"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 entree 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?"