"I cannot doubt that my sphere of influence and activity is about to be enlarged. If so, I shall count upon your help. I am deeply grateful for what you have done already. I recognise in you, my dear, dear brother, an insight into human life and character wider than my own. You have come into contact with what is primal and elemental: an experience lacking as yet to me. I have spoken of this to all our friends, acknowledging frankly my debt to you...."Mark's smile, when he read these lines, was not easy to interpret, but the sense that, for a brief hour, he had grudged his own flesh and blood a triumph, made him reply cordially and affectionately. He ended his letter by assuring Archibald that such help as one brother could give another would always be at his disposal.About this time, feeling stronger day by day, he began to wonder what work he should do in the future. Stride was emphatic that life in the East End would mean a return of his malady. Not being able to preach, a country curacy was unavailable; and in any case Mark told himself that such work would be distasteful. Stride startled him by saying abruptly, "Why don't you write?""Eh?""It's in you, I'll swear. It would be only a crutch, at first, but you have private means. You can write out-of-doors. You will be your own master. You can take proper care of yourself...." Stride waxed eloquent, and Mark listened with a curious exaltation."By Jove!" he said, drawing a deep breath, "I believe I can write.""Everybody writes nowadays," said Stride, "but I have the feeling that you can write what a lot of us will want to read. Think it over!"Mark thought it over for a week. Ideas inundated his brain, clamouring for expression. He begged permission to try his hand at a short story: four thousand words. Stride gave a grudging consent."Mind you," said he, "you're not fit for any sustained mental exertion, but go ahead—full steam, if you like, and we'll see what will happen."Mark wrote his story, and submitted both it and himself to the autocrat. This was a week later, and the scales proclaimed a loss of two pounds. Stride pursed up his lips and waggled his big head."Back you go to the garden to-morrow," he growled. "I'll read your stuff to-night, and tell you what I think of it. It's almost certain to be rubbish."In the morning, however, he had nothing but praise for the author, whose mind was by no means as familiar to him as his body. He beamed and gesticulated as if he had discovered a new bacillus. The story was despatched to an editor, Arthur Conquest, whom Stride knew, and Mark was enjoined to think no more about it. Think about it he did, naturally. The possibility of doing good work in a new field filled him once more with the ardours of youth. He told Stride there was a certain inevitableness about his failures. What had gone before—all trials and disappointments—were part of a writer's equipment. He could not doubt that he had found at last a strong-box, so to speak, for such talents as he possessed. Action had been denied him, articulate speech was not his, the power of putting a noble conception on to canvas he lacked; but he could, he would, he should write according to the truth that was in him, so help him God!Stride warned him that the odds were greatly against his manuscript being accepted. The editor, however, read the story himself, and promised to publish it. His letter contained a message to Mark."Will you tell Mr. Samphire" (wrote Conquest) "that I am going to red-pencil his story, which I take to be a first attempt. He must serve his apprenticeship, which in his case needn't be a long one. I can see that he sets for himself a high standard. If he means business I should advise him to write a novel and burn it. When he comes to town, I hope to make his acquaintance.""Conquest is cold-blooded," said Stride, "but he has a prescient eye. All the same, if you have business dealings with him—look out! And now—go back to your cabbages."Mark told Maitland what had passed. Maitland entered with sympathy into his plans, confessing that he had tried writing as a trade."Grub Street is a long lane with no turning in it for nine-tenths of the foot passengers. I hope you'll gallop down it, Samphire, not crawl as I did."Maitland looked, so Mark reflected, as if he had gone afoot down many paths. Failure was branded upon his pale, too narrow face, his stooping shoulders, his large, clumsy hands: all thumbs, and crudely fashioned at that! But Ross, who was no longer at Crask, had told Mark that Maitland filled a very large place in his huge Manchester parish."What made you go into the Church?" Mark asked abruptly."I had to earn my bread and—scrape; but afterwards——""Yes?"Maitland's dull, sallow complexion seemed to be suffused with a glow. It struck Mark that between his face as he was accustomed to see it and as he saw it now lay the difference between a stage-scene lighted and unlighted."Afterwards," said Maitland, "I knew that the choice of my profession had been determined by a Power infinitely greater than my own will. I became a parson from ignoble motives. I was soured, bitter, sick in mind and body, unfit for the duties I undertook. And then suddenly—one hardly likes to talk about it—my eyes were opened. I came into contact with hundreds worse off than myself. Some of them bore their burdens with a patience, a serenity, an unselfishness that were a revelation—to me. And then I realised that no life is a failure which brightens however faintly the lives of others. Napoleon is the colossal failure of history, because he darkened a continent. I would sooner be a beggar sharing a crust with a child than such as he.""If you were offered preferment——?""I hope to live and die in Manchester.""You nearly did die. Suppose you were not strong enough to go back? You wince, Maitland. That would try your faith. You have been frank with me; I shall be frank with you. I have always wanted one thing, and because I wanted it so much, I tried to bargain with Heaven. I said, 'You shall do what you like with me, only give me, give me the woman I love!' Well, Heaven seemed to take up the challenge. You know my story. I was defeated again and again. And I said to myself I'll grin and bear it, because she is mine. Ah, if you could see her, Maitland, as I see her, if you knew what I have f-f-felt, when I saw her image f-f-fa—fading——" He paused, overcome by his stammer, controlled it, and continued quietly, "I was told that I must die. Ross found me in despair. I—I do not know, but the river was close at hand, and—perhaps—at any rate he rescued me, brought me here, and now, now, I am beginning to live again. I see God in His Heaven. And I see my angel in mine."He was so excited that Maitland entreated him to be calm, introducing, as an anticlimax, the cabbages to be cut and carried in.Shortly after this Stride allowed him to begin his novel. After the first distress of beginning it became plain that this work agreed with him. Weight and appetite increased as the manuscript grew fat. He was out all weathers, and his face became tanned like that of a North Sea fisherman. Stride rubbed his hands chuckling, whenever he saw him.During these months Mark told himself that it was impossible for Betty to write to him till he broke the silence which he had imposed. Meanwhile, he heard that Archibald had accepted a London living: St. Anne's in Sloane Street. Mrs. Samphire sent Mark a long cutting from theSlowshire Chronicle, a synopsis of his brother's labours in and about Westchester. As secretary, and member of many committees, as a lecturer on Temperance, as a pillar of the Charity Organisation Society, as the first tenor of the Westchester Choral Association, Archibald Samphire had honestly earned the gratitude of the community and the very handsome salver, which embalmed that gratitude in a Latin sentence composed by the Dean. Archibald had been asked to preach four Advent sermons in Westminster Cathedral. Mark suggested a theme, revised the sermons, interpolated a hundred passages, cut and slashed his brother's beautiful MSS., and when the sermons were preached and attracted the attention of London, wrote a letter of warm congratulation to his "dearest old fellow." He had taken greater pains with these sermons than with his own novel, because—as he put it to himself—he had grudged his brother a triumph which Betty Kirtling had witnessed.One week after the New Year, he was writing the last lines of his book, when Stride came into the room and flung down a letter in Archibald's handwriting. Mark glanced at it, and at the pile of MS. beside it."Is themagnum opusdone?" said Stride."Very nearly," Mark replied."Are you going to take Conquest's advice and—burn it?""I shall let Conquest see it first," said Mark. He rose from his chair, crossed the room to where Stride was warming his hands at the fire, and laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "It's not bad," he said slowly; "I know it's not bad; and I owe it all to you, Stride.""What is it about?" said Stride, repudiating the debt with a shake of his head. Mark had not shown him any portion of the MS., nor discussed the theme."It's the story of a faith that was lost and found," said Mark. "I can say to you that it is part of my own life, red-hot from my heart, the sort of story that is written once, you understand, and I have the feeling that it could have been written only here, in these solitudes.""I hope it ends happily," said Stride."It ends happily," said Mark, staring at his MS.Stride filled his pipe and then moved to the door."It's going to snow," he said. "We shall have a heavy fall, unless I'm mistaken. It was just such a night as this, last year, when we lost our shepherd on Ben Caryll."He went out, whistling. The door slammed behind him, and the draught from it fluttered the pages of foolscap lying loose on the table. Mark stared at them, smiling, with such a look on his face as a mother bestows on her first-born, when she is alone with him. Then, still smiling, he picked up his brother's letter and broke the seal, the seal of many quarterings, which Archibald habitually used."My dear Mark" (he wrote): "I am the happiest as well as the luckiest of men. Betty Kirtling has promised to become my wife. We shall be married as soon as possible, before I settle down to my new work in London...."The letter fell from Mark's hands. He bent down, trembling, picked it up, and reread its message. Then, crushing the letter into a ball, he flung it into the fire, and watched it crumble and dissolve into ashes. As the flame licked the white paper, the face that stared into the fire shrivelled into a caricature of what it had been a few moments before. The lips were drawn back from the teeth in a snarling grin; colour left the cheeks and flared in purple patches upon the brow. The slender limbs shook as with a palsy....Suddenly, the silence was broken by a laugh: the derisive laugh of the man who knows that his heavens have fallen. The sound of his own laughter seemed to move Mark to action. He seized the manuscript, and thrust it into the flames. When it was destroyed, he laughed again, crossed to the door, opened it, and passed out—still laughing—into the driving wind and rain.CHAPTER XXIION BEN CARYLLMark stood still for a moment, as the wind whipped his face. Then he strode towards the burn which runs into the loch at the foot of Ben Caryll. He was meeting a north-easter, which drove the rain, now turning into sleet, with stinging violence against his face. When he reached the burn he saw that it was beginning to rise. It would be in spate in an hour or two if the storm continued. The big stepping-stones, shining through the mists, were almost covered by the peat-stained, swirling waters, as Mark sprang from one boulder to the other. Having reached the other side, he paused and looked at the burn. Above it widened into a broad, deep pool, with flecks and clots of white spume lying like cream upon its chocolate-coloured surface. Below, it narrowed, running foaming through steep rocky banks, and falling some twenty feet into a bigger pool. Standing where he stood the roar of the fall drowned all sounds. His blood was cooler now; he was able to think. He stared at the stepping-stones. Had his foot slipped, the raging torrent would have whirled him over the falls. If he returned an hour later the ford would be impassable. He would have to go round by the bridge some two miles higher up. With this thought lurking in but not occupying his mind he breasted the heather hill immediately to the right, fighting his way against the wind. He plunged on until he reached some peat hags, when he paused to recover breath. The blood was racing through his veins. Never had he felt so alive, so strong; and yet poison was consuming him. What poison? An answer came on the roaring blast.Hate! Hatred of his brother. He threw out his arms towards the darkening skies."Curse him!" he cried. "Curse him! Curse him!"Then he crossed the hags, and gained a small turf-covered plateau, whence Ben Caryll rose steeply and stonily. This part of the mountain was known as Eagle Rocks, because for many seasons a pair of golden eagles had nested on one of the crags. On a calm day it was no easy feat to scale these rocks. Tourists, for instance, always went round by a deer path, which the gillies used also. Mark laughed. He felt strong, a man: here was an opportunity to test his strength. He grasped a tuft of heather and swung himself to the top of the first rock, but when he tried to stand upright the wind wrestled with him and prevailed. He was constrained to crouch and crawl, clinging to every stick and stone which hands or feet could find. But the spirit within would not allow him to turn back. Foot by foot he ascended the face of the precipice, knowing that if a stone turned, or a tuft gave way, he must fall on the sharp rocks below—knowing and not caring. When he reached the top he was perspiring, breathless, bleeding and spent. He lay still, letting the sleet lash his face. When he felt able to move he sat up and looked across the corrie which lay to the left of the Eagle Rocks. Beyond this stretched a gigantic spur of the mountain; and immediately below lay the strath, with the Crask burn curling down the middle of it. As he looked a veil of mist and scud swept over the mountain. When it seemed thickest, the wind took it and tore it asunder. Glimpses of objects familiar to him during the past five months succeeded each other in procession, filing by to the roar of the wind and the voices of the mountain. In like manner glimpses of his past life presented themselves for an instant, only to be wiped from memory and obliterated as swiftly. Out of the mirk soared the spire of Harrow Church. In the Yard below the boys were cheering a school-fellow, who ran bare-headed down the steps and into the street. It was Archibald, newly elected a member of the school eleven. He saw him again, as he stood in the pulpit in Westchester Cathedral. Again and again, in the arms of Betty!Suddenly he became aware that the wind had moderated somewhat in violence and that snow was falling. He recalled what Stride had said, as he rose, stretched his stiffening limbs, and turned to the huge spur which led to the bridge across the Crask burn. The snow fell in larger flakes. The wind moaned like a woman who has no strength left to scream.After stumbling on for a mile or so amongst the rough heather, Mark was obliged to sit down in the lee of a "knobbie." With the waning light of a Highland winter's afternoon, the air had turned cold; and it seemed to have thickened, so that Mark breathed as a man breathes in a close and stifling room. This rapid fall of temperature and wind produced weird effects. The voices of the mountain changed their note. Defiance died away in a diminuendo. Mountain rills, trickling from a thousand springs to join the burn below, purred beneath the touch of the snow. The roar of the falls came faintly to the ear. After strife and confusion, Nature was crooning a lullaby.Exhausted by what mind and body had endured, Mark fell asleep. The snow fluttered down, thickly, silently, as the minutes passed. The cold grew more intense. Night came on. Mark stirred in his sleep; he uttered inarticulate words; he frowned; he smiled. And then, as if touched by some warning hand, he woke. He stared round him, seeking some familiar face. When the snow fell into his eyes he rubbed them, and stared harder than before, trying to pierce the shadows. Then he cried in a troubled voice:"Who touched me?"No answer came out of the white silence."Who touched me?" he cried again.His ears caught the purr of the rivulets and the muffled roar of the burn in spate. He knew where he was. And then, for a moment, he hesitated. A pleasant languor was stealing over him. Let him sink back upon his feathery bed—and sleep. No—no! He had waked to live.The instinct of life began to throb when he realised the imminence of death. Fatigue left him as he strode forward, quickening his pace, where the ground permitted, to a run. It was difficult to see, but salvation lay down hill. He staggered on, peering to left and right, as the faint light that remained slowly failed. Before he reached the burn it had failed entirely. He was now in a sore predicament, for the ground no longer descended sharply, but sloped in undulations. He began to grope his way like a blind man, walking in circles. The roar of the falls far away to his right could no longer be heard.He was lost!He stood compassless in a desert. No friendly ray from a lantern could pierce this white horror. If his friends discovered his absence, which was unlikely till too late, what could they do? Search Sutherland in a snowstorm for one man?Staggering on through drifts and hags, he realised that the time was fast approaching when his muscles would fail.Did he pray for deliverance? No. If at that moment one thought dominated another, it was the conviction that God, if a God existed, had forsaken him. The struggle for life involved a paradox with which his brain could not grapple. Life had become sweet because it seemed inevitable that he must die.Stumbling over a tuft of heather, a cock grouse rose, cackled, and whirled away. The vigour of the flight, the vitality of that defiant note, stimulated the jaded man. He chose at random a direction, and began to run, stopping now and again, straining his ears to catch the sound of the burn.Presently he stopped altogether, sinking inert, hopeless, spent, upon the soft snow which received him wantonly, touching him with a caress, winding itself round him. He lay still, submitting to Nature, stronger than he, confessing himself vanquished, and asking that the end might be speedy. With death impending, he turned his thoughts towards the woman he loved—the woman about to marry his brother. He would die, as he wished to die, gazing into her face, feeling the cool touch of her fingers, hearing her voice with its tender inflections and modulations. And her image came obedient to his call. Her eyes, with their beguiling interrogation, showing the full orb of the irid between the thin black lines of the lashes, looked into his. For the last time he marked the pathetic droop of the finely curved lips, coral against the ivory of cheek and chin, lips revealing the teeth which were such an admirable finish to the face. Her dark hair, with the dull red glow upon it, curving deliciously from the forehead, was held together at the top by a white niphétos rose he had given her. She was like the rose, he reflected, a blossom of the earth, sweet, lovely, ephemeral. He could not conceive her old, faded, crushed beneath the relentless touch of time.The fancy possessed him that she was his, to be taken whithersoever he might go. He stretched out his hands, trembling with passion, and the vision melted. He grasped the cold snow, not the warm flesh.At this moment, out of the suffocating silence an attenuated vibration of sound thrilled his senses. Instantly he was awake, alert—conscious that help was coming; how and whence he knew not. The sound permeated every fibre, but, numbed by exposure and fatigue, he was unable to interpret its message. Such as it was, it possessed rhythm—a systole and diastole, like the laboured beating of his heart. Was it merely the heart, recording with solemn knell the passing of a soul? No—no! He sprang to his feet, aflame once more with the lust of life. The sound he heard was no delusion of a fanciful brain, no fluttering of a moribund heart, but a clarion note from without, steadily increasing in volume, forcing a passage through the blinding snows—the Crask bell!But at first he was unable to localise the sound: plunging madly this way and that, settling down at length to his true course, which brought him within half an hour to the bridge across the burn. Even then he strayed again and again from the road, led back to it as often by the voice of the bell, growing clearer and louder with every step he took. Presently he heard voices, hoarse shouts, which he answered in feeble whispers; then a yellow light swinging to and fro shone through the darkness. He staggered on to meet it, falling fainting into the arms of Stride.* * * * *Stride asked no questions. Mark was put to bed, and lay still for some four hours: then he began to grind his teeth, to clench his fists. Stride sat beside him watching his friend and patient, with eyes half shut, like a purring cat's, the pupils narrowed to a black slit. Presently he went to the window. The wind had ceased. Outside, in silence, the snow kept on falling, spreading its pall upon the world, while the cold grew more and more intense. The crystals were forming upon the pane, and despite the big peat fire, the temperature in the room fell point after point. Staring through the pane, Stride could see nothing save the piled-up snow on the sill, and the myriad fluttering flakes beyond: each, as he knew, a crystal of surpassing symmetry and loveliness, each fashioned by the Master in His sky and despatched to earth, there to be destroyed, trodden, maybe, into mire and filth, and, rising again, seeking the skies anew, to be transformed by the same Hand into rain, or dew, or sleet, or snow, ordained to fall as before, and as before to rise, the eternal symbol of the soul which descends into the clay, softens it, is tainted and discoloured by it, and then, in glorious resurrection, ascends to be purged and purified in the place whence it came.CHAPTER XXIIIHYMENEALUpon the morning of his wedding-day, Archibald Samphire went into the church of King's Charteris and prayed before the altar. While he was praying, Jim Corrance pushed aside the heavy curtain of the west door and peered in. A whim had seized him. He, the freethinker, the agnostic, had said to himself that he would like to spend a few minutes alone in the church where he had been baptised and confirmed. Rank sentiment! But Jim at heart was a man of sentiment, although he took particular pains to prove to the world that he was nothing of the sort.When Jim saw Archibald's fine figure he frowned, thrusting forward his square chin, and the short hair on the top of his head bristled with exasperation. Upon each side of the kneeling man were ferns and palms, whose fronds touched overhead. The priests' stalls were ablaze with daffodils and primroses picked by the school-children in the water meadows and woods near Pitt Hall. Through the east window a May sun streamed in full flood of prismatic colour. The pure rays of the sun passing through the gorgeous glass absorbed its tints and flung them lavishly here and there, staining with crimson, or blue, or yellow, the white lilies which stood upon the altar. Jim smiled derisively. The fancy struck him that Archie's prayers would absorb, so to speak, the colours of his mind. The words of the General Thanksgiving occurred to Jim."And we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth Thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days."Surely this set—so Jim reflected—forth Archibald Samphire's pious ambition. Doubtless he did aspire to give himself to God's service, particularly that form of it which is held in cathedrals; and he intended, honestly enough, to walk before Him (and before the world) in holiness and righteousness all his days (which he had reason to believe would be long and fruitful).Archibald rose and walked down the aisle. Jim hid himself behind the tall font, but he stared curiously at his old school-fellow. Archibald's face had lost its normal expression of a satisfaction too smug to please such a critical gentleman as Mr. James Corrance. His massive features were troubled. He looked humble! Why? Surely the crimson carpet beneath his feet, bordered with flowers, over-shadowed by exquisite ferns and rare shrubs, indicated the procession of a successful life: a majestic march through the hallowed places of Earth to the Heaven of All Saints beyond!Had Jim been able to peer within that mighty body, he might have seen a self-confidence strangely deflated, a conscience quickened by pangs. The colossus, whose physical prowess had become a glorious tradition at Harrow and Cambridge, knew himself to be a moral coward, inasmuch as he had withheld a vital truth from the woman he loved. Fear of losing, first, her good opinion of him, then the greater fear of losing the woman altogether, had withered again and again the impulse to say frankly: "Mark wrote the two sermons which have made me what I am." Unable to say this, realising that the many opportunities for speech had passed, he had just vowed solemnly that his transgression should be expiated by hard work in his new parish. Truly—as Lady Randolph had said—was Archibald Samphire an unconscious humourist! And before we leave him to return to Jim, let it be added that the big fellow did not know (and being the man he was could not possibly have known) that he had wooed Betty with Mark's words, that he would have wooed in vain with his own. Not unreasonably, he was absolutely convinced that the qualities which had won success in everything undertaken by him had assured this also, the greatest prize of all, a tender, loving wife.Jim waited till five minutes had passed, then he strolled back to his mother's house, telling himself that he was a brute, a dog in the manger, because he had misjudged a God-fearing fellow-creature, immeasurably his superior, who had won in fair competition a prize beyond his (Jim's) deserts.When he returned to his mother's house a trim parlourmaid handed him a note. She told him at the same time that Mrs. Corrance was taking breakfast in her own room. Jim nodded, and broke the seal: a lilac wafer with Betty Kirtling's initials entwined in a cypher."Dear old Jim" (Betty wrote): "please come up after breakfast and take me for a walk."Your affectionate Betty."Betty was installed in The Whim for her wedding; and the Randolphs and Harry Kirtling—not to mention other relations—were keeping her company. Since her engagement had been announced, Jim had scarcely seen her. He had taken the news hard. His clerks, and the jobbers with whom he dealt found him difficult to please, argumentative, contemptuous, and a glutton for work throughout that Lenten season.As Jim approached The Whim, Betty joined him on the drive. He saw that she was very pale."How good of you to come," she exclaimed."Good!" growled Jim. "As if I wouldn't cross the Atlantic or the Styx to walk with you. Where shall we go?"Betty took a path which led to the lane running at right angles to the Westchester road. High hedges bordered this lane, with ancient yew trees at uncertain intervals. To the right lay the best arable land in King's Charteris, rich alluvial soil, now green with spring wheat; to the left, the ground ascended in undulating slopes of pasture till it melted in the downs beyond."Sun is going to shine on you," said Jim.The sun was blazing in a sky limpid after a week's heavy rain. Beneath its warm beams the soaked landscape seemed to be smiling with satisfaction. A peculiar odour of fertility, pungent and potent, assailed the nostrils, the odour of spring, the odour of earth renascent, rejuvenated, once more a bride."I wish it were June instead of May, Jim.""That's the most absurd superstition.""Jim, I want to ask a question. Have you seen or heard of Mark?"Jim looked cross."He's in Sutherland.""Go on, please.""He doesn't answer my letters," said Jim, after a pause."He writes to nobody.""Did you expect him to write?""Yes, I did," said Betty vehemently. "If it had been an ordinary man, but Mark—Heavens! Why should I beat about the bush with you, Jim? Once I wanted to marry Mark! You know that. But he didn't want—me."She paused, blushing, her eyes, pools of brown light, opened wide with their strange look: entreating, interrogating."Which was a woman's reason, I suppose, for engaging yourself to somebody who did."The words slipped from him. Caring for Mark, how could she have accepted Archibald? That cried to Heaven for explanation. He stared at her, seeing no reproach in her eyes, only a soft shadow of wonder—or was it regret—or something subtler than either."Oh, Jim, feeling as you do about religion, you can't understand. I was looking down, down into the depths. Archie taught me to look up.""To him?""To God.""You say that Archibald Samphire revealed God to you?""In that sermon at Windsor—yes. If you had heard it——""I heard of it. You will be the wife of a bishop some day."He tried to give the conversation a lighter turn, fearing that she would speak again of Mark, understanding at last that Mark, standing under sentence of death, had deliberately hidden his heart from her. What else could such a man have done? And if Betty realised this, even now, at the eleventh hour, she might refuse to marry the silver-tongued brother. And because the temptation to tell her the truth was so poignant, he resisted it. It lay on his tongue's tip to exclaim: "Good Lord! Is it possible that you, with your intuitions and sympathies, have failed to divine Mark's love for you? Can't you understand that his love keeps him in Sutherland, that he dares not write for fear that he should reveal it?" At the same time, he knew that marriage between any young woman and a man suffering from an almost incurable malady was unthinkable. And if Betty could not marry Mark, was it not better from every point of view that she should marry his brother? Would not he (Jim) be taking upon himself a terrible responsibility if he broke the silence which Mark's self-sacrifice had made sacred? These, and a thousand other thoughts, jostled each other in his brain."That sermon touched me at first, because I thought it was Mark speaking. Not till then had I realised that Archie possessed the wonderful power of making life easier, happier, ampler; but why does Mark, if he cares nothing for me, stand aloof, why—why?""It is strange," he admitted slowly."Ah," she cried, "you say that reservedly. You, too, have guessed or at least suspected——""What?""That Mark is—jealous—of—Archie." The words dropped from her lips as if she loathed them, as if she loathed herself for speaking them. She continued quickly: "At Westchester, he was alone with me. I was thrilling with surprise and admiration. We had underrated Archie; you know that, Jim. And he had vindicated himself so gloriously. Well, Mark said nothing, not a word of praise. Oh, it was ungenerous—abominable! But I did not think so then. But now, what other interpretation can I put upon his silence?"When she paused, Jim burst into a vehement defence of Mark. He spoke as he spoke to his clerks, clenching his fists, thrusting out his chin, repeating his phrases: "What? You say that? You use such words as abominable, ungenerous? You, Betty Kirtling? Abominable? Ungenerous? Well, if he be jealous, is it surprising, is it not most natural? Abominable? Great Scott! He looks at the man, the brother, who has everything, everything which he lacks—the physical strength, the persuasive voice, the luck—the devil's own luck—I don't pick my words, Betty Kirtling! Why—if he were not jealous, if envy at times did not tear him, he would not be Mark at all, but some impeccable, immaculate humbug! Abominable! From—you!"Betty turned her back, and walked down the lane; Jim hesitated, and pursued."Betty, forgive me! I'm a brute, and this, this is your wedding-day. Here, give me your hand, both hands! That's better. Tell me I'm a beast. I deserve kicking. I'll lie down and let you wipe your boots on me. Your wedding-day—and I've treated you to this."The feeling in his face went straight to her heart."It's all right, Jim," she whispered, half crying, half laughing. "And I take back—abominable." She sighed, gazing towards the downs where she and Mark had played truant. Then, with quivering lips and wet eyes, she murmured, "Poor Mark—poor Mark!" disengaged her hands, and ran down the lane and out of sight.After the wedding there was an old-fashioned breakfast at The Whim, with toasts, speeches, cutting of cake, and so forth. Slowshire came in force, ate largely, drank deeply, and made merry in the solid, stodgy, Slowshire way. None the less, to Lady Randolph and other less acute observers, the function was somewhat depressing. The Whim, where so many cheery gatherings had taken place, had been sold. The furniture was to be moved into the Samphires' London house, while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon. The Squire's wife, in purple satin slashed with heliotrope silk, supplied every guest who belonged to the county families with details."The dear couple will be so comfortable. No—there is no rectory. They will live in Cadogan Place. Lord Minstead was glad to sell the lease. They say, you know, that he—pst—pst—pst——" The speaker's prominent blue eyes seemed positively to bulge from her plump, pink cheeks, as she whispered Minstead's unsavoury story into attentive ears. "But, as I was saying, our dear couple—really the handsomest couple I ever saw in my life—will betrès bien installés. I am to find them a cook—fifty-five pounds a year—do you know of one? She must be acordon bleu. Yes, a kitchenanda scullery-maid. They are very well off, very well off indeed. It is expected that they will entertain——"The Squire, meantime, exchanged a few words with his old friend Lady Randolph. His face was flushed and his eyes congested and very puffy below the lids. Lips and chin, too, had a faint purplish tinge, always seen on the faces of those afflicted by a certain form of heart disease. He was certainly failing, Lady Randolph reflected. Still, he had lived his life, enjoyed the cakes and ale—too much of them!—and might reckon himself amongst the lucky ones. Pomméry had loosened his tongue."They will have—this between ourselves, my dear lady—nearly five thousand a year. Archie has done well. I am very proud of Archie—a fine fellow—hay? You may call him that—a fine fellow—a very fine fellow indeed! Sound"—the Squire thumped his own broad chest—"sound as I am, sound as a bell, and likely to make old bones."Lady Randolph, with eyes half closed, nodded, wondering if this pitiful assumption of high health were genuine or assumed. Surely the Squire must know himself to be no sounder than a big pippin rotten at the core. He stood beside her, tall, portly, scrupulously dressed as a country gentleman of the old school; and the purple flush deepened and spread as he talked."Archibald will be a bishop. Do you know that his portrait is coming out inVanity Fair? The Chrysostom of Sloane Street they call him. His Advent sermons have been widely discussed. And he will have no land to bother him. These are hard times for us landowners. Is Randolph pinched? Of course, he has his town property; but it's different with me; it's the very deuce with me. I'm worried to death about it."What was fermenting in his mind had come, as it generally does with such men, to the surface. Lady Randolph looked unaffectedly sorry, and expressed her sympathy. The Squire plunged into the interminable subject of falling prices, rates, impoverished soil, the difficulty of finding good tenant farmers, and so forth. Not till the bride entered did he cease from his jeremiads."Here is Betty," said Lady Randolph.She wore a travelling dress of pale grey cloth edged and lined with lavender silk. Betty had refused to adorn herself in bright colours, which happened to suit her admirably. A parson's wife, she observed, should dress soberly, and she quoted the Vicar of Wakefield, to Lady Randolph's great amusement. A controversy had arisen over this particular frock. Betty, however, seconded by the dressmaker, had her own way about it. Now Lady Randolph was certain that her protests had been justifiable. The dress, lovely though it was in texture and fit, had a faded appearance; it suggested autumn instead of spring, dun October, not merry May.Betty tripped here and there, bidding her friends and neighbours good-bye, while Archie stood smiling at the door. He looked very large and imposing in a rough grey serge suit, which fused happily the clerical garb with that of a bridegroom. Calm and dignified, he received the congratulations of the men. Once or twice he drew a gold watch from his pocket—a present from the Dean and Chapter—opened it, glanced at it, and closed it with a loud click. He had never missed a train, but the possibility of doing so now impended.Mrs. Samphire held her handkerchief to her face. Mrs. Corrance's handkerchief was in her pocket, but her kind eyes were wet. The young men from the barracks were laughing loudly, cracking jokes with the bridesmaids, "whooping things up a bit." The elderly guests smiled blandly, thinking possibly of their own weddings. The children alone really enjoyed themselves. Jim Corrance waited till the bride had passed him; then he rushed into the dining-room, where he found two generals and an Indian judge solemnly employed in finishing the Admiral's famous Waterloo brandy."Wonderful stuff," said the judge, as he passed the decanter to Jim; "it puts everything right—eh?"Jim nodded. Through the open doors, leading into the hall, he could see Betty run down the stairs, followed by Archibald.The Squire called after her: "God bless you, my dear! God bless you!"She was gone.Jim went out of the dining-room, which was situated, it will be remembered, at the top of The Whim. Most of the guests had followed the bride and groom downstairs. Upon the Persian carpet lay a small spray of lilies of the valley, fallen from Betty's bouquet. Jim glanced to right and left. Nobody was looking at him. Furtively, scarlet in the face, he stalked and bagged the spray of lilies. He placed it carefully in his pocket-book."That's the last of our Betty," he said.
"I cannot doubt that my sphere of influence and activity is about to be enlarged. If so, I shall count upon your help. I am deeply grateful for what you have done already. I recognise in you, my dear, dear brother, an insight into human life and character wider than my own. You have come into contact with what is primal and elemental: an experience lacking as yet to me. I have spoken of this to all our friends, acknowledging frankly my debt to you...."
Mark's smile, when he read these lines, was not easy to interpret, but the sense that, for a brief hour, he had grudged his own flesh and blood a triumph, made him reply cordially and affectionately. He ended his letter by assuring Archibald that such help as one brother could give another would always be at his disposal.
About this time, feeling stronger day by day, he began to wonder what work he should do in the future. Stride was emphatic that life in the East End would mean a return of his malady. Not being able to preach, a country curacy was unavailable; and in any case Mark told himself that such work would be distasteful. Stride startled him by saying abruptly, "Why don't you write?"
"Eh?"
"It's in you, I'll swear. It would be only a crutch, at first, but you have private means. You can write out-of-doors. You will be your own master. You can take proper care of yourself...." Stride waxed eloquent, and Mark listened with a curious exaltation.
"By Jove!" he said, drawing a deep breath, "I believe I can write."
"Everybody writes nowadays," said Stride, "but I have the feeling that you can write what a lot of us will want to read. Think it over!"
Mark thought it over for a week. Ideas inundated his brain, clamouring for expression. He begged permission to try his hand at a short story: four thousand words. Stride gave a grudging consent.
"Mind you," said he, "you're not fit for any sustained mental exertion, but go ahead—full steam, if you like, and we'll see what will happen."
Mark wrote his story, and submitted both it and himself to the autocrat. This was a week later, and the scales proclaimed a loss of two pounds. Stride pursed up his lips and waggled his big head.
"Back you go to the garden to-morrow," he growled. "I'll read your stuff to-night, and tell you what I think of it. It's almost certain to be rubbish."
In the morning, however, he had nothing but praise for the author, whose mind was by no means as familiar to him as his body. He beamed and gesticulated as if he had discovered a new bacillus. The story was despatched to an editor, Arthur Conquest, whom Stride knew, and Mark was enjoined to think no more about it. Think about it he did, naturally. The possibility of doing good work in a new field filled him once more with the ardours of youth. He told Stride there was a certain inevitableness about his failures. What had gone before—all trials and disappointments—were part of a writer's equipment. He could not doubt that he had found at last a strong-box, so to speak, for such talents as he possessed. Action had been denied him, articulate speech was not his, the power of putting a noble conception on to canvas he lacked; but he could, he would, he should write according to the truth that was in him, so help him God!
Stride warned him that the odds were greatly against his manuscript being accepted. The editor, however, read the story himself, and promised to publish it. His letter contained a message to Mark.
"Will you tell Mr. Samphire" (wrote Conquest) "that I am going to red-pencil his story, which I take to be a first attempt. He must serve his apprenticeship, which in his case needn't be a long one. I can see that he sets for himself a high standard. If he means business I should advise him to write a novel and burn it. When he comes to town, I hope to make his acquaintance."
"Conquest is cold-blooded," said Stride, "but he has a prescient eye. All the same, if you have business dealings with him—look out! And now—go back to your cabbages."
Mark told Maitland what had passed. Maitland entered with sympathy into his plans, confessing that he had tried writing as a trade.
"Grub Street is a long lane with no turning in it for nine-tenths of the foot passengers. I hope you'll gallop down it, Samphire, not crawl as I did."
Maitland looked, so Mark reflected, as if he had gone afoot down many paths. Failure was branded upon his pale, too narrow face, his stooping shoulders, his large, clumsy hands: all thumbs, and crudely fashioned at that! But Ross, who was no longer at Crask, had told Mark that Maitland filled a very large place in his huge Manchester parish.
"What made you go into the Church?" Mark asked abruptly.
"I had to earn my bread and—scrape; but afterwards——"
"Yes?"
Maitland's dull, sallow complexion seemed to be suffused with a glow. It struck Mark that between his face as he was accustomed to see it and as he saw it now lay the difference between a stage-scene lighted and unlighted.
"Afterwards," said Maitland, "I knew that the choice of my profession had been determined by a Power infinitely greater than my own will. I became a parson from ignoble motives. I was soured, bitter, sick in mind and body, unfit for the duties I undertook. And then suddenly—one hardly likes to talk about it—my eyes were opened. I came into contact with hundreds worse off than myself. Some of them bore their burdens with a patience, a serenity, an unselfishness that were a revelation—to me. And then I realised that no life is a failure which brightens however faintly the lives of others. Napoleon is the colossal failure of history, because he darkened a continent. I would sooner be a beggar sharing a crust with a child than such as he."
"If you were offered preferment——?"
"I hope to live and die in Manchester."
"You nearly did die. Suppose you were not strong enough to go back? You wince, Maitland. That would try your faith. You have been frank with me; I shall be frank with you. I have always wanted one thing, and because I wanted it so much, I tried to bargain with Heaven. I said, 'You shall do what you like with me, only give me, give me the woman I love!' Well, Heaven seemed to take up the challenge. You know my story. I was defeated again and again. And I said to myself I'll grin and bear it, because she is mine. Ah, if you could see her, Maitland, as I see her, if you knew what I have f-f-felt, when I saw her image f-f-fa—fading——" He paused, overcome by his stammer, controlled it, and continued quietly, "I was told that I must die. Ross found me in despair. I—I do not know, but the river was close at hand, and—perhaps—at any rate he rescued me, brought me here, and now, now, I am beginning to live again. I see God in His Heaven. And I see my angel in mine."
He was so excited that Maitland entreated him to be calm, introducing, as an anticlimax, the cabbages to be cut and carried in.
Shortly after this Stride allowed him to begin his novel. After the first distress of beginning it became plain that this work agreed with him. Weight and appetite increased as the manuscript grew fat. He was out all weathers, and his face became tanned like that of a North Sea fisherman. Stride rubbed his hands chuckling, whenever he saw him.
During these months Mark told himself that it was impossible for Betty to write to him till he broke the silence which he had imposed. Meanwhile, he heard that Archibald had accepted a London living: St. Anne's in Sloane Street. Mrs. Samphire sent Mark a long cutting from theSlowshire Chronicle, a synopsis of his brother's labours in and about Westchester. As secretary, and member of many committees, as a lecturer on Temperance, as a pillar of the Charity Organisation Society, as the first tenor of the Westchester Choral Association, Archibald Samphire had honestly earned the gratitude of the community and the very handsome salver, which embalmed that gratitude in a Latin sentence composed by the Dean. Archibald had been asked to preach four Advent sermons in Westminster Cathedral. Mark suggested a theme, revised the sermons, interpolated a hundred passages, cut and slashed his brother's beautiful MSS., and when the sermons were preached and attracted the attention of London, wrote a letter of warm congratulation to his "dearest old fellow." He had taken greater pains with these sermons than with his own novel, because—as he put it to himself—he had grudged his brother a triumph which Betty Kirtling had witnessed.
One week after the New Year, he was writing the last lines of his book, when Stride came into the room and flung down a letter in Archibald's handwriting. Mark glanced at it, and at the pile of MS. beside it.
"Is themagnum opusdone?" said Stride.
"Very nearly," Mark replied.
"Are you going to take Conquest's advice and—burn it?"
"I shall let Conquest see it first," said Mark. He rose from his chair, crossed the room to where Stride was warming his hands at the fire, and laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "It's not bad," he said slowly; "I know it's not bad; and I owe it all to you, Stride."
"What is it about?" said Stride, repudiating the debt with a shake of his head. Mark had not shown him any portion of the MS., nor discussed the theme.
"It's the story of a faith that was lost and found," said Mark. "I can say to you that it is part of my own life, red-hot from my heart, the sort of story that is written once, you understand, and I have the feeling that it could have been written only here, in these solitudes."
"I hope it ends happily," said Stride.
"It ends happily," said Mark, staring at his MS.
Stride filled his pipe and then moved to the door.
"It's going to snow," he said. "We shall have a heavy fall, unless I'm mistaken. It was just such a night as this, last year, when we lost our shepherd on Ben Caryll."
He went out, whistling. The door slammed behind him, and the draught from it fluttered the pages of foolscap lying loose on the table. Mark stared at them, smiling, with such a look on his face as a mother bestows on her first-born, when she is alone with him. Then, still smiling, he picked up his brother's letter and broke the seal, the seal of many quarterings, which Archibald habitually used.
"My dear Mark" (he wrote): "I am the happiest as well as the luckiest of men. Betty Kirtling has promised to become my wife. We shall be married as soon as possible, before I settle down to my new work in London...."
The letter fell from Mark's hands. He bent down, trembling, picked it up, and reread its message. Then, crushing the letter into a ball, he flung it into the fire, and watched it crumble and dissolve into ashes. As the flame licked the white paper, the face that stared into the fire shrivelled into a caricature of what it had been a few moments before. The lips were drawn back from the teeth in a snarling grin; colour left the cheeks and flared in purple patches upon the brow. The slender limbs shook as with a palsy....
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a laugh: the derisive laugh of the man who knows that his heavens have fallen. The sound of his own laughter seemed to move Mark to action. He seized the manuscript, and thrust it into the flames. When it was destroyed, he laughed again, crossed to the door, opened it, and passed out—still laughing—into the driving wind and rain.
CHAPTER XXII
ON BEN CARYLL
Mark stood still for a moment, as the wind whipped his face. Then he strode towards the burn which runs into the loch at the foot of Ben Caryll. He was meeting a north-easter, which drove the rain, now turning into sleet, with stinging violence against his face. When he reached the burn he saw that it was beginning to rise. It would be in spate in an hour or two if the storm continued. The big stepping-stones, shining through the mists, were almost covered by the peat-stained, swirling waters, as Mark sprang from one boulder to the other. Having reached the other side, he paused and looked at the burn. Above it widened into a broad, deep pool, with flecks and clots of white spume lying like cream upon its chocolate-coloured surface. Below, it narrowed, running foaming through steep rocky banks, and falling some twenty feet into a bigger pool. Standing where he stood the roar of the fall drowned all sounds. His blood was cooler now; he was able to think. He stared at the stepping-stones. Had his foot slipped, the raging torrent would have whirled him over the falls. If he returned an hour later the ford would be impassable. He would have to go round by the bridge some two miles higher up. With this thought lurking in but not occupying his mind he breasted the heather hill immediately to the right, fighting his way against the wind. He plunged on until he reached some peat hags, when he paused to recover breath. The blood was racing through his veins. Never had he felt so alive, so strong; and yet poison was consuming him. What poison? An answer came on the roaring blast.Hate! Hatred of his brother. He threw out his arms towards the darkening skies.
"Curse him!" he cried. "Curse him! Curse him!"
Then he crossed the hags, and gained a small turf-covered plateau, whence Ben Caryll rose steeply and stonily. This part of the mountain was known as Eagle Rocks, because for many seasons a pair of golden eagles had nested on one of the crags. On a calm day it was no easy feat to scale these rocks. Tourists, for instance, always went round by a deer path, which the gillies used also. Mark laughed. He felt strong, a man: here was an opportunity to test his strength. He grasped a tuft of heather and swung himself to the top of the first rock, but when he tried to stand upright the wind wrestled with him and prevailed. He was constrained to crouch and crawl, clinging to every stick and stone which hands or feet could find. But the spirit within would not allow him to turn back. Foot by foot he ascended the face of the precipice, knowing that if a stone turned, or a tuft gave way, he must fall on the sharp rocks below—knowing and not caring. When he reached the top he was perspiring, breathless, bleeding and spent. He lay still, letting the sleet lash his face. When he felt able to move he sat up and looked across the corrie which lay to the left of the Eagle Rocks. Beyond this stretched a gigantic spur of the mountain; and immediately below lay the strath, with the Crask burn curling down the middle of it. As he looked a veil of mist and scud swept over the mountain. When it seemed thickest, the wind took it and tore it asunder. Glimpses of objects familiar to him during the past five months succeeded each other in procession, filing by to the roar of the wind and the voices of the mountain. In like manner glimpses of his past life presented themselves for an instant, only to be wiped from memory and obliterated as swiftly. Out of the mirk soared the spire of Harrow Church. In the Yard below the boys were cheering a school-fellow, who ran bare-headed down the steps and into the street. It was Archibald, newly elected a member of the school eleven. He saw him again, as he stood in the pulpit in Westchester Cathedral. Again and again, in the arms of Betty!
Suddenly he became aware that the wind had moderated somewhat in violence and that snow was falling. He recalled what Stride had said, as he rose, stretched his stiffening limbs, and turned to the huge spur which led to the bridge across the Crask burn. The snow fell in larger flakes. The wind moaned like a woman who has no strength left to scream.
After stumbling on for a mile or so amongst the rough heather, Mark was obliged to sit down in the lee of a "knobbie." With the waning light of a Highland winter's afternoon, the air had turned cold; and it seemed to have thickened, so that Mark breathed as a man breathes in a close and stifling room. This rapid fall of temperature and wind produced weird effects. The voices of the mountain changed their note. Defiance died away in a diminuendo. Mountain rills, trickling from a thousand springs to join the burn below, purred beneath the touch of the snow. The roar of the falls came faintly to the ear. After strife and confusion, Nature was crooning a lullaby.
Exhausted by what mind and body had endured, Mark fell asleep. The snow fluttered down, thickly, silently, as the minutes passed. The cold grew more intense. Night came on. Mark stirred in his sleep; he uttered inarticulate words; he frowned; he smiled. And then, as if touched by some warning hand, he woke. He stared round him, seeking some familiar face. When the snow fell into his eyes he rubbed them, and stared harder than before, trying to pierce the shadows. Then he cried in a troubled voice:
"Who touched me?"
No answer came out of the white silence.
"Who touched me?" he cried again.
His ears caught the purr of the rivulets and the muffled roar of the burn in spate. He knew where he was. And then, for a moment, he hesitated. A pleasant languor was stealing over him. Let him sink back upon his feathery bed—and sleep. No—no! He had waked to live.
The instinct of life began to throb when he realised the imminence of death. Fatigue left him as he strode forward, quickening his pace, where the ground permitted, to a run. It was difficult to see, but salvation lay down hill. He staggered on, peering to left and right, as the faint light that remained slowly failed. Before he reached the burn it had failed entirely. He was now in a sore predicament, for the ground no longer descended sharply, but sloped in undulations. He began to grope his way like a blind man, walking in circles. The roar of the falls far away to his right could no longer be heard.
He was lost!
He stood compassless in a desert. No friendly ray from a lantern could pierce this white horror. If his friends discovered his absence, which was unlikely till too late, what could they do? Search Sutherland in a snowstorm for one man?
Staggering on through drifts and hags, he realised that the time was fast approaching when his muscles would fail.
Did he pray for deliverance? No. If at that moment one thought dominated another, it was the conviction that God, if a God existed, had forsaken him. The struggle for life involved a paradox with which his brain could not grapple. Life had become sweet because it seemed inevitable that he must die.
Stumbling over a tuft of heather, a cock grouse rose, cackled, and whirled away. The vigour of the flight, the vitality of that defiant note, stimulated the jaded man. He chose at random a direction, and began to run, stopping now and again, straining his ears to catch the sound of the burn.
Presently he stopped altogether, sinking inert, hopeless, spent, upon the soft snow which received him wantonly, touching him with a caress, winding itself round him. He lay still, submitting to Nature, stronger than he, confessing himself vanquished, and asking that the end might be speedy. With death impending, he turned his thoughts towards the woman he loved—the woman about to marry his brother. He would die, as he wished to die, gazing into her face, feeling the cool touch of her fingers, hearing her voice with its tender inflections and modulations. And her image came obedient to his call. Her eyes, with their beguiling interrogation, showing the full orb of the irid between the thin black lines of the lashes, looked into his. For the last time he marked the pathetic droop of the finely curved lips, coral against the ivory of cheek and chin, lips revealing the teeth which were such an admirable finish to the face. Her dark hair, with the dull red glow upon it, curving deliciously from the forehead, was held together at the top by a white niphétos rose he had given her. She was like the rose, he reflected, a blossom of the earth, sweet, lovely, ephemeral. He could not conceive her old, faded, crushed beneath the relentless touch of time.
The fancy possessed him that she was his, to be taken whithersoever he might go. He stretched out his hands, trembling with passion, and the vision melted. He grasped the cold snow, not the warm flesh.
At this moment, out of the suffocating silence an attenuated vibration of sound thrilled his senses. Instantly he was awake, alert—conscious that help was coming; how and whence he knew not. The sound permeated every fibre, but, numbed by exposure and fatigue, he was unable to interpret its message. Such as it was, it possessed rhythm—a systole and diastole, like the laboured beating of his heart. Was it merely the heart, recording with solemn knell the passing of a soul? No—no! He sprang to his feet, aflame once more with the lust of life. The sound he heard was no delusion of a fanciful brain, no fluttering of a moribund heart, but a clarion note from without, steadily increasing in volume, forcing a passage through the blinding snows—the Crask bell!
But at first he was unable to localise the sound: plunging madly this way and that, settling down at length to his true course, which brought him within half an hour to the bridge across the burn. Even then he strayed again and again from the road, led back to it as often by the voice of the bell, growing clearer and louder with every step he took. Presently he heard voices, hoarse shouts, which he answered in feeble whispers; then a yellow light swinging to and fro shone through the darkness. He staggered on to meet it, falling fainting into the arms of Stride.
* * * * *
Stride asked no questions. Mark was put to bed, and lay still for some four hours: then he began to grind his teeth, to clench his fists. Stride sat beside him watching his friend and patient, with eyes half shut, like a purring cat's, the pupils narrowed to a black slit. Presently he went to the window. The wind had ceased. Outside, in silence, the snow kept on falling, spreading its pall upon the world, while the cold grew more and more intense. The crystals were forming upon the pane, and despite the big peat fire, the temperature in the room fell point after point. Staring through the pane, Stride could see nothing save the piled-up snow on the sill, and the myriad fluttering flakes beyond: each, as he knew, a crystal of surpassing symmetry and loveliness, each fashioned by the Master in His sky and despatched to earth, there to be destroyed, trodden, maybe, into mire and filth, and, rising again, seeking the skies anew, to be transformed by the same Hand into rain, or dew, or sleet, or snow, ordained to fall as before, and as before to rise, the eternal symbol of the soul which descends into the clay, softens it, is tainted and discoloured by it, and then, in glorious resurrection, ascends to be purged and purified in the place whence it came.
CHAPTER XXIII
HYMENEAL
Upon the morning of his wedding-day, Archibald Samphire went into the church of King's Charteris and prayed before the altar. While he was praying, Jim Corrance pushed aside the heavy curtain of the west door and peered in. A whim had seized him. He, the freethinker, the agnostic, had said to himself that he would like to spend a few minutes alone in the church where he had been baptised and confirmed. Rank sentiment! But Jim at heart was a man of sentiment, although he took particular pains to prove to the world that he was nothing of the sort.
When Jim saw Archibald's fine figure he frowned, thrusting forward his square chin, and the short hair on the top of his head bristled with exasperation. Upon each side of the kneeling man were ferns and palms, whose fronds touched overhead. The priests' stalls were ablaze with daffodils and primroses picked by the school-children in the water meadows and woods near Pitt Hall. Through the east window a May sun streamed in full flood of prismatic colour. The pure rays of the sun passing through the gorgeous glass absorbed its tints and flung them lavishly here and there, staining with crimson, or blue, or yellow, the white lilies which stood upon the altar. Jim smiled derisively. The fancy struck him that Archie's prayers would absorb, so to speak, the colours of his mind. The words of the General Thanksgiving occurred to Jim.
"And we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth Thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves to Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days."
Surely this set—so Jim reflected—forth Archibald Samphire's pious ambition. Doubtless he did aspire to give himself to God's service, particularly that form of it which is held in cathedrals; and he intended, honestly enough, to walk before Him (and before the world) in holiness and righteousness all his days (which he had reason to believe would be long and fruitful).
Archibald rose and walked down the aisle. Jim hid himself behind the tall font, but he stared curiously at his old school-fellow. Archibald's face had lost its normal expression of a satisfaction too smug to please such a critical gentleman as Mr. James Corrance. His massive features were troubled. He looked humble! Why? Surely the crimson carpet beneath his feet, bordered with flowers, over-shadowed by exquisite ferns and rare shrubs, indicated the procession of a successful life: a majestic march through the hallowed places of Earth to the Heaven of All Saints beyond!
Had Jim been able to peer within that mighty body, he might have seen a self-confidence strangely deflated, a conscience quickened by pangs. The colossus, whose physical prowess had become a glorious tradition at Harrow and Cambridge, knew himself to be a moral coward, inasmuch as he had withheld a vital truth from the woman he loved. Fear of losing, first, her good opinion of him, then the greater fear of losing the woman altogether, had withered again and again the impulse to say frankly: "Mark wrote the two sermons which have made me what I am." Unable to say this, realising that the many opportunities for speech had passed, he had just vowed solemnly that his transgression should be expiated by hard work in his new parish. Truly—as Lady Randolph had said—was Archibald Samphire an unconscious humourist! And before we leave him to return to Jim, let it be added that the big fellow did not know (and being the man he was could not possibly have known) that he had wooed Betty with Mark's words, that he would have wooed in vain with his own. Not unreasonably, he was absolutely convinced that the qualities which had won success in everything undertaken by him had assured this also, the greatest prize of all, a tender, loving wife.
Jim waited till five minutes had passed, then he strolled back to his mother's house, telling himself that he was a brute, a dog in the manger, because he had misjudged a God-fearing fellow-creature, immeasurably his superior, who had won in fair competition a prize beyond his (Jim's) deserts.
When he returned to his mother's house a trim parlourmaid handed him a note. She told him at the same time that Mrs. Corrance was taking breakfast in her own room. Jim nodded, and broke the seal: a lilac wafer with Betty Kirtling's initials entwined in a cypher.
"Dear old Jim" (Betty wrote): "please come up after breakfast and take me for a walk.
"Your affectionate Betty."
Betty was installed in The Whim for her wedding; and the Randolphs and Harry Kirtling—not to mention other relations—were keeping her company. Since her engagement had been announced, Jim had scarcely seen her. He had taken the news hard. His clerks, and the jobbers with whom he dealt found him difficult to please, argumentative, contemptuous, and a glutton for work throughout that Lenten season.
As Jim approached The Whim, Betty joined him on the drive. He saw that she was very pale.
"How good of you to come," she exclaimed.
"Good!" growled Jim. "As if I wouldn't cross the Atlantic or the Styx to walk with you. Where shall we go?"
Betty took a path which led to the lane running at right angles to the Westchester road. High hedges bordered this lane, with ancient yew trees at uncertain intervals. To the right lay the best arable land in King's Charteris, rich alluvial soil, now green with spring wheat; to the left, the ground ascended in undulating slopes of pasture till it melted in the downs beyond.
"Sun is going to shine on you," said Jim.
The sun was blazing in a sky limpid after a week's heavy rain. Beneath its warm beams the soaked landscape seemed to be smiling with satisfaction. A peculiar odour of fertility, pungent and potent, assailed the nostrils, the odour of spring, the odour of earth renascent, rejuvenated, once more a bride.
"I wish it were June instead of May, Jim."
"That's the most absurd superstition."
"Jim, I want to ask a question. Have you seen or heard of Mark?"
Jim looked cross.
"He's in Sutherland."
"Go on, please."
"He doesn't answer my letters," said Jim, after a pause.
"He writes to nobody."
"Did you expect him to write?"
"Yes, I did," said Betty vehemently. "If it had been an ordinary man, but Mark—Heavens! Why should I beat about the bush with you, Jim? Once I wanted to marry Mark! You know that. But he didn't want—me."
She paused, blushing, her eyes, pools of brown light, opened wide with their strange look: entreating, interrogating.
"Which was a woman's reason, I suppose, for engaging yourself to somebody who did."
The words slipped from him. Caring for Mark, how could she have accepted Archibald? That cried to Heaven for explanation. He stared at her, seeing no reproach in her eyes, only a soft shadow of wonder—or was it regret—or something subtler than either.
"Oh, Jim, feeling as you do about religion, you can't understand. I was looking down, down into the depths. Archie taught me to look up."
"To him?"
"To God."
"You say that Archibald Samphire revealed God to you?"
"In that sermon at Windsor—yes. If you had heard it——"
"I heard of it. You will be the wife of a bishop some day."
He tried to give the conversation a lighter turn, fearing that she would speak again of Mark, understanding at last that Mark, standing under sentence of death, had deliberately hidden his heart from her. What else could such a man have done? And if Betty realised this, even now, at the eleventh hour, she might refuse to marry the silver-tongued brother. And because the temptation to tell her the truth was so poignant, he resisted it. It lay on his tongue's tip to exclaim: "Good Lord! Is it possible that you, with your intuitions and sympathies, have failed to divine Mark's love for you? Can't you understand that his love keeps him in Sutherland, that he dares not write for fear that he should reveal it?" At the same time, he knew that marriage between any young woman and a man suffering from an almost incurable malady was unthinkable. And if Betty could not marry Mark, was it not better from every point of view that she should marry his brother? Would not he (Jim) be taking upon himself a terrible responsibility if he broke the silence which Mark's self-sacrifice had made sacred? These, and a thousand other thoughts, jostled each other in his brain.
"That sermon touched me at first, because I thought it was Mark speaking. Not till then had I realised that Archie possessed the wonderful power of making life easier, happier, ampler; but why does Mark, if he cares nothing for me, stand aloof, why—why?"
"It is strange," he admitted slowly.
"Ah," she cried, "you say that reservedly. You, too, have guessed or at least suspected——"
"What?"
"That Mark is—jealous—of—Archie." The words dropped from her lips as if she loathed them, as if she loathed herself for speaking them. She continued quickly: "At Westchester, he was alone with me. I was thrilling with surprise and admiration. We had underrated Archie; you know that, Jim. And he had vindicated himself so gloriously. Well, Mark said nothing, not a word of praise. Oh, it was ungenerous—abominable! But I did not think so then. But now, what other interpretation can I put upon his silence?"
When she paused, Jim burst into a vehement defence of Mark. He spoke as he spoke to his clerks, clenching his fists, thrusting out his chin, repeating his phrases: "What? You say that? You use such words as abominable, ungenerous? You, Betty Kirtling? Abominable? Ungenerous? Well, if he be jealous, is it surprising, is it not most natural? Abominable? Great Scott! He looks at the man, the brother, who has everything, everything which he lacks—the physical strength, the persuasive voice, the luck—the devil's own luck—I don't pick my words, Betty Kirtling! Why—if he were not jealous, if envy at times did not tear him, he would not be Mark at all, but some impeccable, immaculate humbug! Abominable! From—you!"
Betty turned her back, and walked down the lane; Jim hesitated, and pursued.
"Betty, forgive me! I'm a brute, and this, this is your wedding-day. Here, give me your hand, both hands! That's better. Tell me I'm a beast. I deserve kicking. I'll lie down and let you wipe your boots on me. Your wedding-day—and I've treated you to this."
The feeling in his face went straight to her heart.
"It's all right, Jim," she whispered, half crying, half laughing. "And I take back—abominable." She sighed, gazing towards the downs where she and Mark had played truant. Then, with quivering lips and wet eyes, she murmured, "Poor Mark—poor Mark!" disengaged her hands, and ran down the lane and out of sight.
After the wedding there was an old-fashioned breakfast at The Whim, with toasts, speeches, cutting of cake, and so forth. Slowshire came in force, ate largely, drank deeply, and made merry in the solid, stodgy, Slowshire way. None the less, to Lady Randolph and other less acute observers, the function was somewhat depressing. The Whim, where so many cheery gatherings had taken place, had been sold. The furniture was to be moved into the Samphires' London house, while the bride and groom were on their honeymoon. The Squire's wife, in purple satin slashed with heliotrope silk, supplied every guest who belonged to the county families with details.
"The dear couple will be so comfortable. No—there is no rectory. They will live in Cadogan Place. Lord Minstead was glad to sell the lease. They say, you know, that he—pst—pst—pst——" The speaker's prominent blue eyes seemed positively to bulge from her plump, pink cheeks, as she whispered Minstead's unsavoury story into attentive ears. "But, as I was saying, our dear couple—really the handsomest couple I ever saw in my life—will betrès bien installés. I am to find them a cook—fifty-five pounds a year—do you know of one? She must be acordon bleu. Yes, a kitchenanda scullery-maid. They are very well off, very well off indeed. It is expected that they will entertain——"
The Squire, meantime, exchanged a few words with his old friend Lady Randolph. His face was flushed and his eyes congested and very puffy below the lids. Lips and chin, too, had a faint purplish tinge, always seen on the faces of those afflicted by a certain form of heart disease. He was certainly failing, Lady Randolph reflected. Still, he had lived his life, enjoyed the cakes and ale—too much of them!—and might reckon himself amongst the lucky ones. Pomméry had loosened his tongue.
"They will have—this between ourselves, my dear lady—nearly five thousand a year. Archie has done well. I am very proud of Archie—a fine fellow—hay? You may call him that—a fine fellow—a very fine fellow indeed! Sound"—the Squire thumped his own broad chest—"sound as I am, sound as a bell, and likely to make old bones."
Lady Randolph, with eyes half closed, nodded, wondering if this pitiful assumption of high health were genuine or assumed. Surely the Squire must know himself to be no sounder than a big pippin rotten at the core. He stood beside her, tall, portly, scrupulously dressed as a country gentleman of the old school; and the purple flush deepened and spread as he talked.
"Archibald will be a bishop. Do you know that his portrait is coming out inVanity Fair? The Chrysostom of Sloane Street they call him. His Advent sermons have been widely discussed. And he will have no land to bother him. These are hard times for us landowners. Is Randolph pinched? Of course, he has his town property; but it's different with me; it's the very deuce with me. I'm worried to death about it."
What was fermenting in his mind had come, as it generally does with such men, to the surface. Lady Randolph looked unaffectedly sorry, and expressed her sympathy. The Squire plunged into the interminable subject of falling prices, rates, impoverished soil, the difficulty of finding good tenant farmers, and so forth. Not till the bride entered did he cease from his jeremiads.
"Here is Betty," said Lady Randolph.
She wore a travelling dress of pale grey cloth edged and lined with lavender silk. Betty had refused to adorn herself in bright colours, which happened to suit her admirably. A parson's wife, she observed, should dress soberly, and she quoted the Vicar of Wakefield, to Lady Randolph's great amusement. A controversy had arisen over this particular frock. Betty, however, seconded by the dressmaker, had her own way about it. Now Lady Randolph was certain that her protests had been justifiable. The dress, lovely though it was in texture and fit, had a faded appearance; it suggested autumn instead of spring, dun October, not merry May.
Betty tripped here and there, bidding her friends and neighbours good-bye, while Archie stood smiling at the door. He looked very large and imposing in a rough grey serge suit, which fused happily the clerical garb with that of a bridegroom. Calm and dignified, he received the congratulations of the men. Once or twice he drew a gold watch from his pocket—a present from the Dean and Chapter—opened it, glanced at it, and closed it with a loud click. He had never missed a train, but the possibility of doing so now impended.
Mrs. Samphire held her handkerchief to her face. Mrs. Corrance's handkerchief was in her pocket, but her kind eyes were wet. The young men from the barracks were laughing loudly, cracking jokes with the bridesmaids, "whooping things up a bit." The elderly guests smiled blandly, thinking possibly of their own weddings. The children alone really enjoyed themselves. Jim Corrance waited till the bride had passed him; then he rushed into the dining-room, where he found two generals and an Indian judge solemnly employed in finishing the Admiral's famous Waterloo brandy.
"Wonderful stuff," said the judge, as he passed the decanter to Jim; "it puts everything right—eh?"
Jim nodded. Through the open doors, leading into the hall, he could see Betty run down the stairs, followed by Archibald.
The Squire called after her: "God bless you, my dear! God bless you!"
She was gone.
Jim went out of the dining-room, which was situated, it will be remembered, at the top of The Whim. Most of the guests had followed the bride and groom downstairs. Upon the Persian carpet lay a small spray of lilies of the valley, fallen from Betty's bouquet. Jim glanced to right and left. Nobody was looking at him. Furtively, scarlet in the face, he stalked and bagged the spray of lilies. He placed it carefully in his pocket-book.
"That's the last of our Betty," he said.