The Coryston Family by Mrs. Humphry Ward (10 best books of all time .txt) 📖

stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a seat beside Marcia.

He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren't very full, and I wanted to hear this--with you."

"She's good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a motion of her face toward the Iphigenia.

"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don't mistake it--please!--for the ordinary 'star'--business."

"But she is the play!"

"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is the dirge music beginning."

Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India. They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through the high poetry and passion of the spectacle on which they both looked. With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her.

Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury.

* * * * *

The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father's knees, imploring him to save her:

"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of death. 'Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have I in Paris's sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death? Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers."

She takes the infant Orestes in her arms:

"Brother!--you are but a tiny helper--and yet--come, weep with me!--come, pray our father not to slay your sister. Look, father, how--silently--he implores you! Have pity! Oh, light, light, dearest of all goods to men! He is mad indeed who prays for death. Better an ill living than a noble dying!"

The music rose and fell like dashing waves upon a fearful coast--through one of the most agonizing scenes ever imagined by poet, ever expressed in art. Wonderful theme!--the terror-stricken anguish of the girl, little more than a child, startled suddenly from bridal dreams into this open-eyed vision of a hideous doom; the helpless remorse of the father; the misery of the mother; and behind it all the pitiless fate--the savage creed--the blood-thirst of the goddess--and the maddened army howling for its prey.

Marcia covered her eyes a moment. "Horrible!" she said, shivering, "too horrible!"

Newbury shook his head, smiling.

"No! You'll see. She carries in her hands the fate of her race--of the Hellenic, the nobler world, threatened by the barbarian, the baser world. She dies, to live. It's the motive of all great art--all religion. Ah--here is Achilles!"

There followed the strangest, pitifulest love scene. Achilles, roused to fury by the foul use made of his great name in the plot against the girl, adopts the shrinking, lovely creature as his own. She has been called his bride; she shall be his bride; and he will fight for her--die for her--if need be. And suddenly, amid the clashing horror of the story, there springs up for an instant the red flower of love. Iphigenia stands dumb in the background, while her mother wails, and Achilles, the goddess-born, puts on his armor and his golden-crested helmet. An exultant sword-song rises from the orchestra. There is a gleam of hope; and the girl, as she looks at her champion, loves him.

The music sank into tenderness, flowing like a stream in summer. And the whole vast audience seemed to hold its breath.

"Marvelous!" The word was Newbury's.

He turned to look at his companion, and the mere energy of his feeling compelled Marcia's eyes to his. Involuntarily, she smiled an answer.

But the golden moment dies!--forever. Shrieking and crashing, the vulture-forces of destruction sweep upon it. Messengers rush in, announcing blow on blow. Achilles' own Myrmidons have turned against him. Agamemnon is threatened--Achilles--Argos! The murderous cries of the army fill the distance like the roar of an uncaged beast.

Iphigenia raises her head. The savage, inexorable music still surges and thunders round her. And just as Achilles is about to leave her, in order to throw himself on the spears of his own men, her trance breaks.

"Mother!--we cannot fight with gods. I die!--I die! But let me die gloriously--unafraid. Hellas calls to me!--Hellas, my country. I alone can give her what she asks--fair sailing, and fair victory. You bore me for the good of Hellas--not for your own joy only, mother! Shall men brave all for women and their fatherland?--and shall one life, one little life, stand in their way? Nay! I give my self to Hellas! Slay me!--pull down the towers of Troy! This through all time shall be sung of me--this be my glory!--this, child and husband both. Hellas, through me, shall conquer. It is meet that Hellenes should rule barbarians, and not barbarians Hellenes. For they are slave-folk--and _we_ are free!"

Achilles cries out in mingled adoration and despair. Now he knows her for what she is--now that he has "looked into her soul"--must he lose her?--is it all over? He pleads again that he may fight and die for her.

But she puts him gently aside.

"Die not for me, kind stranger. Slay no man for me! Let it be _my_ boon to save Hellas, if I may."

And under her sternly sweet command he goes, telling her that he will await her beside the altar of Artemis, there to give his life for her still, if she calls to him--even at the last moment.

But she, tenderly embracing her mother, and the child Orestes, forbidding all thought of vengeance, silencing all clamor of grief--she lifts the song of glorious death, as she slowly passes from view, on her way to the place of sacrifice, the Greek women chanting round her.

"Hail, Hellas, Mother-land! Hail, light-giving Day--torch of Zeus!"

"To another life, and an unknown fate, I go! Farewell, dear light!--farewell!"

"That," said Newbury, gently, to Marcia only, as the music died away, "is the death--_she accepts_!" The tears stood in the girl's eyes. The exaltation of great passion, great poetry, had touched her; mingled strangely with the spell, the resisted spell, of youth and sex. Newbury's dark, expressive face, its proud refinement, its sensitive feeling; the growing realization in her of his strong, exacting personality; the struggle of her weaker will against an advancing master; fascination--revolt; of all these things she was conscious as they both sat drowned in the passion of applause which was swelling through the Opera House, and her eyes were still vaguely following that white figure on the stage, with the bouquets at its feet....

Bright eyes sought her own; a hand reached out, caught hers, and pressed it. She recoiled--released herself sharply. Then she saw that Edward Newbury had risen, and that at the door of the box stood Sir Wilfrid Bury.

* * * * *

Edward Newbury gave up his seat to Sir Wilfrid, and stood against the back of the box talking to Waggin. But she could not flatter herself he paid much attention to her remarks. Marcia could not see him; but his eyes were on her perpetually. A wonderfully handsome fellow, thought Waggin. The profile and brow perfect, the head fine, the eyes full--too full!--of consciousness, as though the personality behind burnt with too intense a flame. Waggin liked him, and was in some sort afraid of him. Never did her small talk seem to her so small as when she launched it at Edward Newbury. And yet no one among the young men of Marcia's acquaintance showed so much courtesy to Marcia's "companion."

"Oh, very fine! very fine!" said Sir Wilfrid; "but I wanted a big fight--Achilles and his Myrmidons going for the other fellows--and somebody having the decency to burn the temple of that hag Artemis! I say!" He spoke, smiling, in Marcia's ear. "Your brother Arthur's in very bad company! Do you see where he is? Look at the box opposite."

Marcia raised her opera-glass, and saw Enid Glenwilliam sitting in front of the box to which Sir Wilfrid pointed her. The Chancellor's daughter was bending her white neck back to talk to a man behind her, who was clearly Arthur Coryston. Behind her also, with his hands in his pockets, and showing a vast expanse of shirt-front, was a big, burly man, who stood looking out on the animated spectacle which the Opera House presented, in this interval between the opera and the ballet, with a look half contemptuous, half dreamy. It was a figure wholly out of keeping--in spite of its conformity in dress--with the splendid opera-house, and the bejeweled crowd which filled it. In some symbolic group of modern statuary, it might have stood for the Third Estate--for Democracy--Labor--personified. But it was a Third Estate, as the modern world has developed it--armed with all the weapons of the other two!

"The Chancellor himself!" said Sir Wilfrid; "watching 'the little victims play'! I picture him figuring up all these smart people. 'How much can I get out of you?--and you?'"

Marcia abruptly put down the glass she held, and turned to Sir Wilfrid. He was her godfather, and he had been her particular friend since the days when they used to go off together to the Zoo or the Pantomime.

"Do, please, talk to Arthur!" she said, eagerly, but so as not to be heard by any one else. "Perhaps he'd listen to you. People are beginning to notice--and it's too, too dreadful. You know what mother would feel!"

"I do," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely;