Betty returned alone to London before mid-day. Mark decided to follow by an afternoon train. They had agreed to meet at Charing Cross, to cross that night to Ostend. Then, in some remote corner of the Ardennes, they expected to make plans for the future. The "move," as Betty had pointed out, covered anything that might appear odd to the enlightened Dibdin. Her divided household would understand that she was going to a friend's house for the few hours during which her own bedroom furniture was being shifted.
Mark accompanied her to the station, returning home to pack a portmanteau. What doubts he had entertained were dispersed. He swore that he would look forward, never backward, and found himself whistling as he climbed the hill to the cottage.
In the shelter, the first object that he saw was Betty's handkerchief lying in the corner of a chair. He picked up the small, square piece of cambric and put it to his lips. A faint essence reminded him that fragrance had come again into his life. Then he began to arrange his papers. When Mary came in to arrange the cloth for luncheon, he told her that he was going away for a few days. She expressed no surprise. Why should she? It lay on his tongue's tip to say: "I have been wretched: now I am going to be happy. Let us shake hands!" Watching her moving here and there he was sensible of an impatience, an irritability almost impossible to suppress. Mary subtly conveyed an impression of protest. He told himself that this was absurd. Suddenly her eyes met his.
"What have I done?" she faltered.
"Why, nothing," he answered.
"You were staring at me so queerly," she answered. "The business which takes you away is pleasant, isn't it?"
He smiled reassuringly.
"Connected with your work, I suppose?"
Her curiosity was natural. He always spoke of his work to her.
"No," he said shortly. "It is not. I dare say you think that I could not be really keen about anything or anybody outside of my work. If I told you——"
He closed his lips, wondering why the truth had so nearly leaked from them. His joy had expanded so quickly, that it exacted a larger habitation.
"I have nothing to tell yet," he said confusedly, "but I may write; you shall hear from me; I shall be frank—with you."
He fell into a reverie, as she left the shelter. In a minute she returned.
"There is a gentleman to see you, Mr. Samphire. Shall I bring him here?"
She handed him a card. A cry escaped Mark's lips.
"David!"
The card fell to the ground. For the moment he felt as if some icy finger had been laid upon his heart. He had not seen David since the Crask days. And he had told himself that this old friend had held sorrowfully aloof, because he had divined that intercourse between the faithful and the faithless, between Christian and pagan, would prove (temporarily at least) inexpedient and abortive.
"Please ask his lordship to come here," he said, frowning.
Mary glanced at his face and withdrew. Mark followed her with his eyes as she crossed the pretty garden between the shelter and the cottage. Not a cloud, he noted, obscured the soft azure of the skies; upon all things lay the spell of summer.
"Why has he come?"
Instinctively he armed himself for conflict. It was curious that he associated the Highlander and his strange powers of second sight with the quiet English Mary. The impending fight would be two against one. Good would side with good, although evil might array itself against evil.
These thoughts flitted through his mind as David was advancing. Mark, summoning up a smile of welcome, met his friend, who smiled back, extending both hands.
"Mark," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you. Thank God, you're well."
"And stronger than I ever was in my life," said Mark. "You'll lunch with me, David. I must go to town this afternoon, but we can have an hour together."
"I must go to town too," replied David. "You look a different man, Mark."
"I am a different man."
David followed him into the shelter and sat down, with a puzzled glance at his surroundings. During luncheon both men were conscious of a new and disagreeable sense of restraint.
"Have you another novel on the stocks?"
"Yes."
David jumped up, eager, vigorous, impetuous.
"I have come a long way out of my road to ask you a question."
"Ask it," said Mark.
"When are you coming back to us?"
"Can God only be served in cassock and surplice?"
"You evade my question," said David. "Mark, I have had the feeling that you were in trouble: ill, dying perhaps. I—I had to come to you. But I find you a strong man, and "—he glanced round at the pleasant garden—"and wasting time. Don't mistake me! You have been working hard, no doubt, but at work which others can do as well. You have recovered your health and——"
"Go on."
"The work God intended you to do is being left undone," said David. "Why?"
"If we are to remain friends, David, you had better not press this question."
"If we are to remain friends, I must. You have resigned a stupendous responsibility—why?"
"Shall we say—incapacity to administer it?"
"Give me the true reason."
"Can't you divine it?"
"I have divined it," said David, after a long pause. "You sneer at a gift which is given to few; but you, of all men, ought to know that it has been given to me. And I have divined more. I know that you are on the edge of an abyss which may engulf you and another."
"You have divined that?"
The sneer had left him; amazement, incredulity took its place. David must have heard some idle rumour. He asked him at once if it were not so.
"I have heard nothing."
"On your oath?"
"Certainly—if you wish it."
Mark paced the length of the shelter; then he turned and approached David, who was watching him. When less than a yard separated them Mark stood still and pulled his watch from his pocket.
"It is now two o'clock," he said. "At half-past six this afternoon I meet the woman I love and who loves me at Charing Cross. To-night—we leave England—together."
The relief of speech was immense, but with this, and dominating it, was the fierce desire to confront David with the truth, to invite his arguments, so as to trample on them.
David said hoarsely: "The woman is your brother's wife. You—you—Mark Samphire, the man I thought so strong, will do this shameful thing? Impossible!"
Mark laughed.
"I'm going to speak plainly, David. For the first and last time I mean to let myself r-r-rip!" He drew in his breath sharply. "You shall see me as I am. I appeal not to the Bishop, not to my old friend of the Mission, but to a more merciful judge than either—a man of flesh and blood."
He paused, frowning, trying to compose, to marshal his thoughts. Then he began quietly, exercising restraint at first, but using increasing emphasis of word and intonation as he proceeded.
"You say it is impossible that Mark Samphire should do this thing. Strange! You have intelligence, sympathy, intuition. Impossible! Oh, the parrot cry of the slave of convention and tradition, of the worshipper of his own graven images, bowing down before them, unable to look beyond the tiny circle wherein he moves and thinks. Impossible, you say? Impossible for Mark Samphire to run away with his brother's wife!"
"Incredible then," Ross interrupted.
"Incredible. It's incredible you should use such a word with your experience. Can't you realise that the same strength which made me struggle up towards what you call good or God is driving me as relentlessly down the other road? I am not the Mark Samphire of the Mission days, but the Mark Samphire who came from Ben Caryll knowing that if he had met his brother alone upon that mountain he would have killed him, or been killed by him. And having felt that, do you think I would stick at running away with his wife?"
His tone was so bitterly contemptuous that Ross could only stammer out: "I have never understood why such love as you bore him turned to such hate."
"Let your God answer that question. As man to man I swear to you that my brother's extraordinary success in everything we undertook together, and my own failure, did not sour me. I grudged him nothing—except her. And I could have let her go to any other. I tell you, David, I've been tried too high. The irony of fate has been too much for me. A time comes to the stoutest runner when he falls. Then the fellows who have been ambling along behind trot past blandly complacent. They are not first, but they are not last. The man who might have been first is last. I fell at a fence too big for me—and I broke my neck. We've said enough, too much, about that, but the fact that I could love as few love ought to be proof to you that my hate would be as strong."
Ross saw that he was trembling violently.
"If you had written to her——"
"If? That 'if' is crucifixion. Yes; yes; if I had written one line, whistled one note, held up one finger—she would have come to me. But then hope had scarcely budded. My life was so pitiful, so frail a thing to offer. And, voluntarily, she had engaged herself to him. He had won her, as he had won everything else——"
"Fairly."
"No. Not fairly."
Briefly, but in vehement words, Mark told the story of the sermons, concluding with Betty's discovery of the truth.
"And now," he demanded, stretching out his shaking hands, "do you see the real Mark Samphire? Is your finger on the pulse of a poor wretch who tried to do his duty and—here's the rub, David—who was punished the more heavily on that account? If I had played the world's game, Betty would be my wife. Archibald would be still minor canon of Westchester."
Ross took the outstretched hands.
"My poor Mark," he murmured.
"Thanks, David; but don't pity me! I envy no man living. You have listened to my story, patiently. One thing more remains to be said. If Betty had not discovered the truth, I could have held aloof from her to the end. On her account, not because she was my brother's wife, I respected the law. But now," his voice was triumphant, "she wants me. Do you hear? She wants me. I'm necessary to her. And because of that, and for no baser reason, I am going to her—to-night."
Ross met his eyes.
"In a word," said he, "you refuse to protect the woman you love against herself?"
"Once, I should have used that very phrase. What an ocean flows between us, David!"
"In six months," continued Ross, "you and she will be tormented in a hell of your own making. There are men and women, thousands of them, who can steep themselves in the life of the senses. You are not of them, Mark, nor ever will be; nor is she."
Mark smiled derisively.
"She and I," he retorted, "are two of the myriad insects crawling upon one of a million worlds. Something within both of us bids us make the most of our hour. We shall do so. You mean well, David, but you rack me—you rack me. Go!"
"So be it," said David.
As he was turning, Mark clutched his sleeve. An expression in David's eyes—the expression which refuses to acknowledge defeat, which indicates unknown resources—alarmed him.
"You are not going to Archibald," he said hoarsely.
David's face was twitching with emotion, but his voice was firm and even.
"You must know where I am going," he said simply. "I have failed—through my own weakness—as I have failed before, as I shall fail again and again, but I believe that He, whose help I am about to implore, will not fail. You will not leave England to-night."
When Mark looked up the speaker was gone.
During the next hour preparations for the journey occupied his attention. But after his portmanteau was strapped and a fly had been ordered to take him to the station, nearly an hour remained. Mark went into the grove and flung himself at length upon the soft carpet woven by the singing pines. He closed his eyes, invoking the alluring image of Betty. Instantly she came with outstretched hands and shining eyes, but between them, a grim and sombre figure, knelt David Ross, his face upturned in supplication. Mark found himself straining his ears to catch the words of the prayer, but they escaped, fleeting upward whither he dared not follow them.
Presently he seemed to hear voices other than David's, and like his inarticulate, although familiar. In his room at the Mission he had often listened to such voices. What man of ethereal attributes has not? But since that night on Ben Caryll these sounds had ceased.
He told himself, irritably, that once again he had fallen a victim to nervous imaginings, echoes of the material world rather than spiritual communications. Barger had told him that it was easy—given certain purely physical conditions—to hypnotise oneself, to sink into a subconscious coma vibrant with sensations and sounds subject to scientific analysis. But even Barger had never denied the transcendental gift of David Ross, even Barger believed firmly in the Seer of Brahan, whose predictions concerning the Seaforth Mackenzies had been verified so marvellously.
It was impossible to ignore the coincidence of David's visits. Twice David had sought him out, when he was in sore straits.
At whose bidding?
The question could not be exorcised by sneer or sophism. Mark had compared himself to an insect, a metaphor used ten thousand times by the agnostic school and properly, since none other is more expressive of the insignificance and ephemeral nature of man's body in relation to the universe. None the less Mark was aware that moral or spiritual facts, as a writer puts it, have no relation whatever to physical size, and that a man's soul can no more be measured with a yardstick than the cardinal virtues.
At whose bidding had David Ross been sent?
He travelled to London by a train which reached Waterloo just after five. As he neared the city his mood changed from one of doubt and perplexity to reckless satisfaction. The hansom which took him to Charing Cross passed over Waterloo Bridge and down the Strand, always crowded at that hour of the afternoon. Twice the hansom was stopped by the uplifted hand of a policeman. Each time it drew up opposite a bar to which thirsty souls were hurrying. Mark's ears could catch the sound of ice tinkling in long tumblers. Corks were popping intermittently. A woman's laugh rang out above the buzz of innumerable voices. Mark stared at the faces of the foot-passengers. Most of the men were returning from work. An air of relaxation informed them. The day had been insufferably hot, but now a breeze from the river was flooding the streets, deliciously cool, astringent, tonic.
The hansom turned in at the station gates, and a moment later a porter was asking Mark his destination. Mark gave the man instructions as he handed the cabby a florin.
"Thank ye, sir. 'Oliday times, sir."
"Yes," said Mark, smiling. All round him were men and women, hard-working Londoners, about to escape into the country or to the seashore after a year's unremitting grind. The great summer exodus was now at its height. Some of the humbler folk carried articles wherewith to beguile the leisure hours: musical instruments, shrimping-nets, spades and buckets, telescopes, and the inevitable hamper of food.
Mark, with time to spare after he had made arrangements for a coupé to Dover, caught the contagion of excitement and gaiety, and could enter into the feelings of an octogenarian who was renewing his youth by playing a penny whistle. Couples were numerous as birds in pairing-time. Mark looked at these with sympathetic interest. They drifted by, pair after pair, an eternal procession of Jacks and Jills. It struck Mark, not for the first time, that these couples were very youthful. And he felt that Betty and he shared their youth, that they had not waited too long. Presently a man of his own class approached, peering eagerly to right and left, consulting first his watch, and then the great clock. Mark watched him and followed him. The man was excited and nervous. Suddenly his face brightened; he ran forward, with both hands extended. "You have come at last," Mark heard him say. A pretty girl, her face suffused with blushes, murmured something, and the man answered hoarsely, "If you had chucked me, I should have cut my throat." Then they passed, arm in arm, laughing and chattering, into the crowd and out of sight. Mark looked at his watch. In less than ten minutes Betty would be here; she also would blush and smile; her hand would be on his arm; and together they would pass out of the noise and confusion into sweet, secluded spaces beyond!
His train backed into the station, and passengers began to take their places. Mark made sure that his coupé was reserved for him, but he would not allow the porter to put his traps into it.
"I am expecting a friend," he said; and the porter grinned. He walked back to the trysting-place under the clock, one of half a dozen who had agreed to meet beneath it. Overhead, the great dial recorded the flight of time with inexorable, inhuman deliberation. Mark was fascinated by the minute hand, creeping on and on, nearing the appointed hour. Betty was running things rather fine, he reflected. In less than seven minutes the train would be despatched.
Five minutes more glided by. The discordant noises of the station fell like the boom of distant breakers upon an ear attuned to the sound of one voice which out of all the voices in the universe was now mute. The porter approached, anxious and insistent. Mark stammered out a score of questions. The porter shook his head dismally.
"She must come," said Mark harshly.
As if in derisive answer, the locomotive of the train about to start whistled. Doors banged. The long line of carriages began to move.
"'Ere she is," said the porter phlegmatically.
Mark turned with thrilling pulses. A woman had rushed up to him, out of breath and scarlet in the face. That she had missed her train, and was distressed inconceivably, no one could doubt; but she was not Betty. Mark could have struck her. She stared stupidly at the vanishing train.
"It's gone," she said.
"Yes," said Mark grimly.
He turned from her to meet the inquisitive stare of a messenger boy. The boy stared unblinking, and then said, "You're Mr. Samphire?"
"Yes," said Mark.
"I'm to give you this."
He held out a letter. Mark took it, broke the seal, and read it, unmindful of porter and boy, who exchanged glances and winks; then he turned to the porter.
"Put my things into a hansom," he said in a dull voice.
"Yes, sir," said the porter.
The boy took one more look at Mark.
"That was a knock-out," he murmured to himself, "a knock-out—sure!"