Chapter VIII

"There never was to God such worship sent
By any angel in the heavenly ways
As this, that Life has uttered for God's praise:--
This girlhood--as the service of Life said
In the beauty and the manners of this maid."
L. ABERCROMBIE.

But Mark Forsyth had still a long black road to travel before he could arrive at mastering calamity, or even at recognising the very real ameliorations which Bel had enumerated for her own justification.

During those first staggering days, realisation bit into him like a corrosive acid, that he had lost, at a stroke, all the manlier side of life; all free, independent movement, and the right to hold his promised wife, even if she willed. More and more he doubted this last, in spite of recent proof that her love had been growing deeper precisely as his own had begun to wane. That was during her absence at Folkestone, which, in the circumstances, looked like a prelude to rejection.

And all the while, locked in the depths of his being, lay the hidden knowledge that he had jettisoned the real woman for the sake of the tinsel sham and had discovered the truth too late. He knew now why his feeling for Sheila had been so curiously unaffected by his passing passion for Bel. It belonged to the depths; and there it had lain hidden, like a jewel in a mine. Once he was blind. Now he saw. War and its vicissitudes had effectually burnt away the husks and left the real man--battered, enlightened, enlarged....

His sole ray of light, since the blow fell, had been one of Sheila's rare letters, written directly she heard that he knew the truth. Short and simple as it was, Mark found in every line of it the inexpressible fragrance of her spirit, the sure delicate touch of the healer on his hidden wound. It had given him a passing uplift, a glimpse of what life might be when the fog had cleared. At present, it seemed to be choking the life out of him, converting all his strength to weakness, his blood to gall.

Sheila wrote that she was still very much tied with work at Westover. Mr. Nacnair had been angelic about coming down and giving her first-hand news; but the moment it was possible, she would fly up to London for a glimpse of them both.

And on the morning after Bel's return--just as Mark was beginning to wonder at her non-appearance--the door opened to admit Lady Forsyth and Sheila, in squirrel furs, with a bunch of violets in her coat.

"Sheila!" he exclaimed, startled, yet frankly overjoyed. "Lord--it's like--seeing you suddenly--like a breath of Hampshire in this confounded London. I'd pretty well given you up."

"I've been trying to come for nearly a week.--True." She nodded, beaming on him and unfastening her violets while she talked. "It seemed hopeless. Then suddenly, to-day, I saw a free space ahead. There was no time to cry, 'Look out!' So I just flew off and nipped into a kind train. And these"--she held out her violets--"are for you. I wanted to bring a sheaf of Father's special chrysanthemums. But I'd have lost the train."

"I prefer these," he said, and under pretence of sniffing them he touched them with his lips. "Fasten them--will you? I'm no better than an overgrown infant."

She shook her head at the faint note of bitterness. "A very capable infant! And your precious right hand's ever so much better. There! They look lovely."

For answer, he merely glanced from the flowers to her face. Lady Forsyth, standing near the window? watched the little scene with a yearning ache at her heart. Now she came forward and patted Mark's shoulder.

"You shall have her to yourself," she said, "for a real long talk. I'll do dragon downstairs and keep Londoners at bay!"

"That's good."

Mark's tone was gravely content. Reaching out, he drew a low chair nearer to the fire and to himself. "Sit--Mouse," he said, as his mother moved away. "Take off your coat. Look as if--you'd come to stay."

She obeyed, more gladly than he knew, and, sitting down by him, drew a khaki sock out of her bag. "You must excuse," she said smiling. "We're as bad as the French Revolution, these days! I'm more or less responsible for Ralph's men. They feel the cold cruelly, poor dears! And I don't get overmuch time now. Mums looks rather strained and tired, doesn't she?"

Mark nodded. "It's been cruel hard on her--this business. But she's come through it all ... 'm what's the confounded word?--a heroine. Has she said much to you?"

"Not much. She knows I understand. We came very close together ... before."

Mark leaned forward.

"You know, you promised you'd tell me ... all that. And then--you never came!"

"Dear, I couldn't," she said very low to the heel of her sock.

He watched her a while in silence; approving the clear, delicate outline of her profile, the soft-toned blue of her blouse, and the old lace collar he had given her two years ago. He knew now how impermissibly he had been craving to see her....

"Well, as you _have_ turned up, at last," he said, abruptly breaking the silence, "tell ... all about it now. I'm dead sick of myself."

And she told...

For nearly an hour they were left in peace. Not since that long-ago talk on the terrace, when she had surprised him by denouncing Bel, had they talked so intimately or at such length; and for Mark it was the most satisfying hour he had known since his return. Both of them, unsuspected by each other, clung rather desperately to "Mums" as the one topic on which they could safely draw near together. Then Sheila wanted to hear about Sœur Colette. This was not easy matter for Mark, but he achieved it, after a fashion. He was describing his own abortive attempt to thank the devoted little nun at parting, when there came a knock at the door.

It was the maid with two letters for Mark. With a start--half relief, half vexation--he recognised Bel's writing.

"May I?" he asked.

And Sheila, rising casually, went over to the window that looked across the Park. This quiet hour together had been so rare and perfect a gift from the blue that she could hardly endure to watch him read a love-letter from Bel. That the girl could dream of leaving him in his helplessness never so much as entered her head.

A smothered curse startled her and she turned sharply.

"Mark!" she cried, an irrepressible ring of tenderness in her tone; but he scarcely heard her.

The Mark of five minutes earlier--her Mark--had vanished. The man she confronted was of Bel's making. He had tossed his letter on to his elbow-table. He sat looking straight before him, his face set and stern.

"Oh--_what_ is it?" she asked, rooted to the spot by a feeling that she ought not to be there. No one ought to see him suffering so. But Mark, dashed from his haven of content by a great wave of anger and disgust, was past troubling about any human presence.

"She ... has no further use for me.--That's all," he said, as if he were speaking into vacancy. "And yesterday I was fool eno' ... Quite a ... masterly composition!"

Could Bel have heard that last she would have felt punished indeed. But it was Sheila who heard it--Sheila who stood grasping the window-sill, swept by a tempest of anger scarcely less than his own.

"Oh--she's a coward--a coward!" The words flashed out involuntarily; and he seemed suddenly to be aware of her.

"You tender-hearted Mouse," he said, in a changed voice. "You ... don't understand, eh? But ... it's natural enough. Inevitable. No one ... but Mums could be expected ... to have any use for me--now."

To that tragic remark Sheila could find no answer. Besides, she was fighting back her tears and wondering desperately, ought she perhaps, to speak of what she knew? Would it give him the smallest consolation? Was it fair to kick even Bel when she was down--Bel, who had taken her all? Fair, or not, the thing was not in Sheila's nature. She was human enough to wish that Mark could know--now. But she was not the one to tell him.

"Thank God--for Mums," she said softly, after a long pause; and he bowed his head in heartfelt acquiescence.

The strained hardness had gone from his face. But the irony of the whole situation was piercing his heart. Sheila--who would have been staunch through thick and thin--here alone with him, almost within arm's length, yet irrevocably, eternally out of reach; lost to him through his own blind folly. If ever mortal man endured the torment of Tantalus it was Mark Forsyth in that hour of bewildered anger and pain.

Sheila, believing him heart-broken, remained near the window, seeking some inadequate word of comfort, and finding none. Instinct told her that, for the moment, silence was best. Probably he was not even aware of her: while she, startled out of her stoic self-repression, had never been so intimately, so poignantly aware of him.

Unconsciously he had clenched his left hand until the knuckles stood out sharp and white. He sat staring into the fire with a fixed unseeing look. At intervals his eyebrows twitched nervously; and sudden fear seized her lest this blow had fallen on him before he was fit for the strain.

"Mark," she said at last, very gently, and came closer to him now. "It simply ... bewilders me; and it has come at such a cruel moment. But you mustn't let--things upset you too much. Would you rather be alone?"

To her surprise he flung out his hand and grasped her wrist.

"No--no. Don't _you_ leave me!"

Was it fancy,--or was there an under-note of fear in his tone? The mere possibility pierced her heart.

"Sit down--please," he said abruptly, and released her. "You've come all this way and I've been simply----"

He checked himself, and was thankful that she would suppose he had forgotten a word. "I've been--looking forward to it for so long. I'll be rotten company. But do stay...."

He let out a great sigh and she sat by him as before; but the spell of their happy intercourse was broken. Bel had come upon the scene, and, as usual, had spoilt everything.

"I think," she said, "you ought to lie back and rest a little. Would you prefer ... shall I read?"

"Do. I'd love it."

"What have you got here? ... Roman Rolland?"

"Yes: a new one--the '_Michel Ange_.' It's splendid."

He indicated the page; but first she must arrange his chair and cushions at a restful slope. Leaning back he gazed up at her. For a mere instant his eyes lingered in hers, that had the clear depth and quiet of a mountain lake.

"Clever Mouse!" he said, in a voice of lazy content. "And look here, not a word to Mums. She'd rage. We'll have our afternoon in peace; and I'll tell her to-night. Go ahead."

Pocketing Bel's letter, he closed his eyes; and Sheila, between the sentences, could scrutinise his face. Cheek-bones and jaw and the fine strong curve of the eye-bone still stood out too sharply; and she noted with a pang the strained corners of his mouth. Beneath his surface composure she detected unmistakable signs of jarred nerves--signs she was learning to know too well--and a great longing came over her to soothe him with the touch of her skilled fingers over his forehead and head. But the very intensity of her feeling made her shrink from an offer that would otherwise have been a mere matter of course.

Meantime she must give her attention to Michael Angelo----

And it was so that Lady Forsyth found them when she came to carry Sheila off for lunch.

After his prescribed rest, they returned and had their afternoon in peace. Though Mark's natural cheerfulness was still shadowed by his calamity, Sheila--seeing what she had seen--marvelled at the controlled ease of his manner. And few could estimate better the manifold difficulties of self-control.

The moment of parting put an almost equal strain on both.

"Come again soon, Mouse," he said, with a brave show of lightness that wrung her heart. "It's done me good--a breath of country air."

She promised to come, when stress of work allowed, and she frankly returned the pressure of his hand.

Then--she was gone: and for Mark it was as if the sun had fallen out of the sky. Alone--with the haunting sense of her presence, the empty chair, and that letter in his pocket, a chill conviction crept through him that life--real life--was over and done with--that he had reached the dead end of everything.

His mother, when she reappeared, found him lying listless and unoccupied, staring into space. As she came to the fire and drew off her gloves, he glanced up at her without a word of greeting: a glance that would normally have hurt her. But, in those days, thought and feeling were altogether concentrated on him.

"Darling," she said, in a voice that tried not to sound over-anxious, "you look horribly done up. It was lovely, wasn't it? But I'm afraid it's all been a little too much for you."

His answer, spoken in a vehement undertone, jarred all through her.

"You're right. The whole cursed situation is just a little too much for me." Then, seeing the startled pain in her eyes, he handed her Bel's envelope, adding more gently: "I'm not going off my head. That came this morning."

She read it slowly, with very mixed feelings, and Mark's eyes never left her face. The breeze of her thoughts rippled over it like wind over a pool. But she did not "rage" as he had anticipated. She was at once too thankful and too profoundly angered by the girl's invincible coolness and selfishness to find relief in mere explosives.

"Well?" he asked, seeing that she had reached the end.

"_Well!_" she echoed, with eloquent brevity. Then, after a pause: "No wonder that took the virtue out of Sheila's visit. It's Bel through and through. I can make no severer comment. And, after all, one detects a touch of poetic justice. She did it ... before to hurt you deliberately for her own ends. Now she's compelled to do it, being what she is. Of course----"

"Mother, be _quiet_!" Mark's eyebrows twitched and he raised a commanding hand. "She's in the right of it. But yesterday ... she never gave me a chance.... Not likely I should dream of holding her to... Oh Lord!" He clenched his hand and closed his eyes, as if to shut out the intolerable truth. But the enemy was within.

And his mother stood there watching him. Every nerve in her quivered with his pain as well as her own; and two great tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks.

Suddenly Mark opened his eyes; and at sight of her mute controlled misery, his heart smote him.

"_Mother_ ... I'm a graceless beast," he said slowly. "Thank God--there's _you_----"

"Yes--there's me--always!" With a sharp sob she fell on her knees beside him and pressed her lips upon his hand.