The Coryston Family - Mrs. Humphry Ward (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

was always down at home to a half-past-eight breakfast, and was accustomed to walk a mile to church--had insisted on breakfasting in her own room, on Sunday, under the Newburys' roof, and had quite enjoyed Lady William's surprised looks when they met at luncheon.

Well, now the thing had to be done again--for the settling of Marcia. Whether the atmosphere of the family or the house would suit Marcia, her mother did not inquire. In the matters of birth and money, nothing could be more appropriate. Lady Coryston, however, was mostly concerned in getting it through quickly, lest it should stand in the way of things more important. She was fond of Marcia; but her daughter occupied, in truth, only the fringe of her thoughts.

However, she duly put up her letter, and was addressing the envelope, when the door opened to admit the head agent of the estate, Mr. Frederick Page.

Mr. Page was, in Lady Coryston's eyes, a prince of agents. Up till now she had trusted him entirely, and had been more largely governed by his advice than her pride of rule would ever have allowed her to confess. Especially had she found reason to be grateful to him for the large amount of money he had lately been able to provide her with from the savings of the Coryston estates, for political purposes. Lady Coryston was one of the largest subscribers to the party funds in the kingdom; the coming election demanded an exceptional effort, and Page's economies had made it almost easy. She greeted him with a peculiarly gracious smile, remembering perhaps the letter of thanks she had received only the day before from the party headquarters.

The agent was still a young man, not much over forty, ruddy, good-looking, inclined to be plump, and possessed of a manner calculated to win the confidence of any employer. He looked the pink of discretion and capacity, and Lady Coryston had never discovered in him the smallest flaw with regard to any of the orthodoxies she required, political or religious. He was a widower, with two girls, who had often been allowed to play with Marcia.

It was clear to Lady Coryston's eyes at once that Mr. Page was much disturbed and upset. She had expected it, of course. She herself was disturbed and upset. But she had perhaps hoped that he would reassure her--make light of the situation.

He did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the effects of an encounter he had just had with Lord Coryston himself in the village street, before entering the park, were plainly visible in the agent's bearing. He plunged at once into the subject.

"I fear, Lady Coryston, there is great trouble brewing on this estate!" "You will stop it," she said, confidently; "you always have stopped it before--you and I together."

He shook his head.

"Ah, but--you see what makes the difference!"

"That Coryston is my son?--and has always been regarded as my heir? Certainly that makes a difference," she admitted, unwillingly. "But his proceedings will soon disgust people--will soon recoil on himself!"

Page looked up to see her pale profile, with its marked hollows in cheek and temple, outlined on the white paneling of the room like some strong, hawkish face of the Renaissance. But, in awe of her as he always was, she seemed to him a foolish woman. Why had she driven matters to this extremity?

He poured out his budget of troubles. All the smoldering discontent which had always existed on the estate had been set alight by Lord Coryston. He was trying to form a union among the laborers, and the farmers were up in arms. He was rousing the dissenters against the Church school of the estate. He was even threatening an inquiry into the state of some of his mother's cottages.

Lady Coryston interrupted. Her voice showed annoyance. "I thought, Mr. Page, there were no insanitary cottages on this property!"

Page hemmed and hawed. He had not the courage to say that if a landowner insists on spending the reserve fund of an estate on politics, the estate suffers. He had found Lady Coryston large sums for the party war-chest; but only a fool could expect him to build new cottages, and keep up a high level of improvements, at the same time.

"I am doing what I can," he said, hurriedly. "There are certain things that must be done. I have given orders."

"My son seems to have caught us napping," said Lady Coryston, rather grimly.

The agent passed the remark by. He inquired whether her ladyship was still determined to refuse land for the Baptist chapel.

"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have no intention whatever of extending his influence."

Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston.

"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a distance. Purely political!"

"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, firmly.

The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead to peaceable living. But he merely remarked:

"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the village."

Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair.

"He defended himself?"

"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you himself this afternoon about the affair."

"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her.

"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these proceedings!"

Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy-- Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no consolation to a proud spirit.

"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I have been accustomed to trust you."

The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for the future.

A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the remark:

"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be in the chair."

He had kept this bombshell to the last, and for various reasons he closely watched its effect.

Lady Coryston paled.

"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall speak," she said, with vivacity.

Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in the speaker's look.

"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy interrogation, looking for his hat.

Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark.

"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is."

"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him to give up some of these extravagances."

"I have no power with him," she said, sharply.

"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he charged them with--Lady Coryston especially.

And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Saturday, as he was passing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well known to the neighborhood.

By George!--if that _did_ mean anything!


CHAPTER VI

Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property. Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more.

Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her of his presence, his smile, his