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

I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will meet as often as his business here makes it possible. Meanwhile his powers and duties on this estate are to be as before. I say the proposal is monstrous! It would falsify our whole life here,--and make it one ugly hypocrisy!"

There was silence a little. Then Newbury asked:

"You of course made it plain once more--in your letter yesterday--that there would be no harshness--that as far as money went--"

"I told him he could have _whatever_ was necessary! We wished to force no man's conscience; but we could not do violence to our own. If they decided to remain together--then he and we must part; but we would make it perfectly easy for them to go elsewhere--in England or the colonies. If they separate, and she will accept the arrangements we propose for her--then he remains here, our trusted friend and right hand as before."

"It is, of course, the wrench of giving up the farm--"

Lord William raised his hands in protesting distress.

"Perfectly true, of course, that he's given the best years of his life to it!--that he's got all sorts of experiments on hand--that he can never build up exactly the same sort of thing elsewhere--that the farm is the apple of his eye. It's absolutely true--every word of it! But then, why did he take this desperate step!--without consulting any of his friends! It's no responsibility of ours!"

The blanched and delicate face of the old man showed the grief, the wound to personal affection he did not venture to let himself express, mingled with a rocklike steadiness of will.

"You have heard from the Cloan Sisters?"

"Last night. Nothing could be kinder. There is a little house close by the Sisterhood where she and the boy could live. They would give her work, and watch over her, like the angels they are,--and the boy could go to a day school. But they won't hear of it--they won't listen to it for a moment; and now--you see--they've put their own alternative plan before us, in this letter. He said to me, yesterday, that she was not religious by temperament--that she wouldn't understand the Sisters--nor they her--that she would be certain to rebel against their rules and regulations--and then all the old temptations would return. 'I have taken her life upon me,' he said, 'and I can't give her up. She is mine, and mine she will remain.' It was terribly touching. I could only say that I was no judge of his conscience, and never pretended to be; but that he could only remain here on our terms."

"The letter is curiously excitable--hardly legible even--very unlike Betts," said Newbury, turning it over thoughtfully.

"That's another complication. He's not himself. That attack of illness has somehow weakened him. I can't reason with him as I used to do."

The father and son walked on in anxious cogitation, till Newbury observed a footman coming with a note.

"From Coryston Place, sir. Waiting an answer."

Newbury read it first with eagerness, then with a clouded brow.

"Ask the servant to tell Miss Coryston I shall be with them for luncheon."

When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face showing the quick feeling behind.

"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?"

"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely trust you and your judgment in such a matter."

Newbury flushed.

"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground. "But Mrs. Betts has been to see her."

"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us."

The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily.

* * * * *

A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were fading; the gorse was over; but the grass and the young wheat were rushing up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, brimming as it was, on its chalk bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows.

The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery_'"?

"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp. It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to _sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of people with a high social trust, to betray that trust."

These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or accomplices in their wrong-doing?

Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen.

A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and to fling back his charges in his face.

Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges.

Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road.

"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you."

"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen of the English ruling class at its moral and physical best, as any student of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his class, of that large modern class of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the memory of years of kindly intercourse--friendship, loyalty, just dealing.

"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward," began Betts, abruptly.

"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly gentle, even deferential.

"You read it, I presume?"

Newbury made a sign of assent.

"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?"

Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question.

Newbury's troubled eyes answered him.

"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!"

"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?"

"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false."

"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?"

"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for you--elsewhere!"

Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him.

"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was.