Part 12

"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.