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

The best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, you're going to drive me from it."

"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden rush of grief. The other turned.

"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she _is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her."

"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?" Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled passion. "I have heard you quote them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a petition we all sent to the Bishop only last year."

"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a stop.

"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in the laboratory I must be looking after."

"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--"

Betts interrupted.

"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no good."

The voice dropped.

With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away.

Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican sort, depends.

The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened. Would she come to meet him?

Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they believed, than Betts himself knew.

And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance of the woods, the limpid flashing of the stream....

He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the new-leafed trees.

The wood was deep--spectators none. She came to his arms, and lightly clasped her own round his neck, hiding her face....

When they moved on together, hand in hand, Marcia, instinctively putting off what must be painful, spoke first of the domestic scene of the day before--of Arthur and her mother--and the revelation sprung upon them all.

"You remember how _terrified_ I was--lest mother should know? And she's taken it so calmly!"

She told the story. Lady Coryston, it seemed, had canceled all the arrangements for the Coryston meeting, and spoke no more of it. She was cool and distant, indeed, toward Arthur, but only those who knew her well would perhaps have noticed it. And he, on his side, having gained his point, had been showing himself particularly amiable; had gone off that morning to pay political visits in the division; and was doing his duty in the afternoon by captaining the village cricket team in their Whitsuntide match. But next week, of course, he would be in London again for the reassembling of Parliament, and hanging about the Glenwilliams' house, as before.

"They're not engaged?"

"Oh dear, no! Coryston doesn't believe _she_ means it seriously at all. He also thinks that mother is plotting something."

"When can I see Coryston?" Newbury turned to her with a rather forced smile. "You know, darling, he'll have to get used to me as a brother!"

"He says he wants to see you--to--to have it out with you," said Marcia, awkwardly. Then with a sudden movement, she clasped both her hands round Newbury's arm.

"Edward!--do--_do_ make us all happy!"

He looked down on the liquid eyes, the fresh young face raised appealingly to his.

"How can I make you happy?" He lifted one hand and kissed it. "You darling!--what can I do?"

But as he spoke he knew what she meant and dreaded the coming moment. That she should ask anything in these magical days that he could not at once lay at her feet!--she, who had promised him herself!

"_Please_--let Mr. Betts stay--please, Edward! Oh, I was so sorry for her yesterday!"

"We are all so sorry for her," he said, after a pause. "My father and mother will do all they can."

"Then you _will_ let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly against him.

"Of course!--if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening.

She straightened herself. "If they separate, you mean?"

"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do."

"But it would break their hearts."

He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed.

"It would make amends."

"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, Edward?--Won't everybody think it _very_ hard?"

"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't matter,--what they have done?--when in truth it seems to us a black offense--"

"Against what--or whom?" she asked, wondering.

The answer came unflinchingly:

"Against our Lord--and His Church."

The revolt within showed itself in her shining eyes.

"Ought we to set up these standards for other people? And they don't ask to stay _here_!--at least she doesn't. That's what Mrs. Betts came to say to me--"

Marcia threw herself into an eager recapitulation of Mrs. Betts's arguments. Her innocence, her ignorance, her power of feeling, and her instinctive claim to have her own way and get what she wanted,--were all perceptible in her pleading. Newbury listened with discomfort and distress--not yielding, however, by the fraction of an inch, as she soon discovered. When she came to an abrupt pause, the wounded pride of a foreseen rebuff dawning in her face, Newbury broke out:

"Darling, I _can't_ discuss it with you! Won't you trust me--Won't you believe that neither father nor I would cause these poor things one moment's pain--if we could help it?"

Marcia drew away from him. He divined the hurt in her as she began twisting and untwisting a ribbon from her belt, while her lip trembled.

"I can't understand," she said, frowning--"I can't!"

"I know you can't. But won't you trust me? Dearest, you're going to trust me with your whole life? Won't you?"

He took her in his arms, bending his handsome head to hers, pleading with her in murmured words and caresses. And again she was conquered, she gave way; not without a galling consciousness of being refused, but thrilled all the same by the very fact that her lover could refuse her, in these first moments of their love. It brought home to her once more that touch of inaccessible strength, of mysterious command in Newbury, which from the beginning had both teased and won her.

But it was on her conscience at least to repeat to him what Coryston had said. She released herself to do it.

"Coryston said, Edward, I was to tell you to 'take care.' He has seen Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and he says they are very excitable people--and very much in love. He can't tell what might happen."

Newbury's face stiffened.

"I think I know them as well as Coryston. We will take every care, dearest. And as for thinking of it--why, it's hardly ever out of my mind--except when I'm with you! It hangs over me from morn till night."

Then at last she let the subject be dismissed; and they loitered home through the woods, drawing into their young veins the scents and hues of the June day. They were at that stage in love, when love has everything to learn, and learns it through ways as old and sweet as life. Each lover is discovering the other, and over the process, Nature, with her own ends in view, throws the eternal glamour.

Yet before they reached the house the "sweet bells" in Marcia's consciousness were once more jangling. There could be nothing but pleasure, indeed, in confessing how each was first attracted to the other; in clearing up the little misunderstandings of courtship; in planning for the future--the honeymoon--their London house--the rooms at Hoddon Grey that were to be refurnished for them. Lady William's jewels emerged from Newbury's pocket, and Marcia blazed with them, there and then, under the trees. They laughed together at the ugly setting, and planned a new one. But then a mention by Newbury of the Oxford friend who was to be his "best man" set him talking of the group of men who had been till now the leading influence in his life--friends made at Oxford, and belonging all of them to that younger High Church party of which he seemed to be the leader. Of two of them especially he talked with eager affection; one, an overworked High Churchman, with a parish in South London; another who belonged to a "Community," the Community of the Ascension, and was soon to go out to a mission-station in a very lonely and plague-stricken part of India.

And gradually, as he talked, Marcia fell silent. The persons he was speaking of, and the ideas they represented, were quite strange to her; although, as a matter of mere information, she knew of course that such people and such institutions existed. She was touched at first, then chilled, and if the truth be told--bored. It was with such topics, as with the Hoddon Grey view of the Betts case. Something in her could not understand.

She guided him deftly back to music, to the opera, to the night of Iphigenia. No jarring there! Each mind kindled the other, in a common delight. Presently they swung along, hand in hand, laughing, quoting, reminding each other of this fine thing, and that. Newbury was a considerable musician; Marcia was accustomed to be thought so. There was a new and singular joy in feeling herself but a novice and ignoramus beside him.

"How much you know!"--and then, shyly--"You must teach me!" With the inevitable male retort--"Teach you!--when you look at me like that!"

It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before luncheon, and