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TITLE: THE CORYSTON FAMILY
AUTHOR: MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
EBOOK: E05566 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

THE CORYSTON FAMILY

A NOVEL

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

ILLUSTRATED BY ELIZABETH SHIPPEN GREEN

1913

TO

G.M.T. AND J.P.T.

ILLUSTRATIONS

"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONCOCTING THIS, MOTHER?" _Frontispiece_

THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR ROSE TO HIS
PERORATION

AS SHE SAW MARCIA HER FACE LIT UP

THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL

"I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"

MARCIA WAS SINGING, IN A LOW VOICE AS SHE CAME

HE SAT STILL, STUDYING HIS MOTHER'S STRONG, LINED FACE

NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN

Book I

LADY CORYSTON

[Greek: turannon einai moria kai tonthelein.]

CHAPTER I

The hands of the clock on the front of the Strangers' Gallery were nearing
six. The long-expected introductory speech of the Minister in charge of the
new Land Bill was over, and the leader of the Opposition was on his feet.
The House of Commons was full and excited. The side galleries were no less
crowded than the benches below, and round the entrance-door stood a compact
throng of members for whom no seats were available. With every sentence,
almost, the speaker addressing the House struck from it assent or protest;
cheers and counter-cheers ran through its ranks; while below the gangway
a few passionate figures on either side, the freebooters of the two great
parties, watched one another angrily, sitting on the very edge of their
seats, like arrows drawn to the string.

Within that privileged section of the Ladies' Gallery to which only the
Speaker's order admits, there was no less agitation than on the floor
below, though the signs of it were less evident. Some half a dozen chairs
placed close against the grille were filled by dusky forms invisible, save
as a dim patchwork, to the House beneath them--women with their faces
pressed against the lattice-work which divided them from the Chamber,
endeavoring to hear and see, in spite of all the difficulties placed in
their way by a graceless Commons. Behind them stood other women, bending
forward sometimes over the heads of those in front, in the feverish effort
to catch the words of the speech. It was so dark in the little room that
no inmate of it could be sure of the identity of any other unless she was
close beside her; and it was pervaded by a constant soft _frou-frou_
of silk and satin, as persons from an inner room moved in and out, or some
lady silently gave up her seat to a new-comer, or one of those in front
bent over to whisper to a friend behind. The background of all seemed
filled with a shadowy medley of plumed hats, from which sometimes a face
emerged as a shaft of faint light from the illumined ceiling of the House
struck upon it.

The atmosphere was very hot, and heavy with the scent of violets, which
seemed to come from a large bunch worn by a slim standing girl. In front
of the girl sat a lady who was evidently absorbed in the scene below. She
rarely moved, except occasionally to put up an eyeglass the better to
enable her to identify some face on the Parliamentary benches, or the
author of some interruption to the speaker. Meanwhile the girl held her
hands upon the back of the lady's chair, and once or twice stooped to speak
to her.

Next to this pair, but in a corner of the gallery, and occupying what
seemed to be a privileged and habitual seat, was a woman of uncouth figure
and strange headgear. Since the Opposition leader had risen, her attention
had wholly wandered. She yawned perpetually, and talked a great deal to a
lady behind her. Once or twice her neighbor threw her an angry glance. But
it was too dark for her to see it; though if she had seen it she would have
paid no attention.

"Lady Coryston!" said a subdued voice. The lady sitting in front of the
girl turned and saw an attendant beckoning.

The girl moved toward him, and returned.

"What is it, Marcia?"

"A note from Arthur, mamma."

A slip of paper was handed to Lady Coryston, who read it in the gloom with
difficulty. Then she whispered to her daughter:

"He hopes to get his chance about seven; if not then, after dinner."

"I really don't think I can stay so long," said the girl, plaintively.
"It's dreadfully tiring."

"Go when you like," said her mother, indifferently. "Send the car back for
me."

She resumed her intent listening just as a smart sally from the speaker
below sent a tumultuous wave of cheers and counter-cheers through his
audience.

"He can be such a buffoon, can't he?" said the stout lady in the corner to
her companion, as she yawned again. She had scarcely tried to lower
her voice. Her remark was, at any rate, quite audible to her next-door
neighbor, who again threw her a swift, stabbing look, of no more avail,
however, than its predecessors.

"Who is that lady in the corner--do you mind telling me?"

The query was timidly whispered in the ear of Marcia Coryston by a veiled
lady, who on the departure of some other persons had come to stand beside
her.

"She is Mrs. Prideaux." said Miss Coryston, stiffly.

"The wife of the Prime Minister!" The voice showed emotion.

Marcia Coryston looked down upon the speaker with an air that said, "A
country cousin, I suppose."

But she whispered, civilly enough: "Yes. She always sits in that corner.
Weren't you here when he was speaking?"

"No--I've not long come in."

The conversation dropped, just as the voice of the orator standing on the
left of the Speaker rose to his peroration.

It was a peroration of considerable eloquence, subtly graduated through a
rising series of rhetorical questions, till it finally culminated and broke
in the ringing sentences:

"Destroy the ordered hierarchy of English land, and you will sweep away a
growth of centuries which would not be where it is if it did not in the
main answer to the needs and reflect the character of Englishmen. Reform
and develop it if you will; bring in modern knowledge to work upon it;
change, expand, without breaking it; appeal to the sense of property,
while enormously diffusing property; help the peasant without slaying the
landlord; in other words, put aside rash, meddlesome revolution, and set
yourselves to build on the ancient foundations of our country what may
yet serve the new time! Then you will have an _English_, a national
policy. It happens to be the Tory policy. Every principle of it is violated
by the monstrous bill you have just brought in. We shall oppose it by every
means and every device in our power!"

[Illustration: THE CONVERSATION DROPPED, JUST AS THE VOICE OF THE ORATOR
ROSE TO HIS PERORATION]

The speaker sat down amid an ovation from his own side. Three men on the
Liberal side jumped up, hat in hand, simultaneously. Two of them subsided
at once. The third began to speak.

A sigh of boredom ran through the latticed gallery above, and several
persons rose and prepared to vacate their places. The lady in the corner
addressed some further remarks on the subject of the speech which had
just concluded to an acquaintance who came up to greet her.
"Childish!--positively childish!"

Lady Coryston caught the words, and as Mrs. Prideaux rose with alacrity
to go into the Speaker's private house for a belated cup of tea, her Tory
neighbor beckoned to her daughter Marcia to take the vacant chair.

"Intolerable woman!" she said, drawing a long breath. "And they're in for
years! Heaven knows what we shall all have to go through."

"Horrible!" said the girl, fervently. "She always behaves like that. Yet of
course she knew perfectly who you were."

"Arthur will probably follow this man," murmured Lady Coryston, returning
to her watch.

"Go and have some tea, mother, and come back."

"No. I might miss his getting up."

There was silence a little. The House was thinning rapidly, and half the
occupants of the Ladies' Galleries had adjourned to the tearooms on the
farther side of the corridor. Marcia could now see her mother's face more
distinctly as 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.


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