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

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