The Coryston Family Part 18

"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a _woman's_ foes were to be those of her own household!"

The Chaplain frowned.

"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily.

"I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was perfectly outrageous."

"What about?" asked Sir Louis.

"A divorce case--a very painful one--on which we have found it necessary to take a strong line."

The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled.

"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?"

"What indeed?--except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can."

"Who are the parties?"

The Chaplain told the story.

"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the Dean.

"Not that I know of."

The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent.

Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to them--shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and n.o.bler than herself; the humility, the self-surrender of pa.s.sion was rising in her, like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it.

Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers there was that in them under which her own wavered.

"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into a n.o.ble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of wild hyacinths to a hilltop.

A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival.

Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened.

She heard her name breathed.

"Marcia!"

She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring tenderness, his lips gravely smiling.

"Yes!"

She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms round her, whispering:

"Marcia! will you come to me--will you be my wife?"

She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?--the supreme of life?

They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log.

He placed her on it, and himself beside her.

"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!"

he said, with pa.s.sionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy--shall I make you happy?"

"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you angry with me."

"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other--to live as we ought to live. Isn't G.o.d good? Isn't life wonderful?"

She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read it in his eyes, had in it--for her--and for the moment--just a shade of painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite give--or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried out in protest. But the slight shrinking pa.s.sed almost immediately. She threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, loving and beloved.

"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to her hair, to smooth it back into something like order.

"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet.

She looked at him a little wistfully.

"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too much. And I shall always--want to be myself."

"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you--or for me!"

The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he added, with a sudden flush:

"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all hypocrites and tyrants. Well--you will judge. I won't defend my father and mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are."

He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding.

"You'll write to Corry--won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; and yet--" Her eyes filled with tears.

"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me."

"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded.

"Do you think I can't keep my temper--when it's _your_ brother? Try me."

He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, the dark ma.s.ses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste them as they pa.s.sed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling.

They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia stopped to look.

"What a charming place! Who lives there?"

Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment.

"That is the model farm."

"Mr. Betts's farm?"