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

the expectation of the scene which--within forty-eight hours--she was deliberately preparing for herself. She meant to win her battle,--did not for one moment admit the possibility of losing it. But that her son would make her suffer for it she foresaw, and though she would not allow them to come into the open, there were dim fears and misgivings in the corners of her mind which made life disagreeable.

It was a fine summer evening, bright but cool. The streets of Coryston were full of people, and Lady Coryston distributed a suzerain's greetings as she passed along. Presently, at a spot ahead of her, she perceived a large crowd, and the motor slowed down.

"What's the matter, Patterson?" she asked of her chauffeur.

"Layin' a stone--or somethin'--my lady," said the chauffeur in a puzzled voice.

"Laying a stone?" she repeated, wondering. Then, as the crowd parted before the motor, she caught sight of a piece of orchard ground which only that morning had been still hidden behind the high moss-grown palings which had screened it for a generation. Now the palings had been removed sufficiently to allow a broad passage through, and the crowd outside was but an overflow from the crowd within. Lady Coryston perceived a platform with several black-coated persons in white ties, a small elderly lady, and half a dozen chairs upon it. At one end of the platform a large notice-board had apparently just been reared, for a couple of men were still at work on its supports. The board exhibited the words--"Site of the new Baptist Chapel for Coryston Major. All contributions to the building fund thankfully received."

There was no stone to be seen, grass and trees indeed were still untouched, but a public meeting was clearly proceeding, and in the chair, behind a small table, was a slight, fair-haired man, gesticulating with vigor.

Lady Coryston recognized her eldest son.

"Drive on, Patterson!" she said, furiously.

"I can't, my lady--they're too thick."

By this time the motor had reached the center of the gathering which filled the road, and the persons composing it had recognized Lady Coryston. A movement ran through the crowd; faces turned toward the motor, and then toward the platform; from the mother--back to the son. The faces seemed to have but one smile, conscious, sly, a little alarmed. And as the motor finally stopped--the chauffeur having no stomach for manslaughter--in front of the breach in the railings, the persons on the platform saw it, and understood what was the matter with the audience.

Coryston paused in his speech. There was a breathless moment. Then, stepping in front of the table, to the edge of the platform, he raised his voice:

"We scarcely expected, my friends, to see my mother, Lady Coryston, among us this evening. Lady Coryston has as good a right to her opinion as any of us have to ours. She has disapproved of this enterprise till now. She did not perhaps think there were so many Baptists--big and little Baptists--in Coryston--" he swept his hand round the audience with its fringe of babies. "May we not hope that her presence to-night means that she has changed her mind--that she will not only support us--but that she will even send a check to the Building Fund! Three cheers for Lady Coryston!"

He pointed to the notice-board, his fair hair blown wildly back from his boyish brow, and queer thin lips; and raising his hand, he started the first "Hip!--hip--"

"Go on, Patterson," cried Lady Coryston again, knocking sharply at the front windows of the open landaulette. The crowd cheered and laughed, in good-humored triumph; the chauffeur hooted violently, and those nearest the motor fled with shrieks and jeers; Lady Coryston sat in pale endurance. At last the way was clear, and the motor shot forward. Coryston stepped back to the table and resumed his speech as though nothing had happened.

"Infamous! Outrageous!"

The words formed themselves on Lady Coryston's angry lips. So the plot in which she had always refused to believe had actually been carried through! That woman on the platform was no doubt the butler's daughter, the miserly spinster who had guarded her Naboth's vineyard against all purchasers for twenty years. Coryston had squared her, and in a few months the Baptist Chapel his mother had staved off till now, would be flaunting it in the village.

And this was Coryston's doing. What taste--what feeling! A mother!--to be so treated! By the time she reached her own sitting-room, Lady Coryston was very near a womanish weeping. She sat silently there awhile, in the falling dusk, forcing back her self-control, making herself think of the next day, the arrival of the Glenwilliams, and how she would need all her strength and a clear head to go through with what she meant to do--more important, that, than this trumpery business in the village!

A sound of footsteps roused her from her thoughts, and she perceived Marcia outside, coming back through the trees to the house. Marcia was singing in a low voice as she came. She had taken off her hat, which swung in her left hand, and her dark curls blew about her charming face. The evening light seemed to halo and caress her; and her mother thought--"she has just parted from Edward!" A kind of jealousy of her daughter for one strange moment possessed her--jealousy of youth and love and opening life. She felt herself thwarted and forgotten; her sons were all against her, and her daughter had no need of her. The memory of her own courting days came back upon her, a rare experience!--and she was conscious of a dull longing for the husband who had humored her every wish--save one; had been proud of her cleverness, and indolently glad of her activity. Yet when she thought of him, it was to see him as he lay on his death-bed, during those long last hours of obstinate silence, when his soul gave no sign to hers, before the end.

Marcia's state and Marcia's feelings, meanwhile, were by no means so simple as her mother imagined. She was absorbed, indeed, by the interest and excitement of her engagement. She could never forget Newbury; his influence mingled with every action and thought of her day; and it was much more than an influence of sex and passion. They had hardly indeed been engaged a few days, before Marcia had instinctively come to look upon their love as a kind of huge and fascinating adventure. Where would it lead?--how would it work out? She was conscious always of the same conflicting impulses of submission and revolt; the same alternations of trust and resentment. In order not to be crushed by the strength of his character, she had brought up against him from the very beginning the weapons of her young beauty, carrying out what she had dimly conceived, even on the first day of their betrothal. The wonder of that perpetual contrast, between the natural sweetness of his temperament and the sternness with which he controlled and disciplined his life, never ceased to affect her. His fierce judgment of opinions--his bitter judgment, often, of men--repelled and angered her. She rose in revolt, protesting; only to be made to feel that in such bitterness, or such fierceness, there was nothing personal whatever. He was but a soldier under orders, mysterious orders; moved by forces she only faintly perceived. Once or twice, during the fortnight, it was as though a breath of something infinitely icy and remote blew across their relation; nor was it till, some years afterward, she read Madame Perrier's life of her brother, Blaise Pascal, that she understood in some small degree what it had meant.

And just as some great physical and mental demand may bring out undreamt-of powers in a man or woman, so with the moral and spiritual demand made by such a personality as Newbury. Marcia rose in stature as she tried to meet it. She was braced, exalted. Her usual egotisms and arrogancies fell away ashamed. She breathed a diviner air, and life ran, hour by hour, with a wonderful intensity, though always haunted by a sense of danger she could not explain. Newbury's claim upon her indeed was soon revealed as the claim of lover, master, friend, in one; his love infused something testing and breathless into every hour of every day they were together.

On the actual day of the Martover meeting Marcia was left alone at Coryston. Newbury had gone--reluctantly for once--to a diocesan meeting on the farther side of the county. Lady Coryston, whose restlessness was evident, had driven to inspect a new farm some miles off, and was to take informal dinner on her way back with her agent, Mr. Page, and his wife--a house in which she might reckon on the latest gossip about the Chancellor's visit, and the great meeting for which special trains were being run from town, and strangers were pouring into the district.

Marcia spent the day in writing letters of thanks for wedding presents, and sheets of instructions to Waggin, who had been commandeered long before this, and was now hard at work in town on the preparations for the wedding; sorely hampered the while by Lady Coryston's absence from the scene. Then, after giving some last thoughts to her actual wedding-dress, the bride-elect wandered into the rose-garden and strolled about aimlessly gathering, till her hands were full of blooms, her thoughts meanwhile running like a mill-race over the immediate past and the immediate future. This one day's separation from Newbury had had a curious effect. She had missed him sharply; yet at the same time she had been conscious of a sort of relief from strain, a slackening of the mental and moral muscles, which had been strangely welcome.

Presently she saw Lester coming from the house, holding up a note.

"I came to bring you this. It seems to want an answer." He approached her, his eyes betraying the pleasure awakened by the sight of her among the roses, in her delicate white dress, under the evening sky. He had scarcely seen her of late, and in her happiness and preoccupation she seemed at last to have practically forgotten his presence in the house.

She opened the note, and as she read it Lester was dismayed to see a look of consternation blotting the brightness from her face.

"I must have the small motor--at once! Can you order it for me?"

"Certainly. You want it directly?"

"Directly. Please hurry them!" And dropping the roses, without a thought, on the ground, and gathering up her white skirts, she ran toward one of the side doors of the facade which led to her room. Lester lifted the fragrant mass of flowers she had left scattered on the grass, and carried them in. What could be the matter?

He saw to the motor's coming round, and when a few minutes later he had placed her in it, cloaked and veiled, he asked her anxiously if he could not do anything to help her, and what he should say to Lady Coryston on her return.

"I have left a note for my mother. Please tell Sir Wilfrid I sha'n't be here for dinner. No--thank you!--thank you! I must go myself!" Then, to the chauffeur--"Redcross Farm!--as quick as you can!"

Lester was left wondering. Some new development of the Betts trouble? After a few minutes' thought he went toward the smoking-room in search of Sir Wilfrid Bury.

Meanwhile Marcia was speeding through the summer country, where the hay harvest was beginning and the fields were still full of folk. The day had been thunderously fine, with threats of change. Broad streaks of light and shadow lay on the shorn grass; children were