BROTHERS (continued 3)

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

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

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

"But I do deny it."

"You encouraged Harry Kirtling the season before last."

"As if he needed encouragement!"

"He nearly persuaded you to marry him."

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

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

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

"And Jim and Archibald."

"My oldest friends."

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

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

"You are very human."

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

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

"That subject's name is Legion."

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

For answer, Betty kissed her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She spoke with such vehemence that Betty was frightened.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

BAGSHOT ON THE RAMPAGE

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

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

"What's up?" said Mark.

"Bagshot is on the rampage."

"The miserable sinner!"

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

"Didn't you go with him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Wot yer givin' us?" he growled.

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

"Will yer?" said Bill.

"Yes."

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

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

Bill said something which need not be recorded.

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

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

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

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

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

Mark sank, gasping, on to the cushions.

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

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

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

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

"You are Amos Barger," he murmured.

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

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

"Yes—now?" repeated Barger.

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

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

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

"Have you learned to hug your chains?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll come," said Mark.

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

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

CHAPTER XIV

A MORAL EXIGENCY

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

"Pull up," said Mark.

"Eh?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Samphire listened to his brother with ears lacerated by envy; and because devils tore him he was the more determined to exorcise them, in the hope that what he did and said might hide what he felt. When Archie finished, the younger brother sprang up and seized his hand.

"From the bottom of my soul," he exclaimed, "I believe that this voice of yours will be heard not only in Westchester, but in every cathedral in England."

Archie answered, dully, "If you had my voice, Mark——"

"Ah!" gasped Mark, "if—if——" He paused, and ended quietly, "We need not speak of that."

"You could read this sermon."

"Even that is denied me. I can read the lessons or anything else save what I write myself. Oh, I have tried and tried. Always the lump comes in my throat—and I hear the laugh of that girl. You remember?"

Archie nodded, betraying his sympathy with a shudder. "It was awful," he said, "awful."

He handed the sheets of manuscript to Mark, adding, "It has helped me enormously. I will avail myself of some of your ideas."

"You will redrape my ideas with your words."

"I couldn't use yours, you know."

Mark gazed abstractedly at the cathedral; then he turned to his brother.

"Look here—I give it to you. Do what you like with it. I can't preach it myself. It's not b-b-bad."

He paused as the stammer seized him. "Not bad?" echoed Archibald. "Why it's splendid—splendid!"

"And why shouldn't I help you—my brother?" His voice softened, as he stretched out his thin hand and touched Archibald's mighty arm. "Take it!"

Archie hesitated, staring inquiringly at Mark. Mark had always been such a stickler for plain-dealing. Then he remembered what Billy had said: "Take what he gives, generously, and so you will best help him to play his part in life."

Mark, meantime, was reflecting that he should like to read in Betty's face the recognition of talents which he was not allowed to proclaim to the world.

"Take it," he repeated. "And, look here, I shall sit beside Betty Kirtling, and afterwards I shall tell her that I wrote it and persuaded you to preach it. No one else shall know."

Archie, unable to determine the ethics of the matter, sensible in a dull, inarticulate way that he ought to say NO, said—YES. His own sermon was inadequate; there was not time to prepare another; and he lacked the power of interpreting the message of those grey stones yonder. This and more flitted through a mind large enough but somewhat conventionally furnished.

"But what has Betty Kirtling to do with it?" he concluded heavily. "Why tell her? If this is to be between you and me, Mark—why tell her?"

Mark put up his hand to hide a smile.

"It may not be necessary to tell her," he said quietly. "She might guess." Then seeing consternation on Archie's fine brows he added: "No one else will guess, but she—well, she has intuitions."

"Is she going to marry Kirtling?"

Again Mark smiled at his brother's lack of perception. He fenced with the question: "You ought to know; you've seen more of her than I have."

"She's a bit of a flirt."

"No."

"I say—yes. She has flirted with Kirtling, with me, with Pynsent, with Jim Corrance, and with you. I sometimes think that she likes you best, Mark. She might take you, because——"

"Go on!"

"Because," Archie explained, "there are two Bettys: the Betty of Mayfair and the Betty of King's Charteris. I heard Mrs. Corrance say that, and it struck me as worth remembering. Most women would only see the Betty of Mayfair, but the other Betty, who takes some finding, has an extravagant admiration of good and a morbid horror of evil. A girl running from evil is likely to rush into the arms of good. I saw my chance there," he added thoughtfully, and again Mark smiled. "I said to myself that the time to catch the witch was just after the London season. I don't mind telling you that I asked her to marry me the day she came back from Goodwood last year. And I was careful about choosing the right place. Depend upon it that tells in these affairs. I chose the Dean's garden: there isn't a sweeter, more peaceful spot under Heaven. But I wasted my time. Hullo! what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You're white as a sheet. You ought to take more care of yourself, my dear fellow. I do Sandow's exercises every morning and evening. And I take a grain of calomel once a week. You look liverish. I find that my mind does not work properly unless my body is in tiptop condition. What were we talking of? Oh, yes—Betty Kirtling. Do you know that Harry Kirtling has proposed about five times—generally out hunting? But she laughs at him. She cried in the Dean's garden."

"Ah?" said Mark softly.

"She won't laugh or cry when the right man speaks, and if you are he the sooner you speak the better. She's an enchantress," Archie concluded, "and her money would come in very handy—wouldn't it?"

"Confound her money!" said Mark violently.

CHAPTER XV

APHRODITE SMILES AND FROWNS

When Betty met Mark just before dinner the story of the Bagshots was told briefly.

"Is that why you look so discouraged?" she whispered.

He laughed, not quite naturally.

"Surely to—to me, you may show your true feelings. Or do you count me a fair-weather friend?"

Before he had answered Lady Randolph came up and said that Mark must be introduced to the lady he was destined to take into dinner. Mark found himself bowing before an ample matron who prattled of herbaceous borders and conifers for nearly half an hour. Betty sat beside him, listening to Jim Corrance. Not till the first entrée was handed did she find an opportunity to repeat her question to Mark: "Am I a fair-weather friend?"

Mark met her glance; then before answering, he allowed his eyes to rest upon her gown and the opals at her throat. She was wearing a frock of filmy tissues, made, so her dressmaker informed her, in Tokio, and known to the fashionable world as rainbow tulle. The general effect of this gown, like the jewels which glittered above it, was that of change, and Betty had christened it the Chameleon, because in certain lights it was softly pink, in others a misty blue, in others, again, amber or palest green. Lady Randolph smiled when she saw this wonderful frock, because it suggested certain phases of character of the girl who wore it. Mark, knowing nothing of the relationship between a woman and her clothes, was, none the less, aware that this gown must have cost a deal of money and had not been chosen for wearing qualities.

"You make one think of May," he replied.

"You look at my frock, not at me. Well, if it comes to that, I have a stout tweed upstairs, which defies hurricanes. I know what you're thinking—and you're wrong. I prefer my Harris tweed, but you don't expect me to wear it in May—do you?"

"Contrast tickles you, Betty."

"How am I to take that?"

"You like an ice with a hot sauce."

"No doubt, you prefer fried fish."

She glanced at him roguishly, leaning slightly towards him, so that the sleeve of her gown touched his coat. From the airy tissues floated a faint fragrance of roses, and then, drowning it in pungent fumes, came that sickening odour of the slums.

"I loathe fried fish," he whispered. Betty smiled as the lady on the other side of Mark asked him if he knew Father Dolling. Nor was Stepney mentioned again, although it obscured the future in yellow fog. Betty was conscious that Mark eyed her with a persistency for which she could not quite account. The same expression may be found on the faces of emigrants setting sail for a new country, yet looking back on the old, which holds all they know of life and which they may not see again. Betty had never set foot on the deck of an emigrant ship; but she was vaguely apprehensive that this persistency of glance was ominous. Her bosom was heaving when she asked him: "Why do you look at me so queerly?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Why should you? You must know by this time that I don't object to being looked at—by you."

If the words were slightly flippant, the tone in which they were spoken was serious enough. She continued: "Your look is that of a man hesitating to leap. When you were a boy you went free at your fences."

Mark caught his breath. Her meaning was unmistakable. She held out white arms to him—the syren!

"They were dear old days," he murmured.

"You rode hard and straight. Many a lead you gave me. When are we going to have a nice long talk?"

Her voice was trembling. And he stammered as he replied: "T-to-night, if you l-l-like."

"It will be heavenly on the terrace," she whispered. "I saw you slip away last night, and I was tempted to follow you."

"Why didn't you?" he blurted out. Last night—he was reflecting—he had been free.

"I have some pride, Mark. Not much, perhaps."

"I saw Aphrodite by moonlight. She was wonderful."

"She is wonderful," Betty murmured. "Is love dead that you use the past tense? Will you take me to the fountain after dinner?"

"Yes."

A minute later Lady Randolph and the ladies left the dining-room. Mark poured himself out a glass of port. The men were talking of the approaching meeting at Ascot, where one of Lord Randolph's horses was likely to win the Gold Vase. Mark listened to Harry Kirtling's eager voice. How keen he was, this handsome lad! What a worshipper of horse and hound! And his host—old man of the world who had drunk of many cups—seemed to covet this gold vase as the one thing desirable. And when he had won it, the cup would glitter upon his sideboard among a score of similar trophies unnoticed and forgotten.

"I have the sermon almost by heart," Archie whispered to his brother. "I read it over three times before dinner. It's odd your treatment of the theme did not occur to me, particularly as I live in the Close."

"One doesn't see the Matterhorn when one is climbing it," Mark observed. "If you want to love Westchester live in Whitechapel."

"I couldn't live in Whitechapel," Archie replied; "it wouldn't suit me at all. Still, as a means to an end—Lord Randolph says that you—er—know what you're at."

"Do I?" said Mark. Then he laughed and struck his brother genially on the shoulder, adding: "At any rate, you know what you're at; but to men like me ignorance of the ultimate aim has its value. Perhaps because I don't quite know what I'm doing I take pleasure in doing it."

"You're a queer chap," said his brother, "and you grow queerer as you grow older. You mean that you would sooner have two birds in the bush than one in the hand."

"The nightingales in the bush—for me," cried Mark.

"I want the bird in the hand," said Archibald solemnly.

"You will cook your bird, old fellow, and eat it with all accessories: bread sauce, rich gravy, the succulent salade Romaine, but you will never hear it sing. A bird in the hand never sings."

The night was very still when Mark and Betty descended the stone steps which led to the fountain: a lovers' night, fragrant with a thousand essences. Silvery shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness of the park, and fell tenderly on the nymphs about the fountain. But Aphrodite was not yet revealed, for her pool lay in shadow guarded by sentinel yews and cypress.

Mark disappeared for a moment; the surface of the pool was troubled; then, with a soft, sibilant sound, the waters rose and enveloped the goddess.

"We are in the nick of time," whispered Mark.

As he spoke the moon topped the trees. For a moment a white flame seemed to sparkle round the brows of Aphrodite; then the features were revealed: the languorous half-opened eyes, the dimpled cheeks, the adorable mouth with its shy smile. The sculptor had suggested the admixture of fear and delight, a shrinking from the embrace of the unknown element, a virginal protest indicated by a gesture of taper fingers and slender shoulders, a protest overpowered by a subtle relaxing of the whole body, the nymph surrendering herself to Life and Love.

Mark turned to Betty. She met his eyes and then turned aside her own. The nymph with the phorminx smiled. And the amorini looked on approving. Mark had the hunger of Romeo on his thin face, the hunger of the beggar who has seen white loaves through the windows of a baker's shop. At Milan there is a hole in the wall whence, long ago, unhappy prisoners looked out upon tables spread with savoury viands: wretches condemned to starve—within sight and smell of baked meats and sparkling wines!

Mark looked again at Betty's face, now pensive, although the dimples were deepening. The elusive tints of the gown, transmuted by the moonbeams into a silvery radiance, shimmered like the watery tissues of the goddess; the opals at her throat might have been dewdrops.

"Dear Betty," he whispered.

She lifted her heavy lids. The eyes beneath were dark as the shadows cast by the cypress, and troubled as the waters of the pool. What darkened and troubled them? What intuition or premonition of sorrow and suffering? But Mark saw the underglow which reflected the flames of his heart.

As they gazed at each other the moon glided discreetly behind a cloud, and a soft darkness obscured all things, out of which came the music of the fountain; a symphony of kisses falling with melodic rhythm upon the face of Aphrodite. In a clump of syringa beyond the Italian garden a nightingale trilled.

He knew that he had only to speak the word, to hold out his arms, and she would come to him. She was smiling, but with a sadness which underlay joy: such sadness as may be seen sometimes in the face of a child, who, coming into possession of a long-desired object, is confronted with the possibility of losing it.

He took her hand, gripping it.

"Mark—what is the matter?"

Her voice rose in a crescendo of distress, as Mark staggered, gasping for breath. Terror-stricken, she supported him to a stone bench hard by, upon which he sank.

"It is a p-p-passing weakness," he stammered. "I am better already."

"You have been overworking yourself in those detestable slums," she said vehemently.

"That is the truth," he answered. "I shall take a holiday."

"A long holiday," she whispered, meeting his eyes. But he saw the face of the tall thin doctor and his lean hand raised in protest. "And you must have someone, some dear friend, to look after you."

Her fingers pressed his arm.

"Yes," he said eagerly. "With such a friend I should grow strong again."

"There are places, earthly paradises, which I've read about. In Samoa or Tahiti——"

He interrupted her, passionately.

"Don't speak of them—yet. Betty, I must turn the key of the fountain. I cannot speak for—for a few days. Do you understand? If you could read my heart. If—if——"

She saw that his excitement was overmastering him.

"Mark, I do understand. We understand each other. You are right. The key of the fountain must be turned. I'll do it, not you." She sprang up lightly, ran to the cypress, and turned the key. When she came back he was staring at the goddess, white and shivering.

Before she went to bed, Betty was cross-examined by Lady Randolph.

"Then he hasn't actually spoken?"

"He will," Betty declared. "And within a week."

"And Stepney?"

"I'd sooner live with him in Stepney——"

"And eat fried fish?"

"And smell fried fish—it's the smell I hate—than live in a garden of roses by Bendemeer's stream with anybody else."

"My poor Betty, you have the disease badly."

Betty, however, did not mention Mark's physical weakness to her friend. Instead, she prattled of love for nearly an hour.

The elder woman told herself that she was listening to an idyll; but, vividly as the tale was presented, a sense of unreality pervaded it; the conviction that, as a child would put it, the story was too good to be true. But because of its goodness Lady Randolph was the more touched by it. Your honest cynic respects good, although he rails against its counterfeit. Moreover, in this joyous acclamation of love, Lady Randolph resumed for a few moments her own youth. It seemed incredible that she should have grown old, and critical, and distrustful. Love touched her with healing fingers, and she became as a little child, free from the dull limitations of age and experience.

"You have been so sympathetic," said Betty, when she bade her old friend good night, "but I know, of course, that in your heart of hearts you think us two fools."

"Not fools, Betty. Babes in the wood, perhaps, playing amongst the rose leaves. Good night, my dear; go and dream of your lover."

But when the door was shut, the woman of the world sighed, and her shrewd face puckered into many wrinkles.

"Am I a fool?" she asked herself. "Should I have stopped this? I fear that it will come to nothing, but then it will be everything, everything, everything to them—while it lasts."

Meantime, Archibald was in Mark's bedroom, talking of the sermon to be preached on the morrow. He had a score of unessential corrections to suggest. A slight amplification here, another word there, an apt quotation, revealed the student of effect, the rhetorician. Mark admitted that his brother had improved the manuscript.

"I have thought of nothing else," said Archie. "At first I disliked preaching another man's sermon, but now I feel as if a lot of it were mine."

"It is all yours," said Mark, smiling. "I have given it to you, haven't I? Only, remember, Betty must know."

"Why?" demanded Archie. "Women will talk and——" he shrugged his broad shoulders. "If the Dean heard of it—— The Dean, you know, is civil, but he has a cut-and-dried manner which I find rather trying. He's a radical, too. We always have had radical deans at Westchester. With my political views, my faith in institutions, and—er—so forth he is not in accord. He told me with really amazing candour that I owed my preferment entirely to my vocal chords. I should have thought a Samphire of Pitt had claims, but no—he repudiates all that. His own father was quite obscure: a bookseller, I've been told, only don't quote me. One can't be too careful in a cathedral town. Well, not to put a fine point on it, the Dean underrates me. I've felt it keenly. When I was singing to him the other night, in his own drawing-room, he went to sleep: he did, indeed. Still, to give him his due, he is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the cathedral, and this sermon ought to surprise him...."

Mark nodded absently. His face seemed thinner and paler since he had parted from Betty less than an hour ago. As in a dream, he heard Archie's voice droning on about the Dean and his Chapter, but he saw only Betty's face, Betty's eyes, which seemed to fill the universe. She loved him! Infirm of body, halting of speech, he had been able to inspire passion in so splendid a fellow-creature. The glory of it filled his soul.

Archie, who must not be blamed for enjoying the sound of his own voice, talked on and on. It was past midnight. Down in the smoking-room young Kirtling, one could wager, was holding forth on the subject of fox-hunting. Jim Corrance, with an ironical smile upon his slightly melancholy face, was listening politely, thinking, no doubt, of some future "coup" in the money market. Lord Randolph, with a long, thin cigar in his mouth, was certainly alive to the possibility of a political crisis. Pynsent, watching the three other men from the depths of an immense chair, was busy fitting their faces into a picture. All this, and much more, passed through Mark's mind.

"Good night," Archie was saying. "We've had a long yarn, haven't we?"

He stood up, extending his hand, which Mark grasped. Opposite to the brothers stood a large cheval glass. Mark's eye fell on this, and straightway the gracious image of Betty vanished, and in her place he saw himself and Archie standing beside each other with linked hands. The contrast between the brothers was so startling that the younger allowed an exclamation to leap from his lips.

"Look," he said, when Archie lifted his handsome brows in interrogation; "who would believe that the same mother bore us?"

The mirror, indeed, seemed to take pleasure in making more of Archibald and less of Mark than was warrantable. The fine massive figure, the smooth, fresh-coloured cheeks, the flaxen curls of the one accentuated the leanness, the pallor, the fragility of the other. Only when you looked at the eyes you recognised the vitality of spirit in Mark. Lady Randolph described the eyes of the brothers aptly enough, when she said that Mark's reminded her of fire and Archie's of—water.

"You will fill out," said Archibald, placidly regarding the curves of his person.

Mark laid his fingers upon his brother's chest.

"Forty-three inches," said Archie. "I had a doctor look me over the other day. He said I was as sound a specimen as he'd ever examined."

"Good night," said Mark abruptly.

When Archie had left the room, Mark returned to the mirror.

"Am I envious?" he muttered. "Not for my own sake, God knows, but for hers. If I were only strong——"

He began to undress, thinking of the doctor and the train. Curiously enough the two were connected. The train rushing on and on through the quiet landscape, the doctor and he whirled on with it, fellow-passengers for a few brief minutes, meeting, parting, and meeting again in obedience to some Power who rules that good shall triumph ultimately over evil. To Mark this was and always had been a sheet-anchor. At Harrow, at Barbizon, in the pulpit of the church in King's Charteris, he had submitted to the Divine Will; but, now, if the greatest thing on earth were denied him would he be able to bow his head in resignation? Every pulse in his body throbbed a passionate—"No."

CHAPTER XVI

WESTCHESTER CATHEDRAL

It happened that Lord Randolph was anxious to consult the Dean of Westchester upon some point of municipal philanthropy, so he drove into the town earlier than usual on Whit-Sunday. Archibald accompanied him, Lord Randolph driving his own pair, which were never driven by anybody else. When the horses were working well into their collars, Lord Randolph turned to the preacher-elect and described, not without humour, his own pangs before the delivery of an important speech in the House of Commons.

"Only I," he concluded, "had the impending horror of a scathing reply from the other side. You black-coated gentlemen have an immense advantage there, an advantage which I hope you, my boy, will never abuse. Is it indiscreet to ask what theme you have taken?"

Archie answered the question by repeating a phrase of Mark's, which summed up, aptly enough, the scope and purpose of the sermon. Lord Randolph raised his grizzled brows.

"Um! I like to see a young man tackling a subject bigger than himself: and the bigger the man, the bigger ought to be his subject. Often," he concluded abruptly, "it is the other way. You are ambitious, Archibald?"

"Yes," the minor canon confessed; and then, afraid of saying too much, he held his tongue. Lord Randolph respected his silence, supposing that the preacher was occupied with his thoughts. Nor did he mention that he expected to meet the Prime Minister at the deanery, who doubtless would attend service in the cathedral. If this young fellow acquitted himself with distinction, his sermon might prove a stepping-stone to great things. A week ago no man knew that a maker of prelates was coming to Westchester, certainly not the Dean, otherwise he might have elected to preach himself. Lord Randolph smiled with a slightly cynical curl of the lip. The Dean, as has been said, was radical in politics, but he probably foresaw that his party, now in power, was not likely to endure for ever.

Lord Randolph left his horses in charge of the groom, and descended at the ancient gate which leads to the Close. At the same moment two figures emerged from the shadows of the deanery porch. "There is the Prime Minister," said Lord Randolph. "I shall have pleasure, Archie, in introducing you to him."

"By Jove!" exclaimed the young man.

A moment later the most eloquent speaker in the kingdom was holding Archibald Samphire's hand and peering into his face. The great man had appreciation of physical beauty, and an eye for a personality. Archie blushed: a tribute ever welcome to genius.

"Our preacher to-day," said the Dean.

"Indeed?"

The young man's hand was retained in the ample grasp of the Prime Minister, who asked a dozen questions, enveloping Archie with that magnetic current, which seemed to emanate from him in fuller measure than from any other of his generation.

"I shall look forward to your sermon," he concluded. "I am sure it will be worthy of this place"—he spoke with solemnity—"and"—his voice changed—"and of—you. You have the gift of eloquence: the lips, the eyes, the brow. I hope we shall meet again soon."

He passed on, smiling genially, leaving the gratified Archie alone with his thoughts. Lord Randolph might have told him that the speaker scattered seed of kindly words wherever he went, and who shall say—even now—what they brought forth? A kindly word lingers in the ear when a kind action may be lost to sight.

The party from Birr Wood entered the cathedral some five minutes before the time when service began. Betty knelt down to repeat the prayer which she had learnt when a child from Mrs. Corrance. She was about to rise, when she happened to steal a glance at Mark kneeling beside her. At that moment she became sensible of what may be termed spiritual giddiness. She seemed to be transported to heights where head and heart failed. A glimpse of the world unseen was vouchsafed her: an empyrean in which she and Mark moved alone amongst the hosts of Heaven. The vision was so vivid, so seizing (to use the word in its French significance) that she felt herself trembling beneath the awe and mystery of it. And then an impulse, which, in its material aspect, had assailed her once before when attempting to scale a certain peak in the Alps, constrained her to look down into what seemed a fathomless abyss. In the mist and shadows of this vast gulf a dull, opaque object challenged attention, and she knew this was the earth: a pin's point in the celestial horizon, borrowing aught it possessed of light and heat from the place wherein she stood. And with this knowledge fear became articulate. The horror of giddiness which paralysed her was not due to the fact that she had been whirled to heights, but to the sense that she might fall headlong from them!

The deep notes of the organ put to flight the vision. Still kneeling, she looked upward into the roof of the chancel, with its delicately carved and gilded ornaments, thence passing to the radiance and simplicity of the nave beyond. Above her head, upon the stone partitions on each side of the sanctuary, stood six carved and gilded mortuary chests, surmounted by the crowns and inscribed with the names of the Saxon princes whose crumbling bones they contain; at her feet almost was the tomb of a great king, slain in the plentitude of his strength and power; hard by were the magnificent chantries of the prelates who sanctified their time, their talents, and their money to the embellishment of this house of God. In one of the chantries, where during his lifetime he spent, daily, many hours of devotion, lies the figure of a man, represented as an emaciated corpse wrapped in a winding-sheet. He it was who caused to be carved on the soaring roof of the choir the sorrowful emblems of our Lord's Passion: the crown of thorns, the nails, the hammer, the scourge, the reed and sponge, the lance, the cross. And who can doubt that he was inspired to so exalt these symbols of the suffering which redeemed mankind? Who can doubt, gazing at the shrunken limbs and careworn features of the prelate, that his untiring labour had caused him innumerable hours of pain serenely endured because he knew that by pain alone Man is purified. He and his successors and predecessors, and the armies of masons they employed, had lived and died that this, the work of their heads and hands, might endure for generations, a monument of the faith which can move mountains of stone and change them into forms of surpassing loveliness. Had they laboured in vain?

Betty rose from her knees as the choir entered the sanctuary. At the same moment Mark touched her arm and glanced across the chancel. Following his eyes, she saw the familiar face of the Prime Minister. Other eyes lingered upon that notable head, now bent in meditation upon the tomb of the king. Mark touched her again. Archibald Samphire was passing by, stately in surplice and hood. The statesman raised his head, and stared keenly at the priest. A half-smile of recognition and encouragement curved his thin lips. Archie, conscious, perhaps, that the eyes of the mighty were on him, looked neither to right nor left. His face was as that of a graven image. "He is cold," thought Betty. "Does he expect, I wonder, to warm others?"

The service began. At that time a certain boy was singing in the Westchester choir who became famous afterwards as the finest treble of his day, combining, till his voice broke, the freshness of youth with the art which crowns a long and patient apprenticeship. Already musical folk were talking of the lad and coming from far to hear him. The choir sang in unison the first verse of the Venite, but above their voices, above the sonorous peal of the organ, floated the aerial notes of the boy. So sublimated was the quality of this child's voice that Betty—and many another—looked up, believing for the moment that these flakes of melody were dropping from heaven. The joyousness which informed each crystalline phrase electrified the ear. This indeed was a clarion call to rejoice! The pain and perplexity in Betty's soul fled, exorcised by this glad spirit, blythe as a skylark carolling in the skies. She glanced at Mark. His eyes were shining, his face aglow with pleasure. Farther down stood Harry Kirtling, unmoved; and on each side were rows of men and women, some perfunctorily praising God, others gazing with lacklustre eyes into the past or future, a few touched to the quick by the message and the instrument by which it was conveyed. Amongst these, one face stood out of the crowd, conspicuous by its pallor and the lines of suffering which scored cheek and mouth and brow. Unmistakably, Death had marked this victim of an incurable malady for his own. Yet, excepting Mark's, no countenance in that great congregation revealed more clearly the happiness and contentment which proclaim success. Here was the vitality of the life immortal flaming upon the ashes of the dead; here was one rejoicing in the salvation of a soul, caring nothing because the body was about to be destroyed!

The choir sang on together till the eighth verse was reached:

"To-day, if ye will hear His voice,

Harden not your hearts!"

These lines were delivered in recitativo by the basses, and then repeated by the choir. "Harden not your hearts!" The injunction rolled down the aisles and transepts; it broke in thunder against the hoary walls, as it has broken for two thousand years against the faithless generations; and then, in the silence which followed, there descended a flute-like echo, emphasising the opportunity and reimposing the condition. To-day, this moment, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts!

Psalms and Lessons succeeded. Archie read the latter. Betty, who had not heard him read since his appointment as minor canon, amended her conviction that he could not warm others. He had that persuasiveness of diction which drapes even the crude and commonplace with samite, and, so garbed, passes like an angel through all doors.

"For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

If this indeed were true, how many of those around Betty Kirtling were of the quick, how many of the dead? How many, again, were asleep, lulled to slumber by indifference? She saw Pynsent staring at Archie's face. Unconsciously he had raised his right hand, as if it held a brush poised above a canvas. Beside him sat Jim Corrance engrossed in thought. Jim was frowning; his lips were shut, as if he feared that information of commercial value might leak from them. It struck Betty, with a certain poignant suddenness, that Jim, dear old Jim, had lost his look of youth, and she wondered vaguely whether or not his mother had marked the loss—and regretted it. Was his face becoming hard? Was it setting into that inexorable mask of death of which the apostle spoke? She shivered and looked away, meeting the curious gaze of Lady Randolph. Then with an effort she restrained her vagabond thoughts and eyes, and listened attentively to the voice of the reader.

Afterwards she wondered if what followed would have impressed her so profoundly had it not been for what went before. At the moment she was merely sensible that her perceptive and intuitive faculties were sharpened to keen edge. She knew with conviction that a veil had been lifted, that she saw clearly and in true proportion what was vital and everlasting.

When Archie ascended the pulpit, Betty prepared herself for an anti-climax, Lady Randolph, for a nap. "Ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house." The preacher repeated his text, and paused. The Prime Minister inclined his ear in a gesture familiar to all who knew him; the Dean polished his spectacles and replaced them, as if seeking to see more clearly what hitherto had been obscured. Silence, always significant, suffused itself throughout the cathedral!

The sermon began as a history of the cathedral, presented with a dramatic sense of the relation borne by Gothic architecture to the renaissance of spirituality in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But soon the preacher passed from the sanctuary in which he stood straight to the hearts of the congregation. It has been well said that neither writer nor painter lives who can set forth adequately on paper or canvas what such artists as Wykeham and Fox expressed in stone. And who dares to portray the house spiritual: the house hewn out of living stones under the direction of the Supreme Architect? But if the whole transcends description, the parts invite it. Archibald paused before taking the stride from the abstract to the concrete. When he spoke again his voice was troubled. Smooth persuasiveness gave place to a rougher eloquence. So far, admirable and inspiring though the sermon had been, it revealed rather the scholar and idealist than the practical man of the world. The cathedral, for instance, interpreted the past. It enshrined the faith and patience of yesterday. What message did it hold for the strivers of to-day?

Archie answered that question in the last half of the sermon, and, answering it, displayed a knowledge of humanity which Mark had gleaned in Stepney and Whitechapel. All that is affecting and pathetic in life was laid bare, but with a delicacy of phrase, a poignancy of suggestion, a sense of proportion, which thrilled rather than dismayed. A sane optimism informed even deformity. It was characteristic of Mark (and most uncharacteristic of the preacher) that he dwelt tenderly upon the inglorious parts of the temple: the rough flints, the bricks, the clay, the mortar! Of the glittering ornaments he said little, of the stone which the builders rejected much. His congregation listened with an attention which never waned. The children stared spellbound at the splendid figure in the pulpit. To them, as to their elders, came the assurance of work to do worth the doing, and the conviction that such work, however slight, brought with it a reward: the Pentecostal gift. Here Mark had attempted to define the unpardonable sin: the rejection of the spiritual and the acceptance of the carnal life. And then followed the apostrophe. When it was delivered, smiles curved the children's lips; men felt the current of their blood flowing strong and free in their veins. For a sound as from heaven had filled the house where they were sitting, and gladness of heart scourged once more from God's temple disease and despair and death!

After the service, the Dean took Archie's hand and congratulated him. "You have spoken with tongues," he said, in his too cold voice, which impressed but never thrilled. Archibald hesitated, flushed, clutched at opportunity and missed it. The Dean turned aside as others approached. To them Archie listened, wondering if Betty knew. The Dean, watching him, amended previous estimates. "The man is really modest," he told his wife at luncheon. "He blushed and stammered when I spoke to him."

Archie went into the Close, accompanied by a prebendary, whom, as it happened, he had slight reason to dislike. As he left the cathedral he saw a small group: the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph, and Lady Randolph; Pynsent and Jim Corrance were standing beyond these. The Prime Minister acclaimed the preacher in Latin, holding out both hands:

"I salute Chrysostom," and then he added simply: "Thank you—thank you!"

Once more Archibald clutched at opportunity, but the prebendary, eyeing him with jealous glance, stood between him and confession. Then Lord Randolph and his wife, Pynsent and Corrance, swelled a chorus of felicitation. Archie was feeling that the truth must be written on his scarlet face. But his friends, like the Dean, attributed confusion to modesty.

"Here he is!"

Betty's voice rose above the chorus. Pynsent made way for her. Mark followed, looking pale and worn.

"Oh, Archie, what can I say?" Her face was radiant. He did not suspect that she wished to apologise for every idle jest at his expense, for every thought and word (and there were many) which now seemed to stain not him but her, the shallow-witted creature, seeing the ludicrous and blind to what lay beneath. "I shall never chaff you again, never."

Archie, however, was looking at Mark. At the moment he realised that unless he spoke, Mark would hold his peace. Mark had not told Betty yet. The group around him was breaking up. The Prime Minister had his watch in his hand. Lord Randolph had turned his back. Betty began again, excitedly:

"And I might have missed it. Aren't you going to shake hands with him, Mark?"

Silently Mark extended his hand. At his brother's touch Archie stammered out: "I owe everything to Mark: he helped me; he has always helped me."

Mark's eyes demanded more; his grasp tightened. The others, hearing but not understanding, shuffled somewhat impatiently. Betty frowned, wondering why Mark was so unresponsive. Surely he would say something. Then she remembered that since they left the south door of the cathedral he had said nothing. Was it possible that he grudged his brother this triumph? From any other man such jealousy would have provoked pity and sympathy, but she had loved and respected Mark because she had never been able to conceive of him as being mean or petty-minded. Yet, long ago, he had confessed that ambition was his besetting sin!

"We shall not be home till two," said Lady Randolph. "Come, all of you!"

She bustled away, followed by the others. Archibald dropped his brother's hand, and strode off in the direction of his lodgings. He would not join the party till after the afternoon's service. Betty glanced at Mark.

"You never congratulated him. He went away hurt, poor fellow! Mark—how could you? And it was your praise he wanted. I saw that. He looked hungrily—at you."

Then Mark laughed, while the shadows in Betty's eyes deepened. That she was perplexed he saw, that she was deeply distressed he had yet to learn. And to give him his due he was thinking at that moment not of Betty, nor of himself, but of Archie. He regretted that he had not told Betty the truth, but her admiration had been so great, her praise so extravagant, that he had shrunk from the assertive: "I did it. I wrote it." Now, if he spoke, Betty being a woman of likes and dislikes, would scorn his brother and make no effort to hide that scorn. All this whirled through his brain while he laughed, because she had misinterpreted the expression of hunger in Archie's eyes.

"Don't laugh!" she enjoined sharply. "Did you not think his sermon splendid?"

"It sounded better than I expected," he said, wondering if she would guess. He made so certain that she would guess. It amazed him that the lynx-eyed Lady Randolph, her sagacious lord, Pynsent, Corrance had been so easily befooled. He had yet to learn that the world is equally prone to believe that a fool may prove a sage as a sage a fool. The unexpected excites and disturbs the reason.

"We have all underrated him," she rejoined, more gently.

At tea-time Lord Randolph returned to Birr Wood, bringing Archibald with him. After tea Lord Randolph drew Mark aside and told him that the Prime Minister had asked many questions concerning the Samphires of Pitt.

"I told him," said he, "that your maternal grandfather had a strain of Wesley's and Sheridan's blood. It seems that he knew and loved him. He must have been a remarkable man."

"My mother adored him," Mark replied. "I can just recall some of the things she said about him."

"Justice was not done him, I fear. He served faithfully ungrateful masters. Perhaps he ought to have been a preacher. At any rate his mantle seems to have descended upon your brother."

He moved away, wondering why Mark had shown so little enthusiasm.

Presently Lady Randolph, under cover of the chatter, said a few words:

"I account for our surprise this morning in one word: Inspiration. There was Goldsmith, for instance. Not that I wish to make comparisons. Archibald is no idiot to be sure, very much the contrary, still I never gave him credit for being a humourist."

"A humourist, Lady Randolph?"

"What? You missed the humour in his sermon—you? Why if I hadn't cried I must have laughed. What was the keynote of that sermon? Renunciation. Eh? The word was not mentioned. Very true, but it informed every phrase. It might have been written by a man who had failed in this world, but who knew that elsewhere his failure would be reckoned as success. The stone that the builders rejected became the head of the corner. Well, so far as this world is concerned, Archie has always succeeded. He has genius in being able to put himself in the place of the man who has failed."

"And the humour?"

"I am coming to that. I go the round of this huge house every Saturday morning, and the house-keeper will tell you that my eyesight is unimpaired. I went into your room, sir, and what did I see?"

"Spare me," said Mark.

"Soit! I went into your brother's room. I declare he has prettier things on his dressing-table than I have on mine. And well-cut boots in trees, eau de Lubin on his washstand, and on his chest of drawers—a trouser-press! Oh! there's no harm in such things, of course, but that sermon this morning and the trouser-press! The golden sandals—treed! The halo sprinkled with eau de Lubin! And yet, and yet he made me cry: hardened old sinner that I am! So I say that he is a genius, and an unconscious humourist, and a Chrysostom, and altogether a most amazing person. Now, go and talk to a younger woman."

Mark obeyed. His old friend eyed his thin figure as he crossed the room.

"How much help did he give his brother?" she muttered to herself.

Archie was surrounded by joyous prattlers. Harry Kirtling, Pynsent, and Jim Corrance were with Betty.

"We are still jawing about your brother's sermon," said Harry Kirtling. "I am sorry to say I missed the first part. A line from my stud groom this morning rather upset me. Dear old Trumpeter has navicular. My best gee—worst luck! Well, by Jove! that sermon cheered me up; it did, indeed. I felt confoundly ashamed of myself and my own small affairs. That was the effect it had on me. But Corrance and Pynsent say it made 'em blue."

"Every man worth his salt wants to be at the head of the procession here," Pynsent explained, in his slightly nasal New England accent.

"Archie stuck his knife into me and turned it," said Corrance.

"You've misinterpreted the whole thing," Mark replied eagerly. "Every man has his work here, but who knows what relation it may bear, if any, to the work which comes after? Great achievements dwindle into insignificance within a d-decade. Why, then, should we t-tear ourselves to p-p-p——"

Meeting Betty's eyes, the abominable lump came into his throat. He paused abruptly, turning aside. Archie, who had joined them, said with authority:

"Mark is right. We make a mad effort to scribble our names upon the quicksands of time." (Mark, with his back still turned to the group, smiled.) "And we die wretched," Archie went on, "because Time's tides wash out our writing within an hour. This struggle after personal recognition is a certain sign of decadence in a nation."

Mark looked at Betty, who was listening to the speaker with faintly glowing cheeks. Pynsent and Corrance seemed to be impressed, because Archie as preacher (thus Mark reflected) had bewitched them. Yesterday, only yesterday, an obscure minor canon would not have so delivered himself; if he had, the others would have scoffed at him as a prig.

"Are we to fight without pay, my dear boy?"

Lord Randolph had approached, cynical, yet interested.

"Forlorn hopes were led before the Victoria Cross was given," murmured Archie deferentially. Then he remembered that Mark had said this, and that Mark was present. At this thought he blushed vividly, once more confirming an impression of modesty. He tried to make amends to Mark. "Why, Mark and I were speaking of this only last night. What did you say, Mark?"

"N-nothing worth r-repeating," stammered Mark.

"He said that a desperate enterprise never lacked men to attempt it. And what allures men to almost certain death? The pay, Lord Randolph? You would be the last to affirm that. Have we not heard of many a noble fellow falling, maybe, within a few feet of the goal, seeing with dying eyes comrades triumphantly scaling the heights, knowing that the success of those comrades was rooted in the bodies over which they had passed to victory? And these—the failures—have died with a glad shout upon their lips; they have been found horribly mutilated, but with a smile on their dead faces. Shall we pity such men, Lord Randolph, or envy them?"

Mark slipped from the room before Lord Randolph replied. Outside the door he discovered that his fists were clenched.

CHAPTER XVII

SURRENDER!

On the following Tuesday, when Mark reached Amos Barger's house, he was told that the surgeon could not see him for a quarter of an hour. Mark followed a manservant into a back dining-room ponderously furnished with mahogany and horsehair. The paper on the wall was hideous in pattern and colour; the wainscoting was grained in imitation of oak; on the square table in the centre of the room lay the comic papers and some society weeklies, amongst them Kosmos and Mayfair. Under the latter was The Bistoury. Mark paced up and down, pausing now and again to look out of a window which commanded a prospect of dingy back-walls and chimney-pots. From the front of the house a charming glimpse of the trees in Cavendish Square redeemed the dull uniformity of the street. Mark had noticed how green was their foliage, recalling the fact that soot is as Mellin's food to the vegetable world. His fancy seized this fact and played with it. Soot, the most defiling of things, transmuted by some amazing process into a brilliant pigment! What a text for a sermon! Presently Mark approached the book-case—a solid, glazed affair as heavy, doubtless, as the works within. To his surprise, he found the lightest of fiction, and every volume showed signs of use. Barger, he reflected, was a wise man to laugh with Anstey and Frank Stockton, but he ought really to buy some new furniture. Then he remembered that Barger had admitted failure, more or less. Possibly, these grim Penates had been taken at a low valuation from the outgoing tenant. With these fugitive speculations he escaped from his own thoughts and fears.

When he went upstairs the surgeon, while shaking hands, eyed him keenly.

"I am the better for my holiday," said Mark.

Barger nodded, and pointed to a chair.

"You said in the train I might live to make old bones. Weakness of heart is not a bar to marriage—is it?"

"Very much the contrary," said the surgeon grimly. "And if you are sound in other respects——"

"I have never known what it is to be really ill," said Mark eagerly; "and I don't think I've had breakfast in bed since I left Harrow."

"And not often there—eh? Never shammed at school did you when the first lesson was a bit stiff?"

"The first lesson never was very stiff—to me," Mark replied.

Barger, with impassive face, began an examination, which lasted longer than Mark expected. At the end Mark said nervously: "The heart is not weaker than it was?"

"Your heart need not cause you any serious anxiety," said the surgeon slowly.

"Thank God!" exclaimed the young man. "From your face I feared a different verdict."

"There is other trouble, Mr. Samphire."

Then Mark smiled pitifully. His premonition of disaster was justified.

"You can speak f-f-frankly," he stammered.

The surgeon spoke frankly, making plain in his precise phraseology what was and what might be. "You will take another opinion," he concluded, "but it is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. These," he pointed to some reagents, "never lie. Doctors do—sometimes."

"I thank you for not lying to me," said Mark gravely.

Barger fumbled with his test tubes, and then burst out vehemently:

"Your only chance lies in the most careful diet, a life in the open air; and even then the issue is doubtful."

"And—marriage?"

"Out of the question."

"But if I got better? Should I be justified in asking a woman to wait?"

His voice was dry and husky. Barger shook his head. The trouble might be staved off for a time, hut there was always the probability of return.

"You have neglected your body," he said irritably. "You have defrauded it of all things essential, and it has taken its revenge. Oh, you parsons who think of others, why can't you see that you would serve the world better if you thought more of yourselves?"

Mark could read the sympathy and pity latent beneath frowns and irritability. He held out his hand. Barger continued:

"You must go to a physician. Yours is not a case for a surgeon. You might try Sir John Drax. He's a specialist. Shall I write him a note? He lives near here, in Welbeck Street."

Berger scribbled a few lines, and handed them to Mark.

"See him at once," he commanded; "suspense is unendurable."

Mark went his way, so blinded by misery that in crossing the street he barely escaped being run over by a big van. He sprang to one side in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation.

Within half an hour Sir John Drax had confirmed Barger's diagnosis and prognosis. Then he asked bluntly if his patient had independent means. An affirmative simplified the case. He, too, prescribed fresh air, simple food, and moderate exercise.

"If I stick to my work in Bethnal Green?"

"You will find yourself in Kensal Green."

"And marriage——?"

"Madness, my dear sir, madness!"

Mark climbed on to the top of the first 'bus which was rolling eastward. As he did so he heard a small boy proclaiming the name of a winner. The name seemed familiar. Then he remembered that it was one of Harry Kirtling's horses. He could see Kirtling's square, stalwart body and the handsome sun-tanned face above it. Of all the bitter minutes in his life, this one seemed to be the bitterest.

When he reached the Mission, pressing work distracted his attention for some hours. He did it as thoroughly as usual, wondering what he should write to Betty when he was at liberty to go to his own room. He wondered also that his friends made no comment upon his appearance. Surely he carried scars. A small glass hung in the committee-room where he was sitting. He glanced at it. Outwardly he was unchanged.

Not till the clock struck nine did he find himself alone. He wrote a letter to Betty, a long letter, which he read and destroyed. The next letter was short, curt, cold: he burned this also. A few minutes later, feeling pain in his hands, he discovered that his nails had lacerated the flesh. Then he knew that a fight for life and reason was beginning. The demons were crying "Surrender!" If he died to-night, Betty would be free; if he lingered on for half a dozen years, she might deem herself bond to a dying man. Virility repudiated such a sacrifice.

"O God," he cried, "let me die to-night!"

Outside, the world of Whitechapel roared in derision. All Mark had known of poverty, of vice, of squalor, swelled into a chorus of despair. Here, in the heart of the slums, in an atmosphere tainted by the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands who had perished cursing God and man, he felt that he was choking for fresh air, that the pestilential fumes of every evil place into which he had entered were destroying him.

He sat down limply on the edge of his bed, wondering whether the end would come soon, telling himself that he was dead already. At any rate his work was done; he would leave the Mission on the morrow. The animal instinct to slink off to some lonely spot where none might witness his misery became overpowering. But a letter to Betty must be written first. He crossed to his desk, where Betty's face smiled out of a silver frame. Gazing at this, he became so absorbed that three sharp taps on the door were unheeded. The Bishop of Poplar entered the room, pausing when he saw the head bent over the table, the thin fingers clutching the silver frame. He closed the door, crossed the room, and laid his hand upon Mark's shoulder.

"You are in sore trouble."

Mark started to his feet with an exclamation compounded of fear and surprise.

"You—David——?" he stammered. "What b-brought you here?"

"You shall answer that question yourself," said Ross gravely.

The men confronted each other. Great as the contrast was between the robust health of the one and the infirmity of the other, a critical eye might have detected a similarity in the two faces—a resemblance the stronger because it was born of the spirit rather than the flesh.

"I was crossing Welbeck Street this afternoon," said Ross, "when I saw you leave one of the houses. It was in my mind to follow and speak to you, but I was hastening to an appointment for which I was late, and leaving town for Scotland at eight. But it happened that I had noted the number of the house you were leaving, and I looked it up in a directory on the platform at Euston. Mind you, my train was about to start, and I had taken my ticket, but when I found out that you had seen Drax, I guessed what had happened. I let the train go on without me, and came on here. Was it coincidence that led me into Welbeck Street this afternoon, or something more?"

"I am under sentence of death," said Mark.

"Tell me all about it." He grasped his friend's hand.

Mark obeyed. "She has always cared for me," he concluded, "always, you understand: ever since we were boy and girl. Many want her. Gorgeous insects have buzzed about her, but she flew to a poor drab-coloured moth. And I"—his voice shook—"I had fluttered about in the outer darkness——"

"Was it darkness, Mark?"

"I should have said twilight."

"Then she was your sun?"

Mark paused before he answered slowly: "God made the sun."

"You try to slip by me," replied the other quickly. "Have I misread you? It seemed to me that you had ideals, standards, rules higher than the average, that for you the light shone more clearly, revealing what lay beyond. Was that light the glamour in a woman's eyes?"

"The light was reflected in her eyes. You press me hard, David. Shall I plead that the light, no matter whence its source, dazzled me. There have been times when I seemed to see the other shore: an enchanted land, so desirable that I wondered why men preferred to linger here. But now"—his voice grew harsh and troubled—"I want this earth. I want to live and love—here."

"What do you propose to do?" David asked.

"Do?" Mark laughed bitterly. "What can I do, but die—the sooner the better? You are a strong man, David; it is hard for you to stand in my shoes; but if you were I you would surrender."

"What?"

"Shall I say—everything."

"You cannot surrender what you have done already, whether good or ill."

"I have to surrender love," Mark muttered. "What do you know of that, David?"

"I loved a woman," Ross replied, "and I love her still, although she is but a memory"—his voice softened—"a memory of what might have been, and what will be. And shall I say that this love has fortified me, because I see it as the reflection of a greater love? The love you talk of surrendering is an imperishable possession."

Mark said nothing.

Ross continued: "Drax is a great authority, but he does not know, as I know, that you have never given your body a fair chance. Now—my word to you is FIGHT. Fight for life, fight for health, fight to save yourself as you have fought tooth and nail to save others! Again and again I've begged you to go to my lodge in Sutherland. Go there with me to-morrow! Drax prescribes fresh air, plain food, complete rest. These may be straws, but clutch them—clutch them! Why, man, I have towed worse wrecks than you into dry dock, and I've seen 'em sail out of harbour with every stitch of canvas set staunch and seaworthy craft! Be my guest for six months! Mark, Mark, my dear, good, foolish, gallant Mark—Fight!"

"Thank you, David," Mark replied. Then the smile which Bagshot knew well lit up the thin haggard face, as he added slowly: "I d-d-don't think it was c-c-coincidence which led you into Welbeck Street this afternoon."

Next day Mark went North with David Ross. Before departure he wrote a letter to Betty, which successfully obscured the facts. He feared that Betty might insist upon appointing herself his nurse. And if she came to him, would he have strength to send her away? Once she had spoken shudderingly of a friend married to a hopeless invalid: a poor wretch lingering on, half dead, changing day by day into something unrecognisable in mind and body.

"You have the right," he wrote, "to demand an explanation, which I must give. I am and shall remain outside that garden into which we strayed last Saturday. What more can I say? Nothing. Try to think of me as a boy who was near and dear to you...."

The letter was filled up with details concerning his work. Reading it, the conclusion was inevitable that the writer had become absorbed in such work. He hinted at the possibility of taking a vow of celibacy.

Betty kissed this letter before she broke the seal, making sure that it was a love-letter. Then she read it, with perceptive faculties blunted by shock. Lady Randolph found her in the Italian garden, staring at the figure of Aphrodite.

"You were right," she exclaimed passionately. "Mark prefers his work to—me."

Lady Randolph kissed her.

"I have been a fool," said Betty, bursting into tears.

CHAPTER XVIII

ARIADNE IN NAXOS

Lady Randolph wisely said nothing, but she wrote to Mark. He replied by return of post.

"I love her devotedly, but I have an almost incurable disease: the result of neglect. Don't let my people know of this. I had the presumption to believe that the sacrifice of the flesh was a sort of burnt-offering to God. The folly of it is hard to bear. Many men here are in a like self-crippled condition, and the doctor in charge, a good sort, makes scathing remarks. David Ross warned me several times; as did his successor at the Mission. Betty, of course, must never find out the truth, which I could not withhold from you, my kind friend. You can best serve her and me by finding her a good, faithful husband, such a fellow as Harry Kirtling, or Jim Corrance.... She is made for the happiness which marriage brings. I can take comfort in the thought that another may give her what is not mine to offer."

Lady Randolph's eyes were wet, as she locked up this letter. Mark had not mentioned Archie as a possible husband. "That would break his heart," she muttered to herself.

Betty and she returned to London, where, during the month that followed, Betty's simulated high spirits and inordinate appetite for excitement provoked a warning.

"If you don't bend, you'll break."

"I am broken in pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, who ought to have been a girl. Men don't break when they tumble off their castle walls. I've stuck myself together, but I'm a cracked vessel."

Lady Randolph wrote a note that evening to Mrs. Corrance. She had faith in the balsamic virtue of the atmosphere in and around King's Charteris, and she knew that Jim spent two days out of each week with his mother. Mrs. Corrance begged Betty to pay her a visit.

"Shall I go?" said Betty.

"I need a rest-cure," Lady Randolph replied pointedly.

So Betty went down into the pleasant Slowshire country, where the warmth of her welcome gave the girl a curious thrill. The kisses of the gentle, grey-haired woman sounded deeps, although they could not touch bottom, for the motherless girl has deeps unplumbed by any fellow-creature. Tea was set out in the pretty old-fashioned drawing-room with its freshly calendered chintzes, its quaint Chelsea figures, its simple dignity of expression. Mrs. Corrance possessed some Queen Anne silver, which she had used daily ever since Betty could remember anything. It sparkled softly like the rings upon the white hands that touched it, shining with a subdued radiance of other days. Betty saw the same quiet glow in her old friend's kind eyes: the peace on the face of age which passes the understanding of youth.

Hitherto she had regarded Mrs. Corrance with grateful affection, but as one to whom the wind had been tempered, one who lived in a fold seeing little beyond save Jim. Betty had always thought of her as mother. Now, she found herself wondering what part this quiet lady had played as sweetheart and wife. Tempests might have raged and died down, before she (Betty) was born. Mrs. Corrance's mind, like her house, was full of charming nooks, cosy corners, so to speak, wherein a tired spirit might take his ease, but perhaps there were also bare chambers into which none was allowed to enter. Into these, if they existed, Betty felt a shameful curiosity to go.

While they drank tea Mrs. Corrance asked no questions. Betty listened with interest to an account of Jim and his doings in the markets of the world.

"He would like to instal me, me, my dear, in a fine house in some fashionable quarter." She laughed, and Betty laughed too, seeing that the mother was delighted secretly that her son should desire to lavish his wealth upon her.

"Do you despise the world, that you live out of it—always?" said Betty.

"I love the country," replied the elder woman evasively; then she added, as if the possibility had just occurred to her: "I hope you won't find it very dull here."

"Not with you," said Betty, slipping her hand into her friend's.

Next day, Mrs. Samphire drove over from Pitt Hall. She looked pinker and plumper than ever, and her hair—arranged in Madonna bands—gave her the vacuous expression of a stout Dutch doll. When the name was announced, Betty rose to fly, but Mrs. Corrance entreated her to remain. While Betty was hesitating, fearing the voluble tongue of Mark's stepmother, the lady herself bustled across the lawn to the chestnut tree beneath which Mrs. Corrance was sitting. In a moment the pleasant silences were shattered.

"How cool you look! And this is dear Betty Kirtling. We never expected to have the honour of seeing so smart a lady in our humdrum circles. Thank you, my poor husband is only so-so. The doctor has prescribed golf. We have laid out a small links in the park. I think golf such a charming game—don't you? I love to look on at it. You agree with me, I'm sure."

Mrs. Corrance tried to lift this interjectional babble out of the rut.

"I suppose," she said reflectively, "that with us middle-aged women looking on at games is an inherited instinct. We have always looked on—haven't we? But Betty, I expect, likes to play golf."

Betty, however, unkindly said nothing, while Mrs. Samphire bleated: "Oh, yes, I do like to see the Squire play golf. Although, when he misses the ball, he does—well, I mustn't tell tales out of school—must I? How is dear Lady Randolph? Did you have a large party for Ascot? Was the Prince there? I have seen your name in the Marlborough House lists. Really, I wonder you speak to me at all."

"I haven't said much yet—have I?" said Betty. "Last time we met you were suffering horribly with neuralgia. Is it better?"

"I'm a martyr now to dyspepsia. I'm trying light and colour, Babbit, you know. If your poor, dear uncle were alive, how interested he would be. I'm wearing red next the skin."

"In July?" ejaculated Mrs. Corrance.

"And I've changed the paper in my boudoir, which used to be a depressing blue, to bright yellow. All the water I drink is acted upon by a red lens. I want Mark to read Babbit. He has had a sort of breakdown. You heard of it?"

"A breakdown?" exclaimed Betty. "Did you say a—breakdown?"

Light flashed upon her. Why had she not thought of this? Her thoughts crowding together clamoured so shrilly that she could barely hear Mrs. Samphire's querulous reply.

"We learned, quite by chance, that he was in a sanatorium in Sutherland. He ought to have come to Pitt Hall."

"Have you asked him?" said Betty in a low voice.

"He would come to us if he wanted us."

Shortly after Mrs. Samphire took her leave.

"Can Mark be seriously ill?" said Betty.

Mrs. Corrance's clear eyes lingered for a moment on Betty's flushed cheeks; then she said tranquilly: "It is not impossible. If so, I don't blame him for going to Scotland."

"He ought to be at Pitt Hall," said Betty. "I think I shall take a brisk walk."

Two days later Betty met the Squire in Westchester. She soon discovered that he was hurt because his son had not come home.

"Perhaps he was anxious to spare you—and others. That would be like him."

"Yes, yes; he's the best boy in the world. But I'm sure there's nothing serious the matter. We Samphires are as hard as nails."

"If he—died up there without making a sign."

The Squire stuttered and choked.

"God bless me! you alarm me. I must write at once. I shall insist on his coming home. Has he taken you into his confidence, my dear?"

"No."

"Um! I thought once that—well, I shall write."

Betty felt that her heart was beating.

"He will pay no attention to a letter. Why not go to him yourself, Mr. Samphire?"

"By God!—I will."

Betty smiled faintly, for the Squire, when he set his mind to a thing, was easily turned aside.

Then she went her way; and Mrs. Corrance noted in her diary that Betty seemed quieter, more like her old self.

On the following Saturday Jim arrived from town, exhaling and exuding Capel Court. He strolled with Betty through lanes, where they had picked primroses and blackberries long ago; and the familiar trees and hedgerows stood like sentinels of the past, guarding simple joys, which Betty told herself could never return. Jim reminded her that a missel-thrush had built in the old pollard close to the village pound, and that the eggs, when about to be blown, proved addled.

"You were very keen about eggs," she said.

"I've always been keen," said Jim. "By Jove!—it was a sell about those eggs. Well—I still collect eggs, and some are addled! That Cornucopia mine, for instance...."

He plunged into a description of a mining deal which had proved disastrous.

"But I got it back, and a lot more in six weeks."

"Which excites you most—winning or losing, Jim?"

"One gets accustomed to winning," said the successful speculator, "but losing is heart-breaking, particularly when you are unable to guess what the loss will be."

"Ah," said Betty. "What do you do with your gains?"

"Let 'em increase and multiply. The mater won't live in a better house, I mean a larger, and she refuses, in advance, all the presents that I've not given her." He laughed, then he continued in a hard voice: "That question of loss interests me."