.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 47047
   :PG.Title: Brothers
   :PG.Released: 2014-10-04
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Horace Annesley Vachell
   :DC.Title: Brothers
              The True History of a Fight Against Odds
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1905
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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BROTHERS
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      BROTHERS

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      THE TRUE HISTORY OF
      A FIGHT AGAINST ODDS

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      BY

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      HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

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      LONDON
      JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
      1905

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      FIRST EDITION . . *May* 1904
      Reprinted . . *June* 1904
      Reprinted . . *August* 1904
      Reprinted . . *November* 1904
      Reprinted . . *December* 1904
      Reprinted . . *The same month*
      Reprinted . . *January* 1905

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      *Copyright in the United
      States of America by
      Horace Annesley Vachell*

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      TO ALL MEN AND WOMEN
      WHO HAVE STRIVEN:
      TO THE STRONG
      WHO HAVE ATTAINED THEIR GOAL,
      TO THE WEAK
      WHO HAVE MADE THE RUNNING FOR THE STRONG,
      AND IN PARTICULAR TO THOSE
      WHO HAVE CONFRONTED ILL-FORTUNE, ILL-HEALTH,
      AND DISAPPOINTMENT
      WITH FORTITUDE AND SERENITY,
      I DEDICATE THIS
      BOOK

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   *BY THE SAME AUTHOR*

   A DRAMA IN SUNSHINE
   JOHN CHARITY
   THE PROCESSION OF LIFE
   LIFE AND SPORT ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE
   THE SHADOWY THIRD
   THE PINCH OF PROSPERITY

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   PREFATORY NOTE

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It is likely that the brothers in this book will be
recognised by some readers who may indict the
good taste of revealing a secret guarded jealously
during many years.  To these let it be said that
the brother who attained to the highest honours
and dignities of his profession earnestly desired
that the truth concerning certain incidents in his
earlier career should be told in a biography.  A
desire he was constrained reluctantly to forego.  The
story of the Samphires satisfies adequately enough
the exigencies of a peculiar case.  The many are
not concerned; the few will discern truth through
the thin veil of fiction.

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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`Prologue`_

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I.  `Bubble and Squeak`_
II.  `Billy's *v.* Bashan's`_
III.  `Which contains a Fortune`_
IV.  `Miss Hazelby is Shocked`_
V.  `Valete`_
VI.  `At Burlington House`_
VII.  `The Hunt Ball`_
VIII.  `Barbizon`_
IX.  `At King's Charteris`_
X.  `After Three Years`_
XI.  `In Love's Pleasaunce`_
XII.  `Betty in Stepney`_
XIII.  `Bagshot on the Rampage`_
XIV.  `A Moral Exigency`_
XV.  `Aphrodite Smiles and Frowns`_
XVI.  `Westchester Cathedral`_
XVII.  `Surrender!`_
XVIII.  `Ariadne in Naxos`_
XIX.  `A Sanatorium in Sutherland`_
XX.  `Betty sees a Sprig of Rue`_
XXI.  `Recuperation`_
XXII.  `On Ben Caryll`_
XXIII.  `Hymeneal`_
XXIV.  `A Red Tie`_
XXV.  `Mark Hears a Bleating`_
XXVI.  `Readjustment`_
XXVII.  `In Grub Street`_
XXVIII.  `A Sunday in Cadogan Place`_
XXIX.  `The Procession of Life`_
XXX.  `A Note of Interrogation`_
XXXI.  `Betty sees Danger Signals`_
XXXII.  `Betty makes Good Resolutions`_
XXXIII.  `Illumination`_
XXXIV.  `Charing Cross`_
XXXV.  `Chrysostom Returns to Chelsea`_
XXXVI.  `Fenella`_
XXXVII.  `Poppy and Mandragora`_
XXXVIII.  `Gonzales`_
XXXIX.  `At the Miraflores`_
XL.  `"Come!"`_
XLI.  `The Power Behind the Throne`_





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.. _`Prologue`:

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   BROTHERS

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   PROLOGUE

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Mark Samphire clutched tightly his
mother's hand, as the big room began to
fill with people.  Some he knew, and these he
feared: because they might speak to him, and then
he would stammer, and choke, and make a piteous
spectacle of himself.  He wished that he were his
brother, Archibald, standing on the other side of
his mother, Archie, the pink-skinned and golden-haired,
a tremendous fellow clad in a new sailor suit,
and tolerably self-possessed, but pinker than usual,
because a lady in lavender silk had hugged him and
called him "a darling."  Nobody called Mark a
darling except his mother, and that only when they
were alone.  The fat butler kept shouting out more
names.  Mrs. Corrance and Jim arrived.  Mark
hoped they would sit near him.  Jim was his own
age—a ripe seven—and a sworn friend.  Lord
Randolph talked to Admiral Kirtling, the funny
man who made everybody laugh.  Ah!  Jim had
pushed his way through the crowd.  In a minute
the two boys were whispering together, nineteen
to the dozen, for Mark seldom stammered when he
talked to Jim.

An older person than Mark would have seen on
the faces of the assembled company an air of
expectation.  Big folding-doors, now shut, divided the
drawing-room from the library.  Upon these the
eyes of the women lingered, for behind them stood
mystery and—so it was reported—beauty!  Meantime
they chattered, talking for the most part about
the house, newly built, and well named The Whim.
Miss Selina Lamb, one of the Lambs from
Cranberry-Orcas, who had so many relations that she
was never out of half-mourning, gave information to
the Dean of Westchester.

"I assure you, Mr. Dean, that it is a fact.  The
dear Admiral got into a fly at Westchester—he
carried nothing but a white umbrella, and told the
man, Thomas Pinnick, who has driven me a score
of times, to take him to 'some salubrious
locality.'  Thomas, quite properly, drove him here across the
downs.  The west wind was blowing strongly, and
the dear man thought he was in the chops—it is
chops, isn't it?—yes, in the chops of the Channel.
He gave Thomas Pinnick a sovereign, and bought
this hill within the week.  Now he has built this
remarkable house."

The Dean smiled, admitting that the house might
be described as remarkable.  Bedrooms covered the
ground floor; above these the sitting-rooms
commanded a fine view of the pastoral county of
Slowshire; at the top of the house were the kitchen and
servants' offices!

"I understand," said Mr. Dean, "that food descends
like manna from above, and that the common
odours of leek and cabbage ascend, and are smelled
of none, save perhaps the skylarks."

"You always put things so poetically," murmured
Miss Lamb.  "Yes, you are right.  The still-room
is just above the library."

"Where it should be, my dear Miss Lamb.  I
hope the Admiral's housekeeper wears list slippers."

Miss Lamb, sensible that the Dean was making a
joke which she could not quite understand, smiled,
showing large even teeth, and asked if Mr. Dean
had ever met the young lady in whose honour they
had gathered together.  Mr. Dean had not met the
young lady, but he had known, intimately, her
mother.  Miss Lamb blushed.

"She was charming," murmured the Dean absently,
"the most fascinating creature."

The spinster sniffed her surprise, reflecting that
her companion was a radical.  A true blue, the
bishop, for instance, would not have mentioned the
mother at all.  She felt it her duty to bleat a feeble
protest.

"She behaved so shockingly, Mr. Dean."

"True, true, but she was very young, Miss Lamb.
Poor, pretty creature!  And now—dead!"

Miss Lamb closed her thin lips, and her large, too
prominent, china-blue eyes settled upon a portrait
just opposite: the portrait of Colonel Kirtling, the
Admiral's elder brother, the father of the mystery
behind the folding-doors, and the husband of the
pretty creature who had behaved so shockingly.
The picture, painted by Richmond, was not unlike
the famous portrait of Lord Byron.  Colonel Fred
Kirtling had been one of the handsomest men in the
Guards.  Richmond reproduced his curling auburn
hair, his short upper lip, his finely modelled nose,
his round chin with a distracting (the adjective was
Lady Blessington's) dimple in it, and his "wicked"
(Lady B. again) eyes.

"Did you know Colonel Kirtling, Mr. Dean?"

"Yes.  A sad scamp, Miss Lamb, a scamp when
he married—at sixty!"

He began to speak of the Kirtling family.  Admiral
Kirtling was the fourth son of the sixteenth Lord
Kirtling, of Kirtling, in the county of Cumberland,
who married a Penberthy from Cornwall, an heiress
with a large fortune settled upon herself and her
children.  The seventeenth lord inherited whatever
his sire had been unable to sell: Kirtling heavily
mortgaged and stripped of its huge leaden roof
(gambled away at hazard) and the wild moors which
encompass it.  This nobleman lived and died in
chronic resentment against the poverty his father
had inflicted upon him.  His brother succeeded, and
was the father of a son whom we shall meet by and
by.  Fred, the third brother, who had a royal duke
for a godfather, married Louise de Courcy, a beauty
with French blood in her veins.  It is certain that
she married Fred for love and against the wishes
of her parents; and it is equally certain that she left
him—just four years afterwards—because she loved
somebody else much better.  This somebody, who
happened to be a peer and a famous soldier, offered
Fred such satisfaction as one gentleman, even in
those latter days, might tender an injured husband.
Fred, however, wrote in reply that he was under an
obligation to his lordship for taking off his hands
the most ungrateful hussy in the kingdom.  Fred's
word, be it added, was little better than his bond
(the children of Israel knew that to be worthless);
and it is significant that Mrs. Kirtling's family, both
French and Irish, abused Fred to all-comers: asserting
that he had deceived dozens of women in his
time, and none more cruelly than his charming wife.
Death shut the mouths of the gossips by carrying
off both Fred and Louise within six months of the
latter's elopement.

By this time the Admiral, a bachelor of some
eccentricity, had just settled into his new house at
King's Charteris, near Westchester, and was known
to be averse to leaving it.  Yet he had to answer the
question: "Who will take care of Fred's baby?"  Lady
Randolph, a kinswoman, was called into
council.

"Children are the devil," said the Admiral gloomily.
"Think of my nymphs."  (He had some beautiful
china).

"This one may prove the prettiest of them all,"
said Lady Randolph.

"Yes, yes; father and mother the handsomest
couple, even if forty years were between 'em.  Well,
well, I lean on you, dear lady."

Lady Randolph did not fail him.  She fetched the
child from town, gave the nurse, an impudent town
minx, twenty-four hours' notice, and installed in her
place a respectable girl, Esther Gear, out of her own
village of Birr Wood.

So much, and little more, was known to the company
assembled in the Admiral's drawing-room.

Presently the big folding-doors were flung open,
and Lady Randolph passed through, leading by the
hand little Elizabeth Kirtling.  A buzz of admiration
greeted Betty.  She wore a delicate India muslin frock,
encircled by a rose-coloured sash.  Rose-coloured
shoes embellished her tiny feet, and a knot of the
same coloured riband glowed in her dark curls,
which framed an oval face.  The Admiral had told
Esther Gear that he would tolerate no black, which
came, he said, into people's lives soon enough.
Round her neck was a string of coral beads which
matched the tints of her cheeks.  Her great hazel
eyes shone demurely beneath their thick black
lashes, and when she smiled her lips parted,
revealing a fairy's set of teeth between two dimples.
The Admiral met his niece on the threshold of the
room, took her hand, and patted it softly.  Then he
led her forward.  The finely proportioned saloon,
filled with rare and beautiful things, the silver light
of an October afternoon, the many faces—young
and old alike touched and interested—served as a
setting for the grizzled veteran, with his whimsical
weather-beaten face seamed by a thousand lines,
and the diminutive creature at his side.
Mrs. Samphire let two tears trickle unheeded down her
thin cheeks, but her pretty mouth was smiling.
Mark felt that his mother's grasp had tightened.
Perhaps she foresaw, poor lady, that the time
appointed for her to leave her sons was near at hand.
Mark stared hard at the little girl as if indeed—as
was true—he had never seen her like.

Now it seems that the Admiral had told his niece,
with a twinkle in his kind eyes, that the
drawing-room was her room: the state apartment of the only
lady of his house.  And so, when Betty looked up
and saw many strange faces about her she recalled
an adjective too often in her father's mouth, and said
clearly and loudly: "Uncle, what are all dese dam
peoples doing in my room?"

When the laughter died down, the Admiral said
with his queer chuckle: "Egad! this is a maid of
surprises"; but he was careful to explain to his niece
that his friends were her friends, to be honoured and
loved by her.  The child's mouth puckered, and her
great eyes were troubled.

"I can't love all dese peoples," she protested, on
the edge of tears.  The Admiral laughed.

"You must pick and choose, Betty.  'Tis the
privilege of your sex.  Come now, who pleases you
best?"

She understood perfectly: examining the company
with dignified curiosity.  Finally, her eyes rested
upon the three boys at Mrs. Samphire's side.

"I like dem boys," she said clearly.

The three boys were confused but charmed.

"She likes the boys, the coquette!" exclaimed the
Admiral.  "And which of the three, missie, do you
like best?"

The boys blushed because the company stared at
them.  Archie, the handsome one, stood nearest to
little Betty, and seeing her hesitation held out his
hands; Jim Corrance smiled invitingly; Mark, the
stammerer, attempted no lure, dismally conscious
that he could not compete against the others, but his
forget-me-not blue eyes, the only fine feature he
possessed, suffused a soft radiance.

"I love him!" cried Betty, running forward.  She
passed Archie and Jim, flinging her arms round
Mark's neck, who bashfully returned her eager
kisses.

"Um!" said the Admiral, half smiling, half
frowning, "as I remarked just now, here is a Maid
of Surprises."





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.. _`BUBBLE AND SQUEAK`:

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   CHAPTER I


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   BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

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This is the history of a fighter, a fighter against
odds, whose weapons were forged at Harrow-on-the-Hill.
Afterwards, in Mark Samphire's eyes, all
school buildings, even the humblest, had a certain
sanctity, because they are strewn with precious dust,
the *pulverem Olympicum*, so pungent to the nostrils
of a combatant.  To him, for instance, the ancient
Fourth Form Room at Harrow was no battered
mausoleum of dead names, but a glorious Campus
Martius, where Byron, Peel, and other immortal youths
wrestled with their future, even as Jacob wrestled with
the angel.

Mark and his friend Jim Corrance became Harrovians
when they were fourteen, taking their places
in the First Shell, the highest form but one open
to new boys.  Archibald Samphire, their senior by
eighteen months, had just reached the Upper
Remove, two forms ahead of the First Shell.

The three boys travelled together from King's
Charteris to London; but at Euston Mark and Jim
were bundled by Archie into a first-class carriage,
with instructions to sit still and not "swagger."  Archie
joined some swells on the platform.  One of
these Olympians lighted a cigar, which he smoked for
a couple of minutes, throwing it away with the
observation that really he must tell the dear old governor
to buy better weeds.

"How do you feel, Mark?" whispered Jim.

"If I l-looked as small as I f-f-feel," said Mark,
"you wouldn't be able to s-s-see me."

An hour later they stood in the schoolyard.  Here
"bill" was called; here yard-cricket, beloved by
many generations of boys, was played; here, peering
out of his cell, might be seen the rosy, clean-shaven
face of old Sam, *Custos*, as the Doctor called him;
that sly old Sam who sold all things pertaining to
Harrow games at a preposterous profit; who prepared
the rods, who was present when those rods fell
hurtling upon the bare flesh—Sam of the fair, round belly,
Sam of the ripe, ruby-coloured nose, who has led
bishops, statesmen, field-marshals, peers and
baronets, members of Parliament, members of the Bar,
members of the Stock Exchange—to the BLOCK!  Can
it be possible that Sam has passed away?  Surely
not.  Is he not part and parcel of the Yard?  And
when the Yard lies silent and deserted, when the
moonbeams alone play upon it, when the school
clock tolls midnight, does not the ghost of old Sam
fare forth on his familiar rounds, keeping watch and
ward in the ancient precincts?

From the Yard Archibald escorted Mark and Jim
to Billy's, their boarding-house, where the boys found
themselves joint tenants of a two-room, a piece of good
fortune (for there were several three-rooms and one
four-room) which they owed partly to Archie, as he
was careful to inform them, and partly to the high
places they had taken in the school.  Long and narrow,
with a door at one end and a window at the other, this
room contained two battered fold-up bedsteads, two
washhand-stands, two bureaux, a shabby carpet, a
table, a fireplace, and three Windsor chairs.  Here the
boys were expected to work, to sleep, and to eat
breakfast and tea.  No room, according to Mark, has since
given him the pleasure and pride which he derived
from this.  And Jim Corrance, after he had made his
enormous fortune, liked to speak of the first
sporting-prints which he bought and of the moth-eaten head of
a red deer, a nine-pointer, found in an attic at Pitt
Hall, the home of the Samphires.

This first summer half was as pleasant as any Mark
spent at Harrow.  He learned to swim in "Ducker,"
the school bathing-place, a puddle in those days, but
since greatly enlarged and improved; he was taught
to play cricket with a straight bat; he lay upon the
green slopes of the Sixth Form Ground and ate ices;
he spent his *exeat* at Randolph House in Belgrave
Square, and witnessed at "Lord's" the defeat of the
Eton eleven from the top of Lord Randolph's coach,
returning to Harrow with a sovereign in his pocket,
pride in his heart, and heaven knows what mixture
of pie and pudding and champagne in his small
stomach!

At Billy's the colour, tone, and texture of the
"house" were exceptionally good.  Billy treated
his boys as gentlemen.  Some dominies play the
spy, thereby turning boys into enemies instead of
friends; Billy always coughed discreetly when
making his rounds.  And if he had reason to suspect a
boy of conduct unbecoming an Harrovian, he would
send for him and speak to him quietly, or perhaps,
if the offender was a good fellow, ask him to breakfast
or dinner, heaping food upon his plate and coals
of fire upon his head.  His favourite warning may
be quoted: "I have had my eye on you for some
time."  But Mark knew, even then, that Billy's
eyes were none of the best, and that often they
pretended not to see much that a wise man overlooks.

The first year passed quickly.  Mark and Jim found
themselves in the Lower Remove at the beginning of
the winter half, where they achieved the distinction
of a "double," jumping over the Upper Remove into
the Third Fifth, known as "Paradise," a place so
pleasant that some boys refused to leave it.  One
could say to aunts and uncles, "Oh, I'm in the
Fifth," and few were unkind enough to ask,
"Which Fifth?"  Here they found Archie and a
friend of his, Lubber West, who in these latter days
doubtless would have been superannuated, and not
without cause.  Archie and the Lubber practised what
they called the "co-operative system of work."  They
would come to Mark's room and sit upon the sofa
with a large gallipot of strawberry-ice between them.
Then Mark and Jim were instructed to "mug up"
forty lines of Euripides.  This took time, and
meanwhile the ice was consumed and anything else in the
form of light refreshment which might be offered.
When Mark was ready to construe, Archie and the
Lubber produced a couple of battered books, and
listened attentively enough to what Mark had to say,
noting in light pencil marks unfamiliar verbs and
nouns.  In this way, as Archie observed, much
valuable time was saved, and the lesson honourably
learned.  Archie had a number of "cribs," but, as
elder brother, he denounced their use by Mark as
immoral.  "Samphire major has given us a very
'Smart'[#] translation," was one of Billy's bon mots,
not original with him by any means, but accepted by
his pupils as proof of wit and gentlemanlike satire.

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[#] Horace was translated by Smart.

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During this half, Archibald was working hard at
cricket, under the kindly eyes of those famous coaches,
the late Lord Bessborough and Mr. Robert Grimston.
He had more than a chance of playing for the school;
and accordingly he pointed out to Mark that it was
the minor's duty to help his major with Greek and
Latin.  "If I do get my straw,"[#] he said, "you will
reap your reward."  This unconscious humorist was
now a glorious specimen of Anglo-Saxon youth.  He
had crisp yellow hair, curling tightly over a round,
well-proportioned head, the clear, ruddy skin which
from the days of David has always commanded
admiration, and a tenor voice of peculiarly fine quality.
Mark was his humble and adoring slave.  Now, it
chanced that in a shop half-way down Harrow Hill
two young women possessed of bright complexions
and waspish waists served hot chocolate and buttered
toast to boys coming up from the playing fields, and
in particular to certain boys of Billy's.  Behind the
shop was a back room, into which two or three big
fellows were admitted.  In a certain set it became the
thing to drop into Brown's at half-past four and have
a lark with the girls.  The girls were able to take care
of themselves; the boys lost their heads.  Because
Archie's head was a pretty one, the girls were not
particularly anxious that he should find it.  During
the Christmas term he and a boy from another house
were in and out of Brown's half a dozen times a day,
and the school wondered what would happen.

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[#] The black-and-white straw hat only worn by members of the
school eleven.

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"I l-l-loathe those girls," said Mark; "one
b-b-bubbles and one squeaks."

Billy's seized the phrase.  Within a week the girls
were known as Bubble and Squeak.  One of the fags
pinned a card to Archie's door:—

"Which do you like best: chocolate and buttered
toast or Bubble and Squeak?"

"What can we do?" said Mark to Jim.

"Is it Bubble or Squeak?" Jim asked.

"I d-d-don't know or care; they're vulgar
b-b-beasts.  Old Archie has a lock of hair.  They've
given away tons of it: enough to stuff a sofa."

"They can get more from the same old place," said Jim.

"Oh, it's their own," said Mark.  "I hate
marmalade-coloured hair—don't you?"

It was after this brief dialogue that Jim noticed a
falling off of Mark's interest in his work.  For the
first time a copy of Iambics deserved some of the
remarks which the form-master made upon them.
During the next fortnight this negligence, coupled
with his stutter and a temporary deafness, sent Mark
to the bottom of his class.  Jim asked for an explanation.

"It's old Archie.  He's playing the devil with himself."

"Let him," said Jim, who was no altruist.  "What's
the good of worrying?  We can't do anything."

"Perhaps we c-c-can," said Mark.  "We *must*,"
he added.

"You have a scheme?"

Mark nodded.  "I d-d-don't know w-what you'll
say to it."

"I can't say anything till I hear it."

"S-suppose I give Billy a hint?"

The scheme was so alien to a boy's conception of
the word "honour," such a violation of an unwritten
code—in fine, such a desperate remedy—that Jim
gasped.

"D-don't look like that!" said Mark sharply.
"C-can't you see that I loathe it—as—you do.  If
m-mother were alive I'd write to her.  But if I told
father, he would come bellowing down, and behave
like a bull in a china shop.  There would be a
jolly r-r-row then."

"Mark," said Jim, "Archie is big enough to look
after himself."

"It's worse than you think," Mark said.  "He's
meeting this g-g-girl after lock-up.  He gets out of
the pantry window.  I daresay he's squared one of
the Tobies" (Toby was the generic name for footmen).
"And it's frightfully r-r-risky.  If he's nailed, he'll
be sacked."

"What a silly old ass!" said Jim.

"He runs these frightful risks—for what?  To kiss
a girl who bubbles at the mouth!"

"It's the one who squeaks," Jim amended.  "And
she's an artful dodger.  She thinks he'll marry her.
All right, I'll go with you to Billy after prayers to-night."

"I'll go alone."

"You won't."

"I will."

"No."

"Yes; yes; yes."

Jim's obstinacy prevailed.  After prayers, the boys
waited in the passage.  Jim had been swished by the
Doctor in the Fourth Form Room, and his sensations
before execution reproduced themselves.  Mark
seemed cool and collected.

"Sit down," said Billy.  "Open your books."

Mark laid his Thucydides upon the table.

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated Billy.  He had
pushed up his spectacles while he was speaking.
Now, he polished a pair of pince-nez and popped
them on his nose.  Nervousness is contagious.

"We have c-c-come here to t-t-tell you, s-sir,
s-s-something which you ought to know."

The house-master blinked, and glanced at both
doors.  One communicated with the passage, the
other opened into the drawing-room, where his wife
was playing one of Strauss's waltzes: *Wein,
Weib und Gesang*.  Whenever Jim heard this waltz
he could conjure up a vision of that square, cosy,
book-lined room, the big desk littered with papers,
and behind it the burly figure of Billy, his eyes
blinking interrogation.  He let Mark take his own time.

"Something wrong in the house?" said Billy.

"Yes, sir."

Billy seized a quill pen, and began to bite it.

"Isn't this a serious step for you boys to take?"
he asked suddenly.

"Yes, sir."

His gravity became portentous.  Perhaps he feared
an abominable revelation.

"You both understand," he coughed nervously,
"that I may be compelled to act on what you choose
to tell me; and if what you have to say
implicates—er—others, if others may—er—have to—er—suffer,
perhaps severely," he nodded so emphatically that his
pince-nez fell off, "it may be well for you to—er—in
fact—to," he blew his nose violently, "to bid
me—Good night."

"Not yet," said Mark firmly.

Billy's hesitation vanished.

"Go on," he said curtly.  "Speak plainly, and
conceal nothing."

Mark told his story.  He made no mention of the
pantry window, nor of the meetings after lock-up.
For the rest, he spoke with a conciseness and practical
common sense which filled Jim with admiration.  As
he was concluding, Billy began to smile.

"You are both good fellows, and I'm obliged to
you.  You must dine with me.  I shall pull a string
or two, and our—er—marionettes, mark that word;
it is pat; our marionettes shall dance elsewhere."

"Not Archie?" gasped Mark.

"No.  We can't spare Archibald.  I undertake to
handle him.  Silly fellow, very silly fellow!  His
father and mother put a better head on your shoulders,
my boy"; he tapped Mark's cheek.  "And now open
old Thicksides.  Eh, what? you know your lesson?
Then let's hear it."  Jim got rather red.  "I shan't
put you on, Corrance, but Samphire minor and I
will construe for your benefit.  Fire away, Samphire
minor."

The boys went back to their room to find Archie
at full length on the sofa.  His greeting justified
Billy's sagacity in keeping Mark to construe
Thucydides.  "What a time you fellows have been!  I
suppose Billy gave you half a dozen readings.  Well,
let's have 'em, late though it is.  I must get my
remove this half."

So no suspicion was excited.

Within the week Bubble and Squeak mysteriously
disappeared, and Samphire major had an interview
with his house-master.  What passed was not
revealed at the time, but, later, Archie gave Mark some
details, which are set down with the premiss that a
minor canon of Westchester Cathedral is speaking,
not a Fifth Form boy at Harrow.

"Do you remember those girls at Brown's?" he
said.  "Well, I fell in love with one of them.
What?  You knew it?  Oh!  Oh, indeed!  The
whole school knew it?  Ah, well, Billy knew it too.
Sent for me, and behaved like a gentleman.  Made
me blubber like a baby.  I give you my word I never
felt quite so cheap.  It wasn't what he said, but what
he left unsaid.  And I promised him that I would
have nothing more to do with Squeak.  He told me
a thing or two about her which opened my eyes; she
was a baggage, but pretty, very pretty: an alluring
little spider.  I felt at the time I would go through
fire and water to her——"

"Not to mention a pantry window," said Mark,
grinning.

"You don't mean to say that you knew that too?
Well, well, it might have proved an ugly scrape."

For a year after this incident, the sun shone serenely
in the Samphire firmament.  The brothers moved up
out of Paradise, into the Second Fifth, Paradise Lost,
and thence into the First Fifth, Paradise Regained,
singing pæans of praise and thanksgiving.  This
was at the beginning of Mark's third summer half,
the half when Archie made a great score at Lord's,
carrying out his bat for eighty-seven runs in the
first innings; the half, also, when Mark received his
"cap,"[#] the night before the match wherein Billy's
became cock house at cricket!

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] The "cap" is the house cricket-cap, given to members of the
house eleven.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BILLY'S *v.* BASHAN'S`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   BILLY'S *v.* BASHAN'S

.. vspace:: 2

During this summer half Mark and Jim built
some castles, in which, as you will see, they
were not called upon to live.  If Fate made men
dwell in the mansions of their dreams how many of
us would find ourselves queerly housed?  Mark's
castles were military fortresses.  He had the pipeclay
in his marrow, whereas Jim saw the Queen's red
through his friend's spectacles.  The boys studied
the lives of famous captains, from Miltiades to
Wellington, and at tea and breakfast would fight
the world's great battles with such well-seasoned
troops as chipped plates and saucers, a battered
salt-cellar and pepper-pot, a glass milk-jug, and a
Britannia metal teapot, which would not pour properly.
India, and in particular the Indian frontier, was their
battlefield: the scene of a strife such as the world
has not yet witnessed; a struggle between the Slav
and the Anglo-Saxon for the supremacy of the world.
Mark boldly reached for a marshal's *bâton*; Jim
modestly contented himself with the full pay of a
general, the Victoria Cross, and a snug little crib in
a good hunting country.

Sometimes Archie deigned to listen to them, but
he was not encouraging in his comments.

"You, a soldier!" he would exclaim, looking at
Mark's narrow chest and skinny arms; "why you'd
die of fatigue in your first campaign.  I advise you
to be a schoolmaster."

"You have f-f-forgotten" (most boys would have
said "you don't know"), "you have forgotten,"
Mark replied, "that Alexander was a small man;
and Nelson, and Napoleon, and Wellington."

"Pooh, they were hard as nails."

That same evening Mark said: "I'm g-going to
the Gym" (gymnasium) "every day, till I get hard
as nails."

"Not in the summer?" Jim exclaimed.

"Yes; I'll have the place to myself—so much the
better."

He worked indefatigably, and Jim was asked to
feel his biceps about four times a day.

About the middle of June Jim made a discovery.
High up, on one of the inside panels of his bedstead,
he found the name of a gallant fellow who had fought
gloriously in the Indian Mutiny.

"I'd like to sleep in his bed," said Mark.

"What a rum chap you are!" Jim exclaimed.

"If I sleep in his bed I may d-dream of him,"
Mark replied.

They changed beds with mutual satisfaction; for
Jim's had a trick of collapsing in the middle of the
night.

Later on Jim made another discovery: subjective
this time.  Mark was overdoing himself: working
mind and muscle too hard.  Never was spirit more
willing, nor flesh more weak.  One day, a sultry day
in the middle of July, he fainted in school.  That
night Billy detained Jim after prayers.

"*Entre nous*, I am uneasy about Samphire minor,"
he said.  "And as two heads are better than one
I've sent for you, his friend and—er—mine.  What
do you suggest?"

At that moment Jim would have gone to the rack
for Billy.  As Jim suggested nothing, Billy
continued: "The case presents difficulties, but
difficulties give an edge to life—don't they?"

"Sometimes," said Jim cautiously; for Billy had
a trick of leading fellows on to make fools of
themselves.

"Samphire minor goes too fast at his fences."

Billy knew that any allusion to the hunting-field
was not wasted on Jim.

"And the fences," continued Billy thoughtfully,
"are rather big for Samphire minor."

"And he won't ride cunning," added Jim.

"Just so.  Thank you, my dear fellow; you follow
me, I see.  Now Samphire major, big though he is,
takes advantage of the—er—gaps."

"Rather," said Jim.

"Humph!"  Billy stroked his ample chin.  Jim
was reflecting that his tutor was too heavy for a
first-flight man, but that in his day he must have been a
thruster.

"In fine, not to put too fine a point on it, *we* must
interfere."

"Yes," said Jim, swelling visibly.

"We must head him off, throw him out, teach
him that valuable lesson, how to *reculer pour mieux
sauter*."

If Billy had a weakness (a *faible*, he would have
said), it was in the use of French, which he spoke
perfectly.

"Ye-es," said Jim, not so confidently.

"Now, how would you set about it?"

"I, sir?  If you please, sir, I don't see my way,
but I'll follow your lead blindly, sir!"

Billy smiled, and polished his pince-nez.

"We shall move slow.  The blind leading the
blind.  Both of you expect to be in the Sixth next
September?  Yes.  Suppose—I only say suppose—suppose
you were left—where you are?"

"Oh, sir!"

"Come, come, I thought Paradise Regained was
the jolliest form in the school."

"It is," said Jim, "but——"

"You are rather young and small for the Sixth.
Why, God bless me! only the other day you were
fags.  Now, if I gave you my word that there
would be no real loss of time, that you would fare
farther and better by taking it easy, what would
you say?"

"I say—all right, sir."

"Good boy!  Wise boy!  Leave the rest to me!
I shall see that Samphire major goes up, which is
fitting.  The height will give him—er—poise, not
*avoirdupois*, of which he has enough already.
Samphire minor will not complain if you keep him
company.  Good night.  *À propos*—will you and
Samphire minor dine with us next Tuesday?  A
glass of champagne will do neither of you any harm."

Next term Mark became less angular, and some
colour came into his thin cheeks.  Both Jim and he
played football hard in the hope of obtaining a
"fez."[#]  Harrow, like Eton and Winchester, has a
game of football peculiarly its own, differing from
"socker" in that it is lawful to give what is called
"yards."  A boy, for instance, dribbling the ball,
may turn and kick it to one of his own side.  If this
manoeuvre be executed neatly, the other boy catches
it and yells: "Yards!"  Then the opposite side
retires three yards from the spot where the ball was
caught, and the catcher is given a free kick, which
at a critical point of the game may prove of value.
In Billy's brute force rather than finesse informed the
play, a fact which had not escaped Mark's notice.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] Worn by members of the house football eleven.

.. vspace:: 2

"We lose lots of goals," said Mark to Jim,
"because we try to rush 'em, instead of giving
'yards' and taking it coolly.  Let's you and I
practise 'yards' till we have it p-pat.  Our best
players f-foozle awfully."

Accordingly they bought a football and kicked it
secretly and assiduously, Mark insisting that "yards"
should not be given by them in the ordinary house
games till they were masters of a wet, slippery ball.
Then one afternoon, when Billy came down to see
how his house was getting on, both boys gave
"yards," in the forefront of the battle.  As they
panted up the hill after the game, Archibald, in the
school flannels, asked if they were much the worse
for wear.  In giving "yards" where the advantage
was greatest, they had been knocked down several
times.

"You fellows played up," said the great man.
"If you go on like that, I may give you a chance
next Saturday."

"Thanks awfully," said Mark.

Saturday came, and with it the first of the series
of house-matches.  When the list went up on the old
landing at the head of the rickety stairs, and when
Mark's and Jim's names were seen, a howl of
remonstrance was heard.

"They'll be getting babies to play next," said
many whose names were not on the list.

Archibald sent for Mark and spoke a sharp word:
"They accuse me of favouring, the silly fools, as if
my brother wasn't the last fellow in the house I'd
think of favouring."

"I know that, Archie."

"You see," Archibald explained, "this match
with Bashan's doesn't count.  We must give 'em a
licking, and afterwards it will be just as easy to let
you drop out, as it was to stick you in."

The school, however, were of opinion that this
match might prove a surprise for Billy's.  Bashan's
was not a first-class team, but there were big fellows
in it who had the reputation of playing a savage
game.  Bashan's, it was said, would sell their souls
and bodies to lower Billy's pride, and Billy's would
sell theirs as cheerfully rather than Bashan's should
triumph.  Billy's included two members of the school
eleven, Archie and the Lubber; Bashan's had one,
but he was reckoned the finest player of his generation.

The game began.  Half the school was present,
including Billy, who was known to miss many things
in life, but his house-match—never!  Behind the
crowd of boys the austere figure of the Doctor sat
erect on his brown horse.

Archie kicked off.  The wind carried the ball to
Bashan's top side.  There a lean, long-legged,
long-winded Bashanite stopped it, kicked it, and swooped
after it like a lurcher after a rabbit!  By virtue of his
speed he shot by Billy's top-side men before they had
got into their stride; in another second he had kicked
the ball again—and again.  It rose slowly, sailed
over the head of the back—who was not quite back—and
just fell between and through the goal-posts.

Bashan's bellowed itself into a frenzy.  Billy's
smiled coldly and critically.  Archie had a vacuous
expression, as of an ox stricken by a pole-axe.  Mark's
eyes were shining.

"We are going to have a f-fight," he said.

Within ten minutes Bashan's had kicked a second
goal almost as "flukey" as the first.  Stupor spread
like a London fog.  Billy's was demoralised.  At
times bad luck paralyses mind and muscles.  On such
occasions the man of finer clay than his fellows seeks
and finds opportunity.  Mark, for instance, rose to
and above this emergency.  He, the smallest player
on the ground, the one, physically speaking, least
well equipped for the task, thrust himself into the
breach between promise and performance.  In the
brief interval, after the second goal had been kicked,
he went up to Archie and the Lubber, who were
standing apart, inert and speechless.

"I s-say," stammered Mark, "you must change
your tactics."

The Lubber raised his heavy head.

"Shut up, Mark!" said Archibald.

"I won't," said Mark.  "These Bashanites haven't
a chance if *you* d-d-do the right thing."

Archie scowled; but the Lubber, who had reason
to respect Mark's abilities as a scholar, growled:
"Well, what is the right thing?"

"The Bashanites are like a lot of helots, drunk
with success.  If we go canny, they'll play
themselves out.  Then we can trample on 'em.  Don't
attack a victorious enemy!  Defence is our game.
Pull our fellows together!  Tell 'em to keep c-cool and
quiet for ten minutes; close in the top sides; keep
the whole eleven in front of our g-goal; forbid
individual effort till you give the word!"

"By Jove! he's right," said the Lubber.  Archie
kicked off for the second time; and the Bashanites
fell on the ball, kicked it hard, and charged furiously.
Met by a solid phalanx, hurled back, bruised and
broken—they charged again and again, panting and
bellowing; but Billy's held together.  Doubtless
Billy himself fathomed the plan of campaign, for
when the fry of his house began to complain, when
cries of "*Follow up!  Follow up!*" were heard above
the yells of the Bashanites, when shrill voices
screamed, "Now's your chance!" or, in disconsolate
wail, "Why don't you run, you idiot!" or, in still
more poignant accents, "Good Lord! what is the
matter with the fools?"—then, above these
heart-breaking cries, boomed a big bass voice:

"Steady, Billy's!  Well played!  Steady!  Steady
there!"

Within ten minutes of half-time it was plain that
the enemy was exhausted.  Wild eyes, heaving
chests, pallid faces confronted a team full of running
and brimful of hope.  At the next pause Archie
moved along the line.  *Orders to charge*.  And didn't
Billy's charge?  Didn't every boy's heart thrill to that
whispered word?  Charge?  Aye, with a yell which
must have echoed in the Fourth Form Room, nearly
a mile away.  Charge?  Yes—with the fury of the
Light Brigade at Balaclava!  And the Bashanites
bowed down before that charge like the worshippers
of Baal beneath the sword of the Prophet!  It was
Homeric, worthy, so Billy said, of the finest
traditions of the house.

One goal to two—and half-time.

While Billy's sucked the lemons which the fry
hurled at them, Jim found time to observe to Mark:
"I say, so far *we* haven't scored."

"N-n-not yet," said Mark.

Bashan's kicked off after ends had been changed.
They had got their second wind, and also sound
advice from their captain, a man of guile, who has
since been seen and heard at Baba Wali, at Abu
Klea, and at Suakin.  The Bashanites herded
together, bent on retaining the advantage of their one
goal, not daring to risk it in pursuit of another.
Once, twice, thrice, Billy's swept up the field, to be
driven back and back when within a dozen paces of
the Bashanite citadel.  And then, at the fourth essay,
Jim's chance came.  He had the ball between his
legs.  "Kick it, kick it!" screamed Billy's.  "*Yards*,"
whispered Mark.  Jim turned mechanically, kicking
the ball into Archie's outstretched hands as the
leading Bashanite rolled him head over heels in the mud.

A silence fell on players and onlookers.  Archie
took his time, eyeing anxiously the distance between
himself and the goal-posts.  Jim shut his eyes, which
in point of fact were nearly closed already.  A roar
of applause from Billy's, a despairing groan from
Bashan's, proclaimed the accuracy of the kick.

Two goals all, and twenty minutes to play!

The Lubber sauntered up, sucking a lemon, and
stolid as usual.

"Well," said he to Mark, "what'll happen now?"

"Why they'll play up like m-mad, of course.
They've everything to gain, and precious little to
lose.  We ought to go back to our defensive tactics.
Let 'em p-pump 'emselves out, and then smash 'em."

"Good kid," said the old Lubber; "if your body
was half as big as your brain, you'd be a corker."

He was seen talking to Archie; and Archie was
nodding his handsome head, as if in accord.  Before
the ball was kicked off, word was passed round to
play on the defensive.  These tactics may seem
elementary to the modern player, but five-and-twenty
years ago football on both sides of the Atlantic was
go-as-you-please—a succession of wild and
unpremeditated rushes, with much brilliant individual
work, but lacking in strategy and organisation.

Within a few minutes of resuming play, the Lubber
stupidly interposed his ankle between a boot and the
ball, forgetting that his skull was the most invulnerable
part of his person, with the result that Billy's lost
his services and weight when they were most needed.
Archie, too, was slightly disabled and more than
slightly dismayed.  Bashan's pressed their advantage
with vigour.

"It's all right," Mark panted.

Archie had the ball and was away, his side streaming
after him.  Down the field he sped, faster and
faster.  The biggest Bashanite met him shoulder to
shoulder in full career.  The Bashanite reeled over
backwards; Archie hardly swerved.  On and on
strode that glorious figure in the violet-and-black
stripes.  Only one more Bashanite stood between
him and the goal; but he, crafty as Ulysses, was
quick to perceive what must be done.  The ball
rolled between him and the all-conquering Archie.
He rushed forward.  Archie crashed into him.  The
Bashanite fell, but the ball sailed towards a group
of battered gladiators, who, having abandoned
pursuit, were awaiting just such a piece of good fortune
as now befell them.

"Get back!" yelled the fry.

Billy's got back in the nick of time, mad with
disappointment.  The Bashanites retreated, cursing.  In
a minute "Time" would be called.  At this moment
Mark darted out of a scrimmage dribbling the ball.

A second later he turned his back upon three big
fellows who were within ten feet of him, knowing
that they would meet with irresistible force on the
spot where he was standing, and knowing—who
better?—-his own feebleness of bone and sinew.  He
turned and gave "yards."

Jim looked down.

When Jim looked up a pile of figures lay upon the
wet, mud-stained grass, and the ball was in the hands
of a sure and safe player.  And then, as a roar
of applause ascended from the throats of everybody
on the ground, the word "Time" fell like a thunderbolt.

The match was over.  Bashan's had tied Billy's.

But the eyes of the crowd rested on the pile in
front of Bashan's goal.  Three figures rose silently;
the fourth lay face down in the mire.  Archie touched
his brother lightly.

"You're all right, old chap, aren't you?"

Mark did not answer.  His arm was turned outward
at a curious angle.

"Back," said Archie, as the two elevens surged
forward.  "Back!"

He faced them, terror-stricken, and Jim Corrance
had never admired him so much nor liked him so
well, because his strong voice trembled and his keen
blue eyes were wet.

"Mark," he cried, kneeling down, "don't you
hear me?  Don't you hear me?"  His voice broke.
"My God!" he exclaimed, "he's dead!"

.. vspace:: 2

The face upturned to the chill November skies was
of death's colour; the eyes stared glassily; the livid
lips were parted in a grim smile heart-breaking to
see.  The two elevens formed a ring around the
brothers and Billy, who had his fingers on Mark's
pulse.  Beyond this inner circle was the outer circle
of spectators.  One boy began to sneeze, and the
silence had become so impressive that his sneeze
seemed a personal affront, an unseemly violation.
Archibald was crying as men cry—silently, with
convulsive movements of the limbs.

Just then the school surgeon hurried up.  Fortunately
he was on the ground, but had retired with
the Lubber to a distant bench, busy in bandaging that
giant's ankle.  Kneeling down, he laid his ear to the
small blue-and-white striped chest.

"I can't feel any pulse," Billy growled.

The doctor's head was as that of a graven image.

"Why don't you do something?" Archibald
demanded, giving expression to the unspoken entreaty
of three hundred boys.

The surgeon paid no attention; he was listening
for that murmur of life which would justify his doing
anything.

"He is coming to," he muttered.

"He is coming to" passed from lip to lip.  The
school sighed with relief.  The clouds above let fall
a few drops of rain.

"A hurdle," commanded the surgeon, "and some coats!"

Billy was the first to pull off his overcoat.  The
surgeon touched Mark's body in a dozen places.
Mark gasped and gurgled; then he tried to sit
up—and succeeded.

"Back's all right," said the surgeon.  "Keep
quiet, my boy!  You're a little the worse for wear.
There, there, shut your eyes and believe that we
shall hurt you as little as possible.  Your arm is
broken."

The news spread while the hurdle was being
brought.  Mark closed his eyes and lay back.  The
captain of Bashan's stepped forward.

"May *I* help to carry the hurdle?" he said.

The biggest swells were proud to carry that hurdle!
The school formed itself into two long lines; and
when Mark passed through—pale, but smiling—some
chord was struck, which thrilled into sound.

"*Three cheers for Samphire minor!*"

The brave shout rolled over the playing-fields and
up Harrow Hill, past the Music Schools which
recorded it; past the Chapel, where its subtle vibrations
were enshrined; past the Yard, which gave back the
glad acclaim of valour; past the Vaughan Library,
startling, perhaps, some bookworm too intent upon
what has been to care greatly for what is and may
be; down the familiar street, where countless
generations of ardent boys had hastened to work or play;
on and on till it reached Billy's—Billy's with its
hoary traditions of innumerable battles fought and
won, Billy's shabby and battered, scarred within and
without, Billy's—dear old Billy's—where it became
merged but not lost, in the whole of which every
valiant word or deed or thought is an imperishable part!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHICH CONTAINS A FORTUNE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHICH CONTAINS A FORTUNE

.. vspace:: 2

At lock-up Billy announced that Mark's injuries,
albeit severe, were not such as to cause his
friends serious anxiety.  And so, when Archie came
to Jim's room with a face as long as the catalogue of
ships in the *Iliad*, and when the two boys present got
up and left hurriedly at his impatient nod of
dismissal, you may believe that Jim's heart began to
thump and his eyes to pop out of his head with
interrogation.

"I dropped in to tell you, you could get your
'fez,'" said Archie.

"Oh, thanks awfully.  And—and Mark?"

"I bought one for him and sent it in.  He got it
after his arm was set."

Jim's heart warmed to the big fellow.  "I'm glad
you thought of that."

"His advice saved the match, and—and—and—"
his voice had a curious quaver in it—"and it's no
good.  Mark can never play footer again."

He sat down and laid his curly head upon a Greek
lexicon.

"You see," Archie continued heavily, "I thought
Mark would step into my shoes."

"Good Lord!" said Jim, seeing Mark's foot.
"He'd lose himself in 'em."

"The Lubber says he'd have made a great player,
a great captain."

"So he will—yet.  Footer's not the only game."

"That's true.  There's cricket."  Archie's face
brightened.  "I must push him on at that.  The
governor might get a 'pro' to bowl to him during
the Easter holidays.  He shall, by Jove!  Yes, you're
right.  I was a fool not to think of that.  And when
he leaves there will have been three Samphires of Pitt
Hall in the school eleven.  I'll go now.  I've got to
tackle a nasty bit of Æschylus.  You played up like
fun to-day.  I told the Doctor you came from our part
of Slowshire.  He said something in Greek which I
couldn't make head or tail of; but I grinned, because
I made certain it was complimentary.  I say—don't
be in too much of a hurry to get into the Sixth.  A
fellow can't work and play too.  And I didn't come
to Harrow to be killed by Greek tragedians.  By-the-by,
if you could go down and give the old Lubber
a 'con,' he'd be grateful.  He'd come up, as usual,
only he doesn't want to climb these stairs.  Good
night.  We're to see Mark to-morrow, if he has a
decent sleep."

After Archie had left the room, Jim rose to go
downstairs to the Lubber, and in rising his eye caught
a picture of Mark's mother, which hung to the right
of the head of the nine-pointer.  On the other side
was a picture of the Squire, a capital portrait of that
fine specimen of the country gentleman.  From time
immemorial the owners of Pitt Hall had sought wives
in Slowshire; but Mark's father went a-wooing in
London and married a delicate creature of sensibility,
refinement, and culture, the daughter of an eloquent
and impecunious member of Parliament, a friend of
Cobden and Bright, with some of Sheridan's wild
blood in his veins, tempered, however, by a tincture
of John Wesley's.  This lady bore her husband
three sons: George, cut to the old Samphire pattern
(whose fortunes do not concern us), Archibald, and
Mark, the stammerer.  Then she died, and in due
time the Squire of Pitt Hall married again, selecting
Miss Selina Lamb, of Cranberry-Orcas, of whom
mention has been made.

Jim stared at both portraits, seeing dimly the gulf
between husband and wife, realising that Mark was
his mother's child, even as Archie was as truly the
son of his burly father.  Mrs. Samphire's pathetic
eyes seemed to pierce his heart, so poignant was the
reflection that the mother's fine qualities of head and
heart had been reproduced faithfully, and with them
her infirmity of body.  Then he blundered out into
the dimly lit passage and stumbled against Nixon
minimus going to supper, although he was as full of
tea and potted meat, and hot buttered toast, and
strawberry jam as a Fourth Form boy could be.

"I say," whined Nixon minimus, "I wish you'd
look and see whom you're shovin' into."

"I am looking," said Jim.  "Unless I'm vastly
mistaken, I heard you say to me this afternoon: 'Why
don't you run, you silly fool?'  I'm going to answer
that question now.  I didn't run because I was
playing to orders.  Later, when I was lying flat on
my back, with the wind squeezed out of me, you
specially urged me to get up and play up.  Yes, you
didn't mean it, of course, but I happen to want to
kick somebody, and I'm going to kick you, you
spoiled infant, you!  Take that, and that!"

Jim went on his way relieved in mind and uplifted.
The Lubber welcomed him warmly, looking very
funny, with his swollen foot in a footbath and a huge
piece of sticking-plaster across his nose.  On his lap
lay a battered volume of Livy and a crib.

"I can give you a rare good pie," he said; "if
you're hungry, stick your nose into that cupboard!"

Jim declined this hospitable offer, and picked up
the Livy.

"These cribs aren't much help," growled the
Lubber.  "It's the verbs and idioms that flummux
me.  Eh?  What?  Oh, done it before!  Bless you—a
dozen times; but my memory is rotten.  As Billy
said in pupil-room last week, 'You'll forget your
own name some day.  West, and sign it North.'  Rather
bad form making puns on a fellow's name.
By gad!  I'm glad you came.  No, hang the 'con'!
I'll chance it.  I want to have a yarn with you about
the Kid.  Awful—wasn't it?  And Archie says he
won't be allowed to play footer again.  Old Archie
has taken it hard.  Not a bad chap, Archie, but a bit
stodgy—like me.  It's on my mind that I've had a
hand in the overdoin' of the Kid.  He's a corker is
the Kid.  I must be blind as a bat, not to have found
that out before.  But he must go slow, or he'll break
down.  Now it wouldn't surprise me if the Kid made
a mark.  What?  A joke?  Not I.  Never made one
in my life—except by accident.  I mean he'll turn
over some big things some day."

"He seems to have turned over some big things
to-day.  The three Bashanites weren't small."

The Lubber laughed.

"To relieve your mind," Jim continued, "I don't
mind telling you that Billy has his eye on the Kid.
He won't break down in his training."

The Lubber accepted this assurance with the faith
of a child; then he looked at the cupboard.

"I think," said he, "that if you don't mind hauling
out that pie, I'll have a go at it.  Somehow, I
couldn't tackle my tea.  You'll have some too, eh?
That's right.  I never feel quite myself when my
tummy's empty."

Next day, after dinner, Archie saw Mark.  He was
in bed, and above the bed hung his "fez," placed
there by the matron.  Archibald tiptoed into the
room, feeling rather uncomfortable.  Mark, he feared,
would be miserable.  To his surprise, he was greeted
with a grin.

"You don't care——"

"I've thought it out—with Billy.  He was here
before dinner.  I slept like a t-top last night, and
when Billy came in I read his face.  He was awfully
d-decent.  It's a pity he has only a daughter,
although, perhaps, that makes him extra nice to the
sons of other people.  He said that I was strong
enough to know the truth.  And the truth is that
footer isn't my game.  Well—I knew it.  But I
wanted to get my 'fez,' and—and there it hangs, and
there is this.  Billy must have had it engraved the
f-first thing this morning."

He put his hand under his pillow, and pulled out
a small hunting-flask.  Upon it was inscribed his
name, and beneath, in small script, the line from
Horace:

"*Palmam qui meruit ferat.*"


"He gave me this," said Mark, "and with it a
jolly good jaw.  He m-made me see that w-w-weakness
is part of my kit, and the w-weak make the
running for the strong; and it's no use messin' about
and trying to do what others can do much better.
And he s-said that a fellow who rebelled and sulked
was a silly ass—and—by Jove!—he's r-right!"

Mark recovered quickly, and was treated as an
honoured guest by his kind hostess, who played and
sang to him every day.  Boys, particularly English
boys, are not taught to express their gratitude in
happy phrases, but perhaps it is none the less on that
account.  If the lady who played Strauss's waltzes to
Mark Samphire should chance to read these lines, let
her believe that the memory of her kindness has
ripened with the passing years.

After the Christmas holidays Mark and Jim found
themselves in the Sixth, privileged to "fag," and
accepted by Billy's as Olympians.  It was a pleasant
half, and at the end of it Archibald won the school
mile.  Mark trained him.  Most of the boys who
trained, trained too hard; and here again Mark's
weakness developed his brother's strength: they
took their "runs" slowly, but regularly.  During
these spring afternoons more than fresh air was
imbibed.  Mark had capacity for absorbing information
about places and people.  To him an ordinary
cottage was a volume of romance; a man asleep by
the roadside quickened speculation; a travelling van
held inexhaustible material.  One day they came
upon an encampment of gipsies.  Mark insisted upon
stopping to speak to an onyx-eyed urchin, who asked
for coppers, and while they were talking a handsome
girl of sixteen lounged forward, addressing Mark as
"my pretty gentleman."

"Go along with you," said Mark.  "I'm as ugly as
they make 'em."

"You are not," the girl replied, staring
impudently into his eyes.  "Them eyes of your'n are
bits of heaven's own blue; and the women will look
into them and love you."

Mark turned scarlet.

"And you," the hussy turned to Archie.  "Ah,
you're a real beauty, but your brother's eyes are
handsomer than your'n."

"How do you know he's my brother?" said Archie.

"We Romanies know many things.  Give me
half a crown, and I'll tell you both a true fortune."

"Shall we take a bob's worth?" said Archie.
"Sixpence each?"

"I'll read your hand for a bob," said the girl,
"and his," she nodded at Mark, "for nothing."

Archie produced a shilling.  The girl took his
hand between her long, slender fingers, and gazed
at the lines on it.

"Well," said a harsh voice, "what do you see?"

An old hag, possibly the girl's grandmother, had
approached silently.

"Hullo," said Archie, "I suppose you're the
queen of the gipsies.  Mother Shipton herself," he
added *sotto voce*.

"I'm a Stanley," said the old woman, not without
dignity.  "You're one as looks for queens on thrones.
The greatest queens, my pretty sir, don't sit on
thrones.  Go on—tell his fortune!  A child could
read that hand and face."

"I see a long life and a full one," droned the girl.
"You will get what you want, because you will want
it so badly."

"A true fortune," mumbled the old woman.

"Your turn, Mark," said Archie.  "Hold out your paw!"

Reluctantly, Mark obeyed.  The girl took his hand
as she had taken Archie's, very delicately, and
smoothed the palm with a touch that was not unlike
a caress.  A puzzled smile curled her red lips.  The
old woman peered over her shoulder.  Again the girl
stroked the boy's palm, and he winced.

"Shrinks from a woman's touch," said the old woman.

"You tell it, mother," said the girl.

The old woman bent down.

"A happy hand," she muttered, "a happy hand,
the hand of the free giver, the blessed hand, the kind
hand, and the strong hand.  Ah, but what is this?
Sorrow, suffering, disappointment!  And love,"
her harsh voice softened: "you will love deeply and
be loved in return.  You are the child of love——"

"I see more," said the girl softly, taking Mark's
hand again.  "This is the hand of a fighter,
mother."

"Ay, so 'tis, so 'tis."

"A fighter and a conqueror."

Before Mark could draw his hand away, she had
bent down and kissed it.  Then she laughed and
tossed her pretty head.

"He'd like a kiss on the mouth," she said, eyeing
Archie saucily, "but he won't get one from me."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MISS HAZELBY IS SHOCKED`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   MISS HAZELBY IS SHOCKED

.. vspace:: 2

Betty Kirtling, when a child, had been
heard to say: "I like girls, but I love boys."  Perhaps,
beneath the smiles of the prim little English
misses who came to play with her, she perceived
jealousies and meanness, whereas the boys displayed
hearts full of love, with no room for anything else
where she was concerned.  The second Mrs. Samphire
maintained Betty to be a spoiled beauty before
she was out of pinafores; but Lady Randolph, a finer
judge of character, held the contrary opinion.  The
Admiral, it is true, set his niece upon a pedestal: an
action of which the nurse, Esther Gear, took fair
advantage.  "Lor bless me, Miss Betty!  what
would your uncle say?  You know he thinks you
one of the angels," was a phrase often in her mouth,
and one not to be disregarded by a child who valued
the good opinion of others.  "My dear," Lady
Randolph would add, "you must never disappoint
your uncle.  If he knew you had told a fib, it would
make him very unhappy."  When the time came to
choose a governess, she selected a lady of strong
character, whose seeming severity was tempered by
a sense of humour and justice.  Betty hated her at
first, and then learned to love her.  Almost
irredeemably ugly, with a square masculine head
surmounting a tall, lean, awkward figure, Miriam
Hazelby made the large impression of one hard to
please, but for whose affection and esteem it were
worth striving.  Her manner, however, was repellent.
The austerity of feature and deportment chilled a
stranger to the marrow; her harsh voice, emphatic
in denouncing humbug and vanity and luxury, only
softened when she was speaking of suffering; then a
quick ear might catch minor harmonies, captivating
because elusive.

During the Easter holidays following the term
when the Samphires met the gipsies, Mark was set
upon procuring some eggs of the stonechat, which
nests in certain sheltered spots upon the Westchester
downs.  Mark had told Betty—now a girl of
fourteen—of his proposed expedition, and she expressed
an ardent wish to accompany him.  Miriam Hazelby,
however, permitted nothing to interfere with lessons.
Betty said sorrowfully:

"I don't suppose Lanky" (her name for Miss
Hazelby) "would let me go alone with you; she
thinks you a young man, and I'm told twice a week
that I'm a young lady.  But what a splendid time we
would have had!"

Next day, Mark tramped off alone, taking the lane
which leads to the downs, and as he was passing the
chalk-pit to the right of the village, Betty sprang
into the road with a gay laugh.  She carried a basket
and wore an old pink linen frock.

"Betty," said Mark, "you've run away."

"Yes.  Isn't it fun?  Shan't I catch it from Lanky
when I get back.  I've lunch in this basket.  Two
big bits of Buszard's cake, some tartlets, sixpennorth
of chocolate, four apples, and four bottles of
ginger-pop.  Catch hold!"

The girl was in wild spirits.  It happened to be a
day of late April when the sun, pouring its rays into
the moist fresh earth, brings forth spring, the
Aphrodite of woods and fields, with the foam of milk-white
blossoms about her, and a cestus of tender green.
As they passed out of the lane on to the soft turf of
the downs, the landscape widened till it became
panoramic.  Behind lay King's Charteris
encompassed by hanging woods now bursting into leaf;
beyond were rolling downs, wide breezy pastures,
sloping southerly and westerly to the sea, which
gleamed, a thread of silver, through an opalescent
haze.

"Isn't it heavenly?" Betty cried.

"It is r-r-rather jolly!"

"R-r-r-ra—ther jolly," she mimicked him to the
life, rounding her shoulders and slouching forward
in an attitude which Mark recognised, not without
dismay, as his own; "ra—ther jolly, awfully jolly,
beastly jolly.  How Lanky would love to hear you."

"S-s-shut up, Betty!"

"What!  You address a young lady in that
manner!  I must beg you"—she had caught the
accent and intonation of the excellent Miriam—"to
speak English.  Young people, nowadays, are
unintelligible.  My father, in whose presence I never
ventured to take a liberty with the English language,
would not have believed it possible that a gentleman
could use such expressions...."

Mark tried to pull her hair, but she ran like
Atalanta, Mark following encumbered with the basket.
Soon the business of the day began: the finding of
the stonechats' nests.  Presently they sat down in
the shade.

"Let us have a 'beyondy' talk," said Betty.

"A what....?"

"Oh, when talk is about things we can't see,
I call it 'beyondy.'  I say—tell me, what—what are
your besetting sins!"  Then she laughed.  "We'll
play 'swops.'  I'll tell you my sins one by one,
if you'll tell me yours.  Only you must begin.  It
will be splendid fun, and, as Lanky says—improving.
She says one ought to know oneself.  I suppose
you—a grand Sixth Form boy—know yourself in all
your moods and tenses.  Give us a lead.  It would
be so nice to find that you are wickeder than I."

"I am," said Mark.

"No humbug—and 'bar chaff,' as dear Lanky
would not say."

"I'm v-very ambitious, Betty."

She was lying full length on the grass.  Now she
sat up, opening her eyes very wide.

"Are you really?  Ambitious—eh?  That's very
interesting.  I'm not ambitious, not a bit.  I'm greedy."  As
she spoke she set her pretty teeth in an apple.
"I'm greedy, and I'm fond of lying in bed.  Lanky
says these are awful sins.  Oh, dear, I've given you
two sins to one.  Never mind.  Lanky says a woman
ought to give more than she gets.  I say, eat fair
with the chocolate.  You big boys pretend to despise
sweets, but I notice they go jolly quick when you're
about.  Yes; greediness and sloth.  It's horrid, but
it's true.  You see, I'm bound to be wicked."

"Why?"

"Mother was wicked.  I know it.  I heard Lady
Randolph say—oh, years ago—that she hoped what
was bad in the Kirtlings would kill what was
worse in the De Courcys.  I'm not sure what she
meant, and I dared not ask her, because she
thought I was looking at some photographs, but it
wasn't complimentary—was it?"

"No," said Mark, getting rather red.

"You are blushing," said Betty.  "I do believe
that you know something.  What is it?"

She turned a coaxing face to his, being one of
those distracting feminine creatures who have a
thousand caresses distinctively their own.  Her touch
was different to the touch of other girls—more
delicate, more subtle—an appeal to the finer, not the
grosser side.

"What do you know?" she murmured.

"I c-can't tell you," Mark began bravely, and
then ended with a feeble—"m-m-much."

"Boys never can tell much," said Betty
disdainfully.  "Go on."

"Your m-m-mother ran away."

"Is that all?  Why I know more than you.  Yes;
she ran away.  I can't think why she did, because
father was so handsome.  I often look at his
miniature; and he must have been the most fascinating
man that ever lived.  Uncle calls him sometimes that
'rascal Fred.'  Now what does he mean by that?"

"Betty," said Mark desperately, "this talk is too
b-b-beyondy for me."

She paid no attention whatsoever.

"I spoke to Lanky about it," she continued
gravely.  "She was nicer than I had ever seen her.
'Betty,' she said, 'remember that it is not for you to
judge your parents.  They may not have had your
advantages.'  Well, that made me think a bit, and
then I hoped their sins would not be visited on me."

"W-w-what did she say to that, Betty?"

"She nodded that long head of hers in a terrible
way.  'We all suffer,' she growled, 'for the evil that
others do.'  Do *you* think I must suffer for what
they did?"

"No, no," cried Mark.  "Why, Betty, to me you
are the princess who l-l-lives for ever and ever,
fair and happy."

She smiled.

"I love you when you talk like that," she
murmured.  "And——  Good gracious me!" She dashed
some tears from her eyes and sprang to her feet.
"Look here, we have that long strip of gorse to do
before lunch.  Come on!  I'll hop you down the
hill.  One—two-three—OFF!"

Away she went, laughing gaily, leaving care in
the shade, and Mark after her—a boy once more, but
with an ache at his heart none the less.

At luncheon Betty speculated upon the nature
of the punishment which awaited her, assuring Mark
that she did not care a hang, revelling the more
joyously in the present, because a cloud lay black
upon the future.

Presently they discovered that the sun was declining
into the soft haze of the western horizon.

"We must run," cried Betty.

They ran and rested, and then ran again till they
came to the sharp incline from the downs into the
valley which holds the village.  And here bad luck
tempted them to link hands and race down a slippery,
grassy slope.  Perhaps Mark went too fast.  Betty
fell with a dismal thump, and a poignant note
of anguish fluttered up from a crumpled heap of
linen.

"Are you hurt, Betty?"

"I have twisted my ankle," she groaned, her face
puckering with pain.

Mark took off her boot and stocking.  The ankle
was already swollen and inflamed.  What a
catastrophe!  But Betty assured him she could limp
home leaning on his arm.  They started very slowly
and in silence.  A brook bubbled in front of them,
and at Mark's advice Betty thrust her foot into the
cool water.

"What a horrid ending," sighed Betty, on the
verge of tears.  "This is the punishment.  Lanky
will do nothing now."

"I should think not," said Mark indignantly.
Presently he began to dry her foot with his handkerchief.
It lay soft and white in his hand.  She was
sitting higher up on the bank, so that she looked
down upon him.

"I like you better than Archie," she said slowly.

"W-w-why?" he stammered.

"You are so much more—sensible."

"Sensible?"

"Yes.  Archie," she blushed faintly, "and that
stupid old Jim Corrance say they're in love with me!
Isn't it absurd?"

Mark grew scarlet.  He would have liked to say
what Archie and Jim had said, but a lump in his
throat made him speechless.

"I feel that you are a real friend," pursued Betty.
"Now we must be getting home."

They set out slowly: Betty leaning on Mark's
left arm and limping along in silence.  Presently
Mark became aware that she was leaning more
heavily.  Then he looked down upon a white,
agonised face.  They had just reached the small
hill whereon The Whim is set.  Mark wondered
whether he could carry her to the summit of it.
A feather-weight, this dainty creature, but Mark was
no colossus like Archie.  Still, exercise in the
gymnasium and elsewhere had hardened his muscles.
He bent down, picked her up, and breasted the hill.
Her arms were round his neck; his arms held her
body.  But how heavy she grew with every step
upward!  How Mark's back and loins and legs
ached!  How his heart beat!  But he reached the
front door and set her down.  And in the twilight
she held up her face and kissed him.

"Now," she commanded, "run home before they
open the door."

"Leave you?  Not I."

He was proof against persuasion, and simulated
anger.  The Admiral must hear their misadventure
from his lips.

"You obstinate wretch!" said Betty.

When the Admiral did hear the story, some three
minutes later, he roared with laughter, although he
grew grave enough towards the end, and sent his
butler, hot-foot, for the village doctor.  Nor was
Mark permitted to leave The Whim till that gentleman
had pronounced the injury a trifling affair, which
time and cold compresses would set right.  At
parting the Admiral admonished Mark solemnly.

"We must have no larks of this sort, my boy.
What!  *My* niece gallivanting about the downs with
a lively young man!  Miss Hazelby is inexpressibly
shocked.  A rod has been pickling the whole day,
you may swear.  And she says that you boys make
love to the child.  Do you?"

"I'd l-l-like to," said Mark abjectedly, "but I
haven't—yet."

The Admiral paced the room slowly, as if it were a
quarter-deck.  His grey beard lay upon his broad
chest; his red weather-beaten countenance was heavy
with thought.

"Look ye here," said he at length.  "This is
serious, and I take it seriously.  I am tempted to call
you a—jackanapes.  As it is, I prefer to say—nothing,
except this: you ought to be birched."

"I f-feel as if you were b-b-birching me."

His face relaxed.

"My boy, I'm sorry for you.  You may not believe
it, but when I was seventeen and in the Mediterranean
squadron"—the Admiral's voice became reminiscent—"I
had the doose of an affair.  I suffered like any
Romeo, and my Juliet was only eight-and—er—twenty!
Well, sir, I fought and conquered, and so
must you, by God!"

"I have f-f-fought, sir; and I am c-c-conquered."

"You're glib with your tongue.  I daresay Betty
thinks you a tremendous fellow."

"She thinks us—very s-s-silly."

"Us?  Miriam Hazelby was right.  The little
baggage!  A De Courcy from tip to toe already.
Well, my boy, shake hands!  You've made a clean
breast of it, and I respect you for that.  And you're in
your salad days, too.  So—no more!  If you choose
to sigh for the moon I can't prevent you.  Good
night."

Mark went home, humble as Uriah Heap.  None
the less, he made a tolerable dinner, and felt happy
and hopeful after it.  And that night he dreamed he
was illustrious—a great soldier, a ruler amongst men.
But, high though he climbed, aye, even to the Milky
Way itself, where honours gleamed innumerable, he
could not attain to the object of his dreams—the
lovely Moon!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VALETE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   VALETE

.. vspace:: 2

It was now definitely decided that Archibald
Samphire must go into the Church, and in due
time hold the snug family living.  The Squire,
however, was of the opinion that Her Majesty's scarlet
would mightily become his handsome second son,
whereas the black of a Clerk in Orders would do
well enough for Mark.  Archie, to his father's
surprise, chose the sable instead of the gules.  Amongst
the Samphires it was a tradition that the second son
always became a parson.  Archie had a respect
amounting to veneration for tradition.

"Suit yourselves," said the Squire of Pitt Hall to
his sons.  "I should have liked to have seen Archie
on a charger."

"But what a leg for a gaiter," said Mark, hinting
at episcopal honours.

Archibald was now a very big fellow indeed, so
big that when he went in to bat at Lord's, as captain
of the Harrow eleven, a small Eton boy, not far from
Lord Randolph's coach, called out shrilly: "I say,
Samphire, how's your wife and family?"  This was
the famous year when Eton was beaten by five
wickets, having suffered defeat during four previous
summers.  And the only thing that marred Archie's
triumph was the fact that Mark, despite the services
of a professional during the Easter holidays, had not
a place in his eleven.  On the eve of the great
match one vacancy remained to be filled.  It became
certain that either Mark or Jim Corrance would
fill it.  Jim has confessed since with shame that
he was miserably jealous of Mark, that for a dreadful
three weeks this feeling strained their friendship.
And he knew that Mark was the better cricketer;
more, that he had made his friend a better cricketer,
that Jim's understanding of and skill in the game
were due to Mark's precept and practice.  Mark would
whip a cricket-ball out of his pocket, whenever five
minutes could be spared, crying, "Come on, old
chap, you muffed an easy one yesterday—*catch*!"  And
the ball would whizz at Jim's toes.  But
during the last trial match Mark fainted from the
heat, and Jim took his place in the slips.  That
night Archie sent for Jim.

"You can get your 'straw,'" he growled.

"But Mark——"

"Won't take it."

"Won't—take—it?"

"He's right.  He hasn't the strength.  He might
faint at Lord's.  We can't run any risks."

Jim went back to his room—confounded.  Mark
met him and gripped his hands.

"You've g-got it," he cried.  "I *am* glad.  Isn't
it glorious?"

"*Glorious?*"

Jim sat down and blubbered, like a Fourth Form boy.

.. vspace:: 2

However, it seemed certain then that another year
would place Mark in the eleven, and also amongst
the monitors, but this happy end to his Harrow
career was not to be.  Archibald, Jim, and he left
Billy's at the end of the Easter half.  In those
days it was hardly possible for a boy to pass into
Sandhurst direct from a public school.  Billy said
that Mark could do it—at the expense of his health;
for extra subjects, like geometrical drawing, English
literature, history, and so forth, would have had to be
learned in addition to the regular school work, which
in the Upper Sixth was as stiff as it could be.

"I'm very sorry to lose you," said Billy, when the
brothers bade him good-bye.  "Samphire major's
future I am not concerned about.  But I do worry
about you, Samphire minor, because you attempt
too much, you—er—so to speak—strain at the camel
and swallow the gnat.  Well, well," he fumbled with
his glasses, "I should like to give you the benefit
of my experience, but," he pursed up his lips, "I
am not sanguine enough to hope that you will profit
by it.  Some excellent people think I take my duties
too lightly.  Perhaps I do, per—haps I do.  A big
house like this represents a force against which one
individual is expected to pit his strength.  But I
realised long ago that what energy I could spare
must of necessity prove—er—intermittent, the
undisciplined, amorphous resistance would be constant.
You—er—take me?  Yes.  So I governed myself
accordingly.  The great force which I was invited
to control sways hither and thither, veering now to
the right, and now—er—to the wrong.  The swing
of the pendulum, in fine.  When it swings to the
right I push it, so it swings a little farther; and
when it swings the other way I pull behind, and
perhaps it does not swing quite so far; but I don't
try to stop the swing, because I know that such a
feat is beyond my powers.  I trust you are following
me, Samphire minor.  You, I fear, will recklessly
expose yourself—and be rolled over, as happened in
our house-match against Bashan's.  There—I have
warned you."

He signed to Archibald to remain behind.  For a
moment there was silence.  Billy leaned back in his
chair polishing the lenses of his pince-nez with a
fine cambric handkerchief.

"If Mark had your body," he began absently, then,
faintly smiling, he added: "Ah, what possibilities lie
in that 'if,' which it were vain, quite vain to consider.
Well, I hope that nothing will come between you and
him, that your brotherly love, which has been a
pleasant thing to witness, will continue to grow in
strength.  Mark has an extravagant affection for
you—the greater because he does not wear it on his
sleeve.  Your success here has sweetened the
bitterness of his many disappointments.  You will get
more from him than you give."

Archibald felt his cheek beginning to burn.

"Don't distress yourself on that account," said
Billy kindly; "only take what he gives, *generously*,
and so you will best help him to play his part in
life."

After this interview followed the farewell supper in
the common-room, with its toasts and speeches.
Archie made certain that he would break down in his
speech.  And before the fags!  He could see and
hear the heartless little beasts snickering!  As
captain of the eleven and of the Philathletic Club, he
was expected to speak about games; as a monitor, it
was no less a duty to mention work.  Finally he wrote
out his speech and submitted it to Mark.

"Just what they'll expect," Mark observed.  "You
j-j-jolly well crack 'em up, and then let 'em down a
peg or two.  You tell 'em what they know already—that
Billy's is the best house in the school; and then
you hope that it will remain so after you have left.
No doubt without your moral and physical support,
Billy's is likely to go to p-p-pot."

"You make me out an ass."

"Most Englishmen either grunt or bray when they
get on to their legs to m-m-make a speech."

"And what are you going to say?"

"Nothing.  Mum's the word for a stammerer.  I
shall bid 'em good-bye, that's all."

Thanks to Mark's criticism, Archie saw and seized
an opportunity.  He told the house he was convinced
that its present prosperous condition was entirely due
to his personal exertions, that he trembled for its future
after he had left, that, if possible, he promised to run
down from time to time for the purpose of giving
advice to the Doctor, which he was sure would be
appreciated—and so forth.  Billy's roared with
laughter, although the sneering voice of Nixon
minimus was heard: "I say, he's trying to be
funny!"  When Archie sat down, the head of the
house proposed Mark's health.  The old common-room
rocked with cheers.  None doubted his popularity,
but this deafening roar of applause lent it
extraordinary significance, because such tributes were
reserved for famous athletes, and for them alone.

"Thank you," he began; "thank you very much.
I suppose you have believed all the p-pleasant things
that the head of the house has just told you about
me..."  Here a dozen voices interrupted, "Yes,
we do"; "He didn't lay it on thick enough";
"You're a beast to leave us," and the like.  Mark
continued, and in his voice there was a curious minor
inflection which held attention and silence in thrall:
"I am glad you believe them, although he has laid
it on too thick.  You see we can't get away from
f-f-facts, can we?  And the fact is I've been a
f-f-failure."  He paused.  "I wanted to play in a
cockhouse m-match at footer; I w-wanted to w-win a
school race; and I w-w-wanted—by Jove! how
b-badly I w-wanted that—I wanted my 'straw.'"

"It was offered him," said Archie.

"It was offered me," repeated Mark.  "And if I'd
taken it, it might have p-proved the straw which
breaks the camel's back.  Jim Corrance got it, and
we know what back he broke—eh?  The b-b-back of
the Eton bowling."  (A terrible din followed, during
which Billy appeared, holding up a protesting hand:
"My dear fellows, unless you are more careful you
will destroy this ramshackle house!")

Meantime Mark had sat down, but every boy in
Billy's respected his silence.  He did not wish them
good-bye, because he couldn't.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT BURLINGTON HOUSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT BURLINGTON HOUSE

.. vspace:: 2

You may divide the world into those who pipe
and those who dance.  The pipers, for the most
part, envy the dancers; but many a dancer has
confessed that the piper, after all, has the best of it.

Mark and Jim Corrance, at this period of their
lives, were dancers to lively measures.  They lived
at home for a year, emancipated youths, enjoying
the pleasures of Arcadia.  Three times a week they
rode across the grey, green downs, "that melt and
fade into the distant sky," into Westchester, where a
scholar of repute undertook their preparation for
Sandhurst.  Other days they worked at home, not
too hard, and played much tennis—a new game
then—and practised arts which please country maidens,
amongst whom Betty Kirtling was not.  For the
Admiral, having no stomach for immature Romeos,
sent his niece abroad (in the company of Miss
Hazelby) to Dresden and Lausanne, whence letters
came describing queer foreign folk with sprightliness
and humour, and always ending "your most
affectionate—Betty."

As the months passed, Jim became aware how
strenuously Mark's heart was set on a soldier's
career.  One night, for instance, the young fellows
were dining with the Randolphs at Birr Wood, when
a famous general was present.  Mark confessed
himself aflame to meet the hero; and the hero, when he
met Mark, became interested in him.  Who shall say
there is not some subtle quality, undetected by the
common herd, which reveals itself to genius, because
it is part, and not the least part, of genius?  And
you will notice that if a great man be speaking in
general company, his eyes will wander here and
there in search of the kindred soul, and when that is
found, they wander no more.  On this occasion a
chance remark led the talk to India.  Lord Randolph
regretted that so brilliant a soldier as Hodson should
have slain the Taimur princes with his own hand.
The hero, who had known Hodson intimately, said
that the princes had been given no assurance that
their lives would be spared, and that their escape
would have proved an immeasurable calamity.  As
he went on to speak of Nicholson and the siege of
Delhi, the buzz of prattle round the big table ceased.

"He suffered excruciating pain" (the general was
alluding to Nicholson), "but not a complaint, not a
sigh, leaked from his lips.  During nine awful days
of agony, his heroic mind fixed itself upon the needs
of his country, to the very last he gave us sound and
clear advice.  When he died, the grim frontier chiefs,
who had witnessed unmoved the most frightful atrocities,
stood by his dead body with the tears streaming
down their cheeks...."

"What a man!" exclaimed Mark.

"Ay," said the general.  He stared at Mark, and
continued, giving details of what followed the fall of
Delhi: then unpublished history.  The speaker had
marched with the column despatched to the relief of
Cawnpore.  "We could only spare," said he, "seven
hundred and fifty British and one thousand nine
hundred native soldiers, and—let me see—how many
field-guns?"  He paused with his eyes still on Mark.

"Sixteen field-guns," said Mark.

"Yes, you are right.  Sixteen field-guns."  Then
as he realised from whom he had received this piece
of information, he broke into an exclamation: "God
bless me!  How did *you* know that?"

"I've read the d-despatches," said Mark, blushing.

After dinner the general came up to Mark and
asked him if he were going to be a soldier.  On
Mark's eager affirmative, he said deliberately: "When
you are gazetted, my boy, come to see me.  I'd like
to make your better acquaintance."

For a week Mark could talk of nothing save the
Indian Mutiny.

"You're too keen," said Jim.  "Suppose we don't pass?"

"Not p-p-pass?  That's a dead certainty."

"If we did not pass——"

"We could enlist, Jim.  I say, you're not going
into the Service because, b-b-because I am?"

"You lit the match," Jim admitted.  "A fellow
must do something.  Soldiering's as good as
anything else."

"Ten times as good as anything else," Mark
exclaimed.

Jim nodded, sensible that Mark cast a glamour
over the future.  As a child Jim could never listen
to tales of smuggling, of hidden treasure, of Captain
Kidd and the Spanish Main, without feeling a titillation
of the marrow.  And now that he was eighteen,
with fluff on his lip, Mark could provoke this
agreeable sensation whenever he pleased.  That he could
fire Jim was not surprising, for Jim was tinder to
many sparks, but he could fire Archibald also.

"I back you to win big stakes," he would say.
"W-w-what did the gipsy predict?  You will g-get
what you want, because you want it so badly.
You've a leg for a g-g-gaiter.  And your voice, your
v-voice is amazing.  I'd sooner hear you sing r-rot
than listen to Lord Randolph talking s-sense.  You
must have the best of singing lessons.  Why—you'll
charm the b-birds off the trees."

Archie did take lessons; and began to warble at
many houses ballads such as "'Twas in Trafalgar's
Bay," "Sally in our Alley," and "I saw from the
Beach when the Morning was Shining."  He grew
bigger and stronger and handsomer every day, and
Mark's pride in and affection for this splendid elder
brother became something of a thorn in the side
of his friend Jim.  Mark had an ingenuous habit of
putting wise words into the mouth of this Olympian.
"Old Archie," he would observe, with a beaming
face, "thinks so-and-so...."  Jim was sorely
tempted to retort: "If old Archie thinks that, why
the deuce doesn't he say it?"  It was plain to Jim
that Archie's brains were of a quality inferior to
Mark's, but Mark would not allow this, and always
waxed warm if anyone dared to speak slightingly
of the colossus.  Archie, for his part, returned his
minor's affection, and not only sought for, but
accepted graciously that minor's advice.

.. vspace:: 2

A year later Mark and Jim went up to London for
the competitive examination, lodging at a family
hotel in Down Street, an old-fashioned inn where the
name of Samphire was known and respected.  The
Squire offered to accompany them, but Mark begged
him to stay at Pitt Hall.  Mark and Jim unpacked
their traps, and then looked out of the window over
the great world of London.

"Too much smoke for me," said Jim, seeing
nothing but dun-coloured roofs and chimney-pots
innumerable.

"But think of the f-f-fires," said Mark, "and of
the faces round the fires.  I am sure I should learn
to like London, if it were not so beastly dirty.  Why,
there are smuts on my cuffs already."

They had a luncheon such as boys love: chops
fizzing and sputtering from the gridiron, a couple of
tankards of stout, a tart with Devonshire cream, and
some Stilton cheese.

"Are you nervous?" said Mark.

Jim admitted a qualm or two.

"We ought to come out amongst the first twenty."

"If I am dead lag, I shall be jolly thankful," said
Jim.

After lunch they took a turn down Piccadilly.
Mark talked: "I say, what a glorious b-buzzing,
like a swarm o' bees in June, and we're in the
hive—eh?"

Presently they entered the Burlington Arcade,
exchanging greetings with old school-fellows; some of
them forlorn of countenance; others bubbling over
with self-assurance.  The Medical Board had to be
passed that afternoon.  Disjointed phrases flitted in
and out of Mark's ear.  "Not got a chance, I tell
you, but it pleases my people to see me make an ass
of myself—Fancy a rank outsider like that wanting
to go into the Service—Yes; seventy-nine, not out—and
first-class cricket—Who are those fellows with
dirty collars?—If you try to crib and get nailed,
you're done—Hullo, Samphire minor! you're going
to pass in first, I know—I say, I saw your aunt the
other day—What dead?—And a jolly good thing,
too—One of the biggest duffers in the school, I tell
you—With windgalls and an awful splint—Played
for the 'Varsity—And, as luck 'd have it, he hit her
favourite cat——"

Outside the Arcade, they shook themselves free of
the chatterers.

"I am in a beastly funk," said Jim, as they went
up the stairs of Burlington House.

"Funk of what?" Mark answered impatiently.

"I don't know," Jim muttered vaguely.

They entered a long, ill-lighted room, and waited
their turn.  Boy after boy came out grinning, and
buttoning up coat and waistcoat.

"Rather a farce this medical exam," whispered
Mark; and then, as he spoke, his voice broke into
a stammer: "I s-s-say—w-w-who's this?"

A fellow they had known at Harrow was coming
through the great double doors.  His face was white
as a sheet and his lips blue.  He was hurrying by,
when Mark called him by name.

"They won't have me," he gasped.  "I—I thought
I was all right," he added piteously, "but I ain't."

"What's wrong?" said Mark.

"Heart.  I asked 'em to tell me.  They were
rather decent, but I'm done.  If you don't mind, I'll
hook it now.  No, don't come with me.  I'm not as
bad as that.  Only it will, it may—grow worse."

He shambled away with the step of an old man.
Mark's face was working with sympathy.

"How b-b-beastly!" he said.  "And it m-m-might
be one of us."

They passed through the doors into a larger room
beyond.  Here a score or more boys in all stages of
dressing and undressing were dotting the floor.  Near
the window a big, burly man was testing the sight
of a slender, round-shouldered youth.  "How many
fingers do I hold up?" Jim heard him say; and the
unhappy youth replied: "Three!"  The big man
laughed grimly.  "Wrong.  Come a little nearer,
and try again."

Jim was confoundedly pale.

"Pinch your cheeks," Mark whispered.

They were told to strip, and did so, but waited for
some time, while the wind from an open window blew
cold on their bare backs.

"Let's slip on our coats," Jim suggested.

"The others don't do it," said Mark, glancing at a
row of shivering boys, "and we won't."

After what seemed an interminable interval, Jim's
name was called.  The doctor into whose hands he
fell made short work of him.  He clapped a stethoscope
to his chest and back, looked at his legs, asked
a few questions, and smiled pleasantly.  "If you can
see and hear, you're all right," said he.  "*Next!*"  Jim
went back to where his clothes lay in a heap on
the chair.  He knew that his sight and hearing were
excellent; but why in the name of all that was hateful
did not Mark come back?  Half-way down the room
Jim could see him, standing in front of a small,
ferret-faced man, who was talking quickly.  Now, Jim had
not been asked to run round a table or to perform any
other strange exercises, but Mark was treated less
kindly.  Jim saw him jump on and off a bench; then
he began to run, and Jim caught the quick command:
"Faster, sir, faster!"  And then the stethoscope was
laid upon his heaving chest.  Jim watched the
doctor's impassible face.  Suddenly the doctor looked
up and beckoned to the man who had examined Jim.
The second doctor put his ear to the stethoscope.

"Catch him!" yelled Jim.

A hush fell upon the big room as Jim sprang
forward, half clothed and choking with excitement.
He had seen Mark quiver and reel, but the tall, thin
doctor had seen it too.  When Jim reached them,
Mark was on his back on the big table.  The
ferret-faced man was smiling disagreeably, and tapping
the palm of his hand with the end of his stethoscope.

"Absolutely unfit," Jim heard him say.  "Not a
surgeon in London would pass him."

"Not pass him?" Jim said furiously.  "He's only
fainted; he's done that before, that's nothing."

"Isn't it?" said the little man drily.  Then he
added malevolently: "When I am ready to receive
instruction from you, young sir, I will let you
know."

When they got back to the hotel and were alone,
Mark flung himself into an armchair.  Presently he
said quietly: "Let's get seats for the play"; so they
walked as far as Mitchell's in Bond Street, and
bought two stalls for the *Colleen Bawn*, in which
Dion Boucicault was acting.  Then they strolled on
to Regent's Park.  Not a word was said about what
passed in Burlington House till they were crossing
Portland Place, where a cousin of Mark's had a
house.

"I shan't go back to Pitt Hall till your exam is
over," Mark said.  "I'd sooner stop up here with you."

"I don't care a hang about the exam now," Jim
blurted out.

"I know you don't," Mark replied.  "All the
same, you must do your level best."

This calmness surprised Jim.  But after the play,
as they were strolling home through the crowded,
gas-lit streets, Mark whispered fiercely: "I'd like to
get drunk to-night."

"Let's do it," said Jim.

"Good old chap!  Do you think I'd let you do
it?"  He glanced at a handsome roysterer, who
was reeling by on the arm of a girl as reckless-looking
as her companion.  "I can guess how *they* feel,
poor devils!"

"We'll have a nightcap, anyhow," said Jim.

So they turned into one of the Piccadilly bars, full
of men and women, and ablaze with light reflected
from a thousand glasses and mirrors.  Mark had
never set foot in a London bar at midnight.  The
roar of the voices, interpenetrated by the shrill
laughter of the women, the clinking of glasses, the
swish of silk petticoats, the white glare, the
overpowering odours of the liquors and perfumes, the
atmosphere hot on one's cheek—these smote him.
Yet the sensation of violence was not unpleasant.
He was sensible that he might yell if he liked, and
that no one would heed him.  They edged up to the
bar, squeezing through the mob till they were
opposite a young woman whose plain black dress and
immaculate apron were crowned by a mop of chestnut
hair.

"Why it's—it's Squeak," Jim said to Mark.

She recognised them at once.

"Hullo, Mr. Samphire minor—why ain't you in bed?"

They demanded whiskies and sodas.

"You can tell that 'andsome brother of yours that
I'm here," said Squeak, as she pushed the drinks
across the bar.

"I'll mention it to him," said Mark.

"I want to see him, to thank him.  He got me
this job.  Don't worry!  I mean that if I'd not got
the chuck from Brown's I shouldn't be 'ere, but
there.  I've not seen 'im.  He's one of the kind that
loves and runs away."

She laughed shrilly, staring with angry eyes at the
young men.  Her complexion had lost its freshness
and delicacy; her eyes were no longer clear and
bright.  Mark's impassive face exasperated her.

"Tell 'im to send back all the 'air I gave 'im," she
continued viciously.

"You have not quite so much left," said Mark.

"Don't look at me like that, you kid, you!  I
know you're thinking," she spoke very low, bending
across the bar, "that I'm not any younger, or prettier,
or better be'aved.  Well—I ain't.  And that's
why I want to thank your brother."

"I shall not forget to tell him to come to see you.
It will be safe enough—now."

They dropped back into the crowd.  By this time
Mark was able to take note of his surroundings.
Squeak, so to speak, had given him bearings.  The
faces, in relation to hers, had a certain resemblance,
as if those present belonged to the same family.
Next to Jim stood an obese Israelite, puffy of face,
with thick, red lips shining through an oily, black
beard.  Jim felt a mad impulse to kick him on
the shins.  Beside him was a tall, thin youth of the
type known in the seventies as the la-di-da young
man.  His pallid, clean-shaven face, his light-blue
eyes, his closely cropped flaxen hair, his delicate
features were all in striking contrast to the Jew's
gross, corpulent person.  The hands of each were as
different as could be: the Jew's short and thick, and
none too clean, with a couple of big yellow diamonds
blazing on them; the youth's long and thin, very
white and bony, with polished nails.  And yet the
pair were as twins, for the same evil spirit leered out
of their eyes.

"Come on," said Mark.

Outside the air was delightfully fresh and cool, but
the crowd seemed to have thickened.  A tremendous
human tide ebbed and flowed between the tall, dark
houses.  Jim's eye caught a white feather in the hat
of a girl, which tossed like foam upon troubled
waters.  Suddenly the fascination of the scene gripped
him.  This was London—*London*, the city of millions;
and he stood on the pavement of its most famous
thoroughfare, of it and in it, whether he loved it,
feared it, or hated it.  And at the moment, so
overpowering was the sense of something new and
strange and terrible that he could not determine
whether his feeling for the capital of the world was
one of attraction or repulsion.

Mark and he moved slowly on, till they came to
the wall which encompasses Devonshire House.
At the corner stood a huge policeman, grimly
impassive, one of London's hundred thousand warders,
and an epitome of all.

"When is closing time?" said Mark to the constable.

"Quarter-past twelve, sir."

Mark looked at his watch.

"Five minutes more.  I'm going back."

"Where?"

"To that girl—Squeak."

"What on earth for?"

"I spoke brutally.  I shall beg her p-pardon.
Don't come with me!"

"You're as mad as a hatter."

Jim went on to Down Street, ascended the stairs,
and began to undress, thinking of two things which
obliterated all others—the slender figure of Mark
when it reeled back into the arms of the tall, thin
surgeon, and the white feather wavering hither and
thither above the turbulent crowd.

Half an hour passed, and Mark did not return.
Jim grew apprehensive.  If Mark had fainted—if he
had fallen into coarse, gross hands such as those
of the Jew.  Then he thought of the colossus at the
corner of Devonshire House, and took comfort in
him—the Argus-eyed, the omnipresent and omnipotent.

"Not in bed yet?" said Mark.

"By Jove, here you are!  I saw you trampled
under foot."

"I'm glad I went back.  The girl's a good sort—silly,
vain, terribly ignorant, but not without heart.
I promised to see her again.  It wouldn't be a b-bad
bit of work to get her out of that—hell."

"You're a rum 'un," said Jim, for since they had
parted Mark's face had resumed its natural expression—that
look of joyousness which redeemed the harsh
features and sallow skin.

"A rum 'un—why?"

"Well, I supposed, you know, that you'd be
thinking just now of—of yourself."

"I'm rather s-sick of that subject."

He flung off his clothes and turned out the gas.
Jim slipped into bed in the adjoining room.  He
couldn't sleep for an hour or two, wondering whether
Mark would break down when he found himself
alone, listening with ears attuned to catch the lightest
sigh.  To his astonishment, Mark breathed quietly
and regularly.  He must be—asleep!  Jim waited for
another ten minutes; then he slipped out of bed.
The moon was throwing a soft radiance upon Mark's
figure.  He lay flat on his back, with his arms straight
at his side.  *He was smiling*!  But his fists were
clenched, and the jaw below the parted lips stood out
firm, square, and aggressive....

Jim watched him lying thus for several minutes;
then he stole back to bed—no longer a boy, but
a man.  By many, doubtless, the step between
boyhood and manhood is taken at random, and forgotten
as soon as taken; or it escapes observation altogether.
But Jim was shown, as in a vision, the past and the
future: the green playing-fields, the happy lanes
of childhood, and beyond—the hurly-burly, the high
winds and whirling dust-clouds, the inexorable
struggle for and of Life!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HUNT BALL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HUNT BALL

.. vspace:: 2

At Harrow, Mark had been told by the drawing-master
that he had great talent as a draughtsman,
and possibly something more.  The vague
"something more" kindled possibilities which
smouldered, and burst into flame when the doctors
at Burlington House pronounced him unfit to serve
his sovereign.  The Squire suggested the Bar, a
bank, or a junior partnership in a brewery.  Mark
shook his head.  Briefs—supposing they came to
him—bullion, beer, left fancy cold.  But to paint a
great picture, to interpret by means of colour a
message vital to the world, this indeed would be worth
while!

Mrs. Samphire bleated dismay and displeasure;
but much to the Squire's surprise, Lady Randolph
sustained Mark's choice of art as an avenue to
success.

"Fame's temple," she said, "lies in the heart of a
maze to which converge a thousand paths—most of
'em blind alleys.  Mark may try one path after
another, but in the end—in the end, mind you—he
will choose the right one."

After a few months' work in South Kensington,
Mark went to Paris, where he became a pupil of the
famous Saphir at the École des Beaux Arts.  Saphir
looked at his studies and shook his head.  He was of
opinion that Mark had better join Julian's for a year;
the standard at the Beaux Arts was very high.  Mark
showed his disappointment.

"Oh, monsieur, I am so anxious to be under you."

"Have you no better reason than that?" said the
great man.

"Our n-n-names are alike," stammered Mark.

"*Tiens*!  Any reason is better than none.  *Samphire
et Saphir*."

"And the l-l-less," said Mark, "includes the
g-g-greater."

Saphir laughed at the compliment, and told Mark
he might join his *atelier*.  "Only you must
work—work—work.  That is my first word to you—work!"

Mark worked furiously.  Many well-informed persons
believe that an art student's life in Paris (particularly
that part of Paris which lies on the left bank
of the Seine) is a sort of carnival—a procession up
and down the Boul' Mich', varied by frequent
excursions to the Moulin Rouge and other places of
entertainment in Montmartre.  Of the unremitting
labour, of the grinding poverty, of the self-denial
cheerfully confronted by the greater number, an
adequate idea perhaps may be gleaned from Zola's
*L'OEuvre*, which sets forth, photographically and
pathologically, French art life as it is.  *L'OEuvre*,
however, deals with the struggle for supremacy
between the academic and the "*plein air*" schools.
When Mark entered the Beaux Arts, this struggle,
although not at an end, had become equalised, the
balance of power and popularity lying rather with the
*plein air* party, of which Saphir was the bright
particular star.  Saphir introduced Mark to Pynsent,
then considered one of the rising men.  Born in the
East of America, related on his mother's side to two
of the Brook Farm celebrities, Pynsent had renounced
a promising career as a lawyer in the hope of making
his fortune out West.  In California he lost what
money he possessed trying to develop a "salted
mine."  Then he "taught school" for bread and
butter—a foothill school on the slopes of the Santa
Lucia mountains, where the pupils were the children
of squatters, and "Pikers," and greasers.  Here he
found his true vocation.  For a couple of years he
denied himself the commonest comforts, living on
beans for the most part, saving his pitiful salary.
Then he worked his passage round the Horn in a
sailing-ship, and began at thirty years of age to draw
from plaster casts!  Since, he had taken most of the
prizes open to foreigners at the École des Beaux
Arts!

Pynsent found Mark a lodging and studio in the
Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, not far from the famous
Café Procope, the café of Voltaire and Verlaine.
With Pynsent as guide, he learned to know Paris—the
Paris of the Valois and Bourbon, the Paris of the
Terror, of the Empire, and of the Republic.  Pynsent
had a prodigious memory, and an absorbing passion
for colour.  He was always hopeful, generous, proud,
inordinately ambitious, and willing to sacrifice
everything to his art.  He exercised an enormous influence
upon Mark, making plain to him the virtue which
underlies so much that is vile and vicious on the
surface.

"Men fail here," said he, "not so much from
incapacity as ignorance.  I could not interpret Paris
to you or to myself had I not served my apprenticeship
in California.  Because my energies were
misdirected there, I have learned to direct them
here.  Great Cæsar's ghost!  What mistakes I have
made!  But you can bet your life that the fellow who
makes no mistakes is either a parasite or a jelly-fish.
Tell me what a man's mistakes are, and I'll tell you
what he is."

"Am I making a mistake?" said Mark.

He had worked—furiously, as has been said—for
two years.  Pynsent smoked his cigarette for a full
minute before he replied: "I don't know yet.  I shall
know soon."

"When you do know, tell me," said Mark.

Meanwhile Archibald Samphire was occupying a
corner of that famous quadrangle of Trinity College
where Byron, Newton, Macaulay—and how many
more?—have kept their terms.  Archie was considered
by impartial judges to be a distinguished young man.
A "double blue," he represented his University at
cricket and as a runner; he was certain to take a good
degree; he could sing charmingly; he was handsome
as Narcissus.  At the end of the second year's work
in Paris, Mark and Archie and Jim Corrance made a
tour of France, with the intention of visiting the
Gothic cathedrals; but, as a rule, after the dust and
glare of the French roads, both Archie and Jim
Corrance would seek and find some cool café.  Mark,
however, would hurry off to the nearest church, and
return raving of foliations and triforia and
clerestories—empty words to Philistines, but to him
documents of surpassing interest.  Archibald was going
to take Orders, not swerving by a hand's breadth
from his goal; but Jim, after a year at Sandhurst,
had resigned his commission.

"I'm no soldier," he told Mark.  "I went up for
my exam because you fired me.  I want to make
money—a big pile."  Mark said nothing, but he
thought of Betty Kirtling, now eighteen, and still
abroad.  Jim had mentioned (with a flushed cheek)
that Betty was coming out at the Westchester Hunt
Ball, always held in New Year's week, and Mark
had said that he would assist at that and other
festivities.

When Christmas came Mark crossed the Channel.
He brought Pynsent with him as a guest.  Mark
was now twenty-two, but he looked older.  You
must imagine a long, thin, sallow face, illumined by
two splendid blue eyes and a wide mouth filled with
white even teeth.  The hair was dark brown, and the
eyebrows were arched, like the eyebrows of the poet
Shelley.  His nose was too long—so Pynsent said—and
the chin was too prominent, the eyes set too far
apart, the brow too wide.  For the rest the figure
was tall and slight, with finely shaped extremities.
Curiously enough, although ninety-nine out of a
hundred persons would have pronounced Mark an
ugly man; yet, dressed in petticoats, judiciously
painted and bewigged, he made a captivating
woman.  At a dance in one of the studios, he
impersonated an American heiress with so much spirit
and appreciation of the attention he received,
that before the night was out he had promised to
become the wife of an impoverished French count:
a prank provoking a challenge, which Mark accepted
and which doubtless would have ended in a duel, had
not Pynsent explained to the victim of the joke that
if Mark was killed, the slayer of so popular a person
would have to fight his friends, man by man, till not
one Englishman or American was left alive in
Saphir's studio.  "It is the woman in Mark's face,"
said Pynsent, "which gives it charm and quality;
but the man, strong and ardent, looks out of his eyes."

Mark did not meet Betty till the night of the Hunt
Ball.  He was standing beside Archie and Pynsent,
as she entered the room.

"Great Scott—here's Beatrice Cenci!" said Pynsent.

The artist was thinking of the fascinating portrait
which hangs in the Barberini Palace, not of the
wooden counterfeit presentment so familiar to buyers
of cheap chromo-lithographs.

"It's our Betty," said Archie.

"As if it could be anybody else," Mark added.

Betty advanced, tall and slim and pale: her great
hazel eyes sparkling with pleasure and excitement.
Beside her, beaming with pride, walked the
grey-headed, grey-bearded Admiral; behind came two
nice-looking youths, fingering their highly glazed
Programmes and gazing at the milk-white neck and
shoulders in front of them.  The big room was full
of people: men in the "pink" of four hunts, officers
in scarlet, officers in dark green and silver,
dignitaries of the Church, bland and superior; lesser
luminaries, such as canons and archdeacons; masters
from the college, supercilious gentlemen for the most
part, and the sisters and wives and cousins of these.
A roving eye might detect the difference between
those of the county and those of the town, dividing
the latter again into those of the barracks, the close,
and the college; and a stranger might have whiled
away the evening, even if he did not dance, by
noting the subtler distinction between the wife of a
rural dean and the mistress of a country vicarage, or
between Lady Randolph, the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant,
and Lady Bellowes, whose husband was
a baronet of recent creation.

The first dance had just come to an end, so the
floor was comparatively clear for the passage of
Betty and her squires.  Archibald went forward,
smiling, to greet her, followed by Mark and Jim
Corrance.

"I've saved three dances apiece for you," said
Betty.

One of the young men behind, Lord Kirtling's
eldest son, protested loudly: "Oh, I say—and I'm
a cousin."

"A cousin!" cried Betty gaily.  "Why, these
are my best and oldest friends.  We've sucked the
same acidulated drop."

Mark introduced Pynsent.  Then Lord Randolph
came up; and Betty was escorted in triumph to the
corner sacred to the magnates, where her card was
almost torn in pieces by the young men.

"Never saw such a pair," said Pynsent to Mark,
indicating Archie and Betty.

Archibald, in the scarlet coat with white facings of
the Quest Hunt, was standing beside Betty, who
wore a pearly brocade embroidered with true lovers'
knots.

"Dear old Archie looks splendid," said Mark.

A set of lancers was being formed.  Mrs. Samphire,
discovering that Mark had no partner, begged
him to sit down beside her.  The years which had
passed since she married the Squire had turned her
from a thin, prim, slightly acidulous spinster into a
plump, smirking matron, whose skin seemed too
tight for her face, even as her bodice seemed too
tight for her figure.  A voluble talker, she was never
known to listen to any person save her superior in
position or rank.  Lady Randolph's lightest words
she cherished and generally repeated them
afterwards—as her own.

"I've hardly had time to say anything to you,"
she bleated.  "How well Archibald looks to-night!
It distresses me dreadfully to think that he will never
wear pink again.  Betty is very handsome.  What
do you say?  A beauty?  No, no.  I can't agree
with you.  And I always admire blondes.  All the
Lambs are blondes."

"No black sheep in your family?" said Mark.
Lady Randolph, who was near, smiled.

"Black sheep?  Never!  Dear me!  Who is that?
Oh, Harry Kirtling.  What a nice-looking young
fellow!  One guesses why he is here.  Our dear
Admiral is anxious to see a coronet on his niece's
head.  Don't move, Mark!  Ah! there is Lady
Valence and her blind husband.  Do tell me—I am
so short-sighted—who is that very common young
man with them?  What?  Oh, oh, indeed!  The
Duke of Brecon!  I must say a word to dear Lady
Valence."

She bustled across the room.  Mark turned to
Lady Randolph.

"Have you any m-m-mint s-sauce?  There is
s-something about all the Lambs which——"

"Does not bring out our great qualities," said
Lady Randolph.  "See!  She has put the Duke to
rout, and he is going to take refuge with me."

Mark glanced up, noting that the Duke's feet were
flat and turned out at an absurd angle, giving him a
shuffling and awkward gait.

"He is a better fellow than he looks," whispered
Lady Randolph.

"Will you do me a favour, Lady Randolph?"  The
Duke's voice was very pleasant.  "Perhaps you
can guess the nature of it?"

"An introduction to Miss Kirtling, of course."

"Of course," he repeated, laughing.

The lancers was just over, and across the room
Mark could see Betty and Pynsent deep in
conversation.  Pynsent, he had heard women say, was a
fascinating man, the more so because heretofore he
had been proof against the assaults of the fair.
Hullo!  Lady Randolph was crossing the floor with
her Duke—confound him!  And now Betty was
smiling at him.  Yes, he had secured a dance;
somebody else's probably.  What an insufferable
silly grin he had!  Jim Corrance interrupted his
thoughts.

"I say, Mark—isn't Betty a wonder?"

Jim began to rave about her.  The Duke and Lady
Randolph passed on; Betty leant back in her chair,
while Pynsent talked.  It seemed to Mark that
Pynsent was making the effort of his life.

"I'm glad you brought Pynsent from Paris," Jim
was saying.  "It will do him good.  Like all
Americans who live in Paris, he is ignorant of the
best side of English life.  Eventually he must settle
in London.  And he'll paint the portraits of all the
swells.  He tells me that already he's in love
with——"

"Betty!" exclaimed Mark.

"With my mother," said Jim, grinning.

Mark was dancing the next valse, and had to seek
his partner, who—it is to be feared—did not find
him as agreeable as usual.  Moreover, she too
prattled of Betty, of the great match she ought to
make, and so forth.  Fortunately a polka gave an
opportunity of letting off steam.  After that, and a
cooling glass of cup, Mark felt more hopeful and in
better humour.  Indeed, by the time his dance with
Betty was due, he was himself, and beginning to
enjoy the ball.

"Your friend, Mr. Pynsent, is perfectly delightful,"
began Betty.

"I thought you found him so."

Betty smiled demurely.

"He talked in the most interesting way about——"

"Himself," said Mark.

"No."

"About you?"

"Wrong again!  He talked, nearly all the time,
about a dear friend of mine whom I had not seen for
years."

"I suppose you have dear friends in every town
in Europe," said Mark.

The shameless coquette nodded.  How her eyes
sparkled.

"And who is this dear friend Pynsent knows?"

"Mr. Pynsent was talking about—*you*," said Betty.

"Betty, dear, forgive me!  I am an ass, a silly,
jealous ass.  And seeing you to-night I—I——"

A kind pair of eyes warned him to say no more.
For a moment there was silence.  Then—they fell to
talking of the old days, capping stories, and
laughing at ancient jokes.  When Mark left her in the
hands of her next partner, he was more in love than
ever, and knew that Betty knew it, and that the
knowledge was not displeasing to her.  And she had made
plain, without words, that this meeting of friends
had stirred her to the core, quickening all those
generous emotions of childhood which older people
are constrained sorrowfully to stifle and destroy.
While Mark was sitting beside her he realised how
little she had changed from the girl who had played
truant on the Westchester Downs, and yet between
them lay a blackthorn fence of convention and
tradition.

Meantime he danced gaily every dance, and at the
end of the ball got into a dogcart to drive home with
Pynsent, feeling, perhaps, more alive than he had ever
felt before.  Pynsent offered him a cigar, and lighted
one himself.

"This Hunt Ball has been a new experience,"
Pynsent said, as the cart rolled up the High Street.
"And it means work.  Lady Randolph has commissioned
a portrait.  I go on to Birr Wood after
leaving you."

"If you satisfy her, Pynsent, she can help you
enormously.  She knows all the right people."

He heard Pynsent's pleasant chuckle.

"'The right people.'  I always scoffed at that
phrase.  But I found out what it means to-night.
Well, I hope to satisfy Lady Randolph.  What I see
I can paint.  I wonder if Miss Kirtling would sit.
Would you ask her?"

"Can you see her?"

"The finer lines are blurred.  I might fail on
that account.  It would be no small thing to set on
canvas the 'unexpectedness' of her face.  She's
going to surprise all of you before she's many years
older."

"She will marry a swell and become like everybody
else," said Mark nervously.

"A marriage of convenience!  That would indeed
be surprising.  No, no; she is likely to marry the
wrong man, but not from any ignoble motive; she
is capable of a great passion, which, mind you, is
more physical than mental, nine times out of ten.
I'd like to make a study of her for a head of Juliet,
but I should want her to be thinking of Romeo, who,
I take it, has not yet made her acquaintance."

Mark shuffled uneasily, and began to drive a willing
horse too fast.

"My brother, Archie, will sit as Romeo."

"Ah!  When they were standing together to-night,
somehow I thought of Verona at once."

"Pynsent," said Mark desperately, "I may as well
tell you that I—I l-l-love Betty Kirtling.  I loved
her when she was a b-baby.  I loved her when she
was a g-girl.  And it all came back to-night.  There
never has been anyone else."

"Um," said Pynsent.

"Tell me frankly what's in your m-mind."

"I'm trying to fit you into it—as Romeo."

"I'm an imbecile, of course, but I f-feel like
Romeo.  There—it's out."

"So is your cigar.  Take a pull on yourself, man,
and on that horse, too!  You're not an imbecile.
Alps lie between you and Miss Kirtling, but the
Alps have been scaled before and will be again."

"If I could paint a great picture——"

Pynsent was silent.

Mark continued keenly: "And I feel in all my
bones that I shall get there, as you put it—with both
feet.  I say—you're not very encouraging."

"You must try for this next Salon."

No more was said.  But when Mark found himself
alone in the room at Pitt Hall which he always used,
he lit the candles on each side of the old-fashioned
mirror.  Then he examined himself, frowning.

"Romeo!" he exclaimed disgustedly.  "Good heavens!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BARBIZON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BARBIZON

.. vspace:: 2

After the Hunt Ball Betty Kirtling was whisked
away on a round of visits.  Jim Corrance accepted
a clerkship in a big firm on the Stock Exchange.
Archibald was reading hard for his degree.  Mark
returned to Paris and work.

Acting under Saphir's advice, he went to Barbizon
with the intention of painting a picture for the Salon.
In those days every man who went to Barbizon
painted one picture at least in accordance with certain
well-defined Barbizonian rules.  At the top of the
canvas was a narrow strip of sky put on boldly with
big brushes and a palette-knife.  Invariably, the
sky was of a tender, pinky-grey complexion, hazy,
but atmospheric, hall-marked, so to speak, by Bastien
Lepage.  Below this strip of opalescent mist, in
solid contrast, were painted the roofs of the village.
These, too, were handled capitally even by the
beginners.  The foreground represented a field full
of waving grasses, grasses from which the sun had
sucked the chlorophyl, leaving them pale and
attenuated.  In this field grew one tree, looking much
the worse for wear.  Under the tree sat or stood a
woman, a peasant wearing the *coiffe* of the commune
and heavy sabots.  This woman always had a
complexion of the colour and texture of alligator-skin,
and her back was bowed by excessive labour.  A
pretty maid waiting for her lover would have been
deemed rank blasphemy against the traditions of the
place where the "Angelus" of Millet had been
conceived and painted.

Mark worked hard at just such a picture during
half of January and the whole of February.  A dozen
friends were painting similar masterpieces in a fine
frenzy of open-air excitement.  Saphir himself was
at Gretz, but he came over to Barbizon, breakfasted
*chez* Siron, and examined his pupils' canvases with
kindly, twinkling eyes.  Then he went back to
Gretz.

"He says we are all monkeys," observed a big
Canadian.

"So we are," cried Mark.  "We're trying to copy
what one man has done s-s-superlatively well."

Later, he took the Canadian aside.  Saphir had
talked alone to him; and Mark had overheard his
own name.

"What did he say to you about—m-m-me?"

"Oh, nothing."

"I w-want the facts."

"Well, he did ask me if you had private means,
and I told him your father made you a good allowance."

"Go on!"

"And—and he said that was fortunate.  Of course
he meant that—er—it takes time to arrive—eh?"

"Quite so.  A lifetime if you happen to choose
the wrong r-road."

About the beginning of March Pynsent arrived
from England.

"I've caught on," he told Mark.  "I shall certainly
take a studio somewhere in Kensington.  Lady
Randolph has found me a score of patrons.  What
are you doing?"

Mark produced his big canvas.  Pynsent stared at
it, pursing up his lower lip and frowning.  Mark's
hopes oozed from every pore.  The picture exhibited
pitiful signs of excessive labour.  Pynsent obtained
his best effects with bits of pure colour laid on with
amazing precision.  Mark's colour looked like putty.

"Are they all as ugly as that?" said Pynsent,
indicating the model.

"I got the ugliest in the v-v-village.  There's a
lot in her face."

"A lot of dirt."

"I don't allow her to wash it.  Can you read her
1-life's history?"

"I'm hanged if I can."

"You see n-nothing in her eyes?"

"Nor in her mouth.  She's lost all her teeth."

"Knocked out by a b-brutal husband," said Mark,
grinning, but ill at ease beneath Pynsent's chaff.

"What are those stains on the apron—red paint?"

"Sheep's blood.  I rubbed it on myself."

Pynsent roared; he was not a Barbizonian.

"Great Scott!  You fellows take yourselves seriously."

"Honestly," said Mark.  "What d'ye think of it?"

"It's good—in streaks," said Pynsent solemnly.
Then his eyes flashed.  "Look here, Mark, they
won't hang that.  But I've told Lady Randolph and
Miss Kirtling that you will have a 'machine' in the
Salon.  Now, have you the pluck to scrape this and
paint it out—*to-night*?"

"Yes," said Mark.

Next day Pynsent led the way into the forest of
Fontainebleau, Mark following like a faithful spaniel.
They walked for miles.  Finally, Pynsent discovered
a bank of cool-looking sand in the heart of a pine
wood; upon the sand were wonderful shadows and
reflections.

"*Voila notre affaire!*" exclaimed Pynsent.

"But the m-model——"

"I have wired to Paris.  These Barbizon peasants
make me tired."

That evening the model arrived—a girl.  Within
twelve hours Mark was at work.  Pynsent posed
the girl upon the bank.  She sat with her elbows
on her knees and her face between her hands,
staring helplessly and hopelessly out of an unknown world.

"We'll call it '*Perdue*,'" said Pynsent.  "The
subject is trite, but the treatment will redeem that.  I
spotted that girl last year in the Rue du Chat qui
Peche.  Aren't her eyes immense?"

Mark protested in vain.  Pynsent ordered him to
begin work.  In eight days the picture was painted.
Pynsent had not laid a brush upon it, but Mark was
miserably conscious that his friend's genius informed
almost every stroke.  For hours Pynsent stood at his
side, exhorting and encouraging.

"It's really good," said Pynsent, after he had
forbidden his pupil to add another touch.

"But it's not m-m-mine, Pynsent."

"What?"

"I couldn't have p-painted it without you."

"Pooh!"

At Siron's Mark's friends predicted success, a
place on the line, honourable mention, a prize,
possibly.  Saphir saw it and whistled.

"You painted that—you?"

They were standing in the dining-room, panelled
with studies, some of them signed by famous men.
Mark's friends were all present, and in the
background Madame Siron smiled genially, murmuring
that monsieur certainly must add a tiny sketch to her
little collection.  Mark glanced from face to face.
The general expression was not to be misinterpreted.
In the eyes of those present he had "arrived."

"*Tiens!*" said Saphir; "it is not signed.  You
must sign it, *mon garçon*."

A bystander produced a brush and palette.

"It grows upon one," said Saphir, shading his
eyes.  "He has lots to learn in technique, but the
feeling which cannot be imparted is there.
*Saperlipopette*!  It brings tears to the eyes.  And look
you," he addressed Pynsent and Mark in broken
English, "I am not easily moved—I!  When I lose
a friend of ze blood—how do you call it?—a relation,
yes, ze tears do not come—no!  And when I hear
Wagner—*zoum, soum, zoum*—ze tears do not come,
no!  But when I hear Rossini, Bellini—rivers, *mes
amis*, rivers!"  With a large gesture he indicated
a tropical downpour; then he continued: "It is ze
melodie.  Is it not so, *mes enfants*?"

He appealed to the circle around him.  Mark
listened, stupefied, to a clamour of congratulation.

"Sign it—sign it!" they cried.

Mark took the brush with a queer smile upon his
wide mouth.  The others fell back to give him room.

"*Dieu de Dieu!*" ejaculated Saphir.

Mark had copied cleverly Pynsent's bold signature;
below it in small script was: "*per* M. S."

Pynsent bit his lip, frowning.  The others stared
at Mark, who met the startled interrogation of their
raised brows with a nervous laugh.

"The f-f-feeling you speak of," he turned to Saphir,
"is his," he indicated Pynsent.  "I cannot s-send it
to the Salon as my work, but I shall k-keep it and
v-value it as long as I live."

Saphir held out his hand.

"My friend," he said in his own tongue, "if you
were not an Angliche, I should ask to have the honour
of embracing you."

"He's a quixotic fool," Pynsent growled; "I never
touched the canvas."

The others vanished, put to flight by an intuition
that something was about to happen.  Mark addressed
Saphir.

"When you were here last you s-said to a friend
of mine that it was fortunate for me, that I had private
means.  You are my master; you have seen everything
I have done.  This, you understand, does not
c-c-count.  Pynsent knows my work, too, every line
of it.  I ask you both: Am I w-w-wasting my time?"

Neither answered.

"No mediocre success will content me," continued
Mark.  "I ask you again: Am I w-w-wasting my time?"

"Yes," said Saphir gruffly.  He put on his hat
and went out.

"He's not infallible," Pynsent muttered angrily.

"Then you advise me to g-go on?  No; you are
too honest to do that.  I shall not go on, Pynsent;
but I don't regret the last three years.  They would
have been wasted indeed if they had b-b-blinded me
to the truth concerning my powers."

"What will you do, Mark?"

"I don't know—yet," said Mark.

.. vspace:: 2

Mark returned to England, where he learned of
Betty's conquests.  The Duke of Brecon, so Lady
Randolph told him, had to marry a million,
otherwise he might have offered Miss Kirtling the
strawberry leaves.  Harry Kirtling, the cousin, very
handsome, and a passionate protester, wooed in
vain, much to the Admiral's dismay, a dismay
tempered by Betty's assurance that she did not wish to
leave her uncle for many a long year.  A prosperous
rector proposed in a letter which began: "My dear
Miss Kirtling,—After much earnest thought and
fervent prayer, I write to entreat you to become my
wife...."  This gentleman was a widower on the
ripe side of forty.  Pynsent, too, confessed that had
he not been bond to Art, he might have become
Betty's slave.

Mark saw her on the day when she was presented
at Court, on the day when she held a small court
herself at Randolph House, after she had kissed her
sovereign's hand.  Like the young man in the
parable, Mark went away from Belgrave Square very
sorrowful, because Betty seemed so rich and he was
so poor.

About this time he met the future Bishop-Suffragan
of Poplar, David Ross, then head of the
Camford Mission.  A man of extraordinary personal
magnetism, Ross had begun by challenging public
attention as the champion middle-weight boxer of his
year.  He possessed a small forest in Sutherland and
abundant private means; but, to the amazement of
his friends, he took Orders and accepted a curacy in
the East End.  His lodge in Sutherland was turned
into a sanatorium, whither were sent at his expense
clergymen who had broken down in health.  David
Ross had the highlander's prophetic faculty and
intuition.  Where others crawled, he leaped to
conclusions respecting his fellow-creatures.  When he
met Mark, for instance, he divined his mental
condition: the suffering denied expression, the
disappointment, the humiliation.  But he divined far
more—something of which Mark himself was unconscious:
a religious mind, religious in the sense in which
Bishop Butler interpreted the word—submissive to
the will of God.  This quality in combination with
a passionate energy and determination to win his
way arrested Ross's attention and captivated his
interest.  He asked Mark to become a guest at the
Mission.

Here the almost invincible odds against which a
dozen men were struggling whetted to keen edge
Mark's vitality and love of fighting.  Listening to
David Ross, it seemed incredible that he should have
pinned his ambition to the painting of a picture.  At
the end of a couple of months' hard work in the
slums he said abruptly to Ross: "If I can
overcome my confounded stammer, I shall take Orders."

Ross held his glance.

"Do nothing rashly," he said gravely.

Time, however, strengthened Mark's resolution.
He set to work to overcome his stammer.  When he
told his family of his intention to take Orders, each
member in turn protested.

"You—a parson?" The Squire was scarlet with surprise.

"There is only one living," bleated Mrs. Samphire.

"Oh, I shan't compete with old Archie," said
Mark, smiling.

Lady Randolph, however, said to Betty: "He is
the right man to lead—*lead*, mind you—forlorn hopes."

"And be killed," Betty answered vehemently.

"I don't think he will be killed, my dear."

For many months after this he worked with Ross,
seeing but little of his family and friends.

.. vspace:: 2

In the following February the Admiral died after
a short sharp attack of pneumonia.  Mark attended
his funeral, and exchanged a few words with Betty,
to whom was left everything the kind, eccentric old
man possessed.  Betty broke down when she saw
Mark's sympathetic face.  She had nursed her uncle
faithfully; she had loved him very dearly; she
realised that she was alone in a world which held
pain as well as pleasure.  Mark tried to comfort her.

"You have so many friends, Betty."

"Friends?"  She smiled through her tears.
"Friends are like policemen—always round the
corner when most wanted.  I might want you, and
you—you—would be somewhere in Whitechapel."

Mark opened his mouth, and shut it again resolutely.

During that week he saw her twice.  It was
settled that The Whim should be let till she came of
age; Betty living, meanwhile, with her guardian
and trustee, Lady Randolph.  Miriam Hazelby
helped Betty to pack up the Admiral's china, and,
when Mark called, played watchdog.  She liked
Mark and respected him; but she respected also
the late Admiral's wishes.  Mark noted that Miss
Hazelby's affection and sympathy for Betty did not
obscure her powers of observation.

"Betty," she said to Mark, "has a mind which
till now has been a sundial: recording only the
bright hours.  I confess that I am anxious about her.
When I left her I told the Admiral that she carried
too much sail and not enough ballast.  As a seaman
he approved my trite little metaphor."

Mark began to praise Betty.

"Oh," said Miss Hazelby drily, "she has been
fortunate in knowing good people to whose standard
she tries to attain.  It has been easy for her to avoid
evil in King's Charteris, but in Belgrave Square——"

The excellent lady sniffed.

"Lady Randolph will keep an eye on her," said Mark.

"She'll need both eyes," retorted Miss Hazelby.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT KING'S CHARTERIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT KING'S CHARTERIS

.. vspace:: 2

Two years later, in April, Mark Samphire
preached his first sermon at King's Charteris.
He had wrestled with his stammer as Christian
did with Apollyon, and he told Archie that he had
reason to believe it was mastered when the brothers
met at Pitt Hall upon the Saturday preceding Mark's
appearance in the village pulpit.

"I passed some severe tests, before they admitted
me to deacons' orders," he said.

Archie stared curiously at an unfamiliar Mark.
"You don't look very fit."

"I've been like a bird in the hand of a fowler, a
fluttering tomtit trying to escape.  Ross rescued
me.  You must get to know Ross: he's a splendid
fellow.  I've talked to him a lot about you."

Archibald nodded, well pleased to find Mark's
eyes lingered upon his handsome face and imposing
figure with the same pride and affection as of yore,
out he was conscious also of a mental change in his
brother, divined rather than apprehended.  Mark
spoke with enthusiasm of work in congested districts,
he gave lamentable details, he indicated colossal
difficulties.

"And this sort of thing satisfies you?" said Archie
heavily.  "Although, as I take it, the results are
visible.  I like to see results.  I keep a diary—of
results.  You were telling me just now of the
difficulties of dealing with a shifting population: the
people, for instance, round the London Docks.  I
couldn't undertake that sort of work."

"You want to count your sheaves," said Mark.

"I am ambitious," Archie admitted.  "Aren't you?"

"Oh, yes.  If I told you that I felt it in me to
become a preacher, you would l-laugh perhaps."

"You've always had plenty to say, Mark."

"And if, one day, I could stand in the pulpit of
such a fane as Westchester, if——"

"Why not?" said Archie.

"I try not to think of that.  But those spires and
pinnacles—I see them as in a vision."

"What will be your text to-morrow?"

"That verse from Isaiah: '*A man shall be as an
hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the
tempest.*'  I shall not t-touch upon the prophetical
interpretation.  I want to show that any man, the
humblest and weakest, may prove a shelter to others."

Archie caught his enthusiasm.

"It is in you, Mark."

"In me, yes; but suppose it won't come out."

"Do you know that Betty Kirtling is here?"

"Here?"  He turned to hide his flushed cheeks.

"She is with Mrs. Corrance.  We are asked to
lunch there to-morrow.  I accepted for you.  Betty ran
down from town yesterday on purpose to hear your
first sermon."

"Oh!"

"It's a great compliment; for she has become a
much-sought-after person.  I see her name continually
in the papers.  Lady Randolph tells me that you
refuse all invitations to Randolph House.  Is that
wise?"

"Wise?"  Mark laughed, and thrust out a lean
leg.  "Is this a leg for a gaiter?"

"That joke is worn threadbare," said Archie, with
a slight frown.  "I can't see why your work should
cut you off from old friends who have your welfare at
heart.  Lord Randolph got me my present curacy.
He would do as much and more for you."

"I shall certainly stick to Ross."

Next morning Mark rose early after an uneasy and
almost sleepless night.  He had been obsessed by a
spirit of Betty.  Whenever he closed his eyes she
came to him.  "She is the creature of my dreams,"
he told himself impatiently.  None the less she
dominated his waking hours, she stood behind that
ever-increasing hope of becoming a great preacher.
He had consumed gallons of midnight oil in the
composition of sermons declaimed in unfrequented
spots of Victoria Park.  Now, the thought of
preaching to the woman he loved filled him with
bitter-sweet excitement.  He dressed and went out into the
park.  Presently he came to an elm out of which
flew some jackdaws chattering volubly.  Their harsh
notes brought back a morning when Archie and he,
small schoolboys, had scaled this very tree in search
of jackdaws' eggs.  Yes; there was the hole, high
up, out of which Archibald by his superior height
and strength had secured the spoil.

Mark sat down, despite the protests of the
jackdaws, and faced his thoughts.  The talk with Archie
of the night before came back to him.  He had heard
Archie preach.  Archie's matter, perhaps, to the
critical mind left something to be desired; but his
manner was admirable and his voice clear, persuasive,
melodious, an instrument of incomparable power
and delicacy.  Did Mark envy his brother?  Did he
grudge him a success already achieved?  Did he
grudge him—a subtler point—the greater success
which undoubtedly he would achieve?  To these
questions he answered sincerely—"No."

Leaving Archibald, his thoughts flew straight and
swift to Betty.  She had come to King's Charteris to
hear him preach?  Why?  His heart flamed; for
Archie had preached his first sermon in the village
church.  Had Betty travelled from town to hear
Samphire major?  No.

When he returned to Pitt Hall, he had made a
sort of compromise with his pride, his conscience,
and his God.  Time was when he abhorred
compromise, but David Ross had said that a life without
compromise must prove entirely selfish or so selfless
in its aims as to be abnormal.  Mark admitted the
possibility of breakdown.  And if silence were
imposed, he must shoulder the burden.  Speech, on
the other hand, if it were truly his, included speech
with Betty.  He felt assured that she expected him
to speak, that she had travelled to King's Charteris
to hear him speak.  He could not have said why this
conviction thrilled every nerve in his body; it simply
was so.

.. vspace:: 2

During the first part of the service, Mark found
time to study the faces of the congregation.  Betty,
sitting beside Mrs. Corrance, looked pale and
anxious.  Mark remembered that she had not entered
the church since the Admiral's funeral.  Having keen
sight, he detected traces of tears, which moved him
profoundly.  Behind her, with his broad back against
one of the pillars, sat the Squire, rigidly upright.
He had come prepared to hear his boy—"the best
boy in the world, sir"—preach a fine sermon.  During
the rector's long and somewhat dry discourses, the
Squire always assumed an attitude of profound
attention, his fine head inclined upon his massive
chest, his eyes and lips meditatively closed.  If
suspicious sounds had not escaped through his nose,
none would have dared to accuse him of napping.
But everybody, from the rector to the latest breeched
urchin, knew that the dear man slept like a
humming-top from introduction to peroration.  He
would not sleep to-day.  Expectation, tempered by
anxiety, informed his expression, the expression
assumed by him at Lord's, when his sons were walking
to the wicket.  Literally interpreted, it said:
"A Samphire may fail, but it is not likely to
happen."  Mark glanced from his father to Mrs. Samphire.
Her prominent eyes, set too far apart, like
a sheep's, were slightly congested; her puffy cheeks
were flushed.  It struck Mark that she would accept
failure on his part with Christian resignation.  She
resented the fact that Mark was the favourite son of
the Squire, who may have seen the quality in his
youngest born which distinguished the mother, and
which Mark alone inherited.  Mrs. Samphire was
inordinately jealous of the first wife.

Mark's thoughts wandered with his eyes.  Just
below the pulpit he saw Wadge, the head keeper, a
thin, hard-bitten, sharp-featured man, whose brown
face was framed in bushy red whiskers.  Many a
day's sport had Mark enjoyed with Wadge.  He
recalled a frosty morning when Jim Corrance,
indiscreetly thrusting his hand into a burrow, had been
nailed by a ferret.  Behind Wadge was Bulpett, the
butcher, a burly man, one of the churchwardens, and
reputed to be worth a snug ten thousand pounds.
What a lot of rats there used to be in his old
slaughter-house before it was pulled down!  Once
Bulpett had caught Archie and Mark peeping
through a chink in the slaughter-house at a calf he
was about to kill.  What silly idiots they felt when
Bulpett politely invited them to come inside.  And
then Bulpett had laughed and said that he would
send a nice piece of veal to Pitt Hall.

The rector gave out the psalms of the day.  Archie's
splendid voice filled the church.  And who was this
singing so shrilly and so abominably flat?  Why dear
old Ellen, to be sure—his first nurse—who must have
walked all the way from Cranberry-Orcas.  Ellen
lived in a cottage near Cranberry brook, wherein
Archie and he used to catch trout by the willow at the
foot of her cabbage patch.  She had been maid to the
first Mrs. Samphire; and when Miss Selina Lamb
came to Pitt Hall, Ellen married a porter, who had
waited for her fifteen years.  Mark knew the porter
well.  He was not an agreeable person, being
rheumatic and asthmatic—and crusty in consequence—but
at the time of the marriage the Samphire boys agreed
that Ellen was wise in preferring him to the Ewe,
their nickname for the stepmother.

How his thoughts were wandering!

With an effort he led them from the nave into the
chancel.  In this church a famous poet and scholar
had ministered for more than a quarter of a
century.  The ancients from the workhouse, who sat in
the front seats of the aisle, wearing white smock
frocks, had been ruddy-faced youths when the poet
first came to King's Charteris.  And in the village
the influence of this saint remained a vital force,
although he had been dead nearly twenty years.
This thought moved Mark to pray that he might
be given the gift of tongues, which is not the faculty
of speaking many languages, but the infinitely
greater power of making our fellow-creatures feel
what we feel—of touching them to issues finer than
those which ordinarily engross them, of so setting
forth what is strong and tender and true that other
things, no matter what they may be, shrink and
shrivel into the trivial and insignificant.

The psalms came to an end.  Standing at the great
brass lectern, Mark read the lessons without stutter
or pause in a voice slightly harsh, yet susceptible of
modulation.  Later, in the same harsh, penetrating
tone he gave out his text.  The scrapings of feet, the
rustle of skirts, the occasional cough were silenced.
Mark began his sermon by asking his hearers to
consider man's relation to others: a theme
informed by him with phrases and illustrations drawn
from personal observation of village life.  Betty
Kirtling felt as if she were peering into a magic
mirror, wherein she saw herself illumined by a
strange light, and this shining image was no
phantom of the imagination, but her true substantial
self, the woman as God intended her to be, with
finite aims and appetites subordinate and subservient
to the majestic design and purpose of the Infinite.

To her right were the village boys, a mob of
sluggish-minded urchins, the raw material out of which
is fashioned the Slowshire yokel.  But each boy—so
Betty noted—was gazing at Mark with intelligence
and affection.  He held them in thrall.  The hard lines
about Mrs. Samphire's eyes and mouth softened.  The
Squire was staring into the face of the preacher—seeing,
hearing, feeling the mother of his son.

And then, when the great thing for which Mark
had laboured as patiently as Demosthenes, seemed
within his grasp, when he had proved to the
meanest understanding that he had something to say
which the world would hear gladly, his infirmity
seized him.  In the middle of a phrase he began to
stutter.  His face grew convulsed, his thin hand
went to his throat, as if seeking to tear from it the
abominable lump.  But no articulate word followed.
Only a stutter falling with sibilant hiss upon the
dismayed congregation.

At that moment a nervous, hysterical girl tittered.
The woman seated next to her glared indiscreet
rebuke.  The wretched creature burst into discordant
laughter.  Betty heard the girl's laughter and saw
Mark's twisted face.  His eyes met hers in a glance
which she could not interpret, as the girl who had
laughed was led weeping from the church.  The
great oak door clanged behind her, and in the
silence which followed Mark attempted to continue
his sermon, but the last desperate effort to conquer
a physical disability cannot be described.  Betty
covered her face.  Old Ellen burst into piteous sobs.
Mark turned towards the altar, the congregation
rising.  Then, with a firm step, he descended the
steps of the pulpit.

.. vspace:: 2

The brothers came out of the vestry together,
passed in silence through the churchyard, where
Easter flowers were shining in the shadows cast
by the lindens, crossed the village street, and strolled
up the lane which led to Westchester Downs.  In the
street a small crowd had collected, including Wadge
and Bulpett.  Further down, by the lychgate, stood
the Samphire landau.  Mark saw a burly figure, and
a face, redder even than usual.  When the Squire
perceived that his sons were crossing the street he
got into the carriage.

"It's hard on him," said Mark.  "The dear old
man was so certain I should score."

The crowd made way; all the men touched their
hats; upon every face was inscribed sympathy and
affection.  Bulpett advanced, holding out his huge
hand.  "Gawd bless ee, sir, we be tarr'ble sorry we
be; but try again, Master Mark, try again!"

"Thank you, Bulpett," said Mark, without stammering.
He glanced at the circle of kindly faces.
"By Jove! it's good to have such friends."

The brothers walked on till they reached a bank
flaming with primroses, and sloping to the old
chalk-pit, where as boys they used to find fossils.

"You *will* try again?" said Archie nervously.

"Again and again," Mark answered.  "All the
same, I have the feeling that I shall never be a
preacher."

The words burst vehemently from his lips.  He
was very pale, but calm.  Archibald seemed quite
overcome.  Mark then said slowly: "I am not fit to
preach."

"What?"

"I—I felt this morning a desire for material
success which appalled me.  I had touched you—all
of you—to something fine, but—I cannot talk
about it, even to you."

He paused with his eyes upon a distant cloud.

"That wretched girl!" groaned Archibald.

Mark's quietness seemed to exasperate the elder
brother.

"I can't follow you," he said irritably.  "Why
shouldn't one want the good things of this world:
power, position, honour?"

"Don't I want 'em?  Great heavens! don't I
hunger for 'em?  But if they are not to be mine,
what then?"

"You kiss the rod?  In your place I should be
furious, beside myself with resentment."

"Good old Archie," said Mark, taking his
brother's hand and pressing it.

He stood up, reminding Archie that Mrs. Corrance
had asked them to lunch with her.

"Betty cried like a baby," said Archie irrelevantly.

Mrs. Corrance received them in the small hall of
her house, welcoming Mark with a mute sympathy
more eloquent than words.  Mark broke the silence
as Betty came forward.

"I made a sad mess of it," he said, smiling genially.

But as he was washing his hands in Jim's room
upstairs, his face hardened.  He went to the window
which overlooked Mrs. Corrance's rose-garden.  At
the end of a *pergola*, glorious in June with the
blossoms of an immense Crimson Rambler, he could see
a small arbour wherein Mrs. Corrance was in the
habit of sitting whenever the day proved fine.  This
arbour was the prettiest thing in the garden, and the
one which brought most vividly to mind his
childhood.  Here, many and many a time, Mrs. Corrance
had read to and played with Jim and the Samphire
boys.  He could just remember how dreary and
neglected this garden had been when the arbour was
built.  Out of a chaos of weeds and stones and broken
crockery (for the outgoing tenant had used this
backyard as a dumping-ground for rubbish) Mrs. Corrance
had created a lovely little world, a tiny domain
peculiarly her own, fragrant with memories sweet as
the thyme and lavender of its herbaceous borders.
As a boy, Mark often wondered why time and care
were lavished upon a piece of ground so insignificant.
Now he knew.  Mrs. Corrance had had the
joy of fashioning beauty out of ugliness.

At luncheon he told some anecdotes of life in
Stepney.  Archibald's gloomy face and Betty's
tell-tale eyelids kept his tongue wagging, but his
thoughts were in the pulpit of King's Charteris
Church or in Mrs. Corrance's rose-garden.  The one
seemed to have affinity with the other.  Would his
life remain a wilderness of weeds and broken
crockery?

After luncheon he found himself alone with Betty
in the arbour.  He had dreaded this moment; so
had she; and yet each was sensible of a harmony
no more to be interpreted than the murmur of the
wind in tall grasses.

"What are your plans?" she asked.

Indirectly he answered by speaking of life at the
Camford Mission.  She listened, computing the
distance between Randolph House and Bethnal Green.

"You talk as if work—such work, too,—were all
that is left."

He was silent.  Her face, delicately flushed,
brimming over with a tender and imaginative pity,
implored him to speak.

"Work lies between me and what is left," he
answered slowly, watching the pulse beat in the blue
veins of her white neck.

"You may be famous yet," she whispered.  "This
morning when you began I—I almost forgot that it
was you.  And when I looked round, everybody,
even the village boys, were spellbound."

"But when I f-f-failed," said Mark hurriedly,
"you, you felt what I f-f-felt, that, that——"  He
put his hand to his throat, unable to finish the phrase
because of the detestable lump rising and swelling
in his throat.

"You thought *that* because I cried."

He nodded, seeing again her despairing gesture.

"I am sorry I was such a poor friend," she said
quickly.  "I ought not to have cried.  I behaved
like a weak fool.  You will succeed yet, Mark.  I
know it; I know it."

The lump in his throat seemed to dissolve.

"But," she continued, "if—if it should be
otherwise, do you think that I would care?  Do you
measure my friendship for you by the world's
foot-rule?"

Mark seized her hands.

"God bless you!" he said passionately.  "God
bless you, dear, dear Betty!"  Then abruptly, with
a strange smile, he added, "Good-bye!"

He had gone before she could recover her wits or
her voice.  She stood alone, a piteous figure, truly
feminine inasmuch as she was not able to pursue the
man.

"Oh, oh!" she cried, covering her face as she had
done in the church.  "I cannot bear the misery
behind his smiles."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AFTER THREE YEARS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   AFTER THREE YEARS

.. vspace:: 2

"I am growing older and older," said Betty
Kirtling.

Lady Randolph, looking up from a paper, peered
through her glasses at charms which Time had
embellished rather than diminished.  Betty had passed
her twenty-second birthday; she had begun her fifth
season; but by virtue of high health and spirits she
still retained the bloom and freshness of the *débutante*.
She stood at the middle window of the morning-room
of Randolph House, the big brown house at the
corner of Belgrave Square, from whose hospitable
doors Archibald and Mark Samphire had driven to
Lord's Cricket Ground when they were Harrow
boys.  Outside, a May sun was shining after a shower;
and in the puddles on the balcony some sparrows were
taking their bath.  Betty was reflecting that London
sparrows must be very uncomfortable in a dry summer.

"Are you wiser?" Lady Randolph asked.

"I know that sparrows wash themselves, and that
skylarks don't," Betty replied.  "I suppose the
London sparrows had to bathe, and that they learned to
love it.  How jolly they look, splashing about.  That
must be a cock bird.  Do you see?  He takes a whole
puddle to himself."

Lady Randolph laid down the *Morning Post*.

"Archibald Samphire has been made a minor
canon of Westchester," she said abruptly.

Betty slightly turned her head.  Lady Randolph
perceived a faint pink blush tinging the whiteness of
her neck.

"And Jim Corrance is coming here to luncheon—to-day."

Betty's exclamation at this must be explained.  Jim
had spent three years in South Africa, buying and
selling gold-mines.  He was now a junior partner in
the great firm which he had entered five years before
as a clerk.

"I shall ask Archibald Samphire and Jim to come
to us at Birr Wood for the Whitsuntide recess.  Do
you think Mark would join them!"

"Perhaps; if you were careful to make no mention
of me."

"Betty?"

"He shuns me as if I were a leper.  I've not
seen him for eighteen months.  Yes—ask him.  Make
him come!  I should like to meet those three once
again."

She ran from the room, laughing.  Lady Randolph
frowned.  "Does she care for Jim?" she was
reflecting, "or is it still Mark?  Or—is it Archibald?
She has always been loyal to her boy lovers."  Her
wise old eyes began to twinkle.  Many men, some
of them irreproachable from the marriage point
of view, had fallen in love with the Kirtling girl
with the De Courcy eyes, but in vain.  "And yet
she is not cold," mused her friend; "a passionate
nature if ever there was one.  How will it end?"  She
often told herself that this ever-increasing interest in
Betty made life worth the living.  She recognised in
her qualities which invited speculation.  Betty had a
sense of religion lacking, or let us say elementary, in
Lord Randolph's wife; on the other hand, the girl's
sense of humour was less keen than her own.
Pynsent—she liked Pynsent—always spoke of Betty's
unexpectedness.  So far, what she had done and said
had been more or less conventional.  That indicated
Irish blood—the wish to please those with whom she
lived.

Her reflections were interrupted by Jim Corrance.
He explained that he had landed at Southampton
within the week.

"I saw this house last night," he concluded, "and
it brought back the days when you were so kind to
us.  So I asked if you were at home.  And I was
delighted to get your wire this morning.  Is Betty
here?"

"No."  His face amused his old friend, but she
added quickly: "She is upstairs, prinking—for you.
Have you seen Mark Samphire?"

"I saw him yesterday, and I shall see him again
this afternoon," said Jim gravely.  "Mark is
overworked, you know."

"I don't know," said Lady Randolph drily.
"Tell me about him."

Jim began to describe the difficulties against which
Mark was contending.  Lady Randolph's eyes lost
their sparkle.

"Do you believe all you say?" she asked when
Jim paused.  "You indict Mark's common sense and
worldly wisdom, but are you as sure as you seem
to be that he is tilting at windmills?"

Corrance was silent.

"I have used your arguments a thousand times,"
continued Lady Randolph, "and always, but always,
I have doubted their real value.  And I am supposed
to be a scoffer, a freethinker, a woman of the world.
It is amazing that I can sympathise at all with Mark,
yet I do, and so do you, my friend.  You are no
more sure than I that he is not right in sacrificing
the things which we rate so highly.  When I last
saw him his face was haggard and white, but he
looked happier than you."

Jim stared at the pattern in the carpet, till an
awkward pause was broken by the entrance of Betty,
a radiant vision from which the young man
laughingly shaded his eyes.  Her welcome was so warm,
that Lady Randolph made certain the girl's heart
was untouched so far as Jim Corrance was
concerned.  Soon after the three joined Lord Randolph
in the dining-room, where Jim was persuaded to
talk of what he had done and what he hoped to
do.  The sun had been shining on him steadily
during three years; and its glow illumined the
present and the future.

"You look pink with prosperity," said Betty;
then she added: "Have you heard of Archie's
preferment? he has been made a minor canon of
Westchester."

"Archibald Samphire is the handsomest young man
in the Church of England," observed Lord Randolph.

"Mark always said that Archie had a leg for a
gaiter," Corrance remarked.

"A well-turned leg," said Lady Randolph, "carries
a man into high places; and Archie is hard-working,
discreet, and ambitious.  He will climb, mark me."

Obviously Jim was delighted to hear of his friend's
success; but Betty's expression defied interpretation.

"It's queer," said Corrance, "but old Archie has
always got what he wanted.  Some fellows at
Harrow called it luck.  I don't believe in luck."

"I do," cried Betty.  "So did Napoleon.  Archie
is lucky.  Do you know that he has come into an
aunt's fortune—about eight hundred a year—which
ought to have gone to the eldest son—George?
Archie won the old lady's heart, when he was a boy,
by writing her a wonderful letter; George pinched
her pug's tail, or threw stones at her cat, or
something.  Archie behaved nicely, and his letter, I
believe, was a model."

"Well—I'm hanged!" exclaimed Jim.  "Was it
Aunt Deborah Samphire?  It was—eh?  Well, I
remember that letter quite well.  Mark dictated it,
for a lark.  And I contributed a word or two.  She
sent Archie a fiver when he got into the Sixth, and
he came to us.  Mark said that Aunt Deb should
have a letter which would warm the cockles of her
heart.  It was a masterpiece."

"Um!" said Lord Randolph.  "This young
fellow is certainly a favourite of the Gods.  Luck?
Good Gad—who can doubt it?  There was that
scoundrel Crewkerne——"

He plunged into a story which began behind the
counter of a haberdasher's and ended in the House
of Lords.

"Crewkerne had the devil's own luck," Lord
Randolph concluded; "and luck seems to sit beside
young Samphire and you, my boy, but the other lad,
Mark, the fellow with the eyes, is one of the unlucky
ones.  That first sermon of his now——"

"Which was also his last," said Betty.

"Eh—what?"  Lord Randolph stared.  "You
don't mean that.  He has tried again—surely?"

"Again—and again," said Betty, "but his
stammer always defeats him."

"And he had the real stuff in him," said Lord
Randolph.  "What a pity it was not allowed to
come out!"

"The real stuff always comes out," said Lady
Randolph, rising.

When Jim took his leave a few minutes later, he
was under promise to spend Whitsuntide at Birr
Wood.  Lady Randolph commissioned him to
persuade Mark to be of the party.  Archibald—she felt
assured—would join them.  But it must be made
plain that a refusal from Mark would be considered
an offence.

Outside, Jim lit an excellent cigar which he
smoked as a cab whirled him eastward.  Years afterwards
he remembered that drive: the swift transition
from Belgrave Square to the Mile End Road.  He
had seen Mark the day before, but only for a few
minutes, because some poor creature had come
running for his friend.  But those few minutes stood
out sable against the white background of their
previous intercourse.  Never could he forget Mark's
delight at seeing him: the light in his blue eyes, the
grasp of his thin hand, the thrill of his voice.  And
yet, to offset this, was the grim fact that his friend's
health and strength were failing.  And this failure,
measured by his (Corrance's) success, seemed tragic.
Yet was it?  The question festered.  And that long
drive, the gradual descent of the hill of Life, lent it
new and poignant significance.  If Mark had
forsworn all Randolph House included—and it held
Betty Kirtling—what had he gained?

The well-bred grey between the shafts of the
hansom sped on past the houses of the rich and
mighty, and plunged into the roaring world of work.
Here, on both sides of the street, in flaming gold
letters for the most part, were the names of the
successful strivers, the prosperous tradesmen,
merchants, and bankers.  Farther on, in Fleet Street,
might be seen other names—those of the heralds and
recorders of human effort—the famous newspapers.
Jim's eyes sparkled, and his heart beat faster.  For
the moment he forgot the dun streets behind these
resplendent thoroughfares—the interminable miles
and miles of houses which shelter the millions who
toil and moil out of sight and out of mind!

Passing the Mansion House, the grey knocked
down a ragamuffin.  Corrance was out of his cab in
a jiffy, but the urchin scrambled up, apparently
unhurt.  Jim gave him half a crown and a scolding,
much to the amusement of the burly policeman, who
was of opinion that the young rascal might have
done it on purpose.  Jim was horrified.  "Bless yer,
sir, they'd do more than that to get a few
coppers."  These words stuck in his thoughts.

When he reached the Mission House he was
received by one of the younger members—a deacon
full of enthusiasm which flared, indeed, from every
word he spoke.  Corrance was struck by the lad's
face—his bright complexion, clear eyes, and general
air of sanity.  Some of the men at the Mission were
ill-equipped for the pleasures of life, and therefore,
perhaps, more justified in accepting its pains in the
hope of compensation hereafter.  They, to be sure,
would have repudiated indignantly the barter and
sale of bodies and souls.  None the less, the
self-sacrifice of one pre-eminently qualified to win this
world's prizes became the more remarkable.

"Samphire will be here in five minutes," said the
young fellow.  "Can I offer you anything—a whisky
and soda, a cigarette?"

"If you will join me."

"I shall be glad of the excuse," replied the other
frankly.  "It is horribly thirsty weather—isn't it?
And a thirst is catching.  I've been working amongst
the navvies this morning.  Glorious chaps—some
of them!  I attend to the games, you know—cricket
and football."

He plunged into a description of the men with
whom he had dealings; and from them, by a natural
transition, to David Ross, who had just been
ordained Bishop of Poplar.  For David Ross great
things were predicted.

"It's like this," he concluded: "Our people are
waking up.  Time they did, too.  And the men who
will fill the big billets will be those who have seen
active service.  I don't sneer at the scholars, but
a bishop nowadays must be more concerned with the
present than the past.  Ross chucked the schools,
and he was right; he has given his attention to
conditions of life amongst the very poor, and I believe
he knows more about 'em than most men of twice his
age and experience.  Samphire's friends may think
he's wasting his time—from a worldly point of view,
I mean—down here in the slums, but he isn't."

Mark's entrance cut short this conversation, and
the speaker withdrew at once.

"Nice boy," said Mark.  "The sort we want
most, and so seldom get.  Half our fellows are
discouraged, and show it; but I'm not going to talk
shop to you, old chap."

"I saw Betty Kirtling to-day," said Jim abruptly.
"It's amazing that she is still Betty Kirtling."

Mark said nothing.  Jim, after a keen glance at
his pale face, began to speak of the Whitsuntide
party, which at first Mark refused to join.  Jim grew
warm in persuasion, accusing Mark of churlishness,
making the matter one personal to himself.  Finally,
Mark consented to spend four days at Birr Wood.

"We shall hear Archie preach in Westchester
Cathedral," Mark said.

"I wish it were you," Jim replied quickly.

"I shall never p-p-preach," stammered Mark.

A few minutes later the friends were on their way
to one of those squalid courts which lie between the
Mile End Road and the river.  To Jim the dull
uniformity of the houses indicated a life inexorably
drab in colour and coarse as fustian in texture.  But
Mark had the microscopist's power of revealing the
beauty that lies imprisoned in a speck of dust.  Seen
by the polarised light of his imagination these
dreary dwellings showed all the colours of the
spectrum.  Here lived a family of weavers; there, behind
those grimy windows, were fashioned the wonderful
hats—the bank-holiday hats of Whitechapel.  Of
every trade pursued in this gigantic hive he had the
details at his tongue's tip; and through the woof
of his description ran golden threads.  More than
once Corrance touched upon the obstacles—the
ever-shifting population, the indifference which lies
between class and class, the drunkenness, the premature
marriages of penniless boys and girls.

"These are mountains—yes."

"You have set your face to the stars, and you do
not look back—eh?" Corrance said quickly.  He
was sorry he had put the question, for he felt that
Mark would not try to evade it.

"Look back?" cried Mark.  "Aye—a thousand
times; and, perhaps, as one climbs higher the
pleasant valleys will grow dim.  I'm not high enough
for that," he added hastily.

"You have climbed far above me," said Jim
vehemently; "and far as you have climbed I have
gone twice as far—down hill."  Then, reading
dismay in Mark's face, he added with a laugh: "Don't
speak; I have said too much already.  You have
the parson's power of compelling confession.  Tell
me more about these weavers!"

Mark obeyed, conscious that troubled waters surged
between himself and his old friend.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IN LOVE'S PLEASAUNCE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN LOVE'S PLEASAUNCE

.. vspace:: 2

Birr Wood lies within three miles of
Westchester upon the banks of the Itchen.  The
house itself—the home of the Randolphs for four
centuries—was rebuilt by Inigo Jones, and has been
mentioned by Lord Orford as being one of that great
architect's best works.  Like many of Jones's palaces,
Birr Wood is a show place.  The magnificent avenue,
the Italian gardens, the terraces, the disposition of
the trees in the park are mere accessories to the vast
white pile which dominates the whole—a glittering
monument to rank and wealth and power.

Pynsent, who had painted four members of the
Randolph family, admired the house enormously,
but he maintained that it must remain greater than
any man who might inhabit it.  The splendid
columns and pilasters, so expressive of what is
enduring in Greek art, were designed obviously
to last for ever, albeit the Randolphs themselves,
once so numerous, so vigorous, and so pre-eminent,
were dwindling to extinction.  Pynsent, possibly
because he was an American, failed to apprehend the
pathos of this.  Mark Samphire said to him: "It
is so horribly sad to think that soon there will be no
Randolphs at Birr Wood."

"Um," replied the painter, "how much sadder it
would be if there were no Birr Wood for the
Randolphs, or those that come after them.  Suppose it
burned down—eh?"

Mark was silent.

"I have heard you say," continued Pynsent,
"that the work, the best work of men's hands, is
greater than the men themselves.  And you are
right.  To me Birr Wood is not the ancient home
of the Randolphs, nor the masterpiece of Inigo
Jones, but a materialisation, adapted to modern
needs, of the spirit of Greek architecture.  For my
part, kind as our friends have been, much as I like
them as individuals, I feel that their house is, in a
strained sense perhaps, profaned by the presence of
an hereditary disease.  The Randolphs Van Dyck
painted were worthy to live at Birr Wood."

This talk took place upon the terrace facing the
Italian gardens upon the Friday preceding Whit
Sunday.  The Samphires, Pynsent, Jim Corrance
and his mother, Betty Kirtling, young Kirtling
(now Lord Kirtling), and three fashionable maidens
made up a party which had assembled on that day,
and would disperse upon the following Tuesday.

Jim had not met Archibald Samphire for some
three years.  Archie, Jim said to himself, might be
only a minor canon, but already he had the air of
a great gun.  He spoke little, and it was
understood that he was thinking of his sermon in
Westchester Cathedral.  After dinner, in the red saloon,
he sang three songs: one a lyric, a Frühlingslied
sweetly pastoral and simple; the second a love song
by an eminent French composer; the last that
hackneyed adaptation of Bach's lovely prelude, Gounod's
"Ave Maria."  When he moved from the piano the
girls surrounded him, prattling thanks and entreaties
for more.  But Betty, so Corrance noted, sat still,
with a faint flush upon her cheeks and a suffused
light in her eyes.

"He sings extraordinarily well," said Jim.

"Yes," Betty sighed.

Just then Mark came up, rubbing his hands.  His
delight in his brother's voice struck Jim as being
pathetic.

"It's the quality that does it," Mark explained.
"That second song of his—rubbish—eh?  But it
thrilled—didn't it, Betty?  And the tragic note, the
note of interrogation: the forlorn 'why'—you heard
that?"

"Yes, yes," said Betty hastily.

"A vocal trick," Jim observed, rather abruptly.
Then he moved away, surrendering his seat to Mark,
who dropped into it.

"Well?" said Mark, following Corrance's figure
with his eyes.  "What do you think of old
Jim?"

"I am thinking of the new Jim," Betty answered.
"And I suppose I can measure the change in myself
by the change in him.  Archie has changed too.
Only you, Mark, remain the same."

She flashed a blinding glance upon him.  Somehow
Mark realised that the glance was an indictment.

"I have changed," he replied quickly.

"No—no.  You are the same Mark, with the same
ideas, the same ideals of years ago."

"Ideals?"  The expression on her face bewildered
him.  Not a score of feet away the others were
buzzing about Archie, but Betty and he seemed
to be alone.  "You used to share my ideals,
Betty."

"You mean you shared them with me, but when
you went away you took them with you.  Now
they are like you—out of sight."

"I am here now," he replied.

"Because your brother is here.  You did not
come to see—me."

"Perhaps I did," he murmured, his thin face
aflame with colour.  Betty's cheeks were pale, but
her bosom heaved.

"If that be really true, I forgive," she whispered.
"Only—prove it!"

She leaned towards him.

"Betty," he said hoarsely, "you know why I have
stayed away from you."  He looked so distressed
that she feared the eyes of the others.

"You shall tell me that and more—to-morrow,"
she murmured, rising.  "My cousin is crossing to us."

Young Kirtling wanted her to sing, but she refused.

"You always say 'No,'" he growled.

Pynsent joined them, followed by Archibald and
the others.  Lady Randolph seated herself beside Mark.

"We have not had a chat for an age," she began,
and then went on abruptly: "How do you like my guests?"

Mark's eyes rested for an instant upon young
Kirtling's handsome but rather saturnine features.
Lady Randolph laughed and tapped Mark's hand
with her fan.

"I didn't ask him.  He asked himself.  He is still
mad about our Betty, but she flouts him.  The
Admiral wished it, as you know."

"And you," said Mark.

"I want the girl to be happy.  And I shall be
satisfied if she finds her peer outside the House of
Lords.  She has plenty of money and can marry
whom she pleases."

For the second time that evening Mark's cheeks flamed.

"She beguiles all hearts," continued Lady Randolph,
looking at Mark out of the corner of a shrewd
grey eye; "Jim Corrance makes no secret of his
feelings; and your handsome brother sang for her and
at her—to-night.  Somehow I can't conceive of her
as the wife of, let us say, a bishop."

"There are bishops and bishops," said Mark.

"Just so.  I am told that a certain person who has
been labouring in a field which—which does not
smell as one that the Lord hath blessed—may, if he
continues to display his remarkable powers of
organisation, wear lawn some day."

Then she spoke discreetly of other things, seeing
that Mark's lips were quivering and his eyes shining;
while the young man listened, hearing her pungent,
pleasant phrases, but seeing only Betty—Betty—Betty!

Meantime that young lady had left the saloon
accompanied by Pynsent, Kittling, and Jim Corrance.
Mark could hear their voices in the room beyond,
and Betty's voice, Betty's laugh, came clearly to his
ears above the chorus, even as the silvery notes of a
flute float upward from the clashing cymbals and
roaring bassoons.  Mark rose quickly and slipped
away into the moonshine of the terrace.

For three years he had told himself daily that the
woman he loved could never be his.  Now—he drew
a deep breath—she had come once more within his
grasp.  More, the world, in the person of his shrewd
old friend, recognised that he, the failure, had not
really failed, that he might have to give, even from
the world's point of view, something worth the
taking.  And here, where material things possessed
such significance, he could measure what he had
accomplished with a detachment unachievable in
Stepney.  A thousand details presented themselves:
a summons to the house of a great minister, an
interview with a prince, who professed interest in the
better housing of the poor, letters from celebrities
asking for information, and his ever-increasing
friendship with David Ross—now famous.  The
power of the orator had been denied him, and
perhaps on that account he had been the keener to
practise what otherwise he might have been content
to preach.

He walked slowly down the terrace and into the
garden which lay below, a conventional garden cut
and trimmed to the patterns set by Le Nôtre
at Versailles and known to the passing tourist as
Love's Pleasaunce, because it was embellished by
marble statues of Venus and attendant Amorini.  In
the centre sparkled a sheet of water wherein and
whereon the fountains played on high days and
holidays.  Mark knew that the key to the middle
fountain was concealed in an Italian cypress.  Often
as a boy he had begged permission to turn this
key, and always, he remembered, there had been a
certain disappointment because the English climate
so seldom lends itself to such a scene, for
instance, as Aphrodite rising from the waters.  Now
he reflected that he had never seen the fountains play
by moonlight.  The whim seized him to turn the
key.  A second later he was gazing spellbound at the
goddess in the centre of the pool.  At the touch of
the shimmering waters the white image thrilled into
life.  Clothed with silvery tissues, which revealed
rather than concealed the adorable grace of her limbs,
Aphrodite smiled.  Beneath the dimpled surface of
the pool, her feet twinkled into a dance, a measure of
the moon, slow, rhythmic, and set to the music of
the fountain.  Beyond, in the shadow of the cypresses,
Mark caught a glimpse of two nymphs: one playing
the double flute dear to Thebans, the other, seated,
sweeping the strings of the Homeric phorminx.
From these, surely, floated the liquid notes, the trills
and cadences, which had stirred to movement the
feet of the goddess.  Mark touched the key again.
The music died in a sigh.  Aphrodite hid herself in
the cold marble.  The pool, so sweetly troubled,
became still.  Mark smiled and released once more
the goddess.  But the illusion had lost its spell.
Mark touched the key for the last time, reflecting
that Aphrodite rises once only for mortal men.  And
the pleasaunce, now, had a forlorn aspect.  A cloud
obscured the moon, so that the silver of the scene
became as lead and the shadows grew chill and
amorphous.  Mark walked slowly away towards the
lights of the house which held Betty.

On the terrace he paused, startled by a deep voice.
Archibald was calling him by name.

"You here?" said Mark.

Archie was seated on a stone bench, which stood
in the shadows.

"Yes.  Sit down!"

"You are in trouble," said Mark quickly.  "Dear
old fellow—what's wrong?"

"My sermon."

Mark sat down, saying: "Tell me about it."

Archie began to speak with a dogged intonation
which recalled Harrow days.  As he indicated the
scope of the sermon already written out, Mark
drummed with his foot upon the terrace.

"I know it," groaned the elder brother.  "It will
send the Dean to sleep, and Lord Randolph will
twiddle his thumbs, and my lady will smile
ironically—and Betty——"

"Yes."

"Betty will pity me."

A silence followed.  Mark was reflecting that Betty's
pity without Betty's love would be hard to endure.

"You care for her?" he muttered.

"Oh, yes," said Archibald impatiently, "but she
says 'No' to me and everybody else.  How I have
loved that witch," his voice grew sentimental, "and
how I should like to show her that I can preach.  And
so I can for ordinary occasions, but when it comes to
a big thing—somehow I don't score.  I'd like to score
this time—eh?  And if—if you could help me,
why—why, it might make all the difference."

"About Betty?"  Mark's voice was thin and
strained, but Archie was too engrossed with his own
thoughts to notice that.

"Betty?  I'm not thinking about Betty.  I mean
that next Sunday may be the making or marring of
my career.

"Oh!"

"I put my profession first, as you do, Mark.  I can
say to you what I would admit to no other, that
success in it is vital to me.  I've worked hard, and of
course I've a pull over most fellows, for which I'm
sincerely grateful; but I've not your brains."

"It happens," said Mark after a slight pause,
"that I have written a sermon about Westchester
Cathedral.  You might find something in it; not
much, I dare say; but a hint or two.  As—as I shall
never preach it, why—why shouldn't you have it?"

"I'd like to see it, Mark.  Some of my best
sermons have been suggested—only suggested, mind
you—by reading others.  Robertson is a
gold-mine—and Newman.  Where is your sermon?"

"Locked up in my desk at the Mission House."

"Oh!"

"I can nip up and get it," said Mark, after a pause.

"I couldn't allow that, Mark.  You're on a holiday
and——"

"There's stuff in that sermon," Mark interrupted.
"I'd like you to see it.  Holiday be hanged!  I'll
fetch it to-morrow."





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.. _`BETTY IN STEPNEY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BETTY SPENDS AN HOUR IN STEPNEY

.. vspace:: 2

Betty Kirtling came down to breakfast the
next morning in her prettiest frock, and with
her prettiest smile upon a glowing face.  Indeed, Lord
Randolph, meeting her in the hall, held up his thin,
white hand, and confessed himself dazzled.  Betty
laughed when he quoted a line of Dryden, sensible
that only a poet could do justice to her looks if they
reflected faithfully her feelings.  Perhaps the
philosopher, with his faintly ironical smile, knew better than
the poet that "the porcelain clay of human kind" is
easily broken, and (being a collector) he may have
remembered (which accounts for the shadows in his eyes)
that rare pieces seldom escape chipping.  He
followed the girl into the dining-room, and saw that she
seated herself next the chair which had been taken by
Mark the morning before.  Mark, however, was not in
the room, his absence being accounted for by young
Kirtling, who had met him driving to the station.

"To the station?" echoed Betty.

Archibald Samphire added that he was charged by
his brother to make the proper excuses.  Mark had
gone to town on an important matter, and would
return that evening before dinner.  Lady Randolph
frowned.

"'Pon my soul," she exclaimed, "our young man
takes himself too seriously."

"He's the best and kindest fellow in the world,"
said Archie.  Then he hesitated.  He could not explain
the nature of Mark's errand without exciting curiosity
about himself and his sermon.

"What were you going to say?" whispered Betty.

"Mark has gone to town to do me a service," said
Archie.

She pouted: "I believe Mark would do anything
for you."

With his eyes on his plate, Archie slowly
answered, "Yes."  Then seeing that Betty was
trifling with her bacon, he added in a different tone:
"I advise you to try this omelette.  Shall I get some
for you?"

Betty said "No" somewhat tartly, wondering why
Mark had left Birr Wood.  "He might have told
me last night at dinner," she thought.

After breakfast she escaped from young Kirtling
and Jim Corrance, and betook herself to a secluded
spot in the gardens, where she sat staring at a pretty
volume of verse—held upside down.  It was intolerable
that she should be sitting here and Mark sixty
miles away.  Then she smiled, remembering that
only yesterday the distance between them had seemed
immeasurable.  And a word, a glance, had bridged
it!  What a miracle of Cupid's engineering!  Her
cheeks were hot as she wondered whether she had
given herself away too cheaply.  If propriety faltered
"Yes," generosity thundered—"No."  She was sure
she understood Mark better than any creature living,
and certainly she understood herself.  Always she had
wanted him, but always—always!  And he had
wanted her, and would want her for ever and ever.
It will be our object to show Betty Kirtling as a
young woman of many facets illumined by lights
and cross-lights; but for the moment she is
presented beneath the blaze of Love, which, like the
sun, eclipses other luminaries.  Betty was an adept
at, if not the mistress of, many accomplishments.
She had been told that she might excel as a musician,
a painter, or a writer, if she chose to give any one of
these arts undivided attention.  She preferred to play
with all rather than work with one, and wisely, for
her admiration of what others had done was certainly
a greater thing than what she might have done
herself.  And, perhaps, because she had scattered her
own energies, she was the more keenly appreciative
of sustained endeavour wherever she found it.  Young
Kirtling, for instance, aroused interest because he
hunted his own hounds as well as any man in
England; Jim Corrance whetted mere affection into
something with a sharper edge to it, inasmuch as he
had sought fortune in South Africa and had found
it; Archie was singing himself steadily and stolidly
into such exalted places as the pulpit of Westchester
Cathedral.

Sitting there in May time encompassed by
Arcadian scents and sounds, Betty found herself
speculating upon the mutual attraction of man and maid.
Young ladies kill time with such meditations as
pleasantly as men kill partridges.  Betty, however,
while sipping the sweet, made a wry face over the
bitter.  Mark's work in the slums stood between
her and him, a mystery which she must accept,
knowing that she could never understand it.  The
horrors amongst which Mark moved revolted her;
the contrast between her life and his pierced
imagination, and left it to bleed; pity, sympathy,
the woman's desire to minister to infirmity, were
drained, glutted, by the incredible demand upon
them.

These meditations were disturbed by Lady Randolph.
Betty, as soon as she saw her kind friend,
remembered that Lady Randolph had shown her
this delightful nook, and had said that she (Lady
Randolph) was in the habit of sitting here.

"You—alone?" said Lady Randolph.  "I have
just passed Harry Kirtling.  He asked me if I knew
where he could find you.  Shall I tell him?"

"Pray don't," said Betty, making room for her
friend on the stone bench.  "And besides," she
added, letting a dimple be seen, "you could not tell
him where I was.  I have spent the last hour in
Stepney."

"I can't see you in Stepney, my dear."

"I thought you would say that," said Betty,
nervously playing with the laces on her frock; then,
reading the sympathy in the other's face, she burst
out: "Oh—I'm a coward, a coward!  I loathe
Stepney."

Lady Randolph wondered whether it would be
wise to speak.  She cherished the conviction that
when in doubt it is better to say nothing; and yet,
in the end, despite a strong feeling that her advice
would be wasted, she said quietly:

"I knew your mother."

"Am I like her?" interrupted Betty.

"I have often thought," continued the elder
woman, ignoring Betty's question, "that if Louise
de Courcy had had your upbringing her life would
have been so different——"

"You mean she would not have married my
father."  Betty's voice hardened.  "Well, if she felt
as—as I feel, she would have married him anyway,
if she loved him."

"She would not have loved him," said Lady
Randolph with emphasis.  "We women love the
things which we are taught to believe are lovable.
You, Betty, have been trained, trained, I say, to
love things and people of good report.  It was
otherwise with your mother."

"And my father," added Betty.  "I have always
known that I was handicapped.  Yes; I have
been trained to see—it's a question of observation,
isn't it?—to see and admire what is good in
everything and everybody, but you don't know what a
materialist I am.  I delight in your flesh-pots.  Why
just now, when I was trying to walk with Mark
through those horrible slums, I found myself
thinking of what——?  That delicious *macédoine* we had
last night!"

Lady Randolph laughed.

"It's no laughing matter.  I'm greedy; I spend
too much time thinking of *chiffons*; and I spend too
much money buying them; I adore great things,
but I cannot give up small things.  I want to run
with the hare and course with the hounds.  Lots of
girls try to do both—and succeed in a feeble sort of
way: a fast on Friday and feast on Saturday diet—eh?"

"In Stepney——" began Lady Randolph.

Betty seized her hands.  "Why should I go to
Stepney?" she whispered, blushing.  "I'll be honest
with you."

"I hope so, my dear."

"Mark is going to ask me to marry him.  It may
be to-day, or to-morrow, or the day after, but it's
coming; and I shall fling myself into his arms."

"Betty!"

"I haven't a spark of pride left.  His long silence
smothered it.  Do you know that I have been at the
back of all his ambitions?  He wanted to be a famous
soldier, because when we were babies I said I must
marry a fighting man."

"If he isn't a fighting man I never saw one."

"Thank you.  You always appreciated him.
When he was spun for the army he thought he had
lost me.  I read despair in his eyes, and he, poor
dear, couldn't read what was in mine.  And then
came that awful scene in King's Charteris Church.
He gave me up then, but I stuck to him.  And
now—now," her eyes filled with tears although her lips
were smiling, "he shall know that success or failure
counts nothing with me.  I want him—him.  And
anything which stands between us I abhor."

Lady Randolph's attempt to reduce this speech to
its elements found expression in a simple: "You
will ask him to give up Stepney?"

"I shall ask him to seek work in some place where
you do not smell fried fish.  There is plenty to do
west of Temple Bar."

"And the others?  You have flirted with all of
them, Betty; don't deny it!"

"But I do deny it."

"You encouraged Harry Kirtling the season
before last."

"As if he needed encouragement!"

"He nearly persuaded you to marry him."

"Yes, he did," she confessed, blushing furiously.
"I burn when I think of that Ascot week.  Bah! what
fools girls are!  Mark never came near me,
answered my letters with post-cards.  I give you my
word—post-cards.  I sent sheaves and received
straws.  And Harry makes love nicely."

"You gave him lots of practice," Lady Randolph
observed drily.

"He wanted me so badly that he offered to give
up his hounds and settle down wherever I pleased."

"And Jim and Archibald."

"My oldest friends."

"Ah, well," sighed Lady Randolph, "you are a
lucky girl, Betty.  Four good fellows want you."

"Archie wouldn't tell me why Mark went to town,"
said Betty absently.  "What a voice he has!  When
he sings I feel like a Madonna.  And his face——!
A man has no business to be so good-looking.  I
am shameless enough to confess to you, only to you,
that his good looks appeal to me enormously.  It
annoys me.  I find myself staring at him as if he
were a sort of royalty.  And when other girls do it,
I think them idiots.  Well, for that matter I have
never disguised from myself, or you, that I am a bit
of an idiot."

"You are very human."

"I am not all you think me," cried the girl.  "And
yet you read me better than anyone else, but there
are pages and pages turned down.  I peep at them
sometimes, and am quite scared.  Mark shall tear
them out and tear them up.  Dear me!  I am making
myself ridiculous: chattering on and on about myself."

"One is never ridiculous when one is young,"
said Lady Randolph solemnly, "and I hope, my
dear, you will let me read the turned-down pages
before they are torn up.  I used to say to myself
that I should like to begin life again, to have one
more chance.  And, listening to you, I feel that I am
beginning again.  It is exciting.  Only I hope that
sometimes you will listen to me, and try to profit by
my experience of a subject on which you, Betty, are
so amazingly ignorant."

"That subject's name is Legion."

"That subject's name is Man.  You have tried, I
dare say, to measure Mark with a girl's rule of thumb,
to weigh him in virgin's scales, but his dimensions
remain an unknown quantity."

For answer, Betty kissed her.

"Tell me," she whispered, "all you know that I
do not know."

"We should sit here for forty years!  Our world
says you ought to marry Harry, and our world is
always more than half right.  Harry has entertained
you with a vast deal of talk about himself, and
perhaps you think you know him.  Ah! you nod your
head with all the cocksureness of ignorance!  You
spoke of his giving up his hounds—for your sake,
because you might find Kirtling a far cry from Bond
Street.  Oh, the conceit of the modern girl!  My
dear, Harry knew well enough that if you became
his wife, no such sacrifice would be demanded.  The
hounds would remain at Kirtling—and so would
you.  If you were beautiful as Helen of Troy, and
fascinating as Cleopatra, you could not root out
that passion for hunting his own hounds.  It is a
master passion—and always will be so long as he
can sit in the saddle.  And in your heart of hearts
you respect and like Harry the more because he does
that one thing really well."

"I am sure you are right," said Betty humbly.

"Well, my dear, what hunting the fox is to Harry,
so is the hunting of vice, and ignorance, and dirt to
Mark Samphire.  The masculine ardour of the chase
possesses both, and each will hunt the country he
knows best."

Betty's silence provoked her friend to say more.
"You are in for a fight, child."  She took Betty's
hand, which seemed cold, and pressed it gently.
"On your own confession you are unfit to be the wife
of the man you love, and who loves you; and so—pray
don't ask me for congratulations."

"You did not marry for love," cried Betty.  Then
she paused, ashamed.  "Forgive me!"

"It is true."  Lady Randolph turned a grim face
to the girl, and her voice was harsh.  "I did not
marry for love.  Shall we say that I lacked courage,
or did I see clearer than you mountainous differences
of temperament, taste, and opinion, which my love
was not strong enough to scale?  Was I a coward
because I turned back?  I do not say Yes or No.
The man I loved had the brains, but not the body of
a conqueror.  Do you think that I was right or
wrong because I refused to add burdens to a back
already bowed?"

She spoke with such vehemence that Betty was
frightened.

"I d-d-do not know," she stammered.

"*I* do not know," repeated the other fiercely.
"When these mysteries between our lower and
higher natures are revealed, I *shall* know, and not
till then—not—till—then!"

Her lips closed violently, as if speech were alarmed
into silence.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BAGSHOT ON THE RAMPAGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BAGSHOT ON THE RAMPAGE

.. vspace:: 2

Alone in his room at the Mission, Mark read
over the sermon he had written upon Westchester
Cathedral.  Then he stared at the bare
boards, the whitewashed walls, the narrow camp
bedstead, the Windsor chairs: things eloquent of
a renunciation which he had found sweet a week ago.
Here he had been well content to live, here he had
known that he might die.  And now in these same
familiar surroundings he felt another man; the tides
of another life ran breast high to meet the quiet
waters.  Was it always so, he wondered?  Did love,
such love as he felt for Elizabeth Kirtling, such love
as she felt for him, exact sacrifice?  Must it be purged
and purified in the flame of renunciation?  And the
answer came at once—Yes.  Perhaps the answer
always does come, if we put the question fairly and
frankly to the Supreme Court of Appeal.  Mark
never doubted, then or thereafter, that if he took
Betty and left his work, it would be ill for both of
them.  This conviction was buttressed by a half-score
of proofs, trivial indeed in themselves, yet in
their sum confirmation strong.  Beneath his hand
lay a memorandum-book.  Mark opened it.  On the
first page was a list of names—drunkards all of
them, many women, a few boys and girls.  These
poor creatures leaned upon him.  Each week they
brought to him such of their earnings as otherwise
would be spent in drink.  With each Mark had
fought—and prevailed.  He alone held the master
key to their hearts.  People who live within a mile
or two of the slums may sneer at a repentance or
reformation founded upon an influence merely
personal, which may be withdrawn at any minute.  But
those labouring among the very poor and ignorant
are well aware that this personal influence, this
amazing power and attraction which one soul may
exercise over another, is the first lever by which
ignorance, and poverty, and sin may be raised to
the level whence the Creator is dimly seen and
apprehended through the created.  Mark knew, and
every fellow-worker in the Mission knew, that
personal influence may, and often does, soften the hard
surface upon which it shines, so that other rays may
penetrate, but he knew also that if personal influence
be withdrawn before that softening process is
complete, induration follows.  Mark read over the names
in the little book, and closed it with a sigh as a knock
at his door was heard.  The handsome young deacon
entered the room.

"Hullo!" he cried, "I am glad you're here."

"What's up?" said Mark.

"Bagshot is on the rampage."

"The miserable sinner!"

"He got his wages last night, and came round as
usual to give 'em to you, but he wouldn't give 'em
to me.  Then he went off."

"Didn't you go with him?"

"I wish I had thought of it," said the other
ruefully.  "He went straight from here to the 'Three
Feathers,' and stayed there till closing time."

Mark looked at his watch.  His train left Waterloo
in an hour.  He had time to see Bagshot, although
such time would probably be wasted.  Bagshot was
a brand snatched from the burning some six weeks
before: a big, burly, blackguard of a navvy, strong
as Sandow, weak as Reuben, reasonable enough
when sober, a madman drunk, with a frail wife and
five small children at his mercy.

"I'll go alone," said Mark, as the young fellow
reached for his hat.

He hurried off, followed at a discreet distance by
the deacon.  The Bagshots lived not far from the
Mission, in Vere Terrace, a densely populated slum.
Mark tapped at the door of Number 5, opened by a
tattered girl of twelve, whose fingers and face were
smeared with paste.

"Where's your father, 'Liza?" said Mark.

"Dunno," replied 'Liza.  "'E's drunk, wherever
'e is.  Would yer like to see mother, Mr. Samphire?"

Mark followed the child into the living-room of the
family.  Coming straight from Birr Wood, contrast
smote him with a violence he had never before
experienced.  The Bagshot family sat round a rickety
table making matchboxes.  Deducting the cost of
paste (which the matchmakers supply), these bring
less than fourpence a gross, and a handy child of ten
or twelve can make just about that number in a day's
hard work!  Facing Mark, stood an old-fashioned
mangle, seldom used, because it took two strong
women to turn it; to the right was a chest of drawers
in the last stages of infirmity, crippled by ill-usage
and long service, stained and discoloured like the face
of the woman who was proud to own it; to the right
a small stove displayed a battered assortment of pots
and pans.  The window, which overlooked a court,
was propped open with an empty bottle.  Into the
court, half filled with rubbish and garbage, the May
sun was streaming, illuminating an atmosphere of
squalor and unhomeliness which hung like a fetid
fog between the crumbling ceiling and the rotten
floor.

"'Ere's Mr. Samphire, mother," said the girl.
Already her thin, nimble fingers were at work, while
her eyes sparkled with excitement.  In the congested
districts of the East End the decencies of life go
naked and unashamed.  'Liza knew that her mother
would burst into virulent speech, and was not
disappointed.  Bill was drunk again, and violent.  She
bared a part of her neck and bosom, showing a
hideous bruise.  'Liza stuck out a leg not much
thicker than a cricket stump, and offered to pull
down her stocking.  Another child had an ugly
lump within three inches of his temple.

"It wos quite like ole times larst night," said
'Liza, grinning.  "'E giv' us all what-for—'e did."

In answer to a question concerning Mr. Bagshot's
immediate whereabouts, the wife replied sullenly that
she neither knew nor cared; then, remembering
Mark's efforts on behalf of the family, she added
curtly: "I'd keep out of 'is wy if I wos you.  'E
might drop in any minnit."

"And yer've got yer best clothes on," added 'Liza
curiously.  "Goin' beanfeastin' I dessay, or to a
weddin'—yer own, my be," she added sharply.

"Stop yer noise, 'Liza," commanded the mother,
wondering vaguely why her visitor was blushing.

"We wos goin' to Chingford to-dy," said the
child with the lump on his head; "and mother
promised us chops and mashed pertaters—didn't yer,
mother?"

"I'd like ter eat chops and mashed pertaters for
ever and ever," 'Liza said.  Then, meeting Mark's
eyes, she added: "That 'ud suit me a sight better
than a golden 'arp or a 'evingly crown."

"You shall have chops to-day," said Mark,
producing a florin.  "Cut along and buy them."

"Mebbee yer aunt 'll let you cook 'em," said
Mrs. Bagshot significantly.  'Liza nodded her shrewd little
head and vanished; but a minute later she appeared,
breathless.  "Father's comin'.  Yer'd better tyke yer
'ook, sir."

Mark said gravely he would stay.  The children
were despatched to the aunt's house.

"Yer'd better go, sir," said the wife, now pallid
with fear.  Mark smiled confidently, shaking his
head.  The drunkard's heavy, uncertain step was
heard in the passage; his voice, thick and raucous,
called for his wife.

"A word with you, Bill," said Mark, as the man's
huge body darkened the doorway.  The giant stared
stupidly at the only fellow-creature he respected.
Then his hand went mechanically to his head and
removed a greasy cap.  The woman sat down and
began making a matchbox.  "I beg your pardon,"
continued Mark, holding out his hand; "I told you
that I would take over your wages each week, and
last night I failed you.  I am very, very sorry."

His blue eyes expressed much more.  The heavy,
bloodshot orbs of the huge navvy sought slowly the
latent spark of ridicule or contempt.  He was just
sober enough to understand in some inexplicable way
that the tables had been turned.  When he saw the
parson he had prepared himself for everything
except this.  Very awkwardly he took Mark's hand in
his own enormous paw.

"Wot yer givin' us?" he growled.

"If the money is not all gone, Bill, I'll take what
is left—now."

"Will yer?" said Bill.

"Yes."

Quality confronting quantity smiled steadily,
reassuringly.  Quantity scowled, wriggled uneasily,
and quailed.  A chink of silver and copper
proclaimed the moral victory.

"Only seven-and-fourpence," said Mark.  "You
can't go to Chingford with that."

Bill said something which need not be recorded.

"It is like this," said Mark.  "I failed you, and
you failed me, and your wife and your children have
suffered.  I can see that you have a splitting
headache, and I believe the forest air would do you good.
Will you take Mrs. Bagshot and the children to
Epping if I pay the piper?  I ought to be fined for
my part in this."

Bill nodded, none too graciously, and some money
was given to Mrs. Bagshot.

"I'm going out of town myself," added Mark, as
he took leave of the giant, "but I know I can trust
you, Bill."

Mr. Bagshot grinned sheepishly.  It is possible,
although not very probable, that he had an elementary
sense of humour.  Mark hurried away looking at his
watch.  Just round the corner he charged into the
deacon, who offered up fervent thanks that he was
unhurt.  "I must run," said Mark, pushing on, "or
I shall miss my train."  He did run till a hansom
was found in the Mile End Road.  Into this he
jumped, bidding the driver use all reasonable haste.
None the less as Mark appeared on the platform at
Waterloo the Westchester express was rolling slowly
out of the station.

.. vspace:: 2

"Close shave that," said a quiet voice; "you might
have been under the train instead of in it.  Was it
worth while?"

Mark sank, gasping, on to the cushions.

"Yes; it was worth while," he exclaimed, and then
fainted.

When he recovered consciousness the train was
running through Clapham Junction.  Mark smelled
brandy, and saw the impassive face of a tall, thin
stranger bending over him.  No other person was
in the carriage.

"Keep quiet for five minutes," the stranger commanded.

Mark closed his eyes.  His heart was thumping,
but his brain worked smoothly.  When he saw the
train rolling out of the station he had been seized
with an absurd conviction that he must overtake and
travel by it to the great happiness awaiting him at
Birr Wood.  What followed was a blur, only,
strangely enough, the voice of the tall, thin man was
familiar.  He had heard his calm, authoritative
accents before; by Heaven!  he had heard that voice
repeating the same words: "*Keep quiet.*"  And they
had been spoken to the accompaniment of a thumping,
throbbing heart and horrible physical weakness.
Who—who was the speaker?  Ah...!  He
remembered.  The long, lofty room at Burlington
House, the boys in all stages of dressing and
undressing, the amazement and dismay on Jim Corrance's
face—these unfolded themselves like the shifting
scenes of a cinematograph.

"You are Amos Barger," he murmured.

He introduced himself to the surgeon, and spoke
of the examination at Burlington House.

"You were very kind," said Mark, "but it was an
awful experience for a boy, because now——"  He
paused to reflect that the man opposite had not asked
for his confidence.

"Yes—now?" repeated Barger.

"Now, the sense of perpetual imprisonment"—he
brought out the grim words slowly—"would not
convey such a sense of loss."

The surgeon was not sure that he agreed.  Could
a young man, a boy, measure his loss?  Was the
capacity for suffering greater in youth?

"I am thinking of one thing," Mark replied,
"liberty, the darling instinct of the newly fledged to
fly.  When you clipped my wings, I had the feeling
that I should never move again.  The pain was
piercing: one could never suffer just such another
pang."

"Have you learned to hug your chains?"

"I do not say that.  They gall me less."

"But as one grows older"—Amos Barger's face
was seamed with distress—"one sees what might
have been so clearly.  You say I was kind; the other
surgeon was and is one of the cast-iron pots.  Well,
I expect no credit for such kindness.  In you I see
reflected myself.  I am of the weaklings, to whom
some incomprehensible Power has said: 'Thus far
shalt thou go—and no farther!'  And I might have
gone far had not my feet, the lowest part of me,
failed.  I am halting through life when every fibre of
my body tells me I was intended to run."

Mark was trying to adjust words to his sympathy,
when the other continued abruptly: "Don't say a
word!  We are poles asunder and must remain so.
I am surprised that I spoke at all.  You have a
faculty, Mr. Samphire, of luring Truth from her well."

The two men looked at each other.  Upon the one
face disappointment had laid her indelible touch;
upon the other glowed the light of hope and faith.

"Before we settle down to our papers"—the
surgeon indicated an enormous pile of magazines and
journals—"let me remind you that we spun you for
the Service because you cannot run, with impunity,
to catch trains—or, indeed, anything else."

He picked up a review as he spoke and opened it.
Mark eyed him vacantly, reflecting that he had run
to catch Betty, not the train.  And he had spoken of
this meeting as coincidence.  Was it coincidence?
His heart began to thump once more.  When he
spoke his voice was hoarse and quavering.

"Thank you.  I suppose just now you had time to
make a rough-and-ready sort of examination?"  The
surgeon nodded.  "Is—is there anything
organically wrong with my heart?"

"Um.  It is organically weak—you knew as much
before, but you may live to be sixty if you take care
of yourself—which you won't do."

"If others were dependent on me I would take care
of myself."

"Oh!" Barger frowned.  "You are married—got
a family—eh?"

"I have been thinking lately of—of marrying."

The surgeon's face was impassive.  Mark looked
out of the window at the pleasant fields of Surrey,
through which the train was running swiftly and
smoothly.  Was Fate bearing him as swiftly and
inexorably out of the paradise wherein he, poor fool,
had already lived in anticipation many years?

"I infer from your silence," he said, "that if you
gave a professional opinion it would be against
marriage—for me?"

"I do not say that," replied the other, shrugging
his shoulders; "but it will be time enough for me to
give a professional opinion when you ask for one in
a professional way.  I'm running down to Bournemouth
for a holiday, but I shall be at home next
Tuesday.  Come and see me.  I'll look you over,
and answer that question to the best of my ability."

"I'll come," said Mark.

"Afternoon or morning?" asked the surgeon,
whipping out a pencil.  "Book your hour!"

"Will three suit you, Mr. Barger?"  The surgeon's
pencil scratched upon the paper.  Mark added:
"I shall be punctual."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A MORAL EXIGENCY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   A MORAL EXIGENCY

.. vspace:: 2

Archibald met his brother at Westchester
Station, and drove him towards Birr Wood as
the shadows lay long and cool upon the white road.
A sweet stillness hung over the ancient capital—the
stillness which in springtime is eloquent of strife.
Everywhere the sap was forcing its way upward;
buds were swelling, leaves were bursting from their
bonds.  And an ethereal mildness permeated the
atmosphere, suffusing in golden haze the setting sun.

"Pull up," said Mark.

"Eh?"

"I should like to read you my sermon here and
now, within sight of the cathedral.  We can walk
across the downs afterwards, and arrive in plenty of
time to dress for dinner."

"All right," Archie replied, "I'm keen enough to
hear it.  Was it hot in town?  You look rather done."

A groom took the reins and drove off.  Mark stared
at the cathedral.

"It lies in a golden chalice," he said, indicating
the haze which obscured the insignificant buildings
of the town while lightening and revealing the
splendid mass of stone, too heavy, too colourless when
seen beneath grey skies.

"Good point that," said Archie, nodding his handsome
head.

The brothers walked across a strip of down, and
found themselves near a clump of trees.  Mark pulled
from his pocket a sheaf of manuscript, and read aloud.

Archie lay flat on his back.  Presently he sat up,
staring at the cathedral.  Then he fixed his eyes on
Mark's face, where they remained, fascinated, till the
last word was said.

"Now," Mark commanded, "I want you to declaim
a bit of it—standing.  You can give it all I
cannot.  Do you mind?"

Archibald took the manuscript, sensible of
emotions and thrills never experienced before.
Dominating these was the wish to do as he was asked—to
declaim a part of the sermon.  He felt a desire to
possess himself of it, to incorporate with it his own
physical attributes.

"Let yourself go," said Mark.  He watched his
brother's face intently, thinking that he would
exchange the brains which had composed the sermon
for the body now bending over it in envy and
admiration.  Archie had a gift for committing verse to
memory.  At Harrow he often boasted that he could
read through a long ode of Horace and repeat it
without making a blunder.

Presently Archie stood up, his massive proportions
outlined against the amber-coloured sky.  Although
barely thirty, he had acquired a certain dignity of
deportment, an air of maturity, in curious contrast
to blooming cheeks and shining eyes.  This aspect
is not uncommon in young clergymen who take
themselves seriously.  Looking at Archibald Samphire,
one might predict that in a few years he would
assume the solidity of a pillar of the Church.  Already,
in the eyes of the spinsters in and around
Westchester Close, he was regarded as a staff upon which
the weak might safely and gratefully lean; already,
when he gave an opinion, soft eyes gazed upward
suffused with moisture.

He began to declaim Mark's peroration in a slow,
impressive voice, the kind of voice which seems to
fill the corners of the soul with echoes at once strange
and familiar.  The late Mr. Gladstone possessed such
a voice.  Mark stared at his brother, absorbing every
note and gesture.  What aptitudes were his for such
a part.  Listening to him, the younger brother
forgot that he had written the phrases which fell with
sonorous significance upon the silence of the fields.
He was able to judge of what he had done, as if he
were hearing the sermon for the first time.
Playwrights experience this bitter-sweet pleasure.  Lines
laboured at for many an hour, become in the mouth
of a great actor or actress so changed, so sublimated
by the touch of genius, as to prove unrecognisable,
even as a child of peasants adopted by persons of
rank may so dazzle the eyes of its mother that it
appears for the moment as a stranger.  And who shall
interpret that same mother's feelings when she sees
lavished upon her darling gifts beyond her power to
bestow—gifts which serve as symbols of her loss and
another's gain?

Mark Samphire listened to his brother with ears
lacerated by envy; and because devils tore him he
was the more determined to exorcise them, in the
hope that what he did and said might hide what he
felt.  When Archie finished, the younger brother
sprang up and seized his hand.

"From the bottom of my soul," he exclaimed,
"I believe that this voice of yours will be heard
not only in Westchester, but in every cathedral in
England."

Archie answered, dully, "If you had my voice,
Mark——"

"Ah!" gasped Mark, "if—if——"  He paused,
and ended quietly, "We need not speak of that."

"You could read this sermon."

"Even that is denied me.  I can read the lessons
or anything else save what I write myself.  Oh, I
have tried and tried.  Always the lump comes in
my throat—and I hear the laugh of that girl.  You
remember?"

Archie nodded, betraying his sympathy with a
shudder.  "It was awful," he said, "awful."

He handed the sheets of manuscript to Mark,
adding, "It has helped me enormously.  I will avail
myself of some of your ideas."

"You will redrape my ideas with your words."

"I couldn't use yours, you know."

Mark gazed abstractedly at the cathedral; then he
turned to his brother.

"Look here—I give it to you.  Do what you like
with it.  I can't preach it myself.  It's not b-b-bad."

He paused as the stammer seized him.  "Not
bad?" echoed Archibald.  "Why it's splendid—splendid!"

"And why shouldn't I help you—my brother?"  His
voice softened, as he stretched out his thin hand
and touched Archibald's mighty arm.  "Take it!"

Archie hesitated, staring inquiringly at Mark.
Mark had always been such a stickler for
plain-dealing.  Then he remembered what Billy had said:
"Take what he gives, *generously*, and so you will
best help him to play his part in life."

Mark, meantime, was reflecting that he should like
to read in Betty's face the recognition of talents
which he was not allowed to proclaim to the world.

"Take it," he repeated.  "And, look here, I shall
sit beside Betty Kirtling, and afterwards I shall tell
her that I wrote it and persuaded you to preach it.
No one else shall know."

Archie, unable to determine the ethics of the
matter, sensible in a dull, inarticulate way that he
ought to say NO, said—YES.  His own sermon
was inadequate; there was not time to prepare
another; and he lacked the power of interpreting
the message of those grey stones yonder.  This
and more flitted through a mind large enough but
somewhat conventionally furnished.

"But what has Betty Kirtling to do with it?" he
concluded heavily.  "Why tell her?  If this is to
be between you and me, Mark—why tell her?"

Mark put up his hand to hide a smile.

"It may not be necessary to tell her," he said
quietly.  "She might guess."  Then seeing
consternation on Archie's fine brows he added: "No one
else will guess, but she—well, she has intuitions."

"Is she going to marry Kirtling?"

Again Mark smiled at his brother's lack of
perception.  He fenced with the question: "You ought
to know; you've seen more of her than I have."

"She's a bit of a flirt."

"No."

"I say—yes.  She has flirted with Kirtling, with
me, with Pynsent, with Jim Corrance, and with you.
I sometimes think that she likes you best, Mark.
She might take you, because——"

"Go on!"

"Because," Archie explained, "there are two
Bettys: the Betty of Mayfair and the Betty of
King's Charteris.  I heard Mrs. Corrance say that,
and it struck me as worth remembering.  Most
women would only see the Betty of Mayfair, but the
other Betty, who takes some finding, has an
extravagant admiration of good and a morbid horror of evil.
A girl running from evil is likely to rush into the
arms of good.  I saw my chance there," he added
thoughtfully, and again Mark smiled.  "I said to
myself that the time to catch the witch was just after
the London season.  I don't mind telling you that I
asked her to marry me the day she came back from
Goodwood last year.  And I was careful about
choosing the right place.  Depend upon it that tells
in these affairs.  I chose the Dean's garden: there
isn't a sweeter, more peaceful spot under Heaven.
But I wasted my time.  Hullo! what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You're white as a sheet.  You ought to take
more care of yourself, my dear fellow.  I do Sandow's
exercises every morning and evening.  And I take a
grain of calomel once a week.  You look liverish.
I find that my mind does not work properly unless
my body is in tiptop condition.  What were we
talking of?  Oh, yes—Betty Kirtling.  Do you know
that Harry Kirtling has proposed about five
times—generally out hunting?  But she laughs at him.
She cried in the Dean's garden."

"Ah?" said Mark softly.

"She won't laugh or cry when the right man
speaks, and if you are he the sooner you speak the
better.  She's an enchantress," Archie concluded,
"and her money would come in very handy—wouldn't it?"

"Confound her money!" said Mark violently.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`APHRODITE SMILES AND FROWNS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   APHRODITE SMILES AND FROWNS

.. vspace:: 2

When Betty met Mark just before dinner the
story of the Bagshots was told briefly.

"Is that why you look so discouraged?" she whispered.

He laughed, not quite naturally.

"Surely to—to me, you may show your true feelings.
Or do you count me a fair-weather friend?"

Before he had answered Lady Randolph came up
and said that Mark must be introduced to the lady
he was destined to take into dinner.  Mark found
himself bowing before an ample matron who prattled
of herbaceous borders and conifers for nearly half
an hour.  Betty sat beside him, listening to Jim
Corrance.  Not till the first entrée was handed did
she find an opportunity to repeat her question to
Mark: "Am I a fair-weather friend?"

Mark met her glance; then before answering,
he allowed his eyes to rest upon her gown and
the opals at her throat.  She was wearing a frock
of filmy tissues, made, so her dressmaker informed
her, in Tokio, and known to the fashionable world as
rainbow tulle.  The general effect of this gown, like
the jewels which glittered above it, was that of
change, and Betty had christened it the Chameleon,
because in certain lights it was softly pink, in others
a misty blue, in others, again, amber or palest green.
Lady Randolph smiled when she saw this wonderful
frock, because it suggested certain phases of
character of the girl who wore it.  Mark, knowing
nothing of the relationship between a woman and
her clothes, was, none the less, aware that this
gown must have cost a deal of money and had not
been chosen for wearing qualities.

"You make one think of May," he replied.

"You look at my frock, not at me.  Well, if it
comes to that, I have a stout tweed upstairs, which
defies hurricanes.  I know what you're thinking—and
you're wrong.  I prefer my Harris tweed, but
you don't expect me to wear it in May—do you?"

"Contrast tickles you, Betty."

"How am I to take that?"

"You like an ice with a hot sauce."

"No doubt, *you* prefer fried fish."

She glanced at him roguishly, leaning slightly
towards him, so that the sleeve of her gown touched
his coat.  From the airy tissues floated a faint
fragrance of roses, and then, drowning it in pungent
fumes, came that sickening odour of the slums.

"I loathe fried fish," he whispered.  Betty smiled
as the lady on the other side of Mark asked him if he
knew Father Dolling.  Nor was Stepney mentioned
again, although it obscured the future in yellow fog.
Betty was conscious that Mark eyed her with a
persistency for which she could not quite account.  The
same expression may be found on the faces of
emigrants setting sail for a new country, yet looking
back on the old, which holds all they know of life
and which they may not see again.  Betty had
never set foot on the deck of an emigrant ship; but
she was vaguely apprehensive that this persistency
of glance was ominous.  Her bosom was heaving
when she asked him: "Why do you look at me so
queerly?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Why should you?  You must know by this time
that I don't object to being looked at—by you."

If the words were slightly flippant, the tone in
which they were spoken was serious enough.  She
continued: "Your look is that of a man hesitating
to leap.  When you were a boy you went free at
your fences."

Mark caught his breath.  Her meaning was unmistakable.
She held out white arms to him—the syren!

"They were dear old days," he murmured.

"You rode hard and straight.  Many a lead you
gave me.  When are we going to have a nice long talk?"

Her voice was trembling.  And he stammered as
he replied: "T-to-night, if you l-l-like."

"It will be heavenly on the terrace," she whispered.
"I saw you slip away last night, and I was tempted
to follow you."

"Why didn't you?" he blurted out.  Last night—he
was reflecting—he had been free.

"I have some pride, Mark.  Not much, perhaps."

"I saw Aphrodite by moonlight.  She was wonderful."

"She is wonderful," Betty murmured.  "Is love
dead that you use the past tense?  Will you take me
to the fountain after dinner?"

"Yes."

A minute later Lady Randolph and the ladies left
the dining-room.  Mark poured himself out a glass
of port.  The men were talking of the approaching
meeting at Ascot, where one of Lord Randolph's
horses was likely to win the Gold Vase.  Mark
listened to Harry Kirtling's eager voice.  How keen
he was, this handsome lad!  What a worshipper
of horse and hound!  And his host—old man of the
world who had drunk of many cups—seemed to
covet this gold vase as the one thing desirable.  And
when he had won it, the cup would glitter upon his
sideboard among a score of similar trophies
unnoticed and forgotten.

"I have the sermon almost by heart," Archie
whispered to his brother.  "I read it over three
times before dinner.  It's odd your treatment of
the theme did not occur to me, particularly as I
live in the Close."

"One doesn't see the Matterhorn when one is
climbing it," Mark observed.  "If you want to love
Westchester live in Whitechapel."

"I couldn't live in Whitechapel," Archie replied;
"it wouldn't suit me at all.  Still, as a means to an
end—Lord Randolph says that you—er—know what
you're at."

"Do I?" said Mark.  Then he laughed and struck
his brother genially on the shoulder, adding: "At
any rate, you know what you're at; but to men like
me ignorance of the ultimate aim has its value.
Perhaps because I don't quite know what I'm doing
I take pleasure in doing it."

"You're a queer chap," said his brother, "and
you grow queerer as you grow older.  You mean
that you would sooner have two birds in the bush
than one in the hand."

"The nightingales in the bush—for me," cried Mark.

"I want the bird in the hand," said Archibald
solemnly.

"You will cook your bird, old fellow, and eat it
with all accessories: bread sauce, rich gravy, the
succulent *salade Romaine*, but you will never hear it
sing.  A bird in the hand never sings."

.. vspace:: 2

The night was very still when Mark and Betty
descended the stone steps which led to the fountain:
a lovers' night, fragrant with a thousand essences.
Silvery shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness of
the park, and fell tenderly on the nymphs about the
fountain.  But Aphrodite was not yet revealed, for
her pool lay in shadow guarded by sentinel yews and
cypress.

Mark disappeared for a moment; the surface of
the pool was troubled; then, with a soft, sibilant
sound, the waters rose and enveloped the goddess.

"We are in the nick of time," whispered Mark.

As he spoke the moon topped the trees.  For a
moment a white flame seemed to sparkle round the
brows of Aphrodite; then the features were revealed:
the languorous half-opened eyes, the dimpled cheeks,
the adorable mouth with its shy smile.  The sculptor
had suggested the admixture of fear and delight, a
shrinking from the embrace of the unknown element,
a virginal protest indicated by a gesture of taper
fingers and slender shoulders, a protest overpowered
by a subtle relaxing of the whole body, the nymph
surrendering herself to Life and Love.

Mark turned to Betty.  She met his eyes and then
turned aside her own.  The nymph with the
phorminx smiled.  And the *amorini* looked on approving.
Mark had the hunger of Romeo on his thin face, the
hunger of the beggar who has seen white loaves
through the windows of a baker's shop.  At Milan
there is a hole in the wall whence, long ago, unhappy
prisoners looked out upon tables spread with savoury
viands: wretches condemned to starve—within sight
and smell of baked meats and sparkling wines!

Mark looked again at Betty's face, now pensive,
although the dimples were deepening.  The elusive
tints of the gown, transmuted by the moonbeams
into a silvery radiance, shimmered like the watery
tissues of the goddess; the opals at her throat might
have been dewdrops.

"Dear Betty," he whispered.

She lifted her heavy lids.  The eyes beneath were
dark as the shadows cast by the cypress, and
troubled as the waters of the pool.  What darkened
and troubled them?  What intuition or premonition
of sorrow and suffering?  But Mark saw the
underglow which reflected the flames of his heart.

As they gazed at each other the moon glided
discreetly behind a cloud, and a soft darkness obscured
all things, out of which came the music of the
fountain; a symphony of kisses falling with melodic
rhythm upon the face of Aphrodite.  In a clump
of syringa beyond the Italian garden a nightingale
trilled.

He knew that he had only to speak the word, to
hold out his arms, and she would come to him.  She
was smiling, but with a sadness which underlay joy:
such sadness as may be seen sometimes in the face of
a child, who, coming into possession of a long-desired
object, is confronted with the possibility of losing it.

He took her hand, gripping it.

"Mark—what is the matter?"

Her voice rose in a crescendo of distress, as Mark
staggered, gasping for breath.  Terror-stricken, she
supported him to a stone bench hard by, upon
which he sank.

"It is a p-p-passing weakness," he stammered.
"I am better already."

"You have been overworking yourself in those
detestable slums," she said vehemently.

"That is the truth," he answered.  "I shall take
a holiday."

"A long holiday," she whispered, meeting his
eyes.  But he saw the face of the tall thin doctor
and his lean hand raised in protest.  "And you must
have someone, some dear friend, to look after you."

Her fingers pressed his arm.

"Yes," he said eagerly.  "With such a friend I
should grow strong again."

"There are places, earthly paradises, which I've
read about.  In Samoa or Tahiti——"

He interrupted her, passionately.

"Don't speak of them—*yet*.  Betty, I must turn
the key of the fountain.  I cannot speak for—for a
few days.  Do you understand?  If you could read
my heart.  If—if——"

She saw that his excitement was overmastering him.

"Mark, I do understand.  We understand each
other.  You are right.  The key of the fountain
must be turned.  I'll do it, not you."  She sprang up
lightly, ran to the cypress, and turned the key.
When she came back he was staring at the goddess,
white and shivering.

Before she went to bed, Betty was cross-examined
by Lady Randolph.

"Then he hasn't actually spoken?"

"He will," Betty declared.  "And within a week."

"And Stepney?"

"I'd sooner live with him in Stepney——"

"And eat fried fish?"

"And smell fried fish—it's the smell I hate—than
live in a garden of roses by Bendemeer's stream with
anybody else."

"My poor Betty, you have the disease badly."

Betty, however, did not mention Mark's physical
weakness to her friend.  Instead, she prattled of
love for nearly an hour.

The elder woman told herself that she was listening
to an idyll; but, vividly as the tale was presented, a
sense of unreality pervaded it; the conviction that,
as a child would put it, the story was too good to be
true.  But because of its goodness Lady Randolph
was the more touched by it.  Your honest cynic
respects good, although he rails against its
counterfeit.  Moreover, in this joyous acclamation of love,
Lady Randolph resumed for a few moments her own
youth.  It seemed incredible that she should have
grown old, and critical, and distrustful.  Love
touched her with healing fingers, and she became as
a little child, free from the dull limitations of age
and experience.

"You have been so sympathetic," said Betty,
when she bade her old friend good night, "but I
know, of course, that in your heart of hearts you
think us two fools."

"Not fools, Betty.  Babes in the wood, perhaps,
playing amongst the rose leaves.  Good night, my
dear; go and dream of your lover."

But when the door was shut, the woman of the
world sighed, and her shrewd face puckered into
many wrinkles.

"Am I a fool?" she asked herself.  "Should
I have stopped this?  I fear that it will come to
nothing, but then it will be everything, everything,
everything to them—while it lasts."

Meantime, Archibald was in Mark's bedroom,
talking of the sermon to be preached on the morrow.
He had a score of unessential corrections to suggest.
A slight amplification here, another word there, an
apt quotation, revealed the student of effect, the
rhetorician.  Mark admitted that his brother had
improved the manuscript.

"I have thought of nothing else," said Archie.
"At first I disliked preaching another man's sermon,
but now I feel as if a lot of it were mine."

"It is all yours," said Mark, smiling.  "I have
given it to you, haven't I?  Only, remember, Betty
must know."

"Why?" demanded Archie.  "Women will talk
and——" he shrugged his broad shoulders.  "If the
Dean heard of it——  The Dean, you know, is civil,
but he has a cut-and-dried manner which I find
rather trying.  He's a radical, too.  We always have
had radical deans at Westchester.  With my political
views, my faith in institutions, and—er—so forth he
is not in accord.  He told me with really amazing
candour that I owed my preferment entirely to my
vocal chords.  I should have thought a Samphire of
Pitt had claims, but no—he repudiates all that.  His
own father was quite obscure: a bookseller, I've
been told, only don't quote me.  One can't be too
careful in a cathedral town.  Well, not to put a fine
point on it, the Dean underrates me.  I've felt it
keenly.  When I was singing to him the other night,
in his own drawing-room, he went to sleep: he did,
indeed.  Still, to give him his due, he is almost a
monomaniac on the subject of the cathedral, and this
sermon ought to surprise him...."

Mark nodded absently.  His face seemed thinner
and paler since he had parted from Betty less than
an hour ago.  As in a dream, he heard Archie's
voice droning on about the Dean and his Chapter,
but he saw only Betty's face, Betty's eyes, which
seemed to fill the universe.  She loved him!  Infirm
of body, halting of speech, he had been able to
inspire passion in so splendid a fellow-creature.  The
glory of it filled his soul.

Archie, who must not be blamed for enjoying the
sound of his own voice, talked on and on.  It was
past midnight.  Down in the smoking-room young
Kirtling, one could wager, was holding forth on the
subject of fox-hunting.  Jim Corrance, with an
ironical smile upon his slightly melancholy face,
was listening politely, thinking, no doubt, of some
future "coup" in the money market.  Lord Randolph,
with a long, thin cigar in his mouth, was
certainly alive to the possibility of a political crisis.
Pynsent, watching the three other men from the
depths of an immense chair, was busy fitting their
faces into a picture.  All this, and much more,
passed through Mark's mind.

"Good night," Archie was saying.  "We've had
a long yarn, haven't we?"

He stood up, extending his hand, which Mark
grasped.  Opposite to the brothers stood a large
cheval glass.  Mark's eye fell on this, and
straightway the gracious image of Betty vanished, and in
her place he saw himself and Archie standing beside
each other with linked hands.  The contrast between
the brothers was so startling that the younger allowed
an exclamation to leap from his lips.

"Look," he said, when Archie lifted his handsome
brows in interrogation; "who would believe that
the same mother bore us?"

The mirror, indeed, seemed to take pleasure in
making more of Archibald and less of Mark than
was warrantable.  The fine massive figure, the
smooth, fresh-coloured cheeks, the flaxen curls of
the one accentuated the leanness, the pallor, the
fragility of the other.  Only when you looked at the
eyes you recognised the vitality of spirit in Mark.
Lady Randolph described the eyes of the brothers
aptly enough, when she said that Mark's reminded
her of fire and Archie's of—water.

"You will fill out," said Archibald, placidly
regarding the curves of his person.

Mark laid his fingers upon his brother's chest.

"Forty-three inches," said Archie.  "I had a
doctor look me over the other day.  He said I was
as sound a specimen as he'd ever examined."

"Good night," said Mark abruptly.

When Archie had left the room, Mark returned to
the mirror.

"Am I envious?" he muttered.  "Not for my
own sake, God knows, but for hers.  If I were only
strong——"

He began to undress, thinking of the doctor and
the train.  Curiously enough the two were connected.
The train rushing on and on through the quiet
landscape, the doctor and he whirled on with it,
fellow-passengers for a few brief minutes, meeting, parting,
and meeting again in obedience to some Power who
rules that good shall triumph ultimately over evil.
To Mark this was and always had been a sheet-anchor.
At Harrow, at Barbizon, in the pulpit of
the church in King's Charteris, he had submitted to
the Divine Will; but, now, if the greatest thing on
earth were denied him would he be able to bow his
head in resignation?  Every pulse in his body
throbbed a passionate—"No."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WESTCHESTER CATHEDRAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   WESTCHESTER CATHEDRAL

.. vspace:: 2

It happened that Lord Randolph was anxious to
consult the Dean of Westchester upon some
point of municipal philanthropy, so he drove into the
town earlier than usual on Whit-Sunday.  Archibald
accompanied him, Lord Randolph driving his own
pair, which were never driven by anybody else.
When the horses were working well into their collars,
Lord Randolph turned to the preacher-elect and
described, not without humour, his own pangs before
the delivery of an important speech in the House of
Commons.

"Only I," he concluded, "had the impending
horror of a scathing reply from the other side.  You
black-coated gentlemen have an immense advantage
there, an advantage which I hope you, my boy, will
never abuse.  Is it indiscreet to ask what theme you
have taken?"

Archie answered the question by repeating a phrase
of Mark's, which summed up, aptly enough, the
scope and purpose of the sermon.  Lord Randolph
raised his grizzled brows.

"Um!  I like to see a young man tackling a
subject bigger than himself: and the bigger the man,
the bigger ought to be his subject.  Often," he
concluded abruptly, "it is the other way.  You are
ambitious, Archibald?"

"Yes," the minor canon confessed; and then,
afraid of saying too much, he held his tongue.  Lord
Randolph respected his silence, supposing that the
preacher was occupied with his thoughts.  Nor did
he mention that he expected to meet the Prime
Minister at the deanery, who doubtless would attend
service in the cathedral.  If this young fellow
acquitted himself with distinction, his sermon might
prove a stepping-stone to great things.  A week ago
no man knew that a maker of prelates was coming to
Westchester, certainly not the Dean, otherwise he
might have elected to preach himself.  Lord Randolph
smiled with a slightly cynical curl of the lip.  The
Dean, as has been said, was radical in politics, but
he probably foresaw that his party, now in power,
was not likely to endure for ever.

Lord Randolph left his horses in charge of the
groom, and descended at the ancient gate which leads
to the Close.  At the same moment two figures
emerged from the shadows of the deanery porch.
"There is the Prime Minister," said Lord Randolph.
"I shall have pleasure, Archie, in introducing you
to him."

"By Jove!" exclaimed the young man.

A moment later the most eloquent speaker in the
kingdom was holding Archibald Samphire's hand
and peering into his face.  The great man had
appreciation of physical beauty, and an eye for a
personality.  Archie blushed: a tribute ever welcome
to genius.

"Our preacher to-day," said the Dean.

"Indeed?"

The young man's hand was retained in the ample
grasp of the Prime Minister, who asked a dozen
questions, enveloping Archie with that magnetic
current, which seemed to emanate from him in fuller
measure than from any other of his generation.

"I shall look forward to your sermon," he concluded.
"I am sure it will be worthy of this place"—he
spoke with solemnity—"and"—his voice
changed—"and of—you.  You have the gift of
eloquence: the lips, the eyes, the brow.  I hope we
shall meet again soon."

He passed on, smiling genially, leaving the
gratified Archie alone with his thoughts.  Lord Randolph
might have told him that the speaker scattered seed
of kindly words wherever he went, and who shall
say—even now—what they brought forth?  A kindly
word lingers in the ear when a kind action may be
lost to sight.

.. vspace:: 2

The party from Birr Wood entered the cathedral
some five minutes before the time when service
began.  Betty knelt down to repeat the prayer which
she had learnt when a child from Mrs. Corrance.
She was about to rise, when she happened to steal a
glance at Mark kneeling beside her.  At that moment
she became sensible of what may be termed spiritual
giddiness.  She seemed to be transported to heights
where head and heart failed.  A glimpse of the
world unseen was vouchsafed her: an empyrean in
which she and Mark moved alone amongst the hosts
of Heaven.  The vision was so vivid, so seizing (to
use the word in its French significance) that she felt
herself trembling beneath the awe and mystery of it.
And then an impulse, which, in its material aspect,
had assailed her once before when attempting to
scale a certain peak in the Alps, constrained her to
look down into what seemed a fathomless abyss.
In the mist and shadows of this vast gulf a dull,
opaque object challenged attention, and she knew
this was the earth: a pin's point in the celestial
horizon, borrowing aught it possessed of light and
heat from the place wherein she stood.  And with
this knowledge fear became articulate.  The horror
of giddiness which paralysed her was not due to the
fact that she had been whirled to heights, but to the
sense that she might fall headlong from them!

The deep notes of the organ put to flight the vision.
Still kneeling, she looked upward into the roof of the
chancel, with its delicately carved and gilded
ornaments, thence passing to the radiance and simplicity
of the nave beyond.  Above her head, upon the
stone partitions on each side of the sanctuary, stood
six carved and gilded mortuary chests, surmounted
by the crowns and inscribed with the names of the
Saxon princes whose crumbling bones they contain;
at her feet almost was the tomb of a great king, slain
in the plentitude of his strength and power; hard by
were the magnificent chantries of the prelates who
sanctified their time, their talents, and their money
to the embellishment of this house of God.  In one
of the chantries, where during his lifetime he spent,
daily, many hours of devotion, lies the figure of a
man, represented as an emaciated corpse wrapped in
a winding-sheet.  He it was who caused to be carved
on the soaring roof of the choir the sorrowful
emblems of our Lord's Passion: the crown of thorns,
the nails, the hammer, the scourge, the reed and
sponge, the lance, the cross.  And who can doubt
that he was inspired to so exalt these symbols of the
suffering which redeemed mankind?  Who can
doubt, gazing at the shrunken limbs and careworn
features of the prelate, that his untiring labour had
caused him innumerable hours of pain serenely
endured because he knew that by pain alone Man is
purified.  He and his successors and predecessors,
and the armies of masons they employed, had lived
and died that this, the work of their heads and hands,
might endure for generations, a monument of the
faith which can move mountains of stone and change
them into forms of surpassing loveliness.  Had they
laboured in vain?

Betty rose from her knees as the choir entered the
sanctuary.  At the same moment Mark touched her
arm and glanced across the chancel.  Following his
eyes, she saw the familiar face of the Prime Minister.
Other eyes lingered upon that notable head, now bent
in meditation upon the tomb of the king.  Mark
touched her again.  Archibald Samphire was passing
by, stately in surplice and hood.  The statesman
raised his head, and stared keenly at the priest.  A
half-smile of recognition and encouragement curved
his thin lips.  Archie, conscious, perhaps, that the
eyes of the mighty were on him, looked neither to
right nor left.  His face was as that of a graven
image.  "He is cold," thought Betty.  "Does he
expect, I wonder, to warm others?"

The service began.  At that time a certain boy was
singing in the Westchester choir who became famous
afterwards as the finest treble of his day, combining,
till his voice broke, the freshness of youth with the
art which crowns a long and patient apprenticeship.
Already musical folk were talking of the lad and
coming from far to hear him.  The choir sang in
unison the first verse of the *Venite*, but above their
voices, above the sonorous peal of the organ, floated
the aerial notes of the boy.  So sublimated was the
quality of this child's voice that Betty—and many
another—looked up, believing for the moment that
these flakes of melody were dropping from heaven.
The joyousness which informed each crystalline
phrase electrified the ear.  This indeed was a clarion
call to rejoice!  The pain and perplexity in Betty's
soul fled, exorcised by this glad spirit, blythe as a
skylark carolling in the skies.  She glanced at Mark.
His eyes were shining, his face aglow with pleasure.
Farther down stood Harry Kirtling, unmoved; and
on each side were rows of men and women, some
perfunctorily praising God, others gazing with
lacklustre eyes into the past or future, a few touched to
the quick by the message and the instrument by
which it was conveyed.  Amongst these, one face
stood out of the crowd, conspicuous by its pallor and
the lines of suffering which scored cheek and mouth
and brow.  Unmistakably, Death had marked this
victim of an incurable malady for his own.  Yet,
excepting Mark's, no countenance in that great
congregation revealed more clearly the happiness and
contentment which proclaim success.  Here was the
vitality of the life immortal flaming upon the ashes
of the dead; here was one rejoicing in the salvation
of a soul, caring nothing because the body was about
to be destroyed!

The choir sang on together till the eighth verse
was reached:

   |  "To-day, if ye will hear His voice,
   |  Harden not your hearts!"
   |

These lines were delivered in *recitativo* by the
basses, and then repeated by the choir.  "*Harden
not your hearts!*"  The injunction rolled down the
aisles and transepts; it broke in thunder against the
hoary walls, as it has broken for two thousand years
against the faithless generations; and then, in the
silence which followed, there descended a flute-like
echo, emphasising the opportunity and reimposing
the condition.  To-day, this moment, *if* ye will hear
his voice, harden not your hearts!

Psalms and Lessons succeeded.  Archie read the
latter.  Betty, who had not heard him read since his
appointment as minor canon, amended her conviction
that he could not warm others.  He had that
persuasiveness of diction which drapes even the crude
and commonplace with samite, and, so garbed, passes
like an angel through all doors.

"For to be carnally minded is death, but to be
spiritually minded is life and peace."

If this indeed were true, how many of those around
Betty Kirtling were of the quick, how many of the
dead?  How many, again, were asleep, lulled to
slumber by indifference?  She saw Pynsent staring
at Archie's face.  Unconsciously he had raised his
right hand, as if it held a brush poised above a
canvas.  Beside him sat Jim Corrance engrossed in
thought.  Jim was frowning; his lips were shut, as
if he feared that information of commercial value
might leak from them.  It struck Betty, with a certain
poignant suddenness, that Jim, dear old Jim, had lost
his look of youth, and she wondered vaguely whether
or not his mother had marked the loss—and regretted
it.  Was his face becoming hard?  Was it setting
into that inexorable mask of death of which the
apostle spoke?  She shivered and looked away,
meeting the curious gaze of Lady Randolph.  Then with
an effort she restrained her vagabond thoughts and
eyes, and listened attentively to the voice of the
reader.

Afterwards she wondered if what followed would
have impressed her so profoundly had it not been for
what went before.  At the moment she was merely
sensible that her perceptive and intuitive faculties
were sharpened to keen edge.  She knew with conviction
that a veil had been lifted, that she saw clearly
and in true proportion what was vital and everlasting.

When Archie ascended the pulpit, Betty prepared
herself for an anti-climax, Lady Randolph, for a
nap.  "*Ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual
house.*"  The preacher repeated his text, and paused.
The Prime Minister inclined his ear in a gesture
familiar to all who knew him; the Dean polished his
spectacles and replaced them, as if seeking to see
more clearly what hitherto had been obscured.
Silence, always significant, suffused itself
throughout the cathedral!

The sermon began as a history of the cathedral,
presented with a dramatic sense of the relation
borne by Gothic architecture to the renaissance of
spirituality in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
But soon the preacher passed from the sanctuary in
which he stood straight to the hearts of the congregation.
It has been well said that neither writer nor
painter lives who can set forth adequately on paper or
canvas what such artists as Wykeham and Fox
expressed in stone.  And who dares to portray the
house spiritual: the house hewn out of living stones
under the direction of the Supreme Architect?  But
if the whole transcends description, the parts invite
it.  Archibald paused before taking the stride from
the abstract to the concrete.  When he spoke again
his voice was troubled.  Smooth persuasiveness
gave place to a rougher eloquence.  So far,
admirable and inspiring though the sermon had been, it
revealed rather the scholar and idealist than the
practical man of the world.  The cathedral, for
instance, interpreted the past.  It enshrined the faith
and patience of yesterday.  What message did it
hold for the strivers of to-day?

Archie answered that question in the last half of
the sermon, and, answering it, displayed a knowledge
of humanity which Mark had gleaned in Stepney
and Whitechapel.  All that is affecting and pathetic
in life was laid bare, but with a delicacy of phrase, a
poignancy of suggestion, a sense of proportion,
which thrilled rather than dismayed.  A sane
optimism informed even deformity.  It was characteristic
of Mark (and most uncharacteristic of the preacher)
that he dwelt tenderly upon the inglorious parts of
the temple: the rough flints, the bricks, the clay, the
mortar!  Of the glittering ornaments he said little,
of the stone which the builders rejected much.  His
congregation listened with an attention which never
waned.  The children stared spellbound at the splendid
figure in the pulpit.  To them, as to their elders,
came the assurance of work to do worth the doing,
and the conviction that such work, however slight,
brought with it a reward: the Pentecostal gift.  Here
Mark had attempted to define the unpardonable sin:
the rejection of the spiritual and the acceptance of
the carnal life.  And then followed the apostrophe.
When it was delivered, smiles curved the children's
lips; men felt the current of their blood flowing
strong and free in their veins.  For a sound as from
heaven had filled the house where they were sitting,
and gladness of heart scourged once more from
God's temple disease and despair and death!

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SURRENDER!`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   SURRENDER!

.. vspace:: 2

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 them *Kosmos* and
*Mayfair*.  Under the latter was *The 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."

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"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...."

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARIADNE IN NAXOS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARIADNE IN NAXOS

.. vspace:: 2

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—to *die*, 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, I *am* pleased 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 wish *I* felt 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.





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.. _`A SANATORIUM IN SUTHERLAND`:

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   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SANATORIUM IN SUTHERLAND

.. vspace:: 2

Archibald Samphire took with him to
Scotland a suit-case and a small handbag.
After leaving Perth, where he made an early
breakfast, he opened the bag and pulled out a roll of
foolscap covered with neat, scholarly handwriting.
The reading of this MS. seemed to give him
pleasure; but presently his fine brow puckered into
wrinkles, and an excellent cigar was allowed to go
out prematurely.

"It's not as good as I thought," he murmured;
and he was not speaking of his cigar.

Presently he lit another cigar and reread the MS.—the
sermon prepared for Royalty.  When he wrote
it, he told himself it eclipsed the one preached on
Whit-Sunday at Westchester.  Afterwards, rereading
it in cold blood, he had come to the conclusion
that it did not quite "grip," as Betty put it, although
sound to the core doctrinally, and discreet; better
suited, perhaps, for august ears than the other.  Now,
in this clear, cool northern air, judgment was of a less
sanguine complexion.  The theme warmed into life
in the Close at Westchester lacked vitality in the
Highlands.  Mountain and moor made it seem
anæmic.  Archibald looked out of the window, which
was open, and inhaled the fresh, pungent air.  Not a
house was to be seen, not even a shepherd's hut; the
moors spread a purple carpet on which no human
creature walked; the mountains, vast, rugged,
solitary, encompassed the moors.  Yet in the heart of
this lonely wilderness men had swarmed together in
conflict.  These mountains had not barred the
progress of an army.  Guns, horses, transport waggons
had defiled through the passes and across the
treacherous peat bogs.  That clear burn yonder had run
red with blood.  Here was fought the battle of
Killiecrankie!  Archie thought of these things as he sat
with the sheets of his sermon in his hand.  He bundled
the MS. back into his bag, and closed it with a snap,
divining his inability to deal adequately with what
was primal!

He had wired to Mark that he was coming North;
accordingly, at Lairg he found a "machine" awaiting
him, a ramshackle cart drawn by a sturdy pony, whose
attempts to leave the rough roads and plunge on to
the moor indicated that he was more at ease beneath
a deer packsaddle than between a pair of shafts.  The
driver eyed somewhat derisively Archie's clerical
garments.  "Ye're no a meenister?" he asked; and
receiving a reply in the affirmative, added with
emphasis, "Ye're verra young for that."  A minute
later he asked if his passenger were college-bred.

"I took my degree at Cambridge," said Archie.

"Indeed.  A'm interested in the Punic Wars.  Yon
Scipio Africanus was a gran' man.  I'd be obliged if
ye'd tell me all ye ken aboot him."

Archie changed from pink to the colour of Turkey
twill.  What he knew about Scipio Africanus could
have been put into a grain of millet seed.  In some
confusion—not wasted upon the critical Scot—he
explained that the Punic Wars were beyond his
horizon.  The driver nodded compassionately,
expressing no surprise at the Sassenach's ignorance.
He was thin and angular; his grey eyes had
curious flecks of brown in them; his face and hands
were very red and hairy, and beneath the red hair
Archie detected a certain amount of dirt.  This
restored the minor canon's sense of superiority.  The
Scot, however, wore stout homespun and superb
stockings.

"You wear good clothes," said Archie.

"D'ye think they're too guid?"

"Certainly not," said Archie hastily.  "Your
Highland sheep look in fine condition."

Once more the driver's queer eyes met his.  The
brown flecks danced in the grey.

"They're no mine, and they cam frae Teviotdale—they
white-faced sheep."  The contempt in the
man's voice was unmistakable.

Archie wondered if the man also came from the
border; he did not look like a Highlander;
Highlanders always said "whateffer."  He wished to
ask questions about Crask, Ross's lodge, but the
brown flecks in the small, closely-set eyes were oddly
disconcerting, so he stared at the face of the
landscape instead of that of the man.  They were driving
over a bleak moor which stretched, far as the eye
could reach, to some delicately blue hills fringing the
western skies.  The scene was panoramic and
indescribably desolate.  Along the road black posts,
set at intervals, served as guides to such
travellers—shepherds for the most part—who were obliged to
cross the moors in winter-time, when snow covered
all things.  Archie thought of November and shivered.
Presently they passed a small slate-tiled cottage built
of rough grey stone and surrounded by a grey stone
wall.  Peats were piled close to a vast midden, on
which some hens were scratching; beyond the peat
stack stood the byre; garden, ornamental or useful,
there was none.  As the pony came to a sudden halt,
three rough collies rushed out, barking furiously.
The driver spoke to them and got down; he strode
into the house, remained there ten minutes, and came
out wiping his hairy chin.  Archie smelled whisky.
The driver picked up the reins, the collies barked,
the pony shambled forward.  Evidently the whisky
had had an effect, for the Scot became communicative.

"He's a verra mean man, yon," he said, jerking
his head in the direction of the house.  "We were
tasting the noo, and I said, as he was filling the
glass—'Stop!'  And wad ye believe it, the brute
stoppit?"

Mark would have laughed.  Archibald remained calm.

"There's too much whisky drunk in Scotland," he said.

"There's' mair drunk oot of it," retorted the driver.

Archie refused to enter into argument, and the
driver filled a black cutty with evil-smelling tobacco.
After the moor was crossed, the character of the
scenery changed.  The road wound its way beside a
charming burn to which heather-covered hills sloped
steeply.  Farther on, a loch reflected the saffron
splendours of the sky.  A splendid mountain—Ben
Caryll—towered to the right.

"Yon's the hoose," said the driver.

The house crowned a small spur of Ben Caryll.
At one side stood a small wooden chapel embellished
by a diminutive bell-tower, in which hung a single
bell of great sweetness of tone.  A big lawn lay on
the other side of the house, and Archie noted with
surprise that tennis-courts were marked out.  He
noted also, with equal surprise, the profusion of
flowers and flowering shrubs and the care which
allotted to each its particular place in the general
plan of the garden.  The house looked grey and
grim, like all houses in this part of Scotland, and the
windows had been enlarged, giving the building
somewhat the appearance of a small factory.  Behind
the tennis-courts stood a row of rough sheds covered
with creepers and facing the south.  In the sheds he
caught a glimpse of tables, chairs, sofas, and other
simple furnishings.

Archie rang the bell, which jangled discordantly.
The door was opened by Mark, who held out both
hands, smiling.  "It's awfully good of you, old
fellow," he said.  "I don't know how to thank you.
You're just in time for supper.  Here's the Bishop.
He's up for a day or two."

David Ross nodded cordially and gripped Archie's
hand.  Two men came forward and were introduced.
One shouldered the big suit-case and went upstairs
with it, ignoring protests.  Archie followed, carrying
his small black bag and feeling that he had come on
a fool's errand so far as Mark was concerned.  Dying?
Why, he looked stronger than he had looked for
months.  As soon as the brothers were alone Archie
said as much.

"I suppose it's the air," Mark explained.  "I'm
out-of-doors night and day.  My trouble is scotched."

"I can't understand how you can joke about it,"
said Archie.

"A vile pun, but irresistible.  I say, wash that
frown off your face and come down.  We'll have a
pipe and a good jaw afterwards.  If you think, by
the way, that I do look better, you might say so to
David Ross.  He's been awfully kind."

"Why didn't you go home?"

"I c-c-couldn't," said Mark shortly.

In the refectory, a long, low annexe to the house,
the Bishop's guests sat at meat.  Some of them were
ruddy and robust; others looked thin and white, but
not one, so Archie remarked, wore the sable of
discontent.  The eyes that met his were candid and
clear—the eyes of men satisfied with their lot in life.
At the foot of the table sat a little fellow with a big
head, which waggled comically.  Archie wondered
where he had seen him before; then he remembered.
The little man looked like Mr. Pickwick, although
he lacked that illustrious character's deportment and
dignity.

"Who is that?" he whispered to Mark, who sat
beside him.

"That's Stride, our resident doctor.  He's mad
keen about the open-air cure.  He got his ideas from
Father Kneippe."

In those days neither Father Kneippe nor his ideas
were famous.  The open-air treatment for disease
was practically unknown.  Mark explained Stride's
methods: his theories on diet and physical culture,
facts now familiar to everybody.

"Stride lives here all the year round, you know.
David Ross comes and goes at long intervals."

"It must be desolate in winter."  Archie gave his
impressions, including a description of the house
with the huge midden.  "It was larger than the
cottage," he said in great disgust, "and the drunken
savage who drove me wanted to learn what I knew
about Scipio Africanus and the Punic wars.  Punic
wars indeed!"

"I like the country and the people," said Mark,
"but you have to climb to get at either."

After supper the guests marched outside and
settled themselves in the sheds, which were lit
with lamps.  Some read, some played chess, some
listened to Stride, who talked unceasingly.  The
Bishop led Archie aside and asked him if he would
like to smoke a pipe on the lawn.

"I'll smoke a cigar," said Archie.  "Can I offer
you one?"

"I prefer a pipe," said the Bishop.

They strolled together on to the lawn.  Although
it was nearly ten, twilight still lingered about the
landscape, as if loath to leave a scene so fair in
darkness.  Archie listened attentively to what his
companion was saying.

"Your brother has neglected his body."  (Ross
had been warned by Mark to say no more than this.)  "In
such cases more or less of a breakdown is
inevitable.  I am delighted that you see a change for
the better.  Six months up here, under Stride, may
set him up."

"I hoped to take him back with me.  I came up
for that purpose."

"Your brother can return with you, if he wishes,
but would it be wise?"

"Perhaps not, perhaps not," said Archie.  "We
did not know that you were prepared to offer so
generous a hospitality."

"He will be a paying guest in more senses than
one.  I dare say you would like to talk to him.
Good night!  I have an immense pile of letters to
answer.  I hope you will stay with us as long as you
please."

He grasped Archie's hand, and strode off.  Archie
watched him for a moment, enviously.  Ross gave
the impression of power in action.  It was certain
that his amazing stride would take him far on any
road—and always *upward and onward*: the motto
adopted by his followers.

When he found himself alone with Mark, in the
bedroom assigned to him, Archie said: "Ross seems
to think that you are doing better here than you
would, for instance, in Slowshire."

"Why, of course.  I'm mending rapidly.  One
cannot do anything rapidly in Slowshire.  It's not
even a place to die in.  One would dawdle over it."

"You will speak with such levity——"

"I've not your gravity, my dear old fellow.
Now then, tell me about yourself.  What are you
doing?"

"I've been commanded to preach at Windsor."

Mark was so eager and warm in his congratulations
that Archie found it easy to go on.

"I've brought my MS. with me.  I want you to
skim through it."

"I must read it at once.  This is wildly exciting."

Archie paced up and down, while Mark sat on
the bed reading the sermon.  Judging from his face,
the fare was proving unpalatable.  Archie saw that
he was frowning and fidgeting with his fingers, as
he used to do at Harrow, when he was looking over
his major's verses.  This familiar expression made
the big fellow feel ludicrously like a boy.  He half
shut his eyes and waited for the inevitable: "I say,
you know, this is awful bosh," of the Fifth Form
days.  Mark read the MS. through, and then glanced
again at certain passages, before he said a word.

"Well," said Archie nervously, "will it do?"

Mark slid off the bed, put his hands in his pockets,
and stared at his brother.

"That depends.  It will do to light some fires
with; but it won't set the Thames, near Windsor,
ablaze."

"Call it 'bosh' and have done with it."

"It's not bosh.  You've taken one of the Beatitudes."

"The Dean suggested that.  He said it would
please.  Of course he knows."

"The text is the most inspiring in the New Testament,
but you've treated it conventionally.  Now
look here——"  He paused to collect his ideas.  Archie
saw that his eyes were shining with that suffused
light which betokened in him mental or spiritual
excitement.  He began to pace up and down the
narrow room; then he burst out: "You lay stress
on the reward hereafter; a hereafter which the finite
mind is unable to grasp.  *The pure in heart shall see
God in His Heaven*.  Don't you know that the pure
in heart see God here?  That He is revealed, and
only to the pure, in everything that lies around us.
Ah, that is a theme, a celestial theme: the revelation
of the Creator in the things created.  And impurity
blinds us.  We look up to God, if we do look up,
through a fog.  You must take that line, Archie.
Burn this—and begin again.  And be sure that you
define purity of heart aright.  Don't confound it
with purity of body.  You are eloquent on the purity
of a child.  Why, man, the purity which knows not
impurity is emasculate compared with the purity
which knows impurity, which has fought with impurity,
and yet, in the end, after conflicts innumerable,
vanquishes impurity!  I tell you that what men
and women want to-day is substance.  An ideal
Heaven, an ideal earth, appeal to us, yes, but they
charm as a mirage charms; they melt and fade as
the mirage does.  What you have written here," he
tapped the foolscap impatiently, "might feed saints,
but flesh-and-blood sinners would go empty away.
By Heaven! if I had your voice, I would make the
sinners hear."

"You must help me," said Archie in a low, hesitating voice.

"Why not?" said Mark excitedly.  "Give me the
night to think.  To-morrow we'll put our heads
together and the sparks shall fly.  I haven't used my
brains for a month.  This will do me good."

"Will it?" said Archie doubtfully.  Already
Mark's face was drawn and haggard; he looked ten
years older than his brother.

"What is life," said Mark contemptuously, "if
the salt of helping a pal be taken from it?  I'm not
useless yet.  Good night.  I sleep in a shed, you
know.  And I can see the stars whenever I open my
eyes."

"It's so cloudy here," said Archibald.

"I can see through most clouds, but s-s-some——"

Mark paused abruptly, the light faded in his eyes,
as he turned and left the room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BETTY SEES A SPRIG OF RUE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   BETTY SEES A SPRIG OF RUE

.. vspace:: 2

Archibald returned to Westchester some three
days later.  In the small black bag was another
MS. quite as bulky as the first, and covered with
Mark's handwriting.  Blots and smudges deformed
it; the edges were dog-eared, whole sentences were
excised, red pencil marks flamed amidst the black.
Yet Archibald read it through again and again,
smiling, and nodding his handsome head.  He was
not alone in his first-class carriage, and his
companion, a shrewd Scotch lawyer, guessed why the
minister kept moving his lips as he read his MS.  In
fancy he was declaiming it.

The day after his arrival at the lodge the elder
brother had said to Mark: "By the way, Betty
Kirtling sent her love to you.  Have you any
message for her?"

"None," said he slowly.  "I hope she is well."

Archie, not detecting the anxiety in his tone,
thought Betty was looking very well.  Then he
mentioned Jim.

"He comes from Friday to Monday, every week.
He wants Betty, but I don't fancy he'll get her."

"Have you any reason for saying that?" Mark
asked, wondering whether Archie was clearer-sighted
than he had supposed.

"Jim is a materialist."

"Oh, come now!"

"A money-grubber and an agnostic."

"One of the best of fellows.  Ross never appeals to
him in vain."

"As if any rich man couldn't write a cheque.
Betty ought to marry somebody very different."

"Don't abuse him to Betty."

"Betty is rather—undisciplined."

"You can say that of all of us.  I hope to God
she won't marry a schoolmaster."  He glanced at
his brother with an eye that flamed.  He had
been smitten by the fear that Betty might marry
Archie.

"What strong expressions you use, Mark.  It
doesn't sound quite—how shall I put it?—well,
seemly, for a man who holds Orders.  I see no chance
of Betty marrying a schoolmaster.  I have great
hopes that she will choose wisely.  She said 'No'
to Harry Kirtling, and she will say 'No' to Jim
Corrance."

"And she said 'No' to you," Mark reflected.

.. vspace:: 2

Within the week Archibald rode over to King's
Charteris, where he found Betty in Mrs. Corrance's
garden gathering roses.  He had wired that he
was returning without Mark.  She took the
telegram to her room, where pride dried her eyes and
hardened her heart.  That night Jim told himself he
had a chance.  She had never been so kind to him,
so understanding, so alluring.  But on the brink
of declaration he hesitated, fearing to leap.
Afterwards he wondered what might have happened
if he had—leaped boldly instead of looking and
longing.

Betty received Archie with the question, "Is Mark
really ill?"

Archie hesitated.

"He looks stronger," he said slowly.  "And he
is in his usual spirits: the life and soul of the place.
There can't be anything really wrong.  In fact he
joked about his health.  He doesn't take anything
very seriously, you know.  David Ross told me that
he had overworked himself—more or less."

"You gave him my love?" Betty murmured
lightly.  She had the faintest tinge of colour in her
cheeks, but her voice was almost cold.

"Yes."

"And I hope he sent a nice message to me in
return?"

"No.  He asked if you were well.  I said—yes.
You do look uncommonly well, Betty."

She wore white, which set off the delicate tints and
admirable texture of her skin, but her hat was black,
giving a necessary note of contrast.  At her throat,
holding together a *jabot* of creamy laces, sparkled an
old-fashioned enamel ornament set with tiny
brilliants.  Standing on the sloping lawn, her figure
defined against a towering yew fence, and holding in
her hand the roses she had just gathered, the girl
made a picture which lured Archie's thoughts even
from Windsor.

"I suppose a country life agrees with me."

"You are wonderful."

She moved to a bench, the young man following
her with eager feet and eyes.  He could not see that
her heart was beating, nor did he notice that the
brilliancy of her eyes was due to an abnormal
enlargement of the pupil.  She sat down, smiling
derisively.  Then she bade him tell her about the
sanatorium.  When he had finished, she said quietly,
"You were very, very kind to take that long
journey."

"It's easy to be kind to people like you—and Mark."

His delightful voice softened, because when he
mentioned his brother's name the memory of what
that brother had done on his behalf filled him with
gratitude.

"I hear you are kind to everybody.  All Slowshire
sings your praises."

Archibald shook his head, wondering whether
Betty would mention the sermon.  He was burning
with impatience to try on, so to speak, some of its
phrases, to watch the effect of them on a woman
who had listened to the Gamaliels of the day.
Betty possessed sincerity, imagination, sympathy.
These would flow freely at the touch of a friend's
hand.

"If it would not bore you," he said, "I should
like to talk over the Windsor sermon.  You can help
me——"

"I?  Help—you?"

"You can, indeed"; his voice grew eager.  "Whatever
I say will be the fresher and purer if it passes
through your mind before it is given to the
world."

"My mind *is* a sort of filter."  She laughed.  None
the less she was pleased and flattered.  Archibald
began to speak in a soft monotone.  Betty half closed
her eyes and the lines of her figure slightly relaxed
beneath the caressing inflections of the speaker's
voice.  Whenever Archie sang she was affected in
the same way.  A languor overcame her.  For the
moment she was not attempting to grasp the meaning
of his words, which, even as inarticulate sounds,
possessed value and significance.  But, soon, she
opened her eyes wide and sat up.  By this time
Archie was at the core of his theme, and his
treatment of it was so masterly that Betty found herself
thrilling with surprise and delight.  A few minutes
before life had seemed empty.  Now it was full
again, brimming over, bubbling, with possibilities
swelling from shadow into substance.  Archie, be it
remembered, was not preaching the sermon.  He
was rather submitting the material, the tissues, the
threads, the patterns, out of which a fine piece of
work had been already fashioned.  Now and again
Betty was invited to choose, to select, out of these
wares some one which pleased her fancy.  She
realised that Archie had more of Mark in him than
she had deemed possible.  Once or twice she seemed
to hear Mark's eager tones.

"You say that like Mark."

"Has Mark talked to you on this theme?"

"Oh, no," Betty replied, "but he pours out his
ideas, as you do."

"Mark and I have talked about this.  He helped
me.  He always does."

Archie spoke hesitatingly, on the edge of full
confession.  He had a genuine desire to tell Betty the
truth.  The words formed on his lips.

"Yes, yes," said Betty absently.  "Mark has
helped me too, many a time; but he's in
Sutherland."  Her voice became cold as she recalled his
letter.  "I feel as if he were at the North Pole!
Well, Archie, I've enjoyed our talk immensely."

"And when may I come to talk to you again?"

"You are not going—now?"

The "now" brought a sparkle to his eyes.

"I must.  I'm one of the busiest men in Westchester."

"I shall run down to Windsor to hear your
sermon," she said.

"Our sermon, Betty."

"That's rubbish.  You must never pay me compliments,
Archie.  I couldn't stand them from you——"
she broke off, irrelevantly: "How did you attain to
your pinnacle?  I suppose you've been climbing ever
since we were children.  It's quite wonderful.  Don't
come Friday or Saturday.  Jim will be here.  Poor,
rich Jim!  What do you think of Jim?"

Archie remembered, in the nick of time, what Mark
had said about not abusing Jim.

"I think what you think," he said slowly.  "Poor,
rich Jim!"

After he had gone, Betty picked no more roses,
but sat down on the bench, feeling rather forlorn.
Archibald had taken something away with him.
What it was she could not define precisely.  For
instance—was it Jim's character?  He had said
nothing.  Nothing—except her own words: "Poor, rich
Jim."  Jim had been his friend, although the men
had now little in common.  Of course, he would not
speak unkindly of an old schoolfellow.  Yet as a
preacher of Christ's gospel, he must in his heart rank
Jim amongst Christ's enemies.  Jim was not with
Christ.  He did not believe in Christ.  The conclusion
was obvious: he must be counted as an enemy.
An enemy?  Poor Jim!

She was still thinking of Jim, when his mother
came towards her.  She seemed to ascend the grass
slope with difficulty; so Betty ran forward to offer an
arm, which was accepted.  As they moved slowly
on, Betty glanced at the quiet face so near her own.
Again, curiosity devoured her.  She observed a
faded look which she tried to interpret.  Did it spell
disappointment?  Were the last draughts of life
proving bitter?  Perhaps she felt that her work was
done, that her little world would wag on without her.
They sat down, and Mrs. Corrance produced her
needle, her silks, and a piece of embroidery from the
old-fashioned velvet bag, which she always carried
on her arm.  Betty, who never sewed, wondered if
the day would ever dawn when she would find solace
in such trivial occupations.  Then Mrs. Corrance
asked for news of Mark.  After that was told, silence
fell on both: the silence which precedes the breaking
of barriers.  Then Betty said softly: "Are you glad
that you have lived—or sorry?"

The frail hands, poised above the delicate embroidery,
sank upon it, and remained still, while faint
lines of interrogation puckered the placid forehead.
Betty continued: "I ought not to ask such questions.
I rush in like a fool.  But then I am a fool, although
I long to be wise.  There is so much a girl like me
wants to know, but if you tell me to hold my tongue
I shall not be surprised or offended."

"I'm glad that I have lived, Betty."

"That is because you have loved.  Your love for
Jim has filled your life, ever since I have known you.
If—if—oh, I am ashamed to put it so brutally—but
if you lost Jim, or if Jim had never been born—what
then?"

"My dear, you press me too hard.  I can hardly
conceive of life without Jim," she smiled.  "He
came when all was dark, and there has been light for
me—ever since."

"When all was dark——" repeated Betty.  She
knew that Jim's father had died when Jim was a small
boy.

"Yes.  My married life was not happy.  Perhaps
I expected too much, as is the way with women;
perhaps it was not meant that I should be happy."

"Not *meant*?"  Betty spoke with impatience.
"Surely the design, the intention, includes
happiness, only we mar it."

"All young people think that," said Mrs. Corrance,
"but as we grow older we see so little real happiness
that we must believe, if we believe in the mercy of
God, that, save for the few, happiness on earth is
not to be enjoyed but earned rather, so that it may be
enjoyed, without alloy, hereafter.  And I believe that
to everyone a glimpse of happiness is vouchsafed.
Were it not for that, how many would struggle on?"

Betty asked no more questions.  The youth in her
rebelled against this placid acceptance of suffering
and strife.  She told herself that she had enormous
capacity for enjoyment.  Politics, literature, history,
sport: all were fish to her net.  But religion, and in
particular that concrete presentation of it by the
Church of England, had, so far, left her cold.  She
seemed to have touched but its phylacteries, out of
which came no virtue.  She had met many clever
men who confessed themselves agnostic.  Her kind
friend, Lady Randolph, never spoke of religion,
either in its wide or narrow sense.  Certainly she
did her duty without aid or formulæ.  In fact, when
Betty came to think of it, some freethinkers of her
acquaintance lived more Christian lives than many
Churchpeople who took the Sacrament every Sunday.
This was puzzling.  On the other hand, the life she
had led since the Admiral's death, the life of Mayfair,
of big country houses, of race-meetings, of perpetual
pleasure-seekings, had begun to pall.  The
grandmothers—some of them—who gambled, and made
love, and over-ate themselves, revolted her.  That
they were at heart discontented and unhappy she
could not doubt.  Finally, she had just come to the
trite conclusion that, in or out of the fashionable
world, the people least to be pitied were those who
had some definite object in view.  Politics, for
instance, had probably saved Lord Randolph from the
hereditary curse of his family; fox-hunting made
Harry Kirtling ride straight and walk straight; Jim
Corrance admitted that money-grubbing kept him
out of mischief.  These pursuits, however, led to
negative results: being preventive of evil, not
productive of good, except indirectly.  Mark Samphire
not only avoided evil, but did good, as dozens were
eager to testify, including herself.  When with Mark
she had always been conscious of his power to bring
out the good in her.  And this afternoon, listening
to Archie, she had felt the same thrill, the same
irresistible yearning to ascend, to scale the heights.
None the less, she was whimsically aware, being a
creature of sense as well as sensibility, that Mark
cast a glamour.  She loved him, and, loving him,
loved what he loved, tried to see Heaven's wares with
his eyes, and succeeded, so long as the magician
remained at her side.  When he was at work in
Whitechapel and she was shopping in Bond Street,
Heaven, somehow, seemed distant.  At such times
she looked at a set of sables or a diamond ornament
with a pleasure which proved that the clay within her
was very far from being purged.

Upon the following Saturday, when Jim asked her
to become his wife, to share the fortune which would
be no fortune without her, she said No, as kindly as
words and looks could say it.  Her distress at the
pain she inflicted touched him profoundly.

"I shall remain your pal, Betty," Jim declared.
"The other thing was always a forlorn hope.  Is it
any use saying that I have known for years that I
wasn't first, and that I was sanguine enough to
believe that if the first failed, I might be second?
Isn't half a loaf better than no bread, dear?"

She let him take her hand, but she turned aside
eyes full of tears.

"We'll go on as before.  The mater needn't know—eh?
It has been a great thing for her having you here."

"And a great thing for me," said Betty unsteadily.
"I wish I could marry you, dear old Jim, but I
can't—I can't."

She broke down, sobbing bitterly.  Jim patted her
hand, wondering what he could say to comfort her,
but the words which came into his head seemed
inadequate.  If he had taken her face between his
strong hands, kissed away her tears, and sworn
passionately that he would love and cherish her so
long as she lived, she might have changed a mind
which was less strong than her body.  While she sat
weeping beside him, she was thinking not so much
that she had lost Mark, but that she had lost love.
The woman within her groaned, the flesh and blood
protested.  She saw herself as in a vision, treading
the dreary years alone, with no strong arm to protect
and defend, with no tiny hands to cling to and caress
her.  And at the end of the pilgrimage stood old
age, grim and grey, carrying a sprig of rue in
palsied shrivelled hands!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RECUPERATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   RECUPERATION

.. vspace:: 2

Mark went North with David Ross convinced
that his months, if not his days, were numbered;
but as time passed, this conviction passed
with it, and hope once more fluttered into his heart.
Stride took extraordinary interest in his case.

"You must become an animal and remain an
animal till I give you leave to assume again the
man," he told Mark after Archibald had left Crask.
"I don't know what you and your brother have
been up to, but you've had a relapse.  You must
go on all-fours till I tell you to walk upright."

Mark promised, but he added: "I feel an
animal—an ass!"

Stride growled out something about dead lions,
and set Mark to work in the garden, bare-legged
and bare-headed.  The work was light, but it
strained every muscle in Mark's body.  Then he
was made to lie down in one of the sheds.  After
such rest came refreshment—easily digested, nourishing
food, taken in small quantities, but often.  During
this month Mark reckoned that he was sleeping fourteen
hours out of the twenty-four.  At the end of each
week Stride weighed him and applied a number of
tests to determine what strength he had gained.
There was a sort of rivalry between the patients.
Dick who had gained two pounds crowed over Tom
who had gained one.  Into this competition Mark
entered with boyish keenness.  Stride said he was
the star pupil of the class.

By the beginning of October, a radical improvement
had taken place.  The cold weather set in
sharply, but Mark, always susceptible to atmospheric
change, braved the frosty nights with impunity,
sleeping in the sheds with the winds howling about
him.  He had the confidence in Stride that a
well-trained dog has in his master.  Some of Stride's
"animals"—as he called them—proved at first
unmanageable.  Coming, as most of them did, from
the strenuous life of crowded cities, accustomed to
and yearning for the stimulus of constant mental
action, such stagnation as Stride enforced seemed
insupportable.  These kittle cattle were yoked for
a season with Mark.

Meantime he had received many letters from his
friends, but none from Betty, who had returned to
Lady Randolph.  Jim wrote that he had been
rejected, but made no mention of Archibald, who was
often seen crossing the downs between Westchester
and Birr Wood.  As a matter of fact, Jim was not
aware of these rides.  He remained in London
making money.  From Pynsent Mark learned of
the enthusiasm aroused by Archibald's Windsor
sermon.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"Reading in the paper" (he wrote) "that your brother
was preaching in St. George's Chapel, I went down to
Windsor yesterday to hear him.  He is quite amazing.
What he said and the way he said it took us by storm.
The Whitsuntide sermon gave only a taste of his quality.
Out of the pulpit he has always struck me as being the
typical English parson of means and position; in it he
is—*apostolic*!  I can find no other adjective to describe his
persuasiveness, sincerity, and power.  Lord Randolph
tells me that it made a profound impression in the highest
quarter.  I saw Betty Kirtling and Lady Randolph in the
knights' stalls...."

.. vspace:: 2

Mark thrust the letter into his pocket with an
exclamation which made the man working next to
him raise his brows.

"Anything wrong, Samphire?  No bad news, I hope?"

Mark blurted out the truth.  His companion,
broken down by hard work in Manchester, had
sympathetic eyes and lips which dropped compassion
upon all infirmities save his own.

"I've had good news, Maitland: my brother has
preached a great sermon at Windsor, and—and
there is something wrong with me.  I have the
damnable wish that he'd failed—as I failed."  Then
he laughed harshly, bending down to pick up his
spade.

That afternoon he climbed the mountain, which
sloped steeply to the loch.  The air, he felt, on the
top of Ben Caryll would purge and purify; the
panoramic view would enlarge the circle of his
sympathies.  And so it proved, although a materialist
might assign another cause.  When Mark reached
the highest peak he became aware that he had
accomplished a feat of physical endurance beyond such
powers as he possessed two months before.  He was
not aware of undue fatigue; on the contrary, a
strange exhilaration permeated mind and body.  He
could have danced, but he sat down, soberly enough,
and reread Pynsent's letter.  When he had done
this, he tried to transport himself to Windsor.  He
wanted to sit with Betty in the knights' stalls,
beneath the gorgeous silken banners, and the
emblazoned shields of the princes of the world, under
the eye and ægis of a living sovereign.  But fancy
left him—in Sutherland.  He gazed upon moor and
mountain whitened here and there by snow.  He
looked into the pale, luminous skies above, into the
frosty opalescent mists to the westward, through
which the sun glowed like a red-hot ball, and
wherever he looked Betty was not.  For the moment
he could not recall her face.  It seemed as if he were
seeking a stranger with a written description of her
in his hand.

Sitting there, some voice whispered to him that
Betty wanted him, that he must descend the
mountain and go to her.  Then he told himself that he
was mad.  If he obeyed this beguiling voice in his
ears, if he went south—what then?  The hope in his
eye and heart would kindle like hope in her, and
such hope was a will-o'-the-wisp flickering above—a
grave!

When he came down from the mountain, he found
Stride busy in his laboratory.  Stride possessed a
magnificent Zeiss microscope and all the
accessories—incubating ovens, sterilising apparatus, stains, and
reagents—for the highest bacteriological work.  Of
late, Mark had given the little man some help in
staining and mounting preparations.

"We are out of one world," Stride had said,
"but I will introduce you to another through an
apochromatic lens.  You will find yourself quite at
home, my friend.  Here, in this drop of water, you
will note the same struggle for existence, the same
old game as it is played in Whitechapel or Whitehall."

When Mark began to understand something of
the technique of the microscope, when Stride had
shown him its uses, for instance, in the analysis of
diseased tissue or blood, and revealed its magical
powers of diagnosis, Mark asked a question: "How
can any doctor work without one?"  Stride laughed
at such innocence.

"It takes up too much time.  No hard-working
practitioner ignores the value of it, but he cannot
use it.  When necessary, he sends preparations to
some specialist.  A microscope exacts more
attention than a wife.  That is why I"—he slapped
his chest and winked furiously—"have remained
single."

This devotion to his work strengthened the chain
which linked patient to doctor.  Stride—Mark felt
assured—might have secured fame and fortune in
London.  Yet he chose to remain unknown and
poor in Sutherland.

Mark told him that he had climbed Ben Caryll,
and felt none the worse for it.  Stride shook his big
head.

"You oughtn't to attempt such walks—yet."

"Then the time is coming.  I shall regain my
health?"

He had never put the question so directly before.
Stride eyed him attentively, hearing a new note in
his voice.

"Per—haps."

"If I asked for leave of absence——"

"It would be refused—peremptorily," said Stride.
"Why, man, you'd douse the glim which I've been
coaxing into flame all these weeks.  What magnet
draws you from Crask?  A woman?"

"Yes—a woman."

"Oh, these tempestuous petticoats!  Now, Samphire,
I'm not a fool, and I guessed, when you came
here, that you left a girl behind you.  You are not
engaged to her?"

"No."

"Good!  Now, listen to wisdom.  If everything
goes well with you—if fresh air and simple food and
freedom from worry make you whole, you may marry
some day—but you'll have to wait a long time, so as
to make sure, and even then, after years of
comparative health, you may break down again.  Will this
young lady wait for you—indefinitely?"

"I should never ask her to do that."

"Um!  I daresay she's flirting with someone at
this very minute.  Eh?  I beg pardon, Samphire.
Your goddess, no doubt, is an exception; but few
women, if they are women, can get along without a
man.  And now you must leave me.  I'm on the
edge of a small discovery.  I've done some good
work to-day."

"Your good work will tell, Stride."

"What d'ye mean?  Recognition?  If it comes,
so much the better; if it doesn't, I've had 'the joy
of the working'—eh?"

Next day, a letter from Archibald gave many
details.  He had enjoyed the honour of meeting his
Sovereign, who said gracious things; he had dined
with a Cabinet Minister; he had been interviewed
at length by a reporter.  The letter concluded as
follows:—

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"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...."

.. vspace:: 2

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.

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"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."

.. vspace:: 2

"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 the *Slowshire
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 the *magnum opus* done?" 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.

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"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...."

.. vspace:: 2

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.





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.. _`ON BEN CARYLL`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON BEN CARYLL

.. vspace:: 2

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.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



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.





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.. _`HYMENEAL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   HYMENEAL

.. vspace:: 2

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.

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.. class:: smaller

"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."

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"Dear old Jim" (Betty wrote): "please come up after
breakfast and take me for a walk.

.. class:: smaller

"Your affectionate Betty."

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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 be
*très bien installés*.  I am to find them a cook—fifty-five
pounds a year—do you know of one?  She must
be a *cordon bleu*.  Yes, a kitchen *and* a 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 in *Vanity 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A RED TIE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   A RED TIE

.. vspace:: 2

Archibald had ordered a coupé to be ready for
him at Westchester, but when the Bournemouth
express dashed up, the stationmaster was obliged to
confess that a blunder had taken place; no coupé was
on the train.  A first-class carriage was found, in
which two seats were already occupied.

"Somebody ought to be censured for this," said
the bridegroom, as the train slid out of the station.
"It's inexcusable carelessness.  I shall write to the
directors about it."

"Pray don't," said Betty.  "The matter's not
worth a penny stamp."

"We shall find a coupé at Victoria," he whispered,
bending forward.  They were *en route* for France,
having agreed to spend their honeymoon in Touraine.
Betty glanced at the elderly couple, whose curiosity
had been quickened.  Archibald drew back with a
slight frown.  "I shall write from Dover," he said.
"I regard it as a duty."

Betty pouted, surprised that he should treat her
injunction so cavalierly.  Men, she reflected, were
men, and must be humoured.  After all, her
husband's annoyance was a compliment to her.  She
blushed as she lay back against the cushions,
shutting her eyes.  Her *husband*!  She repeated the
word very softly, the colour ebbing and flowing in
her cheeks, as she gave herself up to the thought
of him.  Archibald said nothing; that was tactful.
He had plenty of tact—a great gift—and most
agreeable manners.  Suddenly she realised that she was
making an inventory of his good qualities, repeating
them to herself like a parrot.  She sat up, opening
her eyes, opening them indeed wider than usual
when she saw what had happened.  Archibald had
risen early; he had spent a busy and exciting
morning; he had made an excellent breakfast, although,
being a total abstainer, he had refused the Pomméry
and Waterloo brandy.  Now, not being able to talk
to his bride in the presence of strangers, seeing that
she wanted to rest and reflect, he had settled
himself comfortably into his corner and—had fallen
asleep!

Betty eyed him furtively.  She did not like to
wake him, but his appearance distressed her.  She
bent forward and touched his arm.

"Dear me," he said.  "I saw you close your
eyes, Betty, and I closed mine.  You did right to
wake me."

"I couldn't help it," she replied.  "Your hat had
fallen over your left eye.  It made you
look—ridiculous."

They spoke in whispers, leaning forward, so that
their heads almost touched.  But at the word
"ridiculous" the bridegroom winced.

Betty had pierced a sensitive skin.  Seeing this,
she tried to turn the incident into a joke, laughing
lightly, sorry that she should have hurt him, yet
still seeing the hat tilted over the left eye.

At Victoria the coupé was awaiting them.  The
train, however, had only just backed into the station
and would not leave for a quarter of an hour.
Archibald and Betty arranged their belongings, and
proceeded to walk up and down the platform.  A
great station was a never-failing source of interest
to Betty.  The infinite variety of faces, the bustle,
the pervading air of change and motion, even the
raucous, ear-splitting sounds, stimulated her
imagination.  Nothing amused her more than to invent
stories concerning fellow-travellers.  She brought to
this an ingenuity and an insight which had often
delighted Lady Randolph.  Now, as usual, her eye
drifted here and there in search of some attractive
lay figure.  As a rule she selected someone out of
the ordinary groove.  The flare of an eye, the twist
of a moustache, a peculiarity in figure or gait
instantly aroused her interest.  Passing the bookstall,
she saw a man in an Inverness cape made out of
Harris tweed.  Because he had the appearance of
coming straight from Scotland, she examined him
more closely.  At the moment he turned, and their
eyes met.  The stranger was very brown of
complexion and wore a beard, but the eyes, blue eyes
with sparkling pin-points of frosty light, were Mark's
eyes.

"That's Mark!" said Betty excitedly, clutching
her husband's arm.  "Look—look!"

Archibald looked and laughed.

"You have an amazing imagination, my dearest
Mark?  That man in homespun, and a red tie!
He's twice Mark's size, and he wears a beard.  I
noticed him just now.  Mark?  Why Mark's in
Sutherland."

"I was mistaken," said Betty absently.  She
walked on quite sure that the man's eyes were
following her.  She was sure of it, although her
back was turned to him.  A minute before Archibald
had asked her if she would like a tea-basket.  The
refreshment-room was just opposite.  An impulse
seized her.

"I think I should like a tea-basket," she said,
pausing.  "Will you get one?  I'll go back to the
carriage."

Archibald obeyed, unsuspecting.  Betty turned
and ran to the bookstall.  The man was no longer
there.  She looked right and left.  That was
he—disappearing, melting into the crowd outside.
Without a moment's hesitation she hastened after him,
came up behind, plucked at his cape.  He turned at
once.  It was Mark.

"You?" she gasped.  "*You*—here?"

Her eyes, wide open, glaring interrogation, fell
before his.  He took her hand, grasping it firmly.

"I can explain.  I heard of your plans from
Mrs. Samphire.  I knew that you were leaving by this
train.  I came on the off chance of getting a glimpse
of you."

"You are well, *strong*!"

She raised her eyes, devouring him.  He could
see that people in the crowd were nudging each
other, grinning and pointing.  He drew her aside.

"Yes; I am strong."  As he said it, he realised
that he would need all his strength.  What a mad
fool he had been to come, to risk so much.  "Look
here," he said harshly, "you must go back to
Archie.  Tell him—tell him that I couldn't come
to his wedding, because, b-b-because I've left the
Church.  I wasn't going to set every tongue
wagging in Slowshire.  Do you see?  Do you
understand?  Now—go—run!"

He almost pushed her from him.  Her eyes never
left his face.

"Can't you see me to my carriage?"

This, the obvious thing, had not occurred to him.
He walked beside her.  As they passed into the
station, Archibald appeared on the platform, followed
by a boy carrying a tea-basket.

"It *is* Mark," said Betty, as her husband joined
them.  They walked towards the carriage, the most
amazing trio in that vast station.  Mark repeated
his reasons for not taking part in the wedding.
Archibald looked confused.

"You have left our Church?"

He repeated it three times.

"Yes; yes—we can't go into reasons here and now."

"What are you going to do?"

"I am writing."

The guard began to slam the doors.  He came up
to the brothers, smiling, seeing the bride, feeling in
his broad palm the tip of the bridegroom.

"Better get in, sir," he said to Mark, who, in his
Inverness cape and rough cap, looked the traveller.

Archibald pushed Betty into the coupé and shook
hands with Mark.

"You must tell us everything when we get back.
It has been a great shock," he stared at the red tie;
"but I'm delighted to see you looking so well."

He sprang into the coupé as the train began to
move.  Betty pushed him aside and leaned out of
the window.  Mark never forgot the expression on
her face framed by the small, square window.  The
engine was screeching lamentably, like a monster
in agony.  Another train was entering the station,
adding its strident note to the chorus, filling the
atmosphere with clouds of white steam.  A third-class
carriage full of soldiers glided by.  The soldiers,
mostly boyish recruits, were singing at the top of
their voices, "Good-bye, my lover, good-bye."  A
girl standing near burst into hysterical sobbing.
Mark noted these details, as a man notes some
irrelevant trifle in a dream, which remains part of
that dream for ever after.  But his eyes were on
Betty's face.  She had been borne away by a force
slow but irresistible, the relentless Machine, the
symbol of progress, of Fate, if you will, which
tears asunder things and men, and brings some
together again, but not all, nor any just as they
were before.  The face was white and piteous, the
face of an Andromeda.  Upon it, in unmistakable
lines, were inscribed regret and reproach.  Mark
turned sick.  He had wished to save this woman;
had he sacrificed her?

Betty heard her husband say, "This has been very
upsetting."  Immediately she laughed, withdrawing
her face from the window.  Nothing else, probably,
would have erased the tell-tale lines.  She thought
that her laugh was a revelation of what was
passing in her mind; but Archibald took other notice
of it.

"You laugh?" he said heavily.  "I know what
has happened.  I am not much surprised.  Mark has
gone over to Rome.  Really, my dear little woman,
you must not laugh like that.  I give you my word
that I am terribly distressed.  That red tie!"

"The scarlet woman."

"Pray don't joke!  This is most upsetting."

She laughed again, knowing that she was on the
verge of hysterics, trying to control herself.  The
train, rushing on out of the mists of London into the
splendid May sunshine of the country, rocked
violently as it crossed the points.  Betty fell back upon
the cushions, still laughing and repeating
Archibald's words.

"Upsetting?  I should think so."

Like Mark, she was reflecting that Force was
bearing her away, whirling her asunder, leaving heart
and soul here, flinging her body there.  The irony
of it was stunning in its violence.  She covered her
face with her hands, pressing her finger-tips upon
her temples, but she did not close her eyes, which
followed Archibald's slow, methodical movements.
He was arranging the baggage—her handsome
travelling-bag, a wedding present from the Squire, his
own massive suit-case, the parasols and umbrellas,
the tea-basket.  In the contracted space wherein he
moved he loomed colossal.  She felt herself
shrinking, collapsing.  In a minute, a moment, he would
turn, he would take her cold hands in his, removing
them gently but masterfully from the face quivering
beneath.  Then he would surely read and know.  He
had nearly finished his fiddle-faddling arrangements.
He took his hat from his head, looked at it, brushed
a few specks of dust from the crown and rim, and
placed it carefully in the rack.  Out of the pocket of
an overcoat he drew a soft travelling cap, putting it
on deliberately, making himself comfortable.  At
last he was coming towards her, the tea-basket in his
hand, a smile upon his face, an endearing phrase
upon his lips.  Betty closed her eyes.  The words
of the marriage service sounded loud in her ears,
rhythmic, like the roar of waves breaking on an
iron-bound coast: the echo of her oath before the altar
thundering down the empty corridors of the future—"*From
this day forward ... to love, cherish, and to
obey till Death us do part!*"

Archibald dropped the tea-basket with a crash.
His bride had fainted.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MARK HEARS A BLEATING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   MARK HEARS A BLEATING

.. vspace:: 2

Two days later Mark Samphire called upon Jim
Corrance at his chambers in Bolton Street,
Piccadilly.  Here Jim lived when he was not making
money or playing golf at Woking.  He played golf
regularly to keep himself fit.  He also played whist
and billiards.  Whatever he did, work or play, was
characterised by a dexterity and fertility of resource
which generally ensured success.

Jim's chambers were furnished comfortably but
conventionally.  As a matter of fact, he had told a
famous firm of decorators to do the best they could
for a certain sum of money.  Jim added a few
pictures and engravings, some books, and an
impeccable manservant, Tom Wrenn.  He did not look
at the pictures or read the books, but he studied
Wrenn, an interesting document, and mastered
him.  Wrenn, for his part, had nothing but praise
for a gentleman who bought the best of wine
and tobacco and entrusted them unreservedly to
his man.

When Wrenn ushered Mark into the sitting-room,
he exhibited no surprise, but his master stared at his
old friend as if he (Mark) had risen from the dead.
Mark, bearded, brown, sinewy, larger about the
chest and shoulders, confounded Jim—and he said
so in his usual abrupt, jerky fashion.  Then he noted
the rough tweeds and the red tie.  Wrenn lingered
for a moment.

"Wrenn," said Jim, "bring some whisky and
mineral waters, and the Rothschild Excepcionales!"
Wrenn vanished silently.  Jim seized Mark by the coat.

"Why, this howls for explanation.  You've
chucked your black livery—*you*?"

The emphasis laid on the pronoun expressed
surprise, incredulity, and amusement.

"Yes.  I've come here to tell you all about it."

Wrenn appeared with a tray and a long, shallow
box of cigars.  Mark, however, preferred to light his
pipe.  As soon as Wrenn had left the room, he
plunged into his story.

"There was just the possibility, you understand,
of recovery.  Archibald came up.  He wanted me to
go home, and he brought a message from Betty—her
love.  She was stopping with your mother.
That message either meant everything or nothing.
I knew that it meant—everything.  Now, while
Archibald was with me I did a bit of work, brain work, the
first since the smash.  It knocked me out—knocked
all my hopes to smithereens.  Would you under
such conditions have sent back your love to Betty?"

"No," said Jim; "but—well, never mind; go on——"

"After Archibald had left Crask I took a big turn
for the better.  I suppose that glorious air and the
simple food and Stride's knowledge of my case
worked the miracle.  And then I began to hope
again; and I began to work."  He told Jim about
the first short story and the novel, but he did not
mention the Advent sermons of his brother.  "Time
slipped by, Jim.  I was awfully keen about my work."

"I'll bet you were," said Jim.

"You always chaffed me, because I said that in
my philosophy things turned out for the best.  I
told myself that every incident in my life, every
trial and infirmity, had meaning.  Can a man write
what is really vital unless he has striven and
suffered and seen others striving and suffering?
I say—no.  God knows I longed to be a man of
action.  That was denied me.  The desire to paint,
to express what was in me on canvas, proved
fruitless.  Then the Church opened her doors—I saw a
goal, but my stammer choked me at the start.  All
the same, the work in Stepney warmed me to the
core.  I was up to my neck in it."

"And Betty?"

"Ah—Betty.  She was out of sight, Jim, but
never out of mind.  A thousand times I told myself
she was unattainable; that a man was a sickly
anæmic ass who allowed a woman to interfere with
what he had to do."

"Right," said Jim.  "That's gospel."

"All the same, she was back of everything.  Then
came last Whitsuntide——"

He paused.  Jim continued: "I know about that.
I suppose you learned, then, of this cursed mischief
inside you?"

"I suspected something; I went to Barger and
Drax.  They told me marriage was madness."

"Great Scott!"

He was more agitated than Mark, thrusting out
his chin, shaking his shoulders, clenching his fists:
gestures familiar to Mark since the Harrow days
and before.  It struck Mark suddenly that this scene
was recurrent, the ebb and flow of the heart's tide
breaking on rocks.  Could anything be more futile
than talk: the interminable recital of what was and
what might have been?  His voice, as he continued,
lost its tonic quality:

"There is not much more to tell.  Just as I began
to hope that my life might still hold Betty, the news
came of her engagement——"

Jim looked at the red tie.

"And then you saw red," he spluttered, "you saw red."

"When that letter came, I could—have—killed—my—brother."

The two men had risen and were staring at each
other with flaming eyes.

"I could have killed him," Mark repeated
sombrely.  "You know, Jim, what Archie was to me at
Harrow—and long afterwards?"

"The greatest thing on earth," said Jim.  "I used
to be awfully jealous."

"I loved him for his beauty," said Mark drearily,
"for his strength and for his weakness.  I loved
him the more because in some small ways I could
help him.  I grudged him nothing—I swear it!—nothing,
*nothing*, except Betty.  I could have let her
go to you or Harry Kirtling; but to him who had
all I had not, my b-b-brother——"

His stammer seized him, and he trembled violently.

"We'll drop it," exclaimed Jim.  He had turned
away from Mark's eyes, reading in them the hate
which was not yet controlled.  "You don't
feel—er—that way towards *her*?"

"Never, never!"  His eyes softened at once;
then he broke out abruptly: "What made her take
him?"  It was out at last.  He expected no answer
from his friend, but Jim said simply: "Surely you
know?"

"It's darkest mystery."

"Why, man, she told me that he dragged her out
of the depths."  Jim repeated what Betty had said.
"You know what women are.  A petticoat flutters
naturally towards a parson whenever the wind blows.
That did me.  *I* couldn't promise to personally
conduct her to—Heaven.  Yes, his sermons, particularly
that Windsor sermon, captured her."

"The Windsor sermon!  You say the Windsor
s-s-sermon?" Mark stuttered out.

"Yes, the Windsor sermon.  I'm told it was
wonderful.  He's a bit of a prig, but he can preach,
and no mistake!  Why, look here!  Have you seen
this?  Out this morning!"

He took up the current *Vanity Fair* and displayed
a caricature of Archibald Samphire—the Chrysostom
of Sloane Street.  It was one of Pellegrini's best
bits of work, but the "fine animal" in Archibald
had been slightly overdrawn, unintentionally, no
doubt, on the artist's part.  The florid complexion,
the massive jaw, the curls, the lips, were subtly
exaggerated.  None would be surprised to learn that
Chrysostom lived in Cadogan Place with a *cordon
bleu* at fifty-five pounds a year.  Mark gazed at the
cartoon and then laid it, face downwards, on the table.

"The thing's wonderful," he said slowly, "but it
will hurt Betty."

Jim Corrance shrugged his shoulders.  He had
come to the conclusion that a touch of the animal in
men was not a disability where women were concerned.

"I saw them at Victoria," said Mark.

"What?"

Mark explained, blaming himself.

"You've given yourself away," said Jim
disgustedly.  "She had got it into her head that you
didn't care, but the man who doesn't care would
hardly travel from Sutherland to London to catch
one glimpse of another fellow's bride.  Lord!  You
have made a mess of it.  And what are you going to
do now?  Have a drink, and tell me your plans."

"I'm going to write."

"Have you rewritten the novel you burnt?"

"No; but I'm half-way through another."

"You may as well camp with me.  Why not?"

Mark had several reasons "why not," but he gave
one which was sufficient: "I mean to eat and sleep
and work out-of-doors."

The two men talked together for an hour and then
parted.

"By the way," said Jim, as Mark was taking
leave, "the Squire is looking rather seedy.  I fancy
he's something on his mind.  Are you going down
to King's Charteris?"

Mark shook his head impatiently, hearing a terrible
bleating; but as he passed through the Green Park,
on the way to his lodgings, he reflected that he
would have to go to Pitt Hall sooner or later.  Why
not sooner?  He would run down the next day.
Then, he repeated to himself what Jim Corrance
had said about Archibald's sermons, and their effect
on Betty.  Looking back now, with an odd sense
of detachment, he realised how much of these
sermons had been his, how little Archibald's.  For
this he blamed himself.  His brother had asked
for an inch.  He had given gladly an ell.  But
if—the possibility insisted on obtruding itself (an
unwelcome guest)—if Betty discovered the truth, what
would happen?

When he reached his lodging he wrote a letter to
the Squire, saying that he was running down on the
morrow and preparing him for a change of cloth.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"I no longer count myself of the Church of England"
(he wrote), "but you will be doing the wise thing and the
kind thing if you ask no questions."

.. vspace:: 2

This bolt from the blue fell on to the breakfast-table.
Mrs. Samphire, like Archibald, jumped to
the conclusion that Mark had gone over to Rome.

"I knew how it would be," she said acidly, "from
the very beginning.  I dare say he will arrive with
his head shaved and wearing a cowl.  And you were
saying only yesterday that he could have the King's
Charteris living, now that Archie is provided for."

"The boy is a good lad," said the Squire heavily.
"I shall talk to him.  He must take the King's
Charteris living, he *must*.  I shall make a point of
it.  He can keep a curate to preach.  It's the obvious
way out of the wood."

"Then he won't take it."

She burst into detraction of the boy who was like
the woman the Squire had loved.  The Squire
listened moodily, eating his substantial breakfast of
kidneys and poached eggs and a slice from the ham
of his own curing.

"He is not a Samphire at all," concluded the lady,
as she rose from the table, leaving the Squire still
eating, very red in the face where the colour was not
purple, and showing a massive jowl above his neatly
folded white scarf.  Left alone, he cut himself
another slice from the huge ham, and then reread
Mark's letter, staring at it with congested eyes, and
muttering: "Yes, yes—it's the obvious way out of
the wood, the obvious way out of the wood.  He can
keep a curate who can preach.  Four hundred a
year, even in these times, and a capital house, a
really capital house, in first-rate repair.  I shall talk
to him.  The Madam doesn't like him—never did!
But he'll listen to his old pater.  It's the obvious
way out of the wood."

Mark arrived in time for tea.  Mrs. Samphire
received him in the long, narrow drawing-room;
and Mark was conscious that his red tie was to her
as a red rag to a bull.  When she spoke, sniffs were
audible; and Mark kept on telling himself that he
had been a fool to come.  The Squire seemed very
robust.  What did Jim mean?  The congested eyes,
the purple tinge, conveyed no meaning to a man who
had never learned the meaning of health's
danger-signals.

After dinner father and son found themselves
alone.  The Squire had ordered a bottle of '47 port
to be decanted, almost the last that was left in the
bin.  He had to drink most of it, and while he did
so complained of the changes since *his* day.

"Archie is teetotal," he said.  "Well he's
playing his own game his own way, and scoring too, no
doubt o' that.  I dare say you forget that now he's
provided so well for himself, you can step into the
King's Charteris living, which in the nature of
things must soon be vacant.  Nearly four hundred
a year—and a capital house, in first-rate repair.  You
can hire a curate who can preach."

The words came out very fluently, for the Squire
had repeated them to himself a dozen times since
breakfast.  As Mark made no reply, he repeated
them again, adding, however, somewhat confusedly:
"It's the obvious way out of the wood."

"Eh?" said Mark.  "What do you mean, pater?"

The Squire coughed nervously.  He was not
clever at making explanations.

"Oh," he replied testily, "I take it we needn't
go into that.  Times are hard.  The allowance I
have made you and Archie has crippled me.  Archie
gave up his when he came into Aunt Deb's
money—and in the nick of time, egad!"

"I can get along with a hundred a year," said
Mark quietly.

"Rubbish, my dear lad, rubbish!  But the
living's a good 'un, and the house in capital repair.
You would be very comfortable; and," he eyed
Mark pleasantly, "and you'll be following Archie's
example—hey?  Marry a girl with a bit o' money!
There's Kitty Bowker, and——"

"Pater—we won't talk of that."

"We?  I'm talking of it.  I don't ask you to say
a word, not a word.  Oh, I know why you didn't
come to Archie's wedding, but bless you, Betty's not
the only nice girl in the world.  I'll say no more.
I'm glad to see you looking so fit.  That slumming
in the East End disgusted you—drove you into that
tweed suit—hey?  But it'll be quite different at
King's Charteris.  You can manage a day's hunting
a week and a day's shooting throughout the season.
Kitty Bowker looks very well outside a horse—and
she likes a man who goes free at his fences as you
used to do.  Your letter this morning, you know,
startled us a bit.  The Madam thought of Rome.
Nothing in that—hey?"

The Squire looked hard at the decanter which
indeed was quite empty.

"Absolutely nothing," said Mark absently.

"I told the Madam I'd say a word, and there it is:
a capital house, in excellent repair, with——"

"The present incumbent still alive," said Mark.

"True, true—we'll say no more, not a word.
Shall we go into the drawing-room?"

He rose with a certain effort and moved too
ponderously towards the door.  For the first time
Mark realised that his father must soon become an
old man.  A wave of affection surged through him.

"Pater," he said, touching the Squire's massive
shoulder, "how are you feeling?  Any twinges of
gout or—er—anything of that sort?"

"I'm sound as a bell, Mark.  Of course I have
my worries.  There are three farms on my hands,
and the price of corn lower than it has been for years.
I don't know what George will do after I'm gone.
That is why I—um—spoke of the obvious way out
of the wood.  Put on a black tie to-morrow morning,
my dear lad, and—er—a grey suit, to—to oblige me."

"All right," said Mark.  "I'm going to write,
you know."

"Write?" the Squire turned, as he was passing
into the hall.  "Write—what?"

"Novels, short stories, plays perhaps."

"Oh, d——n it!" said the Squire ruefully.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`READJUSTMENT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   READJUSTMENT

.. vspace:: 2

After Mark's return from Pitt Hall, he called on
Barger and Drax, who overhauled him and
pronounced him a new man.  Drax, in particular,
took extraordinary interest in the case, refused a fee,
and begged Mark to come and see him at least once
a quarter.

"I never thought I should speak to you again,"
he said frankly.  "It's the *vis medicatrix naturæ*.
You went back to the simple primal life.  Well—stick
to it!  A winter in Sutherland!  Phew-w-w!
Kill or cure, and no mistake.  I should like to meet
your friend, Doctor Stride."

The question now presented itself: where should
he pitch his tent?  Such work as he had in mind
must be finished in or near London.  His
half-completed novel, *Shall the Strong Retain the Spoil?*
dealt with Londoners; the scene of it was laid in
London.  Finally, after some search, he found a
camping-ground in a small pine wood crowning a
great ridge which overlooked the Thames Valley
and the Surrey heaths.

He discovered this spot, which suited him exactly,
by accident.  Just outside Weybridge he punctured
the tyre of his bicycle.  While repairing it, he
smelled the balsamic fragrance of some pines to his
right, and Longfellow's lines came into his mind:—

   |  "Stood the groves of singling pine trees,
   |  Green in summer, white in winter,
   |  Ever sighing, ever singing."
   |

The west wind was blowing, and from the pine-tops
floated a lullaby, soothing and seductive.  Mark
sat down, listening to this alluring song, absorbing
the scents and sounds.  Presently he climbed a rough
fence and wandered down one of the many aisles.
The carpet beneath his feet was soft as velvet pile,
a carpet woven by the years out of the myriad leaves
dropping unseen and unheard.  Passing through the
wood, he saw the Thames Valley.  A silvery mist
was rising out of it.  On each side of the river were
green meadows, bordered by poplars and willows.
The tower of a church could be seen amongst a
group of fine elms.  This was such a spot as he had
hoped to find.  Regaining the high-road, he pushed
his bicycle to the top of the hill and stopped opposite
a pretty cottage standing in a garden gay with
old-fashioned flowers.  Above the gate was a sign:
*Board and Lodging*.  Mark stared for a moment at
the sign, smiling, because he had expected to find it
there.  If the tiny wood belonged to the owner of
the cottage, the matter was clinched.

He left his bicycle against the palings and walked
through the garden and up to the door.  He had time
to note that the cottage was built of brick.  Some of
the bricks had a vitreous surface, which caught the
light and suffused a radiance over the other bricks.
The general effect was ripe, mellow, rosy.  The sills
and casings of the lattice windows were painted
white; the door was a bright apple-green, with a
shining brass handle, bell, and knocker.  The
cottage was heavily thatched.

In answer to Mark's ring and knock the door was
opened by a girl, whom Mark guessed to be a
daughter of the house, not a servant in any sense,
save the one that she served.  Mark lifted his cap.

"Is that wood yours?" he asked.

The girl seemed amused, but she said: "Oh, yes;
everything inside the paling belongs to mother."

"And you have rooms to let?"

The girl asked him to come in and see them, but
she added doubtfully: "I don't think they'll suit
you."

"I haven't seen them yet," said Mark, "but I'm
sure they will."

The rooms included a small sitting-room and
bedroom.  Mark looked at them with an indifference
which brought disappointment to the face of the
girl.

"Can I speak to your mother?"

"She's an invalid—and in bed, to-day.  If you
want to talk business you must talk with me."

Mark explained that he was anxious to build a
shelter in the garden, at the edge of the wood.  He
added that unless the weather was unusually severe
he should sleep, and eat, and work there.  The
rooms would do for a friend, who might come to see
him from Saturday to Monday.  He should want
the simplest food, and so forth.  The girl said that
the carrying of meals to the shelter would be a
nuisance, especially in rainy weather.  Mark
compromised by offering to eat indoors if the weather
became wet or boisterous.  A bargain was made in
three minutes.

"When will you come?" said the girl.

"To-morrow.  My name is Mark Samphire."

"Mother's name is Dew.  I am Mary Dew."

"Mary Dew," repeated Mark.  He had a tobacco-pouch
in his hand and was filling a pipe.  A pun
occurred to him, execrable and therefore irresistible.
"Honeydew is my constant companion," said he;
"it is quite certain that we shall be friends."

Mary laughed.

"I hope so," she said frankly.  "It's dreadful
waiting on people one doesn't like.  Last summer
we had a gentleman who——"

"Yes," said Mark, lighting his pipe.

"Who wasn't a gentleman—and I hated him."

She looked serious.  Her face was charming,
because the texture of skin and the colouring were
so admirable.  For the rest she was about middle
height, of trim figure, neither thin nor plump: her
eyes were of a clear, intelligent grey, shaded by short
black lashes which gave them distinction and
vivacity.  Long lashes may be a beauty in themselves,
but they conceal rather than reveal the eyes behind
them.  Mary had brown hair, and plenty of it,
simply arranged; her mouth was wide and amply
provided with white, even teeth; her nose was
certainly tip-tilted.  Altogether a young woman at
whom most men would look with pleasure.

As she stood in the garden, the May sun falling
full upon her, every line of face and figure suggested
Spring: Spring in Arcady, fresh, joyous, radiant.
Mark was artist enough to perceive the delicious
half-tones, the tender shades beneath the round chin
and about the finely modelled cheeks.  If Pynsent
saw her, he would be mad to paint her, there, in the
crisp sunlight, amongst the honeysuckle, with the
pines "ever sighing, ever singing" behind her.

Suddenly, a thin, querulous note seemed to pierce
the silence of the garden.

"Mary—Mary!"

"Mother wants me.  Good-bye, Mr. Samphire."

Mark held out his hand.

"Good-bye—till to-morrow."

He turned and moved down the path.  Again that
thin, querulous note pierced the silence.  *Mary,
Mary!* an appeal from age to youth, ay, and a
protest, a far-reaching protest, of pain against
pleasure.  Mark pictured the invalid mother, bedridden,
possibly, dependent upon the ministrations of others,
calling out of the dismal seclusion of her chamber
to the young, healthy creature in the garden.  He
mounted his bicycle, wondering whether Mary had
grown accustomed to that heart-piercing note,
speculating vaguely in regard to its meaning for her and
for others.

.. vspace:: 2

Within a week the shelter was built.  Stout posts
upheld a roof of tongue-and-groove boards spread
with a rough thatch; the floor was boarded also and
covered with sailcloth, which could be washed and
scrubbed like the deck of a ship.  Two walls were
also boarded.  These were lined with shelves, which
contained a miscellaneous collection of some four
hundred books.  The south and west sides of the
shelter were open to the wind and sun, but could be
closed, if necessary, by sailcloth curtains.  A large
table stood in the centre; a bed, serving as a sofa
in daytime, occupied one corner; in another were
an exerciser, a punching-ball, and some light clubs
and dumbbells; chairs, a typewriter, a small stove,
and a huge chest completed the furnishings.

When it was finished Pynsent and Jim Corrance
were invited to inspect and criticise.  Pynsent
brought with him a couple of *mezari*, those quaint,
decorative shawls worn by the women of Genoa, and
draped them cleverly; Corrance brought an Indian
rug.  Both men were charmed with the cottage,
the garden, the grove, and the view.  Pynsent, as
Mark had foreseen, wanted to paint Mary Dew, but
every hour of the weeks between June and August
was engaged.  "You're a tremendous worker," said Jim.

"So are you, Corrance.  A man must work nowadays,
if he means to keep his place in the procession.
The competition is frightful all along the line.  I
shall paint Mary Dew in the autumn.  What do you
call her, Mark?"

"Honey.  Honey Dew.  Do you see?  A poor
pun, but my own.  She's sweet as honey and fresh
as dew, but her mother is a terrible person."

He described an interview with Mrs. Dew.

"Mary told me that her mother wished to see me.
I found her in her own sitting-room, the prettiest
and most comfortable room in the cottage.  Everything
deliciously fresh—chintzes, flowers, paper on
the wall, matting—and in the middle Mrs. Dew:
faded, peevish, puckered, old beyond her years.
Picture to yourselves a puffy, yellow face with
dim, shifty eyes peering out restlessly between red,
swollen lids, a face framed by mouse-coloured hair
and surmounting a great, shapeless body clad in
black alpaca."

"Good!  I see her," said Pynsent.

"I was prepared to sympathise.  She has some
ailment, poor creature, a chronic dyspepsia and a
grievance as chronic against destiny.  One could
pity her if she said and ate less.  Her daughter
admits that she would be a different woman if she
kept on the muzzle.  She calls herself a lady, and
told me that she married beneath her.  Dew, I fancy,
was a petty tradesman.  He left his widow this small
property and a tiny income.  Mary has a tremendous
struggle to make ends meet means.  She's one in
ten thousand."

"Um!" said Pynsent.  "Don't fall in love with
your Honey Dew!"

"Don't talk rot, Pynsent!" Mark replied sharply.
Jim Corrance frowned at the painter, who realised
at once that he had said something *mal-à-propos*.

"I shall cut a lettuce for you fellows," said Mark.

As he left the shelter, Jim turned to Pynsent.

"You put your hoof into it," he growled.

"I did," said Pynsent.

"I say—is Mark going to take a front seat?"

"I don't know."

Mark came back carrying a bottle of Sauterne and
a noble *Romaine*, which he handed to Pynsent, who
was famous for his salads.  Mary entered a minute
later with a well-basted chicken and a great dish of
peas.  The trio fell to their luncheon with appetite.
Mary added a tart, some excellent cheese, and the
best of coffee.

"I've enjoyed myself immensely," said Pynsent.
"You're in Arcady, Mark.  You ought to write an
idyll here: Aucassin and Nicolete—hey?"

They moved up into the pine grove, talking about
books and art.  Jim Corrance listened, smoking his
big cigar.  Pynsent, who smoked Caporal cigarettes
which he rolled himself, spoke volubly in a sharp
New England twang:

"People prate about giving the world what the
world wants.  An artist gives what's in him to give.
I say that nothing else is possible, whether the
world likes it or whether it doesn't.  And, luckily,
the world that buys pictures and books is catholic in
its tastes.  All the same, just at present there is a
big demand for stuff which is signed.  You know
what I mean.  The crowd clamours for individuality.
I was standing in front of a picture of mine at the
Academy last year, and a cleverish-looking girl said:
'That's a Pynsent.  I like his work because I always
know it, not because I understand it.'  I nearly
asked her to shake hands.  It's the same with books.
There's an immense quantity of well-written,
interesting novels published every year, but you'll find
that the few which sell are stamped on every page
with the author's name.  The brand does it, first and
last."

"I only read books that amuse me," said Jim.

"You're a man.  Men read books sometimes, but
women buy them.  Let's hope that Mark's stuff will
please the women.  Then he will arrive."

While they were talking, a young man passed
through the gate and up the garden to the cottage
door.

"Hullo!  Who's this?" said Pynsent.

Mary answered the question by coming out of the
house in a becoming frock and hat and joining the
young man.  Together they strolled down the path.
The three men stared at each other.  It had not
occurred to any of them that Mary might have a
young man.  And this particular one seemed to be
the typical young man, always seen of a Sunday
arm-in-arm with a pretty girl: commonplace, smug,
self-assured.  While they looked Mrs. Dew's thin
querulous voice filtered through the sunlit space
of the garden—

"Mary, Mary—don't be away too long!"

Mary's fresh voice came from behind the palings—

"Of course not, mother.  I shall be back to make
your tea at four."

"Our Jill has her Jack," said Pynsent.  "That
was a becoming hat."

"She made it herself," Mark observed.

"Then she likes her Jack.  Such a girl would not
prink to please a man to whom she was indifferent."

Jim Corrance thrust out his big jaw.  "Mary may
have made that hat to please herself.  If I'd her
face, by gad, I'd make just such a hat and enjoy
myself with a looking-glass."

"So would I," said Mark.

Pynsent and Jim returned to town before dinner.
They promised to come again, and often, but Mark
guessed that such promises were written in ink,
blue and variable as a May sky.  He expected
to be much alone, and during the months that
followed was not disappointed.  From his friends at
the Mission he held aloof.  He knew they would
ask questions, deeming it a duty to argue and
reprove.

Mark had written the truth to David Ross after
the night on Ben Caryll.  In reply, David wisely
made no protest against Mark's determination to
leave the Church.  That he would speak in due time
Mark was uncomfortably aware, and he learned—not
without a feeling of relief—that his old chief was the
busiest man in Poplar.

May passed quickly, devoid of incident and
accident.  Towards the end of it, however, Mark,
reading his morning paper, was horrified to learn that
Bagshot, the man he had tried to reclaim, had
murdered his wife in a drunken fit.  He hastened to
London, saw the prisoner—an abject, cowering wreck
of what he had been—and listened to his dreadful
story.  The poor fellow had struggled hard against
the craving for drink, yet in the end he had slain
the woman he loved.  It was heartrending—the
triumph of evil over good.

After seeing Bagshot, Mark reread that battered
memorandum-book which he had carried through
terrible slums.  Once more, the appeal of the
friendless and helpless stirred him profoundly.  Very
stealthily, like "humble Allen," he began to revisit
some of his waifs; most of them had disappeared;
others as wretched and forlorn occupied their place.
But his ministrations—necessarily ill-sustained and
intermittent—appeared ineffectual.  The joyous
confidence of former days had departed.  The squalor
seemed invincible, the forces against which he
contended so vast and ungovernable that sense and
sensibility revolted.  Only faith could remove such
mountains, and faith had forsaken Mark Samphire.
None the less, he persevered.

About the end of June Archibald and his wife came
back from France and settled down in Cadogan
Place.  Archibald asked Mark to meet them in a
long letter, full of a description of Chenonçeau.
At the end was a postscript in Betty's handwriting:
"*Please come.*"  Mark obeyed—a prey to feelings
which cannot be set down.  For six weeks he had
seen Betty's face looking out of the window of the
train, white, piteous, despairing.  But when they
met he was amazed to find her rosy and smiling,
full of plans, in high health and spirits.  Then he
remembered that his own health was excellent.
Archibald made him welcome, entreated his advice
about the arrangement of books and engravings,
begged him to hang his hat on his own peg, and
alluded only vaguely to the red tie.

"You will come back to us," he said confidently.

Betty held his hand tight at parting.  "Don't
slip out of our lives!" she whispered.

Mark had a glimpse of the face seen from the
train, and hardly knew to what he was pledging
himself when he stammered: "N-n-no,
n-n-no—c-c-certainly not."

After this first meeting it became easy to drop
in to luncheon or tea.  The novel was under
revision, and several passages describing certain
streets and localities had to be rewritten.  Mark
had the artist's passion for truth, carried possibly
to excess.  One of his characters was a shopgirl who
worked in Edgware Road.  Mark spent three days in
Edgware Road, notebook in hand, greedily absorbing
the light and colour of the great thoroughfare.  But
he made a point of returning to Weybridge each
night and slept, whenever it was fine, in the grove,
lulled to sleep by the pines.

Curiosity took him to St. Anne's in Sloane Street,
when Archibald preached his first sermon.  It was
crowded with a fashionable congregation, some of
whom came to hear the music—as fine as could be
found in London outside the cathedrals; others, no
doubt, were attracted by a new and eloquent preacher;
the rest attended divine service in their parish
church, and would have been in their places, cheered
and sustained by the reflection that they were doing
their duty, if the rector had had no palate to his
mouth and the choir had been composed of village
boys squalling free of charge to the accompaniment
of a harmonium.  Mark sat in the gallery, whence
he could see Betty occupying a pew not far from
the pulpit.  He wondered what sort of sermon
Archibald would preach.  And he wondered also
how it would affect Betty.  Meantime, he examined
the congregation.  All these fine folk were possessed
of substantial incomes.  The struggle for daily
bread was an experience unknown to them.  The
men seemed to be fathers of families for the most
part, portly squires of ripe, rosy countenances,
many-acred, and duly sensible of the position and
station in life to which it had pleased God to call
them.  They put gold into the offertory bag, and
could be counted upon to subscribe handsomely to
parochial charities.  In striking contrast were the
brothers and lovers of the beautifully gowned women
beside them.  All, to a man, were frock-coated,
patent-leather-booted, exquisitely cravatted—gilded
youths, indifferent to music or sermon, worshippers
in form only, because "it pleases the mater, you
know," or "Dolly expects it," or "I must make
myself solid with Aunt Sarah."  Mark noted their
well-cut, impassive features, their resigned air, and
their contemptuous negligence of the responses.
The women, on the other hand, displayed a certain
ardour of devotion tempered by a lively interest in
their neighbours' clothes.  A few prayed long and
fervently, giving themselves up to the emotions
inspired by the lovely music and splendid ritual;
the many were intermittent in their attention.  It
was plain that a girl just below Mark, who sang
delightfully, was distracted from thoughts of heaven
by the difficulty of determining whether the cape
of a friend across the aisle was trimmed with sable
or mere mink.  But what struck Mark more forcibly
than anything else was an expression common to all
the faces when in repose.  While the lessons were
being read, men and women alike suffered their
features to relax into a normal look of discontent.
Mouths dropped; heavy lids veiled tired eyes;
dismal lines appeared upon fair faces.

When Archibald ascended the pulpit, a thrill
vibrated through his congregation.  Mark perceived
at a glance that the Rector of St. Anne's had secured
the goodwill and enthusiasm of the women.  They
stared at his fine head, their eyes suffused and
shining, their lips slightly parted, a-quiver with
anticipation.

"*Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my
last end be like his.*"

After a moment's pause, Archibald repeated the
text with a different inflection.  Then, leaning
forward, speaking without notes, he began his sermon.
Mark noted certain mannerisms common to many
preachers.  Archibald hoped that his brothers and
sisters in Christ would bear with him while he laid
before them a few thoughts.  The thoughts appealed
emotionally to a congregation who had consecrated
their energies and potentialities to the art of living.
To such, death, especially a painful death, is horror.
The preacher pictured the last hours of the righteous
man, the faithful servant, conscious that his task has
been accomplished in this world, and that in the
next a place is awaiting him, where, under freer,
fuller conditions, he may still carry on the Master's
work.  Then, changing his tone, Archibald
portrayed the death-bed of the evil-liver—hopeless,
faithless, God-forsaken!

The sermon made an impression.  As the
congregation streamed out of church into the sunshine,
Mark caught words, phrases, ejaculations which
showed plainly that the new rector had at least
satisfied expectation.  But Mark told himself the
fringe of a great subject had been touched—and no
more.  Archibald's manner almost suggested the
detestable adjective—melodramatic.  His power was
that of an actor rather than an evangelist.  Above
and beyond Mark's recognition of this was the
certainty that Betty recognised it also, albeit,
possibly, not so clearly.  Mark had kept his eyes on
Betty's face.  More than once some subtile inflection
of the preacher's voice had thrilled her; but towards
the end of the sermon her attention and interest had
waned.  Instinctively Mark groped his way to the
conclusion that if Archibald had gained his wife's
love and esteem by the use of another's brain, he
might find it difficult to hold by the strength of his own.





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.. _`IN GRUB STREET`:

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   CHAPTER XXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   IN GRUB STREET

.. vspace:: 2

Mark's short story had been duly printed and
published in Conquest's magazine.  About
the time of its appearance (midsummer) Mark called
on Conquest, and the acquaintance then made ripened
into a sort of intimacy.  Conquest, quick to perceive
that Mark had "stuff" in him, and learning that
Mark was writing a novel, expressed a wish to read
it in typescript.

"I advised you, you remember, to write a novel
and burn it."

"I have done so," said Mark quietly.

A big, burly man, with a rugged, leonine head,
Conquest liked to be told he resembled Landor.
With this robust physique went a singularly feminine
apprehension and appreciation of details.  The
enormous amount of work he could accomplish, his grasp
of technicalities, his knowledge, amounting to
intuition, of what the public wanted, his power of
attracting and dominating young men of talent, and, above
all, his encyclopædic memory, made him invaluable
to the firm who employed him.

Mark submitted his novel.  Conquest read it, and
sent for the author.  Mark found him in the editorial
chair, surrounded by books, papers, manuscripts,
press-clippings innumerable—a chaos out of which
the master alone could evoke order.  In the room
beyond, two type-writing machines were clicking
savagely.  Here Conquest's "sub," a secretary, and
half a dozen myrmidons were hard at work.  The
"sub" and his assistants looked pale and thin;
Conquest alone seemed to thrive and expand in an
atmosphere impregnated with the odour of
tobacco-smoke, damp paper, and printers' ink.

"Sit down!  And listen to the words of the ancient!
This is the place where I do the talking.  When I
stop, you must go.  *Shall the Strong retain the Spoil?*
is d——d good and—don't look so pleased!—d——d
bad.  There's hope for you.  We'll publish if you like
to pay half the printer's bill.  Mind you, the book has
but a ghost's chance of catching on; but I don't want
it altered.  You'd cut out the best stuff and leave the
trash.  *I* red-pencilled your short story, but I can't
afford the time to prune this—and you wouldn't like
it.  Leave it here, and I'll send you our regular
agreement to look over and sign.  You are under no
obligations, remember, to publish with us.  Good
morning.  Dine with me next Tuesday.  Eight sharp!"

Mark found himself walking down a steep flight of
stairs, and heard Conquest's strident tones echoing
after him.  He could not remember that he had
accepted the offer made to him, but he was sure that
Conquest took such acceptance for granted.

When Tuesday came, he told Conquest that he
had read and was willing to sign the agreement
which had been sent him.  Conquest nodded in an
off-hand manner, and did not allude to the subject
again.  But he pressed upon Mark the expediency of
joining "The Scribblers," a club newly organised,
and likely to become a power.  Mark consented,
pleased and flattered that a celebrity should exhibit
such interest in him.  He was put up and elected the
same week.  Conquest introduced him to half a
dozen members, most of whom took an early
opportunity of congratulating Mark upon his friendship
with the great man.

"He's a wonder," said a popular author, "but,
mind you, he works for Wisden and Evercreech,
and he'll squeeze you like an orange, if you give
him the chance."

The others winked at each other, but said nothing.
Tommy Greatorex, a small, pale man, with very
bright dark eyes which redeemed his face from
insignificance, began to talk loudly.  Mark had
watched him gnawing nervously at his nails when
Conquest's name was mentioned.

"Oh—these editors!" he exclaimed, shaking his
fist.  "Wouldn't I like to tell some of 'em what I
think of 'em!  Yes; there are exceptions—thank
the Lord!—but Samphire will soon find out that
most of 'em are pinchers.  Six men in this room
sling ink for a living.  Is there one who can stand
up and swear that he's not been squeezed?"  Not a
man moved.  "You see—they sit tight.  In this
trade of ours the worker is not paid for his work
when it's done.  He has to wait for his pennies,
poor devil, although he may be starving.  And
often he isn't paid at all.  A paper goes to pot, or
the special article he has been asked—asked, mind
you—to write is pigeon-holed and doesn't appear,
or there is a change of management.  Any recourse?
Why, man, if you send one of 'em a lawyer's letter,
you may get your cheque by return of post, but
never a line will you write for my gentleman again.
Never more, as the raven said!  One can't afford to
quarrel with 'em.  And don't they know it—don't
they know it, as they blandly turn the screw?  Now,
in America, with the big magazines, it's different.
You submit your stuff, and if it's available a cheque
comes along with the acceptance, and a good cheque
too.  Over here, a few writers, of course, dictate
terms, but the many take what they get with a humble
if not a grateful heart.  If you've private means of
your own, you're all right, but if you have any idea
of supporting yourself with the pen—why, God help
you!—for the editors won't."

"Cool yourself with a whisky and soda," said the
popular author, touching the electric bell.  "Our
profession," he looked at Mark, "is like all others,
overcrowded, and editors and publishers carry on
their business along business lines.  I'll admit that
most authors are not fit to deal with them in a
business way.  They don't like to haggle, and they
don't know how to haggle.  Personally, I employ
an agent."

"That's all right for you," Tommy retorted, "but
an agent's not much use unless there's an established
market for one's wares.  What's this book of yours
about, Samphire?"

"The East End," said Mark.

"Um—the slums treated humorously?"

"I've tried to stick to the facts."

"And you expect to sell 'em as fiction?  Oh—you
optimist!"

"A play's the thing," observed another scribbler.
"Write plays."

"Any fool can write a play," said the little man,
very scornfully.  "I—*mot qui sous parle*—have
written plays, but it takes a diplomatist to get them
read and a genius to get them accepted."

Mark returned to Weybridge rather despondent.

Immediately afterwards he received his first
instalment of proofs from Wisden and Evercreech.
Correcting these proved a painful pleasure.
Conquest's judgment coloured and discoloured every
sheet.  What was good—what was bad?  For his
life Mark was unable to criticise his own work.
Some of the bits he had liked when he wrote them
now seemed crude and trite.  His dialogue, he
decided, was fair, but the narrative lacked
distinction.  Before beginning another novel, he would
study the best models in French and English.
Meantime he would turn out a story or two.  These
were written, despatched to Conquest—and returned
with a printed slip politely setting forth the editor's
regret that they were unavailable.  When he met
Conquest some ten days later, the great man
vouchsafed a few words.

"Sorry to return your stuff.  We shall publish
the book in October.  Have you thought of a
subject for another?  You seem to have gripped
conditions in the East End.  How about a novel in
rather lighter vein dealing with the adventures and
misadventures of a millionaire who has turned
philanthropist and wants to spend his pile in Stepney?
Or—happy thought!—make your millionaire a
millionairess—a good-looking spinster paddling her
canoe through the slums.  That would be capital.
What do you say?"

"I'll think about it," said Mark hesitatingly.
"I'm awfully obliged to you, Conquest."

"That's all right.  By the way, I can use an
article on your brother, two thousand words.  Make
it very personal, and secure good photographs of
him and his church."

"But he mightn't like it, you know."

Conquest roared.  "I say—that's immense—immense!
Not like it?  A popular preacher!  Ha—ha—ha!
Why, it's incense to 'em, man alive.  Ask
him, at any rate.  If he doesn't jump, call me fool.
Can you see him at once?"

"If you wish it."

Somehow, to Mark's disgust, Archibald did jump.
The article appeared in a Church paper and led to
an incident of much greater importance.  Conquest
wired to Mark to come up to town on business.
Mark was given a capital luncheon at Dieudonne's
restaurant, but not till the coffee was served did
Conquest speak of the matter in hand.

"I suppose you know," he said carelessly, but
keeping his eyes on Mark's, "that I pull many
strings.  Now this is between ourselves,
in—the—strictest—confidence.  I want to pump you.  Bless
you, it always pays to be frank.  How do I stand
with your brother?  Does he like me?"

"I'm sure he does," said Mark warmly.  At
Conquest's desire he had introduced him to
Archibald.  Conquest had dined in Cadogan Place.

"I can help him—materially.  Of course there's
something in it for me, but there's more in it for him,
and I thought that you might be willing to act as a
go-between.  Have you noticed a big Basilica which
Lord Vauxhall is building in that part of Chelsea
where his new houses are?  You have?  A fine
thing—hey?  Oh, you don't admire the Byzantine
style.  Well, that church is the biggest advertisement
in London.  Shush-h-h!  I don't want to be
misunderstood.  Vauxhall, who is a friend of mine,
understands the value of churches.  And he's a
Churchman, too.  He felt it to be his duty to build
that church, and *I* say, not he, that it's a thundering
big 'ad' for the neighbourhood.  Now Vauxhall is
immensely struck by your brother's eloquence.
Vauxhall always wants the best of everything, and
he pays for it, cash on the nail.  He would like
to offer the Basilica and fifteen hundred a year to
your brother.  Now the cat's out of the bag.  What
d'you think of her?"

Mark flushed.  Conquest was his host.

"I think she's mangy."

"Good," said Conquest, in no way perturbed.
"I wanted an honest opinion."

"As I understand this," said Mark, "Lord
Vauxhall offers my brother a bribe to boom his new
neighbourhood."

Conquest shrugged his mighty shoulders.

"You are a young man," he said drily.  "Beware
of hasty judgments.  It's my experience that motives
are generally mixed.  Vauxhall has built and
endowed a magnificent church.  He offers it to your
brother, or rather he empowers me to offer it, if
there is a likelihood of the offer being accepted.
Perhaps I had better speak to your brother myself."

"I should prefer that," said Mark.

When he saw Archibald, some days later, he was
quite sure, from his knowledge of Conquest, that
the matter had been broached, but Archibald said
nothing to him about it.  Betty, however, talked as
if no change was impending, so Mark inferred that
she was either without her husband's confidence or
that Lord Vauxhall's offer had been refused.  Betty
was full of plans connected with the parish, and busy
organising a large charity concert.  Jim Corrance
told Mark that he (Jim) had misread Betty's
character and temperament.

"She's happy with her husband," he declared.
"He has a way with him—women can't resist
parsons when they're good and good-looking.  One
must concede that Archie is both."

Mark said nothing.  He was quite unable to
determine whether Betty had found happiness or not.
Sometimes, when alone with husband and wife, he
marked an irritability not without significance.
Archibald had acquired, since he came to London, a
certain air and deportment common to many
successful men.  Betty chaffed him, called him "Sir
Oracle," and when he protested against these quips,
she would frown and bite her lip.  Archibald was
very particular about the antecedents of the people
invited to his house.  Some of Betty's acquaintances
were banned.  Lady Randolph had a word to say on
this.

"Archie is quite right, my dear.  He's not going
to imperil his preferment by hobnobbing with such
frisky folk.  It pays to be exclusive.  Look at those
Bertheim women!  They were—well, we know what
they were; but when they married rich men, they
refused to entertain any matron who was not
immaculate.  Now, to be seen at their houses is a
patent of virtue!"

"Archie," said Betty, "is governed by the
highest motives; still, I should like to see this house
open to a few nice sinners: painters, writers,
musicians; but Archie says they are all freethinkers or
Laodiceans.  It is a great grief to him that Mark
gave up his Orders.  He offered to take him as
secretary."

Lady Randolph stared.  There were times when
she felt that Betty was an unknown quantity.

"You allowed him to make that offer?"

Betty turned aside her eyes.  "I did not know
that it was made.  Of course Mark refused—would
have done so in any case.  I mention it to show you
what manner of man Archie is.  I don't think you
do him justice.  You spoke just now as if he were a
time-server.  His whole life is devoted to others."

"Does he—*know*?" said Lady Randolph, alluding
to what had passed at Birr Wood.

"Why should I tell him?"

"Why, indeed, my dear?"

"It would distress him infinitely.  And it might
lead to a breach between the brothers.  Mark comes
here.  He has changed greatly.  I don't think that
anything interests him very much except his literary
work."

"He looks a different man," said Lady Randolph
absently.

"If it had not been for that breakdown in those
horrible slums, if——"  Betty bit her lip.  Lady
Randolph pretended that she had noticed nothing
unusual, but when she said good-bye she kissed
Betty twice and whispered: "If I were you I should
not encourage Mark to come here."

"*Encourage* him?"

"If he needs no encouragement—so much the worse."

Betty laughed nervously.  Mark's companionship
was a pleasure she would not forego.  She was
interested in his book; she liked to hear his talk,
his gossip of Grub Street; his descriptions of the
Dews, mother and daughter; his adventures in
search of material.  Behind this lay the comfortable
assurance that she had adjusted a difficult situation.
She had lost the lover of her youth, but she had
gained a good husband, a brother, and a friend.
So she told herself that she was rich, repeating the
phrase, till she came to believe it true.  One day she
said to Mark, "I suppose you would call me a rich
woman, using the adjective in its widest sense."

"We are all rich—and poor," Mark replied
evasively.  "What rich man is not poor in some
respect; what poor man is not rich in another?
This is an age of classification.  We go about
sticking labels on to our friends and ourselves.  If you
honestly think yourself rich, you are so."

Sometimes he wondered if she could measure the
violence of feeling which had driven him from the
Church.  She never spoke of his change of cloth;
still she eyed his red tie askance.  Archibald had
said something when he came back from his honeymoon.

"At King's Charteris you could keep a curate.
The pater said that he had spoken to you.  And it's
the family living."

"I'll say to you what I didn't like to say to the
pater: 'Drop it.'"

"Certainly," Archibald replied.  "But it's a pity
your powers of organisation should be wasted."  Then
he made the offer which had provoked astonishment
in Lady Randolph.  It astonished Mark also,
revealing as it did his brother's lack of insight where
he (Mark) was concerned.

"You could help me enormously," Archibald concluded.

"I am going to help myself," said Mark.

Just before the novel was published, Archibald let
fall a hint that Conquest had spoken to him.  Betty
happened to be present, but Archibald addressed
himself to Mark.

"Have you ever met Lord Vauxhall?"

"No."

"A very charming man—and a Christian.  He
dines here next week.  I should like you to meet
him.  By the way, he's a friend of Conquest."

"Ah!" said Mark.

"I like Conquest immensely," said Archibald
suavely.  "He has the larger vision."

"Betty—do you like Conquest?" said Mark abruptly.

She answered promptly: "No."

"Why not?" her husband inquired.

"He's an Octopus man, with his tentacles waving
in every direction.  And his mind is like a big room
handsomely furnished, but without a fireplace in it.
Certainly—he's been sweet as Hybla honey to me,
and I ought to like him, but I don't."





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.. _`A SUNDAY IN CADOGAN PLACE`:

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   CHAPTER XXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A SUNDAY IN CADOGAN PLACE

.. vspace:: 2

In late October, when pages fall as thickly from
printing-presses as leaves do from trees, *Shall
the Strong retain the Spoil?* appeared.  During the
preceding Spring many of the best publishers had
withheld books which were now offered to the public.
Conquest predicted a glutted market, and no sales
for wares bearing obscure brands.  Mark, he said,
might compass a *succès d'estime*—nothing more.
He added that the time had come to pull strings, if
strings were to be pulled.

"I don't quite understand," said Mark.

"Get so-and-so," he named a popular author, "to
enlighten you.  Look here, Samphire, you're a man
of good family, your people know numbers of swells,
that brother of yours is hand in glove with some
bigwigs.  Stir 'em up with a long pole.  I don't
suppose you care to fork out for such advertising as
our friend I mentioned uses.  Paragraphs and all that."

"He pays for paragraphs?"

"Directly and indirectly—you innocent!  I see
you are disgusted.  That's all right.  I mentioned
the matter, because I could steer you a bit, if you
wished to spend say—fifty pounds.  We shall
advertise the book, of course, in the regular way.  It's
the irregular way, my boy, which brings in the
dollars."

"The book must sell on its merits," said Mark.

"As you please," said Conquest.

Shortly afterwards, the first notices were sent to
him by the Press Clipping Agency to which he had
become a subscriber.  Mark was told that his work
showed extraordinary promise, that he would take
high rank, when he had found himself, that he was
a master of dialogue and dialect, the author of a
powerful and convincing study of conditions which
challenged the attention of every thinking man and
woman, and so on and so forth.  He rushed up to
town, showed the clippings to Betty, who seemed to
be more excited and pleased than he was himself,
went on to Wisden and Evercreech, and thence to
his club, where he found Tommy Greatorex, whiter
and more nervous than usual, sitting alone by the
fire in the library.  To him the clippings were
presently submitted with an apology.  Tommy took
them with an ironical smile.

"They're always kind to a new man if he shows
any ability."  He glanced at the clippings, flipping
them with his lean delicately shaped fingers.  "You
are subtle, I see, and daring, and brilliant—and
strong!  By Jove, Samphire, I'll bet a new umbrella,
which I want badly, that you didn't know you were
such a ring-tailed squealer—hey?  Don't blush, my
dear fellow.  Wait till your stuff sells, and then
read what they'll say about it.  Ha—ha!  Listen to
this!  One of 'em says: 'Mr. Samphire is
evidently at home in some of the sordid scenes which
he describes with such power and pathos; we take
it that he has spent many years in the slums.'  So
far—so good.  It's more than likely that the fellow
who wrote that is a member of this club and in the
know.  Here's another, next to it, egad!  'This
story reveals imaginative powers of a high order,
for it is plain that the author has never set foot in
Stepney....'  Ha—ha—ha!  Now sit down,
stand me a drink, and tell me how many copies
have been sold."

"A hundred copies were sold the day before
yesterday," said Mark.

"Now, that's a little bit of all right, and no
mistake.  I'm delighted to hear it.  I congratulate
you—*con fuoco*!  That means business.  One—hundred—copies
in *one* day!  Whew-w-w!  Hang it, why
don't you rejoice?"

"Because," said Mark, "I found out that the
hundred copies were bought by one man for one
man.  A friend of mine on the Stock Exchange took
the lot.  The book is not selling."

"Sorry," said Tommy quietly.  "I've read it.
I've reviewed it.  This," he tapped one of the
clippings which he still held in his hand, "is mine.  I
got for it a few shillings, already spent, and the book
which I shall keep, because it is written by a good
fellow.  It's not what's in the book which appeals to
me, but what's in the writer, and which will come
out—some day."

"Thank you," said Mark.

He returned to luncheon at Cadogan Place,
humbled, and therefore, in a woman's eyes, meet
for sympathy and encouragement.

"In any case," said Betty, "you have had the
delight of writing the book.  And it *is* strong and
subtle; but, Mark, few people are interested in
slums.  Your book made me cry, and I want to laugh.
Life is so sad, why make it sadder?"

Mark had listened to interminable arguments upon
this vexed question.  But in Betty's tone and manner
he caught a glimpse of a spectre.

"Your life is not sad," he said.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," she replied hastily
"We were speaking of your book."

"Hang the book," said Mark impatiently "What
is that to me in comparison with——"  He stopped
abruptly, got up from his chair, paced the length of
the room, and came back.

"You are happy—are you not?" he asked.  They
were alone in the drawing-room, filled with the
pictures and china which had come out of the saloon
at The Whim.  Archibald was presiding over one of
his innumerable committees.  Looking at Betty as
she sat amongst things familiar to Mark from
childhood, it was difficult to believe that she was a
married woman.  She still retained a bloom of
maidenhood, a daintiness and freshness.  Her face
suggested the nymph rather than the matron.

"Of course I am happy," she replied; then she
added in a whisper: "Mark, I ought to be happy,
but I am a rebel."

"All women are rebels, Betty.  Against what in
particular do you rebel?"

"I oughtn't to tell you, but—but I must.  I
suppose I am the many-sided woman, who ought to
have half a dozen husbands.  I am interested in so
many things.  I like to browse here and there.  But
Archie doesn't care about anything or anybody
outside his own vineyard.  He is going up and up and
I am—falling!  Oh, I'm disloyal, but I must speak.
It comes to this: Archie loves me and of course I
love him, but we—we have nothing to say to each
other when we're alone."

She sat, twisting her fingers, staring forlornly at
the carpet.  Mark burst into speech.  At the sound
of his voice, still so youthful in quality, she raised
her head, smiling, eager, intent.

"Why, Betty, we all get blue at times, and sigh
for what we've not got.  There are women, no doubt,
who are fatly content with their lives, but I don't
suppose they go up or down.  One pictures them in
one spot, doing the same stupid thing, saying the
same stupid thing for ever and ever.  I think you're
in a healthy state.  When we feel that we are
going down, we begin to beat our wings and flap
upwards.  Some saints, possibly, might be justified
in taking a rest-cure; they are the ones who never
do it."

He rose to go, not daring to stay.

"When are you coming again, Mark?  You
always do me good.  Can't you spend next Sunday
with us?  By the way, have you ever been to our
church?"

"Yes; the first Sunday Archibald preached."

"Oh!  The sermon about Balaam."

"Yes."

"You know, he says that he's uneven.  But the
women in this parish think him wonderful.  Some
of them, who sit near the pulpit, make a point of
crying whenever he gives them a chance.  One told
me that when he pronounced the Benediction she
felt purged of all sin!  I could have bitten her."

Mark promised to spend the following Sunday in
Cadogan Place, and duly accompanied Betty to
morning service.  For nearly thirty minutes
Archibald preached to a crowded congregation, who
listened intently to a conventional theme, treated
conventionally.  Coming out Mark heard a tall, thin
man, with a striking face, whisper to the woman
beside him: "I came for bread; he gave us
pap—in a golden spoon."

"Did you hear that?" said Betty, a moment later.

"Yes."

Some friends greeted Betty, and no more was said
till luncheon, to which the Chrysostom of Sloane
Street applied himself, as usual, seriously and
silently.  He looked slightly puffy and his eyes were
losing their clearness and sparkle.  Mark asked
abruptly if he were overworked.

"Every minute is filled," said Archibald heavily.
"Overworked?  I can stand a lot of work."

"He would be miserable without it—and bored,"
said Betty.  "He won't even come to concerts with
me now."

"It's the work that tells, nowadays, my dear.
Preaching gives a man a start, but it's the steady
strain of parochial organisation which brings one to
the top of the hill."

"You are neglecting your sermons," said Betty.
"For several Sundays they have struck me as being—how
shall I put it—uninspired.  They hold one's
attention, yes, but they do not grip; they touch, but
they do not penetrate."

Archibald nodded, frowning and crumbling the
bread beside his plate.

"The Duchess," he said, "stopped me this morning
after church to tell me that she liked the
treatment of my text immensely."

"Oh—the Duchess!" exclaimed Betty.

"I've so much on my mind," said Archibald,
turning to Mark.  He rose, looking at his watch.
"I must go now to hear a man sing in Upper
Tooting.  The cigars are in my room."

He went out.  As the door shut behind him, Betty
turned a contrite face to Mark's.

"I hit him when he was down.  What a beast I am!"

At that moment it became a conviction to Mark
that Betty loved an ideal husband, who would fall
from the pinnacle on which she had perched him.
A feeling of pleasure at this impending catastrophe
almost turned him sick.  Then, very slowly, he
resolved that the powers within him should be
devoted to the preservation of an ideal, so vital to
the welfare of the woman he loved.  Betty began to
speak of his literary work.

"When I read your book," she said, "I had an
intuition that one day you would write a play."

Mark quoted Tommy Greatorex.  "That's an easy job."

"I have a motif for you.  The emotional treatment
of religion.  Look at the success of this new
book, *Robert Elsmere*!  The same success awaits
the dramatist who can use like material.  I should
make the principal character a woman of passion
with a strong sense of religion."

"A sinner?"

"Yes.  It seems to me that sinners on the stage
have great opportunities.  The world must listen to
what they have to say.  In real life the good people
do all the talking, the moral talking, I mean; an
honest sinner holds his or her tongue.  It's such a
pity, for I'm sure your honest sinner loathes his sin.
In my drama the sinner is saved, because the sense
of what she has suffered, her personal experience of
the horror and misery of sin, make for her salvation."

"The right man could do something with it, no doubt."

"Why not you, Mark?"

He fell into a reverie, staring into the fire.  Betty
perceived that he had wandered out of the world of
speech into the suburbs of silence, where visions of
what might have been come and go.  Presently he
said abruptly:

"Shall we walk?"

"There's an east wind blowing, evil for man and
beast."

"You're neither.  Come on."

They crossed the park, skirting the Serpentine, a
dull, leaden-coloured lake wrinkled by the keen
wind.  On some of the benches sweethearts were
sitting, serenely unmindful of the blast.

"They feel warm enough," said Betty, laughing.
"Well, I'm in a glow, too."

When they returned to Cadogan Place, Archibald
had just arrived from Upper Tooting.  He said that
he had found a superb tenor, whom he had engaged.

"He sang 'Nazareth'—quite admirably."

Betty, teapot in hand, looked up, interested at once.

"Oh, Archie, you have not sung 'Nazareth' for
months.  Do sing it after tea!"

"Do!" Mark added.  "I haven't heard you sing
for a year."

Finally, after a little pressing, Archibald seated
himself at the piano, a beautiful Steinway.  As he
touched the keys, Betty's face assumed the
expression of delighted receptivity so familiar to Mark.
She glanced at the singer between half-closed eyes,
lying back in her chair in an attitude of physical and
mental ease.  One hand drooped at her side, and as
Archibald sang the fingers of this hand contracted
and relaxed, keeping time to the rhythm of the
song.  Mark felt that her pulses were throbbing,
quivering with delight and satisfaction.  The music
touched him also, stirring to determination his
desire to help and protect the woman he loved.  But
when his thoughts turned, as they did immediately,
to Archibald, they became of another texture and
complexion.  He had not prayed to God since
that night on Ben Caryll.  Now, beneath the
spell of the music, he repeated to himself: "Oh
God, take this hate from me; take this hate from me!"

When Archibald stopped singing, he said that he
must go to his study for an hour's work before
evening service.  Mark accompanied him.  As soon
as they were alone, he blurted out what was in his
mind.

"I say, Archie, if you want a little help, I'm
your man.  I suppose work means the preparation
of your Advent sermons.  I helped you last year.
Shall I help you this?"

Archibald's face flushed.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he muttered;
"but ideas don't flow.  If you would help—but,
but you have your own work."

"My work!  Well, it's lucky I've an allowance,
or I should certainly starve.  Archie, I'd like to help
you.  I ask it as a favour.  Come on; what's the use
of jawing?  What's it to be this Advent?  I thought
of something in church this morning which you
might lick into shape."

He filled his pipe, talking in his hesitating yet
voluble way.  Archibald, the practical, took a pad
to jot down notes in shorthand.  Mark began to
pace the room as his ideas flowed faster.  It seemed
to him that he had dammed them up for many
months; now they came down like the Crask after
a big rain, a cleansing flood, carrying away all
refuse, all barriers.  When he had finished,
Archibald arose ponderously and shook his hand.

"You're a wonderful fellow," he said slowly;
"the hare you, the tortoise I.  It was always so."

"The tortoise won the r-r-race," said Mark.

When he went to bed that night he flung open
wide the window of his room.  Outside, the night
was inky black and tempestuous.  Not a star to be
seen above, and the lamps below burning dimly,
throwing pale circles of light upon the wet, muddy
street.  Mark stood inhaling the fresh air, drawing
long and deep breaths, saturating himself with it.
Presently he muttered:

"I may be happy yet."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PROCESSION OF LIFE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PROCESSION OF LIFE

.. vspace:: 2

Late in May Betty was expecting to be
confined; and Mark could see that Archibald tried
in vain to conceal his anxiety.  "One never knows
how these affairs will end," he said a score of times
to his brother, who replied, "Betty is strong; she
will do well; you are foolish to borrow trouble."  None
the less, Mark's anxiety quickened also as
the time approached, becoming the more poignant,
possibly, because the birth of this baby emphasised
his own isolation and loneliness.  Betty as mother—and
he felt sure that she would prove an admirable
mother—appeared indescribably remote.  Archibald
as father, babbling already about his *son*, obstructed
the horizon.

"The boy may reign at Pitt Hall," said Archibald.
"George has written to say that he hopes it will be
an heir—*his* word—because then he will feel at
liberty to remain a bachelor.  Do you think that
Betty is as prudent as she ought to be?"

"She will do well, she will do well," Mark reiterated.

"You will come to us, Mark.  I shall want you,
you know."

"If you insist——"

"I don't think I could face it without you."

Betty added her entreaties.  "I'm not afraid,"
she maintained; "but Archie is behaving like an
old woman.  Lady Randolph will be with me; I
should feel easier if you were with Archie.  How
devoted you brothers are to each other!"

Mark hastily put up his hand to cover a smile
which he felt to be derisive.  Then he muttered
awkwardly, "All right, I'll c-c-come."

Again he wondered whether she had suspected the
hatred within him.  Surely a creature of her
intuitions and sympathies must know.  And if she did
know, and, knowing, faced the facts, trying to adjust
the balance, piecing together the fragments of broken
lives, was it not his duty, however painful, to help
her and the man she had married?  And perhaps
she had foreseen that any peril threatening an object
dear to both brothers might serve to unite them.
The woman who had whirled them asunder must
cherish the hope that she alone could bring them
together.

When the hour came, when he was alone with
Archibald at midnight, straining his ears for that
thin, querulous wail of the newly born, he forgot
everything except that Betty might be taken away.
The doctor bustled in from time to time, cheery and
sanguine at first, but as the hours passed betraying
uneasiness and anxiety.  Towards morning, when
the whole world seemed to have grown chill and
dreary, he asked for a consultation; and a servant
was sent hot-foot for the most famous accoucheur in
Harley Street.

Archibald rushed upstairs.  He crawled down them
a few minutes later, ghastly, trembling, the
scarecrow of the prosperous Rector of St. Anne's.  Mark,
as white as he, seized his arm.

"Well, well, how is she?  That fool of a doctor
has exaggerated.  They always make out everything
to be more serious than it is."

"She is going, she is going," the husband muttered.

Mark shook him violently.

"Archie, you must pull yourself together.  Do
you hear?"

"It's a judgment, a judgment."

"What do you say?"

"I never told her about those two sermons.  I'm
a coward, a coward.  You despise me—I have felt it."

The big fellow had collapsed, shrunk incredibly,
depleted of windy self-assurance and vanity.  Mark's
hate and scorn and envy began to ooze from him as
the old love, the virile instinct of the strong to
comfort and protect the weak, gushed into his heart,
suffusing a genial warmth through every fibre of
his being.

"I gave them to you freely," he said.  "I urged
you to preach that first sermon.  Put what is past
from you."

But Archibald shook his head.  Now that the
silence was broken, he wished to speak, to give his
shame and trouble all the words so long
suppressed.  In a pitiful manner he began a
self-indictment—*qui s'accuse s'excuse*.

"If Betty is spared, I shall tell her the truth," he
concluded.

Mark frowned, trying to measure the effect of such
a belated confession on Betty.  Then he heard
his brother saying in the tone of conviction which so
impressed his congregations, "Of course, Betty did
not marry me because I preached those sermons."

Mark started.  Temptation beset him to answer
swiftly: "She did—she did.  I know she did.  Had
it not been for my words in your mouth, she would
have waited for, she would have married—me."

He turned aside his face, twisted and seamed by
the effort of holding his tongue.  Archibald
continued: "It has been a secret sore.  I thought hard
work—I have worked very hard—would heal it.
If—if she is spared, I shall speak for all our sakes."

Mark's voice was quite steady when he replied,
"For all our sakes.  You take me into account?"

"Why, of course.  Don't you remember?  You
wished her to know.  You said you would tell her.
Why didn't you?"

"Why, indeed?" Mark echoed fiercely.  Then,
with a sudden change of manner, he went on: "You
must do what you think best.  Betty has placed you
on a pinnacle.  See that you don't topple over!
Practise what you preach.  Then you will save her
soul and your own."

"We talk as if she were not dying."

"She will not die," said Mark solemnly.  At that
moment he was sure that Betty would live, must
live, because (and the reason illumines the dark
places through which Mark had passed), because it
would be so much better for her if she died.

Just then the consulting surgeon arrived.  Archibald
took him upstairs, and returned to Mark within
a quarter of an hour, saying that the case was even
more serious than had been supposed.

"Drax sentenced me to death," said Mark, "but
I'm alive and strong."

Archibald fell on his knees in an agony of
supplication.  Mark watched him.  Suddenly the husband
looked up.

"In the name of God, pray," he entreated.  "You
are a better man than I—pray!"

But Mark remained standing.

He desired to pray, but above this desire and
dominating it was the vivid horror of that evil spirit,
which had so lately fled and which might come back.
A sense of unworthiness prostrated his spirit, but
not his body.  He glanced at Archibald, and left
the room.

Outside, the gas in the hall and passages seemed
to be struggling helplessly against the light of
breaking day.  Familiar objects—furniture belonging
to the Admiral—loomed large out of a sickly, yellow
mist.  Mark found himself staring blankly at an
ancient clock ticking with loud and exasperating
monotony.  It had so ticked away the seconds, the
minutes, the hours of more than a hundred years!

The next objects that caught his eye were two
umbrellas.  They stood side by side, curiously
contrasted: the one a dainty trifle of violet silk and
crystal, encircled with a gold band; and the other
large and massive with a symbolic shepherd's crook
as a handle.  These arrested Mark's attention.  He
remembered that he had chaffed Betty about her
umbrella, telling her that it was too smart for a
parson's wife, and absurdly frail as a protection
against anything save a passing shower.  She
retorted that a wise woman never braves a storm, and
then she had said with the smile he knew so well:
"My umbrella, which, after all, is an *en tout cas*, is
just like me: made for sunshine rather than rain."

He sat down, waiting, staring at Betty's umbrella.
When he looked up Lady Randolph was coming
down the stairs very slowly—a white-haired old
woman.  Something in her face choked the question
which fluttered to his lips.  To gain an instant's
time, he opened the library door and called to his
brother—

"Archie!"

Archibald appeared instantly.

"A girl has been born," said Lady Randolph,
"but she is dead."

"Dead?" repeated Archibald.

"And Betty?" Mark demanded hoarsely.

"The doctors think she is safe."

The three passed into the dining-room, where
some food had been laid out.  Lady Randolph gave
details in a worn voice.  Betty's pluck had been
amazing; she had displayed a fortitude lacking
which she would probably have succumbed.  The
consulting surgeon, who entered shortly afterwards,
assured the husband that, humanly speaking, the
danger was over.  Almost at once Archibald
recovered his normal composure and dignified
deportment.  Mark, on the other hand, exhibited signs
of collapse.  He sat down shivering, as if he had
been attacked by malignant malaria.

Next day he saw Betty for a couple of minutes.
She smiled and thanked him, intimating that Archibald
had told her that the suspense would have been
intolerable had not Mark helped him to bear it.
Of the loss of her baby she said nothing, but before
Mark left the room she exacted a promise that he
would come to see her during the period of
convalescence.

.. vspace:: 2

About this time he began his third novel, *The
Songs of the Angels*.  Conquest asked him if he
were setting to work on the theme suggested by
him, and when Mark pleaded inability to guide a
young and beautiful heiress through the slums of
Stepney, the great man shrugged his shoulders—a
gesture now associated in Mark's mind with derision
and contempt.  Conquest then demanded what he
was doing, and hearing the synopsis of the new
story shrugged his vast shoulders once more.

"That won't sell," he said.  "You could have
handled my theme—if you had tried.  By the way,
that brother of yours has jumped at Vauxhall's
offer.  I knew he would.  He'll go very far, that
young man.  Even the Basilica won't be big enough
to hold him."

He laughed loudly and strode away.

During July Mark saw Betty regularly twice a
week.  Archibald was working harder than ever in
and out of St. Anne's parish, but of the Basilica,
now nearing completion, not a word was said by
either husband or wife.  Mark wondered if Betty
knew.  Her recovery was slow and intermittent.

"Are you worried about anything?" Mark asked
one day.

"Yes," she admitted, after a minute's hesitation;
then she continued quickly, "Have you noticed
another falling off in Archie's sermons?"

"He's unequal, of course," Mark replied.  "And
the best brains refuse to work in a tired body."

"I wish you'd say a word about that.  He'd take
anything from you."

Again she caught a glimpse of that derisive smile
of Mark's which she could not interpret, as he
promised to speak to his brother.  Did he reap his
reward when Betty said, three weeks later, "Archie
has preached splendidly the last two Sundays.  Has
he told you that he has been commanded to preach
again at Windsor?"

Mark nodded rather coldly, so Betty thought.  He
reflected that he was the man with one talent.  How
much better that it should be given to the man who
had ten rather than be atrophied by disuse, buried,
so to speak, in one upon whom silence was imposed.
Every pang of envy which twisted his heart he tried
to assuage with the anodyne of kind actions.  But
the faith which had never failed him when he was
sick seemed to have forsaken him utterly now that
he was whole.

.. vspace:: 2

When *The Songs of the Angels* was half written,
telegrams summoned Mark and his brothers to Pitt
Hall, where the Squire lay dying, senseless and
speechless.  He had been seized with a fit, after
returning from a long day's hunting on Christmas
Eve.  The doctors said at once that nothing could
be done.  Pitt Hall was hung with holly and
mistletoe; and Mark, coming out of the room where his
father lay dead, saw the servants pulling down the
decorations.  It seemed to him that the old house
would never be the same again.  It never was—to him.

The will revealed a terrible state of affairs.  After
the widow's jointure was paid, only enough money
would be left to keep the estate out of the market.
George, in any case, would have to let it for a term
of years and economise closely, if he hoped to
cancel the mortgages.  Low prices, bad years, and
a disastrous attempt to recover losses by speculation
had almost wrecked one of the finest properties
in Slowshire.  The younger sons, as residuary
legatees, found themselves absolutely unprovided
for.  This, it is true, made no difference to
Archibald, but Mark told himself ruefully that he only
possessed his books and simple furnishings and
some ninety pounds.  George was unable to do
anything; but Archibald offered his brother the
same allowance he had been in the habit of
receiving.  Mark refused it.

"I think I can pay my way," said Mark.

"I owe you that—and more too."

"Oh, rubbish!"

"If you would live with us, and become my paid
secretary.  You could have your afternoons and
evenings free."

"I shall not leave my pines," said Mark.  "Many
thanks, but I'm going to score off my own bat."

This conversation took place upon the afternoon
of the funeral.  That evening, in the smoking-room,
the question of the living again presented itself.
George Samphire had inherited his father's manner
and ideas, the latter tempered, possibly, by life in a
cavalry regiment.

"By Jove!" said he, "there's King's Charteris
for you, Mark.  The rector, they tell me, won't see
Easter.  It's the very thing, and you can keep an
eye on my tenant.  That's settled, thank the Lord!"

An awkward pause followed.  At his father's
grave Mark had worn, and wore still, black clothes
of clerical cut.

"I am a layman," said Mark.

"What?  You've chucked it!  But you can't—can
he, Archie?  Once a parson, always a parson.
Archie can arrange anything."

"True," said Archibald, "but——"  He glanced
at Mark, who had risen.

"Don't badger me, George," Mark said quietly.
"You must find a better fellow than I for King's
Charteris.  It's been a terrible day.  I'm off to bed."

He marched out of the room, leaving George
agape with astonishment.

"What the devil's the meaning of this?" he asked
of Archibald.

"I'm afraid he's an agnostic."

"Ag—wha-a-t!"

Archibald explained the meaning of the word, not
so familiar then as now.  George listened, frowning,
interjecting many an "Oh!" and "Ah!" and "By
Jove!" as the speaker delicately conveyed the
impression that he did not despair of leading this
errant sheep back into the fold.

"Mark," he concluded, "has shown a great deal
of right feeling, my dear George.  I cannot doubt
but that it will be well with him.  But he is not one
to be pressed."

"That's sound enough, old Slow-and-Sure, and I
suppose we can get some fellow to keep King's
Charteris warm for him—eh?  And they tell me
you'll have livings to give away one of these fine
days.  Good Lord! what a mess the poor governor
has made of things!"

Saying this, the new squire of Pitt Hall sighed,
poured himself out a whisky and soda, drank it, lit
a candle, and went to bed, followed by Archibald.

Within the week Mark saw Conquest, by appointment,
and told him what had happened, asking at
the same time for a settlement of his small account.
To his dismay he learned that he was in the debt of
Wisden and Evercreech.  What was due for his
first short story and the illustrated interview with
the Rector of St. Anne's was swallowed up in the
bill for printing the novel.  Of this, not counting
press copies, some three hundred and fifty had been
sold, of which—as had been said—Jim Corrance
bought one hundred outright.

"Our bill needn't bother you," said Conquest.
"And the novel may square it yet.  You ask for
my advice.  Frankly, then, I say—journalism, but
it's uphill work.  You've got to make a special
study of editors—and what they want.  The stuff
which Jones prints and pays for, Smith, perhaps,
won't even take the trouble to return as unavailable."

"Can you give me anything?"

"Nothing except advice, Samphire, and a letter
or two.  We are chock full.  Of course I'll always
consider what you send me, but we have our regular
staff, and fifty besides waiting to step into their
shoes."

"If I could get a sub-editorship?"

"Ask for the moon at once.  You don't know
the ropes.  Every fool thinks he can edit or
sub-edit a paper, but the proprietors are not of their
mind.  You're a clever fellow, Samphire, but you'll
pardon me for saying that you're kinky, and you
seem to possess a vermiform appendix of a
conscience.  You can support yourself with your pen,
when you know how to use it."

"I'm much obliged to you," said Mark humbly.

Conquest sent him half a dozen letters, which
were presented in person.  The editors, somehow,
managed to convey the impression that they were
obliging Conquest rather than the bearer of his
credentials.  Each promised, more or less courteously,
to consider any work submitted.  Tommy Greatorex,
the pessimist, proved an unexpected source of
sympathy and help.  He learned that Mark spoke
Italian.  Together they explored Eyre Street Hill
and the purlieus about Hatton Garden, an
expedition which took concrete form in the shape of
a paper dealing with the ice-cream vendors, the
plaster-cast image sellers, and the like.  Tommy
sold the paper for twenty guineas, and divided the
cheque with Mark.  By chance Conquest learned of
this, and wired for Mark.

"Greatorex says you talk Italian like a Dago.
Would you care to translate an Italian novel for
us?  We'll pay you sixty pounds."

"Thank you very much," said Mark.

Conquest handed him the proof sheets of the novel.

"You must translate with discretion," he said
carelessly; "but don't emasculate it!  After all,
we are not publishing for schoolgirls."

Mark left Paternoster Row, and mounted a 'bus
in St. Paul's Churchyard.  When he had taken his
seat, he looked at the sheets and began to read them
very rapidly.  Tommy Greatorex was waiting for
him at the Scribblers.

"Has Conquest given you Nespoli's novel?"

"It's in my pocket," said Mark, rather red in the
face.  "And it ought to be in the public sewer.  I
shan't translate it."

"Phew-w-w!" said Tommy.  "What's the use
of being so bally particular?  What did he offer?
Seventy-five?  Oh, sixty—the Shylock.  Well, old
chap, if you don't take the job, somebody else will."

"There's not a particle of doubt about that," said
Mark.

But when he returned the novel to Conquest, he
saw that he had offended the great man, who
shrugged his shoulders and said curtly that Mark
had better buy a little lamb and play with it.  This
was too much.  Mark flamed.

"I've stood your sneers long enough, Conquest,"
he said.  "You've done me some good turns——"

"Hold on," said Conquest, black and grim.
"Don't flatter yourself that I did them for you.
You are the brother of Archibald Samphire, and
that's about the only claim you have to *my*
consideration.  Now then—march!"

He pointed insolently to the door, towering above
the slight figure confronting him.  Mark recovered
his temper.

"I'd hit you," he said politely, "if you were
smaller, but I can't reach your brazen face, you
b-b-bully and b-b-blusterer.  And I couldn't injure
your thick skin with an axe."

The door between the sanctum and the room
where the typewriters were clicking stood ajar.
When Mark ended his sentence a sound of giggling
was heard.  Conquest, cursing, turned and kicked
the door with violence.  Mark laughed and
disappeared, leaving an unscrupulous enemy behind him.

Misfortune, however, introduces us to friends as
well as enemies.  Mark had been hurt because Jim
Corrance had not repeated his visit to Weybridge.
Jim, he had said to himself, was cold, absorbed in
money-getting, unmindful even of his mother, dear
soul, who must often yearn for the companionship
of her son.  But when Jim heard of the Squire's
will, he rushed down to Weybridge, taking with
him an enormous hamper.  Mark told Betty what passed.

"Jim arrived with a hamper.  I believe he thought
I was starving.  He brought champagne, cigars,
and every potted thing which grows in Fortnum
and Mason's.  And he told me that he was looking
for a confidential clerk at five hundred a year.  And
would I do him the favour to take the billet.  By
Heaven—his face warmed my heart through and through."

"You look," said Betty, "as if someone had left
you a fortune!  Those potted things may come in
handy, if you insist on refusing the help which your
friends are only too glad to offer."

"I shall make my way, Betty."

Her eyes were troubled, as she said hurriedly,
"Are you sure of that, Mark?  If—*if* you should
break down again.  Oh, I know what's in your mind.
You are going to drudge.  And why should you,
when Archie and I would be so delighted to have
you here?  You could help him.  He has told
me——"

"What has he told you?"

His sharp interrogation slightly puzzled her.

"Oh, he says that your hints have been invaluable."

So Archibald had withheld the truth.  He heard
Betty's voice entreating him to come to Cadogan
Place.  His heart was throbbing.  Perhaps she
wanted him.

"I c-c-can't," he stammered.  "I have my p-pride."

"So had Lucifer," she retorted.

That she supposed him cold, he knew.  When
they parted, he smiled to himself because she said
angrily: "You think of nothing but your *Songs of
the Angels*!"

"Angels won't sing in London," he said.

Shortly after this he received a letter from Dudley
McIntyre, the head of an historic publishing house.
McIntyre had read the novel which would not sell,
and begged to have the pleasure of meeting the
author at an early date.  This again was a piece of
luck which Mark discovered, later, to be due to
Tommy Greatorex.  Tommy, who loathed Conquest,
had told McIntyre of what had passed.  McIntyre
had no love for Conquest and despised his business
methods.  When he met Mark, he took a fancy to
him.  Mark, for his part, was charmed with
McIntyre, who represented the publisher of the old
school: being all that Conquest was not: courteous,
sympathetic, speaking with precision in well-chosen
words untainted by slang.  McIntyre, however,
published *belles lettres*, biographies, books of travel,
rather than novels.  Still, he expressed a wish to
see *The Songs of the Angels*, and said that the theme
appealed to him.

"Not that I pretend to be a judge of what will sell
or not sell," he concluded.  "And I seldom pass an
opinion upon a manuscript."

"I should be glad to undertake translations,"
said Mark.

"Will that be worth your while, Mr. Samphire?"

Mark frankly explained his position.  He thought
he was qualified to translate either French or Italian
books.  McIntyre said he would make a note of it,
and did so, entering Mark's address in a small
pocket-book.

"Finish your novel," said he at parting.  "And
give it undivided attention."

Accordingly, Mark remained at Weybridge.  He
realised that if this novel failed, he must become,
as Betty said, a drudge; and he was certain that
hack-writing meant the sacrifice of higher literary
ambitions.  McIntyre was right.  He must make
the effort of his life to grasp something substantial.
If he failed, let him clutch at straws!

Necessity lent edge to the enterprise.  Each
morning he woke with an appetite for work which
seemed to increase rather than diminish.  He
became so absorbed in his task that everything and
everybody became subservient to it.  Archibald had
taken Betty abroad; Pynsent was in Paris; Jim
Corrance had been summoned to New York; David
Ross still held aloof.  So, for six weeks or more, he
was undisturbed by the claims of friendship: the
only claims at that time which he would have considered.

But to such a temperament as Mark's, speech is
vital.  Having no one else, he talked with Mary.
He told himself that Mary was a remarkable girl,
endowed with a fund of practical common sense upon
which he was entitled to draw.  Mary walked every
other Sunday, if it was fine, with the young fellow
of whom mention has been made.  The rest of her
time was spent with her mother and in the
prosecution of duties which lay within the apple-green
palings of her home.  Mrs. Dew kept one servant,
a cook; Mary worked in the house and in the garden.

The Dews, mother and daughter, knew that Mark
was a writer.  Mrs. Dew, however, considered
literary work not quite "genteel."  When Mark
said to her: "You know, Mrs. Dew, that I'm an
author," she sniffed and replied: "I didn't think
you liked it mentioned."

It is curious and instructive to trace any friendship
to its source.  Mark had a character in his book not
unlike Mary.  The reviewers of his first novel agreed
that Mark drew men with a firm touch; his women,
on the other hand, were unconvincing, artificial,
idealised.  It was the most natural thing that he
should say to Mary in his pleasant, friendly voice:
"I s-s-say, Honeydew, if you found yourself in
such-and-such a quandary, what would you do?"

Mary answered this first question so simply and
convincingly that it led to many others.  Mark
ignored her sex, talking to her as he talked to
Pynsent and Corrance.

"Such a lot depends upon the success of this
book," he told her.  "Journalism means bread-and-scrape,
at best cakes and ale, but I'm hungering for
the nectar and ambrosia of Literature.  I feel my
power with the men, but with the women—I grope.
What I don't know about your delightful sex, Mary,
would fill an encyclopædia."

He eyed Mary with wrinkled irritability as a type
of composite womanhood.  After all, he reflected,
"Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady are sisters
under their skins!"  Mary was a bridge by which a
poor ignorant man might cross the gulf which
separates the sexes.  *The Songs of the Angels* was a
love story.  He submitted the plot to Mary, who
confounded him by an apt suggestion.

"By Jove, Honeydew, you know all about it.  I
suppose you've had half a dozen lovers?"

Mary blushed.

"Only Albert Batley."

He spared her confusion, but Mrs. Dew supplied
details.  Albert Batley had a nice growing business,
as a contractor, in and about Weybridge, where
houses were popping up like mushrooms in a night.
Mrs. Dew fretfully complained that Mary did not
know her own mind.  Albert, it appeared, was quite
willing to accept a mother-in-law as a permanent
guest, if Mary would only accept him.  "But
naturally I'm not considered," she concluded, in
that querulous whine which penetrated so far.

"Now, Mrs. Dew," Mark replied, "that won't do
with me.  Mary is as good as gold and your faithful
slave."

"She won't have me long, Mr. Samphire.  I'd
like to see her settled, before I die."

Mark had met Albert, and been much entertained
by him.  Without wasting time in superfluous
verbiage, Mr. Batley had given Mark to understand that
he was ready to buy a wedding-ring, not to mention
other trinkets, as soon as Mary gave him the word.
If ever man was deeply, inextricably in Cupid's
toils, Mr. Batley was he.  *À propos* of this Mark
said one day:

"You see, Honeydew, when a man is in love, he
knows it."

"It works the same way with a woman," said
Mary.  "Only more so."

"Eh?" said Mark.

Mary explained that a girl really and truly in love
was of necessity aware of her condition, because the
fermentation, so to speak, took place in the bottle,
instead of in the barrel with the bung out.  "With
men," she concluded, "it often bubbles away."

Mark detected a note of pain.

"My poor little Honeydew," he said, with warm
sympathy.  "You have suffered.  Some day you
must tell me about it."

"I cared for a man," she murmured, "who cared
nothing for me; but that's over and done with."  Then
she added, blushing: "Albert knows all about
it, and he says he doesn't mind."

"There's no chance of the other——"

"No, no," Mary interrupted.  "He married."

"You will make Albert very happy," said Mark;
"and you will be happy yourself."

"I am happy now," she replied with conviction.

Mark said no more; but Mary's words gave him
pause.  She called herself happy.  Happy—in what?
Only one answer was possible.  Inasmuch as she
had given in fullest measure to others, happiness
had been given to her.





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.. _`A NOTE OF INTERROGATION`:

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   CHAPTER XXX


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NOTE OF INTERROGATION

.. vspace:: 2

The Samphires returned to Cadogan Place in
November.  It was now settled that Archibald
should take the Basilica whenever it was finished,
but the world knew nothing of this till after
Christmas, when there appeared paragraphs in the papers
controlled by Conquest.  One of these caught the
eye of Betty, and she took it to her husband, with
the direct question: "Are you thinking of leaving
St. Anne's?"

He replied with a certain air of restraint: "Yes."

"Why?"

"My dearest, I can do better work there than here.
I had not meant to speak about it to you—yet.  Lord
Vauxhall has paid me a very great compliment."

"What sort of compliment has he paid me?  Did
he ask you to keep so important a matter from your
wife?"

"I so understood him."

"And your word is pledged?"

"Yes."

"Has he offered you more than you receive here?"

"We shall be richer by some hundreds a year."

"I am sorry," said Betty, with heightened colour.
"Lord Vauxhall is shrewd.  Had you seen fit to
consult me, I should have implored you to remain
where you are.  Money is no object to you."

"True.  But preferment——"

"Preferment!  Promotion!  That implies service.
You have only been here eighteen months.  There
will be gossip about this."

"As if I cared for gossip."

"We will say no more about it," said Betty; "but
I tell you frankly that I am hurt!"

She turned and left the room.  That he should
not have trusted her was hard to be borne; yet later
she made allowances for him.  Doubtless, Lord
Vauxhall had insisted upon secrecy.  Her husband's
sense of honour had closed his lips.  She had been
unjust, unkind, a disloyal wife.  She had even
insulted him, hinting that an increase of income had
lured him from duty.  At this point she bathed her
eyes, arranged her hair, and ran downstairs to beg
pardon and entreat forgiveness.  Archibald was
magnanimous.

"You have shown the right feeling, dear Betty,
which I knew you possessed.  I am acting according
to my lights."

Next day the Rector of St. Anne's wired to Mark
to come to town; Mark replied that he had had a
bad bout of influenza, in those days a new and
virulent disease.  Archibald, nervous about his Lenten
sermons but laughing to scorn the possibility of
catching influenza, went down to Weybridge in the
afternoon.  He found Mark looking pale and thin,
but otherwise in good spirits, and on the high road
to recovery.

"You're a valiant man to visit me.  This confounded
disease is so infectious.  You laugh?  You'll
cry if you get it!  I've been as weak as a baby.  If
it had not been for Honeydew——"

He spoke enthusiastically of all his nurse had
done for him.  Archibald nodded absently, turning
over in his mind certain possible themes which he
wished Mark to consider.

"Yes, yes," he interrupted.  "She did what she
could, I make no doubt."

"She's one of the very best," cried Mark.  "I
say—it was awfully good of you, old Archie, to run
down here.  I expect work has piled up."

"It has; it has.  I want to speak to you about
that."  He paused for a moment, as a smile flickered
across Mark's lips.  Archibald, Mark was reflecting,
had an axe to grind.  He had not left home merely
to visit a brother laid by the heels.  Suddenly his
feeling which had flamed grew chill.  He listened
perfunctorily to some introductory remarks.

"My Lenten sermons are giving me grave anxiety;
I find that something out of the common is expected.
If you will bear with me, I'll walk over the—er—course
which I've marked out."

"Cut along!" said Mark.

Archibald winced.  Mark had no sense of the
fitness of things.  He spoke at times as if he (the
Rector of St. Anne's) were a boy in his teens.
Perhaps a word in season might——

"*À propos*," he said, with dignity, "don't you
think, my dear fellow, that it is time for you to put
away certain childish—you will pardon the adjective—certain
childish expressions.  It's absurd to talk of
a man of my weight—'cutting along'...."

"True!  You can stroll if you like, as the placid
Pecksniff strolled.  You have put on weight, Archie."

Archibald, indeed, was broader and thicker about
the neck and shoulders.  He had lost the look of
youth; the hair on the top of his head was thinner;
his eyes were less clear; his fine skin had become
redder and coarser in texture.

"I carry great burdens," he replied.  "Perhaps I
ought not to ask you to share them."

Mark responded instantly, touched by this
unexpected solicitude: "I'm all right."

"You might come to us for a week.  Betty will nurse you."

"That is impossible.  I must finish my book."

"Oh, yes—your book.  I am looking forward to
reading that.  But I wish you would turn your
talents to something more serious than fiction. I——"

"Shall we talk about your work?"

Archibald smiled, but Mark fidgeted and frowned,
as carefully culled platitudes fell upon his ear.
Archibald was indeed strolling placidly down
familiar paths to the great festival of Christendom.  The
very name of Easter had always quickened Mark's
pulses.  Hitherto he had hastened to the feast, the
most joyful of pilgrims.  Now he was shut out; or
rather, the door stood wide open, but he dared not
pass it.  The ban lay upon him—and upon how
many thousands?  His imagination flared, revealing
a multitude staring with yearning eyes at tables
spread for others.  Archibald, in his silky tones, was
enumerating celestial joys.  His words flowed like a
pellucid stream.

"What are you smiling at?" he asked abruptly.

"I beg your pardon," Mark replied, "but you
remind me of an alderman reciting to a starving
mob the names of the dishes to which he and his
corporation are about to sit down."

Archibald had wit enough to see and feel the
point.  He saw, too, that Mark was moved.

"You have an idea.  I should like to hear it,
although——"

"Although I am without the pale, you would say.
Archie, if you would descend from your pulpit and
walk in the shadows with me for a little while—and
if then you could set forth my doubts and perplexities,
how many, think you, of your congregation
would not say: 'I, too, have wandered in those blind
alleys.'  And having pierced the crust of their
indifference with your sympathy and insight, if then
you could transmit the light which seems to have
always blazed on you, this Easter would indeed be
a Day of Resurrection to hundreds who now lie cold
and dead."  He paused, gazed keenly at Archibald,
and continued: "But you—you cannot do that.
You have not trod the wilderness...."  He
covered his face with his hand.

"It is true," said Archibald, in a low voice, "that
I do lack an experience common, I fear, to hundreds
of my parishioners.  And if I cannot open their
hearts, and you can, lend me your key."

Mark was silent.  Then, as before, the sense that
he had envied and hated this once dearly beloved
brother made him generous.

"I will write down and send what is in my mind.
No—don't thank me!"

He began to talk briskly of other things.
Presently Mary came in and reminded him to take his
medicine.  Archibald had not seen her before.
Twice during the previous summer Betty and he
had come to Weybridge, but each day had been
spent upon the river.  Mark went into his bedroom,
and Mary disappeared, to reappear a moment later
with a tea-tray.  Archibald was alone with her for a
couple of minutes.  She arranged the tea-things
with quick, deft fingers, displaying the admirable
lines of her figure as she moved to and fro, now
standing upright, now bending down.  In the soft
light of the spring afternoon she looked charming,
with the inexpressible freshness of youth and health.
Archibald addressed her.

"You are," he was about to say "Mary," but
changed it to "Miss Dew."

"Oh, no, I am Mary," she replied, smiling.
"Your brother calls me 'Honeydew.'"

"My brother calls you a ministering angel."

His soft voice had that fluid quality which
percolates everywhere.  He meant to be polite, nothing
more; he wished to thank a pretty girl who had
nursed a brother: but to Mary his words had other
significance; his glance became an indictment, his
tone inquisitorial.  Without reason, her cheeks
flamed.  Archibald turned aside, murmuring a
commonplace.  When he looked at her, after a discreet
interval, she was composed but pale.  She went out
of the room and did not return.

"Um!" said Archibald to himself, "I must speak
to Betty about this."

Not, however, till late did he find an opportunity.
Harry Kirtling was dining in Cadogan Place, and
loath to say good-night.  The young fellow had
crushed a muscle of his leg out hunting, and had
come up to London to see a famous surgeon, who
prescribed gentle walking exercise and massage.
Harry complained bitterly of the hardship of
spending a fortnight away from his kennels, but was
consoled by Betty, who promised to entertain him.
Despite his injury, he looked astonishingly well, and
brought with him from Cumberland a breezy
atmosphere of mountain and moor which Betty inhaled
gratefully.  He had managed to make it plain that
he was still her devoted slave—a tribute which the
best of women accept without scruple.  And he had
asked her advice upon a score of matters connected
with Kirtling.

When Harry had taken his clean, lean body out of
her drawing-room, Betty turned rather impatiently
to Archibald.

"Has anything happened?  You have been so
glum.  Surely you do not resent my asking Harry
to dine without consulting you?"

"Harry?"  His tone was heavily contemptuous.
"Harry can waste as much of your time as you like
to give him.  Yes; something has happened."

He told his story.

"I don't believe it."

"The girl is attractive.  Her mother, I am told,
reckons herself a lady.  Something must be done.  I
give you my word that I am not mistaken."

"I don't believe it," Betty repeated.

None the less, she did believe it.  Here again
Archibald's voice beguiled her understanding.  He
had acquired that power, invaluable to a clergyman
or a barrister, of making every statement sound as if
it were irrefutable fact.

"I went down to Weybridge to see Mark on
important business, and for a quarter of an hour he
sang this girl's praises.  It is obvious that he wished
to impress me, to make me see with his eyes."

"What is she like?" Betty asked, shortly.

Archibald described her with a deliberation which
annoyed his wife.

"The girl is very comely, my dear; alluring,
many men would call her.  A seductive figure—round,
but not too plump; the complexion of Hebe."

"That's enough," said Betty.

"I tried to do the girl justice," replied her
husband with dignity.  "Personally speaking, her type
of beauty does not appeal to me, but as a man of the
world I cannot deny that it may appeal irresistibly
to others!"

"You call yourself a man of the world," said
Betty suddenly.  "You do not preach to us as a
man of the world.  If this girl loves Mark, if he has
made her love him, you ought to be the first to urge
him to marry her.  From a pagan point of view
such a marriage may seem disastrous, but from the
Christian's——"

She confronted him with heaving bosom and
flaming eyes.  Her agitation and excitement amazed him.
But he grasped the essential fact that he had
blundered, that it might be difficult to retrieve the
blunder.  He was aware that some of his sermons
moved his wife to the core, for she had told him so a
score of times.  He was also aware, but as yet in
less degree, that as mere man he had aroused
without adequately satisfying her expectations.

"If you choose to misinterpret me——" he began.

"But I don't choose.  I ask you, you the preacher
and teacher, to make plain a puzzle which you, not
I, have propounded.  Let us admit what you tell me.
Heaven knows that Mark has lived a lonely and
forlorn life.  Never has he complained to me; but I have
guessed, I have felt that—that—beneath the mask
he chooses to wear a devil tears him.  That devil
drove him from the Church.  Well, we know that
misery loves company.  He has talked to me about
this girl.  She is a plucky creature, like Mark,
inasmuch as she faces adversity with a smile.  She has a
selfish, querulous mother to whom she is devoted.
Such a girl would appeal to such a man.  And now
you tell me that she is attractive.  It is significant
that Mark never mentioned that to me.  I take back
what I said.  I believe you are right.  Mark *has*
learned to love this girl, and she loves him.  And
what are you going to do about it?  And in what
capacity?  As a man of the world?  Or as a priest of
the Most High God?

"I beg you to compose yourself."

"You can compose me by telling the truth——"

"You dare to imply that——"

"I dare be honest with my husband.  I have not
been happy for some weeks, and you must have
noticed it.  Sometimes, particularly of late, I look
for the man I married, and I find somebody else.
Let me finish!  I am too conscious of my own
shortcomings not to be aware that between most
husbands and wives lie troubled waters only to be
passed by mutual faith and patience.  Why, happiness
is faith; and women, I often think, are on the
whole happier than men, because their faith is
stronger.  A woman can believe in her child, in her
husband, in her God.  Well, as years passed, my
faith in God grew dim, and you restored my sight.
But now, somehow, I no longer see so clearly.  Is
it my fault or yours?  I listen to your sermons, and
then I come back to this luxurious house, and
somebody tells me that you are *persona grata* at
Windsor—that you are sure to be made a bishop, as if
preferment were salvation; and——"

"My dear!" said Archibald, "it is late, and I have
half a dozen letters to write.  You have been talking
in an unrestrained manner.  You are not yourself."

He left the room, erect, impassive, master of
himself, but not of her.  She gazed defiantly after him,
clenching her slender fingers.  Intuition told her that
this man was trying to serve God and Mammon, but
when he came to bed an hour later, she owned
herself humbly in the wrong.  Again Archibald was
magnanimous, assuring his dearest Betty that already
he had forgiven and forgotten her offence.  The
"forgotten" sounded patronising.  As if he, with
his memory, could forget!  She lay awake, perplexed
and dismayed, for she knew that Mark was still so
dear to her that the thought of his caring for any
other woman was insupportable.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BETTY SEES DANGER SIGNALS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   BETTY SEES DANGER SIGNALS

.. vspace:: 2

Second thoughts constrained Archibald not to
interfere with Mark.  He told himself that he
had been alarmed unnecessarily.  Mark was in no
position to marry a penniless girl; the infatuation—if
infatuation had been aroused—would subside,
the more quickly, doubtless, if undisturbed.
Moreover, he was too busy to give affairs other than his
own more than a passing thought.  Four days after
the visit to Weybridge he received from Mark a
huge envelope filled with rough notes and
suggestions for a course of Lenten sermons.  With these
(and supplementary to them) were a score of sheets
of foolscap setting forth the phases of modern
unbelief, or want of belief.  Archibald read this record
with a keen appreciation of its dramatic value, but—it
would be unfair to suppress the fact—touched to
issues higher than those involved in rhetoric.  His
extraordinary "flair" had not been at fault.  Mark
had given him more than ideas: insight into a
human heart.  And whatever he saw Archibald
could describe with emphasis and effect.  At once
the plan and purpose of his sermons were made
clear.  He would take infidelity as his theme, and
treat it synthetically, putting together all forms of
unbelief, and exhibiting them as the root from
which evil sprang and flourished.  Faithlessness
was the common denominator of suffering and sin.
He remembered what Betty had said about
happiness in women being dependent on faith, and told
her that wittingly or unwittingly she had hit a truth.
But if he expected her to hit another, he was
disappointed.  She said quietly that she had drawn
a bow at a venture.

About this time she paid a visit to Weybridge,
Mark still pleading work as an excuse for not coming
to Cadogan Place.  Archibald awaited her report
with awakened interest.  Betty told her husband
that Mark was certainly madly in love—with his
heroine.

"And he tells me," she concluded triumphantly,
"that Mary, who seems a nice modest girl, is going
to marry a Mr. Batley.  When *The Songs of the
Angels* is sent off to his publisher, he will come
to us."

About mid-Lent the novel was despatched to town.
After a few days a letter came from McIntyre,
accepting the MS. and offering better terms than Mark
had expected—fifty pounds upon the day of publication
and a royalty upon a sliding scale.  An American
publisher, Cyrus Otway, who had large dealings
with McIntyre's house, happened to be in England.
He offered Mark similar terms for the American
rights.  Mark was jubilant, but McIntyre predicted
limited sales.

"It will be well received," he said.  "My readers
have no doubt on that point, but we do not expect
it to be popular.  You have an admirable style, but
your subject—eh?—is sublimated: over the heads
of many.  And the story is sad.  The public likes
a happy ending.  Other things being equal, the
story with the happy ending sells four to one at
least.  Mr. Cyrus Otway would like to meet you."  Mark
lunched with Cyrus Otway, and was entertained
handsomely.

"I'll be frank with you, Mr. Samphire," said the
Boston publisher, a thin, pale, carefully dressed
man, with a typical New England manner as prim
and precise as a spinster's, and very bright, restless
eyes.  "This is an experiment on our part—a leap
in the dark.  Our people, sir, know a good thing
when they see it.  But the difficulty lies in making
them see it.  Have you done any dramatic work?
You have not.  Ah, there's a goldfield!  And,
if I may be allowed to say so, I think that you
would strike rich ore there.  You have dramatic
power and a re—markable insight into character...."

Mark repeated this conversation to Betty.  He
was staying at Cadogan Place and in high spirits.
The drudgery of hack-writing no longer impended.
Already he was in a position to do the work he
liked best where and when and how he pleased.

"A hundred pounds is not much," said Betty
doubtfully.

"It will last me a year," said Mark.

Meantime, Archibald's Lenten sermons were filling
St. Anne's every Sunday and exciting widespread
comment.  Mark had seen and revised the first
three before he left Weybridge.  The others were
prepared and written out under Mark's eye in the
comfortable library at Cadogan Place.  The Rector
of St. Anne's made no scruple of accepting what
help his brother could give him.  Mark honoured
all cheques, reflecting that this was a labour of love,
which made for his happiness as well as Betty's.  It
never struck him that he was compounding a moral
felony.  Such knowledge came later; but, at the
moment, had any person—Lady Randolph, for
instance—pointed out what he was doing, he would
have indignantly (and honestly) repudiated his own
actions.

Betty listened to every word of these sermons and
told herself she was the wife of an evangelist.  None
the less, she did not ignore the fact that a sharp
distinction lay between Archibald as Man and
Archibald as Priest.  One day she said to Mark,
"Somehow one does not expect a great preacher to
lose his temper because the cook has sent up cod
without oyster sauce."

"Oh, his little weaknesses ought to endear him to
such a woman as you are.  He tells us each
Sunday what a man ought to be, and on weekdays he
shows us what a man is.  A preacher without his
little infirmities would be as uninteresting as—as cod
without oyster sauce."

After Easter, Mark returned to Weybridge.  Betty
missed him so much that she had a fit of nervous
depression which lasted two days.  She made a
resolution to devote herself to parochial work, to
begin a course of stiff reading: pamphlets dealing
with the better housing of the poor, and kindred
subjects.

Mark was now absorbed in writing another novel,
and in the correction of proofs.  *The Songs of the
Angels* appeared simultaneously in New York and
London upon the first of May.  Mark wrote to Betty
that he had never felt in such good health, or more
sanguine about the future.  He was living in the
open air, and had the appetite and complexion of a
gipsy.

Archibald, meanwhile, was working hard on
committees, hand-in-glove with a ducal philanthropist,
whose music-loving duchess declared that
Mr. Samphire had the best tenor voice in the kingdom.
In return for this high compliment, the Rector of
St. Anne's was persuaded to sing at the duchess's
small dinner parties; and this led to a widening
of a circle of acquaintance, which now included
some very great people indeed.  Betty found
herself dining out three days in the week, and was
amazed to discover that her husband enjoyed this
mild dissipation.  As a celebrity he began to be
courted wherever he went, and his photograph
embellished certain shops.  Young women entreated
him to write in their albums.

The world said that Chrysostom was a good fellow
and still unspoiled, but his wife noted an
ever-increasing complacency and compliancy which gave
her pause.  He had begged her, it will be remembered,
to keep at arm's length certain frisky dames
whom she had met at Newmarket and Monte Carlo,
when she was under Lady Randolph's wing.  These
ladies were of no particular rank or position.  But
when Lady Cheyne, notorious all over Europe before
and after she married her marquess, called upon
Mrs. Samphire, Archibald insisted upon Betty
returning the call and accepting an invitation to dine
at Cheyne House.  Betty protested, but he said
blandly: "I have reason to know that Lady Cheyne
is an indefatigable worker in Chelsea.  She will be
a parishioner of ours when we go to the Basilica.
Personally I do not believe half the stories they tell
about her."

"I should hope not," said Betty.  "If a quarter
be true, she is dyed scarlet."

Often she talked to Lady Randolph, but never
with the candour of bygone days.  Intuition told
her that her old friend had no great liking for
Archibald, although she rejoiced at his success.

"You were at Cheyne House last night," said
Lady Randolph, with the twinkle in her eye which
Betty knew so well.  "I dare swear the dinner, my
dear, was better than the company."

"Archie says the dinner was perfection."  Then
she flushed slightly, remembering that her husband
ought to know, for he had spared but few dishes.
"Have you read Mark's new book?"

"I have," said Lady Randolph.

At once Betty began to praise the *Songs*.  It was
to be inferred from her sparkling eyes and eager
gestures that Mark's success had become vital to
her.  Lady Randolph drew conclusions which she
kept to herself.  But that night she said to Lord
Randolph: "I saw Betty Samphire this afternoon.
It is as I feared.  Her parson, the man beneath
the surplice, never inspired anything warmer than
respect."

"Ay, say you so?  Dear me—that's a pity.  But
there's stout stuff under the surplice."

"Stout?"  Lady Randolph smiled.  "You have
hit the word, Randolph.  Stout—and growing
stouter.  And some of the stuff is—stuffing."

"My dear, you are severe.  *Who drives fat horses
should himself be fat*.  I have noticed that your
good round parson is the most popular; your lean
fellow makes everybody uncomfortable.  Archibald
is thought highly of.  He is approachable; he has
great gifts of organisation; he is liked by
Nonconformists and Roman Catholics."

"No doubt," replied Lady Randolph impatiently.
"In a word he can lunch at Lambeth and dine at
Cheyne House, but I am thinking of Betty.  A
sword impends."

In a vague, mysterious way Betty herself was
conscious of danger.  As a girl the pageant of the
London season had excited her.  Her sensibilities,
too keen, her adaptability, her faculty for
enjoyment, inevitably were overstrained during those
feverish months between April and August.  When
she married a clergyman she told herself that she
was out of the rapids and at rest in a placid
backwater.  Now, involuntarily, she had been sucked
into the current again.  And curiously intermingled
with the feeling of apprehension was a thrill.  At
times the desire to let herself go, to fling herself,
like a Mænad, into the gay crowds, to be reckless,
as they were, became almost irresistible.  The
devil-may-care temperament of the De Courcys set her
pulses a-tingling.  But so far she had restrained
these longings.  And then one night, in late June,
Harry Kirtling met her at a ducal house to which
Archibald deemed it a duty to go.  A splendid
entertainment had been provided.  A famous prima
donna and a brilliant violinist enchanted lovers of
music; a French comedian travelled from Paris to
recite; minor luminaries twinkled round these fixed
stars.  A few choice spirits, however, had
withdrawn to a small room set apart for cards, wherein
a young guardsman had opened a bank at baccarat.
This was in flagrant bad taste, for both host and
hostess detested gambling.  Yet it lent a spice to
the adventure.  Lady Cheyne told her cavalier that
she felt as if she were meeting a lover in a church.
When the fun was getting furious, Betty and
Kirtling came in on the heels of curiosity.  Betty
drew back, but Harry held her arm.  A moment
later he was recognised and invited to try his luck.
Always easy-going and thoughtless, he pressed
forward, half dragging Betty with him.  Lady Cheyne
looked up, saw Betty, and screamed with laughter.
Her mocking laughter roused the devil in Betty.
She had not gambled since her marriage; and
gambling in all its forms was regarded by Archibald
as a deadly sin.  Upon the Sunday succeeding
Derby Day he had preached upon this very subject.
He had shown that betting had become a national
vice; he had described with dramatic force its moral
effect upon servants and children.  This was one of
a series of sermons upon the sins of the day, in the
preparation of which the Rector of St. Anne's
needed no assistance from others: culling his facts
from pamphlets and Blue Books, and marshalling
them with the skill which comes from long practice.
To such sermons Betty lent an indifferent ear.
They were of the Gradgrind type: too didactic, too
florid, too obvious, to appeal to the intellectual
members of his congregation.  He preached in
the same Cambyses vein upon drunkenness and
gluttony.  When Lady Cheyne laughed, Betty was
vouchsafed a vision of her husband as she had seen
him ten minutes before, sharing a *pâté* with a
be-diamonded countess who admitted frankly that she
lived to sup.

"You must not peach, Mrs. Samphire!" cried
Lady Cheyne, turning up her impudent nose.

For a moment the game was stopped, and those
present stared at Betty.

"Peach?" echoed Harry, who had certainly taken
more than his allowance of champagne.  "Not she!
Come on, Betty, let us venture a sovereign!"  He
put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a
five-pound note.  "Halves?" Betty nodded.  "When
it's gone, we'll stop—eh?"

Betty nodded again, beginning to laugh.  One of
the young men offered her his chair.

"You play," said Harry.  "I'm such an unlucky
beggar."  He pushed the counters which he had
received in exchange for his note in front of her.
The dealer picked up the pack in front of him, and
began to deal.  Up till then he had won.  Now his
luck deserted him and fell on Betty.

"*Tapez sur la veine*," said Harry.  "Pile it on, Betty!"

By this time Betty was sorry she had sat down.
In the hope of losing what she had won already, she
did pile it on, the banker making no objection.  But
still she won, and won, and won.  And then, in the
middle of the noise and laughter, the host walked
in—and out!  But the expression on his face put
an instant stop to the proceedings.  The young
guardsman, looking exceedingly foolish, pulled
out a pencil and began computing his losses to Betty.

"I make it seventy-five pound," he said.  "I'll
send it to you to-morrow, Mrs. Samphire."

"No, no," said Betty.

"Pooh," said Harry.  "You forget that I'm
your partner.  We'll have a spree together with
this ill-gotten gold."  He laughed, and the others
joined in, but Betty smiled dismally.  All London
would be prattling of this escapade within a few
hours.

Going home in the brougham she told Archibald
what had passed.  The light inside the carriage was
dim, but she felt rather than saw his face stiffen into
amazed displeasure.

"And the Duke came in?"

She understood from his tone that being caught
was not the least part of the offence.

"I have said that I am very sorry."

"You have made me ridiculous," said Archibald
in a tone she had not heard from him before.

"You will make yourself ridiculous," she retorted,
"if you take this too seriously."

He exclaimed hotly: "I would not have had it
happen for five hundred pounds."

The opportunity was irresistible to murmur: "The
moral obliquity of it seems to have escaped you."

"What?  You laugh?  You sneer?  This is too
much, too much."

"Much too much," Betty answered disdainfully.
"I said I was sorry.  Well, I'm nothing of the
kind—now.  I'm glad.  And I shall play again, if I
choose, and back horses, as I used to do, when I was
a happy sinner."

To this Archibald made no reply, and Betty told
herself that she was a shrew.  As the brougham
stopped she said in a low voice: "Archie, I
apologise."

Her husband, in a voice colder than liquid air,
replied: "I accept your apology, Betty, but let me
beg that nothing of this sort occurs again."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BETTY MAKES GOOD RESOLUTIONS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BETTY MAKES GOOD RESOLUTIONS

.. vspace:: 2

During July a deanery in the West of England
fell vacant and was offered to Archibald
Samphire.  Conquest, acting on a hint from Lord
Vauxhall, came post haste to Cadogan Place.  It
happened that he was shown into the drawing-room,
and it also happened that on the balcony Betty sat
in a chair, fast asleep, with a dull novel on her lap.
The balcony was a pretty place, protected from the
sun by a striped awning and filled with palms and
plants.

Conquest looked more enormous than usual in a
light grey frock-coat, open in front, revealing a vast
extent of white waistcoat.  His eyes sparkled keenly
beneath the heavy black brows.  Archibald found
himself shirking these piercing eyes, as he explained
that his library was filled with a deputation of
working men, from whom he had escaped with difficulty.
Conquest nodded impatiently as Archie's polished
periods fell softly upon the air heavy with the heat
of summer and the perfume of many flowers.

"Yes, yes," he said; "I'm obliged.  I hate to be
kept waiting.  About this deanery—hey?"

"I am giving the matter earnest consideration."

"You can't afford to take it," said Conquest
abruptly.  "If you go there, you'll stay there, mark
my words!  That'll be the end of you.  I told
Vauxhall you'd too much common sense to chuck
him.  If it were a bishopric, of course, Vauxhall
would not stand in the way.  I can't pick my words.
And by this time you and I understand each other."

He spread out his broad, pudgy hands in a gesture
familiar to Archibald.

"How did you hear?"

"It's my business to hear things.  I've a hundred
eyes and a thousand ears.  Well?"

"It's great preferment."

"You will be 'Mr. Dean' of course.  But you'll
be out of sight and out of mind.  How did you get
this offer?  By being on the spot.  I'll say a word
more, only you mustn't give me away.  You met
the Prime Minister at Belgrave House the other
day.  My friend, he had heard you preach a certain
sermon at Westchester, but, by gad! he'd forgotten you."

"Forgotten me?" exclaimed Archibald.  "Why,
he came up as soon as the ladies left the
dining-room, and was most civil."

"He can be civil when he likes," said Conquest
drily.  "All the same, he had forgotten your name;
he did not know what you were doing.  The Duchess,
who is a capital friend of yours and a good creature
although she does sniff, sang your praises for five
minutes.  And that did the trick.  Of course, he
made inquiries; he satisfied himself that you are a
corking good worker and a discreet fellow, and all
that, but, bless my soul, aren't there hundreds of
such?  Lord—yes.  But they don't dine at Belgrave
House.  Now, look here, I've no time to waste.  I
came here to do you a friendly turn.  You will gain
far more than you will lose by refusing this so-called
preferment.  And I'll see that your self-sacrifice is
duly recorded.  Trust me for that.  You think
you've made a mark.  So you have; so you have;
but you must deepen the impression.  You've a
magnificent voice, but, man—it won't carry four
hundred miles.  If you want it to be heard by the
right people you must preach in a London pulpit."

"My dear Conquest, I really——"

"Pooh, pooh!  You don't like me the less because
I talk straight when no one is listening.  Now—stand
and deliver a monosyllable.  Are you going to chuck
Vauxhall?  Yes—or No?"

"I have no intention of chucking Lord Vauxhall
or anybody else."

"Right.  That means No.  Good-bye.  You'll see
a leader in next Saturday's *Mercury* which will warm
the cockles of your heart."

Before Archibald could reply, Conquest was out
of the room.  For a big man he could move—when
he so chose—with amazing quickness and lightness.
He disappeared, leaving a vacuum which Betty
filled.  As Archibald turned, after ringing the bell
for a servant to show out Conquest, he saw his wife
standing in the window, framed by the ferns and palms.

"Betty!" he exclaimed.

"Why didn't you kick that—that beast downstairs?
I heard what he said.  He insulted you.
I was asleep outside.  His voice woke me.  For
your sake, not mine, I resisted the temptation to
come forward, and—oh, I could have flown at him!"

Her bosom heaved; her eyes sparkled.  Archibald
stared at her dully, wondering what words would
meet this emergency.

"Have you nothing to say?" she cried.

"My dear," he said, "you do not understand."

"Then explain—explain!"

"Conquest means well.  He is our friend; a
rough diamond, I grant you, but he means well.
He is our friend."

He repeated the words, sensible that they were
inadequate, yet unable to find others.

"Save us from such friends!"

"I had almost decided to send a refusal."

"Why—why, only last night you were on edge to
accept.  You gave me a dozen *pros* against my two
or three *cons*."

"And perhaps," said Archibald, in what Betty
sometimes called his "antiseptic" manner, "those
*cons* outweighed the *pros*, although numerically less.
Conquest takes your view of the matter.  He feels
that I have undertaken a task here in Chelsea, which
cannot be abandoned.  He——"

"He tells you to *reculer pour mieux sauter*," said
Betty derisively, "to refuse a deanery and accept
a bishopric later!  He—the apostle of expediency,
of diplomacy, of compromise!  Well—I do not
judge him.  But he counts you to be of his own
opinion.  He brands you as a time-server, a worldling,
a parasite.  And you let him do it—and shake
hands with him!  And, on next Saturday—you will
read a leader in the *Mercury* which will warm the
cockles of your heart."

"Protest would have been wasted," said Archibald.
"If you will excuse me, my dear, I will go
downstairs.  The deputation is waiting for me."

"One moment," said Betty.  "I have something
to say which must be said—here and now.  Last
night you spoke eloquently enough of that west
country and the life we might lead there.  And
I—I," she faltered and blushed, "I was not honest
when I urged you to stay here.  I am drifting into
the old hateful whirlpool from which I thought I
had escaped for ever.  I pictured to myself life in
a cathedral close—stagnant, dun-coloured, full of
uninteresting duties—and I recoiled from it.  I
smelled that old smell of cleaned gloves at all the
parties.  I thought of myself, not of you.  But now,
I beseech you to consider what London means to
both of us—to you and to me.  And if Mr. Conquest
is right, if your sacred profession is a trade, if great
success in it can be achieved only by such self-advertisement
as he thinks justifiable, is such success
worth having to a Christian gentleman?"

Archibald frowned.  Then, feeling that his powers
of speech had returned to him, he answered at
length, citing certain prelates whose piety, sincerity,
and humility were above reproach.  Conquest took
the worldling's view.  He was more than half pagan,
and he posed openly as a scoffer and a cynic.  Still,
he was right in contending that the great places
in the Church's gift were held by those whom a wide
knowledge of the world had equipped.  Such
knowledge was not to be gleaned in a cathedral
close lying in the heart of a sleepy west country
town.  He hoped that his dearest Betty would not
misunderstand him when he confessed frankly that
he did aspire to the highest positions, not for what
they might hold of honour or emolument, but for
the power they conferred of doing widespread good
to others.  Warming to his theme, he flooded Betty's
perplexed mind with scores of ready-made
phrases—phrases laboriously accumulated: stones, so to
speak, with which he had fortified his own position.

"Oh—I am muddled, muddled," said Betty.

"I have been muddled myself," her husband admitted.
"Modern life must perplex and distress the
wisest.  And all of us at times feel a desire to get
out of the hurly-burly.  Shall I say that last night,
feeling worn out and discouraged, I did long for the
quiet and peace of that west-country deanery; but
this morning—now," he expanded his chest, "I am
myself again."

He smiled assuringly and left the room.

When he had gone, Betty went back to the chair
among the ferns and palms.  She tried to go over
what her husband had said, to look at the matter
fairly from his point of view.  But the effort was
greater than she could compass.  She felt as if she
had been submerged in a torrent of words, and of
these words nothing was left—only a sense of
desolation and isolation.

When she saw Mark a few days later, the article
in the *Mercury* had been published.  Conquest was
given to boasting that he could "boom" an author
with such subtlety that none, not even the man
himself, suspected what was being done.  The readers
of the *Mercury* rose from the perusal of the article
in question convinced that a seasonable and
well-deserved tribute had been paid to a saintly and
self-sacrificing preacher of Christ's gospel.  Archibald,
reading it, was aware that his cheeks, as also the
cockles of his heart, were very warm indeed.  Betty
did not read the article.  Mark, however, was full
of it, not knowing that Conquest had written it.

"The truth is," he told Betty, "the truth is,
Betty, that I did not like his acceptance of the
Basilica.  It bothered me a good deal.  Now this
proves plainly that Archie is above worldly
considerations.  Not another man of his age would
have refused such an offer."

Betty asked for news of the *Songs*.

Of this Mark had nothing very encouraging to
tell.  The book, handsomely received by the Press,
was in fair demand at the libraries, but less than
two thousand copies had been sold.  In America as
yet it had not, so Otway wrote, "caught on."  The
new novel, *A Soul Errant*, was sure to be a success.
He talked with animation for half an hour, describing
his characters.

"You live for this," said Betty abruptly.

"Do you blame me," he answered quickly, "because
I make the most of what is left?"

"I beg your pardon," she replied.

Later, she inquired after Mary Dew.

"She's having a better time of it," Mark declared.
"I don't mind telling you, Betty, that I've tackled
her mother.  I told her she was a slave-owner, a
despot, and a bully.  She took it like a lamb, and
things at Myrtle Cottage are easier, I can assure
you."

"And Albert what's-his-name, who is going to
marry your paragon——"

"Albert Batley is making money.  He has a
big building contract near Surbiton.  He will give
Honeydew all she wants, and deserves."

"You know nothing of women, Mark."

"So the critics say—confound 'em; but I tell you,
Betty, I know a good woman when I see her."

"There you are; displaying your ignorance.  You
talk in that foolish masculine manner of good women,
as if good women were in a class by themselves, and
different from all others.  Why good and evil are
such relative terms that sometimes I can't tell one
from the other."

"Then you're a miserable sinner, and blind to
boot.  Good, the genuine article, can never be
mistaken for evil, although evil, I grant you, may
counterfeit good.  Bless me!  I've been puzzled a
score of times by sinners, but I never mistook a
saint."

"How many have you met?"

"More than you think," he replied gravely.

"And where do you place me?  Among the sheep
or the goats?"

Mark wondered why her lips trembled.  She looked
tired and pale, much paler than usual.

"What a question!" he said lightly.

"I'll answer it myself, Mark.  I have an
extraordinary appreciation of good.  There are times
when I have soared—yes, that's the word—into
another world.  I had dreams, visions if you like,
when I was a girl, but the most vivid experience
of the kind came upon me unexpectedly—in
Westchester Cathedral, upon the day Archie preached
his sermon.  I grasped Something that morning
which cannot be described, but It was real substance.
I grasped It, and I let It go.  Since I have wondered
what It was.  Perhaps I—touched—God."

"Ah!" said Mark.  "Go on, go on!"

She saw that his eyes were shining, that the
expression which she had missed from his face
since her marriage had come back.

"Go—on," she sighed.  "I am going back.  Can
you help me?"

She turned to him with a pathetic gesture of
entreaty.  The light faded in Mark's face.  He
began to stammer.

"If I c-c-could——"

"You believed once.  And now your faith is
gone!  Why?  How?  You *must* tell me."

In her excitement she laid her hand upon his
wrist, clutching it fiercely.  He felt that her fingers
were burning, that the fire in them was fluid, that
in another moment the flame would flare in him,
consuming them both.  He rose, releasing his wrist
with violence.

"I c-c-can't tell you that."  He moved half a
dozen paces from her, before he turned.  When
he spoke again his voice was quite steady.  "Faith
oozes from some people imperceptibly: there is a
steady drain of which they may be unaware, but
my faith left me in an instant.  It may come back
as suddenly.  It may be redeemed.  I have thought
sometimes that faith is God's franchise which is
given freely to all, and taken away from the
unworthy.  And once taken away, it is never given
again, never.  It must be ransomed—paid for."

As he spoke he was aware that at any cost to his
own feelings the talk must be turned into safer
channels.  His first impulse had been one of
unreasoning fear and horror.  When she touched him,
he lost for a terrible moment his self-control.  Love
is a despot whose lightest word may make the
bravest coward.  Seeing her distress, hearing her
quavering voice, feeling her trembling fingers, he
had divined his own weakness.

"Paid for?"  She echoed the words.  "How?"

"By sacrifice," he answered slowly.  "By blood
sacrifice."

.. vspace:: 2

When he had gone, she went to her room and
locked the door.  Alone, her face flamed with anger
against herself.  Had she betrayed her secret?  She
could not answer the question.  Had he spoken
coldly, precisely—on purpose?  Nine women out
of ten distrust a man's works, and have absurd and
infantile faith in his words.  But Betty had had a
surfeit of words from her husband.  Of late, much
of her leisure had been wasted in trying to
determine their value.  Archibald's works were
self-explanatory.  He was indefatigable as parish priest
and philanthropist.  Such work could be measured;
it lay within a circle, say the inner circle of the
Underground Railway.  But his sonorous phrases,
his dogmas and doctrines, were immeasurable:
including this world, past and present, and the world
to come.  It was natural, therefore, that finding
herself compassless in a sea of sentences, she would
steer by the light of such fixed stars as frequent
communions, charity organisation, the visiting of
the sick, and the crusade against alcohol.  In a
word, she had come to the conclusion that it did
not matter very much what a man said, but that
what he did was vital to his own welfare and the
welfare of others, the true expression of his
character and temperament.  Whenever a woman touches
the fringe of such a commonplace, you may be sure
that she will watch a man's actions, the more closely,
perhaps, because she has become too heedless of his
words.  Betty had seen Mark shrink with a violent
effort from her touch; he had kept out of Cadogan
Place during the summer; he had lost faith in
revealed religion.  What if these effects were to be
traced to one cause—herself?

When she was able to think articulately, pleasure
in her discovery was obliterated by pain—the bitter
pangs of retrospection.  Why had she doubted him—and
herself?  By what irony of fate had she given
herself to Archibald?  But almost instantly she
curbed these unavailing regrets.  The past was
irrevocable.  What did the future hold for Mark and
for her?  One thing was certain: they must meet
but rarely, perhaps not at all.

And then ensued a struggle, from which she
emerged weak indeed, but triumphant.  Once again
she was conscious of that sense of detachment,
of looking in spirit upon the flesh; once again a
strange giddiness warned her that only in fancy had
she attained to the heights, that the cliffs were yet to
be scaled.

When she met her husband that afternoon a closer
observer than he might have detected a tenderness
in her voice and manner: the first-fruits of a
resolution to do her duty as wife to a good man.  That
night, when she said her prayers, she thanked God
passionately, because she could esteem and respect
the Rector of St. Anne's.





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.. _`ILLUMINATION`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIII


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   ILLUMINATION

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In August the Archibald Samphires moved from
Cadogan Place to a house on the Embankment,
which belonged to Lord Vauxhall, and was part
of that property which he was so anxious to populate
with the "right kind of people."  The house faced
the Thames and contained some charming rooms,
which combined the quaintness and fine proportions
of the old Chelsea houses with such modern luxuries
as electric light and radiators.  The house in
Cadogan Place had been papered and decorated by a
former tenant, whose taste was severely æsthetic.
Betty abhorred the olive-greens, the dingy browns,
the sickly ochres of the Burne-Jones school.  But
she had accepted them philosophically, reflecting
that houses in London must be repapered and
decorated more often than in the country.  None
the less, she sometimes told herself that certain fits
of depression were due to her bilious-coloured walls,
and that Babbit's theories, as set forth by the Squire's
widow, were worth consideration.

Now she had been given a free hand, at a moment
when fashion was changing with Protean swiftness
from darkness to light.  Rose-red and yellow,
delicate greens, ethereal blues, and white-enamelled
woodwork wooed the fancy of housewives.  Betty
told Lady Randolph that she was no longer a woman,
but a colour scheme diffusing prismatic tints.

"The rainbow after the storm."

Betty glanced up quickly.  Did her old friend
guess that she had passed through a storm?  Or
was it a happy allusion to that frightful
bistre-coloured paper in her bedroom in Cadogan Place?

"I shall be happy here," she said gravely.

They were standing in the drawing-room of the
new house.  The Admiral's Chippendale furniture
was in its place, delicately revealed against lovely
white panelling.  The walls were rose-coloured, of a
paper whose texture was as that of brocade.  The
general effect was fresh and joyous: vernal in the
delicacy of its tints, without a hint of the *bonbonnière*.
Outside, the sun was declining in the west, and the
river ran all golden past the trees and meads of
Battersea Park.  Some barges, laden with hay,
were gliding by on the ebb-tide.

"Archie's room will be ready to-morrow," said
Betty, "and we ought to be in the day after.  You
have all pitied me, but I have enjoyed the dead
season immensely."

Lady Randolph, who was passing through town
on her way to Scotland from Birr Wood, nodded
understandingly.

"The room is just like you, Betty, and that is the
prettiest compliment, my dear, I have ever paid you.
And I must say that the dead season has agreed
with you.  I never saw you look more alive."

"The fact is," said Betty seriously, "I have been
setting more than one house in order."

Lady Randolph smiled.  "I have seen—I have
guessed——  Ah, well, we wives try to remould our
husbands, and the time is not wasted if we succeed
in remoulding ourselves.  My dear, I must fly.  Can
I give you a lift?"

Betty said that much remained to be done, but
after her friend had gone she showed no inclination
to set about doing it.  Instead, she sat by the open
window, gazing at the river flowing slowly and
silently to the sea.  Already she had come to regard
this as the great waterway of her thoughts.  She
rejoiced because she was about to live upon its banks;
she recognised its suggestion and symbolism, its
myriad beauties, its mystery and power.

At this moment she was reflecting that the Thames
was a source of pleasure and profit to man, because
man, as embodied by the Thames Conservancy,
controlled it.  When it burst its banks, the
abomination of desolation followed.  Without the
innumerable dams and locks cribbing and confining
it, these splendid waters would be wasted.  Now
they percolated everywhere, into hundreds and
thousands of homes.

Would it be so with her own life?  It ran in a
channel other than the one she would have chosen,
had choice been given her; it was diverted to uses
she had not apprehended; it was likely to be
diffused infinitely, trickling here and there, instead of
rushing free and untrammelled over a course of its
own making.  Since that memorable interview with
Mark, Betty had accepted the limitations which
duty imposed.  She had not shirked the trivial tasks
of a parson's wife, albeit she was tempted to spend
more time (and money) than was lawful in alluring
shops.  She had not seen Mark alone.  She had put
from her comment and criticism of her husband:
striving to think of the strength that was in him
rather than the weakness.

Now she was aware that these efforts had not been
made in vain.  Life had become easier, happier,
more profitable to herself and others.  She dared to
look forward, and refrained from looking back.

Presently she rose up, glanced, smiling, at the
pretty room, and leaving it reluctantly went
downstairs.  Archibald was out of town for a few days
on duty in the Midlands, and by the morrow she
hoped that all his furniture would be moved.  Part
had come from Cadogan Place that afternoon, and,
before returning home, she wished to see it placed
in the right room.  In the hall she met one of the
servants, who was acting as caretaker.  In answer
to a question, the man said his master's desk had
arrived in the van which was leaving.  Betty
entered her husband's room trying to remember the
exact spot where Archie wished his desk to stand.
It was an immense affair, with a fluted, revolving
top, which, when closed, locked itself and all
drawers.  As she crossed the threshold of the
room, she remembered what Archibald had said.
The desk had been placed in the wrong position.

"Oh, Dibdin," she exclaimed, "that will never
do.  Have the men gone?"

Dibdin said respectfully that the van was still at
the door, but suggested that the men should move
the desk on the morrow.  Betty, however, was
anxious to see how it looked in the place her
husband had chosen.  So the men were summoned.
Doubtless, they were tired, and possibly sulky at
being called as they were about to drive away.  The
desk was very heavy and awkward to move; it
stood on a rug upon a slippery parquet floor.  The
men, using unnecessary violence, canted it slightly
forward.  In the effort to steady it, their feet slipped,
the desk fell forward with a crash, and burst open:
the fluted lid flying back, and the contents of a dozen
pigeon-holes and drawers being scattered over the
floor.  However, upon examination it was found
that no damage had been done.  The desk was
lifted and placed in the desired position, and the
men dismissed.  Dibdin looked so dismayed that
Betty laughed.

"Why, Dibdin, all's well that ends well."

"Master is so particular about his desk," said
Dibdin.  He had been with Archibald before his
marriage.  "He'd never allow me to touch his papers."

"You shan't touch them now," said Betty.  "I'll
arrange them, Dibdin, before I go home."

Dibdin went out, leaving his mistress sitting on
the floor surrounded by notebooks, cheque-books,
manuscripts, and all the accessories which usually
cover a busy man's desk.  As she began to arrange
these, she reflected that the best-laid plans gang
agley.  Archibald had insisted upon locking up
everything, and yet, despite precaution—his precious
desk had burst open.  What a lot of MMS. to be
sure!  And she had not the vaguest idea into what
drawers and pigeon-holes they ought to go.
Archibald had a reasonable dislike of being disturbed
when at work, and when he was not at work the
huge desk was always locked.

Betty recognised an enormous pile of papers as
sermons.  Some were typewritten, date and text
being inscribed upon the outside.  Betty touched
them tenderly: her husband's title-deeds, so to speak,
to the honour and respect she bore him.  Looking
at them she blushed faintly, thinking of the warmer
sentiment they had provoked.  As she blushed her
glance fell upon the sermon she had just picked
up.  This bore no text, but across it, in Archibald's
handwriting, were two words: *Whit-Sunday, Westchester*.

The words provoked a score of memories.  Once
more she knelt in the chancel of that splendid fane,
hearing the flute-like notes of the boy; once more
she was conscious of being whirled aloft to ineffable
heights.  Then she dropped to earth as suddenly,
with a vivid realisation that if this sermon had never
been preached, she would not be here in this house,
the wife of the preacher.  With this reflection came
a desire to read the sermon.  She laid it aside, while
she finished the work of replacing the other MSS.
Then she closed the desk, and discovered that the
lock was hampered.  She was wondering whether
she ought to seal it, when she remembered that it
would be easy to lock up the room.  The light was
failing, yet the fancy took her that she would like to
read her husband's sermon in her own room,
overlooking the river as it flowed to the sea.

She went upstairs carrying the MS. in her hand,
and sat down.  The sun was about to set; and the
river ran red, no longer golden.  Shadows obscured
the city beyond.  A mist was stealing up from the
east, and the barges floating into it were swallowed up.

Betty unrolled the MS., spread it upon her knee,
and began to read.  But at the first glance she
blinked, as if her eyesight were deceiving her.
Then with a muttered exclamation of surprise, she
held the sheets of blue foolscap to the light, and
examined them attentively.  The MS., from beginning
to end, was in Mark's handwriting.  Here and
there words were interpolated or excised.  In the
margin were her husband's notes, but the MS. was
Mark's.  What did it mean?

She read it through.  Yes: as it was written, so
it had been preached, and it had been written by Mark!

Why had she not guessed as much before?  She
rolled up the MS., tied it with the red tape which the
orderly Archibald used, and went downstairs.  The
only other sermon in Mark's handwriting was the
"Purity" sermon, but many were covered with his
notes.  Again and again a phrase remembered, a
thought treasured—because it revealed the man she
had chosen as wise, and noble, and good, and therefore
justified that choice and silenced any doubts she
might have entertained regarding it—stood out as
Mark's.  Again and again she read some common-place,
some compromise, some paragraph which
rang false, slashed by Mark's red pencil.  Once or
twice she held up the sheets, examining closely the
condemned passages; smiling derisively as she
perceived the violence of protest in the broad, deeply
indented excoriations.  Suddenly Dibdin appeared,
bland but surprised.

"Shall I bring a lamp, M'm?"

"Bring me a basket, Dibdin, and then whistle for
a hansom."

She put the sermons into the basket and went
back to Cadogan Place, where a cold supper awaited
her.  The footman told the cook that his mistress
had eaten nothing, but had called for a pint of
champagne.  The cook expressed an opinion that
nothing in the world was so upsetting as a "move";
which turned everything and everybody upside down,
and produced "squirmishy" feelings inside.
Presently Betty's maid went upstairs, and returned with
heightened colour.  Her mistress, so she reported,
was as cross as two sticks.

Betty, indeed, was pacing up and down her
bedroom in a fever of indecision and unrest.  The
husband she had honoured was destroyed.  The
ghost of him inspired repugnance—a repugnance
which found larger room in the new house.  The
pleasure she had taken in furnishing became pain,
inasmuch as not a chintz had been chosen without
the reflection that she was recovering what was
dingy and discoloured in her life, substituting for
the old and worn the fresh and new.  And now, in
the twinkling of an eye, her good resolutions, her
hopes and aims, her readjusted sense of proportion—had
vanished.  She was in the mood to set ablaze
that dainty room in which in fancy she had passed
so many happy hours, to tear down and destroy the
tissues through which she had looked out upon a
future as rose-coloured as they.

She passed a sleepless night, got up feeling and
looking wretched, gave her servants certain hasty
directions, and drove to Waterloo.  In her hand
she carried a small bag containing the Westchester
and Windsor sermons.

From Weybridge she walked to Myrtle Cottage,
and the exercise brought colour into her cheeks.
She was sure that she would find Mark in the shelter,
so she approached it from the side of the grove,
being unwilling to face Mary's clear and possibly
curious eyes.

Mark was at his typewriting machine when she
saw him, and as usual so absorbed in his task that
he never perceived her.  Betty reflected that he
could not have approached her without her being
aware of it, but men surely were fashioned out of
clay other than what was used for women.

"Mark!"

He sprang up, with a startled exclamation, and
came forwards, holding out both hands.

"What has happened?"

As he spoke her indignation began to ooze from
her.  Intuition told her that the expression upon
Mark's face revealed intense sympathy.  Her trouble,
whatever it might be, had moved him to the core.
Suddenly, a light flickered out of the darkness.
For the first time, she saw herself and him alone
together, shut off from the world.  It came upon her
with a shock that she was glad that Mark, not
Archibald, had written the sermon.  Only he, the lover of
her girlish dreams, could have found the words which
had stirred her so profoundly.  Mark repeated the
question, "What has happened?"

"You wrote this?" she cried, holding out the
Westchester sermon.

He nodded, realising the fatuity of denial.  For
a moment they gazed into each other's eyes.  Then
she said slowly—

"You wrote the 'Purity' sermon?"

"M-m-m-most of it," he admitted reluctantly.

"You have helped him ever since?"

"I have revised some of his work."

"And I never guessed it," she exclaimed passionately.
"If I had thought for a moment I must have
known that it was you—you—you, not him.  Oh,
my God, I shall go mad!  I married him because
you—you had tricked him out in a garment of
righteousness!  Had you come forward at the
eleventh hour and spoken I should have thanked
you and blessed you.  Why did you hold your
tongue—why—why—why?"

"I thought you l-l-loved him," he stammered.

"Loved him?"  The scorn in her voice thrilled
his pulses.  "I loved what he said, which was yours.
Why did you not say it yourself?"

"Because," his infirmity gripped him, "I
c-c-c-couldn't."  Her face softened, and the lines of her
figure relaxed.

"It is my fault," she said, gazing at him through
tears; "I ought to have guessed."

"Betty"—he had recovered his self-control, now
that she was in danger of losing hers—"Betty,
I have done you a wrong.  I withheld the truth,
because truth, faith, love had gone out of my life,
blasted by—b-b-by——"

"By me?"

"No—n-n-no."

"By whom?"  He paused, and she continued
vehemently: "Mark, I want the truth.  Nothing
else is possible between us.  What killed your faith?
You have never answered that question.  What
changed you from the man you were to the man
you are?"

"Hate."

She recoiled at the grim word, recoiled, too, from
the expression on his face.

"You hated—your brother?"  The words fell
from quivering lips.  He saw that she was about
to swoop on the truth he had hidden so long.  He
was impotent to avert discovery.  She came very
slowly towards him, her eyes fixed on his.  The
expression in them bewildered him.  She raised
both her arms and laid her hands upon his
shoulders.

"You hated him.  Then you loved—me."

"Always," he answered.  "To me you came out of
Paradise, and brought the best part of it with you."

"Say it again," she whispered.

"I loved you—always: as child, as boy, as man."

She smiled piteously.  "As child, as girl, as
woman I have loved—you.  And yet loving me like
that you could believe that I loved him.  Ah, love
is blind indeed."  She held him with her eyes and
hands, speaking softly and quickly: "And because
you loved me you gave him what he lacked.  That
was like you.  But did it never strike you that I
might find out?"

"Not till too late.  Betty, I have behaved like a
fool.  I gave him that sermon which I would have
given my right hand to preach.  But I had not
foreseen its effect.  Having given it, I could not take
it back."  He went on to describe his breakdown,
the scene with Ross and the doctors, the silence
which he dared not break, his slow recovery, the
renascence of his hopes and their destruction.  A
dozen times his stammer stopped him, as many
times he was made aware that this abhorred
weakness bound him the closer to the woman who loved
him.  When he had finished his story she looked up.

"What shall we do now?" she asked.

Above, the song of the pines rose and fell in
melancholy cadence.  The day was hot, and would
become hotter, but here in this sylvan temple the air
flowed in cool and fragrant currents.  Mark was
silent, reflecting that always he had known this hour
would come.  From the moment he had read Archibald's
letter announcing his engagement, Destiny,
with the leer of some hideous gargoyle, had decreed
that he should hate his brother and love his brother's
wife.  Up to the present moment both passions had
been controlled and confined.  The unforeseen had
turned them loose.

"What shall we do now?"

She stood before him absorbed in the love which
at last had found expression.  What else the world
might hold for her was not.

So standing, delicately flushed, but with eyes
which neither faltered nor fell beneath his, the
daughter of Louise de Courcy awaited Mark's
answer.

"You are my brother's wife," he said slowly.

Betty shrugged her shoulders.  The gesture,
almost piteous in its shrinking protest, moved Mark
more than any words she had spoken.

"If—if I asked you, you would come away with me?"

She nodded, meeting his passionate glance, facing,
as he did, the issues involved.  Her hands moved
towards him—timidly, but with unmistakable
invitation.

"Betty," he cried, "Betty!"

"Ah! you want me.  You do want me—you do, you do!"

"Want you?" his voice broke.  Instantly she
had seized his hands, drawing him towards her.
He held her firmly—at arm's length.  In that
supreme moment he was perhaps stronger than he
had been ever before, inasmuch as the faith which
once had fortified him was his no longer, and yet
without it, believing in nothing, holding in derision
God's law and man's, he resisted her, because he
was counting the cost to her.  Then, reading his
thought, she inclined her head, whispering, "If
there is a God, and if he bade me choose between
life here with you and life hereafter without you,
not being allowed to have both—do you know what
I should say?"

"Do not say it," he entreated.  His face was so
twisted by the consciousness that he was taking
advantage of her weakness that she thought he was
ill.  When he remained rigid, she added gently,
"Let us go to some place where my love shall make
up to you for every pang you have suffered."

"Stop!" he cried hoarsely.  "Apart from our
love, you have not considered what this means: to
me, the man, nothing; to you the loss of everything
which women hold dear.  You must not decide
rashly—you—must—take—time."

She laughed derisively.

"I will take anything you like, so long as you take me."

He caught her to him, closing her mouth with kisses.





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.. _`CHARING CROSS`:

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   CHAPTER XXXIV


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   CHARING CROSS

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Betty returned alone to London before mid-day.
Mark decided to follow by an afternoon
train.  They had agreed to meet at Charing Cross,
to cross that night to Ostend.  Then, in some remote
corner of the Ardennes, they expected to make plans
for the future.  The "move," as Betty had pointed
out, covered anything that might appear odd to the
enlightened Dibdin.  Her divided household would
understand that she was going to a friend's house
for the few hours during which her own bedroom
furniture was being shifted.

Mark accompanied her to the station, returning
home to pack a portmanteau.  What doubts he had
entertained were dispersed.  He swore that he would
look forward, never backward, and found himself
whistling as he climbed the hill to the cottage.

In the shelter, the first object that he saw was
Betty's handkerchief lying in the corner of a chair.
He picked up the small, square piece of cambric and
put it to his lips.  A faint essence reminded him
that fragrance had come again into his life.  Then he
began to arrange his papers.  When Mary came in
to arrange the cloth for luncheon, he told her that
he was going away for a few days.  She expressed
no surprise.  Why should she?  It lay on his
tongue's tip to say: "I have been wretched: now I
am going to be happy.  Let us shake
hands!"  Watching her moving here and there he was
sensible of an impatience, an irritability almost
impossible to suppress.  Mary subtly conveyed an
impression of protest.  He told himself that this
was absurd.  Suddenly her eyes met his.

"What have I done?" she faltered.

"Why, nothing," he answered.

"You were staring at me so queerly," she
answered.  "The business which takes you away is
pleasant, isn't it?"

He smiled reassuringly.

"Connected with your work, I suppose?"

Her curiosity was natural.  He always spoke of
his work to her.

"No," he said shortly.  "It is not.  I dare say
you think that I could not be really keen about
anything or anybody outside of my work.  If I told
you——"

He closed his lips, wondering why the truth had
so nearly leaked from them.  His joy had expanded
so quickly, that it exacted a larger habitation.

"I have nothing to tell yet," he said confusedly,
"but I may write; you shall hear from me; I shall
be frank—with you."

He fell into a reverie, as she left the shelter.  In
a minute she returned.

"There is a gentleman to see you, Mr. Samphire.
Shall I bring him here?"

She handed him a card.  A cry escaped Mark's lips.

"David!"

The card fell to the ground.  For the moment he
felt as if some icy finger had been laid upon his
heart.  He had not seen David since the Crask days.
And he had told himself that this old friend had
held sorrowfully aloof, because he had divined that
intercourse between the faithful and the faithless,
between Christian and pagan, would prove (temporarily
at least) inexpedient and abortive.

"Please ask his lordship to come here," he said,
frowning.

Mary glanced at his face and withdrew.  Mark
followed her with his eyes as she crossed the pretty
garden between the shelter and the cottage.  Not
a cloud, he noted, obscured the soft azure of the
skies; upon all things lay the spell of summer.

"Why has he come?"

Instinctively he armed himself for conflict.  It
was curious that he associated the Highlander and
his strange powers of second sight with the quiet
English Mary.  The impending fight would be two
against one.  Good would side with good, although
evil might array itself against evil.

These thoughts flitted through his mind as David
was advancing.  Mark, summoning up a smile of
welcome, met his friend, who smiled back, extending
both hands.

"Mark," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you.
Thank God, you're well."

"And stronger than I ever was in my life," said
Mark.  "You'll lunch with me, David.  I must go
to town this afternoon, but we can have an hour
together."

"I must go to town too," replied David.  "You
look a different man, Mark."

"I am a different man."

David followed him into the shelter and sat down,
with a puzzled glance at his surroundings.  During
luncheon both men were conscious of a new and
disagreeable sense of restraint.

"Have you another novel on the stocks?"

"Yes."

David jumped up, eager, vigorous, impetuous.

"I have come a long way out of my road to ask
you a question."

"Ask it," said Mark.

"When are you coming back to us?"

"Can God only be served in cassock and surplice?"

"You evade my question," said David.  "Mark,
I have had the feeling that you were in trouble:
ill, dying perhaps.  I—I had to come to you.  But
I find you a strong man, and "—he glanced round at
the pleasant garden—"and wasting time.  Don't
mistake me!  You have been working hard, no
doubt, but at work which others can do as well.
You have recovered your health and——"

"Go on."

"The work God intended you to do is being left
undone," said David.  "Why?"

"If we are to remain friends, David, you had
better not press this question."

"If we are to remain friends, I must.  You have
resigned a stupendous responsibility—why?"

"Shall we say—incapacity to administer it?"

"Give me the true reason."

"Can't you divine it?"

"I have divined it," said David, after a long pause.
"You sneer at a gift which is given to few; but you,
of all men, ought to know that it has been given to
me.  And I have divined more.  I know that you
are on the edge of an abyss which may engulf you and another."

"You have divined that?"

The sneer had left him; amazement, incredulity
took its place.  David must have heard some idle
rumour.  He asked him at once if it were not so.

"I have heard nothing."

"On your oath?"

"Certainly—if you wish it."

Mark paced the length of the shelter; then he
turned and approached David, who was watching
him.  When less than a yard separated them Mark
stood still and pulled his watch from his pocket.

"It is now two o'clock," he said.  "At half-past
six this afternoon I meet the woman I love and who
loves me at Charing Cross.  To-night—we leave
England—together."

The relief of speech was immense, but with this,
and dominating it, was the fierce desire to confront
David with the truth, to invite his arguments, so as
to trample on them.

David said hoarsely: "The woman is your
brother's wife.  You—you—Mark Samphire, the
man I thought so strong, will do this shameful
thing?  *Impossible*!"

Mark laughed.

"I'm going to speak plainly, David.  For the
first and last time I mean to let myself r-r-rip!"  He
drew in his breath sharply.  "You shall see
me as I am.  I appeal not to the Bishop, not to my
old friend of the Mission, but to a more merciful
judge than either—a man of flesh and blood."

He paused, frowning, trying to compose, to marshal
his thoughts.  Then he began quietly, exercising
restraint at first, but using increasing emphasis
of word and intonation as he proceeded.

"You say it is impossible that Mark Samphire
should do this thing.  Strange!  You have intelligence,
sympathy, intuition.  Impossible!  Oh, the
parrot cry of the slave of convention and tradition,
of the worshipper of his own graven images,
bowing down before them, unable to look beyond
the tiny circle wherein he moves and thinks.
Impossible, you say?  Impossible for Mark Samphire
to run away with his brother's wife!"

"Incredible then," Ross interrupted.

"Incredible.  It's incredible you should use such
a word with your experience.  Can't you realise
that the same strength which made me struggle up
towards what you call good or God is driving me as
relentlessly down the other road?  I am not the
Mark Samphire of the Mission days, but the Mark
Samphire who came from Ben Caryll knowing that
if he had met his brother alone upon that mountain
he would have killed him, or been killed by him.
And having felt that, do you think I would stick at
running away with his wife?"

His tone was so bitterly contemptuous that Ross
could only stammer out: "I have never understood
why such love as you bore him turned to such hate."

"Let your God answer that question.  As man to
man I swear to you that my brother's extraordinary
success in everything we undertook together, and
my own failure, did not sour me.  I grudged him
nothing—except her.  And I could have let her go
to any other.  I tell you, David, I've been tried too
high.  The irony of fate has been too much for me.
A time comes to the stoutest runner when he falls.
Then the fellows who have been ambling along
behind trot past blandly complacent.  They are not
first, but they are not last.  The man who might
have been first is last.  I fell at a fence too big for
me—and I broke my neck.  We've said enough, too
much, about that, but the fact that I could love as
few love ought to be proof to you that my hate
would be as strong."

Ross saw that he was trembling violently.

"If you had written to her——"

"If?  That 'if' is crucifixion.  Yes; yes; if I
had written one line, whistled one note, held up one
finger—she would have come to me.  But then hope
had scarcely budded.  My life was so pitiful, so frail
a thing to offer.  And, voluntarily, she had engaged
herself to him.  He had won her, as he had won
everything else——"

"Fairly."

"No.  Not fairly."

Briefly, but in vehement words, Mark told the
story of the sermons, concluding with Betty's
discovery of the truth.

"And now," he demanded, stretching out his
shaking hands, "do you see the real Mark Samphire?
Is your finger on the pulse of a poor wretch
who tried to do his duty and—here's the rub,
David—who was punished the more heavily on that
account?  If I had played the world's game, Betty
would be my wife.  Archibald would be still minor
canon of Westchester."

Ross took the outstretched hands.

"My poor Mark," he murmured.

"Thanks, David; but don't pity me!  I envy
no man living.  You have listened to my story,
patiently.  One thing more remains to be said.  If
Betty had not discovered the truth, I could have
held aloof from her to the end.  On her account,
not because she was my brother's wife, I respected
the law.  But now," his voice was triumphant, "she
wants me.  Do you hear?  She wants me.  I'm
necessary to her.  And because of that, and for no
baser reason, I am going to her—to-night."

Ross met his eyes.

"In a word," said he, "you refuse to protect the
woman you love against herself?"

"Once, I should have used that very phrase.
What an ocean flows between us, David!"

"In six months," continued Ross, "you and she
will be tormented in a hell of your own making.
There are men and women, thousands of them, who
can steep themselves in the life of the senses.  You
are not of them, Mark, nor ever will be; nor is she."

Mark smiled derisively.

"She and I," he retorted, "are two of the myriad
insects crawling upon one of a million worlds.
Something within both of us bids us make the most
of our hour.  We shall do so.  You mean well,
David, but you rack me—you rack me.  Go!"

"So be it," said David.

As he was turning, Mark clutched his sleeve.  An
expression in David's eyes—the expression which
refuses to acknowledge defeat, which indicates
unknown resources—alarmed him.

"You are not going to Archibald," he said hoarsely.

David's face was twitching with emotion, but his
voice was firm and even.

"You must know where I am going," he said
simply.  "I have failed—through my own weakness—as
I have failed before, as I shall fail again and
again, but I believe that He, whose help I am about
to implore, will not fail.  You will not leave England
to-night."

When Mark looked up the speaker was gone.

During the next hour preparations for the journey
occupied his attention.  But after his portmanteau
was strapped and a fly had been ordered to take
him to the station, nearly an hour remained.  Mark
went into the grove and flung himself at length
upon the soft carpet woven by the singing pines.
He closed his eyes, invoking the alluring image of
Betty.  Instantly she came with outstretched hands
and shining eyes, but between them, a grim and
sombre figure, knelt David Ross, his face upturned
in supplication.  Mark found himself straining his
ears to catch the words of the prayer, but they
escaped, fleeting upward whither he dared not follow
them.

Presently he seemed to hear voices other than
David's, and like his inarticulate, although familiar.
In his room at the Mission he had often listened
to such voices.  What man of ethereal attributes
has not?  But since that night on Ben Caryll these
sounds had ceased.

He told himself, irritably, that once again he had
fallen a victim to nervous imaginings, echoes of the
material world rather than spiritual communications.
Barger had told him that it was easy—given certain
purely physical conditions—to hypnotise oneself, to
sink into a subconscious coma vibrant with sensations
and sounds subject to scientific analysis.  But
even Barger had never denied the transcendental
gift of David Ross, even Barger believed firmly in
the Seer of Brahan, whose predictions concerning
the Seaforth Mackenzies had been verified so marvellously.

It was impossible to ignore the coincidence of
David's visits.  Twice David had sought him out,
when he was in sore straits.

At whose bidding?

The question could not be exorcised by sneer or
sophism.  Mark had compared himself to an insect,
a metaphor used ten thousand times by the agnostic
school and properly, since none other is more
expressive of the insignificance and ephemeral nature
of man's body in relation to the universe.  None
the less Mark was aware that moral or spiritual
facts, as a writer puts it, have no relation whatever
to physical size, and that a man's soul can no more
be measured with a yardstick than the cardinal
virtues.

At whose bidding had David Ross been sent?

.. vspace:: 2

He travelled to London by a train which reached
Waterloo just after five.  As he neared the city his
mood changed from one of doubt and perplexity to
reckless satisfaction.  The hansom which took him
to Charing Cross passed over Waterloo Bridge and
down the Strand, always crowded at that hour of
the afternoon.  Twice the hansom was stopped by
the uplifted hand of a policeman.  Each time it
drew up opposite a bar to which thirsty souls were
hurrying.  Mark's ears could catch the sound of
ice tinkling in long tumblers.  Corks were popping
intermittently.  A woman's laugh rang out above
the buzz of innumerable voices.  Mark stared at
the faces of the foot-passengers.  Most of the men
were returning from work.  An air of relaxation
informed them.  The day had been insufferably hot,
but now a breeze from the river was flooding the
streets, deliciously cool, astringent, tonic.

The hansom turned in at the station gates, and a
moment later a porter was asking Mark his destination.
Mark gave the man instructions as he handed
the cabby a florin.

"Thank ye, sir.  'Oliday times, sir."

"Yes," said Mark, smiling.  All round him were
men and women, hard-working Londoners, about to
escape into the country or to the seashore after a
year's unremitting grind.  The great summer exodus
was now at its height.  Some of the humbler folk
carried articles wherewith to beguile the leisure
hours: musical instruments, shrimping-nets, spades
and buckets, telescopes, and the inevitable hamper
of food.

Mark, with time to spare after he had made
arrangements for a coupé to Dover, caught the
contagion of excitement and gaiety, and could enter
into the feelings of an octogenarian who was
renewing his youth by playing a penny whistle.
Couples were numerous as birds in pairing-time.
Mark looked at these with sympathetic interest.
They drifted by, pair after pair, an eternal procession
of Jacks and Jills.  It struck Mark, not for the first
time, that these couples were very youthful.  And
he felt that Betty and he shared their youth, that
they had not waited too long.  Presently a man of
his own class approached, peering eagerly to right
and left, consulting first his watch, and then the
great clock.  Mark watched him and followed him.
The man was excited and nervous.  Suddenly his
face brightened; he ran forward, with both hands
extended.  "You have come at last," Mark heard him
say.  A pretty girl, her face suffused with blushes,
murmured something, and the man answered
hoarsely, "If you had chucked me, I should have
cut my throat."  Then they passed, arm in arm,
laughing and chattering, into the crowd and out
of sight.  Mark looked at his watch.  In less than
ten minutes Betty would be here; she also would
blush and smile; her hand would be on his arm;
and together they would pass out of the noise and
confusion into sweet, secluded spaces beyond!

His train backed into the station, and passengers
began to take their places.  Mark made sure that his
coupé was reserved for him, but he would not allow
the porter to put his traps into it.

"I am expecting a friend," he said; and the
porter grinned.  He walked back to the trysting-place
under the clock, one of half a dozen who had
agreed to meet beneath it.  Overhead, the great
dial recorded the flight of time with inexorable,
inhuman deliberation.  Mark was fascinated by the
minute hand, creeping on and on, nearing the
appointed hour.  Betty was running things rather
fine, he reflected.  In less than seven minutes the
train would be despatched.

Five minutes more glided by.  The discordant
noises of the station fell like the boom of distant
breakers upon an ear attuned to the sound of one
voice which out of all the voices in the universe
was now mute.  The porter approached, anxious and
insistent.  Mark stammered out a score of questions.
The porter shook his head dismally.

"She must come," said Mark harshly.

As if in derisive answer, the locomotive of the
train about to start whistled.  Doors banged.  The
long line of carriages began to move.

"'Ere she is," said the porter phlegmatically.

Mark turned with thrilling pulses.  A woman had
rushed up to him, out of breath and scarlet in the
face.  That she had missed her train, and was
distressed inconceivably, no one could doubt; but she
was not Betty.  Mark could have struck her.  She
stared stupidly at the vanishing train.

"It's gone," she said.

"Yes," said Mark grimly.

He turned from her to meet the inquisitive stare
of a messenger boy.  The boy stared unblinking,
and then said, "You're Mr. Samphire?"

"Yes," said Mark.

"I'm to give you this."

He held out a letter.  Mark took it, broke the
seal, and read it, unmindful of porter and boy, who
exchanged glances and winks; then he turned to
the porter.

"Put my things into a hansom," he said in a dull
voice.

"Yes, sir," said the porter.

The boy took one more look at Mark.

"That was a knock-out," he murmured to himself,
"a knock-out—sure!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHRYSOSTOM RETURNS TO CHELSEA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   CHRYSOSTOM RETURNS TO CHELSEA

.. vspace:: 2

Betty returned to Cadogan Place, conscious of
an extraordinary buoyancy of spirit, of a gaiety
even which made her demure maid stare.  "Getting
out o' this dirty old house makes you laugh, ma'am,"
she remarked.

"Yes," said Betty; "it makes me laugh."

When the maid left the room, Betty sat down by
the window which overlooked the gardens below,
the gardens typical of such houses as the one she
was leaving—conventionally laid out, fenced with
sharply pointed iron palings, pleasure grounds
wherein no person, out of their teens, took any
pleasure whatever.  Betty could see two children
and a gaunt governess walking primly along one of
the broad well-swept paths.  One child, a nice fat
little girl, escaped from bondage, hiding behind a
bush.  Betty could hear the voice of the governess
calling to her, and then a sharp rebuke, as the
truant came toddling back to the path.

"If my baby had lived——"

She put the baby out of her thoughts.  If it had
lived, she and the child might have remained inside
iron palings.

Then, very deliberately, she faced the future.  Her
money was settled on herself.  Mark and she could
live where they pleased, as they pleased.  If one
place proved disagreeable they could move on and
on; the world was wide.

She smiled happily and contentedly.  Many women,
at such a moment, would have been distraught by
anxiety and fear.  But Betty was gladder than she
had ever felt before.  Indeed, she was triumphant.
She told herself that every instinct she had tried
to suppress was vindicated gloriously.  To such
a proud, refined woman the memory that she had
flung herself at Mark's head had been always a dire
humiliation, the more so because she had never
measured the width and depth of his feeling for her.
She repeated the phrase, "He has always loved
me," again and again, letting the sweetness of it
linger upon her lips.

The inevitable sacrifice—the fact which Mark
plainly pointed out that she, the woman, had more
to lose than the man—was acclaimed.  Hitherto,
love—whether love of niece for uncle, of friend for
friend, of wife for husband—had exacted nothing
from her.  She had been extremely generous with
her money, giving away far more than the tithe.
But the signing of cheques had not included one
genuine act of self-denial on her part.  Whatever
she had done had been accomplished without effort,
without pain.

Her thoughts turned from herself to Mark.
Immediately the smile faded from her face.

How cruelly he had suffered!  And with what a
pleasant smile, with how gay a laugh he had
confronted ill-health, ill-fortune, and disappointment!

"I shall be so good to him," she swore beneath
her breath.  "I shall make it up to him—and I
know how to do it."

Here, again, what had gone before might be
reckoned as fuel for the feeding of love's flames.
She was no green girl, but a woman who understood
men, who could speak the right word at the
right time, and had learned to hold her tongue.

"We shall be the happiest pair in the world."

Presently her eye fell upon the small bag she had
carried to Weybridge.  In it were the two sermons.
She rose from her chair, hesitated a moment, and
opened the bag.  The sermons, she decided, must
be locked up in one of the trunks she was leaving
behind.  The first sermon she had read the night
before, but the second she had not read.

She looked at her watch.  Then she picked up
the Windsor sermon, and sat down to read it,
because, reading it, she would hear not Archibald's
voice, but Mark's.

The text met her eyes.  *Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God*.

She read no further.  The MS. fell from her
fingers, and rolled upon the carpet.  Betty did not
see it, because she saw nothing.  The familiar room,
the gardens below, the great city beyond, faded from
her vision.  Darkness encompassed her.  And out
of the darkness, like the writing upon the wall of
Belshazzar's palace in Babylon, flared the words of
the text.

.. vspace:: 2

Suddenly, with a violence of contrast which
convulsed her, the darkness was dispelled, and she saw,
even as Saul of Tarsus saw, a great light.  If she
read Mark's sermon, if she listened to the pleading
voice of the priest, she would fail to keep tryst with
the man, not because she feared for herself, but
because this question could not be evaded: "Will
my impurity prove a curse to him?"

Bending down, she picked up the sheaf of papers,
and thrust them fiercely into the trunk, which stood
open near the window.  Then she sank back into
the chair, covering her face with her hands....

So sitting, she was transported to the ancient,
banner-hung chapel, wherein her husband had
preached before his sovereign.  But in the pulpit
stood Mark, not his brother, and Mark as she
remembered him long ago, the Mark of King's Charteris
days, thin, pale, strong only in spirit; yet how
strong, how valiant in that!

But he was mute, save for the pleading of the
eloquent eyes.  Beneath the spell of these Betty
rose once more, and stood beside the trunk, staring
into it.

Thus standing, she heard the clock in the tower
of St. Anne's strike four.  At that moment David
Ross was praying for her and Mark, praying and
believing that his prayer would be answered.

Betty picked up the MS., locked the door, fell on
her knees, and read the sermon through.

.. vspace:: 2

She was still kneeling when the clock struck five.
One hour had passed.  Mark was nearing Charing
Cross.  She rose from her knees, and sat down to
write a letter: an intolerably difficult task, which
must be accomplished in a few minutes.  She stared
dully at the blank sheet of paper in front of her;
then she wrote:—

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"I have read your sermon, the one preached at Windsor.
Because of that I cannot come to you, and I entreat
you not to come to me.  Mark, my best beloved, I
tempted you.  May God forgive me!  And I know—I
*know*, I say—that He has stretched forth His hand to save
us.  And He willed that your words—what is best in
you—the greatest thing you ever did—should stand between
us.  I cannot lower the Mark who wrote that sermon to
my level.  Oh, Mark, will you curse me as faithless?  Or
will you know that it is not my wretched soul I seek to
save, but yours—yours.

.. class:: smaller

"As soon as this is sent off I shall go to a friend's till
Archibald returns.  I must tell him the truth."

.. vspace:: 2

Archibald Samphire returned from the Midlands
to find a new house set in order and his wife
awaiting him.  He advanced to greet her with a warm
word of affection and congratulation.  But she held
up her hand, and before the distress in her eyes he
recoiled, astonished and dismayed.

Although Betty knew that the lapse from honour
involved in preaching another's sermon was as
nothing compared with the sin she had contemplated,
still she felt that the charge against her husband
must be dealt with first.  In a few words she told
him of the breaking open of his desk and the
discovery of Mark's MSS.  He exhibited no confusion,
but his expression changed and in a manner so
amazing that Betty let fall a sharp exclamation.

"I am glad you know," he said simply.

His voice, his face, his fine massive figure
expressed relief.  She repeated his words:

"You are glad that I know?"

She had made sure that he would excuse himself
blandly, with dignity, looking down upon her; and
she had told herself that his carefully chosen words
would flood her with contempt, the stronger because
her own speech would prove halting and unrestrained.

"Yes, yes.  I was a coward.  I meant to tell you:
I swear it, but I couldn't."  Then he repeated the
phrase he had used to Mark: "God knows it has
been a secret sore."

"Why couldn't you tell me?" she asked.

"Because the right moment for doing so slipped by me."

"You married me under false pretences."

"Eh?"

"You wooed me with Mark's words."

"Wooed you with—Mark's—words?  I can't
follow you."

And here he stated a fact.  He had neither the
ability nor the intuition to follow a woman down the
tortuous path of her feelings and aspirations.  But
at this moment he became aware that something
dreadful remained to be said.  Betty's pale, haggard
face, her trembling fingers, her panting bosom,
revealed an agitation which communicated itself to
him.  Let us be fair to a man with inexorable
limitations.  He had always believed that Betty married
him for love.  And he too had married for love—and
other things which he valued; but the other
things without love would not have tempted him to
a mere marriage of convenience.  And marriage
with Betty had seemed at the time and afterwards
the one thing needful: rounding a life too square,
lending colour and sparkle to a profession whose
habit is sable.  If at times he had been vouchsafed a
glimpse of barriers between his wife and himself, he
attributed these to difference of sex.  But till this
minute he had believed her love as much an
inalienable possession as his name.  There was no
love in the face half turned from his.

"You can't follow me," she repeated slowly.
"That is true enough.  Years ago, when we were
children—babies—I loved Mark, and he loved me."

"Paul and Virginia!"

"Yes, yes, Paul and Virginia."

"We all knew that.  At one time I thought you
would marry Mark."

"He never asked me," she replied, with blazing
cheeks.  "If he had, I should have married him,
sick or well.  I supposed that he didn't want me."

"Why, so did I."

She met his eyes fiercely.

"You swear that?"

"Certainly.  Great heavens!  You don't think
that if I had thought otherwise I should have tried
to supplant him.  He went away and left the field
open to all comers—Jim Corrance, Harry
Kirtling—and me."

"I have done you an injustice," Betty faltered.

At this Archibald's sense of what was fitting
asserted itself.  "Come, come," he said, "I regret
profoundly that I did not frankly avow those two
sermons to be Mark's.  I do not expect you to
forgive me in a minute, but you are generous,
sensible, and my wife.  We must take up our lives
where we left them less than a week ago."

"That is impossible," said Betty.

She felt a great pity for him.  The blow must fall
with hideous violence, shattering the man's just
pride in what he had accomplished.  His
extraordinary success seemed of a sudden to be
transformed into an immense bubble about to be pricked
by a word.

And when the word was spoken, when he knew
everything, Betty saw what Mark had seen upon
the night that the baby was born—the collapse of
a personality.  The big man who was to fill Lord
Vauxhall's Basilica dwindled into a boy with the
puzzled, wondering eyes of youth confronted for
the first time with what it cannot understand.
Betty felt old enough to be his mother, when he
stammered out: "You—*you* have done this thing?"

"I might have done it," she answered gently.

He broke down.

"I have lost my brother and my wife," he groaned.
"my brother and my wife."

Instantly Betty realised what Mark had always
known—the weakness of the colossus.  And this
knowledge that she was the stronger took the chill
from her heart, restoring magically her moral
circulation.  Looking at him, she wondered how she
could have blinded herself to his true proportions.
She had deemed him a Titan!

"What are you going to do?" he asked presently.

"That is for you to say.  If you choose to put me
from you——"

He interrupted her.

"You would go to him."

"No."

He rose up and began to pace the room, glancing
furtively at his wife, who never moved.  Suddenly,
seizing her arm, and speaking in a loud, trembling
voice, he exclaimed: "Mark is dead—you
understand that?  Say it; say it!"

"Mark is dead," she repeated sombrely.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FENELLA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   FENELLA

.. vspace:: 2

Mark went abroad immediately after the events
narrated in the last chapter, and remained
abroad for many months, trying to drown recollection
of Betty in printer's ink.  By a tremendous
effort of will and unremitting grind he nearly
succeeded, but at times he could see nothing save
her face, hear nothing save her voice, feel nothing
save the touch of her lips upon his.  After these
visitations he was beset by a Comus' crew of
spectres: the innumerable disappointments of his
life: *toute l'amertume et tout le déboire de mille
événements fâcheux*.

However, Compensation ordained that his *Songs
of the Angels* should please a certain section of the
American public, and a substantial cheque crossed
the Atlantic in a letter from Cyrus Otway, who
asked for another novel.  Mark had learned to use
his pen (as Conquest once put it); but recognition—the
acclaim of the multitude—seemed indefinitely
remote.  *A Soul Errant* appeared, and was
pronounced by reviewers an admirable piece of work,
but its sales were limited to a few thousand copies.

From George Samphire, Mark learned that
Archibald and Betty had entertained royalty upon the
occasion when the first service was held in the
Basilica.  Tommy Greatorex wrote: "Your big
brother is booming Vauxhall's new neighbourhood,
and no mistake!"  From Betty herself came no
word whatever.  Archibald, so Mark told himself,
had forgiven her, determined to preserve
appearances, to keep the wife with wealth and beauty, to
guard her zealously from the man who had tried
to deprive him of so valuable a possession.  Once
again, hatred of Archibald consumed him.  In
his heart he knew that Betty was pining for one
line—the generous "I forgive you.  I understand."  But
these words he could not write.  He believed
that she had failed him, that she had lacked
courage, and lacking it, had grasped the first excuse
pat to lip and hand.  It seemed incredible that a
sermon should stand between a woman and the man
she loved.  Curiously enough, he could not recall
a line of this sermon thrown off, as it had been, in
a brief fever of excitement and enthusiasm.  Again
and again, he repeated to himself the beatitude, and
wondered what he had found to say about it.

.. vspace:: 2

On his return to England he moved from Weybridge
to Hampstead, where another shelter was built
in a small garden overlooking the Heath.

Meantime, Mary Dew had married Albert Batley,
and when Mark paid her a brief visit he found the
bride beaming, obviously content with her lot, and
very proud of her husband's success as a contractor.
Mrs. Dew explained matters:

"You see, Mr. Samphire, it's like this: Albert
Batley just worships Mary, and she makes him very
comfortable.  Tasty meals go a long way with men
who have a living to earn in this cruel, hard world."

Just as he was leaving Mary said shyly: "I hope,
Mr. Samphire, we shall hear of your getting married.
If ever a gentleman wanted a wife to look after him,
you are he."

Mark laughed; then he replied in his easy, genial
way: "Yes, yes; if you had a twin sister, Honeydew,
I should ask her to live up a tree with me."

Alone at Hampstead, he wondered whether a wife
was waiting for him somewhere: a kind, sweet
creature, who would teach him to forget.  Drax had
told him that, humanly speaking, he was now free
from that insidious disease which spares so few of
its victims.  With care he might live out his
three-score years and ten; he could marry—if he so
pleased.  And for the first time since his father's
death, a balance, steadily increasing, lay at his
bankers.

.. vspace:: 2

About midsummer he began his first play—a
comedy, which had been simmering in his brain for
many months.  He showed the scenario to Greatorex,
who was not encouraging.

"You've immense difficulties ahead of you.  Your
unknown playwright must write his play for one
actor-manager, whose ability it illumines" (Tommy
was quoting from an article of his on the modern
drama), "and whose weakness it obscures.  And
your moral purpose must be disguised, so as to give
the dramatic critic a chance to discover it.  Personally,
there's nothing I enjoy so much as discovering
in a play something which the author never thought
of.  Now, then, having written your play, you must
persuade your actor-manager to spend some
thousands in producing it adequately.  All said and
done, I'd stick to novels, if I were you."

"I must write this play," said Mark.

He wrote it and rewrote it.  Then he read it aloud
to Greatorex, who pointed out many technical
blunders.  Not till the play was actable in every
detail would Tommy pass it as fit to be sent the
rounds.

And then followed interminable, heartbreaking
delays and disappointments.  Actors and actresses,
with rare exceptions, keep plays for months without
reading them, answer no letters, and unhesitatingly
break all promises unprotected by iron-clad contracts.
Finally, the comedy, returned for the sixth time, was
flung by Mark into a drawer and forgotten.

Next summer Mark read in his morning paper
the announcement of a son born to Archibald.
A son!  It was enough that the fellow should desire
anything, anything, for the object to fall into his
grasp!  Then, in a passionate revulsion of feeling,
wondering how Betty fared, he hastened to Chelsea
and furtively interviewed Dibdin, who assured him
that his mistress was doing not only as well as, but
better than, the doctor expected.  Mark gave Dibdin
a sovereign and instructions to report once a day by
letter for three weeks.  Dibdin, an old friend and as
discreet as an archbishop, promised to write,
volunteering the information that the baby was an
"uncommon fine boy, a Samphire every inch of him."  From
Jim Corrance, later, Mark learned that Betty
was likely to prove an adoring mother.  Jim had
seen her with the urchin.  "She has changed," he
told Mark, in his blunt fashion.  "It's natural, I
suppose; one couldn't wish for anything else; but
the Betty of King's Charteris is out of sight.  As
for Archie—he looks patriarchal."

If Jim wondered why Mark never entered his
brother's house, he was too shrewd to ask questions.
Perhaps he guessed more or less accurately at the
truth.  A score of times, Mark was tempted to take
his arm and tell his old friend everything.  Betty,
however, could not be betrayed; and speech with
reserves, with abysmal silences, would avail nothing.
But if he could have unburdened his soul, what a
relief, what a balm it would have proved!

After writing some pot-boiling short stories and
articles, he plunged into a second play, a tragedy,
dealing with the inevitable surrender of woman to
tradition and convention.  In accordance with Tommy
Greatorex's advice, this play was built up for
Mrs. Perowne, an English actress-manager, who had
recently returned from an enormously successful tour
in the United States and Australia.  Mark went to
see her act again and again, fascinated by her
methods, which were those of Duse, and by her
vivid and extraordinary beauty.  She had red hair,
a milk-white skin, a Spanish cast of features, the
spirits and inconsequence of a child, and amazing
physical and intellectual activity.  Mr. Perowne, an
American, had divorced her after a very stormy year
of marriage.  Since, he had died.

This second play, *Fenella*, was written in a spirit
compounded of recklessness and patience.  Mark was
reckless inasmuch as his money was nearly gone;
patient, because the artist within him told him that
he must make haste slowly.  But at the back of this
supreme endeavour, ever-increasing and all-absorbing,
was the determination to achieve a success which
would surpass that of his brother.  Archibald and
he never met, for Mark saw none of his old friends
save Pynsent and Jim Corrance, but Archibald's
name and fame were for ever in his ears.  A great
reputation is hard to make in England, or elsewhere,
but once made it is easily sustained.  The Basilica
was crowded every Sunday morning.  Mark slipped
in one day, wondering what sort of fare would be
provided.  He found it nicely flavoured to the palate
of the town.  Jim Corrance growled out, "Archie
gives 'em easily digested food.  Of course he hasn't
time to prepare such sermons as that Westchester
one.  He's up to his eyes in parochial work.  That's
what makes bishops nowadays."

Mark saw Betty in her pew without being seen by
her.  She looked pale and thin, but not unhappy.

After the visit to the Basilica Mark worked even
harder than before, although he worked in the open
air, and with due regard for his health.  If that
failed again, he was conscious that he would be
bankrupt indeed.  Accordingly, he lived a life of
Spartan simplicity, and played golf regularly with
Jim or Tommy Greatorex.  But *Fenella* obsessed
him.  He told Jim that he was glad the comedy had
not been produced, because *Fenella* was stronger
and better written.  Tommy growled out protests
and warnings: "*Fenella*, whose acquaintance I'm
anxious to make, may prove an ungrateful hussy.
For Heaven's sake don't pin your hopes to her
petticoat!"

When the fourth act was nearly finished, Sybil
Perowne appeared in a new play, an adaptation
of a French drama, which had enjoyed a *succès fou* in
Paris.  Mark and Tommy went to see it and found
an audience cold and indifferent.  As they came out
of the theatre, Mark heard a stout dowager whisper
to her daughter, "My dear, I don't know what it
means, but it's taken away my appetite for supper."

"There you are," said Tommy.  "Beware, Mark,
of tampering with the British playgoer's appetite for
supper.  This thing is too sad.  It won't go.  Ah,
well, the shrewdest managers make abominable
mistakes, and the most successful is the fellow who
makes least."

"*Fenella* is sadder than this."

"Um!" said Tommy.  "Sorry to hear that, my boy."

But when the tragedy was read aloud, Greatorex
professed himself amazed.  He jumped up excitedly.

"I believe you've found yourself, 'pon my soul!
And Sybil is mad keen for a new play.  Hullo!
Phew-w-w!"

Mark had fainted.

When he came to himself he admitted that he had
been unable to sleep for several nights.  Tommy
talked like a sage, advising moderation, but knowing—none
better—that *Fenella* could never have been
born without pangs.  With his sense of the dramatic
he perceived that Mark in his present condition
would be likely to impress the actress, herself highly
strung and emotional.  The good fellow took pains
to arrange an interview, obtaining permission to
call and bring a friend.

"I've cracked you up as the coming novelist, who's
dying to make her acquaintance.  I said in a
postscript that you raved about her."

"She is magnificent," said Mark.

"She never reads plays.  But you must corner
her.  Spar free!  I tell you frankly she's a slippery
one.  I was her Press agent for a season.  If possible,
I want her to hear all about her part before she hands
the play on to that scoundrel Gonzales."

Gonzales was Mrs. Perowne's manager.  Mark
frowned when his name was mentioned.  He had
heard of Gonzales.

Mrs. Perowne made the appointment for three.
At two Mark met Greatorex in his rooms.  Tommy
was in his oldest clothes and hard at work.

"I'm not coming," he announced.  "Never meant
to, either.  Why, man, I should wreck your chance.
Here's a letter with a gilt-edged lie in it.  Have you
the play?  Yes.  Now, look here; leave it in the
hall with your overcoat.  Persuade her, if you can,
to listen to the last scene of the third act.  Don't
leave the house without giving her some of it, if you
have to force it down her throat.  She'll respect your
determination.  Report here."

"I c-c-can't r-r-read it," stammered Mark.

Tommy hit his desk so hard with his fist that the
ink bespattered it.

"Mark," he said solemnly, "I am counting on
your making an exhibition of yourself.  Be sure to
stammer, burst a blood-vessel, faint, have a fit, but
stick to your job.  Now—go!"

Mark was pushed out of the room by his friend.
When the door slammed behind him Greatorex
burst out laughing.  "He won't stammer now, and
he'll read his play."

Mark was shown by an irreproachable butler into
a small room hung with silk and filled with Japanese
furniture.  The dominant note was the grotesque
if not the monstrous.  Everything—from the
embroideries on the walls to the tiny carved figures in
the cabinets—indicated the cult of deformity.

He was examining a bit of enamel when Mrs. Perowne
came in, holding out both hands.

"Tommy's friends are always welcome here," she
said graciously.  "That's a nice bit—isn't it?  It's
not Japanese at all, but Byzantine, as I dare say you
know."

Mark confessed that he knew nothing of enamels.
He sat down, glancing at his hostess, who was not
unconscious of his scrutiny and surprise.  Always,
men meeting her for the first time off the stage were
amazed at her appearance of youth.  She braved the
light from the window with impunity.  Hair,
complexion, eyes might have belonged to a maiden
of twenty.  But the mouth—her most remarkable
feature—betrayed the woman of maturity.  It was
large, finely curved, and mobile.  Her eyes were
of a rich chestnut tint.

"You want to tell me about a play?" she said,
with a low laugh.

"How did you d-d-divine that?"

"The expression of a man who has written a play
is unmistakable.  Well, I am in a charming humour
this afternoon.  What is the play about?  *À propos*—are
you the famous Mr. Samphire's brother?"

Unconsciously Mark winced.

"Yes," he said shortly.

"Tell me about your play."

"I c-c-can't," he said.  For a moment he hesitated,
feeling the lump rising in his throat; then
some emanation from the woman opposite—a sense
of sympathy—restored his confidence.  His face—so
plain when troubled—broke into a smile.  "It's like
this," he continued: "I hate to give you a synopsis
of it.  L-l-let me read a scene or two.  You can
make up your mind in a jiffy whether it pleases you
or not; and if it doesn't, I'll go at a nod from you."

"But I never listen to plays.  Surely that wretch,
Tommy, told you.  I talk them over before they're
written.  I've got someone coming in three-quarters
of an hour to talk over an unwritten play.  The
hundreds which are sent to me to read are always
passed on to Alfred Gonzales."

Mark felt his confidence oozing from every pore.
In another minute his hostess would be bored.  At
this ignominious probability his fighting instincts
asserted themselves.

"I wrote this play for you," he said slowly.  "I
can't see another woman in it at all.  And
somehow,"—he stretched out his lean, finely formed hands
with a dramatic gesture—"somehow I seem to have
gripped you, elusive though you are.  Tommy says
you're a good sort.  Be good to me—for ten minutes.
The play's downstairs in the hall.  Let me fetch it.
Shall I?"

"Yes—fetch it."

He ran like a boy from the room.  Mrs. Perowne
got up, glanced at herself in a small mirror, and sat
down in the seat which Mark had just left.  The
change was not without significance.  Before, she
had wished to be seen; now she wished to see.
When Mark came back she said quietly: "Begin at
the beginning."

At that moment Mark felt once more the accursed
lump in his throat.  His face contracted.  The
woman closely watching him rose and laid her hand
upon his shoulder.

"You have an impediment of speech," she whispered.
"Take your time.  You have interested me.
I like men who surmount obstacles.  I'll sit here till
you can read your play.  I'm going to mix two tiny
cocktails, Martigny cocktails: mild as Mary's little
lamb."

When she came back Mark was at his ease; she
had ceased to be a stranger.  He drank the cocktail,
and began the first act.  Mrs. Perowne lay back in
her chair, watching him with half-closed eyes.  She
never moved, absorbing in silence every word and
intonation.  When Mark had finished, she nodded
gaily.

"The first act is capital.  When will you come
and read the others?"

"At any hour you choose—day or night."

"To-morrow at twelve then.  You must stay to
luncheon afterwards."





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.. _`POPPY AND MANDRAGORA`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVII


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   POPPY AND MANDRAGORA

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Half an hour later Mark was describing what
had passed to Greatorex, who listened with
an odd smile upon his ugly, intelligent face: the
smile which is typical of so much that is left
unsaid, the smile of a knowledge and an experience
which cannot be imparted.  Greatorex had appetite
for such food as Mark was giving him, and he
demanded every crumb.  While Mark was speaking
the journalist smoked.  The smoke ascended in
fragrant clouds, melting into the thickening atmosphere
of the room.  It struck Greatorex, not for the first
time, that the reek of good tobacco manifested all
the things for which men strive and to which it
would seem to be predestined that they should not
attain.  Greatorex asked himself what life would be
without the fragrance of hopes and ambitions which
float from us and vanish.  And how stale, how
offensive their odour becomes unless the windows of the
mind be flung wide open!

"Mark," he said, dropping the end of his cigarette,
"you are desperately keen on this?"

He meant his words to be taken as affirmation or
interrogation, according to Mark's mood.  He never
invited confidences withheld.

"Yes," Mark replied.

"Why?"

When the eyes of the two men countered, a third
person would have remarked in them an extraordinary
difference in colour and quality.  Greatorex
had the onyx eyes of a gipsy, bright yet obscured
by mysterious flickering tints, the eyes which
conceal and so seldom reveal the thoughts behind them.
Mark's blue eyes had that candid expression which
pertains to children's eyes.

"Why?"  Mark repeated the pregnant word.  "I
think you know why.  I have failed in everything
I have undertaken.  I have pursued success as if it
were a will-o'-the-wisp——"

"Which it is——"

"And if once I could hold it in my hand, if I could
say to myself, I have it—it is mine—why then——"

He paused.

"You care so much for fame—you?"

"I ask for recognition, not because recognition is
in itself a hall mark of success, but because without
it labour would seem to be wasted.  What is the
use of a great poem, a great book, which remains
unread?  A gospel is no gospel until it is preached
to thousands."

"Don't set your heart on this play being produced!"

"I *have* set my heart on that, Tommy."

"If Sybil takes a fancy to you——" he paused.

Mark's ingenuous stare was disconcerting.  He
continued lightly: "I warn you that she may like you
better than *Fenella*.  It would not surprise me if she
liked you rather too well."

"Don't be a fool," said Mark angrily.

"If I could only be a fool," Greatorex murmured.
"Depend upon it fools have the best of it.  And they
live, some of 'em, in the only paradise to be found
on this planet.  Well, I have spoken, I have warned you."

Upon the following day Mark returned at the hour
appointed to Mrs. Perowne's flat.  The butler,
impassive as the Sphinx, showed him into the same
room with its curious atmosphere of the East.  In a
few minutes the actress appeared in a *kimono* of some
silvery tissue embroidered in gold, with her hair
done *à la Japonaise*, and embellished with barbaric
ornaments.  Clad in this she became a part, and the
greatest part, of the room.  Looking at her, Mark
felt ill at ease in his blue serge suit.  At the same
time he tried to measure the difference between the
woman in the *kimono* and all other women whom he
had known.  Mrs. Perowne smiled, reading his
thoughts.

"I am quite, quite different to all the others," she
said softly.  "I ought to have lived in the days of
Herod Antipas."

When she spoke of Herod, Mark remembered
that she had Jewish blood in her veins.  Her father
had been a well-known English picture-dealer; her
mother, a famous dancer, a Spanish Moor.  Her
Moorish ancestors, of whom the actress boasted,
were Jews to the marrow, although living in Spain,
outwardly subject to the faith of most Catholic
monarchs.  For generations these people had lived
and died incomparable actors, sustaining from the
cradle to the grave a rôle above which glittered the
knives of the Inquisition.  Mark began to
understand that the woman smiling at him was natural,
most true to herself, when playing a part—and yet
beneath a thousand disguises throbbed the heart of
the Jewess, the child of all countries and of none.

Mark read his play.

As he read it, he realised how poor an instrument
lay in his throat.  He was hoarse from a neglected
cold, and his voice, though flexible, betrayed the
effort made to control it.  But the stammer spared
him.  To Sybil Perowne, familiar with and therefore
slightly contemptuous of the arts of the elocutionist,
this rough, uneven inflection and articulation had
something of the charm of a disused viol or harpsichord,
whose frayed, worn strings still hold jangled
echoes of cadences melodic and harmonious long
ago.  She had the perceptions of the artist, and that
feeling for art which is partly a gift and partly the
result of patient training.  Her perceptions enabled
her to see Mark Samphire as he was, the man who
had fought against odds; her feeling for art
approved his work as the epitome and expression of
that fight dramatically set forth in admirable English.
At the end of the second act the reader looked up
for a word of approval: "Go on!" she said.  The
climax of the third act provoked an exclamation at
Mark's physical distress.  She brought him a glass of
champagne and insisted upon his drinking it.  But
he saw that her eyes were shining.  He plunged
into the fourth act and stumbled through it: every
word rasping his throat.  When he had finished she
jumped up as Greatorex had done.

"I am a woman of impulse," she cried.  "I will
produce your play."

Mark stared at her, not believing his ears.

"You will p-p-produce it?" he stammered.

"Yes," she answered.  "I don't say there's money
in it; I don't say it hasn't faults and crudities; but
I do say it's a play—and it pleases, it touches, it
thrills—me."

She held out her hand.  Mark had an intuition
that she wished him to kiss it.  He raised it
gratefully to his lips.

"And now," she said gaily, "luncheon!  I am
famished.  There is no sauce like emotion.  That is
why Spanish people eat so much at funerals."

At luncheon she asked a score of questions about
his work and life.

"Last night," she said, "I read *The Songs of the
Angels*.  You have heard these songs yourself, eh?
But—do you hear them now?"

She held his glance, faintly smiling at the colour
which rushed into his cheeks.

"There are angels and angels," he said evasively.

"But, if I have interpreted your meaning, the
angels you write about are heard only by the—shall
I offend you if I say—the saints.  You are not a
saint?"

"Hardly," said Mark.

"But you might be," she murmured; "that is
why you interest me"—she paused, sighed, and
finished the sentence—"so much.  I have never
met a saint; I have never met a man who had the
makings of a saint in him—till to-day."

Mark knew that she had challenged him.

"Out of the makings of a saint," he said curtly,
"the devil fashions the greatest sinner."

"You believe in the devil?"

Mark shrugged his shoulders.

"The devil is 'evil' with a big D before it.  I
certainly believe in evil."

"I have to drag answers from you.  Do you dislike
this sort of talk?  Perhaps you think me indiscreet,
impudent; but I like to get my bearings.  It
saves bother.  You can ask me anything—anything,
if, if you regard me as a friend."

"I do," he said hastily; but he asked no questions.

"I don't quite understand you," she said slowly;
"and of course you don't understand me.  I am
sure, judging from your book, your play, and—and
your face, that you have an extravagant admiration
for what you think to be good women.  Is it not so?
You needn't take the trouble to say 'yes.'  And I'm
only a good—*sort*.  I have a sound body, of which I
take the greatest care, and a sane mind; but I was
born without a soul.  *Enfin*, the conclusion is
inevitable—for me—I do not believe in the soul but
you do?"

"I did," he answered.

She offered him a cigarette, and lit one herself, as
the Sphinx-like butler brought coffee and liqueurs.
The luncheon had been very simple.  Sipping her
coffee, the actress began to talk of *Fenella*.

"You wrote the part, you say, for me; but you
have drawn *Fenella* from life."

Mark denied this.

"You may have done it subconsciously, but
you've done it.  Now tell me, have you worked out
the technical details?  Have you estimated the
probable expense?"

"I suppose the adequate mounting of it will be
costly."

"Between three and four thousand pounds," said
Mrs. Perowne carelessly.

Soon after he took his leave.  The play remained
in the actress's possession.  No mention was made
of terms.  Mrs. Perowne had said that Gonzales
would look it over.  Greatorex expressed astonishment
that the affair had come to a head so suddenly,
and congratulated Mark; but he added that a
contract must be signed as soon as possible.

"You don't think——" began Mark.

"My dear fellow, I know a poor devil whose first
play was accepted six years ago.  It has not been
produced yet!  Strictly between ourselves, I don't
mind telling you that I'm the man."

"But if your lawyer——"

"I can't afford to make an enemy of the
actor-manager who *still* has it!  I blame myself; I had
no contract.  We'll prepare a corker for you.  I take
it that you want nothing if the thing fails, and a fair
profit if it goes—eh?  Just so.  When do you see
the fascinating Sybil again?  To-morrow.  Have you
made love to her?  She expects it from every man.
Not many disappoint her."

He laughed at Mark's confusion, and compared
him to the infant Moses found by Pharaoh's daughter
in the bulrushes.  The friends celebrated the
acceptance of the drama at a restaurant, and Mark made
merry.

"You feel it?" said Tommy.

"Eh?"

"Success tickling the palm of your hand?"

"I shall mark this day with red, of course!"

"If we were in the West of America," said Greatorex,
"we should paint the night as red as *la belle*
Sybil's hair.  This sort of thing has only a tinge of
pink in it.  Have you ever let yourself go, Mark?
Of course not!  There is nothing of the beast in
you.  You might kill yourself, or somebody else,
but I can't fancy you on all fours."

They returned to the club, where some choice
spirits were discussing art and literature in a fog of
tobacco-smoke.  But Mark, who joined them, saw
no fog—only the sun, shining upon all things and
all men.

"He's had a four-act play accepted," Greatorex
explained.  "There's no more to tell yet."

Several of the men shook Mark's hand.  Glasses
were replenished, fresh cigars lighted.  Mark laughed
as gaily as any, delightfully aware that he was
receiving something—so to speak—on account, a few
pieces of silver, cash down to bind a bargain.  Some
of his companions were celebrities.  It seemed to
him that for the first time he was of them as well as
with them.  These Olympians asked for his opinion,
laughed at his jokes, approved his suggestions.
The hours passed swiftly and pleasantly.

But walking home to Hampstead, beneath the
stars, in an air purged by frost, his triumph dwindled
to mean proportions.  He considered the events of
the day.  Out of these, now become shadows for
the most part, the face of Sybil Perowne stood out
substantially: a fact to be reckoned with.  He asked
himself if he liked her.  Was he attracted by her
beauty and cleverness?  No; these had not touched
him.  Yet he was attracted—and by what?  A vision
of the Japanese room revealed the fascination, so
mysterious, so alluring to the imagination, of the
occult.  The sorceress beguiled the fancy of a man
who had only cared for good women.  He found
himself speculating in regard to her.  Doubtless the
Sphinx-faced butler could tell some tales—an he would!

If he saw much of her, would he forget Betty?
The child of the Moorish dancer gave poppy and
mandragora to those who sought her.

He had made an appointment with Mrs. Perowne
in the afternoon, but in the morning, having nothing
to do, he thought he would like to see Pynsent.
Pynsent owned a queer old-fashioned house in
Kensington.  Mark rang the bell, which was answered
by a delightful French *bonne*, who made the best
omelette in the world and worshipped Pynsent.
Certainly, Monsieur would be charmed to see his
friend.  Alas! yes; the dear studio in Paris had
been abandoned.  She, Francine, was desolated,
but what would you?  Monsieur Pynsent made gold
in this detestable London instead of silver in
enchanting Paris!  So chattering, she conducted Mark
to the big studio, which was found to be empty.
The master had slipped out for a minute.  Would
Monsieur Mark sit down?  Before he had time to
smoke a tiny cigarette, his friend would be shaking
both his hands.  She gave Mark the cigarettes, the
potent Caporal cigarettes, handed him the latest
Paris paper, popped a log on to the fire, and bustled
away.

Mark looked about him.  The studio, simply
furnished, bare of those tapestries and properties
which most painters buy as soon as they begin to
earn money, was, in short, a workshop full of
ingenious appliances for obtaining curious effects of
colour, light and shade.  In the middle of it stood
a huge oak easel.  Several large canvases were
turned to the wall.  An open paint-box, a palette,
a bowl full of the coarse, broad brushes which
Pynsent used, told Mark that work was about to
begin.  Pynsent took few holidays.  Work had
become to him not a means to an end, but the end
itself.  But then such work as his was an end, an
accomplishment, a victory.  Finality distinguished
every touch.  Mark lit one of the French cigarettes,
because he knew the fumes of it would bring back
the pleasant days in the *Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie*.
He wondered whether Pynsent—the least sentimental
of men—smoked Caporal tobacco for the
same reason.  Possibly.  But more probably because
he was a man in a groove.  One could not conceive
of Pynsent with a butler and footmen.  He lived
now as he had always lived, regardless of Mrs. Grundy,
who said tartly that the great painter was
a pincher.

After a whiff or two, the *Rue de l'Ancienne
Comédie* revealed itself as it appeared one morning
when a couple of brother students were removing
themselves and their belongings from one studio to
another.  Mark had lent two willing hands and a
tongue which outwagged a terrier's tail.  The
students possessed a chest full of costumes.  In
these their friends had arrayed themselves.  From
several adjoining studios came other students and
their models, all anxious to help—or hinder.  Every
article was carried in procession down the narrow
street to the sounds of loud laughter, of banjo and
mandoline, of drum and cornet, and of various
songs.  A diminutive Frenchman, beardless as a
baby, had taken off most of his clothes and was
sitting cross-legged in the middle of a large flat
bath, which four of his friends were carrying,
arm-high, down the street.  The little man had robed
himself in a rough towel; he wore a sponge-bag
on his head; and he hugged to his bare chest an
enormous sponge.  All down the street, windows
were flung up.  Everybody joined in the fun.

"*Une petite surprise pour Monsieur—et Madame*."

The voice of the good Francine put to flight the
joyous procession.  Mark rose up, flung away the
half-smoked cigarette, and saw Betty advancing into
the studio.  Francine hobbled away.  She knew that
Betty had married Mark's brother.

"Betty!"

"Mark!"

"Don't go," said Mark, as she paused irresolute.
"Pynsent is painting you, I suppose.  He will be
here in a minute.  I'll go."

"You never wrote," she faltered.

"Was it likely?  How is the boy?"

"I expected a word of—forgiveness.  The boy is
very well."

"Is he like you?"

"Everybody says so."

He was silent and very pale, whereas Betty's face
was suffused with delicate colour.  He was trying to
resist an overmastering impulse to take her in his
arms, when he heard Pynsent's step, and a moment
afterwards his clear incisive voice.

"I am ashamed that I was not here to receive you,
Mrs. Samphire.  But I know you'd sooner talk to
Mark than me.  I'm painting her, Mark.  You shall
give us your opinion.  I've not seen you for a coon's
age.  What?  Nonsense, my dear fellow.  I can
paint just as well while you're here.  You must stay
as long as you possibly can.  Mustn't he, Mrs. Samphire?"

"Of course," said Betty in her ordinary voice.
Pynsent dragged a canvas across the studio and
placed it on the easel.

"There," said he, "what do you think of that?"

Mark approached the easel, as Betty turned to
remove her hat and jacket.  The portrait, almost
completed, was three-quarters length: a daring study
in what at first glance seemed to be black-and-white.
As a matter of fact, black, as pigment, was not used
at all.  The effect of it was produced by the
admixture and contrast of colour.  Looking into the
translucent shadows the eye detected brilliant tints.

"It's one of the best things I've done," said
Pynsent.  "It's kept me awake nights, this portrait.
I got that shadow under the chin by a trick I learnt
in Florence.  You lay three colours one on top of
the other.  It's great.  The fellow who discovered
it can't draw; he'd be a wonder if he could——"

Pynsent went on talking, unaware of what was
passing in the minds of his friends.  Betty sat down
on the model's dais, and Pynsent arranged her
hands, still talking volubly of light and colour
effects.  Mark remained staring at the picture.
"You haven't said what you think of it," concluded
Pynsent, as he picked up his palette.

"For whom are you painting it?"

"It's an open secret, isn't it?" said the painter,
glancing sideways at his model.  "The grateful
Vauxhall wishes to give it to your brother.  But I
had difficulty in persuading Madame to sit."

"Vauxhall," repeated Mark stupidly.

"Archie, they say, has put thousands into his
pocket.  He boomed the price of all bricks and
mortar within a mile radius of the Basilica.
Well—your opinion, my dear fellow."

Mark still hesitated.  Pynsent was famous for his
delineation of character.  He had the power of
seizing and transferring to canvas those delicate
shades of expression which reveal the real man and
woman.  In pourtraying Betty, he had emphasised
the mother in her at the expense, possibly, of the
wife.  The portrait was hardly flattering in the
generally received sense.  The face was troubled;
lines and shadows lay on it.  Betty's youth and
beauty were subdued, as if beneath the touch of
suffering rather than time.  But the general effect
remained that of a grace and loveliness independent
of colour and texture.  The admirable contours,
the delicate modelling of cheek and brow and chin,
indicated a noble maturity not yet attained but certain
to be attained.  Not at that moment, however, did
Mark realise that Pynsent's portrait was an incomparable
likeness of the Betty who had failed to keep
tryst because the higher nature had overcome the
lower and baser.  But he did grasp a part of the
truth.  He told himself that if Betty had not suffered,
Pynsent would have painted another and a different
portrait.

"The face is strange to me," said Mark.

"What?" Pynsent exclaimed, staring at the
speaker.  "You, you say that?  Why of all men,
I——"  He broke off abruptly, sensible of some
psychological disturbance, puzzled and distressed.
Mark laughed harshly.  He had almost betrayed
himself.  Then he glanced at Betty.  Her likeness
to the picture was extraordinary.

"You m-m-misunderstand me," he stammered.
"I meant to say that you had painted a woman
who has changed.  We all change.  I hardly
recognise my own f-face.  This picture is, as you say,
the b-b-best thing you've done, and I congratulate
you warmly.  I'd like to see it again.  But now I
must r-r-run away.  I d-dropped in to tell you that
my play is accepted."

This piece of news effectively cloaked his nervousness.
Pynsent and Betty expressed their pleasure
and congratulation.  Mark shook hands and escaped.

"I thought he was not himself," said Pynsent,
picking up his palette.  "This will make up for a
good deal, won't it?  I know exactly how he feels.
Great Scott!  It seems only yesterday that I had my
first picture hung in the Salon.  I was skied, but I
was the happiest man in Paris.  All the same, Mark
did not strike me as looking happy—eh?"

She answered his sharp "eh" and still sharper
glance with a constrained "N-n-no."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GONZALES`:

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   CHAPTER XXXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GONZALES

.. vspace:: 2

Mark plunged into the obscurity of the
underground railway, cursing the impulse which
had taken him to Pynsent's studio.  Betty had
suffered, but what was her suffering compared with his?

He repeated this to himself again and again, as
the train bore him eastward.  Then he remembered
Jim's phrase: "Our Betty is out of sight."

Thinking of Jim, he got out at the Mansion House
and walked to the Stock Exchange.  Five minutes
with Jim might blow some cobwebs out of his mind.
He reached the huge building and called for James
Corrance.  The porter bade him wait near some
glass swinging-doors through which hatless men
were continually passing.  Whenever these opened
a dull roar of many voices fell on Mark's ear, a
menacing growl as of an angry beast.  In his present
mood Mark welcomed any strange noise as a
distraction from the buzzing of his own thoughts.
This beast of the markets made itself heard.  Mark
wondered vaguely whether it drowned, to such men
as Jim, all other sounds.

While he stood, peering through the glass doors,
a sharp thud, as of a mallet striking a panel of wood,
smote his ears.  In an instant, as if some wizard had
waved a wand, silence fell upon the crowd within
the building, a silence inexpressibly strange and
awe-inspiring.  Again the thud was heard, louder
and more articulate.  Mark guessed what was
happening.  A member of the Stock Exchange
was about to be "hammered."  The silence, Mark
noted, was partially broken by a shuffling of
innumerable feet, as men pressed forward to catch
the name of the man who had failed.  The hammer
struck for the third and last time.  Mark could see
that every face was turned in one direction; upon
each lay a grim expression of anxiety.  Then a
hoarse voice said in a monotone: "Mr. Caxton Bruno
is unable to comply with his bargains."  A roar of
voices succeeded the announcement, as the crowd
resumed the business of the minute.  The glass
doors swung open; and Jim Corrance appeared.

"You heard poor Bruno hammered," he said.
"Dramatic—eh?  It always thrills, because one
never knows.  That cursed hammer may sound the
death knell of a dozen firms.  I *am* glad to see
you——"

Talking volubly, he insisted that Mark must lunch
with him, although Mark protested that he had no
appetite.  But Jim, when he heard that *Fenella* was
accepted by Mrs. Perowne, declared that a bottle
of champagne must be cracked.  He carried Mark
off to his City club, where scores of men were
eating, drinking, and talking.  Jim pointed out the
celebrities.

"That fellow is a famous 'bear,'" he indicated a
short, thick-set, rather unctuous-looking Jew.  "In
the long run the 'bears' have the best of it."

"He doesn't look clever," said Mark.

"Clever?  He's stupid as an owl outside his own
special business.  It isn't the clever ones who arrive.
I know men with all the qualities essential to success,
but the luck goes against 'em every time.  They
ought to get there with both feet, but they don't.
You must have a glass of that old cognac, Mark.
A play is not accepted every day, by Jove!  I tell
you what I'll do, my boy.  I'll give a dinner in
honour of the event.  We'll get Pynsent, and
Tommy Greatorex, and the rest of 'em.  Why not
nip over to Paris for it?  Eh?  What are you
mumbling?  All take and no give.  What infernal
rot!  Well, I won't take no.  As if it wasn't an
honour to entertain so distinguished a gentleman."

Mark's spirits began to rise.  After all, the world
was not such a bad place.  And the luck which Jim
spoke about had certainly changed.  The play would
be produced within the year.  Thoroughly warmed
by Jim's hospitality, and promising that he would
reconsider his refusal to dine in Paris, he left the
City to keep his appointment with Mrs. Perowne.
But the atmosphere of the underground railway,
raw, fetid, thick with smoke, brought back the
misery and despair of the morning.  He found
himself reflecting that life after thirty was an
underground procession, a nauseating vagabondage in
semi-obscurity, stopping now and again at stations
artificially illumined, garishly decorated, reeking
with abominable odours, crowded with pale, troubled
strangers jostling each other in their wild efforts to
hurry on to some other place as detestable as the
one they were leaving....

As for the play upon which so much was staked,
was he not a sanguine fool to take a woman's word
that it would be produced?  And production did not
mean success.  But here he paused.  Production
to him did mean success.  It was good, good, good!
It had thrilled two persons who knew.  Greatorex,
the cynic, the reader of innumerable plays, and the
actress, the woman of genius.

On this occasion Mrs. Perowne received him in
her drawing-room: a conventional room, white-and-yellow,
filled with absurd knick-knacks and too
many flowers, principally exotics of overpowering
perfume.  She was wearing a large hat which
overshadowed her face.  Her dress and jacket of the
plainest cloth and cut were trimmed with sable.
Mark had passed her brougham, drawn up a few
yards from the entrance of the building, and guessed
that she was going out.  She began to speak about
*Fenella*.

"Alfred Gonzales has read it."

"What does he say?"

"He finds it too serious.  He says there's no
money in it."

Mark gasped.

"But Alfred is not infallible," she added.  "I
mean to produce *Fenella*.  It may be wise to throw
it first to the dog."  This meant a first performance
in the provinces.  Mark burst into excited speech.

"Then you d-d-don't mean to ch-chuck me.
You've raised me to the heights, Mrs. Perowne.
Don't drop me!  I m-m-mean that I'd sooner know
the worst now.  You said you were an impulsive
woman.  Perhaps your impulse overstepped the
b-b-bounds of prudence, you know.  And, if so,
we'll call the thing off.  But don't drop me later.  I
couldn't stand that.  Am I speaking out too plainly?
You've been very kind, very kind indeed; I shall
always be grateful, b-b-but I can face disappointment
better now than l-l-later."

"Sit down," she said, smiling.  "Why, what a
boy you are.  I-I like boys."

He sat down, trembling, wiping the perspiration
from his forehead.

"You are as emotional as I am," she murmured
in a caressing voice.  "Now, I've an appointment
which I must keep.  You can believe that I'd sooner
spend the afternoon with you.  I really mean it.  I
have to recite at a bazaar.  Which bores me horribly.
Now do you believe that I am your friend, that I like
you, that you interest me?  And will you be furious
if I add that I like you better than your play—good
though it is?  I prefer the man to his work, the
artist to his art."

She paused, glancing at him through half-closed
eyes.  There was something feline about her
expression and pose.  Her voice had a purr in it.  Mark
did not know what to say or do.

"I should like to help you to a real success," she
continued.  "And why not?  Your play might be
made into a masterpiece.  At present it is uneven,
amateurish, crude in parts.  Alfred put his finger
on the weak spots.  He says that the fourth act
ought to be rewritten.  Shall we rewrite it together?
I mean, will you let me help you to make it just what
it ought to be?"

"Why, of course," said Mark eagerly.  "I am
not fool enough to suppose that the thing can't be
improved.  Your help, your hints, your experience
would be invaluable.  I was counting on them at
rehearsal."

"But we haven't come to that yet.  I don't hold
with altering plays at rehearsals.  After the first
night or two, revision may be expedient.  One
never knows.  Scenes may drag, or they may be
too short.  We needn't go into that now.  But my
point is that the thing should be as perfect as the
author can make it, before it is read to the company.
You agree with me—*hein*?"

The foreign word of interrogation had a soothing
sound.  Mark placed himself in her hands
unreservedly.

"I trust you," he said simply.

She nodded, showing her lovely teeth in a smile.
Then she pointed out that nothing could be done
till the piece in which she was acting had been
taken off.  She expected to be quite free in a
fortnight's time.  After Easter she would appear in a
rôle which required little preparation.  During Lent
she might go abroad.  But all details could be
settled later.  Would he drink tea with her and talk
everything over the day after to-morrow?

He saw her into her brougham.

"Your play is in Alfred's hands," she said, as she
bade him good-bye.  "He is going to make some
notes for us.  Have you met him?  Go and see him.
He's at the theatre now."

She murmured something he did not catch, as the
brougham rolled silently away.  She was right.  He
ought to see Gonzales.  The business connected
with the play, the contract and so forth, must be
done through him.  Doubtless that was what she
meant when she urged him to go to the theatre.  He
took a 'bus to the Alcazar and sent up his card.
Presently word came down through a tube that
Mr. Gonzales would be disengaged in less than ten
minutes.  Mr. Samphire might care to look over
the house?  Mark assenting to this, a youth
connected with the manager's department escorted him
through the building, which had been built for
Mrs. Perowne "regardless of expense," as the youth said,
and "replete with every modern appliance."  Mark
wondered at the beauty of the decorations in parts
of the theatre other than the auditorium, where
lavishness was to be expected.  The stage was
already set, and the youth told Mark that the
"Empire" furniture had adorned the palace of one
of Napoleon's marshals.

Further details, setting forth the thousands
lavished upon scenery and costumes, gave Mark
a dismal impression that the play itself was the least
part of a modern theatrical performance; this
impression was deepened when he met the manager,
whom he disliked at the first glance.  Gonzales, it
was said, had lured Mrs. Perowne from her husband,
holding out the bait of fame.  She first appeared in
one of his adaptations from the French, a melodrama
built about a head of red hair.  Mrs. Perowne's red
hair had been the feature of posters six yards long,
designed by Cheret.  In America, the yellow press
had asserted that Gonzales was in the habit of
dragging his pupil across her room by her flaming
locks.  Her screams echoed from Maine to California,
and filled every theatre with curious crowds,
who believed the stories when they saw the red hair.

Gonzales was big and burly, with a close-clipped
black beard, through which protruded a red lower
lip.  His face indicated power, cruelty, and a brutal
self-assurance.  He was smoking a very thick cigar,
which he held, when he spoke, between white, fat
fingers.  His voice, however, was charming;
melodious, persuasive, with the intonations and
inflections characteristic of the Latin races; and his eyes,
heavily lidded, were finely formed and of a clear
umber in colour.  He began to praise Mark's play
with an insincerity which revolted.  Mark, sensible
of an overpowering desire to escape, listened to
interminable phrases.

"You are soaping the ways," he said, when
Gonzales paused.  "I understood from Mrs. Perowne
that you saw no m-money in the thing.  You can
tell me frankly what you think of it.  I am not
thin-skinned, and I hope you d-don't take me for a
f-fool."

Gonzales showed his teeth.

"One has to be careful with authors," he said.
"I write myself, trifles," he shrugged his shoulders,
"adaptations, as you know, which have had a
measure of success.  And I can't bear to have them
criticised, these adopted children of mine.  I think
them perfect, perfect.  But you—you are of colder
blood—and you say you prefer the truth which I
speak sometimes," he smiled disagreeably.  "Well,
then, in my opinion, you have just missed a big
thing.  There's dramatic power in every line of
*Fenella*, and in Paris it might catch on, but here
tragedy is played—out.  Still, I don't say that with
judicious cutting, and a slight strengthening of the
love interest, and—in short I told Mrs. Perowne
that we could make something of it, if you gave us
a free hand.  Oh, there's plenty of action, and a
freshness of treatment, but look here——"  He
made a couple of suggestions, so admirable, so
luminous of his insight into dramatic possibilities,
that Mark admitted at once the man's cleverness
and knowledge of what was good work.  But when
he had, so to speak, given this sample of his ability,
he added with an odious sneer: "After all the
public, our public, asks for something absolutely
different.  For example, I am in treaty now for a
comedy in four acts.  Mrs. Perowne will wear eight
dresses, furnished by the four leading dressmakers
of Paris.  *Entre nous*, these confections will cost us
nothing, not a *sou*.  They will be an immense 'ad'
for the dressmakers and for us.  The comedy must
be constructed round these dresses.  As an artist
I deplore such methods, but a successful manager
is forced to employ them."

Mark curtly stated the object of his visit.  Gonzales
shrugged his shoulders.

"The contract?  Is it not early to talk of that?"

Words flowed like a stream of milk from his
mouth.  In the "profession," he explained, one
could not move in haste.  Mrs. Perowne had
engagements to be filled.  It was absurd to talk of
producing a play on a certain day.  It was bad
business to take off a paying piece.  And Rejane
might lease the Alcazar.  No, no, he gave
Mr. Samphire credit for a certain delicacy.  He was
dealing, remember, with a lady, whose judgment—the
truth was best—he had taken by storm.  As her
manager, he had implored her again and again to
read no plays till he, the speaker, had looked them
over.  Finally, Mark took his leave, conscious that
he had been defeated, that this man of many words
could warp him to his will.  He carried away with
him, moreover, a conviction that Gonzales was his
enemy, and that the stories about him and
Mrs. Perowne were true.





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.. _`AT THE MIRAFLORES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT THE MIRAFLORES

.. vspace:: 2

During the fortnight that followed Mark saw
Mrs. Perowne every day.  The actress
exercised over him strange powers of attraction and
repulsion, which he tried to analyse: sensible that
the repulsion was subtle and negative, whereas the
attraction was obvious and positive.  She had a
score of charms; but beneath them lay something
secret and hateful; possibly a cruelty not alien to
red hair and red lips.  By chance, one day, Mark
said that strong smelling-salts held beneath the nose
of a bulldog would make him relax his grip of
another dog when more violent measures had failed.
The actress had a Chow for whom she expressed
extravagant affection.  Before Mark could interfere,
she had called the dog to her side and thrust beneath
its sensitive nostrils some strong spirits of ammonia.
The poor animal snuffed at them, and was almost
strangled by the fumes.  Mark, furious at such
unnecessary cruelty, made hot protest and then got up
to leave the room.  Mrs. Perowne entreated
forgiveness, pleading ignorance and thoughtlessness.
Mark saw tears in her eyes; suborned witnesses,
no doubt, but deemed honest by an honest man.

"I loathe cruelty," said Mark.

"Gonzales is cruel," she replied irrelevantly.

"But you like him?"

"I hate him—sometimes."

He divined in her a desire to talk about Gonzales.

"I hate him always," said Mark.  "I don't
want to hear his name mentioned.  I know he is a
beast."

"Would you like me to dismiss him?" she asked
softly.

He stared at her in astonishment.

"Could you?  I understood that he was
in—indispensable, as actor and manager."

"No man is indispensable to—me," she said
angrily.  Then her face changed and softened,
suffused by an extraordinary radiance of youth and
vitality.  "I mean to say," she murmured, "that
no man, *yet*, has proved himself indispensable,
but——"

She looked at Mark, who got up and began to
pace the room, much agitated.  Her lips were
parted, revealing the small, white, resolute-looking
teeth.  She was reflecting, not without a sense of
humour, that Mark was the first man of the many
she liked who refused to dance to her piping.  The
fact allured her.

"I must go," he said abruptly.

"But you will come to-morrow?"

He hesitated, blushing like a girl, but on the
morrow he came and found her friendly, genial, the
"good sort": a rôle she could sustain to perfection.
Mark, on the other hand, felt himself to be dull and
irritable.  Even the all-absorbing *Fenella* failed to
quicken his wits or pulses.  He answered absently
some suggestions in regard to the fourth act, staring
at the speaker's eyes, as if trying to read their
message instead of that of the lips.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked
in a tone absolutely free from sentiment.

"I am trying to find the real Sybil."

"Sybils are mysteries," she said lightly.  "Besides
you come here to talk about the play—*hein*? not
about me."

"I come here to talk about the play," he answered
slowly, "but I go away to think about you."

"And the thoughts are not always pleasant ones?"

"Not always."

"You are truthful."

"Am I?"

"Most men are such liars.  Gonzales, for example—ah,
well, we won't talk of him.  But the others—oh,
the humbugs!"

In fluent, even tones, she began to speak of the
men she knew intimately, the higher Bohemians of
art and literature.  It was impossible not to be
amused by her sketches.

"This is caricature," said Mark.

"Studies from life."

"I'm glad I don't know those—gentlemen."

"You are a man of limitations; and you see
others not as they are but as you would like them to
be.  That is why your books do not sell.  Your
characters are strongly drawn, but their strength is
a reproach and an exasperation to readers of weaker
clay.  In books, as in real life, we like to meet
people no better and perhaps worse than ourselves.
You are handicapped by ideals, which bankrupt
your ideas...."

On this theme she spoke volubly for some minutes.
Mark listened, amazed at her perceptions, at her
grasp of life as it is lived in London, at her audacity
in dealing with problems.

"You look astonished," she concluded, "but
nowadays revolt is a synonym of intelligence.  As
for me I revolt against stupid traditions and
conventions.  They are to me like those hideous
horse-hair sofas and chairs upon which our grandfathers
sat so stiffly.  What?  Good wear in them?  I dare
say they served their purpose, but now they are
banished to obscure lodging-houses."

Mark repeated some of her phrases to Tommy Greatorex.

"She's as clever as she can stick," Tommy admitted,
"but it's surface cleverness, like surface
water, tricklings from a thousand sources more or
less polluted.  She's interested in you because you
are different from—the others.  Of course you're
not interested in her—apart from her profession, I
mean.  I sent you to her because I knew you would
be proof against her sorceries—the witch.  Hullo!"

Mark was scarlet.

"I say—you're not interested, are you?  She's a
wrong 'un.  I warned you."

"She has good in her."

Greatorex laughed.

"Good?  A needle in a haystack.  Seriously,
Mark, you mustn't burn your fingers.  Lord!  I was
so sure of you.  I foresaw that you would excite
her curiosity and interest; I knew that she would
like you, as I said, better than your play.  In a
word I pulled the strings, but I thought I should
make her dance, not you."

"She has been very kind to me."

"What have you been to her?  Tell me to mind
my own business, if you like.  It's not worth
minding, but that doesn't matter."

"I am going to ask Mrs. Perowne to marry me,"
Mark replied slowly.

"Phew-w-w!"

Instantly, Mark took his hat and marched out of
the room.  Tommy bit his nails till it occurred to
him to light a pipe.  Then he tried to continue his
work, a special article, but he found it impossible to
write a line.  Mark's face and eyes disturbed him.
Finally, he flung down his pen in a rage.

"I thought I knew him," he muttered, "I thought
I knew him.  This is the bottomless pit, and I led
him blindfold to the edge of it."

Suddenly he bethought himself of Pynsent.
Pynsent knew Mrs. Perowne, had painted her
portrait—a revelation of character in colour.
Accordingly he wired to Pynsent, asking him to dine at a
small restaurant in Baker Street, and mentioning
that a subject of importance was to be discussed.
Pynsent wired back an acceptance for the same
evening, and the men met at eight o'clock.  They
sat down to sharpen their appetites upon some excellent
salted fillets of herring.  Not till the *marmite*
was swallowed did Greatorex give his perplexity
words.  Then he said abruptly—

"You painted Mrs. Perowne?"

"You bet I did—inside and out."

"Did she make love to you?"

"N-n-no," Pynsent replied, not quite readily.

"Why not be frank?  I can hold my tongue."

"I think," Pynsent admitted cautiously, "that
she expected me to make love to her, but I didn't.
I took a dislike to the woman.  And it came out in
the picture.  Unpleasant things were said about it
at the time, but she liked it.  She told me I had
succeeded.  And—Great Scott!—so I had."

"She has captivated and is captivated by Mark
Samphire.  He is going to marry her."

"What?"

"It is partly my fault, but I was so sure
of—him."  He told the story at length.  "And now
what are we to do?"

"Mark—Mark!" Pynsent kept repeating stupidly.
"It is incredible.  Mark Samphire—and Sybil
Perowne!"

"She has never denied herself anything."

"She'll suck every ounce of good blood from his
body.  It would be kindness to knock him on the
head."

"It would be pleasure to knock her on the head,"
said Tommy gloomily.

"We can do nothing," said Pynsent, at length,
as he lit one of his Caporal cigarettes, which he
smoked between the courses.  "There was Maiden.
When I studied at the Beaux Arts, Maiden was the
coming man.  By Jove!  he had come.  I remember
his big picture in the Salon of '79.  Crowds stood
in front of it, jabbering like monkeys.  It was great,
great.  And France bought it.  It hangs in the
Luxembourg to-day.  Well, Maiden had a model,
a queer little devil of a girl with huge black eyes
whom he stuck into all his pictures.  He bought
her from her mother out of a slum, the Rue du
Haut-Pavé, close to the cabaret du Soleil d'Or,
and she followed him about like a spaniel, all over
Normandy and Brittany.  We wondered what would
happen when the child became a woman.  Gad! we
might have guessed for a year and a day and never
hit the truth.  Maiden married her!  He, the wit,
the scholar, the gentleman, married that guttersnipe.
And he hasn't painted a picture for fifteen
years!  I tell you, Tommy, that it's impossible to
predict what any man will do when he comes in
contact with the wrong woman."

"Or with the right one," said Greatorex, frowning.

They drank their coffee, and by mutual consent
went to the Miraflores Music Hall, feeling that
anything which might distract their thoughts from
Mark would prove a relief.  The place was crowded
as usual, and Pynsent, pulling out a pencil, began
to draw heads upon a piece of paper placed in his
hat, while Tommy watched his facile fingers, much
amused by the remarks which punctuated every line.

"People must relax," the painter was saying.
"These places would be empty if we lived normal
lives.  A self-respecting savage would be bored to
death here."

"True," said Tommy.  "If you want to find
sense nowadays you must hunt for it in the South
Pacific, in the islands which Captain Cook and
Mr. Thomas Cook did not find.  Hullo, there's Jim
Corrance."

"Why not tell him," said Pynsent quickly.
"He's Mark's oldest friend; he'd do anything for
Mark; and he's a practical sort of chap, too."

Jim joined them with alacrity, obviously glad to
see Pynsent, who, of late, had dropped out of his
file.  The three secured a table in the corner of the
foyer, where they could talk without fear of being
overheard, for the noise—the shrill laughter of the
women, the deep notes of the men, the blare of the
band—was deafening.  Jim, however, not knowing
Mrs. Perowne, save by reputation, was unable to
realise the gravity of the situation.

"Aren't you fellows making a mountain of a
molehill?" he asked.  "And, besides, what can old
Mark offer Sybil Perowne?"

"A new sensation," said Tommy grimly.  His
face impressed Corrance.  Pynsent nodded gloomily.

"There's David Ross," said Jim.

"The Bishop of Poplar?"

"At one time Mark and he were hand-in-glove.
He used to be a wonder-worker."

"Oh, he is still," said Greatorex.  "I thought
we should get something out of you, Corrance."

"But a parson——" began Pynsent doubtfully.

"He was the amateur middleweight champion
before he took Orders," said Corrance, "and it's the
pugilist in him, not the parson, which has made him
the man he is.  He'll tackle Mark, never fear.  He
tackles me—periodically, but all the same, if this
thing is serious he will accomplish nothing."

"That is what I say," Pynsent added.

But Tommy, the smallest and weakest of the
three, doggedly persisted.  Finally he persuaded
Corrance to seek out the Bishop of Poplar.  Having
extracted a promise to this effect, he took leave
of the others, for his article, due on the morrow,
had to be finished that night.  Pynsent and Corrance
remained together.  As the little man plunged into
the crowd, Pynsent said: "Tommy Greatorex would
cut off his right hand for Mark, but I've heard men
call him selfish and self-centred."

Corrance at once began to analyse this indisputable
fact, sticking out his chin, and talking with
an aggressive frankness which much amused the
painter, who said presently:

"We may as well admit, Jim, that we're
cold-blooded, you and I——"

"For the sake of argument—yes.  Go on!"

"Partly because of that we've succeeded.  I can't
see myself, or you, my boy, chucking our work to
help others, although after the work was done we
might write a cheque—eh?"

"You had better have another whisky and potass."

"Thanks.  I will."

They watched the Miraflores ballet from a couple
of balcony stalls.  Fabulous sums had been spent
upon the costumes of the dancers, who represented
flowers and butterflies.  Pynsent became absorbed
in the spectacle of light and colour and movement.
Now and again he jogged Corrance with his elbow,
calling his attention to this effect and that,
muttering inarticulate exclamations.  The lights in the
theatre were turned low, so that the stage, a blaze
of golden splendour, attracted all eyes.  Then,
suddenly, like a sun in eclipse, the stage itself was
obscured.  One saw luminous shadows through
which floated spirits of the air, mysterious winged
beings; the butterflies seeking the flowers at the
approach of night.  Impenetrable darkness
succeeded as the band stopped playing.  In the
foyer, men and women crowded together craned
their heads in one direction, awaiting the supreme
moment.  It came.  Out of the darkness glided a
dazzling creature, veiled in what seemed to be a
tissue of diamonds.  From her alone emanated
light, a myriad sparkles.  She advanced slowly with
white, outstretched arms, a smile upon her face.
At the edge of the stage she poised herself for
flight.  Not a sound broke the silence, but one felt
the throb and thrill of a thousand hearts.  Then a
faint strain of music suffused the air, as the creature
took wing.  She soared upward and forward, following
the curve of an ellipse.  Thus soaring, she
scattered flowers which fell everywhere, filling the
house with perfume.  In the dome of the building
she vanished.  A sigh of pleasure escaped the lips
of the spectators.  The vision reappeared, gliding
forward as before out of obscurity.  Once more, for
the last time, she soared upward and vanished.

"Let us go," said Pynsent.  "That was the
immortal spirit of Love.  And she vanished—no
wonder—in this temple of——"  He shut his lips,
for his neighbours were staring at him.

Corrance rose, muttering: "The expenses must
be stupendous; but Miraflores shares are at 219.
I bought a nice little block at 127 eighteen months
ago."

"Shut up, you miserable materialist!"

"I can't afford to be anything else—nor can
Mark, poor devil!"

"I beg your pardon," said Pynsent hurriedly.

They pushed their way through the crowd, pausing
at the top of the broad stairs which led to the
street below.  The atmosphere, charged with odours
of musk and patchouli and reeking of strong cigars,
was overpoweringly oppressive.  But on almost
every face, pale beneath the glare of the electric
light, flamed a curious satisfaction, curious because
with rare exceptions it was artificial.  The exception
may be mentioned.  A thick-set man, remarkable
by reason of his white hair and pink smooth face,
stood at the entrance, bowing and beaming.  The
habitués knew him, and nodded carelessly as they
passed by.  Some exchanged a few words.  The man
seemed to be counting: reckoning the numbers
present, computing gains.

"That's old Harry," said Corrance to the painter.
"He runs this place.  Hullo, Harry, how are you?
Big house to-night."

"Big house every night," said Harry complacently.
"You know that, Mr. Corrance.  It's prime—prime.
I never get tired of watching it."

He rubbed his plump white hands together,
beaming like an aged cherub.

"Holy Moses!" exclaimed Pynsent.  "You
never get tired of watching—this?"  He indicated
the promenade in a derisive gesture.

"Never," said Harry, opening his blue eyes in
childish astonishment at such a question.  "Why
this is my show.  I planned it.  I stand here every
night."

"It's meat and drink, old chap, isn't it?" said
Corrance.

"I've got just where I wanted to be," Harry said
solemnly.  "The boys call me king of the music-halls."

"Good-night, your majesty," said Corrance,
beginning to descend the stairs.  "There's one that's
happy and content," he added, as Pynsent and he
strolled down the corridor.

"We're saprophytes," burst out Pynsent.

"I don't know what that means," said Jim, "but
it sounds something nasty."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"COME!"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XL


.. class:: center medium bold

   "COME!"

.. vspace:: 2

True to his promise, Corrance sought out the
Bishop of Poplar, and delivered himself of his
message.  David Ross nodded, but his fine eyes
were troubled.

"What's happened to Mark?" said Corrance
irritably.  "D——n it all—I beg your pardon,
David, but Mark would make you swear, bishop
though you are."

"I'll see him," said David; "but I—I don't
know—I fear——"  He broke off abruptly.  Then
his eyes flashed.  "What's happened to Mark?

"As for me," said Jim, "I can see, but Mark,
the blind fool, wants a nurse or a keeper.  He's
half child, half lunatic.  I'll go now.  You're up to
your nose in work, and so am I.  I suppose you
want money, you shameless beggar?"

"All I can get and all I can't get."

"I shall have to send you a cheque," Jim growled.
"I tell everybody you're the dearest friend I've got.
Good-bye."

He retreated hastily, fearing a lecture.  David
returned to an enormous correspondence with which
his secretary was endeavouring to cope.  The poor
man nearly burst into tears when his chief told him
that he might be absent for several hours.  David
put on his hat, deaf to a score of protests.

"I'm going fishing," he said, "and, confound it!
I've no bait."

Corrance had told him that Mark lunched at the
Scribblers.  To that club the Bishop took his way.
There he learned that Mark was writing in the
silence room.  David walked in, unannounced,
holding out his hand, which Mark refused to take.

"You went to Betty," he said fiercely.

"No."

"She failed me."

"Yes; she failed you, thank God."

"What brings you here?"

"You know perfectly well."

"But this is intolerable, this interference!  Will
you understand, Ross, that I insist upon your
leaving me alone?"

"That is impossible, Mark.  Why, I want you to
come and stay with me for a month."

"I wonder they ordained you a bishop," said
Mark.  "I thought they made a point of choosing
men of—tact."

"I've any amount of tact," said David cheerfully.
"Mark, you're a madman, and in your soul you
know it."

"Tommy Greatorex sent you on this fool's errand?"

"Yes; Greatorex and Jim and Pynsent.  Your
friends love you well, Mark.  Have you no love
for them?"

"I'll tell you something, Ross; it may save you
time and trouble.  The love I had for you fellows is
dead—dead."  Then, as a gesture of dismay escaped
the Bishop, Mark added: "I cannot love anybody.
If it could come back, if—but it won't.  That's why
I've kept away from most of you.  You—you all
bore me.  Oh, it's my fault, I know.  I've become a
one-idea'd man.  I can think of nothing but my play
and the woman who is going to produce it, to give it
life.  She's become part of it, do you understand,
part of me—me.  I can't lie to you; but I'd like you
to try to realise that the Mark Samphire you once
knew is dead.  Who killed Cock Robin?" he
laughed.  "I can't answer that question."

"You mean you won't," said the Bishop steadily.
"Well, I believe in the resurrection of the dead.
You will come to life again, Mark Samphire, but
not at my touch."

He moved towards the door.

"David!"

The familiar name thrilled upon the air.  It was
Mark, the old Mark, speaking.  In an instant the
hands of the two friends were locked.

"I can't let you go like that," said Mark.  "For
all you have done and would do, I—thank you."

A few days passed without incident.  Spring was
abroad in the fields and woods, hailed by twittering
birds and white blossoms.  Mark felt her caress,
and was sensible of that amazing calm which
succeeds and precedes any strenuous effort.  He let
himself drift with the current, lulled almost to sleep
by the lilt of the stream which bore him to the
troubled waters beyond his ken.

Someone has said that a fine quality in a human
being may become the source of disaster as well as
triumph.  One might go further, and add that a fine
quality denied its triumph, may be wrecked in
disaster.  That love for others with which Mark had
been endowed would have increased and multiplied
in marriage.  The man had the best qualities or a
husband and father.  He apprehended this with his
reason, even as Betty apprehended it intuitively.  But
such manifest destiny had been denied him, as in like
manner it was denied to his friend David Ross.  But
David had been given his triumph.  His power of
loving, purged from the taint of selfish emotion, had
expanded enormously, incredibly, suffusing itself,
divinely fluid, over vast areas, transmuting
everything it touched, producing and reproducing with
inexhaustible energy and fertility.  Mark's love
might have flowed into as many and diverse
channels had it not been dammed by its bastard brother
passion—hate.

Now, standing (as Greatorex had put it) on the
brink of the bottomless pit, he was conscious that
not only was love, the higher love, dead, but that
hate also was moribund.  He could think of
Archibald as of one at an immeasurable distance—a
shadowy figure, a blur upon the horizon.  And
since his meeting with Betty in Pynsent's studio,
she also had faded, and become *unreal*, a phantom
of the past, flitting from him into impenetrable
shades.

This feeling of remoteness from the persons whose
lives had been so interwoven with his own
underwent a crucial test that same afternoon.  In the
*Globe* Mark read that the see of Parham had been
offered to and accepted by Archibald Samphire.
His brother had reached the apex of his ambitions;
he was the bishop-designate of a famous diocese in
the North of England!  Lower down, in the same
column, was another paragraph—

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"Mrs. Perowne is leaving London for the Continent.
The famous actress, we are given to understand, has
accepted a play by one of our rising novelists, a play
which those who have read it declare to be quite out of
the common."

.. vspace:: 2

Mark recognised the finger of Tommy in this, as
well as the long arm of coincidence.  Upon the
page opposite the column of personal paragraphs
was a sketch of his brother's life and labours.  Mark
laughed.  The Bishop of Parham.  A spiritual peer!
And what a leg for a gaiter!  He laughed again,
reflecting that other paragraphs might be printed
concerning a famous actress and a rising novelist.
My lord would read them with horror.

Next day the *Times* had a long leader about
the Chrysostom of Chelsea.  The late Bishop of
Parham, an old infirm man, had distinguished
himself as scholar, and then extinguished himself as
prelate, lacking those powers of organisation which
do not, perhaps, lend themselves to biblical exegesis
and the Higher Criticism.  His diocese—of great
extent—had of late years increased enormously in
population.  The discovery of coal and a certain
kind of clay had brought about an upheaval: the
pastoral industries, which supported a few farmers
and shepherds, still flourished, but side by side with
colossal commercial enterprises.  Towns, black with
the smoke from a thousand factories, had sprung up
like mushrooms upon turf that had never known
a plough; railroads ravaged the face of the landscape
with indelible lines; half a dozen fishing villages
bade fair to become seaports of importance.  With
these new and complex conditions, the aged scholar
had tried in vain to cope.  Upon his death, at an
advanced age, it was felt at headquarters that a
young man must be selected to grapple with them:
an athlete of tried physical strength, an abstainer
(for the statistics in regard to drunkenness were
appalling), an organiser, and above all things an
eloquent preacher.  For such a task no better nor
abler man than Archibald Samphire could be found
in the kingdom.  The Prime Minister had made
a wise selection, which the Dean and Chapter of
Parham would, doubtless, approve and confirm.
*And so forth*....

Mark bought other journals and read what was
written about Parham and its bishop-designate.
In each a few lines were accorded to the wife, who,
by happy chance, was descended from the most
ancient and distinguished of the border families.
One paper contained the following:—

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"Our readers will learn with deep sympathy and regret
that the health of the future *châtelaine* of Parham Castle
is causing her husband and many friends grave anxiety."

.. vspace:: 2

Mark sprang to his feet with an exclamation.
Betty—ill!  In an instant he felt his blood
circulating violently, stinging him to wild and
over-powering excitement.  The bishop-designate of
Parham remained an attenuated shade; his wife was
clothed with palpable flesh and blood.  Ill?  She?
Incredible!

He despatched a telegram to Dibdin, the butler,
and waited for the answer, pacing up and down
the Finchley Road, regardless of a shower which
wetted him to the skin.  While he waited, one of
the telegraph boys who knew him came up with a
despatch.  Mark tore open the envelope.  The
telegram was from Sybil Perowne.  She had reached
Paris and was going to Fontainebleau.  Mark
stared stupidly at the message.  Then he
murmured between his teeth: "I wish she was going
to Jericho."

The actress had become as remote as Betty had
been a few hours before.  Between Sybil Perowne
and him stretched the long years of youth and
childhood, never to be forgotten—the years which
belonged to Betty.  He went back to meet Betty
in a thousand familiar places; she ran to meet him,
her eyes radiant with pleasure, her lips parted in
joyous acclamation.

An hour later Dibdin's answer came—

.. class:: center

   "Very ill indeed.  Typhoid."

.. vspace:: 2

Mark went to Chelsea in the first hansom he saw.
At his brother's house carriages were coming and
going upon the straw which had been laid down.
Dibdin gave details.  His mistress had complained
of headache and general *malaise* for some ten days,
but had refused persistently to see her doctor.
Finally, she had taken to her bed, ravaged by fever.
She had eaten some oysters sent as a present to
the preacher by an ardent admirer.  Archibald also
had eaten the oysters, but with impunity.

"Lady Randolph is upstairs, and master is in the
library," said Dibdin.  "Won't you see him, Mr. Mark?"

Mark hesitated.

"Yes," he said nervously, "I will.  Show me in, Dibdin."

Archibald, who was writing at his desk, rose to
receive him.  As the door closed behind Dibdin,
the eyes of the brothers met.

"If she asks for me, you will send?" said Mark,
moving a step nearer.

"Go," Archibald replied, trembling and turning
aside his eyes.

"Not till I have your promise.  She may not ask,
but if she does, by Heaven! you must, you shall
send.  Swear it!"

"Go, go!"

But Mark advanced, omnipotent by virtue of the
passion within him.

Archibald retreated.  Did he fear violence?  Or
did he read in his brother's eyes a power of will
against which he was helpless.  Pale, shaken
as by a palsy, he stammered out: "I w-w-will
s-s-send."

"Swear it!"

"I swear it."

Mark went back into the hall.  Dibdin mentioned,
with a pride which at any other time would have
tickled Mark's humour, that everybody in London
wanted the latest news.  He and George, the
footman, were almost worn out answering inquiries.
Princes of the blood, the House of Peers, the House
of Commons, Royal Academicians, county families,
had learned with infinite regret of Mrs. Samphire s
dangerous illness.  Mark listened with eager ears.
And what did Dibdin himself think?  Dibdin, like all
of his class, was lamentably pessimistic.  "In the
hall, we entertain no hope, no hope," Dibdin
murmured.  "And to think of that beautiful castle at
Parham without the mistress is breaking our hearts
in two, sir."

.. vspace:: 2

A terrible ten days passed.  At the beginning of
the first week Mark received a letter from
Mrs. Perowne.  Between the lines of it an even more
distracted vision than Mark's might have caught a
glimpse of the Fury.  Mark read it, wondering what
charm he had perceived in her, and thankful that no
links stronger than words bound him to the witch.
He had asked no questions concerning Mrs. Perowne's
past; and she had asked none concerning
his.  The postscript to her letter was very
imperative: "Come to the woman you love, if you
are alive."  He replied simply: "The woman I
loved as a boy and a man, the woman I love still, is
dying.  Think what you please of me, and forget
me as soon as possible."  By return of post came
his play with a brutal line across the title page:
"Take this to her; I have no use for it."  Mark
tossed the typescript into a drawer with a laugh.
*Fenella*, the graven image of success which he had
set up and worshipped, had become a thing of
absolutely no importance.  But he remembered the
Chow and the spirits of ammonia.  His dear love,
who lay dying, had saved him from—what?

Meantime, his friends sought him out, but he sent
away David, and Tommy Greatorex and Pynsent.
Jim Corrance, however, refused to leave him,
although Mark ignored his presence for twenty-four
hours.  Then, very gradually, he thawed into speech
with his old friend.  Together they awaited the
bulletins.  The disease was running its slow,
tortuous course.  One telegram spelt hope in capital
letters; another—despair: each rose and fell with
Betty's temperature.  Mark's self-control distressed
poor Jim unspeakably.  His face, which had lost the
expression of youth, always so captivating, wore an
iron mask of impassivity.  And yet Jim knew that
the intermittences of Betty's fever imposed
themselves on Mark.

We are told that Chinese malefactors condemned
to die by the abominable torment of *Ling*—the death
from a thousand cuts—only suffer up to a certain
point.  Then insensibility dulls the knives of the
executioners.

Jim was asking himself the question: "Will
Mark cease to feel?" when a telegram from
Archibald reached Hampstead, containing one word,
"*Come*."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XLI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Randolph was awaiting Mark in the
pretty drawing-room overlooking the river.

"Nothing can save her," she whispered.  "She
is alive because she could not die without seeing
you.  What is left is yours.  You understand.
Archibald has been generous."

"Archibald has his son," Mark said hoarsely.

"She was not herself till last night, when the
fever burnt itself out.  But, Mark, always, always
she raved of you.  Husband and child were never
mentioned.  It was terrible for him—poor
fellow—terrible!"

Mark followed her upstairs.

Betty lay in bed, the light from the windows,
which were opened wide, streaming upon her emaciated
face.  A clean, sweet perfume of violets filled
the air, and whatever might have indicated a long
and terrible illness had been removed.

She met his glance with a strange smile, as he
stumbled forward, falling on his knees at the
bedside, saying nothing, but kissing the hand lying
limp upon the coverlet.  Betty spoke first:

"Mark, Mark, Archie has forgiven you."

Mark said nothing.  His brother's forgiveness
came upon him at this moment as a meaningless
blow on the cheek.  What did he care for Archie's
forgiveness?  But he understood instantly what it
meant to Betty.  It explained the smile with which
she greeted him.  The question in her eyes slowly
burnt its way to his heart.

"And he has been so good to me, so—good," she
faltered.

"Yes, yes," he said hastily.  Should he lie to her
as she lay dying?  Should he swear, if need be,
that he, too, was purged of hate and envy?  Why
not, if such empty words had any virtue in them for
her?  But the lie could not leave his lips.  A minute
or two passed in silence.  Then she whispered:
"You will not leave me, Mark?"

Again he kissed her fingers.

"I shall not leave you, dear, dear Betty."

"Ah, but I must leave you.  And I'm afraid."

"If I could go too——Shall I?  Would it make
it easier?"

The life raging in him communicated itself to her.
A faint colour flowed into her cheeks, her eyes
sparkled.

"You would do that?"

"Gladly."

"I knew you would say it.  But I am not afraid
for myself.  I am—afraid—for—you.  And if—if
you went with me, we should part on the other side."

The words dropped one by one from her pallid
lips, slowly, faintly, yet with indescribable emphasis.

"You must—wait," she whispered.  "Promise
me that you will wait.  Quick!"

He obeyed, awestruck, for she had closed her
eyes, and he feared she was gone.  After a pause
she spoke of his sermon: "It is here—under—my—pillow.
Will you read the last two pages to me?"

He consented reluctantly, obedient to some spiritual
authority.  At the sound of his broken, troubled
voice, harsh, but vibrant with that strange arresting
quality which always had thrilled her, she smiled
and sighed.  Mark read the manuscript, unable to
recognise it as his own.  But reading on, he leaped
the years which had passed.  The sermon closed
with a passage of great beauty and power.  When
he finished, he said wonderingly: "Did I write that?"

Betty whispered: "You know now why I couldn't come."

Mark remembered his own aphorism: that the
best work of men is greater than themselves.  And,
if so, the conclusion followed inevitably: this
sermon, infinitely greater than himself, must have been
inspired not from within, but from without—by the
Infinite!

"It is getting very dark," said Betty.

"Yes," he replied.

The sun had not reached its zenith, but it was dark
indeed for the speaker.  Betty's breath came and went
with difficulty, as the heart and lungs slowly failed.
Mark raised her head.  Her fingers felt for his hand.
He perceived that she was making a sign on the
back of it.  At first he thought it was a caress, but
the fingers traced the same sign again and again—a
cross.

He wished to speak of love, but the dreadful lump
filled his throat—strangling him.  She was dying,
slipping from his grasp.  If he could have believed
that a meeting was possible elsewhere, still the
doleful certainty possessed him that the flesh-and-blood
woman was departing for ever.  Revolt raged
within him, while her finger traced the symbol of the
faith he had abjured, the symbol of the love which
vanquishes hate and death.

Suddenly the finger stopped.

As suddenly, something seemed to break in Mark's
heart.

"Betty," he cried, "Betty—do you hear me?  I
am glad you didn't come.  I shall live to thank God
you didn't come."

She opened her eyes, and for the last time he
noted that curious intensity of interrogation by
which the full orb of the irid was revealed.  He saw
that she could not speak; he knew with conviction
that no speech was necessary.  Her lips parted in a
faint smile, as if the last flickering doubt were
escaping.  Then, with a little shiver, with a sigh of
contentment, her lids fell....

.. vspace:: 2

Outside the nurse and Lady Randolph waited,
listening.  In the library below sat Archibald
Samphire and David Ross.  Presently Lady Randolph
went downstairs.

"The doors are locked," she faltered.  "And
there isn't a sound.  I fear—I fear——"

The others understood instantly.

"Oh, my God—not that!" exclaimed Archibald.

He ran upstairs.  At Betty's door he paused,
inclining his ear.  The silence within the room
chilled him to the marrow.  He called Mark by
name, at first in a whisper, then louder, at the last
his voice rang through the house.

"We must break in," he said.

At the first glance it seemed certain that both
Mark and Betty lay dead on the bed.  Even the
trained eye of the nurse was deceived.  But after
a stimulant had been administered, Mark recovered
semi-consciousness.  When he opened his eyes he
began to speak in his natural voice; then he
laughed—gaily, youthfully.

"That's it, Betty—capital!  Pop it over his head!
Good!  Ha—ha! old Archie, that did you.  I say,
I am thirsty...."

He imagined that he was at Pitt Hall playing
lawn tennis.

.. vspace:: 2

Brain fever set in within twenty-four hours.
During his delirium he called impatiently for his
brother, who came trembling.  Mark saw only the boy.

"Why have you stayed away so long?" he asked.
"You're not going to leave me, old chap?"

"No, no," stammered Archibald.

"I say, it is jolly seeing you again."

He stretched out his lean, shrunken hand, which
Archibald took.  Presently Mark's vagabond wits
wandered to Lord's Cricket Ground.

"Well played!" he screamed.  "A boundary hit,
by Jove!  That's my brother, you know, old Archie.
Isn't he splendid?  Isn't he a slogger?  There he
goes again.  What a smite!  Well played,
Samphire major!  Well played, sir—*well played*!"

The tears fell down Archibald's cheeks.

"He's been going on like that all night," whispered
the nurse; then she added gently, "He seems
to have a wonderful love for you, sir."  She was
another nurse, just called in, still ignorant of such
gossip as circulated in the servants' quarters.
Constrained to listen to hideous raving, to heartrending
revelations, this delirium of love touched her to the
core.  She knew that the famous preacher's wife lay
dead in the next room, and being a tender-hearted
woman, strove to comfort him.

"I hear so much that is so shocking," she whispered.
"Only the other day I was nursing a gentleman
who cursed his brother, who—died cursing
him!  And after that, *this*——  It must be a comfort
to you...."

For a fortnight the fever raged.  During long
hours each day the brothers were together, united
by the mocking fiend of delirium.  And during
those hours Mark lived again his youth.  Nothing
seemed to be forgotten.  But delirium achieved
more than reproduction—revelation.  Mark, like all
healthy boys, had concealed his love for his brother.
Of the nature and extent of that love the elder had
formed no conception—till now, when its steady
stream poured down in flood.

After the first shock of seeing his brother's
senseless body, Archibald told himself (and had said
as much to David Ross) that it would be well if
Mark departed in peace out of a world wherein he
had suffered cruelly.  But David Ross shook his head.

"He will not die," he said, with conviction, albeit
the two doctors in attendance held the contrary
opinion.

And then, gradually, Archibald came to regard
his brother's ravings as the shadows of an inestimable
substance.  Computing his gains, he discovered
with poignant consternation, that his losses far
outweighed them.  His name was in men's mouths;
he held power, wealth, health in the hollow of his
hand.  But was there one fellow-creature who truly
loved him?  Day after day, Mark's innumerable
friends came to the door: Pynsent, confessing that
he was unable to work from anxiety; Jim Corrance,
haggard with sleeplessness; Greatorex, who seemed
to spend his time on the doormat; Albert and Mary
Batley.  And besides these, humbler friends: waifs
and strays, reclaimed drunkards, factory girls, who
had read in the papers that the man who had been
kind to them lay dying.

Always Archibald had obtained what he desired;
but it never occurred to him that he desired mean
things, or rather that the things so desired were
mean in comparison with other things which he
had ignored.  None the less, the habit of seeking
strenuously what he coveted remained.  He realised,
inexorably, that he coveted his brother's love.  And
if Mark died, that love once given so freely, then
changed into hate, and at last given back in awful
mockery, would perish with him.

It is possible, of course, that David Ross cleared
his vision.  He told David the little which David
did not know.  In a moment of profound humiliation
he professed himself willing to resign his see.
David indicated other penance, not alien to Christian
sense.  In and around Parham, he pointed out, a
transgressor might bow the neck beneath the yoke
of a labour harder than any to be found even in
convict establishments.  That Archibald should
question his fitness for the task assigned him
convinced David of the magnitude of the change within him.

Upon the day, however, when the doctors agreed
that the crisis of the disease was approaching,
Archibald's misery reached its culminating point.
Returning life meant sanity.  Mark would awake
from a sleep which had lasted forty-eight hours
to the realisation of the past, or he would sink
into the coma and collapse which precede dissolution.

After some discussion it was agreed that Mark's
eyes, when they opened, should rest on a face dear
and familiar to him, yet dissociated from the
events which had succeeded Betty's marriage.
Mrs. Corrance had come to town; she had helped to nurse
Mark; she was staying in the house and could be
summoned at any moment.  Accordingly, when at
length Mark Samphire returned from his wanderings,
the first person he saw was his old friend,
as she sat sewing at the foot of his bed.  She smiled
serenely, waiting for him to speak.  None the less,
he kept silence so long that her hand began to
tremble.  She was sure that he was conscious and
that he must be thinking of Betty.

"Have I been ill?" he asked gravely.

She rose at once, bent over him, touched his hand,
and murmured: "Very ill.  Brain fever.  Keep
quiet."

She laid the tips of her fingers upon his eyelids,
gently pressing them down.  He let them fall, and
asked no more questions.  But later, after he had
taken some food, he said with a smile: "Betty told
me that I must wait."

Within twenty-four hours word went forth from
those in authority that he would live; but to
Archibald's recurrent question, one answer alone was
possible.  Mark had not spoken his brother's name.
Archibald's anxiety became hourly more poignant.
If a glimpse of love had been vouchsafed him, in
order that he might realise that it lay for ever
beyond his reach, then of all men he would reckon
himself the most unhappy.

Mark did not break silence, when he learned that
he was in his brother's house.  David was allowed
to visit him, but the bishop spoke only of the waifs
from the slums around the mission, who had not
forgotten an old friend.

"But Bagshot killed his wife," said Mark.

David changed the subject.  When he said good-bye,
Mark said curtly: "I've been a beast to you,
Davie.  Is it all right?"

Ross repeated Mark's words to Archibald, who
was waiting in the passage: "I think it is all right,"
said he.  Then he added, pressing the other's hand:
"He is asking for pardon."

That night the nurse who had come to him first,
and who had tended him so skilfully, sat alone with
him.  Her perceptions had warned her that she was
in a house where tragedy had been enacted.  She
knew that her patient had been found, stricken
down upon the death-bed of his brother's wife, that
the husband had held aloof at that most solemn hour.

Presently, as she was giving Mark some broth,
he asked if he had raved in his delirium.  Other
questions followed.  He learned of Archibald's
presence at his bedside, of his ministrations.
Incredulity melted into astonishment and then into an
expression which the nurse could not define.

"You were never easy for a moment," she
concluded, "unless your brother was with you."

"And he——?"

"It gave him real comfort to wait on you, poor
gentleman!"

"Thank you," said Mark.  "Good night, nurse!"

Next morning he asked for a mirror, exclaiming,
when he saw his face: "What a scarecrow!"  Later,
he begged the doctor to allow him to send for a
barber.  For some years he had worn a beard,
which, however closely clipped, had greatly altered
him.  When the man came, Mark ordered him to
shave all hair from his face.  This done, he called
again for the mirror.

"Do you see much change?" he asked the nurse.

"I hardly recognise you."

"Others will r-recognise me," he said.

With his back to the light he looked the Mark
who had ascended the pulpit at King's Charteris.
His face was thin, pale, and hollow-cheeked.  The
fever had taken from him the flesh and colour which
life in the open air had given him.  Presently David
Ross called and was admitted.

"Mark!"

He stood upon the threshold, staring.  Mark smiled.

"Will you do me a favour?" he said, as the
nurse slipped from the room.  "I have not seen,"
he paused for a moment, nervously, "m-m-my
b-b-brother yet.  Will you ask him to c-c-come
to me?"

.. vspace:: 2

A year later Pynsent wrote to Jim Corrance from
Parham Castle.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

"Parham has gained far more than Literature has lost.
Here, Mark is the power behind the throne.  *À propos*,
I have painted Archibald on his throne in the sanctuary
of Parham Cathedral.  Everything, however, is subordinated
to the face, upon which a ray of light falls obliquely.
The expression you will hardly recognise, till you come
here.  When it was done, Archibald stared at it for many
minutes.  Then he said in his rather heavy way: 'It's
a portrait; you have looked beneath these.'  He indicated
the robes.  *The man looks years older*.  But Mark has got
back his youthful appearance, his high spirits, his
keenness, his power of getting enjoyment out of what most
of us would consider tedious and disagreeable.  As his
brother's secretary and confidential adviser, he knows
that he has found himself.  Archibald reaps all the
honour and glory: and the sheaves are heavy.  If praise,
as Keble says, be our penance here, the Bishop of
Parham will wear a hair shirt till he dies.  He tells
everybody, with pathetic earnestness, that his brother
is the senior partner in the firm—and, of course, nobody
believes him.  Mark sticks to his red tie, and hunts once
a week with Kirtling's hounds.  He stammers worse
than ever when he gets excited.  It may seem amazing
to you—it is certainly amazing to me—but Mark has the
look of a happy, healthy man; and his nephew, so
curiously like Betty, adores him."

.. vspace:: 2

Jim showed this letter to his mother.

"All the same," he remarked; "Mark ought to
have married Betty.  I am sure of that."

Mrs. Corrance laid down her embroidery.  She
and Jim were keeping house together: it being
agreed that the winter should be spent in town and
the summer in the country.

"I am not sure," she answered slowly.  "I used
to pray that Betty would marry you, but how many
have profited by my 'losing of my prayers'?  David
Ross might make a guess."

Jim flushed.  Only his mother knew that he had
contributed large sums of money and much time to
the Bishop of Poplar's East End enterprises.

"My dear son," Mrs. Corrance touched his hand
with her delicate fingers, "try to believe that Betty
died in order that the three men who loved her
might live."

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center

   THE END

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

   PLYMOUTH
   WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
   PRINTERS

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::