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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57640 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  TWO MEN:
+
+  A ROMANCE OF SUSSEX
+
+  BY
+
+  ALFRED OLLIVANT
+
+
+
+  _Necessity the Spring of Faith
+  and Mould of Character_
+
+
+
+  GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  1919
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1919, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+  _All rights reserved, including that of
+  translation into foreign languages,
+  including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+  Bob, Son of Battle
+  Danny
+  The Gentleman
+  Redcoat Captain
+  The Taming of John Blunt
+  The Royal Road
+  The Brown Mare
+  Boy Woodburn
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  BEACHBOURNE
+  AND THE FRIENDS I MADE THERE
+  1901-1911
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+
+  BEAU-NEZ
+
+  BOOK I
+
+  FATHER AND SON
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+  I Mr. Trupp
+  II Edward Caspar
+  III Anne Caspar
+  IV Old Man Caspar
+  V Ernie Makes His Appearance
+  VI The Manor-House
+  VII Hans Caspar's Will
+
+
+  BOOK II
+
+  THE TWO BROTHERS
+
+  VIII Beachbourne
+  IX The Two Boys
+  X Old and New
+  XI The Study
+  XII Alf Shows His Colours
+  XIII Alf Makes a Remark
+  XIV Evil
+  XV Mr. Trupp Introduces the Lash
+  XVI Father, Mother and Son
+  XVII Ernie Goes for a Soldier
+
+
+  BOOK III
+
+  THE SOLDIER
+
+  XVIII Ernie Goes East
+  XIX The Regiment
+  XX Ernie in India
+  XXI The Return of the Soldier
+  XXII Old Town
+  XXIII The Changed Man
+  XXIV Alf
+  XXV The Churchman
+  XXVI Mr. Pigott
+
+
+  BOOK IV
+
+  RUTH BOAM
+
+  XXVII The Hohenzollern Hotel
+  XXVIII The Third Floor
+  XXIX The Man of Affairs
+  XXX Reality
+  XXXI The Ride on the Bus
+  XXXII On The Hill
+  XXXIII Under the Stars
+
+
+  BOOK V
+
+  CAPTAIN ROYAL
+
+  XXXIV His Arrival
+  XXXV His Origin
+  XXXVI The Captain Begins His Siege
+  XXXVII He Drives a Sap
+  XXXVIII The Serpent
+  XXXIX The Lash Again
+  XL Clash of Males
+  XLI The Decoy Pond
+  XLII The Captain's Flight
+  XLIII The Ebb-Tide
+  XLIV Ernie Leaves the Hotel
+
+
+  BOOK VI
+
+  THE QUEST
+
+  XLV Old Mus Boam
+  XLVI Ernie Turns Philosopher
+  XLVII Alf Tries to Help
+  XLVIII Two Meetings
+  XLIX Alf Marks Time
+
+
+  BOOK VII
+
+  THE OUTCAST
+
+  L The Crumbles
+  LI Evelyn Trupp
+  LII The Return of the Outcast
+  LIII The Find
+  LIV The Brooks
+
+
+  BOOK VIII
+
+  TREASURE TROVE
+
+  LV The Pool
+  LVI Frogs' Hall
+  LVII The Surprise
+  LVIII The Dower-House
+  LIX Alf Tries to Save a Soul
+  LX The End of a Chapter
+
+
+
+
+BEAU-NEZ
+
+BOOK I
+
+FATHER AND SON
+
+
+
+
+TWO MEN
+
+BEAU-NEZ
+
+Old Beau-Nez shouldered out into the sea, immense, immovable, as when
+the North-men, tossing off him in their long-boats, had first named him
+a thousand years before.
+
+Like a lion asleep athwart the doors of light, his head massive upon
+his paws, his flanks smooth as marble, he rested.
+
+The sea broke petulantly and in vain against the boulders that strewed
+his feet.  He lay squandered in the sunshine that filled the hollows in
+his back and declared the lines of his ribs gaunt beneath the pelt.
+
+Overhead larks poured down rivulets of song from the brimming bowl of
+heaven.  The long-drawn swish of the sea, a sonorous under-current that
+came and went in rhythmical monotone, rose from the foot of the cliff
+to meet the silvery rain of sound and mingle with it in deep and
+mysterious harmony.
+
+It was May.  The sides of the coombes were covered with cloth of gold:
+for the gorse was in glory, and filled the air with heavy fragrance;
+while the turf, sweet with thyme, was bejewelled with a myriad variety
+of tiny flowers.
+
+In earth and sea and sky there was a universal murmuring content, as
+though after labour, enduring for æons, the Mother of Time had at last
+brought forth her Son and, as she nursed him, crooned her thankfulness.
+
+Out of the West, along the back of the Downs, dipping and dancing to
+the curve of the land like the wake of a ship over a billowy sea, a
+rough road swept up to the head, passing a dew-pond, the old
+race-course still fenced in, and a farm amid stacks at the head of a
+long valley that curled away towards a lighthouse pricking up white
+against the blue on the summit of the cliff in the eye of the misty
+morning sun.
+
+The name of the lighthouse was Bel- or Baal-tout, reminding men by its
+title of the god their fathers worshipped on high places here and
+elsewhere throughout the world with human sacrifices--the god of the
+Philistine of every age and country, and not least our own.
+
+On Beau-nez itself a tall flagstaff overtopped a little cluster of
+white coast-guard stations, outside which a tethered goat grazed.
+
+Beside the flagstaff stood a man, watching a tan-sailed Thames barge
+leisurely flapping across the shining floor of water beneath.
+
+He too was massive: a big man with swarthy eyes set in a pale face,
+very sure of himself.  So much you could tell by the carriage of his
+head, and the way he stood on his feet.  He was not used to opposition,
+it was clear, and would not brook it; while the coat with the astrakhan
+collar he was wearing added to his air of consequence.
+
+Behind him in the road stood the dingy fly and moth-eaten horse that
+had brought him up the hill.
+
+The big man turned his back on the sun and walked slowly to the top of
+the steep coombe which overlooked the town that lay beneath him like a
+fairy city in the mists along the foam-lined edge of the bay, reaching
+out over the Levels to the East, and flinging its red-coated
+skirmishers up the lower slopes of the Downs.
+
+"How the town grows!" mused the big man.
+
+A brown excrescence on the smooth turf of the coombe beneath him caught
+his eye.  At first he mistook it for a badger's earth; then he saw that
+it was a man lying on his back.  The man's hands were behind his head,
+and his soft hat over his eyes; but he was not sleeping.  One lank leg
+was crossed over a crooked knee, and the dangling foot kicked
+restlessly to and fro.
+
+That foot was sandalled.
+
+The man in the astrakhan coat slowly descended towards the recumbent
+figure.  His eyes were ironical, his expression almost grim.
+
+For a moment he stood looking down upon the unconscious dreamer whose
+pale brown hair peeped from beneath a hat of a shape more familiar in
+the Quartier Latin than on English shores.
+
+Then he prodded the other in the side with his toe.
+
+The young fellow roused with a start and blinked up into the big man's
+face.
+
+"Hullo, f--father," he cried with a slight stutter, and rose in
+perturbation: a ramshackle young fellow, taller even than his father,
+but entirely lacking the other's girth and authoritative presence.  A
+soft beard framed his long face, and he was wearing the low flannel
+collar that in the seventies was the height of bad form.
+
+"Just like you, Ned," said the elder with a grimness that was not
+entirely unkind.
+
+The son bent and brushed his knees unnecessarily.  His face twitched,
+but he did not attempt to answer.
+
+"Your mother's very ill," said the big man casually.  He took a letter
+from his pocket and thrust it towards his son.
+
+The young man read it and handed it back.
+
+"Is she h--happy?" he asked, his face moved and moving.
+
+"She's away all the time--like her son," the other answered; and added
+more mildly--"She doesn't know any one now--not even the latest
+parson."  He turned and climbed the hill again.
+
+On the summit by the flagstaff he paused and looked round deliberately.
+
+"Might build an hotel here," he said thoughtfully.  "Should pay."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+FATHER AND SON
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MR. TRUPP
+
+When in the late seventies young Mr. Trupp, abandoning the use of
+Lister's spray, but with meticulous antiseptic precautions derived from
+the great man at University Hospital, performed the operation of
+variotomy on the daughter of Sir Hector Moray, and she lived, his
+friends called it a miracle, his enemies a lucky fluke.
+
+All were agreed that it had never been done before, and the more
+foolish added that it would never be done again.
+
+Sir Hector was a well-known soldier; and the operation made the growing
+reputation of the man who performed it.
+
+William Trupp was registrar at the Whitechapel at the time, and a
+certainty for the next staff appointment.  When, therefore, while the
+columns of the Lancet were still hot with the controversy that raged
+round the famous case, the young man told Sir Audrey Rivers, whose
+house-surgeon he had been, that he meant to leave London and migrate to
+the country, the great orthopædist had said in his grim way to this his
+favourite pupil:
+
+"If you do, I'll never send you a patient."
+
+Even in his young days Mr. Trupp was remarkable for the gruff geniality
+which characterized him to the end.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said with that shrewd smile of his.  "I must go
+all the same."
+
+Next day Sir Audrey read that his understudy was engaged to Evelyn,
+only daughter of Sir Hector Moray of Pole.
+
+Evelyn Moray came of warrior ancestry; and her father, known on the
+North-West Frontier as Mohmund Moray, was not the least distinguished
+of his line.  The family had won their title as Imperialists, not on
+the platform, but by generations of laborious service in the uttermost
+marches of the Empire.  The Morays were in fact one of those rare
+families of working aristocrats, which through all the insincerities of
+Victorian times remained true to the old knightly ideal of service as
+the only test of leadership.
+
+Evelyn then had been brought up in a spacious atmosphere of high
+endeavour and chivalrous gaiety remote indeed from the dull and narrow
+circumstance of her lover's origin.  Profoundly aware of it, the young
+man was determined that his lady should not suffer as the result of her
+choice.
+
+Moreover he loved the sea; he loved sport; and, not least, he was
+something of a natural philosopher.  That is to say, he cherished
+secret dreams as to the part his profession was to play in that gradual
+Ascent of Man which Darwin had recently revealed to the young men of
+William Trupp's generation.  Moreover he held certain theories as to
+the practice of his profession, which he could never work out in Harley
+Street.  It was his hope to devote his life to a campaign against that
+enemy of the human race--the tubercle bacillus.  And to the realization
+of his plans the sea and open spaces were necessary.
+
+A colleague at the Whitechapel, who was his confidant, said one day:--
+
+"Why don't you look at Beachbourne?  It's a coming town.  And you get
+the sea and the Downs.  It's ideal for your purpose."
+
+"It's so new," protested the young surgeon.  "I can't take that girl
+out of that home and plant her down in a raw place like Beachbourne.
+She'd perish like a violet in Commercial Road."
+
+"There's an Old Town," replied the other....
+
+
+In those days, Mr. Trupp kept greyhounds at the _Pelham Arms_, Lewes,
+and spent his Saturday afternoon scampering about Furrel Beacon and
+High-'nd-Over and the flanks of the hills above Aldwoldston and the
+Ruther Valley.
+
+In the evening, after his sport, he would ride over to spend the night
+at Pole, which lay "up country," as the shepherds and carters in the
+Down villages still called the Weald.
+
+One spring evening he arrived very late by gig instead of on horseback,
+and coming from the East instead of from the South.  The beautiful
+girl, awaiting him somewhat coldly at the gate, was about to chide him,
+when she saw his face; and her frosts melted in a moment.
+
+"My dear," he said, dismounting and taking her by both hands, "I've
+done it."
+
+"What have you done?" she cried, a-gleam like an April evening after
+rain.
+
+"Taken the Manor-house at Beachbourne."
+
+
+Six months later Mr. Trupp was settled in his home, with for capital
+the love of a woman who believed in him, his own natural capacity and
+shrewd common sense, and a blue greyhound bitch called She.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+EDWARD CASPAR
+
+The days when the parish priest knew the secrets of every family within
+his cure have long gone by, never to return.
+
+His place in the last generation has been taken to a great extent by
+the family doctor, who in his turn perhaps will give way to the
+psycho-therapist in the generation to come.
+
+Mr. Trupp had not been long in Beachbourne before he began to know
+something of the inner histories of many of the families about him.
+Those shrewd eyes of his, peering short-sightedly through pince-nez as
+he rolled about the steep streets of Old Town, or drove in his hooded
+gig along the broad esplanades of New, allowed little to escape them.
+Moreover he was a man of singular discretion; and his fellow citizens,
+men alike and women, learned soon to trust him and never had cause to
+regret their confidence.
+
+It was quite in the early days of his residence in the little township
+on the hill that the young surgeon received a letter from Mr. Caspar,
+the famous railway contractor, asking him to look after--_my boy, Ned,
+who has seen good to pitch his tent on your accursed Downs--heaven
+knows why_.
+
+Hans Caspar owed his immense success in life as much to his habit of
+almost brutal directness as to anything, save perhaps his equally
+brutal energy.
+
+A Governor of the Whitechapel Hospital, and a regular attendant at the
+Board-meetings, he knew the young surgeon well, believed in him, and
+did not hesitate to tell the naked truth about his son.
+
+_He's not a scamp_, he wrote.  _Nobody could say that of Ned.  He's got
+no enemies but himself.  You know his trouble.  His address is 60,
+Rectory Walk.  Look him up.  He won't come to you--shy as a roe-deer.
+But once you're established connection he'll love you like a dog.  I've
+told him I'm sending you_.
+
+In a postscript he added,
+
+_I'll foot the bill.  I keep the boy mighty short.  It's the one thing
+I can do to help him_.
+
+Mr. Trupp, in those days none too busy, went....
+
+
+The Manor, a solid Queen Anne house, fronted on to the street opposite
+the black-timbered _Star_, where of old pilgrims who had landed from
+the continent at Pevensey would, after a visit to Holy Well in
+Coombe-in-the-Cliff under Beau-nez, pass their first night before
+taking the green-way that led along the top of the Downs to the _Lamb_
+at Aldwoldston on the road to the shrine of good St. Richard-de-la-Wych
+at Chichester.
+
+Mr. Trupp, muffled to the chin--for even in those days he was
+cultivating the cold which he was to cherish to the end--climbed Church
+Street, little changed for centuries, passed the massive-towered St.
+Michael's on the Kneb, and turned to the left at Billing's Corner.
+Here at once were evidences of the change that had driven Squire Caryll
+to forsake the home of his fathers and retreat westward to the valley
+of the Ruther before the onrush of those he called the barbarians.
+
+"They've squeezed me out, the ----!" the old man said with tears in his
+eyes.  "But, by God, I've made em pay!"
+
+The Manor farm had been cut up into building lots; the Moot, as the
+land under the Kneb crowned by the parish-church was still called,
+would shortly follow suit; and Saffrons Croft, with its glory of great
+elms that stood like a noble tapestry between the Downs and the sea,
+was being turned by a progressive Town Council into a public park.
+
+At the back of Church Street old and new met and clashed unhappily; a
+walnut peeping amid houses, an ancient fig tree prisoned in a back
+yard, a length of grim flint wall patching red brick.
+
+Here a row of substantial blue-slated houses, larger than cottages,
+less pretentious than villas, each with its tiny garden characteristic
+of its occupant, stood at right angle to the Downs and looked across
+open ground to Beech-hangar and the spur which hides Beau-nez from
+view.  A white house across the way, standing apart in pharisaic
+aloofness amid a gloom of unhappy-seeming trees, told that this was
+Rectory Walk.  At the end of the Walk a new road set a boundary to the
+town.  Beyond the road a dark crescent-sea of cultivated land washed
+the foot of the Downs which rose here steep as a green curtain,
+shutting off with radiant darkness the wonder-world that lay beyond in
+the light of setting suns.
+
+No. 60 was almost opposite the Rectory.
+
+Mr. Trupp, as he entered the gate, remarked that in the upper window of
+the house there was a chocolate coloured card, on which was printed in
+deep grooved silver letters the word _Apartments_.
+
+A woman opened to him, but kept the door upon the chain.  Through the
+crack he glanced at her, and saw at once that but for her hardness she
+would have been beautiful, while even in her hardness there was
+something of the quality of a sword.
+
+"Is Mr. Caspar in?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+Whether the woman was surly or suspicious, he wasn't sure; but she
+undid the chain.
+
+"Will you step inside?" she said, thawing ever so little.  "Mr. Trupp,
+isn't it?"
+
+She stood back to let him pass.  Her blue overall, falling straight to
+her feet, showed the fine lines of her figure; her eyes met his
+straight as the point of a lance and much the colour of one; her lips
+were fine almost to cruelty, her nose fine; she was fine all through as
+an aristocrat, if her accent and manner were those of a small
+shop-keeper; and her colouring was of finest porcelain.
+
+She showed him into the room upon the right.
+
+The room was unusual.  There was little furniture in it, and that
+little exquisite; no carpet, but a lovely Persian rug lay before the
+fire.  All round the walls and half-way up them, were oak book-shelves
+with glass doors of a pattern new to Mr. Trupp, but designed he was
+sure in Germany.  On the top of one of them was a Jacobean tankard with
+a crest upon it; in the bow a broad writing-table with the new
+roll-top.  On the brown wall were two pictures, both familiar to the
+young surgeon who was interested in Art and knew something of it:
+Botticelli's _Primavera_ and a perfect print of young Peter Lely's
+famous _Cavalier_--Raoul Beauregard, the long-faced languorous first
+Earl Ravenwood, who died so beautifully in his master's arms at Naseby.
+
+"I had rather lost my crown," the stricken monarch had remarked, so we
+all as children read in our nursery histories.
+
+"Sire," the wounded man had answered.  "You are losing little.  I am
+gaining all...."
+
+As Mr. Trupp entered, a very tall man, smoking by the fireside, put
+down a volume of Swinburne, and rose.  He was as unusual as the room in
+which he lived.  Young though he was, he had a soft brown beard that
+suited his weak and charming face and served partially to hide an
+uncertain mouth and chin.  It was noon, but he was wearing slippers and
+a quilted dressing gown, with the arms of a famous Cambridge College
+worked in silk on the breast-pocket.  Certainly he was hardly the type
+you expected to find in the little room of a tiny house in a backwater
+of a seaside resort.
+
+His long face had something of the contour of a sheep, and something of
+a sheep's expression.  In a flash of recognition Mr. Trupp glanced from
+it to that of the love-locked cavalier on the wall above his head.
+Edward Caspar too had those unforgettable eyes--shy, fugitive, and
+above all far too sensitive.  He had, moreover, the delightful ease of
+manner of one who has been bred at the most ancient of public schools
+and universities and has responded to the somewhat stagnant atmosphere
+of those old-world treasuries of dignity and peace.  But a less shrewd
+eye than Mr. Trupp's would have detected behind the apparent assurance
+a complete lack of self-confidence.
+
+"My father tut--tut--told me you were going to be kind enough to
+lul--lul--look me up," the young man said with a stutter in the perfect
+intonation of his kind.  "It's good of you to come."
+
+"Just looked in for a chat," growled Mr. Trupp, unusually shy for some
+reason.
+
+The two young men talked awhile at random--of the Hospital, of Mr.
+Caspar Senior and the Grand Northern Railway, of Beachbourne, old and
+new, its origin, growth, and prospects.
+
+Then conversation flagged.
+
+Edward Caspar, it was clear, was trying to say something and found it
+difficult.  He stood before the fire, wrapping his dressing-gown about
+him, and moving elephant-wise from one foot to the other.  His brow
+puckered; his face wrought; his eyes were on the floor.
+
+Mr. Trupp, intuitive and sympathetic as few would have believed, gave
+him every chance and mute encouragement.
+
+At last the thing came out.
+
+"You know what my tut--tut--trouble is," said the young man,
+over-riding obstacles with motions of the head.  "I find it hard to
+keep off it."  He nodded to the writing-desk on which stood a
+soda-water syphon and a glass.
+
+"We must see what can be done," the other answered.  "You're young.
+You've got life before you.  It's worth making a fight."
+
+The young man showed himself troubled and eager as a child.
+
+"D'you think there's hup--hup--hope for me?" he asked.
+
+"Every hope," replied Mr. Trupp with the gruff cheerfulness that so
+often surprised his patients.  "You're honest with yourself.  That's
+the main thing.  First thing we must do is to find you a job."
+
+The other stared into the fire.
+
+"I've got a job," he said at last reluctantly.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+Edward Caspar answered after a pause and much facial emotion.
+
+"I'm writing a book on the Philosophy of M--Mysticism."  He wound
+himself up and his speech flowed more freely.  "It'll take me my
+lifetime.  Professor Zweibrucker of Leipzig is helping me.  That's why
+I've settled here.  At least," he corrected, stumbling once again,
+"that's one reason why.  To be quiet and near the Public Library."
+
+Mr. Trupp nodded.
+
+"It's the best in the South of England bar Brighton," he said.  "And
+it'll beat that soon."  He rose to go.
+
+"Does that woman look after you properly?" he asked.
+
+The young man's colour changed; and the momentary glow of enthusiasm
+roused in him as he touched on his work vanished.  Edward Caspar was
+too weak or too honest to make a good conspirator.
+
+He became self-conscious, and blinked rapidly as he stared at the fire.
+
+"What--wow--woman's that?" he asked in a flustered way.
+
+"Your landlady."
+
+The other's face wrought.  His stammer possessed him.  He flapped about
+like a wounded bird in a tumult of fear and pain.
+
+"What?" he said.  "She?--She's all right."
+
+He did not show his visitor to the door.  Mr. Trupp noticed it and
+wondered: for his host's manners were obviously perfect both by nature
+and tradition.
+
+In the passage was the woman who had admitted him, feigning to dust.
+She opened the door for him as he wound himself elaborately up in his
+muffler.
+
+"D'you let lodgings?" he asked.
+
+Those steel blue eyes of hers were on him challenging and armed for
+resistance.
+
+"He's my lodger."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Trupp.  "But have you other rooms?  I see your card's
+up."
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Because my patients ask me now and then if I can recommend them
+lodgings."
+
+The woman was clearly resentful rather than grateful.
+
+Mr. Trupp, amused, pursued his mild persecution with the glee of the
+tormenting male.
+
+"Let me see.  What's your name?"
+
+For a second the woman hesitated--baffled it seemed and fighting.  Then
+she said with a note of obvious relief as of one who has overcome a
+difficulty.
+
+"Anne, I believe."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Anne, I'll remember."
+
+He rolled on his way chuckling to himself.
+
+The woman watched his back suspiciously from the door.
+
+Then she retired, not into the kitchen, but into her lodger's
+sitting-room.
+
+"Your father's spy," she said tartly.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," the young man answered with the desperate
+exasperation of the neurotic.  "My f--father's not like that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ANNE CASPAR
+
+Edward Caspar, something of the scholar, something of the artist, even
+a little of the saint, was notoriously bad at keeping secrets.
+
+"Old Ned leaks," his friends at Harrow and Trinity used to say.  The
+charge was unfortunately true.  It was because he had a secret it was
+important he should keep that, knowing his own weakness, he had settled
+in Old Town, to be out of danger.
+
+Up there on the hill he would meet none of his quondam friends, who, if
+they came to Beachbourne at all, would go to one of the fine hotels in
+New Town along the sea front by the Wish.
+
+But Nature, which has no mercy on weakness in any form, was too much
+for the soft young man.
+
+It was barely a week after his first visit to 60 Rectory Walk that Mr.
+Trupp was sent for again.
+
+The same woman opened to him with the same fierce, almost defiant face.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"It's pleurisy, he says," she answered.  "Pretty sharp."
+
+He unwound himself in the passage.
+
+"He may want a nurse then."
+
+"He won't," cried the woman, the note of challenge in her voice.  "I'll
+nurse him."
+
+"Can you manage it--with your work?"
+
+"If I can't no one else shan't," the woman snorted, almost
+threateningly.  "First door on the left."
+
+Mr. Trupp, grinning to himself, went up the stairs, and was aware that
+the woman was standing at the foot watching his back.  She did not
+follow.
+
+The young surgeon climbed thoughtfully, absorbing his environment, as
+the good doctor does.  The varnished paper on the wall, the cheap
+carpet under his feet, the sham drain-pipe that served as an
+umbrella-stand in the passage; they were all the ordinary appurtenances
+of the house of this class, commonplace, even a little coarse, and
+affording a strange contrast to the almost exotic refinement and
+distinction of the sitting-room on the ground floor.  The house too was
+bright and clean as a hospital, hard too, he thought, as its landlady.
+There was no lodging-house smell, his nose, trained in the great wards
+of the Whitechapel, noted with approval.  Windows were kept clearly
+open, sunshine admitted as a friend.  He trailed his fingers up the
+bannisters and examined them, when he had turned the corner and was out
+of sight of the woman watching in the passage.  Not a trace of dust!
+Yes, when he was in a position to start his Open-air Hostel on the
+cliff for tuberculous patients, this was the woman he should get for
+housekeeper.
+
+He knocked at the door on the left, suddenly remembering that this must
+be the room in the window of which hung the chocolate-coloured
+_Apartments_ card.
+
+Young Caspar's voice bid him enter.
+
+The room was a bed-room and contained a double bed.  In the window,
+where dangled the card, was a dressing-table, and on it, undisguised,
+the paraphernalia of a woman's toilet.
+
+Edward Caspar lay in bed, breathing shortly, his face pinched with
+physical and spiritual suffering.
+
+Beside the bed was a chair and on it a manuscript.
+
+Mr. Trupp glanced at the inscription--_The Philosophy of Mysticism.
+Part I.  The History of Animism_.
+
+"You've fuf--fuf--found us out early," gasped the young man with a
+ghastly smile.
+
+"Nothing very terrible," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+"I'm not ashamed of it," answered the other.  "She's a good woman.
+Only my f--father's a bit old-fashioned.  You see, I'm the only son."
+
+"I don't suppose he knows," grunted Mr. Trupp.
+
+"No, he don't know."
+
+"And I don't see any reason why he should," continued the doctor.
+
+Edward Caspar raised his wistful eyes.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Trupp," he stuttered in his pathetic and dependent way.
+"Thank you.  Very good of you, I'm sure.  We're fond of each other,
+Anne and I.  I owe her a lot.  And my father's getting an old man."
+
+On the mantelpiece was the photograph of a lady in court dress.  Mr.
+Trupp studied the long and refined face.  There was no mistaking the
+type.  It was Beauregard all through, exhibiting the same sheep-like
+contour as that of the man in the bed, the same unquenchable spiritual
+longings as the Cavalier in the room below--added in this case to that
+exasperating weakness which provokes a pagan world to blows.
+
+"Is that your mother?" asked Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She's like you."
+
+"She's supposed to be."
+
+When the doctor left the sick room and went downstairs he was aware
+that the door of the sitting-room was open.
+
+The woman was inside, standing duster in hand, under the picture of the
+Cavalier, whose eyes seemed now to the young doctor faintly ironical.
+
+Mr. Trupp entered quietly and shut the door behind him.
+
+"We're married," she said, blurting the words at him.
+
+"I know," he grunted.
+
+She looked at him suspiciously.
+
+"Did he tell you?"
+
+"That you were married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No."
+
+"Who did?" fiercely.
+
+"Your face."
+
+She relaxed slowly.
+
+"You mean I don't look the sort to stand any nonsense."  She nodded,
+grimly amused.  "You're right.  That's me.  I'm chapel."  Then she let
+herself go.  "I'm fond of Ned," she flashed.  "I wouldn't have married
+him else, for all his family.  He's reel gentry, Ned is.  I don't mean
+his mother being Lady Blanche, I'm not that kind.  I mean in
+him--here."  She put her hand on her chest.  "I know I'm not his sort.
+But I can help him.  And he needs help.  Think any of _them_ could
+support him up?" with scorn.  "Too flabby by half.  Can't support
+emselves, some of em.  Lays on their backs in bed and drinks tea out of
+a spout before they can get up o mornings.  I know.  My sister's in
+service."  She stopped abruptly.  "What do you think about it yourself?
+Straight now."
+
+"I think," said Mr. Trupp, sententious and dour, "the only sensible
+thing he ever did in his life was to marry you."
+
+She eyed him shrewdly, sweetly.  Then the hard young woman softened,
+and her face became beautiful, the lovely colour deepening.
+
+She was still wearing the blue over-all in which he had first seen her.
+
+"You see me how I am," she said.
+
+"I can guess," answered Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Will you see me through?"
+
+"With pleasure."
+
+"I don't want no one else, only you.  Mr. Pigott--the
+schoolmaster--told me of you."
+
+Mr. Trupp nodded.
+
+"He's chapel too," he said.
+
+Her eyes became ironical.
+
+"Yes," she answered.  "He's a good man though.  You'll be church, I
+suppose.  Manor-house always is."
+
+Mr. Trupp shook his head forcibly.
+
+"I'm an agnostic," he replied.  The word, recently coined by Huxley,
+was on the lips of all the young men of Science of the day.  "That's a
+kind of honest heathen," he added, seeing she did not understand.
+
+She nodded at him with a gleam of almost merry malice.
+
+"Hope for the best and fear the worst sort," she said.  "I know em."
+
+Then she returned to her subject, and her face became grave and sweet
+again.
+
+"I'm due in April," she said.
+
+"That's the right time," he answered.  "All children should be born in
+the spring.  Then they're greeted with a song--because Nature wants em;
+and they've got the summer before them to get established in.  I'll
+come and look you up in a day or two."
+
+"And Ned?"
+
+"He's all right.  Keep him in bed.  I'll send him round some medicine
+to ease the pain."
+
+She eyed him shrewdly.
+
+"I didn't mean that.  I meant the big thing.  What chance has he?"
+
+Mr. Trupp buttoned himself up.
+
+"He's honest with himself.  That's the great thing.  For the rest it
+depends mostly on you.  You may pull him up.  He's young.  Is he
+ambitious?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"What about his writing?"
+
+"_The Basis of Animalism_," said Mrs. Caspar thoughtfully.  "That's the
+essay that got him the Fellowship at King's--only he gave it up after a
+year.  Too drudgeryfied.  See where it is," confidentially, "he's got
+the brains, Ned has.  The teachers at Cambridge thought no end of him.
+I've seen their letters.  _You can do what you like_,--the Head Teacher
+wrote.  _Question is--Do you like_?  And that's where it is with him.
+There's no stay in Ned.  He'll write away one day, and then drop it for
+a month.  Then he'll paint a bit; and after that a bit of poetry.  _But
+he don't go at it_.  He don't understand work.  That sort don't," with
+scorn.  "They've no need.  A man works when he's got to--and not
+before.  Dad worked.  He was a tobacconist at Ealing in a small way.
+Cleared three pound a week if he kept at it steady and went under if he
+didn't.  Why should a man work when he's only got to open his mouth and
+the pocket-money'll drop in.  'Tain't in Nature."
+
+Mr. Trupp nodded quiet approval.
+
+"_Must's_ the only word that matters," he said.  "_Must's_ the man.
+He's the boy to kill your _can't_."
+
+The woman followed him to the door.
+
+"Of course if old Mr. Caspar knew he'd disinherit him.  And Ned could
+never earn."
+
+"And you'd be done?" queried Mr. Trupp with quiet glee.
+
+"Never!" cried the woman, up in arms at once.  "I could keep us both at
+a pinch, I'll lay then."
+
+"I'll lay you could," answered the other.  "But Mr. Caspar won't know,
+so you'll be all right."
+
+The two lingered for a moment in the door, as do those who find
+themselves in sympathy.
+
+"He's a hard un's Old Man Caspar," said Anne.
+
+"And he's not the only one," grinned the young doctor.  "And a good job
+too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OLD MAN CASPAR
+
+That was how it came about that Mr. Trupp helped young Ernie Caspar
+into the world.  There was no doubt who the lad took after.
+
+"He's his father's child," said the young surgeon.
+
+Whether Mrs. Caspar was angry with her son for his resemblance to her
+husband, it was hard to say, but she was fierce even in her mothering.
+
+Now she nodded at the photograph of the woman in court-dress upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"It's her he favours," she said shortly, one stern eye on the sucking
+infant.  "He's the spit of her--same as Ned.  None of Old Man Caspar
+about him."
+
+"Have you seen him?" asked Mr. Trupp, washing his hands.
+
+"The Old Man?--Yes.  Once.  He came to lunch.  Met Ned on Beau-nez.  I
+was landlady that day."  She nodded grimly at the window where hung the
+card.  "That's why I keep that up--lest he should come down on us
+sudden.  We're done if he finds us out."
+
+Mr. Trupp grunted as he dried his hands.
+
+"I'm not so sure," he said.
+
+"Well, that's what Ned says," the woman retorted.
+
+"He would," replied the surgeon.
+
+She looked at him sharply.
+
+"You mean Ned's afraid of the old man?"
+
+The other didn't answer.
+
+"You're right there," said the young mother.  "He is.  And I don't
+wonder.  I'm afraid of him--and I've never feared a man before."
+
+"Most people are," replied Mr. Trupp.  "He's a bit of a terror; but
+he's got his points.  You needn't worry," he added as he said good-bye.
+"You're not likely to see much of him.  He's too busy with his Grand
+Northern Railway."
+
+The woman was unconvinced.
+
+"He's that sudden," she said.  "There he was in the door--me in me
+wrapper and all.  Of course Ned never give me no warning.  Too
+flabbergasted by half.  Learnt me a lesson, though, never to sit in the
+back-room with my sewing about."
+
+"Did you know him?" asked Mr. Trupp, amused.
+
+"Know him?" cried the other.  "Seen his picture in the papers time and
+again.  Astrakhan coat and all!"
+
+Happily for the peace of mind of the young couple Mr. Trupp proved
+right.  All the energies of the great contractor were set on driving
+the new commercial railway from London to the North, tapping the Black
+Country, and linking the Yorkshire ports with the Metropolis by the
+most direct route.
+
+It was in fact two years and more before Mr. Caspar made another of his
+sudden appearances at the door of 60.
+
+Young Mrs. Caspar, one of those women who is always on her guard,
+guessed her visitor by that peremptory knock.  She dried her hands,
+shut the kitchen-door on the children--there were two now; peeped into
+the study, saw that Edward was out, and faced the stranger.
+
+Old Mr. Caspar was not really old: a dark, powerful man, almost
+magnificent, in the familiar coat with the astrakhan collar of the
+picture papers, and a black-and-silvered beard.
+
+A close observer would have detected a Semitic strain in him and more
+than a strain of the South.  In fact, Hans Caspar's father came from
+Frankfurt and his mother from Trieste, though he had lived in England
+from his earliest years and spoke without a trace of accent.
+
+Now his dark eyes met the woman's blue ones, and seemed to approve of
+what they saw.
+
+"Mr. Edward Caspar in?" he asked.
+
+"He will be in a moment.--Mr. Hans Caspar, isn't it?"
+
+She showed him into the little back sitting-room.
+
+Then the task before her was to warn her husband before he came
+blundering in and began to coo and call to her and the children from
+the passage.
+
+Anne Caspar was always at her best in a crisis.
+
+Her baby was asleep; and Ernie was happy bestriding a new hobby-horse
+and chanting to himself.
+
+She took off her apron, put on her hat, and paused a moment on the
+door-step, looking up and down the road.
+
+Which way had her husband gone?
+
+Once a week or so he went down town to consult the Public Library.  For
+the rest he always went towards the Downs to lose himself amid the
+hollows of the hills.  She made for the huge green wall that blocked
+the end of the road, shimmering and mysterious in the April sunshine.
+Her choice proved right.  She saw him coming off the hill above
+Beech-hangar, and went to meet him.
+
+He would have blundered past her, oblivious of her presence but that
+she stopped him.
+
+Briefly she told him the news and gave him his instructions.
+
+They must not be seen entering the house together.
+
+She would return directly to the house: he must go along the new Road,
+down Church Street at the back, and approach by way of Billing's Corner.
+
+Obedient as a child, he lumbered off at that curious bear-like trot of
+his, his sandals tapping the pavement.
+
+Ten minutes later, when he entered the back sitting-room, he was
+perspiring but as prepared as such a flabby soul could ever be.
+
+He had always been in terror of his father; and Hans Caspar saw nothing
+strange in his son's greeting.
+
+"Hullo, Edward," he said in his deep voice.  "Just run down to see you."
+
+"Hullo, father," replied the son with the forced cheeriness he always
+adopted when addressing his sire.  "You'll stop for luncheon?"
+
+"Thank-you.  If you can give me a bite."
+
+The young man rang.
+
+His wife came to the door.
+
+"Mr. Caspar'll stay for luncheon," said Edward, lowering his voice
+appropriately.  "Can you let us have something?"
+
+"Very good," replied his wife surlily.
+
+The father looked after her, grimly amused.
+
+"Don't seem very obliging," he remarked.
+
+Edward laughed uneasily.
+
+"What!" he said.  "Oh, she's all right.  A bit fuf--funny in her
+manner.  That's all."
+
+Mr. Caspar prodded his son.
+
+"You'd better mind your eye, Ned.  She's masterful, and a fine figure
+of a woman too."
+
+Edward tittered foolishly.
+
+"What?--Oh, she--she's married.  Children and all that."
+
+"What's her husband do?"
+
+"What--him?--Oh, he does nothing much that I know of."
+
+"Lives on her, I suppose," growled the other.  "Scoundrel!  I know the
+sort.  The kind your Gladstones encourage."
+
+He descanted at length and with more than even his usual violence on
+the sins of all governments and especially radical ones.  Unlike his
+usual self, he was clearly talking as a screen to gain time, sheltering
+something behind a wall of words.  Ned was always embarrassed in his
+father's presence; but for once Mr.  Caspar seemed himself uneasy in
+the presence of this son who had been such a woeful disappointment to
+him.
+
+After his political outburst, there was a prolonged pause.
+
+Then Mr.  Caspar leaned forward and kicked a cinder into its place.
+
+"Pretty comfortable here?" he asked at last.
+
+"Oh, I get along fuf--first-rate," answered the son.
+
+"Three hundred a year's not much for a man in my position to allow his
+only son, I know," the other said gruffly.
+
+It was a new and unexpected note.  The young man, chivalrous to the
+roots of him, and heir to all the qualities of his mother's family,
+instantly answered his father's mute appeal.
+
+"My dear fuf--father, it's a fortune," he said.  "We--I live like a
+prince.  And anyway, it's three hundred a year more than I deserve."
+
+His father was silent.
+
+"I don't know if you've had any expectations from me," he said at last.
+"I've been pretty blunt with you in the past."
+
+The young man had risen and was standing before the fire, his face
+working.
+
+"I've no need for mum--much money," he explained.  "You see I've no
+expensive tastes.  I don't hunt or shoot or gug--gamble.  If I can have
+enough for the necessities of life, and to buy an occasional bub--book
+or two, that's all I need."
+
+"Ned," said the other, coming firmly to the point, "I've made
+arrangements for the three hundred a year I allow you to be continued
+throughout your life."
+
+"I think it's mum--most _awfully_ good of you, father," said the young
+man with obvious sincerity.
+
+The other grunted.
+
+"I don't know," he replied.  "Not every son would take it that way."
+
+He was rarely moved.  His son saw it and was wretched.
+
+Then the woman came in with luncheon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ERNIE MAKES HIS APPEARANCE
+
+The little room in which they lunched looked out on a tiny back-garden
+bounded by a high old flint-wall.
+
+The view was limited; and yet, for those who knew, it contained much of
+the history of Beachbourne.  Over the top of the wall could be seen the
+chimney-pots and long blue roofs of what was now the Workhouse, which
+had, Ned told his father, been a cavalry barracks in the days of
+Napoleon.  Against the wall a fine fig-tree revealed that the new house
+stood where not long since an old garden, its soil enriched by
+centuries of the toil of man, had grown the pleasant fruits of the
+earth.
+
+The room was dark but singularly clean.  It was distinguished,
+moreover, by the complete absence of all the ordinary insignia of a
+lodging-house.  There were no pictures on the walls.  The furniture,
+what there was of it, was mahogany, solid and plain, the chairs and
+sofa horse-hair.
+
+If the room lacked the distinction and delicacy of the study, neither
+was it stamped as was the rest of the house with the conventional
+hall-mark of the lower middle class.  Rather, in its strength and its
+simplicity it was like the parlour of a yeoman-farmer.
+
+The two men talked little at their meal; but all went well until they
+had resumed their chairs in the sunny front sitting-room that looked
+over to the solitary stucco house, gloomy amid trees and evergreens,
+behind a high wall across the road.
+
+"The Rectory, I suppose," said the older man, standing in the bow,
+picking his teeth.  "Always the best house in the parish.  D'you know
+the man?"
+
+"Just," Edward answered.
+
+"What's his sort?"
+
+"Oh, the ordinary cleric.  A bit of a pagan; a bit of a Pharisee; and a
+whole-hearted snob.  He's a Prebendary who insists on being called a
+Canon."
+
+His father flashed a twinkling eye at him.  Just sometimes Hans Caspar
+wondered whether there might not be more in this poor creature of a son
+of his than appeared.
+
+"How like em!" he mused.  "Yet I've an immense admiration for the
+Church as a commercial concern.  Look at the business they've built up.
+Look at the property they've accumulated.  Look at the way the
+Ecclesiastical Commissioners sweat blood out of the foulest slums in
+Christendom.  They deserve to succeed.  Do it all in such style too.
+House their head-managers in palaces, and pay em £15,000 a year--and
+perks--and plenty of em.  The Hanseatic League was nothing to em."
+
+The young man's eyes became quizzical.  Then he began to titter in the
+feeble and deprecatory way of one who half dissents and dares not say
+so.
+
+The door opened quietly.  Hans Caspar, standing in the bow, turned
+round.
+
+A small brown-smocked figure, a-stride a dappled grey horse, looked in;
+and a lovely little singing voice like that of water pouring from a
+jug, said in a slight stutter with mysterious intimacy,
+
+"Daddy!"
+
+The little lad stood smiling in the door, the image of his father, of
+his father's mother, of the Cavalier upon the wall, of those high-bred,
+rather ineffective faces that look down on visitors from the famous
+portrait-gallery at Ravensrood, the Somersetshire home of the
+Beauregards.
+
+Edward Caspar sat and sweated.
+
+It was of course the elder man who spoke first.
+
+"Hullo, youngster!" he called cheerily.  "What might be your name?"
+
+The child's face wrought just like his father's, as he struggled with
+some invisible obstacle.
+
+"Ernie Gug--gug--Gaspod," he said at last.
+
+"Ernie Gaspipe," laughed the other.  "Is your daddy a plumber?"
+
+The child's hand left his horse's mane and shot out a chubby finger.
+
+"That's my dad--daddy," he said.
+
+There was the sound of swift feet in the passage, a blue arm reached
+fiercely forth, and the child was swept back to the kitchen.
+
+Mr. Caspar's eye flashed on his son's grey and quaking face and flashed
+away again.
+
+"Nice-looking kiddy," he said calmly.  "Just the age to take us all for
+his dad."
+
+"Yes," panted Ned, his moist hands gripping the arm of his chair.
+
+"How many's she got?"
+
+"Two, I believe."
+
+"Boys?"
+
+"Yes, both."
+
+The father took a cigar leisurely from his case, cut it and began to
+smoke.
+
+"I'd have liked a large family," he said quietly.
+
+The son raised his eyes of a hunted hare.
+
+"I know, father," he stuttered.  "I'm afraid I've been a great
+dud--disappointment to you."
+
+"Stop it!" grunted the other.  "Or I'll go into the kitchen."  He
+puffed away, lost in his reflections.  "It was your mother," he went
+on.  "She couldn't stand the racket.  That sort can't.  The English
+aristocracy breed in and in too much.  That's why they always fail.  No
+red blood in em."  He added, after a pause, "_You_ almost killed her;
+and you were only a five-pounder when you were born...."
+
+Before he left Mr. Caspar did go into the kitchen alone.
+
+"I'm going to give that woman half-a-sovereign," he explained.  "She
+gave me a decent luncheon."
+
+He went down the passage and knocked at the kitchen-door.
+
+"Come in," said a voice.
+
+He entered.
+
+The woman faced him, formidable as a tigress guarding her cubs.
+
+Her enemy eyed her with something more than kindness.
+
+"I've seen one child," he said with the charm he could assume at will.
+"Where's tother?"
+
+His manner disarmed her.  Half-hidden behind a towel-horse was a cot.
+Anne Caspar stood aside while the big man bent over the sleeping child.
+
+"Ern's all right," she said.  "This'n's not much to talk on--as yet.
+I'd not have rared him only for Mr. Trupp."
+
+"Mr. Trupp's a great man," said the other, and laid two sovereigns on
+the table.
+
+"One for each of em," he explained.
+
+The woman coloured faintly.
+
+There was about her the beauty of a clear and frosty day.
+
+"Thank-you," she said.
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+She took it, and he would not let it go, those eyes of his, in which
+light and darkness, cruelty and kindness, chased each other, engaging
+hers.
+
+"Good-bye," he said.  "I don't know what your name is--Look after
+_him_," He jerked his head towards the door.  "He needs it."
+
+The woman dropped her eyes, the lovely colour deepening in her cheeks.
+
+"I'll try," she said, her natural surliness dashed with ungracious
+graciousness.
+
+In the passage he put on his coat.
+
+Edward came out to him.
+
+"Good-bye, Ned," he said.  "Good luck," and put his hand almost
+affectionately on his son's shoulder.  "I'm going down to look in on
+Trupp and curse him from the Board for leaving the Whitechapel.  Damn
+tomfoolery.  He'd a career before him, that man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MANOR-HOUSE
+
+When he left his son to carry out his threat, Mr. Caspar struck into
+the steep main street of Old Town, which preserved still the somewhat
+stagnant atmosphere of a country village.  On the left the parish
+church, square-towered, massive, grey, stood on a slight eminence over
+a green hollow, called still the Moot, in which was a pond that may
+have been the source of the original bourne.  Beneath the church the
+old Star inn hung its sign-board across the way.  Here Borough Lane
+crossed the street, running steeply down between the church and the inn
+and as steeply up under noble beech-trees along the garden-wall of the
+Queen Anne mansion which must clearly be the Manor-house.
+
+The brass-plate on the door confirmed the visitor's conjecture.
+
+Yes; Mr. Trupp was in.
+
+The house was beautiful within as it was plain and solid outside.  In
+the hall wainscoted, spacious, and with shining oaken floors, a
+grandfather's clock swung its pendulum rhythmically.
+
+The room into which Mr. Caspar was shown had a wide bow-window looking
+out over gracious lawns and laburnum-trees in blossom to the elms in
+Saffrons Croft.
+
+Mr. Trupp entered.  He was a slight man with a moustache, who tilted
+his shrewd, rather sharp face to inspect his visitor through pince-nez.
+
+"Well, Mr. Caspar," he growled genially.
+
+"Ah, you runagate!" scolded the other.  "What d'you mean by it?"
+
+The doctor nodded at the window.
+
+A beautiful young woman with chestnut hair, bare to the sun, was
+walking with extreme deliberation across the lawn, leaning on the arm
+of a nurse.
+
+"That's one reason," he said.
+
+The other gazed.
+
+"Yes; you've given her the right setting," he remarked at last in a
+strangely quiet voice, touched with melancholy.
+
+A greyhound emerged from a shrubbery and crossed the lawn after the two
+women at a stealthy trot.
+
+"That's another," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Sport!" cried the other.  "Bah!--and you might have been a great
+man!--a credit to the Whitechapel.  What's the next?"
+
+"Professional," grunted the Doctor.
+
+"Third and last of course," retorted the other.  "That's you English
+all over.  You don't know what work is.  Still, Old Town for your wife
+and New Town for your practice--may be something in it after all."
+
+The surgeon opened the window.
+
+"Come and be introduced," he said, and led the way across the lawn.
+"She'd like to meet you."
+
+Mrs. Trupp showed herself delightfully shy in her large and royal way.
+Mr. Caspar was Mr. Caspar; and the fair creature knew the secret of Mr.
+Caspar's son.  She was indeed the only woman in Beachbourne who knew
+it, and that not because Mr. Trupp had told her, but because she was
+the only woman in whom Anne Caspar had confided,--as had, in fact,
+Edward too.  Her meeting therefore with Mr. Caspar senior was full of
+dramatic possibilities.  Her innocent soul thrilled with pleasurable
+alarm at the perilous character of the situation.  She felt a little
+guilty and wholly defensive; and her transparent face betrayed every
+emotion as a pool reflects a cloud.
+
+Mr. Caspar watched her as she worked, with admiration and amusement.
+
+"You've come down to see your son, I expect," she said in her charming
+leisured voice.
+
+"I have," he answered brusquely, the light flashing in his eyes.  "He
+seems snug enough.  Not bad lodgings."
+
+"As lodgings go," said Mrs. Trupp, delicately, bending over her work as
+her colour came and went.
+
+"That's a queer creature," continued Mr. Caspar.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The woman my son's lodging with."
+
+Mrs. Caspar held up her work to inspect it.
+
+"She is a little funny in her manner," she replied, and began to pride
+herself on her skill in evading the enemy without telling a downright
+lie.  "She's a fine cook, I believe."
+
+"She's a fine woman," said Mr. Caspar.
+
+The beautiful creature tossed her head as though he was suggesting
+something improper, which no doubt he was.
+
+Mr. Caspar chuckled without shame or mercy; but as he walked back to
+the house his mood changed.
+
+"Well," he said gravely, "I congratulate you, Trupp.  Children may be
+the greatest blessing in a man's life."
+
+Back in the consulting-room he was still very quiet.  All the teasing
+laughter was gone from him.  The mischievous boy, the trampling
+conqueror, had disappeared.  Their place had been taken by a sad and
+even pathetic man.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mr. Trupp, as his visitor sank back in the big
+chair.
+
+"I'm sick as herrings," replied the other.
+
+"Labour troubles?"
+
+The big man, with his black hair, pale face and swarthy eyes, shook his
+head.
+
+"I wish it was."  He put his hand to his heart.  "I've got notice to
+quit.  Rivers gives me eighteen months at most.  Damn nuisance."  He
+stared out of the window at the two women under the elm.  "I don't feel
+like dying.  And there was so much to do."
+
+"Let's see," said the Doctor.
+
+He applied the stethoscope, and then replaced it in his pocket without
+comment.  It was clear from the negative expression of his face that he
+agreed with Sir Audrey Rivers' judgment.
+
+Mr. Caspar, intuitive as his friend, asked no questions.
+
+"That's it," said he.  "Machine wearing out.  I've rattled her about
+too much, I suppose.  Well, a man must live--my sort of man at least.
+I could never be content to rust.  There's nothing to be done.  It's
+just good-bye and no _au revoir_ this time.  That's why I came down.  I
+wanted to see the boy before I pushed off."  He turned suddenly.
+"How's he getting on?"
+
+Mr. Trupp shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"No improvement?" asked the other.
+
+"I wouldn't say that.  He's put the brake on a bit of late."
+
+"Or had it put on for him," muttered Mr. Caspar.
+
+He mused for some time.
+
+"I'd have taken a peerage but for him," he said at last.  "I can't see
+Ned as a hereditary legislator."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," mumbled Mr. Trupp.  He was an aggressive radical of
+the then active school of Dilke and Chamberlain.  "I think he'd do very
+well in the House of Lords."
+
+The young man had touched the springs of laughter in the other's heart.
+Hans Caspar's immense vitality asserted itself again.  He resumed
+himself with a shout, sweeping the clouds boisterously away.
+
+"Ned's a true Beauregard," he said.  "Just his mother over again.  So
+charming and so ineffectual!  Always some weak strain in an hereditary
+aristocracy."
+
+"Must be," muttered Mr. Trupp.  "They're never weeded out.  They're
+above the laws of Nature.  Case of Survival of the Unfittest--protected
+by Law and living on you and me to whom they dictate the Law.  Albino
+bunnies in a gilded hutch with a policeman watching over em!"
+
+"Good!" cried Mr. Caspar.  "Albino bunnies is good.  It took my albino
+in the way of religious orgies.  I prefer Ned's trouble of the two.
+Less humbug about it."  He got up and began restlessly to pace the
+room.  "There's nothing like religion to eat a man's soul away,
+Trupp--to say nothing of a woman's.  _You_ don't let your wife go to
+church, I understand.  Well, you're a shrewd fellow.  That way lies the
+bottomless pit.  Mine took to it--it was in her blood, mind you--when I
+was away in the River Plate driving the Trans-Argentine Railway from
+the Atlantic to the Pacific.  When I came back--good Lord!  Priests to
+luncheon, Bishops to dinner, Deaconesses to tea.  Missionary meetings
+in the drawing-room, altars in the alcove, parasites everywhere.  In
+her last illness she _would_ have a _religeuse_ to see to her instead
+of one of our nurses from the Whitechapel.  Of course she died.  Serve
+her right, too, say I."  He paused.  "With Ned it was just touch and go
+which way it would take him.  I thought at one time his mother's
+trouble'd got him, but in the end it was..."  He jiggled his elbow.
+
+"He's not a bad sort," muttered Mr. Trupp.
+
+Hans Caspar took the other by the lapel of his coat.
+
+"But that's just what makes me so mad, man!" he cried.  "If he'd been
+vicious I could have kicked his back-side with joy.  But you couldn't
+kick Ned.  You can't kick a pathetic vacuum."  He added with a swagger:
+"No man can accuse Hans Caspar of being afraid to use the jack-boot.
+You don't kick bottoms half enough in England."
+
+"There's plenty of kicking bottoms," answered the other.  "The trouble
+is that the men who kick bottoms never get their own kicked.  If every
+man who kicked knew for certain that he would automatically be kicked
+in his turn, we might get on a bit."
+
+Hans Caspar chuckled.
+
+"Your idea of Utopia," he said.  "Everybody standing round in a circle,
+with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front, hacking him.  I
+like it."
+
+"I believe," chanted Mr. Trupp, "in the Big Stick.  That's my creed.
+But I want it applied by everybody to everybody--not by the strong to
+the weak as we do in this country, and you do in yours."
+
+"My firm belief you're this new-fangled creature--a Socialist," said
+Hans Caspar.
+
+"What if I am!" grunted the other.  In fact, in London he had attended
+meetings of the recently born Fabian Society, and had heard William
+Morris preach on Sunday evenings in the stables of Kelmscott House.
+The young surgeon had found himself in general sympathy with the views
+expounded, but like many another man could not tolerate the
+personalities of the expounders of the new creed.  "Apart from Morris,
+they're such prigs," he would say, "and so blatant about it.  Always
+thrusting their alleged intellectual superiority down your throat.  And
+after all, they're only advocating what every sensible man must
+advocate--the application of the method of Science to the problems of
+Government."
+
+Mr. Caspar had gone to the window and was staring out.
+
+"How long'll that boy of mine last the pace he's going?" he asked,
+subdued again.
+
+"He might last thirty years yet," the other answered.
+
+Hans Caspar turned round.
+
+"With that woman to run him, you mean?"
+
+"What woman's that?"
+
+"His wife."
+
+It was Mr. Trupp's turn to look away.
+
+"She's the sort for him," he mumbled warily.
+
+The other broke in with vehement enthusiasm.
+
+"The sort for him!--why, if I'd married a woman like that--with a
+back-bone like steel, and the jaws of a rat-trap--I'd have been a
+Napoleon."
+
+Mr. Trupp's face was still averted.  Its naturally shrewd expression
+had for the moment a satirical touch.
+
+"You think he's a lucky fellow to get her?" said the other.
+
+Mr. Trupp's silence was eloquent enough.
+
+"Ah," continued Hans Caspar knowingly.  "I see.  You think _she_ got
+him.  I dare say.  She's the sort of woman who'd get anything she
+wanted.  And he's the kind of man who'd be got by the first woman who
+wanted him.  I took the measure of her at first sight.  Fact I was just
+going to offer her the job of manageress of my canteen at
+rail-head--when I found out.  She'd make the navvies sit up, I'll
+swear."
+
+"Her hands are pretty full as it is," commented Mr. Trupp.
+
+The other nodded.
+
+"I expect so," he said.  "Ned alone's one woman's job.  And the two
+children."  He put his hand on the surgeon's arm.  "That eldest boy,
+Trupp!"
+
+"What about him?"
+
+"He's his grandmother over again.  Watch him!"
+
+A bell in the street clanged.
+
+"What's that?" he asked.
+
+"Station-bus," said Mr. Trupp.  "The driver strikes the coaching-bell
+over the _Star_ as he passes."
+
+"I must catch it."
+
+The big man put on his coat and went out.  At the door of the inn a
+two-horse bus was drawn up.
+
+Mr. Caspar climbed up beside the driver.
+
+The young surgeon closed the front-door and turned.
+
+His wife stood framed in the garden-window against a background of
+green.
+
+"Did he find out?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"My dear," her husband answered, "he did."
+
+The tender creature's face fell.
+
+"Oh, the poor Caspars!" she cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HANS CASPAR'S WILL
+
+Sir Audrey Rivers' diagnosis proved correct.  Just a year after his
+visit to Beachbourne Mr. Caspar died.
+
+His will caused malicious merriment to those who knew "Unser Hans," as
+he was called in Society.
+
+He left the bulk of his vast fortune in trust for the Whitechapel
+Hospital--with one proviso: that no clergyman was to act as a trustee.
+For the rest he bequeathed £300 a year for life, free of Income Tax, to
+his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Edward Caspar; and should she pre-decease her
+husband, the sum was to be continued to his son.
+
+"Sound fellow that," said Mr. Trupp, when he heard.  "Old Man Caspar to
+the end."
+
+"It's rather hard on our Mr. Caspar," remarked his wife, who had known
+Edward Caspar in London before either had married.
+
+"My dear," replied the surgeon, with the slight sententiousness
+peculiar to him, "the only way to help that sort of son is to be hard
+on him."
+
+"I hope you'll never help my Joe like that," cried the beautiful woman
+warmly.
+
+Mr. Trupp loved to tease his wife.
+
+"If your Joe goes that way I will," he grinned--"and worse.  So mind
+your eye!"
+
+Another woman who was not amused by Hans Caspar's will was the woman
+who benefited by it.
+
+Anne Caspar had the qualities of her kind.  If she was hard, she was
+passionately loyal and genuinely devoted to her Ned.  When she had told
+Mr. Trupp that her marriage had been a love-match she had but spoken
+the truth as regards her part in it.  Therefore on the morning she
+opened the letter from the lawyers announcing that she had come by
+miracle into what was for the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist a
+fortune, she felt a slight had been put upon her husband and was
+perturbed accordingly.
+
+With pensive face she went into the study, wearing the long blue
+over-all in which Edward Caspar had first seen her.
+
+Her husband stood in his shirt-sleeves, pipe in mouth, a loose,
+round-shouldered figure, splashing away with vague enthusiasm at a
+canvas in the sunny bow-window.
+
+She realized in a moment that she had caught him in one of his rare
+uplifted moods.
+
+"Ned," she said.
+
+"What-ho, my Annie!"
+
+"Your father's left us £300 a year."
+
+He chuckled as he painted, one eye on the gleaming mystery of the Downs.
+
+"Been opening my letters, you burglar?"
+
+"The letter's to me."
+
+This time he turned, saw her face, and steadied.
+
+She offered him the envelope.
+
+He glanced at the address.
+
+"Yes, it's to you all right.  Funny they didn't write to me."
+
+"Won't you read it, Ned?" she said gently.
+
+He skimmed the contents and winced.
+
+"That's all right, Anne," he said, handing it back to her, and patting
+her hand.  "The old man's been as good as his word--and better, by the
+amount of Income Tax."
+
+"Such a way to do it and all," said Anne censoriously.
+
+He pinched her arm.
+
+"Perhaps it's for the best," he said.  "And anyway, it doesn't much
+matter."  If Edward Caspar was by no means sure of himself, he was sure
+beyond question of the woman life had given him.
+
+She lifted her face to his, and it was beautiful.
+
+"Ned," she said; and he kissed her.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE TWO BROTHERS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BEACHBOURNE
+
+The Domesday Book tells us that King Edward the Confessor held the
+Manor of Burne, and gave the endowment of the Church of St. Michael to
+the Abbey of Fecamp, along with the Lordships of Steyning and Rye and
+Winchelsea and other jewels from the crown of Sussex; as all who have
+read Mr. Dudgeon's scholarly history of Beachbourne will recall.
+
+Harold cancelled the grant, with the result, so legend has it, that
+William the Norman landed at Pevensey just across the way to enforce
+restitution.  In those days the parish of Burne covered like a blanket
+the western promontory of the great Bay.  At each of the four corners
+of the blanket, holding it down as it were, was a rude hamlet.  On the
+bourne itself a few hovels clustered round the wooden church upon the
+Kneb; in Coombe-in-the-Cliff, carved out of the flank of Beau-nez, was
+Holy Well, haunted by pilgrims from the Continent; on the sea-front
+there was the Wish, beneath which of old a Roman dock had been; and
+further east was Sea-gate with its fishing-station and the earth-work
+which guarded the entrance to the Bay whose waters swept inland over
+what are now the Levels to Ratton and Horsey and the borders of
+Hailsham.
+
+In the reign of Henry II the Norman church, much as we know it to-day,
+succeeded the crazy wooden building in which our Saxon forefathers
+heard the Word of the Promise first brought to Sussex by Bishop
+Wilfrith, who starting from the North, dared the perils of the Forest,
+and somehow fought his way through brake and marsh and thicket, among
+wild beasts and wilder men, to the ancient Roman settlement at
+Chichester; thence to spread the news all along the high bleak
+coast-line on which at river-mouths and lagoon-like estuaries the Saxon
+adventurers had gained a footing.
+
+Till the nineteenth century the parish that lay scattered thus between
+the Downs, the marshes, and the sea, changed but little, experiencing
+the ordinary vicissitudes of an English village.  Bishops made their
+visitations.  Rectors lived and died.  Outlaws sought sanctuary at the
+altar of the church above the Moot, which was still the centre of the
+life of the little pastoral community.  In the last half of the
+fourteenth century the massive tower was added which dominated the
+village as it dominates the town to-day; built perhaps as a
+thank-offering for the passing of the Black Death, which slew half the
+population, reduced the monks at Michelham to five, and, with
+indiscriminating zeal, laid a clammy hand on the Abbot of Battle and
+Prior of St. Pancras, Lewes; while giving rise to a wave of industrial
+unrest which a few years later sent the rebellious men of Sussex
+Londonwards behind the ragged banner of Jack Cade.
+
+In 1534 the Proclamation repudiating the Pope was read from the pulpit
+of the church upon the Kneb; and ten years later the first outburst of
+Puritanism stripped the consecrated building of many shrines, pictures,
+ornaments, as our historian has recently reminded us.
+
+The village thrilled to the threat of the Spanish Armada, and, what is
+more, prepared to meet it; the inhabitants having--time out of memory
+of man, we are told--a reputation, the outcome of experience and
+necessity, for dealing with the landings of forraine enemies.
+
+During the Parliamentary troubles the Squire of Beachbourne was of
+course a stout-hearted Royalist; and his friend the Rector was brought
+up before the authorities on a charge of "malignancy."  Found guilty,
+he was removed from office; whereupon, as his brass quaintly reminds
+us, the gallant gentleman _mori maluit_--preferred to die.  And it is
+on record that the parish was only saved from the ravages of Civil War
+by the abominable condition of the roads of East Sussex.  Perhaps the
+same factor told against the prosperity of the place.  For, by the
+middle of the eighteenth century, Beachbourne, as it was now called,
+had dwindled in population to a few hundred souls.  Later in the same
+century, about the time Newhaven was born, it began to blossom out as a
+health resort.  A celebrity or two discovered its remote charm.  A peer
+succeeded the Squire at the big house.  Behind the Wish a row of
+sea-houses sprang into being on the front.  But Dr. Russell of Lewes
+and the Prince Regent, in turning the fishing-village of Brightelmstone
+into fashionable Brighton, ruined for the moment its rival under
+Beau-nez.  Beachbourne had to wait its turn until the iron horse,
+running on an iron road, across country that not long since had been
+washed by tides, overcame with astounding ease the difficulties that
+teams of snorting oxen up to the hocks in mud had found insuperable.
+
+Then, and only then, the four corners of the parish came together
+apace.  The old bourne disappeared, the source of it in the Moot under
+the church-crowned Kneb now no more than a stagnant pond.  And by the
+time of our story a city of tens of thousands of inhabitants had risen
+where men, still middle-aged, could recall meadows that swept down to
+the sea, the voice of the corn-crake harsh everywhere as they sauntered
+down Water Lane of evenings after church, and the last fight of the
+"gentlemen" and the Revenue Officers that took place on a desolate
+strip of shore to the sound of calling sea-birds, on the site of what
+is now the Cecil Hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE TWO BOYS
+
+Next time Mr. Trupp called at 60 Rectory Walk, he marked that the
+familiar chocolate notice in the upper window had gone.
+
+He chaffed Mrs. Caspar in his grim way.
+
+"No more rooms to let, I see," he said.
+
+"No," the woman answered.  "No more lies to have to tell just at
+present."
+
+She was in one of her tartest moods; and when he congratulated her on
+being through her troubles, she answered,
+
+"Some of em.  Plenty more to follow.  There'll be enough money for Ned
+and me and the boys.  That's one thing."
+
+"And a big thing too," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+"The biggest," admitted the woman surlily.  "Speaking worldly-wise, I
+don't say nay to that."
+
+After the birth of her second son, Mr. Trupp had told her that she
+would have no more children and she was glad: for her hands were going
+to be full enough throughout her life; so much the shrewd woman saw
+clearly.  There was her husband; and there was her eldest son, Ernie,
+who was his father over again.
+
+He had his father's face, his father's charm, his father's soft and
+generous heart; and, unless she was mistaken, other qualities of his
+father that were by no means so desirable.  And the curious thing was
+that the characteristics which in her husband Anne Caspar secretly
+admired, only exasperated her in Ernie.
+
+Alf, the second son, whatever his faults, certainly did not trace them
+to his dad.  He was as much his mother's child as Ernie was his
+father's.  And whether for that reason or because for years she had to
+wrestle for his miserable little life with the Angel of Death, his
+mother loved him with the fierce, protecting passion of an animal.
+
+"Nobody but his mother could have saved him," Mr. Trupp told his wife.
+
+While Mrs. Caspar said to the same lady,
+
+"But for Mr. Trupp he wouldn't be here."
+
+A proud woman, Mrs. Caspar was also a very lonely one.  Her genuine
+pride in her rather ramshackle husband--his birth, his breeding, his
+obvious air of a gentleman--which evinced itself in her almost
+passionate determination that he should dress himself "as such,"
+prevented her from associating with her own class; and the women of her
+husband's class would not associate with her.  Mrs. Trupp, the kindest
+of souls, was the solitary exception.  But the two women were
+antipathetic.  The doctor's wife, who possessed in full measure the
+noble toleration that marks the best of her kind, was forced to admit
+to her conscience, that she could not bring herself to like Mrs.
+Caspar.  The large and beautiful nature of the former, brought to
+fruition in the sunshine and shelter of a cultivated home, could not
+understand the harsh combativeness of the daughter of the small
+tobacconist, who had fought from childhood for the right to live.
+
+"She's like a wolf," Mrs. Trupp told her husband.  "Even with her
+children."
+
+"My dear," said the wise Doctor, "she's had to snap to survive.  You
+haven't.  Others have done your snapping for you."
+
+"She needn't snap and snarl at that dear, gentle husband of hers,"
+retorted Mrs. Trupp.
+
+"If she didn't," replied her husband drily, "she'd be a widow in a
+week."
+
+"Anyway she might be kind to that eldest boy," continued Mrs. Trupp,
+who at Edward Caspar's request had stood sponsor to Ernie.  "He's
+beautiful, and such breeding.  A true Beauregard."
+
+"What d'you make of the baby?" asked her husband with sudden interest.
+
+"Why, he's like a little rat," answered Mrs. Trupp.  "He's the only
+baby I've ever seen I didn't want to handle."
+
+"Yet there's something in him," replied the other thoughtfully.  "He
+wouldn't have lived else.  A touch of Old Man Caspar about that child
+somewhere.  _He'll_ bite all right if he lives to be a man."
+
+And to the Doctor's shrewd and seeing eye it was clear from the start
+that Alfred meant to live to be a man.  Somewhere in the depths of his
+wretched little body there glowed a spark that all the threats and
+frosts of a hostile Nature failed to extinguish.  On that spark his
+mother blew with a tenacity surpassing words; Mr. Trupp blew in his
+wise way, working the bellows of Science with the easy skill of the
+master-workman; little Ernie, most loving of children, blew too.  Even
+Edward Caspar leaned over the cot in his quilted dressing gown and said,
+
+"He's coming on."
+
+But even as he leant, the sensitive fellow knew that there was not and
+could never be any bond between him and his youngest born.  His heart
+was with Ernie.  And the way his mother rebuffed the elder lad, only
+endeared him the more to his father.
+
+
+The two lads grew: Ernie strong in body, loving in heart, lacking in
+will; Alf ardent of spirit, ruthless as a stoat upon the trail, and
+rickety as an old doll.
+
+There was a first-rate elementary school in Old Town to which the two
+boys went when the time came.  The headmaster, Mr. Pigott, was also
+manager of the chapel in the Moot which Mrs. Caspar attended regularly.
+
+The hard woman was religious in the common Puritan way, so dear to the
+English lower-middle-class of her generation.  Her Chapel and her God
+were both a great deal to the austere woman, especially the former.
+She had a stern and narrow moral code of her own which she mistook for
+love of Christ.  From that code she never departed herself, and
+punished to the utmost of her power all those who did depart from it.
+
+In a chapel of her own denomination she had insisted on being married,
+in spite of the fact that she risked by her obstinacy losing the only
+man she had ever loved.
+
+Ned Caspar, for his part, took his religion, as most of us do, from his
+mother.  He was High Church at a time when to be so was far less
+fashionable than it is at present.  He called himself a Catholic, and
+spoke always of the Mass in a way that shocked his fellow-churchmen who
+were in those days still content to speak of themselves as Protestants
+and the sacramental act as Holy Communion.  And after marriage he
+maintained his position with a far greater tenacity than most would
+have expected of the soft-willed man.  Indeed, it was the one point on
+which, aided by his mother's memory, he stood up to his wife for long.
+
+"I'll wear you down yet, my son," Anne told him grimly.  "May as well
+come off the perch now as later."
+
+In this one matter her taunts served only, so it seemed, to strengthen
+her husband's resistance.
+
+He went white, shook, perspired, and continued to attend High Mass at
+St. Michael's, in spite of his growing distaste for the man who
+administered it--his neighbour, Prebendary Willcocks, across the road.
+
+A far wiser woman than she seemed, Mrs. Caspar recognized her mistake,
+desisted from her original line of attack, and let her husband go his
+own way for a time without protest--as the cat permits the mouse a
+little liberty.
+
+When she began to take the children to chapel with her, she said--and
+Anne Caspar could be beautiful upon occasion--
+
+"Ned, I wish you'd come along with me and the boys sometimes.  I do
+feel it so that we never worship in common."
+
+That was the beginning of the end of his resistance.
+
+He became an occasional attendant at the chapel, if he could never
+bring his aesthetic spirit, seeking everywhere for colour, harmony and
+form, to become a professed member of the rather dreary little
+community.
+
+And later, for quite other reasons, he dropped St. Michael's entirely.
+
+But for twenty years after he had ceased to call himself a member of
+the Church of England, often of Sunday afternoons in the spring and
+summer he would take the train to London Bridge, and wander East on the
+top of a dawdling bus, to find himself, about the time most churches
+close their doors, outside St. Jude's in Commercial Street, the
+"chuckers in" already busy at their work among the street-roughs and
+fighting factory girls.  Edward Caspar was not a "chucker-in" himself;
+but when the quiet doorkeeper of the House of the Lord opened it at
+8.30 he was of the first to enter the lighted church, the side-aisles
+of which were darkened that tramp and prostitute might sit there
+unnoticed and unashamed.  And in that motley assembly of hooligans from
+the East End, of respectable artisans from streets drab as their
+inmates, of intellectuals from Toynbee Hall, and occasional visitors
+from the West End, he would join in that irregular and beautiful Hour
+of Worship, of song, silent meditation, solos on organ or violin,
+extempore prayer, readings from Mazzini, Maurice, Ruskin, and Carlyle,
+that made him and others dream of that Society of the Redeemed which in
+days to come should gather thus, without priest or ceremonial, simply
+to rejoice together in the blessing of a common life and universal
+Father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+OLD AND NEW
+
+Edward Caspar went occasionally to chapel in order to gratify his wife.
+He ceased attending church because his always growing spirit, intensely
+modern and aspiring in spite of its inherent weakness, no longer found
+satisfaction in the ornate ritual, the quaint mediæval formulæ, the
+iterations and reiterations of the sacerdotalism which had held his
+mother in its grip.
+
+As a student of comparative religion his intellect was still interested
+in forms which his seeking mind had long rejected as empty, ludicrous,
+or inadequate.
+
+His reading for his book, his experience of life, and most of all an
+inner urge, led him in time to look for the spiritual comfort that was
+his most vital need outside the walls of the consecrated prison in
+which he had been bred.
+
+_Quia fecisti nos ad Te cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiscat in
+Te_ was the motto that hung above his writing-desk.  And his restless
+heart found increasingly its peace sometimes in music, sometimes amid
+the hum of men and women in the crowded streets of the East End of the
+town, and most often in quiet communion with Nature on the Downs or
+beside the sea in some gap far from the haunts of men.
+
+He would ramble the lonely hills by the hour, lost in thought, Ernie
+skirmishing about him.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Trupp, riding with his little daughter up there between
+the sky and sea, would meet the couple.
+
+"Like a bear and a terrier, Bess," he would smile.
+
+Then in some secluded valley, father and son would lie down in the
+"loo" of the hill, as Ernie called it.
+
+Resting there with contented spirits amid the gorse, they would watch
+the gulls, white-winged and desolately crying over the plough, while
+the larks purred above them.
+
+These were the best moments of Ernie's childhood, never to pass from
+him in the tumult and battle of later life.  A child of the earth, even
+his tongue, touched with the soft slur of Sussex caught from
+school-mates, betrayed him for a countryman.  He loved the feel of the
+turf solid beneath him; he loved the sound of the gorse-pods snapping
+in the sun; he loved the thump of the sea crashing on the beach far
+below; and most of all he loved the larks pouring comfort into the
+cistern of his mind until it too seemed to brim with the music of
+praise.
+
+"Loving, idn't they?" he would say in his sweet little voice, his hands
+behind his head, his eyes on a speck of song thrilling in the blue.
+
+"That's it, Boy-lad," his father's answer would come from beneath the
+cavern of his hat; and Edward Caspar forthwith would repeat, in a voice
+that seemed to co-ordinate the harmonies of earth and sky and sea,
+Wordsworth's _Lines above Tintern Abbey_:
+
+        _... That serene and blessed mood,
+  In which the affections gently lead us on,--
+  Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
+  And even the motion of our human blood
+  Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
+  In body, and become a living soul:_
+
+
+Alf never came on these excursions.  The bent of the two brothers was
+indeed entirely different.  If they left the house together, as often
+as not they parted at the garden-gate.  Ern turned his face towards the
+green hills that blocked the end of the road, Alf turned his back on
+them.
+
+"Nothin doin there," he would say with a knowing wink.  He hated
+walking, and he feared the loneliness of the hills.  His heart was in
+the East End of the growing town.  Down there, beyond the gas-works, at
+the edge of the Levels, where the trams clanged continually, where you
+heard strange tongues, and saw new types of faces, Alf found himself.
+The little urchin, who seemed all eyes in a hideous square head, would
+wander by the hour in Sea-gate, among the booths and barrows, drinking
+in the life about him, and return home at night tired but contented.
+
+In bed the two boys would compare their experiences.
+
+"What did you see?" Ern would ask.
+
+"Everythink," Alf would answer.  "Folks and a fight and all."
+
+"I see something, too," said Ernie, deliberate alike of speech and mind.
+
+"What then?" asked Alf, scornfully.
+
+"I see angels," Ernie answered.  "Dad see em too."
+
+But Alf only sniggered.
+
+At that time Old Town hung, as it were, between the Past and the
+Future.  It had not shaken off the one, and yet could not resist the
+other.  Beneath it was New Town, a growing industrial city, absorbing
+workers of every kind from every quarter; stretching back from the sea
+to Rodmill and overrunning the marshes at an incredible speed; with the
+slums, the Sunday agitators, the Salvationists and reformers, the
+rumble of discontent, that mark the cities of our day.  Beyond it lay
+the immemorial countryside with shepherds on the hills, oxen ploughing
+in the valleys, villages clustered about the village-green, the squire,
+the public-house, the parish-church as in the days of Elizabeth.  Old
+Town still slept upon its hill about the parish-church, but the murmur
+of the ungainly offspring at its feet disturbed slumbers that had
+endured for centuries.  In its steep streets you might hear the
+undulating Sussex tongue, little changed from Saxon times, clashing in
+vain conflict with the aggressive cockney phrase and accent which is
+conquering the British Isles as surely, if as slowly, as did the
+English of the men of the Elbe in by-gone days.
+
+Ernie was of the older life; Alf of the new.
+
+Their very speech betrayed them: for the elder boy's tongue was touched
+with the slow, cawing music of the shepherds and labourers with whom he
+loved to consort, while Alf's was the speech of a city rat, sharp,
+incisive, twanging.
+
+In the holiday Ern worked on the hill in the harvest, and was known to
+all the men and most of the animals at the Moot Farm, just across the
+Lewes Road.  Once, in the early spring, he passed the night out in
+Shadow Coombe, and came home fearfully just before school.
+
+His mother was shaking the mat at the front-door.
+
+"Where you been then?" she asked ferociously.
+
+"With the shepherd in his hut," answered Ernie.  "Dis lambin time.  His
+boy's run'd away."
+
+The lad's manifest truthfulness disarmed the angry woman.
+
+Alf peeped round his mother's skirts.
+
+"Did he give you anythink?" he asked.
+
+"I didn't ask him for nohun," Ern answered, aggrieved.
+
+Alf sneered.
+
+"Fat 'ead!" he cried.  "Aynt arf soft, Ern aynt!"
+
+Their father, dressing at the upper window, heard the conversation and
+agonized.  Tolerant as was Edward Caspar of grammatical solecisms, his
+ear, sensitive as Lady Blanche's, writhed at the mangling of vowels by
+his second son.  His wife, who came from the Bucks border of the great
+city on the Thames, had indeed the Cockney phrase but not the offending
+accent.
+
+When he came downstairs, in a moment of despair, he poured his troubles
+into Anne's unsympathetic ear.
+
+"What a way to talk!" he groaned.
+
+"I don't see it matters," his wife answered grimly.  "_They_ aren't
+going to Harrow and Trinity."
+
+The big man winced.  It was a real grief to him that his sons were not
+to have in life the advantages that he believed himself to have been
+given.
+
+"You needn't throw that up at me," he grumbled into his brown beard.
+
+She put her hand on his shoulder.
+
+Her husband was the only creature in the world to whom Anne Caspar
+sometimes demonstrated affection.
+
+"And a good job, too, I says," she observed.  "They got to work."
+Words that gave unconscious witness to the estimate she and her class
+held of their rulers and their education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE STUDY
+
+Instead then of going to the Preparatory-school, the Public-school, and
+the University in which their father had sought to learn the art of
+useful citizenship, the two lads attended on week-days the Board-school
+in the hollow between the church and Rodmill.
+
+New amid much that was old, it reared its gaunt red head above a crowd
+of workmen's cottages which stood on ground still called the Moot,
+where of old, under the Kneb, beside the bourne, the Saxon folk from
+hill and wold and marshy level gathered about the Moot-tree to discuss
+affairs, deal justly between man and man and proclaim the common will.
+
+Mr. Pigott, a short, shrewd, bearded man, with a merry grey eye, swift
+to wrath, was the headmaster as he was manager of the chapel.
+Thoroughly efficient in a day when the Gospel of Efficiency had been
+little preached, he managed chapel and school admirably.
+
+The boys attended both.
+
+Alf was always at the head of his class, Ern never anywhere in
+particular.
+
+As Mr. Pigott told the boys' mother, Ern had plenty of brains, but he
+didn't care to use them.
+
+"He's a little gentleman though--like his father," ended the
+schoolmaster.
+
+Mr. Pigott was on the whole less of a snob than most of us.  As an
+honest radical he scorned rank, perhaps a little ostentatiously; while
+money was very little to him.  But for the mysterious quality of
+breeding he had the respect the roughest of us confess in the presence
+of something finer than ourselves.  And on the rare occasions in which
+Mr. Edward Caspar had been induced to deliver an address at the new
+Institute he would say to his teaching staff in awed voice--"There's
+English for you!  Don't you wish you could talk like that...?"
+
+Now his comparison of her son to her husband provoked Mrs. Caspar as it
+never failed to do.
+
+"That's all very well if you can afford it," she commented acridly.
+"But Ern's got to make his own way in the world."
+
+"He'll do," said Mr. Pigott.  "He won't be forgotten, you'll see.  He's
+a good lad, and that's something even in these days."
+
+And if Ernie was not a success in the schoolroom, in the playground he
+excelled.  Like his father in being universally popular, he was unlike
+him in his marked athletic capacity.
+
+True, he was always in trouble for slacking with the masters, who none
+the less were fond of him; while Alf, the most assiduous of youths, was
+disliked by everybody and gloried in it.  He won all the gilt-edged
+prizes, while Ern took the canings.
+
+Alf reported his brother's misdoings gleefully at home.
+
+"Ern got it again," he crowed jubilantly one evening.  "They fairly
+sliced him, didn't they, Ern?"
+
+His recollections of the scene were so spicy that--for once--he was
+dreadfully affectionate to the brother who had given him such prurient
+pleasure.
+
+"Ern in trouble of course!" cried the mother angrily.  "You needn't
+tell me!  A nice credit to his home and all!  I'm ashamed to look Mr.
+Pigott in the face come Sunday!'
+
+"Now then, mother!" grumbled Mr. Caspar.  "Let the boy alone!"
+
+"Yes, you're always for him!" flared Mrs. Caspar, buttering the bread.
+"Setting him against his mother!  But for you he'd be all right."
+
+Alf sat like a little wizened devil at the end of the table in his high
+chair, his eyes twinkling malignantly over his bib, enjoying the fun.
+
+"It's him and Ern against you and me, mum, ayn't it?" he cried,
+shuffling on his seat.
+
+Whether it was his son's accent or a sense of the tragic truth
+underlying his child's words, that affected him, Mr. Caspar rose and
+shuffled out of the kitchen into the study, which was looked on in the
+family as dad's sanctuary.
+
+The scene had taken place in the kitchen at tea, which was the one meal
+the family shared.  Breakfast, dinner, supper, Edward Caspar had by
+himself in the little back room looking out on the fig-tree; and Mrs.
+Caspar waited on him.
+
+That was by her desire, not his: for from the start of their married
+life Anne had determined that, so far as in her lay, her husband should
+have everything just as he was accustomed to.  Thus from earliest
+infancy the children had been taught by their mother to understand that
+the two sitting-rooms were sacred to dad, and never to be entered
+except by permission.  Their place was the kitchen.  She herself set
+the example by always knocking on the door of either room before
+entering.
+
+And the atmosphere of these two rooms was radically different from that
+of the rest of the house.  Anne knew it and rejoiced.  Everywhere else
+the tobacconist's daughter reigned obviously supreme.  These rooms were
+the habitat of a scholar and a gentleman.  The little back-room,
+indeed, was remarkable for little but the solidity of its few articles
+of furniture, and the old silver salver with the crest, reposing on the
+mahogany side-board.  But the front sitting-room, with the bow-window
+looking out on to Beech-hangar and the long spur of the Downs that hid
+Beau-nez from view, was known in the family as the study, and looked
+what it was called.
+
+The room, flooded with sunshine, was Mrs. Caspar's secret pride.  She
+knew very well that there was nothing quite like it in Beachbourne, Old
+or New, and preserved it jealously.  She did not understand it, much
+preferring her own kitchen, but she recognized that it stamped her
+husband for what he was, admired its atmosphere of distinction, and
+loved showing it to her rare visitors.  On these occasions she stood
+herself in the passage, one arm of steel barring the door, like a
+priest showing the sanctuary to one without the pale.  And it gave her
+malicious pleasure when Canon Willcocks, from the Rectory, opposite,
+calling one day, showed surprise, not untinged with jealousy, at what
+he was permitted to see.  The Canon clearly thought it unseemly that
+Lazarus living at the Rectory gate should boast a room like that.  And
+he was seriously annoyed when Anne, pointing to the Cavalier upon the
+wall, referred to the first Lord Ravensrood as "my children's ancestor."
+
+On the evening of the squabble in the kitchen, Ernie joined his father
+in the study after tea.
+
+As Alf was fond of remarking, "Ern's welcome there if no one else
+ayn't."
+
+Edward Caspar was sitting by the fire as usual, brooding over the
+meerschaum he was colouring.  His manuscript lay where it usually lay
+on the chair at his side, and a critical eye would have noted that it
+was little thicker than when Mr. Trupp had first seen it some years
+before.
+
+"Ain't you well then, dad?" asked the boy in his beautiful little
+treble.
+
+"I'm all right, Boy-lad," the other answered.  "Mother didn't touch
+you, did she?"
+
+There was something reassuring always about Ernie's manner with his
+father, as of a woman dealing with a sick child.
+
+"No," he replied.  "She said I was to come to you."
+
+"Why were you caned at school?" asked the father, after a pause.
+
+The boy's eyes were down, and he scraped the floor with one foot.
+
+"Fighting," he said at last reluctantly.  "Where it were, Alf sauce
+Aaron Huggett in de playground, and Aaron twist Alf's arm.  Allowed
+he'd had more'n enough of Alf's lip.  And he wouldn't leggo.  So I
+paint his nose for him.  And it bled."
+
+Edward Caspar puffed.
+
+"Why don't you let Alfred fight his own battles?"
+
+Steadfast to the tradition of his own class in this matter if in no
+other, he revolted against the common abbreviation of his younger son's
+name.
+
+"Alf fight!" cried Ernie with rare scorn.  "He couldn't fight no-hows.
+D'isn't in him.  He'd just break."
+
+"Then why does he sauce em?"
+
+Ernie resumed his foot scraping.
+
+"That's what I says to him," he admitted in his slow ca-a-ing speech.
+"Only where it seems he ca'an't keep his tongue tidy.  Seems he ca'an't
+elp issalf like.  Then he gets into trouble.  Then I avs to fight for
+him."
+
+"And if you don't fight for him no one else will?" said his father.
+
+"No," replied Ernie with the delightful reluctance of innocence and
+youth.  "See no one do'osn't like Alf--only issalf."  He added as a
+slow after-thought, "And I be his brother like."
+
+Edward Caspar held out a big hand.
+
+Ern saw his father was pleased, he didn't know why; and he was glad.
+
+In Ern's estimation there was no one in the world like dad--the kind,
+the comforter.
+
+Once indeed in Sunday-school, some years before, when Mr. Pigott had
+been expatiating on the character of our Lord, the silence had been
+broken by the voice of a very little lad,
+
+"My dad's like that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALF SHOWS HIS COLOURS
+
+In fact, as Ernie said, the two were brothers, and in some sort
+complementary.
+
+Ern had to the full the chivalrous qualities of the Beauregards.  He
+never forgot that he was Alf's elder brother, or that Alf was a poor
+little creature with a chest in which Mr. Trupp took an abnormal
+interest.  He fought many battles, bore many blows for his young
+brother.  Alf took it all as a matter of course, regarding himself as a
+little god whom Ernie was privileged to serve and suffer for.  Ern
+accepted the other's constant suggestion of superiority without revolt,
+and took the second place with the lazy good-nature characteristic of
+him.
+
+Ern indeed was nothing of a leader.  In all the adventurous
+vicissitudes of boy-life the initiative lay with Alf, who planned the
+mischief; while Ern, obedient to his brother, for whose brains he had
+the profoundest admiration, carried it out and paid the penalty, as a
+rule uncomplainingly, at home and abroad.
+
+Old Town was now creeping west along the foot of the Downs towards
+Lewes.  On its outskirts and in the corn-fields where are to-day rows
+of red-brick villas, were still to be found flint cottages, long
+blue-roofed barns, and timbered farmsteads among elms.  As little by
+little the town, with its border of allotment gardens, flooded along
+the New Road, sweeping up Rodmill and brimming over towards Ratton and
+the Decoy on the edge of the marshes, these buildings that dated from
+another age were gradually diverted from their pristine use to be the
+habitations of those who no longer drew their living from the earth.
+
+Thus in the house which had once been the huntsman's lodge, beside the
+now abandoned kennels, lived Mr. Pigott--one foot in the country, as he
+said, one in the town.
+
+Every morning he walked across the foot-path, past Moot Farm, to
+school.  Mr. Pigott's house stood in a hollow coombe a long way back
+from the road.  The gorse-clad sides of the Down rose steeply at the
+back of it.  In front was an orchard in which a walnut-tree lorded it,
+conspicuous over the lesser trees.
+
+It was towards the end of their school time, when Ern was nearly
+fourteen, that Alf planned a raid upon this tree, famous in the
+locality for its beauty and fruitfulness.
+
+The adventure needed careful thinking out.
+
+The approach to the house was along an unscreened path that led across
+the arable land.  Between the path and the house was the orchard in
+which stood the tree with its coveted treasure.
+
+The trouble was that Mrs. Pigott's window overlooked the orchard, and
+she was always in that window--so much Alf, in his many reconnaissances
+of the position, discovered.
+
+Now it was well known in the school that Mrs. Pigott had but one eye,
+and that of glass, which accounted perhaps for its extraordinary powers
+of vision.  And besides Mrs. Pigott with her one sharp eye, there was
+Mrs. Pigott's little dog with his many sharp teeth.  There was also in
+the background Mr. Pigott, who, outside the chapel, was athletic and
+regrettably fierce.
+
+Alf waited long for his opportunity, in terror lest the tree should be
+beaten before he had worked his will upon it, but his chance came at
+last.
+
+One Saturday afternoon he and Ern were loitering in Church Street,
+marching along with the starts and stops, the semi-innocent and
+semi-surreptitious manner of boys waiting for Satan to enter into them
+and prompt them to definite action, when Alf dug his brother with a
+warning elbow.
+
+Mrs. Pigott was staring with her glass eye into the ironmonger's
+opposite the church.  On her arm was a basket and at her feet her dog.
+It was clear that she was doing her week-end shopping.
+
+Alf, swift to seize his opportunity, set off up the hill, hot-foot,
+silent, with a bustle of arms and legs, his brow puckered as he
+concentrated ruthlessly upon his purpose.
+
+Ern followed the fierce, insistent, little figure more leisurely.
+
+"Steady on!" he called.  "Where away then?"
+
+"Walnut-tree," panted Alf.  "Now's yer chance."
+
+Ern, who knew from experience that the dirty and dangerous work would
+fall to his lot, lagged.
+
+"Mr. Pigott's there," he grumbled.
+
+"Now he ayn't then," cried Alf, spurring the laggard on.  "He's gone
+over to Lewes for the Conference.  Didn't you hear mother at breakfast?"
+
+There had been in truth a split in the chapel.  The Established
+Methodists were breaking away from the Foundation Methodists, and the
+Primitive Methodists were thinking of following suit.  The little
+community was therefore a tumult of warring tongues.
+
+Alf led up the hill, past the chalk-pit, along the side of the Downs,
+and dropped down on his objective from the rear.  Coming to the fence
+that ran round the orchard, he peeped at the low house lying in the
+background under the green flank of the hill.
+
+Ern followed reluctantly, as one drawn to his doom by a fate he cannot
+withstand.
+
+He wanted the walnuts; he wanted to be brave; but he liked Mr. Pigott,
+and, usually obedient to his brother's suggestions, had qualms in this
+case.
+
+"Go on then!" urged Alf.  It was a favourite phrase of his.  "There
+ayn't no one there."
+
+"Come on yourself," answered Ern without enthusiasm.
+
+"Now, I'll stay and watch the path for you against her," piped Alf.
+
+But for once Ern was firm.
+
+"I aren't a-gooin unless you cooms too," he said doggedly.
+
+"What's the good of me, then?" scoffed Alf in his fierce and feverish
+way.  "Can I climb the tree?  Only wish I could.  I'd show you.  I
+suppose you'll be throwin that up at me next!  My belief you're afraid."
+
+But Ernie was not to be moved from the position which he had taken up.
+Just now and then Alf had remarked that his brother for all his
+softness became hard--adamant indeed--in a way that rather frightened
+Alf.
+
+"I'll goo up the tree and shake em down to you," Ern said in his slow,
+musical voice.  "You stand at the foot of her and gather em."
+
+"Fine!" jeered Alf.  "And when Mr. Pigott comes out you'll be up the
+tree safe as dysies, and I'll be on the floor for him to paste!"
+
+"I thart you said he'd gone to Lewes," retorted Ern, unusually alert.
+
+"So he has," replied Alf sourly.  "Only I suppose he won't stay there
+for ever, will he?"
+
+Ern, however, was proof against all the other's logic; and finally the
+two boys climbed the fence together.
+
+The walnut was a majestic tree, with boughs that dropped almost to the
+ground, making a splendid pavilion of green.
+
+Ern swarmed the tree.  Alf stood at the foot, sheltered by the drooping
+branches.  Thus he could watch the house, while nobody in the house
+could see anything of him but a pair of meagre black legs.
+
+He was fairly safe and knew it, but even so his heart pattered, he bit
+his nails continually, and kept a furtive eye on the line of his
+retreat.
+
+"Hurry!" he kept on calling.
+
+Ern, up aloft, went to work like a man.  He tossed the branches to and
+fro.  The ripe walnuts came rattling down.  Alf, underneath, gathered
+rich harvest.  He filled his pockets, his cap, his handkerchief.
+Opening his shirt, he stuffed the brown treasure into his bosom and
+grew into a portly urchin who rattled when he moved.
+
+"I got nigh a bushel!" he cried keenly.  "Throw your coat down, and
+I'll fill the pockets!"
+
+The little devil darted to and fro, tumbling spiderlike upon the
+falling riches, absorbed in accumulation.  His heart and eyes burned.
+There was money in this--money.  And money was already taking its
+appointed place in Alf's philosophy.
+
+He would sell the nuts at so much a pound--some wholesale to a
+fruiterer he knew in the remote East End; some retail to his
+schoolfellows.
+
+The quality and quantity of the loot so absorbed him that he forgot his
+fears.  And when he glanced up through the screen of thick branches to
+see a pair of grey-stockinged legs, thick and formidable to a degree,
+advancing upon the tree with dreadful deliberation, his heart stopped.
+
+The enemy was on them.
+
+Alf emptied handkerchief, pockets, cap: he emptied himself by a swift
+ducking motion that sent the treasure heaped against his heart pouring
+forth with a rattle about his neck and head and ears.
+
+Then he cast fearful eyes to the rear.  It was thirty yards to the
+fence and beyond there was but the unscreened path without a scrap of
+cover, leading across the plough, past the Moot Farm and abandoned
+kennels to the New Road.
+
+Alf saw at a glance that escape was impossible.  Mr. Pigott, for all
+his forty years, could sprint.
+
+Swift as a cornered rat, Alf made his decision.
+
+He marched out from his shelter towards the approaching legs, a puny
+little creature with pale peaked face, and Ern's coat flung over his
+arm.
+
+Mr. Pigott was advancing, very grim and grey, across the rough grass,
+his hands behind him, dragging something.  He seemed in no hurry, and
+not in the least surprised to see Alf, whom he ignored.
+
+"Please, sir," said Alf, perking his face up with an air of frankness,
+"there's a boy up your tree.  Here's his coat."
+
+Mr. Pigott walked slowly on, drawing behind him a sixty-foot hose,
+which issued like a white snake from the scullery window.
+
+"I know," he said with suppressed quiet.  "And I know who set him on to
+it.  I can't beat you because you'd break if I touched you.  But I'll
+take your brother's skin off him though he's twice the man you are, you
+dirty little cur!"
+
+He brought the hose to bear on the brigand in the tree, and loosed the
+water-spout and the vials of his wrath together.
+
+"Ah, you young scoundrel!" he roared, finding joy in explosive
+self-expression.  "I'll teach you come monkeying after my nuts!"
+
+Swish went the stream of water through the branches.
+
+Ern hid as best he could on the leeward side of the trunk.
+
+Mr. Pigott brought his artillery mercilessly to bear upon the boy's
+clasping hands.  Ern, spluttering and sprawling, came down the tree
+with a rush and made a bolt for the fence.
+
+Mr. Pigott, roaring jovially, played the stream full on him.  It was a
+powerful gush, and floored the boy.  The avenger knew no mercy and
+drenched his victim as he lay.
+
+It was a sodden little figure who crept home disconsolately ten minutes
+later.
+
+Alf had been back some time and had already told his tale, gibbering
+with excitement and fear.
+
+Ern's mother, in a white fury, was awaiting the boy in the kitchen.
+
+"I'll learn you disgrace me!" she cried.  "Robbing your own
+chapel-manager's orchard--and then come home like a drownded rat!"
+
+She set about the lad in good earnest.
+
+Alf, perched upon the dresser to be out of the way, watched the fun,
+biting his nails.
+
+"You mustn't hit her back then!" he screamed.  "Your own mother!"
+
+"I aren't hittin' her back then!" cried Ern, dogged, dazed, and warding
+off the blows as best he might.  "I'm only defendin of mesalf."
+
+The noise of the scuffle was considerable.
+
+Outside in the passage was the sound of slippered feet.  Then some one
+tried the door.
+
+"It's only dad!" cried the devil on the dresser, white and with little
+black eyes that danced.
+
+"What's up?" called an agitated voice from outside.  "Hold on, mother!
+Give the boy a chance."
+
+Some one rattled the door.
+
+"Go about your business!" cried Mrs. Caspar.  "There's a pair of you!"
+
+Her anger exhausted and shame possessing her, she was going out into
+the yard to shelter herself in the little shed against the Workhouse
+wall, when Alf's sudden scream stayed her.
+
+"Mum!--down't leave me!--he'll kill me!"
+
+She turned to mark a white flare burning in the face of her elder son.
+
+She had seen it before and had been afraid.
+
+When Ern looked like that he ceased to be Ern: he became
+transfigured--yes, and terrible: like, she sometimes thought, the
+cavalier in the picture must have been in anger.
+
+"Take them sopping duds off," she said quietly, "and then go up and put
+your Sundays on."
+
+
+Half an hour later Ern, wearing dry clothes, entered the study.
+
+He was sweet, smiling, and a thought abashed.
+
+His father, on the other hand, evinced signs of terrible emotion.
+
+His face was mottled, and he was shaking.
+
+Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he stood before the fire, trying
+pitifully to preserve his dignity, and moving uneasily from leg to leg
+like a chained elephant.
+
+"Did she hurt you?" he asked, seeking to steady his voice.
+
+Ern shook his head.
+
+"She laid about me middlin tidy," he admitted.  "But she didn't not to
+say hurt me.  She don't know how--a woman don't.  Too much flusteration
+along of it."
+
+Edward Caspar collapsed into a chair.
+
+"What happened?" he asked.
+
+Ern recounted the story truthfully, the white glimmer in his face
+coming and going between pants as he told.
+
+"Why d'you let him lead you astray?" asked the father irritably, at the
+end.
+
+Ern wagged his head slowly and began to scrape once more with his foot.
+
+"Alf's artfuller nor me!" he said at last in a shamefaced way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ALF MAKES A REMARK
+
+Both boys turned up at Sunday-school next morning: Alf defiant, Ern
+abashed.
+
+Mr. Pigott ignored the former, snubbed him brutally when occasion
+offered, and showed himself benignant to the prime sinner.
+
+After chapel Mrs. Caspar spoke to him.
+
+"I don't know what you think of my son, Mr. Pigott," she began.
+
+"Which son?" asked the other in his bluff way.
+
+"Why, Ernie to be sure.  He's always bringing shame upon me."
+
+"He's worth twice the other," cried Mr. Pigott, letting off steam.
+
+"Ah, yes, you've got your favourites, Mr. Pigott!" retorted the woman.
+
+"And I'm not the only one!" answered the outraged schoolmaster.  "Ern's
+a boy.  And boys will be boys, as we all know.  But he's a little
+gentleman, Ern is.  He's his father over again."
+
+The comparison of Ernie to his father, however well intentioned, always
+touched Mrs. Caspar on the raw.  Her eyes sparkled.  Every now and then
+she reminded you forcibly that her grandmother had lived in a
+by-street--off Greyhound Road, Fulham.
+
+"Ah," she muttered vengefully, "I'll cut his little liver out yet,
+you'll see."
+
+Mr. Pigott rounded on her, genuinely shocked.
+
+"And you a religious woman!" he cried.  "Shame on you!"
+
+"I don't care," answered Mrs. Caspar.  "I see it coming.  I always
+have.  And it's just more than I can bear."
+
+Mr. Pigott did not understand the cause of the woman's emotion, but he
+recognized that it was genuine and so respected it.
+
+"Well, he's leaving school now," he said more gently.  "He'll settle
+down once he's got his nose to the grindstone."
+
+Later, at the meeting of the Bowling Green Committee, in the Moot, the
+schoolmaster reported Mrs. Caspar's saying to Mr. Trupp.
+
+"She's a hard un," he commented.
+
+"She's need to be," growled the other.
+
+"What's that, Doctor?" asked Mr. Pigott.
+
+"If she let go of him, he'd be dead in a month," mumbled Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Mr. Caspar would?"
+
+The Doctor looked at the grey church-tower bluff against the sky.
+
+"But she won't let go," he added.  "She's got her qualities."
+
+"She has," said Mr. Pigott, treading the green.  "She's a diamond--as
+hard, as keen."
+
+The two always sparred when they met and loved their friendly bouts.
+Both were radicals; but they had arrived at their convictions by very
+different routes.  The schoolmaster had inherited his opinions from
+tough, dissenting ancestors, the man of science had acquired them from
+Huxley and Darwin.  Politics the pair rarely discussed, except at
+election time; for on that subject they were in rough agreement.  But
+the two men wrangled genially over religion, the ethics of sport, even
+the two Caspar boys; for Mr. Trupp was the one man in Old Town who
+alleged a preference for the younger boy--mainly, his wife declared,
+because he must be "contrary."
+
+Mr. Pigott now told the stubborn man almost with glee the story of
+Alf's treachery.
+
+"What d'ye think of that now?" he asked defiantly.
+
+"Why," grunted the Doctor, "what I should expect."
+
+"Of course," said the sarcastic Mr. Pigott.
+
+"He's got the faults of his physique," continued the other.  "He's
+afraid of a thrashing because he knows it'd kill him.
+Self-preservation is always the first law of life."
+
+"He's a little cur," said Mr. Pigott.  "That's what your young Alf is."
+
+"I've no doubt he is," replied the Doctor.  "You would be too if you'd
+got that body to live in."
+
+"I'd be ashamed," shouted the other.  "I'd commit suicide offhand."
+
+"The wonder is he's alive at all," continued Mr. Trupp, quite unmoved.
+"Must have some grit in him somewhere or he'd have died when he was
+born."
+
+"That's you and his mother," said the schoolmaster censoriously.
+"Saving useless human material that ought to be scrapped.  And you call
+yourself a Man of Science!  In a properly ordered community you'd stand
+your trial at Lewes Assizes, the two of you--for adding to the criminal
+classes.  Now if we were back in the good old days, they'd have exposed
+Alf at birth--and quite right, too."
+
+"Quite so," said Mr. Trupp.  "Your Christianity has a lot to answer
+for, as I've remarked before."
+
+
+It fell to Mr. Pigott to find a job of work for Ernie when his
+favourite left school: for at that date there were no Labour Bureaux,
+no Juvenile Advisory Committees, no attempt to make the most of the
+country's one solid asset--its Youth.  And the rich had not yet made
+their grand discovery of the last twenty-five years--that the poor have
+bodies; and that these bodies must be saved, even if it cost a little
+more than saving their souls, which can always be done upon the cheap.
+
+Mr. Pigott had little difficulty in his self-imposed task, for he did
+not mean to remain a schoolmaster all his life, and was already
+dabbling in the commercial life of the growing town.
+
+Ernie started as an office-boy in a coal-merchant's office in Cornfield
+Road by the Central Station, which formed the junction between the Old
+Town and the New.
+
+Before the boy embarked on his career, Mr. Pigott invited him to tea
+and lecture.
+
+"It's your own fault if you don't get on," said the schoolmaster
+aggressively after the muffins.  "Rests with yourself.  Office boy to
+President--like they do in America.  Make a romance of it."
+
+"I shall try, sir," cried Era, with the easy enthusiasm characteristic
+of him.
+
+"I'll lay you won't, then!" retorted the other rudely.  "I'll lay all
+the work I've put into you these ten years past goes down the drain.
+Now your grandfather..."
+
+He stopped short, remembering Mrs. Caspar had told him that their
+origin had been kept from the two boys....
+
+At his new job Ern did not work very hard.  It was not in him to do
+that; for he had his father's complete lack of ambition.  But he worked
+just enough to keep his place, to pay his mother for his keep by the
+time he was seventeen, and have some "spending money," as he called it,
+over, with which to buy cigarettes, and join the cricket club.  In time
+he even attained to the dignity of an office stool: for his handwriting
+was excellent, his ability undoubted, and his education as good as most.
+
+"Ern don't lick the stamps no more.  He writes the letters," was Alf's
+report at home.
+
+The younger brother too had now launched out upon the world.  But Alf
+was very different from Ern.  He had his own ideas from the start and
+went his own way.  Somehow he had ferreted out the facts about his
+grandfather's career; and that career it was his deliberate
+determination to surpass.
+
+Those were the early days of the motor industry and the petrol engine.
+Alf made his mother apprentice him to Hewson and Clarke, an
+enterprising young engineering firm in the East End, off Pevensey Road.
+
+"No Old Town for me," he said knowingly.  "New Town's the bird!"
+
+And the boy worked with the undeviating energy of an insect.  All day
+he was busy at the shop, and in the evening came home, grimy and tired,
+to have a wash and then settle down in the kitchen to study the theory
+of the petrol-engine.
+
+His mother, ambitious as her son, watched him with admiration, guarding
+his hours of study jealously from interruption.
+
+"He's his grand-dad over again," she confided to her husband in one of
+their rare moments of intimacy.
+
+Edward Caspar shook his head.  He was interested in his second son,
+although in his heart of hearts he disliked the boy.  He disliked
+ambitious men--their restlessness, their unhappy egoism, their
+incapacity to give themselves to any cause from which they would not
+reap personal advantage, offended his spiritual sense; and he followed
+with amused benevolence the careers of his contemporaries at Harrow and
+Trinity who were reaping now the fruits of Orthodoxy, and just becoming
+Cabinet Ministers, Bishops, Judges, and the like.
+
+"Alf hasn't got my father's physique," he said.
+
+"You wait," Anne replied.  "He'll conquer that too.  Last time Mr.
+Trupp saw him he said he'd do now--if he took care."
+
+Ern watched his brother's feverish activities with ironical smiles.
+
+"He's like a little engine himself," he said.  "No time to look around
+and take a little pleasure in life.  All the while a-running along the
+lines--puff-puff-puff!--with his nose to the ground.  Not knowin where
+he's goin or why; only set on getting somewhere, he don't know where,
+some day, he don't know when."
+
+Himself he preferred the leisurely life, and was known among his
+friends as Gentleman Ernie.  The office, which prided itself upon its
+tone, for in it worked a youth who said he had been at a public school,
+had taken the country accent off his tongue.  Ern was indeed a bit of a
+dandy now, who oiled his hair, and took an interest in his ties; while
+Alf never spent a penny on his clothes, was always shabby, and seldom
+clean.  The dapper young clerk and the grimy little mechanic, on the
+rare occasions when they appeared in the streets together, formed a
+marked contrast, of which Ernie at least was aware.
+
+"You'd never know em for brothers," the passers-by would remark.
+
+Both had arrived at the age when the young male joins a gang, curious
+about women, but inclining to be suspicious of them.  Alf, however,
+strong in himself, continued on his prickly and independent way.  He
+was not drawn to others, nor were others drawn to him.  Companionable
+Ern, on the other hand, who was everybody's friend, was absorbed into a
+gang; but he was different from his gang-mates.  He used less hair-oil
+than they did, and wore more modest ties.  Moreover, there was nothing
+of the hooligan about him.
+
+"Such a gentlemanly lad," said Mrs. Trupp.  "That's his father coming
+out in him."
+
+"May the resemblance end there," muttered Mr. Trupp.
+
+The lady speared her husband on the point of her needle.
+
+"Croakie!" she remarked.
+
+Ern could have been a leader among his mates, had he chosen to assume
+authority.  His quiet, his distinction, his happy manner, and above all
+the fact that he was a promising cricketer and had made half a century
+on the Frying Pan at Lewes for the Sussex Colts against the Canterbury
+Wanderers, marked him out.  But Ern would not lead.  He spent his
+evenings in the main at home rather than in the lighted streets, and
+was at his happiest sitting in the study opposite his father.  On these
+occasions the two rarely spoke, but they enjoyed a silent communion
+that was eminently satisfying to them both.  Just sometimes the father
+would touch the revolving book-case on his right; take out one of the
+little blue poetry books Ern knew so well, and read _The Scholar Gypsy_
+or _The Happy Warrior_.
+
+Ern loved that, but he was far too indolent to pursue the readings
+himself.  When his father had finished, he would return the book to its
+place and say,
+
+"You should read a bit yourself, Boy-lad," and Ern's invariable reply
+would be,
+
+"I will, dad, when I got the time."
+
+But Ern was one of those who never had the time and never would have.
+
+Then the two would relapse into smoke and silence and vague dreams, out
+of which Edward Caspar's voice would emerge,
+
+"Where's Alfred?"
+
+To which Ern would answer with a faint smirk,
+
+"Studyin in the kitchen."
+
+Ern's tendency to be a masher, as the phrase of the day went, delighted
+Mr. Pigott.  He looked on it as the best sign he had yet detected in
+the boy.
+
+"Who's the lady, Ern?" he chaffed, meeting the lad.
+
+The boy smiled shyly.  At such moments, in spite of his plainness, he
+looked beautiful.
+
+"Haven't got one, sir," he said.
+
+It was true, too.  His attitude towards girls was unlike that of his
+mates.  He neither chirped at them in the streets, nor avoided them
+aggressively, nor was self-conscious in their presence.  He was always
+friendly with them, even affectionate; but he went no farther.  Some of
+the Old Town maidens wished he would.  But, in fact, this was not Ern's
+weakness.
+
+The Destroyer, who lies in wait to undo us all, if we give him but a
+crevice through which to creep into our citadel, was taking the line of
+least resistance, as he does in every case.
+
+There began to be rumours in Old Town.  His father's weakness, known to
+all, lent these rumours wing.  In Churchy Beachbourne, as the enemy
+called the town by reason of the number and variety of its consecrated
+buildings, people were swift to believe, eager to hand on their beliefs.
+
+Prebendary Willcocks--which was his proper title--or Canon
+Willcocks--as he had taught the locality to call him--who had reasons
+of his own for disliking Edward Caspar, heard and shook his
+aristocratic head, repeating the rumour to all and sundry in a lowered
+voice.  The Lady Augusta Willcocks, that indefatigable worker in the
+parish for God and the Tory Party, entirely lacking in her husband's
+delicate feeling, echoed it resonantly.
+
+Mr. Pigott was honestly aghast.
+
+"Never!" he cried, and added--"God help him if his mother hears!"
+
+He was so genuinely concerned indeed that he went round to 60 Rectory
+Walk to find out by indirect examination if Mrs. Caspar had heard.
+
+She had; and was distraught.
+
+"If he takes to that, I'll turn him out of the house!" she cried
+savagely.  "Straight I will!"
+
+And there was no question that she meant what she said.
+
+"The best way to make trouble is to meet it half-way," muttered the
+schoolmaster, cowed for once by the woman's terrible emotion.  "Give
+the boy a chance--even if he is your own son."
+
+"Alf says he was blind at the match," the other answered doggedly.
+
+"Alf!" scoffed Mr. Pigott, savage in his turn.  "I wouldn't care that
+what Alf says about his brother.  I know your Alf."
+
+"And I don't then," said Mrs. Caspar.  "I try to keep it fair between
+em--for all what folks may say different."
+
+That evening Mr. Pigott met Alf in Church Street.
+
+The schoolmaster stopped, holding with his eye the youth in the stained
+blue overall.  Alf approached him delicately, with averted face and a
+sly smile.
+
+It was clear that he courted the encounter.
+
+Mr. Pigott came to the point at once.
+
+"How's Ern?" he boomed in a voice of challenge.
+
+Alf dropped his eyes.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "our Ern's goin the same way as dad."
+
+Mr. Pigott gazed at him as one stupefied.
+
+Then in a flash he understood ...  Mr. Trupp was right.  The boy was
+abnormal: his spirit dwarfed and stunted by the miserable tenement in
+which it was forced to dwell.
+
+This sudden peep into one of the sewers of Nature, this illumination of
+what before had been to him obscure, this swift suggestion of Evil
+lurking obscenely in the dusk to leap on the unwary, brought him up
+abruptly.  His anger passed for the moment.  Something between fear and
+pity laid hold of him.
+
+"I suppose you're glad," he said quietly.
+
+Alf smiled that satyr-like smile of his, sickly and uncertain.
+
+"Ah, you never did like me, Mr. Pigott!" he sneered.
+
+"I don't," answered Mr. Pigott.  "I never did.  But I'm beginning to
+understand you.  You're possessed."
+
+He went on down the street and called at the Manor-house.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was, he knew, a staunch friend of Ernie's.
+
+The lady was playing with her children in the garden.  But she gave
+both her ears to her visitor when she knew his errand.  Had she heard
+anything?
+
+Mrs. Trupp coloured.  She _had_ heard something which greatly perturbed
+her pure and beautiful spirit.
+
+Her Joe, home from Rugby, had reported that on the way back from a
+match at Lewes Ernie Caspar had taken a drop which had made him funny.
+
+"It was only a little," the lady ended.  "Joe said it wasn't enough to
+make an ordinary canary queer.  But it upset Ernest for the moment."
+
+Mr. Pigott marched on down the hill to the railway station.
+
+It was shutting-up time, and the object of his concern was just leaving
+the office.
+
+Mr. Pigott unceremoniously seized the boy by the hand.
+
+"For God's sake take a pull, Ern!" he said, most seriously.
+
+Ernie looked up surprised, read the distress in the other's bearded
+face, and burned one of those sudden white flares of his.
+
+"I see!" he said.  "Alf's been at it again!" and he broke away.
+
+Swiftly he went home, passed the study door, and entered the kitchen.
+
+His mother was out.
+
+Alf, his elbows on the table, and his chin on his hands, was studying a
+model-engine under the gas-light.
+
+He looked up surlily as Ern entered.
+
+"Keep out of it!" he ordered.  "You've heard what mother says.  The
+kitchen's mine at this time.  I don't want you."
+
+"But I want you, my lad," answered Ernie, brutal in his bitterness.
+
+He locked the door, and took off his coat.
+
+"Been tellin the tale again!" he trembled, as he rolled up his sleeves.
+"I've had more'n enough of it.  Put em up!  You're for it this journey!"
+
+Alf had risen.  He knew that look upon his brother's face, and was
+afraid.
+
+"You mustn't touch me!" he screamed, shaking a crooked finger at the
+other.  "I'm delicit, I am."
+
+It was the ancient ruse which had stood him in good stead many a time
+at home and in the playground.
+
+"Else you'll tell mother!" sneered Ern.  "Very well.  Have it your own
+way!"
+
+He seized the model engine on the table, and smashed it down on to the
+floor.  It lay at his feet, a broken mass, with spinning wheels.
+
+Then Ern unlocked the door and went out.
+
+At supper that evening he was still burning his white flare.
+
+Alf saw it and was cowed; Mrs. Caspar saw it too and held her peace.
+Edward Caspar was, as always, away in the clouds and aware of nothing
+unusual when he looked in to say good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+EVIL
+
+Alf took no overt steps to avenge himself.  Like old Polonius he went
+round to work, lying in wait for the chance he knew would come.  He had
+not to wait long.
+
+On the August Bank Holiday there was a big dance at the Rink in
+Cornfield Road.  Ern attended.  He danced well and was sought after as
+a partner.
+
+Alf went too.
+
+Ern was surprised to see his brother there, and pleased: for it was not
+in his nature to bear malice long.
+
+"Hullo, Alf!" he chaffed.  "Didn't know you was a dancing-man.  Let me
+find you a partner then."
+
+Alf shook his head, smiling that shifty smile of his.
+
+"I ain't," he said.  "I only come to watch."
+
+That was true; but the words carried no sinister meaning to Ern's
+innocent ear.
+
+Alf watched.
+
+He sat by himself on one of the faded plush-seats that went round the
+hall.  Nobody spoke to him, nobody heeded him.  The seats on either
+side of him were left vacant.
+
+Sour, shabby, ill at ease, yet sure of himself, he watched with furtive
+eyes the flow of boys and girls swirling by him in the dance.
+
+One of Ern's friends pointed his brother out to him.
+
+"I know," laughed Ern.  "Let him alone.  He don't want us.  He's above
+larking, Alf is."
+
+"Never seen him at a hop before," remarked the friend.  "And now he
+don't look happy."
+
+The evening was hot, the dancers thirsty, the drinks good.  Alf
+observed his brother go to the bar once, twice, and again.  Then he
+rose to go home, nodding to himself.
+
+Ern passed him in the dance and stopped.
+
+"What, Alf!  You're off early!"
+
+"I got a bit of reading to do," answered Alf.
+
+"So long, then," said Ernie.  "Shan't be long first myself."  And he
+joined the current again, with flushed face and loquacious tongue.
+
+It was just ten when Alf entered the kitchen.
+
+His father had already retired to bed; his mother was sitting up.
+
+"You're late," she remarked sharply.  "Where's Ern?"
+
+"Heard em say he was at the Rink," Alf answered sheepishly.
+
+Mrs. Caspar's face darkened.  The Puritan in her rose in arms.
+
+"Dancing?" she asked.
+
+Alf feigned uneasiness.
+
+"I'll stay and let him in," he said.  "He mayn't be back yet a bit."
+
+Mrs. Caspar took her candle.
+
+Regular as a machine, she rose always at six, and expected to be in bed
+by ten.
+
+Anything that disturbed her routine she resented, surly as an animal.
+
+"Let me know when he comes in," she said.  "I'll speak to him.  Keepin
+us up to all hours and disturbin dad's rest while he carries on.  Might
+be a disorderly house."
+
+She left the room.
+
+Alf turned out the gas, and sat in the darkness, watching the dying
+fire, and waiting for his mouse.
+
+A crisis in his life had come.
+
+He was about to take the first big step along the road that was going
+to lead him to success or ruin.
+
+He was aware of it, and calm as a practised gambler.
+
+Once he rose and locked the front door to make sure his brother could
+not enter without his knowledge.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when he heard feet outside.
+
+Those feet told their own tale.
+
+Alf turned up the light in the passage and opened the door.
+
+His brother lolled against the side-wall like a mortally wounded man.
+
+"Take my arm, old chap," said Alf, and supported his brother into the
+kitchen.
+
+Ern sat down suddenly at the table.  Alf lit the gas.
+
+The light fell on his brother's foolish face and clearly irritated him.
+He put up his hand to brush it away.
+
+"Arf a mo'," said Alf soothingly, skipped light-footed upstairs, and
+knocked at his mother's door.
+
+She was half-undressed, brushing her hair, her neck and shoulders bare
+in the moonlight.
+
+Alf glanced at them and even in that moment of excitement thought how
+beautiful they were.
+
+Mrs. Caspar raised a finger.
+
+Her husband was in bed and apparently asleep, Lady Blanche upon the
+mantelpiece staring vacantly at the form of her recumbent son.
+
+"Ern!" whispered Alf, and jerked his head significantly.  "You'd best
+come."
+
+Anne Caspar slipped on a wrap.  Candle in hand she descended the stairs
+and entered the kitchen.
+
+Alf followed stealthily.  Like a gnome he stood in the shadow at the
+foot of the stairs, biting his nails uneasily, as he watched with lewd,
+malignant eyes.
+
+Ern sat at the table with the dreadful blind face of the living dead.
+
+He saw his mother enter and paid no heed to her.  He was too much
+occupied.  A troubled look crossed his face, and clouded it.  Then he
+was very sick.
+
+That amused Alf.
+
+His mother shut the kitchen-door.
+
+But Alf was not to be defrauded of his spectacle.
+
+He opened the door quietly.
+
+His mother, busy on her knees, with a slop pail and cloth, looked up.
+
+"It's only me, mum," muttered Alf.
+
+Her face frightened him: so did her breathing: so did her quiet.
+
+"Come in then," she said.  "And shut the door."
+
+Ern still sat at the table.
+
+"You little og!" said Alf fiercely, and shook his brother.
+
+His mother, still on her hands and knees, restrained him.
+
+"Let him be," she said.  "It's past that.  It's past all."
+
+The door opened slowly.
+
+Mr. Caspar stood in it in the faded quilted dressing-gown that had once
+graced historic rooms at Trinity.
+
+He stood there, dishevelled from sleep, a tall, round-shouldered ruin
+of a man, every sign of distress upon his face.
+
+"What is it?" he asked nervously.
+
+"Im!" said Alf.
+
+Mr. Caspar saw Ern, and marked his wife busy on her knees.  Then he
+understood.
+
+The distress on his face deepened.
+
+Anne Caspar rose sharply from her knees, the filthy rag still in her
+hands.
+
+"Two of you!" she cried thickly.  "It's too much!" and shoved him out
+of the room.
+
+The father's slippered feet shuffled along the passage.
+
+"Take your brother up to bed," ordered Mrs. Caspar.
+
+Alf, too discreet to argue, obeyed.
+
+Anne Caspar locked the door, and sat down at the table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MR. TRUPP INTRODUCES THE LASH
+
+There was no doubt that Anne Caspar was a woman of character.
+
+"Too much character," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+His wife was somewhat shocked.
+
+"Can you have too much character?" she asked.
+
+Her husband was in one of his philosophical moods.
+
+"Character's only will," he growled.  "It's the repression or direction
+of energy.  You may misdirect your energies.  Most so-called strong men
+do.  Look at this fellow Chamberlain.  Willed us into this war.  If it
+hadn't been for his superfluous character we should never have heard of
+South Africa."
+
+"And your investments would never have gone down," said Mrs. Trupp
+delicately.
+
+The Doctor may have been unjust to the Colonial Secretary, but he was
+right about Anne Caspar, whom he knew rather better.
+
+That dour woman had, indeed, just two friends in Beachbourne.  One was
+Mr. Trupp, and the other was Mr. Trupp's wife.  Neither had ever failed
+her; and she knew quite well that neither ever would.
+
+The day after the calamity she went round to see the Doctor.
+
+"He's got to go," she said, tight-lipped and trembling.  "That's flat.
+You know what I been through with his father, Mr. Trupp.  You're the
+only one as does.  I'm not going through it again with him.  Ned's my
+man, and I'm going to see him through.  But Ern must go his own way.
+Stew in his own juice, as Alf says.  They say I've been hard with the
+boy.  So I have.  Because I've seen it a-comin ever since he was so
+high.  And I've fought it and been beaten."
+
+The gruff man was wonderfully tender with her.  He saw the woman's
+distress and understood its cause as no other could have done.
+
+"Don't do anything in a hurry," he said soothingly.  "Think it over for
+a week and then come and see me again."
+
+That evening he reported the interview to his wife.
+
+"She'll never turn him out!" cried the kind woman.
+
+"She will though," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+Mrs. Trupp, pink and white with indignation, dropped her eyes to her
+work to hide the flash in them.
+
+"I'll never forgive her if she does," she said.
+
+"Yes, you will," retorted Mr. Trupp.
+
+Mrs. Trupp answered nothing for a time.
+
+"I shall go round to see her," she said at last with determination.
+
+"You won't move her," the Doctor answered, grimly cheerful.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Trupp.  "She hasn't got a heart.  As Mr. Pigott says,
+she's hard as the nether millstone in a frost."
+
+Mr. Trupp put down his coffee-cup and licked his lips like a cat.
+
+"My dear," he said, "you haven't been through her mill."
+
+"Perhaps not," the other answered warmly.  "But I am a mother."
+
+The sympathetic creature, all love and pity, was as good as her word.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was always full of indignation against Mrs. Caspar when away
+from her, and in her presence touched by the tragedy of the woman's
+loneliness.
+
+She found things at Rectory Walk as she had expected or worse.
+
+Ern had lost his job.  His escapade at the Rink had reached his
+employers' ears.  None too satisfied with the quality of the lad's
+work, they had seized the excuse to dismiss him.
+
+"There he is!" cried Mrs. Caspar.  "Just turn eighteen and back on my
+hands.  Nobody won't have him, and I don't blame em neether."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Mrs. Trupp.
+
+The interview between the two women was taking place in the back
+sitting-room, where Mrs. Caspar always saw her rare visitors.
+
+Anne nodded in the direction of the study.
+
+"Settin along o dad," she said briefly.  "Nothing but trouble along of
+it all.  I took his cigarettes away.  _If he don't earn neether shan't
+he smoke_, as Alf says.  And now dad won't smoke because Ern can't.
+_Sympathetic strike_, Alf calls it.  And it's dad's one pleasure.  I
+allow him a shilling bacca-money a week.  It's just all I do allow him."
+
+"We all make mistakes--especially when we're young," said Mrs. Trupp
+gently.
+
+The other was adamant.
+
+"There's slips and slips," she retorted.  "If he'd gone with a girl I'd
+have said nothing.  But _this_!"
+
+Mrs. Trupp was steadfast in her tranquil way, as her opponent was
+dogged.
+
+"I know if my Joe made a mistake what I should do," she said.
+
+"What then?" sharply.
+
+"Forgive him," replied the other.
+
+Mrs. Caspar flared up.
+
+"You wouldn't, not if your Joe's father----"
+
+She pulled up short.
+
+Loyalty to her husband was the soul of Anne Caspar.
+
+
+On her way home the Doctor's wife met Mr. Pigott.
+
+The sanguine little man stopped short.
+
+"You've heard?" said Mrs. Trupp.
+
+The other nodded, surly as a baited bear.
+
+"Ern was round at my place first thing Sunday to tell me.  He kept
+nothing back."  Mr. Pigott dropped his voice like a stage-conspirator.
+"That young Alf's at the bottom of this, I'll lay."
+
+Mrs. Trupp was shocked.
+
+"Did Ernie say so?"
+
+"No," fiercely.  "He wouldn't give his brother away--not he.  But I
+know."  He came closer.  "I tell you the Devil's in that boy.  I can
+see him leering at me from behind the mask of Alf's face.  There is no
+Alf Caspar.  He's only a blind.  But there is a Devil!"
+
+"O, Mr. Pigott!" murmured the lady.
+
+"Yes, you may O Mr. Pigott me!" cried the wrathful man.  "But I've
+watched.  I know.  He's the cuckoo kind, Alf is.  He wants the place to
+himself.  It's me and mum all the time.  His father don't count; and
+Ern's to be jostled out of the nest.  Then there'll be room for him to
+grow.  I curse the day Mr. Trupp saved his miserable little life."
+
+"Hush! hush! hush!" said the lady.
+
+"Yes, I know Alf's one of Mr. Trupp's darlings," continued the other.
+"And I know why.  You know my old bicycle they all laugh at.  I bought
+it for ten shillings from a pedlar and patched it up myself.  It's the
+worst bike in Old Town, but I saved it from the scrap-heap, so I think
+the world of it.  Same with Mr. Trupp and young Alf."
+
+Mrs. Trupp reported to her husband that Mr. Pigott had become almost
+blasphemous over Alf.
+
+"I know," grunted the Doctor.  "He's not fair to the boy.  Alf's
+stunted; of course he's stunted.  He's grown up all wrong.  The wonder
+is he's grown up at all.  He's a standing witness to the power of
+Nature to make the most of a bad job."
+
+It was next day that Mrs. Caspar came round, as appointed, to see the
+Doctor, who was much more to her than a physician.
+
+Mr. Trupp had now come to a decision as to the best course to be taken.
+
+"You must send him right away," he said.  "That's his best chance."
+
+"Dad won't hear of the Colonies," the other replied.  "Says it's so far
+and he'll never see the boy again once he gets out there.  Stood up and
+fought me fairly!"  And it was clear from the way she said it that the
+resistance encountered from her husband had been as rare as it was
+astonishing.
+
+"I didn't mean the Colonies," the other replied.
+
+"What then?"
+
+"The Army."
+
+Mrs. Caspar's face fell.  She was momentarily shocked: for she belonged
+to a sect that had for generations been despitefully used by the powers
+that be.  And the weapon of the powers that be is always in the last
+resort the Army.
+
+"Discipline is what the boy wants," said Mr. Trupp.  "It's what we all
+want."
+
+Anne Caspar nodded dubiously.
+
+"If it's the right sort," she said.
+
+"It may save him," continued her mentor.  "It can't do him any harm.
+And anyway, it's worth trying.  You send Ernie round to me.  I'll have
+a talk with him, and I'll drop in to-morrow and have a chat with his
+father."
+
+Ernie, when approached, made no difficulty.
+
+He was young; his enthusiasms were easily stirred; and the most famous
+of South Country regiments, the Forest Rangers, known in history as the
+Hammer-men, had been more than living up to its reputation in South
+Africa.
+
+"You'll travel," Mr. Trupp told him.  "Go to India as like as not and
+see a bit of the world.  Our Joe's going to Sandhurst next year.
+Nothing'll do but he must be a Hammer-man--like his grandfather before
+him.  I dare say he'll join you out there."
+
+But if Ern was too young to fight his own battles, there was one
+doughty warrior who meant to fight them for him.
+
+Mr. Pigott came round to see the Doctor in roaring wrath.
+
+The South African War was in full swing.  The frenzy of lusty paganism,
+called Imperialism, which was sweeping the country, had revolted the
+schoolmaster and many more.  In the estimation of these, the horrors
+enacted at home in the name of God and Empire surpassed the obscenities
+of the war itself.  Mr. Pigott saw Militarism as a raddled prostitute
+dancing on the souls and bodies of men.
+
+He burst like a tempest into Mr. Trupp's consulting room.
+
+"The Army!" he cried.  "You're going to send that boy into the Army!
+Take him a first-class ticket to Hell at once!  Where's your Militarism
+led us?  The war's costing us half a million a week!  Over a thousand
+casualties at Paardeberg alone!  Rowntree stoned in York; Leonard
+Courtney boycotted in London; Lloyd George escaping for his life over
+the house-tops for daring to preach Christ!  And you call yourself a
+Radical, Mr. Trupp!--Shame on you!"
+
+Mr. Trupp listened, amused and patient.
+
+"It's discipline he wants," he said at last.  "He's soft and slack.
+He'll never do any good without it.  The artist type like his father."
+
+The other began to blaze again.
+
+"Discipline!" he cried.  "You talk like a Prussian drill-sergeant.  I
+tell you that lad's got a soul.  You _discipline_ beasts of the
+field--with a Big Stick; but you _grow_ souls."
+
+Mr. Trupp shook his head.
+
+"We're only just emerging from the mud," he said.  "The Brute still
+lurks in all of us.  Watch him or he'll catch you out.  And remember
+the only thing the Brute understands is the Big Stick.  Without it
+he'll either go to sleep--like Ernie; or pounce on some one who has
+gone to sleep--like Alf."
+
+Mr. Pigott drew himself up.  There was about him the dignity of
+conviction.
+
+"Mr. Trupp," he said.  "Fear never made a man yet.  Faith's the thing."
+
+The Doctor lifted his shrewd kind face, and eyed the other through his
+pince-nez.
+
+"Fear plays its part too," he said.  "We none of us can do without the
+Lash as yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+FATHER, MOTHER AND SON
+
+There was no difficulty with Edward Caspar.
+
+He had made an immense effort and fought about the Colonies.  Easily
+spent, he would not fight again.  Moreover, Ernie committed to the Army
+was committed for a few years only, and not for life; and some of his
+service might very well be passed in England.  In Edward Caspar too,
+pacifist though he personally inclined to be, there was no inherited
+prejudice to overcome: for the Beauregards had been soldiers for
+generations.
+
+Mr. Trupp came to talk things over; and that evening, as father and son
+sat together in the study, Edward Caspar said out of the silence, very
+quietly,
+
+"Boy-lad, it's best you should go."
+
+"I shall go all right, dad," the boy answered, feigning a cheerfulness
+he by no means felt.  "Don't you worry."
+
+"Mother wants it," the other continued.
+
+"She's all right, mother is," said the lad.
+
+It was settled that the boy should go over to Lewes and enlist in the
+Hammer-men at the depot there, on Saturday.
+
+The decision made, his mother relaxed somewhat.  While she still kept
+Ernie without money, she allowed him cigarettes.
+
+Father and son sat together and smoked in the evenings, watching the
+trees swaying against the blue in the Rectory Garden across the road.
+
+Alf reported surreptitiously to his mother that Ern was smoking with
+dad.
+
+"What's it to do with you if he is?" answered the other tartly.
+
+The catastrophe which had severed the frayed string that joined the
+mother and her eldest son had reacted unfavourably on her relations
+with Alf.
+
+The few days before Ern's departure went with accustomed speed.
+
+On the last evening, as he and his father sat together, studying their
+toes in the twilight, a small fire flickering in the grate, Edward
+Caspar spoke out of the dark which he had been waiting to cover him.
+
+"Boy-lad, I can't do by you as I should wish," he said tremulously.
+"But here's a bit of something to show you I mean well."
+
+In the half light he thrust an envelope towards his son.
+
+Ern opened it and saw that it contained a five-pound note.
+
+The great waters surged up into his throat and filled his eyes.
+
+"Here!  I can't keep this, dad," he said chokily.  "I'm all right.
+I've got..."
+
+The old man--for such he was to his son, though not yet fifty--waved
+his hand irritably.
+
+"Put it away," he said, "put it away.  Let's hear no more of it."
+
+Ernie sat dumb, moved and wondering.
+
+Where had dad got the money from?
+
+He knew very well that his mother jealously controlled the family
+purse, doling out rare sixpences or shillings to his father; and he
+knew why.
+
+The boy's brain moved swiftly.
+
+"What's the time, dad?" he asked, and lit the gas.
+
+The clock on the mantel-piece never went: for it was Edward Caspar's
+solitary household task to wind it up.
+
+The father, by no means a match for his artful son, produced from a
+baggy pocket a five-shilling Waterbury watch in place of the old gold
+hunter that had come to him from Lady Blanche's father, the twelfth
+Earl Ravensrood.
+
+His ruse successful, Ernie delivered a direct attack.
+
+"Where's the ticket, dad?" he asked casually.
+
+"What ticket?"
+
+"The pawn-ticket."
+
+"I don't know," irritably.  "Don't worry me.  Turn out the light.  I
+want to get a nap."
+
+Ernie obeyed.
+
+Soon Edward Caspar's breathing told its own tale.
+
+Ernie rose, and, knowing his father's habits well as he knew his own,
+put his hand into the Jacobean tankard that stood on the book-shelf.
+
+There he found what he sought.
+
+Quietly he went out into the passage.
+
+On the ticket was the name he expected: Goldmann, the Jew pawn-broker
+in the East-end off the Pevensey Road.
+
+For a moment he paused, fingering the brown cardboard ticket under the
+gas light.
+
+It would not take him an hour to get down to Goldmann's and back; for
+the tram almost passed the door; but he hadn't got the redemption
+money.  He hadn't got a penny in the world.  Alf had seen to that.
+
+With the impetuous gallantry peculiar to him he made up his mind and
+opened the kitchen-door.  Where Ernie loved he would risk anything,
+face anybody--even his mother.
+
+She sat in her Windsor chair by the fire, a Puritan, still beautiful,
+reading her Bible as she always did at this hour; and her silvering
+hair added to her distinction.
+
+All their married life the pair had sat thus of evenings, Edward in the
+study, Anne Caspar in the kitchen.
+
+The strange couple rarely met indeed except at night.  And the
+arrangement was not of Edward Caspar's making, but of his wife's.  It
+may be that in part the woman preferred the kitchen as the environment
+to which she was most used: it was still more that she had determined
+from the outset of their union never to intrude upon her husband's
+spiritual life, or attempt to encroach upon a mind she could not
+understand.  Her duty was as clear to her from the first as were her
+limitations.  She could and would cherish, support, protect, and even
+chasten her husband where it was necessary for his good.  For the rest
+she was resolved to be no hindrance or inconvenience to him.  He should
+gain by his marriage and not lose by it.  Therefore from the start she
+had slammed the door without mercy or remorse on her own relatives.
+
+When Ern entered, she looked up at him not unkindly through her
+spectacles.
+
+"What is it, Ernie?" she asked.
+
+He rushed out his request.
+
+"Please, mum," he panted, "could you let me have a shilling?"
+
+He was determined not to give his father away.
+
+To his relief his mother rose without a word, went to a drawer,
+unlocked it, took out half a sovereign and gave it to him.
+
+Ernie ran out without his hat, took the old horse-bus at Billing's
+Corner, and riding on the top under a night splendid with stars that
+hung in the elms of Saffrons Croft, he went down the hill, through the
+Chestnuts, past the railway station, and along the gay main-street.
+
+Just before Cornfield Road reaches the sea he exchanged the horse-bus
+for the electric tram that swung him down Pevensey Road through the
+thronged and always thickening East-end.
+
+At the _Barbary Corsair_ in Sea-gate he descended, turned down a
+side-street, and entered a door over which hung the three golden balls
+taken from the coat-of-arms of the banker Medici.
+
+Mr. Goldmann was a short, fair Jew, without a neck, immensely thick
+throughout, though still under thirty.  When he walked he carried his
+arms away from his side as though to aid him to inflate; and winter or
+summer he could be found behind his counter, perspiring freely.  His
+trousers were always too short, and his little legs protruded from them
+like pillars.  He spoke Cockney without a trace of Yiddish.  His manner
+was hearty; but he was honest of his kind.  The police had nothing
+against him, while his innumerable clients complained less of him than
+of his rivals.
+
+Ern in the past had dealt with him.
+
+"How much?" he asked, presenting the ticket.
+
+"Only two-pence," said Goldmann, and took the watch out of the case.
+
+He handled it with care, almost covetously, burnishing it on his sleeve.
+
+"What arms is them?" he asked, displaying the back.
+
+Ernie didn't know.
+
+"If it had been any man but your father left it, I'd have communicated
+with the police," said the pawn-broker cheerfully.
+
+"Will you do it up in a piece of paper, please?" Ern requested.
+
+The Jew obeyed.
+
+"Lend me your stylo alf a mo," said Ernie, and wrote on the paper
+covering the word _Dad_.
+
+Then he raced home and re-entered the kitchen.
+
+It was after ten, but his mother was still up, and apparently
+unconscious of the lateness of the hour.
+
+Ern, panting from the speed at which he had travelled, paid nine
+shillings and four pence into his mother's lap.
+
+Tram and bus had cost him sixpence, and the redemption money the rest.
+
+"Eightpence all told," he gasped, "what I wanted.  Only a little
+something for dad.  I'll send you the odd money when I draw me first
+pay."  He put the little packet on the mantel-piece.  "Will you give
+that to dad, please, when I'm gone, mum?"
+
+His mother looked at him, a rare sweetness in her eyes.
+
+"You may keep the change, Ern," she said gently.
+
+Collecting the money from her lap, she handed it back to him.
+
+A moment he demurred, taken aback; then slipped the cash into his
+trouser pocket, mumbling and deeply moved.
+
+"Thank you kindly, mum," he muttered.
+
+Her eyes were still on his face, and he could not meet them.
+
+"You're a good lad, Ern," she said quietly.
+
+The words, and the way of saying them, moved the lad more than all her
+rebuffs and brutalities in the past had done.  His chest began to
+heave.  She stood before him stiff as a blade of steel, as slight and
+straight.
+
+For a second she laid her hand, fine still for all its toil, upon his
+arm.
+
+"Go up to bed now," she said in the same very quiet way.
+
+He went hurriedly.
+
+There were few things which happened in that house of which Anne Caspar
+was not aware.  That morning on rising she had missed her husband's
+watch on the dressing-table--and had said nothing.  Later she had found
+the pawn-ticket in the tankard--and again had held her peace.
+
+A wife before all things, yet to some extent a mother, she had known,
+had understood, had perhaps sympathized.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ERNIE GOES FOR A SOLDIER
+
+Next day, after dinner, when she heard Ern's feet slowly descending the
+stairs, and knew he was coming to say good-bye, Anne Caspar shoved Alf
+roughly out of the kitchen.
+
+"You wait your brother outside," she said.  "Take his bag now, and
+carry it to the bus for him.  Be a brother for once!"
+
+"Well, I was going to," answered Alf, aggrieved.
+
+Since the catastrophe he had kept discreetly in the background.
+
+Ern entered the kitchen, uncertain of himself, uncertain of his
+reception; but, true to the best that was in him, trying to carry a
+pale feather of gallantry.
+
+"I guess it's about time to be off, mum," he remarked huskily.
+
+His mother shut the door behind him gently, and drew him to her.
+
+"Kiss me, Ern," she said.
+
+The boy gasped and obeyed.
+
+"Now go and say good-bye to dad," continued his mother, quiet, firm,
+authoritative.
+
+As he went into the passage, he heard the kitchen-door close behind him.
+
+Ern was his father's son, and nothing was to be allowed to intrude in
+the parting between the two.
+
+
+Edward Caspar stood before the fire in quilted dressing-gown, somewhat
+faded now.
+
+In its appointed place on the chair beside his chair lay the familiar
+manuscript, much as Ern had known it since his childhood, save that the
+titles on the covering page were typewritten now--_The Philosophy of
+Mysticism, Part I, The Basis of Animism_.
+
+His father's colourless hair was greying fast and becoming sparse;
+while his always ungainly figure was losing any shape it had ever
+possessed.
+
+At fifty Edward Caspar was already old.  But age had enhanced the
+wistfulness which had marked him, even in youth.  His was the face of a
+man who has failed, and is conscious of his failure; but it was the
+face of a Christian, gentle and very sad.  Here clearly was a man of
+immense parts, scholar, thinker, artist, who, somehow baffled by the
+wiles of Nature, had failed to make good.
+
+Yet in spite of his failure there were few who could more surely rely
+upon the limitless resources of the Spirit in the hour of his need than
+Edward Caspar.
+
+And now in this great moment of his life, when he was parting from his
+dearest, he summoned to his aid all the powers that, massed unseen in
+the silence, await our call.
+
+There was a wonderful dignity and restraint about him.
+
+Ern, the most intuitive of lads, felt it and drew from his father's
+strength.
+
+Simply and beautifully father and son kissed.
+
+A moment the eyes of each rested in the other's.
+
+Then it was over.
+
+
+No one of us is entirely inhuman.
+
+Something of the spirit of the scene enacted in the study had conveyed
+itself even to Alf awaiting in the road outside, Ern's bag at his feet.
+
+He was blinking when his brother, blowing his nose, joined him.
+
+Ern glanced at the green rampart of the Downs rising like a wall at the
+end of the road, and huge Shadow Coombe where the lambs were folded in
+March and where once he had passed a night in the shepherd's hut.
+
+Ern waved to them and Beech-hangar beyond.
+
+"Good-bye, old Downs!" he called.  "You and me been good old pals!"
+
+Then they set off for the bus at Billing's Corner, neither speaking,
+neither wishing to, Alf carrying his brother's bag.  Both youths were
+slight and colt-like, yet with loose unshackled limbs; Ern rather
+smart, Alf distinctly shabby.
+
+The Rector, tall and titupping, emerged from his gate as they passed,
+but refrained from seeing them.  He did not approve of the two Caspar
+boys--in the main because they were the sons of their father.
+
+Canon Willcocks aped--successfully enough--the walk and deportment of a
+thoroughbred weed.  His face--which was aquiline--inspired his pose,
+which was aristocratic and satirical.  His solitary hero was Louis
+Napoleon, whom he had worshipped from childhood.  And he bore himself
+habitually as one who is too fine for the coarse world in which he
+dwells perforce.  The two brothers nudged each other as he stalked by.
+Then they climbed to the box-seat of the old bus and established
+themselves beside the driver.
+
+"Where away then?" he asked, seeing the bag.
+
+"Off to see the world, Mr. Huggett," answered Ern, already cheering up.
+"Goin for the week-end to the North Pole, me and Alf!"
+
+The bus jolted down the street, past the long-backed church with its
+mighty tower looking down upon the Moot as it had done for five
+centuries, and stopped opposite the _Star_.  Ern for the last time
+touched the old coaching bell with the driver's whip.  As it clanged
+sonorously, a window in the Manor-house opened.
+
+Ern looked up to see Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, a fair flapper now,
+waving at him with eyes that smiled and shone.
+
+"Good-bye!" they called.  "Good luck!"
+
+Saffrons Croft was white with cricketers as they passed.  The honest
+thump of the ball upon the bat, the recumbent groups under the elms,
+even the imperious voice of Mr. Pigott umpiring on Lower Pitch, moved
+Ern strangely.
+
+Alf's presence somehow helped him to be hard.
+
+At the Central Station the boys got down.
+
+They paced the platform, waiting for the train.
+
+Alf babbled at large, his brother paying little heed.
+
+"Be the making of you!" Alf was saying in his rather patronizing way.
+"See the world!--knock about!--come home a full-blown Hammer-man with a
+fat pension and a V.C. on your chest and a Colonel's commission!  And
+we'll all meet you at the stytion with a brass band playing _See the
+Conquering Hero Comes!_ and be proud of you.  I'd come along meself for
+company, only I'm too small."
+
+Ern roused from his dreams.
+
+"What will you do then?" he asked, faintly ironical.
+
+"Me?" cried Alf, starting off on his favourite topic.  "I ain't a-goin
+to stop in Beachbourne all me life, you lay.  When I'm through me
+apprentice they may send me to the River Plate.  Got a big branch
+there.  England's used up.  There's chances in a new country for a chap
+that means to get on."
+
+Ern installed himself in a smoking carriage.
+
+"O, reservoir," said Alf, facetious to the end.
+
+"See ye again some day," answered Ern, puffing away and exhibiting a
+man-of-the-world-like stoicism he did not feel.
+
+He took off his Trilby hat, unbuttoned the overcoat with the velvet
+collar, and opened his orange-coloured _Answers_.
+
+The train moved on.  The brothers waved.  Alf stood on the platform, a
+mean little figure with a dishonest smile; his clothes rather shabby,
+his trousers too short and creased behind the knees.
+
+Then he turned to the bookstall and asked if _Motor Mems_, the paper on
+the new industry, had arrived yet.
+
+
+Ern leaned back in his corner; and his eyes sought, between hoardings
+and roofs of crowded railway-shops, the familiar outline of the Downs
+which would accompany him to Lewes--and far beyond.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE SOLDIER
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ERNIE GOES EAST
+
+The Army did for Ernie neither what Mr. Trupp hoped nor what Mr. Pigott
+feared.
+
+Ernie was in truth very much the modern man, and had absorbed
+unconsciously the spirit of industrial democracy.  He was open-minded,
+intelligent and sincere.  The false idealism that is at the back of all
+Militarism, the bully-cum-bluff principle that has been the creed of
+the barrack-square at all times all over the world, from Sparta to
+Potsdam, made no appeal to him.  In the British Army, it is true, there
+was even at that date little of the spirit of orthodox Militarism, but
+the shadow of the Continental System and the heritage of a false
+tradition still hung over it.
+
+He found himself plucked out of the world of to-day with its quick flow
+of ideas, its give and take, its elasticity, its vivid unconscious
+spirituality, and plunged back into the darkness of medievalism: forced
+labour, forced worship, forced obsequiousness, a feudal lord against
+whom there was no appeal, with corrupt retainers who squeezed the serf
+without mercy.
+
+When his first drill-instructor in a moment of patronizing confidence
+informed the squad of which Ernie was a member that "It's swank as
+makes the soldier," others were amused; but Ernie, who giggled
+dutifully with the rest, thought how silly and how disgusting.
+
+Ernie always remembered that drill-sergeant's illuminating remark, and
+placed it alongside that of a veteran Colonel, dating from Crimean
+days, who said in Ernie's hearing with the offensive truculence that a
+certain type of officer still thinks he owes it to himself and to his
+position to cultivate,
+
+"That man's no good to me."  He was speaking of a Company
+Sergeant-Major who had the manners of a gentleman.  "Take him away and
+shoot him.  I want a man who'll chuck his chest, and beat his leg, and
+own the barrack square."
+
+Ernie saw very soon that the Army system was based on the old two-class
+conception with an insuperable barrier between the two classes, and the
+underclass deprived of the right to appeal, the right to combine, the
+right to strike.  And he saw equally clearly, and with far more
+surprise, that in spite of its obvious limitations, and openness to
+brutality and abuse, the system worked astonishingly well, given good
+officers--and his own were unusually good upon the whole.
+
+Ernie did not know that the barrack was in fact the heir of the old
+monastic habit and tradition with its herding together of males, its
+little caste of priests who alone possessed the direct access to God
+denied to common men, its sacrosanct dogmas, its insuperable
+prejudices, its life of unquestioning obedience to authority with the
+consequent thwarting of intellectual and spiritual development that is
+the outcome of free communion between man and man; and on the other
+hand its genuine religious fervour, its abnegation, its devotion to
+duty, and disinterested service of the Commonwealth.
+
+
+Ern, it is true, who realized some of these things and was dimly
+conscious of others, was different from most of his mates and superior
+to them: rather more intelligent and much more refined.  The bulk of
+them were the conscripts of Necessity; some, like himself, had made
+mistakes; a few, nearly always themselves the sons of old soldiers,
+were genuine volunteers.
+
+And yet Ern was by no means unhappy.  If he was something of a critic,
+he was not in the least a rebel.  At first the pressure of discipline
+served to brace the boy, as Mr. Trupp had anticipated.  Moreover, if he
+vaguely apprehended what was vicious in the military system, there was
+much he could not fail to enjoy, because he was young, virile and
+healthy; and not a little he could honestly admire.  He loved the
+drill: the rhythmical marching _en masse_, the movements of great
+bodies of men swinging this way and that like one, actuated by a single
+purpose, directed by a single mind, worshipping a single God enthroned
+at the saluting-point, satisfied his religious spirit, exalted and
+transfigured him as did nothing he was to know in later days.  The
+outdoor existence, the hard athleticism, the good fellowship, and above
+all the communal life, appealed to all that was best in him.  Indeed in
+this organization, abused by advanced thinkers in Press and Parliament
+alike, he was to find a fullness of corporate life, an absorption of
+the individual in the mass, a bee-like enthusiasm for the hive, such as
+he was never to discover outside the Army in after years.
+
+Moreover there was a goal held before his eyes, as it is held before
+the eyes of all young English soldiers.
+
+That goal was India.
+
+The Shiny was the Private Soldier's Paradise, the old hands would tell
+the young in the canteens at night.
+
+"Things are different there, my boy.  In the Shiny a swoddy's a
+gentleman.  Punkah-wallahs to pull the cords in the hot weather, a
+tiger curled at your feet to keep the snakes at bay, bearer to clean
+your boots, shooting parties, bubbly by the barrel, I don't know what
+all."
+
+Because of this jewel that was for ever dangled before his eyes, Ernie
+bore a good deal without complaining.
+
+A youth who had enlisted with him, and for much the same reason,
+induced his people to buy him out after six months.
+
+Ernie made no such attempt.
+
+"I'm going through with it now," he said.  "Want to see a bit before
+I'm done and take em home a tale or two."
+
+After a spell of service in Ireland, at the close of the South African
+War, when Ernie was turned twenty, the expected call came.
+
+A draft was going out to join the First Battalion of the Hammer-men at
+Jubbulpore, and Ernie went with it.
+
+The cheering transport dropped down the Thames one misty November
+afternoon, passing hay-laden barges, timber ships from the Baltic, and
+rusty tramps from all over the world.
+
+The smell of the sea, so familiar and so good, thrilled Ernie's
+susceptible heart.  It spoke to him of home, of the unforgotten things
+of childhood, of his passing youth, of much that was intimate and dear.
+He spent most of that first evening on deck, long after dark, in spite
+of the drizzle, watching the coast lights.
+
+Once they passed quite close to a light-ship, swinging desolately on
+the tide.
+
+"What's that?" he asked a sailor.
+
+"Sovereign Light," the man told him.
+
+Ernie leapt to the name familiar to him from childhood.
+
+How often had he not climbed the hill behind his home of winter
+evenings, and waited in the chalk-pit above the larch spinney for that
+far-off spark to leap out of the darkness and warm his expectant heart.
+
+He swung about and stared keenly through the gloom at a light winking
+at them from the land.
+
+"Then that's the light-house under Beau-nez!" he said, pointing.
+
+"That's it," the man answered.  "And Beachbourne underneath.  All them
+lights strung out like a necklace along the coast,--Bexhill, Hastings,
+Beachbourne.  It's growing into a great place.  D'you know it?"
+
+Ernie's heart and eyes were full.
+
+"My home's there," he said.  "And my old dad."
+
+He stayed on deck peering through the darkness, till the last light had
+disappeared and they had swung round Beau-nez into the Channel and he
+could see the Seven Sisters, the gap that marks the mouth of the
+Ruther, and the cliffs between Newhaven and Rotting-dean.  Then he went
+below and turned in.
+
+Thereafter, his home behind him, he began to taste the new life, the
+life of adventure.
+
+He felt the surge of the Atlantic, saw whales spouting in the Bay,
+marked off the coast of Portugal a lateen sail which first whispered of
+the East; gazed up at the Rock of Gibraltar, noted there caparisoned
+Barbs, their head-stalls studded with turquoises to keep the Evil One
+away, welcomed the Mediterranean sun, and gazed at the snow-capped
+hills of Crete.
+
+In Port Said he landed and saw his first mosque.  He examined it with
+interest.
+
+_Very bleak-like_, he wrote home to Mr. Pigott.  _More like a chapel
+than a church.  And more like the Quaker Meeting-house in the Moot than
+either.  No stained glass or crucifixes or nothing.  I was more at home
+there than the Catholics_.
+
+In the Canal he marked the black hair-tents of the travelling Bedouins,
+and saw a British Camel Corps trekking slowly across the desert against
+the hills beyond.  He sweated in the Red Sea and gazed with awe at the
+sultry rocks of Aden, and followed with delight the flying-fish
+skimming across the Indian Ocean.
+
+Then one dawn the engines stopped; the ship lay at rest; and in his
+nostrils, blown from the land, there was the smell of incense.
+
+"Makes you think of the Queen of Sheba," said Ernie.  "Spices and Tyre
+and Sidon and all the rest," and he closed his eyes and saw Mr. Pigott
+standing with the pointer before the black-board, addressing his class.
+
+"Not alf," said his unimaginative friend.  "Give me the Pevensey Road o
+Sadaday nights.  Fried fish and chips."
+
+They went on deck to find themselves lying in the lovely
+island-sprinkled harbour of Bombay; boats with curved bamboo yards and
+brown-skinned crews of pirates under the ship's side; and Parsee
+money-lenders in shining hats on deck offering to change the money of
+those who had any.
+
+Ernie looked across to the land, lifting blue in the wondrous dawn--the
+land that was to be his home for the next six years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE REGIMENT
+
+Ernie joined his Battalion in the Central Provinces.  The Forest
+Rangers, as famous in the South Country as the Black Watch in the
+Highlands, and of far longer pedigree, was first raised from the
+iron-ore workers by the Hammer Ponds on the Forest Ridge in the heart
+of the then Black Country of England to meet the imminent onslaught of
+the Spanish Armada.  In those days the Hammer-men, as they were called
+familiarly from the start, watched the coast from the mouth of the Adur
+to Rye and Winchelsea; and in the succeeding centuries they left their
+bloody mark upon the pages of history, the memories of their
+fellow-countrymen, and the bodies of the King's enemies.
+
+The most ancient of English regiments, it carries on its colours more
+honours than any but the 60th.  For more than three tumultuous
+centuries it has been distinguished even in that British Infantry which
+has never yet encountered in war its match or its master.  The splendid
+foot-soldiers of Spain broke in Flanders before its thundering
+hammer-strokes; in Flanders and elsewhere in later times the legions of
+Imperial France surged in vain against its bayonets; and in our own day
+the Prussian Guard, as insolent and vain-glorious as the veterans of
+Napoleon, has recoiled before the invincible stubbornness of the
+peasants of Sussex.
+
+The officers were drawn almost exclusively from two or three of the
+oldest public-schools.  Ernie found they were keen soldiers, and
+efficient, immensely proud of their regiment, athletic, and
+better-mannered than most.  But as a whole they were singularly stupid
+men, deliberately blind to the wonders of the country in which they
+lived, proud of their blindness, and cultivating their insularity.
+There was one shining exception.
+
+When the new draft paraded for inspection, a scarecrow Major wearing
+the South African ribands walked slowly up and down the ranks with a
+word for each man.  He was very tall, and so lean as to be almost
+spectral.  His voice was charming and leisured, reminding Ernie of his
+father.  He was friendly too, almost genial.  It was obvious that he
+based his authority on his own spiritual qualities and not on the
+accident of his position.  There was no rattling of the sabre, no
+fire-eating, no attempt to put the fear of God into the hearts of the
+recruits.
+
+When he came to Ernie, he asked,
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Caspar, Sir."
+
+The Major looked at the lad from beneath his sun-helmet with sudden
+curiosity.
+
+"Are you ..." he began, and pulled himself up short.  "I hope you'll be
+happy as a Hammer-man," he said, and passed on.
+
+Later he addressed the draft in a gentle little speech of the kind that
+annoyed his brother-officers almost past bearing.
+
+"You have all heard of Death and Glory," he began.  "Well, in this
+country there's a certain amount of Death going about, if you care to
+look out for it, but very little Glory.  You have also heard no doubt
+from your mothers and the missionaries that the black man is your
+brother.  It may be so.  But in this country there are no black men and
+therefore no brothers.  There are brown men who are your remote
+cousins; and they aren't bad fellows if you keep them in their place,
+and remember your own.  On Sundays there is church for those who like
+it; and the same for those who don't.  For the rest, whether you are
+happy or the reverse depends in the main upon your health, and your
+health depends in the main on yourselves.  Be careful what you drink,
+and don't suck every stick of sugar-cane a native offers you.  Remember
+you are Hammer-men and not monkeys.  Most of you are men of Sussex, as
+are most of your officers; and we all know that the Sussex man wunt be
+druv.  But discipline is discipline and must be maintained.  We don't
+hammer each other more than we can help, nor do we hammer the natives
+more than is good for them.  We exist to hammer the King's enemies.
+And now I wish you all well and hope you'll find the Regiment a real
+home."
+
+Major Lewknor's long spidery legs carried him back to the bungalow
+where his wife awaited him.
+
+She was a little woman, clearly Semitic, fine as she was strong, with
+eyes like jewels and the nose of an Arab.
+
+"My dear," said the Major, "in your young days did you ever hear of one
+Hans Caspar?"
+
+"My Jock, did I ever hear of one Napoleon Buonaparte?" mocked his mate.
+"What about him?"
+
+"I was at Trinity with his son," replied the Colonel.
+
+"We used to call him Hathri.  A charming fellow, and a brilliant
+scholar, but----"
+
+"What about him?" said Mrs. Lewknor, who seemed suddenly on the
+defensive.
+
+"His son has just joined us," answered the Major.  "In the ranks."
+
+The lady handled the sugar-tongs thoughtfully.  Her memory travelled
+back more than twenty years to a great ball in Grosvenor Square, and
+the timid son of the house, a gawky, awkward fellow with a reputation
+for shyness and brilliance.  He could not dance, but under the palms in
+the conservatory, tête-à-tête, he could talk--as Rachel Solomons had
+never heard a man talk yet--of things she had never heard talked about:
+of a place called Toynbee Hall somewhere in the East End; of a little
+parson named Samuel Barnett; of the group of young University
+men--Alfred Milner, Arnold Toynbee, Lewis Nettleship--he and his wife
+were gathering about them there with the aim of bridging the gulf
+between Disraeli's Two Nations; of the hopes of a redeemed England and
+a new world that were rising in the hearts of many.  That young man saw
+visions and had made her see them too.  She had cut two dances to
+listen to that talk, and when at last an outraged partner had torn her
+away and Edward had said in his sensitive stuttering way, his face
+shining mysteriously,
+
+"Shall we ever meet again?"
+
+She had answered with astonishing emphasis,
+
+"We must."
+
+But they never did.  Fate swung his scythe; her father died and she had
+to abandon her London season.  Edward Caspar went abroad to study at
+Leipzig.  And next winter she met her Hammer-man and launched her boat
+on the great waters.
+
+But she had never forgotten that mysterious half-hour in which the
+trembling young man had knocked at her door, entered her sanctuary; and
+she, Rachel the reserved, had permitted him to stay.
+
+At that moment Reality had entered her life--unforgettable and
+unforgotten.
+
+
+India from the first tantalized Ernie.  It was for him a mysterious and
+beautiful book, its pages for ever open inviting him to read, yet
+keeping its secret inviolate from him; for he could not read himself
+and there was no one to read to him.  His officers, capable at their
+work, and good fellows enough in the main, Ernie soon discovered to be
+illiterate to an almost laughable degree.  They not only knew nothing
+outside the limited military field, but they took a marked professional
+pride in their ignorance.
+
+Ernie, used to his father's large philosophical outlook on any subject,
+his scholarly talk, his learning, was amazed at the intellectual apathy
+and crustacean self-complacency, sometimes ludicrous, more often naïf,
+occasionally offensive, of those set in authority over him.
+
+Major Lewknor was the solitary exception.  He was the one University
+man in the Regiment, and, whether as the result of a more catholic
+education or a more original temperament, he always stood slightly
+apart from his brother-officers.  When he was a young man they had
+mocked at him quietly; now that he was a field officer they stood
+somewhat in awe of his ironical spirit.  Some of his more dubious
+sayings were handed on religiously from last-joined subaltern to
+last-joined subaltern.  The worst of them--his famous--_Patriotism is
+the last refuge of every scoundrel_--was happily attributed by the Army
+at large to a chap called Johnston who, thank God! was not a Hammer-man
+at all, but a Gunner or a Sapper or something like that.  A Sapper
+probably.  It was just the sort of thing you would expect a Sapper to
+say: for Sappers wore flannel shirts and never washed.
+
+But if the Major was undoubtedly critical of what was obsolete and
+theatrical in the Service that he loved, few possessed a deeper
+reverence or more intimate understanding of the much that was noble in
+it.
+
+"After the really grand ritual of a big ceremonial parade," he would
+say, "when you actually do transcend yourself and become one with the
+Larger Life, for grown men in an age like ours, to be herded at the
+point of the bayonet into a tin-pot temple to hear a gramophone in a
+surplice droning out an unintelligible rigmarole every Sunday in the
+name of religion--why it is not only redundant, it's a blasphemous
+farce that every decent man _must_ kick against."
+
+In spite of his caustic humour the Major's passion for the Regiment, to
+which he had given his life, steadfastly refusing all those
+staff-appointments for which he was so admirably fitted, was genuine as
+it was profound.  Because of it, his much-tried brother officers, who
+loved him deeply if they feared him not a little, forgave him all.  And
+if he was sadly unorthodox in many respects, as for instance that he
+was not a hard and fast Conservative, he was jealously orthodox in
+others as in that contempt for politicians which is almost an obsession
+amongst the men of his profession, perhaps because to them it falls to
+pay the price of the mistakes of their masters at Westminster.
+
+The Major and his wife were in brief distinguished from their kind by
+the fact that they were mentally alive, sympathetic, keen, and
+knowledgeable.  They had passed most of their lives in the East, and
+were of the few of their fellow-countrymen who had made the most of the
+opportunities vouchsafed to them.  Indeed it was said in the Regiment
+that what the pair didn't know about India was not worth knowing.
+
+Once at a halt on a route-march Ernie saw the Major, standing gaunt and
+helmeted in the shade of a banyan tree, take a pace out into the road.
+
+A native, carrying two sealed pitchers slung from the ends of a bamboo,
+was padding down the road in the dust between the ranks of the soldiers
+who had fallen out.
+
+The Major spoke to him, then turned to Ernie who was standing by.
+
+"See that man, Caspar," he said quietly.  "He's a pilgrim.  He's
+tramped all the way from Hardwar, the source of the Ganges, to get holy
+water--seven hundred miles.  What about that for faith?"
+
+"Fine, sir," said Ernie, with quiet enthusiasm.
+
+"In the days of Chaucer we used to do the same kind of thing in
+England," continued the Major.  "Ever read the 'Canterbury Tales'?"
+
+"Dad's read em to me, sir--in bits like."
+
+The Major moved away.
+
+Close by a group of officers, whose faces clearly showed how profoundly
+they disapproved of this conversation, were sprawling in the shade.
+_That was the way to lose caste with the men_.  Amongst them was a
+last-joined lad, chubby still; the other was Mr. Royal of Ernie's
+company.
+
+"What did the Major say he was?" asked the Boy keenly.
+
+"I don't know what the Major said he was," answered Mr. Royal coolly.
+"And between ourselves I don't greatly care.  _I_ know what he was.
+And if you'll ask me prettily I might impart my information."
+
+"What was he?" asked the Boy.
+
+"He was a coolie," said Mr. Royal.  "India's full of them.  In fact
+they're the dominant class."
+
+"I thought he looked something a bit out of the ordinary," said the
+snubbed Boy.
+
+"Did you?" retorted Mr. Royal.  "I thought myself he looked as if he
+wanted kicking.  And as I've got five years' service to your three
+months it may be presumed that I'm right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+ERNIE IN INDIA
+
+The Regiment was wonderfully well run for the men on its social side,
+for the Colonel was a bachelor, and much was trusted to Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+She was at Ernie's bedside the day after he had his first attack of
+fever.
+
+The little lady, so delicate, yet so strong, stood above the lad whose
+mother she might have been with a curious thrill.
+
+He was so like his father, yet so unlike; and he was not only sick of
+fever, but dreadfully homesick too.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor knew all about that, and the cure for it.
+
+"Tell me about your people, Caspar," she said, after the ice had been
+broken.
+
+The lad unloosed the flood-gates with immense relief.
+
+He talked of Beachbourne, of Rectory Walk with the virginia-creeper on
+the wall and the fig-tree at the back; of his mother, of Mr. Pigott,
+even of Alf, and all the time of dad and the Downs.
+
+On rising to go, Mrs. Lewknor said that when she came next day she
+would read to him.
+
+"What shall I read?" she asked.
+
+"Would you read me Matthew Arnold's _Scholar-Gypsy_?" said the boy.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor looked down at the lad with brilliant eyes.
+
+"Is that your father's favourite?" she asked.
+
+"One of them, 'm.  Wordsworth's the one."
+
+There was only one man in the Regiment who possessed a Matthew Arnold,
+but that man happily was Mrs. Lewknor's husband.
+
+Next day, as the little lady read the familiar lines, Ernie lay with
+eyes shut, the tears pouring down his face.
+
+"Takes me right back," he said at last as she finished.  "I'm not here
+at all.  I'm laying just above the Rabbit-walk over Beech-hangar, with
+the gorse-pods snapping in the sun, and the beech-leaves stirring
+beneath me, and old dad with his hat over his eyes and his hands behind
+his head reciting."
+
+That afternoon Mrs. Lewknor told Mr. Royal, who had dropped in to tea,
+that she had been reading Matthew Arnold to a man in his company.
+
+Mr. Royal looked blank.
+
+He had cold, speedwell blue eyes, that seemed all the brighter for his
+curly dark hair, a fine skin, rather pale, and an always growing
+reputation for hard efficiency.
+
+"Matthew Arnold!" he said.  "And who might Mr. Matthew Arnold be?"
+
+He said it a thought aggressively.  It was clear that not only had he
+never heard of Matthew Arnold, but that he would have considered it bad
+form to have done so.
+
+"I believe he was a poet who seldom went to church," said the Major in
+the chi-chi voice which he could imitate to the life.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Royal.  "A poet!--Ah, I'm too busy for that sort of
+thing myself."  He said it with a crushing air of finality.
+
+When he had gone, Mrs. Lewknor looked at her husband with deprecatory
+eyes.
+
+"My Jock," she said with a little sigh, "tell me!--Is it the
+system?--is it the man?--What is it?"
+
+The Major sat upright on a little hard chair.
+
+His eyes twinkled maliciously in his somewhat bony head.  He looked
+like a gaunt satyr.
+
+"My dear," he said, "in the British Army you must do as the British
+Army does.  And there is one thing which the British Army _Will Not_
+tolerate, and that is--a cultivated mind."
+
+"I don't think that's peculiar to the Army," replied Mrs. Lewknor.
+"The attitude's characteristic of our race."
+
+Mr. Royal was not in fact popular among his brother officers.  His
+superiors complained that his manner was slightly insolent, his juniors
+that it was so damn superior.  The men liked him for his efficiency,
+and some women admired him--too much it was whispered.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor followed Ernie's military career with quiet interest.  Not
+that there was very much to follow: for Ernie, apart from the
+cricket-field, had no career.
+
+He did not seek promotion, and was not in fact offered it.  As Mr.
+Royal very truly said,--"He can't come it enough to make an N.C.O."
+The habit of authority indeed sat ill on his shoulders; but he was
+liked by officers and men; and his cricket gave him a place in the
+regimental team.
+
+But there was little in Army life to do for Ernie the one thing
+essential self demands--encourage growth; and not a little to repress
+it.
+
+When the first newness had worn off, Ernie was spiritually unsatisfied
+and solitary.
+
+The grosser vices of the men never appealed to him, and the men
+themselves were not his sort.  To get away from them he sometimes
+wandered far a-field, poking and prying into the temples of the various
+sects, and not seldom found himself in the crowded streets of the
+native city, a lonely khaki figure in a sun-helmet, regarding the
+many-coloured crowd, and asking himself, in the philosophical way he
+inherited from his father,
+
+"What's the meaning of it all?"
+
+It was on one of these rambles that the solitary incident of his career
+in India occurred to him.
+
+He was standing at the foot of the hill in the native city of Lahore,
+watching the traffic in the narrow streets, when he saw a mem-sahib
+driving a tum-tum slowly through the heavy ox-traffic.
+
+The syce for some reason had descended, and the lady was alone.
+
+Just then a huge elephant with painted sides came swinging down the
+steep street, at the head of a religious procession, singing and
+clashing cymbals.
+
+The lady's pony, a dun country-bred, took fright and bolted.
+
+Ernie saw her face, quite calm beneath her solar topee, as she rushed
+past him, pulling at the run-away.  It was Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+A few yards down the street the wheels of the tum-tum cannoned into a
+sack borne by a small donkey.  The donkey, already tottering beneath
+his load, collapsed and lay in the dust unable to rise.
+
+The driver of the donkey, an unsavoury giant, pock-marked, abused the
+mem-sahib.  A crowd gathered.  The religious procession was held up,
+the elephant swinging his trunk discontentedly and spouting showers of
+dust over his flanks.
+
+Ernie didn't like the look of things, for it was common talk in the
+lines that the native city was mutinous.
+
+He came up quickly.  The presence of the man in khaki steadied the
+crowd and stopped the chatter.
+
+"Best get out of this, 'm," he suggested.  "They look a bit funny."
+
+He took the pony's head and turned him.
+
+"You get up alongside me then," said Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+He obeyed.
+
+The crowd made way.  The pock-marked man began again to beat his
+donkey.  The procession resumed its march.
+
+"One up for the Hammer-men!" the little lady laughed, as they emerged
+from the gate of the native city.
+
+"Yes, 'm," said Ernie.  "Only one thing.  The native city's out of
+bounds for me."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor smiled.
+
+"I'm not one of the Military Police," she said....
+
+
+That evening she put to her husband a question that had often puzzled
+her.
+
+"Why doesn't Caspar get on?" she asked.  "He's got twice the
+intelligence of men who go over his head."
+
+"My dear," replied the Major with the sententiousness that grew on him
+with the greying years, "intelligence is the last thing we want in the
+ranks of the Army.  Intelligence always leads to indiscipline.  The
+Army wants in the lower ranks only one thing--what is called
+'character.'  And by character it means the quality of the bull who
+rammed his head against a brick-wall till he was unconscious and went
+at it again when he came round saying--_My head is bloody but unbowed_."
+
+
+During Ernie's years of service the Battalion moved slowly North,
+exchanging the plains of the Central Provinces for the frosty nights
+and red sand-hills of the Punjauh.
+
+Major Lewknor became Colonel; and Mr. Royal adjutant.
+
+Ern and the new Colonel were curiously sympathetic; Ern and the
+adjutant the reverse.
+
+It may be that the Colonel, unusual himself, and lonely because of it,
+recognized a kindred spirit in the man; it may be that he never forgot
+that Ern was the son of his old contemporary Hathri Caspar of Trinity;
+or perhaps Mrs. Lewknor played an unconscious part in the matter.  It
+is certain that on the one occasion Ern was brought before him in the
+Orderly Room for a momentary lapse into his old weakness, the Colonel
+merely "admonished" the offender.
+
+Captain Royal, a ruthless disciplinarian, was aggrieved.
+
+"He's such a rotten slack soldier, sir," he complained, after the
+culprit, congratulating himself upon his escape, had disappeared.
+
+"Isn't he?" said the Colonel, enjoying to the full the irritation of
+his subordinate.  "That man'd be no earthly good except on service."
+
+Even at the wicket indeed Ernie was only at his best when he had to
+try.  A first-rate natural bat, he would have been left out of the
+regimental team for slackness but that, as the Sergeant-Major said,
+
+"Caspar's always there when you want him most."
+
+In fact, Ernie ended his career in the Army with something of a
+flourish.
+
+The Regiment was playing the Rifle Brigade at Rawlpindi in the last
+round for the Holkar Cup.  Half-way through the second day, when the
+Hammer-men were batting, a rot set in.  There were still two hours to
+play when the last man went in.
+
+"Who is it?" asked Mrs. Lewknor, keen as a knife.
+
+"Your friend, Caspar, Mrs. Lewknor," answered the senior subaltern, one
+Conky Joe, with the beak of a penguin, the eyes of an angel, and the
+heart of a laughter-loving boy.  "They're sending him in last for his
+sins in the field--which were many and grievous."
+
+"He won't live long against their fast bowler," commented the Boy
+gloomily.  "I know Caspar."
+
+"I never like to differ from my superiors," said the Colonel.  "But I'm
+not so sure."
+
+"Nor am I," said Mrs. Lewknor defiantly.
+
+The Colonel and his wife proved right.  Ernie batted with astonishing
+confidence from the first.  At the end of twenty minutes it was
+anybody's game.  Royal, well into his second century, was flogging the
+ball all over the ground.  And Ernie's clear voice--"Yes, sir!  No,
+sir!  Stay where you are!" gave new heart to the watching Hammer-men.
+
+In the end the two men played out time with consummate ease, and were
+carried together off the ground.
+
+"It was like bowling at two rocks," said one of the defeated side.
+
+"Spiteful rocks too!" replied the other.  "Stood up and slashed at you!"
+
+The Colonel went up and shook hands with the victorious batsmen, and
+Mrs. Lewknor waved her parasol.
+
+"Well done, Caspar!" she cried.  "Stuck it out!"
+
+A few days later, his time being up, Ernie was detailed for a draft for
+home.
+
+The Colonel, on signing his papers, said that he was sorry to be
+parting, and meant it.
+
+"Charming fellow!" he said to the Adjutant, when Ern had left the room.
+
+"Yes," answered Captain Royal in his lofty way.  "Too charming.  He'll
+never be any good to himself or us either."
+
+"I'm not so sure," replied the Colonel.  "He's the sort that never does
+well except when he's got to."
+
+That evening Ern went up to the Colonel's bungalow to say good-bye to
+Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked the little lady.
+
+"Back home, 'm," Ernie answered.  "Old Town, Beachbourne.  There's no
+place in the world to touch it."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor smiled at his enthusiasm.
+
+"I know it," she said.  "The Colonel comes from those
+parts--Hailsham-way.  Perhaps we shall follow you when we retire."
+
+"Beachbourne!" mused the Colonel, after Ernie had departed.  "Famous
+for two things: Mr. Trupp, the surgeon, who by a brilliant operation
+saved the other day the life of the man the world could have done best
+without, and the Hohenzollern Hotel."
+
+"What's the Hohenzollern Hotel?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"My dear," said the Colonel, "Captain Royal will enlighten you in his
+more intimate moments."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER
+
+That first return to England after his long absence in the East always
+remained one of the land-marks in Ernie's life.  It was a revelation to
+him, never completely to pass away.
+
+The time was late April; the weather perfect.  The song of mating birds
+rose from dew-drenched brake and bush on every hand; the spring lay
+like a dream of gossamer on the hedges and woodlands; the lambs and
+quiet cattle filled him with an immense content.  His heart rose up in
+joy and thankfulness and humble love.
+
+And his mates, it was clear to him, were experiencing the same
+transfiguring emotion.  He was sure of it from the silence that grew on
+them as they travelled through the radiant country-side from the port
+at which they had landed, their noses glued to the windows of the
+troop-train.  Gradually the vision possessed their souls like lovely
+music.  The rowdiness, the silly songs, the bad jokes faded away.  An
+awe stole over them as of men admitted into the Sanctuary and beholding
+there for the first time the beauty of the Holy One unveiled before
+them.
+
+Now and then a quiet voice spoke out of the silence.
+
+"Blime!  There's a rabbit!"
+
+"There's an English serving-maid!"
+
+"Ain't it all solid-like?"
+
+That solidity was one of Ernie's abiding impressions too--the massive
+character of this Western Civilization to which he was returning.  And
+it stood, he was convinced, for something real: for it was based on a
+foundation that only the blind and gross could call materialism.
+
+The big-boned porters trundling tinkling milk-cans along the platforms
+at a wayside station, the English faces, the square brick buildings,
+the substantial coin, confirmed the thought.
+
+"Solid!" he echoed in his father's vein.  "That's the word.  Give me
+the West.  Back there it's all a little bit o gilded gimcrack."
+
+Once the train stopped in an embankment lined with primroses and
+crowned with woods, a sweet undercurrent of song streaming quietly up
+to heaven, like the murmur of innumerable fairy-bees.
+
+Ernie removed his cap; and the unuttered words in his heart, as in
+those of his companions, were, "Let us pray!"
+
+
+A few weeks later he stood on the platform of Victoria, discharged.
+
+Deliberately he chose, to take him home, a train that stopped and
+browsed at all the stations with the familiar English names as it made
+its fussy way across the Weald through the very heart of Saxondom.
+
+He sat in the corner, the window wide, the breeze upon his face,
+without a paper, reading instead the countryside as a man reads in age
+a poem beloved in his youth.
+
+One by one he picked up the old land-marks--the spire of Cowfold
+Monastery, slender against the West, Ditchling Beacon, Black Cap, and
+the Devil's Dyke.
+
+At Ardingly, where the train had stopped, it seemed, for lunch, he got
+out.
+
+The Downs were drawing closer now, the blue rampart of them seeming to
+gather all this beauty as in a giant basin.
+
+In the woods hard by a woodpecker was tapping.  He saw a cock pheasant
+streaming in glorious flight over a broad-backed hedge.  And across the
+hollow of the Weald cuckoos everywhere were calling, and flying as they
+called.  He closed his eyes and listened.  The Weald seemed to him an
+immense bowl of nectar, brimming and beaded.  He was floating in it;
+and the tiny bubbles all about him were popping off with a soft
+delicious sound--_Cuck-oo!  Cuck-oo!_
+
+Then he came to earth to see the train bundling out of the station with
+a callous grin.
+
+It was significant of Ernie's weakness and his strength that he didn't
+mind.  Indeed he was glad.
+
+He left the station and plunged like a swimmer into the sea of sound
+and colour, opening his chest and breathing it in.  The wealth of green
+amazed him.  It filled and fulfilled his heart.  He caught it up in
+both hands, as it were, and poured it over his thirsting flesh.
+Abundant, yet light as froth, it overflowed all things, hedges, woods
+and pastures; splashing with brightest emerald the walls and roofs of
+the cottages, russet-timbered and Sussex-tiled.
+
+Here and there in an old garden, set in the green, was a laburnum like
+a fountain of gold, a splash of lilac in lovely mourning against the
+yews, a chestnut lighted with a myriad spray of bloom.  The pink May
+had succeeded the white; and clematis garlanded the hedges.  There was
+a wonderful stillness everywhere, and the atmosphere was bright and
+hard.  After a dry month the grass was very forward.  The oak-trees
+stood up to their knees in hay that was yellow with buttercups, the
+wind rustling through it like a tide.  The foliage of the oaks was
+still faintly bronzed.  Steadfast, old, and very grim in all this
+faerie, they bore themselves as lords of the Forest by right of
+conquest and long inheritance.  Ernie nodded greeting at them.  Their
+uncompromising air amused him.  They were not his tree: for he was a
+hill-man; and the oaks belonged to the Weald, which in its turn clearly
+belonged to them.  He did not love them; but he admired and respected
+them for their sturdy independence of character, if he laughed a little
+at their English self-righteousness and dogmatic air.  They were of
+England too in their determination not to show emotion: for they
+appeared not to be moving; yet he could see a wind was flowing through
+them, while in the shadow of them mares-in-foal were flicking their
+tails.
+
+Ernie recognized with joy that he was returning to the country he had
+left.
+
+The gang of men he came on at the end of a lane, asphalting a
+main-road, the rare car dashing along with a swirling tail of dust
+between green hedges, disturbed but little his peace of mind.
+
+He was home again--in Old England--the heart of whose heart was Sussex.
+
+In the train again he sank back in a kind of pleasant trance.  Two
+country-men in his carriage were talking in the old ca-a-ing
+speech--_So cardingly I saays to herrr_....  Their undulating voices
+rocked him to sleep.  He woke to find himself in Lewes, and his eyes
+resting on the massif of Mount Caburn.
+
+The train wandered eastwards under the Downs, past Furrel Beacon,
+athwart the opening of the Ruther Valley.  The Long Man of Wilmington
+stared bleakly at him from the flanks of hills that seemed sometimes
+scarred and old and worn, at others rich with the mystery of youth.
+
+The train ran through Polefax, where the line to Romney Marsh turns
+off.  Then with a belated effort at sprightliness it hurried through
+the sprawling outposts of Beachbourne.
+
+The town had grown greatly, overspreading the foothills towards Ratton
+and the woods of the Decoy and skirmishing across the marshes beyond
+the gasworks, which, when he left, had marked the uttermost bounds of
+civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+OLD TOWN
+
+When Ern got out of the train on to the very platform where Alf, six
+years before, had prophesied his return in glory, nothing much happened.
+
+True, the conditions were not quite as Alf had foretold.  Rather the
+reverse.  Whereas it was a dapper young clerk who had left Beachbourne,
+it was a solid working-man who returned to it; one who by his clothes,
+boots, hands, hair, and even walk, testified that he was of those who
+bear on their shoulders the burden of our industrial civilization.  And
+that perhaps was why the promised brass-band was conspicuous by its
+absence, and there were present no fathers of the city expanding ample
+paunches preparatory to delivering an address of welcome to the
+returning soldier.  Instead there was upon the platform one unkempt
+porter, who took his ticket very casually, and when asked by Ern
+whether he recognized him, replied with more honesty than tact that he
+didn't know but thought not.
+
+"See, I sees so many," he remarked apologetically.
+
+"I'm Ernie Caspar," said Ernie, noting with critical military eye that
+the other did not seem to have had his hair cut since last they met.
+"I was at the Moot School along o you.  Aaron Huggett, aren't it?"
+
+The porter's face betrayed a flicker of sardonic interest.
+
+"I expagt you'll be Alf Caspar's brother," he said.
+
+"That's it," Ernie answered, a thought sourly.
+
+Back in Beachbourne he was not himself; he was just his younger
+brother's brother, it seemed.
+
+Things were not quite as he had expected.  Everywhere was a subtle
+change of atmosphere.  Beside the book-stall now stood a sentry-box
+with glass doors.  In it a man with something to his ear was talking to
+himself.
+
+Ernie felt somehow disconsolate.
+
+Outside the station, in Cornfield Road, he paused and took in the scene.
+
+There was more traffic than of old, and it was swifter.  In the country
+from which he came the ox was still the principal motive-power upon the
+roads: here clearly horses were becoming out of date.
+
+He asked a policeman when the bus for Old Town ran.
+
+"There she is," said the man, pointing.  "On the bounce!"
+
+Just across the street, under the particular plane-tree the starlings
+haunted of evenings, where in the past old Huggett in his bottle-green
+coat would wait indefinitely with his mouldy pair of browns, there
+stood a gaudy motor-bus, decked on top.  A spruce conductor was pulling
+the bell sharply; and a board on which were printed the starting-times
+hung from a neighbouring lamp.  It was all very precise, powerful, and
+efficient.  Ernie was not sure whether he liked it or not.
+
+But he had little time to think.  This mechanical monster was not the
+old gentlemanly horse-bus with its easy tolerance.  It gave no law and
+knew no mercy.  It was swift and terrible; and its heart was of the
+same stuff as its engines.
+
+He crossed the road and leapt on to the great lurching thing.
+
+Carelessly it bore him along the Old Road to Lewes and then swung away
+under the Chestnuts into Water Lane.
+
+Here at least nothing had changed but the vehicle that carried him.  On
+his left was Saffrons Croft, just as of old, with its group of splendid
+elms and the Downs seen through the screen of them; in front on the
+hill, above the roofs of Old Town, the church-tower with its squat
+spire, bluff against a background of green.
+
+Two ladies were walking down the hill, a middle-aged and gracious
+mother, escorted by a tall daughter.
+
+Ernie's neighbour nudged him confidentially.
+
+"Mrs. Trupp," he said.
+
+Ernie leaned over.  Except for the silver in her hair, his god-mother
+had altered little; but he would hardly have recognized in the stately
+young woman who walked at her side the flapper who had waved him
+good-bye from the nursery-window years before.
+
+His neighbour was conveying to him information about the great surgeon.
+
+"He's our greatest man by far.  Mr. Trupp _of Beachbourne_.  They come
+from all parts to him.  He saved the Tsar of Dobrudja--when all the
+rest had taken to their prayers."
+
+"Ah," said Ernie, "I think I ave eard of im."
+
+The bus, for all its rushing manners of a parvenu, stopped opposite the
+_Star_; but the old beam across the road was gone.
+
+Ernie felt himself aggrieved, and complained to the conductor as he got
+down.
+
+"Well, you didn't want your head took off every time, did you?" said
+that unsympathetic worthy.
+
+Ernie strolled up Church Street, living his past over again.  Here at
+least he found the rich, slow atmosphere he had expected.  There was
+the long-backed church standing massive and noble as of old on its
+eminence above the Moot; beneath it in the hollow the brown roof of the
+Quaker Meeting-house; and on his left the little ironmonger's shop
+outside which Alf had seen Mrs. Pigott and her dog Sharkie on the fatal
+day they sacked the walnut-tree.
+
+At Billing's Corner he was reassured to find the high flint-wall that
+ran at the back of Rectory Walk making its old sharp corner and the
+fig-tree peeping over it.  The Rectory, too, still stood in pharisaic
+aloofness amid gloomy evergreens.  And out of it was coming the Rector,
+walking mincingly just as of yore.
+
+That finikin old man had not changed much at all events, and yet ...
+and yet ... as he came closer, Ernie was aware of some subtle spiritual
+difference here too.  At first he thought the Rector had grown.  Then
+he recognized that the change was in the top-hat and those tall
+attenuated legs.  They were clothed in gaiters now, and gave the wearer
+just that air of old-world distinction it was his passion to assume.
+
+In fact pseudo-Canon Willcocks had in Ernie's absence become
+Archdeacon, to his own ineffable satisfaction and that of his lady.
+Now he marched down the middle of the road with his hands behind his
+back, in the meditative pose he always hoped passers-by would mistake
+for prayer.
+
+Ernie touched his hat; and the Archdeacon with an air of royal
+indifference imitated to the life from his hero, the late Emperor of
+the French, acknowledged the salute with an "Ah! my friend!" and
+titupped delicately upon his way.
+
+Ernie, grinning, turned the corner and stopped short.
+
+He had little notion as to what was before him.
+
+During his absence his mother's letters, it is true, had been very
+regular and most curt.  It was indeed astonishing how little she had
+contrived to tell him.  His father, on the other hand, had written
+seldom but at length, yet never mentioning home-news; while Alf, of
+course, had not written at all.
+
+Ernie was therefore in the dark as to the welcome awaiting him.
+
+The Downs at the end of the Walk greeted him; but a row of red-brick
+villas on the far side the New Road imposed a barrier between him and
+them.  True, they nodded at him friendly over the intruding roofs; but
+he was shut out from the great Coombe which of old had gathered the
+shadows in the evening and echoed in the spring to the melancholy
+insistent cry of lambs.
+
+All around the builder had been busy.
+
+When he left, the windows of Rectory Walk had looked across over rough
+fields to the Golf Links and Beech-hangar beyond.  Now detached houses
+on the westward side of the road blocked the view.
+
+His own home at least had changed not at all.  The virginia-creeper was
+brilliant as ever on its walls; the arabis humming with bees beneath
+the study-window.
+
+As he passed through the gate, his mother, who must have been waiting,
+opened to him quietly, and held up a warning finger.
+
+She was beautiful still, but showing wear, as must a woman of fifty,
+who has never spared herself.  Her hair was now snow-white; her
+complexion, as seen in the passage, fine as ever; her eyes the same
+startling blue under fierce brows, but the lines about them had an
+added kindness.
+
+She led past the study-door into the kitchen, walking a little stiffly,
+her bones more apparent than of old.
+
+Ern followed her with a smile, his hand scraping the familiar varnished
+paper, his eye catching that of the converted drain-pipe.
+
+She was still clearly a woman of one idea--dad.
+
+Cautiously his mother closed the door of the kitchen behind him.  Then
+she turned and put her hands upon his shoulders.
+
+There was something yearning in her gesture as of a puzzled child
+asking an explanation.  Ern's quick intuitions told him that since he
+had last seen her his mother had lost something and was missing it.
+This he noticed and her hands--how worn they were.  Fondly he kissed
+them, realizing a little wistfully that his mother now was an old woman.
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+"Let me see you," she said, and her eyes dwelt upon his face.  For the
+first time in his life he felt that his mother was depending on him,
+and was moved accordingly.
+
+"You're changed," she said at last.  "You're a man now.  But your eyes
+are the same."
+
+"How's dad?" he asked.
+
+She withdrew from his arms and turned away.
+
+"He's an old man now, Ernie," she said....  "He's not what he was....
+I don't rightly know what to make of him....  He goes to Meeting now."
+She was puzzled and pathetic.
+
+"Has he turned Quaker?" asked Ernie.
+
+"He says not."
+
+Just then quiet music sounded from the study.
+
+"Is that dad?" asked Ernie, amazed.
+
+His mother nodded.
+
+"One of them new-fangled machines.  Pianolas, don't they call em?  I
+give him one for his birthday."
+
+Ernie listened in awed silence.
+
+"That's Beethoven," he said.  "I'd know it anywhere....  In old days we
+used to have to go out for that, me and dad did."
+
+The music ceased.
+
+"Now," said his mother, and opened the kitchen-door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE CHANGED MAN
+
+Ernie went to the study-door and knocked.
+
+"Come in," said a voice that surprised him by its firmness.
+
+He entered.
+
+His father stood before the fireplace almost as he had left him, save
+that he had discarded his dressing-gown for a loose long-tailed
+morning-coat of the kind worn by country gentlemen in the eighties.
+Physically he had changed very little, spiritually it was clear at the
+first glance that he was another man.  The dignity which had
+distinguished him at the moment of parting had become his permanent
+possession.  Some shining wind of the spirit blowing through his
+stagnant streets had purged him thoroughly.  His colour was fresh as a
+child's, his eyes steady and hopeful, and there was a note of quiet
+exaltation about him, of expectation.
+
+"Boy-lad," he said in deeper tones than of old, as they shook hands.
+
+Ernie looked round like one lost.
+
+The room, too, was as greatly changed as its inmate.  But for a bowl of
+crimson roses on the book-shelf it might have been called austere.  The
+Persian rug had gone, the writing-table was bare of the familiar
+manuscript.  The book-shelves had disappeared to make way for a piano.
+The walls were still brown, and from them Lely's Cavalier looked down
+with faintly ironical eyes upon his descendants.  It was the only
+picture on the walls.
+
+"Where are the books then, dad?" Ernie asked.
+
+"I sent them down to Fowler's," the other answered.  "I've done with
+books--all except those."
+
+He pointed to a single row, perhaps a dozen in all, among which Ernie
+recognized the blue backs of the Golden Treasury Series, the old
+edition of Wordsworth, homely as the poet himself, and a little
+brown-paper bound new Testament.
+
+Ernie sat down.  Now he understood that pathetic look in his mother's
+eyes.  His father was no longer dependent on her; and she was missing
+that dependency as only a woman who has given her life to propping an
+invalid can miss it.
+
+"Have you joined the Friends, dad?" he asked earnestly.
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"I shall never join another sect.  They're nearest the Truth, it seems
+to me--a long way nearest.  But they aren't there yet.  None of us are."
+
+Ernie considered his father, sitting opposite him as of old, and yet
+how changed!  In those familiar blue eyes he detected now a dry
+twinkle, as of an imp dancing amid autumn leaves.
+
+Suddenly the imp leapt out and tickled him.
+
+Ernie flung back in his chair and laughed.
+
+The old man opposite nodded sympathetically.
+
+Then the door in the hall opened.
+
+Somebody had entered the passage, and was stumbling over the bag Ernie
+had left there.
+
+Ernie ceased to laugh; and the imp to twinkle.
+
+"That's your brother," said the old man almost harshly.
+
+Ernie made no move.  In the passage outside Alf was shifting the
+bag--with curses.
+
+"Does he live here still?" asked Ernie, low.
+
+"Yes," said his father.  "He's got a garage of his own now.  He's
+getting on."
+
+"Shall I go and see him?" asked Ernie.
+
+"There's nothing to see," his father answered in that new dry note of
+his.  "But you'd better go and see it perhaps," he added.
+
+Ernie rose reluctantly and went into the passage.  Alf's voice came
+from the kitchen, dogmatic and domineering.
+
+"Him or me.  That's flat," he was saying.  "House won't hold us both."
+
+Ernie swaggered into the kitchen.
+
+Alf was standing before the fire, very smart and well-groomed.  He wore
+a double-breasted waistcoat, festooned by a watch-chain, from which
+hung a bronze cross.  A little man still, with an immense head, his
+shoulders appeared broad in their padded coat; but the creases in his
+waistcoat betrayed his hollow chest and defective physique, and his
+legs were small and almost shrunken in their last year's Sunday
+trousers.
+
+Ernie advanced on his brother.
+
+"All right, Alf, old son," he said.  "No need to get yer shirt out.
+I'm not a-goin to force myself on no one."
+
+"Al-_fred_, if you please," answered Alf, planted before the fire and
+caressing a little waxed moustache, which had come into being during
+Ernie's absence.
+
+"Oh, you are igh," laughed Ernie.
+
+"I am Al-_fred_ to me own folk and Mr. Caspar to the rest," answered
+Alf, dogged and unbending.
+
+"Come, Alf, shake hands with your brother!" scolded his mother.
+
+Alf, his eyes still averted, extended a surly hand mechanically from
+the shoulder.
+
+Ern, white and flashing, took the hand.
+
+"There's for my brother!" he said.  "And there's for Alf!" and tossed
+it from him.
+
+Then he went out.
+
+His bag was still in the hall.  He was about to take it up when his
+father called him from the study.
+
+"You're going to stop here?" he asked; and Ernie detected a touch of
+the old anxiety in his voice, a suggestion of the old tremulousness in
+his face and figure.
+
+In all the tuzzles between the two brothers, Alf had over Ern the
+incalculable material advantage of the man who is not a gentleman over
+the man who is.
+
+"I just got to go down and see Mr. Pigott after a job, dad," Ern
+answered soothingly.  "I'll be round again later."
+
+He went out of the house, shutting the door quietly behind him.
+
+Anne Caspar heard it go, and looking out into the passage saw that the
+bag had vanished too.
+
+"He's gone," she said.
+
+"Army manners," muttered Alf.
+
+"You've drove him out," continued his mother.
+
+"Ave I?" said Alf, cleaning his nails with a penknife.  "I got my way
+to make.  I don't want no angers-on to me....  Comin back on us a
+common soldier--not so much as a stripe to his arm, let alone a full
+sergeant.  A fair disgrace on the family, I call it."
+
+"All for yourself always," said his mother censoriously.
+
+"Who else'd I be for then?" asked Alf, genuinely indignant.
+
+"You might be for the church," answered Anne grimly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ALF
+
+If Ernie was now the working-man, Alf on his side was very much the
+gentleman.
+
+He dressed the part to the best of his ability; and--when he
+remembered--even tried to talk it.
+
+But he had not arrived at his present position without a struggle.
+
+When he was through his apprenticeship, he left Hewson & Clarke, and
+inducing his mother to lend him a little capital, started a car and
+garage of his own in the Chestnuts between Old Town and the station.
+
+At first he did not prosper.  The horse-industry, with a tradition of
+tens of thousands of years behind it, would not yield its pride of
+place without a struggle.  Competitors were many and fierce.  And just
+when he believed that he was finding his feet at last, a big London
+Syndicate started the Red Cross Garages throughout Kent and Sussex.
+
+Alf for the first time felt the full weight of capitalism--the
+Juggernaut with Mammon at the wheel that crushes beneath its rollers
+the bodies and souls of the weak and impotent.
+
+His sense of helplessness embittered him.
+
+His garage was empty; his car in little request; he had few repairs.
+Old Town at one end of Beachbourne and Holywell on the foot-hills under
+Beau-nez at the other were the quarters of the resident aristocracy
+amongst whom it was the convention to avoid "the front" as bad form.
+These clung to their sleek pairs and cockaded coachmen just as they
+clung to the Church and Joseph Chamberlain and the belief, so often
+re-affirmed by Archdeacon Willcocks, that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was
+the one man living who knew how to rule the masses.  _The firm hand,
+sir!_
+
+The doctors, on the other hand, were beginning to possess little cars
+of their own which they drove themselves or had driven for them; while
+the progressive Town Council started motor buses and deprived Alf of
+some station-work.  Mr. Pigott, now a radical alderman, was responsible
+for this last injustice.
+
+Alf knew it, and in revenge, ceased to attend chapel.
+
+Mr. Pigott, with an unerring eye for the defaulters of his flock,
+marked his absence and tackled the lost sheep on the subject.
+
+"You've given up God then!" he said, fierce and frowning.
+
+"There ain't none," answered Alf, as brief and brutal.  "Where there's
+no justice, there can't be no God."  His little eyes sparkled
+dreadfully.  "Look at young Albert Hewson.  He went through the shops
+with me.  Is he as good an engineer as me?--Can he strip an engine same
+as me?--Can he turn to the thousandth part of an inch?--Ask the chaps
+in the yard.  Yet because he's got all the money, been to Rugby and
+Oxford, they make him deputy-chairman of the Red Cross Syndicate at
+£1,000 a year straight from the shop, and Managing Director of
+Ball-Bearings, Limited, and I don't know what all."
+
+He became a violent Socialist; spent his Sundays attending Labour
+demonstrations in the East-end; read Robert Blatchford in the
+_Clarion_; and sulked with his mother.
+
+For a moment he even contemplated the abandonment of his ambitions.
+
+When Mr. Pigott, after his second marriage, finally gave up
+schoolmastering and became Manager of the Southdown Transport Company,
+Alf applied for the position of working foreman.
+
+The application was discussed at a meeting of the Directors.
+
+"He's the chap that made the wage-slave speech to the Engineers at the
+Salvation Army Citadel on Labour Day," said one.
+
+"What d'_you_ think, Pigott?" asked another.
+
+"I won't have Alf Caspar in my yard," replied the Manager with
+characteristic emphasis.  "I know Alf."
+
+"Then that settles it," said the chairman.
+
+Alf rightly attributed his defeat to his old schoolmaster.
+
+"So you've turned me down, Mr. Pigott," he said, stopping the other in
+Church Street a few days later.
+
+Mr. Pigott, like most professing pacifists, was always ready for a
+fight.
+
+"I thought you wanted to be a master-man!" he cried.  "And here you're
+applying for a job as a wage-slave--to use your own term."
+
+Alf was white, trembling, and sour-faced.
+
+"All I want is a fair chance," he said doggedly.  "And if I don't get
+it there'll be trouble."  He came a step closer.  His eyes were down,
+and he looked dangerous.  "See here, Mr. Pigott--if you turn on
+full-steam same time you seal up the safety-valve, something'll burst.
+That's science, that is."
+
+Mr. Pigott was not at all dismayed.
+
+"Now look here!" he said.  "You take a pull, young man.  You're going
+altogether too far and too fast.  And I'm speaking not as a magistrate
+but as your old school-master."
+
+At the Bowling Green Committee that evening, while the minutes were
+being read, he retailed the incident to Mr. Trupp.
+
+"That little ewe-lamb o yours is turning tiger because he can't have it
+all his own way," he said.  "Going to upset Society because he's not
+King."
+
+Mr. Trupp was amused.
+
+"Arrested development," he said.  "He's an interesting study in
+pathology."
+
+"Criminal pathology," muttered Mr. Pigott.
+
+Whether in the interests of Science, or of expediency, next day Mr.
+Trupp rolled into Alf's garage, with a blue long-dog, a descendant of
+the original _She_, wearing the studded collar of her ancestress, at
+his heels.
+
+No man had made a stiffer fight against the new and aggressive
+locomotive than the great surgeon.
+
+Pests of the road, he called them, and refused to recognize his friends
+when driving them.  He affirmed that they upset his horses and his
+patients; made the place stink; and whirled through the country-side
+disseminating disease in clouds of dust.  But he was no fool, and
+increasingly busy.  A machine that could whisk him over to Lewes in
+little more than thirty minutes, and land him at the Metropole in
+Brighton in the hour, was not to be scoffed at.
+
+Alf was cleaning his car when Mr. Trupp, greatly muffled in spite of
+the heat, strolled into his yard.
+
+"Look here, Alf," growled the great man.  "I'm never going to own one
+of those things.  But I've got to use one to get about.  If you like to
+do my driving we'll arrange something."
+
+Alf's attitude to life changed in the twinkling of an eye.
+
+He bustled home that evening, a new man.
+
+"All O.K.," he called to his mother.  "I got me first contract."
+
+"What?" she asked sullenly.
+
+"Driving for Mr. Trupp."
+
+She took a saucepan off the fire.
+
+"Then you're a made man," she said; and she did not exaggerate.
+
+The job, or as Alf preferred to call it, the contract, meant honour; it
+meant money; it meant--above all--a start.  Mr. Trupp had been for long
+the first surgeon in Sussex: since the operation, as daring as
+discreet, by which he had preserved the life of a Balkan Tsar to
+disgrace a throne, his fame had become world-wide.
+
+That evening, uplifted on a wave of humility and thankfulness, Alf
+walked to Mr. Pigott's house and apologized to him.
+
+"I said a lot of silly things, I know," he said.  "There is a God and a
+good God too."
+
+Mr. Pigott was sitting with his new wife, who was as much his junior as
+the first had been his senior.
+
+She was a young woman, with a mischievous face and bright hair.
+
+"He'll be glad to have you on His side again," she remarked demurely.
+"He was missing you."
+
+Mr. Pigott scowled melodramatically at the offender.
+
+She refused to catch his eye, busy with her work.
+
+"Five pound a week isn't a bad God as times go," she went on.
+
+Alf smirked.
+
+"It's seven pound ten," he said, and withdrew.
+
+"Elsie Pigott!" roared her husband, when the outside door had shut.
+
+"Sir!" answered his bride, and added--"Mr. Trupp's taken him on....
+Mrs. Trupp's furious...."
+
+Alf, in spite of his access of faith, never returned to chapel.
+
+As he remarked to his mother,
+
+"I got me principles.  And I must stick to em."
+
+"That's it," said his mother.  "Stick to em--until you want to change
+em."
+
+Anne Caspar cherished now no illusions about her second son.
+
+She no longer cared for Alf--for he was no longer dependent on her; nor
+did she respect him.  But his naïveté, the outrageous sincerity of his
+egotism, appealed to a certain grim sense of humour she possessed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE CHURCHMAN
+
+Alf, with all his faults, had at least the supreme virtue of the animal
+living in a fiercely competitive world: he never missed a chance.
+
+A year after he began to drive for Mr. Trupp, he had a second car, a
+man driving for him, and another on repairing work.
+
+Success sugared his political outlook, just as defeat had soured it.
+Like most really hard men, he saved himself in his own eyes by becoming
+a thorough-going sentimentalist.  In the course of a year or two, King
+and Country had become the objects of his ferocious admiration; while
+the masses of his countrymen were to be dealt with as ruthlessly as
+expediency and the Vote would allow.
+
+"Traitors, I call em," he confided to his new friend, the Reverend
+Spink.  "All for their fat selves all the time.  Never think of you and
+me.  They fair give me the hiccoughs."
+
+At the General Election of 1906 he came out fearlessly for God and the
+Conservative Party.
+
+The two candidates for West Beachbourne were, as all decent men
+admitted, the worst who ever stood for a constituency.  The sitting
+member had just received that which he entered Parliament to obtain--a
+Baronetcy; and his solitary ambition now was to be defeated.
+Unfortunately an aspiring wife had other views to which her spouse had
+to give way.
+
+His opponent, on the other hand, had, according to the enemy, recently
+emerged "from a home of rest" in order to contest the constituency.
+
+At the preceding Khaki Election the Conservative candidate, who was an
+undoubtedly fine whip, had secured the "Triumph of Right," as
+Archdeacon Willcocks finely called it, by the simple process of driving
+a well-appointed team through the constituency.
+
+"I'll vote for them 'orses," had been the general verdict.
+
+The victor now repeated his tactics.
+
+On polling day, as a reward for his strenuous labours in the good
+cause, Alf was given a ride on the top of the coach among the very pick
+of England's aristocracy.  In that fair company he meandered from
+public-house to public-house all a winter's afternoon, singing with his
+hosts hymns and spirituous songs.
+
+In Cornfield Road, opposite the _White Hart_, Mr. Pigott, red and dusty
+from the battle, saw him ensconced on that bad eminence among the
+crimson faces and flowery hats of the enemy.
+
+"You've changed your coat to some purpose," he bawled.
+
+Alf leaned down.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said quietly.  "I've learned a bit, and I'm not ashamed
+to admit it."
+
+The beery riders raised an aggressive cheer.  And the son and heir of
+the candidate, snatching the horn from the hand of a footman, blew a
+strident blast in the ear of the outraged schoolmaster.
+
+Alf's candidate was returned, to his no small chagrin--one of the few
+Tories to survive the democratic deluge of that year.
+
+"Just a remnant of us," as Alf remarked pathetically to the Archdeacon,
+"that 'as not bowed the knee to Bile."
+
+Thus earlier in life even than most of us, Alf joined the Big
+Battalions of those who, secure themselves, mean to make capital out of
+the insecurity of others.
+
+"I'm a high old Tory," he would tell Lady Augusta Willcocks
+truculently.  "And I don't care who knows it."
+
+And finding quickly the necessity for, and advantage of, a religious
+sanction for a position that was morally untenable, he threw himself
+upon the bosom of the Church; and in that comfortable and accommodating
+community which opens wide its gates to all who prefer the Path of
+Compromise to the Road that leads up Calvary, he found the sustenance
+of which he stood in need.
+
+Alf effected the change of religious community with considerable tact.
+
+He began quite simply by touching his hat to the junior curate of the
+parish church, when he met him in the street.
+
+The Reverend Spink, who was a man of much the same class as Alf, was
+highly gratified and uplifted.
+
+Then Alf took to saying very shyly,
+
+"Good morning, sir," hurrying past in order not to impede by his
+unworthy presence the great man's view.
+
+Next he took to dropping in to the Reverend Spink's addresses for "men
+only."
+
+Here he made himself conspicuous by his thoughtfulness and the
+corrugations in his brow as he imbibed the teachings of his master.
+
+One day he asked, with some confusion and stumblings of speech, a
+question so easy that even the curate could answer it.
+
+Alf nodded, well satisfied.
+
+The curate swelled in the spirit.  This catechumen at the least knew
+what was what.
+
+Next day Alf, greatly daring, stopped the evangelist in the street.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he began diffidently.  "About what you was saying
+last night about them Proper Prefaces..."
+
+The curate amplified his explanation.
+
+Alf drank in the milk of the Word, nodding his head.
+
+"Ah, I never thought of that!" he said.
+
+"Look here!" said the curate with sudden warmth.  "If you're interested
+in those sort of things..."
+
+The naughty devil who possessed Alf bobbed out and almost undid him.
+
+"What!--Proper Prefaces!" he said, and added hastily--"and the things
+appertaining to em!--religion and that."
+
+"That's what I mean," said the curate.  "Come round to my rooms on
+Friday.  Some of us meet there once a week.  Jolly fellows.  Come and
+smoke a pipe and chat!"
+
+The Reverend Spink was deeply tainted with the hearty bon-camarade
+method which the Bishop of Fulham had recently introduced into the
+Church to enable it to float on the flowing democratic tide.
+
+After that Alf went often.
+
+The curate, who had made inquiries, found that Alf had once been,
+according to report, "a roaring, raving Socialist and atheist!"
+
+"Shockin the things he used to say!" his informant told him.  The
+curate, who was all out for sensation, was thrilled.  Here was a catch
+indeed!--If he could but bring it off!--What wouldn't the dear Bishop
+of Fulham say?
+
+His prayers were answered more swiftly than he had anticipated.
+
+In a month the Reverend Spink had led his penitent to the baptismal
+font.
+
+Alf, asked if he would like any of his people to be present at the
+ceremony, had shaken his head.
+
+"See where it is, sir, Mother's chapel.  She'll never forgive me--not
+but what I'll put up with that if it's right.  And dad's I don't know
+what.  I don't know that he knows himself."
+
+The only people Alf invited to attend were Mrs. Trupp and her daughter.
+They refused politely.
+
+As Bess said to her mother with the firmness of youth, "We are on
+Ernie's side.  Dad may forget, but we don't."
+
+A few weeks later the Reverend Spink went to call on Alf's father.
+
+After he had left, Mrs. Caspar heard strange sounds in the study.  She
+went to the door and listened.
+
+Then she opened and peeped in.
+
+Edward Caspar was laughing as she had never seen him laugh in twenty
+odd years of married life.  The tears were streaming down his face, his
+head was thrown back and his body convulsed.
+
+His wife regarded him with dour sympathy.
+
+"What is it?" she asked hardly.
+
+Her husband wiped his eyes shamefacedly.
+
+"Nothing," he said.  "Only the curate's been converting me."
+
+That evening, as he went to bed, he peered over the banisters, and said
+in his grave way to Alf in the kitchen,
+
+"I hope your friend Mr. Spink'll come again."
+
+Alf reported the incident next day to the curate, adding,
+
+"I will say this for dad.  He is broad."
+
+Mr. Trupp heard of his chauffeur's conversion.
+
+"You're church then now, Alf," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the other with the curious naïveté of blunted
+susceptibilities.  "More classier.  See, I'm getting on now."
+
+
+And Alf did not stop at baptism.
+
+He was thorough in religious as in secular affairs.
+
+Next spring, after a careful preparation by the Reverend Spink, he was
+confirmed by the Bishop and afterwards admitted a member of the C.E.M.S.
+
+After the ceremony, the Bishop inquired of the Rector, in the vestry,
+who the young man with the immense head might be.
+
+Archdeacon Willcocks always wore a little white imperial in reverent
+imitation of his master, Louis Napoleon.  His cult of the Third Emperor
+was perhaps the most genuine thing about him, and had endured for fifty
+years.  But for a stern no-nonsense father he would have deserted
+Cambridge in '70 to fight for a cause already lost.  And he had never
+forgiven the scholar at his gate who had told him that his favourite
+had painted his face before Sedan.
+
+"What if he did?" he had asked sourly.
+
+"Nothing," Edward Caspar had answered.  "Only it's interesting."
+
+"I don't believe he did."
+
+"Did you never read Zola's _Débâcle_?" asked the other gently.
+
+"Nevah!" cried the Archdeacon, on firm church-ground now.  "I don't
+read Zolah!"
+
+"Ah," said Edward.  "Pity..."
+
+The Archdeacon looked like a gentleman, and, to do him justice, tried
+hard to live up to his looks.  With this end in view he had married--to
+his no small gratification, and that of his mother--the daughter of a
+Victorian Earl.  In the days before he became an Archdeacon he
+habitually wore a top-hat, slightly battered to signify that the
+wearer, while an aristocrat, was not a new one.  A sedulous attendant
+on the rich of the parish, he visited the poor by proxy; and yet by the
+simple process of taking off his hat with a sweep to every
+cottage-woman in the Moot who vouchsafed him a good-morning on his rare
+passages through that district, he maintained an easy reputation among
+the more conservative of the working-class as a Christian and a
+gentleman.
+
+Archdeacon Willcocks was in fact a snob, but he was not a cad; whereas
+his junior curate was both.  When, therefore, the Bishop made inquiries
+as to Alf, the Archdeacon gave the glory to his subordinate.
+
+"Spink got hold of him," he said.  "He was a dangerous Socialist, I
+believe."
+
+The Bishop regarded with approval the chubby young man with the pursed
+mouth, wondering whether he should transfer him to the industrial
+East-end or the slums of Portslade.
+
+A thorough-going man of the world, like most of his type, he was quite
+astute enough to see that the real enemy of the Institution he
+represented was the Labour Party; and that the danger from this quarter
+was growing, and would continue to grow.
+
+When Alf returned home from the ceremony in the parish-church, his
+mother was taking off her bonnet in the kitchen.
+
+She eyed him with sardonic mirth as he entered.
+
+"Feel a change?" she asked.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Since he done it."
+
+"Was you there then?" asked Alf.
+
+"I was."
+
+Alf was entirely unabashed.
+
+"I must go with me conscience," he said, "if it was ever so."
+
+"And we all know which way your conscience goes, Alf," his mother
+answered.
+
+"Which way's that then?"
+
+"The way the money goes."
+
+Alf was not in the least offended.  Indeed he was rather pleased.  He
+stood in his favourite position in the window with his back to his
+mother and cleaned his nails with a pen-knife.
+
+"Crucified for conscience' sake," he muttered.  "I dare say I'm not the
+first, nor I won't be the last neether."
+
+Alf was confirmed into the church, and persecuted for it by his mother,
+a few weeks before his brother's return home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+MR. PIGOTT
+
+Ernie, bag in hand, and sore of heart, sauntered along to the end of
+Rectory Walk.
+
+There Beech-hangar, swirling in the wind under the shoulder of the
+Downs that shut off Beau-nez, called to his wounded spirit.
+
+He walked slowly along the New Road, away from the houses, across the
+Golf Links towards this favourite retreat of his boyhood where of old,
+when in trouble with his mother, he would retire.
+
+There on the slope amid the beech-trees, the Links billowing away
+before him to the woods that ambushed the Duke's Lodge, he lay down.
+The smooth stems rose about him like columns in the choir of a church.
+The wind strayed amid a sea of sun-lit leaves.  The cool, the comfort,
+the bright graciousness of these comrades of his youth soothed and
+satisfied him.  He studied them with kind eyes.  The harsh male quality
+of the oak was not theirs.  They could not stand the buffeting of Time
+as did the fierce old warriors of the Weald; but they could sustain the
+spirit in the hour of need.  They were for him the women among trees.
+
+Ernie lay with his eyes shut, and his hands behind his head, listening
+to the wind flowing through the tree-tops.  The murmur of flies, the
+under-song of birds, the moving stillness, the secret stir of life,
+filled him to overflowing.
+
+Alf had made him feel an isolated atom, the sport of incredibly cruel
+devils.  Now he knew that he was part of an immense and harmonious
+whole.  The sense of dislocation, exile and disease passed away.  His
+mind was an open cistern into which a myriad healing streams were
+pouring from an unknown source.
+
+Who was Alf to disturb his peace of mind?  Alf, the puny, the
+pretentious, who was not really alive at all.  There was something
+greater in the world than Alf, and that something was on his side.  He
+was sure of it.
+
+He sat up and laughed.
+
+Then above the murmur of insects and birds the louder hum of Man and
+his machinery, setting the world to rights, stole in upon his mind.
+
+Two groundmen were mowing the green just under the Hangar.
+
+It was time to be moving.
+
+
+He sauntered back along the New Road, eyeing the spruce villas on the
+northern side, where of old allotment gardens had been.
+
+At the corner of Church Street he asked a policeman where Mr. Pigott
+lived now.
+
+The man pointed down the Lewes Road, now fringed with houses.
+
+The old schoolmaster had, it seemed, left Huntsman's Lodge at the foot
+of the Downs, and moved in nearer to his work when he became Manager of
+the South Downs Transport Co.
+
+Ernie rambled down the dusty hill, the Downs upon his left, picking up
+familiar objects as he went--the Moot Farm standing up like an elm-girt
+island from the sea of arable, the long low backs of the Duke's
+piggeries, the path that wound across the plough and led over the hill
+to far Aldwoldston in the Ruther Valley.
+
+A young woman with provocative eyes and brightly burnished hair came to
+the door at his knock and scanned him friendly.
+
+"Is Mr. Pigott in?" Ernie asked.
+
+"He's at his office."
+
+"Could I see Mrs. Pigott then?"
+
+She eyed him merrily.
+
+"You are seeing her," she said; and added, enjoying his embarrassment,
+"I'm number two.  My predecessor sleeps at the back."  She tossed her
+bright head in the direction of the cemetery on Rodmill seen through
+the open back-door.
+
+Ernie blushed and fumbled.
+
+"I'm Ernie Caspar, Miss--I would say Ma'am."
+
+The young woman regarded him with swift and sympathetic interest.
+
+"Oh, I know _you_," she said.  "You used to write from India....  So
+Mr. Pigott never mentioned _me_!  I'll just speak to him when he comes
+in."
+
+She saw the bag in his hand, and her mouth became firm.
+
+"Been to see your people?"
+
+"Just looked in on dad, 'm."
+
+She eyed him sharply.
+
+"And your brother?"
+
+Ern said nothing.
+
+"Well then, you leave your bag here, and step across the Moot to the
+office.  _Southdown Transport Co._, back of the _Star_ by the Quaker
+Meeting-house.  You'll sleep the night here."
+
+Ernie crossed the brickfields, passed his old school where the children
+were singing the evening hymn, under the church upon the Kneb, through
+what the old inhabitants still called Ox-steddle Bottom, where once his
+father had pointed out to him the remains of Roman byres.
+
+The office was in Borough Lane.
+
+Mrs. Pigott had warned her husband by telephone.
+
+Ernie therefore was shown into the inner sanctum at once.
+
+Mr. Pigott, grizzled now, but with the old almost aggressive air of
+integrity, summed his erstwhile pupil up with the eyes of the
+appraising schoolmaster.
+
+"It's the old Ernie.  I see that," he grunted.  "So Alf's been playing
+it up already.  You needn't tell me.  He's a masterpiece, that young
+man.  Even _she_ admits that."  He paused and began again, confidential
+and communicative like one naughty boy whispering to another.  "What
+d'ye think of her?  She's church--more shame to her.  But I forgive
+her.  I forgive her a lot.  You have to when you're married to em--as
+you'll find some day.  And what I don't forgive I pass by.  For
+why?--If I didn't she'd sauce me."  He suddenly became aware that he
+was being indiscreet, even undignified, and broke off gruffly--"Well,
+what did they teach you in the Army?"
+
+Ernie laughed.
+
+"It's not so bad as they make out, sir.  I like the old Regiment well
+enough."
+
+"They tell me," said Mr. Pigott solemnly, "that in South Africa none of
+the unpopular officers came home--_and they weren't shot by the Boers_!"
+
+"It depends on the Regiment, I expect," replied Ernie.  "There's not
+much of that in the Hammer-men.  Our officers were mostly all right.
+More gentlemen than most, from what I could see of it.  They were
+sports, and they tried to be just.  Of course there wasn't none of em
+like dad--only the Colonel.  Hadn't the education.  But some of these
+snotty little jumped-ups like what they had in the Welsh Liverpools
+that lay alongside us in Pindi ... Why I wouldn't salute em if I met em
+in the lines."
+
+Mr. Pigott listened to this audacious statement with the hostile
+interest of the radical.
+
+"A rotten system," he said.  "Built on make-believe and lies."
+
+"It fairly rots some of em," Ernie admitted.  "Gives em more power nor
+what they can carry.  But in the hands of the right men it don't work
+so bad.  All depends on that."
+
+Then Mr. Pigott asked him what he proposed to do.
+
+"That's what I come to you about, sir."
+
+"Of course your brother won't help!"
+
+"No, sir; nor I wouldn't ask him," flashed Ernie.
+
+"And I don't blame you," answered Mr. Pigott.  "Alf's too busy taking
+the Mass and walking in processions to help his brother....  Now I'll
+tell you what to do.  You go up and see Mr. Trupp.  He can do anything
+he likes now he's disembowelled Royalty.  And if he can't help you, I
+must; though I haven't got a vacant job in the yard just now.  You're
+to sleep at my place, _she_ says."
+
+He followed Ernie to the door.
+
+"What d'you make of your father?" he asked mysteriously.
+
+"I don't rightly understand him, sir," Ernie answered.
+
+"Don't you?" said Mr. Pigott.  "I do."  He dropped his voice.  "He's
+waiting the Second Coming, I'm sure of it."
+
+When Ernie presented himself at the Manor, Mr. Trupp was out.  Ernie
+thought Mrs. Trupp would see him.  The smart maid thought not.  Ernie,
+however, proved right.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was sitting in the long drawing-room, with her daughter, and
+greeted him with pleasure.
+
+"Ernie!" cried Mrs. Trupp.  "This is a sight for sair e'en.  What a man
+you've become!"
+
+"Was Alfred decent to you?" blurted Bess.
+
+Mrs. Trupp shot a warning glance at her impetuous daughter.
+
+"And have you seen the new Mrs. Pigott?" she asked.
+
+"She's top-hole," cried Bess.  "He never stops talking about her.
+Really after that other old thing always sitting on his head----"
+
+Then Mr. Trupp entered, smiling, and cocking his face to sum up his
+visitor through his pince-nez.
+
+"You needn't introduce yourself, Ernie," he growled.  "You've taken no
+harm, I see."
+
+Later the two men retired to the consulting-room to talk business.
+
+"Would you care for a temporary job at the Hohenzollern?" asked Mr.
+Trupp; "the German Hotel on the Crumbles.  It was building in your
+time.  They want a lift-man, I know."
+
+"Anything, sir," answered Ernie with easy enthusiasm.
+
+Mr. Trupp rang up the Hotel and arranged the matter there and then.
+
+"It will do as a stop-gap, anyway," he said, "until we can fix you up
+in a permanent job.  You don't want to be knocking about at home,
+twiddling your thumbs."
+
+"That I don't, sir!" laughed Ernie a thought ironically, and returned
+to Deep-dene to tell his luck.
+
+Mr. Pigott glanced at his wife.
+
+"The Hohenzollern," he said gruffly.  "Well, give it a try."
+
+Next day Mr. Pigott met the Doctor in the street.
+
+"Well," he said, "what d'you think of your soldier?"
+
+"Done him no harm anyway," replied Mr. Trupp, quite impenitent.
+
+"I don't know," retorted the other.  "He left here a gentleman: he
+comes back a labourer--fit to work a lift."
+
+"None the worse for that," said Mr. Trupp.  "Mr. Wyndham's been telling
+us we want fewer clerks and more working-men.  There's no satisfying
+you radicals."
+
+"Better than a jumped-up jackanapes in black leggings and a pilot coat,
+I will admit," answered the other.  "Yes, you've got a lot to answer
+for, Mr. Trupp.  First you send him off to the army; and directly
+that's finished you pack him off to the Hohenzollern Hotel."
+
+"Might be worse places," muttered Mr. Trupp.
+
+Mr. Pigott held up a hand in horror.
+
+"Doctor!" he cried, "I tell you what it is.  Ever since you saved that
+Tsar you've been a changed man."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Mr. Trupp.  "I only know that Tsars
+forget to pay their Doctor's bills."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," answered Mr. Pigott.  "_Very_ glad," with
+emphasis.  "A lesson to you to leave the insides of Royalty to emselves
+in future."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+RUTH BOAM
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE HOHENZOLLERN HOTEL
+
+The Hohenzollern Hotel was both physically and spiritually remote from
+all the other hotels in Beachbourne.
+
+The respectable Grand, facing the Wish, the ponderous Talbot opposite
+the band-stand, the perky Hydropathic perched on the rise of the hill,
+the Dudley by the pier, the Cecil, the Bentinck, and all the other
+hotels with aristocratic names and a middle-class clientele, were at
+the West-end of the town, interspersed among boarding-houses the whole
+length of the sea-front from the pier to Beau-nez.
+
+The Hohenzollern stood aloof at the East-end on the edge of the
+Crumbles, as the Levels here were called.
+
+An immense, modern caravanserai of pretentious neogothic style, it had
+been dumped down on the shore beyond the long-deserted Redoubt of
+Napoleonic times.
+
+In front of it was the sea.  On its flank, beyond the Fishing Station,
+stretched the marshes.  Behind it, at a respectful distance, crouching
+in the dust, the mass of mean houses and crowded streets that
+constituted the East-end.
+
+On these the Hohenzollern, aloof and lordly in its railed-off pleasure
+grounds, turned an unheeding back.  It was unaware of their presence;
+or rather recognized them only to patronize.
+
+It was a drab area, unfrequented by the fashionable and redolent of the
+atmosphere of cheap lodging-houses.
+
+The parade ceased at the Redoubt, and ended for promenaders at the pier.
+
+Beyond Splash Point nobody who was anybody ever thought it decent to
+penetrate.  The band-stand, the winter gardens, the brick walls were at
+the West-end, reaching out towards Beau-nez.
+
+And the Hohenzollern was not only inaccessible, it was self-contained
+and meant to be.
+
+It possessed its own fine band, its own smooth lawns, its own strip of
+fore-shore with bathing rafts moored off it and bathing tents on the
+beach, its own tiny jetty for pleasure boats.
+
+The hotel was German-owned and German-inspired; but it was not the
+centre of an extensive spy-system as certain of the patriots of East
+Sussex maintained.
+
+The men and women who launched it as a business proposition were not
+mad.  They were just cosmopolitan financiers who knew a good deal about
+the human heart on its shady side, and proposed to make money out of
+their knowledge.
+
+In Beachbourne it was always spoken of as the German Hotel, and its
+character was well known and probably exaggerated.
+
+The town, called by spiteful rivals on the South Coast Churchy
+Beachbourne, by reason of the number and variety of its sacred
+edifices, was shocked and delighted.
+
+Started in the late nineties, the original title of the Hotel was of
+course the Empire; and its first chairman, Baron Blumenthal, a
+prominent member of the Primrose League.  Then came the slump in
+British Imperialism after the Boer War.  With the advent of a Radical
+Government it became correct for desperate patriots to affirm with
+immense emphasis in private, and with less emphasis on public platforms
+that they would sooner see the country governed by the German Emperor,
+who was at least a gentleman, than by Lloyd George--that little Welsh
+attorney.
+
+At the height of this patriotic rally the German Emperor came himself
+to England; and Beachbourne was thrilled to hear the great and good man
+was to stop at the Empire Hotel to be under Mr. Trupp.
+
+The Hotel incontinently changed its name to commemorate an event which
+in fact never took place.  Shortly afterwards, however, a Balkan
+Tsar--also a Hohenzollern--happily did come, and was subjected by Mr.
+Trupp to the operation prepared for the head of his family.
+
+But if the Hotel changed its name, its reputation remained the same and
+even grew.  In Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Buda-Pesth, men talked of it;
+and even in India native princes whispered _risqué_ stories about it to
+their Prime Ministers at the Council Table.
+
+Wherever men spoke of it, they mentioned with smiles its two
+characteristic traits--the Third Floor and the Head Porter.
+
+The Hohenzollern Hotel, indeed, had two sides, like many a better
+institution, and deliberately cultivated both.
+
+The Third Floor represented one; and Salvation Joe the other.
+
+There were respectable men and women who stayed regularly at the Hotel
+on the Crumbles, and denied quite honestly and not without heat all
+knowledge of the Third Floor and what it stood for.  It was a
+convention at the Hohenzollern that nobody stopping there ever
+recognized anybody else.  You went down to Beachbourne from town with
+the man who always occupied the chair next you at the club; you sat by
+his side in the station-bus that bore you to the portals of the Hotel;
+and then--you parted till Monday morning when you met once more on the
+platform at the station.  Therefore the most staid and admirable of
+citizens often retired there to be undisturbed.  Ministers and their
+secretaries during a busy Session, homely young couples on their
+honeymoons, even Bishops and clergymen in retreat.  And for these the
+Hotel had its undoubted advantages.  Eastwards the Levels stretched
+away for miles haunted by none but birds.  The fore-shore was private,
+the sea itself secluded.  There were no trippers, and, what mattered
+more, none of the usual Society week-enders.  The former spread
+themselves between the Redoubt and the pier, the latter from the pier
+to Beau-nez.
+
+It was for those who sought for quiet at the Hotel that the Head Porter
+existed.  He was known far and wide as Salvation Joe, and always wore
+the red jersey of his kind by request of the Management; though unkind
+rumour affirmed that he had forfeited the right to his distinguishing
+habit.
+
+On Sundays, after lunch, the second dining-room was cleared, and
+Salvation Joe, all glorious in scarlet apparel, held a meeting for the
+staff.  Visitors would be welcomed, a notice in the hall announced,
+though as Joe often said with the splendid smile he was alleged to have
+copied from a recent Archbishop,
+
+"It's only just among ourselves, sir.  We call it our 'appy 'our.  We
+just like to meet together the once a week--them and me and the Master."
+
+That pleased the Bishops, who went back to the Athenæum and talked
+about it over their coffee; it delighted the occupants of the Third
+Floor, especially on wet Sundays; and, to judge from the attendance, it
+appeared to be very popular with the staff, who, warmed by the rays
+from Joe's benevolent eye, sang with enthusiasm _Tell me the old, old
+story_ and the like.
+
+Moreover it was noticed by the curious that when the men were asked by
+sceptical visitors whether they _really_ enjoyed it, the invariable
+answer given in the same sort of voice with the same sort of smile was,
+
+"We calls it our 'appy 'our, miss."
+
+Salvation Joe was not perhaps more of a humbug than most of us: that is
+to say, he humbugged himself just as much as he humbugged others.  At
+one time he had quite certainly found religion; and if with the advent
+of middle age he lost it, it is by no means sure that he was aware of
+his loss.
+
+Certainly he was invaluable to the Management as a counterpoise; and
+they paid him accordingly.  Salvation Joe never took tips.  That
+impressed every one, especially the Third Floor.  Through this
+idiosyncrasy Joe indeed acquired a European reputation.  On Monday
+mornings he stood in the great marbled hall, under a tall palm, among
+bustling porters and stacks of luggage, a majestic presence, refusing
+with a martyr's smile the coin that corrupts.  His real name was Joseph
+Collett; and in the boot-room in the basement he was known irreverently
+as J.C.
+
+The staff attended the service because it paid; and they had to live.
+
+There was only one man who never went; and that man was Ernie.
+
+Joe met him in the passage one day, after he had been at the Hotel a
+month or more, and stopped him.
+
+"I suppose you haven't got a soul to save then, Caspar?" he began, his
+great chest rising and falling beneath the flaming jersey.
+
+Ernie grinned sheepishly.
+
+"Well, Mr. Collett, as to that, I guess I've got the same as most."
+
+"But you're too proud to save it," continued the other in a voice like
+battalions on the march.  He laid a frank and friendly hand on Ernie's
+shoulder.  "Come and confess your Redeemer, my lad!" he called.  "Come
+to the foot of the Cross!  Throw the burden of your sins on Him!  He'll
+carry em--next Sunday--two o'clock--second dining-room--sharp."
+
+Ernie never went.
+
+It was not that he wished to stand or fall by a principle: Ernie had no
+hankerings for a martyr's crown.  It may have been that he inherited
+from his father a fine reserve in matters spiritual and that somewhere
+in the deeps of him there was an invincible repugnance to the methods
+of the seducer, or merely that he was one of the simple of earth--far
+too honest to see the path of expediency and follow it.
+
+The other men saw and winked.  They did not admire Ernie for refusing
+to bow the knee, nor was there anything to admire.
+
+"Bloody mug," was all their comment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE THIRD FLOOR
+
+But if Ernie was simple, he was not blind.  When he was not on the
+lift, he acted as Boots for the Third Floor; and no man could work
+there without seeing what he saw.
+
+Mr. Pigott, once meeting his old pupil in Church Street, asked him how
+he liked his job.
+
+"Not so bad, sir," Ernie answered without enthusiasm.  "Some I likes;
+and some I dislikes; and most I don't mind."
+
+The work indeed, in the slack seasons at all events, was by no means
+hard, the wages moderate; the tips many, and sometimes extravagant.
+
+Ernie was the only man on the staff who frequented the Third Floor.  No
+waiters ever came there.  All the waiting that was done--and there was
+plenty--was done by the maids.
+
+Most of these were foreign; and the few who were not had adopted
+foreign names.  They were pretty and pert; and they called
+Ernie--"Ernie Boots."  It was the common gossip that the Manageress
+chose them herself--"with care," the knowing added with a wink.
+
+Madame, as she was familiarly known, was in fact a Bavarian, who must
+have been beautiful in her day, with an immense bust that concealed a
+most kind heart, and piles of fair hair, obviously her own, that she
+amassed in pyramids on the top of her head.  There was generally a
+cigarette between her lips, and she used a lorgnette lavishly.  She was
+in fact an efficient woman of the world, saved from the dreadful vices
+of the efficient by a genuinely benignant nature.  And she avowed
+openly that it was her mission in life to give people what they
+wanted--propriety to the proper, and pleasure to the pleasure-seeking.
+
+Ernie had been at the hotel nearly a year when there came to the Third
+Floor a maid who seemed strangely out of her element.
+
+He noted her advent at once with surprise and a sense of shame.  Amid
+her saucy colleagues she seemed a lily of the valley blowing stately
+amid artificial flowers.  A big young woman and beautiful, she held
+herself apart, moving among the others, apparently unconscious of them,
+and ignorant of the meretricious atmosphere, as a Madonna walking
+through the ballet of a music-hall revue.
+
+Her presence filled him with acute personal discomfort.  He did not
+like the tone of the Third Floor, but he accepted it as he accepted
+everything with the easy tolerance that was his weakness.  This
+majestic young woman with her aloof and noble air, her accusing
+innocence, her damning purity, filled him with shame and pity--shame
+for himself and his weak-kneed benevolence, pity for those others whom
+she with her unconscious dignity made appear so small and vulgar.
+
+Her name was Ruth, so much Ernie knew, and she was English too, though
+she scarcely looked it: for she was very dark, her hair black as a
+horse's mane, with a skin that had a peculiar ruddy warmth, and the
+large brown eyes full of splendid darkness and mellow lights, that are
+so rare and therefore so noticeable when found among the
+working-classes that fringe the North Sea.  Her brows, black as her
+hair and broadly splashed, almost met; but there was nothing of
+ferocity about her.
+
+Her natural habit, Ernie saw, was that of a great and mysteriously
+growing tree, its roots deep in the red earth; its massive foliage
+drinking of the goodness of sunshine and wind and rain; but now there
+was about her a note of restraint, even of stress.  The easy flow of
+her nature was being dammed.  She seemed out of place and dumbly aware
+of it, like a creature of the wilderness in a strange environment.  The
+profound and quiet joyousness of woman, maturing to ripe perfection,
+which should have been hers to an unusual degree, was not.
+
+Ernie was desperately shy of her.
+
+He would peep at her as she passed him on her swift way; she never
+looked at him.
+
+He seldom saw her speak to the other maids.  Yet it was clear to him
+that this isolation was unnatural to her, and that she was made for
+quiet intercourse and noble mirth.  Unlike the other maids she was
+always busy.  She never romped, gossiped, or flirted.
+
+One evening Ernie saw a fat-necked Jew in a sleeping suit, his mouth
+stuffed with a cigar, his eyes hot and bibulous, standing in the door
+of his bedroom.
+
+The dark beauty came by.
+
+The Jew chirped at her.
+
+"Pretty tartie!" he called in his luscious voice.  "Come inside then.
+I've got something to show you."
+
+The girl passed on, unheeding.
+
+The Jew followed her with moist eyes that glistened.
+
+A fair chamber-maid emerging from another room winked at Ernie.
+
+"She's white," she said, and jerked her head in the direction of the
+disappearing girl.
+
+The chamber-maid was a little cockney from Clapham who had taken to
+herself the name of Céleste.
+
+"None the worse for that, I dare say," said Ernie with unusual acrimony.
+
+Céleste flirted on her way.
+
+"Tra-la-la!--ta-ta-ta!" she taunted with a little mocking flutter of
+her fingers.  "I suppose you're white too, Ernie Boots."
+
+"No," grinned Ernie.  "I'm grey."
+
+"Baa-baa, black sheep!" mocked the naughty one.  "I'd be one or the
+other.  Grey's a silly sort of tint."
+
+Then the Jew's sodden voice came wheezing down the corridor.
+
+"Here, kid!--You'll do.  You're not a bloody iceberg, are you?"
+
+Céleste shook her carefully-coiffed head.
+
+"I'm engaged, Soly.  So sorry!--Go back to bed, there's a dear old
+thing!"
+
+Ernie woke that night in the belief that Ruth was bending over him.
+
+"Ruth!" he answered quietly.  "Is that you?"  But there was no reply.
+
+Next morning he took the plunge.
+
+"Good morning, Miss," he said as she passed him.
+
+The other's curiously impassive face flashed into life.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Boots," she answered in a deep and humming voice
+like the sound of wings.
+
+She said the words quite simply, and he saw she was not chaffing.  She
+honestly believed Boots to be his name.
+
+Céleste, dusting in an adjoining room, looked through an open door.
+
+"She's an innocent," she said discontentedly.  "She knows nothing.
+Ought to go back to her mother.  Madame's got no business to put her
+here."
+
+Ernie went on his way, that deep voice still thrilling in his ears.
+
+Thereafter he sought and found chances of serving the girl.
+
+One day he came on her tugging a heavy basket of washing along the
+passage.  It was clear that she had been too proud to ask another maid
+for help, preferring to trust her own magnificent physique to
+accomplish the task alone.
+
+"Let me, Miss," he said.
+
+"You take yon end," she answered.  "I'll take this.  Then atween us
+like."
+
+"Ah," said Ernie, gathering courage.  "I see what it is.  You think
+you're the only strong one."  Deliberately and without an effort he
+swung the basket on to his shoulder and bore it jauntily to its
+destination.
+
+Then he slid it down and faced the girl.
+
+"Now then!" he cried.
+
+She dropped her eyelids, and he saw the length and curl of her lashes.
+
+"You are strong," she said, with a dainty irony he found as delightful
+as it was surprising.  "I allow you'll be purty nigh half as strong as
+I be."
+
+He pointed an accusing finger at her.
+
+"You're Sussex!" he cried, falling into the old broad speech in his
+turn.  "I'd knaw ye anywheres."
+
+Her whole face gladdened slowly as she heard the familiar accent.
+
+"Never!" she said, still faintly ironical, and added more sedately.  "I
+was bred and born in Sussex, and never been outside it."
+
+"And never mean to be," chaffed Ernie.  "That's your style.  I knaw ye."
+
+"I was borrn in the Brooks at Aldwoldston," she continued, pronouncing
+the word Auston.  "Along under the church by the White Bridge across
+Parson's Tye.  Dad was Squire Caryll's keeper till he was ate up with
+the rheumatism."  Her speech broadened even as she spoke, deliberately,
+he thought, to meet his own.
+
+He followed suit.
+
+The pair began to ca-a-a away at each other like a couple of old rooks
+in an elm in May.
+
+"What might be your name then?"
+
+"Ruth Boam, I believe."
+
+Ernie nodded sagaciously.
+
+"'Twould be surely.  Boam or Burgess or Ticehurst or Woolgar.
+Something with a bit o Saxon in it, as dad says."  He added hopefully:
+"I'm Sussex too.  I was dragged up in Old Town agin the Rectory there,"
+jerking his head.  "Cerdainly I was."
+
+She regarded him mischievously.
+
+"I knew you was no'hun of a foreigner then," she told him.
+
+Ernie feigned surprise.
+
+"How did you knaw that then?"
+
+She chuckled like a cuckoo.
+
+"Hap I aren't the only one," she answered.
+
+Then she was gone; and it struck him suddenly that this grave and
+stately damsel had been chaffing him.
+
+Ernie stood a moment amazed.  Then he nodded his head.
+
+Suddenly he seemed to have crossed a border-line into a new country.
+Behind him was the stale old past, with its failures, its
+purposelessness, its dreary hag-tracks; before him was adventure, the
+New world--and what?
+
+He wasn't sure.  But there it was beckoning him and he should follow,
+true child of Romance that he was.
+
+And it was time he moved on.
+
+He had been a year now at the Hotel and was, as always, tending to grow
+slack.
+
+Salvation Joe was watching him, waiting his chance, and Ernie knew it.
+
+Now a change stole over him.  A nucleus, small at first, but always
+growing, round which the dissipated forces of his spirit could rally,
+had been forming in his heart, unknown to him, ever since Ruth's advent
+to the Third Floor.  He was becoming firm of purpose, gathering
+himself, making good.  His eyes, his face, his gait, testified to the
+change.
+
+Mr. Trupp, the observant, remarked on it to Mr. Pigott.
+
+"He's growing," he said.
+
+"The right way, let's hope," answered the other.  "That place you sent
+him to is a queer kind of forcing house."
+
+"He wants forcing," said Mr. Trupp.  "We all do."
+
+"Bah!" growled Mr. Pigott.  "You and your Lash."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
+
+Once a week Ernie had a half-day off, which he invariably spent in the
+same way.
+
+He took the bus from the Redoubt up to Old Town, went home, and coaxed
+his father out for a walk to Beech-hangar or the Downs above the
+chalk-pit.  Then back to tea, and a long and quiet smoke in the study.
+
+In this matter he always had a faint resistance to overcome, part real,
+part simulated: his father's excuse for not going being the curious one
+that he was too busy.
+
+"You forget that I'm a man of action now," he would say, the imp
+dancing remotely in his blue eyes.  "I've an official position."
+
+It was true too in a sense.  Edward Caspar, during Ernie's absence in
+India, had been appointed a visitor to the workhouse at the back of
+Rectory Walk.  And there in that cess-pool of our civilization, into
+which filtered drop by drop the sewage of all our defective social
+processes, amid the derelicts of the vast ocean of Empire, prostitutes
+sickening to death, the idiot offspring of incestuous intercourse, the
+half-witted mother who had fallen a prey to the prowling male, the
+decent girl who had succumbed to her own affections, the young man
+broken in the industrial arena, the middle-aged who were not wanted,
+the old for whom there was no place beside the fire at home, amid all
+those of every age and class whom Society was too cruel to kill, and
+not capable as yet of stimulating to life, Edward Caspar wandered
+vaguely like a cloud, full of sunshine, blessing alike and blessed.
+
+In his old-fashioned roomy tail-coat of a country gentleman, always
+fresh, his beautiful linen, that showed Anne Caspar's care, his blue
+tie of an artist running loosely through a gold ring, he became a
+familiar figure in the wards of the Bastille, with his beard, his
+spectacles, his morning air, radiating a mild warmth of love and pity.
+
+Almost daily he might be seen, sitting at the bedside of some broken
+boy picked up off the roads to be patched up and flung again under the
+wheels of the Juggernaut car of modern Industrialism that had crushed
+him, or listening to the tale of some ancient in corduroys--not seldom
+according to his own account the scion of an illustrious but ruined
+house--who had laboured on the land for sixty years, to be cast alive
+into the cess-pool when he had been broken in the service of his
+country.
+
+All the inmates of the Bastille, from the unwanted babies in the
+nursery, to the grannies and daddies propped up like dreadful dolls in
+bed in the wards of the Infirmary, liked the visits of this shambling
+man who said so little and looked so much.
+
+The Lady Augusta Willcocks, a fierce and efficient Guardian, tramping
+the wards in short skirts, broad-toed boots, and cropped woolly white
+hair, cross-questioned the Master as to what Mr. Caspar said to the
+inmates.
+
+The Master, a kind man, something of a mystic himself, answered:
+
+"He don't seem to say much.  Mostly he listens."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said the lady with relief.  "Only we don't want
+a lot of nonsense talked in here."
+
+"Seems to soothe em," continued the Master.  "Afore now when I've had
+them violent in the casuals' cells I've sent for him.  They call him
+the Prophet."
+
+The Master smiled to himself as the masterful lady tramped on her way.
+
+He had noticed that Edward Caspar invariably left the ward when the
+Reverend Spink entered to hold Divine Service; and that if the
+Archdeacon marched through the wards like a conqueror amid the dreadful
+human debris of a battle-field the visitor, sitting quietly at the
+bedside of some cast-away, never seemed to see him.
+
+
+In spite of the pressure of affairs, Ernie rarely failed to lure his
+father out into the sunshine on the hill.
+
+Once, as they sat together by the roadside in Beech-hangar, Ernie
+propounded a solemn question.
+
+"Dad."
+
+"Well."
+
+"Didn't you once say there was a Spanish strain in the real old Sussex
+peasant stock?"
+
+The father eyed his son obliquely.
+
+"So they say," he answered.  "A Spanish galleon in the days of the
+Armada wrecked in Ruther Haven.  That's the story.  And I'm inclined to
+think there's something in it.  Any way there's more foreign blood in
+the genuine peasantry of Sussex and Kent than in all the rest of
+England.  Propinquity to the Continent, you see.  All the refugees came
+here first--Dutchmen in the days of Alva; Huguenots after the
+Revocation; Royalists during the Terror; and smugglers of all sorts all
+the time from the days of Cæsar."
+
+That evening, as Anne Caspar brushed her hair in the bedroom before
+going to bed, she heard her husband in the little dressing-room talking
+to himself as his manner was.
+
+She stayed the sweeping motion of her hand and listened.
+
+"I met Mr. Pigott in Church Street this evening," she called.  "He
+stopped me and said, 'What's come to Ernie?'"
+
+There was a silence; then the voice from next door answered,
+
+"She's dark.  That's all I know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+REALITY
+
+A few days after his conversation with his father, Ernie took a
+telegram up to the Third Floor in the afternoon, and was about to
+descend when he heard a bedroom bell ring violently for the maid on
+duty.
+
+There was no maid visible.
+
+He went along the corridor.  At the end of it was a passage-landing
+with a window looking over the sea.
+
+On the window-sill Ruth was sitting in the sun, perched as a woman
+riding, her work beside her.
+
+She did not see him, and for a moment he watched her fascinated: the
+lines of her figure, almost majestic for so young a woman; the dignity
+of her face; the lovely curve of her neck and shoulders; the warmth of
+her colouring.  Her thimbled finger flashed to and fro; and the sun
+caught her hair, simply massed beneath her cap, and revealing in its
+blackness just a note of tan.
+
+Every now and then, as the sea thumped and hissed and poured on the
+fore-shore, she looked up.
+
+There was for once a wonderful content upon her face, the look that
+Ernie had often sought and never found there before.  The strain had
+vanished.  This girl possessed her soul in love and peace for the
+moment at least.
+
+Ernie was reluctant to disturb her, for she gave him the impression of
+one who prays.
+
+"The bell's going, Ruth," he said at last gently.
+
+She put down her work and dismounted from the sill in that swift
+business-like way of hers.  There was a rhythm about her every movement
+that satisfied the deepest need of Ernie's soul.
+
+"What number?" she asked.
+
+"Seventy-seven."
+
+Her face clouded.
+
+It was the sodden Jew, clamant once more.
+
+"I'll go," said Ernie.
+
+It was no job of his, but go he did.  And he was glad he had, for Soly
+surpassed himself.
+
+"You!" stertorously.  "What good are you to me?  Send that Spanish
+gypsy here!  She's the one I want.  I like 'em brown."
+
+Just outside the door Ernie met Céleste.
+
+"He wants you, Miss," he said, and admired the readiness of his lie.
+
+Then he walked thoughtfully back to Ruth, who had resumed her work.
+
+"It's all right," he said shyly.
+
+She lifted her face to him slowly, almost stealthily.
+
+Then there flashed a lovely light into her eyes.
+
+"Thank-you, Mr. Boots," she said.
+
+He advanced a step on her.
+
+"That ain't my name."
+
+She hid again in her work.
+
+"What is then?" she asked.
+
+"Ernie," he said.  "Call me that."
+
+He was curiously peremptory, almost imperious.
+
+She did not answer him--threading her needle deliberately against the
+light.
+
+Suddenly doors flung wide, and his whole being leapt forth as from a
+furnace, caught her up, and rapt her in a living flame of love.
+
+She seemed to feel it beating about her, devouring her, and stirred as
+a tired bird stirs in its nest at night after a long flight.
+
+Ernie was trembling till it seemed to him that his heels rat-a-tatting
+on the floor must betray him.
+
+Then he went on his way.
+
+The transfiguring experience that comes perhaps once in a life-time to
+the pure in heart had come to him in full flood.  A new life was his,
+sweeping away old land-marks, and bearing him he knew not whither.  He
+drifted with that mighty tide, content to be borne along.  He had been
+alive for twenty-five years, yet dead.  Now he rose from the tomb, at
+this his astounding Ascension-tide.  In a second he had been rapt up
+from the earth, had suffered miraculous conversion, and would never
+again see life as he had once seen it.
+
+It was curious, wonderful, and above all it revolutionized old values.
+
+The men and women he met in the passage looked different, especially
+the women.
+
+They were coarse, commonplace.
+
+Céleste passed him with a quip.
+
+What she said he didn't know, but he thought how opaque and material
+she was in such a spiritual world; and what a pity it was; and how
+sorry he was for her.
+
+Madame stopped him and gave him orders.  He heard and carried them out.
+
+But all the while this new spirit was at work on its own business in
+the deeps of him.  His intellect, a mere cockle-shell afloat on an
+Ocean of Mind, dealt with the superficial mechanism of life.
+
+_He_ was elsewhere.  For the first time Ernie became aware of a Double
+Life going on within him, of Two Minds, related, yet apart, each
+pursuing its own ends.
+
+He entered the room in the basement where the men cleaned the knives,
+blacked the boots and ate their hurried meals.  It was cool, almost
+cavernous.  He was amazed that he had never before seen beauty in this
+bleak room, the beauty of the woods for which he longed.
+
+He sat down and was glad.
+
+About him were men of all nationalities, some in aprons, some in their
+shirt-sleeves, some snatching a desultory snack, chattering or silent.
+
+Ernie, aware of them, yet deep in himself, was conscious of two
+impressions: These men were monkeys--and knew it; and they were Sons of
+God--and as yet unconscious of it.
+
+One of the men, a sallow Austrian with a stringy moustache, who went by
+the name of Don John among his mates, put down the _Arbeiter Zeitung_
+which he had been reading, watched Ernie awhile sardonically, and then
+made a jeering remark to a neighbour, who replied.
+
+Ernie caught the words "Third Floor."
+
+Instantly he emerged from his deeps, his intellect alert, paramount,
+and defensive.
+
+Don John continued caressingly, his cheek bulging with cheese, and a
+clasp-knife in his hand.
+
+"Pluddy mug!" he jeered.  "Thinks they're for him.  They're for de
+toffs on de top--not for _you_!  You're unter-tog.  Nozzing for
+unter-tog in this world only de crumbs that _don't_ fall from de rich
+man's table.  De girls are for de Chairman Jews.  They can buy em.  Can
+you?--Nice English girls are cheap."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE RIDE ON THE BUS
+
+The Thursday following his great experience, Ernie went as usual to the
+Redoubt which was the terminus of the bus that ran to Billing's Corner.
+
+He was early; and there was as yet only one passenger on the roof, a
+young woman simply dressed in black, her bare throat girt about with
+yellow amber, and wearing a felt hat of terra-cotta colour.
+
+She was sitting on the front seat.
+
+The large and graceful indolence of her pose gave him pause.
+
+He stayed on the last step, regarding her.
+
+Then she turned her face sea-wards and he saw her profile.
+
+Another moment and he stood above her.
+
+"Ruth," he said.
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"O, it's you, Ernie!" she answered quite simply, and without a thought
+of coquetry.
+
+His heart moved within him.
+
+"That's a little better!" he muttered, and proceeded to sit down beside
+her.
+
+She made room for him, friendly and entirely unconscious.
+
+They began to talk, and once she glanced at him from under her hat with
+tranquil eyes that seemed to pour their soft light into his.
+
+He held them with his own.
+
+The two streams met and mingled in mysterious communion that thrilled
+him till he trembled faintly.
+
+He was the first to turn away.
+
+"You look just all right," he said.
+
+She was a changed girl.  The restraint had left her.  A new life danced
+within her.  She was quivering with it, almost communicative.
+
+"I feel it," she answered joyously.  "I'm off till ten.  I'm going away
+back home to Dad and Mother.  I most in general doos o Sadadays if I
+gets off."
+
+She was broadening her speech again, as though to throw off the
+corrupting town, and draw near once more to the country which had bred
+her.
+
+He heard her with delight; and answered her easily and in kind.
+
+"Auston, aren't it?" he asked.
+
+She eyed him slyly, taking his humour, and nodded.
+
+"You got it," she said.  "I just take bus to Billing's Corner; and then
+'Lewes coach drops me at Turnpike short o B'rick.  Then 'dis but little
+better'n a mile to traipse down the valley.  I was borrun in the River
+House in the Brooks along o the White Bridge under the church.  And
+where I was borrun there my folks do still live.  Pretty well beknown
+in them paarts my folks be, I rack'n."  She was almost chattering now.
+And as her tongue resumed with joy the habit of babyhood a ripple of
+deep mirth swam over her face, and spoke of profound inward content.
+
+She became shy and confidential.  "Just under the eaves outside the
+room where I was borrun there's a martin's nest.  And in the dark o
+summer nights they wake and gurgle to emselves.  That'll be the little
+uns snugglin agin their mother's breast and thinkin how cosy.  I do
+just adore to listen to em.  Kind o company like."  She gurgled in her
+turn, and then looked away abashed and blushing at the flow of her
+confidences.
+
+"That's where you was borrun, was it?" mocked Ernie.  "No, it warn't
+then.  You was borrun in de corrun one morrun all forlorrun.  How do I
+know it?  Cos you're same as I be.  You're a country chap."
+
+It was clear that she enjoyed his chaff.
+
+"That's a sure thing, you may depend," she answered in that humming
+voice of hers that seemed to resound long after she had finished
+speaking.  "It's bred in my blood.  See dad's dad and his dad afoor him
+dey were ox-herds in the home-farm in Ruther Valley.  Dad went along o
+the long-horns on the hill too when he was a lad.  There's few teams
+left now except only Mr. Gorringe's at Exeat.  When dad's dad was a lad
+it was pretty near ox-teams allwheres in Sussex--on the hill and on the
+Levels.  Then it come horrses; and prazendly it'll be machines.  The
+world moves faster nor it used to did one time o day, I expagd.  Ya-as.
+Cerdainly it doos."
+
+The bus ran along the Esplanade to the pier, the sea shining on their
+left.  Then it swung down Cornfield Road, stopped at the Station, and
+took the Old Road for Lewes.  As it lurched under the Chestnuts into
+Water Lane, the Downs were seen across Saffrons Croft through a screen
+of elms.
+
+"There they be!" cried Ernie, hailing them.  "What d'you think of them
+now?"
+
+"Eh, but they're like mother and father to you, if you've been bred to
+em," answered Ruth.  "I just couldn't a-bear to be parted from them
+nohows.  They're Sussex--them and the sea.  Sussex by the sea, my Miss
+Caryll used to call it."
+
+They travelled up the hill; and the girl feasted her eyes on the green
+of Saffrons Croft.
+
+"I allow the brown-birds holloa in them old ellums, dawn and dusk," she
+murmured, talking more to herself than to her companion.  "That's what
+I misses by the sea more'n all--the song o birds.  There's no loo like
+for em--only the anonymous bushes.  Reck'n that's where it is.  They
+like the loo'th, doos birds.  But times I see a old jack-yearn flappin
+along over the Levels like he'd all the time before him.  And the
+wheat-ears come from acrarst the sea and show the white of their tails
+that carmical about Cuckoo-fair.  Hap it'll be their first
+landing-place.  They must be tired.  But there's not nigh the numbers
+there was one time o day.  When dad was a lad there was I dunna many
+all along the Downs from Rottingdean to Friston."
+
+The bus stopped, as always, at the _Star_.
+
+Ernie, who felt the spirit of the show-man strong within him, pointed
+out the Manor-house with a certain proprietary air.
+
+"That's where Mr. Trupp lives," he explained.  "They come from all over
+the world to see him.  He's our doctor.  Has been this thirty year.
+Dad was one of the first in Old Town to have him.  Give him his start,
+as you might say."
+
+"He's a nice gentleman surely," said Ruth.
+
+"Do you know him then?" asked Ernie, a thought jealously.
+
+"I've knaw'd him all my life," answered the other.  "He attends the
+Squire and family.  He looked after my Miss Caryll till she died; and
+then me when I took bad after her death.  Eh, but he was a kind
+gentleman."
+
+"He brought me into the world," said Ernie with an air of finality, the
+desire to swagger still strong upon him.  "He took the inside out of
+the Tsar of Dobrudja and he brought me into the world.  That's what Mr.
+Trupp done."
+
+She turned a deep brown eye on him.
+
+"He done well," she said quietly.
+
+Then they both laughed.
+
+At Billing's Corner he helped her off the bus and on to the four-horse
+char-a-banc waiting outside the _Billing Arms_.
+
+"Last char-a-banc home," said Ernie authoritatively.  "Half after nine
+or so.  I'll look out."
+
+He stood beneath her in the dust.
+
+With her jet-black hair, her colouring of a ripe peach, and those soft
+swarthy eyes that streamed down upon him, she perched above him,
+stately, mocking, mysterious.
+
+He could not make her out.  She was at once so simple and so elusive in
+her royal way.  She teased, startled, and exalted him; she calmed and
+maddened him.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Caspar," came the quiet voice from on high.
+
+"Call me, Ernie," he ordered, this strange passion to domineer still
+overmastering him.
+
+She gazed at him with those quiet ironical eyes of hers.
+
+Then the char-a-banc moved on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+ON THE HILL
+
+That afternoon Ernie and his father sauntered up to the chalk-pit, and
+lay on the green hill-side above it in the sun.
+
+Ernie plucked the bents and chewed them.
+
+"Dad," he began at last.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is love?"
+
+Once years ago at a dance in Grosvenor Square, Edward Caspar had
+himself for a moment floated out on to the ocean of an immense and
+wonderful new life.  Thereafter he had been captured, as such
+easy-going dreamy creatures are, by one of the fiercer sex.  He
+respected his wife, admired her beauty, owed her much, and was aware of
+it; but for all her strength of character Anne had found herself from
+the start of her married relations with her husband in that position of
+secret moral inferiority which is even to-day, perhaps as the result of
+an age-long inheritance of tradition, the accustomed doom of the woman
+who has taken the initiative in matters of sex.  Moreover as the years
+went by the doom grew always more oppressive, and her husband more
+remote....
+
+Edward answered his son,
+
+"A door opens," he said slowly.  "And you see."
+
+"What d'you see?" persisted the young man.
+
+His father made a curious undulating motion with his hand.
+
+  "_The Infinite that lends
+  A Yonder to all ends,_"
+
+he said after a pause, and gestured across the Weald stretched beneath
+them.
+
+"I can see it," he mused, "and hear it.  So can you.  It's a Tide--like
+the wind in willow leaves.  It's silvery and it rustles.  It's
+there--and here--and everywhere.  The scientists call it ether.  So it
+is--from their point of view.  If you approach it from the other
+side--our side--it's what you said.  It goes like so--like a billow."
+With fine long-fingered hand he resumed that curious rhythmic motion of
+his.  "I once heard somebody compare Humanity to an Undulating Wave.
+So it is, because it's the highest expression of _That_.  It made us,
+and is us.  All that about the Everlasting Arms which Mr. Pigott, and
+the Archdeacon, and your Salvation Joe talk about, it's all
+true--literally true.  Only they put it crudely; and for most of them
+it's an opinion and not a fact of experience--that a man can prove for
+himself at any moment."  He paused.  "Love is Recognition--often
+instantaneous.  It is the I-within recognizes the Me-without."
+
+He was sitting up now, bare-headed.  A lovely colour flushed his frail
+complexion.  To Ernie, watching his scant hair, he seemed wonderfully
+innocent and pure: a child talking with the wisdom of an old man.
+
+Then his father spoke again with an emphasis that was almost startling.
+
+"It's the profound simplicity of life that baffles us," he said.  "It's
+too simple for us to understand.  Our brains aren't big enough--as
+yet."  He was becoming strangely excited.  Ernie thought he understood
+now the source of that exalted look of his father's.  "But we shall
+some day.  Already there has been One Man who did.  Think of it!  We
+crucified Him for it of course.  We had to.  He was climbing too far
+a-head: so we plucked him back to earth.  You mustn't go too far ahead
+of the Herd.  They won't stand it.  But He knew: He trusted It: He
+could float in It--like that kittiwake, ascending into heaven,
+descending into hell, at will."
+
+He lay back on the turf, exhausted, his hat over his eyes, his hands on
+the turf beside him.
+
+"Ernie."
+
+"Yes, dad."
+
+"Have you felt the Tide?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+The old man put his hand upon his son's.
+
+"Let it come, Boy-lad," he said.  "Trust it to do the work.  All our
+mistakes are due to the same thing."
+
+"What's that?" asked Ernie.
+
+"Trying to interfere," answered the other.  "Follow!--that's our human
+part."
+
+
+That evening, after supper, before he left, Ernie asked his mother
+shyly for some roses.  She took him out into the front-garden, tiny as
+it was trim, and gave him of her best.
+
+Afterwards, as he walked away, she stood at the little gate and watched
+him, a beautiful look in her eyes.  Then she wiped her shoes very
+carefully, and turned into the house.
+
+The study-door was open, and she peeped in.
+
+Her husband was sitting as always in the bow, looking out towards the
+trees stirring in the Rectory garden.
+
+Anne stared at him.
+
+"Has he said anything to you?" she asked at last in the voice that grew
+always more grumbling and ungracious with the years.
+
+"Not yet," her husband answered.
+
+"Well, it's about time," Anne grumbled.  "Only I wish I'd had the
+choosing of her."
+
+"Ernie'll choose all right," Edward answered in the peculiar crisp way
+he sometimes now adopted.  "You needn't worry about him."
+
+Whether there was a faint emphasis on the pronoun or not, Anne answered
+with asperity,
+
+"And you needn't worry about Alf for that matter.  He's far too set on
+himself to find room for a wife."
+
+
+Ernie was at Billing's Corner half an hour before the Lewes char-a-banc
+was due, hanging about at the top of the rise, looking along the white
+road that runs past Moot Farm under the long swell of the escorting
+hills.
+
+It was a perfect evening of late May.  The sun had already sunk in
+darkened majesty against the West when the familiar cloud of dust
+betokened the approach of the four-horse team.
+
+Ruth was sitting on the box beside the driver.  Ernie recognized her
+from afar by the splotch of colour made by her hat, and was filled with
+an almost overpowering content.
+
+The horses sprang the rise at a canter, the conductor blowing a
+flourish on his horn.  The girl's hand was to her hat, and her head
+bowed to the wind.  The char-a-banc drew up with a swagger in the open
+space before the _Billing Arms_.
+
+She was smiling down at him.
+
+Ernie lifted his cap: it was a trick he had from his father.  No one
+had ever paid the girl that common courtesy before, and she beamed upon
+him.
+
+The other passengers were descending by the steps.
+
+Ernie advanced lordly.
+
+"This way!" he ordered, and laid his roses on the driver's foot-board.
+"Don't wait for them!  Put your foot on the wheel!  Give over your
+hand!  Now your left foot here!"
+
+For the first time in his life he felt masterful.  Powers in him, of
+which he had possessed no previous knowledge, were thrusting through
+the ice of the customary.
+
+Ruth obeyed.
+
+She slipped her foot into his hand.  It was slight, not small, yet
+beautifully compact.
+
+"It's dusty," she warned him.
+
+"No, it ain't," he answered, still in his high mood.
+
+He gripped it firmly.  Her cool hand was in his.
+
+Then she trusted her whole weight to him.
+
+He felt his strength tried and answering to the test; and rejoiced in
+it.  So did she.
+
+For a moment he balanced her, lifted her even, let her feel the power
+of his manhood.  Then he lowered her swiftly.
+
+It was well, even gracefully done.
+
+Neither spoke; Ernie took his roses from the feet of the driver, who
+looked down with approval.
+
+"Go on!" he said sturdily.  "That's the way!"
+
+The motor-bus that was to take them back to the hotel was turning in
+the open space before the public-house.
+
+Without a word they climbed on to the top.
+
+The bus dropped down Church Street, past the long-backed church with
+its square tower standing on the grave-strewn mound solemn in the
+growing dusk.
+
+Ernie placed his roses in Ruth's lap.
+
+Her eyes were shining, her voice soft.
+
+"For me?" she asked in her deep thrilling voice.
+
+For a second he laid his hand on hers.
+
+"Oh, they are beauties!" She buried her face in them.  "My Miss Caryll
+learned me the names of a tidy few o them when we was in the
+Dower-house afoor she come to Beachbourne," she said.
+
+A motor-car stood at Mr. Trupp's door as the bus reached the _Star_.
+
+The two talked quietly of the famous surgeon, their heads together.
+
+The chauffeur got down from the Doctor's car and crossed slowly towards
+the bus.
+
+He was small and wore black gaiters that glittered in the lamp-light
+like a wet slug.
+
+He stood beneath them in the road, and then gave a low whistle.
+
+Ernie looked down.
+
+Alf was leering up at him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+UNDER THE STARS
+
+The bus rolled on, past Saffrons Croft, the stars now twittering in the
+branches of the elms.
+
+"Who was that?" asked Ruth.
+
+"My brother," answered Ernie, a thought surlily.
+
+"He doesn't favour you," said Ruth after a pause.
+
+"No," answered Ernie.  "He's a master-man now, Alf is.  Got his own
+garage and men working for him and all.  He drives for Mr. Trupp."
+
+At the pier, at Ernie's suggestion, they got down.  It was dark now;
+the sea moon-silvered and still.
+
+They walked along, rubbing elbows.  Ernie broke the silence, to ask a
+question that had long haunted him.
+
+"Ruth," he said, "however did you come into service at the
+Hohenzollern?"
+
+Both of them had unconsciously resumed the accent of the town as they
+returned to the town.
+
+Ruth told him simply and without reserve.
+
+She had been maid to Squire Caryll's sister at the Dowerhouse in
+Aldwoldston.  Her mistress had been taken ill, and Mr. Trupp had
+ordered her to Beachbourne.
+
+"We was going to the Grand," Ruth told him.  "But it was full.  So
+cardingly we went to the Hohenzollern till the Grand could have us.
+And once there we stayed there two years--till she died.  See Mr. Trupp
+likes the Hotel for his patients.  There's the lawns straight onto the
+sea; and the Invalids' Corner by the anonymous hedge he got Madame to
+build."
+
+Madame had throughout been kind, so kind--first to her mistress and
+then to her; for after Miss Caryll's death Ruth had broken down from
+over-strain.  The Manageress and Mr. Trupp had pulled her through.
+Then when she came round, Madame, who was clearly fond of the girl, had
+kept her on as personal maid, "cosseting me," said Ruth with a little
+laugh, "like a bottle-lamb."  At Easter, when the crush came, and Ruth
+was quite recovered, Madame had asked her to go to the Third Floor to
+help, saying she would take her back if the girl didn't like it.
+
+"I went tempory to oblige Madame," Ruth explained.  "I'd do a lot for
+her.  She's been that kind."
+
+Ruth had been there some weeks now, too lazy or too shy to take the
+step that would involve another change.
+
+"I don't ardly like to see you there, Ruth," said Ernie gently.  "I
+don't really."
+
+She lifted her face to him in the darkness.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"The Third Floor."
+
+Ruth turned her face to him.  Her wall was down.  She was talking
+intimately almost as a woman to a woman she trusts.
+
+"I don't hardly myself," she said in the musing voice of the disturbed.
+"The gentlemen are that funny.  Seem scarcely respectable, some of em.
+And the couples too.  Might not be married the way they go on.  London,
+I suppose."
+
+He glanced at her covertly.
+
+She met his eyes--so frank, so fearless.
+
+What a man of the world Ernie felt beside this white ewe-lamb straying
+far from the fold in the hollow of its native coombe!
+
+They were skirting now the fosse of the Redoubt.
+
+Before them on the shore rose the great Hotel, like a brilliantly
+lighted mausoleum, blocking out a square patch of stars.
+
+They made towards it.
+
+"Ruth," said Ernie quietly, "if I was you I'd get Madame to change you.
+Second Floor's more your sort.  More steadified.  There's a Bishop
+there now and his wife and three-four daughters or so.  Go to bed at
+ten, and get up at seven.  I can hear em all a-snorin in chorus like so
+many hoggets in a stye when I take the lift down last turn at night."
+
+"Hap I will," said Ruth thoughtfully.  "Madame'd take me back herself,
+only she's got a German maid now, and I wouldn't do anything to put
+Madame out for worlds."
+
+A struggle was taking place in Ernie's heart.  If Ruth left the Third
+Floor for the Second he would still see her sometimes.  If she left the
+Hotel altogether he might lose her.
+
+"Ruth," he said at last.  "I sometimes wonder why you stay on there at
+all."
+
+She glanced at him mischievously.
+
+"Shall I tell you?" she asked, her voice deeper than ever.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's the bathin.  I just do adore the swimmin.  Madame arranges it
+nice for the maids.  And the season's coming on.  We start next week if
+this weather holds.  When the season's over I shall cut my stick--if so
+be Madame wasn't to want me for her own maid again."
+
+She chuckled at her own cunning.
+
+They came to the servants' gate.
+
+Ernie stopped.
+
+"Good-bye, Ruth," he said.  "I'll say good-night."
+
+She looked up at him surprised.
+
+"Aren't you comin then?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "But I'm just a-goin to finish my fag first."
+
+She gave him a delicious look.
+
+Innocent as she was, she understood his consideration and thanked him
+for it mutely.
+
+She gave him her hand.  He took it, shook it, and held it awhile, as
+though weighing it.  It was firm and very capable.
+
+Swiftly he lifted it to his lips and kissed it.
+
+She made no protest, looking at him with kind eyes that knew no thought
+of coquetry.
+
+Then she vanished with her flowers.
+
+He gave her five minutes, and then followed her.
+
+Ruth had been detained in the basement, and was vanishing up the
+back-stairs as he entered, her roses in her hand.
+
+Don John, the Austrian, with his dingy face and greasy moustache,
+winked at Ernie as he passed.
+
+"Peach," he whispered.  "Don't you wish you ad the pickin of her?"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+CAPTAIN ROYAL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+HIS ARRIVAL
+
+Ruth was as good as her word.
+
+Next day she went to see Madame, and asked to be moved from the Third
+Floor.
+
+Madame, the majestic, standing before the fire, dressed like a
+fashion-plate, put down her cigarette and looked at the young woman
+standing before her, slightly abashed, and uncertain how her request
+would be received.
+
+She was genuinely fond of the girl, and had sent her to the Third Floor
+at some personal sacrifice because she wished her to have chances she
+would not get elsewhere.
+
+Now she showed herself kind, if by no means understanding.  She thought
+Ruth foolish and hinted as much.  With foreign girls she could talk so
+much more plainly than with these wooden Englishwomen who understood so
+little.  It was because Ruth was English, yet looked foreign, and
+showed a certain swift comprehension rare in her race, that Madame had
+taken to her at first.
+
+However, she assented to the girl's request as always with a good
+grace, if reluctantly.
+
+"Very well, Ruth," she said.  "You are one of ze quiet ones, I see.
+Zey are too gay on ze Third Floor.  I zought zey might be.  It was only
+an egsperiment.  One of ze maids on ze Second Floor is going next week.
+I vill move you zen.  But you vill not get ze tips, you know.  Bishops
+don't pay."
+
+"Thank you, Ma'am," said Ruth, and left the room.
+
+
+Two evenings later the Hohenzollern Express, as the non-stop train from
+Victoria to Beachbourne was called, brought an unusual number of
+visitors to the Hotel.
+
+The palm-lined hall was packed with forlorn travellers, wandering about
+trying to find themselves; the clerks in the office were besieged; the
+porters run off their legs.
+
+Ernie was on the lift that evening.  He stood in the corridor,
+listening to the hubbub in the hall, and waiting for the first rush of
+visitors who had arranged themselves and appropriated keys, when he saw
+a man emerge from Madame's private sitting-room at the end of the
+passage.
+
+Then he came marching resolutely down the corridor, absorbed, swift,
+direct, with eyes neither to right nor left, wearing a Burberry, and
+the short tooth-brush moustache that was still the rage in the British
+Army; a young man of a type so familiar to Ernie that he smiled on
+recognizing it.
+
+The traveller entered the passenger-lift with a curt,
+
+"Third Floor!"
+
+It was Captain Royal.
+
+Ernie had just been long enough away from the Regiment to see
+everything connected with it through the roseate mists of
+sentimentality.
+
+He pulled the cord and the lift ascended.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he said shyly.  "Might you remember me?"
+
+Royal turned his slate-blue eyes on the other, and extended a sudden
+hand.
+
+"What!  Caspar, the cricketer!" he cried with the gay nonchalance
+peculiar to him.  "Rather!--that stand against the Rifle Brigade at
+Pindi?  Yes.  What!  Got a job you like?  What!"
+
+"Pretty fair, sir," answered Ernie.  "Home on long leave, sir?"
+
+"Yes, six months.  I'm going to work for the Staff College."
+
+"All well with the Regiment when you left, sir?"
+
+"Yes, thanks.  All merry and bright.  We won the Polo Cup.  Mr.
+Ffloukes--you remember him in D Company--got himself mauled by a bear
+in the hills.  Silly young feller.  Quite unnecessary, I thought....
+The Colonel's retired and come home.  Living somewhere in these parts,
+I believe."
+
+The lift stopped at the Third Floor.
+
+Ernie carried the Captain's suit-case to his room.
+
+"I'll bring your heavy luggage myself, sir," he said, for he had quite
+taken the other under his wing.
+
+As he left the room he met Ruth.
+
+Ernie beckoned her mysteriously.
+
+"That's my old skipper," he whispered.  "You look after him now.  He's
+just all right."
+
+Ruth regarded him with amused eyes.
+
+"Why, you're quite excited," she said.
+
+"Ah," answered Ernie.  "We're Hammer-men, him and me.  That's enough.
+_Quite_ enough."  He disappeared down the shaft with a knowing and
+consequential air, hushing her with lordly hand.
+
+The Captain rang for his hot water.
+
+Ruth took it him.
+
+He turned round as she entered and flashed his eyes at her curiously.
+
+"Will you help me unpack?" he said quietly.  "I haven't brought a man."
+
+She knelt beside the suit-case, while he stood at the chest of drawers.
+
+She handed him his clothes, and he arranged them orderly and with an
+unerring precision that appealed to her methodical mind.
+
+His clothes were beautiful too: so fine, so fresh, so like himself,
+Ruth thought.  She handled the silken shirts, when his back was turned,
+and stroked the flimsy vests.
+
+Once he turned swiftly to find her pressing some diaphanous under-wear
+against her cheek.
+
+He laughed; and she blushed.
+
+"That's from Cashmere," he said.  "Pleasant to the touch--what?"
+
+"It's beautiful," answered Ruth.
+
+When Ernie entered with the heavy luggage, Ruth was kneeling at the
+suit-case, the Captain standing over her.
+
+Ernie's somewhat artificial enthusiasm suddenly melted away.
+
+He wasn't very pleased.
+
+The Captain had brought a quantity of luggage too, and clearly meant to
+make a prolonged stay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+HIS ORIGIN
+
+Captain Royal was the son of his father; but very few people knew
+anything about that father.  And those few knew little more than that
+he had made money in business in the North.
+
+The business in fact was that of an unregistered dentist at Blackpool.
+
+Albert Ryle was a curious little fellow.  He lived more like a machine
+than it was possible to conceive a human being could live.  He was so
+regular as to be almost automatic: he had no virtues, and his vices
+were vigorously suppressed.  Early in life he planned out his career
+according to Programme, and he stuck to it with methodical precision
+throughout.  During his working life, happily for him, there were no
+such seismic disturbances, utterly beyond his control, as have
+completely upset the Programme of like automaton men in our own day.
+
+Nor did the unexpected and catastrophic in the way of illness or sudden
+love ever overwhelm him.
+
+He did not marry: that was part of the Programme.  He did not enjoy
+himself.  He lived meanly; but his practice grew and grew, especially
+among the well-to-do artisans.  The middle and upper class he left in
+the main to the qualified practitioners.
+
+He was extraordinarily efficient, thorough, and precise in his work; he
+was daring too.  He would administer gas himself, and happily had no
+accidents.  He spent nothing on himself, and studied the stock-markets
+with the same meticulous care which he gave to the human mouth.
+
+On his fiftieth birthday he totted up his capital account and found he
+had made £25,000--just six months ahead of scheduled time.
+
+His end had been attained.  The first part of the Programme had now
+been accomplished.
+
+Next day--or as near as it was possible--he sold his practice, took
+down his brass-plate, said good-bye to no one, for he knew no one
+except in the way of business; and for the first time in his life
+crossed the Trent, never to recross it.
+
+Albert Ryle never looked back: he moved forward steady as a caterpillar
+on the trail.
+
+In the North he left behind him everything but the accent which, to his
+own no small grief, and the unending anguish of his wife, he carried to
+the grave, and the money he had made in gloomy Lancashire.
+
+He bought a villa in Croydon, modified his name under expert advice,
+and in the sun of the South country began to live.
+
+Mr. Royal of Deepdene had made money in business in the North.  Now he
+was going to spend it in the South.
+
+Here began the second part of the Programme.
+
+He married a middle-class woman, who had been a companion, and
+possessed some not very well-founded pretensions to family.
+
+He entered the Church, ignoring formal admission by baptism, and took
+an active part in the life of the Town.
+
+Capable and tireless, he became in time a Town Councillor, and, better
+still, a Justice of the Peace for Surrey.  His grand ambition, never to
+be fulfilled in this world, was to be a Deputy Lieutenant of the county
+of his adoption.
+
+There was one child of the marriage, who was christened at his wife's
+request, and with his full approval, Hildebrand.
+
+The boy was sent to a first-rate preparatory school, where, being an
+aggressive youngster, he more than held his own.
+
+Mr. Albert Royal was determined that his son should go to one of "our
+ancient public schools."
+
+When he broached the subject, the headmaster of the preparatory school
+was in a dilemma.
+
+Mr. Royal was an admirable parent from the commercial point of view.
+He paid the fees and never made a fuss; but there was no getting away
+from Mr. Royal's accent.
+
+Mr. Wortley, an Etonian himself, didn't somehow think Eton was quite
+the school for Hildebrand.  Too damp.  There wasn't much chance of a
+boy getting into Winchester unless his father had been there before
+him.  Had Mr. Royal been at Winchester?--Ah, bad luck.  Then
+Rugby?--But Mr. Royal wouldn't send his son to a North country school.
+Mr. Royal's home was in the South; and so was his heart.  What about
+Harrow?--Mr. Wortley's face brightened.  Harrow was the very thing.  He
+could see Hildebrand at Harrow in his mind's eye.
+
+Later when his partner came into the study, after Mr. Royal's
+departure, Mr. Wortley announced the news with a little grin.
+
+"Arrow for Ildebrand," he said.
+
+"And quite good enough too," replied the other, who was also an
+Etonian, with a little snort.
+
+
+To Harrow, then, Hildebrand went.
+
+And just at the appropriate moment Mr. Royal Senior died.
+
+That was not part of the Programme, but it was consummately tactful.
+
+"My father didn't do much.  He was a magistrate in Surrey," sounded so
+much better than the reality incarnate, rough and red and rather
+harsh--with the Blackpool accent.
+
+Mr. Royal's opportune death was, in fact, an immense relief to his
+suffering wife and perhaps to young Hildebrand, who was beginning to
+know what was what in the world in which he proposed to live and move
+and have his being.
+
+His school career was a great success.  Many admired, not a few envied,
+nobody liked him; but as a master said--"He likes himself enough to
+make up for that."
+
+An extremely good-looking boy, full of self-confidence, he was an
+unusually fine athlete, played racquets for the school, and notched a
+century against Eton at Lords in a style that made men talk of F. S.
+Jackson at his best.
+
+His mother was presentable and dressed extremely well.
+
+Young Royal had no objection to being seen about with her, and even
+invited her down to Speech-day and introduced her to his friends at
+Lords.  It was not to be wondered at that when she died she left the
+whole of the £25,000 to her only-born.
+
+Hildebrand bore this second bereavement with characteristic fortitude.
+He was just at the age when the possession of money was rare as it was
+useful.
+
+He passed high into Sandhurst, and became an Under-Officer.  His record
+there as an athlete, his bit of money, and the use he made of it,
+enabled him to secure a commission in the coveted Hammer-men.  He
+joined the Regiment with a considerable and deserved reputation, which
+he more than maintained.
+
+He was not popular with his brother-officers, who said quietly among
+themselves that he was not a Sahib; while Conky Joe went so far as to
+assert that he was not even a "white man"; but he was an asset to the
+Regiment and accepted as such.
+
+Now he had come home on six months' leave with two objects in view.  He
+meant to work for the Staff College--and there were few more ambitious
+men; and he meant to enjoy himself.
+
+When he returned to England, there was no question where he would
+settle down.
+
+He knew all about the Hohenzollern, and indeed would boast to his few
+intimates--and he was fond of boasting--that Madame was an old friend
+of his, and that he had paid his first visit to the Third Floor when
+still at Harrow.
+
+Beachbourne indeed suited him very well.  It possessed a first-rate
+crammer; if he wanted Society there was the Club at the West-end, full
+always of Service men retired or on leave; and he could get as much
+golf and cricket as he liked.
+
+A terrific worker, he would have no distractions: for he knew very few
+people socially.  There would be no country-house invitations for him;
+nor did he court them.  When he had passed through the Staff College
+and settled down in London for a spell at the War Office he knew very
+well that doors, now shut to him, would open.  There was no hurry about
+that.  He didn't mean to marry yet: he meant to enjoy himself.
+
+In a word, Captain Royal was an adventurer of a kind by no means
+uncommon in our day.  A Tory in his opinions and his prejudices he
+lacked the one thing that can make a Tory admirable, and that is
+Tradition.
+
+When Colonel Lewknor once defined him as "A first-rate officer and a
+first-class cad," Conky Joe, the kindest of men but a first-rate hater,
+who had never quite got over the bias imbibed in the atmosphere of the
+"greatest of all schools," replied with scorn, rare scorn,
+
+"Well, what d'you expect of Harrow?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE CAPTAIN BEGINS HIS SIEGE
+
+The morning after Captain Royal's advent, Ernie, going his round of the
+Third Floor, dropping boots at various doors, stopped outside No. 72.
+
+The door was open; and Ruth stood at the window looking sea-wards.
+
+It was early yet, scarcely seven, but clearly the Captain was already
+up and out.  Ernie stood in the door, admiring the lines of the girl's
+big young figure, the curve of her neck and shoulders and the glossy
+black of her hair.  He made a little whistling sound.
+
+Ruth turned, saw who it was, and beckoned to him.
+
+The window looked out over the lawns and foreshore on to the sea, brisk
+and broken in the sun.
+
+The tide was brimming, and swinging in, green-hued, white-tipped, and
+splashed with shadows.
+
+The bathing-raft was wobbling in the short chop.  There were no bobbing
+heads about it now.  It was too early in the season, too early in the
+morning, and the sea was too rough.  But a figure, white in the sun,
+balanced on the unsteady raft, then shot arrow-wise into the sea.
+
+Another moment and a black head bounced up out of the water.  Then
+there was the flash of an arm, rising and falling swiftly, as the
+swimmer strode away for the horizon.
+
+"Straight out to sea!" cried Ernie.  "That's the Captain!--Buffet em!"
+
+"I wish I was a man," mused Ruth.  "Go in like that--just as you are."
+
+She took up her duster, and resumed her work.  The bed was already made.
+
+"You're early at it," said Ernie, glancing round.
+
+"Yes," answered Ruth.  "I'm to do his room every morning while he's in
+the water.  He's going to work up here after breakfast."
+
+"Hot stuff!" said Ernie, trying to work up enthusiasm.  "He'll command
+the old Battalion one day, the skipper will.  Good old Hammer-men!"
+
+Half an hour later the Captain was back.  His hair still wet, was crisp
+still and very dark; while the brine crusted his handsome face.  He had
+run up the stairs, three at a stride, too impetuous to await the lift.
+In flannels, a sweater with a broad collar, and white shoes, he looked
+cool and clean and strenuous as the water from which he just emerged.
+At the top of the stairs he met the shabby porter with his collarless
+shirt, his scrubby hair, and rough hands.
+
+Ruth, coming down the corridor, marked the meeting of the two men.
+
+"Mornin," said the Captain, brief as his own moustache.
+
+"Morning, sir," grinned Ernie, rolling by, full of self-consciousness.
+
+An hour later, he saw Ruth coming out of 72 with a tray.
+
+Ernie stopped.
+
+"Havin breakfast in his own room?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Ruth quietly.
+
+The monosyllable seemed to knock at Ernie's heart.
+
+He hesitated a moment.
+
+"I'm sorry you're leaving the Third Floor, Ruth," he said.  "For me own
+sake like."
+
+"Thank you," answered Ruth.
+
+He noticed she was strangely curt.
+
+
+A week later Madame sent for the girl.
+
+"Ruth, are you still in any hurry to change your Floor?" she asked.
+
+The girl looked down, colouring faintly.
+
+"Think it over, vill you?" said Madame.  "There is no hurry."
+
+"Thank you, Ma'am," said Ruth, quivering.
+
+She returned to her work.  A bell was ringing.  It was 72.
+
+Ruth went.
+
+The Captain was manicuring his nails at the window.  He looked up as
+she entered.
+
+"Shut the door!" he said.
+
+She obeyed.
+
+"Come here!" he ordered.
+
+She went.
+
+He looked at her, in his blue eyes a laughing sternness.
+
+"What's this?" he asked.
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"I hear you're thinking of deserting."
+
+She stood before him, her bosom rising and falling.
+
+"Ruth," he said gravely, "you've got to make a home for me while I'm
+here.  I'm a pore lone orphan--no mother, or sister, or friends.
+You've got to mend me and mind me, as my old nurse used to say.  D'you
+see?  I look to you."
+
+"Very well, sir," answered Ruth.
+
+
+Whatever else Ruth might feel about Captain Royal, there was no doubt
+that she admired him.  And to do the man justice, there was not a
+little to admire.  In any company, except the best, he shone.  And on
+the Third Floor, in that meretricious atmosphere of fat-necked Jews,
+dubious foreigners, and degenerate Englishmen, Royal with his strenuous
+ways of the public-school boy, his athletic figure, and keen walk stood
+out like a sword among gamps in an umbrella-stand.
+
+He lived too with the deliberate speed of the man who knows his goal
+and means to get there.
+
+There was no need to call him.  He was up every morning at 6.15, and
+into the sea, rain or fine, rough or smooth, at 6.30.  At 7 he was back
+again in his room, stripped, and doing physical exercises.  At 8 Ruth
+brought his breakfast; and by 9 he had settled to his morning's work.
+After lunch he golfed; then to his crammer; and in the evening he
+relaxed over a billiard-table or in the card-room.
+
+Sometimes he went off for the night to Town.
+
+On the first of these occasions Ernie carried his bag to the taxi with
+a joy for which he himself could not account.
+
+"What!--are you off, sir?" he asked gaily.  "I thought we was going to
+keep you all your leave."
+
+"Only for the week-end," answered the other, with his little hard
+laugh.  "See me back on Monday."
+
+Ernie's heart fell.
+
+He went upstairs, saw Ruth, and feigned surprise.
+
+"What, still here, Ruth?"
+
+"Yes," the girl answered in her quiet way.  "I shan't move now till the
+Captain's gone."
+
+She said it quite simply.  She was too great, too spiritual, to be
+provocative: Ernie knew that.
+
+He stopped full.  There was a sea of fire lifting his chest and
+lighting his eye.
+
+"Ruth," he said.
+
+She saw his emotion, and stayed with the courtesy natural to her.
+
+"Will you walk out with me?"
+
+She met his eyes with the courage, dark, flashing, and kind, he loved
+so much.
+
+"I couldn't do that, Ernie," she said so gently that he loved her all
+the more.
+
+"Why not then?"
+
+"I'm afraid."
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Afraid you might ask me more'n what I can give."
+
+"I'll run the risk!" cried Ernie.  "I'm ready!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+He took her hand.
+
+"I'm a good man, Ruth," he said with the almost divine simplicity of
+the class to which he now belonged.
+
+She overwhelmed him with tenderness.
+
+"O, I know you are, Ernie!" she said in her purring voice of a
+wood-pigeon at evening.  "But I'm not thinking of settling--not yet."
+
+The love-passage relieved Ernie immensely.  He would face defeat, face
+Captain Royal, face the future with confidence now.
+
+Thereafter for some time he went about his work whistling, so that Don
+John, the Austrian, winked at his mates behind his back, and said,
+
+"He thinks she's for him!  No fool like an English fool!"
+
+When he came back from his week-end away, Captain Royal went straight
+to Madame's private sitting-room, which was at the end of the Third
+Floor.  As he came out and passed along the corridor he saw Ruth
+sitting on the window-sill in the passage, where Ernie had suddenly
+known himself in love with her.
+
+He stopped.  There was a bundle of mending beside her, and among it he
+recognized his own pyjamas.
+
+Royal knew there was a sitting-room for the maids, called by the
+habitués of the Third Floor, "the Nunnery," and wondered.
+
+That evening, when she came to put out his evening clothes, he said to
+her,
+
+"You don't care about using the maids' sitting-room, Ruth?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"The other girls aren't your sort? too rowdy--what?"
+
+Again she fell back on characteristic silence.
+
+Each of the bed-rooms on the Third Floor had a dressing-room attached.
+
+"Well, you know my hours," he continued.  "You use my dressing-room to
+work in whenever you like.  I never use it myself; and I know you've a
+lot to do for me."
+
+Ruth thanked him; and after that in the afternoons, when he was out,
+and in the evenings, when he was at dinner, she would sit in his
+dressing-room and work.
+
+One evening, as she sat beside the window, her dark head bent over her
+work, she was aware that he was standing over her.
+
+He had come in on her very quietly from behind, not through his
+bed-room but through the door of the dressing-room that opened into the
+corridor.
+
+She rose to go, gathering her work.
+
+He put his hand upon her shoulder, and pressed her gently back into the
+chair.  She trembled beneath his touch.
+
+"No," he said.  "Don't go.  I like to have you there."
+
+She glanced swiftly at the door behind her.
+
+"That's all right," he laughed.  "It's shut."  Then he moved into the
+bed-room.
+
+"I'm not going to close the door," he said, "because I like to see you
+there when I look up from my work."
+
+She lifted her eyes to his, full of confidence and affection.  He was
+not a man; he was a God--and to be treated as such: he could do no
+wrong.
+
+He smiled at her friendly from his chair.
+
+"I'm going to read Jomini," he said.  "Ever hear of Jomini, Ruth?--nice
+name, isn't it?  Joe-mine-eye."
+
+After that Captain Royal was less regular in his attendance at the
+billiard-room after dinner.
+
+He read in his bed-room; Ruth worked in the dressing-room; sometimes
+the door between the two rooms was open; and sometimes they talked.
+
+One evening Ernie, descending from a higher floor in the lift, marked
+Céleste listening at the dressing-room door.  She saw him, winked, and
+tripped away.
+
+"It's a caise!" she whispered, making a hollow of her hand.  "A
+h'iceberg's hot stuff once it begins to go."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+HE DRIVES A SAP
+
+One morning, after Captain Royal had been at the Hotel two months,
+Ernie missed the familiar soft thud of his feet as he came up the
+stairs three at a time after his bathe.
+
+Ernie looked at his watch.
+
+It was half-past seven; and the Captain was regular as the seasons.  He
+wondered what was up.  The strange dis-ease which possessed him,
+whenever his thoughts turned to Royal, was on him strong.
+
+Then Ruth came out of the Captain's room.  Her face, always grave, was
+graver than usual.  The note of restraint Ernie had marked in it of
+late, whenever he met her, had given place to one of anxiety.
+
+"What's up?" he asked.
+
+"He's not getting up," she answered.  "He's not well.  Looks to me like
+the hot-chills."
+
+The sick man heard the voices outside.
+
+"Caspar!" he called.
+
+"Sir."
+
+Ernie entered.  Captain Royal lay in bed, a touch of colour in his
+cheeks, his skin dry, his hair bristling, his eyes suffused.
+
+"I've got a touch of fever," he said.  "And my head's stupid.  You
+don't remember the prescription they used to give us in India.  Quinine
+and--what?"
+
+Ernie was far too vague to be of any help, and was testily dismissed.
+He left the sick-room.  The Captain's helplessness roused the woman in
+him and disarmed the jealous male.
+
+"It's nothing much," he told Ruth.  "Only a go of malaria.  He used to
+get it in India.  Don't you worry."
+
+Later in the morning Madame visited the sick man, and summed him up
+with those fine shrewd eyes of hers that let so little escape them.
+
+The Captain was clearly running a temperature.
+
+Madame put her plump be-ringed hand on his lean one, and then rang.
+
+Ruth came.
+
+"Have you a thermometer, Ruth?"
+
+Ruth had--a legacy from Miss Caryll's days.  In a moment she
+re-appeared with it, washed it, and put it into the Captain's mouth.
+Then she plucked it out, and took it to the window.  It marked 102.
+
+"What is it?" asked the sick man.
+
+"It's a little up," answered Ruth, shaking the thermometer down.
+
+"What is it?" repeated the other.
+
+Ruth had not nursed Miss Caryll for two years in vain.
+
+"It's a shade over normal," she said.  "Hap it'll be a bit higher this
+evening."
+
+Outside she told Madame.
+
+"I shall send for Mr. Trupp," that lady said, and telephoned at once.
+
+The great man came, grumbling and grousing.  What did he--who loved to
+describe his surgery as carpentry, and himself as a mechanic--know of
+Indian fevers?
+
+Madame took him herself to the Captain's room.  Ruth brought a jug of
+hot water.
+
+"You must just stop in bed till it's burned itself out," said the
+Doctor, wiping his hands and coughing.
+
+The sick man cursed.
+
+"You won't want a nurse," said Madame.  "Ruth'll do everything you
+want."
+
+Mr. Trupp looked up and for the first time noticed the girl by the
+wash-stand.  He seemed put out and glanced at Madame.
+
+"I didn't know you were on this floor, Ruth," he said, and added to the
+Captain--"Ruth nursed a patient of mine for two years in this very
+Hotel, didn't you, Ruth?  She can take a temperature, feel a pulse, and
+keep a chart with the best of em, and you'll be all right in a day or
+two."
+
+Ruth, who loved Mr. Trupp, as she loved no one else on earth, blushed
+and smiled.
+
+"That's settled then," said the Captain from his bed.
+
+Outside in the corridor Mr. Trupp, busy winding his comforter about his
+neck, saw Ernie and shook hands with him.
+
+"Well, Ernie," he said gruffly.  "I forgot you were here.  How _you_
+getting on?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you, sir," answered Ernie, forgetful for the moment of
+all his trouble.  "Nothing much amiss with the Captain, I hope, sir?"
+
+"D'you know him?" asked Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Why, sir!" cried Ernie, aggrieved.  "He was our adjutant.  And a fine
+officer too.  Mr. George'll tell you all about him, though they was in
+different Battalions.  He's well be-known all over India because of his
+cricket."
+
+"O, he's a Hammer-man too, is he?" said Mr. Trupp, interested.  "Quite
+a collection of you here.  D'you know Colonel Lewknor?"
+
+"Know him, sir!" cried Ernie.  "The Colonel!--The best officer and
+nicest gentleman we had.  Is he down here?"
+
+"Yes, he's taking a house in Holywell, I believe....  Take my bag down
+to the car, will you?--You'll find Alf outside.  I must just wait and
+speak to the Manageress."
+
+Ernie willingly obeyed.
+
+Outside was the familiar chocolate-coloured car; and a little way off
+was Alf standing in the grass exchanging confidences with some one in
+the boothole in the basement.
+
+He saw Ernie and broke off his conversation at once to come lurching
+towards his brother, licking his lips, and on his colourless face the
+familiar leer.
+
+"Say, Ern!" he began confidentially.
+
+Ernie, paying no heed, opened the door of the car, and put the bag
+inside.
+
+"That was a pretty pick-up you got hold of top of the bus that time,"
+Alf continued quietly.
+
+Ern faced his brother.
+
+"What's this then?" he asked, rather white.
+
+"That tart top o the bus that night."
+
+Ernie was breathing deep as he shut the door of the car elaborately.
+
+"I thought you was a churchman then," he said.  "Took the sacraments,
+marched in processions and carried the bag, from what I hear of it."
+
+Alf looked round warily.  Then he came boring in upon the other, as
+though determined to penetrate his secret.
+
+"What if I do!" he said.  "'Taint Sunday to-day, is it?--'Taint Sunday
+_all_ the time."
+
+Some one buried in the boot-hole laughed.
+
+"What's that got to do with it?" Ernie asked.  "D'you keep a dirty
+tongue all the week, and put on a clean one o Sunday with yer change o
+clothes?"
+
+"Who was she?" persisted Alf, his eyes like the waters of a canal at
+night glittering in the murk of some desolate industrial quarter.
+
+Ernie folded his arms.  He said nothing; but the lightning flickered
+about his face.
+
+"I know who she was then," continued Alf, his great head weaving from
+side to side.  "She was one of the totties from the Third Floor--where
+you work."  He thrust his head forward, and his eyes were cruel.
+"_D'you_ think she's for you?--Earning twenty-two a week, aren't
+you?--and what the German Jews toss you.  Why, I doubt if she'd fall to
+ME--and I'm a master-man."
+
+Jeering laughter from the bowels of the earth punctuated his words.
+
+Just then Mr. Trupp came through the great swing-doors.  He stopped for
+a word with the hall-porter.
+
+"You settled down here, Ernie?" he asked.
+
+"Pretty fair, sir, thank you," Ernie answered without enthusiasm.
+
+Mr. Trupp entered the car.  He seemed perturbed.
+
+"Well, if you want to make a change at any time, let me know," he said.
+"I only suggested this as a make-shift for you, till we could fix you
+up in something better, you know."
+
+The Doctor drove home in surly mood.
+
+It was not till the evening that his wife arrived at the root of the
+trouble.
+
+"You remember Miss Caryll's maid?" he said.
+
+"Ruth Boam?" cried Mrs. Trupp.  "That charming girl who used to bring
+us over strawberries from the Dower-house at Aldwoldston."
+
+Mr. Trupp stirred his coffee.
+
+"She's on the Third Floor at the Hohenzollern."
+
+Mrs. Trupp put down her work.
+
+"Temporarily," continued the other, "But she oughtn't to be there at
+all, a good girl like that.  I told Madame as much."
+
+"I should think you did!" cried Mrs. Trupp, flashing out like a sword
+from a scabbard.  "It's a crime!"
+
+"Madame's not a criminal," replied her husband quietly.  "She's kind.
+But she's one of the people who carries her kindness altogether too
+far."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE SERPENT
+
+Ernie, who was never very fond of work, had on the Captain's arrival
+stored his trunks in the dressing-room to save himself the trouble of
+carting them up to the box-room in the roof.
+
+Now it occurred to him that if a nurse was called in to attend the sick
+man there might be trouble about the trunks.
+
+On the morning after Mr. Trupp's visit he determined, therefore, to
+move them before he was found out.
+
+Very early he opened the dressing-room door and blundered in.
+
+A girl with bare arms was standing before the looking-glass, dressing
+her dark hair; and the bed had been slept in.
+
+"O, beg pardon, Miss," said Ernie, genuinely abashed.
+
+The girl smiled and held up a hushing finger.
+
+"I didn't know, Miss," continued Ernie, still caught in his own
+confusion.
+
+"Why d'you call me Miss?" asked Ruth calmly.
+
+Ernie laughed lamely.
+
+"Did I?" he said.  "I don't know."  He found relief in bustle.  "I was
+just a-goin to shift some o them trunks."
+
+"Thank you kindly," answered Ruth.  "It'd make more room like."
+
+Ernie set to work.
+
+"How's the Captain?" he asked.
+
+"Middlin or'nary," Ruth replied.  "He didn't sleep unaccountable well."
+
+"You look a bit tired yourself, Ruth," said Ernie.
+
+"I was up to him time or two in the night," the girl answered.  "I
+shall go off this afternoon.  Madame's very kind."
+
+Ernie went out, swallowing his misery as best he could.
+
+
+The fever took its normal course.  The Captain needed very little
+attention.  Ruth gave him his medicine, tidied his bed, took his
+temperature, and saw to his food.
+
+He lay in a fog, amused with her, angry with himself.
+
+"You're top-hole at this job, Ruth," he would say.
+
+On the third night, in the small hours, he rang.  The bell was on a
+chair at Ruth's side.  She rose at once.  The dressing-gown in which
+she wrapped herself was a flimsy affair, and showed the lines of her
+large young body.  The light beside the Captain's bed was switched on.
+
+"Ruth," he said, "I'm better.  I've broken out in a muck-sweat.  I'm
+dripping.  Get me some fresh pyjamas and a towel."
+
+His face was shining with perspiration, his hair dark.
+
+She went to a drawer.
+
+"Bring me a towel," he said.  "And give me a rub down."
+
+She obeyed and clothed him in his new pyjamas.
+
+He lay back, dry and contented.
+
+The dawn was breaking.  She lit the spirit-lamp and crouched beside it,
+graceful and brooding, her nightdress spread on the floor about her
+like a train of snow.
+
+"I'll chill you a drop o milk," she said in her deep voice, with the
+coo of comfort in it.  "It comes over cold towards dawn."
+
+He drank readily and seemed refreshed.
+
+"That's better," he said.
+
+Ruth watched him with kind eyes.
+
+"Now you'll sleep, I reck'n," she said.
+
+"Ruth," he answered, "come here."
+
+She came.
+
+He took her hand and kissed it.
+
+"That's all," he said.  "Thank you.  Good-night."
+
+She went back to the dressing-room and closed the door behind her.
+Then she went to the window.
+
+The tide was low, the sea still dark, and on the horizon of it a bank
+of saffron, from which in time the sun would appear.
+
+On the far edge of the sands, pearl-hued and desolate, the waves
+stirred faintly.  All else was stillness and immensity.  Not a soul,
+not a ship, not a movement.
+
+The sweep, the nakedness, the inexorable passivity of earth and sky and
+sea, man-forsaken and forlorn, seemed for once to affect the girl with
+fear.  She retired hastily to her bed and sought the shelter of sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE LASH AGAIN
+
+In a week the Captain was in the sea again, and living the same
+fiercely strenuous life he had done before his attack.
+
+Ernie congratulated him upon his recovery with a cheerfulness he by no
+means felt.
+
+A question haunted him.
+
+Was Ruth still sleeping in the dressing-room? ...
+
+Could the girl be so indiscreet? ...
+
+Nothing could have been easier for him than to answer the question for
+himself by peeping.  But he would not do it, for the hotel-porter was a
+gentleman.
+
+The question that troubled him was, however, soon to answer itself.
+
+One afternoon, when Ruth was out to Ernie's knowledge, he was surprised
+to hear in the dressing-room the familiar voices of Céleste and another
+maid, hushed and whispering.
+
+"She keeps the key her side," one was saying.
+
+"What's it matter who keeps the key?" the other answered.  "That's only
+a bluff."
+
+The door was slightly ajar.
+
+"He don't seem to have give her nothing," said the one at the
+dressing-table discontentedly.
+
+"Only cash.  Cash is the thing.  Then you can get what you like for
+yourself."
+
+"Here's her Bible and pray-book!  _Look!_--Ain't she just the little
+limit?--and that close with it too."
+
+"It's always the same.  It's the dark uns are the deep uns."
+
+"Don't you dare to chip her then," warned the other.  "She's Madame's
+own ducky-darlin-doodle-day."
+
+Ernie opened the door.
+
+The two girls turned in a scared flutter.
+
+"There!--It's only old Ernie Boots!" cried Céleste relieved.  "He don't
+count, Ernie don't.--But you give me the palpitations though."
+
+Ernie held the door wide.
+
+"You've no business in here," he said sternly.
+
+"No one has--only the Captain, old cock," retorted Céleste flippantly.
+
+The two girls flirted away with high noses and a rustle of silken
+underwear.
+
+Ernie looked round the little room with the eyes of a furtive
+watch-dog.  He had no business there; and being there he ought to make
+it his duty to see nothing.  But he did see; and what he saw was that
+the bed was not in use.
+
+Thrown carelessly upon it was a regimental blazer, obviously awaiting
+repair, and a pair of socks in like case.  Beside them was a work-bag.
+He moved the blazer and saw beneath it a silver cigarette-case.  Then
+in the grate he saw the burnt end of a cigarette.
+
+With beating heart, but unruffled air, he went out.
+
+The two mocking-birds were perched on a window-sill at the end of the
+corridor.
+
+"Pore old Ernie boy!" they cried in chorus.  "Did he think she was for
+him?" ...
+
+The story trickled down to the boot-room in the basement, which was a
+kind of cess-pool into which all the moral filth in the Hotel poured
+and finally accumulated.
+
+Don John openly mocked Ernie.
+
+"Here's Caspar!--Thought he'd have a chance against the toff!"
+
+Ernie flashed round on him.
+
+"Stow it!" he ordered.
+
+The Austrian was afraid.
+
+"Soldier! soldier!" he croaked, hiding his fear behind hideous
+laughter, and reported his enemy to Salvation Joe.
+
+That worthy, swollen and stiff with righteousness as the Jehovah of the
+Israelites, and glad of his chance, tackled Ernie on the subject.
+
+"What's this then?" he said, stopping the other.
+
+"What, sir?" asked Ernie.
+
+"Fighting in the boot-hole," answered Jehovah in his voice of thunder,
+subdued and distant.
+
+"I don't know nothing of it," said Ernie, honestly taken aback.
+
+Jehovah, the majestic, in his flaming jersey, could sneer.
+
+"Ah, don't you, my lad?" he said.  "Well, I do.  Let's have no more of
+it."
+
+The two men went on their way: Salvation Joe to the Manager's office to
+make his report.
+
+"Always the same with these old soldiers," he said.  "It's up with
+their fists at the first onset.  No reasonableness in em.  Can't keep
+em off of it."
+
+"Better keep him anyway till the end of the season," said the Manager.
+"We don't want a change now."
+
+"No, sir.  I don't want a change any time," said the head-porter, on
+the defensive.  "But order is order.  That's all I says."
+
+
+The pressure of necessity was indeed squeezing the softness out of
+Ernie.
+
+Enemies thronged his path.  He was becoming wary and watchful.  Of old,
+when in the course of life he had come up against hostility and
+obstruction, he had met it either by evasion or the non-resistance so
+fatally easy to a man of his temperament.  It was different now.  His
+enemies were leagued together to rob him of something dearer than
+himself.  Therefore he would stand: therefore he would fight.
+
+There grew upon him a dignity, a restraint, above all a sternness that
+men and women alike remarked and respected.
+
+Céleste ceased to mock him; Don John kept his distance; and the Captain
+was on his guard.
+
+Ernie was sure of it: for Royal was nothing of a diplomatist when
+dealing with an enemy whom he despised.
+
+Ruth, too, avoided Ernie now.
+
+He noticed it, and did not attempt to approach her.
+
+The two were drawing away, and yet, Ernie sometimes thought, coming
+closer--for all the girl's grave reserve.
+
+He at least was climbing heights where he had never been before.
+
+Up there in the eternal snows it was lonely but bracing.  He was
+putting on an armour of ice.  Clothed thus, knew that nothing could
+hurt him.  He could bear all things, conquer all men.
+
+Once at that time Mr. Pigott met him in Old Town.
+
+"Ern," he said, eyeing the other curiously, "I've got a job for you in
+my yard, if you like it.  What about it?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Ernie, almost aggressively.  "I'm going to stick
+where I am."
+
+"No offence anyway," growled the other, striding huffily on his way....
+"I might have been insulting him instead of trying to help him," the
+aggrieved man reported to Mr. Trupp later.
+
+"Yes," said the Doctor.  "He's under the Lash again.  I see that.  And
+he's growing because of it.  Men do--if they are men.  If they aren't
+they just break."
+
+"You and your Lash," grumbled the other.  "There are other stimulants
+in the world."
+
+Mr. Trupp pursed his lips.
+
+"Perhaps," he grinned.  "But none so effective."
+
+
+His father, too, noticed the change in his elder son.
+
+Once as they were sitting together, above the chalk-pit, on one of
+Ern's afternoons off, after a long silence, he said,
+
+"How goes it, Boy-lad?"
+
+"What, dad?"
+
+"The affair."
+
+Ernie looked away, teasing the bent between his teeth.
+
+"None too well, dad."
+
+The old man laid a hand on his.
+
+"Wade out into it!" he said.  "Trust the stream!  It'll carry you--if
+you'll let it."
+
+Ernie's mother too, curiously sure in some of her intuitions, felt his
+trouble, was aware of his new-found courage, and came to him.
+
+It had always been so with her from his childhood.
+
+Whenever he put out his strength she rallied to him in full force.
+When in weakness he fell away she left him.  It was as though all her
+woman's power of buttressing had been given to the father, so that
+there was nothing left to satisfy the demands of her seeking elder son.
+
+That evening she gave him roses from her little garden before he went,
+and watched him round the corner.
+
+Then she retreated indoors, and standing thin-shouldered in the door of
+the study, shot at the long loose figure by the fire one of her
+customary crude remarks.
+
+"He's hanging on the Cross," she said.
+
+Edward Caspar stared into the grate.
+
+"He'll rise again," he answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+CLASH OF MALES
+
+Ernie, carrying his roses, mounted the bus.
+
+Opposite the _Star_, he marked a gaunt figure, standing on the steps of
+the Manor-house.  There was something of the kindly vulture about the
+figure's pose that was strangely familiar.  Ernie leapt to sudden life.
+It was the Colonel--without his sun-helmet.  Ernie was off the bus in a
+moment, and sidling shyly up to the object of his worship.
+
+The Colonel, waiting on the steps, watched the antics of the
+approaching devotee with satirical indifference.
+
+"Contemplating assault or adoration?" he asked mildly.  Then he
+stooped, extending a skinny claw.
+
+"What, Caspar!" he called, his cadaverous face lighting up.
+
+"That's me, sir," grinned Ernie, wagging his tail with furious
+enthusiasm.
+
+Just then a chocolate-bodied car drove up, and Ernie was aware of Alf
+looking at him.  The door of the car opened; and Captain Royal stepped
+out.
+
+"Ah, Colonel!" he cried in his brisk hearty voice.
+
+The Colonel laid a finger on the other's sleeve.
+
+"You remember Caspar, Royal?" he said.
+
+"I do," replied Royal briefly.  "Coming in, sir?" as Mr. Trupp's door
+opened at last.
+
+Ernie turned down the hill, burning his white flare.  The Captain's
+brutal insolence had gone home.
+
+The Colonel reported the incident to his wife that evening.
+
+"I could have struck the swine!" he said with unusual ferocity.  "Conky
+Joe was right.  He never was a white man.  A piebald from birth, that
+feller."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor churned the incident in her mind.  It was a slur on the
+Regiment, and therefore a capital offence.
+
+"What a cad!" she said.  "Our dear Caspar too!  Royal's the only
+officer in the Regiment would behave like that.  Where's he stopping?"
+
+"My dear, where would Royal stop?" said the Colonel.  "The
+Hohenzollern--Third Floor--where Caspar's working."
+
+He nodded his big head discreetly.
+
+"How do you know?" asked Mrs. Lewknor, eyeing him.
+
+"Trupp told me," replied the Colonel.
+
+
+Ernie returned to the Hotel with his roses.
+
+Later that evening he went to the door of the dressing-room of 72 and
+knocked quietly.
+
+There was no answer.  He entered and laid the roses on the table.
+
+As he did so the door between the two rooms opened, and Ruth stood in
+it, watching him with hostile eyes.
+
+In the room behind her Ernie could see the Captain in his
+smoking-jacket before the fire with a cigarette between his lips.  Then
+the Captain saw him too.  His easy expression changed in a flash; and
+he acted as always without a moment's hesitation.
+
+He strode towards the open door between the two rooms, brushing Ruth
+almost rudely aside.
+
+"Now no more of it!" he said with brutal savagery.  "I've had enough!"
+
+There was no light in the dressing-room but that which came through the
+uncurtained window from the moonlit sea, and the beam from the bed-room.
+
+In the dimness the eyes of the two men clashed.
+
+For a second the habit of discipline, of inferiority, of bowing to the
+other's artificially imposed authority, overwhelmed Ernie and he
+wavered.  Then strength came to him like a tidal wave: he steadied and
+stood his ground.
+
+In the eyes of his enemy he recognized in a flash the Eternal Brute,
+domineering, all-devouring, ruthless in the greed of its unbridled
+egotism, whose familiar features had been stamped indelibly, from the
+beginnings of Time, upon the retentive tablets of his race-memory.
+
+Ernie was face to face with something in which he had never entirely
+believed--the Ogre of whom the Socialists spoke: Capitalism incarnate,
+stripped of its Church-trimmings, the Monster remorseless and obscene,
+to whom the Children of Men were but as the grass of the fields that
+went to feed the unquenchable fires in its sagging belly.
+
+Quite suddenly the veil had been drawn aside, the roseate mists of
+sentimentality dispersed; and he beheld Human Nature, naked and
+terrible--the Animal who called himself Man--an Animal inspired beyond
+belief by the Devil of Lust and Cruelty, glowering out at him now from
+the ambush of a face created after the likeness of the Son of God.
+
+He said slowly, more to himself than to his enemy:
+
+"My Christ!" and left the room.
+
+
+In the basement, Don John, bare-necked as a bird of prey, his cheek
+bulging with cheese, sat in a dingy apron and expounded his philosophy
+to a little group of disciples as tired and dirty as himself.
+
+"Take advantage!--Of course dey take advantage!  So would I, so would
+you--if we was in their shoes.  Dey would be just pluddy fools not to.
+Dere is only so much in de world.  Dey take what dey can get; and the
+veak to the vall.  Shentlemen and Christians!  Dere is no such tings.
+Tell the tale to mugs!--Dere is just Man and Woman, both worms,
+wriggled up out of the mud.  Man wants Woman; and Woman wants it
+cushie.  So de rich man buys her.  Can you compete against him?--Is
+your body sleek with food and wine and lying in bed?--Is your spirit
+nourished on books and music and plays?--Can you fill her eye with your
+fatness, and clothe her body in furs, and adorn her hair with jewels,
+and fill her lap with gold?--No; de rich man buys what he wants, and he
+wants de best all de time.  For you and me what is left over when he
+haf finished.  Dat is so all de way through--women, wine, horses, what
+you vill.  Touch your hat and say--Tank you, sair.  Vair much obliged.
+It is always de same."  He wagged a yellow fore-finger.  "Dere is only
+two tings Ruling Class leaves to you and me."  He cackled horribly.
+"One is Work"--he pronounced it vurk--"and de udder is War."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+THE DECOY POND
+
+After the battle between the two men, Ruth retired into the fortress
+from which Ernie had lured her before the Captain's arrival.
+
+The old restraint was on her, and hostility was now added.
+
+She barely noticed him when they met, and he, wary for once and wise,
+made no advances to her.
+
+But hope was quickening in his heart, for September was on them now,
+and the leave-season was drawing to an end.
+
+One afternoon Céleste flitted past him like a wagtail.
+
+"Cheer, Ernie-boy," she mocked.  "He's going away."
+
+"Who is?"
+
+"Captain, my Captain."
+
+"When?"
+
+"At once."  She halted.  "But--he's taking her away with him."
+
+Ernie turned grey.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"One of the girls.  They take it in turns to sit in the dressing-room
+of evenings to hear the latest.  It's like an aviary, they say.
+_Coo-bird! coo! now me! now you!  You was good to me when I was ill,
+Ruth,_ he says last night.  _Now I am going to give you a treat.  I'm
+going to take you to Paree for the week-end on my way back to India._"
+
+Ernie came closer.  He looked ugly.
+
+"If I catch any of you girls in there----"
+
+"Baa-a-a!" mocked the naughty one.  "Who was caught in there himself?"
+
+Ernie was now extraordinarily alert and vivid.  The old sleepy
+benevolence had vanished: he was listening at last to that voice which
+none of us can afford to neglect, the voice which says at all times, to
+all men in all places--
+
+_Beware!_
+
+Salvation Joe took a professional and proprietory interest in the
+change, which for some obscure reason he attributed to his own direct
+intervention in heavenly places.
+
+"What is it then?" he asked.  "Has HE found you at last?"
+
+Ernie, who as he gathered strength, gained also in flippancy, replied:
+
+"There was ninety-and-nine, you mean.  That lay.  No, sir, He ain't
+found me.  I've found IT though."
+
+"Well, then, come round to the 'appy 'our on Sunday next and tell us
+all about it," growled the great man.  "There's none so 'umble and
+lowly but we can learn from them, as I often says."
+
+He tramped on his reverberating way....
+
+That night, as Ernie was on lift-duty, the telephone bell rang in the
+passage.  He went.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Caspar from the Garage, Old Town," came the answer.  "Could I
+speak to Captain Royal?"
+
+The Captain had given orders that when he was in his room of evenings
+after dinner, he was not to be disturbed.
+
+"He's engaged," answered Ernie.  "Could I give him a message?"
+
+For a moment there was a pause.  Then the voice began again.
+
+"Who'm I speaking to?"
+
+"One of the porters, sir," Ernie answered.
+
+There was no need for him to disguise his voice: for the telephone was
+out of repair, and speech muffled and uncertain accordingly.
+
+"Well, will you take down this message and see it gets to him to-night.
+_The car will be at the Decoy Park, East Gate, to-morrow afternoon at
+2.30._"
+
+Ernie wrote the message down, and repeated it.
+
+"Very good, sir," he said briskly.
+
+"Thank ye," answered Alf, and rang off.
+
+Later, when Captain Royal came down to the smoking-room for a last
+cigarette before bed, Ernie took him the message.
+
+The Captain, who had brought the art of insolence to his inferiors to a
+height that only a certain type of officer, sheltered by Military Law,
+attains, took the note without a word, glanced at it, and tossed it
+into the fire.
+
+Ernie retired with burning heart.
+
+The conjunction of Captain Royal and Alf seemed to him sinister.  But
+he had his armour on now, his lance in rest.  His brain was working
+with a swiftness and precision that astonished him.  He was ready for
+whatever might come....
+
+The old Decoy was a survival of the remote days when Beachbourne was a
+fishing-village, famous only for the duck-shooting on the Levels hard
+by.  When Ernie was a lad the Decoy Pond, in its rough ambush of trees
+and thick undergrowth, was still the haunt of duck and snipe, and his
+favourite hunting-ground in the bird-nesting season.  During Ernie's
+absence in India the Corporation had acquired it, and made of the
+tangled wilderness, formerly the home of fox and snipe and the shy
+creatures of the jungle, a fair pleasure-ground for their conquerors.
+Green lawns now ran down amid forest-trees and clumps of flowering
+shrubs to a shining ornamental water on which floated stately swans,
+while moor-hen scudded here and there, and flotillas of foreign ducks
+paddled about islands gorgeous with crimson willow.  A broad road ran
+from gate to gate; and in the woods of summer evenings young men now
+chased rarer game than ducks.
+
+It was at the Eastern Gate of this resort that Alf was to meet the
+Captain with a car.
+
+Ernie would meet them there too.  On that he was determined.
+
+It was not his afternoon off, but he arranged to change with a mate.
+
+A light railway ran from the East-end of the Town along the edge of the
+Levels to join the main line at the wayside station known as the Decoy
+Park between Beachbourne and Polefax.
+
+Ernie took the two o'clock train, and, ensconced in a third-class
+smoker, watched.  Very soon the Captain came swinging along the
+platform, a light burberry over his arm, athletic, resolute, and quite
+the English gentleman, his coloured tie striking a charming note of
+gaiety in his otherwise fresh but sober costume.
+
+Ernie watched him critically.  In externals the Captain was the typical
+representative of a Service in which men move, like Wordsworth's cloud,
+all together or not at all.
+
+For the skilled observer, indeed, the history of the British Army
+during the last seventy years is to be read in the evolution of the
+moustaches of its officers.  At the moment now recorded the flowing
+_beau-sabreur_ moustache which dominated the Service from Balaclava to
+Paardeberg had long gone out; while the tuft moustache which
+commemorated for the British Army the advent of the Great War had not
+yet come in.  The tooth-brush or touch-me-not or crawling-caterpillar
+moustache, brief, severe, and bristling, which had held its own against
+all comers since South Africa, was still the rage; and gave the wearer
+that suggestion of something between a hog-maned horse-in-training and
+a rough-haired terrier on the look-out for a row with a rat which was
+the fashionable pose for the British officer in the years between the
+two Wars.
+
+To be quite _comme-il-faut_ Royal should have had trailing at his heels
+a little bustling terrier, rather like himself, harsh in manner, but
+virile, aggressive and keen.
+
+But Captain Royal did not like dogs.
+
+Ernie, chewing a fag in a corner, as he watched his enemy march by,
+remembered that; remembered too and suddenly that it had been common
+talk in the lines that Royal was not popular among his
+brother-officers--"not class enough" the whisper went.  Ernie, who had
+wondered then, understood that now.
+
+At the Decoy Park the Captain got out.
+
+Ernie saw him off the platform, and well started down the road to the
+Decoy Woods before he followed.
+
+A chilly wind blew from across the Levels.
+
+The Captain marched along towards the Park, the tail of his burberry
+floating out, his green hat with the feather in it cocked to meet the
+breeze, the shapely curves of his legs exposed by the wind.
+
+Just outside the Park he looked sharply behind him, but saw only a
+shabby figure slouching casually along some two hundred yards away.
+
+Once inside the Park Ernie left the road and, walking swiftly among the
+trees at the wayside, drew closer.
+
+Here in the woods peacocks strutted, and close by was an aviary in
+which parrots chuckled, golden pheasants preened themselves, and birds
+with gay plumage fluttered.
+
+On the rustic bridge across the ornamental water the Captain paused and
+looked about him.  Nominally he was observing the swans; really he was
+looking to see if he was being watched.
+
+Ernie, alert in every inch of him, recognized the ruse; and drew the
+correct deduction that his enemy had been at this game before.
+
+He waited in the shadow of the trees.
+
+The Captain, satisfied, made now for the East Gate.  Outside it a car
+was waiting.  Ern recognized that chocolate body; and he recognized too
+that little figure in the shining black gaiters who stood beside it,
+and touched his hat with a furtive grin.
+
+The two men exchanged a brief word.  Alf opened the door of the car,
+produced something, and held it out.  Ernie saw that it was a lady's
+fur coat.
+
+Then Captain Royal climbed into the car, and Alf put the hood up.
+
+Ernie approached.
+
+Just inside the East Gate was a little wooden chalet, where teas were
+served.
+
+In this Ernie took cover.
+
+A crowded motor-bus from Beachbourne drove up.
+
+On the front seat was a girl in a terra-cotta-coloured felt hat.
+
+She got down and walked towards the car.
+
+Ernie watched, quivering.
+
+There was only one woman in the world who walked with that direct and
+compelling grace.
+
+It was clear to him that the girl was happy--lyrically so--and shy.
+The flow and rhythm of her every motion betrayed it abundantly.
+
+Alf touched his hat as she approached, and opened the door.
+
+The Captain did not descend.  He was waiting inside--the spider in the
+background lurking to pounce upon the fly, a spider who shot forth
+sudden grey tentacles to enfold his prey.  Ruth, clasped by the
+tentacles, was sucked out of sight.
+
+Ernie was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to leap out into the road
+and cry:
+
+"_Don't!_"
+
+He sweated and trembled.
+
+Then the door of the car slammed.  Ruth was fast inside; and Alf,
+wonderfully brisk, had hopped into his seat, and was fingering the
+levers.
+
+Then the car stole forward swiftly, secretly, like a cat upon the stalk.
+
+It passed through the gate, would cross the Park, strike the Lewes road
+at Ratton on the way to--Lewes--Brighton--where?...
+
+Ern was standing up now, forgetful of concealment.  As the car swept
+by, Alf saw him and made a mocking downward motion with his hand, as of
+one pressing to earth an enemy struggling to his feet.
+
+Ern was aware of it, of the look on Alf's face, of the two in the car.
+
+They did not see him.  The Captain was bending over Ruth, buttoning the
+fur coat round her throat.
+
+Just then there rang through the silence a dreadful cry as of evil
+triumphant.
+
+A peacock in the wood had screamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S FLIGHT
+
+That night Ernie was on late lift-duty.
+
+He was just about to lock the lift when the missing Captain came
+striding across the empty hall with a peremptory finger raised.
+
+"You're late, sir," said Ernie, unlocking grudgingly.
+
+"Third Floor," the other answered, curt as a blow.
+
+When the lift stopped, Ernie went along the corridor to deliver a note
+to Madame in her room.
+
+"Thank-you, Caspar," she said.  "Good-night."
+
+She had always felt a kindness for this soft-spoken son of the people,
+and the fact that he was reported to be of gentle birth had interested
+her.
+
+As he was going back to the lift he met Ruth, still in her hat, coming
+along the corridor, bearing a tray.
+
+She had the merry, mischievous air of a girl just back from a Sunday
+school treat, and still brimming with the laughter of primroses and
+April woods.  His heart leapt up in joy and thankfulness as he beheld
+her.
+
+She gave him the old gay look of affectionate intimacy, which she had
+withheld from him for weeks past.
+
+"Good-night, Ernie," she said as she passed him, in a voice so low that
+but for its deep ringing quality he might almost have missed it.
+
+He half hesitated.
+
+"Good-night, Ruth," he answered, and as he disappeared down the shaft
+of the lift saw her, glowing with health and happiness, enter the
+Captain's room with her tray.
+
+
+He locked the lift.
+
+In the hall the Manager was shutting his desk in the office.  He saw
+Ernie and called:
+
+"Has Captain Royal come in?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There's a telegram for him somewhere."
+
+He hunted about and at last found it.
+
+"Take it up to him now, will you?" he said, "It's been waiting since
+three."
+
+Ernie toiled up the stairs, and knocked at the door of 72.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+He opened it slightly.
+
+The light was on, and he entered.  The room was empty.  He stood a
+moment, quivering.  Then voices from the dressing-room came to him
+quietly and at intervals.
+
+He stood still, with head down, listening.
+
+The Captain was speaking softly, insistently.
+
+Ruth was dumb.  Ernie thought she was crying.
+
+Then he heard her voice, panting and very low,
+
+"A-done, sir, do!"
+
+In a moment Ernie was in eruption.
+
+He flung against the door and tore rabidly at the handle.  There was no
+answer from within.  Ernie brought his fist down upon a panel with a
+left-handed punch that seemed to shake the Hotel.
+
+"Telegram, sir!" he called in stentorian tones, threw the flimsy
+envelope on to the bed, and was gone.
+
+
+Next morning the Captain was up early.
+
+Ernie met him coming back from the bath-room, a towel over his arm.
+
+Royal did not meet the eyes of his enemy.
+
+"Have a taxi at the door at 6.45," he ordered.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Ernie.
+
+A few minutes before that hour the Captain rang for the lift.  Ernie
+found him waiting on the landing with his suitcase and took him down.
+
+In the hall Royal, with averted shoulder, thrust a sovereign towards
+him.
+
+"Here!"
+
+Ernie flared white, and swept the outstretched hand aside with a
+gesture that was almost a blow.
+
+"Never!" he cried.
+
+For the second time the two men's eyes met and clashed; and in a flash
+Ernie knew that he had conquered.  The Captain had run up the sullen
+flag of spiritual catastrophe.
+
+Then he turned away and marched rapidly across the hall.
+
+Ernie went straight back to 72.  The room showed every sign of a hasty
+departure.  The floor was littered; the drawers open and still half
+full of clothes.  Under the dressing-table were boots and shoes, on it
+a pair of hair-brushes, a case of studs, and the lesser paraphernalia
+of a man's toilet.  It was clear that the late occupant had stuffed a
+few things into his suit-case and bolted.
+
+The dressing-room door was shut.
+
+Ernie went to it and listened.
+
+There was no sound within.
+
+"Ruth," he called gently, and opened.  She was lying across the bed in
+her simple print-gown as though she had been felled.
+
+It was clear that she had entered the room and been faced
+with--emptiness.
+
+Her eyes were shut, and her face swam pale as the moon and still in the
+black circle of her hair.  One foot had lost its shoe, and dangled
+black-stockinged and pathetic over the bed.  In her hand, listlessly
+held, was a piece of crumpled paper--as it might have been her
+death-warrant.
+
+She did not seem to breathe.
+
+At first Ernie thought that she was dead, so wan she was, so quiet, so
+unaware.  He did not mind very much, because he had died too; and they
+were together still, and closer than they had ever been.
+
+Quietly he knelt beside her.
+
+"Ruth," he said, and kissed the hand that lay limp at her side.
+
+She stirred beneath his touch.
+
+"It's all right, Ruth," he whispered.
+
+She opened her eyes.  They lay like pools of beauty, dark in her white
+face, and fringed with black.  They spoke to him in the silence,
+appealing to him.  They drew him, they undid him, they purged him by
+their suffering of all sin, lifting him into a white heaven, where was
+no stain of earth, no discord, no breaking despair.
+
+He smiled at her through his tears.
+
+"It's all right, Ruth," he repeated.
+
+She laid her hand on his in loveliest trust.
+
+"Goo away, Ernie," she sighed.  "I just ca'a'n't a-bear it," and her
+eyelids closed again.
+
+He rose to his feet.
+
+The window was open, and the bit of crumpled paper she had been holding
+in her hand was tossing about the floor.
+
+He picked it up unconsciously and went out.
+
+It was not till some time later that he glanced at it casually before
+throwing it away and saw it was a ten-pound note.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE EBB-TIDE
+
+Three days later Ernie met in the hall of the Hotel a man he had known
+and disliked in the Regiment in India.
+
+The two shook hands, Ernie grinning feebly.  He was not so keen about
+the Regiment as he had been a few months before.
+
+"What you doin here then, Mooney?" he asked.
+
+"I've come for Captain Royal's heavy baggage," the other answered.
+"Say, which was his room?"
+
+"I'll show you," said Ernie, and took him up.
+
+Ruth helped in the packing.
+
+Ernie, who came and went throughout the morning, was amazed at her.
+
+Her heart was being eaten away; and yet she might have been packing for
+a stranger, so calm was she, so methodical and self-oblivious.
+
+Once, when Ernie looked in, he saw her kneeling by the window, her back
+to the door, her arms deep in a half-empty trunk.
+
+Mooney winked at him and nodded over his shoulder.
+
+Ernie, standing in the door, met him with the face of a hostile stone.
+
+"Can I help?" he asked.
+
+"No, thank-you," Ruth answered.  "We're nearly through."
+
+By noon the task was finished, and the baggage downstairs piled at the
+back-door.
+
+Mooney and Don John lunched together in the basement.  Ernie, passing,
+saw them, and heard his own name mentioned.  Don John was telling a
+story.  Mooney, following Ernie with his eyes, was unpleasantly amused.
+
+Later Ernie helped to put the luggage on a cab.  He volunteered for the
+work and did it gladly.  As the cab moved off, his heart seemed to lift
+and lighten.  The burden he had carried for so many months was being
+borne away on the top of that oppressed and heavy-laden vehicle.  Then
+his eye caught Mooney's.  The man, smart almost as his master, was
+sitting back in the cab, his eyes half shut, and his lips slightly
+parted.  Between them protruded the tip of his tongue.
+
+Mooney was mocking him.
+
+
+A few days later Ernie missed Ruth from the Third Floor.
+
+He asked Céleste where she had gone.
+
+"Gone to the Second Floor," the girl answered.  "She's waiting on a
+missionary.  Makes a nice change after the Captain."
+
+Ernie was glad, yet sorry.
+
+He saw little of the girl thereafter; and she avoided him.
+
+But he still possessed the ten-pound note she had cast away on the
+morning of Captain Royal's departure, and was worried as to what he
+should do with it.
+
+He could not send it to her, for she would know the sender.  He could
+not give it her, for it was the price of--what?
+
+And there was no one whom he could consult.  His dad in such matters
+was a child; his mother would be unsympathetic; Mr. Pigott would be too
+simple to understand.
+
+Then one autumn afternoon, as he was walking home across Saffrons Croft
+through rustling gold-drifts beneath the elms, he met Mrs. Trupp coming
+down the hill silvery-haired, gracious, and smiling in upon his gloom.
+
+"Well, dreamer," she said.  "Not hard to know whose son you are!"
+
+Ernie looked up, and made one of those lightning resolutions of his.
+
+"Beg pardon, 'm," he said.  "Could I come and see you this evening?"
+
+"You could, Ernie," answered the other.  "And about time too!"
+
+That evening, when the blinds were drawn, and the lamps lit, Ernie
+found himself alone with his godmother in the long-windowed
+drawing-room, telling his story.
+
+Mrs. Trupp, whom cruelty, in its manifold forms, could rouse to a
+white-hot anger that surprised those who did not know her, listened
+quivering and with downward eyes.
+
+"What was the man's name?" she asked at last.
+
+"Captain Royal," Ernie answered without hesitation.
+
+She nodded.
+
+The Captain had called at the Manor-house once or twice during his
+stay, and his easy attentions to her Bess had disquieted her for the
+moment; for she had disliked him from the first.  But Bess, sound in
+her intuitions, as she was strong in her antipathies, had proved well
+able to care for herself.
+
+"She's a good girl," said Ernie, still rapt in his story.  "Too good
+for this world."
+
+"You won't tell me her name?" asked Mrs. Trupp.
+
+Ernie shook his head doggedly, twisting the ten-pound note between his
+knees.  It was his father's son who refused to speak.
+
+"Of course," she went on slowly, "your friend has not been wise, Ernie.
+The world would say she'd brought her troubles on her own head."
+
+Ernie, well aware of the truth, looked at the note, and changed the
+subject clumsily.
+
+"What are I to do with this?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Trupp had no doubts on that score.
+
+"The proper thing to do is to return it to Captain Royal," she said.
+
+Ernie was quite gentleman enough to understand.
+
+"What'll be his address, I wonder?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Trupp went to the telephone, rang up Colonel Lewknor, and made her
+inquiry.
+
+"Army and Navy Club, Piccadilly, will find him," replied the Colonel.
+
+Mrs. Trupp went to her writing-table, addressed and stamped an
+envelope, and put the note inside.
+
+"Register that, please, Ernie," she said....
+
+That evening, as she handed her husband his coffee, she remarked to him
+casually:
+
+"William, who looked after Captain Royal when he was ill?"
+
+Mr. Trupp shot two words at her.
+
+"Ruth Boam."
+
+Mrs. Trupp put down her sugar-tongs, quivering.
+
+"What about her?" grunted Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Nothing," said the lady.  She added after a pause with apparent
+irrelevance--"Did she like you?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Mr. Trupp shortly.  "All I know is that girl
+ought never to have been on the Third Floor.  I told Madame as much."
+
+
+The next time Mrs. Lewknor came to call, Mrs. Trupp told her the whole
+story, as Ernie had told it her; but, like him, concealing the woman's
+name.
+
+Her suppressed indignation made her almost terrible.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor listened doggedly, looking at her toes.
+
+She had her own views about Captain Royal, but he was in the Regiment,
+and the Regiment was her god, to whom she owed unquestioning allegiance.
+
+"There's no reason to suppose it was more than a stupid flirtation,"
+she said lamely.
+
+"It was a _crime_ on his part!" cried Mrs. Trupp with a vehemence that
+astounded her visitor.  "A man in his position, and a girl in hers!"
+
+That evening Mrs. Lewknor rehearsed the tale to her husband.
+
+"Swine-man!" said the Colonel.  "Just like him.  And that man going
+about the country calling himself a Hammerman!  Makes you sick."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+ERNIE LEAVES THE HOTEL
+
+The winter came and began to go.
+
+In February the celandine peeped in the beech-woods in the coombe, and
+the Lords and Ladies began to unfurl their leaves, while in the little
+garden in Rectory Walk daffodils made a brave show.
+
+All through the dark months Ernie had only caught an occasional glimpse
+of Ruth.  Now he lost sight of her entirely.
+
+One afternoon Céleste stopped him on the Third Floor.
+
+She looked at him curiously, with a touch of gauche diffidence he had
+never marked in her before.
+
+"Was you very fond of her then, Ernie?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Who?" he inquired, surprised.
+
+"Ruth."
+
+Ernie stared at her.
+
+"What's happened?"
+
+"She's gone."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Some time since.  Afore Christmas."
+
+He saw that Céleste, the kindest of creatures, was genuinely moved.
+She turned her back, and moved to the window, biting her handkerchief
+to restrain her tears.
+
+"Of course she'd no business here at all," she sobbed.  "She was an
+innocent.  She didn't know nothing.  If she'd mixed with us girls we
+could anyway have learned her enough to keep her out of trouble.  But
+she was that proud.  Kept herself to herself."
+
+Ernie devoured her with dark eyes.
+
+"Where's she gone?" he asked.
+
+"London, I expect," Céleste answered.  "They always do."
+
+The flighty little creature dried her eyes and spread her wings in the
+sun once more.  "Poor old Ern!" she cried.  "But there's better fish in
+the sea than ever came out of it, as the sayin is....  I'm not aimin at
+meself, mind!" she added coquettishly.
+
+Ernie, if he heard her badinage, ignored it.  As always, where his
+heart was concerned, he struck instantly and without fear.
+
+He walked along the corridor and knocked at Madame's door.
+
+She was, as usual, smoking.
+
+"What is it, Caspar?" she asked kindly.
+
+Ernie came to the point with almost brutal directness.
+
+"Ruth Boam, 'm."
+
+Madame studied her rings.
+
+"She has left--while I was gone away," she said after a pause.  "I am
+sorry.  She was nice gurl."
+
+Madame had only just returned from her annual visit to the sister-hotel
+at Brussels.
+
+"Could you tell me where she's gone, 'm?"
+
+Quite suddenly her large fair face wrought.  She rose out of the cloud
+of her own smoke, and just as Céleste had done a few minutes before,
+went to the window and looked out.  Her great shoulders heaved.
+
+"I don't know," she said.  "She has not gone home to Aldwoldston.  I
+haf written."  Then with an astonishing display of emotion:
+
+"That man!" she cried.  "I will never haf that man in my Hotels any
+mores."
+
+Ernie retired, seeking and dissatisfied.
+
+The news of his search soon spread.
+
+In the boot-room next day, when the men were at their "Elevens," Don
+John met him with a jeer as he entered.
+
+"Don't he know then?" mocked the Austrian.
+
+"Know what?" asked Ernie.
+
+"Where she's gone?"
+
+Ernie put down his bread and cheese.
+
+"Where has she gone, then?"
+
+"Queen Charlotte's, Marylebone."
+
+"What's Queen Charlotte's?" asked Ernie, the simple.
+
+A rumble of cruel laughter went round the room.
+
+"Layin-in hospital," said Don John, "for English gurls the Chairman
+Jews have sported with."
+
+Ernie rose.  Very deliberately he took off his apron.
+
+"Shut the door, will you?" he said in a curious white calm.  "Thank
+you, Bill.  Now take his knife from him, some of you.  You know these
+bloody aliens."
+
+A silence had fallen on all.
+
+"What's it all about?" tittered Don John, trying to brave it out.
+
+"Arf a mo," said Ernie, rolling up his sleeves leisurely, "and then
+I'll show you.  Now chuck him out into the ring.  I thank you, Bert."
+
+In the Hotel the feeling between the aliens and the Englishmen ran
+high; and the latter obeyed Ernie's injunction with a will all the more
+because the fame of Ernie's left-handed punch had reached the Hotel
+from Old Town long since.
+
+Don John didn't like it, and he liked it less when Ernie began on him
+in all seriousness.
+
+One of the foreigners slipped out.
+
+Two minutes later Salvation Joe, magnificent in his red jersey,
+shouldered into the room.
+
+"What's all this then?" he growled in his voice of a drum-major.
+"Thought you was a Christian, Caspar?"
+
+Don John was spitting blood over the sink.
+
+Ernie stood in the middle of the floor, his head a little forward,
+ignoring the head-porter, his fists still milling the air with a
+rhythmic purposefulness that was almost dreadful.
+
+"Yes, I'm a Christian all right," he replied in musing voice.  "It is
+more blesseder to give than to receive.  I've give your friend a
+middlin bunt, and there's more where the same come from.  He's only got
+to arst for it."
+
+Salvation Joe marched away to report to the Manager.
+
+"And went on after I'd spoken," he said.  "Saucy with it too."
+
+Christmas was over; Easter some weeks away; things were very slack.
+
+The Manager was a thick young German with wavy black hair parted in the
+middle.  He now sent for Ernie.
+
+"You can go at the end of your month," he said.  "I'm sick of it."
+
+"You ain't the only one," retorted Ernie.  "I'll go now."
+
+"Then you'll go without your wages," replied the Manager.
+
+Ernie went upstairs to his dormitory, dressed, gathered his few
+belongings, and came downstairs deliberately and with dignity.
+
+He felt exalted.
+
+Salvation Joe met him with a sardonic smile.
+
+"What, reelly goin?" he asked.
+
+Ernie experienced quite suddenly an immeasurable superiority to the
+head-porter.
+
+"I am, Mr. Conklin."
+
+"Without your wages?"
+
+"I'll leave them to you, Mr. Conklin," said Ernie quietly.  "They're
+the wages of sin.  This place is a brothel.  And your Christ is my
+Devil."
+
+Leisurely, with a certain joy in his heart, and his bundle in his hand,
+he crossed the road to the Redoubt and climbed the motor-bus for Old
+Town.
+
+As he did so the memory of a like journey with a companion at his side
+was strong upon him.
+
+Somehow he had a feeling that Ruth would be on the top, awaiting him.
+
+Standing on the steps he peeped warily.
+
+She was not there; and his heart, that had been soaring, crashed to
+earth.
+
+Then he climbed up into the bleak unsympathetic sky.  All around him
+were benches empty, ugly, comfortless.  And looking back, he was aware
+of Salvation Joe standing with arms folded across his scarlet paunch,
+eructating on the steps of the Hotel.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI
+
+THE QUEST
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+OLD MUS BOAM
+
+Ernie was not adventurous except where his heart was concerned.
+
+He had the homing tendency of the affectionate nature.
+
+When he left the Hohenzollern Hotel in Sea-gate he made straight as a
+bird for Old Town.  But he did not go to Rectory Walk.  He was out of
+work now, at the slack season of the year, too.  He knew very well what
+his brother Alf's attitude towards him would be, and was by no means
+certain of his mother's: for she, too, worshipped success and
+efficiency in all men but the one dependent on her.
+
+Therefore he went to an old school-fellow of his, married now, and
+established in the Moot at the back of the _Star_, and made
+arrangements to lodge with him.
+
+His immediate future was secure, for he still had a pound or two in
+hand.  And long ago he had adopted the outlook on life of the class
+which had absorbed him--an outlook natural to them, because inevitable,
+and acquired by him--the outlook that sees To-day but shuts its eyes to
+save itself from To-morrow.
+
+Old Town is small and has long ears.  It was soon known that Ernie
+Caspar was "out," and the cause of his dismissal was discussed by all
+and hinted at by not a few.
+
+Alf, sitting behind his wheel at Mr. Trupp's door, was one of the first
+to note his brother hanging about the street-corner.
+
+He reported the fact to his mother.
+
+"He's back on us," he said briefly.
+
+"Who is?"
+
+"Ernie."  He laughed bitterly as he chewed his cigarette.  "Lost his
+job again and turned corner-boy.  Takes his stand opposite the _Star_
+so everybody may know he's my brother."
+
+Mrs. Caspar banged the pans upon the range.
+
+"Why's he lost his job?" violently.
+
+Alf lifted his hand to his mouth.
+
+His mother eyed him, and Alf felt criticism in her stare.
+
+"I see Joe Conklin, the head-porter at the Hotel," he said.  "They give
+him one or two chances.  But it was all no good.  Never is with that
+sort."
+
+Anne Caspar looked at him sharply.
+
+"Are you tellin the tale, Alfred?"
+
+Her son looked up fiercely.
+
+"Why ain't he come home then?--Answer that."
+
+"He did come home Saturday same as usual to take dad a walk."
+
+"That's his cunning--to bluff you he wasn't out," jeered Alf.  "He's
+lodging in Borough Lane.  Has been ten days past.  Mrs. Ticehurt told
+the Reverend Spink.  If he done nothing he ain't ashamed of, why not
+come home?"
+
+To do her justice, Anne Caspar was convinced against her will; but
+subsequent cogitation caused her to accept Alfred's story as true.
+
+She felt that Ernie had deceived her.  Why had he not told her that he
+was out when he came as usual on Saturday for his dad?
+
+Yet in reality the answer was very simple.  It was that Ernie chose to
+keep his troubles to himself.
+
+Thereafter mother and son, by tacit consent, avoided each other in the
+steep streets of Old Town; and when Ernie called next Saturday he found
+the kitchen-door locked against him.
+
+He was not surprised, nor indeed greatly grieved.  His heart was high
+and very steady as he turned into his father's study.  The winter had
+tried the old man, who was no longer now able to take the hill as
+formerly.  Instead the pair dawdled along to Beech-hangar; and there,
+sitting among the tree-roots, under the fine web of winter beech-twigs,
+Ernie told his father the essential fact about his love.
+
+"I've lost her, dad," he said in his simple way.
+
+The old man's blue eyes, that seemed to brighten as his body dulled,
+shone on him mysteriously.
+
+"Feel for her," he said, reaching out his hands like a blind man.
+"You'll find her."  He added after a pause.  "I don't think she's far."
+
+Ernie chewed a grass-blade.
+
+"I shall find her," he said with quiet confidence, "because my heart
+ain't fell down--and won't."
+
+The old man was still blind and feeling.
+
+"Spin," he said.  "Then pounce."
+
+Ernie nodded.
+
+"That's it, and sooner or later my fly'll fall into the web."
+
+"It must," said the other, "if you keep on spinning till you cover the
+uttermost parts of heaven and earth."
+
+
+His father's words, as always, made a deep impression on Ernie's
+suggestible mind.
+
+Ruth was not far: dad had said so; and dad knew.
+
+Next day was Sunday.  He determined to walk over the hill to
+Aldwoldston to see what he could find.
+
+True, Madame at the Hotel had told him that the girl had not gone home;
+but did Madame know?
+
+He started early, passed Moot Farm, where the turkey-cocks, stately and
+with spreading tails, played that they were peacocks, and disdained him
+for a vulgar fellow in spite of old acquaintance.
+
+It was February, and the beeches in the coombe at the back of Ratton
+Hall had not yet begun to warm and colour with the rising sap.  The
+feel of the turf beneath his feet, the glimpse of shrouded waters
+beyond the Seven Sisters, uplifted and inspired him as of old.
+
+He could conquer; he could find.
+
+Descending the long slope into Cuckmere, he crossed the road at the
+racing-stables, took the hill again, and marched along, his head in the
+sky, and a song on his lips, to greet that of the lark pouring down on
+him from the unbroken dimness of the heavens.
+
+It was still early as he dropped down the bare bleak flank of
+Wind-hover, scrawled upon with gorse; and came over the cultivated
+foot-hills into the valley, bright with brooks and the narrow Ruther
+that winds like a silver slug down the green-way towards the sea.
+
+He crossed the stream by a white hand-bridge, passed along an upraised
+path under an avenue of willows, across the open field called Parson's
+Tye; up the narrow chapel-lane between back-gardens and high walls,
+into Aldwoldston High Street, curling narrow as a defile between
+crowding houses, yellow-washed, brown-timbered, amber-tiled.
+
+Conspicuous by its air of age and dignity stood out the _Lamb_, swarthy
+as the smugglers who once haunted it; a mass of black timber won,
+perhaps, from high-beaked galleons in Elizabethan days, with small
+projecting upper windows through the leaded panes of which eyes watched
+the street of old, while ears strained for the clatter of the hoofs of
+tub-laden pack-horses hard-driven from the Haven in the darks.  A roof
+of Horsham slats bowed it to earth; while a huge red ship's
+figure-head, scarred and hideous as an ogre, propped with its dreadful
+bulk the corner of the street as it had done for the hundred and fifty
+years since the vessel of which it was the guardian and the god had
+been lured to destruction against the ghastly wall of the Seven
+Sisters.  And the carvings, quaint and coloured, on the centre-board
+reminded Ernie that his father, when once of old their rambles had
+taken them thus far, had told him that the inn had been in days gone by
+a sanctuary under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle and the next
+house of call after the _Star_ at Beachbourne for pilgrims on their way
+from Pevensey to visit the shrine and relics of holy St.
+Richard-de-la-Wych at Chichester.
+
+Just beyond the _Lamb_ in the little market-square, filled almost by a
+solitary chestnut-tree, stood the Cross.
+
+Around it, their backs against the brick pediment, gathered the village
+worthies as they and their fathers had gathered at that hour, under
+those skies, amid those hills, on Sabbath mornings for centuries
+innumerable.  Standing round the four sides of it, men all, in Sunday
+negligé and easy attitudes, buttressing the Cross, they smoked and
+chewed and spat and ruminated.  On the fringe of the centre-piece were
+groups of youths and boys, silent as their elders and as absorbed,
+whose age and worth did not yet entitle them to a place among the
+buttresses.  No women or girls joined the sacred circle.  These stood
+in the doors of their houses round the square, or sat on their
+doorsteps, or peeped through the low latticed windows of the
+_Smugglers' House_ at their masters expectorating round the Cross.
+
+But for a little white terrier, curled on the pediment at his owner's
+back, who bit his flank with furious zeal, Ernie could have believed
+that here was a group of rustic statuary set up appropriately to embody
+the spirit of the place.
+
+A twinkle lurking in his eyes, he asked the most ancient of the
+buttresses the way to Mr. Boam's cottage.
+
+Very slowly the group stirred to life with grunts, groans, and a
+shuffling of feet.
+
+Then the ancient one removed his pipe, and, after a preliminary
+exercise, spoke.
+
+"Old Mus Boam, t' chapel-maaster," he said.  "Down River Lane yarnder.
+Frogs' Hall in t' Brooks.  I expagt yo'll find he a-settin on his
+bricks.  Most generally doos o Sunday.  For why?  Ca'an't get no
+furderer dese day, I rack'n.  Ate up with rheumatiz, he am.  Ca'an't
+goo to Chapel.  So Chapel has to goo to he!--he!--he!----"  A jest
+clearly almost as old as the toothless one who made it.
+
+Ernie dropped down River Lane into the valley again.  Just behind the
+willows at the foot of the lane stood a yellow-washed cottage, with a
+high-pitched roof like a truncated spire.
+
+Sheltering the door from the sea-winds was a fine bay-tree, and in
+front of the house a little space of bricks on which sat an old man
+looking out across the stream towards Wind-hover's bare dun flank, pale
+in the wintry sun.
+
+He, too, seemed pale and wintry, sitting there, one big hand on his
+ash-stick: a beautiful old fellow, very tall and sparse, his ruffled
+beard curling stubbornly up from beneath his chin towards the long
+shaven upper lip that added severity to his natural dignity.
+
+There was no question where Ruth got her stature or her bearing from,
+if her colouring was all her own.
+
+Ernie felt awkward in the presence of the still old man, but he
+introduced himself shyly as one who had been in service with Ruth at
+the Hotel.
+
+Mus Boam eyed him keenly, kindly, but with obvious reserve.
+
+"She'll ha left there now, I expagd," he said briefly, and
+called--"Mother!"
+
+A woman came to the door.  She was big, too, with the warm skin of her
+daughter, and the same distinguished foreign air.  Her hair was
+snow-white, her eye-brows black, her eyes and colouring of the South.
+Surely she was descended from some Spanish adventurer who had made of
+Ruther Haven a base for raids up the valley into the Weald.  But
+England, it was clear, and Sussex in particular, had impressed their
+staid and ponderous selves upon the riotous foreign blood to the
+exclusion of all else.  A gypsy queen, the mother of Madonnas, bred
+among the Baptists and saturated with their faith, there was about her
+the same atmosphere of large and quiet strength that characterized her
+man.  And Ernie could well understand that the pair had taught chapel,
+as Ruth had once told him, for thirty years in the building at the back.
+
+Mrs. Boam stood in the door and looked at the visitor.
+
+He noticed at once about her the same cloud of reserve that he had
+remarked in her husband.
+
+She was clearly too well-bred to show hostility, but equally clearly
+she was exercising restraint.
+
+"She'll ha gone into service," she said in deep and humming voice, like
+an echo of her daughter's, but somewhat dulled and flat with wear.
+
+"In Beachbourne?" asked Ernie.
+
+"Of course we doosn't see her as often as we used when she was at the
+Hotel.  D'idn't to be expected, surely," said the mother parrying.
+
+"And it bein winter and all," continued the old man, taking up the
+tale.  "No coaches at this time o year.  And dis a tidy traipse over
+the hill for a maid."  He turned the conversation.  "You'll ha walked,
+Mr., to judge from yer boots." ...
+
+Ernie trudged home over the greasy hills with certain clear impressions
+in his mind.
+
+The old folk were anxious: they did not know where Ruth was: and they
+would not talk.
+
+Was she writing?
+
+Was she still in Beachbourne?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+ERNIE TURNS PHILOSOPHER
+
+Ernie was now steadily ablaze.  His heart was set; his purpose
+resolved; there was no faltering in his faith.  The armour in which his
+spirit was cased revealed no fissures under strain.  He was amazed at
+his own strength, and at the illimitable resources on which he could
+draw at will.
+
+People who saw him at this time, swept by the March winds, haggard and
+pinched at the _Star_ corner, wondered at the flame of determination
+burning in his face.
+
+"He seems always waiting for some one," said Elsie Pigott, who, like
+many another woman, was haunted by his wistful eyes at night.
+
+"Perhaps he is," answered Mrs. Trupp.
+
+It was the slackest season of the year--between Christmas and Easter;
+and there was no work obtainable.  Building was held up by the frosts;
+visitors were sporadic; and in the East-end a strike of engineers in
+the great railway shops had dislocated trade.
+
+Elsie Pigott pleaded with her husband for her favourite; but for once
+she could not tease or taunt the Manager of the Southdown Transport
+Company in acquiescence with her wishes.
+
+"No," he said, sturdily, "if he wants my help he must come and ask for
+it.  Last time I offered him a job he snubbed me brutally.  I've got my
+self-respect same as others."
+
+That evening she came to his door.
+
+"Please, sir," she said, dropping a curtsey, "Mr. Ernest Caspar!--will
+you see him?"
+
+He scowled at her over his _Christian Commonwealth_.
+
+"You've done this," he said.
+
+"No, sir," demurely bobbing.  "He came."
+
+"Show him in."
+
+Ernie entered, shining and unshorn, a tatterdemalion with the face of a
+saint.
+
+The old schoolmaster thought how like his father he was growing: the
+same untidy garden of flesh, the same spirit at work behind the weeds.
+
+"Well," he said, laying down his paper, "I don't see much of you at
+chapel these days."
+
+Ernie smiled.
+
+"I'm in chapel all the time, sir," he said.  "That's what I come about.
+I wanted you to know."  He sat down suddenly.  "You know what you used
+to tell me about prayer when I was a nipper.  _Ask, and it shall be
+given you_, and that."  He leaned forward.  "That's true--every word of
+it.  You can have what you want for the askin--if you'll wait.  Now I
+want something; and I shall get it in time, because I'll be faithful."
+
+Mr. Pigott looked into the rapt eager eyes of the scare-crow opposite
+him.
+
+For some reason he felt humiliated, even afraid; and, man-like, he
+concealed his qualms behind an added gruffness.
+
+"Your father's been talking to you," he said.
+
+"Ah," said Ernie.  "But I been talking to myself, too.  No one else
+can't teach you, only yourself."  He began to expound his philosophy
+with tapping finger in the half-hushed voice of the priest revealing
+the mysteries of life and death to the neophyte.  "See there's two
+minds in Man," he began.  "There's the Big Mind and the Little One.
+The Big Mind's like a Great Dream--it's beautiful, like clouds, but it
+can't do much by itself: the Little Mind's like a tintack, sharp and to
+the point.  Now Alf's got the one kind of Mind, and me and Dad the
+other.  This here Little Mind helps you to get on: it thinks it's on
+its own, being conceited.  But the Big Mind behind does the real work."
+His eyes burned.  He spoke with a solemnity, a conviction that was
+overwhelming.
+
+Mr. Pigott was awed in spite of himself.
+
+"The Little Mind's clever like Alf.  And the Big Mind's wise like your
+father.  That's it, is it?" he said lamely.
+
+Ernie nodded.
+
+"And what about Mr. Trupp?" the other inquired.
+
+"Ah," said Ernie, with enthusiasm, "he's a great man, Mr. Trupp is.  He
+lives by both Minds--as a full man should.  He don't neglect neether.
+They're meant to work together.  Ye see the Little Mind should be like
+a lantern for the Big Mind to work with--like a miner's lamp in the pit
+like.  It's got no real life of its own--only what the miner chooses to
+give it.  Most folks neglect one or the other.  Dad and me neglect the
+Little Mind--so we don't do much; but we aren't afraid of nothin.  Alf,
+now, he neglects the Big; so he's in fear of his life always, and good
+cause why, too.  For he lives by the Little Mind.  And sooner or later
+the Little Mind'll go out snuff.  And then where'll Alf be?"
+
+Elsie Pigott, in an apron, stood in the door.
+
+"We're discussing prayer," her husband informed her.
+
+"Indeed," said the lady.  "And now you'll discuss a plate of beef.  At
+least Ernie will."
+
+The starveling rose.
+
+"No, thank you, 'm," he said.
+
+"Aren't you hungry then?" asked the young woman.
+
+"Not as I'm aware of," laughed Ernie.
+
+"Nonsense," the other answered, "you can live by the Spirit, but not on
+it."  And she took him firmly by the arm and led him into the kitchen.
+
+Her guest established, she returned to her husband.
+
+"Have you found him a job, Samuel Pigott?" she asked.
+
+"I have not, Elsie Pigott.  Nor has he asked me for one."
+
+"Mr. Pigott," his wife retorted, "if you were not twenty years my
+senior I should call you the beast you undoubtedly are."
+
+All the same, when his wife had gone to bed that night, Mr. Pigott rang
+up the Hohenzollern Hotel and asked the Manager why Ernie had been
+dismissed.
+
+"Got fighting drunk," replied the Manager.  "He'd been warned before."
+
+After that Mr. Pigott set his face like a flint.
+
+"It's now or never," he admitted to Mr. Trupp, and added reluctantly,
+"There may be something in your Big Stick sometimes, after all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+ALF TRIES TO HELP
+
+Ernie was now in a bad way materially.
+
+He became seedy and slipshod, with hollow eyes, and clothes that hung
+loosely upon his diminishing frame.
+
+Alf resented his presence and appearance as a personal injury.
+
+"Does it to spite me, it's my belief," he told his mother furiously.
+"Always at the _Star_ corner lookin like a scare-crow and askin for
+pity.  A fair disgrace on the family.  Of course all the folks want to
+know why I don't help him.  What's the good of helping him?  He's the
+sort the more you help the less he'll help himself.  Help him downhill,
+as Reverend Spink says."
+
+The thing became a scandal locally, and Anne Caspar shared something of
+the feeling of her younger son.
+
+If Ern must starve, why do it at her door?
+
+Happily her husband was, as always, blind to what was going on beneath
+his nose; and so long as he was not disturbed Anne could stifle any
+pangs of conscience that might trouble her.
+
+Alf, on the other hand, had no pangs to stifle: for to the hardness of
+the egoist he added the mercilessness of the degenerate.  His mental
+attitude towards the weak was that of the lower animals towards the
+wounded of their kind.  He wanted them out of the way.  Indeed, but for
+his ever-present sense of the Man in Blue at the corner of the street
+he would have dealt with Ernie, dragging a broken wing, as the maimed
+rook is dealt with by its mates.
+
+He eased himself, however, and took characteristic revenge on his
+brother for the spiritual wrongs that the needy can inflict upon the
+prosperous by direct action.
+
+At a meeting of the Church of England Men's Society in Old Town, he
+asked in laboured words and with obvious emotion for the prayers of
+those present for "a dear one who had gone astrye"; squeezing his eyes
+and contorting his features in a fashion that led certain ladies of the
+congregation of St. Michael to whisper among themselves that Mr. Caspar
+was a very earnest young man.
+
+Even in the C.E.M.S. Alf had few friends and some enemies; and Ernie
+heard from one of these--whom a sense of duty had compelled to
+speak--what had passed at the meeting in the Church-room.
+
+Ernie accordingly stopped his brother in the street next day.  He
+looked white and dangerous.  Alf knew that look and halted.  His heart,
+too, brought up with a jolt, and then began to patter furiously.
+
+"What's all this, then?" began Ernie, breathing heavily through his
+nose.
+
+"What's what?"
+
+"At the Men's Society last night.  Can't do nothing to help your
+brother...."
+
+Alf held up a deprecatory hand.
+
+"You don't know what you're talkin about, Ernest," he said solemnly.
+"I'm doin more for you nor what you know."
+
+Ernie came closer.  There was in his eyes a surprising flash and
+glitter as of steel suddenly unsheathed; and he was kneading his hands.
+Ern's "punch" had been famous in certain circles in Old Town long
+before he went into the Army.
+
+Now Alf had a spot upon his soul.  He, too, possessed a weakness of a
+sort that Civilization in its kindest mood covers except in times of
+extraordinary and brutal stress.
+
+"I know _just_ what you're doing for me, Alf," said Ernie quietly.
+"Let's have no more of it, see, or I'll bloody well bash you!"
+
+There was no question that Ernie meant what he said.  Easy-going though
+he was, all his life he had been subject to these sudden eruptions
+which flooded the sunny and somnolent landscape with white-hot lava; as
+his brother knew to his cost of old.
+
+Alf put his hand up as though he had been already bashed.
+
+"Ow!" he gasped, "Ow!" and passed on swiftly.
+
+That evening he went, as was very proper, to see and consult his
+spiritual director.
+
+
+The origin of the Reverend Spink was known to few.  He was in reality
+the son of a Nonconformist grocer in the North, and had been educated
+with a view to the ministry.  His mother had been a governess, a fact
+of which her son at the outset of his career was perhaps unduly proud;
+though later in life, when referring to it, he would say with quite
+unnecessary ferocity, "And I'm not ashamed of it, eether."
+
+After his father's death the superior attraction of what his mother
+truly called "the church of the gentry" seduced him from his old-time
+allegiance.  With the aid of the local Bishop he was sent to a
+Theological College, and shortly received what he was fond of naming in
+militarist moments, "a commission" in the Established Church.
+
+He did not like his brother-curates to have been public-schoolmen, and,
+when asked, would say that he himself had been educated privately.  The
+Archdeacon, who was not jealous of him, spoke of him to those of his
+staff he considered on his own social level as "dear brother Spink."
+On the rare occasions when the Lady Augusta Willcocks asked him to
+supper, he oiled his hair before the great event and prayed fervently
+for guidance at his bed-side.
+
+He was a small man, plump and rather puffy, who wore pince-nez, was
+spruce in his person, and walked about in a brisk, rather bustling way,
+as though he could not afford to lose a minute if all the souls waiting
+for him to save them were to be gathered in.
+
+He and Alf were of much the same class if of somewhat different
+calibre.  It was, indeed, from a close observation and imitation of the
+facial activities of the Reverend Spink at devotion that Alf had been
+enabled to win the benedictions of the virgins of St. Michael's.
+
+Alf now called on his friend and pitched his tale.
+
+"Past ope," he said lugubriously.  "I'm sorry to say it of any man, let
+alone me own blood brother.  But it's my true belief all the same."
+
+"To man, my dear friend," said the Reverend Spink, rising heavenward on
+his toes with a splendid smile, "much is impossible.  Not so to Go-urd."
+
+Alf looked into the fire very religiously.  Then he nodded his head and
+said after an impressive pause,
+
+"I believe you, sir."  He lifted his face with a frankness the curate
+thought beautiful.  "Of course I ain't told you all I know about our
+Ern," he said.  "After all, he _is_ me own brother.  And, as I often
+says, blood is thickerer nor what water is."
+
+It was some months later that Alf swaggered into his mother's kitchen
+late one night.
+
+The knowing look upon his face was mingled with one of obvious relief.
+
+He sat down before the fire and smiled secretively.  Once he sighed,
+and then chuckled till his mother's attention was attracted.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+Alf nodded his great head.
+
+"Ah," he said.  "He'll be easier now, you'll see.  That's all.  _She's_
+left."
+
+His mother, who was stirring something in a saucepan, looked up.
+
+"Who's left?"
+
+"Her Ern got into trouble with."
+
+Anne Caspar ceased to stir.
+
+"What's that?" she asked sharply.
+
+Alf smirked as he stared into the fire.
+
+"One of the flash-girls from the Hotel.  I see her off to-day for Mr.
+Trupp."
+
+Anne Caspar was breathing deep.
+
+"Was Mr. Trupp seeing to her?"
+
+"That's it," said Alf.  "Sea View.  You know."
+
+Yes, Anne Caspar knew all about Sea View.
+
+"Was that why Ernie left the Hotel?" she asked at last, white as a
+sword.
+
+"Ah," said Alf, significantly.  "It was one why, I reck'n."
+
+Anne Caspar was not critical nor logical nor even just.
+
+Next Saturday, when Ern called to take his father out, his mother met
+him with terrible hostility.
+
+"She won't come on you now," she said with a white sneer.  "You needn't
+worry no more."
+
+Ernie was taken aback.
+
+"Who won't come on me?" he asked.
+
+"That girl you got into trouble."
+
+Ern turned ghastly.  His mother's eyes held his face with cruel
+tenacity, although she was trembling.
+
+"She's gone away to London," Anne continued,--"with her child."
+
+Ernie threw back his head with a little hoary smile.
+
+"Ah," he said, "Alf," and went out slowly.
+
+His mother's voice pursued him, dreadful in its caressing cruelty.
+
+"I shan't tell dad," she said.
+
+It was not often Ernie drew his sword.  Now he knew no mercy.
+
+"You can," he retorted.  "He won't believe you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+TWO MEETINGS
+
+After thirty years of following the wagon, Colonel Lewknor and his wife
+had returned home from India on a pittance of a pension.
+
+There was a grandson now, and that grandson had to be sent to Eton like
+his father and his grandfather before him.  Mrs. Lewknor was determined
+upon that.  But the grandson's father was only a Captain in the Indian
+Army; ways and means had to be found; and openings are not many in
+modern life for a retired couple on the wrong side of fifty.
+
+Then the Colonel's health became uncertain, and he was sent down to
+Trupp of Beachbourne.
+
+While there Mrs. Lewknor caught influenza, and Mr. Trupp attended both.
+
+A delightful intimacy sprang up between the three.  The Colonel's
+sardonic humour and detached outlook upon life appealed to the great
+surgeon almost as much as did Mrs. Lewknor's experience and width of
+view to his wife.
+
+Mr. Trupp attended his patients once a day for a fortnight.
+
+When he paid his last visit, Mrs. Lewknor thanked him and asked him for
+his account.
+
+"I'll see," answered Mr. Trupp.  "What are you going to do when you
+leave here?"
+
+"Go back to London and look out for a job, I suppose."
+
+Mr. Trupp shook his head.
+
+"The Colonel mustn't go back to London," he said.  "Why not stay here
+and find your job here?"
+
+He expounded his pet plan, cherished faithfully for years, of an
+Open-Air Hostel for his tuberculous patients.
+
+"There's a site available in Coombe-in-the-Cliff," he said, "just at
+the back.  Build a Home.  I'll fill it for you.  You'll make a lot of
+money."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor was thrilled at the project.  It was at least a great
+adventure; and, coming of the lion-hearted race that conquered Canaan,
+she had no fears.
+
+The Colonel, it is true, was more tempered in his enthusiasm, but then,
+as he was fond of saying,
+
+"I haven't the courage of a louse.  No man has."
+
+And he was content to stand aside, as often before, and watch his
+wife's audacities with admiration not untinged with irony.
+
+She took a tiny house in Holywell for herself and her husband, set out
+to raise money with which to buy the site in Coombe-in-the-Cliff, and
+sat down in earnest to work out the scheme in co-operation with the
+inspirer of it.
+
+Her visits to Old Town to consult Mr. Trupp were almost daily.  In fine
+weather she would walk across the Golf Links; and when the turf was
+like a soaped sponge she would go round by the road through
+Beech-hangar.
+
+Here one bitter April afternoon she marked a tall bowed old man walking
+dreamily under the beech-trees, the light falling through the fine
+net-work of twigs on his uplifted face.  His hands were behind him, and
+he wore an old-fashioned roomy tail-coat.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor's swift feminine eyes took him in at a glance.
+
+He was a gentleman; he lived out of the world; and there was somebody
+at home who cared for him: for it was clear that he was not the kind of
+man who would care for himself.
+
+As she drew near, she glanced away, and yet confirmed her impression
+with that trick of the well-bred woman who somehow sees without looking.
+
+Then, as she passed him, a wave of recognition overwhelmed her, and she
+stopped suddenly.
+
+"Mr. Edward Caspar!" she cried.
+
+He, too, had half turned.
+
+"I was wondering if you'd remember me," he rumbled, beaming kindly down
+on the little lady through gold-rimmed spectacles.  "You still walk as
+if you were dancing."
+
+"Who am I?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," he answered.  "Thirty years ago you were Rachel
+Solomons."
+
+The profound spiritual affinity which had made itself felt in that
+unforgettable moment under the palms in Grosvenor Square long ago
+manifested itself instantly.
+
+Time was not.  Only two spirits were, who recognized the familiar beat
+of each other's wings in the dark spaces of Eternity.
+
+She regarded him affectionately.
+
+"How's it gone?" she asked.
+
+"Not so bad, I suppose," he mused.  "Better than I expected, if worse
+than I hoped.  I'm dreaming still instead of doing."
+
+"Any big things in your life?"
+
+"One."
+
+"A woman?" fearlessly.
+
+"No.  My son.  And he was taken from me--for ever, I thought at the
+time.  And after that I made the Discovery."
+
+The little lady nodded.
+
+"It's worth making," she said.
+
+"Yes," replied the old man with the sudden leaping enthusiasm she
+remembered so well of old, and the same spreading flush, "and you don't
+make it till you've lost everything.  That's the condition."
+
+He had turned and was rambling along at her side, as if he had belonged
+to her for the thirty years in which they had not met.
+
+They walked together thus down the New Road, along Rectory Walk, and
+turned into Church Street.
+
+Anne Caspar from the bedroom-window saw them pass and wondered.
+
+They were not talking: Anne was glad of that.  Her Ned was ambling
+along, apparently unaware of the little lady, strong as she was fine,
+walking at his side.
+
+The pair turned down the hill at Billing's Corner.
+
+It was afternoon, and the street was almost empty save for a shabby man
+walking up the hill towards them from the _Star_.
+
+They did not see him, absorbed more in themselves than in each other;
+but he saw them and stepped into the porch of the parish-church as
+though to avoid them.
+
+Just opposite the porch Edward Caspar came to himself and said good-bye
+with grunts.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor looked after his heavy figure toiling laboriously up the
+hill.
+
+Then her eyes caught the eyes peeping at her from the porch--eyes that
+possessed the same wistful quality as those of the man who had just
+left her side: eyes somehow familiar that were smiling at her.
+
+"Why, Caspar!" she cried, and crossed the road.
+
+The man left the beam against which he was leaning, and came towards
+her suddenly.  There was a curious wan smile upon his face.  He
+lurched, held out his hand like a child for help, and fell his length
+in the road.
+
+A man from the iron-monger's shop opposite came out.
+
+"He's out of work," he said.  "He's half-starved.  There's a lot the
+same.  Funny world."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor was horrified.
+
+"Take him into the porch," she cried, "out of the road.  He'll be run
+over here."
+
+"No, not into the church!" came an authoritative voice.  "I know the
+man.  The church is a sacred edifice."
+
+It was the Archdeacon.  He bent his somewhat dandiacal figure
+elaborately, put his nose close to Ernie's lips, and sniffed
+deliberately.
+
+"No, sir, it's not that," said the iron-monger shortly.  "It's food he
+wants."
+
+"Ah," said the Archdeacon, rising in gaitered majesty, his painful duty
+done.  "I'm glad to heah it."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor was trembling with fury.
+
+Ernie, on his back in the mud, stirred and opened his eyes.
+
+He saw wavering faces all about him.
+
+"Guess I'm all right now," he said.
+
+"Give him air!" ordered the Archdeacon magnificently.  "Ayah, I say!"
+and he made a sweeping gesture with his arm to brush away the crowd who
+were not there.
+
+"He's had plenty of air," retorted Mrs. Lewknor with the curt brutality
+that distinguished her on rare occasions.  "What he wants is something
+more solid than he gets from the pulpit."
+
+The Archdeacon eyed her _de-haut-en-bas_.  From his undergraduate days
+he had believed implicitly in the power of his eye to master and
+demoralize his enemies and those of his Church, and the Lady Augusta
+Willcocks had loyally fostered his belief.
+
+Now, however, his antagonist refused to be demoralized.
+
+He saw that she was a lady, suspected that she might be "somebody," and
+with that fine flair for the things of this world which characterize
+the successful of his profession, he retired on gaitered legs with a
+somewhat theatrical dignity.
+
+Ernie was helped to his feet.
+
+A car, coming slowly down the hill, ground to a halt.
+
+Mr. Trupp leaned out and took in the scene.
+
+"Ernie, get up alongside your brother, will you?" he said.  "Mrs.
+Lewknor!"
+
+The car rolled on its way with its two new occupants.
+
+"He don't want me," muttered Mr. Trupp in his companion's ear.  "He
+wants my cook."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, still seething, recorded the incident.
+
+"The Church is the limit," she snapped.  "I could have pushed that man
+over in the mud."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Trupp soothingly.  "But you mustn't take the Church too
+seriously.  The right way to look on it is as rather a bad joke."
+
+
+That evening, after his coffee, Mr. Trupp laid down his evening paper
+and stared long into the fire as his manner was.
+
+His wife and daughter waited for the word that was slowly brewing.
+
+It came in time.
+
+"Men grow when they've got to," he announced at last with humorous
+sententiousness.
+
+"They can't grow much without food," said Bess with warmth.  The
+incident of the afternoon had stirred her generous young soul to the
+deeps.  "It's monstrous!"
+
+"It is," her father agreed.  "And it's all because Civilization has
+thrown up a class that's above the Discipline it imposes upon others."
+
+Mrs. Trupp eyed her husband sternly.
+
+"William Trupp!" she said, "I believe you're a Socialist."
+
+"My dear," he answered, "I've been told that before."
+
+"Bess and I don't want to hear your viewy views," continued the lady.
+"We want to talk about flesh-and-blood Ernie and how to help him."
+
+"Hear! hear!" said Bess.
+
+"My dears," replied the annoying man, "it's just Ernie I'm talking
+about.  He's growing again.  My old friend Necessity's at work on him
+once more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+ALF MARKS TIME
+
+The scene outside the parish-church in Old Town, when Mrs. Lewknor
+challenged the Archdeacon, marked the turn in Ernie's material fortunes.
+
+The Reverend Spink handed on his version of the affair to Mr. Pigott at
+the Relief Committee that evening.
+
+"He was laying on his face in the road _dead_ drunk opposite the
+church-door when his brother picked him up," he reported, round-eyed
+and spectacled.  "His poor, _poor_ people!"
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Pigott, "was he?--I know where you got that story from."
+
+The curate tried to be rude in his turn, but he was not so good at it
+as the more experienced man.
+
+"Such a place to choose!" he continued, turning to Colonel Lewknor.
+"Opposite the church-door!  Just like him!"
+
+"Such a place, indeed!" echoed the Colonel, quiet and courteous.
+"What's the good of lying down to die of starvation at the door of the
+_Church_ of all places?  Will she open to you?"
+
+Mr. Pigott disliked the Reverend Spink almost as much as he disliked
+the curate's protégé.  Next day the contrary man sent for Ernie and
+offered him a job as lorry-man in the Transport Company.
+
+"I know you and you know me," he said in his most aggressive manner.
+"So it's no good telling a pack o lies to each other that I can see.
+Start at twenty-three a week, with chances of a rise if you keep at it
+steady.  Begin Monday....  And it's your last chance, mind!"
+
+Ernie ignored the insults and leapt at the offer.
+
+The Southdown Transport Company ran motor-lorries between Newhaven and
+Beachbourne, carrying seaborne coal and other merchandise from the
+harbour on the Ouse to the town under Beau-nez.
+
+Ernie liked the work.
+
+It kept him out of doors, under the sky, and in touch with the
+old-world elemental things he loved.  The breath and bustle of the
+harbour at Newhaven; the long ride on the motor-lorry through the
+hill-country at all seasons of the year; even the pleasant acrid smell
+of the coal and coke in the lorry and on his overalls was pleasant and
+satisfying to him.
+
+He worked steadily, paid his debts, and for the first time in his life
+began gradually to save money.
+
+That autumn his father asked him if he wouldn't return home to live.
+
+"Alfred's left us," said the old man.
+
+"Has he?" asked Ernie surprised.  "Where's he gone then?"
+
+"He's gone to live above his garage," replied the other.  "Something's
+happening to Alfred," he added.  "I don't know what."
+
+Alf, in fact, was changing; and Mr. Trupp was watching the evolution of
+his chauffeur with a detached scientific interest that his wife defined
+as inhuman.
+
+And that evolution was proceeding apace.  Alf was living alone above
+his garage; he had introduced a girl into his office; and he was no
+longer getting on.
+
+Mr. Trupp noted the last as far the most significant symptom of the
+three.
+
+Alf had climbed in his career to a certain point, and there he stuck
+fast.  His business neither went ahead nor back.  He was still doing
+well and saving money.  The wonder was that he was not doing better.
+
+But the reason was clear enough to the penetrating eye of the old
+surgeon, to whom his chauffeur was an absorbing study in mental
+pathology: Alf was no more a man of one idea; his energies were no
+longer concentrated solely on getting on to the exclusion of all else.
+The emotional side of him, battered down from infancy, was revenging
+itself at last.  Desperately it was seeking an outlet, no matter how
+perverted: certainly it would find one.
+
+"He's suffering from life-long repression," the Doctor told his wife.
+"Now he's got to find a safety-valve."
+
+In his own mind Mr. Trupp had no doubt as to the form the safety-valve
+would take.
+
+
+About that time Mrs. Trupp, meeting Mr. Pigott in the Moot, asked him
+how his new hand was getting on.
+
+"Working steady as Old Time," replied the other with satisfaction.
+
+"I like the look upon his face," Mrs. Trupp remarked.  "He's always
+expecting."
+
+"Yes," replied the old school-master, "expecting angels--like his
+father."
+
+"Perhaps he'll find them," smiled Mrs. Trupp.
+
+That evening, as it chanced, she met her godson under the elms in
+Saffrons Croft, and stopped him.
+
+It was May now.  The hope illuminating air and sky and every living
+thing was reflected in Ernie's face.  Indeed the young man looked
+inspired.
+
+The two regarded each other affectionately.
+
+"Ernie," said the lady, colouring faintly.
+
+"Yes, 'm."
+
+"Are you still thinking of that girl you told me about?"
+
+The other's face glowed like the moon.
+
+"I never hardly think of nothing else, 'm."
+
+"I knew you were," answered Mrs. Trupp.  She added with a sudden lovely
+smile: "You'll find her--if you're faithful."
+
+"That's what dad keeps on, 'm," Ernie answered.  "And I know I shall
+too.  See, I keep all the while a-drawin her to me."  He made the
+motion of one hauling on a line.  "She can't escape me--not nohows."
+
+He turned on her the earnest eyes of the evangelist, and began to wag
+an impressive finger in the way she loved.
+
+"See, you can draw down what you want--_only you must want it with all
+your heart_.  'Taint no good without that.  Alf, now, he draws down
+money.  For why?--that's what he wants.  Now I want something else."
+
+The lady regarded him with wise shrewd interest.
+
+This New Thought, as the foolish called it, how old it was, how
+universal, how deeply embedded in the primitive consciousness of the
+common man!  Ernie, to be sure, did not read Edward Carpenter nor the
+works of any of that school; but instinct and experience had led him to
+knock at the same door.
+
+"And if Alf wanted something different, too?" she asked.
+
+Ernie shook a sceptical head.
+
+"He wouldn't--not really.  That ain't Alf.  Money's what Alf wants and
+what he gets by consequence.  He's only for himself, Alf is.  If he
+went out a'ter anything else he'd only go half-hearted like, therefore
+he wouldn't get it.  He'd be a house divided against hissalf.  So he'd
+fall."
+
+
+The two brothers now rarely met and never spoke.
+
+Just sometimes Ernie in his grimy overall, sitting with arms crossed
+and sooty face upon a load of coal in the jolting lorry, would be
+passed by Alf at the wheel of his thirty horse-power car, stealing by
+without an effort or a sound, swift as the wind, silent as the tide.
+
+On these occasions Ernie, perched aloft on his load, would detect the
+smirk on his brother's face, and knew that Alf was feeling his own
+superiority and hoping that Ernie felt it too.
+
+In those days Ernie learned to know the corner of England in the
+triangle between Lewes, the Seven Sisters, and Beau-nez as he had never
+known it before.  And the closer grew his intimacy the greater became
+his love.
+
+The quiet, the strength, the noble rounded comeliness of the hills
+reminded him of the woman he sought.  True, she disturbed him, present
+or absent; while they, in act or retrospect, comforted.  But their full
+round breasts, rising clean and clear before him, stubble-crowned,
+green, purple, or golden against the blue, gave him a sense of earth
+rooted in the immensity of spirit and washed by the winds of heaven as
+did nothing else he knew but the woman he had lost.
+
+"Wish I were a poet," he sometimes said to his father.  "To put it all
+down what I feel, so others could see it too."
+
+"Perhaps you are," his father replied.
+
+And certainly if to be a poet is to love the familiar objects of the
+road, a poet Ernie was: for he loved them all--Lewes with its narrow
+streets, its steep hill to which you cling like a fly on a pane and
+look across to Mount Caburn for help; the old _Pelham Arms_, its
+walnut-tree at the back, the _Fox_, the _Barley Mow_, the _Newmarket_
+on the Brighton road; the hills running down in glorious nakedness to
+the highway, the tanned harvesters sitting among their sheaves; peeps
+of the blue Weald islanded with woods; and always accompanying him the
+long wall of the Downs, gloomy or gleaming, here smooth as the flanks
+of a race-horse, there scarred, grim, weather-worn and pocked, in
+winter dazzling white beneath the blue, ruddy in autumn sunsets,
+emerald in April days; and all the year gathering the shadows at
+evening in the Northward coombes to spill them over the expectant Weald
+like purple wine when the door of night had closed upon the sun.
+
+The lorries to and from Newhaven always took their way through the
+valley of the Ruther.  Once or twice in that winter, as they bumped
+down High'nd Over from Sea-foord into Aldwoldston at evening, Ernie was
+surprised to find the chocolate-bodied car lying apparently derelict in
+the roadway at the steep entrance to the village; and wondered if the
+surviving Miss Caryll who still lived in the Dowerhouse at the foot of
+the hill was ill.
+
+And again one evening in the spring, as he jolted through the
+village-street, past the great chestnut lit with a thousand tapers in
+the market-square, he was aware of a man on a motor-bicycle pelting
+past him up the hill.  The man wore motor-goggles; but there was no
+mistaking Alf, bowed over his handles, flashing past the _Lamb_, down
+the hill, and out of sight.
+
+What was Alf doing at that hour of the evening on the road to Sea-foord?
+
+
+
+BOOK VII
+
+THE OUTCAST
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+THE CRUMBLES
+
+Nature's punishments of her erring children are slow as they are sure.
+
+If the inexorable Dame cannot forget, neither can she hurry.
+
+Therefore the shock of realization that the wages of sin are death--as
+our fathers used to put it; or that weakness brings its own reward--as
+we should more prosaically say; because it comes gradually to the human
+consciousness, is mercifully numbed.
+
+It was some time before Ruth faced the fact that she was in the toils,
+and that there was no escaping.  When at length the dreadful dream had
+become a reality, and she was forced to acknowledge to herself the life
+she bore within her, it seemed to her for a moment that the worst was
+passed.
+
+On the morrow of the night on which the hidden voice refused longer to
+be hushed, she went away by herself on to the Crumbles: that
+bird-haunted waste of stagnant pools and tussocky shingles which
+stretches along the edge of the Bay to Pevensey.  There at least she
+would be sure of being alone save for a rare creature of the
+Wilderness, snipe or wild duck, hare or slow-winged heron.  Half a mile
+from the great Hotel, rising sepulchre-wise from the surrounding
+desolation, her back to the town, and her face to the sea, she sat down
+on the lonely beach and girdled her knees with her arms.
+
+It was a dull November afternoon.
+
+The remorseless sea crawled like a serpent out of the gloom, curled an
+ugly lip at her as it reared to stare, then softly falling to the
+ground, scudded towards her with a hideous little hiss, to suck her
+down, the victim of its lust.
+
+The dumb sky offered her no help.  There was neither song nor sun.  And
+back in the West, amassed under significant gloom, lay the great camp
+of men, hostile now to her and hers, to which she must yet return.
+
+Sitting thus by the scolding sea, her chin on her knees, she looked the
+situation in the sombre eyes.
+
+It was terrible enough.
+
+She had to pay the price every mothering woman must pay--disfigurement,
+pain, dependency, long-drawn physical disease, and, at the end of all,
+torment and possibly death: and in her case, added to the price Nature
+asks of those women who obey her laws, there was the penalty Man
+demands of those who violate his.
+
+For her, and such as her, there is in Society, as at present organized,
+but one sure way of escape: and that way Ruth was too near to Nature,
+too healthy in mind and body, to contemplate save for a passing moment.
+
+Her eyes travelled down her young figure, shapely yet.
+
+"All right, my darling," she cooed.  "You shan't suffer--not if it were
+ever so."
+
+Her face was to the future.  At whatever cost, she would be true to the
+trust imposed on her unsought.
+
+Indeed, so sane was she and strong, that but for the old couple in the
+little yellow-washed cottage in the valley of the Ruther, who had
+taught Bible-class there for thirty years, she believed her fear would
+have been blotted out by the hope her baby, pushing through the crust
+of her terror like a crocus through the chill wintry earth into
+February sunshine, brought her.
+
+For she recognized with a sob of bitterness that these brooding months,
+when her child, thrusting with tiny hands and inarticulate cries, was
+opening for her the Door of Escape into the Open Country that lies for
+each one of us outside the Prison that is Self, would have been the
+most beautiful in her life, if Humanity had blessed her for the
+sufferings she was enduring on its behalf, if Society had supported and
+pitied her when she had fallen into the trap that it had laid.
+
+As things were, she was an outlaw, who would be stoned alike by men and
+women when it was discovered that an innocent indiscretion, prompted by
+a noble natural impulse, had flung her into the miry pit.
+
+She turned and looked across the flats at her back to the great camp of
+men, crouching for their prey.
+
+The Downs behind seemed to circle it as with a wall of dulled steel,
+making escape impossible; while over in the West was a murky glow as of
+damped-down furnaces, waiting to open their doors and pour down molten
+gloom on the City of the Plain.
+
+Ruth rose up swiftly and returned to the Hotel.
+
+Better even its unsympathetic walls than the naked desolation of the
+waste.
+
+There, however, was no one to whom she could turn.  Ernie was out of
+the question, while Madame had retired, as always at this season of the
+year, to the sister-hotel at Brussels.
+
+Indeed in all Beachbourne with its hundred thousand inhabitants, its
+temples and tabernacles at every street corner, its innumerable
+white-collared priests and ministers, its sacrament-taking women, and
+reform-talking men, was there one soul to whom she could look in her
+distress?
+
+Ruth prayed as she had never prayed before.  Alone in the darkness on
+her knees, redeeming herself and mankind by her tears, she asked that
+the punishment for the mother's sin might not fall upon the child.
+
+"On my head, O Lord, not hers," was the cry of her anguished heart.
+
+Light came to her darkness.
+
+There was one man in Beachbourne in whom she had detected, so she
+believed, the spirit of Love.
+
+That man was Mr. Trupp, who had attended her Miss Caryll till she died.
+
+Taking her courage in her hands one dark January evening, when she
+realized that her time at the Hotel was short, she stood on the steps
+of the Manor-house and rang.
+
+"Why, you're quite a stranger, Ruth!" said the smiling maid.
+
+"Could I see Mr. Trupp?" asked the girl.
+
+"That I'm sure you can."
+
+She was shown into the long consulting-room, and sat down, trembling,
+her eyes upon her knees.
+
+She was staking her all upon a throw.
+
+Mr. Trupp came in.
+
+The young woman dressed in black, simply as a lady, rose.
+
+"Who is it?" asked the surgeon, peering over his pince-nez.
+
+"Ruth Boam, sir," the other answered.  "Miss Caryll."
+
+Mr. Trupp glanced at her.  Then he put his hand upon her shoulder, and
+she knew that she was safe.
+
+"Sit down," he said gently.
+
+This large young creature, who had something of his own Bess about her,
+went straight to his heart in her trouble.
+
+"Ruth," he said gravely.  "May I send Mrs. Trupp to you?"
+
+Ruth sobbed and nodded.
+
+Very slowly Mr. Trupp climbed the stairs to his wife's room.
+
+
+It was some time before Mrs. Trupp joined the girl.
+
+The room was dark, save for one shaded lamp.
+
+The lady came in quietly, dressed for the evening in a damson-coloured
+tea-gown that showed off her gracious beauty and silver hair.  Her face
+was wan and wistful, her bearing noble and full of tender dignity.
+
+The black figure on the chair did not move.
+
+The elder woman took her seat beside the younger and laid her hand upon
+the girl's.
+
+"Ruth," she said at last, in a still voice with a quiver running
+through it.  "I know more than you think.  You loved him, didn't you?"
+
+The broken girl nodded; then shook her head.
+
+"It's not that," she said.  "It's not him.  It's my baby.  I couldn't
+abear she should be born in the Workhouse along of them."
+
+To Mrs. Trupp the Workhouse system had been a nightmare ever since, as
+a young girl, she had first realized its existence and become dimly
+aware of the part it played in our imperial scheme.  She believed that
+the institution which had its local seat in the old Cavalry Barracks at
+the back of Rectory Walk was no worse than others of its kind up and
+down the country.  Sometimes she visited its wards and nurseries with
+her old friend, Edward Caspar, and came away sick at heart and
+oppressed of spirit.  More often, sitting in her garden, she listened
+to his quietly told stories of what he always called "our Cess-pool."
+
+Mrs. Trupp stroked Ruth's hand.
+
+"It shan't," she said, with the fierceness that sometimes surprised her
+friends.  "You must trust us.  Mr. Trupp'll see you through.  But you
+must leave the Hotel at once.  I'm going to send you to a house of mine
+in Sea-gate--now.  I shall telephone for the car."
+
+And half an hour later Ruth was sitting in the chocolate-bodied car
+that once before had carried her into the perilous Unknown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+EVELYN TRUPP
+
+Evelyn Moray had been brought up in the Church; and, like most
+Englishwomen of her class and generation, she had as a girl looked to
+the Church to enable her to realize her ideals.
+
+In her young days she and her neighbour of later life, Edward Caspar,
+had been of the little group of West-end people who had been drawn East
+by the couple who were making St. Jude's, Whitechapel, the home of real
+religion for more than the dwellers in the East-end.  She would
+sometimes give a violin solo at the famous Worship Hour in the church
+off Commercial Street; while Edward Caspar would on rare occasions read
+Browning or Wordsworth there.  The memory of those early days of
+dawning hopes served as a never-present bond between the pair when in
+later years chance caused them to pass their lives side by side in the
+little town on the hill under Beau-nez.  And the religious development
+of each had followed much the same lines.
+
+They had watched the fingers of love light a candle in the darkness of
+the late seventies and the early eighties, and ...
+
+"The candle went out," Edward Caspar would say.  "Candles always do in
+the Church of England."
+
+"Yet the light grows," his companion would answer.
+
+"Assuredly," Edward would agree.  "Everywhere but in the Churches."
+
+Evelyn Moray's disillusionment had begun even before her marriage.  For
+all her innocence she brought a singularly shrewd judgment to bear on
+the affairs of men.  And if as she came to understand the truth, she
+suffered at first the pangs of betrayed love, she was too brave a
+spirit not to face the situation in its entirety.  The noble words of
+the Order of Baptism--_manfully to fight under His banner against sin,
+the world, and the Devil_--applied, she found, to a Church the
+outstanding characteristic of which was that it never fought at all.
+When she was bogged in a quagmire of doubt and despair, fearful of the
+new, more than dissatisfied by the old, Mr. Trupp had come into her
+life.  His sane judgment, his wide experience, and broad philosophy,
+landed her once more on _terra firma_.  In a time before the great
+Exodus from the Temples of Orthodoxy had assumed the proportions that
+we know to-day, she had left their gloomy portals to seek elsewhere
+that simple and direct service of mankind her spirit needed for its
+fulfilment.
+
+Her father's death left her something of an heiress.
+
+Forthwith she started a maternity home in a quiet street in Sea-gate
+for young women of the middle-class who had fallen victims of a Society
+which failed to protect them, to give them opportunity, to supply their
+honest needs.
+
+The conditions of entry to the home were strict; and Mrs. Trupp never
+wilfully departed from them.  Sometimes, it is true, she was taken in;
+often she was disappointed; but she persevered with the tenacity that
+is the inevitable outcome of continuous prayer.
+
+She ran her home very quietly; and Mr. Trupp was, of course, her
+medical officer.  But the Church, jealous of all trespassing within
+what it believed to be its own demesne, heard and objected.
+
+"Making sin easy," said Lady Augusta Willcocks, who wore short hair and
+cultivated the downright manner which she believed to be characteristic
+of the English aristocracy.
+
+She cherished a secret antipathy for "the doctor's wife," as in her
+more bitter moments she would describe her neighbour.
+
+Lady Augusta was indeed of the world of Victoria and Disraeli, opulent,
+pushing, loud; Mrs. Trupp of an older, finer, more deliberate age.
+There was between the temper and tradition of the two ladies a gulf no
+convention could bridge.  Lady Augusta felt and resented the fact.
+
+Archdeacon Willcocks, on the other hand, reacted to the same stimulus
+in a different way.  For him the fact that Mrs. Trupp was a Moray of
+Pole was paramount.  And so--when Mr. Trupp had become famous--he
+hushed up his wife and schemed to run Mrs. Trupp's home in connection
+with the Diocesan Magdalen League.
+
+But Mrs. Trupp was not to be cajoled.  She had her own way of doing
+things, and meant to stick to it.
+
+"I think perhaps we'd better go on working for the same end in our
+rather different ways," she told the Archdeacon with that disarming
+courtesy of hers.
+
+"Am I to understand that our way is not the Christian way?" asked the
+Archdeacon, smiling and satirical according to his wont, as he swayed
+his long thin body to and fro, serpent-wise.
+
+"It may be," replied the lady, faintly ironical in her turn.  "It's not
+quite mine."
+
+"Pity," said the Archdeacon, mounting his favourite high horse with the
+little toss of his head, carefully cultivated, which so impressed the
+shop-keepers of Old Town.  "I had hoped that you remained of the Faith,
+even if you have seen good to desert your Church."
+
+The lady looked at him with eyes that were a little wistful, a little
+whimsical.
+
+"I'm afraid we're mutually disappointed," she answered quietly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+THE RETURN OF THE OUTCAST
+
+It was in Mrs. Trupp's home, in a back-water of the East-end, that
+Ruth's child was born.
+
+The babe was beautiful, but over the mother a shadow lay.
+
+"It's her people," Mr. Trupp told his wife.  "She hasn't broken it to
+them yet."
+
+"I know," Mrs. Trupp answered.  "I must talk to her about it."
+
+Ruth, curled in her bed, giving satisfaction to the babe in the hollow
+of her arm, showed every sign of distress when the other broached the
+topic.
+
+"Will you trust me to tell them?" asked the lady gently.  Ruth raised
+her fine eyes, brimming with gratitude to the elder woman's face.
+
+
+Mrs. Trupp went.
+
+Before she started on her pilgrimage of love she passed an hour in the
+parish-church, which was her favourite resort in all the crises of her
+life.
+
+There the Archdeacon came on her, to his surprise.
+
+"I'm glad to see you here, Mrs. Trupp," he said with slight inevitable
+patronage.
+
+"I'm often here," she answered, smiling.
+
+"Ah," said the Archdeacon.  "I've missed you."
+
+She could not tell him that this was because she avoided the church
+when he and his fellow-priests were ministering there.
+
+"I love the atmosphere," she said.
+
+"Thank-you.  It is nice, I think," he answered with a little bow;
+taking to himself, with childish ingenuousness, the credit for the
+conditions that six centuries of prayer and worship had created.
+
+An hour later Mrs. Trupp was face to face with Ruth's mother in the
+kitchen of Frogs' Hall.
+
+Hard by, the church-bell tolled for evening service.  Through the open
+window came the noise of homing rooks drifting up the valley from the
+Haven; and under the hedge on the far side the Brooks a cow bellowed.
+
+It was Mrs. Boam who began.
+
+"I allow you've come to tell me about our Ruth," she said at last.
+
+"Have you heard anything?" asked Mrs. Trupp.
+
+The other shook her head.
+
+"We'd be the last to hear," she said.  "That's sure.  But I knaw
+there's been something.  It's seven month since she's been anigh us.
+That's not our maid--our Ruth: so good and kind and considerate for her
+dad and me as she's always been."
+
+"There has been something," answered Mrs. Trupp, and told her tale....
+
+The mother listened in silence, the tears streaming down her face, her
+hands upon her lap.
+
+When the story was finished, she rose.
+
+"Thank you kindly, 'm," she said.  "If you'll excuse me I'll tell dad.
+He's in the back."
+
+She went out, a big unwieldy woman, walking with the unconscious
+majesty of grief, and was absent some time.
+
+Mrs. Trupp sat in the kitchen with a somnolent rust-coloured cat, and
+listened to the willows rustling by the stream and the voices of
+children playing by the bridge.
+
+Once she went to the window and looked across the cattle-dotted Brooks
+to the long low foothill that raises a back like a bow, green now with
+young corn, against the bleak shaven flanks of old Wind-hover.
+
+Then Reuben Boam entered, erect as a soldier, and with the face of a
+puritan and prophet.
+
+Mrs. Trupp wondered, as she often had of late years, why the men of her
+own class never attained the dignity of the great amongst the simple
+poor.
+
+She rose humiliated, conscious of her own spiritual inferiority; and
+took his rough paw between her two delicate hands.
+
+"Won't you sit down, Boam?" she suggested, quite modern enough to
+realize what a topsy-turvy world it was in which she should have to
+make such a request to an old man in his own home.
+
+His long bare upper lip trembled and nibbled as he spoke.
+
+"She's a good maid," he said huskily--"our Ruth.  The Mistus says it
+were a gentleman.  It's hard for a working girl to stand up agen a
+gentleman that's set on despoilin her.  But in my day gentlemen were
+gentlemen and kept emselves accardin.  They tell me it's different now.
+Accounts for the bit o bitterness, hap."  The great hand lying in hers
+twitched.  "She must come back home soon so ever she can move.  There's
+not much.  But we'll make out somehow.  Rebecca must goo to her.
+She'll need her mother now.  They was always very close--mother and
+daughter."
+
+The old woman entered, tying her bonnet-strings beneath her chin.
+
+"Yes, I'll take carrier's cart to Ratton.  Then I can walk to the Decoy
+and take train to the East-end."
+
+"Won't you come with me?" said Mrs. Trupp.  "I've got the car in the
+Tye." ...
+
+She dropped her companion at the door of the house in Sea-gate, and
+herself took a tram home.  When Mrs. Boam emerged from the house an
+hour later a car was still at the door.
+
+The old lady looked about her, a little bustled.
+
+"Could you tell me the way to the tram?" she asked the chauffeur.
+
+He touched his hat and smiled.
+
+If Alf had a soft spot in his heart, it was for old women.
+
+"This is your tram, ma," he said, and helped her in.
+
+
+A fortnight later the same car stood at the same door, when Ruth
+emerged, her baby in her arms.
+
+It was dusk, and she did not see the chauffeur, who leaned out towards
+her.
+
+"Would you come up in front alongside me?" he said.  "I put your box
+inside."
+
+Ruth obeyed.
+
+They drove through the gathering shadows in the sweet-scented June
+evening, past Ratton and Polefax, all along the foot of the Downs, the
+Wilmington Giant with his great staff gleaming wan and ogre-like on the
+hillside, and at the Turn-pike, just where the spire of B'rick church
+is seen pricking out of trees, turned for the gap and ran down the
+valley towards the Haven.
+
+A sea-wind with a sparkle in it blowing up the Brooks seemed to meet
+the softer breezes of the Weald and penetrate them.  A young moon hung
+over the sharp crest of Wind-hover.
+
+Ruth, her baby in her arms, picked up familiar objects as they swung
+by: the long-backed barn on the left, the little red pillar-box on the
+wall, and occasionally the glimmer of a light in one of the homesteads
+among trees across the stream.  On her right, unhedged cornlands swept
+away in a rustling sea towards the foot of the Downs which made a
+bulwark of darkness against the firmament; while on the near rise a row
+of stacks, like immense bee-hives, stood sentinel under the stars.
+
+The car slid down a hill and up again.  The valley lay naked alongside
+them now, cattle moving darkly in the moonlight and the tower of the
+church upon the hill black against the night in front.
+
+The chauffeur took out his clutch.  The car was running so noiselessly
+that Ruth could hear the ghostly stir and murmur of the willows that
+line the river-bank and cover the feet of the village with a green
+girdle.
+
+"You don't remember me then?" said the man beside her.
+
+They were the first words he had spoken.
+
+Ruth glanced at the face beside her own, smooth and smiling in the
+moon, and clutched her baby to her so fiercely that it gave a little
+cry.
+
+"Ah," said Alf, "I thought you would then."
+
+The impression he had made seemed to please and satisfy him.  He put
+his engine into gear, and was soon running through the village-street.
+
+At the foot of the hill, where a group of mighty elms on a high bank
+guard the seaward entrance to the village, he turned sharply to the
+left under a row of pollarded poplars, and bumped over Parson's Tye
+quiet in the moonlight, the church four-square among its trees upon the
+mound on the right.
+
+Then he drew up by the stile leading into the Brooks.
+
+Ruth descended swiftly, and her babe lying like a snowdrift in her
+arms, disappeared in the darkness through the stile.
+
+Alf waited beside his car, watching the river like a snake crawling and
+curling away in gleams of sudden silver under stark trees into the
+night.
+
+A few minutes later the bulk of a big woman in a white apron appeared
+at the stile.
+
+"Could you take the box in?" said a gentle voice.  "Dad's crippled."
+
+Alf swaggered.
+
+"Very well.  This once.  To oblige."
+
+The job accomplished, he looked round the little plain kitchen with a
+proprietary air.
+
+"Nice little place," he said.
+
+"Would you take a cup of tea?" asked Mrs. Boam.
+
+Ruth had disappeared.
+
+"No'w, thank you," said Alf in his cockiest manner.  "I dare say you'll
+see me round here again next time I'm this way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+THE FIND
+
+It was rather more than a year later.
+
+Ernie, in grimy overall strapped over his waistcoat, and grey shirt
+without a tie, was climbing the lower slopes of High-'nd-Over from
+Sea-foord in an empty lorry.
+
+Beneath him lay the Haven, buttressed by a gleam of white cliff, the
+Old River blue-winding to the sea at Exeat, and the New laid like a
+sword-blade across the curves of the Old.
+
+The lorry bumped over the crest of the hill, austere and bare even in
+the sunshine, the sea broad-shining at its back, and dropped down out
+of the brilliant bleakness into the best wooded of the river-valleys
+that pierce the South Downs.
+
+It was Saturday evening early in July.
+
+There had been a fierce and prolonged drought.  In the Brooks all along
+the banks of the slug-like stream the hay had already been carried fine
+in quality and light in weight.  On the sun-burnt foothills a belated
+farmer was working overtime to carry the last load before Sunday.  The
+long blue wain proceeded in lurches across the hill-side to the
+guttural exhortations of the wagoner, all about it a little busy knot
+of men and women raking and pitching.
+
+Ernie sat with his back to the hill, his arms folded, looking across
+the valley to the tiny hamlets clustered round a spire, the huge black
+barns and clumps of wood beyond the stream, and the deep hedges running
+caterpillar-wise up the flank of the opposing Down.
+
+The air was still keen and sparkling, yet full of scents rising from
+the fields that looked save in the Brooks brown for once and parched
+instead of fresh and green as of wont after being shorn of their crop.
+
+Ernie enjoyed those scents.  There was nothing like them in the East,
+he remembered.  Was there indeed anywhere outside of England?
+
+The lorry ran past the Dower-house in its rich old garden, the
+grey-shingled spire of the church opening to view at the back of the
+village across Parson's Tye.
+
+They rattled under the elms at the foot of the hill and up the steep
+street, where the same brown spaniel lay always in the same place
+asking to be run over.
+
+A jumble of houses pressed in upon them.  Sudden dormer-windows peeped
+from unexpected roofs.  Chimney-stacks would have tumbled on them but
+for the brilliant creeper that bound their old bricks together.  While
+in odd corners behind the high brick path tall hollyhocks bowed as they
+passed.
+
+The High Street was fuller than usual.  Labourers slouched along it,
+tired and contented.  A wain, with a pole at each corner pointing to
+heaven, the carter with patched corduroys and long whip plodding at the
+head of his team, was carrying a party of haymakers home.  Under the
+great chestnut in the market-square a group of dusty horses stood, the
+sweat drying on them.  Wages had been paid--the best wages of the year
+too: for all had worked overtime; Sunday was ahead of man and woman and
+beast alike; the most strenuous weeks of the year were over, and the
+most quiet to come.
+
+The lorry ran swiftly down the hill, out of the village.
+
+At the spot where a lane runs off to Littlington, it swerved suddenly
+to the right.  Ernie, sitting on the rail, swayed over the side to look.
+
+They were passing a girl, walking soberly along, her back to the
+village.  Clearly she had just come from the fields, for she wore an
+orange-coloured turban wisped about her black hair, a long loose
+earth-coloured gabardine, stained with toil, and short enough to
+disclose the heavy boots of the agricultural worker.
+
+She was a big young woman, broad of shoulder, large of limb, who walked
+in spite of her heavy foot-wear with an easy rhythm that caused Ernie's
+heart to leap.
+
+The lorry flashed by.
+
+The girl did not look up, marching steadfastly forward, careless of the
+passing vehicle; but Ernie caught a glimpse of her profile.
+
+In a moment he was on his feet.
+
+The lorry was travelling fast.  Ernie tapped at the partition which
+divided the body of the car from the driver, and peered through the
+glass.
+
+The man at the wheel heard, but shook a grim head.  He did not mean to
+stop.  Home and beer and the week-end rest lay before him.
+
+Ernie, far too impetuous to think, did not hesitate.
+
+He jumped at the road, fleeting swiftly away beneath him.
+
+It rose up like a careering wave and struck him viciously.
+
+Whether he fell on his feet, his hands and knees, or his back, he never
+afterwards knew.
+
+That he was shocked into unconsciousness is clear, and that his body
+continued its ordinary functions unconcerned and guided he knew not by
+what mysterious power.
+
+He woke, as it were, still jarred from shock, and aching throughout
+him, to find himself steadily tramping along a road.
+
+The objective world surged in on him.  He put up his hand to ward off
+the huge green seas that came lolloping along to overwhelm him.
+
+Riding the charging billows were a host of immense black ogres,
+dreadful in their impassivity, and with blind eyes, who yet had seen
+him and were set on his destruction.
+
+Then he resumed himself.  The billows were the hills; the careering
+ogres the row of bee-hive stacks dumped peacefully on the rise upon his
+right.
+
+He could not have been unconscious many minutes, for the sun still hung
+on the crest of the hill much where he had seen it last; but he was
+walking along the road on which he had fallen and must so have walked
+during his unconsciousness, seeing that he was now perhaps a quarter of
+a mile from the spot where he had jumped, and proceeding in the
+opposite direction to that in which the lorry had been travelling.  His
+face was towards the sea and the village through which he had recently
+passed, his back to the Weald.
+
+On his left was a wood, darkened by firs.  A dusty motor-bicycle lay up
+against the bank.
+
+Ernie was aware of the machine, as one is aware of something in a book.
+It was not real to him: he was not real to himself.  Indeed he was
+conscious of one thing only: that some power was guiding him and
+bidding him keep quiet.
+
+He did not attempt to take control.  His brain, except as a mirror
+which reflected passing objects, was passive; and he was content that
+this should be so.
+
+Dimly he wondered if he was dead.  Then he realized that the question
+had no interest for him, and he retired once more into the No Man's
+Land of the hypnoidal state.
+
+A villager was approaching.
+
+He saw the man marching towards him as on the screen of a cinema.
+
+The man said good evening.
+
+Ernie answered, and found himself listening with interest to his own
+voice.  It sounded so loud and alien.
+
+He was a puppet in a play, watching his own performance--actor and
+audience in one.
+
+Except for a certain diffused physical discomfort on the remote
+circumference of his being, he was not happy or unhappy.  He was a
+headache, and that was all he was.  But he was a headache which could
+walk and if necessary talk.
+
+Then, still obeying his unseen guide, he turned off the dusty road into
+the wood upon his left that stretched across the Brooks down towards
+the stream.
+
+On the fringe of the wood he was bidden to stay....
+
+The river ran in front of him a few yards away.  On the other bank,
+immediately opposite him, was a clump of willows.  There too was a big
+young woman in a tan overall.
+
+She was sitting on the tow-path, her back against a tree, her arms
+bound about her knees, her feet in heavy boots pressed close together
+in an attitude expressing doggedness.  She was bare-headed; and her
+orange turban lay at her feet.  Ernie marked her gypsy colouring, red
+and gold, and the yellow necklace that bound her throat.  The sullen
+expression of her face was enhanced by the gleam of teeth which her
+lips, drawn back almost to a snarl, revealed.
+
+Here surely was a tigress, trapped and resentful.
+
+Above her stood a little man in the shining black gaiters and great
+goggles of a chauffeur.
+
+He was talking and smiling.  The young woman sat beneath him, her tense
+arms binding her knees, her eyes down.
+
+But this was not the usual drama when the Serpent and the Woman meet.
+Here the Serpent was taunting Eve, not tempting her.  So much her face
+betrayed.
+
+Ernie watched the picture-play with absorbed interest.  A great while
+ago he had known both actor and actress intimately, and still took an
+impersonal interest in them and their doings.
+
+Then the little man's voice came to him across the stream, sharp and
+strident.  He had a peculiar swaggering motion of the head and
+shoulders as he spoke, truculent yet furtive, that Ernie knew well; and
+all the time his eyes were wandering uneasily about the Brooks,
+searching for enemies.
+
+"You'll ask me to marry you next!" he sneered.  "_ME marry YOU!_"
+
+The young woman rose, ominous and passionate.  She stood in her
+tan-coloured gabardine, like some noble barbarian at bay, a creature of
+the earth and elements, yet conquering them.
+
+She seemed to tower above the little man, and in her hand was the
+orange turban like a sling that swung heavily to and fro.
+
+Ernie watched the scene with fascinated eyes, and, most of all, that
+bright slow-swinging thing that sagged so dreadfully.
+
+The little man watched its pendulum-like action too.  He did not seem
+to like the curious slow swing of it, or the look upon the face of the
+swinger, for he withdrew a pace or two.
+
+"Any more of it," said the girl, her voice deep and vibrating, "and
+I'll tell Mr. Trupp."
+
+The name struck Ernie's subconsciousness with the disturbing effect of
+a pebble dropped into a still pool.  Ripples spread over the torpid
+surface of his mind, rousing it in ever-growing circles to life.  The
+view was dissolving with extraordinary speed.  It remained the same and
+yet was entirely changed.  The play was becoming real....
+
+The little man was now walking swiftly away along the tow-path.
+Suddenly he turned and came back a pace or two, his hand out.
+
+The woman had not stirred.  She stood bare-headed on the river-bank,
+one foot on a twisted root, one knee bent.
+
+"Give me back my letter," said the man.  "And I'll let it go at that."
+
+She met him squarely.
+
+"That I wun't then!"
+
+The little man hesitated and then turned about.
+
+
+Ernie came to himself with a pop, as a man comes to the surface after
+long submersion in the deeps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+THE BROOKS
+
+Ruth was standing on the bank opposite him, but she had turned her back
+upon him and the river.
+
+He saw the heave of her shoulders, and the motion of her head, and knew
+that she was weeping.
+
+In a second he had flung himself into the water and was wading towards
+her.
+
+She turned at the sound of his surging, expecting fresh enemies, and
+prepared for them.
+
+He stood in mid-stream, a picturesque and dishevelled figure, grimy
+with coal-dust, collarless, touzle-headed, his greasy overall braced
+above his waistcoat.
+
+"Ruth!" he called uncertainly.
+
+She stood on the bank among the willows and looked down on him.
+
+He ducked his face in the stream, and washed away the coal-dust.
+
+"Now d'ye know me?" he grinned.
+
+Her face glowed.
+
+"I knew you without that, Ernie," she answered, her voice deep and
+humming, as of old, like an inspired silver-top.
+
+He surged towards her with wide arms amid the water-weeds.
+
+She stretched out a strong hand to help him up.
+
+He took it, and kissed the fine fingers.
+
+In another moment he was standing at her side.
+
+"O, Ernie!" she said, and passed her hand across her forehead.  "Seems
+like you was sent."
+
+He gathered her in his arms.  Her eyes were closed; her face, wan now
+beneath the warm colouring, tilted back.  He marked the perfect round,
+full and very large, of her sheathed pupils.  Then in her ear he
+whispered,
+
+"Ruth, will you marry me?"
+
+She shook her head, the tears welling from under closed lids.  Then she
+withdrew quietly from his arms.
+
+"I couldn't do that, Ernie," she said.
+
+He absorbed her with his eyes.  Her gabardine, smocked at the breast,
+shewed the noble lines of her bosom, fuller and firmer than of old.  It
+was open at the neck and revealed the amber necklace bound about a
+throat that was round and massive as a pillar, and touched to olive by
+the sun.
+
+Alf was walking away towards the bridge which threw a red-brick span
+across the stream some hundreds of yards distant.  Cows moved in the
+meadow.  One came towards him along the tow-path, lowing in the dusk.
+
+Alf stopped and watched it.  He did not like cows: he did not like
+animals.  "Machines are my line," he would say.  "More sense in em."
+The cow, unaware of the disturbance she was causing in the other's
+breast, mooned forward.  That was enough for Alf.  On his right was a
+plank-bridge carelessly flung across the stream.  Alf did not like
+plank-bridges either, but he preferred them to cows.  And placed as he
+now was between the Devil and the Deep Sea, he chose the Deep Sea
+without a moment's hesitation, because he knew that here at least the
+Sea was fairly shallow.
+
+He crossed the plank-bridge--on his hands and knees.  The pair under
+the willow watched in silence with an awed curiosity.
+
+"He's frit," murmured Ruth, the light and laughter peeping through her
+clouds.
+
+"He's always frit, Alf is," Ernie answered out of the experience of
+thirty years.
+
+"Alfs always is," commented Ruth.
+
+Alf, the astounding, the perils of land and sea behind him, now rose
+from his humiliating position, and well knowing he had been watched,
+waved with the stupid bravado that is a form of self-defence towards
+the willow clump.
+
+Then he disappeared into the wood.  In another moment the swift
+thud-thud-thud of a motor-bike starting up was heard.
+
+Ruth listened.
+
+"He ain't coming back," said Ern comfortably.
+
+"Ah," Ruth answered, unconvinced.  "You don't know him.  You don't know
+Alfs."  She put out her hand towards him in that brave and gracious way
+of hers.  "I'm glad you come though, Ern," she said.
+
+Ernie's eyes filled with tears, as he caught her fingers.
+
+"There!" he said.  "He couldn't hurt you.  He ain't no account, Alf
+ain't."
+
+She answered soberly.
+
+"No, he couldn't hurt _me_--not my body leastways.  But I was like to
+ha killed _him_."
+
+A little breeze stirred the willows.  The turban on the ground flapped
+and fluttered like a winged bird.  Then it opened suddenly and
+discovered a jagged flint, wrapped in its folds.  Ruth took it out and
+tossed it into the stream.
+
+"It aren't pretty, I knaw," she said.  "But life is life; and Alfs are
+Alfs; and you never knaw."
+
+He escorted her across the Brooks to the road, moving leisurely behind
+her in the dusk, his shoulder mumbling hers.
+
+On the bridge she said good-bye.
+
+He was outraged.
+
+"I'm going home with you!" he cried.
+
+"I'd liefer not, if you please, Ernie," she said, gently insistent.
+"Not through the village, Sadaday night and all."
+
+"Very well," he answered reluctantly.  "To-morrow then.  A bit afoor
+cock-crow."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII
+
+TREASURE TROVE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+THE POOL
+
+Ernie was up and away early next morning.
+
+It was Sunday; and there was nobody about except the few hurrying to
+early service in the parish-church.
+
+Amongst these he noted Alf turning into the porch.
+
+At Billing's Corner he met the Archdeacon, who passed him with
+disapproving eye, and the sour remark,
+
+"You're off early, Caspar."
+
+"Yes, sir," brightly.  "I'm away over the hill."
+
+"Ah," smirked the Archdeacon, "there are better ways of passing the
+Sabbath, I believe."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Ernie.  "You'll find Alf awaitin you inside.  He's
+doin it for us both."
+
+The Archdeacon had never quite made up his mind whether Ernie was
+ingenuous or impertinent or both.  But then he had never made up his
+mind about Ernie's father, though he had disliked his impalpable
+neighbour and feared him secretly for thirty years.
+
+
+Ernie now turned into Rectory Walk, and paused outside No. 60.
+
+The habits of the inmates he knew to a minute, and had timed himself
+accordingly.
+
+His mother would be in the kitchen, preparing breakfast in her blue
+wrapper, while his father would be dressing.
+
+Standing in the tiny square of garden among the tall tobacco plants, he
+tossed a cautious pebble through the upper window which was open.
+
+"Dad!" he called, low.
+
+The old man, spectacled, but collarless, in all the purity of a clean
+Sunday shirt, thrust out a touzled head.
+
+"Found her," whispered Ernie.
+
+His father nodded down benevolently.  Then there sparkled in his eyes
+that remote and frosty twinkle which was the outward and visible sign
+of the change that had been wrought in him.
+
+"And finding's keeping," he said.
+
+
+In the glorious morning Ernie took the hill, marching through the gorse
+to the song of larks.  On the one hand the Weald lay spread beneath him
+like a green lagoon, dimming to blue; and on the other the great waters
+rose up to meet and mingle with the greater sky.
+
+It was still early when he dropped down kestrel-haunted Wind-hover,
+over the corn-covered foothills, into the Brooks.
+
+A white hand-bridge on red girders crossed the stream just under the
+mound on which stood the short-backed cathedral church with its
+thick-set tower, half-hidden by ash and sycamore.
+
+On the bridge Ernie paused and looked across towards the village lying
+in the morning sunlight, a tumble of russet roofs hugger-mugger among
+gardens on the hill, the old brown tiles crudely patched here and there
+with raw red ones; beyond the roofs the bare Downs; and at the foot of
+the hill, just across the green, tiny Frogs' Hall with the honeysuckle
+about the door, and Mus Boam sitting as always on his bricks,
+spectacles on nose, and Book spread on his knees.
+
+Then Ernie was aware of a movement in the water underneath him and
+glanced down.  Just beside the bridge a willow leaned over the stream.
+
+Here in a pool, sheltered by bridge and tree, a young woman stood, her
+skirts kilted, and the water to her knees.
+
+She wore the same orange scarf as on the previous evening, and the same
+earth-coloured gabardine; but her arms were bare; and in them was a
+naked babe.
+
+Standing amid water-weeds, the stream glancing in the sunshine about
+her, and the lights and shadows dappling her face as the willow above
+her stirred, she dipped the child and cooed, and dipped and cooed
+again, while the babe kicked and flung its arms and laughed.
+
+Beyond the stream heifers, black and red and white, moved leisurely in
+the flat green water-meadow or flicked their tails in the shadow of the
+straggling hedge that divided the Brooks from the long foot-hill, of
+the form and colour of a rainbow, which curved against the background
+of smooth Windhover.
+
+Ernie, on the bridge, himself unseen, watched the young woman, with
+contented eyes.
+
+Happy in her motherhood, Ruth had clearly forgotten for the moment her
+troubles and her tragedy.
+
+Quietly Ernie moved off the bridge and took his stand beside the willow
+on the bank.
+
+Ruth saw him now, smiled a casual greeting, and continued her labours.
+
+Suffering, it was clear, had crushed all self-consciousness out of her.
+She knew no shyness, no false shame; performing her natural functions
+simple as a creature of the Wilderness.
+
+Then she came wading towards him, her baby wet and slippery in her
+arms.  The sun had burnt her a rich olive hue, deepening the red in her
+cheek, touching her throat to gold.  With her orange turban crowning
+her swarthy hair she looked a gypsy Juno.
+
+More massive than of old, matured in face and figure, she was a woman
+now and not a girl: one who had fought and suffered and endured, and
+bore on her body the stigmata of her ordeal.  There was no laughter in
+her, and no trace of coquetry.  Almost austere, nobly indifferent, she
+was facing life without fear and with little hope.
+
+Ernie was shy and self-conscious as she was the reverse.
+
+"You don't go to the Lock then?" he said stupidly.
+
+"Nay," Ruth answered.  "The Lock's for the lads.  This'n's for baby and
+me.  More loo like."
+
+"She seems to favour it," said Ernie.
+
+"Aye, she's unaccountable fond of the water, same as her mother."  Her
+speech had taken once again the tone of her village environment.
+
+The young mother sat down on the bank, and turning the child face down,
+began to stroke her back with strong caressing rhythmical sweep.
+
+Ernie, watching, was amazed at the skill and easy masterfulness of her
+motions.
+
+"Who learned you that?" he asked.
+
+"Seems to coom like," she answered.  "I doos it most days in general."
+
+"She likes that," said Ernie wisely, watching the squirming rogue.
+
+"Doosn't do her no harm anyways," answered the mother.
+
+She put the little naked thing to sprawl and crawl and scramble on the
+grass beside her.
+
+"Sun and wind and water," she said.  "Give a child them three; and she
+wun't need for no'hun else--only food.  That's what Mr. Trupp says.
+And I reck'n he says right."
+
+Standing up, the water still covering her feet, she dropped her skirt.
+
+He gave her his hand to help her on to the bank.
+
+"The sun's burnt you," he remarked.
+
+"Aye," she answered.  "I been in the hay these three weeks past.  We've
+carried all now, only Pook's Pasture."
+
+Her humming voice soothed and satisfied him as of old.  He listened to
+it as to a familiar song heard again after many years.  He did not
+catch the words of the song, nor care to.  It was the air and its
+associations that held his heart.  Then he woke from his dream to find
+the woman at his side saying:
+
+"I shall wait over harvest.  I promised Mr. Gander that.  See I work
+good as a man.  Better'n some, hap," with a gleam of the old Ruth and a
+little backward toss of the head.  "Then I shall goo."
+
+Ernie roused swiftly.
+
+"Where'll you goo then?"
+
+"Back to service."
+
+Ernie was staggered.
+
+"And what about her?" nodding at the baby gurgling and squirming in the
+grass.
+
+Ruth answered nothing, but her face stiffened.
+
+He felt in her the fierce and formidable power he had felt on the
+previous evening beside the stream.
+
+Here was not the Ruth he had known.  Nature had roused in the mother
+forces, beautiful but terrible, of which the maid had not been
+conscious.
+
+She stood with high head, like a roused stag, looking across the
+water-meadows to the foothills.
+
+Then her chest began to heave.
+
+"There's not enough," she said deeply.  "I been home more'n a twal
+month now.  Dad's got the pension, and there's what the Squire allows
+him and the cottage; and I doos the milkin at the Barton and earns well
+at whiles in the hay and harvest.  But 'taren't enough.  We can't make
+out--not the four of us and a growin child.  I must just goo back to
+service.  I made the mistake, and I must pay--not them."
+
+Ernie came closer.
+
+"No, you won't," he said masterfully.  "You'll marry me."
+
+She shook her head, swallowing her tears.  Then she laid her hand upon
+his arm.
+
+"Thank-you, Ernie," she said.  "I just can't do that."
+
+"Why not then?" fiercely.
+
+"Ern," she panted, "if I married any I'd marry you.  But I'll marry
+no'hun now."
+
+She sat down under the willow and began to dress her babe.
+
+Ern stood above her, dogged and determined.
+
+"Say! why can't you marry me then?" he persisted.
+
+As though in answer she dandled the child.  Then she lifted her face to
+his, and in her eyes there was the flash and challenge of a love so
+fierce that Ernie felt himself suddenly afraid.
+
+"I doosn't regret it," she said.  "Never!--I'd goo through it all again
+for her sake and glad.  She's worth it--every dimple of her!"  And she
+laid her lips upon the child's with a passion that was almost terrible.
+
+"You done no wrong, whoever did," mumbled Ernie, awed still by this
+eruption of reality.  "'Twarn't no fault o yours--or hers for the
+matter of that."
+
+Ruth rose and tossed her baby over her shoulder with an easy careless
+motion that frightened Ernie as much as it thrilled him.  The child
+lying now face down, and doubled like a sack, sucked her thumb and
+regarded him with the blue eyes of her father.
+
+Together they walked across the field towards the yellow-daubed cottage
+with the steep brown roof and mass of honeysuckle over the door,
+standing with its back to the tumbled houses on the hill behind.
+
+"Mind, Ruth.  I won't take no," insisted Ernie.  "You need protection.
+A young woman like you do."
+
+"Never!" said Ruth.
+
+Ernie, unconscious of his companion's irony, ploughed on his ox-like
+way.
+
+"You don't know what men are," he continued.
+
+Her brown eyes flashed, and then dwelt on him with wistful humour.
+
+"I should," she said.  "This last two year and all," she added with
+solemn bitterness.  "I knaw now why girls go down.  They makes one
+mistake, then the Alfs get em.  And when the Alfs get em they're done.
+They're like stoats, Alfs are; and we're the rabbits.  Hunt you down,
+jump on you, and then suck the blood out of your brain.  Often I've
+seen em at it in the hawth."
+
+"Alf!" cried Ernie, his blood a maelstrom within him.
+
+He tried to halt, but she marched on.
+
+"What's he been doin to you?" hoarsely pursuing.
+
+She answered painfully.
+
+"You knaw yesterday?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a harsh, almost cruel note in his voice.
+
+She turned on him, anger and laughter battling in her eyes.  Then she
+saw a look upon his face, dark, sullen, and suffering, such as she had
+never seen there before.
+
+"I done no wrong, Ern," she said.  "No need to be that savage wi me."
+
+He became quiet; and she resumed.
+
+"He's been goin on at me a year now--tryin to get me."
+
+"Does he want to marry you?"
+
+Ruth drew back her upper lip till the teeth gleamed white.  She looked
+splendidly scornful.
+
+"Marry me!" she sneered.  "That isn't Alf.  He wants me--for his sport.
+Alfs don't marry--not the likes o' me anyways.  That ties em down.
+They want the pleasure, but they won't pay the price."
+
+They had reached Frogs' Hall, mounted the high step, and entered.
+
+Ruth put the child to bed, and then rejoined Ernie in the kitchen.
+
+"Tell the rest," said Ernie.  He was white and dogged.
+
+Again she gave him battle with her eyes; and again marked the look upon
+his face and relented.
+
+"Last week he wrote.  Asked me to meet him in the willow-clump by the
+Lock at sun-down.  I thought best goo and have it out with him.  It's
+been goin on over a year now."
+
+"Wasn't you afraid?" asked Ernie in awe and admiration.
+
+"Afraid of him?" she scoffed, and stripped her arm that was smooth as
+marble, thick as a cable, and sinuous as a snake.  "I can load against
+the men in the hay.  You ask Mus Gander.  And I knaw Alf." ...
+
+An envelope was in her hand.
+
+"Here's the latter."
+
+She gave it him.
+
+It was undated, and typewritten, and torn, but on the top there was
+still left enough of the heading to be decipherable--_Caspar's Garage,
+Saffrons Croft, Beachbourne_.
+
+The letter contained an assignation, an indecent suggestion, and a
+threat; and it was signed _Little Cock Robin_.
+
+A small fire spluttered in the grate.
+
+Ernie flung the letter on to it, and held it down in the flame with
+vicious heel.
+
+Ruth was on her knees in a moment, trying to rescue the charred
+fragments.
+
+"Eh, but you shouldn't ha done that, Ernie!" she cried.
+
+"Why not then?" flashed the other.  "Hell's filth, flame's food."
+
+Ruth rose, her attempt at salvage having failed.
+
+"Ah," she said, "you're simple.  You doosn't knaw men.  You think
+they're all same as you.  I've learned other.  There's a kind of man
+who when he's got the sway over you there's only one way with him."
+
+"And what's that?"
+
+"Get the sway over him."
+
+He looked at her sternly and with devouring eyes.
+
+"Has Alf got the sway over you?"
+
+She was stirred and tumultuous, the chords of her being swept by a
+mighty wind.
+
+"He thinks he has," she panted.  "That's one why I'm gooin into
+service--to get away."
+
+"You could never leave the child!" cried Ernie.
+
+"It's just her I'm thinking of."
+
+He came closer.
+
+"I claim her!" he cried passionately.  "I've a right to her--and to her
+mother too."
+
+She smiled at him wistfully.
+
+"Ah, you think you're strong!"
+
+"Aye, I'm strong enough when I like.  Trouble with me is I don't often
+like."
+
+She shook her head; but he felt the resistance dying out of her.
+
+"Goo away now, Ernie!" she pleaded, choking.  "Don't tempt a poor girl!
+There's a dear lad!"
+
+"I'll goo away if you'll think it over."
+
+"I'll think it over--if you'll goo away."
+
+She threw up her head.
+
+Beneath her eyelids the tears welled down.
+
+He drew her to him: his lips were close to hers; his eyes on hers.
+
+Gently she disengaged.
+
+"Nay, lad, you mustn't," she said.  "I must just reap where I've sown,
+as the old Book says, and make amends as best I can.  No need to drag
+down all I love along o me."  She added on that new note which thrilled
+him so strangely, "Not as I regrets my child.  Never!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+FROGS' HALL
+
+It was just about the time of Ernie's discovery of Ruth that Mrs. Trupp
+announced firmly to her husband one evening, a propos of nothing in
+particular,
+
+"I shall tell him where she is now."
+
+"She mustn't be let down again," grunted Mr. Trupp, who was devoted to
+Ruth.
+
+"Ernie won't let her down," answered Mrs. Trupp with bright confidence.
+"He's an absolute gentleman.  All the Beauregards are."
+
+"Alf, for instance," commented the curmudgeon across the hearth.
+
+"So that's _that_," continued the lady with the emphasis of one who
+scents opposition.  "She wants help; and he wants her.  And he's been
+true to her for a year and a half now.  That's a long time in that
+class," she went on with fine inconsistency.  "So _that's_ settled."
+
+"Pity," grumbled the recalcitrant.  "He's doing nicely now, Pigott
+tells me--and will so long as he doesn't get what he wants.  If she
+marries him she'll make him happy and comfortable.  She's just the sort
+of woman who would.  And he'll go to pieces at once.  There's nothing
+to muck a man's career like a happy marriage."
+
+Mrs. Trupp looked severely at the wicked man over her spectacles.
+
+"It's lucky _your_ marriage has proved such a failure, William Trupp,"
+she said.
+
+The other drank his coffee and licked his lips.
+
+"What's done can't be undone, my dear," he grinned.  "Bess, ask your
+mother to give me another cup of cawfee."
+
+
+Mrs. Trupp had no need to send for Ernie after all.  For he called, and
+sitting in the dusk of the great French-windowed drawing-room in the
+very chair in which eighteen months before he had told of his loss, he
+told now of his treasure trove.
+
+There was no reserve or concealment between the two.  What one did not
+know of the story the other could add.  They were friends, intimates,
+made one by their common feeling for a woman who had suffered and
+endured.
+
+"One thing I knaw," said Ernie deeply.  "She didn't commit adultery,
+whoever did."
+
+Mrs. Trupp, as often, wondered at and was made ashamed by the direct
+and spiritual insight of a rough-handed working man.
+
+"She loved him," said Ernie.  "That's just all about it.  Didn't know
+what he was, no more than a lamb knows what a tiger is till he's got
+her."
+
+"She's a good woman," responded Mrs. Trupp soberly; and added on a
+note, half-mischievous, half-cautious, not a little provocative--"I
+wonder if she'll have you."
+
+Whatever fears for the outcome of his enterprise Mrs. Trupp might
+entertain, Ernie himself had none.
+
+Indeed for so diffident a man he was astonishingly confident in a quiet
+way; and besieged his lady with a conquering sense of victory that
+would brook no doubt and little delay.
+
+Every Sunday morning found him crossing the white bridge at
+Aldwoldston; and many a week-day evening saw him in Frogs' Hall.
+
+It took him just an hour to trundle an ancient bicycle, lent by Mr.
+Pigott, from Billing's Corner to the Market Cross after his day's work
+was done; and an hour back, with the moon hanging over Wind-hover and
+the night-jars purring in the woods under the northern escarpment of
+the Downs.  But he was young; the August evenings were long-drawn and
+full of scents and the cries of partridges; and the hour he spent with
+Ruth in the Brooks, strolling along the tow-path under the pollarded
+willows to the sound of rooks homing and high-strewn in the heaven, was
+worth the toil.
+
+The time was between the hay and the straw; and Ruth, apart from her
+milking at the Barton, was not pressed with work.
+
+She liked his visits, and looked for them; but she drew no nearer to
+him, nor ever invited him to come.  Friendly always, even affectionate,
+she kept between them a cloud, impalpable and impenetrable.  At the end
+of a month he knew that he was no closer to his goal than when he had
+met her first upon the river-bank.
+
+The old folks grew to love the constant visitor, nor did he disguise
+the errand on which he was bent; while little Alice, with her father's
+eyes peeping from beneath her mother's curls, greeted her new friend
+with screams of joy, bangings on her drum, and the loveliest and most
+intimate of smiles.
+
+Ernie made the child a cradle-swing of willow-withes, hung it from the
+bough of an apple-tree, in the garden, and passed many a happy hour
+alone with her.
+
+One evening Ruth, returning from the Dower-house, her yoke upon her
+shoulders, found him in the garden on the hill at the back of the
+cottage, swinging the child and singing.
+
+She bent her knees and lowered her milk-cans to the ground.  The
+clanking of the cans on the stone caught Ernie's ears.  He turned from
+his labour of love to see Ruth standing in the door in her
+earth-coloured gabardine.
+
+She smiled at him; and in her eyes there was the gleam, mysterious and
+darkling, with which good men are sometimes blessed by their women.
+
+Ernie bent over the cradle.
+
+"Who'm I, baby?" he asked.
+
+The little singing voice from the basket-cradle made answer sweetly in
+one brief bubble-word.
+
+Ruth heard it, put her hand to her heart, and turned slowly away, the
+chains of the yoke upon her shoulders jingling faintly.
+
+Ernie came to her.
+
+"You mustn't, Ernie," she murmured.
+
+"I must then," he whispered in her ear, "my dear love--my lady."
+
+His arm stole about her; but she put it aside, and regarded him with
+eyes that were great and grieved under the evening sky.
+
+"Ernie," she said in her gently thrilling voice.  "Goo away, there's a
+dear lad--afoor worse comes of it.  You can't help me; and I might harm
+you."
+
+He took her hands in his, and kissed them.
+
+A working-man in speech, in habit, and in garb, he made love always as
+a Beauregard.  Indeed in the great moments of his life it was always
+one of those pale chivalrous gentlemen who stood out amid the motley
+and tumultuous concourse of the forbears who thronged his path.
+
+"But you _can_ help me, Ruth," he told her.  "I got my weakness.  I
+dare say you've heard tell."
+
+For the first time the girl in her, long hidden, peeped out at him, shy
+yet shrewd.
+
+"I remember what they used to say at the Hotel," she answered, with the
+overwhelming simplicity of the pure in heart.
+
+"You can help me conquer that," he urged.  "No one else can, only you."
+
+She said nothing, but gazed at him with new eyes, sweet and very grave,
+that seemed to sum him up.
+
+At last he had moved her.  Swift and sensitive almost as was she, he
+saw it instantly; and with the profound wisdom of the true lover said
+no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+THE SURPRISE
+
+A few evenings later, he dropped off the lorry in the market-square,
+determined to pay Ruth a surprise visit two hours before his time, and
+walk home over Wind-hover afterwards.
+
+He ran down River Lane at the back of the slaughter-house, grinning to
+himself.  At the bottom of the lane a group of young willows bending
+plume-like over the wall at the corner ambushed him from Frogs' Hall.
+Covered thus he approached the cottage on tip-toe with the grins, the
+conspicuous elbow-work and elaborate stealth of the happy conspirator.
+
+Ruth would have put the babe to bed.  He would surprise her alone.
+
+Frogs' Hall stood on a bank a foot or two above the Brooks to lift it
+over the winter floods and high leap-tides.  Two windows only, one
+above the other, looked out over the river.  Ernie peeped from his
+ambush.  The lower window was open; and a voice came through it.
+
+The voice was not that of Ruth, nor of her father or mother, but it was
+strangely familiar.
+
+"You don't want me," it was urging.  "Very well.  So be it.  And I
+don't want to do you no harm.  Why should I?--I shan't tell no one what
+I know.  Only you must give me back that letter in exchange.  Fair is
+fair.  See, we've both made mistakes, you and me.  That's the short of
+it.  But there's no reason any one should know if you'll only be
+sensible."
+
+Ernie heard Ruth's answer, low and passionate.
+
+"I wun't give it you then!--I'll hold it over you.  Then I'll know I
+got you safe.  Show it your Church friends and Mrs. Trupp and all."
+
+Alf laughed harshly.
+
+"Think it over, my lass," he said.  "I'll call again in a day or two.
+I can twist your tail, and I will if you want."
+
+He came out of the low-browed door, his eyes down, a thwarted look upon
+his face.  It was not till he had descended the steps into the Brooks
+that he was aware of the man standing against the bunch of willows on
+his left.
+
+He turned about with a grunt and made off in the direction of Parson's
+Tye.
+
+A few yards away he turned again and came back swiftly, his eyes down,
+and face troubled.
+
+"Say, Ernie!" he began.
+
+Ernie, under the tossing willow-plumes, awaited him coldly.
+
+Alf seemed to feel that he had run up against the wall of the other's
+hostility.  He stopped short, turned abruptly once more, and bustled
+away, jerking a handful of words over his shoulder.
+
+"All right," he said.  "Have it your own way.  Only don't blame me.
+That's all.  But there is a law in the land."
+
+Ernie stood with folded arms, and watched his brother across the Tye
+and out of sight.
+
+Then thoughtfully he mounted the steps of the cottage, knocked at the
+door, and entered the kitchen.
+
+Ruth sat by the fire, staring into it, on her face that formidable look
+of an animal driven to bay he had before remarked.
+
+He stood in the door and watched her.
+
+"Ruth," he said at last.
+
+Her profile was to him, her hands bound about her knees.  She did not
+stir, but she was aware of his presence.
+
+"He ain't got nothing against you, Alf ain't?" Ernie continued.
+
+His face was wrung, his voice thick and unnatural.
+
+Ruth rose slowly; slowly she came to him, and put both hands on his
+shoulders.
+
+She lifted her face, and it was blind and quivering.
+
+"O, Ernie!" she cried.  "It was him drove me that day."
+
+Ernie smiled, in his relief his hands clasping her elbows, his eyes
+dwelling on her twittering lids.
+
+"I knaw'd that then," he answered broadly.
+
+She opened her eyes on him swiftly, and stared aghast.
+
+"Did you?" she panted.  "How?"
+
+"I saw ye."
+
+She huddled closer to him, and laid her head upon his shoulder as
+though to hide her face.
+
+"Where did you see me?" she whispered.
+
+"At the Decoy.  East Gate.  That afternoon."
+
+Suddenly she drooped, and seemed to hang about him.  He put his arms
+about her; otherwise she would surely have fallen.
+
+He sank into a chair; and it was some while before she gathered herself
+and rose.
+
+One hand on the mantel-piece, she stood gazing into the fire, panting.
+
+"Alf's the only one as knows who he was--only you and Madame," she said
+at last.  "And you're safe."  She lifted her eyes to his and continued
+appealingly.  "He done me wrong, Ernie.  But he's her father all said.
+And I wouldn't for worlds any harm come to him through me.  He was mine
+one time o day, tany rate.  And I must protect him, best I can."
+
+"He can protect himself, I reck'n," said Ernie bitterly.  "Don't ardly
+need you to see to him, I reck'n."
+
+She looked up swiftly.
+
+"It'd wreck his career if it was known.  They'd bowl him out of the
+Army surely."
+
+"Who told you that?" asked Ernie.
+
+For a fraction of a second she hesitated.
+
+"He did," she said: and instantly saw her mistake.
+
+Ernie rose, slow and white.
+
+"Does he write then still?"
+
+She felt the storms beating about her, and her bosom heaved.
+
+"Only that once," she answered at length and lamely.
+
+Ernie came pressing in on her with ruthless determination.
+
+"May I see the letter?"
+
+She flashed up at him with astonishing ferocity.
+
+"No," and added heavily--"It's burnt."
+
+She was clearly fencing with him; clearly not telling all the truth.
+He did not blame her.  But he felt that helplessness, that irritation,
+of the male whose bull-headed rush is baffled by the woman's weapon,
+imponderable as air, elusive as twilight, soft and blinding as a fog;
+the weapons she has wrought in self-defence upon the anvil of her
+necessities through the immemorial ages of her evolution.
+
+"He asked you to burn it, I suppose?" said Ernie bitterly.
+
+Her bosom heaved.  She did not answer him.
+
+"Ah," continued Ernie remorselessly.  "He knew you.  Took advantage to
+the end."
+
+Ernie was troubled for the moment by the incident, but the emotion it
+aroused in him was pity rather than anger.
+
+Ruth had deceived him, he was sure.  He did not believe that Royal had
+written her a letter.  So skilled an adventurer, so expert a cad, would
+be little likely to commit himself on paper in such a matter.  That
+ten-pound note had wound up the incident for him.
+
+But the shifts to which a girl in Ruth's position must inevitably be
+driven seemed to him excusable, even in this case, admirable.  Royal
+had betrayed and deserted her; and she repaid his treachery by a
+steadfastness beyond words.
+
+With the capacity of true love, he made beauty out of an obvious
+blemish.
+
+Here was a woman indeed!--Here was a lover!
+
+Quietly he persevered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+THE DOWER-HOUSE
+
+When his father asked him how the chase went, Ernie answered with a
+grin,
+
+"She hangs back a bit, dad.  I spun and I pounced.  What next?"
+
+"Spin again," said the old man.  "First the web; then the fly; and last
+the cocoon."
+
+Ernie chuckled.  Lying on the hillside amid the gorse and scrub he had
+often watched the spider at his work.  The method was exactly as
+described by his father.  The hunter spun his web and then retired to
+an ambush to wait.  When the prey was caught and the wires brought the
+message to the citadel, he pounced.  Next with incredible speed he
+wrapped his victim round in silk till it was but a swathed mummy to be
+absorbed at leisure.
+
+"It's what I am a-doin, dad," said Ernie, and continued to wind his
+silken meshes about his prey; while others aided in the pleasant
+conspiracy.
+
+One August afternoon Mrs. Trupp, after calling at the Dower-house,
+looked in at Frogs' Hall.
+
+The little river ran like a white riband across the Brooks under shaggy
+willows tossing silvery tails.  A flotilla of ducks came down the
+stream and landed quacking under the white bridge clumsily to climb the
+bank and waddle towards Parson's Tye.  On the lower slopes of
+Wind-hover the corn still stood in sheaves, the stubble ruddy in the
+sunset on the bow-backed foothill across the stream.
+
+Ruth sat and listened to her friend; on her face the perturbed look of
+the good woman genuinely determined to do what is right and honestly
+puzzled as to her course.
+
+"Don't you love him, Ruth?" asked the other.  "Is that the trouble?"
+
+The young woman was deeply moved.
+
+"I've left my heart behind me," she said.  "I shall never love a man
+again--not like that.  All that's left of me has gone to the child."
+
+"Ruth," said the elder woman, "d'you know that most of the successful
+marriages I know are based on friendship?  It's very few who pull off
+the Big Thing.  And those that do often come to grief.  They expect too
+much, and are disappointed."
+
+She found herself, as always, talking to Ruth as she would have done to
+a girl of her own kind.  There was no sense of class or caste between
+the two.  They met simply on the ground of common humanity.
+
+"Aye, I could be his friend," said Ruth slowly.  "And more than his
+friend.  There's none like Ernie.  I'd give him all I got to give.
+That's a sure thing.  I'd be that grateful to him and all."
+
+"And there's little Alice," continued Mrs. Trupp.
+
+"That's just it," cried Ruth passionately.  "It's little Alice is all I
+think on.  It's that makes me afear'd--lest I should be unfair to
+Ernie.  See, I do love Ernie.  You ca'an't help it.  He's that good and
+unselfish.  And I wouldn't hurt him for all the world--not if it was
+ever so."
+
+"He's the kind of man who needs a woman to help him along the way,"
+said Mrs. Trupp.
+
+Ruth peeped at the other warily, even a thought jealously.  What did
+she know of Ernie's weakness?  For Ruth, if she was not in love with
+Ernie, felt for him that profound protective sense which the
+mother-woman invariably feels for a man who has shown himself dependent
+on her.
+
+"Cerdainly it aren't as if he were one of the ambitious ones," she
+mused.  "Cerdainly not.  All for himself and gettin to de top, no
+matter about no one else."
+
+"Like his brother," said Mrs. Trupp crisply.
+
+"Aye," Ruth agreed, "like Alf.  That's where it is.  Both brothers want
+me, only they want me different.  Alf thought I was his for the askin.
+Because I made my mistake he thought I was anybody's wench--to be had
+for money.  That's where the difference lays atween him and Ernie.  You
+could trust Ernie anywheres, a woman could."
+
+"And that's the whole battle from the woman's point of view," said Mrs.
+Trupp, rising.  "To trust your man.  To know that, wherever he is and
+whatever he's doing, he won't let you down."
+
+
+After her visitor had left, Ruth took the child and walked up River
+Lane to the butcher's at the top.
+
+Marching thoughtfully between high walls, she met Miss Eldred, the
+daughter of a neighbouring Vicar.
+
+Miss Eldred was an austere and lonely young woman, with a reputation
+for learning and advanced views, who took no part in the church life of
+the locality, and was even said to be a rationalist.
+
+She and Ruth had known each other from childhood, and had always been
+somewhat antipathetic.
+
+As the young woman coming down the lane saw the young woman coming up
+it, babe perched on shoulder, her lavender-grey eyes, remote and almost
+smouldering, kindled suddenly.  The veil fell from before her face, and
+the spirit behind the clouds shone forth in wistful radiance.
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Ruth," she said in her staccato voice, "I envy you."
+
+The young mother experienced a swift revulsion of feeling.  A profound
+sympathy stirred her for this ungainly fellow-creature, the slave of
+circumstances, for whom the door of what Ruth now knew to be Eternity
+was little likely ever to open, unless forced.
+
+Her instinct told her truly that she could best succour the other in
+her distress by herself seeking aid.
+
+"See, I got the chance to marry, Miss," she began with beautiful
+awkwardness.  "I don't rightly knaw what to be at."
+
+The other's eyes became shrewd and critical.
+
+"D'you like the man?" she asked harshly.
+
+"We fits in pretty fair like," Ruth made answer without enthusiasm.
+
+"Is he fond of the child?" continued the inquisitor.
+
+"O, aye.  He fairly dotes on her."
+
+"I should take the chance," said the other with a gasp.  "You've got
+the child....  That's the thing that matters....  You must put the
+child first....  Nothing else counts....  She'll be the better for a
+father."
+
+Next Saturday Ernie strolled across the Brooks, as his custom on that
+evening was, to meet Ruth on her return from milking.
+
+Her course never varied.  She milked at the Barton, and carried the
+milk to the Dower-house.  There she emptied her cans and filled them
+again with water which she carried home to Frogs' Hall to serve the
+uses of the cottage.
+
+Ernie wandered across Parson's Tye, with the long green-backed
+clergy-house showing its thatch and black and white timber work above
+the hedge of _arbor vitae_, and out on to the main road at the sea-ward
+end of the village.
+
+Here the Dower-house lay on the left of the road behind a wall.  A
+solid building, comfortable and warm, with russet roof and
+dormer-windows under a dark sycamore, it had changed little maybe since
+the great days of old when Aldwoldston on the Ruther, with its tannery,
+its brewery, its river traffic, and procession of pilgrims passing
+through from Sea-foord to Michelham Priory, had challenged the
+supremacy of Lewes on the Ouse, and been something of a city when
+Beachbourne was still but a tiny hamlet on the hill between the
+sheep-runs of Beau-nez and the snipe-haunted Levels.
+
+Ernie walked soberly along the dry moat that separated the garden-wall
+from the road.  In the middle of the wall was a gate of open ironwork,
+wrought from Sussex ore, smelted by a Hammer Pond on Ashdown Ridge, and
+dating from the days when Heathfield was the centre of England's Black
+Country.  The gate, high and narrow, made an eye in the wall with a
+heavy brow of ivy overhanging it.  Ernie crossed the little bridge that
+spanned the moat between box-hedges, and half-hidden under a lilac
+against the ivy-covered wall, he peered through the open-work of the
+gate.
+
+From his feet a long grass-path ran up between rank herbaceous borders
+to the house, ambushed by trees.
+
+The clink of cans told him he had timed himself aright.  At the far end
+of the walk was a thick bower over which the leaves of a vine, already
+turning, scrambled.
+
+From the rich darkness of this bower Ruth now emerged, marching
+solemnly down the path.  Her yoke was on her shoulders, her pails
+swinging, clanking, slopping.
+
+She walked very deliberately, dressed in the worn earth-coloured
+gabardine that fell in nobly simple lines about her figure.  Her eyes
+were down, her face grave; and the rakish orange turban wound about her
+head contrasted strangely with the noble seriousness of her face.
+
+Ernie breathed deep as he watched her coming towards him down the
+grass-walk under pergolas crowned with roses and honeysuckle.  From his
+covert his eyes followed her with tender content, for he thought she
+was not aware of his presence.  But he was wrong.
+
+A few yards from him, with a graceful dipping motion of the knees, she
+lowered her shining cans to the ground, disengaged them, and came to
+him, paler than her wont, the chains of the yoke she still carried now
+swinging free.
+
+He opened the gate and approached her.
+
+"Ernie," she said with a little sigh, "I'll marry you if you wish it."
+She paused.  Her bosom was heaving, her eyes shuttered.  Then she
+raised her head.  "And I'm sure I thank you very much--me and baby."
+
+Hard by a young fig-tree grew against the wall, low-branched and with
+long-fingered leaves.  He drew her beneath the shelter of it, and
+gathered her slowly in his arms like a sheath of corn.  He kissed her
+patient lips, her eyes; his tears bedewed her cheek; his hand was in
+hers, and she was kneading it....  Both hands were rough with toil.
+
+Then she opened her eyes; and down in the brown deeps of them shone a
+lovely star.
+
+"I pray I done you no wrong, Ern," she said, and smiled at him through
+mists.
+
+Tenderly he removed the yoke from her shoulders and placed it on his
+own.
+
+Then he bowed to the burden, and taking the road trudged solemnly
+homeward by her side, the cans clinking and water spilling as he moved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+ALF TRIES TO SAVE A SOUL
+
+Of course there was trouble: Alf saw to that.
+
+It was very seldom he came to Rectory Walk now; but he did come one
+evening after the news was common property in Old Town.
+
+He marched straight into the kitchen, kicked a chair into its place
+before the fire, and sat down without a word to his mother.  It was
+dusk in there, but Anne could see that he was terribly moved.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Nothin," Alf answered.  "Only my cart's broke."
+
+The mother waited for more, grimly amused.
+
+"He's done it this time," Alf continued at last.
+
+"Who has?"
+
+"Old Ern."
+
+The epithet of affection roused Anne to swift suspicion.
+
+"What's he done then?"
+
+Alf chewed the end of a cigarette.
+
+"Don't ask me," he said.  "Talk o the town!--I could 'ide me ead with
+shyme."  He looked up suddenly and stared his mother blankly in the
+face.
+
+"Little better nor a common you know."
+
+"Common what?" asked his mother harshly.
+
+Alf, like many another sinner, had a genuine and almost child-like
+belief in his mother's innocence and lack of knowledge of those
+processes of nature with which she might be assumed to be familiar.  He
+raised a deprecatory hand as though to brush her irritably aside.
+
+"You wouldn't understand if I was to tell you," he groaned, screwing up
+his little yellow face as he did when wrestling in prayer for sinners.
+"Nor I wouldn't wish you to.  My heart's fair broke.  That's enough for
+you."  He buried his face in his hands.  "He's been a bad brother to
+me, very bad.  Couldn't well ha been worse.  Anybody could tell you
+that.  But blood is blood, and blood is thicker nor what water is, as
+I'm finding now to my cost."
+
+Anne Caspar came closer.
+
+"Is he goin to marry her?" she asked.
+
+"Ah," said Alf.  "And that ain't all.  Not by no means--nor the lesser
+'alf of it eether."
+
+His mother was still fiercely cold.
+
+"Is she the one he got into trouble?"
+
+Alf evaded her swiftly.
+
+"It ain't his child though."
+
+"What?" she snarled.  "Is there a brat?"
+
+She turned on the gas.
+
+The tears were rolling down Alf's cheeks as he nodded assent.
+
+"Me own blood-brother and all!" was what he said.  "I can't look folks
+in the face, I can't."
+
+Just then the study-door opened and shut again.
+
+Ernie came out into the darkened passage.
+
+The kitchen-door was wide.
+
+Through it the two brothers stared at each other, Ernie standing in the
+dusk, Alf sitting in the gas-light.
+
+Then Ernie spoke.
+
+"Tellin the tale, Alf?" he said with quiet irony.  Alf waved his
+brother away.
+
+"You've broke my eart," he said, "and your mother's.  Not as you care,
+not you!"
+
+"If that's all I've broke I ain't done much 'arm, old son," came the
+still voice out of the dusk; and the outer door shut.
+
+
+His wife was the one creature in the world to whom Edward Caspar was
+consistently hard; and her husband the only one to whom Anne was
+unfailingly considerate.
+
+In her inmost consciousness she knew the reason of her husband's
+attitude, and bowed to it as to an inexorable ordinance of Nature.
+Throughout her married life she had paid the penalty of the woman who
+has taken the lead in matters of sex.  Fierce though she was, there
+were few more old-fashioned than Anne Caspar, and from the start she
+had seemed to recognize and be resigned to the justice of her fate.
+
+That night as the couple went to bed, Edward said from the
+dressing-room with a touch of tenderness he rarely showed his wife:
+
+"Mother, Ern's going to be married."
+
+"You needn't tell me," said Anne harshly.  "There's a bastard.  Did he
+tell you that?"
+
+It was seldom that Anne allowed herself to indulge in coarseness when
+addressing her husband.
+
+He gave his familiar little click of disgust, and shut the door between
+the two rooms.
+
+That night he did not join her but slept, if he slept at all, on the
+camp-bed in the dressing-room.
+
+
+Next day, Anne Caspar went round to interview Mrs. Trupp.
+
+The years had brought the two women no nearer, rather the reverse
+indeed.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was soaring always into heaven: Mrs. Caspar chained to her
+prison-cell on earth.
+
+"She's a good woman," said Mrs. Trupp of Ruth, with stubborn
+gentleness.  "I don't know a better."
+
+"But she's had a illegitimate child.  It's sin!  It's wickedness!"
+
+"I know she's made a mistake," replied the other in her even voice.
+"But it's not for you and me to judge her.  You and I were able to
+marry the men we loved.  If we hadn't been...."
+
+"I should have stood up!" harshly.
+
+"You can't say," said Mrs. Trupp, calm as the other was ferocious.
+"You don't know.  We've never been tested."  Then the devil entered
+into her as it does sometimes into the holiest of women, a naughty
+devil, very mischievous, who loathed Pharisaism and loved to persecute
+it....  "_Besides, should we have been right to stand up?_"
+
+Anne Caspar gasped.
+
+The lady wetted her cotton delicately, and threaded her needle against
+the dying light.
+
+"It's a nice point," she added in her charming voice.
+
+Anne tramped home, meeting Mr. Pigott on the hill.  He stopped to speak
+to her, but she trudged on surlily.
+
+"The world's gone mad," she said.  "It's time it come to an end.  It's
+a bad un."
+
+Mr. Pigott went on to the Manor-house to put his question.
+
+"Is she all right?" he asked--"This girl of Ernie's."
+
+"Right as rain," answered Mrs. Trupp.  "But she's had a _rotten_ time."
+
+
+There was no doubt that Alf was deeply stirred by this new happening in
+his brother's life.
+
+The whole of him resented it with the fury of a baffled sea.
+
+Ern was about to possess a beautiful woman Alf had desired, and Ern was
+Alf's brother.  That deep-seated sense of competition and ineradicable
+jealousy that exists between members of a family--as profound and
+disruptive a force as any to be found in human consciousness, dating
+back as it does to the fierce struggles of nursery days--was at work
+within him.
+
+As always in moments of conflict, he had recourse to his spiritual
+director.
+
+The Reverend Spink was a sleek little man, solid in body if not in
+mind, and full of rather shoddy enthusiasms.
+
+"Poor old Ernie!" said Alf.  "He's been a bad brother to me.  I will
+say that for him.  But I wouldn't wish my worst friend to come to
+_that_."
+
+"But you must save him from himself!" cried the curate.  "Go out into
+the highways and hedges and _drag them in!_--that's the command.  Fling
+out the life-line!" and he flung out a plump little arm clothed in best
+broadcloth to show how it was done.
+
+Alf nodded solemnly.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "I'll save him--if he is to be saved."  He rose up
+grandly, loving himself.  "Cover me with hinsults; crucify me 'ands and
+feet; strike me in the face like as not.  But I'll face it all.  No
+cross, no crown, as the s'yin is."
+
+He went out on his errand of mercy.
+
+In a few moments he was round at the rooms of the lost sheep.
+
+Ernie was at home.
+
+"You know I wish you well, Ernest, don't you?" he began painfully.
+
+The other had not risen.
+
+"I know all about that," he answered enigmatically.
+
+Alf drew a little nearer and dropped his voice, looking about him.
+
+"You can't marry her, Ern," he whispered.
+
+Ern was quite unmoved.
+
+"Can't I?" he said.  "And why not then?"
+
+"_Because you can't!_" Alf almost screamed.
+
+Ernie was still amused.
+
+"I mustn't have her because you can't," he said.  "That's the short of
+it."
+
+Alf cackled horribly.
+
+"Me!--Want her?--I like that."
+
+"I know you did then!"
+
+"Likely!" sneered Alf, his pride swift to arms.  "Likely she'd ha took
+you and said no to me."  He pressed closer, his face mottled.  "_Do_
+you know what I'm worth as I stand here in me shoes?  I got £3,000
+saved away in the Bank, and makin all the time.  If I liked I could
+retire on meself--at 28--and be a gentleman.  That's what I am!  That's
+what I done!  That's Alf Caspar!  And you tell me she'd ha took up with
+a dirty coal-porter at 23s. 6d. a week when she could have had _Me_!"
+
+Ernie flared up.
+
+He leapt to his feet.
+
+"Out of it!" he ordered.  "What the bloody l's my marriage got to do
+with you?"
+
+Alf tumbled down the wooden stairs with such a furious clatter as to
+bring the landlady to the kitchen-door.
+
+Later that evening he reported his brother's saying to the Reverend
+Spink.
+
+"Swore something fearful!" he said.  "I couldn't tell you what he _did_
+say.  I couldn't reelly.  Couldn't defile me lips with the words.
+That's the Army, I suppose.  Pick up a lot of dirt there, some of em."
+
+The Reverend Spink, who boasted a moustache he believed to be military,
+rocked judicially to and fro before the fire.  Since he had been
+ordained a Minister of the Established Church, and had lived in touch
+with the Archdeacon and Lady Augusta Willcocks, he felt very profoundly
+that the maintenance of the aristocratic and imperial tradition had
+been entrusted to his special keeping.
+
+"Had I not been called to a Higher Service," he said, enunciating his
+words with the meticulous care of one to whom correct pronunciation has
+always been a difficulty, "I should have gone into the Army, meself."
+He added--"An officer, of course."
+
+"Of course," repeated Alf, "as is only befitting a gentleman of your
+rank and stytion in life.  No, I got nothing against the Army.  Armies
+must be, as I tell them, and Navies too--if you're an Island.  Only all
+I say is--_Leave it to others_, I says.  You don't want your own family
+mixed up with _that_."
+
+
+But Alf was not done yet.
+
+He went over to Aldwoldston and tried to see Ruth.
+
+She refused, and reported him to Mrs. Trupp, who spoke very seriously
+to her husband.
+
+"William," she said, "you'll have to sack that man."
+
+He shook his head, grimly amused.
+
+"Can't be done," he replied.  "Too interesting a study and too good a
+chauffeur," but he spoke to Alf all the same.
+
+"You must let that girl be," he said gruffly.  "Ern's got her; and he's
+going to keep her."
+
+"Ah," said Alf, swaggering.  "I know what I know, and what no one else
+don't know, only me; and I don't like it."
+
+"Brothers never do," retorted Mr. Trupp.  "Especially if they wanted
+the girl themselves."
+
+"Ah, 'taint that," said Alf, sour and white.  "I shan't marry off the
+streets, whatever else.  No, sir.  He's not been a good brother to
+me--nobody can't throw that up against him.  But that's no reason why
+when I see him askin' for trouble I shouldn't try to save him.  Me own
+blood brother and all."
+
+Mr. Trupp got into the car.
+
+"I'll tell you what," he muttered.  "You're a true churchman, Alf, if
+you're nothing else.  I will say that for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+THE END OF A CHAPTER
+
+The char-a-banc, called by courtesy a coach, which was bound for what
+is known locally as "the long drive," waited at Billing's Corner for
+any Old Town passengers.
+
+It had started from Holywell, and Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor sat beside
+the driver.
+
+A ramshackle old gentleman came rambling furtively across the road.
+
+The coachman nudged the Colonel.
+
+"That's old Mr. Caspar," he whispered.  He had for learning the
+profound respect of the illiterate.  "They say he knows so much he
+don't know all he do know.  Talks Hebrew in his sleep, they say."
+
+The Colonel answered musingly.
+
+"Is that Caspar?" and thought how little this old man had changed from
+the young man who forty years before had shambled just thus about the
+courts of Trinity.
+
+The old gentleman, who had the air of being pursued, climbed to his
+place at the back of the char-a-banc.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor turned.  She knew that for some reason Fear had laid hold
+once more of her Man of Faith.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Caspar!" she called in her gay voice.  "I thought it was
+you!--I forget if you've ever met my husband."
+
+"I knew your boy in India, Mr. Caspar," said the Colonel in his
+delightful manner.  "He was one of the best cricketers in the regiment."
+
+The friendly voices and kind eyes appeared to soothe the old man.
+
+"He's going to be married to-morrow," he panted.  "I'm just going over
+to Aldwoldston to see the lady."
+
+In the village the char-a-banc drew up under the great chestnut-tree by
+the market-cross; while the passengers descended for tea in the
+black-and-white-timbered _Lamb_.
+
+Mr. Caspar, too, got down.  Mrs. Lewknor heard him ask the way to
+Frogs' Hall, and saw him lumber off in that flurried way of his as if
+pursued.
+
+She followed him into River Lane.
+
+He heard her and turned with eyes aghast behind his gold-rimmed
+spectacles.
+
+She met him with swiftest sympathy.
+
+"May I come with you, Mr. Caspar?" she asked.
+
+He seemed relieved.
+
+"Yes," he panted, and started off down the steep lane, between the high
+flint-walls embedded in nettles, at a shuffling trot regardless of the
+little lady following at his heels.
+
+In the silence she gave him of her strength.
+
+In the Brooks he paused and mooned helplessly across at the river and
+the hills squandered in the sunshine beyond and the cattle who mooned
+back.
+
+"This is it," said Mrs. Lewknor in her cool confident voice.  "This
+yellow-washed one, the man said."
+
+"Yes," grunted Edward, once again relieved, and trotted off to the
+little cottage on the bank beside the willows.
+
+He went up the steps and knocked.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor loitered down to the stream.
+
+Ruth opened.  Her visitor glanced at her through dim spectacles; and
+strength came to him.
+
+"Are you Ruth?" he asked.
+
+The young woman's face lit up.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said.  "And I know who you are.  I been hopin you might
+happen along.  Come you in and sit down."
+
+The old man mopped his neck.
+
+"I mustn't," he said in tones that meant "I daren't," and continued
+hurriedly, "I should be getting back.  I'm expected home.  But I had to
+come and wish you well."  He touched her arm tremulously.  "Bless you,
+my dear!--He's a good lad, only weak."  He lowered his voice.  "Keep
+him on the curb a bit," he whispered hurriedly.  "But not too much.
+That's where his mother made her mistake.  Drove him away from her."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, standing by a willow on the river-bank, saw the old man
+turn.
+
+Slowly she walked across the field to the cottage.
+
+The young woman in the door watched her with uncertain eyes that seemed
+to leap towards her and then retreat and leap again.
+
+"Is that....  That aren't Ern's mother?" she asked.
+
+The lady paused, her fine eyes dwelling on a distant roof.
+
+"No," said Mr. Caspar.  "That's a friend."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, who had the love of her race for beautiful things,
+allowed her eyes to rest on the noble creature in the door.
+
+"I know your Ernie though," she said charmingly.  "He's a very old
+friend of mine."
+
+The two women exchanged friendly glances and a few words.
+
+Then Edward Caspar and his companion moved off into Parson's Tye.
+
+The church stood four-square on the mound above them, the red tiles of
+the roof peeping through the trees.
+
+"Shall we go in?" said Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"Let's," replied the other.
+
+They sat together side by side in the aisle, amid the haunting memories
+of centuries.
+
+When they emerged the Man of Fear had given place once more to the
+Child of Faith.
+
+
+It was a very small party that started next day from Old Town for the
+wedding.
+
+Besides Mr. and Mrs. Trupp there were in the chocolate-bodied car Mr.
+and Mrs. Pigott.
+
+The great surgeon was at his surliest.
+
+Mrs. Pigott noted it at once, and of course must take advantage.
+
+"Do you like weddings, Mr. Trupp?" she asked brightly.
+
+"Call it a wedding!" growled the other.  "I call it a funeral.  It's
+the end of a good man.  He'll go to pieces now he's got all he wants.
+No: if you want to get the most out of a man, keep him asking.  Once
+he's sated he's done....  What does Mrs. Pigott say?"
+
+Mrs. Pigott said:
+
+"Bob the cherry near his lips, but don't let him gobble it."  The young
+woman gave a bird-like toss of her head and threw a teasing glance at
+her husband.  "Bob the cherry.  That's it."
+
+When the car swung off the road at the foot of the village into
+Parson's Tye, Mr. Trupp was in more sober mood.
+
+As the other three crossed the green to the church, he lingered behind.
+
+"Comin in then, Alf?" he asked.
+
+The chauffeur shook his head.
+
+"I know's too much, sir," he said firmly.  "No good won't come of
+evil--as ever I heard tell."
+
+Mr. Trupp rolled away, coughing.
+
+"Alf turned moralist!" he muttered.
+
+The pair were to be married in church.  For Ruth herself was "church"
+in the sense the working-class understand that word.  Miss Caryll had
+taken considerable pains to effect her conversion, while her people,
+with the quiet tolerance of their kind, had made no objection.
+
+Ruth herself had been profoundly indifferent, and underwent the change
+mainly to oblige.  But while she rarely attended divine service
+herself, and was neither interested in the religious community to which
+she belonged nor affected by it, on the vital occasions of her life she
+expected it to do its duty by her---to marry her, bury her, baptize and
+confirm her children; and she would have been astonished and aggrieved
+had it refused her the rites which were in her judgment her due.
+
+The great church with its hollow-timbered roof like the bottom of an
+upturned ship, its bell-ropes looped and hanging from the central tower
+above the transept, is called by some the Cathedral of the Downs.
+
+It was quiet now as a forest at evening, and empty save for Mr. and
+Mrs. Boam, straight-backed in black, Ruth sitting subdued between her
+father and mother, little Alice on her Granny's lap, and Ernie alone in
+the pew upon the right.
+
+There was about the little gathering something of the solemnity of the
+hills which hemmed them round.
+
+Mrs. Trupp, walking in the stillness up the aisle, was aware of it as
+she took her place at Ernie's side.
+
+Then in the silence the singing voice of a little child floated out
+like a silver bubble of sound.
+
+"Daddy," it said.
+
+Ruth shot at the man across the aisle a sudden lovely look of affection
+and intimate confidence; and one soul at least, kneeling there in the
+sunshine, felt that the word sealed the covenant between this wayfaring
+couple, still only starting on their pilgrimage, as no offices of any
+priest could do.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Doubleday, Page & Co. hope to publish _One Woman: being the sequel to
+Two Men_, next spring.
+
+
+
+
+  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
+  GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Two Men: A Romance of Sussex, by Alfred Ollivant
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57640 ***