The Coryston Family Part 31

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME]

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 s.e.x and pa.s.sion. 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 ma.s.s of flowers she had left scattered on the gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.s; children were tumbling in the swaths, and a cheerful murmur of voices rose on the evening air. But Marcia could only think of the note she still held in her hand.

"Can you come and see me? to-night--at once. Don't bring anybody. I am alarmed about my husband. Mr. Edward is away till to-morrow.--ALICE BETTS."

This sudden appeal to her had produced in Marcia a profound intensity of feeling. She thought of Coryston's "Take care!"--and trembled. Edward would not be home till the following day. She must act alone--help alone. The thought braced her will. Her mother would be no use--but she wished she had thought of asking Sir Wilfrid to come with her....

The car turned into the field lane leading to the farm. The wind had strengthened, and during all the latter part of her drive heavy clouds had been rising from the west, and ma.s.sing themselves round the declining sun.

The quality of the light had changed, and the air had grown colder.

"Looks like a storm, miss," said the young chauffeur, a lad just promoted to driving, and the son of the Coryston head gardener. As he spoke, a man came out of a range of buildings on the farther side of a field and paused to look at the motor. He was carrying something in his arms--Marcia thought, a lamb. The sight of the lady in the car seemed to excite his astonishment, but after a moment or two's observation he turned abruptly round the corner of the building behind him and disappeared.

"That's the place, miss, where they try all the new foods," the chauffeur continued, eagerly,--"and that's Mr. Betts. He's just wonderful with the beasts."

"You know the farm, Jackson?"

"Oh, father's great friends with Mr. Betts," said the youth, proudly.

"And I've often come over with him of a Sunday. Mr. Betts is a very nice gentleman. He'll show you everything."

At which point, however, with a conscious look, and a blush, the young man fell silent. Marcia wondered how much he knew. Probably not much less than she did, considering the agitation in the neighborhood.

They motored slowly toward the farm-house, an old building with modern additions and a small garden round it, standing rather nakedly on the edge of the famous checkered field, a patchwork quilt of green, yellow, and brown, which Marcia had often pa.s.sed on her drives without understanding in the least what it meant. About a stone's-throw from the front door rose a substantial one-storied building, and, seeing Miss Coryston glance at it curiously, Jackson was again eager to explain:

"That's the laboratory, miss--His lordship built that six years ago. And last year there was a big meeting here. Father and I come over to the speeches--and they gave Mr. Betts a gold medal--and there was an American gentleman who spoke--and he said as how this place of Mr. Betts--next to that place, Harpenden way--Rothamsted, I think they call it--was most 'ighly thought of in the States--and Mr. Betts had done fine. And that's the cattle-station over there, miss, where they fattens 'em, and weighs 'em. And down there's the drainage field where they gathers all the water that's been through the crops, when they've manured 'em--and the mangel field--and--"

"Mind that gate, Jackson," said Marcia. The youth silenced, looked to his steering, and brought the motor up safely to the door of the farm.

A rather draggled maid-servant answered Marcia's ring, examined her furtively, and showed her into the little drawing-room. Marcia stood at the window, looking out. She saw the motor disappearing toward the garage which she understood was to be found somewhere on the premises. The storm was drawing nearer; the rising grounds to the west were in black shadow--but on the fields and scattered buildings in front, wild gleams were striking now here, now there. How trim everything was!--how solid and prosperous. The great cattle-shed on the one hand--the sheep-station on the other, with its pens and hurdles--the fine stone-built laboratory--the fields stretching to the distance.

She turned to the room in which she stood. Nothing trim or solid there! A foundation indeed of simple things, the chairs and tables of a bachelor's room, over which a tawdry taste had gone rioting. Draperies of "art"

muslin; photographs in profusion--of ladies in very low dresses and affected poses, with names and affectionate messages written across the corners;--a mult.i.tude of dingy knick-knacks; above the mantelpiece a large colored photograph of Mrs. Betts herself as Ariel; clothes lying about; muddy shoes; the remains of a meal: Marcia looked at the medley with quick repulsion, the wave of feeling dropping.

The door opened. A small figure in a black dress entered softly, closed the door behind her, and stood looking at Miss Coryston. Marcia was at first bewildered. She had only seen Mrs. Betts once before, in her outdoor things, and the impression left had been of a red-eyed, disheveled, excitable woman, dressed in shabby finery, the sort of person who would naturally possess such a sitting-room as that in which they stood. And here was a woman austerely simple in dress and calm in manner! The black gown, without an ornament of any kind, showed the still lovely curves of the slight body, and the whiteness of the arms and hands. The face was quiet, of a dead pallor; the hair gathered loosely together and held in place by a couple of combs, was predominantly gray, and there had been no effort this time to disguise the bareness of the temples, or the fresh signs of age graven round eyes and lips.

For the first time the quick sense of the girl perceived that Mrs. Betts was or had been a beautiful woman. By what dramatic instinct did she thus present herself for this interview? A wretched actress on the boards, did she yet possess some subtle perception which came into play at this crisis of her own personal life?

"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it."

She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks.

"I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am."

Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the gusts which precede the storm.

"Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly.

"Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I was."

"He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night.

I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up.

Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to write. I took him some tea, and then--"

The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia and laid both hands on the girl's arm.

"He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So then--"

The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped them away, unheeded.