"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.