Chapter XI: Part 11

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 aesthetic. 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 _bonbonniere_. Outside, the sun was declining in the west, and the river ran all golden past the trees and meads of Battersea Park. Some barges, laden with hay, were gliding by on the ebb-tide.

"Archie's room will be ready to-morrow," said Betty, "and we ought to be in the day after. You have all pitied me, but I have enjoyed the dead season immensely."

Lady Randolph, who was passing through town on her way to Scotland from Birr Wood, nodded understandingly.

"The room is just like you, Betty, and that is the prettiest compliment, my dear, I have ever paid you. And I must say that the dead season has agreed with you. I never saw you look more alive."

"The fact is," said Betty seriously, "I have been setting more than one house in order."

Lady Randolph smiled. "I have seen--I have guessed---- Ah, well, we wives try to remould our husbands, and the time is not wasted if we succeed in remoulding ourselves. My dear, I must fly. Can I give you a lift?"

Betty said that much remained to be done, but after her friend had gone she showed no inclination to set about doing it. Instead, she sat by the open window, gazing at the river flowing slowly and silently to the sea. Already she had come to regard this as the great waterway of her thoughts. She rejoiced because she was about to live upon its banks; she recognised its suggestion and symbolism, its myriad beauties, its mystery and power.

At this moment she was reflecting that the Thames was a source of pleasure and profit to man, because man, as embodied by the Thames Conservancy, controlled it. When it burst its banks, the abomination of desolation followed. Without the innumerable dams and locks cribbing and confining it, these splendid waters would be wasted. Now they percolated everywhere, into hundreds and thousands of homes.

Would it be so with her own life? It ran in a channel other than the one she would have chosen, had choice been given her; it was diverted to uses she had not apprehended; it was likely to be diffused infinitely, trickling here and there, instead of rushing free and untrammelled over a course of its own making. Since that memorable interview with Mark, Betty had accepted the limitations which duty imposed. She had not shirked the trivial tasks of a parson's wife, albeit she was tempted to spend more time (and money) than was lawful in alluring shops. She had not seen Mark alone. She had put from her comment and criticism of her husband: striving to think of the strength that was in him rather than the weakness.

Now she was aware that these efforts had not been made in vain. Life had become easier, happier, more profitable to herself and others. She dared to look forward, and refrained from looking back.

Presently she rose up, glanced, smiling, at the pretty room, and leaving it reluctantly went downstairs. Archibald was out of town for a few days on duty in the Midlands, and by the morrow she hoped that all his furniture would be moved. Part had come from Cadogan Place that afternoon, and, before returning home, she wished to see it placed in the right room. In the hall she met one of the servants, who was acting as caretaker. In answer to a question, the man said his master's desk had arrived in the van which was leaving. Betty entered her husband's room trying to remember the exact spot where Archie wished his desk to stand. It was an immense affair, with a fluted, revolving top, which, when closed, locked itself and all drawers. As she crossed the threshold of the room, she remembered what Archibald had said. The desk had been placed in the wrong position.

"Oh, Dibdin," she exclaimed, "that will never do. Have the men gone?"

Dibdin said respectfully that the van was still at the door, but suggested that the men should move the desk on the morrow. Betty, however, was anxious to see how it looked in the place her husband had chosen. So the men were summoned. Doubtless, they were tired, and possibly sulky at being called as they were about to drive away. The desk was very heavy and awkward to move; it stood on a rug upon a slippery parquet floor. The men, using unnecessary violence, canted it slightly forward. In the effort to steady it, their feet slipped, the desk fell forward with a crash, and burst open: the fluted lid flying back, and the contents of a dozen pigeon-holes and drawers being scattered over the floor. However, upon examination it was found that no damage had been done. The desk was lifted and placed in the desired position, and the men dismissed. Dibdin looked so dismayed that Betty laughed.

"Why, Dibdin, all's well that ends well."

"Master is so particular about his desk," said Dibdin. He had been with Archibald before his marriage. "He'd never allow me to touch his papers."

"You shan't touch them now," said Betty. "I'll arrange them, Dibdin, before I go home."

Dibdin went out, leaving his mistress sitting on the floor surrounded by notebooks, cheque-books, manuscripts, and all the accessories which usually cover a busy man's desk. As she began to arrange these, she reflected that the best-laid plans gang agley. Archibald had insisted upon locking up everything, and yet, despite precaution--his precious desk had burst open. What a lot of MMS. to be sure! And she had not the vaguest idea into what drawers and pigeon-holes they ought to go. Archibald had a reasonable dislike of being disturbed when at work, and when he was not at work the huge desk was always locked.

Betty recognised an enormous pile of papers as sermons. Some were typewritten, date and text being inscribed upon the outside. Betty touched them tenderly: her husband's title-deeds, so to speak, to the honour and respect she bore him. Looking at them she blushed faintly, thinking of the warmer sentiment they had provoked. As she blushed her glance fell upon the sermon she had just picked up. This bore no text, but across it, in Archibald's handwriting, were two words: _Whit-Sunday, Westchester_.

The words provoked a score of memories. Once more she knelt in the chancel of that splendid fane, hearing the flute-like notes of the boy; once more she was conscious of being whirled aloft to ineffable heights. Then she dropped to earth as suddenly, with a vivid realisation that if this sermon had never been preached, she would not be here in this house, the wife of the preacher. With this reflection came a desire to read the sermon. She laid it aside, while she finished the work of replacing the other MSS. Then she closed the desk, and discovered that the lock was hampered. She was wondering whether she ought to seal it, when she remembered that it would be easy to lock up the room. The light was failing, yet the fancy took her that she would like to read her husband's sermon in her own room, overlooking the river as it flowed to the sea.

She went upstairs carrying the MS. in her hand, and sat down. The sun was about to set; and the river ran red, no longer golden. Shadows obscured the city beyond. A mist was stealing up from the east, and the barges floating into it were swallowed up.

Betty unrolled the MS., spread it upon her knee, and began to read. But at the first glance she blinked, as if her eyesight were deceiving her. Then with a muttered exclamation of surprise, she held the sheets of blue foolscap to the light, and examined them attentively. The MS., from beginning to end, was in Mark's handwriting. Here and there words were interpolated or excised. In the margin were her husband's notes, but the MS. was Mark's. What did it mean?

She read it through. Yes: as it was written, so it had been preached, and it had been written by Mark!

Why had she not guessed as much before? She rolled up the MS., tied it with the red tape which the orderly Archibald used, and went downstairs. The only other sermon in Mark's handwriting was the "Purity" sermon, but many were covered with his notes. Again and again a phrase remembered, a thought treasured--because it revealed the man she had chosen as wise, and noble, and good, and therefore justified that choice and silenced any doubts she might have entertained regarding it--stood out as Mark's. Again and again she read some common-place, some compromise, some paragraph which rang false, slashed by Mark's red pencil. Once or twice she held up the sheets, examining closely the condemned passages; smiling derisively as she perceived the violence of protest in the broad, deeply indented excoriations. Suddenly Dibdin appeared, bland but surprised.

"Shall I bring a lamp, M'm?"

"Bring me a basket, Dibdin, and then whistle for a hansom."

She put the sermons into the basket and went back to Cadogan Place, where a cold supper awaited her. The footman told the cook that his mistress had eaten nothing, but had called for a pint of champagne. The cook expressed an opinion that nothing in the world was so upsetting as a "move"; which turned everything and everybody upside down, and produced "squirmishy" feelings inside. Presently Betty's maid went upstairs, and returned with heightened colour. Her mistress, so she reported, was as cross as two sticks.

Betty, indeed, was pacing up and down her bedroom in a fever of indecision and unrest. The husband she had honoured was destroyed. The ghost of him inspired repugnance--a repugnance which found larger room in the new house. The pleasure she had taken in furnishing became pain, inasmuch as not a chintz had been chosen without the reflection that she was recovering what was dingy and discoloured in her life, substituting for the old and worn the fresh and new. And now, in the twinkling of an eye, her good resolutions, her hopes and aims, her readjusted sense of proportion--had vanished. She was in the mood to set ablaze that dainty room in which in fancy she had passed so many happy hours, to tear down and destroy the tissues through which she had looked out upon a future as rose-coloured as they.

She passed a sleepless night, got up feeling and looking wretched, gave her servants certain hasty directions, and drove to Waterloo. In her hand she carried a small bag containing the Westchester and Windsor sermons.

From Weybridge she walked to Myrtle Cottage, and the exercise brought colour into her cheeks. She was sure that she would find Mark in the shelter, so she approached it from the side of the grove, being unwilling to face Mary's clear and possibly curious eyes.

Mark was at his typewriting machine when she saw him, and as usual so absorbed in his task that he never perceived her. Betty reflected that he could not have approached her without her being aware of it, but men surely were fashioned out of clay other than what was used for women.

"Mark!"

He sprang up, with a startled exclamation, and came forwards, holding out both hands.

"What has happened?"

As he spoke her indignation began to ooze from her. Intuition told her that the expression upon Mark's face revealed intense sympathy. Her trouble, whatever it might be, had moved him to the core. Suddenly, a light flickered out of the darkness. For the first time, she saw herself and him alone together, shut off from the world. It came upon her with a shock that she was glad that Mark, not Archibald, had written the sermon. Only he, the lover of her girlish dreams, could have found the words which had stirred her so profoundly. Mark repeated the question, "What has happened?"

"You wrote this?" she cried, holding out the Westchester sermon.

He nodded, realising the fatuity of denial. For a moment they gazed into each other's eyes. Then she said slowly--

"You wrote the 'Purity' sermon?"

"M-m-m-most of it," he admitted reluctantly.

"You have helped him ever since?"

"I have revised some of his work."

"And I never guessed it," she exclaimed passionately. "If I had thought for a moment I must have known that it was you--you--you, not him. Oh, my God, I shall go mad! I married him because you--you had tricked him out in a garment of righteousness! Had you come forward at the eleventh hour and spoken I should have thanked you and blessed you. Why did you hold your tongue--why--why--why?"

"I thought you l-l-loved him," he stammered.

"Loved him?" The scorn in her voice thrilled his pulses. "I loved what he said, which was yours. Why did you not say it yourself?"

"Because," his infirmity gripped him, "I c-c-c-couldn't." Her face softened, and the lines of her figure relaxed.

"It is my fault," she said, gazing at him through tears; "I ought to have guessed."

"Betty"--he had recovered his self-control, now that she was in danger of losing hers--"Betty, I have done you a wrong. I withheld the truth, because truth, faith, love had gone out of my life, blasted by--b-b-by----"

"By me?"

"No--n-n-no."

"By whom?" He paused, and she continued vehemently: "Mark, I want the truth. Nothing else is possible between us. What killed your faith? You have never answered that question. What changed you from the man you were to the man you are?"

"Hate."

She recoiled at the grim word, recoiled, too, from the expression on his face.

"You hated--your brother?" The words fell from quivering lips. He saw that she was about to swoop on the truth he had hidden so long. He was impotent to avert discovery. She came very slowly towards him, her eyes fixed on his. The expression in them bewildered him. She raised both her arms and laid her hands upon his shoulders.

"You hated him. Then you loved--me."

"Always," he answered. "To me you came out of Paradise, and brought the best part of it with you."

"Say it again," she whispered.

"I loved you--always: as child, as boy, as man."

She smiled piteously. "As child, as girl, as woman I have loved--you. And yet loving me like that you could believe that I loved him. Ah, love is blind indeed." She held him with her eyes and hands, speaking softly and quickly: "And because you loved me you gave him what he lacked. That was like you. But did it never strike you that I might find out?"

"Not till too late. Betty, I have behaved like a fool. I gave him that sermon which I would have given my right hand to preach. But I had not foreseen its effect. Having given it, I could not take it back." He went on to describe his breakdown, the scene with Ross and the doctors, the silence which he dared not break, his slow recovery, the renascence of his hopes and their destruction. A dozen times his stammer stopped him, as many times he was made aware that this abhorred weakness bound him the closer to the woman who loved him. When he had finished his story she looked up.

"What shall we do now?" she asked.

Above, the song of the pines rose and fell in melancholy cadence. The day was hot, and would become hotter, but here in this sylvan temple the air flowed in cool and fragrant currents. Mark was silent, reflecting that always he had known this hour would come. From the moment he had read Archibald's letter announcing his engagement, Destiny, with the leer of some hideous gargoyle, had decreed that he should hate his brother and love his brother's wife. Up to the present moment both passions had been controlled and confined. The unforeseen had turned them loose.

"What shall we do now?"

She stood before him absorbed in the love which at last had found expression. What else the world might hold for her was not.

So standing, delicately flushed, but with eyes which neither faltered nor fell beneath his, the daughter of Louise de Courcy awaited Mark's answer.

"You are my brother's wife," he said slowly.

Betty shrugged her shoulders. The gesture, almost piteous in its shrinking protest, moved Mark more than any words she had spoken.

"If--if I asked you, you would come away with me?"

She nodded, meeting his passionate glance, facing, as he did, the issues involved. Her hands moved towards him--timidly, but with unmistakable invitation.

"Betty," he cried, "Betty!"

"Ah! you want me. You do want me--you do, you do!"

"Want you?" his voice broke. Instantly she had seized his hands, drawing him towards her. He held her firmly--at arm's length. In that supreme moment he was perhaps stronger than he had been ever before, inasmuch as the faith which once had fortified him was his no longer, and yet without it, believing in nothing, holding in derision God's law and man's, he resisted her, because he was counting the cost to her. Then, reading his thought, she inclined her head, whispering, "If there is a God, and if he bade me choose between life here with you and life hereafter without you, not being allowed to have both--do you know what I should say?"

"Do not say it," he entreated. His face was so twisted by the consciousness that he was taking advantage of her weakness that she thought he was ill. When he remained rigid, she added gently, "Let us go to some place where my love shall make up to you for every pang you have suffered."

"Stop!" he cried hoarsely. "Apart from our love, you have not considered what this means: to me, the man, nothing; to you the loss of everything which women hold dear. You must not decide rashly--you--must--take--time."

She laughed derisively.

"I will take anything you like, so long as you take me."

He caught her to him, closing her mouth with kisses.

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

*CHARING CROSS*

Betty returned alone to London before mid-day. Mark decided to follow by an afternoon train. They had agreed to meet at Charing Cross, to cross that night to Ostend. Then, in some remote corner of the Ardennes, they expected to make plans for the future. The "move," as Betty had pointed out, covered anything that might appear odd to the enlightened Dibdin. Her divided household would understand that she was going to a friend's house for the few hours during which her own bedroom furniture was being shifted.

Mark accompanied her to the station, returning home to pack a portmanteau. What doubts he had entertained were dispersed. He swore that he would look forward, never backward, and found himself whistling as he climbed the hill to the cottage.

In the shelter, the first object that he saw was Betty's handkerchief lying in the corner of a chair. He picked up the small, square piece of cambric and put it to his lips. A faint essence reminded him that fragrance had come again into his life. Then he began to arrange his papers. When Mary came in to arrange the cloth for luncheon, he told her that he was going away for a few days. She expressed no surprise. Why should she? It lay on his tongue's tip to say: "I have been wretched: now I am going to be happy. Let us shake hands!" Watching her moving here and there he was sensible of an impatience, an irritability almost impossible to suppress. Mary subtly conveyed an impression of protest. He told himself that this was absurd. Suddenly her eyes met his.

"What have I done?" she faltered.

"Why, nothing," he answered.

"You were staring at me so queerly," she answered. "The business which takes you away is pleasant, isn't it?"

He smiled reassuringly.

"Connected with your work, I suppose?"

Her curiosity was natural. He always spoke of his work to her.

"No," he said shortly. "It is not. I dare say you think that I could not be really keen about anything or anybody outside of my work. If I told you----"

He closed his lips, wondering why the truth had so nearly leaked from them. His joy had expanded so quickly, that it exacted a larger habitation.

"I have nothing to tell yet," he said confusedly, "but I may write; you shall hear from me; I shall be frank--with you."

He fell into a reverie, as she left the shelter. In a minute she returned.

"There is a gentleman to see you, Mr. Samphire. Shall I bring him here?"

She handed him a card. A cry escaped Mark's lips.

"David!"

The card fell to the ground. For the moment he felt as if some icy finger had been laid upon his heart. He had not seen David since the Crask days. And he had told himself that this old friend had held sorrowfully aloof, because he had divined that intercourse between the faithful and the faithless, between Christian and pagan, would prove (temporarily at least) inexpedient and abortive.

"Please ask his lordship to come here," he said, frowning.

Mary glanced at his face and withdrew. Mark followed her with his eyes as she crossed the pretty garden between the shelter and the cottage. Not a cloud, he noted, obscured the soft azure of the skies; upon all things lay the spell of summer.

"Why has he come?"

Instinctively he armed himself for conflict. It was curious that he associated the Highlander and his strange powers of second sight with the quiet English Mary. The impending fight would be two against one. Good would side with good, although evil might array itself against evil.

These thoughts flitted through his mind as David was advancing. Mark, summoning up a smile of welcome, met his friend, who smiled back, extending both hands.

"Mark," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you. Thank God, you're well."

"And stronger than I ever was in my life," said Mark. "You'll lunch with me, David. I must go to town this afternoon, but we can have an hour together."

"I must go to town too," replied David. "You look a different man, Mark."

"I am a different man."

David followed him into the shelter and sat down, with a puzzled glance at his surroundings. During luncheon both men were conscious of a new and disagreeable sense of restraint.

"Have you another novel on the stocks?"

"Yes."

David jumped up, eager, vigorous, impetuous.

"I have come a long way out of my road to ask you a question."

"Ask it," said Mark.

"When are you coming back to us?"

"Can God only be served in cassock and surplice?"

"You evade my question," said David. "Mark, I have had the feeling that you were in trouble: ill, dying perhaps. I--I had to come to you. But I find you a strong man, and "--he glanced round at the pleasant garden--"and wasting time. Don't mistake me! You have been working hard, no doubt, but at work which others can do as well. You have recovered your health and----"

"Go on."

"The work God intended you to do is being left undone," said David. "Why?"

"If we are to remain friends, David, you had better not press this question."

"If we are to remain friends, I must. You have resigned a stupendous responsibility--why?"

"Shall we say--incapacity to administer it?"

"Give me the true reason."

"Can't you divine it?"

"I have divined it," said David, after a long pause. "You sneer at a gift which is given to few; but you, of all men, ought to know that it has been given to me. And I have divined more. I know that you are on the edge of an abyss which may engulf you and another."

"You have divined that?"

The sneer had left him; amazement, incredulity took its place. David must have heard some idle rumour. He asked him at once if it were not so.

"I have heard nothing."

"On your oath?"

"Certainly--if you wish it."

Mark paced the length of the shelter; then he turned and approached David, who was watching him. When less than a yard separated them Mark stood still and pulled his watch from his pocket.

"It is now two o'clock," he said. "At half-past six this afternoon I meet the woman I love and who loves me at Charing Cross. To-night--we leave England--together."

The relief of speech was immense, but with this, and dominating it, was the fierce desire to confront David with the truth, to invite his arguments, so as to trample on them.

David said hoarsely: "The woman is your brother's wife. You--you--Mark Samphire, the man I thought so strong, will do this shameful thing? _Impossible_!"

Mark laughed.

"I'm going to speak plainly, David. For the first and last time I mean to let myself r-r-rip!" He drew in his breath sharply. "You shall see me as I am. I appeal not to the Bishop, not to my old friend of the Mission, but to a more merciful judge than either--a man of flesh and blood."

He paused, frowning, trying to compose, to marshal his thoughts. Then he began quietly, exercising restraint at first, but using increasing emphasis of word and intonation as he proceeded.

"You say it is impossible that Mark Samphire should do this thing. Strange! You have intelligence, sympathy, intuition. Impossible! Oh, the parrot cry of the slave of convention and tradition, of the worshipper of his own graven images, bowing down before them, unable to look beyond the tiny circle wherein he moves and thinks. Impossible, you say? Impossible for Mark Samphire to run away with his brother's wife!"

"Incredible then," Ross interrupted.

"Incredible. It's incredible you should use such a word with your experience. Can't you realise that the same strength which made me struggle up towards what you call good or God is driving me as relentlessly down the other road? I am not the Mark Samphire of the Mission days, but the Mark Samphire who came from Ben Caryll knowing that if he had met his brother alone upon that mountain he would have killed him, or been killed by him. And having felt that, do you think I would stick at running away with his wife?"

His tone was so bitterly contemptuous that Ross could only stammer out: "I have never understood why such love as you bore him turned to such hate."

"Let your God answer that question. As man to man I swear to you that my brother's extraordinary success in everything we undertook together, and my own failure, did not sour me. I grudged him nothing--except her. And I could have let her go to any other. I tell you, David, I've been tried too high. The irony of fate has been too much for me. A time comes to the stoutest runner when he falls. Then the fellows who have been ambling along behind trot past blandly complacent. They are not first, but they are not last. The man who might have been first is last. I fell at a fence too big for me--and I broke my neck. We've said enough, too much, about that, but the fact that I could love as few love ought to be proof to you that my hate would be as strong."

Ross saw that he was trembling violently.

"If you had written to her----"

"If? That 'if' is crucifixion. Yes; yes; if I had written one line, whistled one note, held up one finger--she would have come to me. But then hope had scarcely budded. My life was so pitiful, so frail a thing to offer. And, voluntarily, she had engaged herself to him. He had won her, as he had won everything else----"

"Fairly."

"No. Not fairly."

Briefly, but in vehement words, Mark told the story of the sermons, concluding with Betty's discovery of the truth.

"And now," he demanded, stretching out his shaking hands, "do you see the real Mark Samphire? Is your finger on the pulse of a poor wretch who tried to do his duty and--here's the rub, David--who was punished the more heavily on that account? If I had played the world's game, Betty would be my wife. Archibald would be still minor canon of Westchester."

Ross took the outstretched hands.

"My poor Mark," he murmured.

"Thanks, David; but don't pity me! I envy no man living. You have listened to my story, patiently. One thing more remains to be said. If Betty had not discovered the truth, I could have held aloof from her to the end. On her account, not because she was my brother's wife, I respected the law. But now," his voice was triumphant, "she wants me. Do you hear? She wants me. I'm necessary to her. And because of that, and for no baser reason, I am going to her--to-night."

Ross met his eyes.

"In a word," said he, "you refuse to protect the woman you love against herself?"

"Once, I should have used that very phrase. What an ocean flows between us, David!"

"In six months," continued Ross, "you and she will be tormented in a hell of your own making. There are men and women, thousands of them, who can steep themselves in the life of the senses. You are not of them, Mark, nor ever will be; nor is she."

Mark smiled derisively.

"She and I," he retorted, "are two of the myriad insects crawling upon one of a million worlds. Something within both of us bids us make the most of our hour. We shall do so. You mean well, David, but you rack me--you rack me. Go!"

"So be it," said David.

As he was turning, Mark clutched his sleeve. An expression in David's eyes--the expression which refuses to acknowledge defeat, which indicates unknown resources--alarmed him.

"You are not going to Archibald," he said hoarsely.

David's face was twitching with emotion, but his voice was firm and even.

"You must know where I am going," he said simply. "I have failed--through my own weakness--as I have failed before, as I shall fail again and again, but I believe that He, whose help I am about to implore, will not fail. You will not leave England to-night."

When Mark looked up the speaker was gone.

During the next hour preparations for the journey occupied his attention. But after his portmanteau was strapped and a fly had been ordered to take him to the station, nearly an hour remained. Mark went into the grove and flung himself at length upon the soft carpet woven by the singing pines. He closed his eyes, invoking the alluring image of Betty. Instantly she came with outstretched hands and shining eyes, but between them, a grim and sombre figure, knelt David Ross, his face upturned in supplication. Mark found himself straining his ears to catch the words of the prayer, but they escaped, fleeting upward whither he dared not follow them.

Presently he seemed to hear voices other than David's, and like his inarticulate, although familiar. In his room at the Mission he had often listened to such voices. What man of ethereal attributes has not? But since that night on Ben Caryll these sounds had ceased.

He told himself, irritably, that once again he had fallen a victim to nervous imaginings, echoes of the material world rather than spiritual communications. Barger had told him that it was easy--given certain purely physical conditions--to hypnotise oneself, to sink into a subconscious coma vibrant with sensations and sounds subject to scientific analysis. But even Barger had never denied the transcendental gift of David Ross, even Barger believed firmly in the Seer of Brahan, whose predictions concerning the Seaforth Mackenzies had been verified so marvellously.

It was impossible to ignore the coincidence of David's visits. Twice David had sought him out, when he was in sore straits.

At whose bidding?

The question could not be exorcised by sneer or sophism. Mark had compared himself to an insect, a metaphor used ten thousand times by the agnostic school and properly, since none other is more expressive of the insignificance and ephemeral nature of man's body in relation to the universe. None the less Mark was aware that moral or spiritual facts, as a writer puts it, have no relation whatever to physical size, and that a man's soul can no more be measured with a yardstick than the cardinal virtues.

At whose bidding had David Ross been sent?

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 coupe 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 coupe 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!"

*CHAPTER XXXV*

*CHRYSOSTOM RETURNS TO CHELSEA*

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.

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.

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:--

"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.

"As soon as this is sent off I shall go to a friend's till Archibald returns. I must tell him the truth."

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.

*CHAPTER XXXVI*

*FENELLA*

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 deboire de mille evenements facheux_.

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.