‘Bel!’
But she laid her hand upon his lips.
‘Hush and listen to me. It wouldn’t be fair on Harry either; stranding her with those two. In ten days, we can both come south and a regenerate Bel can dare to pay you a visit. Their minds will be full of such big terrible things by then that they’ll take me for granted. As for you—the real Mark will be so swamped with his responsibilities that there would be no time for love-making, even if I came.’
In the end he was forced to admit that she was right. Three days of fighting himself had not been without a steadying effect on his impatient spirit: and so the matter was settled.
Rain and wind had ceased. They spent all the afternoon and evening together on the water; and on Monday the Forsyth party travelled down to Wynchcombe Friars.
At no time could Lady Forsyth leave Inveraig without a pang: and never had it been sharper than on that 10th of August with the glory and anguish of Belgium’s gallant stand beating on her brain, and the poignant question at her heart—when, and in what circumstances, would they four see that grey rugged house and the lochs and hills of Scotland again?
CHAPTER XI.
Wynchcombe Friars was a singularly perfect relic of the Tudor period. It rambled, it blossomed into irrelevant gables, it took you to its heart. The lordly spaciousness of an eighteenth-century mansion seemed dull, featureless, by contrast with its individuality, its friendly charm. And of all its beautiful old rooms was none more individual than Mark’s studio, with its oak-panelled walls, deep window-seats and leaded casements that opened upon the sea of pinetops he had described to Bel. For him and his mother, it was the soul of the house; and in nothing was their intimacy more evident than in the fact that this, his holy of holies, was hers also. A certain square bay window that caught the last of the sun upon the pines held her armchair of dull blue brocade, her book-case and elbow table. Blue prevailed also in the window-seats, the casement curtains and the Turkish rugs on the polished floor.
The studio itself contained little beyond Mark’s paraphernalia, his writing-table and a few pieces of priceless old furniture. The spirit of Michael Angelo pervaded the place:—models of his statues and groups, sepia studies by Mark from the great friezes; and a portrait of the Florentine’s rugged head occupied the place of honour above the mantelpiece. The blue-tiled fireplace beneath was flanked by Mark’s first two essays in statuary: symbolic figures of Triumph and Defeat. Triumph, a splendid nude, stood poised upon a rock; arms uplifted, head flung back. Defeat, a fallen Lucifer, still sullenly defiant, leaned upon his battered sword; a figure of sombre strength. The Viking, who accompanied Mark on his moves, was set in a dark oak niche that served for frame and threw him into strong relief.
Still, beneath all the beauty and friendliness of the room, there lurked the same unobtrusively ascetic note that had been more marked in the simpler studio at Inveraig.