Part 10

Again Mark smiled at his brother's lack of perception. He fenced with the question: "You ought to know; you've seen more of her than I have."

"She's a bit of a flirt."

"No."

"I say--yes. She has flirted with Kirtling, with me, with Pynsent, with Jim Corrance, and with you. I sometimes think that she likes you best, Mark. She might take you, because----"

"Go on!"

"Because," Archie explained, "there are two Bettys: the Betty of Mayfair and the Betty of King's Charteris. I heard Mrs. Corrance say that, and it struck me as worth remembering. Most women would only see the Betty of Mayfair, but the other Betty, who takes some finding, has an extravagant admiration of good and a morbid horror of evil. A girl running from evil is likely to rush into the arms of good. I saw my chance there," he added thoughtfully, and again Mark smiled. "I said to myself that the time to catch the witch was just after the London season. I don't mind telling you that I asked her to marry me the day she came back from Goodwood last year. And I was careful about choosing the right place. Depend upon it that tells in these affairs. I chose the Dean's garden: there isn't a sweeter, more peaceful spot under Heaven. But I wasted my time. Hullo! what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You're white as a sheet. You ought to take more care of yourself, my dear fellow. I do Sandow's exercises every morning and evening. And I take a grain of calomel once a week. You look liverish. I find that my mind does not work properly unless my body is in tiptop condition. What were we talking of? Oh, yes--Betty Kirtling. Do you know that Harry Kirtling has proposed about five times--generally out hunting? But she laughs at him. She cried in the Dean's garden."

"Ah?" said Mark softly.

"She won't laugh or cry when the right man speaks, and if you are he the sooner you speak the better. She's an enchantress," Archie concluded, "and her money would come in very handy--wouldn't it?"

"Confound her money!" said Mark violently.

*CHAPTER XV*

*APHRODITE SMILES AND FROWNS*

When Betty met Mark just before dinner the story of the Bagshots was told briefly.

"Is that why you look so discouraged?" she whispered.

He laughed, not quite naturally.

"Surely to--to me, you may show your true feelings. Or do you count me a fair-weather friend?"

Before he had answered Lady Randolph came up and said that Mark must be introduced to the lady he was destined to take into dinner. Mark found himself bowing before an ample matron who prattled of herbaceous borders and conifers for nearly half an hour. Betty sat beside him, listening to Jim Corrance. Not till the first entree was handed did she find an opportunity to repeat her question to Mark: "Am I a fair-weather friend?"

Mark met her glance; then before answering, he allowed his eyes to rest upon her gown and the opals at her throat. She was wearing a frock of filmy tissues, made, so her dressmaker informed her, in Tokio, and known to the fashionable world as rainbow tulle. The general effect of this gown, like the jewels which glittered above it, was that of change, and Betty had christened it the Chameleon, because in certain lights it was softly pink, in others a misty blue, in others, again, amber or palest green. Lady Randolph smiled when she saw this wonderful frock, because it suggested certain phases of character of the girl who wore it. Mark, knowing nothing of the relationship between a woman and her clothes, was, none the less, aware that this gown must have cost a deal of money and had not been chosen for wearing qualities.

"You make one think of May," he replied.

"You look at my frock, not at me. Well, if it comes to that, I have a stout tweed upstairs, which defies hurricanes. I know what you're thinking--and you're wrong. I prefer my Harris tweed, but you don't expect me to wear it in May--do you?"

"Contrast tickles you, Betty."

"How am I to take that?"

"You like an ice with a hot sauce."

"No doubt, _you_ prefer fried fish."

She glanced at him roguishly, leaning slightly towards him, so that the sleeve of her gown touched his coat. From the airy tissues floated a faint fragrance of roses, and then, drowning it in pungent fumes, came that sickening odour of the slums.

"I loathe fried fish," he whispered. Betty smiled as the lady on the other side of Mark asked him if he knew Father Dolling. Nor was Stepney mentioned again, although it obscured the future in yellow fog. Betty was conscious that Mark eyed her with a persistency for which she could not quite account. The same expression may be found on the faces of emigrants setting sail for a new country, yet looking back on the old, which holds all they know of life and which they may not see again. Betty had never set foot on the deck of an emigrant ship; but she was vaguely apprehensive that this persistency of glance was ominous. Her bosom was heaving when she asked him: "Why do you look at me so queerly?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Why should you? You must know by this time that I don't object to being looked at--by you."

If the words were slightly flippant, the tone in which they were spoken was serious enough. She continued: "Your look is that of a man hesitating to leap. When you were a boy you went free at your fences."

Mark caught his breath. Her meaning was unmistakable. She held out white arms to him--the syren!

"They were dear old days," he murmured.

"You rode hard and straight. Many a lead you gave me. When are we going to have a nice long talk?"

Her voice was trembling. And he stammered as he replied: "T-to-night, if you l-l-like."

"It will be heavenly on the terrace," she whispered. "I saw you slip away last night, and I was tempted to follow you."

"Why didn't you?" he blurted out. Last night--he was reflecting--he had been free.

"I have some pride, Mark. Not much, perhaps."

"I saw Aphrodite by moonlight. She was wonderful."

"She is wonderful," Betty murmured. "Is love dead that you use the past tense? Will you take me to the fountain after dinner?"

"Yes."

A minute later Lady Randolph and the ladies left the dining-room. Mark poured himself out a glass of port. The men were talking of the approaching meeting at Ascot, where one of Lord Randolph's horses was likely to win the Gold Vase. Mark listened to Harry Kirtling's eager voice. How keen he was, this handsome lad! What a worshipper of horse and hound! And his host--old man of the world who had drunk of many cups--seemed to covet this gold vase as the one thing desirable. And when he had won it, the cup would glitter upon his sideboard among a score of similar trophies unnoticed and forgotten.

"I have the sermon almost by heart," Archie whispered to his brother. "I read it over three times before dinner. It's odd your treatment of the theme did not occur to me, particularly as I live in the Close."

"One doesn't see the Matterhorn when one is climbing it," Mark observed. "If you want to love Westchester live in Whitechapel."

"I couldn't live in Whitechapel," Archie replied; "it wouldn't suit me at all. Still, as a means to an end--Lord Randolph says that you--er--know what you're at."

"Do I?" said Mark. Then he laughed and struck his brother genially on the shoulder, adding: "At any rate, you know what you're at; but to men like me ignorance of the ultimate aim has its value. Perhaps because I don't quite know what I'm doing I take pleasure in doing it."

"You're a queer chap," said his brother, "and you grow queerer as you grow older. You mean that you would sooner have two birds in the bush than one in the hand."

"The nightingales in the bush--for me," cried Mark.

"I want the bird in the hand," said Archibald solemnly.

"You will cook your bird, old fellow, and eat it with all accessories: bread sauce, rich gravy, the succulent _salade Romaine_, but you will never hear it sing. A bird in the hand never sings."

The night was very still when Mark and Betty descended the stone steps which led to the fountain: a lovers' night, fragrant with a thousand essences. Silvery shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness of the park, and fell tenderly on the nymphs about the fountain. But Aphrodite was not yet revealed, for her pool lay in shadow guarded by sentinel yews and cypress.

Mark disappeared for a moment; the surface of the pool was troubled; then, with a soft, sibilant sound, the waters rose and enveloped the goddess.

"We are in the nick of time," whispered Mark.

As he spoke the moon topped the trees. For a moment a white flame seemed to sparkle round the brows of Aphrodite; then the features were revealed: the languorous half-opened eyes, the dimpled cheeks, the adorable mouth with its shy smile. The sculptor had suggested the admixture of fear and delight, a shrinking from the embrace of the unknown element, a virginal protest indicated by a gesture of taper fingers and slender shoulders, a protest overpowered by a subtle relaxing of the whole body, the nymph surrendering herself to Life and Love.

Mark turned to Betty. She met his eyes and then turned aside her own. The nymph with the phorminx smiled. And the _amorini_ looked on approving. Mark had the hunger of Romeo on his thin face, the hunger of the beggar who has seen white loaves through the windows of a baker's shop. At Milan there is a hole in the wall whence, long ago, unhappy prisoners looked out upon tables spread with savoury viands: wretches condemned to starve--within sight and smell of baked meats and sparkling wines!

Mark looked again at Betty's face, now pensive, although the dimples were deepening. The elusive tints of the gown, transmuted by the moonbeams into a silvery radiance, shimmered like the watery tissues of the goddess; the opals at her throat might have been dewdrops.

"Dear Betty," he whispered.

She lifted her heavy lids. The eyes beneath were dark as the shadows cast by the cypress, and troubled as the waters of the pool. What darkened and troubled them? What intuition or premonition of sorrow and suffering? But Mark saw the underglow which reflected the flames of his heart.

As they gazed at each other the moon glided discreetly behind a cloud, and a soft darkness obscured all things, out of which came the music of the fountain; a symphony of kisses falling with melodic rhythm upon the face of Aphrodite. In a clump of syringa beyond the Italian garden a nightingale trilled.

He knew that he had only to speak the word, to hold out his arms, and she would come to him. She was smiling, but with a sadness which underlay joy: such sadness as may be seen sometimes in the face of a child, who, coming into possession of a long-desired object, is confronted with the possibility of losing it.

He took her hand, gripping it.

"Mark--what is the matter?"

Her voice rose in a crescendo of distress, as Mark staggered, gasping for breath. Terror-stricken, she supported him to a stone bench hard by, upon which he sank.

"It is a p-p-passing weakness," he stammered. "I am better already."

"You have been overworking yourself in those detestable slums," she said vehemently.

"That is the truth," he answered. "I shall take a holiday."

"A long holiday," she whispered, meeting his eyes. But he saw the face of the tall thin doctor and his lean hand raised in protest. "And you must have someone, some dear friend, to look after you."

Her fingers pressed his arm.

"Yes," he said eagerly. "With such a friend I should grow strong again."

"There are places, earthly paradises, which I've read about. In Samoa or Tahiti----"

He interrupted her, passionately.

"Don't speak of them--_yet_. Betty, I must turn the key of the fountain. I cannot speak for--for a few days. Do you understand? If you could read my heart. If--if----"

She saw that his excitement was overmastering him.

"Mark, I do understand. We understand each other. You are right. The key of the fountain must be turned. I'll do it, not you." She sprang up lightly, ran to the cypress, and turned the key. When she came back he was staring at the goddess, white and shivering.

Before she went to bed, Betty was cross-examined by Lady Randolph.

"Then he hasn't actually spoken?"

"He will," Betty declared. "And within a week."

"And Stepney?"

"I'd sooner live with him in Stepney----"

"And eat fried fish?"

"And smell fried fish--it's the smell I hate--than live in a garden of roses by Bendemeer's stream with anybody else."

"My poor Betty, you have the disease badly."

Betty, however, did not mention Mark's physical weakness to her friend. Instead, she prattled of love for nearly an hour.

The elder woman told herself that she was listening to an idyll; but, vividly as the tale was presented, a sense of unreality pervaded it; the conviction that, as a child would put it, the story was too good to be true. But because of its goodness Lady Randolph was the more touched by it. Your honest cynic respects good, although he rails against its counterfeit. Moreover, in this joyous acclamation of love, Lady Randolph resumed for a few moments her own youth. It seemed incredible that she should have grown old, and critical, and distrustful. Love touched her with healing fingers, and she became as a little child, free from the dull limitations of age and experience.

"You have been so sympathetic," said Betty, when she bade her old friend good night, "but I know, of course, that in your heart of hearts you think us two fools."

"Not fools, Betty. Babes in the wood, perhaps, playing amongst the rose leaves. Good night, my dear; go and dream of your lover."

But when the door was shut, the woman of the world sighed, and her shrewd face puckered into many wrinkles.

"Am I a fool?" she asked herself. "Should I have stopped this? I fear that it will come to nothing, but then it will be everything, everything, everything to them--while it lasts."

Meantime, Archibald was in Mark's bedroom, talking of the sermon to be preached on the morrow. He had a score of unessential corrections to suggest. A slight amplification here, another word there, an apt quotation, revealed the student of effect, the rhetorician. Mark admitted that his brother had improved the manuscript.

"I have thought of nothing else," said Archie. "At first I disliked preaching another man's sermon, but now I feel as if a lot of it were mine."

"It is all yours," said Mark, smiling. "I have given it to you, haven't I? Only, remember, Betty must know."

"Why?" demanded Archie. "Women will talk and----" he shrugged his broad shoulders. "If the Dean heard of it---- The Dean, you know, is civil, but he has a cut-and-dried manner which I find rather trying. He's a radical, too. We always have had radical deans at Westchester. With my political views, my faith in institutions, and--er--so forth he is not in accord. He told me with really amazing candour that I owed my preferment entirely to my vocal chords. I should have thought a Samphire of Pitt had claims, but no--he repudiates all that. His own father was quite obscure: a bookseller, I've been told, only don't quote me. One can't be too careful in a cathedral town. Well, not to put a fine point on it, the Dean underrates me. I've felt it keenly. When I was singing to him the other night, in his own drawing-room, he went to sleep: he did, indeed. Still, to give him his due, he is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the cathedral, and this sermon ought to surprise him...."

Mark nodded absently. His face seemed thinner and paler since he had parted from Betty less than an hour ago. As in a dream, he heard Archie's voice droning on about the Dean and his Chapter, but he saw only Betty's face, Betty's eyes, which seemed to fill the universe. She loved him! Infirm of body, halting of speech, he had been able to inspire passion in so splendid a fellow-creature. The glory of it filled his soul.

Archie, who must not be blamed for enjoying the sound of his own voice, talked on and on. It was past midnight. Down in the smoking-room young Kirtling, one could wager, was holding forth on the subject of fox-hunting. Jim Corrance, with an ironical smile upon his slightly melancholy face, was listening politely, thinking, no doubt, of some future "coup" in the money market. Lord Randolph, with a long, thin cigar in his mouth, was certainly alive to the possibility of a political crisis. Pynsent, watching the three other men from the depths of an immense chair, was busy fitting their faces into a picture. All this, and much more, passed through Mark's mind.

"Good night," Archie was saying. "We've had a long yarn, haven't we?"

He stood up, extending his hand, which Mark grasped. Opposite to the brothers stood a large cheval glass. Mark's eye fell on this, and straightway the gracious image of Betty vanished, and in her place he saw himself and Archie standing beside each other with linked hands. The contrast between the brothers was so startling that the younger allowed an exclamation to leap from his lips.

"Look," he said, when Archie lifted his handsome brows in interrogation; "who would believe that the same mother bore us?"

The mirror, indeed, seemed to take pleasure in making more of Archibald and less of Mark than was warrantable. The fine massive figure, the smooth, fresh-coloured cheeks, the flaxen curls of the one accentuated the leanness, the pallor, the fragility of the other. Only when you looked at the eyes you recognised the vitality of spirit in Mark. Lady Randolph described the eyes of the brothers aptly enough, when she said that Mark's reminded her of fire and Archie's of--water.

"You will fill out," said Archibald, placidly regarding the curves of his person.

Mark laid his fingers upon his brother's chest.

"Forty-three inches," said Archie. "I had a doctor look me over the other day. He said I was as sound a specimen as he'd ever examined."

"Good night," said Mark abruptly.

When Archie had left the room, Mark returned to the mirror.

"Am I envious?" he muttered. "Not for my own sake, God knows, but for hers. If I were only strong----"

He began to undress, thinking of the doctor and the train. Curiously enough the two were connected. The train rushing on and on through the quiet landscape, the doctor and he whirled on with it, fellow-passengers for a few brief minutes, meeting, parting, and meeting again in obedience to some Power who rules that good shall triumph ultimately over evil. To Mark this was and always had been a sheet-anchor. At Harrow, at Barbizon, in the pulpit of the church in King's Charteris, he had submitted to the Divine Will; but, now, if the greatest thing on earth were denied him would he be able to bow his head in resignation? Every pulse in his body throbbed a passionate--"No."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*WESTCHESTER CATHEDRAL*

It happened that Lord Randolph was anxious to consult the Dean of Westchester upon some point of municipal philanthropy, so he drove into the town earlier than usual on Whit-Sunday. Archibald accompanied him, Lord Randolph driving his own pair, which were never driven by anybody else. When the horses were working well into their collars, Lord Randolph turned to the preacher-elect and described, not without humour, his own pangs before the delivery of an important speech in the House of Commons.

"Only I," he concluded, "had the impending horror of a scathing reply from the other side. You black-coated gentlemen have an immense advantage there, an advantage which I hope you, my boy, will never abuse. Is it indiscreet to ask what theme you have taken?"

Archie answered the question by repeating a phrase of Mark's, which summed up, aptly enough, the scope and purpose of the sermon. Lord Randolph raised his grizzled brows.

"Um! I like to see a young man tackling a subject bigger than himself: and the bigger the man, the bigger ought to be his subject. Often," he concluded abruptly, "it is the other way. You are ambitious, Archibald?"

"Yes," the minor canon confessed; and then, afraid of saying too much, he held his tongue. Lord Randolph respected his silence, supposing that the preacher was occupied with his thoughts. Nor did he mention that he expected to meet the Prime Minister at the deanery, who doubtless would attend service in the cathedral. If this young fellow acquitted himself with distinction, his sermon might prove a stepping-stone to great things. A week ago no man knew that a maker of prelates was coming to Westchester, certainly not the Dean, otherwise he might have elected to preach himself. Lord Randolph smiled with a slightly cynical curl of the lip. The Dean, as has been said, was radical in politics, but he probably foresaw that his party, now in power, was not likely to endure for ever.

Lord Randolph left his horses in charge of the groom, and descended at the ancient gate which leads to the Close. At the same moment two figures emerged from the shadows of the deanery porch. "There is the Prime Minister," said Lord Randolph. "I shall have pleasure, Archie, in introducing you to him."

"By Jove!" exclaimed the young man.

A moment later the most eloquent speaker in the kingdom was holding Archibald Samphire's hand and peering into his face. The great man had appreciation of physical beauty, and an eye for a personality. Archie blushed: a tribute ever welcome to genius.

"Our preacher to-day," said the Dean.

"Indeed?"

The young man's hand was retained in the ample grasp of the Prime Minister, who asked a dozen questions, enveloping Archie with that magnetic current, which seemed to emanate from him in fuller measure than from any other of his generation.

"I shall look forward to your sermon," he concluded. "I am sure it will be worthy of this place"--he spoke with solemnity--"and"--his voice changed--"and of--you. You have the gift of eloquence: the lips, the eyes, the brow. I hope we shall meet again soon."

He passed on, smiling genially, leaving the gratified Archie alone with his thoughts. Lord Randolph might have told him that the speaker scattered seed of kindly words wherever he went, and who shall say--even now--what they brought forth? A kindly word lingers in the ear when a kind action may be lost to sight.

The party from Birr Wood entered the cathedral some five minutes before the time when service began. Betty knelt down to repeat the prayer which she had learnt when a child from Mrs. Corrance. She was about to rise, when she happened to steal a glance at Mark kneeling beside her. At that moment she became sensible of what may be termed spiritual giddiness. She seemed to be transported to heights where head and heart failed. A glimpse of the world unseen was vouchsafed her: an empyrean in which she and Mark moved alone amongst the hosts of Heaven. The vision was so vivid, so seizing (to use the word in its French significance) that she felt herself trembling beneath the awe and mystery of it. And then an impulse, which, in its material aspect, had assailed her once before when attempting to scale a certain peak in the Alps, constrained her to look down into what seemed a fathomless abyss. In the mist and shadows of this vast gulf a dull, opaque object challenged attention, and she knew this was the earth: a pin's point in the celestial horizon, borrowing aught it possessed of light and heat from the place wherein she stood. And with this knowledge fear became articulate. The horror of giddiness which paralysed her was not due to the fact that she had been whirled to heights, but to the sense that she might fall headlong from them!