"Certainly! The minister they propose is a most mischievous person, I have no intention whatever of extending his influence."

Page acquiesced. He himself would have made the Baptists happy with a half an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But he had never breathed any suggestion of the kind to Lady Coryston.

"I have done my best--believe me--to stop the Sunday disturbances," he said, "but in vain. They are chiefly got up, however, by people from a distance. Purely political!"

"Of course. I am not to be intimidated by them," said Lady Coryston, firmly.

The agent's inner mind let loose a thought to the effect that the increasing influence of women in politics did not seem to be likely to lead to peaceable living. But he merely remarked:

"I much regret that Lord Coryston should have addressed them himself last Sunday. I ventured to tell his lordship so when I met him just now in the village."

Lady Coryston stiffened on her chair.

"He defended himself?"

"Hotly. And I was to tell you that with your leave he will call on you himself this afternoon about the affair."

"My house is always open to my son," said Lady Coryston, quietly. But Page perceived the tremor of battle that ran through her.

"As to his support of that blacksmith from Ling, whom he is actually setting up in business at Knatchett itself--the man is turning out a perfect firebrand!--distributing Socialist leaflets over the whole neighborhood--getting up a quarrel between some of the parents here in this very village and our schoolmaster, about the punishment of a child--perfectly legitimate!--everything in order!--and enrolling more members of Mr. Glenwilliam's new Land League--within a stone's-throw of this house!--than I like to think of. I won't answer for this village, Lady Coryston, at the next election, if Lord Coryston goes on with these proceedings!"

Lady Coryston frowned. She was not accustomed to be addressed in so pessimistic a tone, and the mere mention of her arch-enemy--Glenwilliam--had put defiance into her. With some dryness, she preached energy, watchfulness, and a hopeful mind. The agent grasped the situation with the quickness born of long acquaintance with her, and adroitly shifted his ground. He remarked that at any rate Lord Coryston was making things uncomfortable all round; and he described with gusto the raids upon some of the Radical employers and small cottage-owners of the district, in the name of political liberty and decent housing, by which Coryston had been lately bewildering the Radical mind. Lady Coryston laughed; but was perhaps more annoyed than amused. To be brought down to the same level with Radical millers and grocers--and by her own son--was no consolation to a proud spirit.

"If our cottages can be reasonably attacked, they must be put in order, and at once," she said, with dignity. "You, Mr. Page, are my eyes and ears. I have been accustomed to trust you."

The agent accepted the implied reproach with outward meekness, and an inward resolve to put Lady Coryston on a much stricter financial regime for the future.

A long conversation followed, at the end of which Mr. Page rose, with the remark:

"Your ladyship will be sorry to hear that Mr. Glenwilliam is to speak at Martover next month,--and that it is already rumored Lord Coryston will be in the chair."

He had kept this bombsh.e.l.l to the last, and for various reasons he closely watched its effect.

Lady Coryston paled.

"We will have a Tory meeting here the same night, and my son Arthur shall speak," she said, with vivacity.

Some odd thoughts arose in the mind of Mr. Page as he met the angry fire in the speaker's look.

"By all means. By the way, I did not know Mr. Arthur was acquainted with those strange people the Atherstones?" he said, in a tone of easy interrogation, looking for his hat.

Lady Coryston was a little surprised by the remark.

"I suppose an M.P. must be acquainted with everybody--to some extent," she said, smiling. "I know very well what his opinion of Mr. Atherstone is."

"Naturally," said Page, also smiling. "Well, good-by, Lady Coryston. I hope when you see Lord Coryston this afternoon you will be able to persuade him to give up some of these extravagances."

"I have no power with him," she said, sharply.

"Why did you give up what you had?" thought the agent, as he took his departure. His long experience of Lady Coryston, able as she was, and as he admitted her to be, in many respects, had in the end only increased in him a secret contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"--the old, old game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted--it was this he charged them with--Lady Coryston especially.

And as to that nice but rather stupid fellow Arthur, what on earth could he be doing at the Atherstones'? Had he--Page--come by chance on a secret,--dramatic and lamentable!--when, on the preceding Sat.u.r.day, as he was pa.s.sing along the skirts of the wood bounding the Atherstones' little property, on his way to one of the Coryston hill-farms, he had perceived in the distance--himself masked by a thin curtain of trees--two persons in the wood-path, in intimate or agitated conversation. They were Arthur Coryston and Miss Glenwilliam. He recognized the lady at once, had several times seen her on the platform when her father spoke at meetings, and the frequent presence of the Glenwilliams at the Atherstones' cottage was well known to the neighborhood.

By George!--if that _did_ mean anything!

CHAPTER VI

Meanwhile on this May morning Marcia was reading in the park, not far from a footpath--a right of way--leading from the village to the high road running east and west along the northern boundary of the Coryston property.

Round her the slopes were white with hawthorn under a thunderous sky of blue and piled white cloud. The dappled forms of deer glanced through the twisted hawthorn stems, and at her feet a trout-stream, entrancingly clear and clean, slipped by over its chalk bottom--the gray-green weeds swaying under the slight push of the water. There was a mist of blossom, and everywhere the fragrance of a bountiful earth, young once more.

Marcia, it must be confessed, was only pretending to read. She had some reason to think that Edward Newbury might present himself at Coryston for lunch that day. If so, and if he walked from Hoddon Grey--and, unlike most young men of his age, he was a great walker, even when there was no question of grouse or golf--he would naturally take this path. Some strong mingled impulse had placed her there, on his road. The attraction for her of his presence, his smile, his character was irresistibly increasing.

There were many days when she was restless and the world was empty till he came. And yet there were other days when she was quite cold to him; when the thought of giving her life into his hands made her cry "impossible"; when it seemed to her, as she had said to Waggin, that she rather feared than loved him.

Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper cla.s.s, yet always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. The boy had grown up in a religious hothouse; his father, Lord William, had been accustomed in his youth to make periodical pilgrimages to Christchurch as one of Pusey's "penitents," and his house became in later life a rallying-point for the High Anglican party in all its emergencies. Edward himself, as the result of an intense travail of mind, had abandoned habitual confession as he came to manhood, but he would not for the world have missed the week of "retreat" he spent every year, with other Anglican laymen, under the roof of the most spiritual of Anglican bishops. He was a joyous, confident, devoted son of the English church; a man governed by the most definite and rigid beliefs, held with a pure intensity of feeling, and impervious to any sort of Modernism.

At the same time his handsome person, his ardent and amiable temper, his poetic and musical tastes, made him a very general favorite even in the most miscellaneous society. The enthusiastic Christian was also a popular man of the world; and the esoteric elements in his character, though perfectly well known to all who were in any degree his intimates, were jealously hidden from the mult.i.tude, who welcomed him as a good-looking fellow and an agreeable companion. He had been four years in the Guards, and some years in India, as private secretary to his uncle, the Viceroy. He was a good shot, a pa.s.sionate dancer, a keen musician; and that mysterious note in him of the unbending and the inexorable only made him--in general--the more attractive both to men and women, as it became apparent to them. Men scoffed at him, yet without ever despising him. Perhaps the time was coming when, as character hardened, and the glamour of youth dropped away, many men might hate him. Men like Coryston and Atherstone were beginning indeed to be bitterly hostile. But these were possibilities which were only just emerging.

Marcia was well aware of Newbury's distinction; and secretly very proud of his homage. But rebellion in her was still active. When, however, she asked herself, with that instinct for self-a.n.a.lysis bred in the woman of to-day by the plays she sees, and half the tales she reads--"Why is it he likes me?"--the half-sarcastic reply would still suggest itself--"No doubt just because I am so shapeless and so formless--because I don't know myself what I want or what I mean to be. He thinks he'll form me--he'll save my soul.

Shall he?"

A footstep on the path made her look up, annoyed that she could not control a sudden burning of the cheek. But the figure she expected was not there.

"Coryston!" she cried.

Her brother approached her. He seemed to be reciting verse, and she thought she caught some words from a Sh.e.l.ley chorus which she knew, because he had made her learn it when she was a child in the schoolroom. He threw himself down beside her.

"Well?"

Brother and sister had only met twice since Coryston's settlement at Knatchett--once in the village street, and once when Marcia had invaded his bachelor quarters at Knatchett. On that occasion she had discharged upon him all the sarcasm and remonstrance of which she was capable. But she only succeeded in reminding herself of a bullfight of which she had once seen part at San Sebastian. Her shafts stuck glittering in the bull's hide, but the bull barely shook himself. There he stood--good-humored, and pawing.

To-day also Coryston seemed to be in high spirits. Marcia, on the other hand, gave him a look half troubled, half hostile.

"Corry!--I wanted to speak to you. Are you really going to see mother this afternoon?"

"Certainly. I met Page in the village half an hour ago and asked him to announce me."

"I don't want to talk any more about all the dreadful things you've been doing," said Marcia, with sisterly dignity. "I know it wouldn't be any good. But there's one thing I must say. I do beg of you, Corry, not to say a word to mamma about--about Arthur and Enid Glenwilliam. I know you were at the Atherstones on Sat.u.r.day!"

The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to give a softer shade to its strong beauty. She went on, appealingly:

"Arthur's told me a lot. He's quite mad. I've argued--and argued with him--but it's no good. He doesn't care for anything--Parliament, mamma, the estates, anything--in comparison with that girl. At present she's playing with him, and he's getting desperate. But I'm simply in _terror_ about mamma!"

Corry whistled.

"My dear, she'll have to know some time. As you say, he's in it, head over ears. No use your trying to pull him back!"