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

could evoke it when she pleased. She evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with his bright conscious eyes.

"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding.

"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a puckered brow.

"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't want to read it--"

"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling.

"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps that if you and I--"

"Took counsel! Excellent!"

"We might perhaps think of some way of stopping it."

"He's much more acutely angry with us at present than with anything your mother does," said Newbury, gravely! "Has he told you?"

"No, but--he means to," said the girl, hesitating.

"It is not unfair I think I should anticipate him. You will have his version afterward. I got an extraordinary letter from him this morning. It is strange that he cannot see we also plead justice and right for what we do--that if we satisfied his conscience we should wound our own."

He rose from the grass as he spoke, and took a seat on a stone a little way from her. And as she looked at him Marcia had a strange, sudden feeling that here was quite another man from the wooer who had just been lying on the grass at her feet. _This_ was the man of whom she had said to Waggin--"he seems the softest, kindest!--and underneath--_iron_!" A shade of some habitual sternness had crept over the features. A noble sternness, however; and it had begun to stir in her, intermittently, the thrill of an answering humility.

"It is difficult for me--perhaps impossible--to tell you all the story," he said, after a pause, "but I will try and tell it shortly--in its broad outlines."

"I have heard some of it."

"So I supposed. But let me tell it in order--so far as I can. It concerns a man whom a few weeks ago we all regarded--my father and mother--myself--as one of our best friends. You know how keen my father is about experimenting with the land? Well, when we set up our experimental farm here ten years ago we made this man--John Betts--the head of it. He has been my father's right hand--and he has done splendidly--made the farm, indeed, and himself, famous. And he seemed to be one with us in other respects." He paused a moment, looked keenly into her face, and then said, gravely and simply: "We looked upon him as a deeply religious man. My mother could not say enough of his influence on the estate. He took a large men's class on Sundays. He was a regular communicant; he helped our clergyman splendidly. And especially"--here again the speaker hesitated a moment. But he resumed with a gentle seriousness--"he helped us in all our attempts to make the people here live straight--like Christians--not like animals. My mother has very strict rules--she won't allow any one in our cottages who has lost their character. I know it sounds harsh. It isn't so--it's merciful. The villages were in a terrible state when we came--as to morals. I can't of course explain to you--but our priest appealed to us--we had to make changes--and my father and mother bravely faced unpopularity--"

He looked at her steadily, while his face changed, and the sudden red of some quick emotion invaded it.

"You know we are unpopular!"

"Yes," said Marcia, slowly, his perfect sincerity forbidding anything else in her.

"Especially"--there was a touch of scorn in the full voice--"owing to the attacks on my father and mother of that Liberal agitator--that man Atherstone--who lives in that cottage on the hill--your mother knows all about him. He has spread innumerable stories about us ever since we came to live here. He is a free-thinker and a republican--we are church people and Tories. He thinks that every man--or woman--is a law unto themselves. We think--but you know what we think!"

He smiled at her.

"Well--to return to Betts. This is May. Last August he had an attack of influenza, and went off to North Wales, to the sea, to recruit. He was away much longer than any one expected, and after about six weeks he wrote to my father to say that he should return to Hoddon Grey--with a wife. He had found a lady at Colwyn Bay, whom he had known as a girl. She was a widow, had just lost her father, with whom she lived, and was very miserable and forlorn. I need not say we all wrote the most friendly letters. She came, a frail, delicate creature, with one child. My mother did all she could for her, but was much baffled by her reserve and shrinking. Then--bit by bit--through some extraordinary chances and coincidences--I needn't go through it all--the true story came out."

He looked away for a moment over the reaches of the park, evidently considering with himself what he could tell, and how far.

"I can only tell you the bare facts," he said, at last. "Mrs. Betts was divorced by her first husband. She ran away with a man who was in his employment, and lived with him for two years. He never married her, and after two years he deserted her. She has had a wretched life since--with her child. Then Betts came along, whom she had known long ago. She threw herself on his pity. She is very attractive--he lost his head--and married her. Well now, what were we to do?"

"They _are_ married?" said Marcia.

"Certainly--by the law. But it is a law which matters nothing to us!"

The voice had taken to itself a full challenging note.

Marcia looked up.

"Because--you think--divorce is wrong?"

"Because--'What God has joined together let no man put asunder!'"

"But there are exceptions in the New Testament?"

The peach bloom on Marcia's cheek deepened as she bent over the daisy chain she was idly making.

"Doubtful ones! The dissolution of marriage may itself be an open question. But, for all churchmen, the remarriage of divorced persons--and trebly, when it is asked for by the person whose sin caused the divorce!--is an absolutely closed one!"

Marcia's mind was in a ferment. But her girlish senses were keenly alive to the presence beside her--the clean-cut classical face, the spiritual beauty of the eyes. Yet something in her shivered.

"Suppose she was very unhappy with her first husband?"

"Law cannot be based on hard cases. It is made to help the great multitude of suffering, sinning men and women through their lives." He paused a little, and then said, "Our Lord 'knew what was in man.'"

The low tone in which the last words were spoken affected Marcia deeply, not so much as an appeal to religion, for her own temperament was not religious, as because they revealed the inner mystical life of the man beside her. She was suddenly filled again with a strange pride that he should have singled her out--to love her.

But the rise of feeling was quickly followed by recoil.

She looked up eagerly.

"If I had been very miserable--had made a hideous mistake--and knew it--and somebody came along and offered to make me happy--give me a home--and care for me--I couldn't and I shouldn't resist!"

"You would," he said, simply, "if God gave you strength."

Nothing so intimate had yet been said between them. There was silence. That old, old connection between the passion of religion--which is in truth a great romanticism--and the passion of sex, made itself felt; but in its most poetic form. Marcia was thrillingly conscious of the debate in herself--of the voice which said, "Teach me, govern me, love me--be my adored master and friend!" and the voice which replied, "I should be his slave--I will not!"

At last she said:

"You have dismissed Mr. Betts?"

He sighed.

"He is going in a month. My father offered all we could. If--Mrs. Betts"--the words came out with effort--"would have separated from him we should have amply provided for her and her child. The Cloan Sisters would have watched over her. She could have lived near them, and Betts could have seen her from time to time--"

"They refused?"

"Absolutely. Betts wrote my father the fiercest letters. They were married, he said, married legally and honestly--and that was an end of it. As to Mrs. Betts's former history, no one had the smallest right to pry into it. He defied my father to dismiss him. My father--on his principles--had no choice but to do so. So then--your brother came on the scene!"

"Of course--he was furious?"

"What right has he to be furious?" said Newbury, quietly. "His principles may be what he pleases. But he must allow us ours. This is a free country."

A certain haughtiness behind the gentle manner was very perceptible. Marcia kindled for her brother.

"I suppose Corry would say, if the Church ruled us--as you wish--England wouldn't be free!"

"That's his view. We have ours. No doubt he has the present majority with him. But why attack us personally--call us names--because of what we believe?"

He spoke with vivacity, with wounded feeling. Marcia melted.

"But every one knows," she murmured, "that Corry is mad--quite mad."

And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand.

"Don't blame us!"

He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it.

"Don't let him set you against us!"

She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she sprang to her feet.

"Mother will be waiting lunch for us."

They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them. The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and there were strange, wild lights on the water and the grass, as though, invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land. Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace. Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was enchantment.

Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of both families.

"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened.

"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?"

Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked.

"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals."