Part 19

"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 _succes 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!