Stride growled out something about dead lions, and set Mark to work in
the garden, bare-legged and bare-headed. The work was light, but it
strained every muscle in Mark's body. Then he was made to lie down in
one of the sheds. After such rest came refreshment--easily digested,
nourishing food, taken in small quantities, but often. During this
month Mark reckoned that he was sleeping fourteen hours out of the
twenty-four. At the end of each week Stride weighed him and applied a
number of tests to determine what strength he had gained. There was a
sort of rivalry between the patients. Dick who had gained two pounds
crowed over Tom who had gained one. Into this competition Mark entered
with boyish keenness. Stride said he was the star pupil of the class.
By the beginning of October, a radical improvement had taken place. The
cold weather set in sharply, but Mark, always susceptible to atmospheric
change, braved the frosty nights with impunity, sleeping in the sheds
with the winds howling about him. He had the confidence in Stride that
a well-trained dog has in his master. Some of Stride's "animals"--as he
called them--proved at first unmanageable. Coming, as most of them did,
from the strenuous life of crowded cities, accustomed to and yearning
for the stimulus of constant mental action, such stagnation as Stride
enforced seemed insupportable. These kittle cattle were yoked for a
season with Mark.
Meantime he had received many letters from his friends, but none from
Betty, who had returned to Lady Randolph. Jim wrote that he had been
rejected, but made no mention of Archibald, who was often seen crossing
the downs between Westchester and Birr Wood. As a matter of fact, Jim
was not aware of these rides. He remained in London making money. From
Pynsent Mark learned of the enthusiasm aroused by Archibald's Windsor
sermon.
"Reading in the paper" (he wrote) "that your brother was preaching in
St. George's Chapel, I went down to Windsor yesterday to hear him. He
is quite amazing. What he said and the way he said it took us by storm.
The Whitsuntide sermon gave only a taste of his quality. Out of the
pulpit he has always struck me as being the typical English parson of
means and position; in it he is--_apostolic_! I can find no other
adjective to describe his persuasiveness, sincerity, and power. Lord
Randolph tells me that it made a profound impression in the highest
quarter. I saw Betty Kirtling and Lady Randolph in the knights'
stalls...."
Mark thrust the letter into his pocket with an exclamation which made
the man working next to him raise his brows.
"Anything wrong, Samphire? No bad news, I hope?"
Mark blurted out the truth. His companion, broken down by hard work in
Manchester, had sympathetic eyes and lips which dropped compassion upon
all infirmities save his own.
"I've had good news, Maitland: my brother has preached a great sermon at
Windsor, and--and there is something wrong with me. I have the damnable
wish that he'd failed--as I failed." Then he laughed harshly, bending
down to pick up his spade.
That afternoon he climbed the mountain, which sloped steeply to the
loch. The air, he felt, on the top of Ben Caryll would purge and
purify; the panoramic view would enlarge the circle of his sympathies.
And so it proved, although a materialist might assign another cause.
When Mark reached the highest peak he became aware that he had
accomplished a feat of physical endurance beyond such powers as he
possessed two months before. He was not aware of undue fatigue; on the
contrary, a strange exhilaration permeated mind and body. He could have
danced, but he sat down, soberly enough, and reread Pynsent's letter.
When he had done this, he tried to transport himself to Windsor. He
wanted to sit with Betty in the knights' stalls, beneath the gorgeous
silken banners, and the emblazoned shields of the princes of the world,
under the eye and aegis of a living sovereign. But fancy left him--in
Sutherland. He gazed upon moor and mountain whitened here and there by
snow. He looked into the pale, luminous skies above, into the frosty
opalescent mists to the westward, through which the sun glowed like a
red-hot ball, and wherever he looked Betty was not. For the moment he
could not recall her face. It seemed as if he were seeking a stranger
with a written description of her in his hand.
Sitting there, some voice whispered to him that Betty wanted him, that
he must descend the mountain and go to her. Then he told himself that
he was mad. If he obeyed this beguiling voice in his ears, if he went
south--what then? The hope in his eye and heart would kindle like hope
in her, and such hope was a will-o'-the-wisp flickering above--a grave!
When he came down from the mountain, he found Stride busy in his
laboratory. Stride possessed a magnificent Zeiss microscope and all the
accessories--incubating ovens, sterilising apparatus, stains, and
reagents--for the highest bacteriological work. Of late, Mark had given
the little man some help in staining and mounting preparations.
"We are out of one world," Stride had said, "but I will introduce you to
another through an apochromatic lens. You will find yourself quite at
home, my friend. Here, in this drop of water, you will note the same
struggle for existence, the same old game as it is played in Whitechapel
or Whitehall."
When Mark began to understand something of the technique of the
microscope, when Stride had shown him its uses, for instance, in the
analysis of diseased tissue or blood, and revealed its magical powers of
diagnosis, Mark asked a question: "How can any doctor work without one?"
Stride laughed at such innocence.
"It takes up too much time. No hard-working practitioner ignores the
value of it, but he cannot use it. When necessary, he sends
preparations to some specialist. A microscope exacts more attention
than a wife. That is why I"--he slapped his chest and winked
furiously--"have remained single."
This devotion to his work strengthened the chain which linked patient to
doctor. Stride--Mark felt assured--might have secured fame and fortune
in London. Yet he chose to remain unknown and poor in Sutherland.
Mark told him that he had climbed Ben Caryll, and felt none the worse
for it. Stride shook his big head.
"You oughtn't to attempt such walks--yet."
"Then the time is coming. I shall regain my health?"
He had never put the question so directly before. Stride eyed him
attentively, hearing a new note in his voice.
"Per--haps."
"If I asked for leave of absence----"
"It would be refused--peremptorily," said Stride. "Why, man, you'd douse
the glim which I've been coaxing into flame all these weeks. What
magnet draws you from Crask? A woman?"
"Yes--a woman."
"Oh, these tempestuous petticoats! Now, Samphire, I'm not a fool, and I
guessed, when you came here, that you left a girl behind you. You are
not engaged to her?"
"No."
"Good! Now, listen to wisdom. If everything goes well with you--if
fresh air and simple food and freedom from worry make you whole, you may
marry some day--but you'll have to wait a long time, so as to make sure,
and even then, after years of comparative health, you may break down
again. Will this young lady wait for you--indefinitely?"
"I should never ask her to do that."
"Um! I daresay she's flirting with someone at this very minute. Eh? I
beg pardon, Samphire. Your goddess, no doubt, is an exception; but few
women, if they are women, can get along without a man. And now you must
leave me. I'm on the edge of a small discovery. I've done some good
work to-day."
"Your good work will tell, Stride."
"What d'ye mean? Recognition? If it comes, so much the better; if it
doesn't, I've had 'the joy of the working'--eh?"
Next day, a letter from Archibald gave many details. He had enjoyed the
honour of meeting his Sovereign, who said gracious things; he had dined
with a Cabinet Minister; he had been interviewed at length by a
reporter. The letter concluded as follows:--
"I cannot doubt that my sphere of influence and activity is about to be
enlarged. If so, I shall count upon your help. I am deeply grateful
for what you have done already. I recognise in you, my dear, dear
brother, an insight into human life and character wider than my own. You
have come into contact with what is primal and elemental: an experience
lacking as yet to me. I have spoken of this to all our friends,
acknowledging frankly my debt to you...."
Mark's smile, when he read these lines, was not easy to interpret, but
the sense that, for a brief hour, he had grudged his own flesh and blood
a triumph, made him reply cordially and affectionately. He ended his
letter by assuring Archibald that such help as one brother could give
another would always be at his disposal.
About this time, feeling stronger day by day, he began to wonder what
work he should do in the future. Stride was emphatic that life in the
East End would mean a return of his malady. Not being able to preach, a
country curacy was unavailable; and in any case Mark told himself that
such work would be distasteful. Stride startled him by saying abruptly,
"Why don't you write?"
"Eh?"
"It's in you, I'll swear. It would be only a crutch, at first, but you
have private means. You can write out-of-doors. You will be your own
master. You can take proper care of yourself...." Stride waxed
eloquent, and Mark listened with a curious exaltation.
"By Jove!" he said, drawing a deep breath, "I believe I can write."
"Everybody writes nowadays," said Stride, "but I have the feeling that
you can write what a lot of us will want to read. Think it over!"
Mark thought it over for a week. Ideas inundated his brain, clamouring
for expression. He begged permission to try his hand at a short story:
four thousand words. Stride gave a grudging consent.
"Mind you," said he, "you're not fit for any sustained mental exertion,
but go ahead--full steam, if you like, and we'll see what will happen."
Mark wrote his story, and submitted both it and himself to the autocrat.
This was a week later, and the scales proclaimed a loss of two pounds.
Stride pursed up his lips and waggled his big head.
"Back you go to the garden to-morrow," he growled. "I'll read your
stuff to-night, and tell you what I think of it. It's almost certain to
be rubbish."
In the morning, however, he had nothing but praise for the author, whose
mind was by no means as familiar to him as his body. He beamed and
gesticulated as if he had discovered a new bacillus. The story was
despatched to an editor, Arthur Conquest, whom Stride knew, and Mark was
enjoined to think no more about it. Think about it he did, naturally.
The possibility of doing good work in a new field filled him once more
with the ardours of youth. He told Stride there was a certain
inevitableness about his failures. What had gone before--all trials and
disappointments--were part of a writer's equipment. He could not doubt
that he had found at last a strong-box, so to speak, for such talents as
he possessed. Action had been denied him, articulate speech was not
his, the power of putting a noble conception on to canvas he lacked; but
he could, he would, he should write according to the truth that was in
him, so help him God!
Stride warned him that the odds were greatly against his manuscript
being accepted. The editor, however, read the story himself, and
promised to publish it. His letter contained a message to Mark.
"Will you tell Mr. Samphire" (wrote Conquest) "that I am going to
red-pencil his story, which I take to be a first attempt. He must serve
his apprenticeship, which in his case needn't be a long one. I can see
that he sets for himself a high standard. If he means business I should
advise him to write a novel and burn it. When he comes to town, I hope
to make his acquaintance."
"Conquest is cold-blooded," said Stride, "but he has a prescient eye.
All the same, if you have business dealings with him--look out! And
now--go back to your cabbages."
Mark told Maitland what had passed. Maitland entered with sympathy into
his plans, confessing that he had tried writing as a trade.
"Grub Street is a long lane with no turning in it for nine-tenths of the
foot passengers. I hope you'll gallop down it, Samphire, not crawl as I
did."
Maitland looked, so Mark reflected, as if he had gone afoot down many
paths. Failure was branded upon his pale, too narrow face, his stooping
shoulders, his large, clumsy hands: all thumbs, and crudely fashioned at
that! But Ross, who was no longer at Crask, had told Mark that Maitland
filled a very large place in his huge Manchester parish.
"What made you go into the Church?" Mark asked abruptly.
"I had to earn my bread and--scrape; but afterwards----"
"Yes?"
Maitland's dull, sallow complexion seemed to be suffused with a glow.
It struck Mark that between his face as he was accustomed to see it and
as he saw it now lay the difference between a stage-scene lighted and
unlighted.
"Afterwards," said Maitland, "I knew that the choice of my profession
had been determined by a Power infinitely greater than my own will. I
became a parson from ignoble motives. I was soured, bitter, sick in
mind and body, unfit for the duties I undertook. And then suddenly--one
hardly likes to talk about it--my eyes were opened. I came into contact
with hundreds worse off than myself. Some of them bore their burdens
with a patience, a serenity, an unselfishness that were a revelation--to
me. And then I realised that no life is a failure which brightens
however faintly the lives of others. Napoleon is the colossal failure
of history, because he darkened a continent. I would sooner be a beggar
sharing a crust with a child than such as he."
"If you were offered preferment----?"
"I hope to live and die in Manchester."
"You nearly did die. Suppose you were not strong enough to go back?
You wince, Maitland. That would try your faith. You have been frank
with me; I shall be frank with you. I have always wanted one thing, and
because I wanted it so much, I tried to bargain with Heaven. I said,
'You shall do what you like with me, only give me, give me the woman I
love!' Well, Heaven seemed to take up the challenge. You know my
story. I was defeated again and again. And I said to myself I'll grin
and bear it, because she is mine. Ah, if you could see her, Maitland,
as I see her, if you knew what I have f-f-felt, when I saw her image
f-f-fa--fading----" He paused, overcome by his stammer, controlled it,
and continued quietly, "I was told that I must die. Ross found me in
despair. I--I do not know, but the river was close at hand,
and--perhaps--at any rate he rescued me, brought me here, and now, now,
I am beginning to live again. I see God in His Heaven. And I see my
angel in mine."
He was so excited that Maitland entreated him to be calm, introducing,
as an anticlimax, the cabbages to be cut and carried in.
Shortly after this Stride allowed him to begin his novel. After the
first distress of beginning it became plain that this work agreed with
him. Weight and appetite increased as the manuscript grew fat. He was
out all weathers, and his face became tanned like that of a North Sea
fisherman. Stride rubbed his hands chuckling, whenever he saw him.
During these months Mark told himself that it was impossible for Betty
to write to him till he broke the silence which he had imposed.
Meanwhile, he heard that Archibald had accepted a London living: St.
Anne's in Sloane Street. Mrs. Samphire sent Mark a long cutting from the
_Slowshire Chronicle_, a synopsis of his brother's labours in and about
Westchester. As secretary, and member of many committees, as a lecturer
on Temperance, as a pillar of the Charity Organisation Society, as the
first tenor of the Westchester Choral Association, Archibald Samphire
had honestly earned the gratitude of the community and the very handsome
salver, which embalmed that gratitude in a Latin sentence composed by
the Dean. Archibald had been asked to preach four Advent sermons in
Westminster Cathedral. Mark suggested a theme, revised the sermons,
interpolated a hundred passages, cut and slashed his brother's beautiful
MSS., and when the sermons were preached and attracted the attention of
London, wrote a letter of warm congratulation to his "dearest old
fellow." He had taken greater pains with these sermons than with his
own novel, because--as he put it to himself--he had grudged his brother
a triumph which Betty Kirtling had witnessed.
One week after the New Year, he was writing the last lines of his book,
when Stride came into the room and flung down a letter in Archibald's
handwriting. Mark glanced at it, and at the pile of MS. beside it.
"Is the _magnum opus_ done?" said Stride.
"Very nearly," Mark replied.
"Are you going to take Conquest's advice and--burn it?"
"I shall let Conquest see it first," said Mark. He rose from his chair,
crossed the room to where Stride was warming his hands at the fire, and
laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. "It's not bad," he said
slowly; "I know it's not bad; and I owe it all to you, Stride."
"What is it about?" said Stride, repudiating the debt with a shake of
his head. Mark had not shown him any portion of the MS., nor discussed
the theme.
"It's the story of a faith that was lost and found," said Mark. "I can
say to you that it is part of my own life, red-hot from my heart, the
sort of story that is written once, you understand, and I have the
feeling that it could have been written only here, in these solitudes."
"I hope it ends happily," said Stride.
"It ends happily," said Mark, staring at his MS.
Stride filled his pipe and then moved to the door.
"It's going to snow," he said. "We shall have a heavy fall, unless I'm
mistaken. It was just such a night as this, last year, when we lost our
shepherd on Ben Caryll."
He went out, whistling. The door slammed behind him, and the draught
from it fluttered the pages of foolscap lying loose on the table. Mark
stared at them, smiling, with such a look on his face as a mother
bestows on her first-born, when she is alone with him. Then, still
smiling, he picked up his brother's letter and broke the seal, the seal
of many quarterings, which Archibald habitually used.
"My dear Mark" (he wrote): "I am the happiest as well as the luckiest of
men. Betty Kirtling has promised to become my wife. We shall be
married as soon as possible, before I settle down to my new work in
London...."
The letter fell from Mark's hands. He bent down, trembling, picked it
up, and reread its message. Then, crushing the letter into a ball, he
flung it into the fire, and watched it crumble and dissolve into ashes.
As the flame licked the white paper, the face that stared into the fire
shrivelled into a caricature of what it had been a few moments before.
The lips were drawn back from the teeth in a snarling grin; colour left
the cheeks and flared in purple patches upon the brow. The slender
limbs shook as with a palsy....
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a laugh: the derisive laugh of the
man who knows that his heavens have fallen. The sound of his own
laughter seemed to move Mark to action. He seized the manuscript, and
thrust it into the flames. When it was destroyed, he laughed again,
crossed to the door, opened it, and passed out--still laughing--into the
driving wind and rain.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*ON BEN CARYLL*
Mark stood still for a moment, as the wind whipped his face. Then he
strode towards the burn which runs into the loch at the foot of Ben
Caryll. He was meeting a north-easter, which drove the rain, now
turning into sleet, with stinging violence against his face. When he
reached the burn he saw that it was beginning to rise. It would be in
spate in an hour or two if the storm continued. The big
stepping-stones, shining through the mists, were almost covered by the
peat-stained, swirling waters, as Mark sprang from one boulder to the
other. Having reached the other side, he paused and looked at the burn.
Above it widened into a broad, deep pool, with flecks and clots of white
spume lying like cream upon its chocolate-coloured surface. Below, it
narrowed, running foaming through steep rocky banks, and falling some
twenty feet into a bigger pool. Standing where he stood the roar of the
fall drowned all sounds. His blood was cooler now; he was able to
think. He stared at the stepping-stones. Had his foot slipped, the
raging torrent would have whirled him over the falls. If he returned an
hour later the ford would be impassable. He would have to go round by
the bridge some two miles higher up. With this thought lurking in but
not occupying his mind he breasted the heather hill immediately to the
right, fighting his way against the wind. He plunged on until he
reached some peat hags, when he paused to recover breath. The blood was
racing through his veins. Never had he felt so alive, so strong; and
yet poison was consuming him. What poison? An answer came on the
roaring blast. _Hate_! Hatred of his brother. He threw out his arms
towards the darkening skies.
"Curse him!" he cried. "Curse him! Curse him!"
Then he crossed the hags, and gained a small turf-covered plateau,
whence Ben Caryll rose steeply and stonily. This part of the mountain
was known as Eagle Rocks, because for many seasons a pair of golden
eagles had nested on one of the crags. On a calm day it was no easy
feat to scale these rocks. Tourists, for instance, always went round by
a deer path, which the gillies used also. Mark laughed. He felt strong,
a man: here was an opportunity to test his strength. He grasped a tuft
of heather and swung himself to the top of the first rock, but when he
tried to stand upright the wind wrestled with him and prevailed. He was
constrained to crouch and crawl, clinging to every stick and stone which
hands or feet could find. But the spirit within would not allow him to
turn back. Foot by foot he ascended the face of the precipice, knowing
that if a stone turned, or a tuft gave way, he must fall on the sharp
rocks below--knowing and not caring. When he reached the top he was
perspiring, breathless, bleeding and spent. He lay still, letting the
sleet lash his face. When he felt able to move he sat up and looked
across the corrie which lay to the left of the Eagle Rocks. Beyond this
stretched a gigantic spur of the mountain; and immediately below lay the
strath, with the Crask burn curling down the middle of it. As he looked
a veil of mist and scud swept over the mountain. When it seemed
thickest, the wind took it and tore it asunder. Glimpses of objects
familiar to him during the past five months succeeded each other in
procession, filing by to the roar of the wind and the voices of the
mountain. In like manner glimpses of his past life presented themselves
for an instant, only to be wiped from memory and obliterated as swiftly.
Out of the mirk soared the spire of Harrow Church. In the Yard below
the boys were cheering a school-fellow, who ran bare-headed down the
steps and into the street. It was Archibald, newly elected a member of
the school eleven. He saw him again, as he stood in the pulpit in
Westchester Cathedral. Again and again, in the arms of Betty!
Suddenly he became aware that the wind had moderated somewhat in
violence and that snow was falling. He recalled what Stride had said,
as he rose, stretched his stiffening limbs, and turned to the huge spur
which led to the bridge across the Crask burn. The snow fell in larger
flakes. The wind moaned like a woman who has no strength left to
scream.
After stumbling on for a mile or so amongst the rough heather, Mark was
obliged to sit down in the lee of a "knobbie." With the waning light of
a Highland winter's afternoon, the air had turned cold; and it seemed to
have thickened, so that Mark breathed as a man breathes in a close and
stifling room. This rapid fall of temperature and wind produced weird
effects. The voices of the mountain changed their note. Defiance died
away in a diminuendo. Mountain rills, trickling from a thousand springs
to join the burn below, purred beneath the touch of the snow. The roar
of the falls came faintly to the ear. After strife and confusion,
Nature was crooning a lullaby.
Exhausted by what mind and body had endured, Mark fell asleep. The snow
fluttered down, thickly, silently, as the minutes passed. The cold grew
more intense. Night came on. Mark stirred in his sleep; he uttered
inarticulate words; he frowned; he smiled. And then, as if touched by
some warning hand, he woke. He stared round him, seeking some familiar
face. When the snow fell into his eyes he rubbed them, and stared
harder than before, trying to pierce the shadows. Then he cried in a
troubled voice:
"Who touched me?"
No answer came out of the white silence.
"Who touched me?" he cried again.
His ears caught the purr of the rivulets and the muffled roar of the
burn in spate. He knew where he was. And then, for a moment, he
hesitated. A pleasant languor was stealing over him. Let him sink back
upon his feathery bed--and sleep. No--no! He had waked to live.
The instinct of life began to throb when he realised the imminence of
death. Fatigue left him as he strode forward, quickening his pace,
where the ground permitted, to a run. It was difficult to see, but
salvation lay down hill. He staggered on, peering to left and right, as
the faint light that remained slowly failed. Before he reached the burn
it had failed entirely. He was now in a sore predicament, for the
ground no longer descended sharply, but sloped in undulations. He began
to grope his way like a blind man, walking in circles. The roar of the
falls far away to his right could no longer be heard.
He was lost!
He stood compassless in a desert. No friendly ray from a lantern could
pierce this white horror. If his friends discovered his absence, which
was unlikely till too late, what could they do? Search Sutherland in a
snowstorm for one man?
Staggering on through drifts and hags, he realised that the time was
fast approaching when his muscles would fail.
Did he pray for deliverance? No. If at that moment one thought
dominated another, it was the conviction that God, if a God existed, had
forsaken him. The struggle for life involved a paradox with which his
brain could not grapple. Life had become sweet because it seemed
inevitable that he must die.
Stumbling over a tuft of heather, a cock grouse rose, cackled, and
whirled away. The vigour of the flight, the vitality of that defiant
note, stimulated the jaded man. He chose at random a direction, and
began to run, stopping now and again, straining his ears to catch the
sound of the burn.
Presently he stopped altogether, sinking inert, hopeless, spent, upon
the soft snow which received him wantonly, touching him with a caress,
winding itself round him. He lay still, submitting to Nature, stronger
than he, confessing himself vanquished, and asking that the end might be
speedy. With death impending, he turned his thoughts towards the woman
he loved--the woman about to marry his brother. He would die, as he
wished to die, gazing into her face, feeling the cool touch of her
fingers, hearing her voice with its tender inflections and modulations.
And her image came obedient to his call. Her eyes, with their beguiling
interrogation, showing the full orb of the irid between the thin black
lines of the lashes, looked into his. For the last time he marked the
pathetic droop of the finely curved lips, coral against the ivory of
cheek and chin, lips revealing the teeth which were such an admirable
finish to the face. Her dark hair, with the dull red glow upon it,
curving deliciously from the forehead, was held together at the top by a
white niphetos rose he had given her. She was like the rose, he
reflected, a blossom of the earth, sweet, lovely, ephemeral. He could
not conceive her old, faded, crushed beneath the relentless touch of
time.
The fancy possessed him that she was his, to be taken whithersoever he
might go. He stretched out his hands, trembling with passion, and the
vision melted. He grasped the cold snow, not the warm flesh.
At this moment, out of the suffocating silence an attenuated vibration
of sound thrilled his senses. Instantly he was awake, alert--conscious
that help was coming; how and whence he knew not. The sound permeated
every fibre, but, numbed by exposure and fatigue, he was unable to
interpret its message. Such as it was, it possessed rhythm--a systole
and diastole, like the laboured beating of his heart. Was it merely the
heart, recording with solemn knell the passing of a soul? No--no! He
sprang to his feet, aflame once more with the lust of life. The sound
he heard was no delusion of a fanciful brain, no fluttering of a
moribund heart, but a clarion note from without, steadily increasing in
volume, forcing a passage through the blinding snows--the Crask bell!
But at first he was unable to localise the sound: plunging madly this
way and that, settling down at length to his true course, which brought
him within half an hour to the bridge across the burn. Even then he
strayed again and again from the road, led back to it as often by the
voice of the bell, growing clearer and louder with every step he took.
Presently he heard voices, hoarse shouts, which he answered in feeble
whispers; then a yellow light swinging to and fro shone through the
darkness. He staggered on to meet it, falling fainting into the arms of
Stride.
* * * * *
Stride asked no questions. Mark was put to bed, and lay still for some
four hours: then he began to grind his teeth, to clench his fists.
Stride sat beside him watching his friend and patient, with eyes half
shut, like a purring cat's, the pupils narrowed to a black slit.
Presently he went to the window. The wind had ceased. Outside, in
silence, the snow kept on falling, spreading its pall upon the world,
while the cold grew more and more intense. The crystals were forming
upon the pane, and despite the big peat fire, the temperature in the
room fell point after point. Staring through the pane, Stride could see
nothing save the piled-up snow on the sill, and the myriad fluttering
flakes beyond: each, as he knew, a crystal of surpassing symmetry and
loveliness, each fashioned by the Master in His sky and despatched to
earth, there to be destroyed, trodden, maybe, into mire and filth, and,
rising again, seeking the skies anew, to be transformed by the same Hand
into rain, or dew, or sleet, or snow, ordained to fall as before, and as
before to rise, the eternal symbol of the soul which descends into the
clay, softens it, is tainted and discoloured by it, and then, in
glorious resurrection, ascends to be purged and purified in the place
whence it came.
*CHAPTER XXIII*
*HYMENEAL*
Upon the morning of his wedding-day, Archibald Samphire went into the
church of King's Charteris and prayed before the altar. While he was
praying, Jim Corrance pushed aside the heavy curtain of the west door
and peered in. A whim had seized him. He, the freethinker, the
agnostic, had said to himself that he would like to spend a few minutes
alone in the church where he had been baptised and confirmed. Rank
sentiment! But Jim at heart was a man of sentiment, although he took
particular pains to prove to the world that he was nothing of the sort.
When Jim saw Archibald's fine figure he frowned, thrusting forward his
square chin, and the short hair on the top of his head bristled with
exasperation. Upon each side of the kneeling man were ferns and palms,
whose fronds touched overhead. The priests' stalls were ablaze with
daffodils and primroses picked by the school-children in the water
meadows and woods near Pitt Hall. Through the east window a May sun
streamed in full flood of prismatic colour. The pure rays of the sun
passing through the gorgeous glass absorbed its tints and flung them
lavishly here and there, staining with crimson, or blue, or yellow, the
white lilies which stood upon the altar. Jim smiled derisively. The
fancy struck him that Archie's prayers would absorb, so to speak, the
colours of his mind. The words of the General Thanksgiving occurred to
Jim.
"And we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that
our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and that we shew forth Thy
praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up ourselves
to Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness
all our days."
Surely this set--so Jim reflected--forth Archibald Samphire's pious
ambition. Doubtless he did aspire to give himself to God's service,
particularly that form of it which is held in cathedrals; and he
intended, honestly enough, to walk before Him (and before the world) in
holiness and righteousness all his days (which he had reason to believe
would be long and fruitful).
Archibald rose and walked down the aisle. Jim hid himself behind the
tall font, but he stared curiously at his old school-fellow.
Archibald's face had lost its normal expression of a satisfaction too
smug to please such a critical gentleman as Mr. James Corrance. His
massive features were troubled. He looked humble! Why? Surely the
crimson carpet beneath his feet, bordered with flowers, over-shadowed by
exquisite ferns and rare shrubs, indicated the procession of a
successful life: a majestic march through the hallowed places of Earth
to the Heaven of All Saints beyond!
Had Jim been able to peer within that mighty body, he might have seen a
self-confidence strangely deflated, a conscience quickened by pangs.
The colossus, whose physical prowess had become a glorious tradition at
Harrow and Cambridge, knew himself to be a moral coward, inasmuch as he
had withheld a vital truth from the woman he loved. Fear of losing,
first, her good opinion of him, then the greater fear of losing the
woman altogether, had withered again and again the impulse to say
frankly: "Mark wrote the two sermons which have made me what I am."
Unable to say this, realising that the many opportunities for speech had
passed, he had just vowed solemnly that his transgression should be
expiated by hard work in his new parish. Truly--as Lady Randolph had
said--was Archibald Samphire an unconscious humourist! And before we
leave him to return to Jim, let it be added that the big fellow did not
know (and being the man he was could not possibly have known) that he
had wooed Betty with Mark's words, that he would have wooed in vain with
his own. Not unreasonably, he was absolutely convinced that the
qualities which had won success in everything undertaken by him had
assured this also, the greatest prize of all, a tender, loving wife.
Jim waited till five minutes had passed, then he strolled back to his
mother's house, telling himself that he was a brute, a dog in the
manger, because he had misjudged a God-fearing fellow-creature,
immeasurably his superior, who had won in fair competition a prize
beyond his (Jim's) deserts.
When he returned to his mother's house a trim parlourmaid handed him a
note. She told him at the same time that Mrs. Corrance was taking
breakfast in her own room. Jim nodded, and broke the seal: a lilac
wafer with Betty Kirtling's initials entwined in a cypher.
"Dear old Jim" (Betty wrote): "please come up after breakfast and take
me for a walk.
"Your affectionate Betty."
Betty was installed in The Whim for her wedding; and the Randolphs and
Harry Kirtling--not to mention other relations--were keeping her
company. Since her engagement had been announced, Jim had scarcely seen
her. He had taken the news hard. His clerks, and the jobbers with whom
he dealt found him difficult to please, argumentative, contemptuous, and
a glutton for work throughout that Lenten season.
As Jim approached The Whim, Betty joined him on the drive. He saw that
she was very pale.
"How good of you to come," she exclaimed.
"Good!" growled Jim. "As if I wouldn't cross the Atlantic or the Styx
to walk with you. Where shall we go?"
Betty took a path which led to the lane running at right angles to the
Westchester road. High hedges bordered this lane, with ancient yew
trees at uncertain intervals. To the right lay the best arable land in
King's Charteris, rich alluvial soil, now green with spring wheat; to
the left, the ground ascended in undulating slopes of pasture till it
melted in the downs beyond.
"Sun is going to shine on you," said Jim.
The sun was blazing in a sky limpid after a week's heavy rain. Beneath
its warm beams the soaked landscape seemed to be smiling with
satisfaction. A peculiar odour of fertility, pungent and potent,
assailed the nostrils, the odour of spring, the odour of earth
renascent, rejuvenated, once more a bride.
"I wish it were June instead of May, Jim."
"That's the most absurd superstition."
"Jim, I want to ask a question. Have you seen or heard of Mark?"
Jim looked cross.
"He's in Sutherland."
"Go on, please."
"He doesn't answer my letters," said Jim, after a pause.
"He writes to nobody."
"Did you expect him to write?"
"Yes, I did," said Betty vehemently. "If it had been an ordinary man,
but Mark--Heavens! Why should I beat about the bush with you, Jim?
Once I wanted to marry Mark! You know that. But he didn't want--me."
She paused, blushing, her eyes, pools of brown light, opened wide with
their strange look: entreating, interrogating.
"Which was a woman's reason, I suppose, for engaging yourself to
somebody who did."
The words slipped from him. Caring for Mark, how could she have
accepted Archibald? That cried to Heaven for explanation. He stared at
her, seeing no reproach in her eyes, only a soft shadow of wonder--or
was it regret--or something subtler than either.
"Oh, Jim, feeling as you do about religion, you can't understand. I was
looking down, down into the depths. Archie taught me to look up."
"To him?"
"To God."
"You say that Archibald Samphire revealed God to you?"
"In that sermon at Windsor--yes. If you had heard it----"
"I heard of it. You will be the wife of a bishop some day."
He tried to give the conversation a lighter turn, fearing that she would
speak again of Mark, understanding at last that Mark, standing under
sentence of death, had deliberately hidden his heart from her. What else
could such a man have done? And if Betty realised this, even now, at
the eleventh hour, she might refuse to marry the silver-tongued brother.
And because the temptation to tell her the truth was so poignant, he
resisted it. It lay on his tongue's tip to exclaim: "Good Lord! Is it
possible that you, with your intuitions and sympathies, have failed to
divine Mark's love for you? Can't you understand that his love keeps him
in Sutherland, that he dares not write for fear that he should reveal
it?" At the same time, he knew that marriage between any young woman
and a man suffering from an almost incurable malady was unthinkable.
And if Betty could not marry Mark, was it not better from every point of
view that she should marry his brother? Would not he (Jim) be taking
upon himself a terrible responsibility if he broke the silence which
Mark's self-sacrifice had made sacred? These, and a thousand other
thoughts, jostled each other in his brain.
"That sermon touched me at first, because I thought it was Mark
speaking. Not till then had I realised that Archie possessed the
wonderful power of making life easier, happier, ampler; but why does
Mark, if he cares nothing for me, stand aloof, why--why?"
"It is strange," he admitted slowly.
"Ah," she cried, "you say that reservedly. You, too, have guessed or at
least suspected----"
"What?"
"That Mark is--jealous--of--Archie." The words dropped from her lips as
if she loathed them, as if she loathed herself for speaking them. She
continued quickly: "At Westchester, he was alone with me. I was
thrilling with surprise and admiration. We had underrated Archie; you
know that, Jim. And he had vindicated himself so gloriously. Well, Mark
said nothing, not a word of praise. Oh, it was ungenerous--abominable!
But I did not think so then. But now, what other interpretation can I
put upon his silence?"
When she paused, Jim burst into a vehement defence of Mark. He spoke as
he spoke to his clerks, clenching his fists, thrusting out his chin,
repeating his phrases: "What? You say that? You use such words as
abominable, ungenerous? You, Betty Kirtling? Abominable? Ungenerous?
Well, if he be jealous, is it surprising, is it not most natural?
Abominable? Great Scott! He looks at the man, the brother, who has
everything, everything which he lacks--the physical strength, the
persuasive voice, the luck--the devil's own luck--I don't pick my words,
Betty Kirtling! Why--if he were not jealous, if envy at times did not
tear him, he would not be Mark at all, but some impeccable, immaculate
humbug! Abominable! From--you!"
Betty turned her back, and walked down the lane; Jim hesitated, and
pursued.
"Betty, forgive me! I'm a brute, and this, this is your wedding-day.
Here, give me your hand, both hands! That's better. Tell me I'm a
beast. I deserve kicking. I'll lie down and let you wipe your boots on
me. Your wedding-day--and I've treated you to this."
The feeling in his face went straight to her heart.
"It's all right, Jim," she whispered, half crying, half laughing. "And
I take back--abominable." She sighed, gazing towards the downs where
she and Mark had played truant. Then, with quivering lips and wet eyes,
she murmured, "Poor Mark--poor Mark!" disengaged her hands, and ran down
the lane and out of sight.
After the wedding there was an old-fashioned breakfast at The Whim, with
toasts, speeches, cutting of cake, and so forth. Slowshire came in
force, ate largely, drank deeply, and made merry in the solid, stodgy,
Slowshire way. None the less, to Lady Randolph and other less acute
observers, the function was somewhat depressing. The Whim, where so
many cheery gatherings had taken place, had been sold. The furniture
was to be moved into the Samphires' London house, while the bride and
groom were on their honeymoon. The Squire's wife, in purple satin
slashed with heliotrope silk, supplied every guest who belonged to the
county families with details.
"The dear couple will be so comfortable. No--there is no rectory. They
will live in Cadogan Place. Lord Minstead was glad to sell the lease.
They say, you know, that he--pst--pst--pst----" The speaker's prominent
blue eyes seemed positively to bulge from her plump, pink cheeks, as she
whispered Minstead's unsavoury story into attentive ears. "But, as I was
saying, our dear couple--really the handsomest couple I ever saw in my
life--will be _tres bien installes_. I am to find them a
cook--fifty-five pounds a year--do you know of one? She must be a
_cordon bleu_. Yes, a kitchen _and_ a scullery-maid. They are very well
off, very well off indeed. It is expected that they will entertain----"
The Squire, meantime, exchanged a few words with his old friend Lady
Randolph. His face was flushed and his eyes congested and very puffy
below the lids. Lips and chin, too, had a faint purplish tinge, always
seen on the faces of those afflicted by a certain form of heart disease.
He was certainly failing, Lady Randolph reflected. Still, he had lived
his life, enjoyed the cakes and ale--too much of them!--and might reckon
himself amongst the lucky ones. Pommery had loosened his tongue.
"They will have--this between ourselves, my dear lady--nearly five
thousand a year. Archie has done well. I am very proud of Archie--a
fine fellow--hay? You may call him that--a fine fellow--a very fine
fellow indeed! Sound"--the Squire thumped his own broad chest--"sound
as I am, sound as a bell, and likely to make old bones."
Lady Randolph, with eyes half closed, nodded, wondering if this pitiful
assumption of high health were genuine or assumed. Surely the Squire
must know himself to be no sounder than a big pippin rotten at the core.
He stood beside her, tall, portly, scrupulously dressed as a country
gentleman of the old school; and the purple flush deepened and spread as
he talked.
"Archibald will be a bishop. Do you know that his portrait is coming
out in _Vanity Fair_? The Chrysostom of Sloane Street they call him.
His Advent sermons have been widely discussed. And he will have no land
to bother him. These are hard times for us landowners. Is Randolph
pinched? Of course, he has his town property; but it's different with
me; it's the very deuce with me. I'm worried to death about it."
What was fermenting in his mind had come, as it generally does with such
men, to the surface. Lady Randolph looked unaffectedly sorry, and
expressed her sympathy. The Squire plunged into the interminable
subject of falling prices, rates, impoverished soil, the difficulty of
finding good tenant farmers, and so forth. Not till the bride entered
did he cease from his jeremiads.
"Here is Betty," said Lady Randolph.
She wore a travelling dress of pale grey cloth edged and lined with
lavender silk. Betty had refused to adorn herself in bright colours,
which happened to suit her admirably. A parson's wife, she observed,
should dress soberly, and she quoted the Vicar of Wakefield, to Lady
Randolph's great amusement. A controversy had arisen over this
particular frock. Betty, however, seconded by the dressmaker, had her
own way about it. Now Lady Randolph was certain that her protests had
been justifiable. The dress, lovely though it was in texture and fit,
had a faded appearance; it suggested autumn instead of spring, dun
October, not merry May.
Betty tripped here and there, bidding her friends and neighbours
good-bye, while Archie stood smiling at the door. He looked very large
and imposing in a rough grey serge suit, which fused happily the
clerical garb with that of a bridegroom. Calm and dignified, he
received the congratulations of the men. Once or twice he drew a gold
watch from his pocket--a present from the Dean and Chapter--opened it,
glanced at it, and closed it with a loud click. He had never missed a
train, but the possibility of doing so now impended.
Mrs. Samphire held her handkerchief to her face. Mrs. Corrance's
handkerchief was in her pocket, but her kind eyes were wet. The young
men from the barracks were laughing loudly, cracking jokes with the
bridesmaids, "whooping things up a bit." The elderly guests smiled
blandly, thinking possibly of their own weddings. The children alone
really enjoyed themselves. Jim Corrance waited till the bride had
passed him; then he rushed into the dining-room, where he found two
generals and an Indian judge solemnly employed in finishing the
Admiral's famous Waterloo brandy.
"Wonderful stuff," said the judge, as he passed the decanter to Jim; "it
puts everything right--eh?"
Jim nodded. Through the open doors, leading into the hall, he could see
Betty run down the stairs, followed by Archibald.