Part 11

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.