The Coryston Family / A Novel

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

"Perhaps!" Coryston repeated, roughly. "But I have no claim to know, nor do I want to know!"

Newbury gave him a look of wonder.

"I thought you were out for justice—and freedom of conscience?" he said, slowly. "Is the Christian conscience—alone—excepted? Freedom for every one else—but none for us?"

"Precisely! Because your freedom means other men's slavery!" Coryston panted out the words. "You can't have your freedom! It's too costly in human life. Everywhere Europe has found that out. The freedom you Catholics—Anglican or Roman—want, is anti-social. We sha'n't give it you!"

"You will have to give it us," said Newbury, calmly, "because in putting us down—which of course you could do with ease—you would destroy all that you yourselves value in civilization. It would be the same with us, if we had the upper hand, as you have now. Neither of us can destroy the other. We stand face to face—we shall stand face to face—while the world lasts."

Coryston broke into passionate contradiction. Society, he was confident, would, in the long run, put down Catholicism, of all sorts, by law.

"Life is hard enough, the devil knows! We can't afford—we simply can't afford—to let you make it harder by these damned traditions! I appeal to those two dead people! They did what you thought wrong, and your conscience judged and sentenced them. But who made you a judge and divider over them? Who asked you to be the dispenser for them of blessing and cursing?"

Newbury stood still.

"No good, Coryston, your raving like this! There is one question that cuts the knot—that decides where you stand—and where I stand. You don't believe there has ever been any living word from God to man—any lifting of the eternal veil. We do! We say the heavens have opened—a God has walked this earth! Everything else follows from that."

"Including the deaths of John Betts and his wife!" said Coryston, with bitter contempt. "A God suffers and bleeds, for that! No!—for us, if there is a God, He speaks in love—in love only—in love supremely—such love as those two poor things had for each other!"