In August the Archibald Samphires moved from Cadogan Place to a house on the Embankment, which belonged to Lord Vauxhall, and was part of that property which he was so anxious to populate with the "right kind of people." The house faced the Thames and contained some charming rooms, which combined the quaintness and fine proportions of the old Chelsea houses with such modern luxuries as electric light and radiators. The house in Cadogan Place had been papered and decorated by a former tenant, whose taste was severely æsthetic. Betty abhorred the olive-greens, the dingy browns, the sickly ochres of the Burne-Jones school. But she had accepted them philosophically, reflecting that houses in London must be repapered and decorated more often than in the country. None the less, she sometimes told herself that certain fits of depression were due to her bilious-coloured walls, and that Babbit's theories, as set forth by the Squire's widow, were worth consideration.
Now she had been given a free hand, at a moment when fashion was changing with Protean swiftness from darkness to light. Rose-red and yellow, delicate greens, ethereal blues, and white-enamelled woodwork wooed the fancy of housewives. Betty told Lady Randolph that she was no longer a woman, but a colour scheme diffusing prismatic tints.
"The rainbow after the storm."
Betty glanced up quickly. Did her old friend guess that she had passed through a storm? Or was it a happy allusion to that frightful bistre-coloured paper in her bedroom in Cadogan Place?
"I shall be happy here," she said gravely.
They were standing in the drawing-room of the new house. The Admiral's Chippendale furniture was in its place, delicately revealed against lovely white panelling. The walls were rose-coloured, of a paper whose texture was as that of brocade. The general effect was fresh and joyous: vernal in the delicacy of its tints, without a hint of the bonbonnière. Outside, the sun was declining in the west, and the river ran all golden past the trees and meads of Battersea Park. Some barges, laden with hay, were gliding by on the ebb-tide.
"Archie's room will be ready to-morrow," said Betty, "and we ought to be in the day after. You have all pitied me, but I have enjoyed the dead season immensely."
Lady Randolph, who was passing through town on her way to Scotland from Birr Wood, nodded understandingly.
"The room is just like you, Betty, and that is the prettiest compliment, my dear, I have ever paid you. And I must say that the dead season has agreed with you. I never saw you look more alive."
"The fact is," said Betty seriously, "I have been setting more than one house in order."
Lady Randolph smiled. "I have seen—I have guessed—— Ah, well, we wives try to remould our husbands, and the time is not wasted if we succeed in remoulding ourselves. My dear, I must fly. Can I give you a lift?"
Betty said that much remained to be done, but after her friend had gone she showed no inclination to set about doing it. Instead, she sat by the open window, gazing at the river flowing slowly and silently to the sea. Already she had come to regard this as the great waterway of her thoughts. She rejoiced because she was about to live upon its banks; she recognised its suggestion and symbolism, its myriad beauties, its mystery and power.
At this moment she was reflecting that the Thames was a source of pleasure and profit to man, because man, as embodied by the Thames Conservancy, controlled it. When it burst its banks, the abomination of desolation followed. Without the innumerable dams and locks cribbing and confining it, these splendid waters would be wasted. Now they percolated everywhere, into hundreds and thousands of homes.
Would it be so with her own life? It ran in a channel other than the one she would have chosen, had choice been given her; it was diverted to uses she had not apprehended; it was likely to be diffused infinitely, trickling here and there, instead of rushing free and untrammelled over a course of its own making. Since that memorable interview with Mark, Betty had accepted the limitations which duty imposed. She had not shirked the trivial tasks of a parson's wife, albeit she was tempted to spend more time (and money) than was lawful in alluring shops. She had not seen Mark alone. She had put from her comment and criticism of her husband: striving to think of the strength that was in him rather than the weakness.
Now she was aware that these efforts had not been made in vain. Life had become easier, happier, more profitable to herself and others. She dared to look forward, and refrained from looking back.
Presently she rose up, glanced, smiling, at the pretty room, and leaving it reluctantly went downstairs. Archibald was out of town for a few days on duty in the Midlands, and by the morrow she hoped that all his furniture would be moved. Part had come from Cadogan Place that afternoon, and, before returning home, she wished to see it placed in the right room. In the hall she met one of the servants, who was acting as caretaker. In answer to a question, the man said his master's desk had arrived in the van which was leaving. Betty entered her husband's room trying to remember the exact spot where Archie wished his desk to stand. It was an immense affair, with a fluted, revolving top, which, when closed, locked itself and all drawers. As she crossed the threshold of the room, she remembered what Archibald had said. The desk had been placed in the wrong position.
"Oh, Dibdin," she exclaimed, "that will never do. Have the men gone?"
Dibdin said respectfully that the van was still at the door, but suggested that the men should move the desk on the morrow. Betty, however, was anxious to see how it looked in the place her husband had chosen. So the men were summoned. Doubtless, they were tired, and possibly sulky at being called as they were about to drive away. The desk was very heavy and awkward to move; it stood on a rug upon a slippery parquet floor. The men, using unnecessary violence, canted it slightly forward. In the effort to steady it, their feet slipped, the desk fell forward with a crash, and burst open: the fluted lid flying back, and the contents of a dozen pigeon-holes and drawers being scattered over the floor. However, upon examination it was found that no damage had been done. The desk was lifted and placed in the desired position, and the men dismissed. Dibdin looked so dismayed that Betty laughed.
"Why, Dibdin, all's well that ends well."
"Master is so particular about his desk," said Dibdin. He had been with Archibald before his marriage. "He'd never allow me to touch his papers."
"You shan't touch them now," said Betty. "I'll arrange them, Dibdin, before I go home."
Dibdin went out, leaving his mistress sitting on the floor surrounded by notebooks, cheque-books, manuscripts, and all the accessories which usually cover a busy man's desk. As she began to arrange these, she reflected that the best-laid plans gang agley. Archibald had insisted upon locking up everything, and yet, despite precaution—his precious desk had burst open. What a lot of MMS. to be sure! And she had not the vaguest idea into what drawers and pigeon-holes they ought to go. Archibald had a reasonable dislike of being disturbed when at work, and when he was not at work the huge desk was always locked.
Betty recognised an enormous pile of papers as sermons. Some were typewritten, date and text being inscribed upon the outside. Betty touched them tenderly: her husband's title-deeds, so to speak, to the honour and respect she bore him. Looking at them she blushed faintly, thinking of the warmer sentiment they had provoked. As she blushed her glance fell upon the sermon she had just picked up. This bore no text, but across it, in Archibald's handwriting, were two words: Whit-Sunday, Westchester.
The words provoked a score of memories. Once more she knelt in the chancel of that splendid fane, hearing the flute-like notes of the boy; once more she was conscious of being whirled aloft to ineffable heights. Then she dropped to earth as suddenly, with a vivid realisation that if this sermon had never been preached, she would not be here in this house, the wife of the preacher. With this reflection came a desire to read the sermon. She laid it aside, while she finished the work of replacing the other MSS. Then she closed the desk, and discovered that the lock was hampered. She was wondering whether she ought to seal it, when she remembered that it would be easy to lock up the room. The light was failing, yet the fancy took her that she would like to read her husband's sermon in her own room, overlooking the river as it flowed to the sea.
She went upstairs carrying the MS. in her hand, and sat down. The sun was about to set; and the river ran red, no longer golden. Shadows obscured the city beyond. A mist was stealing up from the east, and the barges floating into it were swallowed up.
Betty unrolled the MS., spread it upon her knee, and began to read. But at the first glance she blinked, as if her eyesight were deceiving her. Then with a muttered exclamation of surprise, she held the sheets of blue foolscap to the light, and examined them attentively. The MS., from beginning to end, was in Mark's handwriting. Here and there words were interpolated or excised. In the margin were her husband's notes, but the MS. was Mark's. What did it mean?
She read it through. Yes: as it was written, so it had been preached, and it had been written by Mark!
Why had she not guessed as much before? She rolled up the MS., tied it with the red tape which the orderly Archibald used, and went downstairs. The only other sermon in Mark's handwriting was the "Purity" sermon, but many were covered with his notes. Again and again a phrase remembered, a thought treasured—because it revealed the man she had chosen as wise, and noble, and good, and therefore justified that choice and silenced any doubts she might have entertained regarding it—stood out as Mark's. Again and again she read some common-place, some compromise, some paragraph which rang false, slashed by Mark's red pencil. Once or twice she held up the sheets, examining closely the condemned passages; smiling derisively as she perceived the violence of protest in the broad, deeply indented excoriations. Suddenly Dibdin appeared, bland but surprised.
"Shall I bring a lamp, M'm?"
"Bring me a basket, Dibdin, and then whistle for a hansom."
She put the sermons into the basket and went back to Cadogan Place, where a cold supper awaited her. The footman told the cook that his mistress had eaten nothing, but had called for a pint of champagne. The cook expressed an opinion that nothing in the world was so upsetting as a "move"; which turned everything and everybody upside down, and produced "squirmishy" feelings inside. Presently Betty's maid went upstairs, and returned with heightened colour. Her mistress, so she reported, was as cross as two sticks.
Betty, indeed, was pacing up and down her bedroom in a fever of indecision and unrest. The husband she had honoured was destroyed. The ghost of him inspired repugnance—a repugnance which found larger room in the new house. The pleasure she had taken in furnishing became pain, inasmuch as not a chintz had been chosen without the reflection that she was recovering what was dingy and discoloured in her life, substituting for the old and worn the fresh and new. And now, in the twinkling of an eye, her good resolutions, her hopes and aims, her readjusted sense of proportion—had vanished. She was in the mood to set ablaze that dainty room in which in fancy she had passed so many happy hours, to tear down and destroy the tissues through which she had looked out upon a future as rose-coloured as they.
She passed a sleepless night, got up feeling and looking wretched, gave her servants certain hasty directions, and drove to Waterloo. In her hand she carried a small bag containing the Westchester and Windsor sermons.
From Weybridge she walked to Myrtle Cottage, and the exercise brought colour into her cheeks. She was sure that she would find Mark in the shelter, so she approached it from the side of the grove, being unwilling to face Mary's clear and possibly curious eyes.
Mark was at his typewriting machine when she saw him, and as usual so absorbed in his task that he never perceived her. Betty reflected that he could not have approached her without her being aware of it, but men surely were fashioned out of clay other than what was used for women.
"Mark!"
He sprang up, with a startled exclamation, and came forwards, holding out both hands.
"What has happened?"
As he spoke her indignation began to ooze from her. Intuition told her that the expression upon Mark's face revealed intense sympathy. Her trouble, whatever it might be, had moved him to the core. Suddenly, a light flickered out of the darkness. For the first time, she saw herself and him alone together, shut off from the world. It came upon her with a shock that she was glad that Mark, not Archibald, had written the sermon. Only he, the lover of her girlish dreams, could have found the words which had stirred her so profoundly. Mark repeated the question, "What has happened?"
"You wrote this?" she cried, holding out the Westchester sermon.
He nodded, realising the fatuity of denial. For a moment they gazed into each other's eyes. Then she said slowly—
"You wrote the 'Purity' sermon?"
"M-m-m-most of it," he admitted reluctantly.
"You have helped him ever since?"
"I have revised some of his work."
"And I never guessed it," she exclaimed passionately. "If I had thought for a moment I must have known that it was you—you—you, not him. Oh, my God, I shall go mad! I married him because you—you had tricked him out in a garment of righteousness! Had you come forward at the eleventh hour and spoken I should have thanked you and blessed you. Why did you hold your tongue—why—why—why?"
"I thought you l-l-loved him," he stammered.
"Loved him?" The scorn in her voice thrilled his pulses. "I loved what he said, which was yours. Why did you not say it yourself?"
"Because," his infirmity gripped him, "I c-c-c-couldn't." Her face softened, and the lines of her figure relaxed.
"It is my fault," she said, gazing at him through tears; "I ought to have guessed."
"Betty"—he had recovered his self-control, now that she was in danger of losing hers—"Betty, I have done you a wrong. I withheld the truth, because truth, faith, love had gone out of my life, blasted by—b-b-by——"
"By me?"
"No—n-n-no."
"By whom?" He paused, and she continued vehemently: "Mark, I want the truth. Nothing else is possible between us. What killed your faith? You have never answered that question. What changed you from the man you were to the man you are?"
"Hate."
She recoiled at the grim word, recoiled, too, from the expression on his face.
"You hated—your brother?" The words fell from quivering lips. He saw that she was about to swoop on the truth he had hidden so long. He was impotent to avert discovery. She came very slowly towards him, her eyes fixed on his. The expression in them bewildered him. She raised both her arms and laid her hands upon his shoulders.
"You hated him. Then you loved—me."
"Always," he answered. "To me you came out of Paradise, and brought the best part of it with you."
"Say it again," she whispered.
"I loved you—always: as child, as boy, as man."
She smiled piteously. "As child, as girl, as woman I have loved—you. And yet loving me like that you could believe that I loved him. Ah, love is blind indeed." She held him with her eyes and hands, speaking softly and quickly: "And because you loved me you gave him what he lacked. That was like you. But did it never strike you that I might find out?"
"Not till too late. Betty, I have behaved like a fool. I gave him that sermon which I would have given my right hand to preach. But I had not foreseen its effect. Having given it, I could not take it back." He went on to describe his breakdown, the scene with Ross and the doctors, the silence which he dared not break, his slow recovery, the renascence of his hopes and their destruction. A dozen times his stammer stopped him, as many times he was made aware that this abhorred weakness bound him the closer to the woman who loved him. When he had finished his story she looked up.
"What shall we do now?" she asked.
Above, the song of the pines rose and fell in melancholy cadence. The day was hot, and would become hotter, but here in this sylvan temple the air flowed in cool and fragrant currents. Mark was silent, reflecting that always he had known this hour would come. From the moment he had read Archibald's letter announcing his engagement, Destiny, with the leer of some hideous gargoyle, had decreed that he should hate his brother and love his brother's wife. Up to the present moment both passions had been controlled and confined. The unforeseen had turned them loose.
"What shall we do now?"
She stood before him absorbed in the love which at last had found expression. What else the world might hold for her was not.
So standing, delicately flushed, but with eyes which neither faltered nor fell beneath his, the daughter of Louise de Courcy awaited Mark's answer.
"You are my brother's wife," he said slowly.
Betty shrugged her shoulders. The gesture, almost piteous in its shrinking protest, moved Mark more than any words she had spoken.
"If—if I asked you, you would come away with me?"
She nodded, meeting his passionate glance, facing, as he did, the issues involved. Her hands moved towards him—timidly, but with unmistakable invitation.
"Betty," he cried, "Betty!"
"Ah! you want me. You do want me—you do, you do!"
"Want you?" his voice broke. Instantly she had seized his hands, drawing him towards her. He held her firmly—at arm's length. In that supreme moment he was perhaps stronger than he had been ever before, inasmuch as the faith which once had fortified him was his no longer, and yet without it, believing in nothing, holding in derision God's law and man's, he resisted her, because he was counting the cost to her. Then, reading his thought, she inclined her head, whispering, "If there is a God, and if he bade me choose between life here with you and life hereafter without you, not being allowed to have both—do you know what I should say?"
"Do not say it," he entreated. His face was so twisted by the consciousness that he was taking advantage of her weakness that she thought he was ill. When he remained rigid, she added gently, "Let us go to some place where my love shall make up to you for every pang you have suffered."
"Stop!" he cried hoarsely. "Apart from our love, you have not considered what this means: to me, the man, nothing; to you the loss of everything which women hold dear. You must not decide rashly—you—must—take—time."
She laughed derisively.
"I will take anything you like, so long as you take me."
He caught her to him, closing her mouth with kisses.