The Coryston Family Part 11

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"Because there'll be the deuce to pay if she does," said Coryston, nursing his knees, and bubbling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "My unfortunate mother will have to make another will. What the lawyers have made out of her already!"

"There would be no reconciling her to the notion of such a marriage?" asked Atherstone, after a moment.

"'If my son takes to him a wife of the daughters of Heth, what good shall my life be unto me?'" quoted Coryston, laughing. "Good gracious, how handy the Bible comes in--for most things! I expect you're an infidel, and don't know." He looked up curiously at Atherstone.

A shade of annoyance crossed Atherstone's finely marked face.

"I was the son of a Presbyterian minister," he said, shortly. "But to return. After all, you know, Radicals and Tories do still intermarry! It hasn't quite come to that!"

"No, but it's coming to that!" cried Coryston, bringing his hand down in a slap on the tea-table. "And women like my mother are determined it shall come to it. They want to see this country divided up into two hostile camps--fighting it out--blood and thunder, and devilries galore. Ay, and"--he brought his face eagerly, triumphantly, close to Atherstone's--"so do you, too--at bottom."

The doctor drew back. "I want politics to be realities, if that's what you mean," he said, coldly. "But the peaceful methods of democracy are enough for me. Well, Lord Coryston, you say you've been finding out a lot of things in these few weeks you've been settled here. What sort?"

Coryston turned an odd, deliberate look at his questioner.

"Yes, I'm after a lot of game--in the Liberal preserves just as much as the Tory. There isn't a pin to choose between you! Now, look here!" He checked the items off on his fingers. "My mother's been refusing land for a Baptist chapel. Half the village Baptist--lots of land handy--she won't let 'em have a yard. Well, we're having meetings every week, we're sending her resolutions every week, which she puts in the waste-paper basket. And on Sundays they rig up a tent on that bit of common ground at the park gates, and sing hymns at her when she goes to church. That's No. 1. No. 2--My mother's been letting Page--her agent--evict a jolly decent fellow called Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course--but that's the truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days--no good. Now I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent for the village. I can tell you he's going it! That's No. 2. No. 3--There's a slight difficulty with the hunt I needn't trouble you with. We've given 'em warning we're going to kill foxes wherever we can get 'em. They've been just gorging chickens this last year--nasty beasts! That don't matter much, however. No. 4--Ah-ha!"--he rubbed his hands--"I'm on the track of that old hypocrite, Burton of Martover--"

"Burton! one of the best men in the country!" cried Atherstone, indignantly. "You're quite mistaken, Lord Coryston!"

"Am I!" cried Coryston, with equal indignation--"not a bit of it. Talking Liberalism through his nose at all the meetings round here, and then doing a thing--Look here! He turned that man and his wife--Potifer's his name--who are now looking after me--out of their cottage and their bit of land--why, do you think?--because _the man voted for Arthur_! Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? Arthur kissed his baby. Of course he voted for Arthur. He thought Arthur was 'a real nice gentleman'--so did his wife.

Why shouldn't he vote for Arthur? n.o.body wanted to kiss Burton's baby. Hang him! You know this kind of thing must be put a stop to!"

And, getting up, Coryston stamped up and down furiously, his small face aflame. Atherstone watched him in silence. This strange settlement of Lady Coryston's disinherited son--socialist and revolutionist--as a kind of watchman, in the very midst of the Coryston estates, at his mother's very gates, might not after all turn out so well as the democrats of the neighborhood had antic.i.p.ated. The man was too queer--too flighty.

"Wait a bit! I think some of your judgments may be too hasty, Lord Coryston. There's a deal to learn in this neighborhood--the Hoddon Grey estate, for instance--"

Coryston threw up his hands.

"The Newburys--my word, the Newburys! 'Too bright and good'--aren't they?--'for human nature's daily food.' Such churches--and schools--and villages! All the little boys patterns--and all the little girls saints.

Everybody singing in choirs--and belonging to confraternities--and carrying banners. 'By the p.r.i.c.king of my thumbs' when I see a Newbury I feel that a mere fraction divides me from the criminal cla.s.s. And I tell you, I've heard a story about that estate"--the odd figure paused beside the tea-table and rapped it vigorously for emphasis--"that's worse than any other villainy I've yet come across. You know what I mean. Betts and his wife!"

He paused, scrutinizing the faces of Atherstone and Marion with his glittering eyes.

Atherstone nodded gravely. He and Marion both knew the story. The neighborhood indeed was ringing with it. On the one hand it involved the pitiful tale of a divorced woman; on the other the unbending religious convictions of the Newbury family. There was hot champions.h.i.+p on both sides; but on the whole the Newbury family was at the moment unpopular in their own county, because of the affair. And Edward Newbury in particular was thought to have behaved with harshness.

Coryston sat down to discuss the matter with his companions, showing a white heat of feeling. "The religious tyrant," he vowed, "is the most hideous of all tyrants!"

Marion said little. Her grave look followed her guest's vehement talk; but she scarcely betrayed her own point of view. The doctor, of course, was as angry as Coryston.

Presently Atherstone was summoned into the house, and then Coryston said, abruptly:

"My mother likes that fellow--Newbury. My sister likes him. From what I hear he might become my brother-in-law. He sha'n't--before Marcia knows this story!"

Marion looked a little embarra.s.sed, and certainly disapproving.

"He has very warm friends down here," she said, slowly; "people who admire him enormously."

"So had Torquemada!" cried Coryston. "What does that prove? Look here!"--he put both elbows on the table, and looked sharply into Marion's plain and troubled countenance--"don't you agree with me?"

"I don't know whether I do or not--I don't know enough about it."

"You mustn't," he said, eagerly--"you mustn't disagree with me!" Then, after a pause, "Do you know that I'm always hearing about you, Miss Atherstone, down in those villages?"

Marion blushed furiously, then laughed.

"I can't imagine why."

"Oh yes, you can. I hate charity--generally. It's a beastly mess. But the things you do--are human things. Look here, if you ever want any help, anything that a fellow with not much coin, but with a pair of strong arms and a decent headpiece, can do, you come to me. Do you see?"

Marion smiled and thanked him.

Coryston rose.

"I must go. Sha'n't wait for Arthur. He seems to be better employed. But--I should like to come up here pretty often, Miss Atherstone, and talk to you.

I shouldn't wonder if I agreed with you more than I do with your father. Do you see any objection?"

He stood leaning on the back of a chair, looking at her with his queer simplicity. She smiled back.

"Not the least. Come when you like."

He nodded, and without any further farewell, or any conventional message to her father, he strode away down the garden, whistling.

Marion was left alone. Her face, the face of a woman of thirty-five, relaxed; a little rose-leaf pink crept into the cheeks. This was the fourth or fifth time that she had met Lord Coryston, and each time they had seemed to understand each other a little better. She put aside all foolish notions. But life was certainly more interesting than it had been.

Coryston had been gone some time, when at last his brother and Miss Glenwilliam emerged from the wood. The tea-table was now spread in the shade, and they approached it. Marion tried to show nothing of the curiosity she felt.

That Arthur Coryston was in no mood for ordinary conversation at least was clear. He refused her proffered cup, and almost immediately took his leave.

Enid subsided again into her long chair, and Atherstone and Marion waited upon her. She had an animated, excited look, the reflection, no doubt, of the conversation which had taken place in the wood. But when Marion and she were left alone it was a long time before she disclosed anything. At last, when the golden May light was beginning to fade from the hill, she sat up suddenly.

"I don't think I can, Marion; I don't think I _can_!"

"Can what?"

"Marry that man, my dear!" She bent forward and took her friend's hands in hers. "Do you know what I was thinking of all the time he talked?--and he's a very nice boy--and I like him very much. I was thinking of my father!"

She threw her head back proudly. Marion looked at her in some perplexity.

"I was thinking of my father," she repeated. "My father is the greatest man I know. And I'm not only his daughter. I'm his friend. He has no one but me since my mother died. He tells me everything, and I understand him. Why should I marry a man like that, when I have my father! And yet of course he touches me--Arthur Coryston--and some day I shall want a home--and children--like other people. And there is the money, if his mother didn't strip him of it for marrying me! And there's the famous name, and the family, and the prestige. Oh yes, I see all that. It attracts me enormously. I'm no ascetic, as Coryston has discovered. And yet when I think of going from my father to that man--from my father's ideas to Arthur's ideas--it's as though some one thrust me into a cave, and rolled a stone on me. I should beat myself dead, trying to get out! I told him I couldn't make up my mind yet--for a long, long time."

"Was that kind?" said Marion, gently.

"Well, he seemed to like it better than a final No," laughed the girl, but rather drearily. "Marion! you don't know, n.o.body can know but me, what a man my father is!"

And sitting erect she looked absently at the plain, the clear hardness of her eyes melting to a pa.s.sionate tenderness. It was to Marion as though the rugged figure of the Chancellor overshadowed them; just as, at that moment, in the political sense, it overshadowed England.