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.