Only on Sunday, his last day, he evaded one ordeal by limiting his attendance at church to early service with his mother. Bel had little taste for early rising, and Mark did not press the point.
In the afternoon he delighted his humbler friends—wives of the gamekeeper, the coachman and the manager of his industrial colony—by calling on them in full uniform. Though he occasionally wore the kilt and glengarry at Inveraig, his Hampshire folk had never seen him thus attired; and their open admiration was so embarrassing that, after several hours of it, he returned limp and exhausted, clamouring for whisky and soda and the society of Bel, who could always be trusted to keep her admiration within bounds.
To her he devoted the evening; and early on Monday the more personal farewells must be said; the cheerful, casual note vigorously maintained. It was not ‘the real thing’ yet; and the women, in their hearts, prayed that ‘the real thing’ might be deferred for many months to come. Meantime, unless England was favoured with an invasion, he would be safe enough on the south-east coast of Scotland; and later on, if rooms were available, he would permit his mother and Bel to intrude upon his violent industry for a week.
Keith drove them all to the station, and behold, outside the gray stone gateway, an impromptu guard of honour lined the road to Westover: villagers and farm hands, weavers and metal-workers, women, children and ineligible men. At sight of the motor, they broke into shouts and ragged cheers that would have moved a heart many degrees less responsive than the heart of Mark Forsyth.
‘Drive slower, man,’ he said to Keith; and, standing up in the car, he waved his glengarry—giving them shout for shout—till he could no more.
That vision of him, so standing, with the morning light in his eyes, the sun upon his chestnut-red hair and his kilt blown back by the wind, remained stamped indelibly upon his mother’s brain....
CHAPTER XIV.
‘Hearts that are as one high heart,
Withholding nought from doom or bale,
Burningly offered up—to bleed,