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Title: Brothers: The True History of a Fight Against Odds

Creator: Horace Annesley Vachell

Release date: October 4, 2014 [eBook #47047]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROTHERS:
THE TRUE HISTORY OF A FIGHT AGAINST ODDS ***

BROTHERS
THE TRUE HISTORY OF
A FIGHT AGAINST ODDS

BY
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1905

FIRST EDITION . . May 1904
Reprinted . . June 1904

Reprinted . . August 1904
Reprinted . . November 1904

Reprinted . . December 1904
Reprinted . . The same month
Reprinted . . January 1905

Copyright in the United
States of America by

Horace Annesley Vachell

TO ALL MEN AND WOMEN
WHO HAVE STRIVEN:
TO THE STRONG
WHO HAVE ATTAINED THEIR GOAL,
TO THE WEAK
WHO HAVE MADE THE RUNNING FOR THE STRONG,
AND IN PARTICULAR TO THOSE
WHO HAVE CONFRONTED ILL-FORTUNE, ILL-HEALTH,
AND DISAPPOINTMENT
WITH FORTITUDE AND SERENITY,
I DEDICATE THIS
BOOK

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A DRAMA IN SUNSHINE
JOHN CHARITY
THE PROCESSION OF LIFE
LIFE AND SPORT ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE
THE SHADOWY THIRD
THE PINCH OF PROSPERITY

PREFATORY NOTE

It is likely that the brothers in this book will be recognised by some readers
who may indict the good taste of revealing a secret guarded jealously

during many years. To these let it be said that the brother who attained to
the highest honours and dignities of his profession earnestly desired that the
truth concerning certain incidents in his earlier career should be told in a
biography. A desire he was constrained reluctantly to forego. The story of
the Samphires satisfies adequately enough the exigencies of a peculiar case.
The many are not concerned; the few will discern truth through the thin veil
of fiction.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER

Prologue

I. Bubble and Squeak
II. Billy's *v.* Bashan's
III. Which contains a Fortune
IV. Miss Hazelby is Shocked
V. Valete
VI. At Burlington House
VII. The Hunt Ball
VIII. Barbizon
IX. At King's Charteris
X. After Three Years
XI. In Love's Pleasaunce
XII. Betty in Stepney
XIII. Bagshot on the Rampage
XIV. A Moral Exigency
XV. Aphrodite Smiles and Frowns

XVI. Westchester Cathedral
XVII. Surrender!
XVIII. Ariadne in Naxos
XIX. A Sanatorium in Sutherland
XX. Betty sees a Sprig of Rue
XXI. Recuperation
XXII. On Ben Caryll
XXIII. Hymeneal
XXIV. A Red Tie
XXV. Mark Hears a Bleating
XXVI. Readjustment
XVII. In Grub Street
XVIII. A Sunday in Cadogan Place
XXIX. The Procession of Life
XXX. A Note of Interrogation
XXXI. Betty sees Danger Signals
XXII. Betty makes Good Resolutions
XXIII. Illumination
XXIV. Charing Cross
XXV. Chrysostom Returns to Chelsea
XXVI. Fenella
XVII. Poppy and Mandragora
XVIII. Gonzales
XXIX. At the Miraflores
XL. "Come!"
XLI. The Power Behind the Throne

BROTHERS

PROLOGUE

Mark Samphire clutched tightly his mother's hand, as the big room began to
fill with people. Some he knew, and these he feared: because they might
speak to him, and then he would stammer, and choke, and make a piteous
spectacle of himself. He wished that he were his brother, Archibald,
standing on the other side of his mother, Archie, the pink-skinned and
golden-haired, a tremendous fellow clad in a new sailor suit, and tolerably
self-possessed, but pinker than usual, because a lady in lavender silk had
hugged him and called him "a darling." Nobody called Mark a darling
except his mother, and that only when they were alone. The fat butler kept
shouting out more names. Mrs. Corrance and Jim arrived. Mark hoped they
would sit near him. Jim was his own age—a ripe seven—and a sworn
friend. Lord Randolph talked to Admiral Kirtling, the funny man who made
everybody laugh. Ah! Jim had pushed his way through the crowd. In a
minute the two boys were whispering together, nineteen to the dozen, for
Mark seldom stammered when he talked to Jim.
An older person than Mark would have seen on the faces of the
assembled company an air of expectation. Big folding-doors, now shut,
divided the drawing-room from the library. Upon these the eyes of the
women lingered, for behind them stood mystery and—so it was reported—
beauty! Meantime they chattered, talking for the most part about the house,
newly built, and well named The Whim. Miss Selina Lamb, one of the

Lambs from Cranberry-Orcas, who had so many relations that she was
never out of half-mourning, gave information to the Dean of Westchester.
"I assure you, Mr. Dean, that it is a fact. The dear Admiral got into a
fly at Westchester—he carried nothing but a white umbrella, and told the
man, Thomas Pinnick, who has driven me a score of times, to take him to
'some salubrious locality.' Thomas, quite properly, drove him here across
the downs. The west wind was blowing strongly, and the dear man thought
he was in the chops—it is chops, isn't it?—yes, in the chops of the Channel.
He gave Thomas Pinnick a sovereign, and bought this hill within the week.
Now he has built this remarkable house."
The Dean smiled, admitting that the house might be described as
remarkable. Bedrooms covered the ground floor; above these the sitting-
rooms commanded a fine view of the pastoral county of Slowshire; at the
top of the house were the kitchen and servants' offices!
"I understand," said Mr. Dean, "that food descends like manna from
above, and that the common odours of leek and cabbage ascend, and are
smelled of none, save perhaps the skylarks."
"You always put things so poetically," murmured Miss Lamb. "Yes,
you are right. The still-room is just above the library."
"Where it should be, my dear Miss Lamb. I hope the Admiral's
housekeeper wears list slippers."
Miss Lamb, sensible that the Dean was making a joke which she could
not quite understand, smiled, showing large even teeth, and asked if Mr.
Dean had ever met the young lady in whose honour they had gathered
together. Mr. Dean had not met the young lady, but he had known,
intimately, her mother. Miss Lamb blushed.
"She was charming," murmured the Dean absently, "the most
fascinating creature."

The spinster sniffed her surprise, reflecting that her companion was a
radical. A true blue, the bishop, for instance, would not have mentioned the
mother at all. She felt it her duty to bleat a feeble protest.
"She behaved so shockingly, Mr. Dean."
"True, true, but she was very young, Miss Lamb. Poor, pretty creature!
And now—dead!"
Miss Lamb closed her thin lips, and her large, too prominent, china-
blue eyes settled upon a portrait just opposite: the portrait of Colonel
Kirtling, the Admiral's elder brother, the father of the mystery behind the
folding-doors, and the husband of the pretty creature who had behaved so
shockingly. The picture, painted by Richmond, was not unlike the famous
portrait of Lord Byron. Colonel Fred Kirtling had been one of the
handsomest men in the Guards. Richmond reproduced his curling auburn
hair, his short upper lip, his finely modelled nose, his round chin with a
distracting (the adjective was Lady Blessington's) dimple in it, and his
"wicked" (Lady B. again) eyes.
"Did you know Colonel Kirtling, Mr. Dean?"
"Yes. A sad scamp, Miss Lamb, a scamp when he married—at sixty!"
He began to speak of the Kirtling family. Admiral Kirtling was the
fourth son of the sixteenth Lord Kirtling, of Kirtling, in the county of
Cumberland, who married a Penberthy from Cornwall, an heiress with a
large fortune settled upon herself and her children. The seventeenth lord
inherited whatever his sire had been unable to sell: Kirtling heavily
mortgaged and stripped of its huge leaden roof (gambled away at hazard)
and the wild moors which encompass it. This nobleman lived and died in
chronic resentment against the poverty his father had inflicted upon him.
His brother succeeded, and was the father of a son whom we shall meet by
and by. Fred, the third brother, who had a royal duke for a godfather,

married Louise de Courcy, a beauty with French blood in her veins. It is
certain that she married Fred for love and against the wishes of her parents;
and it is equally certain that she left him—just four years afterwards—
because she loved somebody else much better. This somebody, who
happened to be a peer and a famous soldier, offered Fred such satisfaction
as one gentleman, even in those latter days, might tender an injured
husband. Fred, however, wrote in reply that he was under an obligation to
his lordship for taking off his hands the most ungrateful hussy in the
kingdom. Fred's word, be it added, was little better than his bond (the
children of Israel knew that to be worthless); and it is significant that Mrs.
Kirtling's family, both French and Irish, abused Fred to all-comers:
asserting that he had deceived dozens of women in his time, and none more
cruelly than his charming wife. Death shut the mouths of the gossips by
carrying off both Fred and Louise within six months of the latter's
elopement.
By this time the Admiral, a bachelor of some eccentricity, had just
settled into his new house at King's Charteris, near Westchester, and was
known to be averse to leaving it. Yet he had to answer the question: "Who
will take care of Fred's baby?" Lady Randolph, a kinswoman, was called
into council.
"Children are the devil," said the Admiral gloomily. "Think of my
nymphs." (He had some beautiful china).
"This one may prove the prettiest of them all," said Lady Randolph.
"Yes, yes; father and mother the handsomest couple, even if forty years
were between 'em. Well, well, I lean on you, dear lady."
Lady Randolph did not fail him. She fetched the child from town, gave
the nurse, an impudent town minx, twenty-four hours' notice, and installed

in her place a respectable girl, Esther Gear, out of her own village of Birr
Wood.
So much, and little more, was known to the company assembled in the
Admiral's drawing-room.
Presently the big folding-doors were flung open, and Lady Randolph
passed through, leading by the hand little Elizabeth Kirtling. A buzz of
admiration greeted Betty. She wore a delicate India muslin frock, encircled
by a rose-coloured sash. Rose-coloured shoes embellished her tiny feet, and
a knot of the same coloured riband glowed in her dark curls, which framed
an oval face. The Admiral had told Esther Gear that he would tolerate no
black, which came, he said, into people's lives soon enough. Round her
neck was a string of coral beads which matched the tints of her cheeks. Her
great hazel eyes shone demurely beneath their thick black lashes, and when
she smiled her lips parted, revealing a fairy's set of teeth between two
dimples. The Admiral met his niece on the threshold of the room, took her
hand, and patted it softly. Then he led her forward. The finely proportioned
saloon, filled with rare and beautiful things, the silver light of an October
afternoon, the many faces—young and old alike touched and interested—
served as a setting for the grizzled veteran, with his whimsical weather-
beaten face seamed by a thousand lines, and the diminutive creature at his
side. Mrs. Samphire let two tears trickle unheeded down her thin cheeks,
but her pretty mouth was smiling. Mark felt that his mother's grasp had
tightened. Perhaps she foresaw, poor lady, that the time appointed for her to
leave her sons was near at hand. Mark stared hard at the little girl as if
indeed—as was true—he had never seen her like.
Now it seems that the Admiral had told his niece, with a twinkle in his
kind eyes, that the drawing-room was her room: the state apartment of the
only lady of his house. And so, when Betty looked up and saw many

strange faces about her she recalled an adjective too often in her father's
mouth, and said clearly and loudly: "Uncle, what are all dese dam peoples
doing in my room?"
When the laughter died down, the Admiral said with his queer chuckle:
"Egad! this is a maid of surprises"; but he was careful to explain to his niece
that his friends were her friends, to be honoured and loved by her. The
child's mouth puckered, and her great eyes were troubled.
"I can't love all dese peoples," she protested, on the edge of tears. The
Admiral laughed.
"You must pick and choose, Betty. 'Tis the privilege of your sex. Come
now, who pleases you best?"
She understood perfectly: examining the company with dignified
curiosity. Finally, her eyes rested upon the three boys at Mrs. Samphire's
side.
"I like dem boys," she said clearly.
The three boys were confused but charmed.
"She likes the boys, the coquette!" exclaimed the Admiral. "And which
of the three, missie, do you like best?"
The boys blushed because the company stared at them. Archie, the
handsome one, stood nearest to little Betty, and seeing her hesitation held
out his hands; Jim Corrance smiled invitingly; Mark, the stammerer,
attempted no lure, dismally conscious that he could not compete against the
others, but his forget-me-not blue eyes, the only fine feature he possessed,
suffused a soft radiance.
"I love him!" cried Betty, running forward. She passed Archie and Jim,
flinging her arms round Mark's neck, who bashfully returned her eager
kisses.

"Um!" said the Admiral, half smiling, half frowning, "as I remarked
just now, here is a Maid of Surprises."

CHAPTER I
BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

This is the history of a fighter, a fighter against odds, whose weapons were
forged at Harrow-on-the-Hill. Afterwards, in Mark Samphire's eyes, all
school buildings, even the humblest, had a certain sanctity, because they are
strewn with precious dust, the pulverem Olympicum, so pungent to the
nostrils of a combatant. To him, for instance, the ancient Fourth Form
Room at Harrow was no battered mausoleum of dead names, but a glorious
Campus Martius, where Byron, Peel, and other immortal youths wrestled
with their future, even as Jacob wrestled with the angel.
Mark and his friend Jim Corrance became Harrovians when they were
fourteen, taking their places in the First Shell, the highest form but one open
to new boys. Archibald Samphire, their senior by eighteen months, had just
reached the Upper Remove, two forms ahead of the First Shell.
The three boys travelled together from King's Charteris to London; but
at Euston Mark and Jim were bundled by Archie into a first-class carriage,
with instructions to sit still and not "swagger." Archie joined some swells on
the platform. One of these Olympians lighted a cigar, which he smoked for
a couple of minutes, throwing it away with the observation that really he
must tell the dear old governor to buy better weeds.
"How do you feel, Mark?" whispered Jim.

"If I l-looked as small as I f-f-feel," said Mark, "you wouldn't be able
to s-s-see me."
An hour later they stood in the schoolyard. Here "bill" was called; here
yard-cricket, beloved by many generations of boys, was played; here,
peering out of his cell, might be seen the rosy, clean-shaven face of old
Sam, Custos, as the Doctor called him; that sly old Sam who sold all things
pertaining to Harrow games at a preposterous profit; who prepared the rods,
who was present when those rods fell hurtling upon the bare flesh—Sam of
the fair, round belly, Sam of the ripe, ruby-coloured nose, who has led
bishops, statesmen, field-marshals, peers and baronets, members of
Parliament, members of the Bar, members of the Stock Exchange—to the
BLOCK! Can it be possible that Sam has passed away? Surely not. Is he not
part and parcel of the Yard? And when the Yard lies silent and deserted,
when the moonbeams alone play upon it, when the school clock tolls
midnight, does not the ghost of old Sam fare forth on his familiar rounds,
keeping watch and ward in the ancient precincts?
From the Yard Archibald escorted Mark and Jim to Billy's, their
boarding-house, where the boys found themselves joint tenants of a two-
room, a piece of good fortune (for there were several three-rooms and one
four-room) which they owed partly to Archie, as he was careful to inform
them, and partly to the high places they had taken in the school. Long and
narrow, with a door at one end and a window at the other, this room
contained two battered fold-up bedsteads, two washhand-stands, two
bureaux, a shabby carpet, a table, a fireplace, and three Windsor chairs.
Here the boys were expected to work, to sleep, and to eat breakfast and tea.
No room, according to Mark, has since given him the pleasure and pride
which he derived from this. And Jim Corrance, after he had made his
enormous fortune, liked to speak of the first sporting-prints which he

bought and of the moth-eaten head of a red deer, a nine-pointer, found in an
attic at Pitt Hall, the home of the Samphires.
This first summer half was as pleasant as any Mark spent at Harrow.
He learned to swim in "Ducker," the school bathing-place, a puddle in those
days, but since greatly enlarged and improved; he was taught to play cricket
with a straight bat; he lay upon the green slopes of the Sixth Form Ground
and ate ices; he spent his exeat at Randolph House in Belgrave Square, and
witnessed at "Lord's" the defeat of the Eton eleven from the top of Lord
Randolph's coach, returning to Harrow with a sovereign in his pocket, pride
in his heart, and heaven knows what mixture of pie and pudding and
champagne in his small stomach!
At Billy's the colour, tone, and texture of the "house" were
exceptionally good. Billy treated his boys as gentlemen. Some dominies
play the spy, thereby turning boys into enemies instead of friends; Billy
always coughed discreetly when making his rounds. And if he had reason to
suspect a boy of conduct unbecoming an Harrovian, he would send for him
and speak to him quietly, or perhaps, if the offender was a good fellow, ask
him to breakfast or dinner, heaping food upon his plate and coals of fire
upon his head. His favourite warning may be quoted: "I have had my eye on
you for some time." But Mark knew, even then, that Billy's eyes were none
of the best, and that often they pretended not to see much that a wise man
overlooks.
The first year passed quickly. Mark and Jim found themselves in the
Lower Remove at the beginning of the winter half, where they achieved the
distinction of a "double," jumping over the Upper Remove into the Third
Fifth, known as "Paradise," a place so pleasant that some boys refused to
leave it. One could say to aunts and uncles, "Oh, I'm in the Fifth," and few
were unkind enough to ask, "Which Fifth?" Here they found Archie and a

friend of his, Lubber West, who in these latter days doubtless would have
been superannuated, and not without cause. Archie and the Lubber practised
what they called the "co-operative system of work." They would come to
Mark's room and sit upon the sofa with a large gallipot of strawberry-ice
between them. Then Mark and Jim were instructed to "mug up" forty lines
of Euripides. This took time, and meanwhile the ice was consumed and
anything else in the form of light refreshment which might be offered.
When Mark was ready to construe, Archie and the Lubber produced a
couple of battered books, and listened attentively enough to what Mark had
to say, noting in light pencil marks unfamiliar verbs and nouns. In this way,
as Archie observed, much valuable time was saved, and the lesson
honourably learned. Archie had a number of "cribs," but, as elder brother,
he denounced their use by Mark as immoral. "Samphire major has given us
a very 'Smart'[#] translation," was one of Billy's bon mots, not original with
him by any means, but accepted by his pupils as proof of wit and
gentlemanlike satire.

[#] Horace was translated by Smart.

During this half, Archibald was working hard at cricket, under the kindly
eyes of those famous coaches, the late Lord Bessborough and Mr. Robert
Grimston. He had more than a chance of playing for the school; and
accordingly he pointed out to Mark that it was the minor's duty to help his
major with Greek and Latin. "If I do get my straw,"[#] he said, "you will
reap your reward." This unconscious humorist was now a glorious specimen
of Anglo-Saxon youth. He had crisp yellow hair, curling tightly over a
round, well-proportioned head, the clear, ruddy skin which from the days of
David has always commanded admiration, and a tenor voice of peculiarly

fine quality. Mark was his humble and adoring slave. Now, it chanced that
in a shop half-way down Harrow Hill two young women possessed of
bright complexions and waspish waists served hot chocolate and buttered
toast to boys coming up from the playing fields, and in particular to certain
boys of Billy's. Behind the shop was a back room, into which two or three
big fellows were admitted. In a certain set it became the thing to drop into
Brown's at half-past four and have a lark with the girls. The girls were able
to take care of themselves; the boys lost their heads. Because Archie's head
was a pretty one, the girls were not particularly anxious that he should find
it. During the Christmas term he and a boy from another house were in and
out of Brown's half a dozen times a day, and the school wondered what
would happen.

[#] The black-and-white straw hat only worn by members of the school eleven.

"I l-l-loathe those girls," said Mark; "one b-b-bubbles and one squeaks."
Billy's seized the phrase. Within a week the girls were known as
Bubble and Squeak. One of the fags pinned a card to Archie's door:—
"Which do you like best: chocolate and buttered toast or Bubble and
Squeak?"
"What can we do?" said Mark to Jim.
"Is it Bubble or Squeak?" Jim asked.
"I d-d-don't know or care; they're vulgar b-b-beasts. Old Archie has a
lock of hair. They've given away tons of it: enough to stuff a sofa."
"They can get more from the same old place," said Jim.
"Oh, it's their own," said Mark. "I hate marmalade-coloured hair—
don't you?"

It was after this brief dialogue that Jim noticed a falling off of Mark's
interest in his work. For the first time a copy of Iambics deserved some of
the remarks which the form-master made upon them. During the next
fortnight this negligence, coupled with his stutter and a temporary deafness,
sent Mark to the bottom of his class. Jim asked for an explanation.
"It's old Archie. He's playing the devil with himself."
"Let him," said Jim, who was no altruist. "What's the good of
worrying? We can't do anything."
"Perhaps we c-c-can," said Mark. "We must," he added.
"You have a scheme?"
Mark nodded. "I d-d-don't know w-what you'll say to it."
"I can't say anything till I hear it."
"S-suppose I give Billy a hint?"
The scheme was so alien to a boy's conception of the word "honour,"
such a violation of an unwritten code—in fine, such a desperate remedy—
that Jim gasped.
"D-don't look like that!" said Mark sharply. "C-can't you see that I
loathe it—as—you do. If m-mother were alive I'd write to her. But if I told
father, he would come bellowing down, and behave like a bull in a china
shop. There would be a jolly r-r-row then."
"Mark," said Jim, "Archie is big enough to look after himself."
"It's worse than you think," Mark said. "He's meeting this g-g-girl after
lock-up. He gets out of the pantry window. I daresay he's squared one of the
Tobies" (Toby was the generic name for footmen). "And it's frightfully r-r-
risky. If he's nailed, he'll be sacked."
"What a silly old ass!" said Jim.
"He runs these frightful risks—for what? To kiss a girl who bubbles at
the mouth!"

"It's the one who squeaks," Jim amended. "And she's an artful dodger.
She thinks he'll marry her. All right, I'll go with you to Billy after prayers
to-night."
"I'll go alone."
"You won't."
"I will."
"No."
"Yes; yes; yes."
Jim's obstinacy prevailed. After prayers, the boys waited in the
passage. Jim had been swished by the Doctor in the Fourth Form Room,
and his sensations before execution reproduced themselves. Mark seemed
cool and collected.
"Sit down," said Billy. "Open your books."
Mark laid his Thucydides upon the table.
"Bless my soul!" ejaculated Billy. He had pushed up his spectacles
while he was speaking. Now, he polished a pair of pince-nez and popped
them on his nose. Nervousness is contagious.
"We have c-c-come here to t-t-tell you, s-sir, s-s-something which you
ought to know."
The house-master blinked, and glanced at both doors. One
communicated with the passage, the other opened into the drawing-room,
where his wife was playing one of Strauss's waltzes: Wein, Weib und
Gesang. Whenever Jim heard this waltz he could conjure up a vision of that
square, cosy, book-lined room, the big desk littered with papers, and behind
it the burly figure of Billy, his eyes blinking interrogation. He let Mark take
his own time.
"Something wrong in the house?" said Billy.
"Yes, sir."

Billy seized a quill pen, and began to bite it.
"Isn't this a serious step for you boys to take?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes, sir."
His gravity became portentous. Perhaps he feared an abominable
revelation.
"You both understand," he coughed nervously, "that I may be
compelled to act on what you choose to tell me; and if what you have to say
implicates—er—others, if others may—er—have to—er—suffer, perhaps
severely," he nodded so emphatically that his pince-nez fell off, "it may be
well for you to—er—in fact—to," he blew his nose violently, "to bid me—
Good night."
"Not yet," said Mark firmly.
Billy's hesitation vanished.
"Go on," he said curtly. "Speak plainly, and conceal nothing."
Mark told his story. He made no mention of the pantry window, nor of
the meetings after lock-up. For the rest, he spoke with a conciseness and
practical common sense which filled Jim with admiration. As he was
concluding, Billy began to smile.
"You are both good fellows, and I'm obliged to you. You must dine
with me. I shall pull a string or two, and our—er—marionettes, mark that
word; it is pat; our marionettes shall dance elsewhere."
"Not Archie?" gasped Mark.
"No. We can't spare Archibald. I undertake to handle him. Silly fellow,
very silly fellow! His father and mother put a better head on your shoulders,
my boy"; he tapped Mark's cheek. "And now open old Thicksides. Eh,
what? you know your lesson? Then let's hear it." Jim got rather red. "I
shan't put you on, Corrance, but Samphire minor and I will construe for
your benefit. Fire away, Samphire minor."

The boys went back to their room to find Archie at full length on the
sofa. His greeting justified Billy's sagacity in keeping Mark to construe
Thucydides. "What a time you fellows have been! I suppose Billy gave you
half a dozen readings. Well, let's have 'em, late though it is. I must get my
remove this half."
So no suspicion was excited.
Within the week Bubble and Squeak mysteriously disappeared, and
Samphire major had an interview with his house-master. What passed was
not revealed at the time, but, later, Archie gave Mark some details, which
are set down with the premiss that a minor canon of Westchester Cathedral
is speaking, not a Fifth Form boy at Harrow.
"Do you remember those girls at Brown's?" he said. "Well, I fell in
love with one of them. What? You knew it? Oh! Oh, indeed! The whole
school knew it? Ah, well, Billy knew it too. Sent for me, and behaved like a
gentleman. Made me blubber like a baby. I give you my word I never felt
quite so cheap. It wasn't what he said, but what he left unsaid. And I
promised him that I would have nothing more to do with Squeak. He told
me a thing or two about her which opened my eyes; she was a baggage, but
pretty, very pretty: an alluring little spider. I felt at the time I would go
through fire and water to her——"
"Not to mention a pantry window," said Mark, grinning.
"You don't mean to say that you knew that too? Well, well, it might
have proved an ugly scrape."
For a year after this incident, the sun shone serenely in the Samphire
firmament. The brothers moved up out of Paradise, into the Second Fifth,
Paradise Lost, and thence into the First Fifth, Paradise Regained, singing
pæans of praise and thanksgiving. This was at the beginning of Mark's third
summer half, the half when Archie made a great score at Lord's, carrying

out his bat for eighty-seven runs in the first innings; the half, also, when
Mark received his "cap,"[#] the night before the match wherein Billy's
became cock house at cricket!

[#] The "cap" is the house cricket-cap, given to members of the house eleven.

CHAPTER II
BILLY'S v. BASHAN'S

During this summer half Mark and Jim built some castles, in which, as you
will see, they were not called upon to live. If Fate made men dwell in the
mansions of their dreams how many of us would find ourselves queerly
housed? Mark's castles were military fortresses. He had the pipeclay in his
marrow, whereas Jim saw the Queen's red through his friend's spectacles.
The boys studied the lives of famous captains, from Miltiades to
Wellington, and at tea and breakfast would fight the world's great battles
with such well-seasoned troops as chipped plates and saucers, a battered
salt-cellar and pepper-pot, a glass milk-jug, and a Britannia metal teapot,
which would not pour properly. India, and in particular the Indian frontier,
was their battlefield: the scene of a strife such as the world has not yet
witnessed; a struggle between the Slav and the Anglo-Saxon for the
supremacy of the world. Mark boldly reached for a marshal's bâton; Jim
modestly contented himself with the full pay of a general, the Victoria
Cross, and a snug little crib in a good hunting country.
Sometimes Archie deigned to listen to them, but he was not
encouraging in his comments.

"You, a soldier!" he would exclaim, looking at Mark's narrow chest
and skinny arms; "why you'd die of fatigue in your first campaign. I advise
you to be a schoolmaster."
"You have f-f-forgotten" (most boys would have said "you don't
know"), "you have forgotten," Mark replied, "that Alexander was a small
man; and Nelson, and Napoleon, and Wellington."
"Pooh, they were hard as nails."
That same evening Mark said: "I'm g-going to the Gym" (gymnasium)
"every day, till I get hard as nails."
"Not in the summer?" Jim exclaimed.
"Yes; I'll have the place to myself—so much the better."
He worked indefatigably, and Jim was asked to feel his biceps about
four times a day.
About the middle of June Jim made a discovery. High up, on one of
the inside panels of his bedstead, he found the name of a gallant fellow who
had fought gloriously in the Indian Mutiny.
"I'd like to sleep in his bed," said Mark.
"What a rum chap you are!" Jim exclaimed.
"If I sleep in his bed I may d-dream of him," Mark replied.
They changed beds with mutual satisfaction; for Jim's had a trick of
collapsing in the middle of the night.
Later on Jim made another discovery: subjective this time. Mark was
overdoing himself: working mind and muscle too hard. Never was spirit
more willing, nor flesh more weak. One day, a sultry day in the middle of
July, he fainted in school. That night Billy detained Jim after prayers.
"Entre nous, I am uneasy about Samphire minor," he said. "And as two
heads are better than one I've sent for you, his friend and—er—mine. What
do you suggest?"

At that moment Jim would have gone to the rack for Billy. As Jim
suggested nothing, Billy continued: "The case presents difficulties, but
difficulties give an edge to life—don't they?"
"Sometimes," said Jim cautiously; for Billy had a trick of leading
fellows on to make fools of themselves.
"Samphire minor goes too fast at his fences."
Billy knew that any allusion to the hunting-field was not wasted on
Jim.
"And the fences," continued Billy thoughtfully, "are rather big for
Samphire minor."
"And he won't ride cunning," added Jim.
"Just so. Thank you, my dear fellow; you follow me, I see. Now
Samphire major, big though he is, takes advantage of the—er—gaps."
"Rather," said Jim.
"Humph!" Billy stroked his ample chin. Jim was reflecting that his
tutor was too heavy for a first-flight man, but that in his day he must have
been a thruster.
"In fine, not to put too fine a point on it, we must interfere."
"Yes," said Jim, swelling visibly.
"We must head him off, throw him out, teach him that valuable lesson,
how to reculer pour mieux sauter."
If Billy had a weakness (a faible, he would have said), it was in the use
of French, which he spoke perfectly.
"Ye-es," said Jim, not so confidently.
"Now, how would you set about it?"
"I, sir? If you please, sir, I don't see my way, but I'll follow your lead
blindly, sir!"
Billy smiled, and polished his pince-nez.

"We shall move slow. The blind leading the blind. Both of you expect
to be in the Sixth next September? Yes. Suppose—I only say suppose—
suppose you were left—where you are?"
"Oh, sir!"
"Come, come, I thought Paradise Regained was the jolliest form in the
school."
"It is," said Jim, "but——"
"You are rather young and small for the Sixth. Why, God bless me!
only the other day you were fags. Now, if I gave you my word that there
would be no real loss of time, that you would fare farther and better by
taking it easy, what would you say?"
"I say—all right, sir."
"Good boy! Wise boy! Leave the rest to me! I shall see that Samphire
major goes up, which is fitting. The height will give him—er—poise, not
avoirdupois, of which he has enough already. Samphire minor will not
complain if you keep him company. Good night. À propos—will you and
Samphire minor dine with us next Tuesday? A glass of champagne will do
neither of you any harm."
Next term Mark became less angular, and some colour came into his
thin cheeks. Both Jim and he played football hard in the hope of obtaining a
"fez."[#] Harrow, like Eton and Winchester, has a game of football
peculiarly its own, differing from "socker" in that it is lawful to give what is
called "yards." A boy, for instance, dribbling the ball, may turn and kick it
to one of his own side. If this manoeuvre be executed neatly, the other boy
catches it and yells: "Yards!" Then the opposite side retires three yards from
the spot where the ball was caught, and the catcher is given a free kick,
which at a critical point of the game may prove of value. In Billy's brute

force rather than finesse informed the play, a fact which had not escaped
Mark's notice.

[#] Worn by members of the house football eleven.

"We lose lots of goals," said Mark to Jim, "because we try to rush 'em,
instead of giving 'yards' and taking it coolly. Let's you and I practise 'yards'
till we have it p-pat. Our best players f-foozle awfully."
Accordingly they bought a football and kicked it secretly and
assiduously, Mark insisting that "yards" should not be given by them in the
ordinary house games till they were masters of a wet, slippery ball. Then
one afternoon, when Billy came down to see how his house was getting on,
both boys gave "yards," in the forefront of the battle. As they panted up the
hill after the game, Archibald, in the school flannels, asked if they were
much the worse for wear. In giving "yards" where the advantage was
greatest, they had been knocked down several times.
"You fellows played up," said the great man. "If you go on like that, I
may give you a chance next Saturday."
"Thanks awfully," said Mark.
Saturday came, and with it the first of the series of house-matches.
When the list went up on the old landing at the head of the rickety stairs,
and when Mark's and Jim's names were seen, a howl of remonstrance was
heard.
"They'll be getting babies to play next," said many whose names were
not on the list.
Archibald sent for Mark and spoke a sharp word: "They accuse me of
favouring, the silly fools, as if my brother wasn't the last fellow in the house
I'd think of favouring."

"I know that, Archie."
"You see," Archibald explained, "this match with Bashan's doesn't
count. We must give 'em a licking, and afterwards it will be just as easy to
let you drop out, as it was to stick you in."
The school, however, were of opinion that this match might prove a
surprise for Billy's. Bashan's was not a first-class team, but there were big
fellows in it who had the reputation of playing a savage game. Bashan's, it
was said, would sell their souls and bodies to lower Billy's pride, and Billy's
would sell theirs as cheerfully rather than Bashan's should triumph. Billy's
included two members of the school eleven, Archie and the Lubber;
Bashan's had one, but he was reckoned the finest player of his generation.
The game began. Half the school was present, including Billy, who
was known to miss many things in life, but his house-match—never!
Behind the crowd of boys the austere figure of the Doctor sat erect on his
brown horse.
Archie kicked off. The wind carried the ball to Bashan's top side.
There a lean, long-legged, long-winded Bashanite stopped it, kicked it, and
swooped after it like a lurcher after a rabbit! By virtue of his speed he shot
by Billy's top-side men before they had got into their stride; in another
second he had kicked the ball again—and again. It rose slowly, sailed over
the head of the back—who was not quite back—and just fell between and
through the goal-posts.
Bashan's bellowed itself into a frenzy. Billy's smiled coldly and
critically. Archie had a vacuous expression, as of an ox stricken by a pole-
axe. Mark's eyes were shining.
"We are going to have a f-fight," he said.
Within ten minutes Bashan's had kicked a second goal almost as
"flukey" as the first. Stupor spread like a London fog. Billy's was

demoralised. At times bad luck paralyses mind and muscles. On such
occasions the man of finer clay than his fellows seeks and finds opportunity.
Mark, for instance, rose to and above this emergency. He, the smallest
player on the ground, the one, physically speaking, least well equipped for
the task, thrust himself into the breach between promise and performance.
In the brief interval, after the second goal had been kicked, he went up to
Archie and the Lubber, who were standing apart, inert and speechless.
"I s-say," stammered Mark, "you must change your tactics."
The Lubber raised his heavy head.
"Shut up, Mark!" said Archibald.
"I won't," said Mark. "These Bashanites haven't a chance if you d-d-do
the right thing."
Archie scowled; but the Lubber, who had reason to respect Mark's
abilities as a scholar, growled: "Well, what is the right thing?"
"The Bashanites are like a lot of helots, drunk with success. If we go
canny, they'll play themselves out. Then we can trample on 'em. Don't
attack a victorious enemy! Defence is our game. Pull our fellows together!
Tell 'em to keep c-cool and quiet for ten minutes; close in the top sides;
keep the whole eleven in front of our g-goal; forbid individual effort till you
give the word!"
"By Jove! he's right," said the Lubber. Archie kicked off for the second
time; and the Bashanites fell on the ball, kicked it hard, and charged
furiously. Met by a solid phalanx, hurled back, bruised and broken—they
charged again and again, panting and bellowing; but Billy's held together.
Doubtless Billy himself fathomed the plan of campaign, for when the fry of
his house began to complain, when cries of "Follow up! Follow up!" were
heard above the yells of the Bashanites, when shrill voices screamed,
"Now's your chance!" or, in disconsolate wail, "Why don't you run, you

idiot!" or, in still more poignant accents, "Good Lord! what is the matter
with the fools?"—then, above these heart-breaking cries, boomed a big bass
voice:
"Steady, Billy's! Well played! Steady! Steady there!"
Within ten minutes of half-time it was plain that the enemy was
exhausted. Wild eyes, heaving chests, pallid faces confronted a team full of
running and brimful of hope. At the next pause Archie moved along the
line. Orders to charge. And didn't Billy's charge? Didn't every boy's heart
thrill to that whispered word? Charge? Aye, with a yell which must have
echoed in the Fourth Form Room, nearly a mile away. Charge? Yes—with
the fury of the Light Brigade at Balaclava! And the Bashanites bowed down
before that charge like the worshippers of Baal beneath the sword of the
Prophet! It was Homeric, worthy, so Billy said, of the finest traditions of the
house.
One goal to two—and half-time.
While Billy's sucked the lemons which the fry hurled at them, Jim
found time to observe to Mark: "I say, so far we haven't scored."
"N-n-not yet," said Mark.
Bashan's kicked off after ends had been changed. They had got their
second wind, and also sound advice from their captain, a man of guile, who
has since been seen and heard at Baba Wali, at Abu Klea, and at Suakin.
The Bashanites herded together, bent on retaining the advantage of their one
goal, not daring to risk it in pursuit of another. Once, twice, thrice, Billy's
swept up the field, to be driven back and back when within a dozen paces of
the Bashanite citadel. And then, at the fourth essay, Jim's chance came. He
had the ball between his legs. "Kick it, kick it!" screamed Billy's. "Yards,"
whispered Mark. Jim turned mechanically, kicking the ball into Archie's

outstretched hands as the leading Bashanite rolled him head over heels in
the mud.
A silence fell on players and onlookers. Archie took his time, eyeing
anxiously the distance between himself and the goal-posts. Jim shut his
eyes, which in point of fact were nearly closed already. A roar of applause
from Billy's, a despairing groan from Bashan's, proclaimed the accuracy of
the kick.
Two goals all, and twenty minutes to play!
The Lubber sauntered up, sucking a lemon, and stolid as usual.
"Well," said he to Mark, "what'll happen now?"
"Why they'll play up like m-mad, of course. They've everything to
gain, and precious little to lose. We ought to go back to our defensive
tactics. Let 'em p-pump 'emselves out, and then smash 'em."
"Good kid," said the old Lubber; "if your body was half as big as your
brain, you'd be a corker."
He was seen talking to Archie; and Archie was nodding his handsome
head, as if in accord. Before the ball was kicked off, word was passed round
to play on the defensive. These tactics may seem elementary to the modern
player, but five-and-twenty years ago football on both sides of the Atlantic
was go-as-you-please—a succession of wild and unpremeditated rushes,
with much brilliant individual work, but lacking in strategy and
organisation.
Within a few minutes of resuming play, the Lubber stupidly interposed
his ankle between a boot and the ball, forgetting that his skull was the most
invulnerable part of his person, with the result that Billy's lost his services
and weight when they were most needed. Archie, too, was slightly disabled
and more than slightly dismayed. Bashan's pressed their advantage with
vigour.

"It's all right," Mark panted.
Archie had the ball and was away, his side streaming after him. Down
the field he sped, faster and faster. The biggest Bashanite met him shoulder
to shoulder in full career. The Bashanite reeled over backwards; Archie
hardly swerved. On and on strode that glorious figure in the violet-and-
black stripes. Only one more Bashanite stood between him and the goal; but
he, crafty as Ulysses, was quick to perceive what must be done. The ball
rolled between him and the all-conquering Archie. He rushed forward.
Archie crashed into him. The Bashanite fell, but the ball sailed towards a
group of battered gladiators, who, having abandoned pursuit, were awaiting
just such a piece of good fortune as now befell them.
"Get back!" yelled the fry.
Billy's got back in the nick of time, mad with disappointment. The
Bashanites retreated, cursing. In a minute "Time" would be called. At this
moment Mark darted out of a scrimmage dribbling the ball.
A second later he turned his back upon three big fellows who were
within ten feet of him, knowing that they would meet with irresistible force
on the spot where he was standing, and knowing—who better?—-his own
feebleness of bone and sinew. He turned and gave "yards."
Jim looked down.
When Jim looked up a pile of figures lay upon the wet, mud-stained
grass, and the ball was in the hands of a sure and safe player. And then, as a
roar of applause ascended from the throats of everybody on the ground, the
word "Time" fell like a thunderbolt.
The match was over. Bashan's had tied Billy's.
But the eyes of the crowd rested on the pile in front of Bashan's goal.
Three figures rose silently; the fourth lay face down in the mire. Archie
touched his brother lightly.

"You're all right, old chap, aren't you?"
Mark did not answer. His arm was turned outward at a curious angle.
"Back," said Archie, as the two elevens surged forward. "Back!"
He faced them, terror-stricken, and Jim Corrance had never admired
him so much nor liked him so well, because his strong voice trembled and
his keen blue eyes were wet.
"Mark," he cried, kneeling down, "don't you hear me? Don't you hear
me?" His voice broke. "My God!" he exclaimed, "he's dead!"

The face upturned to the chill November skies was of death's colour; the
eyes stared glassily; the livid lips were parted in a grim smile heart-
breaking to see. The two elevens formed a ring around the brothers and
Billy, who had his fingers on Mark's pulse. Beyond this inner circle was the
outer circle of spectators. One boy began to sneeze, and the silence had
become so impressive that his sneeze seemed a personal affront, an
unseemly violation. Archibald was crying as men cry—silently, with
convulsive movements of the limbs.
Just then the school surgeon hurried up. Fortunately he was on the
ground, but had retired with the Lubber to a distant bench, busy in
bandaging that giant's ankle. Kneeling down, he laid his ear to the small
blue-and-white striped chest.
"I can't feel any pulse," Billy growled.
The doctor's head was as that of a graven image.
"Why don't you do something?" Archibald demanded, giving
expression to the unspoken entreaty of three hundred boys.
The surgeon paid no attention; he was listening for that murmur of life
which would justify his doing anything.
"He is coming to," he muttered.

"He is coming to" passed from lip to lip. The school sighed with relief.
The clouds above let fall a few drops of rain.
"A hurdle," commanded the surgeon, "and some coats!"
Billy was the first to pull off his overcoat. The surgeon touched Mark's
body in a dozen places. Mark gasped and gurgled; then he tried to sit up—
and succeeded.
"Back's all right," said the surgeon. "Keep quiet, my boy! You're a little
the worse for wear. There, there, shut your eyes and believe that we shall
hurt you as little as possible. Your arm is broken."
The news spread while the hurdle was being brought. Mark closed his
eyes and lay back. The captain of Bashan's stepped forward.
"May I help to carry the hurdle?" he said.
The biggest swells were proud to carry that hurdle! The school formed
itself into two long lines; and when Mark passed through—pale, but smiling
—some chord was struck, which thrilled into sound.
"Three cheers for Samphire minor!"
The brave shout rolled over the playing-fields and up Harrow Hill, past
the Music Schools which recorded it; past the Chapel, where its subtle
vibrations were enshrined; past the Yard, which gave back the glad acclaim
of valour; past the Vaughan Library, startling, perhaps, some bookworm too
intent upon what has been to care greatly for what is and may be; down the
familiar street, where countless generations of ardent boys had hastened to
work or play; on and on till it reached Billy's—Billy's with its hoary
traditions of innumerable battles fought and won, Billy's shabby and
battered, scarred within and without, Billy's—dear old Billy's—where it
became merged but not lost, in the whole of which every valiant word or
deed or thought is an imperishable part!

CHAPTER III
WHICH CONTAINS A FORTUNE

At lock-up Billy announced that Mark's injuries, albeit severe, were not
such as to cause his friends serious anxiety. And so, when Archie came to
Jim's room with a face as long as the catalogue of ships in the Iliad, and
when the two boys present got up and left hurriedly at his impatient nod of
dismissal, you may believe that Jim's heart began to thump and his eyes to
pop out of his head with interrogation.
"I dropped in to tell you, you could get your 'fez,'" said Archie.
"Oh, thanks awfully. And—and Mark?"
"I bought one for him and sent it in. He got it after his arm was set."
Jim's heart warmed to the big fellow. "I'm glad you thought of that."
"His advice saved the match, and—and—and—" his voice had a
curious quaver in it—"and it's no good. Mark can never play footer again."
He sat down and laid his curly head upon a Greek lexicon.
"You see," Archie continued heavily, "I thought Mark would step into
my shoes."
"Good Lord!" said Jim, seeing Mark's foot. "He'd lose himself in 'em."
"The Lubber says he'd have made a great player, a great captain."
"So he will—yet. Footer's not the only game."
"That's true. There's cricket." Archie's face brightened. "I must push
him on at that. The governor might get a 'pro' to bowl to him during the
Easter holidays. He shall, by Jove! Yes, you're right. I was a fool not to
think of that. And when he leaves there will have been three Samphires of
Pitt Hall in the school eleven. I'll go now. I've got to tackle a nasty bit of
Æschylus. You played up like fun to-day. I told the Doctor you came from

our part of Slowshire. He said something in Greek which I couldn't make
head or tail of; but I grinned, because I made certain it was complimentary.
I say—don't be in too much of a hurry to get into the Sixth. A fellow can't
work and play too. And I didn't come to Harrow to be killed by Greek
tragedians. By-the-by, if you could go down and give the old Lubber a 'con,'
he'd be grateful. He'd come up, as usual, only he doesn't want to climb these
stairs. Good night. We're to see Mark to-morrow, if he has a decent sleep."
After Archie had left the room, Jim rose to go downstairs to the
Lubber, and in rising his eye caught a picture of Mark's mother, which hung
to the right of the head of the nine-pointer. On the other side was a picture
of the Squire, a capital portrait of that fine specimen of the country
gentleman. From time immemorial the owners of Pitt Hall had sought wives
in Slowshire; but Mark's father went a-wooing in London and married a
delicate creature of sensibility, refinement, and culture, the daughter of an
eloquent and impecunious member of Parliament, a friend of Cobden and
Bright, with some of Sheridan's wild blood in his veins, tempered, however,
by a tincture of John Wesley's. This lady bore her husband three sons:
George, cut to the old Samphire pattern (whose fortunes do not concern us),
Archibald, and Mark, the stammerer. Then she died, and in due time the
Squire of Pitt Hall married again, selecting Miss Selina Lamb, of
Cranberry-Orcas, of whom mention has been made.
Jim stared at both portraits, seeing dimly the gulf between husband and
wife, realising that Mark was his mother's child, even as Archie was as truly
the son of his burly father. Mrs. Samphire's pathetic eyes seemed to pierce
his heart, so poignant was the reflection that the mother's fine qualities of
head and heart had been reproduced faithfully, and with them her infirmity
of body. Then he blundered out into the dimly lit passage and stumbled
against Nixon minimus going to supper, although he was as full of tea and

potted meat, and hot buttered toast, and strawberry jam as a Fourth Form
boy could be.
"I say," whined Nixon minimus, "I wish you'd look and see whom
you're shovin' into."
"I am looking," said Jim. "Unless I'm vastly mistaken, I heard you say
to me this afternoon: 'Why don't you run, you silly fool?' I'm going to
answer that question now. I didn't run because I was playing to orders.
Later, when I was lying flat on my back, with the wind squeezed out of me,
you specially urged me to get up and play up. Yes, you didn't mean it, of
course, but I happen to want to kick somebody, and I'm going to kick you,
you spoiled infant, you! Take that, and that!"
Jim went on his way relieved in mind and uplifted. The Lubber
welcomed him warmly, looking very funny, with his swollen foot in a
footbath and a huge piece of sticking-plaster across his nose. On his lap lay
a battered volume of Livy and a crib.
"I can give you a rare good pie," he said; "if you're hungry, stick your
nose into that cupboard!"
Jim declined this hospitable offer, and picked up the Livy.
"These cribs aren't much help," growled the Lubber. "It's the verbs and
idioms that flummux me. Eh? What? Oh, done it before! Bless you—a
dozen times; but my memory is rotten. As Billy said in pupil-room last
week, 'You'll forget your own name some day. West, and sign it North.'
Rather bad form making puns on a fellow's name. By gad! I'm glad you
came. No, hang the 'con'! I'll chance it. I want to have a yarn with you about
the Kid. Awful—wasn't it? And Archie says he won't be allowed to play
footer again. Old Archie has taken it hard. Not a bad chap, Archie, but a bit
stodgy—like me. It's on my mind that I've had a hand in the overdoin' of the
Kid. He's a corker is the Kid. I must be blind as a bat, not to have found that

out before. But he must go slow, or he'll break down. Now it wouldn't
surprise me if the Kid made a mark. What? A joke? Not I. Never made one
in my life—except by accident. I mean he'll turn over some big things some
day."
"He seems to have turned over some big things to-day. The three
Bashanites weren't small."
The Lubber laughed.
"To relieve your mind," Jim continued, "I don't mind telling you that
Billy has his eye on the Kid. He won't break down in his training."
The Lubber accepted this assurance with the faith of a child; then he
looked at the cupboard.
"I think," said he, "that if you don't mind hauling out that pie, I'll have
a go at it. Somehow, I couldn't tackle my tea. You'll have some too, eh?
That's right. I never feel quite myself when my tummy's empty."
Next day, after dinner, Archie saw Mark. He was in bed, and above the
bed hung his "fez," placed there by the matron. Archibald tiptoed into the
room, feeling rather uncomfortable. Mark, he feared, would be miserable.
To his surprise, he was greeted with a grin.
"You don't care——"
"I've thought it out—with Billy. He was here before dinner. I slept like
a t-top last night, and when Billy came in I read his face. He was awfully d-
decent. It's a pity he has only a daughter, although, perhaps, that makes him
extra nice to the sons of other people. He said that I was strong enough to
know the truth. And the truth is that footer isn't my game. Well—I knew it.
But I wanted to get my 'fez,' and—and there it hangs, and there is this. Billy
must have had it engraved the f-first thing this morning."
He put his hand under his pillow, and pulled out a small hunting-flask.
Upon it was inscribed his name, and beneath, in small script, the line from

Horace:
"Palmam qui meruit ferat."
"He gave me this," said Mark, "and with it a jolly good jaw. He m-
made me see that w-w-weakness is part of my kit, and the w-weak make the
running for the strong; and it's no use messin' about and trying to do what
others can do much better. And he s-said that a fellow who rebelled and
sulked was a silly ass—and—by Jove!—he's r-right!"
Mark recovered quickly, and was treated as an honoured guest by his
kind hostess, who played and sang to him every day. Boys, particularly
English boys, are not taught to express their gratitude in happy phrases, but
perhaps it is none the less on that account. If the lady who played Strauss's
waltzes to Mark Samphire should chance to read these lines, let her believe
that the memory of her kindness has ripened with the passing years.
After the Christmas holidays Mark and Jim found themselves in the
Sixth, privileged to "fag," and accepted by Billy's as Olympians. It was a
pleasant half, and at the end of it Archibald won the school mile. Mark
trained him. Most of the boys who trained, trained too hard; and here again
Mark's weakness developed his brother's strength: they took their "runs"
slowly, but regularly. During these spring afternoons more than fresh air
was imbibed. Mark had capacity for absorbing information about places and
people. To him an ordinary cottage was a volume of romance; a man asleep
by the roadside quickened speculation; a travelling van held inexhaustible
material. One day they came upon an encampment of gipsies. Mark insisted
upon stopping to speak to an onyx-eyed urchin, who asked for coppers, and
while they were talking a handsome girl of sixteen lounged forward,
addressing Mark as "my pretty gentleman."
"Go along with you," said Mark. "I'm as ugly as they make 'em."

"You are not," the girl replied, staring impudently into his eyes. "Them
eyes of your'n are bits of heaven's own blue; and the women will look into
them and love you."
Mark turned scarlet.
"And you," the hussy turned to Archie. "Ah, you're a real beauty, but
your brother's eyes are handsomer than your'n."
"How do you know he's my brother?" said Archie.
"We Romanies know many things. Give me half a crown, and I'll tell
you both a true fortune."
"Shall we take a bob's worth?" said Archie. "Sixpence each?"
"I'll read your hand for a bob," said the girl, "and his," she nodded at
Mark, "for nothing."
Archie produced a shilling. The girl took his hand between her long,
slender fingers, and gazed at the lines on it.
"Well," said a harsh voice, "what do you see?"
An old hag, possibly the girl's grandmother, had approached silently.
"Hullo," said Archie, "I suppose you're the queen of the gipsies.
Mother Shipton herself," he added sotto voce.
"I'm a Stanley," said the old woman, not without dignity. "You're one
as looks for queens on thrones. The greatest queens, my pretty sir, don't sit
on thrones. Go on—tell his fortune! A child could read that hand and face."
"I see a long life and a full one," droned the girl. "You will get what
you want, because you will want it so badly."
"A true fortune," mumbled the old woman.
"Your turn, Mark," said Archie. "Hold out your paw!"
Reluctantly, Mark obeyed. The girl took his hand as she had taken
Archie's, very delicately, and smoothed the palm with a touch that was not

unlike a caress. A puzzled smile curled her red lips. The old woman peered
over her shoulder. Again the girl stroked the boy's palm, and he winced.
"Shrinks from a woman's touch," said the old woman.
"You tell it, mother," said the girl.
The old woman bent down.
"A happy hand," she muttered, "a happy hand, the hand of the free
giver, the blessed hand, the kind hand, and the strong hand. Ah, but what is
this? Sorrow, suffering, disappointment! And love," her harsh voice
softened: "you will love deeply and be loved in return. You are the child of
love——"
"I see more," said the girl softly, taking Mark's hand again. "This is the
hand of a fighter, mother."
"Ay, so 'tis, so 'tis."
"A fighter and a conqueror."
Before Mark could draw his hand away, she had bent down and kissed
it. Then she laughed and tossed her pretty head.
"He'd like a kiss on the mouth," she said, eyeing Archie saucily, "but
he won't get one from me."

CHAPTER IV
MISS HAZELBY IS SHOCKED

Betty Kirtling, when a child, had been heard to say: "I like girls, but I love
boys." Perhaps, beneath the smiles of the prim little English misses who
came to play with her, she perceived jealousies and meanness, whereas the
boys displayed hearts full of love, with no room for anything else where she

was concerned. The second Mrs. Samphire maintained Betty to be a spoiled
beauty before she was out of pinafores; but Lady Randolph, a finer judge of
character, held the contrary opinion. The Admiral, it is true, set his niece
upon a pedestal: an action of which the nurse, Esther Gear, took fair
advantage. "Lor bless me, Miss Betty! what would your uncle say? You
know he thinks you one of the angels," was a phrase often in her mouth,
and one not to be disregarded by a child who valued the good opinion of
others. "My dear," Lady Randolph would add, "you must never disappoint
your uncle. If he knew you had told a fib, it would make him very
unhappy." When the time came to choose a governess, she selected a lady
of strong character, whose seeming severity was tempered by a sense of
humour and justice. Betty hated her at first, and then learned to love her.
Almost irredeemably ugly, with a square masculine head surmounting a tall,
lean, awkward figure, Miriam Hazelby made the large impression of one
hard to please, but for whose affection and esteem it were worth striving.
Her manner, however, was repellent. The austerity of feature and
deportment chilled a stranger to the marrow; her harsh voice, emphatic in
denouncing humbug and vanity and luxury, only softened when she was
speaking of suffering; then a quick ear might catch minor harmonies,
captivating because elusive.
During the Easter holidays following the term when the Samphires met
the gipsies, Mark was set upon procuring some eggs of the stonechat, which
nests in certain sheltered spots upon the Westchester downs. Mark had told
Betty—now a girl of fourteen—of his proposed expedition, and she
expressed an ardent wish to accompany him. Miriam Hazelby, however,
permitted nothing to interfere with lessons. Betty said sorrowfully:
"I don't suppose Lanky" (her name for Miss Hazelby) "would let me
go alone with you; she thinks you a young man, and I'm told twice a week

that I'm a young lady. But what a splendid time we would have had!"
Next day, Mark tramped off alone, taking the lane which leads to the
downs, and as he was passing the chalk-pit to the right of the village, Betty
sprang into the road with a gay laugh. She carried a basket and wore an old
pink linen frock.
"Betty," said Mark, "you've run away."
"Yes. Isn't it fun? Shan't I catch it from Lanky when I get back. I've
lunch in this basket. Two big bits of Buszard's cake, some tartlets,
sixpennorth of chocolate, four apples, and four bottles of ginger-pop. Catch
hold!"
The girl was in wild spirits. It happened to be a day of late April when
the sun, pouring its rays into the moist fresh earth, brings forth spring, the
Aphrodite of woods and fields, with the foam of milk-white blossoms about
her, and a cestus of tender green. As they passed out of the lane on to the
soft turf of the downs, the landscape widened till it became panoramic.
Behind lay King's Charteris encompassed by hanging woods now bursting
into leaf; beyond were rolling downs, wide breezy pastures, sloping
southerly and westerly to the sea, which gleamed, a thread of silver, through
an opalescent haze.
"Isn't it heavenly?" Betty cried.
"It is r-r-rather jolly!"
"R-r-r-ra—ther jolly," she mimicked him to the life, rounding her
shoulders and slouching forward in an attitude which Mark recognised, not
without dismay, as his own; "ra—ther jolly, awfully jolly, beastly jolly. How
Lanky would love to hear you."
"S-s-shut up, Betty!"
"What! You address a young lady in that manner! I must beg you"—
she had caught the accent and intonation of the excellent Miriam—"to

speak English. Young people, nowadays, are unintelligible. My father, in
whose presence I never ventured to take a liberty with the English language,
would not have believed it possible that a gentleman could use such
expressions...."
Mark tried to pull her hair, but she ran like Atalanta, Mark following
encumbered with the basket. Soon the business of the day began: the
finding of the stonechats' nests. Presently they sat down in the shade.
"Let us have a 'beyondy' talk," said Betty.
"A what....?"
"Oh, when talk is about things we can't see, I call it 'beyondy.' I say—
tell me, what—what are your besetting sins!" Then she laughed. "We'll play
'swops.' I'll tell you my sins one by one, if you'll tell me yours. Only you
must begin. It will be splendid fun, and, as Lanky says—improving. She
says one ought to know oneself. I suppose you—a grand Sixth Form boy—
know yourself in all your moods and tenses. Give us a lead. It would be so
nice to find that you are wickeder than I."
"I am," said Mark.
"No humbug—and 'bar chaff,' as dear Lanky would not say."
"I'm v-very ambitious, Betty."
She was lying full length on the grass. Now she sat up, opening her
eyes very wide.
"Are you really? Ambitious—eh? That's very interesting. I'm not
ambitious, not a bit. I'm greedy." As she spoke she set her pretty teeth in an
apple. "I'm greedy, and I'm fond of lying in bed. Lanky says these are awful
sins. Oh, dear, I've given you two sins to one. Never mind. Lanky says a
woman ought to give more than she gets. I say, eat fair with the chocolate.
You big boys pretend to despise sweets, but I notice they go jolly quick

when you're about. Yes; greediness and sloth. It's horrid, but it's true. You
see, I'm bound to be wicked."
"Why?"
"Mother was wicked. I know it. I heard Lady Randolph say—oh, years
ago—that she hoped what was bad in the Kirtlings would kill what was
worse in the De Courcys. I'm not sure what she meant, and I dared not ask
her, because she thought I was looking at some photographs, but it wasn't
complimentary—was it?"
"No," said Mark, getting rather red.
"You are blushing," said Betty. "I do believe that you know something.
What is it?"
She turned a coaxing face to his, being one of those distracting
feminine creatures who have a thousand caresses distinctively their own.
Her touch was different to the touch of other girls—more delicate, more
subtle—an appeal to the finer, not the grosser side.
"What do you know?" she murmured.
"I c-can't tell you," Mark began bravely, and then ended with a feeble
—"m-m-much."
"Boys never can tell much," said Betty disdainfully. "Go on."
"Your m-m-mother ran away."
"Is that all? Why I know more than you. Yes; she ran away. I can't
think why she did, because father was so handsome. I often look at his
miniature; and he must have been the most fascinating man that ever lived.
Uncle calls him sometimes that 'rascal Fred.' Now what does he mean by
that?"
"Betty," said Mark desperately, "this talk is too b-b-beyondy for me."
She paid no attention whatsoever.

"I spoke to Lanky about it," she continued gravely. "She was nicer than
I had ever seen her. 'Betty,' she said, 'remember that it is not for you to
judge your parents. They may not have had your advantages.' Well, that
made me think a bit, and then I hoped their sins would not be visited on
me."
"W-w-what did she say to that, Betty?"
"She nodded that long head of hers in a terrible way. 'We all suffer,' she
growled, 'for the evil that others do.' Do you think I must suffer for what
they did?"
"No, no," cried Mark. "Why, Betty, to me you are the princess who l-l-
lives for ever and ever, fair and happy."
She smiled.
"I love you when you talk like that," she murmured. "And—— Good
gracious me!" She dashed some tears from her eyes and sprang to her feet.
"Look here, we have that long strip of gorse to do before lunch. Come on!
I'll hop you down the hill. One—two-three—OFF!"
Away she went, laughing gaily, leaving care in the shade, and Mark
after her—a boy once more, but with an ache at his heart none the less.
At luncheon Betty speculated upon the nature of the punishment which
awaited her, assuring Mark that she did not care a hang, revelling the more
joyously in the present, because a cloud lay black upon the future.
Presently they discovered that the sun was declining into the soft haze
of the western horizon.
"We must run," cried Betty.
They ran and rested, and then ran again till they came to the sharp
incline from the downs into the valley which holds the village. And here
bad luck tempted them to link hands and race down a slippery, grassy slope.

Perhaps Mark went too fast. Betty fell with a dismal thump, and a poignant
note of anguish fluttered up from a crumpled heap of linen.
"Are you hurt, Betty?"
"I have twisted my ankle," she groaned, her face puckering with pain.
Mark took off her boot and stocking. The ankle was already swollen
and inflamed. What a catastrophe! But Betty assured him she could limp
home leaning on his arm. They started very slowly and in silence. A brook
bubbled in front of them, and at Mark's advice Betty thrust her foot into the
cool water.
"What a horrid ending," sighed Betty, on the verge of tears. "This is the
punishment. Lanky will do nothing now."
"I should think not," said Mark indignantly. Presently he began to dry
her foot with his handkerchief. It lay soft and white in his hand. She was
sitting higher up on the bank, so that she looked down upon him.
"I like you better than Archie," she said slowly.
"W-w-why?" he stammered.
"You are so much more—sensible."
"Sensible?"
"Yes. Archie," she blushed faintly, "and that stupid old Jim Corrance
say they're in love with me! Isn't it absurd?"
Mark grew scarlet. He would have liked to say what Archie and Jim
had said, but a lump in his throat made him speechless.
"I feel that you are a real friend," pursued Betty. "Now we must be
getting home."
They set out slowly: Betty leaning on Mark's left arm and limping
along in silence. Presently Mark became aware that she was leaning more
heavily. Then he looked down upon a white, agonised face. They had just
reached the small hill whereon The Whim is set. Mark wondered whether

he could carry her to the summit of it. A feather-weight, this dainty creature,
but Mark was no colossus like Archie. Still, exercise in the gymnasium and
elsewhere had hardened his muscles. He bent down, picked her up, and
breasted the hill. Her arms were round his neck; his arms held her body. But
how heavy she grew with every step upward! How Mark's back and loins
and legs ached! How his heart beat! But he reached the front door and set
her down. And in the twilight she held up her face and kissed him.
"Now," she commanded, "run home before they open the door."
"Leave you? Not I."
He was proof against persuasion, and simulated anger. The Admiral
must hear their misadventure from his lips.
"You obstinate wretch!" said Betty.
When the Admiral did hear the story, some three minutes later, he
roared with laughter, although he grew grave enough towards the end, and
sent his butler, hot-foot, for the village doctor. Nor was Mark permitted to
leave The Whim till that gentleman had pronounced the injury a trifling
affair, which time and cold compresses would set right. At parting the
Admiral admonished Mark solemnly.
"We must have no larks of this sort, my boy. What! My niece
gallivanting about the downs with a lively young man! Miss Hazelby is
inexpressibly shocked. A rod has been pickling the whole day, you may
swear. And she says that you boys make love to the child. Do you?"
"I'd l-l-like to," said Mark abjectedly, "but I haven't—yet."
The Admiral paced the room slowly, as if it were a quarter-deck. His
grey beard lay upon his broad chest; his red weather-beaten countenance
was heavy with thought.
"Look ye here," said he at length. "This is serious, and I take it
seriously. I am tempted to call you a—jackanapes. As it is, I prefer to say—

nothing, except this: you ought to be birched."
"I f-feel as if you were b-b-birching me."
His face relaxed.
"My boy, I'm sorry for you. You may not believe it, but when I was
seventeen and in the Mediterranean squadron"—the Admiral's voice
became reminiscent—"I had the doose of an affair. I suffered like any
Romeo, and my Juliet was only eight-and—er—twenty! Well, sir, I fought
and conquered, and so must you, by God!"
"I have f-f-fought, sir; and I am c-c-conquered."
"You're glib with your tongue. I daresay Betty thinks you a tremendous
fellow."
"She thinks us—very s-s-silly."
"Us? Miriam Hazelby was right. The little baggage! A De Courcy from
tip to toe already. Well, my boy, shake hands! You've made a clean breast of
it, and I respect you for that. And you're in your salad days, too. So—no
more! If you choose to sigh for the moon I can't prevent you. Good night."
Mark went home, humble as Uriah Heap. None the less, he made a
tolerable dinner, and felt happy and hopeful after it. And that night he
dreamed he was illustrious—a great soldier, a ruler amongst men. But, high
though he climbed, aye, even to the Milky Way itself, where honours
gleamed innumerable, he could not attain to the object of his dreams—the
lovely Moon!

CHAPTER V
VALETE

It was now definitely decided that Archibald Samphire must go into the
Church, and in due time hold the snug family living. The Squire, however,
was of the opinion that Her Majesty's scarlet would mightily become his
handsome second son, whereas the black of a Clerk in Orders would do
well enough for Mark. Archie, to his father's surprise, chose the sable
instead of the gules. Amongst the Samphires it was a tradition that the
second son always became a parson. Archie had a respect amounting to
veneration for tradition.
"Suit yourselves," said the Squire of Pitt Hall to his sons. "I should
have liked to have seen Archie on a charger."
"But what a leg for a gaiter," said Mark, hinting at episcopal honours.
Archibald was now a very big fellow indeed, so big that when he went
in to bat at Lord's, as captain of the Harrow eleven, a small Eton boy, not far
from Lord Randolph's coach, called out shrilly: "I say, Samphire, how's
your wife and family?" This was the famous year when Eton was beaten by
five wickets, having suffered defeat during four previous summers. And the
only thing that marred Archie's triumph was the fact that Mark, despite the
services of a professional during the Easter holidays, had not a place in his
eleven. On the eve of the great match one vacancy remained to be filled. It
became certain that either Mark or Jim Corrance would fill it. Jim has
confessed since with shame that he was miserably jealous of Mark, that for
a dreadful three weeks this feeling strained their friendship. And he knew
that Mark was the better cricketer; more, that he had made his friend a
better cricketer, that Jim's understanding of and skill in the game were due
to Mark's precept and practice. Mark would whip a cricket-ball out of his
pocket, whenever five minutes could be spared, crying, "Come on, old
chap, you muffed an easy one yesterday—catch!" And the ball would whizz

at Jim's toes. But during the last trial match Mark fainted from the heat, and
Jim took his place in the slips. That night Archie sent for Jim.
"You can get your 'straw,'" he growled.
"But Mark——"
"Won't take it."
"Won't—take—it?"
"He's right. He hasn't the strength. He might faint at Lord's. We can't
run any risks."
Jim went back to his room—confounded. Mark met him and gripped
his hands.
"You've g-got it," he cried. "I am glad. Isn't it glorious?"
"Glorious?"
Jim sat down and blubbered, like a Fourth Form boy.

However, it seemed certain then that another year would place Mark in the
eleven, and also amongst the monitors, but this happy end to his Harrow
career was not to be. Archibald, Jim, and he left Billy's at the end of the
Easter half. In those days it was hardly possible for a boy to pass into
Sandhurst direct from a public school. Billy said that Mark could do it—at
the expense of his health; for extra subjects, like geometrical drawing,
English literature, history, and so forth, would have had to be learned in
addition to the regular school work, which in the Upper Sixth was as stiff as
it could be.
"I'm very sorry to lose you," said Billy, when the brothers bade him
good-bye. "Samphire major's future I am not concerned about. But I do
worry about you, Samphire minor, because you attempt too much, you—er
—so to speak—strain at the camel and swallow the gnat. Well, well," he
fumbled with his glasses, "I should like to give you the benefit of my

experience, but," he pursed up his lips, "I am not sanguine enough to hope
that you will profit by it. Some excellent people think I take my duties too
lightly. Perhaps I do, per—haps I do. A big house like this represents a force
against which one individual is expected to pit his strength. But I realised
long ago that what energy I could spare must of necessity prove—er—
intermittent, the undisciplined, amorphous resistance would be constant.
You—er—take me? Yes. So I governed myself accordingly. The great force
which I was invited to control sways hither and thither, veering now to the
right, and now—er—to the wrong. The swing of the pendulum, in fine.
When it swings to the right I push it, so it swings a little farther; and when it
swings the other way I pull behind, and perhaps it does not swing quite so
far; but I don't try to stop the swing, because I know that such a feat is
beyond my powers. I trust you are following me, Samphire minor. You, I
fear, will recklessly expose yourself—and be rolled over, as happened in
our house-match against Bashan's. There—I have warned you."
He signed to Archibald to remain behind. For a moment there was
silence. Billy leaned back in his chair polishing the lenses of his pince-nez
with a fine cambric handkerchief.
"If Mark had your body," he began absently, then, faintly smiling, he
added: "Ah, what possibilities lie in that 'if,' which it were vain, quite vain
to consider. Well, I hope that nothing will come between you and him, that
your brotherly love, which has been a pleasant thing to witness, will
continue to grow in strength. Mark has an extravagant affection for you—
the greater because he does not wear it on his sleeve. Your success here has
sweetened the bitterness of his many disappointments. You will get more
from him than you give."
Archibald felt his cheek beginning to burn.

"Don't distress yourself on that account," said Billy kindly; "only take
what he gives, generously, and so you will best help him to play his part in
life."
After this interview followed the farewell supper in the common-room,
with its toasts and speeches. Archie made certain that he would break down
in his speech. And before the fags! He could see and hear the heartless little
beasts snickering! As captain of the eleven and of the Philathletic Club, he
was expected to speak about games; as a monitor, it was no less a duty to
mention work. Finally he wrote out his speech and submitted it to Mark.
"Just what they'll expect," Mark observed. "You j-j-jolly well crack 'em
up, and then let 'em down a peg or two. You tell 'em what they know
already—that Billy's is the best house in the school; and then you hope that
it will remain so after you have left. No doubt without your moral and
physical support, Billy's is likely to go to p-p-pot."
"You make me out an ass."
"Most Englishmen either grunt or bray when they get on to their legs
to m-m-make a speech."
"And what are you going to say?"
"Nothing. Mum's the word for a stammerer. I shall bid 'em good-bye,
that's all."
Thanks to Mark's criticism, Archie saw and seized an opportunity. He
told the house he was convinced that its present prosperous condition was
entirely due to his personal exertions, that he trembled for its future after he
had left, that, if possible, he promised to run down from time to time for the
purpose of giving advice to the Doctor, which he was sure would be
appreciated—and so forth. Billy's roared with laughter, although the
sneering voice of Nixon minimus was heard: "I say, he's trying to be
funny!" When Archie sat down, the head of the house proposed Mark's

health. The old common-room rocked with cheers. None doubted his
popularity, but this deafening roar of applause lent it extraordinary
significance, because such tributes were reserved for famous athletes, and
for them alone.
"Thank you," he began; "thank you very much. I suppose you have
believed all the p-pleasant things that the head of the house has just told you
about me..." Here a dozen voices interrupted, "Yes, we do"; "He didn't lay it
on thick enough"; "You're a beast to leave us," and the like. Mark
continued, and in his voice there was a curious minor inflection which held
attention and silence in thrall: "I am glad you believe them, although he has
laid it on too thick. You see we can't get away from f-f-facts, can we? And
the fact is I've been a f-f-failure." He paused. "I wanted to play in a
cockhouse m-match at footer; I w-wanted to w-win a school race; and I w-
w-wanted—by Jove! how b-badly I w-wanted that—I wanted my 'straw.'"
"It was offered him," said Archie.
"It was offered me," repeated Mark. "And if I'd taken it, it might have
p-proved the straw which breaks the camel's back. Jim Corrance got it, and
we know what back he broke—eh? The b-b-back of the Eton bowling." (A
terrible din followed, during which Billy appeared, holding up a protesting
hand: "My dear fellows, unless you are more careful you will destroy this
ramshackle house!")
Meantime Mark had sat down, but every boy in Billy's respected his
silence. He did not wish them good-bye, because he couldn't.

CHAPTER VI
AT BURLINGTON HOUSE

You may divide the world into those who pipe and those who dance. The
pipers, for the most part, envy the dancers; but many a dancer has confessed
that the piper, after all, has the best of it.
Mark and Jim Corrance, at this period of their lives, were dancers to
lively measures. They lived at home for a year, emancipated youths,
enjoying the pleasures of Arcadia. Three times a week they rode across the
grey, green downs, "that melt and fade into the distant sky," into
Westchester, where a scholar of repute undertook their preparation for
Sandhurst. Other days they worked at home, not too hard, and played much
tennis—a new game then—and practised arts which please country
maidens, amongst whom Betty Kirtling was not. For the Admiral, having no
stomach for immature Romeos, sent his niece abroad (in the company of
Miss Hazelby) to Dresden and Lausanne, whence letters came describing
queer foreign folk with sprightliness and humour, and always ending "your
most affectionate—Betty."
As the months passed, Jim became aware how strenuously Mark's
heart was set on a soldier's career. One night, for instance, the young
fellows were dining with the Randolphs at Birr Wood, when a famous
general was present. Mark confessed himself aflame to meet the hero; and
the hero, when he met Mark, became interested in him. Who shall say there
is not some subtle quality, undetected by the common herd, which reveals
itself to genius, because it is part, and not the least part, of genius? And you
will notice that if a great man be speaking in general company, his eyes will
wander here and there in search of the kindred soul, and when that is found,
they wander no more. On this occasion a chance remark led the talk to
India. Lord Randolph regretted that so brilliant a soldier as Hodson should
have slain the Taimur princes with his own hand. The hero, who had known
Hodson intimately, said that the princes had been given no assurance that

their lives would be spared, and that their escape would have proved an
immeasurable calamity. As he went on to speak of Nicholson and the siege
of Delhi, the buzz of prattle round the big table ceased.
"He suffered excruciating pain" (the general was alluding to
Nicholson), "but not a complaint, not a sigh, leaked from his lips. During
nine awful days of agony, his heroic mind fixed itself upon the needs of his
country, to the very last he gave us sound and clear advice. When he died,
the grim frontier chiefs, who had witnessed unmoved the most frightful
atrocities, stood by his dead body with the tears streaming down their
cheeks...."
"What a man!" exclaimed Mark.
"Ay," said the general. He stared at Mark, and continued, giving details
of what followed the fall of Delhi: then unpublished history. The speaker
had marched with the column despatched to the relief of Cawnpore. "We
could only spare," said he, "seven hundred and fifty British and one
thousand nine hundred native soldiers, and—let me see—how many field-
guns?" He paused with his eyes still on Mark.
"Sixteen field-guns," said Mark.
"Yes, you are right. Sixteen field-guns." Then as he realised from
whom he had received this piece of information, he broke into an
exclamation: "God bless me! How did you know that?"
"I've read the d-despatches," said Mark, blushing.
After dinner the general came up to Mark and asked him if he were
going to be a soldier. On Mark's eager affirmative, he said deliberately:
"When you are gazetted, my boy, come to see me. I'd like to make your
better acquaintance."
For a week Mark could talk of nothing save the Indian Mutiny.
"You're too keen," said Jim. "Suppose we don't pass?"

"Not p-p-pass? That's a dead certainty."
"If we did not pass——"
"We could enlist, Jim. I say, you're not going into the Service because,
b-b-because I am?"
"You lit the match," Jim admitted. "A fellow must do something.
Soldiering's as good as anything else."
"Ten times as good as anything else," Mark exclaimed.
Jim nodded, sensible that Mark cast a glamour over the future. As a
child Jim could never listen to tales of smuggling, of hidden treasure, of
Captain Kidd and the Spanish Main, without feeling a titillation of the
marrow. And now that he was eighteen, with fluff on his lip, Mark could
provoke this agreeable sensation whenever he pleased. That he could fire
Jim was not surprising, for Jim was tinder to many sparks, but he could fire
Archibald also.
"I back you to win big stakes," he would say. "W-w-what did the gipsy
predict? You will g-get what you want, because you want it so badly. You've
a leg for a g-g-gaiter. And your voice, your v-voice is amazing. I'd sooner
hear you sing r-rot than listen to Lord Randolph talking s-sense. You must
have the best of singing lessons. Why—you'll charm the b-birds off the
trees."
Archie did take lessons; and began to warble at many houses ballads
such as "'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay," "Sally in our Alley," and "I saw from the
Beach when the Morning was Shining." He grew bigger and stronger and
handsomer every day, and Mark's pride in and affection for this splendid
elder brother became something of a thorn in the side of his friend Jim.
Mark had an ingenuous habit of putting wise words into the mouth of this
Olympian. "Old Archie," he would observe, with a beaming face, "thinks
so-and-so...." Jim was sorely tempted to retort: "If old Archie thinks that,

why the deuce doesn't he say it?" It was plain to Jim that Archie's brains
were of a quality inferior to Mark's, but Mark would not allow this, and
always waxed warm if anyone dared to speak slightingly of the colossus.
Archie, for his part, returned his minor's affection, and not only sought for,
but accepted graciously that minor's advice.

A year later Mark and Jim went up to London for the competitive
examination, lodging at a family hotel in Down Street, an old-fashioned inn
where the name of Samphire was known and respected. The Squire offered
to accompany them, but Mark begged him to stay at Pitt Hall. Mark and Jim
unpacked their traps, and then looked out of the window over the great
world of London.
"Too much smoke for me," said Jim, seeing nothing but dun-coloured
roofs and chimney-pots innumerable.
"But think of the f-f-fires," said Mark, "and of the faces round the
fires. I am sure I should learn to like London, if it were not so beastly dirty.
Why, there are smuts on my cuffs already."
They had a luncheon such as boys love: chops fizzing and sputtering
from the gridiron, a couple of tankards of stout, a tart with Devonshire
cream, and some Stilton cheese.
"Are you nervous?" said Mark.
Jim admitted a qualm or two.
"We ought to come out amongst the first twenty."
"If I am dead lag, I shall be jolly thankful," said Jim.
After lunch they took a turn down Piccadilly. Mark talked: "I say, what
a glorious b-buzzing, like a swarm o' bees in June, and we're in the hive—
eh?"

Presently they entered the Burlington Arcade, exchanging greetings
with old school-fellows; some of them forlorn of countenance; others
bubbling over with self-assurance. The Medical Board had to be passed that
afternoon. Disjointed phrases flitted in and out of Mark's ear. "Not got a
chance, I tell you, but it pleases my people to see me make an ass of myself
—Fancy a rank outsider like that wanting to go into the Service—Yes;
seventy-nine, not out—and first-class cricket—Who are those fellows with
dirty collars?—If you try to crib and get nailed, you're done—Hullo,
Samphire minor! you're going to pass in first, I know—I say, I saw your
aunt the other day—What dead?—And a jolly good thing, too—One of the
biggest duffers in the school, I tell you—With windgalls and an awful splint
—Played for the 'Varsity—And, as luck 'd have it, he hit her favourite cat
——"
Outside the Arcade, they shook themselves free of the chatterers.
"I am in a beastly funk," said Jim, as they went up the stairs of
Burlington House.
"Funk of what?" Mark answered impatiently.
"I don't know," Jim muttered vaguely.
They entered a long, ill-lighted room, and waited their turn. Boy after
boy came out grinning, and buttoning up coat and waistcoat.
"Rather a farce this medical exam," whispered Mark; and then, as he
spoke, his voice broke into a stammer: "I s-s-say—w-w-who's this?"
A fellow they had known at Harrow was coming through the great
double doors. His face was white as a sheet and his lips blue. He was
hurrying by, when Mark called him by name.
"They won't have me," he gasped. "I—I thought I was all right," he
added piteously, "but I ain't."
"What's wrong?" said Mark.

"Heart. I asked 'em to tell me. They were rather decent, but I'm done. If
you don't mind, I'll hook it now. No, don't come with me. I'm not as bad as
that. Only it will, it may—grow worse."
He shambled away with the step of an old man. Mark's face was
working with sympathy.
"How b-b-beastly!" he said. "And it m-m-might be one of us."
They passed through the doors into a larger room beyond. Here a score
or more boys in all stages of dressing and undressing were dotting the floor.
Near the window a big, burly man was testing the sight of a slender, round-
shouldered youth. "How many fingers do I hold up?" Jim heard him say;
and the unhappy youth replied: "Three!" The big man laughed grimly.
"Wrong. Come a little nearer, and try again."
Jim was confoundedly pale.
"Pinch your cheeks," Mark whispered.
They were told to strip, and did so, but waited for some time, while the
wind from an open window blew cold on their bare backs.
"Let's slip on our coats," Jim suggested.
"The others don't do it," said Mark, glancing at a row of shivering
boys, "and we won't."
After what seemed an interminable interval, Jim's name was called.
The doctor into whose hands he fell made short work of him. He clapped a
stethoscope to his chest and back, looked at his legs, asked a few questions,
and smiled pleasantly. "If you can see and hear, you're all right," said he.
"Next!" Jim went back to where his clothes lay in a heap on the chair. He
knew that his sight and hearing were excellent; but why in the name of all
that was hateful did not Mark come back? Half-way down the room Jim
could see him, standing in front of a small, ferret-faced man, who was
talking quickly. Now, Jim had not been asked to run round a table or to

perform any other strange exercises, but Mark was treated less kindly. Jim
saw him jump on and off a bench; then he began to run, and Jim caught the
quick command: "Faster, sir, faster!" And then the stethoscope was laid
upon his heaving chest. Jim watched the doctor's impassible face. Suddenly
the doctor looked up and beckoned to the man who had examined Jim. The
second doctor put his ear to the stethoscope.
"Catch him!" yelled Jim.
A hush fell upon the big room as Jim sprang forward, half clothed and
choking with excitement. He had seen Mark quiver and reel, but the tall,
thin doctor had seen it too. When Jim reached them, Mark was on his back
on the big table. The ferret-faced man was smiling disagreeably, and
tapping the palm of his hand with the end of his stethoscope.
"Absolutely unfit," Jim heard him say. "Not a surgeon in London
would pass him."
"Not pass him?" Jim said furiously. "He's only fainted; he's done that
before, that's nothing."
"Isn't it?" said the little man drily. Then he added malevolently: "When
I am ready to receive instruction from you, young sir, I will let you know."
When they got back to the hotel and were alone, Mark flung himself
into an armchair. Presently he said quietly: "Let's get seats for the play"; so
they walked as far as Mitchell's in Bond Street, and bought two stalls for the
Colleen Bawn, in which Dion Boucicault was acting. Then they strolled on
to Regent's Park. Not a word was said about what passed in Burlington
House till they were crossing Portland Place, where a cousin of Mark's had
a house.
"I shan't go back to Pitt Hall till your exam is over," Mark said. "I'd
sooner stop up here with you."
"I don't care a hang about the exam now," Jim blurted out.

"I know you don't," Mark replied. "All the same, you must do your
level best."
This calmness surprised Jim. But after the play, as they were strolling
home through the crowded, gas-lit streets, Mark whispered fiercely: "I'd
like to get drunk to-night."
"Let's do it," said Jim.
"Good old chap! Do you think I'd let you do it?" He glanced at a
handsome roysterer, who was reeling by on the arm of a girl as reckless-
looking as her companion. "I can guess how they feel, poor devils!"
"We'll have a nightcap, anyhow," said Jim.
So they turned into one of the Piccadilly bars, full of men and women,
and ablaze with light reflected from a thousand glasses and mirrors. Mark
had never set foot in a London bar at midnight. The roar of the voices,
interpenetrated by the shrill laughter of the women, the clinking of glasses,
the swish of silk petticoats, the white glare, the overpowering odours of the
liquors and perfumes, the atmosphere hot on one's cheek—these smote him.
Yet the sensation of violence was not unpleasant. He was sensible that he
might yell if he liked, and that no one would heed him. They edged up to
the bar, squeezing through the mob till they were opposite a young woman
whose plain black dress and immaculate apron were crowned by a mop of
chestnut hair.
"Why it's—it's Squeak," Jim said to Mark.
She recognised them at once.
"Hullo, Mr. Samphire minor—why ain't you in bed?"
They demanded whiskies and sodas.
"You can tell that 'andsome brother of yours that I'm here," said
Squeak, as she pushed the drinks across the bar.
"I'll mention it to him," said Mark.

"I want to see him, to thank him. He got me this job. Don't worry! I
mean that if I'd not got the chuck from Brown's I shouldn't be 'ere, but there.
I've not seen 'im. He's one of the kind that loves and runs away."
She laughed shrilly, staring with angry eyes at the young men. Her
complexion had lost its freshness and delicacy; her eyes were no longer
clear and bright. Mark's impassive face exasperated her.
"Tell 'im to send back all the 'air I gave 'im," she continued viciously.
"You have not quite so much left," said Mark.
"Don't look at me like that, you kid, you! I know you're thinking," she
spoke very low, bending across the bar, "that I'm not any younger, or
prettier, or better be'aved. Well—I ain't. And that's why I want to thank your
brother."
"I shall not forget to tell him to come to see you. It will be safe enough
—now."
They dropped back into the crowd. By this time Mark was able to take
note of his surroundings. Squeak, so to speak, had given him bearings. The
faces, in relation to hers, had a certain resemblance, as if those present
belonged to the same family. Next to Jim stood an obese Israelite, puffy of
face, with thick, red lips shining through an oily, black beard. Jim felt a mad
impulse to kick him on the shins. Beside him was a tall, thin youth of the
type known in the seventies as the la-di-da young man. His pallid, clean-
shaven face, his light-blue eyes, his closely cropped flaxen hair, his delicate
features were all in striking contrast to the Jew's gross, corpulent person.
The hands of each were as different as could be: the Jew's short and thick,
and none too clean, with a couple of big yellow diamonds blazing on them;
the youth's long and thin, very white and bony, with polished nails. And yet
the pair were as twins, for the same evil spirit leered out of their eyes.
"Come on," said Mark.

Outside the air was delightfully fresh and cool, but the crowd seemed
to have thickened. A tremendous human tide ebbed and flowed between the
tall, dark houses. Jim's eye caught a white feather in the hat of a girl, which
tossed like foam upon troubled waters. Suddenly the fascination of the
scene gripped him. This was London—London, the city of millions; and he
stood on the pavement of its most famous thoroughfare, of it and in it,
whether he loved it, feared it, or hated it. And at the moment, so
overpowering was the sense of something new and strange and terrible that
he could not determine whether his feeling for the capital of the world was
one of attraction or repulsion.
Mark and he moved slowly on, till they came to the wall which
encompasses Devonshire House. At the corner stood a huge policeman,
grimly impassive, one of London's hundred thousand warders, and an
epitome of all.
"When is closing time?" said Mark to the constable.
"Quarter-past twelve, sir."
Mark looked at his watch.
"Five minutes more. I'm going back."
"Where?"
"To that girl—Squeak."
"What on earth for?"
"I spoke brutally. I shall beg her p-pardon. Don't come with me!"
"You're as mad as a hatter."
Jim went on to Down Street, ascended the stairs, and began to undress,
thinking of two things which obliterated all others—the slender figure of
Mark when it reeled back into the arms of the tall, thin surgeon, and the
white feather wavering hither and thither above the turbulent crowd.

Half an hour passed, and Mark did not return. Jim grew apprehensive.
If Mark had fainted—if he had fallen into coarse, gross hands such as those
of the Jew. Then he thought of the colossus at the corner of Devonshire
House, and took comfort in him—the Argus-eyed, the omnipresent and
omnipotent.
"Not in bed yet?" said Mark.
"By Jove, here you are! I saw you trampled under foot."
"I'm glad I went back. The girl's a good sort—silly, vain, terribly
ignorant, but not without heart. I promised to see her again. It wouldn't be a
b-bad bit of work to get her out of that—hell."
"You're a rum 'un," said Jim, for since they had parted Mark's face had
resumed its natural expression—that look of joyousness which redeemed
the harsh features and sallow skin.
"A rum 'un—why?"
"Well, I supposed, you know, that you'd be thinking just now of—of
yourself."
"I'm rather s-sick of that subject."
He flung off his clothes and turned out the gas. Jim slipped into bed in
the adjoining room. He couldn't sleep for an hour or two, wondering
whether Mark would break down when he found himself alone, listening
with ears attuned to catch the lightest sigh. To his astonishment, Mark
breathed quietly and regularly. He must be—asleep! Jim waited for another
ten minutes; then he slipped out of bed. The moon was throwing a soft
radiance upon Mark's figure. He lay flat on his back, with his arms straight
at his side. He was smiling! But his fists were clenched, and the jaw below
the parted lips stood out firm, square, and aggressive....
Jim watched him lying thus for several minutes; then he stole back to
bed—no longer a boy, but a man. By many, doubtless, the step between

boyhood and manhood is taken at random, and forgotten as soon as taken;
or it escapes observation altogether. But Jim was shown, as in a vision, the
past and the future: the green playing-fields, the happy lanes of childhood,
and beyond—the hurly-burly, the high winds and whirling dust-clouds, the
inexorable struggle for and of Life!

CHAPTER VII
THE HUNT BALL

At Harrow, Mark had been told by the drawing-master that he had great
talent as a draughtsman, and possibly something more. The vague
"something more" kindled possibilities which smouldered, and burst into
flame when the doctors at Burlington House pronounced him unfit to serve
his sovereign. The Squire suggested the Bar, a bank, or a junior partnership
in a brewery. Mark shook his head. Briefs—supposing they came to him—
bullion, beer, left fancy cold. But to paint a great picture, to interpret by
means of colour a message vital to the world, this indeed would be worth
while!
Mrs. Samphire bleated dismay and displeasure; but much to the
Squire's surprise, Lady Randolph sustained Mark's choice of art as an
avenue to success.
"Fame's temple," she said, "lies in the heart of a maze to which
converge a thousand paths—most of 'em blind alleys. Mark may try one
path after another, but in the end—in the end, mind you—he will choose the
right one."

After a few months' work in South Kensington, Mark went to Paris,
where he became a pupil of the famous Saphir at the École des Beaux Arts.
Saphir looked at his studies and shook his head. He was of opinion that
Mark had better join Julian's for a year; the standard at the Beaux Arts was
very high. Mark showed his disappointment.
"Oh, monsieur, I am so anxious to be under you."
"Have you no better reason than that?" said the great man.
"Our n-n-names are alike," stammered Mark.
"Tiens! Any reason is better than none. Samphire et Saphir."
"And the l-l-less," said Mark, "includes the g-g-greater."
Saphir laughed at the compliment, and told Mark he might join his
atelier. "Only you must work—work—work. That is my first word to you
—work!"
Mark worked furiously. Many well-informed persons believe that an
art student's life in Paris (particularly that part of Paris which lies on the left
bank of the Seine) is a sort of carnival—a procession up and down the Boul'
Mich', varied by frequent excursions to the Moulin Rouge and other places
of entertainment in Montmartre. Of the unremitting labour, of the grinding
poverty, of the self-denial cheerfully confronted by the greater number, an
adequate idea perhaps may be gleaned from Zola's L'OEuvre, which sets
forth, photographically and pathologically, French art life as it is. L'OEuvre,
however, deals with the struggle for supremacy between the academic and
the "plein air" schools. When Mark entered the Beaux Arts, this struggle,
although not at an end, had become equalised, the balance of power and
popularity lying rather with the plein air party, of which Saphir was the
bright particular star. Saphir introduced Mark to Pynsent, then considered
one of the rising men. Born in the East of America, related on his mother's
side to two of the Brook Farm celebrities, Pynsent had renounced a

promising career as a lawyer in the hope of making his fortune out West. In
California he lost what money he possessed trying to develop a "salted
mine." Then he "taught school" for bread and butter—a foothill school on
the slopes of the Santa Lucia mountains, where the pupils were the children
of squatters, and "Pikers," and greasers. Here he found his true vocation.
For a couple of years he denied himself the commonest comforts, living on
beans for the most part, saving his pitiful salary. Then he worked his
passage round the Horn in a sailing-ship, and began at thirty years of age to
draw from plaster casts! Since, he had taken most of the prizes open to
foreigners at the École des Beaux Arts!
Pynsent found Mark a lodging and studio in the Rue de l'Ancienne
Comédie, not far from the famous Café Procope, the café of Voltaire and
Verlaine. With Pynsent as guide, he learned to know Paris—the Paris of the
Valois and Bourbon, the Paris of the Terror, of the Empire, and of the
Republic. Pynsent had a prodigious memory, and an absorbing passion for
colour. He was always hopeful, generous, proud, inordinately ambitious,
and willing to sacrifice everything to his art. He exercised an enormous
influence upon Mark, making plain to him the virtue which underlies so
much that is vile and vicious on the surface.
"Men fail here," said he, "not so much from incapacity as ignorance. I
could not interpret Paris to you or to myself had I not served my
apprenticeship in California. Because my energies were misdirected there, I
have learned to direct them here. Great Cæsar's ghost! What mistakes I have
made! But you can bet your life that the fellow who makes no mistakes is
either a parasite or a jelly-fish. Tell me what a man's mistakes are, and I'll
tell you what he is."
"Am I making a mistake?" said Mark.

He had worked—furiously, as has been said—for two years. Pynsent
smoked his cigarette for a full minute before he replied: "I don't know yet. I
shall know soon."
"When you do know, tell me," said Mark.
Meanwhile Archibald Samphire was occupying a corner of that famous
quadrangle of Trinity College where Byron, Newton, Macaulay—and how
many more?—have kept their terms. Archie was considered by impartial
judges to be a distinguished young man. A "double blue," he represented his
University at cricket and as a runner; he was certain to take a good degree;
he could sing charmingly; he was handsome as Narcissus. At the end of the
second year's work in Paris, Mark and Archie and Jim Corrance made a tour
of France, with the intention of visiting the Gothic cathedrals; but, as a rule,
after the dust and glare of the French roads, both Archie and Jim Corrance
would seek and find some cool café. Mark, however, would hurry off to the
nearest church, and return raving of foliations and triforia and clerestories—
empty words to Philistines, but to him documents of surpassing interest.
Archibald was going to take Orders, not swerving by a hand's breadth from
his goal; but Jim, after a year at Sandhurst, had resigned his commission.
"I'm no soldier," he told Mark. "I went up for my exam because you
fired me. I want to make money—a big pile." Mark said nothing, but he
thought of Betty Kirtling, now eighteen, and still abroad. Jim had
mentioned (with a flushed cheek) that Betty was coming out at the
Westchester Hunt Ball, always held in New Year's week, and Mark had said
that he would assist at that and other festivities.
When Christmas came Mark crossed the Channel. He brought Pynsent
with him as a guest. Mark was now twenty-two, but he looked older. You
must imagine a long, thin, sallow face, illumined by two splendid blue eyes
and a wide mouth filled with white even teeth. The hair was dark brown,

and the eyebrows were arched, like the eyebrows of the poet Shelley. His
nose was too long—so Pynsent said—and the chin was too prominent, the
eyes set too far apart, the brow too wide. For the rest the figure was tall and
slight, with finely shaped extremities. Curiously enough, although ninety-
nine out of a hundred persons would have pronounced Mark an ugly man;
yet, dressed in petticoats, judiciously painted and bewigged, he made a
captivating woman. At a dance in one of the studios, he impersonated an
American heiress with so much spirit and appreciation of the attention he
received, that before the night was out he had promised to become the wife
of an impoverished French count: a prank provoking a challenge, which
Mark accepted and which doubtless would have ended in a duel, had not
Pynsent explained to the victim of the joke that if Mark was killed, the
slayer of so popular a person would have to fight his friends, man by man,
till not one Englishman or American was left alive in Saphir's studio. "It is
the woman in Mark's face," said Pynsent, "which gives it charm and
quality; but the man, strong and ardent, looks out of his eyes."
Mark did not meet Betty till the night of the Hunt Ball. He was
standing beside Archie and Pynsent, as she entered the room.
"Great Scott—here's Beatrice Cenci!" said Pynsent.
The artist was thinking of the fascinating portrait which hangs in the
Barberini Palace, not of the wooden counterfeit presentment so familiar to
buyers of cheap chromo-lithographs.
"It's our Betty," said Archie.
"As if it could be anybody else," Mark added.
Betty advanced, tall and slim and pale: her great hazel eyes sparkling
with pleasure and excitement. Beside her, beaming with pride, walked the
grey-headed, grey-bearded Admiral; behind came two nice-looking youths,
fingering their highly glazed Programmes and gazing at the milk-white

neck and shoulders in front of them. The big room was full of people: men
in the "pink" of four hunts, officers in scarlet, officers in dark green and
silver, dignitaries of the Church, bland and superior; lesser luminaries, such
as canons and archdeacons; masters from the college, supercilious
gentlemen for the most part, and the sisters and wives and cousins of these.
A roving eye might detect the difference between those of the county and
those of the town, dividing the latter again into those of the barracks, the
close, and the college; and a stranger might have whiled away the evening,
even if he did not dance, by noting the subtler distinction between the wife
of a rural dean and the mistress of a country vicarage, or between Lady
Randolph, the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and Lady Bellowes, whose
husband was a baronet of recent creation.
The first dance had just come to an end, so the floor was
comparatively clear for the passage of Betty and her squires. Archibald
went forward, smiling, to greet her, followed by Mark and Jim Corrance.
"I've saved three dances apiece for you," said Betty.
One of the young men behind, Lord Kirtling's eldest son, protested
loudly: "Oh, I say—and I'm a cousin."
"A cousin!" cried Betty gaily. "Why, these are my best and oldest
friends. We've sucked the same acidulated drop."
Mark introduced Pynsent. Then Lord Randolph came up; and Betty
was escorted in triumph to the corner sacred to the magnates, where her
card was almost torn in pieces by the young men.
"Never saw such a pair," said Pynsent to Mark, indicating Archie and
Betty.
Archibald, in the scarlet coat with white facings of the Quest Hunt,
was standing beside Betty, who wore a pearly brocade embroidered with
true lovers' knots.

"Dear old Archie looks splendid," said Mark.
A set of lancers was being formed. Mrs. Samphire, discovering that
Mark had no partner, begged him to sit down beside her. The years which
had passed since she married the Squire had turned her from a thin, prim,
slightly acidulous spinster into a plump, smirking matron, whose skin
seemed too tight for her face, even as her bodice seemed too tight for her
figure. A voluble talker, she was never known to listen to any person save
her superior in position or rank. Lady Randolph's lightest words she
cherished and generally repeated them afterwards—as her own.
"I've hardly had time to say anything to you," she bleated. "How well
Archibald looks to-night! It distresses me dreadfully to think that he will
never wear pink again. Betty is very handsome. What do you say? A
beauty? No, no. I can't agree with you. And I always admire blondes. All
the Lambs are blondes."
"No black sheep in your family?" said Mark. Lady Randolph, who was
near, smiled.
"Black sheep? Never! Dear me! Who is that? Oh, Harry Kirtling. What
a nice-looking young fellow! One guesses why he is here. Our dear Admiral
is anxious to see a coronet on his niece's head. Don't move, Mark! Ah! there
is Lady Valence and her blind husband. Do tell me—I am so short-sighted
—who is that very common young man with them? What? Oh, oh, indeed!
The Duke of Brecon! I must say a word to dear Lady Valence."
She bustled across the room. Mark turned to Lady Randolph.
"Have you any m-m-mint s-sauce? There is s-something about all the
Lambs which——"
"Does not bring out our great qualities," said Lady Randolph. "See!
She has put the Duke to rout, and he is going to take refuge with me."

Mark glanced up, noting that the Duke's feet were flat and turned out
at an absurd angle, giving him a shuffling and awkward gait.
"He is a better fellow than he looks," whispered Lady Randolph.
"Will you do me a favour, Lady Randolph?" The Duke's voice was
very pleasant. "Perhaps you can guess the nature of it?"
"An introduction to Miss Kirtling, of course."
"Of course," he repeated, laughing.
The lancers was just over, and across the room Mark could see Betty
and Pynsent deep in conversation. Pynsent, he had heard women say, was a
fascinating man, the more so because heretofore he had been proof against
the assaults of the fair. Hullo! Lady Randolph was crossing the floor with
her Duke—confound him! And now Betty was smiling at him. Yes, he had
secured a dance; somebody else's probably. What an insufferable silly grin
he had! Jim Corrance interrupted his thoughts.
"I say, Mark—isn't Betty a wonder?"
Jim began to rave about her. The Duke and Lady Randolph passed on;
Betty leant back in her chair, while Pynsent talked. It seemed to Mark that
Pynsent was making the effort of his life.
"I'm glad you brought Pynsent from Paris," Jim was saying. "It will do
him good. Like all Americans who live in Paris, he is ignorant of the best
side of English life. Eventually he must settle in London. And he'll paint the
portraits of all the swells. He tells me that already he's in love with——"
"Betty!" exclaimed Mark.
"With my mother," said Jim, grinning.
Mark was dancing the next valse, and had to seek his partner, who—it
is to be feared—did not find him as agreeable as usual. Moreover, she too
prattled of Betty, of the great match she ought to make, and so forth.
Fortunately a polka gave an opportunity of letting off steam. After that, and

a cooling glass of cup, Mark felt more hopeful and in better humour.
Indeed, by the time his dance with Betty was due, he was himself, and
beginning to enjoy the ball.
"Your friend, Mr. Pynsent, is perfectly delightful," began Betty.
"I thought you found him so."
Betty smiled demurely.
"He talked in the most interesting way about——"
"Himself," said Mark.
"No."
"About you?"
"Wrong again! He talked, nearly all the time, about a dear friend of
mine whom I had not seen for years."
"I suppose you have dear friends in every town in Europe," said Mark.
The shameless coquette nodded. How her eyes sparkled.
"And who is this dear friend Pynsent knows?"
"Mr. Pynsent was talking about—you," said Betty.
"Betty, dear, forgive me! I am an ass, a silly, jealous ass. And seeing
you to-night I—I——"
A kind pair of eyes warned him to say no more. For a moment there
was silence. Then—they fell to talking of the old days, capping stories, and
laughing at ancient jokes. When Mark left her in the hands of her next
partner, he was more in love than ever, and knew that Betty knew it, and
that the knowledge was not displeasing to her. And she had made plain,
without words, that this meeting of friends had stirred her to the core,
quickening all those generous emotions of childhood which older people
are constrained sorrowfully to stifle and destroy. While Mark was sitting
beside her he realised how little she had changed from the girl who had

played truant on the Westchester Downs, and yet between them lay a
blackthorn fence of convention and tradition.
Meantime he danced gaily every dance, and at the end of the ball got
into a dogcart to drive home with Pynsent, feeling, perhaps, more alive than
he had ever felt before. Pynsent offered him a cigar, and lighted one
himself.
"This Hunt Ball has been a new experience," Pynsent said, as the cart
rolled up the High Street. "And it means work. Lady Randolph has
commissioned a portrait. I go on to Birr Wood after leaving you."
"If you satisfy her, Pynsent, she can help you enormously. She knows
all the right people."
He heard Pynsent's pleasant chuckle.
"'The right people.' I always scoffed at that phrase. But I found out
what it means to-night. Well, I hope to satisfy Lady Randolph. What I see I
can paint. I wonder if Miss Kirtling would sit. Would you ask her?"
"Can you see her?"
"The finer lines are blurred. I might fail on that account. It would be no
small thing to set on canvas the 'unexpectedness' of her face. She's going to
surprise all of you before she's many years older."
"She will marry a swell and become like everybody else," said Mark
nervously.
"A marriage of convenience! That would indeed be surprising. No, no;
she is likely to marry the wrong man, but not from any ignoble motive; she
is capable of a great passion, which, mind you, is more physical than
mental, nine times out of ten. I'd like to make a study of her for a head of
Juliet, but I should want her to be thinking of Romeo, who, I take it, has not
yet made her acquaintance."
Mark shuffled uneasily, and began to drive a willing horse too fast.

"My brother, Archie, will sit as Romeo."
"Ah! When they were standing together to-night, somehow I thought
of Verona at once."
"Pynsent," said Mark desperately, "I may as well tell you that I—I l-l-
love Betty Kirtling. I loved her when she was a b-baby. I loved her when
she was a g-girl. And it all came back to-night. There never has been
anyone else."
"Um," said Pynsent.
"Tell me frankly what's in your m-mind."
"I'm trying to fit you into it—as Romeo."
"I'm an imbecile, of course, but I f-feel like Romeo. There—it's out."
"So is your cigar. Take a pull on yourself, man, and on that horse, too!
You're not an imbecile. Alps lie between you and Miss Kirtling, but the
Alps have been scaled before and will be again."
"If I could paint a great picture——"
Pynsent was silent.
Mark continued keenly: "And I feel in all my bones that I shall get
there, as you put it—with both feet. I say—you're not very encouraging."
"You must try for this next Salon."
No more was said. But when Mark found himself alone in the room at
Pitt Hall which he always used, he lit the candles on each side of the old-
fashioned mirror. Then he examined himself, frowning.
"Romeo!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Good heavens!"

CHAPTER VIII
BARBIZON

After the Hunt Ball Betty Kirtling was whisked away on a round of visits.
Jim Corrance accepted a clerkship in a big firm on the Stock Exchange.
Archibald was reading hard for his degree. Mark returned to Paris and
work.
Acting under Saphir's advice, he went to Barbizon with the intention of
painting a picture for the Salon. In those days every man who went to
Barbizon painted one picture at least in accordance with certain well-
defined Barbizonian rules. At the top of the canvas was a narrow strip of
sky put on boldly with big brushes and a palette-knife. Invariably, the sky
was of a tender, pinky-grey complexion, hazy, but atmospheric, hall-
marked, so to speak, by Bastien Lepage. Below this strip of opalescent mist,
in solid contrast, were painted the roofs of the village. These, too, were
handled capitally even by the beginners. The foreground represented a field
full of waving grasses, grasses from which the sun had sucked the
chlorophyl, leaving them pale and attenuated. In this field grew one tree,
looking much the worse for wear. Under the tree sat or stood a woman, a
peasant wearing the coiffe of the commune and heavy sabots. This woman
always had a complexion of the colour and texture of alligator-skin, and her
back was bowed by excessive labour. A pretty maid waiting for her lover
would have been deemed rank blasphemy against the traditions of the place
where the "Angelus" of Millet had been conceived and painted.

Mark worked hard at just such a picture during half of January and the
whole of February. A dozen friends were painting similar masterpieces in a
fine frenzy of open-air excitement. Saphir himself was at Gretz, but he
came over to Barbizon, breakfasted chez Siron, and examined his pupils'
canvases with kindly, twinkling eyes. Then he went back to Gretz.
"He says we are all monkeys," observed a big Canadian.
"So we are," cried Mark. "We're trying to copy what one man has done
s-s-superlatively well."
Later, he took the Canadian aside. Saphir had talked alone to him; and
Mark had overheard his own name.
"What did he say to you about—m-m-me?"
"Oh, nothing."
"I w-want the facts."
"Well, he did ask me if you had private means, and I told him your
father made you a good allowance."
"Go on!"
"And—and he said that was fortunate. Of course he meant that—er—it
takes time to arrive—eh?"
"Quite so. A lifetime if you happen to choose the wrong r-road."
About the beginning of March Pynsent arrived from England.
"I've caught on," he told Mark. "I shall certainly take a studio
somewhere in Kensington. Lady Randolph has found me a score of patrons.
What are you doing?"
Mark produced his big canvas. Pynsent stared at it, pursing up his
lower lip and frowning. Mark's hopes oozed from every pore. The picture
exhibited pitiful signs of excessive labour. Pynsent obtained his best effects
with bits of pure colour laid on with amazing precision. Mark's colour
looked like putty.

"Are they all as ugly as that?" said Pynsent, indicating the model.
"I got the ugliest in the v-v-village. There's a lot in her face."
"A lot of dirt."
"I don't allow her to wash it. Can you read her 1-life's history?"
"I'm hanged if I can."
"You see n-nothing in her eyes?"
"Nor in her mouth. She's lost all her teeth."
"Knocked out by a b-brutal husband," said Mark, grinning, but ill at
ease beneath Pynsent's chaff.
"What are those stains on the apron—red paint?"
"Sheep's blood. I rubbed it on myself."
Pynsent roared; he was not a Barbizonian.
"Great Scott! You fellows take yourselves seriously."
"Honestly," said Mark. "What d'ye think of it?"
"It's good—in streaks," said Pynsent solemnly. Then his eyes flashed.
"Look here, Mark, they won't hang that. But I've told Lady Randolph and
Miss Kirtling that you will have a 'machine' in the Salon. Now, have you the
pluck to scrape this and paint it out—to-night?"
"Yes," said Mark.
Next day Pynsent led the way into the forest of Fontainebleau, Mark
following like a faithful spaniel. They walked for miles. Finally, Pynsent
discovered a bank of cool-looking sand in the heart of a pine wood; upon
the sand were wonderful shadows and reflections.
"Voila notre affaire!" exclaimed Pynsent.
"But the m-model——"
"I have wired to Paris. These Barbizon peasants make me tired."
That evening the model arrived—a girl. Within twelve hours Mark was
at work. Pynsent posed the girl upon the bank. She sat with her elbows on

her knees and her face between her hands, staring helplessly and hopelessly
out of an unknown world.
"We'll call it 'Perdue,'" said Pynsent. "The subject is trite, but the
treatment will redeem that. I spotted that girl last year in the Rue du Chat
qui Peche. Aren't her eyes immense?"
Mark protested in vain. Pynsent ordered him to begin work. In eight
days the picture was painted. Pynsent had not laid a brush upon it, but Mark
was miserably conscious that his friend's genius informed almost every
stroke. For hours Pynsent stood at his side, exhorting and encouraging.
"It's really good," said Pynsent, after he had forbidden his pupil to add
another touch.
"But it's not m-m-mine, Pynsent."
"What?"
"I couldn't have p-painted it without you."
"Pooh!"
At Siron's Mark's friends predicted success, a place on the line,
honourable mention, a prize, possibly. Saphir saw it and whistled.
"You painted that—you?"
They were standing in the dining-room, panelled with studies, some of
them signed by famous men. Mark's friends were all present, and in the
background Madame Siron smiled genially, murmuring that monsieur
certainly must add a tiny sketch to her little collection. Mark glanced from
face to face. The general expression was not to be misinterpreted. In the
eyes of those present he had "arrived."
"Tiens!" said Saphir; "it is not signed. You must sign it, mon garçon."
A bystander produced a brush and palette.
"It grows upon one," said Saphir, shading his eyes. "He has lots to
learn in technique, but the feeling which cannot be imparted is there.

Saperlipopette! It brings tears to the eyes. And look you," he addressed
Pynsent and Mark in broken English, "I am not easily moved—I! When I
lose a friend of ze blood—how do you call it?—a relation, yes, ze tears do
not come—no! And when I hear Wagner—zoum, soum, zoum—ze tears do
not come, no! But when I hear Rossini, Bellini—rivers, mes amis, rivers!"
With a large gesture he indicated a tropical downpour; then he continued:
"It is ze melodie. Is it not so, mes enfants?"
He appealed to the circle around him. Mark listened, stupefied, to a
clamour of congratulation.
"Sign it—sign it!" they cried.
Mark took the brush with a queer smile upon his wide mouth. The
others fell back to give him room.
"Dieu de Dieu!" ejaculated Saphir.
Mark had copied cleverly Pynsent's bold signature; below it in small
script was: "per M. S."
Pynsent bit his lip, frowning. The others stared at Mark, who met the
startled interrogation of their raised brows with a nervous laugh.
"The f-f-feeling you speak of," he turned to Saphir, "is his," he
indicated Pynsent. "I cannot s-send it to the Salon as my work, but I shall k-
keep it and v-value it as long as I live."
Saphir held out his hand.
"My friend," he said in his own tongue, "if you were not an Angliche, I
should ask to have the honour of embracing you."
"He's a quixotic fool," Pynsent growled; "I never touched the canvas."
The others vanished, put to flight by an intuition that something was
about to happen. Mark addressed Saphir.
"When you were here last you s-said to a friend of mine that it was
fortunate for me, that I had private means. You are my master; you have

seen everything I have done. This, you understand, does not c-c-count.
Pynsent knows my work, too, every line of it. I ask you both: Am I w-w-
wasting my time?"
Neither answered.
"No mediocre success will content me," continued Mark. "I ask you
again: Am I w-w-wasting my time?"
"Yes," said Saphir gruffly. He put on his hat and went out.
"He's not infallible," Pynsent muttered angrily.
"Then you advise me to g-go on? No; you are too honest to do that. I
shall not go on, Pynsent; but I don't regret the last three years. They would
have been wasted indeed if they had b-b-blinded me to the truth concerning
my powers."
"What will you do, Mark?"
"I don't know—yet," said Mark.

Mark returned to England, where he learned of Betty's conquests. The Duke
of Brecon, so Lady Randolph told him, had to marry a million, otherwise he
might have offered Miss Kirtling the strawberry leaves. Harry Kirtling, the
cousin, very handsome, and a passionate protester, wooed in vain, much to
the Admiral's dismay, a dismay tempered by Betty's assurance that she did
not wish to leave her uncle for many a long year. A prosperous rector
proposed in a letter which began: "My dear Miss Kirtling,—After much
earnest thought and fervent prayer, I write to entreat you to become my
wife...." This gentleman was a widower on the ripe side of forty. Pynsent,
too, confessed that had he not been bond to Art, he might have become
Betty's slave.
Mark saw her on the day when she was presented at Court, on the day
when she held a small court herself at Randolph House, after she had kissed

her sovereign's hand. Like the young man in the parable, Mark went away
from Belgrave Square very sorrowful, because Betty seemed so rich and he
was so poor.
About this time he met the future Bishop-Suffragan of Poplar, David
Ross, then head of the Camford Mission. A man of extraordinary personal
magnetism, Ross had begun by challenging public attention as the
champion middle-weight boxer of his year. He possessed a small forest in
Sutherland and abundant private means; but, to the amazement of his
friends, he took Orders and accepted a curacy in the East End. His lodge in
Sutherland was turned into a sanatorium, whither were sent at his expense
clergymen who had broken down in health. David Ross had the highlander's
prophetic faculty and intuition. Where others crawled, he leaped to
conclusions respecting his fellow-creatures. When he met Mark, for
instance, he divined his mental condition: the suffering denied expression,
the disappointment, the humiliation. But he divined far more—something of
which Mark himself was unconscious: a religious mind, religious in the
sense in which Bishop Butler interpreted the word—submissive to the will
of God. This quality in combination with a passionate energy and
determination to win his way arrested Ross's attention and captivated his
interest. He asked Mark to become a guest at the Mission.
Here the almost invincible odds against which a dozen men were
struggling whetted to keen edge Mark's vitality and love of fighting.
Listening to David Ross, it seemed incredible that he should have pinned
his ambition to the painting of a picture. At the end of a couple of months'
hard work in the slums he said abruptly to Ross: "If I can overcome my
confounded stammer, I shall take Orders."
Ross held his glance.
"Do nothing rashly," he said gravely.

Time, however, strengthened Mark's resolution. He set to work to
overcome his stammer. When he told his family of his intention to take
Orders, each member in turn protested.
"You—a parson?" The Squire was scarlet with surprise.
"There is only one living," bleated Mrs. Samphire.
"Oh, I shan't compete with old Archie," said Mark, smiling.
Lady Randolph, however, said to Betty: "He is the right man to lead—
lead, mind you—forlorn hopes."
"And be killed," Betty answered vehemently.
"I don't think he will be killed, my dear."
For many months after this he worked with Ross, seeing but little of
his family and friends.

In the following February the Admiral died after a short sharp attack of
pneumonia. Mark attended his funeral, and exchanged a few words with
Betty, to whom was left everything the kind, eccentric old man possessed.
Betty broke down when she saw Mark's sympathetic face. She had nursed
her uncle faithfully; she had loved him very dearly; she realised that she
was alone in a world which held pain as well as pleasure. Mark tried to
comfort her.
"You have so many friends, Betty."
"Friends?" She smiled through her tears. "Friends are like policemen—
always round the corner when most wanted. I might want you, and you—
you—would be somewhere in Whitechapel."
Mark opened his mouth, and shut it again resolutely.
During that week he saw her twice. It was settled that The Whim
should be let till she came of age; Betty living, meanwhile, with her
guardian and trustee, Lady Randolph. Miriam Hazelby helped Betty to pack

up the Admiral's china, and, when Mark called, played watchdog. She liked
Mark and respected him; but she respected also the late Admiral's wishes.
Mark noted that Miss Hazelby's affection and sympathy for Betty did not
obscure her powers of observation.
"Betty," she said to Mark, "has a mind which till now has been a
sundial: recording only the bright hours. I confess that I am anxious about
her. When I left her I told the Admiral that she carried too much sail and not
enough ballast. As a seaman he approved my trite little metaphor."
Mark began to praise Betty.
"Oh," said Miss Hazelby drily, "she has been fortunate in knowing
good people to whose standard she tries to attain. It has been easy for her to
avoid evil in King's Charteris, but in Belgrave Square——"
The excellent lady sniffed.
"Lady Randolph will keep an eye on her," said Mark.
"She'll need both eyes," retorted Miss Hazelby.

CHAPTER IX
AT KING'S CHARTERIS

Two years later, in April, Mark Samphire preached his first sermon at
King's Charteris. He had wrestled with his stammer as Christian did with
Apollyon, and he told Archie that he had reason to believe it was mastered
when the brothers met at Pitt Hall upon the Saturday preceding Mark's
appearance in the village pulpit.
"I passed some severe tests, before they admitted me to deacons'
orders," he said.

Archie stared curiously at an unfamiliar Mark. "You don't look very
fit."
"I've been like a bird in the hand of a fowler, a fluttering tomtit trying
to escape. Ross rescued me. You must get to know Ross: he's a splendid
fellow. I've talked to him a lot about you."
Archibald nodded, well pleased to find Mark's eyes lingered upon his
handsome face and imposing figure with the same pride and affection as of
yore, out he was conscious also of a mental change in his brother, divined
rather than apprehended. Mark spoke with enthusiasm of work in congested
districts, he gave lamentable details, he indicated colossal difficulties.
"And this sort of thing satisfies you?" said Archie heavily. "Although,
as I take it, the results are visible. I like to see results. I keep a diary—of
results. You were telling me just now of the difficulties of dealing with a
shifting population: the people, for instance, round the London Docks. I
couldn't undertake that sort of work."
"You want to count your sheaves," said Mark.
"I am ambitious," Archie admitted. "Aren't you?"
"Oh, yes. If I told you that I felt it in me to become a preacher, you
would l-laugh perhaps."
"You've always had plenty to say, Mark."
"And if, one day, I could stand in the pulpit of such a fane as
Westchester, if——"
"Why not?" said Archie.
"I try not to think of that. But those spires and pinnacles—I see them
as in a vision."
"What will be your text to-morrow?"
"That verse from Isaiah: 'A man shall be as an hiding place from the
wind, and a covert from the tempest.' I shall not t-touch upon the

prophetical interpretation. I want to show that any man, the humblest and
weakest, may prove a shelter to others."
Archie caught his enthusiasm.
"It is in you, Mark."
"In me, yes; but suppose it won't come out."
"Do you know that Betty Kirtling is here?"
"Here?" He turned to hide his flushed cheeks.
"She is with Mrs. Corrance. We are asked to lunch there to-morrow. I
accepted for you. Betty ran down from town yesterday on purpose to hear
your first sermon."
"Oh!"
"It's a great compliment; for she has become a much-sought-after
person. I see her name continually in the papers. Lady Randolph tells me
that you refuse all invitations to Randolph House. Is that wise?"
"Wise?" Mark laughed, and thrust out a lean leg. "Is this a leg for a
gaiter?"
"That joke is worn threadbare," said Archie, with a slight frown. "I
can't see why your work should cut you off from old friends who have your
welfare at heart. Lord Randolph got me my present curacy. He would do as
much and more for you."
"I shall certainly stick to Ross."
Next morning Mark rose early after an uneasy and almost sleepless
night. He had been obsessed by a spirit of Betty. Whenever he closed his
eyes she came to him. "She is the creature of my dreams," he told himself
impatiently. None the less she dominated his waking hours, she stood
behind that ever-increasing hope of becoming a great preacher. He had
consumed gallons of midnight oil in the composition of sermons declaimed
in unfrequented spots of Victoria Park. Now, the thought of preaching to the

woman he loved filled him with bitter-sweet excitement. He dressed and
went out into the park. Presently he came to an elm out of which flew some
jackdaws chattering volubly. Their harsh notes brought back a morning
when Archie and he, small schoolboys, had scaled this very tree in search of
jackdaws' eggs. Yes; there was the hole, high up, out of which Archibald by
his superior height and strength had secured the spoil.
Mark sat down, despite the protests of the jackdaws, and faced his
thoughts. The talk with Archie of the night before came back to him. He had
heard Archie preach. Archie's matter, perhaps, to the critical mind left
something to be desired; but his manner was admirable and his voice clear,
persuasive, melodious, an instrument of incomparable power and delicacy.
Did Mark envy his brother? Did he grudge him a success already achieved?
Did he grudge him—a subtler point—the greater success which
undoubtedly he would achieve? To these questions he answered sincerely
—"No."
Leaving Archibald, his thoughts flew straight and swift to Betty. She
had come to King's Charteris to hear him preach? Why? His heart flamed;
for Archie had preached his first sermon in the village church. Had Betty
travelled from town to hear Samphire major? No.
When he returned to Pitt Hall, he had made a sort of compromise with
his pride, his conscience, and his God. Time was when he abhorred
compromise, but David Ross had said that a life without compromise must
prove entirely selfish or so selfless in its aims as to be abnormal. Mark
admitted the possibility of breakdown. And if silence were imposed, he
must shoulder the burden. Speech, on the other hand, if it were truly his,
included speech with Betty. He felt assured that she expected him to speak,
that she had travelled to King's Charteris to hear him speak. He could not

have said why this conviction thrilled every nerve in his body; it simply was
so.

During the first part of the service, Mark found time to study the faces of
the congregation. Betty, sitting beside Mrs. Corrance, looked pale and
anxious. Mark remembered that she had not entered the church since the
Admiral's funeral. Having keen sight, he detected traces of tears, which
moved him profoundly. Behind her, with his broad back against one of the
pillars, sat the Squire, rigidly upright. He had come prepared to hear his boy
—"the best boy in the world, sir"—preach a fine sermon. During the
rector's long and somewhat dry discourses, the Squire always assumed an
attitude of profound attention, his fine head inclined upon his massive chest,
his eyes and lips meditatively closed. If suspicious sounds had not escaped
through his nose, none would have dared to accuse him of napping. But
everybody, from the rector to the latest breeched urchin, knew that the dear
man slept like a humming-top from introduction to peroration. He would
not sleep to-day. Expectation, tempered by anxiety, informed his
expression, the expression assumed by him at Lord's, when his sons were
walking to the wicket. Literally interpreted, it said: "A Samphire may fail,
but it is not likely to happen." Mark glanced from his father to Mrs.
Samphire. Her prominent eyes, set too far apart, like a sheep's, were slightly
congested; her puffy cheeks were flushed. It struck Mark that she would
accept failure on his part with Christian resignation. She resented the fact
that Mark was the favourite son of the Squire, who may have seen the
quality in his youngest born which distinguished the mother, and which
Mark alone inherited. Mrs. Samphire was inordinately jealous of the first
wife.

Mark's thoughts wandered with his eyes. Just below the pulpit he saw
Wadge, the head keeper, a thin, hard-bitten, sharp-featured man, whose
brown face was framed in bushy red whiskers. Many a day's sport had Mark
enjoyed with Wadge. He recalled a frosty morning when Jim Corrance,
indiscreetly thrusting his hand into a burrow, had been nailed by a ferret.
Behind Wadge was Bulpett, the butcher, a burly man, one of the
churchwardens, and reputed to be worth a snug ten thousand pounds. What
a lot of rats there used to be in his old slaughter-house before it was pulled
down! Once Bulpett had caught Archie and Mark peeping through a chink
in the slaughter-house at a calf he was about to kill. What silly idiots they
felt when Bulpett politely invited them to come inside. And then Bulpett
had laughed and said that he would send a nice piece of veal to Pitt Hall.
The rector gave out the psalms of the day. Archie's splendid voice
filled the church. And who was this singing so shrilly and so abominably
flat? Why dear old Ellen, to be sure—his first nurse—who must have
walked all the way from Cranberry-Orcas. Ellen lived in a cottage near
Cranberry brook, wherein Archie and he used to catch trout by the willow at
the foot of her cabbage patch. She had been maid to the first Mrs.
Samphire; and when Miss Selina Lamb came to Pitt Hall, Ellen married a
porter, who had waited for her fifteen years. Mark knew the porter well. He
was not an agreeable person, being rheumatic and asthmatic—and crusty in
consequence—but at the time of the marriage the Samphire boys agreed
that Ellen was wise in preferring him to the Ewe, their nickname for the
stepmother.
How his thoughts were wandering!
With an effort he led them from the nave into the chancel. In this
church a famous poet and scholar had ministered for more than a quarter of
a century. The ancients from the workhouse, who sat in the front seats of the

aisle, wearing white smock frocks, had been ruddy-faced youths when the
poet first came to King's Charteris. And in the village the influence of this
saint remained a vital force, although he had been dead nearly twenty years.
This thought moved Mark to pray that he might be given the gift of tongues,
which is not the faculty of speaking many languages, but the infinitely
greater power of making our fellow-creatures feel what we feel—of
touching them to issues finer than those which ordinarily engross them, of
so setting forth what is strong and tender and true that other things, no
matter what they may be, shrink and shrivel into the trivial and
insignificant.
The psalms came to an end. Standing at the great brass lectern, Mark
read the lessons without stutter or pause in a voice slightly harsh, yet
susceptible of modulation. Later, in the same harsh, penetrating tone he
gave out his text. The scrapings of feet, the rustle of skirts, the occasional
cough were silenced. Mark began his sermon by asking his hearers to
consider man's relation to others: a theme informed by him with phrases
and illustrations drawn from personal observation of village life. Betty
Kirtling felt as if she were peering into a magic mirror, wherein she saw
herself illumined by a strange light, and this shining image was no phantom
of the imagination, but her true substantial self, the woman as God intended
her to be, with finite aims and appetites subordinate and subservient to the
majestic design and purpose of the Infinite.
To her right were the village boys, a mob of sluggish-minded urchins,
the raw material out of which is fashioned the Slowshire yokel. But each
boy—so Betty noted—was gazing at Mark with intelligence and affection.
He held them in thrall. The hard lines about Mrs. Samphire's eyes and
mouth softened. The Squire was staring into the face of the preacher—
seeing, hearing, feeling the mother of his son.

And then, when the great thing for which Mark had laboured as
patiently as Demosthenes, seemed within his grasp, when he had proved to
the meanest understanding that he had something to say which the world
would hear gladly, his infirmity seized him. In the middle of a phrase he
began to stutter. His face grew convulsed, his thin hand went to his throat,
as if seeking to tear from it the abominable lump. But no articulate word
followed. Only a stutter falling with sibilant hiss upon the dismayed
congregation.
At that moment a nervous, hysterical girl tittered. The woman seated
next to her glared indiscreet rebuke. The wretched creature burst into
discordant laughter. Betty heard the girl's laughter and saw Mark's twisted
face. His eyes met hers in a glance which she could not interpret, as the girl
who had laughed was led weeping from the church. The great oak door
clanged behind her, and in the silence which followed Mark attempted to
continue his sermon, but the last desperate effort to conquer a physical
disability cannot be described. Betty covered her face. Old Ellen burst into
piteous sobs. Mark turned towards the altar, the congregation rising. Then,
with a firm step, he descended the steps of the pulpit.

The brothers came out of the vestry together, passed in silence through the
churchyard, where Easter flowers were shining in the shadows cast by the
lindens, crossed the village street, and strolled up the lane which led to
Westchester Downs. In the street a small crowd had collected, including
Wadge and Bulpett. Further down, by the lychgate, stood the Samphire
landau. Mark saw a burly figure, and a face, redder even than usual. When
the Squire perceived that his sons were crossing the street he got into the
carriage.

"It's hard on him," said Mark. "The dear old man was so certain I
should score."
The crowd made way; all the men touched their hats; upon every face
was inscribed sympathy and affection. Bulpett advanced, holding out his
huge hand. "Gawd bless ee, sir, we be tarr'ble sorry we be; but try again,
Master Mark, try again!"
"Thank you, Bulpett," said Mark, without stammering. He glanced at
the circle of kindly faces. "By Jove! it's good to have such friends."
The brothers walked on till they reached a bank flaming with
primroses, and sloping to the old chalk-pit, where as boys they used to find
fossils.
"You will try again?" said Archie nervously.
"Again and again," Mark answered. "All the same, I have the feeling
that I shall never be a preacher."
The words burst vehemently from his lips. He was very pale, but calm.
Archibald seemed quite overcome. Mark then said slowly: "I am not fit to
preach."
"What?"
"I—I felt this morning a desire for material success which appalled
me. I had touched you—all of you—to something fine, but—I cannot talk
about it, even to you."
He paused with his eyes upon a distant cloud.
"That wretched girl!" groaned Archibald.
Mark's quietness seemed to exasperate the elder brother.
"I can't follow you," he said irritably. "Why shouldn't one want the
good things of this world: power, position, honour?"
"Don't I want 'em? Great heavens! don't I hunger for 'em? But if they
are not to be mine, what then?"

"You kiss the rod? In your place I should be furious, beside myself
with resentment."
"Good old Archie," said Mark, taking his brother's hand and pressing
it.
He stood up, reminding Archie that Mrs. Corrance had asked them to
lunch with her.
"Betty cried like a baby," said Archie irrelevantly.
Mrs. Corrance received them in the small hall of her house, welcoming
Mark with a mute sympathy more eloquent than words. Mark broke the
silence as Betty came forward.
"I made a sad mess of it," he said, smiling genially.
But as he was washing his hands in Jim's room upstairs, his face
hardened. He went to the window which overlooked Mrs. Corrance's rose-
garden. At the end of a pergola, glorious in June with the blossoms of an
immense Crimson Rambler, he could see a small arbour wherein Mrs.
Corrance was in the habit of sitting whenever the day proved fine. This
arbour was the prettiest thing in the garden, and the one which brought most
vividly to mind his childhood. Here, many and many a time, Mrs. Corrance
had read to and played with Jim and the Samphire boys. He could just
remember how dreary and neglected this garden had been when the arbour
was built. Out of a chaos of weeds and stones and broken crockery (for the
outgoing tenant had used this backyard as a dumping-ground for rubbish)
Mrs. Corrance had created a lovely little world, a tiny domain peculiarly her
own, fragrant with memories sweet as the thyme and lavender of its
herbaceous borders. As a boy, Mark often wondered why time and care
were lavished upon a piece of ground so insignificant. Now he knew. Mrs.
Corrance had had the joy of fashioning beauty out of ugliness.

At luncheon he told some anecdotes of life in Stepney. Archibald's
gloomy face and Betty's tell-tale eyelids kept his tongue wagging, but his
thoughts were in the pulpit of King's Charteris Church or in Mrs. Corrance's
rose-garden. The one seemed to have affinity with the other. Would his life
remain a wilderness of weeds and broken crockery?
After luncheon he found himself alone with Betty in the arbour. He
had dreaded this moment; so had she; and yet each was sensible of a
harmony no more to be interpreted than the murmur of the wind in tall
grasses.
"What are your plans?" she asked.
Indirectly he answered by speaking of life at the Camford Mission.
She listened, computing the distance between Randolph House and Bethnal
Green.
"You talk as if work—such work, too,—were all that is left."
He was silent. Her face, delicately flushed, brimming over with a
tender and imaginative pity, implored him to speak.
"Work lies between me and what is left," he answered slowly,
watching the pulse beat in the blue veins of her white neck.
"You may be famous yet," she whispered. "This morning when you
began I—I almost forgot that it was you. And when I looked round,
everybody, even the village boys, were spellbound."
"But when I f-f-failed," said Mark hurriedly, "you, you felt what I f-f-
felt, that, that——" He put his hand to his throat, unable to finish the phrase
because of the detestable lump rising and swelling in his throat.
"You thought that because I cried."
He nodded, seeing again her despairing gesture.
"I am sorry I was such a poor friend," she said quickly. "I ought not to
have cried. I behaved like a weak fool. You will succeed yet, Mark. I know

it; I know it."
The lump in his throat seemed to dissolve.
"But," she continued, "if—if it should be otherwise, do you think that I
would care? Do you measure my friendship for you by the world's foot-
rule?"
Mark seized her hands.
"God bless you!" he said passionately. "God bless you, dear, dear
Betty!" Then abruptly, with a strange smile, he added, "Good-bye!"
He had gone before she could recover her wits or her voice. She stood
alone, a piteous figure, truly feminine inasmuch as she was not able to
pursue the man.
"Oh, oh!" she cried, covering her face as she had done in the church. "I
cannot bear the misery behind his smiles."

CHAPTER X
AFTER THREE YEARS

"I am growing older and older," said Betty Kirtling.
Lady Randolph, looking up from a paper, peered through her glasses at
charms which Time had embellished rather than diminished. Betty had
passed her twenty-second birthday; she had begun her fifth season; but by
virtue of high health and spirits she still retained the bloom and freshness of
the débutante. She stood at the middle window of the morning-room of
Randolph House, the big brown house at the corner of Belgrave Square,
from whose hospitable doors Archibald and Mark Samphire had driven to
Lord's Cricket Ground when they were Harrow boys. Outside, a May sun

was shining after a shower; and in the puddles on the balcony some
sparrows were taking their bath. Betty was reflecting that London sparrows
must be very uncomfortable in a dry summer.
"Are you wiser?" Lady Randolph asked.
"I know that sparrows wash themselves, and that skylarks don't," Betty
replied. "I suppose the London sparrows had to bathe, and that they learned
to love it. How jolly they look, splashing about. That must be a cock bird.
Do you see? He takes a whole puddle to himself."
Lady Randolph laid down the Morning Post.
"Archibald Samphire has been made a minor canon of Westchester,"
she said abruptly.
Betty slightly turned her head. Lady Randolph perceived a faint pink
blush tinging the whiteness of her neck.
"And Jim Corrance is coming here to luncheon—to-day."
Betty's exclamation at this must be explained. Jim had spent three
years in South Africa, buying and selling gold-mines. He was now a junior
partner in the great firm which he had entered five years before as a clerk.
"I shall ask Archibald Samphire and Jim to come to us at Birr Wood
for the Whitsuntide recess. Do you think Mark would join them!"
"Perhaps; if you were careful to make no mention of me."
"Betty?"
"He shuns me as if I were a leper. I've not seen him for eighteen
months. Yes—ask him. Make him come! I should like to meet those three
once again."
She ran from the room, laughing. Lady Randolph frowned. "Does she
care for Jim?" she was reflecting, "or is it still Mark? Or—is it Archibald?
She has always been loyal to her boy lovers." Her wise old eyes began to
twinkle. Many men, some of them irreproachable from the marriage point

of view, had fallen in love with the Kirtling girl with the De Courcy eyes,
but in vain. "And yet she is not cold," mused her friend; "a passionate
nature if ever there was one. How will it end?" She often told herself that
this ever-increasing interest in Betty made life worth the living. She
recognised in her qualities which invited speculation. Betty had a sense of
religion lacking, or let us say elementary, in Lord Randolph's wife; on the
other hand, the girl's sense of humour was less keen than her own. Pynsent
—she liked Pynsent—always spoke of Betty's unexpectedness. So far, what
she had done and said had been more or less conventional. That indicated
Irish blood—the wish to please those with whom she lived.
Her reflections were interrupted by Jim Corrance. He explained that he
had landed at Southampton within the week.
"I saw this house last night," he concluded, "and it brought back the
days when you were so kind to us. So I asked if you were at home. And I
was delighted to get your wire this morning. Is Betty here?"
"No." His face amused his old friend, but she added quickly: "She is
upstairs, prinking—for you. Have you seen Mark Samphire?"
"I saw him yesterday, and I shall see him again this afternoon," said
Jim gravely. "Mark is overworked, you know."
"I don't know," said Lady Randolph drily. "Tell me about him."
Jim began to describe the difficulties against which Mark was
contending. Lady Randolph's eyes lost their sparkle.
"Do you believe all you say?" she asked when Jim paused. "You indict
Mark's common sense and worldly wisdom, but are you as sure as you seem
to be that he is tilting at windmills?"
Corrance was silent.
"I have used your arguments a thousand times," continued Lady
Randolph, "and always, but always, I have doubted their real value. And I

am supposed to be a scoffer, a freethinker, a woman of the world. It is
amazing that I can sympathise at all with Mark, yet I do, and so do you, my
friend. You are no more sure than I that he is not right in sacrificing the
things which we rate so highly. When I last saw him his face was haggard
and white, but he looked happier than you."
Jim stared at the pattern in the carpet, till an awkward pause was
broken by the entrance of Betty, a radiant vision from which the young man
laughingly shaded his eyes. Her welcome was so warm, that Lady Randolph
made certain the girl's heart was untouched so far as Jim Corrance was
concerned. Soon after the three joined Lord Randolph in the dining-room,
where Jim was persuaded to talk of what he had done and what he hoped to
do. The sun had been shining on him steadily during three years; and its
glow illumined the present and the future.
"You look pink with prosperity," said Betty; then she added: "Have
you heard of Archie's preferment? he has been made a minor canon of
Westchester."
"Archibald Samphire is the handsomest young man in the Church of
England," observed Lord Randolph.
"Mark always said that Archie had a leg for a gaiter," Corrance
remarked.
"A well-turned leg," said Lady Randolph, "carries a man into high
places; and Archie is hard-working, discreet, and ambitious. He will climb,
mark me."
Obviously Jim was delighted to hear of his friend's success; but Betty's
expression defied interpretation.
"It's queer," said Corrance, "but old Archie has always got what he
wanted. Some fellows at Harrow called it luck. I don't believe in luck."

"I do," cried Betty. "So did Napoleon. Archie is lucky. Do you know
that he has come into an aunt's fortune—about eight hundred a year—which
ought to have gone to the eldest son—George? Archie won the old lady's
heart, when he was a boy, by writing her a wonderful letter; George pinched
her pug's tail, or threw stones at her cat, or something. Archie behaved
nicely, and his letter, I believe, was a model."
"Well—I'm hanged!" exclaimed Jim. "Was it Aunt Deborah Samphire?
It was—eh? Well, I remember that letter quite well. Mark dictated it, for a
lark. And I contributed a word or two. She sent Archie a fiver when he got
into the Sixth, and he came to us. Mark said that Aunt Deb should have a
letter which would warm the cockles of her heart. It was a masterpiece."
"Um!" said Lord Randolph. "This young fellow is certainly a favourite
of the Gods. Luck? Good Gad—who can doubt it? There was that scoundrel
Crewkerne——"
He plunged into a story which began behind the counter of a
haberdasher's and ended in the House of Lords.
"Crewkerne had the devil's own luck," Lord Randolph concluded; "and
luck seems to sit beside young Samphire and you, my boy, but the other lad,
Mark, the fellow with the eyes, is one of the unlucky ones. That first
sermon of his now——"
"Which was also his last," said Betty.
"Eh—what?" Lord Randolph stared. "You don't mean that. He has tried
again—surely?"
"Again—and again," said Betty, "but his stammer always defeats him."
"And he had the real stuff in him," said Lord Randolph. "What a pity it
was not allowed to come out!"
"The real stuff always comes out," said Lady Randolph, rising.

When Jim took his leave a few minutes later, he was under promise to
spend Whitsuntide at Birr Wood. Lady Randolph commissioned him to
persuade Mark to be of the party. Archibald—she felt assured—would join
them. But it must be made plain that a refusal from Mark would be
considered an offence.
Outside, Jim lit an excellent cigar which he smoked as a cab whirled
him eastward. Years afterwards he remembered that drive: the swift
transition from Belgrave Square to the Mile End Road. He had seen Mark
the day before, but only for a few minutes, because some poor creature had
come running for his friend. But those few minutes stood out sable against
the white background of their previous intercourse. Never could he forget
Mark's delight at seeing him: the light in his blue eyes, the grasp of his thin
hand, the thrill of his voice. And yet, to offset this, was the grim fact that his
friend's health and strength were failing. And this failure, measured by his
(Corrance's) success, seemed tragic. Yet was it? The question festered. And
that long drive, the gradual descent of the hill of Life, lent it new and
poignant significance. If Mark had forsworn all Randolph House included
—and it held Betty Kirtling—what had he gained?
The well-bred grey between the shafts of the hansom sped on past the
houses of the rich and mighty, and plunged into the roaring world of work.
Here, on both sides of the street, in flaming gold letters for the most part,
were the names of the successful strivers, the prosperous tradesmen,
merchants, and bankers. Farther on, in Fleet Street, might be seen other
names—those of the heralds and recorders of human effort—the famous
newspapers. Jim's eyes sparkled, and his heart beat faster. For the moment
he forgot the dun streets behind these resplendent thoroughfares—the
interminable miles and miles of houses which shelter the millions who toil
and moil out of sight and out of mind!

Passing the Mansion House, the grey knocked down a ragamuffin.
Corrance was out of his cab in a jiffy, but the urchin scrambled up,
apparently unhurt. Jim gave him half a crown and a scolding, much to the
amusement of the burly policeman, who was of opinion that the young
rascal might have done it on purpose. Jim was horrified. "Bless yer, sir,
they'd do more than that to get a few coppers." These words stuck in his
thoughts.
When he reached the Mission House he was received by one of the
younger members—a deacon full of enthusiasm which flared, indeed, from
every word he spoke. Corrance was struck by the lad's face—his bright
complexion, clear eyes, and general air of sanity. Some of the men at the
Mission were ill-equipped for the pleasures of life, and therefore, perhaps,
more justified in accepting its pains in the hope of compensation hereafter.
They, to be sure, would have repudiated indignantly the barter and sale of
bodies and souls. None the less, the self-sacrifice of one pre-eminently
qualified to win this world's prizes became the more remarkable.
"Samphire will be here in five minutes," said the young fellow. "Can I
offer you anything—a whisky and soda, a cigarette?"
"If you will join me."
"I shall be glad of the excuse," replied the other frankly. "It is horribly
thirsty weather—isn't it? And a thirst is catching. I've been working
amongst the navvies this morning. Glorious chaps—some of them! I attend
to the games, you know—cricket and football."
He plunged into a description of the men with whom he had dealings;
and from them, by a natural transition, to David Ross, who had just been
ordained Bishop of Poplar. For David Ross great things were predicted.
"It's like this," he concluded: "Our people are waking up. Time they
did, too. And the men who will fill the big billets will be those who have

seen active service. I don't sneer at the scholars, but a bishop nowadays
must be more concerned with the present than the past. Ross chucked the
schools, and he was right; he has given his attention to conditions of life
amongst the very poor, and I believe he knows more about 'em than most
men of twice his age and experience. Samphire's friends may think he's
wasting his time—from a worldly point of view, I mean—down here in the
slums, but he isn't."
Mark's entrance cut short this conversation, and the speaker withdrew
at once.
"Nice boy," said Mark. "The sort we want most, and so seldom get.
Half our fellows are discouraged, and show it; but I'm not going to talk
shop to you, old chap."
"I saw Betty Kirtling to-day," said Jim abruptly. "It's amazing that she
is still Betty Kirtling."
Mark said nothing. Jim, after a keen glance at his pale face, began to
speak of the Whitsuntide party, which at first Mark refused to join. Jim
grew warm in persuasion, accusing Mark of churlishness, making the
matter one personal to himself. Finally, Mark consented to spend four days
at Birr Wood.
"We shall hear Archie preach in Westchester Cathedral," Mark said.
"I wish it were you," Jim replied quickly.
"I shall never p-p-preach," stammered Mark.
A few minutes later the friends were on their way to one of those
squalid courts which lie between the Mile End Road and the river. To Jim
the dull uniformity of the houses indicated a life inexorably drab in colour
and coarse as fustian in texture. But Mark had the microscopist's power of
revealing the beauty that lies imprisoned in a speck of dust. Seen by the
polarised light of his imagination these dreary dwellings showed all the

colours of the spectrum. Here lived a family of weavers; there, behind those
grimy windows, were fashioned the wonderful hats—the bank-holiday hats
of Whitechapel. Of every trade pursued in this gigantic hive he had the
details at his tongue's tip; and through the woof of his description ran
golden threads. More than once Corrance touched upon the obstacles—the
ever-shifting population, the indifference which lies between class and
class, the drunkenness, the premature marriages of penniless boys and girls.
"These are mountains—yes."
"You have set your face to the stars, and you do not look back—eh?"
Corrance said quickly. He was sorry he had put the question, for he felt that
Mark would not try to evade it.
"Look back?" cried Mark. "Aye—a thousand times; and, perhaps, as
one climbs higher the pleasant valleys will grow dim. I'm not high enough
for that," he added hastily.
"You have climbed far above me," said Jim vehemently; "and far as
you have climbed I have gone twice as far—down hill." Then, reading
dismay in Mark's face, he added with a laugh: "Don't speak; I have said too
much already. You have the parson's power of compelling confession. Tell
me more about these weavers!"
Mark obeyed, conscious that troubled waters surged between himself
and his old friend.

CHAPTER XI
IN LOVE'S PLEASAUNCE

Birr Wood lies within three miles of Westchester upon the banks of the
Itchen. The house itself—the home of the Randolphs for four centuries—
was rebuilt by Inigo Jones, and has been mentioned by Lord Orford as
being one of that great architect's best works. Like many of Jones's palaces,
Birr Wood is a show place. The magnificent avenue, the Italian gardens, the
terraces, the disposition of the trees in the park are mere accessories to the
vast white pile which dominates the whole—a glittering monument to rank
and wealth and power.
Pynsent, who had painted four members of the Randolph family,
admired the house enormously, but he maintained that it must remain
greater than any man who might inhabit it. The splendid columns and
pilasters, so expressive of what is enduring in Greek art, were designed
obviously to last for ever, albeit the Randolphs themselves, once so
numerous, so vigorous, and so pre-eminent, were dwindling to extinction.
Pynsent, possibly because he was an American, failed to apprehend the
pathos of this. Mark Samphire said to him: "It is so horribly sad to think
that soon there will be no Randolphs at Birr Wood."
"Um," replied the painter, "how much sadder it would be if there were
no Birr Wood for the Randolphs, or those that come after them. Suppose it
burned down—eh?"
Mark was silent.
"I have heard you say," continued Pynsent, "that the work, the best
work of men's hands, is greater than the men themselves. And you are right.
To me Birr Wood is not the ancient home of the Randolphs, nor the
masterpiece of Inigo Jones, but a materialisation, adapted to modern needs,
of the spirit of Greek architecture. For my part, kind as our friends have
been, much as I like them as individuals, I feel that their house is, in a

strained sense perhaps, profaned by the presence of an hereditary disease.
The Randolphs Van Dyck painted were worthy to live at Birr Wood."
This talk took place upon the terrace facing the Italian gardens upon
the Friday preceding Whit Sunday. The Samphires, Pynsent, Jim Corrance
and his mother, Betty Kirtling, young Kirtling (now Lord Kirtling), and
three fashionable maidens made up a party which had assembled on that
day, and would disperse upon the following Tuesday.
Jim had not met Archibald Samphire for some three years. Archie, Jim
said to himself, might be only a minor canon, but already he had the air of a
great gun. He spoke little, and it was understood that he was thinking of his
sermon in Westchester Cathedral. After dinner, in the red saloon, he sang
three songs: one a lyric, a Frühlingslied sweetly pastoral and simple; the
second a love song by an eminent French composer; the last that hackneyed
adaptation of Bach's lovely prelude, Gounod's "Ave Maria." When he
moved from the piano the girls surrounded him, prattling thanks and
entreaties for more. But Betty, so Corrance noted, sat still, with a faint flush
upon her cheeks and a suffused light in her eyes.
"He sings extraordinarily well," said Jim.
"Yes," Betty sighed.
Just then Mark came up, rubbing his hands. His delight in his brother's
voice struck Jim as being pathetic.
"It's the quality that does it," Mark explained. "That second song of his
—rubbish—eh? But it thrilled—didn't it, Betty? And the tragic note, the
note of interrogation: the forlorn 'why'—you heard that?"
"Yes, yes," said Betty hastily.
"A vocal trick," Jim observed, rather abruptly. Then he moved away,
surrendering his seat to Mark, who dropped into it.

"Well?" said Mark, following Corrance's figure with his eyes. "What
do you think of old Jim?"
"I am thinking of the new Jim," Betty answered. "And I suppose I can
measure the change in myself by the change in him. Archie has changed
too. Only you, Mark, remain the same."
She flashed a blinding glance upon him. Somehow Mark realised that
the glance was an indictment.
"I have changed," he replied quickly.
"No—no. You are the same Mark, with the same ideas, the same ideals
of years ago."
"Ideals?" The expression on her face bewildered him. Not a score of
feet away the others were buzzing about Archie, but Betty and he seemed to
be alone. "You used to share my ideals, Betty."
"You mean you shared them with me, but when you went away you
took them with you. Now they are like you—out of sight."
"I am here now," he replied.
"Because your brother is here. You did not come to see—me."
"Perhaps I did," he murmured, his thin face aflame with colour. Betty's
cheeks were pale, but her bosom heaved.
"If that be really true, I forgive," she whispered. "Only—prove it!"
She leaned towards him.
"Betty," he said hoarsely, "you know why I have stayed away from
you." He looked so distressed that she feared the eyes of the others.
"You shall tell me that and more—to-morrow," she murmured, rising.
"My cousin is crossing to us."
Young Kirtling wanted her to sing, but she refused.
"You always say 'No,'" he growled.

Pynsent joined them, followed by Archibald and the others. Lady
Randolph seated herself beside Mark.
"We have not had a chat for an age," she began, and then went on
abruptly: "How do you like my guests?"
Mark's eyes rested for an instant upon young Kirtling's handsome but
rather saturnine features. Lady Randolph laughed and tapped Mark's hand
with her fan.
"I didn't ask him. He asked himself. He is still mad about our Betty,
but she flouts him. The Admiral wished it, as you know."
"And you," said Mark.
"I want the girl to be happy. And I shall be satisfied if she finds her
peer outside the House of Lords. She has plenty of money and can marry
whom she pleases."
For the second time that evening Mark's cheeks flamed.
"She beguiles all hearts," continued Lady Randolph, looking at Mark
out of the corner of a shrewd grey eye; "Jim Corrance makes no secret of
his feelings; and your handsome brother sang for her and at her—to-night.
Somehow I can't conceive of her as the wife of, let us say, a bishop."
"There are bishops and bishops," said Mark.
"Just so. I am told that a certain person who has been labouring in a
field which—which does not smell as one that the Lord hath blessed—may,
if he continues to display his remarkable powers of organisation, wear lawn
some day."
Then she spoke discreetly of other things, seeing that Mark's lips were
quivering and his eyes shining; while the young man listened, hearing her
pungent, pleasant phrases, but seeing only Betty—Betty—Betty!
Meantime that young lady had left the saloon accompanied by
Pynsent, Kittling, and Jim Corrance. Mark could hear their voices in the

room beyond, and Betty's voice, Betty's laugh, came clearly to his ears
above the chorus, even as the silvery notes of a flute float upward from the
clashing cymbals and roaring bassoons. Mark rose quickly and slipped
away into the moonshine of the terrace.
For three years he had told himself daily that the woman he loved
could never be his. Now—he drew a deep breath—she had come once more
within his grasp. More, the world, in the person of his shrewd old friend,
recognised that he, the failure, had not really failed, that he might have to
give, even from the world's point of view, something worth the taking. And
here, where material things possessed such significance, he could measure
what he had accomplished with a detachment unachievable in Stepney. A
thousand details presented themselves: a summons to the house of a great
minister, an interview with a prince, who professed interest in the better
housing of the poor, letters from celebrities asking for information, and his
ever-increasing friendship with David Ross—now famous. The power of
the orator had been denied him, and perhaps on that account he had been
the keener to practise what otherwise he might have been content to preach.
He walked slowly down the terrace and into the garden which lay
below, a conventional garden cut and trimmed to the patterns set by Le
Nôtre at Versailles and known to the passing tourist as Love's Pleasaunce,
because it was embellished by marble statues of Venus and attendant
Amorini. In the centre sparkled a sheet of water wherein and whereon the
fountains played on high days and holidays. Mark knew that the key to the
middle fountain was concealed in an Italian cypress. Often as a boy he had
begged permission to turn this key, and always, he remembered, there had
been a certain disappointment because the English climate so seldom lends
itself to such a scene, for instance, as Aphrodite rising from the waters.
Now he reflected that he had never seen the fountains play by moonlight.

The whim seized him to turn the key. A second later he was gazing
spellbound at the goddess in the centre of the pool. At the touch of the
shimmering waters the white image thrilled into life. Clothed with silvery
tissues, which revealed rather than concealed the adorable grace of her
limbs, Aphrodite smiled. Beneath the dimpled surface of the pool, her feet
twinkled into a dance, a measure of the moon, slow, rhythmic, and set to the
music of the fountain. Beyond, in the shadow of the cypresses, Mark caught
a glimpse of two nymphs: one playing the double flute dear to Thebans, the
other, seated, sweeping the strings of the Homeric phorminx. From these,
surely, floated the liquid notes, the trills and cadences, which had stirred to
movement the feet of the goddess. Mark touched the key again. The music
died in a sigh. Aphrodite hid herself in the cold marble. The pool, so
sweetly troubled, became still. Mark smiled and released once more the
goddess. But the illusion had lost its spell. Mark touched the key for the last
time, reflecting that Aphrodite rises once only for mortal men. And the
pleasaunce, now, had a forlorn aspect. A cloud obscured the moon, so that
the silver of the scene became as lead and the shadows grew chill and
amorphous. Mark walked slowly away towards the lights of the house
which held Betty.
On the terrace he paused, startled by a deep voice. Archibald was
calling him by name.
"You here?" said Mark.
Archie was seated on a stone bench, which stood in the shadows.
"Yes. Sit down!"
"You are in trouble," said Mark quickly. "Dear old fellow—what's
wrong?"
"My sermon."
Mark sat down, saying: "Tell me about it."

Archie began to speak with a dogged intonation which recalled
Harrow days. As he indicated the scope of the sermon already written out,
Mark drummed with his foot upon the terrace.
"I know it," groaned the elder brother. "It will send the Dean to sleep,
and Lord Randolph will twiddle his thumbs, and my lady will smile
ironically—and Betty——"
"Yes."
"Betty will pity me."
A silence followed. Mark was reflecting that Betty's pity without
Betty's love would be hard to endure.
"You care for her?" he muttered.
"Oh, yes," said Archibald impatiently, "but she says 'No' to me and
everybody else. How I have loved that witch," his voice grew sentimental,
"and how I should like to show her that I can preach. And so I can for
ordinary occasions, but when it comes to a big thing—somehow I don't
score. I'd like to score this time—eh? And if—if you could help me, why—
why, it might make all the difference."
"About Betty?" Mark's voice was thin and strained, but Archie was too
engrossed with his own thoughts to notice that.
"Betty? I'm not thinking about Betty. I mean that next Sunday may be
the making or marring of my career.
"Oh!"
"I put my profession first, as you do, Mark. I can say to you what I
would admit to no other, that success in it is vital to me. I've worked hard,
and of course I've a pull over most fellows, for which I'm sincerely grateful;
but I've not your brains."
"It happens," said Mark after a slight pause, "that I have written a
sermon about Westchester Cathedral. You might find something in it; not

much, I dare say; but a hint or two. As—as I shall never preach it, why—
why shouldn't you have it?"
"I'd like to see it, Mark. Some of my best sermons have been suggested
—only suggested, mind you—by reading others. Robertson is a gold-mine
—and Newman. Where is your sermon?"
"Locked up in my desk at the Mission House."
"Oh!"
"I can nip up and get it," said Mark, after a pause.
"I couldn't allow that, Mark. You're on a holiday and——"
"There's stuff in that sermon," Mark interrupted. "I'd like you to see it.
Holiday be hanged! I'll fetch it to-morrow."

CHAPTER XII
BETTY SPENDS AN HOUR IN STEPNEY

Betty Kirtling came down to breakfast the next morning in her prettiest
frock, and with her prettiest smile upon a glowing face. Indeed, Lord
Randolph, meeting her in the hall, held up his thin, white hand, and
confessed himself dazzled. Betty laughed when he quoted a line of Dryden,
sensible that only a poet could do justice to her looks if they reflected
faithfully her feelings. Perhaps the philosopher, with his faintly ironical
smile, knew better than the poet that "the porcelain clay of human kind" is
easily broken, and (being a collector) he may have remembered (which
accounts for the shadows in his eyes) that rare pieces seldom escape
chipping. He followed the girl into the dining-room, and saw that she seated
herself next the chair which had been taken by Mark the morning before.

Mark, however, was not in the room, his absence being accounted for by
young Kirtling, who had met him driving to the station.
"To the station?" echoed Betty.
Archibald Samphire added that he was charged by his brother to make
the proper excuses. Mark had gone to town on an important matter, and
would return that evening before dinner. Lady Randolph frowned.
"'Pon my soul," she exclaimed, "our young man takes himself too
seriously."
"He's the best and kindest fellow in the world," said Archie. Then he
hesitated. He could not explain the nature of Mark's errand without exciting
curiosity about himself and his sermon.
"What were you going to say?" whispered Betty.
"Mark has gone to town to do me a service," said Archie.
She pouted: "I believe Mark would do anything for you."
With his eyes on his plate, Archie slowly answered, "Yes." Then seeing
that Betty was trifling with her bacon, he added in a different tone: "I advise
you to try this omelette. Shall I get some for you?"
Betty said "No" somewhat tartly, wondering why Mark had left Birr
Wood. "He might have told me last night at dinner," she thought.
After breakfast she escaped from young Kirtling and Jim Corrance,
and betook herself to a secluded spot in the gardens, where she sat staring at
a pretty volume of verse—held upside down. It was intolerable that she
should be sitting here and Mark sixty miles away. Then she smiled,
remembering that only yesterday the distance between them had seemed
immeasurable. And a word, a glance, had bridged it! What a miracle of
Cupid's engineering! Her cheeks were hot as she wondered whether she had
given herself away too cheaply. If propriety faltered "Yes," generosity
thundered—"No." She was sure she understood Mark better than any

creature living, and certainly she understood herself. Always she had
wanted him, but always—always! And he had wanted her, and would want
her for ever and ever. It will be our object to show Betty Kirtling as a young
woman of many facets illumined by lights and cross-lights; but for the
moment she is presented beneath the blaze of Love, which, like the sun,
eclipses other luminaries. Betty was an adept at, if not the mistress of, many
accomplishments. She had been told that she might excel as a musician, a
painter, or a writer, if she chose to give any one of these arts undivided
attention. She preferred to play with all rather than work with one, and
wisely, for her admiration of what others had done was certainly a greater
thing than what she might have done herself. And, perhaps, because she had
scattered her own energies, she was the more keenly appreciative of
sustained endeavour wherever she found it. Young Kirtling, for instance,
aroused interest because he hunted his own hounds as well as any man in
England; Jim Corrance whetted mere affection into something with a
sharper edge to it, inasmuch as he had sought fortune in South Africa and
had found it; Archie was singing himself steadily and stolidly into such
exalted places as the pulpit of Westchester Cathedral.
Sitting there in May time encompassed by Arcadian scents and sounds,
Betty found herself speculating upon the mutual attraction of man and
maid. Young ladies kill time with such meditations as pleasantly as men kill
partridges. Betty, however, while sipping the sweet, made a wry face over
the bitter. Mark's work in the slums stood between her and him, a mystery
which she must accept, knowing that she could never understand it. The
horrors amongst which Mark moved revolted her; the contrast between her
life and his pierced imagination, and left it to bleed; pity, sympathy, the
woman's desire to minister to infirmity, were drained, glutted, by the
incredible demand upon them.

These meditations were disturbed by Lady Randolph. Betty, as soon as
she saw her kind friend, remembered that Lady Randolph had shown her
this delightful nook, and had said that she (Lady Randolph) was in the habit
of sitting here.
"You—alone?" said Lady Randolph. "I have just passed Harry
Kirtling. He asked me if I knew where he could find you. Shall I tell him?"
"Pray don't," said Betty, making room for her friend on the stone
bench. "And besides," she added, letting a dimple be seen, "you could not
tell him where I was. I have spent the last hour in Stepney."
"I can't see you in Stepney, my dear."
"I thought you would say that," said Betty, nervously playing with the
laces on her frock; then, reading the sympathy in the other's face, she burst
out: "Oh—I'm a coward, a coward! I loathe Stepney."
Lady Randolph wondered whether it would be wise to speak. She
cherished the conviction that when in doubt it is better to say nothing; and
yet, in the end, despite a strong feeling that her advice would be wasted, she
said quietly:
"I knew your mother."
"Am I like her?" interrupted Betty.
"I have often thought," continued the elder woman, ignoring Betty's
question, "that if Louise de Courcy had had your upbringing her life would
have been so different——"
"You mean she would not have married my father." Betty's voice
hardened. "Well, if she felt as—as I feel, she would have married him
anyway, if she loved him."
"She would not have loved him," said Lady Randolph with emphasis.
"We women love the things which we are taught to believe are lovable.

You, Betty, have been trained, trained, I say, to love things and people of
good report. It was otherwise with your mother."
"And my father," added Betty. "I have always known that I was
handicapped. Yes; I have been trained to see—it's a question of observation,
isn't it?—to see and admire what is good in everything and everybody, but
you don't know what a materialist I am. I delight in your flesh-pots. Why
just now, when I was trying to walk with Mark through those horrible
slums, I found myself thinking of what——? That delicious macédoine we
had last night!"
Lady Randolph laughed.
"It's no laughing matter. I'm greedy; I spend too much time thinking of
chiffons; and I spend too much money buying them; I adore great things,
but I cannot give up small things. I want to run with the hare and course
with the hounds. Lots of girls try to do both—and succeed in a feeble sort
of way: a fast on Friday and feast on Saturday diet—eh?"
"In Stepney——" began Lady Randolph.
Betty seized her hands. "Why should I go to Stepney?" she whispered,
blushing. "I'll be honest with you."
"I hope so, my dear."
"Mark is going to ask me to marry him. It may be to-day, or to-
morrow, or the day after, but it's coming; and I shall fling myself into his
arms."
"Betty!"
"I haven't a spark of pride left. His long silence smothered it. Do you
know that I have been at the back of all his ambitions? He wanted to be a
famous soldier, because when we were babies I said I must marry a fighting
man."
"If he isn't a fighting man I never saw one."

"Thank you. You always appreciated him. When he was spun for the
army he thought he had lost me. I read despair in his eyes, and he, poor
dear, couldn't read what was in mine. And then came that awful scene in
King's Charteris Church. He gave me up then, but I stuck to him. And now
—now," her eyes filled with tears although her lips were smiling, "he shall
know that success or failure counts nothing with me. I want him—him. And
anything which stands between us I abhor."
Lady Randolph's attempt to reduce this speech to its elements found
expression in a simple: "You will ask him to give up Stepney?"
"I shall ask him to seek work in some place where you do not smell
fried fish. There is plenty to do west of Temple Bar."
"And the others? You have flirted with all of them, Betty; don't deny
it!"
"But I do deny it."
"You encouraged Harry Kirtling the season before last."
"As if he needed encouragement!"
"He nearly persuaded you to marry him."
"Yes, he did," she confessed, blushing furiously. "I burn when I think
of that Ascot week. Bah! what fools girls are! Mark never came near me,
answered my letters with post-cards. I give you my word—post-cards. I
sent sheaves and received straws. And Harry makes love nicely."
"You gave him lots of practice," Lady Randolph observed drily.
"He wanted me so badly that he offered to give up his hounds and
settle down wherever I pleased."
"And Jim and Archibald."
"My oldest friends."
"Ah, well," sighed Lady Randolph, "you are a lucky girl, Betty. Four
good fellows want you."

"Archie wouldn't tell me why Mark went to town," said Betty absently.
"What a voice he has! When he sings I feel like a Madonna. And his face
——! A man has no business to be so good-looking. I am shameless enough
to confess to you, only to you, that his good looks appeal to me enormously.
It annoys me. I find myself staring at him as if he were a sort of royalty.
And when other girls do it, I think them idiots. Well, for that matter I have
never disguised from myself, or you, that I am a bit of an idiot."
"You are very human."
"I am not all you think me," cried the girl. "And yet you read me better
than anyone else, but there are pages and pages turned down. I peep at them
sometimes, and am quite scared. Mark shall tear them out and tear them up.
Dear me! I am making myself ridiculous: chattering on and on about
myself."
"One is never ridiculous when one is young," said Lady Randolph
solemnly, "and I hope, my dear, you will let me read the turned-down pages
before they are torn up. I used to say to myself that I should like to begin
life again, to have one more chance. And, listening to you, I feel that I am
beginning again. It is exciting. Only I hope that sometimes you will listen to
me, and try to profit by my experience of a subject on which you, Betty, are
so amazingly ignorant."
"That subject's name is Legion."
"That subject's name is Man. You have tried, I dare say, to measure
Mark with a girl's rule of thumb, to weigh him in virgin's scales, but his
dimensions remain an unknown quantity."
For answer, Betty kissed her.
"Tell me," she whispered, "all you know that I do not know."
"We should sit here for forty years! Our world says you ought to marry
Harry, and our world is always more than half right. Harry has entertained

you with a vast deal of talk about himself, and perhaps you think you know
him. Ah! you nod your head with all the cocksureness of ignorance! You
spoke of his giving up his hounds—for your sake, because you might find
Kirtling a far cry from Bond Street. Oh, the conceit of the modern girl! My
dear, Harry knew well enough that if you became his wife, no such sacrifice
would be demanded. The hounds would remain at Kirtling—and so would
you. If you were beautiful as Helen of Troy, and fascinating as Cleopatra,
you could not root out that passion for hunting his own hounds. It is a
master passion—and always will be so long as he can sit in the saddle. And
in your heart of hearts you respect and like Harry the more because he does
that one thing really well."
"I am sure you are right," said Betty humbly.
"Well, my dear, what hunting the fox is to Harry, so is the hunting of
vice, and ignorance, and dirt to Mark Samphire. The masculine ardour of
the chase possesses both, and each will hunt the country he knows best."
Betty's silence provoked her friend to say more. "You are in for a fight,
child." She took Betty's hand, which seemed cold, and pressed it gently.
"On your own confession you are unfit to be the wife of the man you love,
and who loves you; and so—pray don't ask me for congratulations."
"You did not marry for love," cried Betty. Then she paused, ashamed.
"Forgive me!"
"It is true." Lady Randolph turned a grim face to the girl, and her voice
was harsh. "I did not marry for love. Shall we say that I lacked courage, or
did I see clearer than you mountainous differences of temperament, taste,
and opinion, which my love was not strong enough to scale? Was I a
coward because I turned back? I do not say Yes or No. The man I loved had
the brains, but not the body of a conqueror. Do you think that I was right or
wrong because I refused to add burdens to a back already bowed?"

She spoke with such vehemence that Betty was frightened.
"I d-d-do not know," she stammered.
"I do not know," repeated the other fiercely. "When these mysteries
between our lower and higher natures are revealed, I shall know, and not till
then—not—till—then!"
Her lips closed violently, as if speech were alarmed into silence.

CHAPTER XIII
BAGSHOT ON THE RAMPAGE

Alone in his room at the Mission, Mark read over the sermon he had written
upon Westchester Cathedral. Then he stared at the bare boards, the
whitewashed walls, the narrow camp bedstead, the Windsor chairs: things
eloquent of a renunciation which he had found sweet a week ago. Here he
had been well content to live, here he had known that he might die. And
now in these same familiar surroundings he felt another man; the tides of
another life ran breast high to meet the quiet waters. Was it always so, he
wondered? Did love, such love as he felt for Elizabeth Kirtling, such love as
she felt for him, exact sacrifice? Must it be purged and purified in the flame
of renunciation? And the answer came at once—Yes. Perhaps the answer
always does come, if we put the question fairly and frankly to the Supreme
Court of Appeal. Mark never doubted, then or thereafter, that if he took
Betty and left his work, it would be ill for both of them. This conviction
was buttressed by a half-score of proofs, trivial indeed in themselves, yet in
their sum confirmation strong. Beneath his hand lay a memorandum-book.
Mark opened it. On the first page was a list of names—drunkards all of

them, many women, a few boys and girls. These poor creatures leaned upon
him. Each week they brought to him such of their earnings as otherwise
would be spent in drink. With each Mark had fought—and prevailed. He
alone held the master key to their hearts. People who live within a mile or
two of the slums may sneer at a repentance or reformation founded upon an
influence merely personal, which may be withdrawn at any minute. But
those labouring among the very poor and ignorant are well aware that this
personal influence, this amazing power and attraction which one soul may
exercise over another, is the first lever by which ignorance, and poverty, and
sin may be raised to the level whence the Creator is dimly seen and
apprehended through the created. Mark knew, and every fellow-worker in
the Mission knew, that personal influence may, and often does, soften the
hard surface upon which it shines, so that other rays may penetrate, but he
knew also that if personal influence be withdrawn before that softening
process is complete, induration follows. Mark read over the names in the
little book, and closed it with a sigh as a knock at his door was heard. The
handsome young deacon entered the room.
"Hullo!" he cried, "I am glad you're here."
"What's up?" said Mark.
"Bagshot is on the rampage."
"The miserable sinner!"
"He got his wages last night, and came round as usual to give 'em to
you, but he wouldn't give 'em to me. Then he went off."
"Didn't you go with him?"
"I wish I had thought of it," said the other ruefully. "He went straight
from here to the 'Three Feathers,' and stayed there till closing time."
Mark looked at his watch. His train left Waterloo in an hour. He had
time to see Bagshot, although such time would probably be wasted. Bagshot

was a brand snatched from the burning some six weeks before: a big, burly,
blackguard of a navvy, strong as Sandow, weak as Reuben, reasonable
enough when sober, a madman drunk, with a frail wife and five small
children at his mercy.
"I'll go alone," said Mark, as the young fellow reached for his hat.
He hurried off, followed at a discreet distance by the deacon. The
Bagshots lived not far from the Mission, in Vere Terrace, a densely
populated slum. Mark tapped at the door of Number 5, opened by a tattered
girl of twelve, whose fingers and face were smeared with paste.
"Where's your father, 'Liza?" said Mark.
"Dunno," replied 'Liza. "'E's drunk, wherever 'e is. Would yer like to
see mother, Mr. Samphire?"
Mark followed the child into the living-room of the family. Coming
straight from Birr Wood, contrast smote him with a violence he had never
before experienced. The Bagshot family sat round a rickety table making
matchboxes. Deducting the cost of paste (which the matchmakers supply),
these bring less than fourpence a gross, and a handy child of ten or twelve
can make just about that number in a day's hard work! Facing Mark, stood
an old-fashioned mangle, seldom used, because it took two strong women
to turn it; to the right was a chest of drawers in the last stages of infirmity,
crippled by ill-usage and long service, stained and discoloured like the face
of the woman who was proud to own it; to the right a small stove displayed
a battered assortment of pots and pans. The window, which overlooked a
court, was propped open with an empty bottle. Into the court, half filled
with rubbish and garbage, the May sun was streaming, illuminating an
atmosphere of squalor and unhomeliness which hung like a fetid fog
between the crumbling ceiling and the rotten floor.

"'Ere's Mr. Samphire, mother," said the girl. Already her thin, nimble
fingers were at work, while her eyes sparkled with excitement. In the
congested districts of the East End the decencies of life go naked and
unashamed. 'Liza knew that her mother would burst into virulent speech,
and was not disappointed. Bill was drunk again, and violent. She bared a
part of her neck and bosom, showing a hideous bruise. 'Liza stuck out a leg
not much thicker than a cricket stump, and offered to pull down her
stocking. Another child had an ugly lump within three inches of his temple.
"It wos quite like ole times larst night," said 'Liza, grinning. "'E giv' us
all what-for—'e did."
In answer to a question concerning Mr. Bagshot's immediate
whereabouts, the wife replied sullenly that she neither knew nor cared; then,
remembering Mark's efforts on behalf of the family, she added curtly: "I'd
keep out of 'is wy if I wos you. 'E might drop in any minnit."
"And yer've got yer best clothes on," added 'Liza curiously. "Goin'
beanfeastin' I dessay, or to a weddin'—yer own, my be," she added sharply.
"Stop yer noise, 'Liza," commanded the mother, wondering vaguely
why her visitor was blushing.
"We wos goin' to Chingford to-dy," said the child with the lump on his
head; "and mother promised us chops and mashed pertaters—didn't yer,
mother?"
"I'd like ter eat chops and mashed pertaters for ever and ever," 'Liza
said. Then, meeting Mark's eyes, she added: "That 'ud suit me a sight better
than a golden 'arp or a 'evingly crown."
"You shall have chops to-day," said Mark, producing a florin. "Cut
along and buy them."
"Mebbee yer aunt 'll let you cook 'em," said Mrs. Bagshot
significantly. 'Liza nodded her shrewd little head and vanished; but a minute

later she appeared, breathless. "Father's comin'. Yer'd better tyke yer 'ook,
sir."
Mark said gravely he would stay. The children were despatched to the
aunt's house.
"Yer'd better go, sir," said the wife, now pallid with fear. Mark smiled
confidently, shaking his head. The drunkard's heavy, uncertain step was
heard in the passage; his voice, thick and raucous, called for his wife.
"A word with you, Bill," said Mark, as the man's huge body darkened
the doorway. The giant stared stupidly at the only fellow-creature he
respected. Then his hand went mechanically to his head and removed a
greasy cap. The woman sat down and began making a matchbox. "I beg
your pardon," continued Mark, holding out his hand; "I told you that I
would take over your wages each week, and last night I failed you. I am
very, very sorry."
His blue eyes expressed much more. The heavy, bloodshot orbs of the
huge navvy sought slowly the latent spark of ridicule or contempt. He was
just sober enough to understand in some inexplicable way that the tables
had been turned. When he saw the parson he had prepared himself for
everything except this. Very awkwardly he took Mark's hand in his own
enormous paw.
"Wot yer givin' us?" he growled.
"If the money is not all gone, Bill, I'll take what is left—now."
"Will yer?" said Bill.
"Yes."
Quality confronting quantity smiled steadily, reassuringly. Quantity
scowled, wriggled uneasily, and quailed. A chink of silver and copper
proclaimed the moral victory.

"Only seven-and-fourpence," said Mark. "You can't go to Chingford
with that."
Bill said something which need not be recorded.
"It is like this," said Mark. "I failed you, and you failed me, and your
wife and your children have suffered. I can see that you have a splitting
headache, and I believe the forest air would do you good. Will you take
Mrs. Bagshot and the children to Epping if I pay the piper? I ought to be
fined for my part in this."
Bill nodded, none too graciously, and some money was given to Mrs.
Bagshot.
"I'm going out of town myself," added Mark, as he took leave of the
giant, "but I know I can trust you, Bill."
Mr. Bagshot grinned sheepishly. It is possible, although not very
probable, that he had an elementary sense of humour. Mark hurried away
looking at his watch. Just round the corner he charged into the deacon, who
offered up fervent thanks that he was unhurt. "I must run," said Mark,
pushing on, "or I shall miss my train." He did run till a hansom was found
in the Mile End Road. Into this he jumped, bidding the driver use all
reasonable haste. None the less as Mark appeared on the platform at
Waterloo the Westchester express was rolling slowly out of the station.

"Close shave that," said a quiet voice; "you might have been under the train
instead of in it. Was it worth while?"
Mark sank, gasping, on to the cushions.
"Yes; it was worth while," he exclaimed, and then fainted.
When he recovered consciousness the train was running through
Clapham Junction. Mark smelled brandy, and saw the impassive face of a
tall, thin stranger bending over him. No other person was in the carriage.

"Keep quiet for five minutes," the stranger commanded.
Mark closed his eyes. His heart was thumping, but his brain worked
smoothly. When he saw the train rolling out of the station he had been
seized with an absurd conviction that he must overtake and travel by it to
the great happiness awaiting him at Birr Wood. What followed was a blur,
only, strangely enough, the voice of the tall, thin man was familiar. He had
heard his calm, authoritative accents before; by Heaven! he had heard that
voice repeating the same words: "Keep quiet." And they had been spoken to
the accompaniment of a thumping, throbbing heart and horrible physical
weakness. Who—who was the speaker? Ah...! He remembered. The long,
lofty room at Burlington House, the boys in all stages of dressing and
undressing, the amazement and dismay on Jim Corrance's face—these
unfolded themselves like the shifting scenes of a cinematograph.
"You are Amos Barger," he murmured.
He introduced himself to the surgeon, and spoke of the examination at
Burlington House.
"You were very kind," said Mark, "but it was an awful experience for a
boy, because now——" He paused to reflect that the man opposite had not
asked for his confidence.
"Yes—now?" repeated Barger.
"Now, the sense of perpetual imprisonment"—he brought out the grim
words slowly—"would not convey such a sense of loss."
The surgeon was not sure that he agreed. Could a young man, a boy,
measure his loss? Was the capacity for suffering greater in youth?
"I am thinking of one thing," Mark replied, "liberty, the darling instinct
of the newly fledged to fly. When you clipped my wings, I had the feeling
that I should never move again. The pain was piercing: one could never
suffer just such another pang."

"Have you learned to hug your chains?"
"I do not say that. They gall me less."
"But as one grows older"—Amos Barger's face was seamed with
distress—"one sees what might have been so clearly. You say I was kind;
the other surgeon was and is one of the cast-iron pots. Well, I expect no
credit for such kindness. In you I see reflected myself. I am of the
weaklings, to whom some incomprehensible Power has said: 'Thus far shalt
thou go—and no farther!' And I might have gone far had not my feet, the
lowest part of me, failed. I am halting through life when every fibre of my
body tells me I was intended to run."
Mark was trying to adjust words to his sympathy, when the other
continued abruptly: "Don't say a word! We are poles asunder and must
remain so. I am surprised that I spoke at all. You have a faculty, Mr.
Samphire, of luring Truth from her well."
The two men looked at each other. Upon the one face disappointment
had laid her indelible touch; upon the other glowed the light of hope and
faith.
"Before we settle down to our papers"—the surgeon indicated an
enormous pile of magazines and journals—"let me remind you that we spun
you for the Service because you cannot run, with impunity, to catch trains—
or, indeed, anything else."
He picked up a review as he spoke and opened it. Mark eyed him
vacantly, reflecting that he had run to catch Betty, not the train. And he had
spoken of this meeting as coincidence. Was it coincidence? His heart began
to thump once more. When he spoke his voice was hoarse and quavering.
"Thank you. I suppose just now you had time to make a rough-and-
ready sort of examination?" The surgeon nodded. "Is—is there anything
organically wrong with my heart?"

"Um. It is organically weak—you knew as much before, but you may
live to be sixty if you take care of yourself—which you won't do."
"If others were dependent on me I would take care of myself."
"Oh!" Barger frowned. "You are married—got a family—eh?"
"I have been thinking lately of—of marrying."
The surgeon's face was impassive. Mark looked out of the window at
the pleasant fields of Surrey, through which the train was running swiftly
and smoothly. Was Fate bearing him as swiftly and inexorably out of the
paradise wherein he, poor fool, had already lived in anticipation many
years?
"I infer from your silence," he said, "that if you gave a professional
opinion it would be against marriage—for me?"
"I do not say that," replied the other, shrugging his shoulders; "but it
will be time enough for me to give a professional opinion when you ask for
one in a professional way. I'm running down to Bournemouth for a holiday,
but I shall be at home next Tuesday. Come and see me. I'll look you over,
and answer that question to the best of my ability."
"I'll come," said Mark.
"Afternoon or morning?" asked the surgeon, whipping out a pencil.
"Book your hour!"
"Will three suit you, Mr. Barger?" The surgeon's pencil scratched upon
the paper. Mark added: "I shall be punctual."

CHAPTER XIV
A MORAL EXIGENCY

Archibald met his brother at Westchester Station, and drove him towards
Birr Wood as the shadows lay long and cool upon the white road. A sweet
stillness hung over the ancient capital—the stillness which in springtime is
eloquent of strife. Everywhere the sap was forcing its way upward; buds
were swelling, leaves were bursting from their bonds. And an ethereal
mildness permeated the atmosphere, suffusing in golden haze the setting
sun.
"Pull up," said Mark.
"Eh?"
"I should like to read you my sermon here and now, within sight of the
cathedral. We can walk across the downs afterwards, and arrive in plenty of
time to dress for dinner."
"All right," Archie replied, "I'm keen enough to hear it. Was it hot in
town? You look rather done."
A groom took the reins and drove off. Mark stared at the cathedral.
"It lies in a golden chalice," he said, indicating the haze which
obscured the insignificant buildings of the town while lightening and
revealing the splendid mass of stone, too heavy, too colourless when seen
beneath grey skies.
"Good point that," said Archie, nodding his handsome head.
The brothers walked across a strip of down, and found themselves near
a clump of trees. Mark pulled from his pocket a sheaf of manuscript, and
read aloud.
Archie lay flat on his back. Presently he sat up, staring at the cathedral.
Then he fixed his eyes on Mark's face, where they remained, fascinated, till
the last word was said.
"Now," Mark commanded, "I want you to declaim a bit of it—
standing. You can give it all I cannot. Do you mind?"

Archibald took the manuscript, sensible of emotions and thrills never
experienced before. Dominating these was the wish to do as he was asked—
to declaim a part of the sermon. He felt a desire to possess himself of it, to
incorporate with it his own physical attributes.
"Let yourself go," said Mark. He watched his brother's face intently,
thinking that he would exchange the brains which had composed the
sermon for the body now bending over it in envy and admiration. Archie
had a gift for committing verse to memory. At Harrow he often boasted that
he could read through a long ode of Horace and repeat it without making a
blunder.
Presently Archie stood up, his massive proportions outlined against the
amber-coloured sky. Although barely thirty, he had acquired a certain
dignity of deportment, an air of maturity, in curious contrast to blooming
cheeks and shining eyes. This aspect is not uncommon in young clergymen
who take themselves seriously. Looking at Archibald Samphire, one might
predict that in a few years he would assume the solidity of a pillar of the
Church. Already, in the eyes of the spinsters in and around Westchester
Close, he was regarded as a staff upon which the weak might safely and
gratefully lean; already, when he gave an opinion, soft eyes gazed upward
suffused with moisture.
He began to declaim Mark's peroration in a slow, impressive voice, the
kind of voice which seems to fill the corners of the soul with echoes at once
strange and familiar. The late Mr. Gladstone possessed such a voice. Mark
stared at his brother, absorbing every note and gesture. What aptitudes were
his for such a part. Listening to him, the younger brother forgot that he had
written the phrases which fell with sonorous significance upon the silence
of the fields. He was able to judge of what he had done, as if he were
hearing the sermon for the first time. Playwrights experience this bitter-

sweet pleasure. Lines laboured at for many an hour, become in the mouth of
a great actor or actress so changed, so sublimated by the touch of genius, as
to prove unrecognisable, even as a child of peasants adopted by persons of
rank may so dazzle the eyes of its mother that it appears for the moment as
a stranger. And who shall interpret that same mother's feelings when she
sees lavished upon her darling gifts beyond her power to bestow—gifts
which serve as symbols of her loss and another's gain?
Mark Samphire listened to his brother with ears lacerated by envy; and
because devils tore him he was the more determined to exorcise them, in
the hope that what he did and said might hide what he felt. When Archie
finished, the younger brother sprang up and seized his hand.
"From the bottom of my soul," he exclaimed, "I believe that this voice
of yours will be heard not only in Westchester, but in every cathedral in
England."
Archie answered, dully, "If you had my voice, Mark——"
"Ah!" gasped Mark, "if—if——" He paused, and ended quietly, "We
need not speak of that."
"You could read this sermon."
"Even that is denied me. I can read the lessons or anything else save
what I write myself. Oh, I have tried and tried. Always the lump comes in
my throat—and I hear the laugh of that girl. You remember?"
Archie nodded, betraying his sympathy with a shudder. "It was awful,"
he said, "awful."
He handed the sheets of manuscript to Mark, adding, "It has helped me
enormously. I will avail myself of some of your ideas."
"You will redrape my ideas with your words."
"I couldn't use yours, you know."
Mark gazed abstractedly at the cathedral; then he turned to his brother.

"Look here—I give it to you. Do what you like with it. I can't preach it
myself. It's not b-b-bad."
He paused as the stammer seized him. "Not bad?" echoed Archibald.
"Why it's splendid—splendid!"
"And why shouldn't I help you—my brother?" His voice softened, as
he stretched out his thin hand and touched Archibald's mighty arm. "Take
it!"
Archie hesitated, staring inquiringly at Mark. Mark had always been
such a stickler for plain-dealing. Then he remembered what Billy had said:
"Take what he gives, generously, and so you will best help him to play his
part in life."
Mark, meantime, was reflecting that he should like to read in Betty's
face the recognition of talents which he was not allowed to proclaim to the
world.
"Take it," he repeated. "And, look here, I shall sit beside Betty
Kirtling, and afterwards I shall tell her that I wrote it and persuaded you to
preach it. No one else shall know."
Archie, unable to determine the ethics of the matter, sensible in a dull,
inarticulate way that he ought to say NO, said—YES. His own sermon was
inadequate; there was not time to prepare another; and he lacked the power
of interpreting the message of those grey stones yonder. This and more
flitted through a mind large enough but somewhat conventionally furnished.
"But what has Betty Kirtling to do with it?" he concluded heavily.
"Why tell her? If this is to be between you and me, Mark—why tell her?"
Mark put up his hand to hide a smile.
"It may not be necessary to tell her," he said quietly. "She might
guess." Then seeing consternation on Archie's fine brows he added: "No one
else will guess, but she—well, she has intuitions."

"Is she going to marry Kirtling?"
Again Mark smiled at his brother's lack of perception. He fenced with
the question: "You ought to know; you've seen more of her than I have."
"She's a bit of a flirt."
"No."
"I say—yes. She has flirted with Kirtling, with me, with Pynsent, with
Jim Corrance, and with you. I sometimes think that she likes you best,
Mark. She might take you, because——"
"Go on!"
"Because," Archie explained, "there are two Bettys: the Betty of
Mayfair and the Betty of King's Charteris. I heard Mrs. Corrance say that,
and it struck me as worth remembering. Most women would only see the
Betty of Mayfair, but the other Betty, who takes some finding, has an
extravagant admiration of good and a morbid horror of evil. A girl running
from evil is likely to rush into the arms of good. I saw my chance there," he
added thoughtfully, and again Mark smiled. "I said to myself that the time
to catch the witch was just after the London season. I don't mind telling you
that I asked her to marry me the day she came back from Goodwood last
year. And I was careful about choosing the right place. Depend upon it that
tells in these affairs. I chose the Dean's garden: there isn't a sweeter, more
peaceful spot under Heaven. But I wasted my time. Hullo! what's the
matter?"
"Nothing."
"You're white as a sheet. You ought to take more care of yourself, my
dear fellow. I do Sandow's exercises every morning and evening. And I take
a grain of calomel once a week. You look liverish. I find that my mind does
not work properly unless my body is in tiptop condition. What were we
talking of? Oh, yes—Betty Kirtling. Do you know that Harry Kirtling has

proposed about five times—generally out hunting? But she laughs at him.
She cried in the Dean's garden."
"Ah?" said Mark softly.
"She won't laugh or cry when the right man speaks, and if you are he
the sooner you speak the better. She's an enchantress," Archie concluded,
"and her money would come in very handy—wouldn't it?"
"Confound her money!" said Mark violently.

CHAPTER XV
APHRODITE SMILES AND FROWNS

When Betty met Mark just before dinner the story of the Bagshots was told
briefly.
"Is that why you look so discouraged?" she whispered.
He laughed, not quite naturally.
"Surely to—to me, you may show your true feelings. Or do you count
me a fair-weather friend?"
Before he had answered Lady Randolph came up and said that Mark
must be introduced to the lady he was destined to take into dinner. Mark
found himself bowing before an ample matron who prattled of herbaceous
borders and conifers for nearly half an hour. Betty sat beside him, listening
to Jim Corrance. Not till the first entrée was handed did she find an
opportunity to repeat her question to Mark: "Am I a fair-weather friend?"
Mark met her glance; then before answering, he allowed his eyes to
rest upon her gown and the opals at her throat. She was wearing a frock of
filmy tissues, made, so her dressmaker informed her, in Tokio, and known

to the fashionable world as rainbow tulle. The general effect of this gown,
like the jewels which glittered above it, was that of change, and Betty had
christened it the Chameleon, because in certain lights it was softly pink, in
others a misty blue, in others, again, amber or palest green. Lady Randolph
smiled when she saw this wonderful frock, because it suggested certain
phases of character of the girl who wore it. Mark, knowing nothing of the
relationship between a woman and her clothes, was, none the less, aware
that this gown must have cost a deal of money and had not been chosen for
wearing qualities.
"You make one think of May," he replied.
"You look at my frock, not at me. Well, if it comes to that, I have a
stout tweed upstairs, which defies hurricanes. I know what you're thinking
—and you're wrong. I prefer my Harris tweed, but you don't expect me to
wear it in May—do you?"
"Contrast tickles you, Betty."
"How am I to take that?"
"You like an ice with a hot sauce."
"No doubt, you prefer fried fish."
She glanced at him roguishly, leaning slightly towards him, so that the
sleeve of her gown touched his coat. From the airy tissues floated a faint
fragrance of roses, and then, drowning it in pungent fumes, came that
sickening odour of the slums.
"I loathe fried fish," he whispered. Betty smiled as the lady on the
other side of Mark asked him if he knew Father Dolling. Nor was Stepney
mentioned again, although it obscured the future in yellow fog. Betty was
conscious that Mark eyed her with a persistency for which she could not
quite account. The same expression may be found on the faces of emigrants
setting sail for a new country, yet looking back on the old, which holds all

they know of life and which they may not see again. Betty had never set
foot on the deck of an emigrant ship; but she was vaguely apprehensive that
this persistency of glance was ominous. Her bosom was heaving when she
asked him: "Why do you look at me so queerly?"
"I beg your pardon."
"Why should you? You must know by this time that I don't object to
being looked at—by you."
If the words were slightly flippant, the tone in which they were spoken
was serious enough. She continued: "Your look is that of a man hesitating to
leap. When you were a boy you went free at your fences."
Mark caught his breath. Her meaning was unmistakable. She held out
white arms to him—the syren!
"They were dear old days," he murmured.
"You rode hard and straight. Many a lead you gave me. When are we
going to have a nice long talk?"
Her voice was trembling. And he stammered as he replied: "T-to-night,
if you l-l-like."
"It will be heavenly on the terrace," she whispered. "I saw you slip
away last night, and I was tempted to follow you."
"Why didn't you?" he blurted out. Last night—he was reflecting—he
had been free.
"I have some pride, Mark. Not much, perhaps."
"I saw Aphrodite by moonlight. She was wonderful."
"She is wonderful," Betty murmured. "Is love dead that you use the
past tense? Will you take me to the fountain after dinner?"
"Yes."
A minute later Lady Randolph and the ladies left the dining-room.
Mark poured himself out a glass of port. The men were talking of the

approaching meeting at Ascot, where one of Lord Randolph's horses was
likely to win the Gold Vase. Mark listened to Harry Kirtling's eager voice.
How keen he was, this handsome lad! What a worshipper of horse and
hound! And his host—old man of the world who had drunk of many cups—
seemed to covet this gold vase as the one thing desirable. And when he had
won it, the cup would glitter upon his sideboard among a score of similar
trophies unnoticed and forgotten.
"I have the sermon almost by heart," Archie whispered to his brother.
"I read it over three times before dinner. It's odd your treatment of the
theme did not occur to me, particularly as I live in the Close."
"One doesn't see the Matterhorn when one is climbing it," Mark
observed. "If you want to love Westchester live in Whitechapel."
"I couldn't live in Whitechapel," Archie replied; "it wouldn't suit me at
all. Still, as a means to an end—Lord Randolph says that you—er—know
what you're at."
"Do I?" said Mark. Then he laughed and struck his brother genially on
the shoulder, adding: "At any rate, you know what you're at; but to men like
me ignorance of the ultimate aim has its value. Perhaps because I don't
quite know what I'm doing I take pleasure in doing it."
"You're a queer chap," said his brother, "and you grow queerer as you
grow older. You mean that you would sooner have two birds in the bush
than one in the hand."
"The nightingales in the bush—for me," cried Mark.
"I want the bird in the hand," said Archibald solemnly.
"You will cook your bird, old fellow, and eat it with all accessories:
bread sauce, rich gravy, the succulent salade Romaine, but you will never
hear it sing. A bird in the hand never sings."

The night was very still when Mark and Betty descended the stone steps
which led to the fountain: a lovers' night, fragrant with a thousand essences.
Silvery shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness of the park, and fell
tenderly on the nymphs about the fountain. But Aphrodite was not yet
revealed, for her pool lay in shadow guarded by sentinel yews and cypress.
Mark disappeared for a moment; the surface of the pool was troubled;
then, with a soft, sibilant sound, the waters rose and enveloped the goddess.
"We are in the nick of time," whispered Mark.
As he spoke the moon topped the trees. For a moment a white flame
seemed to sparkle round the brows of Aphrodite; then the features were
revealed: the languorous half-opened eyes, the dimpled cheeks, the adorable
mouth with its shy smile. The sculptor had suggested the admixture of fear
and delight, a shrinking from the embrace of the unknown element, a
virginal protest indicated by a gesture of taper fingers and slender
shoulders, a protest overpowered by a subtle relaxing of the whole body, the
nymph surrendering herself to Life and Love.
Mark turned to Betty. She met his eyes and then turned aside her own.
The nymph with the phorminx smiled. And the amorini looked on
approving. Mark had the hunger of Romeo on his thin face, the hunger of
the beggar who has seen white loaves through the windows of a baker's
shop. At Milan there is a hole in the wall whence, long ago, unhappy
prisoners looked out upon tables spread with savoury viands: wretches
condemned to starve—within sight and smell of baked meats and sparkling
wines!
Mark looked again at Betty's face, now pensive, although the dimples
were deepening. The elusive tints of the gown, transmuted by the
moonbeams into a silvery radiance, shimmered like the watery tissues of
the goddess; the opals at her throat might have been dewdrops.

"Dear Betty," he whispered.
She lifted her heavy lids. The eyes beneath were dark as the shadows
cast by the cypress, and troubled as the waters of the pool. What darkened
and troubled them? What intuition or premonition of sorrow and suffering?
But Mark saw the underglow which reflected the flames of his heart.
As they gazed at each other the moon glided discreetly behind a cloud,
and a soft darkness obscured all things, out of which came the music of the
fountain; a symphony of kisses falling with melodic rhythm upon the face
of Aphrodite. In a clump of syringa beyond the Italian garden a nightingale
trilled.
He knew that he had only to speak the word, to hold out his arms, and
she would come to him. She was smiling, but with a sadness which
underlay joy: such sadness as may be seen sometimes in the face of a child,
who, coming into possession of a long-desired object, is confronted with the
possibility of losing it.
He took her hand, gripping it.
"Mark—what is the matter?"
Her voice rose in a crescendo of distress, as Mark staggered, gasping
for breath. Terror-stricken, she supported him to a stone bench hard by,
upon which he sank.
"It is a p-p-passing weakness," he stammered. "I am better already."
"You have been overworking yourself in those detestable slums," she
said vehemently.
"That is the truth," he answered. "I shall take a holiday."
"A long holiday," she whispered, meeting his eyes. But he saw the face
of the tall thin doctor and his lean hand raised in protest. "And you must
have someone, some dear friend, to look after you."
Her fingers pressed his arm.

"Yes," he said eagerly. "With such a friend I should grow strong
again."
"There are places, earthly paradises, which I've read about. In Samoa
or Tahiti——"
He interrupted her, passionately.
"Don't speak of them—yet. Betty, I must turn the key of the fountain. I
cannot speak for—for a few days. Do you understand? If you could read my
heart. If—if——"
She saw that his excitement was overmastering him.
"Mark, I do understand. We understand each other. You are right. The
key of the fountain must be turned. I'll do it, not you." She sprang up
lightly, ran to the cypress, and turned the key. When she came back he was
staring at the goddess, white and shivering.
Before she went to bed, Betty was cross-examined by Lady Randolph.
"Then he hasn't actually spoken?"
"He will," Betty declared. "And within a week."
"And Stepney?"
"I'd sooner live with him in Stepney——"
"And eat fried fish?"
"And smell fried fish—it's the smell I hate—than live in a garden of
roses by Bendemeer's stream with anybody else."
"My poor Betty, you have the disease badly."
Betty, however, did not mention Mark's physical weakness to her
friend. Instead, she prattled of love for nearly an hour.
The elder woman told herself that she was listening to an idyll; but,
vividly as the tale was presented, a sense of unreality pervaded it; the
conviction that, as a child would put it, the story was too good to be true.
But because of its goodness Lady Randolph was the more touched by it.

Your honest cynic respects good, although he rails against its counterfeit.
Moreover, in this joyous acclamation of love, Lady Randolph resumed for a
few moments her own youth. It seemed incredible that she should have
grown old, and critical, and distrustful. Love touched her with healing
fingers, and she became as a little child, free from the dull limitations of age
and experience.
"You have been so sympathetic," said Betty, when she bade her old
friend good night, "but I know, of course, that in your heart of hearts you
think us two fools."
"Not fools, Betty. Babes in the wood, perhaps, playing amongst the
rose leaves. Good night, my dear; go and dream of your lover."
But when the door was shut, the woman of the world sighed, and her
shrewd face puckered into many wrinkles.
"Am I a fool?" she asked herself. "Should I have stopped this? I fear
that it will come to nothing, but then it will be everything, everything,
everything to them—while it lasts."
Meantime, Archibald was in Mark's bedroom, talking of the sermon to
be preached on the morrow. He had a score of unessential corrections to
suggest. A slight amplification here, another word there, an apt quotation,
revealed the student of effect, the rhetorician. Mark admitted that his
brother had improved the manuscript.
"I have thought of nothing else," said Archie. "At first I disliked
preaching another man's sermon, but now I feel as if a lot of it were mine."
"It is all yours," said Mark, smiling. "I have given it to you, haven't I?
Only, remember, Betty must know."
"Why?" demanded Archie. "Women will talk and——" he shrugged
his broad shoulders. "If the Dean heard of it—— The Dean, you know, is
civil, but he has a cut-and-dried manner which I find rather trying. He's a

radical, too. We always have had radical deans at Westchester. With my
political views, my faith in institutions, and—er—so forth he is not in
accord. He told me with really amazing candour that I owed my preferment
entirely to my vocal chords. I should have thought a Samphire of Pitt had
claims, but no—he repudiates all that. His own father was quite obscure: a
bookseller, I've been told, only don't quote me. One can't be too careful in a
cathedral town. Well, not to put a fine point on it, the Dean underrates me.
I've felt it keenly. When I was singing to him the other night, in his own
drawing-room, he went to sleep: he did, indeed. Still, to give him his due,
he is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the cathedral, and this sermon
ought to surprise him...."
Mark nodded absently. His face seemed thinner and paler since he had
parted from Betty less than an hour ago. As in a dream, he heard Archie's
voice droning on about the Dean and his Chapter, but he saw only Betty's
face, Betty's eyes, which seemed to fill the universe. She loved him! Infirm
of body, halting of speech, he had been able to inspire passion in so
splendid a fellow-creature. The glory of it filled his soul.
Archie, who must not be blamed for enjoying the sound of his own
voice, talked on and on. It was past midnight. Down in the smoking-room
young Kirtling, one could wager, was holding forth on the subject of fox-
hunting. Jim Corrance, with an ironical smile upon his slightly melancholy
face, was listening politely, thinking, no doubt, of some future "coup" in the
money market. Lord Randolph, with a long, thin cigar in his mouth, was
certainly alive to the possibility of a political crisis. Pynsent, watching the
three other men from the depths of an immense chair, was busy fitting their
faces into a picture. All this, and much more, passed through Mark's mind.
"Good night," Archie was saying. "We've had a long yarn, haven't
we?"

He stood up, extending his hand, which Mark grasped. Opposite to the
brothers stood a large cheval glass. Mark's eye fell on this, and straightway
the gracious image of Betty vanished, and in her place he saw himself and
Archie standing beside each other with linked hands. The contrast between
the brothers was so startling that the younger allowed an exclamation to
leap from his lips.
"Look," he said, when Archie lifted his handsome brows in
interrogation; "who would believe that the same mother bore us?"
The mirror, indeed, seemed to take pleasure in making more of
Archibald and less of Mark than was warrantable. The fine massive figure,
the smooth, fresh-coloured cheeks, the flaxen curls of the one accentuated
the leanness, the pallor, the fragility of the other. Only when you looked at
the eyes you recognised the vitality of spirit in Mark. Lady Randolph
described the eyes of the brothers aptly enough, when she said that Mark's
reminded her of fire and Archie's of—water.
"You will fill out," said Archibald, placidly regarding the curves of his
person.
Mark laid his fingers upon his brother's chest.
"Forty-three inches," said Archie. "I had a doctor look me over the
other day. He said I was as sound a specimen as he'd ever examined."
"Good night," said Mark abruptly.
When Archie had left the room, Mark returned to the mirror.
"Am I envious?" he muttered. "Not for my own sake, God knows, but
for hers. If I were only strong——"
He began to undress, thinking of the doctor and the train. Curiously
enough the two were connected. The train rushing on and on through the
quiet landscape, the doctor and he whirled on with it, fellow-passengers for
a few brief minutes, meeting, parting, and meeting again in obedience to

some Power who rules that good shall triumph ultimately over evil. To
Mark this was and always had been a sheet-anchor. At Harrow, at Barbizon,
in the pulpit of the church in King's Charteris, he had submitted to the
Divine Will; but, now, if the greatest thing on earth were denied him would
he be able to bow his head in resignation? Every pulse in his body throbbed
a passionate—"No."

CHAPTER XVI
WESTCHESTER CATHEDRAL

It happened that Lord Randolph was anxious to consult the Dean of
Westchester upon some point of municipal philanthropy, so he drove into
the town earlier than usual on Whit-Sunday. Archibald accompanied him,
Lord Randolph driving his own pair, which were never driven by anybody
else. When the horses were working well into their collars, Lord Randolph
turned to the preacher-elect and described, not without humour, his own
pangs before the delivery of an important speech in the House of Commons.
"Only I," he concluded, "had the impending horror of a scathing reply
from the other side. You black-coated gentlemen have an immense
advantage there, an advantage which I hope you, my boy, will never abuse.
Is it indiscreet to ask what theme you have taken?"
Archie answered the question by repeating a phrase of Mark's, which
summed up, aptly enough, the scope and purpose of the sermon. Lord
Randolph raised his grizzled brows.
"Um! I like to see a young man tackling a subject bigger than himself:
and the bigger the man, the bigger ought to be his subject. Often," he
concluded abruptly, "it is the other way. You are ambitious, Archibald?"
"Yes," the minor canon confessed; and then, afraid of saying too much,
he held his tongue. Lord Randolph respected his silence, supposing that the
preacher was occupied with his thoughts. Nor did he mention that he
expected to meet the Prime Minister at the deanery, who doubtless would
attend service in the cathedral. If this young fellow acquitted himself with

distinction, his sermon might prove a stepping-stone to great things. A week
ago no man knew that a maker of prelates was coming to Westchester,
certainly not the Dean, otherwise he might have elected to preach himself.
Lord Randolph smiled with a slightly cynical curl of the lip. The Dean, as
has been said, was radical in politics, but he probably foresaw that his party,
now in power, was not likely to endure for ever.
Lord Randolph left his horses in charge of the groom, and descended
at the ancient gate which leads to the Close. At the same moment two
figures emerged from the shadows of the deanery porch. "There is the
Prime Minister," said Lord Randolph. "I shall have pleasure, Archie, in
introducing you to him."
"By Jove!" exclaimed the young man.
A moment later the most eloquent speaker in the kingdom was holding
Archibald Samphire's hand and peering into his face. The great man had
appreciation of physical beauty, and an eye for a personality. Archie
blushed: a tribute ever welcome to genius.
"Our preacher to-day," said the Dean.
"Indeed?"
The young man's hand was retained in the ample grasp of the Prime
Minister, who asked a dozen questions, enveloping Archie with that
magnetic current, which seemed to emanate from him in fuller measure
than from any other of his generation.
"I shall look forward to your sermon," he concluded. "I am sure it will
be worthy of this place"—he spoke with solemnity—"and"—his voice
changed—"and of—you. You have the gift of eloquence: the lips, the eyes,
the brow. I hope we shall meet again soon."
He passed on, smiling genially, leaving the gratified Archie alone with
his thoughts. Lord Randolph might have told him that the speaker scattered

seed of kindly words wherever he went, and who shall say—even now—
what they brought forth? A kindly word lingers in the ear when a kind
action may be lost to sight.

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

crowns and inscribed with the names of the Saxon princes whose crumbling
bones they contain; at her feet almost was the tomb of a great king, slain in
the plentitude of his strength and power; hard by were the magnificent
chantries of the prelates who sanctified their time, their talents, and their
money to the embellishment of this house of God. In one of the chantries,
where during his lifetime he spent, daily, many hours of devotion, lies the
figure of a man, represented as an emaciated corpse wrapped in a winding-
sheet. He it was who caused to be carved on the soaring roof of the choir
the sorrowful emblems of our Lord's Passion: the crown of thorns, the nails,
the hammer, the scourge, the reed and sponge, the lance, the cross. And who
can doubt that he was inspired to so exalt these symbols of the suffering
which redeemed mankind? Who can doubt, gazing at the shrunken limbs
and careworn features of the prelate, that his untiring labour had caused him
innumerable hours of pain serenely endured because he knew that by pain
alone Man is purified. He and his successors and predecessors, and the
armies of masons they employed, had lived and died that this, the work of
their heads and hands, might endure for generations, a monument of the
faith which can move mountains of stone and change them into forms of
surpassing loveliness. Had they laboured in vain?
Betty rose from her knees as the choir entered the sanctuary. At the
same moment Mark touched her arm and glanced across the chancel.
Following his eyes, she saw the familiar face of the Prime Minister. Other
eyes lingered upon that notable head, now bent in meditation upon the tomb
of the king. Mark touched her again. Archibald Samphire was passing by,
stately in surplice and hood. The statesman raised his head, and stared
keenly at the priest. A half-smile of recognition and encouragement curved
his thin lips. Archie, conscious, perhaps, that the eyes of the mighty were on

him, looked neither to right nor left. His face was as that of a graven image.
"He is cold," thought Betty. "Does he expect, I wonder, to warm others?"
The service began. At that time a certain boy was singing in the
Westchester choir who became famous afterwards as the finest treble of his
day, combining, till his voice broke, the freshness of youth with the art
which crowns a long and patient apprenticeship. Already musical folk were
talking of the lad and coming from far to hear him. The choir sang in unison
the first verse of the Venite, but above their voices, above the sonorous peal
of the organ, floated the aerial notes of the boy. So sublimated was the
quality of this child's voice that Betty—and many another—looked up,
believing for the moment that these flakes of melody were dropping from
heaven. The joyousness which informed each crystalline phrase electrified
the ear. This indeed was a clarion call to rejoice! The pain and perplexity in
Betty's soul fled, exorcised by this glad spirit, blythe as a skylark carolling
in the skies. She glanced at Mark. His eyes were shining, his face aglow
with pleasure. Farther down stood Harry Kirtling, unmoved; and on each
side were rows of men and women, some perfunctorily praising God, others
gazing with lacklustre eyes into the past or future, a few touched to the
quick by the message and the instrument by which it was conveyed.
Amongst these, one face stood out of the crowd, conspicuous by its pallor
and the lines of suffering which scored cheek and mouth and brow.
Unmistakably, Death had marked this victim of an incurable malady for his
own. Yet, excepting Mark's, no countenance in that great congregation
revealed more clearly the happiness and contentment which proclaim
success. Here was the vitality of the life immortal flaming upon the ashes of
the dead; here was one rejoicing in the salvation of a soul, caring nothing
because the body was about to be destroyed!
The choir sang on together till the eighth verse was reached:

"To-day, if ye will hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts!"

These lines were delivered in recitativo by the basses, and then repeated by
the choir. "Harden not your hearts!" The injunction rolled down the aisles
and transepts; it broke in thunder against the hoary walls, as it has broken
for two thousand years against the faithless generations; and then, in the
silence which followed, there descended a flute-like echo, emphasising the
opportunity and reimposing the condition. To-day, this moment, if ye will
hear his voice, harden not your hearts!
Psalms and Lessons succeeded. Archie read the latter. Betty, who had
not heard him read since his appointment as minor canon, amended her
conviction that he could not warm others. He had that persuasiveness of
diction which drapes even the crude and commonplace with samite, and, so
garbed, passes like an angel through all doors.
"For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life
and peace."
If this indeed were true, how many of those around Betty Kirtling were
of the quick, how many of the dead? How many, again, were asleep, lulled
to slumber by indifference? She saw Pynsent staring at Archie's face.
Unconsciously he had raised his right hand, as if it held a brush poised
above a canvas. Beside him sat Jim Corrance engrossed in thought. Jim was
frowning; his lips were shut, as if he feared that information of commercial
value might leak from them. It struck Betty, with a certain poignant
suddenness, that Jim, dear old Jim, had lost his look of youth, and she
wondered vaguely whether or not his mother had marked the loss—and
regretted it. Was his face becoming hard? Was it setting into that inexorable

mask of death of which the apostle spoke? She shivered and looked away,
meeting the curious gaze of Lady Randolph. Then with an effort she
restrained her vagabond thoughts and eyes, and listened attentively to the
voice of the reader.
Afterwards she wondered if what followed would have impressed her
so profoundly had it not been for what went before. At the moment she was
merely sensible that her perceptive and intuitive faculties were sharpened to
keen edge. She knew with conviction that a veil had been lifted, that she
saw clearly and in true proportion what was vital and everlasting.
When Archie ascended the pulpit, Betty prepared herself for an anti-
climax, Lady Randolph, for a nap. "Ye also as lively stones are built up a
spiritual house." The preacher repeated his text, and paused. The Prime
Minister inclined his ear in a gesture familiar to all who knew him; the
Dean polished his spectacles and replaced them, as if seeking to see more
clearly what hitherto had been obscured. Silence, always significant,
suffused itself throughout the cathedral!
The sermon began as a history of the cathedral, presented with a
dramatic sense of the relation borne by Gothic architecture to the
renaissance of spirituality in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But
soon the preacher passed from the sanctuary in which he stood straight to
the hearts of the congregation. It has been well said that neither writer nor
painter lives who can set forth adequately on paper or canvas what such
artists as Wykeham and Fox expressed in stone. And who dares to portray
the house spiritual: the house hewn out of living stones under the direction
of the Supreme Architect? But if the whole transcends description, the parts
invite it. Archibald paused before taking the stride from the abstract to the
concrete. When he spoke again his voice was troubled. Smooth
persuasiveness gave place to a rougher eloquence. So far, admirable and

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

After the service, the Dean took Archie's hand and congratulated him. "You
have spoken with tongues," he said, in his too cold voice, which impressed
but never thrilled. Archibald hesitated, flushed, clutched at opportunity and

missed it. The Dean turned aside as others approached. To them Archie
listened, wondering if Betty knew. The Dean, watching him, amended
previous estimates. "The man is really modest," he told his wife at
luncheon. "He blushed and stammered when I spoke to him."
Archie went into the Close, accompanied by a prebendary, whom, as it
happened, he had slight reason to dislike. As he left the cathedral he saw a
small group: the Prime Minister, Lord Randolph, and Lady Randolph;
Pynsent and Jim Corrance were standing beyond these. The Prime Minister
acclaimed the preacher in Latin, holding out both hands:
"I salute Chrysostom," and then he added simply: "Thank you—thank
you!"
Once more Archibald clutched at opportunity, but the prebendary,
eyeing him with jealous glance, stood between him and confession. Then
Lord Randolph and his wife, Pynsent and Corrance, swelled a chorus of
felicitation. Archie was feeling that the truth must be written on his scarlet
face. But his friends, like the Dean, attributed confusion to modesty.
"Here he is!"
Betty's voice rose above the chorus. Pynsent made way for her. Mark
followed, looking pale and worn.
"Oh, Archie, what can I say?" Her face was radiant. He did not suspect
that she wished to apologise for every idle jest at his expense, for every
thought and word (and there were many) which now seemed to stain not
him but her, the shallow-witted creature, seeing the ludicrous and blind to
what lay beneath. "I shall never chaff you again, never."
Archie, however, was looking at Mark. At the moment he realised that
unless he spoke, Mark would hold his peace. Mark had not told Betty yet.
The group around him was breaking up. The Prime Minister had his watch

in his hand. Lord Randolph had turned his back. Betty began again,
excitedly:
"And I might have missed it. Aren't you going to shake hands with
him, Mark?"
Silently Mark extended his hand. At his brother's touch Archie
stammered out: "I owe everything to Mark: he helped me; he has always
helped me."
Mark's eyes demanded more; his grasp tightened. The others, hearing
but not understanding, shuffled somewhat impatiently. Betty frowned,
wondering why Mark was so unresponsive. Surely he would say something.
Then she remembered that since they left the south door of the cathedral he
had said nothing. Was it possible that he grudged his brother this triumph?
From any other man such jealousy would have provoked pity and
sympathy, but she had loved and respected Mark because she had never
been able to conceive of him as being mean or petty-minded. Yet, long ago,
he had confessed that ambition was his besetting sin!
"We shall not be home till two," said Lady Randolph. "Come, all of
you!"
She bustled away, followed by the others. Archibald dropped his
brother's hand, and strode off in the direction of his lodgings. He would not
join the party till after the afternoon's service. Betty glanced at Mark.
"You never congratulated him. He went away hurt, poor fellow! Mark
—how could you? And it was your praise he wanted. I saw that. He looked
hungrily—at you."
Then Mark laughed, while the shadows in Betty's eyes deepened. That
she was perplexed he saw, that she was deeply distressed he had yet to
learn. And to give him his due he was thinking at that moment not of Betty,
nor of himself, but of Archie. He regretted that he had not told Betty the

truth, but her admiration had been so great, her praise so extravagant, that
he had shrunk from the assertive: "I did it. I wrote it." Now, if he spoke,
Betty being a woman of likes and dislikes, would scorn his brother and
make no effort to hide that scorn. All this whirled through his brain while he
laughed, because she had misinterpreted the expression of hunger in
Archie's eyes.
"Don't laugh!" she enjoined sharply. "Did you not think his sermon
splendid?"
"It sounded better than I expected," he said, wondering if she would
guess. He made so certain that she would guess. It amazed him that the
lynx-eyed Lady Randolph, her sagacious lord, Pynsent, Corrance had been
so easily befooled. He had yet to learn that the world is equally prone to
believe that a fool may prove a sage as a sage a fool. The unexpected
excites and disturbs the reason.
"We have all underrated him," she rejoined, more gently.
At tea-time Lord Randolph returned to Birr Wood, bringing Archibald
with him. After tea Lord Randolph drew Mark aside and told him that the
Prime Minister had asked many questions concerning the Samphires of Pitt.
"I told him," said he, "that your maternal grandfather had a strain of
Wesley's and Sheridan's blood. It seems that he knew and loved him. He
must have been a remarkable man."
"My mother adored him," Mark replied. "I can just recall some of the
things she said about him."
"Justice was not done him, I fear. He served faithfully ungrateful
masters. Perhaps he ought to have been a preacher. At any rate his mantle
seems to have descended upon your brother."
He moved away, wondering why Mark had shown so little enthusiasm.
Presently Lady Randolph, under cover of the chatter, said a few words:

"I account for our surprise this morning in one word: Inspiration.
There was Goldsmith, for instance. Not that I wish to make comparisons.
Archibald is no idiot to be sure, very much the contrary, still I never gave
him credit for being a humourist."
"A humourist, Lady Randolph?"
"What? You missed the humour in his sermon—you? Why if I hadn't
cried I must have laughed. What was the keynote of that sermon?
Renunciation. Eh? The word was not mentioned. Very true, but it informed
every phrase. It might have been written by a man who had failed in this
world, but who knew that elsewhere his failure would be reckoned as
success. The stone that the builders rejected became the head of the corner.
Well, so far as this world is concerned, Archie has always succeeded. He
has genius in being able to put himself in the place of the man who has
failed."
"And the humour?"
"I am coming to that. I go the round of this huge house every Saturday
morning, and the house-keeper will tell you that my eyesight is unimpaired.
I went into your room, sir, and what did I see?"
"Spare me," said Mark.
"Soit! I went into your brother's room. I declare he has prettier things
on his dressing-table than I have on mine. And well-cut boots in trees, eau
de Lubin on his washstand, and on his chest of drawers—a trouser-press!
Oh! there's no harm in such things, of course, but that sermon this morning
and the trouser-press! The golden sandals—treed! The halo sprinkled with
eau de Lubin! And yet, and yet he made me cry: hardened old sinner that I
am! So I say that he is a genius, and an unconscious humourist, and a
Chrysostom, and altogether a most amazing person. Now, go and talk to a
younger woman."

Mark obeyed. His old friend eyed his thin figure as he crossed the
room.
"How much help did he give his brother?" she muttered to herself.
Archie was surrounded by joyous prattlers. Harry Kirtling, Pynsent,
and Jim Corrance were with Betty.
"We are still jawing about your brother's sermon," said Harry Kirtling.
"I am sorry to say I missed the first part. A line from my stud groom this
morning rather upset me. Dear old Trumpeter has navicular. My best gee—
worst luck! Well, by Jove! that sermon cheered me up; it did, indeed. I felt
confoundly ashamed of myself and my own small affairs. That was the
effect it had on me. But Corrance and Pynsent say it made 'em blue."
"Every man worth his salt wants to be at the head of the procession
here," Pynsent explained, in his slightly nasal New England accent.
"Archie stuck his knife into me and turned it," said Corrance.
"You've misinterpreted the whole thing," Mark replied eagerly. "Every
man has his work here, but who knows what relation it may bear, if any, to
the work which comes after? Great achievements dwindle into
insignificance within a d-decade. Why, then, should we t-tear ourselves to
p-p-p——"
Meeting Betty's eyes, the abominable lump came into his throat. He
paused abruptly, turning aside. Archie, who had joined them, said with
authority:
"Mark is right. We make a mad effort to scribble our names upon the
quicksands of time." (Mark, with his back still turned to the group, smiled.)
"And we die wretched," Archie went on, "because Time's tides wash out our
writing within an hour. This struggle after personal recognition is a certain
sign of decadence in a nation."

Mark looked at Betty, who was listening to the speaker with faintly
glowing cheeks. Pynsent and Corrance seemed to be impressed, because
Archie as preacher (thus Mark reflected) had bewitched them. Yesterday,
only yesterday, an obscure minor canon would not have so delivered
himself; if he had, the others would have scoffed at him as a prig.
"Are we to fight without pay, my dear boy?"
Lord Randolph had approached, cynical, yet interested.
"Forlorn hopes were led before the Victoria Cross was given,"
murmured Archie deferentially. Then he remembered that Mark had said
this, and that Mark was present. At this thought he blushed vividly, once
more confirming an impression of modesty. He tried to make amends to
Mark. "Why, Mark and I were speaking of this only last night. What did
you say, Mark?"
"N-nothing worth r-repeating," stammered Mark.
"He said that a desperate enterprise never lacked men to attempt it.
And what allures men to almost certain death? The pay, Lord Randolph?
You would be the last to affirm that. Have we not heard of many a noble
fellow falling, maybe, within a few feet of the goal, seeing with dying eyes
comrades triumphantly scaling the heights, knowing that the success of
those comrades was rooted in the bodies over which they had passed to
victory? And these—the failures—have died with a glad shout upon their
lips; they have been found horribly mutilated, but with a smile on their dead
faces. Shall we pity such men, Lord Randolph, or envy them?"
Mark slipped from the room before Lord Randolph replied. Outside
the door he discovered that his fists were clenched.

CHAPTER XVII

SURRENDER!

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

Barger nodded, and pointed to a chair.
"You said in the train I might live to make old bones. Weakness of
heart is not a bar to marriage—is it?"
"Very much the contrary," said the surgeon grimly. "And if you are
sound in other respects——"
"I have never known what it is to be really ill," said Mark eagerly;
"and I don't think I've had breakfast in bed since I left Harrow."
"And not often there—eh? Never shammed at school did you when the
first lesson was a bit stiff?"
"The first lesson never was very stiff—to me," Mark replied.
Barger, with impassive face, began an examination, which lasted
longer than Mark expected. At the end Mark said nervously: "The heart is
not weaker than it was?"
"Your heart need not cause you any serious anxiety," said the surgeon
slowly.
"Thank God!" exclaimed the young man. "From your face I feared a
different verdict."
"There is other trouble, Mr. Samphire."
Then Mark smiled pitifully. His premonition of disaster was justified.
"You can speak f-f-frankly," he stammered.
The surgeon spoke frankly, making plain in his precise phraseology
what was and what might be. "You will take another opinion," he
concluded, "but it is not a matter of opinion, but of fact. These," he pointed
to some reagents, "never lie. Doctors do—sometimes."
"I thank you for not lying to me," said Mark gravely.
Barger fumbled with his test tubes, and then burst out vehemently:
"Your only chance lies in the most careful diet, a life in the open air;
and even then the issue is doubtful."

"And—marriage?"
"Out of the question."
"But if I got better? Should I be justified in asking a woman to wait?"
His voice was dry and husky. Barger shook his head. The trouble
might be staved off for a time, hut there was always the probability of
return.
"You have neglected your body," he said irritably. "You have
defrauded it of all things essential, and it has taken its revenge. Oh, you
parsons who think of others, why can't you see that you would serve the
world better if you thought more of yourselves?"
Mark could read the sympathy and pity latent beneath frowns and
irritability. He held out his hand. Barger continued:
"You must go to a physician. Yours is not a case for a surgeon. You
might try Sir John Drax. He's a specialist. Shall I write him a note? He lives
near here, in Welbeck Street."
Berger scribbled a few lines, and handed them to Mark.
"See him at once," he commanded; "suspense is unendurable."
Mark went his way, so blinded by misery that in crossing the street he
barely escaped being run over by a big van. He sprang to one side in
obedience to the instinct of self-preservation.
Within half an hour Sir John Drax had confirmed Barger's diagnosis
and prognosis. Then he asked bluntly if his patient had independent means.
An affirmative simplified the case. He, too, prescribed fresh air, simple
food, and moderate exercise.
"If I stick to my work in Bethnal Green?"
"You will find yourself in Kensal Green."
"And marriage——?"
"Madness, my dear sir, madness!"

Mark climbed on to the top of the first 'bus which was rolling
eastward. As he did so he heard a small boy proclaiming the name of a
winner. The name seemed familiar. Then he remembered that it was one of
Harry Kirtling's horses. He could see Kirtling's square, stalwart body and
the handsome sun-tanned face above it. Of all the bitter minutes in his life,
this one seemed to be the bitterest.
When he reached the Mission, pressing work distracted his attention
for some hours. He did it as thoroughly as usual, wondering what he should
write to Betty when he was at liberty to go to his own room. He wondered
also that his friends made no comment upon his appearance. Surely he
carried scars. A small glass hung in the committee-room where he was
sitting. He glanced at it. Outwardly he was unchanged.
Not till the clock struck nine did he find himself alone. He wrote a
letter to Betty, a long letter, which he read and destroyed. The next letter
was short, curt, cold: he burned this also. A few minutes later, feeling pain
in his hands, he discovered that his nails had lacerated the flesh. Then he
knew that a fight for life and reason was beginning. The demons were
crying "Surrender!" If he died to-night, Betty would be free; if he lingered
on for half a dozen years, she might deem herself bond to a dying man.
Virility repudiated such a sacrifice.
"O God," he cried, "let me die to-night!"
Outside, the world of Whitechapel roared in derision. All Mark had
known of poverty, of vice, of squalor, swelled into a chorus of despair.
Here, in the heart of the slums, in an atmosphere tainted by the dead bodies
of hundreds of thousands who had perished cursing God and man, he felt
that he was choking for fresh air, that the pestilential fumes of every evil
place into which he had entered were destroying him.

He sat down limply on the edge of his bed, wondering whether the end
would come soon, telling himself that he was dead already. At any rate his
work was done; he would leave the Mission on the morrow. The animal
instinct to slink off to some lonely spot where none might witness his
misery became overpowering. But a letter to Betty must be written first. He
crossed to his desk, where Betty's face smiled out of a silver frame. Gazing
at this, he became so absorbed that three sharp taps on the door were
unheeded. The Bishop of Poplar entered the room, pausing when he saw the
head bent over the table, the thin fingers clutching the silver frame. He
closed the door, crossed the room, and laid his hand upon Mark's shoulder.
"You are in sore trouble."
Mark started to his feet with an exclamation compounded of fear and
surprise.
"You—David——?" he stammered. "What b-brought you here?"
"You shall answer that question yourself," said Ross gravely.
The men confronted each other. Great as the contrast was between the
robust health of the one and the infirmity of the other, a critical eye might
have detected a similarity in the two faces—a resemblance the stronger
because it was born of the spirit rather than the flesh.
"I was crossing Welbeck Street this afternoon," said Ross, "when I saw
you leave one of the houses. It was in my mind to follow and speak to you,
but I was hastening to an appointment for which I was late, and leaving
town for Scotland at eight. But it happened that I had noted the number of
the house you were leaving, and I looked it up in a directory on the platform
at Euston. Mind you, my train was about to start, and I had taken my ticket,
but when I found out that you had seen Drax, I guessed what had happened.
I let the train go on without me, and came on here. Was it coincidence that
led me into Welbeck Street this afternoon, or something more?"

"I am under sentence of death," said Mark.
"Tell me all about it." He grasped his friend's hand.
Mark obeyed. "She has always cared for me," he concluded, "always,
you understand: ever since we were boy and girl. Many want her. Gorgeous
insects have buzzed about her, but she flew to a poor drab-coloured moth.
And I"—his voice shook—"I had fluttered about in the outer darkness——"
"Was it darkness, Mark?"
"I should have said twilight."
"Then she was your sun?"
Mark paused before he answered slowly: "God made the sun."
"You try to slip by me," replied the other quickly. "Have I misread
you? It seemed to me that you had ideals, standards, rules higher than the
average, that for you the light shone more clearly, revealing what lay
beyond. Was that light the glamour in a woman's eyes?"
"The light was reflected in her eyes. You press me hard, David. Shall I
plead that the light, no matter whence its source, dazzled me. There have
been times when I seemed to see the other shore: an enchanted land, so
desirable that I wondered why men preferred to linger here. But now"—his
voice grew harsh and troubled—"I want this earth. I want to live and love—
here."
"What do you propose to do?" David asked.
"Do?" Mark laughed bitterly. "What can I do, but die—the sooner the
better? You are a strong man, David; it is hard for you to stand in my shoes;
but if you were I you would surrender."
"What?"
"Shall I say—everything."
"You cannot surrender what you have done already, whether good or
ill."

"I have to surrender love," Mark muttered. "What do you know of that,
David?"
"I loved a woman," Ross replied, "and I love her still, although she is
but a memory"—his voice softened—"a memory of what might have been,
and what will be. And shall I say that this love has fortified me, because I
see it as the reflection of a greater love? The love you talk of surrendering is
an imperishable possession."
Mark said nothing.
Ross continued: "Drax is a great authority, but he does not know, as I
know, that you have never given your body a fair chance. Now—my word
to you is FIGHT. Fight for life, fight for health, fight to save yourself as you
have fought tooth and nail to save others! Again and again I've begged you
to go to my lodge in Sutherland. Go there with me to-morrow! Drax
prescribes fresh air, plain food, complete rest. These may be straws, but
clutch them—clutch them! Why, man, I have towed worse wrecks than you
into dry dock, and I've seen 'em sail out of harbour with every stitch of
canvas set staunch and seaworthy craft! Be my guest for six months! Mark,
Mark, my dear, good, foolish, gallant Mark—Fight!"
"Thank you, David," Mark replied. Then the smile which Bagshot
knew well lit up the thin haggard face, as he added slowly: "I d-d-don't
think it was c-c-coincidence which led you into Welbeck Street this
afternoon."

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

lingering on, half dead, changing day by day into something unrecognisable
in mind and body.

"You have the right," he wrote, "to demand an explanation, which I must give. I am and shall remain

outside that garden into which we strayed last Saturday. What more can I say? Nothing. Try to think

of me as a boy who was near and dear to you...."

The letter was filled up with details concerning his work. Reading it, the
conclusion was inevitable that the writer had become absorbed in such
work. He hinted at the possibility of taking a vow of celibacy.
Betty kissed this letter before she broke the seal, making sure that it
was a love-letter. Then she read it, with perceptive faculties blunted by
shock. Lady Randolph found her in the Italian garden, staring at the figure
of Aphrodite.
"You were right," she exclaimed passionately. "Mark prefers his work
to—me."
Lady Randolph kissed her.
"I have been a fool," said Betty, bursting into tears.

CHAPTER XVIII
ARIADNE IN NAXOS

Lady Randolph wisely said nothing, but she wrote to Mark. He replied by
return of post.
"I love her devotedly, but I have an almost incurable disease: the result
of neglect. Don't let my people know of this. I had the presumption to

believe that the sacrifice of the flesh was a sort of burnt-offering to God.
The folly of it is hard to bear. Many men here are in a like self-crippled
condition, and the doctor in charge, a good sort, makes scathing remarks.
David Ross warned me several times; as did his successor at the Mission.
Betty, of course, must never find out the truth, which I could not withhold
from you, my kind friend. You can best serve her and me by finding her a
good, faithful husband, such a fellow as Harry Kirtling, or Jim Corrance....
She is made for the happiness which marriage brings. I can take comfort in
the thought that another may give her what is not mine to offer."
Lady Randolph's eyes were wet, as she locked up this letter. Mark had
not mentioned Archie as a possible husband. "That would break his heart,"
she muttered to herself.
Betty and she returned to London, where, during the month that
followed, Betty's simulated high spirits and inordinate appetite for
excitement provoked a warning.
"If you don't bend, you'll break."
"I am broken in pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, who ought to have been
a girl. Men don't break when they tumble off their castle walls. I've stuck
myself together, but I'm a cracked vessel."
Lady Randolph wrote a note that evening to Mrs. Corrance. She had
faith in the balsamic virtue of the atmosphere in and around King's
Charteris, and she knew that Jim spent two days out of each week with his
mother. Mrs. Corrance begged Betty to pay her a visit.
"Shall I go?" said Betty.
"I need a rest-cure," Lady Randolph replied pointedly.
So Betty went down into the pleasant Slowshire country, where the
warmth of her welcome gave the girl a curious thrill. The kisses of the
gentle, grey-haired woman sounded deeps, although they could not touch

bottom, for the motherless girl has deeps unplumbed by any fellow-
creature. Tea was set out in the pretty old-fashioned drawing-room with its
freshly calendered chintzes, its quaint Chelsea figures, its simple dignity of
expression. Mrs. Corrance possessed some Queen Anne silver, which she
had used daily ever since Betty could remember anything. It sparkled softly
like the rings upon the white hands that touched it, shining with a subdued
radiance of other days. Betty saw the same quiet glow in her old friend's
kind eyes: the peace on the face of age which passes the understanding of
youth.
Hitherto she had regarded Mrs. Corrance with grateful affection, but as
one to whom the wind had been tempered, one who lived in a fold seeing
little beyond save Jim. Betty had always thought of her as mother. Now, she
found herself wondering what part this quiet lady had played as sweetheart
and wife. Tempests might have raged and died down, before she (Betty)
was born. Mrs. Corrance's mind, like her house, was full of charming
nooks, cosy corners, so to speak, wherein a tired spirit might take his ease,
but perhaps there were also bare chambers into which none was allowed to
enter. Into these, if they existed, Betty felt a shameful curiosity to go.
While they drank tea Mrs. Corrance asked no questions. Betty listened
with interest to an account of Jim and his doings in the markets of the
world.
"He would like to instal me, me, my dear, in a fine house in some
fashionable quarter." She laughed, and Betty laughed too, seeing that the
mother was delighted secretly that her son should desire to lavish his wealth
upon her.
"Do you despise the world, that you live out of it—always?" said
Betty.

"I love the country," replied the elder woman evasively; then she
added, as if the possibility had just occurred to her: "I hope you won't find it
very dull here."
"Not with you," said Betty, slipping her hand into her friend's.
Next day, Mrs. Samphire drove over from Pitt Hall. She looked pinker
and plumper than ever, and her hair—arranged in Madonna bands—gave
her the vacuous expression of a stout Dutch doll. When the name was
announced, Betty rose to fly, but Mrs. Corrance entreated her to remain.
While Betty was hesitating, fearing the voluble tongue of Mark's
stepmother, the lady herself bustled across the lawn to the chestnut tree
beneath which Mrs. Corrance was sitting. In a moment the pleasant silences
were shattered.
"How cool you look! And this is dear Betty Kirtling. We never
expected to have the honour of seeing so smart a lady in our humdrum
circles. Thank you, my poor husband is only so-so. The doctor has
prescribed golf. We have laid out a small links in the park. I think golf such
a charming game—don't you? I love to look on at it. You agree with me, I'm
sure."
Mrs. Corrance tried to lift this interjectional babble out of the rut.
"I suppose," she said reflectively, "that with us middle-aged women
looking on at games is an inherited instinct. We have always looked on—
haven't we? But Betty, I expect, likes to play golf."
Betty, however, unkindly said nothing, while Mrs. Samphire bleated:
"Oh, yes, I do like to see the Squire play golf. Although, when he misses the
ball, he does—well, I mustn't tell tales out of school—must I? How is dear
Lady Randolph? Did you have a large party for Ascot? Was the Prince
there? I have seen your name in the Marlborough House lists. Really, I
wonder you speak to me at all."

"I haven't said much yet—have I?" said Betty. "Last time we met you
were suffering horribly with neuralgia. Is it better?"
"I'm a martyr now to dyspepsia. I'm trying light and colour, Babbit,
you know. If your poor, dear uncle were alive, how interested he would be.
I'm wearing red next the skin."
"In July?" ejaculated Mrs. Corrance.
"And I've changed the paper in my boudoir, which used to be a
depressing blue, to bright yellow. All the water I drink is acted upon by a
red lens. I want Mark to read Babbit. He has had a sort of breakdown. You
heard of it?"
"A breakdown?" exclaimed Betty. "Did you say a—breakdown?"
Light flashed upon her. Why had she not thought of this? Her thoughts
crowding together clamoured so shrilly that she could barely hear Mrs.
Samphire's querulous reply.
"We learned, quite by chance, that he was in a sanatorium in
Sutherland. He ought to have come to Pitt Hall."
"Have you asked him?" said Betty in a low voice.
"He would come to us if he wanted us."
Shortly after Mrs. Samphire took her leave.
"Can Mark be seriously ill?" said Betty.
Mrs. Corrance's clear eyes lingered for a moment on Betty's flushed
cheeks; then she said tranquilly: "It is not impossible. If so, I don't blame
him for going to Scotland."
"He ought to be at Pitt Hall," said Betty. "I think I shall take a brisk
walk."
Two days later Betty met the Squire in Westchester. She soon
discovered that he was hurt because his son had not come home.

"Perhaps he was anxious to spare you—and others. That would be like
him."
"Yes, yes; he's the best boy in the world. But I'm sure there's nothing
serious the matter. We Samphires are as hard as nails."
"If he—died up there without making a sign."
The Squire stuttered and choked.
"God bless me! you alarm me. I must write at once. I shall insist on his
coming home. Has he taken you into his confidence, my dear?"
"No."
"Um! I thought once that—well, I shall write."
Betty felt that her heart was beating.
"He will pay no attention to a letter. Why not go to him yourself, Mr.
Samphire?"
"By God!—I will."
Betty smiled faintly, for the Squire, when he set his mind to a thing,
was easily turned aside.
Then she went her way; and Mrs. Corrance noted in her diary that
Betty seemed quieter, more like her old self.
On the following Saturday Jim arrived from town, exhaling and
exuding Capel Court. He strolled with Betty through lanes, where they had
picked primroses and blackberries long ago; and the familiar trees and
hedgerows stood like sentinels of the past, guarding simple joys, which
Betty told herself could never return. Jim reminded her that a missel-thrush
had built in the old pollard close to the village pound, and that the eggs,
when about to be blown, proved addled.
"You were very keen about eggs," she said.
"I've always been keen," said Jim. "By Jove!—it was a sell about those
eggs. Well—I still collect eggs, and some are addled! That Cornucopia

mine, for instance...."
He plunged into a description of a mining deal which had proved
disastrous.
"But I got it back, and a lot more in six weeks."
"Which excites you most—winning or losing, Jim?"
"One gets accustomed to winning," said the successful speculator, "but
losing is heart-breaking, particularly when you are unable to guess what the
loss will be."
"Ah," said Betty. "What do you do with your gains?"
"Let 'em increase and multiply. The mater won't live in a better house,
I mean a larger, and she refuses, in advance, all the presents that I've not
given her." He laughed, then he continued in a hard voice: "That question of
loss interests me."
He looked at Betty, who slightly lowered her parasol and made no
reply.
"I never forget my losses."
"Because they have been few?"
"Because they have been heavy. The fellows in our market would tell
you that I have a very serious failing: I don't know when to let go."
"I call that a virtue: in a word, you don't know when you're beat."
"No," he said steadily. "I don't know when I'm beat."
A silence followed, during which the tamer of bulls and bears
decapitated a few dandelions. Betty watched him out of the corner of her
eye. A certain dexterity and ruthlessness in Jim's use of his cane had
significance. Then she found herself wondering what Jim looked like when
he was a boy. She could not recall her old playmate, being obsessed for the
moment by the man beside her. Some men always retain the look of youth
—Mark was one of these; others would seem to have been born old; many,

like Jim Corrance, assume early a hard and impenetrable crust of middle
age. Jim's face was thin and lined, although he had the square figure of an
athlete. One could not picture him as a rosy-cheeked urchin, nor could one
believe that he would grow feeble, and bent, and white-haired. And yet,
despite his strength and success, Betty felt poignantly sorry for him. And
being a woman she showed her compassion in a score of inflections,
gestures, which were as spikenard to the man who loved her.
"I wonder you are so nice to me," he said presently; then as she raised
her delicate brows he added quickly: "I've cut loose from so much you
revere. It's a pill for the mater, but I couldn't play the humbug. I look at life
as it is: as it appears, I mean, to me—a place where the devil takes the
hindmost."
"And those in front——"
"Oh—I dare say the devil takes them also—later."
Betty changed the subject, not because it was distasteful, but for the
subtler reason that she feared her own thoughts, which stuck in a slough of
despond. For the rest of the walk they prattled gaily enough of the pranks
they had played as boy and girl. Jim's face insensibly softened, so that Betty
caught a glimpse of the Harrovian. Then, at the mention of Archie's name,
the talk flowed back into the present.
"I never asked you what you thought of that wonderful sermon of his."
Jim admitted surprise. "Old Archie has come on," he added. "He's a
plodder, and he's good to look at, and he means to 'get there.'"
"To get—where?"
"To the bench of bishops."
"I used to underrate Archie, but there's a lot in him."
"A lot of him, too. Oh—you needn't frown, Betty. I think that Archie
makes a capital parson; and I dare say he'll personally conduct a select party

of you Slowshire people to heaven."
"How bitter you are, Jim."
"I won't be bitter when I'm with you," he promised. "I say, there's the
bush where we caught the Duke of Burgundy fritillary. I saw it in the old
cabinet the other day. You nailed it with your hat and gave it to me,
although you wanted it yourself. I felt a beast for taking it, but I adored you
for being so unselfish."
"You offered me your Purple Emperor next day."
"And you refused it," said Jim quickly.
"So I did. I must tell everybody that I have refused an Emperor."
"Not to mention smaller fry. Three months ago I thought you meant to
marry Harry Kirtling, and he thought so too, by Jove!"
"You dare to insinuate that I encouraged him?"
"You have a way with you, Betty." He glanced at her ardently, but she
looked down, faintly blushing, as he continued: "You are not one of these
modern young women who can stand alone."
"That is true," she said simply. "I am not strong enough to stand alone,
and I admire in men the qualities lacking in myself. We had better go home;
your mother will be waiting for her tea."
Jim said no more, but in the evening he asked his mother if she had
any reason to suppose that an understanding existed between Mark and
Betty.
"When she refused Kirtling, Pynsent and I made certain she was
engaged to Mark. Now he has gone to the uttermost ends of the earth, and
she never mentions his name to me."
"Nor to me," said Mrs. Corrance. Then she touched her son's shoulder
very gently. "Do not make ropes out of sand, dear."

Jim went back to town on Monday morning, but he returned to King's
Charteris the following Friday, and walked once more with Betty in the
lovely woods which lie between Westchester and the New Forest. Naturally
and by training an acute observer, although a keener judge of men than
women, Betty puzzled him. He saw that she was slightly contemptuous of
the material side of life, although willing to listen by the hour to his
presentment of it. This, however, might be a phase, a mood. He felt assured,
now, that Betty would have married Mark had he asked her to do so, and he
lay awake at night wondering whether she would marry anybody else. For
the rest he determined that he must make haste slowly. He would give the
girl the fellowship she craved without defining its elements. That she was
grateful for such abstinence her manner proved. She became at once open,
candid, a delightful companion.
Meantime the Squire had not left Pitt Hall. When he met Betty, he said,
with some confusion, that the "Madam" (as he called Mrs. Samphire) had
opposed so long a journey; one, moreover, which was like to prove a fool's
errand. He excused himself by complaining querulously of an estate which
exacted constant supervision. His face was even more florid than usual, and
his manner less complacent. When Betty mentioned this to Archie (who
rode over from Westchester on a well-bred cob), he expressed a fear that his
father was losing money.
"He spoke of going North," Betty said, after a pause. "If Mark is really
ill, surely he ought to be nursed by—by his nearest and dearest?"
Archie betrayed astonishment.
"Ill? Really ill? I've heard nothing of serious illness, not a word. How
do you know, Betty?"
"I have guessed," she answered vehemently. "He has slipped away to
—to die, perhaps!"

Archie showed a most lively concern.
"No, no, you exaggerate. Look here, Betty, if someone ought to go
North, I'll go."
"Oh, Archie—if you would."
"Dear old Mark! Of course I'll go. It happens that I can get a week's
leave. I'll bring him home with me."
He spoke in a warm, sympathetic tone, kindling Betty's gratitude and
affection. Never had she liked Mark's brother so well.
"You can spare the time, Archie?"
"Yes, yes; I'm so glad you spoke to me. By the way, I've a piece of
news for you—great news, too. I am commanded to preach at Windsor."
"Oh, Archie, I am pleased to hear that. It will mean so much—won't
it."
"Yes."
She asked questions: Was the date set? Had he a theme? and so forth.
"You know," she continued gravely, "I shall never forget your Westchester
sermon. Many sermons touch one, but that gripped. Often, I've not been
quite fair to you, and now I'm horribly ashamed of myself. You forgive
me?"
"My dear Betty! I say—was there so great a difference between that
sermon and others I have preached?"
"Why, Archie, how modest you are! Don't you know that you climbed
to the heights that Whit-Sunday? Before, you seemed to be rambling about
on the comfortable plains. Oh, I know we can't scale mountains every day.
Lord Randolph said as much——" She paused.
"What did Lord Randolph say?"
"He did not intend that it should reach your ears."

"Betty—you will do me a favour by repeating what he said as he said
it. I am not thin-skinned."
"Well, he said that beer was good liquor, and that spirits should be used
sparingly. You couldn't preach such a sermon as that every Sunday."
"Not I," said Archie.
"The great thing is that you can stir up hearts when the occasion
comes. I feel sure you will surpass yourself at Windsor."
"I wish I felt sure, Betty. Well—I'll do my best to persuade Mark to
return with me, but he's obstinate as a mule where his health is concerned.
Shall I give him any message from you?"
"You can give him—my love."
She spoke with assumed lightness of tone. Archie found a phrase.
"A man would travel farther than Sutherland to receive that." Then he
took his leave, gravely smiling.
"He's a good sort," said Betty.
None the less she told herself that her intuitions in regard to men were
fluid. Again and again she tried to grasp them, to mould them into
permanent form, into definiteness; always they flowed away—peaceably
sometimes, with a sweet melodic cadence, as of a Scotch burn, but more
often roaring, like the same burn in spate; in either case leaving but a small
silt behind.
The two days following Archie's departure she spent alone in the
woods (for Mrs. Corrance seldom left her pretty garden), seeking from
Nature an answer to the problem in her heart. The great oaks and beeches
preserved an inviolate silence in those languorous July days, but the pines
seemed to have a message for an attentive ear. Their sighs were, perhaps,
the warning voices of the innumerable dead, hushed and (to most mortals)
inarticulate. Here and there amidst this rich pastoral country Betty found

sterile acres where even the hardy fir failed to find sustenance. These
patches in the landscape had a weird fascination. Betty perceived beauty,
dignity, in their subtle, faded tints, their delicate greys and shadowy browns.
Once upon a time, doubtless, these barren spots had bloomed, too
luxuriantly, perhaps; in due time they would bloom again in splendid
resurrection. In the centre of one of the stony places a young birch tree of
great beauty stretched slender limbs toward the green paradise which
encompassed it, inclining slightly to the south.
"I am like that birch," said Betty.

CHAPTER XIX
A SANATORIUM IN SUTHERLAND

Archibald Samphire took with him to Scotland a suit-case and a small
handbag. After leaving Perth, where he made an early breakfast, he opened
the bag and pulled out a roll of foolscap covered with neat, scholarly
handwriting. The reading of this MS. seemed to give him pleasure; but
presently his fine brow puckered into wrinkles, and an excellent cigar was
allowed to go out prematurely.
"It's not as good as I thought," he murmured; and he was not speaking
of his cigar.
Presently he lit another cigar and reread the MS.—the sermon prepared
for Royalty. When he wrote it, he told himself it eclipsed the one preached
on Whit-Sunday at Westchester. Afterwards, rereading it in cold blood, he
had come to the conclusion that it did not quite "grip," as Betty put it,
although sound to the core doctrinally, and discreet; better suited, perhaps,

for august ears than the other. Now, in this clear, cool northern air, judgment
was of a less sanguine complexion. The theme warmed into life in the Close
at Westchester lacked vitality in the Highlands. Mountain and moor made it
seem anæmic. Archibald looked out of the window, which was open, and
inhaled the fresh, pungent air. Not a house was to be seen, not even a
shepherd's hut; the moors spread a purple carpet on which no human
creature walked; the mountains, vast, rugged, solitary, encompassed the
moors. Yet in the heart of this lonely wilderness men had swarmed together
in conflict. These mountains had not barred the progress of an army. Guns,
horses, transport waggons had defiled through the passes and across the
treacherous peat bogs. That clear burn yonder had run red with blood. Here
was fought the battle of Killiecrankie! Archie thought of these things as he
sat with the sheets of his sermon in his hand. He bundled the MS. back into
his bag, and closed it with a snap, divining his inability to deal adequately
with what was primal!
He had wired to Mark that he was coming North; accordingly, at Lairg
he found a "machine" awaiting him, a ramshackle cart drawn by a sturdy
pony, whose attempts to leave the rough roads and plunge on to the moor
indicated that he was more at ease beneath a deer packsaddle than between
a pair of shafts. The driver eyed somewhat derisively Archie's clerical
garments. "Ye're no a meenister?" he asked; and receiving a reply in the
affirmative, added with emphasis, "Ye're verra young for that." A minute
later he asked if his passenger were college-bred.
"I took my degree at Cambridge," said Archie.
"Indeed. A'm interested in the Punic Wars. Yon Scipio Africanus was a
gran' man. I'd be obliged if ye'd tell me all ye ken aboot him."
Archie changed from pink to the colour of Turkey twill. What he knew
about Scipio Africanus could have been put into a grain of millet seed. In

some confusion—not wasted upon the critical Scot—he explained that the
Punic Wars were beyond his horizon. The driver nodded compassionately,
expressing no surprise at the Sassenach's ignorance. He was thin and
angular; his grey eyes had curious flecks of brown in them; his face and
hands were very red and hairy, and beneath the red hair Archie detected a
certain amount of dirt. This restored the minor canon's sense of superiority.
The Scot, however, wore stout homespun and superb stockings.
"You wear good clothes," said Archie.
"D'ye think they're too guid?"
"Certainly not," said Archie hastily. "Your Highland sheep look in fine
condition."
Once more the driver's queer eyes met his. The brown flecks danced in
the grey.
"They're no mine, and they cam frae Teviotdale—they white-faced
sheep." The contempt in the man's voice was unmistakable.
Archie wondered if the man also came from the border; he did not look
like a Highlander; Highlanders always said "whateffer." He wished to ask
questions about Crask, Ross's lodge, but the brown flecks in the small,
closely-set eyes were oddly disconcerting, so he stared at the face of the
landscape instead of that of the man. They were driving over a bleak moor
which stretched, far as the eye could reach, to some delicately blue hills
fringing the western skies. The scene was panoramic and indescribably
desolate. Along the road black posts, set at intervals, served as guides to
such travellers—shepherds for the most part—who were obliged to cross
the moors in winter-time, when snow covered all things. Archie thought of
November and shivered. Presently they passed a small slate-tiled cottage
built of rough grey stone and surrounded by a grey stone wall. Peats were
piled close to a vast midden, on which some hens were scratching; beyond

the peat stack stood the byre; garden, ornamental or useful, there was none.
As the pony came to a sudden halt, three rough collies rushed out, barking
furiously. The driver spoke to them and got down; he strode into the house,
remained there ten minutes, and came out wiping his hairy chin. Archie
smelled whisky. The driver picked up the reins, the collies barked, the pony
shambled forward. Evidently the whisky had had an effect, for the Scot
became communicative.
"He's a verra mean man, yon," he said, jerking his head in the direction
of the house. "We were tasting the noo, and I said, as he was filling the
glass—'Stop!' And wad ye believe it, the brute stoppit?"
Mark would have laughed. Archibald remained calm.
"There's too much whisky drunk in Scotland," he said.
"There's' mair drunk oot of it," retorted the driver.
Archie refused to enter into argument, and the driver filled a black
cutty with evil-smelling tobacco. After the moor was crossed, the character
of the scenery changed. The road wound its way beside a charming burn to
which heather-covered hills sloped steeply. Farther on, a loch reflected the
saffron splendours of the sky. A splendid mountain—Ben Caryll—towered
to the right.
"Yon's the hoose," said the driver.
The house crowned a small spur of Ben Caryll. At one side stood a
small wooden chapel embellished by a diminutive bell-tower, in which
hung a single bell of great sweetness of tone. A big lawn lay on the other
side of the house, and Archie noted with surprise that tennis-courts were
marked out. He noted also, with equal surprise, the profusion of flowers and
flowering shrubs and the care which allotted to each its particular place in
the general plan of the garden. The house looked grey and grim, like all
houses in this part of Scotland, and the windows had been enlarged, giving

the building somewhat the appearance of a small factory. Behind the tennis-
courts stood a row of rough sheds covered with creepers and facing the
south. In the sheds he caught a glimpse of tables, chairs, sofas, and other
simple furnishings.
Archie rang the bell, which jangled discordantly. The door was opened
by Mark, who held out both hands, smiling. "It's awfully good of you, old
fellow," he said. "I don't know how to thank you. You're just in time for
supper. Here's the Bishop. He's up for a day or two."
David Ross nodded cordially and gripped Archie's hand. Two men
came forward and were introduced. One shouldered the big suit-case and
went upstairs with it, ignoring protests. Archie followed, carrying his small
black bag and feeling that he had come on a fool's errand so far as Mark
was concerned. Dying? Why, he looked stronger than he had looked for
months. As soon as the brothers were alone Archie said as much.
"I suppose it's the air," Mark explained. "I'm out-of-doors night and
day. My trouble is scotched."
"I can't understand how you can joke about it," said Archie.
"A vile pun, but irresistible. I say, wash that frown off your face and
come down. We'll have a pipe and a good jaw afterwards. If you think, by
the way, that I do look better, you might say so to David Ross. He's been
awfully kind."
"Why didn't you go home?"
"I c-c-couldn't," said Mark shortly.
In the refectory, a long, low annexe to the house, the Bishop's guests
sat at meat. Some of them were ruddy and robust; others looked thin and
white, but not one, so Archie remarked, wore the sable of discontent. The
eyes that met his were candid and clear—the eyes of men satisfied with
their lot in life. At the foot of the table sat a little fellow with a big head,

which waggled comically. Archie wondered where he had seen him before;
then he remembered. The little man looked like Mr. Pickwick, although he
lacked that illustrious character's deportment and dignity.
"Who is that?" he whispered to Mark, who sat beside him.
"That's Stride, our resident doctor. He's mad keen about the open-air
cure. He got his ideas from Father Kneippe."
In those days neither Father Kneippe nor his ideas were famous. The
open-air treatment for disease was practically unknown. Mark explained
Stride's methods: his theories on diet and physical culture, facts now
familiar to everybody.
"Stride lives here all the year round, you know. David Ross comes and
goes at long intervals."
"It must be desolate in winter." Archie gave his impressions, including
a description of the house with the huge midden. "It was larger than the
cottage," he said in great disgust, "and the drunken savage who drove me
wanted to learn what I knew about Scipio Africanus and the Punic wars.
Punic wars indeed!"
"I like the country and the people," said Mark, "but you have to climb
to get at either."
After supper the guests marched outside and settled themselves in the
sheds, which were lit with lamps. Some read, some played chess, some
listened to Stride, who talked unceasingly. The Bishop led Archie aside and
asked him if he would like to smoke a pipe on the lawn.
"I'll smoke a cigar," said Archie. "Can I offer you one?"
"I prefer a pipe," said the Bishop.
They strolled together on to the lawn. Although it was nearly ten,
twilight still lingered about the landscape, as if loath to leave a scene so fair
in darkness. Archie listened attentively to what his companion was saying.

"Your brother has neglected his body." (Ross had been warned by
Mark to say no more than this.) "In such cases more or less of a breakdown
is inevitable. I am delighted that you see a change for the better. Six months
up here, under Stride, may set him up."
"I hoped to take him back with me. I came up for that purpose."
"Your brother can return with you, if he wishes, but would it be wise?"
"Perhaps not, perhaps not," said Archie. "We did not know that you
were prepared to offer so generous a hospitality."
"He will be a paying guest in more senses than one. I dare say you
would like to talk to him. Good night! I have an immense pile of letters to
answer. I hope you will stay with us as long as you please."
He grasped Archie's hand, and strode off. Archie watched him for a
moment, enviously. Ross gave the impression of power in action. It was
certain that his amazing stride would take him far on any road—and always
upward and onward: the motto adopted by his followers.
When he found himself alone with Mark, in the bedroom assigned to
him, Archie said: "Ross seems to think that you are doing better here than
you would, for instance, in Slowshire."
"Why, of course. I'm mending rapidly. One cannot do anything rapidly
in Slowshire. It's not even a place to die in. One would dawdle over it."
"You will speak with such levity——"
"I've not your gravity, my dear old fellow. Now then, tell me about
yourself. What are you doing?"
"I've been commanded to preach at Windsor."
Mark was so eager and warm in his congratulations that Archie found
it easy to go on.
"I've brought my MS. with me. I want you to skim through it."
"I must read it at once. This is wildly exciting."

Archie paced up and down, while Mark sat on the bed reading the
sermon. Judging from his face, the fare was proving unpalatable. Archie
saw that he was frowning and fidgeting with his fingers, as he used to do at
Harrow, when he was looking over his major's verses. This familiar
expression made the big fellow feel ludicrously like a boy. He half shut his
eyes and waited for the inevitable: "I say, you know, this is awful bosh," of
the Fifth Form days. Mark read the MS. through, and then glanced again at
certain passages, before he said a word.
"Well," said Archie nervously, "will it do?"
Mark slid off the bed, put his hands in his pockets, and stared at his
brother.
"That depends. It will do to light some fires with; but it won't set the
Thames, near Windsor, ablaze."
"Call it 'bosh' and have done with it."
"It's not bosh. You've taken one of the Beatitudes."
"The Dean suggested that. He said it would please. Of course he
knows."
"The text is the most inspiring in the New Testament, but you've
treated it conventionally. Now look here——" He paused to collect his
ideas. Archie saw that his eyes were shining with that suffused light which
betokened in him mental or spiritual excitement. He began to pace up and
down the narrow room; then he burst out: "You lay stress on the reward
hereafter; a hereafter which the finite mind is unable to grasp. The pure in
heart shall see God in His Heaven. Don't you know that the pure in heart
see God here? That He is revealed, and only to the pure, in everything that
lies around us. Ah, that is a theme, a celestial theme: the revelation of the
Creator in the things created. And impurity blinds us. We look up to God, if
we do look up, through a fog. You must take that line, Archie. Burn this—

and begin again. And be sure that you define purity of heart aright. Don't
confound it with purity of body. You are eloquent on the purity of a child.
Why, man, the purity which knows not impurity is emasculate compared
with the purity which knows impurity, which has fought with impurity, and
yet, in the end, after conflicts innumerable, vanquishes impurity! I tell you
that what men and women want to-day is substance. An ideal Heaven, an
ideal earth, appeal to us, yes, but they charm as a mirage charms; they melt
and fade as the mirage does. What you have written here," he tapped the
foolscap impatiently, "might feed saints, but flesh-and-blood sinners would
go empty away. By Heaven! if I had your voice, I would make the sinners
hear."
"You must help me," said Archie in a low, hesitating voice.
"Why not?" said Mark excitedly. "Give me the night to think. To-
morrow we'll put our heads together and the sparks shall fly. I haven't used
my brains for a month. This will do me good."
"Will it?" said Archie doubtfully. Already Mark's face was drawn and
haggard; he looked ten years older than his brother.
"What is life," said Mark contemptuously, "if the salt of helping a pal
be taken from it? I'm not useless yet. Good night. I sleep in a shed, you
know. And I can see the stars whenever I open my eyes."
"It's so cloudy here," said Archibald.
"I can see through most clouds, but s-s-some——"
Mark paused abruptly, the light faded in his eyes, as he turned and left
the room.

CHAPTER XX
BETTY SEES A SPRIG OF RUE

Archibald returned to Westchester some three days later. In the small black
bag was another MS. quite as bulky as the first, and covered with Mark's
handwriting. Blots and smudges deformed it; the edges were dog-eared,
whole sentences were excised, red pencil marks flamed amidst the black.
Yet Archibald read it through again and again, smiling, and nodding his
handsome head. He was not alone in his first-class carriage, and his
companion, a shrewd Scotch lawyer, guessed why the minister kept moving
his lips as he read his MS. In fancy he was declaiming it.
The day after his arrival at the lodge the elder brother had said to
Mark: "By the way, Betty Kirtling sent her love to you. Have you any
message for her?"
"None," said he slowly. "I hope she is well."
Archie, not detecting the anxiety in his tone, thought Betty was
looking very well. Then he mentioned Jim.
"He comes from Friday to Monday, every week. He wants Betty, but I
don't fancy he'll get her."
"Have you any reason for saying that?" Mark asked, wondering
whether Archie was clearer-sighted than he had supposed.
"Jim is a materialist."
"Oh, come now!"
"A money-grubber and an agnostic."
"One of the best of fellows. Ross never appeals to him in vain."
"As if any rich man couldn't write a cheque. Betty ought to marry
somebody very different."
"Don't abuse him to Betty."
"Betty is rather—undisciplined."

"You can say that of all of us. I hope to God she won't marry a
schoolmaster." He glanced at his brother with an eye that flamed. He had
been smitten by the fear that Betty might marry Archie.
"What strong expressions you use, Mark. It doesn't sound quite—how
shall I put it?—well, seemly, for a man who holds Orders. I see no chance
of Betty marrying a schoolmaster. I have great hopes that she will choose
wisely. She said 'No' to Harry Kirtling, and she will say 'No' to Jim
Corrance."
"And she said 'No' to you," Mark reflected.

Within the week Archibald rode over to King's Charteris, where he found
Betty in Mrs. Corrance's garden gathering roses. He had wired that he was
returning without Mark. She took the telegram to her room, where pride
dried her eyes and hardened her heart. That night Jim told himself he had a
chance. She had never been so kind to him, so understanding, so alluring.
But on the brink of declaration he hesitated, fearing to leap. Afterwards he
wondered what might have happened if he had—leaped boldly instead of
looking and longing.
Betty received Archie with the question, "Is Mark really ill?"
Archie hesitated.
"He looks stronger," he said slowly. "And he is in his usual spirits: the
life and soul of the place. There can't be anything really wrong. In fact he
joked about his health. He doesn't take anything very seriously, you know.
David Ross told me that he had overworked himself—more or less."
"You gave him my love?" Betty murmured lightly. She had the faintest
tinge of colour in her cheeks, but her voice was almost cold.
"Yes."
"And I hope he sent a nice message to me in return?"

"No. He asked if you were well. I said—yes. You do look uncommonly
well, Betty."
She wore white, which set off the delicate tints and admirable texture
of her skin, but her hat was black, giving a necessary note of contrast. At
her throat, holding together a jabot of creamy laces, sparkled an old-
fashioned enamel ornament set with tiny brilliants. Standing on the sloping
lawn, her figure defined against a towering yew fence, and holding in her
hand the roses she had just gathered, the girl made a picture which lured
Archie's thoughts even from Windsor.
"I suppose a country life agrees with me."
"You are wonderful."
She moved to a bench, the young man following her with eager feet
and eyes. He could not see that her heart was beating, nor did he notice that
the brilliancy of her eyes was due to an abnormal enlargement of the pupil.
She sat down, smiling derisively. Then she bade him tell her about the
sanatorium. When he had finished, she said quietly, "You were very, very
kind to take that long journey."
"It's easy to be kind to people like you—and Mark."
His delightful voice softened, because when he mentioned his brother's
name the memory of what that brother had done on his behalf filled him
with gratitude.
"I hear you are kind to everybody. All Slowshire sings your praises."
Archibald shook his head, wondering whether Betty would mention
the sermon. He was burning with impatience to try on, so to speak, some of
its phrases, to watch the effect of them on a woman who had listened to the
Gamaliels of the day. Betty possessed sincerity, imagination, sympathy.
These would flow freely at the touch of a friend's hand.

"If it would not bore you," he said, "I should like to talk over the
Windsor sermon. You can help me——"
"I? Help—you?"
"You can, indeed"; his voice grew eager. "Whatever I say will be the
fresher and purer if it passes through your mind before it is given to the
world."
"My mind is a sort of filter." She laughed. None the less she was
pleased and flattered. Archibald began to speak in a soft monotone. Betty
half closed her eyes and the lines of her figure slightly relaxed beneath the
caressing inflections of the speaker's voice. Whenever Archie sang she was
affected in the same way. A languor overcame her. For the moment she was
not attempting to grasp the meaning of his words, which, even as
inarticulate sounds, possessed value and significance. But, soon, she opened
her eyes wide and sat up. By this time Archie was at the core of his theme,
and his treatment of it was so masterly that Betty found herself thrilling
with surprise and delight. A few minutes before life had seemed empty.
Now it was full again, brimming over, bubbling, with possibilities swelling
from shadow into substance. Archie, be it remembered, was not preaching
the sermon. He was rather submitting the material, the tissues, the threads,
the patterns, out of which a fine piece of work had been already fashioned.
Now and again Betty was invited to choose, to select, out of these wares
some one which pleased her fancy. She realised that Archie had more of
Mark in him than she had deemed possible. Once or twice she seemed to
hear Mark's eager tones.
"You say that like Mark."
"Has Mark talked to you on this theme?"
"Oh, no," Betty replied, "but he pours out his ideas, as you do."
"Mark and I have talked about this. He helped me. He always does."

Archie spoke hesitatingly, on the edge of full confession. He had a
genuine desire to tell Betty the truth. The words formed on his lips.
"Yes, yes," said Betty absently. "Mark has helped me too, many a time;
but he's in Sutherland." Her voice became cold as she recalled his letter. "I
feel as if he were at the North Pole! Well, Archie, I've enjoyed our talk
immensely."
"And when may I come to talk to you again?"
"You are not going—now?"
The "now" brought a sparkle to his eyes.
"I must. I'm one of the busiest men in Westchester."
"I shall run down to Windsor to hear your sermon," she said.
"Our sermon, Betty."
"That's rubbish. You must never pay me compliments, Archie. I
couldn't stand them from you——" she broke off, irrelevantly: "How did
you attain to your pinnacle? I suppose you've been climbing ever since we
were children. It's quite wonderful. Don't come Friday or Saturday. Jim will
be here. Poor, rich Jim! What do you think of Jim?"
Archie remembered, in the nick of time, what Mark had said about not
abusing Jim.
"I think what you think," he said slowly. "Poor, rich Jim!"
After he had gone, Betty picked no more roses, but sat down on the
bench, feeling rather forlorn. Archibald had taken something away with
him. What it was she could not define precisely. For instance—was it Jim's
character? He had said nothing. Nothing—except her own words: "Poor,
rich Jim." Jim had been his friend, although the men had now little in
common. Of course, he would not speak unkindly of an old schoolfellow.
Yet as a preacher of Christ's gospel, he must in his heart rank Jim amongst
Christ's enemies. Jim was not with Christ. He did not believe in Christ. The

conclusion was obvious: he must be counted as an enemy. An enemy? Poor
Jim!
She was still thinking of Jim, when his mother came towards her. She
seemed to ascend the grass slope with difficulty; so Betty ran forward to
offer an arm, which was accepted. As they moved slowly on, Betty glanced
at the quiet face so near her own. Again, curiosity devoured her. She
observed a faded look which she tried to interpret. Did it spell
disappointment? Were the last draughts of life proving bitter? Perhaps she
felt that her work was done, that her little world would wag on without her.
They sat down, and Mrs. Corrance produced her needle, her silks, and a
piece of embroidery from the old-fashioned velvet bag, which she always
carried on her arm. Betty, who never sewed, wondered if the day would
ever dawn when she would find solace in such trivial occupations. Then
Mrs. Corrance asked for news of Mark. After that was told, silence fell on
both: the silence which precedes the breaking of barriers. Then Betty said
softly: "Are you glad that you have lived—or sorry?"
The frail hands, poised above the delicate embroidery, sank upon it,
and remained still, while faint lines of interrogation puckered the placid
forehead. Betty continued: "I ought not to ask such questions. I rush in like
a fool. But then I am a fool, although I long to be wise. There is so much a
girl like me wants to know, but if you tell me to hold my tongue I shall not
be surprised or offended."
"I'm glad that I have lived, Betty."
"That is because you have loved. Your love for Jim has filled your life,
ever since I have known you. If—if—oh, I am ashamed to put it so brutally
—but if you lost Jim, or if Jim had never been born—what then?"
"My dear, you press me too hard. I can hardly conceive of life without
Jim," she smiled. "He came when all was dark, and there has been light for

me—ever since."
"When all was dark——" repeated Betty. She knew that Jim's father
had died when Jim was a small boy.
"Yes. My married life was not happy. Perhaps I expected too much, as
is the way with women; perhaps it was not meant that I should be happy."
"Not meant?" Betty spoke with impatience. "Surely the design, the
intention, includes happiness, only we mar it."
"All young people think that," said Mrs. Corrance, "but as we grow
older we see so little real happiness that we must believe, if we believe in
the mercy of God, that, save for the few, happiness on earth is not to be
enjoyed but earned rather, so that it may be enjoyed, without alloy,
hereafter. And I believe that to everyone a glimpse of happiness is
vouchsafed. Were it not for that, how many would struggle on?"
Betty asked no more questions. The youth in her rebelled against this
placid acceptance of suffering and strife. She told herself that she had
enormous capacity for enjoyment. Politics, literature, history, sport: all were
fish to her net. But religion, and in particular that concrete presentation of it
by the Church of England, had, so far, left her cold. She seemed to have
touched but its phylacteries, out of which came no virtue. She had met
many clever men who confessed themselves agnostic. Her kind friend,
Lady Randolph, never spoke of religion, either in its wide or narrow sense.
Certainly she did her duty without aid or formulæ. In fact, when Betty came
to think of it, some freethinkers of her acquaintance lived more Christian
lives than many Churchpeople who took the Sacrament every Sunday. This
was puzzling. On the other hand, the life she had led since the Admiral's
death, the life of Mayfair, of big country houses, of race-meetings, of
perpetual pleasure-seekings, had begun to pall. The grandmothers—some of
them—who gambled, and made love, and over-ate themselves, revolted her.

That they were at heart discontented and unhappy she could not doubt.
Finally, she had just come to the trite conclusion that, in or out of the
fashionable world, the people least to be pitied were those who had some
definite object in view. Politics, for instance, had probably saved Lord
Randolph from the hereditary curse of his family; fox-hunting made Harry
Kirtling ride straight and walk straight; Jim Corrance admitted that money-
grubbing kept him out of mischief. These pursuits, however, led to negative
results: being preventive of evil, not productive of good, except indirectly.
Mark Samphire not only avoided evil, but did good, as dozens were eager to
testify, including herself. When with Mark she had always been conscious
of his power to bring out the good in her. And this afternoon, listening to
Archie, she had felt the same thrill, the same irresistible yearning to ascend,
to scale the heights. None the less, she was whimsically aware, being a
creature of sense as well as sensibility, that Mark cast a glamour. She loved
him, and, loving him, loved what he loved, tried to see Heaven's wares with
his eyes, and succeeded, so long as the magician remained at her side.
When he was at work in Whitechapel and she was shopping in Bond Street,
Heaven, somehow, seemed distant. At such times she looked at a set of
sables or a diamond ornament with a pleasure which proved that the clay
within her was very far from being purged.
Upon the following Saturday, when Jim asked her to become his wife,
to share the fortune which would be no fortune without her, she said No, as
kindly as words and looks could say it. Her distress at the pain she inflicted
touched him profoundly.
"I shall remain your pal, Betty," Jim declared. "The other thing was
always a forlorn hope. Is it any use saying that I have known for years that I
wasn't first, and that I was sanguine enough to believe that if the first failed,
I might be second? Isn't half a loaf better than no bread, dear?"

She let him take her hand, but she turned aside eyes full of tears.
"We'll go on as before. The mater needn't know—eh? It has been a
great thing for her having you here."
"And a great thing for me," said Betty unsteadily. "I wish I could
marry you, dear old Jim, but I can't—I can't."
She broke down, sobbing bitterly. Jim patted her hand, wondering
what he could say to comfort her, but the words which came into his head
seemed inadequate. If he had taken her face between his strong hands,
kissed away her tears, and sworn passionately that he would love and
cherish her so long as she lived, she might have changed a mind which was
less strong than her body. While she sat weeping beside him, she was
thinking not so much that she had lost Mark, but that she had lost love. The
woman within her groaned, the flesh and blood protested. She saw herself
as in a vision, treading the dreary years alone, with no strong arm to protect
and defend, with no tiny hands to cling to and caress her. And at the end of
the pilgrimage stood old age, grim and grey, carrying a sprig of rue in
palsied shrivelled hands!

CHAPTER XXI
RECUPERATION

Mark went North with David Ross convinced that his months, if not his
days, were numbered; but as time passed, this conviction passed with it, and
hope once more fluttered into his heart. Stride took extraordinary interest in
his case.

"You must become an animal and remain an animal till I give you
leave to assume again the man," he told Mark after Archibald had left
Crask. "I don't know what you and your brother have been up to, but you've
had a relapse. You must go on all-fours till I tell you to walk upright."
Mark promised, but he added: "I feel an animal—an ass!"
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 ægis 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 niphétos 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 très bien installés. 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. Pomméry 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.
The Squire called after her: "God bless you, my dear! God bless you!"
She was gone.
Jim went out of the dining-room, which was situated, it will be
remembered, at the top of The Whim. Most of the guests had followed the
bride and groom downstairs. Upon the Persian carpet lay a small spray of
lilies of the valley, fallen from Betty's bouquet. Jim glanced to right and
left. Nobody was looking at him. Furtively, scarlet in the face, he stalked
and bagged the spray of lilies. He placed it carefully in his pocket-book.
"That's the last of our Betty," he said.

CHAPTER XXIV
A RED TIE

Archibald had ordered a coupé to be ready for him at Westchester, but when
the Bournemouth express dashed up, the stationmaster was obliged to
confess that a blunder had taken place; no coupé was on the train. A first-
class carriage was found, in which two seats were already occupied.
"Somebody ought to be censured for this," said the bridegroom, as the
train slid out of the station. "It's inexcusable carelessness. I shall write to the
directors about it."
"Pray don't," said Betty. "The matter's not worth a penny stamp."
"We shall find a coupé at Victoria," he whispered, bending forward.
They were en route for France, having agreed to spend their honeymoon in
Touraine. Betty glanced at the elderly couple, whose curiosity had been

quickened. Archibald drew back with a slight frown. "I shall write from
Dover," he said. "I regard it as a duty."
Betty pouted, surprised that he should treat her injunction so
cavalierly. Men, she reflected, were men, and must be humoured. After all,
her husband's annoyance was a compliment to her. She blushed as she lay
back against the cushions, shutting her eyes. Her husband! She repeated the
word very softly, the colour ebbing and flowing in her cheeks, as she gave
herself up to the thought of him. Archibald said nothing; that was tactful.
He had plenty of tact—a great gift—and most agreeable manners. Suddenly
she realised that she was making an inventory of his good qualities,
repeating them to herself like a parrot. She sat up, opening her eyes,
opening them indeed wider than usual when she saw what had happened.
Archibald had risen early; he had spent a busy and exciting morning; he had
made an excellent breakfast, although, being a total abstainer, he had
refused the Pomméry and Waterloo brandy. Now, not being able to talk to
his bride in the presence of strangers, seeing that she wanted to rest and
reflect, he had settled himself comfortably into his corner and—had fallen
asleep!
Betty eyed him furtively. She did not like to wake him, but his
appearance distressed her. She bent forward and touched his arm.
"Dear me," he said. "I saw you close your eyes, Betty, and I closed
mine. You did right to wake me."
"I couldn't help it," she replied. "Your hat had fallen over your left eye.
It made you look—ridiculous."
They spoke in whispers, leaning forward, so that their heads almost
touched. But at the word "ridiculous" the bridegroom winced.
Betty had pierced a sensitive skin. Seeing this, she tried to turn the
incident into a joke, laughing lightly, sorry that she should have hurt him,

yet still seeing the hat tilted over the left eye.
At Victoria the coupé was awaiting them. The train, however, had only
just backed into the station and would not leave for a quarter of an hour.
Archibald and Betty arranged their belongings, and proceeded to walk up
and down the platform. A great station was a never-failing source of interest
to Betty. The infinite variety of faces, the bustle, the pervading air of change
and motion, even the raucous, ear-splitting sounds, stimulated her
imagination. Nothing amused her more than to invent stories concerning
fellow-travellers. She brought to this an ingenuity and an insight which had
often delighted Lady Randolph. Now, as usual, her eye drifted here and
there in search of some attractive lay figure. As a rule she selected someone
out of the ordinary groove. The flare of an eye, the twist of a moustache, a
peculiarity in figure or gait instantly aroused her interest. Passing the
bookstall, she saw a man in an Inverness cape made out of Harris tweed.
Because he had the appearance of coming straight from Scotland, she
examined him more closely. At the moment he turned, and their eyes met.
The stranger was very brown of complexion and wore a beard, but the eyes,
blue eyes with sparkling pin-points of frosty light, were Mark's eyes.
"That's Mark!" said Betty excitedly, clutching her husband's arm.
"Look—look!"
Archibald looked and laughed.
"You have an amazing imagination, my dearest Mark? That man in
homespun, and a red tie! He's twice Mark's size, and he wears a beard. I
noticed him just now. Mark? Why Mark's in Sutherland."
"I was mistaken," said Betty absently. She walked on quite sure that
the man's eyes were following her. She was sure of it, although her back
was turned to him. A minute before Archibald had asked her if she would

like a tea-basket. The refreshment-room was just opposite. An impulse
seized her.
"I think I should like a tea-basket," she said, pausing. "Will you get
one? I'll go back to the carriage."
Archibald obeyed, unsuspecting. Betty turned and ran to the bookstall.
The man was no longer there. She looked right and left. That was he—
disappearing, melting into the crowd outside. Without a moment's hesitation
she hastened after him, came up behind, plucked at his cape. He turned at
once. It was Mark.
"You?" she gasped. "You—here?"
Her eyes, wide open, glaring interrogation, fell before his. He took her
hand, grasping it firmly.
"I can explain. I heard of your plans from Mrs. Samphire. I knew that
you were leaving by this train. I came on the off chance of getting a glimpse
of you."
"You are well, strong!"
She raised her eyes, devouring him. He could see that people in the
crowd were nudging each other, grinning and pointing. He drew her aside.
"Yes; I am strong." As he said it, he realised that he would need all his
strength. What a mad fool he had been to come, to risk so much. "Look
here," he said harshly, "you must go back to Archie. Tell him—tell him that
I couldn't come to his wedding, because, b-b-because I've left the Church. I
wasn't going to set every tongue wagging in Slowshire. Do you see? Do you
understand? Now—go—run!"
He almost pushed her from him. Her eyes never left his face.
"Can't you see me to my carriage?"
This, the obvious thing, had not occurred to him. He walked beside
her. As they passed into the station, Archibald appeared on the platform,

followed by a boy carrying a tea-basket.
"It is Mark," said Betty, as her husband joined them. They walked
towards the carriage, the most amazing trio in that vast station. Mark
repeated his reasons for not taking part in the wedding. Archibald looked
confused.
"You have left our Church?"
He repeated it three times.
"Yes; yes—we can't go into reasons here and now."
"What are you going to do?"
"I am writing."
The guard began to slam the doors. He came up to the brothers,
smiling, seeing the bride, feeling in his broad palm the tip of the
bridegroom.
"Better get in, sir," he said to Mark, who, in his Inverness cape and
rough cap, looked the traveller.
Archibald pushed Betty into the coupé and shook hands with Mark.
"You must tell us everything when we get back. It has been a great
shock," he stared at the red tie; "but I'm delighted to see you looking so
well."
He sprang into the coupé as the train began to move. Betty pushed him
aside and leaned out of the window. Mark never forgot the expression on
her face framed by the small, square window. The engine was screeching
lamentably, like a monster in agony. Another train was entering the station,
adding its strident note to the chorus, filling the atmosphere with clouds of
white steam. A third-class carriage full of soldiers glided by. The soldiers,
mostly boyish recruits, were singing at the top of their voices, "Good-bye,
my lover, good-bye." A girl standing near burst into hysterical sobbing.
Mark noted these details, as a man notes some irrelevant trifle in a dream,

which remains part of that dream for ever after. But his eyes were on Betty's
face. She had been borne away by a force slow but irresistible, the relentless
Machine, the symbol of progress, of Fate, if you will, which tears asunder
things and men, and brings some together again, but not all, nor any just as
they were before. The face was white and piteous, the face of an
Andromeda. Upon it, in unmistakable lines, were inscribed regret and
reproach. Mark turned sick. He had wished to save this woman; had he
sacrificed her?
Betty heard her husband say, "This has been very upsetting."
Immediately she laughed, withdrawing her face from the window. Nothing
else, probably, would have erased the tell-tale lines. She thought that her
laugh was a revelation of what was passing in her mind; but Archibald took
other notice of it.
"You laugh?" he said heavily. "I know what has happened. I am not
much surprised. Mark has gone over to Rome. Really, my dear little
woman, you must not laugh like that. I give you my word that I am terribly
distressed. That red tie!"
"The scarlet woman."
"Pray don't joke! This is most upsetting."
She laughed again, knowing that she was on the verge of hysterics,
trying to control herself. The train, rushing on out of the mists of London
into the splendid May sunshine of the country, rocked violently as it crossed
the points. Betty fell back upon the cushions, still laughing and repeating
Archibald's words.
"Upsetting? I should think so."
Like Mark, she was reflecting that Force was bearing her away,
whirling her asunder, leaving heart and soul here, flinging her body there.
The irony of it was stunning in its violence. She covered her face with her

hands, pressing her finger-tips upon her temples, but she did not close her
eyes, which followed Archibald's slow, methodical movements. He was
arranging the baggage—her handsome travelling-bag, a wedding present
from the Squire, his own massive suit-case, the parasols and umbrellas, the
tea-basket. In the contracted space wherein he moved he loomed colossal.
She felt herself shrinking, collapsing. In a minute, a moment, he would turn,
he would take her cold hands in his, removing them gently but masterfully
from the face quivering beneath. Then he would surely read and know. He
had nearly finished his fiddle-faddling arrangements. He took his hat from
his head, looked at it, brushed a few specks of dust from the crown and rim,
and placed it carefully in the rack. Out of the pocket of an overcoat he drew
a soft travelling cap, putting it on deliberately, making himself comfortable.
At last he was coming towards her, the tea-basket in his hand, a smile upon
his face, an endearing phrase upon his lips. Betty closed her eyes. The
words of the marriage service sounded loud in her ears, rhythmic, like the
roar of waves breaking on an iron-bound coast: the echo of her oath before
the altar thundering down the empty corridors of the future—"From this
day forward ... to love, cherish, and to obey till Death us do part!"
Archibald dropped the tea-basket with a crash. His bride had fainted.

CHAPTER XXV
MARK HEARS A BLEATING

Two days later Mark Samphire called upon Jim Corrance at his chambers in
Bolton Street, Piccadilly. Here Jim lived when he was not making money or
playing golf at Woking. He played golf regularly to keep himself fit. He

also played whist and billiards. Whatever he did, work or play, was
characterised by a dexterity and fertility of resource which generally
ensured success.
Jim's chambers were furnished comfortably but conventionally. As a
matter of fact, he had told a famous firm of decorators to do the best they
could for a certain sum of money. Jim added a few pictures and engravings,
some books, and an impeccable manservant, Tom Wrenn. He did not look at
the pictures or read the books, but he studied Wrenn, an interesting
document, and mastered him. Wrenn, for his part, had nothing but praise for
a gentleman who bought the best of wine and tobacco and entrusted them
unreservedly to his man.
When Wrenn ushered Mark into the sitting-room, he exhibited no
surprise, but his master stared at his old friend as if he (Mark) had risen
from the dead. Mark, bearded, brown, sinewy, larger about the chest and
shoulders, confounded Jim—and he said so in his usual abrupt, jerky
fashion. Then he noted the rough tweeds and the red tie. Wrenn lingered for
a moment.
"Wrenn," said Jim, "bring some whisky and mineral waters, and the
Rothschild Excepcionales!" Wrenn vanished silently. Jim seized Mark by
the coat.
"Why, this howls for explanation. You've chucked your black livery—
you?"
The emphasis laid on the pronoun expressed surprise, incredulity, and
amusement.
"Yes. I've come here to tell you all about it."
Wrenn appeared with a tray and a long, shallow box of cigars. Mark,
however, preferred to light his pipe. As soon as Wrenn had left the room, he
plunged into his story.

"There was just the possibility, you understand, of recovery. Archibald
came up. He wanted me to go home, and he brought a message from Betty
—her love. She was stopping with your mother. That message either meant
everything or nothing. I knew that it meant—everything. Now, while
Archibald was with me I did a bit of work, brain work, the first since the
smash. It knocked me out—knocked all my hopes to smithereens. Would
you under such conditions have sent back your love to Betty?"
"No," said Jim; "but—well, never mind; go on——"
"After Archibald had left Crask I took a big turn for the better. I
suppose that glorious air and the simple food and Stride's knowledge of my
case worked the miracle. And then I began to hope again; and I began to
work." He told Jim about the first short story and the novel, but he did not
mention the Advent sermons of his brother. "Time slipped by, Jim. I was
awfully keen about my work."
"I'll bet you were," said Jim.
"You always chaffed me, because I said that in my philosophy things
turned out for the best. I told myself that every incident in my life, every
trial and infirmity, had meaning. Can a man write what is really vital unless
he has striven and suffered and seen others striving and suffering? I say—
no. God knows I longed to be a man of action. That was denied me. The
desire to paint, to express what was in me on canvas, proved fruitless. Then
the Church opened her doors—I saw a goal, but my stammer choked me at
the start. All the same, the work in Stepney warmed me to the core. I was up
to my neck in it."
"And Betty?"
"Ah—Betty. She was out of sight, Jim, but never out of mind. A
thousand times I told myself she was unattainable; that a man was a sickly
anæmic ass who allowed a woman to interfere with what he had to do."

"Right," said Jim. "That's gospel."
"All the same, she was back of everything. Then came last Whitsuntide
——"
He paused. Jim continued: "I know about that. I suppose you learned,
then, of this cursed mischief inside you?"
"I suspected something; I went to Barger and Drax. They told me
marriage was madness."
"Great Scott!"
He was more agitated than Mark, thrusting out his chin, shaking his
shoulders, clenching his fists: gestures familiar to Mark since the Harrow
days and before. It struck Mark suddenly that this scene was recurrent, the
ebb and flow of the heart's tide breaking on rocks. Could anything be more
futile than talk: the interminable recital of what was and what might have
been? His voice, as he continued, lost its tonic quality:
"There is not much more to tell. Just as I began to hope that my life
might still hold Betty, the news came of her engagement——"
Jim looked at the red tie.
"And then you saw red," he spluttered, "you saw red."
"When that letter came, I could—have—killed—my—brother."
The two men had risen and were staring at each other with flaming
eyes.
"I could have killed him," Mark repeated sombrely. "You know, Jim,
what Archie was to me at Harrow—and long afterwards?"
"The greatest thing on earth," said Jim. "I used to be awfully jealous."
"I loved him for his beauty," said Mark drearily, "for his strength and
for his weakness. I loved him the more because in some small ways I could
help him. I grudged him nothing—I swear it!—nothing, nothing, except

Betty. I could have let her go to you or Harry Kirtling; but to him who had
all I had not, my b-b-brother——"
His stammer seized him, and he trembled violently.
"We'll drop it," exclaimed Jim. He had turned away from Mark's eyes,
reading in them the hate which was not yet controlled. "You don't feel—er
—that way towards her?"
"Never, never!" His eyes softened at once; then he broke out abruptly:
"What made her take him?" It was out at last. He expected no answer from
his friend, but Jim said simply: "Surely you know?"
"It's darkest mystery."
"Why, man, she told me that he dragged her out of the depths." Jim
repeated what Betty had said. "You know what women are. A petticoat
flutters naturally towards a parson whenever the wind blows. That did me. I
couldn't promise to personally conduct her to—Heaven. Yes, his sermons,
particularly that Windsor sermon, captured her."
"The Windsor sermon! You say the Windsor s-s-sermon?" Mark
stuttered out.
"Yes, the Windsor sermon. I'm told it was wonderful. He's a bit of a
prig, but he can preach, and no mistake! Why, look here! Have you seen
this? Out this morning!"
He took up the current Vanity Fair and displayed a caricature of
Archibald Samphire—the Chrysostom of Sloane Street. It was one of
Pellegrini's best bits of work, but the "fine animal" in Archibald had been
slightly overdrawn, unintentionally, no doubt, on the artist's part. The florid
complexion, the massive jaw, the curls, the lips, were subtly exaggerated.
None would be surprised to learn that Chrysostom lived in Cadogan Place
with a cordon bleu at fifty-five pounds a year. Mark gazed at the cartoon
and then laid it, face downwards, on the table.

"The thing's wonderful," he said slowly, "but it will hurt Betty."
Jim Corrance shrugged his shoulders. He had come to the conclusion
that a touch of the animal in men was not a disability where women were
concerned.
"I saw them at Victoria," said Mark.
"What?"
Mark explained, blaming himself.
"You've given yourself away," said Jim disgustedly. "She had got it
into her head that you didn't care, but the man who doesn't care would
hardly travel from Sutherland to London to catch one glimpse of another
fellow's bride. Lord! You have made a mess of it. And what are you going
to do now? Have a drink, and tell me your plans."
"I'm going to write."
"Have you rewritten the novel you burnt?"
"No; but I'm half-way through another."
"You may as well camp with me. Why not?"
Mark had several reasons "why not," but he gave one which was
sufficient: "I mean to eat and sleep and work out-of-doors."
The two men talked together for an hour and then parted.
"By the way," said Jim, as Mark was taking leave, "the Squire is
looking rather seedy. I fancy he's something on his mind. Are you going
down to King's Charteris?"
Mark shook his head impatiently, hearing a terrible bleating; but as he
passed through the Green Park, on the way to his lodgings, he reflected that
he would have to go to Pitt Hall sooner or later. Why not sooner? He would
run down the next day. Then, he repeated to himself what Jim Corrance had
said about Archibald's sermons, and their effect on Betty. Looking back
now, with an odd sense of detachment, he realised how much of these

sermons had been his, how little Archibald's. For this he blamed himself.
His brother had asked for an inch. He had given gladly an ell. But if—the
possibility insisted on obtruding itself (an unwelcome guest)—if Betty
discovered the truth, what would happen?
When he reached his lodging he wrote a letter to the Squire, saying
that he was running down on the morrow and preparing him for a change of
cloth.

"I no longer count myself of the Church of England" (he wrote), "but you will be doing the wise

thing and the kind thing if you ask no questions."

This bolt from the blue fell on to the breakfast-table. Mrs. Samphire, like
Archibald, jumped to the conclusion that Mark had gone over to Rome.
"I knew how it would be," she said acidly, "from the very beginning. I
dare say he will arrive with his head shaved and wearing a cowl. And you
were saying only yesterday that he could have the King's Charteris living,
now that Archie is provided for."
"The boy is a good lad," said the Squire heavily. "I shall talk to him.
He must take the King's Charteris living, he must. I shall make a point of it.
He can keep a curate to preach. It's the obvious way out of the wood."
"Then he won't take it."
She burst into detraction of the boy who was like the woman the
Squire had loved. The Squire listened moodily, eating his substantial
breakfast of kidneys and poached eggs and a slice from the ham of his own
curing.
"He is not a Samphire at all," concluded the lady, as she rose from the
table, leaving the Squire still eating, very red in the face where the colour
was not purple, and showing a massive jowl above his neatly folded white

scarf. Left alone, he cut himself another slice from the huge ham, and then
reread Mark's letter, staring at it with congested eyes, and muttering: "Yes,
yes—it's the obvious way out of the wood, the obvious way out of the
wood. He can keep a curate who can preach. Four hundred a year, even in
these times, and a capital house, a really capital house, in first-rate repair. I
shall talk to him. The Madam doesn't like him—never did! But he'll listen
to his old pater. It's the obvious way out of the wood."
Mark arrived in time for tea. Mrs. Samphire received him in the long,
narrow drawing-room; and Mark was conscious that his red tie was to her
as a red rag to a bull. When she spoke, sniffs were audible; and Mark kept
on telling himself that he had been a fool to come. The Squire seemed very
robust. What did Jim mean? The congested eyes, the purple tinge, conveyed
no meaning to a man who had never learned the meaning of health's danger-
signals.
After dinner father and son found themselves alone. The Squire had
ordered a bottle of '47 port to be decanted, almost the last that was left in
the bin. He had to drink most of it, and while he did so complained of the
changes since his day.
"Archie is teetotal," he said. "Well he's playing his own game his own
way, and scoring too, no doubt o' that. I dare say you forget that now he's
provided so well for himself, you can step into the King's Charteris living,
which in the nature of things must soon be vacant. Nearly four hundred a
year—and a capital house, in first-rate repair. You can hire a curate who can
preach."
The words came out very fluently, for the Squire had repeated them to
himself a dozen times since breakfast. As Mark made no reply, he repeated
them again, adding, however, somewhat confusedly: "It's the obvious way
out of the wood."

"Eh?" said Mark. "What do you mean, pater?"
The Squire coughed nervously. He was not clever at making
explanations.
"Oh," he replied testily, "I take it we needn't go into that. Times are
hard. The allowance I have made you and Archie has crippled me. Archie
gave up his when he came into Aunt Deb's money—and in the nick of time,
egad!"
"I can get along with a hundred a year," said Mark quietly.
"Rubbish, my dear lad, rubbish! But the living's a good 'un, and the
house in capital repair. You would be very comfortable; and," he eyed Mark
pleasantly, "and you'll be following Archie's example—hey? Marry a girl
with a bit o' money! There's Kitty Bowker, and——"
"Pater—we won't talk of that."
"We? I'm talking of it. I don't ask you to say a word, not a word. Oh, I
know why you didn't come to Archie's wedding, but bless you, Betty's not
the only nice girl in the world. I'll say no more. I'm glad to see you looking
so fit. That slumming in the East End disgusted you—drove you into that
tweed suit—hey? But it'll be quite different at King's Charteris. You can
manage a day's hunting a week and a day's shooting throughout the season.
Kitty Bowker looks very well outside a horse—and she likes a man who
goes free at his fences as you used to do. Your letter this morning, you
know, startled us a bit. The Madam thought of Rome. Nothing in that—
hey?"
The Squire looked hard at the decanter which indeed was quite empty.
"Absolutely nothing," said Mark absently.
"I told the Madam I'd say a word, and there it is: a capital house, in
excellent repair, with——"
"The present incumbent still alive," said Mark.

"True, true—we'll say no more, not a word. Shall we go into the
drawing-room?"
He rose with a certain effort and moved too ponderously towards the
door. For the first time Mark realised that his father must soon become an
old man. A wave of affection surged through him.
"Pater," he said, touching the Squire's massive shoulder, "how are you
feeling? Any twinges of gout or—er—anything of that sort?"
"I'm sound as a bell, Mark. Of course I have my worries. There are
three farms on my hands, and the price of corn lower than it has been for
years. I don't know what George will do after I'm gone. That is why I—um
—spoke of the obvious way out of the wood. Put on a black tie to-morrow
morning, my dear lad, and—er—a grey suit, to—to oblige me."
"All right," said Mark. "I'm going to write, you know."
"Write?" the Squire turned, as he was passing into the hall. "Write—
what?"
"Novels, short stories, plays perhaps."
"Oh, d——n it!" said the Squire ruefully.

CHAPTER XXVI
READJUSTMENT

After Mark's return from Pitt Hall, he called on Barger and Drax, who
overhauled him and pronounced him a new man. Drax, in particular, took
extraordinary interest in the case, refused a fee, and begged Mark to come
and see him at least once a quarter.

"I never thought I should speak to you again," he said frankly. "It's the
vis medicatrix naturæ. You went back to the simple primal life. Well—stick
to it! A winter in Sutherland! Phew-w-w! Kill or cure, and no mistake. I
should like to meet your friend, Doctor Stride."
The question now presented itself: where should he pitch his tent?
Such work as he had in mind must be finished in or near London. His half-
completed novel, Shall the Strong Retain the Spoil? dealt with Londoners;
the scene of it was laid in London. Finally, after some search, he found a
camping-ground in a small pine wood crowning a great ridge which
overlooked the Thames Valley and the Surrey heaths.
He discovered this spot, which suited him exactly, by accident. Just
outside Weybridge he punctured the tyre of his bicycle. While repairing it,
he smelled the balsamic fragrance of some pines to his right, and
Longfellow's lines came into his mind:—

"Stood the groves of singling pine trees,
Green in summer, white in winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing."

The west wind was blowing, and from the pine-tops floated a lullaby,
soothing and seductive. Mark sat down, listening to this alluring song,
absorbing the scents and sounds. Presently he climbed a rough fence and
wandered down one of the many aisles. The carpet beneath his feet was soft
as velvet pile, a carpet woven by the years out of the myriad leaves
dropping unseen and unheard. Passing through the wood, he saw the
Thames Valley. A silvery mist was rising out of it. On each side of the river
were green meadows, bordered by poplars and willows. The tower of a

church could be seen amongst a group of fine elms. This was such a spot as
he had hoped to find. Regaining the high-road, he pushed his bicycle to the
top of the hill and stopped opposite a pretty cottage standing in a garden
gay with old-fashioned flowers. Above the gate was a sign: Board and
Lodging. Mark stared for a moment at the sign, smiling, because he had
expected to find it there. If the tiny wood belonged to the owner of the
cottage, the matter was clinched.
He left his bicycle against the palings and walked through the garden
and up to the door. He had time to note that the cottage was built of brick.
Some of the bricks had a vitreous surface, which caught the light and
suffused a radiance over the other bricks. The general effect was ripe,
mellow, rosy. The sills and casings of the lattice windows were painted
white; the door was a bright apple-green, with a shining brass handle, bell,
and knocker. The cottage was heavily thatched.
In answer to Mark's ring and knock the door was opened by a girl,
whom Mark guessed to be a daughter of the house, not a servant in any
sense, save the one that she served. Mark lifted his cap.
"Is that wood yours?" he asked.
The girl seemed amused, but she said: "Oh, yes; everything inside the
paling belongs to mother."
"And you have rooms to let?"
The girl asked him to come in and see them, but she added doubtfully:
"I don't think they'll suit you."
"I haven't seen them yet," said Mark, "but I'm sure they will."
The rooms included a small sitting-room and bedroom. Mark looked at
them with an indifference which brought disappointment to the face of the
girl.
"Can I speak to your mother?"

"She's an invalid—and in bed, to-day. If you want to talk business you
must talk with me."
Mark explained that he was anxious to build a shelter in the garden, at
the edge of the wood. He added that unless the weather was unusually
severe he should sleep, and eat, and work there. The rooms would do for a
friend, who might come to see him from Saturday to Monday. He should
want the simplest food, and so forth. The girl said that the carrying of meals
to the shelter would be a nuisance, especially in rainy weather. Mark
compromised by offering to eat indoors if the weather became wet or
boisterous. A bargain was made in three minutes.
"When will you come?" said the girl.
"To-morrow. My name is Mark Samphire."
"Mother's name is Dew. I am Mary Dew."
"Mary Dew," repeated Mark. He had a tobacco-pouch in his hand and
was filling a pipe. A pun occurred to him, execrable and therefore
irresistible. "Honeydew is my constant companion," said he; "it is quite
certain that we shall be friends."
Mary laughed.
"I hope so," she said frankly. "It's dreadful waiting on people one
doesn't like. Last summer we had a gentleman who——"
"Yes," said Mark, lighting his pipe.
"Who wasn't a gentleman—and I hated him."
She looked serious. Her face was charming, because the texture of skin
and the colouring were so admirable. For the rest she was about middle
height, of trim figure, neither thin nor plump: her eyes were of a clear,
intelligent grey, shaded by short black lashes which gave them distinction
and vivacity. Long lashes may be a beauty in themselves, but they conceal
rather than reveal the eyes behind them. Mary had brown hair, and plenty of

it, simply arranged; her mouth was wide and amply provided with white,
even teeth; her nose was certainly tip-tilted. Altogether a young woman at
whom most men would look with pleasure.
As she stood in the garden, the May sun falling full upon her, every
line of face and figure suggested Spring: Spring in Arcady, fresh, joyous,
radiant. Mark was artist enough to perceive the delicious half-tones, the
tender shades beneath the round chin and about the finely modelled cheeks.
If Pynsent saw her, he would be mad to paint her, there, in the crisp
sunlight, amongst the honeysuckle, with the pines "ever sighing, ever
singing" behind her.
Suddenly, a thin, querulous note seemed to pierce the silence of the
garden.
"Mary—Mary!"
"Mother wants me. Good-bye, Mr. Samphire."
Mark held out his hand.
"Good-bye—till to-morrow."
He turned and moved down the path. Again that thin, querulous note
pierced the silence. Mary, Mary! an appeal from age to youth, ay, and a
protest, a far-reaching protest, of pain against pleasure. Mark pictured the
invalid mother, bedridden, possibly, dependent upon the ministrations of
others, calling out of the dismal seclusion of her chamber to the young,
healthy creature in the garden. He mounted his bicycle, wondering whether
Mary had grown accustomed to that heart-piercing note, speculating
vaguely in regard to its meaning for her and for others.

Within a week the shelter was built. Stout posts upheld a roof of tongue-
and-groove boards spread with a rough thatch; the floor was boarded also
and covered with sailcloth, which could be washed and scrubbed like the

deck of a ship. Two walls were also boarded. These were lined with shelves,
which contained a miscellaneous collection of some four hundred books.
The south and west sides of the shelter were open to the wind and sun, but
could be closed, if necessary, by sailcloth curtains. A large table stood in the
centre; a bed, serving as a sofa in daytime, occupied one corner; in another
were an exerciser, a punching-ball, and some light clubs and dumbbells;
chairs, a typewriter, a small stove, and a huge chest completed the
furnishings.
When it was finished Pynsent and Jim Corrance were invited to inspect
and criticise. Pynsent brought with him a couple of mezari, those quaint,
decorative shawls worn by the women of Genoa, and draped them cleverly;
Corrance brought an Indian rug. Both men were charmed with the cottage,
the garden, the grove, and the view. Pynsent, as Mark had foreseen, wanted
to paint Mary Dew, but every hour of the weeks between June and August
was engaged. "You're a tremendous worker," said Jim.
"So are you, Corrance. A man must work nowadays, if he means to
keep his place in the procession. The competition is frightful all along the
line. I shall paint Mary Dew in the autumn. What do you call her, Mark?"
"Honey. Honey Dew. Do you see? A poor pun, but my own. She's
sweet as honey and fresh as dew, but her mother is a terrible person."
He described an interview with Mrs. Dew.
"Mary told me that her mother wished to see me. I found her in her
own sitting-room, the prettiest and most comfortable room in the cottage.
Everything deliciously fresh—chintzes, flowers, paper on the wall, matting
—and in the middle Mrs. Dew: faded, peevish, puckered, old beyond her
years. Picture to yourselves a puffy, yellow face with dim, shifty eyes
peering out restlessly between red, swollen lids, a face framed by mouse-

coloured hair and surmounting a great, shapeless body clad in black
alpaca."
"Good! I see her," said Pynsent.
"I was prepared to sympathise. She has some ailment, poor creature, a
chronic dyspepsia and a grievance as chronic against destiny. One could
pity her if she said and ate less. Her daughter admits that she would be a
different woman if she kept on the muzzle. She calls herself a lady, and told
me that she married beneath her. Dew, I fancy, was a petty tradesman. He
left his widow this small property and a tiny income. Mary has a
tremendous struggle to make ends meet means. She's one in ten thousand."
"Um!" said Pynsent. "Don't fall in love with your Honey Dew!"
"Don't talk rot, Pynsent!" Mark replied sharply. Jim Corrance frowned
at the painter, who realised at once that he had said something mal-à-
propos.
"I shall cut a lettuce for you fellows," said Mark.
As he left the shelter, Jim turned to Pynsent.
"You put your hoof into it," he growled.
"I did," said Pynsent.
"I say—is Mark going to take a front seat?"
"I don't know."
Mark came back carrying a bottle of Sauterne and a noble Romaine,
which he handed to Pynsent, who was famous for his salads. Mary entered a
minute later with a well-basted chicken and a great dish of peas. The trio
fell to their luncheon with appetite. Mary added a tart, some excellent
cheese, and the best of coffee.
"I've enjoyed myself immensely," said Pynsent. "You're in Arcady,
Mark. You ought to write an idyll here: Aucassin and Nicolete—hey?"

They moved up into the pine grove, talking about books and art. Jim
Corrance listened, smoking his big cigar. Pynsent, who smoked Caporal
cigarettes which he rolled himself, spoke volubly in a sharp New England
twang:
"People prate about giving the world what the world wants. An artist
gives what's in him to give. I say that nothing else is possible, whether the
world likes it or whether it doesn't. And, luckily, the world that buys
pictures and books is catholic in its tastes. All the same, just at present there
is a big demand for stuff which is signed. You know what I mean. The
crowd clamours for individuality. I was standing in front of a picture of
mine at the Academy last year, and a cleverish-looking girl said: 'That's a
Pynsent. I like his work because I always know it, not because I understand
it.' I nearly asked her to shake hands. It's the same with books. There's an
immense quantity of well-written, interesting novels published every year,
but you'll find that the few which sell are stamped on every page with the
author's name. The brand does it, first and last."
"I only read books that amuse me," said Jim.
"You're a man. Men read books sometimes, but women buy them. Let's
hope that Mark's stuff will please the women. Then he will arrive."
While they were talking, a young man passed through the gate and up
the garden to the cottage door.
"Hullo! Who's this?" said Pynsent.
Mary answered the question by coming out of the house in a becoming
frock and hat and joining the young man. Together they strolled down the
path. The three men stared at each other. It had not occurred to any of them
that Mary might have a young man. And this particular one seemed to be
the typical young man, always seen of a Sunday arm-in-arm with a pretty

girl: commonplace, smug, self-assured. While they looked Mrs. Dew's thin
querulous voice filtered through the sunlit space of the garden—
"Mary, Mary—don't be away too long!"
Mary's fresh voice came from behind the palings—
"Of course not, mother. I shall be back to make your tea at four."
"Our Jill has her Jack," said Pynsent. "That was a becoming hat."
"She made it herself," Mark observed.
"Then she likes her Jack. Such a girl would not prink to please a man
to whom she was indifferent."
Jim Corrance thrust out his big jaw. "Mary may have made that hat to
please herself. If I'd her face, by gad, I'd make just such a hat and enjoy
myself with a looking-glass."
"So would I," said Mark.
Pynsent and Jim returned to town before dinner. They promised to
come again, and often, but Mark guessed that such promises were written in
ink, blue and variable as a May sky. He expected to be much alone, and
during the months that followed was not disappointed. From his friends at
the Mission he held aloof. He knew they would ask questions, deeming it a
duty to argue and reprove.
Mark had written the truth to David Ross after the night on Ben Caryll.
In reply, David wisely made no protest against Mark's determination to
leave the Church. That he would speak in due time Mark was
uncomfortably aware, and he learned—not without a feeling of relief—that
his old chief was the busiest man in Poplar.
May passed quickly, devoid of incident and accident. Towards the end
of it, however, Mark, reading his morning paper, was horrified to learn that
Bagshot, the man he had tried to reclaim, had murdered his wife in a
drunken fit. He hastened to London, saw the prisoner—an abject, cowering

wreck of what he had been—and listened to his dreadful story. The poor
fellow had struggled hard against the craving for drink, yet in the end he
had slain the woman he loved. It was heartrending—the triumph of evil
over good.
After seeing Bagshot, Mark reread that battered memorandum-book
which he had carried through terrible slums. Once more, the appeal of the
friendless and helpless stirred him profoundly. Very stealthily, like "humble
Allen," he began to revisit some of his waifs; most of them had
disappeared; others as wretched and forlorn occupied their place. But his
ministrations—necessarily ill-sustained and intermittent—appeared
ineffectual. The joyous confidence of former days had departed. The
squalor seemed invincible, the forces against which he contended so vast
and ungovernable that sense and sensibility revolted. Only faith could
remove such mountains, and faith had forsaken Mark Samphire. None the
less, he persevered.
About the end of June Archibald and his wife came back from France
and settled down in Cadogan Place. Archibald asked Mark to meet them in
a long letter, full of a description of Chenonçeau. At the end was a
postscript in Betty's handwriting: "Please come." Mark obeyed—a prey to
feelings which cannot be set down. For six weeks he had seen Betty's face
looking out of the window of the train, white, piteous, despairing. But when
they met he was amazed to find her rosy and smiling, full of plans, in high
health and spirits. Then he remembered that his own health was excellent.
Archibald made him welcome, entreated his advice about the arrangement
of books and engravings, begged him to hang his hat on his own peg, and
alluded only vaguely to the red tie.
"You will come back to us," he said confidently.

Betty held his hand tight at parting. "Don't slip out of our lives!" she
whispered.
Mark had a glimpse of the face seen from the train, and hardly knew to
what he was pledging himself when he stammered: "N-n-no, n-n-no—c-c-
certainly not."
After this first meeting it became easy to drop in to luncheon or tea.
The novel was under revision, and several passages describing certain
streets and localities had to be rewritten. Mark had the artist's passion for
truth, carried possibly to excess. One of his characters was a shopgirl who
worked in Edgware Road. Mark spent three days in Edgware Road,
notebook in hand, greedily absorbing the light and colour of the great
thoroughfare. But he made a point of returning to Weybridge each night and
slept, whenever it was fine, in the grove, lulled to sleep by the pines.
Curiosity took him to St. Anne's in Sloane Street, when Archibald
preached his first sermon. It was crowded with a fashionable congregation,
some of whom came to hear the music—as fine as could be found in
London outside the cathedrals; others, no doubt, were attracted by a new
and eloquent preacher; the rest attended divine service in their parish
church, and would have been in their places, cheered and sustained by the
reflection that they were doing their duty, if the rector had had no palate to
his mouth and the choir had been composed of village boys squalling free
of charge to the accompaniment of a harmonium. Mark sat in the gallery,
whence he could see Betty occupying a pew not far from the pulpit. He
wondered what sort of sermon Archibald would preach. And he wondered
also how it would affect Betty. Meantime, he examined the congregation.
All these fine folk were possessed of substantial incomes. The struggle for
daily bread was an experience unknown to them. The men seemed to be
fathers of families for the most part, portly squires of ripe, rosy

countenances, many-acred, and duly sensible of the position and station in
life to which it had pleased God to call them. They put gold into the
offertory bag, and could be counted upon to subscribe handsomely to
parochial charities. In striking contrast were the brothers and lovers of the
beautifully gowned women beside them. All, to a man, were frock-coated,
patent-leather-booted, exquisitely cravatted—gilded youths, indifferent to
music or sermon, worshippers in form only, because "it pleases the mater,
you know," or "Dolly expects it," or "I must make myself solid with Aunt
Sarah." Mark noted their well-cut, impassive features, their resigned air, and
their contemptuous negligence of the responses. The women, on the other
hand, displayed a certain ardour of devotion tempered by a lively interest in
their neighbours' clothes. A few prayed long and fervently, giving
themselves up to the emotions inspired by the lovely music and splendid
ritual; the many were intermittent in their attention. It was plain that a girl
just below Mark, who sang delightfully, was distracted from thoughts of
heaven by the difficulty of determining whether the cape of a friend across
the aisle was trimmed with sable or mere mink. But what struck Mark more
forcibly than anything else was an expression common to all the faces when
in repose. While the lessons were being read, men and women alike
suffered their features to relax into a normal look of discontent. Mouths
dropped; heavy lids veiled tired eyes; dismal lines appeared upon fair faces.
When Archibald ascended the pulpit, a thrill vibrated through his
congregation. Mark perceived at a glance that the Rector of St. Anne's had
secured the goodwill and enthusiasm of the women. They stared at his fine
head, their eyes suffused and shining, their lips slightly parted, a-quiver
with anticipation.
"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."

After a moment's pause, Archibald repeated the text with a different
inflection. Then, leaning forward, speaking without notes, he began his
sermon. Mark noted certain mannerisms common to many preachers.
Archibald hoped that his brothers and sisters in Christ would bear with him
while he laid before them a few thoughts. The thoughts appealed
emotionally to a congregation who had consecrated their energies and
potentialities to the art of living. To such, death, especially a painful death,
is horror. The preacher pictured the last hours of the righteous man, the
faithful servant, conscious that his task has been accomplished in this
world, and that in the next a place is awaiting him, where, under freer, fuller
conditions, he may still carry on the Master's work. Then, changing his
tone, Archibald portrayed the death-bed of the evil-liver—hopeless,
faithless, God-forsaken!
The sermon made an impression. As the congregation streamed out of
church into the sunshine, Mark caught words, phrases, ejaculations which
showed plainly that the new rector had at least satisfied expectation. But
Mark told himself the fringe of a great subject had been touched—and no
more. Archibald's manner almost suggested the detestable adjective—
melodramatic. His power was that of an actor rather than an evangelist.
Above and beyond Mark's recognition of this was the certainty that Betty
recognised it also, albeit, possibly, not so clearly. Mark had kept his eyes on
Betty's face. More than once some subtile inflection of the preacher's voice
had thrilled her; but towards the end of the sermon her attention and interest
had waned. Instinctively Mark groped his way to the conclusion that if
Archibald had gained his wife's love and esteem by the use of another's
brain, he might find it difficult to hold by the strength of his own.

CHAPTER XXVII
IN GRUB STREET

Mark's short story had been duly printed and published in Conquest's
magazine. About the time of its appearance (midsummer) Mark called on
Conquest, and the acquaintance then made ripened into a sort of intimacy.
Conquest, quick to perceive that Mark had "stuff" in him, and learning that
Mark was writing a novel, expressed a wish to read it in typescript.
"I advised you, you remember, to write a novel and burn it."
"I have done so," said Mark quietly.
A big, burly man, with a rugged, leonine head, Conquest liked to be
told he resembled Landor. With this robust physique went a singularly
feminine apprehension and appreciation of details. The enormous amount of
work he could accomplish, his grasp of technicalities, his knowledge,
amounting to intuition, of what the public wanted, his power of attracting
and dominating young men of talent, and, above all, his encyclopædic
memory, made him invaluable to the firm who employed him.
Mark submitted his novel. Conquest read it, and sent for the author.
Mark found him in the editorial chair, surrounded by books, papers,
manuscripts, press-clippings innumerable—a chaos out of which the master
alone could evoke order. In the room beyond, two type-writing machines
were clicking savagely. Here Conquest's "sub," a secretary, and half a dozen
myrmidons were hard at work. The "sub" and his assistants looked pale and
thin; Conquest alone seemed to thrive and expand in an atmosphere
impregnated with the odour of tobacco-smoke, damp paper, and printers'
ink.
"Sit down! And listen to the words of the ancient! This is the place
where I do the talking. When I stop, you must go. Shall the Strong retain

the Spoil? is d——d good and—don't look so pleased!—d——d bad.
There's hope for you. We'll publish if you like to pay half the printer's bill.
Mind you, the book has but a ghost's chance of catching on; but I don't want
it altered. You'd cut out the best stuff and leave the trash. I red-pencilled
your short story, but I can't afford the time to prune this—and you wouldn't
like it. Leave it here, and I'll send you our regular agreement to look over
and sign. You are under no obligations, remember, to publish with us. Good
morning. Dine with me next Tuesday. Eight sharp!"
Mark found himself walking down a steep flight of stairs, and heard
Conquest's strident tones echoing after him. He could not remember that he
had accepted the offer made to him, but he was sure that Conquest took
such acceptance for granted.
When Tuesday came, he told Conquest that he had read and was
willing to sign the agreement which had been sent him. Conquest nodded in
an off-hand manner, and did not allude to the subject again. But he pressed
upon Mark the expediency of joining "The Scribblers," a club newly
organised, and likely to become a power. Mark consented, pleased and
flattered that a celebrity should exhibit such interest in him. He was put up
and elected the same week. Conquest introduced him to half a dozen
members, most of whom took an early opportunity of congratulating Mark
upon his friendship with the great man.
"He's a wonder," said a popular author, "but, mind you, he works for
Wisden and Evercreech, and he'll squeeze you like an orange, if you give
him the chance."
The others winked at each other, but said nothing. Tommy Greatorex, a
small, pale man, with very bright dark eyes which redeemed his face from
insignificance, began to talk loudly. Mark had watched him gnawing
nervously at his nails when Conquest's name was mentioned.

"Oh—these editors!" he exclaimed, shaking his fist. "Wouldn't I like to
tell some of 'em what I think of 'em! Yes; there are exceptions—thank the
Lord!—but Samphire will soon find out that most of 'em are pinchers. Six
men in this room sling ink for a living. Is there one who can stand up and
swear that he's not been squeezed?" Not a man moved. "You see—they sit
tight. In this trade of ours the worker is not paid for his work when it's done.
He has to wait for his pennies, poor devil, although he may be starving. And
often he isn't paid at all. A paper goes to pot, or the special article he has
been asked—asked, mind you—to write is pigeon-holed and doesn't appear,
or there is a change of management. Any recourse? Why, man, if you send
one of 'em a lawyer's letter, you may get your cheque by return of post, but
never a line will you write for my gentleman again. Never more, as the
raven said! One can't afford to quarrel with 'em. And don't they know it—
don't they know it, as they blandly turn the screw? Now, in America, with
the big magazines, it's different. You submit your stuff, and if it's available a
cheque comes along with the acceptance, and a good cheque too. Over here,
a few writers, of course, dictate terms, but the many take what they get with
a humble if not a grateful heart. If you've private means of your own, you're
all right, but if you have any idea of supporting yourself with the pen—why,
God help you!—for the editors won't."
"Cool yourself with a whisky and soda," said the popular author,
touching the electric bell. "Our profession," he looked at Mark, "is like all
others, overcrowded, and editors and publishers carry on their business
along business lines. I'll admit that most authors are not fit to deal with
them in a business way. They don't like to haggle, and they don't know how
to haggle. Personally, I employ an agent."
"That's all right for you," Tommy retorted, "but an agent's not much
use unless there's an established market for one's wares. What's this book of

yours about, Samphire?"
"The East End," said Mark.
"Um—the slums treated humorously?"
"I've tried to stick to the facts."
"And you expect to sell 'em as fiction? Oh—you optimist!"
"A play's the thing," observed another scribbler. "Write plays."
"Any fool can write a play," said the little man, very scornfully. "I—
mot qui sous parle—have written plays, but it takes a diplomatist to get
them read and a genius to get them accepted."
Mark returned to Weybridge rather despondent.
Immediately afterwards he received his first instalment of proofs from
Wisden and Evercreech. Correcting these proved a painful pleasure.
Conquest's judgment coloured and discoloured every sheet. What was good
—what was bad? For his life Mark was unable to criticise his own work.
Some of the bits he had liked when he wrote them now seemed crude and
trite. His dialogue, he decided, was fair, but the narrative lacked distinction.
Before beginning another novel, he would study the best models in French
and English. Meantime he would turn out a story or two. These were
written, despatched to Conquest—and returned with a printed slip politely
setting forth the editor's regret that they were unavailable. When he met
Conquest some ten days later, the great man vouchsafed a few words.
"Sorry to return your stuff. We shall publish the book in October. Have
you thought of a subject for another? You seem to have gripped conditions
in the East End. How about a novel in rather lighter vein dealing with the
adventures and misadventures of a millionaire who has turned
philanthropist and wants to spend his pile in Stepney? Or—happy thought!
—make your millionaire a millionairess—a good-looking spinster paddling
her canoe through the slums. That would be capital. What do you say?"

"I'll think about it," said Mark hesitatingly. "I'm awfully obliged to
you, Conquest."
"That's all right. By the way, I can use an article on your brother, two
thousand words. Make it very personal, and secure good photographs of
him and his church."
"But he mightn't like it, you know."
Conquest roared. "I say—that's immense—immense! Not like it? A
popular preacher! Ha—ha—ha! Why, it's incense to 'em, man alive. Ask
him, at any rate. If he doesn't jump, call me fool. Can you see him at once?"
"If you wish it."
Somehow, to Mark's disgust, Archibald did jump. The article appeared
in a Church paper and led to an incident of much greater importance.
Conquest wired to Mark to come up to town on business. Mark was given a
capital luncheon at Dieudonne's restaurant, but not till the coffee was served
did Conquest speak of the matter in hand.
"I suppose you know," he said carelessly, but keeping his eyes on
Mark's, "that I pull many strings. Now this is between ourselves, in—the—
strictest—confidence. I want to pump you. Bless you, it always pays to be
frank. How do I stand with your brother? Does he like me?"
"I'm sure he does," said Mark warmly. At Conquest's desire he had
introduced him to Archibald. Conquest had dined in Cadogan Place.
"I can help him—materially. Of course there's something in it for me,
but there's more in it for him, and I thought that you might be willing to act
as a go-between. Have you noticed a big Basilica which Lord Vauxhall is
building in that part of Chelsea where his new houses are? You have? A fine
thing—hey? Oh, you don't admire the Byzantine style. Well, that church is
the biggest advertisement in London. Shush-h-h! I don't want to be
misunderstood. Vauxhall, who is a friend of mine, understands the value of

churches. And he's a Churchman, too. He felt it to be his duty to build that
church, and I say, not he, that it's a thundering big 'ad' for the
neighbourhood. Now Vauxhall is immensely struck by your brother's
eloquence. Vauxhall always wants the best of everything, and he pays for it,
cash on the nail. He would like to offer the Basilica and fifteen hundred a
year to your brother. Now the cat's out of the bag. What d'you think of her?"
Mark flushed. Conquest was his host.
"I think she's mangy."
"Good," said Conquest, in no way perturbed. "I wanted an honest
opinion."
"As I understand this," said Mark, "Lord Vauxhall offers my brother a
bribe to boom his new neighbourhood."
Conquest shrugged his mighty shoulders.
"You are a young man," he said drily. "Beware of hasty judgments. It's
my experience that motives are generally mixed. Vauxhall has built and
endowed a magnificent church. He offers it to your brother, or rather he
empowers me to offer it, if there is a likelihood of the offer being accepted.
Perhaps I had better speak to your brother myself."
"I should prefer that," said Mark.
When he saw Archibald, some days later, he was quite sure, from his
knowledge of Conquest, that the matter had been broached, but Archibald
said nothing to him about it. Betty, however, talked as if no change was
impending, so Mark inferred that she was either without her husband's
confidence or that Lord Vauxhall's offer had been refused. Betty was full of
plans connected with the parish, and busy organising a large charity
concert. Jim Corrance told Mark that he (Jim) had misread Betty's character
and temperament.

"She's happy with her husband," he declared. "He has a way with him
—women can't resist parsons when they're good and good-looking. One
must concede that Archie is both."
Mark said nothing. He was quite unable to determine whether Betty
had found happiness or not. Sometimes, when alone with husband and wife,
he marked an irritability not without significance. Archibald had acquired,
since he came to London, a certain air and deportment common to many
successful men. Betty chaffed him, called him "Sir Oracle," and when he
protested against these quips, she would frown and bite her lip. Archibald
was very particular about the antecedents of the people invited to his house.
Some of Betty's acquaintances were banned. Lady Randolph had a word to
say on this.
"Archie is quite right, my dear. He's not going to imperil his
preferment by hobnobbing with such frisky folk. It pays to be exclusive.
Look at those Bertheim women! They were—well, we know what they
were; but when they married rich men, they refused to entertain any matron
who was not immaculate. Now, to be seen at their houses is a patent of
virtue!"
"Archie," said Betty, "is governed by the highest motives; still, I
should like to see this house open to a few nice sinners: painters, writers,
musicians; but Archie says they are all freethinkers or Laodiceans. It is a
great grief to him that Mark gave up his Orders. He offered to take him as
secretary."
Lady Randolph stared. There were times when she felt that Betty was
an unknown quantity.
"You allowed him to make that offer?"
Betty turned aside her eyes. "I did not know that it was made. Of
course Mark refused—would have done so in any case. I mention it to show

you what manner of man Archie is. I don't think you do him justice. You
spoke just now as if he were a time-server. His whole life is devoted to
others."
"Does he—know?" said Lady Randolph, alluding to what had passed at
Birr Wood.
"Why should I tell him?"
"Why, indeed, my dear?"
"It would distress him infinitely. And it might lead to a breach between
the brothers. Mark comes here. He has changed greatly. I don't think that
anything interests him very much except his literary work."
"He looks a different man," said Lady Randolph absently.
"If it had not been for that breakdown in those horrible slums, if——"
Betty bit her lip. Lady Randolph pretended that she had noticed nothing
unusual, but when she said good-bye she kissed Betty twice and whispered:
"If I were you I should not encourage Mark to come here."
"Encourage him?"
"If he needs no encouragement—so much the worse."
Betty laughed nervously. Mark's companionship was a pleasure she
would not forego. She was interested in his book; she liked to hear his talk,
his gossip of Grub Street; his descriptions of the Dews, mother and
daughter; his adventures in search of material. Behind this lay the
comfortable assurance that she had adjusted a difficult situation. She had
lost the lover of her youth, but she had gained a good husband, a brother,
and a friend. So she told herself that she was rich, repeating the phrase, till
she came to believe it true. One day she said to Mark, "I suppose you would
call me a rich woman, using the adjective in its widest sense."
"We are all rich—and poor," Mark replied evasively. "What rich man
is not poor in some respect; what poor man is not rich in another? This is an

age of classification. We go about sticking labels on to our friends and
ourselves. If you honestly think yourself rich, you are so."
Sometimes he wondered if she could measure the violence of feeling
which had driven him from the Church. She never spoke of his change of
cloth; still she eyed his red tie askance. Archibald had said something when
he came back from his honeymoon.
"At King's Charteris you could keep a curate. The pater said that he
had spoken to you. And it's the family living."
"I'll say to you what I didn't like to say to the pater: 'Drop it.'"
"Certainly," Archibald replied. "But it's a pity your powers of
organisation should be wasted." Then he made the offer which had
provoked astonishment in Lady Randolph. It astonished Mark also,
revealing as it did his brother's lack of insight where he (Mark) was
concerned.
"You could help me enormously," Archibald concluded.
"I am going to help myself," said Mark.
Just before the novel was published, Archibald let fall a hint that
Conquest had spoken to him. Betty happened to be present, but Archibald
addressed himself to Mark.
"Have you ever met Lord Vauxhall?"
"No."
"A very charming man—and a Christian. He dines here next week. I
should like you to meet him. By the way, he's a friend of Conquest."
"Ah!" said Mark.
"I like Conquest immensely," said Archibald suavely. "He has the
larger vision."
"Betty—do you like Conquest?" said Mark abruptly.
She answered promptly: "No."

"Why not?" her husband inquired.
"He's an Octopus man, with his tentacles waving in every direction.
And his mind is like a big room handsomely furnished, but without a
fireplace in it. Certainly—he's been sweet as Hybla honey to me, and I
ought to like him, but I don't."

CHAPTER XXVIII
A SUNDAY IN CADOGAN PLACE

In late October, when pages fall as thickly from printing-presses as leaves
do from trees, Shall the Strong retain the Spoil? appeared. During the
preceding Spring many of the best publishers had withheld books which
were now offered to the public. Conquest predicted a glutted market, and no
sales for wares bearing obscure brands. Mark, he said, might compass a
succès d'estime—nothing more. He added that the time had come to pull
strings, if strings were to be pulled.
"I don't quite understand," said Mark.
"Get so-and-so," he named a popular author, "to enlighten you. Look
here, Samphire, you're a man of good family, your people know numbers of
swells, that brother of yours is hand in glove with some bigwigs. Stir 'em up
with a long pole. I don't suppose you care to fork out for such advertising as
our friend I mentioned uses. Paragraphs and all that."
"He pays for paragraphs?"
"Directly and indirectly—you innocent! I see you are disgusted. That's
all right. I mentioned the matter, because I could steer you a bit, if you
wished to spend say—fifty pounds. We shall advertise the book, of course,

in the regular way. It's the irregular way, my boy, which brings in the
dollars."
"The book must sell on its merits," said Mark.
"As you please," said Conquest.
Shortly afterwards, the first notices were sent to him by the Press
Clipping Agency to which he had become a subscriber. Mark was told that
his work showed extraordinary promise, that he would take high rank, when
he had found himself, that he was a master of dialogue and dialect, the
author of a powerful and convincing study of conditions which challenged
the attention of every thinking man and woman, and so on and so forth. He
rushed up to town, showed the clippings to Betty, who seemed to be more
excited and pleased than he was himself, went on to Wisden and
Evercreech, and thence to his club, where he found Tommy Greatorex,
whiter and more nervous than usual, sitting alone by the fire in the library.
To him the clippings were presently submitted with an apology. Tommy
took them with an ironical smile.
"They're always kind to a new man if he shows any ability." He
glanced at the clippings, flipping them with his lean delicately shaped
fingers. "You are subtle, I see, and daring, and brilliant—and strong! By
Jove, Samphire, I'll bet a new umbrella, which I want badly, that you didn't
know you were such a ring-tailed squealer—hey? Don't blush, my dear
fellow. Wait till your stuff sells, and then read what they'll say about it. Ha
—ha! Listen to this! One of 'em says: 'Mr. Samphire is evidently at home in
some of the sordid scenes which he describes with such power and pathos;
we take it that he has spent many years in the slums.' So far—so good. It's
more than likely that the fellow who wrote that is a member of this club and
in the know. Here's another, next to it, egad! 'This story reveals imaginative
powers of a high order, for it is plain that the author has never set foot in

Stepney....' Ha—ha—ha! Now sit down, stand me a drink, and tell me how
many copies have been sold."
"A hundred copies were sold the day before yesterday," said Mark.
"Now, that's a little bit of all right, and no mistake. I'm delighted to
hear it. I congratulate you—con fuoco! That means business. One—hundred
—copies in one day! Whew-w-w! Hang it, why don't you rejoice?"
"Because," said Mark, "I found out that the hundred copies were
bought by one man for one man. A friend of mine on the Stock Exchange
took the lot. The book is not selling."
"Sorry," said Tommy quietly. "I've read it. I've reviewed it. This," he
tapped one of the clippings which he still held in his hand, "is mine. I got
for it a few shillings, already spent, and the book which I shall keep,
because it is written by a good fellow. It's not what's in the book which
appeals to me, but what's in the writer, and which will come out—some
day."
"Thank you," said Mark.
He returned to luncheon at Cadogan Place, humbled, and therefore, in
a woman's eyes, meet for sympathy and encouragement.
"In any case," said Betty, "you have had the delight of writing the
book. And it is strong and subtle; but, Mark, few people are interested in
slums. Your book made me cry, and I want to laugh. Life is so sad, why
make it sadder?"
Mark had listened to interminable arguments upon this vexed question.
But in Betty's tone and manner he caught a glimpse of a spectre.
"Your life is not sad," he said.
"I'm one of the lucky ones," she replied hastily "We were speaking of
your book."

"Hang the book," said Mark impatiently "What is that to me in
comparison with——" He stopped abruptly, got up from his chair, paced
the length of the room, and came back.
"You are happy—are you not?" he asked. They were alone in the
drawing-room, filled with the pictures and china which had come out of the
saloon at The Whim. Archibald was presiding over one of his innumerable
committees. Looking at Betty as she sat amongst things familiar to Mark
from childhood, it was difficult to believe that she was a married woman.
She still retained a bloom of maidenhood, a daintiness and freshness. Her
face suggested the nymph rather than the matron.
"Of course I am happy," she replied; then she added in a whisper:
"Mark, I ought to be happy, but I am a rebel."
"All women are rebels, Betty. Against what in particular do you
rebel?"
"I oughtn't to tell you, but—but I must. I suppose I am the many-sided
woman, who ought to have half a dozen husbands. I am interested in so
many things. I like to browse here and there. But Archie doesn't care about
anything or anybody outside his own vineyard. He is going up and up and I
am—falling! Oh, I'm disloyal, but I must speak. It comes to this: Archie
loves me and of course I love him, but we—we have nothing to say to each
other when we're alone."
She sat, twisting her fingers, staring forlornly at the carpet. Mark burst
into speech. At the sound of his voice, still so youthful in quality, she raised
her head, smiling, eager, intent.
"Why, Betty, we all get blue at times, and sigh for what we've not got.
There are women, no doubt, who are fatly content with their lives, but I
don't suppose they go up or down. One pictures them in one spot, doing the
same stupid thing, saying the same stupid thing for ever and ever. I think

you're in a healthy state. When we feel that we are going down, we begin to
beat our wings and flap upwards. Some saints, possibly, might be justified
in taking a rest-cure; they are the ones who never do it."
He rose to go, not daring to stay.
"When are you coming again, Mark? You always do me good. Can't
you spend next Sunday with us? By the way, have you ever been to our
church?"
"Yes; the first Sunday Archibald preached."
"Oh! The sermon about Balaam."
"Yes."
"You know, he says that he's uneven. But the women in this parish
think him wonderful. Some of them, who sit near the pulpit, make a point of
crying whenever he gives them a chance. One told me that when he
pronounced the Benediction she felt purged of all sin! I could have bitten
her."
Mark promised to spend the following Sunday in Cadogan Place, and
duly accompanied Betty to morning service. For nearly thirty minutes
Archibald preached to a crowded congregation, who listened intently to a
conventional theme, treated conventionally. Coming out Mark heard a tall,
thin man, with a striking face, whisper to the woman beside him: "I came
for bread; he gave us pap—in a golden spoon."
"Did you hear that?" said Betty, a moment later.
"Yes."
Some friends greeted Betty, and no more was said till luncheon, to
which the Chrysostom of Sloane Street applied himself, as usual, seriously
and silently. He looked slightly puffy and his eyes were losing their
clearness and sparkle. Mark asked abruptly if he were overworked.

"Every minute is filled," said Archibald heavily. "Overworked? I can
stand a lot of work."
"He would be miserable without it—and bored," said Betty. "He won't
even come to concerts with me now."
"It's the work that tells, nowadays, my dear. Preaching gives a man a
start, but it's the steady strain of parochial organisation which brings one to
the top of the hill."
"You are neglecting your sermons," said Betty. "For several Sundays
they have struck me as being—how shall I put it—uninspired. They hold
one's attention, yes, but they do not grip; they touch, but they do not
penetrate."
Archibald nodded, frowning and crumbling the bread beside his plate.
"The Duchess," he said, "stopped me this morning after church to tell
me that she liked the treatment of my text immensely."
"Oh—the Duchess!" exclaimed Betty.
"I've so much on my mind," said Archibald, turning to Mark. He rose,
looking at his watch. "I must go now to hear a man sing in Upper Tooting.
The cigars are in my room."
He went out. As the door shut behind him, Betty turned a contrite face
to Mark's.
"I hit him when he was down. What a beast I am!"
At that moment it became a conviction to Mark that Betty loved an
ideal husband, who would fall from the pinnacle on which she had perched
him. A feeling of pleasure at this impending catastrophe almost turned him
sick. Then, very slowly, he resolved that the powers within him should be
devoted to the preservation of an ideal, so vital to the welfare of the woman
he loved. Betty began to speak of his literary work.

"When I read your book," she said, "I had an intuition that one day you
would write a play."
Mark quoted Tommy Greatorex. "That's an easy job."
"I have a motif for you. The emotional treatment of religion. Look at
the success of this new book, Robert Elsmere! The same success awaits the
dramatist who can use like material. I should make the principal character a
woman of passion with a strong sense of religion."
"A sinner?"
"Yes. It seems to me that sinners on the stage have great opportunities.
The world must listen to what they have to say. In real life the good people
do all the talking, the moral talking, I mean; an honest sinner holds his or
her tongue. It's such a pity, for I'm sure your honest sinner loathes his sin. In
my drama the sinner is saved, because the sense of what she has suffered,
her personal experience of the horror and misery of sin, make for her
salvation."
"The right man could do something with it, no doubt."
"Why not you, Mark?"
He fell into a reverie, staring into the fire. Betty perceived that he had
wandered out of the world of speech into the suburbs of silence, where
visions of what might have been come and go. Presently he said abruptly:
"Shall we walk?"
"There's an east wind blowing, evil for man and beast."
"You're neither. Come on."
They crossed the park, skirting the Serpentine, a dull, leaden-coloured
lake wrinkled by the keen wind. On some of the benches sweethearts were
sitting, serenely unmindful of the blast.
"They feel warm enough," said Betty, laughing. "Well, I'm in a glow,
too."

When they returned to Cadogan Place, Archibald had just arrived from
Upper Tooting. He said that he had found a superb tenor, whom he had
engaged.
"He sang 'Nazareth'—quite admirably."
Betty, teapot in hand, looked up, interested at once.
"Oh, Archie, you have not sung 'Nazareth' for months. Do sing it after
tea!"
"Do!" Mark added. "I haven't heard you sing for a year."
Finally, after a little pressing, Archibald seated himself at the piano, a
beautiful Steinway. As he touched the keys, Betty's face assumed the
expression of delighted receptivity so familiar to Mark. She glanced at the
singer between half-closed eyes, lying back in her chair in an attitude of
physical and mental ease. One hand drooped at her side, and as Archibald
sang the fingers of this hand contracted and relaxed, keeping time to the
rhythm of the song. Mark felt that her pulses were throbbing, quivering
with delight and satisfaction. The music touched him also, stirring to
determination his desire to help and protect the woman he loved. But when
his thoughts turned, as they did immediately, to Archibald, they became of
another texture and complexion. He had not prayed to God since that night
on Ben Caryll. Now, beneath the spell of the music, he repeated to himself:
"Oh God, take this hate from me; take this hate from me!"
When Archibald stopped singing, he said that he must go to his study
for an hour's work before evening service. Mark accompanied him. As soon
as they were alone, he blurted out what was in his mind.
"I say, Archie, if you want a little help, I'm your man. I suppose work
means the preparation of your Advent sermons. I helped you last year. Shall
I help you this?"
Archibald's face flushed.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he muttered; "but ideas don't
flow. If you would help—but, but you have your own work."
"My work! Well, it's lucky I've an allowance, or I should certainly
starve. Archie, I'd like to help you. I ask it as a favour. Come on; what's the
use of jawing? What's it to be this Advent? I thought of something in church
this morning which you might lick into shape."
He filled his pipe, talking in his hesitating yet voluble way. Archibald,
the practical, took a pad to jot down notes in shorthand. Mark began to pace
the room as his ideas flowed faster. It seemed to him that he had dammed
them up for many months; now they came down like the Crask after a big
rain, a cleansing flood, carrying away all refuse, all barriers. When he had
finished, Archibald arose ponderously and shook his hand.
"You're a wonderful fellow," he said slowly; "the hare you, the tortoise
I. It was always so."
"The tortoise won the r-r-race," said Mark.
When he went to bed that night he flung open wide the window of his
room. Outside, the night was inky black and tempestuous. Not a star to be
seen above, and the lamps below burning dimly, throwing pale circles of
light upon the wet, muddy street. Mark stood inhaling the fresh air, drawing
long and deep breaths, saturating himself with it. Presently he muttered:
"I may be happy yet."

CHAPTER XXIX
THE PROCESSION OF LIFE

Late in May Betty was expecting to be confined; and Mark could see that
Archibald tried in vain to conceal his anxiety. "One never knows how these
affairs will end," he said a score of times to his brother, who replied, "Betty
is strong; she will do well; you are foolish to borrow trouble." None the
less, Mark's anxiety quickened also as the time approached, becoming the
more poignant, possibly, because the birth of this baby emphasised his own
isolation and loneliness. Betty as mother—and he felt sure that she would
prove an admirable mother—appeared indescribably remote. Archibald as
father, babbling already about his son, obstructed the horizon.
"The boy may reign at Pitt Hall," said Archibald. "George has written
to say that he hopes it will be an heir—his word—because then he will feel
at liberty to remain a bachelor. Do you think that Betty is as prudent as she
ought to be?"
"She will do well, she will do well," Mark reiterated.
"You will come to us, Mark. I shall want you, you know."
"If you insist——"
"I don't think I could face it without you."
Betty added her entreaties. "I'm not afraid," she maintained; "but
Archie is behaving like an old woman. Lady Randolph will be with me; I
should feel easier if you were with Archie. How devoted you brothers are to
each other!"
Mark hastily put up his hand to cover a smile which he felt to be
derisive. Then he muttered awkwardly, "All right, I'll c-c-come."
Again he wondered whether she had suspected the hatred within him.
Surely a creature of her intuitions and sympathies must know. And if she
did know, and, knowing, faced the facts, trying to adjust the balance,
piecing together the fragments of broken lives, was it not his duty, however
painful, to help her and the man she had married? And perhaps she had

foreseen that any peril threatening an object dear to both brothers might
serve to unite them. The woman who had whirled them asunder must
cherish the hope that she alone could bring them together.
When the hour came, when he was alone with Archibald at midnight,
straining his ears for that thin, querulous wail of the newly born, he forgot
everything except that Betty might be taken away. The doctor bustled in
from time to time, cheery and sanguine at first, but as the hours passed
betraying uneasiness and anxiety. Towards morning, when the whole world
seemed to have grown chill and dreary, he asked for a consultation; and a
servant was sent hot-foot for the most famous accoucheur in Harley Street.
Archibald rushed upstairs. He crawled down them a few minutes later,
ghastly, trembling, the scarecrow of the prosperous Rector of St. Anne's.
Mark, as white as he, seized his arm.
"Well, well, how is she? That fool of a doctor has exaggerated. They
always make out everything to be more serious than it is."
"She is going, she is going," the husband muttered.
Mark shook him violently.
"Archie, you must pull yourself together. Do you hear?"
"It's a judgment, a judgment."
"What do you say?"
"I never told her about those two sermons. I'm a coward, a coward.
You despise me—I have felt it."
The big fellow had collapsed, shrunk incredibly, depleted of windy
self-assurance and vanity. Mark's hate and scorn and envy began to ooze
from him as the old love, the virile instinct of the strong to comfort and
protect the weak, gushed into his heart, suffusing a genial warmth through
every fibre of his being.

"I gave them to you freely," he said. "I urged you to preach that first
sermon. Put what is past from you."
But Archibald shook his head. Now that the silence was broken, he
wished to speak, to give his shame and trouble all the words so long
suppressed. In a pitiful manner he began a self-indictment—qui s'accuse
s'excuse.
"If Betty is spared, I shall tell her the truth," he concluded.
Mark frowned, trying to measure the effect of such a belated
confession on Betty. Then he heard his brother saying in the tone of
conviction which so impressed his congregations, "Of course, Betty did not
marry me because I preached those sermons."
Mark started. Temptation beset him to answer swiftly: "She did—she
did. I know she did. Had it not been for my words in your mouth, she would
have waited for, she would have married—me."
He turned aside his face, twisted and seamed by the effort of holding
his tongue. Archibald continued: "It has been a secret sore. I thought hard
work—I have worked very hard—would heal it. If—if she is spared, I shall
speak for all our sakes."
Mark's voice was quite steady when he replied, "For all our sakes. You
take me into account?"
"Why, of course. Don't you remember? You wished her to know. You
said you would tell her. Why didn't you?"
"Why, indeed?" Mark echoed fiercely. Then, with a sudden change of
manner, he went on: "You must do what you think best. Betty has placed
you on a pinnacle. See that you don't topple over! Practise what you preach.
Then you will save her soul and your own."
"We talk as if she were not dying."

"She will not die," said Mark solemnly. At that moment he was sure
that Betty would live, must live, because (and the reason illumines the dark
places through which Mark had passed), because it would be so much better
for her if she died.
Just then the consulting surgeon arrived. Archibald took him upstairs,
and returned to Mark within a quarter of an hour, saying that the case was
even more serious than had been supposed.
"Drax sentenced me to death," said Mark, "but I'm alive and strong."
Archibald fell on his knees in an agony of supplication. Mark watched
him. Suddenly the husband looked up.
"In the name of God, pray," he entreated. "You are a better man than I
—pray!"
But Mark remained standing.
He desired to pray, but above this desire and dominating it was the
vivid horror of that evil spirit, which had so lately fled and which might
come back. A sense of unworthiness prostrated his spirit, but not his body.
He glanced at Archibald, and left the room.
Outside, the gas in the hall and passages seemed to be struggling
helplessly against the light of breaking day. Familiar objects—furniture
belonging to the Admiral—loomed large out of a sickly, yellow mist. Mark
found himself staring blankly at an ancient clock ticking with loud and
exasperating monotony. It had so ticked away the seconds, the minutes, the
hours of more than a hundred years!
The next objects that caught his eye were two umbrellas. They stood
side by side, curiously contrasted: the one a dainty trifle of violet silk and
crystal, encircled with a gold band; and the other large and massive with a
symbolic shepherd's crook as a handle. These arrested Mark's attention. He
remembered that he had chaffed Betty about her umbrella, telling her that it

was too smart for a parson's wife, and absurdly frail as a protection against
anything save a passing shower. She retorted that a wise woman never
braves a storm, and then she had said with the smile he knew so well: "My
umbrella, which, after all, is an en tout cas, is just like me: made for
sunshine rather than rain."
He sat down, waiting, staring at Betty's umbrella. When he looked up
Lady Randolph was coming down the stairs very slowly—a white-haired
old woman. Something in her face choked the question which fluttered to
his lips. To gain an instant's time, he opened the library door and called to
his brother—
"Archie!"
Archibald appeared instantly.
"A girl has been born," said Lady Randolph, "but she is dead."
"Dead?" repeated Archibald.
"And Betty?" Mark demanded hoarsely.
"The doctors think she is safe."
The three passed into the dining-room, where some food had been laid
out. Lady Randolph gave details in a worn voice. Betty's pluck had been
amazing; she had displayed a fortitude lacking which she would probably
have succumbed. The consulting surgeon, who entered shortly afterwards,
assured the husband that, humanly speaking, the danger was over. Almost at
once Archibald recovered his normal composure and dignified deportment.
Mark, on the other hand, exhibited signs of collapse. He sat down shivering,
as if he had been attacked by malignant malaria.
Next day he saw Betty for a couple of minutes. She smiled and
thanked him, intimating that Archibald had told her that the suspense would
have been intolerable had not Mark helped him to bear it. Of the loss of her

baby she said nothing, but before Mark left the room she exacted a promise
that he would come to see her during the period of convalescence.

About this time he began his third novel, The Songs of the Angels. Conquest
asked him if he were setting to work on the theme suggested by him, and
when Mark pleaded inability to guide a young and beautiful heiress through
the slums of Stepney, the great man shrugged his shoulders—a gesture now
associated in Mark's mind with derision and contempt. Conquest then
demanded what he was doing, and hearing the synopsis of the new story
shrugged his vast shoulders once more.
"That won't sell," he said. "You could have handled my theme—if you
had tried. By the way, that brother of yours has jumped at Vauxhall's offer. I
knew he would. He'll go very far, that young man. Even the Basilica won't
be big enough to hold him."
He laughed loudly and strode away.
During July Mark saw Betty regularly twice a week. Archibald was
working harder than ever in and out of St. Anne's parish, but of the Basilica,
now nearing completion, not a word was said by either husband or wife.
Mark wondered if Betty knew. Her recovery was slow and intermittent.
"Are you worried about anything?" Mark asked one day.
"Yes," she admitted, after a minute's hesitation; then she continued
quickly, "Have you noticed another falling off in Archie's sermons?"
"He's unequal, of course," Mark replied. "And the best brains refuse to
work in a tired body."
"I wish you'd say a word about that. He'd take anything from you."
Again she caught a glimpse of that derisive smile of Mark's which she
could not interpret, as he promised to speak to his brother. Did he reap his
reward when Betty said, three weeks later, "Archie has preached splendidly