Chapter 9 AT KING'S CHARTERIS

Two years later, in April, Mark Samphire preached his first sermon at King's Charteris. He had wrestled with his stammer as Christian did with Apollyon, and he told Archie that he had reason to believe it was mastered when the brothers met at Pitt Hall upon the Saturday preceding Mark's appearance in the village pulpit.

"I passed some severe tests, before they admitted me to deacons' orders," he said.

Archie stared curiously at an unfamiliar Mark. "You don't look very fit."

"I've been like a bird in the hand of a fowler, a fluttering tomtit trying to escape. Ross rescued me. You must get to know Ross: he's a splendid fellow. I've talked to him a lot about you."

Archibald nodded, well pleased to find Mark's eyes lingered upon his handsome face and imposing figure with the same pride and affection as of yore, out he was conscious also of a mental change in his brother, divined rather than apprehended. Mark spoke with enthusiasm of work in congested districts, he gave lamentable details, he indicated colossal difficulties.

"And this sort of thing satisfies you?" said Archie heavily. "Although, as I take it, the results are visible. I like to see results. I keep a diary-of results. You were telling me just now of the difficulties of dealing with a shifting population: the people, for instance, round the London Docks. I couldn't undertake that sort of work."

"You want to count your sheaves," said Mark.

"I am ambitious," Archie admitted. "Aren't you?"

"Oh, yes. If I told you that I felt it in me to become a preacher, you would l-laugh perhaps."

"You've always had plenty to say, Mark."

"And if, one day, I could stand in the pulpit of such a fane as Westchester, if--"

"Why not?" said Archie.

"I try not to think of that. But those spires and pinnacles-I see them as in a vision."

"What will be your text to-morrow?"

"That verse from Isaiah: 'A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest.' I shall not t-touch upon the prophetical interpretation. I want to show that any man, the humblest and weakest, may prove a shelter to others."

Archie caught his enthusiasm.

"It is in you, Mark."

"In me, yes; but suppose it won't come out."

"Do you know that Betty Kirtling is here?"

"Here?" He turned to hide his flushed cheeks.

"She is with Mrs. Corrance. We are asked to lunch there to-morrow. I accepted for you. Betty ran down from town yesterday on purpose to hear your first sermon."

"Oh!"

"It's a great compliment; for she has become a much-sought-after person. I see her name continually in the papers. Lady Randolph tells me that you refuse all invitations to Randolph House. Is that wise?"

"Wise?" Mark laughed, and thrust out a lean leg. "Is this a leg for a gaiter?"

"That joke is worn threadbare," said Archie, with a slight frown. "I can't see why your work should cut you off from old friends who have your welfare at heart. Lord Randolph got me my present curacy. He would do as much and more for you."

"I shall certainly stick to Ross."

Next morning Mark rose early after an uneasy and almost sleepless night. He had been obsessed by a spirit of Betty. Whenever he closed his eyes she came to him. "She is the creature of my dreams," he told himself impatiently. None the less she dominated his waking hours, she stood behind that ever-increasing hope of becoming a great preacher. He had consumed gallons of midnight oil in the composition of sermons declaimed in unfrequented spots of Victoria Park. Now, the thought of preaching to the woman he loved filled him with bitter-sweet excitement. He dressed and went out into the park. Presently he came to an elm out of which flew some jackdaws chattering volubly. Their harsh notes brought back a morning when Archie and he, small schoolboys, had scaled this very tree in search of jackdaws' eggs. Yes; there was the hole, high up, out of which Archibald by his superior height and strength had secured the spoil.

Mark sat down, despite the protests of the jackdaws, and faced his thoughts. The talk with Archie of the night before came back to him. He had heard Archie preach. Archie's matter, perhaps, to the critical mind left something to be desired; but his manner was admirable and his voice clear, persuasive, melodious, an instrument of incomparable power and delicacy. Did Mark envy his brother? Did he grudge him a success already achieved? Did he grudge him-a subtler point-the greater success which undoubtedly he would achieve? To these questions he answered sincerely-"No."

Leaving Archibald, his thoughts flew straight and swift to Betty. She had come to King's Charteris to hear him preach? Why? His heart flamed; for Archie had preached his first sermon in the village church. Had Betty travelled from town to hear Samphire major? No.

When he returned to Pitt Hall, he had made a sort of compromise with his pride, his conscience, and his God. Time was when he abhorred compromise, but David Ross had said that a life without compromise must prove entirely selfish or so selfless in its aims as to be abnormal. Mark admitted the possibility of breakdown. And if silence were imposed, he must shoulder the burden. Speech, on the other hand, if it were truly his, included speech with Betty. He felt assured that she expected him to speak, that she had travelled to King's Charteris to hear him speak. He could not have said why this conviction thrilled every nerve in his body; it simply was so.

During the first part of the service, Mark found time to study the faces of the congregation. Betty, sitting beside Mrs. Corrance, looked pale and anxious. Mark remembered that she had not entered the church since the Admiral's funeral. Having keen sight, he detected traces of tears, which moved him profoundly. Behind her, with his broad back against one of the pillars, sat the Squire, rigidly upright. He had come prepared to hear his boy-"the best boy in the world, sir"-preach a fine sermon. During the rector's long and somewhat dry discourses, the Squire always assumed an attitude of profound attention, his fine head inclined upon his massive chest, his eyes and lips meditatively closed. If suspicious sounds had not escaped through his nose, none would have dared to accuse him of napping. But everybody, from the rector to the latest breeched urchin, knew that the dear man slept like a humming-top from introduction to peroration. He would not sleep to-day. Expectation, tempered by anxiety, informed his expression, the expression assumed by him at Lord's, when his sons were walking to the wicket. Literally interpreted, it said: "A Samphire may fail, but it is not likely to happen." Mark glanced from his father to Mrs. Samphire. Her prominent eyes, set too far apart, like a sheep's, were slightly congested; her puffy cheeks were flushed. It struck Mark that she would accept failure on his part with Christian resignation. She resented the fact that Mark was the favourite son of the Squire, who may have seen the quality in his youngest born which distinguished the mother, and which Mark alone inherited. Mrs. Samphire was inordinately jealous of the first wife.

Mark's thoughts wandered with his eyes. Just below the pulpit he saw Wadge, the head keeper, a thin, hard-bitten, sharp-featured man, whose brown face was framed in bushy red whiskers. Many a day's sport had Mark enjoyed with Wadge. He recalled a frosty morning when Jim Corrance, indiscreetly thrusting his hand into a burrow, had been nailed by a ferret. Behind Wadge was Bulpett, the butcher, a burly man, one of the churchwardens, and reputed to be worth a snug ten thousand pounds. What a lot of rats there used to be in his old slaughter-house before it was pulled down! Once Bulpett had caught Archie and Mark peeping through a chink in the slaughter-house at a calf he was about to kill. What silly idiots they felt when Bulpett politely invited them to come inside. And then Bulpett had laughed and said that he would send a nice piece of veal to Pitt Hall.

The rector gave out the psalms of the day. Archie's splendid voice filled the church. And who was this singing so shrilly and so abominably flat? Why dear old Ellen, to be sure-his first nurse-who must have walked all the way from Cranberry-Orcas. Ellen lived in a cottage near Cranberry brook, wherein Archie and he used to catch trout by the willow at the foot of her cabbage patch. She had been maid to the first Mrs. Samphire; and when Miss Selina Lamb came to Pitt Hall, Ellen married a porter, who had waited for her fifteen years. Mark knew the porter well. He was not an agreeable person, being rheumatic and asthmatic-and crusty in consequence-but at the time of the marriage the Samphire boys agreed that Ellen was wise in preferring him to the Ewe, their nickname for the stepmother.

How his thoughts were wandering!

With an effort he led them from the nave into the chancel. In this church a famous poet and scholar had ministered for more than a quarter of a century. The ancients from the workhouse, who sat in the front seats of the aisle, wearing white smock frocks, had been ruddy-faced youths when the poet first came to King's Charteris. And in the village the influence of this saint remained a vital force, although he had been dead nearly twenty years. This thought moved Mark to pray that he might be given the gift of tongues, which is not the faculty of speaking many languages, but the infinitely greater power of making our fellow-creatures feel what we feel-of touching them to issues finer than those which ordinarily engross them, of so setting forth what is strong and tender and true that other things, no matter what they may be, shrink and shrivel into the trivial and insignificant.

The psalms came to an end. Standing at the great brass lectern, Mark read the lessons without stutter or pause in a voice slightly harsh, yet susceptible of modulation. Later, in the same harsh, penetrating tone he gave out his text. The scrapings of feet, the rustle of skirts, the occasional cough were silenced. Mark began his sermon by asking his hearers to consider man's relation to others: a theme informed by him with phrases and illustrations drawn from personal observation of village life. Betty Kirtling felt as if she were peering into a magic mirror, wherein she saw herself illumined by a strange light, and this shining image was no phantom of the imagination, but her true substantial self, the woman as God intended her to be, with finite aims and appetites subordinate and subservient to the majestic design and purpose of the Infinite.

To her right were the village boys, a mob of sluggish-minded urchins, the raw material out of which is fashioned the Slowshire yokel. But each boy-so Betty noted-was gazing at Mark with intelligence and affection. He held them in thrall. The hard lines about Mrs. Samphire's eyes and mouth softened. The Squire was staring into the face of the preacher-seeing, hearing, feeling the mother of his son.

And then, when the great thing for which Mark had laboured as patiently as Demosthenes, seemed within his grasp, when he had proved to the meanest understanding that he had something to say which the world would hear gladly, his infirmity seized him. In the middle of a phrase he began to stutter. His face grew convulsed, his thin hand went to his throat, as if seeking to tear from it the abominable lump. But no articulate word followed. Only a stutter falling with sibilant hiss upon the dismayed congregation.

At that moment a nervous, hysterical girl tittered. The woman seated next to her glared indiscreet rebuke. The wretched creature burst into discordant laughter. Betty heard the girl's laughter and saw Mark's twisted face. His eyes met hers in a glance which she could not interpret, as the girl who had laughed was led weeping from the church. The great oak door clanged behind her, and in the silence which followed Mark attempted to continue his sermon, but the last desperate effort to conquer a physical disability cannot be described. Betty covered her face. Old Ellen burst into piteous sobs. Mark turned towards the altar, the congregation rising. Then, with a firm step, he descended the steps of the pulpit.

The brothers came out of the vestry together, passed in silence through the churchyard, where Easter flowers were shining in the shadows cast by the lindens, crossed the village street, and strolled up the lane which led to Westchester Downs. In the street a small crowd had collected, including Wadge and Bulpett. Further down, by the lychgate, stood the Samphire landau. Mark saw a burly figure, and a face, redder even than usual. When the Squire perceived that his sons were crossing the street he got into the carriage.

"It's hard on him," said Mark. "The dear old man was so certain I should score."

The crowd made way; all the men touched their hats; upon every face was inscribed sympathy and affection. Bulpett advanced, holding out his huge hand. "Gawd bless ee, sir, we be tarr'ble sorry we be; but try again, Master Mark, try again!"

"Thank you, Bulpett," said Mark, without stammering. He glanced at the circle of kindly faces. "By Jove! it's good to have such friends."

The brothers walked on till they reached a bank flaming with primroses, and sloping to the old chalk-pit, where as boys they used to find fossils.

"You will try again?" said Archie nervously.

"Again and again," Mark answered. "All the same, I have the feeling that I shall never be a preacher."

The words burst vehemently from his lips. He was very pale, but calm. Archibald seemed quite overcome. Mark then said slowly: "I am not fit to preach."

"What?"

"I-I felt this morning a desire for material success which appalled me. I had touched you-all of you-to something fine, but-I cannot talk about it, even to you."

He paused with his eyes upon a distant cloud.

"That wretched girl!" groaned Archibald.

Mark's quietness seemed to exasperate the elder brother.

"I can't follow you," he said irritably. "Why shouldn't one want the good things of this world: power, position, honour?"

"Don't I want 'em? Great heavens! don't I hunger for 'em? But if they are not to be mine, what then?"

"You kiss the rod? In your place I should be furious, beside myself with resentment."

"Good old Archie," said Mark, taking his brother's hand and pressing it.

He stood up, reminding Archie that Mrs. Corrance had asked them to lunch with her.

"Betty cried like a baby," said Archie irrelevantly.

Mrs. Corrance received them in the small hall of her house, welcoming Mark with a mute sympathy more eloquent than words. Mark broke the silence as Betty came forward.

"I made a sad mess of it," he said, smiling genially.

But as he was washing his hands in Jim's room upstairs, his face hardened. He went to the window which overlooked Mrs. Corrance's rose-garden. At the end of a pergola, glorious in June with the blossoms of an immense Crimson Rambler, he could see a small arbour wherein Mrs. Corrance was in the habit of sitting whenever the day proved fine. This arbour was the prettiest thing in the garden, and the one which brought most vividly to mind his childhood. Here, many and many a time, Mrs. Corrance had read to and played with Jim and the Samphire boys. He could just remember how dreary and neglected this garden had been when the arbour was built. Out of a chaos of weeds and stones and broken crockery (for the outgoing tenant had used this backyard as a dumping-ground for rubbish) Mrs. Corrance had created a lovely little world, a tiny domain peculiarly her own, fragrant with memories sweet as the thyme and lavender of its herbaceous borders. As a boy, Mark often wondered why time and care were lavished upon a piece of ground so insignificant. Now he knew. Mrs. Corrance had had the joy of fashioning beauty out of ugliness.

At luncheon he told some anecdotes of life in Stepney. Archibald's gloomy face and Betty's tell-tale eyelids kept his tongue wagging, but his thoughts were in the pulpit of King's Charteris Church or in Mrs. Corrance's rose-garden. The one seemed to have affinity with the other. Would his life remain a wilderness of weeds and broken crockery?

After luncheon he found himself alone with Betty in the arbour. He had dreaded this moment; so had she; and yet each was sensible of a harmony no more to be interpreted than the murmur of the wind in tall grasses.

"What are your plans?" she asked.

Indirectly he answered by speaking of life at the Camford Mission. She listened, computing the distance between Randolph House and Bethnal Green.

"You talk as if work-such work, too,-were all that is left."

He was silent. Her face, delicately flushed, brimming over with a tender and imaginative pity, implored him to speak.

"Work lies between me and what is left," he answered slowly, watching the pulse beat in the blue veins of her white neck.

"You may be famous yet," she whispered. "This morning when you began I-I almost forgot that it was you. And when I looked round, everybody, even the village boys, were spellbound."

"But when I f-f-failed," said Mark hurriedly, "you, you felt what I f-f-felt, that, that--" He put his hand to his throat, unable to finish the phrase because of the detestable lump rising and swelling in his throat.

"You thought that because I cried."

He nodded, seeing again her despairing gesture.

"I am sorry I was such a poor friend," she said quickly. "I ought not to have cried. I behaved like a weak fool. You will succeed yet, Mark. I know it; I know it."

The lump in his throat seemed to dissolve.

"But," she continued, "if-if it should be otherwise, do you think that I would care? Do you measure my friendship for you by the world's foot-rule?"

Mark seized her hands.

"God bless you!" he said passionately. "God bless you, dear, dear Betty!" Then abruptly, with a strange smile, he added, "Good-bye!"

He had gone before she could recover her wits or her voice. She stood alone, a piteous figure, truly feminine inasmuch as she was not able to pursue the man.

"Oh, oh!" she cried, covering her face as she had done in the church. "I cannot bear the misery behind his smiles."