He replied with a certain air of restraint: "Yes."
"Why?"
"My dearest, I can do better work there than here. I had not meant to speak about it to you—yet. Lord Vauxhall has paid me a very great compliment."
"What sort of compliment has he paid me? Did he ask you to keep so important a matter from your wife?"
"I so understood him."
"And your word is pledged?"
"Yes."
"Has he offered you more than you receive here?"
"We shall be richer by some hundreds a year."
"I am sorry," said Betty, with heightened colour. "Lord Vauxhall is shrewd. Had you seen fit to consult me, I should have implored you to remain where you are. Money is no object to you."
"True. But preferment——"
"Preferment! Promotion! That implies service. You have only been here eighteen months. There will be gossip about this."
"As if I cared for gossip."
"We will say no more about it," said Betty; "but I tell you frankly that I am hurt!"
She turned and left the room. That he should not have trusted her was hard to be borne; yet later she made allowances for him. Doubtless, Lord Vauxhall had insisted upon secrecy. Her husband's sense of honour had closed his lips. She had been unjust, unkind, a disloyal wife. She had even insulted him, hinting that an increase of income had lured him from duty. At this point she bathed her eyes, arranged her hair, and ran downstairs to beg pardon and entreat forgiveness. Archibald was magnanimous.
"You have shown the right feeling, dear Betty, which I knew you possessed. I am acting according to my lights."
Next day the Rector of St. Anne's wired to Mark to come to town; Mark replied that he had had a bad bout of influenza, in those days a new and virulent disease. Archibald, nervous about his Lenten sermons but laughing to scorn the possibility of catching influenza, went down to Weybridge in the afternoon. He found Mark looking pale and thin, but otherwise in good spirits, and on the high road to recovery.
"You're a valiant man to visit me. This confounded disease is so infectious. You laugh? You'll cry if you get it! I've been as weak as a baby. If it had not been for Honeydew——"
He spoke enthusiastically of all his nurse had done for him. Archibald nodded absently, turning over in his mind certain possible themes which he wished Mark to consider.
"Yes, yes," he interrupted. "She did what she could, I make no doubt."
"She's one of the very best," cried Mark. "I say—it was awfully good of you, old Archie, to run down here. I expect work has piled up."
"It has; it has. I want to speak to you about that." He paused for a moment, as a smile flickered across Mark's lips. Archibald, Mark was reflecting, had an axe to grind. He had not left home merely to visit a brother laid by the heels. Suddenly his feeling which had flamed grew chill. He listened perfunctorily to some introductory remarks.
"My Lenten sermons are giving me grave anxiety; I find that something out of the common is expected. If you will bear with me, I'll walk over the—er—course which I've marked out."
"Cut along!" said Mark.
Archibald winced. Mark had no sense of the fitness of things. He spoke at times as if he (the Rector of St. Anne's) were a boy in his teens. Perhaps a word in season might——
"À propos," he said, with dignity, "don't you think, my dear fellow, that it is time for you to put away certain childish—you will pardon the adjective—certain childish expressions. It's absurd to talk of a man of my weight—'cutting along'...."
"True! You can stroll if you like, as the placid Pecksniff strolled. You have put on weight, Archie."
Archibald, indeed, was broader and thicker about the neck and shoulders. He had lost the look of youth; the hair on the top of his head was thinner; his eyes were less clear; his fine skin had become redder and coarser in texture.
"I carry great burdens," he replied. "Perhaps I ought not to ask you to share them."
Mark responded instantly, touched by this unexpected solicitude: "I'm all right."
"You might come to us for a week. Betty will nurse you."
"That is impossible. I must finish my book."
"Oh, yes—your book. I am looking forward to reading that. But I wish you would turn your talents to something more serious than fiction. I——"
"Shall we talk about your work?"
Archibald smiled, but Mark fidgeted and frowned, as carefully culled platitudes fell upon his ear. Archibald was indeed strolling placidly down familiar paths to the great festival of Christendom. The very name of Easter had always quickened Mark's pulses. Hitherto he had hastened to the feast, the most joyful of pilgrims. Now he was shut out; or rather, the door stood wide open, but he dared not pass it. The ban lay upon him—and upon how many thousands? His imagination flared, revealing a multitude staring with yearning eyes at tables spread for others. Archibald, in his silky tones, was enumerating celestial joys. His words flowed like a pellucid stream.
"What are you smiling at?" he asked abruptly.
"I beg your pardon," Mark replied, "but you remind me of an alderman reciting to a starving mob the names of the dishes to which he and his corporation are about to sit down."
Archibald had wit enough to see and feel the point. He saw, too, that Mark was moved.
"You have an idea. I should like to hear it, although——"
"Although I am without the pale, you would say. Archie, if you would descend from your pulpit and walk in the shadows with me for a little while—and if then you could set forth my doubts and perplexities, how many, think you, of your congregation would not say: 'I, too, have wandered in those blind alleys.' And having pierced the crust of their indifference with your sympathy and insight, if then you could transmit the light which seems to have always blazed on you, this Easter would indeed be a Day of Resurrection to hundreds who now lie cold and dead." He paused, gazed keenly at Archibald, and continued: "But you—you cannot do that. You have not trod the wilderness...." He covered his face with his hand.
"It is true," said Archibald, in a low voice, "that I do lack an experience common, I fear, to hundreds of my parishioners. And if I cannot open their hearts, and you can, lend me your key."
Mark was silent. Then, as before, the sense that he had envied and hated this once dearly beloved brother made him generous.
"I will write down and send what is in my mind. No—don't thank me!"
He began to talk briskly of other things. Presently Mary came in and reminded him to take his medicine. Archibald had not seen her before. Twice during the previous summer Betty and he had come to Weybridge, but each day had been spent upon the river. Mark went into his bedroom, and Mary disappeared, to reappear a moment later with a tea-tray. Archibald was alone with her for a couple of minutes. She arranged the tea-things with quick, deft fingers, displaying the admirable lines of her figure as she moved to and fro, now standing upright, now bending down. In the soft light of the spring afternoon she looked charming, with the inexpressible freshness of youth and health. Archibald addressed her.
"You are," he was about to say "Mary," but changed it to "Miss Dew."
"Oh, no, I am Mary," she replied, smiling. "Your brother calls me 'Honeydew.'"
"My brother calls you a ministering angel."
His soft voice had that fluid quality which percolates everywhere. He meant to be polite, nothing more; he wished to thank a pretty girl who had nursed a brother: but to Mary his words had other significance; his glance became an indictment, his tone inquisitorial. Without reason, her cheeks flamed. Archibald turned aside, murmuring a commonplace. When he looked at her, after a discreet interval, she was composed but pale. She went out of the room and did not return.
"Um!" said Archibald to himself, "I must speak to Betty about this."
Not, however, till late did he find an opportunity. Harry Kirtling was dining in Cadogan Place, and loath to say good-night. The young fellow had crushed a muscle of his leg out hunting, and had come up to London to see a famous surgeon, who prescribed gentle walking exercise and massage. Harry complained bitterly of the hardship of spending a fortnight away from his kennels, but was consoled by Betty, who promised to entertain him. Despite his injury, he looked astonishingly well, and brought with him from Cumberland a breezy atmosphere of mountain and moor which Betty inhaled gratefully. He had managed to make it plain that he was still her devoted slave—a tribute which the best of women accept without scruple. And he had asked her advice upon a score of matters connected with Kirtling.
When Harry had taken his clean, lean body out of her drawing-room, Betty turned rather impatiently to Archibald.
"Has anything happened? You have been so glum. Surely you do not resent my asking Harry to dine without consulting you?"
"Harry?" His tone was heavily contemptuous. "Harry can waste as much of your time as you like to give him. Yes; something has happened."
He told his story.
"I don't believe it."
"The girl is attractive. Her mother, I am told, reckons herself a lady. Something must be done. I give you my word that I am not mistaken."
"I don't believe it," Betty repeated.
None the less, she did believe it. Here again Archibald's voice beguiled her understanding. He had acquired that power, invaluable to a clergyman or a barrister, of making every statement sound as if it were irrefutable fact.
"I went down to Weybridge to see Mark on important business, and for a quarter of an hour he sang this girl's praises. It is obvious that he wished to impress me, to make me see with his eyes."
"What is she like?" Betty asked, shortly.
Archibald described her with a deliberation which annoyed his wife.
"The girl is very comely, my dear; alluring, many men would call her. A seductive figure—round, but not too plump; the complexion of Hebe."
"That's enough," said Betty.
"I tried to do the girl justice," replied her husband with dignity. "Personally speaking, her type of beauty does not appeal to me, but as a man of the world I cannot deny that it may appeal irresistibly to others!"
"You call yourself a man of the world," said Betty suddenly. "You do not preach to us as a man of the world. If this girl loves Mark, if he has made her love him, you ought to be the first to urge him to marry her. From a pagan point of view such a marriage may seem disastrous, but from the Christian's——"
She confronted him with heaving bosom and flaming eyes. Her agitation and excitement amazed him. But he grasped the essential fact that he had blundered, that it might be difficult to retrieve the blunder. He was aware that some of his sermons moved his wife to the core, for she had told him so a score of times. He was also aware, but as yet in less degree, that as mere man he had aroused without adequately satisfying her expectations.
"If you choose to misinterpret me——" he began.
"But I don't choose. I ask you, you the preacher and teacher, to make plain a puzzle which you, not I, have propounded. Let us admit what you tell me. Heaven knows that Mark has lived a lonely and forlorn life. Never has he complained to me; but I have guessed, I have felt that—that—beneath the mask he chooses to wear a devil tears him. That devil drove him from the Church. Well, we know that misery loves company. He has talked to me about this girl. She is a plucky creature, like Mark, inasmuch as she faces adversity with a smile. She has a selfish, querulous mother to whom she is devoted. Such a girl would appeal to such a man. And now you tell me that she is attractive. It is significant that Mark never mentioned that to me. I take back what I said. I believe you are right. Mark has learned to love this girl, and she loves him. And what are you going to do about it? And in what capacity? As a man of the world? Or as a priest of the Most High God?
"I beg you to compose yourself."
"You can compose me by telling the truth——"
"You dare to imply that——"
"I dare be honest with my husband. I have not been happy for some weeks, and you must have noticed it. Sometimes, particularly of late, I look for the man I married, and I find somebody else. Let me finish! I am too conscious of my own shortcomings not to be aware that between most husbands and wives lie troubled waters only to be passed by mutual faith and patience. Why, happiness is faith; and women, I often think, are on the whole happier than men, because their faith is stronger. A woman can believe in her child, in her husband, in her God. Well, as years passed, my faith in God grew dim, and you restored my sight. But now, somehow, I no longer see so clearly. Is it my fault or yours? I listen to your sermons, and then I come back to this luxurious house, and somebody tells me that you are persona grata at Windsor—that you are sure to be made a bishop, as if preferment were salvation; and——"
"My dear!" said Archibald, "it is late, and I have half a dozen letters to write. You have been talking in an unrestrained manner. You are not yourself."
He left the room, erect, impassive, master of himself, but not of her. She gazed defiantly after him, clenching her slender fingers. Intuition told her that this man was trying to serve God and Mammon, but when he came to bed an hour later, she owned herself humbly in the wrong. Again Archibald was magnanimous, assuring his dearest Betty that already he had forgiven and forgotten her offence. The "forgotten" sounded patronising. As if he, with his memory, could forget! She lay awake, perplexed and dismayed, for she knew that Mark was still so dear to her that the thought of his caring for any other woman was insupportable.