Part 5

So they turned into one of the Piccadilly bars, full of men and women, and ablaze with light reflected from a thousand glasses and mirrors. Mark had never set foot in a London bar at midnight. The roar of the voices, interpenetrated by the shrill laughter of the women, the clinking of glasses, the swish of silk petticoats, the white glare, the overpowering odours of the liquors and perfumes, the atmosphere hot on one's cheek--these smote him. Yet the sensation of violence was not unpleasant. He was sensible that he might yell if he liked, and that no one would heed him. They edged up to the bar, squeezing through the mob till they were opposite a young woman whose plain black dress and immaculate apron were crowned by a mop of chestnut hair.

"Why it's--it's Squeak," Jim said to Mark.

She recognised them at once.

"Hullo, Mr. Samphire minor--why ain't you in bed?"

They demanded whiskies and sodas.

"You can tell that 'andsome brother of yours that I'm here," said Squeak, as she pushed the drinks across the bar.

"I'll mention it to him," said Mark.

"I want to see him, to thank him. He got me this job. Don't worry! I mean that if I'd not got the chuck from Brown's I shouldn't be 'ere, but there. I've not seen 'im. He's one of the kind that loves and runs away."

She laughed shrilly, staring with angry eyes at the young men. Her complexion had lost its freshness and delicacy; her eyes were no longer clear and bright. Mark's impassive face exasperated her.

"Tell 'im to send back all the 'air I gave 'im," she continued viciously.

"You have not quite so much left," said Mark.

"Don't look at me like that, you kid, you! I know you're thinking," she spoke very low, bending across the bar, "that I'm not any younger, or prettier, or better be'aved. Well--I ain't. And that's why I want to thank your brother."

"I shall not forget to tell him to come to see you. It will be safe enough--now."

They dropped back into the crowd. By this time Mark was able to take note of his surroundings. Squeak, so to speak, had given him bearings. The faces, in relation to hers, had a certain resemblance, as if those present belonged to the same family. Next to Jim stood an obese Israelite, puffy of face, with thick, red lips shining through an oily, black beard. Jim felt a mad impulse to kick him on the shins. Beside him was a tall, thin youth of the type known in the seventies as the la-di-da young man. His pallid, clean-shaven face, his light-blue eyes, his closely cropped flaxen hair, his delicate features were all in striking contrast to the Jew's gross, corpulent person. The hands of each were as different as could be: the Jew's short and thick, and none too clean, with a couple of big yellow diamonds blazing on them; the youth's long and thin, very white and bony, with polished nails. And yet the pair were as twins, for the same evil spirit leered out of their eyes.

"Come on," said Mark.

Outside the air was delightfully fresh and cool, but the crowd seemed to have thickened. A tremendous human tide ebbed and flowed between the tall, dark houses. Jim's eye caught a white feather in the hat of a girl, which tossed like foam upon troubled waters. Suddenly the fascination of the scene gripped him. This was London--_London_, the city of millions; and he stood on the pavement of its most famous thoroughfare, of it and in it, whether he loved it, feared it, or hated it. And at the moment, so overpowering was the sense of something new and strange and terrible that he could not determine whether his feeling for the capital of the world was one of attraction or repulsion.

Mark and he moved slowly on, till they came to the wall which encompasses Devonshire House. At the corner stood a huge policeman, grimly impassive, one of London's hundred thousand warders, and an epitome of all.

"When is closing time?" said Mark to the constable.

"Quarter-past twelve, sir."

Mark looked at his watch.

"Five minutes more. I'm going back."

"Where?"

"To that girl--Squeak."

"What on earth for?"

"I spoke brutally. I shall beg her p-pardon. Don't come with me!"

"You're as mad as a hatter."

Jim went on to Down Street, ascended the stairs, and began to undress, thinking of two things which obliterated all others--the slender figure of Mark when it reeled back into the arms of the tall, thin surgeon, and the white feather wavering hither and thither above the turbulent crowd.

Half an hour passed, and Mark did not return. Jim grew apprehensive. If Mark had fainted--if he had fallen into coarse, gross hands such as those of the Jew. Then he thought of the colossus at the corner of Devonshire House, and took comfort in him--the Argus-eyed, the omnipresent and omnipotent.

"Not in bed yet?" said Mark.

"By Jove, here you are! I saw you trampled under foot."

"I'm glad I went back. The girl's a good sort--silly, vain, terribly ignorant, but not without heart. I promised to see her again. It wouldn't be a b-bad bit of work to get her out of that--hell."

"You're a rum 'un," said Jim, for since they had parted Mark's face had resumed its natural expression--that look of joyousness which redeemed the harsh features and sallow skin.

"A rum 'un--why?"

"Well, I supposed, you know, that you'd be thinking just now of--of yourself."

"I'm rather s-sick of that subject."

He flung off his clothes and turned out the gas. Jim slipped into bed in the adjoining room. He couldn't sleep for an hour or two, wondering whether Mark would break down when he found himself alone, listening with ears attuned to catch the lightest sigh. To his astonishment, Mark breathed quietly and regularly. He must be--asleep! Jim waited for another ten minutes; then he slipped out of bed. The moon was throwing a soft radiance upon Mark's figure. He lay flat on his back, with his arms straight at his side. _He was smiling_! But his fists were clenched, and the jaw below the parted lips stood out firm, square, and aggressive....

Jim watched him lying thus for several minutes; then he stole back to bed--no longer a boy, but a man. By many, doubtless, the step between boyhood and manhood is taken at random, and forgotten as soon as taken; or it escapes observation altogether. But Jim was shown, as in a vision, the past and the future: the green playing-fields, the happy lanes of childhood, and beyond--the hurly-burly, the high winds and whirling dust-clouds, the inexorable struggle for and of Life!

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE HUNT BALL*

At Harrow, Mark had been told by the drawing-master that he had great talent as a draughtsman, and possibly something more. The vague "something more" kindled possibilities which smouldered, and burst into flame when the doctors at Burlington House pronounced him unfit to serve his sovereign. The Squire suggested the Bar, a bank, or a junior partnership in a brewery. Mark shook his head. Briefs--supposing they came to him--bullion, beer, left fancy cold. But to paint a great picture, to interpret by means of colour a message vital to the world, this indeed would be worth while!

Mrs. Samphire bleated dismay and displeasure; but much to the Squire's surprise, Lady Randolph sustained Mark's choice of art as an avenue to success.

"Fame's temple," she said, "lies in the heart of a maze to which converge a thousand paths--most of 'em blind alleys. Mark may try one path after another, but in the end--in the end, mind you--he will choose the right one."

After a few months' work in South Kensington, Mark went to Paris, where he became a pupil of the famous Saphir at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Saphir looked at his studies and shook his head. He was of opinion that Mark had better join Julian's for a year; the standard at the Beaux Arts was very high. Mark showed his disappointment.

"Oh, monsieur, I am so anxious to be under you."

"Have you no better reason than that?" said the great man.

"Our n-n-names are alike," stammered Mark.

"_Tiens_! Any reason is better than none. _Samphire et Saphir_."

"And the l-l-less," said Mark, "includes the g-g-greater."

Saphir laughed at the compliment, and told Mark he might join his _atelier_. "Only you must work--work--work. That is my first word to you--work!"

Mark worked furiously. Many well-informed persons believe that an art student's life in Paris (particularly that part of Paris which lies on the left bank of the Seine) is a sort of carnival--a procession up and down the Boul' Mich', varied by frequent excursions to the Moulin Rouge and other places of entertainment in Montmartre. Of the unremitting labour, of the grinding poverty, of the self-denial cheerfully confronted by the greater number, an adequate idea perhaps may be gleaned from Zola's _L'OEuvre_, which sets forth, photographically and pathologically, French art life as it is. _L'OEuvre_, however, deals with the struggle for supremacy between the academic and the "_plein air_" schools. When Mark entered the Beaux Arts, this struggle, although not at an end, had become equalised, the balance of power and popularity lying rather with the _plein air_ party, of which Saphir was the bright particular star. Saphir introduced Mark to Pynsent, then considered one of the rising men. Born in the East of America, related on his mother's side to two of the Brook Farm celebrities, Pynsent had renounced a promising career as a lawyer in the hope of making his fortune out West. In California he lost what money he possessed trying to develop a "salted mine." Then he "taught school" for bread and butter--a foothill school on the slopes of the Santa Lucia mountains, where the pupils were the children of squatters, and "Pikers," and greasers. Here he found his true vocation. For a couple of years he denied himself the commonest comforts, living on beans for the most part, saving his pitiful salary. Then he worked his passage round the Horn in a sailing-ship, and began at thirty years of age to draw from plaster casts! Since, he had taken most of the prizes open to foreigners at the Ecole des Beaux Arts!

Pynsent found Mark a lodging and studio in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, not far from the famous Cafe Procope, the cafe of Voltaire and Verlaine. With Pynsent as guide, he learned to know Paris--the Paris of the Valois and Bourbon, the Paris of the Terror, of the Empire, and of the Republic. Pynsent had a prodigious memory, and an absorbing passion for colour. He was always hopeful, generous, proud, inordinately ambitious, and willing to sacrifice everything to his art. He exercised an enormous influence upon Mark, making plain to him the virtue which underlies so much that is vile and vicious on the surface.

"Men fail here," said he, "not so much from incapacity as ignorance. I could not interpret Paris to you or to myself had I not served my apprenticeship in California. Because my energies were misdirected there, I have learned to direct them here. Great Caesar's ghost! What mistakes I have made! But you can bet your life that the fellow who makes no mistakes is either a parasite or a jelly-fish. Tell me what a man's mistakes are, and I'll tell you what he is."

"Am I making a mistake?" said Mark.

He had worked--furiously, as has been said--for two years. Pynsent smoked his cigarette for a full minute before he replied: "I don't know yet. I shall know soon."

"When you do know, tell me," said Mark.

Meanwhile Archibald Samphire was occupying a corner of that famous quadrangle of Trinity College where Byron, Newton, Macaulay--and how many more?--have kept their terms. Archie was considered by impartial judges to be a distinguished young man. A "double blue," he represented his University at cricket and as a runner; he was certain to take a good degree; he could sing charmingly; he was handsome as Narcissus. At the end of the second year's work in Paris, Mark and Archie and Jim Corrance made a tour of France, with the intention of visiting the Gothic cathedrals; but, as a rule, after the dust and glare of the French roads, both Archie and Jim Corrance would seek and find some cool cafe. Mark, however, would hurry off to the nearest church, and return raving of foliations and triforia and clerestories--empty words to Philistines, but to him documents of surpassing interest. Archibald was going to take Orders, not swerving by a hand's breadth from his goal; but Jim, after a year at Sandhurst, had resigned his commission.

"I'm no soldier," he told Mark. "I went up for my exam because you fired me. I want to make money--a big pile." Mark said nothing, but he thought of Betty Kirtling, now eighteen, and still abroad. Jim had mentioned (with a flushed cheek) that Betty was coming out at the Westchester Hunt Ball, always held in New Year's week, and Mark had said that he would assist at that and other festivities.

When Christmas came Mark crossed the Channel. He brought Pynsent with him as a guest. Mark was now twenty-two, but he looked older. You must imagine a long, thin, sallow face, illumined by two splendid blue eyes and a wide mouth filled with white even teeth. The hair was dark brown, and the eyebrows were arched, like the eyebrows of the poet Shelley. His nose was too long--so Pynsent said--and the chin was too prominent, the eyes set too far apart, the brow too wide. For the rest the figure was tall and slight, with finely shaped extremities. Curiously enough, although ninety-nine out of a hundred persons would have pronounced Mark an ugly man; yet, dressed in petticoats, judiciously painted and bewigged, he made a captivating woman. At a dance in one of the studios, he impersonated an American heiress with so much spirit and appreciation of the attention he received, that before the night was out he had promised to become the wife of an impoverished French count: a prank provoking a challenge, which Mark accepted and which doubtless would have ended in a duel, had not Pynsent explained to the victim of the joke that if Mark was killed, the slayer of so popular a person would have to fight his friends, man by man, till not one Englishman or American was left alive in Saphir's studio. "It is the woman in Mark's face," said Pynsent, "which gives it charm and quality; but the man, strong and ardent, looks out of his eyes."

Mark did not meet Betty till the night of the Hunt Ball. He was standing beside Archie and Pynsent, as she entered the room.

"Great Scott--here's Beatrice Cenci!" said Pynsent.

The artist was thinking of the fascinating portrait which hangs in the Barberini Palace, not of the wooden counterfeit presentment so familiar to buyers of cheap chromo-lithographs.

"It's our Betty," said Archie.

"As if it could be anybody else," Mark added.

Betty advanced, tall and slim and pale: her great hazel eyes sparkling with pleasure and excitement. Beside her, beaming with pride, walked the grey-headed, grey-bearded Admiral; behind came two nice-looking youths, fingering their highly glazed Programmes and gazing at the milk-white neck and shoulders in front of them. The big room was full of people: men in the "pink" of four hunts, officers in scarlet, officers in dark green and silver, dignitaries of the Church, bland and superior; lesser luminaries, such as canons and archdeacons; masters from the college, supercilious gentlemen for the most part, and the sisters and wives and cousins of these. A roving eye might detect the difference between those of the county and those of the town, dividing the latter again into those of the barracks, the close, and the college; and a stranger might have whiled away the evening, even if he did not dance, by noting the subtler distinction between the wife of a rural dean and the mistress of a country vicarage, or between Lady Randolph, the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and Lady Bellowes, whose husband was a baronet of recent creation.

The first dance had just come to an end, so the floor was comparatively clear for the passage of Betty and her squires. Archibald went forward, smiling, to greet her, followed by Mark and Jim Corrance.

"I've saved three dances apiece for you," said Betty.

One of the young men behind, Lord Kirtling's eldest son, protested loudly: "Oh, I say--and I'm a cousin."

"A cousin!" cried Betty gaily. "Why, these are my best and oldest friends. We've sucked the same acidulated drop."

Mark introduced Pynsent. Then Lord Randolph came up; and Betty was escorted in triumph to the corner sacred to the magnates, where her card was almost torn in pieces by the young men.

"Never saw such a pair," said Pynsent to Mark, indicating Archie and Betty.

Archibald, in the scarlet coat with white facings of the Quest Hunt, was standing beside Betty, who wore a pearly brocade embroidered with true lovers' knots.

"Dear old Archie looks splendid," said Mark.

A set of lancers was being formed. Mrs. Samphire, discovering that Mark had no partner, begged him to sit down beside her. The years which had passed since she married the Squire had turned her from a thin, prim, slightly acidulous spinster into a plump, smirking matron, whose skin seemed too tight for her face, even as her bodice seemed too tight for her figure. A voluble talker, she was never known to listen to any person save her superior in position or rank. Lady Randolph's lightest words she cherished and generally repeated them afterwards--as her own.

"I've hardly had time to say anything to you," she bleated. "How well Archibald looks to-night! It distresses me dreadfully to think that he will never wear pink again. Betty is very handsome. What do you say? A beauty? No, no. I can't agree with you. And I always admire blondes. All the Lambs are blondes."

"No black sheep in your family?" said Mark. Lady Randolph, who was near, smiled.

"Black sheep? Never! Dear me! Who is that? Oh, Harry Kirtling. What a nice-looking young fellow! One guesses why he is here. Our dear Admiral is anxious to see a coronet on his niece's head. Don't move, Mark! Ah! there is Lady Valence and her blind husband. Do tell me--I am so short-sighted--who is that very common young man with them? What? Oh, oh, indeed! The Duke of Brecon! I must say a word to dear Lady Valence."

She bustled across the room. Mark turned to Lady Randolph.

"Have you any m-m-mint s-sauce? There is s-something about all the Lambs which----"

"Does not bring out our great qualities," said Lady Randolph. "See! She has put the Duke to rout, and he is going to take refuge with me."

Mark glanced up, noting that the Duke's feet were flat and turned out at an absurd angle, giving him a shuffling and awkward gait.

"He is a better fellow than he looks," whispered Lady Randolph.

"Will you do me a favour, Lady Randolph?" The Duke's voice was very pleasant. "Perhaps you can guess the nature of it?"

"An introduction to Miss Kirtling, of course."

"Of course," he repeated, laughing.

The lancers was just over, and across the room Mark could see Betty and 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."