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

growing astonishment. Then, still holding it, she was hurrying away to her own sitting-room when the butler intercepted her.

"There's a young lady, miss, who wants to see you. I took her to your sitting-room. She said she came from the dressmaker--something you had ordered--very particular."

"Something I had ordered?" said Marcia, mystified. "I don't know anything about it."

She ran up-stairs, still thinking of the letter in her hand.

"I won't see her!" she said to herself, vehemently, "without Edward's leave. He has a right now to say what I shall do. It is different with Coryston. He may argue with me--and with Edward--if he pleases. But Mrs. Betts herself! No--that's too much!"

Her cheeks flushed angrily. She threw open the door of her sitting-room. Some one sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair rose as she entered. To her amazement Marcia perceived a slender woman--a lady--a complete stranger to her, standing in her own private sitting-room, awaiting her arrival. A woman in rather slipshod artistic dress, with hands clasped theatrically, and tears on her cheeks.

"Who are you?" said Marcia, drawing back.


Book II

MARCIA

"To make you me how much so e'er I try, You will be always you, and I be I."


CHAPTER IX

"Miss Coryston, I have done a dreadful thing," said a trembling voice. "I--I have deceived your servants--told them lies--that I might get to see you. But I implore you, let me speak to you!--don't send me away!"

Marcia Coryston looked in amazement at the shrinking, childish creature, standing suppliant before her, and repeated:

"I have not an idea who you are. Please tell me your name."

"My name--is Alice Betts," said the other, after a momentary hesitation. "Oh, perhaps you don't know anything about me. But yet--I think you must; because--because there has been so much talk!"

"Mrs. Betts?" said Marcia, slowly. Her eyes perused the other's face, which reddened deeply under the girl's scrutiny. Marcia, in her pale pink dress and hat, simple, but fresh and perfectly appointed, with her general aspect of young bloom and strength, seemed to take her place naturally against--one might almost say, as an effluence from--the background of bright June foliage, which could be seen through the open windows of the room; while Mrs. Betts, tumbled, powdered, and through all the juvenility of her attire--arms bare to the elbow and throat half uncovered, short skirts and shell necklace,--betraying her thirty-five years, belonged quite plainly to the used, autumnal category of her sex.

"Haven't you heard of me?" she resumed, plaintively. "I thought--Lord Coryston--"

She paused, her eyes cast down.

"Oh yes," said Marcia, mechanically. "You have seen my brother? Please sit down."

Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up. Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a broken, sobbing voice.

"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh! my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so _ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I don't know how to excuse myself--"

She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears.

"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing.

"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!"

Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched.

"I am sure nobody wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with embarrassment.

Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly.

"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm unless he will give me up?"

But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly:

"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs."

"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into vehemence:

"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen! You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help anybody as wretched as I am!"

The small, chubby face and slight figure had assumed a certain tragic force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as though the speaker observed herself, even in violence.

Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and then said:

"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?"

"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment. "I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look at Marcia.

The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed.

"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging. And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the shore, and I told him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr. Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more disgrace on anybody."

She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor!

Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up.

"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!"

The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only say again in a vaguely troubled voice:

"I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere."

"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?"