The Coryston Family Part 28

When the footman was out of earshot, Newbury turned to his father, his face showing the quick feeling behind.

"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Betts are trying to get at Marcia?"

"No! I thought Coryston might be endeavoring to influence her. That fellow's absolutely reckless! But what can she have to do with the Bettses themselves? Really, the questions that young women concern themselves with to-day!" cried Lord William, not without vehemence. "Marcia must surely trust you and your judgment in such a matter."

Newbury flushed.

"I'm certain--she will," he said, rather slowly, his eyes on the ground.

"But Mrs. Betts has been to see her."

"A great impertinence! A most improper proceeding!" said Lord William, hotly. "Is that what her note says? My dear Edward, you must go over and beg Marcia to let this matter _alone_! It is not for her to be troubled with at all. She must really leave it to us."

The wandlike old man straightened his white head a trifle haughtily.

A couple of hours later Newbury set out to walk to Coryston. The day was sultry, and June in all its power ruled the countryside. The hawthorns were fading; the gorse was over; but the gra.s.s and the young wheat were rus.h.i.+ng up, the wild roses threw their garlands on every hedge, and the Coryston trout-stream, beside which Newbury walked, br.i.m.m.i.n.g as it was, on its chalk bed, would soon be almost masked from sight by the lush growths which overhung its narrow stream, twisting silverly through the meadows.

The sensitive mind and conscience of a man, alive, through the long discipline of religion, to many kinds of obligation, were, at this moment, far from happy, even with this flaming June about him, and the beloved brought nearer by every step. The thought of Marcia, the recollection of her face, the expectation of her kiss, thrilled indeed in his veins. He was not yet thirty, and the forces of his life were still rising. He had never felt his manhood so vigorous, nor his hopes so high. Nevertheless he was haunted--pursued--by the thought of those two miserable persons, over whom he and his father held, it seemed, a power they had certainly never sought, and hated to exercise. Yet how disobey the Church!--and how ignore the plain words of her Lord--"_He that marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery_'"?

"Marriage is for Christians indissoluble. It bears the sacramental stamp.

It is the image, the outward and visible sign of that most awful and most sacred union between Christ and the soul. To break the church's law concerning it, and to help others to break it, is--for Christians--to _sin_. To acquiesce in it, to be a partner to the dissolution of marriage for such reasons as Mrs. Betts had to furnish, was to injure not only the Christian church, but the human society, and, in the case of people with a high social trust, to betray that trust."

These were the ideas, the ideas of his family, and his church, which held him inexorably. He saw no escape from them. Yet he suffered from the enforcement of them, suffered truly and sincerely, even in the dawn of his own young happiness. What could he do to persuade the two offenders to the only right course!--or if that were impossible, to help them to take up life again where he and his would not be responsible for what they did or accomplices in their wrong-doing?

Presently, to shorten his road, he left the park, and took to a lane outside it. And here he suddenly perceived that he was on the borders of the experimental farm, that great glory of the estate, famous in the annals of English country life before John Betts had ever seen it, but doubly famous during the twenty years that he had been in charge of it. There was the thirty-acre field like one vast chessboard, made up of small green plots; where wheat was being constantly tempted and tried with new soils and new foods; and farmers from both the old and new worlds would come eagerly to watch and learn. There were the sheds where wheat was grown, not in open ground, but in pots under shelter; there was the long range of buildings devoted to cattle, and all the problems of food; there was the new chemical laboratory which his father had built for John Betts; and there in the distance was the pretty dwelling-house which now sheltered the woman from whose presence on the estate all the trouble had arisen.

A trouble which had been greatly aggravated by Coryston's presence on the scene. Newbury, for all that his heart was full of Marcia, was none the less sorely indignant with her brother, eager to have it out with him, and to fling back his charges in his face.

Suddenly, a form appeared behind a gate flanked by high hedges.

Newbury recognized John Betts. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with slightly grizzled hair, a countenance tanned and seamed by long exposure, and pale-blue spectacled eyes, opened the gate and stepped into the road.

"I saw you coming, Mr. Edward, and thought I should like a word with you."

"By all means," said Newbury, offering his hand. But Betts took no notice of it. They moved on together--a striking pair: the younger man, with his high, narrow brow and strong though slender build, bearing himself with the unconscious air of authority, given by the military life, and in this case also, no doubt, by the influence of birth and tradition; as fine a specimen of the English ruling cla.s.s at its moral and physical best, as any student of our social life would be likely to discover; and beside him a figure round whom the earth-life in its primitive strength seemed to be still clinging, though the great brain of the man had long since made him its master and catechist, and not, like the ordinary man of the fields, farmer or laborer, its slave. He, too, was typical of his cla.s.s, of that large modern cla.s.s of the new countryman, armed by science and a precise knowledge, which has been developed from the primitive artists of the world--plowman, reaper, herdsman; who understood nothing and discovered everything. A strong, taciturn, slightly slouching fellow; vouched for by the quiet blue eyes, and their honest look; at this moment, however, clouded by a frown of distress. And between the two men there lay the memory of years of kindly intercourse--friends.h.i.+p, loyalty, just dealing.

"Your father will have got a letter from me this morning, Mr. Edward,"

began Betts, abruptly.

"He did. I left him writing to you." The young man's voice was singularly gentle, even deferential.

"You read it, I presume?"

Newbury made a sign of a.s.sent.

"Is there any hope for us, Mr. Edward?"

Betts turned to look into his companion's face. A slight tremor in the normally firm lips betrayed the agitation behind the question.

Newbury's troubled eyes answered him.

"You don't know what it costs us--not to be able to meet you--in that way!"

"You think the arrangement we now propose--would still compromise you?"

"How could we?" pleaded the younger man, with very evident pain. "We should be aiding and abetting--what we believe to be wrong--conniving at it indeed; while we led people--deliberately--to believe what was false."

"Then it is still your ultimatum--that we must separate?"

"If you remain here, in our service--our representative. But if you would only allow us to make the liberal provision we would like to make for you--elsewhere!"

Betts was silent a little; then he broke out, looking round him.

"I have been twenty years at the head of that farm. I have worked for it night and day. It's been my life. Other men have worked for their wives and children. I've worked for the farm. There are experiments going on there--you know it, Mr. Edward--that have been going on for years. They're working out now--coming to something--I've earned that reward. How can I begin anywhere else? Besides, I'm flagging. I'm not the man I was. The best of me has gone into that farm." He raised his arm to point. "And now, you're going to drive me from it."

"Oh, Betts--why did you--why _did_ you!" cried Newbury, in a sudden rush of grief. The other turned.

"Because--a woman came--and clung to me! Mr. Edward, when you were a boy I saw you once take up a wounded leveret in the fields--a tiny thing. You made yourself kill it for mercy's sake--and then you sat down and cried over it--for the thought of all it had suffered. Well, my wife--she _is_ my wife too!--is to me like that wounded thing. Only I've given her _life_!--and he that takes her from me will kill her."

"And the actual words of our Blessed Lord, Betts, matter nothing to you?"

Newbury spoke with a sudden yet controlled pa.s.sion. "I have heard you quote them often. You seemed to believe and feel with us. You signed a pet.i.tion we all sent to the Bishop only last year."

"That seems so long ago, Mr. Edward,--so long ago. I've been through a lot since--a lot--" repeated Betts, absently, as though his mind had suddenly escaped from the conversation into some dream of its own. Then he came to a stop.

"Well, good morning to you, sir--good morning. There's something doing in the laboratory I must be looking after."

"Let me come and talk to you to-night, Betts! We have some notion of a Canadian opening that might attract you. You know the great Government farm near Ottawa? Why not allow my father to write to the Director--"

Betts interrupted.

"Come when you like, Mr. Edward. Thank you kindly. But--it's no good--no good."

The voice dropped.

With a slight gesture of farewell, Betts walked away.

Newbury went on his road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The patience--humbleness even--of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words.

What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the ideas put up against him by Newbury and his father were the ideas on which a large section of his own life had been based. It is not for nothing that a man is for years a devout communicant, and in touch thereby with all the circle of beliefs on which Catholicism, whether of the Roman or Anglican sort, depends.

The white towers of Coryston appeared among the trees. His steps quickened.

Would she come to meet him?

Then his mind filled with repugnance. _Must_ he discuss this melancholy business again with her--with Marcia? How could he? It was not right!--not seemly! He thought with horror of the interview between her and Mrs. Betts--his stainless Marcia, and that little besmirched woman, of whose life between the dissolution of her first marriage, and her meeting with Betts, the Newburys knew more than they wished to know, more, they believed, than Betts himself knew.

And the whole June day protested with him--its beauty, the clean radiance of the woods, the limpid flas.h.i.+ng of the stream....

He hurried on. Ah, there she was!--a fluttering vision through the new-leafed trees.