BROTHERS (continued 2)

"Absolutely unfit," Jim heard him say. "Not a surgeon in London would pass him."

"Not pass him?" Jim said furiously. "He's only fainted; he's done that before, that's nothing."

"Isn't it?" said the little man drily. Then he added malevolently: "When I am ready to receive instruction from you, young sir, I will let you know."

When they got back to the hotel and were alone, Mark flung himself into an armchair. Presently he said quietly: "Let's get seats for the play"; so they walked as far as Mitchell's in Bond Street, and bought two stalls for the Colleen Bawn, in which Dion Boucicault was acting. Then they strolled on to Regent's Park. Not a word was said about what passed in Burlington House till they were crossing Portland Place, where a cousin of Mark's had a house.

"I shan't go back to Pitt Hall till your exam is over," Mark said. "I'd sooner stop up here with you."

"I don't care a hang about the exam now," Jim blurted out.

"I know you don't," Mark replied. "All the same, you must do your level best."

This calmness surprised Jim. But after the play, as they were strolling home through the crowded, gas-lit streets, Mark whispered fiercely: "I'd like to get drunk to-night."

"Let's do it," said Jim.

"Good old chap! Do you think I'd let you do it?" He glanced at a handsome roysterer, who was reeling by on the arm of a girl as reckless-looking as her companion. "I can guess how they feel, poor devils!"

"We'll have a nightcap, anyhow," said Jim.

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 École 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 École des Beaux Arts!

Pynsent found Mark a lodging and studio in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, not far from the famous Café Procope, the café 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 Cæsar'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 café. 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."

"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 garçon."

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 débutante. 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 Frühlingslied 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 Nôtre 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 macédoine 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."