The Coryston Family | Page 9

in wine-colored damask, or by tables
holding _objets d'art_ of the same mixed quality as the pictures. Even
the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses with which
the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression of
beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought
suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded
hangings in dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the
empty matted floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom
lighting up a corner. The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous
pleasure.
Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands
behind her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw
her profile, sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague
alarm struck through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about
to say or do? Till now Marcia 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