The Coryston Family Part 16

And suddenly, impulsively, she put out her hand.

"Don't blame us!"

He took the hand in both his own, bent over and kissed it.

"Don't let him set you against us!"

She smiled and shook her head. Then by way of extricating herself and him from the moment of emotion--by way of preventing its going any further--she sprang to her feet.

"Mother will be waiting lunch for us."

They walked back to the house together, discussing as they went Coryston's whole campaign. Newbury's sympathy with her mother was as balm to Marcia; insensibly she rewarded him, both by an open and charming mood, and also by a docility, a readiness to listen to the Newbury view of life which she had never yet shown. The May day, meanwhile, murmured and gleamed around them.

The spring wind like a riotous life leaped and rustled in the new leaf of the oaks and beeches; the sky seemed to be leaning mistily to earth; and there were strange, wild lights on the water and the gra.s.s, as though, invisible, the train of Dionysius or Apollo swept through the land.

Meanwhile the relation between the young man and the girl ripened apace.

Marcia's resistance faltered within her; and to Newbury the walk was enchantment.

Finally they agreed to leave the task of remonstrating with Coryston to Sir Wilfrid Bury, who was expected the following day, and was an old friend of both families.

"Corry likes him," said Marcia. "He says, 'Give me either a firebrand or a cynic!' He has no use for other sorts of people. And perhaps Sir Wilfrid will help us, too--with Arthur." Her look darkened.

"Arthur?" said Newbury, startled. "What's wrong with Arthur?"

Marcia hurriedly told him. He looked amazed and shocked.

"Oh, that can't be allowed. We must protect your mother--and persuade Arthur. Let me do what I can. He and I are old pals."

Marcia was only too glad to be helped. It had begun to seem to her, in spite of the rush of her London gaieties, and the brilliance of her London successes, that she had been very lonely at home for a long time, and here, in this strong man, were warmth and shelter.

Luncheon pa.s.sed gaily, and Lady Coryston perceived, or thought she perceived, that Marcia's affairs were marching briskly toward their destined end. Newbury took his leave immediately afterward, saying to Lady Coryston, "So we expect you--next Sunday?" The slight emphasis he laid on the words, the pressure on her hand seemed to reveal to her the hope in the young man's mind. Well!--the sooner, the better.

Afterward Lady Coryston paid some calls in the village, and, coming home through a stately series of walled gardens ablaze with spring flowers, she gave some directions for a new herbaceous border. Then she returned to the house to await her son. Marcia meanwhile had gone to the station to meet Sir Wilfrid Bury.

Coryston duly arrived, a more disreputable figure than usual--bedraggled with rain, his shabby trousers tucked into his boots, and his cap festooned with fishing-flies; for the afternoon had turned showery, and Coryston had been pursuing the only sport which appealed to him in the trout-stream of the park. Before he did so he had formally asked leave of the agent, and had been formally granted it.

He and Lady Coryston were closeted together for nearly an hour. Had any one been sitting in the adjoining room they would have heard, save on two occasions when the raised voices clashed together, but little variation in the tones of the combatants. When the conference broke up and Coryston departed Lady Coryston was left alone for a little while. She sat motionless in her chair beside her writing-table. Animation and color faded slowly from her features; and before her trance of thought was broken by the arrival of a servant announcing that Sir Wilfrid Bury had arrived, one who knew her well would have been startled by certain subtle changes in her aspect.

Coryston, meanwhile, made his way to the great library in the north wing, looking for Lester. He found the young librarian at his desk, with a fifteenth-century MS. before him, which he was describing and cataloguing.

The beautiful pages sparkling with color and gold were held open by gla.s.s weights, and the young man's face, as he bent over his task, showed the happy abstraction of the scholar. All around him rose the latticed walls of the library, holding on one side a collection of MSS., on the other of early printed books, well known to learned Europe. Wandering gleams from the showery sky outside lit up the faded richness of the room, the pale brown and yellows of the books, the sharp black and white of the old engravings hanging among them. The windows were wide open, and occasionally a westerly gust would blow in upon the floor petals from a fruit tree in blossom just outside.

Coryston came in, looking rather flushed and excited, and took a seat on the edge of the table where Lester was working, his hands in his pockets.

"What a blessed place!" he said, glancing round him. Lester looked up and smiled absently.

"Not bad?"

Silence a moment. Then Coryston said, with sudden vehemence:

"Don't you go into politics, Lester!"

"No fear, old man. But what's up, now? You seem to have been ragging a good deal."

"I've been 'following the gleam,'" said Coryston, with a sarcastic mouth.

"Or to put it in another way--there's a hot coal in me that makes me do certain things. I dignify it by calling it a sense of justice. What is it?

I don't know. I say, Lester, are you a Suffragist?"

"Haven't made up my mind."

"I am--theoretically. But upon my word--politics plays the deuce with women. And sometimes I think that women will play the deuce with politics."

"You mean they're so unmeasured?" said Lester, cautiously.

Coryston shook his head vaguely, staring at the floor, but presently broke out:

"I say, Lester, if we can't find generosity, tenderness, an open mind--among women--where the devil are we going to find them?" He stood up.

"And politics kills all that kind of thing."

"'Physician, heal thyself,'" laughed Lester.

"Ah, but it's our _business_!'"--Coryston smote the table beside him--"our dusty, d--d business. We've got somehow to push and harry and drive this beastly world into some sort of decency. But the women!--oughtn't they to be in the shrine--tending the mystic fire? What if the fire goes out--if the heart of the nation dies?"

Lester's blue-gray eyes looked up quietly. There was sympathy in them, but he said nothing.

Coryston tramped half-way to the library door, then turned back.

"My mother's quite a good woman," he said, abruptly. "There are no great scandals on this estate--it's better managed than most. But because of this poison of politics, no one can call their souls their own. If she'd let them live their own lives they'd adore her."

"The trade-unions are just the same."

"I believe you!" said Coryston. "Freedom's a lost art in England--from Parliament downward. Well, well--Good-by!"

"Coryston!"

"Yes?" Lord Coryston paused with his hand on the door.

"Don't take the chair for Glenwilliam?"

"By George, I will!" Coryston's eyes flamed. And going out he noisily shut the door.

Lester was left to his work. But his mood had been diverted, and he presently found that he was wasting time. He walked to the window, and stood there gazing at the bright flower-beds in the formal garden, the fountain plashing in its center, the low hills and woods that closed the horizon, the villages with their church-towers, piercing the shelter of the woods. May had drawn over the whole her first veils of green. The English perfection, the English mellowness, was everywhere; the spring breathings in the air came scented with the young leaf of trees that had been planted before Blenheim was fought.

Suddenly across the farther end of the garden pa.s.sed a girlish figure in white. Lester's pulses ran. It was Marcia. He saw her but seldom, and that generally at a distance. But sometimes she would come, in her pretty, friendly way, to chat to him about his work, and turn over his ma.n.u.scripts.

"She has the same feeling about me that nice women have about their dogs and cats. They are conscious of them, sorry for them; they don't like them to feel themselves neglected. So she comes to see me every now and then--lest I should think myself forgotten. Her conscience p.r.i.c.ks her for people less prosperous than herself. I see it quite plainly. But she would be angry if I were to tell her so!"