He does not get peace; still less from inside himself. When there is no chance of seeing Jean for a while, he tries to bring her close by doing what she would like doing. Because she is a keen horsewoman, he enlarges his stable at Undershaw from one horse to six, and begins riding to hounds. Because Jean is musical, Arthur decides to learn the banjo, a decision Touie greets with her normal indulgence. Arthur now plays the Bombardon tuba and the banjo, though neither instrument is famed for its ability to accompany a classically trained mezzo-soprano voice. Sometimes he and Jean arrange to read the same book while they are apart – Stevenson, Scott's poems, Meredith; each likes to imagine the other on the same page, sentence, phrase, word, syllable.

Touie's preferred reading is The Imitation of Christ. She has her faith, her children, her comfort, her quiet occupations. Arthur's guilt ensures that he behaves towards her with the utmost consideration and gentleness. Even when her saintly optimism seems to border on a monstrous complacency, and he feels a rage gathering within him, he knows he cannot inflict it upon her. To his shame, he inflicts it upon his children, upon servants, caddies, employees of the railway and idiot journalists. He remains utterly dutiful towards Touie, utterly in love with Jean; yet in other parts of his life he becomes harder and more irritable. Patientia vincit reads the admonition in stained glass. Yet he feels he is growing a stony carapace. His natural expression is turning into a prosecutor's stare. He looks through others accusingly, because he is so used to looking through himself.

He begins to think of himself geometrically, as being located at the centre of a triangle. Its points are the three women of his life, its sides the iron bars of duty. Naturally, he has placed Jean at the apex, with Touie and the Mam at the base. But sometimes the triangle seems to rotate around him, and then his head spins.

Jean never offers the slightest complaint or reproach. She tells him that she cannot, will not, ever love another person; that waiting for him is not a trial but a joy; that she is entirely happy; that their hours together are the central truth of her life.

'My darling,' he says, 'do you think there was ever such a love story as ours since the world began?'

Jean feels her eyes fill with tears. At the same time, she is a little shocked. 'Arthur dearest, it is not a sporting competition.'

He accepts the rebuke. 'Even so, how many people have had their love tested as we have? I should think our case was about unique.'

'Does not every couple think their case unique?'

'It is a common delusion. Whereas with us-'

'Arthur!' Jean does not think boastfulness appropriate to love; she is inclined to find it vulgar.

'Even so,' he persists, 'even so I feel sometimes – no often – that there is a Guardian Spirit watching over us.'

'So do I,' Jean agrees.

Arthur does not find the notion of a Guardian Spirit fanciful, or even a banality. He finds it plausible and real.

Nevertheless, he needs an earthly witness to their love. He needs to offer proof. He takes to forwarding Jean's love letters to the Mam. He does not ask permission, or regard this as breaching a confidence. He needs it to be known that their feelings for one another are still as fresh as ever, and their trials not in vain. He tells the Mam to destroy the letters, and suggests a choice of method. She may either burn them, or – preferably – tear them into tiny pieces and scatter them among the flowers at Masongill Cottage.

Flowers. Each year, without fail, on the 15th of March, Jean receives a single snowdrop with a note from her beloved Arthur. A white flower once a year for Jean, and white lies all the year round for his wife.

And all the time, Arthur's fame increases. He is a clubman, a diner-out, a public figure. He becomes an authority on worlds beyond literature and medicine. He stands for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist in Edinburgh Central, where defeat is tempered by the recognition that much of politics is a mudbath. His views are canvassed, his support counted on. He is popular. He becomes more popular when he reluctantly submits to the joint will of the Mam and the British reading public: he resuscitates Sherlock Holmes and despatches him in the footprints of an enormous hound.

When the South African War breaks out, Arthur volunteers as a medical officer. The Mam does everything to dissuade him: she thinks his large frame a sure target for the Boer bullet; further, she judges the war nothing but a dishonourable scramble for gold. Arthur disagrees. It is his duty to go; he is acknowledged to have the strongest influence over young men – especially young sporting men – of anyone in England bar Kipling. He also thinks that this war is worth a white lie or two: the nation is getting into a fight which is a rightful one.

He leaves Tilbury on the Oriental. He is to be looked after on his adventure by Cleeve, the butler from Undershaw. Jean has filled his cabin with flowers, but will not come to say farewell; she cannot face a parting amid the thronged and thumping cheerfulness of a transport. As the whistle sounds for visitors to leave the ship the Mam bids him a tight-mouthed goodbye.

'I wish Jean had come,' he says, a small boy in a hulking suit.

'She is in the crowd,' the Mam replies. 'Somewhere. Hiding. She could not trust her feelings, she said.'

And with that she goes. Arthur rushes to the rail, furious and impotent; he watches his mother's white cap as if it will lead him to Jean. The gangplank is withdrawn, the ropes unslung; the Oriental pulls away, the hooter bellows and Arthur can see nothing and nobody through his tears. He lies down in his floral, fragrant cabin. The triangle, the triangle with iron bars, whirls inside his head, until it comes to rest with Touie at its apex. Touie, who instantly and devotedly approved this project, like every other he has ever undertaken; Touie, who asked him to write, but only if he has time, and who made no fuss. Dear Touie.

On the voyage out, his mood slowly lifts, as he begins to understand more fully why he has come. As a duty and example, of course; but also for selfish reasons. He has become a pampered and rewarded fellow, who needs some cleansing of the spirit. He has been safe too long, has lost muscle, and requires danger. He has been among women too long, and too confusingly, and yearns for the world of men. When the Oriental docks to take on coal at Cape de Verde, the Middlesex Yeomanry instantly organizes a cricket match on the first piece of flattened ground they can find. Arthur watches the game – against the staff of the telegraph station – with joy in his heart. There are rules for pleasure and rules for work. Rules, orders given and received, and a clear purpose. That is what he has come for.

At Bloemfontein the hospital tents are on the cricket field; the main ward is the pavilion. He sees much death; though more men are lost to enteric than to the Boer bullet. He takes five days' leave to follow the army's advance north, across the Vet river towards Pretoria. On his return, south of Brandfort, his party is stopped by a Basuto on a shaggy mount, who tells them of a British soldier lying wounded at some two hours' distance. They buy the fellow as a guide for a florin. There is a long ride through maize fields then out across the veldt. The wounded Englishman turns out to be a dead Australian: short, muscular, with a yellow waxen face. No. 410, New South Wales Mounted Infantry, now dismounted, his horse and his rifle gone. He has bled to death from a stomach wound. He lies with his pocket watch set up before him; he must have seen his life tick away by the minute. The watch has stopped at one o'clock in the morning. Beside him stands his empty water bottle, with a red ivory chessman balanced on the top of it. The other chessmen – more likely to be loot from a Boer farmstead than a soldier's pastime – are in his haversack. They gather his effects: a bandolier, a stylograph pen, a silk handkerchief, a clasp-knife, the Waterbury watch, plus £2 6s. 6d. in a frayed purse. The sticky body is slung over Arthur's horse, and a swarm of flies attends them on the two-mile ride to the nearest telegraph post. There they leave No. 410, New South Wales Mounted Infantry, for burial.