"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.
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?"
"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."