The Coryston Family | Page 9

had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some matter of family property--some selling or buying transaction--which a mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in the estates "--he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, not mine."
And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother was an exceptional woman.
But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts she struck up conversation.
"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?"
"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help it, she dresses so outrageously."
"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that kind of thing."
Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows.
"That's where the ill-breeding comes in--that a young girl should make herself so conspicuous."
"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. People on our side--people you'd never think--will do anything to get her for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she says."
"That I can quite believe! Yes--I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the other day--dining--when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that _man_!"
Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself.
Marcia laughed.
"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it.
"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly.
Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer.
In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, "Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!"
In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection.
He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. And indeed,