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

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