Chapter V

"Of love it may be said, the more unearthly, the more invisible."--HARDY.

The first moment that escape was decently possible, Lady Forsyth left the group under the pines and went straight to her bedroom. Mark would follow her, of course, but she had desperate need of a few minutes' breathing space. She knew now that what Keith called "the brave old wisdom of acceptance" was still far from her; that she had not really faced the truth till she saw it in Mark's eyes. And while her pulses still throbbed unevenly his voice sounded at the door.

"Mother, can I come in?" he asked; and the next moment stood before her--a glowing embodiment of victory.

"Congratulate me, Mums," he said. "I've brought off the great event with honours. Miss Alison--Bel has promised to be my wife."

"I know. I have known it--all day," she answered him, with a brave attempt at a smile.

"More than I have! Hadn't the cheek to count on her. It was rather sharp work, and I'm not what you might call a fascinating chap. But I simply couldn't wait. It's the most amazing luck----"

He broke off as if he had come into actual collision with her thought. For nearly half a minute she endured the challenging scrutiny of his gaze. Then: "Mother, what's up?" he asked, in a changed voice. "Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

She drew in a steadying breath. He had given her a cue that made plain speaking a shade less difficult.

"My darling boy," she said quietly, "I've never played at pretences with you and I can't do it now. You admit this has been sharp work. And, honestly, I wish you had waited. I should have thought better of your judgment and the quality of--your love."

He frowned sharply. "Oh Lord, I didn't come here for a preachment. The last thing one would expect from you. I suppose it means you've taken one of your prejudices against her."

"Dear, I don't _know_ her yet. No more do you."

"Well, anyway, I love her. Strikes me that's the straightest road to knowledge. And as she loves me----"

"Did she tell you so, Mark--quite unmistakably?"

"Well, of course," he retorted with rising temper; and was suddenly confronted by the realisation that Bel had done nothing of the kind. The discovery made him angrier than ever; but there was no untruthfulness in him. "I don't know about unmistakably. You don't expect a girl to make passionate declarations. Isn't the fact of her accepting me proof enough for any one?"

"_Is_ it?" Lady Forsyth had herself in hand now, and she could not forego her one chance of candour even while she perceived the futility of reasoning with a man in his exalted state. "Don't you realise that, in your case, there are ... other factors? Your position, your title..."

"My--? Great Scott!" He stood speechless. The thing had simply not occurred to him. Title and position were, for him, as much a matter of course as the hair on his head. Then, as surprise subsided, anger flared up again. "Upon my soul, Mother, I don't know what's come to you. One would hardly think it was from you I'd learnt to credit people with the best motives. Are you trying to insinuate that she may have fooled me? Accepted all my worldly goods under a pretence of caring----?"

"No: not pretence," she interrupted, with a flash of impatience. "How can I make myself clear to you if you won't let me finish a sentence? I meant that your sudden infatuation--I can call it nothing else--might very well turn any girl's head and tempt her to imagine herself in love with you when she is really in love with the whole thing--flattered--attracted----"

"Mother, be quiet! I _will_ not hear you!" There was pain as well as anger in the cry. "You don't understand her. You won't try to understand her. You're simply jealous--prejudiced. And I was counting on you--oh, confound it all----"

He swung round on his heel and strode away from her that she might not see how deeply he was wounded by the failure of one who had never failed him yet.

And she, feeling suddenly exhausted, sank down on the sofa near which she had been standing; her lips compressed, her face strained and hard.

The silence lasted little more than a minute; but to both it seemed interminable. Their deep and real devotion had never been less apparent than now; yet, even in that antagonistic pause, each knew it unshaken, unshakable, by anything that either might say or do. Hence its infinite capacity for inflicting pain.

Mark remained standing by the window; and Lady Forsyth's answer, when it came, was addressed to the unpromising outline of his back and shoulders.

"If you won't hear me, Mark, there is no more to be said. It has been difficult enough to speak at all at such a moment----"

"Then I wish to God you'd held your tongue," he flashed round upon her. "You haven't succeeded in shaking my faith--in her. You've only taken the shine out of the happiest day of my life. If that's any consolation to you!"

Without giving her time to answer he swung out of the room; and the trivial fact that he refrained from slamming the door seemed cruelly to emphasise that his words had not been spoken in temper, but wrung from him by the bitterness of disappointment and hurt pride.

For a time she remained as he had left her, sitting very still and upright, looking into vacancy. Then she covered her face and bowed her head upon the carved end of the sofa. But no tears came. She would not suffer them. She was still too angry with Fate, with Mark, and, above all, with the girl who had so transformed him. And tears, after forty, hurt too poignantly to bring relief. She was suffering, merely, and realising the power of those words, spoken by them both in the heat of the spirit, to disfigure the finer fabric of their lives. Between two natures equally frank and fiery, lightning flashes of temper were inevitable; but never before had they revealed such threatening depths of division. Worst of all, that division could not be hidden from others. The fact and the reason would be obvious to them all: a thought intolerable to her sensitive pride that shrank from scrutiny even of sympathetic eyes.

And to-morrow--and to-morrow----?

The ghost of a shiver ran through her. Life with an estranged Mark and an unloved daughter-in-law was the last impossibility. She was a fool to have spoken while the ardour and thrill of possession were so fresh upon him. Yet, had she kept silence, he would eventually have forced the truth from her. It was the price of her proudest achievement; but it cannot be said that she paid it willingly----

At this point her thoughts were checked by the sound of his footstep. She might have known he would come. Instantly she was on her feet: her heart too full of relief for any thought of what she should say.

Outside the door he paused--and she held her breath. Then, very gently, he turned the handle and came in.

The temper had gone out of his face but not the pain. He came straight up to her and set both hands on her shoulders. "Mother, I'm sorry," he said simply. "I was a brute. But one doesn't expect unfairness from you."

"Darling, it was clumsy of me--I didn't mean to be unfair," she answered, grasping his wrists. "But it's always been the truth between us. I couldn't insult you with empty insincerities."

"And it didn't strike you that you were insulting _her_?"

His fervent stress on the pronoun was indiscreet, to say the least of it, and Lady Forsyth winced visibly.

"Mums, don't be a fool," he said, with gruff tenderness, gently pressing her down on to the sofa. "If you're going to start with being jealous----"

"It's not jealousy, Mark."

"Then what the deuce is it?"

One thought sprang to both their minds, but neither could or would speak it.

"We've got to know where we stand about this business," Mark went on. "If you're going to dislike and distrust her, the position's impossible. The trouble is, she suspects something of the sort. But of course I told her it was all rot. Mother, you simply must be good to her. She seems to have had a pretty rank time of it with her own people."

"In what way?"

"D'you really care to hear?"

"Of course I do, seeing how vitally her past concerns your future."

Mark grimaced indulgently. "Can't you drop me and take a little decent interest in her?"

"I'll try--if you'll give me a chance! What about her people, and this Miss O'Neill? I've often wondered----"

He told her, in clipped phrases, pacing to and fro, as his habit was when moved or trying to express his thoughts. He seldom sat down except to eat or read; and always seemed most completely himself when squarely planted on his feet.

His version of Bel's very mixed experiences--glorified inevitably--failed to dispel his mother's instinctive sense of something lacking in the girl, precisely what, it was too soon to tell.

"Poor child!" she said, when he had finished. "I wonder--how old is she?"

Mark frowned. "I haven't the remotest. We didn't exchange birth certificates. About five-and-twenty----"

"More than that."

"Well, if she was forty it would make no earthly difference," he retorted. "The point is--will you be decent to her, if it's only for my sake? She doesn't seem ever to have had a home worth mentioning. I want her to feel she has a real one here."

She sighed and rose to her feet. "Darling, I'll do my best." A deep metallic sound vibrated through the house--"Good gracious! There's dinner and I haven't changed."

"Who cares? You look awfully sweet in that blue thing. Come along."

He slipped a hand through her arm and led her out on to the landing. But at the head of the stairs he paused. A vision of Sheila skimming down the lower flight reminded him sharply that there were others to be told. There were also congratulations to be endured.

"I say, Mums, you might go ahead and break the ice," he said, giving her a gentle forward push. "I feel most beastly shy of them all."

Shyness was the least part of her own acute discomfort; but the obedience of a wife is as nothing to that of a well-trained mother. So she went before to do his bidding; and, being a mother, she would not have had it otherwise. Indeed the boyish request, following upon his casual compliment, seemed to bring her nearer to him than she had felt for days.

But in spite of her good services, Mark found dinner, flavoured with discreet congratulations, a singularly unappetising meal. His mother's doubtful attitude worried him more than he cared to confess. Amongst the others also, he felt--or imagined--a lack of genuine sympathy in the air; and the obvious word "congratulation" was conspicuous by its absence. Pure accident, no doubt; but it jarred. Of a sudden he felt vaguely "out of it," and more than a little aggrieved that his happiness--which should have added the perfecting touch to their summer party--seemed instead to have put things indefinably out of gear.

Matters were not much better in the drawing-room after dinner--the friendliest hour of the day at Inveraig. Keith took up a book. Lady Forsyth obliterated herself behind the _Times_; and Sheila, soon after the men came in, slipped quietly out of the room. Ralph, kicking his heels on the window-seat, proposed Bridge. Mark refused without ceremony; and Maurice proceeded to monopolise Miss Videlle, by way of reward for duty done.

Mark, in his highly strung mood, felt unjustifiably annoyed with them all, and the more he suspected their lack of sympathy the more his chivalrous nature swerved towards Bel. He gave it up at last and decided to go to The Rowans. There at least he would be welcome and could talk naturally.

"I'm going for a stroll, Mother," he announced to the vast expanse of the _Times_. "Leave something unlocked if I'm late."

He wondered--would Keith offer to accompany him? But Keith made no move.

In the hall his happy impulse was checked by the recollection of Harry--probably antagonistic and quite certain to speak her mind without reserve. His unexpected appearance might only make things difficult for Bel. He felt checked at every turn.

"Oh damn it all!" he muttered aloud, and in the same breath caught sight of Sheila coming slowly downstairs.

The light falling on her from above burnished the outward sweeping waves of her dark hair, made shadowed mysteries of her eyes, and luminously caressed the curves of her face, that, like her voice, was at once clear-cut and soft. Her high-waisted, silver-grey gown added a cubit to her stature; and Mark, watching her unperceived, was smitten afresh by her natural wild-flower grace, the very antithesis of Bel's more exotic charm. Seen thus, Sheila looked no less than beautiful; but Mark's mind, just then, was concentrated on Bel. If only he could enlist Sheila's championship, the girl would have twice the chance with his mother.

Straightway he resolved on a direct appeal, and going quickly forward, planted himself on the mat, one hand grasping the balustrade.

She started and came to a standstill two steps above him, so that their eyes were almost level.

"What is it? Mums wanting me?" she asked, and he thought she looked paler than usual, but perhaps it was only the light.

"No. _I_ am though," he said, with his usual directness. "Are you frightfully busy? Or frightfully bored with me and my engagement?"

"Neither," she answered, a smile flickering in her eyes. "Why?"

"Well, the rest seem to be. And mother was quite upset. I had no end of a scene with her."

"Poor darling!" Sheila murmured distressfully, and Mark made a whimsical grimace.

"Which? Her or me?"

Her pallor vanished. "Mums, of course. Still, I'm sorry all round. It'll spoil things for you both."

"Rather! But I'm thinking you could do a deal to smooth matters, Sheila--if you choose. It's Bel, I'm bothered about. I want you all to make her feel welcome. And things don't look promising so far. Come out for a stroll, will you! I've a lot to say."

"I'd love to."

He stood back to make way for her, and as she reached his side his hand closed lightly on her arm. "Sure you'll be warm enough in this?" he said.

She nodded and went rather quickly on before him into the garden.

Avoiding the terrace, they turned into a coppice of birch and pine, and so passed out on to an open stretch of heather, duskily purple and bronze in the fading light.

Mark did most of the talking, and--in the repetition of her story to more sympathetic ears--Bel shone out with fresh lustre as the heroine of a plucky, if somewhat erratic, fight against the tyranny of circumstance and unfavourable early surroundings.

Sheila listened to it all in her quietly intent fashion that was balm to the excitable natures of both mother and son. She had the true gift for listening, which is even rarer than the gift of speech; and for Mark her silence had a quality of its own. It was a living thing, alert and aware. When a man felt worried it seemed to distil a sympathy that called for no embarrassing response. And her brief contributions to their talk were more than satisfactory.

Of course she would love his Bel as a sister, and "Mums" would be sure to come round in time. To doubt it were a poor compliment to Bel, she reminded him; and he wondered how he had overlooked that obvious truth.

Only once she spoke of herself. "You know, I'm afraid," she said, "however well things turn out, Mums will never quite be able to put her in my place. And I'm also afraid...," she hesitated and looked up at him, "that I wouldn't have it otherwise."

"No more would I," he agreed, with sudden fervour. "You belong--to us both. And you always will."

When, at length, darkness and falling dew drove them in, she had charmed him completely from his mood of vague doubt and irritation. But for the new name on his lips, and the stir of excitement in his veins, it was almost as if they were the Mark and Sheila of a month ago: almost--but not quite.

In the hall he held out his hand. "I'd rather not go in there again. Tell them I haven't gone out, will you?" He paused. "I'm a rotten hand at saying things, Sheila. But, somehow, you've made everything look different. And you'll square mother all right. I can trust you."

He grasped her hand harder than he realised; but she bore it without wincing.

"Yes, Mark," she said, "you can trust me. I'll do my very best."

And none knew better than he the measure of her very best. He ran upstairs with a lighter heart. One could rely on Sheila, though the heavens fell; and his doubts--as she had said--were an injustice to Bel, who would probably twist them all--including his mother--round her little finger, once she set herself to the task. His last thought was of their meeting on the morrow. But it was Sheila's face, softly radiant in the lamplight, that perversely haunted his dreams.