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.”
Lady Randolph’s attempt to reduce this speech to its elements found expression in a simple: “You will ask him to give up Stepney?”
“I shall ask him to seek work in some place where you do not smell fried fish. There is plenty to do west of Temple Bar.”
“And the others? You have flirted with all of them, Betty; don’t deny it!”
“But I do deny it.”
“You encouraged Harry Kirtling the season before last.”
“As if he needed encouragement!”
“He nearly persuaded you to marry him.”
“Yes, he did,” she confessed, blushing furiously. “I burn when I think of that Ascot week. Bah! what fools girls are! Mark never came near me, answered my letters with post-cards. I give you my word—post-cards. I sent sheaves and received straws. And Harry makes love nicely.”
“You gave him lots of practice,” Lady Randolph observed drily.
“He wanted me so badly that he offered to give up his hounds and settle down wherever I pleased.”
“And Jim and Archibald.”
“My oldest friends.”
“Ah, well,” sighed Lady Randolph, “you are a lucky girl, Betty. Four good fellows want you.”
“Archie wouldn’t tell me why Mark went to town,” said Betty absently. “What a voice he has! When he sings I feel like a Madonna. And his face——! A man has no business to be so good-looking. I am shameless enough to confess to you, only to you, that his good looks appeal to me enormously. It annoys me. I find myself staring at him as if he were a sort of royalty. And when other girls do it, I think them idiots. Well, for that matter I have never disguised from myself, or you, that I am a bit of an idiot.”
“You are very human.”
“I am not all you think me,” cried the girl. “And yet you read me better than anyone else, but there are pages and pages turned down. I peep at them sometimes, and am quite scared. Mark shall tear them out and tear them up. Dear me! I am making myself ridiculous: chattering on and on about myself.”
“One is never ridiculous when one is young,” said Lady Randolph solemnly, “and I hope, my dear, you will let me read the turned-down pages before they are torn up. I used to say to myself that I should like to begin life again, to have one more chance. And, listening to you, I feel that I am beginning again. It is exciting. Only I hope that sometimes you will listen to me, and try to profit by my experience of a subject on which you, Betty, are so amazingly ignorant.”
“That subject’s name is Legion.”
“That subject’s name is Man. You have tried, I dare say, to measure Mark with a girl’s rule of thumb, to weigh him in virgin’s scales, but his dimensions remain an unknown quantity.”
For answer, Betty kissed her.
“Tell me,” she whispered, “all you know that I do not know.”
“We should sit here for forty years! Our world says you ought to marry Harry, and our world is always more than half right. Harry has entertained you with a vast deal of talk about himself, and perhaps you think you know him. Ah! you nod your head with all the cocksureness of ignorance! You spoke of his giving up his hounds—for your sake, because you might find Kirtling a far cry from Bond Street. Oh, the conceit of the modern girl! My dear, Harry knew well enough that if you became his wife, no such sacrifice would be demanded. The hounds would remain at Kirtling—and so would you. If you were beautiful as Helen of Troy, and fascinating as Cleopatra, you could not root out that passion for hunting his own hounds. It is a master passion—and always will be so long as he can sit in the saddle. And in your heart of hearts you respect and like Harry the more because he does that one thing really well.”
“I am sure you are right,” said Betty humbly.
“Well, my dear, what hunting the fox is to Harry, so is the hunting of vice, and ignorance, and dirt to Mark Samphire. The masculine ardour of the chase possesses both, and each will hunt the country he knows best.”
Betty’s silence provoked her friend to say more. “You are in for a fight, child.” She took Betty’s hand, which seemed cold, and pressed it gently. “On your own confession you are unfit to be the wife of the man you love, and who loves you; and so—pray don’t ask me for congratulations.”
“You did not marry for love,” cried Betty. Then she paused, ashamed. “Forgive me!”
“It is true.” Lady Randolph turned a grim face to the girl, and her voice was harsh. “I did not marry for love. Shall we say that I lacked courage, or did I see clearer than you mountainous differences of temperament, taste, and opinion, which my love was not strong enough to scale? Was I a coward because I turned back? I do not say Yes or No. The man I loved had the brains, but not the body of a conqueror. Do you think that I was right or wrong because I refused to add burdens to a back already bowed?”
She spoke with such vehemence that Betty was frightened.
“I d-d-do not know,” she stammered.
“I do not know,” repeated the other fiercely. “When these mysteries between our lower and higher natures are revealed, I shall know, and not till then—not—till—then!”
Her lips closed violently, as if speech were alarmed into silence.