Corriston

“ True, Corriston's uniform was a character recommendation which might have justified candor to a moderate extent. But Clakey was talking outrageously out of turn. He was becoming confidential about matters he had no right to discuss with anyone on such short acquaintance. Corriston suddenly realized that Clakey was slightly drunk.
"Look here," Corriston said. "You're talking like a fool. Do you know what you're saying?"
"Sure I know. Miss Ramsey is a golden girl. And I'm her bodyguard ... important trust ... sop to a man's egoism." ”

“ Was it just imagination, or had the big man's immoderate expansiveness grated on her and brought a look of displeasure to her young face? Corriston couldn't be sure, and his brow remained furrowed as he watched her cross the passenger cabin and disappear into the ladies' lounge.
"I'm Jim Clakey," the big man said.
Corriston reseated himself, a troubled indecision still apparent in his stare. Then gradually he found himself relaxing. He nodded up at the big man. "Sit down, Mr. Clakey," he said. "Ask me anything you want. ”

“ Corriston felt himself stepping forward before he even thought about it. But he halted abruptly when the captain said: "There's a murderer on the loose aboard this ship. You may as well accept that fact right now. Each of you has to be on his guard. It's only right and proper that you should keep your eyes and ears open, and stay worried. If you do, our chances of catching up with him before the ship berths should be reasonably good." ”

“ She was silent for an instant, while the pain in her eyes seemed to deepen. Then she said, "I can't leave him now, darling. Not right away. It would be too cruel a blow."
Ahead now Corriston could see three of the colonists coming toward him. They were less than forty feet away. "I think I know how it is," he said. "When you've been through too much, you just go dead inside. You can feel sympathy for someone very close, like your father. ”

“ Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well...."
Before she willed it, she was telling him:
"He didn't. He didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "He had another wife." Incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself.
"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
She poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure.
"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she said. "We were going to leave for Oregon—going to go through California. We were in the hotel, and he was going out to get the tickets. He started to go. Then he came back. ”

“ His hands on his sides, Coryston stood confronting them all, his eyes glittering.
"What stuff you do talk, Coryston!" said Arthur, half angrily, half contemptuously. "What good does it do to anybody?" And he resumed his restless walk.
"All flung, too, at a man of peace like me," said the white-haired Sir Wilfrid, with his quiet smile. "It takes all sorts, my dear Corry, to play the game of a generation—old and young. However, the situation is too acute for moralizing. Arthur, are you open to any sort of advice from an old friend?" ”

“ As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the hills, lay the great classic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands on them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?"
Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing for a Cornishman to build his own house, make his own shoes, be both fisherman and miner, and, possibly, small shop-keeper besides; and wherever the Cornish miner emigrates, he is pretty sure to take the lead in enterprise and danger.
Wilkie Collins says: "As a body of men they are industrious, intelligent, sober, and orderly, neither soured by hard work, nor depressed by harsher privations"; and the old poet Taylor, in 1649, writes: "Cornwall is the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, for high, churlish hills and affable, courteous people. ”

“ Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking and pondering. ”

“ Beneath the bitterness and the shock of it, even Lady Coryston presently flinched. This kind of language, though never in such brutal terms, she had heard from Corry once or twice. But, Arthur!—She put up a trembling hand.
"That's enough, Arthur! We had better stop this conversation. I have done the best I could for you—always."
"Why didn't you love us!" he cried, striking a chair beside him for emphasis. "Why didn't you love us! It was always politics—politics! Somebody to be attacked—somebody to be scored off—somebody to be squared. And a lot of stupid talk that bored us all! ”

“ Lady Coryston became strangely dear to her children before she left them forever, and the last faint words she spoke, on that winter morning when she died, were for Coryston, who had her hand in his. "Corry—Corry darling"—and as he came closer—"Corry, who was my firstborn!"
On the night of Lady Coryston's death Reginald Lester wrote:
"Coryston has just taken me in to see his mother. She lies in a frowning rest which does not—as death so often does—make any break with our memories of her when alive. Attitude and expression are characteristic. ”

“ Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched him in the ribs.
"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you."
Arthur grew red.
"Of course it was nonsense to you!"
"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?"
"Nothing that matters to you, Corry."
"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!"
"Do hold your tongue, Corry!"
"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother will fight you for all she's worth." ”

“ Why should a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with such a problem—be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old house—for Lord William had once or twice courteously invited the Coryston librarian to examine such small treasures as he himself possessed. He could see Marcia in its paneled rooms and on its old lawns—Marcia and Newbury. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The question was addressed to Miss Glenwilliam, while the speaker shot an indicating thumb in his brother's direction.
The girl looked embarrassed, and Arthur Coryston again came to the rescue.
"We've no right to thrust our family affairs upon other people, Corry," he said, resolutely. "I told you so as we walked up."
"Oh, but they're so interesting," was Coryston's cool reply as he took his seat by Marion Atherstone. "I'm certain everybody here finds them so. And what on earth have I taken Knatchett for, except to blazon abroad what our dear mother has been doing?" ”

“ And they won't play the game!"
"Don't pretend that you and your mother could ever have played any game—together—Corry," said Sir Wilfrid, sharply.
Coryston looked at him queerly, good-humoredly.
"One might argue till doomsday—I agree—as to which of us said 'won't play' first. But there it is. It's our turn. And you elders won't give it us. Now mother's going to try a little tyranny on Arthur—having made a mess of me. What's the sense of it? It's we who have the youth—we who have the power—we who know more than our elders simply because we were born thirty years later! ”

“ She must get James to find out. In love? She smiled. There were very few maidens in England, whatever their pretensions, who would be likely to refuse Arthur Coryston. Let him only throw the handkerchief, and his mother would soon do the rest. And indeed it was high time he set up house for himself. There is a restlessness in a man which means—marriage; and a mother soon becomes aware of it.
Recalling her thoughts to the letters before her, Lady Coryston perceived among them a note from Lady William Newbury asking her and Marcia to spend a week-end at Hoddon Grey. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The old man snapped stiffly upright and distributed implacable stare among the members of the newly arrived party. He was not softened by Miss Corson's glowing beauty, nor impressed by the United States Senator's dignity, nor won by the charming smile of Miss Corson's well-favored squire, nor daunted by the inquiring scowl of a pompous man whose mutton-chop whiskers mingled with the beaver fur about his neck; a stranger who was patently prosperous and metropolitan. ”

“ But Lady Coryston gets all she wants without fighting. When father goes out of office I shall be nobody. She will be always at the top of the tree."
"I am no wiser than before as to whether you really like Arthur Coryston or not. You have heard, of course, the gossip about the estates?"
"Heard?" The speaker smiled. "I know not only the gossip—but the facts—by heart! I am drowned—smothered in them. At present Arthur is the darling—the spotless one. But when she knows about me!"—Miss Glenwilliam threw up her hands. ”

“ A revolving bookcase near carried a number of books of reference, and at her elbow, with the paper-knife inside it, lay a copy of the Quarterly Review. The walls of the room were covered with books—a fine collection of county histories, and a large number of historical memoirs and biographies. In a corner, specially lit, a large bust of the late Lord Coryston conveyed to a younger generation the troubled, interrogative look which in later life had been the normal look of the original. ”

“ He turned, laughing to his daughter.
"Coryston has settled in—with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He has all sorts of ructions on his hands already."
"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the classical cupolas emerging from the woods.
"My dear—she began it. And he is quite right—he has a public duty to these estates."
"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly."
"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, are over." ”

“ Marcia meanwhile sat erect and fierce.
"What else could he expect? Father did leave the estates to mother—just because Corry had taken up such views—so that she might keep us straight."
"But afterward! My dear, he is so young! And young men change."
Lady Coryston's death was not, of course, to be mentioned—except with this awe and vagueness—scarcely to be thought of. But hotter revolutionists than Corry have turned Tories by forty. Waggin harped on this theme. ”