The Coryston Family | Page 3

Lady Coryston sat in a brown study, not listening,
evidently, to the very halting gentleman who was in possession of the
House, though her eyes still roamed the fast-emptying benches.
It was the face of a woman on the wrong side of fifty. The complexion
was extremely fair, with gray shades in it. The eyes, pale in color but
singularly imperious and direct, were sunk deep under straight brows.
The nose was long, prominent, and delicately sharp in the nostril. These
features, together with the long upper lip and severely cut mouth and
chin, the slightly hollow cheeks and the thin containing oval of the face,
set in pale and still abundant hair, made a harsh yet, on the whole,
handsome impression. There was at Coryston, in the gallery, a picture
of Elizabeth Tudor in her later years to which Lady Coryston had been
often compared; and she, who as a rule disliked any reference to her
personal appearance, did not, it was sometimes remarked, resent this
particular comparison. The likeness was carried further by Lady
Coryston's tall and gaunt frame; by her formidable carriage and step;
and by the energy of the long-fingered hands. In dress also there was
some parallel between her and the Queen of many gowns. Lady
Coryston seldom wore colors, but the richest of black silks and satins
and the finest of laces were pressed night and day into the service of
her masterful good looks. She made her own fashions. Amid the large
and befeathered hats of the day, for instance, she alone wore habitually
a kind of coif made of thin black lace on her fair face, the lappets of
which were fastened with a diamond close beneath her chin. For the
country she invented modifications of her London dress, which, while
loose and comfortable, were scarcely less stately. And whatever she
wore seemed always part and parcel of her formidable self.
In Marcia's eyes, her mother was a wonderful being--oppressively
wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's
mothers were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the

chimney-corner, or the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no
trouble, and could be used for all the common purposes of life. But
Lady Coryston could never be used. On the contrary, her
husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her daughter, had always
appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of her own ends.
Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very much
matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause
just as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends.
As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of
Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her
mother as of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the
circumstances of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could
be more certain than blows of some kind before long....
"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur
would get him in."
Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches
of the Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a
man who was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive,
apparently, to the debate.
"Has he just come in?"
"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he
expected to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said
Lady Coryston, impatiently.
But the elderly gentleman from the Highlands, to whom she thus
unkindly referred, went on humming and hawing as before, while the
House lumbered or fidgeted, hats well over noses and legs stretched to
infinity.
"Oh, there is Arthur!" cried Marcia, having just discovered her brother
among the shadows under the gallery to the left. "I couldn't make him
out before. One can see he's on wires."

For while everybody else, after the excitement of the two opening
speeches, which was now running its course through the crowded
lobbies outside, had sunk into somnolence within the House itself, the
fair-haired youth on whom her eyes were bent was sitting erect on the
edge of his seat, papers in hand, his face turned eagerly toward the
speaker on the other side of the House. His attitude gave the impression
of one just about to spring to his feet.
But Marcia was of opinion that he would still have to wait some time
before springing. She knew the humming and hawing gentleman--had
heard him often before. He was one of those plagues of debate who rise
with ease and cease with difficulty. She would certainly have time to
get a cup of tea and come back. So with a word to her mother she
groped her way