The Coryston Family / A Novel

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

And again—at Cambridge—another recollection clutched at memory; Corry, taking up the case of a youth who had been sent down, according to him, unjustly—furious attacks on the college authorities—rioting in college—ending of course in the summary sending down of Coryston also. She and his father in their annoyance and disappointment had refused to listen to his explanations, to let him defend himself indeed at all. His mother could see still Corry's strange hostile look at her, on his first arrival at home, as much as to say, "Nothing to expect from you!" She could still hear the hall door closing behind him as he went off on wanderings abroad and in the East for what proved to be an absence of three years.

Yet there were some things she could remember on the other side, dating also from Corry's Cambridge years. When her old father died, one Easter vacation, and she, who was deeply attached to him, had arrived at Coryston after the funeral, worn out by misery and grief, there, suddenly, were Corry's arms open to her, and his—almost timid—kiss on her cheek. The thought of those few weeks when he had been so tender to her, and she had been too tired and sad for anything except to lie still and accept the kindness of her husband and sons, was embittered to her by the remembrance of all the fierce jars which had come after; but, at the moment, they were halcyon days. As she thought of them now beside the open window, she was suddenly aware of a catch in the throat, which she must instantly restrain. It was really too late for any such melting between herself and Corry!

As to the scene which had taken place in the drawing-room of the St. James's Square house on Coryston's hurried return home after his father's death, and the explanation to him of the terms of his father's will, she had expected it, and had prepared for it. But it had been none the less a terrible experience. The fierceness of Corry's anger had been indeed quietly expressed—he had evidently schooled himself; but the words and phrases used by him had bitten into her mind. His wrath had taken the form of a long summing up of the relations between himself and her since his boyhood, of a final scornful attack on her supposed "principles," and a denunciation of her love of power—unjustified, unwarranted power—as the cause of all the unhappiness in their family life. He had not said it in so many words, but she knew very well that what he meant was "You have refused to be the normal woman, and you have neither mind enough nor knowledge enough to justify you. You have sacrificed everything to politics, and you don't understand a single political problem. You have ruined your own life and ours for a barren intellectualism, and it will leave you in the end a lonely and unhappy woman."

Well, well, she had borne with him—she had not broken with him, after all that. She would have found a dozen ways of improving his position, of giving him back his inheritance, if he had shown the smallest disposition to meet her, to compromise with her. But he had gone from extravagance to extravagance, from outrage to outrage. And finally she had gathered up all her strength and struck, for the family traditions, for the party's, the country's interests. And of course she had been right—she had been abundantly right.

Drawing herself unconsciously erect, she looked out over the wide Coryston domain, the undulations of the great estate as it stretched northward to the hills. Politics! She had been in politics from her childhood; she had been absorbed in them through all her married life; and now, in her later years, she was fairly consumed by the passion of them, by the determination to win and conquer. Not for herself!—so at least her thoughts, judged in her own cause, vehemently insisted; not for any personal motive whatever, but to save the country from the break-up of all that made England great, from the incursions of a venomous rabble, bent on destroying the upper class, the landed system, the aristocracy, the Church, the Crown. Woman as she was, she would fight revolution to the last; they should find her body by the wall, when and if the fortress of the old English life went down.

Glenwilliam!—in that name all her hatreds were summed up.

For there had arisen, during these latter years, a man of the people, to lead what Lady Coryston called the "revolution"—a man who had suffered cruelties, so it was said, at the hands of the capitalist and employing class; who, as a young miner, blacklisted because of the part he had taken in a successful strike, had gone, cap in hand, to mine after mine, begging vainly for work, his wife and child tramping beside him. The first wife and her child had perished, so the legend ran, at any rate, of hardship and sheer lack of food. That insolent conspicuous girl who was now the mistress of his house was the daughter of a second wife, a middle-class woman, married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two great parties.

"We refused to pay his price," was the way in which Lady Coryston was accustomed to put it, "so the Liberals bought him—dear!"

And he was now exacting from that luckless party the very uttermost farthing! Destruction of the Church; conscription, with a view, no doubt, to turning a workman-led army, in case of need, upon the possessing class; persecution of the landed interests; criminally heavy taxation—these were Apollyon's weapons. And against such things even a weak woman must turn to bay—must fight even her own heart, in the interests of her country.

"Did I choose my post in life for myself?—its duties, its responsibilities? It was as much given to me as a soldier's place in the line of battle! Am I to shirk it because I am a woman? The women have no more right to run away than the men—vote or no vote! Haven't we eyes to see this ruin that's coming, and minds to baffle it with? If I make Corry rich?—and help thereby to throw England to the dogs? Am I to give him what he says he hates—land and money—to use for what I hate—and what his father hated? Just because he is my son—my flesh and blood? He would scorn the plea himself—he has scorned it all his life. Then let him respect his mother—when she does the same."