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.