"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.