CHAPTER XXXIIBETTY MAKES GOOD RESOLUTIONSDuring July a deanery in the West of England fell vacant and was offered to Archibald Samphire. Conquest, acting on a hint from Lord Vauxhall, came post haste to Cadogan Place. It happened that he was shown into the drawing-room, and it also happened that on the balcony Betty sat in a chair, fast asleep, with a dull novel on her lap. The balcony was a pretty place, protected from the sun by a striped awning and filled with palms and plants.Conquest looked more enormous than usual in a light grey frock-coat, open in front, revealing a vast extent of white waistcoat. His eyes sparkled keenly beneath the heavy black brows. Archibald found himself shirking these piercing eyes, as he explained that his library was filled with a deputation of working men, from whom he had escaped with difficulty. Conquest nodded impatiently as Archie's polished periods fell softly upon the air heavy with the heat of summer and the perfume of many flowers."Yes, yes," he said; "I'm obliged. I hate to be kept waiting. About this deanery—hey?""I am giving the matter earnest consideration.""You can't afford to take it," said Conquest abruptly. "If you go there, you'll stay there, mark my words! That'll be the end of you. I told Vauxhall you'd too much common sense to chuck him. If it were a bishopric, of course, Vauxhall would not stand in the way. I can't pick my words. And by this time you and I understand each other."He spread out his broad, pudgy hands in a gesture familiar to Archibald."How did you hear?""It's my business to hear things. I've a hundred eyes and a thousand ears. Well?""It's great preferment.""You will be 'Mr. Dean' of course. But you'll be out of sight and out of mind. How did you get this offer? By being on the spot. I'll say a word more, only you mustn't give me away. You met the Prime Minister at Belgrave House the other day. My friend, he had heard you preach a certain sermon at Westchester, but, by gad! he'd forgotten you.""Forgotten me?" exclaimed Archibald. "Why, he came up as soon as the ladies left the dining-room, and was most civil.""He can be civil when he likes," said Conquest drily. "All the same, he had forgotten your name; he did not know what you were doing. The Duchess, who is a capital friend of yours and a good creature although she does sniff, sang your praises for five minutes. And that did the trick. Of course, he made inquiries; he satisfied himself that you are a corking good worker and a discreet fellow, and all that, but, bless my soul, aren't there hundreds of such? Lord—yes. But they don't dine at Belgrave House. Now, look here, I've no time to waste. I came here to do you a friendly turn. You will gain far more than you will lose by refusing this so-called preferment. And I'll see that your self-sacrifice is duly recorded. Trust me for that. You think you've made a mark. So you have; so you have; but you must deepen the impression. You've a magnificent voice, but, man—it won't carry four hundred miles. If you want it to be heard by the right people you must preach in a London pulpit.""My dear Conquest, I really——""Pooh, pooh! You don't like me the less because I talk straight when no one is listening. Now—stand and deliver a monosyllable. Are you going to chuck Vauxhall? Yes—or No?""I have no intention of chucking Lord Vauxhall or anybody else.""Right. That means No. Good-bye. You'll see a leader in next Saturday'sMercurywhich will warm the cockles of your heart."Before Archibald could reply, Conquest was out of the room. For a big man he could move—when he so chose—with amazing quickness and lightness. He disappeared, leaving a vacuum which Betty filled. As Archibald turned, after ringing the bell for a servant to show out Conquest, he saw his wife standing in the window, framed by the ferns and palms."Betty!" he exclaimed."Why didn't you kick that—that beast downstairs? I heard what he said. He insulted you. I was asleep outside. His voice woke me. For your sake, not mine, I resisted the temptation to come forward, and—oh, I could have flown at him!"Her bosom heaved; her eyes sparkled. Archibald stared at her dully, wondering what words would meet this emergency."Have you nothing to say?" she cried."My dear," he said, "you do not understand.""Then explain—explain!""Conquest means well. He is our friend; a rough diamond, I grant you, but he means well. He is our friend."He repeated the words, sensible that they were inadequate, yet unable to find others."Save us from such friends!""I had almost decided to send a refusal.""Why—why, only last night you were on edge to accept. You gave me a dozenprosagainst my two or threecons.""And perhaps," said Archibald, in what Betty sometimes called his "antiseptic" manner, "thoseconsoutweighed thepros, although numerically less. Conquest takes your view of the matter. He feels that I have undertaken a task here in Chelsea, which cannot be abandoned. He——""He tells you toreculer pour mieux sauter," said Betty derisively, "to refuse a deanery and accept a bishopric later! He—the apostle of expediency, of diplomacy, of compromise! Well—I do not judge him. But he counts you to be of his own opinion. He brands you as a time-server, a worldling, a parasite. And you let him do it—and shake hands with him! And, on next Saturday—you will read a leader in theMercurywhich will warm the cockles of your heart.""Protest would have been wasted," said Archibald. "If you will excuse me, my dear, I will go downstairs. The deputation is waiting for me.""One moment," said Betty. "I have something to say which must be said—here and now. Last night you spoke eloquently enough of that west country and the life we might lead there. And I—I," she faltered and blushed, "I was not honest when I urged you to stay here. I am drifting into the old hateful whirlpool from which I thought I had escaped for ever. I pictured to myself life in a cathedral close—stagnant, dun-coloured, full of uninteresting duties—and I recoiled from it. I smelled that old smell of cleaned gloves at all the parties. I thought of myself, not of you. But now, I beseech you to consider what London means to both of us—to you and to me. And if Mr. Conquest is right, if your sacred profession is a trade, if great success in it can be achieved only by such self-advertisement as he thinks justifiable, is such success worth having to a Christian gentleman?"Archibald frowned. Then, feeling that his powers of speech had returned to him, he answered at length, citing certain prelates whose piety, sincerity, and humility were above reproach. Conquest took the worldling's view. He was more than half pagan, and he posed openly as a scoffer and a cynic. Still, he was right in contending that the great places in the Church's gift were held by those whom a wide knowledge of the world had equipped. Such knowledge was not to be gleaned in a cathedral close lying in the heart of a sleepy west country town. He hoped that his dearest Betty would not misunderstand him when he confessed frankly that he did aspire to the highest positions, not for what they might hold of honour or emolument, but for the power they conferred of doing widespread good to others. Warming to his theme, he flooded Betty's perplexed mind with scores of ready-made phrases—phrases laboriously accumulated: stones, so to speak, with which he had fortified his own position."Oh—I am muddled, muddled," said Betty."I have been muddled myself," her husband admitted. "Modern life must perplex and distress the wisest. And all of us at times feel a desire to get out of the hurly-burly. Shall I say that last night, feeling worn out and discouraged, I did long for the quiet and peace of that west-country deanery; but this morning—now," he expanded his chest, "I am myself again."He smiled assuringly and left the room.When he had gone, Betty went back to the chair among the ferns and palms. She tried to go over what her husband had said, to look at the matter fairly from his point of view. But the effort was greater than she could compass. She felt as if she had been submerged in a torrent of words, and of these words nothing was left—only a sense of desolation and isolation.When she saw Mark a few days later, the article in theMercuryhad been published. Conquest was given to boasting that he could "boom" an author with such subtlety that none, not even the man himself, suspected what was being done. The readers of theMercuryrose from the perusal of the article in question convinced that a seasonable and well-deserved tribute had been paid to a saintly and self-sacrificing preacher of Christ's gospel. Archibald, reading it, was aware that his cheeks, as also the cockles of his heart, were very warm indeed. Betty did not read the article. Mark, however, was full of it, not knowing that Conquest had written it."The truth is," he told Betty, "the truth is, Betty, that I did not like his acceptance of the Basilica. It bothered me a good deal. Now this proves plainly that Archie is above worldly considerations. Not another man of his age would have refused such an offer."Betty asked for news of theSongs.Of this Mark had nothing very encouraging to tell. The book, handsomely received by the Press, was in fair demand at the libraries, but less than two thousand copies had been sold. In America as yet it had not, so Otway wrote, "caught on." The new novel,A Soul Errant, was sure to be a success. He talked with animation for half an hour, describing his characters."You live for this," said Betty abruptly."Do you blame me," he answered quickly, "because I make the most of what is left?""I beg your pardon," she replied.Later, she inquired after Mary Dew."She's having a better time of it," Mark declared. "I don't mind telling you, Betty, that I've tackled her mother. I told her she was a slave-owner, a despot, and a bully. She took it like a lamb, and things at Myrtle Cottage are easier, I can assure you.""And Albert what's-his-name, who is going to marry your paragon——""Albert Batley is making money. He has a big building contract near Surbiton. He will give Honeydew all she wants, and deserves.""You know nothing of women, Mark.""So the critics say—confound 'em; but I tell you, Betty, I know a good woman when I see her.""There you are; displaying your ignorance. You talk in that foolish masculine manner of good women, as if good women were in a class by themselves, and different from all others. Why good and evil are such relative terms that sometimes I can't tell one from the other.""Then you're a miserable sinner, and blind to boot. Good, the genuine article, can never be mistaken for evil, although evil, I grant you, may counterfeit good. Bless me! I've been puzzled a score of times by sinners, but I never mistook a saint.""How many have you met?""More than you think," he replied gravely."And where do you place me? Among the sheep or the goats?"Mark wondered why her lips trembled. She looked tired and pale, much paler than usual."What a question!" he said lightly."I'll answer it myself, Mark. I have an extraordinary appreciation of good. There are times when I have soared—yes, that's the word—into another world. I had dreams, visions if you like, when I was a girl, but the most vivid experience of the kind came upon me unexpectedly—in Westchester Cathedral, upon the day Archie preached his sermon. I grasped Something that morning which cannot be described, but It was real substance. I grasped It, and I let It go. Since I have wondered what It was. Perhaps I—touched—God.""Ah!" said Mark. "Go on, go on!"She saw that his eyes were shining, that the expression which she had missed from his face since her marriage had come back."Go—on," she sighed. "I am going back. Can you help me?"She turned to him with a pathetic gesture of entreaty. The light faded in Mark's face. He began to stammer."If I c-c-could——""You believed once. And now your faith is gone! Why? How? Youmusttell me."In her excitement she laid her hand upon his wrist, clutching it fiercely. He felt that her fingers were burning, that the fire in them was fluid, that in another moment the flame would flare in him, consuming them both. He rose, releasing his wrist with violence."I c-c-can't tell you that." He moved half a dozen paces from her, before he turned. When he spoke again his voice was quite steady. "Faith oozes from some people imperceptibly: there is a steady drain of which they may be unaware, but my faith left me in an instant. It may come back as suddenly. It may be redeemed. I have thought sometimes that faith is God's franchise which is given freely to all, and taken away from the unworthy. And once taken away, it is never given again, never. It must be ransomed—paid for."As he spoke he was aware that at any cost to his own feelings the talk must be turned into safer channels. His first impulse had been one of unreasoning fear and horror. When she touched him, he lost for a terrible moment his self-control. Love is a despot whose lightest word may make the bravest coward. Seeing her distress, hearing her quavering voice, feeling her trembling fingers, he had divined his own weakness."Paid for?" She echoed the words. "How?""By sacrifice," he answered slowly. "By blood sacrifice."When he had gone, she went to her room and locked the door. Alone, her face flamed with anger against herself. Had she betrayed her secret? She could not answer the question. Had he spoken coldly, precisely—on purpose? Nine women out of ten distrust a man's works, and have absurd and infantile faith in his words. But Betty had had a surfeit of words from her husband. Of late, much of her leisure had been wasted in trying to determine their value. Archibald's works were self-explanatory. He was indefatigable as parish priest and philanthropist. Such work could be measured; it lay within a circle, say the inner circle of the Underground Railway. But his sonorous phrases, his dogmas and doctrines, were immeasurable: including this world, past and present, and the world to come. It was natural, therefore, that finding herself compassless in a sea of sentences, she would steer by the light of such fixed stars as frequent communions, charity organisation, the visiting of the sick, and the crusade against alcohol. In a word, she had come to the conclusion that it did not matter very much what a man said, but that what he did was vital to his own welfare and the welfare of others, the true expression of his character and temperament. Whenever a woman touches the fringe of such a commonplace, you may be sure that she will watch a man's actions, the more closely, perhaps, because she has become too heedless of his words. Betty had seen Mark shrink with a violent effort from her touch; he had kept out of Cadogan Place during the summer; he had lost faith in revealed religion. What if these effects were to be traced to one cause—herself?When she was able to think articulately, pleasure in her discovery was obliterated by pain—the bitter pangs of retrospection. Why had she doubted him—and herself? By what irony of fate had she given herself to Archibald? But almost instantly she curbed these unavailing regrets. The past was irrevocable. What did the future hold for Mark and for her? One thing was certain: they must meet but rarely, perhaps not at all.And then ensued a struggle, from which she emerged weak indeed, but triumphant. Once again she was conscious of that sense of detachment, of looking in spirit upon the flesh; once again a strange giddiness warned her that only in fancy had she attained to the heights, that the cliffs were yet to be scaled.When she met her husband that afternoon a closer observer than he might have detected a tenderness in her voice and manner: the first-fruits of a resolution to do her duty as wife to a good man. That night, when she said her prayers, she thanked God passionately, because she could esteem and respect the Rector of St. Anne's.CHAPTER XXXIIIILLUMINATIONIn August the Archibald Samphires moved from Cadogan Place to a house on the Embankment, which belonged to Lord Vauxhall, and was part of that property which he was so anxious to populate with the "right kind of people." The house faced the Thames and contained some charming rooms, which combined the quaintness and fine proportions of the old Chelsea houses with such modern luxuries as electric light and radiators. The house in Cadogan Place had been papered and decorated by a former tenant, whose taste was severely æsthetic. Betty abhorred the olive-greens, the dingy browns, the sickly ochres of the Burne-Jones school. But she had accepted them philosophically, reflecting that houses in London must be repapered and decorated more often than in the country. None the less, she sometimes told herself that certain fits of depression were due to her bilious-coloured walls, and that Babbit's theories, as set forth by the Squire's widow, were worth consideration.Now she had been given a free hand, at a moment when fashion was changing with Protean swiftness from darkness to light. Rose-red and yellow, delicate greens, ethereal blues, and white-enamelled woodwork wooed the fancy of housewives. Betty told Lady Randolph that she was no longer a woman, but a colour scheme diffusing prismatic tints."The rainbow after the storm."Betty glanced up quickly. Did her old friend guess that she had passed through a storm? Or was it a happy allusion to that frightful bistre-coloured paper in her bedroom in Cadogan Place?"I shall be happy here," she said gravely.They were standing in the drawing-room of the new house. The Admiral's Chippendale furniture was in its place, delicately revealed against lovely white panelling. The walls were rose-coloured, of a paper whose texture was as that of brocade. The general effect was fresh and joyous: vernal in the delicacy of its tints, without a hint of thebonbonnière. Outside, the sun was declining in the west, and the river ran all golden past the trees and meads of Battersea Park. Some barges, laden with hay, were gliding by on the ebb-tide."Archie's room will be ready to-morrow," said Betty, "and we ought to be in the day after. You have all pitied me, but I have enjoyed the dead season immensely."Lady Randolph, who was passing through town on her way to Scotland from Birr Wood, nodded understandingly."The room is just like you, Betty, and that is the prettiest compliment, my dear, I have ever paid you. And I must say that the dead season has agreed with you. I never saw you look more alive.""The fact is," said Betty seriously, "I have been setting more than one house in order."Lady Randolph smiled. "I have seen—I have guessed—— Ah, well, we wives try to remould our husbands, and the time is not wasted if we succeed in remoulding ourselves. My dear, I must fly. Can I give you a lift?"Betty said that much remained to be done, but after her friend had gone she showed no inclination to set about doing it. Instead, she sat by the open window, gazing at the river flowing slowly and silently to the sea. Already she had come to regard this as the great waterway of her thoughts. She rejoiced because she was about to live upon its banks; she recognised its suggestion and symbolism, its myriad beauties, its mystery and power.At this moment she was reflecting that the Thames was a source of pleasure and profit to man, because man, as embodied by the Thames Conservancy, controlled it. When it burst its banks, the abomination of desolation followed. Without the innumerable dams and locks cribbing and confining it, these splendid waters would be wasted. Now they percolated everywhere, into hundreds and thousands of homes.Would it be so with her own life? It ran in a channel other than the one she would have chosen, had choice been given her; it was diverted to uses she had not apprehended; it was likely to be diffused infinitely, trickling here and there, instead of rushing free and untrammelled over a course of its own making. Since that memorable interview with Mark, Betty had accepted the limitations which duty imposed. She had not shirked the trivial tasks of a parson's wife, albeit she was tempted to spend more time (and money) than was lawful in alluring shops. She had not seen Mark alone. She had put from her comment and criticism of her husband: striving to think of the strength that was in him rather than the weakness.Now she was aware that these efforts had not been made in vain. Life had become easier, happier, more profitable to herself and others. She dared to look forward, and refrained from looking back.Presently she rose up, glanced, smiling, at the pretty room, and leaving it reluctantly went downstairs. Archibald was out of town for a few days on duty in the Midlands, and by the morrow she hoped that all his furniture would be moved. Part had come from Cadogan Place that afternoon, and, before returning home, she wished to see it placed in the right room. In the hall she met one of the servants, who was acting as caretaker. In answer to a question, the man said his master's desk had arrived in the van which was leaving. Betty entered her husband's room trying to remember the exact spot where Archie wished his desk to stand. It was an immense affair, with a fluted, revolving top, which, when closed, locked itself and all drawers. As she crossed the threshold of the room, she remembered what Archibald had said. The desk had been placed in the wrong position."Oh, Dibdin," she exclaimed, "that will never do. Have the men gone?"Dibdin said respectfully that the van was still at the door, but suggested that the men should move the desk on the morrow. Betty, however, was anxious to see how it looked in the place her husband had chosen. So the men were summoned. Doubtless, they were tired, and possibly sulky at being called as they were about to drive away. The desk was very heavy and awkward to move; it stood on a rug upon a slippery parquet floor. The men, using unnecessary violence, canted it slightly forward. In the effort to steady it, their feet slipped, the desk fell forward with a crash, and burst open: the fluted lid flying back, and the contents of a dozen pigeon-holes and drawers being scattered over the floor. However, upon examination it was found that no damage had been done. The desk was lifted and placed in the desired position, and the men dismissed. Dibdin looked so dismayed that Betty laughed."Why, Dibdin, all's well that ends well.""Master is so particular about his desk," said Dibdin. He had been with Archibald before his marriage. "He'd never allow me to touch his papers.""You shan't touch them now," said Betty. "I'll arrange them, Dibdin, before I go home."Dibdin went out, leaving his mistress sitting on the floor surrounded by notebooks, cheque-books, manuscripts, and all the accessories which usually cover a busy man's desk. As she began to arrange these, she reflected that the best-laid plans gang agley. Archibald had insisted upon locking up everything, and yet, despite precaution—his precious desk had burst open. What a lot of MMS. to be sure! And she had not the vaguest idea into what drawers and pigeon-holes they ought to go. Archibald had a reasonable dislike of being disturbed when at work, and when he was not at work the huge desk was always locked.Betty recognised an enormous pile of papers as sermons. Some were typewritten, date and text being inscribed upon the outside. Betty touched them tenderly: her husband's title-deeds, so to speak, to the honour and respect she bore him. Looking at them she blushed faintly, thinking of the warmer sentiment they had provoked. As she blushed her glance fell upon the sermon she had just picked up. This bore no text, but across it, in Archibald's handwriting, were two words:Whit-Sunday, Westchester.The words provoked a score of memories. Once more she knelt in the chancel of that splendid fane, hearing the flute-like notes of the boy; once more she was conscious of being whirled aloft to ineffable heights. Then she dropped to earth as suddenly, with a vivid realisation that if this sermon had never been preached, she would not be here in this house, the wife of the preacher. With this reflection came a desire to read the sermon. She laid it aside, while she finished the work of replacing the other MSS. Then she closed the desk, and discovered that the lock was hampered. She was wondering whether she ought to seal it, when she remembered that it would be easy to lock up the room. The light was failing, yet the fancy took her that she would like to read her husband's sermon in her own room, overlooking the river as it flowed to the sea.She went upstairs carrying the MS. in her hand, and sat down. The sun was about to set; and the river ran red, no longer golden. Shadows obscured the city beyond. A mist was stealing up from the east, and the barges floating into it were swallowed up.Betty unrolled the MS., spread it upon her knee, and began to read. But at the first glance she blinked, as if her eyesight were deceiving her. Then with a muttered exclamation of surprise, she held the sheets of blue foolscap to the light, and examined them attentively. The MS., from beginning to end, was in Mark's handwriting. Here and there words were interpolated or excised. In the margin were her husband's notes, but the MS. was Mark's. What did it mean?She read it through. Yes: as it was written, so it had been preached, and it had been written by Mark!Why had she not guessed as much before? She rolled up the MS., tied it with the red tape which the orderly Archibald used, and went downstairs. The only other sermon in Mark's handwriting was the "Purity" sermon, but many were covered with his notes. Again and again a phrase remembered, a thought treasured—because it revealed the man she had chosen as wise, and noble, and good, and therefore justified that choice and silenced any doubts she might have entertained regarding it—stood out as Mark's. Again and again she read some common-place, some compromise, some paragraph which rang false, slashed by Mark's red pencil. Once or twice she held up the sheets, examining closely the condemned passages; smiling derisively as she perceived the violence of protest in the broad, deeply indented excoriations. Suddenly Dibdin appeared, bland but surprised."Shall I bring a lamp, M'm?""Bring me a basket, Dibdin, and then whistle for a hansom."She put the sermons into the basket and went back to Cadogan Place, where a cold supper awaited her. The footman told the cook that his mistress had eaten nothing, but had called for a pint of champagne. The cook expressed an opinion that nothing in the world was so upsetting as a "move"; which turned everything and everybody upside down, and produced "squirmishy" feelings inside. Presently Betty's maid went upstairs, and returned with heightened colour. Her mistress, so she reported, was as cross as two sticks.Betty, indeed, was pacing up and down her bedroom in a fever of indecision and unrest. The husband she had honoured was destroyed. The ghost of him inspired repugnance—a repugnance which found larger room in the new house. The pleasure she had taken in furnishing became pain, inasmuch as not a chintz had been chosen without the reflection that she was recovering what was dingy and discoloured in her life, substituting for the old and worn the fresh and new. And now, in the twinkling of an eye, her good resolutions, her hopes and aims, her readjusted sense of proportion—had vanished. She was in the mood to set ablaze that dainty room in which in fancy she had passed so many happy hours, to tear down and destroy the tissues through which she had looked out upon a future as rose-coloured as they.She passed a sleepless night, got up feeling and looking wretched, gave her servants certain hasty directions, and drove to Waterloo. In her hand she carried a small bag containing the Westchester and Windsor sermons.From Weybridge she walked to Myrtle Cottage, and the exercise brought colour into her cheeks. She was sure that she would find Mark in the shelter, so she approached it from the side of the grove, being unwilling to face Mary's clear and possibly curious eyes.Mark was at his typewriting machine when she saw him, and as usual so absorbed in his task that he never perceived her. Betty reflected that he could not have approached her without her being aware of it, but men surely were fashioned out of clay other than what was used for women."Mark!"He sprang up, with a startled exclamation, and came forwards, holding out both hands."What has happened?"As he spoke her indignation began to ooze from her. Intuition told her that the expression upon Mark's face revealed intense sympathy. Her trouble, whatever it might be, had moved him to the core. Suddenly, a light flickered out of the darkness. For the first time, she saw herself and him alone together, shut off from the world. It came upon her with a shock that she was glad that Mark, not Archibald, had written the sermon. Only he, the lover of her girlish dreams, could have found the words which had stirred her so profoundly. Mark repeated the question, "What has happened?""You wrote this?" she cried, holding out the Westchester sermon.He nodded, realising the fatuity of denial. For a moment they gazed into each other's eyes. Then she said slowly—"You wrote the 'Purity' sermon?""M-m-m-most of it," he admitted reluctantly."You have helped him ever since?""I have revised some of his work.""And I never guessed it," she exclaimed passionately. "If I had thought for a moment I must have known that it was you—you—you, not him. Oh, my God, I shall go mad! I married him because you—you had tricked him out in a garment of righteousness! Had you come forward at the eleventh hour and spoken I should have thanked you and blessed you. Why did you hold your tongue—why—why—why?""I thought you l-l-loved him," he stammered."Loved him?" The scorn in her voice thrilled his pulses. "I loved what he said, which was yours. Why did you not say it yourself?""Because," his infirmity gripped him, "I c-c-c-couldn't." Her face softened, and the lines of her figure relaxed."It is my fault," she said, gazing at him through tears; "I ought to have guessed.""Betty"—he had recovered his self-control, now that she was in danger of losing hers—"Betty, I have done you a wrong. I withheld the truth, because truth, faith, love had gone out of my life, blasted by—b-b-by——""By me?""No—n-n-no.""By whom?" He paused, and she continued vehemently: "Mark, I want the truth. Nothing else is possible between us. What killed your faith? You have never answered that question. What changed you from the man you were to the man you are?""Hate."She recoiled at the grim word, recoiled, too, from the expression on his face."You hated—your brother?" The words fell from quivering lips. He saw that she was about to swoop on the truth he had hidden so long. He was impotent to avert discovery. She came very slowly towards him, her eyes fixed on his. The expression in them bewildered him. She raised both her arms and laid her hands upon his shoulders."You hated him. Then you loved—me.""Always," he answered. "To me you came out of Paradise, and brought the best part of it with you.""Say it again," she whispered."I loved you—always: as child, as boy, as man."She smiled piteously. "As child, as girl, as woman I have loved—you. And yet loving me like that you could believe that I loved him. Ah, love is blind indeed." She held him with her eyes and hands, speaking softly and quickly: "And because you loved me you gave him what he lacked. That was like you. But did it never strike you that I might find out?""Not till too late. Betty, I have behaved like a fool. I gave him that sermon which I would have given my right hand to preach. But I had not foreseen its effect. Having given it, I could not take it back." He went on to describe his breakdown, the scene with Ross and the doctors, the silence which he dared not break, his slow recovery, the renascence of his hopes and their destruction. A dozen times his stammer stopped him, as many times he was made aware that this abhorred weakness bound him the closer to the woman who loved him. When he had finished his story she looked up."What shall we do now?" she asked.Above, the song of the pines rose and fell in melancholy cadence. The day was hot, and would become hotter, but here in this sylvan temple the air flowed in cool and fragrant currents. Mark was silent, reflecting that always he had known this hour would come. From the moment he had read Archibald's letter announcing his engagement, Destiny, with the leer of some hideous gargoyle, had decreed that he should hate his brother and love his brother's wife. Up to the present moment both passions had been controlled and confined. The unforeseen had turned them loose."What shall we do now?"She stood before him absorbed in the love which at last had found expression. What else the world might hold for her was not.So standing, delicately flushed, but with eyes which neither faltered nor fell beneath his, the daughter of Louise de Courcy awaited Mark's answer."You are my brother's wife," he said slowly.Betty shrugged her shoulders. The gesture, almost piteous in its shrinking protest, moved Mark more than any words she had spoken."If—if I asked you, you would come away with me?"She nodded, meeting his passionate glance, facing, as he did, the issues involved. Her hands moved towards him—timidly, but with unmistakable invitation."Betty," he cried, "Betty!""Ah! you want me. You do want me—you do, you do!""Want you?" his voice broke. Instantly she had seized his hands, drawing him towards her. He held her firmly—at arm's length. In that supreme moment he was perhaps stronger than he had been ever before, inasmuch as the faith which once had fortified him was his no longer, and yet without it, believing in nothing, holding in derision God's law and man's, he resisted her, because he was counting the cost to her. Then, reading his thought, she inclined her head, whispering, "If there is a God, and if he bade me choose between life here with you and life hereafter without you, not being allowed to have both—do you know what I should say?""Do not say it," he entreated. His face was so twisted by the consciousness that he was taking advantage of her weakness that she thought he was ill. When he remained rigid, she added gently, "Let us go to some place where my love shall make up to you for every pang you have suffered.""Stop!" he cried hoarsely. "Apart from our love, you have not considered what this means: to me, the man, nothing; to you the loss of everything which women hold dear. You must not decide rashly—you—must—take—time."She laughed derisively."I will take anything you like, so long as you take me."He caught her to him, closing her mouth with kisses.CHAPTER XXXIVCHARING CROSSBetty returned alone to London before mid-day. Mark decided to follow by an afternoon train. They had agreed to meet at Charing Cross, to cross that night to Ostend. Then, in some remote corner of the Ardennes, they expected to make plans for the future. The "move," as Betty had pointed out, covered anything that might appear odd to the enlightened Dibdin. Her divided household would understand that she was going to a friend's house for the few hours during which her own bedroom furniture was being shifted.Mark accompanied her to the station, returning home to pack a portmanteau. What doubts he had entertained were dispersed. He swore that he would look forward, never backward, and found himself whistling as he climbed the hill to the cottage.In the shelter, the first object that he saw was Betty's handkerchief lying in the corner of a chair. He picked up the small, square piece of cambric and put it to his lips. A faint essence reminded him that fragrance had come again into his life. Then he began to arrange his papers. When Mary came in to arrange the cloth for luncheon, he told her that he was going away for a few days. She expressed no surprise. Why should she? It lay on his tongue's tip to say: "I have been wretched: now I am going to be happy. Let us shake hands!" Watching her moving here and there he was sensible of an impatience, an irritability almost impossible to suppress. Mary subtly conveyed an impression of protest. He told himself that this was absurd. Suddenly her eyes met his."What have I done?" she faltered."Why, nothing," he answered."You were staring at me so queerly," she answered. "The business which takes you away is pleasant, isn't it?"He smiled reassuringly."Connected with your work, I suppose?"Her curiosity was natural. He always spoke of his work to her."No," he said shortly. "It is not. I dare say you think that I could not be really keen about anything or anybody outside of my work. If I told you——"He closed his lips, wondering why the truth had so nearly leaked from them. His joy had expanded so quickly, that it exacted a larger habitation."I have nothing to tell yet," he said confusedly, "but I may write; you shall hear from me; I shall be frank—with you."He fell into a reverie, as she left the shelter. In a minute she returned."There is a gentleman to see you, Mr. Samphire. Shall I bring him here?"She handed him a card. A cry escaped Mark's lips."David!"The card fell to the ground. For the moment he felt as if some icy finger had been laid upon his heart. He had not seen David since the Crask days. And he had told himself that this old friend had held sorrowfully aloof, because he had divined that intercourse between the faithful and the faithless, between Christian and pagan, would prove (temporarily at least) inexpedient and abortive."Please ask his lordship to come here," he said, frowning.Mary glanced at his face and withdrew. Mark followed her with his eyes as she crossed the pretty garden between the shelter and the cottage. Not a cloud, he noted, obscured the soft azure of the skies; upon all things lay the spell of summer."Why has he come?"Instinctively he armed himself for conflict. It was curious that he associated the Highlander and his strange powers of second sight with the quiet English Mary. The impending fight would be two against one. Good would side with good, although evil might array itself against evil.These thoughts flitted through his mind as David was advancing. Mark, summoning up a smile of welcome, met his friend, who smiled back, extending both hands."Mark," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you. Thank God, you're well.""And stronger than I ever was in my life," said Mark. "You'll lunch with me, David. I must go to town this afternoon, but we can have an hour together.""I must go to town too," replied David. "You look a different man, Mark.""I am a different man."David followed him into the shelter and sat down, with a puzzled glance at his surroundings. During luncheon both men were conscious of a new and disagreeable sense of restraint."Have you another novel on the stocks?""Yes."David jumped up, eager, vigorous, impetuous."I have come a long way out of my road to ask you a question.""Ask it," said Mark."When are you coming back to us?""Can God only be served in cassock and surplice?""You evade my question," said David. "Mark, I have had the feeling that you were in trouble: ill, dying perhaps. I—I had to come to you. But I find you a strong man, and "—he glanced round at the pleasant garden—"and wasting time. Don't mistake me! You have been working hard, no doubt, but at work which others can do as well. You have recovered your health and——""Go on.""The work God intended you to do is being left undone," said David. "Why?""If we are to remain friends, David, you had better not press this question.""If we are to remain friends, I must. You have resigned a stupendous responsibility—why?""Shall we say—incapacity to administer it?""Give me the true reason.""Can't you divine it?""I have divined it," said David, after a long pause. "You sneer at a gift which is given to few; but you, of all men, ought to know that it has been given to me. And I have divined more. I know that you are on the edge of an abyss which may engulf you and another.""You have divined that?"The sneer had left him; amazement, incredulity took its place. David must have heard some idle rumour. He asked him at once if it were not so."I have heard nothing.""On your oath?""Certainly—if you wish it."Mark paced the length of the shelter; then he turned and approached David, who was watching him. When less than a yard separated them Mark stood still and pulled his watch from his pocket."It is now two o'clock," he said. "At half-past six this afternoon I meet the woman I love and who loves me at Charing Cross. To-night—we leave England—together."The relief of speech was immense, but with this, and dominating it, was the fierce desire to confront David with the truth, to invite his arguments, so as to trample on them.David said hoarsely: "The woman is your brother's wife. You—you—Mark Samphire, the man I thought so strong, will do this shameful thing?Impossible!"Mark laughed."I'm going to speak plainly, David. For the first and last time I mean to let myself r-r-rip!" He drew in his breath sharply. "You shall see me as I am. I appeal not to the Bishop, not to my old friend of the Mission, but to a more merciful judge than either—a man of flesh and blood."He paused, frowning, trying to compose, to marshal his thoughts. Then he began quietly, exercising restraint at first, but using increasing emphasis of word and intonation as he proceeded."You say it is impossible that Mark Samphire should do this thing. Strange! You have intelligence, sympathy, intuition. Impossible! Oh, the parrot cry of the slave of convention and tradition, of the worshipper of his own graven images, bowing down before them, unable to look beyond the tiny circle wherein he moves and thinks. Impossible, you say? Impossible for Mark Samphire to run away with his brother's wife!""Incredible then," Ross interrupted."Incredible. It's incredible you should use such a word with your experience. Can't you realise that the same strength which made me struggle up towards what you call good or God is driving me as relentlessly down the other road? I am not the Mark Samphire of the Mission days, but the Mark Samphire who came from Ben Caryll knowing that if he had met his brother alone upon that mountain he would have killed him, or been killed by him. And having felt that, do you think I would stick at running away with his wife?"His tone was so bitterly contemptuous that Ross could only stammer out: "I have never understood why such love as you bore him turned to such hate.""Let your God answer that question. As man to man I swear to you that my brother's extraordinary success in everything we undertook together, and my own failure, did not sour me. I grudged him nothing—except her. And I could have let her go to any other. I tell you, David, I've been tried too high. The irony of fate has been too much for me. A time comes to the stoutest runner when he falls. Then the fellows who have been ambling along behind trot past blandly complacent. They are not first, but they are not last. The man who might have been first is last. I fell at a fence too big for me—and I broke my neck. We've said enough, too much, about that, but the fact that I could love as few love ought to be proof to you that my hate would be as strong."Ross saw that he was trembling violently."If you had written to her——""If? That 'if' is crucifixion. Yes; yes; if I had written one line, whistled one note, held up one finger—she would have come to me. But then hope had scarcely budded. My life was so pitiful, so frail a thing to offer. And, voluntarily, she had engaged herself to him. He had won her, as he had won everything else——""Fairly.""No. Not fairly."Briefly, but in vehement words, Mark told the story of the sermons, concluding with Betty's discovery of the truth."And now," he demanded, stretching out his shaking hands, "do you see the real Mark Samphire? Is your finger on the pulse of a poor wretch who tried to do his duty and—here's the rub, David—who was punished the more heavily on that account? If I had played the world's game, Betty would be my wife. Archibald would be still minor canon of Westchester."Ross took the outstretched hands."My poor Mark," he murmured."Thanks, David; but don't pity me! I envy no man living. You have listened to my story, patiently. One thing more remains to be said. If Betty had not discovered the truth, I could have held aloof from her to the end. On her account, not because she was my brother's wife, I respected the law. But now," his voice was triumphant, "she wants me. Do you hear? She wants me. I'm necessary to her. And because of that, and for no baser reason, I am going to her—to-night."Ross met his eyes."In a word," said he, "you refuse to protect the woman you love against herself?""Once, I should have used that very phrase. What an ocean flows between us, David!""In six months," continued Ross, "you and she will be tormented in a hell of your own making. There are men and women, thousands of them, who can steep themselves in the life of the senses. You are not of them, Mark, nor ever will be; nor is she."Mark smiled derisively."She and I," he retorted, "are two of the myriad insects crawling upon one of a million worlds. Something within both of us bids us make the most of our hour. We shall do so. You mean well, David, but you rack me—you rack me. Go!""So be it," said David.As he was turning, Mark clutched his sleeve. An expression in David's eyes—the expression which refuses to acknowledge defeat, which indicates unknown resources—alarmed him."You are not going to Archibald," he said hoarsely.David's face was twitching with emotion, but his voice was firm and even."You must know where I am going," he said simply. "I have failed—through my own weakness—as I have failed before, as I shall fail again and again, but I believe that He, whose help I am about to implore, will not fail. You will not leave England to-night."When Mark looked up the speaker was gone.During the next hour preparations for the journey occupied his attention. But after his portmanteau was strapped and a fly had been ordered to take him to the station, nearly an hour remained. Mark went into the grove and flung himself at length upon the soft carpet woven by the singing pines. He closed his eyes, invoking the alluring image of Betty. Instantly she came with outstretched hands and shining eyes, but between them, a grim and sombre figure, knelt David Ross, his face upturned in supplication. Mark found himself straining his ears to catch the words of the prayer, but they escaped, fleeting upward whither he dared not follow them.Presently he seemed to hear voices other than David's, and like his inarticulate, although familiar. In his room at the Mission he had often listened to such voices. What man of ethereal attributes has not? But since that night on Ben Caryll these sounds had ceased.He told himself, irritably, that once again he had fallen a victim to nervous imaginings, echoes of the material world rather than spiritual communications. Barger had told him that it was easy—given certain purely physical conditions—to hypnotise oneself, to sink into a subconscious coma vibrant with sensations and sounds subject to scientific analysis. But even Barger had never denied the transcendental gift of David Ross, even Barger believed firmly in the Seer of Brahan, whose predictions concerning the Seaforth Mackenzies had been verified so marvellously.It was impossible to ignore the coincidence of David's visits. Twice David had sought him out, when he was in sore straits.At whose bidding?The question could not be exorcised by sneer or sophism. Mark had compared himself to an insect, a metaphor used ten thousand times by the agnostic school and properly, since none other is more expressive of the insignificance and ephemeral nature of man's body in relation to the universe. None the less Mark was aware that moral or spiritual facts, as a writer puts it, have no relation whatever to physical size, and that a man's soul can no more be measured with a yardstick than the cardinal virtues.At whose bidding had David Ross been sent?
CHAPTER XXXII
BETTY MAKES GOOD RESOLUTIONS
During July a deanery in the West of England fell vacant and was offered to Archibald Samphire. Conquest, acting on a hint from Lord Vauxhall, came post haste to Cadogan Place. It happened that he was shown into the drawing-room, and it also happened that on the balcony Betty sat in a chair, fast asleep, with a dull novel on her lap. The balcony was a pretty place, protected from the sun by a striped awning and filled with palms and plants.
Conquest looked more enormous than usual in a light grey frock-coat, open in front, revealing a vast extent of white waistcoat. His eyes sparkled keenly beneath the heavy black brows. Archibald found himself shirking these piercing eyes, as he explained that his library was filled with a deputation of working men, from whom he had escaped with difficulty. Conquest nodded impatiently as Archie's polished periods fell softly upon the air heavy with the heat of summer and the perfume of many flowers.
"Yes, yes," he said; "I'm obliged. I hate to be kept waiting. About this deanery—hey?"
"I am giving the matter earnest consideration."
"You can't afford to take it," said Conquest abruptly. "If you go there, you'll stay there, mark my words! That'll be the end of you. I told Vauxhall you'd too much common sense to chuck him. If it were a bishopric, of course, Vauxhall would not stand in the way. I can't pick my words. And by this time you and I understand each other."
He spread out his broad, pudgy hands in a gesture familiar to Archibald.
"How did you hear?"
"It's my business to hear things. I've a hundred eyes and a thousand ears. Well?"
"It's great preferment."
"You will be 'Mr. Dean' of course. But you'll be out of sight and out of mind. How did you get this offer? By being on the spot. I'll say a word more, only you mustn't give me away. You met the Prime Minister at Belgrave House the other day. My friend, he had heard you preach a certain sermon at Westchester, but, by gad! he'd forgotten you."
"Forgotten me?" exclaimed Archibald. "Why, he came up as soon as the ladies left the dining-room, and was most civil."
"He can be civil when he likes," said Conquest drily. "All the same, he had forgotten your name; he did not know what you were doing. The Duchess, who is a capital friend of yours and a good creature although she does sniff, sang your praises for five minutes. And that did the trick. Of course, he made inquiries; he satisfied himself that you are a corking good worker and a discreet fellow, and all that, but, bless my soul, aren't there hundreds of such? Lord—yes. But they don't dine at Belgrave House. Now, look here, I've no time to waste. I came here to do you a friendly turn. You will gain far more than you will lose by refusing this so-called preferment. And I'll see that your self-sacrifice is duly recorded. Trust me for that. You think you've made a mark. So you have; so you have; but you must deepen the impression. You've a magnificent voice, but, man—it won't carry four hundred miles. If you want it to be heard by the right people you must preach in a London pulpit."
"My dear Conquest, I really——"
"Pooh, pooh! You don't like me the less because I talk straight when no one is listening. Now—stand and deliver a monosyllable. Are you going to chuck Vauxhall? Yes—or No?"
"I have no intention of chucking Lord Vauxhall or anybody else."
"Right. That means No. Good-bye. You'll see a leader in next Saturday'sMercurywhich will warm the cockles of your heart."
Before Archibald could reply, Conquest was out of the room. For a big man he could move—when he so chose—with amazing quickness and lightness. He disappeared, leaving a vacuum which Betty filled. As Archibald turned, after ringing the bell for a servant to show out Conquest, he saw his wife standing in the window, framed by the ferns and palms.
"Betty!" he exclaimed.
"Why didn't you kick that—that beast downstairs? I heard what he said. He insulted you. I was asleep outside. His voice woke me. For your sake, not mine, I resisted the temptation to come forward, and—oh, I could have flown at him!"
Her bosom heaved; her eyes sparkled. Archibald stared at her dully, wondering what words would meet this emergency.
"Have you nothing to say?" she cried.
"My dear," he said, "you do not understand."
"Then explain—explain!"
"Conquest means well. He is our friend; a rough diamond, I grant you, but he means well. He is our friend."
He repeated the words, sensible that they were inadequate, yet unable to find others.
"Save us from such friends!"
"I had almost decided to send a refusal."
"Why—why, only last night you were on edge to accept. You gave me a dozenprosagainst my two or threecons."
"And perhaps," said Archibald, in what Betty sometimes called his "antiseptic" manner, "thoseconsoutweighed thepros, although numerically less. Conquest takes your view of the matter. He feels that I have undertaken a task here in Chelsea, which cannot be abandoned. He——"
"He tells you toreculer pour mieux sauter," said Betty derisively, "to refuse a deanery and accept a bishopric later! He—the apostle of expediency, of diplomacy, of compromise! Well—I do not judge him. But he counts you to be of his own opinion. He brands you as a time-server, a worldling, a parasite. And you let him do it—and shake hands with him! And, on next Saturday—you will read a leader in theMercurywhich will warm the cockles of your heart."
"Protest would have been wasted," said Archibald. "If you will excuse me, my dear, I will go downstairs. The deputation is waiting for me."
"One moment," said Betty. "I have something to say which must be said—here and now. Last night you spoke eloquently enough of that west country and the life we might lead there. And I—I," she faltered and blushed, "I was not honest when I urged you to stay here. I am drifting into the old hateful whirlpool from which I thought I had escaped for ever. I pictured to myself life in a cathedral close—stagnant, dun-coloured, full of uninteresting duties—and I recoiled from it. I smelled that old smell of cleaned gloves at all the parties. I thought of myself, not of you. But now, I beseech you to consider what London means to both of us—to you and to me. And if Mr. Conquest is right, if your sacred profession is a trade, if great success in it can be achieved only by such self-advertisement as he thinks justifiable, is such success worth having to a Christian gentleman?"
Archibald frowned. Then, feeling that his powers of speech had returned to him, he answered at length, citing certain prelates whose piety, sincerity, and humility were above reproach. Conquest took the worldling's view. He was more than half pagan, and he posed openly as a scoffer and a cynic. Still, he was right in contending that the great places in the Church's gift were held by those whom a wide knowledge of the world had equipped. Such knowledge was not to be gleaned in a cathedral close lying in the heart of a sleepy west country town. He hoped that his dearest Betty would not misunderstand him when he confessed frankly that he did aspire to the highest positions, not for what they might hold of honour or emolument, but for the power they conferred of doing widespread good to others. Warming to his theme, he flooded Betty's perplexed mind with scores of ready-made phrases—phrases laboriously accumulated: stones, so to speak, with which he had fortified his own position.
"Oh—I am muddled, muddled," said Betty.
"I have been muddled myself," her husband admitted. "Modern life must perplex and distress the wisest. And all of us at times feel a desire to get out of the hurly-burly. Shall I say that last night, feeling worn out and discouraged, I did long for the quiet and peace of that west-country deanery; but this morning—now," he expanded his chest, "I am myself again."
He smiled assuringly and left the room.
When he had gone, Betty went back to the chair among the ferns and palms. She tried to go over what her husband had said, to look at the matter fairly from his point of view. But the effort was greater than she could compass. She felt as if she had been submerged in a torrent of words, and of these words nothing was left—only a sense of desolation and isolation.
When she saw Mark a few days later, the article in theMercuryhad been published. Conquest was given to boasting that he could "boom" an author with such subtlety that none, not even the man himself, suspected what was being done. The readers of theMercuryrose from the perusal of the article in question convinced that a seasonable and well-deserved tribute had been paid to a saintly and self-sacrificing preacher of Christ's gospel. Archibald, reading it, was aware that his cheeks, as also the cockles of his heart, were very warm indeed. Betty did not read the article. Mark, however, was full of it, not knowing that Conquest had written it.
"The truth is," he told Betty, "the truth is, Betty, that I did not like his acceptance of the Basilica. It bothered me a good deal. Now this proves plainly that Archie is above worldly considerations. Not another man of his age would have refused such an offer."
Betty asked for news of theSongs.
Of this Mark had nothing very encouraging to tell. The book, handsomely received by the Press, was in fair demand at the libraries, but less than two thousand copies had been sold. In America as yet it had not, so Otway wrote, "caught on." The new novel,A Soul Errant, was sure to be a success. He talked with animation for half an hour, describing his characters.
"You live for this," said Betty abruptly.
"Do you blame me," he answered quickly, "because I make the most of what is left?"
"I beg your pardon," she replied.
Later, she inquired after Mary Dew.
"She's having a better time of it," Mark declared. "I don't mind telling you, Betty, that I've tackled her mother. I told her she was a slave-owner, a despot, and a bully. She took it like a lamb, and things at Myrtle Cottage are easier, I can assure you."
"And Albert what's-his-name, who is going to marry your paragon——"
"Albert Batley is making money. He has a big building contract near Surbiton. He will give Honeydew all she wants, and deserves."
"You know nothing of women, Mark."
"So the critics say—confound 'em; but I tell you, Betty, I know a good woman when I see her."
"There you are; displaying your ignorance. You talk in that foolish masculine manner of good women, as if good women were in a class by themselves, and different from all others. Why good and evil are such relative terms that sometimes I can't tell one from the other."
"Then you're a miserable sinner, and blind to boot. Good, the genuine article, can never be mistaken for evil, although evil, I grant you, may counterfeit good. Bless me! I've been puzzled a score of times by sinners, but I never mistook a saint."
"How many have you met?"
"More than you think," he replied gravely.
"And where do you place me? Among the sheep or the goats?"
Mark wondered why her lips trembled. She looked tired and pale, much paler than usual.
"What a question!" he said lightly.
"I'll answer it myself, Mark. I have an extraordinary appreciation of good. There are times when I have soared—yes, that's the word—into another world. I had dreams, visions if you like, when I was a girl, but the most vivid experience of the kind came upon me unexpectedly—in Westchester Cathedral, upon the day Archie preached his sermon. I grasped Something that morning which cannot be described, but It was real substance. I grasped It, and I let It go. Since I have wondered what It was. Perhaps I—touched—God."
"Ah!" said Mark. "Go on, go on!"
She saw that his eyes were shining, that the expression which she had missed from his face since her marriage had come back.
"Go—on," she sighed. "I am going back. Can you help me?"
She turned to him with a pathetic gesture of entreaty. The light faded in Mark's face. He began to stammer.
"If I c-c-could——"
"You believed once. And now your faith is gone! Why? How? Youmusttell me."
In her excitement she laid her hand upon his wrist, clutching it fiercely. He felt that her fingers were burning, that the fire in them was fluid, that in another moment the flame would flare in him, consuming them both. He rose, releasing his wrist with violence.
"I c-c-can't tell you that." He moved half a dozen paces from her, before he turned. When he spoke again his voice was quite steady. "Faith oozes from some people imperceptibly: there is a steady drain of which they may be unaware, but my faith left me in an instant. It may come back as suddenly. It may be redeemed. I have thought sometimes that faith is God's franchise which is given freely to all, and taken away from the unworthy. And once taken away, it is never given again, never. It must be ransomed—paid for."
As he spoke he was aware that at any cost to his own feelings the talk must be turned into safer channels. His first impulse had been one of unreasoning fear and horror. When she touched him, he lost for a terrible moment his self-control. Love is a despot whose lightest word may make the bravest coward. Seeing her distress, hearing her quavering voice, feeling her trembling fingers, he had divined his own weakness.
"Paid for?" She echoed the words. "How?"
"By sacrifice," he answered slowly. "By blood sacrifice."
When he had gone, she went to her room and locked the door. Alone, her face flamed with anger against herself. Had she betrayed her secret? She could not answer the question. Had he spoken coldly, precisely—on purpose? Nine women out of ten distrust a man's works, and have absurd and infantile faith in his words. But Betty had had a surfeit of words from her husband. Of late, much of her leisure had been wasted in trying to determine their value. Archibald's works were self-explanatory. He was indefatigable as parish priest and philanthropist. Such work could be measured; it lay within a circle, say the inner circle of the Underground Railway. But his sonorous phrases, his dogmas and doctrines, were immeasurable: including this world, past and present, and the world to come. It was natural, therefore, that finding herself compassless in a sea of sentences, she would steer by the light of such fixed stars as frequent communions, charity organisation, the visiting of the sick, and the crusade against alcohol. In a word, she had come to the conclusion that it did not matter very much what a man said, but that what he did was vital to his own welfare and the welfare of others, the true expression of his character and temperament. Whenever a woman touches the fringe of such a commonplace, you may be sure that she will watch a man's actions, the more closely, perhaps, because she has become too heedless of his words. Betty had seen Mark shrink with a violent effort from her touch; he had kept out of Cadogan Place during the summer; he had lost faith in revealed religion. What if these effects were to be traced to one cause—herself?
When she was able to think articulately, pleasure in her discovery was obliterated by pain—the bitter pangs of retrospection. Why had she doubted him—and herself? By what irony of fate had she given herself to Archibald? But almost instantly she curbed these unavailing regrets. The past was irrevocable. What did the future hold for Mark and for her? One thing was certain: they must meet but rarely, perhaps not at all.
And then ensued a struggle, from which she emerged weak indeed, but triumphant. Once again she was conscious of that sense of detachment, of looking in spirit upon the flesh; once again a strange giddiness warned her that only in fancy had she attained to the heights, that the cliffs were yet to be scaled.
When she met her husband that afternoon a closer observer than he might have detected a tenderness in her voice and manner: the first-fruits of a resolution to do her duty as wife to a good man. That night, when she said her prayers, she thanked God passionately, because she could esteem and respect the Rector of St. Anne's.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ILLUMINATION
In August the Archibald Samphires moved from Cadogan Place to a house on the Embankment, which belonged to Lord Vauxhall, and was part of that property which he was so anxious to populate with the "right kind of people." The house faced the Thames and contained some charming rooms, which combined the quaintness and fine proportions of the old Chelsea houses with such modern luxuries as electric light and radiators. The house in Cadogan Place had been papered and decorated by a former tenant, whose taste was severely æsthetic. Betty abhorred the olive-greens, the dingy browns, the sickly ochres of the Burne-Jones school. But she had accepted them philosophically, reflecting that houses in London must be repapered and decorated more often than in the country. None the less, she sometimes told herself that certain fits of depression were due to her bilious-coloured walls, and that Babbit's theories, as set forth by the Squire's widow, were worth consideration.
Now she had been given a free hand, at a moment when fashion was changing with Protean swiftness from darkness to light. Rose-red and yellow, delicate greens, ethereal blues, and white-enamelled woodwork wooed the fancy of housewives. Betty told Lady Randolph that she was no longer a woman, but a colour scheme diffusing prismatic tints.
"The rainbow after the storm."
Betty glanced up quickly. Did her old friend guess that she had passed through a storm? Or was it a happy allusion to that frightful bistre-coloured paper in her bedroom in Cadogan Place?
"I shall be happy here," she said gravely.
They were standing in the drawing-room of the new house. The Admiral's Chippendale furniture was in its place, delicately revealed against lovely white panelling. The walls were rose-coloured, of a paper whose texture was as that of brocade. The general effect was fresh and joyous: vernal in the delicacy of its tints, without a hint of thebonbonnière. Outside, the sun was declining in the west, and the river ran all golden past the trees and meads of Battersea Park. Some barges, laden with hay, were gliding by on the ebb-tide.
"Archie's room will be ready to-morrow," said Betty, "and we ought to be in the day after. You have all pitied me, but I have enjoyed the dead season immensely."
Lady Randolph, who was passing through town on her way to Scotland from Birr Wood, nodded understandingly.
"The room is just like you, Betty, and that is the prettiest compliment, my dear, I have ever paid you. And I must say that the dead season has agreed with you. I never saw you look more alive."
"The fact is," said Betty seriously, "I have been setting more than one house in order."
Lady Randolph smiled. "I have seen—I have guessed—— Ah, well, we wives try to remould our husbands, and the time is not wasted if we succeed in remoulding ourselves. My dear, I must fly. Can I give you a lift?"
Betty said that much remained to be done, but after her friend had gone she showed no inclination to set about doing it. Instead, she sat by the open window, gazing at the river flowing slowly and silently to the sea. Already she had come to regard this as the great waterway of her thoughts. She rejoiced because she was about to live upon its banks; she recognised its suggestion and symbolism, its myriad beauties, its mystery and power.
At this moment she was reflecting that the Thames was a source of pleasure and profit to man, because man, as embodied by the Thames Conservancy, controlled it. When it burst its banks, the abomination of desolation followed. Without the innumerable dams and locks cribbing and confining it, these splendid waters would be wasted. Now they percolated everywhere, into hundreds and thousands of homes.
Would it be so with her own life? It ran in a channel other than the one she would have chosen, had choice been given her; it was diverted to uses she had not apprehended; it was likely to be diffused infinitely, trickling here and there, instead of rushing free and untrammelled over a course of its own making. Since that memorable interview with Mark, Betty had accepted the limitations which duty imposed. She had not shirked the trivial tasks of a parson's wife, albeit she was tempted to spend more time (and money) than was lawful in alluring shops. She had not seen Mark alone. She had put from her comment and criticism of her husband: striving to think of the strength that was in him rather than the weakness.
Now she was aware that these efforts had not been made in vain. Life had become easier, happier, more profitable to herself and others. She dared to look forward, and refrained from looking back.
Presently she rose up, glanced, smiling, at the pretty room, and leaving it reluctantly went downstairs. Archibald was out of town for a few days on duty in the Midlands, and by the morrow she hoped that all his furniture would be moved. Part had come from Cadogan Place that afternoon, and, before returning home, she wished to see it placed in the right room. In the hall she met one of the servants, who was acting as caretaker. In answer to a question, the man said his master's desk had arrived in the van which was leaving. Betty entered her husband's room trying to remember the exact spot where Archie wished his desk to stand. It was an immense affair, with a fluted, revolving top, which, when closed, locked itself and all drawers. As she crossed the threshold of the room, she remembered what Archibald had said. The desk had been placed in the wrong position.
"Oh, Dibdin," she exclaimed, "that will never do. Have the men gone?"
Dibdin said respectfully that the van was still at the door, but suggested that the men should move the desk on the morrow. Betty, however, was anxious to see how it looked in the place her husband had chosen. So the men were summoned. Doubtless, they were tired, and possibly sulky at being called as they were about to drive away. The desk was very heavy and awkward to move; it stood on a rug upon a slippery parquet floor. The men, using unnecessary violence, canted it slightly forward. In the effort to steady it, their feet slipped, the desk fell forward with a crash, and burst open: the fluted lid flying back, and the contents of a dozen pigeon-holes and drawers being scattered over the floor. However, upon examination it was found that no damage had been done. The desk was lifted and placed in the desired position, and the men dismissed. Dibdin looked so dismayed that Betty laughed.
"Why, Dibdin, all's well that ends well."
"Master is so particular about his desk," said Dibdin. He had been with Archibald before his marriage. "He'd never allow me to touch his papers."
"You shan't touch them now," said Betty. "I'll arrange them, Dibdin, before I go home."
Dibdin went out, leaving his mistress sitting on the floor surrounded by notebooks, cheque-books, manuscripts, and all the accessories which usually cover a busy man's desk. As she began to arrange these, she reflected that the best-laid plans gang agley. Archibald had insisted upon locking up everything, and yet, despite precaution—his precious desk had burst open. What a lot of MMS. to be sure! And she had not the vaguest idea into what drawers and pigeon-holes they ought to go. Archibald had a reasonable dislike of being disturbed when at work, and when he was not at work the huge desk was always locked.
Betty recognised an enormous pile of papers as sermons. Some were typewritten, date and text being inscribed upon the outside. Betty touched them tenderly: her husband's title-deeds, so to speak, to the honour and respect she bore him. Looking at them she blushed faintly, thinking of the warmer sentiment they had provoked. As she blushed her glance fell upon the sermon she had just picked up. This bore no text, but across it, in Archibald's handwriting, were two words:Whit-Sunday, Westchester.
The words provoked a score of memories. Once more she knelt in the chancel of that splendid fane, hearing the flute-like notes of the boy; once more she was conscious of being whirled aloft to ineffable heights. Then she dropped to earth as suddenly, with a vivid realisation that if this sermon had never been preached, she would not be here in this house, the wife of the preacher. With this reflection came a desire to read the sermon. She laid it aside, while she finished the work of replacing the other MSS. Then she closed the desk, and discovered that the lock was hampered. She was wondering whether she ought to seal it, when she remembered that it would be easy to lock up the room. The light was failing, yet the fancy took her that she would like to read her husband's sermon in her own room, overlooking the river as it flowed to the sea.
She went upstairs carrying the MS. in her hand, and sat down. The sun was about to set; and the river ran red, no longer golden. Shadows obscured the city beyond. A mist was stealing up from the east, and the barges floating into it were swallowed up.
Betty unrolled the MS., spread it upon her knee, and began to read. But at the first glance she blinked, as if her eyesight were deceiving her. Then with a muttered exclamation of surprise, she held the sheets of blue foolscap to the light, and examined them attentively. The MS., from beginning to end, was in Mark's handwriting. Here and there words were interpolated or excised. In the margin were her husband's notes, but the MS. was Mark's. What did it mean?
She read it through. Yes: as it was written, so it had been preached, and it had been written by Mark!
Why had she not guessed as much before? She rolled up the MS., tied it with the red tape which the orderly Archibald used, and went downstairs. The only other sermon in Mark's handwriting was the "Purity" sermon, but many were covered with his notes. Again and again a phrase remembered, a thought treasured—because it revealed the man she had chosen as wise, and noble, and good, and therefore justified that choice and silenced any doubts she might have entertained regarding it—stood out as Mark's. Again and again she read some common-place, some compromise, some paragraph which rang false, slashed by Mark's red pencil. Once or twice she held up the sheets, examining closely the condemned passages; smiling derisively as she perceived the violence of protest in the broad, deeply indented excoriations. Suddenly Dibdin appeared, bland but surprised.
"Shall I bring a lamp, M'm?"
"Bring me a basket, Dibdin, and then whistle for a hansom."
She put the sermons into the basket and went back to Cadogan Place, where a cold supper awaited her. The footman told the cook that his mistress had eaten nothing, but had called for a pint of champagne. The cook expressed an opinion that nothing in the world was so upsetting as a "move"; which turned everything and everybody upside down, and produced "squirmishy" feelings inside. Presently Betty's maid went upstairs, and returned with heightened colour. Her mistress, so she reported, was as cross as two sticks.
Betty, indeed, was pacing up and down her bedroom in a fever of indecision and unrest. The husband she had honoured was destroyed. The ghost of him inspired repugnance—a repugnance which found larger room in the new house. The pleasure she had taken in furnishing became pain, inasmuch as not a chintz had been chosen without the reflection that she was recovering what was dingy and discoloured in her life, substituting for the old and worn the fresh and new. And now, in the twinkling of an eye, her good resolutions, her hopes and aims, her readjusted sense of proportion—had vanished. She was in the mood to set ablaze that dainty room in which in fancy she had passed so many happy hours, to tear down and destroy the tissues through which she had looked out upon a future as rose-coloured as they.
She passed a sleepless night, got up feeling and looking wretched, gave her servants certain hasty directions, and drove to Waterloo. In her hand she carried a small bag containing the Westchester and Windsor sermons.
From Weybridge she walked to Myrtle Cottage, and the exercise brought colour into her cheeks. She was sure that she would find Mark in the shelter, so she approached it from the side of the grove, being unwilling to face Mary's clear and possibly curious eyes.
Mark was at his typewriting machine when she saw him, and as usual so absorbed in his task that he never perceived her. Betty reflected that he could not have approached her without her being aware of it, but men surely were fashioned out of clay other than what was used for women.
"Mark!"
He sprang up, with a startled exclamation, and came forwards, holding out both hands.
"What has happened?"
As he spoke her indignation began to ooze from her. Intuition told her that the expression upon Mark's face revealed intense sympathy. Her trouble, whatever it might be, had moved him to the core. Suddenly, a light flickered out of the darkness. For the first time, she saw herself and him alone together, shut off from the world. It came upon her with a shock that she was glad that Mark, not Archibald, had written the sermon. Only he, the lover of her girlish dreams, could have found the words which had stirred her so profoundly. Mark repeated the question, "What has happened?"
"You wrote this?" she cried, holding out the Westchester sermon.
He nodded, realising the fatuity of denial. For a moment they gazed into each other's eyes. Then she said slowly—
"You wrote the 'Purity' sermon?"
"M-m-m-most of it," he admitted reluctantly.
"You have helped him ever since?"
"I have revised some of his work."
"And I never guessed it," she exclaimed passionately. "If I had thought for a moment I must have known that it was you—you—you, not him. Oh, my God, I shall go mad! I married him because you—you had tricked him out in a garment of righteousness! Had you come forward at the eleventh hour and spoken I should have thanked you and blessed you. Why did you hold your tongue—why—why—why?"
"I thought you l-l-loved him," he stammered.
"Loved him?" The scorn in her voice thrilled his pulses. "I loved what he said, which was yours. Why did you not say it yourself?"
"Because," his infirmity gripped him, "I c-c-c-couldn't." Her face softened, and the lines of her figure relaxed.
"It is my fault," she said, gazing at him through tears; "I ought to have guessed."
"Betty"—he had recovered his self-control, now that she was in danger of losing hers—"Betty, I have done you a wrong. I withheld the truth, because truth, faith, love had gone out of my life, blasted by—b-b-by——"
"By me?"
"No—n-n-no."
"By whom?" He paused, and she continued vehemently: "Mark, I want the truth. Nothing else is possible between us. What killed your faith? You have never answered that question. What changed you from the man you were to the man you are?"
"Hate."
She recoiled at the grim word, recoiled, too, from the expression on his face.
"You hated—your brother?" The words fell from quivering lips. He saw that she was about to swoop on the truth he had hidden so long. He was impotent to avert discovery. She came very slowly towards him, her eyes fixed on his. The expression in them bewildered him. She raised both her arms and laid her hands upon his shoulders.
"You hated him. Then you loved—me."
"Always," he answered. "To me you came out of Paradise, and brought the best part of it with you."
"Say it again," she whispered.
"I loved you—always: as child, as boy, as man."
She smiled piteously. "As child, as girl, as woman I have loved—you. And yet loving me like that you could believe that I loved him. Ah, love is blind indeed." She held him with her eyes and hands, speaking softly and quickly: "And because you loved me you gave him what he lacked. That was like you. But did it never strike you that I might find out?"
"Not till too late. Betty, I have behaved like a fool. I gave him that sermon which I would have given my right hand to preach. But I had not foreseen its effect. Having given it, I could not take it back." He went on to describe his breakdown, the scene with Ross and the doctors, the silence which he dared not break, his slow recovery, the renascence of his hopes and their destruction. A dozen times his stammer stopped him, as many times he was made aware that this abhorred weakness bound him the closer to the woman who loved him. When he had finished his story she looked up.
"What shall we do now?" she asked.
Above, the song of the pines rose and fell in melancholy cadence. The day was hot, and would become hotter, but here in this sylvan temple the air flowed in cool and fragrant currents. Mark was silent, reflecting that always he had known this hour would come. From the moment he had read Archibald's letter announcing his engagement, Destiny, with the leer of some hideous gargoyle, had decreed that he should hate his brother and love his brother's wife. Up to the present moment both passions had been controlled and confined. The unforeseen had turned them loose.
"What shall we do now?"
She stood before him absorbed in the love which at last had found expression. What else the world might hold for her was not.
So standing, delicately flushed, but with eyes which neither faltered nor fell beneath his, the daughter of Louise de Courcy awaited Mark's answer.
"You are my brother's wife," he said slowly.
Betty shrugged her shoulders. The gesture, almost piteous in its shrinking protest, moved Mark more than any words she had spoken.
"If—if I asked you, you would come away with me?"
She nodded, meeting his passionate glance, facing, as he did, the issues involved. Her hands moved towards him—timidly, but with unmistakable invitation.
"Betty," he cried, "Betty!"
"Ah! you want me. You do want me—you do, you do!"
"Want you?" his voice broke. Instantly she had seized his hands, drawing him towards her. He held her firmly—at arm's length. In that supreme moment he was perhaps stronger than he had been ever before, inasmuch as the faith which once had fortified him was his no longer, and yet without it, believing in nothing, holding in derision God's law and man's, he resisted her, because he was counting the cost to her. Then, reading his thought, she inclined her head, whispering, "If there is a God, and if he bade me choose between life here with you and life hereafter without you, not being allowed to have both—do you know what I should say?"
"Do not say it," he entreated. His face was so twisted by the consciousness that he was taking advantage of her weakness that she thought he was ill. When he remained rigid, she added gently, "Let us go to some place where my love shall make up to you for every pang you have suffered."
"Stop!" he cried hoarsely. "Apart from our love, you have not considered what this means: to me, the man, nothing; to you the loss of everything which women hold dear. You must not decide rashly—you—must—take—time."
She laughed derisively.
"I will take anything you like, so long as you take me."
He caught her to him, closing her mouth with kisses.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHARING CROSS
Betty returned alone to London before mid-day. Mark decided to follow by an afternoon train. They had agreed to meet at Charing Cross, to cross that night to Ostend. Then, in some remote corner of the Ardennes, they expected to make plans for the future. The "move," as Betty had pointed out, covered anything that might appear odd to the enlightened Dibdin. Her divided household would understand that she was going to a friend's house for the few hours during which her own bedroom furniture was being shifted.
Mark accompanied her to the station, returning home to pack a portmanteau. What doubts he had entertained were dispersed. He swore that he would look forward, never backward, and found himself whistling as he climbed the hill to the cottage.
In the shelter, the first object that he saw was Betty's handkerchief lying in the corner of a chair. He picked up the small, square piece of cambric and put it to his lips. A faint essence reminded him that fragrance had come again into his life. Then he began to arrange his papers. When Mary came in to arrange the cloth for luncheon, he told her that he was going away for a few days. She expressed no surprise. Why should she? It lay on his tongue's tip to say: "I have been wretched: now I am going to be happy. Let us shake hands!" Watching her moving here and there he was sensible of an impatience, an irritability almost impossible to suppress. Mary subtly conveyed an impression of protest. He told himself that this was absurd. Suddenly her eyes met his.
"What have I done?" she faltered.
"Why, nothing," he answered.
"You were staring at me so queerly," she answered. "The business which takes you away is pleasant, isn't it?"
He smiled reassuringly.
"Connected with your work, I suppose?"
Her curiosity was natural. He always spoke of his work to her.
"No," he said shortly. "It is not. I dare say you think that I could not be really keen about anything or anybody outside of my work. If I told you——"
He closed his lips, wondering why the truth had so nearly leaked from them. His joy had expanded so quickly, that it exacted a larger habitation.
"I have nothing to tell yet," he said confusedly, "but I may write; you shall hear from me; I shall be frank—with you."
He fell into a reverie, as she left the shelter. In a minute she returned.
"There is a gentleman to see you, Mr. Samphire. Shall I bring him here?"
She handed him a card. A cry escaped Mark's lips.
"David!"
The card fell to the ground. For the moment he felt as if some icy finger had been laid upon his heart. He had not seen David since the Crask days. And he had told himself that this old friend had held sorrowfully aloof, because he had divined that intercourse between the faithful and the faithless, between Christian and pagan, would prove (temporarily at least) inexpedient and abortive.
"Please ask his lordship to come here," he said, frowning.
Mary glanced at his face and withdrew. Mark followed her with his eyes as she crossed the pretty garden between the shelter and the cottage. Not a cloud, he noted, obscured the soft azure of the skies; upon all things lay the spell of summer.
"Why has he come?"
Instinctively he armed himself for conflict. It was curious that he associated the Highlander and his strange powers of second sight with the quiet English Mary. The impending fight would be two against one. Good would side with good, although evil might array itself against evil.
These thoughts flitted through his mind as David was advancing. Mark, summoning up a smile of welcome, met his friend, who smiled back, extending both hands.
"Mark," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you. Thank God, you're well."
"And stronger than I ever was in my life," said Mark. "You'll lunch with me, David. I must go to town this afternoon, but we can have an hour together."
"I must go to town too," replied David. "You look a different man, Mark."
"I am a different man."
David followed him into the shelter and sat down, with a puzzled glance at his surroundings. During luncheon both men were conscious of a new and disagreeable sense of restraint.
"Have you another novel on the stocks?"
"Yes."
David jumped up, eager, vigorous, impetuous.
"I have come a long way out of my road to ask you a question."
"Ask it," said Mark.
"When are you coming back to us?"
"Can God only be served in cassock and surplice?"
"You evade my question," said David. "Mark, I have had the feeling that you were in trouble: ill, dying perhaps. I—I had to come to you. But I find you a strong man, and "—he glanced round at the pleasant garden—"and wasting time. Don't mistake me! You have been working hard, no doubt, but at work which others can do as well. You have recovered your health and——"
"Go on."
"The work God intended you to do is being left undone," said David. "Why?"
"If we are to remain friends, David, you had better not press this question."
"If we are to remain friends, I must. You have resigned a stupendous responsibility—why?"
"Shall we say—incapacity to administer it?"
"Give me the true reason."
"Can't you divine it?"
"I have divined it," said David, after a long pause. "You sneer at a gift which is given to few; but you, of all men, ought to know that it has been given to me. And I have divined more. I know that you are on the edge of an abyss which may engulf you and another."
"You have divined that?"
The sneer had left him; amazement, incredulity took its place. David must have heard some idle rumour. He asked him at once if it were not so.
"I have heard nothing."
"On your oath?"
"Certainly—if you wish it."
Mark paced the length of the shelter; then he turned and approached David, who was watching him. When less than a yard separated them Mark stood still and pulled his watch from his pocket.
"It is now two o'clock," he said. "At half-past six this afternoon I meet the woman I love and who loves me at Charing Cross. To-night—we leave England—together."
The relief of speech was immense, but with this, and dominating it, was the fierce desire to confront David with the truth, to invite his arguments, so as to trample on them.
David said hoarsely: "The woman is your brother's wife. You—you—Mark Samphire, the man I thought so strong, will do this shameful thing?Impossible!"
Mark laughed.
"I'm going to speak plainly, David. For the first and last time I mean to let myself r-r-rip!" He drew in his breath sharply. "You shall see me as I am. I appeal not to the Bishop, not to my old friend of the Mission, but to a more merciful judge than either—a man of flesh and blood."
He paused, frowning, trying to compose, to marshal his thoughts. Then he began quietly, exercising restraint at first, but using increasing emphasis of word and intonation as he proceeded.
"You say it is impossible that Mark Samphire should do this thing. Strange! You have intelligence, sympathy, intuition. Impossible! Oh, the parrot cry of the slave of convention and tradition, of the worshipper of his own graven images, bowing down before them, unable to look beyond the tiny circle wherein he moves and thinks. Impossible, you say? Impossible for Mark Samphire to run away with his brother's wife!"
"Incredible then," Ross interrupted.
"Incredible. It's incredible you should use such a word with your experience. Can't you realise that the same strength which made me struggle up towards what you call good or God is driving me as relentlessly down the other road? I am not the Mark Samphire of the Mission days, but the Mark Samphire who came from Ben Caryll knowing that if he had met his brother alone upon that mountain he would have killed him, or been killed by him. And having felt that, do you think I would stick at running away with his wife?"
His tone was so bitterly contemptuous that Ross could only stammer out: "I have never understood why such love as you bore him turned to such hate."
"Let your God answer that question. As man to man I swear to you that my brother's extraordinary success in everything we undertook together, and my own failure, did not sour me. I grudged him nothing—except her. And I could have let her go to any other. I tell you, David, I've been tried too high. The irony of fate has been too much for me. A time comes to the stoutest runner when he falls. Then the fellows who have been ambling along behind trot past blandly complacent. They are not first, but they are not last. The man who might have been first is last. I fell at a fence too big for me—and I broke my neck. We've said enough, too much, about that, but the fact that I could love as few love ought to be proof to you that my hate would be as strong."
Ross saw that he was trembling violently.
"If you had written to her——"
"If? That 'if' is crucifixion. Yes; yes; if I had written one line, whistled one note, held up one finger—she would have come to me. But then hope had scarcely budded. My life was so pitiful, so frail a thing to offer. And, voluntarily, she had engaged herself to him. He had won her, as he had won everything else——"
"Fairly."
"No. Not fairly."
Briefly, but in vehement words, Mark told the story of the sermons, concluding with Betty's discovery of the truth.
"And now," he demanded, stretching out his shaking hands, "do you see the real Mark Samphire? Is your finger on the pulse of a poor wretch who tried to do his duty and—here's the rub, David—who was punished the more heavily on that account? If I had played the world's game, Betty would be my wife. Archibald would be still minor canon of Westchester."
Ross took the outstretched hands.
"My poor Mark," he murmured.
"Thanks, David; but don't pity me! I envy no man living. You have listened to my story, patiently. One thing more remains to be said. If Betty had not discovered the truth, I could have held aloof from her to the end. On her account, not because she was my brother's wife, I respected the law. But now," his voice was triumphant, "she wants me. Do you hear? She wants me. I'm necessary to her. And because of that, and for no baser reason, I am going to her—to-night."
Ross met his eyes.
"In a word," said he, "you refuse to protect the woman you love against herself?"
"Once, I should have used that very phrase. What an ocean flows between us, David!"
"In six months," continued Ross, "you and she will be tormented in a hell of your own making. There are men and women, thousands of them, who can steep themselves in the life of the senses. You are not of them, Mark, nor ever will be; nor is she."
Mark smiled derisively.
"She and I," he retorted, "are two of the myriad insects crawling upon one of a million worlds. Something within both of us bids us make the most of our hour. We shall do so. You mean well, David, but you rack me—you rack me. Go!"
"So be it," said David.
As he was turning, Mark clutched his sleeve. An expression in David's eyes—the expression which refuses to acknowledge defeat, which indicates unknown resources—alarmed him.
"You are not going to Archibald," he said hoarsely.
David's face was twitching with emotion, but his voice was firm and even.
"You must know where I am going," he said simply. "I have failed—through my own weakness—as I have failed before, as I shall fail again and again, but I believe that He, whose help I am about to implore, will not fail. You will not leave England to-night."
When Mark looked up the speaker was gone.
During the next hour preparations for the journey occupied his attention. But after his portmanteau was strapped and a fly had been ordered to take him to the station, nearly an hour remained. Mark went into the grove and flung himself at length upon the soft carpet woven by the singing pines. He closed his eyes, invoking the alluring image of Betty. Instantly she came with outstretched hands and shining eyes, but between them, a grim and sombre figure, knelt David Ross, his face upturned in supplication. Mark found himself straining his ears to catch the words of the prayer, but they escaped, fleeting upward whither he dared not follow them.
Presently he seemed to hear voices other than David's, and like his inarticulate, although familiar. In his room at the Mission he had often listened to such voices. What man of ethereal attributes has not? But since that night on Ben Caryll these sounds had ceased.
He told himself, irritably, that once again he had fallen a victim to nervous imaginings, echoes of the material world rather than spiritual communications. Barger had told him that it was easy—given certain purely physical conditions—to hypnotise oneself, to sink into a subconscious coma vibrant with sensations and sounds subject to scientific analysis. But even Barger had never denied the transcendental gift of David Ross, even Barger believed firmly in the Seer of Brahan, whose predictions concerning the Seaforth Mackenzies had been verified so marvellously.
It was impossible to ignore the coincidence of David's visits. Twice David had sought him out, when he was in sore straits.
At whose bidding?
The question could not be exorcised by sneer or sophism. Mark had compared himself to an insect, a metaphor used ten thousand times by the agnostic school and properly, since none other is more expressive of the insignificance and ephemeral nature of man's body in relation to the universe. None the less Mark was aware that moral or spiritual facts, as a writer puts it, have no relation whatever to physical size, and that a man's soul can no more be measured with a yardstick than the cardinal virtues.
At whose bidding had David Ross been sent?