Mark remembered his own aphorism: that the best work of men is greater
than themselves. And, if so, the conclusion followed inevitably: this
sermon, infinitely greater than himself, must have been inspired not
from within, but from without--by the Infinite!
"It is getting very dark," said Betty.
"Yes," he replied.
The sun had not reached its zenith, but it was dark indeed for the
speaker. Betty's breath came and went with difficulty, as the heart and
lungs slowly failed. Mark raised her head. Her fingers felt for his
hand. He perceived that she was making a sign on the back of it. At
first he thought it was a caress, but the fingers traced the same sign
again and again--a cross.
He wished to speak of love, but the dreadful lump filled his
throat--strangling him. She was dying, slipping from his grasp. If he
could have believed that a meeting was possible elsewhere, still the
doleful certainty possessed him that the flesh-and-blood woman was
departing for ever. Revolt raged within him, while her finger traced
the symbol of the faith he had abjured, the symbol of the love which
vanquishes hate and death.
Suddenly the finger stopped.
As suddenly, something seemed to break in Mark's heart.
"Betty," he cried, "Betty--do you hear me? I am glad you didn't come.
I shall live to thank God you didn't come."
She opened her eyes, and for the last time he noted that curious
intensity of interrogation by which the full orb of the irid was
revealed. He saw that she could not speak; he knew with conviction that
no speech was necessary. Her lips parted in a faint smile, as if the
last flickering doubt were escaping. Then, with a little shiver, with a
sigh of contentment, her lids fell....
Outside the nurse and Lady Randolph waited, listening. In the library
below sat Archibald Samphire and David Ross. Presently Lady Randolph
went downstairs.
"The doors are locked," she faltered. "And there isn't a sound. I
fear--I fear----"
The others understood instantly.
"Oh, my God--not that!" exclaimed Archibald.
He ran upstairs. At Betty's door he paused, inclining his ear. The
silence within the room chilled him to the marrow. He called Mark by
name, at first in a whisper, then louder, at the last his voice rang
through the house.
"We must break in," he said.
At the first glance it seemed certain that both Mark and Betty lay dead
on the bed. Even the trained eye of the nurse was deceived. But after
a stimulant had been administered, Mark recovered semi-consciousness.
When he opened his eyes he began to speak in his natural voice; then he
laughed--gaily, youthfully.
"That's it, Betty--capital! Pop it over his head! Good! Ha--ha! old
Archie, that did you. I say, I am thirsty...."
He imagined that he was at Pitt Hall playing lawn tennis.
Brain fever set in within twenty-four hours. During his delirium he
called impatiently for his brother, who came trembling. Mark saw only
the boy.
"Why have you stayed away so long?" he asked. "You're not going to leave
me, old chap?"
"No, no," stammered Archibald.
"I say, it is jolly seeing you again."
He stretched out his lean, shrunken hand, which Archibald took.
Presently Mark's vagabond wits wandered to Lord's Cricket Ground.
"Well played!" he screamed. "A boundary hit, by Jove! That's my
brother, you know, old Archie. Isn't he splendid? Isn't he a slogger?
There he goes again. What a smite! Well played, Samphire major! Well
played, sir--_well played_!"
The tears fell down Archibald's cheeks.
"He's been going on like that all night," whispered the nurse; then she
added gently, "He seems to have a wonderful love for you, sir." She was
another nurse, just called in, still ignorant of such gossip as
circulated in the servants' quarters. Constrained to listen to hideous
raving, to heartrending revelations, this delirium of love touched her
to the core. She knew that the famous preacher's wife lay dead in the
next room, and being a tender-hearted woman, strove to comfort him.
"I hear so much that is so shocking," she whispered. "Only the other day
I was nursing a gentleman who cursed his brother, who--died cursing him!
And after that, _this_---- It must be a comfort to you...."
For a fortnight the fever raged. During long hours each day the
brothers were together, united by the mocking fiend of delirium. And
during those hours Mark lived again his youth. Nothing seemed to be
forgotten. But delirium achieved more than reproduction--revelation.
Mark, like all healthy boys, had concealed his love for his brother. Of
the nature and extent of that love the elder had formed no
conception--till now, when its steady stream poured down in flood.
After the first shock of seeing his brother's senseless body, Archibald
told himself (and had said as much to David Ross) that it would be well
if Mark departed in peace out of a world wherein he had suffered
cruelly. But David Ross shook his head.
"He will not die," he said, with conviction, albeit the two doctors in
attendance held the contrary opinion.
And then, gradually, Archibald came to regard his brother's ravings as
the shadows of an inestimable substance. Computing his gains, he
discovered with poignant consternation, that his losses far outweighed
them. His name was in men's mouths; he held power, wealth, health in
the hollow of his hand. But was there one fellow-creature who truly
loved him? Day after day, Mark's innumerable friends came to the door:
Pynsent, confessing that he was unable to work from anxiety; Jim
Corrance, haggard with sleeplessness; Greatorex, who seemed to spend his
time on the doormat; Albert and Mary Batley. And besides these, humbler
friends: waifs and strays, reclaimed drunkards, factory girls, who had
read in the papers that the man who had been kind to them lay dying.
Always Archibald had obtained what he desired; but it never occurred to
him that he desired mean things, or rather that the things so desired
were mean in comparison with other things which he had ignored. None
the less, the habit of seeking strenuously what he coveted remained. He
realised, inexorably, that he coveted his brother's love. And if Mark
died, that love once given so freely, then changed into hate, and at
last given back in awful mockery, would perish with him.
It is possible, of course, that David Ross cleared his vision. He told
David the little which David did not know. In a moment of profound
humiliation he professed himself willing to resign his see. David
indicated other penance, not alien to Christian sense. In and around
Parham, he pointed out, a transgressor might bow the neck beneath the
yoke of a labour harder than any to be found even in convict
establishments. That Archibald should question his fitness for the task
assigned him convinced David of the magnitude of the change within him.
Upon the day, however, when the doctors agreed that the crisis of the
disease was approaching, Archibald's misery reached its culminating
point. Returning life meant sanity. Mark would awake from a sleep which
had lasted forty-eight hours to the realisation of the past, or he would
sink into the coma and collapse which precede dissolution.
After some discussion it was agreed that Mark's eyes, when they opened,
should rest on a face dear and familiar to him, yet dissociated from the
events which had succeeded Betty's marriage. Mrs. Corrance had come to
town; she had helped to nurse Mark; she was staying in the house and
could be summoned at any moment. Accordingly, when at length Mark
Samphire returned from his wanderings, the first person he saw was his
old friend, as she sat sewing at the foot of his bed. She smiled
serenely, waiting for him to speak. None the less, he kept silence so
long that her hand began to tremble. She was sure that he was conscious
and that he must be thinking of Betty.
"Have I been ill?" he asked gravely.
She rose at once, bent over him, touched his hand, and murmured: "Very
ill. Brain fever. Keep quiet."
She laid the tips of her fingers upon his eyelids, gently pressing them
down. He let them fall, and asked no more questions. But later, after
he had taken some food, he said with a smile: "Betty told me that I must
wait."
Within twenty-four hours word went forth from those in authority that he
would live; but to Archibald's recurrent question, one answer alone was
possible. Mark had not spoken his brother's name. Archibald's anxiety
became hourly more poignant. If a glimpse of love had been vouchsafed
him, in order that he might realise that it lay for ever beyond his
reach, then of all men he would reckon himself the most unhappy.
Mark did not break silence, when he learned that he was in his brother's
house. David was allowed to visit him, but the bishop spoke only of the
waifs from the slums around the mission, who had not forgotten an old
friend.
"But Bagshot killed his wife," said Mark.
David changed the subject. When he said good-bye, Mark said curtly:
"I've been a beast to you, Davie. Is it all right?"
Ross repeated Mark's words to Archibald, who was waiting in the passage:
"I think it is all right," said he. Then he added, pressing the other's
hand: "He is asking for pardon."
That night the nurse who had come to him first, and who had tended him
so skilfully, sat alone with him. Her perceptions had warned her that
she was in a house where tragedy had been enacted. She knew that her
patient had been found, stricken down upon the death-bed of his
brother's wife, that the husband had held aloof at that most solemn
hour.
Presently, as she was giving Mark some broth, he asked if he had raved
in his delirium. Other questions followed. He learned of Archibald's
presence at his bedside, of his ministrations. Incredulity melted into
astonishment and then into an expression which the nurse could not
define.
"You were never easy for a moment," she concluded, "unless your brother
was with you."
"And he----?"
"It gave him real comfort to wait on you, poor gentleman!"
"Thank you," said Mark. "Good night, nurse!"
Next morning he asked for a mirror, exclaiming, when he saw his face:
"What a scarecrow!" Later, he begged the doctor to allow him to send
for a barber. For some years he had worn a beard, which, however
closely clipped, had greatly altered him. When the man came, Mark
ordered him to shave all hair from his face. This done, he called again
for the mirror.
"Do you see much change?" he asked the nurse.
"I hardly recognise you."
"Others will r-recognise me," he said.
With his back to the light he looked the Mark who had ascended the
pulpit at King's Charteris. His face was thin, pale, and hollow-cheeked.
The fever had taken from him the flesh and colour which life in the open
air had given him. Presently David Ross called and was admitted.
"Mark!"
He stood upon the threshold, staring. Mark smiled.
"Will you do me a favour?" he said, as the nurse slipped from the room.
"I have not seen," he paused for a moment, nervously, "m-m-my
b-b-brother yet. Will you ask him to c-c-come to me?"
A year later Pynsent wrote to Jim Corrance from Parham Castle.
"Parham has gained far more than Literature has lost. Here, Mark is the
power behind the throne. _A propos_, I have painted Archibald on his
throne in the sanctuary of Parham Cathedral. Everything, however, is
subordinated to the face, upon which a ray of light falls obliquely. The
expression you will hardly recognise, till you come here. When it was
done, Archibald stared at it for many minutes. Then he said in his
rather heavy way: 'It's a portrait; you have looked beneath these.' He
indicated the robes. _The man looks years older_. But Mark has got
back his youthful appearance, his high spirits, his keenness, his power
of getting enjoyment out of what most of us would consider tedious and
disagreeable. As his brother's secretary and confidential adviser, he
knows that he has found himself. Archibald reaps all the honour and
glory: and the sheaves are heavy. If praise, as Keble says, be our
penance here, the Bishop of Parham will wear a hair shirt till he dies.
He tells everybody, with pathetic earnestness, that his brother is the
senior partner in the firm--and, of course, nobody believes him. Mark
sticks to his red tie, and hunts once a week with Kirtling's hounds. He
stammers worse than ever when he gets excited. It may seem amazing to
you--it is certainly amazing to me--but Mark has the look of a happy,
healthy man; and his nephew, so curiously like Betty, adores him."
Jim showed this letter to his mother.
"All the same," he remarked; "Mark ought to have married Betty. I am
sure of that."
Mrs. Corrance laid down her embroidery. She and Jim were keeping house
together: it being agreed that the winter should be spent in town and
the summer in the country.
"I am not sure," she answered slowly. "I used to pray that Betty would
marry you, but how many have profited by my 'losing of my prayers'?
David Ross might make a guess."
Jim flushed. Only his mother knew that he had contributed large sums of
money and much time to the Bishop of Poplar's East End enterprises.
"My dear son," Mrs. Corrance touched his hand with her delicate fingers,
"try to believe that Betty died in order that the three men who loved
her might live."