Chapter IX

"Suffer not woman in her tenderness to sit near him in the darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountain of tears...."--DE QUINCEY.

Next morning they could speak of it all more calmly. Mark had slept little and had done some unpleasantly lucid thinking in the small hours.

"Now--it must be business to-day," he said, when his mother appeared after breakfast, to read or to write for him according to his mood. "And first, we must answer _this_."

He brought his hand down sharply on Bel's letter.

"Need you?" she asked.

"Yes--I need. I've ... one or two things to say. My left-hand scrawl's not legible yet; so--you must write them for me. She won't like that."

It was the first time Helen Forsyth had heard a vindictive note in her son's voice.

"No," she said quietly; and, opening his despatch-case, she laid out her materials, while he sat worrying his moustache.

When she was ready, he dictated in a low, impersonal tone the "one or two things" that he had thought out in the small hours.

"Bel, I have your letter. Of course you are free. I had no other intention. I meant to tell you on Thursday, but ... I was a weak fool----"

"Mark!" his mother remonstrated; and he frowned sharply.

"I was a weak fool," he repeated with emphasis. "Written it?"

"Yes."

"As it's hard on you losing everything, I am instructing my solicitors to pay you the £5000 I told you about. Money is always useful."

At that, his mother laid down her pen.

"My dear boy, it's out of the question. Walker will think you've gone mad."

"Walker may think what he pleases. He will get his instructions before he knows the engagement is off."

The set of Mark's face warned her that she was knocking her head against a wall; but she could not give in without further protest.

"Darling, do be reasonable," she pleaded. "It's not fair----"

"Not fair--on whom?" he blazed round at her. "I'm not despoiling Wynchcombe Friars. And it isn't as if ... there was any chance--Marriage is out of the question. And ... it's a bit hard on Bel. After all, she's lost her husband through the war. I'm simply treating her as if she was my widow. And it may save some other luckless chap from ... the 'business arrangement' she proposes to ratify at the altar. Anyway, Mother, the money's mine, and I don't feel fit to argue the point. If you won't write what I want, I must do it through Keith--that's all."

She bit her lip to keep back the futile retort. He was plainly not himself this morning. Dr. Norton had warned her of possible nerve complications. Opposition was useless; probably harmful. And what did a little money matter after all?

"Of course I'll write what you want, Mark," she said quietly. "But ... wouldn't three thousand be enough?"

"Oh, all right, three thousand," he agreed listlessly, to her complete surprise. All the fire seemed to have gone out of him. "Let's get it over. Have you written everything? Thanks. Give it here."

He read it through, while his mother watched him with troubled eyes, then slowly, laboriously he scrawled with his left hand: "Good-bye. Mark Stuart Forsyth."

"There--that's done," he said, pushing the paper across the table. "Write instructions to Walker in my name, will you? I feel fagged out. This cursed lying up saps all one's energy."

Though her heart yearned over him, she answered nothing. He needed no cheap word of sympathy from her. They were one in suffering; and he knew it. All she could do for him was to be untiring in his service.

While she went on with her writing, he lay silent and inert, not even troubling to fill his pipe--an achievement that had delighted him a few days ago.

Mechanically Helen's pen travelled over the paper; but she scarcely knew what she wrote, so harassed was her brain with perplexity and foreboding. She had hoped much from Sheila's visit, but Bel had stepped in and spoilt the effect. Just when the first realisation of his fate was blackening everything, she must needs rub salt into his wound by dwelling on the pain and strain which she could not endure. And Mark responded by heaping coals of fire on her head. It was maddening of him; but at the moment every minor consideration was dwarfed by the discouraging state of his nerves. His alterations between listlessness and irritability alarmed her. Mercifully, Dr. Norton was coming to-morrow; and she hoped Keith would arrive soon.

At the first, far-off sound of his footstep she laid down her pen. "I'll be back in a minute, darling," she said, and hurried away.

In the midst of all her anxiety and sorrow, it was a very real blessing to have Keith back again; and, as regards Mark, her reliance on him was absolute. To her, their relation seemed a singularly perfect thing. She had almost forgotten--in her concentration on Mark--that he was supposed to be in love with her.

"What's wrong now?" he asked: she was so obviously thankful to see him.

"Oh, everything. Come in here a minute."

She led him into the empty ante-room where visitors waited; and there told him, in a few trenchant phrases, the tale of Bel's defection, of Sheila's visit, and of Mark's change for the worse.

"I suspect he didn't sleep much last night, and I'm afraid I ... rather ... get on his nerves," she concluded, with a pitiful quiver of her lip. "Something fresh is hurting him terribly--something bigger, I think, than the loss of Bel. Keith ... I'm afraid ... for his precious brain."

"Don't get thinking that, Helen." Keith's eyes were gentler than his tone. "How about another drive? The first was a success. We'll ask Nurse."

"Yes, do." Her face cleared. "But I think--unless he asks for me--I won't come. He can feel my anxiety--just as I feel his pain. And it worries him."

"Well--perhaps you're right. You mothers are the standing miracles of creation."

She shook her head; but his quietly spoken tribute cheered and comforted her, as he had meant that it should.

"Nurse" approved the suggestion of a drive, and Mark assented without enthusiasm. He also accepted without comment the fact that his mother was not coming; and she, from the window, watched them go in a mood of bewildered misery that came very near despair. Could she have broken down the wall of Mark's reserve and probed the depths of his hidden pain, even her fine courage might altogether have given way. But mercifully man "goes upon his long business like a blind child...."

To-day's drive was quite conspicuously not a success. The first one had come at a happy moment. But Mark was slipping steadily down into the dark places of the soul where happy moments are not, where he would have to fight with beasts--quite as real and terrible as the beasts at Ephesus--before he could win again to daylight and sanity and acceptance.

To-day, though the sun shone fitfully and the sky showed frail patches of blue, his soul was unresponsive, utterly, to the still small voice of hope. To-day the mere sight of whole men and women, walking, riding free to come and go, to feel the good earth under their feet, stirred him suddenly to such a fury of rebellion that he felt as if his brain would burst.

Bombs! That was what he wanted. Bombs to hurl right and left into that complacent crowd, that talked "war" and "atrocities" and "the Christmas truce," and knew nothing about it all--nothing whatever. Why were there no bombs? It was scandalous mismanagement----

By some queer freak, the taxi had become a trench and the complacent Londoners were Germans--swarms of them. One couldn't imagine Germans otherwise than in swarms. And there was only one way to prevent these swarms from overrunning the earth:--shells and guns, unlimited shells and guns. When the deuce would Home Authorities even begin to wake up...?

At this point the Germans vanished; the trench was a taxi again, and Mark glanced furtively at Keith as if to see whether he had noticed the transformation. But Keith had merely seen the outer Mark sunk in an unnatural apathy that seemed to confirm his own worst forebodings; and now, in response to that questioning glance, he smiled his tranquil, rather tired smile.

"A nice change getting out into the open, eh, old man?" he said. "In a few months' time you may be handling your own car."

"Think so?" A flicker of interest sounded in Mark's tone.

"Quite possible, I should say. When that day comes we'll go round recruiting again--you and I."

Then, having caught Mark's attention, he dilated a little upon that vexed question, and ventured a pious hope that some day, something--perhaps Zeppelin bombs in Downing Street--would convince a Government, presumably anxious for victory, that, in war, time spelt not merely money but infinitely precious human lives.

Mark gave the matter his polite consideration, though it seemed to him curiously remote. Keith was doing his best. They all were; but none of them had a glimmering idea of the Sheila complication, or of what the whole thing meant--for him. Just as well, perhaps.

He felt half ashamed, now, of the sudden rage that had possessed him; and that brief vivid delusion had startled him not a little. He must "hang on to things" firmly or it might recur.

He hung on, accordingly, till the drive ended and they carried him up to his room, haunted now by Sheila's presence. His mother was out; and Keith, as luck would have it, began to talk of Sheila and to sing her praises, till Mark could endure it no more. His brows twitched and he hung on to things with desperate tenacity. But it was useless. Keith, in the kindness of his heart, was jabbing nails into him: driving them home----

For a time Mark bore it in semi-silence: then, to Keith's consternation, he suddenly and very completely let himself go....

For close on half an hour he cursed everything and everyone, more especially the devoted Macgregor, whose superfluous zeal had saved him from extinction. He raged against his dependence on others, against the broken life ahead of him, with a terrible fluency and command of language that Keith had not heard from him since full power of speech returned.

To interrupt or reason with him were worse than useless: moreover, Macnair knew that, for a man of Mark's passionate nature, some such explosion was inevitable, and he devoutly hoped it might bring relief. Much of it, both in manner and matter, was so foreign to the true Mark, that Keith found it all unendurably painful. Yet he endured; and at intervals said what he could, which was little enough; first, because he was a tongue-tied Scot; second, because Mark was in no condition just then for comfort of any kind.

Slowly the storm died down to disconnected mutterings of apology and self-disgust; and the sound of his mother's footstep without silenced him altogether.

"Oh Lord! Here's Mums," he murmured, and Keith did not fail to notice the worried look in his eyes. "Don't go, old man. And for God's sake--don't give me away."

"_Is_ it likely?" Keith asked, with a reproachful look. "She has more than enough to bear."

Words and tone had their intended effect. When his mother appeared, Mark achieved a smile.

She came to him and kissed his forehead.

"Had a nice drive?"

"Oh, a damned delectable drive!" he answered with a short laugh. "Beastly unfair on Keith, dosing him with an hour of my society."

"You shut up," Keith commanded sternly; and Helen, seeing that something had gone wrong, made haste to change the subject.

Keith took her out to lunch and had a good deal to say about the political situation. Then, the day being Saturday, he insisted on a Symphony Concert. He further insisted on ringing up Sir John Forsyth--who happened to be in town--and asking him to look in on Mark for tea. Helen never liked him better than in these occasional autocratic moods. Too often nowadays the one thing she prayed to be delivered from was a decision, no matter how trifling; and at such times the masculine note of command was restful beyond belief.

So she went with him to the Queen's Hall; and Beethoven's music flowed like a river of healing over the bruised places of her heart; and when they returned to Park Lane, Sir John began insisting also.

This, though she never guessed it, was equally Keith's doing.

Laura, he said, had given him strict injunctions to bring Helen back for dinner. "Quite quiet," the Admiral assured her, seeing hesitation on her face. "Only ourselves and the Desmonds. He's up on some recruiting business. Age cannot wither him. Wonderful fellow!"

"But--Mark," Helen murmured, glancing at her son, who seemed lost in his own reflections.

"I'll spend the evening with him," Keith struck in. "Nothing I should enjoy better."

Mark, who was listening fitfully, greeted that statement with a grimace and a faint, very faint, twinkle in his eye. The eclipse of his humour was, to those who loved him, a bitter thing; and, in Keith's opinion, a bad sign.

It was certainly not in evidence that evening. The afternoon's explosion seemed to have flung him to the other extreme. He smoked pipe after pipe without volunteering a word; and Keith, watching him unobserved, grew more anxious than ever. Towards the end, after a long silence, he suddenly leaned forward and gave Keith a straight look.

"I've got it!" he said, with decision.

"Got what, old chap?" Keith asked, feeling seriously alarmed.

"A priceless sentence of Robert Louis'--rather apt for the occasion," Mark answered; and Keith broke into a low laugh of relief. "It's been wandering in my head, bits of it. Couldn't piece them together. Now it's come straight. 'When we have fallen through storey after storey of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful among the ruins, it is then that we begin to measure the stature of our friends.' Struck me I'd been ... measuring yours to-day. Understand?"

"I do understand." Keith was too deeply moved to say more.

"Not quite so crazy, am I, as I sounded this afternoon," Mark went on, with a pathetic pride in his own achievement.

"Not a bit of it! If you can quote R.L.S. verbatim, you'll do all right, in time."

"Yes--in time." Mark let out his breath and leaned back against his cushions. "Meanwhile I--'sit rueful among the ruins.' And you must make allowances, you ... people."

At that, Keith rose abruptly; it was time to be gone.

"My dear fellow," he said, and laid a hand on Mark's shoulder, "we're ready to make all the allowances on earth. Only--" a pause--"as far as you can ... be merciful to your mother."

Mark sighed. "Mums? Yes--that's the difficulty. Women are the deuce."

"A few of them," Keith remarked with quiet emphasis, "are about all the visible guarantee we have that--there's a God in heaven!"

Then he took his leave, feeling a shade less anxious, but determined to be on the spot next morning and to see Dr. Norton when he came.

"Sleep sound, old chap," was his parting injunction; but the brief snatches of sleep that came to Mark in the early hours of the night were robbed of all healing influence by dreams--hideous dreams, such as he had not suffered from since his earlier days in the Red Cross barn. Vividly he saw again that mound of earth, in the moonlight, and the leg that would not be still; and again, in imagination, he crept out into the open, caring nothing for risks if only he could quiet that leg or release its owner.

Up to this point, the dream was always the same. It varied only in its culmination. And to-night there sprang from behind the mound a colossal German with nails like talons and eyes like live coals. But when Mark would have sprung at him he found himself paralysed; while the Thing under the mound whimpered for help, and the Creature--a very Apollyon--loomed nearer every moment....

Miraculously, he shook off that nightmare rigidity. He was locked in a suffocating death-grapple. The Creature's breath scorched his face; and, with a start, he awoke, shivering, beads of cold sweat upon his forehead.

"My God!" he breathed, between horror and relief, and promptly switched on the light. It was just after one o'clock; but sleep and the desire of sleep were gone from him.

To quiet his mind and cleanse it of fear he tried reading a few pages of _Michel Ange_. It was useless. His eyes followed the words but, although he understood them, they made no connected impression on his brain.

With a sigh he gave it up, switched off the light and lay there, open-eyed, hour after hour, watching two panels of moonlight shift slowly across the carpet, climb the wall, lessen and vanish as the moon swung westward. Outside, the companionable hum of traffic grew fainter; ceased altogether; and left him at the mercy of his increasingly bitter thoughts.

Too clearly he foresaw the peculiar trials of his hampered, restricted life; devoid of freedom, devoid of movement, save such as he could accomplish in a wheeled chair, or a motor--perhaps. To a man of independent spirit and immense physical vigour, the prospect was intolerable; and the glimmer of hope on the horizon was too dim to pierce the fog that shrouded his spirit. Better a shattered limb, that could have been replaced, than this hulk of useless bone and sinew. Even now he could not grasp the fact that in all probability, he would never stand squarely on his feet again----

And that was only a part of the tragedy: the rest was entirely of his own making, which did not mend matters--rather the reverse.

In the silence, one reiterate sentence kept hammering at his brain: "All along, I have been a fool--worse than a fool. All along, Mums has been right."

Forcing himself to travel backward through the years, he saw, now, how obviously it had been Sheila from the very beginning; so obviously, that he had taken things almost too much for granted. She and Mums were his life. He had asked nothing better; and having them constantly with him, he had scarcely given a thought to marriage. On the whole, he had preferred his freedom. Marriage could wait.

It was her sudden departure from his horizon and her charming letters--she was fairly communicative on paper--that had set him thinking seriously of her, dreaming of her, longing to see her again. That year of her absence had seemed a rather blank year.

Then--she had come back....

He remembered very well that moment of meeting; the stir in his veins; the new touch of shyness between them, and the light in his mother's eyes. He understood it all now. She had been watching her dearest dream come true.

Soon after that he had found himself wondering--did Sheila, by any chance, care? Or was it chiefly Mums? And was he no more to her than Ralph?

At that point--with a suddenness, a swiftness of which he now felt half ashamed--Bel happened to him. There is no other word for it. She came, smiled, conquered; and for a time he was translated; no longer master of his destiny and very hardly master of himself.

Living again through those plays, he began to suspect that from the first her effect on him had been conscious, deliberate. There was no true simplicity in her. Yet with what engaging charm she could affect simplicity, the better to secure her hold on him.

Since his return, since he had been able to see her as she was, he had perceived that she represented, in subtle gracious guise, an appeal which, in its more obvious forms, he had successfully withstood. For this, for the glamour, the unsatisfying charm of the mere courtesan--so he labelled her in his bitterness--he had flung aside a real woman; one of the few, as Keith had said, who are a visible guarantee of God. He had dropped the substance to catch at a shadow: and now, too late, the horrors and splendours of war, the shining faith and saintliness of one small French nun, had renewed a right spirit within him and opened his eyes to the truth.

It was the cruelest knowledge of his life. Even the crippling of his manhood seemed a small thing beside that other loss for which he alone was to blame.

Strange how vivid was the feel of her in absence! How near she had drawn to him in France! And Bel, not seen, eluded him utterly. Proof--he knew it now--that she was but the fair semblance of reality; while Sheila, like the King's daughter, was "all glorious within." Six months ago, she might have been his for the asking. And she would have stood by him, stood by him to the end----

Towards morning, he slept heavily for an hour; and woke with a dead weight on heart and brain: a weight, beyond his power to shift, that seemed steadily pressing him down, down into the depths----

In this state Dr. Norton found him; and, after some fifteen minutes of very lop-sided talk, he said decisively: "Sir Mark, I've come to the conclusion we can't keep you here your full time. The sooner we get you out of Town the better."

"Home?" Mark asked, a glimmer of hope in his voice.

"I'm afraid--not yet. But a move in that direction. 'Mavins,' in Surrey; a beautiful old place. Perhaps you know it?"

Mark nodded.

"Sir Howard Meredith has given it over to convalescents like yourself, who need mental as well as physical healing. I'll ring them up. Move you to-day, if possible. You'll go quite comfortably by motor ambulance."

"Thanks."

The veil of indifference had fallen again. "Anything's preferable--to this."

"Cheer up, then, and give yourself a chance," Norton commanded briskly; but he walked down the passage with an anxious line between his brows.

He found Macnair and Lady Forsyth in the sitting-room, and wasted no words in vain preliminaries.

"My patient's all to pieces," he announced bluntly. "Nerves in a rotten state. What have you been doing to him these two days?"

Helen briefly explained the situation and Bel's latest move.

As the doctor listened, anxiety gave place to anger.

"Good Lord! As if he hadn't enough against him! I've distrusted that young lady and her silky manners from the start. Seen too many of her kind, in hospitals, smoking cigarettes with wounded officers, under the impression that they are doing their 'bit' for their country. He's well rid of her; but this is a critical moment for any fresh upset."

He proceeded to unfold his plan; and to them he explained more fully that "Mavins" was more a home for nerve-shattered officers. There Sir Mark would be in the best possible hands; noted specialists, professors of psychology; and there was no reason to suppose that he might not pull round completely, in time.

"We'll move him to-day if we can," Norton concluded, addressing Lady Forsyth. "His best chance just now is to get right away from everything and everyone associated with this business; especially--from you!"

She managed to smile. "Oh, I know, I'm the fatal one----"

"Because he cares for you most," Norton reminded her in a gentler tone. Then he went off to make the necessary arrangements.

After a good deal of telephoning, matters were settled. Mark would leave in the early afternoon. Dr. Norton, meanwhile, had discovered that Macnair was a personal friend of Professor Langton, the great psychologist. On the strength of this he proposed that Keith should go down with Mark and stay a few days till he felt settled in his new surroundings.

Mark, himself, took no visible interest in it all. He seemed to have slipped hopelessly out of reach.

After lunch his mother came in for a few minutes to say good-bye; and there on his table lay an open note in Bel's handwriting. For a moment it startled her: then she remembered his quixotic gift.

"May I?" she asked, and he nodded.

Bel's acknowledgment was brief and, as usual, effective.

"Coals of fire on my head. How exactly like you! And--what can one say, except that my utter unworthiness is the measure of my gratitude.--BEL."

"Posing to the last!" was Lady Forsyth's enraged reflection. "That's the best place for it," she said aloud; and tearing it across, she flung it in the fire.

Mark, leaning back against his cushions watched it burn.

Helen was watching his face. It showed no glimmer of feeling. Then, anxiety and curiosity so pricked her that she ventured a question.

"Darling," she said, a hand on his shoulder, "I'm puzzled. Is this fresh trouble--altogether Bel?"

"N--no. Not the way you mean. Still--she's responsible----"

His brows twitched. He seemed to force the words out, frowning at the fire.

Then, unexpectedly, he looked up at her, a strange, wild light in his eyes. "Mums, it's--oh God! ... It's _everything_!"

To that heart-piercing cry there could be only one answer. Stooping over him, she kissed him, holding him close; and he, with sudden fervour, returned her kiss, clutching her hand as if he could not bear to let it go.

So they parted, with never a word; and her question remained unanswered;--the puzzle still unsolved.

Keith went with him, as arranged. Sheila was presumably chained to Westover; and Helen, with heart and hope near breaking-point, was left utterly alone.