But instead she threw her son a look of furious contempt, with the words:
"You have been glad enough of my help, Arthur, in the past; you have never been able indeed to do without it. I am under no illusions as to your Parliamentary abilities--unaided."
"Mother!--" cried Marcia and James simultaneously.
Coryston shrugged his shoulders. Arthur, breaking from Sir Wilfrid"s restraining hand, approached his mother. His face was inflamed with anger, his eyes bloodshot.
"You like to say these cruel things, mother. We have all put up with them long enough. My father put up with them long enough. I intend to think for myself in future. I don"t think of Glenwilliam as you do. I know him--and I know his daughter."
The last words were spoken with a special emphasis. A movement of alarm--in Marcia"s case, of terror--ran through all the spectators. Sir Wilfrid caught the speaker by the arm, but was impatiently shaken off.
Lady Coryston met her son"s eyes with equal pa.s.sion.
"An intriguer--an unscrupulous intriguer--like himself!" said Lady Coryston, with cutting emphasis.
Arthur"s flush turned to pallor. Coryston, springing up, raised a warning hand. "Take care, old fellow!" Marcia and James came forward. But Arthur thrust them aside.
"Mother and I have got to settle this!" He came to lean over her, looking into her face. "I advise you to be careful, mother, of what you say!" There was a dreadful pause. Then he lifted himself and said, with folded arms, slowly, still looking hard at Lady Coryston: "I am--in love--with the lady to whom you refer in that unjustifiable manner. I wish to marry her--and I am doing my best to persuade her to marry me. _Now_ you understand perhaps why I didn"t wish to attack her father at this particular juncture."
"Arthur!"
Marcia threw herself upon her brother, to lead him away. Coryston, meanwhile, with lifted brows and the prominent greenish eyes beneath them starting out of his head, never ceased to observe his mother. There was trouble--and a sudden softness--in his look.
Silence reigned, for a few painful moments. The eyes of the two combatants were on each other. The change in Lady Coryston"s aspect was something quite different from what is ordinarily described as "turning pale." It represented rather the instinctive and immediate rally of the whole human personality in the presence of danger more deadly than any it has yet encountered. It was the gray rally of strength, not the pallor of fear. She laughed--as she pa.s.sed her handkerchief over her lips--so Marcia thought afterward--to hide their trembling.
"I thank you for your frankness, Arthur. You will hardly expect me to wish you success in such a love affair, or to further your suit. But your confession--your astonishing confession--does at least supply some reason for your extraordinary behavior. For the present--_for the present_"--she spoke slowly--"I cease to press you to speak at this meeting which has been announced. It can at any rate be postponed. As to the other and graver matter, we will discuss it later--and in private. I must take time to think it over."
She rose. James came forward.
"May I come with you, mother?"
She frowned a little.
"Not now, James, not now. I must write some letters immediately, with regard to the meeting."
And without another look at any of her children, she walked proudly through the room. Sir Wilfrid threw the door open for her, and murmured something in her ear--no doubt an offer of consultation. But she only shook her head; and he closed the door.
Then while Arthur, his hands on his hips, walked restlessly up and down, and Coryston, lying back on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, Marcia, James, and Sir Wilfrid looked at each other in a common dismay.
Sir Wilfrid spoke first:
"Are we really, Arthur, to take the statement you have just made seriously?"
Arthur turned impatiently.
"Do I look like joking?"
"I wish you did," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "It would be a comfort to us."
"Luckily mother doesn"t believe a word of it!"
The voice was Coryston"s, directed apparently at the Adam decoration of the ceiling.
Arthur stood still.
"What do you mean?"
"No offense. I dare say she believed _you_. But the notion strikes her as too grotesque to be bothered about."
"She may be right there," said Arthur, gloomily, resuming his walk.
"Whether she is or not, she"ll take good care, my boy, that nothing comes of it," was Coryston"s murmured comment. But the words were lost in his mustache. He turned to look at James, who was standing at the open window gazing into the garden. Something in his brother"s meditative back seemed to annoy him. He aimed at it with a crumpled envelope he held in his hand, and hit it. James turned with a start.
"Look here, James--this isn"t Hegel--and it isn"t Lotze--and it isn"t Bergson--it"s life. Haven"t you got a remark to contribute?"
James"s blue eyes showed no resentment.
"I"m very sorry for you all," he said, quietly, "especially for mother."
"Why?"
"Because she"s the oldest. We"ve got the future. She hasn"t."
The color rushed to Marcia"s face. She looked gratefully at her brother.
Sir Wilfrid"s gray head nodded agreement.
"Hm!" said Coryston, "I don"t see that. At least, of course it has a certain truth. But it doesn"t present itself to me as a ground for sparing the older generation. In fact"--he sprang to his feet--"present company--present family excepted--we"re being ruined--stick stock ruined--by the elder generation! They"re in our way everywhere! Why don"t they withdraw--and let _us_ take the stage? We know more than they.
We"re further evolved--we"re better informed. And they will insist on pitting their years against our brains all over the field. I tell you the world can"t get on like this. Something will have to be done. We"re choked up with the older generation."
"Yes, for those who have no reverence--and no pity!" said Marcia.
The low intensity of her voice brought the looks of all three brothers upon her in some evident surprise. None of them had yet ceased to regard their sister as a child, with opinions not worth speculating about. Coryston flushed, involuntarily.
"My withers are unwrung," he said, not without bravado. "You don"t understand, my dear. Do I want to do the elder generation any damage? Not at all! But it is time the elder generation withdrew to the chimney-corner and gave us our rights! You think that ungrateful--disrespectful? Good heavens! What do we _care_ about the people, our contemporaries, with whom we are always fighting and scuffling in what we are pleased to call _action_? The people who matter to us are the people who rest us--and calm us--and bind up our wounds. If instead of finding a woman to argue and wrestle with I had found just a mother here, knitting by the fire"--he threw out a hand toward Lady Coryston"s empty chair--"with time to smile and think and jest--with no ax to grind--and no opinions to push--do you think I shouldn"t have been at her feet--her slave, her adorer? Besides, the older generation have ground their axes, and pushed their opinions, long enough--they have had thirty years of it! We should be the dancers now, and they the wall-flowers. 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! Let the old submit, and we"ll cushion the world for them, and play them out of it with march-music! But they _will_ fight us--and they can"t win!"
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?"
"Yes," said Arthur, unwillingly, "if I weren"t so jolly sure what it would be."