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

to upset them again? Do, if you like. I'll pick them up." His eyes mocked her tenderly, and before she could reply he had seized her disengaged hand and kissed it. Then he stood up.

"Now I'm going. Good-by."

"How much mischief will you get into to-day?" she asked, in a rather stifled voice.

"It's Sunday--so there isn't so much chance as usual. First item." He checked them on his fingers. "Go to Redcross Farm, see Betts, and--if necessary--have a jolly row with Edward Newbury--or his papa. Second, Blow up Price--my domestic blacksmith--you know!--the socialist apostle I rescued from my mother's clutches and set up at Patchett, forge and all--blow him up sky-high, for evicting a widow woman in a cottage left him by his brother, with every circumstance of barbarity. There's a parable called, I believe, 'The Unjust Servant,' which I intend to rub into him. Item, No. 3, Pitch into the gentleman who turned out the man who voted for Arthur--the Radical miller--Martover gent--who's coming to see me at three this afternoon, to ask what the deuce I mean by spreading reports about him. Shall have a ripping time with him!"

"Why, he's one of the Baptists who were on the platform with you yesterday." Marion pointed to the local paper lying on the grass.

"Don't care. Don't like Baptists, except when they're downtrodden." A vicious kick given to a stone on the lawn emphasized the remark. "Well, good-by. Shall look in at Coryston this afternoon to see if there's anything left of my mother."

And off he went whistling. As he did so, the head and profile of a young lady richly adorned with red-gold hair might have been seen in the upper window. The owner of it was looking after Coryston.

"Why didn't you make him stay?" said Enid Glenwilliam, composedly, as she came out upon the lawn and took a seat on the grass in front of the summer-house.

"On the contrary, I sent him away."

"By telling him whom we were expecting? Was it news to him?"

"Entirely. He hoped you would treat Lady Coryston kindly." Then, with a sudden movement, Marion looked up from her mending, and her eyes--challenging, a little stern,--struck full on her companion.

Enid laughed, and, settling herself into the garden chair, she straightened and smoothed the folds of her dress, which was of a pale-blue crape and suited her tall fairness and brilliance to perfection.

"That's good! I shouldn't have minded his staying at all."

"You promised to see Lady Coryston alone--and she has a right to it," said Marion, with emphasis.

"Has she? I wonder if she has a right to anything?" said Enid Glenwilliam, absently, and lifting a stalk of grass, she began to chew it in silence while her gaze wandered over the view.

"Have you at all made up your mind, Enid, what you are going to say?"

"How can I, till I know what _she's_ going to say?" laughed Miss Glenwilliam, teasingly.

"But of course you know perfectly well."

"Is it so plain that no Conservative mother could endure me? But I admit it's not very likely Lady Coryston could. She is the living, distilled essence of Conservative mothers. The question is, mightn't she have to put up with me?"

"I do not believe you care for Arthur Coryston," said Marion, with slow decision, "and if you don't care for him you ought not to marry him."

"Oh, but you forget a lot of things!" was the cool reply. "You simplify a deal too much."

"Are you any nearer caring for him--really--than you were six weeks ago?"

"He's a very--nice--dear fellow." The girl's face softened. "And it would be even sweeter to dish the pack of fortune-hunting mothers who are after him, now, than it was six weeks ago."

"Enid!"

"Can't help it, dear. I'm made like that. I see all the ugly shabby little sides of it--the 'scores' I should make, the snubs I should have to put up with, the tricks Lady Coryston would certainly play on us. How I should love fighting her! In six months Arthur would be my father's private secretary."

"You would despise him if he were!"

"Yes, I suppose I should. But it would be I who would write his speeches for him then--and they'd make Lady Coryston sit up! Ah! didn't you hear something?"

A distant humming on the hill leading to the house became audible.

Marion Atherstone rose.

"It sounds like a motor. You'll have the garden quite to yourselves. I'll see that nobody interrupts you."

Enid nodded. But before Marion had gone half across the lawn she came quickly back again.

"Remember, Enid," her voice pleaded, "his mother's devoted to him. Don't make a quarrel between them--unless you must." Enid smiled, and lightly kissed the face bending over her.

"Did Lord Coryston tell you to say that?"

Marion departed, silenced.

Enid Glenwilliam waited. While the humming noise drew nearer she lifted the local paper from the ground and looked eagerly at the account of the Martover meeting. The paper was a Radical paper, and it had blossomed into its biggest head-lines for the Chancellor. "Chancellor goes for the Landlords," "Crushing attack," "Tories writhe under it," "Frantic applause."

She put it down, half contemptuous, half pleased. She had grown accustomed to the mouthings of party politics, and could not do without them. But her brain was not taken in by them. "Father was not so good as usual last night," she said to herself. "But nobody else would have been half so good!" she added, with a fierce protectiveness.

And in that spirit she rose to meet the stately lady in black, whom the Atherstones' maid-servant was showing across the garden.

"Miss Glenwilliam, I believe?"

Lady Coryston paused and put up her eyeglass. Enid Glenwilliam advanced, holding out her hand.

"How do you do, Lady Coryston?"

The tone was gay, even amused. Lady Coryston realized at once she was being scanned by a very sharp pair of eyes, and that their owner was, or seemed to be, in no sort of embarrassment. The first advantage, indeed, had been gained by the younger woman. Lady Coryston had approached her with the formality of a stranger. Enid Glenwilliam's easy greetings suggested that they had already met in many drawing-rooms.

Miss Glenwilliam offered a seat.

"Are you afraid of the grass? We could easily go indoors."

"Thank you. This does very well. It was very kind of you to say you would see me."

"I was delighted--of course."

There was a moment's pause. The two women observed each other. Lady Coryston had taken Marion's chair, and sat erect upon it. Her face, with its large and still handsome features, its prominent eyes and determined mouth, was well framed in a black hat, of which the lace strings were tied under her chin. Her flowing dress and scarf of some thin black material, delicately embroidered with jet, were arranged, as usual, with a view to the only effect she ever cared to make--the effect of the great lady, in command--clearly--of all possible resources, while far too well bred to indulge in display or ostentation.

Enid Glenwilliam's blood had quickened, in spite of her apparent ease. She had taken up an ostrich-feather fan--a traditional weapon of the sex--and waved it slowly to and fro, while she waited for her visitor to speak.

"Miss Glenwilliam," began Lady Coryston, "you must no doubt have thought it a strange step that I should ask you for this conversation?"

The tone of this sentence was slightly interrogative, and the girl on the grass nodded gravely.

"But I confess it seemed to me the best and most straightforward thing to do. I am accustomed to go to the point, when a matter has become serious; and I hate shilly-shallying. You, we all know, are very clever, and have much experience of the world. You will, I am sure, prefer that I should be frank."

"Certainly," smiled Enid, "if I only knew what the matter was!"

Lady Coryston's tone became a trifle colder.

"That I should have thought was obvious. You have been seeing a great deal of my son, Miss Glenwilliam; your--your friendship with him has been very conspicuous of late; and I have it from himself that he is in love with you, and either has asked you, or will ask you, to marry him."

"He has asked me several times," said the girl, quietly. Then, suddenly, she laughed. "I came away with my father this week-end, that I might, if possible, prevent his asking me again."

"Then you have refused him?" The voice was indiscreetly eager.

"So far."

"So far? May I ask--does that mean that you yourself are still undecided?"

"I have as yet said nothing final to him."

Lady Coryston paused a few seconds, to consider the look presented to her, and then said, with emphasis:

"If that is so, it is fortunate that we are able to have this talk--at this moment. For I wish, before you take any final decision, to lay before you what the view of my son's family must inevitably be of such a marriage."

"The view of Lord Coryston and yourself?" said Miss Glenwilliam, in her most girlish voice.

"My son Coryston and I have at present no interests in common," was Lady Coryston's slightly tart reply. "That, I should have thought, considering his public utterances, and the part which I have always taken in politics, was sufficiently evident."

Her companion, without speaking, bent over the sticks of the fan, which her long fingers were engaged in straightening.

"No! When I speak of the family," resumed Lady Coryston, "I must for the present, unfortunately, look upon myself as the only sure guardian of its traditions; but that I intend to be--while I live. And I can only regard a marriage between my son and yourself as undesirable--not only for my son--but first and foremost, Miss Glenwilliam, for yourself."

"And why?"

Laying down the fan upon her knee, the young lady now applied her nimble fingers to smoothing the white and curling tips of the feathers.

The color rushed into Lady Coryston's lightly wrinkled cheeks.

"Because it rarely or never answers that persons from such different worlds, holding such different opinions, and with such different antecedents, should marry," she said, firmly. "Because I could not welcome you as a daughter--and because a marriage with you would disastrously affect the prospects of my son."

"I wonder what you mean by 'such different worlds,'" said Miss Glenwilliam, with what seemed an innocent astonishment. "Arthur and I always go to the same dances."

Lady Coryston's flush deepened angrily. She had some difficulty in keeping her voice in order.

"I think you understand what I mean. I don't wish to be the least rude."

"Of course not. But--is it my birth, or my poverty, that you most dislike?"

"Poverty has nothing to do with it--nothing at all. I have never considered money in connection with Arthur's marriage, and never shall."

"Because you have so much of it?" Lifting her broad, white brow from the fan on her knee, Enid turned the astonishing eyes beneath it on the lady in black sitting beside her. And for the first time the lady in black was conscious of the malice lurking in the soft voice of the speaker.

"That, perhaps, would be your way of explaining it. In any case, I repeat, money has nothing to do with the present case. But, Miss Glenwilliam, my son belongs to a