The Coryston Family Part 10

"That we get on? I am sure she has never imagined that Mr. Arthur could so demean himself."

"But she must find out some day."

"Oh yes, I mean her to," said Miss Glenwilliam, quietly. She reached out a long hand toward Marion's cat and stroked it. Then she turned her large eyes of pale hazel set under beautiful dark brows to her companion. "You see--Lady Coryston has not only snubbed me--she has insulted father."

"How?" exclaimed Marion, startled.

"At Chatton House the other day. She refused to go down to dinner with him.

She positively did. The table had to be rearranged, and little Lady Chatton nearly had hysterics."

The girl lay looking at her friend, her large but finely cut mouth faintly smiling. But there was something dangerous in her eyes.

"And one day at lunch she refused to be introduced to me. I saw it happen quite plainly. Oh, she didn't exactly mean to be insolent. But she thinks society is too tolerant--of people like father and me."

"What a foolish woman!" said Marion Atherstone, rather helplessly.

"Not at all! She knows quite well that my whole existence is a fight--so far as London is concerned. She wants to make the fight a little harder--that's all."

"Your 'whole existence a fight,'" repeated Marion, with a touch of scorn, "after that list of parties!"

"It's a good fight at present," said the girl, coolly, "and a successful one. But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father goes out of office I shall be n.o.body. _She_ will be always at the top of the tree."

"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?"

"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip--but the facts--by heart! I am drowned--smothered in them. At present Arthur is the darling--the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"--Miss Glenwilliam threw up her hands.

"You think she will change her mind again?"

The girl took up a stalk of gra.s.s and nibbled it in laughing meditation.

"Perhaps I oughtn't to risk his chances?" she said, looking sidelong.

"Don't think about 'chances,'" said Marion Atherstone, indignantly--"think about whether you care for each other!"

"What a _bourgeois_ point of view! Well, honestly--I don't know.

Arthur Coryston is not at all clever. He has the most absurd opinions. We have only known each other a few months. If he were _very_ rich--By the way, is he coming this afternoon? And may I have a cigarette?"

Marion handed cigarettes. The click of a garden gate in the distance caught her ear.

"Here they are--he and Lord Coryston."

Enid Glenwilliam lit her cigarette, and made no move. Her slender, long-limbed body, as it lay at ease in the deep garden chair, the pale ma.s.ses of her hair, and the confident quiet face beneath it, made a charming impression of graceful repose. As Arthur Coryston reached her she held out a welcoming hand, and her eyes greeted him--a gay, significant look.

Coryston, having shaken hands with Miss Atherstone, hastily approached her companion.

"I didn't know you smoked," he said, abruptly, standing before her with his hands on his sides.

As always, Coryston made an odd figure. His worn, ill-fitting clothes, with their bulging pockets, the gra.s.shopper slimness of his legs and arms, the peering, glancing look of his eternally restless eyes, were all of them displeasing to Enid Glenwilliam as she surveyed him. But she answered him with a smile.

"Mayn't I?"

He looked down on her, frowning.

"Why should women set up a new want--a new slavery--that costs money?"

The color flew to her cheeks.

"Why shouldn't they? Go and preach to your own s.e.x."

"No good!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But women are supposed to have consciences. And--especially--_Liberal_ women," he added, slowly, as his eyes traveled over her dress.

"And pray why should Liberal women be ascetics any more than any other kind of women?" she asked him, quietly.

"Why?" His voice grew suddenly loud. "Because there are thousands of people in this country perishing for lack of proper food and clothing--and it is the function of Liberals to bring it home to the other thousands."

Arthur Coryston broke out indignantly:

"I say, Cony, do hold your tongue! You do talk such stuff!"

The young man, sitting where the whole careless grace of Miss Glenwilliam's person was delightfully visible to him, showed a countenance red with wrath.

Coryston faced round upon him, transformed. His frown had disappeared in a look of radiant good humor.

"Look here, Arthur, you've got the money-bags--you might leave me the talking. Has he told you what's happened?"

The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an indicating thumb in his brother's direction.

The girl looked embarra.s.sed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue.

"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up."

"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our dear mother has been doing?"

"I wish to heaven you hadn't taken Knatchett," said Arthur, sulkily.

"You regard me as a nuisance? Well, I meant to be. I'm finding out such lots of things," added Coryston, slowly, while his eyes, wandering over the plain, ceased their restlessness for a moment and became fixed and dreamy.

Dr. Atherstone caught the last words as he came out from his study. He approached his guests with an amused look at Coryston. But the necessary courtesies of the situation imposed themselves. So long as Arthur Coryston was present the Tory son of his Tory mother, an Opposition M.P. for a const.i.tuency, part of which was visible from the cottage garden, and a comparative stranger to the Atherstones, it was scarcely possible to let Coryston loose. The younger brother was there--Atherstone perfectly understood--simply because Miss Glenwilliam was their guest; not for his own _beaux yeux_ or his daughter's. But having ventured on to hostile ground, for a fair lady's sake, he might look to being kindly treated.

Arthur, on his side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to greet Atherstone--whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as a pestilent agitator--with the indifferent good breeding that all young Englishmen of the cla.s.ses have at command; he was ready to talk of the view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, moreover, by feelings he could hardly suppose were unsuspected by his hosts. Enid Glenwilliam watched him with secret but sympathetic laughter; and presently came to his aid. She rose from her seat.

"It's a little hot here, Marion. Shall I have time to show Mr. Coryston the view from the wood-path before tea?"

Marion a.s.sented. And the two tall figures strolled away across a little field toward a hanging wood on the edge of the hill.

"Will she have him?" said Coryston to Marion Atherstone, looking after the departing figures.

The question was disconcertingly frank. Marion laughed and colored.