand. + +"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!" + +She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go." + +The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of +the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message +mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young +girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly +envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty +made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady +Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black," +such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left +nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or +Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in +search of a young one. + +"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?" + +The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the +honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of +their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted +good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless +final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing. + +Then she ran across the passage to her mother's sitting-room. Lady Coryston +had complained of illness during the day and had not been down-stairs. But +Marcia's experience was that when her mother was ill she was not less, but +more active than usual, and that withdrawal to her sitting-room generally +meant a concentration of energy. + +Lady Coryston was sitting with a writing-board on her knee, and a +reading-lamp beside her, lighting a table covered with correspondence. +Within her reach was a deep cupboard in the wall containing estate and +business letters, elaborately labeled and subdivided. A revolving bookcase +near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the +paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the _Quarterly Review_. The walls +of the room were covered with books--a fine collection of county histories, +and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, +specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger +generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been +the normal look of the original. His portrait by Holl hung over the +mantelpiece, flanked on either side by water-color pictures of his sons and +daughter in their childhood. + +There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and Lady Coryston never +sat in it. She objected to flowers as being in the way; and there was not +a sign anywhere of the photographs and small knick-knacks which generally +belitter a woman's sitting--room. Altogether, an ugly room, but +characteristic, businesslike, and not without a dignity of its own. + +"Mother!--why don't you rest a little?" cried Marcia, eying the black-robed +figure and the long pale face, marked by very evident fatigue. "You've been +writing letters or seeing people all day. How long did James stay?" + +"About an hour." + +"And Mr. Page?" Mr. Page was the agent of the main Coryston estate. + +"Some time. There was a great deal to settle." + +"Did you"--the girl fidgeted--"did you tell him about Coryston?" + +"Certainly. He says there is only one house in the neighborhood he could +take--" + +"He has taken it." Marcia opened her right hand, in which she crushed a +telegram. "Bellows has just brought me this." + +Lady Coryston opened and read it. + +"Have taken Knatchett for three years. Tell mother." Lady Coryston's lips +stiffened. + +"He has lost no time. He can vex and distress us, of course. We shall have +to bear it." + +"Vex and distress us! I should think he can!" cried Marcia. "Has James been +talking to him?" + +"I dare say," said Lady Coryston, adding, with a slight, sarcastic laugh, +"James is a little too sure of being always in the right." + +From which Marcia guessed that James had not only been talking to Coryston, +but also remonstrating with his mother, which no doubt accounted for Lady +Coryston's worn-out looks. James had more effect upon her than most people; +though never quite effect enough. + +Marcia stood with one foot on the fender, her gaze fixed on her mother in +a frowning abstraction. And suddenly Lady Coryston, lifting her eyes, +realized her daughter, and the vision that she made. + +"You look very well, Marcia. Have I seen that dress before?" + +"No. I designed it last week. Ah!"--the sound of a distant gong made itself +heard--"there's the motor. Well, good night, mother. Take care of yourself +and do go to bed soon." + +She stooped to kiss her mother. + +"Who's going with you?" + +"Waggin and James. Arthur may come in. He thinks the House will be up +early. And I asked Mr. Lester. But he can't come for the first part." + +Her mother held her sleeve and looked up, smiling. Lady Coryston's smiles +were scarcely less formidable than her frowns. + +"You expect to see Edward Newbury?" + +"I dare say. They have their box, as usual." + +"Well!--run off and enjoy yourself. Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." + +"Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's +governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, +partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that +when she was wanted to act duenna, she came--at a moment's notice. And she +was very willing to come. She lived in an Earl's Court lodging, and these +occasional expeditions with Marcia represented for her the gilt on her +modest gingerbread. She was a small, refined woman, with a figure still +slender, gray hair, and a quiet face. Her dresses were years old, but she +had a wonderful knack of bringing them up-to-date, and she never did Marcia +any discredit. She adored Marcia, and indeed all the family. Lady Coryston +called her "Miss Wagstaffe"--but to the others, sons and daughter, she was +only "Waggin." There were very few things about the Coryston family she did +not know; but her discretion was absolute. + +As she saw Marcia running down-stairs her face lit up. + +"My dear, what a lovely gown!--and how sweet you look!" + +"Don't talk nonsense, Waggin!--and put on this rose I've brought for you!" + +Waggin submitted while Marcia adorned her and gave various pats and pulls +to her hair. + +"There!--you look ten years younger," said the girl, with her bright look, +stepping back. "But where is James?" + +The butler stepped forward. + +"Mr. James will meet you at the Opera." + +"Oh, good!" murmured Marcia in her companion's ear. "Now we can croon." + +And croon they did through the long crowded way to Covent Garden. By the +time the motor reached St. Martin's Lane, Waggin was in possession of all +that had happened. She had long expected it, having shrewdly noted many +signs of Lady Coryston's accumulating wrath. But now that "Corry," her dear +"Corry," with whom she had fought so many a schoolroom fight in the days +of his Eton jackets, was really disinherited, her concern was great. Tears +stood in her kind eyes. "Poor Corry!" alternated in her mouth with "Your +poor mother!" Sinner and judge appealed equally to her pity. + +Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce. + +"What else could he expect? Father _did_ leave the estates to +mother--just because Corry had taken up such views--so that she might keep +us straight." + +[Illustration: AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP] + +"But _afterward_! My dear, he is so young! And young men change." + +Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned--except with this +awe and vagueness--scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists +than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. + +Marcia shook her head. + +"He won't change. Mother did not ask it. All she asked was--for her sake +and father's--that he should hold his tongue." + +A flush sprang to Waggin's faded cheek. + +"A _man_!--a grown man!" she said, wondering--"forbid him to speak +out--speak freely?" + +Marcia looked anxiously at her companion. It was very seldom that Waggin +betrayed so much heat. + +"I know," said the girl, gloomily--"'Your money or your life'--for I +suppose it sounds like that. Corry would say his convictions are his life. +But why 'a man,' Waggin?" She straightened her pretty shoulders. "I don't +believe you'd mind if it were a woman. You don't believe in a _woman_ +having convictions!" + +Waggin looked a little bewildered. + +"I'm old-fashioned, I suppose--but--" + +Marcia laughed triumphantly. + +"Why shouldn't Corry respect his mother's convictions? She wants to prove +that women oughtn't to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even--" + +"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so +splendid--so splendid!" + +"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, +Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!" + +Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl's. The note of +storm in Marcia's mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to +change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen +with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little +niece--and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr. +Arthur--and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!--not exactly +handsome--but you couldn't possibly pass her over." + +"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of +course, Waggin, they weren't alone?" + +"Oh no--probably not!--though--though I didn't see any one else. They +seemed so full of talk--I didn't speak to Mr. Arthur. _Who_ do you say +she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently. + +Marcia turned upon her. + +"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It's too bad of +Arthur! It's abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I've heard +things said sometimes--but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, +Waggin!--you _didn't_ see them alone?" + +The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course +Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does +exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless +she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But +_Arthur_!" + +Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they +passed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress. + +"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention +it! I'm sure there's nothing in it." + +"I've half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned +emphasis. "But I wouldn't believe it!--I shall tell Arthur what I think of +him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but +that's quite another thing. It's as though mother were never to have any +pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!--behind her back, +too." + +"My dear!--it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, +and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your +mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand--" + +"To please mother--and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with +perfect composure. "You're thinking of Edward Newbury?" + +"Who else should I be thinking of!--after all you told me last week?" + +"Oh yes--I like Edward Newbury"--the tone betrayed a curious +irritation--"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer +him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!" + +"Marcia--dearest!--don't be cruel to him!" + +"No--but he mustn't press me! I've given him hints--and he won't take them. +I can't make up my mind, Waggin. I can't! It's not only marrying him--it's +the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me--at +Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party--evening prayers in the private chapel, +_before dinner_!--nobody allowed to breakfast in bed--everybody driven +off to church--and such a _fuss_ about Lent! It made me shiver. I'm +not that sort, Waggin--I never shall be." + +And as again a stream of light from a music-hall façade poured into the +carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark +eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand. + +"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired +lady--"make your own conditions!" + +"No, no!--never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, +kindest--and underneath--_iron_! Most people are taken in. I'm not." + +There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing--she +knew it--would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though +she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special +pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still +undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family--the young man himself heir +presumptive to a marquisate money--high character--everything that mortal +mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted--Waggin was certain of it. +The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And +yet--let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In +Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him. + +Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for +an important "first night"--there is no sight in London, perhaps, that +ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern +life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide +the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women--women old and +young--their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray +heads; the roses that youth wears--divinely careless; or the diamonds +wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years. + +Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted +positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that +instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the +Greek called _hubris_, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. +It meant in her--"I am young--I am handsome--the world is all on my +side--who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave +a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her +actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, +so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of +compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. +Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a +narrow inexperience. + +The overture had begun--in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience +was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of +those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia +sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising +her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up +of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It +was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had +joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the +music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over. + +"Marcia--you vandal!--listen!" + +The girl started and blushed. + +"I don't understand the music, James!--it's so strange and barbarous." + +"Well, it isn't Glück, certainly," said James, smiling. + +Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the +crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear space of sky, +a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell--winds caught +it--snatches of tempest overpowered it--shrieking demons rushed upon it and +silenced it. But it persisted; passing finally into a processional march, +through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end. + +"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are +the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host." + +The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had +but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of +Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and +fifty years after Glück, how to make it speak, through music, to more +modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, +and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous +and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which had soon gripped Covent +Garden. + +There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the +allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But +at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary +blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. Hellas cannot avenge itself on the +Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds +back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as goddess of the land, she +claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the +host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has +vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your +daughter!--Iphigenia!" + +Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the +stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, +bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that +she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner +despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. +Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant +joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose +neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to +kiss, saying tender, touching things--how she has missed him--how long the +time has been.... + +The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an +old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli +in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in +which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the +soul. + +Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, +smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but +in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in +noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a +seat beside Marcia. + +He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted +to hear this--with you." + +"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a +motion of her face toward the Iphigenia. + +"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it--please!--for the +ordinary 'star'--business." + +"But she is the play!" + +"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of +sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the +death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is +the dirge music beginning." + +Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of +the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various +incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man +beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys +and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not +long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of +the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. +They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then +begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball +that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept +into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with +him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed +to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no +avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached +her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which +were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through +the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. +With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her. + +Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once +exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, +as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her +dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, +of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's +knees, imploring him to save her: + +"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my +father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before +my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of +death. 'Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have +I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death? +Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have +that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers." + +She takes the infant Orestes in her arms: + +"Brother!--you are but a tiny helper--and yet--come, weep with me!--come, +pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how--silently--he +implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! +He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble +dying!" + +The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast--through +one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in +art. Wonderful theme!--the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more +than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed +vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery +of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate--the savage creed--the +blood-thirst of the goddess--and the maddened army howling for its prey. + +Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too +horrible!" + +Newbury shook his head, smiling. + +"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race--of the +Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. +She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art--all religion. Ah--here +is Achilles!" + +There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to +fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, +adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his +bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her--die for her--if +need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs +up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the +background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on +his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from +the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her +champion, loves him. + +The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the +whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath. + +"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's. + +He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling +compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer. + +But the golden moment dies!--forever. Shrieking and crashing, the +vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing +blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon +is threatened--Achilles--Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the +distance like the roar of an uncaged beast. + +Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and +thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to +throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. + +"Mother!--we cannot fight with gods. I die!--I die! But let me die +gloriously--unafraid. Hellas calls to me!--Hellas, my country. I alone can +give her what she asks--fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the +good of Hellas--not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for +women and their fatherland?--and shall one life, one little life, stand in +their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!--pull down the towers of +Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me--this be my glory!--this, +child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that +Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are +slave-folk--and _we_ are free!" + +Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for +what she is--now that he has "looked into her soul"--must he lose her?--is +it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her. + +But she puts him gently aside. + +"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be _my_ +boon to save Hellas, if I may." + +And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await +her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if +she calls to him--even at the last moment. + +But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding +all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief--she lifts the song +of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place +of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her. + +"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day--torch of Zeus!" + +"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear +light!--farewell!" + +"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is +the death--_she accepts_!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The +exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled +strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's +dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the +growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; +the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; +fascination--revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat +drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera +House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the +stage, with the bouquets at its feet.... + +Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed +it. She recoiled--released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward +Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury. + + * * * * * + +Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back +of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid +much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were +on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The +profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full--too full!--of +consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a +flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her +small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. +And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much +courtesy to Marcia's "companion." + +"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big +fight--Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows--and somebody +having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He +spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad +company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite." + +Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front +of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was +bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly +Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and +showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood +looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, +in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half +contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping--in +spite of its conformity in dress--with the splendid opera-house, and the +bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern +statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate--for +Democracy--Labor--personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern +world has developed it--armed with all the weapons of the other two! + +"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims +play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I +get out of you?--and you?'" + +Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He +was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days +when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime. + +"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard +by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to +notice--and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!" + +"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely; "if that's what you mean." His eyes +rested a moment on the striking figure of the Chancellor's daughter. +"Certainly--I'll put in a word. But she is a very fascinating young woman, +my dear!" + +"I know," said Marcia, helplessly, "I know." + +There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid asked: + +"When do you go down to Coryston?" + +"Just before Whitsuntide." + +He looked round with a smile, saw that Edward Newbury was still in the box, +and whispered, mischievously: + +"Hoddon Grey, too, I think, will not be empty?" + +Marcia kept an indifferent face. + +"I dare say. You're coming?" Sir Wilfrid nodded. "Oh, _have_ you +heard--?" + +She murmured to him behind her fan. Sir Wilfrid knew all their history--had +been her father's most intimate friend. She gave him a rapid account of +Coryston's disinheriting. The old man rose, his humorous eyes suddenly +grave. + +"We'll talk of this--at Coryston. Ah, Newbury--I took your chair--I resign. +Hullo, Lester--good evening. Heavens, there's the curtain going up. Good +night!" + +He hurried away. Newbury moved forward, his eager look on Marcia. But she +turned, smiling, to the young librarian. + +"You haven't seen this ballet, Mr. Lester?--Schumann's 'Carnival'? Oh, +you mustn't stand so far back. We can make room, can't we?" She addressed +Newbury, and before he knew what had happened, the chairs had been so +manipulated that Lester sat between Marcia and Newbury, while Waggin had +drawn back into the shadow. The eyes of Marcia's duenna twinkled. It +pleased her that this magnificent young man, head, it was said, of the +young High Church party, distinguished in many ways, and as good as he was +handsome, was not to have too easy a game. Marcia had clearly lost her head +a little at the Shrewsbury House ball; and was now trying to recover it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +After one of those baffling fortnights of bitter wind and cold, which so +often mark the beginning of an English May, when all that the spring has +slowly gained since March seems to be confiscated afresh by returning +winter, the weather had repented itself, the skies had cleared, and +suddenly, under a flood of sunshine, there were blue-bells in the +copses, cowslips in the fields, a tawny leaf breaking on the oaks, a new +cheerfulness in the eyes and gait of the countryman. + +A plain, pleasant-looking woman sat sewing out-of-doors, in front of a +small verandaed cottage, perched high on a hillside which commanded a wide +view of central England. The chalk down fell beneath her into a sheath of +beech woods; the line of hills, slope behind slope, ran westward to the +sunset, while eastward they mounted to a wooded crest beyond which the +cottage could not look. Northward, beginning some six hundred feet below +the cottage, stretched a wide and varied country, dotted with villages and +farms, with houses and woods, till it lost itself in the haze of a dim +horizon. + +A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the +French windows of the cottage. + +"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?" + +"Between three and four, papa." + +"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a +long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably--Sunday or no +Sunday!" + +"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting +her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern. + +"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston--who said he would be here to +tea." + +Miss Atherstone looked a little startled. + +"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I +wrote yesterday." + +"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in +the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the +estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent +terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it +up to Coryston somehow." + +"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly. + +"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's +not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I +never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby." + +"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of +brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever +people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a +retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers +in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the +midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty constituencies by +heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the +pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count +by any important Minister framing an important bill. + +He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of +English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large +Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship--little known except to an inner +ring--was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did +nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been +the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live +in history. + +Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and +much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life. +Brilliant creatures--men and women--came and went, to and from the cottage. +Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not +much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, +and a vegetarian. Marion read the _Church Family Times_, went +diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough +about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and +her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other. + +Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one +who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound +affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to +some one or other of the Sirens of her sex. When Enid came to the cottage +Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability +is that she saw through the Siren--what there was to see through--a good +deal more sharply than her father did. + +Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just +been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would +probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to +him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of +talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was +pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept +running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more +passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more +big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of +land, and church, and finance!--democratic England when it once got to +business--and it was getting to business--would make short work of them. + +As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the +democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the +hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held +sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile +mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord +ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots +than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than +their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands +on them. + +One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He +turned, laughing to his daughter. + +"Coryston has settled in--with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He +has all sorts of ructions on his hands already." + +"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas +emerging from the woods. + +"My dear--she began it. And he is quite right--he _has_ a public duty +to these estates." + +"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly." + +"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong +parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, +are over." + +"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously. + +"I repeat--she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a +will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!" + +"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly. + +Atherstone shrugged his shoulders--too honest to reply. + +He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed. + +"I hear Coryston's very servants--his man and wife--were evicted from their +cottage for political reasons." + +"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion. + +Atherstone stared. + +"My dear!--" + +"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks. + +"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It +doesn't do to have such stories going round--on our side. I wonder why +Coryston chose them." + +"I should think--because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The +slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek +as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to +listen. + +"I think I hear the motor." + +"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation +was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters. + +Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess +was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair. + +"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing. +"Let's see--four dinners, three balls, two operas,--a week-end at Windsor, +two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do +you expect but a rag!" + +"Don't say you don't like it!" + +"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm +insulted, and when they do--" + +"You're bored?" + +"It's you finished the sentence!--not I! And I've scarcely seen father this +week except at breakfast. _That's_ bored me horribly." + +"What have you _really_ been doing?" + +"Inquisitor!--I have been amusing myself." + +"With Arthur Coryston?" + +Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her +companion. + +"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?" + +"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?" + +"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so +demean himself." + +"But she must find out some day." + +"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out +a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large +eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You +see--Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me--she has insulted father." + +"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled. + +"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. +She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton +nearly had hysterics." + +The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly +smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes. + +"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen +quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks +society is too tolerant--of people like father and me." + +"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly. + +"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight--so +far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little +harder--that's all." + +"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, +"after that list of parties!" + +"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful +one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father +goes out of office I shall be nobody. _She_ will be always at the top +of the tree." + +"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or +not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?" + +"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip--but the +facts--by heart! I am drowned--smothered in them. At present Arthur is the +darling--the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"--Miss Glenwilliam +threw up her hands. + +"You think she will change her mind again?" + +The girl took up a stalk of grass and nibbled it in laughing meditation. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong. + +"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly--"think +about whether you care for each other!" + +"What a _bourgeois_ point of view! Well, honestly--I don't know. +Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We +have only known each other a few months. If he were _very_ rich--By +the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?" + +Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught +her ear. + +"Here they are--he and Lord Coryston." + +Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, +long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale +masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a +charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she +held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him--a gay, significant +look. + +Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her +companion. + +"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his +hands on his sides. + +As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with +their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the +peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them +displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him +with a smile. + +"Mayn't I?" + +He looked down on her, frowning. + +"Why should women set up a new want--a new slavery--that costs money?" + +The color flew to her cheeks. + +"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own sex." + +"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have +consciences. And--especially--_Liberal_ women," he added, slowly, as +his eyes traveled over her dress. + +"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind +of women?" she asked him, quietly. + +"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people +in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing--and it is +the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands." + +Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly: + +"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!" + +The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's +person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with +wrath. + +Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a +look of radiant good humor. + +"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags--you might leave me the +talking. Has he told you what's happened?" + +The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an +indicating thumb in his brother's direction. + +The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue. + +"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he +said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up." + +"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his +seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And +what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our +dear mother has been doing?" + +"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily. + +"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such +lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the +plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy. + +Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He +approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary +courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston +was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a +constituency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a +comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to +let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there--Atherstone perfectly +understood--simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his +own _beaux yeux_ or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile +ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated. + +Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to +greet Atherstone--whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as +a pestilent agitator--with the indifferent good breeding that all young +Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the +view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was +increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, +moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his +hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; +and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat. + +"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the +view from the wood-path before tea?" + +Marion assented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little +field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill. + +"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the +departing figures. + +The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored. + +"I haven't the slightest idea." + +"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing +his knees, and bubbling with amusement. "My unfortunate mother will have to +make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!" + +"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked +Atherstone, after a moment. + +"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall +my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy +the Bible comes in--for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't +know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. + +A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. + +"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to +return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It +hasn't quite come to that!" + +"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a +slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall +come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile +camps--fighting it out--blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, +and"--he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's--"so +do you, too--at bottom." + +The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you +mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough +for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of +things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?" + +Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner. + +"Yes, I'm after a lot of game--in the Liberal preserves just as much as the +Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked +the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist +chapel. Half the village Baptist--lots of land handy--she won't let 'em +have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her +resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on +Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, +and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2--My +mother's been letting Page--her agent--evict a jolly decent fellow called +Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the +villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course--but that's the +truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days--no good. Now +I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, +for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent +for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3--There's +a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given +'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been +just gorging chickens this last year--nasty beasts! That don't matter much, +however. No. 4--Ah-ha!"--he rubbed his hands--"I'm on the track of that old +hypocrite, Burton of Martover--" + +"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, +indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!" + +"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation--"not a bit of it. Talking +Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then +doing a thing--Look here! He turned that man and his wife--Potifer's his +name--who are now looking after me--out of their cottage and their bit of +land--why, do you think?--because _the man voted for Arthur_! Why +shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted +for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'--so did his wife. +Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Nobody wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang +him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!" + +And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face +aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady +Coryston's disinherited son--socialist and revolutionist--as a kind of +watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's +very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the +neighborhood had anticipated. The man was too queer--too flighty. + +"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord +Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood--the Hoddon Grey +estate, for instance--" + +Coryston threw up his hands. + +"The Newburys--my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'--aren't +they?--'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches--and schools--and +villages! All the little boys patterns--and all the little girls saints. +Everybody singing in choirs--and belonging to confraternities--and carrying +banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that +a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, +I've heard a story about that estate"--the odd figure paused beside the +tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis--"that's worse than any +other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his +wife!" + +He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his +glittering eyes. + +Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The +neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the +pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious +convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot championship on both +sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in +their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular +was thought to have behaved with harshness. + +Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a +white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most +hideous of all tyrants!" + +Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but +she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as +angry as Coryston. + +Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, +abruptly: + +"My mother likes that fellow--Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I +hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't--before Marcia knows +this story!" + +Marion looked a little embarrassed, and certainly disapproving. + +"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire +him enormously." + +"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"--he +put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and +troubled countenance--"don't you agree with me?" + +"I don't know whether I do or not--I don't know enough about it." + +"You mustn't," he said, eagerly--"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, +after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss +Atherstone, down in those villages?" + +Marion blushed furiously, then laughed. + +"I can't imagine why." + +"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity--generally. It's a beastly mess. But the +things you do--are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, +anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms +and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?" + +Marion smiled and thanked him. + +Coryston rose. + +"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But--I +should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you. +I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do +you see any objection?" + +He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer +simplicity. She smiled back. + +"Not the least. Come when you like." + +He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to +her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling. + +Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, +relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth +or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had +seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish +notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been. + + * * * * * + +Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss +Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the +shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the +curiosity she felt. + +That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was +clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave. +Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited +upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of +the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she +were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, +when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up +suddenly. + +"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I _can_!" + +"Can what?" + +"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in +hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?--and he's +a very nice boy--and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!" + +She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity. + +"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man +I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but +me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why +should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course +he touches me--Arthur Coryston--and some day I shall want a home--and +children--like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't +strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and +the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me +enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I +think of going from my father to that man--from my father's ideas to +Arthur's ideas--it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled +a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I +couldn't make up my mind yet--for a long, long time." + +"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently. + +"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but +rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, nobody can know but me, what a +man my father is!" + +And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of +her eyes melting to a passionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the +rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, +in the political sense, it overshadowed England. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Lady Coryston's quarters at Coryston Place were not quite so devoid of all +the lighter touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, +of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to +a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. +Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about +the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once +adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. +But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and +of light and sunshine--on sunny days--there was, at any rate, no lack. +Marcia had recently chosen a new chintz for the chairs and sofas, and one +small group of photographs, on a table beside the fireplace, were allowed +to remind the spectator that the owner of the room had once been a young +mother, with a maternal pride in a bunch of fine children. Here were +Coryston, aged nine, on pony-back, pompously showing off; James, dreamily +affable, already a personage at seven; Arthur, fondling a cricket-bat, with +a stiff mouth, hastily closed--by order--on its natural grin; and Marcia, +frowning and pouting, in fancy dress as "The Strawberry Girl," just +emerging, it seemed, from one battle-royal with her nurse, and about to +plunge into another. + +Lady Coryston had just entered the room. She was alone, and she carried a +pile of letters, which she put down on the central writing-table. Then she +went to one of the windows, which on this May day was open, and stood, +looking out, one long mittened hand resting vaguely on the table that held +the photographs. A commanding figure! She was in black, carrying her only +ornament, an embossed silver girdle and chatelaine, the gift of her husband +in their first year of marriage. As she paused, motionless, in the clear +sunshine, her great height and her great thinness and flatness brought +out with emphasis the masculine carriage of the shoulders and the strong +markings of the face. In this moment of solitude, however, the mistress of +Coryston Place and of the great domain on which she looked, allowed herself +an expression which was scarcely that of an autocrat--at any rate of an +autocrat at ease. + +She was thinking of Coryston; and Coryston was giving her a good deal +to think about. Of course she had expected annoyance; but scarcely such +annoyance as Coryston, it seemed, was now bent on causing her. At bottom, +she had always reckoned on her position as mother and woman. Coryston might +threaten, but that he should actually carry out such iniquities as he was +now engaged on, had been--she owned it--beyond her calculations. + +For she had come down to find the whole neighborhood in a ferment, and many +pleasant illusions, in the shelter of which she had walked for years, both +before and since her husband's death, questioned, at least, and cracking, +if not shattered. That the Corystons were model landlords, that they +enjoyed a feudal popularity among their tenants and laborers, was for Lady +Coryston one of the axioms on which life was based. She despised people who +starved their estates, let their repairs go, and squeezed the last farthing +out of their tenants. Nor had she any sympathy with people who owned +insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least +possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the +very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy +and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in +by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the +laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists +to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her +gates; discovering bad cottages, where none were known to exist; and, in +general, holding up his mother to blame and criticism, which, as Lady +Coryston most truly, sincerely, indignantly felt, was wholly undeserved. + +This then was the "game" that Coryston had warned her of. He was actually +playing it; though she had never believed for one moment that he would ever +do so. How was she to meet it? With firmness, no doubt, and dignity. As to +the firmness she had no fears; it was the dignity she was anxious about. + +Lady Coryston was a woman of conscience; although no doubt she had long ago +harnessed her will to her conscience, which revolved--sometimes heavily--in +the rear. Still there the conscience was, and periodically she had to take +account of it. Periodically, it made her uncomfortable on the subject of +her eldest son. Periodically, it forced her to ask herself--as in this +reverie by the window--"How is it that, bit by bit, and year by year, +he and I have drifted to this pass? Who began it? Is it in any sense my +fault?" + +How was it, in the first place, that neither she nor his father had ever +had any real influence over this incorrigible spirit; that even in Corry's +childish days, when his parents had him at their mercy, they might punish, +and thwart, and distress him, but could never really conquer him? Lady +Coryston could recall struggles with her son, whether at home or at school, +which turned her sick to think of. + +Corry--for instance--at his preparatory school, taking a loathing to his +head master, demanding to be withdrawn, and stubbornly refusing to say why; +the master's authority upheld by Corry's parents; vindictive punishment; +followed by sudden illness on the boy's part in the midst of the commotion, +and his return home, white-faced, silent, indomitable. It made her shiver +to remember how he had refused to be nursed by her or by any one but the +old housekeeper at Coryston; how for weeks he had scarcely spoken to his +father or mother. Then had come the lad's justification--a hideous cruelty +charge against the head master; and on a quasi-apology from his father, +Corry had consented to forgive his parents. + +And again--at Cambridge--another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, +taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to +him, unjustly--furious attacks on the college authorities--rioting in +college--ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She +and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen +to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother +could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival +at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from _you_!" She could +still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings +abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years. + +Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating +also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter +vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston +after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were +Corry's arms open to her, and his--almost timid--kiss on her cheek. The +thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had +been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the +kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance +of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were +halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was +suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. +It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry! + +As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. +James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's +death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she +had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less +a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed +quietly expressed--he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and +phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form +of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his +boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a +denunciation of her love of power--unjustified, unwarranted power--as the +cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so +many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused +to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge +enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you +don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life +and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a +lonely and unhappy woman." + +Well, well, she had borne with him--she had not broken with him, after +all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of +giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition +to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to +extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all +her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, +the country's interests. And of course she had been right--she had been +abundantly right. + +Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston +domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to +the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had +been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later +years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination +to win and conquer. Not for herself!--so at least her thoughts, judged in +her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, +but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, +from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper +class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as +she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body +by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down. + +_Glenwilliam_!--in that name all her hatreds were summed up. + +For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to +lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"--a man who had suffered +cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing +class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken +in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging +vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and +her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and +sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress +of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, +married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small +competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political +position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while +England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had +built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled +him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties. + +"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was +accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him--_dear_!" + +And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost +farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, +to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; +persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation--these were +Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to +bay--must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country. + +"Did I choose my post in life for myself?--its duties, its +responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the +line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no +more right to run away than the men--vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to +see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry +rich?--and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what +he says he hates--land and money--to use for what _I_ hate--and what +his father hated? Just because he is my son--my flesh and blood? He would +scorn the plea himself--he has scorned it all his life. Then let him +respect his mother--when she does the same." + +But meanwhile the "game," as Coryston was playing it?--what was to be done +as to this episode and that? + +She sat down to her writing-table, still busily thinking, and reminding +herself that her agent Mr. Page was to come and see her at twelve. She had +hoped to get some counsel and help out of Arthur, now that the House was up +for a fortnight. But Arthur had really been very inconsiderate and tiresome +so far. He had arrived so late for dinner on the Saturday that there had +been no time for talk, especially as there was a large party in the house. +On Sunday he had taken a motor, and had been away all day, paying--he +said--some constituency visits. And now this morning with the earliest +train he was off to London, though there was really no occasion for him +whatever to go up there. He seemed rather unlike himself. His mother +wondered if he was ill. And she fell into some indignant reflections on the +stuffy atmosphere and bad lighting of the House of Commons. But ever since +he knew that he was to have the estates his manner seemed to have changed; +not certainly in the direction of triumph or satisfaction. On the contrary, +he had once or twice said irritably to his mother that the will was +ridiculous and ought not to stand. She had been obliged to make it clear to +him that the matter was _not_ to be discussed. + +Suddenly, as she sat there, distress seized her at the bare thought of any +shadow between herself and Arthur--Arthur, her darling, who was upholding +his father's principles and hers in Parliament with so much zeal and good +feeling; who had never all his life--till these latter weeks--given her so +much as a cross word. Yet now that she could no longer chase the thought +quite away, she admitted, more and more frankly, that she was anxious. Was +he in any money difficulties? She must get James to find out. In love? She +smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, +who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the +handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high +time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which +means--marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it. + + * * * * * + +Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived +among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend +a week-end at Hoddon Grey. Lady Coryston rather wearily reflected that she +must no doubt accept. That young man was clearly in pursuit of Marcia. What +Marcia's own views were, her mother had not yet discovered. She seemed +sometimes glad to see him; sometimes entirely indifferent; and Lady +Coryston thought she had observed that her daughter's vacillations tried +Edward Newbury's pride sorely, at times. But it would end in a match--it +was pretty certain to end in a match. Marcia was only testing her power +over a strong-willed man, who would capture her in the end. That being so, +Lady Coryston acknowledged that the necessary tiresome preliminaries must +be gone through. + +She hastily scrawled a note of acceptance, without any of the fond +imaginings that would have accompanied the act in the ordinary mother. Like +all imperious women she disliked staying in other people's houses, where +she could not arrange her hours. And she had a particularly resentful +memory of a visit which she had paid with her husband to Lord and Lady +William Newbury when they were renting a house in Surrey, before they had +inherited Hoddon Grey, and while Marcia was still in the schoolroom. Never +in her life had she been so ordered about. The strict rules of the house +had seemed to her intolerable. She was a martinet herself, and inclined to +pay all due attention to the observances of religion; but they must be her +own observances, or at least approved by her. To be expected to follow +other people's observances set her aflame. To make such a fuss, also, about +your religion seemed to her indecorous and absurd. She remembered with a +satisfaction which was half ashamed, that she--who was always down at +home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to +church--had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the +Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when +they met at luncheon. + +Well, now the thing had to be done again--for the settling of Marcia. +Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her +mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be +more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting +it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more +important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, +only the fringe of her thoughts. + +However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when +the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page. + +Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she +had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice +than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially +had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he +had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston +estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest +subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded +an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She +greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the +letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party +headquarters. + +The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, +inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the +confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, +and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard +to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a +widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia. + +It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much +disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was +disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure +her--make light of the situation. + +He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter +he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before +entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged +at once into the subject. + +"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" + +"You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it +before--you and I together." + +He shook his head. + +"Ah, but--you see what makes the difference!" + +"That Coryston is my son?--and has always been regarded as my heir? +Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his +proceedings will soon disgust people--will soon recoil on himself!" + +Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek +and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, +hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, +she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this +extremity? + +He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which +had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He +was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up +in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the +estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his +mother's cottages. + +Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. +Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!" + +Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner +insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate +suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; +but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high +level of improvements, at the same time. + +"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that +must be done. I have given orders." + +"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather +grimly. + +The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still +determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel. + +"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have +no intention whatever of extending his influence." + +Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half +an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But +he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston. + +"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he +said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a +distance. Purely political!" + +"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, +firmly. + +The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the +increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead +to peaceable living. But he merely remarked: + +"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last +Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the +village." + +Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair. + +"He defended himself?" + +"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you +himself this afternoon about the affair." + +"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page +perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her. + +"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually +setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a +perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole +neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in +this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a +child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more +members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of +this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, +Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these +proceedings!" + +Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in +so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her +arch-enemy--Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, +she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped +the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and +adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston +was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the +raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the +district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which +Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston +laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to +the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no +consolation to a proud spirit. + +"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and +at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I +have been accustomed to trust you." + +The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an +inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for +the future. + +A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the +remark: + +"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at +Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be +in the chair." + +He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely +watched its effect. + +Lady Coryston paled. + +"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall +speak," she said, with vivacity. + +Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in +the speaker's look. + +"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted +with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy +interrogation, looking for his hat. + +Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark. + +"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she +said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is." + +"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope +when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him +to give up some of these extravagances." + +"I have no power with him," she said, sharply. + +"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his +departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he +admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him +a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They +seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old +game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, +give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when +caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he +charged them with--Lady Coryston especially. + +And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could +he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a +secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Saturday, as he +was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little +property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in +the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the +wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston +and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times +seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the +frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well +known to the neighborhood. + +By George!--if that _did_ mean anything! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from +a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road +running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. +Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of +blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the +twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear +and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying +under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and +everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more. + +Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some +reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for +lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike +most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no +question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong +mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her +of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing. +There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he +came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when +the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; +when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared +than loved him. + +Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet +always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back +at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a +mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped +by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican +tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first +and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, +and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had +grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been +accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch +as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a +rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward +himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned +habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world +have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican +laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a +joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the +most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and +impervious to any sort of Modernism. + +At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his +poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the +most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular +man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though +perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were +jealously hidden from the multitude, who welcomed him as a good-looking +fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, +and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He +was a good shot, a passionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious +note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him--in +general--the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent +to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the +time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth +dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone +were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities +which were only just emerging. + +Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of +his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked +herself, with that instinct for self-analysis bred in the woman of to-day +by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads--"Why is it he likes +me?"--the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself--"No doubt just +because I am so shapeless and so formless--because I don't know myself what +I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me--he'll save my soul. +Shall he?" + +A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control +a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there. + +"Coryston!" she cried. + +Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought +she caught some words from a Shelley chorus which she knew, because he had +made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself +down beside her. + +"Well?" + +Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at +Knatchett--once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his +bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon +him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only +succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen +part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but +the bull barely shook himself. There he stood--good-humored, and pawing. + +To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other +hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile. + +"Corry!--I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this +afternoon?" + +"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to +announce me." + +"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been +doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any +good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say +a word to mamma about--about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were +at the Atherstones on Saturday!" + +The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong +beauty. She went on, appealingly: + +"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued--and argued with +him--but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything--Parliament, mamma, the +estates, anything--in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing +with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in _terror_ about +mamma!" + +Corry whistled. + +"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over +ears. No use your trying to pull him back!" + +"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, passionately; "what's left of her, after +you've done!" + +Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister. +Then he slowly got up from the grass and took a seat beside her. + +"Look here, Marcia, do you think--do you honestly think--that I'm the +aggressor in this family row?" + +"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think!" + +Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!--" she went +on, in a muffled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly! +Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks +ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with +him--you _must_! Persuade him to give her up!" + +She laid her hand on his arm imploringly. + +Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little. + +"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back +Arthur up through thick and thin!" + +"_Corry_!--how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her--how can +he live in that set--the son-in-law of _that man_! He'll have to give +up his seat--nobody here would ever vote for him again. His friends would +cut him--" + +"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, +impatiently. + +But Marcia wailed on: + +"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories--like you--" + +"Not a principle to his back!--I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I +tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into +it!--if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury +she's been living in. I believe--if you ask me--that she'd accept Arthur +for his money--but that she doesn't care one brass farthing about him. Why +should she?" + +"Corry!" + +"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one--and she's not been accustomed to +living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"--he got +up from the seat--"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want +me to do? I repeat--I'm coming to see mother this afternoon." + +"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little +worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows +anything. Promise!" + +"Very well. For the present--I'm mum." + +"And talk to him!--tell him it'll ruin him!" + +"I don't mind--from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her +with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud +overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look. + +"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly. + +"What?" The tone showed her startled. + +"Let _me_ come and talk to _you_ about that man whom all the +world says you're going to marry!" + +She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his +voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly: + +"What do you mean, Corry!" + +"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, passionately. "At +least let me talk to you." + +She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full +of energy and will as his own. + +"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it." + +"Not as I should tell it!" + +A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great +effort to master her excitement. + +"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask _him_ for +his version, too." + +Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed. + +"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing +man: "Ah, I see!--here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to +mother--and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with +you--my small sister!--when we next meet." + +He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there +dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered--as of a grave +yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon +invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia +was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury +quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the +grass beside her. + +"What a heavenly spot!--and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find +you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch." + +Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the +spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, +dappling his bronzed face. + +Marcia flushed a little--an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat +and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, +she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the +keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied +it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. +Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the +last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the +decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it +should be a word of denial. Better--better infinitely--these doubts and +checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her. + +This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And +it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she +anticipated him. + +"I want to talk to you about Corry--my brother!" she said, bending toward +him. + +[Illustration: THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL] + +There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She +evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out +his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the +child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with +his bright conscious eyes. + +"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding. + +"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a +puckered brow. + +"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William +yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't +want to read it--" + +"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling. + +"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I +wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place +against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps +that if you and I--" + +"Took counsel! Excellent!" + +"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it." + +"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your +mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?" + +"No, but--he means to," said the girl, hesitating. + +"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his +version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It +is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we +do--that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own." + +He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way +from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling +that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on +the grass at her feet. _This_ was the man of whom she had said to +Waggin--"he seems the softest, kindest!--and underneath--_iron_!" +A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble +sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the +thrill of an answering humility. + +"It is difficult for me--perhaps impossible--to tell you all the story," +he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly--in its broad +outlines." + +"I have heard some of it." + +"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order--so far as I can. It concerns a +man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded--my father and mother--myself--as +one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting +with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years +ago we made this man--John Betts--the head of it. He has been my father's +right hand--and he has done splendidly--made the farm, indeed, and himself, +famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a +moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We +looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough +of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. +He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And +especially"--here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with +a gentle seriousness--"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people +here live straight--like Christians--not like animals. My mother has very +strict rules--she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their +character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so--it's merciful. The villages +were in a terrible state when we came--as to morals. I can't of course +explain to you--but our priest appealed to us--we had to make changes--and +my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity--" + +He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of +some quick emotion invaded it. + +"You know we are unpopular!" + +"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else +in her. + +"Especially"--there was a touch of scorn in the full voice--"owing to +the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator--that man +Atherstone--who lives in that cottage on the hill--your mother knows all +about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to +live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican--we are church people and +Tories. He thinks that every man--or woman--is a law unto themselves. We +think--but you know what we think!" + +He smiled at her. + +"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of +influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away +much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to +my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had +found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, +had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and +forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a +frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could +for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by +bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go +through it all--the true story came out." + +He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently +considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. + +"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was +divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his +employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and +after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with +her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw +herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married +her. Well now, what were we to do?" + +"They _are_ married?" said Marcia. + +"Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" + +The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. + +Marcia looked up. + +"Because--you think--divorce is wrong?" + +"Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" + +"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" + +The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain +she was idly making. + +"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. +But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, +when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an +absolutely closed one!" + +Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to +the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty +of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. + +"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" + +"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude +of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a +little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" + +The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, +not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not +religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man +beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he +should have singled her out--to love her. + +But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. + +She looked up eagerly. + +"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and +somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care +for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!" + +"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength." + +Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That +old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a +great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its +most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in +herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my +adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his +slave--I will not!" + +At last she said: + +"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?" + +He sighed. + +"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. +Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we +should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would +have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have +seen her from time to time--" + +"They refused?" + +"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, +he said, married legally and honestly--and that was an end of it. As to +Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. +He defied my father to dismiss him. My father--on his principles--had no +choice but to do so. So then--your brother came on the scene!" + +"Of course--he was furious?" + +"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles +may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country." + +A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia +kindled for her brother. + +"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us--as you wish--England +wouldn't be free!" + +"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with +him. But why attack us personally--call us names--because of what we +believe?" + +He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted. + +"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad--quite mad." + +And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand. + +"Don't blame us!" + +He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it. + +"Don't let him set you against us!" + +She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him +from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she +sprang to her feet. + +"Mother will be waiting lunch for us." + +They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's +whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; +insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by +a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had +never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. +The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of +the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and +there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, +invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. +Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. +Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was +enchantment. + +Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir +Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of +both families. + +"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a +cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid +will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened. + +"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?" + +Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked. + +"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade +Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals." + +Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in +spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London +successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, +in this strong man, were warmth and shelter. + + * * * * * + +Luncheon passed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she +perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their +destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady +Coryston, "So we expect you--next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on +the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the +young man's mind. Well!--the sooner, the better. + +Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home +through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she +gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the +house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet +Sir Wilfrid Bury. + +Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual--bedraggled +with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned +with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had +been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of +the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and +had been formally granted it. + +He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any +one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two +occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation +in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston +departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat +motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded +slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by +the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one +who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her +aspect. + +Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, +looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a +fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. +The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass +weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the +happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls +of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of +early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from +the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale +brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old +engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally +a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in +blossom just outside. + +Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on +the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. + +"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and +smiled absently. + +"Not bad?" + +Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: + +"Don't you go into politics, Lester!" + +"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good +deal." + +"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. +"Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do +certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? +I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" + +"Haven't made up my mind." + +"I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with +women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." + +"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. + +Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke +out: + +"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open +mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. +"And politics kills all that kind of thing." + +"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester. + +"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside +him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry +and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the +women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if +the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?" + +Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but +he said nothing. + +Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. + +"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great +scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this +poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let +them live their own lives they'd adore her." + +"The trade-unions are just the same." + +"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from +Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!" + +"Coryston!" + +"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. + +"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" + +"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut +the door. + + * * * * * + +Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he +presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and +stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the +fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the +horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the +woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English +perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings +in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted +before Blenheim was fought. + +Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in +white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that +generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, +friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. + +"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs +and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like +them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and +then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for +people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would +be angry if I were to tell her so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and +lustiest. + +Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. +The long low line of the house rose behind them--an attractive house and +an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a +high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high +gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private +chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not +display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and +old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people +who were walking up and down the front lawn together. + +Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His +pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; +he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair--he was walking +bareheaded--was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, +was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement--a +stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord +William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the +stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife +beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like +woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and +wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave +that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at +first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most +submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life +have been either possible or happy in her husband's company. + +They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their +week-end guests--Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring +cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, +however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that +she held the field. + +"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying +in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward +has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe +you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother." + +"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's +party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I +remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical." + +"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with +all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is +perfectly ridiculous." + +"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said +Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that +Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for +a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded +something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said--quite +indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can _act_.' It +was curious--and rather disquieting--to see so much +decision--self-assertion--in so young a woman." + +"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently +confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles--a fine +character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily +guided by one she loves." + +"I hope so, for Edward's sake--for he is very much in love. I trust he is +not letting inclination run away with him. So much--to all of us--depends +on his marriage!" + +Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his +eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some +three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been +associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been +the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, +a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of +a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of +Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with +beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey +had sheltered large gatherings--gatherings of the high Puseyite party in +the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in +the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile--orator and ascetic--might +have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were +strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made +fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme +old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's +blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement. + +Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord +William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the +dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the +pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of +Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his +forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled--the endless, +unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against +the unbeliever. + +... His wife broke in upon his reverie. + +"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?" + +Lord William started. + +"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his +shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever." + +"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly. + +"A line--in the third person." + +"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise--" + +"So she is--most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every +right to complain of her." + +"You think she has done wrong?" + +"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things--whatever her son may +be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of +such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds +of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to +claim--something altogether monstrous and unnatural!" + +Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. +His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel +or agnostic son?" + +Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully +extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?" + +"Not at all! That was God's will--the cross she had to bear. She interferes +with the course of Providence--presumptuously interferes with it--doing +evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade +men by gentleness--not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is +usurping what does not--what never can--belong to her." + +The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for +male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady +William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady +Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions +were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her +husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce +their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous +those opinions may be. + +"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord +William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for +politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the +wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I +received last week?" + +"Do you think he will do what he threatens?" + +"What--get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them +somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our +consciences." + +Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought +of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. +Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. + +His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into +the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; +gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. +She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at +everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and +plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's +widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of +lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the +house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a +sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the +end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and +fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud +chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and +the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink +and tied with knots of pink ribbon. + +Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. +She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own +money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she +had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the +dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of +azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. +Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there +for the girl Edward loved--who was probably to be his wife. A great +tenderness filled her heart. + +When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, +and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors +open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful +still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with +Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she +prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his +father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... + + * * * * * + +An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive +with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was +strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, +the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the +deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among +the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. + +In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two +young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. + +Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him +with a sigh of satisfaction. + +"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!" + +"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after +them." + +"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his +handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?" + +"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his--a 'fidus Achates'--who +lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather +melancholy tone. + +"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"--Sir +Louis Ford lowered his voice--"I gathered the amazing fact that +Coryston--_Coryston_!--is going to take the chair at a meeting where +Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month." + +Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately +form of Coryston's mother in the distance. + +"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly. + +A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, +and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been +invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find +out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese. + +"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a _woman's_ foes were to be +those of her own household!" + +The Chaplain frowned. + +"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. +"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was +perfectly outrageous." + +"What about?" asked Sir Louis. + +"A divorce case--a very painful one--on which we have found it necessary to +take a strong line." + +The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and +spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled. + +"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?" + +"What indeed?--except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can." + +"Who are the parties?" + +The Chaplain told the story. + +"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the +Dean. + +"Not that I know of." + +The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind +his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened +the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny +fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the +human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to +them--shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious +of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as +though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, +Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the +far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things +threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled +both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain +helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than +herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, +like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it. + +Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers +there was that in them under which her own wavered. + +"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the +way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into +a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of +wild hyacinths to a hilltop. + +A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them +closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and +quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air +was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them +only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival. + +Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. +She heard her name breathed. + +"Marcia!" + +She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring +tenderness, his lips gravely smiling. + +"Yes!" + +She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms +round her, whispering: + +"Marcia! will you come to me--will you be my wife?" + +She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not +so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?--the supreme of +life? + +They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her +within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. +He placed her on it, and himself beside her. + +"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" +he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy--shall I make +you happy?" + +"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in +her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you +angry with me." + +"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, +Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other--to live +as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?" + +She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read +it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of +painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite +give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried +out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She +threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling +silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm +about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, +loving and beloved. + +"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she +disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to +her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. + +"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. + +She looked at him a little wistfully. + +"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too +much. And I shall always--want to be myself." + +"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!" +The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he +added, with a sudden flush: + +"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all +hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and +mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." + +He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. + +"You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; +and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears. + +"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." + +"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. + +"Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try +me." + +He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved +through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, +the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace +flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never +come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste +them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such +crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. + +They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them +into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which +there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and +there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously +forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a +sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia +stopped to look. + +"What a charming place! Who lives there?" + +Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. + +"That is the model farm." + +"Mr. Betts's farm?" + +"Yes. Can you manage that stile?" + +Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with +the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and +talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to +Lord William. + +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of +perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me--about that story. I +don't think I can prevent him." + +"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears." + +He spoke gravely. + +"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I--I think perhaps I had better +have it out with him--myself. I remember all you said to me!" + +"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without +a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject +immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden. + +Lady William first perceived them--perceived, too, that they were hand in +hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and +rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband. + +The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their +cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered +himself of the frivolous remark--in answer to some plea of the Dean's on +behalf of further powers for the female sex: + +"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be +necessary to draw the line!"--when they too caught sight of the advancing +figures. + +The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over +his round cheeks and button mouth. + +"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath. + +"Eh!--what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly +put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?" + +Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting +with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a +happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not +without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain +moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and +blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken +composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and +given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to +Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion +would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already +thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before +dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential +information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible +date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice +and straightforward--just indeed what she had expected. But there would +be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; +whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught. + +"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of +this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night." + +She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, +and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker. + +"You think so, father?" + +"Certainly, my dear son, certainly." + +Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but +perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this +time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and +a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room. + +The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, +looked at her keenly from time to time. + +"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she +fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?" + +Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the +betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William +had disappeared. + +Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and +deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!--is it +really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?" + +Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly. + +"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury. + +"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up +the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening +prayer after dinner." + +His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and +took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her +through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel. + +"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston +as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained +amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But +unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest +in the religious customs of his neighbors. + +"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady +Coryston followed, willy-nilly. + +Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the +chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," +shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a +sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly +forsaken--altogether remote from him. + +But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great +crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May +evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of +her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many +servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord +William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel +seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; +and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the +house to which it was attached. + +"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it +mean for _me_? Can I play my part in it?" + +What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed +to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing +ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a +time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague +fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind! + +And now it returned upon her intensified--that cold, indefinite fear, +creeping through love and joy. + +She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that +she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar--absorbed. + +And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General +Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, +the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a +natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of +Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston." + +An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into +a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her +cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these +kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I +ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been +asked!" + +When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her +appealingly. + +"Darling!--you didn't mind?" + +She quickly withdrew her hand from his. + +"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress." + +And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the +unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight +of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the +roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and +unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter +to her maid about everything and nothing--laughing at any trifle, and yet +feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale +pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last +string tied that she had never looked better. + +"But won't you put on these roses, miss?" + +She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered. + +Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her +reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much +stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her +resources against some hostile force--to be saying to herself: + +"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!" + + * * * * * + +Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all +the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the +sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was +resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put +on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on +great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks +that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away +the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by +Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room +shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler +had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a +bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had +gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel +and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and +gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics +with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, +so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any +rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, +which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult. + +After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, +deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her. + +"Well, how are you feeling?" + +"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes +aflame. + +"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law +for taking her from you?" + +"Who--Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking +of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel +still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot +within twenty-four hours!" + +"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about +Marcia!" + +Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him. + +"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about." + +"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you +really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?" + +"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her +properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"--she dropped +her voice--"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, +the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as +you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on +earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?" + +"Tyranny! _You_ call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced. + +"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? +One's soul is not one's own." + +Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to +drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never +tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have +spent the morning in remonstrating with her--to no purpose whatever--on the +manner in which she was treating her eldest son. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was +passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when +visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for +the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as +he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the +immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself +ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and +to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by +Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the +library--gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the +antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and +literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put +aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house +represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired +of raiding. + +But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of +the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a +more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research +allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why +should he not make himself a _writer_, like other people? + +But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary +conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for +some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, +and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be +carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. +For instance: + +"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or +to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining +ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the +distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his +character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And +yet--I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should +see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the +same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, +of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those +particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to +her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that +she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though +often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the +two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and +must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she +should have injured or trampled on some one else. + +"Of late she has come in here--to the library--much more frequently. I am +sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am +presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve +her. + +"It has grown up inevitably--this affair; but N. little realizes how +dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him +and his philosophy will attract her--will draw the moth to the candle. All +strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the +ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there +to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making +against such men as Newbury--their ideals and traditions. And to one or +other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She +does not know it--does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; +but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of +free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon +Newbury. + +"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement--if it is an +engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that +she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; +and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if +he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can +toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? +'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady +Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet +all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that +throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting--not direct +party-fighting--but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the +nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in +fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate--isn't +that what women might do for us?--instead of taking up with all the +old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? +Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, +but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all +and any sort--to vote against her. + +"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters +to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work +there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests +itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid +me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and +give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if +I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If +I only could _write_! The world seems to be waiting for the historian +that can write. + +"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How +much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its +still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that +obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country +like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly +prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and +manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and +splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life--as in the Boer war; and +the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something +valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults. + +"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the +full-blown _tyrannus_. She has no doubt whatever about her right to +rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that +Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between +threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of +her--how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her +afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the +wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to +differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and +Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times. + +"The poor people here--or most of them--are used to her, and in a way +respect her. They take her as inevitable--like the rent or the east wind; +and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for +them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see +that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his +mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages +without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing +up in the village and on the farms--not so much there, however!--which is +going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But +they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to +get out of his campaign. + +"And then--Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her +by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. +She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family +have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with +her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased +with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when +something does really touch her--when something makes her _feel_--that +curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. +There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a +miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who +was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the +girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden--Marcia +with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but +keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels--must have been +worth seeing. And there is an old man--a decrepit old road-mender, whose +sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she +never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to +tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes +to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in +Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. +You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on +which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet +she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either? + +"But the tragic figure--the tragic possibility--in all this family +_galčre_ at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because +of our old Cambridge friendship--quite against my will--a good deal about +the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that +any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is +persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that +what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the +young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry +a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many +proposals--" + +The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the +writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became +aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur +Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved +to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, +he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library +staircase. + +As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was +that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, +his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped +to view, amid the general relaxation of _tenue_ and dignity. He came +up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning +into a chair beside it. + +"I hear mother and Marcia are away?" + +"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?" + +"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young +man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about." + +Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, +thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of +the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the +busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among +the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the +hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to +cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop. + +"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? +There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month--mother's arranged it +all--not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!--and I'm to speak +at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not +allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet +mother's had the bills printed already!" + +"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?" + +"I dare say. D--n the Martover meeting! But what _taste_!--two +brothers slanging at each other--almost in the same parish. I declare women +have no taste!--not a ha'porth. But I won't do it--and mother, just for +once, will have to give in." + +He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him--no doubt +with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation +appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the +self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April. + +"You are afraid of being misunderstood?" + +"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young +man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me +again. She makes that quite plain." + +"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she +discriminate between the politician and the private friend?" + +Arthur shook his head. + +"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam +a thief and a robber--and what else can I call him, with mother +looking on?--there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's +_fanatical_ about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already +about him. I tell you--it's rather fine, Lester!--upon my soul, it is!" + +And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned +his still boyish looks upon his friend. + +"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But--I confess +I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are +you prepared to take her into your confidence?" + +"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the +devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't +tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!" + +There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him +meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward. + +"Look here, Arthur!--can't you make a last effort, and get free?" + +His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted: + +"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two +worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor +your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in +love. But it does matter--and it'll tell more and more every year." + +"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us +all--I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses--just as so much +grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter." + +"And yet you love her!" + +"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify +about these things--she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at +her own side--just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships--and +everything that he says and thinks. She adores him--she'd go to the stake +for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on +him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad--I know that. But I'd rather marry +her mad than any other woman sane!" + +"All the same you _could_ break it off," persisted Lester. + +"Of course I could. I could hang--or poison--or shoot myself, I suppose, if +it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her +up, I shall cut the whole business--Parliament--estates--everything!" + +The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly +subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. + +"What are your chances?" + +"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. +But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of +speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair--and if I +don't make it, mother will know the reason why!--it's all up with me." + +"Why don't you apply to Coryston?" + +"What--to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't +he?--with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was +coming down here to make mischief--and, by Jove, he's doing it!" + +"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. + +Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering +greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the +door behind him. + +"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" + +Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to +reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he +deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a +cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal +which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung +an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking +and pondering. + +"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; +"we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out +for you, Arthur--upon my soul, I don't!" + +"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. + +"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage +yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off +the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." + +"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" + +"What do _you_ think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in +a garret--a genteel garret--on a thousand a year? For her father, +perhaps!--but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it." + +No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He +descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took +his arm--an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted. + +"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it +serious?" + +"Sure of her? Good God--if I were!" + +He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could +not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets. + +Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine +concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out +of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the +window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for +an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. +Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind. + +"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get +Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know +that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting +in the Martover paper yesterday--" + +"_No_!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing. + +"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she +has already written your speech." + +"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair. + +"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell +mother you won't be treated so--that you're a man, not a school-boy--that +you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches--_et cetera_. +Play the independence card for all you're worth. It _may_ get you out +of the mess." + +Arthur's countenance began to clear. + +"I'm to make it appear a bargain--between you and me? I asked you to give +up your show, and you--" + +"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already +warned you, it won't help you long." + +"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression. + +"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be +Glenwilliam--and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her +heart--and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before +you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the +person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed--whereas +_you_ have been the model son." + +Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur. + +"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the +rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!" + +"'_Life_,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just +try offering your billet--with all its little worries thrown in--to the +next fellow you meet in the street--and see what happens!" + +But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother. + +"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"--he +waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the +sun--"for--for Enid--you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!" + +There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried +conviction. Coryston's expression changed. + +"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with--with Enid--to give it up," he +said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her--I don't mean anything in +the least offensive--has a very just and accurate idea of the value of +money." + +A sort of impatient groan was the only reply. + +But Lester raised his head from his book. + +"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one +to the other. + +"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and +Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by +now?" + +He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he +spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with +Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment +hard and threatening. + +"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your +sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she +might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up +his papers as he spoke. + +"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you +a friend?--her friend?--our friend?--everybody's friend?" said Coryston, +peremptorily. "Look here!--if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"--he +brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table--"there'll be another +family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case +before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with +her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury +hear reason--well and good. If she can't--or if she doesn't see the thing +as she ought, herself--well!--we shall know where we are!" + +"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an +awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!" + +"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"--the voice was Lester's--"to plunge +her into such a business, at such a time!" + +"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable +Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts--why should we? Arthur!--come and +walk home with me!" + +Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to +any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers--and finally let himself be carried +off. + +Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library. + +"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'" + +What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with +such a problem--be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off +things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat +solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or +might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old +house--for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston +librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could +see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns--Marcia and Newbury. + +Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library +floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of +old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of +doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows. + +He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such +painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the +growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had +his career to think of--and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day +he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life +on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It +would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never +possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient +barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound +and sane; it looked life in the face--its gifts and its denials, and those +stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting +spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he +submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, +handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both +soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him. + + * * * * * + +Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent +time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first +train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to +give an hour to business talk--as to settlements and so forth--with Lord +William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her +motor with all possible speed. + +"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with +half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: +"But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent +people--quite excellent." + +Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course +never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion +of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any +soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance. + +"If only Edward and you--and everybody would not be in such a dreadful +hurry!" she said, protesting. + +"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have +you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till +the autumn I should be terribly busy--absolutely taken up--with Arthur's +election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to +the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not +only the usual Liberal gang--I shall have Coryston to fight!" + +"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then +she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that +notice of Arthur's meeting into the _Witness_ without consulting him. +Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid +of his cutting up rough?" + +"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. +As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that +Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in +doubt as to what _he_ thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only +five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully--without a word of +reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!" + +Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more +than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped +Coryston had been able to talk to him--to persuade him! Edward too had +promised to see him--immediately. Surely between them they would make him +hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother? + +The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival +at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler. + +"Is Mr. Arthur here?" + +"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for +luncheon." + +Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the +answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened +first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still +holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler +intercepted her. + +"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your +sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker--something you had +ordered--very particular." + +"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything +about it." + +She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand. + +"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's +leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with +Coryston. He may argue with me--and with Edward--if he pleases. But Mrs. +Betts herself! No--that's too much!" + +Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. +Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her +amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman--a lady--a complete stranger +to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A +woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, +and tears on her cheeks. + +"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back. + + + + +Book II + + +MARCIA + + + "To make you me how much so e'er I try, + You will be always you, and I be I." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. +"I--I have deceived your servants--told them lies--that I might get to +see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!--don't send me away!" + +Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, +standing suppliant before her, and repeated: + +"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name." + +"My name--is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. +"Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet--I think you must; +because--because there has been so much talk!" + +"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which +reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress +and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general +aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally +against--one might almost say, as an effluence from--the background of +bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the +room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility +of her attire--arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short +skirts and shell necklace,--betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite +plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex. + +"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought--Lord +Coryston--" + +She paused, her eyes cast down. + +"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit +down." + +Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. +Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a +broken, sobbing voice. + +"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my +poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh! +my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he +never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about +your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so +_ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I +don't know how to excuse myself--" + +She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned +face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears. + +"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and +annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing. + +"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, +removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I +consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, +to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, +Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!" + +Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran +lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had +placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched. + +"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with +embarrassment. + +Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly. + +"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm +unless he will give me up?" + +But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly: + +"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs." + +"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, +turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag +of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into +vehemence: + +"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen! +You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly +wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help +anybody as wretched as I am!" + +The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic +force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the +bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be +thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as +though the speaker observed herself, even in violence. + +Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and +then said: + +"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to +me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I +shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?" + +"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, +Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because +you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my +story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment. +"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had +an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as +though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was +only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and +she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few +months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I +suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he +struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a +choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was +only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved +me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like +heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and +there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against +my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband +divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other +man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel +to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So +there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look +at Marcia. + +The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed. + +"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He +hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I +couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm +not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to +keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he +was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. +And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I +was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to +me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told +him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't +a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no +prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. +Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in +the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he +knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, +to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more +disgrace on anybody." + +She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the +small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and +powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly +into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some +rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing +and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! + +Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. + +"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares +for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll +kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" + +The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her +slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which +sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only +say again in a vaguely troubled voice: + +"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't +to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't +do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." + +"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help +each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means +to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord +William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too +cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if +he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend +henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary +friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near +a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just +think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after +all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a +better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love +me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You +know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. +He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and +made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand +much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things +anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll +go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? +What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?" + +[Illustration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"] + +Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her +cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no +acting now. + +The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands +gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her. + +"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know +what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced +people marrying again. You know--how they've set a standard all their +lives--for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever +preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their +feelings. They hate--I'm sure they hate--making any one unhappy. But if +one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, +how--" + +"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, +_please_, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you +to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up--and he'll never give me +up. But I'll go away--I'll go to a little cottage John has--it was his +mother's, in Charnwood Forest--far away from everybody. Nobody here will +ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work +will let him. He will come over in the motor--he's always running about the +country--nobody would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated--so we +should have separated--as far as spending our lives together goes. But I +should sometimes--sometimes--have my John!--for my own--my very own--and he +would sometimes have me!" + +Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts +shook from head to foot. + +Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling--of +a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an +experience, touched so nearly on passions and sins which had hitherto been +to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, +whatever class she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the +conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment--a moment differing +wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have +come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack +such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay +knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, +the real stuff--the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new +to her. + +And, in a flash of memory and association, there passed through her mind +the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights--Iphigenia on the stage, +wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and +Newbury's voice: + +"_This_ is the death she shrinks from--" + +And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately +to its doom: + +"And this--is the death she _accepts_!" + +Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome +features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the +girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose--"_he_ +would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and +loves--and _therefore_ he will inflict it inexorably on others. But +that's the point! For oneself, yes--but for others who suffer and don't +believe!--suffer horribly!" + +A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs. +Betts. + +"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll +try and put it to Mr. Newbury. Nobody here, you think, need know anything +about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and +you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all +anybody need know?" + +Mrs. Betts raised herself. + +"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord +William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't +do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to +interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William +and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!" + +She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair +and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand: + +"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury--because you love him. If +I lose John who will ever give me a kind word--a kind look again? I thought +at last--I'd found--a little love. Even bad people"--her voice broke--"may +rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that." + +Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes. +Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her +mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled +with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of +deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and +responsive human being. + +"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that +I'll speak to Mr. Newbury." + +Mrs. Betts gave her effusive thanks which somehow jarred on Marcia; she was +glad when they were over and Mrs. Betts rose to go. That her tearful and +disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side +staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. +Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an +undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon +pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound of the house. + +She found herself in a strange confusion of mind. She still saw the small +tear-stained face, the dingy finery, the tormented hair; the story she had +just heard was still sounding in her ears. But what really held her was the +question: "Can I move Edward? What will he say to me?" + +And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together +came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which +had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been +drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?--drawn with a +hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by +them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it +that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had +been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer +idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? +Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the +center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices +eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself +naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. + +But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of +the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be +entering upon--moving--in a world where almost nothing was left free for +her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was +taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; +would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon +Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. + +And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of +self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's +lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home +life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to +them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, +congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning--these +things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. +The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing +enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish +joking--with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and +literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the +Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute +refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at +least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice--in +relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still +standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, +she knew--knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, +his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she +sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, +she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in +her?--what was there in her--to deserve it? + +And yet--and yet! Some penetrating instinct to which in this moment of +solitude, of unwilling reflection, she could not help but listen, told her +that the very soul of him was not hers; that the deepest foundation of his +life was no human affection, but the rapture, the compelling vision of a +mystical faith. And that rapture she could never share; she knew herself; +it was not in her. One moment she could have cried out in despair over her +own limitations and disabilities. The next she was jealous; on fire. + +Jealous!--that was the real, sadly human truth; jealous, as women have +always been, of the faith, or the art, or the friendship, which threatens +their hold upon the lover. And there stole upon her as she sat musing, the +old, old temptation--the temptation of Psyche--to test and try this man, +who was to bring her into bondage, before the bonds were yet quite set. She +was honestly touched by Mrs. Betts's story. To her, in her first softness +of love, it seemed intolerably hard and odious that two people who clung to +each other should be forcibly torn apart; two people whom no law, but +only an ecclesiastical scruple condemned. Surely Edward would accept, and +persuade his father to accept, the compromise which the husband and wife +suggested. If Mrs. Betts withdrew from the scene, from the estate, would +not this satisfy everybody? What further scandal could there be? She went +on arguing it with herself, but all the time the real, deepest motive +at work was not so much sympathy, as a kind of excited +restlessness--curiosity. She saw herself pleading with Edward, breaking +down his resistance, winning her cause, and then, instead of triumphing, +flinging herself into his arms, to ask pardon for daring to fight him. + +The happy tears blinded her, and fell unheeded until a mocking reaction +dried them. + +"Oh, what a fool!--what a fool!" + +And running through the wood she came out into the sunshine at its farther +end--a blaze of sun upon the lake, its swans, its stone-rimmed islands, +and statuary, on the gray-white front of the pillared and porticoed house, +stretching interminably. The flowers shone in the stiff beds; a rain of +blossom drifted through the air. Everything glittered and sparkled. It was +Corinthian, pretentious, artificial; but as Marcia hurried up the broad +middle walk between the queer gods and goddesses, whom some pupil of +Bernini's had manufactured in Rome for a Coryston of the eighteenth +century, she was in love with the scene, which in general she disliked; in +love with the summer, in love above all with the quick life of her own mind +and body.... + +There were persons talking in her mother's sitting-room--Sir Wilfrid, +Arthur, and Coryston--she perceived them through the open windows. The +sight of Arthur suddenly sobered her, and diverted her thoughts. For if +Newbury now held the chief place in her mind, her mother still reigned +there. She--Marcia--must be on the spot to protect her mother!--in case +protection were wanted, and Coryston and Sir Wilfrid had not succeeded +yet in bringing that mad fellow to his senses. Ah! but they had all a new +helper and counselor now--in Edward. Let Coryston abuse him to her, if he +dared! She would know how to defend him. + +She hurried on. + +Simultaneously, from the garden door of the library a figure emerged, a +man with some books under his arm. She recognized Lester, and a rush of +something which was partly shyness and partly a delicious pride came over +her, to delay her steps. + +They met under the wide open colonnade which carried the first story of the +house. Lester came toward her smiling and flushed. + +"I've just heard," he said. "I do congratulate you. It's splendid!" + +She gave him her hand; and he thought as he looked at her how happiness had +beautified and transformed her. All that was imperfect in the face seemed +to have fallen into harmony; and her dark bloom had never been so lovely. + +"Yes, I'm very happy. He'll keep me in order! At least he'll try." Her eyes +danced. + +"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not +indeed knowing what to say. + +"Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with +him." + +"Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite--Ah!--" + +A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead--Lady Coryston's voice and +Arthur's clashing--startled them both. + +"Oh, I must go!" cried Marcia, frowning and paling. "Thank you--thank you +so much. Good-by." + +And she ran into the house. Lester remained rooted in the shadows of the +colonnade for a minute or two, looking after her, with a set, abstracted +face. Then the sound of the altercation overhead smote him too with alarm. +He moved quickly away lest through the open windows he might catch what was +said. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Marcia entered her mother's sitting-room in the midst of what seemed a +babel of voices. James Coryston, indeed, who was sitting in a corner of +the room while Coryston and Sir Wilfrid Bury argued across him, was not +contributing to it. He was watching his mother, and she on the other side +of the room was talking rapidly to her son Arthur, who could evidently +hardly control himself sufficiently to listen to her. + +As Marcia came in she heard Arthur say in a loud voice: + +"Your attitude, mother, is perfectly unreasonable, and I will not submit to +be dictated to like this!" + +Marcia, staying her foot half-way across the room, looked at her youngest +brother in amazement. + +Was this rough-mannered, rough-voiced man, Arthur?--the tame house-brother, +and docile son of their normal life? What was happening to them all? + +Lady Coryston broke out: + +"I repeat--you propose to me, Arthur, a bargain which is no bargain!--" + +"A quid without a quo?" interrupted Coryston, who had suddenly dropped his +argument with Sir Wilfrid, and had thrown himself on a sofa near his mother +and Arthur. + +Lady Coryston took no notice of him. She continued to address her +youngest-born. + +"What Coryston may do--now--after all that has passed is to me a matter of +merely secondary importance. When I first saw the notice of the Martover +meeting it was a shock to me--I admit it. But since then he has done so +many other things--he has struck at me in so many other ways--he has so +publicly and scandalously outraged family feeling, and political decency--" + +"I really haven't," said Coryston, mildly. "I haven't--if this was a free +country." + +Lady Coryston flashed a sudden superb look at him and resumed: + +"--that I really don't care what Coryston does. He has done his worst. I +can't suffer any greater insult than he has already put upon me--" + +Coryston shook his head, mutely protesting. He seized a pen from a table +near, and began to bite and strip it with an absent face. + +"But _you_, Arthur!" his mother went on with angry emphasis, "have +still a character to lose or gain. As I have said, it doesn't now matter +vitally to me whether Coryston is in the chair or not--I regard him as +merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw--but if _you_ let this meeting at +Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, +you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played +the coward--and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the +lurch--though that latter point I can see doesn't move you at all!" + +James and Sir Wilfrid Bury came anxiously to join the group. Sir Wilfrid +approached the still standing and distressed Marcia. Drawing her hand +within his arm, he patted it kindly. + +"We can't persuade your mother, my dear. Suppose you try." + +"Mother, you can't insist on Arthur's going through with the meeting if he +doesn't wish to!" said Marcia, with animation. "Do let him give it up! It +would be so easy to postpone it." + +Lady Coryston turned upon her. + +"Everything is easy in your eyes, no doubt, Marcia, except that he should +do his duty, and spare my feelings! As a matter of fact you know perfectly +well that Arthur has always allowed me to arrange these things for him." + +"I don't mean, mother, to do so in future!" said Arthur, resolutely turning +upon her. "You _must_ leave me to manage my own life and my own +affairs." + +Lady Coryston's features quivered in her long bony face. As she sat near +the window, on a high chair, fully illumined, in a black velvet dress, +long-waisted, and with a kind of stand-up ruffle at the throat, she was +amazingly Queen Bess. James, who was always conscious of the likeness, +could almost have expected her to rise and say in the famous words of the +Queen to Cecil--"Little man, little man, your father durst not have said +'must' to me!" + +But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words: + +"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never +been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your +Parliamentary abilities--unaided." + +"Mother!--" cried Marcia and James simultaneously. + +Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid's +restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, +his eyes bloodshot. + +"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them +long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for +myself in future. I don't think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him--and I +know his daughter." + +The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm--in +Marcia's case, of terror--ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid +caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off. + +Lady Coryston met her son's eyes with equal passion. + +"An intriguer--an unscrupulous intriguer--like himself!" said Lady +Coryston, with cutting emphasis. + +Arthur's flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning +hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur +thrust them aside. + +"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking +into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There +was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, +slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am--in love--with the lady +to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her--and +I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. _Now_ you understand +perhaps why I didn't wish to attack her father at this particular +juncture." + +"Arthur!" + +Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, +meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them +starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was +trouble--and a sudden softness--in his look. + +Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants +were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston's aspect was something +quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It +represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human +personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet +encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She +laughed--as she passed her handkerchief over her lips--so Marcia thought +afterward--to hide their trembling. + +"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to +wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your +confession--your astonishing confession--does at least supply some +reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present--_for the +present_"--she spoke slowly--"I cease to press you to speak at this +meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to +the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later--and in private. I +must take time to think it over." + +She rose. James came forward. + +"May I come with you, mother?" + +She frowned a little. + +"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with +regard to the meeting." + +And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through +the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something +in her ear--no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; +and he closed the door. + +Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, +and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, +and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay. + +Sir Wilfrid spoke first: + +"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made +seriously?" + +Arthur turned impatiently. + +"Do I look like joking?" + +"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us." + +"Luckily mother doesn't believe a word of it!" + +The voice was Coryston's, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the +ceiling. + +Arthur stood still. + +"What do you mean?" + +"No offense. I dare say she believed _you_. But the notion strikes her +as too grotesque to be bothered about." + +"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk. + +"Whether she is or not, she'll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes +of it," was Coryston's murmured comment. But the words were lost in his +mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window +gazing into the garden. Something in his brother's meditative back seemed +to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, +and hit it. James turned with a start. + +"Look here, James--this isn't Hegel--and it isn't Lotze--and it isn't +Bergson--it's life. Haven't you got a remark to contribute?" + +James's blue eyes showed no resentment. + +"I'm very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother." + +"Why?" + +"Because she's the oldest. We've got the future. She hasn't." + +The color rushed to Marcia's face. She looked gratefully at her brother. +Sir Wilfrid's gray head nodded agreement. + +"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don't see that. At least, of course it has a +certain truth. But it doesn't present itself to me as a ground for +sparing the older generation. In fact"--he sprang to his feet--"present +company--present family excepted--we're being ruined--stick stock +ruined--by the elder generation! They're in our way everywhere! Why don't +they withdraw--and let _us_ take the stage? We know more than they. +We're further evolved--we're better informed. And they will insist on +pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the +world can't get on like this. Something will have to be done. We're choked +up with the older generation." + +"Yes, for those who have no reverence--and no pity!" said Marcia. + +The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon +her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their +sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston +flushed, involuntarily. + +"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't +understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not +at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner +and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful--disrespectful? Good +heavens! What do we _care_ about the people, our contemporaries, with +whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call +_action_? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us--and +calm us--and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue +and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"--he +threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston's empty chair--"with time to smile +and think and jest--with no ax to grind--and no opinions to push--do you +think I shouldn't have been at her feet--her slave, her adorer? Besides, +the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, +long enough--they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers +now, and they the wall-flowers. And they won't play the game!" + +"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any +game--together--Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply. + +Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly. + +"One might argue till doomsday--I agree--as to which of us said 'won't +play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it +us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur--having made +a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's _we_ who have the +youth--_we_ who have the power--_we_ who know more than our +elders simply because we were born thirty years later! Let the old submit, +and we'll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with +march-music! But they _will_ fight us--and they can't win!" + +His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes +glittering. + +"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half +contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his +restless walk. + +"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir +Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play +the game of a generation--old and young. However, the situation is too +acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an +old friend?" + +"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren't so jolly sure what it would +be." + +"Don't be so sure. Come and take me a turn in the lime avenue before +lunch." + +The two disappeared. James followed them. Marcia, full of disquiet, was +going off to find Lady Coryston when Coryston stopped her. + +"I say, Marcia--it's true--isn't it? You're engaged to Newbury?" + +She turned proudly, confronting him. + +"I am." + +"I'm not going to congratulate you!" he said, vehemently. "I've got a deal +to say to you. Will you allow me to say it?" + +"Whenever you like," said Marcia, indifferently. + +Coryston perched himself on the edge of a table beside her, looking down +upon her, his hands thrust into his pockets. + +"How much do you know of this Betts business?" he asked her, abruptly. + +"A good deal--considering you sent Mrs. Betts to see me this morning!" + +"Oh, she came, did she? Well, do you see any common sense, any justice, any +Christianity in forcing that woman to leave her husband--in flinging her +out to the wolves again, just as she has got into shelter?" + +"In Edward's view, Mr. Betts is not her husband," said Marcia, defiantly. +"You seem to forget that fact." + +"'Edward's view'?" repeated Coryston, impatiently. "My dear, what's Edward +got to do with it? He's not the law of the land. Let him follow his own law +if he likes. But to tear up other people's lives by the roots, in the name +of some private particular species of law that you believe in and they +don't, is really too much--at this time of day. You ought to stop it, +Marcia!--and you must!" + +"Who's tyrannizing now?" said Marcia. "Haven't other people as good a right +to live their beliefs as you?" + +"Yes, so long as they don't destroy other people in the process. Even I am +not anarchist enough for that." + +"Well," said Marcia, coolly, "the Newburys are making it disagreeable for +Mr. and Mrs. Betts because they disapprove of them. And what else are you +doing with mamma?" + +She threw a triumphant look at her brother. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Coryston, jumping up. "The weakest 'score' I +ever heard. Don't you know the difference between the things that are +vital and the things that are superficial--between fighting opinions, and +_destroying a life_, between tilting and boxing, however roughly--and +_murdering_?" + +He looked at her fiercely. + +"Who talks of murdering!" The tone was scornful. + +"I do! If the Newburys drive those two apart they will have a murder of +souls on their conscience. And if you talked to that woman this morning you +know it as well as I!" + +Marcia faltered a little. + +"They could still meet as friends." + +"Yes, under the eyes of holy women!--spying lest any impropriety occur! +That's the proposal, I understand. Of all the vile and cold-blooded +suggestions!--" + +And restraining himself with the utmost difficulty, as one might hang on to +the curb of a bolting horse, Coryston stamped up and down the room, till +speech was once more possible. Then he came to an abrupt pause before his +sister. + +"Are you really in love with this man, Marcia?" + +So challenged, Marcia did not deign to answer. She merely looked up at +Coryston, motionless, faintly smiling. He took his answer, dazzled at the +same time by her emerging and developing beauty. + +"Well, if you do love him," he said, slowly, "and he loves you, _make_ +him have pity! Those two, also, love each other. That woman is a poor +common little thing. She was a poor common little actress with no talent, +before her first husband married her--she's a common little actress now, +even when she feels most deeply. You probably saw it, and it repelled +you. _You_ can afford, you see, to keep a fine taste, and fastidious +feelings! But if you tear her from that man, you kill all that's good in +her--you ruin all her miserable chances. That man's raising her. Bit by bit +he'll stamp his own character into hers--because she loves him. And Betts +himself, a great, silent, hard man, who has once in his life done a +splendid thing!--forgotten himself head over ears for a woman--and is now +doing his level best to make a good job of her--you Christians are going +to reward him first by breaking his heart, and tearing his life-work to +pieces!--God!--I wish your Master were here to tell you what He'd think of +it!" + +"You're not His only interpreter!" cried Marcia, breathing quickly. "It's +in His name that Edward and his father are acting. You daren't say--you +daren't _think_--that it's for mere authority's sake--mere +domination's sake!" + +Coryston eyed her in silence a little. + +"No use in arguing this thing on its merits," he said, curtly, at last. +"You don't know enough about it, and Newbury and I shouldn't have a single +premise in common. But I just warn you and him--it's a ticklish game +playing with a pair of human lives like these. They are sensitive, +excitable people--I don't threaten--I only say--_take care_!" + +"'Game,' 'play'--what silly words to use about such men as Edward and his +father, in such a matter!" said Marcia as she rose, breathing contempt. "I +shall talk to Edward--I promised Mrs. Betts. But I suppose, Corry, it's +no good saying, to begin with, that when you talk of tyranny, you seem to +_me_ at any rate, the best tyrant of the lot." + +The girl stood with her head thrown back, challenging her brother, her +whole slender form poised for battle. + +Coryston shook his head. + +"Nonsense! I play the gadfly--to all the tyrants." "_A tyrant_," +repeated his sister, steadily. "And an unkind wretch into the bargain! I +was engaged--yesterday--and have you said one nice, brotherly word to me?" + +Her lips trembled. Coryston turned away. + +"You are giving yourself to the forces of reaction," he said, between his +teeth, "the forces that are everywhere fighting liberty--whether in the +individual--or the State. Only, unfortunately "--he turned with a smile, +the sudden gaiety of which fairly startled his sister--"as far as matrimony +is concerned, I seem to be doing precisely the same thing myself." + +"Corry! what on earth do you mean?" + +"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? Perhaps you will some day," said Coryston, +with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the +battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If +you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. +I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff +document, I admit. If not--" + +"Well, if not?" + +"War!" was the short reply, as her brother made for the door. + +Then suddenly he came back to say: + +"Keep an eye on mother. As far as Arthur's concerned--she's dangerous. She +hasn't the smallest intention of letting him marry that girl. And here +too it'll be a case of meddling with forces you don't understand. Keep me +informed." + +"Yes--if you promise to help him--and her--to break it off," said Marcia, +firmly. + +Coryston slowly shook his head; and went. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston, having shaken off all companions, had betaken +herself for greater privacy to a solitary walk. She desired to see neither +children nor friends nor servants till she had made up her mind what she +was going to do. As generally happened with her in the bad moments of life, +the revelation of what threatened her had steeled and nerved her to a +surprising degree. Her stately indoor dress had been exchanged for a short +tweed gown, and, as she walked briskly along, her white hair framed in the +drawn hood of black silk which she wore habitually on country walks, she +had still a wonderful air of youth, and indeed she had never felt herself +more vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean +peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by +something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the +feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next +stroke may--probably will--end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it +made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the +clearness of her resolve. + +So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had +increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress +just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever +since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public +as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by +refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm +her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, +Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no +doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph +over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid +Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a +fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed +to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had +declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, +to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time--all the time--the handsome, +repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the +hollow of her hand! + +Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself +that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The +circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many +people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams +were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay +hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage +could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher--the temptation had +only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would +be the sweetness--for such persons as the Glenwilliams--of a planned and +successful revenge. + +Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover +meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood +from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the +week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. +Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an +interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to +be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and +irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the +embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his +seat--to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the +country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small +towns in his division. + +She reached a rising ground in the park, where was a seat under a fine oak, +commanding a view. The green slopes below her ran westward to a wide sky +steeped toward the horizon in all conceivable shades of lilac and pearl, +with here and there in the upper heaven lakes of blue and towering +thunder-clouds brooding over them, prophesying storm. She looked out over +her domain, in which, up to a short time before, her writ, so to speak, had +run, like that of a king. And now all sense of confidence, of security, +was gone. There on the hillside was the white patch of Knatchett--the old +farmhouse, where Coryston had settled himself. It showed to her disturbed +mind like the patch of leaven which, scarcely visible at first, will grow +and grow "till the whole is leavened." A leaven of struggle and revolt. And +only her woman's strength to fight it. + +Suddenly--a tremor of great weakness came upon her. Arthur, her dearest! It +had been comparatively easy to fight Coryston. When had she not fought +him? But Arthur! She thought of all the happy times she had had with +him--electioneering for him, preparing his speeches, watching his first +steps in the House of Commons. The years before her, her coming old age, +seemed all at once to have passed into a gray eclipse; and some difficult +tears forced their way. Had she, after all, mismanaged her life? Were +prophecies to which she had always refused to listen--she seemed to hear +them in her dead husband's voice!--coming true? She fell into a great and +lonely anguish of mind; while the westerly light burned on the broidery of +white hawthorns spread over the green spaces below, and on the loops and +turns of the little brimming trout-stream that ran so merrily through the +park. + +But she never wavered for one moment as to her determination to see Enid +Glenwilliam after the Martover meeting; nor did the question of Arthur's +personal happiness enter for one moment into her calculations. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The breakfast gong had just sounded at Hoddon Grey. The hour was a quarter +to nine. Prayers in the chapel were over, and Lord and Lady Newbury, at +either end of the table, spectacles on nose, were opening and reading their +letters. + +"Where is Edward?" said Lady William, looking round. + +"My dear!" Lord William's tone was mildly reproachful. + +"Of course--I forgot for a moment!" And on Lady William's delicately +withered cheek there appeared a slight flush. For it was their wedding-day, +and never yet, since his earliest childhood, had their only son, their only +child, failed, either personally or by deputy, to present his mother with a +bunch of June roses on the morning of this June anniversary. While he was +in India the custom was remitted to the old head gardener, who always +received, however, from the absent son the appropriate letter or message to +be attached to the flowers. And one of the most vivid memories Lady William +retained of her son's boyhood showed her the half-open door of an inn +bedroom at Domodossola, and Edward's handsome face--the face of a lad of +eleven--looking in, eyes shining, white teeth grinning, as he held aloft in +triumph the great bunch of carnations and roses for which the little fellow +had scoured the sleepy town in the early hours. They had taken him abroad +for the first time, during a break between his preparatory school and Eton, +when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of measles; and Lady +William could never forget the charm of the boy's companionship, his eager +docility and sweetness, his delight in the Catholic churches and services, +his ready friendships with the country-folk, with the coachman who drove +them, and the _sagrestani_ who led them through dim chapels and +gleaming monuments. + +But when indeed had he not been their delight and treasure from his youth +up till now? And though in the interest of a long letter from her Bishop to +whom she was devoted, Lady William had momentarily forgotten the date, +this wedding-day was, in truth, touched, for both parents, with a special +consecration and tenderness, since it was the first since Edward's own +betrothal. And there beside Lady William's plate lay a large jeweler's +case, worn and old-fashioned, whereof the appearance was intimately +connected both with the old facts and the new. + +Meanwhile, a rainy morning, in which, however, there was a hidden sunlight, +threw a mild illumination into the Hoddon Grey dining-room, upon the +sparely provided breakfast-table, the somewhat austere line of family +portraits on the gray wall, the Chippendale chairs shining with the +hand-polish of generations, the Empire clock of black and ormolu on the +chimney-piece and on the little tan spitz, sitting up with wagging tail and +asking eyes, on Lady William's left. Neither she nor her husband ever took +more than--or anything else than--an egg with their coffee and toast. They +secretly despised people who ate heavy breakfasts, and the extra allowance +made for Edward's young appetite, or for guests, was never more than +frugal. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was a hearty eater, was accustomed to say of +the Hoddon Grey fare that it deprived the Hoddon Grey fasts--which were +kept according to the strict laws of the Church--of any merit whatever. It +left you nothing to give up. + +Nevertheless, this little morning scene at Hoddon Grey possessed, for the +sensitive eye, a peculiar charm. The spaces of the somewhat empty room +matched the bareness of the white linen, the few flowers standing +separately here and there upon it, and the few pieces of old silver. The +absence of any loose abundance of food or gear, the frugal refined note, +were of course symbolic of the life lived in the house. The Newburys were +rich. Their beautifully housed, and beautifully kept estate, with its nobly +adorned churches, its public halls and institutions, proclaimed the fact; +but in their own private sphere it was ignored as much as possible. + +"Here he is!" exclaimed Lady William, turning to the door with something of +a flutter. "Oh, Edward, they are lovely!" + +Her son laid the dewy bunch beside her plate and then kissed his mother +affectionately. + +"Many happy returns!--and you, father! Hullo--mother, you've got a +secret--you're blushing! What's up?" + +And still holding Lady William by the arm, he looked smilingly from her to +the jeweler's case on the table. + +"They must be reset, dear; but they're fine." + +Lady William opened the case, and pushed it toward him. It contained a +necklace and pendant, two bracelets, and a stomacher brooch of diamonds and +sapphire--magnificent stones in a heavy gold setting, whereof the Early +Victorianism cried aloud. The set had been much admired in the great +exhibition of 1851, where indeed it had been bought by Lady William's +father as a present to his wife. Secretly Lady William still thought it +superb; but she was quite aware that no young woman would wear it. + +Edward looked at it with amusement. + +"The stones are gorgeous. When Cartier's had a go at it, it'll be something +like! I can remember your wearing it, mother, at Court, when I was a small +child. And you're going to give it to Marcia?" He kissed her again. + +"Take it, dear, and ask her how she'd like them set," said his mother, +happily, putting the box into his hand; after which he was allowed to sit +down to his breakfast. + +Lord William meanwhile had taken no notice of the little incident of +the jewels. He was deep in a letter which seemed to have distracted his +attention entirely from his son and to be causing him distress. When he had +finished it he pushed it away and sat gazing before him as though still +held by the recollection of it. + +"I never knew a more sad, a more difficult case," he said, presently, +speaking, it seemed, to himself. + +Edward turned with a start. + +"Another letter, father?" + +Lord William pushed it over to him. + +Newbury read it, and as he did so, in his younger face there appeared the +same expression as in his father's; a kind of grave sadness, in which there +was no trace of indecision, though much of trouble. Lady William asked no +question, though in the course of her little pecking meal, she threw some +anxious glances at her husband and son. They preserved a strict silence at +table on the subject of the letter; but as soon as breakfast was over, Lord +William made a sign to his son, and they went out into the garden together, +walking away from the house. + +"You know we can't do this, Edward!" said Lord William, with energy, as +soon as they were in solitude. + +Edward's eyes assented. + +His father resumed, impetuously: "How can I go on in close relations with +a man--my right hand in the estate--almost more than my agent--associated +with all the church institutions and charities--a communicant--secretary +of the communicant's guild!--our friend and helper in all our religious +business--who has been the head and front of the campaign against +immorality in this village--responsible, with us, for many decisions that +must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble--who yet now proposes, +himself, to maintain what we can only regard--what everybody on this estate +has been taught to regard--as an immoral connection with a married woman! +Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The +so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but +the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his +business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this +estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would +falsify our whole life here,--and make it one ugly hypocrisy!" + +There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked: + +"You of course made it plain once more--in your letter yesterday--that +there would be no harshness--that as far as money went--" + +"I told him he could have _whatever_ was necessary! We wished to force +no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they +decided to remain together--then he and we must part; but we would make it +perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere--in England or the colonies. +If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for +her--then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before." + +"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm--" + +Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress. + +"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to +it!--that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand--that he can never +build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere--that the farm is the +apple of his eye. It's absolutely true--every word of it! But then, why did +he take this desperate step!--without consulting any of his friends! It's +no responsibility of ours!" + +The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound +to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled +with a rocklike steadiness of will. + +"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?" + +"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the +Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and +watch over her, like the angels they are,--and the boy could go to a day +school. But they won't hear of it--they won't listen to it for a moment; +and now--you see--they've put their own alternative plan before us, in +this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by +temperament--that she wouldn't understand the Sisters--nor they her--that +she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations--and then +all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he +said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' +It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his +conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here +on our terms." + +"The letter is curiously excitable--hardly legible even--very unlike +Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully. + +"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has +somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do." + +The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a +footman coming with a note. + +"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer." + +Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow. + +"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon." + +When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face +showing the quick feeling behind. + +"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?" + +"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That +fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses +themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with +to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely +trust you and your judgment in such a matter." + +Newbury flushed. + +"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. +"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her." + +"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, +hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over +and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be +troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us." + +The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily. + + * * * * * + +A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was +sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were +fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing +up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston +trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk +bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which +overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows. + +The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long +discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, +far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved +brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of +her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was +not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never +felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was +haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom +he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, +and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the +plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away +committeth adultery_'"? + +"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. +It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and +most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law +concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to +_sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of +marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not +only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of +people with a high social trust, to betray that trust." + +These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held +him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the +enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his +own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the +only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up +life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or +accomplices in their wrong-doing? + +Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane +outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of +the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals +of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly +famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was +the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green +plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils +and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come +eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, +not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of +buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the +new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and +there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the +woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen. + +A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the +scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the +less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and +to fling back his charges in his face. + +Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges. + +Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly +grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and +pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road. + +"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you." + +"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice +of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his +high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the +unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case +also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen +of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student +of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure +round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still +clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its +master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer +or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large +modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise +knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the +world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered +everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for +by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, +clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the +memory of years of kindly intercourse--friendship, loyalty, just dealing. + +"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," +began Betts, abruptly. + +"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly +gentle, even deferential. + +"You read it, I presume?" + +Newbury made a sign of assent. + +"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" + +Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the +normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. + +Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. + +"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!" + +"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?" + +"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should +be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it +indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false." + +"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?" + +"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would +only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for +you--elsewhere!" + +Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. + +"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it +night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives +and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on +there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're +working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I +begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The +best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, +you're going to drive me from it." + +"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden +rush of grief. The other turned. + +"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy +I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You +made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried +over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she +_is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given +her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her." + +"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" +Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote +them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition +we all sent to the Bishop only last year." + +"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot +since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly +escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a +stop. + +"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in +the laboratory I must be looking after." + +"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a +Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm +near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--" + +Betts interrupted. + +"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no +good." + +The voice dropped. + +With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away. + +Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The +patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young +man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken +address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. +What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; +determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the +ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which +a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that +a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the +circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican +sort, depends. + +The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. +Would she come to meet him? + +Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this +melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not +right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her +and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of +whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting +with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they +believed, than Betts himself knew. + +And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance +of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream.... + +He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the +new-leafed trees. + +The wood was deep--spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly +clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face.... + +When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting +off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day +before--of Arthur and her mother--and the revelation sprung upon them all. + +"You remember how _terrified_ I was--lest mother should know? And +she's taken it so calmly!" + +She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the +arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was +cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well +would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his +point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that +morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in +the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide +match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the +reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as +before. + +"They're not engaged?" + +"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe _she_ means it seriously at +all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something." + +"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced +smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!" + +"He says he wants to see you--to--to have it out with you," said Marcia, +awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round +Newbury's arm. + +"Edward!--do--_do_ make us all happy!" + +He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly +to his. + +"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You +darling!--what can I do?" + +But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That +she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay +at her feet!--she, who had promised him herself! + +"_Please_--let Mr. Betts stay--please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for +her yesterday!" + +"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and +mother will do all they can." + +"Then you _will_ let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly +against him. + +"Of course!--if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, +unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening. + +She straightened herself. + +"If they separate, you mean?" + +"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do." + +"But it would break their hearts." + +He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed. + +"It would make amends." + +"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her +color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one +has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, +Edward?--Won't everybody think it _very_ hard?" + +"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, +that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't +matter,--what they have done?--when in truth it seems to us a black +offense--" + +"Against what--or whom?" she asked, wondering. + +The answer came unflinchingly: + +"Against our Lord--and His Church." + +The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes. + +"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to +stay _here_!--at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say +to me--" + +Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's +arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her +instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,--were +all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and +distress--not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon +discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a +foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out: + +"Darling, I _can't_ discuss it with you! Won't you trust me--Won't +you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one +moment's pain--if we could help it?" + +Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting +and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled. + +"I can't understand," she said, frowning--"I can't!" + +"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust +me with your whole life? Won't you?" + +He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with +her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave +way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all +the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first +moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of +inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the +beginning had both teased and won her. + +But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had +said. She released herself to do it. + +"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. +and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people--and very much +in love. He can't tell what might happen." + +Newbury's face stiffened. + +"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. +And as for thinking of it--why, it's hardly ever out of my mind--except +when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night." + +Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home +through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of +the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to +learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is +discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in +view, throws the eternal glamour. + +Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's +consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, +indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in +clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the +future--the honeymoon--their London house--the rooms at Hoddon Grey that +were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from +Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the +trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. +But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best +man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading +influence in his life--friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to +that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two +of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked +High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a +"Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a +mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India. + +And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was +speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; +although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such +people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then +chilled, and if the truth be told--bored. It was with such topics, as +with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not +understand. + +She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of +Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common +delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, +reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a +considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a +new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside +him. + +"How much you know!"--and then, shyly--"You must teach me!" With the +inevitable male retort--"Teach you!--when you look at me like that!" + +It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before +luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it +was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly +figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for +having forgotten them. + +And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his +silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened +also to him. + + * * * * * + +"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury +walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia +and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the +drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady +Coryston's special and peremptory command for the _trousseau_. + +"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter." + +Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled +with the laugh. + +"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good +deal--but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business +with the Baptists?" + +Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper. + +"Well now they've got their land--through Coryston. There always was a +square piece in the very middle of the village--an _enclave_ belonging +to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the +Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston +has found her, got at her, and made her sell it--finding, I believe, the +greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the +foundation-stone of the new Bethel--under his mother's nose." + +"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, +flushing. + +Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly. + +"Moral--don't keep a conscience--political or ecclesiastical. There's +nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven's sake, don't be a +posthumous villain!" + +"What's that?" + +"A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife," said +Sir Wilfrid, calmly. "It's played the deuce in this family, and will go on +doing it." + +Whereupon the late Lord Coryston's executor produced an outline of the +family history--up to date--for the benefit of Lady Coryston's future +son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip +on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike +the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of +money and inheritance. + +"So Arthur inherits everything!" + +"Hm--does he?" said Sir Wilfrid. + +"But I thought--" + +"Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss +Glenwilliam over his mother's body--and if he does marry her he may whistle +for the estates." + +"Then James will have them?" said Newbury, smiling. + +"Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody." + +"I hope not!" Newbury's tone showed a genuine discomfort. + +"What is Lady Coryston doing?" + +"About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!--what isn't she doing?" said Sir +Wilfrid, significantly. "All the same, she lies low." As he spoke, his eyes +fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging +from the wood. He pointed. + +"They will be there on Sunday fortnight--after the Martover meeting." + +"Who? The Glenwilliams?" + +Sir Wilfrid nodded. + +"And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly +inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the +less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in +the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end +annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was +attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents +alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, +and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by +committees. + +And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, +loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law--on conditions. + +"I see no reason," he wrote, "why you and I should not be good friends--if +only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful +case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your +_opinions_ on divorce don't matter, of course, to me--nor mine to +you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you +must--because of your opinions--commit yourself to one of them--why then, +whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can't be friends. It would be +mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do +my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of +the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance +with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter +to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat--"Separate--or go--" +well, then you and I'll come to blows--Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you +that Marcia is at bottom a humanist--in the new sense--like me." + +To which Newbury promptly replied: + +"My dear Coryston--I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, +whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any +useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the +same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling +out opinion--or rather conviction--and supposing that we can agree, apart +from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The +omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia--perhaps +because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the +happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily +affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to +understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached +to you--though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you +have taken down here.... Let me know when you return--that I may come over +to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can't we?--even though we look at life so +differently." + +But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made +no reply. + +The June days passed on, bringing the "high midsummer pomps." Every day +Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between +them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London +had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and +even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with +a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys +guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled +to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick +to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole +proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be +arranged. + +Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as +possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the +horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was +being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The +supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on +the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but +on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got +into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the "Rational Marriage +Union" appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in +the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at +night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a +hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his +smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that +Coryston was still away. + +For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did +come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters +were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that +to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety +of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her +mother had no mind to give to such a trifle--or to anything, indeed--her +own marriage not excepted--but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's +intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They +lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would +have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; +and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed +in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the +affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover +meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of +conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it +seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those +queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for +the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly +and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of +opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. +Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his +mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston +that they also should return to St. James's Square, partly to keep an eye +on the backslider, partly with a view to "fittings," Lady Coryston curtly +replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her +up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at +Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to +play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the +pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him. + +On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out +westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of +Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major +about seven o'clock. She had been holding conference with a number of +persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to +turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of +opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon's +work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain +was alive with plans. A passion of political--and personal--hatred charged +every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not +a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of +life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that +even if Arthur did fail her--incredible defection!--she, alone, would +fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great +possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes. + +Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of +the scene which--within forty-eight hours--she was deliberately preparing +for herself. She meant to win her battle,--did not for one moment admit the +possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she +foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there +were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life +disagreeable. + +It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were +full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as +she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large +crowd, and the motor slowed down. + +"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur. + +"Layin' a stone--or somethin'--my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled +voice. + +"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before +the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that +morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had +screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently +to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow +from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several +black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a +dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had +apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its +supports. The board exhibited the words--"Site of the new Baptist Chapel +for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully +received." + +There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, +but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a +small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor. + +Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. + +"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. + +"I can't, my lady--they're too thick." + +By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled +the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A +movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then +toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed +to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor +finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front +of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and +understood what was the matter with the audience. + +Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, +stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his +voice: + +"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among +us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of +us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did +not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in +Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. +"May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her +mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a +check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" + +He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his +boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the +first "Hip!--hip--" + +"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the +front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in +good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the +motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At +last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back +to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. + +"Infamous! Outrageous!" + +The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in +which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! +That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly +spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for +twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist +Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the +village. + +And this was Coryston's doing. What taste--what feeling! A mother!--to be +so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was +very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling +dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, +the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength +and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do--more important, +that, than this trumpery business in the village! + +A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia +outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in +a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left +hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light +seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought--"she has just parted +from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment +possessed her--jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt +herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her +daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back +upon her, a rare experience!--and she was conscious of a dull longing for +the husband who had humored her every wish--save one; had been proud of her +cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of +him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last +hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the +end. + +[Illustration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME] + +Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple +as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and +excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence +mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than +an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few +days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a +kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?--how would +it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of +submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In +order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought +up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, +carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their +betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural +sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and +disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of +opinions--his bitter judgment, often, of men--repelled and angered her. +She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such +bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was +but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only +faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a +breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; +nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of +her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what +it had meant. + +And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of +powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by +such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet +it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away +ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a +wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could +not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim +of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and +breathless into every hour of every day they were together. + +On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at +Coryston. Newbury had gone--reluctantly for once--to a diocesan meeting +on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was +evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take +informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife--a +house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's +visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from +town, and strangers were pouring into the district. + +Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and +sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before +this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; +sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. +Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the +bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly +gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile +running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. +This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had +missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort +of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which +had been strangely welcome. + +Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note. + +"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, +his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the +roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely +seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last +to have practically forgotten his presence in the house. + +She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look +of consternation blotting the brightness from her face. + +"I must have the small motor--at once! Can you order it for me?" + +"Certainly. You want it directly?" + +"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, +on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the +side doors of the façade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant +mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. +What could be the matter? + +He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had +placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could +not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her +return. + +"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be +here for dinner. No--thank you!--thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the +chauffeur--"Redcross Farm!--as quick as you can!" + +Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After +a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir +Wilfrid Bury. + +Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay +harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had +been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and +shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a +cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only +think of the note she still held in her hand. + +"Can you come and see me? to-night--at once. Don't bring anybody. I am +alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.--ALICE BETTS." + +This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of +feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"--and trembled. Edward would +not be home till the following day. She must act alone--help alone. The +thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use--but she wished she had +thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her.... + +The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had +strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had +been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. +The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder. + +"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted +to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man +came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused +to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms--Marcia +thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his +astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly +round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared. + +"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur +continued, eagerly,--"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the +beasts." + +"You know the farm, Jackson?" + +"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly. +"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice +gentleman. He'll show you everything." + +At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man +fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than +she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood. + +They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern +additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge +of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and +brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in +the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a +substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it +curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain: + +"That's the laboratory, miss--His lordship built that six years ago. And +last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the +speeches--and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal--and there was an American +gentleman who spoke--and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts--next to +that place, Harpenden way--Rothamsted, I think they call it--was most +'ighly thought of in the States--and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's +the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs +'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water +that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em--and the mangel +field--and--" + +"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his +steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm. + +A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her +furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the +window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which +she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was +drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow--but on +the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now +here, now there. How trim everything was!--how solid and prosperous. The +great cattle-shed on the one hand--the sheep-station on the other, with its +pens and hurdles--the fine stone-built laboratory--the fields stretching to +the distance. + +She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A +foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's +room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art" +muslin; photographs in profusion--of ladies in very low dresses and +affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the +corners;--a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large +colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; +muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick +repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping. + +The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the +door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first +bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor +things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, +excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would +naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here +was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, +without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the +slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, +of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a +couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this +time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age +graven round eyes and lips. + +For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts +was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus +present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did +she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis +of her own personal life? + +"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a +chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." +She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, +who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor +falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil +framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. + +"I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, +hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my +mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." + +Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked +out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the +gusts which precede the storm. + +"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. + +"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I +was." + +"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again +out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. +I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among +the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note +in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four +o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with +something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock +the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call +him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. +Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he +wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to +write. I took him some tea, and then--" + +The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia +and laid both hands on the girl's arm. + +"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never +quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was +this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to +Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken +up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So +then--" + +The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into +Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her +dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped +them away, unheeded. + +"So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, +and I wasn't worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never +leave him--never--he said--but I must go away then because he had letters +to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and--and--he took me +in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me +up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at +me, and saying queer things to himself--and at last he went down-stairs.... +All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The +men say he's so strange--they don't like to leave him alone--but he drives +them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn't come in all day, +I sat down and wrote to you--" + +She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of +Marcia's cloak. + +"I don't know anybody here. John's lots of friends--but they're not my +friends--and even when they're sorry for us--they know--what I've done--and +they don't want to have much to do with me. You said you'd speak for us to +Mr. Edward--and I know you did--Mr. Edward told John so. You've been kinder +to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell _you_--what +I'm going to do. I'm going away--I'm going right away. John won't know, +nobody'll know where I'm gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury--and get +him and Lord William to be kind to John--as they used to be. He'll get over +it--by and by!" + +Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away. + +"I'm not going to the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! +You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life--and I've got my boy. John +won't find me--I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people +to touch--there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody--I'll go where +I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you--what I wanted to ask you?" + +"No indeed I don't," cried Marcia, in distress. "And you won't--you sha'n't +do anything so mad! Please--please, be patient!--I'll go again to Mr. +Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!" + +Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No use--no use. It's the only thing to do for +me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John +now, just what I've said, it wouldn't make any difference. He couldn't stop +me. I'm going!--that's settled. But _he_ sha'n't go. He's got to take +up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him--and look after +him--and watch him. What's their religion good for, if it can't do that? +Oh, how I _hate_ their religion!" + +Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have +been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true: + +"Haven't I good reason?" Her hands clenched at the words. "It's that which +has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he's been back here, it's +the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he's in mortal +sin--he thinks he's damned--and yet he won't--he can't give me up. My poor +old John!--We were so happy those few weeks!--why couldn't they leave +us alone!--That hard old man, Lord William!--and Mr. Edward--who's got +you--and everything he wants besides in the world! There--now I suppose +you'll turn against me too!" + +She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her +head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing--against +her will. + +"I'm not against you. Indeed--indeed--I'm not against you! You'll see. I'll +go again to Mr. Newbury--I promise you! He's not hard--he's not cruel--he's +not!..." + +"Hush!" said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward--"there he is!" And +trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just +outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling +round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had +begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his +weather-beaten cheeks and short beard. + +His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at +them--and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no +sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting +rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow. + +"Oh! go after him!" said Marcia, imploringly. "Don't trouble about me! I'll +find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!" She would have wrapped it round Mrs. +Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her. + +"No good. He wouldn't listen to me. I'll get one of the men to bring him +in. And the servant'll go for your motor." She went out of the room to give +the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, +standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she +suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with +stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks. + +"Make them do something for John. It doesn't matter about me. Let them +comfort John. Then I'll forgive them." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had +left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of +a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on +the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen--east, west, and north. +Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each +circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into +pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in +snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. +From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the +unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to +find death at Chalgrove Field. + +Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post +of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke +significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in +particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew +back her eyes and thoughts perpetually. + +The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not +seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, +in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as +usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come +back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been +this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under +the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook +her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady +Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little +dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the +ample girth of Glenwilliam. + +... Ah!--the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window +in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam's +room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for +morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out +of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her +friend's society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was +Enid's way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge +meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion's quiet +Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam's +eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of +genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he +must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who +adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest. + +Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the +opener--though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night +before, and had given no promise that he would come. + +Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At +sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down +beside her. + +"Nobody else about? What a blessing!" + +She looked at him with mild reproach. + +"My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down." + +"Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman's wife and had to get up +at six o'clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a +world of good." + +"How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing." + +"Yes, it does. One must form opinions--or burst. I can tell you, I judged +Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him." + +"Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches," said Marion, +cautiously. + +"Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn't it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of +Liberalism, as I sat there. I'll go and join the Primrose League." + +Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed--with her finger on her lip. + +"Hush! She might hear." She pointed to the half-open window on the first +floor. + +"And a good thing too," growled Coryston. "She adores him--and makes +him worse. Why can't he _work_ at these things--or why can't his +secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an +undergraduate--and doesn't care a rap--so long as a hall-full of fools +cheer him." + +"You usen't to talk like this!" + +"No--because I had illusions," was the sharp reply. "Glenwilliam was one of +them. Land!--what does he know about land?--what does a miner--who won't +learn!--know about farming? Why, that man--that fellow, John Betts"--he +pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain--"whom the +Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the +dirt--just like these Christians!--John Betts knows more about land in his +little finger than Glenwilliam's whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, +you'd see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not +allowed a look in. I'm sick of it! I'm off to Canada with Betts." + +Marion looked up. + +"I thought it was to be the Primrose League." + +"You like catching me out," said Coryston, grimly. "But I assure you I'm +pretty downhearted." + +"You expect too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to +notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," +she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat." + +"She's another disillusion. She's idle and dirty. And Potifer never does +a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral--don't bother your head about +martyrs. There's generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them." + +He broke off--looking at her with a clouded brow. + +"Marion!" + +She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face. + +"Yes, Lord Coryston!" + +"If you're so critical of my clothes, why don't you come and look after +them and me?" + +She gasped--then recovered herself. + +"I've never been asked," she said, quietly. + +"Asked! Haven't you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a +detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with--as it +pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me +feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject +letters--and apologize--and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other +woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't know what it means?" + +He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery +accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching. + +"I didn't know I was both a busybody--and a Pharisee!" + +"Hypocrite!" he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. +But she withdrew it. + +"My dear friend--if you wish to resume this conversation--it must be at +another time. I haven't been able to tell you before, I didn't know +it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother--Lady +Coryston--will be here in half an hour--to see Enid." + +He stared. + +"My mother! So _that's_ what she's been up to!" + +"She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father's +taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly." + +"And what the deuce is going to happen?" + +Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great +deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and +Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well +what was going on. + +"And can't stick it?" cried Coryston, his eyes shining. "Glenwilliam has +his faults, but I don't believe he'll want Arthur for a son-in-law--even +with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and +the estates." + +"Because of your mother?" + +Coryston nodded. "So there's another strong man--a real big +'un!--dependent, like Arthur and me--on the whim of a woman. It'll do +Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that's too fond of +beating its wives. Well, well--so my mother's coming!" He glanced round the +little house and garden. "Look here!" He bent forward peremptorily. "You'll +see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?" + +Marion's expression showed a certain bewilderment. + +"I wouldn't trust that girl!" Coryston went on, with vehemence. "She's got +something cruel in her eyes." + +"Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston's coming--" + +"To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the +game will be Miss Glenwilliam's. She'll have my mother in a cleft stick. +I'm not sure I oughtn't to be somewhere about. Well, well. I'll march. When +shall we 'resume the conversation,' as you put it?" + +He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement +upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass. + +"Oh!" She bent to pick them up. + +"Don't touch them!" cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands +and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand. + +"Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." +His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her +disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up. + +"Now I'm going. Good-by." + +"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather +stifled voice. + +"It's Sunday--so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He +checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and--if +necessary--have a jolly row with Edward Newbury--or his papa. Second, +Blow up Price--my domestic blacksmith--you know!--the socialist apostle +I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and +all--blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him +by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable +called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. +Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for +Arthur--the Radical miller--Martover gent--who's coming to see me at three +this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about +him. Shall have a ripping time with him!" + +"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you +yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass. + +"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A +vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, +good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's +anything left of my mother." + +And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young +lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper +window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston. + +"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as +she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the +summer-house. + +"On the contrary, I sent him away." + +"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?" + +"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with +a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her +eyes--challenging, a little stern,--struck full on her companion. + +Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened +and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and +suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection. + +"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all." + +"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone--and she has a right to it," said +Marion, with emphasis. + +"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, +absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence +while her gaze wandered over the view. + +"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?" + +"How can I, till I know what _she's_ going to say?" laughed Miss +Glenwilliam, teasingly. + +"But of course you know perfectly well." + +"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit +it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled +essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put +up with me?" + +"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow +decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him." + +"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a +deal too much." + +"Are you any nearer caring for him--really--than you were six weeks ago?" + +"He's a very--nice--dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would +be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after +him, now, than it was six weeks ago." + +"Enid!" + +"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little +sides of it--the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up +with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should +love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private +secretary." + +"You would despise him if he were!" + +"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches +for him then--and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear +something?" + +A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible. + +Marion Atherstone rose. + +"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll +see that nobody interrupts you." + +Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came +quickly back again. + +"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't +make a quarrel between them--unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly +kissed the face bending over her. + +"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?" + +Marion departed, silenced. + +Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted +the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the +Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed +into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for +the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic +applause." + +She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed +to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But +her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last +night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so +good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness. + +And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the +Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden. + +"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?" + +Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, +holding out her hand. + +"How do you do, Lady Coryston?" + +The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being +scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed +to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been +gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the +formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that +they had already met in many drawing-rooms. + +Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat. + +"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors." + +"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would +see me." + +"I was delighted--of course." + +There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady +Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with +its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined +mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied +under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, +delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to +the only effect she ever cared to make--the effect of the great lady, in +command--clearly--of all possible resources, while far too well bred to +indulge in display or ostentation. + +Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She +had taken up an ostrich-feather fan--a traditional weapon of the sex--and +waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak. + +"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it +a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?" + +The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the +grass nodded gravely. + +"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to +do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; +and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have +much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be +frank." + +"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!" + +Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder. + +"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal +of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your--your friendship with him has been very +conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with +you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him." + +"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, +she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if +possible, prevent his asking me again." + +"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager. + +"So far." + +"So far? May I ask--does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?" + +"I have as yet said nothing final to him." + +Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, +and then said, with emphasis: + +"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk--at this +moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you +what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage." + +"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her +most girlish voice. + +"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady +Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering +his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, +was sufficiently evident." + +Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her +long fingers were engaged in straightening. + +"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the +present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its +traditions; but that I intend to be--while I live. And I can only regard +a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable--not only for my +son--but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." + +"And why?" + +Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble +fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. + +The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks. + +"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different +worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different +antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome +you as a daughter--and because a marriage with you would disastrously +affect the prospects of my son." + +"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, +with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the +same dances." + +Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping +her voice in order. + +"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude." + +"Of course not. But--is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?" + +"Poverty has nothing to do with it--nothing at all. I have never considered +money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall." + +"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the +fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady +in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was +conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker. + +"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, +money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my +son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions." + +At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the +moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence. + +Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father's made that morning at +breakfast: "Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as +long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the +first Lord Coryston--in his earliest batch of peers--with the title and a +fat post--something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their +money--then came the Welsh coal--et cetera." + +But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on: + +"We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of +them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are +the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you +know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of +leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me--as trustee for the +political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has +been--excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both--and is now--the +principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the +estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust +did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three +months ago." + +"How very interesting!" said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston +could not see her face. + +"But it is only fair to him and to you," Arthur's mother continued, with +increased deliberation, "that I should say frankly, now that this crisis +has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur +should inherit his father's estates. A fresh disposition of them will have +to be made." + +Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone. + +"Because--Lady Coryston--I am my father's daughter?" + +"Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with +our traditions--and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it." The +conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final +words. + +There was a slight pause. + +"Then--if Arthur married me--he would be a pauper?" said the girl, bending +forward. + +"He has a thousand a year." + +"That's very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again." + +Lady Coryston moved nervously. + +"I don't understand you." + +"What I _couldn't_ have done, Lady Coryston--would have been to come +into Arthur's family as in any way dependent on his mother!" + +The girl's eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled. + +"I couldn't of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling +toward me," she said, after a moment. + +"No--you couldn't--you couldn't indeed!" + +Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her +visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic +table that stood between them, her breath fluttering. + +"Yes--perhaps now I could marry him--perhaps now I could!" she repeated. +"So long as I wasn't your dependent--so long as we had a free life of our +own--and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope--the +situation might be faced. We might hope, too--father and I--to bring +_our_ ideas and _our_ principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe +he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made +him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should +set any store by _our_ principles. You think all I want is money. +Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and +luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry +me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and +present you next day with the _fait accompli_--to take or leave. I +believe you would have surrendered to the _fait accompli_--yes, I +believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you +would forgive him. Well, but then--I looked forward--to the months--or +years--in which I should be courting--flattering--propitiating you--giving +up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours--turning my back on my father--on +my old friends--on my party--for _money_! Oh yes, I should be quite +capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had +the grace--the conscience--to funk it. I apologize for the slang--I can't +express it any other way. And now you come and say: 'Engage yourself to +him--and I'll disinherit him _at once_. That makes the thing look +clean and square!--that tempts the devil in one, or the angel--I don't +know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by +marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks +a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began +life as a pit-boy--Yes, I think it might be done!" + +The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands +behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston. + +In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor's daughter had suddenly +assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston +understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl +for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly +perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, +the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any +conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the +eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate +forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her +wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman +was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and +formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to +feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam. + +Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some +moments before, under the girl's threatening eyes, she could speak at all. +Then she said, with difficulty: + +"You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam--but you do not love him! That is +perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his +happiness and mine, in order--" + +"I don't love him? Ah! that's another story altogether! Do I love him? I +don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't believe I am as capable of +falling in love as other girls are--or say they are. I like him, and get on +with him--and I might marry him; I might--have--married him," she repeated, +slowly, "partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for +the slight you offered my father!--and partly for other things. But you +see--now I come to think of it--there is some one else to be considered--" + +The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, +with a sudden change of mood and voice. + +"You say you won't have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn't decide it for +me--and it wouldn't decide it for Arthur. But there's some one else won't +have it." + +A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with +it--considering. + +"My father came to my room last night," she said, at last, "in order to +speak to me about it. 'Enid,' he said, 'don't marry that man! He's a good +enough fellow--but he'll drive a wedge into our life. We can't find a use +for him--you and I. He'll divide us, my girl--and it isn't worth it--you +don't love him!' And we had a long talk--and at last I told him--I +wouldn't--I _wouldn't_! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don't marry +your son, it's not because you object--but because my father--whom you +insulted--doesn't wish me to enter your family--doesn't approve of a +marriage with your son--and has persuaded me against it." + +Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the +flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under +the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she +slowly rose from her seat. + +"You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, +love my son--and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you." + +She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that +she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. +She too rose. + +"I'm sorry, Lady Coryston. I've been a brute. But when I think of my +father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of +the things I have said. But it's no good apologizing. Let me, however, just +say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He's in love +with me--and I'm very, _very_ sorry for him. Let me write to him +first--before you speak to him. I'll write--as kindly as I can. But I warn +you--it'll hurt him--and he may visit it on you--for all I can say. When +will he be at Coryston?" + +"To-night." + +"I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?" + +They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston +entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, +which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started. + +Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her +face in her hands. + +After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. +She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor's burly form filled up the +door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement +upon his daughter. + +"Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you--did she +scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what's the +matter, my girl? Are you upset?" + +Enid got up, struggling for composure. + +"I--I behaved like a perfect fiend." + +"Did you?" The Chancellor's laughter filled the summer-house. "The old +harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking +in upon you here!--to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and +penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, +Enid, what's the matter--don't be a fool, my dear! You don't regret him?" + +"No." He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. +Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him. + +"I shall never marry, father. It's you and I, isn't it, against the world?" + +"Half the world," said Glenwilliam, laughing. "There's a jolly big half on +our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry." He +looked at her with proud affection. + +She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the +house together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' +cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had +obtained--apparently--everything for which she had set out, and yet there +she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has +suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class +is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed +to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam +had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady +Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and +could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a +closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that +night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have +a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and +the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very +rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings +that her doctor had given her before she left town--"You are overtaxing +yourself, Lady Coryston--and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She +came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never +coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, +from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day--till she +had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no +sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a +fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain. + +Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she +perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston +House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with +some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. +How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls +really should be more considerate. + +The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even +preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia +was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after +helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It +vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or +annoyed--perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it. + +Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room. + +"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an +old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!" + +She looked at him somberly. + +"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please--not a word!--till I +give you leave. I have gone through--a great deal." + +Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put +out his hand and pressed hers. + +"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to +your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for +luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay +horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury. + +"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits +his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used +to in my days." + +But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did +not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon. + +Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. +Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate +little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, +bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted +from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could +scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell +silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair +and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple +and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; +it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir +Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from +presenting herself so unattractively to her lover. + +Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid +obstinately called a "monkery"--_alias_ the house of an Anglican +brotherhood or Community--the Community of the Ascension, of which +Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for +Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury +a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously +evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and +through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some +deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" +was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face +during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time--even when the +fellow's looking at his sweetheart." + +After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They +wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink +willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the +gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen +trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all +washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, +and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the +hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the +gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines +stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a +moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called +or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a +Sabbath dreariness--held the scene. + +Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. +She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was +conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. + +"Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said, +anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been +away?" + +"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed +his. + +"Wrong--quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I +thought of you last night." + +"Where--when?" Her voice was low--a little embarrassed. + +"In chapel--the chapel at Blackmount--at Benediction." + +She looked puzzled. + +"What is Benediction?" + +"A most beautiful service, though of late origin--which, like fools, we +have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels +like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday +evening"--his voice fell--"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have +you there." + +She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: + +"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not +recognized--yet. To some of the services--to Benediction for instance--the +public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule--of the strictest +observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night +Office--most touching--most solemn! And--my darling!"--he pressed her hand +while his face lit up--"I want to ask you--though I hardly dare. Would you +give me--would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our +marriage? Father Brierly--my old friend--would give us both Communion, on +the morning of our wedding--in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red +Street, Soho--just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" +His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half +past seven--nobody but your mother would know. And then +afterward--afterward!--we will go through with the great ceremony--and the +crowds--and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the +Seventh's chapel--isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we +two alone, into our hearts--to feed upon Him, forever!" + +There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, +yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the +listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia--as though behind the +lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling--something +that threatened her very self. She drew herself back. + +"Edward!--ought you--to take things for granted about me--like this?" + +His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed. + +"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I +talked it over with Brierly--he sent you a message--" + +"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know +him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do--but +indeed--indeed--my mind is often in confusion--great confusion--I don't +know what to think--about many things." + +"The Church decides for us, darling--that is the great comfort--the great +strength." + +"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know +that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just +as much in the wrong as--well, as he'd think me!--_me_, even!" She +gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. +Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something +so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so +unhappy--all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come--and then +afraid what you'd say--" + +She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his. + +And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though +a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on. + +"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I +found her half mad--in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen +you. But perhaps you've seen her--to-day?" She hung on his answer. + +"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left +Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and +mother for a moment--heard nothing--and rode on here as fast as I could. +What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was +settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging +you--insisting upon dragging you--into it!" + +"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for +him--but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right--I dare say she's +deserved it--I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable--so pitiable! +She's _going_!--she's made up her mind to that--she's going. That's +what she wanted to tell me--and asked that I should tell you." + +"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly. + +"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip +away--to hide! He's not to know where she is--and she implores you to keep +him here--to comfort him--and watch over him." + +"Which of course we should do." + +The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught +Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close. + +"Yes, but Edward!--listen!--it would kill them both. His mind seems to be +giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from +their doctor. And she--she says if she does go, if decent people turn her +out, she'll just go back to people like herself--who'll be kind to her. +Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters." + +"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly. + +"But you can't allow it!--you _can't_!--the poor, poor things!" cried +Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward--I shall never forget it!" And with a +growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of +her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the +window. + +"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his +work--and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last +straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life--and now he'll think +that he's only made things worse. And he's ill--his brain's had a shake. +Edward--dear Edward!--let them stay!--for my sake, let them stay!" + +All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning--more lovely. +She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her +soft cheek against his. + +"Do you mean--let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, +putting his arms round her. + +"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the +house--and so long as he does his work--his scientific work--need anything +else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? +Wouldn't everybody understand--wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for +pity?" + +Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia--do you +ever think of my father in this?" + +"Oh, mayn't I go!--and _beg_ Lord William--" + +"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say--My father's an old man. This +has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, +as he would himself. And now--in addition--you want him to do something +that he feels to be wrong." + +"But Edward, they _are_ married! Isn't it a tyranny"--she brought the +word out bravely--"when it causes so much suffering!--to insist on more +than the law does?" + +"For us there is but one law--the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of +something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of +stern conviction: "For us they are _not_ married--and we should be +conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married +persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I +_can't_ discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress. + +She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate +hopelessness--not without resentment--was rising in her. + +"Then you won't try to persuade your father--even for my sake, Edward?" + +He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because +he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind. + +The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green +vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched +her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said--in a low, lingering +voice: + +"And I--I couldn't marry--and be happy--with the thought always--of what +had happened to them--and how--you couldn't give me--what I asked. I have +been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward--we--we've +made a great mistake!" + +She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet +with something new--and resolute--in her aspect. + +"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay. + +"Oh! it was my fault!"--and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once +childish and piteous--"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought +me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than +I, and of course--of course--you thought that if--if I loved you--I'd be +guided by you--and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live +by myself--and think for myself--more than other girls--because mother was +always busy with other things--that didn't concern me--that I didn't care +about--and I was left alone--and had to puzzle out a lot of things that +I never talked about. I'm obstinate--I'm proud. I must believe for +myself--and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come +out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I +had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since +we've been engaged--this few weeks--I've been doing nothing but think and +think--and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this +trouble. I _couldn't_"--she clenched her hand with a passionate +gesture--"I _couldn't_ do what you're doing. It would kill me. You +seem to be obeying something outside--which you're quite sure of. But if +_I_ drove those two people to despair, because I thought something +was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in +my heart--my _own heart_--again. Love seems to me everything!--being +kind--not giving pain. And for you there's something greater--what the +Church says--what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never +agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was +wicked--and I--well!"--she panted a little, trying for her words--"there +are ugly--violent--feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate +_you_--but--Edward--just now--I felt I could hate--what you believe!" + +The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her +hands, imploring. + +"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!" + +During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree +beside her, looking down upon her--white and motionless. He had made no +effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee. + +"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and +half-consciously--"terrible!" + +"But indeed--indeed--it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a +whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left +untaken. + +The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a +composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come--the +sudden furling of the winds--in the very midst of tempest. She divined the +tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not +dared to watch it. + +"Marcia--is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you +to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time +to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that--I should +influence you?" + +"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of +myself--now. This has made me know myself--as I never did. I should wound +and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard--and bad." + +Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, +as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images +which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the +silences, more active far than speech, which determine life. + +At the end of it, he came to sit beside her. + +"Then we must give it up--we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness +you gave me--this little while. I pray God to bless you--now and forever." + +Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. +She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it +with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a +stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous +earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy +"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose. + +"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night." + +They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her +whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized +what she had done as both inevitable and past recall. + +They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a +piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!--oh, I'm _sorry_!" + +At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden +on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's +sitting-room observed them. + +These persons were--strange to say--Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady +Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired +to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. +Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had +disappeared. + +The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep +silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All +the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running +perpetually through her mind--the girl's gestures and tones--above all the +words of her final warning. + +After all it was not she--his mother--who had done it. Without her it would +have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this +plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?--of Arthur? What +absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled. + +And yet she knew that she was listening--listening in dread--for a footstep +in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the +further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. +He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance +of her seeing him--unless she sent for him--till the following morning, +after the arrival of the letter. _Then_--she must face him. + +But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him +as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, +making his maiden speech. In April--and this was July. Had that infatuation +begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest--her Benjamin? + +She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. +There was somebody approaching her room--evidently on tiptoe. Some one +knocking--very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!" + +The door opened--and there was Coryston. + +She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed. + +"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston." + +He paused on the threshold. + +"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you--or something?" + +His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed--though still annoyed. + +"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come +to see me like this, Coryston." + +"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?" + +She pointed to a number of the _Quarterly_ that was lying open, and to +an article on "The later years of Disraeli." + +Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But +he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his +reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after +a little while, it was pleasant. + +Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her +efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the +book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its +setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and +helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these +last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy +softness--as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human +spectacle--invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body +relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also +oppressed him--like a voice--an omen. + +He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note +from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid +confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now +there was Arthur to be faced--who would never believe, of course, but that +his mother had done it. + +A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and +saw two figures--Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh--on +the instant--all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!--and his creed! +That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father! + +Well!--he peered at them--has she got anything whatever out of young +Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to +wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the +garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not +demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction. + +He sat down again, and tossing the _Quarterly_ away, he took up a +volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really +possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be +taken--Marcia or no Marcia!--to rouse the country-side against the +Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this +tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that +morning--a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to +him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to +hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!--she might wait. + +[Illustration: HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE] + +Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage +outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia! + +He opened the door. + +"Don't come in. Mother's asleep." + +Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood +on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the +instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to +her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She +turned and beckoned to Coryston. + +"Come with me--a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading +from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as +children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm. + +"Coryston--I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my +engagement." + +"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!" + +He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped +back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment. + +"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never +understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear +it. What's wrong with mother?" + +"She's knocked over--by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this +morning." + +He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest. + +"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my +affairs--till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by." + +"I say, Marcia--old woman--don't be so fierce with me. You took me by +surprise--" he muttered, uncomfortably. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world--seems to be able to +understand anybody else--or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by." + +Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing +no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and +Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest +misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston +family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day. + +Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a +long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been +too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to +him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought +relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body. + +The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, +she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in +the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods--the distant +sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir--a few notes of +birds--were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once +indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's +merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt--on the top floor. How +remote!--and yet how near. + +And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had +given him--suffering--suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last +night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her--how could +she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, +now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, +the energy of a fuller life. + +She went to bed, and to sleep--for a few hours--toward morning. She was +roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror. + +"Oh, miss!" + +"What is the matter?" + +Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?--dead? + +The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just +brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the +early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was +locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of +horror. John Betts was sitting--dead--in his chair, with a bullet wound in +the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. +She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped +from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately +unfastened her dress--The bullet had passed through her heart, and death +had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on +which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad--forgive." And +beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The +foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands. + +She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, +fainting, on her pillows. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the +presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty +years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the +girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the +news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell +her what she must know. + +Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing +straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters +she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering +under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang +forward in bed. + +"What!--Marcia!--have you seen Arthur?" + +Marcia shook her head. + +"It's not Arthur, mother!" + +And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as +those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position, +and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding +day, she said not a word. + +On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then +irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant +interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the +Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up +at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried +to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her +daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she +supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go +herself--without permission either from her mother or her betrothed--to +see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing +happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and +annoying! + +However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual +trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult. +In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after +the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She +began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the +night before--or that morning? + +"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night--and this morning he's +not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered +the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then +her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck +her with a sudden and added distress. + +"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day." + +"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, +sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before +he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do +is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing +to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And +I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible +thing at all--without coming to me first." + +"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you--aren't you sorry +for those two people?--and don't you understand that I--I hoped I might +have helped them?" + +At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston +frowned. + +"Certainly, I'm sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can't stand any extra +strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed. +Now go and lie down." + +She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a +new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was +called back. + +"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs +to let me know." + +"Yes, mother." + +As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind +immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult +of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had +come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful +world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, +and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both. + +She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a +short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs. +In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and +flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the +newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone. + +He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her +face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with +such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister. + +She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable +child--saying under her breath: + +"You know--I saw them--the night before last?" + +"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?" +For he saw she had a letter in her hand. + +"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I'll go to the +library." + +She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from +the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When +Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of +grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further +news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, +had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the +discovery of the tragedy. + +"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay +with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the +evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her +sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised +you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the +laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute +depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words +that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the +shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, +which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to +bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back +again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning. +How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be +guessed." + +Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out +a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read: + +"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have +often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can't stay behind. Will you +please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn't met again--" + +It ended incoherently in blots and smudges. + +"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the +letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight +of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library +chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew +from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering +words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned +face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow +under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied +tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she +gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in +this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude +of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but +that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his +voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence +with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for +months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on +whom to lean. + +But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of +Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say +with energy: "I don't want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could +only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world. + +But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, +and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur. + +Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just +dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the +farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her. + +"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How +_abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!" + +"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the +discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a +message." + +[Illustration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN] + +Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy. + +"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks +of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and +it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the +arrival of a letter--" + +"From Enid Glenwilliam?" + +"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part +the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature +appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor +ears--But here he is!" + +Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the +library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face +wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features +and receding chin. + +"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my +dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and +Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed +he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. +_He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I +say--mother is late!" + +He looked round the hall imperiously. + +Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. +Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some +message. + +"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, +sternly. + +"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to +appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should +have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And +what's this they say about a letter?" + +His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in +dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; +but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. + +Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the +letter was. + +"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. + +"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." + +He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand +dropped. + +"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose +you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're +a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of +it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the +little woman, though." + +And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all +the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the +glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, +approached Marcia. + +"My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so +unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to +the police." + +She held it out to him obediently. + +Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. +When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his +smooth-shaven actor's face: + +"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope +it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with +Newbury?" + +Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble +mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. + +"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not +_quarreled_--" + +Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and +pressed it. + +"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without +losing you." + +Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury +then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two +interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The +object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with +such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an +appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw +occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be +alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young +man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to +help his sister. + +Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned +against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole +neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a +more odious, a more untoward situation! + +But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed, +indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the +truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously +composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes, +though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way +unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was +ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she +rose, and said she would go back to her room. + +"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with +her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can." + +As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall. +Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He +opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a +boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading +to the fore-court. + +It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern façade +had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air +Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an +abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write +a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's +last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!--that she knew. His +stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school. + +It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman. +And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn +between two contending imaginations--the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting +beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and +the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night--the +shelves of labeled bottles and jars--the tables and chemical apparatus--the +electric light burning--and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed +figure against his knee:--and then--Newbury--in his sitting-room, amid +the books and portraits of his college years--the crucifix over the +mantelpiece--the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln--of Assisi. + +Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The +thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame +himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it +all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying +with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other, +and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and +not merely man's mistake. She longed--sometimes--to throw her arms round +him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that +young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would +never draw back from what she had offered him--never. She would go to him, +and stand by him--as Sir Wilfrid had said--if he wanted her. + +The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more +unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the +dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of +the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her +daughter. + +"Mother!--do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met--blaming +herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the +morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up." + +Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite +well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned +to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house. + +"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him +since." + +The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady +Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in +connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I +needn't appear," said Marcia, dully. + +"I should rather think not!" + +Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal +institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston +family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said +nothing. + +As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered--with a +start. + +"Mother--I forgot!--I'm so sorry--I dare say it was nothing. But I think a +letter came for Arthur just before twelve--a letter he was expecting. At +least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet +him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since." + +Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near +and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession +to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's +appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth. + +But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up +any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by +other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her +mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded. + +And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia +for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her--insignificant as +the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been. +But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring +out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed--and +knew she possessed--a certain measured strength; just enough--and no +more--to enable her to go through a conversation which _must_ be +faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to +her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and +unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time! + +But reasoning on it did not help her--only silence and endurance. After +resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again, +refusing Marcia's company. + +"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?--if you're going to rest, +you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the +foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her. + +But Lady Coryston shook her head. + +"Thank you--I don't want anything." + + * * * * * + +So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but +wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and +lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed; +in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had +been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet +there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power +and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural +expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had +first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped +him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely; +and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but +withering. + +Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at +recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight +of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the +window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her +waist. + +Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles +of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real. +Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with +human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ +in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they +comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to +suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering +here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of +immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved +much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her +strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to +her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and +to believe. + +Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding +silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself. +Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own +room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once +she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But +otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her +without permission. + +Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a +time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain +which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out--restlessly--to the +East Wood--the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her +face against the log--a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried +ring--almost within reach of her hand--seemed to call to her like a living +thing. No!--let it rest. + +If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him +a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed; +but she did not know for what. + +Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts +were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord +William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile +silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a +full account of the efforts--many and vain--that had been made both by +himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to +persuade him to accept it. + +"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in +themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize +a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could +have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we +have done." + +Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. +Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. +Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the +countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning +attention. + +When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took +his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and +straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small +feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A +mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the +man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a +group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the +Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities +and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the +old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would +have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing +currents of thought and life. + +Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went +back himself to wait for the verdict. + +As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been +held, Coryston emerged. + +Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been +the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. +Newbury began: + +"Will you take a message from me to your sister?" + +A man opened the door in front a little way. + +"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." + +The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the +conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many +forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury +beside him. + +"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" + +Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his +face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression. + +"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to +discuss our differences, Coryston--" + +"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' +as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin +arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is +time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about +'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as +these have been slain!" + +"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes +took fire. + +"Hunted by the Christian conscience!--that it might lie comfortable o' +nights," was the scornful reply. + +Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road, +crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of +sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village. +As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a +motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away. +A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his +brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the +news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had +been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother +and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his +brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown +point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion +which held him. + +Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same +dry and carefully governed voice as before. + +"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still +engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off--although--since +then--I have received two letters from her--" + +He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure. + +"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time--perhaps--I shall know +better--what my future life will be." + +"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do +I want to know!" + +Newbury gave him a look of wonder. + +"I thought you were out for justice--and freedom of conscience?" he said, +slowly. "Is the Christian conscience--alone--excepted? Freedom for every +one else--but none for us?" + +"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston +panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly +in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you +Catholics--Anglican or Roman--want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it +you!" + +"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us +down--which of course you could do with ease--you would destroy all that +you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we +had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. +We stand face to face--we shall stand face to face--while the world lasts." + +Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, +would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law. + +"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford--we simply can't +afford--to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to +those two dead people! They did what _you_ thought wrong, and your +conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider +over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and +cursing?" + +Newbury stood still. + +"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that +cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't +believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting +of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God +_has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." + +"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with +bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there +is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as +those two poor things had for each other!" + +After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the +last word of his own creed. + +Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could +be reached. Newbury paused. + +"Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again." + +He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his +face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever +seen it. + +"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel +nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has +been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood. +It tells me where to go--and I obey." + +He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And +Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced +him. + +But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. + +"Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's +boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And +all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say +to-night." + +He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, +and went off to find Marion Atherstone--the only person with whom he could +trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit +of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress--and even his +rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him +from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted +for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild +company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or +institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, +led by a sure instinct, he went. + +Meanwhile the motor which passed Newbury and Coryston in the park had sped +to its goal. It had already carried Arthur Coryston over half the county. +That morning he had been told at the Atherstones' cottage, on his +breathless arrival there, just before luncheon, that while the Chancellor +had returned to town, Miss Glenwilliam had motored to a friend's house, +some twenty miles north, and was not going back to London till the evening. +Arthur Coryston at once pursued her. Sorely against her will, he had forced +the lady to an interview, and in the blind rage of his utter defeat and +discomfiture, he left her again in hot quest of that explanation with his +mother which Enid Glenwilliam had honestly--and vainly--tried to prevent. + +Lady Coryston meanwhile was bewildered by his absence. During the lonely +hours when Marcia, from a distance, had once caught sight of her crossing +an open window in her sitting-room, she had not been able to settle to any +occupation, still less to rest. She tried to write out the Agenda of an +important Primrose League meeting over which she was to preside; to put +together some notes of her speech. In vain. A strange heaviness weighed +upon her. The only stimulus that worked--and that only for a time--was a +fierce attack on Glenwilliam in one of the morning papers. She read it +hungrily; but it brought on acute headache, which reduced her to idleness +and closed eyes. + +After a while she roused herself to pull down a blind against a teasing +invasion of sun, and in doing so she perceived a slim, white figure +hurrying away from the house, through the bright-colored mazes of the +Italian garden. Marcia! She remembered vaguely that Marcia had come to her +that morning in trouble about what? She could not remember. It had seemed +to her of importance. + +At last, about half an hour after she had seen Marcia disappear in the +shrubbery paths leading to the East Wood, Lady Coryston, startled by a +sound from the fore-court, sat suddenly erect on her sofa. A motor? + +She rose, and going to a little mirror on the wall, she straightened the +lace coiffure she habitually wore. In doing so she was struck--dismayed +even--by her own aspect. + +"When this is all over, Marcia and I perhaps might go abroad for a week or +two," she thought. + +A swift step approaching--a peremptory knock at the door. + +"Come in!" + +Arthur entered, and with his back against the door stood surveying +his mother. She waited for him to speak, expecting violence. For some +moments--in vain. Except in so far as his quick-breathing silence, his look +of dry, hollow-eyed exasperation spoke--more piercingly than words. + +"Well, Arthur," she said, at last, "I have been expecting you for some +time." + +"I have been trying to put the mischief you have done me straight," he +said, between his teeth. + +"I have done you no mischief that I know of. Won't you come and sit down +quietly--and talk the whole matter over? You can't imagine that I desire +anything but your good!" + +His laugh seemed to give her physical pain. + +"Couldn't you take to desiring something else, mother, than my 'good' as +you call it? Because, I tell you plainly, it don't suit my book. You have +been meddling in my affairs!--just as you have always meddled in them, for +matter of that! But this time you've done it with a vengeance--you've done +it _damnably_!" He struck his hand upon a table near. "What right had +you"--he approached her threateningly--"what earthly right had you to go +and see Enid Glenwilliam yesterday, just simply that you might spoil my +chances with her! Who gave you leave?" + +He flung the questions at her. + +"I had every right," said Lady Coryston, calmly. "I am your mother--I +have done everything for you--you owe your whole position to me. You +were ruining yourself by a mad fancy. I was bound to take care that +Miss Glenwilliam should not accept you without knowing all the facts. +But--actually--as it happens--she had made up her mind--before we met." + +"So she says!--and I don't believe a word of it--_not--one--word_! She +wanted to make me less mad with you. She's like you, mother, she thinks +she can manage everybody. So she tried to cram me--that it was Glenwilliam +persuaded her against me. Rot! If you hadn't gone and meddled, if you +hadn't treated her like dirt--if you hadn't threatened to spoil my +prospects, and told her you'd never receive her--if you hadn't put her +back up in a hundred ways--she'd have married me. It's +you--you--_you_--that have done it!" + +He threw himself on a chair in front of her, his hands on his knees, +staring at her. His aspect as of a man disorganized and undone by baffled +passion, repelled and disgusted her. Was this her Arthur?--her perfect +gentleman--her gay, courteous, well-behaved darling--whose mingled docility +and good breeding had, so far, suited both her affection and her love of +rule so well? The deep under-sense of disaster which had held her all day, +returned upon her in ten-fold strength. But she fronted him bravely. + +"You are, as it happens, entirely wrong, Arthur. It's not I who have done +it--but Miss Glenwilliam's own good sense--or her father's. Of course I +confess frankly that I should have done my best--that I did, if you like, +do my best, to prevent your marriage with Miss Glenwilliam. And as for +right, who else had a right, if not I? Was it not most unkind, most +undutiful on your part!"--her tone was a tone of battle--"was it not an +outrage on your father's memory--that you should even entertain the +notion of such a connection? To bring the daughter of that man into this +family!--after all we have done--and suffered--for our principles--it's +you, who ought to ask _my_ pardon, Arthur, and not I yours! Times +without number, you have agreed with me in despising people who have +behaved as if politics were a mere game--a trifle that didn't matter. You +have told me often, that things were getting too hot; you couldn't be +friends in private, with people you hated in public; people you looked +upon as robbers and cheats. And then--_then_--you go and let this +infatuation run away with you--you forget all your principles--you forget +your mother, and all you owe her--and you go and ask this girl to marry +you--whose father is our personal and political enemy--a political +adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I +hold sacred--or ought to hold sacred!" + +"For goodness' sake, mother, don't make a political speech!" He turned upon +her with angry contempt. "That kind of thing does all very well to spout +at an election--but it won't do between you and me. I _don't_ hate +Glenwilliam--_there_! The estates--and the property--and all we hold +sacred, as you call it--will last my time--and his. And I jolly well don't +care what happens afterward. _He's_ not going to do us much harm. +England's a deal tougher proposition than he thinks. It's you women who get +up such a hullabaloo--I declare you make politics a perfect devilry! But +then"--he shrugged his shoulders fiercely--"I'm not going to waste time in +arguing. I just came to tell you _what I intend to do_; and then I'm +going up to town. I've ordered the motor for seven o'clock." + +Lady Coryston had risen, and stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, +looking down upon her son. + +"I shall be glad indeed to hear what you intend to do, Arthur. I see you +have missed two or three important divisions lately." + +He burst out: + +"And they won't be the last either, by a good way. I'm going to chuck it, +mother! And if you don't like it--you can blame yourself!" + +"What do you mean?" + +He hesitated a moment--then spoke deliberately. + +"I intend to leave Parliament after this session. I do! I'm sick of it. A +friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me +to go in with him--and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my +mind from these troubles." + +Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her +strong will could keep from trembling. + +"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for +you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon +you--" + +He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. + +"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you +ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since +I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was +literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that! +And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of +him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that +I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you +knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that +meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page +_before you told me_. And when I kicked--and told you about Enid--did +you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?--did you ever, +even, consider for one moment what I told you?--that I was in love with +her?--dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged +it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow--" + +His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. + +"Instead of that, mother--you only thought of how you could thwart and +checkmate me--how you could get _your_ way--and force me to give up +mine. It was _abominable_ of you to go and see Enid, without a word to +me!--it was _abominable_ to plot and plan behind my back, and then to +force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of +any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!--she +didn't want to come it too hard on you--that's her way!--so she made up +some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! +You've ruined me!--you've ruined me!" + +He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and +pain. + +Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a +passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that +was closing on her, she could not restrain. + +"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course +you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so +lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like +this?" + +He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look. + +"Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no +good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been +fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But +the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all +my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I +did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been +kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--" + +And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face +disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood +of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the +shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, +though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. +But, Arthur!--She put up a trembling hand. + +"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done +the best I could for you--always." + +"Why didn't you _love_ us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for +emphasis. "Why didn't you _love_ us! It was always politics--politics! +Somebody to be attacked--somebody to be scored off--somebody to be squared. +And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! My poor father was as sick of +it often as we were. He had enough of it out of doors. Damn politics for +women, I say--damn them!" + +Lady Coryston raised her hand. + +"_Go_, Arthur! This is enough." + +He drew a long breath. + +"Upon my soul, I think it is. We'd better not excite each other any more. +I'll speak to Sir Wilfrid, mother, before I go, and ask him to report +various things to you, which I have to say. And I shall go and see the +Whips to-night. Of course I don't want to do the party any harm. If there +is a general election in the autumn, all that need happen is that I sha'n't +stand again. And as to the estates"--he hesitated--"as to the estates, +mother, do as you like. Upon my word I think you'd better give them back to +Coryston! A certain amount of money is all I shall want." + +"Go!" said Lady Coryston again, still pointing. + +He stood a moment, fiddling with some ornaments on a table near him, then +caught up his hat with a laugh--and still eying her askance, he walked to +the door, opened it, and disappeared; though he closed it so uncertainly +that Lady Coryston, until, after what seemed an interval, she heard his +footsteps receding, could not be sure that he was really gone. + +But he was gone; and all the plans and hopes of her later life lay in ashes +about her. She sat motionless. After half an hour she heard the sound of a +motor being driven away from the front of the house. Through the evening +air, too, she caught distant voices--which soon ceased. + +She rang presently for her maid, and said she would dine in her room, +because of a bad headache. Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid +Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred +him to the next morning. + +Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's +ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that +no one dared force themselves upon her. Only, between ten and eleven, +Marcia again came to the door, knocked gently, and was told to go away. Her +mother would be all right in the morning. The girl reluctantly obeyed. + +The state of terrible tension in which Lady Coryston passed that night had +no witness. It could only be guessed at, by Marcia, in particular, to +whom it fell afterward to take charge of her mother's papers and personal +affairs. Lady Coryston had apparently gathered all Arthur's, letters to her +together, from the very first to the very latest, tied them up neatly, and +laid them in the drawer which held those of her dead husband. She had begun +to write a letter to Coryston, but when found, it was incoherent, and could +not be understood. She had removed the early photographs of Arthur from her +table, and a larger, recent one of the young M.P., taken in London for the +constituency, which was on her mantelpiece, and had placed them both face +downward in the same drawer with the letters. And then, when she had found +it impossible to write what she wished to write, she seemed to have gone +back to her arm-chair, taking with her two or three of Arthur's Eton +reports--by what instinct had she chosen them out from the piles of +letters!--and a psalter she often used. But by a mere accident, a sinister +trick of fate, when she was found, the book lay open under her hand at one +of those imprecatory psalms at which Christendom has at last learned to +shudder. Only a few days before, Sir Wilfrid Bury had laughed at her--as +only he might--for her "Old Testament tone" toward her enemies, and had +quoted this very psalm. Her helpless fingers touched it. + +But the night was a night of vigil for others also. Coryston, who could not +sleep, spent the greater part of it first in writing to Marion Atherstone, +and then in composing a slashing attack upon the High Church party for its +attitude toward the divorce laws of the country, and the proposals recently +made for their reform. "How much longer are we going to allow these +black-coated gentlemen to despise and trample on the laws under which +the rest of us are content to live!--or to use the rights and powers +of property for the bare purpose of pressing their tyrannies and their +superstitions on other people?" + +Meanwhile, in the beautiful chapel of Hoddon Grey, Edward Newbury, worn out +with the intolerable distress of the preceding forty-eight hours, and yet +incapable of sleep, sat or knelt through long stretches of the night. The +chapel was dark but for one light. Over the altar there burnt a lamp, and +behind it could be seen, from the chair, where he knelt, the silk veil of +the tabernacle. Reservation had been permitted for years in the Hoddon Grey +chapel, and the fact had interwoven itself with the deepest life of +the household, eclipsing and dulling the other religious practices +of Anglicanism, just as the strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or +sterilizes the rest. There, in Newbury's passionate belief, the Master of +the House kept watch, or slept, above the altar, as once above the Galilean +waves. For him, the "advanced" Anglican, as for any Catholic of the Roman +faith, the doctrine of the Mass was the central doctrine of all religion, +and that intimate and personal adoration to which it leads, was the +governing power of life. The self-torturing anguish which he had suffered +ever since the news of the two suicides had reached him could only endure +itself in this sacred presence; and it was there he had taken refuge under +the earlier blow of the breach with Marcia. + +The night was very still--a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of +starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, +stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, +and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the +flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently +and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; and the white mists on the lawn and +fields outside made their way through the open windows, and dimmed the glow +of color on the walls and in the apse. + +In those melancholy and yet ardent hours Edward Newbury reached the utmost +heights of religious affirmation, and the extreme of personal renunciation. +It became clear to a mind attuned for such thoughts, that, by severing him +from Marcia, and, at the same time, and by the same stroke, imposing upon +him at least some fraction of responsibility--a fraction which his honesty +could not deny--for the deaths of John and Alice Betts, God had called him, +Edward Newbury, in a way not to be mistaken and not to be refused. His life +was henceforth forfeit--forfeit to his Lord. Henceforth, let him make of +it a willing sacrifice, an expiatory oblation, perpetually renewed, and +offered in perpetual union with the Divine Victim, for their souls and his +own. + +The ideas of the Conventual house in which he had so lately spent hours of +intense religious happiness closed upon him and possessed him. He was +not to marry. He was reserved for the higher counsels, the Counsels of +Perfection. The face and talk of his friend Brierly, who was so soon going +to his dangerous and solitary post in Southern India, haunted his mind, and +at last seemed to show him a way out of his darkness. His poor father and +mother! But he never doubted for one moment that they would give him up, +that they would let him follow his conscience. + +By the time the sun was fairly up, the storm of religious feeling had died +down in Newbury. He had taken his resolve, but he was incapable of any +further emotion concerning it. On the other hand, his heart was alive to +the thought of Marcia, and of that letter she had sent him. Dear, generous +Marcia! Once more he would write to her--once more! + +"DEAREST MARCIA,--I may call you so, I think, for the last time, and at +this turning-point of both our lives. I may never see you again; or if we +do meet, you will have become so strange to me that you will wonder in what +other and distant life it was that we loved each other. I think you did +love me for a little while, and I do bless and thank you that you let +me know you--and love you. And I bless you above all for the thought of +consolation and pity you had toward me, even yesterday, in those terrible +hours--when you offered to come back to me and help me, as though our bond +had never been broken. + +"No, dear Marcia!--I saw the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make +you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was +never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one +whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be +narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough--or cold enough!--to let you +give yourself back to one you cannot truly love--or trust. But that you +offered it, because you were sorry for me, and that you would have carried +it out, firmly, your dear hand clenched, as it were, on the compact--that +warms my heart--that I shall have, as a precious memory, to carry into the +far-off life that I foresee. + +"I cannot write much about the terrible thing at Redcross Farm. Your great +pity for me implies that you think me--and my father--in some way and in +some degree, responsible. Perhaps we are--I do not wish to shirk the truth. +If so, it is as soldiers under orders are responsible for the hurt and +damage they may cause, in their King's war--as much, and as little. At +least, so far as the main matter is concerned. That I might have been--that +I ought to have been--infinitely more loving, wiser, stronger to help +them--that I know--that I shall feel as long as I live. And it is a feeling +which will determine all my future life. + +"You remember what I told you of Father Brierly and the Community of the +Ascension? As soon as I can leave my father and mother--they are at present +in deep distress--I shall probably go to the Community House in Lancashire +for a time. My present intention is to take orders, and perhaps to join +Brierly eventually in mission work. My father and mother are splendid! They +and I shall be separated perhaps in this world, but in that mysterious +other world which lies all about us even now, and which is revealed to us +in the Sacraments, we shall meet at last, and forever--if we are faithful. + +"Good-by--God be with you--God give you every good thing in this +present time--love, children, friends--and, 'in the world to come, life +everlasting.'" + + * * * * * + +About the hour when the letter was finished, when the July sun was already +high over the dewy new-shorn fields, Coryston, after an hour's sleep in his +chair, and a bath, left Knatchett to walk to Coryston. He was oppressed by +some vague dread which would not let him rest. In the strong excitements +and animosities of the preceding day he had forgotten his mother. But the +memory of her face on the sofa during that Sunday reading had come back +upon him with unpleasant force. It had been always so with him in life. She +no sooner relapsed into the woman than he became a son. Only the experience +had been rare! + +He crossed the Hoddon Grey park, and then walked through _a_ mile +of the Coryston demesne, till he reached the lake and saw beyond it the +Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun--and the long +marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared +loggia. "What the deuce are _we_ going to do with these places!" he +asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be +allowed to sell it, or turn it to any useful purpose whatever!" + +He skirted the lake, and began to mount the steps, and flagged paths of the +formal garden. Suddenly as he approached the garden front he saw that two +windows of his mother's sitting-room were open, and that some one--a figure +in black--was sitting in a high-backed arm-chair beside one of them. His +mother!--up?--at seven o'clock in the morning? Yet was it his mother? He +came nearer. The figure was motionless--the head thrown back, the eyes +invisible from where he stood. Something in the form, the attitude--its +stillness and strangeness in the morning light--struck him with horror. He +rushed to the garden door, found it open, dashed up the stairs, and into +his mother's room. + +"Mother!" + +Lady Coryston neither moved nor spoke. But as he came up to her, he saw +that she was alive--that her eyes opened and perceived him. Nothing else in +her lived or moved. And as he knelt down by her, and took her tenderly in +his arms, she relapsed into the unconscious state from which his entrance +had momentarily roused her. + + * * * * * + +What else there is to tell had best be told quickly. Lady Coryston lived +for some eight months after this seizure. She partially recovered from the +first stroke, and all the organization of the great house, and all the +thought of her children circled round the tragic death-in-life into which +she had fallen. + +Arthur had come rushing back to Coryston after the catastrophe, restored +by it, like a stream which has wandered in flood, to the older and natural +channels of life. Bitter remorse for his conduct to his mother, and a sharp +resentment of Enid Glenwilliam's conduct toward himself, acted wholesomely. +He took up his normal occupations again, in Parliament and on the estates, +and talked no more of Buenos Ayres. But whether his mother's darkened mind +ever forgave him it would be difficult to say. She rarely noticed him, +and when she spoke it was generally for Coryston. Her dependence upon her +eldest son became a touching and poignant thing, deepening the souls of +both. Coryston came to live at Coryston, and between his love for Marion +Atherstone, and his nursing of his mother, was more truly happy for a time +than his character had ever yet allowed him to be. The din of battle, +political and religious, penetrated no more within a house where death came +closer day by day, and where weakness and suffering had at last united +these differing men and women in a common interest of profoundest pity. +Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them +forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when +she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry--Corry +darling"--and as he came closer--"Corry, who was my firstborn!" + +On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote: + +"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning +rest which does not--as death so often does--make any break with our +memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. She +is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut +mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt +still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the +face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she +modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able +during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, to make +an alteration in her will, and the alteration was no mere surrender to what +one sees to have been, at bottom, her invincible affection for Coryston. +She has still left Arthur the estates for life, but with remainder to +Coryston's son, should he have one, and she has made Coryston a trustee +together with Sir Wilfrid Bury. This will mean practically a division +between the brothers--to which Arthur has already pledged himself, so he +tells me--but with no power to Coryston to make such radical changes as +would destroy the family tradition, at least without Arthur's consent and +Sir Wilfrid's. But Coryston will have plenty of money and plenty of land +wherewith to experiment, and no doubt we shall see some strange things. + +"Thus she kept her flag flying to the end, so far as the enfeebled brain +allowed. Yet the fact was that her state of dependence on her children +during her illness, and their goodness to her, did in truth evoke another +woman with new perceptions, superposed, as it were, upon the old. And +there, I think, came in her touch of greatness--which one could not have +expected. She was capable at any rate of _this_ surrender; not going +back upon the old--but just accepting the new. Her life might have petered +out in bitterness and irritation, leaving an odious memory. It became a +source of infinite sweetness, just because her children found out--to their +immense surprise--that she _could_ let herself be loved; and they +threw themselves with eagerness on the chance she gave them. + +"She dies in time--one of the last of a generation which will soon have +passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no +doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her +rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts--or few. +As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as +obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that +is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will +'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority of his kind. + +"Marcia!--in her black dress, beside her mother, looking down upon +her--with that yearning look!--But--not a word! There are things too sacred +for these pages." + + * * * * * + +During the months of Lady Coryston's illness, indeed, Reginald Lester +entered, through stages scarcely perceived by himself and them, upon a new +relation toward the Coryston family. He became the increasingly intimate +friend and counselor of the Coryston brothers, and of Marcia, no less--but +in a fresh and profounder sense. He shared much of the estate business with +Mr. Page; he reconciled as best he could the jarring views of Coryston and +Arthur; he started on the reorganization of the great Library, in which, so +far, he had only dealt with a fraction of its possessions. And every day he +was Marcia's companion, in things intimate and moving, no less than in +the practical or commonplace affairs of ordinary life. It was he who read +poetry with her, or played accompaniments to her songs, in the hours of +relief from her nursing; it was he who watched and understood her; who +guided and yet adored her. His love for her was never betrayed; but it +gradually became, without her knowing it, the condition of her life. And +when Lady Coryston died, in the February following her stroke, and Marcia, +who was worn out, went abroad with Waggin for a few weeks' rest, the +correspondence which passed between her and Lester during the earlier days +of her absence, by the more complete and deliberate utterance which it +permitted between them, did at last reveal to the girl the depths of her +own heart. + +During her travels various things happened. + +One chilly afternoon, late in March, when a light powdering of snow lay on +the northern slopes of the hills, Coryston went up to the cottage in +the hopes of finding Marion Atherstone alone. There had been a quiet +understanding between them all the winter, more or less known to the +Coryston family, but all talk of marriage had been silenced by the +condition of Lady Coryston, who indeed never knew such schemes were in the +air. + +About six weeks, however, after his mother's death, Coryston's natural +_fougue_ suggested to him that he was being trifled with. He burst +into the little sitting-room where Marion was just making tea, and sat +down, scowling, on the further side of the hearth. + +"What is the matter?" Marion asked, mildly. During the winter a beautifying +change seemed to have passed upon Atherstone's daughter. She was younger, +better looking, better dressed; yet keeping always the touch of homeliness, +of smiling common-sense, which had first attracted a man in secret +rebellion against his own rhetoric and other people's. + +"You are treating me abominably!" said Coryston, with vehemence. + +"How? My conscience is as sound as a bell!" Wherewith, laughing, she handed +him his cup of tea. + +"All bells aren't sound. Some are flawed," was the prompt reply. "I have +asked you twice this week to tell me when you will be good enough to marry +me, and you haven't said a single word in reply." + +Marion was silent a little; then she looked up, as Andromache looked at +Hector--with a laugh, yet with something else fluttering behind. + +"Let's ask ourselves once more, Herbert--is it really a wise thing to do?" + +Nobody else since his father died had ever called Coryston by his Christian +name; which was perhaps why Marion Atherstone took a peculiar pleasure in +using it. Coryston had mostly forgotten that he possessed such a name, but +from her he liked it. + +"What on earth do you mean by that?" + +"In the first place, Herbert, I was never intended by nature to be a +peeress." + +He sprang up furiously. + +"I never heard a more snobbish remark! All that you are asked is to be my +wife." + +She shook her head. + +"We can't make a world for ourselves only. Then there's--father." + +"Well, what about him?" + +"You don't get on very well," she said, with a sigh. + +Coryston controlled himself with difficulty. + +"For your father, the Liberal party is mostly Jahve--the hope of the +children of light. For me the Liberal party is mostly Dagon--either made a +god of by Philistines, or groveling before a stronger God--Mammon. But that +don't matter. I can behave myself." + +Marion bent over her work. + +"Can't I behave myself?" he repeated, threateningly, as he moved nearer +her. + +She looked up at last. + +"Suppose you get bored with me--as you have with the Liberal party?" + +"But never with liberty," he said, ardently. + +"Suppose you come to see the seamy side of me--as you do of everybody?" + +"I don't invent seamy sides--where none exist," he said, looking +peremptorily into her eyes. + +"I'm not clever, Herbert--and I think I'm a Tory." + +"Heavens, what do I care? You're the woman I happen to love." + +"And I intend to go to church." + +"Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. + +She shook her head. + +"No. I'm an Evangelical." + +"Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. + +She laughed. + +"It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth--goodwill to men--that I can +understand. So that's settled. Now then--a fortnight next Wednesday?" + +"No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not. Wait a minute, Herbert! Where +are you going to live, and what are you going to do?" + +"I'm taking over the Dorset estates. Lots to do on them, and not much +money. Arthur washes his hands of them. There's an old farm where we can +live. In six months I shall have quarreled with all the neighbors, and life +will be worth living again." + +She lifted her eyebrows. + +"A charming prospect for your wife!" + +"Certainly. You'll have the life you were born for. You'll go round +after me--whitewashing the scandals I cause--or if you like to put it +sentimentally--binding up the wounds I make. But if I'm anything I'm a +sociologist, and my business is to make experiments. They will no doubt be +as futile as those I have been making here." + +"And where shall I come in?" + +"You'll be training up the boy--who'll profit by the experiments." + +"The boy?" + +"The boy--our boy--who's to have the estates," said Coryston, without a +moment's hesitation. + +Marion flushed, and pulled her work to her again. Coryston dropped on his +knees beside her, and asked her pardon with eyes whereof the male audacity +had passed into a steady and shining tenderness. + +When Coryston returned that night to the big house, he found his brothers +Arthur and James arrived for the week-end. Arthur was full of Parliamentary +gossip--"battles of kites and crows," of which Coryston was generally +intolerant. But on this occasion he took it silently, and Arthur rambled +on. James sat mildly beaming, with finger-tips joined, and the look of +one on the verge of a confidence. But he talked, after all--when Arthur +paused--only of music and the opera, and as his brothers were not musical, +he soon came to an end, and Arthur held the stage. They were gathered in +the smoking-room on the ground or garden floor, a room hung with pictures +of race-horses, and saddened by various family busts that had not been +thought good enough for the library. Outside, the March wind rattled +through trees as yet untouched by the spring, and lashed a shivering water +round the fountain nymphs. + +"Whoever could have dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, +in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from a +reverie. + +"Who? The Government? Lord!--what does it matter? Look here, you chaps--I +heard some news in Martover just now. Lord William Newbury died last +night--heart failure--expected for the last fortnight." + +Arthur received the news with the lively professional interest that one +landowner feels in another, and tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind +himself to ask Page when the funeral was to be, as the Member for the +division must of course attend it. James said, thoughtfully: + +"Edward, I saw, was ordained last week. And my letter from Marcia this +morning tells me she expects to see him in Rome, on his way to India. Poor +Lady William will be very much alone!" + +"If you make a solitude and call it religion, what can you expect?" said +Coryston, sharply. His face had darkened at the Newburys' name. As always, +it had evoked the memory of two piteous graves. Then, as he got up from his +chair, he said to Arthur: + +"I've fixed it up. Marion and I shall get married next month." + +The brothers looked a little embarrassed, though not at all surprised. +Corry's attachment to this plain, sensible lady, of moderate opinions, had +indeed astonished them enormously when they first became aware of it; but +they were now used to it. + +"All right, Corry!" said Arthur, slapping his brother on the back. "The +best chance of keeping you out of a madhouse! And a very nice woman! You +don't expect me to chum with her father?" + +"Not unless you wish to learn a thing or two--which was never your strong +point," said Coryston, dodging a roll of some Parliamentary paper or other, +which Arthur aimed at him. He turned to James. "Well, James, aren't you +going to congratulate me?--And why don't you do it yourself?" + +"Of course I congratulate you," said James, hastily. "Most sincerely!" + +But his expression--half agitated, half smiling--betrayed emotions so far +beyond the needs of the situation, that Coryston gave him a puzzled glance. +James indeed opened his mouth as though to speak. Then a bright, pink color +overspread his whole countenance from brow to chin; his lips shut and he +fell back in his chair. Presently he went away, and could be heard playing +Bach on the organ in the central hall. He returned to London the same +evening carrying a cargo of philosophical books, from the library, and a +number of novels, though as a rule he never read novels. + +The next morning, in a letter to Coryston, he announced his engagement to a +girl of nineteen, an orphan, and a pupil at the Royal College of Music. She +was the daughter of his Cambridge tutor--penniless, pretty, and musical. He +had paid her fees it seemed for several years, and the effect on him of her +charming mezzo-soprano voice, at a recent concert given by the College, had +settled the matter. The philosopher in love, who had been too shy to tell +his brothers _viva voce_, was quite free of tongue in writing; and +Coryston and Arthur, though they laughed, were glad that "old James" had +found the courage to be happy. Coryston remarked to Arthur that it now +remained for him to keep up the blue blood of the family. + +"Or Marcia," said Arthur, evading the personal reference. + +"Marcia?" Coryston threw his brother an amused, significant look, and said +nothing for a moment. But presently he dropped out: + +"Lester writes that he'll be in Rome next week looking after that Borghese +manuscript. He doesn't expect to get back here till May." + +For Lester had now been absent from Coryston some three or four weeks, +traveling on matters connected with the library. + +Arthur made no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, +twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and +boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with +success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family +house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had +by now asserted, or reasserted themselves; though fighting still with the +sore memory of Enid Glenwilliam. Was he going to allow his sister to marry +out of her rank--even though the lover were the best fellow in the world? +A man may marry whom he will, and the family is only secondarily affected. +But a woman is absorbed by the family of her husband. + +He finally shrugged his shoulders over it. + +"Marcia is as stiff-necked as Coryston," he said to himself, "if it comes +to that." + + * * * * * + +April followed. Amid a crowded Rome, alive with flowers and fountains under +a life-giving sun, Marcia Coryston became sharply conscious again of the +color and beauty interwoven with mere living, for the sane and sound among +men. Edward Newbury passed through on his way to Brindisi and Southern +India; and she saw him for an hour; an interview short and restrained, but +not to be forgotten by either of the two persons concerned. When it was +over Marcia shed a few secret tears--tears of painful sympathy, of an +admiration, which was half pity; and then threw herself once more with--as +it were--a gasp of renewed welcome, into the dear, kind, many-hued world +on which Edward Newbury had turned his back. Presently Lester arrived. He +became her constant companion through the inexhaustible spectacle of Rome; +and she could watch him among the students who were his fellows, modest +or learned as they, yet marked out from most of them by the signs he +bore--signs well known by now to her--of a poetic and eager spirit, +always and everywhere in quest of the human--of man himself, laughing or +suffering, behind his works. The golden days passed by; the blue and white +anemones bloomed and died in the Alban woods; the English crowd that comes +for Easter arrived and departed; and soon Marcia herself must go home, +carrying with her the passionate yet expectant feeling of a child, tired +out with happy days, and dreaming of more to come. + +These were private and personal affairs. But in March a catastrophe +happened which shook the mind of England, and profoundly altered the course +of politics. An American yacht with Glenwilliam on board was overtaken +off the Needles by a sudden and terrific storm, and went down, without a +survivor, and with nothing but some floating wreckage to tell the tale. The +Chancellor's daughter was left alone and poor. The passionate sympathy +and admiration which her father's party had felt for himself was in some +measure transferred to his daughter. But to the amazement of many persons, +she refused with scorn any pecuniary help, living on a small income, and +trying her hand, with some prospect of success, at literature. About six +weeks after her father's death Arthur Coryston found her out and again +asked her to marry him. It is probable there was some struggle in her mind, +but in the end she refused. "You are a kind, true fellow!" she said to him, +gratefully, "but it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do!" And then with a darkening +of her strong face: "There is only one thing I can do for _him_ +now--to serve his causes! And you don't care for one of them! No--no! +Good-by!--Good-by!" + +At last, in May, Marcia came back again to live--as she supposed--at +Coryston with Arthur, and do her duty by her own people. A wonderful spring +was abroad in the land. The gorse on the slopes of the hills was a marvel, +and when the hawthorns came out beside it, or flung their bloom along the +hedgerows and the streams; when far and near the cuckoo's voice made the +new world of blossom and growth articulate; when furtive birds slipped +joyously to and fro between the nests above and a teeming earth below; when +the west winds veering between south and north, and driving the great white +clouds before them, made, every day, a new marvel of the sky--Marcia would +often hold her breath and know within herself the growth of an answering +and a heavenly spring. Lester finished his scholar's errands in Rome and +Naples, and returned to Coryston in the middle week of May, in order to +complete his work there. He found much more to do than he supposed; he +found his friends, Coryston and Arthur, eager to capture and keep him; he +found in every field and wood the kindling beauty of the year; he found +Marcia!--and a bewildering though still shy message in her dark eyes. +Through what doubts and scruples, through what stages of unfolding +confidence and growing joy their minds passed, and to what end it all moved +on, let those imagine, to whom the purest and deepest of human emotions has +ever spoken, or is speaking now. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Coryston Family, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + +***** This file should be named 9507-8.txt or 9507-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/5/0/9507/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Coryston Family + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: August 5, 2012 [EBook #9507] +Release Date: December, 2005 +First Posted: October 7, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<br> +<br> +<h3>E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland,<br> + Josephine Paolucci, Tonya Allen,<br> + and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</h3> +<br> +<br> +<hr> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i1.png"><img src="images/i1.png" width="150" +alt="THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS PERORATION"></a> +</p> + + + +<h1>THE CORYSTON FAMILY</h1> + +<h2>A NOVEL</h2> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>MRS. HUMPHRY WARD</h2> + +<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY</h3> + +<h2>ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN</h2> + +<h3>1913</h3> + +<br> +<br> + +<h3>TO</h3> +<h3>G.M.T.</h3> +<h3>AND</h3> +<h3>J.P.T.</h3> + +<br> +<br> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH1"> CHAPTER I</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH2"> CHAPTER II</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH3"> CHAPTER III</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH4"> CHAPTER IV</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH5"> CHAPTER V</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH6"> CHAPTER VI</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH7"> CHAPTER VII</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH8"> CHAPTER VIII</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH9"> CHAPTER IX</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH10"> CHAPTER X</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH11"> CHAPTER XI</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH12"> CHAPTER XII</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH13"> CHAPTER XIII</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH14"> CHAPTER XIV</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH15"> CHAPTER XV</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH16"> CHAPTER XVI</a></p> +<br> +<br> + +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<br> +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i1.png">"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" <i>Frontispiece</i></a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i2.png">THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS PERORATION</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i3.png">AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i4.png">THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i5.png">"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i6.png">MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i7.png">HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE</a></p> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="images/i8.png">NOW SUDDENLY—HERE WAS A FRIEND—ON WHOM TO LEAN</a></p> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<h2> +Book I +</h2> + +<h2>LADY CORYSTON</h2> +<p class="ctr"> +[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.] +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<a name="CH1"><!-- CH1 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER I +</h2> +<p> +The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing +six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the +new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet. +The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less +crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact +throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence, +almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest; +cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway +a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great +parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their +seats, like arrows drawn to the string. +</p> +<p> +Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the +Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor +below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs +placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save +as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them—women with their faces +pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber, +endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in +their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending +forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort +to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that +no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was +close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft <i>frou-frou</i> +of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some +lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front +bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed +filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face +emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House +struck upon it. +</p> +<p> +The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which +seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front +of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She +rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to +enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the +author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her +hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak +to her. +</p> +<p> +Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what +seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure +and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention +had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a +lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But +it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have +paid no attention. +</p> +<p> +"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the +girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning. +</p> +<p> +The girl moved toward him, and returned. +</p> +<p> +"What is it, Marcia?" +</p> +<p> +"A note from Arthur, mamma." +</p> +<p> +A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with +difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter: +</p> +<p> +"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner." +</p> +<p> +"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively. +"It's dreadfully tiring." +</p> +<p> +"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for +me." +</p> +<p> +She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker +below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his +audience. +</p> +<p> +"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to +her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower +her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door +neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail, +however, than its predecessors. +</p> +<p> +"Who is that lady in the corner—do you mind telling me?" +</p> +<p> +The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled +lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside +her. +</p> +<p> +"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly. +</p> +<p> +"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion. +</p> +<p> +Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A +country cousin, I suppose." +</p> +<p> +But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner. +Weren't you here when he was speaking?" +</p> +<p> +"No—I've not long come in." +</p> +<p> +The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the +left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. +</p> +<p> +It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a +rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke +in the ringing sentences: +</p> +<p> +"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a +growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the +main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform +and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; +change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, +while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the +landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set +yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may +yet serve the new time! Then you will have an <i>English</i>, a national +policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated +by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every +means and every device in our power!" +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i2.png"><img src="images/i2.png" width="150" +alt="THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS PERORATION"></a> +</p> +<p> +The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the +Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided +at once. The third began to speak. +</p> +<p> +A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several +persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner +addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had +just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her. +"Childish!—positively childish!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity +to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory +neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair. +</p> +<p> +"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for +years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through." +</p> +<p> +"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of +course she knew perfectly who you were." +</p> +<p> +"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning +to her watch. +</p> +<p> +"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back." +</p> +<p> +"No. I might miss his getting up." +</p> +<p> +There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the +occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the +farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more +distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, +to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though +her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches. +</p> +<p> +It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion +was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but +singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows. +The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These +features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and chin, +the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face, set +in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole, handsome +impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture of Elizabeth +Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been often compared; +and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her personal appearance, +did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The +likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by +her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered +hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of +many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black +silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into +the service of her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid +the large and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore +habitually a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the +lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For +the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while +loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore +seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self. +</p> +<p> +In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being—oppressively +wonderful—whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers +were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or +the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be +used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be +used. On the contrary, her husband—while he lived—her three sons, and her +daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of +her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very +much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just +as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends. +</p> +<p> +As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of +Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as +of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances +of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain +than blows of some kind before long.... +</p> +<p> +"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would +get him in." +</p> +<p> +Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the +Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who +was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the +debate. +</p> +<p> +"Has he just come in?" +</p> +<p> +"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected +to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston, +impatiently. +</p> +<p> +But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus unkindly +referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the House lumbered or +fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to infinity. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother +among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him out +before. One can see he's on wires." +</p> +<p> +For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening speeches, +which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had +sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom +her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in +hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the +House. His attitude gave the impression of one just about to spring to his +feet. +</p> +<p> +But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time before +springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman—had heard him often +before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise with ease and cease +with difficulty. She would certainly have time to get a cup of tea and come +back. So with a word to her mother she groped her way through the dark +gallery across the corridor toward a tearoom. But at the door of the +gallery she turned back. There through the lattice which shuts in the +Ladies' Gallery, right across the House, she saw the Strangers' Gallery at +the other end. The man whose head had been propped on his hands when she +first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be +looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the +Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His +face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the +clear, critical eyes, their sudden frown or smile. +</p> +<p> +"I wonder what <i>he</i>'ll think of Arthur's speech—and whether he's +seen Coryston. I wonder whether he knows there's going to be an awful row +to-night. Coryston's mad!" +</p> +<p> +Coryston was her eldest brother, and she was very fond of him. But the way +he had been behaving!—the way he had been defying mamma!—it was really +ridiculous. What could he expect? +</p> +<p> +She seemed to be talking to the distant face, defending her mother and +herself with a kind of unwilling deference. +</p> +<p> +"After all, do I really care what he thinks?" +</p> +<p> +She turned and went her way to the tearoom. As she entered it she saw some +acquaintances at the farther end, who waved their hands to her, beckoning +her to join them. She hastened across the room, much observed by the way, +and conscious of the eyes upon her. It was a relief to find herself among a +group of chattering people. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile at the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their +tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers—by name, Mrs. Verity +and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society +and in the precincts of the House of Commons—the Ladies' Gallery, the +Terrace, the dining-rooms—though she was but an unmarried girl of +two-and-twenty. Quite apart, however, from her own qualities and claims, Enid +Glenwilliam was conspicuous as the only daughter of the most vigorously +hated and ardently followed man of the moment—the North Country miner's +agent, who was now England's Finance Minister. +</p> +<p> +"You saw who that young lady was?" said Mrs. Frant to Miss Glenwilliam. "I +thought you knew her." +</p> +<p> +"Marcia Coryston? I have just been introduced to her. But she isn't allowed +to know me!" The laugh that accompanied the words had a pleasant childish +chuckle in it. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Frant laughed also. +</p> +<p> +"Girls, I suppose, have to do what they're told," she said, dryly. "But it +<i>was</i> Arthur Coryston, wasn't it, who sent you that extra order for +to-day, Enid?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his +mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother +will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's +quite a nice boy—but—" +</p> +<p> +She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which +smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and +expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, +it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm +for its weapon. +</p> +<p> +"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the +papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and +eyes. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively. +</p> +<p> +"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all +talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say." +</p> +<p> +"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a +few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a +thing as <i>matria potestas</i>? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned +at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston +stands for. How splendid—to stand for anything—nowadays!" +</p> +<p> +The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their +characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as +her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd +look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?" +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely +finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a +chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty. +</p> +<p> +"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, +with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled—"My dear! I came to bring +you a word of sympathy." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston looked at her coldly. +</p> +<p> +"Are you speaking of Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +"Naturally. The only logical result of those proceedings last night would +be, of course, the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner. Coryston wants our +heads! There's nothing else to be said. I took the speeches for young men's +nonsense—just midsummer madness, but I find people very angry. <i>Your</i> +son! one of <i>us</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"I thought the speeches very clever," said Lady Coryston. +</p> +<p> +"I'm rejoiced you take it so philosophically, my dear Emilia!"—the tone +was a little snappish—"I confess I thought you would have been much +distressed." +</p> +<p> +"What's the good of being distressed? I have known Coryston's opinions for +a long time. One has to <i>act</i>—of course," the speaker added, with +deliberation. +</p> +<p> +"Act? I don't understand." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston did not enlighten her. Indeed, she did not hear her. She was +bending forward eagerly. The fair-haired youth on the back benches, who had +been so long waiting his turn, was up at last. +</p> +<p> +It was a maiden speech, and a good one, as such things go. There was enough +nervousness and not too much; enough assurance and not too much. The facts +and figures in it had been well arranged. A modest jest or two tripped +pleasantly out; and the general remarks at the end had been well chosen +from the current stock, and were not unduly prolonged. Altogether a +creditable effort, much assisted by the young man's presence and manner. He +had no particular good looks, indeed; his nose ascended, his chin satisfied +no one; but he had been a well-known bat in the Oxford eleven of his day, +and was now a Yeomanry officer; he held himself with soldierly erectness, +and his slender body, cased in a becoming pale waistcoat under his tail +coat, carried a well-shaped head covered with thick and tumbling hair. +</p> +<p> +The House filled up a little to hear him. His father had been a member of +Parliament for twenty years, and a popular member. There was some curiosity +to know what his son would make of his first speech. And springing from the +good feeling which always animates the House of Commons on such occasions, +there was a fair amount of friendly applause from both sides when he sat +down. +</p> +<p> +"Features the father, and takes after the mother!" said a white-haired +listener in the Strangers' Gallery to himself, as the young man ceased +speaking. "She's drilled him! Well, now I suppose I must go and +congratulate her." He rose from his seat and began to make his way out. In +the passage outside the Gallery he overtook and recognized the man whose +entrance into the House Lady Coryston and her daughter had noticed about an +hour earlier. +</p> +<p> +"Well, what did you think of it, Lester?" +</p> +<p> +The other smiled good-humoredly. +</p> +<p> +"Capital! Everybody must make a beginning. He's taken a lot of pains." +</p> +<p> +"It's a beastly audience!" said Sir Wilfrid Bury, in reply. "Don't I know +it! Well, I'm off to congratulate. How does the catalogue get on?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, very well. I sha'n't finish till the summer. There's a good deal still +to do at Coryston. Some of the things are really too precious to move +about." +</p> +<p> +"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering +his voice. +</p> +<p> +The young man smiled discreetly. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her." +</p> +<p> +"I suppose she's pressed you into the service—makes you help Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own +secretary." +</p> +<p> +"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?" +</p> +<p> +"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get +through." +</p> +<p> +"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house." +</p> +<p> +"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own +arrangements." +</p> +<p> +"Ta-ta." +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to +the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been +chatting, was in some sort a protégé of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid, +indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford +historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid +work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons. +A generation earlier, Lester's father had been a brother officer of Sir +Wilfrid's, in days when the Lester family was still rich, and before the +crashing failure of the great banking-house of the name. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, at the other end of the House of Commons, Lady Coryston had +been sitting pleasantly absorbed, watching her son, who lay now like a man +relieved, lolling on the half-empty bench, chatting to a friend beside him. +His voice was still in her ears: mingled with the memory of other voices +from old, buried times. For more than twenty years how familiar had she +been with this political scene!—these galleries and benches, crowded or +listless; these opposing Cabinets—the Ins and Outs—on either side of the +historic table; the glitter of the Mace at its farther end; the books, the +old morocco boxes, the tops of the official wigs, the ugly light which +bathed it all; the exhausted air, the dreariness, the boredom! all +worth while, these last, just for the moments, the crises, the play of +personalities, the conflict of giants, of which they were the inevitable +conditions. There, on the second bench above the gangway on the Tory +side, her husband, before he succeeded to the title, had sat through four +Parliaments. And from the same point of vantage above she had watched him +year after year, coming in and out, speaking occasionally, never eloquent +or brilliant, but always respected; a good, worthy, steady-going fellow +with whom no one had any fault to find, least of all his wife, to whom he +had very easily given up the management of their common life, while he +represented her political opinions in Parliament much more than his own. +</p> +<p> +Until—until? +</p> +<p> +Well, until in an evil hour, a great question, the only political question +on which he differed and had always differed from his wife, on which he +felt he <i>must</i> speak for himself and stand on his own feet, arose to +divide them. There, in that Gallery, she had sat, with rage and defeat in +her heart, watching him pass along, behind the Speaker's chair, toward the +wrong division lobby, his head doggedly held down, as though he knew and +felt her eyes upon him, but must do his duty all the same. On this one +matter he had voted against her, spoken against her, openly flouted and +disavowed her. And it had broken down their whole relation, poisoned +their whole life. "Women are natural tyrants," he had said to her once, +bitterly—"no man could torment me as you do." And then had come his +death—his swift last illness, with those tired eyes still alive in the +dumb face, after speech and movement were no longer possible—eyes which +were apt to close when she came near. +</p> +<p> +And yet, after all—the will!—the will which all his relations and friends +had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable +failure to play the man in his own household, and in which <i>she</i>, his +wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate +her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and +personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, +and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great Irish, the +great Devonshire properties, the accumulated savings of a lifetime, they +were all hers—hers absolutely. Her husband had stood last in the entail; +and with a view to her own power, she had never allowed him to renew it. +</p> +<p> +Coryston had been furiously angry when the terms of his father's will were +revealed. She could never think without shivering of certain scenes, with +Coryston in the past—of a certain other scene that was still to come. +Well, it had been a duel between them; and after apparently sore defeat, +she had won, so far as influence over his father was concerned. And since +his father's death she had given him every chance. He had only to hold his +tongue, to keep his monstrous, <i>sans-culotte</i> opinions to himself, at +least, if he could not give them up; and she would have restored him his +inheritance, would have dealt with him not only justly, but generously. He +had chosen; he had deliberately chosen. Well, now then it was for her—as +she had said to old Lady Frensham—it was for her to reply, but not in +words only. +</p> +<p> +She fell back upon the thought of Arthur, Arthur, her darling; so manly, +and yet so docile; so willing to be guided! Where was he, that she might +praise him for his speech? She turned, searching the dark doorway with her +eyes. But there was no Arthur, only the white head and smiling countenance +of her old friend, Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was beckoning to her. She +hurriedly bade Marcia, who had just returned to the Gallery, to keep her +seat for her, and went out into the corridor to speak to him. +</p> +<p> +"Well, not bad, was it? These youngsters have got the trick! I thought it +capital. But I dare say you'll have all sorts of fault to find, you most +exacting of women!" +</p> +<p> +"No, no; it was good," she said, eagerly. "And he's improving fast." +</p> +<p> +"Well then"—the wise old eyes beside her laughed kindly into hers—"be +content, and don't take Coryston's escapades too hardly!" +</p> +<p> +She drew back, and her long face and haughty mouth stiffened in the way he +knew. +</p> +<p> +"Are you coming to see me on Sunday?" she said, quietly. +</p> +<p> +He took his snubbing without resentment. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose so. I don't often miss, do I? Well, I hear Marcia was the beauty +at the Shrewsbury House ball, and that—" he whispered something, laughing +in her ear. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston looked a little impatient. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I dare say. And if it's not he, it will be some one else. She'll marry +directly. I always expected it. Well, now I must go. Have you seen Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +"Mother! Hullo, Sir Wilfrid!" +</p> +<p> +There was the young orator, flushed and radiant. But his mother could say +very little to him, for the magnificent person in charge of the Gallery and +its approaches intervened. "No talking allowed here, sir, please." Even +Lady Coryston must obey. All she could add to her hurried congratulations +was: +</p> +<p> +"You're coming in to-night, remember, Arthur?—nine-thirty." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I've paired. I'm coming. But what on earth's up, mother?" +</p> +<p> +Her lips shut closely. +</p> +<p> +"Remember, nine-thirty!" She turned and went back into the darkness of the +Gallery. +</p> +<p> +Arthur hesitated a moment in the passage outside. Then he turned back +toward the little entrance-room opposite the entrance to the ordinary +Ladies' Gallery, where he found another attendant. +</p> +<p> +"Is Miss Glenwilliam here?" he inquired, carelessly. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir, in the front row, with Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. Do you wish +to speak to her, sir? The Gallery's pretty empty." +</p> +<p> +Arthur Coryston went in. The benches sloped upward, and on the lowest one, +nearest the grille, he saw the lady of his quest, and was presently bending +over her. +</p> +<p> +"Well," he said, flushing, "I suppose you thought it all bosh!" +</p> +<p> +"Not at all! That's what you have to say. What else can you say? You did it +excellently." +</p> +<p> +Her lightly mocking eyes looked into his. His flush deepened. +</p> +<p> +"Are you going to be at the Frenshams' dance?" he asked her, presently. +</p> +<p> +"We're not invited. They're too savage with father. But we shall be at the +Opera to-morrow night." +</p> +<p> +His face lightened. But no more talk was possible. A Minister was up, and +people were crowding back into the Gallery. He hurriedly pressed her hand +and departed. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + +<a name="CH2"><!-- CH2 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER II +</h2> +<p> +Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia +noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the +fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her +eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner—her +mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal +summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So +Arthur—evidently puzzled—had paired for the evening, and would return +from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and +Coryston had wired an hour before dinner—"Inconvenient, but will turn up." +</p> +<p> +What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well +that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's +position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, +on a jointure; leaving their former splendors—the family mansion and the +family income—behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and +efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the +daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past +could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although +she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been +the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule +in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children +except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his +grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached +and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, +when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a +quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his +opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad +after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction +between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred +while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had +been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile. +</p> +<p> +Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for +taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly +his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that +there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why +be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord? +</p> +<p> +And really—of late—his behavior! Never coming to see his mother—writing +the most outrageous things in support of the Government—speaking for +Radical candidates in their very own county—denouncing by name some of +their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible! +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She +went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in +white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she +passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint +and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her +childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the +equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, +which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the +staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be +like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family +and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing +association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse +whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident +flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the +picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long +Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night. +</p> +<p> +Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark +eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength—she +certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. +The face reminded one of ripe fruit—so rich was the downy bloom on the +delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch +of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it +perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would +see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding +prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were +rich—quite unconsciously—in that magic of sex which belongs to only +a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and +occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many +things—in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which +she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her +whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of +life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually—the +unknown!—yearning for his call, his command.... +</p> +<p> +There were many people—witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her +mother—who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious +effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three +seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and +set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she +received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, +copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused—or +made her mother refuse for her—one or more of the men whom all other +mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one +quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned +her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural +arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained <i>nonchalant</i> +and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of +passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. +Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's +opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out +of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long +the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed. +</p> +<p> +As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of +Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with +certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into +the drawing-room in her mother's wake. +</p> +<p> +The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston +strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian +pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on +wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," +held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth +looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since +1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good +enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their +ancestors were now discredited—laughed out of court—as collectors, owing +to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a +number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or +by tables holding <i>objets d'art</i> of the same mixed quality as the +pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses +with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression +of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought +suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in +dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted +floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. +The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind +her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, +sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck +through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till +now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some +matter of family property—some selling or buying transaction—which a +mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might +well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting +in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a +recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in +the estates "—he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, +not mine." +</p> +<p> +And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for +granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some +time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? +Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have +become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women +make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother +was an exceptional woman. +</p> +<p> +But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, +and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews +with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts +she struck up conversation. +</p> +<p> +"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?" +</p> +<p> +"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help +it, she dresses so outrageously." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that +kind of thing." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows. +</p> +<p> +"That's where the ill-breeding comes in—that a young girl should make +herself so conspicuous." +</p> +<p> +"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. +People on our side—people you'd never think—will do anything to get her +for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she +says." +</p> +<p> +"That I can quite believe! Yes—I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the +other day—dining—when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that +<i>man</i>!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her +path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself. +</p> +<p> +Marcia laughed. +</p> +<p> +"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he +was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't +the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a +friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it. +</p> +<p> +"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly. +</p> +<p> +Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant +sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and +took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large +envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her +mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a +small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other +side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky +cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, +Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt +furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That +patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the +time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer. +</p> +<p> +In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, +then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all +kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in +front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, +"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of +the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby +greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with +indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's +all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!" +</p> +<p> +In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also +of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both +of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, +as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial +men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions +matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not +exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the +nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection. +</p> +<p> +He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. +And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint +lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each +other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than +the irreconcilable differences. +</p> +<p> +Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent +political escapades—remarks which she took in complete silence—he settled +himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to +say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the +likeness—through all contrast—between mother and son. Lady Coryston was +tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing—a Lady Macbeth of the +drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet +of a man—on wires—never at ease—the piled fair hair overbalancing the +face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both +physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. <i>Will</i>—carried to +extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady +Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it +was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy. +</p> +<p> +Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed +evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled +to read her mother—the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of +expression—from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of +nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time. +</p> +<p> +She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of +Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" +but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to +sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded +foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid +oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia +noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an +old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints. +</p> +<p> +"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with +a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of +business—not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will +hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, +by the family—the estates—and the country." +</p> +<p> +At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially +when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something +peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection. +</p> +<p> +Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt +chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his +head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; +and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was +pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. +And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what +Was going to happen. +</p> +<p> +"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in +leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father +did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him—" +</p> +<p> +Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an +anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking +went on: +</p> +<p> +"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that +in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and +all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in +danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out +his ideas—the ideas he and I had held in common—and should remain the +guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had +inherited—and in which he believed—" +</p> +<p> +Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his +elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his +mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the +slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear +of the spaniel against the other. +</p> +<p> +"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's +death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I +cannot have satisfied <i>all</i> my children." She paused a moment. "I have +not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury—that none of you +can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up—nothing +more. And I have certainly <i>wished</i>"—she laid a heavy emphasis on +the word—"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own +fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for +any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own +money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to +provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston—" +</p> +<p> +She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was +certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and +prunella.'" +</p> +<p> +James murmured, "Corry—old man?" Marcia flushed angrily. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that +everything he could possibly have claimed—" +</p> +<p> +"Short of the estates—which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with +an amused look. +</p> +<p> +His mother went on without noticing the interruption: +</p> +<p> +"—would have been his—either now or in due time—if he would only have +made certain concessions—" +</p> +<p> +"Sold my soul and held my tongue?—quite right!" said Coryston. "I have +scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed +emotion. +</p> +<p> +"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and +consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his +father's convictions—" +</p> +<p> +"What!—you think he still has them—in the upper regions?" +</p> +<p> +Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew +pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's +side, she took her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult +your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. +</p> +<p> +Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands +on his sides. +</p> +<p> +"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting +something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been +dishing me altogether?—cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what +you mean? Let's have it!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. +</p> +<p> +"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes—but please <i>tell</i> it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to +keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I +guess, from your will—which concern me—and the rest of them"—he waved +his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get +done with it." +</p> +<p> +"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." +</p> +<p> +With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady +Coryston took up the folded paper. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which +concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, +in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily +at Coryston—"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But—" +</p> +<p> +"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest +son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while +I'm speculating as to what's coming." +</p> +<p> +"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that +Coryston is behaving abominably." +</p> +<p> +But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with +lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston began to read. +</p> +<p> +Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing +the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his +custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, +Arthur sprang to his feet. +</p> +<p> +"I say, mother!" +</p> +<p> +"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. +</p> +<p> +She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: +</p> +<p> +"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, +her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper +which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat +dumfoundered. +</p> +<p> +James approached his mother. +</p> +<p> +"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." +</p> +<p> +She turned toward him. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, James, I shall maintain them." +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair +hair as though in bewilderment. +</p> +<p> +"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to +me I shall hand it back to Corry." +</p> +<p> +"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in +trust," said Lady Coryston. +</p> +<p> +Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a +little distance. +</p> +<p> +"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches +have contributed?" +</p> +<p> +"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have +intrusted you with the estates." +</p> +<p> +"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The +letter which he left for me said as much." +</p> +<p> +"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly. +</p> +<p> +"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see +how things stand." +</p> +<p> +He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the +items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion—you cut me +out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to +buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my +present fortune—the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I +understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying +properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's +mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all—all, that +is, which would have normally come to me—or <i>nothing</i>!" +</p> +<p> +He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features +sparkling. +</p> +<p> +"I will have all—or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for +a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of +risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I +should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital." +</p> +<p> +"You make it your business to wound, Coryston." +</p> +<p> +"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been +<i>absolutely in my right</i>!" He brought his hand down with passion +on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I—the next +generation—ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no +moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. +There is always something to be said for property, so long as each +generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property +is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, +<i>then</i> it is what the Frenchman called it, <i>theft</i>!—or worse.... +Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven +thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property—well!—I'm going to a +large extent to manage it!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston started. +</p> +<p> +"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately. +</p> +<p> +"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, +calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound +ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title +I can't stand for our parliamentary division—but I shall look out for +somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm +afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with +me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would +always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed—least of all +by a woman." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston rose from her seat. +</p> +<p> +"James!—Arthur!—" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will +understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish +that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it +hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and +understand me. Good night." +</p> +<p> +"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously. +</p> +<p> +She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm +round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding +Coryston at bay the while. +</p> +<p> +As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and +opened it for her. +</p> +<p> +"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I—but we'll play +fair." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and +Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched +him in the ribs. +</p> +<p> +"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! +I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you." +</p> +<p> +Arthur grew red. +</p> +<p> +"Of course it was nonsense to you!" +</p> +<p> +"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?" +</p> +<p> +"Nothing that matters to you, Corry." +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!" +</p> +<p> +"Do hold your tongue, Corry!" +</p> +<p> +"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother +will fight you for all she's worth." +</p> +<p> +"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that." +</p> +<p> +"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the +estates, Arthur." +</p> +<p> +"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall +find a way of getting out of them—the greater part of them, anyway. All +the same, Corry, if I do—you'll have to give guarantees." +</p> +<p> +"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"—Coryston gave a great +stretch—"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order +it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. +You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I +tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to +take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the +whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!" +</p> +<p> +He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping +and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the +legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy +thousand a year. +</p> +<p> +Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their +bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no +sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the +landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book. +</p> +<p> +She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to +be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house +from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large +ground-floor room at the back. +</p> +<p> +"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" +And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her +mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. +It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of +Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But +that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into +the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain +she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the +second volume of <i>Diana of the Crossways</i>. Why not? It was only just +eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had +gone to bed. +</p> +<p> +She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she +opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, +and she heard some one moving about. +</p> +<p> +"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment." +</p> +<p> +A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk +heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed +toward the figure at the door. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do +anything for you?" +</p> +<p> +The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage +behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, +and blue eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know +where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her +volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too +strong. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose my brothers have been here?" +</p> +<p> +Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment. +</p> +<p> +"They have only just gone—at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went +some time ago." +</p> +<p> +Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?" +</p> +<p> +Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did +nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled. +</p> +<p> +"But they've told you—he and Arthur—they've told you what's happened?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them." +</p> +<p> +"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia—"when he wants to do +something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious +plan?—of coming to settle down at Coryston—in our very pockets—in order +to make mother's life a burden to her?" +</p> +<p> +"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll +do it." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He +calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's +consciences don't matter a bit." +</p> +<p> +Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out +impetuously: +</p> +<p> +"You think he's been badly treated?" +</p> +<p> +"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one." +</p> +<p> +"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, +as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's <i>splendid</i> +my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it." +</p> +<p> +Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of +covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a +Liberal." +</p> +<p> +"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't +agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if +I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative." +</p> +<p> +"But you think other things matter more than politics?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially—" He stopped. +</p> +<p> +"Especially—for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered +his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I +know." +</p> +<p> +"Beauty—poetry—sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?" +</p> +<p> +He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her. +</p> +<p> +There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made +a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he +raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, +in the darkness, by the solitary light—the lines of her young form, the +delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes. +</p> +<p> +She held out her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!" +</p> +<p> +She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH3"><!-- CH3 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER III +</h2> +<p> +"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go." +</p> +<p> +The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of +the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message +mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young +girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly +envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty +made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady +Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black," +such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left +nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or +Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in +search of a young one. +</p> +<p> +"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?" +</p> +<p> +The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the +honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of +their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted +good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless +final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing. +</p> +<p> +Then she ran across the passage to her mother's sitting-room. Lady Coryston +had complained of illness during the day and had not been down-stairs. But +Marcia's experience was that when her mother was ill she was not less, but +more active than usual, and that withdrawal to her sitting-room generally +meant a concentration of energy. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston was sitting with a writing-board on her knee, and a +reading-lamp beside her, lighting a table covered with correspondence. +Within her reach was a deep cupboard in the wall containing estate and +business letters, elaborately labeled and subdivided. A revolving bookcase +near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the +paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>. The walls +of the room were covered with books—a fine collection of county histories, +and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, +specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger +generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been +the normal look of the original. His portrait by Holl hung over the +mantelpiece, flanked on either side by water-color pictures of his sons and +daughter in their childhood. +</p> +<p> +There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and Lady Coryston never +sat in it. She objected to flowers as being in the way; and there was not +a sign anywhere of the photographs and small knick-knacks which generally +belitter a woman's sitting—room. Altogether, an ugly room, but +characteristic, businesslike, and not without a dignity of its own. +</p> +<p> +"Mother!—why don't you rest a little?" cried Marcia, eying the black-robed +figure and the long pale face, marked by very evident fatigue. "You've been +writing letters or seeing people all day. How long did James stay?" +</p> +<p> +"About an hour." +</p> +<p> +"And Mr. Page?" Mr. Page was the agent of the main Coryston estate. +</p> +<p> +"Some time. There was a great deal to settle." +</p> +<p> +"Did you"—the girl fidgeted—"did you tell him about Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. He says there is only one house in the neighborhood he could +take—" +</p> +<p> +"He has taken it." Marcia opened her right hand, in which she crushed a +telegram. "Bellows has just brought me this." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston opened and read it. +</p> +<p> +"Have taken Knatchett for three years. Tell mother." Lady Coryston's lips +stiffened. +</p> +<p> +"He has lost no time. He can vex and distress us, of course. We shall have +to bear it." +</p> +<p> +"Vex and distress us! I should think he can!" cried Marcia. "Has James been +talking to him?" +</p> +<p> +"I dare say," said Lady Coryston, adding, with a slight, sarcastic laugh, +"James is a little too sure of being always in the right." +</p> +<p> +From which Marcia guessed that James had not only been talking to Coryston, +but also remonstrating with his mother, which no doubt accounted for Lady +Coryston's worn-out looks. James had more effect upon her than most people; +though never quite effect enough. +</p> +<p> +Marcia stood with one foot on the fender, her gaze fixed on her mother in +a frowning abstraction. And suddenly Lady Coryston, lifting her eyes, +realized her daughter, and the vision that she made. +</p> +<p> +"You look very well, Marcia. Have I seen that dress before?" +</p> +<p> +"No. I designed it last week. Ah!"—the sound of a distant gong made itself +heard—"there's the motor. Well, good night, mother. Take care of yourself +and do go to bed soon." +</p> +<p> +She stooped to kiss her mother. +</p> +<p> +"Who's going with you?" +</p> +<p> +"Waggin and James. Arthur may come in. He thinks the House will be up +early. And I asked Mr. Lester. But he can't come for the first part." +</p> +<p> +Her mother held her sleeve and looked up, smiling. Lady Coryston's smiles +were scarcely less formidable than her frowns. +</p> +<p> +"You expect to see Edward Newbury?" +</p> +<p> +"I dare say. They have their box, as usual." +</p> +<p> +"Well!—run off and enjoy yourself. Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." +</p> +<p> +"Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's +governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, +partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that +when she was wanted to act duenna, she came—at a moment's notice. And she +was very willing to come. She lived in an Earl's Court lodging, and these +occasional expeditions with Marcia represented for her the gilt on her +modest gingerbread. She was a small, refined woman, with a figure still +slender, gray hair, and a quiet face. Her dresses were years old, but she +had a wonderful knack of bringing them up-to-date, and she never did Marcia +any discredit. She adored Marcia, and indeed all the family. Lady Coryston +called her "Miss Wagstaffe"—but to the others, sons and daughter, she was +only "Waggin." There were very few things about the Coryston family she did +not know; but her discretion was absolute. +</p> +<p> +As she saw Marcia running down-stairs her face lit up. +</p> +<p> +"My dear, what a lovely gown!—and how sweet you look!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't talk nonsense, Waggin!—and put on this rose I've brought for you!" +</p> +<p> +Waggin submitted while Marcia adorned her and gave various pats and pulls +to her hair. +</p> +<p> +"There!—you look ten years younger," said the girl, with her bright look, +stepping back. "But where is James?" +</p> +<p> +The butler stepped forward. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. James will meet you at the Opera." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, good!" murmured Marcia in her companion's ear. "Now we can croon." +</p> +<p> +And croon they did through the long crowded way to Covent Garden. By the +time the motor reached St. Martin's Lane, Waggin was in possession of all +that had happened. She had long expected it, having shrewdly noted many +signs of Lady Coryston's accumulating wrath. But now that "Corry," her dear +"Corry," with whom she had fought so many a schoolroom fight in the days +of his Eton jackets, was really disinherited, her concern was great. Tears +stood in her kind eyes. "Poor Corry!" alternated in her mouth with "Your +poor mother!" Sinner and judge appealed equally to her pity. +</p> +<p> +Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce. +</p> +<p> +"What else could he expect? Father <i>did</i> leave the estates to +mother—just because Corry had taken up such views—so that she might keep +us straight." +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i3.png"><img src="images/i3.png" width="150" +alt="AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP"></a> +</p> +<p> +"But <i>afterward</i>! My dear, he is so young! And young men change." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned—except with this +awe and vagueness—scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists +than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. +</p> +<p> +Marcia shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"He won't change. Mother did not ask it. All she asked was—for her sake +and father's—that he should hold his tongue." +</p> +<p> +A flush sprang to Waggin's faded cheek. +</p> +<p> +"A <i>man</i>!—a grown man!" she said, wondering—"forbid him to speak +out—speak freely?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia looked anxiously at her companion. It was very seldom that Waggin +betrayed so much heat. +</p> +<p> +"I know," said the girl, gloomily—"'Your money or your life'—for I +suppose it sounds like that. Corry would say his convictions are his life. +But why 'a man,' Waggin?" She straightened her pretty shoulders. "I don't +believe you'd mind if it were a woman. You don't believe in a <i>woman</i> +having convictions!" +</p> +<p> +Waggin looked a little bewildered. +</p> +<p> +"I'm old-fashioned, I suppose—but—" +</p> +<p> +Marcia laughed triumphantly. +</p> +<p> +"Why shouldn't Corry respect his mother's convictions? She wants to prove +that women oughtn't to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even—" +</p> +<p> +"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so +splendid—so splendid!" +</p> +<p> +"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, +Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!" +</p> +<p> +Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl's. The note of +storm in Marcia's mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to +change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen +with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little +niece—and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr. +Arthur—and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!—not exactly +handsome—but you couldn't possibly pass her over." +</p> +<p> +"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of +course, Waggin, they weren't alone?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh no—probably not!—though—though I didn't see any one else. They +seemed so full of talk—I didn't speak to Mr. Arthur. <i>Who</i> do you say +she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently. +</p> +<p> +Marcia turned upon her. +</p> +<p> +"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It's too bad of +Arthur! It's abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I've heard +things said sometimes—but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, +Waggin!—you <i>didn't</i> see them alone?" +</p> +<p> +The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course +Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does +exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless +she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But +<i>Arthur</i>!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they +passed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention +it! I'm sure there's nothing in it." +</p> +<p> +"I've half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned +emphasis. "But I wouldn't believe it!—I shall tell Arthur what I think of +him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but +that's quite another thing. It's as though mother were never to have any +pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!—behind her back, +too." +</p> +<p> +"My dear!—it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, +and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your +mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand—" +</p> +<p> +"To please mother—and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with +perfect composure. "You're thinking of Edward Newbury?" +</p> +<p> +"Who else should I be thinking of!—after all you told me last week?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes—I like Edward Newbury"—the tone betrayed a curious +irritation—"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer +him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!" +</p> +<p> +"Marcia—dearest!—don't be cruel to him!" +</p> +<p> +"No—but he mustn't press me! I've given him hints—and he won't take them. +I can't make up my mind, Waggin. I can't! It's not only marrying him—it's +the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me—at +Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party—evening prayers in the private chapel, +<i>before dinner</i>!—nobody allowed to breakfast in bed—everybody driven +off to church—and such a <i>fuss</i> about Lent! It made me shiver. I'm +not that sort, Waggin—I never shall be." +</p> +<p> +And as again a stream of light from a music-hall façade poured into the +carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark +eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand. +</p> +<p> +"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired +lady—"make your own conditions!" +</p> +<p> +"No, no!—never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, +kindest—and underneath—<i>iron</i>! Most people are taken in. I'm not." +</p> +<p> +There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing—she +knew it—would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though +she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special +pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still +undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family—the young man himself heir +presumptive to a marquisate money—high character—everything that mortal +mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted—Waggin was certain of it. +The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And +yet—let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In +Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him. +</p> +<p> +Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for +an important "first night"—there is no sight in London, perhaps, that +ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern +life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide +the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women—women old and +young—their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray +heads; the roses that youth wears—divinely careless; or the diamonds +wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years. +</p> +<p> +Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted +positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that +instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the +Greek called <i>hubris</i>, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. +It meant in her—"I am young—I am handsome—the world is all on my +side—who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave +a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her +actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, +so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of +compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. +Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a +narrow inexperience. +</p> +<p> +The overture had begun—in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience +was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of +those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia +sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising +her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up +of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It +was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had +joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the +music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia—you vandal!—listen!" +</p> +<p> +The girl started and blushed. +</p> +<p> +"I don't understand the music, James!—it's so strange and barbarous." +</p> +<p> +"Well, it isn't Glück, certainly," said James, smiling. +</p> +<p> +Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the +crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear space of sky, +a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell—winds caught +it—snatches of tempest overpowered it—shrieking demons rushed upon it and +silenced it. But it persisted; passing finally into a processional march, +through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end. +</p> +<p> +"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are +the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host." +</p> +<p> +The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had +but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of +Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and +fifty years after Glück, how to make it speak, through music, to more +modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, +and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous +and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which had soon gripped Covent +Garden. +</p> +<p> +There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the +allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But +at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary +blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. Hellas cannot avenge itself on the +Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds +back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as goddess of the land, she +claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the +host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has +vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your +daughter!—Iphigenia!" +</p> +<p> +Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the +stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, +bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that +she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner +despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. +Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant +joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose +neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to +kiss, saying tender, touching things—how she has missed him—how long the +time has been.... +</p> +<p> +The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an +old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli +in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in +which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the +soul. +</p> +<p> +Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, +smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but +in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in +noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a +seat beside Marcia. +</p> +<p> +He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted +to hear this—with you." +</p> +<p> +"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a +motion of her face toward the Iphigenia. +</p> +<p> +"Yes—but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it—please!—for the +ordinary 'star'—business." +</p> +<p> +"But she is the play!" +</p> +<p> +"She is the <i>idea</i>! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of +sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from—and the +death she accepts; between the horror—and the greatness! Listen!—here is +the dirge music beginning." +</p> +<p> +Marcia listened—with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of +the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various +incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man +beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys +and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not +long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of +the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. +They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then +begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball +that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept +into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with +him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed +to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no +avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached +her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which +were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through +the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. +With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her. +</p> +<p> +Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once +exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, +as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her +dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, +of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's +knees, imploring him to save her: +</p> +<p> +"Tears will I bring—my only cunning—all I have! Round your knees, my +father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before +my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!—drive me not down into the halls of +death. 'Twas I first called you father—I, your firstborn. What fault have +I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come—to be my death? +Turn to me—give me a look—a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have +that to remember—if you will not heed my prayers." +</p> +<p> +She takes the infant Orestes in her arms: +</p> +<p> +"Brother!—you are but a tiny helper—and yet—come, weep with me!—come, +pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how—silently—he +implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! +He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble +dying!" +</p> +<p> +The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast—through +one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in +art. Wonderful theme!—the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more +than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed +vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery +of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate—the savage creed—the +blood-thirst of the goddess—and the maddened army howling for its prey. +</p> +<p> +Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too +horrible!" +</p> +<p> +Newbury shook his head, smiling. +</p> +<p> +"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race—of the +Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. +She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art—all religion. Ah—here +is Achilles!" +</p> +<p> +There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to +fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, +adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his +bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her—die for her—if +need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs +up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the +background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on +his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from +the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her +champion, loves him. +</p> +<p> +The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the +whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath. +</p> +<p> +"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's. +</p> +<p> +He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling +compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer. +</p> +<p> +But the golden moment dies!—forever. Shrieking and crashing, the +vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing +blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon +is threatened—Achilles—Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the +distance like the roar of an uncaged beast. +</p> +<p> +Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and +thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to +throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. +</p> +<p> +"Mother!—we cannot fight with gods. I die!—I die! But let me die +gloriously—unafraid. Hellas calls to me!—Hellas, my country. I alone can +give her what she asks—fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the +good of Hellas—not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for +women and their fatherland?—and shall one life, one little life, stand in +their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!—pull down the towers of +Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me—this be my glory!—this, +child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that +Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are +slave-folk—and <i>we</i> are free!" +</p> +<p> +Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for +what she is—now that he has "looked into her soul"—must he lose her?—is +it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her. +</p> +<p> +But she puts him gently aside. +</p> +<p> +"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be <i>my</i> +boon to save Hellas, if I may." +</p> +<p> +And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await +her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if +she calls to him—even at the last moment. +</p> +<p> +But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding +all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief—she lifts the song +of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place +of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her. +</p> +<p> +"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day—torch of Zeus!" +</p> +<p> +"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear +light!—farewell!" +</p> +<p> +"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is +the death—<i>she accepts</i>!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The +exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled +strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's +dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the +growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; +the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; +fascination—revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat +drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera +House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the +stage, with the bouquets at its feet.... +</p> +<p> +Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed +it. She recoiled—released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward +Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back +of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid +much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were +on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The +profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full—too full!—of +consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a +flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her +small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. +And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much +courtesy to Marcia's "companion." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big +fight—Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows—and somebody +having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He +spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad +company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite." +</p> +<p> +Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front +of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was +bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly +Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and +showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood +looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, +in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half +contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping—in +spite of its conformity in dress—with the splendid opera-house, and the +bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern +statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate—for +Democracy—Labor—personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern +world has developed it—armed with all the weapons of the other two! +</p> +<p> +"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims +play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I +get out of you?—and you?'" +</p> +<p> +Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He +was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days +when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime. +</p> +<p> +"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard +by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to +notice—and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!" +</p> +<p> +"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely; "if that's what you mean." His eyes +rested a moment on the striking figure of the Chancellor's daughter. +"Certainly—I'll put in a word. But she is a very fascinating young woman, +my dear!" +</p> +<p> +"I know," said Marcia, helplessly, "I know." +</p> +<p> +There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid asked: +</p> +<p> +"When do you go down to Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +"Just before Whitsuntide." +</p> +<p> +He looked round with a smile, saw that Edward Newbury was still in the box, +and whispered, mischievously: +</p> +<p> +"Hoddon Grey, too, I think, will not be empty?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia kept an indifferent face. +</p> +<p> +"I dare say. You're coming?" Sir Wilfrid nodded. "Oh, <i>have</i> you +heard—?" +</p> +<p> +She murmured to him behind her fan. Sir Wilfrid knew all their history—had +been her father's most intimate friend. She gave him a rapid account of +Coryston's disinheriting. The old man rose, his humorous eyes suddenly +grave. +</p> +<p> +"We'll talk of this—at Coryston. Ah, Newbury—I took your chair—I resign. +Hullo, Lester—good evening. Heavens, there's the curtain going up. Good +night!" +</p> +<p> +He hurried away. Newbury moved forward, his eager look on Marcia. But she +turned, smiling, to the young librarian. +</p> +<p> +"You haven't seen this ballet, Mr. Lester?—Schumann's 'Carnival'? Oh, +you mustn't stand so far back. We can make room, can't we?" She addressed +Newbury, and before he knew what had happened, the chairs had been so +manipulated that Lester sat between Marcia and Newbury, while Waggin had +drawn back into the shadow. The eyes of Marcia's duenna twinkled. It +pleased her that this magnificent young man, head, it was said, of the +young High Church party, distinguished in many ways, and as good as he was +handsome, was not to have too easy a game. Marcia had clearly lost her head +a little at the Shrewsbury House ball; and was now trying to recover it. +</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH4"><!-- CH4 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER IV +</h2> +<p> +After one of those baffling fortnights of bitter wind and cold, which so +often mark the beginning of an English May, when all that the spring has +slowly gained since March seems to be confiscated afresh by returning +winter, the weather had repented itself, the skies had cleared, and +suddenly, under a flood of sunshine, there were blue-bells in the +copses, cowslips in the fields, a tawny leaf breaking on the oaks, a new +cheerfulness in the eyes and gait of the countryman. +</p> +<p> +A plain, pleasant-looking woman sat sewing out-of-doors, in front of a +small verandaed cottage, perched high on a hillside which commanded a wide +view of central England. The chalk down fell beneath her into a sheath of +beech woods; the line of hills, slope behind slope, ran westward to the +sunset, while eastward they mounted to a wooded crest beyond which the +cottage could not look. Northward, beginning some six hundred feet below +the cottage, stretched a wide and varied country, dotted with villages and +farms, with houses and woods, till it lost itself in the haze of a dim +horizon. +</p> +<p> +A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the +French windows of the cottage. +</p> +<p> +"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?" +</p> +<p> +"Between three and four, papa." +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a +long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably—Sunday or no +Sunday!" +</p> +<p> +"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting +her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern. +</p> +<p> +"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston—who said he would be here to +tea." +</p> +<p> +Miss Atherstone looked a little startled. +</p> +<p> +"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I +wrote yesterday." +</p> +<p> +"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in +the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the +estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent +terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it +up to Coryston somehow." +</p> +<p> +"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly. +</p> +<p> +"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's +not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I +never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of +brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever +people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a +retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers +in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the +midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty constituencies by +heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the +pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count +by any important Minister framing an important bill. +</p> +<p> +He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of +English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large +Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship—little known except to an inner +ring—was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did +nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been +the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live +in history. +</p> +<p> +Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and +much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life. +Brilliant creatures—men and women—came and went, to and from the cottage. +Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not +much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, +and a vegetarian. Marion read the <i>Church Family Times</i>, went +diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough +about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and +her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other. +</p> +<p> +Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one +who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound +affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to +some one or other of the Sirens of her sex. When Enid came to the cottage +Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability +is that she saw through the Siren—what there was to see through—a good +deal more sharply than her father did. +</p> +<p> +Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just +been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would +probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to +him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of +talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was +pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept +running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more +passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more +big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of +land, and church, and finance!—democratic England when it once got to +business—and it was getting to business—would make short work of them. +</p> +<p> +As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the +democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the +hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held +sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile +mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord +ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots +than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than +their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands +on them. +</p> +<p> +One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He +turned, laughing to his daughter. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston has settled in—with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He +has all sorts of ructions on his hands already." +</p> +<p> +"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas +emerging from the woods. +</p> +<p> +"My dear—she began it. And he is quite right—he <i>has</i> a public duty +to these estates." +</p> +<p> +"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly." +</p> +<p> +"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong +parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, +are over." +</p> +<p> +"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously. +</p> +<p> +"I repeat—she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a +will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!" +</p> +<p> +"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly. +</p> +<p> +Atherstone shrugged his shoulders—too honest to reply. +</p> +<p> +He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed. +</p> +<p> +"I hear Coryston's very servants—his man and wife—were evicted from their +cottage for political reasons." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion. +</p> +<p> +Atherstone stared. +</p> +<p> +"My dear!—" +</p> +<p> +"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks. +</p> +<p> +"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It +doesn't do to have such stories going round—on our side. I wonder why +Coryston chose them." +</p> +<p> +"I should think—because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The +slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek +as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to +listen. +</p> +<p> +"I think I hear the motor." +</p> +<p> +"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation +was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters. +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess +was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair. +</p> +<p> +"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing. +"Let's see—four dinners, three balls, two operas,—a week-end at Windsor, +two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do +you expect but a rag!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't say you don't like it!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm +insulted, and when they do—" +</p> +<p> +"You're bored?" +</p> +<p> +"It's you finished the sentence!—not I! And I've scarcely seen father this +week except at breakfast. <i>That's</i> bored me horribly." +</p> +<p> +"What have you <i>really</i> been doing?" +</p> +<p> +"Inquisitor!—I have been amusing myself." +</p> +<p> +"With Arthur Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her +companion. +</p> +<p> +"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?" +</p> +<p> +"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?" +</p> +<p> +"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so +demean himself." +</p> +<p> +"But she must find out some day." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out +a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large +eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You +see—Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me—she has insulted father." +</p> +<p> +"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled. +</p> +<p> +"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. +She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton +nearly had hysterics." +</p> +<p> +The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly +smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen +quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks +society is too tolerant—of people like father and me." +</p> +<p> +"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly. +</p> +<p> +"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight—so +far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little +harder—that's all." +</p> +<p> +"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, +"after that list of parties!" +</p> +<p> +"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful +one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father +goes out of office I shall be nobody. <i>She</i> will be always at the top +of the tree." +</p> +<p> +"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or +not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?" +</p> +<p> +"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip—but the +facts—by heart! I am drowned—smothered in them. At present Arthur is the +darling—the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"—Miss Glenwilliam +threw up her hands. +</p> +<p> +"You think she will change her mind again?" +</p> +<p> +The girl took up a stalk of grass and nibbled it in laughing meditation. +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong. +</p> +<p> +"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly—"think +about whether you care for each other!" +</p> +<p> +"What a <i>bourgeois</i> point of view! Well, honestly—I don't know. +Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We +have only known each other a few months. If he were <i>very</i> rich—By +the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?" +</p> +<p> +Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught +her ear. +</p> +<p> +"Here they are—he and Lord Coryston." +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, +long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale +masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a +charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she +held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him—a gay, significant +look. +</p> +<p> +Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her +companion. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his +hands on his sides. +</p> +<p> +As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with +their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the +peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them +displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him +with a smile. +</p> +<p> +"Mayn't I?" +</p> +<p> +He looked down on her, frowning. +</p> +<p> +"Why should women set up a new want—a new slavery—that costs money?" +</p> +<p> +The color flew to her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own sex." +</p> +<p> +"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have +consciences. And—especially—<i>Liberal</i> women," he added, slowly, as +his eyes traveled over her dress. +</p> +<p> +"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind +of women?" she asked him, quietly. +</p> +<p> +"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people +in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing—and it is +the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands." +</p> +<p> +Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly: +</p> +<p> +"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!" +</p> +<p> +The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's +person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with +wrath. +</p> +<p> +Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a +look of radiant good humor. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags—you might leave me the +talking. Has he told you what's happened?" +</p> +<p> +The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an +indicating thumb in his brother's direction. +</p> +<p> +The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue. +</p> +<p> +"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he +said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his +seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And +what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our +dear mother has been doing?" +</p> +<p> +"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily. +</p> +<p> +"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such +lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the +plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy. +</p> +<p> +Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He +approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary +courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston +was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a +constituency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a +comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to +let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there—Atherstone perfectly +understood—simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his +own <i>beaux yeux</i> or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile +ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated. +</p> +<p> +Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to +greet Atherstone—whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as +a pestilent agitator—with the indifferent good breeding that all young +Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the +view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was +increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, +moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his +hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; +and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat. +</p> +<p> +"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the +view from the wood-path before tea?" +</p> +<p> +Marion assented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little +field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill. +</p> +<p> +"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the +departing figures. +</p> +<p> +The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored. +</p> +<p> +"I haven't the slightest idea." +</p> +<p> +"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing +his knees, and bubbling with amusement. "My unfortunate mother will have to +make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!" +</p> +<p> +"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked +Atherstone, after a moment. +</p> +<p> +"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall +my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy +the Bible comes in—for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't +know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. +</p> +<p> +A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. +</p> +<p> +"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to +return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It +hasn't quite come to that!" +</p> +<p> +"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a +slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall +come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile +camps—fighting it out—blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, +and"—he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's—"so +do you, too—at bottom." +</p> +<p> +The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you +mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough +for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of +things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?" +</p> +<p> +Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I'm after a lot of game—in the Liberal preserves just as much as the +Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked +the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist +chapel. Half the village Baptist—lots of land handy—she won't let 'em +have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her +resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on +Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, +and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2—My +mother's been letting Page—her agent—evict a jolly decent fellow called +Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the +villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course—but that's the +truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days—no good. Now +I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, +for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent +for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3—There's +a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given +'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been +just gorging chickens this last year—nasty beasts! That don't matter much, +however. No. 4—Ah-ha!"—he rubbed his hands—"I'm on the track of that old +hypocrite, Burton of Martover—" +</p> +<p> +"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, +indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!" +</p> +<p> +"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation—"not a bit of it. Talking +Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then +doing a thing—Look here! He turned that man and his wife—Potifer's his +name—who are now looking after me—out of their cottage and their bit of +land—why, do you think?—because <i>the man voted for Arthur</i>! Why +shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted +for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'—so did his wife. +Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Nobody wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang +him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!" +</p> +<p> +And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face +aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady +Coryston's disinherited son—socialist and revolutionist—as a kind of +watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's +very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the +neighborhood had anticipated. The man was too queer—too flighty. +</p> +<p> +"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord +Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood—the Hoddon Grey +estate, for instance—" +</p> +<p> +Coryston threw up his hands. +</p> +<p> +"The Newburys—my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'—aren't +they?—'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches—and schools—and +villages! All the little boys patterns—and all the little girls saints. +Everybody singing in choirs—and belonging to confraternities—and carrying +banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that +a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, +I've heard a story about that estate"—the odd figure paused beside the +tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis—"that's worse than any +other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his +wife!" +</p> +<p> +He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his +glittering eyes. +</p> +<p> +Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The +neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the +pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious +convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot championship on both +sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in +their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular +was thought to have behaved with harshness. +</p> +<p> +Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a +white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most +hideous of all tyrants!" +</p> +<p> +Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but +she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as +angry as Coryston. +</p> +<p> +Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, +abruptly: +</p> +<p> +"My mother likes that fellow—Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I +hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't—before Marcia knows +this story!" +</p> +<p> +Marion looked a little embarrassed, and certainly disapproving. +</p> +<p> +"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire +him enormously." +</p> +<p> +"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"—he +put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and +troubled countenance—"don't you agree with me?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know whether I do or not—I don't know enough about it." +</p> +<p> +"You mustn't," he said, eagerly—"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, +after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss +Atherstone, down in those villages?" +</p> +<p> +Marion blushed furiously, then laughed. +</p> +<p> +"I can't imagine why." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity—generally. It's a beastly mess. But the +things you do—are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, +anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms +and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?" +</p> +<p> +Marion smiled and thanked him. +</p> +<p> +Coryston rose. +</p> +<p> +"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But—I +should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you. +I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do +you see any objection?" +</p> +<p> +He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer +simplicity. She smiled back. +</p> +<p> +"Not the least. Come when you like." +</p> +<p> +He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to +her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling. +</p> +<p> +Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, +relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth +or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had +seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish +notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss +Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the +shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the +curiosity she felt. +</p> +<p> +That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was +clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave. +Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited +upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of +the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she +were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, +when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up +suddenly. +</p> +<p> +"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I <i>can</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"Can what?" +</p> +<p> +"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in +hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?—and he's +a very nice boy—and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!" +</p> +<p> +She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity. +</p> +<p> +"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man +I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but +me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why +should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course +he touches me—Arthur Coryston—and some day I shall want a home—and +children—like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't +strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and +the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me +enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I +think of going from my father to that man—from my father's ideas to +Arthur's ideas—it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled +a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I +couldn't make up my mind yet—for a long, long time." +</p> +<p> +"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently. +</p> +<p> +"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but +rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, nobody can know but me, what a +man my father is!" +</p> +<p> +And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of +her eyes melting to a passionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the +rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, +in the political sense, it overshadowed England. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH5"><!-- CH5 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER V +</h2> +<p> +Lady Coryston's quarters at Coryston Place were not quite so devoid of all +the lighter touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, +of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to +a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. +Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about +the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once +adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. +But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and +of light and sunshine—on sunny days—there was, at any rate, no lack. +Marcia had recently chosen a new chintz for the chairs and sofas, and one +small group of photographs, on a table beside the fireplace, were allowed +to remind the spectator that the owner of the room had once been a young +mother, with a maternal pride in a bunch of fine children. Here were +Coryston, aged nine, on pony-back, pompously showing off; James, dreamily +affable, already a personage at seven; Arthur, fondling a cricket-bat, with +a stiff mouth, hastily closed—by order—on its natural grin; and Marcia, +frowning and pouting, in fancy dress as "The Strawberry Girl," just +emerging, it seemed, from one battle-royal with her nurse, and about to +plunge into another. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston had just entered the room. She was alone, and she carried a +pile of letters, which she put down on the central writing-table. Then she +went to one of the windows, which on this May day was open, and stood, +looking out, one long mittened hand resting vaguely on the table that held +the photographs. A commanding figure! She was in black, carrying her only +ornament, an embossed silver girdle and chatelaine, the gift of her husband +in their first year of marriage. As she paused, motionless, in the clear +sunshine, her great height and her great thinness and flatness brought +out with emphasis the masculine carriage of the shoulders and the strong +markings of the face. In this moment of solitude, however, the mistress of +Coryston Place and of the great domain on which she looked, allowed herself +an expression which was scarcely that of an autocrat—at any rate of an +autocrat at ease. +</p> +<p> +She was thinking of Coryston; and Coryston was giving her a good deal +to think about. Of course she had expected annoyance; but scarcely such +annoyance as Coryston, it seemed, was now bent on causing her. At bottom, +she had always reckoned on her position as mother and woman. Coryston might +threaten, but that he should actually carry out such iniquities as he was +now engaged on, had been—she owned it—beyond her calculations. +</p> +<p> +For she had come down to find the whole neighborhood in a ferment, and many +pleasant illusions, in the shelter of which she had walked for years, both +before and since her husband's death, questioned, at least, and cracking, +if not shattered. That the Corystons were model landlords, that they +enjoyed a feudal popularity among their tenants and laborers, was for Lady +Coryston one of the axioms on which life was based. She despised people who +starved their estates, let their repairs go, and squeezed the last farthing +out of their tenants. Nor had she any sympathy with people who owned +insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least +possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the +very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy +and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in +by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the +laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists +to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her +gates; discovering bad cottages, where none were known to exist; and, in +general, holding up his mother to blame and criticism, which, as Lady +Coryston most truly, sincerely, indignantly felt, was wholly undeserved. +</p> +<p> +This then was the "game" that Coryston had warned her of. He was actually +playing it; though she had never believed for one moment that he would ever +do so. How was she to meet it? With firmness, no doubt, and dignity. As to +the firmness she had no fears; it was the dignity she was anxious about. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston was a woman of conscience; although no doubt she had long ago +harnessed her will to her conscience, which revolved—sometimes heavily—in +the rear. Still there the conscience was, and periodically she had to take +account of it. Periodically, it made her uncomfortable on the subject of +her eldest son. Periodically, it forced her to ask herself—as in this +reverie by the window—"How is it that, bit by bit, and year by year, +he and I have drifted to this pass? Who began it? Is it in any sense my +fault?" +</p> +<p> +How was it, in the first place, that neither she nor his father had ever +had any real influence over this incorrigible spirit; that even in Corry's +childish days, when his parents had him at their mercy, they might punish, +and thwart, and distress him, but could never really conquer him? Lady +Coryston could recall struggles with her son, whether at home or at school, +which turned her sick to think of. +</p> +<p> +Corry—for instance—at his preparatory school, taking a loathing to his +head master, demanding to be withdrawn, and stubbornly refusing to say why; +the master's authority upheld by Corry's parents; vindictive punishment; +followed by sudden illness on the boy's part in the midst of the commotion, +and his return home, white-faced, silent, indomitable. It made her shiver +to remember how he had refused to be nursed by her or by any one but the +old housekeeper at Coryston; how for weeks he had scarcely spoken to his +father or mother. Then had come the lad's justification—a hideous cruelty +charge against the head master; and on a quasi-apology from his father, +Corry had consented to forgive his parents. +</p> +<p> +And again—at Cambridge—another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, +taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to +him, unjustly—furious attacks on the college authorities—rioting in +college—ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She +and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen +to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother +could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival +at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from <i>you</i>!" She could +still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings +abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years. +</p> +<p> +Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating +also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter +vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston +after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were +Corry's arms open to her, and his—almost timid—kiss on her cheek. The +thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had +been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the +kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance +of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were +halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was +suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. +It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry! +</p> +<p> +As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. +James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's +death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she +had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less +a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed +quietly expressed—he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and +phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form +of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his +boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a +denunciation of her love of power—unjustified, unwarranted power—as the +cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so +many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused +to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge +enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you +don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life +and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a +lonely and unhappy woman." +</p> +<p> +Well, well, she had borne with him—she had not broken with him, after +all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of +giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition +to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to +extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all +her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, +the country's interests. And of course she had been right—she had been +abundantly right. +</p> +<p> +Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston +domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to +the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had +been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later +years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination +to win and conquer. Not for herself!—so at least her thoughts, judged in +her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, +but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, +from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper +class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as +she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body +by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down. +</p> +<p> +<i>Glenwilliam</i>!—in that name all her hatreds were summed up. +</p> +<p> +For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to +lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"—a man who had suffered +cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing +class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken +in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging +vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and +her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and +sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress +of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, +married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small +competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political +position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while +England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had +built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled +him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties. +</p> +<p> +"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was +accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him—<i>dear</i>!" +</p> +<p> +And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost +farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, +to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; +persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation—these were +Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to +bay—must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country. +</p> +<p> +"Did I choose my post in life for myself?—its duties, its +responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the +line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no +more right to run away than the men—vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to +see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry +rich?—and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what +he says he hates—land and money—to use for what <i>I</i> hate—and what +his father hated? Just because he is my son—my flesh and blood? He would +scorn the plea himself—he has scorned it all his life. Then let him +respect his mother—when she does the same." +</p> +<p> +But meanwhile the "game," as Coryston was playing it?—what was to be done +as to this episode and that? +</p> +<p> +She sat down to her writing-table, still busily thinking, and reminding +herself that her agent Mr. Page was to come and see her at twelve. She had +hoped to get some counsel and help out of Arthur, now that the House was up +for a fortnight. But Arthur had really been very inconsiderate and tiresome +so far. He had arrived so late for dinner on the Saturday that there had +been no time for talk, especially as there was a large party in the house. +On Sunday he had taken a motor, and had been away all day, paying—he +said—some constituency visits. And now this morning with the earliest +train he was off to London, though there was really no occasion for him +whatever to go up there. He seemed rather unlike himself. His mother +wondered if he was ill. And she fell into some indignant reflections on the +stuffy atmosphere and bad lighting of the House of Commons. But ever since +he knew that he was to have the estates his manner seemed to have changed; +not certainly in the direction of triumph or satisfaction. On the contrary, +he had once or twice said irritably to his mother that the will was +ridiculous and ought not to stand. She had been obliged to make it clear to +him that the matter was <i>not</i> to be discussed. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly, as she sat there, distress seized her at the bare thought of any +shadow between herself and Arthur—Arthur, her darling, who was upholding +his father's principles and hers in Parliament with so much zeal and good +feeling; who had never all his life—till these latter weeks—given her so +much as a cross word. Yet now that she could no longer chase the thought +quite away, she admitted, more and more frankly, that she was anxious. Was +he in any money difficulties? She must get James to find out. In love? She +smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, +who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the +handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high +time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which +means—marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived +among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend +a week-end at Hoddon Grey. Lady Coryston rather wearily reflected that she +must no doubt accept. That young man was clearly in pursuit of Marcia. What +Marcia's own views were, her mother had not yet discovered. She seemed +sometimes glad to see him; sometimes entirely indifferent; and Lady +Coryston thought she had observed that her daughter's vacillations tried +Edward Newbury's pride sorely, at times. But it would end in a match—it +was pretty certain to end in a match. Marcia was only testing her power +over a strong-willed man, who would capture her in the end. That being so, +Lady Coryston acknowledged that the necessary tiresome preliminaries must +be gone through. +</p> +<p> +She hastily scrawled a note of acceptance, without any of the fond +imaginings that would have accompanied the act in the ordinary mother. Like +all imperious women she disliked staying in other people's houses, where +she could not arrange her hours. And she had a particularly resentful +memory of a visit which she had paid with her husband to Lord and Lady +William Newbury when they were renting a house in Surrey, before they had +inherited Hoddon Grey, and while Marcia was still in the schoolroom. Never +in her life had she been so ordered about. The strict rules of the house +had seemed to her intolerable. She was a martinet herself, and inclined to +pay all due attention to the observances of religion; but they must be her +own observances, or at least approved by her. To be expected to follow +other people's observances set her aflame. To make such a fuss, also, about +your religion seemed to her indecorous and absurd. She remembered with a +satisfaction which was half ashamed, that she—who was always down at +home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to +church—had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the +Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when +they met at luncheon. +</p> +<p> +Well, now the thing had to be done again—for the settling of Marcia. +Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her +mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be +more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting +it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more +important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, +only the fringe of her thoughts. +</p> +<p> +However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when +the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she +had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice +than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially +had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he +had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston +estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest +subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded +an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She +greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the +letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party +headquarters. +</p> +<p> +The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, +inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the +confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, +and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard +to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a +widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia. +</p> +<p> +It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much +disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was +disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure +her—make light of the situation. +</p> +<p> +He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter +he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before +entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged +at once into the subject. +</p> +<p> +"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" +</p> +<p> +"You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it +before—you and I together." +</p> +<p> +He shook his head. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, but—you see what makes the difference!" +</p> +<p> +"That Coryston is my son?—and has always been regarded as my heir? +Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his +proceedings will soon disgust people—will soon recoil on himself!" +</p> +<p> +Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek +and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, +hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, +she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this +extremity? +</p> +<p> +He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which +had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He +was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up +in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the +estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his +mother's cottages. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. +Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!" +</p> +<p> +Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner +insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate +suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; +but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high +level of improvements, at the same time. +</p> +<p> +"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that +must be done. I have given orders." +</p> +<p> +"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather +grimly. +</p> +<p> +The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still +determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have +no intention whatever of extending his influence." +</p> +<p> +Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half +an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But +he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston. +</p> +<p> +"I have done my best—believe me—to stop the Sunday disturbances," he +said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a +distance. Purely political!" +</p> +<p> +"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, +firmly. +</p> +<p> +The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the +increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead +to peaceable living. But he merely remarked: +</p> +<p> +"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last +Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the +village." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair. +</p> +<p> +"He defended himself?" +</p> +<p> +"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you +himself this afternoon about the affair." +</p> +<p> +"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page +perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her. +</p> +<p> +"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually +setting up in business at Knatchett itself—the man is turning out a +perfect firebrand!—distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole +neighborhood—getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in +this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a +child—perfectly legitimate!—everything in order!—and enrolling more +members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League—within a stone's-throw of +this house!—than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, +Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these +proceedings!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in +so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her +arch-enemy—Glenwilliam—had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she +preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the +situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and +adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston +was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the +raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the +district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which +Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston +laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to +the same level with Radical millers and grocers—and by her own son—was no +consolation to a proud spirit. +</p> +<p> +"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and +at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I +have been accustomed to trust you." +</p> +<p> +The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an +inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for +the future. +</p> +<p> +A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the +remark: +</p> +<p> +"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at +Martover next month,—and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be +in the chair." +</p> +<p> +He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely +watched its effect. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston paled. +</p> +<p> +"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall +speak," she said, with vivacity. +</p> +<p> +Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in +the speaker's look. +</p> +<p> +"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted +with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy +interrogation, looking for his hat. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody—to some extent," she +said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is." +</p> +<p> +"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope +when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him +to give up some of these extravagances." +</p> +<p> +"I have no power with him," she said, sharply. +</p> +<p> +"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his +departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he +admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him +a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They +seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"—the old, old +game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, +give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when +caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted—it was this he +charged them with—Lady Coryston especially. +</p> +<p> +And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could +he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he—Page—come by chance on a +secret,—dramatic and lamentable!—when, on the preceding Saturday, as he +was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little +property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in +the distance—himself masked by a thin curtain of trees—two persons in the +wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston +and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times +seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the +frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well +known to the neighborhood. +</p> +<p> +By George!—if that <i>did</i> mean anything! +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH6"><!-- CH6 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VI +</h2> +<p> +Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from +a footpath—a right of way—leading from the village to the high road +running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. +Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of +blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the +twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear +and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom—the gray-green weeds swaying +under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and +everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more. +</p> +<p> +Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some +reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for +lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey—and, unlike +most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no +question of grouse or golf—he would naturally take this path. Some strong +mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her +of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing. +There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he +came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when +the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; +when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared +than loved him. +</p> +<p> +Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet +always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back +at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a +mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped +by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican +tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first +and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, +and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had +grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been +accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch +as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a +rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward +himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned +habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world +have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican +laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a +joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the +most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and +impervious to any sort of Modernism. +</p> +<p> +At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his +poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the +most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular +man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though +perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were +jealously hidden from the multitude, who welcomed him as a good-looking +fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, +and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He +was a good shot, a passionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious +note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him—in +general—the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent +to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the +time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth +dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone +were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities +which were only just emerging. +</p> +<p> +Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of +his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked +herself, with that instinct for self-analysis bred in the woman of to-day +by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads—"Why is it he likes +me?"—the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself—"No doubt just +because I am so shapeless and so formless—because I don't know myself what +I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me—he'll save my soul. +Shall he?" +</p> +<p> +A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control +a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston!" she cried. +</p> +<p> +Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought +she caught some words from a Shelley chorus which she knew, because he had +made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself +down beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Well?" +</p> +<p> +Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at +Knatchett—once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his +bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon +him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only +succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen +part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but +the bull barely shook himself. There he stood—good-humored, and pawing. +</p> +<p> +To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other +hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile. +</p> +<p> +"Corry!—I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this +afternoon?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to +announce me." +</p> +<p> +"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been +doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any +good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say +a word to mamma about—about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were +at the Atherstones on Saturday!" +</p> +<p> +The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong +beauty. She went on, appealingly: +</p> +<p> +"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued—and argued with +him—but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything—Parliament, mamma, the +estates, anything—in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing +with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in <i>terror</i> about +mamma!" +</p> +<p> +Corry whistled. +</p> +<p> +"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over +ears. No use your trying to pull him back!" +</p> +<p> +"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, passionately; "what's left of her, after +you've done!" +</p> +<p> +Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister. +Then he slowly got up from the grass and took a seat beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Marcia, do you think—do you honestly think—that I'm the +aggressor in this family row?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I don't know—I don't know what to think!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!—" she went +on, in a muffled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly! +Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks +ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with +him—you <i>must</i>! Persuade him to give her up!" +</p> +<p> +She laid her hand on his arm imploringly. +</p> +<p> +Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back +Arthur up through thick and thin!" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Corry</i>!—how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her—how can +he live in that set—the son-in-law of <i>that man</i>! He'll have to give +up his seat—nobody here would ever vote for him again. His friends would +cut him—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, +impatiently. +</p> +<p> +But Marcia wailed on: +</p> +<p> +"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories—like you—" +</p> +<p> +"Not a principle to his back!—I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I +tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into +it!—if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury +she's been living in. I believe—if you ask me—that she'd accept Arthur +for his money—but that she doesn't care one brass farthing about him. Why +should she?" +</p> +<p> +"Corry!" +</p> +<p> +"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one—and she's not been accustomed to +living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"—he got +up from the seat—"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want +me to do? I repeat—I'm coming to see mother this afternoon." +</p> +<p> +"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little +worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows +anything. Promise!" +</p> +<p> +"Very well. For the present—I'm mum." +</p> +<p> +"And talk to him!—tell him it'll ruin him!" +</p> +<p> +"I don't mind—from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her +with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud +overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look. +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly. +</p> +<p> +"What?" The tone showed her startled. +</p> +<p> +"Let <i>me</i> come and talk to <i>you</i> about that man whom all the +world says you're going to marry!" +</p> +<p> +She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his +voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly: +</p> +<p> +"What do you mean, Corry!" +</p> +<p> +"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, passionately. "At +least let me talk to you." +</p> +<p> +She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full +of energy and will as his own. +</p> +<p> +"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it." +</p> +<p> +"Not as I should tell it!" +</p> +<p> +A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great +effort to master her excitement. +</p> +<p> +"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask <i>him</i> for +his version, too." +</p> +<p> +Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed. +</p> +<p> +"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing +man: "Ah, I see!—here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to +mother—and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with +you—my small sister!—when we next meet." +</p> +<p> +He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there +dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered—as of a grave +yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon +invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia +was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury +quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the +grass beside her. +</p> +<p> +"What a heavenly spot!—and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find +you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch." +</p> +<p> +Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the +spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, +dappling his bronzed face. +</p> +<p> +Marcia flushed a little—an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat +and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, +she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the +keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied +it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. +Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the +last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the +decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it +should be a word of denial. Better—better infinitely—these doubts and +checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her. +</p> +<p> +This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And +it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she +anticipated him. +</p> +<p> +"I want to talk to you about Corry—my brother!" she said, bending toward +him. +</p> + + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i4.png"><img src="images/i4.png" width="150" +alt="THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL"></a> +</p> +<p> +There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She +evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out +his arms to her—gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the +child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with +his bright conscious eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding. +</p> +<p> +"We know he's behaving dreadfully—abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a +puckered brow. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William +yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet—and I don't +want to read it—" +</p> +<p> +"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling. +</p> +<p> +"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I +wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place +against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps +that if you and I—" +</p> +<p> +"Took counsel! Excellent!" +</p> +<p> +"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it." +</p> +<p> +"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your +mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?" +</p> +<p> +"No, but—he means to," said the girl, hesitating. +</p> +<p> +"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his +version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It +is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we +do—that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own." +</p> +<p> +He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way +from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling +that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on +the grass at her feet. <i>This</i> was the man of whom she had said to +Waggin—"he seems the softest, kindest!—and underneath—<i>iron</i>!" +A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble +sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the +thrill of an answering humility. +</p> +<p> +"It is difficult for me—perhaps impossible—to tell you all the story," +he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly—in its broad +outlines." +</p> +<p> +"I have heard some of it." +</p> +<p> +"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order—so far as I can. It concerns a +man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded—my father and mother—myself—as +one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting +with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years +ago we made this man—John Betts—the head of it. He has been my father's +right hand—and he has done splendidly—made the farm, indeed, and himself, +famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a +moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We +looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough +of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. +He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And +especially"—here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with +a gentle seriousness—"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people +here live straight—like Christians—not like animals. My mother has very +strict rules—she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their +character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so—it's merciful. The villages +were in a terrible state when we came—as to morals. I can't of course +explain to you—but our priest appealed to us—we had to make changes—and +my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity—" +</p> +<p> +He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of +some quick emotion invaded it. +</p> +<p> +"You know we are unpopular!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else +in her. +</p> +<p> +"Especially"—there was a touch of scorn in the full voice—"owing to +the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator—that man +Atherstone—who lives in that cottage on the hill—your mother knows all +about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to +live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican—we are church people and +Tories. He thinks that every man—or woman—is a law unto themselves. We +think—but you know what we think!" +</p> +<p> +He smiled at her. +</p> +<p> +"Well—to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of +influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away +much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to +my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey—with a wife. He had +found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, +had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and +forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a +frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could +for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then—bit by +bit—through some extraordinary chances and coincidences—I needn't go +through it all—the true story came out." +</p> +<p> +He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently +considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. +</p> +<p> +"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was +divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his +employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and +after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since—with +her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw +herself on his pity. She is very attractive—he lost his head—and married +her. Well now, what were we to do?" +</p> +<p> +"They <i>are</i> married?" said Marcia. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly—by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" +</p> +<p> +The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. +</p> +<p> +Marcia looked up. +</p> +<p> +"Because—you think—divorce is wrong?" +</p> +<p> +"Because—'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" +</p> +<p> +"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" +</p> +<p> +The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain +she was idly making. +</p> +<p> +"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. +But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons—and trebly, +when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!—is an +absolutely closed one!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to +the presence beside her—the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty +of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. +</p> +<p> +"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" +</p> +<p> +"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude +of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a +little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" +</p> +<p> +The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, +not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not +religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man +beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he +should have singled her out—to love her. +</p> +<p> +But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. +</p> +<p> +She looked up eagerly. +</p> +<p> +"If I had been very miserable—had made a hideous mistake—and knew it—and +somebody came along and offered to make me happy—give me a home—and care +for me—I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!" +</p> +<p> +"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength." +</p> +<p> +Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That +old, old connection between the passion of religion—which is in truth a +great romanticism—and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its +most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in +herself—of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me—be my +adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his +slave—I will not!" +</p> +<p> +At last she said: +</p> +<p> +"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?" +</p> +<p> +He sighed. +</p> +<p> +"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If—Mrs. +Betts"—the words came out with effort—"would have separated from him we +should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would +have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have +seen her from time to time—" +</p> +<p> +"They refused?" +</p> +<p> +"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, +he said, married legally and honestly—and that was an end of it. As to +Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. +He defied my father to dismiss him. My father—on his principles—had no +choice but to do so. So then—your brother came on the scene!" +</p> +<p> +"Of course—he was furious?" +</p> +<p> +"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles +may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country." +</p> +<p> +A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia +kindled for her brother. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us—as you wish—England +wouldn't be free!" +</p> +<p> +"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with +him. But why attack us personally—call us names—because of what we +believe?" +</p> +<p> +He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted. +</p> +<p> +"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad—quite mad." +</p> +<p> +And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Don't blame us!" +</p> +<p> +He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it. +</p> +<p> +"Don't let him set you against us!" +</p> +<p> +She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him +from the moment of emotion—by way of preventing its going any further—she +sprang to her feet. +</p> +<p> +"Mother will be waiting lunch for us." +</p> +<p> +They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's +whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; +insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by +a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had +never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. +The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of +the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and +there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, +invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. +Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. +Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was +enchantment. +</p> +<p> +Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir +Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of +both families. +</p> +<p> +"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a +cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid +will help us, too—with Arthur." Her look darkened. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother—and persuade +Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals." +</p> +<p> +Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in +spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London +successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, +in this strong man, were warmth and shelter. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Luncheon passed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she +perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their +destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady +Coryston, "So we expect you—next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on +the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the +young man's mind. Well!—the sooner, the better. +</p> +<p> +Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home +through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she +gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the +house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet +Sir Wilfrid Bury. +</p> +<p> +Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual—bedraggled +with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned +with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had +been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of +the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and +had been formally granted it. +</p> +<p> +He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any +one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two +occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation +in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston +departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat +motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded +slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by +the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one +who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her +aspect. +</p> +<p> +Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, +looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a +fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. +The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass +weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the +happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls +of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of +early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from +the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale +brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old +engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally +a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in +blossom just outside. +</p> +<p> +Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on +the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. +</p> +<p> +"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and +smiled absently. +</p> +<p> +"Not bad?" +</p> +<p> +Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: +</p> +<p> +"Don't you go into politics, Lester!" +</p> +<p> +"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good +deal." +</p> +<p> +"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. +"Or to put it in another way—there's a hot coal in me that makes me do +certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? +I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" +</p> +<p> +"Haven't made up my mind." +</p> +<p> +"I am—theoretically. But upon my word—politics plays the deuce with +women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." +</p> +<p> +"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. +</p> +<p> +Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke +out: +</p> +<p> +"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open +mind—among women—where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. +"And politics kills all that kind of thing." +</p> +<p> +"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, but it's our <i>business</i>!'"—Coryston smote the table beside +him—"our dusty, d—d business. We've got somehow to push and harry +and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the +women!—oughtn't they to be in the shrine—tending the mystic fire? What if +the fire goes out—if the heart of the nation dies?" +</p> +<p> +Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but +he said nothing. +</p> +<p> +Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. +</p> +<p> +"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great +scandals on this estate—it's better managed than most. But because of this +poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let +them live their own lives they'd adore her." +</p> +<p> +"The trade-unions are just the same." +</p> +<p> +"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England—from +Parliament downward. Well, well—Good-by!" +</p> +<p> +"Coryston!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. +</p> +<p> +"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" +</p> +<p> +"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut +the door. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he +presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and +stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the +fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the +horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the +woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English +perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings +in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted +before Blenheim was fought. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in +white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that +generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, +friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. +</p> +<p> +"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs +and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like +them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and +then—lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for +people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would +be angry if I were to tell her so!" +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH7"><!-- CH7 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VII +</h2> +<p> +It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and +lustiest. +</p> +<p> +Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. +The long low line of the house rose behind them—an attractive house and +an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a +high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high +gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private +chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not +display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and +old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people +who were walking up and down the front lawn together. +</p> +<p> +Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His +pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; +he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair—he was walking +bareheaded—was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, +was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement—a +stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord +William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the +stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife +beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like +woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and +wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave +that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at +first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most +submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life +have been either possible or happy in her husband's company. +</p> +<p> +They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their +week-end guests—Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring +cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, +however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that +she held the field. +</p> +<p> +"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying +in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward +has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe +you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother." +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's +party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I +remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical." +</p> +<p> +"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with +all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is +perfectly ridiculous." +</p> +<p> +"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said +Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that +Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for +a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded +something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said—quite +indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can <i>act</i>.' It +was curious—and rather disquieting—to see so much +decision—self-assertion—in so young a woman." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently +confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles—a fine +character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily +guided by one she loves." +</p> +<p> +"I hope so, for Edward's sake—for he is very much in love. I trust he is +not letting inclination run away with him. So much—to all of us—depends +on his marriage!" +</p> +<p> +Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his +eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some +three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been +associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been +the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, +a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of +a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of +Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with +beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey +had sheltered large gatherings—gatherings of the high Puseyite party in +the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in +the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile—orator and ascetic—might +have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were +strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made +fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme +old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's +blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement. +</p> +<p> +Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord +William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the +dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the +pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of +Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his +forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled—the endless, +unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against +the unbeliever. +</p> +<p> +... His wife broke in upon his reverie. +</p> +<p> +"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?" +</p> +<p> +Lord William started. +</p> +<p> +"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his +shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever." +</p> +<p> +"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly. +</p> +<p> +"A line—in the third person." +</p> +<p> +"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise—" +</p> +<p> +"So she is—most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every +right to complain of her." +</p> +<p> +"You think she has done wrong?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things—whatever her son may +be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of +such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds +of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to +claim—something altogether monstrous and unnatural!" +</p> +<p> +Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. +His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel +or agnostic son?" +</p> +<p> +Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully +extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?" +</p> +<p> +"Not at all! That was God's will—the cross she had to bear. She interferes +with the course of Providence—presumptuously interferes with it—doing +evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade +men by gentleness—not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is +usurping what does not—what never can—belong to her." +</p> +<p> +The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for +male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady +William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady +Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions +were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her +husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce +their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous +those opinions may be. +</p> +<p> +"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord +William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for +politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the +wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I +received last week?" +</p> +<p> +"Do you think he will do what he threatens?" +</p> +<p> +"What—get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them +somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our +consciences." +</p> +<p> +Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought +of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. +Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. +</p> +<p> +His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into +the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; +gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. +She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at +everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and +plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's +widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of +lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the +house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a +sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the +end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and +fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud +chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and +the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink +and tied with knots of pink ribbon. +</p> +<p> +Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. +She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own +money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she +had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the +dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of +azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. +Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there +for the girl Edward loved—who was probably to be his wife. A great +tenderness filled her heart. +</p> +<p> +When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, +and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors +open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful +still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with +Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she +prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his +father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... +</p> +<hr> +<p> +An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive +with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was +strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, +the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the +deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among +the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. +</p> +<p> +In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two +young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him +with a sigh of satisfaction. +</p> +<p> +"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!" +</p> +<p> +"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after +them." +</p> +<p> +"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his +handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?" +</p> +<p> +"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his—a 'fidus Achates'—who +lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather +melancholy tone. +</p> +<p> +"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"—Sir +Louis Ford lowered his voice—"I gathered the amazing fact that +Coryston—<i>Coryston</i>!—is going to take the chair at a meeting where +Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month." +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately +form of Coryston's mother in the distance. +</p> +<p> +"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly. +</p> +<p> +A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, +and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been +invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find +out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese. +</p> +<p> +"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a <i>woman's</i> foes were to be +those of her own household!" +</p> +<p> +The Chaplain frowned. +</p> +<p> +"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. +"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was +perfectly outrageous." +</p> +<p> +"What about?" asked Sir Louis. +</p> +<p> +"A divorce case—a very painful one—on which we have found it necessary to +take a strong line." +</p> +<p> +The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and +spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled. +</p> +<p> +"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?" +</p> +<p> +"What indeed?—except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can." +</p> +<p> +"Who are the parties?" +</p> +<p> +The Chaplain told the story. +</p> +<p> +"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the +Dean. +</p> +<p> +"Not that I know of." +</p> +<p> +The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind +his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened +the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny +fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the +human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to +them—shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious +of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as +though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, +Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the +far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things +threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled +both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain +helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than +herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, +like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it. +</p> +<p> +Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers +there was that in them under which her own wavered. +</p> +<p> +"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the +way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into +a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of +wild hyacinths to a hilltop. +</p> +<p> +A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them +closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and +quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air +was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them +only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival. +</p> +<p> +Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. +She heard her name breathed. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia!" +</p> +<p> +She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring +tenderness, his lips gravely smiling. +</p> +<p> +"Yes!" +</p> +<p> +She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms +round her, whispering: +</p> +<p> +"Marcia! will you come to me—will you be my wife?" +</p> +<p> +She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not +so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?—the supreme of +life? +</p> +<p> +They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her +within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. +He placed her on it, and himself beside her. +</p> +<p> +"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" +he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy—shall I make +you happy?" +</p> +<p> +"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in +her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you +angry with me." +</p> +<p> +"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, +Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other—to live +as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?" +</p> +<p> +She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read +it in his eyes, had in it—for her—and for the moment—just a shade of +painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite +give—or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried +out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She +threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling +silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm +about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, +loving and beloved. +</p> +<p> +"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she +disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to +her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. +</p> +<p> +"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. +</p> +<p> +She looked at him a little wistfully. +</p> +<p> +"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too +much. And I shall always—want to be myself." +</p> +<p> +"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you—or for me!" +The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he +added, with a sudden flush: +</p> +<p> +"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all +hypocrites and tyrants. Well—you will judge. I won't defend my father and +mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." +</p> +<p> +He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. +</p> +<p> +"You'll write to Corry—won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; +and yet—" Her eyes filled with tears. +</p> +<p> +"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." +</p> +<p> +"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. +</p> +<p> +"Do you think I can't keep my temper—when it's <i>your</i> brother? Try +me." +</p> +<p> +He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved +through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, +the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace +flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never +come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste +them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such +crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. +</p> +<p> +They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them +into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which +there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and +there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously +forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a +sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia +stopped to look. +</p> +<p> +"What a charming place! Who lives there?" +</p> +<p> +Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. +</p> +<p> +"That is the model farm." +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Betts's farm?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. Can you manage that stile?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with +the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and +talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to +Lord William. +</p> +<p> +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of +perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me—about that story. I +don't think I can prevent him." +</p> +<p> +"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears." +</p> +<p> +He spoke gravely. +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I—I think perhaps I had better +have it out with him—myself. I remember all you said to me!" +</p> +<p> +"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without +a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject +immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden. +</p> +<p> +Lady William first perceived them—perceived, too, that they were hand in +hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and +rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband. +</p> +<p> +The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their +cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered +himself of the frivolous remark—in answer to some plea of the Dean's on +behalf of further powers for the female sex: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be +necessary to draw the line!"—when they too caught sight of the advancing +figures. +</p> +<p> +The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over +his round cheeks and button mouth. +</p> +<p> +"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath. +</p> +<p> +"Eh!—what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly +put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?" +</p> +<p> +Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting +with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a +happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not +without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain +moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and +blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken +composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and +given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to +Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion +would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already +thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before +dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential +information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible +date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice +and straightforward—just indeed what she had expected. But there would +be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; +whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught. +</p> +<p> +"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of +this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night." +</p> +<p> +She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, +and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker. +</p> +<p> +"You think so, father?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly, my dear son, certainly." +</p> +<p> +Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but +perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this +time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and +a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room. +</p> +<p> +The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, +looked at her keenly from time to time. +</p> +<p> +"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she +fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?" +</p> +<p> +Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the +betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William +had disappeared. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and +deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!—is it +really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly. +</p> +<p> +"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury. +</p> +<p> +"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up +the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening +prayer after dinner." +</p> +<p> +His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and +took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her +through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel. +</p> +<p> +"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston +as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained +amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But +unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest +in the religious customs of his neighbors. +</p> +<p> +"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady +Coryston followed, willy-nilly. +</p> +<p> +Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the +chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," +shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a +sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly +forsaken—altogether remote from him. +</p> +<p> +But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great +crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May +evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of +her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many +servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord +William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel +seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; +and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the +house to which it was attached. +</p> +<p> +"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it +mean for <i>me</i>? Can I play my part in it?" +</p> +<p> +What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed +to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing +ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a +time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague +fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind! +</p> +<p> +And now it returned upon her intensified—that cold, indefinite fear, +creeping through love and joy. +</p> +<p> +She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that +she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar—absorbed. +</p> +<p> +And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General +Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, +the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a +natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of +Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston." +</p> +<p> +An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into +a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her +cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these +kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I +ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been +asked!" +</p> +<p> +When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her +appealingly. +</p> +<p> +"Darling!—you didn't mind?" +</p> +<p> +She quickly withdrew her hand from his. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress." +</p> +<p> +And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the +unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight +of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the +roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and +unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter +to her maid about everything and nothing—laughing at any trifle, and yet +feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale +pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last +string tied that she had never looked better. +</p> +<p> +"But won't you put on these roses, miss?" +</p> +<p> +She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered. +</p> +<p> +Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her +reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much +stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her +resources against some hostile force—to be saying to herself: +</p> +<p> +"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!" +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all +the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the +sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was +resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put +on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on +great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks +that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away +the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by +Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room +shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler +had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a +bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had +gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel +and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and +gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics +with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, +so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any +rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, +which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult. +</p> +<p> +After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, +deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Well, how are you feeling?" +</p> +<p> +"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes +aflame. +</p> +<p> +"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law +for taking her from you?" +</p> +<p> +"Who—Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking +of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel +still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot +within twenty-four hours!" +</p> +<p> +"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about +Marcia!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him. +</p> +<p> +"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about." +</p> +<p> +"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you +really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her +properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"—she dropped +her voice—"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, +the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as +you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on +earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?" +</p> +<p> +"Tyranny! <i>You</i> call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? +One's soul is not one's own." +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to +drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never +tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have +spent the morning in remonstrating with her—to no purpose whatever—on the +manner in which she was treating her eldest son. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br><a name="CH8"><!-- CH8 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII +</h2> +<p> +While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was +passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when +visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for +the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as +he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the +immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself +ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and +to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by +Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the +library—gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the +antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and +literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put +aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house +represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired +of raiding. +</p> +<p> +But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of +the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a +more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research +allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why +should he not make himself a <i>writer</i>, like other people? +</p> +<p> +But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary +conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for +some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, +and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be +carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. +For instance: +</p> +<p> +"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or +to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining +ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the +distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his +character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And +yet—I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should +see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the +same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, +of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those +particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to +her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that +she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though +often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the +two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and +must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she +should have injured or trampled on some one else. +</p> +<p> +"Of late she has come in here—to the library—much more frequently. I am +sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am +presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve +her. +</p> +<p> +"It has grown up inevitably—this affair; but N. little realizes how +dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him +and his philosophy will attract her—will draw the moth to the candle. All +strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the +ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there +to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making +against such men as Newbury—their ideals and traditions. And to one or +other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She +does not know it—does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; +but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of +free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon +Newbury. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement—if it is an +engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that +she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; +and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if +he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can +toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? +'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady +Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet +all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that +throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting—not direct +party-fighting—but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the +nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in +fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate—isn't +that what women might do for us?—instead of taking up with all the +old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? +Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, +but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all +and any sort—to vote against her. +</p> +<p> +"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters +to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work +there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests +itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid +me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and +give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if +I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If +I only could <i>write</i>! The world seems to be waiting for the historian +that can write. +</p> +<p> +"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How +much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its +still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that +obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country +like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly +prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and +manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and +splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life—as in the Boer war; and +the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something +valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults. +</p> +<p> +"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the +full-blown <i>tyrannus</i>. She has no doubt whatever about her right to +rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that +Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between +threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of +her—how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her +afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the +wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to +differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and +Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times. +</p> +<p> +"The poor people here—or most of them—are used to her, and in a way +respect her. They take her as inevitable—like the rent or the east wind; +and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for +them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see +that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his +mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages +without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing +up in the village and on the farms—not so much there, however!—which is +going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But +they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to +get out of his campaign. +</p> +<p> +"And then—Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her +by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. +She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family +have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with +her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased +with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when +something does really touch her—when something makes her <i>feel</i>—that +curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. +There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a +miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who +was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the +girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden—Marcia +with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but +keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels—must have been +worth seeing. And there is an old man—a decrepit old road-mender, whose +sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she +never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to +tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes +to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in +Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. +You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on +which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet +she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either? +</p> +<p> +"But the tragic figure—the tragic possibility—in all this family +<i>galčre</i> at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because +of our old Cambridge friendship—quite against my will—a good deal about +the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that +any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is +persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that +what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the +young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry +a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many +proposals—" +</p> +<p> +The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the +writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became +aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur +Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved +to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, +he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library +staircase. +</p> +<p> +As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was +that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, +his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped +to view, amid the general relaxation of <i>tenue</i> and dignity. He came +up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning +into a chair beside it. +</p> +<p> +"I hear mother and Marcia are away?" +</p> +<p> +"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young +man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about." +</p> +<p> +Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, +thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of +the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the +busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among +the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the +hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to +cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop. +</p> +<p> +"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? +There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month—mother's arranged it +all—not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!—and I'm to speak +at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not +allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet +mother's had the bills printed already!" +</p> +<p> +"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?" +</p> +<p> +"I dare say. D—n the Martover meeting! But what <i>taste</i>!—two +brothers slanging at each other—almost in the same parish. I declare women +have no taste!—not a ha'porth. But I won't do it—and mother, just for +once, will have to give in." +</p> +<p> +He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him—no doubt +with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation +appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the +self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April. +</p> +<p> +"You are afraid of being misunderstood?" +</p> +<p> +"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young +man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me +again. She makes that quite plain." +</p> +<p> +"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she +discriminate between the politician and the private friend?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur shook his head. +</p> +<p> +"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam +a thief and a robber—and what else can I call him, with mother +looking on?—there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's +<i>fanatical</i> about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already +about him. I tell you—it's rather fine, Lester!—upon my soul, it is!" +</p> +<p> +And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned +his still boyish looks upon his friend. +</p> +<p> +"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But—I confess +I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are +you prepared to take her into your confidence?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the +devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't +tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!" +</p> +<p> +There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him +meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Arthur!—can't you make a last effort, and get free?" +</p> +<p> +His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted: +</p> +<p> +"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two +worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor +your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in +love. But it does matter—and it'll tell more and more every year." +</p> +<p> +"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us +all—I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses—just as so much +grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter." +</p> +<p> +"And yet you love her!" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify +about these things—she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at +her own side—just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships—and +everything that he says and thinks. She adores him—she'd go to the stake +for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on +him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad—I know that. But I'd rather marry +her mad than any other woman sane!" +</p> +<p> +"All the same you <i>could</i> break it off," persisted Lester. +</p> +<p> +"Of course I could. I could hang—or poison—or shoot myself, I suppose, if +it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her +up, I shall cut the whole business—Parliament—estates—everything!" +</p> +<p> +The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly +subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. +</p> +<p> +"What are your chances?" +</p> +<p> +"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. +But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of +speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair—and if I +don't make it, mother will know the reason why!—it's all up with me." +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you apply to Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +"What—to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't +he?—with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was +coming down here to make mischief—and, by Jove, he's doing it!" +</p> +<p> +"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. +</p> +<p> +Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering +greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the +door behind him. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to +reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he +deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a +cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal +which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung +an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking +and pondering. +</p> +<p> +"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; +"we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out +for you, Arthur—upon my soul, I don't!" +</p> +<p> +"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. +</p> +<p> +"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage +yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off +the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." +</p> +<p> +"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" +</p> +<p> +"What do <i>you</i> think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in +a garret—a genteel garret—on a thousand a year? For her father, +perhaps!—but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it." +</p> +<p> +No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He +descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took +his arm—an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it +serious?" +</p> +<p> +"Sure of her? Good God—if I were!" +</p> +<p> +He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could +not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets. +</p> +<p> +Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine +concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out +of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the +window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for +an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. +Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind. +</p> +<p> +"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get +Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know +that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting +in the Martover paper yesterday—" +</p> +<p> +"<i>No</i>!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing. +</p> +<p> +"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she +has already written your speech." +</p> +<p> +"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair. +</p> +<p> +"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell +mother you won't be treated so—that you're a man, not a school-boy—that +you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches—<i>et cetera</i>. +Play the independence card for all you're worth. It <i>may</i> get you out +of the mess." +</p> +<p> +Arthur's countenance began to clear. +</p> +<p> +"I'm to make it appear a bargain—between you and me? I asked you to give +up your show, and you—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already +warned you, it won't help you long." +</p> +<p> +"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression. +</p> +<p> +"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be +Glenwilliam—and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her +heart—and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before +you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the +person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed—whereas +<i>you</i> have been the model son." +</p> +<p> +Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur. +</p> +<p> +"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the +rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!" +</p> +<p> +"'<i>Life</i>,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just +try offering your billet—with all its little worries thrown in—to the +next fellow you meet in the street—and see what happens!" +</p> +<p> +But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother. +</p> +<p> +"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"—he +waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the +sun—"for—for Enid—you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!" +</p> +<p> +There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried +conviction. Coryston's expression changed. +</p> +<p> +"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with—with Enid—to give it up," he +said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her—I don't mean anything in +the least offensive—has a very just and accurate idea of the value of +money." +</p> +<p> +A sort of impatient groan was the only reply. +</p> +<p> +But Lester raised his head from his book. +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one +to the other. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and +Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by +now?" +</p> +<p> +He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he +spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with +Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment +hard and threatening. +</p> +<p> +"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your +sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she +might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up +his papers as he spoke. +</p> +<p> +"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you +a friend?—her friend?—our friend?—everybody's friend?" said Coryston, +peremptorily. "Look here!—if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"—he +brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table—"there'll be another +family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case +before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with +her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury +hear reason—well and good. If she can't—or if she doesn't see the thing +as she ought, herself—well!—we shall know where we are!" +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an +awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!" +</p> +<p> +"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"—the voice was Lester's—"to plunge +her into such a business, at such a time!" +</p> +<p> +"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable +Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts—why should we? Arthur!—come and +walk home with me!" +</p> +<p> +Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to +any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers—and finally let himself be carried +off. +</p> +<p> +Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library. +</p> +<p> +"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'" +</p> +<p> +What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with +such a problem—be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off +things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat +solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or +might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old +house—for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston +librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could +see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns—Marcia and Newbury. +</p> +<p> +Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library +floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of +old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of +doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows. +</p> +<p> +He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such +painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the +growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had +his career to think of—and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day +he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life +on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It +would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never +possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient +barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound +and sane; it looked life in the face—its gifts and its denials, and those +stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting +spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he +submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, +handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both +soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent +time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first +train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to +give an hour to business talk—as to settlements and so forth—with Lord +William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her +motor with all possible speed. +</p> +<p> +"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with +half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: +"But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent +people—quite excellent." +</p> +<p> +Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course +never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion +of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any +soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance. +</p> +<p> +"If only Edward and you—and everybody would not be in such a dreadful +hurry!" she said, protesting. +</p> +<p> +"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have +you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till +the autumn I should be terribly busy—absolutely taken up—with Arthur's +election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to +the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not +only the usual Liberal gang—I shall have Coryston to fight!" +</p> +<p> +"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then +she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that +notice of Arthur's meeting into the <i>Witness</i> without consulting him. +Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid +of his cutting up rough?" +</p> +<p> +"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. +As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that +Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in +doubt as to what <i>he</i> thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only +five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully—without a word of +reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more +than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped +Coryston had been able to talk to him—to persuade him! Edward too had +promised to see him—immediately. Surely between them they would make him +hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother? +</p> +<p> +The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival +at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler. +</p> +<p> +"Is Mr. Arthur here?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for +luncheon." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the +answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened +first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still +holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler +intercepted her. +</p> +<p> +"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your +sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker—something you had +ordered—very particular." +</p> +<p> +"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything +about it." +</p> +<p> +She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand. +</p> +<p> +"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's +leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with +Coryston. He may argue with me—and with Edward—if he pleases. But Mrs. +Betts herself! No—that's too much!" +</p> +<p> +Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. +Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her +amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman—a lady—a complete stranger +to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A +woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, +and tears on her cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<h2> +Book II +</h2> +<h2> +MARCIA +</h2> +<p class="ind"> + "To make you me how much so e'er I try,<br> + You will be always you, and I be I." +</p> + +<br> +<br> + +<a name="CH9"><!-- CH9 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER IX +</h2> +<p> +"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. +"I—I have deceived your servants—told them lies—that I might get to +see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!—don't send me away!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, +standing suppliant before her, and repeated: +</p> +<p> +"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name." +</p> +<p> +"My name—is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. +"Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet—I think you must; +because—because there has been so much talk!" +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which +reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress +and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general +aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally +against—one might almost say, as an effluence from—the background of +bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the +room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility +of her attire—arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short +skirts and shell necklace,—betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite +plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex. +</p> +<p> +"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought—Lord +Coryston—" +</p> +<p> +She paused, her eyes cast down. +</p> +<p> +"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit +down." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. +Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a +broken, sobbing voice. +</p> +<p> +"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I—I don't know what we shall do—my +poor husband and I. We heard last night—that at the chapel service—oh! +my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he +never goes:—but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about +your engagement to Mr. Newbury—and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so +<i>ashamed</i>, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!—I +don't know how to excuse myself—" +</p> +<p> +She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned +face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears. +</p> +<p> +"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and +annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing. +</p> +<p> +"And then—well then"—Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, +removing them with another long and miserable sigh—"my husband and I +consulted—and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, +to plead for us—with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, +Miss Coryston—and we—we are so miserable!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran +lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had +placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched. +</p> +<p> +"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with +embarrassment. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly. +</p> +<p> +"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm +unless he will give me up?" +</p> +<p> +But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly: +</p> +<p> +"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs." +</p> +<p> +"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, +turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag +of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into +vehemence: +</p> +<p> +"You ought to listen to me!—it is cruel—heartless, if you don't listen! +You are going to be happy—and rich—to have everything you can possibly +wish for on this earth. How can you—how <i>can</i> you refuse—to help +anybody as wretched as I am!" +</p> +<p> +The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic +force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the +bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be +thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as +though the speaker observed herself, even in violence. +</p> +<p> +Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and +then said: +</p> +<p> +"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to +me—you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I +shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?" +</p> +<p> +"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, +Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps—but it's just because +you're so young—and so—so happy—that I came to you. You don't know my +story—and I can't tell it you—" The speaker covered her face a moment. +"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had +an awfully hard time—awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as +though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see—I was married when I was +only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me—she was dying—and +she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few +months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I +suffered—I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he +struck me, and abused me. Then"—she turned her head away and spoke in a +choked, rapid voice—"there was another man—he taught me music, and—I was +only a child, Miss Coryston—just eighteen. He made me believe he loved +me—and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like +heaven—and one day—I went off with him—down to a seaside place, and +there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against +my life, but I couldn't—there! I couldn't. And so—then my husband +divorced me—and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other +man—deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel +to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So +there I was left, with—with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look +at Marcia. +</p> +<p> +The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed. +</p> +<p> +"And I just lived on somehow—with my father—who was a hard man. He +hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I +couldn't earn money and be independent—though I tried once or twice. I'm +not strong—and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to +keep me—and it was bitter—for him and for me. Well, then, last August he +was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. +And one day on the sands I saw—John Betts—after fifteen years. When I +was twenty—he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to +me—and oh!—I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told +him everything. Well—he was sorry for me!—and father died—and I hadn't +a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no +prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. +Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce—he had seen it in +the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him—not one little bit. But he +knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, +to any one but him and me. I was free—and I wasn't going to bring any more +disgrace on anybody." +</p> +<p> +She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the +small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and +powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly +into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some +rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing +and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! +</p> +<p> +Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Coryston!—if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares +for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll +kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" +</p> +<p> +The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her +slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which +sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only +say again in a vaguely troubled voice: +</p> +<p> +"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't +to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't +do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." +</p> +<p> +"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help +each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means +to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!—and Lord +William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too +cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if +he promises—that I shall be no more his wife—but just a friend +henceforward—if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary +friends—then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near +a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters—and send the boy to school. Just +think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after +all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a +better woman"—sobs rose again in the speaker's throat—"some one to love +me—and now I must part from him—or else his life will be ruined! You +know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. +He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and +made soils—and all sorts of ways of growing fruit—oh, I don't understand +much about it—I'm not clever—but I know he could never do the same things +anywhere else—not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it—he'll +go—for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why <i>should</i> he go? +What's the reason—the <i>justice</i> of it?" +</p> + + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i5.png"><img src="images/i5.png" width="150" +alt="'I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU'"></a> +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her +cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no +acting now. +</p> +<p> +The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands +gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her. +</p> +<p> +"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know +what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced +people marrying again. You know—how they've set a standard all their +lives—for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever +preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their +feelings. They hate—I'm sure they hate—making any one unhappy. But if +one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, +how—" +</p> +<p> +"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, +<i>please</i>, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you +to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up—and he'll never give me +up. But I'll go away—I'll go to a little cottage John has—it was his +mother's, in Charnwood Forest—far away from everybody. Nobody here will +ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work +will let him. He will come over in the motor—he's always running about the +country—nobody would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated—so we +should have separated—as far as spending our lives together goes. But I +should sometimes—sometimes—have my John!—for my own—my very own—and he +would sometimes have me!" +</p> +<p> +Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts +shook from head to foot. +</p> +<p> +Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling—of +a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an +experience, touched so nearly on passions and sins which had hitherto been +to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, +whatever class she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the +conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment—a moment differing +wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have +come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack +such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay +knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, +the real stuff—the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new +to her. +</p> +<p> +And, in a flash of memory and association, there passed through her mind +the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights—Iphigenia on the stage, +wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and +Newbury's voice: +</p> +<p> +"<i>This</i> is the death she shrinks from—" +</p> +<p> +And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately +to its doom: +</p> +<p> +"And this—is the death she <i>accepts</i>!" +</p> +<p> +Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome +features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the +girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose—"<i>he</i> +would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and +loves—and <i>therefore</i> he will inflict it inexorably on others. But +that's the point! For oneself, yes—but for others who suffer and don't +believe!—suffer horribly!" +</p> +<p> +A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs. +Betts. +</p> +<p> +"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll +try and put it to Mr. Newbury. Nobody here, you think, need know anything +about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and +you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all +anybody need know?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts raised herself. +</p> +<p> +"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord +William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't +do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to +interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William +and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!" +</p> +<p> +She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair +and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand: +</p> +<p> +"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury—because you love him. If +I lose John who will ever give me a kind word—a kind look again? I thought +at last—I'd found—a little love. Even bad people"—her voice broke—"may +rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that." +</p> +<p> +Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes. +Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her +mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled +with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of +deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and +responsive human being. +</p> +<p> +"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that +I'll speak to Mr. Newbury." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts gave her effusive thanks which somehow jarred on Marcia; she was +glad when they were over and Mrs. Betts rose to go. That her tearful and +disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side +staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. +Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an +undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon +pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound of the house. +</p> +<p> +She found herself in a strange confusion of mind. She still saw the small +tear-stained face, the dingy finery, the tormented hair; the story she had +just heard was still sounding in her ears. But what really held her was the +question: "Can I move Edward? What will he say to me?" +</p> +<p> +And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together +came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which +had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been +drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?—drawn with a +hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by +them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it +that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had +been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer +idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? +Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the +center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices +eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself +naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. +</p> +<p> +But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of +the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be +entering upon—moving—in a world where almost nothing was left free for +her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was +taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; +would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon +Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. +</p> +<p> +And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of +self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's +lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home +life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to +them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, +congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning—these +things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. +The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing +enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish +joking—with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and +literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the +Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute +refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at +least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice—in +relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still +standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, +she knew—knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, +his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she +sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, +she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in +her?—what was there in her—to deserve it? +</p> +<p> +And yet—and yet! Some penetrating instinct to which in this moment of +solitude, of unwilling reflection, she could not help but listen, told her +that the very soul of him was not hers; that the deepest foundation of his +life was no human affection, but the rapture, the compelling vision of a +mystical faith. And that rapture she could never share; she knew herself; +it was not in her. One moment she could have cried out in despair over her +own limitations and disabilities. The next she was jealous; on fire. +</p> +<p> +Jealous!—that was the real, sadly human truth; jealous, as women have +always been, of the faith, or the art, or the friendship, which threatens +their hold upon the lover. And there stole upon her as she sat musing, the +old, old temptation—the temptation of Psyche—to test and try this man, +who was to bring her into bondage, before the bonds were yet quite set. She +was honestly touched by Mrs. Betts's story. To her, in her first softness +of love, it seemed intolerably hard and odious that two people who clung to +each other should be forcibly torn apart; two people whom no law, but +only an ecclesiastical scruple condemned. Surely Edward would accept, and +persuade his father to accept, the compromise which the husband and wife +suggested. If Mrs. Betts withdrew from the scene, from the estate, would +not this satisfy everybody? What further scandal could there be? She went +on arguing it with herself, but all the time the real, deepest motive +at work was not so much sympathy, as a kind of excited +restlessness—curiosity. She saw herself pleading with Edward, breaking +down his resistance, winning her cause, and then, instead of triumphing, +flinging herself into his arms, to ask pardon for daring to fight him. +</p> +<p> +The happy tears blinded her, and fell unheeded until a mocking reaction +dried them. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, what a fool!—what a fool!" +</p> +<p> +And running through the wood she came out into the sunshine at its farther +end—a blaze of sun upon the lake, its swans, its stone-rimmed islands, +and statuary, on the gray-white front of the pillared and porticoed house, +stretching interminably. The flowers shone in the stiff beds; a rain of +blossom drifted through the air. Everything glittered and sparkled. It was +Corinthian, pretentious, artificial; but as Marcia hurried up the broad +middle walk between the queer gods and goddesses, whom some pupil of +Bernini's had manufactured in Rome for a Coryston of the eighteenth +century, she was in love with the scene, which in general she disliked; in +love with the summer, in love above all with the quick life of her own mind +and body.... +</p> +<p> +There were persons talking in her mother's sitting-room—Sir Wilfrid, +Arthur, and Coryston—she perceived them through the open windows. The +sight of Arthur suddenly sobered her, and diverted her thoughts. For if +Newbury now held the chief place in her mind, her mother still reigned +there. She—Marcia—must be on the spot to protect her mother!—in case +protection were wanted, and Coryston and Sir Wilfrid had not succeeded +yet in bringing that mad fellow to his senses. Ah! but they had all a new +helper and counselor now—in Edward. Let Coryston abuse him to her, if he +dared! She would know how to defend him. +</p> +<p> +She hurried on. +</p> +<p> +Simultaneously, from the garden door of the library a figure emerged, a +man with some books under his arm. She recognized Lester, and a rush of +something which was partly shyness and partly a delicious pride came over +her, to delay her steps. +</p> +<p> +They met under the wide open colonnade which carried the first story of the +house. Lester came toward her smiling and flushed. +</p> +<p> +"I've just heard," he said. "I do congratulate you. It's splendid!" +</p> +<p> +She gave him her hand; and he thought as he looked at her how happiness had +beautified and transformed her. All that was imperfect in the face seemed +to have fallen into harmony; and her dark bloom had never been so lovely. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I'm very happy. He'll keep me in order! At least he'll try." Her eyes +danced. +</p> +<p> +"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not +indeed knowing what to say. +</p> +<p> +"Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with +him." +</p> +<p> +"Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite—Ah!—" +</p> +<p> +A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead—Lady Coryston's voice and +Arthur's clashing—startled them both. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I must go!" cried Marcia, frowning and paling. "Thank you—thank you +so much. Good-by." +</p> +<p> +And she ran into the house. Lester remained rooted in the shadows of the +colonnade for a minute or two, looking after her, with a set, abstracted +face. Then the sound of the altercation overhead smote him too with alarm. +He moved quickly away lest through the open windows he might catch what was +said. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH10"><!-- CH10 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER X +</h2> +<p> +Marcia entered her mother's sitting-room in the midst of what seemed a +babel of voices. James Coryston, indeed, who was sitting in a corner of +the room while Coryston and Sir Wilfrid Bury argued across him, was not +contributing to it. He was watching his mother, and she on the other side +of the room was talking rapidly to her son Arthur, who could evidently +hardly control himself sufficiently to listen to her. +</p> +<p> +As Marcia came in she heard Arthur say in a loud voice: +</p> +<p> +"Your attitude, mother, is perfectly unreasonable, and I will not submit to +be dictated to like this!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia, staying her foot half-way across the room, looked at her youngest +brother in amazement. +</p> +<p> +Was this rough-mannered, rough-voiced man, Arthur?—the tame house-brother, +and docile son of their normal life? What was happening to them all? +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston broke out: +</p> +<p> +"I repeat—you propose to me, Arthur, a bargain which is no bargain!—" +</p> +<p> +"A quid without a quo?" interrupted Coryston, who had suddenly dropped his +argument with Sir Wilfrid, and had thrown himself on a sofa near his mother +and Arthur. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston took no notice of him. She continued to address her +youngest-born. +</p> +<p> +"What Coryston may do—now—after all that has passed is to me a matter of +merely secondary importance. When I first saw the notice of the Martover +meeting it was a shock to me—I admit it. But since then he has done so +many other things—he has struck at me in so many other ways—he has so +publicly and scandalously outraged family feeling, and political decency—" +</p> +<p> +"I really haven't," said Coryston, mildly. "I haven't—if this was a free +country." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston flashed a sudden superb look at him and resumed: +</p> +<p> +"—that I really don't care what Coryston does. He has done his worst. I +can't suffer any greater insult than he has already put upon me—" +</p> +<p> +Coryston shook his head, mutely protesting. He seized a pen from a table +near, and began to bite and strip it with an absent face. +</p> +<p> +"But <i>you</i>, Arthur!" his mother went on with angry emphasis, "have +still a character to lose or gain. As I have said, it doesn't now matter +vitally to me whether Coryston is in the chair or not—I regard him as +merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw—but if <i>you</i> let this meeting at +Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, +you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played +the coward—and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the +lurch—though that latter point I can see doesn't move you at all!" +</p> +<p> +James and Sir Wilfrid Bury came anxiously to join the group. Sir Wilfrid +approached the still standing and distressed Marcia. Drawing her hand +within his arm, he patted it kindly. +</p> +<p> +"We can't persuade your mother, my dear. Suppose you try." +</p> +<p> +"Mother, you can't insist on Arthur's going through with the meeting if he +doesn't wish to!" said Marcia, with animation. "Do let him give it up! It +would be so easy to postpone it." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston turned upon her. +</p> +<p> +"Everything is easy in your eyes, no doubt, Marcia, except that he should +do his duty, and spare my feelings! As a matter of fact you know perfectly +well that Arthur has always allowed me to arrange these things for him." +</p> +<p> +"I don't mean, mother, to do so in future!" said Arthur, resolutely turning +upon her. "You <i>must</i> leave me to manage my own life and my own +affairs." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's features quivered in her long bony face. As she sat near +the window, on a high chair, fully illumined, in a black velvet dress, +long-waisted, and with a kind of stand-up ruffle at the throat, she was +amazingly Queen Bess. James, who was always conscious of the likeness, +could almost have expected her to rise and say in the famous words of the +Queen to Cecil—"Little man, little man, your father durst not have said +'must' to me!" +</p> +<p> +But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words: +</p> +<p> +"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never +been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your +Parliamentary abilities—unaided." +</p> +<p> +"Mother!—" cried Marcia and James simultaneously. +</p> +<p> +Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid's +restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, +his eyes bloodshot. +</p> +<p> +"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them +long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for +myself in future. I don't think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him—and I +know his daughter." +</p> +<p> +The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm—in +Marcia's case, of terror—ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid +caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston met her son's eyes with equal passion. +</p> +<p> +"An intriguer—an unscrupulous intriguer—like himself!" said Lady +Coryston, with cutting emphasis. +</p> +<p> +Arthur's flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning +hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur +thrust them aside. +</p> +<p> +"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking +into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There +was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, +slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am—in love—with the lady +to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her—and +I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. <i>Now</i> you understand +perhaps why I didn't wish to attack her father at this particular +juncture." +</p> +<p> +"Arthur!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, +meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them +starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was +trouble—and a sudden softness—in his look. +</p> +<p> +Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants +were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston's aspect was something +quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It +represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human +personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet +encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She +laughed—as she passed her handkerchief over her lips—so Marcia thought +afterward—to hide their trembling. +</p> +<p> +"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to +wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your +confession—your astonishing confession—does at least supply some +reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present—<i>for the +present</i>"—she spoke slowly—"I cease to press you to speak at this +meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to +the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later—and in private. I +must take time to think it over." +</p> +<p> +She rose. James came forward. +</p> +<p> +"May I come with you, mother?" +</p> +<p> +She frowned a little. +</p> +<p> +"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with +regard to the meeting." +</p> +<p> +And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through +the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something +in her ear—no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; +and he closed the door. +</p> +<p> +Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, +and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, +and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid spoke first: +</p> +<p> +"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made +seriously?" +</p> +<p> +Arthur turned impatiently. +</p> +<p> +"Do I look like joking?" +</p> +<p> +"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us." +</p> +<p> +"Luckily mother doesn't believe a word of it!" +</p> +<p> +The voice was Coryston's, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the +ceiling. +</p> +<p> +Arthur stood still. +</p> +<p> +"What do you mean?" +</p> +<p> +"No offense. I dare say she believed <i>you</i>. But the notion strikes her +as too grotesque to be bothered about." +</p> +<p> +"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk. +</p> +<p> +"Whether she is or not, she'll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes +of it," was Coryston's murmured comment. But the words were lost in his +mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window +gazing into the garden. Something in his brother's meditative back seemed +to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, +and hit it. James turned with a start. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, James—this isn't Hegel—and it isn't Lotze—and it isn't +Bergson—it's life. Haven't you got a remark to contribute?" +</p> +<p> +James's blue eyes showed no resentment. +</p> +<p> +"I'm very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother." +</p> +<p> +"Why?" +</p> +<p> +"Because she's the oldest. We've got the future. She hasn't." +</p> +<p> +The color rushed to Marcia's face. She looked gratefully at her brother. +Sir Wilfrid's gray head nodded agreement. +</p> +<p> +"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don't see that. At least, of course it has a +certain truth. But it doesn't present itself to me as a ground for +sparing the older generation. In fact"—he sprang to his feet—"present +company—present family excepted—we're being ruined—stick stock +ruined—by the elder generation! They're in our way everywhere! Why don't +they withdraw—and let <i>us</i> take the stage? We know more than they. +We're further evolved—we're better informed. And they will insist on +pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the +world can't get on like this. Something will have to be done. We're choked +up with the older generation." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, for those who have no reverence—and no pity!" said Marcia. +</p> +<p> +The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon +her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their +sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston +flushed, involuntarily. +</p> +<p> +"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't +understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not +at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner +and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful—disrespectful? Good +heavens! What do we <i>care</i> about the people, our contemporaries, with +whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call +<i>action</i>? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us—and +calm us—and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue +and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"—he +threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston's empty chair—"with time to smile +and think and jest—with no ax to grind—and no opinions to push—do you +think I shouldn't have been at her feet—her slave, her adorer? Besides, +the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, +long enough—they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers +now, and they the wall-flowers. And they won't play the game!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any +game—together—Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply. +</p> +<p> +Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly. +</p> +<p> +"One might argue till doomsday—I agree—as to which of us said 'won't +play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it +us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur—having made +a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's <i>we</i> who have the +youth—<i>we</i> who have the power—<i>we</i> who know more than our +elders simply because we were born thirty years later! Let the old submit, +and we'll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with +march-music! But they <i>will</i> fight us—and they can't win!" +</p> +<p> +His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes +glittering. +</p> +<p> +"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half +contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his +restless walk. +</p> +<p> +"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir +Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play +the game of a generation—old and young. However, the situation is too +acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an +old friend?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren't so jolly sure what it would +be." +</p> +<p> +"Don't be so sure. Come and take me a turn in the lime avenue before +lunch." +</p> +<p> +The two disappeared. James followed them. Marcia, full of disquiet, was +going off to find Lady Coryston when Coryston stopped her. +</p> +<p> +"I say, Marcia—it's true—isn't it? You're engaged to Newbury?" +</p> +<p> +She turned proudly, confronting him. +</p> +<p> +"I am." +</p> +<p> +"I'm not going to congratulate you!" he said, vehemently. "I've got a deal +to say to you. Will you allow me to say it?" +</p> +<p> +"Whenever you like," said Marcia, indifferently. +</p> +<p> +Coryston perched himself on the edge of a table beside her, looking down +upon her, his hands thrust into his pockets. +</p> +<p> +"How much do you know of this Betts business?" he asked her, abruptly. +</p> +<p> +"A good deal—considering you sent Mrs. Betts to see me this morning!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, she came, did she? Well, do you see any common sense, any justice, any +Christianity in forcing that woman to leave her husband—in flinging her +out to the wolves again, just as she has got into shelter?" +</p> +<p> +"In Edward's view, Mr. Betts is not her husband," said Marcia, defiantly. +"You seem to forget that fact." +</p> +<p> +"'Edward's view'?" repeated Coryston, impatiently. "My dear, what's Edward +got to do with it? He's not the law of the land. Let him follow his own law +if he likes. But to tear up other people's lives by the roots, in the name +of some private particular species of law that you believe in and they +don't, is really too much—at this time of day. You ought to stop it, +Marcia!—and you must!" +</p> +<p> +"Who's tyrannizing now?" said Marcia. "Haven't other people as good a right +to live their beliefs as you?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, so long as they don't destroy other people in the process. Even I am +not anarchist enough for that." +</p> +<p> +"Well," said Marcia, coolly, "the Newburys are making it disagreeable for +Mr. and Mrs. Betts because they disapprove of them. And what else are you +doing with mamma?" +</p> +<p> +She threw a triumphant look at her brother. +</p> +<p> +"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Coryston, jumping up. "The weakest 'score' I +ever heard. Don't you know the difference between the things that are +vital and the things that are superficial—between fighting opinions, and +<i>destroying a life</i>, between tilting and boxing, however roughly—and +<i>murdering</i>?" +</p> +<p> +He looked at her fiercely. +</p> +<p> +"Who talks of murdering!" The tone was scornful. +</p> +<p> +"I do! If the Newburys drive those two apart they will have a murder of +souls on their conscience. And if you talked to that woman this morning you +know it as well as I!" +</p> +<p> +Marcia faltered a little. +</p> +<p> +"They could still meet as friends." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, under the eyes of holy women!—spying lest any impropriety occur! +That's the proposal, I understand. Of all the vile and cold-blooded +suggestions!—" +</p> +<p> +And restraining himself with the utmost difficulty, as one might hang on to +the curb of a bolting horse, Coryston stamped up and down the room, till +speech was once more possible. Then he came to an abrupt pause before his +sister. +</p> +<p> +"Are you really in love with this man, Marcia?" +</p> +<p> +So challenged, Marcia did not deign to answer. She merely looked up at +Coryston, motionless, faintly smiling. He took his answer, dazzled at the +same time by her emerging and developing beauty. +</p> +<p> +"Well, if you do love him," he said, slowly, "and he loves you, <i>make</i> +him have pity! Those two, also, love each other. That woman is a poor +common little thing. She was a poor common little actress with no talent, +before her first husband married her—she's a common little actress now, +even when she feels most deeply. You probably saw it, and it repelled +you. <i>You</i> can afford, you see, to keep a fine taste, and fastidious +feelings! But if you tear her from that man, you kill all that's good in +her—you ruin all her miserable chances. That man's raising her. Bit by bit +he'll stamp his own character into hers—because she loves him. And Betts +himself, a great, silent, hard man, who has once in his life done a +splendid thing!—forgotten himself head over ears for a woman—and is now +doing his level best to make a good job of her—you Christians are going +to reward him first by breaking his heart, and tearing his life-work to +pieces!—God!—I wish your Master were here to tell you what He'd think of +it!" +</p> +<p> +"You're not His only interpreter!" cried Marcia, breathing quickly. "It's +in His name that Edward and his father are acting. You daren't say—you +daren't <i>think</i>—that it's for mere authority's sake—mere +domination's sake!" +</p> +<p> +Coryston eyed her in silence a little. +</p> +<p> +"No use in arguing this thing on its merits," he said, curtly, at last. +"You don't know enough about it, and Newbury and I shouldn't have a single +premise in common. But I just warn you and him—it's a ticklish game +playing with a pair of human lives like these. They are sensitive, +excitable people—I don't threaten—I only say—<i>take care</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"'Game,' 'play'—what silly words to use about such men as Edward and his +father, in such a matter!" said Marcia as she rose, breathing contempt. "I +shall talk to Edward—I promised Mrs. Betts. But I suppose, Corry, it's +no good saying, to begin with, that when you talk of tyranny, you seem to +<i>me</i> at any rate, the best tyrant of the lot." +</p> +<p> +The girl stood with her head thrown back, challenging her brother, her +whole slender form poised for battle. +</p> +<p> +Coryston shook his head. +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense! I play the gadfly—to all the tyrants." "<i>A tyrant</i>," +repeated his sister, steadily. "And an unkind wretch into the bargain! I +was engaged—yesterday—and have you said one nice, brotherly word to me?" +</p> +<p> +Her lips trembled. Coryston turned away. +</p> +<p> +"You are giving yourself to the forces of reaction," he said, between his +teeth, "the forces that are everywhere fighting liberty—whether in the +individual—or the State. Only, unfortunately "—he turned with a smile, +the sudden gaiety of which fairly startled his sister—"as far as matrimony +is concerned, I seem to be doing precisely the same thing myself." +</p> +<p> +"Corry! what on earth do you mean?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? Perhaps you will some day," said Coryston, +with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the +battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If +you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. +I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff +document, I admit. If not—" +</p> +<p> +"Well, if not?" +</p> +<p> +"War!" was the short reply, as her brother made for the door. +</p> +<p> +Then suddenly he came back to say: +</p> +<p> +"Keep an eye on mother. As far as Arthur's concerned—she's dangerous. She +hasn't the smallest intention of letting him marry that girl. And here +too it'll be a case of meddling with forces you don't understand. Keep me +informed." +</p> +<p> +"Yes—if you promise to help him—and her—to break it off," said Marcia, +firmly. +</p> +<p> +Coryston slowly shook his head; and went. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Lady Coryston, having shaken off all companions, had betaken +herself for greater privacy to a solitary walk. She desired to see neither +children nor friends nor servants till she had made up her mind what she +was going to do. As generally happened with her in the bad moments of life, +the revelation of what threatened her had steeled and nerved her to a +surprising degree. Her stately indoor dress had been exchanged for a short +tweed gown, and, as she walked briskly along, her white hair framed in the +drawn hood of black silk which she wore habitually on country walks, she +had still a wonderful air of youth, and indeed she had never felt herself +more vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean +peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by +something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the +feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next +stroke may—probably will—end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it +made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the +clearness of her resolve. +</p> +<p> +So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had +increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress +just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever +since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public +as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by +refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm +her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, +Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no +doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph +over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid +Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a +fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed +to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had +declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, +to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time—all the time—the handsome, +repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the +hollow of her hand! +</p> +<p> +Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself +that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The +circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many +people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams +were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay +hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage +could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher—the temptation had +only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would +be the sweetness—for such persons as the Glenwilliams—of a planned and +successful revenge. +</p> +<p> +Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover +meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood +from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the +week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. +Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an +interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to +be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and +irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the +embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his +seat—to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the +country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small +towns in his division. +</p> +<p> +She reached a rising ground in the park, where was a seat under a fine oak, +commanding a view. The green slopes below her ran westward to a wide sky +steeped toward the horizon in all conceivable shades of lilac and pearl, +with here and there in the upper heaven lakes of blue and towering +thunder-clouds brooding over them, prophesying storm. She looked out over +her domain, in which, up to a short time before, her writ, so to speak, had +run, like that of a king. And now all sense of confidence, of security, +was gone. There on the hillside was the white patch of Knatchett—the old +farmhouse, where Coryston had settled himself. It showed to her disturbed +mind like the patch of leaven which, scarcely visible at first, will grow +and grow "till the whole is leavened." A leaven of struggle and revolt. And +only her woman's strength to fight it. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly—a tremor of great weakness came upon her. Arthur, her dearest! It +had been comparatively easy to fight Coryston. When had she not fought +him? But Arthur! She thought of all the happy times she had had with +him—electioneering for him, preparing his speeches, watching his first +steps in the House of Commons. The years before her, her coming old age, +seemed all at once to have passed into a gray eclipse; and some difficult +tears forced their way. Had she, after all, mismanaged her life? Were +prophecies to which she had always refused to listen—she seemed to hear +them in her dead husband's voice!—coming true? She fell into a great and +lonely anguish of mind; while the westerly light burned on the broidery of +white hawthorns spread over the green spaces below, and on the loops and +turns of the little brimming trout-stream that ran so merrily through the +park. +</p> +<p> +But she never wavered for one moment as to her determination to see Enid +Glenwilliam after the Martover meeting; nor did the question of Arthur's +personal happiness enter for one moment into her calculations. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH11"><!-- CH11 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XI +</h2> +<p> +The breakfast gong had just sounded at Hoddon Grey. The hour was a quarter +to nine. Prayers in the chapel were over, and Lord and Lady Newbury, at +either end of the table, spectacles on nose, were opening and reading their +letters. +</p> +<p> +"Where is Edward?" said Lady William, looking round. +</p> +<p> +"My dear!" Lord William's tone was mildly reproachful. +</p> +<p> +"Of course—I forgot for a moment!" And on Lady William's delicately +withered cheek there appeared a slight flush. For it was their wedding-day, +and never yet, since his earliest childhood, had their only son, their only +child, failed, either personally or by deputy, to present his mother with a +bunch of June roses on the morning of this June anniversary. While he was +in India the custom was remitted to the old head gardener, who always +received, however, from the absent son the appropriate letter or message to +be attached to the flowers. And one of the most vivid memories Lady William +retained of her son's boyhood showed her the half-open door of an inn +bedroom at Domodossola, and Edward's handsome face—the face of a lad of +eleven—looking in, eyes shining, white teeth grinning, as he held aloft in +triumph the great bunch of carnations and roses for which the little fellow +had scoured the sleepy town in the early hours. They had taken him abroad +for the first time, during a break between his preparatory school and Eton, +when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of measles; and Lady +William could never forget the charm of the boy's companionship, his eager +docility and sweetness, his delight in the Catholic churches and services, +his ready friendships with the country-folk, with the coachman who drove +them, and the <i>sagrestani</i> who led them through dim chapels and +gleaming monuments. +</p> +<p> +But when indeed had he not been their delight and treasure from his youth +up till now? And though in the interest of a long letter from her Bishop to +whom she was devoted, Lady William had momentarily forgotten the date, +this wedding-day was, in truth, touched, for both parents, with a special +consecration and tenderness, since it was the first since Edward's own +betrothal. And there beside Lady William's plate lay a large jeweler's +case, worn and old-fashioned, whereof the appearance was intimately +connected both with the old facts and the new. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, a rainy morning, in which, however, there was a hidden sunlight, +threw a mild illumination into the Hoddon Grey dining-room, upon the +sparely provided breakfast-table, the somewhat austere line of family +portraits on the gray wall, the Chippendale chairs shining with the +hand-polish of generations, the Empire clock of black and ormolu on the +chimney-piece and on the little tan spitz, sitting up with wagging tail and +asking eyes, on Lady William's left. Neither she nor her husband ever took +more than—or anything else than—an egg with their coffee and toast. They +secretly despised people who ate heavy breakfasts, and the extra allowance +made for Edward's young appetite, or for guests, was never more than +frugal. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was a hearty eater, was accustomed to say of +the Hoddon Grey fare that it deprived the Hoddon Grey fasts—which were +kept according to the strict laws of the Church—of any merit whatever. It +left you nothing to give up. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, this little morning scene at Hoddon Grey possessed, for the +sensitive eye, a peculiar charm. The spaces of the somewhat empty room +matched the bareness of the white linen, the few flowers standing +separately here and there upon it, and the few pieces of old silver. The +absence of any loose abundance of food or gear, the frugal refined note, +were of course symbolic of the life lived in the house. The Newburys were +rich. Their beautifully housed, and beautifully kept estate, with its nobly +adorned churches, its public halls and institutions, proclaimed the fact; +but in their own private sphere it was ignored as much as possible. +</p> +<p> +"Here he is!" exclaimed Lady William, turning to the door with something of +a flutter. "Oh, Edward, they are lovely!" +</p> +<p> +Her son laid the dewy bunch beside her plate and then kissed his mother +affectionately. +</p> +<p> +"Many happy returns!—and you, father! Hullo—mother, you've got a +secret—you're blushing! What's up?" +</p> +<p> +And still holding Lady William by the arm, he looked smilingly from her to +the jeweler's case on the table. +</p> +<p> +"They must be reset, dear; but they're fine." +</p> +<p> +Lady William opened the case, and pushed it toward him. It contained a +necklace and pendant, two bracelets, and a stomacher brooch of diamonds and +sapphire—magnificent stones in a heavy gold setting, whereof the Early +Victorianism cried aloud. The set had been much admired in the great +exhibition of 1851, where indeed it had been bought by Lady William's +father as a present to his wife. Secretly Lady William still thought it +superb; but she was quite aware that no young woman would wear it. +</p> +<p> +Edward looked at it with amusement. +</p> +<p> +"The stones are gorgeous. When Cartier's had a go at it, it'll be something +like! I can remember your wearing it, mother, at Court, when I was a small +child. And you're going to give it to Marcia?" He kissed her again. +</p> +<p> +"Take it, dear, and ask her how she'd like them set," said his mother, +happily, putting the box into his hand; after which he was allowed to sit +down to his breakfast. +</p> +<p> +Lord William meanwhile had taken no notice of the little incident of +the jewels. He was deep in a letter which seemed to have distracted his +attention entirely from his son and to be causing him distress. When he had +finished it he pushed it away and sat gazing before him as though still +held by the recollection of it. +</p> +<p> +"I never knew a more sad, a more difficult case," he said, presently, +speaking, it seemed, to himself. +</p> +<p> +Edward turned with a start. +</p> +<p> +"Another letter, father?" +</p> +<p> +Lord William pushed it over to him. +</p> +<p> +Newbury read it, and as he did so, in his younger face there appeared the +same expression as in his father's; a kind of grave sadness, in which there +was no trace of indecision, though much of trouble. Lady William asked no +question, though in the course of her little pecking meal, she threw some +anxious glances at her husband and son. They preserved a strict silence at +table on the subject of the letter; but as soon as breakfast was over, Lord +William made a sign to his son, and they went out into the garden together, +walking away from the house. +</p> +<p> +"You know we can't do this, Edward!" said Lord William, with energy, as +soon as they were in solitude. +</p> +<p> +Edward's eyes assented. +</p> +<p> +His father resumed, impetuously: "How can I go on in close relations with +a man—my right hand in the estate—almost more than my agent—associated +with all the church institutions and charities—a communicant—secretary +of the communicant's guild!—our friend and helper in all our religious +business—who has been the head and front of the campaign against +immorality in this village—responsible, with us, for many decisions that +must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble—who yet now proposes, +himself, to maintain what we can only regard—what everybody on this estate +has been taught to regard—as an immoral connection with a married woman! +Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The +so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but +the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his +business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this +estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would +falsify our whole life here,—and make it one ugly hypocrisy!" +</p> +<p> +There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked: +</p> +<p> +"You of course made it plain once more—in your letter yesterday—that +there would be no harshness—that as far as money went—" +</p> +<p> +"I told him he could have <i>whatever</i> was necessary! We wished to force +no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they +decided to remain together—then he and we must part; but we would make it +perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere—in England or the colonies. +If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for +her—then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before." +</p> +<p> +"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm—" +</p> +<p> +Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress. +</p> +<p> +"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to +it!—that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand—that he can never +build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere—that the farm is the +apple of his eye. It's absolutely true—every word of it! But then, why did +he take this desperate step!—without consulting any of his friends! It's +no responsibility of ours!" +</p> +<p> +The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound +to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled +with a rocklike steadiness of will. +</p> +<p> +"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?" +</p> +<p> +"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the +Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and +watch over her, like the angels they are,—and the boy could go to a day +school. But they won't hear of it—they won't listen to it for a moment; +and now—you see—they've put their own alternative plan before us, in +this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by +temperament—that she wouldn't understand the Sisters—nor they her—that +she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations—and then +all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he +said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' +It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his +conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here +on our terms." +</p> +<p> +"The letter is curiously excitable—hardly legible even—very unlike +Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully. +</p> +<p> +"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has +somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do." +</p> +<p> +The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a +footman coming with a note. +</p> +<p> +"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer." +</p> +<p> +Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow. +</p> +<p> +"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon." +</p> +<p> +When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face +showing the quick feeling behind. +</p> +<p> +"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?" +</p> +<p> +"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That +fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses +themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with +to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely +trust you and your judgment in such a matter." +</p> +<p> +Newbury flushed. +</p> +<p> +"I'm certain—she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. +"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her." +</p> +<p> +"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, +hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over +and beg Marcia to let this matter <i>alone</i>! It is not for her to be +troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us." +</p> +<p> +The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was +sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were +fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing +up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston +trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk +bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which +overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows. +</p> +<p> +The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long +discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, +far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved +brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of +her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was +not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never +felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was +haunted—pursued—by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom +he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, +and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!—and how ignore the +plain words of her Lord—"<i>He that marrieth her that is put away +committeth adultery</i>'"? +</p> +<p> +"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. +It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and +most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law +concerning it, and to help others to break it, is—for Christians—to +<i>sin</i>. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of +marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not +only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of +people with a high social trust, to betray that trust." +</p> +<p> +These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held +him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the +enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his +own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the +only right course!—or if that were impossible, to help them to take up +life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or +accomplices in their wrong-doing? +</p> +<p> +Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane +outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of +the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals +of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly +famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was +the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green +plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils +and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come +eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, +not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of +buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the +new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and +there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the +woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen. +</p> +<p> +A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the +scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the +less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and +to fling back his charges in his face. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges. +</p> +<p> +Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly +grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and +pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road. +</p> +<p> +"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you." +</p> +<p> +"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice +of it. They moved on together—a striking pair: the younger man, with his +high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the +unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case +also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen +of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student +of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure +round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still +clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its +master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer +or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large +modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise +knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the +world—plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered +everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for +by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, +clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the +memory of years of kindly intercourse—friendship, loyalty, just dealing. +</p> +<p> +"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," +began Betts, abruptly. +</p> +<p> +"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly +gentle, even deferential. +</p> +<p> +"You read it, I presume?" +</p> +<p> +Newbury made a sign of assent. +</p> +<p> +"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" +</p> +<p> +Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the +normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. +</p> +<p> +Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. +</p> +<p> +"You don't know what it costs us—not to be able to meet you—in that way!" +</p> +<p> +"You think the arrangement we now propose—would still compromise you?" +</p> +<p> +"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should +be aiding and abetting—what we believe to be wrong—conniving at it +indeed; while we led people—deliberately—to believe what was false." +</p> +<p> +"Then it is still your ultimatum—that we must separate?" +</p> +<p> +"If you remain here, in our service—our representative. But if you would +only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for +you—elsewhere!" +</p> +<p> +Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. +</p> +<p> +"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it +night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives +and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on +there—you know it, Mr. Edward—that have been going on for years. They're +working out now—coming to something—I've earned that reward. How can I +begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The +best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, +you're going to drive me from it." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Betts—why did you—why <i>did</i> you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden +rush of grief. The other turned. +</p> +<p> +"Because—a woman came—and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy +I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields—a tiny thing. You +made yourself kill it for mercy's sake—and then you sat down and cried +over it—for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife—she +<i>is</i> my wife too!—is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given +her <i>life</i>!—and he that takes her from me will kill her." +</p> +<p> +"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" +Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote +them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition +we all sent to the Bishop only last year." +</p> +<p> +"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,—so long ago. I've been through a lot +since—a lot—" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly +escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a +stop. +</p> +<p> +"Well, good morning to you, sir—good morning. There's something doing in +the laboratory I must be looking after." +</p> +<p> +"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a +Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm +near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director—" +</p> +<p> +Betts interrupted. +</p> +<p> +"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But—it's no good—no +good." +</p> +<p> +The voice dropped. +</p> +<p> +With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away. +</p> +<p> +Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The +patience—humbleness even—of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young +man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken +address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. +What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; +determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the +ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which +a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that +a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the +circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican +sort, depends. +</p> +<p> +The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. +Would she come to meet him? +</p> +<p> +Then his mind filled with repugnance. <i>Must</i> he discuss this +melancholy business again with her—with Marcia? How could he? It was not +right!—not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her +and Mrs. Betts—his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of +whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting +with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they +believed, than Betts himself knew. +</p> +<p> +And the whole June day protested with him—its beauty, the clean radiance +of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream.... +</p> +<p> +He hurried on. Ah, there she was!—a fluttering vision through the +new-leafed trees. +</p> +<p> +The wood was deep—spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly +clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face.... +</p> +<p> +When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting +off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day +before—of Arthur and her mother—and the revelation sprung upon them all. +</p> +<p> +"You remember how <i>terrified</i> I was—lest mother should know? And +she's taken it so calmly!" +</p> +<p> +She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the +arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was +cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well +would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his +point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that +morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in +the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide +match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the +reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as +before. +</p> +<p> +"They're not engaged?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe <i>she</i> means it seriously at +all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something." +</p> +<p> +"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced +smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!" +</p> +<p> +"He says he wants to see you—to—to have it out with you," said Marcia, +awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round +Newbury's arm. +</p> +<p> +"Edward!—do—<i>do</i> make us all happy!" +</p> +<p> +He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly +to his. +</p> +<p> +"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You +darling!—what can I do?" +</p> +<p> +But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That +she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay +at her feet!—she, who had promised him herself! +</p> +<p> +"<i>Please</i>—let Mr. Betts stay—please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for +her yesterday!" +</p> +<p> +"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and +mother will do all they can." +</p> +<p> +"Then you <i>will</i> let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly +against him. +</p> +<p> +"Of course!—if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, +unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening. +</p> +<p> +She straightened herself. +</p> +<p> +"If they separate, you mean?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do." +</p> +<p> +"But it would break their hearts." +</p> +<p> +He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed. +</p> +<p> +"It would make amends." +</p> +<p> +"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her +color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one +has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, +Edward?—Won't everybody think it <i>very</i> hard?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, +that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't +matter,—what they have done?—when in truth it seems to us a black +offense—" +</p> +<p> +"Against what—or whom?" she asked, wondering. +</p> +<p> +The answer came unflinchingly: +</p> +<p> +"Against our Lord—and His Church." +</p> +<p> +The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to +stay <i>here</i>!—at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say +to me—" +</p> +<p> +Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's +arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her +instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,—were +all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and +distress—not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon +discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a +foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out: +</p> +<p> +"Darling, I <i>can't</i> discuss it with you! Won't you trust me—Won't +you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one +moment's pain—if we could help it?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting +and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled. +</p> +<p> +"I can't understand," she said, frowning—"I can't!" +</p> +<p> +"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust +me with your whole life? Won't you?" +</p> +<p> +He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with +her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave +way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all +the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first +moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of +inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the +beginning had both teased and won her. +</p> +<p> +But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had +said. She released herself to do it. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. +and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people—and very much +in love. He can't tell what might happen." +</p> +<p> +Newbury's face stiffened. +</p> +<p> +"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. +And as for thinking of it—why, it's hardly ever out of my mind—except +when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night." +</p> +<p> +Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home +through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of +the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to +learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is +discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in +view, throws the eternal glamour. +</p> +<p> +Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's +consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, +indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in +clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the +future—the honeymoon—their London house—the rooms at Hoddon Grey that +were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from +Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the +trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. +But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best +man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading +influence in his life—friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to +that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two +of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked +High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a +"Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a +mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India. +</p> +<p> +And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was +speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; +although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such +people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then +chilled, and if the truth be told—bored. It was with such topics, as +with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not +understand. +</p> +<p> +She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of +Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common +delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, +reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a +considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a +new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside +him. +</p> +<p> +"How much you know!"—and then, shyly—"You must teach me!" With the +inevitable male retort—"Teach you!—when you look at me like that!" +</p> +<p> +It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before +luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it +was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly +figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for +having forgotten them. +</p> +<p> +And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his +silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened +also to him. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury +walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia +and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the +drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady +Coryston's special and peremptory command for the <i>trousseau</i>. +</p> +<p> +"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter." +</p> +<p> +Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled +with the laugh. +</p> +<p> +"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good +deal—but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business +with the Baptists?" +</p> +<p> +Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper. +</p> +<p> +"Well now they've got their land—through Coryston. There always was a +square piece in the very middle of the village—an <i>enclave</i> belonging +to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the +Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston +has found her, got at her, and made her sell it—finding, I believe, the +greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the +foundation-stone of the new Bethel—under his mother's nose." +</p> +<p> +"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, +flushing. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly. +</p> +<p> +"Moral—don't keep a conscience—political or ecclesiastical. There's +nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven's sake, don't be a +posthumous villain!" +</p> +<p> +"What's that?" +</p> +<p> +"A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife," said +Sir Wilfrid, calmly. "It's played the deuce in this family, and will go on +doing it." +</p> +<p> +Whereupon the late Lord Coryston's executor produced an outline of the +family history—up to date—for the benefit of Lady Coryston's future +son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip +on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike +the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of +money and inheritance. +</p> +<p> +"So Arthur inherits everything!" +</p> +<p> +"Hm—does he?" said Sir Wilfrid. +</p> +<p> +"But I thought—" +</p> +<p> +"Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss +Glenwilliam over his mother's body—and if he does marry her he may whistle +for the estates." +</p> +<p> +"Then James will have them?" said Newbury, smiling. +</p> +<p> +"Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody." +</p> +<p> +"I hope not!" Newbury's tone showed a genuine discomfort. +</p> +<p> +"What is Lady Coryston doing?" +</p> +<p> +"About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!—what isn't she doing?" said Sir +Wilfrid, significantly. "All the same, she lies low." As he spoke, his eyes +fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging +from the wood. He pointed. +</p> +<p> +"They will be there on Sunday fortnight—after the Martover meeting." +</p> +<p> +"Who? The Glenwilliams?" +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid nodded. +</p> +<p> +"And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly +inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen." +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH12"><!-- CH12 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XII +</h2> +<p> +The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the +less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in +the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end +annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was +attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents +alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, +and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by +committees. +</p> +<p> +And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, +loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law—on conditions. +</p> +<p> +"I see no reason," he wrote, "why you and I should not be good friends—if +only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful +case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your +<i>opinions</i> on divorce don't matter, of course, to me—nor mine to +you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you +must—because of your opinions—commit yourself to one of them—why then, +whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can't be friends. It would be +mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do +my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of +the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance +with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter +to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat—"Separate—or go—" +well, then you and I'll come to blows—Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you +that Marcia is at bottom a humanist—in the new sense—like me." +</p> +<p> +To which Newbury promptly replied: +</p> +<p> +"My dear Coryston—I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, +whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any +useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the +same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling +out opinion—or rather conviction—and supposing that we can agree, apart +from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The +omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia—perhaps +because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the +happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily +affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to +understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached +to you—though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you +have taken down here.... Let me know when you return—that I may come over +to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can't we?—even though we look at life so +differently." +</p> +<p> +But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made +no reply. +</p> +<p> +The June days passed on, bringing the "high midsummer pomps." Every day +Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between +them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London +had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and +even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with +a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys +guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled +to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick +to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole +proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be +arranged. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as +possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the +horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was +being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The +supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on +the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but +on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got +into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the "Rational Marriage +Union" appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in +the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at +night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a +hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his +smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that +Coryston was still away. +</p> +<p> +For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did +come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters +were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that +to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety +of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her +mother had no mind to give to such a trifle—or to anything, indeed—her +own marriage not excepted—but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's +intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They +lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would +have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; +and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed +in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the +affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover +meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of +conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it +seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those +queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for +the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly +and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of +opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. +Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his +mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston +that they also should return to St. James's Square, partly to keep an eye +on the backslider, partly with a view to "fittings," Lady Coryston curtly +replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her +up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at +Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to +play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the +pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him. +</p> +<p> +On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out +westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of +Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major +about seven o'clock. She had been holding conference with a number of +persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to +turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of +opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon's +work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain +was alive with plans. A passion of political—and personal—hatred charged +every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not +a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of +life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that +even if Arthur did fail her—incredible defection!—she, alone, would +fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great +possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes. +</p> +<p> +Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of +the scene which—within forty-eight hours—she was deliberately preparing +for herself. She meant to win her battle,—did not for one moment admit the +possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she +foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there +were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life +disagreeable. +</p> +<p> +It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were +full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as +she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large +crowd, and the motor slowed down. +</p> +<p> +"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur. +</p> +<p> +"Layin' a stone—or somethin'—my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled +voice. +</p> +<p> +"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before +the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that +morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had +screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently +to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow +from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several +black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a +dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had +apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its +supports. The board exhibited the words—"Site of the new Baptist Chapel +for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully +received." +</p> +<p> +There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, +but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a +small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. +</p> +<p> +"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. +</p> +<p> +"I can't, my lady—they're too thick." +</p> +<p> +By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled +the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A +movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then +toward the platform; from the mother—back to the son. The faces seemed +to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor +finally stopped—the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter—in front +of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and +understood what was the matter with the audience. +</p> +<p> +Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, +stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his +voice: +</p> +<p> +"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among +us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of +us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did +not perhaps think there were so many Baptists—big and little Baptists—in +Coryston—" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. +"May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her +mind—that she will not only support us—but that she will even send a +check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" +</p> +<p> +He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his +boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the +first "Hip!—hip—" +</p> +<p> +"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the +front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in +good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the +motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At +last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back +to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. +</p> +<p> +"Infamous! Outrageous!" +</p> +<p> +The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in +which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! +That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly +spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for +twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist +Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the +village. +</p> +<p> +And this was Coryston's doing. What taste—what feeling! A mother!—to be +so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was +very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling +dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, +the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength +and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do—more important, +that, than this trumpery business in the village! +</p> +<p> +A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia +outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in +a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left +hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light +seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought—"she has just parted +from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment +possessed her—jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt +herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her +daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back +upon her, a rare experience!—and she was conscious of a dull longing for +the husband who had humored her every wish—save one; had been proud of her +cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of +him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last +hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the +end. +</p> + + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i6.png"><img src="images/i6.png" width="150" +alt="MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME"></a> +</p> +<p> +Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple +as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and +excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence +mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than +an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few +days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a +kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?—how would +it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of +submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In +order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought +up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, +carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their +betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural +sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and +disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of +opinions—his bitter judgment, often, of men—repelled and angered her. +She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such +bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was +but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only +faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a +breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; +nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of +her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what +it had meant. +</p> +<p> +And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of +powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by +such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet +it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away +ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a +wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could +not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim +of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and +breathless into every hour of every day they were together. +</p> +<p> +On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at +Coryston. Newbury had gone—reluctantly for once—to a diocesan meeting +on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was +evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take +informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife—a +house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's +visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from +town, and strangers were pouring into the district. +</p> +<p> +Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and +sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before +this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; +sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. +Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the +bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly +gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile +running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. +This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had +missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort +of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which +had been strangely welcome. +</p> +<p> +Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note. +</p> +<p> +"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, +his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the +roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely +seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last +to have practically forgotten his presence in the house. +</p> +<p> +She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look +of consternation blotting the brightness from her face. +</p> +<p> +"I must have the small motor—at once! Can you order it for me?" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. You want it directly?" +</p> +<p> +"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, +on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the +side doors of the façade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant +mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. +What could be the matter? +</p> +<p> +He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had +placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could +not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her +return. +</p> +<p> +"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be +here for dinner. No—thank you!—thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the +chauffeur—"Redcross Farm!—as quick as you can!" +</p> +<p> +Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After +a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir +Wilfrid Bury. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay +harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had +been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and +shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a +cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only +think of the note she still held in her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Can you come and see me? to-night—at once. Don't bring anybody. I am +alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.—ALICE BETTS." +</p> +<p> +This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of +feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"—and trembled. Edward would +not be home till the following day. She must act alone—help alone. The +thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use—but she wished she had +thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her.... +</p> +<p> +The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had +strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had +been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. +The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder. +</p> +<p> +"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted +to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man +came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused +to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms—Marcia +thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his +astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly +round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared. +</p> +<p> +"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur +continued, eagerly,—"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the +beasts." +</p> +<p> +"You know the farm, Jackson?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly. +"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice +gentleman. He'll show you everything." +</p> +<p> +At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man +fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than +she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood. +</p> +<p> +They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern +additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge +of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and +brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in +the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a +substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it +curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain: +</p> +<p> +"That's the laboratory, miss—His lordship built that six years ago. And +last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the +speeches—and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal—and there was an American +gentleman who spoke—and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts—next to +that place, Harpenden way—Rothamsted, I think they call it—was most +'ighly thought of in the States—and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's +the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs +'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water +that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em—and the mangel +field—and—" +</p> +<p> +"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his +steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm. +</p> +<p> +A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her +furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the +window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which +she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was +drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow—but on +the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now +here, now there. How trim everything was!—how solid and prosperous. The +great cattle-shed on the one hand—the sheep-station on the other, with its +pens and hurdles—the fine stone-built laboratory—the fields stretching to +the distance. +</p> +<p> +She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A +foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's +room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art" +muslin; photographs in profusion—of ladies in very low dresses and +affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the +corners;—a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large +colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; +muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick +repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping. +</p> +<p> +The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the +door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first +bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor +things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, +excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would +naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here +was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, +without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the +slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, +of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a +couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this +time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age +graven round eyes and lips. +</p> +<p> +For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts +was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus +present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did +she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis +of her own personal life? +</p> +<p> +"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a +chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." +She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, +who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor +falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil +framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"I musn't sit down, thank you—I can't stay long," said the girl, +hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my +mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." +</p> +<p> +Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked +out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the +gusts which precede the storm. +</p> +<p> +"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. +</p> +<p> +"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I +was." +</p> +<p> +"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again +out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. +I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among +the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note +in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four +o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with +something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock +the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call +him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. +Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he +wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to +write. I took him some tea, and then—" +</p> +<p> +The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia +and laid both hands on the girl's arm. +</p> +<p> +"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never +quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay—and now it was +this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to +Canada—but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken +up. He could never begin any new work—his life was all in this place. So +then—" +</p> +<p> +The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into +Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her +dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped +them away, unheeded. +</p> +<p> +"So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, +and I wasn't worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never +leave him—never—he said—but I must go away then because he had letters +to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and—and—he took me +in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me +up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at +me, and saying queer things to himself—and at last he went down-stairs.... +All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The +men say he's so strange—they don't like to leave him alone—but he drives +them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn't come in all day, +I sat down and wrote to you—" +</p> +<p> +She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of +Marcia's cloak. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know anybody here. John's lots of friends—but they're not my +friends—and even when they're sorry for us—they know—what I've done—and +they don't want to have much to do with me. You said you'd speak for us to +Mr. Edward—and I know you did—Mr. Edward told John so. You've been kinder +to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell <i>you</i>—what +I'm going to do. I'm going away—I'm going right away. John won't know, +nobody'll know where I'm gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury—and get +him and Lord William to be kind to John—as they used to be. He'll get over +it—by and by!" +</p> +<p> +Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away. +</p> +<p> +"I'm not going to the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! +You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life—and I've got my boy. John +won't find me—I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people +to touch—there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody—I'll go where +I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you—what I wanted to ask you?" +</p> +<p> +"No indeed I don't," cried Marcia, in distress. "And you won't—you sha'n't +do anything so mad! Please—please, be patient!—I'll go again to Mr. +Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No use—no use. It's the only thing to do for +me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John +now, just what I've said, it wouldn't make any difference. He couldn't stop +me. I'm going!—that's settled. But <i>he</i> sha'n't go. He's got to take +up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him—and look after +him—and watch him. What's their religion good for, if it can't do that? +Oh, how I <i>hate</i> their religion!" +</p> +<p> +Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have +been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true: +</p> +<p> +"Haven't I good reason?" Her hands clenched at the words. "It's that which +has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he's been back here, it's +the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he's in mortal +sin—he thinks he's damned—and yet he won't—he can't give me up. My poor +old John!—We were so happy those few weeks!—why couldn't they leave +us alone!—That hard old man, Lord William!—and Mr. Edward—who's got +you—and everything he wants besides in the world! There—now I suppose +you'll turn against me too!" +</p> +<p> +She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her +head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing—against +her will. +</p> +<p> +"I'm not against you. Indeed—indeed—I'm not against you! You'll see. I'll +go again to Mr. Newbury—I promise you! He's not hard—he's not cruel—he's +not!..." +</p> +<p> +"Hush!" said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward—"there he is!" And +trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just +outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling +round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had +begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his +weather-beaten cheeks and short beard. +</p> +<p> +His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at +them—and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no +sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting +rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! go after him!" said Marcia, imploringly. "Don't trouble about me! I'll +find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!" She would have wrapped it round Mrs. +Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her. +</p> +<p> +"No good. He wouldn't listen to me. I'll get one of the men to bring him +in. And the servant'll go for your motor." She went out of the room to give +the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, +standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she +suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with +stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks. +</p> +<p> +"Make them do something for John. It doesn't matter about me. Let them +comfort John. Then I'll forgive them." +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH13"><!-- CH13 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII +</h2> +<p> +Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had +left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of +a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on +the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen—east, west, and north. +Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each +circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into +pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in +snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. +From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the +unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to +find death at Chalgrove Field. +</p> +<p> +Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post +of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke +significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in +particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew +back her eyes and thoughts perpetually. +</p> +<p> +The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not +seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, +in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as +usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come +back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been +this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under +the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook +her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady +Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little +dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the +ample girth of Glenwilliam. +</p> +<p> +... Ah!—the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window +in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam's +room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for +morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out +of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her +friend's society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was +Enid's way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge +meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion's quiet +Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam's +eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of +genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he +must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who +adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest. +</p> +<p> +Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the +opener—though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night +before, and had given no promise that he would come. +</p> +<p> +Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At +sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down +beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Nobody else about? What a blessing!" +</p> +<p> +She looked at him with mild reproach. +</p> +<p> +"My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down." +</p> +<p> +"Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman's wife and had to get up +at six o'clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a +world of good." +</p> +<p> +"How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, it does. One must form opinions—or burst. I can tell you, I judged +Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him." +</p> +<p> +"Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches," said Marion, +cautiously. +</p> +<p> +"Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn't it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of +Liberalism, as I sat there. I'll go and join the Primrose League." +</p> +<p> +Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed—with her finger on her lip. +</p> +<p> +"Hush! She might hear." She pointed to the half-open window on the first +floor. +</p> +<p> +"And a good thing too," growled Coryston. "She adores him—and makes +him worse. Why can't he <i>work</i> at these things—or why can't his +secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an +undergraduate—and doesn't care a rap—so long as a hall-full of fools +cheer him." +</p> +<p> +"You usen't to talk like this!" +</p> +<p> +"No—because I had illusions," was the sharp reply. "Glenwilliam was one of +them. Land!—what does he know about land?—what does a miner—who won't +learn!—know about farming? Why, that man—that fellow, John Betts"—he +pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain—"whom the +Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the +dirt—just like these Christians!—John Betts knows more about land in his +little finger than Glenwilliam's whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, +you'd see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not +allowed a look in. I'm sick of it! I'm off to Canada with Betts." +</p> +<p> +Marion looked up. +</p> +<p> +"I thought it was to be the Primrose League." +</p> +<p> +"You like catching me out," said Coryston, grimly. "But I assure you I'm +pretty downhearted." +</p> +<p> +"You expect too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to +notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," +she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat." +</p> +<p> +"She's another disillusion. She's idle and dirty. And Potifer never does +a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral—don't bother your head about +martyrs. There's generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them." +</p> +<p> +He broke off—looking at her with a clouded brow. +</p> +<p> +"Marion!" +</p> +<p> +She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Lord Coryston!" +</p> +<p> +"If you're so critical of my clothes, why don't you come and look after +them and me?" +</p> +<p> +She gasped—then recovered herself. +</p> +<p> +"I've never been asked," she said, quietly. +</p> +<p> +"Asked! Haven't you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a +detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with—as it +pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me +feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject +letters—and apologize—and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other +woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't know what it means?" +</p> +<p> +He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery +accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know I was both a busybody—and a Pharisee!" +</p> +<p> +"Hypocrite!" he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. +But she withdrew it. +</p> +<p> +"My dear friend—if you wish to resume this conversation—it must be at +another time. I haven't been able to tell you before, I didn't know +it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother—Lady +Coryston—will be here in half an hour—to see Enid." +</p> +<p> +He stared. +</p> +<p> +"My mother! So <i>that's</i> what she's been up to!" +</p> +<p> +"She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father's +taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly." +</p> +<p> +"And what the deuce is going to happen?" +</p> +<p> +Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great +deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and +Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well +what was going on. +</p> +<p> +"And can't stick it?" cried Coryston, his eyes shining. "Glenwilliam has +his faults, but I don't believe he'll want Arthur for a son-in-law—even +with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and +the estates." +</p> +<p> +"Because of your mother?" +</p> +<p> +Coryston nodded. "So there's another strong man—a real big +'un!—dependent, like Arthur and me—on the whim of a woman. It'll do +Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that's too fond of +beating its wives. Well, well—so my mother's coming!" He glanced round the +little house and garden. "Look here!" He bent forward peremptorily. "You'll +see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?" +</p> +<p> +Marion's expression showed a certain bewilderment. +</p> +<p> +"I wouldn't trust that girl!" Coryston went on, with vehemence. "She's got +something cruel in her eyes." +</p> +<p> +"Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston's coming—" +</p> +<p> +"To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the +game will be Miss Glenwilliam's. She'll have my mother in a cleft stick. +I'm not sure I oughtn't to be somewhere about. Well, well. I'll march. When +shall we 'resume the conversation,' as you put it?" +</p> +<p> +He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement +upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass. +</p> +<p> +"Oh!" She bent to pick them up. +</p> +<p> +"Don't touch them!" cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands +and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." +His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her +disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up. +</p> +<p> +"Now I'm going. Good-by." +</p> +<p> +"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather +stifled voice. +</p> +<p> +"It's Sunday—so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He +checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and—if +necessary—have a jolly row with Edward Newbury—or his papa. Second, +Blow up Price—my domestic blacksmith—you know!—the socialist apostle +I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and +all—blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him +by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable +called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. +Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for +Arthur—the Radical miller—Martover gent—who's coming to see me at three +this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about +him. Shall have a ripping time with him!" +</p> +<p> +"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you +yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass. +</p> +<p> +"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A +vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, +good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's +anything left of my mother." +</p> +<p> +And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young +lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper +window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston. +</p> +<p> +"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as +she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the +summer-house. +</p> +<p> +"On the contrary, I sent him away." +</p> +<p> +"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?" +</p> +<p> +"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with +a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her +eyes—challenging, a little stern,—struck full on her companion. +</p> +<p> +Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened +and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and +suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection. +</p> +<p> +"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all." +</p> +<p> +"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone—and she has a right to it," said +Marion, with emphasis. +</p> +<p> +"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, +absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence +while her gaze wandered over the view. +</p> +<p> +"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?" +</p> +<p> +"How can I, till I know what <i>she's</i> going to say?" laughed Miss +Glenwilliam, teasingly. +</p> +<p> +"But of course you know perfectly well." +</p> +<p> +"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit +it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled +essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put +up with me?" +</p> +<p> +"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow +decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a +deal too much." +</p> +<p> +"Are you any nearer caring for him—really—than you were six weeks ago?" +</p> +<p> +"He's a very—nice—dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would +be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after +him, now, than it was six weeks ago." +</p> +<p> +"Enid!" +</p> +<p> +"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little +sides of it—the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up +with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should +love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private +secretary." +</p> +<p> +"You would despise him if he were!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches +for him then—and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear +something?" +</p> +<p> +A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible. +</p> +<p> +Marion Atherstone rose. +</p> +<p> +"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll +see that nobody interrupts you." +</p> +<p> +Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came +quickly back again. +</p> +<p> +"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't +make a quarrel between them—unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly +kissed the face bending over her. +</p> +<p> +"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?" +</p> +<p> +Marion departed, silenced. +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted +the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the +Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed +into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for +the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic +applause." +</p> +<p> +She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed +to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But +her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last +night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so +good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness. +</p> +<p> +And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the +Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, +holding out her hand. +</p> +<p> +"How do you do, Lady Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being +scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed +to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been +gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the +formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that +they had already met in many drawing-rooms. +</p> +<p> +Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat. +</p> +<p> +"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would +see me." +</p> +<p> +"I was delighted—of course." +</p> +<p> +There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady +Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with +its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined +mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied +under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, +delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to +the only effect she ever cared to make—the effect of the great lady, in +command—clearly—of all possible resources, while far too well bred to +indulge in display or ostentation. +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She +had taken up an ostrich-feather fan—a traditional weapon of the sex—and +waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it +a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?" +</p> +<p> +The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the +grass nodded gravely. +</p> +<p> +"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to +do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; +and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have +much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be +frank." +</p> +<p> +"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder. +</p> +<p> +"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal +of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your—your friendship with him has been very +conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with +you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him." +</p> +<p> +"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, +she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if +possible, prevent his asking me again." +</p> +<p> +"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager. +</p> +<p> +"So far." +</p> +<p> +"So far? May I ask—does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?" +</p> +<p> +"I have as yet said nothing final to him." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, +and then said, with emphasis: +</p> +<p> +"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk—at this +moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you +what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage." +</p> +<p> +"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her +most girlish voice. +</p> +<p> +"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady +Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering +his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, +was sufficiently evident." +</p> +<p> +Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her +long fingers were engaged in straightening. +</p> +<p> +"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the +present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its +traditions; but that I intend to be—while I live. And I can only regard +a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable—not only for my +son—but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." +</p> +<p> +"And why?" +</p> +<p> +Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble +fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. +</p> +<p> +The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks. +</p> +<p> +"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different +worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different +antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome +you as a daughter—and because a marriage with you would disastrously +affect the prospects of my son." +</p> +<p> +"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, +with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the +same dances." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping +her voice in order. +</p> +<p> +"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude." +</p> +<p> +"Of course not. But—is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?" +</p> +<p> +"Poverty has nothing to do with it—nothing at all. I have never considered +money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall." +</p> +<p> +"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the +fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady +in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was +conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker. +</p> +<p> +"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, +money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my +son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions." +</p> +<p> +At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the +moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence. +</p> +<p> +Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father's made that morning at +breakfast: "Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as +long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the +first Lord Coryston—in his earliest batch of peers—with the title and a +fat post—something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their +money—then came the Welsh coal—et cetera." +</p> +<p> +But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on: +</p> +<p> +"We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of +them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are +the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you +know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of +leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me—as trustee for the +political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has +been—excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both—and is now—the +principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the +estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust +did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three +months ago." +</p> +<p> +"How very interesting!" said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston +could not see her face. +</p> +<p> +"But it is only fair to him and to you," Arthur's mother continued, with +increased deliberation, "that I should say frankly, now that this crisis +has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur +should inherit his father's estates. A fresh disposition of them will have +to be made." +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone. +</p> +<p> +"Because—Lady Coryston—I am my father's daughter?" +</p> +<p> +"Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with +our traditions—and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it." The +conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final +words. +</p> +<p> +There was a slight pause. +</p> +<p> +"Then—if Arthur married me—he would be a pauper?" said the girl, bending +forward. +</p> +<p> +"He has a thousand a year." +</p> +<p> +"That's very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston moved nervously. +</p> +<p> +"I don't understand you." +</p> +<p> +"What I <i>couldn't</i> have done, Lady Coryston—would have been to come +into Arthur's family as in any way dependent on his mother!" +</p> +<p> +The girl's eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled. +</p> +<p> +"I couldn't of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling +toward me," she said, after a moment. +</p> +<p> +"No—you couldn't—you couldn't indeed!" +</p> +<p> +Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her +visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic +table that stood between them, her breath fluttering. +</p> +<p> +"Yes—perhaps now I could marry him—perhaps now I could!" she repeated. +"So long as I wasn't your dependent—so long as we had a free life of our +own—and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope—the +situation might be faced. We might hope, too—father and I—to bring +<i>our</i> ideas and <i>our</i> principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe +he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made +him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should +set any store by <i>our</i> principles. You think all I want is money. +Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and +luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry +me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and +present you next day with the <i>fait accompli</i>—to take or leave. I +believe you would have surrendered to the <i>fait accompli</i>—yes, I +believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you +would forgive him. Well, but then—I looked forward—to the months—or +years—in which I should be courting—flattering—propitiating you—giving +up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours—turning my back on my father—on +my old friends—on my party—for <i>money</i>! Oh yes, I should be quite +capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had +the grace—the conscience—to funk it. I apologize for the slang—I can't +express it any other way. And now you come and say: 'Engage yourself to +him—and I'll disinherit him <i>at once</i>. That makes the thing look +clean and square!—that tempts the devil in one, or the angel—I don't +know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by +marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks +a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began +life as a pit-boy—Yes, I think it might be done!" +</p> +<p> +The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands +behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston. +</p> +<p> +In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor's daughter had suddenly +assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston +understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl +for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly +perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, +the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any +conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the +eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate +forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her +wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman +was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and +formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to +feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam. +</p> +<p> +Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some +moments before, under the girl's threatening eyes, she could speak at all. +Then she said, with difficulty: +</p> +<p> +"You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam—but you do not love him! That is +perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his +happiness and mine, in order—" +</p> +<p> +"I don't love him? Ah! that's another story altogether! Do I love him? I +don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't believe I am as capable of +falling in love as other girls are—or say they are. I like him, and get on +with him—and I might marry him; I might—have—married him," she repeated, +slowly, "partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for +the slight you offered my father!—and partly for other things. But you +see—now I come to think of it—there is some one else to be considered—" +</p> +<p> +The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, +with a sudden change of mood and voice. +</p> +<p> +"You say you won't have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn't decide it for +me—and it wouldn't decide it for Arthur. But there's some one else won't +have it." +</p> +<p> +A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with +it—considering. +</p> +<p> +"My father came to my room last night," she said, at last, "in order to +speak to me about it. 'Enid,' he said, 'don't marry that man! He's a good +enough fellow—but he'll drive a wedge into our life. We can't find a use +for him—you and I. He'll divide us, my girl—and it isn't worth it—you +don't love him!' And we had a long talk—and at last I told him—I +wouldn't—I <i>wouldn't</i>! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don't marry +your son, it's not because you object—but because my father—whom you +insulted—doesn't wish me to enter your family—doesn't approve of a +marriage with your son—and has persuaded me against it." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the +flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under +the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she +slowly rose from her seat. +</p> +<p> +"You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, +love my son—and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you." +</p> +<p> +She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that +she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. +She too rose. +</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry, Lady Coryston. I've been a brute. But when I think of my +father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of +the things I have said. But it's no good apologizing. Let me, however, just +say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He's in love +with me—and I'm very, <i>very</i> sorry for him. Let me write to him +first—before you speak to him. I'll write—as kindly as I can. But I warn +you—it'll hurt him—and he may visit it on you—for all I can say. When +will he be at Coryston?" +</p> +<p> +"To-night." +</p> +<p> +"I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?" +</p> +<p> +They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston +entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, +which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started. +</p> +<p> +Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her +face in her hands. +</p> +<p> +After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. +She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor's burly form filled up the +door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement +upon his daughter. +</p> +<p> +"Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you—did she +scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what's the +matter, my girl? Are you upset?" +</p> +<p> +Enid got up, struggling for composure. +</p> +<p> +"I—I behaved like a perfect fiend." +</p> +<p> +"Did you?" The Chancellor's laughter filled the summer-house. "The old +harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking +in upon you here!—to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and +penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, +Enid, what's the matter—don't be a fool, my dear! You don't regret him?" +</p> +<p> +"No." He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. +Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him. +</p> +<p> +"I shall never marry, father. It's you and I, isn't it, against the world?" +</p> +<p> +"Half the world," said Glenwilliam, laughing. "There's a jolly big half on +our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry." He +looked at her with proud affection. +</p> +<p> +She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the +house together. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH14"><!-- CH14 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV +</h2> +<p> +The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' +cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had +obtained—apparently—everything for which she had set out, and yet there +she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has +suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class +is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed +to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam +had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady +Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and +could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a +closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that +night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have +a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and +the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very +rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings +that her doctor had given her before she left town—"You are overtaxing +yourself, Lady Coryston—and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She +came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never +coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, +from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day—till she +had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no +sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a +fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain. +</p> +<p> +Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she +perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston +House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with +some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. +How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls +really should be more considerate. +</p> +<p> +The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even +preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia +was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after +helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It +vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or +annoyed—perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room. +</p> +<p> +"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an +old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!" +</p> +<p> +She looked at him somberly. +</p> +<p> +"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please—not a word!—till I +give you leave. I have gone through—a great deal." +</p> +<p> +Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put +out his hand and pressed hers. +</p> +<p> +"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to +your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for +luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay +horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury. +</p> +<p> +"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits +his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used +to in my days." +</p> +<p> +But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did +not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. +Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate +little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, +bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted +from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could +scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell +silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair +and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple +and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; +it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir +Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from +presenting herself so unattractively to her lover. +</p> +<p> +Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid +obstinately called a "monkery"—<i>alias</i> the house of an Anglican +brotherhood or Community—the Community of the Ascension, of which +Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for +Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury +a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously +evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and +through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some +deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" +was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face +during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time—even when the +fellow's looking at his sweetheart." +</p> +<p> +After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They +wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink +willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the +gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen +trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all +washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, +and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the +hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the +gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines +stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a +moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called +or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness—as it seemed to Marcia, a +Sabbath dreariness—held the scene. +</p> +<p> +Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. +She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was +conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. +</p> +<p> +"Darling!—is there anything wrong—anything that troubles you?" he said, +anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been +away?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed +his. +</p> +<p> +"Wrong—quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I +thought of you last night." +</p> +<p> +"Where—when?" Her voice was low—a little embarrassed. +</p> +<p> +"In chapel—the chapel at Blackmount—at Benediction." +</p> +<p> +She looked puzzled. +</p> +<p> +"What is Benediction?" +</p> +<p> +"A most beautiful service, though of late origin—which, like fools, we +have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels +like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday +evening"—his voice fell—"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have +you there." +</p> +<p> +She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: +</p> +<p> +"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not +recognized—yet. To some of the services—to Benediction for instance—the +public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule—of the strictest +observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night +Office—most touching—most solemn! And—my darling!"—he pressed her hand +while his face lit up—"I want to ask you—though I hardly dare. Would you +give me—would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our +marriage? Father Brierly—my old friend—would give us both Communion, on +the morning of our wedding—in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red +Street, Soho—just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" +His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half +past seven—nobody but your mother would know. And then +afterward—afterward!—we will go through with the great ceremony—and the +crowds—and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the +Seventh's chapel—isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we +two alone, into our hearts—to feed upon Him, forever!" +</p> +<p> +There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, +yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the +listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia—as though behind the +lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling—something +that threatened her very self. She drew herself back. +</p> +<p> +"Edward!—ought you—to take things for granted about me—like this?" +</p> +<p> +His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed. +</p> +<p> +"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I +talked it over with Brierly—he sent you a message—" +</p> +<p> +"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know +him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do—but +indeed—indeed—my mind is often in confusion—great confusion—I don't +know what to think—about many things." +</p> +<p> +"The Church decides for us, darling—that is the great comfort—the great +strength." +</p> +<p> +"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know +that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just +as much in the wrong as—well, as he'd think me!—<i>me</i>, even!" She +gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. +Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something +so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so +unhappy—all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come—and then +afraid what you'd say—" +</p> +<p> +She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his. +</p> +<p> +And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though +a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on. +</p> +<p> +"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I +found her half mad—in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen +you. But perhaps you've seen her—to-day?" She hung on his answer. +</p> +<p> +"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left +Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and +mother for a moment—heard nothing—and rode on here as fast as I could. +What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was +settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging +you—insisting upon dragging you—into it!" +</p> +<p> +"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for +him—but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right—I dare say she's +deserved it—I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable—so pitiable! +She's <i>going</i>!—she's made up her mind to that—she's going. That's +what she wanted to tell me—and asked that I should tell you." +</p> +<p> +"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly. +</p> +<p> +"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip +away—to hide! He's not to know where she is—and she implores you to keep +him here—to comfort him—and watch over him." +</p> +<p> +"Which of course we should do." +</p> +<p> +The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught +Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but Edward!—listen!—it would kill them both. His mind seems to be +giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from +their doctor. And she—she says if she does go, if decent people turn her +out, she'll just go back to people like herself—who'll be kind to her. +Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters." +</p> +<p> +"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly. +</p> +<p> +"But you can't allow it!—you <i>can't</i>!—the poor, poor things!" cried +Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward—I shall never forget it!" And with a +growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of +her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the +window. +</p> +<p> +"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his +work—and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last +straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life—and now he'll think +that he's only made things worse. And he's ill—his brain's had a shake. +Edward—dear Edward!—let them stay!—for my sake, let them stay!" +</p> +<p> +All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning—more lovely. +She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her +soft cheek against his. +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean—let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, +putting his arms round her. +</p> +<p> +"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the +house—and so long as he does his work—his scientific work—need anything +else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? +Wouldn't everybody understand—wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for +pity?" +</p> +<p> +Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia—do you +ever think of my father in this?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, mayn't I go!—and <i>beg</i> Lord William—" +</p> +<p> +"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say—My father's an old man. This +has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, +as he would himself. And now—in addition—you want him to do something +that he feels to be wrong." +</p> +<p> +"But Edward, they <i>are</i> married! Isn't it a tyranny"—she brought the +word out bravely—"when it causes so much suffering!—to insist on more +than the law does?" +</p> +<p> +"For us there is but one law—the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of +something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of +stern conviction: "For us they are <i>not</i> married—and we should be +conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married +persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I +<i>can't</i> discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress. +</p> +<p> +She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate +hopelessness—not without resentment—was rising in her. +</p> +<p> +"Then you won't try to persuade your father—even for my sake, Edward?" +</p> +<p> +He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because +he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind. +</p> +<p> +The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green +vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched +her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said—in a low, lingering +voice: +</p> +<p> +"And I—I couldn't marry—and be happy—with the thought always—of what +had happened to them—and how—you couldn't give me—what I asked. I have +been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward—we—we've +made a great mistake!" +</p> +<p> +She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet +with something new—and resolute—in her aspect. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! it was my fault!"—and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once +childish and piteous—"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought +me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than +I, and of course—of course—you thought that if—if I loved you—I'd be +guided by you—and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live +by myself—and think for myself—more than other girls—because mother was +always busy with other things—that didn't concern me—that I didn't care +about—and I was left alone—and had to puzzle out a lot of things that +I never talked about. I'm obstinate—I'm proud. I must believe for +myself—and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come +out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I +had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since +we've been engaged—this few weeks—I've been doing nothing but think and +think—and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this +trouble. I <i>couldn't</i>"—she clenched her hand with a passionate +gesture—"I <i>couldn't</i> do what you're doing. It would kill me. You +seem to be obeying something outside—which you're quite sure of. But if +<i>I</i> drove those two people to despair, because I thought something +was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in +my heart—my <i>own heart</i>—again. Love seems to me everything!—being +kind—not giving pain. And for you there's something greater—what the +Church says—what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never +agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was +wicked—and I—well!"—she panted a little, trying for her words—"there +are ugly—violent—feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate +<i>you</i>—but—Edward—just now—I felt I could hate—what you believe!" +</p> +<p> +The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her +hands, imploring. +</p> +<p> +"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!" +</p> +<p> +During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree +beside her, looking down upon her—white and motionless. He had made no +effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee. +</p> +<p> +"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and +half-consciously—"terrible!" +</p> +<p> +"But indeed—indeed—it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a +whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left +untaken. +</p> +<p> +The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a +composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come—the +sudden furling of the winds—in the very midst of tempest. She divined the +tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not +dared to watch it. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia—is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you +to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time +to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that—I should +influence you?" +</p> +<p> +"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of +myself—now. This has made me know myself—as I never did. I should wound +and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard—and bad." +</p> +<p> +Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, +as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images +which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the +silences, more active far than speech, which determine life. +</p> +<p> +At the end of it, he came to sit beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Then we must give it up—we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness +you gave me—this little while. I pray God to bless you—now and forever." +</p> +<p> +Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. +She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it +with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a +stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous +earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy +"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose. +</p> +<p> +"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night." +</p> +<p> +They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her +whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized +what she had done as both inevitable and past recall. +</p> +<p> +They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a +piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!—oh, I'm <i>sorry</i>!" +</p> +<p> +At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden +on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's +sitting-room observed them. +</p> +<p> +These persons were—strange to say—Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady +Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired +to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. +Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had +disappeared. +</p> +<p> +The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep +silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All +the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running +perpetually through her mind—the girl's gestures and tones—above all the +words of her final warning. +</p> +<p> +After all it was not she—his mother—who had done it. Without her it would +have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this +plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?—of Arthur? What +absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled. +</p> +<p> +And yet she knew that she was listening—listening in dread—for a footstep +in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the +further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. +He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance +of her seeing him—unless she sent for him—till the following morning, +after the arrival of the letter. <i>Then</i>—she must face him. +</p> +<p> +But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him +as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, +making his maiden speech. In April—and this was July. Had that infatuation +begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest—her Benjamin? +</p> +<p> +She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. +There was somebody approaching her room—evidently on tiptoe. Some one +knocking—very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!" +</p> +<p> +The door opened—and there was Coryston. +</p> +<p> +She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed. +</p> +<p> +"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston." +</p> +<p> +He paused on the threshold. +</p> +<p> +"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you—or something?" +</p> +<p> +His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed—though still annoyed. +</p> +<p> +"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come +to see me like this, Coryston." +</p> +<p> +"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?" +</p> +<p> +She pointed to a number of the <i>Quarterly</i> that was lying open, and to +an article on "The later years of Disraeli." +</p> +<p> +Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But +he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his +reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after +a little while, it was pleasant. +</p> +<p> +Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her +efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the +book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its +setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and +helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these +last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy +softness—as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human +spectacle—invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body +relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also +oppressed him—like a voice—an omen. +</p> +<p> +He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note +from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid +confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now +there was Arthur to be faced—who would never believe, of course, but that +his mother had done it. +</p> +<p> +A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and +saw two figures—Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh—on +the instant—all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!—and his creed! +That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father! +</p> +<p> +Well!—he peered at them—has she got anything whatever out of young +Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to +wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the +garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not +demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction. +</p> +<p> +He sat down again, and tossing the <i>Quarterly</i> away, he took up a +volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really +possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be +taken—Marcia or no Marcia!—to rouse the country-side against the +Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this +tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that +morning—a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to +him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to +hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!—she might wait. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i7.png"><img src="images/i7.png" width="150" +alt="HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE"></a> +</p> +<p> +Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage +outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia! +</p> +<p> +He opened the door. +</p> +<p> +"Don't come in. Mother's asleep." +</p> +<p> +Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood +on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the +instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to +her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She +turned and beckoned to Coryston. +</p> +<p> +"Come with me—a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading +from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as +children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm. +</p> +<p> +"Coryston—I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my +engagement." +</p> +<p> +"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!" +</p> +<p> +He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped +back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment. +</p> +<p> +"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never +understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear +it. What's wrong with mother?" +</p> +<p> +"She's knocked over—by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this +morning." +</p> +<p> +He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest. +</p> +<p> +"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my +affairs—till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by." +</p> +<p> +"I say, Marcia—old woman—don't be so fierce with me. You took me by +surprise—" he muttered, uncomfortably. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world—seems to be able to +understand anybody else—or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by." +</p> +<p> +Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing +no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and +Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest +misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston +family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day. +</p> +<p> +Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a +long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been +too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to +him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought +relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body. +</p> +<p> +The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, +she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in +the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods—the distant +sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir—a few notes of +birds—were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once +indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's +merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt—on the top floor. How +remote!—and yet how near. +</p> +<p> +And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had +given him—suffering—suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last +night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her—how could +she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, +now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, +the energy of a fuller life. +</p> +<p> +She went to bed, and to sleep—for a few hours—toward morning. She was +roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, miss!" +</p> +<p> +"What is the matter?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?—dead? +</p> +<p> +The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just +brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the +early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was +locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of +horror. John Betts was sitting—dead—in his chair, with a bullet wound in +the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. +She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped +from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately +unfastened her dress—The bullet had passed through her heart, and death +had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on +which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad—forgive." And +beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The +foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands. +</p> +<p> +She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, +fainting, on her pillows. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH15"><!-- CH15 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XV +</h2> +<p> +It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the +presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty +years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the +girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the +news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell +her what she must know. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing +straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters +she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering +under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang +forward in bed. +</p> +<p> +"What!—Marcia!—have you seen Arthur?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"It's not Arthur, mother!" +</p> +<p> +And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as +those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position, +and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding +day, she said not a word. +</p> +<p> +On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then +irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant +interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the +Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up +at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried +to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her +daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she +supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go +herself—without permission either from her mother or her betrothed—to +see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing +happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and +annoying! +</p> +<p> +However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual +trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult. +In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after +the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She +began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the +night before—or that morning? +</p> +<p> +"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night—and this morning he's +not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered +the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then +her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck +her with a sudden and added distress. +</p> +<p> +"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day." +</p> +<p> +"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, +sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before +he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do +is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing +to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And +I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible +thing at all—without coming to me first." +</p> +<p> +"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you—aren't you sorry +for those two people?—and don't you understand that I—I hoped I might +have helped them?" +</p> +<p> +At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston +frowned. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly, I'm sorry. But—the fact is, Marcia—I can't stand any extra +strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed. +Now go and lie down." +</p> +<p> +She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a +new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was +called back. +</p> +<p> +"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur—tell them down-stairs +to let me know." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, mother." +</p> +<p> +As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind +immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult +of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had +come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world—an awful +world—where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, +and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both. +</p> +<p> +She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a +short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs. +In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and +flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the +newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone. +</p> +<p> +He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her +face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with +such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister. +</p> +<p> +She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable +child—saying under her breath: +</p> +<p> +"You know—I saw them—the night before last?" +</p> +<p> +"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?" +For he saw she had a letter in her hand. +</p> +<p> +"Please tell them to send this letter. And then—come back. I'll go to the +library." +</p> +<p> +She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from +the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When +Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of +grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further +news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, +had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the +discovery of the tragedy. +</p> +<p> +"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay +with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the +evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her +sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised +you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the +laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute +depression—the revolver was in his drawer—he scrawled the two words +that were found—and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the +shot—but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, +which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to +bring him in—her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back +again—no one heard a sound—and they were not discovered till the morning. +How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be +guessed." +</p> +<p> +Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out +a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read: +</p> +<p> +"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still—not much injured. I have +often seen him look so. My John—my John—I can't stay behind. Will you +please do something for my boy? John—John—if only we hadn't met again—" +</p> +<p> +It ended incoherently in blots and smudges. +</p> +<p> +"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the +letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight +of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library +chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew +from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering +words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned +face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow +under its pile of strong grizzled hair:—she saw them all as an embodied +tenderness—courage and help made visible—a courage and help on which she +gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in +this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude +of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but +that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his +voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence +with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for +months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly—here was a friend—on +whom to lean. +</p> +<p> +But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of +Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say +with energy: "I don't want to see him yet—not <i>yet</i>!" Lester could +only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world. +</p> +<p> +But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, +and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur. +</p> +<p> +Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just +dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the +farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her. +</p> +<p> +"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How +<i>abominable</i> that you should be mixed up with this thing!" +</p> +<p> +"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the +discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a +message." +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="images/i8.png"><img src="images/i8.png" width="150" +alt="NOW SUDDENLY—HERE WAS A FRIEND—ON WHOM TO LEAN"></a> +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy. +</p> +<p> +"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks +of nothing but one thing—and one person. He arrived late last night, and +it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the +arrival of a letter—" +</p> +<p> +"From Enid Glenwilliam?" +</p> +<p> +"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair—the part +the Newburys had played in it—the effect on you—since that poor creature +appealed to you. But no—not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor +ears—But here he is!" +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the +library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face +wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features +and receding chin. +</p> +<p> +"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my +dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it—especially as you and +Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park—he confessed +he'd set you on—and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. +<i>He's</i> perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I +say—mother is late!" +</p> +<p> +He looked round the hall imperiously. +</p> +<p> +Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. +Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some +message. +</p> +<p> +"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, +sternly. +</p> +<p> +"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia—awfully—but I expect you'll have to +appear at the inquest—don't see how you can get out of it. You should +have thought twice about going there—when Newbury didn't want you to. And +what's this they say about a letter?" +</p> +<p> +His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in +dealing with their inferiors, or—until love has tamed them—with women; +but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. +</p> +<p> +Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the +letter was. +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. +</p> +<p> +"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." +</p> +<p> +He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand +dropped. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose +you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're +a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of +it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the +little woman, though." +</p> +<p> +And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all +the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the +glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, +approached Marcia. +</p> +<p> +"My dear, your brother isn't himself!—else he could never have spoken so +unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to +the police." +</p> +<p> +She held it out to him obediently. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. +When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his +smooth-shaven actor's face: +</p> +<p> +"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope +it's not true—I hope to God, it's not true!—that you've quarreled with +Newbury?" +</p> +<p> +Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble +mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not +<i>quarreled</i>—" +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and +pressed it. +</p> +<p> +"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this—without +losing you." +</p> +<p> +Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury +then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two +interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The +object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with +such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an +appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw +occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be +alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young +man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to +help his sister. +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned +against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole +neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a +more odious, a more untoward situation! +</p> +<p> +But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed, +indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the +truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously +composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes, +though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way +unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was +ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she +rose, and said she would go back to her room. +</p> +<p> +"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with +her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest—sleep if you can." +</p> +<p> +As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall. +Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He +opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a +boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading +to the fore-court. +</p> +<p> +It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern façade +had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air +Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an +abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write +a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's +last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!—that she knew. His +stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school. +</p> +<p> +It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman. +And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn +between two contending imaginations—the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting +beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and +the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night—the +shelves of labeled bottles and jars—the tables and chemical apparatus—the +electric light burning—and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed +figure against his knee:—and then—Newbury—in his sitting-room, amid +the books and portraits of his college years—the crucifix over the +mantelpiece—the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln—of Assisi. +</p> +<p> +Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The +thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame +himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it +all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying +with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other, +and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and +not merely man's mistake. She longed—sometimes—to throw her arms round +him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that +young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would +never draw back from what she had offered him—never. She would go to him, +and stand by him—as Sir Wilfrid had said—if he wanted her. +</p> +<p> +The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more +unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the +dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of +the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her +daughter. +</p> +<p> +"Mother!—do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met—blaming +herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the +morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite +well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned +to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house. +</p> +<p> +"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him +since." +</p> +<p> +The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady +Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in +connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I +needn't appear," said Marcia, dully. +</p> +<p> +"I should rather think not!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal +institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston +family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said +nothing. +</p> +<p> +As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered—with a +start. +</p> +<p> +"Mother—I forgot!—I'm so sorry—I dare say it was nothing. But I think a +letter came for Arthur just before twelve—a letter he was expecting. At +least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet +him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near +and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession +to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's +appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth. +</p> +<p> +But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up +any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by +other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her +mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded. +</p> +<p> +And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia +for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her—insignificant as +the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been. +But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring +out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed—and +knew she possessed—a certain measured strength; just enough—and no +more—to enable her to go through a conversation which <i>must</i> be +faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to +her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and +unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time! +</p> +<p> +But reasoning on it did not help her—only silence and endurance. After +resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again, +refusing Marcia's company. +</p> +<p> +"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?—if you're going to rest, +you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the +foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her. +</p> +<p> +But Lady Coryston shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"Thank you—I don't want anything." +</p> +<hr> +<p> +So—for Marcia—there was nothing to be done with these weary hours—but +wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and +lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed; +in case—well, in case—nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had +been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet +there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power +and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural +expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had +first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped +him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely; +and all the time—strangely, inexplicably—love had been, not growing, but +withering. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at +recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight +of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the +window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her +waist. +</p> +<p> +Was there a beyond?—where were they?—those poor ghosts! All the riddles +of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia—riddles at last made real. +Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with +human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ +in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?—were they +comforted—purged—absolved? Had they simply ceased to be—to feel—to +suffer? Or did some stern doom await them—still—after all the suffering +here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of +immortal words—"<i>Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved +much</i>." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her +strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to +her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and +to believe. +</p> +<p> +Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding +silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself. +Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own +room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once +she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But +otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her +without permission. +</p> +<p> +Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a +time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain +which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out—restlessly—to the +East Wood—the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her +face against the log—a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried +ring—almost within reach of her hand—seemed to call to her like a living +thing. No!—let it rest. +</p> +<p> +If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him +a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed; +but she did not know for what. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts +were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord +William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile +silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a +full account of the efforts—many and vain—that had been made both by +himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to +persuade him to accept it. +</p> +<p> +"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs—in +themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize +a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could +have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we +have done." +</p> +<p> +Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. +Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. +Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the +countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning +attention. +</p> +<p> +When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took +his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and +straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small +feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A +mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the +man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a +group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the +Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities +and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the +old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would +have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing +currents of thought and life. +</p> +<p> +Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went +back himself to wait for the verdict. +</p> +<p> +As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been +held, Coryston emerged. +</p> +<p> +Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been +the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. +Newbury began: +</p> +<p> +"Will you take a message from me to your sister?" +</p> +<p> +A man opened the door in front a little way. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." +</p> +<p> +The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the +conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many +forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury +beside him. +</p> +<p> +"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" +</p> +<p> +Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his +face, normally so charged—over-charged—with expression. +</p> +<p> +"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to +discuss our differences, Coryston—" +</p> +<p> +"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' +as you call them, have led to <i>that</i>!" He turned and flung out a thin +arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is +time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about +'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as +these have been slain!" +</p> +<p> +"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes +took fire. +</p> +<p> +"Hunted by the Christian conscience!—that it might lie comfortable o' +nights," was the scornful reply. +</p> +<p> +Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road, +crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of +sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village. +As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a +motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away. +A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his +brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the +news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had +been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother +and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his +brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown +point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion +which held him. +</p> +<p> +Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same +dry and carefully governed voice as before. +</p> +<p> +"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still +engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off—although—since +then—I have received two letters from her—" +</p> +<p> +He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure. +</p> +<p> +"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time—perhaps—I shall know +better—what my future life will be." +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do +I want to know!" +</p> +<p> +Newbury gave him a look of wonder. +</p> +<p> +"I thought you were out for justice—and freedom of conscience?" he said, +slowly. "Is the Christian conscience—alone—excepted? Freedom for every +one else—but none for us?" +</p> +<p> +"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston +panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly +in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you +Catholics—Anglican or Roman—want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it +you!" +</p> +<p> +"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us +down—which of course you could do with ease—you would destroy all that +you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we +had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. +We stand face to face—we shall stand face to face—while the world lasts." +</p> +<p> +Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, +would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law. +</p> +<p> +"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford—we simply can't +afford—to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to +those two dead people! They did what <i>you</i> thought wrong, and your +conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider +over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and +cursing?" +</p> +<p> +Newbury stood still. +</p> +<p> +"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that +cuts the knot—that decides where you stand—and where I stand. You don't +believe there has ever been any living word from God to man—any lifting +of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens <i>have</i> opened—a God +<i>has</i> walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." +</p> +<p> +"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with +bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!—for us, if there +is a God, He speaks in love—in love only—in love supremely—such love as +those two poor things had for each other!" +</p> +<p> +After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the +last word of his own creed. +</p> +<p> +Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could +be reached. Newbury paused. +</p> +<p> +"Here, Coryston, we part—and we may never meet again." +</p> +<p> +He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his +face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever +seen it. +</p> +<p> +"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel +nothing—that life can ever be the same for me again—after this? It has +been to me a sign-post in the dark—written in letters of flame—and blood. +It tells me where to go—and I obey." +</p> +<p> +He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And +Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced +him. +</p> +<p> +But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. +</p> +<p> +"Please, tell—Marcia—that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's +boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And +all I have to say to her for her letter—her blessed letter—I will say +to-night." +</p> +<p> +He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<a name="CH16"><!-- CH16 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI +</h2> +<p> +Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, +and went off to find Marion Atherstone—the only person with whom he could +trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit +of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress—and even his +rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him +from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted +for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild +company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or +institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, +led by a sure instinct, he went. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile the motor which passed Newbury and Coryston in the park had sped +to its goal. It had already carried Arthur Coryston over half the county. +That morning he had been told at the Atherstones' cottage, on his +breathless arrival there, just before luncheon, that while the Chancellor +had returned to town, Miss Glenwilliam had motored to a friend's house, +some twenty miles north, and was not going back to London till the evening. +Arthur Coryston at once pursued her. Sorely against her will, he had forced +the lady to an interview, and in the blind rage of his utter defeat and +discomfiture, he left her again in hot quest of that explanation with his +mother which Enid Glenwilliam had honestly—and vainly—tried to prevent. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston meanwhile was bewildered by his absence. During the lonely +hours when Marcia, from a distance, had once caught sight of her crossing +an open window in her sitting-room, she had not been able to settle to any +occupation, still less to rest. She tried to write out the Agenda of an +important Primrose League meeting over which she was to preside; to put +together some notes of her speech. In vain. A strange heaviness weighed +upon her. The only stimulus that worked—and that only for a time—was a +fierce attack on Glenwilliam in one of the morning papers. She read it +hungrily; but it brought on acute headache, which reduced her to idleness +and closed eyes. +</p> +<p> +After a while she roused herself to pull down a blind against a teasing +invasion of sun, and in doing so she perceived a slim, white figure +hurrying away from the house, through the bright-colored mazes of the +Italian garden. Marcia! She remembered vaguely that Marcia had come to her +that morning in trouble about what? She could not remember. It had seemed +to her of importance. +</p> +<p> +At last, about half an hour after she had seen Marcia disappear in the +shrubbery paths leading to the East Wood, Lady Coryston, startled by a +sound from the fore-court, sat suddenly erect on her sofa. A motor? +</p> +<p> +She rose, and going to a little mirror on the wall, she straightened the +lace coiffure she habitually wore. In doing so she was struck—dismayed +even—by her own aspect. +</p> +<p> +"When this is all over, Marcia and I perhaps might go abroad for a week or +two," she thought. +</p> +<p> +A swift step approaching—a peremptory knock at the door. +</p> +<p> +"Come in!" +</p> +<p> +Arthur entered, and with his back against the door stood surveying +his mother. She waited for him to speak, expecting violence. For some +moments—in vain. Except in so far as his quick-breathing silence, his look +of dry, hollow-eyed exasperation spoke—more piercingly than words. +</p> +<p> +"Well, Arthur," she said, at last, "I have been expecting you for some +time." +</p> +<p> +"I have been trying to put the mischief you have done me straight," he +said, between his teeth. +</p> +<p> +"I have done you no mischief that I know of. Won't you come and sit down +quietly—and talk the whole matter over? You can't imagine that I desire +anything but your good!" +</p> +<p> +His laugh seemed to give her physical pain. +</p> +<p> +"Couldn't you take to desiring something else, mother, than my 'good' as +you call it? Because, I tell you plainly, it don't suit my book. You have +been meddling in my affairs!—just as you have always meddled in them, for +matter of that! But this time you've done it with a vengeance—you've done +it <i>damnably</i>!" He struck his hand upon a table near. "What right had +you"—he approached her threateningly—"what earthly right had you to go +and see Enid Glenwilliam yesterday, just simply that you might spoil my +chances with her! Who gave you leave?" +</p> +<p> +He flung the questions at her. +</p> +<p> +"I had every right," said Lady Coryston, calmly. "I am your mother—I +have done everything for you—you owe your whole position to me. You +were ruining yourself by a mad fancy. I was bound to take care that +Miss Glenwilliam should not accept you without knowing all the facts. +But—actually—as it happens—she had made up her mind—before we met." +</p> +<p> +"So she says!—and I don't believe a word of it—<i>not—one—word</i>! She +wanted to make me less mad with you. She's like you, mother, she thinks +she can manage everybody. So she tried to cram me—that it was Glenwilliam +persuaded her against me. Rot! If you hadn't gone and meddled, if you +hadn't treated her like dirt—if you hadn't threatened to spoil my +prospects, and told her you'd never receive her—if you hadn't put her +back up in a hundred ways—she'd have married me. It's +you—you—<i>you</i>—that have done it!" +</p> +<p> +He threw himself on a chair in front of her, his hands on his knees, +staring at her. His aspect as of a man disorganized and undone by baffled +passion, repelled and disgusted her. Was this her Arthur?—her perfect +gentleman—her gay, courteous, well-behaved darling—whose mingled docility +and good breeding had, so far, suited both her affection and her love of +rule so well? The deep under-sense of disaster which had held her all day, +returned upon her in ten-fold strength. But she fronted him bravely. +</p> +<p> +"You are, as it happens, entirely wrong, Arthur. It's not I who have done +it—but Miss Glenwilliam's own good sense—or her father's. Of course I +confess frankly that I should have done my best—that I did, if you like, +do my best, to prevent your marriage with Miss Glenwilliam. And as for +right, who else had a right, if not I? Was it not most unkind, most +undutiful on your part!"—her tone was a tone of battle—"was it not an +outrage on your father's memory—that you should even entertain the +notion of such a connection? To bring the daughter of that man into this +family!—after all we have done—and suffered—for our principles—it's +you, who ought to ask <i>my</i> pardon, Arthur, and not I yours! Times +without number, you have agreed with me in despising people who have +behaved as if politics were a mere game—a trifle that didn't matter. You +have told me often, that things were getting too hot; you couldn't be +friends in private, with people you hated in public; people you looked +upon as robbers and cheats. And then—<i>then</i>—you go and let this +infatuation run away with you—you forget all your principles—you forget +your mother, and all you owe her—and you go and ask this girl to marry +you—whose father is our personal and political enemy—a political +adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I +hold sacred—or ought to hold sacred!" +</p> +<p> +"For goodness' sake, mother, don't make a political speech!" He turned upon +her with angry contempt. "That kind of thing does all very well to spout +at an election—but it won't do between you and me. I <i>don't</i> hate +Glenwilliam—<i>there</i>! The estates—and the property—and all we hold +sacred, as you call it—will last my time—and his. And I jolly well don't +care what happens afterward. <i>He's</i> not going to do us much harm. +England's a deal tougher proposition than he thinks. It's you women who get +up such a hullabaloo—I declare you make politics a perfect devilry! But +then"—he shrugged his shoulders fiercely—"I'm not going to waste time in +arguing. I just came to tell you <i>what I intend to do</i>; and then I'm +going up to town. I've ordered the motor for seven o'clock." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston had risen, and stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, +looking down upon her son. +</p> +<p> +"I shall be glad indeed to hear what you intend to do, Arthur. I see you +have missed two or three important divisions lately." +</p> +<p> +He burst out: +</p> +<p> +"And they won't be the last either, by a good way. I'm going to chuck it, +mother! And if you don't like it—you can blame yourself!" +</p> +<p> +"What do you mean?" +</p> +<p> +He hesitated a moment—then spoke deliberately. +</p> +<p> +"I intend to leave Parliament after this session. I do! I'm sick of it. A +friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me +to go in with him—and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my +mind from these troubles." +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her +strong will could keep from trembling. +</p> +<p> +"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for +you!—for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon +you—" +</p> +<p> +He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. +</p> +<p> +"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you—Look here! Have you +ever let me, in anything—for one day, one hour—call my soul my own—since +I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was +literally <i>afraid</i> to tell you—there! You've brought me to that! +And when a man's afraid of a woman—it somehow makes a jelly of +him—altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid—at first—that +I was doing something independent of you—something you would hate, if you +knew. Beastly of me, I know!—but there it was. And then you arranged that +meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!—you told Page +<i>before you told me</i>. And when I kicked—and told you about Enid—did +you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?—did you ever, +even, consider for one moment what I told you?—that I was in love with +her?—dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged +it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow—" +</p> +<p> +His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. +</p> +<p> +"Instead of that, mother—you only thought of how you could thwart and +checkmate me—how you could get <i>your</i> way—and force me to give up +mine. It was <i>abominable</i> of you to go and see Enid, without a word to +me!—it was <i>abominable</i> to plot and plan behind my back, and then to +force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of +any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!—she +didn't want to come it too hard on you—that's her way!—so she made up +some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! +You've ruined me!—you've ruined me!" +</p> +<p> +He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and +pain. +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a +passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that +was closing on her, she could not restrain. +</p> +<p> +"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur—as you put it—though of course +you're not ruined at all!—but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so +lost to all decency—all affection—that you can speak to your mother like +this?" +</p> +<p> +He turned and paused—to throw her an ugly look. +</p> +<p> +"Well—I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men—but it's no +good talking about affection to me—after this. Yes, I suppose you've been +fond of me, mother, in your way—and I suppose I've been fond of you. But +the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in <i>fear</i> of you!—all +my life—and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I +did because I was a coward—a disgusting coward!—who ought to have been +kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid—" +</p> +<p> +And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face +disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood +of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the +shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, +though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. +But, Arthur!—She put up a trembling hand. +</p> +<p> +"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done +the best I could for you—always." +</p> +<p> +"Why didn't you <i>love</i> us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for +emphasis. "Why didn't you <i>love</i> us! It was always politics—politics! +Somebody to be attacked—somebody to be scored off—somebody to be squared. +And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! My poor father was as sick of +it often as we were. He had enough of it out of doors. Damn politics for +women, I say—damn them!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston raised her hand. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Go</i>, Arthur! This is enough." +</p> +<p> +He drew a long breath. +</p> +<p> +"Upon my soul, I think it is. We'd better not excite each other any more. +I'll speak to Sir Wilfrid, mother, before I go, and ask him to report +various things to you, which I have to say. And I shall go and see the +Whips to-night. Of course I don't want to do the party any harm. If there +is a general election in the autumn, all that need happen is that I sha'n't +stand again. And as to the estates"—he hesitated—"as to the estates, +mother, do as you like. Upon my word I think you'd better give them back to +Coryston! A certain amount of money is all I shall want." +</p> +<p> +"Go!" said Lady Coryston again, still pointing. +</p> +<p> +He stood a moment, fiddling with some ornaments on a table near him, then +caught up his hat with a laugh—and still eying her askance, he walked to +the door, opened it, and disappeared; though he closed it so uncertainly +that Lady Coryston, until, after what seemed an interval, she heard his +footsteps receding, could not be sure that he was really gone. +</p> +<p> +But he was gone; and all the plans and hopes of her later life lay in ashes +about her. She sat motionless. After half an hour she heard the sound of a +motor being driven away from the front of the house. Through the evening +air, too, she caught distant voices—which soon ceased. +</p> +<p> +She rang presently for her maid, and said she would dine in her room, +because of a bad headache. Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid +Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred +him to the next morning. +</p> +<p> +Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's +ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that +no one dared force themselves upon her. Only, between ten and eleven, +Marcia again came to the door, knocked gently, and was told to go away. Her +mother would be all right in the morning. The girl reluctantly obeyed. +</p> +<p> +The state of terrible tension in which Lady Coryston passed that night had +no witness. It could only be guessed at, by Marcia, in particular, to +whom it fell afterward to take charge of her mother's papers and personal +affairs. Lady Coryston had apparently gathered all Arthur's, letters to her +together, from the very first to the very latest, tied them up neatly, and +laid them in the drawer which held those of her dead husband. She had begun +to write a letter to Coryston, but when found, it was incoherent, and could +not be understood. She had removed the early photographs of Arthur from her +table, and a larger, recent one of the young M.P., taken in London for the +constituency, which was on her mantelpiece, and had placed them both face +downward in the same drawer with the letters. And then, when she had found +it impossible to write what she wished to write, she seemed to have gone +back to her arm-chair, taking with her two or three of Arthur's Eton +reports—by what instinct had she chosen them out from the piles of +letters!—and a psalter she often used. But by a mere accident, a sinister +trick of fate, when she was found, the book lay open under her hand at one +of those imprecatory psalms at which Christendom has at last learned to +shudder. Only a few days before, Sir Wilfrid Bury had laughed at her—as +only he might—for her "Old Testament tone" toward her enemies, and had +quoted this very psalm. Her helpless fingers touched it. +</p> +<p> +But the night was a night of vigil for others also. Coryston, who could not +sleep, spent the greater part of it first in writing to Marion Atherstone, +and then in composing a slashing attack upon the High Church party for its +attitude toward the divorce laws of the country, and the proposals recently +made for their reform. "How much longer are we going to allow these +black-coated gentlemen to despise and trample on the laws under which +the rest of us are content to live!—or to use the rights and powers +of property for the bare purpose of pressing their tyrannies and their +superstitions on other people?" +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, in the beautiful chapel of Hoddon Grey, Edward Newbury, worn out +with the intolerable distress of the preceding forty-eight hours, and yet +incapable of sleep, sat or knelt through long stretches of the night. The +chapel was dark but for one light. Over the altar there burnt a lamp, and +behind it could be seen, from the chair, where he knelt, the silk veil of +the tabernacle. Reservation had been permitted for years in the Hoddon Grey +chapel, and the fact had interwoven itself with the deepest life of +the household, eclipsing and dulling the other religious practices +of Anglicanism, just as the strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or +sterilizes the rest. There, in Newbury's passionate belief, the Master of +the House kept watch, or slept, above the altar, as once above the Galilean +waves. For him, the "advanced" Anglican, as for any Catholic of the Roman +faith, the doctrine of the Mass was the central doctrine of all religion, +and that intimate and personal adoration to which it leads, was the +governing power of life. The self-torturing anguish which he had suffered +ever since the news of the two suicides had reached him could only endure +itself in this sacred presence; and it was there he had taken refuge under +the earlier blow of the breach with Marcia. +</p> +<p> +The night was very still—a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of +starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, +stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, +and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the +flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently +and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; and the white mists on the lawn and +fields outside made their way through the open windows, and dimmed the glow +of color on the walls and in the apse. +</p> +<p> +In those melancholy and yet ardent hours Edward Newbury reached the utmost +heights of religious affirmation, and the extreme of personal renunciation. +It became clear to a mind attuned for such thoughts, that, by severing him +from Marcia, and, at the same time, and by the same stroke, imposing upon +him at least some fraction of responsibility—a fraction which his honesty +could not deny—for the deaths of John and Alice Betts, God had called him, +Edward Newbury, in a way not to be mistaken and not to be refused. His life +was henceforth forfeit—forfeit to his Lord. Henceforth, let him make of +it a willing sacrifice, an expiatory oblation, perpetually renewed, and +offered in perpetual union with the Divine Victim, for their souls and his +own. +</p> +<p> +The ideas of the Conventual house in which he had so lately spent hours of +intense religious happiness closed upon him and possessed him. He was +not to marry. He was reserved for the higher counsels, the Counsels of +Perfection. The face and talk of his friend Brierly, who was so soon going +to his dangerous and solitary post in Southern India, haunted his mind, and +at last seemed to show him a way out of his darkness. His poor father and +mother! But he never doubted for one moment that they would give him up, +that they would let him follow his conscience. +</p> +<p> +By the time the sun was fairly up, the storm of religious feeling had died +down in Newbury. He had taken his resolve, but he was incapable of any +further emotion concerning it. On the other hand, his heart was alive to +the thought of Marcia, and of that letter she had sent him. Dear, generous +Marcia! Once more he would write to her—once more! +</p> +<p> +"DEAREST MARCIA,—I may call you so, I think, for the last time, and at +this turning-point of both our lives. I may never see you again; or if we +do meet, you will have become so strange to me that you will wonder in what +other and distant life it was that we loved each other. I think you did +love me for a little while, and I do bless and thank you that you let +me know you—and love you. And I bless you above all for the thought of +consolation and pity you had toward me, even yesterday, in those terrible +hours—when you offered to come back to me and help me, as though our bond +had never been broken. +</p> +<p> +"No, dear Marcia!—I saw the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make +you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was +never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one +whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be +narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough—or cold enough!—to let you +give yourself back to one you cannot truly love—or trust. But that you +offered it, because you were sorry for me, and that you would have carried +it out, firmly, your dear hand clenched, as it were, on the compact—that +warms my heart—that I shall have, as a precious memory, to carry into the +far-off life that I foresee. +</p> +<p> +"I cannot write much about the terrible thing at Redcross Farm. Your great +pity for me implies that you think me—and my father—in some way and in +some degree, responsible. Perhaps we are—I do not wish to shirk the truth. +If so, it is as soldiers under orders are responsible for the hurt and +damage they may cause, in their King's war—as much, and as little. At +least, so far as the main matter is concerned. That I might have been—that +I ought to have been—infinitely more loving, wiser, stronger to help +them—that I know—that I shall feel as long as I live. And it is a feeling +which will determine all my future life. +</p> +<p> +"You remember what I told you of Father Brierly and the Community of the +Ascension? As soon as I can leave my father and mother—they are at present +in deep distress—I shall probably go to the Community House in Lancashire +for a time. My present intention is to take orders, and perhaps to join +Brierly eventually in mission work. My father and mother are splendid! They +and I shall be separated perhaps in this world, but in that mysterious +other world which lies all about us even now, and which is revealed to us +in the Sacraments, we shall meet at last, and forever—if we are faithful. +</p> +<p> +"Good-by—God be with you—God give you every good thing in this +present time—love, children, friends—and, 'in the world to come, life +everlasting.'" +</p> +<hr> +<p> +About the hour when the letter was finished, when the July sun was already +high over the dewy new-shorn fields, Coryston, after an hour's sleep in his +chair, and a bath, left Knatchett to walk to Coryston. He was oppressed by +some vague dread which would not let him rest. In the strong excitements +and animosities of the preceding day he had forgotten his mother. But the +memory of her face on the sofa during that Sunday reading had come back +upon him with unpleasant force. It had been always so with him in life. She +no sooner relapsed into the woman than he became a son. Only the experience +had been rare! +</p> +<p> +He crossed the Hoddon Grey park, and then walked through <i>a</i> mile +of the Coryston demesne, till he reached the lake and saw beyond it the +Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun—and the long +marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared +loggia. "What the deuce are <i>we</i> going to do with these places!" he +asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be +allowed to sell it, or turn it to any useful purpose whatever!" +</p> +<p> +He skirted the lake, and began to mount the steps, and flagged paths of the +formal garden. Suddenly as he approached the garden front he saw that two +windows of his mother's sitting-room were open, and that some one—a figure +in black—was sitting in a high-backed arm-chair beside one of them. His +mother!—up?—at seven o'clock in the morning? Yet was it his mother? He +came nearer. The figure was motionless—the head thrown back, the eyes +invisible from where he stood. Something in the form, the attitude—its +stillness and strangeness in the morning light—struck him with horror. He +rushed to the garden door, found it open, dashed up the stairs, and into +his mother's room. +</p> +<p> +"Mother!" +</p> +<p> +Lady Coryston neither moved nor spoke. But as he came up to her, he saw +that she was alive—that her eyes opened and perceived him. Nothing else in +her lived or moved. And as he knelt down by her, and took her tenderly in +his arms, she relapsed into the unconscious state from which his entrance +had momentarily roused her. +</p> +<hr> +<p> +What else there is to tell had best be told quickly. Lady Coryston lived +for some eight months after this seizure. She partially recovered from the +first stroke, and all the organization of the great house, and all the +thought of her children circled round the tragic death-in-life into which +she had fallen. +</p> +<p> +Arthur had come rushing back to Coryston after the catastrophe, restored +by it, like a stream which has wandered in flood, to the older and natural +channels of life. Bitter remorse for his conduct to his mother, and a sharp +resentment of Enid Glenwilliam's conduct toward himself, acted wholesomely. +He took up his normal occupations again, in Parliament and on the estates, +and talked no more of Buenos Ayres. But whether his mother's darkened mind +ever forgave him it would be difficult to say. She rarely noticed him, +and when she spoke it was generally for Coryston. Her dependence upon her +eldest son became a touching and poignant thing, deepening the souls of +both. Coryston came to live at Coryston, and between his love for Marion +Atherstone, and his nursing of his mother, was more truly happy for a time +than his character had ever yet allowed him to be. The din of battle, +political and religious, penetrated no more within a house where death came +closer day by day, and where weakness and suffering had at last united +these differing men and women in a common interest of profoundest pity. +Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them +forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when +she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry—Corry +darling"—and as he came closer—"Corry, who was my firstborn!" +</p> +<p> +On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote: +</p> +<p> +"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning +rest which does not—as death so often does—make any break with our +memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. She +is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut +mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt +still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the +face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she +modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able +during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, to make +an alteration in her will, and the alteration was no mere surrender to what +one sees to have been, at bottom, her invincible affection for Coryston. +She has still left Arthur the estates for life, but with remainder to +Coryston's son, should he have one, and she has made Coryston a trustee +together with Sir Wilfrid Bury. This will mean practically a division +between the brothers—to which Arthur has already pledged himself, so he +tells me—but with no power to Coryston to make such radical changes as +would destroy the family tradition, at least without Arthur's consent and +Sir Wilfrid's. But Coryston will have plenty of money and plenty of land +wherewith to experiment, and no doubt we shall see some strange things. +</p> +<p> +"Thus she kept her flag flying to the end, so far as the enfeebled brain +allowed. Yet the fact was that her state of dependence on her children +during her illness, and their goodness to her, did in truth evoke another +woman with new perceptions, superposed, as it were, upon the old. And +there, I think, came in her touch of greatness—which one could not have +expected. She was capable at any rate of <i>this</i> surrender; not going +back upon the old—but just accepting the new. Her life might have petered +out in bitterness and irritation, leaving an odious memory. It became a +source of infinite sweetness, just because her children found out—to their +immense surprise—that she <i>could</i> let herself be loved; and they +threw themselves with eagerness on the chance she gave them. +</p> +<p> +"She dies in time—one of the last of a generation which will soon have +passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no +doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her +rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts—or few. +As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as +obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that +is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will +'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority of his kind. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia!—in her black dress, beside her mother, looking down upon +her—with that yearning look!—But—not a word! There are things too sacred +for these pages." +</p> +<hr> +<p> +During the months of Lady Coryston's illness, indeed, Reginald Lester +entered, through stages scarcely perceived by himself and them, upon a new +relation toward the Coryston family. He became the increasingly intimate +friend and counselor of the Coryston brothers, and of Marcia, no less—but +in a fresh and profounder sense. He shared much of the estate business with +Mr. Page; he reconciled as best he could the jarring views of Coryston and +Arthur; he started on the reorganization of the great Library, in which, so +far, he had only dealt with a fraction of its possessions. And every day he +was Marcia's companion, in things intimate and moving, no less than in +the practical or commonplace affairs of ordinary life. It was he who read +poetry with her, or played accompaniments to her songs, in the hours of +relief from her nursing; it was he who watched and understood her; who +guided and yet adored her. His love for her was never betrayed; but it +gradually became, without her knowing it, the condition of her life. And +when Lady Coryston died, in the February following her stroke, and Marcia, +who was worn out, went abroad with Waggin for a few weeks' rest, the +correspondence which passed between her and Lester during the earlier days +of her absence, by the more complete and deliberate utterance which it +permitted between them, did at last reveal to the girl the depths of her +own heart. +</p> +<p> +During her travels various things happened. +</p> +<p> +One chilly afternoon, late in March, when a light powdering of snow lay on +the northern slopes of the hills, Coryston went up to the cottage in +the hopes of finding Marion Atherstone alone. There had been a quiet +understanding between them all the winter, more or less known to the +Coryston family, but all talk of marriage had been silenced by the +condition of Lady Coryston, who indeed never knew such schemes were in the +air. +</p> +<p> +About six weeks, however, after his mother's death, Coryston's natural +<i>fougue</i> suggested to him that he was being trifled with. He burst +into the little sitting-room where Marion was just making tea, and sat +down, scowling, on the further side of the hearth. +</p> +<p> +"What is the matter?" Marion asked, mildly. During the winter a beautifying +change seemed to have passed upon Atherstone's daughter. She was younger, +better looking, better dressed; yet keeping always the touch of homeliness, +of smiling common-sense, which had first attracted a man in secret +rebellion against his own rhetoric and other people's. +</p> +<p> +"You are treating me abominably!" said Coryston, with vehemence. +</p> +<p> +"How? My conscience is as sound as a bell!" Wherewith, laughing, she handed +him his cup of tea. +</p> +<p> +"All bells aren't sound. Some are flawed," was the prompt reply. "I have +asked you twice this week to tell me when you will be good enough to marry +me, and you haven't said a single word in reply." +</p> +<p> +Marion was silent a little; then she looked up, as Andromache looked at +Hector—with a laugh, yet with something else fluttering behind. +</p> +<p> +"Let's ask ourselves once more, Herbert—is it really a wise thing to do?" +</p> +<p> +Nobody else since his father died had ever called Coryston by his Christian +name; which was perhaps why Marion Atherstone took a peculiar pleasure in +using it. Coryston had mostly forgotten that he possessed such a name, but +from her he liked it. +</p> +<p> +"What on earth do you mean by that?" +</p> +<p> +"In the first place, Herbert, I was never intended by nature to be a +peeress." +</p> +<p> +He sprang up furiously. +</p> +<p> +"I never heard a more snobbish remark! All that you are asked is to be my +wife." +</p> +<p> +She shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"We can't make a world for ourselves only. Then there's—father." +</p> +<p> +"Well, what about him?" +</p> +<p> +"You don't get on very well," she said, with a sigh. +</p> +<p> +Coryston controlled himself with difficulty. +</p> +<p> +"For your father, the Liberal party is mostly Jahve—the hope of the +children of light. For me the Liberal party is mostly Dagon—either made a +god of by Philistines, or groveling before a stronger God—Mammon. But that +don't matter. I can behave myself." +</p> +<p> +Marion bent over her work. +</p> +<p> +"Can't I behave myself?" he repeated, threateningly, as he moved nearer +her. +</p> +<p> +She looked up at last. +</p> +<p> +"Suppose you get bored with me—as you have with the Liberal party?" +</p> +<p> +"But never with liberty," he said, ardently. +</p> +<p> +"Suppose you come to see the seamy side of me—as you do of everybody?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't invent seamy sides—where none exist," he said, looking +peremptorily into her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I'm not clever, Herbert—and I think I'm a Tory." +</p> +<p> +"Heavens, what do I care? You're the woman I happen to love." +</p> +<p> +"And I intend to go to church." +</p> +<p> +"Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. +</p> +<p> +She shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"No. I'm an Evangelical." +</p> +<p> +"Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. +</p> +<p> +She laughed. +</p> +<p> +"It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth—goodwill to men—that I can +understand. So that's settled. Now then—a fortnight next Wednesday?" +</p> +<p> +"No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not. Wait a minute, Herbert! Where +are you going to live, and what are you going to do?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm taking over the Dorset estates. Lots to do on them, and not much +money. Arthur washes his hands of them. There's an old farm where we can +live. In six months I shall have quarreled with all the neighbors, and life +will be worth living again." +</p> +<p> +She lifted her eyebrows. +</p> +<p> +"A charming prospect for your wife!" +</p> +<p> +"Certainly. You'll have the life you were born for. You'll go round +after me—whitewashing the scandals I cause—or if you like to put it +sentimentally—binding up the wounds I make. But if I'm anything I'm a +sociologist, and my business is to make experiments. They will no doubt be +as futile as those I have been making here." +</p> +<p> +"And where shall I come in?" +</p> +<p> +"You'll be training up the boy—who'll profit by the experiments." +</p> +<p> +"The boy?" +</p> +<p> +"The boy—our boy—who's to have the estates," said Coryston, without a +moment's hesitation. +</p> +<p> +Marion flushed, and pulled her work to her again. Coryston dropped on his +knees beside her, and asked her pardon with eyes whereof the male audacity +had passed into a steady and shining tenderness. +</p> +<p> +When Coryston returned that night to the big house, he found his brothers +Arthur and James arrived for the week-end. Arthur was full of Parliamentary +gossip—"battles of kites and crows," of which Coryston was generally +intolerant. But on this occasion he took it silently, and Arthur rambled +on. James sat mildly beaming, with finger-tips joined, and the look of +one on the verge of a confidence. But he talked, after all—when Arthur +paused—only of music and the opera, and as his brothers were not musical, +he soon came to an end, and Arthur held the stage. They were gathered in +the smoking-room on the ground or garden floor, a room hung with pictures +of race-horses, and saddened by various family busts that had not been +thought good enough for the library. Outside, the March wind rattled +through trees as yet untouched by the spring, and lashed a shivering water +round the fountain nymphs. +</p> +<p> +"Whoever could have dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, +in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from a +reverie. +</p> +<p> +"Who? The Government? Lord!—what does it matter? Look here, you chaps—I +heard some news in Martover just now. Lord William Newbury died last +night—heart failure—expected for the last fortnight." +</p> +<p> +Arthur received the news with the lively professional interest that one +landowner feels in another, and tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind +himself to ask Page when the funeral was to be, as the Member for the +division must of course attend it. James said, thoughtfully: +</p> +<p> +"Edward, I saw, was ordained last week. And my letter from Marcia this +morning tells me she expects to see him in Rome, on his way to India. Poor +Lady William will be very much alone!" +</p> +<p> +"If you make a solitude and call it religion, what can you expect?" said +Coryston, sharply. His face had darkened at the Newburys' name. As always, +it had evoked the memory of two piteous graves. Then, as he got up from his +chair, he said to Arthur: +</p> +<p> +"I've fixed it up. Marion and I shall get married next month." +</p> +<p> +The brothers looked a little embarrassed, though not at all surprised. +Corry's attachment to this plain, sensible lady, of moderate opinions, had +indeed astonished them enormously when they first became aware of it; but +they were now used to it. +</p> +<p> +"All right, Corry!" said Arthur, slapping his brother on the back. "The +best chance of keeping you out of a madhouse! And a very nice woman! You +don't expect me to chum with her father?" +</p> +<p> +"Not unless you wish to learn a thing or two—which was never your strong +point," said Coryston, dodging a roll of some Parliamentary paper or other, +which Arthur aimed at him. He turned to James. "Well, James, aren't you +going to congratulate me?—And why don't you do it yourself?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I congratulate you," said James, hastily. "Most sincerely!" +</p> +<p> +But his expression—half agitated, half smiling—betrayed emotions so far +beyond the needs of the situation, that Coryston gave him a puzzled glance. +James indeed opened his mouth as though to speak. Then a bright, pink color +overspread his whole countenance from brow to chin; his lips shut and he +fell back in his chair. Presently he went away, and could be heard playing +Bach on the organ in the central hall. He returned to London the same +evening carrying a cargo of philosophical books, from the library, and a +number of novels, though as a rule he never read novels. +</p> +<p> +The next morning, in a letter to Coryston, he announced his engagement to a +girl of nineteen, an orphan, and a pupil at the Royal College of Music. She +was the daughter of his Cambridge tutor—penniless, pretty, and musical. He +had paid her fees it seemed for several years, and the effect on him of her +charming mezzo-soprano voice, at a recent concert given by the College, had +settled the matter. The philosopher in love, who had been too shy to tell +his brothers <i>viva voce</i>, was quite free of tongue in writing; and +Coryston and Arthur, though they laughed, were glad that "old James" had +found the courage to be happy. Coryston remarked to Arthur that it now +remained for him to keep up the blue blood of the family. +</p> +<p> +"Or Marcia," said Arthur, evading the personal reference. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia?" Coryston threw his brother an amused, significant look, and said +nothing for a moment. But presently he dropped out: +</p> +<p> +"Lester writes that he'll be in Rome next week looking after that Borghese +manuscript. He doesn't expect to get back here till May." +</p> +<p> +For Lester had now been absent from Coryston some three or four weeks, +traveling on matters connected with the library. +</p> +<p> +Arthur made no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, +twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and +boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with +success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family +house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had +by now asserted, or reasserted themselves; though fighting still with the +sore memory of Enid Glenwilliam. Was he going to allow his sister to marry +out of her rank—even though the lover were the best fellow in the world? +A man may marry whom he will, and the family is only secondarily affected. +But a woman is absorbed by the family of her husband. +</p> +<p> +He finally shrugged his shoulders over it. +</p> +<p> +"Marcia is as stiff-necked as Coryston," he said to himself, "if it comes +to that." +</p> +<hr> +<p> +April followed. Amid a crowded Rome, alive with flowers and fountains under +a life-giving sun, Marcia Coryston became sharply conscious again of the +color and beauty interwoven with mere living, for the sane and sound among +men. Edward Newbury passed through on his way to Brindisi and Southern +India; and she saw him for an hour; an interview short and restrained, but +not to be forgotten by either of the two persons concerned. When it was +over Marcia shed a few secret tears—tears of painful sympathy, of an +admiration, which was half pity; and then threw herself once more with—as +it were—a gasp of renewed welcome, into the dear, kind, many-hued world +on which Edward Newbury had turned his back. Presently Lester arrived. He +became her constant companion through the inexhaustible spectacle of Rome; +and she could watch him among the students who were his fellows, modest +or learned as they, yet marked out from most of them by the signs he +bore—signs well known by now to her—of a poetic and eager spirit, +always and everywhere in quest of the human—of man himself, laughing or +suffering, behind his works. The golden days passed by; the blue and white +anemones bloomed and died in the Alban woods; the English crowd that comes +for Easter arrived and departed; and soon Marcia herself must go home, +carrying with her the passionate yet expectant feeling of a child, tired +out with happy days, and dreaming of more to come. +</p> +<p> +These were private and personal affairs. But in March a catastrophe +happened which shook the mind of England, and profoundly altered the course +of politics. An American yacht with Glenwilliam on board was overtaken +off the Needles by a sudden and terrific storm, and went down, without a +survivor, and with nothing but some floating wreckage to tell the tale. The +Chancellor's daughter was left alone and poor. The passionate sympathy +and admiration which her father's party had felt for himself was in some +measure transferred to his daughter. But to the amazement of many persons, +she refused with scorn any pecuniary help, living on a small income, and +trying her hand, with some prospect of success, at literature. About six +weeks after her father's death Arthur Coryston found her out and again +asked her to marry him. It is probable there was some struggle in her mind, +but in the end she refused. "You are a kind, true fellow!" she said to him, +gratefully, "but it wouldn't do—it wouldn't do!" And then with a darkening +of her strong face: "There is only one thing I can do for <i>him</i> +now—to serve his causes! And you don't care for one of them! No—no! +Good-by!—Good-by!" +</p> +<p> +At last, in May, Marcia came back again to live—as she supposed—at +Coryston with Arthur, and do her duty by her own people. A wonderful spring +was abroad in the land. The gorse on the slopes of the hills was a marvel, +and when the hawthorns came out beside it, or flung their bloom along the +hedgerows and the streams; when far and near the cuckoo's voice made the +new world of blossom and growth articulate; when furtive birds slipped +joyously to and fro between the nests above and a teeming earth below; when +the west winds veering between south and north, and driving the great white +clouds before them, made, every day, a new marvel of the sky—Marcia would +often hold her breath and know within herself the growth of an answering +and a heavenly spring. Lester finished his scholar's errands in Rome and +Naples, and returned to Coryston in the middle week of May, in order to +complete his work there. He found much more to do than he supposed; he +found his friends, Coryston and Arthur, eager to capture and keep him; he +found in every field and wood the kindling beauty of the year; he found +Marcia!—and a bewildering though still shy message in her dark eyes. +Through what doubts and scruples, through what stages of unfolding +confidence and growing joy their minds passed, and to what end it all moved +on, let those imagine, to whom the purest and deepest of human emotions has +ever spoken, or is speaking now. +</p> + +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Coryston Family, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + +***** This file should be named 9507-h.htm or 9507-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/5/0/9507/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Coryston Family + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Posting Date: August 5, 2012 [EBook #9507] +Release Date: December, 2005 +First Posted: October 7, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + +THE CORYSTON FAMILY + +A NOVEL + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN + +1913 + + + + + + +TO + +G.M.T. AND J.P.T. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" _Frontispiece_ + +THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS +PERORATION + +AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP + +THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL + +"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU" + +MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME + +HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE + +NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN + + + + + +Book I + + +LADY CORYSTON + + +[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.] + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing +six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the +new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet. +The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less +crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact +throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence, +almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest; +cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway +a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great +parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their +seats, like arrows drawn to the string. + +Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the +Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor +below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs +placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save +as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them--women with their faces +pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber, +endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in +their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending +forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort +to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that +no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was +close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft _frou-frou_ +of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some +lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front +bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed +filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face +emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House +struck upon it. + +The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which +seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front +of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She +rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to +enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the +author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her +hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak +to her. + +Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what +seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure +and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention +had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a +lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But +it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have +paid no attention. + +"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the +girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning. + +The girl moved toward him, and returned. + +"What is it, Marcia?" + +"A note from Arthur, mamma." + +A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with +difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter: + +"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner." + +"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively. +"It's dreadfully tiring." + +"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for +me." + +She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker +below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his +audience. + +"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to +her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower +her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door +neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail, +however, than its predecessors. + +"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?" + +The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled +lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside +her. + +"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly. + +"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion. + +Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A +country cousin, I suppose." + +But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner. +Weren't you here when he was speaking?" + +"No--I've not long come in." + +The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the +left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. + +It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a +rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke +in the ringing sentences: + +"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a +growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the +main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform +and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; +change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, +while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the +landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set +yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may +yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national +policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated +by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every +means and every device in our power!" + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR +ROSE TO HIS PERORATION] + +The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the +Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided +at once. The third began to speak. + +A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several +persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner +addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had +just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her. +"Childish!--positively childish!" + +Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity +to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory +neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair. + +"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for +years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through." + +"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of +course she knew perfectly who you were." + +"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning +to her watch. + +"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back." + +"No. I might miss his getting up." + +There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the +occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the +farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more +distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, +to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though +her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches. + +It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion +was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but +singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows. +The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These +features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and chin, +the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face, set +in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole, handsome +impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture of Elizabeth +Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been often compared; +and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her personal appearance, +did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The +likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by +her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered +hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of +many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black +silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into +the service of her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid +the large and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore +habitually a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the +lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For +the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while +loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore +seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self. + +In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being--oppressively +wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers +were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or +the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be +used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be +used. On the contrary, her husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her +daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of +her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very +much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just +as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends. + +As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of +Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as +of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances +of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain +than blows of some kind before long.... + +"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would +get him in." + +Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the +Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who +was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the +debate. + +"Has he just come in?" + +"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected +to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston, +impatiently. + +But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus unkindly +referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the House lumbered or +fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to infinity. + +"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother +among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him out +before. One can see he's on wires." + +For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening speeches, +which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had +sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom +her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in +hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the +House. His attitude gave the impression of one just about to spring to his +feet. + +But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time before +springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman--had heard him often +before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise with ease and cease +with difficulty. She would certainly have time to get a cup of tea and come +back. So with a word to her mother she groped her way through the dark +gallery across the corridor toward a tearoom. But at the door of the +gallery she turned back. There through the lattice which shuts in the +Ladies' Gallery, right across the House, she saw the Strangers' Gallery at +the other end. The man whose head had been propped on his hands when she +first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be +looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the +Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His +face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the +clear, critical eyes, their sudden frown or smile. + +"I wonder what _he_'ll think of Arthur's speech--and whether he's +seen Coryston. I wonder whether he knows there's going to be an awful row +to-night. Coryston's mad!" + +Coryston was her eldest brother, and she was very fond of him. But the way +he had been behaving!--the way he had been defying mamma!--it was really +ridiculous. What could he expect? + +She seemed to be talking to the distant face, defending her mother and +herself with a kind of unwilling deference. + +"After all, do I really care what he thinks?" + +She turned and went her way to the tearoom. As she entered it she saw some +acquaintances at the farther end, who waved their hands to her, beckoning +her to join them. She hastened across the room, much observed by the way, +and conscious of the eyes upon her. It was a relief to find herself among a +group of chattering people. + +Meanwhile at the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their +tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers--by name, Mrs. Verity +and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society +and in the precincts of the House of Commons--the Ladies' Gallery, the +Terrace, the dining-rooms--though she was but an unmarried girl of +two-and-twenty. Quite apart, however, from her own qualities and claims, +Enid Glenwilliam was conspicuous as the only daughter of the most +vigorously hated and ardently followed man of the moment--the North +Country miner's agent, who was now England's Finance Minister. + +"You saw who that young lady was?" said Mrs. Frant to Miss Glenwilliam. "I +thought you knew her." + +"Marcia Coryston? I have just been introduced to her. But she isn't allowed +to know me!" The laugh that accompanied the words had a pleasant childish +chuckle in it. + +Mrs. Frant laughed also. + +"Girls, I suppose, have to do what they're told," she said, dryly. "But it +_was_ Arthur Coryston, wasn't it, who sent you that extra order for +to-day, Enid?" + +"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his +mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother +will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's +quite a nice boy--but--" + +She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which +smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and +expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, +it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm +for its weapon. + +"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the +papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and +eyes. + +Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively. + +"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all +talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say." + +"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a +few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a +thing as _matria potestas_? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned +at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston +stands for. How splendid--to stand for anything--nowadays!" + +The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their +characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as +her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd +look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?" + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely +finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a +chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty. + +"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, +with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled--"My dear! I came to bring +you a word of sympathy." + +Lady Coryston looked at her coldly. + +"Are you speaking of Coryston?" + +"Naturally. The only logical result of those proceedings last night would +be, of course, the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner. Coryston wants our +heads! There's nothing else to be said. I took the speeches for young men's +nonsense--just midsummer madness, but I find people very angry. _Your_ +son! one of _us_!" + +"I thought the speeches very clever," said Lady Coryston. + +"I'm rejoiced you take it so philosophically, my dear Emilia!"--the tone +was a little snappish--"I confess I thought you would have been much +distressed." + +"What's the good of being distressed? I have known Coryston's opinions for +a long time. One has to _act_--of course," the speaker added, with +deliberation. + +"Act? I don't understand." + +Lady Coryston did not enlighten her. Indeed, she did not hear her. She was +bending forward eagerly. The fair-haired youth on the back benches, who had +been so long waiting his turn, was up at last. + +It was a maiden speech, and a good one, as such things go. There was enough +nervousness and not too much; enough assurance and not too much. The facts +and figures in it had been well arranged. A modest jest or two tripped +pleasantly out; and the general remarks at the end had been well chosen +from the current stock, and were not unduly prolonged. Altogether a +creditable effort, much assisted by the young man's presence and manner. He +had no particular good looks, indeed; his nose ascended, his chin satisfied +no one; but he had been a well-known bat in the Oxford eleven of his day, +and was now a Yeomanry officer; he held himself with soldierly erectness, +and his slender body, cased in a becoming pale waistcoat under his tail +coat, carried a well-shaped head covered with thick and tumbling hair. + +The House filled up a little to hear him. His father had been a member of +Parliament for twenty years, and a popular member. There was some curiosity +to know what his son would make of his first speech. And springing from the +good feeling which always animates the House of Commons on such occasions, +there was a fair amount of friendly applause from both sides when he sat +down. + +"Features the father, and takes after the mother!" said a white-haired +listener in the Strangers' Gallery to himself, as the young man ceased +speaking. "She's drilled him! Well, now I suppose I must go and +congratulate her." He rose from his seat and began to make his way out. In +the passage outside the Gallery he overtook and recognized the man whose +entrance into the House Lady Coryston and her daughter had noticed about an +hour earlier. + +"Well, what did you think of it, Lester?" + +The other smiled good-humoredly. + +"Capital! Everybody must make a beginning. He's taken a lot of pains." + +"It's a beastly audience!" said Sir Wilfrid Bury, in reply. "Don't I know +it! Well, I'm off to congratulate. How does the catalogue get on?" + +"Oh, very well. I sha'n't finish till the summer. There's a good deal still +to do at Coryston. Some of the things are really too precious to move +about." + +"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering +his voice. + +The young man smiled discreetly. + +"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her." + +"I suppose she's pressed you into the service--makes you help Arthur?" + +"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own +secretary." + +"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?" + +"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get +through." + +"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house." + +"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own +arrangements." + +"Ta-ta." + +Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to +the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been +chatting, was in some sort a protege of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid, +indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford +historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid +work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons. +A generation earlier, Lester's father had been a brother officer of Sir +Wilfrid's, in days when the Lester family was still rich, and before the +crashing failure of the great banking-house of the name. + +Meanwhile, at the other end of the House of Commons, Lady Coryston had +been sitting pleasantly absorbed, watching her son, who lay now like a man +relieved, lolling on the half-empty bench, chatting to a friend beside him. +His voice was still in her ears: mingled with the memory of other voices +from old, buried times. For more than twenty years how familiar had she +been with this political scene!--these galleries and benches, crowded or +listless; these opposing Cabinets--the Ins and Outs--on either side of the +historic table; the glitter of the Mace at its farther end; the books, the +old morocco boxes, the tops of the official wigs, the ugly light which +bathed it all; the exhausted air, the dreariness, the boredom! all +worth while, these last, just for the moments, the crises, the play of +personalities, the conflict of giants, of which they were the inevitable +conditions. There, on the second bench above the gangway on the Tory +side, her husband, before he succeeded to the title, had sat through four +Parliaments. And from the same point of vantage above she had watched him +year after year, coming in and out, speaking occasionally, never eloquent +or brilliant, but always respected; a good, worthy, steady-going fellow +with whom no one had any fault to find, least of all his wife, to whom he +had very easily given up the management of their common life, while he +represented her political opinions in Parliament much more than his own. + +Until--until? + +Well, until in an evil hour, a great question, the only political question +on which he differed and had always differed from his wife, on which he +felt he _must_ speak for himself and stand on his own feet, arose to +divide them. There, in that Gallery, she had sat, with rage and defeat in +her heart, watching him pass along, behind the Speaker's chair, toward the +wrong division lobby, his head doggedly held down, as though he knew and +felt her eyes upon him, but must do his duty all the same. On this one +matter he had voted against her, spoken against her, openly flouted and +disavowed her. And it had broken down their whole relation, poisoned +their whole life. "Women are natural tyrants," he had said to her once, +bitterly--"no man could torment me as you do." And then had come his +death--his swift last illness, with those tired eyes still alive in the +dumb face, after speech and movement were no longer possible--eyes which +were apt to close when she came near. + +And yet, after all--the will!--the will which all his relations and friends +had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable +failure to play the man in his own household, and in which _she_, his +wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate +her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and +personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, +and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great Irish, the +great Devonshire properties, the accumulated savings of a lifetime, they +were all hers--hers absolutely. Her husband had stood last in the entail; +and with a view to her own power, she had never allowed him to renew it. + +Coryston had been furiously angry when the terms of his father's will were +revealed. She could never think without shivering of certain scenes, with +Coryston in the past--of a certain other scene that was still to come. +Well, it had been a duel between them; and after apparently sore defeat, +she had won, so far as influence over his father was concerned. And since +his father's death she had given him every chance. He had only to hold his +tongue, to keep his monstrous, _sans-culotte_ opinions to himself, at +least, if he could not give them up; and she would have restored him his +inheritance, would have dealt with him not only justly, but generously. He +had chosen; he had deliberately chosen. Well, now then it was for her--as +she had said to old Lady Frensham--it was for her to reply, but not in +words only. + +She fell back upon the thought of Arthur, Arthur, her darling; so manly, +and yet so docile; so willing to be guided! Where was he, that she might +praise him for his speech? She turned, searching the dark doorway with her +eyes. But there was no Arthur, only the white head and smiling countenance +of her old friend, Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was beckoning to her. She +hurriedly bade Marcia, who had just returned to the Gallery, to keep her +seat for her, and went out into the corridor to speak to him. + +"Well, not bad, was it? These youngsters have got the trick! I thought it +capital. But I dare say you'll have all sorts of fault to find, you most +exacting of women!" + +"No, no; it was good," she said, eagerly. "And he's improving fast." + +"Well then"--the wise old eyes beside her laughed kindly into hers--"be +content, and don't take Coryston's escapades too hardly!" + +She drew back, and her long face and haughty mouth stiffened in the way he +knew. + +"Are you coming to see me on Sunday?" she said, quietly. + +He took his snubbing without resentment. + +"I suppose so. I don't often miss, do I? Well, I hear Marcia was the beauty +at the Shrewsbury House ball, and that--" he whispered something, laughing +in her ear. + +Lady Coryston looked a little impatient. + +"Oh, I dare say. And if it's not he, it will be some one else. She'll marry +directly. I always expected it. Well, now I must go. Have you seen Arthur?" + +"Mother! Hullo, Sir Wilfrid!" + +There was the young orator, flushed and radiant. But his mother could say +very little to him, for the magnificent person in charge of the Gallery and +its approaches intervened. "No talking allowed here, sir, please." Even +Lady Coryston must obey. All she could add to her hurried congratulations +was: + +"You're coming in to-night, remember, Arthur?--nine-thirty." + +"Yes, I've paired. I'm coming. But what on earth's up, mother?" + +Her lips shut closely. + +"Remember, nine-thirty!" She turned and went back into the darkness of the +Gallery. + +Arthur hesitated a moment in the passage outside. Then he turned back +toward the little entrance-room opposite the entrance to the ordinary +Ladies' Gallery, where he found another attendant. + +"Is Miss Glenwilliam here?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"Yes, sir, in the front row, with Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. Do you wish +to speak to her, sir? The Gallery's pretty empty." + +Arthur Coryston went in. The benches sloped upward, and on the lowest one, +nearest the grille, he saw the lady of his quest, and was presently bending +over her. + +"Well," he said, flushing, "I suppose you thought it all bosh!" + +"Not at all! That's what you have to say. What else can you say? You did it +excellently." + +Her lightly mocking eyes looked into his. His flush deepened. + +"Are you going to be at the Frenshams' dance?" he asked her, presently. + +"We're not invited. They're too savage with father. But we shall be at the +Opera to-morrow night." + +His face lightened. But no more talk was possible. A Minister was up, and +people were crowding back into the Gallery. He hurriedly pressed her hand +and departed. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia +noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the +fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her +eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner--her +mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal +summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So +Arthur--evidently puzzled--had paired for the evening, and would return +from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and +Coryston had wired an hour before dinner--"Inconvenient, but will turn up." + +What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well +that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's +position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, +on a jointure; leaving their former splendors--the family mansion and the +family income--behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and +efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the +daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past +could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although +she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been +the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule +in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children +except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his +grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached +and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, +when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a +quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his +opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad +after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction +between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred +while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had +been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile. + +Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for +taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly +his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that +there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why +be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord? + +And really--of late--his behavior! Never coming to see his mother--writing +the most outrageous things in support of the Government--speaking for +Radical candidates in their very own county--denouncing by name some of +their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible! + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She +went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in +white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she +passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint +and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her +childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the +equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, +which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the +staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be +like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family +and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing +association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse +whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident +flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the +picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long +Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night. + +Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark +eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength--she +certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. +The face reminded one of ripe fruit--so rich was the downy bloom on the +delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch +of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it +perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would +see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding +prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were +rich--quite unconsciously--in that magic of sex which belongs to only +a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and +occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many +things--in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which +she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her +whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of +life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually--the +unknown!--yearning for his call, his command.... + +There were many people--witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her +mother--who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious +effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three +seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and +set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she +received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, +copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused--or +made her mother refuse for her--one or more of the men whom all other +mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one +quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned +her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural +arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained _nonchalant_ +and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of +passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. +Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's +opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out +of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long +the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed. + +As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of +Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with +certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into +the drawing-room in her mother's wake. + +The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston +strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian +pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on +wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," +held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth +looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since +1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good +enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their +ancestors were now discredited--laughed out of court--as collectors, owing +to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a +number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or +by tables holding _objets d'art_ of the same mixed quality as the +pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses +with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression +of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought +suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in +dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted +floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. +The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind +her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, +sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck +through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till +now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some +matter of family property--some selling or buying transaction--which a +mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might +well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting +in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a +recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in +the estates "--he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, +not mine." + +And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for +granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some +time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? +Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have +become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women +make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother +was an exceptional woman. + +But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, +and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews +with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts +she struck up conversation. + +"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?" + +"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help +it, she dresses so outrageously." + +"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that +kind of thing." + +Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows. + +"That's where the ill-breeding comes in--that a young girl should make +herself so conspicuous." + +"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. +People on our side--people you'd never think--will do anything to get her +for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she +says." + +"That I can quite believe! Yes--I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the +other day--dining--when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that +_man_!" + +Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her +path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself. + +Marcia laughed. + +"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he +was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't +the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a +friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it. + +"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly. + +Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant +sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and +took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large +envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her +mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a +small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other +side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky +cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, +Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt +furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That +patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the +time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer. + +In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, +then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all +kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in +front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, +"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of +the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby +greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with +indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's +all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!" + +In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also +of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both +of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, +as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial +men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions +matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not +exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the +nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection. + +He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. +And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint +lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each +other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than +the irreconcilable differences. + +Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent +political escapades--remarks which she took in complete silence--he settled +himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to +say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the +likeness--through all contrast--between mother and son. Lady Coryston was +tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing--a Lady Macbeth of the +drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet +of a man--on wires--never at ease--the piled fair hair overbalancing the +face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both +physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. _Will_--carried to +extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady +Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it +was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy. + +Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed +evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled +to read her mother--the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of +expression--from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of +nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time. + +She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of +Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" +but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to +sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded +foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid +oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia +noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an +old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints. + +"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with +a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of +business--not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will +hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, +by the family--the estates--and the country." + +At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially +when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something +peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection. + +Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt +chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his +head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; +and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was +pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. +And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what +Was going to happen. + +"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in +leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father +did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him--" + +Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an +anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking +went on: + +"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that +in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and +all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in +danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out +his ideas--the ideas he and I had held in common--and should remain the +guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had +inherited--and in which he believed--" + +Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his +elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his +mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the +slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear +of the spaniel against the other. + +"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's +death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I +cannot have satisfied _all_ my children." She paused a moment. "I have +not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury--that none of you +can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up--nothing +more. And I have certainly _wished_"--she laid a heavy emphasis on +the word--"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own +fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for +any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own +money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to +provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston--" + +She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was +certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh. + +"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and +prunella.'" + +James murmured, "Corry--old man?" Marcia flushed angrily. + +"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that +everything he could possibly have claimed--" + +"Short of the estates--which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with +an amused look. + +His mother went on without noticing the interruption: + +"--would have been his--either now or in due time--if he would only have +made certain concessions--" + +"Sold my soul and held my tongue?--quite right!" said Coryston. "I have +scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect." + +Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed +emotion. + +"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and +consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his +father's convictions--" + +"What!--you think he still has them--in the upper regions?" + +Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew +pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's +side, she took her hand. + +"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult +your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. + +Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands +on his sides. + +"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting +something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been +dishing me altogether?--cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what +you mean? Let's have it!" + +Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. + +"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way--" + +"Yes--but please _tell_ it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to +keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I +guess, from your will--which concern me--and the rest of them"--he waved +his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get +done with it." + +"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." + +With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady +Coryston took up the folded paper. + +"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which +concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, +in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily +at Coryston--"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But--" + +"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest +son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while +I'm speculating as to what's coming." + +"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that +Coryston is behaving abominably." + +But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with +lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. + +Lady Coryston began to read. + +Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing +the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his +custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, +Arthur sprang to his feet. + +"I say, mother!" + +"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. + +She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: + +"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, +her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper +which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat +dumfoundered. + +James approached his mother. + +"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." + +She turned toward him. + +"Yes, James, I shall maintain them." + +Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair +hair as though in bewilderment. + +"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to +me I shall hand it back to Corry." + +"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in +trust," said Lady Coryston. + +Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a +little distance. + +"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches +have contributed?" + +"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have +intrusted you with the estates." + +"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The +letter which he left for me said as much." + +"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly. + +"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see +how things stand." + +He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the +items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion--you cut me +out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to +buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my +present fortune--the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I +understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying +properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's +mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all--all, that +is, which would have normally come to me--or _nothing_!" + +He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features +sparkling. + +"I will have all--or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for +a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of +risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I +should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital." + +"You make it your business to wound, Coryston." + +"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been +_absolutely in my right_!" He brought his hand down with passion +on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I--the next +generation--ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no +moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. +There is always something to be said for property, so long as each +generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property +is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, +_then_ it is what the Frenchman called it, _theft_!--or worse.... +Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven +thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property--well!--I'm going to a +large extent to manage it!" + +Lady Coryston started. + +"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately. + +"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, +calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound +ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title +I can't stand for our parliamentary division--but I shall look out for +somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm +afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with +me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would +always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed--least of all +by a woman." + +Lady Coryston rose from her seat. + +"James!--Arthur!--" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will +understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish +that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it +hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and +understand me. Good night." + +"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously. + +She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm +round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding +Coryston at bay the while. + +As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and +opened it for her. + +"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I--but we'll play +fair." + +Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and +Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched +him in the ribs. + +"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! +I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you." + +Arthur grew red. + +"Of course it was nonsense to you!" + +"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?" + +"Nothing that matters to you, Corry." + +"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!" + +"Do hold your tongue, Corry!" + +"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother +will fight you for all she's worth." + +"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that." + +"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the +estates, Arthur." + +"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall +find a way of getting out of them--the greater part of them, anyway. All +the same, Corry, if I do--you'll have to give guarantees." + +"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"--Coryston gave a great +stretch--"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order +it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. +You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I +tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to +take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the +whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!" + +He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping +and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the +legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy +thousand a year. + +Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their +bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no +sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the +landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book. + +She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to +be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house +from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large +ground-floor room at the back. + +"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" +And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her +mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. +It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of +Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But +that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into +the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain +she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the +second volume of _Diana of the Crossways_. Why not? It was only just +eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had +gone to bed. + +She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she +opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, +and she heard some one moving about. + +"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment." + +A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk +heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed +toward the figure at the door. + +"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do +anything for you?" + +The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage +behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, +and blue eyes. + +"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know +where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her +volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too +strong. + +"I suppose my brothers have been here?" + +Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment. + +"They have only just gone--at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went +some time ago." + +Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase. + +"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?" + +Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did +nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled. + +"But they've told you--he and Arthur--they've told you what's happened?" + +"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them." + +"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia--"when he wants to do +something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious +plan?--of coming to settle down at Coryston--in our very pockets--in order +to make mother's life a burden to her?" + +"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll +do it." + +"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He +calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's +consciences don't matter a bit." + +Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out +impetuously: + +"You think he's been badly treated?" + +"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one." + +"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, +as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's _splendid_ +my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it." + +Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of +covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks. + +"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a +Liberal." + +"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't +agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if +I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative." + +"But you think other things matter more than politics?" + +"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially--" He stopped. + +"Especially--for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered +his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I +know." + +"Beauty--poetry--sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?" + +He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her. + +There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made +a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he +raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, +in the darkness, by the solitary light--the lines of her young form, the +delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes. + +She held out her hand. + +"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!" + +She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go." + +The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of +the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message +mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young +girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly +envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty +made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady +Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black," +such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left +nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or +Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in +search of a young one. + +"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?" + +The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the +honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of +their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted +good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless +final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing. + +Then she ran across the passage to her mother's sitting-room. Lady Coryston +had complained of illness during the day and had not been down-stairs. But +Marcia's experience was that when her mother was ill she was not less, but +more active than usual, and that withdrawal to her sitting-room generally +meant a concentration of energy. + +Lady Coryston was sitting with a writing-board on her knee, and a +reading-lamp beside her, lighting a table covered with correspondence. +Within her reach was a deep cupboard in the wall containing estate and +business letters, elaborately labeled and subdivided. A revolving bookcase +near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the +paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the _Quarterly Review_. The walls +of the room were covered with books--a fine collection of county histories, +and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, +specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger +generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been +the normal look of the original. His portrait by Holl hung over the +mantelpiece, flanked on either side by water-color pictures of his sons and +daughter in their childhood. + +There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and Lady Coryston never +sat in it. She objected to flowers as being in the way; and there was not +a sign anywhere of the photographs and small knick-knacks which generally +belitter a woman's sitting--room. Altogether, an ugly room, but +characteristic, businesslike, and not without a dignity of its own. + +"Mother!--why don't you rest a little?" cried Marcia, eying the black-robed +figure and the long pale face, marked by very evident fatigue. "You've been +writing letters or seeing people all day. How long did James stay?" + +"About an hour." + +"And Mr. Page?" Mr. Page was the agent of the main Coryston estate. + +"Some time. There was a great deal to settle." + +"Did you"--the girl fidgeted--"did you tell him about Coryston?" + +"Certainly. He says there is only one house in the neighborhood he could +take--" + +"He has taken it." Marcia opened her right hand, in which she crushed a +telegram. "Bellows has just brought me this." + +Lady Coryston opened and read it. + +"Have taken Knatchett for three years. Tell mother." Lady Coryston's lips +stiffened. + +"He has lost no time. He can vex and distress us, of course. We shall have +to bear it." + +"Vex and distress us! I should think he can!" cried Marcia. "Has James been +talking to him?" + +"I dare say," said Lady Coryston, adding, with a slight, sarcastic laugh, +"James is a little too sure of being always in the right." + +From which Marcia guessed that James had not only been talking to Coryston, +but also remonstrating with his mother, which no doubt accounted for Lady +Coryston's worn-out looks. James had more effect upon her than most people; +though never quite effect enough. + +Marcia stood with one foot on the fender, her gaze fixed on her mother in +a frowning abstraction. And suddenly Lady Coryston, lifting her eyes, +realized her daughter, and the vision that she made. + +"You look very well, Marcia. Have I seen that dress before?" + +"No. I designed it last week. Ah!"--the sound of a distant gong made itself +heard--"there's the motor. Well, good night, mother. Take care of yourself +and do go to bed soon." + +She stooped to kiss her mother. + +"Who's going with you?" + +"Waggin and James. Arthur may come in. He thinks the House will be up +early. And I asked Mr. Lester. But he can't come for the first part." + +Her mother held her sleeve and looked up, smiling. Lady Coryston's smiles +were scarcely less formidable than her frowns. + +"You expect to see Edward Newbury?" + +"I dare say. They have their box, as usual." + +"Well!--run off and enjoy yourself. Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." + +"Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's +governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, +partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that +when she was wanted to act duenna, she came--at a moment's notice. And she +was very willing to come. She lived in an Earl's Court lodging, and these +occasional expeditions with Marcia represented for her the gilt on her +modest gingerbread. She was a small, refined woman, with a figure still +slender, gray hair, and a quiet face. Her dresses were years old, but she +had a wonderful knack of bringing them up-to-date, and she never did Marcia +any discredit. She adored Marcia, and indeed all the family. Lady Coryston +called her "Miss Wagstaffe"--but to the others, sons and daughter, she was +only "Waggin." There were very few things about the Coryston family she did +not know; but her discretion was absolute. + +As she saw Marcia running down-stairs her face lit up. + +"My dear, what a lovely gown!--and how sweet you look!" + +"Don't talk nonsense, Waggin!--and put on this rose I've brought for you!" + +Waggin submitted while Marcia adorned her and gave various pats and pulls +to her hair. + +"There!--you look ten years younger," said the girl, with her bright look, +stepping back. "But where is James?" + +The butler stepped forward. + +"Mr. James will meet you at the Opera." + +"Oh, good!" murmured Marcia in her companion's ear. "Now we can croon." + +And croon they did through the long crowded way to Covent Garden. By the +time the motor reached St. Martin's Lane, Waggin was in possession of all +that had happened. She had long expected it, having shrewdly noted many +signs of Lady Coryston's accumulating wrath. But now that "Corry," her dear +"Corry," with whom she had fought so many a schoolroom fight in the days +of his Eton jackets, was really disinherited, her concern was great. Tears +stood in her kind eyes. "Poor Corry!" alternated in her mouth with "Your +poor mother!" Sinner and judge appealed equally to her pity. + +Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce. + +"What else could he expect? Father _did_ leave the estates to +mother--just because Corry had taken up such views--so that she might keep +us straight." + +[Illustration: AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP] + +"But _afterward_! My dear, he is so young! And young men change." + +Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned--except with this +awe and vagueness--scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists +than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. + +Marcia shook her head. + +"He won't change. Mother did not ask it. All she asked was--for her sake +and father's--that he should hold his tongue." + +A flush sprang to Waggin's faded cheek. + +"A _man_!--a grown man!" she said, wondering--"forbid him to speak +out--speak freely?" + +Marcia looked anxiously at her companion. It was very seldom that Waggin +betrayed so much heat. + +"I know," said the girl, gloomily--"'Your money or your life'--for I +suppose it sounds like that. Corry would say his convictions are his life. +But why 'a man,' Waggin?" She straightened her pretty shoulders. "I don't +believe you'd mind if it were a woman. You don't believe in a _woman_ +having convictions!" + +Waggin looked a little bewildered. + +"I'm old-fashioned, I suppose--but--" + +Marcia laughed triumphantly. + +"Why shouldn't Corry respect his mother's convictions? She wants to prove +that women oughtn't to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even--" + +"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so +splendid--so splendid!" + +"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, +Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!" + +Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl's. The note of +storm in Marcia's mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to +change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen +with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little +niece--and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr. +Arthur--and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!--not exactly +handsome--but you couldn't possibly pass her over." + +"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of +course, Waggin, they weren't alone?" + +"Oh no--probably not!--though--though I didn't see any one else. They +seemed so full of talk--I didn't speak to Mr. Arthur. _Who_ do you say +she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently. + +Marcia turned upon her. + +"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It's too bad of +Arthur! It's abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I've heard +things said sometimes--but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, +Waggin!--you _didn't_ see them alone?" + +The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course +Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does +exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless +she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But +_Arthur_!" + +Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they +passed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress. + +"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention +it! I'm sure there's nothing in it." + +"I've half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned +emphasis. "But I wouldn't believe it!--I shall tell Arthur what I think of +him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but +that's quite another thing. It's as though mother were never to have any +pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!--behind her back, +too." + +"My dear!--it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, +and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your +mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand--" + +"To please mother--and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with +perfect composure. "You're thinking of Edward Newbury?" + +"Who else should I be thinking of!--after all you told me last week?" + +"Oh yes--I like Edward Newbury"--the tone betrayed a curious +irritation--"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer +him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!" + +"Marcia--dearest!--don't be cruel to him!" + +"No--but he mustn't press me! I've given him hints--and he won't take them. +I can't make up my mind, Waggin. I can't! It's not only marrying him--it's +the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me--at +Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party--evening prayers in the private chapel, +_before dinner_!--nobody allowed to breakfast in bed--everybody driven +off to church--and such a _fuss_ about Lent! It made me shiver. I'm +not that sort, Waggin--I never shall be." + +And as again a stream of light from a music-hall facade poured into the +carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark +eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand. + +"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired +lady--"make your own conditions!" + +"No, no!--never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, +kindest--and underneath--_iron_! Most people are taken in. I'm not." + +There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing--she +knew it--would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though +she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special +pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still +undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family--the young man himself heir +presumptive to a marquisate money--high character--everything that mortal +mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted--Waggin was certain of it. +The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And +yet--let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In +Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him. + +Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for +an important "first night"--there is no sight in London, perhaps, that +ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern +life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide +the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women--women old and +young--their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray +heads; the roses that youth wears--divinely careless; or the diamonds +wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years. + +Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted +positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that +instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the +Greek called _hubris_, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. +It meant in her--"I am young--I am handsome--the world is all on my +side--who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave +a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her +actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, +so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of +compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. +Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a +narrow inexperience. + +The overture had begun--in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience +was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of +those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia +sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising +her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up +of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It +was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had +joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the +music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over. + +"Marcia--you vandal!--listen!" + +The girl started and blushed. + +"I don't understand the music, James!--it's so strange and barbarous." + +"Well, it isn't Glueck, certainly," said James, smiling. + +Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the +crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear space of sky, +a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell--winds caught +it--snatches of tempest overpowered it--shrieking demons rushed upon it and +silenced it. But it persisted; passing finally into a processional march, +through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end. + +"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are +the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host." + +The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had +but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of +Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and +fifty years after Glueck, how to make it speak, through music, to more +modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, +and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous +and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which had soon gripped Covent +Garden. + +There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the +allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But +at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary +blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. Hellas cannot avenge itself on the +Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds +back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as goddess of the land, she +claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the +host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has +vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your +daughter!--Iphigenia!" + +Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the +stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, +bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that +she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner +despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. +Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant +joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose +neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to +kiss, saying tender, touching things--how she has missed him--how long the +time has been.... + +The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an +old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli +in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in +which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the +soul. + +Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, +smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but +in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in +noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a +seat beside Marcia. + +He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted +to hear this--with you." + +"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a +motion of her face toward the Iphigenia. + +"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it--please!--for the +ordinary 'star'--business." + +"But she is the play!" + +"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of +sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the +death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is +the dirge music beginning." + +Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of +the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various +incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man +beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys +and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not +long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of +the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. +They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then +begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball +that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept +into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with +him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed +to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no +avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached +her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which +were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through +the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. +With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her. + +Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once +exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, +as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her +dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, +of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's +knees, imploring him to save her: + +"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my +father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before +my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of +death. 'Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have +I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death? +Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have +that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers." + +She takes the infant Orestes in her arms: + +"Brother!--you are but a tiny helper--and yet--come, weep with me!--come, +pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how--silently--he +implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! +He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble +dying!" + +The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast--through +one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in +art. Wonderful theme!--the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more +than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed +vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery +of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate--the savage creed--the +blood-thirst of the goddess--and the maddened army howling for its prey. + +Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too +horrible!" + +Newbury shook his head, smiling. + +"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race--of the +Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. +She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art--all religion. Ah--here +is Achilles!" + +There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to +fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, +adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his +bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her--die for her--if +need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs +up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the +background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on +his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from +the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her +champion, loves him. + +The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the +whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath. + +"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's. + +He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling +compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer. + +But the golden moment dies!--forever. Shrieking and crashing, the +vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing +blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon +is threatened--Achilles--Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the +distance like the roar of an uncaged beast. + +Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and +thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to +throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. + +"Mother!--we cannot fight with gods. I die!--I die! But let me die +gloriously--unafraid. Hellas calls to me!--Hellas, my country. I alone can +give her what she asks--fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the +good of Hellas--not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for +women and their fatherland?--and shall one life, one little life, stand in +their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!--pull down the towers of +Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me--this be my glory!--this, +child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that +Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are +slave-folk--and _we_ are free!" + +Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for +what she is--now that he has "looked into her soul"--must he lose her?--is +it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her. + +But she puts him gently aside. + +"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be _my_ +boon to save Hellas, if I may." + +And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await +her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if +she calls to him--even at the last moment. + +But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding +all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief--she lifts the song +of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place +of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her. + +"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day--torch of Zeus!" + +"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear +light!--farewell!" + +"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is +the death--_she accepts_!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The +exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled +strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's +dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the +growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; +the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; +fascination--revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat +drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera +House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the +stage, with the bouquets at its feet.... + +Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed +it. She recoiled--released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward +Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury. + + * * * * * + +Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back +of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid +much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were +on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The +profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full--too full!--of +consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a +flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her +small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. +And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much +courtesy to Marcia's "companion." + +"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big +fight--Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows--and somebody +having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He +spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad +company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite." + +Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front +of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was +bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly +Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and +showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood +looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, +in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half +contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping--in +spite of its conformity in dress--with the splendid opera-house, and the +bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern +statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate--for +Democracy--Labor--personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern +world has developed it--armed with all the weapons of the other two! + +"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims +play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I +get out of you?--and you?'" + +Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He +was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days +when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime. + +"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard +by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to +notice--and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!" + +"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely; "if that's what you mean." His eyes +rested a moment on the striking figure of the Chancellor's daughter. +"Certainly--I'll put in a word. But she is a very fascinating young woman, +my dear!" + +"I know," said Marcia, helplessly, "I know." + +There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid asked: + +"When do you go down to Coryston?" + +"Just before Whitsuntide." + +He looked round with a smile, saw that Edward Newbury was still in the box, +and whispered, mischievously: + +"Hoddon Grey, too, I think, will not be empty?" + +Marcia kept an indifferent face. + +"I dare say. You're coming?" Sir Wilfrid nodded. "Oh, _have_ you +heard--?" + +She murmured to him behind her fan. Sir Wilfrid knew all their history--had +been her father's most intimate friend. She gave him a rapid account of +Coryston's disinheriting. The old man rose, his humorous eyes suddenly +grave. + +"We'll talk of this--at Coryston. Ah, Newbury--I took your chair--I resign. +Hullo, Lester--good evening. Heavens, there's the curtain going up. Good +night!" + +He hurried away. Newbury moved forward, his eager look on Marcia. But she +turned, smiling, to the young librarian. + +"You haven't seen this ballet, Mr. Lester?--Schumann's 'Carnival'? Oh, +you mustn't stand so far back. We can make room, can't we?" She addressed +Newbury, and before he knew what had happened, the chairs had been so +manipulated that Lester sat between Marcia and Newbury, while Waggin had +drawn back into the shadow. The eyes of Marcia's duenna twinkled. It +pleased her that this magnificent young man, head, it was said, of the +young High Church party, distinguished in many ways, and as good as he was +handsome, was not to have too easy a game. Marcia had clearly lost her head +a little at the Shrewsbury House ball; and was now trying to recover it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +After one of those baffling fortnights of bitter wind and cold, which so +often mark the beginning of an English May, when all that the spring has +slowly gained since March seems to be confiscated afresh by returning +winter, the weather had repented itself, the skies had cleared, and +suddenly, under a flood of sunshine, there were blue-bells in the +copses, cowslips in the fields, a tawny leaf breaking on the oaks, a new +cheerfulness in the eyes and gait of the countryman. + +A plain, pleasant-looking woman sat sewing out-of-doors, in front of a +small verandaed cottage, perched high on a hillside which commanded a wide +view of central England. The chalk down fell beneath her into a sheath of +beech woods; the line of hills, slope behind slope, ran westward to the +sunset, while eastward they mounted to a wooded crest beyond which the +cottage could not look. Northward, beginning some six hundred feet below +the cottage, stretched a wide and varied country, dotted with villages and +farms, with houses and woods, till it lost itself in the haze of a dim +horizon. + +A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the +French windows of the cottage. + +"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?" + +"Between three and four, papa." + +"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a +long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably--Sunday or no +Sunday!" + +"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting +her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern. + +"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston--who said he would be here to +tea." + +Miss Atherstone looked a little startled. + +"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I +wrote yesterday." + +"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in +the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the +estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent +terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it +up to Coryston somehow." + +"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly. + +"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's +not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I +never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby." + +"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of +brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever +people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a +retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers +in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the +midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty constituencies by +heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the +pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count +by any important Minister framing an important bill. + +He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of +English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large +Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship--little known except to an inner +ring--was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did +nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been +the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live +in history. + +Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and +much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life. +Brilliant creatures--men and women--came and went, to and from the cottage. +Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not +much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, +and a vegetarian. Marion read the _Church Family Times_, went +diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough +about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and +her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other. + +Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one +who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound +affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to +some one or other of the Sirens of her sex. When Enid came to the cottage +Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability +is that she saw through the Siren--what there was to see through--a good +deal more sharply than her father did. + +Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just +been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would +probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to +him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of +talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was +pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept +running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more +passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more +big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of +land, and church, and finance!--democratic England when it once got to +business--and it was getting to business--would make short work of them. + +As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the +democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the +hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held +sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile +mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord +ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots +than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than +their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands +on them. + +One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He +turned, laughing to his daughter. + +"Coryston has settled in--with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He +has all sorts of ructions on his hands already." + +"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas +emerging from the woods. + +"My dear--she began it. And he is quite right--he _has_ a public duty +to these estates." + +"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly." + +"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong +parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, +are over." + +"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously. + +"I repeat--she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a +will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!" + +"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly. + +Atherstone shrugged his shoulders--too honest to reply. + +He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed. + +"I hear Coryston's very servants--his man and wife--were evicted from their +cottage for political reasons." + +"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion. + +Atherstone stared. + +"My dear!--" + +"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks. + +"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It +doesn't do to have such stories going round--on our side. I wonder why +Coryston chose them." + +"I should think--because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The +slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek +as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to +listen. + +"I think I hear the motor." + +"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation +was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters. + +Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess +was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair. + +"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing. +"Let's see--four dinners, three balls, two operas,--a week-end at Windsor, +two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do +you expect but a rag!" + +"Don't say you don't like it!" + +"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm +insulted, and when they do--" + +"You're bored?" + +"It's you finished the sentence!--not I! And I've scarcely seen father this +week except at breakfast. _That's_ bored me horribly." + +"What have you _really_ been doing?" + +"Inquisitor!--I have been amusing myself." + +"With Arthur Coryston?" + +Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her +companion. + +"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?" + +"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?" + +"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so +demean himself." + +"But she must find out some day." + +"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out +a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large +eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You +see--Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me--she has insulted father." + +"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled. + +"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. +She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton +nearly had hysterics." + +The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly +smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes. + +"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen +quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks +society is too tolerant--of people like father and me." + +"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly. + +"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight--so +far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little +harder--that's all." + +"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, +"after that list of parties!" + +"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful +one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father +goes out of office I shall be nobody. _She_ will be always at the top +of the tree." + +"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or +not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?" + +"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip--but the +facts--by heart! I am drowned--smothered in them. At present Arthur is the +darling--the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"--Miss Glenwilliam +threw up her hands. + +"You think she will change her mind again?" + +The girl took up a stalk of grass and nibbled it in laughing meditation. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong. + +"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly--"think +about whether you care for each other!" + +"What a _bourgeois_ point of view! Well, honestly--I don't know. +Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We +have only known each other a few months. If he were _very_ rich--By +the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?" + +Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught +her ear. + +"Here they are--he and Lord Coryston." + +Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, +long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale +masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a +charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she +held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him--a gay, significant +look. + +Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her +companion. + +"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his +hands on his sides. + +As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with +their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the +peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them +displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him +with a smile. + +"Mayn't I?" + +He looked down on her, frowning. + +"Why should women set up a new want--a new slavery--that costs money?" + +The color flew to her cheeks. + +"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own sex." + +"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have +consciences. And--especially--_Liberal_ women," he added, slowly, as +his eyes traveled over her dress. + +"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind +of women?" she asked him, quietly. + +"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people +in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing--and it is +the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands." + +Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly: + +"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!" + +The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's +person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with +wrath. + +Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a +look of radiant good humor. + +"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags--you might leave me the +talking. Has he told you what's happened?" + +The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an +indicating thumb in his brother's direction. + +The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue. + +"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he +said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up." + +"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his +seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And +what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our +dear mother has been doing?" + +"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily. + +"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such +lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the +plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy. + +Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He +approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary +courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston +was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a +constituency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a +comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to +let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there--Atherstone perfectly +understood--simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his +own _beaux yeux_ or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile +ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated. + +Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to +greet Atherstone--whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as +a pestilent agitator--with the indifferent good breeding that all young +Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the +view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was +increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, +moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his +hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; +and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat. + +"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the +view from the wood-path before tea?" + +Marion assented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little +field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill. + +"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the +departing figures. + +The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored. + +"I haven't the slightest idea." + +"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing +his knees, and bubbling with amusement. "My unfortunate mother will have to +make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!" + +"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked +Atherstone, after a moment. + +"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall +my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy +the Bible comes in--for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't +know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. + +A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. + +"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to +return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It +hasn't quite come to that!" + +"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a +slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall +come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile +camps--fighting it out--blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, +and"--he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's--"so +do you, too--at bottom." + +The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you +mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough +for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of +things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?" + +Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner. + +"Yes, I'm after a lot of game--in the Liberal preserves just as much as the +Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked +the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist +chapel. Half the village Baptist--lots of land handy--she won't let 'em +have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her +resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on +Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, +and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2--My +mother's been letting Page--her agent--evict a jolly decent fellow called +Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the +villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course--but that's the +truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days--no good. Now +I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, +for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent +for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3--There's +a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given +'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been +just gorging chickens this last year--nasty beasts! That don't matter much, +however. No. 4--Ah-ha!"--he rubbed his hands--"I'm on the track of that old +hypocrite, Burton of Martover--" + +"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, +indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!" + +"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation--"not a bit of it. Talking +Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then +doing a thing--Look here! He turned that man and his wife--Potifer's his +name--who are now looking after me--out of their cottage and their bit of +land--why, do you think?--because _the man voted for Arthur_! Why +shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted +for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'--so did his wife. +Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Nobody wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang +him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!" + +And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face +aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady +Coryston's disinherited son--socialist and revolutionist--as a kind of +watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's +very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the +neighborhood had anticipated. The man was too queer--too flighty. + +"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord +Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood--the Hoddon Grey +estate, for instance--" + +Coryston threw up his hands. + +"The Newburys--my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'--aren't +they?--'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches--and schools--and +villages! All the little boys patterns--and all the little girls saints. +Everybody singing in choirs--and belonging to confraternities--and carrying +banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that +a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, +I've heard a story about that estate"--the odd figure paused beside the +tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis--"that's worse than any +other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his +wife!" + +He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his +glittering eyes. + +Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The +neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the +pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious +convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot championship on both +sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in +their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular +was thought to have behaved with harshness. + +Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a +white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most +hideous of all tyrants!" + +Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but +she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as +angry as Coryston. + +Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, +abruptly: + +"My mother likes that fellow--Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I +hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't--before Marcia knows +this story!" + +Marion looked a little embarrassed, and certainly disapproving. + +"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire +him enormously." + +"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"--he +put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and +troubled countenance--"don't you agree with me?" + +"I don't know whether I do or not--I don't know enough about it." + +"You mustn't," he said, eagerly--"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, +after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss +Atherstone, down in those villages?" + +Marion blushed furiously, then laughed. + +"I can't imagine why." + +"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity--generally. It's a beastly mess. But the +things you do--are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, +anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms +and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?" + +Marion smiled and thanked him. + +Coryston rose. + +"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But--I +should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you. +I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do +you see any objection?" + +He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer +simplicity. She smiled back. + +"Not the least. Come when you like." + +He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to +her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling. + +Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, +relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth +or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had +seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish +notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been. + + * * * * * + +Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss +Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the +shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the +curiosity she felt. + +That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was +clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave. +Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited +upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of +the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she +were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, +when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up +suddenly. + +"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I _can_!" + +"Can what?" + +"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in +hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?--and he's +a very nice boy--and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!" + +She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity. + +"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man +I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but +me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why +should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course +he touches me--Arthur Coryston--and some day I shall want a home--and +children--like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't +strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and +the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me +enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I +think of going from my father to that man--from my father's ideas to +Arthur's ideas--it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled +a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I +couldn't make up my mind yet--for a long, long time." + +"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently. + +"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but +rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, nobody can know but me, what a +man my father is!" + +And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of +her eyes melting to a passionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the +rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, +in the political sense, it overshadowed England. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Lady Coryston's quarters at Coryston Place were not quite so devoid of all +the lighter touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, +of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to +a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. +Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about +the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once +adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. +But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and +of light and sunshine--on sunny days--there was, at any rate, no lack. +Marcia had recently chosen a new chintz for the chairs and sofas, and one +small group of photographs, on a table beside the fireplace, were allowed +to remind the spectator that the owner of the room had once been a young +mother, with a maternal pride in a bunch of fine children. Here were +Coryston, aged nine, on pony-back, pompously showing off; James, dreamily +affable, already a personage at seven; Arthur, fondling a cricket-bat, with +a stiff mouth, hastily closed--by order--on its natural grin; and Marcia, +frowning and pouting, in fancy dress as "The Strawberry Girl," just +emerging, it seemed, from one battle-royal with her nurse, and about to +plunge into another. + +Lady Coryston had just entered the room. She was alone, and she carried a +pile of letters, which she put down on the central writing-table. Then she +went to one of the windows, which on this May day was open, and stood, +looking out, one long mittened hand resting vaguely on the table that held +the photographs. A commanding figure! She was in black, carrying her only +ornament, an embossed silver girdle and chatelaine, the gift of her husband +in their first year of marriage. As she paused, motionless, in the clear +sunshine, her great height and her great thinness and flatness brought +out with emphasis the masculine carriage of the shoulders and the strong +markings of the face. In this moment of solitude, however, the mistress of +Coryston Place and of the great domain on which she looked, allowed herself +an expression which was scarcely that of an autocrat--at any rate of an +autocrat at ease. + +She was thinking of Coryston; and Coryston was giving her a good deal +to think about. Of course she had expected annoyance; but scarcely such +annoyance as Coryston, it seemed, was now bent on causing her. At bottom, +she had always reckoned on her position as mother and woman. Coryston might +threaten, but that he should actually carry out such iniquities as he was +now engaged on, had been--she owned it--beyond her calculations. + +For she had come down to find the whole neighborhood in a ferment, and many +pleasant illusions, in the shelter of which she had walked for years, both +before and since her husband's death, questioned, at least, and cracking, +if not shattered. That the Corystons were model landlords, that they +enjoyed a feudal popularity among their tenants and laborers, was for Lady +Coryston one of the axioms on which life was based. She despised people who +starved their estates, let their repairs go, and squeezed the last farthing +out of their tenants. Nor had she any sympathy with people who owned +insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least +possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the +very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy +and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in +by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the +laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists +to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her +gates; discovering bad cottages, where none were known to exist; and, in +general, holding up his mother to blame and criticism, which, as Lady +Coryston most truly, sincerely, indignantly felt, was wholly undeserved. + +This then was the "game" that Coryston had warned her of. He was actually +playing it; though she had never believed for one moment that he would ever +do so. How was she to meet it? With firmness, no doubt, and dignity. As to +the firmness she had no fears; it was the dignity she was anxious about. + +Lady Coryston was a woman of conscience; although no doubt she had long ago +harnessed her will to her conscience, which revolved--sometimes heavily--in +the rear. Still there the conscience was, and periodically she had to take +account of it. Periodically, it made her uncomfortable on the subject of +her eldest son. Periodically, it forced her to ask herself--as in this +reverie by the window--"How is it that, bit by bit, and year by year, +he and I have drifted to this pass? Who began it? Is it in any sense my +fault?" + +How was it, in the first place, that neither she nor his father had ever +had any real influence over this incorrigible spirit; that even in Corry's +childish days, when his parents had him at their mercy, they might punish, +and thwart, and distress him, but could never really conquer him? Lady +Coryston could recall struggles with her son, whether at home or at school, +which turned her sick to think of. + +Corry--for instance--at his preparatory school, taking a loathing to his +head master, demanding to be withdrawn, and stubbornly refusing to say why; +the master's authority upheld by Corry's parents; vindictive punishment; +followed by sudden illness on the boy's part in the midst of the commotion, +and his return home, white-faced, silent, indomitable. It made her shiver +to remember how he had refused to be nursed by her or by any one but the +old housekeeper at Coryston; how for weeks he had scarcely spoken to his +father or mother. Then had come the lad's justification--a hideous cruelty +charge against the head master; and on a quasi-apology from his father, +Corry had consented to forgive his parents. + +And again--at Cambridge--another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, +taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to +him, unjustly--furious attacks on the college authorities--rioting in +college--ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She +and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen +to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother +could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival +at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from _you_!" She could +still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings +abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years. + +Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating +also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter +vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston +after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were +Corry's arms open to her, and his--almost timid--kiss on her cheek. The +thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had +been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the +kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance +of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were +halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was +suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. +It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry! + +As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. +James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's +death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she +had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less +a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed +quietly expressed--he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and +phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form +of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his +boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a +denunciation of her love of power--unjustified, unwarranted power--as the +cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so +many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused +to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge +enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you +don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life +and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a +lonely and unhappy woman." + +Well, well, she had borne with him--she had not broken with him, after +all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of +giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition +to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to +extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all +her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, +the country's interests. And of course she had been right--she had been +abundantly right. + +Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston +domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to +the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had +been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later +years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination +to win and conquer. Not for herself!--so at least her thoughts, judged in +her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, +but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, +from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper +class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as +she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body +by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down. + +_Glenwilliam_!--in that name all her hatreds were summed up. + +For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to +lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"--a man who had suffered +cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing +class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken +in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging +vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and +her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and +sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress +of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, +married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small +competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political +position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while +England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had +built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled +him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties. + +"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was +accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him--_dear_!" + +And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost +farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, +to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; +persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation--these were +Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to +bay--must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country. + +"Did I choose my post in life for myself?--its duties, its +responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the +line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no +more right to run away than the men--vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to +see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry +rich?--and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what +he says he hates--land and money--to use for what _I_ hate--and what +his father hated? Just because he is my son--my flesh and blood? He would +scorn the plea himself--he has scorned it all his life. Then let him +respect his mother--when she does the same." + +But meanwhile the "game," as Coryston was playing it?--what was to be done +as to this episode and that? + +She sat down to her writing-table, still busily thinking, and reminding +herself that her agent Mr. Page was to come and see her at twelve. She had +hoped to get some counsel and help out of Arthur, now that the House was up +for a fortnight. But Arthur had really been very inconsiderate and tiresome +so far. He had arrived so late for dinner on the Saturday that there had +been no time for talk, especially as there was a large party in the house. +On Sunday he had taken a motor, and had been away all day, paying--he +said--some constituency visits. And now this morning with the earliest +train he was off to London, though there was really no occasion for him +whatever to go up there. He seemed rather unlike himself. His mother +wondered if he was ill. And she fell into some indignant reflections on the +stuffy atmosphere and bad lighting of the House of Commons. But ever since +he knew that he was to have the estates his manner seemed to have changed; +not certainly in the direction of triumph or satisfaction. On the contrary, +he had once or twice said irritably to his mother that the will was +ridiculous and ought not to stand. She had been obliged to make it clear to +him that the matter was _not_ to be discussed. + +Suddenly, as she sat there, distress seized her at the bare thought of any +shadow between herself and Arthur--Arthur, her darling, who was upholding +his father's principles and hers in Parliament with so much zeal and good +feeling; who had never all his life--till these latter weeks--given her so +much as a cross word. Yet now that she could no longer chase the thought +quite away, she admitted, more and more frankly, that she was anxious. Was +he in any money difficulties? She must get James to find out. In love? She +smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, +who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the +handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high +time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which +means--marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it. + + * * * * * + +Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived +among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend +a week-end at Hoddon Grey. Lady Coryston rather wearily reflected that she +must no doubt accept. That young man was clearly in pursuit of Marcia. What +Marcia's own views were, her mother had not yet discovered. She seemed +sometimes glad to see him; sometimes entirely indifferent; and Lady +Coryston thought she had observed that her daughter's vacillations tried +Edward Newbury's pride sorely, at times. But it would end in a match--it +was pretty certain to end in a match. Marcia was only testing her power +over a strong-willed man, who would capture her in the end. That being so, +Lady Coryston acknowledged that the necessary tiresome preliminaries must +be gone through. + +She hastily scrawled a note of acceptance, without any of the fond +imaginings that would have accompanied the act in the ordinary mother. Like +all imperious women she disliked staying in other people's houses, where +she could not arrange her hours. And she had a particularly resentful +memory of a visit which she had paid with her husband to Lord and Lady +William Newbury when they were renting a house in Surrey, before they had +inherited Hoddon Grey, and while Marcia was still in the schoolroom. Never +in her life had she been so ordered about. The strict rules of the house +had seemed to her intolerable. She was a martinet herself, and inclined to +pay all due attention to the observances of religion; but they must be her +own observances, or at least approved by her. To be expected to follow +other people's observances set her aflame. To make such a fuss, also, about +your religion seemed to her indecorous and absurd. She remembered with a +satisfaction which was half ashamed, that she--who was always down at +home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to +church--had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the +Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when +they met at luncheon. + +Well, now the thing had to be done again--for the settling of Marcia. +Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her +mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be +more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting +it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more +important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, +only the fringe of her thoughts. + +However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when +the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page. + +Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she +had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice +than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially +had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he +had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston +estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest +subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded +an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She +greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the +letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party +headquarters. + +The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, +inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the +confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, +and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard +to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a +widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia. + +It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much +disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was +disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure +her--make light of the situation. + +He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter +he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before +entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged +at once into the subject. + +"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" + +"You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it +before--you and I together." + +He shook his head. + +"Ah, but--you see what makes the difference!" + +"That Coryston is my son?--and has always been regarded as my heir? +Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his +proceedings will soon disgust people--will soon recoil on himself!" + +Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek +and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, +hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, +she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this +extremity? + +He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which +had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He +was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up +in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the +estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his +mother's cottages. + +Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. +Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!" + +Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner +insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate +suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; +but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high +level of improvements, at the same time. + +"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that +must be done. I have given orders." + +"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather +grimly. + +The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still +determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel. + +"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have +no intention whatever of extending his influence." + +Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half +an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But +he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston. + +"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he +said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a +distance. Purely political!" + +"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, +firmly. + +The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the +increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead +to peaceable living. But he merely remarked: + +"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last +Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the +village." + +Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair. + +"He defended himself?" + +"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you +himself this afternoon about the affair." + +"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page +perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her. + +"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually +setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a +perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole +neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in +this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a +child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more +members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of +this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, +Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these +proceedings!" + +Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in +so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her +arch-enemy--Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, +she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped +the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and +adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston +was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the +raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the +district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which +Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston +laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to +the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no +consolation to a proud spirit. + +"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and +at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I +have been accustomed to trust you." + +The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an +inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for +the future. + +A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the +remark: + +"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at +Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be +in the chair." + +He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely +watched its effect. + +Lady Coryston paled. + +"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall +speak," she said, with vivacity. + +Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in +the speaker's look. + +"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted +with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy +interrogation, looking for his hat. + +Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark. + +"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she +said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is." + +"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope +when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him +to give up some of these extravagances." + +"I have no power with him," she said, sharply. + +"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his +departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he +admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him +a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They +seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old +game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, +give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when +caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he +charged them with--Lady Coryston especially. + +And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could +he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a +secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Saturday, as he +was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little +property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in +the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the +wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston +and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times +seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the +frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well +known to the neighborhood. + +By George!--if that _did_ mean anything! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from +a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road +running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. +Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of +blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the +twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear +and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying +under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and +everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more. + +Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some +reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for +lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike +most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no +question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong +mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her +of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing. +There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he +came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when +the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; +when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared +than loved him. + +Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet +always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back +at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a +mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped +by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican +tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first +and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, +and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had +grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been +accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch +as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a +rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward +himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned +habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world +have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican +laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a +joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the +most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and +impervious to any sort of Modernism. + +At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his +poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the +most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular +man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though +perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were +jealously hidden from the multitude, who welcomed him as a good-looking +fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, +and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He +was a good shot, a passionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious +note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him--in +general--the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent +to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the +time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth +dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone +were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities +which were only just emerging. + +Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of +his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked +herself, with that instinct for self-analysis bred in the woman of to-day +by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads--"Why is it he likes +me?"--the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself--"No doubt just +because I am so shapeless and so formless--because I don't know myself what +I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me--he'll save my soul. +Shall he?" + +A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control +a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there. + +"Coryston!" she cried. + +Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought +she caught some words from a Shelley chorus which she knew, because he had +made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself +down beside her. + +"Well?" + +Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at +Knatchett--once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his +bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon +him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only +succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen +part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but +the bull barely shook himself. There he stood--good-humored, and pawing. + +To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other +hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile. + +"Corry!--I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this +afternoon?" + +"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to +announce me." + +"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been +doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any +good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say +a word to mamma about--about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were +at the Atherstones on Saturday!" + +The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong +beauty. She went on, appealingly: + +"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued--and argued with +him--but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything--Parliament, mamma, the +estates, anything--in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing +with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in _terror_ about +mamma!" + +Corry whistled. + +"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over +ears. No use your trying to pull him back!" + +"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, passionately; "what's left of her, after +you've done!" + +Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister. +Then he slowly got up from the grass and took a seat beside her. + +"Look here, Marcia, do you think--do you honestly think--that I'm the +aggressor in this family row?" + +"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think!" + +Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!--" she went +on, in a muffled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly! +Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks +ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with +him--you _must_! Persuade him to give her up!" + +She laid her hand on his arm imploringly. + +Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little. + +"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back +Arthur up through thick and thin!" + +"_Corry_!--how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her--how can +he live in that set--the son-in-law of _that man_! He'll have to give +up his seat--nobody here would ever vote for him again. His friends would +cut him--" + +"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, +impatiently. + +But Marcia wailed on: + +"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories--like you--" + +"Not a principle to his back!--I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I +tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into +it!--if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury +she's been living in. I believe--if you ask me--that she'd accept Arthur +for his money--but that she doesn't care one brass farthing about him. Why +should she?" + +"Corry!" + +"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one--and she's not been accustomed to +living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"--he got +up from the seat--"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want +me to do? I repeat--I'm coming to see mother this afternoon." + +"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little +worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows +anything. Promise!" + +"Very well. For the present--I'm mum." + +"And talk to him!--tell him it'll ruin him!" + +"I don't mind--from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her +with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud +overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look. + +"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly. + +"What?" The tone showed her startled. + +"Let _me_ come and talk to _you_ about that man whom all the +world says you're going to marry!" + +She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his +voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly: + +"What do you mean, Corry!" + +"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, passionately. "At +least let me talk to you." + +She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full +of energy and will as his own. + +"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it." + +"Not as I should tell it!" + +A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great +effort to master her excitement. + +"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask _him_ for +his version, too." + +Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed. + +"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing +man: "Ah, I see!--here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to +mother--and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with +you--my small sister!--when we next meet." + +He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there +dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered--as of a grave +yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon +invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia +was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury +quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the +grass beside her. + +"What a heavenly spot!--and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find +you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch." + +Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the +spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, +dappling his bronzed face. + +Marcia flushed a little--an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat +and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, +she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the +keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied +it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. +Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the +last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the +decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it +should be a word of denial. Better--better infinitely--these doubts and +checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her. + +This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And +it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she +anticipated him. + +"I want to talk to you about Corry--my brother!" she said, bending toward +him. + +[Illustration: THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL] + +There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She +evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out +his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the +child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with +his bright conscious eyes. + +"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding. + +"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a +puckered brow. + +"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William +yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't +want to read it--" + +"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling. + +"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I +wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place +against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps +that if you and I--" + +"Took counsel! Excellent!" + +"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it." + +"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your +mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?" + +"No, but--he means to," said the girl, hesitating. + +"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his +version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It +is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we +do--that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own." + +He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way +from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling +that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on +the grass at her feet. _This_ was the man of whom she had said to +Waggin--"he seems the softest, kindest!--and underneath--_iron_!" +A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble +sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the +thrill of an answering humility. + +"It is difficult for me--perhaps impossible--to tell you all the story," +he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly--in its broad +outlines." + +"I have heard some of it." + +"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order--so far as I can. It concerns a +man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded--my father and mother--myself--as +one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting +with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years +ago we made this man--John Betts--the head of it. He has been my father's +right hand--and he has done splendidly--made the farm, indeed, and himself, +famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a +moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We +looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough +of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. +He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And +especially"--here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with +a gentle seriousness--"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people +here live straight--like Christians--not like animals. My mother has very +strict rules--she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their +character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so--it's merciful. The villages +were in a terrible state when we came--as to morals. I can't of course +explain to you--but our priest appealed to us--we had to make changes--and +my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity--" + +He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of +some quick emotion invaded it. + +"You know we are unpopular!" + +"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else +in her. + +"Especially"--there was a touch of scorn in the full voice--"owing to +the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator--that man +Atherstone--who lives in that cottage on the hill--your mother knows all +about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to +live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican--we are church people and +Tories. He thinks that every man--or woman--is a law unto themselves. We +think--but you know what we think!" + +He smiled at her. + +"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of +influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away +much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to +my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had +found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, +had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and +forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a +frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could +for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by +bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go +through it all--the true story came out." + +He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently +considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. + +"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was +divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his +employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and +after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with +her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw +herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married +her. Well now, what were we to do?" + +"They _are_ married?" said Marcia. + +"Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" + +The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. + +Marcia looked up. + +"Because--you think--divorce is wrong?" + +"Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" + +"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" + +The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain +she was idly making. + +"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. +But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, +when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an +absolutely closed one!" + +Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to +the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty +of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. + +"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" + +"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude +of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a +little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" + +The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, +not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not +religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man +beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he +should have singled her out--to love her. + +But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. + +She looked up eagerly. + +"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and +somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care +for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!" + +"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength." + +Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That +old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a +great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its +most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in +herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my +adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his +slave--I will not!" + +At last she said: + +"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?" + +He sighed. + +"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. +Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we +should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would +have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have +seen her from time to time--" + +"They refused?" + +"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, +he said, married legally and honestly--and that was an end of it. As to +Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. +He defied my father to dismiss him. My father--on his principles--had no +choice but to do so. So then--your brother came on the scene!" + +"Of course--he was furious?" + +"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles +may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country." + +A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia +kindled for her brother. + +"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us--as you wish--England +wouldn't be free!" + +"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with +him. But why attack us personally--call us names--because of what we +believe?" + +He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted. + +"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad--quite mad." + +And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand. + +"Don't blame us!" + +He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it. + +"Don't let him set you against us!" + +She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him +from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she +sprang to her feet. + +"Mother will be waiting lunch for us." + +They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's +whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; +insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by +a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had +never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. +The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of +the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and +there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, +invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. +Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. +Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was +enchantment. + +Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir +Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of +both families. + +"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a +cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid +will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened. + +"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?" + +Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked. + +"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade +Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals." + +Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in +spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London +successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, +in this strong man, were warmth and shelter. + + * * * * * + +Luncheon passed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she +perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their +destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady +Coryston, "So we expect you--next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on +the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the +young man's mind. Well!--the sooner, the better. + +Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home +through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she +gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the +house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet +Sir Wilfrid Bury. + +Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual--bedraggled +with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned +with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had +been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of +the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and +had been formally granted it. + +He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any +one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two +occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation +in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston +departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat +motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded +slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by +the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one +who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her +aspect. + +Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, +looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a +fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. +The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass +weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the +happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls +of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of +early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from +the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale +brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old +engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally +a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in +blossom just outside. + +Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on +the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. + +"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and +smiled absently. + +"Not bad?" + +Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: + +"Don't you go into politics, Lester!" + +"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good +deal." + +"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. +"Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do +certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? +I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" + +"Haven't made up my mind." + +"I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with +women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." + +"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. + +Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke +out: + +"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open +mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. +"And politics kills all that kind of thing." + +"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester. + +"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside +him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry +and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the +women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if +the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?" + +Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but +he said nothing. + +Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. + +"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great +scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this +poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let +them live their own lives they'd adore her." + +"The trade-unions are just the same." + +"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from +Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!" + +"Coryston!" + +"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. + +"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" + +"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut +the door. + + * * * * * + +Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he +presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and +stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the +fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the +horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the +woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English +perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings +in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted +before Blenheim was fought. + +Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in +white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that +generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, +friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. + +"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs +and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like +them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and +then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for +people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would +be angry if I were to tell her so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and +lustiest. + +Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. +The long low line of the house rose behind them--an attractive house and +an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a +high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high +gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private +chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not +display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and +old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people +who were walking up and down the front lawn together. + +Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His +pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; +he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair--he was walking +bareheaded--was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, +was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement--a +stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord +William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the +stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife +beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like +woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and +wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave +that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at +first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most +submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life +have been either possible or happy in her husband's company. + +They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their +week-end guests--Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring +cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, +however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that +she held the field. + +"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying +in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward +has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe +you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother." + +"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's +party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I +remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical." + +"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with +all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is +perfectly ridiculous." + +"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said +Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that +Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for +a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded +something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said--quite +indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can _act_.' It +was curious--and rather disquieting--to see so much +decision--self-assertion--in so young a woman." + +"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently +confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles--a fine +character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily +guided by one she loves." + +"I hope so, for Edward's sake--for he is very much in love. I trust he is +not letting inclination run away with him. So much--to all of us--depends +on his marriage!" + +Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his +eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some +three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been +associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been +the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, +a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of +a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of +Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with +beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey +had sheltered large gatherings--gatherings of the high Puseyite party in +the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in +the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile--orator and ascetic--might +have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were +strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made +fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme +old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's +blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement. + +Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord +William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the +dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the +pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of +Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his +forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled--the endless, +unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against +the unbeliever. + +... His wife broke in upon his reverie. + +"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?" + +Lord William started. + +"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his +shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever." + +"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly. + +"A line--in the third person." + +"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise--" + +"So she is--most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every +right to complain of her." + +"You think she has done wrong?" + +"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things--whatever her son may +be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of +such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds +of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to +claim--something altogether monstrous and unnatural!" + +Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. +His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel +or agnostic son?" + +Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully +extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?" + +"Not at all! That was God's will--the cross she had to bear. She interferes +with the course of Providence--presumptuously interferes with it--doing +evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade +men by gentleness--not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is +usurping what does not--what never can--belong to her." + +The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for +male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady +William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady +Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions +were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her +husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce +their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous +those opinions may be. + +"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord +William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for +politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the +wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I +received last week?" + +"Do you think he will do what he threatens?" + +"What--get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them +somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our +consciences." + +Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought +of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. +Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. + +His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into +the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; +gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. +She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at +everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and +plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's +widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of +lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the +house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a +sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the +end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and +fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud +chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and +the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink +and tied with knots of pink ribbon. + +Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. +She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own +money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she +had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the +dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of +azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. +Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there +for the girl Edward loved--who was probably to be his wife. A great +tenderness filled her heart. + +When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, +and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors +open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful +still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with +Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she +prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his +father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... + + * * * * * + +An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive +with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was +strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, +the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the +deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among +the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. + +In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two +young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. + +Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him +with a sigh of satisfaction. + +"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!" + +"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after +them." + +"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his +handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?" + +"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his--a 'fidus Achates'--who +lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather +melancholy tone. + +"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"--Sir +Louis Ford lowered his voice--"I gathered the amazing fact that +Coryston--_Coryston_!--is going to take the chair at a meeting where +Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month." + +Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately +form of Coryston's mother in the distance. + +"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly. + +A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, +and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been +invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find +out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese. + +"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a _woman's_ foes were to be +those of her own household!" + +The Chaplain frowned. + +"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. +"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was +perfectly outrageous." + +"What about?" asked Sir Louis. + +"A divorce case--a very painful one--on which we have found it necessary to +take a strong line." + +The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and +spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled. + +"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?" + +"What indeed?--except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can." + +"Who are the parties?" + +The Chaplain told the story. + +"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the +Dean. + +"Not that I know of." + +The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind +his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened +the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny +fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the +human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to +them--shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious +of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as +though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, +Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the +far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things +threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled +both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain +helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than +herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, +like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it. + +Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers +there was that in them under which her own wavered. + +"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the +way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into +a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of +wild hyacinths to a hilltop. + +A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them +closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and +quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air +was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them +only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival. + +Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. +She heard her name breathed. + +"Marcia!" + +She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring +tenderness, his lips gravely smiling. + +"Yes!" + +She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms +round her, whispering: + +"Marcia! will you come to me--will you be my wife?" + +She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not +so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?--the supreme of +life? + +They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her +within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. +He placed her on it, and himself beside her. + +"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" +he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy--shall I make +you happy?" + +"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in +her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you +angry with me." + +"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, +Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other--to live +as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?" + +She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read +it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of +painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite +give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried +out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She +threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling +silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm +about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, +loving and beloved. + +"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she +disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to +her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. + +"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. + +She looked at him a little wistfully. + +"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too +much. And I shall always--want to be myself." + +"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!" +The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he +added, with a sudden flush: + +"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all +hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and +mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." + +He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. + +"You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; +and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears. + +"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." + +"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. + +"Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try +me." + +He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved +through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, +the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace +flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never +come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste +them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such +crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. + +They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them +into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which +there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and +there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously +forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a +sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia +stopped to look. + +"What a charming place! Who lives there?" + +Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. + +"That is the model farm." + +"Mr. Betts's farm?" + +"Yes. Can you manage that stile?" + +Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with +the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and +talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to +Lord William. + +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of +perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me--about that story. I +don't think I can prevent him." + +"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears." + +He spoke gravely. + +"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I--I think perhaps I had better +have it out with him--myself. I remember all you said to me!" + +"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without +a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject +immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden. + +Lady William first perceived them--perceived, too, that they were hand in +hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and +rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband. + +The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their +cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered +himself of the frivolous remark--in answer to some plea of the Dean's on +behalf of further powers for the female sex: + +"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be +necessary to draw the line!"--when they too caught sight of the advancing +figures. + +The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over +his round cheeks and button mouth. + +"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath. + +"Eh!--what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly +put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?" + +Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting +with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a +happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not +without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain +moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and +blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken +composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and +given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to +Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion +would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already +thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before +dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential +information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible +date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice +and straightforward--just indeed what she had expected. But there would +be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; +whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught. + +"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of +this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night." + +She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, +and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker. + +"You think so, father?" + +"Certainly, my dear son, certainly." + +Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but +perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this +time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and +a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room. + +The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, +looked at her keenly from time to time. + +"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she +fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?" + +Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the +betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William +had disappeared. + +Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and +deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!--is it +really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?" + +Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly. + +"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury. + +"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up +the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening +prayer after dinner." + +His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and +took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her +through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel. + +"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston +as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained +amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But +unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest +in the religious customs of his neighbors. + +"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady +Coryston followed, willy-nilly. + +Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the +chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," +shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a +sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly +forsaken--altogether remote from him. + +But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great +crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May +evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of +her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many +servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord +William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel +seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; +and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the +house to which it was attached. + +"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it +mean for _me_? Can I play my part in it?" + +What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed +to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing +ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a +time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague +fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind! + +And now it returned upon her intensified--that cold, indefinite fear, +creeping through love and joy. + +She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that +she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar--absorbed. + +And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General +Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, +the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a +natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of +Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston." + +An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into +a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her +cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these +kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I +ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been +asked!" + +When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her +appealingly. + +"Darling!--you didn't mind?" + +She quickly withdrew her hand from his. + +"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress." + +And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the +unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight +of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the +roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and +unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter +to her maid about everything and nothing--laughing at any trifle, and yet +feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale +pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last +string tied that she had never looked better. + +"But won't you put on these roses, miss?" + +She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered. + +Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her +reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much +stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her +resources against some hostile force--to be saying to herself: + +"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!" + + * * * * * + +Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all +the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the +sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was +resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put +on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on +great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks +that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away +the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by +Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room +shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler +had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a +bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had +gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel +and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and +gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics +with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, +so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any +rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, +which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult. + +After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, +deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her. + +"Well, how are you feeling?" + +"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes +aflame. + +"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law +for taking her from you?" + +"Who--Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking +of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel +still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot +within twenty-four hours!" + +"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about +Marcia!" + +Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him. + +"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about." + +"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you +really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?" + +"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her +properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"--she dropped +her voice--"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, +the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as +you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on +earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?" + +"Tyranny! _You_ call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced. + +"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? +One's soul is not one's own." + +Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to +drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never +tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have +spent the morning in remonstrating with her--to no purpose whatever--on the +manner in which she was treating her eldest son. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was +passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when +visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for +the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as +he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the +immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself +ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and +to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by +Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the +library--gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the +antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and +literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put +aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house +represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired +of raiding. + +But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of +the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a +more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research +allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why +should he not make himself a _writer_, like other people? + +But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary +conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for +some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, +and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be +carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. +For instance: + +"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or +to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining +ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the +distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his +character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And +yet--I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should +see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the +same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, +of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those +particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to +her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that +she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though +often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the +two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and +must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she +should have injured or trampled on some one else. + +"Of late she has come in here--to the library--much more frequently. I am +sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am +presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve +her. + +"It has grown up inevitably--this affair; but N. little realizes how +dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him +and his philosophy will attract her--will draw the moth to the candle. All +strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the +ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there +to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making +against such men as Newbury--their ideals and traditions. And to one or +other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She +does not know it--does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; +but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of +free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon +Newbury. + +"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement--if it is an +engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that +she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; +and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if +he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can +toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? +'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady +Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet +all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that +throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting--not direct +party-fighting--but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the +nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in +fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate--isn't +that what women might do for us?--instead of taking up with all the +old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? +Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, +but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all +and any sort--to vote against her. + +"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters +to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work +there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests +itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid +me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and +give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if +I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If +I only could _write_! The world seems to be waiting for the historian +that can write. + +"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How +much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its +still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that +obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country +like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly +prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and +manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and +splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life--as in the Boer war; and +the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something +valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults. + +"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the +full-blown _tyrannus_. She has no doubt whatever about her right to +rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that +Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between +threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of +her--how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her +afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the +wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to +differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and +Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times. + +"The poor people here--or most of them--are used to her, and in a way +respect her. They take her as inevitable--like the rent or the east wind; +and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for +them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see +that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his +mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages +without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing +up in the village and on the farms--not so much there, however!--which is +going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But +they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to +get out of his campaign. + +"And then--Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her +by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. +She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family +have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with +her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased +with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when +something does really touch her--when something makes her _feel_--that +curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. +There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a +miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who +was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the +girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden--Marcia +with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but +keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels--must have been +worth seeing. And there is an old man--a decrepit old road-mender, whose +sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she +never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to +tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes +to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in +Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. +You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on +which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet +she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either? + +"But the tragic figure--the tragic possibility--in all this family +_galere_ at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because +of our old Cambridge friendship--quite against my will--a good deal about +the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that +any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is +persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that +what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the +young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry +a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many +proposals--" + +The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the +writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became +aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur +Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved +to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, +he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library +staircase. + +As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was +that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, +his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped +to view, amid the general relaxation of _tenue_ and dignity. He came +up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning +into a chair beside it. + +"I hear mother and Marcia are away?" + +"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?" + +"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young +man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about." + +Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, +thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of +the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the +busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among +the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the +hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to +cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop. + +"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? +There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month--mother's arranged it +all--not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!--and I'm to speak +at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not +allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet +mother's had the bills printed already!" + +"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?" + +"I dare say. D--n the Martover meeting! But what _taste_!--two +brothers slanging at each other--almost in the same parish. I declare women +have no taste!--not a ha'porth. But I won't do it--and mother, just for +once, will have to give in." + +He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him--no doubt +with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation +appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the +self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April. + +"You are afraid of being misunderstood?" + +"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young +man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me +again. She makes that quite plain." + +"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she +discriminate between the politician and the private friend?" + +Arthur shook his head. + +"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam +a thief and a robber--and what else can I call him, with mother +looking on?--there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's +_fanatical_ about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already +about him. I tell you--it's rather fine, Lester!--upon my soul, it is!" + +And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned +his still boyish looks upon his friend. + +"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But--I confess +I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are +you prepared to take her into your confidence?" + +"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the +devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't +tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!" + +There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him +meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward. + +"Look here, Arthur!--can't you make a last effort, and get free?" + +His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted: + +"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two +worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor +your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in +love. But it does matter--and it'll tell more and more every year." + +"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us +all--I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses--just as so much +grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter." + +"And yet you love her!" + +"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify +about these things--she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at +her own side--just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships--and +everything that he says and thinks. She adores him--she'd go to the stake +for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on +him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad--I know that. But I'd rather marry +her mad than any other woman sane!" + +"All the same you _could_ break it off," persisted Lester. + +"Of course I could. I could hang--or poison--or shoot myself, I suppose, if +it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her +up, I shall cut the whole business--Parliament--estates--everything!" + +The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly +subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. + +"What are your chances?" + +"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. +But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of +speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair--and if I +don't make it, mother will know the reason why!--it's all up with me." + +"Why don't you apply to Coryston?" + +"What--to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't +he?--with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was +coming down here to make mischief--and, by Jove, he's doing it!" + +"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. + +Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering +greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the +door behind him. + +"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" + +Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to +reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he +deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a +cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal +which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung +an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking +and pondering. + +"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; +"we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out +for you, Arthur--upon my soul, I don't!" + +"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. + +"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage +yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off +the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." + +"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" + +"What do _you_ think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in +a garret--a genteel garret--on a thousand a year? For her father, +perhaps!--but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it." + +No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He +descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took +his arm--an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted. + +"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it +serious?" + +"Sure of her? Good God--if I were!" + +He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could +not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets. + +Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine +concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out +of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the +window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for +an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. +Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind. + +"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get +Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know +that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting +in the Martover paper yesterday--" + +"_No_!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing. + +"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she +has already written your speech." + +"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair. + +"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell +mother you won't be treated so--that you're a man, not a school-boy--that +you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches--_et cetera_. +Play the independence card for all you're worth. It _may_ get you out +of the mess." + +Arthur's countenance began to clear. + +"I'm to make it appear a bargain--between you and me? I asked you to give +up your show, and you--" + +"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already +warned you, it won't help you long." + +"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression. + +"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be +Glenwilliam--and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her +heart--and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before +you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the +person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed--whereas +_you_ have been the model son." + +Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur. + +"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the +rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!" + +"'_Life_,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just +try offering your billet--with all its little worries thrown in--to the +next fellow you meet in the street--and see what happens!" + +But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother. + +"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"--he +waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the +sun--"for--for Enid--you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!" + +There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried +conviction. Coryston's expression changed. + +"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with--with Enid--to give it up," he +said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her--I don't mean anything in +the least offensive--has a very just and accurate idea of the value of +money." + +A sort of impatient groan was the only reply. + +But Lester raised his head from his book. + +"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one +to the other. + +"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and +Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by +now?" + +He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he +spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with +Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment +hard and threatening. + +"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your +sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she +might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up +his papers as he spoke. + +"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you +a friend?--her friend?--our friend?--everybody's friend?" said Coryston, +peremptorily. "Look here!--if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"--he +brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table--"there'll be another +family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case +before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with +her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury +hear reason--well and good. If she can't--or if she doesn't see the thing +as she ought, herself--well!--we shall know where we are!" + +"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an +awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!" + +"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"--the voice was Lester's--"to plunge +her into such a business, at such a time!" + +"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable +Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts--why should we? Arthur!--come and +walk home with me!" + +Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to +any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers--and finally let himself be carried +off. + +Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library. + +"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'" + +What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with +such a problem--be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off +things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat +solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or +might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old +house--for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston +librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could +see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns--Marcia and Newbury. + +Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library +floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of +old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of +doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows. + +He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such +painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the +growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had +his career to think of--and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day +he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life +on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It +would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never +possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient +barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound +and sane; it looked life in the face--its gifts and its denials, and those +stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting +spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he +submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, +handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both +soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him. + + * * * * * + +Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent +time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first +train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to +give an hour to business talk--as to settlements and so forth--with Lord +William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her +motor with all possible speed. + +"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with +half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: +"But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent +people--quite excellent." + +Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course +never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion +of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any +soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance. + +"If only Edward and you--and everybody would not be in such a dreadful +hurry!" she said, protesting. + +"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have +you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till +the autumn I should be terribly busy--absolutely taken up--with Arthur's +election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to +the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not +only the usual Liberal gang--I shall have Coryston to fight!" + +"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then +she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that +notice of Arthur's meeting into the _Witness_ without consulting him. +Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid +of his cutting up rough?" + +"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. +As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that +Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in +doubt as to what _he_ thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only +five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully--without a word of +reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!" + +Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more +than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped +Coryston had been able to talk to him--to persuade him! Edward too had +promised to see him--immediately. Surely between them they would make him +hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother? + +The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival +at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler. + +"Is Mr. Arthur here?" + +"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for +luncheon." + +Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the +answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened +first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still +holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler +intercepted her. + +"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your +sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker--something you had +ordered--very particular." + +"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything +about it." + +She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand. + +"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's +leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with +Coryston. He may argue with me--and with Edward--if he pleases. But Mrs. +Betts herself! No--that's too much!" + +Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. +Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her +amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman--a lady--a complete stranger +to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A +woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, +and tears on her cheeks. + +"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back. + + + + +Book II + + +MARCIA + + + "To make you me how much so e'er I try, + You will be always you, and I be I." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. +"I--I have deceived your servants--told them lies--that I might get to +see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!--don't send me away!" + +Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, +standing suppliant before her, and repeated: + +"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name." + +"My name--is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. +"Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet--I think you must; +because--because there has been so much talk!" + +"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which +reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress +and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general +aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally +against--one might almost say, as an effluence from--the background of +bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the +room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility +of her attire--arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short +skirts and shell necklace,--betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite +plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex. + +"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought--Lord +Coryston--" + +She paused, her eyes cast down. + +"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit +down." + +Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. +Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a +broken, sobbing voice. + +"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my +poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh! +my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he +never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about +your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so +_ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I +don't know how to excuse myself--" + +She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned +face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears. + +"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and +annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing. + +"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, +removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I +consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, +to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, +Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!" + +Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran +lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had +placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched. + +"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with +embarrassment. + +Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly. + +"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm +unless he will give me up?" + +But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly: + +"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs." + +"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, +turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag +of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into +vehemence: + +"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen! +You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly +wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help +anybody as wretched as I am!" + +The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic +force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the +bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be +thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as +though the speaker observed herself, even in violence. + +Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and +then said: + +"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to +me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I +shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?" + +"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, +Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because +you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my +story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment. +"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had +an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as +though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was +only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and +she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few +months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I +suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he +struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a +choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was +only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved +me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like +heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and +there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against +my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband +divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other +man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel +to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So +there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look +at Marcia. + +The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed. + +"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He +hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I +couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm +not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to +keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he +was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. +And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I +was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to +me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told +him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't +a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no +prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. +Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in +the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he +knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, +to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more +disgrace on anybody." + +She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the +small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and +powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly +into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some +rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing +and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! + +Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. + +"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares +for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll +kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" + +The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her +slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which +sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only +say again in a vaguely troubled voice: + +"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't +to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't +do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." + +"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help +each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means +to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord +William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too +cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if +he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend +henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary +friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near +a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just +think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after +all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a +better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love +me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You +know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. +He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and +made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand +much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things +anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll +go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? +What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?" + +[Illustration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"] + +Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her +cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no +acting now. + +The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands +gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her. + +"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know +what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced +people marrying again. You know--how they've set a standard all their +lives--for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever +preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their +feelings. They hate--I'm sure they hate--making any one unhappy. But if +one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, +how--" + +"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, +_please_, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you +to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up--and he'll never give me +up. But I'll go away--I'll go to a little cottage John has--it was his +mother's, in Charnwood Forest--far away from everybody. Nobody here will +ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work +will let him. He will come over in the motor--he's always running about the +country--nobody would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated--so we +should have separated--as far as spending our lives together goes. But I +should sometimes--sometimes--have my John!--for my own--my very own--and he +would sometimes have me!" + +Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts +shook from head to foot. + +Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling--of +a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an +experience, touched so nearly on passions and sins which had hitherto been +to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, +whatever class she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the +conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment--a moment differing +wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have +come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack +such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay +knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, +the real stuff--the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new +to her. + +And, in a flash of memory and association, there passed through her mind +the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights--Iphigenia on the stage, +wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and +Newbury's voice: + +"_This_ is the death she shrinks from--" + +And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately +to its doom: + +"And this--is the death she _accepts_!" + +Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome +features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the +girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose--"_he_ +would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and +loves--and _therefore_ he will inflict it inexorably on others. But +that's the point! For oneself, yes--but for others who suffer and don't +believe!--suffer horribly!" + +A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs. +Betts. + +"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll +try and put it to Mr. Newbury. Nobody here, you think, need know anything +about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and +you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all +anybody need know?" + +Mrs. Betts raised herself. + +"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord +William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't +do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to +interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William +and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!" + +She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair +and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand: + +"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury--because you love him. If +I lose John who will ever give me a kind word--a kind look again? I thought +at last--I'd found--a little love. Even bad people"--her voice broke--"may +rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that." + +Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes. +Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her +mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled +with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of +deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and +responsive human being. + +"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that +I'll speak to Mr. Newbury." + +Mrs. Betts gave her effusive thanks which somehow jarred on Marcia; she was +glad when they were over and Mrs. Betts rose to go. That her tearful and +disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side +staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. +Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an +undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon +pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound of the house. + +She found herself in a strange confusion of mind. She still saw the small +tear-stained face, the dingy finery, the tormented hair; the story she had +just heard was still sounding in her ears. But what really held her was the +question: "Can I move Edward? What will he say to me?" + +And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together +came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which +had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been +drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?--drawn with a +hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by +them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it +that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had +been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer +idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? +Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the +center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices +eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself +naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. + +But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of +the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be +entering upon--moving--in a world where almost nothing was left free for +her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was +taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; +would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon +Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. + +And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of +self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's +lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home +life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to +them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, +congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning--these +things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. +The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing +enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish +joking--with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and +literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the +Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute +refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at +least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice--in +relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still +standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, +she knew--knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, +his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she +sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, +she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in +her?--what was there in her--to deserve it? + +And yet--and yet! Some penetrating instinct to which in this moment of +solitude, of unwilling reflection, she could not help but listen, told her +that the very soul of him was not hers; that the deepest foundation of his +life was no human affection, but the rapture, the compelling vision of a +mystical faith. And that rapture she could never share; she knew herself; +it was not in her. One moment she could have cried out in despair over her +own limitations and disabilities. The next she was jealous; on fire. + +Jealous!--that was the real, sadly human truth; jealous, as women have +always been, of the faith, or the art, or the friendship, which threatens +their hold upon the lover. And there stole upon her as she sat musing, the +old, old temptation--the temptation of Psyche--to test and try this man, +who was to bring her into bondage, before the bonds were yet quite set. She +was honestly touched by Mrs. Betts's story. To her, in her first softness +of love, it seemed intolerably hard and odious that two people who clung to +each other should be forcibly torn apart; two people whom no law, but +only an ecclesiastical scruple condemned. Surely Edward would accept, and +persuade his father to accept, the compromise which the husband and wife +suggested. If Mrs. Betts withdrew from the scene, from the estate, would +not this satisfy everybody? What further scandal could there be? She went +on arguing it with herself, but all the time the real, deepest motive +at work was not so much sympathy, as a kind of excited +restlessness--curiosity. She saw herself pleading with Edward, breaking +down his resistance, winning her cause, and then, instead of triumphing, +flinging herself into his arms, to ask pardon for daring to fight him. + +The happy tears blinded her, and fell unheeded until a mocking reaction +dried them. + +"Oh, what a fool!--what a fool!" + +And running through the wood she came out into the sunshine at its farther +end--a blaze of sun upon the lake, its swans, its stone-rimmed islands, +and statuary, on the gray-white front of the pillared and porticoed house, +stretching interminably. The flowers shone in the stiff beds; a rain of +blossom drifted through the air. Everything glittered and sparkled. It was +Corinthian, pretentious, artificial; but as Marcia hurried up the broad +middle walk between the queer gods and goddesses, whom some pupil of +Bernini's had manufactured in Rome for a Coryston of the eighteenth +century, she was in love with the scene, which in general she disliked; in +love with the summer, in love above all with the quick life of her own mind +and body.... + +There were persons talking in her mother's sitting-room--Sir Wilfrid, +Arthur, and Coryston--she perceived them through the open windows. The +sight of Arthur suddenly sobered her, and diverted her thoughts. For if +Newbury now held the chief place in her mind, her mother still reigned +there. She--Marcia--must be on the spot to protect her mother!--in case +protection were wanted, and Coryston and Sir Wilfrid had not succeeded +yet in bringing that mad fellow to his senses. Ah! but they had all a new +helper and counselor now--in Edward. Let Coryston abuse him to her, if he +dared! She would know how to defend him. + +She hurried on. + +Simultaneously, from the garden door of the library a figure emerged, a +man with some books under his arm. She recognized Lester, and a rush of +something which was partly shyness and partly a delicious pride came over +her, to delay her steps. + +They met under the wide open colonnade which carried the first story of the +house. Lester came toward her smiling and flushed. + +"I've just heard," he said. "I do congratulate you. It's splendid!" + +She gave him her hand; and he thought as he looked at her how happiness had +beautified and transformed her. All that was imperfect in the face seemed +to have fallen into harmony; and her dark bloom had never been so lovely. + +"Yes, I'm very happy. He'll keep me in order! At least he'll try." Her eyes +danced. + +"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not +indeed knowing what to say. + +"Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with +him." + +"Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite--Ah!--" + +A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead--Lady Coryston's voice and +Arthur's clashing--startled them both. + +"Oh, I must go!" cried Marcia, frowning and paling. "Thank you--thank you +so much. Good-by." + +And she ran into the house. Lester remained rooted in the shadows of the +colonnade for a minute or two, looking after her, with a set, abstracted +face. Then the sound of the altercation overhead smote him too with alarm. +He moved quickly away lest through the open windows he might catch what was +said. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Marcia entered her mother's sitting-room in the midst of what seemed a +babel of voices. James Coryston, indeed, who was sitting in a corner of +the room while Coryston and Sir Wilfrid Bury argued across him, was not +contributing to it. He was watching his mother, and she on the other side +of the room was talking rapidly to her son Arthur, who could evidently +hardly control himself sufficiently to listen to her. + +As Marcia came in she heard Arthur say in a loud voice: + +"Your attitude, mother, is perfectly unreasonable, and I will not submit to +be dictated to like this!" + +Marcia, staying her foot half-way across the room, looked at her youngest +brother in amazement. + +Was this rough-mannered, rough-voiced man, Arthur?--the tame house-brother, +and docile son of their normal life? What was happening to them all? + +Lady Coryston broke out: + +"I repeat--you propose to me, Arthur, a bargain which is no bargain!--" + +"A quid without a quo?" interrupted Coryston, who had suddenly dropped his +argument with Sir Wilfrid, and had thrown himself on a sofa near his mother +and Arthur. + +Lady Coryston took no notice of him. She continued to address her +youngest-born. + +"What Coryston may do--now--after all that has passed is to me a matter of +merely secondary importance. When I first saw the notice of the Martover +meeting it was a shock to me--I admit it. But since then he has done so +many other things--he has struck at me in so many other ways--he has so +publicly and scandalously outraged family feeling, and political decency--" + +"I really haven't," said Coryston, mildly. "I haven't--if this was a free +country." + +Lady Coryston flashed a sudden superb look at him and resumed: + +"--that I really don't care what Coryston does. He has done his worst. I +can't suffer any greater insult than he has already put upon me--" + +Coryston shook his head, mutely protesting. He seized a pen from a table +near, and began to bite and strip it with an absent face. + +"But _you_, Arthur!" his mother went on with angry emphasis, "have +still a character to lose or gain. As I have said, it doesn't now matter +vitally to me whether Coryston is in the chair or not--I regard him as +merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw--but if _you_ let this meeting at +Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, +you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played +the coward--and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the +lurch--though that latter point I can see doesn't move you at all!" + +James and Sir Wilfrid Bury came anxiously to join the group. Sir Wilfrid +approached the still standing and distressed Marcia. Drawing her hand +within his arm, he patted it kindly. + +"We can't persuade your mother, my dear. Suppose you try." + +"Mother, you can't insist on Arthur's going through with the meeting if he +doesn't wish to!" said Marcia, with animation. "Do let him give it up! It +would be so easy to postpone it." + +Lady Coryston turned upon her. + +"Everything is easy in your eyes, no doubt, Marcia, except that he should +do his duty, and spare my feelings! As a matter of fact you know perfectly +well that Arthur has always allowed me to arrange these things for him." + +"I don't mean, mother, to do so in future!" said Arthur, resolutely turning +upon her. "You _must_ leave me to manage my own life and my own +affairs." + +Lady Coryston's features quivered in her long bony face. As she sat near +the window, on a high chair, fully illumined, in a black velvet dress, +long-waisted, and with a kind of stand-up ruffle at the throat, she was +amazingly Queen Bess. James, who was always conscious of the likeness, +could almost have expected her to rise and say in the famous words of the +Queen to Cecil--"Little man, little man, your father durst not have said +'must' to me!" + +But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words: + +"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never +been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your +Parliamentary abilities--unaided." + +"Mother!--" cried Marcia and James simultaneously. + +Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid's +restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, +his eyes bloodshot. + +"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them +long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for +myself in future. I don't think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him--and I +know his daughter." + +The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm--in +Marcia's case, of terror--ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid +caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off. + +Lady Coryston met her son's eyes with equal passion. + +"An intriguer--an unscrupulous intriguer--like himself!" said Lady +Coryston, with cutting emphasis. + +Arthur's flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning +hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur +thrust them aside. + +"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking +into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There +was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, +slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am--in love--with the lady +to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her--and +I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. _Now_ you understand +perhaps why I didn't wish to attack her father at this particular +juncture." + +"Arthur!" + +Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, +meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them +starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was +trouble--and a sudden softness--in his look. + +Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants +were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston's aspect was something +quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It +represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human +personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet +encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She +laughed--as she passed her handkerchief over her lips--so Marcia thought +afterward--to hide their trembling. + +"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to +wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your +confession--your astonishing confession--does at least supply some +reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present--_for the +present_"--she spoke slowly--"I cease to press you to speak at this +meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to +the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later--and in private. I +must take time to think it over." + +She rose. James came forward. + +"May I come with you, mother?" + +She frowned a little. + +"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with +regard to the meeting." + +And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through +the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something +in her ear--no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; +and he closed the door. + +Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, +and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, +and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay. + +Sir Wilfrid spoke first: + +"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made +seriously?" + +Arthur turned impatiently. + +"Do I look like joking?" + +"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us." + +"Luckily mother doesn't believe a word of it!" + +The voice was Coryston's, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the +ceiling. + +Arthur stood still. + +"What do you mean?" + +"No offense. I dare say she believed _you_. But the notion strikes her +as too grotesque to be bothered about." + +"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk. + +"Whether she is or not, she'll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes +of it," was Coryston's murmured comment. But the words were lost in his +mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window +gazing into the garden. Something in his brother's meditative back seemed +to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, +and hit it. James turned with a start. + +"Look here, James--this isn't Hegel--and it isn't Lotze--and it isn't +Bergson--it's life. Haven't you got a remark to contribute?" + +James's blue eyes showed no resentment. + +"I'm very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother." + +"Why?" + +"Because she's the oldest. We've got the future. She hasn't." + +The color rushed to Marcia's face. She looked gratefully at her brother. +Sir Wilfrid's gray head nodded agreement. + +"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don't see that. At least, of course it has a +certain truth. But it doesn't present itself to me as a ground for +sparing the older generation. In fact"--he sprang to his feet--"present +company--present family excepted--we're being ruined--stick stock +ruined--by the elder generation! They're in our way everywhere! Why don't +they withdraw--and let _us_ take the stage? We know more than they. +We're further evolved--we're better informed. And they will insist on +pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the +world can't get on like this. Something will have to be done. We're choked +up with the older generation." + +"Yes, for those who have no reverence--and no pity!" said Marcia. + +The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon +her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their +sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston +flushed, involuntarily. + +"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't +understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not +at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner +and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful--disrespectful? Good +heavens! What do we _care_ about the people, our contemporaries, with +whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call +_action_? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us--and +calm us--and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue +and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"--he +threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston's empty chair--"with time to smile +and think and jest--with no ax to grind--and no opinions to push--do you +think I shouldn't have been at her feet--her slave, her adorer? Besides, +the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, +long enough--they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers +now, and they the wall-flowers. And they won't play the game!" + +"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any +game--together--Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply. + +Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly. + +"One might argue till doomsday--I agree--as to which of us said 'won't +play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it +us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur--having made +a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's _we_ who have the +youth--_we_ who have the power--_we_ who know more than our +elders simply because we were born thirty years later! Let the old submit, +and we'll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with +march-music! But they _will_ fight us--and they can't win!" + +His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes +glittering. + +"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half +contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his +restless walk. + +"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir +Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play +the game of a generation--old and young. However, the situation is too +acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an +old friend?" + +"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren't so jolly sure what it would +be." + +"Don't be so sure. Come and take me a turn in the lime avenue before +lunch." + +The two disappeared. James followed them. Marcia, full of disquiet, was +going off to find Lady Coryston when Coryston stopped her. + +"I say, Marcia--it's true--isn't it? You're engaged to Newbury?" + +She turned proudly, confronting him. + +"I am." + +"I'm not going to congratulate you!" he said, vehemently. "I've got a deal +to say to you. Will you allow me to say it?" + +"Whenever you like," said Marcia, indifferently. + +Coryston perched himself on the edge of a table beside her, looking down +upon her, his hands thrust into his pockets. + +"How much do you know of this Betts business?" he asked her, abruptly. + +"A good deal--considering you sent Mrs. Betts to see me this morning!" + +"Oh, she came, did she? Well, do you see any common sense, any justice, any +Christianity in forcing that woman to leave her husband--in flinging her +out to the wolves again, just as she has got into shelter?" + +"In Edward's view, Mr. Betts is not her husband," said Marcia, defiantly. +"You seem to forget that fact." + +"'Edward's view'?" repeated Coryston, impatiently. "My dear, what's Edward +got to do with it? He's not the law of the land. Let him follow his own law +if he likes. But to tear up other people's lives by the roots, in the name +of some private particular species of law that you believe in and they +don't, is really too much--at this time of day. You ought to stop it, +Marcia!--and you must!" + +"Who's tyrannizing now?" said Marcia. "Haven't other people as good a right +to live their beliefs as you?" + +"Yes, so long as they don't destroy other people in the process. Even I am +not anarchist enough for that." + +"Well," said Marcia, coolly, "the Newburys are making it disagreeable for +Mr. and Mrs. Betts because they disapprove of them. And what else are you +doing with mamma?" + +She threw a triumphant look at her brother. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Coryston, jumping up. "The weakest 'score' I +ever heard. Don't you know the difference between the things that are +vital and the things that are superficial--between fighting opinions, and +_destroying a life_, between tilting and boxing, however roughly--and +_murdering_?" + +He looked at her fiercely. + +"Who talks of murdering!" The tone was scornful. + +"I do! If the Newburys drive those two apart they will have a murder of +souls on their conscience. And if you talked to that woman this morning you +know it as well as I!" + +Marcia faltered a little. + +"They could still meet as friends." + +"Yes, under the eyes of holy women!--spying lest any impropriety occur! +That's the proposal, I understand. Of all the vile and cold-blooded +suggestions!--" + +And restraining himself with the utmost difficulty, as one might hang on to +the curb of a bolting horse, Coryston stamped up and down the room, till +speech was once more possible. Then he came to an abrupt pause before his +sister. + +"Are you really in love with this man, Marcia?" + +So challenged, Marcia did not deign to answer. She merely looked up at +Coryston, motionless, faintly smiling. He took his answer, dazzled at the +same time by her emerging and developing beauty. + +"Well, if you do love him," he said, slowly, "and he loves you, _make_ +him have pity! Those two, also, love each other. That woman is a poor +common little thing. She was a poor common little actress with no talent, +before her first husband married her--she's a common little actress now, +even when she feels most deeply. You probably saw it, and it repelled +you. _You_ can afford, you see, to keep a fine taste, and fastidious +feelings! But if you tear her from that man, you kill all that's good in +her--you ruin all her miserable chances. That man's raising her. Bit by bit +he'll stamp his own character into hers--because she loves him. And Betts +himself, a great, silent, hard man, who has once in his life done a +splendid thing!--forgotten himself head over ears for a woman--and is now +doing his level best to make a good job of her--you Christians are going +to reward him first by breaking his heart, and tearing his life-work to +pieces!--God!--I wish your Master were here to tell you what He'd think of +it!" + +"You're not His only interpreter!" cried Marcia, breathing quickly. "It's +in His name that Edward and his father are acting. You daren't say--you +daren't _think_--that it's for mere authority's sake--mere +domination's sake!" + +Coryston eyed her in silence a little. + +"No use in arguing this thing on its merits," he said, curtly, at last. +"You don't know enough about it, and Newbury and I shouldn't have a single +premise in common. But I just warn you and him--it's a ticklish game +playing with a pair of human lives like these. They are sensitive, +excitable people--I don't threaten--I only say--_take care_!" + +"'Game,' 'play'--what silly words to use about such men as Edward and his +father, in such a matter!" said Marcia as she rose, breathing contempt. "I +shall talk to Edward--I promised Mrs. Betts. But I suppose, Corry, it's +no good saying, to begin with, that when you talk of tyranny, you seem to +_me_ at any rate, the best tyrant of the lot." + +The girl stood with her head thrown back, challenging her brother, her +whole slender form poised for battle. + +Coryston shook his head. + +"Nonsense! I play the gadfly--to all the tyrants." "_A tyrant_," +repeated his sister, steadily. "And an unkind wretch into the bargain! I +was engaged--yesterday--and have you said one nice, brotherly word to me?" + +Her lips trembled. Coryston turned away. + +"You are giving yourself to the forces of reaction," he said, between his +teeth, "the forces that are everywhere fighting liberty--whether in the +individual--or the State. Only, unfortunately "--he turned with a smile, +the sudden gaiety of which fairly startled his sister--"as far as matrimony +is concerned, I seem to be doing precisely the same thing myself." + +"Corry! what on earth do you mean?" + +"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? Perhaps you will some day," said Coryston, +with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the +battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If +you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. +I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff +document, I admit. If not--" + +"Well, if not?" + +"War!" was the short reply, as her brother made for the door. + +Then suddenly he came back to say: + +"Keep an eye on mother. As far as Arthur's concerned--she's dangerous. She +hasn't the smallest intention of letting him marry that girl. And here +too it'll be a case of meddling with forces you don't understand. Keep me +informed." + +"Yes--if you promise to help him--and her--to break it off," said Marcia, +firmly. + +Coryston slowly shook his head; and went. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston, having shaken off all companions, had betaken +herself for greater privacy to a solitary walk. She desired to see neither +children nor friends nor servants till she had made up her mind what she +was going to do. As generally happened with her in the bad moments of life, +the revelation of what threatened her had steeled and nerved her to a +surprising degree. Her stately indoor dress had been exchanged for a short +tweed gown, and, as she walked briskly along, her white hair framed in the +drawn hood of black silk which she wore habitually on country walks, she +had still a wonderful air of youth, and indeed she had never felt herself +more vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean +peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by +something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the +feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next +stroke may--probably will--end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it +made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the +clearness of her resolve. + +So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had +increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress +just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever +since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public +as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by +refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm +her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, +Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no +doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph +over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid +Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a +fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed +to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had +declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, +to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time--all the time--the handsome, +repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the +hollow of her hand! + +Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself +that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The +circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many +people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams +were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay +hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage +could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher--the temptation had +only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would +be the sweetness--for such persons as the Glenwilliams--of a planned and +successful revenge. + +Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover +meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood +from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the +week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. +Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an +interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to +be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and +irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the +embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his +seat--to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the +country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small +towns in his division. + +She reached a rising ground in the park, where was a seat under a fine oak, +commanding a view. The green slopes below her ran westward to a wide sky +steeped toward the horizon in all conceivable shades of lilac and pearl, +with here and there in the upper heaven lakes of blue and towering +thunder-clouds brooding over them, prophesying storm. She looked out over +her domain, in which, up to a short time before, her writ, so to speak, had +run, like that of a king. And now all sense of confidence, of security, +was gone. There on the hillside was the white patch of Knatchett--the old +farmhouse, where Coryston had settled himself. It showed to her disturbed +mind like the patch of leaven which, scarcely visible at first, will grow +and grow "till the whole is leavened." A leaven of struggle and revolt. And +only her woman's strength to fight it. + +Suddenly--a tremor of great weakness came upon her. Arthur, her dearest! It +had been comparatively easy to fight Coryston. When had she not fought +him? But Arthur! She thought of all the happy times she had had with +him--electioneering for him, preparing his speeches, watching his first +steps in the House of Commons. The years before her, her coming old age, +seemed all at once to have passed into a gray eclipse; and some difficult +tears forced their way. Had she, after all, mismanaged her life? Were +prophecies to which she had always refused to listen--she seemed to hear +them in her dead husband's voice!--coming true? She fell into a great and +lonely anguish of mind; while the westerly light burned on the broidery of +white hawthorns spread over the green spaces below, and on the loops and +turns of the little brimming trout-stream that ran so merrily through the +park. + +But she never wavered for one moment as to her determination to see Enid +Glenwilliam after the Martover meeting; nor did the question of Arthur's +personal happiness enter for one moment into her calculations. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The breakfast gong had just sounded at Hoddon Grey. The hour was a quarter +to nine. Prayers in the chapel were over, and Lord and Lady Newbury, at +either end of the table, spectacles on nose, were opening and reading their +letters. + +"Where is Edward?" said Lady William, looking round. + +"My dear!" Lord William's tone was mildly reproachful. + +"Of course--I forgot for a moment!" And on Lady William's delicately +withered cheek there appeared a slight flush. For it was their wedding-day, +and never yet, since his earliest childhood, had their only son, their only +child, failed, either personally or by deputy, to present his mother with a +bunch of June roses on the morning of this June anniversary. While he was +in India the custom was remitted to the old head gardener, who always +received, however, from the absent son the appropriate letter or message to +be attached to the flowers. And one of the most vivid memories Lady William +retained of her son's boyhood showed her the half-open door of an inn +bedroom at Domodossola, and Edward's handsome face--the face of a lad of +eleven--looking in, eyes shining, white teeth grinning, as he held aloft in +triumph the great bunch of carnations and roses for which the little fellow +had scoured the sleepy town in the early hours. They had taken him abroad +for the first time, during a break between his preparatory school and Eton, +when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of measles; and Lady +William could never forget the charm of the boy's companionship, his eager +docility and sweetness, his delight in the Catholic churches and services, +his ready friendships with the country-folk, with the coachman who drove +them, and the _sagrestani_ who led them through dim chapels and +gleaming monuments. + +But when indeed had he not been their delight and treasure from his youth +up till now? And though in the interest of a long letter from her Bishop to +whom she was devoted, Lady William had momentarily forgotten the date, +this wedding-day was, in truth, touched, for both parents, with a special +consecration and tenderness, since it was the first since Edward's own +betrothal. And there beside Lady William's plate lay a large jeweler's +case, worn and old-fashioned, whereof the appearance was intimately +connected both with the old facts and the new. + +Meanwhile, a rainy morning, in which, however, there was a hidden sunlight, +threw a mild illumination into the Hoddon Grey dining-room, upon the +sparely provided breakfast-table, the somewhat austere line of family +portraits on the gray wall, the Chippendale chairs shining with the +hand-polish of generations, the Empire clock of black and ormolu on the +chimney-piece and on the little tan spitz, sitting up with wagging tail and +asking eyes, on Lady William's left. Neither she nor her husband ever took +more than--or anything else than--an egg with their coffee and toast. They +secretly despised people who ate heavy breakfasts, and the extra allowance +made for Edward's young appetite, or for guests, was never more than +frugal. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was a hearty eater, was accustomed to say of +the Hoddon Grey fare that it deprived the Hoddon Grey fasts--which were +kept according to the strict laws of the Church--of any merit whatever. It +left you nothing to give up. + +Nevertheless, this little morning scene at Hoddon Grey possessed, for the +sensitive eye, a peculiar charm. The spaces of the somewhat empty room +matched the bareness of the white linen, the few flowers standing +separately here and there upon it, and the few pieces of old silver. The +absence of any loose abundance of food or gear, the frugal refined note, +were of course symbolic of the life lived in the house. The Newburys were +rich. Their beautifully housed, and beautifully kept estate, with its nobly +adorned churches, its public halls and institutions, proclaimed the fact; +but in their own private sphere it was ignored as much as possible. + +"Here he is!" exclaimed Lady William, turning to the door with something of +a flutter. "Oh, Edward, they are lovely!" + +Her son laid the dewy bunch beside her plate and then kissed his mother +affectionately. + +"Many happy returns!--and you, father! Hullo--mother, you've got a +secret--you're blushing! What's up?" + +And still holding Lady William by the arm, he looked smilingly from her to +the jeweler's case on the table. + +"They must be reset, dear; but they're fine." + +Lady William opened the case, and pushed it toward him. It contained a +necklace and pendant, two bracelets, and a stomacher brooch of diamonds and +sapphire--magnificent stones in a heavy gold setting, whereof the Early +Victorianism cried aloud. The set had been much admired in the great +exhibition of 1851, where indeed it had been bought by Lady William's +father as a present to his wife. Secretly Lady William still thought it +superb; but she was quite aware that no young woman would wear it. + +Edward looked at it with amusement. + +"The stones are gorgeous. When Cartier's had a go at it, it'll be something +like! I can remember your wearing it, mother, at Court, when I was a small +child. And you're going to give it to Marcia?" He kissed her again. + +"Take it, dear, and ask her how she'd like them set," said his mother, +happily, putting the box into his hand; after which he was allowed to sit +down to his breakfast. + +Lord William meanwhile had taken no notice of the little incident of +the jewels. He was deep in a letter which seemed to have distracted his +attention entirely from his son and to be causing him distress. When he had +finished it he pushed it away and sat gazing before him as though still +held by the recollection of it. + +"I never knew a more sad, a more difficult case," he said, presently, +speaking, it seemed, to himself. + +Edward turned with a start. + +"Another letter, father?" + +Lord William pushed it over to him. + +Newbury read it, and as he did so, in his younger face there appeared the +same expression as in his father's; a kind of grave sadness, in which there +was no trace of indecision, though much of trouble. Lady William asked no +question, though in the course of her little pecking meal, she threw some +anxious glances at her husband and son. They preserved a strict silence at +table on the subject of the letter; but as soon as breakfast was over, Lord +William made a sign to his son, and they went out into the garden together, +walking away from the house. + +"You know we can't do this, Edward!" said Lord William, with energy, as +soon as they were in solitude. + +Edward's eyes assented. + +His father resumed, impetuously: "How can I go on in close relations with +a man--my right hand in the estate--almost more than my agent--associated +with all the church institutions and charities--a communicant--secretary +of the communicant's guild!--our friend and helper in all our religious +business--who has been the head and front of the campaign against +immorality in this village--responsible, with us, for many decisions that +must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble--who yet now proposes, +himself, to maintain what we can only regard--what everybody on this estate +has been taught to regard--as an immoral connection with a married woman! +Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The +so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but +the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his +business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this +estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would +falsify our whole life here,--and make it one ugly hypocrisy!" + +There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked: + +"You of course made it plain once more--in your letter yesterday--that +there would be no harshness--that as far as money went--" + +"I told him he could have _whatever_ was necessary! We wished to force +no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they +decided to remain together--then he and we must part; but we would make it +perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere--in England or the colonies. +If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for +her--then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before." + +"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm--" + +Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress. + +"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to +it!--that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand--that he can never +build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere--that the farm is the +apple of his eye. It's absolutely true--every word of it! But then, why did +he take this desperate step!--without consulting any of his friends! It's +no responsibility of ours!" + +The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound +to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled +with a rocklike steadiness of will. + +"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?" + +"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the +Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and +watch over her, like the angels they are,--and the boy could go to a day +school. But they won't hear of it--they won't listen to it for a moment; +and now--you see--they've put their own alternative plan before us, in +this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by +temperament--that she wouldn't understand the Sisters--nor they her--that +she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations--and then +all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he +said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' +It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his +conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here +on our terms." + +"The letter is curiously excitable--hardly legible even--very unlike +Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully. + +"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has +somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do." + +The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a +footman coming with a note. + +"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer." + +Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow. + +"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon." + +When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face +showing the quick feeling behind. + +"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?" + +"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That +fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses +themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with +to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely +trust you and your judgment in such a matter." + +Newbury flushed. + +"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. +"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her." + +"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, +hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over +and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be +troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us." + +The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily. + + * * * * * + +A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was +sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were +fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing +up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston +trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk +bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which +overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows. + +The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long +discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, +far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved +brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of +her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was +not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never +felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was +haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom +he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, +and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the +plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away +committeth adultery_'"? + +"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. +It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and +most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law +concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to +_sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of +marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not +only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of +people with a high social trust, to betray that trust." + +These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held +him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the +enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his +own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the +only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up +life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or +accomplices in their wrong-doing? + +Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane +outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of +the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals +of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly +famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was +the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green +plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils +and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come +eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, +not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of +buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the +new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and +there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the +woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen. + +A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the +scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the +less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and +to fling back his charges in his face. + +Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges. + +Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly +grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and +pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road. + +"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you." + +"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice +of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his +high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the +unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case +also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen +of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student +of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure +round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still +clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its +master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer +or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large +modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise +knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the +world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered +everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for +by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, +clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the +memory of years of kindly intercourse--friendship, loyalty, just dealing. + +"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," +began Betts, abruptly. + +"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly +gentle, even deferential. + +"You read it, I presume?" + +Newbury made a sign of assent. + +"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" + +Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the +normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. + +Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. + +"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!" + +"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?" + +"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should +be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it +indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false." + +"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?" + +"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would +only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for +you--elsewhere!" + +Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. + +"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it +night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives +and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on +there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're +working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I +begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The +best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, +you're going to drive me from it." + +"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden +rush of grief. The other turned. + +"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy +I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You +made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried +over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she +_is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given +her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her." + +"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" +Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote +them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition +we all sent to the Bishop only last year." + +"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot +since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly +escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a +stop. + +"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in +the laboratory I must be looking after." + +"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a +Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm +near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--" + +Betts interrupted. + +"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no +good." + +The voice dropped. + +With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away. + +Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The +patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young +man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken +address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. +What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; +determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the +ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which +a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that +a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the +circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican +sort, depends. + +The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. +Would she come to meet him? + +Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this +melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not +right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her +and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of +whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting +with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they +believed, than Betts himself knew. + +And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance +of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream.... + +He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the +new-leafed trees. + +The wood was deep--spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly +clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face.... + +When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting +off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day +before--of Arthur and her mother--and the revelation sprung upon them all. + +"You remember how _terrified_ I was--lest mother should know? And +she's taken it so calmly!" + +She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the +arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was +cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well +would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his +point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that +morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in +the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide +match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the +reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as +before. + +"They're not engaged?" + +"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe _she_ means it seriously at +all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something." + +"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced +smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!" + +"He says he wants to see you--to--to have it out with you," said Marcia, +awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round +Newbury's arm. + +"Edward!--do--_do_ make us all happy!" + +He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly +to his. + +"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You +darling!--what can I do?" + +But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That +she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay +at her feet!--she, who had promised him herself! + +"_Please_--let Mr. Betts stay--please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for +her yesterday!" + +"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and +mother will do all they can." + +"Then you _will_ let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly +against him. + +"Of course!--if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, +unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening. + +She straightened herself. + +"If they separate, you mean?" + +"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do." + +"But it would break their hearts." + +He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed. + +"It would make amends." + +"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her +color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one +has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, +Edward?--Won't everybody think it _very_ hard?" + +"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, +that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't +matter,--what they have done?--when in truth it seems to us a black +offense--" + +"Against what--or whom?" she asked, wondering. + +The answer came unflinchingly: + +"Against our Lord--and His Church." + +The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes. + +"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to +stay _here_!--at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say +to me--" + +Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's +arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her +instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,--were +all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and +distress--not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon +discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a +foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out: + +"Darling, I _can't_ discuss it with you! Won't you trust me--Won't +you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one +moment's pain--if we could help it?" + +Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting +and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled. + +"I can't understand," she said, frowning--"I can't!" + +"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust +me with your whole life? Won't you?" + +He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with +her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave +way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all +the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first +moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of +inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the +beginning had both teased and won her. + +But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had +said. She released herself to do it. + +"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. +and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people--and very much +in love. He can't tell what might happen." + +Newbury's face stiffened. + +"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. +And as for thinking of it--why, it's hardly ever out of my mind--except +when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night." + +Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home +through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of +the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to +learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is +discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in +view, throws the eternal glamour. + +Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's +consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, +indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in +clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the +future--the honeymoon--their London house--the rooms at Hoddon Grey that +were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from +Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the +trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. +But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best +man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading +influence in his life--friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to +that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two +of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked +High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a +"Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a +mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India. + +And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was +speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; +although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such +people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then +chilled, and if the truth be told--bored. It was with such topics, as +with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not +understand. + +She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of +Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common +delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, +reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a +considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a +new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside +him. + +"How much you know!"--and then, shyly--"You must teach me!" With the +inevitable male retort--"Teach you!--when you look at me like that!" + +It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before +luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it +was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly +figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for +having forgotten them. + +And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his +silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened +also to him. + + * * * * * + +"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury +walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia +and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the +drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady +Coryston's special and peremptory command for the _trousseau_. + +"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter." + +Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled +with the laugh. + +"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good +deal--but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business +with the Baptists?" + +Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper. + +"Well now they've got their land--through Coryston. There always was a +square piece in the very middle of the village--an _enclave_ belonging +to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the +Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston +has found her, got at her, and made her sell it--finding, I believe, the +greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the +foundation-stone of the new Bethel--under his mother's nose." + +"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, +flushing. + +Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly. + +"Moral--don't keep a conscience--political or ecclesiastical. There's +nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven's sake, don't be a +posthumous villain!" + +"What's that?" + +"A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife," said +Sir Wilfrid, calmly. "It's played the deuce in this family, and will go on +doing it." + +Whereupon the late Lord Coryston's executor produced an outline of the +family history--up to date--for the benefit of Lady Coryston's future +son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip +on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike +the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of +money and inheritance. + +"So Arthur inherits everything!" + +"Hm--does he?" said Sir Wilfrid. + +"But I thought--" + +"Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss +Glenwilliam over his mother's body--and if he does marry her he may whistle +for the estates." + +"Then James will have them?" said Newbury, smiling. + +"Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody." + +"I hope not!" Newbury's tone showed a genuine discomfort. + +"What is Lady Coryston doing?" + +"About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!--what isn't she doing?" said Sir +Wilfrid, significantly. "All the same, she lies low." As he spoke, his eyes +fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging +from the wood. He pointed. + +"They will be there on Sunday fortnight--after the Martover meeting." + +"Who? The Glenwilliams?" + +Sir Wilfrid nodded. + +"And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly +inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the +less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in +the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end +annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was +attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents +alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, +and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by +committees. + +And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, +loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law--on conditions. + +"I see no reason," he wrote, "why you and I should not be good friends--if +only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful +case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your +_opinions_ on divorce don't matter, of course, to me--nor mine to +you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you +must--because of your opinions--commit yourself to one of them--why then, +whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can't be friends. It would be +mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do +my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of +the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance +with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter +to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat--"Separate--or go--" +well, then you and I'll come to blows--Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you +that Marcia is at bottom a humanist--in the new sense--like me." + +To which Newbury promptly replied: + +"My dear Coryston--I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, +whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any +useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the +same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling +out opinion--or rather conviction--and supposing that we can agree, apart +from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The +omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia--perhaps +because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the +happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily +affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to +understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached +to you--though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you +have taken down here.... Let me know when you return--that I may come over +to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can't we?--even though we look at life so +differently." + +But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made +no reply. + +The June days passed on, bringing the "high midsummer pomps." Every day +Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between +them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London +had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and +even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with +a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys +guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled +to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick +to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole +proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be +arranged. + +Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as +possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the +horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was +being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The +supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on +the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but +on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got +into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the "Rational Marriage +Union" appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in +the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at +night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a +hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his +smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that +Coryston was still away. + +For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did +come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters +were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that +to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety +of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her +mother had no mind to give to such a trifle--or to anything, indeed--her +own marriage not excepted--but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's +intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They +lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would +have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; +and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed +in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the +affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover +meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of +conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it +seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those +queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for +the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly +and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of +opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. +Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his +mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston +that they also should return to St. James's Square, partly to keep an eye +on the backslider, partly with a view to "fittings," Lady Coryston curtly +replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her +up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at +Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to +play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the +pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him. + +On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out +westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of +Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major +about seven o'clock. She had been holding conference with a number of +persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to +turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of +opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon's +work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain +was alive with plans. A passion of political--and personal--hatred charged +every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not +a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of +life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that +even if Arthur did fail her--incredible defection!--she, alone, would +fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great +possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes. + +Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of +the scene which--within forty-eight hours--she was deliberately preparing +for herself. She meant to win her battle,--did not for one moment admit the +possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she +foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there +were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life +disagreeable. + +It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were +full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as +she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large +crowd, and the motor slowed down. + +"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur. + +"Layin' a stone--or somethin'--my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled +voice. + +"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before +the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that +morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had +screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently +to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow +from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several +black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a +dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had +apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its +supports. The board exhibited the words--"Site of the new Baptist Chapel +for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully +received." + +There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, +but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a +small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor. + +Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. + +"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. + +"I can't, my lady--they're too thick." + +By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled +the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A +movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then +toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed +to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor +finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front +of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and +understood what was the matter with the audience. + +Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, +stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his +voice: + +"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among +us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of +us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did +not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in +Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. +"May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her +mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a +check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" + +He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his +boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the +first "Hip!--hip--" + +"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the +front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in +good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the +motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At +last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back +to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. + +"Infamous! Outrageous!" + +The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in +which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! +That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly +spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for +twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist +Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the +village. + +And this was Coryston's doing. What taste--what feeling! A mother!--to be +so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was +very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling +dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, +the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength +and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do--more important, +that, than this trumpery business in the village! + +A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia +outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in +a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left +hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light +seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought--"she has just parted +from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment +possessed her--jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt +herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her +daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back +upon her, a rare experience!--and she was conscious of a dull longing for +the husband who had humored her every wish--save one; had been proud of her +cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of +him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last +hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the +end. + +[Illustration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME] + +Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple +as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and +excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence +mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than +an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few +days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a +kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?--how would +it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of +submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In +order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought +up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, +carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their +betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural +sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and +disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of +opinions--his bitter judgment, often, of men--repelled and angered her. +She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such +bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was +but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only +faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a +breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; +nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of +her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what +it had meant. + +And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of +powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by +such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet +it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away +ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a +wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could +not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim +of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and +breathless into every hour of every day they were together. + +On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at +Coryston. Newbury had gone--reluctantly for once--to a diocesan meeting +on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was +evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take +informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife--a +house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's +visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from +town, and strangers were pouring into the district. + +Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and +sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before +this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; +sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. +Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the +bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly +gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile +running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. +This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had +missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort +of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which +had been strangely welcome. + +Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note. + +"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, +his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the +roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely +seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last +to have practically forgotten his presence in the house. + +She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look +of consternation blotting the brightness from her face. + +"I must have the small motor--at once! Can you order it for me?" + +"Certainly. You want it directly?" + +"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, +on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the +side doors of the facade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant +mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. +What could be the matter? + +He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had +placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could +not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her +return. + +"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be +here for dinner. No--thank you!--thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the +chauffeur--"Redcross Farm!--as quick as you can!" + +Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After +a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir +Wilfrid Bury. + +Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay +harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had +been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and +shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a +cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only +think of the note she still held in her hand. + +"Can you come and see me? to-night--at once. Don't bring anybody. I am +alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.--ALICE BETTS." + +This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of +feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"--and trembled. Edward would +not be home till the following day. She must act alone--help alone. The +thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use--but she wished she had +thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her.... + +The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had +strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had +been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. +The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder. + +"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted +to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man +came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused +to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms--Marcia +thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his +astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly +round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared. + +"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur +continued, eagerly,--"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the +beasts." + +"You know the farm, Jackson?" + +"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly. +"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice +gentleman. He'll show you everything." + +At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man +fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than +she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood. + +They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern +additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge +of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and +brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in +the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a +substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it +curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain: + +"That's the laboratory, miss--His lordship built that six years ago. And +last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the +speeches--and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal--and there was an American +gentleman who spoke--and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts--next to +that place, Harpenden way--Rothamsted, I think they call it--was most +'ighly thought of in the States--and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's +the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs +'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water +that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em--and the mangel +field--and--" + +"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his +steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm. + +A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her +furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the +window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which +she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was +drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow--but on +the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now +here, now there. How trim everything was!--how solid and prosperous. The +great cattle-shed on the one hand--the sheep-station on the other, with its +pens and hurdles--the fine stone-built laboratory--the fields stretching to +the distance. + +She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A +foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's +room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art" +muslin; photographs in profusion--of ladies in very low dresses and +affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the +corners;--a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large +colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; +muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick +repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping. + +The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the +door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first +bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor +things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, +excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would +naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here +was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, +without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the +slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, +of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a +couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this +time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age +graven round eyes and lips. + +For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts +was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus +present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did +she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis +of her own personal life? + +"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a +chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." +She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, +who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor +falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil +framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. + +"I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, +hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my +mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." + +Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked +out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the +gusts which precede the storm. + +"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. + +"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I +was." + +"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again +out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. +I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among +the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note +in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four +o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with +something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock +the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call +him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. +Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he +wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to +write. I took him some tea, and then--" + +The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia +and laid both hands on the girl's arm. + +"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never +quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was +this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to +Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken +up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So +then--" + +The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into +Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her +dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped +them away, unheeded. + +"So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, +and I wasn't worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never +leave him--never--he said--but I must go away then because he had letters +to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and--and--he took me +in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me +up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at +me, and saying queer things to himself--and at last he went down-stairs.... +All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The +men say he's so strange--they don't like to leave him alone--but he drives +them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn't come in all day, +I sat down and wrote to you--" + +She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of +Marcia's cloak. + +"I don't know anybody here. John's lots of friends--but they're not my +friends--and even when they're sorry for us--they know--what I've done--and +they don't want to have much to do with me. You said you'd speak for us to +Mr. Edward--and I know you did--Mr. Edward told John so. You've been kinder +to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell _you_--what +I'm going to do. I'm going away--I'm going right away. John won't know, +nobody'll know where I'm gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury--and get +him and Lord William to be kind to John--as they used to be. He'll get over +it--by and by!" + +Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away. + +"I'm not going to the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! +You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life--and I've got my boy. John +won't find me--I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people +to touch--there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody--I'll go where +I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you--what I wanted to ask you?" + +"No indeed I don't," cried Marcia, in distress. "And you won't--you sha'n't +do anything so mad! Please--please, be patient!--I'll go again to Mr. +Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!" + +Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No use--no use. It's the only thing to do for +me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John +now, just what I've said, it wouldn't make any difference. He couldn't stop +me. I'm going!--that's settled. But _he_ sha'n't go. He's got to take +up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him--and look after +him--and watch him. What's their religion good for, if it can't do that? +Oh, how I _hate_ their religion!" + +Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have +been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true: + +"Haven't I good reason?" Her hands clenched at the words. "It's that which +has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he's been back here, it's +the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he's in mortal +sin--he thinks he's damned--and yet he won't--he can't give me up. My poor +old John!--We were so happy those few weeks!--why couldn't they leave +us alone!--That hard old man, Lord William!--and Mr. Edward--who's got +you--and everything he wants besides in the world! There--now I suppose +you'll turn against me too!" + +She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her +head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing--against +her will. + +"I'm not against you. Indeed--indeed--I'm not against you! You'll see. I'll +go again to Mr. Newbury--I promise you! He's not hard--he's not cruel--he's +not!..." + +"Hush!" said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward--"there he is!" And +trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just +outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling +round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had +begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his +weather-beaten cheeks and short beard. + +His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at +them--and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no +sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting +rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow. + +"Oh! go after him!" said Marcia, imploringly. "Don't trouble about me! I'll +find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!" She would have wrapped it round Mrs. +Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her. + +"No good. He wouldn't listen to me. I'll get one of the men to bring him +in. And the servant'll go for your motor." She went out of the room to give +the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, +standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she +suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with +stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks. + +"Make them do something for John. It doesn't matter about me. Let them +comfort John. Then I'll forgive them." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had +left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of +a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on +the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen--east, west, and north. +Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each +circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into +pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in +snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. +From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the +unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to +find death at Chalgrove Field. + +Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post +of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke +significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in +particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew +back her eyes and thoughts perpetually. + +The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not +seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, +in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as +usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come +back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been +this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under +the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook +her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady +Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little +dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the +ample girth of Glenwilliam. + +... Ah!--the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window +in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam's +room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for +morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out +of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her +friend's society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was +Enid's way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge +meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion's quiet +Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam's +eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of +genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he +must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who +adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest. + +Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the +opener--though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night +before, and had given no promise that he would come. + +Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At +sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down +beside her. + +"Nobody else about? What a blessing!" + +She looked at him with mild reproach. + +"My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down." + +"Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman's wife and had to get up +at six o'clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a +world of good." + +"How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing." + +"Yes, it does. One must form opinions--or burst. I can tell you, I judged +Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him." + +"Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches," said Marion, +cautiously. + +"Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn't it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of +Liberalism, as I sat there. I'll go and join the Primrose League." + +Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed--with her finger on her lip. + +"Hush! She might hear." She pointed to the half-open window on the first +floor. + +"And a good thing too," growled Coryston. "She adores him--and makes +him worse. Why can't he _work_ at these things--or why can't his +secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an +undergraduate--and doesn't care a rap--so long as a hall-full of fools +cheer him." + +"You usen't to talk like this!" + +"No--because I had illusions," was the sharp reply. "Glenwilliam was one of +them. Land!--what does he know about land?--what does a miner--who won't +learn!--know about farming? Why, that man--that fellow, John Betts"--he +pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain--"whom the +Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the +dirt--just like these Christians!--John Betts knows more about land in his +little finger than Glenwilliam's whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, +you'd see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not +allowed a look in. I'm sick of it! I'm off to Canada with Betts." + +Marion looked up. + +"I thought it was to be the Primrose League." + +"You like catching me out," said Coryston, grimly. "But I assure you I'm +pretty downhearted." + +"You expect too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to +notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," +she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat." + +"She's another disillusion. She's idle and dirty. And Potifer never does +a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral--don't bother your head about +martyrs. There's generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them." + +He broke off--looking at her with a clouded brow. + +"Marion!" + +She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face. + +"Yes, Lord Coryston!" + +"If you're so critical of my clothes, why don't you come and look after +them and me?" + +She gasped--then recovered herself. + +"I've never been asked," she said, quietly. + +"Asked! Haven't you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a +detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with--as it +pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me +feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject +letters--and apologize--and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other +woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't know what it means?" + +He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery +accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching. + +"I didn't know I was both a busybody--and a Pharisee!" + +"Hypocrite!" he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. +But she withdrew it. + +"My dear friend--if you wish to resume this conversation--it must be at +another time. I haven't been able to tell you before, I didn't know +it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother--Lady +Coryston--will be here in half an hour--to see Enid." + +He stared. + +"My mother! So _that's_ what she's been up to!" + +"She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father's +taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly." + +"And what the deuce is going to happen?" + +Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great +deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and +Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well +what was going on. + +"And can't stick it?" cried Coryston, his eyes shining. "Glenwilliam has +his faults, but I don't believe he'll want Arthur for a son-in-law--even +with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and +the estates." + +"Because of your mother?" + +Coryston nodded. "So there's another strong man--a real big +'un!--dependent, like Arthur and me--on the whim of a woman. It'll do +Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that's too fond of +beating its wives. Well, well--so my mother's coming!" He glanced round the +little house and garden. "Look here!" He bent forward peremptorily. "You'll +see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?" + +Marion's expression showed a certain bewilderment. + +"I wouldn't trust that girl!" Coryston went on, with vehemence. "She's got +something cruel in her eyes." + +"Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston's coming--" + +"To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the +game will be Miss Glenwilliam's. She'll have my mother in a cleft stick. +I'm not sure I oughtn't to be somewhere about. Well, well. I'll march. When +shall we 'resume the conversation,' as you put it?" + +He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement +upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass. + +"Oh!" She bent to pick them up. + +"Don't touch them!" cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands +and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand. + +"Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." +His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her +disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up. + +"Now I'm going. Good-by." + +"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather +stifled voice. + +"It's Sunday--so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He +checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and--if +necessary--have a jolly row with Edward Newbury--or his papa. Second, +Blow up Price--my domestic blacksmith--you know!--the socialist apostle +I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and +all--blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him +by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable +called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. +Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for +Arthur--the Radical miller--Martover gent--who's coming to see me at three +this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about +him. Shall have a ripping time with him!" + +"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you +yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass. + +"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A +vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, +good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's +anything left of my mother." + +And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young +lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper +window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston. + +"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as +she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the +summer-house. + +"On the contrary, I sent him away." + +"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?" + +"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with +a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her +eyes--challenging, a little stern,--struck full on her companion. + +Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened +and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and +suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection. + +"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all." + +"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone--and she has a right to it," said +Marion, with emphasis. + +"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, +absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence +while her gaze wandered over the view. + +"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?" + +"How can I, till I know what _she's_ going to say?" laughed Miss +Glenwilliam, teasingly. + +"But of course you know perfectly well." + +"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit +it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled +essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put +up with me?" + +"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow +decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him." + +"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a +deal too much." + +"Are you any nearer caring for him--really--than you were six weeks ago?" + +"He's a very--nice--dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would +be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after +him, now, than it was six weeks ago." + +"Enid!" + +"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little +sides of it--the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up +with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should +love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private +secretary." + +"You would despise him if he were!" + +"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches +for him then--and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear +something?" + +A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible. + +Marion Atherstone rose. + +"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll +see that nobody interrupts you." + +Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came +quickly back again. + +"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't +make a quarrel between them--unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly +kissed the face bending over her. + +"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?" + +Marion departed, silenced. + +Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted +the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the +Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed +into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for +the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic +applause." + +She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed +to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But +her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last +night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so +good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness. + +And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the +Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden. + +"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?" + +Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, +holding out her hand. + +"How do you do, Lady Coryston?" + +The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being +scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed +to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been +gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the +formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that +they had already met in many drawing-rooms. + +Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat. + +"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors." + +"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would +see me." + +"I was delighted--of course." + +There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady +Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with +its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined +mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied +under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, +delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to +the only effect she ever cared to make--the effect of the great lady, in +command--clearly--of all possible resources, while far too well bred to +indulge in display or ostentation. + +Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She +had taken up an ostrich-feather fan--a traditional weapon of the sex--and +waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak. + +"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it +a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?" + +The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the +grass nodded gravely. + +"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to +do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; +and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have +much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be +frank." + +"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!" + +Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder. + +"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal +of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your--your friendship with him has been very +conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with +you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him." + +"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, +she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if +possible, prevent his asking me again." + +"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager. + +"So far." + +"So far? May I ask--does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?" + +"I have as yet said nothing final to him." + +Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, +and then said, with emphasis: + +"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk--at this +moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you +what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage." + +"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her +most girlish voice. + +"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady +Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering +his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, +was sufficiently evident." + +Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her +long fingers were engaged in straightening. + +"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the +present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its +traditions; but that I intend to be--while I live. And I can only regard +a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable--not only for my +son--but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." + +"And why?" + +Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble +fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. + +The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks. + +"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different +worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different +antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome +you as a daughter--and because a marriage with you would disastrously +affect the prospects of my son." + +"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, +with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the +same dances." + +Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping +her voice in order. + +"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude." + +"Of course not. But--is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?" + +"Poverty has nothing to do with it--nothing at all. I have never considered +money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall." + +"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the +fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady +in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was +conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker. + +"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, +money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my +son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions." + +At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the +moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence. + +Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father's made that morning at +breakfast: "Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as +long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the +first Lord Coryston--in his earliest batch of peers--with the title and a +fat post--something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their +money--then came the Welsh coal--et cetera." + +But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on: + +"We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of +them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are +the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you +know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of +leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me--as trustee for the +political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has +been--excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both--and is now--the +principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the +estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust +did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three +months ago." + +"How very interesting!" said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston +could not see her face. + +"But it is only fair to him and to you," Arthur's mother continued, with +increased deliberation, "that I should say frankly, now that this crisis +has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur +should inherit his father's estates. A fresh disposition of them will have +to be made." + +Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone. + +"Because--Lady Coryston--I am my father's daughter?" + +"Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with +our traditions--and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it." The +conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final +words. + +There was a slight pause. + +"Then--if Arthur married me--he would be a pauper?" said the girl, bending +forward. + +"He has a thousand a year." + +"That's very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again." + +Lady Coryston moved nervously. + +"I don't understand you." + +"What I _couldn't_ have done, Lady Coryston--would have been to come +into Arthur's family as in any way dependent on his mother!" + +The girl's eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled. + +"I couldn't of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling +toward me," she said, after a moment. + +"No--you couldn't--you couldn't indeed!" + +Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her +visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic +table that stood between them, her breath fluttering. + +"Yes--perhaps now I could marry him--perhaps now I could!" she repeated. +"So long as I wasn't your dependent--so long as we had a free life of our +own--and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope--the +situation might be faced. We might hope, too--father and I--to bring +_our_ ideas and _our_ principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe +he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made +him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should +set any store by _our_ principles. You think all I want is money. +Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and +luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry +me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and +present you next day with the _fait accompli_--to take or leave. I +believe you would have surrendered to the _fait accompli_--yes, I +believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you +would forgive him. Well, but then--I looked forward--to the months--or +years--in which I should be courting--flattering--propitiating you--giving +up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours--turning my back on my father--on +my old friends--on my party--for _money_! Oh yes, I should be quite +capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had +the grace--the conscience--to funk it. I apologize for the slang--I can't +express it any other way. And now you come and say: 'Engage yourself to +him--and I'll disinherit him _at once_. That makes the thing look +clean and square!--that tempts the devil in one, or the angel--I don't +know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by +marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks +a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began +life as a pit-boy--Yes, I think it might be done!" + +The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands +behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston. + +In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor's daughter had suddenly +assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston +understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl +for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly +perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, +the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any +conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the +eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate +forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her +wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman +was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and +formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to +feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam. + +Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some +moments before, under the girl's threatening eyes, she could speak at all. +Then she said, with difficulty: + +"You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam--but you do not love him! That is +perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his +happiness and mine, in order--" + +"I don't love him? Ah! that's another story altogether! Do I love him? I +don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't believe I am as capable of +falling in love as other girls are--or say they are. I like him, and get on +with him--and I might marry him; I might--have--married him," she repeated, +slowly, "partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for +the slight you offered my father!--and partly for other things. But you +see--now I come to think of it--there is some one else to be considered--" + +The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, +with a sudden change of mood and voice. + +"You say you won't have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn't decide it for +me--and it wouldn't decide it for Arthur. But there's some one else won't +have it." + +A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with +it--considering. + +"My father came to my room last night," she said, at last, "in order to +speak to me about it. 'Enid,' he said, 'don't marry that man! He's a good +enough fellow--but he'll drive a wedge into our life. We can't find a use +for him--you and I. He'll divide us, my girl--and it isn't worth it--you +don't love him!' And we had a long talk--and at last I told him--I +wouldn't--I _wouldn't_! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don't marry +your son, it's not because you object--but because my father--whom you +insulted--doesn't wish me to enter your family--doesn't approve of a +marriage with your son--and has persuaded me against it." + +Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the +flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under +the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she +slowly rose from her seat. + +"You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, +love my son--and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you." + +She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that +she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. +She too rose. + +"I'm sorry, Lady Coryston. I've been a brute. But when I think of my +father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of +the things I have said. But it's no good apologizing. Let me, however, just +say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He's in love +with me--and I'm very, _very_ sorry for him. Let me write to him +first--before you speak to him. I'll write--as kindly as I can. But I warn +you--it'll hurt him--and he may visit it on you--for all I can say. When +will he be at Coryston?" + +"To-night." + +"I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?" + +They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston +entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, +which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started. + +Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her +face in her hands. + +After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. +She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor's burly form filled up the +door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement +upon his daughter. + +"Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you--did she +scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what's the +matter, my girl? Are you upset?" + +Enid got up, struggling for composure. + +"I--I behaved like a perfect fiend." + +"Did you?" The Chancellor's laughter filled the summer-house. "The old +harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking +in upon you here!--to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and +penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, +Enid, what's the matter--don't be a fool, my dear! You don't regret him?" + +"No." He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. +Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him. + +"I shall never marry, father. It's you and I, isn't it, against the world?" + +"Half the world," said Glenwilliam, laughing. "There's a jolly big half on +our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry." He +looked at her with proud affection. + +She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the +house together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' +cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had +obtained--apparently--everything for which she had set out, and yet there +she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has +suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class +is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed +to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam +had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady +Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and +could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a +closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that +night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have +a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and +the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very +rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings +that her doctor had given her before she left town--"You are overtaxing +yourself, Lady Coryston--and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She +came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never +coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, +from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day--till she +had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no +sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a +fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain. + +Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she +perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston +House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with +some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. +How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls +really should be more considerate. + +The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even +preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia +was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after +helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It +vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or +annoyed--perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it. + +Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room. + +"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an +old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!" + +She looked at him somberly. + +"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please--not a word!--till I +give you leave. I have gone through--a great deal." + +Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put +out his hand and pressed hers. + +"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to +your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for +luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay +horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury. + +"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits +his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used +to in my days." + +But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did +not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon. + +Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. +Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate +little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, +bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted +from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could +scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell +silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair +and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple +and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; +it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir +Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from +presenting herself so unattractively to her lover. + +Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid +obstinately called a "monkery"--_alias_ the house of an Anglican +brotherhood or Community--the Community of the Ascension, of which +Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for +Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury +a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously +evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and +through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some +deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" +was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face +during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time--even when the +fellow's looking at his sweetheart." + +After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They +wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink +willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the +gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen +trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all +washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, +and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the +hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the +gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines +stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a +moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called +or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a +Sabbath dreariness--held the scene. + +Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. +She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was +conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. + +"Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said, +anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been +away?" + +"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed +his. + +"Wrong--quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I +thought of you last night." + +"Where--when?" Her voice was low--a little embarrassed. + +"In chapel--the chapel at Blackmount--at Benediction." + +She looked puzzled. + +"What is Benediction?" + +"A most beautiful service, though of late origin--which, like fools, we +have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels +like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday +evening"--his voice fell--"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have +you there." + +She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: + +"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not +recognized--yet. To some of the services--to Benediction for instance--the +public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule--of the strictest +observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night +Office--most touching--most solemn! And--my darling!"--he pressed her hand +while his face lit up--"I want to ask you--though I hardly dare. Would you +give me--would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our +marriage? Father Brierly--my old friend--would give us both Communion, on +the morning of our wedding--in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red +Street, Soho--just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" +His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half +past seven--nobody but your mother would know. And then +afterward--afterward!--we will go through with the great ceremony--and the +crowds--and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the +Seventh's chapel--isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we +two alone, into our hearts--to feed upon Him, forever!" + +There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, +yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the +listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia--as though behind the +lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling--something +that threatened her very self. She drew herself back. + +"Edward!--ought you--to take things for granted about me--like this?" + +His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed. + +"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I +talked it over with Brierly--he sent you a message--" + +"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know +him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do--but +indeed--indeed--my mind is often in confusion--great confusion--I don't +know what to think--about many things." + +"The Church decides for us, darling--that is the great comfort--the great +strength." + +"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know +that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just +as much in the wrong as--well, as he'd think me!--_me_, even!" She +gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. +Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something +so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so +unhappy--all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come--and then +afraid what you'd say--" + +She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his. + +And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though +a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on. + +"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I +found her half mad--in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen +you. But perhaps you've seen her--to-day?" She hung on his answer. + +"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left +Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and +mother for a moment--heard nothing--and rode on here as fast as I could. +What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was +settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging +you--insisting upon dragging you--into it!" + +"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for +him--but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right--I dare say she's +deserved it--I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable--so pitiable! +She's _going_!--she's made up her mind to that--she's going. That's +what she wanted to tell me--and asked that I should tell you." + +"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly. + +"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip +away--to hide! He's not to know where she is--and she implores you to keep +him here--to comfort him--and watch over him." + +"Which of course we should do." + +The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught +Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close. + +"Yes, but Edward!--listen!--it would kill them both. His mind seems to be +giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from +their doctor. And she--she says if she does go, if decent people turn her +out, she'll just go back to people like herself--who'll be kind to her. +Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters." + +"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly. + +"But you can't allow it!--you _can't_!--the poor, poor things!" cried +Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward--I shall never forget it!" And with a +growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of +her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the +window. + +"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his +work--and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last +straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life--and now he'll think +that he's only made things worse. And he's ill--his brain's had a shake. +Edward--dear Edward!--let them stay!--for my sake, let them stay!" + +All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning--more lovely. +She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her +soft cheek against his. + +"Do you mean--let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, +putting his arms round her. + +"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the +house--and so long as he does his work--his scientific work--need anything +else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? +Wouldn't everybody understand--wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for +pity?" + +Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia--do you +ever think of my father in this?" + +"Oh, mayn't I go!--and _beg_ Lord William--" + +"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say--My father's an old man. This +has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, +as he would himself. And now--in addition--you want him to do something +that he feels to be wrong." + +"But Edward, they _are_ married! Isn't it a tyranny"--she brought the +word out bravely--"when it causes so much suffering!--to insist on more +than the law does?" + +"For us there is but one law--the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of +something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of +stern conviction: "For us they are _not_ married--and we should be +conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married +persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I +_can't_ discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress. + +She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate +hopelessness--not without resentment--was rising in her. + +"Then you won't try to persuade your father--even for my sake, Edward?" + +He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because +he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind. + +The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green +vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched +her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said--in a low, lingering +voice: + +"And I--I couldn't marry--and be happy--with the thought always--of what +had happened to them--and how--you couldn't give me--what I asked. I have +been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward--we--we've +made a great mistake!" + +She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet +with something new--and resolute--in her aspect. + +"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay. + +"Oh! it was my fault!"--and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once +childish and piteous--"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought +me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than +I, and of course--of course--you thought that if--if I loved you--I'd be +guided by you--and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live +by myself--and think for myself--more than other girls--because mother was +always busy with other things--that didn't concern me--that I didn't care +about--and I was left alone--and had to puzzle out a lot of things that +I never talked about. I'm obstinate--I'm proud. I must believe for +myself--and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come +out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I +had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since +we've been engaged--this few weeks--I've been doing nothing but think and +think--and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this +trouble. I _couldn't_"--she clenched her hand with a passionate +gesture--"I _couldn't_ do what you're doing. It would kill me. You +seem to be obeying something outside--which you're quite sure of. But if +_I_ drove those two people to despair, because I thought something +was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in +my heart--my _own heart_--again. Love seems to me everything!--being +kind--not giving pain. And for you there's something greater--what the +Church says--what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never +agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was +wicked--and I--well!"--she panted a little, trying for her words--"there +are ugly--violent--feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate +_you_--but--Edward--just now--I felt I could hate--what you believe!" + +The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her +hands, imploring. + +"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!" + +During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree +beside her, looking down upon her--white and motionless. He had made no +effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee. + +"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and +half-consciously--"terrible!" + +"But indeed--indeed--it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a +whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left +untaken. + +The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a +composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come--the +sudden furling of the winds--in the very midst of tempest. She divined the +tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not +dared to watch it. + +"Marcia--is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you +to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time +to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that--I should +influence you?" + +"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of +myself--now. This has made me know myself--as I never did. I should wound +and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard--and bad." + +Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, +as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images +which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the +silences, more active far than speech, which determine life. + +At the end of it, he came to sit beside her. + +"Then we must give it up--we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness +you gave me--this little while. I pray God to bless you--now and forever." + +Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. +She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it +with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a +stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous +earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy +"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose. + +"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night." + +They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her +whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized +what she had done as both inevitable and past recall. + +They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a +piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!--oh, I'm _sorry_!" + +At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden +on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's +sitting-room observed them. + +These persons were--strange to say--Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady +Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired +to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. +Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had +disappeared. + +The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep +silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All +the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running +perpetually through her mind--the girl's gestures and tones--above all the +words of her final warning. + +After all it was not she--his mother--who had done it. Without her it would +have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this +plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?--of Arthur? What +absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled. + +And yet she knew that she was listening--listening in dread--for a footstep +in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the +further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. +He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance +of her seeing him--unless she sent for him--till the following morning, +after the arrival of the letter. _Then_--she must face him. + +But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him +as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, +making his maiden speech. In April--and this was July. Had that infatuation +begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest--her Benjamin? + +She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. +There was somebody approaching her room--evidently on tiptoe. Some one +knocking--very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!" + +The door opened--and there was Coryston. + +She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed. + +"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston." + +He paused on the threshold. + +"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you--or something?" + +His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed--though still annoyed. + +"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come +to see me like this, Coryston." + +"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?" + +She pointed to a number of the _Quarterly_ that was lying open, and to +an article on "The later years of Disraeli." + +Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But +he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his +reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after +a little while, it was pleasant. + +Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her +efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the +book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its +setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and +helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these +last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy +softness--as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human +spectacle--invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body +relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also +oppressed him--like a voice--an omen. + +He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note +from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid +confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now +there was Arthur to be faced--who would never believe, of course, but that +his mother had done it. + +A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and +saw two figures--Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh--on +the instant--all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!--and his creed! +That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father! + +Well!--he peered at them--has she got anything whatever out of young +Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to +wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the +garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not +demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction. + +He sat down again, and tossing the _Quarterly_ away, he took up a +volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really +possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be +taken--Marcia or no Marcia!--to rouse the country-side against the +Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this +tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that +morning--a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to +him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to +hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!--she might wait. + +[Illustration: HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE] + +Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage +outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia! + +He opened the door. + +"Don't come in. Mother's asleep." + +Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood +on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the +instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to +her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She +turned and beckoned to Coryston. + +"Come with me--a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading +from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as +children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm. + +"Coryston--I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my +engagement." + +"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!" + +He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped +back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment. + +"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never +understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear +it. What's wrong with mother?" + +"She's knocked over--by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this +morning." + +He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest. + +"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my +affairs--till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by." + +"I say, Marcia--old woman--don't be so fierce with me. You took me by +surprise--" he muttered, uncomfortably. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world--seems to be able to +understand anybody else--or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by." + +Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing +no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and +Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest +misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston +family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day. + +Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a +long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been +too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to +him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought +relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body. + +The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, +she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in +the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods--the distant +sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir--a few notes of +birds--were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once +indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's +merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt--on the top floor. How +remote!--and yet how near. + +And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had +given him--suffering--suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last +night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her--how could +she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, +now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, +the energy of a fuller life. + +She went to bed, and to sleep--for a few hours--toward morning. She was +roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror. + +"Oh, miss!" + +"What is the matter?" + +Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?--dead? + +The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just +brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the +early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was +locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of +horror. John Betts was sitting--dead--in his chair, with a bullet wound in +the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. +She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped +from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately +unfastened her dress--The bullet had passed through her heart, and death +had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on +which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad--forgive." And +beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The +foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands. + +She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, +fainting, on her pillows. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the +presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty +years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the +girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the +news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell +her what she must know. + +Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing +straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters +she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering +under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang +forward in bed. + +"What!--Marcia!--have you seen Arthur?" + +Marcia shook her head. + +"It's not Arthur, mother!" + +And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as +those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position, +and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding +day, she said not a word. + +On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then +irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant +interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the +Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up +at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried +to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her +daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she +supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go +herself--without permission either from her mother or her betrothed--to +see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing +happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and +annoying! + +However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual +trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult. +In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after +the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She +began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the +night before--or that morning? + +"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night--and this morning he's +not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered +the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then +her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck +her with a sudden and added distress. + +"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day." + +"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, +sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before +he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do +is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing +to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And +I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible +thing at all--without coming to me first." + +"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you--aren't you sorry +for those two people?--and don't you understand that I--I hoped I might +have helped them?" + +At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston +frowned. + +"Certainly, I'm sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can't stand any extra +strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed. +Now go and lie down." + +She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a +new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was +called back. + +"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs +to let me know." + +"Yes, mother." + +As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind +immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult +of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had +come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful +world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, +and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both. + +She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a +short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs. +In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and +flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the +newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone. + +He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her +face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with +such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister. + +She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable +child--saying under her breath: + +"You know--I saw them--the night before last?" + +"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?" +For he saw she had a letter in her hand. + +"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I'll go to the +library." + +She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from +the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When +Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of +grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further +news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, +had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the +discovery of the tragedy. + +"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay +with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the +evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her +sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised +you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the +laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute +depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words +that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the +shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, +which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to +bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back +again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning. +How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be +guessed." + +Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out +a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read: + +"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have +often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can't stay behind. Will you +please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn't met again--" + +It ended incoherently in blots and smudges. + +"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the +letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight +of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library +chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew +from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering +words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned +face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow +under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied +tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she +gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in +this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude +of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but +that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his +voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence +with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for +months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on +whom to lean. + +But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of +Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say +with energy: "I don't want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could +only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world. + +But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, +and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur. + +Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just +dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the +farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her. + +"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How +_abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!" + +"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the +discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a +message." + +[Illustration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN] + +Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy. + +"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks +of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and +it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the +arrival of a letter--" + +"From Enid Glenwilliam?" + +"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part +the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature +appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor +ears--But here he is!" + +Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the +library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face +wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features +and receding chin. + +"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my +dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and +Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed +he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. +_He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I +say--mother is late!" + +He looked round the hall imperiously. + +Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. +Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some +message. + +"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, +sternly. + +"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to +appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should +have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And +what's this they say about a letter?" + +His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in +dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; +but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. + +Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the +letter was. + +"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. + +"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." + +He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand +dropped. + +"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose +you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're +a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of +it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the +little woman, though." + +And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all +the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the +glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, +approached Marcia. + +"My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so +unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to +the police." + +She held it out to him obediently. + +Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. +When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his +smooth-shaven actor's face: + +"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope +it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with +Newbury?" + +Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble +mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. + +"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not +_quarreled_--" + +Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and +pressed it. + +"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without +losing you." + +Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury +then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two +interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The +object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with +such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an +appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw +occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be +alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young +man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to +help his sister. + +Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned +against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole +neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a +more odious, a more untoward situation! + +But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed, +indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the +truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously +composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes, +though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way +unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was +ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she +rose, and said she would go back to her room. + +"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with +her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can." + +As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall. +Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He +opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a +boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading +to the fore-court. + +It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern facade +had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air +Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an +abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write +a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's +last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!--that she knew. His +stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school. + +It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman. +And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn +between two contending imaginations--the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting +beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and +the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night--the +shelves of labeled bottles and jars--the tables and chemical apparatus--the +electric light burning--and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed +figure against his knee:--and then--Newbury--in his sitting-room, amid +the books and portraits of his college years--the crucifix over the +mantelpiece--the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln--of Assisi. + +Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The +thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame +himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it +all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying +with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other, +and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and +not merely man's mistake. She longed--sometimes--to throw her arms round +him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that +young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would +never draw back from what she had offered him--never. She would go to him, +and stand by him--as Sir Wilfrid had said--if he wanted her. + +The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more +unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the +dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of +the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her +daughter. + +"Mother!--do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met--blaming +herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the +morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up." + +Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite +well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned +to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house. + +"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him +since." + +The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady +Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in +connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I +needn't appear," said Marcia, dully. + +"I should rather think not!" + +Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal +institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston +family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said +nothing. + +As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered--with a +start. + +"Mother--I forgot!--I'm so sorry--I dare say it was nothing. But I think a +letter came for Arthur just before twelve--a letter he was expecting. At +least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet +him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since." + +Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near +and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession +to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's +appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth. + +But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up +any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by +other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her +mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded. + +And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia +for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her--insignificant as +the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been. +But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring +out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed--and +knew she possessed--a certain measured strength; just enough--and no +more--to enable her to go through a conversation which _must_ be +faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to +her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and +unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time! + +But reasoning on it did not help her--only silence and endurance. After +resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again, +refusing Marcia's company. + +"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?--if you're going to rest, +you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the +foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her. + +But Lady Coryston shook her head. + +"Thank you--I don't want anything." + + * * * * * + +So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but +wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and +lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed; +in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had +been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet +there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power +and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural +expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had +first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped +him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely; +and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but +withering. + +Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at +recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight +of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the +window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her +waist. + +Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles +of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real. +Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with +human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ +in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they +comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to +suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering +here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of +immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved +much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her +strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to +her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and +to believe. + +Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding +silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself. +Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own +room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once +she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But +otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her +without permission. + +Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a +time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain +which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out--restlessly--to the +East Wood--the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her +face against the log--a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried +ring--almost within reach of her hand--seemed to call to her like a living +thing. No!--let it rest. + +If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him +a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed; +but she did not know for what. + +Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts +were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord +William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile +silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a +full account of the efforts--many and vain--that had been made both by +himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to +persuade him to accept it. + +"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in +themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize +a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could +have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we +have done." + +Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. +Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. +Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the +countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning +attention. + +When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took +his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and +straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small +feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A +mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the +man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a +group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the +Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities +and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the +old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would +have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing +currents of thought and life. + +Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went +back himself to wait for the verdict. + +As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been +held, Coryston emerged. + +Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been +the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. +Newbury began: + +"Will you take a message from me to your sister?" + +A man opened the door in front a little way. + +"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." + +The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the +conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many +forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury +beside him. + +"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" + +Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his +face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression. + +"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to +discuss our differences, Coryston--" + +"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' +as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin +arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is +time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about +'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as +these have been slain!" + +"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes +took fire. + +"Hunted by the Christian conscience!--that it might lie comfortable o' +nights," was the scornful reply. + +Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road, +crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of +sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village. +As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a +motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away. +A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his +brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the +news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had +been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother +and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his +brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown +point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion +which held him. + +Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same +dry and carefully governed voice as before. + +"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still +engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off--although--since +then--I have received two letters from her--" + +He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure. + +"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time--perhaps--I shall know +better--what my future life will be." + +"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do +I want to know!" + +Newbury gave him a look of wonder. + +"I thought you were out for justice--and freedom of conscience?" he said, +slowly. "Is the Christian conscience--alone--excepted? Freedom for every +one else--but none for us?" + +"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston +panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly +in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you +Catholics--Anglican or Roman--want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it +you!" + +"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us +down--which of course you could do with ease--you would destroy all that +you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we +had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. +We stand face to face--we shall stand face to face--while the world lasts." + +Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, +would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law. + +"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford--we simply can't +afford--to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to +those two dead people! They did what _you_ thought wrong, and your +conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider +over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and +cursing?" + +Newbury stood still. + +"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that +cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't +believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting +of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God +_has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." + +"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with +bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there +is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as +those two poor things had for each other!" + +After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the +last word of his own creed. + +Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could +be reached. Newbury paused. + +"Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again." + +He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his +face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever +seen it. + +"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel +nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has +been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood. +It tells me where to go--and I obey." + +He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And +Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced +him. + +But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. + +"Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's +boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And +all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say +to-night." + +He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, +and went off to find Marion Atherstone--the only person with whom he could +trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit +of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress--and even his +rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him +from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted +for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild +company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or +institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, +led by a sure instinct, he went. + +Meanwhile the motor which passed Newbury and Coryston in the park had sped +to its goal. It had already carried Arthur Coryston over half the county. +That morning he had been told at the Atherstones' cottage, on his +breathless arrival there, just before luncheon, that while the Chancellor +had returned to town, Miss Glenwilliam had motored to a friend's house, +some twenty miles north, and was not going back to London till the evening. +Arthur Coryston at once pursued her. Sorely against her will, he had forced +the lady to an interview, and in the blind rage of his utter defeat and +discomfiture, he left her again in hot quest of that explanation with his +mother which Enid Glenwilliam had honestly--and vainly--tried to prevent. + +Lady Coryston meanwhile was bewildered by his absence. During the lonely +hours when Marcia, from a distance, had once caught sight of her crossing +an open window in her sitting-room, she had not been able to settle to any +occupation, still less to rest. She tried to write out the Agenda of an +important Primrose League meeting over which she was to preside; to put +together some notes of her speech. In vain. A strange heaviness weighed +upon her. The only stimulus that worked--and that only for a time--was a +fierce attack on Glenwilliam in one of the morning papers. She read it +hungrily; but it brought on acute headache, which reduced her to idleness +and closed eyes. + +After a while she roused herself to pull down a blind against a teasing +invasion of sun, and in doing so she perceived a slim, white figure +hurrying away from the house, through the bright-colored mazes of the +Italian garden. Marcia! She remembered vaguely that Marcia had come to her +that morning in trouble about what? She could not remember. It had seemed +to her of importance. + +At last, about half an hour after she had seen Marcia disappear in the +shrubbery paths leading to the East Wood, Lady Coryston, startled by a +sound from the fore-court, sat suddenly erect on her sofa. A motor? + +She rose, and going to a little mirror on the wall, she straightened the +lace coiffure she habitually wore. In doing so she was struck--dismayed +even--by her own aspect. + +"When this is all over, Marcia and I perhaps might go abroad for a week or +two," she thought. + +A swift step approaching--a peremptory knock at the door. + +"Come in!" + +Arthur entered, and with his back against the door stood surveying +his mother. She waited for him to speak, expecting violence. For some +moments--in vain. Except in so far as his quick-breathing silence, his look +of dry, hollow-eyed exasperation spoke--more piercingly than words. + +"Well, Arthur," she said, at last, "I have been expecting you for some +time." + +"I have been trying to put the mischief you have done me straight," he +said, between his teeth. + +"I have done you no mischief that I know of. Won't you come and sit down +quietly--and talk the whole matter over? You can't imagine that I desire +anything but your good!" + +His laugh seemed to give her physical pain. + +"Couldn't you take to desiring something else, mother, than my 'good' as +you call it? Because, I tell you plainly, it don't suit my book. You have +been meddling in my affairs!--just as you have always meddled in them, for +matter of that! But this time you've done it with a vengeance--you've done +it _damnably_!" He struck his hand upon a table near. "What right had +you"--he approached her threateningly--"what earthly right had you to go +and see Enid Glenwilliam yesterday, just simply that you might spoil my +chances with her! Who gave you leave?" + +He flung the questions at her. + +"I had every right," said Lady Coryston, calmly. "I am your mother--I +have done everything for you--you owe your whole position to me. You +were ruining yourself by a mad fancy. I was bound to take care that +Miss Glenwilliam should not accept you without knowing all the facts. +But--actually--as it happens--she had made up her mind--before we met." + +"So she says!--and I don't believe a word of it--_not--one--word_! She +wanted to make me less mad with you. She's like you, mother, she thinks +she can manage everybody. So she tried to cram me--that it was Glenwilliam +persuaded her against me. Rot! If you hadn't gone and meddled, if you +hadn't treated her like dirt--if you hadn't threatened to spoil my +prospects, and told her you'd never receive her--if you hadn't put her +back up in a hundred ways--she'd have married me. It's +you--you--_you_--that have done it!" + +He threw himself on a chair in front of her, his hands on his knees, +staring at her. His aspect as of a man disorganized and undone by baffled +passion, repelled and disgusted her. Was this her Arthur?--her perfect +gentleman--her gay, courteous, well-behaved darling--whose mingled docility +and good breeding had, so far, suited both her affection and her love of +rule so well? The deep under-sense of disaster which had held her all day, +returned upon her in ten-fold strength. But she fronted him bravely. + +"You are, as it happens, entirely wrong, Arthur. It's not I who have done +it--but Miss Glenwilliam's own good sense--or her father's. Of course I +confess frankly that I should have done my best--that I did, if you like, +do my best, to prevent your marriage with Miss Glenwilliam. And as for +right, who else had a right, if not I? Was it not most unkind, most +undutiful on your part!"--her tone was a tone of battle--"was it not an +outrage on your father's memory--that you should even entertain the +notion of such a connection? To bring the daughter of that man into this +family!--after all we have done--and suffered--for our principles--it's +you, who ought to ask _my_ pardon, Arthur, and not I yours! Times +without number, you have agreed with me in despising people who have +behaved as if politics were a mere game--a trifle that didn't matter. You +have told me often, that things were getting too hot; you couldn't be +friends in private, with people you hated in public; people you looked +upon as robbers and cheats. And then--_then_--you go and let this +infatuation run away with you--you forget all your principles--you forget +your mother, and all you owe her--and you go and ask this girl to marry +you--whose father is our personal and political enemy--a political +adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I +hold sacred--or ought to hold sacred!" + +"For goodness' sake, mother, don't make a political speech!" He turned upon +her with angry contempt. "That kind of thing does all very well to spout +at an election--but it won't do between you and me. I _don't_ hate +Glenwilliam--_there_! The estates--and the property--and all we hold +sacred, as you call it--will last my time--and his. And I jolly well don't +care what happens afterward. _He's_ not going to do us much harm. +England's a deal tougher proposition than he thinks. It's you women who get +up such a hullabaloo--I declare you make politics a perfect devilry! But +then"--he shrugged his shoulders fiercely--"I'm not going to waste time in +arguing. I just came to tell you _what I intend to do_; and then I'm +going up to town. I've ordered the motor for seven o'clock." + +Lady Coryston had risen, and stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, +looking down upon her son. + +"I shall be glad indeed to hear what you intend to do, Arthur. I see you +have missed two or three important divisions lately." + +He burst out: + +"And they won't be the last either, by a good way. I'm going to chuck it, +mother! And if you don't like it--you can blame yourself!" + +"What do you mean?" + +He hesitated a moment--then spoke deliberately. + +"I intend to leave Parliament after this session. I do! I'm sick of it. A +friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me +to go in with him--and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my +mind from these troubles." + +Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her +strong will could keep from trembling. + +"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for +you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon +you--" + +He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. + +"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you +ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since +I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was +literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that! +And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of +him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that +I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you +knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that +meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page +_before you told me_. And when I kicked--and told you about Enid--did +you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?--did you ever, +even, consider for one moment what I told you?--that I was in love with +her?--dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged +it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow--" + +His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. + +"Instead of that, mother--you only thought of how you could thwart and +checkmate me--how you could get _your_ way--and force me to give up +mine. It was _abominable_ of you to go and see Enid, without a word to +me!--it was _abominable_ to plot and plan behind my back, and then to +force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of +any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!--she +didn't want to come it too hard on you--that's her way!--so she made up +some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! +You've ruined me!--you've ruined me!" + +He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and +pain. + +Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a +passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that +was closing on her, she could not restrain. + +"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course +you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so +lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like +this?" + +He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look. + +"Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no +good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been +fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But +the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all +my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I +did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been +kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--" + +And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face +disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood +of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the +shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, +though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. +But, Arthur!--She put up a trembling hand. + +"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done +the best I could for you--always." + +"Why didn't you _love_ us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for +emphasis. "Why didn't you _love_ us! It was always politics--politics! +Somebody to be attacked--somebody to be scored off--somebody to be squared. +And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! My poor father was as sick of +it often as we were. He had enough of it out of doors. Damn politics for +women, I say--damn them!" + +Lady Coryston raised her hand. + +"_Go_, Arthur! This is enough." + +He drew a long breath. + +"Upon my soul, I think it is. We'd better not excite each other any more. +I'll speak to Sir Wilfrid, mother, before I go, and ask him to report +various things to you, which I have to say. And I shall go and see the +Whips to-night. Of course I don't want to do the party any harm. If there +is a general election in the autumn, all that need happen is that I sha'n't +stand again. And as to the estates"--he hesitated--"as to the estates, +mother, do as you like. Upon my word I think you'd better give them back to +Coryston! A certain amount of money is all I shall want." + +"Go!" said Lady Coryston again, still pointing. + +He stood a moment, fiddling with some ornaments on a table near him, then +caught up his hat with a laugh--and still eying her askance, he walked to +the door, opened it, and disappeared; though he closed it so uncertainly +that Lady Coryston, until, after what seemed an interval, she heard his +footsteps receding, could not be sure that he was really gone. + +But he was gone; and all the plans and hopes of her later life lay in ashes +about her. She sat motionless. After half an hour she heard the sound of a +motor being driven away from the front of the house. Through the evening +air, too, she caught distant voices--which soon ceased. + +She rang presently for her maid, and said she would dine in her room, +because of a bad headache. Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid +Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred +him to the next morning. + +Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's +ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that +no one dared force themselves upon her. Only, between ten and eleven, +Marcia again came to the door, knocked gently, and was told to go away. Her +mother would be all right in the morning. The girl reluctantly obeyed. + +The state of terrible tension in which Lady Coryston passed that night had +no witness. It could only be guessed at, by Marcia, in particular, to +whom it fell afterward to take charge of her mother's papers and personal +affairs. Lady Coryston had apparently gathered all Arthur's, letters to her +together, from the very first to the very latest, tied them up neatly, and +laid them in the drawer which held those of her dead husband. She had begun +to write a letter to Coryston, but when found, it was incoherent, and could +not be understood. She had removed the early photographs of Arthur from her +table, and a larger, recent one of the young M.P., taken in London for the +constituency, which was on her mantelpiece, and had placed them both face +downward in the same drawer with the letters. And then, when she had found +it impossible to write what she wished to write, she seemed to have gone +back to her arm-chair, taking with her two or three of Arthur's Eton +reports--by what instinct had she chosen them out from the piles of +letters!--and a psalter she often used. But by a mere accident, a sinister +trick of fate, when she was found, the book lay open under her hand at one +of those imprecatory psalms at which Christendom has at last learned to +shudder. Only a few days before, Sir Wilfrid Bury had laughed at her--as +only he might--for her "Old Testament tone" toward her enemies, and had +quoted this very psalm. Her helpless fingers touched it. + +But the night was a night of vigil for others also. Coryston, who could not +sleep, spent the greater part of it first in writing to Marion Atherstone, +and then in composing a slashing attack upon the High Church party for its +attitude toward the divorce laws of the country, and the proposals recently +made for their reform. "How much longer are we going to allow these +black-coated gentlemen to despise and trample on the laws under which +the rest of us are content to live!--or to use the rights and powers +of property for the bare purpose of pressing their tyrannies and their +superstitions on other people?" + +Meanwhile, in the beautiful chapel of Hoddon Grey, Edward Newbury, worn out +with the intolerable distress of the preceding forty-eight hours, and yet +incapable of sleep, sat or knelt through long stretches of the night. The +chapel was dark but for one light. Over the altar there burnt a lamp, and +behind it could be seen, from the chair, where he knelt, the silk veil of +the tabernacle. Reservation had been permitted for years in the Hoddon Grey +chapel, and the fact had interwoven itself with the deepest life of +the household, eclipsing and dulling the other religious practices +of Anglicanism, just as the strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or +sterilizes the rest. There, in Newbury's passionate belief, the Master of +the House kept watch, or slept, above the altar, as once above the Galilean +waves. For him, the "advanced" Anglican, as for any Catholic of the Roman +faith, the doctrine of the Mass was the central doctrine of all religion, +and that intimate and personal adoration to which it leads, was the +governing power of life. The self-torturing anguish which he had suffered +ever since the news of the two suicides had reached him could only endure +itself in this sacred presence; and it was there he had taken refuge under +the earlier blow of the breach with Marcia. + +The night was very still--a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of +starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, +stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, +and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the +flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently +and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; and the white mists on the lawn and +fields outside made their way through the open windows, and dimmed the glow +of color on the walls and in the apse. + +In those melancholy and yet ardent hours Edward Newbury reached the utmost +heights of religious affirmation, and the extreme of personal renunciation. +It became clear to a mind attuned for such thoughts, that, by severing him +from Marcia, and, at the same time, and by the same stroke, imposing upon +him at least some fraction of responsibility--a fraction which his honesty +could not deny--for the deaths of John and Alice Betts, God had called him, +Edward Newbury, in a way not to be mistaken and not to be refused. His life +was henceforth forfeit--forfeit to his Lord. Henceforth, let him make of +it a willing sacrifice, an expiatory oblation, perpetually renewed, and +offered in perpetual union with the Divine Victim, for their souls and his +own. + +The ideas of the Conventual house in which he had so lately spent hours of +intense religious happiness closed upon him and possessed him. He was +not to marry. He was reserved for the higher counsels, the Counsels of +Perfection. The face and talk of his friend Brierly, who was so soon going +to his dangerous and solitary post in Southern India, haunted his mind, and +at last seemed to show him a way out of his darkness. His poor father and +mother! But he never doubted for one moment that they would give him up, +that they would let him follow his conscience. + +By the time the sun was fairly up, the storm of religious feeling had died +down in Newbury. He had taken his resolve, but he was incapable of any +further emotion concerning it. On the other hand, his heart was alive to +the thought of Marcia, and of that letter she had sent him. Dear, generous +Marcia! Once more he would write to her--once more! + +"DEAREST MARCIA,--I may call you so, I think, for the last time, and at +this turning-point of both our lives. I may never see you again; or if we +do meet, you will have become so strange to me that you will wonder in what +other and distant life it was that we loved each other. I think you did +love me for a little while, and I do bless and thank you that you let +me know you--and love you. And I bless you above all for the thought of +consolation and pity you had toward me, even yesterday, in those terrible +hours--when you offered to come back to me and help me, as though our bond +had never been broken. + +"No, dear Marcia!--I saw the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make +you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was +never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one +whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be +narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough--or cold enough!--to let you +give yourself back to one you cannot truly love--or trust. But that you +offered it, because you were sorry for me, and that you would have carried +it out, firmly, your dear hand clenched, as it were, on the compact--that +warms my heart--that I shall have, as a precious memory, to carry into the +far-off life that I foresee. + +"I cannot write much about the terrible thing at Redcross Farm. Your great +pity for me implies that you think me--and my father--in some way and in +some degree, responsible. Perhaps we are--I do not wish to shirk the truth. +If so, it is as soldiers under orders are responsible for the hurt and +damage they may cause, in their King's war--as much, and as little. At +least, so far as the main matter is concerned. That I might have been--that +I ought to have been--infinitely more loving, wiser, stronger to help +them--that I know--that I shall feel as long as I live. And it is a feeling +which will determine all my future life. + +"You remember what I told you of Father Brierly and the Community of the +Ascension? As soon as I can leave my father and mother--they are at present +in deep distress--I shall probably go to the Community House in Lancashire +for a time. My present intention is to take orders, and perhaps to join +Brierly eventually in mission work. My father and mother are splendid! They +and I shall be separated perhaps in this world, but in that mysterious +other world which lies all about us even now, and which is revealed to us +in the Sacraments, we shall meet at last, and forever--if we are faithful. + +"Good-by--God be with you--God give you every good thing in this +present time--love, children, friends--and, 'in the world to come, life +everlasting.'" + + * * * * * + +About the hour when the letter was finished, when the July sun was already +high over the dewy new-shorn fields, Coryston, after an hour's sleep in his +chair, and a bath, left Knatchett to walk to Coryston. He was oppressed by +some vague dread which would not let him rest. In the strong excitements +and animosities of the preceding day he had forgotten his mother. But the +memory of her face on the sofa during that Sunday reading had come back +upon him with unpleasant force. It had been always so with him in life. She +no sooner relapsed into the woman than he became a son. Only the experience +had been rare! + +He crossed the Hoddon Grey park, and then walked through _a_ mile +of the Coryston demesne, till he reached the lake and saw beyond it the +Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun--and the long +marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared +loggia. "What the deuce are _we_ going to do with these places!" he +asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be +allowed to sell it, or turn it to any useful purpose whatever!" + +He skirted the lake, and began to mount the steps, and flagged paths of the +formal garden. Suddenly as he approached the garden front he saw that two +windows of his mother's sitting-room were open, and that some one--a figure +in black--was sitting in a high-backed arm-chair beside one of them. His +mother!--up?--at seven o'clock in the morning? Yet was it his mother? He +came nearer. The figure was motionless--the head thrown back, the eyes +invisible from where he stood. Something in the form, the attitude--its +stillness and strangeness in the morning light--struck him with horror. He +rushed to the garden door, found it open, dashed up the stairs, and into +his mother's room. + +"Mother!" + +Lady Coryston neither moved nor spoke. But as he came up to her, he saw +that she was alive--that her eyes opened and perceived him. Nothing else in +her lived or moved. And as he knelt down by her, and took her tenderly in +his arms, she relapsed into the unconscious state from which his entrance +had momentarily roused her. + + * * * * * + +What else there is to tell had best be told quickly. Lady Coryston lived +for some eight months after this seizure. She partially recovered from the +first stroke, and all the organization of the great house, and all the +thought of her children circled round the tragic death-in-life into which +she had fallen. + +Arthur had come rushing back to Coryston after the catastrophe, restored +by it, like a stream which has wandered in flood, to the older and natural +channels of life. Bitter remorse for his conduct to his mother, and a sharp +resentment of Enid Glenwilliam's conduct toward himself, acted wholesomely. +He took up his normal occupations again, in Parliament and on the estates, +and talked no more of Buenos Ayres. But whether his mother's darkened mind +ever forgave him it would be difficult to say. She rarely noticed him, +and when she spoke it was generally for Coryston. Her dependence upon her +eldest son became a touching and poignant thing, deepening the souls of +both. Coryston came to live at Coryston, and between his love for Marion +Atherstone, and his nursing of his mother, was more truly happy for a time +than his character had ever yet allowed him to be. The din of battle, +political and religious, penetrated no more within a house where death came +closer day by day, and where weakness and suffering had at last united +these differing men and women in a common interest of profoundest pity. +Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them +forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when +she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry--Corry +darling"--and as he came closer--"Corry, who was my firstborn!" + +On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote: + +"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning +rest which does not--as death so often does--make any break with our +memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. She +is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut +mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt +still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the +face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she +modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able +during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, to make +an alteration in her will, and the alteration was no mere surrender to what +one sees to have been, at bottom, her invincible affection for Coryston. +She has still left Arthur the estates for life, but with remainder to +Coryston's son, should he have one, and she has made Coryston a trustee +together with Sir Wilfrid Bury. This will mean practically a division +between the brothers--to which Arthur has already pledged himself, so he +tells me--but with no power to Coryston to make such radical changes as +would destroy the family tradition, at least without Arthur's consent and +Sir Wilfrid's. But Coryston will have plenty of money and plenty of land +wherewith to experiment, and no doubt we shall see some strange things. + +"Thus she kept her flag flying to the end, so far as the enfeebled brain +allowed. Yet the fact was that her state of dependence on her children +during her illness, and their goodness to her, did in truth evoke another +woman with new perceptions, superposed, as it were, upon the old. And +there, I think, came in her touch of greatness--which one could not have +expected. She was capable at any rate of _this_ surrender; not going +back upon the old--but just accepting the new. Her life might have petered +out in bitterness and irritation, leaving an odious memory. It became a +source of infinite sweetness, just because her children found out--to their +immense surprise--that she _could_ let herself be loved; and they +threw themselves with eagerness on the chance she gave them. + +"She dies in time--one of the last of a generation which will soon have +passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no +doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her +rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts--or few. +As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as +obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that +is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will +'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority of his kind. + +"Marcia!--in her black dress, beside her mother, looking down upon +her--with that yearning look!--But--not a word! There are things too sacred +for these pages." + + * * * * * + +During the months of Lady Coryston's illness, indeed, Reginald Lester +entered, through stages scarcely perceived by himself and them, upon a new +relation toward the Coryston family. He became the increasingly intimate +friend and counselor of the Coryston brothers, and of Marcia, no less--but +in a fresh and profounder sense. He shared much of the estate business with +Mr. Page; he reconciled as best he could the jarring views of Coryston and +Arthur; he started on the reorganization of the great Library, in which, so +far, he had only dealt with a fraction of its possessions. And every day he +was Marcia's companion, in things intimate and moving, no less than in +the practical or commonplace affairs of ordinary life. It was he who read +poetry with her, or played accompaniments to her songs, in the hours of +relief from her nursing; it was he who watched and understood her; who +guided and yet adored her. His love for her was never betrayed; but it +gradually became, without her knowing it, the condition of her life. And +when Lady Coryston died, in the February following her stroke, and Marcia, +who was worn out, went abroad with Waggin for a few weeks' rest, the +correspondence which passed between her and Lester during the earlier days +of her absence, by the more complete and deliberate utterance which it +permitted between them, did at last reveal to the girl the depths of her +own heart. + +During her travels various things happened. + +One chilly afternoon, late in March, when a light powdering of snow lay on +the northern slopes of the hills, Coryston went up to the cottage in +the hopes of finding Marion Atherstone alone. There had been a quiet +understanding between them all the winter, more or less known to the +Coryston family, but all talk of marriage had been silenced by the +condition of Lady Coryston, who indeed never knew such schemes were in the +air. + +About six weeks, however, after his mother's death, Coryston's natural +_fougue_ suggested to him that he was being trifled with. He burst +into the little sitting-room where Marion was just making tea, and sat +down, scowling, on the further side of the hearth. + +"What is the matter?" Marion asked, mildly. During the winter a beautifying +change seemed to have passed upon Atherstone's daughter. She was younger, +better looking, better dressed; yet keeping always the touch of homeliness, +of smiling common-sense, which had first attracted a man in secret +rebellion against his own rhetoric and other people's. + +"You are treating me abominably!" said Coryston, with vehemence. + +"How? My conscience is as sound as a bell!" Wherewith, laughing, she handed +him his cup of tea. + +"All bells aren't sound. Some are flawed," was the prompt reply. "I have +asked you twice this week to tell me when you will be good enough to marry +me, and you haven't said a single word in reply." + +Marion was silent a little; then she looked up, as Andromache looked at +Hector--with a laugh, yet with something else fluttering behind. + +"Let's ask ourselves once more, Herbert--is it really a wise thing to do?" + +Nobody else since his father died had ever called Coryston by his Christian +name; which was perhaps why Marion Atherstone took a peculiar pleasure in +using it. Coryston had mostly forgotten that he possessed such a name, but +from her he liked it. + +"What on earth do you mean by that?" + +"In the first place, Herbert, I was never intended by nature to be a +peeress." + +He sprang up furiously. + +"I never heard a more snobbish remark! All that you are asked is to be my +wife." + +She shook her head. + +"We can't make a world for ourselves only. Then there's--father." + +"Well, what about him?" + +"You don't get on very well," she said, with a sigh. + +Coryston controlled himself with difficulty. + +"For your father, the Liberal party is mostly Jahve--the hope of the +children of light. For me the Liberal party is mostly Dagon--either made a +god of by Philistines, or groveling before a stronger God--Mammon. But that +don't matter. I can behave myself." + +Marion bent over her work. + +"Can't I behave myself?" he repeated, threateningly, as he moved nearer +her. + +She looked up at last. + +"Suppose you get bored with me--as you have with the Liberal party?" + +"But never with liberty," he said, ardently. + +"Suppose you come to see the seamy side of me--as you do of everybody?" + +"I don't invent seamy sides--where none exist," he said, looking +peremptorily into her eyes. + +"I'm not clever, Herbert--and I think I'm a Tory." + +"Heavens, what do I care? You're the woman I happen to love." + +"And I intend to go to church." + +"Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. + +She shook her head. + +"No. I'm an Evangelical." + +"Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. + +She laughed. + +"It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth--goodwill to men--that I can +understand. So that's settled. Now then--a fortnight next Wednesday?" + +"No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not. Wait a minute, Herbert! Where +are you going to live, and what are you going to do?" + +"I'm taking over the Dorset estates. Lots to do on them, and not much +money. Arthur washes his hands of them. There's an old farm where we can +live. In six months I shall have quarreled with all the neighbors, and life +will be worth living again." + +She lifted her eyebrows. + +"A charming prospect for your wife!" + +"Certainly. You'll have the life you were born for. You'll go round +after me--whitewashing the scandals I cause--or if you like to put it +sentimentally--binding up the wounds I make. But if I'm anything I'm a +sociologist, and my business is to make experiments. They will no doubt be +as futile as those I have been making here." + +"And where shall I come in?" + +"You'll be training up the boy--who'll profit by the experiments." + +"The boy?" + +"The boy--our boy--who's to have the estates," said Coryston, without a +moment's hesitation. + +Marion flushed, and pulled her work to her again. Coryston dropped on his +knees beside her, and asked her pardon with eyes whereof the male audacity +had passed into a steady and shining tenderness. + +When Coryston returned that night to the big house, he found his brothers +Arthur and James arrived for the week-end. Arthur was full of Parliamentary +gossip--"battles of kites and crows," of which Coryston was generally +intolerant. But on this occasion he took it silently, and Arthur rambled +on. James sat mildly beaming, with finger-tips joined, and the look of +one on the verge of a confidence. But he talked, after all--when Arthur +paused--only of music and the opera, and as his brothers were not musical, +he soon came to an end, and Arthur held the stage. They were gathered in +the smoking-room on the ground or garden floor, a room hung with pictures +of race-horses, and saddened by various family busts that had not been +thought good enough for the library. Outside, the March wind rattled +through trees as yet untouched by the spring, and lashed a shivering water +round the fountain nymphs. + +"Whoever could have dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, +in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from a +reverie. + +"Who? The Government? Lord!--what does it matter? Look here, you chaps--I +heard some news in Martover just now. Lord William Newbury died last +night--heart failure--expected for the last fortnight." + +Arthur received the news with the lively professional interest that one +landowner feels in another, and tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind +himself to ask Page when the funeral was to be, as the Member for the +division must of course attend it. James said, thoughtfully: + +"Edward, I saw, was ordained last week. And my letter from Marcia this +morning tells me she expects to see him in Rome, on his way to India. Poor +Lady William will be very much alone!" + +"If you make a solitude and call it religion, what can you expect?" said +Coryston, sharply. His face had darkened at the Newburys' name. As always, +it had evoked the memory of two piteous graves. Then, as he got up from his +chair, he said to Arthur: + +"I've fixed it up. Marion and I shall get married next month." + +The brothers looked a little embarrassed, though not at all surprised. +Corry's attachment to this plain, sensible lady, of moderate opinions, had +indeed astonished them enormously when they first became aware of it; but +they were now used to it. + +"All right, Corry!" said Arthur, slapping his brother on the back. "The +best chance of keeping you out of a madhouse! And a very nice woman! You +don't expect me to chum with her father?" + +"Not unless you wish to learn a thing or two--which was never your strong +point," said Coryston, dodging a roll of some Parliamentary paper or other, +which Arthur aimed at him. He turned to James. "Well, James, aren't you +going to congratulate me?--And why don't you do it yourself?" + +"Of course I congratulate you," said James, hastily. "Most sincerely!" + +But his expression--half agitated, half smiling--betrayed emotions so far +beyond the needs of the situation, that Coryston gave him a puzzled glance. +James indeed opened his mouth as though to speak. Then a bright, pink color +overspread his whole countenance from brow to chin; his lips shut and he +fell back in his chair. Presently he went away, and could be heard playing +Bach on the organ in the central hall. He returned to London the same +evening carrying a cargo of philosophical books, from the library, and a +number of novels, though as a rule he never read novels. + +The next morning, in a letter to Coryston, he announced his engagement to a +girl of nineteen, an orphan, and a pupil at the Royal College of Music. She +was the daughter of his Cambridge tutor--penniless, pretty, and musical. He +had paid her fees it seemed for several years, and the effect on him of her +charming mezzo-soprano voice, at a recent concert given by the College, had +settled the matter. The philosopher in love, who had been too shy to tell +his brothers _viva voce_, was quite free of tongue in writing; and +Coryston and Arthur, though they laughed, were glad that "old James" had +found the courage to be happy. Coryston remarked to Arthur that it now +remained for him to keep up the blue blood of the family. + +"Or Marcia," said Arthur, evading the personal reference. + +"Marcia?" Coryston threw his brother an amused, significant look, and said +nothing for a moment. But presently he dropped out: + +"Lester writes that he'll be in Rome next week looking after that Borghese +manuscript. He doesn't expect to get back here till May." + +For Lester had now been absent from Coryston some three or four weeks, +traveling on matters connected with the library. + +Arthur made no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, +twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and +boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with +success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family +house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had +by now asserted, or reasserted themselves; though fighting still with the +sore memory of Enid Glenwilliam. Was he going to allow his sister to marry +out of her rank--even though the lover were the best fellow in the world? +A man may marry whom he will, and the family is only secondarily affected. +But a woman is absorbed by the family of her husband. + +He finally shrugged his shoulders over it. + +"Marcia is as stiff-necked as Coryston," he said to himself, "if it comes +to that." + + * * * * * + +April followed. Amid a crowded Rome, alive with flowers and fountains under +a life-giving sun, Marcia Coryston became sharply conscious again of the +color and beauty interwoven with mere living, for the sane and sound among +men. Edward Newbury passed through on his way to Brindisi and Southern +India; and she saw him for an hour; an interview short and restrained, but +not to be forgotten by either of the two persons concerned. When it was +over Marcia shed a few secret tears--tears of painful sympathy, of an +admiration, which was half pity; and then threw herself once more with--as +it were--a gasp of renewed welcome, into the dear, kind, many-hued world +on which Edward Newbury had turned his back. Presently Lester arrived. He +became her constant companion through the inexhaustible spectacle of Rome; +and she could watch him among the students who were his fellows, modest +or learned as they, yet marked out from most of them by the signs he +bore--signs well known by now to her--of a poetic and eager spirit, +always and everywhere in quest of the human--of man himself, laughing or +suffering, behind his works. The golden days passed by; the blue and white +anemones bloomed and died in the Alban woods; the English crowd that comes +for Easter arrived and departed; and soon Marcia herself must go home, +carrying with her the passionate yet expectant feeling of a child, tired +out with happy days, and dreaming of more to come. + +These were private and personal affairs. But in March a catastrophe +happened which shook the mind of England, and profoundly altered the course +of politics. An American yacht with Glenwilliam on board was overtaken +off the Needles by a sudden and terrific storm, and went down, without a +survivor, and with nothing but some floating wreckage to tell the tale. The +Chancellor's daughter was left alone and poor. The passionate sympathy +and admiration which her father's party had felt for himself was in some +measure transferred to his daughter. But to the amazement of many persons, +she refused with scorn any pecuniary help, living on a small income, and +trying her hand, with some prospect of success, at literature. About six +weeks after her father's death Arthur Coryston found her out and again +asked her to marry him. It is probable there was some struggle in her mind, +but in the end she refused. "You are a kind, true fellow!" she said to him, +gratefully, "but it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do!" And then with a darkening +of her strong face: "There is only one thing I can do for _him_ +now--to serve his causes! And you don't care for one of them! No--no! +Good-by!--Good-by!" + +At last, in May, Marcia came back again to live--as she supposed--at +Coryston with Arthur, and do her duty by her own people. A wonderful spring +was abroad in the land. The gorse on the slopes of the hills was a marvel, +and when the hawthorns came out beside it, or flung their bloom along the +hedgerows and the streams; when far and near the cuckoo's voice made the +new world of blossom and growth articulate; when furtive birds slipped +joyously to and fro between the nests above and a teeming earth below; when +the west winds veering between south and north, and driving the great white +clouds before them, made, every day, a new marvel of the sky--Marcia would +often hold her breath and know within herself the growth of an answering +and a heavenly spring. Lester finished his scholar's errands in Rome and +Naples, and returned to Coryston in the middle week of May, in order to +complete his work there. He found much more to do than he supposed; he +found his friends, Coryston and Arthur, eager to capture and keep him; he +found in every field and wood the kindling beauty of the year; he found +Marcia!--and a bewildering though still shy message in her dark eyes. +Through what doubts and scruples, through what stages of unfolding +confidence and growing joy their minds passed, and to what end it all moved +on, let those imagine, to whom the purest and deepest of human emotions has +ever spoken, or is speaking now. + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Coryston Family, by Mrs. Humphry Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + +***** This file should be named 9507.txt or 9507.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/5/0/9507/ + +Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine +Paolucci, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed +Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Coryston Family + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9507] +[This file was first posted on October 7, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, +Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +THE CORYSTON FAMILY + +A NOVEL + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN + +1913 + + + + + + +TO + +G.M.T. AND J.P.T. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" _Frontispiece_ + +THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS +PERORATION + +AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP + +THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL + +"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU" + +MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME + +HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE + +NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN + + + + + +Book I + + +LADY CORYSTON + + +[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.] + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing +six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the +new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet. +The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less +crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact +throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence, +almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest; +cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway +a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great +parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their +seats, like arrows drawn to the string. + +Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the +Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor +below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs +placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save +as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them--women with their faces +pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber, +endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in +their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending +forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort +to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that +no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was +close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft _frou-frou_ +of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some +lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front +bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed +filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face +emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House +struck upon it. + +The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which +seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front +of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She +rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to +enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the +author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her +hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak +to her. + +Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what +seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure +and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention +had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a +lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But +it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have +paid no attention. + +"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the +girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning. + +The girl moved toward him, and returned. + +"What is it, Marcia?" + +"A note from Arthur, mamma." + +A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with +difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter: + +"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner." + +"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively. +"It's dreadfully tiring." + +"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for +me." + +She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker +below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his +audience. + +"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to +her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower +her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door +neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail, +however, than its predecessors. + +"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?" + +The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled +lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside +her. + +"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly. + +"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion. + +Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A +country cousin, I suppose." + +But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner. +Weren't you here when he was speaking?" + +"No--I've not long come in." + +The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the +left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. + +It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a +rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke +in the ringing sentences: + +"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a +growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the +main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform +and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; +change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, +while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the +landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set +yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may +yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national +policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated +by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every +means and every device in our power!" + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR +ROSE TO HIS PERORATION] + +The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the +Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided +at once. The third began to speak. + +A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several +persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner +addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had +just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her. +"Childish!--positively childish!" + +Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity +to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory +neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair. + +"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for +years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through." + +"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of +course she knew perfectly who you were." + +"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning +to her watch. + +"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back." + +"No. I might miss his getting up." + +There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the +occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the +farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more +distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, +to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though +her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches. + +It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion +was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but +singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows. +The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These +features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and chin, +the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face, set +in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole, handsome +impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture of Elizabeth +Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been often compared; +and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her personal appearance, +did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The +likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by +her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered +hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of +many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black +silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into +the service of her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid +the large and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore +habitually a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the +lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For +the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while +loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore +seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self. + +In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being--oppressively +wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers +were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or +the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be +used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be +used. On the contrary, her husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her +daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of +her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very +much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just +as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends. + +As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of +Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as +of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances +of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain +than blows of some kind before long.... + +"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would +get him in." + +Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the +Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who +was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the +debate. + +"Has he just come in?" + +"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected +to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston, +impatiently. + +But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus unkindly +referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the House lumbered or +fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to infinity. + +"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother +among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him out +before. One can see he's on wires." + +For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening speeches, +which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had +sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom +her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in +hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the +House. His attitude gave the impression of one just about to spring to his +feet. + +But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time before +springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman--had heard him often +before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise with ease and cease +with difficulty. She would certainly have time to get a cup of tea and come +back. So with a word to her mother she groped her way through the dark +gallery across the corridor toward a tearoom. But at the door of the +gallery she turned back. There through the lattice which shuts in the +Ladies' Gallery, right across the House, she saw the Strangers' Gallery at +the other end. The man whose head had been propped on his hands when she +first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be +looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the +Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His +face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the +clear, critical eyes, their sudden frown or smile. + +"I wonder what _he_'ll think of Arthur's speech--and whether he's +seen Coryston. I wonder whether he knows there's going to be an awful row +to-night. Coryston's mad!" + +Coryston was her eldest brother, and she was very fond of him. But the way +he had been behaving!--the way he had been defying mamma!--it was really +ridiculous. What could he expect? + +She seemed to be talking to the distant face, defending her mother and +herself with a kind of unwilling deference. + +"After all, do I really care what he thinks?" + +She turned and went her way to the tearoom. As she entered it she saw some +acquaintances at the farther end, who waved their hands to her, beckoning +her to join them. She hastened across the room, much observed by the way, +and conscious of the eyes upon her. It was a relief to find herself among a +group of chattering people. + +Meanwhile at the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their +tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers--by name, Mrs. Verity +and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society +and in the precincts of the House of Commons--the Ladies' Gallery, the +Terrace, the dining-rooms--though she was but an unmarried girl of two-and- +twenty. Quite apart, however, from her own qualities and claims, Enid +Glenwilliam was conspicuous as the only daughter of the most vigorously +hated and ardently followed man of the moment--the North Country miner's +agent, who was now England's Finance Minister. + +"You saw who that young lady was?" said Mrs. Frant to Miss Glenwilliam. "I +thought you knew her." + +"Marcia Coryston? I have just been introduced to her. But she isn't allowed +to know me!" The laugh that accompanied the words had a pleasant childish +chuckle in it. + +Mrs. Frant laughed also. + +"Girls, I suppose, have to do what they're told," she said, dryly. "But it +_was_ Arthur Coryston, wasn't it, who sent you that extra order for +to-day, Enid?" + +"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his +mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother +will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's +quite a nice boy--but--" + +She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which +smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and +expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, +it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm +for its weapon. + +"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the +papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and +eyes. + +Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively. + +"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all +talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say." + +"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a +few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a +thing as _matria potestas_? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned +at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston +stands for. How splendid--to stand for anything--nowadays!" + +The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their +characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as +her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd +look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?" + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely +finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a +chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty. + +"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, +with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled--"My dear! I came to bring +you a word of sympathy." + +Lady Coryston looked at her coldly. + +"Are you speaking of Coryston?" + +"Naturally. The only logical result of those proceedings last night would +be, of course, the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner. Coryston wants our +heads! There's nothing else to be said. I took the speeches for young men's +nonsense--just midsummer madness, but I find people very angry. _Your_ +son! one of _us_!" + +"I thought the speeches very clever," said Lady Coryston. + +"I'm rejoiced you take it so philosophically, my dear Emilia!"--the tone +was a little snappish--"I confess I thought you would have been much +distressed." + +"What's the good of being distressed? I have known Coryston's opinions for +a long time. One has to _act_--of course," the speaker added, with +deliberation. + +"Act? I don't understand." + +Lady Coryston did not enlighten her. Indeed, she did not hear her. She was +bending forward eagerly. The fair-haired youth on the back benches, who had +been so long waiting his turn, was up at last. + +It was a maiden speech, and a good one, as such things go. There was enough +nervousness and not too much; enough assurance and not too much. The facts +and figures in it had been well arranged. A modest jest or two tripped +pleasantly out; and the general remarks at the end had been well chosen +from the current stock, and were not unduly prolonged. Altogether a +creditable effort, much assisted by the young man's presence and manner. He +had no particular good looks, indeed; his nose ascended, his chin satisfied +no one; but he had been a well-known bat in the Oxford eleven of his day, +and was now a Yeomanry officer; he held himself with soldierly erectness, +and his slender body, cased in a becoming pale waistcoat under his tail +coat, carried a well-shaped head covered with thick and tumbling hair. + +The House filled up a little to hear him. His father had been a member of +Parliament for twenty years, and a popular member. There was some curiosity +to know what his son would make of his first speech. And springing from the +good feeling which always animates the House of Commons on such occasions, +there was a fair amount of friendly applause from both sides when he sat +down. + +"Features the father, and takes after the mother!" said a white-haired +listener in the Strangers' Gallery to himself, as the young man ceased +speaking. "She's drilled him! Well, now I suppose I must go and +congratulate her." He rose from his seat and began to make his way out. In +the passage outside the Gallery he overtook and recognized the man whose +entrance into the House Lady Coryston and her daughter had noticed about an +hour earlier. + +"Well, what did you think of it, Lester?" + +The other smiled good-humoredly. + +"Capital! Everybody must make a beginning. He's taken a lot of pains." + +"It's a beastly audience!" said Sir Wilfrid Bury, in reply. "Don't I know +it! Well, I'm off to congratulate. How does the catalogue get on?" + +"Oh, very well. I sha'n't finish till the summer. There's a good deal still +to do at Coryston. Some of the things are really too precious to move +about." + +"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering +his voice. + +The young man smiled discreetly. + +"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her." + +"I suppose she's pressed you into the service--makes you help Arthur?" + +"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own +secretary." + +"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?" + +"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get +through." + +"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house." + +"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own +arrangements." + +"Ta-ta." + +Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to +the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been +chatting, was in some sort a protege of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid, +indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford +historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid +work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons. +A generation earlier, Lester's father had been a brother officer of Sir +Wilfrid's, in days when the Lester family was still rich, and before the +crashing failure of the great banking-house of the name. + +Meanwhile, at the other end of the House of Commons, Lady Coryston had +been sitting pleasantly absorbed, watching her son, who lay now like a man +relieved, lolling on the half-empty bench, chatting to a friend beside him. +His voice was still in her ears: mingled with the memory of other voices +from old, buried times. For more than twenty years how familiar had she +been with this political scene!--these galleries and benches, crowded or +listless; these opposing Cabinets--the Ins and Outs--on either side of the +historic table; the glitter of the Mace at its farther end; the books, the +old morocco boxes, the tops of the official wigs, the ugly light which +bathed it all; the exhausted air, the dreariness, the boredom! all +worth while, these last, just for the moments, the crises, the play of +personalities, the conflict of giants, of which they were the inevitable +conditions. There, on the second bench above the gangway on the Tory +side, her husband, before he succeeded to the title, had sat through four +Parliaments. And from the same point of vantage above she had watched him +year after year, coming in and out, speaking occasionally, never eloquent +or brilliant, but always respected; a good, worthy, steady-going fellow +with whom no one had any fault to find, least of all his wife, to whom he +had very easily given up the management of their common life, while he +represented her political opinions in Parliament much more than his own. + +Until--until? + +Well, until in an evil hour, a great question, the only political question +on which he differed and had always differed from his wife, on which he +felt he _must_ speak for himself and stand on his own feet, arose to +divide them. There, in that Gallery, she had sat, with rage and defeat in +her heart, watching him pass along, behind the Speaker's chair, toward the +wrong division lobby, his head doggedly held down, as though he knew and +felt her eyes upon him, but must do his duty all the same. On this one +matter he had voted against her, spoken against her, openly flouted and +disavowed her. And it had broken down their whole relation, poisoned +their whole life. "Women are natural tyrants," he had said to her once, +bitterly--"no man could torment me as you do." And then had come his +death--his swift last illness, with those tired eyes still alive in the +dumb face, after speech and movement were no longer possible--eyes which +were apt to close when she came near. + +And yet, after all--the will!--the will which all his relations and friends +had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable +failure to play the man in his own household, and in which _she_, his +wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate +her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and +personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, +and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great Irish, the +great Devonshire properties, the accumulated savings of a lifetime, they +were all hers--hers absolutely. Her husband had stood last in the entail; +and with a view to her own power, she had never allowed him to renew it. + +Coryston had been furiously angry when the terms of his father's will were +revealed. She could never think without shivering of certain scenes, with +Coryston in the past--of a certain other scene that was still to come. +Well, it had been a duel between them; and after apparently sore defeat, +she had won, so far as influence over his father was concerned. And since +his father's death she had given him every chance. He had only to hold his +tongue, to keep his monstrous, _sans-culotte_ opinions to himself, at +least, if he could not give them up; and she would have restored him his +inheritance, would have dealt with him not only justly, but generously. He +had chosen; he had deliberately chosen. Well, now then it was for her--as +she had said to old Lady Frensham--it was for her to reply, but not in +words only. + +She fell back upon the thought of Arthur, Arthur, her darling; so manly, +and yet so docile; so willing to be guided! Where was he, that she might +praise him for his speech? She turned, searching the dark doorway with her +eyes. But there was no Arthur, only the white head and smiling countenance +of her old friend, Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was beckoning to her. She +hurriedly bade Marcia, who had just returned to the Gallery, to keep her +seat for her, and went out into the corridor to speak to him. + +"Well, not bad, was it? These youngsters have got the trick! I thought it +capital. But I dare say you'll have all sorts of fault to find, you most +exacting of women!" + +"No, no; it was good," she said, eagerly. "And he's improving fast." + +"Well then"--the wise old eyes beside her laughed kindly into hers--"be +content, and don't take Coryston's escapades too hardly!" + +She drew back, and her long face and haughty mouth stiffened in the way he +knew. + +"Are you coming to see me on Sunday?" she said, quietly. + +He took his snubbing without resentment. + +"I suppose so. I don't often miss, do I? Well, I hear Marcia was the beauty +at the Shrewsbury House ball, and that--" he whispered something, laughing +in her ear. + +Lady Coryston looked a little impatient. + +"Oh, I dare say. And if it's not he, it will be some one else. She'll marry +directly. I always expected it. Well, now I must go. Have you seen Arthur?" + +"Mother! Hullo, Sir Wilfrid!" + +There was the young orator, flushed and radiant. But his mother could say +very little to him, for the magnificent person in charge of the Gallery and +its approaches intervened. "No talking allowed here, sir, please." Even +Lady Coryston must obey. All she could add to her hurried congratulations +was: + +"You're coming in to-night, remember, Arthur?--nine-thirty." + +"Yes, I've paired. I'm coming. But what on earth's up, mother?" + +Her lips shut closely. + +"Remember, nine-thirty!" She turned and went back into the darkness of the +Gallery. + +Arthur hesitated a moment in the passage outside. Then he turned back +toward the little entrance-room opposite the entrance to the ordinary +Ladies' Gallery, where he found another attendant. + +"Is Miss Glenwilliam here?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"Yes, sir, in the front row, with Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. Do you wish +to speak to her, sir? The Gallery's pretty empty." + +Arthur Coryston went in. The benches sloped upward, and on the lowest one, +nearest the grille, he saw the lady of his quest, and was presently bending +over her. + +"Well," he said, flushing, "I suppose you thought it all bosh!" + +"Not at all! That's what you have to say. What else can you say? You did it +excellently." + +Her lightly mocking eyes looked into his. His flush deepened. + +"Are you going to be at the Frenshams' dance?" he asked her, presently. + +"We're not invited. They're too savage with father. But we shall be at the +Opera to-morrow night." + +His face lightened. But no more talk was possible. A Minister was up, and +people were crowding back into the Gallery. He hurriedly pressed her hand +and departed. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia +noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the +fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her +eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner--her +mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal +summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So +Arthur--evidently puzzled--had paired for the evening, and would return +from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and +Coryston had wired an hour before dinner--"Inconvenient, but will turn up." + +What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well +that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's +position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, +on a jointure; leaving their former splendors--the family mansion and the +family income--behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and +efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the +daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past +could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although +she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been +the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule +in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children +except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his +grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached +and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, +when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a +quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his +opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad +after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction +between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred +while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had +been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile. + +Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for +taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly +his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that +there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why +be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord? + +And really--of late--his behavior! Never coming to see his mother--writing +the most outrageous things in support of the Government--speaking for +Radical candidates in their very own county--denouncing by name some of +their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible! + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She +went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in +white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she +passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint +and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her +childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the +equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, +which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the +staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be +like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family +and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing +association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse +whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident +flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the +picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long +Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night. + +Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark +eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength--she +certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. +The face reminded one of ripe fruit--so rich was the downy bloom on the +delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch +of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it +perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would +see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding +prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were +rich--quite unconsciously--in that magic of sex which belongs to only +a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and +occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many +things--in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which +she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her +whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of +life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually--the +unknown!--yearning for his call, his command.... + +There were many people--witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her +mother--who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious +effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three +seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and +set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she +received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, +copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused--or +made her mother refuse for her--one or more of the men whom all other +mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one +quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned +her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural +arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained _nonchalant_ +and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of +passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. +Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's +opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out +of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long +the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed. + +As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of +Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with +certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into +the drawing-room in her mother's wake. + +The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston +strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian +pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on +wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," +held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth +looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since +1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good +enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their +ancestors were now discredited--laughed out of court--as collectors, owing +to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a +number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or +by tables holding _objets d'art_ of the same mixed quality as the +pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses +with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression +of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought +suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in +dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted +floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. +The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind +her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, +sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck +through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till +now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some +matter of family property--some selling or buying transaction--which a +mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might +well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting +in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a +recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in +the estates "--he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, +not mine." + +And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for +granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some +time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? +Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have +become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women +make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother +was an exceptional woman. + +But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, +and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews +with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts +she struck up conversation. + +"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?" + +"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help +it, she dresses so outrageously." + +"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that +kind of thing." + +Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows. + +"That's where the ill-breeding comes in--that a young girl should make +herself so conspicuous." + +"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. +People on our side--people you'd never think--will do anything to get her +for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she +says." + +"That I can quite believe! Yes--I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the +other day--dining--when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that +_man_!" + +Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her +path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself. + +Marcia laughed. + +"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he +was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't +the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a +friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it. + +"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly. + +Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant +sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and +took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large +envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her +mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a +small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other +side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky +cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, +Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt +furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That +patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the +time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer. + +In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, +then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all +kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in +front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, +"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of +the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby +greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with +indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's +all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!" + +In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also +of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both +of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, +as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial +men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions +matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not +exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the +nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection. + +He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. +And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint +lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each +other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than +the irreconcilable differences. + +Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent +political escapades--remarks which she took in complete silence--he settled +himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to +say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the +likeness--through all contrast--between mother and son. Lady Coryston was +tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing--a Lady Macbeth of the +drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet +of a man--on wires--never at ease--the piled fair hair overbalancing the +face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both +physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. _Will_--carried to +extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady +Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it +was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy. + +Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed +evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled +to read her mother--the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of +expression--from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of +nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time. + +She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of +Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" +but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to +sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded +foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid +oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia +noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an +old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints. + +"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with +a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of +business--not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will +hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, +by the family--the estates--and the country." + +At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially +when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something +peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection. + +Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt +chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his +head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; +and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was +pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. +And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what +Was going to happen. + +"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in +leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father +did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him--" + +Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an +anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking +went on: + +"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that +in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and +all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in +danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out +his ideas--the ideas he and I had held in common--and should remain the +guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had +inherited--and in which he believed--" + +Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his +elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his +mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the +slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear +of the spaniel against the other. + +"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's +death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I +cannot have satisfied _all_ my children." She paused a moment. "I have +not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury--that none of you +can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up--nothing +more. And I have certainly _wished_"--she laid a heavy emphasis on +the word--"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own +fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for +any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own +money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to +provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston--" + +She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was +certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh. + +"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and +prunella.'" + +James murmured, "Corry--old man?" Marcia flushed angrily. + +"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that +everything he could possibly have claimed--" + +"Short of the estates--which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with +an amused look. + +His mother went on without noticing the interruption: + +"--would have been his--either now or in due time--if he would only have +made certain concessions--" + +"Sold my soul and held my tongue?--quite right!" said Coryston. "I have +scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect." + +Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed +emotion. + +"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and +consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his +father's convictions--" + +"What!--you think he still has them--in the upper regions?" + +Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew +pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's +side, she took her hand. + +"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult +your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. + +Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands +on his sides. + +"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting +something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been +dishing me altogether?--cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what +you mean? Let's have it!" + +Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. + +"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way--" + +"Yes--but please _tell_ it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to +keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I +guess, from your will--which concern me--and the rest of them"--he waved +his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get +done with it." + +"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." + +With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady +Coryston took up the folded paper. + +"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which +concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, +in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily +at Coryston--"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But--" + +"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest +son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while +I'm speculating as to what's coming." + +"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that +Coryston is behaving abominably." + +But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with +lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. + +Lady Coryston began to read. + +Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing +the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his +custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, +Arthur sprang to his feet. + +"I say, mother!" + +"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. + +She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: + +"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, +her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper +which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat +dumfoundered. + +James approached his mother. + +"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." + +She turned toward him. + +"Yes, James, I shall maintain them." + +Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair +hair as though in bewilderment. + +"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to +me I shall hand it back to Corry." + +"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in +trust," said Lady Coryston. + +Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a +little distance. + +"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches +have contributed?" + +"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have +intrusted you with the estates." + +"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The +letter which he left for me said as much." + +"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly. + +"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see +how things stand." + +He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the +items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion--you cut me +out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to +buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my +present fortune--the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I +understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying +properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's +mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all--all, that +is, which would have normally come to me--or _nothing_!" + +He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features +sparkling. + +"I will have all--or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for +a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of +risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I +should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital." + +"You make it your business to wound, Coryston." + +"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been +_absolutely in my right_!" He brought his hand down with passion +on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I--the next +generation--ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no +moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. +There is always something to be said for property, so long as each +generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property +is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, +_then_ it is what the Frenchman called it, _theft_!--or worse.... +Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven +thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property--well!--I'm going to a +large extent to manage it!" + +Lady Coryston started. + +"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately. + +"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, +calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound +ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title +I can't stand for our parliamentary division--but I shall look out for +somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm +afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with +me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would +always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed--least of all +by a woman." + +Lady Coryston rose from her seat. + +"James!--Arthur!--" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will +understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish +that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it +hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and +understand me. Good night." + +"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously. + +She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm +round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding +Coryston at bay the while. + +As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and +opened it for her. + +"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I--but we'll play +fair." + +Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and +Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched +him in the ribs. + +"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! +I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you." + +Arthur grew red. + +"Of course it was nonsense to you!" + +"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?" + +"Nothing that matters to you, Corry." + +"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!" + +"Do hold your tongue, Corry!" + +"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother +will fight you for all she's worth." + +"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that." + +"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the +estates, Arthur." + +"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall +find a way of getting out of them--the greater part of them, anyway. All +the same, Corry, if I do--you'll have to give guarantees." + +"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"--Coryston gave a great +stretch--"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order +it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. +You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I +tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to +take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the +whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!" + +He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping +and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the +legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy +thousand a year. + +Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their +bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no +sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the +landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book. + +She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to +be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house +from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large +ground-floor room at the back. + +"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" +And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her +mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. +It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of +Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But +that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into +the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain +she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the +second volume of _Diana of the Crossways_. Why not? It was only just +eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had +gone to bed. + +She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she +opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, +and she heard some one moving about. + +"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment." + +A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk +heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed +toward the figure at the door. + +"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do +anything for you?" + +The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage +behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, +and blue eyes. + +"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know +where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her +volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too +strong. + +"I suppose my brothers have been here?" + +Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment. + +"They have only just gone--at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went +some time ago." + +Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase. + +"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?" + +Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did +nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled. + +"But they've told you--he and Arthur--they've told you what's happened?" + +"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them." + +"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia--"when he wants to do +something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious +plan?--of coming to settle down at Coryston--in our very pockets--in order +to make mother's life a burden to her?" + +"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll +do it." + +"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He +calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's +consciences don't matter a bit." + +Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out +impetuously: + +"You think he's been badly treated?" + +"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one." + +"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, +as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's _splendid_ +my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it." + +Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of +covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks. + +"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a +Liberal." + +"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't +agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if +I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative." + +"But you think other things matter more than politics?" + +"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially--" He stopped. + +"Especially--for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered +his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I +know." + +"Beauty--poetry--sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?" + +He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her. + +There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made +a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he +raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, +in the darkness, by the solitary light--the lines of her young form, the +delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes. + +She held out her hand. + +"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!" + +She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go." + +The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of +the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message +mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young +girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly +envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty +made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady +Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black," +such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left +nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or +Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in +search of a young one. + +"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?" + +The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the +honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of +their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted +good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless +final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing. + +Then she ran across the passage to her mother's sitting-room. Lady Coryston +had complained of illness during the day and had not been down-stairs. But +Marcia's experience was that when her mother was ill she was not less, but +more active than usual, and that withdrawal to her sitting-room generally +meant a concentration of energy. + +Lady Coryston was sitting with a writing-board on her knee, and a +reading-lamp beside her, lighting a table covered with correspondence. +Within her reach was a deep cupboard in the wall containing estate and +business letters, elaborately labeled and subdivided. A revolving bookcase +near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the +paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the _Quarterly Review_. The walls +of the room were covered with books--a fine collection of county histories, +and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, +specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger +generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been +the normal look of the original. His portrait by Holl hung over the +mantelpiece, flanked on either side by water-color pictures of his sons and +daughter in their childhood. + +There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and Lady Coryston never +sat in it. She objected to flowers as being in the way; and there was not +a sign anywhere of the photographs and small knick-knacks which generally +belitter a woman's sitting--room. Altogether, an ugly room, but +characteristic, businesslike, and not without a dignity of its own. + +"Mother!--why don't you rest a little?" cried Marcia, eying the black-robed +figure and the long pale face, marked by very evident fatigue. "You've been +writing letters or seeing people all day. How long did James stay?" + +"About an hour." + +"And Mr. Page?" Mr. Page was the agent of the main Coryston estate. + +"Some time. There was a great deal to settle." + +"Did you"--the girl fidgeted--"did you tell him about Coryston?" + +"Certainly. He says there is only one house in the neighborhood he could +take--" + +"He has taken it." Marcia opened her right hand, in which she crushed a +telegram. "Bellows has just brought me this." + +Lady Coryston opened and read it. + +"Have taken Knatchett for three years. Tell mother." Lady Coryston's lips +stiffened. + +"He has lost no time. He can vex and distress us, of course. We shall have +to bear it." + +"Vex and distress us! I should think he can!" cried Marcia. "Has James been +talking to him?" + +"I dare say," said Lady Coryston, adding, with a slight, sarcastic laugh, +"James is a little too sure of being always in the right." + +From which Marcia guessed that James had not only been talking to Coryston, +but also remonstrating with his mother, which no doubt accounted for Lady +Coryston's worn-out looks. James had more effect upon her than most people; +though never quite effect enough. + +Marcia stood with one foot on the fender, her gaze fixed on her mother in +a frowning abstraction. And suddenly Lady Coryston, lifting her eyes, +realized her daughter, and the vision that she made. + +"You look very well, Marcia. Have I seen that dress before?" + +"No. I designed it last week. Ah!"--the sound of a distant gong made itself +heard--"there's the motor. Well, good night, mother. Take care of yourself +and do go to bed soon." + +She stooped to kiss her mother. + +"Who's going with you?" + +"Waggin and James. Arthur may come in. He thinks the House will be up +early. And I asked Mr. Lester. But he can't come for the first part." + +Her mother held her sleeve and looked up, smiling. Lady Coryston's smiles +were scarcely less formidable than her frowns. + +"You expect to see Edward Newbury?" + +"I dare say. They have their box, as usual." + +"Well!--run off and enjoy yourself. Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." + +"Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's +governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, +partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that +when she was wanted to act duenna, she came--at a moment's notice. And she +was very willing to come. She lived in an Earl's Court lodging, and these +occasional expeditions with Marcia represented for her the gilt on her +modest gingerbread. She was a small, refined woman, with a figure still +slender, gray hair, and a quiet face. Her dresses were years old, but she +had a wonderful knack of bringing them up-to-date, and she never did Marcia +any discredit. She adored Marcia, and indeed all the family. Lady Coryston +called her "Miss Wagstaffe"--but to the others, sons and daughter, she was +only "Waggin." There were very few things about the Coryston family she did +not know; but her discretion was absolute. + +As she saw Marcia running down-stairs her face lit up. + +"My dear, what a lovely gown!--and how sweet you look!" + +"Don't talk nonsense, Waggin!--and put on this rose I've brought for you!" + +Waggin submitted while Marcia adorned her and gave various pats and pulls +to her hair. + +"There!--you look ten years younger," said the girl, with her bright look, +stepping back. "But where is James?" + +The butler stepped forward. + +"Mr. James will meet you at the Opera." + +"Oh, good!" murmured Marcia in her companion's ear. "Now we can croon." + +And croon they did through the long crowded way to Covent Garden. By the +time the motor reached St. Martin's Lane, Waggin was in possession of all +that had happened. She had long expected it, having shrewdly noted many +signs of Lady Coryston's accumulating wrath. But now that "Corry," her dear +"Corry," with whom she had fought so many a schoolroom fight in the days +of his Eton jackets, was really disinherited, her concern was great. Tears +stood in her kind eyes. "Poor Corry!" alternated in her mouth with "Your +poor mother!" Sinner and judge appealed equally to her pity. + +Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce. + +"What else could he expect? Father _did_ leave the estates to +mother--just because Corry had taken up such views--so that she might keep +us straight." + +[Illustration: AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP] + +"But _afterward_! My dear, he is so young! And young men change." + +Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned--except with this +awe and vagueness--scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists +than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. + +Marcia shook her head. + +"He won't change. Mother did not ask it. All she asked was--for her sake +and father's--that he should hold his tongue." + +A flush sprang to Waggin's faded cheek. + +"A _man_!--a grown man!" she said, wondering--"forbid him to speak +out--speak freely?" + +Marcia looked anxiously at her companion. It was very seldom that Waggin +betrayed so much heat. + +"I know," said the girl, gloomily--"'Your money or your life'--for I +suppose it sounds like that. Corry would say his convictions are his life. +But why 'a man,' Waggin?" She straightened her pretty shoulders. "I don't +believe you'd mind if it were a woman. You don't believe in a _woman_ +having convictions!" + +Waggin looked a little bewildered. + +"I'm old-fashioned, I suppose--but--" + +Marcia laughed triumphantly. + +"Why shouldn't Corry respect his mother's convictions? She wants to prove +that women oughtn't to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even--" + +"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so +splendid--so splendid!" + +"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, +Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!" + +Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl's. The note of +storm in Marcia's mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to +change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen +with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little +niece--and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr. +Arthur--and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!--not exactly +handsome--but you couldn't possibly pass her over." + +"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of +course, Waggin, they weren't alone?" + +"Oh no--probably not!--though--though I didn't see any one else. They +seemed so full of talk--I didn't speak to Mr. Arthur. _Who_ do you say +she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently. + +Marcia turned upon her. + +"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It's too bad of +Arthur! It's abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I've heard +things said sometimes--but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, +Waggin!--you _didn't_ see them alone?" + +The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course +Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does +exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless +she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But +_Arthur_!" + +Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they +passed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress. + +"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention +it! I'm sure there's nothing in it." + +"I've half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned +emphasis. "But I wouldn't believe it!--I shall tell Arthur what I think of +him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but +that's quite another thing. It's as though mother were never to have any +pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!--behind her back, +too." + +"My dear!--it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, +and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your +mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand--" + +"To please mother--and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with +perfect composure. "You're thinking of Edward Newbury?" + +"Who else should I be thinking of!--after all you told me last week?" + +"Oh yes--I like Edward Newbury"--the tone betrayed a curious +irritation--"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer +him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!" + +"Marcia--dearest!--don't be cruel to him!" + +"No--but he mustn't press me! I've given him hints--and he won't take them. +I can't make up my mind, Waggin. I can't! It's not only marrying him--it's +the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me--at +Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party--evening prayers in the private chapel, +_before dinner_!--nobody allowed to breakfast in bed--everybody driven +off to church--and such a _fuss_ about Lent! It made me shiver. I'm +not that sort, Waggin--I never shall be." + +And as again a stream of light from a music-hall facade poured into the +carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark +eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand. + +"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired +lady--"make your own conditions!" + +"No, no!--never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, +kindest--and underneath--_iron_! Most people are taken in. I'm not." + +There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing--she +knew it--would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though +she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special +pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still +undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family--the young man himself heir +presumptive to a marquisate money--high character--everything that mortal +mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted--Waggin was certain of it. +The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And +yet--let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In +Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him. + +Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for +an important "first night"--there is no sight in London, perhaps, that +ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern +life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide +the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women--women old and +young--their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray +heads; the roses that youth wears--divinely careless; or the diamonds +wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years. + +Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted +positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that +instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the +Greek called _hubris_, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. +It meant in her--"I am young--I am handsome--the world is all on my +side--who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave +a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her +actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, +so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of +compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. +Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a +narrow inexperience. + +The overture had begun--in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience +was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of +those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia +sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising +her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up +of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It +was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had +joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the +music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over. + +"Marcia--you vandal!--listen!" + +The girl started and blushed. + +"I don't understand the music, James!--it's so strange and barbarous." + +"Well, it isn't Glueck, certainly," said James, smiling. + +Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the +crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear space of sky, +a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell--winds caught +it--snatches of tempest overpowered it--shrieking demons rushed upon it and +silenced it. But it persisted; passing finally into a processional march, +through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end. + +"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are +the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host." + +The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had +but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of +Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and +fifty years after Glueck, how to make it speak, through music, to more +modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, +and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous +and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which had soon gripped Covent +Garden. + +There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the +allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But +at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary +blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. Hellas cannot avenge itself on the +Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds +back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as goddess of the land, she +claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the +host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has +vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your +daughter!--Iphigenia!" + +Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the +stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, +bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that +she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner +despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. +Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant +joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose +neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to +kiss, saying tender, touching things--how she has missed him--how long the +time has been.... + +The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an +old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli +in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in +which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the +soul. + +Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, +smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but +in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in +noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a +seat beside Marcia. + +He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted +to hear this--with you." + +"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a +motion of her face toward the Iphigenia. + +"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it--please!--for the +ordinary 'star'--business." + +"But she is the play!" + +"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of +sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the +death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is +the dirge music beginning." + +Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of +the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various +incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man +beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys +and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not +long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of +the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. +They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then +begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball +that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept +into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with +him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed +to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no +avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached +her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which +were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through +the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. +With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her. + +Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once +exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, +as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her +dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, +of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's +knees, imploring him to save her: + +"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my +father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before +my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of +death. 'Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have +I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death? +Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have +that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers." + +She takes the infant Orestes in her arms: + +"Brother!--you are but a tiny helper--and yet--come, weep with me!--come, +pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how--silently--he +implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! +He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble +dying!" + +The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast--through +one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in +art. Wonderful theme!--the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more +than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed +vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery +of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate--the savage creed--the +blood-thirst of the goddess--and the maddened army howling for its prey. + +Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too +horrible!" + +Newbury shook his head, smiling. + +"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race--of the +Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. +She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art--all religion. Ah--here +is Achilles!" + +There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to +fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, +adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his +bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her--die for her--if +need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs +up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the +background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on +his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from +the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her +champion, loves him. + +The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the +whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath. + +"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's. + +He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling +compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer. + +But the golden moment dies!--forever. Shrieking and crashing, the +vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing +blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon +is threatened--Achilles--Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the +distance like the roar of an uncaged beast. + +Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and +thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to +throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. + +"Mother!--we cannot fight with gods. I die!--I die! But let me die +gloriously--unafraid. Hellas calls to me!--Hellas, my country. I alone can +give her what she asks--fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the +good of Hellas--not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for +women and their fatherland?--and shall one life, one little life, stand in +their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!--pull down the towers of +Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me--this be my glory!--this, +child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that +Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are +slave-folk--and _we_ are free!" + +Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for +what she is--now that he has "looked into her soul"--must he lose her?--is +it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her. + +But she puts him gently aside. + +"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be _my_ +boon to save Hellas, if I may." + +And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await +her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if +she calls to him--even at the last moment. + +But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding +all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief--she lifts the song +of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place +of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her. + +"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day--torch of Zeus!" + +"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear +light!--farewell!" + +"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is +the death--_she accepts_!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The +exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled +strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's +dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the +growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; +the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; +fascination--revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat +drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera +House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the +stage, with the bouquets at its feet.... + +Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed +it. She recoiled--released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward +Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury. + + * * * * * + +Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back +of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid +much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were +on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The +profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full--too full!--of +consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a +flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her +small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. +And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much +courtesy to Marcia's "companion." + +"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big +fight--Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows--and somebody +having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He +spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad +company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite." + +Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front +of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was +bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly +Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and +showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood +looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, +in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half +contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping--in +spite of its conformity in dress--with the splendid opera-house, and the +bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern +statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate--for +Democracy--Labor--personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern +world has developed it--armed with all the weapons of the other two! + +"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims +play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I +get out of you?--and you?'" + +Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He +was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days +when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime. + +"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard +by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to +notice--and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!" + +"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely; "if that's what you mean." His eyes +rested a moment on the striking figure of the Chancellor's daughter. +"Certainly--I'll put in a word. But she is a very fascinating young woman, +my dear!" + +"I know," said Marcia, helplessly, "I know." + +There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid asked: + +"When do you go down to Coryston?" + +"Just before Whitsuntide." + +He looked round with a smile, saw that Edward Newbury was still in the box, +and whispered, mischievously: + +"Hoddon Grey, too, I think, will not be empty?" + +Marcia kept an indifferent face. + +"I dare say. You're coming?" Sir Wilfrid nodded. "Oh, _have_ you +heard--?" + +She murmured to him behind her fan. Sir Wilfrid knew all their history--had +been her father's most intimate friend. She gave him a rapid account of +Coryston's disinheriting. The old man rose, his humorous eyes suddenly +grave. + +"We'll talk of this--at Coryston. Ah, Newbury--I took your chair--I resign. +Hullo, Lester--good evening. Heavens, there's the curtain going up. Good +night!" + +He hurried away. Newbury moved forward, his eager look on Marcia. But she +turned, smiling, to the young librarian. + +"You haven't seen this ballet, Mr. Lester?--Schumann's 'Carnival'? Oh, +you mustn't stand so far back. We can make room, can't we?" She addressed +Newbury, and before he knew what had happened, the chairs had been so +manipulated that Lester sat between Marcia and Newbury, while Waggin had +drawn back into the shadow. The eyes of Marcia's duenna twinkled. It +pleased her that this magnificent young man, head, it was said, of the +young High Church party, distinguished in many ways, and as good as he was +handsome, was not to have too easy a game. Marcia had clearly lost her head +a little at the Shrewsbury House ball; and was now trying to recover it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +After one of those baffling fortnights of bitter wind and cold, which so +often mark the beginning of an English May, when all that the spring has +slowly gained since March seems to be confiscated afresh by returning +winter, the weather had repented itself, the skies had cleared, and +suddenly, under a flood of sunshine, there were blue-bells in the +copses, cowslips in the fields, a tawny leaf breaking on the oaks, a new +cheerfulness in the eyes and gait of the countryman. + +A plain, pleasant-looking woman sat sewing out-of-doors, in front of a +small verandaed cottage, perched high on a hillside which commanded a wide +view of central England. The chalk down fell beneath her into a sheath of +beech woods; the line of hills, slope behind slope, ran westward to the +sunset, while eastward they mounted to a wooded crest beyond which the +cottage could not look. Northward, beginning some six hundred feet below +the cottage, stretched a wide and varied country, dotted with villages and +farms, with houses and woods, till it lost itself in the haze of a dim +horizon. + +A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the +French windows of the cottage. + +"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?" + +"Between three and four, papa." + +"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a +long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably--Sunday or no +Sunday!" + +"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting +her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern. + +"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston--who said he would be here to +tea." + +Miss Atherstone looked a little startled. + +"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I +wrote yesterday." + +"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in +the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the +estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent +terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it +up to Coryston somehow." + +"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly. + +"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's +not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I +never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby." + +"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of +brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever +people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a +retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers +in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the +midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty constituencies by +heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the +pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count +by any important Minister framing an important bill. + +He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of +English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large +Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship--little known except to an inner +ring--was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did +nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been +the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live +in history. + +Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and +much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life. +Brilliant creatures--men and women--came and went, to and from the cottage. +Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not +much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, +and a vegetarian. Marion read the _Church Family Times_, went +diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough +about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and +her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other. + +Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one +who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound +affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to +some one or other of the Sirens of her sex. When Enid came to the cottage +Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability +is that she saw through the Siren--what there was to see through--a good +deal more sharply than her father did. + +Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just +been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would +probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to +him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of +talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was +pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept +running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more +passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more +big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of +land, and church, and finance!--democratic England when it once got to +business--and it was getting to business--would make short work of them. + +As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the +democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the +hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held +sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile +mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord +ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots +than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than +their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands +on them. + +One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He +turned, laughing to his daughter. + +"Coryston has settled in--with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He +has all sorts of ructions on his hands already." + +"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas +emerging from the woods. + +"My dear--she began it. And he is quite right--he _has_ a public duty +to these estates." + +"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly." + +"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong +parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, +are over." + +"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously. + +"I repeat--she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a +will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!" + +"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly. + +Atherstone shrugged his shoulders--too honest to reply. + +He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed. + +"I hear Coryston's very servants--his man and wife--were evicted from their +cottage for political reasons." + +"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion. + +Atherstone stared. + +"My dear!--" + +"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks. + +"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It +doesn't do to have such stories going round--on our side. I wonder why +Coryston chose them." + +"I should think--because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The +slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek +as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to +listen. + +"I think I hear the motor." + +"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation +was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters. + +Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess +was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair. + +"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing. +"Let's see--four dinners, three balls, two operas,--a week-end at Windsor, +two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do +you expect but a rag!" + +"Don't say you don't like it!" + +"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm +insulted, and when they do--" + +"You're bored?" + +"It's you finished the sentence!--not I! And I've scarcely seen father this +week except at breakfast. _That's_ bored me horribly." + +"What have you _really_ been doing?" + +"Inquisitor!--I have been amusing myself." + +"With Arthur Coryston?" + +Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her +companion. + +"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?" + +"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?" + +"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so +demean himself." + +"But she must find out some day." + +"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out +a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large +eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You +see--Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me--she has insulted father." + +"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled. + +"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. +She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton +nearly had hysterics." + +The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly +smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes. + +"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen +quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks +society is too tolerant--of people like father and me." + +"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly. + +"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight--so +far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little +harder--that's all." + +"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, +"after that list of parties!" + +"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful +one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father +goes out of office I shall be nobody. _She_ will be always at the top +of the tree." + +"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or +not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?" + +"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip--but the +facts--by heart! I am drowned--smothered in them. At present Arthur is the +darling--the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"--Miss Glenwilliam +threw up her hands. + +"You think she will change her mind again?" + +The girl took up a stalk of grass and nibbled it in laughing meditation. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong. + +"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly--"think +about whether you care for each other!" + +"What a _bourgeois_ point of view! Well, honestly--I don't know. +Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We +have only known each other a few months. If he were _very_ rich--By +the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?" + +Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught +her ear. + +"Here they are--he and Lord Coryston." + +Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, +long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale +masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a +charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she +held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him--a gay, significant +look. + +Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her +companion. + +"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his +hands on his sides. + +As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with +their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the +peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them +displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him +with a smile. + +"Mayn't I?" + +He looked down on her, frowning. + +"Why should women set up a new want--a new slavery--that costs money?" + +The color flew to her cheeks. + +"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own sex." + +"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have +consciences. And--especially--_Liberal_ women," he added, slowly, as +his eyes traveled over her dress. + +"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind +of women?" she asked him, quietly. + +"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people +in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing--and it is +the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands." + +Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly: + +"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!" + +The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's +person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with +wrath. + +Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a +look of radiant good humor. + +"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags--you might leave me the +talking. Has he told you what's happened?" + +The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an +indicating thumb in his brother's direction. + +The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue. + +"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he +said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up." + +"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his +seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And +what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our +dear mother has been doing?" + +"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily. + +"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such +lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the +plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy. + +Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He +approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary +courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston +was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a +constituency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a +comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to +let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there--Atherstone perfectly +understood--simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his +own _beaux yeux_ or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile +ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated. + +Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to +greet Atherstone--whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as +a pestilent agitator--with the indifferent good breeding that all young +Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the +view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was +increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, +moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his +hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; +and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat. + +"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the +view from the wood-path before tea?" + +Marion assented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little +field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill. + +"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the +departing figures. + +The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored. + +"I haven't the slightest idea." + +"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing +his knees, and bubbling with amusement. "My unfortunate mother will have to +make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!" + +"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked +Atherstone, after a moment. + +"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall +my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy +the Bible comes in--for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't +know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. + +A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. + +"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to +return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It +hasn't quite come to that!" + +"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a +slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall +come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile +camps--fighting it out--blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, +and"--he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's--"so +do you, too--at bottom." + +The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you +mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough +for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of +things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?" + +Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner. + +"Yes, I'm after a lot of game--in the Liberal preserves just as much as the +Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked +the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist +chapel. Half the village Baptist--lots of land handy--she won't let 'em +have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her +resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on +Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, +and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2--My +mother's been letting Page--her agent--evict a jolly decent fellow called +Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the +villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course--but that's the +truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days--no good. Now +I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, +for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent +for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3--There's +a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given +'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been +just gorging chickens this last year--nasty beasts! That don't matter much, +however. No. 4--Ah-ha!"--he rubbed his hands--"I'm on the track of that old +hypocrite, Burton of Martover--" + +"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, +indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!" + +"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation--"not a bit of it. Talking +Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then +doing a thing--Look here! He turned that man and his wife--Potifer's his +name--who are now looking after me--out of their cottage and their bit of +land--why, do you think?--because _the man voted for Arthur_! Why +shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted +for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'--so did his wife. +Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Nobody wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang +him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!" + +And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face +aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady +Coryston's disinherited son--socialist and revolutionist--as a kind of +watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's +very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the +neighborhood had anticipated. The man was too queer--too flighty. + +"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord +Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood--the Hoddon Grey +estate, for instance--" + +Coryston threw up his hands. + +"The Newburys--my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'--aren't +they?--'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches--and schools--and +villages! All the little boys patterns--and all the little girls saints. +Everybody singing in choirs--and belonging to confraternities--and carrying +banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that +a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, +I've heard a story about that estate"--the odd figure paused beside the +tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis--"that's worse than any +other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his +wife!" + +He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his +glittering eyes. + +Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The +neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the +pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious +convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot championship on both +sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in +their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular +was thought to have behaved with harshness. + +Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a +white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most +hideous of all tyrants!" + +Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but +she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as +angry as Coryston. + +Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, +abruptly: + +"My mother likes that fellow--Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I +hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't--before Marcia knows +this story!" + +Marion looked a little embarrassed, and certainly disapproving. + +"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire +him enormously." + +"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"--he +put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and +troubled countenance--"don't you agree with me?" + +"I don't know whether I do or not--I don't know enough about it." + +"You mustn't," he said, eagerly--"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, +after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss +Atherstone, down in those villages?" + +Marion blushed furiously, then laughed. + +"I can't imagine why." + +"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity--generally. It's a beastly mess. But the +things you do--are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, +anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms +and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?" + +Marion smiled and thanked him. + +Coryston rose. + +"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But--I +should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you. +I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do +you see any objection?" + +He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer +simplicity. She smiled back. + +"Not the least. Come when you like." + +He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to +her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling. + +Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, +relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth +or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had +seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish +notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been. + + * * * * * + +Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss +Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the +shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the +curiosity she felt. + +That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was +clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave. +Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited +upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of +the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she +were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, +when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up +suddenly. + +"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I _can_!" + +"Can what?" + +"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in +hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?--and he's +a very nice boy--and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!" + +She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity. + +"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man +I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but +me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why +should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course +he touches me--Arthur Coryston--and some day I shall want a home--and +children--like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't +strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and +the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me +enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I +think of going from my father to that man--from my father's ideas to +Arthur's ideas--it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled +a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I +couldn't make up my mind yet--for a long, long time." + +"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently. + +"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but +rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, nobody can know but me, what a +man my father is!" + +And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of +her eyes melting to a passionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the +rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, +in the political sense, it overshadowed England. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Lady Coryston's quarters at Coryston Place were not quite so devoid of all +the lighter touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, +of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to +a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. +Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about +the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once +adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. +But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and +of light and sunshine--on sunny days--there was, at any rate, no lack. +Marcia had recently chosen a new chintz for the chairs and sofas, and one +small group of photographs, on a table beside the fireplace, were allowed +to remind the spectator that the owner of the room had once been a young +mother, with a maternal pride in a bunch of fine children. Here were +Coryston, aged nine, on pony-back, pompously showing off; James, dreamily +affable, already a personage at seven; Arthur, fondling a cricket-bat, with +a stiff mouth, hastily closed--by order--on its natural grin; and Marcia, +frowning and pouting, in fancy dress as "The Strawberry Girl," just +emerging, it seemed, from one battle-royal with her nurse, and about to +plunge into another. + +Lady Coryston had just entered the room. She was alone, and she carried a +pile of letters, which she put down on the central writing-table. Then she +went to one of the windows, which on this May day was open, and stood, +looking out, one long mittened hand resting vaguely on the table that held +the photographs. A commanding figure! She was in black, carrying her only +ornament, an embossed silver girdle and chatelaine, the gift of her husband +in their first year of marriage. As she paused, motionless, in the clear +sunshine, her great height and her great thinness and flatness brought +out with emphasis the masculine carriage of the shoulders and the strong +markings of the face. In this moment of solitude, however, the mistress of +Coryston Place and of the great domain on which she looked, allowed herself +an expression which was scarcely that of an autocrat--at any rate of an +autocrat at ease. + +She was thinking of Coryston; and Coryston was giving her a good deal +to think about. Of course she had expected annoyance; but scarcely such +annoyance as Coryston, it seemed, was now bent on causing her. At bottom, +she had always reckoned on her position as mother and woman. Coryston might +threaten, but that he should actually carry out such iniquities as he was +now engaged on, had been--she owned it--beyond her calculations. + +For she had come down to find the whole neighborhood in a ferment, and many +pleasant illusions, in the shelter of which she had walked for years, both +before and since her husband's death, questioned, at least, and cracking, +if not shattered. That the Corystons were model landlords, that they +enjoyed a feudal popularity among their tenants and laborers, was for Lady +Coryston one of the axioms on which life was based. She despised people who +starved their estates, let their repairs go, and squeezed the last farthing +out of their tenants. Nor had she any sympathy with people who owned +insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least +possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the +very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy +and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in +by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the +laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists +to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her +gates; discovering bad cottages, where none were known to exist; and, in +general, holding up his mother to blame and criticism, which, as Lady +Coryston most truly, sincerely, indignantly felt, was wholly undeserved. + +This then was the "game" that Coryston had warned her of. He was actually +playing it; though she had never believed for one moment that he would ever +do so. How was she to meet it? With firmness, no doubt, and dignity. As to +the firmness she had no fears; it was the dignity she was anxious about. + +Lady Coryston was a woman of conscience; although no doubt she had long ago +harnessed her will to her conscience, which revolved--sometimes heavily--in +the rear. Still there the conscience was, and periodically she had to take +account of it. Periodically, it made her uncomfortable on the subject of +her eldest son. Periodically, it forced her to ask herself--as in this +reverie by the window--"How is it that, bit by bit, and year by year, +he and I have drifted to this pass? Who began it? Is it in any sense my +fault?" + +How was it, in the first place, that neither she nor his father had ever +had any real influence over this incorrigible spirit; that even in Corry's +childish days, when his parents had him at their mercy, they might punish, +and thwart, and distress him, but could never really conquer him? Lady +Coryston could recall struggles with her son, whether at home or at school, +which turned her sick to think of. + +Corry--for instance--at his preparatory school, taking a loathing to his +head master, demanding to be withdrawn, and stubbornly refusing to say why; +the master's authority upheld by Corry's parents; vindictive punishment; +followed by sudden illness on the boy's part in the midst of the commotion, +and his return home, white-faced, silent, indomitable. It made her shiver +to remember how he had refused to be nursed by her or by any one but the +old housekeeper at Coryston; how for weeks he had scarcely spoken to his +father or mother. Then had come the lad's justification--a hideous cruelty +charge against the head master; and on a quasi-apology from his father, +Corry had consented to forgive his parents. + +And again--at Cambridge--another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, +taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to +him, unjustly--furious attacks on the college authorities--rioting in +college--ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She +and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen +to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother +could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival +at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from _you_!" She could +still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings +abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years. + +Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating +also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter +vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston +after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were +Corry's arms open to her, and his--almost timid--kiss on her cheek. The +thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had +been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the +kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance +of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were +halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was +suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. +It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry! + +As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. +James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's +death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she +had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less +a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed +quietly expressed--he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and +phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form +of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his +boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a +denunciation of her love of power--unjustified, unwarranted power--as the +cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so +many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused +to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge +enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you +don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life +and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a +lonely and unhappy woman." + +Well, well, she had borne with him--she had not broken with him, after +all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of +giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition +to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to +extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all +her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, +the country's interests. And of course she had been right--she had been +abundantly right. + +Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston +domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to +the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had +been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later +years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination +to win and conquer. Not for herself!--so at least her thoughts, judged in +her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, +but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, +from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper +class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as +she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body +by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down. + +_Glenwilliam_!--in that name all her hatreds were summed up. + +For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to +lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"--a man who had suffered +cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing +class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken +in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging +vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and +her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and +sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress +of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, +married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small +competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political +position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while +England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had +built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled +him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties. + +"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was +accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him--_dear_!" + +And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost +farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, +to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; +persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation--these were +Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to +bay--must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country. + +"Did I choose my post in life for myself?--its duties, its +responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the +line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no +more right to run away than the men--vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to +see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry +rich?--and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what +he says he hates--land and money--to use for what _I_ hate--and what +his father hated? Just because he is my son--my flesh and blood? He would +scorn the plea himself--he has scorned it all his life. Then let him +respect his mother--when she does the same." + +But meanwhile the "game," as Coryston was playing it?--what was to be done +as to this episode and that? + +She sat down to her writing-table, still busily thinking, and reminding +herself that her agent Mr. Page was to come and see her at twelve. She had +hoped to get some counsel and help out of Arthur, now that the House was up +for a fortnight. But Arthur had really been very inconsiderate and tiresome +so far. He had arrived so late for dinner on the Saturday that there had +been no time for talk, especially as there was a large party in the house. +On Sunday he had taken a motor, and had been away all day, paying--he +said--some constituency visits. And now this morning with the earliest +train he was off to London, though there was really no occasion for him +whatever to go up there. He seemed rather unlike himself. His mother +wondered if he was ill. And she fell into some indignant reflections on the +stuffy atmosphere and bad lighting of the House of Commons. But ever since +he knew that he was to have the estates his manner seemed to have changed; +not certainly in the direction of triumph or satisfaction. On the contrary, +he had once or twice said irritably to his mother that the will was +ridiculous and ought not to stand. She had been obliged to make it clear to +him that the matter was _not_ to be discussed. + +Suddenly, as she sat there, distress seized her at the bare thought of any +shadow between herself and Arthur--Arthur, her darling, who was upholding +his father's principles and hers in Parliament with so much zeal and good +feeling; who had never all his life--till these latter weeks--given her so +much as a cross word. Yet now that she could no longer chase the thought +quite away, she admitted, more and more frankly, that she was anxious. Was +he in any money difficulties? She must get James to find out. In love? She +smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, +who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the +handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high +time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which +means--marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it. + + * * * * * + +Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived +among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend +a week-end at Hoddon Grey. Lady Coryston rather wearily reflected that she +must no doubt accept. That young man was clearly in pursuit of Marcia. What +Marcia's own views were, her mother had not yet discovered. She seemed +sometimes glad to see him; sometimes entirely indifferent; and Lady +Coryston thought she had observed that her daughter's vacillations tried +Edward Newbury's pride sorely, at times. But it would end in a match--it +was pretty certain to end in a match. Marcia was only testing her power +over a strong-willed man, who would capture her in the end. That being so, +Lady Coryston acknowledged that the necessary tiresome preliminaries must +be gone through. + +She hastily scrawled a note of acceptance, without any of the fond +imaginings that would have accompanied the act in the ordinary mother. Like +all imperious women she disliked staying in other people's houses, where +she could not arrange her hours. And she had a particularly resentful +memory of a visit which she had paid with her husband to Lord and Lady +William Newbury when they were renting a house in Surrey, before they had +inherited Hoddon Grey, and while Marcia was still in the schoolroom. Never +in her life had she been so ordered about. The strict rules of the house +had seemed to her intolerable. She was a martinet herself, and inclined to +pay all due attention to the observances of religion; but they must be her +own observances, or at least approved by her. To be expected to follow +other people's observances set her aflame. To make such a fuss, also, about +your religion seemed to her indecorous and absurd. She remembered with a +satisfaction which was half ashamed, that she--who was always down at +home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to +church--had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the +Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when +they met at luncheon. + +Well, now the thing had to be done again--for the settling of Marcia. +Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her +mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be +more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting +it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more +important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, +only the fringe of her thoughts. + +However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when +the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page. + +Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she +had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice +than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially +had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he +had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston +estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest +subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded +an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She +greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the +letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party +headquarters. + +The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, +inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the +confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, +and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard +to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a +widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia. + +It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much +disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was +disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure +her--make light of the situation. + +He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter +he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before +entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged +at once into the subject. + +"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" + +"You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it +before--you and I together." + +He shook his head. + +"Ah, but--you see what makes the difference!" + +"That Coryston is my son?--and has always been regarded as my heir? +Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his +proceedings will soon disgust people--will soon recoil on himself!" + +Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek +and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, +hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, +she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this +extremity? + +He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which +had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He +was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up +in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the +estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his +mother's cottages. + +Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. +Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!" + +Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner +insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate +suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; +but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high +level of improvements, at the same time. + +"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that +must be done. I have given orders." + +"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather +grimly. + +The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still +determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel. + +"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have +no intention whatever of extending his influence." + +Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half +an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But +he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston. + +"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he +said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a +distance. Purely political!" + +"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, +firmly. + +The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the +increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead +to peaceable living. But he merely remarked: + +"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last +Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the +village." + +Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair. + +"He defended himself?" + +"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you +himself this afternoon about the affair." + +"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page +perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her. + +"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually +setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a +perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole +neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in +this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a +child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more +members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of +this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, +Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these +proceedings!" + +Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in +so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy-- +Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she +preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the +situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and +adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston +was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the +raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the +district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which +Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston +laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to +the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no +consolation to a proud spirit. + +"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and +at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I +have been accustomed to trust you." + +The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an +inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for +the future. + +A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the +remark: + +"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at +Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be +in the chair." + +He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely +watched its effect. + +Lady Coryston paled. + +"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall +speak," she said, with vivacity. + +Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in +the speaker's look. + +"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted +with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy +interrogation, looking for his hat. + +Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark. + +"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she +said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is." + +"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope +when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him +to give up some of these extravagances." + +"I have no power with him," she said, sharply. + +"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his +departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he +admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him +a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They +seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old +game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, +give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when +caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he +charged them with--Lady Coryston especially. + +And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could +he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a +secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Saturday, as he +was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little +property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in +the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the +wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston +and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times +seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the +frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well +known to the neighborhood. + +By George!--if that _did_ mean anything! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from +a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road +running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. +Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of +blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the +twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear +and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying +under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and +everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more. + +Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some +reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for +lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike +most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no +question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong +mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her +of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing. +There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he +came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when +the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; +when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared +than loved him. + +Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet +always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back +at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a +mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped +by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican +tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first +and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, +and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had +grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been +accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch +as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a +rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward +himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned +habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world +have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican +laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a +joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the +most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and +impervious to any sort of Modernism. + +At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his +poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the +most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular +man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though +perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were +jealously hidden from the multitude, who welcomed him as a good-looking +fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, +and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He +was a good shot, a passionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious +note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him--in +general--the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent +to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the +time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth +dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone +were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities +which were only just emerging. + +Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of +his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked +herself, with that instinct for self-analysis bred in the woman of to-day +by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads--"Why is it he likes +me?"--the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself--"No doubt just +because I am so shapeless and so formless--because I don't know myself what +I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me--he'll save my soul. +Shall he?" + +A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control +a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there. + +"Coryston!" she cried. + +Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought +she caught some words from a Shelley chorus which she knew, because he had +made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself +down beside her. + +"Well?" + +Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at +Knatchett--once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his +bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon +him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only +succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen +part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but +the bull barely shook himself. There he stood--good-humored, and pawing. + +To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other +hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile. + +"Corry!--I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this +afternoon?" + +"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to +announce me." + +"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been +doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any +good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say +a word to mamma about--about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were +at the Atherstones on Saturday!" + +The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong +beauty. She went on, appealingly: + +"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued--and argued with +him--but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything--Parliament, mamma, the +estates, anything--in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing +with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in _terror_ about +mamma!" + +Corry whistled. + +"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over +ears. No use your trying to pull him back!" + +"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, passionately; "what's left of her, after +you've done!" + +Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister. +Then he slowly got up from the grass and took a seat beside her. + +"Look here, Marcia, do you think--do you honestly think--that I'm the +aggressor in this family row?" + +"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think!" + +Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!--" she went +on, in a muffled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly! +Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks +ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with +him--you _must_! Persuade him to give her up!" + +She laid her hand on his arm imploringly. + +Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little. + +"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back +Arthur up through thick and thin!" + +"_Corry_!--how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her--how can +he live in that set--the son-in-law of _that man_! He'll have to give +up his seat--nobody here would ever vote for him again. His friends would +cut him--" + +"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, +impatiently. + +But Marcia wailed on: + +"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories--like you--" + +"Not a principle to his back!--I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I +tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into +it!--if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury +she's been living in. I believe--if you ask me--that she'd accept Arthur +for his money--but that she doesn't care one brass farthing about him. Why +should she?" + +"Corry!" + +"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one--and she's not been accustomed to +living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"--he got +up from the seat--"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want +me to do? I repeat--I'm coming to see mother this afternoon." + +"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little +worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows +anything. Promise!" + +"Very well. For the present--I'm mum." + +"And talk to him!--tell him it'll ruin him!" + +"I don't mind--from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her +with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud +overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look. + +"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly. + +"What?" The tone showed her startled. + +"Let _me_ come and talk to _you_ about that man whom all the +world says you're going to marry!" + +She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his +voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly: + +"What do you mean, Corry!" + +"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, passionately. "At +least let me talk to you." + +She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full +of energy and will as his own. + +"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it." + +"Not as I should tell it!" + +A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great +effort to master her excitement. + +"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask _him_ for +his version, too." + +Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed. + +"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing +man: "Ah, I see!--here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to +mother--and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with +you--my small sister!--when we next meet." + +He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there +dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered--as of a grave +yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon +invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia +was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury +quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the +grass beside her. + +"What a heavenly spot!--and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find +you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch." + +Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the +spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, +dappling his bronzed face. + +Marcia flushed a little--an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat +and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, +she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the +keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied +it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. +Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the +last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the +decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it +should be a word of denial. Better--better infinitely--these doubts and +checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her. + +This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And +it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she +anticipated him. + +"I want to talk to you about Corry--my brother!" she said, bending toward +him. + +[Illustration: THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL] + +There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She +evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out +his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the +child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with +his bright conscious eyes. + +"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding. + +"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a +puckered brow. + +"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William +yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't +want to read it--" + +"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling. + +"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I +wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place +against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps +that if you and I--" + +"Took counsel! Excellent!" + +"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it." + +"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your +mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?" + +"No, but--he means to," said the girl, hesitating. + +"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his +version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It +is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we +do--that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own." + +He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way +from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling +that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on +the grass at her feet. _This_ was the man of whom she had said to +Waggin--"he seems the softest, kindest!--and underneath--_iron_!" +A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble +sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the +thrill of an answering humility. + +"It is difficult for me--perhaps impossible--to tell you all the story," +he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly--in its broad +outlines." + +"I have heard some of it." + +"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order--so far as I can. It concerns a +man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded--my father and mother--myself--as +one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting +with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years +ago we made this man--John Betts--the head of it. He has been my father's +right hand--and he has done splendidly--made the farm, indeed, and himself, +famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a +moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We +looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough +of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. +He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And +especially"--here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with +a gentle seriousness--"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people +here live straight--like Christians--not like animals. My mother has very +strict rules--she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their +character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so--it's merciful. The villages +were in a terrible state when we came--as to morals. I can't of course +explain to you--but our priest appealed to us--we had to make changes--and +my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity--" + +He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of +some quick emotion invaded it. + +"You know we are unpopular!" + +"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else +in her. + +"Especially"--there was a touch of scorn in the full voice--"owing to +the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator--that man +Atherstone--who lives in that cottage on the hill--your mother knows all +about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to +live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican--we are church people and +Tories. He thinks that every man--or woman--is a law unto themselves. We +think--but you know what we think!" + +He smiled at her. + +"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of +influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away +much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to +my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had +found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, +had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and +forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a +frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could +for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by +bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go +through it all--the true story came out." + +He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently +considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. + +"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was +divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his +employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and +after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with +her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw +herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married +her. Well now, what were we to do?" + +"They _are_ married?" said Marcia. + +"Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" + +The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. + +Marcia looked up. + +"Because--you think--divorce is wrong?" + +"Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" + +"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" + +The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain +she was idly making. + +"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. +But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, +when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an +absolutely closed one!" + +Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to +the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty +of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. + +"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" + +"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude +of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a +little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" + +The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, +not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not +religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man +beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he +should have singled her out--to love her. + +But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. + +She looked up eagerly. + +"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and +somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care +for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!" + +"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength." + +Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That +old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a +great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its +most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in +herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my +adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his +slave--I will not!" + +At last she said: + +"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?" + +He sighed. + +"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. +Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we +should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would +have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have +seen her from time to time--" + +"They refused?" + +"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, +he said, married legally and honestly--and that was an end of it. As to +Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. +He defied my father to dismiss him. My father--on his principles--had no +choice but to do so. So then--your brother came on the scene!" + +"Of course--he was furious?" + +"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles +may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country." + +A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia +kindled for her brother. + +"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us--as you wish--England +wouldn't be free!" + +"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with +him. But why attack us personally--call us names--because of what we +believe?" + +He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted. + +"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad--quite mad." + +And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand. + +"Don't blame us!" + +He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it. + +"Don't let him set you against us!" + +She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him +from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she +sprang to her feet. + +"Mother will be waiting lunch for us." + +They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's +whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; +insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by +a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had +never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. +The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of +the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and +there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, +invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. +Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. +Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was +enchantment. + +Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir +Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of +both families. + +"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a +cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid +will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened. + +"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?" + +Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked. + +"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade +Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals." + +Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in +spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London +successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, +in this strong man, were warmth and shelter. + + * * * * * + +Luncheon passed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she +perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their +destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady +Coryston, "So we expect you--next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on +the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the +young man's mind. Well!--the sooner, the better. + +Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home +through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she +gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the +house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet +Sir Wilfrid Bury. + +Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual--bedraggled +with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned +with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had +been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of +the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and +had been formally granted it. + +He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any +one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two +occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation +in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston +departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat +motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded +slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by +the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one +who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her +aspect. + +Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, +looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a +fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. +The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass +weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the +happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls +of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of +early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from +the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale +brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old +engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally +a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in +blossom just outside. + +Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on +the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. + +"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and +smiled absently. + +"Not bad?" + +Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: + +"Don't you go into politics, Lester!" + +"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good +deal." + +"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. +"Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do +certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? +I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" + +"Haven't made up my mind." + +"I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with +women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." + +"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. + +Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke +out: + +"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open +mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. +"And politics kills all that kind of thing." + +"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester. + +"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside +him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry +and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the +women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if +the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?" + +Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but +he said nothing. + +Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. + +"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great +scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this +poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let +them live their own lives they'd adore her." + +"The trade-unions are just the same." + +"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from +Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!" + +"Coryston!" + +"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. + +"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" + +"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut +the door. + + * * * * * + +Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he +presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and +stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the +fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the +horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the +woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English +perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings +in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted +before Blenheim was fought. + +Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in +white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that +generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, +friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. + +"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs +and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like +them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and +then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for +people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would +be angry if I were to tell her so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and +lustiest. + +Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. +The long low line of the house rose behind them--an attractive house and +an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a +high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high +gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private +chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not +display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and +old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people +who were walking up and down the front lawn together. + +Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His +pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; +he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair--he was walking +bareheaded--was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, +was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement--a +stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord +William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the +stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife +beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like +woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and +wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave +that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at +first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most +submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life +have been either possible or happy in her husband's company. + +They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their +week-end guests--Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring +cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, +however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that +she held the field. + +"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying +in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward +has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe +you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother." + +"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's +party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I +remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical." + +"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with +all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is +perfectly ridiculous." + +"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said +Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that +Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for +a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded +something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said--quite +indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can _act_.' It +was curious--and rather disquieting--to see so much decision-- +self-assertion--in so young a woman." + +"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently +confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles--a fine +character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily +guided by one she loves." + +"I hope so, for Edward's sake--for he is very much in love. I trust he is +not letting inclination run away with him. So much--to all of us--depends +on his marriage!" + +Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his +eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some +three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been +associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been +the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, +a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of +a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of +Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with +beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey +had sheltered large gatherings--gatherings of the high Puseyite party in +the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in +the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile--orator and ascetic--might +have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were +strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made +fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme +old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's +blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement. + +Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord +William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the +dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the +pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of +Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his +forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled--the endless, +unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against +the unbeliever. + +... His wife broke in upon his reverie. + +"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?" + +Lord William started. + +"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his +shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever." + +"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly. + +"A line--in the third person." + +"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise--" + +"So she is--most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every +right to complain of her." + +"You think she has done wrong?" + +"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things--whatever her son may +be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of +such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds +of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to +claim--something altogether monstrous and unnatural!" + +Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. +His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel +or agnostic son?" + +Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully +extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?" + +"Not at all! That was God's will--the cross she had to bear. She interferes +with the course of Providence--presumptuously interferes with it--doing +evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade +men by gentleness--not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is +usurping what does not--what never can--belong to her." + +The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for +male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady +William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady +Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions +were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her +husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce +their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous +those opinions may be. + +"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord +William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for +politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the +wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I +received last week?" + +"Do you think he will do what he threatens?" + +"What--get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them +somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our +consciences." + +Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought +of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. +Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. + +His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into +the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; +gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. +She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at +everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and +plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's +widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of +lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the +house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a +sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the +end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and +fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud +chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and +the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink +and tied with knots of pink ribbon. + +Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. +She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own +money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she +had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the +dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of +azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. +Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there +for the girl Edward loved--who was probably to be his wife. A great +tenderness filled her heart. + +When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, +and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors +open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful +still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with +Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she +prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his +father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... + + * * * * * + +An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive +with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was +strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, +the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the +deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among +the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. + +In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two +young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. + +Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him +with a sigh of satisfaction. + +"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!" + +"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after +them." + +"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his +handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?" + +"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his--a 'fidus Achates'--who +lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather +melancholy tone. + +"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"--Sir +Louis Ford lowered his voice--"I gathered the amazing fact that +Coryston--_Coryston_!--is going to take the chair at a meeting where +Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month." + +Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately +form of Coryston's mother in the distance. + +"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly. + +A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, +and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been +invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find +out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese. + +"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a _woman's_ foes were to be +those of her own household!" + +The Chaplain frowned. + +"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. +"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was +perfectly outrageous." + +"What about?" asked Sir Louis. + +"A divorce case--a very painful one--on which we have found it necessary to +take a strong line." + +The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and +spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled. + +"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?" + +"What indeed?--except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can." + +"Who are the parties?" + +The Chaplain told the story. + +"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the +Dean. + +"Not that I know of." + +The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind +his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened +the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny +fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the +human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to +them--shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious +of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as +though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, +Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the +far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things +threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled +both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain +helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than +herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, +like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it. + +Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers +there was that in them under which her own wavered. + +"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the +way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into +a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of +wild hyacinths to a hilltop. + +A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them +closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and +quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air +was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them +only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival. + +Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. +She heard her name breathed. + +"Marcia!" + +She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring +tenderness, his lips gravely smiling. + +"Yes!" + +She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms +round her, whispering: + +"Marcia! will you come to me--will you be my wife?" + +She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not +so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?--the supreme of +life? + +They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her +within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. +He placed her on it, and himself beside her. + +"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" +he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy--shall I make +you happy?" + +"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in +her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you +angry with me." + +"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, +Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other--to live +as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?" + +She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read +it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of +painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite +give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried +out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She +threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling +silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm +about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, +loving and beloved. + +"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she +disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to +her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. + +"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. + +She looked at him a little wistfully. + +"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too +much. And I shall always--want to be myself." + +"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!" +The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he +added, with a sudden flush: + +"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all +hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and +mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." + +He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. + +"You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; +and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears. + +"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." + +"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. + +"Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try +me." + +He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved +through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, +the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace +flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never +come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste +them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such +crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. + +They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them +into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which +there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and +there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously +forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a +sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia +stopped to look. + +"What a charming place! Who lives there?" + +Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. + +"That is the model farm." + +"Mr. Betts's farm?" + +"Yes. Can you manage that stile?" + +Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with +the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and +talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to +Lord William. + +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of +perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me--about that story. I +don't think I can prevent him." + +"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears." + +He spoke gravely. + +"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I--I think perhaps I had better +have it out with him--myself. I remember all you said to me!" + +"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without +a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject +immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden. + +Lady William first perceived them--perceived, too, that they were hand in +hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and +rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband. + +The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their +cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered +himself of the frivolous remark--in answer to some plea of the Dean's on +behalf of further powers for the female sex: + +"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be +necessary to draw the line!"--when they too caught sight of the advancing +figures. + +The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over +his round cheeks and button mouth. + +"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath. + +"Eh!--what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly +put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?" + +Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting +with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a +happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not +without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain +moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and +blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken +composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and +given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to +Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion +would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already +thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before +dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential +information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible +date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice +and straightforward--just indeed what she had expected. But there would +be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; +whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught. + +"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of +this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night." + +She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, +and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker. + +"You think so, father?" + +"Certainly, my dear son, certainly." + +Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but +perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this +time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and +a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room. + +The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, +looked at her keenly from time to time. + +"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she +fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?" + +Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the +betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William +had disappeared. + +Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and +deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!--is it +really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?" + +Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly. + +"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury. + +"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up +the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening +prayer after dinner." + +His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and +took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her +through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel. + +"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston +as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained +amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But +unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest +in the religious customs of his neighbors. + +"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady +Coryston followed, willy-nilly. + +Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the +chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," +shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a +sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly +forsaken--altogether remote from him. + +But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great +crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May +evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of +her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many +servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord +William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel +seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; +and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the +house to which it was attached. + +"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it +mean for _me_? Can I play my part in it?" + +What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed +to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing +ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a +time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague +fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind! + +And now it returned upon her intensified--that cold, indefinite fear, +creeping through love and joy. + +She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that +she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar--absorbed. + +And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General +Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, +the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a +natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of +Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston." + +An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into +a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her +cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these +kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I +ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been +asked!" + +When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her +appealingly. + +"Darling!--you didn't mind?" + +She quickly withdrew her hand from his. + +"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress." + +And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the +unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight +of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the +roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and +unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter +to her maid about everything and nothing--laughing at any trifle, and yet +feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale +pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last +string tied that she had never looked better. + +"But won't you put on these roses, miss?" + +She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered. + +Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her +reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much +stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her +resources against some hostile force--to be saying to herself: + +"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!" + + * * * * * + +Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all +the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the +sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was +resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put +on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on +great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks +that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away +the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by +Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room +shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler +had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a +bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had +gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel +and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and +gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics +with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, +so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any +rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, +which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult. + +After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, +deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her. + +"Well, how are you feeling?" + +"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes +aflame. + +"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law +for taking her from you?" + +"Who--Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking +of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel +still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot +within twenty-four hours!" + +"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about +Marcia!" + +Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him. + +"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about." + +"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you +really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?" + +"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her +properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"--she dropped +her voice--"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, +the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as +you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on +earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?" + +"Tyranny! _You_ call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced. + +"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? +One's soul is not one's own." + +Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to +drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never +tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have +spent the morning in remonstrating with her--to no purpose whatever--on the +manner in which she was treating her eldest son. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was +passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when +visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for +the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as +he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the +immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself +ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and +to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by +Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the +library--gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the +antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and +literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put +aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house +represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired +of raiding. + +But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of +the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a +more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research +allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why +should he not make himself a _writer_, like other people? + +But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary +conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for +some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, +and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be +carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. +For instance: + +"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or +to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining +ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the +distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his +character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And +yet--I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should +see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the +same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, +of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those +particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to +her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that +she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though +often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the +two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and +must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she +should have injured or trampled on some one else. + +"Of late she has come in here--to the library--much more frequently. I am +sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am +presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve +her. + +"It has grown up inevitably--this affair; but N. little realizes how +dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him +and his philosophy will attract her--will draw the moth to the candle. All +strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the +ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there +to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making +against such men as Newbury--their ideals and traditions. And to one or +other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She +does not know it--does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; +but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of +free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon +Newbury. + +"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement--if it is an +engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that +she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; +and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if +he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can +toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? +'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady +Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet +all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that +throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting--not direct +party-fighting--but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the +nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in +fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate--isn't +that what women might do for us?--instead of taking up with all the +old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? +Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, +but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all +and any sort--to vote against her. + +"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters +to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work +there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests +itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid +me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and +give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if +I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If +I only could _write_! The world seems to be waiting for the historian +that can write. + +"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How +much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its +still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that +obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country +like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly +prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and +manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and +splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life--as in the Boer war; and +the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something +valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults. + +"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the +full-blown _tyrannus_. She has no doubt whatever about her right to +rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that +Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between +threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of +her--how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her +afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the +wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to +differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and +Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times. + +"The poor people here--or most of them--are used to her, and in a way +respect her. They take her as inevitable--like the rent or the east wind; +and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for +them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see +that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his +mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages +without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing +up in the village and on the farms--not so much there, however!--which is +going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But +they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to +get out of his campaign. + +"And then--Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her +by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. +She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family +have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with +her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased +with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when +something does really touch her--when something makes her _feel_--that +curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. +There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a +miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who +was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the +girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden--Marcia +with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but +keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels--must have been +worth seeing. And there is an old man--a decrepit old road-mender, whose +sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she +never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to +tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes +to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in +Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. +You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on +which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet +she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either? + +"But the tragic figure--the tragic possibility--in all this family +_galere_ at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because +of our old Cambridge friendship--quite against my will--a good deal about +the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that +any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is +persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that +what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the +young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry +a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many +proposals--" + +The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the +writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became +aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur +Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved +to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, +he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library +staircase. + +As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was +that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, +his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped +to view, amid the general relaxation of _tenue_ and dignity. He came +up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning +into a chair beside it. + +"I hear mother and Marcia are away?" + +"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?" + +"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young +man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about." + +Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, +thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of +the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the +busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among +the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the +hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to +cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop. + +"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? +There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month--mother's arranged it +all--not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!--and I'm to speak +at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not +allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet +mother's had the bills printed already!" + +"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?" + +"I dare say. D--n the Martover meeting! But what _taste_!--two +brothers slanging at each other--almost in the same parish. I declare women +have no taste!--not a ha'porth. But I won't do it--and mother, just for +once, will have to give in." + +He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him--no doubt +with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation +appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the +self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April. + +"You are afraid of being misunderstood?" + +"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young +man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me +again. She makes that quite plain." + +"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she +discriminate between the politician and the private friend?" + +Arthur shook his head. + +"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam +a thief and a robber--and what else can I call him, with mother +looking on?--there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's +_fanatical_ about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already +about him. I tell you--it's rather fine, Lester!--upon my soul, it is!" + +And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned +his still boyish looks upon his friend. + +"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But--I confess +I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are +you prepared to take her into your confidence?" + +"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the +devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't +tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!" + +There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him +meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward. + +"Look here, Arthur!--can't you make a last effort, and get free?" + +His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted: + +"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two +worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor +your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in +love. But it does matter--and it'll tell more and more every year." + +"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us +all--I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses--just as so much +grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter." + +"And yet you love her!" + +"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify +about these things--she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at +her own side--just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships--and +everything that he says and thinks. She adores him--she'd go to the stake +for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on +him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad--I know that. But I'd rather marry +her mad than any other woman sane!" + +"All the same you _could_ break it off," persisted Lester. + +"Of course I could. I could hang--or poison--or shoot myself, I suppose, if +it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her +up, I shall cut the whole business--Parliament--estates--everything!" + +The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly +subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. + +"What are your chances?" + +"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. +But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of +speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair--and if I +don't make it, mother will know the reason why!--it's all up with me." + +"Why don't you apply to Coryston?" + +"What--to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't +he?--with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was +coming down here to make mischief--and, by Jove, he's doing it!" + +"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. + +Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering +greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the +door behind him. + +"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" + +Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to +reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he +deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a +cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal +which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung +an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking +and pondering. + +"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; +"we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out +for you, Arthur--upon my soul, I don't!" + +"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. + +"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage +yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off +the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." + +"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" + +"What do _you_ think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in +a garret--a genteel garret--on a thousand a year? For her father, +perhaps!--but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it." + +No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He +descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took +his arm--an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted. + +"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it +serious?" + +"Sure of her? Good God--if I were!" + +He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could +not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets. + +Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine +concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out +of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the +window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for +an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. +Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind. + +"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get +Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know +that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting +in the Martover paper yesterday--" + +"_No_!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing. + +"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she +has already written your speech." + +"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair. + +"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell +mother you won't be treated so--that you're a man, not a school-boy--that +you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches--_et cetera_. +Play the independence card for all you're worth. It _may_ get you out +of the mess." + +Arthur's countenance began to clear. + +"I'm to make it appear a bargain--between you and me? I asked you to give +up your show, and you--" + +"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already +warned you, it won't help you long." + +"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression. + +"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be +Glenwilliam--and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her +heart--and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before +you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the +person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed--whereas +_you_ have been the model son." + +Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur. + +"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the +rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!" + +"'_Life_,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just +try offering your billet--with all its little worries thrown in--to the +next fellow you meet in the street--and see what happens!" + +But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother. + +"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"--he +waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the +sun--"for--for Enid--you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!" + +There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried +conviction. Coryston's expression changed. + +"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with--with Enid--to give it up," he +said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her--I don't mean anything in +the least offensive--has a very just and accurate idea of the value of +money." + +A sort of impatient groan was the only reply. + +But Lester raised his head from his book. + +"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one +to the other. + +"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and +Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by +now?" + +He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he +spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with +Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment +hard and threatening. + +"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your +sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she +might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up +his papers as he spoke. + +"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you +a friend?--her friend?--our friend?--everybody's friend?" said Coryston, +peremptorily. "Look here!--if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"--he +brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table--"there'll be another +family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case +before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with +her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury +hear reason--well and good. If she can't--or if she doesn't see the thing +as she ought, herself--well!--we shall know where we are!" + +"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an +awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!" + +"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"--the voice was Lester's--"to plunge +her into such a business, at such a time!" + +"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable +Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts--why should we? Arthur!--come and +walk home with me!" + +Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to +any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers--and finally let himself be carried +off. + +Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library. + +"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'" + +What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with +such a problem--be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off +things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat +solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or +might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old +house--for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston +librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could +see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns--Marcia and Newbury. + +Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library +floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of +old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of +doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows. + +He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such +painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the +growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had +his career to think of--and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day +he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life +on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It +would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never +possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient +barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound +and sane; it looked life in the face--its gifts and its denials, and those +stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting +spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he +submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, +handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both +soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him. + + * * * * * + +Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent +time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first +train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to +give an hour to business talk--as to settlements and so forth--with Lord +William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her +motor with all possible speed. + +"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with +half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: +"But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent +people--quite excellent." + +Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course +never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion +of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any +soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance. + +"If only Edward and you--and everybody would not be in such a dreadful +hurry!" she said, protesting. + +"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have +you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till +the autumn I should be terribly busy--absolutely taken up--with Arthur's +election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to +the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not +only the usual Liberal gang--I shall have Coryston to fight!" + +"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then +she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that +notice of Arthur's meeting into the _Witness_ without consulting him. +Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid +of his cutting up rough?" + +"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. +As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that +Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in +doubt as to what _he_ thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only +five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully--without a word of +reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!" + +Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more +than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped +Coryston had been able to talk to him--to persuade him! Edward too had +promised to see him--immediately. Surely between them they would make him +hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother? + +The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival +at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler. + +"Is Mr. Arthur here?" + +"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for +luncheon." + +Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the +answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened +first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still +holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler +intercepted her. + +"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your +sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker--something you had +ordered--very particular." + +"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything +about it." + +She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand. + +"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's +leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with +Coryston. He may argue with me--and with Edward--if he pleases. But Mrs. +Betts herself! No--that's too much!" + +Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. +Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her +amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman--a lady--a complete stranger +to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A +woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, +and tears on her cheeks. + +"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back. + + + + +Book II + + +MARCIA + + + "To make you me how much so e'er I try, + You will be always you, and I be I." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. +"I--I have deceived your servants--told them lies--that I might get to +see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!--don't send me away!" + +Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, +standing suppliant before her, and repeated: + +"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name." + +"My name--is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. +"Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet--I think you must; +because--because there has been so much talk!" + +"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which +reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress +and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general +aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally +against--one might almost say, as an effluence from--the background of +bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the +room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility +of her attire--arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short +skirts and shell necklace,--betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite +plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex. + +"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought--Lord +Coryston--" + +She paused, her eyes cast down. + +"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit +down." + +Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. +Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a +broken, sobbing voice. + +"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my +poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh! +my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he +never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about +your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so +_ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I +don't know how to excuse myself--" + +She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned +face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears. + +"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and +annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing. + +"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, +removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I +consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, +to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, +Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!" + +Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran +lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had +placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched. + +"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with +embarrassment. + +Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly. + +"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm +unless he will give me up?" + +But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly: + +"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs." + +"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, +turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag +of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into +vehemence: + +"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen! +You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly +wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help +anybody as wretched as I am!" + +The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic +force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the +bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be +thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as +though the speaker observed herself, even in violence. + +Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and +then said: + +"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to +me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I +shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?" + +"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, +Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because +you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my +story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment. +"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had +an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as +though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was +only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and +she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few +months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I +suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he +struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a +choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was +only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved +me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like +heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and +there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against +my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband +divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other +man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel +to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So +there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look +at Marcia. + +The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed. + +"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He +hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I +couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm +not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to +keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he +was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. +And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I +was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to +me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told +him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't +a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no +prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. +Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in +the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he +knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, +to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more +disgrace on anybody." + +She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the +small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and +powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly +into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some +rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing +and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! + +Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. + +"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares +for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll +kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" + +The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her +slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which +sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only +say again in a vaguely troubled voice: + +"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't +to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't +do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." + +"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help +each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means +to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord +William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too +cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if +he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend +henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary +friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near +a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just +think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after +all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a +better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love +me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You +know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. +He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and +made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand +much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things +anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll +go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? +What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?" + +[Illustration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"] + +Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her +cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no +acting now. + +The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands +gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her. + +"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know +what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced +people marrying again. You know--how they've set a standard all their +lives--for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever +preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their +feelings. They hate--I'm sure they hate--making any one unhappy. But if +one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, +how--" + +"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, +_please_, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you +to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up--and he'll never give me +up. But I'll go away--I'll go to a little cottage John has--it was his +mother's, in Charnwood Forest--far away from everybody. Nobody here will +ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work +will let him. He will come over in the motor--he's always running about the +country--nobody would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated--so we +should have separated--as far as spending our lives together goes. But I +should sometimes--sometimes--have my John!--for my own--my very own--and he +would sometimes have me!" + +Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts +shook from head to foot. + +Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling--of +a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an +experience, touched so nearly on passions and sins which had hitherto been +to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, +whatever class she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the +conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment--a moment differing +wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have +come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack +such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay +knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, +the real stuff--the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new +to her. + +And, in a flash of memory and association, there passed through her mind +the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights--Iphigenia on the stage, +wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and +Newbury's voice: + +"_This_ is the death she shrinks from--" + +And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately +to its doom: + +"And this--is the death she _accepts_!" + +Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome +features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the +girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose--"_he_ +would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and +loves--and _therefore_ he will inflict it inexorably on others. But +that's the point! For oneself, yes--but for others who suffer and don't +believe!--suffer horribly!" + +A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs. +Betts. + +"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll +try and put it to Mr. Newbury. Nobody here, you think, need know anything +about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and +you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all +anybody need know?" + +Mrs. Betts raised herself. + +"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord +William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't +do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to +interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William +and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!" + +She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair +and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand: + +"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury--because you love him. If +I lose John who will ever give me a kind word--a kind look again? I thought +at last--I'd found--a little love. Even bad people"--her voice broke--"may +rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that." + +Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes. +Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her +mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled +with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of +deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and +responsive human being. + +"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that +I'll speak to Mr. Newbury." + +Mrs. Betts gave her effusive thanks which somehow jarred on Marcia; she was +glad when they were over and Mrs. Betts rose to go. That her tearful and +disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side +staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. +Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an +undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon +pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound of the house. + +She found herself in a strange confusion of mind. She still saw the small +tear-stained face, the dingy finery, the tormented hair; the story she had +just heard was still sounding in her ears. But what really held her was the +question: "Can I move Edward? What will he say to me?" + +And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together +came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which +had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been +drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?--drawn with a +hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by +them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it +that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had +been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer +idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? +Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the +center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices +eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself +naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. + +But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of +the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be +entering upon--moving--in a world where almost nothing was left free for +her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was +taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; +would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon +Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. + +And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of +self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's +lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home +life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to +them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, +congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning--these +things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. +The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing +enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish +joking--with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and +literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the +Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute +refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at +least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice--in +relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still +standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, +she knew--knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, +his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she +sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, +she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in +her?--what was there in her--to deserve it? + +And yet--and yet! Some penetrating instinct to which in this moment of +solitude, of unwilling reflection, she could not help but listen, told her +that the very soul of him was not hers; that the deepest foundation of his +life was no human affection, but the rapture, the compelling vision of a +mystical faith. And that rapture she could never share; she knew herself; +it was not in her. One moment she could have cried out in despair over her +own limitations and disabilities. The next she was jealous; on fire. + +Jealous!--that was the real, sadly human truth; jealous, as women have +always been, of the faith, or the art, or the friendship, which threatens +their hold upon the lover. And there stole upon her as she sat musing, the +old, old temptation--the temptation of Psyche--to test and try this man, +who was to bring her into bondage, before the bonds were yet quite set. She +was honestly touched by Mrs. Betts's story. To her, in her first softness +of love, it seemed intolerably hard and odious that two people who clung to +each other should be forcibly torn apart; two people whom no law, but +only an ecclesiastical scruple condemned. Surely Edward would accept, and +persuade his father to accept, the compromise which the husband and wife +suggested. If Mrs. Betts withdrew from the scene, from the estate, would +not this satisfy everybody? What further scandal could there be? She went +on arguing it with herself, but all the time the real, deepest motive +at work was not so much sympathy, as a kind of excited restlessness +--curiosity. She saw herself pleading with Edward, breaking +down his resistance, winning her cause, and then, instead of triumphing, +flinging herself into his arms, to ask pardon for daring to fight him. + +The happy tears blinded her, and fell unheeded until a mocking reaction +dried them. + +"Oh, what a fool!--what a fool!" + +And running through the wood she came out into the sunshine at its farther +end--a blaze of sun upon the lake, its swans, its stone-rimmed islands, +and statuary, on the gray-white front of the pillared and porticoed house, +stretching interminably. The flowers shone in the stiff beds; a rain of +blossom drifted through the air. Everything glittered and sparkled. It was +Corinthian, pretentious, artificial; but as Marcia hurried up the broad +middle walk between the queer gods and goddesses, whom some pupil of +Bernini's had manufactured in Rome for a Coryston of the eighteenth +century, she was in love with the scene, which in general she disliked; in +love with the summer, in love above all with the quick life of her own mind +and body.... + +There were persons talking in her mother's sitting-room--Sir Wilfrid, +Arthur, and Coryston--she perceived them through the open windows. The +sight of Arthur suddenly sobered her, and diverted her thoughts. For if +Newbury now held the chief place in her mind, her mother still reigned +there. She--Marcia--must be on the spot to protect her mother!--in case +protection were wanted, and Coryston and Sir Wilfrid had not succeeded +yet in bringing that mad fellow to his senses. Ah! but they had all a new +helper and counselor now--in Edward. Let Coryston abuse him to her, if he +dared! She would know how to defend him. + +She hurried on. + +Simultaneously, from the garden door of the library a figure emerged, a +man with some books under his arm. She recognized Lester, and a rush of +something which was partly shyness and partly a delicious pride came over +her, to delay her steps. + +They met under the wide open colonnade which carried the first story of the +house. Lester came toward her smiling and flushed. + +"I've just heard," he said. "I do congratulate you. It's splendid!" + +She gave him her hand; and he thought as he looked at her how happiness had +beautified and transformed her. All that was imperfect in the face seemed +to have fallen into harmony; and her dark bloom had never been so lovely. + +"Yes, I'm very happy. He'll keep me in order! At least he'll try." Her eyes +danced. + +"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not +indeed knowing what to say. + +"Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with +him." + +"Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite--Ah!--" + +A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead--Lady Coryston's voice and +Arthur's clashing--startled them both. + +"Oh, I must go!" cried Marcia, frowning and paling. "Thank you--thank you +so much. Good-by." + +And she ran into the house. Lester remained rooted in the shadows of the +colonnade for a minute or two, looking after her, with a set, abstracted +face. Then the sound of the altercation overhead smote him too with alarm. +He moved quickly away lest through the open windows he might catch what was +said. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Marcia entered her mother's sitting-room in the midst of what seemed a +babel of voices. James Coryston, indeed, who was sitting in a corner of +the room while Coryston and Sir Wilfrid Bury argued across him, was not +contributing to it. He was watching his mother, and she on the other side +of the room was talking rapidly to her son Arthur, who could evidently +hardly control himself sufficiently to listen to her. + +As Marcia came in she heard Arthur say in a loud voice: + +"Your attitude, mother, is perfectly unreasonable, and I will not submit to +be dictated to like this!" + +Marcia, staying her foot half-way across the room, looked at her youngest +brother in amazement. + +Was this rough-mannered, rough-voiced man, Arthur?--the tame house-brother, +and docile son of their normal life? What was happening to them all? + +Lady Coryston broke out: + +"I repeat--you propose to me, Arthur, a bargain which is no bargain!--" + +"A quid without a quo?" interrupted Coryston, who had suddenly dropped his +argument with Sir Wilfrid, and had thrown himself on a sofa near his mother +and Arthur. + +Lady Coryston took no notice of him. She continued to address her +youngest-born. + +"What Coryston may do--now--after all that has passed is to me a matter of +merely secondary importance. When I first saw the notice of the Martover +meeting it was a shock to me--I admit it. But since then he has done so +many other things--he has struck at me in so many other ways--he has so +publicly and scandalously outraged family feeling, and political decency--" + +"I really haven't," said Coryston, mildly. "I haven't--if this was a free +country." + +Lady Coryston flashed a sudden superb look at him and resumed: + +"--that I really don't care what Coryston does. He has done his worst. I +can't suffer any greater insult than he has already put upon me--" + +Coryston shook his head, mutely protesting. He seized a pen from a table +near, and began to bite and strip it with an absent face. + +"But _you_, Arthur!" his mother went on with angry emphasis, "have +still a character to lose or gain. As I have said, it doesn't now matter +vitally to me whether Coryston is in the chair or not--I regard him as +merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw--but if _you_ let this meeting at +Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, +you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played +the coward--and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the +lurch--though that latter point I can see doesn't move you at all!" + +James and Sir Wilfrid Bury came anxiously to join the group. Sir Wilfrid +approached the still standing and distressed Marcia. Drawing her hand +within his arm, he patted it kindly. + +"We can't persuade your mother, my dear. Suppose you try." + +"Mother, you can't insist on Arthur's going through with the meeting if he +doesn't wish to!" said Marcia, with animation. "Do let him give it up! It +would be so easy to postpone it." + +Lady Coryston turned upon her. + +"Everything is easy in your eyes, no doubt, Marcia, except that he should +do his duty, and spare my feelings! As a matter of fact you know perfectly +well that Arthur has always allowed me to arrange these things for him." + +"I don't mean, mother, to do so in future!" said Arthur, resolutely turning +upon her. "You _must_ leave me to manage my own life and my own +affairs." + +Lady Coryston's features quivered in her long bony face. As she sat near +the window, on a high chair, fully illumined, in a black velvet dress, +long-waisted, and with a kind of stand-up ruffle at the throat, she was +amazingly Queen Bess. James, who was always conscious of the likeness, +could almost have expected her to rise and say in the famous words of the +Queen to Cecil--"Little man, little man, your father durst not have said +'must' to me!" + +But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words: + +"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never +been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your +Parliamentary abilities--unaided." + +"Mother!--" cried Marcia and James simultaneously. + +Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid's +restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, +his eyes bloodshot. + +"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them +long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for +myself in future. I don't think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him--and I +know his daughter." + +The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm--in +Marcia's case, of terror--ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid +caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off. + +Lady Coryston met her son's eyes with equal passion. + +"An intriguer--an unscrupulous intriguer--like himself!" said Lady +Coryston, with cutting emphasis. + +Arthur's flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning +hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur +thrust them aside. + +"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking +into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There +was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, +slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am--in love--with the lady +to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her--and +I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. _Now_ you understand +perhaps why I didn't wish to attack her father at this particular +juncture." + +"Arthur!" + +Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, +meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them +starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was +trouble--and a sudden softness--in his look. + +Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants +were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston's aspect was something +quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It +represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human +personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet +encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She +laughed--as she passed her handkerchief over her lips--so Marcia thought +afterward--to hide their trembling. + +"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to +wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your +confession--your astonishing confession--does at least supply some +reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present--_for the +present_"--she spoke slowly--"I cease to press you to speak at this +meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to +the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later--and in private. I +must take time to think it over." + +She rose. James came forward. + +"May I come with you, mother?" + +She frowned a little. + +"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with +regard to the meeting." + +And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through +the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something +in her ear--no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; +and he closed the door. + +Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, +and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, +and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay. + +Sir Wilfrid spoke first: + +"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made +seriously?" + +Arthur turned impatiently. + +"Do I look like joking?" + +"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us." + +"Luckily mother doesn't believe a word of it!" + +The voice was Coryston's, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the +ceiling. + +Arthur stood still. + +"What do you mean?" + +"No offense. I dare say she believed _you_. But the notion strikes her +as too grotesque to be bothered about." + +"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk. + +"Whether she is or not, she'll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes +of it," was Coryston's murmured comment. But the words were lost in his +mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window +gazing into the garden. Something in his brother's meditative back seemed +to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, +and hit it. James turned with a start. + +"Look here, James--this isn't Hegel--and it isn't Lotze--and it isn't +Bergson--it's life. Haven't you got a remark to contribute?" + +James's blue eyes showed no resentment. + +"I'm very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother." + +"Why?" + +"Because she's the oldest. We've got the future. She hasn't." + +The color rushed to Marcia's face. She looked gratefully at her brother. +Sir Wilfrid's gray head nodded agreement. + +"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don't see that. At least, of course it has a +certain truth. But it doesn't present itself to me as a ground for +sparing the older generation. In fact"--he sprang to his feet--"present +company--present family excepted--we're being ruined--stick stock +ruined--by the elder generation! They're in our way everywhere! Why don't +they withdraw--and let _us_ take the stage? We know more than they. +We're further evolved--we're better informed. And they will insist on +pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the +world can't get on like this. Something will have to be done. We're choked +up with the older generation." + +"Yes, for those who have no reverence--and no pity!" said Marcia. + +The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon +her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their +sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston +flushed, involuntarily. + +"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't +understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not +at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner +and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful--disrespectful? Good +heavens! What do we _care_ about the people, our contemporaries, with +whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call +_action_? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us--and +calm us--and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue +and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"--he +threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston's empty chair--"with time to smile +and think and jest--with no ax to grind--and no opinions to push--do you +think I shouldn't have been at her feet--her slave, her adorer? Besides, +the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, +long enough--they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers +now, and they the wall-flowers. And they won't play the game!" + +"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any +game--together--Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply. + +Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly. + +"One might argue till doomsday--I agree--as to which of us said 'won't +play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it +us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur--having made +a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's _we_ who have the +youth--_we_ who have the power--_we_ who know more than our +elders simply because we were born thirty years later! Let the old submit, +and we'll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with +march-music! But they _will_ fight us--and they can't win!" + +His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes +glittering. + +"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half +contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his +restless walk. + +"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir +Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play +the game of a generation--old and young. However, the situation is too +acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an +old friend?" + +"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren't so jolly sure what it would +be." + +"Don't be so sure. Come and take me a turn in the lime avenue before +lunch." + +The two disappeared. James followed them. Marcia, full of disquiet, was +going off to find Lady Coryston when Coryston stopped her. + +"I say, Marcia--it's true--isn't it? You're engaged to Newbury?" + +She turned proudly, confronting him. + +"I am." + +"I'm not going to congratulate you!" he said, vehemently. "I've got a deal +to say to you. Will you allow me to say it?" + +"Whenever you like," said Marcia, indifferently. + +Coryston perched himself on the edge of a table beside her, looking down +upon her, his hands thrust into his pockets. + +"How much do you know of this Betts business?" he asked her, abruptly. + +"A good deal--considering you sent Mrs. Betts to see me this morning!" + +"Oh, she came, did she? Well, do you see any common sense, any justice, any +Christianity in forcing that woman to leave her husband--in flinging her +out to the wolves again, just as she has got into shelter?" + +"In Edward's view, Mr. Betts is not her husband," said Marcia, defiantly. +"You seem to forget that fact." + +"'Edward's view'?" repeated Coryston, impatiently. "My dear, what's Edward +got to do with it? He's not the law of the land. Let him follow his own law +if he likes. But to tear up other people's lives by the roots, in the name +of some private particular species of law that you believe in and they +don't, is really too much--at this time of day. You ought to stop it, +Marcia!--and you must!" + +"Who's tyrannizing now?" said Marcia. "Haven't other people as good a right +to live their beliefs as you?" + +"Yes, so long as they don't destroy other people in the process. Even I am +not anarchist enough for that." + +"Well," said Marcia, coolly, "the Newburys are making it disagreeable for +Mr. and Mrs. Betts because they disapprove of them. And what else are you +doing with mamma?" + +She threw a triumphant look at her brother. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Coryston, jumping up. "The weakest 'score' I +ever heard. Don't you know the difference between the things that are +vital and the things that are superficial--between fighting opinions, and +_destroying a life_, between tilting and boxing, however roughly--and +_murdering_?" + +He looked at her fiercely. + +"Who talks of murdering!" The tone was scornful. + +"I do! If the Newburys drive those two apart they will have a murder of +souls on their conscience. And if you talked to that woman this morning you +know it as well as I!" + +Marcia faltered a little. + +"They could still meet as friends." + +"Yes, under the eyes of holy women!--spying lest any impropriety occur! +That's the proposal, I understand. Of all the vile and cold-blooded +suggestions!--" + +And restraining himself with the utmost difficulty, as one might hang on to +the curb of a bolting horse, Coryston stamped up and down the room, till +speech was once more possible. Then he came to an abrupt pause before his +sister. + +"Are you really in love with this man, Marcia?" + +So challenged, Marcia did not deign to answer. She merely looked up at +Coryston, motionless, faintly smiling. He took his answer, dazzled at the +same time by her emerging and developing beauty. + +"Well, if you do love him," he said, slowly, "and he loves you, _make_ +him have pity! Those two, also, love each other. That woman is a poor +common little thing. She was a poor common little actress with no talent, +before her first husband married her--she's a common little actress now, +even when she feels most deeply. You probably saw it, and it repelled +you. _You_ can afford, you see, to keep a fine taste, and fastidious +feelings! But if you tear her from that man, you kill all that's good in +her--you ruin all her miserable chances. That man's raising her. Bit by bit +he'll stamp his own character into hers--because she loves him. And Betts +himself, a great, silent, hard man, who has once in his life done a +splendid thing!--forgotten himself head over ears for a woman--and is now +doing his level best to make a good job of her--you Christians are going +to reward him first by breaking his heart, and tearing his life-work to +pieces!--God!--I wish your Master were here to tell you what He'd think of +it!" + +"You're not His only interpreter!" cried Marcia, breathing quickly. "It's +in His name that Edward and his father are acting. You daren't say--you +daren't _think_--that it's for mere authority's sake--mere +domination's sake!" + +Coryston eyed her in silence a little. + +"No use in arguing this thing on its merits," he said, curtly, at last. +"You don't know enough about it, and Newbury and I shouldn't have a single +premise in common. But I just warn you and him--it's a ticklish game +playing with a pair of human lives like these. They are sensitive, +excitable people--I don't threaten--I only say--_take care_!" + +"'Game,' 'play'--what silly words to use about such men as Edward and his +father, in such a matter!" said Marcia as she rose, breathing contempt. "I +shall talk to Edward--I promised Mrs. Betts. But I suppose, Corry, it's +no good saying, to begin with, that when you talk of tyranny, you seem to +_me_ at any rate, the best tyrant of the lot." + +The girl stood with her head thrown back, challenging her brother, her +whole slender form poised for battle. + +Coryston shook his head. + +"Nonsense! I play the gadfly--to all the tyrants." "_A tyrant_," +repeated his sister, steadily. "And an unkind wretch into the bargain! I +was engaged--yesterday--and have you said one nice, brotherly word to me?" + +Her lips trembled. Coryston turned away. + +"You are giving yourself to the forces of reaction," he said, between his +teeth, "the forces that are everywhere fighting liberty--whether in the +individual--or the State. Only, unfortunately "--he turned with a smile, +the sudden gaiety of which fairly startled his sister--"as far as matrimony +is concerned, I seem to be doing precisely the same thing myself." + +"Corry! what on earth do you mean?" + +"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? Perhaps you will some day," said Coryston, +with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the +battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If +you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. +I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff +document, I admit. If not--" + +"Well, if not?" + +"War!" was the short reply, as her brother made for the door. + +Then suddenly he came back to say: + +"Keep an eye on mother. As far as Arthur's concerned--she's dangerous. She +hasn't the smallest intention of letting him marry that girl. And here +too it'll be a case of meddling with forces you don't understand. Keep me +informed." + +"Yes--if you promise to help him--and her--to break it off," said Marcia, +firmly. + +Coryston slowly shook his head; and went. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston, having shaken off all companions, had betaken +herself for greater privacy to a solitary walk. She desired to see neither +children nor friends nor servants till she had made up her mind what she +was going to do. As generally happened with her in the bad moments of life, +the revelation of what threatened her had steeled and nerved her to a +surprising degree. Her stately indoor dress had been exchanged for a short +tweed gown, and, as she walked briskly along, her white hair framed in the +drawn hood of black silk which she wore habitually on country walks, she +had still a wonderful air of youth, and indeed she had never felt herself +more vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean +peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by +something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the +feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next +stroke may--probably will--end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it +made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the +clearness of her resolve. + +So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had +increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress +just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever +since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public +as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by +refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm +her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, +Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no +doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph +over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid +Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a +fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed +to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had +declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, +to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time--all the time--the handsome, +repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the +hollow of her hand! + +Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself +that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The +circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many +people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams +were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay +hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage +could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher--the temptation had +only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would +be the sweetness--for such persons as the Glenwilliams--of a planned and +successful revenge. + +Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover +meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood +from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the +week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. +Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an +interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to +be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and +irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the +embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his +seat--to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the +country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small +towns in his division. + +She reached a rising ground in the park, where was a seat under a fine oak, +commanding a view. The green slopes below her ran westward to a wide sky +steeped toward the horizon in all conceivable shades of lilac and pearl, +with here and there in the upper heaven lakes of blue and towering +thunder-clouds brooding over them, prophesying storm. She looked out over +her domain, in which, up to a short time before, her writ, so to speak, had +run, like that of a king. And now all sense of confidence, of security, +was gone. There on the hillside was the white patch of Knatchett--the old +farmhouse, where Coryston had settled himself. It showed to her disturbed +mind like the patch of leaven which, scarcely visible at first, will grow +and grow "till the whole is leavened." A leaven of struggle and revolt. And +only her woman's strength to fight it. + +Suddenly--a tremor of great weakness came upon her. Arthur, her dearest! It +had been comparatively easy to fight Coryston. When had she not fought +him? But Arthur! She thought of all the happy times she had had with +him--electioneering for him, preparing his speeches, watching his first +steps in the House of Commons. The years before her, her coming old age, +seemed all at once to have passed into a gray eclipse; and some difficult +tears forced their way. Had she, after all, mismanaged her life? Were +prophecies to which she had always refused to listen--she seemed to hear +them in her dead husband's voice!--coming true? She fell into a great and +lonely anguish of mind; while the westerly light burned on the broidery of +white hawthorns spread over the green spaces below, and on the loops and +turns of the little brimming trout-stream that ran so merrily through the +park. + +But she never wavered for one moment as to her determination to see Enid +Glenwilliam after the Martover meeting; nor did the question of Arthur's +personal happiness enter for one moment into her calculations. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The breakfast gong had just sounded at Hoddon Grey. The hour was a quarter +to nine. Prayers in the chapel were over, and Lord and Lady Newbury, at +either end of the table, spectacles on nose, were opening and reading their +letters. + +"Where is Edward?" said Lady William, looking round. + +"My dear!" Lord William's tone was mildly reproachful. + +"Of course--I forgot for a moment!" And on Lady William's delicately +withered cheek there appeared a slight flush. For it was their wedding-day, +and never yet, since his earliest childhood, had their only son, their only +child, failed, either personally or by deputy, to present his mother with a +bunch of June roses on the morning of this June anniversary. While he was +in India the custom was remitted to the old head gardener, who always +received, however, from the absent son the appropriate letter or message to +be attached to the flowers. And one of the most vivid memories Lady William +retained of her son's boyhood showed her the half-open door of an inn +bedroom at Domodossola, and Edward's handsome face--the face of a lad of +eleven--looking in, eyes shining, white teeth grinning, as he held aloft in +triumph the great bunch of carnations and roses for which the little fellow +had scoured the sleepy town in the early hours. They had taken him abroad +for the first time, during a break between his preparatory school and Eton, +when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of measles; and Lady +William could never forget the charm of the boy's companionship, his eager +docility and sweetness, his delight in the Catholic churches and services, +his ready friendships with the country-folk, with the coachman who drove +them, and the _sagrestani_ who led them through dim chapels and +gleaming monuments. + +But when indeed had he not been their delight and treasure from his youth +up till now? And though in the interest of a long letter from her Bishop to +whom she was devoted, Lady William had momentarily forgotten the date, +this wedding-day was, in truth, touched, for both parents, with a special +consecration and tenderness, since it was the first since Edward's own +betrothal. And there beside Lady William's plate lay a large jeweler's +case, worn and old-fashioned, whereof the appearance was intimately +connected both with the old facts and the new. + +Meanwhile, a rainy morning, in which, however, there was a hidden sunlight, +threw a mild illumination into the Hoddon Grey dining-room, upon the +sparely provided breakfast-table, the somewhat austere line of family +portraits on the gray wall, the Chippendale chairs shining with the +hand-polish of generations, the Empire clock of black and ormolu on the +chimney-piece and on the little tan spitz, sitting up with wagging tail and +asking eyes, on Lady William's left. Neither she nor her husband ever took +more than--or anything else than--an egg with their coffee and toast. They +secretly despised people who ate heavy breakfasts, and the extra allowance +made for Edward's young appetite, or for guests, was never more than +frugal. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was a hearty eater, was accustomed to say of +the Hoddon Grey fare that it deprived the Hoddon Grey fasts--which were +kept according to the strict laws of the Church--of any merit whatever. It +left you nothing to give up. + +Nevertheless, this little morning scene at Hoddon Grey possessed, for the +sensitive eye, a peculiar charm. The spaces of the somewhat empty room +matched the bareness of the white linen, the few flowers standing +separately here and there upon it, and the few pieces of old silver. The +absence of any loose abundance of food or gear, the frugal refined note, +were of course symbolic of the life lived in the house. The Newburys were +rich. Their beautifully housed, and beautifully kept estate, with its nobly +adorned churches, its public halls and institutions, proclaimed the fact; +but in their own private sphere it was ignored as much as possible. + +"Here he is!" exclaimed Lady William, turning to the door with something of +a flutter. "Oh, Edward, they are lovely!" + +Her son laid the dewy bunch beside her plate and then kissed his mother +affectionately. + +"Many happy returns!--and you, father! Hullo--mother, you've got a +secret--you're blushing! What's up?" + +And still holding Lady William by the arm, he looked smilingly from her to +the jeweler's case on the table. + +"They must be reset, dear; but they're fine." + +Lady William opened the case, and pushed it toward him. It contained a +necklace and pendant, two bracelets, and a stomacher brooch of diamonds and +sapphire--magnificent stones in a heavy gold setting, whereof the Early +Victorianism cried aloud. The set had been much admired in the great +exhibition of 1851, where indeed it had been bought by Lady William's +father as a present to his wife. Secretly Lady William still thought it +superb; but she was quite aware that no young woman would wear it. + +Edward looked at it with amusement. + +"The stones are gorgeous. When Cartier's had a go at it, it'll be something +like! I can remember your wearing it, mother, at Court, when I was a small +child. And you're going to give it to Marcia?" He kissed her again. + +"Take it, dear, and ask her how she'd like them set," said his mother, +happily, putting the box into his hand; after which he was allowed to sit +down to his breakfast. + +Lord William meanwhile had taken no notice of the little incident of +the jewels. He was deep in a letter which seemed to have distracted his +attention entirely from his son and to be causing him distress. When he had +finished it he pushed it away and sat gazing before him as though still +held by the recollection of it. + +"I never knew a more sad, a more difficult case," he said, presently, +speaking, it seemed, to himself. + +Edward turned with a start. + +"Another letter, father?" + +Lord William pushed it over to him. + +Newbury read it, and as he did so, in his younger face there appeared the +same expression as in his father's; a kind of grave sadness, in which there +was no trace of indecision, though much of trouble. Lady William asked no +question, though in the course of her little pecking meal, she threw some +anxious glances at her husband and son. They preserved a strict silence at +table on the subject of the letter; but as soon as breakfast was over, Lord +William made a sign to his son, and they went out into the garden together, +walking away from the house. + +"You know we can't do this, Edward!" said Lord William, with energy, as +soon as they were in solitude. + +Edward's eyes assented. + +His father resumed, impetuously: "How can I go on in close relations with +a man--my right hand in the estate--almost more than my agent--associated +with all the church institutions and charities--a communicant--secretary +of the communicant's guild!--our friend and helper in all our religious +business--who has been the head and front of the campaign against +immorality in this village--responsible, with us, for many decisions that +must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble--who yet now proposes, +himself, to maintain what we can only regard--what everybody on this estate +has been taught to regard--as an immoral connection with a married woman! +Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The +so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but +the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his +business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this +estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would +falsify our whole life here,--and make it one ugly hypocrisy!" + +There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked: + +"You of course made it plain once more--in your letter yesterday--that +there would be no harshness--that as far as money went--" + +"I told him he could have _whatever_ was necessary! We wished to force +no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they +decided to remain together--then he and we must part; but we would make it +perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere--in England or the colonies. +If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for +her--then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before." + +"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm--" + +Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress. + +"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to +it!--that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand--that he can never +build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere--that the farm is the +apple of his eye. It's absolutely true--every word of it! But then, why did +he take this desperate step!--without consulting any of his friends! It's +no responsibility of ours!" + +The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound +to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled +with a rocklike steadiness of will. + +"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?" + +"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the +Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and +watch over her, like the angels they are,--and the boy could go to a day +school. But they won't hear of it--they won't listen to it for a moment; +and now--you see--they've put their own alternative plan before us, in +this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by +temperament--that she wouldn't understand the Sisters--nor they her--that +she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations--and then +all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he +said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' +It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his +conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here +on our terms." + +"The letter is curiously excitable--hardly legible even--very unlike +Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully. + +"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has +somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do." + +The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a +footman coming with a note. + +"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer." + +Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow. + +"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon." + +When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face +showing the quick feeling behind. + +"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?" + +"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That +fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses +themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with +to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely +trust you and your judgment in such a matter." + +Newbury flushed. + +"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. +"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her." + +"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, +hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over +and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be +troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us." + +The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily. + + * * * * * + +A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was +sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were +fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing +up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston +trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk +bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which +overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows. + +The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long +discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, +far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved +brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of +her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was +not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never +felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was +haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom +he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, +and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the +plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away +committeth adultery_'"? + +"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. +It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and +most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law +concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to +_sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of +marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not +only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of +people with a high social trust, to betray that trust." + +These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held +him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the +enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his +own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the +only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up +life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or +accomplices in their wrong-doing? + +Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane +outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of +the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals +of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly +famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was +the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green +plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils +and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come +eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, +not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of +buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the +new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and +there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the +woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen. + +A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the +scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the +less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and +to fling back his charges in his face. + +Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges. + +Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly +grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and +pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road. + +"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you." + +"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice +of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his +high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the +unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case +also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen +of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student +of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure +round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still +clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its +master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer +or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large +modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise +knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the +world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered +everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for +by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, +clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the +memory of years of kindly intercourse--friendship, loyalty, just dealing. + +"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," +began Betts, abruptly. + +"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly +gentle, even deferential. + +"You read it, I presume?" + +Newbury made a sign of assent. + +"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" + +Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the +normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. + +Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. + +"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!" + +"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?" + +"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should +be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it +indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false." + +"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?" + +"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would +only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for +you--elsewhere!" + +Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. + +"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it +night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives +and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on +there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're +working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I +begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The +best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, +you're going to drive me from it." + +"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden +rush of grief. The other turned. + +"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy +I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You +made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried +over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she +_is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given +her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her." + +"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" +Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote +them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition +we all sent to the Bishop only last year." + +"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot +since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly +escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a +stop. + +"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in +the laboratory I must be looking after." + +"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a +Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm +near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--" + +Betts interrupted. + +"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no +good." + +The voice dropped. + +With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away. + +Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The +patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young +man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken +address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. +What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; +determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the +ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which +a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that +a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the +circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican +sort, depends. + +The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. +Would she come to meet him? + +Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this +melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not +right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her +and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of +whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting +with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they +believed, than Betts himself knew. + +And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance +of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream.... + +He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the +new-leafed trees. + +The wood was deep--spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly +clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face.... + +When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting +off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day +before--of Arthur and her mother--and the revelation sprung upon them all. + +"You remember how _terrified_ I was--lest mother should know? And +she's taken it so calmly!" + +She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the +arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was +cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well +would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his +point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that +morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in +the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide +match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the +reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as +before. + +"They're not engaged?" + +"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe _she_ means it seriously at +all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something." + +"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced +smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!" + +"He says he wants to see you--to--to have it out with you," said Marcia, +awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round +Newbury's arm. + +"Edward!--do--_do_ make us all happy!" + +He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly +to his. + +"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You +darling!--what can I do?" + +But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That +she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay +at her feet!--she, who had promised him herself! + +"_Please_--let Mr. Betts stay--please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for +her yesterday!" + +"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and +mother will do all they can." + +"Then you _will_ let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly +against him. + +"Of course!--if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, +unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening. + +She straightened herself. + +"If they separate, you mean?" + +"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do." + +"But it would break their hearts." + +He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed. + +"It would make amends." + +"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her +color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one +has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, +Edward?--Won't everybody think it _very_ hard?" + +"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, +that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't +matter,--what they have done?--when in truth it seems to us a black +offense--" + +"Against what--or whom?" she asked, wondering. + +The answer came unflinchingly: + +"Against our Lord--and His Church." + +The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes. + +"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to +stay _here_!--at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say +to me--" + +Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's +arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her +instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,--were +all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and +distress--not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon +discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a +foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out: + +"Darling, I _can't_ discuss it with you! Won't you trust me--Won't +you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one +moment's pain--if we could help it?" + +Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting +and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled. + +"I can't understand," she said, frowning--"I can't!" + +"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust +me with your whole life? Won't you?" + +He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with +her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave +way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all +the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first +moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of +inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the +beginning had both teased and won her. + +But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had +said. She released herself to do it. + +"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. +and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people--and very much +in love. He can't tell what might happen." + +Newbury's face stiffened. + +"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. +And as for thinking of it--why, it's hardly ever out of my mind--except +when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night." + +Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home +through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of +the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to +learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is +discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in +view, throws the eternal glamour. + +Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's +consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, +indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in +clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the +future--the honeymoon--their London house--the rooms at Hoddon Grey that +were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from +Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the +trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. +But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best +man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading +influence in his life--friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to +that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two +of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked +High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a +"Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a +mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India. + +And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was +speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; +although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such +people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then +chilled, and if the truth be told--bored. It was with such topics, as +with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not +understand. + +She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of +Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common +delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, +reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a +considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a +new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside +him. + +"How much you know!"--and then, shyly--"You must teach me!" With the +inevitable male retort--"Teach you!--when you look at me like that!" + +It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before +luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it +was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly +figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for +having forgotten them. + +And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his +silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened +also to him. + + * * * * * + +"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury +walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia +and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the +drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady +Coryston's special and peremptory command for the _trousseau_. + +"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter." + +Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled +with the laugh. + +"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good +deal--but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business +with the Baptists?" + +Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper. + +"Well now they've got their land--through Coryston. There always was a +square piece in the very middle of the village--an _enclave_ belonging +to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the +Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston +has found her, got at her, and made her sell it--finding, I believe, the +greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the +foundation-stone of the new Bethel--under his mother's nose." + +"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, +flushing. + +Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly. + +"Moral--don't keep a conscience--political or ecclesiastical. There's +nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven's sake, don't be a +posthumous villain!" + +"What's that?" + +"A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife," said +Sir Wilfrid, calmly. "It's played the deuce in this family, and will go on +doing it." + +Whereupon the late Lord Coryston's executor produced an outline of the +family history--up to date--for the benefit of Lady Coryston's future +son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip +on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike +the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of +money and inheritance. + +"So Arthur inherits everything!" + +"Hm--does he?" said Sir Wilfrid. + +"But I thought--" + +"Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss +Glenwilliam over his mother's body--and if he does marry her he may whistle +for the estates." + +"Then James will have them?" said Newbury, smiling. + +"Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody." + +"I hope not!" Newbury's tone showed a genuine discomfort. + +"What is Lady Coryston doing?" + +"About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!--what isn't she doing?" said Sir +Wilfrid, significantly. "All the same, she lies low." As he spoke, his eyes +fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging +from the wood. He pointed. + +"They will be there on Sunday fortnight--after the Martover meeting." + +"Who? The Glenwilliams?" + +Sir Wilfrid nodded. + +"And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly +inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the +less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in +the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end +annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was +attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents +alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, +and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by +committees. + +And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, +loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law--on conditions. + +"I see no reason," he wrote, "why you and I should not be good friends--if +only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful +case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your +_opinions_ on divorce don't matter, of course, to me--nor mine to +you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you +must--because of your opinions--commit yourself to one of them--why then, +whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can't be friends. It would be +mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do +my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of +the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance +with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter +to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat--"Separate--or go--" +well, then you and I'll come to blows--Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you +that Marcia is at bottom a humanist--in the new sense--like me." + +To which Newbury promptly replied: + +"My dear Coryston--I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, +whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any +useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the +same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling +out opinion--or rather conviction--and supposing that we can agree, apart +from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The +omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia--perhaps +because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the +happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily +affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to +understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached +to you--though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you +have taken down here.... Let me know when you return--that I may come over +to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can't we?--even though we look at life so +differently." + +But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made +no reply. + +The June days passed on, bringing the "high midsummer pomps." Every day +Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between +them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London +had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and +even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with +a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys +guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled +to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick +to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole +proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be +arranged. + +Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as +possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the +horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was +being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The +supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on +the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but +on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got +into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the "Rational Marriage +Union" appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in +the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at +night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a +hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his +smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that +Coryston was still away. + +For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did +come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters +were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that +to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety +of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her +mother had no mind to give to such a trifle--or to anything, indeed--her +own marriage not excepted--but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's +intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They +lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would +have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; +and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed +in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the +affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover +meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of +conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it +seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those +queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for +the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly +and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of +opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. +Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his +mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston +that they also should return to St. James's Square, partly to keep an eye +on the backslider, partly with a view to "fittings," Lady Coryston curtly +replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her +up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at +Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to +play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the +pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him. + +On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out +westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of +Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major +about seven o'clock. She had been holding conference with a number of +persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to +turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of +opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon's +work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain +was alive with plans. A passion of political--and personal--hatred charged +every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not +a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of +life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that +even if Arthur did fail her--incredible defection!--she, alone, would +fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great +possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes. + +Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of +the scene which--within forty-eight hours--she was deliberately preparing +for herself. She meant to win her battle,--did not for one moment admit the +possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she +foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there +were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life +disagreeable. + +It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were +full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as +she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large +crowd, and the motor slowed down. + +"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur. + +"Layin' a stone--or somethin'--my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled +voice. + +"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before +the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that +morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had +screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently +to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow +from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several +black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a +dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had +apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its +supports. The board exhibited the words--"Site of the new Baptist Chapel +for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully +received." + +There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, +but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a +small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor. + +Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. + +"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. + +"I can't, my lady--they're too thick." + +By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled +the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A +movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then +toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed +to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor +finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front +of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and +understood what was the matter with the audience. + +Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, +stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his +voice: + +"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among +us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of +us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did +not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in +Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. +"May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her +mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a +check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" + +He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his +boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the +first "Hip!--hip--" + +"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the +front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in +good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the +motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At +last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back +to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. + +"Infamous! Outrageous!" + +The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in +which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! +That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly +spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for +twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist +Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the +village. + +And this was Coryston's doing. What taste--what feeling! A mother!--to be +so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was +very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling +dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, +the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength +and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do--more important, +that, than this trumpery business in the village! + +A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia +outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in +a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left +hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light +seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought--"she has just parted +from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment +possessed her--jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt +herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her +daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back +upon her, a rare experience!--and she was conscious of a dull longing for +the husband who had humored her every wish--save one; had been proud of her +cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of +him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last +hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the +end. + +[Illustration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME] + +Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple +as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and +excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence +mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than +an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few +days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a +kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?--how would +it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of +submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In +order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought +up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, +carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their +betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural +sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and +disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of +opinions--his bitter judgment, often, of men--repelled and angered her. +She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such +bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was +but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only +faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a +breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; +nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of +her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what +it had meant. + +And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of +powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by +such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet +it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away +ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a +wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could +not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim +of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and +breathless into every hour of every day they were together. + +On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at +Coryston. Newbury had gone--reluctantly for once--to a diocesan meeting +on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was +evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take +informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife--a +house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's +visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from +town, and strangers were pouring into the district. + +Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and +sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before +this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; +sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. +Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the +bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly +gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile +running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. +This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had +missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort +of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which +had been strangely welcome. + +Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note. + +"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, +his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the +roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely +seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last +to have practically forgotten his presence in the house. + +She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look +of consternation blotting the brightness from her face. + +"I must have the small motor--at once! Can you order it for me?" + +"Certainly. You want it directly?" + +"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, +on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the +side doors of the facade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant +mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. +What could be the matter? + +He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had +placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could +not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her +return. + +"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be +here for dinner. No--thank you!--thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the +chauffeur--"Redcross Farm!--as quick as you can!" + +Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After +a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir +Wilfrid Bury. + +Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay +harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had +been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and +shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a +cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only +think of the note she still held in her hand. + +"Can you come and see me? to-night--at once. Don't bring anybody. I am +alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.--ALICE BETTS." + +This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of +feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"--and trembled. Edward would +not be home till the following day. She must act alone--help alone. The +thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use--but she wished she had +thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her.... + +The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had +strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had +been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. +The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder. + +"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted +to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man +came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused +to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms--Marcia +thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his +astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly +round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared. + +"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur +continued, eagerly,--"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the +beasts." + +"You know the farm, Jackson?" + +"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly. +"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice +gentleman. He'll show you everything." + +At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man +fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than +she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood. + +They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern +additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge +of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and +brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in +the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a +substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it +curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain: + +"That's the laboratory, miss--His lordship built that six years ago. And +last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the +speeches--and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal--and there was an American +gentleman who spoke--and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts--next to +that place, Harpenden way--Rothamsted, I think they call it--was most +'ighly thought of in the States--and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's +the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs +'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water +that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em--and the mangel +field--and--" + +"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his +steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm. + +A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her +furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the +window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which +she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was +drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow--but on +the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now +here, now there. How trim everything was!--how solid and prosperous. The +great cattle-shed on the one hand--the sheep-station on the other, with its +pens and hurdles--the fine stone-built laboratory--the fields stretching to +the distance. + +She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A +foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's +room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art" +muslin; photographs in profusion--of ladies in very low dresses and +affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the +corners;--a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large +colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; +muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick +repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping. + +The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the +door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first +bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor +things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, +excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would +naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here +was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, +without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the +slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, +of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a +couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this +time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age +graven round eyes and lips. + +For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts +was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus +present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did +she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis +of her own personal life? + +"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a +chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." +She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, +who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor +falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil +framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. + +"I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, +hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my +mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." + +Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked +out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the +gusts which precede the storm. + +"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. + +"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I +was." + +"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again +out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. +I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among +the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note +in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four +o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with +something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock +the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call +him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. +Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he +wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to +write. I took him some tea, and then--" + +The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia +and laid both hands on the girl's arm. + +"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never +quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was +this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to +Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken +up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So +then--" + +The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into +Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her +dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped +them away, unheeded. + +"So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, +and I wasn't worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never +leave him--never--he said--but I must go away then because he had letters +to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and--and--he took me +in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me +up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at +me, and saying queer things to himself--and at last he went down-stairs.... +All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The +men say he's so strange--they don't like to leave him alone--but he drives +them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn't come in all day, +I sat down and wrote to you--" + +She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of +Marcia's cloak. + +"I don't know anybody here. John's lots of friends--but they're not my +friends--and even when they're sorry for us--they know--what I've done--and +they don't want to have much to do with me. You said you'd speak for us to +Mr. Edward--and I know you did--Mr. Edward told John so. You've been kinder +to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell _you_--what +I'm going to do. I'm going away--I'm going right away. John won't know, +nobody'll know where I'm gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury--and get +him and Lord William to be kind to John--as they used to be. He'll get over +it--by and by!" + +Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away. + +"I'm not going to the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! +You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life--and I've got my boy. John +won't find me--I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people +to touch--there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody--I'll go where +I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you--what I wanted to ask you?" + +"No indeed I don't," cried Marcia, in distress. "And you won't--you sha'n't +do anything so mad! Please--please, be patient!--I'll go again to Mr. +Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!" + +Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No use--no use. It's the only thing to do for +me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John +now, just what I've said, it wouldn't make any difference. He couldn't stop +me. I'm going!--that's settled. But _he_ sha'n't go. He's got to take +up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him--and look after +him--and watch him. What's their religion good for, if it can't do that? +Oh, how I _hate_ their religion!" + +Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have +been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true: + +"Haven't I good reason?" Her hands clenched at the words. "It's that which +has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he's been back here, it's +the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he's in mortal +sin--he thinks he's damned--and yet he won't--he can't give me up. My poor +old John!--We were so happy those few weeks!--why couldn't they leave +us alone!--That hard old man, Lord William!--and Mr. Edward--who's got +you--and everything he wants besides in the world! There--now I suppose +you'll turn against me too!" + +She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her +head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing--against +her will. + +"I'm not against you. Indeed--indeed--I'm not against you! You'll see. I'll +go again to Mr. Newbury--I promise you! He's not hard--he's not cruel--he's +not!..." + +"Hush!" said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward--"there he is!" And +trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just +outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling +round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had +begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his +weather-beaten cheeks and short beard. + +His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at +them--and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no +sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting +rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow. + +"Oh! go after him!" said Marcia, imploringly. "Don't trouble about me! I'll +find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!" She would have wrapped it round Mrs. +Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her. + +"No good. He wouldn't listen to me. I'll get one of the men to bring him +in. And the servant'll go for your motor." She went out of the room to give +the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, +standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she +suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with +stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks. + +"Make them do something for John. It doesn't matter about me. Let them +comfort John. Then I'll forgive them." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had +left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of +a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on +the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen--east, west, and north. +Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each +circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into +pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in +snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. +From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the +unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to +find death at Chalgrove Field. + +Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post +of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke +significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in +particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew +back her eyes and thoughts perpetually. + +The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not +seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, +in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as +usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come +back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been +this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under +the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook +her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady +Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little +dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the +ample girth of Glenwilliam. + +... Ah!--the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window +in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam's +room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for +morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out +of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her +friend's society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was +Enid's way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge +meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion's quiet +Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam's +eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of +genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he +must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who +adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest. + +Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the +opener--though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night +before, and had given no promise that he would come. + +Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At +sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down +beside her. + +"Nobody else about? What a blessing!" + +She looked at him with mild reproach. + +"My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down." + +"Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman's wife and had to get up +at six o'clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a +world of good." + +"How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing." + +"Yes, it does. One must form opinions--or burst. I can tell you, I judged +Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him." + +"Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches," said Marion, +cautiously. + +"Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn't it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of +Liberalism, as I sat there. I'll go and join the Primrose League." + +Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed--with her finger on her lip. + +"Hush! She might hear." She pointed to the half-open window on the first +floor. + +"And a good thing too," growled Coryston. "She adores him--and makes +him worse. Why can't he _work_ at these things--or why can't his +secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an +undergraduate--and doesn't care a rap--so long as a hall-full of fools +cheer him." + +"You usen't to talk like this!" + +"No--because I had illusions," was the sharp reply. "Glenwilliam was one of +them. Land!--what does he know about land?--what does a miner--who won't +learn!--know about farming? Why, that man--that fellow, John Betts"--he +pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain--"whom the +Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the +dirt--just like these Christians!--John Betts knows more about land in his +little finger than Glenwilliam's whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, +you'd see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not +allowed a look in. I'm sick of it! I'm off to Canada with Betts." + +Marion looked up. + +"I thought it was to be the Primrose League." + +"You like catching me out," said Coryston, grimly. "But I assure you I'm +pretty downhearted." + +"You expect too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to +notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," +she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat." + +"She's another disillusion. She's idle and dirty. And Potifer never does +a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral--don't bother your head about +martyrs. There's generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them." + +He broke off--looking at her with a clouded brow. + +"Marion!" + +She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face. + +"Yes, Lord Coryston!" + +"If you're so critical of my clothes, why don't you come and look after +them and me?" + +She gasped--then recovered herself. + +"I've never been asked," she said, quietly. + +"Asked! Haven't you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a +detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with--as it +pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me +feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject +letters--and apologize--and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other +woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't know what it means?" + +He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery +accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching. + +"I didn't know I was both a busybody--and a Pharisee!" + +"Hypocrite!" he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. +But she withdrew it. + +"My dear friend--if you wish to resume this conversation--it must be at +another time. I haven't been able to tell you before, I didn't know +it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother--Lady +Coryston--will be here in half an hour--to see Enid." + +He stared. + +"My mother! So _that's_ what she's been up to!" + +"She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father's +taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly." + +"And what the deuce is going to happen?" + +Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great +deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and +Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well +what was going on. + +"And can't stick it?" cried Coryston, his eyes shining. "Glenwilliam has +his faults, but I don't believe he'll want Arthur for a son-in-law--even +with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and +the estates." + +"Because of your mother?" + +Coryston nodded. "So there's another strong man--a real big +'un!--dependent, like Arthur and me--on the whim of a woman. It'll do +Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that's too fond of +beating its wives. Well, well--so my mother's coming!" He glanced round the +little house and garden. "Look here!" He bent forward peremptorily. "You'll +see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?" + +Marion's expression showed a certain bewilderment. + +"I wouldn't trust that girl!" Coryston went on, with vehemence. "She's got +something cruel in her eyes." + +"Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston's coming--" + +"To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the +game will be Miss Glenwilliam's. She'll have my mother in a cleft stick. +I'm not sure I oughtn't to be somewhere about. Well, well. I'll march. When +shall we 'resume the conversation,' as you put it?" + +He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement +upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass. + +"Oh!" She bent to pick them up. + +"Don't touch them!" cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands +and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand. + +"Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." +His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her +disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up. + +"Now I'm going. Good-by." + +"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather +stifled voice. + +"It's Sunday--so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He +checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and--if +necessary--have a jolly row with Edward Newbury--or his papa. Second, +Blow up Price--my domestic blacksmith--you know!--the socialist apostle +I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and +all--blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him +by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable +called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. +Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for +Arthur--the Radical miller--Martover gent--who's coming to see me at three +this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about +him. Shall have a ripping time with him!" + +"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you +yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass. + +"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A +vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, +good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's +anything left of my mother." + +And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young +lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper +window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston. + +"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as +she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the +summer-house. + +"On the contrary, I sent him away." + +"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?" + +"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with +a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her +eyes--challenging, a little stern,--struck full on her companion. + +Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened +and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and +suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection. + +"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all." + +"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone--and she has a right to it," said +Marion, with emphasis. + +"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, +absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence +while her gaze wandered over the view. + +"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?" + +"How can I, till I know what _she's_ going to say?" laughed Miss +Glenwilliam, teasingly. + +"But of course you know perfectly well." + +"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit +it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled +essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put +up with me?" + +"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow +decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him." + +"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a +deal too much." + +"Are you any nearer caring for him--really--than you were six weeks ago?" + +"He's a very--nice--dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would +be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after +him, now, than it was six weeks ago." + +"Enid!" + +"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little +sides of it--the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up +with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should +love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private +secretary." + +"You would despise him if he were!" + +"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches +for him then--and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear +something?" + +A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible. + +Marion Atherstone rose. + +"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll +see that nobody interrupts you." + +Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came +quickly back again. + +"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't +make a quarrel between them--unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly +kissed the face bending over her. + +"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?" + +Marion departed, silenced. + +Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted +the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the +Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed +into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for +the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic +applause." + +She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed +to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But +her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last +night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so +good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness. + +And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the +Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden. + +"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?" + +Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, +holding out her hand. + +"How do you do, Lady Coryston?" + +The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being +scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed +to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been +gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the +formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that +they had already met in many drawing-rooms. + +Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat. + +"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors." + +"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would +see me." + +"I was delighted--of course." + +There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady +Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with +its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined +mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied +under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, +delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to +the only effect she ever cared to make--the effect of the great lady, in +command--clearly--of all possible resources, while far too well bred to +indulge in display or ostentation. + +Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She +had taken up an ostrich-feather fan--a traditional weapon of the sex--and +waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak. + +"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it +a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?" + +The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the +grass nodded gravely. + +"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to +do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; +and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have +much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be +frank." + +"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!" + +Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder. + +"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal +of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your--your friendship with him has been very +conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with +you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him." + +"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, +she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if +possible, prevent his asking me again." + +"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager. + +"So far." + +"So far? May I ask--does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?" + +"I have as yet said nothing final to him." + +Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, +and then said, with emphasis: + +"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk--at this +moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you +what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage." + +"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her +most girlish voice. + +"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady +Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering +his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, +was sufficiently evident." + +Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her +long fingers were engaged in straightening. + +"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the +present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its +traditions; but that I intend to be--while I live. And I can only regard +a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable--not only for my +son--but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." + +"And why?" + +Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble +fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. + +The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks. + +"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different +worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different +antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome +you as a daughter--and because a marriage with you would disastrously +affect the prospects of my son." + +"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, +with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the +same dances." + +Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping +her voice in order. + +"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude." + +"Of course not. But--is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?" + +"Poverty has nothing to do with it--nothing at all. I have never considered +money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall." + +"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the +fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady +in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was +conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker. + +"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, +money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my +son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions." + +At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the +moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence. + +Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father's made that morning at +breakfast: "Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as +long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the +first Lord Coryston--in his earliest batch of peers--with the title and a +fat post--something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their +money--then came the Welsh coal--et cetera." + +But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on: + +"We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of +them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are +the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you +know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of +leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me--as trustee for the +political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has +been--excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both--and is now--the +principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the +estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust +did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three +months ago." + +"How very interesting!" said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston +could not see her face. + +"But it is only fair to him and to you," Arthur's mother continued, with +increased deliberation, "that I should say frankly, now that this crisis +has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur +should inherit his father's estates. A fresh disposition of them will have +to be made." + +Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone. + +"Because--Lady Coryston--I am my father's daughter?" + +"Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with +our traditions--and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it." The +conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final +words. + +There was a slight pause. + +"Then--if Arthur married me--he would be a pauper?" said the girl, bending +forward. + +"He has a thousand a year." + +"That's very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again." + +Lady Coryston moved nervously. + +"I don't understand you." + +"What I _couldn't_ have done, Lady Coryston--would have been to come +into Arthur's family as in any way dependent on his mother!" + +The girl's eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled. + +"I couldn't of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling +toward me," she said, after a moment. + +"No--you couldn't--you couldn't indeed!" + +Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her +visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic +table that stood between them, her breath fluttering. + +"Yes--perhaps now I could marry him--perhaps now I could!" she repeated. +"So long as I wasn't your dependent--so long as we had a free life of our +own--and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope--the +situation might be faced. We might hope, too--father and I--to bring +_our_ ideas and _our_ principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe +he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made +him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should +set any store by _our_ principles. You think all I want is money. +Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and +luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry +me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and +present you next day with the _fait accompli_--to take or leave. I +believe you would have surrendered to the _fait accompli_--yes, I +believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you +would forgive him. Well, but then--I looked forward--to the months--or +years--in which I should be courting--flattering--propitiating you--giving +up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours--turning my back on my father--on +my old friends--on my party--for _money_! Oh yes, I should be quite +capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had +the grace--the conscience--to funk it. I apologize for the slang--I can't +express it any other way. And now you come and say: 'Engage yourself to +him--and I'll disinherit him _at once_. That makes the thing look +clean and square!--that tempts the devil in one, or the angel--I don't +know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by +marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks +a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began +life as a pit-boy--Yes, I think it might be done!" + +The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands +behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston. + +In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor's daughter had suddenly +assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston +understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl +for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly +perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, +the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any +conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the +eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate +forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her +wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman +was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and +formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to +feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam. + +Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some +moments before, under the girl's threatening eyes, she could speak at all. +Then she said, with difficulty: + +"You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam--but you do not love him! That is +perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his +happiness and mine, in order--" + +"I don't love him? Ah! that's another story altogether! Do I love him? I +don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't believe I am as capable of +falling in love as other girls are--or say they are. I like him, and get on +with him--and I might marry him; I might--have--married him," she repeated, +slowly, "partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for +the slight you offered my father!--and partly for other things. But you +see--now I come to think of it--there is some one else to be considered--" + +The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, +with a sudden change of mood and voice. + +"You say you won't have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn't decide it for +me--and it wouldn't decide it for Arthur. But there's some one else won't +have it." + +A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with +it--considering. + +"My father came to my room last night," she said, at last, "in order to +speak to me about it. 'Enid,' he said, 'don't marry that man! He's a good +enough fellow--but he'll drive a wedge into our life. We can't find a use +for him--you and I. He'll divide us, my girl--and it isn't worth it--you +don't love him!' And we had a long talk--and at last I told him--I +wouldn't--I _wouldn't_! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don't marry +your son, it's not because you object--but because my father--whom you +insulted--doesn't wish me to enter your family--doesn't approve of a +marriage with your son--and has persuaded me against it." + +Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the +flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under +the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she +slowly rose from her seat. + +"You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, +love my son--and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you." + +She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that +she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. +She too rose. + +"I'm sorry, Lady Coryston. I've been a brute. But when I think of my +father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of +the things I have said. But it's no good apologizing. Let me, however, just +say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He's in love +with me--and I'm very, _very_ sorry for him. Let me write to him +first--before you speak to him. I'll write--as kindly as I can. But I warn +you--it'll hurt him--and he may visit it on you--for all I can say. When +will he be at Coryston?" + +"To-night." + +"I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?" + +They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston +entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, +which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started. + +Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her +face in her hands. + +After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. +She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor's burly form filled up the +door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement +upon his daughter. + +"Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you--did she +scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what's the +matter, my girl? Are you upset?" + +Enid got up, struggling for composure. + +"I--I behaved like a perfect fiend." + +"Did you?" The Chancellor's laughter filled the summer-house. "The old +harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking +in upon you here!--to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and +penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, +Enid, what's the matter--don't be a fool, my dear! You don't regret him?" + +"No." He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. +Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him. + +"I shall never marry, father. It's you and I, isn't it, against the world?" + +"Half the world," said Glenwilliam, laughing. "There's a jolly big half on +our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry." He +looked at her with proud affection. + +She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the +house together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' +cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had +obtained--apparently--everything for which she had set out, and yet there +she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has +suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class +is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed +to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam +had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady +Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and +could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a +closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that +night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have +a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and +the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very +rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings +that her doctor had given her before she left town--"You are overtaxing +yourself, Lady Coryston--and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She +came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never +coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, +from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day--till she +had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no +sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a +fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain. + +Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she +perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston +House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with +some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. +How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls +really should be more considerate. + +The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even +preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia +was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after +helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It +vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or +annoyed--perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it. + +Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room. + +"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an +old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!" + +She looked at him somberly. + +"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please--not a word!--till I +give you leave. I have gone through--a great deal." + +Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put +out his hand and pressed hers. + +"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to +your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for +luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay +horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury. + +"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits +his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used +to in my days." + +But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did +not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon. + +Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. +Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate +little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, +bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted +from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could +scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell +silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair +and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple +and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; +it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir +Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from +presenting herself so unattractively to her lover. + +Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid +obstinately called a "monkery"--_alias_ the house of an Anglican +brotherhood or Community--the Community of the Ascension, of which +Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for +Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury +a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously +evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and +through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some +deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" +was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face +during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time--even when the +fellow's looking at his sweetheart." + +After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They +wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink +willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the +gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen +trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all +washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, +and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the +hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the +gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines +stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a +moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called +or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a +Sabbath dreariness--held the scene. + +Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. +She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was +conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. + +"Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said, +anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been +away?" + +"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed +his. + +"Wrong--quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I +thought of you last night." + +"Where--when?" Her voice was low--a little embarrassed. + +"In chapel--the chapel at Blackmount--at Benediction." + +She looked puzzled. + +"What is Benediction?" + +"A most beautiful service, though of late origin--which, like fools, we +have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels +like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday +evening"--his voice fell--"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have +you there." + +She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: + +"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not +recognized--yet. To some of the services--to Benediction for instance--the +public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule--of the strictest +observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night +Office--most touching--most solemn! And--my darling!"--he pressed her hand +while his face lit up--"I want to ask you--though I hardly dare. Would you +give me--would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our +marriage? Father Brierly--my old friend--would give us both Communion, on +the morning of our wedding--in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red +Street, Soho--just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" +His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half +past seven--nobody but your mother would know. And then +afterward--afterward!--we will go through with the great ceremony--and the +crowds--and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the +Seventh's chapel--isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we +two alone, into our hearts--to feed upon Him, forever!" + +There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, +yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the +listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia--as though behind the +lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling--something +that threatened her very self. She drew herself back. + +"Edward!--ought you--to take things for granted about me--like this?" + +His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed. + +"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I +talked it over with Brierly--he sent you a message--" + +"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know +him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do--but +indeed--indeed--my mind is often in confusion--great confusion--I don't +know what to think--about many things." + +"The Church decides for us, darling--that is the great comfort--the great +strength." + +"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know +that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just +as much in the wrong as--well, as he'd think me!--_me_, even!" She +gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. +Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something +so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so +unhappy--all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come--and then +afraid what you'd say--" + +She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his. + +And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though +a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on. + +"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I +found her half mad--in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen +you. But perhaps you've seen her--to-day?" She hung on his answer. + +"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left +Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and +mother for a moment--heard nothing--and rode on here as fast as I could. +What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was +settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging +you--insisting upon dragging you--into it!" + +"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for +him--but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right--I dare say she's +deserved it--I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable--so pitiable! +She's _going_!--she's made up her mind to that--she's going. That's +what she wanted to tell me--and asked that I should tell you." + +"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly. + +"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip +away--to hide! He's not to know where she is--and she implores you to keep +him here--to comfort him--and watch over him." + +"Which of course we should do." + +The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught +Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close. + +"Yes, but Edward!--listen!--it would kill them both. His mind seems to be +giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from +their doctor. And she--she says if she does go, if decent people turn her +out, she'll just go back to people like herself--who'll be kind to her. +Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters." + +"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly. + +"But you can't allow it!--you _can't_!--the poor, poor things!" cried +Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward--I shall never forget it!" And with a +growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of +her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the +window. + +"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his +work--and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last +straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life--and now he'll think +that he's only made things worse. And he's ill--his brain's had a shake. +Edward--dear Edward!--let them stay!--for my sake, let them stay!" + +All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning--more lovely. +She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her +soft cheek against his. + +"Do you mean--let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, +putting his arms round her. + +"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the +house--and so long as he does his work--his scientific work--need anything +else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? +Wouldn't everybody understand--wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for +pity?" + +Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia--do you +ever think of my father in this?" + +"Oh, mayn't I go!--and _beg_ Lord William--" + +"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say--My father's an old man. This +has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, +as he would himself. And now--in addition--you want him to do something +that he feels to be wrong." + +"But Edward, they _are_ married! Isn't it a tyranny"--she brought the +word out bravely--"when it causes so much suffering!--to insist on more +than the law does?" + +"For us there is but one law--the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of +something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of +stern conviction: "For us they are _not_ married--and we should be +conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married +persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I +_can't_ discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress. + +She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate +hopelessness--not without resentment--was rising in her. + +"Then you won't try to persuade your father--even for my sake, Edward?" + +He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because +he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind. + +The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green +vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched +her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said--in a low, lingering +voice: + +"And I--I couldn't marry--and be happy--with the thought always--of what +had happened to them--and how--you couldn't give me--what I asked. I have +been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward--we--we've +made a great mistake!" + +She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet +with something new--and resolute--in her aspect. + +"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay. + +"Oh! it was my fault!"--and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once +childish and piteous--"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought +me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than +I, and of course--of course--you thought that if--if I loved you--I'd be +guided by you--and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live +by myself--and think for myself--more than other girls--because mother was +always busy with other things--that didn't concern me--that I didn't care +about--and I was left alone--and had to puzzle out a lot of things that +I never talked about. I'm obstinate--I'm proud. I must believe for +myself--and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come +out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I +had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since +we've been engaged--this few weeks--I've been doing nothing but think and +think--and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this +trouble. I _couldn't_"--she clenched her hand with a passionate +gesture--"I _couldn't_ do what you're doing. It would kill me. You +seem to be obeying something outside--which you're quite sure of. But if +_I_ drove those two people to despair, because I thought something +was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in +my heart--my _own heart_--again. Love seems to me everything!--being +kind--not giving pain. And for you there's something greater--what the +Church says--what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never +agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was +wicked--and I--well!"--she panted a little, trying for her words--"there +are ugly--violent--feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate +_you_--but--Edward--just now--I felt I could hate--what you believe!" + +The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her +hands, imploring. + +"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!" + +During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree +beside her, looking down upon her--white and motionless. He had made no +effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee. + +"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and +half-consciously--"terrible!" + +"But indeed--indeed--it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a +whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left +untaken. + +The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a +composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come--the +sudden furling of the winds--in the very midst of tempest. She divined the +tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not +dared to watch it. + +"Marcia--is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you +to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time +to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that--I should +influence you?" + +"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of +myself--now. This has made me know myself--as I never did. I should wound +and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard--and bad." + +Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, +as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images +which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the +silences, more active far than speech, which determine life. + +At the end of it, he came to sit beside her. + +"Then we must give it up--we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness +you gave me--this little while. I pray God to bless you--now and forever." + +Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. +She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it +with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a +stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous +earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy +"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose. + +"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night." + +They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her +whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized +what she had done as both inevitable and past recall. + +They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a +piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!--oh, I'm _sorry_!" + +At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden +on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's +sitting-room observed them. + +These persons were--strange to say--Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady +Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired +to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. +Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had +disappeared. + +The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep +silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All +the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running +perpetually through her mind--the girl's gestures and tones--above all the +words of her final warning. + +After all it was not she--his mother--who had done it. Without her it would +have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this +plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?--of Arthur? What +absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled. + +And yet she knew that she was listening--listening in dread--for a footstep +in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the +further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. +He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance +of her seeing him--unless she sent for him--till the following morning, +after the arrival of the letter. _Then_--she must face him. + +But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him +as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, +making his maiden speech. In April--and this was July. Had that infatuation +begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest--her Benjamin? + +She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. +There was somebody approaching her room--evidently on tiptoe. Some one +knocking--very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!" + +The door opened--and there was Coryston. + +She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed. + +"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston." + +He paused on the threshold. + +"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you--or something?" + +His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed--though still annoyed. + +"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come +to see me like this, Coryston." + +"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?" + +She pointed to a number of the _Quarterly_ that was lying open, and to +an article on "The later years of Disraeli." + +Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But +he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his +reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after +a little while, it was pleasant. + +Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her +efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the +book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its +setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and +helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these +last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy +softness--as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human +spectacle--invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body +relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also +oppressed him--like a voice--an omen. + +He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note +from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid +confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now +there was Arthur to be faced--who would never believe, of course, but that +his mother had done it. + +A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and +saw two figures--Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh--on +the instant--all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!--and his creed! +That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father! + +Well!--he peered at them--has she got anything whatever out of young +Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to +wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the +garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not +demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction. + +He sat down again, and tossing the _Quarterly_ away, he took up a +volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really +possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be +taken--Marcia or no Marcia!--to rouse the country-side against the +Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this +tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that +morning--a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to +him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to +hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!--she might wait. + +[Illustration: HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE] + +Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage +outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia! + +He opened the door. + +"Don't come in. Mother's asleep." + +Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood +on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the +instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to +her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She +turned and beckoned to Coryston. + +"Come with me--a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading +from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as +children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm. + +"Coryston--I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my +engagement." + +"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!" + +He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped +back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment. + +"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never +understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear +it. What's wrong with mother?" + +"She's knocked over--by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this +morning." + +He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest. + +"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my +affairs--till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by." + +"I say, Marcia--old woman--don't be so fierce with me. You took me by +surprise--" he muttered, uncomfortably. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world--seems to be able to +understand anybody else--or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by." + +Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing +no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and +Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest +misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston +family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day. + +Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a +long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been +too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to +him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought +relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body. + +The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, +she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in +the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods--the distant +sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir--a few notes of +birds--were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once +indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's +merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt--on the top floor. How +remote!--and yet how near. + +And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had +given him--suffering--suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last +night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her--how could +she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, +now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, +the energy of a fuller life. + +She went to bed, and to sleep--for a few hours--toward morning. She was +roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror. + +"Oh, miss!" + +"What is the matter?" + +Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?--dead? + +The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just +brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the +early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was +locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of +horror. John Betts was sitting--dead--in his chair, with a bullet wound in +the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. +She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped +from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately +unfastened her dress--The bullet had passed through her heart, and death +had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on +which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad--forgive." And +beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The +foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands. + +She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, +fainting, on her pillows. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the +presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty +years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the +girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the +news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell +her what she must know. + +Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing +straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters +she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering +under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang +forward in bed. + +"What!--Marcia!--have you seen Arthur?" + +Marcia shook her head. + +"It's not Arthur, mother!" + +And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as +those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position, +and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding +day, she said not a word. + +On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then +irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant +interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the +Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up +at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried +to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her +daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she +supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go +herself--without permission either from her mother or her betrothed--to +see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing +happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and +annoying! + +However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual +trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult. +In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after +the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She +began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the +night before--or that morning? + +"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night--and this morning he's +not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered +the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then +her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck +her with a sudden and added distress. + +"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day." + +"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, +sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before +he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do +is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing +to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And +I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible +thing at all--without coming to me first." + +"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you--aren't you sorry +for those two people?--and don't you understand that I--I hoped I might +have helped them?" + +At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston +frowned. + +"Certainly, I'm sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can't stand any extra +strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed. +Now go and lie down." + +She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a +new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was +called back. + +"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs +to let me know." + +"Yes, mother." + +As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind +immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult +of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had +come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful +world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, +and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both. + +She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a +short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs. +In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and +flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the +newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone. + +He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her +face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with +such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister. + +She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable +child--saying under her breath: + +"You know--I saw them--the night before last?" + +"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?" +For he saw she had a letter in her hand. + +"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I'll go to the +library." + +She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from +the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When +Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of +grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further +news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, +had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the +discovery of the tragedy. + +"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay +with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the +evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her +sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised +you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the +laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute +depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words +that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the +shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, +which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to +bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back +again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning. +How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be +guessed." + +Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out +a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read: + +"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have +often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can't stay behind. Will you +please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn't met again--" + +It ended incoherently in blots and smudges. + +"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the +letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight +of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library +chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew +from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering +words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned +face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow +under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied +tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she +gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in +this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude +of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but +that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his +voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence +with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for +months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on +whom to lean. + +But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of +Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say +with energy: "I don't want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could +only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world. + +But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, +and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur. + +Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just +dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the +farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her. + +"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How +_abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!" + +"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the +discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a +message." + +[Illustration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN] + +Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy. + +"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks +of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and +it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the +arrival of a letter--" + +"From Enid Glenwilliam?" + +"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part +the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature +appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor +ears--But here he is!" + +Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the +library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face +wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features +and receding chin. + +"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my +dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and +Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed +he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. +_He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I +say--mother is late!" + +He looked round the hall imperiously. + +Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. +Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some +message. + +"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, +sternly. + +"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to +appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should +have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And +what's this they say about a letter?" + +His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in +dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; +but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. + +Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the +letter was. + +"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. + +"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." + +He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand +dropped. + +"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose +you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're +a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of +it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the +little woman, though." + +And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all +the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the +glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, +approached Marcia. + +"My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so +unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to +the police." + +She held it out to him obediently. + +Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. +When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his +smooth-shaven actor's face: + +"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope +it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with +Newbury?" + +Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble +mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. + +"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not +_quarreled_--" + +Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and +pressed it. + +"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without +losing you." + +Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury +then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two +interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The +object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with +such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an +appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw +occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be +alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young +man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to +help his sister. + +Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned +against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole +neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a +more odious, a more untoward situation! + +But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed, +indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the +truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously +composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes, +though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way +unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was +ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she +rose, and said she would go back to her room. + +"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with +her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can." + +As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall. +Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He +opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a +boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading +to the fore-court. + +It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern facade +had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air +Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an +abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write +a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's +last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!--that she knew. His +stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school. + +It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman. +And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn +between two contending imaginations--the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting +beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and +the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night--the +shelves of labeled bottles and jars--the tables and chemical apparatus--the +electric light burning--and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed +figure against his knee:--and then--Newbury--in his sitting-room, amid +the books and portraits of his college years--the crucifix over the +mantelpiece--the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln--of Assisi. + +Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The +thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame +himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it +all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying +with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other, +and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and +not merely man's mistake. She longed--sometimes--to throw her arms round +him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that +young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would +never draw back from what she had offered him--never. She would go to him, +and stand by him--as Sir Wilfrid had said--if he wanted her. + +The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more +unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the +dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of +the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her +daughter. + +"Mother!--do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met--blaming +herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the +morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up." + +Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite +well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned +to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house. + +"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him +since." + +The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady +Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in +connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I +needn't appear," said Marcia, dully. + +"I should rather think not!" + +Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal +institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston +family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said +nothing. + +As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered--with a +start. + +"Mother--I forgot!--I'm so sorry--I dare say it was nothing. But I think a +letter came for Arthur just before twelve--a letter he was expecting. At +least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet +him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since." + +Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near +and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession +to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's +appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth. + +But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up +any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by +other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her +mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded. + +And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia +for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her--insignificant as +the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been. +But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring +out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed--and +knew she possessed--a certain measured strength; just enough--and no +more--to enable her to go through a conversation which _must_ be +faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to +her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and +unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time! + +But reasoning on it did not help her--only silence and endurance. After +resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again, +refusing Marcia's company. + +"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?--if you're going to rest, +you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the +foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her. + +But Lady Coryston shook her head. + +"Thank you--I don't want anything." + + * * * * * + +So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but +wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and +lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed; +in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had +been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet +there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power +and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural +expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had +first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped +him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely; +and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but +withering. + +Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at +recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight +of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the +window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her +waist. + +Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles +of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real. +Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with +human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ +in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they +comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to +suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering +here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of +immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved +much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her +strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to +her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and +to believe. + +Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding +silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself. +Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own +room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once +she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But +otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her +without permission. + +Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a +time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain +which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out--restlessly--to the +East Wood--the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her +face against the log--a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried +ring--almost within reach of her hand--seemed to call to her like a living +thing. No!--let it rest. + +If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him +a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed; +but she did not know for what. + +Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts +were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord +William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile +silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a +full account of the efforts--many and vain--that had been made both by +himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to +persuade him to accept it. + +"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in +themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize +a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could +have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we +have done." + +Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. +Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. +Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the +countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning +attention. + +When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took +his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and +straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small +feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A +mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the +man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a +group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the +Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities +and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the +old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would +have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing +currents of thought and life. + +Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went +back himself to wait for the verdict. + +As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been +held, Coryston emerged. + +Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been +the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. +Newbury began: + +"Will you take a message from me to your sister?" + +A man opened the door in front a little way. + +"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." + +The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the +conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many +forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury +beside him. + +"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" + +Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his +face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression. + +"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to +discuss our differences, Coryston--" + +"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' +as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin +arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is +time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about +'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as +these have been slain!" + +"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes +took fire. + +"Hunted by the Christian conscience!--that it might lie comfortable o' +nights," was the scornful reply. + +Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road, +crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of +sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village. +As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a +motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away. +A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his +brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the +news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had +been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother +and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his +brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown +point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion +which held him. + +Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same +dry and carefully governed voice as before. + +"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still +engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off--although--since +then--I have received two letters from her--" + +He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure. + +"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time--perhaps--I shall know +better--what my future life will be." + +"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do +I want to know!" + +Newbury gave him a look of wonder. + +"I thought you were out for justice--and freedom of conscience?" he said, +slowly. "Is the Christian conscience--alone--excepted? Freedom for every +one else--but none for us?" + +"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston +panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly +in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you +Catholics--Anglican or Roman--want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it +you!" + +"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us +down--which of course you could do with ease--you would destroy all that +you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we +had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. +We stand face to face--we shall stand face to face--while the world lasts." + +Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, +would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law. + +"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford--we simply can't +afford--to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to +those two dead people! They did what _you_ thought wrong, and your +conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider +over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and +cursing?" + +Newbury stood still. + +"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that +cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't +believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting +of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God +_has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." + +"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with +bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there +is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as +those two poor things had for each other!" + +After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the +last word of his own creed. + +Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could +be reached. Newbury paused. + +"Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again." + +He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his +face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever +seen it. + +"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel +nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has +been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood. +It tells me where to go--and I obey." + +He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And +Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced +him. + +But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. + +"Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's +boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And +all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say +to-night." + +He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, +and went off to find Marion Atherstone--the only person with whom he could +trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit +of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress--and even his +rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him +from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted +for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild +company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or +institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, +led by a sure instinct, he went. + +Meanwhile the motor which passed Newbury and Coryston in the park had sped +to its goal. It had already carried Arthur Coryston over half the county. +That morning he had been told at the Atherstones' cottage, on his +breathless arrival there, just before luncheon, that while the Chancellor +had returned to town, Miss Glenwilliam had motored to a friend's house, +some twenty miles north, and was not going back to London till the evening. +Arthur Coryston at once pursued her. Sorely against her will, he had forced +the lady to an interview, and in the blind rage of his utter defeat and +discomfiture, he left her again in hot quest of that explanation with his +mother which Enid Glenwilliam had honestly--and vainly--tried to prevent. + +Lady Coryston meanwhile was bewildered by his absence. During the lonely +hours when Marcia, from a distance, had once caught sight of her crossing +an open window in her sitting-room, she had not been able to settle to any +occupation, still less to rest. She tried to write out the Agenda of an +important Primrose League meeting over which she was to preside; to put +together some notes of her speech. In vain. A strange heaviness weighed +upon her. The only stimulus that worked--and that only for a time--was a +fierce attack on Glenwilliam in one of the morning papers. She read it +hungrily; but it brought on acute headache, which reduced her to idleness +and closed eyes. + +After a while she roused herself to pull down a blind against a teasing +invasion of sun, and in doing so she perceived a slim, white figure +hurrying away from the house, through the bright-colored mazes of the +Italian garden. Marcia! She remembered vaguely that Marcia had come to her +that morning in trouble about what? She could not remember. It had seemed +to her of importance. + +At last, about half an hour after she had seen Marcia disappear in the +shrubbery paths leading to the East Wood, Lady Coryston, startled by a +sound from the fore-court, sat suddenly erect on her sofa. A motor? + +She rose, and going to a little mirror on the wall, she straightened the +lace coiffure she habitually wore. In doing so she was struck--dismayed +even--by her own aspect. + +"When this is all over, Marcia and I perhaps might go abroad for a week or +two," she thought. + +A swift step approaching--a peremptory knock at the door. + +"Come in!" + +Arthur entered, and with his back against the door stood surveying +his mother. She waited for him to speak, expecting violence. For some +moments--in vain. Except in so far as his quick-breathing silence, his look +of dry, hollow-eyed exasperation spoke--more piercingly than words. + +"Well, Arthur," she said, at last, "I have been expecting you for some +time." + +"I have been trying to put the mischief you have done me straight," he +said, between his teeth. + +"I have done you no mischief that I know of. Won't you come and sit down +quietly--and talk the whole matter over? You can't imagine that I desire +anything but your good!" + +His laugh seemed to give her physical pain. + +"Couldn't you take to desiring something else, mother, than my 'good' as +you call it? Because, I tell you plainly, it don't suit my book. You have +been meddling in my affairs!--just as you have always meddled in them, for +matter of that! But this time you've done it with a vengeance--you've done +it _damnably_!" He struck his hand upon a table near. "What right had +you"--he approached her threateningly--"what earthly right had you to go +and see Enid Glenwilliam yesterday, just simply that you might spoil my +chances with her! Who gave you leave?" + +He flung the questions at her. + +"I had every right," said Lady Coryston, calmly. "I am your mother--I +have done everything for you--you owe your whole position to me. You +were ruining yourself by a mad fancy. I was bound to take care that +Miss Glenwilliam should not accept you without knowing all the facts. +But--actually--as it happens--she had made up her mind--before we met." + +"So she says!--and I don't believe a word of it--_not--one--word_! She +wanted to make me less mad with you. She's like you, mother, she thinks +she can manage everybody. So she tried to cram me--that it was Glenwilliam +persuaded her against me. Rot! If you hadn't gone and meddled, if you +hadn't treated her like dirt--if you hadn't threatened to spoil my +prospects, and told her you'd never receive her--if you hadn't put her +back up in a hundred ways--she'd have married me. It's you--you-- +_you_--that have done it!" + +He threw himself on a chair in front of her, his hands on his knees, +staring at her. His aspect as of a man disorganized and undone by baffled +passion, repelled and disgusted her. Was this her Arthur?--her perfect +gentleman--her gay, courteous, well-behaved darling--whose mingled docility +and good breeding had, so far, suited both her affection and her love of +rule so well? The deep under-sense of disaster which had held her all day, +returned upon her in ten-fold strength. But she fronted him bravely. + +"You are, as it happens, entirely wrong, Arthur. It's not I who have done +it--but Miss Glenwilliam's own good sense--or her father's. Of course I +confess frankly that I should have done my best--that I did, if you like, +do my best, to prevent your marriage with Miss Glenwilliam. And as for +right, who else had a right, if not I? Was it not most unkind, most +undutiful on your part!"--her tone was a tone of battle--"was it not an +outrage on your father's memory--that you should even entertain the +notion of such a connection? To bring the daughter of that man into this +family!--after all we have done--and suffered--for our principles--it's +you, who ought to ask _my_ pardon, Arthur, and not I yours! Times +without number, you have agreed with me in despising people who have +behaved as if politics were a mere game--a trifle that didn't matter. You +have told me often, that things were getting too hot; you couldn't be +friends in private, with people you hated in public; people you looked +upon as robbers and cheats. And then--_then_--you go and let this +infatuation run away with you--you forget all your principles--you forget +your mother, and all you owe her--and you go and ask this girl to marry +you--whose father is our personal and political enemy--a political +adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I +hold sacred--or ought to hold sacred!" + +"For goodness' sake, mother, don't make a political speech!" He turned upon +her with angry contempt. "That kind of thing does all very well to spout +at an election--but it won't do between you and me. I _don't_ hate +Glenwilliam--_there_! The estates--and the property--and all we hold +sacred, as you call it--will last my time--and his. And I jolly well don't +care what happens afterward. _He's_ not going to do us much harm. +England's a deal tougher proposition than he thinks. It's you women who get +up such a hullabaloo--I declare you make politics a perfect devilry! But +then"--he shrugged his shoulders fiercely--"I'm not going to waste time in +arguing. I just came to tell you _what I intend to do_; and then I'm +going up to town. I've ordered the motor for seven o'clock." + +Lady Coryston had risen, and stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, +looking down upon her son. + +"I shall be glad indeed to hear what you intend to do, Arthur. I see you +have missed two or three important divisions lately." + +He burst out: + +"And they won't be the last either, by a good way. I'm going to chuck it, +mother! And if you don't like it--you can blame yourself!" + +"What do you mean?" + +He hesitated a moment--then spoke deliberately. + +"I intend to leave Parliament after this session. I do! I'm sick of it. A +friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me +to go in with him--and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my +mind from these troubles." + +Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her +strong will could keep from trembling. + +"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for +you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon +you--" + +He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. + +"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you +ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since +I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was +literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that! +And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of +him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that +I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you +knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that +meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page +_before you told me_. And when I kicked--and told you about Enid--did +you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?--did you ever, +even, consider for one moment what I told you?--that I was in love with +her?--dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged +it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow--" + +His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. + +"Instead of that, mother--you only thought of how you could thwart and +checkmate me--how you could get _your_ way--and force me to give up +mine. It was _abominable_ of you to go and see Enid, without a word to +me!--it was _abominable_ to plot and plan behind my back, and then to +force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of +any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!--she +didn't want to come it too hard on you--that's her way!--so she made up +some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! +You've ruined me!--you've ruined me!" + +He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and +pain. + +Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a +passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that +was closing on her, she could not restrain. + +"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course +you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so +lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like +this?" + +He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look. + +"Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no +good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been +fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But +the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all +my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I +did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been +kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--" + +And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face +disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood +of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the +shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, +though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. +But, Arthur!--She put up a trembling hand. + +"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done +the best I could for you--always." + +"Why didn't you _love_ us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for +emphasis. "Why didn't you _love_ us! It was always politics--politics! +Somebody to be attacked--somebody to be scored off--somebody to be squared. +And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! My poor father was as sick of +it often as we were. He had enough of it out of doors. Damn politics for +women, I say--damn them!" + +Lady Coryston raised her hand. + +"_Go_, Arthur! This is enough." + +He drew a long breath. + +"Upon my soul, I think it is. We'd better not excite each other any more. +I'll speak to Sir Wilfrid, mother, before I go, and ask him to report +various things to you, which I have to say. And I shall go and see the +Whips to-night. Of course I don't want to do the party any harm. If there +is a general election in the autumn, all that need happen is that I sha'n't +stand again. And as to the estates"--he hesitated--"as to the estates, +mother, do as you like. Upon my word I think you'd better give them back to +Coryston! A certain amount of money is all I shall want." + +"Go!" said Lady Coryston again, still pointing. + +He stood a moment, fiddling with some ornaments on a table near him, then +caught up his hat with a laugh--and still eying her askance, he walked to +the door, opened it, and disappeared; though he closed it so uncertainly +that Lady Coryston, until, after what seemed an interval, she heard his +footsteps receding, could not be sure that he was really gone. + +But he was gone; and all the plans and hopes of her later life lay in ashes +about her. She sat motionless. After half an hour she heard the sound of a +motor being driven away from the front of the house. Through the evening +air, too, she caught distant voices--which soon ceased. + +She rang presently for her maid, and said she would dine in her room, +because of a bad headache. Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid +Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred +him to the next morning. + +Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's +ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that +no one dared force themselves upon her. Only, between ten and eleven, +Marcia again came to the door, knocked gently, and was told to go away. Her +mother would be all right in the morning. The girl reluctantly obeyed. + +The state of terrible tension in which Lady Coryston passed that night had +no witness. It could only be guessed at, by Marcia, in particular, to +whom it fell afterward to take charge of her mother's papers and personal +affairs. Lady Coryston had apparently gathered all Arthur's, letters to her +together, from the very first to the very latest, tied them up neatly, and +laid them in the drawer which held those of her dead husband. She had begun +to write a letter to Coryston, but when found, it was incoherent, and could +not be understood. She had removed the early photographs of Arthur from her +table, and a larger, recent one of the young M.P., taken in London for the +constituency, which was on her mantelpiece, and had placed them both face +downward in the same drawer with the letters. And then, when she had found +it impossible to write what she wished to write, she seemed to have gone +back to her arm-chair, taking with her two or three of Arthur's Eton +reports--by what instinct had she chosen them out from the piles of +letters!--and a psalter she often used. But by a mere accident, a sinister +trick of fate, when she was found, the book lay open under her hand at one +of those imprecatory psalms at which Christendom has at last learned to +shudder. Only a few days before, Sir Wilfrid Bury had laughed at her--as +only he might--for her "Old Testament tone" toward her enemies, and had +quoted this very psalm. Her helpless fingers touched it. + +But the night was a night of vigil for others also. Coryston, who could not +sleep, spent the greater part of it first in writing to Marion Atherstone, +and then in composing a slashing attack upon the High Church party for its +attitude toward the divorce laws of the country, and the proposals recently +made for their reform. "How much longer are we going to allow these +black-coated gentlemen to despise and trample on the laws under which +the rest of us are content to live!--or to use the rights and powers +of property for the bare purpose of pressing their tyrannies and their +superstitions on other people?" + +Meanwhile, in the beautiful chapel of Hoddon Grey, Edward Newbury, worn out +with the intolerable distress of the preceding forty-eight hours, and yet +incapable of sleep, sat or knelt through long stretches of the night. The +chapel was dark but for one light. Over the altar there burnt a lamp, and +behind it could be seen, from the chair, where he knelt, the silk veil of +the tabernacle. Reservation had been permitted for years in the Hoddon Grey +chapel, and the fact had interwoven itself with the deepest life of +the household, eclipsing and dulling the other religious practices +of Anglicanism, just as the strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or +sterilizes the rest. There, in Newbury's passionate belief, the Master of +the House kept watch, or slept, above the altar, as once above the Galilean +waves. For him, the "advanced" Anglican, as for any Catholic of the Roman +faith, the doctrine of the Mass was the central doctrine of all religion, +and that intimate and personal adoration to which it leads, was the +governing power of life. The self-torturing anguish which he had suffered +ever since the news of the two suicides had reached him could only endure +itself in this sacred presence; and it was there he had taken refuge under +the earlier blow of the breach with Marcia. + +The night was very still--a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of +starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, +stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, +and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the +flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently +and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; and the white mists on the lawn and +fields outside made their way through the open windows, and dimmed the glow +of color on the walls and in the apse. + +In those melancholy and yet ardent hours Edward Newbury reached the utmost +heights of religious affirmation, and the extreme of personal renunciation. +It became clear to a mind attuned for such thoughts, that, by severing him +from Marcia, and, at the same time, and by the same stroke, imposing upon +him at least some fraction of responsibility--a fraction which his honesty +could not deny--for the deaths of John and Alice Betts, God had called him, +Edward Newbury, in a way not to be mistaken and not to be refused. His life +was henceforth forfeit--forfeit to his Lord. Henceforth, let him make of +it a willing sacrifice, an expiatory oblation, perpetually renewed, and +offered in perpetual union with the Divine Victim, for their souls and his +own. + +The ideas of the Conventual house in which he had so lately spent hours of +intense religious happiness closed upon him and possessed him. He was +not to marry. He was reserved for the higher counsels, the Counsels of +Perfection. The face and talk of his friend Brierly, who was so soon going +to his dangerous and solitary post in Southern India, haunted his mind, and +at last seemed to show him a way out of his darkness. His poor father and +mother! But he never doubted for one moment that they would give him up, +that they would let him follow his conscience. + +By the time the sun was fairly up, the storm of religious feeling had died +down in Newbury. He had taken his resolve, but he was incapable of any +further emotion concerning it. On the other hand, his heart was alive to +the thought of Marcia, and of that letter she had sent him. Dear, generous +Marcia! Once more he would write to her--once more! + +"DEAREST MARCIA,--I may call you so, I think, for the last time, and at +this turning-point of both our lives. I may never see you again; or if we +do meet, you will have become so strange to me that you will wonder in what +other and distant life it was that we loved each other. I think you did +love me for a little while, and I do bless and thank you that you let +me know you--and love you. And I bless you above all for the thought of +consolation and pity you had toward me, even yesterday, in those terrible +hours--when you offered to come back to me and help me, as though our bond +had never been broken. + +"No, dear Marcia!--I saw the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make +you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was +never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one +whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be +narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough--or cold enough!--to let you +give yourself back to one you cannot truly love--or trust. But that you +offered it, because you were sorry for me, and that you would have carried +it out, firmly, your dear hand clenched, as it were, on the compact--that +warms my heart--that I shall have, as a precious memory, to carry into the +far-off life that I foresee. + +"I cannot write much about the terrible thing at Redcross Farm. Your great +pity for me implies that you think me--and my father--in some way and in +some degree, responsible. Perhaps we are--I do not wish to shirk the truth. +If so, it is as soldiers under orders are responsible for the hurt and +damage they may cause, in their King's war--as much, and as little. At +least, so far as the main matter is concerned. That I might have been--that +I ought to have been--infinitely more loving, wiser, stronger to help +them--that I know--that I shall feel as long as I live. And it is a feeling +which will determine all my future life. + +"You remember what I told you of Father Brierly and the Community of the +Ascension? As soon as I can leave my father and mother--they are at present +in deep distress--I shall probably go to the Community House in Lancashire +for a time. My present intention is to take orders, and perhaps to join +Brierly eventually in mission work. My father and mother are splendid! They +and I shall be separated perhaps in this world, but in that mysterious +other world which lies all about us even now, and which is revealed to us +in the Sacraments, we shall meet at last, and forever--if we are faithful. + +"Good-by--God be with you--God give you every good thing in this +present time--love, children, friends--and, 'in the world to come, life +everlasting.'" + + * * * * * + +About the hour when the letter was finished, when the July sun was already +high over the dewy new-shorn fields, Coryston, after an hour's sleep in his +chair, and a bath, left Knatchett to walk to Coryston. He was oppressed by +some vague dread which would not let him rest. In the strong excitements +and animosities of the preceding day he had forgotten his mother. But the +memory of her face on the sofa during that Sunday reading had come back +upon him with unpleasant force. It had been always so with him in life. She +no sooner relapsed into the woman than he became a son. Only the experience +had been rare! + +He crossed the Hoddon Grey park, and then walked through _a_ mile +of the Coryston demesne, till he reached the lake and saw beyond it the +Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun--and the long +marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared +loggia. "What the deuce are _we_ going to do with these places!" he +asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be +allowed to sell it, or turn it to any useful purpose whatever!" + +He skirted the lake, and began to mount the steps, and flagged paths of the +formal garden. Suddenly as he approached the garden front he saw that two +windows of his mother's sitting-room were open, and that some one--a figure +in black--was sitting in a high-backed arm-chair beside one of them. His +mother!--up?--at seven o'clock in the morning? Yet was it his mother? He +came nearer. The figure was motionless--the head thrown back, the eyes +invisible from where he stood. Something in the form, the attitude--its +stillness and strangeness in the morning light--struck him with horror. He +rushed to the garden door, found it open, dashed up the stairs, and into +his mother's room. + +"Mother!" + +Lady Coryston neither moved nor spoke. But as he came up to her, he saw +that she was alive--that her eyes opened and perceived him. Nothing else in +her lived or moved. And as he knelt down by her, and took her tenderly in +his arms, she relapsed into the unconscious state from which his entrance +had momentarily roused her. + + * * * * * + +What else there is to tell had best be told quickly. Lady Coryston lived +for some eight months after this seizure. She partially recovered from the +first stroke, and all the organization of the great house, and all the +thought of her children circled round the tragic death-in-life into which +she had fallen. + +Arthur had come rushing back to Coryston after the catastrophe, restored +by it, like a stream which has wandered in flood, to the older and natural +channels of life. Bitter remorse for his conduct to his mother, and a sharp +resentment of Enid Glenwilliam's conduct toward himself, acted wholesomely. +He took up his normal occupations again, in Parliament and on the estates, +and talked no more of Buenos Ayres. But whether his mother's darkened mind +ever forgave him it would be difficult to say. She rarely noticed him, +and when she spoke it was generally for Coryston. Her dependence upon her +eldest son became a touching and poignant thing, deepening the souls of +both. Coryston came to live at Coryston, and between his love for Marion +Atherstone, and his nursing of his mother, was more truly happy for a time +than his character had ever yet allowed him to be. The din of battle, +political and religious, penetrated no more within a house where death came +closer day by day, and where weakness and suffering had at last united +these differing men and women in a common interest of profoundest pity. +Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them +forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when +she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry--Corry +darling"--and as he came closer--"Corry, who was my firstborn!" + +On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote: + +"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning +rest which does not--as death so often does--make any break with our +memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. She +is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut +mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt +still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the +face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she +modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able +during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, to make +an alteration in her will, and the alteration was no mere surrender to what +one sees to have been, at bottom, her invincible affection for Coryston. +She has still left Arthur the estates for life, but with remainder to +Coryston's son, should he have one, and she has made Coryston a trustee +together with Sir Wilfrid Bury. This will mean practically a division +between the brothers--to which Arthur has already pledged himself, so he +tells me--but with no power to Coryston to make such radical changes as +would destroy the family tradition, at least without Arthur's consent and +Sir Wilfrid's. But Coryston will have plenty of money and plenty of land +wherewith to experiment, and no doubt we shall see some strange things. + +"Thus she kept her flag flying to the end, so far as the enfeebled brain +allowed. Yet the fact was that her state of dependence on her children +during her illness, and their goodness to her, did in truth evoke another +woman with new perceptions, superposed, as it were, upon the old. And +there, I think, came in her touch of greatness--which one could not have +expected. She was capable at any rate of _this_ surrender; not going +back upon the old--but just accepting the new. Her life might have petered +out in bitterness and irritation, leaving an odious memory. It became a +source of infinite sweetness, just because her children found out--to their +immense surprise--that she _could_ let herself be loved; and they +threw themselves with eagerness on the chance she gave them. + +"She dies in time--one of the last of a generation which will soon have +passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no +doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her +rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts--or few. +As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as +obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that +is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will +'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority of his kind. + +"Marcia!--in her black dress, beside her mother, looking down upon +her--with that yearning look!--But--not a word! There are things too sacred +for these pages." + + * * * * * + +During the months of Lady Coryston's illness, indeed, Reginald Lester +entered, through stages scarcely perceived by himself and them, upon a new +relation toward the Coryston family. He became the increasingly intimate +friend and counselor of the Coryston brothers, and of Marcia, no less--but +in a fresh and profounder sense. He shared much of the estate business with +Mr. Page; he reconciled as best he could the jarring views of Coryston and +Arthur; he started on the reorganization of the great Library, in which, so +far, he had only dealt with a fraction of its possessions. And every day he +was Marcia's companion, in things intimate and moving, no less than in +the practical or commonplace affairs of ordinary life. It was he who read +poetry with her, or played accompaniments to her songs, in the hours of +relief from her nursing; it was he who watched and understood her; who +guided and yet adored her. His love for her was never betrayed; but it +gradually became, without her knowing it, the condition of her life. And +when Lady Coryston died, in the February following her stroke, and Marcia, +who was worn out, went abroad with Waggin for a few weeks' rest, the +correspondence which passed between her and Lester during the earlier days +of her absence, by the more complete and deliberate utterance which it +permitted between them, did at last reveal to the girl the depths of her +own heart. + +During her travels various things happened. + +One chilly afternoon, late in March, when a light powdering of snow lay on +the northern slopes of the hills, Coryston went up to the cottage in +the hopes of finding Marion Atherstone alone. There had been a quiet +understanding between them all the winter, more or less known to the +Coryston family, but all talk of marriage had been silenced by the +condition of Lady Coryston, who indeed never knew such schemes were in the +air. + +About six weeks, however, after his mother's death, Coryston's natural +_fougue_ suggested to him that he was being trifled with. He burst +into the little sitting-room where Marion was just making tea, and sat +down, scowling, on the further side of the hearth. + +"What is the matter?" Marion asked, mildly. During the winter a beautifying +change seemed to have passed upon Atherstone's daughter. She was younger, +better looking, better dressed; yet keeping always the touch of homeliness, +of smiling common-sense, which had first attracted a man in secret +rebellion against his own rhetoric and other people's. + +"You are treating me abominably!" said Coryston, with vehemence. + +"How? My conscience is as sound as a bell!" Wherewith, laughing, she handed +him his cup of tea. + +"All bells aren't sound. Some are flawed," was the prompt reply. "I have +asked you twice this week to tell me when you will be good enough to marry +me, and you haven't said a single word in reply." + +Marion was silent a little; then she looked up, as Andromache looked at +Hector--with a laugh, yet with something else fluttering behind. + +"Let's ask ourselves once more, Herbert--is it really a wise thing to do?" + +Nobody else since his father died had ever called Coryston by his Christian +name; which was perhaps why Marion Atherstone took a peculiar pleasure in +using it. Coryston had mostly forgotten that he possessed such a name, but +from her he liked it. + +"What on earth do you mean by that?" + +"In the first place, Herbert, I was never intended by nature to be a +peeress." + +He sprang up furiously. + +"I never heard a more snobbish remark! All that you are asked is to be my +wife." + +She shook her head. + +"We can't make a world for ourselves only. Then there's--father." + +"Well, what about him?" + +"You don't get on very well," she said, with a sigh. + +Coryston controlled himself with difficulty. + +"For your father, the Liberal party is mostly Jahve--the hope of the +children of light. For me the Liberal party is mostly Dagon--either made a +god of by Philistines, or groveling before a stronger God--Mammon. But that +don't matter. I can behave myself." + +Marion bent over her work. + +"Can't I behave myself?" he repeated, threateningly, as he moved nearer +her. + +She looked up at last. + +"Suppose you get bored with me--as you have with the Liberal party?" + +"But never with liberty," he said, ardently. + +"Suppose you come to see the seamy side of me--as you do of everybody?" + +"I don't invent seamy sides--where none exist," he said, looking +peremptorily into her eyes. + +"I'm not clever, Herbert--and I think I'm a Tory." + +"Heavens, what do I care? You're the woman I happen to love." + +"And I intend to go to church." + +"Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. + +She shook her head. + +"No. I'm an Evangelical." + +"Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. + +She laughed. + +"It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth--goodwill to men--that I can +understand. So that's settled. Now then--a fortnight next Wednesday?" + +"No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not. Wait a minute, Herbert! Where +are you going to live, and what are you going to do?" + +"I'm taking over the Dorset estates. Lots to do on them, and not much +money. Arthur washes his hands of them. There's an old farm where we can +live. In six months I shall have quarreled with all the neighbors, and life +will be worth living again." + +She lifted her eyebrows. + +"A charming prospect for your wife!" + +"Certainly. You'll have the life you were born for. You'll go round +after me--whitewashing the scandals I cause--or if you like to put it +sentimentally--binding up the wounds I make. But if I'm anything I'm a +sociologist, and my business is to make experiments. They will no doubt be +as futile as those I have been making here." + +"And where shall I come in?" + +"You'll be training up the boy--who'll profit by the experiments." + +"The boy?" + +"The boy--our boy--who's to have the estates," said Coryston, without a +moment's hesitation. + +Marion flushed, and pulled her work to her again. Coryston dropped on his +knees beside her, and asked her pardon with eyes whereof the male audacity +had passed into a steady and shining tenderness. + +When Coryston returned that night to the big house, he found his brothers +Arthur and James arrived for the week-end. Arthur was full of Parliamentary +gossip--"battles of kites and crows," of which Coryston was generally +intolerant. But on this occasion he took it silently, and Arthur rambled +on. James sat mildly beaming, with finger-tips joined, and the look of +one on the verge of a confidence. But he talked, after all--when Arthur +paused--only of music and the opera, and as his brothers were not musical, +he soon came to an end, and Arthur held the stage. They were gathered in +the smoking-room on the ground or garden floor, a room hung with pictures +of race-horses, and saddened by various family busts that had not been +thought good enough for the library. Outside, the March wind rattled +through trees as yet untouched by the spring, and lashed a shivering water +round the fountain nymphs. + +"Whoever could have dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, +in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from a +reverie. + +"Who? The Government? Lord!--what does it matter? Look here, you chaps--I +heard some news in Martover just now. Lord William Newbury died last +night--heart failure--expected for the last fortnight." + +Arthur received the news with the lively professional interest that one +landowner feels in another, and tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind +himself to ask Page when the funeral was to be, as the Member for the +division must of course attend it. James said, thoughtfully: + +"Edward, I saw, was ordained last week. And my letter from Marcia this +morning tells me she expects to see him in Rome, on his way to India. Poor +Lady William will be very much alone!" + +"If you make a solitude and call it religion, what can you expect?" said +Coryston, sharply. His face had darkened at the Newburys' name. As always, +it had evoked the memory of two piteous graves. Then, as he got up from his +chair, he said to Arthur: + +"I've fixed it up. Marion and I shall get married next month." + +The brothers looked a little embarrassed, though not at all surprised. +Corry's attachment to this plain, sensible lady, of moderate opinions, had +indeed astonished them enormously when they first became aware of it; but +they were now used to it. + +"All right, Corry!" said Arthur, slapping his brother on the back. "The +best chance of keeping you out of a madhouse! And a very nice woman! You +don't expect me to chum with her father?" + +"Not unless you wish to learn a thing or two--which was never your strong +point," said Coryston, dodging a roll of some Parliamentary paper or other, +which Arthur aimed at him. He turned to James. "Well, James, aren't you +going to congratulate me?--And why don't you do it yourself?" + +"Of course I congratulate you," said James, hastily. "Most sincerely!" + +But his expression--half agitated, half smiling--betrayed emotions so far +beyond the needs of the situation, that Coryston gave him a puzzled glance. +James indeed opened his mouth as though to speak. Then a bright, pink color +overspread his whole countenance from brow to chin; his lips shut and he +fell back in his chair. Presently he went away, and could be heard playing +Bach on the organ in the central hall. He returned to London the same +evening carrying a cargo of philosophical books, from the library, and a +number of novels, though as a rule he never read novels. + +The next morning, in a letter to Coryston, he announced his engagement to a +girl of nineteen, an orphan, and a pupil at the Royal College of Music. She +was the daughter of his Cambridge tutor--penniless, pretty, and musical. He +had paid her fees it seemed for several years, and the effect on him of her +charming mezzo-soprano voice, at a recent concert given by the College, had +settled the matter. The philosopher in love, who had been too shy to tell +his brothers _viva voce_, was quite free of tongue in writing; and +Coryston and Arthur, though they laughed, were glad that "old James" had +found the courage to be happy. Coryston remarked to Arthur that it now +remained for him to keep up the blue blood of the family. + +"Or Marcia," said Arthur, evading the personal reference. + +"Marcia?" Coryston threw his brother an amused, significant look, and said +nothing for a moment. But presently he dropped out: + +"Lester writes that he'll be in Rome next week looking after that Borghese +manuscript. He doesn't expect to get back here till May." + +For Lester had now been absent from Coryston some three or four weeks, +traveling on matters connected with the library. + +Arthur made no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, +twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and +boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with +success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family +house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had +by now asserted, or reasserted themselves; though fighting still with the +sore memory of Enid Glenwilliam. Was he going to allow his sister to marry +out of her rank--even though the lover were the best fellow in the world? +A man may marry whom he will, and the family is only secondarily affected. +But a woman is absorbed by the family of her husband. + +He finally shrugged his shoulders over it. + +"Marcia is as stiff-necked as Coryston," he said to himself, "if it comes +to that." + + * * * * * + +April followed. Amid a crowded Rome, alive with flowers and fountains under +a life-giving sun, Marcia Coryston became sharply conscious again of the +color and beauty interwoven with mere living, for the sane and sound among +men. Edward Newbury passed through on his way to Brindisi and Southern +India; and she saw him for an hour; an interview short and restrained, but +not to be forgotten by either of the two persons concerned. When it was +over Marcia shed a few secret tears--tears of painful sympathy, of an +admiration, which was half pity; and then threw herself once more with--as +it were--a gasp of renewed welcome, into the dear, kind, many-hued world +on which Edward Newbury had turned his back. Presently Lester arrived. He +became her constant companion through the inexhaustible spectacle of Rome; +and she could watch him among the students who were his fellows, modest +or learned as they, yet marked out from most of them by the signs he +bore--signs well known by now to her--of a poetic and eager spirit, +always and everywhere in quest of the human--of man himself, laughing or +suffering, behind his works. The golden days passed by; the blue and white +anemones bloomed and died in the Alban woods; the English crowd that comes +for Easter arrived and departed; and soon Marcia herself must go home, +carrying with her the passionate yet expectant feeling of a child, tired +out with happy days, and dreaming of more to come. + +These were private and personal affairs. But in March a catastrophe +happened which shook the mind of England, and profoundly altered the course +of politics. An American yacht with Glenwilliam on board was overtaken +off the Needles by a sudden and terrific storm, and went down, without a +survivor, and with nothing but some floating wreckage to tell the tale. The +Chancellor's daughter was left alone and poor. The passionate sympathy +and admiration which her father's party had felt for himself was in some +measure transferred to his daughter. But to the amazement of many persons, +she refused with scorn any pecuniary help, living on a small income, and +trying her hand, with some prospect of success, at literature. About six +weeks after her father's death Arthur Coryston found her out and again +asked her to marry him. It is probable there was some struggle in her mind, +but in the end she refused. "You are a kind, true fellow!" she said to him, +gratefully, "but it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do!" And then with a darkening +of her strong face: "There is only one thing I can do for _him_ +now--to serve his causes! And you don't care for one of them! No--no! +Good-by!--Good-by!" + +At last, in May, Marcia came back again to live--as she supposed--at +Coryston with Arthur, and do her duty by her own people. A wonderful spring +was abroad in the land. The gorse on the slopes of the hills was a marvel, +and when the hawthorns came out beside it, or flung their bloom along the +hedgerows and the streams; when far and near the cuckoo's voice made the +new world of blossom and growth articulate; when furtive birds slipped +joyously to and fro between the nests above and a teeming earth below; when +the west winds veering between south and north, and driving the great white +clouds before them, made, every day, a new marvel of the sky--Marcia would +often hold her breath and know within herself the growth of an answering +and a heavenly spring. Lester finished his scholar's errands in Rome and +Naples, and returned to Coryston in the middle week of May, in order to +complete his work there. He found much more to do than he supposed; he +found his friends, Coryston and Arthur, eager to capture and keep him; he +found in every field and wood the kindling beauty of the year; he found +Marcia!--and a bewildering though still shy message in her dark eyes. +Through what doubts and scruples, through what stages of unfolding +confidence and growing joy their minds passed, and to what end it all moved +on, let those imagine, to whom the purest and deepest of human emotions has +ever spoken, or is speaking now. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + +This file should be named 7cryf10.txt or 7cryf10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7cryf11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7cryf10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Coryston Family + +Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward + +Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9507] +[This file was first posted on October 7, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: iso-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, +Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + +THE CORYSTON FAMILY + +A NOVEL + +BY + +MRS. HUMPHRY WARD + +ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN + +1913 + + + + + + +TO + +G.M.T. AND J.P.T. + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" _Frontispiece_ + +THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS +PERORATION + +AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP + +THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL + +"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU" + +MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME + +HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE + +NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN + + + + + +Book I + + +LADY CORYSTON + + +[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.] + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing +six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the +new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet. +The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less +crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact +throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence, +almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest; +cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway +a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great +parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their +seats, like arrows drawn to the string. + +Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the +Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor +below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs +placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save +as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them--women with their faces +pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber, +endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in +their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending +forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort +to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that +no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was +close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft _frou-frou_ +of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some +lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front +bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed +filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face +emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House +struck upon it. + +The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which +seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front +of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She +rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to +enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the +author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her +hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak +to her. + +Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what +seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure +and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention +had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a +lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But +it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have +paid no attention. + +"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the +girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning. + +The girl moved toward him, and returned. + +"What is it, Marcia?" + +"A note from Arthur, mamma." + +A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with +difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter: + +"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner." + +"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively. +"It's dreadfully tiring." + +"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for +me." + +She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker +below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his +audience. + +"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to +her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower +her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door +neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail, +however, than its predecessors. + +"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?" + +The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled +lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside +her. + +"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly. + +"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion. + +Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A +country cousin, I suppose." + +But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner. +Weren't you here when he was speaking?" + +"No--I've not long come in." + +The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the +left of the Speaker rose to his peroration. + +It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a +rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke +in the ringing sentences: + +"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a +growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the +main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform +and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it; +change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property, +while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the +landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set +yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may +yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national +policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated +by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every +means and every device in our power!" + +[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR +ROSE TO HIS PERORATION] + +The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the +Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided +at once. The third began to speak. + +A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several +persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner +addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had +just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her. +"Childish!--positively childish!" + +Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity +to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory +neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair. + +"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for +years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through." + +"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of +course she knew perfectly who you were." + +"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning +to her watch. + +"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back." + +"No. I might miss his getting up." + +There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the +occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the +farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more +distinctly as Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening, evidently, +to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the House, though +her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches. + +It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion +was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but +singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows. +The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These +features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and chin, +the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face, set +in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole, handsome +impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture of Elizabeth +Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been often compared; +and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her personal appearance, +did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this particular comparison. The +likeness was carried further by Lady Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by +her formidable carriage and step; and by the energy of the long-fingered +hands. In dress also there was some parallel between her and the Queen of +many gowns. Lady Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black +silks and satins and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into +the service of her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid +the large and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore +habitually a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the +lappets of which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For +the country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while +loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she wore +seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self. + +In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being--oppressively +wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers +were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or +the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be +used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be +used. On the contrary, her husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her +daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of +her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very +much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just +as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends. + +As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of +Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as +of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances +of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain +than blows of some kind before long.... + +"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would +get him in." + +Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the +Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who +was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the +debate. + +"Has he just come in?" + +"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected +to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston, +impatiently. + +But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus unkindly +referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the House lumbered or +fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to infinity. + +"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother +among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him out +before. One can see he's on wires." + +For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening speeches, +which was now running its course through the crowded lobbies outside, had +sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the fair-haired youth on whom +her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the edge of his seat, papers in +hand, his face turned eagerly toward the speaker on the other side of the +House. His attitude gave the impression of one just about to spring to his +feet. + +But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time before +springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman--had heard him often +before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise with ease and cease +with difficulty. She would certainly have time to get a cup of tea and come +back. So with a word to her mother she groped her way through the dark +gallery across the corridor toward a tearoom. But at the door of the +gallery she turned back. There through the lattice which shuts in the +Ladies' Gallery, right across the House, she saw the Strangers' Gallery at +the other end. The man whose head had been propped on his hands when she +first discovered his presence was now sitting upright, and seemed to be +looking straight at herself, though she knew well that no one in the +Ladies' Gallery was really visible from any other part of the House. His +face was a mere black-and-white patch in the distance. But she imagined the +clear, critical eyes, their sudden frown or smile. + +"I wonder what _he_'ll think of Arthur's speech--and whether he's +seen Coryston. I wonder whether he knows there's going to be an awful row +to-night. Coryston's mad!" + +Coryston was her eldest brother, and she was very fond of him. But the way +he had been behaving!--the way he had been defying mamma!--it was really +ridiculous. What could he expect? + +She seemed to be talking to the distant face, defending her mother and +herself with a kind of unwilling deference. + +"After all, do I really care what he thinks?" + +She turned and went her way to the tearoom. As she entered it she saw some +acquaintances at the farther end, who waved their hands to her, beckoning +her to join them. She hastened across the room, much observed by the way, +and conscious of the eyes upon her. It was a relief to find herself among a +group of chattering people. + +Meanwhile at the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their +tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers--by name, Mrs. Verity +and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society +and in the precincts of the House of Commons--the Ladies' Gallery, the +Terrace, the dining-rooms--though she was but an unmarried girl of two-and- +twenty. Quite apart, however, from her own qualities and claims, Enid +Glenwilliam was conspicuous as the only daughter of the most vigorously +hated and ardently followed man of the moment--the North Country miner's +agent, who was now England's Finance Minister. + +"You saw who that young lady was?" said Mrs. Frant to Miss Glenwilliam. "I +thought you knew her." + +"Marcia Coryston? I have just been introduced to her. But she isn't allowed +to know me!" The laugh that accompanied the words had a pleasant childish +chuckle in it. + +Mrs. Frant laughed also. + +"Girls, I suppose, have to do what they're told," she said, dryly. "But it +_was_ Arthur Coryston, wasn't it, who sent you that extra order for +to-day, Enid?" + +"Yes," laughed the girl again; "but I am quite certain he didn't tell his +mother! We must really be civil and go back to hear him speak. His mother +will think it magnificent, anyway. She probably wrote it for him. He's +quite a nice boy--but--" + +She shook her head over him, softly smiling to herself. The face which +smiled had no very clear title to beauty, but it was arresting and +expressive, and it had beautiful points. Like the girl's figure and dress, +it suggested a self-conscious, fastidious personality: egotism, with charm +for its weapon. + +"I wonder what Lady Coryston thinks of her eldest son's performances in the +papers this morning!" said lively little Mrs. Frant, throwing up hands and +eyes. + +Mrs. Verity, a soft, faded woman, smiled responsively. + +"They can't be exactly dull in that family," she said. "I'm told they all +talk at once; and none of them listens to a word the others say." + +"I think I'll bet that Lady Coryston will make Lord Coryston listen to a +few remarks on that speech!" laughed Enid Glenwilliam. "Is there such a +thing as _matria potestas_? I've forgotten all the Latin I learned +at Cambridge, so I don't know. But if there is, that's what Lady Coryston +stands for. How splendid--to stand for anything--nowadays!" + +The three fell into an animated discussion of the Coryston family and their +characteristics. Enid Glenwilliam canvassed them all at least as freely as +her neighbors. But every now and then little Mrs. Frant threw her an odd +look, as much as to say, "Am I really taken in?" + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile a very substantial old lady, scarcely less deliberate and finely +finished, in spite of her size, than Lady Coryston herself, had taken a +chair beside her in the gallery, which was still very empty. + +"My dear," she said, panting a little and grasping Lady Coryston's wrist, +with a plump hand on which the rings sparkled--"My dear! I came to bring +you a word of sympathy." + +Lady Coryston looked at her coldly. + +"Are you speaking of Coryston?" + +"Naturally. The only logical result of those proceedings last night would +be, of course, the guillotine at Hyde Park Corner. Coryston wants our +heads! There's nothing else to be said. I took the speeches for young men's +nonsense--just midsummer madness, but I find people very angry. _Your_ +son! one of _us_!" + +"I thought the speeches very clever," said Lady Coryston. + +"I'm rejoiced you take it so philosophically, my dear Emilia!"--the tone +was a little snappish--"I confess I thought you would have been much +distressed." + +"What's the good of being distressed? I have known Coryston's opinions for +a long time. One has to _act_--of course," the speaker added, with +deliberation. + +"Act? I don't understand." + +Lady Coryston did not enlighten her. Indeed, she did not hear her. She was +bending forward eagerly. The fair-haired youth on the back benches, who had +been so long waiting his turn, was up at last. + +It was a maiden speech, and a good one, as such things go. There was enough +nervousness and not too much; enough assurance and not too much. The facts +and figures in it had been well arranged. A modest jest or two tripped +pleasantly out; and the general remarks at the end had been well chosen +from the current stock, and were not unduly prolonged. Altogether a +creditable effort, much assisted by the young man's presence and manner. He +had no particular good looks, indeed; his nose ascended, his chin satisfied +no one; but he had been a well-known bat in the Oxford eleven of his day, +and was now a Yeomanry officer; he held himself with soldierly erectness, +and his slender body, cased in a becoming pale waistcoat under his tail +coat, carried a well-shaped head covered with thick and tumbling hair. + +The House filled up a little to hear him. His father had been a member of +Parliament for twenty years, and a popular member. There was some curiosity +to know what his son would make of his first speech. And springing from the +good feeling which always animates the House of Commons on such occasions, +there was a fair amount of friendly applause from both sides when he sat +down. + +"Features the father, and takes after the mother!" said a white-haired +listener in the Strangers' Gallery to himself, as the young man ceased +speaking. "She's drilled him! Well, now I suppose I must go and +congratulate her." He rose from his seat and began to make his way out. In +the passage outside the Gallery he overtook and recognized the man whose +entrance into the House Lady Coryston and her daughter had noticed about an +hour earlier. + +"Well, what did you think of it, Lester?" + +The other smiled good-humoredly. + +"Capital! Everybody must make a beginning. He's taken a lot of pains." + +"It's a beastly audience!" said Sir Wilfrid Bury, in reply. "Don't I know +it! Well, I'm off to congratulate. How does the catalogue get on?" + +"Oh, very well. I sha'n't finish till the summer. There's a good deal still +to do at Coryston. Some of the things are really too precious to move +about." + +"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering +his voice. + +The young man smiled discreetly. + +"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her." + +"I suppose she's pressed you into the service--makes you help Arthur?" + +"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own +secretary." + +"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?" + +"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get +through." + +"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house." + +"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own +arrangements." + +"Ta-ta." + +Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to +the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been +chatting, was in some sort a protégé of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid, +indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford +historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid +work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons. +A generation earlier, Lester's father had been a brother officer of Sir +Wilfrid's, in days when the Lester family was still rich, and before the +crashing failure of the great banking-house of the name. + +Meanwhile, at the other end of the House of Commons, Lady Coryston had +been sitting pleasantly absorbed, watching her son, who lay now like a man +relieved, lolling on the half-empty bench, chatting to a friend beside him. +His voice was still in her ears: mingled with the memory of other voices +from old, buried times. For more than twenty years how familiar had she +been with this political scene!--these galleries and benches, crowded or +listless; these opposing Cabinets--the Ins and Outs--on either side of the +historic table; the glitter of the Mace at its farther end; the books, the +old morocco boxes, the tops of the official wigs, the ugly light which +bathed it all; the exhausted air, the dreariness, the boredom! all +worth while, these last, just for the moments, the crises, the play of +personalities, the conflict of giants, of which they were the inevitable +conditions. There, on the second bench above the gangway on the Tory +side, her husband, before he succeeded to the title, had sat through four +Parliaments. And from the same point of vantage above she had watched him +year after year, coming in and out, speaking occasionally, never eloquent +or brilliant, but always respected; a good, worthy, steady-going fellow +with whom no one had any fault to find, least of all his wife, to whom he +had very easily given up the management of their common life, while he +represented her political opinions in Parliament much more than his own. + +Until--until? + +Well, until in an evil hour, a great question, the only political question +on which he differed and had always differed from his wife, on which he +felt he _must_ speak for himself and stand on his own feet, arose to +divide them. There, in that Gallery, she had sat, with rage and defeat in +her heart, watching him pass along, behind the Speaker's chair, toward the +wrong division lobby, his head doggedly held down, as though he knew and +felt her eyes upon him, but must do his duty all the same. On this one +matter he had voted against her, spoken against her, openly flouted and +disavowed her. And it had broken down their whole relation, poisoned +their whole life. "Women are natural tyrants," he had said to her once, +bitterly--"no man could torment me as you do." And then had come his +death--his swift last illness, with those tired eyes still alive in the +dumb face, after speech and movement were no longer possible--eyes which +were apt to close when she came near. + +And yet, after all--the will!--the will which all his relations and friends +had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable +failure to play the man in his own household, and in which _she_, his +wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate +her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and +personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, +and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great Irish, the +great Devonshire properties, the accumulated savings of a lifetime, they +were all hers--hers absolutely. Her husband had stood last in the entail; +and with a view to her own power, she had never allowed him to renew it. + +Coryston had been furiously angry when the terms of his father's will were +revealed. She could never think without shivering of certain scenes, with +Coryston in the past--of a certain other scene that was still to come. +Well, it had been a duel between them; and after apparently sore defeat, +she had won, so far as influence over his father was concerned. And since +his father's death she had given him every chance. He had only to hold his +tongue, to keep his monstrous, _sans-culotte_ opinions to himself, at +least, if he could not give them up; and she would have restored him his +inheritance, would have dealt with him not only justly, but generously. He +had chosen; he had deliberately chosen. Well, now then it was for her--as +she had said to old Lady Frensham--it was for her to reply, but not in +words only. + +She fell back upon the thought of Arthur, Arthur, her darling; so manly, +and yet so docile; so willing to be guided! Where was he, that she might +praise him for his speech? She turned, searching the dark doorway with her +eyes. But there was no Arthur, only the white head and smiling countenance +of her old friend, Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was beckoning to her. She +hurriedly bade Marcia, who had just returned to the Gallery, to keep her +seat for her, and went out into the corridor to speak to him. + +"Well, not bad, was it? These youngsters have got the trick! I thought it +capital. But I dare say you'll have all sorts of fault to find, you most +exacting of women!" + +"No, no; it was good," she said, eagerly. "And he's improving fast." + +"Well then"--the wise old eyes beside her laughed kindly into hers--"be +content, and don't take Coryston's escapades too hardly!" + +She drew back, and her long face and haughty mouth stiffened in the way he +knew. + +"Are you coming to see me on Sunday?" she said, quietly. + +He took his snubbing without resentment. + +"I suppose so. I don't often miss, do I? Well, I hear Marcia was the beauty +at the Shrewsbury House ball, and that--" he whispered something, laughing +in her ear. + +Lady Coryston looked a little impatient. + +"Oh, I dare say. And if it's not he, it will be some one else. She'll marry +directly. I always expected it. Well, now I must go. Have you seen Arthur?" + +"Mother! Hullo, Sir Wilfrid!" + +There was the young orator, flushed and radiant. But his mother could say +very little to him, for the magnificent person in charge of the Gallery and +its approaches intervened. "No talking allowed here, sir, please." Even +Lady Coryston must obey. All she could add to her hurried congratulations +was: + +"You're coming in to-night, remember, Arthur?--nine-thirty." + +"Yes, I've paired. I'm coming. But what on earth's up, mother?" + +Her lips shut closely. + +"Remember, nine-thirty!" She turned and went back into the darkness of the +Gallery. + +Arthur hesitated a moment in the passage outside. Then he turned back +toward the little entrance-room opposite the entrance to the ordinary +Ladies' Gallery, where he found another attendant. + +"Is Miss Glenwilliam here?" he inquired, carelessly. + +"Yes, sir, in the front row, with Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. Do you wish +to speak to her, sir? The Gallery's pretty empty." + +Arthur Coryston went in. The benches sloped upward, and on the lowest one, +nearest the grille, he saw the lady of his quest, and was presently bending +over her. + +"Well," he said, flushing, "I suppose you thought it all bosh!" + +"Not at all! That's what you have to say. What else can you say? You did it +excellently." + +Her lightly mocking eyes looked into his. His flush deepened. + +"Are you going to be at the Frenshams' dance?" he asked her, presently. + +"We're not invited. They're too savage with father. But we shall be at the +Opera to-morrow night." + +His face lightened. But no more talk was possible. A Minister was up, and +people were crowding back into the Gallery. He hurriedly pressed her hand +and departed. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia +noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the +fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her +eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner--her +mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal +summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So +Arthur--evidently puzzled--had paired for the evening, and would return +from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and +Coryston had wired an hour before dinner--"Inconvenient, but will turn up." + +What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well +that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's +position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, +on a jointure; leaving their former splendors--the family mansion and the +family income--behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and +efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the +daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past +could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although +she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been +the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule +in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children +except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his +grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached +and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, +when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a +quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his +opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad +after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction +between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred +while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had +been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile. + +Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for +taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly +his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that +there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why +be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord? + +And really--of late--his behavior! Never coming to see his mother--writing +the most outrageous things in support of the Government--speaking for +Radical candidates in their very own county--denouncing by name some of +their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible! + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She +went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in +white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she +passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint +and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her +childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the +equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, +which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the +staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be +like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family +and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing +association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse +whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident +flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the +picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long +Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night. + +Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark +eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength--she +certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. +The face reminded one of ripe fruit--so rich was the downy bloom on the +delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch +of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it +perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would +see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding +prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were +rich--quite unconsciously--in that magic of sex which belongs to only +a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and +occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many +things--in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which +she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her +whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of +life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually--the +unknown!--yearning for his call, his command.... + +There were many people--witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her +mother--who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious +effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three +seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and +set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she +received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, +copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused--or +made her mother refuse for her--one or more of the men whom all other +mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one +quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned +her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural +arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained _nonchalant_ +and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of +passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. +Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's +opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out +of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long +the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed. + +As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of +Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with +certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into +the drawing-room in her mother's wake. + +The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston +strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian +pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on +wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," +held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth +looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since +1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good +enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their +ancestors were now discredited--laughed out of court--as collectors, owing +to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a +number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or +by tables holding _objets d'art_ of the same mixed quality as the +pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses +with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression +of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought +suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in +dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted +floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. +The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind +her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, +sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck +through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till +now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some +matter of family property--some selling or buying transaction--which a +mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might +well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting +in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a +recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in +the estates "--he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, +not mine." + +And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for +granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some +time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? +Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have +become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women +make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother +was an exceptional woman. + +But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, +and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews +with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts +she struck up conversation. + +"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?" + +"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help +it, she dresses so outrageously." + +"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that +kind of thing." + +Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows. + +"That's where the ill-breeding comes in--that a young girl should make +herself so conspicuous." + +"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. +People on our side--people you'd never think--will do anything to get her +for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she +says." + +"That I can quite believe! Yes--I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the +other day--dining--when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that +_man_!" + +Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her +path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself. + +Marcia laughed. + +"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he +was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't +the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a +friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it. + +"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly. + +Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant +sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and +took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large +envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her +mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a +small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other +side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky +cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, +Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt +furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That +patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the +time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer. + +In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, +then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all +kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in +front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, +"Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of +the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby +greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with +indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's +all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!" + +In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also +of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both +of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, +as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial +men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions +matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not +exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the +nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection. + +He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. +And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint +lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each +other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than +the irreconcilable differences. + +Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent +political escapades--remarks which she took in complete silence--he settled +himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to +say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the +likeness--through all contrast--between mother and son. Lady Coryston was +tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing--a Lady Macbeth of the +drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet +of a man--on wires--never at ease--the piled fair hair overbalancing the +face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both +physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. _Will_--carried to +extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady +Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it +was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy. + +Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed +evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled +to read her mother--the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of +expression--from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of +nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time. + +She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of +Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" +but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to +sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded +foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid +oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia +noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an +old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints. + +"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with +a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of +business--not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will +hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, +by the family--the estates--and the country." + +At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially +when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something +peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection. + +Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt +chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his +head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; +and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was +pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. +And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what +Was going to happen. + +"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in +leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father +did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him--" + +Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an +anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking +went on: + +"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that +in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and +all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in +danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out +his ideas--the ideas he and I had held in common--and should remain the +guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had +inherited--and in which he believed--" + +Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his +elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his +mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the +slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear +of the spaniel against the other. + +"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's +death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I +cannot have satisfied _all_ my children." She paused a moment. "I have +not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury--that none of you +can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up--nothing +more. And I have certainly _wished_"--she laid a heavy emphasis on +the word--"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own +fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for +any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own +money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to +provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston--" + +She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was +certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh. + +"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and +prunella.'" + +James murmured, "Corry--old man?" Marcia flushed angrily. + +"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that +everything he could possibly have claimed--" + +"Short of the estates--which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with +an amused look. + +His mother went on without noticing the interruption: + +"--would have been his--either now or in due time--if he would only have +made certain concessions--" + +"Sold my soul and held my tongue?--quite right!" said Coryston. "I have +scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect." + +Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed +emotion. + +"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and +consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his +father's convictions--" + +"What!--you think he still has them--in the upper regions?" + +Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew +pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's +side, she took her hand. + +"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult +your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook. + +Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands +on his sides. + +"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting +something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been +dishing me altogether?--cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what +you mean? Let's have it!" + +Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy. + +"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way--" + +"Yes--but please _tell_ it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to +keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I +guess, from your will--which concern me--and the rest of them"--he waved +his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get +done with it." + +"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston." + +With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady +Coryston took up the folded paper. + +"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which +concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, +in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily +at Coryston--"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But--" + +"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest +son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while +I'm speculating as to what's coming." + +"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that +Coryston is behaving abominably." + +But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with +lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently. + +Lady Coryston began to read. + +Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing +the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his +custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, +Arthur sprang to his feet. + +"I say, mother!" + +"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience. + +She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out: + +"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, +her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper +which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat +dumfoundered. + +James approached his mother. + +"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions." + +She turned toward him. + +"Yes, James, I shall maintain them." + +Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair +hair as though in bewilderment. + +"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to +me I shall hand it back to Corry." + +"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in +trust," said Lady Coryston. + +Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a +little distance. + +"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches +have contributed?" + +"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have +intrusted you with the estates." + +"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The +letter which he left for me said as much." + +"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly. + +"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see +how things stand." + +He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the +items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion--you cut me +out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to +buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my +present fortune--the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I +understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying +properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's +mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all--all, that +is, which would have normally come to me--or _nothing_!" + +He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features +sparkling. + +"I will have all--or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for +a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of +risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I +should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital." + +"You make it your business to wound, Coryston." + +"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been +_absolutely in my right_!" He brought his hand down with passion +on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I--the next +generation--ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no +moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. +There is always something to be said for property, so long as each +generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property +is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, +_then_ it is what the Frenchman called it, _theft_!--or worse.... +Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven +thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property--well!--I'm going to a +large extent to manage it!" + +Lady Coryston started. + +"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately. + +"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, +calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound +ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title +I can't stand for our parliamentary division--but I shall look out for +somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm +afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with +me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would +always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed--least of all +by a woman." + +Lady Coryston rose from her seat. + +"James!--Arthur!--" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will +understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish +that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it +hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and +understand me. Good night." + +"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously. + +She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm +round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding +Coryston at bay the while. + +As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and +opened it for her. + +"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I--but we'll play +fair." + +Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and +Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched +him in the ribs. + +"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! +I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you." + +Arthur grew red. + +"Of course it was nonsense to you!" + +"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?" + +"Nothing that matters to you, Corry." + +"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!" + +"Do hold your tongue, Corry!" + +"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother +will fight you for all she's worth." + +"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that." + +"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the +estates, Arthur." + +"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall +find a way of getting out of them--the greater part of them, anyway. All +the same, Corry, if I do--you'll have to give guarantees." + +"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"--Coryston gave a great +stretch--"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order +it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. +You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I +tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to +take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the +whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!" + +He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping +and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the +legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy +thousand a year. + +Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their +bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no +sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the +landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book. + +She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to +be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house +from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large +ground-floor room at the back. + +"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" +And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her +mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. +It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of +Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But +that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into +the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain +she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the +second volume of _Diana of the Crossways_. Why not? It was only just +eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had +gone to bed. + +She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she +opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, +and she heard some one moving about. + +"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment." + +A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk +heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed +toward the figure at the door. + +"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do +anything for you?" + +The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage +behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, +and blue eyes. + +"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know +where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her +volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too +strong. + +"I suppose my brothers have been here?" + +Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment. + +"They have only just gone--at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went +some time ago." + +Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase. + +"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?" + +Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did +nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled. + +"But they've told you--he and Arthur--they've told you what's happened?" + +"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them." + +"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia--"when he wants to do +something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious +plan?--of coming to settle down at Coryston--in our very pockets--in order +to make mother's life a burden to her?" + +"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll +do it." + +"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He +calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's +consciences don't matter a bit." + +Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out +impetuously: + +"You think he's been badly treated?" + +"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one." + +"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, +as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's _splendid_ +my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it." + +Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of +covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks. + +"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a +Liberal." + +"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't +agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if +I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative." + +"But you think other things matter more than politics?" + +"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially--" He stopped. + +"Especially--for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered +his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I +know." + +"Beauty--poetry--sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?" + +He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her. + +There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made +a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he +raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, +in the darkness, by the solitary light--the lines of her young form, the +delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes. + +She held out her hand. + +"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!" + +She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +"Her ladyship says she would like to see you, Miss, before you go." + +The speaker was Lady Coryston's maid. She stood just within the doorway of +the room where Marcia was dressing for the Opera, delivering her message +mechanically, but really absorbed in the spectacle presented by the young +girl before her. Sewell was an artist in her own sphere, and secretly +envious of the greater range of combination which Marcia's youth and beauty +made possible for the persons who dressed her, as compared with Lady +Coryston. There are all kinds of subtle variants, no doubt, in "black," +such as Lady Coryston habitually wore; and the costliness of them left +nothing to be desired. But when she saw Marcia clothed in a new Worth or +Paquin, Sewell was sorely tempted to desert her elderly mistress and go in +search of a young one. + +"Come in, Sewell," cried Marcia. "What do you think of it?" + +The woman eagerly obeyed her. Marcia's little maid, Bellows, did the +honors, and the two experts, in an ecstasy, chattered the language of +their craft, while Marcia, amid her shimmering white and pink, submitted +good-humoredly to being pulled about and twisted round, till after endless +final touches, she was at last pronounced the perfect thing. + +Then she ran across the passage to her mother's sitting-room. Lady Coryston +had complained of illness during the day and had not been down-stairs. But +Marcia's experience was that when her mother was ill she was not less, but +more active than usual, and that withdrawal to her sitting-room generally +meant a concentration of energy. + +Lady Coryston was sitting with a writing-board on her knee, and a +reading-lamp beside her, lighting a table covered with correspondence. +Within her reach was a deep cupboard in the wall containing estate and +business letters, elaborately labeled and subdivided. A revolving bookcase +near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the +paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the _Quarterly Review_. The walls +of the room were covered with books--a fine collection of county histories, +and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, +specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger +generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been +the normal look of the original. His portrait by Holl hung over the +mantelpiece, flanked on either side by water-color pictures of his sons and +daughter in their childhood. + +There was only one comfortable chair in the room, and Lady Coryston never +sat in it. She objected to flowers as being in the way; and there was not +a sign anywhere of the photographs and small knick-knacks which generally +belitter a woman's sitting--room. Altogether, an ugly room, but +characteristic, businesslike, and not without a dignity of its own. + +"Mother!--why don't you rest a little?" cried Marcia, eying the black-robed +figure and the long pale face, marked by very evident fatigue. "You've been +writing letters or seeing people all day. How long did James stay?" + +"About an hour." + +"And Mr. Page?" Mr. Page was the agent of the main Coryston estate. + +"Some time. There was a great deal to settle." + +"Did you"--the girl fidgeted--"did you tell him about Coryston?" + +"Certainly. He says there is only one house in the neighborhood he could +take--" + +"He has taken it." Marcia opened her right hand, in which she crushed a +telegram. "Bellows has just brought me this." + +Lady Coryston opened and read it. + +"Have taken Knatchett for three years. Tell mother." Lady Coryston's lips +stiffened. + +"He has lost no time. He can vex and distress us, of course. We shall have +to bear it." + +"Vex and distress us! I should think he can!" cried Marcia. "Has James been +talking to him?" + +"I dare say," said Lady Coryston, adding, with a slight, sarcastic laugh, +"James is a little too sure of being always in the right." + +From which Marcia guessed that James had not only been talking to Coryston, +but also remonstrating with his mother, which no doubt accounted for Lady +Coryston's worn-out looks. James had more effect upon her than most people; +though never quite effect enough. + +Marcia stood with one foot on the fender, her gaze fixed on her mother in +a frowning abstraction. And suddenly Lady Coryston, lifting her eyes, +realized her daughter, and the vision that she made. + +"You look very well, Marcia. Have I seen that dress before?" + +"No. I designed it last week. Ah!"--the sound of a distant gong made itself +heard--"there's the motor. Well, good night, mother. Take care of yourself +and do go to bed soon." + +She stooped to kiss her mother. + +"Who's going with you?" + +"Waggin and James. Arthur may come in. He thinks the House will be up +early. And I asked Mr. Lester. But he can't come for the first part." + +Her mother held her sleeve and looked up, smiling. Lady Coryston's smiles +were scarcely less formidable than her frowns. + +"You expect to see Edward Newbury?" + +"I dare say. They have their box, as usual." + +"Well!--run off and enjoy yourself. Give my love to Miss Wagstaffe." + +"Waggin" was waiting in the hall for Marcia. She had been Miss Coryston's +governess for five years, and was now in retirement on a small income, +partly supplied by a pension from Lady Coryston. It was understood that +when she was wanted to act duenna, she came--at a moment's notice. And she +was very willing to come. She lived in an Earl's Court lodging, and these +occasional expeditions with Marcia represented for her the gilt on her +modest gingerbread. She was a small, refined woman, with a figure still +slender, gray hair, and a quiet face. Her dresses were years old, but she +had a wonderful knack of bringing them up-to-date, and she never did Marcia +any discredit. She adored Marcia, and indeed all the family. Lady Coryston +called her "Miss Wagstaffe"--but to the others, sons and daughter, she was +only "Waggin." There were very few things about the Coryston family she did +not know; but her discretion was absolute. + +As she saw Marcia running down-stairs her face lit up. + +"My dear, what a lovely gown!--and how sweet you look!" + +"Don't talk nonsense, Waggin!--and put on this rose I've brought for you!" + +Waggin submitted while Marcia adorned her and gave various pats and pulls +to her hair. + +"There!--you look ten years younger," said the girl, with her bright look, +stepping back. "But where is James?" + +The butler stepped forward. + +"Mr. James will meet you at the Opera." + +"Oh, good!" murmured Marcia in her companion's ear. "Now we can croon." + +And croon they did through the long crowded way to Covent Garden. By the +time the motor reached St. Martin's Lane, Waggin was in possession of all +that had happened. She had long expected it, having shrewdly noted many +signs of Lady Coryston's accumulating wrath. But now that "Corry," her dear +"Corry," with whom she had fought so many a schoolroom fight in the days +of his Eton jackets, was really disinherited, her concern was great. Tears +stood in her kind eyes. "Poor Corry!" alternated in her mouth with "Your +poor mother!" Sinner and judge appealed equally to her pity. + +Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce. + +"What else could he expect? Father _did_ leave the estates to +mother--just because Corry had taken up such views--so that she might keep +us straight." + +[Illustration: AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP] + +"But _afterward_! My dear, he is so young! And young men change." + +Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned--except with this +awe and vagueness--scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists +than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. + +Marcia shook her head. + +"He won't change. Mother did not ask it. All she asked was--for her sake +and father's--that he should hold his tongue." + +A flush sprang to Waggin's faded cheek. + +"A _man_!--a grown man!" she said, wondering--"forbid him to speak +out--speak freely?" + +Marcia looked anxiously at her companion. It was very seldom that Waggin +betrayed so much heat. + +"I know," said the girl, gloomily--"'Your money or your life'--for I +suppose it sounds like that. Corry would say his convictions are his life. +But why 'a man,' Waggin?" She straightened her pretty shoulders. "I don't +believe you'd mind if it were a woman. You don't believe in a _woman_ +having convictions!" + +Waggin looked a little bewildered. + +"I'm old-fashioned, I suppose--but--" + +Marcia laughed triumphantly. + +"Why shouldn't Corry respect his mother's convictions? She wants to prove +that women oughtn't to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even--" + +"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so +splendid--so splendid!" + +"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, +Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!" + +Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl's. The note of +storm in Marcia's mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to +change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen +with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little +niece--and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr. +Arthur--and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!--not exactly +handsome--but you couldn't possibly pass her over." + +"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of +course, Waggin, they weren't alone?" + +"Oh no--probably not!--though--though I didn't see any one else. They +seemed so full of talk--I didn't speak to Mr. Arthur. _Who_ do you say +she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently. + +Marcia turned upon her. + +"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It's too bad of +Arthur! It's abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I've heard +things said sometimes--but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, +Waggin!--you _didn't_ see them alone?" + +The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course +Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does +exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless +she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But +_Arthur_!" + +Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they +passed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress. + +"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention +it! I'm sure there's nothing in it." + +"I've half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned +emphasis. "But I wouldn't believe it!--I shall tell Arthur what I think of +him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but +that's quite another thing. It's as though mother were never to have any +pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!--behind her back, +too." + +"My dear!--it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, +and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your +mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand--" + +"To please mother--and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with +perfect composure. "You're thinking of Edward Newbury?" + +"Who else should I be thinking of!--after all you told me last week?" + +"Oh yes--I like Edward Newbury"--the tone betrayed a curious +irritation--"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer +him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!" + +"Marcia--dearest!--don't be cruel to him!" + +"No--but he mustn't press me! I've given him hints--and he won't take them. +I can't make up my mind, Waggin. I can't! It's not only marrying him--it's +the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me--at +Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party--evening prayers in the private chapel, +_before dinner_!--nobody allowed to breakfast in bed--everybody driven +off to church--and such a _fuss_ about Lent! It made me shiver. I'm +not that sort, Waggin--I never shall be." + +And as again a stream of light from a music-hall façade poured into the +carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark +eyes full of some passionate feeling, not very easy to understand. + +"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired +lady--"make your own conditions!" + +"No, no!--never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, +kindest--and underneath--_iron_! Most people are taken in. I'm not." + +There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing--she +knew it--would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though +she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special +pains on Marcia's behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still +undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family--the young man himself heir +presumptive to a marquisate money--high character--everything that mortal +mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted--Waggin was certain of it. +The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And +yet--let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In +Waggin's opinion he had his work cut out for him. + +Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for +an important "first night"--there is no sight in London, perhaps, that +ministers more sharply to the lust of modern eyes and the pride of modern +life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide +the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women--women old and +young--their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray +heads; the roses that youth wears--divinely careless; or the diamonds +wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years. + +Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted +positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that +instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the +Greek called _hubris_, and which is only vile when it outlives youth. +It meant in her--"I am young--I am handsome--the world is all on my +side--who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave +a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her +actions and attitudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, +so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of +compassion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr. +Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a +narrow inexperience. + +The overture had begun--in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience +was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of +those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia +sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising +her own opera-glass from time to time, especially to watch the filling up +of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It +was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had +joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the +music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over. + +"Marcia--you vandal!--listen!" + +The girl started and blushed. + +"I don't understand the music, James!--it's so strange and barbarous." + +"Well, it isn't Glück, certainly," said James, smiling. + +Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the +crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear space of sky, +a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell--winds caught +it--snatches of tempest overpowered it--shrieking demons rushed upon it and +silenced it. But it persisted; passing finally into a processional march, +through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end. + +"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are +the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host." + +The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had +but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of +Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and +fifty years after Glück, how to make it speak, through music, to more +modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, +and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous +and heroic, with a swiftness and a passion which had soon gripped Covent +Garden. + +There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the +allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But +at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary +blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. Hellas cannot avenge itself on the +Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds +back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as goddess of the land, she +claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the +host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has +vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your +daughter!--Iphigenia!" + +Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the +stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, +bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that +she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner +despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain. +Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant +joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose +neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to +kiss, saying tender, touching things--how she has missed him--how long the +time has been.... + +The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an +old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli +in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in +which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the +soul. + +Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, +smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but +in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in +noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a +seat beside Marcia. + +He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted +to hear this--with you." + +"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a +motion of her face toward the Iphigenia. + +"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it--please!--for the +ordinary 'star'--business." + +"But she is the play!" + +"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of +sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the +death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is +the dirge music beginning." + +Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of +the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various +incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man +beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys +and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not +long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of +the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. +They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then +begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball +that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept +into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with +him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed +to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no +avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached +her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which +were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through +the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. +With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her. + +Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once +exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, +as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her +dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, +of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's +knees, imploring him to save her: + +"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my +father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before +my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of +death. 'Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have +I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death? +Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have +that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers." + +She takes the infant Orestes in her arms: + +"Brother!--you are but a tiny helper--and yet--come, weep with me!--come, +pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how--silently--he +implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! +He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble +dying!" + +The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast--through +one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in +art. Wonderful theme!--the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more +than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed +vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery +of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate--the savage creed--the +blood-thirst of the goddess--and the maddened army howling for its prey. + +Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too +horrible!" + +Newbury shook his head, smiling. + +"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race--of the +Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. +She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art--all religion. Ah--here +is Achilles!" + +There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to +fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, +adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his +bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her--die for her--if +need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs +up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the +background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on +his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from +the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her +champion, loves him. + +The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the +whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath. + +"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's. + +He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling +compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer. + +But the golden moment dies!--forever. Shrieking and crashing, the +vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing +blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon +is threatened--Achilles--Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the +distance like the roar of an uncaged beast. + +Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and +thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to +throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks. + +"Mother!--we cannot fight with gods. I die!--I die! But let me die +gloriously--unafraid. Hellas calls to me!--Hellas, my country. I alone can +give her what she asks--fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the +good of Hellas--not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for +women and their fatherland?--and shall one life, one little life, stand in +their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!--pull down the towers of +Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me--this be my glory!--this, +child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that +Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are +slave-folk--and _we_ are free!" + +Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for +what she is--now that he has "looked into her soul"--must he lose her?--is +it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her. + +But she puts him gently aside. + +"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be _my_ +boon to save Hellas, if I may." + +And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await +her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if +she calls to him--even at the last moment. + +But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding +all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief--she lifts the song +of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place +of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her. + +"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day--torch of Zeus!" + +"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear +light!--farewell!" + +"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is +the death--_she accepts_!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The +exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled +strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's +dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the +growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; +the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; +fascination--revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat +drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera +House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the +stage, with the bouquets at its feet.... + +Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed +it. She recoiled--released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward +Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury. + + * * * * * + +Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back +of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid +much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were +on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The +profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full--too full!--of +consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a +flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her +small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. +And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much +courtesy to Marcia's "companion." + +"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big +fight--Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows--and somebody +having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He +spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad +company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite." + +Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front +of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was +bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly +Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and +showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood +looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, +in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half +contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping--in +spite of its conformity in dress--with the splendid opera-house, and the +bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern +statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate--for +Democracy--Labor--personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern +world has developed it--armed with all the weapons of the other two! + +"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims +play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I +get out of you?--and you?'" + +Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He +was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days +when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime. + +"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard +by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to +notice--and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!" + +"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely; "if that's what you mean." His eyes +rested a moment on the striking figure of the Chancellor's daughter. +"Certainly--I'll put in a word. But she is a very fascinating young woman, +my dear!" + +"I know," said Marcia, helplessly, "I know." + +There was a pause. Then Sir Wilfrid asked: + +"When do you go down to Coryston?" + +"Just before Whitsuntide." + +He looked round with a smile, saw that Edward Newbury was still in the box, +and whispered, mischievously: + +"Hoddon Grey, too, I think, will not be empty?" + +Marcia kept an indifferent face. + +"I dare say. You're coming?" Sir Wilfrid nodded. "Oh, _have_ you +heard--?" + +She murmured to him behind her fan. Sir Wilfrid knew all their history--had +been her father's most intimate friend. She gave him a rapid account of +Coryston's disinheriting. The old man rose, his humorous eyes suddenly +grave. + +"We'll talk of this--at Coryston. Ah, Newbury--I took your chair--I resign. +Hullo, Lester--good evening. Heavens, there's the curtain going up. Good +night!" + +He hurried away. Newbury moved forward, his eager look on Marcia. But she +turned, smiling, to the young librarian. + +"You haven't seen this ballet, Mr. Lester?--Schumann's 'Carnival'? Oh, +you mustn't stand so far back. We can make room, can't we?" She addressed +Newbury, and before he knew what had happened, the chairs had been so +manipulated that Lester sat between Marcia and Newbury, while Waggin had +drawn back into the shadow. The eyes of Marcia's duenna twinkled. It +pleased her that this magnificent young man, head, it was said, of the +young High Church party, distinguished in many ways, and as good as he was +handsome, was not to have too easy a game. Marcia had clearly lost her head +a little at the Shrewsbury House ball; and was now trying to recover it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +After one of those baffling fortnights of bitter wind and cold, which so +often mark the beginning of an English May, when all that the spring has +slowly gained since March seems to be confiscated afresh by returning +winter, the weather had repented itself, the skies had cleared, and +suddenly, under a flood of sunshine, there were blue-bells in the +copses, cowslips in the fields, a tawny leaf breaking on the oaks, a new +cheerfulness in the eyes and gait of the countryman. + +A plain, pleasant-looking woman sat sewing out-of-doors, in front of a +small verandaed cottage, perched high on a hillside which commanded a wide +view of central England. The chalk down fell beneath her into a sheath of +beech woods; the line of hills, slope behind slope, ran westward to the +sunset, while eastward they mounted to a wooded crest beyond which the +cottage could not look. Northward, beginning some six hundred feet below +the cottage, stretched a wide and varied country, dotted with villages and +farms, with houses and woods, till it lost itself in the haze of a dim +horizon. + +A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the +French windows of the cottage. + +"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?" + +"Between three and four, papa." + +"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a +long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably--Sunday or no +Sunday!" + +"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting +her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern. + +"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston--who said he would be here to +tea." + +Miss Atherstone looked a little startled. + +"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I +wrote yesterday." + +"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in +the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the +estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent +terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it +up to Coryston somehow." + +"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly. + +"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's +not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I +never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby." + +"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of +brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever +people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a +retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers +in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the +midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty constituencies by +heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the +pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count +by any important Minister framing an important bill. + +He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of +English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large +Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship--little known except to an inner +ring--was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did +nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been +the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live +in history. + +Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and +much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life. +Brilliant creatures--men and women--came and went, to and from the cottage. +Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not +much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, +and a vegetarian. Marion read the _Church Family Times_, went +diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough +about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and +her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other. + +Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one +who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound +affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to +some one or other of the Sirens of her sex. When Enid came to the cottage +Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability +is that she saw through the Siren--what there was to see through--a good +deal more sharply than her father did. + +Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just +been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would +probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to +him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of +talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was +pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept +running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more +passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more +big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of +land, and church, and finance!--democratic England when it once got to +business--and it was getting to business--would make short work of them. + +As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the +democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the +hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held +sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile +mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord +ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots +than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than +their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands +on them. + +One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He +turned, laughing to his daughter. + +"Coryston has settled in--with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He +has all sorts of ructions on his hands already." + +"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas +emerging from the woods. + +"My dear--she began it. And he is quite right--he _has_ a public duty +to these estates." + +"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly." + +"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong +parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, +are over." + +"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously. + +"I repeat--she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a +will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!" + +"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly. + +Atherstone shrugged his shoulders--too honest to reply. + +He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed. + +"I hear Coryston's very servants--his man and wife--were evicted from their +cottage for political reasons." + +"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion. + +Atherstone stared. + +"My dear!--" + +"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks. + +"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It +doesn't do to have such stories going round--on our side. I wonder why +Coryston chose them." + +"I should think--because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The +slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek +as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to +listen. + +"I think I hear the motor." + +"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation +was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters. + +Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess +was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair. + +"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing. +"Let's see--four dinners, three balls, two operas,--a week-end at Windsor, +two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do +you expect but a rag!" + +"Don't say you don't like it!" + +"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm +insulted, and when they do--" + +"You're bored?" + +"It's you finished the sentence!--not I! And I've scarcely seen father this +week except at breakfast. _That's_ bored me horribly." + +"What have you _really_ been doing?" + +"Inquisitor!--I have been amusing myself." + +"With Arthur Coryston?" + +Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her +companion. + +"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?" + +"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?" + +"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so +demean himself." + +"But she must find out some day." + +"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out +a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large +eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You +see--Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me--she has insulted father." + +"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled. + +"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him. +She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton +nearly had hysterics." + +The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly +smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes. + +"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen +quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks +society is too tolerant--of people like father and me." + +"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly. + +"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight--so +far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little +harder--that's all." + +"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, +"after that list of parties!" + +"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful +one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father +goes out of office I shall be nobody. _She_ will be always at the top +of the tree." + +"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or +not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?" + +"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip--but the +facts--by heart! I am drowned--smothered in them. At present Arthur is the +darling--the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"--Miss Glenwilliam +threw up her hands. + +"You think she will change her mind again?" + +The girl took up a stalk of grass and nibbled it in laughing meditation. + +"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong. + +"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly--"think +about whether you care for each other!" + +"What a _bourgeois_ point of view! Well, honestly--I don't know. +Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We +have only known each other a few months. If he were _very_ rich--By +the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?" + +Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught +her ear. + +"Here they are--he and Lord Coryston." + +Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, +long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale +masses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a +charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she +held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him--a gay, significant +look. + +Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her +companion. + +"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his +hands on his sides. + +As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with +their bulging pockets, the grasshopper slimness of his legs and arms, the +peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them +displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him +with a smile. + +"Mayn't I?" + +He looked down on her, frowning. + +"Why should women set up a new want--a new slavery--that costs money?" + +The color flew to her cheeks. + +"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own sex." + +"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have +consciences. And--especially--_Liberal_ women," he added, slowly, as +his eyes traveled over her dress. + +"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind +of women?" she asked him, quietly. + +"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people +in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing--and it is +the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands." + +Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly: + +"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!" + +The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's +person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with +wrath. + +Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a +look of radiant good humor. + +"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags--you might leave me the +talking. Has he told you what's happened?" + +The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an +indicating thumb in his brother's direction. + +The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue. + +"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he +said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up." + +"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his +seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And +what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our +dear mother has been doing?" + +"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily. + +"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such +lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the +plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy. + +Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He +approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary +courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston +was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a +constituency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a +comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to +let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there--Atherstone perfectly +understood--simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his +own _beaux yeux_ or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile +ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated. + +Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to +greet Atherstone--whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as +a pestilent agitator--with the indifferent good breeding that all young +Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the +view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was +increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, +moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his +hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; +and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat. + +"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the +view from the wood-path before tea?" + +Marion assented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little +field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill. + +"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the +departing figures. + +The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored. + +"I haven't the slightest idea." + +"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing +his knees, and bubbling with amusement. "My unfortunate mother will have to +make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!" + +"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked +Atherstone, after a moment. + +"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall +my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy +the Bible comes in--for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't +know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone. + +A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face. + +"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to +return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It +hasn't quite come to that!" + +"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a +slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall +come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile +camps--fighting it out--blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, +and"--he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's--"so +do you, too--at bottom." + +The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you +mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough +for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of +things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?" + +Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner. + +"Yes, I'm after a lot of game--in the Liberal preserves just as much as the +Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked +the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist +chapel. Half the village Baptist--lots of land handy--she won't let 'em +have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her +resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on +Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, +and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2--My +mother's been letting Page--her agent--evict a jolly decent fellow called +Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the +villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course--but that's the +truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days--no good. Now +I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, +for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent +for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3--There's +a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given +'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been +just gorging chickens this last year--nasty beasts! That don't matter much, +however. No. 4--Ah-ha!"--he rubbed his hands--"I'm on the track of that old +hypocrite, Burton of Martover--" + +"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, +indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!" + +"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation--"not a bit of it. Talking +Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then +doing a thing--Look here! He turned that man and his wife--Potifer's his +name--who are now looking after me--out of their cottage and their bit of +land--why, do you think?--because _the man voted for Arthur_! Why +shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted +for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'--so did his wife. +Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Nobody wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang +him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!" + +And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face +aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady +Coryston's disinherited son--socialist and revolutionist--as a kind of +watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's +very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the +neighborhood had anticipated. The man was too queer--too flighty. + +"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord +Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood--the Hoddon Grey +estate, for instance--" + +Coryston threw up his hands. + +"The Newburys--my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'--aren't +they?--'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches--and schools--and +villages! All the little boys patterns--and all the little girls saints. +Everybody singing in choirs--and belonging to confraternities--and carrying +banners. 'By the pricking of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that +a mere fraction divides me from the criminal class. And I tell you, +I've heard a story about that estate"--the odd figure paused beside the +tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis--"that's worse than any +other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his +wife!" + +He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his +glittering eyes. + +Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The +neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the +pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious +convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot championship on both +sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in +their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular +was thought to have behaved with harshness. + +Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a +white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most +hideous of all tyrants!" + +Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but +she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as +angry as Coryston. + +Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, +abruptly: + +"My mother likes that fellow--Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I +hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't--before Marcia knows +this story!" + +Marion looked a little embarrassed, and certainly disapproving. + +"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire +him enormously." + +"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"--he +put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and +troubled countenance--"don't you agree with me?" + +"I don't know whether I do or not--I don't know enough about it." + +"You mustn't," he said, eagerly--"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, +after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss +Atherstone, down in those villages?" + +Marion blushed furiously, then laughed. + +"I can't imagine why." + +"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity--generally. It's a beastly mess. But the +things you do--are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, +anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms +and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?" + +Marion smiled and thanked him. + +Coryston rose. + +"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But--I +should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you. +I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do +you see any objection?" + +He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer +simplicity. She smiled back. + +"Not the least. Come when you like." + +He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to +her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling. + +Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, +relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth +or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had +seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish +notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been. + + * * * * * + +Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss +Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the +shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the +curiosity she felt. + +That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was +clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave. +Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited +upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of +the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she +were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, +when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up +suddenly. + +"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I _can_!" + +"Can what?" + +"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in +hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?--and he's +a very nice boy--and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!" + +She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity. + +"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man +I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but +me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why +should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course +he touches me--Arthur Coryston--and some day I shall want a home--and +children--like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't +strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and +the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me +enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I +think of going from my father to that man--from my father's ideas to +Arthur's ideas--it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled +a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I +couldn't make up my mind yet--for a long, long time." + +"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently. + +"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but +rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, nobody can know but me, what a +man my father is!" + +And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of +her eyes melting to a passionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the +rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, +in the political sense, it overshadowed England. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +Lady Coryston's quarters at Coryston Place were not quite so devoid of all +the lighter touches as her London sitting-room. The view from the windows, +of the formal garden outside, with its rows of white statues, leading to +a winding lake, and parklike slopes beyond it, was certainly cheerful. +Coryston particularly disliked it, and had many ribald things to say about +the statues, which in his mad undergraduate days he had more than once +adorned with caps of liberty, pipes, mustaches, and similar impertinences. +But most people were attracted by the hard brightness of the outlook; and +of light and sunshine--on sunny days--there was, at any rate, no lack. +Marcia had recently chosen a new chintz for the chairs and sofas, and one +small group of photographs, on a table beside the fireplace, were allowed +to remind the spectator that the owner of the room had once been a young +mother, with a maternal pride in a bunch of fine children. Here were +Coryston, aged nine, on pony-back, pompously showing off; James, dreamily +affable, already a personage at seven; Arthur, fondling a cricket-bat, with +a stiff mouth, hastily closed--by order--on its natural grin; and Marcia, +frowning and pouting, in fancy dress as "The Strawberry Girl," just +emerging, it seemed, from one battle-royal with her nurse, and about to +plunge into another. + +Lady Coryston had just entered the room. She was alone, and she carried a +pile of letters, which she put down on the central writing-table. Then she +went to one of the windows, which on this May day was open, and stood, +looking out, one long mittened hand resting vaguely on the table that held +the photographs. A commanding figure! She was in black, carrying her only +ornament, an embossed silver girdle and chatelaine, the gift of her husband +in their first year of marriage. As she paused, motionless, in the clear +sunshine, her great height and her great thinness and flatness brought +out with emphasis the masculine carriage of the shoulders and the strong +markings of the face. In this moment of solitude, however, the mistress of +Coryston Place and of the great domain on which she looked, allowed herself +an expression which was scarcely that of an autocrat--at any rate of an +autocrat at ease. + +She was thinking of Coryston; and Coryston was giving her a good deal +to think about. Of course she had expected annoyance; but scarcely such +annoyance as Coryston, it seemed, was now bent on causing her. At bottom, +she had always reckoned on her position as mother and woman. Coryston might +threaten, but that he should actually carry out such iniquities as he was +now engaged on, had been--she owned it--beyond her calculations. + +For she had come down to find the whole neighborhood in a ferment, and many +pleasant illusions, in the shelter of which she had walked for years, both +before and since her husband's death, questioned, at least, and cracking, +if not shattered. That the Corystons were model landlords, that they +enjoyed a feudal popularity among their tenants and laborers, was for Lady +Coryston one of the axioms on which life was based. She despised people who +starved their estates, let their repairs go, and squeezed the last farthing +out of their tenants. Nor had she any sympathy with people who owned +insanitary cottages. It had been her fond belief that she at least +possessed none. And now here was Coryston, her eldest son, camped in the +very midst of her property, not as her friend and support, but as her enemy +and critic; poking his nose into every corner of the estates, taken in +by every ridiculous complaint, preaching Socialism at full blast to the +laborers, and Land Acts to the farmers, stirring up the Nonconformists +to such antics as the Baptists had lately been playing on Sundays at her +gates; discovering bad cottages, where none were known to exist; and, in +general, holding up his mother to blame and criticism, which, as Lady +Coryston most truly, sincerely, indignantly felt, was wholly undeserved. + +This then was the "game" that Coryston had warned her of. He was actually +playing it; though she had never believed for one moment that he would ever +do so. How was she to meet it? With firmness, no doubt, and dignity. As to +the firmness she had no fears; it was the dignity she was anxious about. + +Lady Coryston was a woman of conscience; although no doubt she had long ago +harnessed her will to her conscience, which revolved--sometimes heavily--in +the rear. Still there the conscience was, and periodically she had to take +account of it. Periodically, it made her uncomfortable on the subject of +her eldest son. Periodically, it forced her to ask herself--as in this +reverie by the window--"How is it that, bit by bit, and year by year, +he and I have drifted to this pass? Who began it? Is it in any sense my +fault?" + +How was it, in the first place, that neither she nor his father had ever +had any real influence over this incorrigible spirit; that even in Corry's +childish days, when his parents had him at their mercy, they might punish, +and thwart, and distress him, but could never really conquer him? Lady +Coryston could recall struggles with her son, whether at home or at school, +which turned her sick to think of. + +Corry--for instance--at his preparatory school, taking a loathing to his +head master, demanding to be withdrawn, and stubbornly refusing to say why; +the master's authority upheld by Corry's parents; vindictive punishment; +followed by sudden illness on the boy's part in the midst of the commotion, +and his return home, white-faced, silent, indomitable. It made her shiver +to remember how he had refused to be nursed by her or by any one but the +old housekeeper at Coryston; how for weeks he had scarcely spoken to his +father or mother. Then had come the lad's justification--a hideous cruelty +charge against the head master; and on a quasi-apology from his father, +Corry had consented to forgive his parents. + +And again--at Cambridge--another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, +taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to +him, unjustly--furious attacks on the college authorities--rioting in +college--ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She +and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen +to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother +could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival +at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from _you_!" She could +still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings +abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years. + +Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating +also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter +vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston +after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were +Corry's arms open to her, and his--almost timid--kiss on her cheek. The +thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had +been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the +kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance +of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were +halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was +suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. +It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry! + +As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. +James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's +death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she +had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less +a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed +quietly expressed--he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and +phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form +of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his +boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a +denunciation of her love of power--unjustified, unwarranted power--as the +cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so +many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused +to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge +enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you +don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life +and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a +lonely and unhappy woman." + +Well, well, she had borne with him--she had not broken with him, after +all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of +giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition +to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to +extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all +her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, +the country's interests. And of course she had been right--she had been +abundantly right. + +Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston +domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to +the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had +been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later +years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination +to win and conquer. Not for herself!--so at least her thoughts, judged in +her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, +but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, +from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper +class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as +she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body +by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down. + +_Glenwilliam_!--in that name all her hatreds were summed up. + +For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to +lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"--a man who had suffered +cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing +class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken +in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging +vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and +her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and +sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress +of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, +married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small +competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political +position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while +England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had +built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled +him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties. + +"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was +accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him--_dear_!" + +And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost +farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, +to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; +persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation--these were +Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to +bay--must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country. + +"Did I choose my post in life for myself?--its duties, its +responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the +line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no +more right to run away than the men--vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to +see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry +rich?--and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what +he says he hates--land and money--to use for what _I_ hate--and what +his father hated? Just because he is my son--my flesh and blood? He would +scorn the plea himself--he has scorned it all his life. Then let him +respect his mother--when she does the same." + +But meanwhile the "game," as Coryston was playing it?--what was to be done +as to this episode and that? + +She sat down to her writing-table, still busily thinking, and reminding +herself that her agent Mr. Page was to come and see her at twelve. She had +hoped to get some counsel and help out of Arthur, now that the House was up +for a fortnight. But Arthur had really been very inconsiderate and tiresome +so far. He had arrived so late for dinner on the Saturday that there had +been no time for talk, especially as there was a large party in the house. +On Sunday he had taken a motor, and had been away all day, paying--he +said--some constituency visits. And now this morning with the earliest +train he was off to London, though there was really no occasion for him +whatever to go up there. He seemed rather unlike himself. His mother +wondered if he was ill. And she fell into some indignant reflections on the +stuffy atmosphere and bad lighting of the House of Commons. But ever since +he knew that he was to have the estates his manner seemed to have changed; +not certainly in the direction of triumph or satisfaction. On the contrary, +he had once or twice said irritably to his mother that the will was +ridiculous and ought not to stand. She had been obliged to make it clear to +him that the matter was _not_ to be discussed. + +Suddenly, as she sat there, distress seized her at the bare thought of any +shadow between herself and Arthur--Arthur, her darling, who was upholding +his father's principles and hers in Parliament with so much zeal and good +feeling; who had never all his life--till these latter weeks--given her so +much as a cross word. Yet now that she could no longer chase the thought +quite away, she admitted, more and more frankly, that she was anxious. Was +he in any money difficulties? She must get James to find out. In love? She +smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, +who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the +handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high +time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which +means--marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it. + + * * * * * + +Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived +among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend +a week-end at Hoddon Grey. Lady Coryston rather wearily reflected that she +must no doubt accept. That young man was clearly in pursuit of Marcia. What +Marcia's own views were, her mother had not yet discovered. She seemed +sometimes glad to see him; sometimes entirely indifferent; and Lady +Coryston thought she had observed that her daughter's vacillations tried +Edward Newbury's pride sorely, at times. But it would end in a match--it +was pretty certain to end in a match. Marcia was only testing her power +over a strong-willed man, who would capture her in the end. That being so, +Lady Coryston acknowledged that the necessary tiresome preliminaries must +be gone through. + +She hastily scrawled a note of acceptance, without any of the fond +imaginings that would have accompanied the act in the ordinary mother. Like +all imperious women she disliked staying in other people's houses, where +she could not arrange her hours. And she had a particularly resentful +memory of a visit which she had paid with her husband to Lord and Lady +William Newbury when they were renting a house in Surrey, before they had +inherited Hoddon Grey, and while Marcia was still in the schoolroom. Never +in her life had she been so ordered about. The strict rules of the house +had seemed to her intolerable. She was a martinet herself, and inclined to +pay all due attention to the observances of religion; but they must be her +own observances, or at least approved by her. To be expected to follow +other people's observances set her aflame. To make such a fuss, also, about +your religion seemed to her indecorous and absurd. She remembered with a +satisfaction which was half ashamed, that she--who was always down at +home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to +church--had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the +Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when +they met at luncheon. + +Well, now the thing had to be done again--for the settling of Marcia. +Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her +mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be +more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting +it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more +important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, +only the fringe of her thoughts. + +However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when +the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page. + +Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she +had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice +than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially +had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he +had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston +estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest +subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded +an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She +greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the +letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party +headquarters. + +The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, +inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the +confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, +and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard +to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a +widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia. + +It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much +disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was +disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure +her--make light of the situation. + +He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter +he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before +entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged +at once into the subject. + +"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" + +"You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it +before--you and I together." + +He shook his head. + +"Ah, but--you see what makes the difference!" + +"That Coryston is my son?--and has always been regarded as my heir? +Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his +proceedings will soon disgust people--will soon recoil on himself!" + +Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek +and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, +hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, +she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this +extremity? + +He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which +had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He +was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up +in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the +estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his +mother's cottages. + +Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. +Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!" + +Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner +insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate +suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; +but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high +level of improvements, at the same time. + +"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that +must be done. I have given orders." + +"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather +grimly. + +The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still +determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel. + +"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have +no intention whatever of extending his influence." + +Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half +an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But +he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston. + +"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he +said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a +distance. Purely political!" + +"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, +firmly. + +The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the +increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead +to peaceable living. But he merely remarked: + +"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last +Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the +village." + +Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair. + +"He defended himself?" + +"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you +himself this afternoon about the affair." + +"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page +perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her. + +"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually +setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a +perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole +neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in +this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a +child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more +members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of +this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, +Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these +proceedings!" + +Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in +so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy-- +Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she +preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the +situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and +adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston +was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the +raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the +district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which +Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston +laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to +the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no +consolation to a proud spirit. + +"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and +at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I +have been accustomed to trust you." + +The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an +inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for +the future. + +A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the +remark: + +"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at +Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be +in the chair." + +He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely +watched its effect. + +Lady Coryston paled. + +"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall +speak," she said, with vivacity. + +Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in +the speaker's look. + +"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted +with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy +interrogation, looking for his hat. + +Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark. + +"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she +said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is." + +"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope +when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him +to give up some of these extravagances." + +"I have no power with him," she said, sharply. + +"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his +departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he +admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him +a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They +seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old +game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, +give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when +caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he +charged them with--Lady Coryston especially. + +And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could +he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a +secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Saturday, as he +was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little +property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in +the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the +wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston +and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times +seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the +frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well +known to the neighborhood. + +By George!--if that _did_ mean anything! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from +a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road +running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. +Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of +blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the +twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear +and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying +under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and +everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more. + +Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some +reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for +lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike +most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no +question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong +mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her +of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing. +There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he +came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when +the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; +when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared +than loved him. + +Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet +always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back +at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a +mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped +by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican +tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first +and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, +and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had +grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been +accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch +as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a +rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward +himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned +habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world +have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican +laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a +joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the +most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and +impervious to any sort of Modernism. + +At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his +poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the +most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular +man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though +perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were +jealously hidden from the multitude, who welcomed him as a good-looking +fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, +and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He +was a good shot, a passionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious +note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him--in +general--the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent +to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the +time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth +dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone +were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities +which were only just emerging. + +Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of +his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked +herself, with that instinct for self-analysis bred in the woman of to-day +by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads--"Why is it he likes +me?"--the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself--"No doubt just +because I am so shapeless and so formless--because I don't know myself what +I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me--he'll save my soul. +Shall he?" + +A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control +a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there. + +"Coryston!" she cried. + +Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought +she caught some words from a Shelley chorus which she knew, because he had +made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself +down beside her. + +"Well?" + +Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at +Knatchett--once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his +bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon +him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only +succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen +part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but +the bull barely shook himself. There he stood--good-humored, and pawing. + +To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other +hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile. + +"Corry!--I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this +afternoon?" + +"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to +announce me." + +"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been +doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any +good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say +a word to mamma about--about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were +at the Atherstones on Saturday!" + +The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong +beauty. She went on, appealingly: + +"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued--and argued with +him--but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything--Parliament, mamma, the +estates, anything--in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing +with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in _terror_ about +mamma!" + +Corry whistled. + +"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over +ears. No use your trying to pull him back!" + +"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, passionately; "what's left of her, after +you've done!" + +Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister. +Then he slowly got up from the grass and took a seat beside her. + +"Look here, Marcia, do you think--do you honestly think--that I'm the +aggressor in this family row?" + +"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think!" + +Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!--" she went +on, in a muffled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly! +Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks +ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with +him--you _must_! Persuade him to give her up!" + +She laid her hand on his arm imploringly. + +Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little. + +"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back +Arthur up through thick and thin!" + +"_Corry_!--how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her--how can +he live in that set--the son-in-law of _that man_! He'll have to give +up his seat--nobody here would ever vote for him again. His friends would +cut him--" + +"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, +impatiently. + +But Marcia wailed on: + +"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories--like you--" + +"Not a principle to his back!--I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I +tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into +it!--if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury +she's been living in. I believe--if you ask me--that she'd accept Arthur +for his money--but that she doesn't care one brass farthing about him. Why +should she?" + +"Corry!" + +"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one--and she's not been accustomed to +living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"--he got +up from the seat--"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want +me to do? I repeat--I'm coming to see mother this afternoon." + +"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little +worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows +anything. Promise!" + +"Very well. For the present--I'm mum." + +"And talk to him!--tell him it'll ruin him!" + +"I don't mind--from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her +with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud +overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look. + +"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly. + +"What?" The tone showed her startled. + +"Let _me_ come and talk to _you_ about that man whom all the +world says you're going to marry!" + +She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his +voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly: + +"What do you mean, Corry!" + +"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, passionately. "At +least let me talk to you." + +She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full +of energy and will as his own. + +"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it." + +"Not as I should tell it!" + +A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great +effort to master her excitement. + +"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask _him_ for +his version, too." + +Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed. + +"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing +man: "Ah, I see!--here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to +mother--and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with +you--my small sister!--when we next meet." + +He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there +dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered--as of a grave +yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon +invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia +was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury. + + * * * * * + +As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury +quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the +grass beside her. + +"What a heavenly spot!--and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find +you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch." + +Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the +spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, +dappling his bronzed face. + +Marcia flushed a little--an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat +and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, +she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the +keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied +it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible. +Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the +last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the +decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it +should be a word of denial. Better--better infinitely--these doubts and +checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her. + +This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And +it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she +anticipated him. + +"I want to talk to you about Corry--my brother!" she said, bending toward +him. + +[Illustration: THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL] + +There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She +evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out +his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the +child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with +his bright conscious eyes. + +"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding. + +"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a +puckered brow. + +"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William +yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't +want to read it--" + +"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling. + +"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I +wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place +against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps +that if you and I--" + +"Took counsel! Excellent!" + +"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it." + +"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your +mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?" + +"No, but--he means to," said the girl, hesitating. + +"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his +version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It +is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we +do--that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own." + +He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way +from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling +that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on +the grass at her feet. _This_ was the man of whom she had said to +Waggin--"he seems the softest, kindest!--and underneath--_iron_!" +A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble +sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the +thrill of an answering humility. + +"It is difficult for me--perhaps impossible--to tell you all the story," +he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly--in its broad +outlines." + +"I have heard some of it." + +"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order--so far as I can. It concerns a +man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded--my father and mother--myself--as +one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting +with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years +ago we made this man--John Betts--the head of it. He has been my father's +right hand--and he has done splendidly--made the farm, indeed, and himself, +famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a +moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We +looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough +of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. +He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And +especially"--here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with +a gentle seriousness--"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people +here live straight--like Christians--not like animals. My mother has very +strict rules--she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their +character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so--it's merciful. The villages +were in a terrible state when we came--as to morals. I can't of course +explain to you--but our priest appealed to us--we had to make changes--and +my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity--" + +He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of +some quick emotion invaded it. + +"You know we are unpopular!" + +"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else +in her. + +"Especially"--there was a touch of scorn in the full voice--"owing to +the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator--that man +Atherstone--who lives in that cottage on the hill--your mother knows all +about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to +live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican--we are church people and +Tories. He thinks that every man--or woman--is a law unto themselves. We +think--but you know what we think!" + +He smiled at her. + +"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of +influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away +much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to +my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had +found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, +had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and +forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a +frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could +for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by +bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go +through it all--the true story came out." + +He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently +considering with himself what he could tell, and how far. + +"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was +divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his +employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and +after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with +her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw +herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married +her. Well now, what were we to do?" + +"They _are_ married?" said Marcia. + +"Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!" + +The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note. + +Marcia looked up. + +"Because--you think--divorce is wrong?" + +"Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'" + +"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?" + +The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain +she was idly making. + +"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. +But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, +when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an +absolutely closed one!" + +Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to +the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty +of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered. + +"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?" + +"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude +of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a +little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'" + +The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, +not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not +religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man +beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he +should have singled her out--to love her. + +But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil. + +She looked up eagerly. + +"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and +somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care +for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!" + +"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength." + +Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That +old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a +great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its +most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in +herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my +adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his +slave--I will not!" + +At last she said: + +"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?" + +He sighed. + +"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. +Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we +should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would +have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have +seen her from time to time--" + +"They refused?" + +"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, +he said, married legally and honestly--and that was an end of it. As to +Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. +He defied my father to dismiss him. My father--on his principles--had no +choice but to do so. So then--your brother came on the scene!" + +"Of course--he was furious?" + +"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles +may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country." + +A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia +kindled for her brother. + +"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us--as you wish--England +wouldn't be free!" + +"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with +him. But why attack us personally--call us names--because of what we +believe?" + +He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted. + +"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad--quite mad." + +And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand. + +"Don't blame us!" + +He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it. + +"Don't let him set you against us!" + +She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him +from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she +sprang to her feet. + +"Mother will be waiting lunch for us." + +They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's +whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; +insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by +a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had +never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. +The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of +the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and +there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, +invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. +Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. +Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was +enchantment. + +Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir +Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of +both families. + +"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a +cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid +will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened. + +"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?" + +Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked. + +"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade +Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals." + +Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in +spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London +successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, +in this strong man, were warmth and shelter. + + * * * * * + +Luncheon passed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she +perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their +destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady +Coryston, "So we expect you--next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on +the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the +young man's mind. Well!--the sooner, the better. + +Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home +through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she +gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the +house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet +Sir Wilfrid Bury. + +Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual--bedraggled +with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned +with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had +been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of +the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and +had been formally granted it. + +He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any +one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two +occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation +in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston +departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat +motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded +slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by +the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one +who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her +aspect. + +Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, +looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a +fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing. +The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by glass +weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the +happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls +of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of +early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from +the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale +brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old +engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally +a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in +blossom just outside. + +Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on +the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets. + +"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and +smiled absently. + +"Not bad?" + +Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence: + +"Don't you go into politics, Lester!" + +"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good +deal." + +"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth. +"Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do +certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it? +I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?" + +"Haven't made up my mind." + +"I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with +women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics." + +"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously. + +Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke +out: + +"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open +mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up. +"And politics kills all that kind of thing." + +"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester. + +"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside +him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry +and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the +women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if +the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?" + +Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but +he said nothing. + +Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back. + +"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great +scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this +poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let +them live their own lives they'd adore her." + +"The trade-unions are just the same." + +"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from +Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!" + +"Coryston!" + +"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door. + +"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?" + +"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut +the door. + + * * * * * + +Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he +presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and +stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the +fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the +horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the +woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English +perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings +in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted +before Blenheim was fought. + +Suddenly across the farther end of the garden passed a girlish figure in +white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that +generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, +friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his manuscripts. + +"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs +and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like +them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and +then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience pricks her for +people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would +be angry if I were to tell her so!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and +lustiest. + +Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. +The long low line of the house rose behind them--an attractive house and +an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a +high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high +gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private +chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not +display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and +old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people +who were walking up and down the front lawn together. + +Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His +pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; +he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair--he was walking +bareheaded--was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, +was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement--a +stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord +William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the +stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife +beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like +woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and +wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave +that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at +first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most +submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life +have been either possible or happy in her husband's company. + +They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their +week-end guests--Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring +cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, +however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that +she held the field. + +"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying +in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward +has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe +you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother." + +"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's +party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I +remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical." + +"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with +all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is +perfectly ridiculous." + +"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said +Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that +Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for +a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded +something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said--quite +indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can _act_.' It +was curious--and rather disquieting--to see so much decision-- +self-assertion--in so young a woman." + +"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently +confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles--a fine +character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily +guided by one she loves." + +"I hope so, for Edward's sake--for he is very much in love. I trust he is +not letting inclination run away with him. So much--to all of us--depends +on his marriage!" + +Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his +eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some +three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been +associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been +the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, +a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of +a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of +Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with +beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey +had sheltered large gatherings--gatherings of the high Puseyite party in +the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in +the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile--orator and ascetic--might +have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were +strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made +fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme +old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's +blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement. + +Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord +William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the +dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the +pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of +Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his +forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled--the endless, +unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against +the unbeliever. + +... His wife broke in upon his reverie. + +"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?" + +Lord William started. + +"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his +shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever." + +"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly. + +"A line--in the third person." + +"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise--" + +"So she is--most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every +right to complain of her." + +"You think she has done wrong?" + +"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things--whatever her son may +be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of +such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds +of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to +claim--something altogether monstrous and unnatural!" + +Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. +His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel +or agnostic son?" + +Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully +extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?" + +"Not at all! That was God's will--the cross she had to bear. She interferes +with the course of Providence--presumptuously interferes with it--doing +evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade +men by gentleness--not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is +usurping what does not--what never can--belong to her." + +The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for +male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady +William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady +Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions +were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her +husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce +their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous +those opinions may be. + +"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord +William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for +politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the +wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I +received last week?" + +"Do you think he will do what he threatens?" + +"What--get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them +somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our +consciences." + +Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought +of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. +Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation. + +His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into +the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; +gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. +She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at +everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and +plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's +widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of +lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the +house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a +sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the +end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and +fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud +chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and +the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink +and tied with knots of pink ribbon. + +Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. +She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own +money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she +had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the +dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of +azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. +Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there +for the girl Edward loved--who was probably to be his wife. A great +tenderness filled her heart. + +When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, +and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors +open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful +still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with +Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she +prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his +father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... + + * * * * * + +An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive +with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was +strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, +the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the +deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among +the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. + +In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two +young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. + +Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him +with a sigh of satisfaction. + +"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!" + +"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after +them." + +"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his +handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?" + +"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his--a 'fidus Achates'--who +lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather +melancholy tone. + +"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"--Sir +Louis Ford lowered his voice--"I gathered the amazing fact that +Coryston--_Coryston_!--is going to take the chair at a meeting where +Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month." + +Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately +form of Coryston's mother in the distance. + +"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly. + +A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, +and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been +invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find +out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese. + +"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a _woman's_ foes were to be +those of her own household!" + +The Chaplain frowned. + +"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. +"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was +perfectly outrageous." + +"What about?" asked Sir Louis. + +"A divorce case--a very painful one--on which we have found it necessary to +take a strong line." + +The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and +spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled. + +"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?" + +"What indeed?--except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can." + +"Who are the parties?" + +The Chaplain told the story. + +"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the +Dean. + +"Not that I know of." + +The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind +his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened +the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny +fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the +human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to +them--shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious +of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as +though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, +Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the +far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things +threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled +both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain +helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than +herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, +like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it. + +Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers +there was that in them under which her own wavered. + +"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the +way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into +a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of +wild hyacinths to a hilltop. + +A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them +closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and +quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air +was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them +only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival. + +Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. +She heard her name breathed. + +"Marcia!" + +She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring +tenderness, his lips gravely smiling. + +"Yes!" + +She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms +round her, whispering: + +"Marcia! will you come to me--will you be my wife?" + +She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not +so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?--the supreme of +life? + +They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her +within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. +He placed her on it, and himself beside her. + +"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" +he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy--shall I make +you happy?" + +"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in +her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you +angry with me." + +"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, +Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other--to live +as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?" + +She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read +it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of +painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite +give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried +out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She +threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling +silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm +about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, +loving and beloved. + +"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she +disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to +her hair, to smooth it back into something like order. + +"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet. + +She looked at him a little wistfully. + +"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too +much. And I shall always--want to be myself." + +"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!" +The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he +added, with a sudden flush: + +"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all +hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and +mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are." + +He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding. + +"You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; +and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears. + +"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me." + +"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded. + +"Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try +me." + +He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved +through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, +the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace +flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never +come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste +them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such +crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling. + +They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them +into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which +there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and +there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously +forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a +sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia +stopped to look. + +"What a charming place! Who lives there?" + +Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment. + +"That is the model farm." + +"Mr. Betts's farm?" + +"Yes. Can you manage that stile?" + +Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with +the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and +talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to +Lord William. + +"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of +perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me--about that story. I +don't think I can prevent him." + +"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears." + +He spoke gravely. + +"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I--I think perhaps I had better +have it out with him--myself. I remember all you said to me!" + +"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without +a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject +immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden. + +Lady William first perceived them--perceived, too, that they were hand in +hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and +rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband. + +The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their +cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered +himself of the frivolous remark--in answer to some plea of the Dean's on +behalf of further powers for the female sex: + +"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be +necessary to draw the line!"--when they too caught sight of the advancing +figures. + +The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over +his round cheeks and button mouth. + +"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath. + +"Eh!--what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly +put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?" + +Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting +with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a +happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not +without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain +moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and +blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken +composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and +given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to +Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion +would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already +thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before +dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential +information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible +date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice +and straightforward--just indeed what she had expected. But there would +be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; +whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught. + +"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of +this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night." + +She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, +and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker. + +"You think so, father?" + +"Certainly, my dear son, certainly." + +Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but +perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this +time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and +a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room. + +The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, +looked at her keenly from time to time. + +"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she +fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?" + +Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the +betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William +had disappeared. + +Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and +deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!--is it +really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?" + +Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly. + +"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury. + +"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up +the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening +prayer after dinner." + +His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and +took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her +through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel. + +"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston +as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained +amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But +unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest +in the religious customs of his neighbors. + +"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady +Coryston followed, willy-nilly. + +Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the +chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," +shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a +sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly +forsaken--altogether remote from him. + +But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great +crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May +evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of +her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many +servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord +William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel +seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; +and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the +house to which it was attached. + +"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it +mean for _me_? Can I play my part in it?" + +What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed +to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing +ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a +time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague +fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind! + +And now it returned upon her intensified--that cold, indefinite fear, +creeping through love and joy. + +She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that +she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar--absorbed. + +And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General +Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, +the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a +natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of +Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston." + +An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into +a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her +cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these +kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I +ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been +asked!" + +When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her +appealingly. + +"Darling!--you didn't mind?" + +She quickly withdrew her hand from his. + +"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress." + +And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the +unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight +of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the +roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and +unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter +to her maid about everything and nothing--laughing at any trifle, and yet +feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale +pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last +string tied that she had never looked better. + +"But won't you put on these roses, miss?" + +She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered. + +Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her +reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much +stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her +resources against some hostile force--to be saying to herself: + +"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!" + + * * * * * + +Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all +the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the +sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was +resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put +on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on +great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks +that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away +the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by +Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room +shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler +had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a +bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had +gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel +and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and +gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics +with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, +so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any +rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, +which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult. + +After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, +deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her. + +"Well, how are you feeling?" + +"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes +aflame. + +"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law +for taking her from you?" + +"Who--Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking +of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel +still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot +within twenty-four hours!" + +"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about +Marcia!" + +Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him. + +"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about." + +"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you +really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?" + +"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her +properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"--she dropped +her voice--"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, +the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as +you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on +earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?" + +"Tyranny! _You_ call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced. + +"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? +One's soul is not one's own." + +Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to +drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never +tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have +spent the morning in remonstrating with her--to no purpose whatever--on the +manner in which she was treating her eldest son. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +While these events were happening at Hoddon Grey, Reginald Lester was +passing a solitary Sunday at Coryston, until the afternoon, at least, when +visitors appeared. To be left to himself, the solitary inhabitant, save for +the servants, of the great classical pile; to be able to wander about it as +he liked, free to speculate on its pictures and engravings; to rummage the +immense collection of china in the basement rooms which no one but himself +ever looked at; to examine some new corner of the muniment-room, and +to ponder the strange and gruesome collection of death-masks, made by +Coryston's grandfather, and now ranged in one of the annexes of the +library--gave him endless entertainment. He was a born student, in whom the +antiquarian instincts would perhaps ultimately overpower the poetic and +literary tastes which were now so strong in him; and on Sunday, when he put +aside his catalogue, the miscellaneous possessions of an historic house +represented for him a happy hunting-ground through which he was never tired +of raiding. + +But on Sunday, also, he generally gave some time to writing the journal of +the preceding week. He had begun it in the hopes of attaining thereby a +more flexible and literary style than the methods of his daily research +allowed, and with various Stevensonian ambitions dinning in his head. Why +should he not make himself a _writer_, like other people? + +But the criticisms of books, the records of political or literary +conversation, with which the parchment-bound volume had been filled for +some time, had been gradually giving place to something quite different, +and it had become more necessary than ever that the book should be +carefully locked when done with, and put away in his most private drawer. +For instance: + +"What is happening, or what has probably already happened, yesterday or +to-day, at Hoddon Grey? It is very easy to guess. N. has been gaining +ground steadily ever since he has been able to see her away from the +distracting influences of London. What is impressive and unusual in his +character has room to show itself; and there are no rival forces. And +yet--I doubt very much whether it would answer his purpose that she should +see much of his home. She will never endure any home of her own run on the +same lines; for at bottom she is a pagan, with the splendid pagan virtues, +of honor, fairness, loyalty, pity, but incapable by temperament of those +particular emotions on which the life of Hoddon Grey is based. Humility, to +her, is a word and a quality for which she has no use; and I am sure that +she has never been sorry for her 'sins,' in the religious sense, though +often, it seems to me, her dear life just swings hour by hour between the +two poles of impulse and remorse. She passionately wants something and +must get it; and then she is consumed with fear lest in the getting it she +should have injured or trampled on some one else. + +"Of late she has come in here--to the library--much more frequently. I am +sure she feels that I care deeply what happens to her; and I sometimes am +presumptuous enough to think that she wishes me to understand and approve +her. + +"It has grown up inevitably--this affair; but N. little realizes how +dangerous his position is. Up to a certain point the ascetic element in him +and his philosophy will attract her--will draw the moth to the candle. All +strong-willed characters among women are attracted by the austere, the +ascetic powers in men. The history of all religious movements is there +to prove it. But there are tremendous currents in our modern life making +against such men as Newbury--their ideals and traditions. And to one or +other of those currents it always seems to me that she is committed. She +does not know it--does not dream, perhaps, whither she is being carried; +but all the same there are 'murmurs and scents' from 'the infinite sea' of +free knowledge and experiment which play upon her, and will never play upon +Newbury. + +"Coryston will make a great effort to upset the engagement--if it is an +engagement; that I can see. He thinks himself justified, on the ground that +she will be committing herself to an inhuman and antisocial view of life; +and he will work upon her through this painful Betts case. I wonder if +he will succeed. Is he really any more tolerant than his mother? And can +toleration in the active-spirited be ever anything more than approximate? +'When I speak of toleration I mean not tolerated Popery,' said Milton. Lady +Coryston can't tolerate her son, and Coryston can't tolerate Newbury. Yet +all three must somehow live together and make a world. Doesn't that +throw some light on the ideal function of women? Not voting--not direct +party-fighting--but the creation of a spiritual atmosphere in which the +nation may do its best, and may be insensibly urged to do its best, in +fresh, spontaneous ways, like a plant flowering in a happy climate--isn't +that what women might do for us?--instead of taking up with all the +old-fashioned, disappointing, political machinery, that men have found out? +Meanwhile Lady Coryston of course wants all the women of her sort to vote, +but doesn't see how it is to be done without letting in the women of all +and any sort--to vote against her. + +"I have about half done my cataloguing, and have been writing some letters +to Germany this morning with a view to settling on some university work +there for the winter. A big book on the rise and fall of Burgundy suggests +itself to me; and already I hug the thought of it. Lady Coryston has paid +me well for this job, and I shall be able to do what I like for a year, and +give mother and Janie some of the jam and frills of life. And who knows if +I sha'n't after all be able to make my living out of what I like best? If +I only could _write_! The world seems to be waiting for the historian +that can write. + +"But meanwhile I shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How +much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its +still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that +obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country +like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly +prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and +manufacturing world. There are buried seeds in it, often of rare and +splendid kinds, which any crisis brings to life--as in the Boer war; and +the mere cult of family and inheritance implies, after all, something +valuable in a world that has lately grown so poor in all cults. + +"Mother and daughter here show what is going on. Lady Coryston is just the +full-blown _tyrannus_. She has no doubt whatever about her right to +rule, and she rules for all she's worth. At the same time she knows that +Demos has the last word, and she spends her time in the old see-saw between +threats and cajolery. The old vicar here has told me astonishing tales of +her--how she turned her own sister out-of-doors and never spoke to her +afterward because she married a man who ratted to the Liberals, and the +wife went with him; how her own husband dreaded her if he ever happened to +differ from her politically, and a sort of armed neutrality between her and +Coryston was all that could be hoped for at the best of times. + +"The poor people here--or most of them--are used to her, and in a way +respect her. They take her as inevitable--like the rent or the east wind; +and when she sends them coal and blankets, and builds village halls for +them, they think they might be worse off. On the other hand, I don't see +that Coryston makes much way among them. They think his behavior to his +mother unseemly; and if they were he, they would use all his advantages +without winking. At the same time, there is a younger generation growing +up in the village and on the farms--not so much there, however!--which is +going to give Lady Coryston trouble. Coryston puzzles and excites them. But +they, too, often look askance; they wonder what he, personally, is going to +get out of his campaign. + +"And then--Marcia? For in this book, this locked book, may I not call her +by her name? Well, she is certainly no prophetess among these countryfolk. +She takes up no regular duties among the poor, as the women of her family +have probably always done. She is not at her ease with them; nor they with +her. When she tries to make friends with them she is like a ship teased +with veering winds, and glad to shrink back into harbor. And yet when +something does really touch her--when something makes her _feel_--that +curious indecision in her nature hardens into something irresistible. +There was a half-witted girl in the village, ill-treated and enslaved by a +miserly old aunt. Miss Coryston happened to hear of it from her maid, who +was a relation of the girl. She went and bearded the aunt, and took the +girl away bodily in her pony-cart. The scene in the cottage garden--Marcia +with her arm round the poor beaten and starved creature, very pale, but +keeping her head, and the old virago shrieking at her heels--must have been +worth seeing. And there is an old man--a decrepit old road-mender, whose +sight was injured in a shooting accident. She likes his racy talk, and she +never forgets his Christmas present or his birthday, and often drops in to +tea with him and his old wife. But that's because it amuses her. She goes +to see them for precisely the same reasons that she would pay a call in +Mayfair; and it's inspiriting to see how they guess, and how they like it. +You perceive that she is shrinking all the time from the assumptions on +which her mother's life is based, refusing to make them her own, and yet +she doesn't know what to put in their place. Does Coryston, either? + +"But the tragic figure--the tragic possibility--in all this family +_galčre_ at the present moment, of course, is Arthur. I know, because +of our old Cambridge friendship--quite against my will--a good deal about +the adventure into which he has somehow slipped; and one can only feel that +any day may bring the storm. His letter to me yesterday shows that he is +persecuting the lady with entreaties, that she is holding him off, and that +what Lady Coryston may do when she knows will greatly affect what the +young lady will do. I don't believe for one moment that she will marry +a penniless A. She has endless opportunities, and, I am told, many +proposals--" + +The journal at this point was abruptly closed and locked away. For the +writer of it, who was sitting at an open window of the library, became +aware of the entrance of a motor into the forecourt of the house. Arthur +Coryston was sitting in it. When he perceived Lester at the window he waved +to the librarian, and jumping from the car as it drew up at the front door, +he came across the court to a side door, which gave access to the library +staircase. + +As he entered the room Lester was disagreeably struck by his aspect. It was +that of a man who has slept ill and drunk unwisely. His dress was careless, +his eyes haggard, and all the weaknesses of the face seemed to have leaped +to view, amid the general relaxation of _tenue_ and dignity. He came +up to the chair at which Lester was writing, and flung himself frowning +into a chair beside it. + +"I hear mother and Marcia are away?" + +"They have gone to Hoddon Grey for the Sunday. Didn't you know?" + +"Oh yes, I knew. I suppose I knew. Mother wrote something," said the young +man, impatiently. "But I have had other things to think about." + +Lester glanced at him, but without speaking. Arthur rose from his seat, +thrust his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the polished floor of +the library. The florid, Georgian decoration of ceiling and walls, and the +busts of placid gentlemen with curling wigs which stood at intervals among +the glass cases, wore an air of trivial or fatuous repose beside the +hunted young fellow walking up and down. Lester resolutely forbore to +cross-examine him. But at last the walk came to an abrupt stop. + +"Here's the last straw, Lester! Have you heard what mother wants me to do? +There's to be a big Tory meeting here in a month--mother's arranged it +all--not a word to me with your leave, or by your leave!--and I'm to speak +at it and blackguard Glenwilliam! I have her letter this morning. I'm not +allowed a look in, I tell you! I'm not consulted in the least. I'll bet +mother's had the bills printed already!" + +"A reply, of course, to the Martover meeting?" + +"I dare say. D--n the Martover meeting! But what _taste_!--two +brothers slanging at each other--almost in the same parish. I declare women +have no taste!--not a ha'porth. But I won't do it--and mother, just for +once, will have to give in." + +He sat down again and took the cigarette which Lester handed him--no doubt +with soothing intentions. And indeed his state of excitement and agitation +appeared nothing less than pitiable to the friend who remembered the +self-complacent young orator, the budding legislator of early April. + +"You are afraid of being misunderstood?" + +"If I attack her father, as mother wishes me to attack him," said the young +man, with emphasis, looking up, "Enid Glenwilliam will never speak to me +again. She makes that quite plain." + +"She ought to be too clever!" said Lester, with vivacity. "Can't she +discriminate between the politician and the private friend?" + +Arthur shook his head. + +"Other people may. She doesn't. If I get up in public and call Glenwilliam +a thief and a robber--and what else can I call him, with mother +looking on?--there'll be an end of my chances for good and all. She's +_fanatical_ about her father! She's pulled me up once or twice already +about him. I tell you--it's rather fine, Lester!--upon my soul, it is!" + +And with a countenance suddenly softening and eyes shining, Arthur turned +his still boyish looks upon his friend. + +"I can quite believe it. They're a very interesting pair.... But--I confess +I'm thinking of Lady Coryston. What explanation can you possibly give? Are +you prepared to take her into your confidence?" + +"I don't know whether I'm prepared or not. Whatever happens I'm between the +devil and the deep sea. If I tell her, she'll break with me; and if I don't +tell her, it won't be long before she guesses for herself!" + +There was a pause, broken at last by Lester, whose blue eyes had shown him +meanwhile deep in reflection. He bent forward. + +"Look here, Arthur!--can't you make a last effort, and get free?" + +His companion threw him a queer resentful look, but Lester persisted: + +"You know what I think. You won't make each other happy. You belong to two +worlds which won't and can't mix. Her friends can never be your friends nor +your friends hers. You think that doesn't matter now, because you're in +love. But it does matter--and it'll tell more and more every year." + +"Don't I know it?" cried Arthur. "She despises us all. She looks upon us +all--I mean, us people, with land and money and big houses--just as so much +grist to her father's mill, so many fat cattle for him to slaughter." + +"And yet you love her!" + +"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify +about these things--she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at +her own side--just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships--and +everything that he says and thinks. She adores him--she'd go to the stake +for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on +him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad--I know that. But I'd rather marry +her mad than any other woman sane!" + +"All the same you _could_ break it off," persisted Lester. + +"Of course I could. I could hang--or poison--or shoot myself, I suppose, if +it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her +up, I shall cut the whole business--Parliament--estates--everything!" + +The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly +subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. + +"What are your chances?" + +"With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. +But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of +speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair--and if I +don't make it, mother will know the reason why!--it's all up with me." + +"Why don't you apply to Coryston?" + +"What--to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't +he?--with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was +coming down here to make mischief--and, by Jove, he's doing it!" + +"I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. + +Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering +greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the +door behind him. + +"Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" + +Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to +reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he +deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a +cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal +which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung +an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking +and pondering. + +"Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; +"we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out +for you, Arthur--upon my soul, I don't!" + +"No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. + +"Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage +yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off +the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." + +"You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" + +"What do _you_ think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in +a garret--a genteel garret--on a thousand a year? For her father, +perhaps!--but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it." + +No reply, except a furious glance. Coryston began to look perturbed. He +descended from his perch, and approaching the still pacing Arthur, he took +his arm--an attention to which the younger brother barely submitted. + +"Look here, old boy? Am I becoming a beast? Are you sure of her? Is it +serious?" + +"Sure of her? Good God--if I were!" + +He walked to a window near, and stood looking out, so that his face could +not be seen by his companions, his hands in his pockets. + +Coryston's eyebrows went up; the eyes beneath them showed a genuine +concern. Refusing a further pull at Lester's cigarettes, he took a pipe out +of his pocket, lit it, and puffed away in a brown study. The figure at the +window remained motionless. Lester felt the situation too delicate for +an outsider's interference, and made a feint of returning to his work. +Presently it seemed that Coryston made up his mind. + +"Well," he said, slowly, "all right. I'll cut my meeting. I can get +Atherstone to take the chair, and make some excuse. But I really don't know +that it'll help you much. There's already an announcement of your meeting +in the Martover paper yesterday--" + +"_No_!" Arthur faced round upon his brother, his cheeks blazing. + +"Perfectly true. Mother's taken time by the forelock. I have no doubt she +has already written your speech." + +"What on earth can I do?" He stood in helpless despair. + +"Have a row!" said Coryston, laughing. "A good row and stick to it! Tell +mother you won't be treated so--that you're a man, not a school-boy--that +you prefer, with many thanks, to write your own speeches--_et cetera_. +Play the independence card for all you're worth. It _may_ get you out +of the mess." + +Arthur's countenance began to clear. + +"I'm to make it appear a bargain--between you and me? I asked you to give +up your show, and you--" + +"Oh, any lies you like," said Coryston, placidly. "But as I've already +warned you, it won't help you long." + +"One gains a bit of time," said the young lover, in a tone of depression. + +"What's the good of it? In a year's time Glenwilliam will still be +Glenwilliam--and mother mother. Of course you know you'll break her +heart--and that kind of thing. Marcia made me promise to put that before +you. So I do. It's perfectly true; though I don't know that I am the +person to press it! But then mother and I have always disagreed--whereas +_you_ have been the model son." + +Angry melancholy swooped once more upon Arthur. + +"What the deuce have women to do with politics! Why can't they leave the +rotten things to us? Life won't be worth living if they go on like this!" + +"'_Life_,'" echoed Coryston, with amused contempt. "Your life? Just +try offering your billet--with all its little worries thrown in--to the +next fellow you meet in the street--and see what happens!" + +But the man in Arthur rebelled. He faced his brother. + +"If you think that I wouldn't give up this whole show to-morrow"--he +waved his hand toward the marble forecourt outside, now glistening in the +sun--"for--for Enid--you never made a greater mistake in your life, Corry!" + +There was a bitter and passionate accent in the voice which carried +conviction. Coryston's expression changed. + +"Unfortunately, it wouldn't help you with--with Enid--to give it up," he +said, quietly. "Miss Glenwilliam, as I read her--I don't mean anything in +the least offensive--has a very just and accurate idea of the value of +money." + +A sort of impatient groan was the only reply. + +But Lester raised his head from his book. + +"Why don't you see what Miss Coryston can do?" he asked, looking from one +to the other. + +"Marcia?" cried Coryston, springing up. "By the way, what are mother and +Marcia after, this Sunday? Do you suppose that business is all settled by +now?" + +He flung out a finger vaguely in the direction of Hoddon Grey. And as he +spoke all the softness which had gradually penetrated his conversation with +Arthur through all his banter, disappeared. His aspect became in a moment +hard and threatening. + +"Don't discuss it with me, Coryston," said Lester, rather sharply. "Your +sister wouldn't like it. I only mentioned her name to suggest that she +might influence your mother in Arthur's case." He rose, and began to put up +his papers as he spoke. + +"I know that! All the same, why shouldn't we talk about her? Aren't you +a friend?--her friend?--our friend?--everybody's friend?" said Coryston, +peremptorily. "Look here!--if Marcia's really going to marry Newbury!"--he +brought his hand down vehemently on Lester's table--"there'll be another +family row. Nothing in the world will prevent my putting the Betts' case +before Marcia! I have already warned her that I mean to have it out with +her, and I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her. If she can make Newbury +hear reason--well and good. If she can't--or if she doesn't see the thing +as she ought, herself--well!--we shall know where we are!" + +"Look here, Corry," said Arthur, remonstrating, "Edward Newbury's an +awfully good chap. Don't you go making mischief!" + +"Rather hard on your sister, isn't it?"--the voice was Lester's--"to plunge +her into such a business, at such a time!" + +"If she's happy, let her make a thank-offering!" said the inexorable +Coryston. "Life won't spare her its facts--why should we? Arthur!--come and +walk home with me!" + +Arthur demurred, stipulated that he should not be expected to be civil to +any of Coryston's Socialist lodgers--and finally let himself be carried +off. + +Lester was left once more to the quiet of the library. + +"'I have advised Mrs. Betts to write to her!'" + +What a shame! Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with +such a problem--be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off +things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat +solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or +might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old +house--for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston +librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could +see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns--Marcia and Newbury. + +Gradually his head dropped on his hands. The sun crept along the library +floor in patches of orange and purple, as it struck through the lozenges of +old painted glass which bordered the windows. No sound except the cooing of +doves, and the note of a distant cuckoo from the river meadows. + +He did his best to play the cynic with himself. He told himself that such +painful longings and jealous revolts as he was conscious of are among the +growing-pains of life, and must be borne, and gradually forgotten. He had +his career to think of--and his mother and sister, whom he loved. Some day +he too would marry and set up house and beget children, framing his life +on the simple strenuous lines made necessary by the family misfortunes. It +would have been easier, perhaps, to despise wealth, if he and his had never +possessed it, and if his lack of it were not the first and sufficient +barrier which divided him from Marcia Coryston. But his nature was sound +and sane; it looked life in the face--its gifts and its denials, and those +stern joys which the mere wrestle with experience brings to the fighting +spirit. He had soon reconquered cheerfulness; and when Arthur returned, he +submitted to be talked to for hours on that young man's tangled affairs, +handling the youth with that mixture of sympathy and satire which both +soothed and teased the sentimentalists who chose to confide in him. + + * * * * * + +Next morning Marcia and her mother returned from Hoddon Grey in excellent +time. Lady Coryston never lingered over week-ends. Generally the first +train on Monday morning saw her depart. In this case she was obliged to +give an hour to business talk--as to settlements and so forth--with Lord +William, on Monday morning. But when that was over she stepped into her +motor with all possible speed. + +"What a Sunday!" she said, languidly throwing herself back, with +half-closed eyes, as they emerged from the park. Then remembering herself: +"But you, my dear, have been happy! And of course they are excellent +people--quite excellent." + +Marcia sat beside her flushed and rather constrained. She had of course +never expected her mother to behave like ordinary mothers on the occasion +of a daughter's betrothal. She took her insignificance, the absence of any +soft emotion, quite calmly. All the same she had her grievance. + +"If only Edward and you--and everybody would not be in such a dreadful +hurry!" she said, protesting. + +"Seven weeks, my dear child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have +you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till +the autumn I should be terribly busy--absolutely taken up--with Arthur's +election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to +the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not +only the usual Liberal gang--I shall have Coryston to fight!" + +"I know. It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then +she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that +notice of Arthur's meeting into the _Witness_ without consulting him. +Why, you didn't even ask him, before you settled it all! Aren't you afraid +of his cutting up rough?" + +"Not in the least! Arthur always expects me to settle those things for him. +As soon as Coryston had taken that outrageous step, it was imperative that +Arthur should speak in his own village. We can't have people's minds in +doubt as to what _he_ thinks of Glenwilliam, with an election only +five months off. I have written to him, of course, fully--without a word of +reply! What he has been doing these last weeks I can't imagine!" + +Marcia fell into a frowning silence. She knew, alack! a great deal more +than she wished to know of what Arthur had been doing. Oh, she hoped +Coryston had been able to talk to him--to persuade him! Edward too had +promised to see him--immediately. Surely between them they would make him +hear reason, before any suspicion reached their mother? + +The usual pile of letters awaited Lady Coryston and Marcia on their arrival +at home. But before opening hers, Lady Coryston turned to the butler. + +"Is Mr. Arthur here?" + +"Yes, my lady. He is out now, but he left word he would be in for +luncheon." + +Lady Coryston's face lit up. Marcia did not hear the question or the +answer. She was absorbed in a letter which she happened to have opened +first. She read it hastily, with growing astonishment. Then, still +holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler +intercepted her. + +"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your +sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker--something you had +ordered--very particular." + +"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything +about it." + +She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand. + +"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's +leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with +Coryston. He may argue with me--and with Edward--if he pleases. But Mrs. +Betts herself! No--that's too much!" + +Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. +Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her +amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman--a lady--a complete stranger +to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A +woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, +and tears on her cheeks. + +"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back. + + + + +Book II + + +MARCIA + + + "To make you me how much so e'er I try, + You will be always you, and I be I." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. +"I--I have deceived your servants--told them lies--that I might get to +see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!--don't send me away!" + +Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, +standing suppliant before her, and repeated: + +"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name." + +"My name--is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. +"Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet--I think you must; +because--because there has been so much talk!" + +"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which +reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress +and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general +aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally +against--one might almost say, as an effluence from--the background of +bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the +room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility +of her attire--arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short +skirts and shell necklace,--betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite +plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex. + +"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought--Lord +Coryston--" + +She paused, her eyes cast down. + +"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit +down." + +Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. +Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a +broken, sobbing voice. + +"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my +poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh! +my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he +never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about +your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so +_ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I +don't know how to excuse myself--" + +She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned +face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears. + +"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and +annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing. + +"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, +removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I +consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, +to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, +Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!" + +Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran +lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had +placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched. + +"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with +embarrassment. + +Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly. + +"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm +unless he will give me up?" + +But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly: + +"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs." + +"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, +turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag +of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into +vehemence: + +"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen! +You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly +wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help +anybody as wretched as I am!" + +The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic +force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the +bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be +thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as +though the speaker observed herself, even in violence. + +Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and +then said: + +"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to +me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I +shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?" + +"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, +Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because +you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my +story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment. +"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had +an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as +though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was +only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and +she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few +months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I +suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he +struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a +choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was +only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved +me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like +heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and +there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against +my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband +divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other +man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel +to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So +there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look +at Marcia. + +The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed. + +"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He +hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I +couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm +not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to +keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he +was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. +And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I +was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to +me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told +him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't +a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no +prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. +Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in +the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he +knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, +to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more +disgrace on anybody." + +She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the +small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and +powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly +into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some +rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing +and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! + +Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. + +"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares +for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll +kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" + +The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her +slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which +sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only +say again in a vaguely troubled voice: + +"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't +to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't +do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." + +"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help +each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means +to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord +William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too +cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if +he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend +henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary +friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near +a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just +think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after +all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a +better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love +me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You +know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. +He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and +made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand +much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things +anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll +go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? +What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?" + +[Illustration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"] + +Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her +cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no +acting now. + +The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands +gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her. + +"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know +what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced +people marrying again. You know--how they've set a standard all their +lives--for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever +preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their +feelings. They hate--I'm sure they hate--making any one unhappy. But if +one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, +how--" + +"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, +_please_, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you +to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up--and he'll never give me +up. But I'll go away--I'll go to a little cottage John has--it was his +mother's, in Charnwood Forest--far away from everybody. Nobody here will +ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work +will let him. He will come over in the motor--he's always running about the +country--nobody would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated--so we +should have separated--as far as spending our lives together goes. But I +should sometimes--sometimes--have my John!--for my own--my very own--and he +would sometimes have me!" + +Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts +shook from head to foot. + +Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling--of +a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an +experience, touched so nearly on passions and sins which had hitherto been +to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, +whatever class she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the +conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment--a moment differing +wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have +come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack +such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay +knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, +the real stuff--the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new +to her. + +And, in a flash of memory and association, there passed through her mind +the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights--Iphigenia on the stage, +wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and +Newbury's voice: + +"_This_ is the death she shrinks from--" + +And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately +to its doom: + +"And this--is the death she _accepts_!" + +Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome +features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the +girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose--"_he_ +would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and +loves--and _therefore_ he will inflict it inexorably on others. But +that's the point! For oneself, yes--but for others who suffer and don't +believe!--suffer horribly!" + +A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs. +Betts. + +"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll +try and put it to Mr. Newbury. Nobody here, you think, need know anything +about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and +you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all +anybody need know?" + +Mrs. Betts raised herself. + +"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord +William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't +do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to +interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William +and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!" + +She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair +and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand: + +"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury--because you love him. If +I lose John who will ever give me a kind word--a kind look again? I thought +at last--I'd found--a little love. Even bad people"--her voice broke--"may +rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that." + +Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes. +Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her +mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled +with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of +deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and +responsive human being. + +"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that +I'll speak to Mr. Newbury." + +Mrs. Betts gave her effusive thanks which somehow jarred on Marcia; she was +glad when they were over and Mrs. Betts rose to go. That her tearful and +disheveled aspect might escape the servants Marcia took her down a side +staircase of the vast house, and piloted her through some garden paths. +Then the girl herself, returning, opened a gate into a wood, where an +undergrowth of wild roses was just breaking into flower, and was soon +pacing a mossy path out of sight and sound of the house. + +She found herself in a strange confusion of mind. She still saw the small +tear-stained face, the dingy finery, the tormented hair; the story she had +just heard was still sounding in her ears. But what really held her was the +question: "Can I move Edward? What will he say to me?" + +And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together +came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which +had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been +drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?--drawn with a +hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by +them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it +that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had +been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer +idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? +Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the +center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices +eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself +naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. + +But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of +the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be +entering upon--moving--in a world where almost nothing was left free for +her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was +taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; +would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon +Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. + +And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of +self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's +lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home +life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to +them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, +congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning--these +things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. +The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing +enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish +joking--with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and +literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the +Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute +refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at +least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice--in +relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still +standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, +she knew--knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, +his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she +sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, +she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in +her?--what was there in her--to deserve it? + +And yet--and yet! Some penetrating instinct to which in this moment of +solitude, of unwilling reflection, she could not help but listen, told her +that the very soul of him was not hers; that the deepest foundation of his +life was no human affection, but the rapture, the compelling vision of a +mystical faith. And that rapture she could never share; she knew herself; +it was not in her. One moment she could have cried out in despair over her +own limitations and disabilities. The next she was jealous; on fire. + +Jealous!--that was the real, sadly human truth; jealous, as women have +always been, of the faith, or the art, or the friendship, which threatens +their hold upon the lover. And there stole upon her as she sat musing, the +old, old temptation--the temptation of Psyche--to test and try this man, +who was to bring her into bondage, before the bonds were yet quite set. She +was honestly touched by Mrs. Betts's story. To her, in her first softness +of love, it seemed intolerably hard and odious that two people who clung to +each other should be forcibly torn apart; two people whom no law, but +only an ecclesiastical scruple condemned. Surely Edward would accept, and +persuade his father to accept, the compromise which the husband and wife +suggested. If Mrs. Betts withdrew from the scene, from the estate, would +not this satisfy everybody? What further scandal could there be? She went +on arguing it with herself, but all the time the real, deepest motive +at work was not so much sympathy, as a kind of excited restlessness +--curiosity. She saw herself pleading with Edward, breaking +down his resistance, winning her cause, and then, instead of triumphing, +flinging herself into his arms, to ask pardon for daring to fight him. + +The happy tears blinded her, and fell unheeded until a mocking reaction +dried them. + +"Oh, what a fool!--what a fool!" + +And running through the wood she came out into the sunshine at its farther +end--a blaze of sun upon the lake, its swans, its stone-rimmed islands, +and statuary, on the gray-white front of the pillared and porticoed house, +stretching interminably. The flowers shone in the stiff beds; a rain of +blossom drifted through the air. Everything glittered and sparkled. It was +Corinthian, pretentious, artificial; but as Marcia hurried up the broad +middle walk between the queer gods and goddesses, whom some pupil of +Bernini's had manufactured in Rome for a Coryston of the eighteenth +century, she was in love with the scene, which in general she disliked; in +love with the summer, in love above all with the quick life of her own mind +and body.... + +There were persons talking in her mother's sitting-room--Sir Wilfrid, +Arthur, and Coryston--she perceived them through the open windows. The +sight of Arthur suddenly sobered her, and diverted her thoughts. For if +Newbury now held the chief place in her mind, her mother still reigned +there. She--Marcia--must be on the spot to protect her mother!--in case +protection were wanted, and Coryston and Sir Wilfrid had not succeeded +yet in bringing that mad fellow to his senses. Ah! but they had all a new +helper and counselor now--in Edward. Let Coryston abuse him to her, if he +dared! She would know how to defend him. + +She hurried on. + +Simultaneously, from the garden door of the library a figure emerged, a +man with some books under his arm. She recognized Lester, and a rush of +something which was partly shyness and partly a delicious pride came over +her, to delay her steps. + +They met under the wide open colonnade which carried the first story of the +house. Lester came toward her smiling and flushed. + +"I've just heard," he said. "I do congratulate you. It's splendid!" + +She gave him her hand; and he thought as he looked at her how happiness had +beautified and transformed her. All that was imperfect in the face seemed +to have fallen into harmony; and her dark bloom had never been so lovely. + +"Yes, I'm very happy. He'll keep me in order! At least he'll try." Her eyes +danced. + +"Everybody seems extremely pleased," he said, walking at her side, and not +indeed knowing what to say. + +"Except Coryston," replied Marcia, calmly. "I shall have a bad time with +him." + +"Stand up to him!" he laughed. "His bark is worse than his bite--Ah!--" + +A sudden sound of vehement voices overhead--Lady Coryston's voice and +Arthur's clashing--startled them both. + +"Oh, I must go!" cried Marcia, frowning and paling. "Thank you--thank you +so much. Good-by." + +And she ran into the house. Lester remained rooted in the shadows of the +colonnade for a minute or two, looking after her, with a set, abstracted +face. Then the sound of the altercation overhead smote him too with alarm. +He moved quickly away lest through the open windows he might catch what was +said. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Marcia entered her mother's sitting-room in the midst of what seemed a +babel of voices. James Coryston, indeed, who was sitting in a corner of +the room while Coryston and Sir Wilfrid Bury argued across him, was not +contributing to it. He was watching his mother, and she on the other side +of the room was talking rapidly to her son Arthur, who could evidently +hardly control himself sufficiently to listen to her. + +As Marcia came in she heard Arthur say in a loud voice: + +"Your attitude, mother, is perfectly unreasonable, and I will not submit to +be dictated to like this!" + +Marcia, staying her foot half-way across the room, looked at her youngest +brother in amazement. + +Was this rough-mannered, rough-voiced man, Arthur?--the tame house-brother, +and docile son of their normal life? What was happening to them all? + +Lady Coryston broke out: + +"I repeat--you propose to me, Arthur, a bargain which is no bargain!--" + +"A quid without a quo?" interrupted Coryston, who had suddenly dropped his +argument with Sir Wilfrid, and had thrown himself on a sofa near his mother +and Arthur. + +Lady Coryston took no notice of him. She continued to address her +youngest-born. + +"What Coryston may do--now--after all that has passed is to me a matter of +merely secondary importance. When I first saw the notice of the Martover +meeting it was a shock to me--I admit it. But since then he has done so +many other things--he has struck at me in so many other ways--he has so +publicly and scandalously outraged family feeling, and political decency--" + +"I really haven't," said Coryston, mildly. "I haven't--if this was a free +country." + +Lady Coryston flashed a sudden superb look at him and resumed: + +"--that I really don't care what Coryston does. He has done his worst. I +can't suffer any greater insult than he has already put upon me--" + +Coryston shook his head, mutely protesting. He seized a pen from a table +near, and began to bite and strip it with an absent face. + +"But _you_, Arthur!" his mother went on with angry emphasis, "have +still a character to lose or gain. As I have said, it doesn't now matter +vitally to me whether Coryston is in the chair or not--I regard him as +merely Glenwilliam's cat's-paw--but if _you_ let this meeting at +Martover pass, you will have weakened your position in this constituency, +you will have disheartened your supporters, you will have played +the coward--and you will have left your mother disgracefully in the +lurch--though that latter point I can see doesn't move you at all!" + +James and Sir Wilfrid Bury came anxiously to join the group. Sir Wilfrid +approached the still standing and distressed Marcia. Drawing her hand +within his arm, he patted it kindly. + +"We can't persuade your mother, my dear. Suppose you try." + +"Mother, you can't insist on Arthur's going through with the meeting if he +doesn't wish to!" said Marcia, with animation. "Do let him give it up! It +would be so easy to postpone it." + +Lady Coryston turned upon her. + +"Everything is easy in your eyes, no doubt, Marcia, except that he should +do his duty, and spare my feelings! As a matter of fact you know perfectly +well that Arthur has always allowed me to arrange these things for him." + +"I don't mean, mother, to do so in future!" said Arthur, resolutely turning +upon her. "You _must_ leave me to manage my own life and my own +affairs." + +Lady Coryston's features quivered in her long bony face. As she sat near +the window, on a high chair, fully illumined, in a black velvet dress, +long-waisted, and with a kind of stand-up ruffle at the throat, she was +amazingly Queen Bess. James, who was always conscious of the likeness, +could almost have expected her to rise and say in the famous words of the +Queen to Cecil--"Little man, little man, your father durst not have said +'must' to me!" + +But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words: + +"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never +been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your +Parliamentary abilities--unaided." + +"Mother!--" cried Marcia and James simultaneously. + +Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid's +restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, +his eyes bloodshot. + +"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them +long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for +myself in future. I don't think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him--and I +know his daughter." + +The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm--in +Marcia's case, of terror--ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid +caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off. + +Lady Coryston met her son's eyes with equal passion. + +"An intriguer--an unscrupulous intriguer--like himself!" said Lady +Coryston, with cutting emphasis. + +Arthur's flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning +hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur +thrust them aside. + +"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking +into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There +was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, +slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am--in love--with the lady +to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her--and +I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. _Now_ you understand +perhaps why I didn't wish to attack her father at this particular +juncture." + +"Arthur!" + +Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, +meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them +starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was +trouble--and a sudden softness--in his look. + +Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants +were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston's aspect was something +quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It +represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human +personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet +encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She +laughed--as she passed her handkerchief over her lips--so Marcia thought +afterward--to hide their trembling. + +"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to +wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your +confession--your astonishing confession--does at least supply some +reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present--_for the +present_"--she spoke slowly--"I cease to press you to speak at this +meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to +the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later--and in private. I +must take time to think it over." + +She rose. James came forward. + +"May I come with you, mother?" + +She frowned a little. + +"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with +regard to the meeting." + +And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through +the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something +in her ear--no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; +and he closed the door. + +Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, +and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, +and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay. + +Sir Wilfrid spoke first: + +"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made +seriously?" + +Arthur turned impatiently. + +"Do I look like joking?" + +"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us." + +"Luckily mother doesn't believe a word of it!" + +The voice was Coryston's, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the +ceiling. + +Arthur stood still. + +"What do you mean?" + +"No offense. I dare say she believed _you_. But the notion strikes her +as too grotesque to be bothered about." + +"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk. + +"Whether she is or not, she'll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes +of it," was Coryston's murmured comment. But the words were lost in his +mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window +gazing into the garden. Something in his brother's meditative back seemed +to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, +and hit it. James turned with a start. + +"Look here, James--this isn't Hegel--and it isn't Lotze--and it isn't +Bergson--it's life. Haven't you got a remark to contribute?" + +James's blue eyes showed no resentment. + +"I'm very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother." + +"Why?" + +"Because she's the oldest. We've got the future. She hasn't." + +The color rushed to Marcia's face. She looked gratefully at her brother. +Sir Wilfrid's gray head nodded agreement. + +"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don't see that. At least, of course it has a +certain truth. But it doesn't present itself to me as a ground for +sparing the older generation. In fact"--he sprang to his feet--"present +company--present family excepted--we're being ruined--stick stock +ruined--by the elder generation! They're in our way everywhere! Why don't +they withdraw--and let _us_ take the stage? We know more than they. +We're further evolved--we're better informed. And they will insist on +pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the +world can't get on like this. Something will have to be done. We're choked +up with the older generation." + +"Yes, for those who have no reverence--and no pity!" said Marcia. + +The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon +her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their +sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston +flushed, involuntarily. + +"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don't +understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not +at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner +and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful--disrespectful? Good +heavens! What do we _care_ about the people, our contemporaries, with +whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call +_action_? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us--and +calm us--and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue +and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"--he +threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston's empty chair--"with time to smile +and think and jest--with no ax to grind--and no opinions to push--do you +think I shouldn't have been at her feet--her slave, her adorer? Besides, +the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, +long enough--they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers +now, and they the wall-flowers. And they won't play the game!" + +"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any +game--together--Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply. + +Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly. + +"One might argue till doomsday--I agree--as to which of us said 'won't +play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it +us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur--having made +a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's _we_ who have the +youth--_we_ who have the power--_we_ who know more than our +elders simply because we were born thirty years later! Let the old submit, +and we'll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with +march-music! But they _will_ fight us--and they can't win!" + +His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes +glittering. + +"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half +contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his +restless walk. + +"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir +Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play +the game of a generation--old and young. However, the situation is too +acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an +old friend?" + +"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren't so jolly sure what it would +be." + +"Don't be so sure. Come and take me a turn in the lime avenue before +lunch." + +The two disappeared. James followed them. Marcia, full of disquiet, was +going off to find Lady Coryston when Coryston stopped her. + +"I say, Marcia--it's true--isn't it? You're engaged to Newbury?" + +She turned proudly, confronting him. + +"I am." + +"I'm not going to congratulate you!" he said, vehemently. "I've got a deal +to say to you. Will you allow me to say it?" + +"Whenever you like," said Marcia, indifferently. + +Coryston perched himself on the edge of a table beside her, looking down +upon her, his hands thrust into his pockets. + +"How much do you know of this Betts business?" he asked her, abruptly. + +"A good deal--considering you sent Mrs. Betts to see me this morning!" + +"Oh, she came, did she? Well, do you see any common sense, any justice, any +Christianity in forcing that woman to leave her husband--in flinging her +out to the wolves again, just as she has got into shelter?" + +"In Edward's view, Mr. Betts is not her husband," said Marcia, defiantly. +"You seem to forget that fact." + +"'Edward's view'?" repeated Coryston, impatiently. "My dear, what's Edward +got to do with it? He's not the law of the land. Let him follow his own law +if he likes. But to tear up other people's lives by the roots, in the name +of some private particular species of law that you believe in and they +don't, is really too much--at this time of day. You ought to stop it, +Marcia!--and you must!" + +"Who's tyrannizing now?" said Marcia. "Haven't other people as good a right +to live their beliefs as you?" + +"Yes, so long as they don't destroy other people in the process. Even I am +not anarchist enough for that." + +"Well," said Marcia, coolly, "the Newburys are making it disagreeable for +Mr. and Mrs. Betts because they disapprove of them. And what else are you +doing with mamma?" + +She threw a triumphant look at her brother. + +"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Coryston, jumping up. "The weakest 'score' I +ever heard. Don't you know the difference between the things that are +vital and the things that are superficial--between fighting opinions, and +_destroying a life_, between tilting and boxing, however roughly--and +_murdering_?" + +He looked at her fiercely. + +"Who talks of murdering!" The tone was scornful. + +"I do! If the Newburys drive those two apart they will have a murder of +souls on their conscience. And if you talked to that woman this morning you +know it as well as I!" + +Marcia faltered a little. + +"They could still meet as friends." + +"Yes, under the eyes of holy women!--spying lest any impropriety occur! +That's the proposal, I understand. Of all the vile and cold-blooded +suggestions!--" + +And restraining himself with the utmost difficulty, as one might hang on to +the curb of a bolting horse, Coryston stamped up and down the room, till +speech was once more possible. Then he came to an abrupt pause before his +sister. + +"Are you really in love with this man, Marcia?" + +So challenged, Marcia did not deign to answer. She merely looked up at +Coryston, motionless, faintly smiling. He took his answer, dazzled at the +same time by her emerging and developing beauty. + +"Well, if you do love him," he said, slowly, "and he loves you, _make_ +him have pity! Those two, also, love each other. That woman is a poor +common little thing. She was a poor common little actress with no talent, +before her first husband married her--she's a common little actress now, +even when she feels most deeply. You probably saw it, and it repelled +you. _You_ can afford, you see, to keep a fine taste, and fastidious +feelings! But if you tear her from that man, you kill all that's good in +her--you ruin all her miserable chances. That man's raising her. Bit by bit +he'll stamp his own character into hers--because she loves him. And Betts +himself, a great, silent, hard man, who has once in his life done a +splendid thing!--forgotten himself head over ears for a woman--and is now +doing his level best to make a good job of her--you Christians are going +to reward him first by breaking his heart, and tearing his life-work to +pieces!--God!--I wish your Master were here to tell you what He'd think of +it!" + +"You're not His only interpreter!" cried Marcia, breathing quickly. "It's +in His name that Edward and his father are acting. You daren't say--you +daren't _think_--that it's for mere authority's sake--mere +domination's sake!" + +Coryston eyed her in silence a little. + +"No use in arguing this thing on its merits," he said, curtly, at last. +"You don't know enough about it, and Newbury and I shouldn't have a single +premise in common. But I just warn you and him--it's a ticklish game +playing with a pair of human lives like these. They are sensitive, +excitable people--I don't threaten--I only say--_take care_!" + +"'Game,' 'play'--what silly words to use about such men as Edward and his +father, in such a matter!" said Marcia as she rose, breathing contempt. "I +shall talk to Edward--I promised Mrs. Betts. But I suppose, Corry, it's +no good saying, to begin with, that when you talk of tyranny, you seem to +_me_ at any rate, the best tyrant of the lot." + +The girl stood with her head thrown back, challenging her brother, her +whole slender form poised for battle. + +Coryston shook his head. + +"Nonsense! I play the gadfly--to all the tyrants." "_A tyrant_," +repeated his sister, steadily. "And an unkind wretch into the bargain! I +was engaged--yesterday--and have you said one nice, brotherly word to me?" + +Her lips trembled. Coryston turned away. + +"You are giving yourself to the forces of reaction," he said, between his +teeth, "the forces that are everywhere fighting liberty--whether in the +individual--or the State. Only, unfortunately "--he turned with a smile, +the sudden gaiety of which fairly startled his sister--"as far as matrimony +is concerned, I seem to be doing precisely the same thing myself." + +"Corry! what on earth do you mean?" + +"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? Perhaps you will some day," said Coryston, +with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the +battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If +you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. +I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff +document, I admit. If not--" + +"Well, if not?" + +"War!" was the short reply, as her brother made for the door. + +Then suddenly he came back to say: + +"Keep an eye on mother. As far as Arthur's concerned--she's dangerous. She +hasn't the smallest intention of letting him marry that girl. And here +too it'll be a case of meddling with forces you don't understand. Keep me +informed." + +"Yes--if you promise to help him--and her--to break it off," said Marcia, +firmly. + +Coryston slowly shook his head; and went. + +Meanwhile Lady Coryston, having shaken off all companions, had betaken +herself for greater privacy to a solitary walk. She desired to see neither +children nor friends nor servants till she had made up her mind what she +was going to do. As generally happened with her in the bad moments of life, +the revelation of what threatened her had steeled and nerved her to a +surprising degree. Her stately indoor dress had been exchanged for a short +tweed gown, and, as she walked briskly along, her white hair framed in the +drawn hood of black silk which she wore habitually on country walks, she +had still a wonderful air of youth, and indeed she had never felt herself +more vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean +peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by +something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the +feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next +stroke may--probably will--end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it +made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the +clearness of her resolve. + +So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had +increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress +just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever +since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public +as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by +refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm +her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, +Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no +doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph +over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid +Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a +fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed +to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had +declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, +to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time--all the time--the handsome, +repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the +hollow of her hand! + +Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself +that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The +circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many +people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams +were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay +hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage +could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher--the temptation had +only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would +be the sweetness--for such persons as the Glenwilliams--of a planned and +successful revenge. + +Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover +meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood +from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the +week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. +Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an +interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to +be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and +irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the +embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his +seat--to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the +country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small +towns in his division. + +She reached a rising ground in the park, where was a seat under a fine oak, +commanding a view. The green slopes below her ran westward to a wide sky +steeped toward the horizon in all conceivable shades of lilac and pearl, +with here and there in the upper heaven lakes of blue and towering +thunder-clouds brooding over them, prophesying storm. She looked out over +her domain, in which, up to a short time before, her writ, so to speak, had +run, like that of a king. And now all sense of confidence, of security, +was gone. There on the hillside was the white patch of Knatchett--the old +farmhouse, where Coryston had settled himself. It showed to her disturbed +mind like the patch of leaven which, scarcely visible at first, will grow +and grow "till the whole is leavened." A leaven of struggle and revolt. And +only her woman's strength to fight it. + +Suddenly--a tremor of great weakness came upon her. Arthur, her dearest! It +had been comparatively easy to fight Coryston. When had she not fought +him? But Arthur! She thought of all the happy times she had had with +him--electioneering for him, preparing his speeches, watching his first +steps in the House of Commons. The years before her, her coming old age, +seemed all at once to have passed into a gray eclipse; and some difficult +tears forced their way. Had she, after all, mismanaged her life? Were +prophecies to which she had always refused to listen--she seemed to hear +them in her dead husband's voice!--coming true? She fell into a great and +lonely anguish of mind; while the westerly light burned on the broidery of +white hawthorns spread over the green spaces below, and on the loops and +turns of the little brimming trout-stream that ran so merrily through the +park. + +But she never wavered for one moment as to her determination to see Enid +Glenwilliam after the Martover meeting; nor did the question of Arthur's +personal happiness enter for one moment into her calculations. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +The breakfast gong had just sounded at Hoddon Grey. The hour was a quarter +to nine. Prayers in the chapel were over, and Lord and Lady Newbury, at +either end of the table, spectacles on nose, were opening and reading their +letters. + +"Where is Edward?" said Lady William, looking round. + +"My dear!" Lord William's tone was mildly reproachful. + +"Of course--I forgot for a moment!" And on Lady William's delicately +withered cheek there appeared a slight flush. For it was their wedding-day, +and never yet, since his earliest childhood, had their only son, their only +child, failed, either personally or by deputy, to present his mother with a +bunch of June roses on the morning of this June anniversary. While he was +in India the custom was remitted to the old head gardener, who always +received, however, from the absent son the appropriate letter or message to +be attached to the flowers. And one of the most vivid memories Lady William +retained of her son's boyhood showed her the half-open door of an inn +bedroom at Domodossola, and Edward's handsome face--the face of a lad of +eleven--looking in, eyes shining, white teeth grinning, as he held aloft in +triumph the great bunch of carnations and roses for which the little fellow +had scoured the sleepy town in the early hours. They had taken him abroad +for the first time, during a break between his preparatory school and Eton, +when he was convalescing from a dangerous attack of measles; and Lady +William could never forget the charm of the boy's companionship, his eager +docility and sweetness, his delight in the Catholic churches and services, +his ready friendships with the country-folk, with the coachman who drove +them, and the _sagrestani_ who led them through dim chapels and +gleaming monuments. + +But when indeed had he not been their delight and treasure from his youth +up till now? And though in the interest of a long letter from her Bishop to +whom she was devoted, Lady William had momentarily forgotten the date, +this wedding-day was, in truth, touched, for both parents, with a special +consecration and tenderness, since it was the first since Edward's own +betrothal. And there beside Lady William's plate lay a large jeweler's +case, worn and old-fashioned, whereof the appearance was intimately +connected both with the old facts and the new. + +Meanwhile, a rainy morning, in which, however, there was a hidden sunlight, +threw a mild illumination into the Hoddon Grey dining-room, upon the +sparely provided breakfast-table, the somewhat austere line of family +portraits on the gray wall, the Chippendale chairs shining with the +hand-polish of generations, the Empire clock of black and ormolu on the +chimney-piece and on the little tan spitz, sitting up with wagging tail and +asking eyes, on Lady William's left. Neither she nor her husband ever took +more than--or anything else than--an egg with their coffee and toast. They +secretly despised people who ate heavy breakfasts, and the extra allowance +made for Edward's young appetite, or for guests, was never more than +frugal. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was a hearty eater, was accustomed to say of +the Hoddon Grey fare that it deprived the Hoddon Grey fasts--which were +kept according to the strict laws of the Church--of any merit whatever. It +left you nothing to give up. + +Nevertheless, this little morning scene at Hoddon Grey possessed, for the +sensitive eye, a peculiar charm. The spaces of the somewhat empty room +matched the bareness of the white linen, the few flowers standing +separately here and there upon it, and the few pieces of old silver. The +absence of any loose abundance of food or gear, the frugal refined note, +were of course symbolic of the life lived in the house. The Newburys were +rich. Their beautifully housed, and beautifully kept estate, with its nobly +adorned churches, its public halls and institutions, proclaimed the fact; +but in their own private sphere it was ignored as much as possible. + +"Here he is!" exclaimed Lady William, turning to the door with something of +a flutter. "Oh, Edward, they are lovely!" + +Her son laid the dewy bunch beside her plate and then kissed his mother +affectionately. + +"Many happy returns!--and you, father! Hullo--mother, you've got a +secret--you're blushing! What's up?" + +And still holding Lady William by the arm, he looked smilingly from her to +the jeweler's case on the table. + +"They must be reset, dear; but they're fine." + +Lady William opened the case, and pushed it toward him. It contained a +necklace and pendant, two bracelets, and a stomacher brooch of diamonds and +sapphire--magnificent stones in a heavy gold setting, whereof the Early +Victorianism cried aloud. The set had been much admired in the great +exhibition of 1851, where indeed it had been bought by Lady William's +father as a present to his wife. Secretly Lady William still thought it +superb; but she was quite aware that no young woman would wear it. + +Edward looked at it with amusement. + +"The stones are gorgeous. When Cartier's had a go at it, it'll be something +like! I can remember your wearing it, mother, at Court, when I was a small +child. And you're going to give it to Marcia?" He kissed her again. + +"Take it, dear, and ask her how she'd like them set," said his mother, +happily, putting the box into his hand; after which he was allowed to sit +down to his breakfast. + +Lord William meanwhile had taken no notice of the little incident of +the jewels. He was deep in a letter which seemed to have distracted his +attention entirely from his son and to be causing him distress. When he had +finished it he pushed it away and sat gazing before him as though still +held by the recollection of it. + +"I never knew a more sad, a more difficult case," he said, presently, +speaking, it seemed, to himself. + +Edward turned with a start. + +"Another letter, father?" + +Lord William pushed it over to him. + +Newbury read it, and as he did so, in his younger face there appeared the +same expression as in his father's; a kind of grave sadness, in which there +was no trace of indecision, though much of trouble. Lady William asked no +question, though in the course of her little pecking meal, she threw some +anxious glances at her husband and son. They preserved a strict silence at +table on the subject of the letter; but as soon as breakfast was over, Lord +William made a sign to his son, and they went out into the garden together, +walking away from the house. + +"You know we can't do this, Edward!" said Lord William, with energy, as +soon as they were in solitude. + +Edward's eyes assented. + +His father resumed, impetuously: "How can I go on in close relations with +a man--my right hand in the estate--almost more than my agent--associated +with all the church institutions and charities--a communicant--secretary +of the communicant's guild!--our friend and helper in all our religious +business--who has been the head and front of the campaign against +immorality in this village--responsible, with us, for many decisions that +must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble--who yet now proposes, +himself, to maintain what we can only regard--what everybody on this estate +has been taught to regard--as an immoral connection with a married woman! +Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The +so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but +the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his +business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this +estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would +falsify our whole life here,--and make it one ugly hypocrisy!" + +There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked: + +"You of course made it plain once more--in your letter yesterday--that +there would be no harshness--that as far as money went--" + +"I told him he could have _whatever_ was necessary! We wished to force +no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they +decided to remain together--then he and we must part; but we would make it +perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere--in England or the colonies. +If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for +her--then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before." + +"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm--" + +Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress. + +"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to +it!--that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand--that he can never +build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere--that the farm is the +apple of his eye. It's absolutely true--every word of it! But then, why did +he take this desperate step!--without consulting any of his friends! It's +no responsibility of ours!" + +The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound +to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled +with a rocklike steadiness of will. + +"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?" + +"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the +Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and +watch over her, like the angels they are,--and the boy could go to a day +school. But they won't hear of it--they won't listen to it for a moment; +and now--you see--they've put their own alternative plan before us, in +this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by +temperament--that she wouldn't understand the Sisters--nor they her--that +she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations--and then +all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he +said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' +It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his +conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here +on our terms." + +"The letter is curiously excitable--hardly legible even--very unlike +Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully. + +"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has +somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do." + +The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a +footman coming with a note. + +"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer." + +Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow. + +"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon." + +When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face +showing the quick feeling behind. + +"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?" + +"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That +fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses +themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with +to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely +trust you and your judgment in such a matter." + +Newbury flushed. + +"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. +"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her." + +"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, +hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over +and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be +troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us." + +The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily. + + * * * * * + +A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was +sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were +fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing +up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston +trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk +bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which +overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows. + +The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long +discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, +far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved +brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of +her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was +not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never +felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was +haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom +he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, +and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the +plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away +committeth adultery_'"? + +"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. +It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and +most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law +concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to +_sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of +marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not +only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of +people with a high social trust, to betray that trust." + +These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held +him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the +enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his +own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the +only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up +life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or +accomplices in their wrong-doing? + +Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane +outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of +the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals +of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly +famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was +the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green +plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils +and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come +eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, +not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of +buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the +new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and +there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the +woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen. + +A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the +scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the +less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and +to fling back his charges in his face. + +Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges. + +Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly +grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and +pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road. + +"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you." + +"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice +of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his +high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the +unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case +also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen +of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student +of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure +round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still +clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its +master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer +or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large +modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise +knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the +world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered +everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for +by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, +clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the +memory of years of kindly intercourse--friendship, loyalty, just dealing. + +"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," +began Betts, abruptly. + +"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly +gentle, even deferential. + +"You read it, I presume?" + +Newbury made a sign of assent. + +"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?" + +Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the +normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question. + +Newbury's troubled eyes answered him. + +"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!" + +"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?" + +"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should +be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it +indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false." + +"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?" + +"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would +only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for +you--elsewhere!" + +Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him. + +"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it +night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives +and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on +there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're +working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I +begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The +best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, +you're going to drive me from it." + +"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden +rush of grief. The other turned. + +"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy +I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You +made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried +over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she +_is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given +her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her." + +"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" +Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote +them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition +we all sent to the Bishop only last year." + +"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot +since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly +escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a +stop. + +"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in +the laboratory I must be looking after." + +"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a +Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm +near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--" + +Betts interrupted. + +"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no +good." + +The voice dropped. + +With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away. + +Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The +patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young +man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken +address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. +What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; +determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the +ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which +a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that +a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the +circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican +sort, depends. + +The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. +Would she come to meet him? + +Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this +melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not +right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her +and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of +whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting +with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they +believed, than Betts himself knew. + +And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance +of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream.... + +He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the +new-leafed trees. + +The wood was deep--spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly +clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face.... + +When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting +off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day +before--of Arthur and her mother--and the revelation sprung upon them all. + +"You remember how _terrified_ I was--lest mother should know? And +she's taken it so calmly!" + +She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the +arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was +cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well +would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his +point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that +morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in +the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide +match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the +reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as +before. + +"They're not engaged?" + +"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe _she_ means it seriously at +all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something." + +"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced +smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!" + +"He says he wants to see you--to--to have it out with you," said Marcia, +awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round +Newbury's arm. + +"Edward!--do--_do_ make us all happy!" + +He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly +to his. + +"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You +darling!--what can I do?" + +But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That +she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay +at her feet!--she, who had promised him herself! + +"_Please_--let Mr. Betts stay--please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for +her yesterday!" + +"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and +mother will do all they can." + +"Then you _will_ let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly +against him. + +"Of course!--if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, +unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening. + +She straightened herself. + +"If they separate, you mean?" + +"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do." + +"But it would break their hearts." + +He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed. + +"It would make amends." + +"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her +color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one +has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, +Edward?--Won't everybody think it _very_ hard?" + +"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, +that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't +matter,--what they have done?--when in truth it seems to us a black +offense--" + +"Against what--or whom?" she asked, wondering. + +The answer came unflinchingly: + +"Against our Lord--and His Church." + +The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes. + +"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to +stay _here_!--at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say +to me--" + +Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's +arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her +instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,--were +all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and +distress--not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon +discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a +foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out: + +"Darling, I _can't_ discuss it with you! Won't you trust me--Won't +you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one +moment's pain--if we could help it?" + +Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting +and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled. + +"I can't understand," she said, frowning--"I can't!" + +"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust +me with your whole life? Won't you?" + +He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with +her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave +way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all +the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first +moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of +inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the +beginning had both teased and won her. + +But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had +said. She released herself to do it. + +"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. +and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people--and very much +in love. He can't tell what might happen." + +Newbury's face stiffened. + +"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. +And as for thinking of it--why, it's hardly ever out of my mind--except +when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night." + +Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home +through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of +the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to +learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is +discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in +view, throws the eternal glamour. + +Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's +consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, +indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in +clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the +future--the honeymoon--their London house--the rooms at Hoddon Grey that +were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from +Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the +trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. +But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best +man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading +influence in his life--friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to +that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two +of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked +High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a +"Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a +mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India. + +And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was +speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; +although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such +people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then +chilled, and if the truth be told--bored. It was with such topics, as +with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not +understand. + +She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of +Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common +delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, +reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a +considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a +new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside +him. + +"How much you know!"--and then, shyly--"You must teach me!" With the +inevitable male retort--"Teach you!--when you look at me like that!" + +It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before +luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it +was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly +figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for +having forgotten them. + +And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his +silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened +also to him. + + * * * * * + +"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury +walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia +and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the +drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady +Coryston's special and peremptory command for the _trousseau_. + +"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter." + +Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled +with the laugh. + +"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good +deal--but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business +with the Baptists?" + +Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper. + +"Well now they've got their land--through Coryston. There always was a +square piece in the very middle of the village--an _enclave_ belonging +to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the +Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston +has found her, got at her, and made her sell it--finding, I believe, the +greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the +foundation-stone of the new Bethel--under his mother's nose." + +"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, +flushing. + +Sir Wilfrid eyed him slyly. + +"Moral--don't keep a conscience--political or ecclesiastical. There's +nothing but mischief comes of it. And, for Heaven's sake, don't be a +posthumous villain!" + +"What's that?" + +"A man who makes an unjust will, and leaves everything to his wife," said +Sir Wilfrid, calmly. "It's played the deuce in this family, and will go on +doing it." + +Whereupon the late Lord Coryston's executor produced an outline of the +family history--up to date--for the benefit of Lady Coryston's future +son-in-law. Newbury, who was always singularly ignorant of the town gossip +on such matters, received it with amazement. Nothing could be more unlike +the strictly traditional ways which governed his own family in matters of +money and inheritance. + +"So Arthur inherits everything!" + +"Hm--does he?" said Sir Wilfrid. + +"But I thought--" + +"Wait and see, my dear fellow, wait and see. He will only marry Miss +Glenwilliam over his mother's body--and if he does marry her he may whistle +for the estates." + +"Then James will have them?" said Newbury, smiling. + +"Why not Marcia? She has as good a chance as anybody." + +"I hope not!" Newbury's tone showed a genuine discomfort. + +"What is Lady Coryston doing?" + +"About the Glenwilliam affair? Ah!--what isn't she doing?" said Sir +Wilfrid, significantly. "All the same, she lies low." As he spoke, his eyes +fell upon the hillside and on the white cottage of the Atherstones emerging +from the wood. He pointed. + +"They will be there on Sunday fortnight--after the Martover meeting." + +"Who? The Glenwilliams?" + +Sir Wilfrid nodded. + +"And I am of opinion that something will happen. When two highly +inflammable bodies approach each other, something generally does happen." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +The weeks that followed offered no particular A event, but were none the +less important to this history. Coryston was called off to an election in +the north, where he made a series of speeches which perhaps in the end +annoyed the Labor candidate he was supporting as much as the Tory he was +attacking. For, generally reckoned a Socialist by friends and opponents +alike, he preached openly, on this occasion, that Socialism was absurd, +and none but fools would upset kings and cabinets, to be governed by +committees. + +And on one of his spare evenings he wrote a letter to Edward Newbury, +loftily accepting him as a brother-in-law--on conditions. + +"I see no reason," he wrote, "why you and I should not be good friends--if +only I can induce you to take the line of common humanity in this pitiful +case, which, as you know, has set our whole neighborhood aflame. Your +_opinions_ on divorce don't matter, of course, to me--nor mine to +you. But there are cruelties of which all men are judges. And if you +must--because of your opinions--commit yourself to one of them--why then, +whether you marry Marcia or no, you and I can't be friends. It would be +mere hypocrisy to suppose it. And I tell you quite frankly that I shall do +my best to influence Marcia. There seem to me to be one or two ways out of +the business, that would at any rate relieve you of any active connivance +with what you hold to be immorality. I have dealt with them in my letter +to your father. But if you stand on your present fiat--"Separate--or go--" +well, then you and I'll come to blows--Marcia or no Marcia. And I warn you +that Marcia is at bottom a humanist--in the new sense--like me." + +To which Newbury promptly replied: + +"My dear Coryston--I am quite prepared to discuss the Betts case with you, +whenever you return, and we can meet. But we cannot discuss it to any +useful purpose, unless you are prepared to allow me, before we begin, the +same freedom of opinion that you claim for yourself. It is no good ruling +out opinion--or rather conviction--and supposing that we can agree, apart +from conviction, on what is cruelty in this case, and what isn't. The +omitted point is vital. I find it difficult to write about Marcia--perhaps +because my heart and mind are so full of her. All I can say is that the +happiness she has brought me by consenting to be my wife must necessarily +affect all I think and feel. And to begin with, it makes me very keen to +understand and be friends with those she loves. She is very much attached +to you--though much troubled often, as of course you know, by the line you +have taken down here.... Let me know when you return--that I may come over +to Knatchett. We can be brothers, can't we?--even though we look at life so +differently." + +But to this Coryston, who had gone on to a Labor Congress in Scotland, made +no reply. + +The June days passed on, bringing the "high midsummer pomps." Every day +Newbury and Marcia met, and the Betts case was scarcely mentioned between +them after Newbury had been able to tell her that Lord William in London +had got from some Canadian magnates who happened to be there, a cordial and +even enthusiastic promise of employment for John Betts, in connection with +a Government experiment in Alberta. An opening was ready; the Newburys +guaranteed all expenses; and at last Betts himself seemed to be reconciled +to the prospect of emigration, being now, as always, determined to stick +to his marriage. Nobody wished to hurry him; he was considering the whole +proposal; and in a week or two Newbury quite hoped that matters might be +arranged. + +Meanwhile, though the pride of the Newburys concealed the fact as much as +possible, not only from Marcia but from each other, the dilemma on the +horns of which John and Alice Betts had found themselves impaled, was +being eagerly, even passionately discussed through the whole district. The +supporters of the Newburys were many, for there were scores of persons on +the Newbury estates who heartily sympathized with their point of view; but +on the whole the defenders of the Betts marriage were more. The affair got +into the newspapers, and a lecturer representing the "Rational Marriage +Union" appeared from London, and addressed large and attentive audiences in +the little towns. After one of these lectures, Newbury returning home at +night from Coryston was pelted with stones and clods by men posted behind a +hedge. He was only slightly hurt, and when Marcia tried to speak of it, his +smile of frank contempt put the matter by. She could only be thankful that +Coryston was still away. + +For Lady Coryston, meanwhile, the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did +come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters +were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that +to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety +of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her +mother had no mind to give to such a trifle--or to anything, indeed--her +own marriage not excepted--but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's +intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They +lingered on at Coryston when, with the wedding so close in view, it would +have been natural that they should return at once to London for shopping; +and Marcia observed that her mother seemed to be more closely absorbed +in politics than ever, while less attentive, perhaps, than usual to the +affairs of the estate and the village. A poster announcing the Martover +meeting was lying about in her sitting-room, and from a fragment of +conversation overheard between her mother and Mr. Page, the agent, it +seemed that Lady Coryston had been making elaborate inquiries as to those +queer people, the Atherstones, with whom the Glenwilliams were to stay for +the meeting. Was her mother afraid that Arthur would do something silly +and public when they came down! Not the least likely! He had plenty of +opportunities in London, with no local opinion, and no mother to worry him. +Yet when Parliament reassembled, and Arthur, with an offhand good-by to his +mother, went back to his duties, Marcia in vain suggested to Lady Coryston +that they also should return to St. James's Square, partly to keep an eye +on the backslider, partly with a view to "fittings," Lady Coryston curtly +replied, that Marcia might have a motor whenever she pleased, to take her +up to town, but that she herself meant for another fortnight to stay at +Coryston. Marcia, much puzzled, could only write to James to beg him to +play watch-dog; well aware, however, that if Arthur chose to press the +pace, James could do nothing whatever to stop him. + +On the day before the Glenwilliam meeting Lady Coryston, who had gone out +westward through the park, was returning by motor from the direction of +Martover, and reached her own big and prosperous village of Coryston Major +about seven o'clock. She had been holding conference with a number of +persons in the old borough of Martover, persons who might be trusted to +turn a Radical meeting into a howling inferno, if the smallest chink of +opportunity were given them; and she was conscious of a good afternoon's +work. As she sat majestically erect in the corner of the motor, her brain +was alive with plans. A passion of political--and personal--hatred charged +every vein. She was tired, but she would not admit it. On the contrary, not +a day passed that she did not say to herself that she was in the prime of +life, that the best of her work as a party woman was still to do, and that +even if Arthur did fail her--incredible defection!--she, alone, would +fight to the end, and leave her mark, so far as a voteless woman of great +possessions might, upon the country and its fortunes. + +Yet the thought of Arthur was very bitter to her, and the expectation of +the scene which--within forty-eight hours--she was deliberately preparing +for herself. She meant to win her battle,--did not for one moment admit the +possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she +foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there +were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life +disagreeable. + +It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were +full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as +she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large +crowd, and the motor slowed down. + +"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur. + +"Layin' a stone--or somethin'--my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled +voice. + +"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before +the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that +morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had +screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently +to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow +from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several +black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a +dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had +apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its +supports. The board exhibited the words--"Site of the new Baptist Chapel +for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully +received." + +There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, +but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a +small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor. + +Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son. + +"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously. + +"I can't, my lady--they're too thick." + +By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled +the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A +movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then +toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed +to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor +finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front +of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and +understood what was the matter with the audience. + +Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, +stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his +voice: + +"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among +us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of +us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did +not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in +Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. +"May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her +mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a +check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!" + +He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his +boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the +first "Hip!--hip--" + +"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the +front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in +good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the +motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At +last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back +to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened. + +"Infamous! Outrageous!" + +The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in +which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! +That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly +spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for +twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist +Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the +village. + +And this was Coryston's doing. What taste--what feeling! A mother!--to be +so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was +very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling +dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, +the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength +and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do--more important, +that, than this trumpery business in the village! + +A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia +outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in +a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left +hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light +seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought--"she has just parted +from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment +possessed her--jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt +herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her +daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back +upon her, a rare experience!--and she was conscious of a dull longing for +the husband who had humored her every wish--save one; had been proud of her +cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of +him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last +hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the +end. + +[Illustration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME] + +Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple +as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and +excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence +mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than +an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few +days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a +kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?--how would +it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of +submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In +order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought +up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, +carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their +betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural +sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and +disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of +opinions--his bitter judgment, often, of men--repelled and angered her. +She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such +bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was +but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only +faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a +breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; +nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of +her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what +it had meant. + +And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of +powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by +such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet +it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away +ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a +wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could +not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim +of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and +breathless into every hour of every day they were together. + +On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at +Coryston. Newbury had gone--reluctantly for once--to a diocesan meeting +on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was +evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take +informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife--a +house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's +visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from +town, and strangers were pouring into the district. + +Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and +sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before +this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; +sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. +Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the +bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly +gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile +running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. +This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had +missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort +of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which +had been strangely welcome. + +Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note. + +"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, +his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the +roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely +seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last +to have practically forgotten his presence in the house. + +She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look +of consternation blotting the brightness from her face. + +"I must have the small motor--at once! Can you order it for me?" + +"Certainly. You want it directly?" + +"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, +on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the +side doors of the façade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant +mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. +What could be the matter? + +He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had +placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could +not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her +return. + +"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be +here for dinner. No--thank you!--thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the +chauffeur--"Redcross Farm!--as quick as you can!" + +Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After +a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir +Wilfrid Bury. + +Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay +harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had +been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and +shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a +cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only +think of the note she still held in her hand. + +"Can you come and see me? to-night--at once. Don't bring anybody. I am +alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.--ALICE BETTS." + +This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of +feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"--and trembled. Edward would +not be home till the following day. She must act alone--help alone. The +thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use--but she wished she had +thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her.... + +The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had +strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had +been rising from the west, and massing themselves round the declining sun. +The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder. + +"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted +to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man +came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused +to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms--Marcia +thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his +astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly +round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared. + +"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur +continued, eagerly,--"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the +beasts." + +"You know the farm, Jackson?" + +"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly. +"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice +gentleman. He'll show you everything." + +At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man +fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than +she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood. + +They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern +additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge +of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and +brown, which Marcia had often passed on her drives without understanding in +the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a +substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it +curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain: + +"That's the laboratory, miss--His lordship built that six years ago. And +last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the +speeches--and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal--and there was an American +gentleman who spoke--and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts--next to +that place, Harpenden way--Rothamsted, I think they call it--was most +'ighly thought of in the States--and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's +the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs +'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water +that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em--and the mangel +field--and--" + +"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his +steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm. + +A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her +furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the +window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which +she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was +drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow--but on +the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now +here, now there. How trim everything was!--how solid and prosperous. The +great cattle-shed on the one hand--the sheep-station on the other, with its +pens and hurdles--the fine stone-built laboratory--the fields stretching to +the distance. + +She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A +foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's +room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art" +muslin; photographs in profusion--of ladies in very low dresses and +affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the +corners;--a multitude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large +colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; +muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick +repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping. + +The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the +door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first +bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor +things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, +excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would +naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here +was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, +without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the +slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, +of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a +couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this +time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age +graven round eyes and lips. + +For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts +was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus +present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did +she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis +of her own personal life? + +"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a +chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." +She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, +who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor +falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil +framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. + +"I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, +hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my +mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." + +Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked +out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the +gusts which precede the storm. + +"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. + +"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I +was." + +"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again +out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. +I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among +the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note +in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four +o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with +something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock +the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call +him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. +Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he +wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to +write. I took him some tea, and then--" + +The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia +and laid both hands on the girl's arm. + +"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never +quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was +this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to +Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken +up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So +then--" + +The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into +Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her +dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped +them away, unheeded. + +"So then I told him I had better go. I had brought him nothing but trouble, +and I wasn't worth it. He was angry with me for saying it. I should never +leave him--never--he said--but I must go away then because he had letters +to write. And I was just going, when he came after me, and--and--he took me +in his arms and carried me up-stairs and laid me on the bed and covered me +up warmly. Then he stayed a little while at the foot of the bed looking at +me, and saying queer things to himself--and at last he went down-stairs.... +All day he has been out and about the farm. He has never spoken to me. The +men say he's so strange--they don't like to leave him alone--but he drives +them away when they go to speak to him. And when he didn't come in all day, +I sat down and wrote to you--" + +She paused, mechanically running her little hand up and down the front of +Marcia's cloak. + +"I don't know anybody here. John's lots of friends--but they're not my +friends--and even when they're sorry for us--they know--what I've done--and +they don't want to have much to do with me. You said you'd speak for us to +Mr. Edward--and I know you did--Mr. Edward told John so. You've been kinder +to me than any one else here. So I just wanted to tell _you_--what +I'm going to do. I'm going away--I'm going right away. John won't know, +nobody'll know where I'm gone. But I want you to tell Mr. Newbury--and get +him and Lord William to be kind to John--as they used to be. He'll get over +it--by and by!" + +Then, straightening herself, she drew herself away. + +"I'm not going to the Sisterhood!" she said, defiantly. "I'd sooner die! +You may tell Mr. Newbury I'll live my own life--and I've got my boy. John +won't find me--I'll take care of that. But if I'm not fit for decent people +to touch--there's plenty like me. I'll not cringe to anybody--I'll go where +I'm welcome. So now you understand, don't you--what I wanted to ask you?" + +"No indeed I don't," cried Marcia, in distress. "And you won't--you sha'n't +do anything so mad! Please--please, be patient!--I'll go again to Mr. +Newbury. I shall see him to-morrow!" + +Mrs. Betts shook her head. "No use--no use. It's the only thing to do for +me to take myself off. And no one can stop it. If you were to tell John +now, just what I've said, it wouldn't make any difference. He couldn't stop +me. I'm going!--that's settled. But _he_ sha'n't go. He's got to take +up his work here again. And Mr. Edward must persuade him--and look after +him--and watch him. What's their religion good for, if it can't do that? +Oh, how I _hate_ their religion!" + +Her eyes lit up with passion; whatever touch of acting there might have +been in her monologue till now, this rang fiercely true: + +"Haven't I good reason?" Her hands clenched at the words. "It's that which +has come between us, as well as the farm. Since he's been back here, it's +the old ideas that have got hold of him again. He thinks he's in mortal +sin--he thinks he's damned--and yet he won't--he can't give me up. My poor +old John!--We were so happy those few weeks!--why couldn't they leave +us alone!--That hard old man, Lord William!--and Mr. Edward--who's got +you--and everything he wants besides in the world! There--now I suppose +you'll turn against me too!" + +She stood superbly at bay, her little body drawn up against the wall, her +head thrown back. To her own dismay, Marcia found herself sobbing--against +her will. + +"I'm not against you. Indeed--indeed--I'm not against you! You'll see. I'll +go again to Mr. Newbury--I promise you! He's not hard--he's not cruel--he's +not!..." + +"Hush!" said Mrs. Berts, suddenly, springing forward--"there he is!" And +trembling all over, she pointed to the figure of her husband, standing just +outside the window and looking in upon them. Thunder had been rumbling +round the house during the whole of this scene, and now the rain had +begun. It beat on the bare grizzled head of John Betts, and upon his +weather-beaten cheeks and short beard. + +His expression sent a shudder through Marcia. He seemed to be looking at +them--and yet not conscious of them; his tired eyes met hers, and made no +sign. With a slight puzzled gesture he turned away, back into the pelting +rain, his shoulders bent, his step faltering and slow. + +"Oh! go after him!" said Marcia, imploringly. "Don't trouble about me! I'll +find the motor. Go! Take my cloak!" She would have wrapped it round Mrs. +Betts and pushed her to the door. But the woman stopped her. + +"No good. He wouldn't listen to me. I'll get one of the men to bring him +in. And the servant'll go for your motor." She went out of the room to give +the order, and came back. Then as she saw Marcia under the storm light, +standing in the middle of the room, and struggling with her tears, she +suddenly fell on her knees beside the girl, embracing her dress, with +stifled sobs and inarticulate words of thanks. + +"Make them do something for John. It doesn't matter about me. Let them +comfort John. Then I'll forgive them." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Marion Atherstone sat sewing in the cottage garden. Uncertain weather had +left the grass wet, and she had carried her work-table into the shelter of +a small summer-house, whence the whole plain, drawn in purple and blue on +the pale grounding of its chalk soil, could be seen--east, west, and north. +Serried ranks, line above line, of purplish cloud girded the horizon, each +circle of the great amphitheater rising from its shadowy foundations into +pearly white and shining gray, while the topmost series of all soared in +snowy majesty upon a sea of blue, above the far-spread woods and fields. +From these hills, the Dane in his high clearings had looked out upon the +unbroken forests below, and John Hampden had ridden down with his yeomen to +find death at Chalgrove Field. + +Marion was an Englishwoman to the core; and not ill-read. From this post +of hers, she knew a hundred landmarks, churches, towns, hills, which spoke +significantly of Englishmen and their doings. But one white patch, in +particular, on an upland not three miles from the base of the hills, drew +back her eyes and thoughts perpetually. + +The patch was Knatchett, and she was thinking of Lord Coryston. She had not +seen him for a fortnight; though a stout packet of his letters lay within, +in a drawer reserved to things she valued; but she was much afraid that, as +usual, he had been the center of stormy scenes in the north, and had come +back embittered in spirit. And now, since he had returned, there had been +this defiance of Lady Coryston, and this planting of the Baptist flag under +the very tower of the old church of Coryston Major. Marion Atherstone shook +her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady +Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little +dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the +ample girth of Glenwilliam. + +... Ah!--the blind was going up. Marion had her eyes on a particular window +in the little house to her right. It was the window of Enid Glenwilliam's +room. Though the church clock below had struck eleven, and the bell for +morning service had ceased to ring, Miss Glenwilliam was not yet out +of bed. Marion had stayed at home from church that she might enjoy her +friend's society, and the friend had only just been called. Well, it was +Enid's way; and after all, who could wonder? The excitement of that huge +meeting of the night before was still tingling even in Marion's quiet +Conservative veins. She had not been carried away by Glenwilliam's +eloquence at all; she had thought him a wonderful, tawdry, false man of +genius, not unlikely to bring himself and England to ruin. All the same, he +must be an exhausting man for a daughter to live with; and a daughter who +adored him. She did not grudge Enid her rest. + +Ah, there was the little gate opening! Somehow she had expected the +opener--though he had disappeared abruptly from the meeting the night +before, and had given no promise that he would come. + +Coryston walked up the garden path, looking about him suspiciously. At +sight of Marion he took off his cap; she gave him her hand, and he sat down +beside her. + +"Nobody else about? What a blessing!" + +She looked at him with mild reproach. + +"My father and the Chancellor are gone for a walk. Enid is not yet down." + +"Why? She is perfectly well. If she were a workman's wife and had to get up +at six o'clock, get his breakfast and wash the children, it would do her a +world of good." + +"How do you know? You are always judging people, and it helps nothing." + +"Yes, it does. One must form opinions--or burst. I can tell you, I judged +Glenwilliam last night, as I sat listening to him." + +"Father thought it hardly one of his best speeches," said Marion, +cautiously. + +"Sheer wallowing claptrap, wasn't it! I was ashamed of him, and sick of +Liberalism, as I sat there. I'll go and join the Primrose League." + +Marion lifted her blue eyes and laughed--with her finger on her lip. + +"Hush! She might hear." She pointed to the half-open window on the first +floor. + +"And a good thing too," growled Coryston. "She adores him--and makes +him worse. Why can't he _work_ at these things--or why can't his +secretaries prime him decently! He makes blunders that would disgrace an +undergraduate--and doesn't care a rap--so long as a hall-full of fools +cheer him." + +"You usen't to talk like this!" + +"No--because I had illusions," was the sharp reply. "Glenwilliam was one of +them. Land!--what does he know about land?--what does a miner--who won't +learn!--know about farming? Why, that man--that fellow, John Betts"--he +pointed to the Hoddon Grey woods on the edge of the plain--"whom the +Newburys are driving out of his job, because he picked a woman out of the +dirt--just like these Christians!--John Betts knows more about land in his +little finger than Glenwilliam's whole body! Yet, if you saw them together, +you'd see Glenwilliam patronizing and browbeating him, and Betts not +allowed a look in. I'm sick of it! I'm off to Canada with Betts." + +Marion looked up. + +"I thought it was to be the Primrose League." + +"You like catching me out," said Coryston, grimly. "But I assure you I'm +pretty downhearted." + +"You expect too much," said Marion, softly, distressed as she spoke, to +notice his frayed collar and cuffs, and the tear in his coat pocket. "And," +she added, firmly, "you should make Mrs. Potifer mend your coat." + +"She's another disillusion. She's idle and dirty. And Potifer never does +a stroke of work if he can help it. Moral--don't bother your head about +martyrs. There's generally some excellent reason for martyrizing them." + +He broke off--looking at her with a clouded brow. + +"Marion!" + +She turned with a start, the color flooding her plain, pleasant face. + +"Yes, Lord Coryston!" + +"If you're so critical of my clothes, why don't you come and look after +them and me?" + +She gasped--then recovered herself. + +"I've never been asked," she said, quietly. + +"Asked! Haven't you been scolding and advising me for weeks? Is there a +detail of my private or public life that you don't meddle with--as it +pleases you? Half a dozen times a day when I'm with you, you make me +feel myself a fool or a brute. And then I go home and write you abject +letters--and apologize--and explain. Do you think I'd do it for any other +woman in the world? Do you dare to say you don't know what it means?" + +He brought his threatening face closer to hers, his blue eyes one fiery +accusation. Marion resumed her work, her lip twitching. + +"I didn't know I was both a busybody--and a Pharisee!" + +"Hypocrite!" he said, with energy. His hand leaped out and captured hers. +But she withdrew it. + +"My dear friend--if you wish to resume this conversation--it must be at +another time. I haven't been able to tell you before, I didn't know +it myself till late last night, when Enid told me. Your mother--Lady +Coryston--will be here in half an hour--to see Enid." + +He stared. + +"My mother! So _that's_ what she's been up to!" + +"She seems to have asked Enid some days ago for an interview. My father's +taken Mr. Glenwilliam out of the way, and I shall disappear shortly." + +"And what the deuce is going to happen?" + +Marion replied that she had no idea. Enid had certainly been seeing a great +deal of Arthur Coryston; London, her father reported, was full of talk; and +Miss Atherstone thought that from his manner the Chancellor knew very well +what was going on. + +"And can't stick it?" cried Coryston, his eyes shining. "Glenwilliam has +his faults, but I don't believe he'll want Arthur for a son-in-law--even +with the estates. And of course he has no chance of getting both Arthur and +the estates." + +"Because of your mother?" + +Coryston nodded. "So there's another strong man--a real big +'un!--dependent, like Arthur and me--on the whim of a woman. It'll do +Glenwilliam nothing but good. He belongs to a class that's too fond of +beating its wives. Well, well--so my mother's coming!" He glanced round the +little house and garden. "Look here!" He bent forward peremptorily. "You'll +see that Miss Glenwilliam treats her decently?" + +Marion's expression showed a certain bewilderment. + +"I wouldn't trust that girl!" Coryston went on, with vehemence. "She's got +something cruel in her eyes." + +"Cruel! Why, Lady Coryston's coming--" + +"To trample on her? Of course. I know that. But any fool can see that the +game will be Miss Glenwilliam's. She'll have my mother in a cleft stick. +I'm not sure I oughtn't to be somewhere about. Well, well. I'll march. When +shall we 'resume the conversation,' as you put it?" + +He looked at her, smiling. Marion colored again, and her nervous movement +upset the work-basket; balls of cotton and wool rolled upon the grass. + +"Oh!" She bent to pick them up. + +"Don't touch them!" cried Coryston. She obeyed instantly, while, on hands +and knees, he gathered them up and placed them in her hand. + +"Would you like to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." +His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her +disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up. + +"Now I'm going. Good-by." + +"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather +stifled voice. + +"It's Sunday--so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He +checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and--if +necessary--have a jolly row with Edward Newbury--or his papa. Second, +Blow up Price--my domestic blacksmith--you know!--the socialist apostle +I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and +all--blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him +by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable +called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. +Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for +Arthur--the Radical miller--Martover gent--who's coming to see me at three +this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about +him. Shall have a ripping time with him!" + +"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you +yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass. + +"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A +vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, +good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's +anything left of my mother." + +And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young +lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper +window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston. + +"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as +she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the +summer-house. + +"On the contrary, I sent him away." + +"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?" + +"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with +a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her +eyes--challenging, a little stern,--struck full on her companion. + +Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened +and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and +suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection. + +"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all." + +"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone--and she has a right to it," said +Marion, with emphasis. + +"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, +absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence +while her gaze wandered over the view. + +"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?" + +"How can I, till I know what _she's_ going to say?" laughed Miss +Glenwilliam, teasingly. + +"But of course you know perfectly well." + +"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit +it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled +essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put +up with me?" + +"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow +decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him." + +"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a +deal too much." + +"Are you any nearer caring for him--really--than you were six weeks ago?" + +"He's a very--nice--dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would +be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after +him, now, than it was six weeks ago." + +"Enid!" + +"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little +sides of it--the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up +with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should +love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private +secretary." + +"You would despise him if he were!" + +"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches +for him then--and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear +something?" + +A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible. + +Marion Atherstone rose. + +"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll +see that nobody interrupts you." + +Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came +quickly back again. + +"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't +make a quarrel between them--unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly +kissed the face bending over her. + +"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?" + +Marion departed, silenced. + +Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted +the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the +Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed +into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for +the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic +applause." + +She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed +to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But +her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last +night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so +good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness. + +And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the +Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden. + +"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?" + +Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, +holding out her hand. + +"How do you do, Lady Coryston?" + +The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being +scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed +to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been +gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the +formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that +they had already met in many drawing-rooms. + +Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat. + +"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors." + +"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would +see me." + +"I was delighted--of course." + +There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady +Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with +its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined +mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied +under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, +delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to +the only effect she ever cared to make--the effect of the great lady, in +command--clearly--of all possible resources, while far too well bred to +indulge in display or ostentation. + +Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She +had taken up an ostrich-feather fan--a traditional weapon of the sex--and +waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak. + +"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it +a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?" + +The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the +grass nodded gravely. + +"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to +do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; +and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have +much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be +frank." + +"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!" + +Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder. + +"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal +of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your--your friendship with him has been very +conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with +you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him." + +"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, +she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if +possible, prevent his asking me again." + +"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager. + +"So far." + +"So far? May I ask--does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?" + +"I have as yet said nothing final to him." + +Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, +and then said, with emphasis: + +"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk--at this +moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you +what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage." + +"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her +most girlish voice. + +"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady +Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering +his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, +was sufficiently evident." + +Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her +long fingers were engaged in straightening. + +"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the +present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its +traditions; but that I intend to be--while I live. And I can only regard +a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable--not only for my +son--but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself." + +"And why?" + +Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble +fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers. + +The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks. + +"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different +worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different +antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome +you as a daughter--and because a marriage with you would disastrously +affect the prospects of my son." + +"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, +with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the +same dances." + +Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping +her voice in order. + +"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude." + +"Of course not. But--is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?" + +"Poverty has nothing to do with it--nothing at all. I have never considered +money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall." + +"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the +fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady +in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was +conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker. + +"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, +money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my +son belongs to a family that has fought for its convictions." + +At this the younger lady shot a satiric glance at the elder, which for the +moment interrupted a carefully prepared sentence. + +Enid was thinking of a casual remark of her father's made that morning at +breakfast: "Oh yes, the Corystons are an old family. They were Whigs as +long as there were any bones to pick on that side. Then Pitt bought the +first Lord Coryston--in his earliest batch of peers--with the title and a +fat post--something to do with the navy. That was the foundation of their +money--then came the Welsh coal--et cetera." + +But she kept her recollections to herself. Lady Coryston went on: + +"We have stood for generations for certain principles. We are proud of +them. My husband died in them. I have devoted my life to them. They are +the principles of the Conservative party. Our eldest son, as of course you +know, departed from them. My dear husband did not flinch; and instead of +leaving the estates to Coryston, he left them to me--as trustee for the +political faith he believed in; that faith of which your father has +been--excuse my frankness, it is really best for us both--and is now--the +principal enemy! I then had to decide, when I was left a widow, to whom the +estates were to go on my death. Painful as it was, I decided that my trust +did not allow me to leave them to Coryston. I made Arthur my heir three +months ago." + +"How very interesting!" said the listener, behind the fan. Lady Coryston +could not see her face. + +"But it is only fair to him and to you," Arthur's mother continued, with +increased deliberation, "that I should say frankly, now that this crisis +has arisen, that if you and Arthur marry, it is impossible that Arthur +should inherit his father's estates. A fresh disposition of them will have +to be made." + +Enid Glenwilliam dropped the fan and looked up. Her color had gone. + +"Because--Lady Coryston--I am my father's daughter?" + +"Because you would bring into our family principles wholly at variance with +our traditions--and I should be false to my trust if I allowed it." The +conscious dignity of pose and voice fitted the solemnity of these final +words. + +There was a slight pause. + +"Then--if Arthur married me--he would be a pauper?" said the girl, bending +forward. + +"He has a thousand a year." + +"That's very disturbing! I shall have to consider everything again." + +Lady Coryston moved nervously. + +"I don't understand you." + +"What I _couldn't_ have done, Lady Coryston--would have been to come +into Arthur's family as in any way dependent on his mother!" + +The girl's eyes shone. Lady Coryston had also paled. + +"I couldn't of course expect that you would have any friendly feeling +toward me," she said, after a moment. + +"No--you couldn't--you couldn't indeed!" + +Enid Glenwilliam sprang up, entered the summer-house, and stood over her +visitor, lightly leaning forward, her hands supporting her on a rustic +table that stood between them, her breath fluttering. + +"Yes--perhaps now I could marry him--perhaps now I could!" she repeated. +"So long as I wasn't your dependent--so long as we had a free life of our +own--and knew exactly where we stood, with nothing to fear or to hope--the +situation might be faced. We might hope, too--father and I--to bring +_our_ ideas and _our_ principles to bear upon Arthur. I believe +he would adopt them. He has never had any ideas of his own. You have made +him take yours! But of course it seems inconceivable to you that we should +set any store by _our_ principles. You think all I want is money. +Well, I am like anybody else. I know the value of money. I like money and +luxury, and pretty things. I have been sorely tempted to let Arthur marry +me as he has once or twice proposed, at the nearest registry office, and +present you next day with the _fait accompli_--to take or leave. I +believe you would have surrendered to the _fait accompli_--yes, I +believe you would! Arthur was convinced that, after sulking a little, you +would forgive him. Well, but then--I looked forward--to the months--or +years--in which I should be courting--flattering--propitiating you--giving +up my own ideas, perhaps, to take yours--turning my back on my father--on +my old friends--on my party--for _money_! Oh yes, I should be quite +capable of it. At least, I dare say I should. And I just funked it! I had +the grace--the conscience--to funk it. I apologize for the slang--I can't +express it any other way. And now you come and say: 'Engage yourself to +him--and I'll disinherit him _at once_. That makes the thing look +clean and square!--that tempts the devil in one, or the angel--I don't +know which. I like Arthur. I should get a great many social advantages by +marrying him, whatever you may do or say; and a thousand a year to me looks +a great deal more than it does to you. But then, you see, my father began +life as a pit-boy--Yes, I think it might be done!" + +The speaker raised herself to her full height, and stood with her hands +behind her, gazing at Lady Coryston. + +In the eyes of that poor lady the Chancellor's daughter had suddenly +assumed the aspect of some glittering, avenging fate. At last Lady Coryston +understood something of the power, the spell, there was in this girl +for whom her son had deserted her; at last she perceived, despairingly +perceived, her strange beauty. The long thin mouth, now breathing scorn, +the short chin, and prominent cheekbones denied Enid Glenwilliam any +conventional right indeed to that great word. But the loveliness of the +eyes and hair, of the dark brows, sustaining the broad and delicate +forehead, the pale rose and white of the skin, the setting of the head, her +wonderful tallness and slenderness, these, instinct as the whole woman +was, at the moment, with a passion of defiance, made of her a dazzling and +formidable creature. Lady Coryston beheld her father in her; she seemed to +feel the touch, the terror of Glenwilliam. + +Bewilderment and unaccustomed weakness overtook Lady Coryston. It was some +moments before, under the girl's threatening eyes, she could speak at all. +Then she said, with difficulty: + +"You may marry my son, Miss Glenwilliam--but you do not love him! That is +perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his +happiness and mine, in order--" + +"I don't love him? Ah! that's another story altogether! Do I love him? I +don't know. Honestly, I don't know. I don't believe I am as capable of +falling in love as other girls are--or say they are. I like him, and get on +with him--and I might marry him; I might--have--married him," she repeated, +slowly, "partly to have the sweetness, Lady Coryston, of punishing you for +the slight you offered my father!--and partly for other things. But you +see--now I come to think of it--there is some one else to be considered--" + +The girl dropped into a chair, and looked across the table at her visitor, +with a sudden change of mood and voice. + +"You say you won't have it, Lady Coryston. Well, that doesn't decide it for +me--and it wouldn't decide it for Arthur. But there's some one else won't +have it." + +A pause. Miss Glenwilliam took up the fan again and played with +it--considering. + +"My father came to my room last night," she said, at last, "in order to +speak to me about it. 'Enid,' he said, 'don't marry that man! He's a good +enough fellow--but he'll drive a wedge into our life. We can't find a use +for him--you and I. He'll divide us, my girl--and it isn't worth it--you +don't love him!' And we had a long talk--and at last I told him--I +wouldn't--I _wouldn't_! So you see, Lady Coryston, if I don't marry +your son, it's not because you object--but because my father--whom you +insulted--doesn't wish me to enter your family--doesn't approve of a +marriage with your son--and has persuaded me against it." + +Lady Coryston stared into the face of the speaker, and quailed before the +flash of something primitive and savage in the eyes that met her own. Under +the sting of it, however, she found a first natural and moving word, as she +slowly rose from her seat. + +"You love your father, Miss Glenwilliam. You might remember that I, too, +love my son--and there was never a rough word between us till he knew you." + +She wavered a little, gathering up her dress. And the girl perceived that +she had grown deadly white, and was suddenly ashamed of her own vehemence. +She too rose. + +"I'm sorry, Lady Coryston. I've been a brute. But when I think of my +father, and those who hate him, I see red. I had no business to say some of +the things I have said. But it's no good apologizing. Let me, however, just +say this: Please be careful, Lady Coryston, about your son. He's in love +with me--and I'm very, _very_ sorry for him. Let me write to him +first--before you speak to him. I'll write--as kindly as I can. But I warn +you--it'll hurt him--and he may visit it on you--for all I can say. When +will he be at Coryston?" + +"To-night." + +"I will send a letter over to-morrow morning. Is your car waiting?" + +They moved across the lawn together, not speaking a word. Lady Coryston +entered the car. Enid Glenwilliam made her a low bow, almost a curtsey, +which the elder lady acknowledged; and the car started. + +Enid came back to the summer-house, sat down by the table, and buried her +face in her hands. + +After a little while a hurried step was heard approaching the summer-house. +She looked up and saw her father. The Chancellor's burly form filled up the +door of the little house. His dark, gipsy face looked down with amusement +upon his daughter. + +"Well, Enid, how did you get through? Did she trample on you--did she +scratch and spit? I wager she got as good as she gave? Why, what's the +matter, my girl? Are you upset?" + +Enid got up, struggling for composure. + +"I--I behaved like a perfect fiend." + +"Did you?" The Chancellor's laughter filled the summer-house. "The old +harridan! At last somebody has told her the truth. The idea of her breaking +in upon you here!--to threaten you, I suppose, with all sorts of pains and +penalties, if you married her precious son. You gave her what for. Why, +Enid, what's the matter--don't be a fool, my dear! You don't regret him?" + +"No." He put his arm tenderly round her, and she leaned against him. +Suddenly she drew herself up and kissed him. + +"I shall never marry, father. It's you and I, isn't it, against the world?" + +"Half the world," said Glenwilliam, laughing. "There's a jolly big half on +our side, my dear, and lots of good fellows in it for you to marry." He +looked at her with proud affection. + +She shook her head, slipped her hand in his, and they walked back to the +house together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +The state of mind in which Lady Coryston drove home from the Atherstones' +cottage would have seemed to most people unreasonable. She had +obtained--apparently--everything for which she had set out, and yet there +she was, smarting and bruised through all her being, like one who has +suffered intolerable humiliation and defeat. A woman of her type and class +is so well sheltered as a rule from the roughnesses of life, so accustomed +to the deference of their neighbors, that to be handled as Enid Glenwilliam +had handled her victim, destroys for the time nerve and self-respect. Lady +Coryston felt as if she had been physically as well as morally beaten, and +could not get over it. She sat, white and shaken, in the darkness of a +closed motor, the prey to strange terrors. She would not see Arthur that +night! He was only to return late, and she would not risk it. She must have +a night's rest, indeed, before grappling with him. She was not herself, and +the violence of that extraordinary girl had upset her. Conscious of a very +rapid pulse, she remembered for a moment, unwillingly, certain warnings +that her doctor had given her before she left town--"You are overtaxing +yourself, Lady Coryston--and you badly want a rest." Pure nonsense! She +came of a long-lived stock, persons of sound hearts and lungs, who never +coddled themselves. All the same, she shrank physically, instinctively, +from the thought of any further emotion or excitement that day--till she +had had a good night. She now remembered that she had had practically no +sleep the preceding night. Indeed, ever since the angry scene with Arthur a +fortnight before, she had been conscious of bodily and mental strain. + +Which perhaps accounted for the feeling of irritation with which she +perceived the figure of her daughter standing on the steps of Coryston +House beside Sir Wilfrid Bury. Marcia had come to her that morning with +some tiresome story about the Newburys and the divorced woman Mrs. Betts. +How could she think of such things, when her mind was full of Arthur? Girls +really should be more considerate. + +The car drew up at the steps, and Marcia and Sir Wilfrid awaited it. Even +preoccupied as she was, Lady Coryston could not help noticing that Marcia +was subdued and silent. She asked her mother no questions, and after +helping Lady Coryston to alight, she went quickly into the house. It +vaguely crossed the mother's mind that her daughter was depressed or +annoyed--perhaps with her? But she could not stop to think about it. + +Sir Wilfrid, however, followed Lady Coryston into the drawing-room. + +"What have you been doing?" he asked her, smiling, taking the liberty of an +old friend and co-executor. "I think I guess!" + +She looked at him somberly. + +"She won't marry him! But not a word to Arthur, please--not a word!--till I +give you leave. I have gone through--a great deal." + +Her look of weakness and exhaustion did indeed strike him painfully. He put +out his hand and pressed hers. + +"Well, so far, so good," he said, gravely. "It must be a great relief to +your mind." Then in another and a lower tone he added, "Poor old boy!" + +Lady Coryston made no reply except to say that she must get ready for +luncheon. She left the room just as Sir Wilfrid perceived a rider on a bay +horse approaching through the park, and recognized Edward Newbury. + +"Handsome fellow!" he thought, as he watched him from the window; "and sits +his horse uncommonly well. Why doesn't that girl fly to meet him? They used +to in my days." + +But Newbury dismounted with only a footman to receive him, and Marcia did +not appear till the gong had rung for luncheon. + +Sir Wilfrid's social powers were severely taxed to keep that meal going. +Lady Coryston sat almost entirely silent and ate nothing. Marcia too ate +little and talked less. Newbury indeed had arrived in radiant spirits, +bringing a flamboyant account of Marcia's trousseau which he had extracted +from a weekly paper, and prepared to tease her thereon. But he could +scarcely get the smallest rise out of her, and presently he, too, fell +silent, throwing uneasy glances at her from time to time. Her black hair +and eyes were more than usually striking, by contrast with a very simple +and unadorned white dress; but for beauty, her face required animation; +it could be all but plain in moments of languor or abstraction; and Sir +Wilfrid marveled that a girl's secret instinct did not save her from +presenting herself so unattractively to her lover. + +Newbury, it appeared, had spent the preceding night in what Sir Wilfrid +obstinately called a "monkery"--_alias_ the house of an Anglican +brotherhood or Community--the Community of the Ascension, of which +Newbury's great friend, Father Brierly, was Superior. In requital for +Newbury's teasing of Marcia, Sir Wilfrid would have liked to tease Newbury +a little on the subject of the "monkery." But Newbury most dexterously +evaded him. He would laugh, but not at the hosts he had just quitted; and +through all his bantering good temper there could be felt the throb of some +deep feeling which was not allowed to express itself. "Damned queer eyes!" +was Bury's inward comment, as he happened once to observe Newbury's face +during a pause of silence. "Half in a dream all the time--even when the +fellow's looking at his sweetheart." + +After luncheon Marcia made a sign, and she and Newbury slipped away. They +wandered out beyond the lake into a big wood, where great pools of pink +willow-herb, in its open spaces, caught the light as it struck through the +gray trunks of the beeches. Newbury found a seat for Marcia on a fallen +trunk, and threw himself beside her. The world seemed to have been all +washed by the thunder-storm of the night before; the odors of grass, earth, +and fern were steaming out into the summer air. The wood was alive with the +hum of innumerable insects, which had become audible and dominant with the +gradual silencing of the birds. In the half-cut hay-fields the machines +stood at rest; rarely, an interlaced couple could be dimly seen for a +moment on some distant footpath of the park; sometimes a partridge called +or a jay screamed; otherwise a Sabbath stillness--as it seemed to Marcia, a +Sabbath dreariness--held the scene. + +Newbury put up his arms, drew her down to him, and kissed her passionately. +She yielded; but it was more yielding than response; and again he was +conscious of misgiving as at luncheon. + +"Darling!--is there anything wrong--anything that troubles you?" he said, +anxiously. "Do you think I've forgotten you for one moment, while I've been +away?" + +"Yes; while you were asleep." She smiled shyly, while her fingers caressed +his. + +"Wrong--quite wrong! I dreamed of you both nights. And oh, dearest, I +thought of you last night." + +"Where--when?" Her voice was low--a little embarrassed. + +"In chapel--the chapel at Blackmount--at Benediction." + +She looked puzzled. + +"What is Benediction?" + +"A most beautiful service, though of late origin--which, like fools, we +have let the Romans monopolize. The Bishops bar it, but in private chapels +like our own, or Blackmount, they can't interfere. To me, yesterday +evening"--his voice fell--"it was like the gate of heaven. I longed to have +you there." + +She made no reply. Her brow knitted a little. He went on: + +"Of course a great deal of what is done at places like Blackmount is not +recognized--yet. To some of the services--to Benediction for instance--the +public is not admitted. But the brothers keep every rule--of the strictest +observance. I was present last night at the recitation of the Night +Office--most touching--most solemn! And--my darling!"--he pressed her hand +while his face lit up--"I want to ask you--though I hardly dare. Would you +give me--would you give me the greatest joy you could give me, before our +marriage? Father Brierly--my old friend--would give us both Communion, on +the morning of our wedding--in the little chapel of the Brotherhood, in Red +Street, Soho--just us two alone. Would it be too much for you, too tiring?" +His voice was tenderness itself. "I would come for you at half +past seven--nobody but your mother would know. And then +afterward--afterward!--we will go through with the great ceremony--and the +crowds--and the bridesmaids. Your mother tells me it's to be Henry the +Seventh's chapel--isn't it? But first, we shall have received our Lord, we +two alone, into our hearts--to feed upon Him, forever!" + +There was silence. He had spoken with an imploring gentleness and humility, +yet nevertheless with a tender confidence which did not escape the +listener. And again a sudden terror seized on Marcia--as though behind the +lover, she perceived something priestly, directive, compelling--something +that threatened her very self. She drew herself back. + +"Edward!--ought you--to take things for granted about me--like this?" + +His face, with its "illuminated," exalted look, scarcely changed. + +"I don't take anything for granted, dearest. I only put it before you. I +talked it over with Brierly--he sent you a message--" + +"But I don't know him!" cried Marcia. "And I don't know that I want to know +him. I'm not sure I think as you do, Edward. You assume that I do--but +indeed--indeed--my mind is often in confusion--great confusion--I don't +know what to think--about many things." + +"The Church decides for us, darling--that is the great comfort--the great +strength." + +"But what Church? Everybody chooses his own, it seems to me! And you know +that that Roman priest who was at Hoddon Grey the other day thinks you just +as much in the wrong as--well, as he'd think me!--_me_, even!" She +gave a little tremulous laugh. Then, with a quick movement she sat erect. +Her great, dark eyes fixed him eagerly. "And Edward, I've got something +so different, so very different to talk to you about! I've been so +unhappy--all night, all to-day. I've been pining for you to come--and then +afraid what you'd say--" + +She broke off, her lips parting eagerly, her look searching his. + +And this time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though +a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She hurried on. + +"I went over to see Mrs. Betts, yesterday, Edward. She sent for me. And I +found her half mad--in despair! I just persuaded her to wait till I'd seen +you. But perhaps you've seen her--to-day?" She hung on his answer. + +"Indeed, no." The chill, the alteration in his tone were evident. "I left +Blackmount this morning, after matins, motored home, just saw my father and +mother for a moment--heard nothing--and rode on here as fast as I could. +What is there fresh, dearest? I thought that painful business was +settled. And I confess I feel very indignant with Mrs. Betts for dragging +you--insisting upon dragging you--into it!" + +"How could she help it? She's no friends, Edward! People are very sorry for +him--but they fight shy of her. I dare say it's right--I dare say she's +deserved it--I don't want to know. But oh it's so miserable--so pitiable! +She's _going_!--she's made up her mind to that--she's going. That's +what she wanted to tell me--and asked that I should tell you." + +"She could do nothing better for herself, or him," said Newbury, firmly. + +"But she's not going, in the way you proposed! Oh no. She's going to slip +away--to hide! He's not to know where she is--and she implores you to keep +him here--to comfort him--and watch over him." + +"Which of course we should do." + +The quiet, determined voice sent a shiver through Marcia. She caught +Newbury's hand in hers, and held it close. + +"Yes, but Edward!--listen!--it would kill them both. His mind seems to be +giving way. I got a letter from her again this morning, inclosing one from +their doctor. And she--she says if she does go, if decent people turn her +out, she'll just go back to people like herself--who'll be kind to her. +Nothing will induce her to go to the Cloan Sisters." + +"She must, of course, be the judge of that," said Newbury, coldly. + +"But you can't allow it!--you _can't_!--the poor, poor things!" cried +Marcia. "I saw him too, Edward--I shall never forget it!" And with a +growing excitement she gave a full account of her visit to the farm, of +her conversation with Mrs. Betts, of that gray, grief-stricken face at the +window. + +"He's fifty-two. How can he start again? He's just torn between his +work--and her. And if she goes away and hides from him, it'll be the last +straw. He believes he saved her from a bad life--and now he'll think +that he's only made things worse. And he's ill--his brain's had a shake. +Edward--dear Edward!--let them stay!--for my sake, let them stay!" + +All her soul was in her eyes. She had never been more winning--more lovely. +She placed her hands on his shoulders as he sat beside her, and leaned her +soft cheek against his. + +"Do you mean--let them stay on at the Farm?" he asked, after a pause, +putting his arms round her. + +"Couldn't they? They could live so quietly. She would hardly ever leave the +house--and so long as he does his work--his scientific work--need anything +else trouble you? Need you have any other relations with them at all? +Wouldn't everybody understand--wouldn't everybody know you'd done it for +pity?" + +Again a pause. Then he said, with evident difficulty: "Dear Marcia--do you +ever think of my father in this?" + +"Oh, mayn't I go!--and _beg_ Lord William--" + +"Ah, but wait a minute. I was going to say--My father's an old man. This +has hit him hard. It's aged him a good deal. He trusted Betts implicitly, +as he would himself. And now--in addition--you want him to do something +that he feels to be wrong." + +"But Edward, they _are_ married! Isn't it a tyranny"--she brought the +word out bravely--"when it causes so much suffering!--to insist on more +than the law does?" + +"For us there is but one law--the law of Christ!" And then, as a flash of +something like anger passed through his face, he added, with an accent of +stern conviction: "For us they are _not_ married--and we should be +conniving at an offense and a scandal, if we accepted them as married +persons. Oh, dear Marcia, why do you make me say these things? I +_can't_ discuss them with you!" he repeated, in a most real distress. + +She raised herself, and moved a little further from him. A passionate +hopelessness--not without resentment--was rising in her. + +"Then you won't try to persuade your father--even for my sake, Edward?" + +He made no reply. She saw his lip tremble, but she knew it was only because +he could not bear to put into words the refusal behind. + +The silence continued. Marcia, raising her head, looked away into the green +vistas of the wood, while the tears gathered slowly in her eyes. He watched +her, in a trouble no less deep. At last she said--in a low, lingering +voice: + +"And I--I couldn't marry--and be happy--with the thought always--of what +had happened to them--and how--you couldn't give me--what I asked. I have +been thinking it out for hours and hours. I'm afraid, Edward--we--we've +made a great mistake!" + +She drew her hand away, and looked at him, very pale and trembling, yet +with something new--and resolute--in her aspect. + +"Marcia!" It was a sound of dismay. + +"Oh! it was my fault!"--and she clasped her hands in a gesture at once +childish and piteous--"I somehow knew from the beginning that you thought +me different from what I am. It was quite natural. You're much older than +I, and of course--of course--you thought that if--if I loved you--I'd be +guided by you--and think as you wish. But Edward, you see I've had to live +by myself--and think for myself--more than other girls--because mother was +always busy with other things--that didn't concern me--that I didn't care +about--and I was left alone--and had to puzzle out a lot of things that +I never talked about. I'm obstinate--I'm proud. I must believe for +myself--and not because some one else does. I don't know where I shall come +out. And that's the strange thing! Before we were engaged, I didn't know I +had a mind!" She smiled at him pitifully through her tears. "And ever since +we've been engaged--this few weeks--I've been doing nothing but think and +think--and all the time it's been carrying me away from you. And now this +trouble. I _couldn't_"--she clenched her hand with a passionate +gesture--"I _couldn't_ do what you're doing. It would kill me. You +seem to be obeying something outside--which you're quite sure of. But if +_I_ drove those two people to despair, because I thought something +was wrong that they thought right, I should never have any happiness in +my heart--my _own heart_--again. Love seems to me everything!--being +kind--not giving pain. And for you there's something greater--what the +Church says--what the Bible says. And I could never see that. I could never +agree. I could never submit. And we should be miserable. You'd think I was +wicked--and I--well!"--she panted a little, trying for her words--"there +are ugly--violent--feelings in me sometimes. I couldn't hate +_you_--but--Edward--just now--I felt I could hate--what you believe!" + +The sudden change in his look smote her to the heart. She held out her +hands, imploring. + +"Forgive me! Oh, do forgive me!" + +During her outburst he had risen, and was now leaning against a young tree +beside her, looking down upon her--white and motionless. He had made no +effort to take her hands, and they dropped upon her knee. + +"This is terrible!" he said, as though to himself, and +half-consciously--"terrible!" + +"But indeed--indeed--it's best." Her voice, which was little more than a +whisper, was broken by a sob. She buried her face in the hands he had left +untaken. + +The minutes seemed endless till he spoke again; and then it was with a +composure which seemed to her like the momentary quiet that may come--the +sudden furling of the winds--in the very midst of tempest. She divined the +tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not +dared to watch it. + +"Marcia--is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you +to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time +to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that--I should +influence you?" + +"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of +myself--now. This has made me know myself--as I never did. I should wound +and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard--and bad." + +Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind, +as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images +which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the +silences, more active far than speech, which determine life. + +At the end of it, he came to sit beside her. + +"Then we must give it up--we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness +you gave me--this little while. I pray God to bless you--now and forever." + +Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time. +She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him. He looked at it +with a sad smile, pressed his lips to it, and then stooping down, he took a +stick lying by the log, and scooped out a deep hole in the mossy, fibrous +earth. Into it he dropped the ring, covering it again with all the leafy +"rubble and wreck" of the wood. He covered his eyes for a moment, and rose. + +"Let me take you home. I will write to Lady Coryston to-night." + +They walked silently through the wood, and to the house. Never, in her +whole life, had Marcia felt so unhappy. And yet, already, she recognized +what she had done as both inevitable and past recall. + +They parted, just with a lingering look into each other's eyes, and a +piteous murmur from her: "I'm sorry!--oh, I'm _sorry_!" + +At the moment when Marcia and Newbury were crossing the formal garden +on the west front of the house, one of two persons in Lady Coryston's +sitting-room observed them. + +These persons were--strange to say--Lady Coryston and her eldest son. Lady +Coryston, after luncheon, had felt so seriously unwell that she had retired +to her sitting-room, with strict injunctions that she must be left alone. +Sir Wilfrid and Lester started on a Sunday walk; Marcia and Newbury had +disappeared. + +The house, through all its innumerable rooms and corridors, sank into deep +silence. Lady Coryston was lying on her sofa, with closed eyes. All +the incidents of her conversation with Enid Glenwilliam were running +perpetually through her mind--the girl's gestures and tones--above all the +words of her final warning. + +After all it was not she--his mother--who had done it. Without her it would +have happened all the same. She found herself constantly putting up this +plea, as though in recurrent gusts of fear. Fear of whom?--of Arthur? What +absurdity! Her proud spirit rebelled. + +And yet she knew that she was listening--listening in dread--for a footstep +in the house. That again was absurd. Arthur was staying with friends on the +further side of the country, and was to leave them after dinner by motor. +He could not be home till close on midnight; and there would be no chance +of her seeing him--unless she sent for him--till the following morning, +after the arrival of the letter. _Then_--she must face him. + +But still the footstep haunted her imagination, and the remembrance of him +as he had stood, light and buoyant, on the floor of the House of Commons, +making his maiden speech. In April--and this was July. Had that infatuation +begun even then, which had robbed her of her dearest--her Benjamin? + +She fell into a restless sleep after a while, and woke suddenly, in alarm. +There was somebody approaching her room--evidently on tiptoe. Some one +knocking--very gently. She sat up, trembling. "Come in!" + +The door opened--and there was Coryston. + +She fell back on her cushions, astonished and annoyed. + +"I said I was not to be disturbed, Coryston." + +He paused on the threshold. + +"Am I disturbing you? Wouldn't you like me to read to you--or something?" + +His tone was so gentle that she was disarmed--though still annoyed. + +"Come in. I may perhaps point out that it's a long time since you've come +to see me like this, Coryston." + +"Yes. Never mind. What shall I read?" + +She pointed to a number of the _Quarterly_ that was lying open, and to +an article on "The later years of Disraeli." + +Coryston winced. He knew the man who had written it, and detested him. But +he sat down beside her, and began immediately to read. To both of them his +reading was a defense against conversation, and yet to both of them, after +a little while, it was pleasant. + +Presently indeed he saw that it had soothed her and that in spite of her +efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the +book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its +setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and +helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these +last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy +softness--as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human +spectacle--invaded and transformed his whole expression; his thin body +relaxed; his hands dropped at his side. The dead quiet of the house also +oppressed him--like a voice--an omen. + +He knew that she had seen Enid Glenwilliam that morning. A little note +from Marion Atherstone that afternoon spoke anxiety and sympathy. "Enid +confesses she was violent. I am afraid it was a painful scene." And now +there was Arthur to be faced--who would never believe, of course, but that +his mother had done it. + +A movement in the garden outside diverted his attention. He looked up and +saw two figures--Marcia and Newbury. A sight which roused in him afresh--on +the instant--all his fiercest animosities. That fellow!--and his creed! +That old hide-bound inquisitor, his father! + +Well!--he peered at them--has she got anything whatever out of young +Tartuffe? Not she! He knew the breed. He rose discreetly, so as not to +wake Lady Coryston, and standing by the window, he watched them across the +garden, and saw their parting. Something in their demeanor struck him. "Not +demonstrative anyway," he said to himself, with a queer satisfaction. + +He sat down again, and tossing the _Quarterly_ away, he took up a +volume of Browning. But he scarcely read a line. His mind was really +possessed by the Betts' story, and by the measures that might be +taken--Marcia or no Marcia!--to rouse the country-side against the +Newburys, and force them to bow to public opinion in the matter of this +tragedy. He himself had seen the two people concerned, again, that +morning--a miserable sight! Neither of them had said anything further to +him of their plans. Only Mrs. Betts had talked incoherently of "waiting to +hear from Miss Coryston." Poor soul!--she might wait. + +[Illustration: HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE] + +Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage +outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia! + +He opened the door. + +"Don't come in. Mother's asleep." + +Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood +on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the +instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to +her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She +turned and beckoned to Coryston. + +"Come with me--a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading +from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as +children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm. + +"Coryston--I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my +engagement." + +"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!" + +He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped +back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment. + +"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never +understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear +it. What's wrong with mother?" + +"She's knocked over--by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this +morning." + +He described the situation. Marcia showed but a languid interest. + +"Poor mother!" she said, absently. "Then I won't bother her with my +affairs--till to-morrow. Don't tell her anything, Corry. Good-by." + +"I say, Marcia--old woman--don't be so fierce with me. You took me by +surprise--" he muttered, uncomfortably. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nobody in this world--seems to be able to +understand anybody else--or make allowances for anybody else. Good-by." + +Coryston had long since departed. Lady Coryston had gone to bed, seeing +no one, and pleading headache. Marcia, too, had deserted Sir Wilfrid and +Lester after dinner, leaving Sir Wilfrid to the liveliest and dismalest +misgivings as to what might have been happening further to the Coryston +family on this most inexplicable and embarrassing day. + +Marcia was sitting in her room by the open window. She had been writing a +long letter to Newbury, pouring out her soul to him. All that she had been +too young and immature to say to him face to face, she had tried to say to +him in these closely written and blotted pages. To write them had brought +relief, but also exhaustion of mind and body. + +The summer night was sultry and very still. Above a bank of purple cloud, +she looked into depths of fathomless azure, star-sprinkled, with a light in +the southeast prophesying moonrise. Dark shapes of woods--the distant +sound of the little trout-stream, where it ran over a weir--a few notes of +birds--were the only sounds; otherwise the soul was alone with itself. Once +indeed she heard a sudden burst of voices far overhead, and a girl's +merry laugh. One of the young servants no doubt--on the top floor. How +remote!--and yet how near. + +And far away over those trees was Newbury, smarting under the blow she had +given him--suffering--suffering. That poor woman, too, weeping out her last +night, perhaps, beside her husband. What could she do for her--how could +she help her? Marcia sat there hour after hour, now lost in her own grief, +now in that of others; realizing through pain, through agonized sympathy, +the energy of a fuller life. + +She went to bed, and to sleep--for a few hours--toward morning. She was +roused by her maid, who came in with a white face of horror. + +"Oh, miss!" + +"What is the matter?" + +Marcia sat up in bed. Was her mother ill?--dead? + +The girl stammered out her ghastly news. Briggs the head gardener had just +brought it. The head foreman at Redcross Farm going his rounds in the +early hours, had perceived a light burning in the laboratory. The door was +locked, but on forcing his way in, he had come suddenly on a spectacle of +horror. John Betts was sitting--dead--in his chair, with a bullet wound in +the temple; Mrs. Betts was on a stool beside him, leaning against his knee. +She must have found him dead, have taken up the revolver, as it had dropped +from his hand, and after an interval, long or short, have deliberately +unfastened her dress--The bullet had passed through her heart, and death +had been a matter of seconds. On the table was lying a scrap of paper on +which were the words in John Betts's handwriting: "Mad--forgive." And +beside it a little twisted note, addressed to "Miss Marcia Coryston." The +foreman had given it to Briggs. Her maid placed it in Marcia's hands. + +She tried to read it, but failed. The girl beside her saw her slip back, +fainting, on her pillows. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +It was the old housekeeper at Coryston, one Mrs. Drew, who had been the +presiding spirit of the house in all its domestic aspects for some thirty +years, who came at the summons of Marcia's frightened maid, and helped the +girl to revive her mistress, without alarming Lady Coryston. And before the +news could reach her mother in other ways, Marcia herself went in to tell +her what she must know. + +Lady Coryston had had a bad night, and was sitting up in bed gazing +straight before her, her gaunt hands lying listlessly on a pile of letters +she had not yet opened. When Marcia came in, a white ghost, still shivering +under nervous shock, her mother looked at her in sudden dismay. She sprang +forward in bed. + +"What!--Marcia!--have you seen Arthur?" + +Marcia shook her head. + +"It's not Arthur, mother!" + +And standing rigid beside her mother's bed, she told her news, so far as +those piteous deaths at Redcross Farm were concerned. Of her own position, +and of the scene which had passed between herself and Newbury the preceding +day, she said not a word. + +On the facts presented to her, Lady Coryston was first bewildered, then +irritated. Why on earth should Marcia take this morbid and extravagant +interest in the affairs of such people? They were not even tenants of the +Coryston estates! It was monstrous that she should have taken them up +at all, and most audacious and unbecoming that she should have tried +to intercede for them with the Newburys, as she understood, from her +daughter's hardly coherent story, had been the case. And now, she +supposed, as Marcia had actually been so foolish, so headstrong, as to go +herself--without permission either from her mother or her betrothed--to +see these two people at the farm, the very day before this horrible thing +happened, she might have to appear at the inquest. Most improper and +annoying! + +However, she scarcely expressed her disapproval aloud with her usual +trenchancy. In the first place, Marcia's tremulous state made it difficult. +In the next, she was herself so far from normal that she could not, after +the first few minutes, keep her attention fixed upon the matter at all. She +began abruptly to question Marcia as to whether she had seen Arthur the +night before--or that morning? + +"I had gone up-stairs before he arrived last night--and this morning he's +not yet down," said the girl, perfunctorily, as though she only answered +the question with her lips, without attaching any real meaning to it. Then +her mother's aspect, which on her entrance she had scarcely noticed, struck +her with a sudden and added distress. + +"You don't look well, mother. Don't come down to-day." + +"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, +sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before +he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do +is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing +to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And +I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible +thing at all--without coming to me first." + +"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren't you--aren't you sorry +for those two people?--and don't you understand that I--I hoped I might +have helped them?" + +At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston +frowned. + +"Certainly, I'm sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can't stand any extra +strain this morning. We'll talk about it again when you're more composed. +Now go and lie down." + +She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a +new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was +called back. + +"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs +to let me know." + +"Yes, mother." + +As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia's tired mind +immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult +of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had +come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful +world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, +and yet within a stone's-throw of those who yearned to give them both. + +She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a +short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs. +In the central hall, a vast pillared space, crowded with statuary and +flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the +newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone. + +He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her +face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with +such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister. + +She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable +child--saying under her breath: + +"You know--I saw them--the night before last?" + +"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?" +For he saw she had a letter in her hand. + +"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I'll go to the +library." + +She went blindly along the passages to the library, hearing and flying from +the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she passed. When +Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of +grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further +news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, +had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the +discovery of the tragedy. + +"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay +with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the +evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her +sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised +you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the +laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute +depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words +that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the +shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, +which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to +bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back +again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning. +How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be +guessed." + +Marcia's trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out +a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read: + +"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have +often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can't stay behind. Will you +please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn't met again--" + +It ended incoherently in blots and smudges. + +"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the +letter. It was a word of sudden compassion wrested from him by the sight +of Marcia's intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library +chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew +from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering +words of comfort. All consciousness of sex dropped away; the sharp-chinned +face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the noble brow +under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied +tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she +gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in +this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this attitude +of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but +that of a passing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his +voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence +with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for +months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on +whom to lean. + +But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of +Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say +with energy: "I don't want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could +only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world. + +But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, +and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur. + +Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just +dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston's visit to the +farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her. + +"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How +_abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!" + +"I couldn't help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the +discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a +message." + +[Illustration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN] + +Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy. + +"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks +of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and +it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the +arrival of a letter--" + +"From Enid Glenwilliam?" + +"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part +the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature +appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor +ears--But here he is!" + +Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the +library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face +wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features +and receding chin. + +"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you've been getting into. Think, my +dear, you'd have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and +Newbury didn't agree. I've just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed +he'd set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it. +_He's_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I +say--mother is late!" + +He looked round the hall imperiously. + +Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply. +Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some +message. + +"Arthur, remember that your sister's had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, +sternly. + +"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you'll have to +appear at the inquest--don't see how you can get out of it. You should +have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn't want you to. And +what's this they say about a letter?" + +His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in +dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; +but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur. + +Marcia's hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the +letter was. + +"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly. + +"You'd better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you." + +He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand +dropped. + +"Oh, well, if you're going to take no one's advice but your own, I suppose +you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're +a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of +it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for the +little woman, though." + +And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all +the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the +glass and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry ejaculation, +approached Marcia. + +"My dear, your brother isn't himself!--else he could never have spoken so +unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to +the police." + +She held it out to him obediently. + +Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute. +When he returned, it was to say, with lips that twitched a little in his +smooth-shaven actor's face: + +"Most touching! If one could only have known! But dear Marcia, I hope +it's not true--I hope to God, it's not true!--that you've quarreled with +Newbury?" + +Marcia was standing with her head thrown back against the high marble +mantelpiece. The lids drooped over her eyes. + +"I don't know," she said, in a faint voice. "I don't know. Oh no, not +_quarreled_--" + +Sir Wilfrid looked at her with a fatherly concern; took her limp hand and +pressed it. + +"Stand by him, dear, stand by him! He'll suffer enough from this--without +losing you." + +Marcia did not answer. Lester had returned to the hall, and he and Bury +then got from her, as gently as possible, a full account of her two +interviews with Mrs. Betts. Lester wrote it down, and Marcia signed it. The +object of the two men was to make the police authorities acquainted with +such testimony as Marcia had to give, while sparing her if possible an +appearance at the inquest. While Lester was writing, Sir Wilfrid threw +occasional scathing glances toward the distant Arthur, who seemed to be +alternately pacing up and down and reading the newspapers. But the young +man showed no signs whatever of doing or suggesting anything further to +help his sister. + +Sir Wilfrid perceived at once how Marcia's narrative might be turned +against the Newburys, round whom the hostile feeling of a whole +neighborhood was probably at that moment rising into fury. Was there ever a +more odious, a more untoward situation! + +But he could not be certain that Marcia understood it so. He failed, +indeed, altogether, to decipher her mind toward Newbury; or to get at the +truth of what had happened between them. She sat, very pale, and piteously +composed; answering the questions they put to her, and sometimes, +though rarely, unable to control a sob, which seemed to force its way +unconsciously. At the end of their cross-examination, when Sir Wilfrid was +ready to start for Martover, the police headquarters for the district, she +rose, and said she would go back to her room. + +"Do, do, dear child!" Bury threw a fatherly arm round her, and went with +her to the foot of the stairs. "Go and rest--sleep if you can." + +As Marcia moved away there was a sudden sound at the end of the hall. +Arthur had run hurriedly toward the door leading to the outer vestibule. He +opened it and disappeared. Through the high-arched windows to the left, a +boy on a bicycle could be seen descending the long central avenue leading +to the fore-court. + +It was just noon. The great clock set in the center of the eastern façade +had chimed the hour, and as its strokes died away on the midsummer air +Marcia was conscious, as her mother had been the preceding afternoon, of an +abnormal stillness round her. She was in her sitting-room, trying to write +a letter to Mrs. Betts's sister about the boy mentioned in his mother's +last words. He was not at the farm, thank God!--that she knew. His +stepfather had sent him at Easter to a good preparatory school. + +It seemed to help her to be doing this last poor service to the dead woman. +And yet in truth she scarcely knew what she was writing. Her mind was torn +between two contending imaginations--the thought of Mrs. Betts, sitting +beside her dead husband, and waiting for the moment of her own death; and +the thought of Newbury. Alternately she saw the laboratory at night--the +shelves of labeled bottles and jars--the tables and chemical apparatus--the +electric light burning--and in the chair the dead man, with the bowed +figure against his knee:--and then--Newbury--in his sitting-room, amid +the books and portraits of his college years--the crucifix over the +mantelpiece--the beautiful drawings of Einsiedeln--of Assisi. + +Her heart cried out to him. It had cried out to him in her letter. The +thought of the agony he must be suffering tortured her. Did he blame +himself? Did he remember how she had implored him to "take care"? Or was it +all still plain to him that he had done right? She found herself praying +with all her strength that he might still feel he could have done no other, +and that what had happened, because of his action, had been God's will, and +not merely man's mistake. She longed--sometimes--to throw her arms round +him, and comfort him. Yet there was no passion in her longing. All that +young rising of the blood seemed to have been killed in her. But she would +never draw back from what she had offered him--never. She would go to him, +and stand by him--as Sir Wilfrid had said--if he wanted her. + +The gong rang for luncheon. Marcia rose unwillingly; but she was still more +unwilling to make her feelings the talk of the household. As she neared the +dining-room she saw her mother approaching from the opposite side of +the house. Lady Coryston walked feebly, and her appearance shocked her +daughter. + +"Mother!--do let me send for Bryan!" she pleaded, as they met--blaming +herself sharply the while for her own absorption and inaction during the +morning hours. "You don't look a bit fit to be up." + +Lady Coryston replied in a tone which forbade discussion that she was quite +well, and had no need whatever of Dr. Bryan's attendance. Then she turned +to the butler, and inquired if Mr. Arthur was in the house. + +"His motor came round, my lady, about twelve o'clock. I have not seen him +since." + +The lunch passed almost in complete silence between the two ladies. Lady +Coryston was informed that Sir Wilfrid and Lester had gone to Martover in +connection with Marcia's share in the events at Redcross Farm. "They hope I +needn't appear," said Marcia, dully. + +"I should rather think not!" + +Lady Coryston's indignant tone seemed to assume that English legal +institutions were made merely to suit the convenience of the Coryston +family. Marcia had enough of Coryston in her to perceive it. But she said +nothing. + +As they entered the drawing-room after luncheon she remembered--with a +start. + +"Mother--I forgot!--I'm so sorry--I dare say it was nothing. But I think a +letter came for Arthur just before twelve--a letter he was expecting. At +least I saw a messenger-boy come down the avenue. Arthur ran out to meet +him. Then I went up-stairs, and I haven't seen him since." + +Lady Coryston had turned whiter than before. She groped for a chair near +and seated herself, before she recovered sufficient self-possession +to question her daughter as to the precise moment of the messenger's +appearance, the direction from which he arrived, and so forth. + +But Marcia knew no more, and could tell no more. Nor could she summon up +any curiosity about her brother, possessed and absorbed as her mind was by +other thoughts and images. But in a vague, anxious way she felt for her +mother; and if Lady Coryston had spoken Marcia would have responded. + +And Lady Coryston would have liked to speak, first of all to scold Marcia +for forgetting her message, and then to confide in her--insignificant as +the daughter's part in the mother's real life and thoughts had always been. +But she felt physically incapable of bearing the emotion which might spring +out upon her from such a conversation. It was as though she possessed--and +knew she possessed--a certain measured strength; just enough--and no +more--to enable her to go through a conversation which _must_ be +faced. She had better not waste it beforehand. Sometimes it occurred to +her that her feeling toward this coming interview was wholly morbid and +unnatural. How many worse things had she faced in her time! + +But reasoning on it did not help her--only silence and endurance. After +resting a little in the drawing-room she went up to her sitting-room again, +refusing Marcia's company. + +"Won't you let me come and make you comfortable?--if you're going to rest, +you'll want a shawl and some pillows," said the girl, as she stood at the +foot of the staircase, wistfully looking after her. + +But Lady Coryston shook her head. + +"Thank you--I don't want anything." + + * * * * * + +So--for Marcia--there was nothing to be done with these weary hours--but +wait and think and weep! She went back to her own sitting-room, and +lingeringly put Newbury's letters together, in a packet, which she sealed; +in case--well, in case--nothing came of her letter of the morning. They had +been engaged not quite a month. Although they had met almost every day, yet +there were many letters from him; letters of which she felt anew the power +and beauty as she reread them. Yet from that power and beauty, the natural +expression of his character, she stood further off now than when she had +first known him. The mystery indeed in which her nascent love had wrapped +him had dropped away. She knew him better, she respected him infinitely; +and all the time--strangely, inexplicably--love had been, not growing, but +withering. + +Meanwhile, into all her thoughts about herself and Newbury there rushed at +recurrent intervals the memory, the overwhelming memory, of her last sight +of John and Alice Betts. That gray face in the summer dusk, beyond the +window, haunted her; and the memory of those arms which had clung about her +waist. + +Was there a beyond?--where were they?--those poor ghosts! All the riddles +of the eternal Sphinx leaped upon Marcia--riddles at last made real. +Twenty-four hours ago, two brains, two hearts, alive, furiously alive, with +human sorrow and human revolt. And now? Had that infinitely pitiful Christ +in whom Newbury believed, received the two tormented souls?--were they +comforted--purged--absolved? Had they simply ceased to be--to feel--to +suffer? Or did some stern doom await them--still--after all the suffering +here? A shudder ran through the girl, evoking by reaction the memory of +immortal words--"_Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved +much_." She fed herself on the divine saying; repressing with all her +strength the skeptical, pessimistic impulses that were perhaps natural to +her temperament, forcing herself, as it were, for their sakes, to hope and +to believe. + +Again, as the afternoon wore away, she was weighed down by the surrounding +silence. No one in the main pile of building but her mother and herself. +Not a sound, but the striking of the great gilt clock outside. From her own +room she could see the side windows of her mother's sitting-room; and once +she thought she perceived the stately figure passing across them. But +otherwise Lady Coryston made no sign; and her daughter dared not go to her +without permission. + +Why did no letter come for her, no reply? She sat at her open windows for a +time, watching the front approaches, and looking out into a drizzling rain +which veiled the afternoon. When it ceased she went out--restlessly--to the +East Wood--the wood where they had broken it off. She lay down with her +face against the log--a prone white figure, among the fern. The buried +ring--almost within reach of her hand--seemed to call to her like a living +thing. No!--let it rest. + +If it was God's will that she should go back to Edward, she would make him +a good wife. But her fear, her shrinking, was all there still. She prayed; +but she did not know for what. + +Meanwhile at Redcross Farm, the Coroner was holding his inquiry. The facts +were simple, the public sympathy and horror profound. Newbury and Lord +William had given their evidence amid a deep and, in many quarters, hostile +silence. The old man, parchment-pale, but of an unshaken dignity, gave a +full account of the efforts--many and vain--that had been made both by +himself and his son to find Betts congenial work in another sphere and to +persuade him to accept it. + +"We had nothing to do with his conscience, or with his private affairs--in +themselves. All we asked was that we should not be called on to recognize +a marriage which in our eyes was not a marriage. Everything that we could +have done consistently with that position, my son and I may honestly say we +have done." + +Sir Wilfrid Bury was called, to verify Marcia's written statement, and Mrs. +Betts's letter was handed to the Coroner, who broke down in reading it. +Coryston, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, watched the +countenances of the two Newburys while it was being read, with a frowning +attention. + +When the evidence was over, and the jury had retired, Edward Newbury took +his father to the carriage which was waiting. The old man, so thin and +straight, from his small head and narrow shoulders to his childishly small +feet, leaned upon his son's arm, and apparently saw nothing around him. A +mostly silent throng lined the lane leading to the farm. Half-way stood the +man who had come down to lecture on "Rational Marriage," surrounded by a +group of Martover Socialists. From them rose a few hisses and groans as the +Newburys passed. But other groups represented the Church Confraternities +and clubs of the Newbury estate. Among them heads were quietly bared as the +old man went by, or hands were silently held out. Even a stranger would +have realized that the scene represented the meeting of two opposing +currents of thought and life. + +Newbury placed his father in the carriage, which drove off. He then went +back himself to wait for the verdict. + +As he approached the door of the laboratory in which the inquiry had been +held, Coryston emerged. + +Newbury flushed and stopped him. Coryston received it as though it had been +the challenge of an enemy. He stepped back, straightening himself fiercely. +Newbury began: + +"Will you take a message from me to your sister?" + +A man opened the door in front a little way. + +"Mr. Edward, the jury are coming back." + +The two men went in; Coryston listened with a sarcastic mouth to the +conventional verdict of "unsound mind" which drapes impartially so many +forms of human ill. And again he found himself in the lane with Newbury +beside him. + +"One more lie," he said, violently, "to a jury's credit!" + +Newbury looked up. It was astonishing what a mask he could make of his +face, normally so charged--over-charged--with expression. + +"What else could it have been? But this is no time or place for us to +discuss our differences, Coryston--" + +"Why not!" cried Coryston, who had turned a dead white. "'Our differences,' +as you call them, have led to _that_!" He turned and flung out a thin +arm toward the annex to the laboratory, where the bodies were lying. "It is +time, I think, that reasonable men should come to some understanding about +'differences' that can slay and madden a pair of poor hunted souls, as +these have been slain!" + +"'Hunted?' What do you mean?" said Newbury, sternly, while his dark eyes +took fire. + +"Hunted by the Christian conscience!--that it might lie comfortable o' +nights," was the scornful reply. + +Newbury said nothing for a few moments. They emerged on the main road, +crossed it, and entered the Hoddon Grey park. Here they were alone, out of +sight of the crowd returning from the inquest to the neighboring village. +As they stepped into one of the green rides of the park they perceived a +motorcar descending the private road which crossed it a hundred yards away. +A man was driving it at a furious pace, and Coryston clearly recognized his +brother Arthur. He was driving toward Coryston. Up to the moment when the +news of the farm tragedy had reached him that morning, Coryston's mind had +been very full of what seemed to him the impending storm between his mother +and Arthur. Since then he had never thought of it, and the sight of his +brother rushing past, making for Coryston, no doubt, from some unknown +point, excited but a moment's recollection, lost at once in the emotion +which held him. + +Newbury struck in, however, before he could express it further; in the same +dry and carefully governed voice as before. + +"You are Marcia's brother, Coryston. Yesterday morning she and I were still +engaged to be married. Yesterday afternoon we broke it off--although--since +then--I have received two letters from her--" + +He paused a moment, but soon resumed, with fresh composure. + +"Those letters I shall answer to-night. By that time--perhaps--I shall know +better--what my future life will be." + +"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do +I want to know!" + +Newbury gave him a look of wonder. + +"I thought you were out for justice--and freedom of conscience?" he said, +slowly. "Is the Christian conscience--alone--excepted? Freedom for every +one else--but none for us?" + +"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston +panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly +in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you +Catholics--Anglican or Roman--want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it +you!" + +"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us +down--which of course you could do with ease--you would destroy all that +you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we +had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. +We stand face to face--we shall stand face to face--while the world lasts." + +Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, +would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law. + +"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford--we simply can't +afford--to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to +those two dead people! They did what _you_ thought wrong, and your +conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider +over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and +cursing?" + +Newbury stood still. + +"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that +cuts the knot--that decides where you stand--and where I stand. You don't +believe there has ever been any living word from God to man--any lifting +of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens _have_ opened--a God +_has_ walked this earth! Everything else follows from that." + +"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with +bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!--for us, if there +is a God, He speaks in love--in love only--in love supremely--such love as +those two poor things had for each other!" + +After which they walked along in silence for some time. Each had said the +last word of his own creed. + +Presently they reached a footpath from which the house at Hoddon Grey could +be reached. Newbury paused. + +"Here, Coryston, we part--and we may never meet again." + +He raised his heavy eyes to his companion. All passion had died from his +face, which in its pale sorrow was more beautiful than Coryston had ever +seen it. + +"Do you think," he said, with deliberate gentleness, "that I feel +nothing--that life can ever be the same for me again--after this? It has +been to me a sign-post in the dark--written in letters of flame--and blood. +It tells me where to go--and I obey." + +He paused, looking, as it seemed, through Coryston, at things beyond. And +Coryston was aware of a strange and sudden awe in himself which silenced +him. + +But Newbury recalled his thoughts. He spoke next in his ordinary tone. + +"Please, tell--Marcia--that all arrangements have been made for Mr. Betts's +boy, with the relatives' consent. She need have no anxiety about him. And +all I have to say to her for her letter--her blessed letter--I will say +to-night." + +He walked away, and was soon lost to sight among the trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Coryston walked back to Knatchett at a furious pace, jumped on his bicycle, +and went off to find Marion Atherstone--the only person with whom he could +trust himself at the moment. He more than suspected that Marcia in a fit +of sentimental folly would relent toward Newbury in distress--and even his +rashness shrank from the possibility of a quarrel which might separate him +from his sister for good. But liberate his soul he must; and he thirsted +for a listener with whom to curse bigots up and down. In Marion's mild +company, strangely enough, the most vigorous cursing, whether of men or +institutions, had always in the end calming results. To Marion, however, +led by a sure instinct, he went. + +Meanwhile the motor which passed Newbury and Coryston in the park had sped +to its goal. It had already carried Arthur Coryston over half the county. +That morning he had been told at the Atherstones' cottage, on his +breathless arrival there, just before luncheon, that while the Chancellor +had returned to town, Miss Glenwilliam had motored to a friend's house, +some twenty miles north, and was not going back to London till the evening. +Arthur Coryston at once pursued her. Sorely against her will, he had forced +the lady to an interview, and in the blind rage of his utter defeat and +discomfiture, he left her again in hot quest of that explanation with his +mother which Enid Glenwilliam had honestly--and vainly--tried to prevent. + +Lady Coryston meanwhile was bewildered by his absence. During the lonely +hours when Marcia, from a distance, had once caught sight of her crossing +an open window in her sitting-room, she had not been able to settle to any +occupation, still less to rest. She tried to write out the Agenda of an +important Primrose League meeting over which she was to preside; to put +together some notes of her speech. In vain. A strange heaviness weighed +upon her. The only stimulus that worked--and that only for a time--was a +fierce attack on Glenwilliam in one of the morning papers. She read it +hungrily; but it brought on acute headache, which reduced her to idleness +and closed eyes. + +After a while she roused herself to pull down a blind against a teasing +invasion of sun, and in doing so she perceived a slim, white figure +hurrying away from the house, through the bright-colored mazes of the +Italian garden. Marcia! She remembered vaguely that Marcia had come to her +that morning in trouble about what? She could not remember. It had seemed +to her of importance. + +At last, about half an hour after she had seen Marcia disappear in the +shrubbery paths leading to the East Wood, Lady Coryston, startled by a +sound from the fore-court, sat suddenly erect on her sofa. A motor? + +She rose, and going to a little mirror on the wall, she straightened the +lace coiffure she habitually wore. In doing so she was struck--dismayed +even--by her own aspect. + +"When this is all over, Marcia and I perhaps might go abroad for a week or +two," she thought. + +A swift step approaching--a peremptory knock at the door. + +"Come in!" + +Arthur entered, and with his back against the door stood surveying +his mother. She waited for him to speak, expecting violence. For some +moments--in vain. Except in so far as his quick-breathing silence, his look +of dry, hollow-eyed exasperation spoke--more piercingly than words. + +"Well, Arthur," she said, at last, "I have been expecting you for some +time." + +"I have been trying to put the mischief you have done me straight," he +said, between his teeth. + +"I have done you no mischief that I know of. Won't you come and sit down +quietly--and talk the whole matter over? You can't imagine that I desire +anything but your good!" + +His laugh seemed to give her physical pain. + +"Couldn't you take to desiring something else, mother, than my 'good' as +you call it? Because, I tell you plainly, it don't suit my book. You have +been meddling in my affairs!--just as you have always meddled in them, for +matter of that! But this time you've done it with a vengeance--you've done +it _damnably_!" He struck his hand upon a table near. "What right had +you"--he approached her threateningly--"what earthly right had you to go +and see Enid Glenwilliam yesterday, just simply that you might spoil my +chances with her! Who gave you leave?" + +He flung the questions at her. + +"I had every right," said Lady Coryston, calmly. "I am your mother--I +have done everything for you--you owe your whole position to me. You +were ruining yourself by a mad fancy. I was bound to take care that +Miss Glenwilliam should not accept you without knowing all the facts. +But--actually--as it happens--she had made up her mind--before we met." + +"So she says!--and I don't believe a word of it--_not--one--word_! She +wanted to make me less mad with you. She's like you, mother, she thinks +she can manage everybody. So she tried to cram me--that it was Glenwilliam +persuaded her against me. Rot! If you hadn't gone and meddled, if you +hadn't treated her like dirt--if you hadn't threatened to spoil my +prospects, and told her you'd never receive her--if you hadn't put her +back up in a hundred ways--she'd have married me. It's you--you-- +_you_--that have done it!" + +He threw himself on a chair in front of her, his hands on his knees, +staring at her. His aspect as of a man disorganized and undone by baffled +passion, repelled and disgusted her. Was this her Arthur?--her perfect +gentleman--her gay, courteous, well-behaved darling--whose mingled docility +and good breeding had, so far, suited both her affection and her love of +rule so well? The deep under-sense of disaster which had held her all day, +returned upon her in ten-fold strength. But she fronted him bravely. + +"You are, as it happens, entirely wrong, Arthur. It's not I who have done +it--but Miss Glenwilliam's own good sense--or her father's. Of course I +confess frankly that I should have done my best--that I did, if you like, +do my best, to prevent your marriage with Miss Glenwilliam. And as for +right, who else had a right, if not I? Was it not most unkind, most +undutiful on your part!"--her tone was a tone of battle--"was it not an +outrage on your father's memory--that you should even entertain the +notion of such a connection? To bring the daughter of that man into this +family!--after all we have done--and suffered--for our principles--it's +you, who ought to ask _my_ pardon, Arthur, and not I yours! Times +without number, you have agreed with me in despising people who have +behaved as if politics were a mere game--a trifle that didn't matter. You +have told me often, that things were getting too hot; you couldn't be +friends in private, with people you hated in public; people you looked +upon as robbers and cheats. And then--_then_--you go and let this +infatuation run away with you--you forget all your principles--you forget +your mother, and all you owe her--and you go and ask this girl to marry +you--whose father is our personal and political enemy--a political +adventurer who is trying to pull down and destroy everything that you and I +hold sacred--or ought to hold sacred!" + +"For goodness' sake, mother, don't make a political speech!" He turned upon +her with angry contempt. "That kind of thing does all very well to spout +at an election--but it won't do between you and me. I _don't_ hate +Glenwilliam--_there_! The estates--and the property--and all we hold +sacred, as you call it--will last my time--and his. And I jolly well don't +care what happens afterward. _He's_ not going to do us much harm. +England's a deal tougher proposition than he thinks. It's you women who get +up such a hullabaloo--I declare you make politics a perfect devilry! But +then"--he shrugged his shoulders fiercely--"I'm not going to waste time in +arguing. I just came to tell you _what I intend to do_; and then I'm +going up to town. I've ordered the motor for seven o'clock." + +Lady Coryston had risen, and stood, with one hand on the mantelpiece, +looking down upon her son. + +"I shall be glad indeed to hear what you intend to do, Arthur. I see you +have missed two or three important divisions lately." + +He burst out: + +"And they won't be the last either, by a good way. I'm going to chuck it, +mother! And if you don't like it--you can blame yourself!" + +"What do you mean?" + +He hesitated a moment--then spoke deliberately. + +"I intend to leave Parliament after this session. I do! I'm sick of it. A +friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me +to go in with him--and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my +mind from these troubles." + +Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her +strong will could keep from trembling. + +"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for +you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon +you--" + +He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved. + +"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you +ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since +I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was +literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that! +And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of +him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that +I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you +knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that +meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page +_before you told me_. And when I kicked--and told you about Enid--did +you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?--did you ever, +even, consider for one moment what I told you?--that I was in love with +her?--dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged +it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow--" + +His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself. + +"Instead of that, mother--you only thought of how you could thwart and +checkmate me--how you could get _your_ way--and force me to give up +mine. It was _abominable_ of you to go and see Enid, without a word to +me!--it was _abominable_ to plot and plan behind my back, and then to +force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of +any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!--she +didn't want to come it too hard on you--that's her way!--so she made up +some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! +You've ruined me!--you've ruined me!" + +He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and +pain. + +Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a +passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that +was closing on her, she could not restrain. + +"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur--as you put it--though of course +you're not ruined at all!--but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so +lost to all decency--all affection--that you can speak to your mother like +this?" + +He turned and paused--to throw her an ugly look. + +"Well--I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men--but it's no +good talking about affection to me--after this. Yes, I suppose you've been +fond of me, mother, in your way--and I suppose I've been fond of you. But +the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in _fear_ of you!--all +my life--and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I +did because I was a coward--a disgusting coward!--who ought to have been +kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid--" + +And standing before her, with his hands on his sides, all his pleasant face +disfigured by anger and the desire to wound, he poured out upon her a flood +of recollections of his childhood and youth. Beneath the bitterness and the +shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, +though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. +But, Arthur!--She put up a trembling hand. + +"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done +the best I could for you--always." + +"Why didn't you _love_ us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for +emphasis. "Why didn't you _love_ us! It was always politics--politics! +Somebody to be attacked--somebody to be scored off--somebody to be squared. +And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! My poor father was as sick of +it often as we were. He had enough of it out of doors. Damn politics for +women, I say--damn them!" + +Lady Coryston raised her hand. + +"_Go_, Arthur! This is enough." + +He drew a long breath. + +"Upon my soul, I think it is. We'd better not excite each other any more. +I'll speak to Sir Wilfrid, mother, before I go, and ask him to report +various things to you, which I have to say. And I shall go and see the +Whips to-night. Of course I don't want to do the party any harm. If there +is a general election in the autumn, all that need happen is that I sha'n't +stand again. And as to the estates"--he hesitated--"as to the estates, +mother, do as you like. Upon my word I think you'd better give them back to +Coryston! A certain amount of money is all I shall want." + +"Go!" said Lady Coryston again, still pointing. + +He stood a moment, fiddling with some ornaments on a table near him, then +caught up his hat with a laugh--and still eying her askance, he walked to +the door, opened it, and disappeared; though he closed it so uncertainly +that Lady Coryston, until, after what seemed an interval, she heard his +footsteps receding, could not be sure that he was really gone. + +But he was gone; and all the plans and hopes of her later life lay in ashes +about her. She sat motionless. After half an hour she heard the sound of a +motor being driven away from the front of the house. Through the evening +air, too, she caught distant voices--which soon ceased. + +She rang presently for her maid, and said she would dine in her room, +because of a bad headache. Marcia came, but was not admitted. Sir Wilfrid +Bury asked if he might see her, just for a few minutes. A message referred +him to the next morning. + +Dinner came and went down untouched. Whenever she was ill, Lady Coryston's +ways were solitary and ungracious. She hated being "fussed over." So that +no one dared force themselves upon her. Only, between ten and eleven, +Marcia again came to the door, knocked gently, and was told to go away. Her +mother would be all right in the morning. The girl reluctantly obeyed. + +The state of terrible tension in which Lady Coryston passed that night had +no witness. It could only be guessed at, by Marcia, in particular, to +whom it fell afterward to take charge of her mother's papers and personal +affairs. Lady Coryston had apparently gathered all Arthur's, letters to her +together, from the very first to the very latest, tied them up neatly, and +laid them in the drawer which held those of her dead husband. She had begun +to write a letter to Coryston, but when found, it was incoherent, and could +not be understood. She had removed the early photographs of Arthur from her +table, and a larger, recent one of the young M.P., taken in London for the +constituency, which was on her mantelpiece, and had placed them both face +downward in the same drawer with the letters. And then, when she had found +it impossible to write what she wished to write, she seemed to have gone +back to her arm-chair, taking with her two or three of Arthur's Eton +reports--by what instinct had she chosen them out from the piles of +letters!--and a psalter she often used. But by a mere accident, a sinister +trick of fate, when she was found, the book lay open under her hand at one +of those imprecatory psalms at which Christendom has at last learned to +shudder. Only a few days before, Sir Wilfrid Bury had laughed at her--as +only he might--for her "Old Testament tone" toward her enemies, and had +quoted this very psalm. Her helpless fingers touched it. + +But the night was a night of vigil for others also. Coryston, who could not +sleep, spent the greater part of it first in writing to Marion Atherstone, +and then in composing a slashing attack upon the High Church party for its +attitude toward the divorce laws of the country, and the proposals recently +made for their reform. "How much longer are we going to allow these +black-coated gentlemen to despise and trample on the laws under which +the rest of us are content to live!--or to use the rights and powers +of property for the bare purpose of pressing their tyrannies and their +superstitions on other people?" + +Meanwhile, in the beautiful chapel of Hoddon Grey, Edward Newbury, worn out +with the intolerable distress of the preceding forty-eight hours, and yet +incapable of sleep, sat or knelt through long stretches of the night. The +chapel was dark but for one light. Over the altar there burnt a lamp, and +behind it could be seen, from the chair, where he knelt, the silk veil of +the tabernacle. Reservation had been permitted for years in the Hoddon Grey +chapel, and the fact had interwoven itself with the deepest life of +the household, eclipsing and dulling the other religious practices +of Anglicanism, just as the strong plant in a hedgerow drives out or +sterilizes the rest. There, in Newbury's passionate belief, the Master of +the House kept watch, or slept, above the altar, as once above the Galilean +waves. For him, the "advanced" Anglican, as for any Catholic of the Roman +faith, the doctrine of the Mass was the central doctrine of all religion, +and that intimate and personal adoration to which it leads, was the +governing power of life. The self-torturing anguish which he had suffered +ever since the news of the two suicides had reached him could only endure +itself in this sacred presence; and it was there he had taken refuge under +the earlier blow of the breach with Marcia. + +The night was very still--a night of soft showers, broken by intervals of +starlight. Gradually as the darkness thinned toward dawn, the figures, +stoled and winged and crowned, of the painted windows, came dimly forth, +and long rays of pale light crept over the marble steps and floor, upon the +flowers on the altar and the crucifix above it. The dawn flowed in silently +and coldly; the birds stirred faintly; and the white mists on the lawn and +fields outside made their way through the open windows, and dimmed the glow +of color on the walls and in the apse. + +In those melancholy and yet ardent hours Edward Newbury reached the utmost +heights of religious affirmation, and the extreme of personal renunciation. +It became clear to a mind attuned for such thoughts, that, by severing him +from Marcia, and, at the same time, and by the same stroke, imposing upon +him at least some fraction of responsibility--a fraction which his honesty +could not deny--for the deaths of John and Alice Betts, God had called him, +Edward Newbury, in a way not to be mistaken and not to be refused. His life +was henceforth forfeit--forfeit to his Lord. Henceforth, let him make of +it a willing sacrifice, an expiatory oblation, perpetually renewed, and +offered in perpetual union with the Divine Victim, for their souls and his +own. + +The ideas of the Conventual house in which he had so lately spent hours of +intense religious happiness closed upon him and possessed him. He was +not to marry. He was reserved for the higher counsels, the Counsels of +Perfection. The face and talk of his friend Brierly, who was so soon going +to his dangerous and solitary post in Southern India, haunted his mind, and +at last seemed to show him a way out of his darkness. His poor father and +mother! But he never doubted for one moment that they would give him up, +that they would let him follow his conscience. + +By the time the sun was fairly up, the storm of religious feeling had died +down in Newbury. He had taken his resolve, but he was incapable of any +further emotion concerning it. On the other hand, his heart was alive to +the thought of Marcia, and of that letter she had sent him. Dear, generous +Marcia! Once more he would write to her--once more! + +"DEAREST MARCIA,--I may call you so, I think, for the last time, and at +this turning-point of both our lives. I may never see you again; or if we +do meet, you will have become so strange to me that you will wonder in what +other and distant life it was that we loved each other. I think you did +love me for a little while, and I do bless and thank you that you let +me know you--and love you. And I bless you above all for the thought of +consolation and pity you had toward me, even yesterday, in those terrible +hours--when you offered to come back to me and help me, as though our bond +had never been broken. + +"No, dear Marcia!--I saw the truth in your face yesterday. I could not make +you happy. I should set jarring a discord in your life for which it was +never meant. You did right, absolutely right, to separate yourself from one +whose inmost and irrevocable convictions repelled and shocked you. I may be +narrow and cold; but I am not narrow enough--or cold enough!--to let you +give yourself back to one you cannot truly love--or trust. But that you +offered it, because you were sorry for me, and that you would have carried +it out, firmly, your dear hand clenched, as it were, on the compact--that +warms my heart--that I shall have, as a precious memory, to carry into the +far-off life that I foresee. + +"I cannot write much about the terrible thing at Redcross Farm. Your great +pity for me implies that you think me--and my father--in some way and in +some degree, responsible. Perhaps we are--I do not wish to shirk the truth. +If so, it is as soldiers under orders are responsible for the hurt and +damage they may cause, in their King's war--as much, and as little. At +least, so far as the main matter is concerned. That I might have been--that +I ought to have been--infinitely more loving, wiser, stronger to help +them--that I know--that I shall feel as long as I live. And it is a feeling +which will determine all my future life. + +"You remember what I told you of Father Brierly and the Community of the +Ascension? As soon as I can leave my father and mother--they are at present +in deep distress--I shall probably go to the Community House in Lancashire +for a time. My present intention is to take orders, and perhaps to join +Brierly eventually in mission work. My father and mother are splendid! They +and I shall be separated perhaps in this world, but in that mysterious +other world which lies all about us even now, and which is revealed to us +in the Sacraments, we shall meet at last, and forever--if we are faithful. + +"Good-by--God be with you--God give you every good thing in this +present time--love, children, friends--and, 'in the world to come, life +everlasting.'" + + * * * * * + +About the hour when the letter was finished, when the July sun was already +high over the dewy new-shorn fields, Coryston, after an hour's sleep in his +chair, and a bath, left Knatchett to walk to Coryston. He was oppressed by +some vague dread which would not let him rest. In the strong excitements +and animosities of the preceding day he had forgotten his mother. But the +memory of her face on the sofa during that Sunday reading had come back +upon him with unpleasant force. It had been always so with him in life. She +no sooner relapsed into the woman than he became a son. Only the experience +had been rare! + +He crossed the Hoddon Grey park, and then walked through _a_ mile +of the Coryston demesne, till he reached the lake and saw beyond it the +Italian garden, with its statues glittering in the early sun--and the long +marble front of the house, with its rococo ornament, and its fine pillared +loggia. "What the deuce are _we_ going to do with these places!" he +asked himself in petulant despair. "And to think that Arthur won't be +allowed to sell it, or turn it to any useful purpose whatever!" + +He skirted the lake, and began to mount the steps, and flagged paths of the +formal garden. Suddenly as he approached the garden front he saw that two +windows of his mother's sitting-room were open, and that some one--a figure +in black--was sitting in a high-backed arm-chair beside one of them. His +mother!--up?--at seven o'clock in the morning? Yet was it his mother? He +came nearer. The figure was motionless--the head thrown back, the eyes +invisible from where he stood. Something in the form, the attitude--its +stillness and strangeness in the morning light--struck him with horror. He +rushed to the garden door, found it open, dashed up the stairs, and into +his mother's room. + +"Mother!" + +Lady Coryston neither moved nor spoke. But as he came up to her, he saw +that she was alive--that her eyes opened and perceived him. Nothing else in +her lived or moved. And as he knelt down by her, and took her tenderly in +his arms, she relapsed into the unconscious state from which his entrance +had momentarily roused her. + + * * * * * + +What else there is to tell had best be told quickly. Lady Coryston lived +for some eight months after this seizure. She partially recovered from the +first stroke, and all the organization of the great house, and all the +thought of her children circled round the tragic death-in-life into which +she had fallen. + +Arthur had come rushing back to Coryston after the catastrophe, restored +by it, like a stream which has wandered in flood, to the older and natural +channels of life. Bitter remorse for his conduct to his mother, and a sharp +resentment of Enid Glenwilliam's conduct toward himself, acted wholesomely. +He took up his normal occupations again, in Parliament and on the estates, +and talked no more of Buenos Ayres. But whether his mother's darkened mind +ever forgave him it would be difficult to say. She rarely noticed him, +and when she spoke it was generally for Coryston. Her dependence upon her +eldest son became a touching and poignant thing, deepening the souls of +both. Coryston came to live at Coryston, and between his love for Marion +Atherstone, and his nursing of his mother, was more truly happy for a time +than his character had ever yet allowed him to be. The din of battle, +political and religious, penetrated no more within a house where death came +closer day by day, and where weakness and suffering had at last united +these differing men and women in a common interest of profoundest pity. +Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them +forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when +she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry--Corry +darling"--and as he came closer--"Corry, who was my firstborn!" + +On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote: + +"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning +rest which does not--as death so often does--make any break with our +memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. She +is the strong woman still, conscious of immense power; and, if that shut +mouth could speak, and if health were given back to her, ready no doubt +still to use it tyrannously. There is no weakening and no repentance in the +face; and I like it better so. Nor did she ever really reverse, though she +modified, the exclusion of Coryston from the inheritance. She was able +during an interval of comparative betterment about Christmas-time, to make +an alteration in her will, and the alteration was no mere surrender to what +one sees to have been, at bottom, her invincible affection for Coryston. +She has still left Arthur the estates for life, but with remainder to +Coryston's son, should he have one, and she has made Coryston a trustee +together with Sir Wilfrid Bury. This will mean practically a division +between the brothers--to which Arthur has already pledged himself, so he +tells me--but with no power to Coryston to make such radical changes as +would destroy the family tradition, at least without Arthur's consent and +Sir Wilfrid's. But Coryston will have plenty of money and plenty of land +wherewith to experiment, and no doubt we shall see some strange things. + +"Thus she kept her flag flying to the end, so far as the enfeebled brain +allowed. Yet the fact was that her state of dependence on her children +during her illness, and their goodness to her, did in truth evoke another +woman with new perceptions, superposed, as it were, upon the old. And +there, I think, came in her touch of greatness--which one could not have +expected. She was capable at any rate of _this_ surrender; not going +back upon the old--but just accepting the new. Her life might have petered +out in bitterness and irritation, leaving an odious memory. It became a +source of infinite sweetness, just because her children found out--to their +immense surprise--that she _could_ let herself be loved; and they +threw themselves with eagerness on the chance she gave them. + +"She dies in time--one of the last of a generation which will soon have +passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no +doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her +rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts--or few. +As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as +obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that +is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will +'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority of his kind. + +"Marcia!--in her black dress, beside her mother, looking down upon +her--with that yearning look!--But--not a word! There are things too sacred +for these pages." + + * * * * * + +During the months of Lady Coryston's illness, indeed, Reginald Lester +entered, through stages scarcely perceived by himself and them, upon a new +relation toward the Coryston family. He became the increasingly intimate +friend and counselor of the Coryston brothers, and of Marcia, no less--but +in a fresh and profounder sense. He shared much of the estate business with +Mr. Page; he reconciled as best he could the jarring views of Coryston and +Arthur; he started on the reorganization of the great Library, in which, so +far, he had only dealt with a fraction of its possessions. And every day he +was Marcia's companion, in things intimate and moving, no less than in +the practical or commonplace affairs of ordinary life. It was he who read +poetry with her, or played accompaniments to her songs, in the hours of +relief from her nursing; it was he who watched and understood her; who +guided and yet adored her. His love for her was never betrayed; but it +gradually became, without her knowing it, the condition of her life. And +when Lady Coryston died, in the February following her stroke, and Marcia, +who was worn out, went abroad with Waggin for a few weeks' rest, the +correspondence which passed between her and Lester during the earlier days +of her absence, by the more complete and deliberate utterance which it +permitted between them, did at last reveal to the girl the depths of her +own heart. + +During her travels various things happened. + +One chilly afternoon, late in March, when a light powdering of snow lay on +the northern slopes of the hills, Coryston went up to the cottage in +the hopes of finding Marion Atherstone alone. There had been a quiet +understanding between them all the winter, more or less known to the +Coryston family, but all talk of marriage had been silenced by the +condition of Lady Coryston, who indeed never knew such schemes were in the +air. + +About six weeks, however, after his mother's death, Coryston's natural +_fougue_ suggested to him that he was being trifled with. He burst +into the little sitting-room where Marion was just making tea, and sat +down, scowling, on the further side of the hearth. + +"What is the matter?" Marion asked, mildly. During the winter a beautifying +change seemed to have passed upon Atherstone's daughter. She was younger, +better looking, better dressed; yet keeping always the touch of homeliness, +of smiling common-sense, which had first attracted a man in secret +rebellion against his own rhetoric and other people's. + +"You are treating me abominably!" said Coryston, with vehemence. + +"How? My conscience is as sound as a bell!" Wherewith, laughing, she handed +him his cup of tea. + +"All bells aren't sound. Some are flawed," was the prompt reply. "I have +asked you twice this week to tell me when you will be good enough to marry +me, and you haven't said a single word in reply." + +Marion was silent a little; then she looked up, as Andromache looked at +Hector--with a laugh, yet with something else fluttering behind. + +"Let's ask ourselves once more, Herbert--is it really a wise thing to do?" + +Nobody else since his father died had ever called Coryston by his Christian +name; which was perhaps why Marion Atherstone took a peculiar pleasure in +using it. Coryston had mostly forgotten that he possessed such a name, but +from her he liked it. + +"What on earth do you mean by that?" + +"In the first place, Herbert, I was never intended by nature to be a +peeress." + +He sprang up furiously. + +"I never heard a more snobbish remark! All that you are asked is to be my +wife." + +She shook her head. + +"We can't make a world for ourselves only. Then there's--father." + +"Well, what about him?" + +"You don't get on very well," she said, with a sigh. + +Coryston controlled himself with difficulty. + +"For your father, the Liberal party is mostly Jahve--the hope of the +children of light. For me the Liberal party is mostly Dagon--either made a +god of by Philistines, or groveling before a stronger God--Mammon. But that +don't matter. I can behave myself." + +Marion bent over her work. + +"Can't I behave myself?" he repeated, threateningly, as he moved nearer +her. + +She looked up at last. + +"Suppose you get bored with me--as you have with the Liberal party?" + +"But never with liberty," he said, ardently. + +"Suppose you come to see the seamy side of me--as you do of everybody?" + +"I don't invent seamy sides--where none exist," he said, looking +peremptorily into her eyes. + +"I'm not clever, Herbert--and I think I'm a Tory." + +"Heavens, what do I care? You're the woman I happen to love." + +"And I intend to go to church." + +"Edward Newbury's kind of church?" he asked her, uneasily. + +She shook her head. + +"No. I'm an Evangelical." + +"Thank the Lord! So am I," he said, fervently. + +She laughed. + +"It's true," he insisted. "Peace on earth--goodwill to men--that I can +understand. So that's settled. Now then--a fortnight next Wednesday?" + +"No, no!" she said, in alarm, "certainly not. Wait a minute, Herbert! Where +are you going to live, and what are you going to do?" + +"I'm taking over the Dorset estates. Lots to do on them, and not much +money. Arthur washes his hands of them. There's an old farm where we can +live. In six months I shall have quarreled with all the neighbors, and life +will be worth living again." + +She lifted her eyebrows. + +"A charming prospect for your wife!" + +"Certainly. You'll have the life you were born for. You'll go round +after me--whitewashing the scandals I cause--or if you like to put it +sentimentally--binding up the wounds I make. But if I'm anything I'm a +sociologist, and my business is to make experiments. They will no doubt be +as futile as those I have been making here." + +"And where shall I come in?" + +"You'll be training up the boy--who'll profit by the experiments." + +"The boy?" + +"The boy--our boy--who's to have the estates," said Coryston, without a +moment's hesitation. + +Marion flushed, and pulled her work to her again. Coryston dropped on his +knees beside her, and asked her pardon with eyes whereof the male audacity +had passed into a steady and shining tenderness. + +When Coryston returned that night to the big house, he found his brothers +Arthur and James arrived for the week-end. Arthur was full of Parliamentary +gossip--"battles of kites and crows," of which Coryston was generally +intolerant. But on this occasion he took it silently, and Arthur rambled +on. James sat mildly beaming, with finger-tips joined, and the look of +one on the verge of a confidence. But he talked, after all--when Arthur +paused--only of music and the opera, and as his brothers were not musical, +he soon came to an end, and Arthur held the stage. They were gathered in +the smoking-room on the ground or garden floor, a room hung with pictures +of race-horses, and saddened by various family busts that had not been +thought good enough for the library. Outside, the March wind rattled +through trees as yet untouched by the spring, and lashed a shivering water +round the fountain nymphs. + +"Whoever could have dreamed they would have held on till now!" said Arthur, +in reply to a perfunctory remark from James. Coryston looked up from a +reverie. + +"Who? The Government? Lord!--what does it matter? Look here, you chaps--I +heard some news in Martover just now. Lord William Newbury died last +night--heart failure--expected for the last fortnight." + +Arthur received the news with the lively professional interest that one +landowner feels in another, and tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind +himself to ask Page when the funeral was to be, as the Member for the +division must of course attend it. James said, thoughtfully: + +"Edward, I saw, was ordained last week. And my letter from Marcia this +morning tells me she expects to see him in Rome, on his way to India. Poor +Lady William will be very much alone!" + +"If you make a solitude and call it religion, what can you expect?" said +Coryston, sharply. His face had darkened at the Newburys' name. As always, +it had evoked the memory of two piteous graves. Then, as he got up from his +chair, he said to Arthur: + +"I've fixed it up. Marion and I shall get married next month." + +The brothers looked a little embarrassed, though not at all surprised. +Corry's attachment to this plain, sensible lady, of moderate opinions, had +indeed astonished them enormously when they first became aware of it; but +they were now used to it. + +"All right, Corry!" said Arthur, slapping his brother on the back. "The +best chance of keeping you out of a madhouse! And a very nice woman! You +don't expect me to chum with her father?" + +"Not unless you wish to learn a thing or two--which was never your strong +point," said Coryston, dodging a roll of some Parliamentary paper or other, +which Arthur aimed at him. He turned to James. "Well, James, aren't you +going to congratulate me?--And why don't you do it yourself?" + +"Of course I congratulate you," said James, hastily. "Most sincerely!" + +But his expression--half agitated, half smiling--betrayed emotions so far +beyond the needs of the situation, that Coryston gave him a puzzled glance. +James indeed opened his mouth as though to speak. Then a bright, pink color +overspread his whole countenance from brow to chin; his lips shut and he +fell back in his chair. Presently he went away, and could be heard playing +Bach on the organ in the central hall. He returned to London the same +evening carrying a cargo of philosophical books, from the library, and a +number of novels, though as a rule he never read novels. + +The next morning, in a letter to Coryston, he announced his engagement to a +girl of nineteen, an orphan, and a pupil at the Royal College of Music. She +was the daughter of his Cambridge tutor--penniless, pretty, and musical. He +had paid her fees it seemed for several years, and the effect on him of her +charming mezzo-soprano voice, at a recent concert given by the College, had +settled the matter. The philosopher in love, who had been too shy to tell +his brothers _viva voce_, was quite free of tongue in writing; and +Coryston and Arthur, though they laughed, were glad that "old James" had +found the courage to be happy. Coryston remarked to Arthur that it now +remained for him to keep up the blue blood of the family. + +"Or Marcia," said Arthur, evading the personal reference. + +"Marcia?" Coryston threw his brother an amused, significant look, and said +nothing for a moment. But presently he dropped out: + +"Lester writes that he'll be in Rome next week looking after that Borghese +manuscript. He doesn't expect to get back here till May." + +For Lester had now been absent from Coryston some three or four weeks, +traveling on matters connected with the library. + +Arthur made no comment, but stood awhile by the window in a brown-study, +twisting his lip, and frowning slightly. His nondescript features and +boyish manner scarcely allowed him at any time to play the magnate with +success. But his position as master of Coryston Place, the great family +house with its pompous tradition, and the long influence of his mother, had +by now asserted, or reasserted themselves; though fighting still with the +sore memory of Enid Glenwilliam. Was he going to allow his sister to marry +out of her rank--even though the lover were the best fellow in the world? +A man may marry whom he will, and the family is only secondarily affected. +But a woman is absorbed by the family of her husband. + +He finally shrugged his shoulders over it. + +"Marcia is as stiff-necked as Coryston," he said to himself, "if it comes +to that." + + * * * * * + +April followed. Amid a crowded Rome, alive with flowers and fountains under +a life-giving sun, Marcia Coryston became sharply conscious again of the +color and beauty interwoven with mere living, for the sane and sound among +men. Edward Newbury passed through on his way to Brindisi and Southern +India; and she saw him for an hour; an interview short and restrained, but +not to be forgotten by either of the two persons concerned. When it was +over Marcia shed a few secret tears--tears of painful sympathy, of an +admiration, which was half pity; and then threw herself once more with--as +it were--a gasp of renewed welcome, into the dear, kind, many-hued world +on which Edward Newbury had turned his back. Presently Lester arrived. He +became her constant companion through the inexhaustible spectacle of Rome; +and she could watch him among the students who were his fellows, modest +or learned as they, yet marked out from most of them by the signs he +bore--signs well known by now to her--of a poetic and eager spirit, +always and everywhere in quest of the human--of man himself, laughing or +suffering, behind his works. The golden days passed by; the blue and white +anemones bloomed and died in the Alban woods; the English crowd that comes +for Easter arrived and departed; and soon Marcia herself must go home, +carrying with her the passionate yet expectant feeling of a child, tired +out with happy days, and dreaming of more to come. + +These were private and personal affairs. But in March a catastrophe +happened which shook the mind of England, and profoundly altered the course +of politics. An American yacht with Glenwilliam on board was overtaken +off the Needles by a sudden and terrific storm, and went down, without a +survivor, and with nothing but some floating wreckage to tell the tale. The +Chancellor's daughter was left alone and poor. The passionate sympathy +and admiration which her father's party had felt for himself was in some +measure transferred to his daughter. But to the amazement of many persons, +she refused with scorn any pecuniary help, living on a small income, and +trying her hand, with some prospect of success, at literature. About six +weeks after her father's death Arthur Coryston found her out and again +asked her to marry him. It is probable there was some struggle in her mind, +but in the end she refused. "You are a kind, true fellow!" she said to him, +gratefully, "but it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do!" And then with a darkening +of her strong face: "There is only one thing I can do for _him_ +now--to serve his causes! And you don't care for one of them! No--no! +Good-by!--Good-by!" + +At last, in May, Marcia came back again to live--as she supposed--at +Coryston with Arthur, and do her duty by her own people. A wonderful spring +was abroad in the land. The gorse on the slopes of the hills was a marvel, +and when the hawthorns came out beside it, or flung their bloom along the +hedgerows and the streams; when far and near the cuckoo's voice made the +new world of blossom and growth articulate; when furtive birds slipped +joyously to and fro between the nests above and a teeming earth below; when +the west winds veering between south and north, and driving the great white +clouds before them, made, every day, a new marvel of the sky--Marcia would +often hold her breath and know within herself the growth of an answering +and a heavenly spring. Lester finished his scholar's errands in Rome and +Naples, and returned to Coryston in the middle week of May, in order to +complete his work there. He found much more to do than he supposed; he +found his friends, Coryston and Arthur, eager to capture and keep him; he +found in every field and wood the kindling beauty of the year; he found +Marcia!--and a bewildering though still shy message in her dark eyes. +Through what doubts and scruples, through what stages of unfolding +confidence and growing joy their minds passed, and to what end it all moved +on, let those imagine, to whom the purest and deepest of human emotions has +ever spoken, or is speaking now. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE CORYSTON FAMILY *** + +This file should be named 8cryf10.txt or 8cryf10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8cryf11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8cryf10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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