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.”