Part 8

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."

Mark sat down, saying: "Tell me about it."

Archie began to speak with a dogged intonation which recalled Harrow days. As he indicated the scope of the sermon already written out, Mark drummed with his foot upon the terrace.

"I know it," groaned the elder brother. "It will send the Dean to sleep, and Lord Randolph will twiddle his thumbs, and my lady will smile ironically--and Betty----"

"Yes."

"Betty will pity me."

A silence followed. Mark was reflecting that Betty's pity without Betty's love would be hard to endure.

"You care for her?" he muttered.

"Oh, yes," said Archibald impatiently, "but she says 'No' to me and everybody else. How I have loved that witch," his voice grew sentimental, "and how I should like to show her that I can preach. And so I can for ordinary occasions, but when it comes to a big thing--somehow I don't score. I'd like to score this time--eh? And if--if you could help me, why--why, it might make all the difference."

"About Betty?" Mark's voice was thin and strained, but Archie was too engrossed with his own thoughts to notice that.

"Betty? I'm not thinking about Betty. I mean that next Sunday may be the making or marring of my career.

"Oh!"

"I put my profession first, as you do, Mark. I can say to you what I would admit to no other, that success in it is vital to me. I've worked hard, and of course I've a pull over most fellows, for which I'm sincerely grateful; but I've not your brains."

"It happens," said Mark after a slight pause, "that I have written a sermon about Westchester Cathedral. You might find something in it; not much, I dare say; but a hint or two. As--as I shall never preach it, why--why shouldn't you have it?"

"I'd like to see it, Mark. Some of my best sermons have been suggested--only suggested, mind you--by reading others. Robertson is a gold-mine--and Newman. Where is your sermon?"

"Locked up in my desk at the Mission House."

"Oh!"

"I can nip up and get it," said Mark, after a pause.

"I couldn't allow that, Mark. You're on a holiday and----"

"There's stuff in that sermon," Mark interrupted. "I'd like you to see it. Holiday be hanged! I'll fetch it to-morrow."

*CHAPTER XII*

*BETTY SPENDS AN HOUR IN STEPNEY*

Betty Kirtling came down to breakfast the next morning in her prettiest frock, and with her prettiest smile upon a glowing face. Indeed, Lord Randolph, meeting her in the hall, held up his thin, white hand, and confessed himself dazzled. Betty laughed when he quoted a line of Dryden, sensible that only a poet could do justice to her looks if they reflected faithfully her feelings. Perhaps the philosopher, with his faintly ironical smile, knew better than the poet that "the porcelain clay of human kind" is easily broken, and (being a collector) he may have remembered (which accounts for the shadows in his eyes) that rare pieces seldom escape chipping. He followed the girl into the dining-room, and saw that she seated herself next the chair which had been taken by Mark the morning before. Mark, however, was not in the room, his absence being accounted for by young Kirtling, who had met him driving to the station.

"To the station?" echoed Betty.

Archibald Samphire added that he was charged by his brother to make the proper excuses. Mark had gone to town on an important matter, and would return that evening before dinner. Lady Randolph frowned.

"'Pon my soul," she exclaimed, "our young man takes himself too seriously."

"He's the best and kindest fellow in the world," said Archie. Then he hesitated. He could not explain the nature of Mark's errand without exciting curiosity about himself and his sermon.

"What were you going to say?" whispered Betty.

"Mark has gone to town to do me a service," said Archie.

She pouted: "I believe Mark would do anything for you."

With his eyes on his plate, Archie slowly answered, "Yes." Then seeing that Betty was trifling with her bacon, he added in a different tone: "I advise you to try this omelette. Shall I get some for you?"

Betty said "No" somewhat tartly, wondering why Mark had left Birr Wood. "He might have told me last night at dinner," she thought.

After breakfast she escaped from young Kirtling and Jim Corrance, and betook herself to a secluded spot in the gardens, where she sat staring at a pretty volume of verse--held upside down. It was intolerable that she should be sitting here and Mark sixty miles away. Then she smiled, remembering that only yesterday the distance between them had seemed immeasurable. And a word, a glance, had bridged it! What a miracle of Cupid's engineering! Her cheeks were hot as she wondered whether she had given herself away too cheaply. If propriety faltered "Yes," generosity thundered--"No." She was sure she understood Mark better than any creature living, and certainly she understood herself. Always she had wanted him, but always--always! And he had wanted her, and would want her for ever and ever. It will be our object to show Betty Kirtling as a young woman of many facets illumined by lights and cross-lights; but for the moment she is presented beneath the blaze of Love, which, like the sun, eclipses other luminaries. Betty was an adept at, if not the mistress of, many accomplishments. She had been told that she might excel as a musician, a painter, or a writer, if she chose to give any one of these arts undivided attention. She preferred to play with all rather than work with one, and wisely, for her admiration of what others had done was certainly a greater thing than what she might have done herself. And, perhaps, because she had scattered her own energies, she was the more keenly appreciative of sustained endeavour wherever she found it. Young Kirtling, for instance, aroused interest because he hunted his own hounds as well as any man in England; Jim Corrance whetted mere affection into something with a sharper edge to it, inasmuch as he had sought fortune in South Africa and had found it; Archie was singing himself steadily and stolidly into such exalted places as the pulpit of Westchester Cathedral.

Sitting there in May time encompassed by Arcadian scents and sounds, Betty found herself speculating upon the mutual attraction of man and maid. Young ladies kill time with such meditations as pleasantly as men kill partridges. Betty, however, while sipping the sweet, made a wry face over the bitter. Mark's work in the slums stood between her and him, a mystery which she must accept, knowing that she could never understand it. The horrors amongst which Mark moved revolted her; the contrast between her life and his pierced imagination, and left it to bleed; pity, sympathy, the woman's desire to minister to infirmity, were drained, glutted, by the incredible demand upon them.

These meditations were disturbed by Lady Randolph. Betty, as soon as she saw her kind friend, remembered that Lady Randolph had shown her this delightful nook, and had said that she (Lady Randolph) was in the habit of sitting here.

"You--alone?" said Lady Randolph. "I have just passed Harry Kirtling. He asked me if I knew where he could find you. Shall I tell him?"

"Pray don't," said Betty, making room for her friend on the stone bench. "And besides," she added, letting a dimple be seen, "you could not tell him where I was. I have spent the last hour in Stepney."

"I can't see you in Stepney, my dear."

"I thought you would say that," said Betty, nervously playing with the laces on her frock; then, reading the sympathy in the other's face, she burst out: "Oh--I'm a coward, a coward! I loathe Stepney."

Lady Randolph wondered whether it would be wise to speak. She cherished the conviction that when in doubt it is better to say nothing; and yet, in the end, despite a strong feeling that her advice would be wasted, she said quietly:

"I knew your mother."

"Am I like her?" interrupted Betty.

"I have often thought," continued the elder woman, ignoring Betty's question, "that if Louise de Courcy had had your upbringing her life would have been so different----"

"You mean she would not have married my father." Betty's voice hardened. "Well, if she felt as--as I feel, she would have married him anyway, if she loved him."

"She would not have loved him," said Lady Randolph with emphasis. "We women love the things which we are taught to believe are lovable. You, Betty, have been trained, trained, I say, to love things and people of good report. It was otherwise with your mother."

"And my father," added Betty. "I have always known that I was handicapped. Yes; I have been trained to see--it's a question of observation, isn't it?--to see and admire what is good in everything and everybody, but you don't know what a materialist I am. I delight in your flesh-pots. Why just now, when I was trying to walk with Mark through those horrible slums, I found myself thinking of what----? That delicious _macedoine_ we had last night!"

Lady Randolph laughed.

"It's no laughing matter. I'm greedy; I spend too much time thinking of _chiffons_; and I spend too much money buying them; I adore great things, but I cannot give up small things. I want to run with the hare and course with the hounds. Lots of girls try to do both--and succeed in a feeble sort of way: a fast on Friday and feast on Saturday diet--eh?"

"In Stepney----" began Lady Randolph.

Betty seized her hands. "Why should I go to Stepney?" she whispered, blushing. "I'll be honest with you."

"I hope so, my dear."

"Mark is going to ask me to marry him. It may be to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after, but it's coming; and I shall fling myself into his arms."

"Betty!"

"I haven't a spark of pride left. His long silence smothered it. Do you know that I have been at the back of all his ambitions? He wanted to be a famous soldier, because when we were babies I said I must marry a fighting man."

"If he isn't a fighting man I never saw one."

"Thank you. You always appreciated him. When he was spun for the army he thought he had lost me. I read despair in his eyes, and he, poor dear, couldn't read what was in mine. And then came that awful scene in King's Charteris Church. He gave me up then, but I stuck to him. And now--now," her eyes filled with tears although her lips were smiling, "he shall know that success or failure counts nothing with me. I want him--him. And anything which stands between us I abhor."

Lady Randolph's attempt to reduce this speech to its elements found expression in a simple: "You will ask him to give up Stepney?"

"I shall ask him to seek work in some place where you do not smell fried fish. There is plenty to do west of Temple Bar."

"And the others? You have flirted with all of them, Betty; don't deny it!"

"But I do deny it."

"You encouraged Harry Kirtling the season before last."

"As if he needed encouragement!"

"He nearly persuaded you to marry him."

"Yes, he did," she confessed, blushing furiously. "I burn when I think of that Ascot week. Bah! what fools girls are! Mark never came near me, answered my letters with post-cards. I give you my word--post-cards. I sent sheaves and received straws. And Harry makes love nicely."

"You gave him lots of practice," Lady Randolph observed drily.

"He wanted me so badly that he offered to give up his hounds and settle down wherever I pleased."

"And Jim and Archibald."

"My oldest friends."

"Ah, well," sighed Lady Randolph, "you are a lucky girl, Betty. Four good fellows want you."

"Archie wouldn't tell me why Mark went to town," said Betty absently. "What a voice he has! When he sings I feel like a Madonna. And his face----! A man has no business to be so good-looking. I am shameless enough to confess to you, only to you, that his good looks appeal to me enormously. It annoys me. I find myself staring at him as if he were a sort of royalty. And when other girls do it, I think them idiots. Well, for that matter I have never disguised from myself, or you, that I am a bit of an idiot."

"You are very human."

"I am not all you think me," cried the girl. "And yet you read me better than anyone else, but there are pages and pages turned down. I peep at them sometimes, and am quite scared. Mark shall tear them out and tear them up. Dear me! I am making myself ridiculous: chattering on and on about myself."

"One is never ridiculous when one is young," said Lady Randolph solemnly, "and I hope, my dear, you will let me read the turned-down pages before they are torn up. I used to say to myself that I should like to begin life again, to have one more chance. And, listening to you, I feel that I am beginning again. It is exciting. Only I hope that sometimes you will listen to me, and try to profit by my experience of a subject on which you, Betty, are so amazingly ignorant."

"That subject's name is Legion."

"That subject's name is Man. You have tried, I dare say, to measure Mark with a girl's rule of thumb, to weigh him in virgin's scales, but his dimensions remain an unknown quantity."

For answer, Betty kissed her.

"Tell me," she whispered, "all you know that I do not know."