After the service, the Dean took Archie's hand and congratulated him. "You have spoken with tongues," he said, in his too cold voice, which impressed but never thrilled. Archibald hesitated, flushed, clutched at opportunity and missed it. The Dean turned aside as others approached. To them Archie listened, wondering if Betty knew. The Dean, watching him, amended previous estimates. "The man is really modest," he told his wife at luncheon. "He blushed and stammered when I spoke to him."Archie went into the Close, accompanied by a prebendary, whom, as it happened, he had slight reason to dislike. As he left the cathedral he saw a small group: the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph, and Lady Randolph; Pynsent and Jim Corrance were standing beyond these. The Prime Minister acclaimed the preacher in Latin, holding out both hands:"I salute Chrysostom," and then he added simply: "Thank you—thank you!"Once more Archibald clutched at opportunity, but the prebendary, eyeing him with jealous glance, stood between him and confession. Then Lord Randolph and his wife, Pynsent and Corrance, swelled a chorus of felicitation. Archie was feeling that the truth must be written on his scarlet face. But his friends, like the Dean, attributed confusion to modesty."Here he is!"Betty's voice rose above the chorus. Pynsent made way for her. Mark followed, looking pale and worn."Oh, Archie, what can I say?" Her face was radiant. He did not suspect that she wished to apologise for every idle jest at his expense, for every thought and word (and there were many) which now seemed to stain not him but her, the shallow-witted creature, seeing the ludicrous and blind to what lay beneath. "I shall never chaff you again, never."Archie, however, was looking at Mark. At the moment he realised that unless he spoke, Mark would hold his peace. Mark had not told Betty yet. The group around him was breaking up. The Prime Minister had his watch in his hand. Lord Randolph had turned his back. Betty began again, excitedly:"And I might have missed it. Aren't you going to shake hands with him, Mark?"Silently Mark extended his hand. At his brother's touch Archie stammered out: "I owe everything to Mark: he helped me; he has always helped me."Mark's eyes demanded more; his grasp tightened. The others, hearing but not understanding, shuffled somewhat impatiently. Betty frowned, wondering why Mark was so unresponsive. Surely he would say something. Then she remembered that since they left the south door of the cathedral he had said nothing. Was it possible that he grudged his brother this triumph? From any other man such jealousy would have provoked pity and sympathy, but she had loved and respected Mark because she had never been able to conceive of him as being mean or petty-minded. Yet, long ago, he had confessed that ambition was his besetting sin!"We shall not be home till two," said Lady Randolph. "Come, all of you!"She bustled away, followed by the others. Archibald dropped his brother's hand, and strode off in the direction of his lodgings. He would not join the party till after the afternoon's service. Betty glanced at Mark."You never congratulated him. He went away hurt, poor fellow! Mark—how could you? And it was your praise he wanted. I saw that. He looked hungrily—at you."Then Mark laughed, while the shadows in Betty's eyes deepened. That she was perplexed he saw, that she was deeply distressed he had yet to learn. And to give him his due he was thinking at that moment not of Betty, nor of himself, but of Archie. He regretted that he had not told Betty the truth, but her admiration had been so great, her praise so extravagant, that he had shrunk from the assertive: "I did it. I wrote it." Now, if he spoke, Betty being a woman of likes and dislikes, would scorn his brother and make no effort to hide that scorn. All this whirled through his brain while he laughed, because she had misinterpreted the expression of hunger in Archie's eyes."Don't laugh!" she enjoined sharply. "Did you not think his sermon splendid?""It sounded better than I expected," he said, wondering if she would guess. He made so certain that she would guess. It amazed him that the lynx-eyed Lady Randolph, her sagacious lord, Pynsent, Corrance had been so easily befooled. He had yet to learn that the world is equally prone to believe that a fool may prove a sage as a sage a fool. The unexpected excites and disturbs the reason."We have all underrated him," she rejoined, more gently.At tea-time Lord Randolph returned to Birr Wood, bringing Archibald with him. After tea Lord Randolph drew Mark aside and told him that the Prime Minister had asked many questions concerning the Samphires of Pitt."I told him," said he, "that your maternal grandfather had a strain of Wesley's and Sheridan's blood. It seems that he knew and loved him. He must have been a remarkable man.""My mother adored him," Mark replied. "I can just recall some of the things she said about him.""Justice was not done him, I fear. He served faithfully ungrateful masters. Perhaps he ought to have been a preacher. At any rate his mantle seems to have descended upon your brother."He moved away, wondering why Mark had shown so little enthusiasm.Presently Lady Randolph, under cover of the chatter, said a few words:"I account for our surprise this morning in one word: Inspiration. There was Goldsmith, for instance. Not that I wish to make comparisons. Archibald is no idiot to be sure, very much the contrary, still I never gave him credit for being a humourist.""A humourist, Lady Randolph?""What? You missed the humour in his sermon—you? Why if I hadn't cried I must have laughed. What was the keynote of that sermon? Renunciation. Eh? The word was not mentioned. Very true, but it informed every phrase. It might have been written by a man who had failed in this world, but who knew that elsewhere his failure would be reckoned as success. The stone that the builders rejected became the head of the corner. Well, so far as this world is concerned, Archie has always succeeded. He has genius in being able to put himself in the place of the man who has failed.""And the humour?""I am coming to that. I go the round of this huge house every Saturday morning, and the house-keeper will tell you that my eyesight is unimpaired. I went into your room, sir, and what did I see?""Spare me," said Mark."Soit! I went into your brother's room. I declare he has prettier things on his dressing-table than I have on mine. And well-cut boots in trees, eau de Lubin on his washstand, and on his chest of drawers—a trouser-press! Oh! there's no harm in such things, of course, but that sermon this morning and the trouser-press! The golden sandals—treed! The halo sprinkled with eau de Lubin! And yet, and yet he made me cry: hardened old sinner that I am! So I say that he is a genius, and an unconscious humourist, and a Chrysostom, and altogether a most amazing person. Now, go and talk to a younger woman."Mark obeyed. His old friend eyed his thin figure as he crossed the room."How much help did he give his brother?" she muttered to herself.Archie was surrounded by joyous prattlers. Harry Kirtling, Pynsent, and Jim Corrance were with Betty."We are still jawing about your brother's sermon," said Harry Kirtling. "I am sorry to say I missed the first part. A line from my stud groom this morning rather upset me. Dear old Trumpeter has navicular. My best gee—worst luck! Well, by Jove! that sermon cheered me up; it did, indeed. I felt confoundly ashamed of myself and my own small affairs. That was the effect it had on me. But Corrance and Pynsent say it made 'em blue.""Every man worth his salt wants to be at the head of the procession here," Pynsent explained, in his slightly nasal New England accent."Archie stuck his knife into me and turned it," said Corrance."You've misinterpreted the whole thing," Mark replied eagerly. "Every man has his work here, but who knows what relation it may bear, if any, to the work which comes after? Great achievements dwindle into insignificance within a d-decade. Why, then, should we t-tear ourselves to p-p-p——"Meeting Betty's eyes, the abominable lump came into his throat. He paused abruptly, turning aside. Archie, who had joined them, said with authority:"Mark is right. We make a mad effort to scribble our names upon the quicksands of time." (Mark, with his back still turned to the group, smiled.) "And we die wretched," Archie went on, "because Time's tides wash out our writing within an hour. This struggle after personal recognition is a certain sign of decadence in a nation."Mark looked at Betty, who was listening to the speaker with faintly glowing cheeks. Pynsent and Corrance seemed to be impressed, because Archie as preacher (thus Mark reflected) had bewitched them. Yesterday, only yesterday, an obscure minor canon would not have so delivered himself; if he had, the others would have scoffed at him as a prig."Are we to fight without pay, my dear boy?"Lord Randolph had approached, cynical, yet interested."Forlorn hopes were led before the Victoria Cross was given," murmured Archie deferentially. Then he remembered that Mark had said this, and that Mark was present. At this thought he blushed vividly, once more confirming an impression of modesty. He tried to make amends to Mark. "Why, Mark and I were speaking of this only last night. What did you say, Mark?""N-nothing worth r-repeating," stammered Mark."He said that a desperate enterprise never lacked men to attempt it. And what allures men to almost certain death? The pay, Lord Randolph? You would be the last to affirm that. Have we not heard of many a noble fellow falling, maybe, within a few feet of the goal, seeing with dying eyes comrades triumphantly scaling the heights, knowing that the success of those comrades was rooted in the bodies over which they had passed to victory? And these—the failures—have died with a glad shout upon their lips; they have been found horribly mutilated, but with a smile on their dead faces. Shall we pity such men, Lord Randolph, or envy them?"Mark slipped from the room before Lord Randolph replied. Outside the door he discovered that his fists were clenched.CHAPTER XVIISURRENDER!On the following Tuesday, when Mark reached Amos Barger's house, he was told that the surgeon could not see him for a quarter of an hour. Mark followed a manservant into a back dining-room ponderously furnished with mahogany and horsehair. The paper on the wall was hideous in pattern and colour; the wainscoting was grained in imitation of oak; on the square table in the centre of the room lay the comic papers and some society weeklies, amongst themKosmosandMayfair. Under the latter wasThe Bistoury. Mark paced up and down, pausing now and again to look out of a window which commanded a prospect of dingy back-walls and chimney-pots. From the front of the house a charming glimpse of the trees in Cavendish Square redeemed the dull uniformity of the street. Mark had noticed how green was their foliage, recalling the fact that soot is as Mellin's food to the vegetable world. His fancy seized this fact and played with it. Soot, the most defiling of things, transmuted by some amazing process into a brilliant pigment! What a text for a sermon! Presently Mark approached the book-case—a solid, glazed affair as heavy, doubtless, as the works within. To his surprise, he found the lightest of fiction, and every volume showed signs of use. Barger, he reflected, was a wise man to laugh with Anstey and Frank Stockton, but he ought really to buy some new furniture. Then he remembered that Barger had admitted failure, more or less. Possibly, these grim Penates had been taken at a low valuation from the outgoing tenant. With these fugitive speculations he escaped from his own thoughts and fears.When he went upstairs the surgeon, while shaking hands, eyed him keenly."I am the better for my holiday," said Mark.Barger nodded, and pointed to a chair."You said in the train I might live to make old bones. Weakness of heart is not a bar to marriage—is it?""Very much the contrary," said the surgeon grimly. "And if you are sound in other respects——""I have never known what it is to be really ill," said Mark eagerly; "and I don't think I've had breakfast in bed since I left Harrow.""And not often there—eh? Never shammed at school did you when the first lesson was a bit stiff?""The first lesson never was very stiff—to me," Mark replied.Barger, with impassive face, began an examination, which lasted longer than Mark expected. At the end Mark said nervously: "The heart is not weaker than it was?""Your heart need not cause you any serious anxiety," said the surgeon slowly."Thank God!" exclaimed the young man. "From your face I feared a different verdict.""There is other trouble, Mr. Samphire."Then Mark smiled pitifully. His premonition of disaster was justified."You can speak f-f-frankly," he stammered.The surgeon spoke frankly, making plain in his precise phraseology what was and what might be. "You will take another opinion," he concluded, "but it is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. These," he pointed to some reagents, "never lie. Doctors do—sometimes.""I thank you for not lying to me," said Mark gravely.Barger fumbled with his test tubes, and then burst out vehemently:"Your only chance lies in the most careful diet, a life in the open air; and even then the issue is doubtful.""And—marriage?""Out of the question.""But if I got better? Should I be justified in asking a woman to wait?"His voice was dry and husky. Barger shook his head. The trouble might be staved off for a time, hut there was always the probability of return."You have neglected your body," he said irritably. "You have defrauded it of all things essential, and it has taken its revenge. Oh, you parsons who think of others, why can't you see that you would serve the world better if you thought more of yourselves?"Mark could read the sympathy and pity latent beneath frowns and irritability. He held out his hand. Barger continued:"You must go to a physician. Yours is not a case for a surgeon. You might try Sir John Drax. He's a specialist. Shall I write him a note? He lives near here, in Welbeck Street."Berger scribbled a few lines, and handed them to Mark."See him at once," he commanded; "suspense is unendurable."Mark went his way, so blinded by misery that in crossing the street he barely escaped being run over by a big van. He sprang to one side in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation.Within half an hour Sir John Drax had confirmed Barger's diagnosis and prognosis. Then he asked bluntly if his patient had independent means. An affirmative simplified the case. He, too, prescribed fresh air, simple food, and moderate exercise."If I stick to my work in Bethnal Green?""You will find yourself in Kensal Green.""And marriage——?""Madness, my dear sir, madness!"Mark climbed on to the top of the first 'bus which was rolling eastward. As he did so he heard a small boy proclaiming the name of a winner. The name seemed familiar. Then he remembered that it was one of Harry Kirtling's horses. He could see Kirtling's square, stalwart body and the handsome sun-tanned face above it. Of all the bitter minutes in his life, this one seemed to be the bitterest.When he reached the Mission, pressing work distracted his attention for some hours. He did it as thoroughly as usual, wondering what he should write to Betty when he was at liberty to go to his own room. He wondered also that his friends made no comment upon his appearance. Surely he carried scars. A small glass hung in the committee-room where he was sitting. He glanced at it. Outwardly he was unchanged.Not till the clock struck nine did he find himself alone. He wrote a letter to Betty, a long letter, which he read and destroyed. The next letter was short, curt, cold: he burned this also. A few minutes later, feeling pain in his hands, he discovered that his nails had lacerated the flesh. Then he knew that a fight for life and reason was beginning. The demons were crying "Surrender!" If he died to-night, Betty would be free; if he lingered on for half a dozen years, she might deem herself bond to a dying man. Virility repudiated such a sacrifice."O God," he cried, "let me die to-night!"Outside, the world of Whitechapel roared in derision. All Mark had known of poverty, of vice, of squalor, swelled into a chorus of despair. Here, in the heart of the slums, in an atmosphere tainted by the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands who had perished cursing God and man, he felt that he was choking for fresh air, that the pestilential fumes of every evil place into which he had entered were destroying him.He sat down limply on the edge of his bed, wondering whether the end would come soon, telling himself that he was dead already. At any rate his work was done; he would leave the Mission on the morrow. The animal instinct to slink off to some lonely spot where none might witness his misery became overpowering. But a letter to Betty must be written first. He crossed to his desk, where Betty's face smiled out of a silver frame. Gazing at this, he became so absorbed that three sharp taps on the door were unheeded. The Bishop of Poplar entered the room, pausing when he saw the head bent over the table, the thin fingers clutching the silver frame. He closed the door, crossed the room, and laid his hand upon Mark's shoulder."You are in sore trouble."Mark started to his feet with an exclamation compounded of fear and surprise."You—David——?" he stammered. "What b-brought you here?""You shall answer that question yourself," said Ross gravely.The men confronted each other. Great as the contrast was between the robust health of the one and the infirmity of the other, a critical eye might have detected a similarity in the two faces—a resemblance the stronger because it was born of the spirit rather than the flesh."I was crossing Welbeck Street this afternoon," said Ross, "when I saw you leave one of the houses. It was in my mind to follow and speak to you, but I was hastening to an appointment for which I was late, and leaving town for Scotland at eight. But it happened that I had noted the number of the house you were leaving, and I looked it up in a directory on the platform at Euston. Mind you, my train was about to start, and I had taken my ticket, but when I found out that you had seen Drax, I guessed what had happened. I let the train go on without me, and came on here. Was it coincidence that led me into Welbeck Street this afternoon, or something more?""I am under sentence of death," said Mark."Tell me all about it." He grasped his friend's hand.Mark obeyed. "She has always cared for me," he concluded, "always, you understand: ever since we were boy and girl. Many want her. Gorgeous insects have buzzed about her, but she flew to a poor drab-coloured moth. And I"—his voice shook—"I had fluttered about in the outer darkness——""Was it darkness, Mark?""I should have said twilight.""Then she was your sun?"Mark paused before he answered slowly: "God made the sun.""You try to slip by me," replied the other quickly. "Have I misread you? It seemed to me that you had ideals, standards, rules higher than the average, that for you the light shone more clearly, revealing what lay beyond. Was that light the glamour in a woman's eyes?""The light was reflected in her eyes. You press me hard, David. Shall I plead that the light, no matter whence its source, dazzled me. There have been times when I seemed to see the other shore: an enchanted land, so desirable that I wondered why men preferred to linger here. But now"—his voice grew harsh and troubled—"I want this earth. I want to live and love—here.""What do you propose to do?" David asked."Do?" Mark laughed bitterly. "What can I do, but die—the sooner the better? You are a strong man, David; it is hard for you to stand in my shoes; but if you were I you would surrender.""What?""Shall I say—everything.""You cannot surrender what you have done already, whether good or ill.""I have to surrender love," Mark muttered. "What do you know of that, David?""I loved a woman," Ross replied, "and I love her still, although she is but a memory"—his voice softened—"a memory of what might have been, and what will be. And shall I say that this love has fortified me, because I see it as the reflection of a greater love? The love you talk of surrendering is an imperishable possession."Mark said nothing.Ross continued: "Drax is a great authority, but he does not know, as I know, that you have never given your body a fair chance. Now—my word to you is FIGHT. Fight for life, fight for health, fight to save yourself as you have fought tooth and nail to save others! Again and again I've begged you to go to my lodge in Sutherland. Go there with me to-morrow! Drax prescribes fresh air, plain food, complete rest. These may be straws, but clutch them—clutch them! Why, man, I have towed worse wrecks than you into dry dock, and I've seen 'em sail out of harbour with every stitch of canvas set staunch and seaworthy craft! Be my guest for six months! Mark, Mark, my dear, good, foolish, gallant Mark—Fight!""Thank you, David," Mark replied. Then the smile which Bagshot knew well lit up the thin haggard face, as he added slowly: "I d-d-don't think it was c-c-coincidence which led you into Welbeck Street this afternoon."Next day Mark went North with David Ross. Before departure he wrote a letter to Betty, which successfully obscured the facts. He feared that Betty might insist upon appointing herself his nurse. And if she came to him, would he have strength to send her away? Once she had spoken shudderingly of a friend married to a hopeless invalid: a poor wretch lingering on, half dead, changing day by day into something unrecognisable in mind and body."You have the right," he wrote, "to demand an explanation, which I must give. I am and shall remain outside that garden into which we strayed last Saturday. What more can I say? Nothing. Try to think of me as a boy who was near and dear to you...."The letter was filled up with details concerning his work. Reading it, the conclusion was inevitable that the writer had become absorbed in such work. He hinted at the possibility of taking a vow of celibacy.Betty kissed this letter before she broke the seal, making sure that it was a love-letter. Then she read it, with perceptive faculties blunted by shock. Lady Randolph found her in the Italian garden, staring at the figure of Aphrodite."You were right," she exclaimed passionately. "Mark prefers his work to—me."Lady Randolph kissed her."I have been a fool," said Betty, bursting into tears.CHAPTER XVIIIARIADNE IN NAXOSLady Randolph wisely said nothing, but she wrote to Mark. He replied by return of post."I love her devotedly, but I have an almost incurable disease: the result of neglect. Don't let my people know of this. I had the presumption to believe that the sacrifice of the flesh was a sort of burnt-offering to God. The folly of it is hard to bear. Many men here are in a like self-crippled condition, and the doctor in charge, a good sort, makes scathing remarks. David Ross warned me several times; as did his successor at the Mission. Betty, of course, must never find out the truth, which I could not withhold from you, my kind friend. You can best serve her and me by finding her a good, faithful husband, such a fellow as Harry Kirtling, or Jim Corrance.... She is made for the happiness which marriage brings. I can take comfort in the thought that another may give her what is not mine to offer."Lady Randolph's eyes were wet, as she locked up this letter. Mark had not mentioned Archie as a possible husband. "That would break his heart," she muttered to herself.Betty and she returned to London, where, during the month that followed, Betty's simulated high spirits and inordinate appetite for excitement provoked a warning."If you don't bend, you'll break.""I am broken in pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, who ought to have been a girl. Men don't break when they tumble off their castle walls. I've stuck myself together, but I'm a cracked vessel."Lady Randolph wrote a note that evening to Mrs. Corrance. She had faith in the balsamic virtue of the atmosphere in and around King's Charteris, and she knew that Jim spent two days out of each week with his mother. Mrs. Corrance begged Betty to pay her a visit."Shall I go?" said Betty."I need a rest-cure," Lady Randolph replied pointedly.So Betty went down into the pleasant Slowshire country, where the warmth of her welcome gave the girl a curious thrill. The kisses of the gentle, grey-haired woman sounded deeps, although they could not touch bottom, for the motherless girl has deeps unplumbed by any fellow-creature. Tea was set out in the pretty old-fashioned drawing-room with its freshly calendered chintzes, its quaint Chelsea figures, its simple dignity of expression. Mrs. Corrance possessed some Queen Anne silver, which she had used daily ever since Betty could remember anything. It sparkled softly like the rings upon the white hands that touched it, shining with a subdued radiance of other days. Betty saw the same quiet glow in her old friend's kind eyes: the peace on the face of age which passes the understanding of youth.Hitherto she had regarded Mrs. Corrance with grateful affection, but as one to whom the wind had been tempered, one who lived in a fold seeing little beyond save Jim. Betty had always thought of her as mother. Now, she found herself wondering what part this quiet lady had played as sweetheart and wife. Tempests might have raged and died down, before she (Betty) was born. Mrs. Corrance's mind, like her house, was full of charming nooks, cosy corners, so to speak, wherein a tired spirit might take his ease, but perhaps there were also bare chambers into which none was allowed to enter. Into these, if they existed, Betty felt a shameful curiosity to go.While they drank tea Mrs. Corrance asked no questions. Betty listened with interest to an account of Jim and his doings in the markets of the world."He would like to instal me, me, my dear, in a fine house in some fashionable quarter." She laughed, and Betty laughed too, seeing that the mother was delighted secretly that her son should desire to lavish his wealth upon her."Do you despise the world, that you live out of it—always?" said Betty."I love the country," replied the elder woman evasively; then she added, as if the possibility had just occurred to her: "I hope you won't find it very dull here.""Not with you," said Betty, slipping her hand into her friend's.Next day, Mrs. Samphire drove over from Pitt Hall. She looked pinker and plumper than ever, and her hair—arranged in Madonna bands—gave her the vacuous expression of a stout Dutch doll. When the name was announced, Betty rose to fly, but Mrs. Corrance entreated her to remain. While Betty was hesitating, fearing the voluble tongue of Mark's stepmother, the lady herself bustled across the lawn to the chestnut tree beneath which Mrs. Corrance was sitting. In a moment the pleasant silences were shattered."How cool you look! And this is dear Betty Kirtling. We never expected to have the honour of seeing so smart a lady in our humdrum circles. Thank you, my poor husband is only so-so. The doctor has prescribed golf. We have laid out a small links in the park. I think golf such a charming game—don't you? I love to look on at it. You agree with me, I'm sure."Mrs. Corrance tried to lift this interjectional babble out of the rut."I suppose," she said reflectively, "that with us middle-aged women looking on at games is an inherited instinct. We have always looked on—haven't we? But Betty, I expect, likes to play golf."Betty, however, unkindly said nothing, while Mrs. Samphire bleated: "Oh, yes, I do like to see the Squire play golf. Although, when he misses the ball, he does—well, I mustn't tell tales out of school—must I? How is dear Lady Randolph? Did you have a large party for Ascot? Was the Prince there? I have seen your name in the Marlborough House lists. Really, I wonder you speak to me at all.""I haven't said much yet—have I?" said Betty. "Last time we met you were suffering horribly with neuralgia. Is it better?""I'm a martyr now to dyspepsia. I'm trying light and colour, Babbit, you know. If your poor, dear uncle were alive, how interested he would be. I'm wearing red next the skin.""In July?" ejaculated Mrs. Corrance."And I've changed the paper in my boudoir, which used to be a depressing blue, to bright yellow. All the water I drink is acted upon by a red lens. I want Mark to read Babbit. He has had a sort of breakdown. You heard of it?""A breakdown?" exclaimed Betty. "Did you say a—breakdown?"Light flashed upon her. Why had she not thought of this? Her thoughts crowding together clamoured so shrilly that she could barely hear Mrs. Samphire's querulous reply."We learned, quite by chance, that he was in a sanatorium in Sutherland. He ought to have come to Pitt Hall.""Have you asked him?" said Betty in a low voice."He would come to us if he wanted us."Shortly after Mrs. Samphire took her leave."Can Mark be seriously ill?" said Betty.Mrs. Corrance's clear eyes lingered for a moment on Betty's flushed cheeks; then she said tranquilly: "It is not impossible. If so, I don't blame him for going to Scotland.""He ought to be at Pitt Hall," said Betty. "I think I shall take a brisk walk."Two days later Betty met the Squire in Westchester. She soon discovered that he was hurt because his son had not come home."Perhaps he was anxious to spare you—and others. That would be like him.""Yes, yes; he's the best boy in the world. But I'm sure there's nothing serious the matter. We Samphires are as hard as nails.""If he—died up there without making a sign."The Squire stuttered and choked."God bless me! you alarm me. I must write at once. I shall insist on his coming home. Has he taken you into his confidence, my dear?""No.""Um! I thought once that—well, I shall write."Betty felt that her heart was beating."He will pay no attention to a letter. Why not go to him yourself, Mr. Samphire?""By God!—I will."Betty smiled faintly, for the Squire, when he set his mind to a thing, was easily turned aside.Then she went her way; and Mrs. Corrance noted in her diary that Betty seemed quieter, more like her old self.On the following Saturday Jim arrived from town, exhaling and exuding Capel Court. He strolled with Betty through lanes, where they had picked primroses and blackberries long ago; and the familiar trees and hedgerows stood like sentinels of the past, guarding simple joys, which Betty told herself could never return. Jim reminded her that a missel-thrush had built in the old pollard close to the village pound, and that the eggs, when about to be blown, proved addled."You were very keen about eggs," she said."I've always been keen," said Jim. "By Jove!—it was a sell about those eggs. Well—I still collect eggs, and some are addled! That Cornucopia mine, for instance...."He plunged into a description of a mining deal which had proved disastrous."But I got it back, and a lot more in six weeks.""Which excites you most—winning or losing, Jim?""One gets accustomed to winning," said the successful speculator, "but losing is heart-breaking, particularly when you are unable to guess what the loss will be.""Ah," said Betty. "What do you do with your gains?""Let 'em increase and multiply. The mater won't live in a better house, I mean a larger, and she refuses, in advance, all the presents that I've not given her." He laughed, then he continued in a hard voice: "That question of loss interests me."He looked at Betty, who slightly lowered her parasol and made no reply."I never forget my losses.""Because they have been few?""Because they have been heavy. The fellows in our market would tell you that I have a very serious failing: I don't know when to let go.""I call that a virtue: in a word, you don't know when you're beat.""No," he said steadily. "I don't know when I'm beat."A silence followed, during which the tamer of bulls and bears decapitated a few dandelions. Betty watched him out of the corner of her eye. A certain dexterity and ruthlessness in Jim's use of his cane had significance. Then she found herself wondering what Jim looked like when he was a boy. She could not recall her old playmate, being obsessed for the moment by the man beside her. Some men always retain the look of youth—Mark was one of these; others would seem to have been born old; many, like Jim Corrance, assume early a hard and impenetrable crust of middle age. Jim's face was thin and lined, although he had the square figure of an athlete. One could not picture him as a rosy-cheeked urchin, nor could one believe that he would grow feeble, and bent, and white-haired. And yet, despite his strength and success, Betty felt poignantly sorry for him. And being a woman she showed her compassion in a score of inflections, gestures, which were as spikenard to the man who loved her."I wonder you are so nice to me," he said presently; then as she raised her delicate brows he added quickly: "I've cut loose from so much you revere. It's a pill for the mater, but I couldn't play the humbug. I look at life as it is: as it appears, I mean, to me—a place where the devil takes the hindmost.""And those in front——""Oh—I dare say the devil takes them also—later."Betty changed the subject, not because it was distasteful, but for the subtler reason that she feared her own thoughts, which stuck in a slough of despond. For the rest of the walk they prattled gaily enough of the pranks they had played as boy and girl. Jim's face insensibly softened, so that Betty caught a glimpse of the Harrovian. Then, at the mention of Archie's name, the talk flowed back into the present."I never asked you what you thought of that wonderful sermon of his."Jim admitted surprise. "Old Archie has come on," he added. "He's a plodder, and he's good to look at, and he means to 'get there.'""To get—where?""To the bench of bishops.""I used to underrate Archie, but there's a lot in him.""A lot of him, too. Oh—you needn't frown, Betty. I think that Archie makes a capital parson; and I dare say he'll personally conduct a select party of you Slowshire people to heaven.""How bitter you are, Jim.""I won't be bitter when I'm with you," he promised. "I say, there's the bush where we caught the Duke of Burgundy fritillary. I saw it in the old cabinet the other day. You nailed it with your hat and gave it to me, although you wanted it yourself. I felt a beast for taking it, but I adored you for being so unselfish.""You offered me your Purple Emperor next day.""And you refused it," said Jim quickly."So I did. I must tell everybody that I have refused an Emperor.""Not to mention smaller fry. Three months ago I thought you meant to marry Harry Kirtling, and he thought so too, by Jove!""You dare to insinuate that I encouraged him?""You have a way with you, Betty." He glanced at her ardently, but she looked down, faintly blushing, as he continued: "You are not one of these modern young women who can stand alone.""That is true," she said simply. "I am not strong enough to stand alone, and I admire in men the qualities lacking in myself. We had better go home; your mother will be waiting for her tea."Jim said no more, but in the evening he asked his mother if she had any reason to suppose that an understanding existed between Mark and Betty."When she refused Kirtling, Pynsent and I made certain she was engaged to Mark. Now he has gone to the uttermost ends of the earth, and she never mentions his name to me.""Nor to me," said Mrs. Corrance. Then she touched her son's shoulder very gently. "Do not make ropes out of sand, dear."Jim went back to town on Monday morning, but he returned to King's Charteris the following Friday, and walked once more with Betty in the lovely woods which lie between Westchester and the New Forest. Naturally and by training an acute observer, although a keener judge of men than women, Betty puzzled him. He saw that she was slightly contemptuous of the material side of life, although willing to listen by the hour to his presentment of it. This, however, might be a phase, a mood. He felt assured, now, that Betty would have married Mark had he asked her to do so, and he lay awake at night wondering whether she would marry anybody else. For the rest he determined that he must make haste slowly. He would give the girl the fellowship she craved without defining its elements. That she was grateful for such abstinence her manner proved. She became at once open, candid, a delightful companion.Meantime the Squire had not left Pitt Hall. When he met Betty, he said, with some confusion, that the "Madam" (as he called Mrs. Samphire) had opposed so long a journey; one, moreover, which was like to prove a fool's errand. He excused himself by complaining querulously of an estate which exacted constant supervision. His face was even more florid than usual, and his manner less complacent. When Betty mentioned this to Archie (who rode over from Westchester on a well-bred cob), he expressed a fear that his father was losing money."He spoke of going North," Betty said, after a pause. "If Mark is really ill, surely he ought to be nursed by—by his nearest and dearest?"Archie betrayed astonishment."Ill? Really ill? I've heard nothing of serious illness, not a word. How do you know, Betty?""I have guessed," she answered vehemently. "He has slipped away to—todie, perhaps!"Archie showed a most lively concern."No, no, you exaggerate. Look here, Betty, if someone ought to go North, I'll go.""Oh, Archie—if you would.""Dear old Mark! Of course I'll go. It happens that I can get a week's leave. I'll bring him home with me."He spoke in a warm, sympathetic tone, kindling Betty's gratitude and affection. Never had she liked Mark's brother so well."You can spare the time, Archie?""Yes, yes; I'm so glad you spoke to me. By the way, I've a piece of news for you—great news, too. I am commanded to preach at Windsor.""Oh, Archie, Iampleased to hear that. It will mean so much—won't it.""Yes."She asked questions: Was the date set? Had he a theme? and so forth. "You know," she continued gravely, "I shall never forget your Westchester sermon. Many sermons touch one, but that gripped. Often, I've not been quite fair to you, and now I'm horribly ashamed of myself. You forgive me?""My dear Betty! I say—was there so great a difference between that sermon and others I have preached?""Why, Archie, how modest you are! Don't you know that you climbed to the heights that Whit-Sunday? Before, you seemed to be rambling about on the comfortable plains. Oh, I know we can't scale mountains every day. Lord Randolph said as much——" She paused."What did Lord Randolph say?""He did not intend that it should reach your ears.""Betty—you will do me a favour by repeating what he said as he said it. I am not thin-skinned.""Well, he said that beer was good liquor, and that spirits should be used sparingly. You couldn't preach such a sermon as that every Sunday.""Not I," said Archie."The great thing is that you can stir up hearts when the occasion comes. I feel sure you will surpass yourself at Windsor.""I wishIfelt sure, Betty. Well—I'll do my best to persuade Mark to return with me, but he's obstinate as a mule where his health is concerned. Shall I give him any message from you?""You can give him—my love."She spoke with assumed lightness of tone. Archie found a phrase."A man would travel farther than Sutherland to receive that." Then he took his leave, gravely smiling."He's a good sort," said Betty.None the less she told herself that her intuitions in regard to men were fluid. Again and again she tried to grasp them, to mould them into permanent form, into definiteness; always they flowed away—peaceably sometimes, with a sweet melodic cadence, as of a Scotch burn, but more often roaring, like the same burn in spate; in either case leaving but a small silt behind.The two days following Archie's departure she spent alone in the woods (for Mrs. Corrance seldom left her pretty garden), seeking from Nature an answer to the problem in her heart. The great oaks and beeches preserved an inviolate silence in those languorous July days, but the pines seemed to have a message for an attentive ear. Their sighs were, perhaps, the warning voices of the innumerable dead, hushed and (to most mortals) inarticulate. Here and there amidst this rich pastoral country Betty found sterile acres where even the hardy fir failed to find sustenance. These patches in the landscape had a weird fascination. Betty perceived beauty, dignity, in their subtle, faded tints, their delicate greys and shadowy browns. Once upon a time, doubtless, these barren spots had bloomed, too luxuriantly, perhaps; in due time they would bloom again in splendid resurrection. In the centre of one of the stony places a young birch tree of great beauty stretched slender limbs toward the green paradise which encompassed it, inclining slightly to the south."I am like that birch," said Betty.
After the service, the Dean took Archie's hand and congratulated him. "You have spoken with tongues," he said, in his too cold voice, which impressed but never thrilled. Archibald hesitated, flushed, clutched at opportunity and missed it. The Dean turned aside as others approached. To them Archie listened, wondering if Betty knew. The Dean, watching him, amended previous estimates. "The man is really modest," he told his wife at luncheon. "He blushed and stammered when I spoke to him."
Archie went into the Close, accompanied by a prebendary, whom, as it happened, he had slight reason to dislike. As he left the cathedral he saw a small group: the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph, and Lady Randolph; Pynsent and Jim Corrance were standing beyond these. The Prime Minister acclaimed the preacher in Latin, holding out both hands:
"I salute Chrysostom," and then he added simply: "Thank you—thank you!"
Once more Archibald clutched at opportunity, but the prebendary, eyeing him with jealous glance, stood between him and confession. Then Lord Randolph and his wife, Pynsent and Corrance, swelled a chorus of felicitation. Archie was feeling that the truth must be written on his scarlet face. But his friends, like the Dean, attributed confusion to modesty.
"Here he is!"
Betty's voice rose above the chorus. Pynsent made way for her. Mark followed, looking pale and worn.
"Oh, Archie, what can I say?" Her face was radiant. He did not suspect that she wished to apologise for every idle jest at his expense, for every thought and word (and there were many) which now seemed to stain not him but her, the shallow-witted creature, seeing the ludicrous and blind to what lay beneath. "I shall never chaff you again, never."
Archie, however, was looking at Mark. At the moment he realised that unless he spoke, Mark would hold his peace. Mark had not told Betty yet. The group around him was breaking up. The Prime Minister had his watch in his hand. Lord Randolph had turned his back. Betty began again, excitedly:
"And I might have missed it. Aren't you going to shake hands with him, Mark?"
Silently Mark extended his hand. At his brother's touch Archie stammered out: "I owe everything to Mark: he helped me; he has always helped me."
Mark's eyes demanded more; his grasp tightened. The others, hearing but not understanding, shuffled somewhat impatiently. Betty frowned, wondering why Mark was so unresponsive. Surely he would say something. Then she remembered that since they left the south door of the cathedral he had said nothing. Was it possible that he grudged his brother this triumph? From any other man such jealousy would have provoked pity and sympathy, but she had loved and respected Mark because she had never been able to conceive of him as being mean or petty-minded. Yet, long ago, he had confessed that ambition was his besetting sin!
"We shall not be home till two," said Lady Randolph. "Come, all of you!"
She bustled away, followed by the others. Archibald dropped his brother's hand, and strode off in the direction of his lodgings. He would not join the party till after the afternoon's service. Betty glanced at Mark.
"You never congratulated him. He went away hurt, poor fellow! Mark—how could you? And it was your praise he wanted. I saw that. He looked hungrily—at you."
Then Mark laughed, while the shadows in Betty's eyes deepened. That she was perplexed he saw, that she was deeply distressed he had yet to learn. And to give him his due he was thinking at that moment not of Betty, nor of himself, but of Archie. He regretted that he had not told Betty the truth, but her admiration had been so great, her praise so extravagant, that he had shrunk from the assertive: "I did it. I wrote it." Now, if he spoke, Betty being a woman of likes and dislikes, would scorn his brother and make no effort to hide that scorn. All this whirled through his brain while he laughed, because she had misinterpreted the expression of hunger in Archie's eyes.
"Don't laugh!" she enjoined sharply. "Did you not think his sermon splendid?"
"It sounded better than I expected," he said, wondering if she would guess. He made so certain that she would guess. It amazed him that the lynx-eyed Lady Randolph, her sagacious lord, Pynsent, Corrance had been so easily befooled. He had yet to learn that the world is equally prone to believe that a fool may prove a sage as a sage a fool. The unexpected excites and disturbs the reason.
"We have all underrated him," she rejoined, more gently.
At tea-time Lord Randolph returned to Birr Wood, bringing Archibald with him. After tea Lord Randolph drew Mark aside and told him that the Prime Minister had asked many questions concerning the Samphires of Pitt.
"I told him," said he, "that your maternal grandfather had a strain of Wesley's and Sheridan's blood. It seems that he knew and loved him. He must have been a remarkable man."
"My mother adored him," Mark replied. "I can just recall some of the things she said about him."
"Justice was not done him, I fear. He served faithfully ungrateful masters. Perhaps he ought to have been a preacher. At any rate his mantle seems to have descended upon your brother."
He moved away, wondering why Mark had shown so little enthusiasm.
Presently Lady Randolph, under cover of the chatter, said a few words:
"I account for our surprise this morning in one word: Inspiration. There was Goldsmith, for instance. Not that I wish to make comparisons. Archibald is no idiot to be sure, very much the contrary, still I never gave him credit for being a humourist."
"A humourist, Lady Randolph?"
"What? You missed the humour in his sermon—you? Why if I hadn't cried I must have laughed. What was the keynote of that sermon? Renunciation. Eh? The word was not mentioned. Very true, but it informed every phrase. It might have been written by a man who had failed in this world, but who knew that elsewhere his failure would be reckoned as success. The stone that the builders rejected became the head of the corner. Well, so far as this world is concerned, Archie has always succeeded. He has genius in being able to put himself in the place of the man who has failed."
"And the humour?"
"I am coming to that. I go the round of this huge house every Saturday morning, and the house-keeper will tell you that my eyesight is unimpaired. I went into your room, sir, and what did I see?"
"Spare me," said Mark.
"Soit! I went into your brother's room. I declare he has prettier things on his dressing-table than I have on mine. And well-cut boots in trees, eau de Lubin on his washstand, and on his chest of drawers—a trouser-press! Oh! there's no harm in such things, of course, but that sermon this morning and the trouser-press! The golden sandals—treed! The halo sprinkled with eau de Lubin! And yet, and yet he made me cry: hardened old sinner that I am! So I say that he is a genius, and an unconscious humourist, and a Chrysostom, and altogether a most amazing person. Now, go and talk to a younger woman."
Mark obeyed. His old friend eyed his thin figure as he crossed the room.
"How much help did he give his brother?" she muttered to herself.
Archie was surrounded by joyous prattlers. Harry Kirtling, Pynsent, and Jim Corrance were with Betty.
"We are still jawing about your brother's sermon," said Harry Kirtling. "I am sorry to say I missed the first part. A line from my stud groom this morning rather upset me. Dear old Trumpeter has navicular. My best gee—worst luck! Well, by Jove! that sermon cheered me up; it did, indeed. I felt confoundly ashamed of myself and my own small affairs. That was the effect it had on me. But Corrance and Pynsent say it made 'em blue."
"Every man worth his salt wants to be at the head of the procession here," Pynsent explained, in his slightly nasal New England accent.
"Archie stuck his knife into me and turned it," said Corrance.
"You've misinterpreted the whole thing," Mark replied eagerly. "Every man has his work here, but who knows what relation it may bear, if any, to the work which comes after? Great achievements dwindle into insignificance within a d-decade. Why, then, should we t-tear ourselves to p-p-p——"
Meeting Betty's eyes, the abominable lump came into his throat. He paused abruptly, turning aside. Archie, who had joined them, said with authority:
"Mark is right. We make a mad effort to scribble our names upon the quicksands of time." (Mark, with his back still turned to the group, smiled.) "And we die wretched," Archie went on, "because Time's tides wash out our writing within an hour. This struggle after personal recognition is a certain sign of decadence in a nation."
Mark looked at Betty, who was listening to the speaker with faintly glowing cheeks. Pynsent and Corrance seemed to be impressed, because Archie as preacher (thus Mark reflected) had bewitched them. Yesterday, only yesterday, an obscure minor canon would not have so delivered himself; if he had, the others would have scoffed at him as a prig.
"Are we to fight without pay, my dear boy?"
Lord Randolph had approached, cynical, yet interested.
"Forlorn hopes were led before the Victoria Cross was given," murmured Archie deferentially. Then he remembered that Mark had said this, and that Mark was present. At this thought he blushed vividly, once more confirming an impression of modesty. He tried to make amends to Mark. "Why, Mark and I were speaking of this only last night. What did you say, Mark?"
"N-nothing worth r-repeating," stammered Mark.
"He said that a desperate enterprise never lacked men to attempt it. And what allures men to almost certain death? The pay, Lord Randolph? You would be the last to affirm that. Have we not heard of many a noble fellow falling, maybe, within a few feet of the goal, seeing with dying eyes comrades triumphantly scaling the heights, knowing that the success of those comrades was rooted in the bodies over which they had passed to victory? And these—the failures—have died with a glad shout upon their lips; they have been found horribly mutilated, but with a smile on their dead faces. Shall we pity such men, Lord Randolph, or envy them?"
Mark slipped from the room before Lord Randolph replied. Outside the door he discovered that his fists were clenched.
CHAPTER XVII
SURRENDER!
On the following Tuesday, when Mark reached Amos Barger's house, he was told that the surgeon could not see him for a quarter of an hour. Mark followed a manservant into a back dining-room ponderously furnished with mahogany and horsehair. The paper on the wall was hideous in pattern and colour; the wainscoting was grained in imitation of oak; on the square table in the centre of the room lay the comic papers and some society weeklies, amongst themKosmosandMayfair. Under the latter wasThe Bistoury. Mark paced up and down, pausing now and again to look out of a window which commanded a prospect of dingy back-walls and chimney-pots. From the front of the house a charming glimpse of the trees in Cavendish Square redeemed the dull uniformity of the street. Mark had noticed how green was their foliage, recalling the fact that soot is as Mellin's food to the vegetable world. His fancy seized this fact and played with it. Soot, the most defiling of things, transmuted by some amazing process into a brilliant pigment! What a text for a sermon! Presently Mark approached the book-case—a solid, glazed affair as heavy, doubtless, as the works within. To his surprise, he found the lightest of fiction, and every volume showed signs of use. Barger, he reflected, was a wise man to laugh with Anstey and Frank Stockton, but he ought really to buy some new furniture. Then he remembered that Barger had admitted failure, more or less. Possibly, these grim Penates had been taken at a low valuation from the outgoing tenant. With these fugitive speculations he escaped from his own thoughts and fears.
When he went upstairs the surgeon, while shaking hands, eyed him keenly.
"I am the better for my holiday," said Mark.
Barger nodded, and pointed to a chair.
"You said in the train I might live to make old bones. Weakness of heart is not a bar to marriage—is it?"
"Very much the contrary," said the surgeon grimly. "And if you are sound in other respects——"
"I have never known what it is to be really ill," said Mark eagerly; "and I don't think I've had breakfast in bed since I left Harrow."
"And not often there—eh? Never shammed at school did you when the first lesson was a bit stiff?"
"The first lesson never was very stiff—to me," Mark replied.
Barger, with impassive face, began an examination, which lasted longer than Mark expected. At the end Mark said nervously: "The heart is not weaker than it was?"
"Your heart need not cause you any serious anxiety," said the surgeon slowly.
"Thank God!" exclaimed the young man. "From your face I feared a different verdict."
"There is other trouble, Mr. Samphire."
Then Mark smiled pitifully. His premonition of disaster was justified.
"You can speak f-f-frankly," he stammered.
The surgeon spoke frankly, making plain in his precise phraseology what was and what might be. "You will take another opinion," he concluded, "but it is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. These," he pointed to some reagents, "never lie. Doctors do—sometimes."
"I thank you for not lying to me," said Mark gravely.
Barger fumbled with his test tubes, and then burst out vehemently:
"Your only chance lies in the most careful diet, a life in the open air; and even then the issue is doubtful."
"And—marriage?"
"Out of the question."
"But if I got better? Should I be justified in asking a woman to wait?"
His voice was dry and husky. Barger shook his head. The trouble might be staved off for a time, hut there was always the probability of return.
"You have neglected your body," he said irritably. "You have defrauded it of all things essential, and it has taken its revenge. Oh, you parsons who think of others, why can't you see that you would serve the world better if you thought more of yourselves?"
Mark could read the sympathy and pity latent beneath frowns and irritability. He held out his hand. Barger continued:
"You must go to a physician. Yours is not a case for a surgeon. You might try Sir John Drax. He's a specialist. Shall I write him a note? He lives near here, in Welbeck Street."
Berger scribbled a few lines, and handed them to Mark.
"See him at once," he commanded; "suspense is unendurable."
Mark went his way, so blinded by misery that in crossing the street he barely escaped being run over by a big van. He sprang to one side in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation.
Within half an hour Sir John Drax had confirmed Barger's diagnosis and prognosis. Then he asked bluntly if his patient had independent means. An affirmative simplified the case. He, too, prescribed fresh air, simple food, and moderate exercise.
"If I stick to my work in Bethnal Green?"
"You will find yourself in Kensal Green."
"And marriage——?"
"Madness, my dear sir, madness!"
Mark climbed on to the top of the first 'bus which was rolling eastward. As he did so he heard a small boy proclaiming the name of a winner. The name seemed familiar. Then he remembered that it was one of Harry Kirtling's horses. He could see Kirtling's square, stalwart body and the handsome sun-tanned face above it. Of all the bitter minutes in his life, this one seemed to be the bitterest.
When he reached the Mission, pressing work distracted his attention for some hours. He did it as thoroughly as usual, wondering what he should write to Betty when he was at liberty to go to his own room. He wondered also that his friends made no comment upon his appearance. Surely he carried scars. A small glass hung in the committee-room where he was sitting. He glanced at it. Outwardly he was unchanged.
Not till the clock struck nine did he find himself alone. He wrote a letter to Betty, a long letter, which he read and destroyed. The next letter was short, curt, cold: he burned this also. A few minutes later, feeling pain in his hands, he discovered that his nails had lacerated the flesh. Then he knew that a fight for life and reason was beginning. The demons were crying "Surrender!" If he died to-night, Betty would be free; if he lingered on for half a dozen years, she might deem herself bond to a dying man. Virility repudiated such a sacrifice.
"O God," he cried, "let me die to-night!"
Outside, the world of Whitechapel roared in derision. All Mark had known of poverty, of vice, of squalor, swelled into a chorus of despair. Here, in the heart of the slums, in an atmosphere tainted by the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands who had perished cursing God and man, he felt that he was choking for fresh air, that the pestilential fumes of every evil place into which he had entered were destroying him.
He sat down limply on the edge of his bed, wondering whether the end would come soon, telling himself that he was dead already. At any rate his work was done; he would leave the Mission on the morrow. The animal instinct to slink off to some lonely spot where none might witness his misery became overpowering. But a letter to Betty must be written first. He crossed to his desk, where Betty's face smiled out of a silver frame. Gazing at this, he became so absorbed that three sharp taps on the door were unheeded. The Bishop of Poplar entered the room, pausing when he saw the head bent over the table, the thin fingers clutching the silver frame. He closed the door, crossed the room, and laid his hand upon Mark's shoulder.
"You are in sore trouble."
Mark started to his feet with an exclamation compounded of fear and surprise.
"You—David——?" he stammered. "What b-brought you here?"
"You shall answer that question yourself," said Ross gravely.
The men confronted each other. Great as the contrast was between the robust health of the one and the infirmity of the other, a critical eye might have detected a similarity in the two faces—a resemblance the stronger because it was born of the spirit rather than the flesh.
"I was crossing Welbeck Street this afternoon," said Ross, "when I saw you leave one of the houses. It was in my mind to follow and speak to you, but I was hastening to an appointment for which I was late, and leaving town for Scotland at eight. But it happened that I had noted the number of the house you were leaving, and I looked it up in a directory on the platform at Euston. Mind you, my train was about to start, and I had taken my ticket, but when I found out that you had seen Drax, I guessed what had happened. I let the train go on without me, and came on here. Was it coincidence that led me into Welbeck Street this afternoon, or something more?"
"I am under sentence of death," said Mark.
"Tell me all about it." He grasped his friend's hand.
Mark obeyed. "She has always cared for me," he concluded, "always, you understand: ever since we were boy and girl. Many want her. Gorgeous insects have buzzed about her, but she flew to a poor drab-coloured moth. And I"—his voice shook—"I had fluttered about in the outer darkness——"
"Was it darkness, Mark?"
"I should have said twilight."
"Then she was your sun?"
Mark paused before he answered slowly: "God made the sun."
"You try to slip by me," replied the other quickly. "Have I misread you? It seemed to me that you had ideals, standards, rules higher than the average, that for you the light shone more clearly, revealing what lay beyond. Was that light the glamour in a woman's eyes?"
"The light was reflected in her eyes. You press me hard, David. Shall I plead that the light, no matter whence its source, dazzled me. There have been times when I seemed to see the other shore: an enchanted land, so desirable that I wondered why men preferred to linger here. But now"—his voice grew harsh and troubled—"I want this earth. I want to live and love—here."
"What do you propose to do?" David asked.
"Do?" Mark laughed bitterly. "What can I do, but die—the sooner the better? You are a strong man, David; it is hard for you to stand in my shoes; but if you were I you would surrender."
"What?"
"Shall I say—everything."
"You cannot surrender what you have done already, whether good or ill."
"I have to surrender love," Mark muttered. "What do you know of that, David?"
"I loved a woman," Ross replied, "and I love her still, although she is but a memory"—his voice softened—"a memory of what might have been, and what will be. And shall I say that this love has fortified me, because I see it as the reflection of a greater love? The love you talk of surrendering is an imperishable possession."
Mark said nothing.
Ross continued: "Drax is a great authority, but he does not know, as I know, that you have never given your body a fair chance. Now—my word to you is FIGHT. Fight for life, fight for health, fight to save yourself as you have fought tooth and nail to save others! Again and again I've begged you to go to my lodge in Sutherland. Go there with me to-morrow! Drax prescribes fresh air, plain food, complete rest. These may be straws, but clutch them—clutch them! Why, man, I have towed worse wrecks than you into dry dock, and I've seen 'em sail out of harbour with every stitch of canvas set staunch and seaworthy craft! Be my guest for six months! Mark, Mark, my dear, good, foolish, gallant Mark—Fight!"
"Thank you, David," Mark replied. Then the smile which Bagshot knew well lit up the thin haggard face, as he added slowly: "I d-d-don't think it was c-c-coincidence which led you into Welbeck Street this afternoon."
Next day Mark went North with David Ross. Before departure he wrote a letter to Betty, which successfully obscured the facts. He feared that Betty might insist upon appointing herself his nurse. And if she came to him, would he have strength to send her away? Once she had spoken shudderingly of a friend married to a hopeless invalid: a poor wretch lingering on, half dead, changing day by day into something unrecognisable in mind and body.
"You have the right," he wrote, "to demand an explanation, which I must give. I am and shall remain outside that garden into which we strayed last Saturday. What more can I say? Nothing. Try to think of me as a boy who was near and dear to you...."
The letter was filled up with details concerning his work. Reading it, the conclusion was inevitable that the writer had become absorbed in such work. He hinted at the possibility of taking a vow of celibacy.
Betty kissed this letter before she broke the seal, making sure that it was a love-letter. Then she read it, with perceptive faculties blunted by shock. Lady Randolph found her in the Italian garden, staring at the figure of Aphrodite.
"You were right," she exclaimed passionately. "Mark prefers his work to—me."
Lady Randolph kissed her.
"I have been a fool," said Betty, bursting into tears.
CHAPTER XVIII
ARIADNE IN NAXOS
Lady Randolph wisely said nothing, but she wrote to Mark. He replied by return of post.
"I love her devotedly, but I have an almost incurable disease: the result of neglect. Don't let my people know of this. I had the presumption to believe that the sacrifice of the flesh was a sort of burnt-offering to God. The folly of it is hard to bear. Many men here are in a like self-crippled condition, and the doctor in charge, a good sort, makes scathing remarks. David Ross warned me several times; as did his successor at the Mission. Betty, of course, must never find out the truth, which I could not withhold from you, my kind friend. You can best serve her and me by finding her a good, faithful husband, such a fellow as Harry Kirtling, or Jim Corrance.... She is made for the happiness which marriage brings. I can take comfort in the thought that another may give her what is not mine to offer."
Lady Randolph's eyes were wet, as she locked up this letter. Mark had not mentioned Archie as a possible husband. "That would break his heart," she muttered to herself.
Betty and she returned to London, where, during the month that followed, Betty's simulated high spirits and inordinate appetite for excitement provoked a warning.
"If you don't bend, you'll break."
"I am broken in pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, who ought to have been a girl. Men don't break when they tumble off their castle walls. I've stuck myself together, but I'm a cracked vessel."
Lady Randolph wrote a note that evening to Mrs. Corrance. She had faith in the balsamic virtue of the atmosphere in and around King's Charteris, and she knew that Jim spent two days out of each week with his mother. Mrs. Corrance begged Betty to pay her a visit.
"Shall I go?" said Betty.
"I need a rest-cure," Lady Randolph replied pointedly.
So Betty went down into the pleasant Slowshire country, where the warmth of her welcome gave the girl a curious thrill. The kisses of the gentle, grey-haired woman sounded deeps, although they could not touch bottom, for the motherless girl has deeps unplumbed by any fellow-creature. Tea was set out in the pretty old-fashioned drawing-room with its freshly calendered chintzes, its quaint Chelsea figures, its simple dignity of expression. Mrs. Corrance possessed some Queen Anne silver, which she had used daily ever since Betty could remember anything. It sparkled softly like the rings upon the white hands that touched it, shining with a subdued radiance of other days. Betty saw the same quiet glow in her old friend's kind eyes: the peace on the face of age which passes the understanding of youth.
Hitherto she had regarded Mrs. Corrance with grateful affection, but as one to whom the wind had been tempered, one who lived in a fold seeing little beyond save Jim. Betty had always thought of her as mother. Now, she found herself wondering what part this quiet lady had played as sweetheart and wife. Tempests might have raged and died down, before she (Betty) was born. Mrs. Corrance's mind, like her house, was full of charming nooks, cosy corners, so to speak, wherein a tired spirit might take his ease, but perhaps there were also bare chambers into which none was allowed to enter. Into these, if they existed, Betty felt a shameful curiosity to go.
While they drank tea Mrs. Corrance asked no questions. Betty listened with interest to an account of Jim and his doings in the markets of the world.
"He would like to instal me, me, my dear, in a fine house in some fashionable quarter." She laughed, and Betty laughed too, seeing that the mother was delighted secretly that her son should desire to lavish his wealth upon her.
"Do you despise the world, that you live out of it—always?" said Betty.
"I love the country," replied the elder woman evasively; then she added, as if the possibility had just occurred to her: "I hope you won't find it very dull here."
"Not with you," said Betty, slipping her hand into her friend's.
Next day, Mrs. Samphire drove over from Pitt Hall. She looked pinker and plumper than ever, and her hair—arranged in Madonna bands—gave her the vacuous expression of a stout Dutch doll. When the name was announced, Betty rose to fly, but Mrs. Corrance entreated her to remain. While Betty was hesitating, fearing the voluble tongue of Mark's stepmother, the lady herself bustled across the lawn to the chestnut tree beneath which Mrs. Corrance was sitting. In a moment the pleasant silences were shattered.
"How cool you look! And this is dear Betty Kirtling. We never expected to have the honour of seeing so smart a lady in our humdrum circles. Thank you, my poor husband is only so-so. The doctor has prescribed golf. We have laid out a small links in the park. I think golf such a charming game—don't you? I love to look on at it. You agree with me, I'm sure."
Mrs. Corrance tried to lift this interjectional babble out of the rut.
"I suppose," she said reflectively, "that with us middle-aged women looking on at games is an inherited instinct. We have always looked on—haven't we? But Betty, I expect, likes to play golf."
Betty, however, unkindly said nothing, while Mrs. Samphire bleated: "Oh, yes, I do like to see the Squire play golf. Although, when he misses the ball, he does—well, I mustn't tell tales out of school—must I? How is dear Lady Randolph? Did you have a large party for Ascot? Was the Prince there? I have seen your name in the Marlborough House lists. Really, I wonder you speak to me at all."
"I haven't said much yet—have I?" said Betty. "Last time we met you were suffering horribly with neuralgia. Is it better?"
"I'm a martyr now to dyspepsia. I'm trying light and colour, Babbit, you know. If your poor, dear uncle were alive, how interested he would be. I'm wearing red next the skin."
"In July?" ejaculated Mrs. Corrance.
"And I've changed the paper in my boudoir, which used to be a depressing blue, to bright yellow. All the water I drink is acted upon by a red lens. I want Mark to read Babbit. He has had a sort of breakdown. You heard of it?"
"A breakdown?" exclaimed Betty. "Did you say a—breakdown?"
Light flashed upon her. Why had she not thought of this? Her thoughts crowding together clamoured so shrilly that she could barely hear Mrs. Samphire's querulous reply.
"We learned, quite by chance, that he was in a sanatorium in Sutherland. He ought to have come to Pitt Hall."
"Have you asked him?" said Betty in a low voice.
"He would come to us if he wanted us."
Shortly after Mrs. Samphire took her leave.
"Can Mark be seriously ill?" said Betty.
Mrs. Corrance's clear eyes lingered for a moment on Betty's flushed cheeks; then she said tranquilly: "It is not impossible. If so, I don't blame him for going to Scotland."
"He ought to be at Pitt Hall," said Betty. "I think I shall take a brisk walk."
Two days later Betty met the Squire in Westchester. She soon discovered that he was hurt because his son had not come home.
"Perhaps he was anxious to spare you—and others. That would be like him."
"Yes, yes; he's the best boy in the world. But I'm sure there's nothing serious the matter. We Samphires are as hard as nails."
"If he—died up there without making a sign."
The Squire stuttered and choked.
"God bless me! you alarm me. I must write at once. I shall insist on his coming home. Has he taken you into his confidence, my dear?"
"No."
"Um! I thought once that—well, I shall write."
Betty felt that her heart was beating.
"He will pay no attention to a letter. Why not go to him yourself, Mr. Samphire?"
"By God!—I will."
Betty smiled faintly, for the Squire, when he set his mind to a thing, was easily turned aside.
Then she went her way; and Mrs. Corrance noted in her diary that Betty seemed quieter, more like her old self.
On the following Saturday Jim arrived from town, exhaling and exuding Capel Court. He strolled with Betty through lanes, where they had picked primroses and blackberries long ago; and the familiar trees and hedgerows stood like sentinels of the past, guarding simple joys, which Betty told herself could never return. Jim reminded her that a missel-thrush had built in the old pollard close to the village pound, and that the eggs, when about to be blown, proved addled.
"You were very keen about eggs," she said.
"I've always been keen," said Jim. "By Jove!—it was a sell about those eggs. Well—I still collect eggs, and some are addled! That Cornucopia mine, for instance...."
He plunged into a description of a mining deal which had proved disastrous.
"But I got it back, and a lot more in six weeks."
"Which excites you most—winning or losing, Jim?"
"One gets accustomed to winning," said the successful speculator, "but losing is heart-breaking, particularly when you are unable to guess what the loss will be."
"Ah," said Betty. "What do you do with your gains?"
"Let 'em increase and multiply. The mater won't live in a better house, I mean a larger, and she refuses, in advance, all the presents that I've not given her." He laughed, then he continued in a hard voice: "That question of loss interests me."
He looked at Betty, who slightly lowered her parasol and made no reply.
"I never forget my losses."
"Because they have been few?"
"Because they have been heavy. The fellows in our market would tell you that I have a very serious failing: I don't know when to let go."
"I call that a virtue: in a word, you don't know when you're beat."
"No," he said steadily. "I don't know when I'm beat."
A silence followed, during which the tamer of bulls and bears decapitated a few dandelions. Betty watched him out of the corner of her eye. A certain dexterity and ruthlessness in Jim's use of his cane had significance. Then she found herself wondering what Jim looked like when he was a boy. She could not recall her old playmate, being obsessed for the moment by the man beside her. Some men always retain the look of youth—Mark was one of these; others would seem to have been born old; many, like Jim Corrance, assume early a hard and impenetrable crust of middle age. Jim's face was thin and lined, although he had the square figure of an athlete. One could not picture him as a rosy-cheeked urchin, nor could one believe that he would grow feeble, and bent, and white-haired. And yet, despite his strength and success, Betty felt poignantly sorry for him. And being a woman she showed her compassion in a score of inflections, gestures, which were as spikenard to the man who loved her.
"I wonder you are so nice to me," he said presently; then as she raised her delicate brows he added quickly: "I've cut loose from so much you revere. It's a pill for the mater, but I couldn't play the humbug. I look at life as it is: as it appears, I mean, to me—a place where the devil takes the hindmost."
"And those in front——"
"Oh—I dare say the devil takes them also—later."
Betty changed the subject, not because it was distasteful, but for the subtler reason that she feared her own thoughts, which stuck in a slough of despond. For the rest of the walk they prattled gaily enough of the pranks they had played as boy and girl. Jim's face insensibly softened, so that Betty caught a glimpse of the Harrovian. Then, at the mention of Archie's name, the talk flowed back into the present.
"I never asked you what you thought of that wonderful sermon of his."
Jim admitted surprise. "Old Archie has come on," he added. "He's a plodder, and he's good to look at, and he means to 'get there.'"
"To get—where?"
"To the bench of bishops."
"I used to underrate Archie, but there's a lot in him."
"A lot of him, too. Oh—you needn't frown, Betty. I think that Archie makes a capital parson; and I dare say he'll personally conduct a select party of you Slowshire people to heaven."
"How bitter you are, Jim."
"I won't be bitter when I'm with you," he promised. "I say, there's the bush where we caught the Duke of Burgundy fritillary. I saw it in the old cabinet the other day. You nailed it with your hat and gave it to me, although you wanted it yourself. I felt a beast for taking it, but I adored you for being so unselfish."
"You offered me your Purple Emperor next day."
"And you refused it," said Jim quickly.
"So I did. I must tell everybody that I have refused an Emperor."
"Not to mention smaller fry. Three months ago I thought you meant to marry Harry Kirtling, and he thought so too, by Jove!"
"You dare to insinuate that I encouraged him?"
"You have a way with you, Betty." He glanced at her ardently, but she looked down, faintly blushing, as he continued: "You are not one of these modern young women who can stand alone."
"That is true," she said simply. "I am not strong enough to stand alone, and I admire in men the qualities lacking in myself. We had better go home; your mother will be waiting for her tea."
Jim said no more, but in the evening he asked his mother if she had any reason to suppose that an understanding existed between Mark and Betty.
"When she refused Kirtling, Pynsent and I made certain she was engaged to Mark. Now he has gone to the uttermost ends of the earth, and she never mentions his name to me."
"Nor to me," said Mrs. Corrance. Then she touched her son's shoulder very gently. "Do not make ropes out of sand, dear."
Jim went back to town on Monday morning, but he returned to King's Charteris the following Friday, and walked once more with Betty in the lovely woods which lie between Westchester and the New Forest. Naturally and by training an acute observer, although a keener judge of men than women, Betty puzzled him. He saw that she was slightly contemptuous of the material side of life, although willing to listen by the hour to his presentment of it. This, however, might be a phase, a mood. He felt assured, now, that Betty would have married Mark had he asked her to do so, and he lay awake at night wondering whether she would marry anybody else. For the rest he determined that he must make haste slowly. He would give the girl the fellowship she craved without defining its elements. That she was grateful for such abstinence her manner proved. She became at once open, candid, a delightful companion.
Meantime the Squire had not left Pitt Hall. When he met Betty, he said, with some confusion, that the "Madam" (as he called Mrs. Samphire) had opposed so long a journey; one, moreover, which was like to prove a fool's errand. He excused himself by complaining querulously of an estate which exacted constant supervision. His face was even more florid than usual, and his manner less complacent. When Betty mentioned this to Archie (who rode over from Westchester on a well-bred cob), he expressed a fear that his father was losing money.
"He spoke of going North," Betty said, after a pause. "If Mark is really ill, surely he ought to be nursed by—by his nearest and dearest?"
Archie betrayed astonishment.
"Ill? Really ill? I've heard nothing of serious illness, not a word. How do you know, Betty?"
"I have guessed," she answered vehemently. "He has slipped away to—todie, perhaps!"
Archie showed a most lively concern.
"No, no, you exaggerate. Look here, Betty, if someone ought to go North, I'll go."
"Oh, Archie—if you would."
"Dear old Mark! Of course I'll go. It happens that I can get a week's leave. I'll bring him home with me."
He spoke in a warm, sympathetic tone, kindling Betty's gratitude and affection. Never had she liked Mark's brother so well.
"You can spare the time, Archie?"
"Yes, yes; I'm so glad you spoke to me. By the way, I've a piece of news for you—great news, too. I am commanded to preach at Windsor."
"Oh, Archie, Iampleased to hear that. It will mean so much—won't it."
"Yes."
She asked questions: Was the date set? Had he a theme? and so forth. "You know," she continued gravely, "I shall never forget your Westchester sermon. Many sermons touch one, but that gripped. Often, I've not been quite fair to you, and now I'm horribly ashamed of myself. You forgive me?"
"My dear Betty! I say—was there so great a difference between that sermon and others I have preached?"
"Why, Archie, how modest you are! Don't you know that you climbed to the heights that Whit-Sunday? Before, you seemed to be rambling about on the comfortable plains. Oh, I know we can't scale mountains every day. Lord Randolph said as much——" She paused.
"What did Lord Randolph say?"
"He did not intend that it should reach your ears."
"Betty—you will do me a favour by repeating what he said as he said it. I am not thin-skinned."
"Well, he said that beer was good liquor, and that spirits should be used sparingly. You couldn't preach such a sermon as that every Sunday."
"Not I," said Archie.
"The great thing is that you can stir up hearts when the occasion comes. I feel sure you will surpass yourself at Windsor."
"I wishIfelt sure, Betty. Well—I'll do my best to persuade Mark to return with me, but he's obstinate as a mule where his health is concerned. Shall I give him any message from you?"
"You can give him—my love."
She spoke with assumed lightness of tone. Archie found a phrase.
"A man would travel farther than Sutherland to receive that." Then he took his leave, gravely smiling.
"He's a good sort," said Betty.
None the less she told herself that her intuitions in regard to men were fluid. Again and again she tried to grasp them, to mould them into permanent form, into definiteness; always they flowed away—peaceably sometimes, with a sweet melodic cadence, as of a Scotch burn, but more often roaring, like the same burn in spate; in either case leaving but a small silt behind.
The two days following Archie's departure she spent alone in the woods (for Mrs. Corrance seldom left her pretty garden), seeking from Nature an answer to the problem in her heart. The great oaks and beeches preserved an inviolate silence in those languorous July days, but the pines seemed to have a message for an attentive ear. Their sighs were, perhaps, the warning voices of the innumerable dead, hushed and (to most mortals) inarticulate. Here and there amidst this rich pastoral country Betty found sterile acres where even the hardy fir failed to find sustenance. These patches in the landscape had a weird fascination. Betty perceived beauty, dignity, in their subtle, faded tints, their delicate greys and shadowy browns. Once upon a time, doubtless, these barren spots had bloomed, too luxuriantly, perhaps; in due time they would bloom again in splendid resurrection. In the centre of one of the stony places a young birch tree of great beauty stretched slender limbs toward the green paradise which encompassed it, inclining slightly to the south.
"I am like that birch," said Betty.