Pynsent deep in conversation. Pynsent, he had heard women say, was a
fascinating man, the more so because heretofore he had been proof
against the assaults of the fair. Hullo! Lady Randolph was crossing the
floor with her Duke--confound him! And now Betty was smiling at him.
Yes, he had secured a dance; somebody else's probably. What an
insufferable silly grin he had! Jim Corrance interrupted his thoughts.
"I say, Mark--isn't Betty a wonder?"
Jim began to rave about her. The Duke and Lady Randolph passed on;
Betty leant back in her chair, while Pynsent talked. It seemed to Mark
that Pynsent was making the effort of his life.
"I'm glad you brought Pynsent from Paris," Jim was saying. "It will do
him good. Like all Americans who live in Paris, he is ignorant of the
best side of English life. Eventually he must settle in London. And
he'll paint the portraits of all the swells. He tells me that already
he's in love with----"
"Betty!" exclaimed Mark.
"With my mother," said Jim, grinning.
Mark was dancing the next valse, and had to seek his partner, who--it is
to be feared--did not find him as agreeable as usual. Moreover, she too
prattled of Betty, of the great match she ought to make, and so forth.
Fortunately a polka gave an opportunity of letting off steam. After
that, and a cooling glass of cup, Mark felt more hopeful and in better
humour. Indeed, by the time his dance with Betty was due, he was
himself, and beginning to enjoy the ball.
"Your friend, Mr. Pynsent, is perfectly delightful," began Betty.
"I thought you found him so."
Betty smiled demurely.
"He talked in the most interesting way about----"
"Himself," said Mark.
"No."
"About you?"
"Wrong again! He talked, nearly all the time, about a dear friend of
mine whom I had not seen for years."
"I suppose you have dear friends in every town in Europe," said Mark.
The shameless coquette nodded. How her eyes sparkled.
"And who is this dear friend Pynsent knows?"
"Mr. Pynsent was talking about--_you_," said Betty.
"Betty, dear, forgive me! I am an ass, a silly, jealous ass. And
seeing you to-night I--I----"
A kind pair of eyes warned him to say no more. For a moment there was
silence. Then--they fell to talking of the old days, capping stories,
and laughing at ancient jokes. When Mark left her in the hands of her
next partner, he was more in love than ever, and knew that Betty knew
it, and that the knowledge was not displeasing to her. And she had made
plain, without words, that this meeting of friends had stirred her to
the core, quickening all those generous emotions of childhood which
older people are constrained sorrowfully to stifle and destroy. While
Mark was sitting beside her he realised how little she had changed from
the girl who had played truant on the Westchester Downs, and yet between
them lay a blackthorn fence of convention and tradition.
Meantime he danced gaily every dance, and at the end of the ball got
into a dogcart to drive home with Pynsent, feeling, perhaps, more alive
than he had ever felt before. Pynsent offered him a cigar, and lighted
one himself.
"This Hunt Ball has been a new experience," Pynsent said, as the cart
rolled up the High Street. "And it means work. Lady Randolph has
commissioned a portrait. I go on to Birr Wood after leaving you."
"If you satisfy her, Pynsent, she can help you enormously. She knows
all the right people."
He heard Pynsent's pleasant chuckle.
"'The right people.' I always scoffed at that phrase. But I found out
what it means to-night. Well, I hope to satisfy Lady Randolph. What I
see I can paint. I wonder if Miss Kirtling would sit. Would you ask
her?"
"Can you see her?"
"The finer lines are blurred. I might fail on that account. It would
be no small thing to set on canvas the 'unexpectedness' of her face.
She's going to surprise all of you before she's many years older."
"She will marry a swell and become like everybody else," said Mark
nervously.
"A marriage of convenience! That would indeed be surprising. No, no;
she is likely to marry the wrong man, but not from any ignoble motive;
she is capable of a great passion, which, mind you, is more physical
than mental, nine times out of ten. I'd like to make a study of her for
a head of Juliet, but I should want her to be thinking of Romeo, who, I
take it, has not yet made her acquaintance."
Mark shuffled uneasily, and began to drive a willing horse too fast.
"My brother, Archie, will sit as Romeo."
"Ah! When they were standing together to-night, somehow I thought of
Verona at once."
"Pynsent," said Mark desperately, "I may as well tell you that I--I
l-l-love Betty Kirtling. I loved her when she was a b-baby. I loved
her when she was a g-girl. And it all came back to-night. There never
has been anyone else."
"Um," said Pynsent.
"Tell me frankly what's in your m-mind."
"I'm trying to fit you into it--as Romeo."
"I'm an imbecile, of course, but I f-feel like Romeo. There--it's out."
"So is your cigar. Take a pull on yourself, man, and on that horse,
too! You're not an imbecile. Alps lie between you and Miss Kirtling,
but the Alps have been scaled before and will be again."
"If I could paint a great picture----"
Pynsent was silent.
Mark continued keenly: "And I feel in all my bones that I shall get
there, as you put it--with both feet. I say--you're not very
encouraging."
"You must try for this next Salon."
No more was said. But when Mark found himself alone in the room at Pitt
Hall which he always used, he lit the candles on each side of the
old-fashioned mirror. Then he examined himself, frowning.
"Romeo!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Good heavens!"
*CHAPTER VIII*
*BARBIZON*
After the Hunt Ball Betty Kirtling was whisked away on a round of
visits. Jim Corrance accepted a clerkship in a big firm on the Stock
Exchange. Archibald was reading hard for his degree. Mark returned to
Paris and work.
Acting under Saphir's advice, he went to Barbizon with the intention of
painting a picture for the Salon. In those days every man who went to
Barbizon painted one picture at least in accordance with certain
well-defined Barbizonian rules. At the top of the canvas was a narrow
strip of sky put on boldly with big brushes and a palette-knife.
Invariably, the sky was of a tender, pinky-grey complexion, hazy, but
atmospheric, hall-marked, so to speak, by Bastien Lepage. Below this
strip of opalescent mist, in solid contrast, were painted the roofs of
the village. These, too, were handled capitally even by the beginners.
The foreground represented a field full of waving grasses, grasses from
which the sun had sucked the chlorophyl, leaving them pale and
attenuated. In this field grew one tree, looking much the worse for
wear. Under the tree sat or stood a woman, a peasant wearing the
_coiffe_ of the commune and heavy sabots. This woman always had a
complexion of the colour and texture of alligator-skin, and her back was
bowed by excessive labour. A pretty maid waiting for her lover would
have been deemed rank blasphemy against the traditions of the place
where the "Angelus" of Millet had been conceived and painted.
Mark worked hard at just such a picture during half of January and the
whole of February. A dozen friends were painting similar masterpieces
in a fine frenzy of open-air excitement. Saphir himself was at Gretz,
but he came over to Barbizon, breakfasted _chez_ Siron, and examined his
pupils' canvases with kindly, twinkling eyes. Then he went back to
Gretz.
"He says we are all monkeys," observed a big Canadian.
"So we are," cried Mark. "We're trying to copy what one man has done
s-s-superlatively well."
Later, he took the Canadian aside. Saphir had talked alone to him; and
Mark had overheard his own name.
"What did he say to you about--m-m-me?"
"Oh, nothing."
"I w-want the facts."
"Well, he did ask me if you had private means, and I told him your
father made you a good allowance."
"Go on!"
"And--and he said that was fortunate. Of course he meant that--er--it
takes time to arrive--eh?"
"Quite so. A lifetime if you happen to choose the wrong r-road."
About the beginning of March Pynsent arrived from England.
"I've caught on," he told Mark. "I shall certainly take a studio
somewhere in Kensington. Lady Randolph has found me a score of patrons.
What are you doing?"
Mark produced his big canvas. Pynsent stared at it, pursing up his
lower lip and frowning. Mark's hopes oozed from every pore. The
picture exhibited pitiful signs of excessive labour. Pynsent obtained
his best effects with bits of pure colour laid on with amazing
precision. Mark's colour looked like putty.
"Are they all as ugly as that?" said Pynsent, indicating the model.
"I got the ugliest in the v-v-village. There's a lot in her face."
"A lot of dirt."
"I don't allow her to wash it. Can you read her 1-life's history?"
"I'm hanged if I can."
"You see n-nothing in her eyes?"
"Nor in her mouth. She's lost all her teeth."
"Knocked out by a b-brutal husband," said Mark, grinning, but ill at
ease beneath Pynsent's chaff.
"What are those stains on the apron--red paint?"
"Sheep's blood. I rubbed it on myself."
Pynsent roared; he was not a Barbizonian.
"Great Scott! You fellows take yourselves seriously."
"Honestly," said Mark. "What d'ye think of it?"
"It's good--in streaks," said Pynsent solemnly. Then his eyes flashed.
"Look here, Mark, they won't hang that. But I've told Lady Randolph and
Miss Kirtling that you will have a 'machine' in the Salon. Now, have
you the pluck to scrape this and paint it out--_to-night_?"
"Yes," said Mark.
Next day Pynsent led the way into the forest of Fontainebleau, Mark
following like a faithful spaniel. They walked for miles. Finally,
Pynsent discovered a bank of cool-looking sand in the heart of a pine
wood; upon the sand were wonderful shadows and reflections.
"_Voila notre affaire!_" exclaimed Pynsent.
"But the m-model----"
"I have wired to Paris. These Barbizon peasants make me tired."
That evening the model arrived--a girl. Within twelve hours Mark was at
work. Pynsent posed the girl upon the bank. She sat with her elbows on
her knees and her face between her hands, staring helplessly and
hopelessly out of an unknown world.
"We'll call it '_Perdue_,'" said Pynsent. "The subject is trite, but
the treatment will redeem that. I spotted that girl last year in the
Rue du Chat qui Peche. Aren't her eyes immense?"
Mark protested in vain. Pynsent ordered him to begin work. In eight
days the picture was painted. Pynsent had not laid a brush upon it, but
Mark was miserably conscious that his friend's genius informed almost
every stroke. For hours Pynsent stood at his side, exhorting and
encouraging.
"It's really good," said Pynsent, after he had forbidden his pupil to
add another touch.
"But it's not m-m-mine, Pynsent."
"What?"
"I couldn't have p-painted it without you."
"Pooh!"
At Siron's Mark's friends predicted success, a place on the line,
honourable mention, a prize, possibly. Saphir saw it and whistled.
"You painted that--you?"
They were standing in the dining-room, panelled with studies, some of
them signed by famous men. Mark's friends were all present, and in the
background Madame Siron smiled genially, murmuring that monsieur
certainly must add a tiny sketch to her little collection. Mark glanced
from face to face. The general expression was not to be misinterpreted.
In the eyes of those present he had "arrived."
"_Tiens!_" said Saphir; "it is not signed. You must sign it, _mon
garcon_."
A bystander produced a brush and palette.
"It grows upon one," said Saphir, shading his eyes. "He has lots to
learn in technique, but the feeling which cannot be imparted is there.
_Saperlipopette_! It brings tears to the eyes. And look you," he
addressed Pynsent and Mark in broken English, "I am not easily moved--I!
When I lose a friend of ze blood--how do you call it?--a relation, yes,
ze tears do not come--no! And when I hear Wagner--_zoum, soum,
zoum_--ze tears do not come, no! But when I hear Rossini,
Bellini--rivers, _mes amis_, rivers!" With a large gesture he indicated
a tropical downpour; then he continued: "It is ze melodie. Is it not
so, _mes enfants_?"
He appealed to the circle around him. Mark listened, stupefied, to a
clamour of congratulation.
"Sign it--sign it!" they cried.
Mark took the brush with a queer smile upon his wide mouth. The others
fell back to give him room.
"_Dieu de Dieu!_" ejaculated Saphir.
Mark had copied cleverly Pynsent's bold signature; below it in small
script was: "_per_ M. S."
Pynsent bit his lip, frowning. The others stared at Mark, who met the
startled interrogation of their raised brows with a nervous laugh.
"The f-f-feeling you speak of," he turned to Saphir, "is his," he
indicated Pynsent. "I cannot s-send it to the Salon as my work, but I
shall k-keep it and v-value it as long as I live."
Saphir held out his hand.
"My friend," he said in his own tongue, "if you were not an Angliche, I
should ask to have the honour of embracing you."
"He's a quixotic fool," Pynsent growled; "I never touched the canvas."
The others vanished, put to flight by an intuition that something was
about to happen. Mark addressed Saphir.
"When you were here last you s-said to a friend of mine that it was
fortunate for me, that I had private means. You are my master; you have
seen everything I have done. This, you understand, does not c-c-count.
Pynsent knows my work, too, every line of it. I ask you both: Am I
w-w-wasting my time?"
Neither answered.
"No mediocre success will content me," continued Mark. "I ask you
again: Am I w-w-wasting my time?"
"Yes," said Saphir gruffly. He put on his hat and went out.
"He's not infallible," Pynsent muttered angrily.
"Then you advise me to g-go on? No; you are too honest to do that. I
shall not go on, Pynsent; but I don't regret the last three years. They
would have been wasted indeed if they had b-b-blinded me to the truth
concerning my powers."
"What will you do, Mark?"
"I don't know--yet," said Mark.
Mark returned to England, where he learned of Betty's conquests. The
Duke of Brecon, so Lady Randolph told him, had to marry a million,
otherwise he might have offered Miss Kirtling the strawberry leaves.
Harry Kirtling, the cousin, very handsome, and a passionate protester,
wooed in vain, much to the Admiral's dismay, a dismay tempered by
Betty's assurance that she did not wish to leave her uncle for many a
long year. A prosperous rector proposed in a letter which began: "My
dear Miss Kirtling,--After much earnest thought and fervent prayer, I
write to entreat you to become my wife...." This gentleman was a
widower on the ripe side of forty. Pynsent, too, confessed that had he
not been bond to Art, he might have become Betty's slave.
Mark saw her on the day when she was presented at Court, on the day when
she held a small court herself at Randolph House, after she had kissed
her sovereign's hand. Like the young man in the parable, Mark went away
from Belgrave Square very sorrowful, because Betty seemed so rich and he
was so poor.
About this time he met the future Bishop-Suffragan of Poplar, David
Ross, then head of the Camford Mission. A man of extraordinary personal
magnetism, Ross had begun by challenging public attention as the
champion middle-weight boxer of his year. He possessed a small forest
in Sutherland and abundant private means; but, to the amazement of his
friends, he took Orders and accepted a curacy in the East End. His
lodge in Sutherland was turned into a sanatorium, whither were sent at
his expense clergymen who had broken down in health. David Ross had the
highlander's prophetic faculty and intuition. Where others crawled, he
leaped to conclusions respecting his fellow-creatures. When he met
Mark, for instance, he divined his mental condition: the suffering
denied expression, the disappointment, the humiliation. But he divined
far more--something of which Mark himself was unconscious: a religious
mind, religious in the sense in which Bishop Butler interpreted the
word--submissive to the will of God. This quality in combination with a
passionate energy and determination to win his way arrested Ross's
attention and captivated his interest. He asked Mark to become a guest
at the Mission.
Here the almost invincible odds against which a dozen men were
struggling whetted to keen edge Mark's vitality and love of fighting.
Listening to David Ross, it seemed incredible that he should have pinned
his ambition to the painting of a picture. At the end of a couple of
months' hard work in the slums he said abruptly to Ross: "If I can
overcome my confounded stammer, I shall take Orders."
Ross held his glance.
"Do nothing rashly," he said gravely.
Time, however, strengthened Mark's resolution. He set to work to
overcome his stammer. When he told his family of his intention to take
Orders, each member in turn protested.
"You--a parson?" The Squire was scarlet with surprise.
"There is only one living," bleated Mrs. Samphire.
"Oh, I shan't compete with old Archie," said Mark, smiling.
Lady Randolph, however, said to Betty: "He is the right man to
lead--_lead_, mind you--forlorn hopes."
"And be killed," Betty answered vehemently.
"I don't think he will be killed, my dear."
For many months after this he worked with Ross, seeing but little of his
family and friends.
In the following February the Admiral died after a short sharp attack of
pneumonia. Mark attended his funeral, and exchanged a few words with
Betty, to whom was left everything the kind, eccentric old man
possessed. Betty broke down when she saw Mark's sympathetic face. She
had nursed her uncle faithfully; she had loved him very dearly; she
realised that she was alone in a world which held pain as well as
pleasure. Mark tried to comfort her.
"You have so many friends, Betty."
"Friends?" She smiled through her tears. "Friends are like
policemen--always round the corner when most wanted. I might want you,
and you--you--would be somewhere in Whitechapel."
Mark opened his mouth, and shut it again resolutely.
During that week he saw her twice. It was settled that The Whim should
be let till she came of age; Betty living, meanwhile, with her guardian
and trustee, Lady Randolph. Miriam Hazelby helped Betty to pack up the
Admiral's china, and, when Mark called, played watchdog. She liked Mark
and respected him; but she respected also the late Admiral's wishes.
Mark noted that Miss Hazelby's affection and sympathy for Betty did not
obscure her powers of observation.
"Betty," she said to Mark, "has a mind which till now has been a
sundial: recording only the bright hours. I confess that I am anxious
about her. When I left her I told the Admiral that she carried too much
sail and not enough ballast. As a seaman he approved my trite little
metaphor."
Mark began to praise Betty.
"Oh," said Miss Hazelby drily, "she has been fortunate in knowing good
people to whose standard she tries to attain. It has been easy for her
to avoid evil in King's Charteris, but in Belgrave Square----"
The excellent lady sniffed.
"Lady Randolph will keep an eye on her," said Mark.
"She'll need both eyes," retorted Miss Hazelby.
*CHAPTER IX*
*AT KING'S CHARTERIS*
Two years later, in April, Mark Samphire preached his first sermon at
King's Charteris. He had wrestled with his stammer as Christian did with
Apollyon, and he told Archie that he had reason to believe it was
mastered when the brothers met at Pitt Hall upon the Saturday preceding
Mark's appearance in the village pulpit.
"I passed some severe tests, before they admitted me to deacons'
orders," he said.
Archie stared curiously at an unfamiliar Mark. "You don't look very
fit."
"I've been like a bird in the hand of a fowler, a fluttering tomtit
trying to escape. Ross rescued me. You must get to know Ross: he's a
splendid fellow. I've talked to him a lot about you."
Archibald nodded, well pleased to find Mark's eyes lingered upon his
handsome face and imposing figure with the same pride and affection as
of yore, out he was conscious also of a mental change in his brother,
divined rather than apprehended. Mark spoke with enthusiasm of work in
congested districts, he gave lamentable details, he indicated colossal
difficulties.
"And this sort of thing satisfies you?" said Archie heavily. "Although,
as I take it, the results are visible. I like to see results. I keep a
diary--of results. You were telling me just now of the difficulties of
dealing with a shifting population: the people, for instance, round the
London Docks. I couldn't undertake that sort of work."
"You want to count your sheaves," said Mark.
"I am ambitious," Archie admitted. "Aren't you?"
"Oh, yes. If I told you that I felt it in me to become a preacher, you
would l-laugh perhaps."
"You've always had plenty to say, Mark."
"And if, one day, I could stand in the pulpit of such a fane as
Westchester, if----"
"Why not?" said Archie.
"I try not to think of that. But those spires and pinnacles--I see them
as in a vision."
"What will be your text to-morrow?"
"That verse from Isaiah: '_A man shall be as an hiding place from the
wind, and a covert from the tempest._' I shall not t-touch upon the
prophetical interpretation. I want to show that any man, the humblest
and weakest, may prove a shelter to others."
Archie caught his enthusiasm.
"It is in you, Mark."
"In me, yes; but suppose it won't come out."
"Do you know that Betty Kirtling is here?"
"Here?" He turned to hide his flushed cheeks.
"She is with Mrs. Corrance. We are asked to lunch there to-morrow. I
accepted for you. Betty ran down from town yesterday on purpose to hear
your first sermon."
"Oh!"
"It's a great compliment; for she has become a much-sought-after person.
I see her name continually in the papers. Lady Randolph tells me that
you refuse all invitations to Randolph House. Is that wise?"
"Wise?" Mark laughed, and thrust out a lean leg. "Is this a leg for a
gaiter?"
"That joke is worn threadbare," said Archie, with a slight frown. "I
can't see why your work should cut you off from old friends who have
your welfare at heart. Lord Randolph got me my present curacy. He would
do as much and more for you."
"I shall certainly stick to Ross."
Next morning Mark rose early after an uneasy and almost sleepless night.
He had been obsessed by a spirit of Betty. Whenever he closed his eyes
she came to him. "She is the creature of my dreams," he told himself
impatiently. None the less she dominated his waking hours, she stood
behind that ever-increasing hope of becoming a great preacher. He had
consumed gallons of midnight oil in the composition of sermons declaimed
in unfrequented spots of Victoria Park. Now, the thought of preaching
to the woman he loved filled him with bitter-sweet excitement. He
dressed and went out into the park. Presently he came to an elm out of
which flew some jackdaws chattering volubly. Their harsh notes brought
back a morning when Archie and he, small schoolboys, had scaled this
very tree in search of jackdaws' eggs. Yes; there was the hole, high
up, out of which Archibald by his superior height and strength had
secured the spoil.
Mark sat down, despite the protests of the jackdaws, and faced his
thoughts. The talk with Archie of the night before came back to him.
He had heard Archie preach. Archie's matter, perhaps, to the critical
mind left something to be desired; but his manner was admirable and his
voice clear, persuasive, melodious, an instrument of incomparable power
and delicacy. Did Mark envy his brother? Did he grudge him a success
already achieved? Did he grudge him--a subtler point--the greater
success which undoubtedly he would achieve? To these questions he
answered sincerely--"No."
Leaving Archibald, his thoughts flew straight and swift to Betty. She
had come to King's Charteris to hear him preach? Why? His heart
flamed; for Archie had preached his first sermon in the village church.
Had Betty travelled from town to hear Samphire major? No.
When he returned to Pitt Hall, he had made a sort of compromise with his
pride, his conscience, and his God. Time was when he abhorred
compromise, but David Ross had said that a life without compromise must
prove entirely selfish or so selfless in its aims as to be abnormal.
Mark admitted the possibility of breakdown. And if silence were
imposed, he must shoulder the burden. Speech, on the other hand, if it
were truly his, included speech with Betty. He felt assured that she
expected him to speak, that she had travelled to King's Charteris to
hear him speak. He could not have said why this conviction thrilled
every nerve in his body; it simply was so.
During the first part of the service, Mark found time to study the faces
of the congregation. Betty, sitting beside Mrs. Corrance, looked pale
and anxious. Mark remembered that she had not entered the church since
the Admiral's funeral. Having keen sight, he detected traces of tears,
which moved him profoundly. Behind her, with his broad back against one
of the pillars, sat the Squire, rigidly upright. He had come prepared to
hear his boy--"the best boy in the world, sir"--preach a fine sermon.
During the rector's long and somewhat dry discourses, the Squire always
assumed an attitude of profound attention, his fine head inclined upon
his massive chest, his eyes and lips meditatively closed. If suspicious
sounds had not escaped through his nose, none would have dared to accuse
him of napping. But everybody, from the rector to the latest breeched
urchin, knew that the dear man slept like a humming-top from
introduction to peroration. He would not sleep to-day. Expectation,
tempered by anxiety, informed his expression, the expression assumed by
him at Lord's, when his sons were walking to the wicket. Literally
interpreted, it said: "A Samphire may fail, but it is not likely to
happen." Mark glanced from his father to Mrs. Samphire. Her prominent
eyes, set too far apart, like a sheep's, were slightly congested; her
puffy cheeks were flushed. It struck Mark that she would accept failure
on his part with Christian resignation. She resented the fact that Mark
was the favourite son of the Squire, who may have seen the quality in
his youngest born which distinguished the mother, and which Mark alone
inherited. Mrs. Samphire was inordinately jealous of the first wife.
Mark's thoughts wandered with his eyes. Just below the pulpit he saw
Wadge, the head keeper, a thin, hard-bitten, sharp-featured man, whose
brown face was framed in bushy red whiskers. Many a day's sport had
Mark enjoyed with Wadge. He recalled a frosty morning when Jim
Corrance, indiscreetly thrusting his hand into a burrow, had been nailed
by a ferret. Behind Wadge was Bulpett, the butcher, a burly man, one of
the churchwardens, and reputed to be worth a snug ten thousand pounds.
What a lot of rats there used to be in his old slaughter-house before it
was pulled down! Once Bulpett had caught Archie and Mark peeping
through a chink in the slaughter-house at a calf he was about to kill.
What silly idiots they felt when Bulpett politely invited them to come
inside. And then Bulpett had laughed and said that he would send a nice
piece of veal to Pitt Hall.
The rector gave out the psalms of the day. Archie's splendid voice
filled the church. And who was this singing so shrilly and so
abominably flat? Why dear old Ellen, to be sure--his first nurse--who
must have walked all the way from Cranberry-Orcas. Ellen lived in a
cottage near Cranberry brook, wherein Archie and he used to catch trout
by the willow at the foot of her cabbage patch. She had been maid to
the first Mrs. Samphire; and when Miss Selina Lamb came to Pitt Hall,
Ellen married a porter, who had waited for her fifteen years. Mark knew
the porter well. He was not an agreeable person, being rheumatic and
asthmatic--and crusty in consequence--but at the time of the marriage
the Samphire boys agreed that Ellen was wise in preferring him to the
Ewe, their nickname for the stepmother.
How his thoughts were wandering!
With an effort he led them from the nave into the chancel. In this
church a famous poet and scholar had ministered for more than a quarter
of a century. The ancients from the workhouse, who sat in the front
seats of the aisle, wearing white smock frocks, had been ruddy-faced
youths when the poet first came to King's Charteris. And in the village
the influence of this saint remained a vital force, although he had been
dead nearly twenty years. This thought moved Mark to pray that he might
be given the gift of tongues, which is not the faculty of speaking many
languages, but the infinitely greater power of making our
fellow-creatures feel what we feel--of touching them to issues finer
than those which ordinarily engross them, of so setting forth what is
strong and tender and true that other things, no matter what they may
be, shrink and shrivel into the trivial and insignificant.
The psalms came to an end. Standing at the great brass lectern, Mark
read the lessons without stutter or pause in a voice slightly harsh, yet
susceptible of modulation. Later, in the same harsh, penetrating tone
he gave out his text. The scrapings of feet, the rustle of skirts, the
occasional cough were silenced. Mark began his sermon by asking his
hearers to consider man's relation to others: a theme informed by him
with phrases and illustrations drawn from personal observation of
village life. Betty Kirtling felt as if she were peering into a magic
mirror, wherein she saw herself illumined by a strange light, and this
shining image was no phantom of the imagination, but her true
substantial self, the woman as God intended her to be, with finite aims
and appetites subordinate and subservient to the majestic design and
purpose of the Infinite.
To her right were the village boys, a mob of sluggish-minded urchins,
the raw material out of which is fashioned the Slowshire yokel. But
each boy--so Betty noted--was gazing at Mark with intelligence and
affection. He held them in thrall. The hard lines about Mrs.
Samphire's eyes and mouth softened. The Squire was staring into the
face of the preacher--seeing, hearing, feeling the mother of his son.
And then, when the great thing for which Mark had laboured as patiently
as Demosthenes, seemed within his grasp, when he had proved to the
meanest understanding that he had something to say which the world would
hear gladly, his infirmity seized him. In the middle of a phrase he
began to stutter. His face grew convulsed, his thin hand went to his
throat, as if seeking to tear from it the abominable lump. But no
articulate word followed. Only a stutter falling with sibilant hiss upon
the dismayed congregation.
At that moment a nervous, hysterical girl tittered. The woman seated
next to her glared indiscreet rebuke. The wretched creature burst into
discordant laughter. Betty heard the girl's laughter and saw Mark's
twisted face. His eyes met hers in a glance which she could not
interpret, as the girl who had laughed was led weeping from the church.
The great oak door clanged behind her, and in the silence which followed
Mark attempted to continue his sermon, but the last desperate effort to
conquer a physical disability cannot be described. Betty covered her
face. Old Ellen burst into piteous sobs. Mark turned towards the altar,
the congregation rising. Then, with a firm step, he descended the steps
of the pulpit.
The brothers came out of the vestry together, passed in silence through
the churchyard, where Easter flowers were shining in the shadows cast by
the lindens, crossed the village street, and strolled up the lane which
led to Westchester Downs. In the street a small crowd had collected,
including Wadge and Bulpett. Further down, by the lychgate, stood the
Samphire landau. Mark saw a burly figure, and a face, redder even than
usual. When the Squire perceived that his sons were crossing the street
he got into the carriage.
"It's hard on him," said Mark. "The dear old man was so certain I
should score."
The crowd made way; all the men touched their hats; upon every face was
inscribed sympathy and affection. Bulpett advanced, holding out his
huge hand. "Gawd bless ee, sir, we be tarr'ble sorry we be; but try
again, Master Mark, try again!"
"Thank you, Bulpett," said Mark, without stammering. He glanced at the
circle of kindly faces. "By Jove! it's good to have such friends."
The brothers walked on till they reached a bank flaming with primroses,
and sloping to the old chalk-pit, where as boys they used to find
fossils.
"You _will_ try again?" said Archie nervously.
"Again and again," Mark answered. "All the same, I have the feeling
that I shall never be a preacher."
The words burst vehemently from his lips. He was very pale, but calm.
Archibald seemed quite overcome. Mark then said slowly: "I am not fit
to preach."
"What?"
"I--I felt this morning a desire for material success which appalled me.
I had touched you--all of you--to something fine, but--I cannot talk
about it, even to you."
He paused with his eyes upon a distant cloud.
"That wretched girl!" groaned Archibald.
Mark's quietness seemed to exasperate the elder brother.
"I can't follow you," he said irritably. "Why shouldn't one want the
good things of this world: power, position, honour?"
"Don't I want 'em? Great heavens! don't I hunger for 'em? But if they
are not to be mine, what then?"
"You kiss the rod? In your place I should be furious, beside myself
with resentment."
"Good old Archie," said Mark, taking his brother's hand and pressing it.
He stood up, reminding Archie that Mrs. Corrance had asked them to lunch
with her.
"Betty cried like a baby," said Archie irrelevantly.
Mrs. Corrance received them in the small hall of her house, welcoming
Mark with a mute sympathy more eloquent than words. Mark broke the
silence as Betty came forward.
"I made a sad mess of it," he said, smiling genially.
But as he was washing his hands in Jim's room upstairs, his face
hardened. He went to the window which overlooked Mrs. Corrance's
rose-garden. At the end of a _pergola_, glorious in June with the
blossoms of an immense Crimson Rambler, he could see a small arbour
wherein Mrs. Corrance was in the habit of sitting whenever the day
proved fine. This arbour was the prettiest thing in the garden, and the
one which brought most vividly to mind his childhood. Here, many and
many a time, Mrs. Corrance had read to and played with Jim and the
Samphire boys. He could just remember how dreary and neglected this
garden had been when the arbour was built. Out of a chaos of weeds and
stones and broken crockery (for the outgoing tenant had used this
backyard as a dumping-ground for rubbish) Mrs. Corrance had created a
lovely little world, a tiny domain peculiarly her own, fragrant with
memories sweet as the thyme and lavender of its herbaceous borders. As a
boy, Mark often wondered why time and care were lavished upon a piece of
ground so insignificant. Now he knew. Mrs. Corrance had had the joy of
fashioning beauty out of ugliness.
At luncheon he told some anecdotes of life in Stepney. Archibald's
gloomy face and Betty's tell-tale eyelids kept his tongue wagging, but
his thoughts were in the pulpit of King's Charteris Church or in Mrs.
Corrance's rose-garden. The one seemed to have affinity with the other.
Would his life remain a wilderness of weeds and broken crockery?
After luncheon he found himself alone with Betty in the arbour. He had
dreaded this moment; so had she; and yet each was sensible of a harmony
no more to be interpreted than the murmur of the wind in tall grasses.
"What are your plans?" she asked.
Indirectly he answered by speaking of life at the Camford Mission. She
listened, computing the distance between Randolph House and Bethnal
Green.
"You talk as if work--such work, too,--were all that is left."
He was silent. Her face, delicately flushed, brimming over with a
tender and imaginative pity, implored him to speak.
"Work lies between me and what is left," he answered slowly, watching
the pulse beat in the blue veins of her white neck.
"You may be famous yet," she whispered. "This morning when you began
I--I almost forgot that it was you. And when I looked round, everybody,
even the village boys, were spellbound."
"But when I f-f-failed," said Mark hurriedly, "you, you felt what I
f-f-felt, that, that----" He put his hand to his throat, unable to
finish the phrase because of the detestable lump rising and swelling in
his throat.
"You thought _that_ because I cried."
He nodded, seeing again her despairing gesture.
"I am sorry I was such a poor friend," she said quickly. "I ought not
to have cried. I behaved like a weak fool. You will succeed yet, Mark.
I know it; I know it."
The lump in his throat seemed to dissolve.
"But," she continued, "if--if it should be otherwise, do you think that
I would care? Do you measure my friendship for you by the world's
foot-rule?"
Mark seized her hands.
"God bless you!" he said passionately. "God bless you, dear, dear
Betty!" Then abruptly, with a strange smile, he added, "Good-bye!"
He had gone before she could recover her wits or her voice. She stood
alone, a piteous figure, truly feminine inasmuch as she was not able to
pursue the man.
"Oh, oh!" she cried, covering her face as she had done in the church.
"I cannot bear the misery behind his smiles."
*CHAPTER X*
*AFTER THREE YEARS*
"I am growing older and older," said Betty Kirtling.
Lady Randolph, looking up from a paper, peered through her glasses at
charms which Time had embellished rather than diminished. Betty had
passed her twenty-second birthday; she had begun her fifth season; but
by virtue of high health and spirits she still retained the bloom and
freshness of the _debutante_. She stood at the middle window of the
morning-room of Randolph House, the big brown house at the corner of
Belgrave Square, from whose hospitable doors Archibald and Mark Samphire
had driven to Lord's Cricket Ground when they were Harrow boys.
Outside, a May sun was shining after a shower; and in the puddles on the
balcony some sparrows were taking their bath. Betty was reflecting that
London sparrows must be very uncomfortable in a dry summer.
"Are you wiser?" Lady Randolph asked.
"I know that sparrows wash themselves, and that skylarks don't," Betty
replied. "I suppose the London sparrows had to bathe, and that they
learned to love it. How jolly they look, splashing about. That must be
a cock bird. Do you see? He takes a whole puddle to himself."
Lady Randolph laid down the _Morning Post_.
"Archibald Samphire has been made a minor canon of Westchester," she
said abruptly.
Betty slightly turned her head. Lady Randolph perceived a faint pink
blush tinging the whiteness of her neck.
"And Jim Corrance is coming here to luncheon--to-day."
Betty's exclamation at this must be explained. Jim had spent three
years in South Africa, buying and selling gold-mines. He was now a
junior partner in the great firm which he had entered five years before
as a clerk.
"I shall ask Archibald Samphire and Jim to come to us at Birr Wood for
the Whitsuntide recess. Do you think Mark would join them!"
"Perhaps; if you were careful to make no mention of me."
"Betty?"
"He shuns me as if I were a leper. I've not seen him for eighteen
months. Yes--ask him. Make him come! I should like to meet those
three once again."
She ran from the room, laughing. Lady Randolph frowned. "Does she care
for Jim?" she was reflecting, "or is it still Mark? Or--is it
Archibald? She has always been loyal to her boy lovers." Her wise old
eyes began to twinkle. Many men, some of them irreproachable from the
marriage point of view, had fallen in love with the Kirtling girl with
the De Courcy eyes, but in vain. "And yet she is not cold," mused her
friend; "a passionate nature if ever there was one. How will it end?"
She often told herself that this ever-increasing interest in Betty made
life worth the living. She recognised in her qualities which invited
speculation. Betty had a sense of religion lacking, or let us say
elementary, in Lord Randolph's wife; on the other hand, the girl's sense
of humour was less keen than her own. Pynsent--she liked Pynsent--always
spoke of Betty's unexpectedness. So far, what she had done and said had
been more or less conventional. That indicated Irish blood--the wish to
please those with whom she lived.
Her reflections were interrupted by Jim Corrance. He explained that he
had landed at Southampton within the week.
"I saw this house last night," he concluded, "and it brought back the
days when you were so kind to us. So I asked if you were at home. And
I was delighted to get your wire this morning. Is Betty here?"
"No." His face amused his old friend, but she added quickly: "She is
upstairs, prinking--for you. Have you seen Mark Samphire?"
"I saw him yesterday, and I shall see him again this afternoon," said
Jim gravely. "Mark is overworked, you know."
"I don't know," said Lady Randolph drily. "Tell me about him."
Jim began to describe the difficulties against which Mark was
contending. Lady Randolph's eyes lost their sparkle.
"Do you believe all you say?" she asked when Jim paused. "You indict
Mark's common sense and worldly wisdom, but are you as sure as you seem
to be that he is tilting at windmills?"
Corrance was silent.
"I have used your arguments a thousand times," continued Lady Randolph,
"and always, but always, I have doubted their real value. And I am
supposed to be a scoffer, a freethinker, a woman of the world. It is
amazing that I can sympathise at all with Mark, yet I do, and so do you,
my friend. You are no more sure than I that he is not right in
sacrificing the things which we rate so highly. When I last saw him his
face was haggard and white, but he looked happier than you."
Jim stared at the pattern in the carpet, till an awkward pause was
broken by the entrance of Betty, a radiant vision from which the young
man laughingly shaded his eyes. Her welcome was so warm, that Lady
Randolph made certain the girl's heart was untouched so far as Jim
Corrance was concerned. Soon after the three joined Lord Randolph in
the dining-room, where Jim was persuaded to talk of what he had done and
what he hoped to do. The sun had been shining on him steadily during
three years; and its glow illumined the present and the future.
"You look pink with prosperity," said Betty; then she added: "Have you
heard of Archie's preferment? he has been made a minor canon of
Westchester."
"Archibald Samphire is the handsomest young man in the Church of
England," observed Lord Randolph.
"Mark always said that Archie had a leg for a gaiter," Corrance
remarked.
"A well-turned leg," said Lady Randolph, "carries a man into high
places; and Archie is hard-working, discreet, and ambitious. He will
climb, mark me."
Obviously Jim was delighted to hear of his friend's success; but Betty's
expression defied interpretation.
"It's queer," said Corrance, "but old Archie has always got what he
wanted. Some fellows at Harrow called it luck. I don't believe in
luck."
"I do," cried Betty. "So did Napoleon. Archie is lucky. Do you know
that he has come into an aunt's fortune--about eight hundred a
year--which ought to have gone to the eldest son--George? Archie won the
old lady's heart, when he was a boy, by writing her a wonderful letter;
George pinched her pug's tail, or threw stones at her cat, or something.
Archie behaved nicely, and his letter, I believe, was a model."
"Well--I'm hanged!" exclaimed Jim. "Was it Aunt Deborah Samphire? It
was--eh? Well, I remember that letter quite well. Mark dictated it,
for a lark. And I contributed a word or two. She sent Archie a fiver
when he got into the Sixth, and he came to us. Mark said that Aunt Deb
should have a letter which would warm the cockles of her heart. It was
a masterpiece."
"Um!" said Lord Randolph. "This young fellow is certainly a favourite
of the Gods. Luck? Good Gad--who can doubt it? There was that
scoundrel Crewkerne----"
He plunged into a story which began behind the counter of a
haberdasher's and ended in the House of Lords.
"Crewkerne had the devil's own luck," Lord Randolph concluded; "and luck
seems to sit beside young Samphire and you, my boy, but the other lad,
Mark, the fellow with the eyes, is one of the unlucky ones. That first
sermon of his now----"
"Which was also his last," said Betty.
"Eh--what?" Lord Randolph stared. "You don't mean that. He has tried
again--surely?"
"Again--and again," said Betty, "but his stammer always defeats him."
"And he had the real stuff in him," said Lord Randolph. "What a pity it
was not allowed to come out!"
"The real stuff always comes out," said Lady Randolph, rising.
When Jim took his leave a few minutes later, he was under promise to
spend Whitsuntide at Birr Wood. Lady Randolph commissioned him to
persuade Mark to be of the party. Archibald--she felt assured--would
join them. But it must be made plain that a refusal from Mark would be
considered an offence.
Outside, Jim lit an excellent cigar which he smoked as a cab whirled him
eastward. Years afterwards he remembered that drive: the swift
transition from Belgrave Square to the Mile End Road. He had seen Mark
the day before, but only for a few minutes, because some poor creature
had come running for his friend. But those few minutes stood out sable
against the white background of their previous intercourse. Never could
he forget Mark's delight at seeing him: the light in his blue eyes, the
grasp of his thin hand, the thrill of his voice. And yet, to offset
this, was the grim fact that his friend's health and strength were
failing. And this failure, measured by his (Corrance's) success, seemed
tragic. Yet was it? The question festered. And that long drive, the
gradual descent of the hill of Life, lent it new and poignant
significance. If Mark had forsworn all Randolph House included--and it
held Betty Kirtling--what had he gained?
The well-bred grey between the shafts of the hansom sped on past the
houses of the rich and mighty, and plunged into the roaring world of
work. Here, on both sides of the street, in flaming gold letters for the
most part, were the names of the successful strivers, the prosperous
tradesmen, merchants, and bankers. Farther on, in Fleet Street, might
be seen other names--those of the heralds and recorders of human
effort--the famous newspapers. Jim's eyes sparkled, and his heart beat
faster. For the moment he forgot the dun streets behind these
resplendent thoroughfares--the interminable miles and miles of houses
which shelter the millions who toil and moil out of sight and out of
mind!
Passing the Mansion House, the grey knocked down a ragamuffin. Corrance
was out of his cab in a jiffy, but the urchin scrambled up, apparently
unhurt. Jim gave him half a crown and a scolding, much to the amusement
of the burly policeman, who was of opinion that the young rascal might
have done it on purpose. Jim was horrified. "Bless yer, sir, they'd do
more than that to get a few coppers." These words stuck in his
thoughts.
When he reached the Mission House he was received by one of the younger
members--a deacon full of enthusiasm which flared, indeed, from every
word he spoke. Corrance was struck by the lad's face--his bright
complexion, clear eyes, and general air of sanity. Some of the men at
the Mission were ill-equipped for the pleasures of life, and therefore,
perhaps, more justified in accepting its pains in the hope of
compensation hereafter. They, to be sure, would have repudiated
indignantly the barter and sale of bodies and souls. None the less, the
self-sacrifice of one pre-eminently qualified to win this world's prizes
became the more remarkable.
"Samphire will be here in five minutes," said the young fellow. "Can I
offer you anything--a whisky and soda, a cigarette?"
"If you will join me."
"I shall be glad of the excuse," replied the other frankly. "It is
horribly thirsty weather--isn't it? And a thirst is catching. I've been
working amongst the navvies this morning. Glorious chaps--some of them!
I attend to the games, you know--cricket and football."
He plunged into a description of the men with whom he had dealings; and
from them, by a natural transition, to David Ross, who had just been
ordained Bishop of Poplar. For David Ross great things were predicted.
"It's like this," he concluded: "Our people are waking up. Time they
did, too. And the men who will fill the big billets will be those who
have seen active service. I don't sneer at the scholars, but a bishop
nowadays must be more concerned with the present than the past. Ross
chucked the schools, and he was right; he has given his attention to
conditions of life amongst the very poor, and I believe he knows more
about 'em than most men of twice his age and experience. Samphire's
friends may think he's wasting his time--from a worldly point of view, I
mean--down here in the slums, but he isn't."
Mark's entrance cut short this conversation, and the speaker withdrew at
once.
"Nice boy," said Mark. "The sort we want most, and so seldom get. Half
our fellows are discouraged, and show it; but I'm not going to talk shop
to you, old chap."
"I saw Betty Kirtling to-day," said Jim abruptly. "It's amazing that she
is still Betty Kirtling."
Mark said nothing. Jim, after a keen glance at his pale face, began to
speak of the Whitsuntide party, which at first Mark refused to join.
Jim grew warm in persuasion, accusing Mark of churlishness, making the
matter one personal to himself. Finally, Mark consented to spend four
days at Birr Wood.
"We shall hear Archie preach in Westchester Cathedral," Mark said.
"I wish it were you," Jim replied quickly.
"I shall never p-p-preach," stammered Mark.
A few minutes later the friends were on their way to one of those
squalid courts which lie between the Mile End Road and the river. To
Jim the dull uniformity of the houses indicated a life inexorably drab
in colour and coarse as fustian in texture. But Mark had the
microscopist's power of revealing the beauty that lies imprisoned in a
speck of dust. Seen by the polarised light of his imagination these
dreary dwellings showed all the colours of the spectrum. Here lived a
family of weavers; there, behind those grimy windows, were fashioned the
wonderful hats--the bank-holiday hats of Whitechapel. Of every trade
pursued in this gigantic hive he had the details at his tongue's tip;
and through the woof of his description ran golden threads. More than
once Corrance touched upon the obstacles--the ever-shifting population,
the indifference which lies between class and class, the drunkenness,
the premature marriages of penniless boys and girls.
"These are mountains--yes."
"You have set your face to the stars, and you do not look back--eh?"
Corrance said quickly. He was sorry he had put the question, for he
felt that Mark would not try to evade it.
"Look back?" cried Mark. "Aye--a thousand times; and, perhaps, as one
climbs higher the pleasant valleys will grow dim. I'm not high enough
for that," he added hastily.
"You have climbed far above me," said Jim vehemently; "and far as you
have climbed I have gone twice as far--down hill." Then, reading dismay
in Mark's face, he added with a laugh: "Don't speak; I have said too
much already. You have the parson's power of compelling confession.
Tell me more about these weavers!"
Mark obeyed, conscious that troubled waters surged between himself and
his old friend.
*CHAPTER XI*
*IN LOVE'S PLEASAUNCE*
Birr Wood lies within three miles of Westchester upon the banks of the
Itchen. The house itself--the home of the Randolphs for four
centuries--was rebuilt by Inigo Jones, and has been mentioned by Lord
Orford as being one of that great architect's best works. Like many of
Jones's palaces, Birr Wood is a show place. The magnificent avenue, the
Italian gardens, the terraces, the disposition of the trees in the park
are mere accessories to the vast white pile which dominates the whole--a
glittering monument to rank and wealth and power.
Pynsent, who had painted four members of the Randolph family, admired
the house enormously, but he maintained that it must remain greater than
any man who might inhabit it. The splendid columns and pilasters, so
expressive of what is enduring in Greek art, were designed obviously to
last for ever, albeit the Randolphs themselves, once so numerous, so
vigorous, and so pre-eminent, were dwindling to extinction. Pynsent,
possibly because he was an American, failed to apprehend the pathos of
this. Mark Samphire said to him: "It is so horribly sad to think that
soon there will be no Randolphs at Birr Wood."
"Um," replied the painter, "how much sadder it would be if there were no
Birr Wood for the Randolphs, or those that come after them. Suppose it
burned down--eh?"
Mark was silent.
"I have heard you say," continued Pynsent, "that the work, the best work
of men's hands, is greater than the men themselves. And you are right.
To me Birr Wood is not the ancient home of the Randolphs, nor the
masterpiece of Inigo Jones, but a materialisation, adapted to modern
needs, of the spirit of Greek architecture. For my part, kind as our
friends have been, much as I like them as individuals, I feel that their
house is, in a strained sense perhaps, profaned by the presence of an
hereditary disease. The Randolphs Van Dyck painted were worthy to live
at Birr Wood."
This talk took place upon the terrace facing the Italian gardens upon
the Friday preceding Whit Sunday. The Samphires, Pynsent, Jim Corrance
and his mother, Betty Kirtling, young Kirtling (now Lord Kirtling), and
three fashionable maidens made up a party which had assembled on that
day, and would disperse upon the following Tuesday.
Jim had not met Archibald Samphire for some three years. Archie, Jim
said to himself, might be only a minor canon, but already he had the air
of a great gun. He spoke little, and it was understood that he was
thinking of his sermon in Westchester Cathedral. After dinner, in the
red saloon, he sang three songs: one a lyric, a Fruehlingslied sweetly
pastoral and simple; the second a love song by an eminent French
composer; the last that hackneyed adaptation of Bach's lovely prelude,
Gounod's "Ave Maria." When he moved from the piano the girls surrounded
him, prattling thanks and entreaties for more. But Betty, so Corrance
noted, sat still, with a faint flush upon her cheeks and a suffused
light in her eyes.
"He sings extraordinarily well," said Jim.
"Yes," Betty sighed.
Just then Mark came up, rubbing his hands. His delight in his brother's
voice struck Jim as being pathetic.
"It's the quality that does it," Mark explained. "That second song of
his--rubbish--eh? But it thrilled--didn't it, Betty? And the tragic
note, the note of interrogation: the forlorn 'why'--you heard that?"
"Yes, yes," said Betty hastily.
"A vocal trick," Jim observed, rather abruptly. Then he moved away,
surrendering his seat to Mark, who dropped into it.
"Well?" said Mark, following Corrance's figure with his eyes. "What do
you think of old Jim?"
"I am thinking of the new Jim," Betty answered. "And I suppose I can
measure the change in myself by the change in him. Archie has changed
too. Only you, Mark, remain the same."
She flashed a blinding glance upon him. Somehow Mark realised that the
glance was an indictment.
"I have changed," he replied quickly.
"No--no. You are the same Mark, with the same ideas, the same ideals of
years ago."
"Ideals?" The expression on her face bewildered him. Not a score of
feet away the others were buzzing about Archie, but Betty and he seemed
to be alone. "You used to share my ideals, Betty."
"You mean you shared them with me, but when you went away you took them
with you. Now they are like you--out of sight."
"I am here now," he replied.
"Because your brother is here. You did not come to see--me."
"Perhaps I did," he murmured, his thin face aflame with colour. Betty's
cheeks were pale, but her bosom heaved.
"If that be really true, I forgive," she whispered. "Only--prove it!"
She leaned towards him.
"Betty," he said hoarsely, "you know why I have stayed away from you."
He looked so distressed that she feared the eyes of the others.
"You shall tell me that and more--to-morrow," she murmured, rising. "My
cousin is crossing to us."
Young Kirtling wanted her to sing, but she refused.
"You always say 'No,'" he growled.
Pynsent joined them, followed by Archibald and the others. Lady
Randolph seated herself beside Mark.
"We have not had a chat for an age," she began, and then went on
abruptly: "How do you like my guests?"
Mark's eyes rested for an instant upon young Kirtling's handsome but
rather saturnine features. Lady Randolph laughed and tapped Mark's hand
with her fan.
"I didn't ask him. He asked himself. He is still mad about our Betty,
but she flouts him. The Admiral wished it, as you know."
"And you," said Mark.
"I want the girl to be happy. And I shall be satisfied if she finds her
peer outside the House of Lords. She has plenty of money and can marry
whom she pleases."
For the second time that evening Mark's cheeks flamed.
"She beguiles all hearts," continued Lady Randolph, looking at Mark out
of the corner of a shrewd grey eye; "Jim Corrance makes no secret of his
feelings; and your handsome brother sang for her and at her--to-night.
Somehow I can't conceive of her as the wife of, let us say, a bishop."
"There are bishops and bishops," said Mark.
"Just so. I am told that a certain person who has been labouring in a
field which--which does not smell as one that the Lord hath
blessed--may, if he continues to display his remarkable powers of
organisation, wear lawn some day."
Then she spoke discreetly of other things, seeing that Mark's lips were
quivering and his eyes shining; while the young man listened, hearing
her pungent, pleasant phrases, but seeing only Betty--Betty--Betty!
Meantime that young lady had left the saloon accompanied by Pynsent,
Kittling, and Jim Corrance. Mark could hear their voices in the room
beyond, and Betty's voice, Betty's laugh, came clearly to his ears above
the chorus, even as the silvery notes of a flute float upward from the
clashing cymbals and roaring bassoons. Mark rose quickly and slipped
away into the moonshine of the terrace.
For three years he had told himself daily that the woman he loved could
never be his. Now--he drew a deep breath--she had come once more within
his grasp. More, the world, in the person of his shrewd old friend,
recognised that he, the failure, had not really failed, that he might
have to give, even from the world's point of view, something worth the
taking. And here, where material things possessed such significance, he
could measure what he had accomplished with a detachment unachievable in
Stepney. A thousand details presented themselves: a summons to the
house of a great minister, an interview with a prince, who professed
interest in the better housing of the poor, letters from celebrities
asking for information, and his ever-increasing friendship with David
Ross--now famous. The power of the orator had been denied him, and
perhaps on that account he had been the keener to practise what
otherwise he might have been content to preach.
He walked slowly down the terrace and into the garden which lay below, a
conventional garden cut and trimmed to the patterns set by Le Notre at
Versailles and known to the passing tourist as Love's Pleasaunce,
because it was embellished by marble statues of Venus and attendant
Amorini. In the centre sparkled a sheet of water wherein and whereon
the fountains played on high days and holidays. Mark knew that the key
to the middle fountain was concealed in an Italian cypress. Often as a
boy he had begged permission to turn this key, and always, he
remembered, there had been a certain disappointment because the English
climate so seldom lends itself to such a scene, for instance, as
Aphrodite rising from the waters. Now he reflected that he had never
seen the fountains play by moonlight. The whim seized him to turn the
key. A second later he was gazing spellbound at the goddess in the
centre of the pool. At the touch of the shimmering waters the white
image thrilled into life. Clothed with silvery tissues, which revealed
rather than concealed the adorable grace of her limbs, Aphrodite smiled.
Beneath the dimpled surface of the pool, her feet twinkled into a dance,
a measure of the moon, slow, rhythmic, and set to the music of the
fountain. Beyond, in the shadow of the cypresses, Mark caught a glimpse
of two nymphs: one playing the double flute dear to Thebans, the other,
seated, sweeping the strings of the Homeric phorminx. From these,
surely, floated the liquid notes, the trills and cadences, which had
stirred to movement the feet of the goddess. Mark touched the key
again. The music died in a sigh. Aphrodite hid herself in the cold
marble. The pool, so sweetly troubled, became still. Mark smiled and
released once more the goddess. But the illusion had lost its spell.
Mark touched the key for the last time, reflecting that Aphrodite rises
once only for mortal men. And the pleasaunce, now, had a forlorn
aspect. A cloud obscured the moon, so that the silver of the scene
became as lead and the shadows grew chill and amorphous. Mark walked
slowly away towards the lights of the house which held Betty.
On the terrace he paused, startled by a deep voice. Archibald was
calling him by name.
"You here?" said Mark.
Archie was seated on a stone bench, which stood in the shadows.
"Yes. Sit down!"
"You are in trouble," said Mark quickly. "Dear old fellow--what's
wrong?"
"My sermon."