Meantime, Archibald was in Mark's bedroom, talking of the sermon to be preached on the morrow. He had a score of unessential corrections to suggest. A slight amplification here, another word there, an apt quotation, revealed the student of effect, the rhetorician. Mark admitted that his brother had improved the manuscript.
"I have thought of nothing else," said Archie. "At first I disliked preaching another man's sermon, but now I feel as if a lot of it were mine."
"It is all yours," said Mark, smiling. "I have given it to you, haven't I? Only, remember, Betty must know."
"Why?" demanded Archie. "Women will talk and——" he shrugged his broad shoulders. "If the Dean heard of it—— The Dean, you know, is civil, but he has a cut-and-dried manner which I find rather trying. He's a radical, too. We always have had radical deans at Westchester. With my political views, my faith in institutions, and—er—so forth he is not in accord. He told me with really amazing candour that I owed my preferment entirely to my vocal chords. I should have thought a Samphire of Pitt had claims, but no—he repudiates all that. His own father was quite obscure: a bookseller, I've been told, only don't quote me. One can't be too careful in a cathedral town. Well, not to put a fine point on it, the Dean underrates me. I've felt it keenly. When I was singing to him the other night, in his own drawing-room, he went to sleep: he did, indeed. Still, to give him his due, he is almost a monomaniac on the subject of the cathedral, and this sermon ought to surprise him...."
Mark nodded absently. His face seemed thinner and paler since he had parted from Betty less than an hour ago. As in a dream, he heard Archie's voice droning on about the Dean and his Chapter, but he saw only Betty's face, Betty's eyes, which seemed to fill the universe. She loved him! Infirm of body, halting of speech, he had been able to inspire passion in so splendid a fellow-creature. The glory of it filled his soul.
Archie, who must not be blamed for enjoying the sound of his own voice, talked on and on. It was past midnight. Down in the smoking-room young Kirtling, one could wager, was holding forth on the subject of fox-hunting. Jim Corrance, with an ironical smile upon his slightly melancholy face, was listening politely, thinking, no doubt, of some future "coup" in the money market. Lord Randolph, with a long, thin cigar in his mouth, was certainly alive to the possibility of a political crisis. Pynsent, watching the three other men from the depths of an immense chair, was busy fitting their faces into a picture. All this, and much more, passed through Mark's mind.
"Good night," Archie was saying. "We've had a long yarn, haven't we?"
He stood up, extending his hand, which Mark grasped. Opposite to the brothers stood a large cheval glass. Mark's eye fell on this, and straightway the gracious image of Betty vanished, and in her place he saw himself and Archie standing beside each other with linked hands. The contrast between the brothers was so startling that the younger allowed an exclamation to leap from his lips.
"Look," he said, when Archie lifted his handsome brows in interrogation; "who would believe that the same mother bore us?"
The mirror, indeed, seemed to take pleasure in making more of Archibald and less of Mark than was warrantable. The fine massive figure, the smooth, fresh-coloured cheeks, the flaxen curls of the one accentuated the leanness, the pallor, the fragility of the other. Only when you looked at the eyes you recognised the vitality of spirit in Mark. Lady Randolph described the eyes of the brothers aptly enough, when she said that Mark's reminded her of fire and Archie's of—water.