The Coryston Family by Mrs. Humphry Ward (best free e book reader TXT) 📕

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.

There was a child in Marcia, and she