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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57641 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  ONE WOMAN:
+
+  Being the Second Part
+  of a Romance of Sussex
+
+  BY
+
+  ALFRED OLLIVANT
+
+
+
+  Après a'voir souffert il faut souffrir encore
+
+
+
+  LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
+  RUSKIN HOUSE, 40, MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1
+
+
+
+
+First published in 1921
+
+
+
+  BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+  DANNY
+  OWD BOB
+  BOY WOODBURN
+  THE GENTLEMAN
+  THE ROYAL ROAD
+  THE BROWN MARE
+  THE NEXT STEP
+  THE TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT
+  TWO MEN
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  MY COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  THE CARRIER'S CART
+
+  PART I
+
+  DEEPENING DUSK
+
+  I THE HOSTEL
+  II COW GAP
+  III THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD
+  IV ALF
+  V THE CREEPING DEATH
+  VI THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET
+  VII THE MAN FROM THE NORTH
+  VIII THE CHERUB
+  IX THE SHADOW OF ROYAL
+  X BOBS
+  XI THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN
+  XII RUTH WAKES
+  XIII NIGHTMARE
+  XIV SHADOWS
+  XV THE LANDLORD
+  XVI THE GRANDMOTHER
+  XVII THE CHALLENGE
+  XVIII A SKIRMISH
+  XIX PITCHED BATTLE
+  XX THE VANQUISHED
+  XXI THUNDER
+
+
+  PART II
+
+  TROUBLED DAWN
+
+  XXII THE BETRAYAL
+  XXIII THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT
+  XXIV THE PILGRIMS
+  XXV RED IN THE MORNING
+  XXVI THE AVALANCHE MOVES
+  XXVII THE GROWING ROAR
+  XXVIII OLD TOWN
+  XXIX FOLLOW YOUR LEADER
+  XXX THE END OF THE WORLD
+  XXXI THE COLONEL
+  XXXII THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
+  XXXIII BEAU-NEZ
+  XXXIV THE STATION
+  XXXV IN THE EVENING
+  XXXVI RUTH FACES THE STORM
+  XXXVII MRS. LEWKNOR
+  XXXVIII SUSPENSE
+  XXXIX THE VALLEY OF DECISION
+  XL VICTORY AND REVENGE
+
+
+  THE COMFORTER
+
+
+
+
+THE CARRIER'S CART
+
+An old-fashioned carrier's cart, such as you may still meet on the
+roads of Sussex, tilted, one-horsed, and moving at the leisurely pace
+of a bye-gone age, turned East at the Turnpike, and made slowly along
+the Lewes-Beachbourne road under the northern scarp of the Downs one
+evening of autumn in 1908.  In it, at the back of the driver, were a
+young man and a young woman, the only passengers, ensconced among
+hen-coops, flitches of bacon, and baskets of greens.
+
+They sat hand-in-hand.
+
+The woman was a noble creature, about her the majestic tranquillity of
+a great three-decker that comes to rest in sunset waters after its
+Trafalgar.  The man, but for a certain wistfulness about his eyes which
+betokened undue sensibility, was not remarkable.  Till he spoke you
+would have said he was a gentleman--that is to say if your eyes
+confined their scrutiny to his face and refused to see his hands, his
+boots, his clothes.  When he spoke you would have recognised at once
+that he was Sussex of the soil as, surely, was the woman beside him;
+though the speech of both was faintly marred with the all-pervading
+cockney accent of those who have passed beyond the village-green into
+the larger world of the England of to-day.
+
+Both ca-a-ad musically enough; but less by far than the little carrier,
+whose round back blocked the view of the road, and the twitching ears
+of old mare Jenny.  For nearly fifty years, man and boy, Isaac Woolgar
+had travelled twice a day, six days a week, the road on which he was
+travelling now.  He had seen the long-horns--those "black runts" so
+familiar to old-world Sussex--give place to horses in the plough upon
+the hill; the horses in their turn supplanted on the road by motors;
+and men using the legs God had given them to trundle wheels instead of
+walk.  Undisturbed, he plodded on his way, accompanied always by the
+wires lifted on tall black poles, crowned with tiers of tiny porcelain
+chimney-pots unknown in his youth, which had linked Lewes with
+Beachbourne these forty years; and he would so plod until he died.  The
+_Star_ on the hill in Old Town, Beachbourne, marked one end of his
+day's journey; and the equally ancient _Lamb_, at Aldwoldston,
+black-timbered and gabled too, marked the other.  He had never been
+further "oop country," as he called it, than Heathfield.  Lewes was the
+utmost term of his wanderings West, Beau-nez East; while the sea at
+Newhaven had bounded him on the South.  Within this tiny quadrilateral,
+which just about determined also the wanderings of an old dog-fox in
+Abbot's Wood, he had passed his life; and nothing now would ever induce
+him to pass the bounds he had allotted himself.
+
+To the man and woman in the cart old Mus. Woolgar had been a familiar
+figure from childhood.  The little girl skipping by the market-cross in
+Aldwoldston would stop to watch him start; the little boy would wait at
+Billing's Corner on the top of the hill to see him come along the New
+Road past Motcombe at the end of his journey.  Long before either had
+been aware of the other's existence the old carrier had served as an
+invisible link between them.
+
+Now the two were married.
+
+Ruth Boam had become Mrs. Ernie Caspar that afternoon in the
+cathedral-church of Aldwoldston, on the mound among the ash-trees above
+Parsons' Tye and the long donkey-backed clergy-house that dates from
+the fourteenth century.
+
+It had been a very quiet wedding.  The father and mother of the bride
+had stumped across from Frogs' Hall, at the foot of the village, Ruth
+accompanying them, her little daughter in her arms.  For the rest, Dr.
+and Mrs. Trupp had come over from Beachbourne with Mr. Pigott and his
+wife in the chocolate-bodied car driven by the bridegroom's brother.
+
+Alf had not entered the church to see Ernie married.  He had mouched
+sullenly down to the river instead, and stood there during the service,
+his back to the church, looking across the Brooks to old Wind-hover's
+dun and shaven flank with eyes that did not see, and ears that refused
+to hear.
+
+After the ceremony the car-party returned to Beachbourne by way of the
+sea--climbing High-'nd-over, to drop down into Sea-ford, and home by
+Birling Gap and Beau-nez.  From the almost violent gesture with which
+Alf had set his engines in motion and drawn out of the lane under the
+pollarded willows of Parson's Tye, he at least had been glad to turn
+his back on the scene.
+
+
+Ruth and her husband had returned to Frogs' Hall with the old folk.
+
+Later, as the sun began to lower behind Black Cap into the valley of
+the Ouse, they went up River Lane and picked up the carrier's cart by
+the market-cross.
+
+For the moment they were leaving little Alice with her grandmother
+while they settled into the Moot, Old Town, where Ernie had found a
+cottage close to his work, not a quarter of a mile from the home of his
+father and mother in Rectory Walk.
+
+The carrier's cart moved slowly on under the telegraph wires on which
+the martins were already gathering: for it was September.  Now and then
+Ernie raised the flap that made a little window in the side of the
+tilt, and looked out at the accompanying Downs, mysterious in the
+evening.
+
+"They're still there," he announced comfortably, "and like to be yet a
+bit, I reckon."
+
+"They move much same pace as us doos, seems to me," said Ruth.
+
+"We should get there afoor them yet though," answered Ernie.
+
+"Afoor the Day of Judgment we might, if so be we doosn't die o
+breathlessness first," the woman replied.
+
+"You'd like a car to yourself you would," chaffed Ernie.  "And Alf
+drivin you."
+
+Ruth turned in her lips.
+
+They moved leisurely forward, leaving Folkington clustered about its
+village-green upon the right, passing the tea-gardens at Wannock, and
+up the long pull to Willingdon, standing among old gardens and pleasant
+fig-trees.  Once through the village the woods of Hampden Park
+green-bosomed upon the left, blocked out the marshes and the splendid
+vision of Pevensey Bay.  Now the road emerged from the shelter of
+hedges and elm-trees and flowed with a noble billowy motion between
+seas of corn that washed the foot of the Downs and swept over Rodmill
+to the outposts of Beachbourne.  Between the road and the Downs stood
+Motcombe, islanded in the ruddy sea, amongst its elms and low
+piggeries.  Behind the farm, at the very foot of the hill, was
+Huntsman's Lodge where once, when both were boys, Alf had betrayed his
+brother on the occasion of the looting of the walnut-tree.
+
+Ern pointed out the spot to his bride and told the tale.  Ruth listened
+with grim understanding.
+
+"That's Alf," she said.
+
+"Mr. Pigott lived there that time o day," Ern continued.  "One of the
+five Manors of Beachbourne, used to be--I've heard dad say.  Belonged
+to the Salwyns of Friston Place over the hill--the clergy-folk.  The
+farm's where the Manor-house used to be; and the annual sheep-fair was
+held in a field outside from William the Conqueror till a few years
+back."
+
+He pointed to one of a little row of villas on the left which looked
+over the allotment gardens to the Downs.
+
+"That's where Mr. Pigott lives now.  My school-master he were that time
+o day."
+
+"Who's Mr. Pigott?" Ruth asked.
+
+Ernie rootled her with a friendly elbow.
+
+"My guv'nor, stoopid!  Manager of the Southdown Transport Company.  Him
+that was at the wedding--with the beard.  Settin along o Mrs. Trupp."
+
+"Oh, Mr. _Pigott_!" answered Ruth.  Now that the strain of the last two
+years was over at last, she brimmed over with a demure naughtiness.
+"Well, why couldn't you say so, then?  You _are_ funny, men are."
+
+The cart climbed the steep hill to Billing's Corner and Ernie looked
+down the familiar road to the Rectory and even caught a peep of the
+back of his old home.  Then they turned down Church Street with its
+old-world fragrance of lavender and yesterday.
+
+On the left the parish-church, long-backed and massive-towered upon the
+Kneb, brooded over the centuries it had seen come and go.
+
+"Dad says the whole history of Beachbourne's centred there," said Ernie
+in awed voice.  "Steeped in it, he says."
+
+Ernie, who had been leaning forward to peep at the Archdeacon posed in
+the entrance of St. Michael's, now dropped back suddenly, nudging his
+companion.
+
+A lean woman with white hair and wrathful black eyebrows, her
+complexion still delicate as a girl's, was coming up the hill.
+
+"Mother," whispered Ernie.
+
+It was Ruth's turn to raise the flap and peer forth stealthily at the
+figure passing so close and so unconsciously on the pavement.
+
+So that was the woman who had opposed her marriage with such malevolent
+persistency!
+
+Ruth observed her enemy with more curiosity than hostility, and
+received a passing impression of a fierce unhappy face.
+
+"She don't favour you no-ways," she said, as she relapsed into a
+corner.  "Where's dad though?"
+
+Ernie shook his head.
+
+"He's never with her," he said.  "I ca-a-n't call to mind as ever I've
+seen them out together, not the pair of them."
+
+"I'd ha liked him to have been at the wedding," murmured Ruth a thought
+discontentedly.
+
+"And he'd ha liked it too, I'll lay," Ernie answered.  "Only she'd
+never have let him."
+
+The cart stopped; and the two passengers descended at the old _Star_
+opposite the Manor-house, which bore the plate of Mr. William Trupp,
+the famous surgeon.
+
+On the Manor-house steps a tall somewhat cadaverous man was standing.
+He was so simply dressed as almost to be shabby; and his straw hat,
+tilted on the back of his head, disclosed a singularly fine forehead.
+There was something arresting about the man and his attitude: a
+delicious mixture of mischievous alertness and philosophical
+detachment.  He might have been a mediæval scholar waiting at the door
+of his master; or a penitent seeking absolution; or, not least, a youth
+about to perpetrate a run-away knock.
+
+Ernie across the road watched him with eyes in which affection and
+amusement mingled.  Then the door opened, and the
+scholar-penitent-youth was being greeted with glee by Bess Trupp.
+
+Ernie turned to his wife.
+
+"My old Colonel," he said confidentially.  "What I was in India with.
+Best Colonel the Hammer-men ever had--and that's saying something."
+
+"Colonel Lewknor, aren't it?" asked Ruth.
+
+"That's him," said Ernie keenly.  "Do you knaw him?"
+
+"He was over at Auston last summer," answered Ruth, "lecturin we got to
+fight Germany or something.  I went, but I didn't pay no heed to him.
+No account talk, I call that."
+
+Together they dropped down Borough Lane and turned to the left along
+the Moot where dwelt the workers of Old Town--a few in flint cottages
+set in gardens, rank with currant bushes, a record of the days, not so
+long ago, when corn flowed down both sides of Water Lane, making a lake
+of gold between the village on the hill and the Sea-houses by the Wish;
+and most in the new streets of little red houses that looked up,
+pathetically aware of their commonness, to the calm dignity of the old
+church upon the Kneb above.
+
+At one of these latter Ernie stopped and made believe to fumble with a
+key.  Ruth, who had not seen her new home, was thrilling quietly, as
+she had been throughout the journey, though determined not to betray
+her emotion to her mate.
+
+The door opened and they entered.
+
+A charming voice from the kitchen greeted them.
+
+"Ah, there you are--punctual to the minute!"
+
+A woman, silver-haired and gracious, turned from deft busy-ness at the
+range.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Trupp!" cried Ruth, looking about her.
+
+The table was laid already, and gay with flowers; the fire lit, the
+kettle on the boil, the supper ready.
+
+"It is kind," said Ruth.  "Was this you and Miss Bess?"
+
+"Perhaps we had a hand in it," laughed the other.  "She couldn't be
+here, as she's got a meeting of her Boy Scouts.  But she sent her best
+wishes.  Now I hand over the key to the master; and my responsibilities
+are over!"  And she was gone with the delicious ripple of laughter
+Ernie had loved from babyhood.
+
+Ruth was now thirsting to explore her new home, but Ernie insisted on
+supping first.  This he did with malicious deliberation.  When at
+length he was satisfied they went upstairs together, he leading the way.
+
+"This is our room!" he said with ill-disguised complacency, stepping
+aside.
+
+The bridal chamber was swept and garnished.  In it were more flowers,
+bowls of them; and the furniture simple, solid, and very good, was of a
+character rarely found in houses of that class.
+
+Ernie enjoyed the obvious pleasure of his bride as she touched and
+glanced and dipped like some large bird flitting gracefully from piece
+to piece.
+
+Then she paused solemnly and looked about her.
+
+"Reckon it must ha cost a tidy penny," she said.
+
+"It did," Ernie answered.
+
+She cocked a soft brown eye at him.
+
+"Could you afford it, Ernie?"
+
+"I could not," said Ernie, standing grimly and with folded arms.
+
+At the moment her eyes fell on a card tied to the bed-post on which was
+written: _From Mr., Mrs. and Miss Trupp_.  Ruth's eyes caressed the
+bed, and her fingers stroked the smooth wood.
+
+"It's like them," she said.  "None o your cheap trash."
+
+"Ah," answered Ernie.  "Trust them.  They're just all right, they are."
+
+Before the looking-glass on the chest of drawers Ruth now took off her
+hat.
+
+She was perhaps too simple, too natural, too near to earth to be shy at
+this the supreme moment of a woman's life.  At least she was too wary
+to show it.
+
+"Rich folks they have two little beds laid alongside, these days," she
+said, speaking from her experience as a maid.  "I wouldn't think it was
+right myself.  Only you mustn't judge others."  She added in her slow
+way, as she patted her hair--"I wouldn't feel prarperly married like
+only in a prarper two-bed."
+
+Ernie drew down the blind.
+
+Then he marched upon his bride deliberately and with remorseless eyes.
+Suddenly she turned and met him with a swift and lovely smile, dropping
+her mask, and discovering herself to him in the surprising radiance of
+a moon that reveals its beauty after long obscurity.  She laid her
+hands upon his shoulders in utter surrender.  He gathered her gradually
+in his arms; and closing his eyes, dwelt on her lips with the slow and
+greedy passion of a bee, absorbed in absorption, and drinking deep in
+the cloistered seclusion of a fox-glove bell,
+
+"You're prarperly married all right," he said.  "And you ca-a-n't get
+out of it--not no-ways."
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+DEEPENING DUSK
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HOSTEL
+
+Dr. Trupp of Beachbourne, as he was generally known--Mr. Trupp, to give
+him his correct title--was a genuinely great man.
+
+His father had been a book-seller in Torquay; and he himself never lost
+the greater qualities of the class from which he sprang.  He was very
+simple and very shrewd.  Science had not blunted the fine intuitions
+which his brusque manner half concealed.  Moreover, he trusted those
+intuitions perhaps unconsciously as do few men of his profession; and
+they rarely played him false.  In early manhood his integrity, his
+sound common sense, and practical idealism had won for him the love of
+a singularly noble girl who might have married one of the best of her
+inevitably artificial class.  Later in life indeed Evelyn Trupp often
+would amuse her father and annoy her mother by affirming that she was
+far prouder of being the wife of Mr. Trupp of Beachbourne than of
+having been Miss Moray of Pole.  And she had good cause.  For her
+husband was no longer the country doctor at whom the county families
+had sniffed.  He was "Trupp of Beachbourne," whose fame had spread,
+quietly it is true, from Sussex, through England to the outer world.
+And if there was some difference of opinion as to whether Mr. Trupp had
+made Beachbourne, or Beachbourne had made him, there was no question
+that the growth of the town, and its deserved popularity as a
+health-resort was coincident with his residence there.
+
+At least the event justified the young surgeon's courage and
+originality in the choice of a site for his life-long campaign.  Indeed
+had he stayed in London it is certain that he would never have achieved
+the work he was able to consummate in the town girdled by the southern
+hills and washed by Northern Seas.  And that work was no mean
+contribution to the welfare of the race.  Mr. Trupp was a pioneer in
+the organized attack on perhaps the deadliest and most pertinacious
+enemy that threatens the supremacy of Man--the tubercle bacillus.  And
+his choice of a _point-d'appui_ from which to conduct his offensive was
+no small factor in his success.
+
+He was, moreover, one of the men who in the last years of the
+nineteenth century and the earlier years of this set himself to stem
+the tide of luxury which in his judgment was softening the spines of
+the younger generation.  And the helpful buffets which gave him his
+name, and were responsible at least for some of his triumphs, were not
+the outcome of spasms of irritability but of a deliberate philosophy.
+
+For Mr. Trupp, despite his kind heart, never forgot that Man with all
+his aspirations after heaven had but yesterday ceased to be an animal
+and still stood on the edge of the slough from which he had just
+emerged, up to his hocks in mud, the slime yet trickling from his
+shaggy sides.
+
+"Don't give him sympathy," he would sometimes say to an astonished
+father.  "What he wants is the Big Stick ... Stop his allowance.  He'll
+soon get well.  Necessity's the best doctor....  Take her mother away
+from her.  The mothers make half the invalids....  Let her get up early
+in the morning and take the kitchen-maid tea in bed.  _She's_ a useful
+citizen at all events."
+
+He saw his country, so he believed, sinking into a dropsical coma
+before his eyes, just for want of somebody to kick it awake; and the
+sight made him sick and fearful.
+
+Often riding with his daughter of evenings after the day's work he
+would pause a moment beside the flag-staff on Beau-nez and look North
+East across the waste of sea dull or shining at his feet.
+
+"Can you hear him growling, Bess?" he asked his companion once.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The Brute."
+
+Bess knew her father's ogre, and the common talk.
+
+"Is Germany the Brute?" she asked.
+
+Her father shook his head.
+
+"One of them," he answered.  "Wherever Man is there the Brute is--keep
+that in mind when you're married, my dear.  And he's always sleeping
+after a gorge or ravenous before one.  Our Brute's asleep now he's got
+his belly full.  Theirs"--nodding across the water--"is prowling for
+his prey."
+
+To Mr. Pigott he confided his belief that there was only one thing that
+could save England.
+
+"What's that?" asked the old school-master.
+
+"A bloody war," replied Mr. Trupp.
+
+Many other men were saying the same thing, but few of his intellectual
+calibre, and none of his radical views.
+
+His own part in staying the rot that in his belief threatened to
+corrupt the country he loved with such a deep if critical love, was
+clear enough.  It was the business of him and his colleagues to give
+the nation the health that made for character, just as it was that of
+the school-master to give them the character that made for health.  And
+he tackled his side of national education with a will: the Sun, the
+Sea, the Air being the assistants in whom he trusted.
+
+His old idea, cherished through a life-time, of an open-air hostel,
+where he could have under his immediate supervision children without
+their mothers, and wives without their husbands, sought always more
+urgently for expression as the years slipped by.  It was not, however,
+till the twentieth century was well upon its way, that all the
+conditions necessary for the safe launching of his project were
+fulfilled.
+
+His chance came when Colonel Lewknor and his wife crossed his path on
+retirement from the Sendee.
+
+
+Rachel Lewknor took up the old surgeon's plan with the fierce yet wary
+courage of her race.
+
+Here was her chance, heaven-sent.  Thus and thus would she fulfil her
+cherished dream and make the money to send her grandson, Toby, to Eton
+like his father and grandfather before him.
+
+Like most soldiers, she and the Colonel were poor.  All through their
+working lives any money they might have saved against old age they had
+invested in the education of their boy; stinting themselves in order to
+send young Jock to his father's school and afterwards to start him in
+his father's regiment.  On retirement therefore they had little but a
+pittance of a pension on which to live.  The question of how to raise
+the capital to buy the site and build the hostel was therefore the most
+urgent of the earlier difficulties that beset Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+Mr. Trupp said frankly that he could lend the money and would do so at
+a pinch; but he made it clear that he would rather not.  He, too, was
+starting his boy Joe in the Hammer-men, and like all civilians of those
+days had an exaggerated idea of the expenses of an officer in the Army.
+Moreover, he had determined that when the time and the man came Bess
+should marry where she liked; and the question of money should not
+stand in her way.
+
+Happily Mrs. Lewknor's problem solved itself as by miracle.
+
+
+Alf Caspar, who had his garage in the Goffs at the foot of Old Town
+and, in spite of the continued protests of Mrs. Trupp and Bess, still
+drove for Mr. Trupp (the old surgeon refusing steadfastly to keep a car
+of his own), had from the start evinced an almost prurient interest in
+the conception of the hostel.  In the very earliest days when Mr. Trupp
+and Mrs. Lewknor talked it over as they drove through Paradise, the
+beech-hangar between old Town and Meads, to visit the prospective site
+in Cow Gap, he would sit at his wheel manipulating his engine to ensure
+the maximum of silent running, his head screwed round and big left ear
+reaching back to lick up what was passing between the two occupants of
+the body of the car.
+
+Later, when it had actually been decided to embark upon the scheme, he
+said to Mr. Trupp one day in his brightest manner:
+
+"Should be a paying proposition, sir, with you behind it."
+
+The old surgeon eyed his chaffeur through his pince-nez shrewdly.
+
+"If you like to put £3,000 or so into it, Alfred, you wouldn't do
+yourself any harm," he said.
+
+Alf sheathed his eyes in that swift bird-like way of his, and tittered.
+
+"Three thousand pounds!" he said.  "Me!" ....
+
+A few days later when Mr. Trupp called at the Colonel's tiny villa in
+Meads.  Mrs. Lewknor ran out to him, eager as a girl.
+
+She had received from Messrs. Morgan and Evans, the solicitors in
+Terminus Road, an offer of the sum required on behalf of a client on
+the security of a first mortgage.
+
+"It's a miracle!" she cried, her eyes sparkling like jewels.
+
+"Or a ramp!" said the Colonel from behind.  "D'you know anything about
+the firm, Trupp?"
+
+"I've known and employed em ever since I've been here," replied the old
+surgeon.  "They're as old as Beachbourne and a bit older.  A Lewes firm
+really, and they still have an office there.  But as the balance of
+power shifted East they shifted with it."
+
+"They don't say who their client is," commented the Colonel.
+
+"I'll ask em," the other answered.
+
+That afternoon he drove down to Terminus Road, and leaving Alf in the
+car outside, entered the office.
+
+He and Mr. Morgan were old friends who might truly be accounted among
+the founders of modern Beachbourne.
+
+"Who's your client?" asked Mr. Trupp, gruff and grinning.  "Out with
+it!"
+
+Mr. Morgan shook his smooth grey head, humour and mystery lurking about
+his mouth and in his eyes.
+
+"Wishes to remain anonymous," he said.  "We're empowered to act on his
+behalf."
+
+He strolled to the window and peeped out, tilting on his toes to
+overlook the screen which obscured the lower half of it.
+
+What he saw seemed to amuse him, and his amusement seemed to re-act in
+its turn on Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Is he a solid man?" asked the surgeon.
+
+"As a rock," came the voice from the window.
+
+The other seemed satisfied; the contract forthwith was signed; and Mrs.
+Lewknor bought her site.
+
+
+Cow Gap was an ideal spot for the hostel.
+
+It is carved out of the flank of Beau-nez; the gorse-covered hill
+encircling it in huge green rampart that shelters it from the
+prevailing Sou-West gales.  Embedded in the majestic bluff that
+terminates the long line of the South Downs and juts out into the sea
+in the semblance of a lion asleep, head on his paws, it opens a broad
+green face to the sea and rising sun.  The cliff here is very low, and
+the chalk-strewn beach, easy of access from above, is seldom outraged
+by skirmishers from the great army peopling the sands along the front
+towards the Redoubt and the far Crumbles.  A spur of the hill shuts it
+off from the aristocratic quarter of the town, known as Meads, which
+covers with gardened villas the East-ward foot-hills of Beau-nez and
+ceases abruptly at the bottom of the Duke's Drive that sweeps up the
+Head in graceful curves.
+
+In this secluded coombe, that welcomes the sun at dawn, at dusk holds
+the lingering shadows, and is flecked all day with the wings of passing
+sea-birds, after many months of delay and obstructions victoriously
+overcome, Mrs. Lewknor began to build her house of bricks and mortar in
+the spring of the year Ruth and Ernie Caspar set out together to
+construct the future in a more enduring medium.
+
+The house, long and low, with balconies broad as streets, and windows
+everywhere to catch the light, rose layer by layer out of the turf on
+the edge of the cliff.  All the summer and on into the autumn it was
+a-building.  A white house with a red roof, plain yet picturesque, it
+might have been a coastguard station and was not.  Partaking of the
+character of the cliffs on which it stood and the green Downs in which
+it was enclosed, it seemed a fitting tenant of the great coombe in
+which, apart from a pair of goal-posts under the steep of the hill at
+the back, it was the only evidence of the neighbourhood of Man.
+
+Mr. Trupp watched the gradual realisation of the dream of a lifetime
+with the absorbed content of a child who observes the erection of a
+house of wooden bricks.  And he was not alone.
+
+When at the end of the day's work Alf now drove his employer, as he
+often did, to Cow Gap to study progress, he, too, would descend and
+poke and pry amid skeleton walls and crude dank passages with sharp
+eyes and sharper whispered questions to labourers, foreman, and even
+the architect.  Never a Sunday passed but found him bustling across the
+golf-links before church, to ascend ladders, walk along precarious
+scaffoldings, and march with proprietory air and incredible swagger
+along the terraces of the newly laid-out gardens that patched with
+brown the green quilt of the coombe.
+
+Once, on such a Sunday visit, he climbed the hill at the back to obtain
+a bird's-eye view of the building.  Amid spurting whin-chats and
+shining gossamers, he climbed in the brilliant autumn morning till he
+had almost reached the crest.  He was lost to the world and the beauty
+lavished all about him; his eyes shuttered to the whispered suggestions
+of the infinite; his heart closed to the revealing loveliness of Earth,
+round-limbed and bare, as he revolved in the dark prison-house of self
+the treadmill of his insect projects.  The sidesman of St. Michael's,
+spruce, scented, oiled, in fancy waistcoat, with boots of glace kid,
+and waxed moustache, moving laboriously between sky and sea, was
+civilised man at the height of his imperfection and vain-glorious in
+his fatuous artificiality.
+
+Suddenly a bare head and collarless stark neck blurted up out of a deep
+gorse-clump before him.
+
+"Who goes there?" came a challenge, deep and formidable, as the roar of
+some jungle lord disturbed in his covert.
+
+Alf collapsed as a soap-bubble, blown from a clay pipe and brilliant in
+the sunshine, bursts at the impact of an elemental prickle.  He fled
+down the hill incontinently.
+
+The man who had barked, shoulder-deep in gorse, his eyes still
+flashing, turned to the woman squandered beneath him in luxurious
+splendour.  Native of the earth on which she lay, and kin to it as some
+long-limbed hind of the forest, she regarded him with amused content.
+The sudden battle-call of her male roused what there was of primitive
+in her, soothed, and flattered her womanhood.  Comfortably she fell
+back upon the sense of security it called up, delighting behind
+half-drawn lids in the surprising ferocity of her man.  That roar of
+his, startling the silence like a trumpet-note, had spoken to her
+deeps.  Swiftly, and perhaps for the first time, she recognised what
+the man above her stood for in her life, and why one with whom she did
+not pretend to be in love so completely satisfied her most urgent
+present need.  He was a break-water behind which she lay with furled
+sails after a hazardous voyage over uncharted deeps.  Outside was still
+the roar and batter of seas.  The sound of guns booming overhead as she
+lay, stripped of her canvas, and rocking pleasantly in the inner
+waters, did not alarm, rather indeed lulled, her to sleep: for they
+spoke to her of protection at last.
+
+"Who was it, Ernie?" she murmured, raising a lazy head from the hands
+on which they were pillowed, the dark hair strewn about her like
+wind-slashed rain.
+
+The man turned, outraged still and bristling.
+
+"Alf!" he snorted.  "Just bob me head over the hawth at him.  That was
+enough--_quite_ enough!  I knaw the colour of Alf's liver."
+
+He stood above her with his air of a fighting male.
+
+She had never seen him like that before; and she regarded him
+critically and with approval.
+
+"Ern," she called quietly, with a chuckle, deep and secret as the
+gurgle of water pouring from a long-throated jug; and with a faint
+movement of her hips she made room for him in the sand beside her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+COW GAP
+
+Honeymoons are not for the class that does the world's dirty work; but
+joy can be seized by the simple of heart even in the conditions we
+impose upon the poor.
+
+Ernie Caspar after his marriage with Ruth Boam settled down with his
+bride in Old Town to enjoy the fruits of victory.
+
+The young couple had been lucky to find a cottage in the Moot; for even
+in those days accommodation for the working-class was as hard to find
+in Beachbourne as elsewhere.  The cottage, too, was appropriately
+situated for them in every way.  It was close to the yard of the
+Southdown Transport Company, where Ernie's work lay; and at the bottom
+of Borough Lane, at the top of which was the Manor-house, where lived
+Mr. and Mrs. Trupp, who had seen Ruth through her trouble, and had
+befriended Ernie from his boyhood.
+
+"D'you remember that first time ever we rode up to Old Town together
+tarp o the bus?" asked Ernie of his bride, one evening as they passed
+the great doctor's house on the way to Beau-nez.
+
+"Hap I do," Ruth answered, amused at her lover's intense seriousness.
+
+"And do _you_ remember what I said to you?" insistently.
+
+"Ne'er a word," answered Ruth, casual and teasing--"only it was
+no-account talk.  That's all I remember."
+
+"I pointed you out Mr. Trupp's house," Ernie continued solemnly, "and I
+says to you--_He brought me into the world_, I says.  _That's what he
+done_."
+
+The old roguish black-bird look, which after her winter of despair had
+been creeping slowly back to Ruth's face in this new spring, gleamed
+sedately now.
+
+"I mind me now," she said.  "Leastwise I don't remember what you said,
+but I remembers what I answered."
+
+"What did you answer then?" asked Ernie, suspiciously.
+
+"_He done well_, was what I says," answered the young woman gravely.
+
+"He did," replied Ernie with exaggerated pomp.  "And he done better to
+settle issalf at my door so I could be his friend if so be he ever
+gotten into trouble."
+
+"One thing I knaw," said Ruth, serious in her turn now.  "They're the
+two best friends e'er a workin woman had."
+
+"They are," Ernie agreed.  "And she's my god-mother."
+
+It was the fact in his life of which on the whole he was most proud and
+certainly the one for which he was least responsible.  "And she aren't
+yours," he continued, puffed up and self-complacent.  "And never will
+be."  He added finally to curb her arrogance.  "See she was dad's
+friend afore ever they married, eether of them."
+
+Ruth checked her husband's snobbishness with a tap.
+
+"You _are_ grand," she said.
+
+Close to the cottage of the young couple was the lovely old Motcombe
+garden, public now, pierced by the bourne from which the town derives
+its name.  The garden with its ancient dove-cot, ivy-crowned, its
+splendid weeping ashes, its ruined walls, compact of native flint and
+chalk, the skeletons of afore-time barns and byres, stands between the
+old parsonage house and older parish-church that crowns the Kneb above
+and, with its massive tower, its squat shingled spire peculiar to
+Sussex, set four-square to the winds of time, seems lost in a mist of
+memories.
+
+Beyond the church, a few hundred yards further up the hill, at the back
+of Billing's Corner in Rectory Walk, Ernie's parents still dwelt.
+
+Anne Caspar did not visit Ruth.  Indeed, she ignored the presence of
+her daughter-in-law; but those steel-blue eyes of hers sought out and
+recognized in a hard flash the majestic peasant girl who now haunted
+Church Street at shopping hours as the woman who had married her son.
+Ernie's mother was in fact one of those who make it a point of duty, as
+well as a pleasure, never to forgive.  She had neither pardoned Ruth
+for daring to be her daughter-in-law, nor forgotten her sin.  And both
+offences were immeasurably accentuated by Ruth's crime in establishing
+herself in the Moot.
+
+"Settlin on my door-step," she said.  "Brassy slut!"
+
+"Just like her," her second son answered; and added with stealthy
+malice, "Dad visits em.  I seen im."
+
+Alf, for all his acuteness, had never learned the simple lesson that
+his mother would not tolerate the slightest criticism of her old man.
+
+"And why shouldn't he?" she asked sharply.  "Isn't Ern his own
+flesh-and-blood?  _He's_ got a heart, dad has, if some as ought to ave
+aven't."
+
+"No reason at all," answered Alf, looking down his nose.  "Why
+shouldn't he be thick in with her--and with her child for the matter of
+that?  I see him walkin in the Moot the other day near the Quaker
+meeting-house hand-in-hand with little Alice.  Pretty as a Bible
+picture it struck me."
+
+Anne Caspar stared stonily.
+
+"Who's little Alice?" she asked.
+
+"Her love-child," answered Alf.  "Like your grand-child as you might
+say--only illegit o course."
+
+His mother breathed heavily.
+
+"Is Ern the father?" she asked at last in a sour flat voice.
+
+"Not him!" jeered Alf.  "She's a rich man's cast-off, Ruth is.  Made it
+worth Ern's while.  That's where it was.  See, cash is cash in this
+world."
+
+Anne laid back her ears as she rummaged among her memories,
+
+"I thought you told me," she began slowly, "as Ern--"
+
+"Never!" cried Alf.  "Ern had nothin to do with it, who-ever had."
+
+"Who was the father?" asked Anne, not above a little feminine curiosity.
+
+Alf shook his head cunningly.
+
+"Ah," he said, "now you're askin!" and added after a moment's pause:--
+
+"She was all-the-world's wench one time o day, your daughter was.
+That's all I can tell you."
+
+Anne stirred a saucepan thoughtfully.  She did not believe Alf: for she
+knew that Ernie was far too much his father's son to be bought
+disgracefully, and she remembered suddenly a suggestion that Mr. Pigott
+had lately thrown out to the effect that Alf himself had not been
+altogether proof against the seductions of this seductive young woman
+his brother had won.  It struck her now that there might be something
+in the story after all, unlikely as it seemed: for she remarked that
+Alf always pursued his sister-in-law with the covert rancour and
+vindictiveness of the mean spirit which has met defeat.
+
+But however doubtful she might be in her own heart of Alf's tale, the
+essential facts about Ruth were not in dispute: her daughter-in-law was
+the mother of an illegitimate child and had settled down with that
+child not a quarter of a mile away.  Everybody knew the story,
+especially of course the neighbours she would least wish to know
+it--the Archdeacon and Lady Augusta in the Rectory across the way.  For
+over thirty years Anne had lived in her solid little blue-slated house,
+the ampelopsis running over its good red face, the tobacco plants sweet
+on summer evenings in the border round the neat and tidy lawn, holding
+her nose high, too high her enemies averred, and priding herself above
+all women on her respectability--and now!
+
+No wonder Ernie, bringing home his bride and his disgrace, infuriated
+her.
+
+"Shamin me afore em all!" she muttered time and again with sullen wrath
+to the pots and pans she banged about on the range.
+
+She never saw the offender now except on Sundays when he came up to
+visit his father, which he did as regularly as in the days before his
+marriage.  The ritual of these visits was always the same.  Ernie would
+come in at the front-door; she would give him a surly nod from the
+kitchen; he would say quietly--"Hullo, mum!" and turn off into the
+study where his dad was awaiting him.
+
+The two, Anne remarked with acrimony, grew always nearer and--what
+annoyed her most--talked always less.  Edward Caspar was an old man
+now, in body if not in years; and on the occasion of Ernie's visits
+father and son rarely strolled out to take the sun on the hill at the
+back or lounge in the elusive shade of Paradise as in former days.
+They were content instead to sit together in the austere little study
+looking out on to the trees of the Rectory, Lely's famous _Cavalier_,
+the first Lord Ravensrood, glancing down from the otherwise bare walls
+with wistful yet ironic eyes on his two remote descendants enjoying
+each other beneath in a suspicious communion of silence.
+
+Thus Anne always found the pair when she brought them their tea; and
+the mysterious intimacy between the two was all the more marked because
+of her husband's almost comical unawareness of his second son.  The
+genuine resentment Anne experienced in the matter of Edward's unvarying
+attitude towards his two sons she visited, regardless of justice, upon
+Alf.
+
+"Might not be a son to your father the way you go on!" she said
+censoriously.
+
+"And what about him," cried Alf, not without reason.  "Might not be a
+father to your son, seems to me."
+
+
+It would, however, have taken more than Anne Caspar's passionate
+indignation at the action of Ernie and his bride in establishing
+themselves in the Moot to cloud the lives of the newly-married couple.
+Ern was now twenty-eight, and Ruth four years younger.  They had the
+present, which they enjoyed; they did not worry about the future; and
+the past inevitably buries itself in time.
+
+"We're young yet, as Mr. Trupp says," remarked Ernie.  "We've got it
+all afore us.  Life's not so bad for all they say.  I got you: and you
+got me; and the rest don't matter."
+
+They were lying on Beau-nez in the dusk above Cow Gap, listening to the
+long-drawn swish of the sea, going and coming with the tranquil rhythm
+that soothes the spirit of man, restless in Time, with rumours of
+forgotten Eternity.
+
+"And we both got little Alice," murmured Ruth, eyes resting on his with
+affectionate confidence, sure of his love for her and the child that
+was not his.
+
+"Keep me cosy, Ern," whispered the luxurious creature with a delicious
+mixture of entreaty and authority snuggling up against him.  She was
+lying, her face lifted flower-wise to the moon that hung above her
+bubble-like and benignant, her eyes closed, her lips tilted to tempt
+the pollen-bearing bee, while about them the lovely laughter brimmed
+and dimpled.
+
+"I'll keep you cosy, my beauty," replied Ernie, with the busy
+seriousness of the male intent on love.  "I'll give you plenty beside
+little Alice to think of afore I'm done with you.  I'll learn _you_.
+Don't you worrit.  I know what _you_ want."
+
+"What then?" asked Ruth, deep and satisfied.
+
+"Why, basketfuls o babies--armfuls of em, like cowslips till you're
+fairly smothered, and spill em over the field because you can't hold em
+all."
+
+Perhaps he was right.  Certainly after the battle and conflict of the
+last two years Ruth felt spiritually lazy.  She browsed and drowsed,
+content that Ernie for the time being should master her.  It was good
+for him, too, she saw, so long as he would do it, correcting his
+natural tendency to slackness; and she had little doubt that she could
+assume authority at will in the future, should it prove necessary.
+Meanwhile that spirit of adventure which lurked in her; distinguished
+her from her class; and had already once led her into danger and
+catastrophe, was lulled to sleep for the moment.
+
+The hill at the back of Cow Gap is steep, and towards the crest the
+gorse grows thick and very high.  In the heart of this covert, dense
+enough to satisfy the most jealous lovers, Ernie had made a safe
+retreat.  He had cut away the resisting gorse with a bill-hook, rooted
+up the stumps, stripped the turf and made a sleeping-place of sand
+brought up from the shore.  In a rabbit-hole hard by, he hid a
+spirit-lamp and sundry stores of tea and biscuits; while Mrs. Trupp
+routed out from her coach-house an immense old carriage umbrella dating
+from Pole days which, when unfurled, served to turn a shower.
+
+Ruth and Ernie called their hiding-place the Ambush; for in it they
+could harbour, seeing all things, yet themselves unseen.  And there,
+through that brilliant autumn, they would pass their week-ends,
+watching Under-cliff, as the hostel was called, rising up out of the
+saucer of the coombe beneath them.  They would leave little Alice with
+a neighbour, and lock up the cottage in the Moot, which Ruth was
+swiftly transfiguring into a home.  On Saturday evenings, after a hard
+afternoon's work, stripping, papering, painting, making the old new and
+the dull bright, the pair would walk up Church Street, turn to the left
+at Billing's Corner, and dropping down Love Lane by the Rectory, cross
+the golf links and mount the hill by the rabbit-walk that leads above
+Paradise, past the dew-pond, on to the broad-strewn back of Beau-nez.
+Up there, surrounded by the dimming waters and billowing land, they
+would wait till the Head was deserted by all save a tethered goat and
+watchful coastguard; till in the solitude and silence the stars
+whispered, and the darkening turf, grateful for the falling dew,
+responded sweetly to their pressing feet.  Then the young couple,
+taking hands, would leave the crest and find their way with beating
+hearts along the track that led through the covert to their
+couching-place, where none would disturb them except maybe a hunting
+stoat; and only the moon would peep at them under the shaggy eyebrow of
+the gorse as they rejoiced in their youth, their love, their life.
+
+And then at dawn when the sun glanced warily over the brim of the sea
+and none was yet astir save the kestrel hovering in the wind; and the
+pair of badgers--who with the amazing tenacity of their kind still
+tenanted the burrows of their ancestors within a quarter of a mile of
+the tents and tabernacles of man--rooted and sported clumsily on the
+dewy hillside beneath; they would rise and slip bare-foot down the
+hill, past the hostel, on to the deserted beach, there to become one
+with the living waters, misty and lapping, as at night they had entered
+into communion with earth and sky and the little creaking creatures of
+the dark.
+
+"This is life," Ernie said on one such Sabbath dawn, sinking into the
+waters with deep content.  "Wouldn't old dad just love this?"
+
+"If it were like this all the time!" Ruth answered a thought wistfully
+as she floated with paddling hands, sea and sky, as it was in the
+beginning, enveloping her.  "Like music in church.  Just the peace that
+passeth understanding, as my Miss Caryll'd say."
+
+"Ah," said Ernie, speaking with the profound sagacity that not seldom
+marks the words of the foolish.  "Might be bad for us.  If there was
+nothing to fight we'd all be like to go to sleep.  That's what Mr.
+Trupp says."
+
+"Some of us might," said Ruth, the girl slyly peeping forth from her
+covering womanhood.
+
+"Look at Germany!" continued the wise man, surging closer.  "Look at
+what the Colonel said the other night at the Institute.  We're the
+rabbits; and Germany's the python, the Colonel says."
+
+"That for Germany!" answered Ruth, splashing the water with the flat of
+her hand in the direction of the rising sun.
+
+"And she's all the while a-creepin--a-creepin--closer acrarst the sea,"
+said Ernie, edging nearer--"for to SWALLOW US UP!"  And with a rush he
+engulfed her young body in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD
+
+On one of the last days of that brilliant October, just before the grey
+curtain of rains descended to blot out autumn fields and twinkling
+waters, Colonel Lewknor and his wife moved into the hostel.
+
+On that first evening Mrs. Lewknor came down the broad stair-case in
+"review order," as she called it, to celebrate the consummation of the
+first stage of her project, and found her husband standing at the
+sea-ward window of the hall, a Mestophelian figure, holding back the
+curtain and peeping out.  Quietly she came and stood beside him, about
+her shoulders the scarlet cape a Rajput Princess had given her after
+Lord Curzon's durbar.
+
+The house, which was the solitary building in the great coombe, stood
+back some hundred yards from the cliff along which the coast-guard's
+path to Beau-nez showed up white-dotted in the darkness.  The Colonel
+was staring out over the misty and muffled waters, mumbling to himself,
+as was his way.
+
+"We shall get a nice view from here, anyway," he said with his
+satyr-like chuckle.
+
+She laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Of what?" she asked.
+
+"The landing," he replied.
+
+She rippled off into a delicious titter.  After thirty years of married
+life her Jocko was still for Rachel Lewknor the most entertaining of
+men.
+
+"You and Mr. Trupp!" she said.  "A pair of you!"  For the two men had
+drawn singularly close since the Colonel on retirement had established
+himself in Meads.
+
+The old soldier in truth came as something of a revelation to the great
+surgeon, who delighted in the other's philosophical mind, his freedom
+from the conventional limitations and prejudices of the officer-caste,
+his wide reading and ironical humour.
+
+On his evening ride one day about this time Mr. Trupp and Bess came
+upon the Colonel halted at the flag-staff on the top of the Head, and
+gazing out over the wide-spread waters with solemn eyes, as though
+watching for a tidal wave to sweep up out of the East and overwhelm his
+country.  Mr. Trupp knew that the old soldier was often at that spot in
+that attitude at that hour, a sentinel on guard at the uttermost end of
+the uttermost peninsula that jutted out into the Channel; and he knew
+why.
+
+"Well, is it coming?" the doctor growled, half serious, half chaffing.
+
+The Colonel, standing with his hat off, his fine forehead and
+cadaverous face thrusting up into the blue, answered with quiet
+conviction.
+
+"It's coming all right."
+
+"It's been coming all my time," answered the other sardonically.  "If
+it don't come soon I shall miss it.  In the seventies it was Russia.
+Any fool, who wasn't a criminal or a traitor or both, could see that a
+clash was inevitable.  Two great races expanding at incredible speed in
+Asia, etc., etc.  Then in the nineties it was France.  Any man in his
+right mind could see it.  It was mathematically demonstrable.  Two
+great races expanding in Africa, etc., etc....  And now it's
+Germany..."  He coughed and ended gruffly, "Well, you may be right this
+time."
+
+"We were right about William the Conqueror," said the Colonel urbanely.
+"He came."
+
+"But that was some time ago, my daughter tells me," replied Mr. Trupp.
+"And you've been wrong every time since."
+
+Bess giggled; and the Colonel adjusted his field-glasses with delicate
+precision.
+
+"If you say it's going to rain and keep on saying it long enough you'll
+probably prove right in the end," he remarked.  "It's dogged as does it
+in the realm of speculation as elsewhere in my experience."
+
+The old surgeon and his daughter turned their backs on the flagstaff
+and the solitary watchman beside it, and jogged towards the sunset
+red-strewn behind the white bluff of the Seven Sisters Newhaven-way.
+
+Two figures topped the brow of Warren Hill in front and came swiftly
+over the short turf towards them.  It was Saturday: Ruth and Ernie were
+on their way to their secret covert above Cow Gap as usual.
+
+"About your last week-end up here before the weather breaks, I should
+say," chaffed the old surgeon as he passed them.
+
+Ernie laughed a little nervously.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Just what I were a-sayin to Ruth," he answered.  He had
+thought his secret known to none.
+
+"Well, I hope the police won't catch you," remarked the other with a
+grin as he rode on.
+
+"Never!--not unless someone was to give us away, sir!" said Ruth
+demurely, as she looked across the sea under lowered brows.
+
+Bess called back reassuringly over her shoulder:
+
+"You're all right, Ruth.  I'll square Mr. Trupp."
+
+The riders struck Duke's Drive and dropped down into Meads.
+
+"How happy Ernie looks now!" said Bess.  "It's delightful to see him."
+
+"Yes," replied her father--"too happy.  He's going to sleep again--just
+what I told you.  And when he's well away in the land of dreams _IT_'ll
+pounce on him once more."
+
+That evening over his coffee Mr. Trupp returned to the subject, which
+was a favourite with him.
+
+"I always knew how it would be," he said with gloomy complacency.
+
+"Of course," answered Mrs. Trupp, glancing mischievously at Bess.
+
+"Makes him too comfortable," the wise man continued.  "Fatal mistake.
+What he wants is an occasional flick with the whip to keep him up to
+the mark.  We all do."
+
+It was not, indeed, in Ruth's nature to use the whip or inspire the
+fear which few of us as yet are able to do without.  And at present she
+did not bother much.  For at first her beauty and spiritual power were
+quite enough to hold Ernie.  He found in her the comfort and the stay
+the tree finds in the earth it is rooted in.  She was the element in
+which he lived and moved and had his being.  She satisfied his body and
+his spirit as the sea satisfies the fish which dwells in it.  She
+steadied him and that was what he needed.
+
+The marriage, indeed, proved as successful as are most.  That is to say
+it was not a failure, in that both the contracting parties were on the
+whole the happier for it.  Certainly Ern was: for there was no doubt
+that he was in love with Ruth, nor that his love was real and enduring.
+
+Ruth on her side was fond of Ern, and grateful to him, if only because
+of little Alice; although her feeling was more that of the mother for
+the child than of the woman for her mate.  She was full of pity for him
+and occasionally unuttered resentment.  That was inevitable because Ern
+was weak.  She had continually to prop him up, though she would rather
+have let him do the propping.  And perhaps for her own growth it was
+good that she must give support rather than receive it.
+
+In a way she was not the ideal wife for Ern: her strength was her
+weakness.  She appeared almost too big of soul and tranquil of spirit.
+But there was another side of her, largely undeveloped, that had as yet
+only revealed itself in gleams, or rather, to be exact, in one lurid
+flash of lightning which had thrown her firmament into ghastly and
+twittering relief.  Her quiet was the hushed and crouching quiet of the
+young lilac in winter, lying secretly in wait for the touch of April
+sun, to leap forth from its covert in an amazing ecstasy of colour,
+fragrance, loveliness and power.
+
+For the time being Ruth was glad to lie up, as a tigress in whelp,
+after long hunting, is content to harbour in the green darkness,
+drinking in draughts of refreshing through sleep, while her mate prowls
+out at dusk to find meat.  But that would not last for ever.  Her life
+must be full and brimming over or her insatiable vitality and that
+all-devouring spirit of hers, reaching out like a creeper to embrace
+the world, might find outlet in mischief, innocent enough in the
+intention, and yet, as experience had already proved, catastrophic in
+its consequences.
+
+In her secret deeps, indeed, Ruth was one to whom danger was the breath
+of life, although she was still unaware of it: an explorer and pioneer,
+gay and gallant, sailing her skiff over virgin oceans, reckless of the
+sunken reefs that might at any moment rip the bottom out of her frail
+craft.  The outward sedateness of the Sussex peasant was liable at any
+moment to sudden overthrow, as some chance spark caused the southern
+blood in her veins to leap and frolic into flame; and that Castilian
+hidalgo, her remote ancestor, who lurked behind the arras of the
+centuries, called her away from the timid herd to some dear and
+desperate enterprise of romance.
+
+Mrs. Trupp alone was aware of this buccaneer quality hidden in the
+young woman's heart and undiscovered of the world.  Ruth's Miss Caryll
+had told her friend of it long ago when the girl was in her service at
+the Dower-house, Aldwoldston.
+
+"It's the Spaniard in her," Miss Caryll had said.
+
+And when at the time of her distress Ruth had told her story to the
+wife of the great surgeon who had succoured her, Mrs. Trupp, keen-eyed
+for all her gentleness, had more than once detected the flash of a
+sword in the murk of the tragedy.
+
+The girl had dared--and been defeated.  She would dare again--until she
+found her conqueror: thus Mrs. Trupp envisaged the position.
+
+Was Ernie that man?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ALF
+
+Then a child lifted its tiny sail on the far horizon.  Its rippling
+approach across the flood-tides absorbed Ruth and helped Ernie: for he
+had in him much of his father's mysticism, and was one of those men who
+go through life rubbing their eyes as the angels start up from the
+dusty road, and they see miracles on every side where others only find
+the prosaic permutations and combinations of mud.  And this particular
+miracle, taking place so deliberately beneath his roof, a miracle of
+which he was the unconscious agent, inspired and awed him.
+
+"Makes you sweat to think of it," he said to a mate in the yard.
+
+"By then you've had half-a-dozen and got to keep em, you'll sweat
+less," retorted his friend, who had been married several years.
+
+Mr. Trupp looked after Ruth.
+
+Great man as he was now, he still attended faithfully those humble
+families who had supported him when first he had established himself in
+Old Town thirty years before, young, unknown, his presence fiercely
+resented by the older practitioners.
+
+When Ruth's time came, Ernie sat in the kitchen, shaken to the soul,
+and listening to the feet in the room above.
+
+It was a dirty night, howling, dark and slashed with rain.  Outside in
+the little dim street that ran below the Kneb on which loomed the
+shadowy bulk of the parish-church, solid against the cloud-drift, stood
+the doctor's car.
+
+Once Ernie went to the rain-sluiced window and saw Alf with his collar
+turned up crouching behind the wheel.
+
+Ernie went out into the flapping night.
+
+"Ere, Alf!" he said hoarsely.  "We can't go on like this.  Tain't in
+nature.  After all, we're brothers."
+
+The two had not spoken since the one had possessed the woman the other
+had desired.
+
+Alf now showed himself curiously complacent.
+
+"I am a Christian all right," he confided to his brother; and added
+with the naïve self-satisfaction of the megalomaniac, as he shook
+hands: "I wish there was more like me, I do reelly."
+
+"Come in, then," said Ern, who was not listening.  "I can't abear to
+see you out here such a night as this and all."
+
+Alf came in.
+
+The two brothers sat over the fire in the kitchen, Alf uplifted, his
+gaitered legs crossed.  He looked about him brightly with that curious
+proprietory air of his.
+
+"You've a decent little crib here, Ern, I see," he said.
+
+"None so bad," Ernie answered briefly.
+
+"Done it up nice too," the other continued.  "Did your landlord do that
+now?"
+
+"No; me and Ruth atween us."
+
+"Ah, he'll raise your rent against you."
+
+"Like em," said Ern.  "They're all the same."
+
+Somebody moved overhead.
+
+Ern, stirred to his deeps, rose and stood, leaning his forehead on the
+mantel-piece, his ears aloft.
+
+"This is a bad job, Ern," said Alf--"a shockin bad job."
+
+"It's killin me," Ern answered with the delicious egoism of the male at
+such moments.
+
+There was a lengthy silence.  Then Alf spoke again--casually this time.
+
+"She never said nothin to you about no letter, did she?"
+
+"It's burned," replied Ernie curtly.
+
+Alf glanced at his brother sharply.  Then, satisfied that the other was
+in fact telling the truth, he resumed his study of the fire.
+
+"Not as there was anythink in it there shouldn't have been," he said
+complacently.  "You can ask anyone."  He was silent for a time.  Then
+he continued confidentially, leaning forward a little--"When you see
+her tell her I'm safe.  May be that'll ease her a bit."
+
+Ernie came to himself and glowered.
+
+"What ye mean?" he asked.
+
+Alf cocked his chin, knowing and mysteriously.
+
+"Ah," he said.  "You just tell her what I tell you--_Alf won't let on;
+Alf's safe_.  Just that.  You'll see."
+
+There was a stir and a movement in the room above: then the howl of a
+woman in travail.
+
+Ern was panting.  Silence succeeded the storm.  Then a tiny miaowing
+from the room above came down to them.
+
+Alf started to his feet.
+
+"What's that?" he cried.
+
+"My child," answered Ernie deeply, lifting a blind face to the ceiling.
+
+Alf was afraid of many things; but most of all he feared children, and
+was brutal to them consequently, less from cruelty, as the
+unimaginative conceived, than in self-defence.  And the younger the
+child the more he feared it.  The presence in the house of this tiny
+creature, emerging suddenly into the world from the darkness of the
+Beyond with its mute and mysterious message, terrified him.
+
+"Here!  I'm off!" he said.  "This ain't the place for me," and he left
+the house precipitately.
+
+Mrs. Trupp of course went to visit the young mother.  Ruth in bed,
+nursing her babe, met her with a smile that was radiant yet wistful.
+
+"It's that different to last time," she said, and nodded at little
+Alice playing with her beads at the foot of the bed.  "See, she'd no
+one--only her mother ... and you ... and Mr. Trupp.  They were all
+against her--poor lamb!--as if it was fault of her'n."  She gasped,
+choking back a sob.--"This'n's got em all on her side."
+
+"That's all over now, Ruth," said Mrs. Trupp gently.
+
+"I pray so, with all my heart I do," answered Ruth.  "You never knaw.
+Seems to me some things are never over--not in this world anyways."
+
+She blinked back tears, drew her hand across her eyes, and flashed up
+bravely.
+
+"Silly, ain't it?" she laughed.  "Only times it all come back so--what
+we went through, she and me.  And not through any fault of mine--only
+foolishness like."
+
+
+Ruth was one of those women who are a standing vindication of our
+civilisation and a challenge to all who indict it.  She was up and
+about in an incredibly short time, the firmer in body and soul for her
+adventure.
+
+One morning Alf came round quietly to see her.  She was at the
+wash-tub, busy and bare-armed; and met him with eyes that were neither
+fearful nor defiant.
+
+"I'm not a-goin to hurt you, Ruth," he began caressingly, with a
+characteristic lift of his chin.  "I only come to say it's all right.
+You got nothink against me now and I'll forget all I know about you.  A
+bargain's a bargain.  And now you've done your bit I'll do mine."
+
+The announcement, so generous in its intention, did not seem to make
+the expected impression.
+
+"I am a gentleman," continued Alf, leaning against the door-post.
+"Always ave been.  It's in me blood, see?  Can't help meself like even
+if I was to wish to."  He started off on a favourite theme of his.
+"Lord Ravensrood--him that made that speech on the Territorials the
+other night in the House of Lords, he's my second cousin.  I daresay if
+enough was to die I'd be Lord Ravensrood meself.  Often whiles I
+remember that.  I'm not like the rest of them.  I got blue blood
+running through me veins, as Reverend Spink says.  You can tell that by
+the look of me.  I'm not the one to take advantage."
+
+Ruth, up to her elbows in soap-suds, lifted her face.
+
+"I'm not afraid o you, Alf," she said quite simply.  "Now I got my Ern."
+
+The announcement annoyed Alf.  He rolled his head resentfully.
+
+"No one as does right has anythink to fear from me," he said harshly.
+"It's only wrong-doers I'm a terror to.  Don't you believe what they
+tell you.  So long as you keep yourself accordin and don't interfere
+with nobody, nobody won't interfere with you, my gurl."
+
+Ruth mocked him daintily.
+
+"I'm not your girl," she said, soaping her beautifully moulded arms.
+"I'm Ern's girl, and proud of it."  Her lovely eyes engaged his,
+teasing and tempting.  "That's our room above--his and mine.  It's
+cosy."
+
+"Ah," said Alf, smouldering.  "I'd like to see it."
+
+"You can't do that," answered Ruth gravely.  "Besides, there's nothing
+to see only the double-bed Mrs. Trupp gave us and the curtains to close
+it at night and that, so that no one shan't peep at what they
+should'nt."
+
+The touch of southern blood, wild and adventurous, which revealed
+itself in her swarthy colouring and black hair, stung her on to darings
+demure as they were provocative.  Alf, sour of eye, changed the subject.
+
+"Yes, it's a nice little bit of a crib," he said, glancing round.
+"What might be your rent?"
+
+"More'n it ought to be," answered Ruth.
+
+"That's a pity," said Alf.  "What's Ern's money now?"
+
+"I shan't tell you."
+
+Alf thrust his huge head forward with an evil grin.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said.  "It's twenty-four, and that's the limit.
+Pigott won't raise him no more.  I know Pigott."  He gloated over his
+victim.  "Yes, old Ern makes in the week what I'd make in a day if I
+was to do nothink only loll against the wall with me mouth open to
+catch the interest on me money that'd roll into it.  And I'm makin all
+the time: for God's give me brains and I'm usin em.  I'm not a-going to
+drive for somebody else all my life.  I'm the comin man in this
+town--you ask my bankers.  There's plenty doin _you_ don't know nothin
+of, and more to come.  And I'm at the back of it!--I'm the man what
+makes things move--that's what I am!"  He swelled like a little
+bull-frog.  "I'm a gentleman--that's Alf."  He shot his face forward
+and wagged a finger at her.  "And that's just the difference between
+Ern and me.  I'm in the position to live on me own money and never do a
+hand's turn for it: while Ern has to sweat for his handful of coppers.
+And _then_ it ain't enough to keep his wife from the wash-tub.  I'd
+like to see _my_ wife at that!--Now then!"  He folded his arms and
+struck an attitude.
+
+Ruth soused and wrung and rinsed quite unmoved.
+
+"That aren't the only difference, Alf," she said soothingly.  "See,
+Ern's got me.  That makes up to him a lot, he says.  He says he don't
+care nothing so long as he's got me to issalf, he says....
+Strawberries and cream and plenty of em, he calls me when he's got the
+curtains draw'd up there, and me a-settin on his knee."
+
+Alf retreated, burning and baffled.  She came to the door drying her
+arms, and pursued her victim with eyes in which the lightning played
+with laughter; as fastidious and dainty in her cruelty as a cat
+sporting with a mouse.
+
+A little way down the street he paused and turned.  Then he came back a
+pace or two stealthily.  His face was mottled and he was tilting his
+chin, mysterious and confidential.
+
+"Never hear e'er a word from the Captain?" he asked, in a hushed voice.
+
+Ruth flashed a terrible white and her bosom surged.
+
+"I do times," continued the tormentor, and bustled on his way with a
+malignant chuckle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CREEPING DEATH
+
+One evening at the club, Mr. Trupp asked the Colonel what had happened
+to Captain Royal.
+
+"He went through the Staff College, and now he's at the War Office, I
+believe," the other answered curtly.
+
+"Ever hear from him?" asked Mr. Trupp, warily.
+
+"No," said the Colonel.  "He's not a friend of mine."  And to save
+himself and an old brother-officer for whom he had neither liking nor
+respect, he changed the conversation to the theme that haunted him.
+
+Mr. Trupp might chaff the Colonel about his _idée fixe_, but he, too,
+like most men of his class, had the fear of Germany constantly before
+his eyes and liked nothing better than to discuss the familiar topic
+with his friend over a cigar.
+
+"Well, how are we getting on?" he asked encouragingly.
+
+"Not so bad," the Colonel answered through the smoke.  "Haldane's sent
+for Haig from India."
+
+"Who's Haig?" puffed the other.
+
+"Haig's a soldier who was at Oxford," the Colonel answered.  "You
+didn't know there was such a variety, did you?"
+
+"Never mind about Oxford," grunted the great surgeon.  "Oxford turns
+out as many asses as any other institution so far as I can see.  Does
+he know his job?  That's the point."
+
+"As well as you can expect a soldier to know it," replied the other,
+still in the ironic vein.  "Sound but slow's his reputation.  He and
+Haldane are the strongest combination there's been at the War Office in
+my time."  He added more seriously--"They ought to get a move on
+between 'em, if anybody can."
+
+"In time?" asked Mr. Trupp.
+
+The Colonel, in spite of the recurrent waves of despair, which
+inundated him, was at heart an unrepentant optimist.
+
+"I don't see why not," he said.  "Bobs says Germany can't strike till
+the Kiel Canal's open for battleships.  That won't be till 1912 or so."
+
+The old doctor moved into the card-room with a cough.
+
+"Gives you time to get on with your job, too, Colonel," he said.  "I
+wish you well.  Good-night."
+
+The Colonel was retired now; but his brain was as active as ever, his
+heart as big, if his body was no longer so sure an instrument as it
+once had been.  And Lord Roberts, when he asked his old comrade in arms
+to undertake work which he did not hesitate to describe as vital to the
+Empire, knew that the man to whom he was appealing possessed _in
+excelsis_ the quality which has always made the British Army the
+nursery of spirits who put the good of the Service before their own
+advancement.  The little old hero, like all great soldiers, had his
+favourite regiments, the result of association and experience; and it
+was well known that the Hammer-men stood at the top of the list.  Fifty
+years before the date of this story they had sweated with him on the
+Ridge before Delhi; under his eyes had stormed the Kashmir Gate; with
+him had watched Nicholson die.  Twenty years later they had gone up the
+Kurrum with the young Major-General, and made with him the famous march
+from Kabul to Kandahar.  Another twenty years and they were making the
+pace for the old Field Marshal in the great trek from Paardeberg to
+Bloemfontein.  He knew most of the officers, some of them intimately.
+And on hearing that Jocko Lewknor had settled down at Beachbourne wrote
+at once and asked him to become Secretary of the local branch of the
+National Service League, which existed to establish in England
+universal military training on the lines of Switzerland's Militia.
+
+The Colonel made one of his rare trips to London and lunched at the Rag
+with the leader who had been his hero ever since as a lad he had gone
+up the Peiwar Khotal with the First Hammer-men at the order of Bahadur
+Bobs.
+
+The Field Marshal opened the Colonel's eyes to the danger threatening
+the Empire.
+
+"The one thing in our favour is this," he said, as they parted at the
+hall-door.  "We've yet time."
+
+The Colonel, inspired with new life, returned to Beachbourne and told
+his wife.  She listened with vivid interest.
+
+"You've got your work cut out, my Jocko," she said.  "And I shan't be
+able to help you much."
+
+"No," replied the Colonel.  "You must stick to the hostel.  I'll plough
+my own furrow."
+
+Forthwith he set to work with the quiet tenacity peculiar to him.  From
+the start he made surprising headway, perhaps because he was so unlike
+the orthodox product of the barrack-square; and like his leader he
+eschewed the party politics he had always loathed.
+
+When he took up the work of the League he found it one of the many
+non-party organisations, run solely by the Conservatives quartered in
+Meads and Old Town, because, to do them justice, nobody else would lend
+a hand.  Liberalism, camped in mid-town about Terminus Road, was
+sullenly suspicious; Labour, at the East-end, openly hostile.  The
+opposition of Liberalism, the Colonel soon discovered, centred round
+the leader of Nonconformity in the town, Mr. Geddes, the powerful
+Presbyterian minister at St. Andrew's; the resistance of Labour,
+inchoate as yet and ineffective as the Labour Party from which it
+sprang, was far more difficult to tackle as being more vague and
+imponderable.
+
+In those days, always with the same end in view, the Colonel spent much
+time in the East-end, winding his way into the heart of Industrial
+Democracy.  He sloughed some old prejudices and learnt some new truths,
+especially the one most difficult for a man of his age and tradition to
+imbibe--that he knew almost nothing of modern England.  Often on
+Sundays he would walk across from Meads to Sea-gate and spend his
+afternoon wandering in the Recreation Ground, gathering impressions on
+the day that Labour tries to become articulate.
+
+On one such Sunday afternoon he came on a large old gentleman in gold
+spectacles, fair linen, and roomy tailcoat, meandering on the edge of a
+dirty and tattered crowd who were eddying about a platform.  The old
+gentleman seemed strangely out of place and delightfully unconscious of
+it; wandering about, large, benevolent and undisturbed, like a moon in
+a stormy sky.
+
+"Well, Mr. Caspar," said the Colonel quietly.  "What do you make of it
+all?"
+
+The large soft man turned his mild gaze of a cow in calf on the lean
+tall one at his side.  It was clear he had no notion who the speaker
+was; or that they had been at Trinity together forty years before.
+
+"To me it's extraordinarily inspiring," he said with an earnestness
+that was almost ridiculous.  "I feel the surge of the spirit beating
+behind the bars down here as I do nowhere else....  It fills me with an
+immense hope."
+
+The Colonel, standing by the other like a stick beside a sack, sighed.
+
+"They fill _me_ with a fathomless despair," he said gently.  "One wants
+to help them, but they won't let you."
+
+The other shook a slow head.
+
+"I don't look at it like that," he replied.  "I go to them for help."
+
+The Colonel made a little moue.
+
+"D'you get it?" he asked
+
+"I do," Mr. Caspar replied with startling conviction.
+
+The Colonel moved sorrowfully upon his way.  He was becoming a man of
+one idea--Germany....
+
+A few nights later, after supper, he strolled up Beau-nez under a
+harvest-moon spreading silvery wings moth-like over earth and sea.  He
+was full of his own thoughts, and and for once heavy, almost
+down-hearted, as he took up his familiar post of vigil beside the
+flagstaff on the Head and looked out over the shining waters.  The
+Liberals were moving at last, it seemed.  The great cry for
+Dreadnoughts, more Dreadnoughts,
+
+  _We want eight!
+  We won't wait!_
+
+had gone up to the ears of Government from millions of middle-class
+homes; but the Working Man still slept.
+
+Would nothing rouse him to the Terror that stalked by night across
+those quiet waters? ... The Working Man, who would have to bear the
+brunt of it when the trouble came....  The Working Man...?
+
+The Head was deserted save for the familiar goat tethered outside the
+coast-guard station.  The moon beamed down benignantly on the
+silver-sabled land, broad-bosomed about him, and the waters stirring
+far beneath him with a rustle like wind in corn.  Then he heard a
+movement at his back, and turned to see behind him, shabby, collarless,
+sheepish, the very Working Man of whom he had been thinking.
+
+The Colonel regarded the mystic figure, gigantic in the moonlight, a
+type rather than an individual, with an interest that was half
+compassionate and half satirical.
+
+_Yes.  That was the feller!  That was the chap who would take it in the
+neck!  That man with the silly smile--God help him!_
+
+"_Come to look for it?_" he said to the shadow, half to
+himself--"_wiser than your kind?_"
+
+"_Look for what, sir?_"
+
+"_The Creeping Death that's stealing across the sea to swallow you and
+yours._"
+
+The shadow sidled towards him.
+
+"Is that you, sir?" a voice said.  "I thought it were."
+
+The Colonel emerged from his dream.
+
+"What, Caspar!" he replied.  "What are you doing up here at this time
+of night?"
+
+"Just come up for a look round before turning in, me and my wife, sir,"
+the other answered.  "Ruth," he called, "it's the Colonel."
+
+A young woman with an orange scarf about her hair issued from the
+shadow of the coast-guard station and came forward slowly.
+
+"I've heard a lot about you from Ern, sir," she said in a deep voice
+that hummed like a top in the silvery silence.  "When you commanded his
+battalion in India and all."
+
+The Colonel, standing in the dusk, listened with a deep content as to
+familiar music, the player unseen; and was aware that his senses were
+stirred by a beauty felt rather than seen......  Then he dropped down
+the hill to the hostel twinkling solitary in the coombe beneath.
+
+"Your friend Caspar's married," he told his wife on joining her in the
+loggia.  The little lady scoffed.
+
+"Married!" she cried.  "He's been married nearly a year.  They spent
+their honeymoon on the hill at the back last autumn.  I could see them
+from my room."
+
+"Why ever didn't you tell me?" asked the Colonel.  "I'd have run em in
+for vagrancy."
+
+"No, you wouldn't," answered Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because, my Jocko, she's a peasant Madonna.  You couldn't stand up
+against her.  No man could."
+
+"A powerful great creature from what I could see of her," the Colonel
+admitted.  "A bit of a handful for Master Ernie, I should guess."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor's fine face became firm.  She thought she scented a
+challenge in the words and dropped her eyes to her work to hide the
+flash in them.
+
+"Ernie'll hold her," she said.  "He could hold any woman.  He's a
+gentleman like his father before him."
+
+He reached a long arm across to her as he sat and raised her fingers to
+his lips.
+
+Years ago a bird had flashed across the vision of his wife, coming and
+going, in and out of the darkness, like the sparrow of the Saxon tale;
+but this had been no sparrow, rather a bird of Paradise.  The Colonel
+knew that; and he knew that the fowler who had loosed the jewel-like
+bird was that baggy old gentleman who lived across the golf links in
+the little house that overlooked the Rectory.  He knew and understood:
+for years ago the same bird had flashed with radiant wings across the
+chamber of his life too, swiftly coming, swiftly going.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET
+
+If the Colonel in his missionary efforts for the National Service
+League made little impression on the masses in the East-end, he was
+astonishingly successful with such labour as existed in Old Town; which
+in political consciousness lagged fifty years behind its tumultuous
+neighbour on the edge of the Levels, and retained far into this century
+much of the atmosphere of a country village.  There the Church was
+still a power politically, and the workers disorganised.  The Brewery
+in the Moot and the Southdown Transport Company were the sole employers
+of labour in the bulk; and Mr. Pigott the only stubborn opponent of the
+programme of the League.
+
+Archdeacon Willcocks backed the Colonel with whole-hearted ferocity,
+and lent him the services of the Reverend Spink, who, flattered at
+working with a Colonel D.S.O., showed himself keen and capable, and
+proposed to run the Old Town branch of the League in conjunction with
+the Church of England's Men's Society.
+
+"I've got a first-rate secretary as a start," he told the Colonel
+importantly.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Caspar."
+
+"Ernest Caspar!" cried the Colonel.  "The old Hammer-man!"
+
+"No, his brother.  Twice the man.  Alfred--Mr. Trupp's chauffeur."
+
+A few days later, when leaving the curate's lodgings, the Colonel ran
+up against Ernie in Church Street.
+
+"Your brother's joined us," he said.  "Are you going to?"
+
+Ernie's charming face became sullen at once.
+
+"I would, sir," he said.  "Only for that."
+
+"Only for what?"
+
+"Alf."
+
+"You won't join because your brother has!" grinned the Colonel.
+
+Ernie rolled a sheepish head.
+
+"It's my wife, sir," he muttered.  "See, he persecutes her somethink
+shameful."
+
+Next afternoon the Colonel was crossing Saffrons Croft on his way to
+the Manor-house for tea, when a majestic young woman, a baby in her
+arms, sauntering under the elms watching the cricket, smiled at him
+suddenly.
+
+He stopped, uncertain of her identity.
+
+"I'm Mrs. Caspar, sir," she explained.  "We met you the other night on
+the Head--Ern and me."
+
+"Oh, I know all about you!" replied the Colonel, glancing at the baby
+who lifted to the sky a face like a sleeping rose.  "My word!--she's a
+bonny un."
+
+"She grows, sir," replied Ruth, cooing and contented.  "We gets her all
+the air we can.  So we come here with the children for a blow of the
+coolth most in general Saraday afternoons.  More air than in the Moot."
+
+"Where's Caspar?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Yonder under the ellums, sir, along with a friend.  Come about the
+classes or something I did hear."
+
+"The class-war?" asked the Colonel grimly.
+
+"No, sir," answered Ruth.  "Classes for learning you learning, I allow.
+Man from the North, I yeard say.  Talks funny--foreign talk I call it."
+
+Just then the Colonel's glance fell on a child, slim as a daisy stalk,
+and with the healthy pallor of a wood-anemone, hiding behind Ruth's
+skirt and peeping at the stranger with fearless blue eyes that seemed
+somehow strangely familiar.
+
+"And what's your name, little Miss Hide-away?" he asked, delighted.
+
+"Little Alice," the child replied, bold and delicate as a robin.
+
+The fact that the child was obviously some four years old while Ernie
+had not been married half that time did not occur to the Colonel as
+strange.  He glanced at the young mother, noble in outline, and in her
+black and red beauty of the South so unlike the child.
+
+"She doesn't take after her mother and father," he said, with the
+reckless indiscretion of his sex.
+
+Then he saw his mistake.  Ruth has run up signals of distress.  Ernie,
+who had now joined them, as always at his best in an emergency, came
+quickly to the rescue.
+
+"Favours her grandmother, sir, I say," he remarked.
+
+"Like my boy," commented the Colonel, recovering himself.  "I don't
+think anybody'd have taken our Jock for his father's son when he joined
+us at Pindi in 1904--eh, Caspar?"
+
+The two old Hammer-men chatted over days in India.  Then the Colonel
+went on up the hill, the eyes of the child still haunting him.
+
+The Manor-house party were having tea on the lawn, under the laburnum,
+looking over the sunk fence on to Saffrons Croft beyond, when the
+Colonel joined them.  Mrs. Lewknor was already there; and young Stanley
+Bessemere, the Conservative candidate for Beachbourne East.  He and
+Bess were watching a little group of people gathered about a man who
+was standing on a bench in Saffrons Croft haranguing.
+
+"Lend me your bird-glasses, Miss Trupp," said her companion eagerly.
+
+He stood up, a fine figure of a man, perfectly tailored,
+
+"Yes," he said.  "I thought so.  It's my friend."
+
+"Who's that?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Our bright particular local star of Socialism," the other answered.
+"The very latest thing from Ruskin College.  I thought he confined
+himself to the East-end, but I'm glad to find he gives you Old Towners
+a turn now and then, Miss Trupp.  And I hope he won't forget you up at
+Meads, Colonel."
+
+"What's his name?" asked Bess, amused.
+
+"Burt," replied the other.  "He comes from the North--and he's welcome
+to go back there to-morrow so far as I'm concerned."
+
+"You're from the North yourself, Mr. Bessemere," Mrs. Trupp reminded
+him.
+
+"I am," replied the young man, "and proud of it.  But for political
+purposes, I prefer the South.  That's why I'm a candidate for
+Beachbourne East."
+
+A few minutes later he took his departure.  The Colonel watched him go
+with a sardonic grin.  Philosopher though he might be, he was not above
+certain of the prejudices common to his profession, and possessed in an
+almost exaggerated degree the Army view of all politicians as the
+enemies of Man at large and of the Services in particular.
+
+Bess was still observing through her glasses the little group about the
+man on the bench.
+
+"There's Ruth!" she cried--"and Ernie!"
+
+"Listening to the orator?" asked the Colonel, joining her.
+
+"Not Ruth!" answered Bess with splendid scorn.  "No orators for her,
+thank you!--She's listening to the baby.  Ernie can listen to him."
+
+The Colonel took the glasses and saw Ruth and Ernie detach themselves
+from the knot of people and come slowly up the hill making for Borough
+Lane.
+
+"That really is a magnificent young woman of Caspar's," he said to his
+host.
+
+"She's one in a million," replied the old surgeon.
+
+"William's always been in love with her," said his wife.
+
+"All the men are," added Mrs. Lewknor, with a provocative little nod at
+her husband.
+
+"Where did he pick up his pearl?" asked the Colonel.  "I love that
+droning accent of hers.  It's like the music of a rookery."
+
+"She can ca-a-a away with the best of them when she likes," chuckled
+Bess.  "You should hear her over the baby!"
+
+"An Aldwolston girl," said Mrs. Trupp.  "She's Sussex to the core--with
+that Spanish strain so many of them have."  She added with extreme
+deliberation,--"She was at the Hohenzollern for a bit one time o day,
+as we say in these parts."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor coloured faintly and looked at her feet.  Next to her
+Jocko and his Jock the regiment was the most sacred object in her
+world.  But the harm was done.  The secret she had guarded so long even
+from her husband was out.  The word Hohenzollern had, she saw, unlocked
+the door of the mystery for him.
+
+Instantly the Colonel recalled Captain Royal's stay at the hotel on the
+Crumbles a few years before ... Ernie Caspar's service there ... the
+clash of the two men on the steps of the house where he was now having
+tea ... Royal's sudden flight, and the rumours that had reached him of
+the reasons for it.
+
+The eyes which had looked at him a few minutes since in Saffrons Croft
+from beneath the fair brow of little Alice were the eyes of his old
+adjutant.
+
+Then Mr. Trupp's voice broke in upon his reverie.
+
+"Ah," said the old surgeon, "I see you know."
+
+"And I'm glad you should," remarked Mrs. Trupp with the almost
+vindictive emphasis that at times characterised this so gentle woman.
+
+"Everybody does, mother," Bess interjected quietly...
+
+As the Colonel and his wife walked home across the golf links he turned
+to her.
+
+"Did you know that, Rachel?" he inquired.
+
+She looked straight in front of her as she walked.
+
+"I did, my Jocko ... Mrs. Trupp told me."
+
+The Colonel mused.
+
+"What a change!--from Royal to Caspar!" he said.
+
+She glanced up at him.
+
+"You don't understand, Jocko," she said quietly.  "Ruth was never
+Royal's mistress.  She was a maid on the Third Floor at the
+Hohenzollern when he was there.  He simply raped her and bolted."
+
+The Colonel shrugged.
+
+"Like the cad," he said.
+
+They walked on awhile.  Then the Colonel said more to himself than to
+his companion,
+
+"I wonder if she's satisfied?"
+
+The little lady at his side made a grimace that suggested--"Is any
+woman?"
+
+But all she said was,
+
+"She's a good woman."
+
+"She's come a cropper once," replied the Colonel.
+
+"She was tripped," retorted the other almost tartly.  "She didn't fall."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MAN FROM THE NORTH
+
+A few days later, on a Saturday afternoon, the Colonel was sitting in
+the loggia of the hostel looking out over the sea when he saw two men
+coming down the shoulder of Beau-nez along the coast-guard path.
+
+The tall man in black with flying coat-tails he recognised at once.  It
+was Mr. Geddes, the one outstanding minister of the Gospel in
+Beachbourne: a scholar, yet in touch with his own times, eloquent and
+broad, with a more than local reputation as a Liberal leader.  His
+companion was a sturdy fellow in a cap, with curly black hair and a
+merry eye.
+
+The Colonel, who never missed a chance, went out to waylay the pair.
+Mr. Geddes introduced his friend--Mr. Burt, who'd come down recently
+from Mather and Platt's in the North to act as foreman fitter at Hewson
+and Clarke's in the East-end.
+
+The Colonel reached out a bony hand, which the other gripped fiercely.
+
+"I know you're both conspirators," he said with a wary smile.  "What
+troubles are you hatching for me now?"
+
+Mr. Geddes laughed, and the engineer, surly a little from shyness and
+self-conscious as a school-boy, grinned.
+
+"Mr. Burt and I are both keen on education," said the minister.  "He's
+been telling me of Tawney's tutorial class at Rochdale.  We're hatching
+a branch of the W.E.A. down here.  That's our only conspiracy."
+
+"What's the W.E.A.?" asked the Colonel, always keen.
+
+"It's the Democratic wing of the National Service League," the engineer
+answered in broad Lancashire--"Workers' Education Association."
+
+The Colonel nodded.
+
+"He's getting at me!" he said.  "I'm always being shot at.  Will you
+both come in to tea and talk?--I should like you to meet my wife, Burt.
+She'll take you on.  She's a red-hot Tory and a bonnie fighter."
+
+But Mr. Geddes had a committee, and--"A must get on with the
+Revolution," said Burt gravely.
+
+"What Revolution's that?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"The Revolution that begun in 1906--and that's been going on ever
+since; and will go on till we're through!"  He said the last words with
+a kind of ferocity; and then burst into a sudden jovial roar as he saw
+the humour of his own ultra-seriousness.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, who had been watching the interview from the loggia,
+called to her husband as he returned to the house.
+
+"Who was that man with Mr. Geddes?" she asked.
+
+"Stanley Bessemere's friend," the Colonel answered.  "A red
+Revolutionary from Lancasheer--on the bubble; and a capital good fellow
+too, I should say."
+
+That evening the Colonel rang up Mr. Geddes to ask about the engineer.
+
+"He's the new type of intellectual artizan," the minister informed him.
+"The russet-coated captain who knows what he's fighting for and loves
+what he knows.  Unless I'm mistaken he's going to play a considerable
+part in our East-end politics down here."  He gave the other the
+engineer's address, adding with characteristic breadth,
+
+"It might be worth your while to follow him up perhaps, Colonel."
+
+Joe Burt lodged in the East-end off Pevensey Road in the heart of the
+new and ever-growing industrial quarter of Seagate, which was gradually
+transforming a rather suburban little town of villas with a
+fishing-station attached into a manufacturing city, oppressed with all
+the thronging problems of our century.  There the Colonel visited his
+new friend.  Burt was the first man of his type the old soldier, who
+had done most of his service in India, had met.  The engineer himself,
+and even more the room in which he lived, with its obvious air of
+culture, was an eye-opener to the Colonel.
+
+There was an old sideboard, beautifully kept, and on it a copper kettle
+and spirit lamp; a good carpet, decent curtains.  On the walls were
+Millais's _Knight Errant_, Greiffenhagen's _Man with a Scythe_, and
+Clausen's _Girl at the Gate_.  But it was the books on a long deal
+plank that most amazed the old soldier; not so much the number of them
+but the quality.  He stood in front of them and read their titles with
+grunts.
+
+Alfred Marshall's _Principles of Economics_ lolled up against the
+Webbs' _Industrial Democracy_; Bradley's lectures on the tragedies of
+Shakespeare hobnobbed with Gilbert Murray's translations from
+Euripides.  Few of the standard books on Economics and Industrial
+History, English or American, were missing.  And the work of the modern
+creators in imaginative literature, Wells, Shaw, Arnold Bennett were
+mixed with _Alton Locke_, _Daniel Deronda_, _Sybil_, and the essays of
+Samuel Butler and Edward Carpenter.
+
+"You're not married then?" said the Colonel, throwing a glance round
+the well-appointed room.
+
+"Yes, A am though," the engineer answered, his black-brown eyes
+twinkling.  "A'm married to Democracy.  She's ma first loov and like to
+be ma last."
+
+"What you doing down South?" asked the Colonel, tossing one leg over
+the other as he sat down to smoke.
+
+"Coom to make trouble," replied the other.
+
+"Good for you!" said the Colonel.  "Hotting things up for our friend
+Stan.  Well, he wants it.  All the politicians do."
+
+His first visit to Seagate Lane was by no means his last: for the
+engineer's courage, his integrity, his aggressive tactics, delighted
+and amused the scholarly old soldier; but when he came to tackle his
+man seriously on the business of the National Service League he found
+he could not move him an inch from the position he invariably took up:
+The Army would be used by the Government in the only war that
+matters--the Industrial war; and therefore the Army must not be
+strengthened.
+
+"If the Army was used for the only purpose it ought to be used
+for--defence--A'd be with you.  So'd the boolk of the workers.  But
+it's not.  They use it to croosh strikes!"  And he brought his fist
+down on the table with a characteristic thump.  "That's to croosh
+us!--For the strike's our only weapon, Colonel."
+
+The power, the earnestness, even the savagery he displayed, amazed the
+other.  Here was a reality, an elemental force of which he had scarcely
+been aware.  This was Democracy incarnate.  And whatever else he might
+think he could not but admire the sincerity and strength of it.  But he
+always brought his opponent back to what was for him the only issue.
+
+"Germany!" he said.
+
+"That's blooff!" replied the other.  "They'll get the machine-guns for
+use against Germany, and when they've got em they'll use them against
+us.  That's the capitalists' game.--Then there's the officers."
+
+"What about em?" said the Colonel cheerfully.  "They're harmless
+enough, poor devils."
+
+"Tories to a man.  Coom from the capitalist class."
+
+"What if they do?"
+
+"The Army does what the capitalist officer tells it.  And he knows
+where his interest lies aw reet."
+
+"Well, of course you know the British officer better than I do, Burt,"
+replied the Colonel, nettled for once.
+
+His opponent was grimly pleased to have drawn blood.
+
+"In the next few years if things go as they look like goin we shall
+see," was his comment.  "Wait till we get a Labour Government in power!"
+
+The Colonel knocked out his pipe.
+
+"Well, Burt, I'll say this," he remarked.  "If we could get half the
+passion into our cause you do into yours, we should do."
+
+"We're fighting a reality, Colonel," the other answered.  "You're
+fighting a shadow, that's the difference."
+
+"I hope to God it may prove so!" said the Colonel, as they shook hands.
+
+The two men thoroughly enjoyed their spars.  And the battle was well
+matched: for the soldier of the Old Army and the soldier of the New
+were both scholars, well-read, logical, and fair-minded.
+
+On one of his visits the Colonel found Ernie Caspar in the engineer's
+room standing before the book-shelf, handling the books.  Ernie showed
+himself a little shame-faced in the presence of his old Commanding
+Officer.
+
+"How do they compare to your father's, Caspar?" asked the Colonel,
+innocently unaware of the other's _mauvaise honte_ and the cause of it.
+
+"Dad's got ne'er a book now, sir," Ernie answered gruffly.  "Only just
+the Bible, and Wordsworth, and Troward's Lectures.  Not as he'd ever
+anythink like this--only Carpenter.  See, dad's not an economist.  More
+of a philosopher and poet like."
+
+"I wish they were mine," said the Colonel, turning over Zimmeni's
+_Greek Commonwealth_.
+
+"They're all right if so be you can afford em," answered Ernie shortly,
+almost sourly.
+
+"Books are better'n beer, Ernie," said Joe Burt, a thought maliciously;
+and added with the little touch of priggishness that is rarely absent
+from those who have acquired knowledge comparatively late in
+life--"They're the bread of life and source of power."
+
+"Maybe," retorted Ernie with a snort; "but they aren't the equal of
+wife and children, I'll lay."
+
+He left the room surlily.
+
+Burt grinned at the Colonel.
+
+"Ern's one o the much-married uns," he said.
+
+"D'you know his wife?" the Colonel asked.
+
+Joe shook his bull-head.
+
+"Nay," he said.  "And don't wish to."
+
+"She's a fine woman all the same," replied the Colonel.
+
+"Happen so," the other answered.  "All the more reason a should avoid
+her.  They canna thole me, the women canna.  And A don't blame em."
+
+"Why can't they thole you?" asked the Colonel curiously.
+
+"Most Labour leaders rise to power at the expense of their wives," the
+other explained.  "They go on; but the wives stay where they are--at
+the wash-tub.  The women see that; and they don't like it.  And they're
+right."
+
+"What's the remedy?"
+
+"There's nobbut one."  Joe now not seldom honoured the Colonel by
+relapsing into dialect when addressing him.  "And that's for the Labour
+leader to remain unmarried.  They're the priests of Democracy--or
+should be."
+
+"You'll never make a Labour leader out of Caspar," said the Colonel
+genially.  "I've tried to make an N.C.O. of him before now and failed."
+
+"A'm none so sure," Joe said, and added with genuine concern: "He's on
+the wobble.  Might go up; might go down.  Anything might happen to yon
+lad now.  He's just the age.  But he's one o ma best pupils--if he'll
+nobbut work."
+
+"Ah," said the Colonel with interest.  "So he's joined your class at
+St. Andrew's Hall, has he?"
+
+"Yes," replied the other.  "Mr. Chislehurst brought him along--the new
+curate in Old Town.  D'ye know him?"
+
+"He's my cousin," replied the Colonel.  "I got him here.  He'd been
+overworking in Bermondsey--in connection with the Oxford Bermondsey
+Mission."
+
+"Oh, he's one of _them_!" cried the other.  "That accounts for it.  A
+know _them_.  They were at Oxford when A was at Ruskin.  They're
+jannock,--and so yoong with it.  They think they're going to convert
+the Church to Christianity!"  He chuckled.
+
+"In the course of history," remarked the Colonel, "many Churchmen have
+thought that.  But the end of it's always been the same."
+
+"What's that?" asked the engineer.
+
+"That the Church has converted them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CHERUB
+
+The advent of Bobby Chislehurst to Old Town made a considerable
+difference to Bessie Trupp.  She was not at all in love with him and he
+only pleasantly so with her; but as she told her friend the Colonel,
+
+"He's the first curate we've ever had in Old Town you can be like that
+with."
+
+"Like that is good," said the Colonel.  "Give me my tables.  Meet it is
+I write it down.--It says nothing and expresses everything."
+
+Now if the clergy in Old Town with the exception of Bess's pet
+antipathy, the Reverend Spink, were honest men worthy of respect, as
+everybody admitted, they were also old-fashioned; and Bobby Chislehurst
+was a new and disturbing element in their midst.  Shy and unassuming
+though he was, the views of the Cherub, as the Colonel called his
+cousin, when they became known, created something of a mild sensation
+in the citadel which had been held for Conservatism against all comers
+by the Archdeacon and his lady for nearly forty years.
+
+Even Mr. Pigott was shocked.
+
+"He's a Socialist!" he confided to Mr. Trupp at the Bowling Green
+Committee.
+
+The old Nonconformist had passed the happiest hours of a militant life
+in battle with the Church as represented by his neighbour, the
+Archdeacon, but of late it had been borne in upon him with increasing
+urgency that the time might come when Church and Chapel would have to
+join forces and present a common front against the hosts of Socialism
+which he feared more than ever he had done the Tory legions.
+
+But if the Church was going Socialist! ...
+
+And Mr. Chislehurst said it was...
+
+The new curate and Bess Trupp had much in common, especially Boy
+Scouts, their youth and the outstanding characteristic of their
+generation--a passionate interest and sympathy for their poorer
+neighbours.  Both spent laborious and happy hours in the Moot,
+listening a great deal, learning much, even helping a little.  Bess,
+who had known most of the dwellers in the hollow under the Kneb all her
+life, had of course her favourites whom she commended to the special
+care of Bobby on his arrival; and first of these were the young Caspars.
+
+She told him of Edward Caspar, her mother's old friend, scholar,
+dreamer, gentleman, with the blood of the Beauregards in his veins, who
+had married the daughter of an Ealing tobacconist, and lived in Rectory
+Walk; of Anne Caspar, the harsh and devoted tyrant; of the two sons of
+this inharmonious couple, and the antagonism between them from
+childhood; of Alf's victory and Ernie's enlistment in the Army; his
+sojourn in India and return to Old Town some years since; and she gave
+him a brief outline of Ruth's history, not mentioning Royal's name but
+referring once or twice through set teeth to "that little beast."
+
+"Who's that?" asked the Cherub.
+
+"Ernie's brother," she answered.  "Alfred, who drives for dad."
+
+"Not the sidesman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bobby looked surprised.
+
+"Mr. Spink," Bess explained darkly.  "He got him there."
+
+Apart from Bess's recommendation, Mr. Chislehurst's contact with Ruth
+was soon established through little Alice, who attended Sunday School.
+Ruth, moreover, called herself a church-woman, and was sedately proud
+of it, though the Church had no apparent influence upon her life, and
+though she never attended services.
+
+On the latter point, the Cherub, when he had rooted himself firmly in
+her regard, remonstrated.
+
+"See, I ca-a-n't, sir," said Ruth simply.
+
+"Why not?" asked Bobby.
+
+"_He's_ always there," Ruth answered enigmatically.
+
+Bobby was puzzled and she saw it.
+
+"Alf," she explained.  "See, he wanted me same as Ernie.  Only not to
+marry me.  Just for his fun like and then throw you over.  That's Alf,
+that is.  There's the difference atween the two brothers."  She
+regarded the young man before her with the lovely solicitude of the
+mother initiating a sensitive son into the cruelties of a world of
+which she has already had tragic experience.  "Men are like that,
+sir--some men."  She added with tender delicacy, "Only you wouldn't
+know it, not yet."
+
+The Cherub might be innocent, but no man has lived and worked in the
+back-streets of Bermondsey without learning some strange and ugly
+truths about life and human nature.
+
+"He's not worrying you now?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Nothing to talk on," answered Ruth.  "He wants me still, I allow.
+Only he won't get me--not yet a bit anyways."  She seemed quite casual
+about the danger that threatened her, Bobby noticed; even, he thought,
+quietly enjoying it.
+
+That evening, when the Cherub touched on the point to his colleague,
+Mr. Spink turned in his india-rubber lips.
+
+"It's an honour to be abused by a woman like that," he said.  "She's a
+bad character--bad."
+
+"She's not that, I swear!" cried Bobby warmly.  "She may have
+exaggerated, or made a mistake, but bad she's not."
+
+"I believe I've been in the parish longer than you have, Chislehurst,"
+retorted the other crisply.  "And presumably I know something about the
+people in it."
+
+"You've not been in as long as Miss Trupp," retorted Bobby.  "She's
+been here all her life."
+
+Mr. Spink puffed at his cigar with uplifted chin and smiled.
+
+"How's it getting on?" he asked.
+
+"Pah!" muttered Bobby--"Cad!" and went out, rather white.
+
+That was not the end of the matter, however.
+
+A few days later Joe Burt and Bobby had paused for a word at the _Star_
+corner when Mr. Spink and Alf Caspar came down Church Street together.
+
+"Birds of a feather," said Alf loudly, nudging his companion, just as
+they passed the standing couple.
+
+"That's not very courteous, Caspar," called Bobby quietly after him.
+
+Mr. Spink walked on with a smirk; but Alf came back with hardly
+dissimulated truculence.
+
+"Sorry you've been spreading this about me, Mr. Chislehurst," he said,
+his sour eyes blinking.
+
+"What?" asked the Cherub, astonished.
+
+"Dirt," Alf retorted.  "And I know where you got it from too."
+
+"I haven't," cried Bobby with boyish indignation.  "What d'you mean?"
+
+"I know you have though," retorted Alf.  "So it's no good denying it."
+He was about to move on with a sneer when Joe Burt struck in.
+
+"That's a foonny way to talk," he said.
+
+"_Foonny_ it may be," mocked Alf.  "One thing I'll lay: it's not so
+_foonny_ as your lingo."
+
+The engineer shouldered a pace nearer.
+
+"Throw a sneer, do you?"
+
+"Ah," said Alf, secure in the presence of the clergyman.  "I know all
+about _you_."
+
+"Coom to that," retorted the Northerner, "I know a little about you.
+One o Stan's pups, aren't you?"
+
+Bobby moved on and Alf at once followed suit.
+
+"You keep down in the East-end, my lad!" he called over his shoulder.
+"We don't want none of it in Old Town.  Nor we won't have it, neether."
+
+Joe stood four-square at the cross-roads, bristling like a dog.
+
+"Called yourself a Socialist when yo were down, didn't you?" he
+shouted.  "And then turned Church and State when yo began to make.  I
+know your sort!"
+
+He dropped down Borough Lane, hackles still up, on the way to meet
+Ernie by appointment in the Moot.
+
+At the corner he waited, one eye on Ern's cottage, which he did not
+approach.  Then Ruth's face peeped round her door, amused and
+malicious, to catch his dark head bobbing back into covert as he saw
+her.  The two played _I spy_ thus most evenings to the amusement of one
+of them at least.
+
+"He's there," she told Ernie in the kitchen--"Waitin at the
+corner.--Keeps a safe distance, don't he?--What's he feared on?"
+
+"You," answered Ernie, and rose.
+
+Ruth snorted.  The reluctance to meet her of this man with the growing
+reputation as a fighter amused and provoked her.  Sometimes she chaffed
+with Ernie about it; but a ripple of resentment ran always across her
+laughter.
+
+Ern now excused his friend.
+
+"He's all for his politics," he said.  "No time for women."
+
+"Hap, he'll learn yet," answered Ruth with a fierce little nod of her
+head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SHADOW OF ROYAL
+
+That evening Alf called at Bobby's lodgings and apologised frankly.
+
+"I know I said what I shouldn't, sir," he admitted.  "But it fairly
+tortured me to see you along of a chap like that Burt."
+
+"He's all right," said Bobby coldly.
+
+Alf smiled that sickly smile of his.
+
+"Ah, you're innocent, Mr. Chislehurst," he said.  "Only wish I knew as
+little as you do."
+
+Alf in fact was moving on and up again in his career; walking warily in
+consequence, and determined to do nothing that should endanger his
+position with the powers that be.  This was the motive that inspired
+his apology to Mr. Chislehurst and caused him likewise to make
+approaches to his old schoolmaster, Mr. Pigott.
+
+The old Nonconformist met the advances of his erstwhile pupil with
+genial brutality.
+
+"What's up now, Alf?" he asked.  "Spreading the treacle to catch the
+flies.  Mind ye don't catch an hornet instead then!"
+
+The remark may have been made in innocence, but Alf looked sharply at
+the speaker and retired in some disorder.  His new stir of secret
+busyness was in fact bringing him into contact with unusual company, as
+Mrs. Trupp discovered by accident.  One evening she had occasion to
+telephone on behalf of her husband to the garage.  A voice that seemed
+familiar replied.
+
+"Who's that?" she asked.
+
+The answer came back, sharp as an echo,
+
+"_Who's that?_"
+
+"I'm Mrs. Trupp.  I want to speak to Alfred Caspar."
+
+Then the voice muttered and Alfred took the receiver.
+
+Later Mrs. Trupp told her husband of the incident.
+
+"I'm _certain_ it was Captain Royal," she said with emphasis.
+
+The old surgeon expressed no surprise.
+
+"I daresay," he said.  "Alf's raising money for some business scheme.
+He told me so."
+
+Now if Alf's attempts on Ruth in the days between the birth of the
+child and her marriage to Ernie were known to Mrs. Trupp, the
+connection of the little motor-engineer and Royal was only suspected by
+her.  A chance word of Ruth's had put her on guard; and that was all.
+Now with the swift natural intuition for the ways of evil-doers, which
+the innocent woman, once roused, so often reveals as by miracle, she
+flashed to a conclusion.
+
+"Alf's blackmailing him!" she said positively.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," her husband answered calmly.
+
+His wife put her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"How _can_ you employ a man like that, William?" she said, grave and
+grieved.
+
+It was an old point of dispute between them.  Now he took her hand and
+stroked it.
+
+"My dear," he said, "when a bacteriologist has had a unique specimen
+under the microscope for years he's not going to abandon it for a
+scruple."
+
+A few days later Mrs. Trupp was walking down Borough Lane past the
+_Star_ when she saw Alf and Ruth cross each other on the pavement fifty
+yards in front.  Neither stopped, but Alf shot a sidelong word in the
+woman's ear as he slid by serpent-wise.  Ruth marched on with a toss of
+her head, and Mrs. Trupp noted the furtive look in the eyes of her
+husband's chaffeur as he met her glance and passed, touching his cap.
+
+Mindful of her conversation with her husband, she followed Ruth home
+and boarded her instantly.
+
+"Ruth," she asked, "I want to know something.  You must tell me for
+your own good.  Alfred's got no hold over you?"
+
+Ruth drew in her breath with the sound, almost a hiss, of a sword
+snatched from its scabbard.  Then slowly she relaxed.
+
+"He's not got the sway over me not now," she said in a still voice,
+with lowered eyes.  "Only thing he's the only one outside who knaws
+Captain Royal's the father of little Alice."
+
+Mrs. Trupp eyed her under level brows.
+
+"Oh, he does know that?" she said.
+
+Ruth was pale.
+
+"Yes, 'M," she said.  "See Alf used to drive him that summer at the
+Hohenzollern."
+
+Mrs. Trupp was not entirely satisfied.
+
+"I don't see how Alfred can hold his knowledge over you," she remarked.
+
+"Not over me," answered Ruth, raising her eyes.  "Over him."
+
+"Over who?"
+
+"Captain Royal," said Ruth; and added slowly--"And I'd be sorry for
+anyone Alf got into his clutches--let alone her father."
+
+Her dark eyes smouldered; her colour returned to her, swarthy and
+glowing; a gleam of teeth revealed itself between faintly parted lips.
+
+Mrs. Trupp not for the first time was aware of a secret love of battle
+and danger in this young Englishwoman whose staid veins carried the
+wild blood of some remote ancestress who had danced in the orange
+groves of Seville, watched the Mediterranean blue flecked with the
+sails of Barbary corsairs, and followed with passionate eyes the
+darings and devilries of her matador in the ring among the bulls of
+Andalusia.
+
+Mrs. Trupp returned home, unquiet at heart, and with a sense that
+somehow she had been baffled.  She knew Ruth well enough now to
+understand how that young woman had fallen a prey to Royal.  It was not
+the element of class that had been her undoing, certainly not the
+factor of money: it was the soldier in the man who had seized the
+girl's imagination.  And Mrs. Trupp, daughter herself of a line of
+famous soldiers, recognised that Royal with all his faults, was a
+soldier, fine as a steel-blade, keen, thorough, searching.  It was the
+hardness and sparkle and frost-like quality of this man with a soul
+like a sword which had set dancing the girl's hot Spanish blood.  Royal
+was a warrior; and to that fact Ruth owned her downfall.
+
+Was Ernie a warrior too?
+
+Not for the first time she asked herself the question as she turned out
+of the Moot into Borough Lane.  And at the moment the man of whom she
+was thinking emerged from the yard of the Transport Company, dusty,
+draggled, negligent as always, and smiling at her with kind eyes--too
+kind, she sometimes thought.
+
+As she crossed the road to the Manor-house Joe Burt passed her and gave
+his cap a surly hitch by way of salute.  Mrs. Trupp responded
+pleasantly.  Her husband, she knew, respected the engineer.  She
+herself had once heard him speak and had admired the fire and
+fearlessness in him.  Moreover, genuine aristocrat that she was, she
+followed with sympathy his lonely battle against the hosts of Toryism
+in the East-end, none the less because she was herself a Conservative
+by tradition and temperament.
+
+_That_ man was a warrior to be sure....
+
+That evening the old surgeon dropped his paper and looked over his
+pince-nez at his wife and daughter.
+
+"My dears," he said, "I've some good news for you."
+
+"I know," replied Bess, scornfully.  "Your Lloyd George is coming down
+in January to speak on his iniquitous Budget.  I knew that, thank you!"
+
+"Better even than that," her father answered.  "Alfred Caspar's leaving
+me of his own accord."
+
+The girl tossed her skein of coloured silk to the ceiling with a
+splendid gesture.
+
+"Chuck-_her_-up!" she cried.  "Do you hear, mother?"
+
+"I do," answered Mrs. Trupp severely.  "Better late than never."
+
+"And I'm losing the best chauffeur in East Sussex," Mr. Trupp continued.
+
+Alf, indeed, who had paddled his little canoe for so long and so
+successfully on the Beachbourne mill-pond, was now about to launch a
+larger vessel on the ocean of the world in obedience to the urge of
+that ambition which, apart from a solitary lapse, had been the
+consuming passion of his life.  Unlike most men, however, who, as they
+become increasingly absorbed in their own affairs, tend to drop outside
+interests, he persisted loyally in old-time activities.  Whether it was
+that his insatiable desire for power forbade him to abandon any
+position, however modest, which afforded him scope; or that he felt it
+more necessary than ever now, in the interests of his expanding career,
+to maintain and if possible improve his relations with the Church and
+State which exercised so potent a control in the sphere in which he
+proposed to operate; or that the genuinely honest workman in him
+refused to abandon a job to which he had once put his hand, it is the
+fact that he continued diligent in his office at St. Michael's, and
+manifested even increased zeal in his labours for the National Service
+League.
+
+Alf, indeed, so distinguished himself by his services to the League
+that at the annual meeting at the Town Hall, he received public
+commendation both from the Archdeacon and the Colonel, who announced
+that "the admirable and indefatigable secretary of our Old Town branch,
+Mr. Alfred Caspar, has agreed to become District Convener."
+
+That meeting was a red-letter day in the history of the Beachbourne
+National Service League, for at it the Colonel disclosed that Lord
+Roberts was coming down to speak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+BOBS
+
+The old Field-Marshal, wise and anxious as a great doctor, was sitting
+now at the bedside of the patient that was his country.  His finger was
+on her pulse, his eye on the hourglass, the sands of which were running
+out; and he was listening always for the padding feet of that Visitor
+whose knock on the door he expected momentarily.
+
+After South Africa he had sheathed at last the sword which had not
+rested in its scabbard for fifty years; and from that moment his eyes
+were everywhere, watching, guiding, cherishing the movement to which he
+had given birth.
+
+He followed the activities and successes of Colonel Lewknor on the
+South Coast with a close attention of which the old Hammer-man knew
+nothing; and to show his appreciation of the Colonel's labours, he
+volunteered to come down to Beachbourne and address a meeting.
+
+The offer was greedily accepted.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, who, now that the hostel was in full swing, was more free
+to interest herself in her husband's concerns, flung herself into the
+project with enthusiasm.  And the Colonel went to work with tact and
+resolution.  On one point he was determined: this should not be a
+Conservative demonstration, run by the Tories of Old Town and Meads.
+Mr. Glynde, a local squire, the member for Beachbourne West, might be
+trusted to behave himself.  But young Stanley Bessemere, who, as the
+Colonel truly said, was for thrusting his toe into the crack of every
+door, would need watching--he and his cohorts of lady-workers.
+
+The Committee took the Town Hall for the occasion, and arranged for the
+meeting to be at eight in the evening so that Labour might attend if it
+would.
+
+The Colonel journeyed down to the East-end to ask Joe Burt to take an
+official part in the reception; but the engineer refused, to the
+Colonel's chagrin.
+
+"A shall coom though," said Joe.
+
+"And bring your mates along," urged the Colonel.  "The old gentleman's
+worth seeing at all events.  Mr. Geddes is coming."
+
+"I was going to soop with Ernie Caspar and his missus," replied the
+engineer, looking a little foolish.  "And we were coomin along together
+afterwards."
+
+"Ah," laughed the Colonel, as he went out.  "She's beat you!--I knew
+she would.  Back the woman!"
+
+Joe grinned in the door.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "Best get it over.  That's my notion of it."
+
+
+Bobs was still the most popular of Englishmen, if no longer the figure
+of romance he had been in the eyes of the British public for a few
+minutes during the South African war.  His name drew; and the Town Hall
+was pleasantly full without being packed.  Many came to see the old
+hero who cared little for his subject.  Amongst these was Ruth Caspar
+who at Ernie's request for once had left her babes to the care of a
+friend.  She stood at the back of the hall with her husband amongst her
+kind.  Mrs. Trupp, passing, invited her to come forward; but Ruth had
+spied Alf at the platform end, a steward with a pink rosette, very
+smart, and deep in secret counsel with the Reverend Spink.  Joe Burt,
+with critical bright eye everywhere, supported the wall next to her.
+The Colonel, hurrying by, threw a friendly glance at him.
+
+"Ah," he said, "so you've found each other."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Ruth mischievously.  "He's faced me at last, Mr.
+Burt has."
+
+"And none the worse for it, I hope," said the Colonel.
+
+"That's not for me to say, sir," answered Ruth, who was in gay mood.
+
+Joe changed the subject awkwardly.
+
+"A see young Bessemere's takin a prominent part in the proceedings," he
+said, nodding towards the platform.  "He's two oughts above nothing,
+that young mon."
+
+"Yes, young ass," replied the Colonel cheerfully.  "Now if you'd come
+on the Committee as I asked you, you'd be there to keep him in his
+place.  You play into the hands of your enemy!"
+
+Then Bobby Chislehurst stopped for a word with Ruth and Ernie and their
+friend.
+
+"Coom, Mr. Chislehurst!" chaffed the engineer.  "A'm surprised to see
+_you_ here.  A thought you was a Pacifist."
+
+"So I am," replied the other cheerily.  "That's why I've come.  I want
+to hear both sides."
+
+Joe shook his bullet-head gravely.
+
+"There's nobbut two sides in life," he said.  "Right and Wrong.  Which
+side is the Church on?"
+
+Then the little Field-Marshal came on to the platform with the swift
+and resolute walk of the old Horse-gunner.  He was nearly eighty now,
+but his figure was that of a youth, neat, slight, alert.  Ruth remarked
+with interest that the hero was bow-legged, which she did not intend
+her children to be.  For the rest, his kindly face of a Roman-nosed
+thoroughbred in training, his deep wrinkles, and close-cropped white
+hair, delighted her.
+
+The great soldier proved no orator; but his earnestness more than
+compensated for his lack of eloquence.
+
+After the meeting he came down into the body of the hall and held an
+informal reception.  The Colonel introduced Mr. Geddes, and left the
+two together while he edged his way down to Joe Burt.
+
+"Well, what d'you think of him?" he asked.
+
+The engineer, his hands glued to the wall behind him, rocked to and fro.
+
+"A like him better than his opinions," he grinned.
+
+"You come along and have a word with him," urged the Colonel.
+
+Joe shook a wary head.
+
+"He's busy with Church and State," he said, nodding down the hall.  "He
+don't need Labour."
+
+Then Ruth chimed in almost shrilly for once.
+
+"There's young Alf shook hands with him!"
+
+"Always shovin of issalf!" muttered Ernie sourly.  "He and Reverend
+Spink."
+
+The old Field-Marshal was now coming slowly down the hall with a word
+here and a handshake there.  Church and State, as Joe had truly said,
+were pressing him.  Mrs. Trupp, indeed, and Mrs. Lewknor were fighting
+a heavy rearguard action against the Archdeacon and Stanley Bessemere
+and his cohorts, to cover the old soldier's retirement.
+
+As the column drifted past Ernie and Ruth the Colonel stopped.
+
+"An old Hammer-man, sir," he said.  "And the mother of future
+Hammer-men."
+
+Lord Roberts shook hands with Ruth, and turned to Ernie.
+
+"What battalion?" he asked in his high-pitched voice.
+
+"First, sir," answered Ernie, rigid at attention, in a voice Ruth had
+never heard before.
+
+"Ah," said the old Field-Marshal.  "They were with me in the march to
+Kandahar.  Never shall I forget them!"  He ran his eye shrewdly over
+the other.  "Are you keeping fit?"
+
+"Pretty fair, considering, sir," answered Ernie, relaxing suddenly as
+he had braced.
+
+"Well, you'll be wanted soon," said Bobs, and passed on.  "How these
+men run to seed, directly they leave the service, Lewknor!" he remarked
+to the Colonel on the stairs.  "Now I daresay that fellow was a smart
+upstanding man when he was with you."
+
+
+Ernie, thrilled at his adventure, went out into the cool night with
+Ruth, quietly amused at his excitement, beside him.
+
+"Didn't 'alf look, Alf didn't, when he talked to you!" chuckled Ruth.
+
+That was the main impression she had derived from the meeting, that and
+Lord Roberts's ears and the way they were stuck on to his head; but
+Ernie's mind was still in tumult.
+
+"Where's Joe then?" he cried suddenly, and turned to see his pal still
+standing somewhat forlorn on the steps of the Town Hall.
+
+He whistled and beckoned furiously.
+
+"Come on, Joe!" he called.  "Just down to the Wish and have a look at
+the sea."
+
+But the engineer shook his head and turned slowly away down Grove Road.
+
+"Nay, A know when A'm not wanted," he called.  "Yoong lovers like to be
+alone."
+
+"Sauce!" said Ruth, marching on with a little smile.
+
+Ernie rejoined her.
+
+"What d'you think of him?" he asked keenly.
+
+"O, I liked him," said Ruth, cool and a trifle mischievous.  "He's like
+a little bird--so alife like.  And that tag of white beard to his chin
+like a billy-goat!--I did just want to pluck it!"  She tittered and
+then recollected herself.
+
+"I didn't mean Lord Roberts, fat-ead," retorted Ernie.  "I meant Joe."
+
+"O, that chap!" answered Ruth casually.  "I didn't pay much heed to
+him.  There's a lot o nature to him, I should reckon.  Most in general
+there is--them black chaps, bull-built, wi curly tops to em."
+
+She drifted back to Lord Roberts and the meeting.
+
+"Only all that about war!--I don't like that.  Don't seem right, not to
+my mind.  There's a plenty enough troubles seems to me without them
+a-shoving great wars on top o you all for love."
+
+Ernie felt that the occasion demanded a lecture and that he was pointed
+out as the man to give it.  The chance, moreover, might not recur; and
+he must therefore make the most of it.  He had this feeling less often
+perhaps than most men, and for that reason when he had it he had it
+strong.  At the moment he was profoundly aware of the immense
+superiority of his sex; the political sagacity of Man; his power of
+taking statesmanlike views denied apparently to Woman.
+
+"And what if Germany attacks us!" he asked censoriously.  "Take it
+laying down, I suppose!--Spread yourself on the beach and let em tread
+on you as they land, so they don't wet their feet!"
+
+"Germany won't interfere with you if you don't interfere with her, I
+reckon," Ruth answered calmly.  "It's just the same as neighbours in
+the street.  You're friends or un-friends, accordin as you like."
+
+"What about Mrs. Ticehurst?" cried Ernie, feeling victory was his for
+once.  "You didn't interfere with her, did you?  Yet she tip the dust
+bin a-top o little Alice over the back-wall--to show she loved you, I
+suppose."
+
+Ruth tilted a knowing chin.
+
+"She aren't a neighbour, Mrs. Ticehurst aren't--not prarperly."
+
+They were relapsing into broad Sussex as they always would when
+chaffing.
+
+"What are she then?"
+
+"She's a cat, sure-ly."
+
+The night air, the thronged and brilliant sky, the rare change, the
+little bit of holiday, inspired and stimulated her.  The Martha of much
+busyness had given place to the girl again.  Immersed in the splendid
+darkness, she was in a delicious mood, cool, provocative, ironical; as
+Ernie had known her in that brief April of her life before Captain
+Royal had thrown a shadow across her path.
+
+He threaded his arm through hers.  Together they climbed the little
+Wish hill on the sea-front.  From the top, by the old martello tower,
+they looked across the sea, white beneath the moon.  Ernie's mood of
+high statesmanship had passed already.
+
+"I don't see this Creeping Death they talk on," he said discontentedly.
+
+"Ah," Ruth answered, sagacious in her turn.  "Hap it's there though."
+
+Ernie turned on her.
+
+"I thart you just said..."
+
+"No, I didn't then," she answered with magnificent unconcern.  "All I
+say is--War and that, what's it got to do wi' we?"
+
+As they came off the hill they met Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor crossing
+Madeira Walk on their way home.
+
+"Where's your friend?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Gone back to his books and learning, sir, I reckon," replied Ruth.
+"He don't want us."
+
+"Ah, you scared him, Mrs. Caspar," chaffed the Colonel.
+
+"Scared him back to his revolution," commented Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+Ruth laughed that deep silvery bell-like laughter of hers that seemed
+to make the night vibrate.
+
+"He'd take some scaring, I reckon, that chap would," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN
+
+Joe Burt had been born at Rochdale of a mother whose favourite saying
+was:
+
+"With a rocking-chair and a piece o celery a Lancasheer lass is aw
+reet."
+
+At eight, she had entered the mill, doffing.  Joe had entered the same
+mill at about the same age, doffing too.  He worked bare-footed in the
+ring-room in the days when overlookers and jobbers carried straps and
+used them.
+
+When he was fifteen his mother died, and his father married again.
+
+"Thoo can fend for self," his step-mother told him straightway, with
+the fine directness of the North.
+
+Joe packed his worldly possessions in a chequered handkerchief,
+especially his greatest treasure--a sixpenny book bought off a
+second-hand bookstall at infinite cost to the buyer and called _The
+Hundred Best Thoughts_.  Then he crossed the common at night, falling
+into a ditch on the way, to find the lodging-house woman who was to be
+his mother for the next ten years drinking her Friday pint o beer.  He
+was earning six shillings a week at the time in a bicycle-shop.  Later
+he entered a big engineering firm and, picking up knowledge as he went
+along, was a first-class fitter when he was through his time.
+
+Those were the days when George Barnes was Secretary of the Amalgamated
+Society of Engineers, and leading the great engineers' strike of the
+early nineties.  Labour was still under the heel of Capital, but
+squealing freely.  Socialism, apart from a few thinkers, was the gospel
+of noisy and innocuous cranks; and advanced working-men still called
+themselves Radicals.
+
+Young Joe woke up sooner than most to the fact that he was the slave of
+an environment that was slowly throttling him because it denied him
+opportunity to be himself--which is to say to grow.  He discarded
+chapel for ever on finding that his step-mother was a regular
+worshipper at Little Bethel, and held in high esteem amongst the
+congregation.  He read Robert Blatchford in the _Clarion_, went to hear
+Keir Hardie, who with Joey Arch was dodging in and out of Parliament
+during those years, heralds of the advancing storm, and took some part
+in founding the local branch of the newly-formed Independent Labour
+Party.  When his meditative spirit tired of the furious ragings of the
+Labour Movement of those early days, he would retire to the Friends'
+Meeting-house on the hill and ruminate there over the plain tablet set
+in the turf which marks appropriately the resting place of the greatest
+of modern Quakers.
+
+The eyes of the intelligent young fitter were opening fast now; and the
+death of the head of his firm completed the process and gave him sight.
+
+"Started from nothing.  Left £200,000.  Bequeathed each of his servants
+£2 for every year of service; but nothing for us as had made the money."
+
+Joe was now a leading man in the local A.S.E.  His Society recognised
+his work and sent him in the early years of our century to Ruskin
+College, Oxford.  The enemies of that institution are in the habit of
+saying that it spoils good mechanics to make bad Labour leaders.  The
+original aim of the College was to take men from the pit, the mill, the
+shop, pour into them light and learning in the rich atmosphere of the
+most ancient of our Universities, and then return them whence they came
+to act amongst their fellows as lamps in the darkness and living
+witnesses of the redeeming power of education.  The ideal, noble in
+itself, appealed to the public; but like many such ideals, it foundered
+on the invincible rock of human nature.  The miners, weavers, and
+engineers, who were the students, after their year amid the towers and
+courts of Oxford, showed little desire to return whence they came.
+Rather they made their newly-acquired power an instrument to enable
+them to evade the suffocating conditions under which they were born;
+and who shall blame them?  They became officials in Labour Bureaux,
+Trade Union leaders, Secretaries of Clubs, and sometimes the hangers-on
+of the wealthy supporters of the Movement.
+
+Burt was a shining exception to the rule.  At the end of his academic
+year he returned to the very bench in the very shop he had left a year
+before, with enlarged vision, ordered mind, increased conviction;
+determined from that position to act as Apostle to the Gentiles of the
+Old Gospel in its new form.
+
+He was the not uncommon type of intellectual artisan of that day who
+held as the first article of his creed that no working-man ought to
+marry under the economic conditions that then prevailed; and that if
+Nature and circumstance forced him to take a wife that he was not
+morally justified in having children.  This attitude involving as it
+inevitably must a levy on the only capital that is of enduring value to
+a country--its Youth--was thrust upon thoughtful workers, as Joe was
+never tired of pointing out, by the patriotic class, who refused their
+employees the leisure, the security, the material standards of life
+necessary to modern man for his full development.
+
+Joe practised what he preached, and was himself unmarried.  Apart,
+indeed, from an occasional fugitive physical connection as a youth with
+some passing girl, he had never fairly encountered a woman; never
+sought a woman; never, certainly, heard the call that refuses to be
+denied, spirit calling to spirit, flesh to flesh, was never even aware
+of his own deep need.  Women for him were still a weakness to be
+avoided.  They were the necessaries of the feeble, an encumbrance to
+the strong.  That was his view, the view of the crude boy.  And he
+believed himself lucky to be numbered among the uncalled for he was in
+fact a sober fanatic, living as selflessly for his creed as ever did
+those first preachers of unscientific Socialism, the Apostles and
+Martyrs of the first centuries of our era.  Even in the shop he had his
+little class of students, pouring the milk of the word into their ears
+as he set their machines, and the missionary spirit drove him always on
+to fresh enterprise.
+
+The Movement, as he always called it, was well ablaze by the second
+decade of the century in the Midlands and the North, but in the South
+it still only smouldered.  And when Hewson and Clarke started their
+aeroplane department at Beachbourne, and began to build machines for
+the Government, Joe Burt, a first-rate mechanic, leapt at the chance
+offered him by the firm and crossed the Thames with his books, his
+brains, his big heart, to carry the Gospel of Redemption by Revolution
+to the men of Sussex as centuries before, his spiritual ancestor, St.
+Wilfrid, he too coming from the North, had done.  In that strange land
+with its smooth-bosomed hills, its shining sea, its ca-a-ing speech, he
+found everything politically as he had expected.  And yet it was in the
+despised South that he discovered the woman who was to rouse in him the
+fierce hunger of which till then he had been unaware except as an
+occasional crude physical need.
+
+As on Saturday or Sunday afternoons at the time the revelation was
+coming to him he roamed alone, moody and unmated, the rogue-man, amid
+the round-breasted hills he often paused to mark their resemblance to
+the woman who was rousing in his deeps new and terrible forces of which
+he had previously been unaware.  In her majestic strength, her laughing
+tranquillity, even in her moods, grave or gay, the spirit mischievously
+playing hide-and-seek behind the smooth appearance, she was very much
+the daughter of the hills amid which she had been bred.
+
+Ruth was as yet deliciously unaware of her danger.  She was, indeed,
+unaware of any danger save that which haunts the down-sitting and
+up-rising of every working woman throughout the world--the abiding
+spectre of insecurity.
+
+She liked this big man, surly and self-conscious, and encouraged his
+visits.  Not seldom as she moved amid her cups and saucers in the
+back-ground of the kitchen, she would turn eye or ear to the powerful
+stranger with the rough eloquence sucking his pipe by the fire and
+holding forth to Ernie on his favourite theme.  It flattered her that
+he who notoriously disliked women should care to come and sit in her
+kitchen, lifting an occasional wary eyelid as he talked to look at her.
+And when she caught his glance he would scowl like a boy detected
+playing truant.
+
+"I shan't hurt you then, Mr. Burt," she assured him with the caressing
+tenderness that is mockery.
+
+His chin sunk on his chest.
+
+"A'm none that sure," he growled.
+
+Ernie winked at Ruth.
+
+"Call him Joe," he suggested.  "Then hap he'll be less frit."
+
+"Wilta?" asked Ruth, daintily mimicking the accent of her guest.
+
+"Thoo's mockin a lad," muttered Joe, delighted and relapsing into
+broader Lancashire.
+
+"Nay, ma lad," retorted Ruth.  "A dursena.  A'm far ower scared."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+RUTH WAKES
+
+Apart from such occasional sallies Ruth paid little attention to her
+husband's friend or, indeed, to anything outside her home.  Now that
+she had dropped her anchor in the quiet waters of love sheltered by
+law, and had her recovered self-respect to buttress her against the
+batterings of a wayward world, she was snug, even perhaps a little
+selfish with the self-absorption of the woman who is wrapped up in that
+extension of herself which is her home, her children, and the man who
+has given them her.
+
+After her stormy flight she had settled down in her nest, and seldom
+peeped over at the cat prowling beneath or at anybody, indeed, but the
+cock-bird bringing back a grub for supper; and him she peeped for
+pretty often.  She was busy too with the unending busyness of the woman
+who is her own cook, housekeeper, parlourmaid, nurse and laundress.
+And happily for her she had the qualities that life demands of the
+woman who bears the world's burden--a magnificent physique to endure
+the wear and tear of it all, the invaluable capacity of getting on well
+with her neighbours, method in her house, tact with her husband, a way
+with her children.
+
+And there was no doubt that on the whole she was happy.  The reaction
+from the _sturm-und-drang_ period before her marriage was passing but
+had not yet wholly passed.  Her spirit still slept after the hurricane.
+Naturally a little indolent, and living freely and fully, if without
+passion, her nature flowed pleasantly through rich pastures along the
+channels grooved in earth by the age-long travail of the spirit.
+
+Jenny and little Ned followed Susie, just a year between each child.
+Ernie loved his children, especially always the last for the time
+being; but the element of wonder had vanished and with it much of the
+impetus that had kept him steady for so long.
+
+"How is it now?" asked his mate, on hearing of the birth of the boy.
+
+"O, it's all right," answered Ernie, wagging his head.  "Only it ain't
+quite the same like.  You gets used to it, as the sayin is."
+
+"And you'll get use-ter to it afore you're through, you'll see," his
+friend answered, not without a touch of triumphant bitterness.  He
+liked others to suffer what he had suffered himself.
+
+As little by little the romance of wife and children began to lose its
+glamour, and the economic pressure steadily increased, the old weakness
+began at times to re-assert itself in Ernie.  He haunted the _Star_
+over much.  Joe Burt chaffed him.
+
+"Hitch your wagon to a star by all means, Ern," he said.  "But not that
+one."
+
+Mr. Pigott too cautioned him once or twice, alike as friend and
+employer.
+
+"Family man now, you know, Ernie," he said.
+
+The sinner was always disarming in his obviously sincere penitence.
+
+"I knaw I've unbuttoned a bit of late, sir," he admitted.  "I'll brace
+up.  I will and I can."
+
+And at the critical moment the fates, which seemed as fond of Ernie as
+was everybody else, helped him.
+
+Susie, his first-born, caught pneumonia.  The shock stimulated Ernie;
+as shock always did.  The steel that was in him gleamed instantly
+through the rust.
+
+"Say, we shan't lose her!" he asked Mr. Trupp in staccato voice.
+
+Mr. Trupp knew Ernie, knew his weakness, knew human nature.
+
+"Can't say," he muttered.  "Might not."
+
+Ern went to the window and looked out on the square tower of the old
+church on the Kneb above him.  His eyes were bright and his uncollared
+neck seemed strangely long and thin.
+
+"She's got to live," he muttered defiantly.
+
+The doctor nodded grimly.
+
+The Brute had pounced on Ernie sleeping and was shaking him as a dog
+shakes a rat.  Mr. Trupp, who had no intention of losing Susie, was by
+no means sorry.
+
+"If it's got to be, it's got to be," said Ruth, busy with poultices.
+"Only it won't be if I can help it."
+
+She was calm and strong as Ernie was fiercely resentful.  That angered
+Ernie, who was seeking someone to punish in his pain.
+
+When Mr. Trupp had left he turned on Ruth.
+
+"You take it cool enough!" he said with a rare sneer.
+
+She looked at him, surprised.
+
+"Well, where's the sense in wearin yourself into a fret?" answered
+Ruth.  "That doosn't help any as I can see."
+
+"Ah, I knaw!" he said.  "You needn't tell me."
+
+She put down the poultice and regarded him with eyes in which there was
+a thought of challenge.
+
+"What d'you knaw, Ern?"
+
+There was something formidable about her very quiet.
+
+"What I do, then," he said, and turned his back on her.  "If it was
+somebody else, we should soon see."
+
+She came to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and turned him so that
+she could read his face.  He did not look at her.
+
+She turned slowly away, drawing in her breath as one who rouses
+reluctantly from sleep.
+
+"That's it, is it?" she said wearily.  "I thart it'd come to that some
+day."
+
+Just then little Alice danced in from the street, delicate, pale
+sprite, with anemone-like health and beauty.
+
+"Daddy-paddy!" she said, smiling up at him, as she twined her fingers
+into his.
+
+He bent and kissed her with unusual tenderness.
+
+"Pray for our little Sue, Lal," he muttered.
+
+The child looked up at him with fearless eyes of forget-me-not blue.
+
+"I be," she said.
+
+He gave her a hand, and they went out together into Motcombe Garden:
+for they were the best of friends.
+
+Ruth was left.  In her heart she had always known that this would come:
+he would turn on her some day.  And she did not blame him: she was too
+magnanimous.  Men were like that, men were.  They couldn't help
+theirsalves.  Any one of them but Ernie would have thrown her past up
+at her long before.  She was more grateful for his past forbearance
+than resentful at his present vindictiveness.  Now that the blow, so
+long hovering above her in the dimness of sab-consciousness, had fallen
+she felt the pain of it, dulled indeed by the fact that she was already
+suffering profoundly on Susie's account.  But the impact braced her;
+and it was better so.  There was no life without suffering and
+struggle.  If you faced that fact with your eyes open, never
+luxuriating in the selfishness of make-believe, compelling your teeth
+to meet on the granite realities of life, then there would be no
+dreadful shock as you fell out of your warm bed and rosy dreams into an
+icy pool.
+
+Ruth went back to her hum-drum toil.  She had been dreaming.  Now she
+must awake.  It was Ernie who had roused her from that dangerous
+lethargy with a brutal slash across the face; and she was not
+ungrateful to him.
+
+When he returned an hour later with little Alice she was unusually
+tender to him, though her eyes were rainwashed.  He on his side was
+clearly ashamed and stiff accordingly.  He said nothing; instead he was
+surly in self-defence.
+
+To make amends he sat up with the child that night and the next.
+
+"Shall you save her, sir?" asked the scare-crow on the third morning.
+
+"I shan't," replied the doctor.  "Her mother may."
+
+Next day when Mr. Trupp came he grunted the grunt, so familiar to his
+patients, that meant all was well.
+
+When the corner was turned Ern did not apologise to Ruth, though he
+longed to do so; nor did she ask it of him.  To save himself without
+undergoing the humiliation of penance, and to satisfy that most easily
+appeased of human faculties, his conscience, he resorted to a trick
+ancient as Man: he went to chapel.
+
+Mr. Pigott who had stood in that door at that hour in that frock-coat
+for forty years past, to greet alike the sinner and the saved, welcomed
+the lost sheep, who had not entered the fold for months.
+
+"I know what this means," he said, shaking hands.  "You needn't tell
+me.  I congratulate you.  Go in and give thanks."
+
+Ern bustled in.
+
+"I shall come regular now, sir," he said.  "I've had my lesson.  You
+can count on me."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Pigott, and said no more.
+
+Next Sunday indeed he waited grimly and in vain for the prodigal.
+
+"Soon eased off," he muttered, as he closed the door at last.  "One
+with a very sandy soil."
+
+The Manager of the Southdown Transport Company went home that evening
+to the little house on the Lewes Road in unaccomodating mood.
+
+"_His_ trousers are coming down all right," he told his wife.  "I've
+said it before, and I'll say it again.  Once you let go o God----"
+
+"God lets go o you," interposed Mrs. Pigott.  "Tit for tat."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NIGHTMARE
+
+A few days later on his way back to the Manor-house from visiting his
+little patient in the Moot, the old surgeon met Mr. Pigott, who stopped
+to make enquiries.
+
+"She'll do now," said Mr. Trupp.
+
+"And that fellow?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Her father."
+
+Mr. Trupp looked at the windy sky, torn to shreds and tatters by the
+Sou-west wind above the tower of the parish-church.
+
+"He wanted the Big Stick and he got it," he said.  "If it came down on
+his shoulders once a week regularly for a year he'd be a man.  Steady
+pressure is what a fellow like that needs.  And steady pressure is just
+what you don't get in a disorganised society such as ours."
+
+The old Nonconformist held up a protesting hand.
+
+"You'd better go to Germany straight off!" he cried.  "That's the only
+place _you'd_ be happy in."
+
+Mr. Trupp grinned.
+
+"No need," he said, "Germany's coming here.  Ask the Colonel!"
+
+"Ah!" scolded the other.  "You and your Colonels!  You go and hear
+Norman Angell on the _Great Illusion_ at the Town Hall on Friday.  You
+go and hear a sensible man talk sense.  That'll do you a bit of good.
+Mr. Geddes is going to take the chair."
+
+The old surgeon turned on his way, grinning still.
+
+"The Colonel's squared Mr. Geddes," he said.  "He's all right now."
+
+What Mr. Trupp told Mr. Pigott, more it is true in chaff than in
+earnest, was partially true at least.  Liberalism was giving way
+beneath the Colonel's calculated assault.  After Lord Roberts's visit
+to Beachbourne the enemy dropped into the lines of the besiegers
+sometimes in single spies and sometimes in battalions.  Only Mr. Pigott
+held out stubbornly, and that less perhaps from conviction than from a
+sense of personal grievance against the Colonel.  For three solid years
+the pugnacious old Nonconformist had been trying to fix a quarrel on
+the man he wished to make his enemy; but his adversary had eluded
+battle with grace and agility.  That in itself happily afforded a good
+and unforgiveable cause of offence.
+
+"They won't fight, these soldiers!" he grumbled to his wife.
+
+"They leave that to you pacifists," replied the lady, brightly.
+
+"Pack o poltroons!" scolded the old warrior.  "One can respect the
+Archdeacon at least because he has the courage of his opinions.  But
+this chap!"
+
+Yet if Liberalism as a whole was finding grace at last, Labour in the
+East-end remained obdurate, as only a mollusc can; and Labour was
+gaining power for all men to see.
+
+In the general elections of 1910, indeed, the two Conservative
+candidates, Stanley Bessemere, East, and Mr. Glynde, West, romped home.
+The Colonel was neither surprised nor deceived by the results of the
+elections.  He knew now that in modern England in the towns at all
+events, among the rising generation, there were few Conservative
+working men--though there were millions who might and in fact did vote
+for Conservative candidates; and not many Radicals--apart from a leaven
+of sturdy middle-aged survivors of the Gladstonian age.  The workers as
+a whole, it was clear, as they grew in class-consciousness, were
+swinging slow as a huge tide, and almost as unconscious, towards the
+left.  But they were not articulate; they were not consistent; they
+changed their labels as they changed their clothes, and as yet they
+steadfastly refused to call themselves Socialists.  Indeed, in spite of
+the local Conservative victory, the outstanding political feature of
+the moment, apart from the always growing insurgency of Woman, was the
+advance of Labour, as the Colonel and many other thoughtful observers
+noted.  He began, moreover, to see that behind the froth, the foam, and
+arrant nonsense of the extreme section of the movement, there was
+gathering a solid body of political philosophy.  The masses were
+becoming organised--an army, no longer a rabble; with staff, regimental
+officers, plan of campaign, and an always growing discipline.  And,
+whether you agreed with it or not, there was no denying that the
+Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission was a political portent.
+
+When Joe Burt came up to Undercliff, as he sometimes did, to smoke and
+chat with the Colonel, Mrs. Lewknor, a whole-hearted Tory, would attack
+him on the tyranny of Trade Unions with magnificent fury.
+
+She made no impression on the engineer, stubborn as herself.
+
+"War is war; and discipline is discipline.  And in war it's the best
+disciplined Army that wins.  A should have thought a soldier'd have
+realised that much.  And this isna one o your _little_ wars, mind ye!
+This is the Greatest War that ever was or will be.  And we workers are
+fighting for our lives."
+
+"Discipline is one thing and tyranny is quite another!" cried Mrs.
+Lewknor, with flashing eyes.
+
+The Colonel, who delighted in these pitched battles, sat and sucked his
+pipe on the fringe of the hub-bub; only now and then turning the
+cooling hose of his irony on the combatants.
+
+"It is," he said in his detached way.  "Discipline is pressure you
+exert on somebody else.  And tyranny is pressure exerted by somebody
+else upon you."
+
+And it was well he was present to introduce the leaven of humour into
+the dough of controversy, for Mrs. Lewknor found the engineer a
+maddening opponent.  He was so cool, so logical, and above all so _dam_
+provocative, as the little lady remarked with a snap of her still
+perfect teeth.  He gave no quarter and asked none.
+
+"I don't like him," she said with immense firmness to the Colonel after
+one of these encounters, standing in characteristic attitude, her skirt
+a little lifted, and one foot daintily poised on the fender-rail.  "I
+don't trust him one inch."
+
+"He is a bit mad-doggy," the other said, entwining his long legs.  "But
+he is genuine."
+
+Then two significant incidents cast the shadow of coming events on the
+screen of Time.
+
+In July, 1911, Germany sent the _Panther_ to Agadir.  There ensued a
+sudden first-class political crisis; and a panic on every Stock
+Exchange in Europe.
+
+Even Ernie was moved.  This man who, in spite of Joe Burt's teaching,
+took as yet little more account of political happenings than does the
+field-mouse of the manoeuvres of the reaping machine that will shortly
+destroy its home, crossed the golf links one evening and walked through
+Meads to find out what the Colonel thought.
+
+"What's it going to be, sir?" he asked.
+
+The other refused to commit himself.
+
+"Might be anything," he said.  "Looks a bit funny."
+
+"Think the reservists will be called up?"
+
+The old soldier evinced a curious restrained keenness as of a restive
+horse desiring to charge a fence and yet uncertain of what it will find
+on the far side.  The Colonel, appraising him with the shrewd eyes of
+the man used to judging men, was satisfied.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," was all he would say.
+
+The old Hammer-man walked away along the cliff in the direction of
+Meads, and dropped down on to the golf links to go home by the ha-ha
+outside the Duke's Lodge.  Then he swung away under the elms of Compton
+Place Road and turned into Saffrons Croft, where Ruth and the children
+were to have met him.  He looked about for them in vain.  The
+cricketers were there as always, the idlers strolling from group to
+group, but no Ruth.  Ernie who had been looking forward to a quiet
+half-hour's play with little Alice and Susie on the turf in the shade
+of the elms before bed-time felt himself thwarted and resentful.  Ruth
+as a rule was reliable; but of late, ever since his unkindness to her
+at the time of Susie's illness, three weeks since, he had marked a
+change in her, subtle perhaps but real.  True she denied him nothing;
+but unlike herself, she gave without generosity, coldly and as a duty.
+
+Nursing his grievance, he dropped down the steep hill under the
+Manor-house wall, past the Greys, into Church Street.
+
+At the _Star_ a little group was gossiping, heads together.  As he
+crossed the road they turned and looked at him with curiosity and in
+silence.  Then a mate of his in the Transport Company called across,
+
+"Sorry to hear this, Ern."
+
+Ernie, thinking the man referred to the probabilities that he would be
+called back to the Army, and proud of his momentary fortuitous
+importance, shouted back with an air of appropriate nonchalance,
+
+"That's all right, Guy.  I wouldn't mind a spell with the old regiment
+again--that I wouldn't."
+
+At the foot of Borough Lane he met Alf bustling along.  His brother did
+not pause, but gave Ernie a searching look as he passed and said,
+"Watch it, Ern!"
+
+Ern experienced a strange qualm as he approached his home.  The door
+was open; nobody was about; there was not a sound in the house--neither
+the accustomed chirp of the children, nor the voice and movements of
+their mother.
+
+The nightmare terrors that are wont to seize the sensitive at such
+times, especially if their conscience is haunted, laid hold of him.
+The emptiness, the silence appalled him.  Death, so it seemed to his
+imaginative mind, reigned where the life and warmth and pleasant human
+busyness the woman and her children create had formerly been.  Ever
+since that dark moment when he had let loose those foul and treacherous
+words, he had been uneasy in his mind; and yet, though usually the
+humblest of men, some stubborn imp of pride had possessed him and
+refused to allow him to express the contrition he genuinely felt.
+Perhaps the very magnitude of his offence had prevented him from making
+just amends.
+
+Ruth on her side had said nothing; but she had felt profoundly the
+wound he had inflicted on her heart.  So much her silence and unusual
+reserve had told him.  Had he gone too far?  Had her resentment been
+deeper than he had divined?  Had he by his stupid brutality in a moment
+of animal panic and animal pain snapped the light chain that bound him
+to this woman he loved so dearly and knew so little?  And none was more
+conscious than he how fragile was that chain.  Ruth had never been
+immersed in love for him: she had never pretended to be.  He knew that.
+She had been an affectionate and most loyal friend; and that was all.
+
+On the threshold of his home he paused and stared down with the
+frightened snort of a horse suddenly aware of an abyss gaping at his
+feet.
+
+For the first time in his married life the instant sense of his
+insecurity, always present in his subconsciousness, leapt into the
+light of day.
+
+He gathered himself and marched upstairs as a man marches up the steps
+of the scaffold to pay the merited punishment for his crimes.
+
+Then he heard a little noise.  The door of the back room where the
+children, all but the baby, slept, was open.  He peeped in.  Susie was
+there, and Jenny with her.  Hope returned to him.  They were sitting up
+in bed still in outdoor clothes.  Then he noticed that the baby's cot
+which stood of wont in the front room beside the big bed was here too.
+His sudden relief changed to anguish.  He saw it all: _his_ children,
+the three of them, packed away together like fledgelings in a nest--for
+him to mother; and the mother-bird herself and _her_ child flown!
+
+And he had brought his punishment on to his own head!
+
+Susie waved a rag-doll at him and giggled.
+
+"Neddy seeps with Susie!" she cried.  "Susie nurse him!  Mummy's gone
+with man!"
+
+Brutally Ernie burst into the bedroom.
+
+Two people stood beside the bed--his wife and a man; one on either side
+of it.
+
+The man was Joe Burt; the woman Ruth.
+
+On the bed between them lay little Alice, wan as a lily, her eyes
+closed apparently in death.
+
+As he entered Joe raised a hushing finger.
+
+"It's all right, Ern.  She isna dead," said the engineer, comfortably.
+
+Ruth, who was the colour of the child on the bed, had turned to him and
+now wreathed her arms about him.
+
+"O Ern!" she cried in choking voice.  "I _am_ that glad you've come."
+
+For a moment she hung on him, dependent as he had never known her.
+
+Then the child stirred, opened her eyes, saw Ernie at the foot of the
+bed, and smiled.
+
+"Daddy," came her sweet little voice.
+
+Her eyes fell on Joe; her lovely brow crumpled and she wailed,
+
+"Don't want man."
+
+"That's me," said Joe gently, and stole towards the door on tip-toe.
+Ern followed him out.
+
+Mr. Trupp met them on the stairs.
+
+At the outer door Joe gave a whispered account of what had happened.
+He had been crossing Saffrons Croft on the way up to see Ernie, when he
+had noticed Ruth and the children under the elms.  Little Alice had
+seen him and come rushing through the players towards her friend.  A
+cricket-ball had struck her on the forehead; and he had carried her
+home like a dead thing.  Outside the cottage they had met Alf, and Ruth
+had asked him to go for Mr. Trupp.
+
+Ernie ran back upstairs.
+
+The old surgeon, bending over the child, gave him a reassuring glance.
+
+"The child's all right," he said.  "See to the mother!" and nodded to
+Ruth, who was holding on to the mantel-piece.
+
+She was swaying.  Ern gathered her to him.  The whole of her weight
+seemed on him.  His eyes hung on her face, pale beneath its dark crown
+as once, and only once, he had seen it before--that time she lay on the
+bed in Royal's dressing-room on the dawn of her undoing.
+
+"Ruth," he called quietly.
+
+Slowly she returned to life, opening her eyes, and drawing her hand
+across them.
+
+"Is that you, Ern?" she sighed.  "O, that's right.  I come all over
+funny like.  Silly!  I'm all right now."
+
+Ernie lowered her into a chair.
+
+She sat a moment, gathering herself.  Then she looked up at him--and
+remembered.  She had been caught.  Fear came over her, and she began to
+tremble.
+
+He bent and kissed her.
+
+"I'm sorry I said that, Ruth," he whispered in her ear.
+
+A lovely light welled up into her eyes.  At that moment she was nearer
+loving him than she had ever been.  Regardless of Mr. Trupp's presence,
+she put a hand on either of his shoulders, and regarded him
+steadfastly, a baffling look on her face.
+
+"Dear Ern!" she said.  "Only I'd liefer you didn't say it again.  See,
+it _do_ hurt from you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SHADOWS
+
+Ern was not called up after all.
+
+The trap-door through which men had peered aghast into the fires of
+hell, closed suddenly as it had opened.  Only the clang of the stokers
+working in the darkness under the earth could still be heard day and
+night at their infernal busyness by any who paused and laid ear to the
+ground.
+
+England and the world breathed again.
+
+"Touch and go," said Mr. Trupp, who felt like a man coming to the
+surface after a deep plunge.
+
+"Dress rehearsal," said the Colonel.
+
+"It'll never be so near again!" Mr. Pigott announced pontifically to
+his wife.  "Never!"
+
+"Thank you," replied that lady.  "May we take it from you?"
+
+When it was over the Colonel found that the walls of Jericho had
+fallen: the Liberal Citadel had been stormed.  Mr. Geddes took the
+chair at a meeting at St. Andrew's Hall to discuss the programme of the
+League.
+
+"It looks as if you were right after all," the tall minister said to
+the Colonel gravely.
+
+"Pray heaven I'm not," the other answered in like tones.
+
+The second significant incident of this time, which occurred during a
+lull before the final flare-up of the long-drawn Agadir crisis, had
+less happy results from the point of view of the old soldier.
+
+In August, suddenly and without warning, the railway-men came out.  The
+Colonel had been up to London for the night on the business of the
+League, and next morning had walked into Victoria Street Station to
+find it in possession of the soldiers: men in khaki in full marching
+order, rifle, bayonet, and bandolier; sentries everywhere; and on the
+platform a Union official in a blue badge urging the guard to come out.
+
+The guard, a heavy-shouldered middle-aged fellow, was stubbornly
+lumping along the platform on flat feet, swinging his lantern.
+
+"I've got a heart," he kept on reiterating.  "I've got a wife and
+children to think of."
+
+"So've I," replied the official, dogging him.  "It's because I am
+thinking of them that I'm out."
+
+"Silly 'aound!" said a bystander
+
+"No, he ain't then!" retorted a second.
+
+"Yes, he is!" chipped in a third.  "Makin trouble for isself and
+everybody else all round.  Calls isself the workers'
+friend!--Hadgitator, I call him!"
+
+All the way down to Beachbourne in the train the Colonel marked pickets
+guarding bridges; a cavalry patrol with lances flashing from the green
+covert of a country lane; a battery on the march; armies on the move.
+
+Joe Burt's right, he reflected, it's war.
+
+"I never thought to see the like of that in England," said a
+fellow-traveller, eyes glued to the window.
+
+"Makes you think," the Colonel admitted.
+
+Arrived home he found there was a call for special constables.  That
+evening he went to the police station to sign on, and found many of the
+leading citizens of Beachbourne there on like errand.  Bobby
+Chislehurst, his open young face clouded for once, and disturbed, was
+pressing the point of view of the railway-men on Stanley Bessemere, who
+was listening with the amused indifference of the man who knows.
+
+"I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," the politician was saying,
+shaking the sagacious head of the embryo statesmen.  "They're taking
+advantage of the international situation to try to better themselves."
+
+"But they say it's the Government and the directors who are taking
+advantage of it to try and put them off--as they've been doing for
+years!" cried Bobby, finely indignant.
+
+"I believe I know what I am talking about," replied the other, unmoved
+from the rock of his superiority.  "I don't mind telling you that the
+European situation is still most precarious.  The men know that, and
+they're trying to squeeze the Government.  I should like to think it
+wasn't so."
+
+Then the Archdeacon's voice loudly uplifted overwhelmed all others.
+
+"O, for an hour of the Kaiser!--He'd deal with em.  The one man left in
+Europe--now my poor Emperah's gone.  Lloyd George ... Bowing the knee
+to Baal ... Traitors to their country ... Want a lesson ... What can
+you expect?"  He mouthed away grandiloquently in detached sentences to
+the air in general; and nobody paid any attention to him.
+
+Near by, Mr. Pigott, red and ruffled, was asking what the Army had to
+do with it?--who wanted the soldiers?--why not leave it to the
+civilians?--with a provocative glance at the Colonel.
+
+Then there was a noise of marching in the street, and a body of
+working-men drew up outside the door.
+
+"Who are those fellows?" asked the Archdeacon loudly.
+
+"Workers from the East-end, old cock," shouted one of them as
+offensively through the door.  "Come to sign on as Specials!  And just
+as good a right here as you have...."
+
+The leader of the men in the street broke away from them and shouldered
+into the yard, battle in his eye.
+
+It was Joe Burt, who, as the Colonel had once remarked, was sometimes a
+wise statesman, and sometimes a foaming demagogue.  To-day he was the
+latter at his worst.
+
+"What did I tell yo?" he said to the Colonel roughly.  "Bringin oop the
+Army against us.  Royal Engineers driving trains and all!  It's a
+disgrace."
+
+The Colonel reasoned with him.
+
+"But, my dear fellow, you can't have one section of the community
+holding up the country."
+
+"Can't have it!" surly and savage.  "Yo've had five hundred dud
+plutocrats in the House of Lords holding up the people for years past.
+Did ye shout then?  If they use direct action in their own interests
+why make a rout when 500,000 railway men come out for a living
+wage?--And _then_ you coom to the workers and ask them to strengthen
+the Army the Government'll use against them!--A wonder yo've the face!"
+He turned away, shaking.
+
+Just then happily there was a diversion.  The yard-door, which a
+policeman had shut, burst open; and a baggy old gentleman lumbered
+through it with the scared look of a bear lost in a busy thoroughfare
+and much the motions of one.
+
+Holding on to his coat-tails like a keeper came Ruth.  She was panting,
+and a little dishevelled; in her arms was her baby, and her hat was
+a-wry.
+
+"He would come!" she said, almost in tears.  "There was no stoppin him.
+So I had just to come along too."
+
+Joe, aware that he had gone too far, and glad of the interruption,
+stepped up to Ruth and took the baby from her arms.  The distressed
+woman gave him a look of gratitude and began to pat and preen her hair.
+
+At this moment Ernie burst into the yard.  He was more alert than
+usual, and threw a swift, almost hostile, glance about him.  Then he
+saw Ruth busy tidying herself, and relaxed.
+
+"Caught him playing truant, didn't you, in Saffrons Croft?" he said.
+"The park-keeper tell me."
+
+Ruth was recovering rapidly.
+
+"Yes," she laughed.  "I told him it was nothing to do with him--strikes
+and riots and bloodshed!--Such an idea!"
+
+A baby began to wail; and Ernie turned to see Joe with little Ned in
+his arms.
+
+"Hallo!  Joe!" he chaffed.  "_My_ baby, I think."
+
+He took his own child amid laughter, Joe surrendering it reluctantly.
+
+Just then Edward Caspar appeared in the door of the office.  He looked
+at them over his spectacles and said quietly, as if to himself.
+
+"It's Law as well.  We must never forget that."
+
+The Colonel turned to Ernie.
+
+"What's he mean?" he asked low.--"Law as well."
+
+Ernie, dandling the baby, drew away into a corner where he would be out
+of earshot of the Archdeacon.
+
+"It's a line of poetry, sir," he explained in hushed voice--
+
+  "_O, Love that art remorseless Law,
+  So beautiful, so terrible._"
+
+
+"Go on!" said the Colonel, keenly.  "Go on!--I like that."
+
+But Ernie only wagged a sheepish head.
+
+"That's all," he said reluctantly.  "It never got beyond them two
+lines."  He added with a shy twinkle--"That's dad, that is."
+
+A chocolate-bodied car stopped in the street opposite.
+
+Out of it stepped Mr. Trupp.
+
+In it the Colonel saw a lean woman with eyes the blue of steel, fierce
+black brows, and snow-white hair.
+
+She was peering hungrily out.
+
+"It's mother come after dad," Ernie explained.  "In Mr. Trupp's car.
+That's my brother driving."
+
+The old surgeon, crossing the yard, now met the run-agate emerging from
+the office and took him kindly by the arm.
+
+"No, no, Mr. Caspar," he scolded soothingly.  "They don't want old
+fellows like you and me to do the bludgeon business.  Our sons'll do
+all that's necessary in that line."
+
+He packed the elderly truant away in the car.
+
+Mr. Caspar sat beside his wife, his hands folded on the handle of his
+umbrella, looking as determined as he knew how.
+
+Mrs. Caspar tucked a rug about his knees.
+
+Ernie, who had followed his father out to the car, and exchanged a word
+with his brother sitting stiff as an idol, behind his wheel, now
+returned to the yard, grinning.
+
+"Well!" said Joe.
+
+Ernie rolled his head.
+
+"Asked Alf if _he_ was goin to sign on?" he grinned.
+
+"Is he?" asked the Colonel ingenuously.
+
+Ernie laughed harshly.
+
+"Not Alf!" he said.  "He's a true Christian, Alf is, when there's
+scrapping on the tape..."
+
+At the club a few days later, when the trouble had blown over, the
+Colonel asked Mr. Trupp if Ernie was ill.
+
+"He seemed so slack," he said, with a genuine concern.
+
+"So he is," growled the old surgeon.  "He wants the Lash--that's all."
+
+"Different from his brother," mused the Colonel--"that chauffeur feller
+of yours.  He's keen enough from what I can see."
+
+Mr. Trupp puffed at his cigar.
+
+"Alf's ambitious," he said.  "That's his spur.  Starting in a big way
+on his own now.  Sussex is going to blossom out into Caspar's Garages,
+he tells me.  I'm going to put money in the company.  Some men draw
+money.  Alf's one."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE LANDLORD
+
+Alf's great scheme indeed was prospering.
+
+Thwarted by the Woman, and driven back upon himself, he had taken up
+the career of action at the point where he had left it to pursue an
+adventure that had brought him no profit and incredible bitterness.
+
+Fortune had favoured him.
+
+Just at the moment Ruth had baffled him, another enemy of his, the Red
+Cross Garage Syndicate, which in the early days of his career had
+throttled him, came to grief.
+
+Alf saw his chance, and flung himself into the new project with such
+characteristic energy as to drown the bitterness of sex-defeat.  He had
+no difficulty in raising the necessary capital for the little Syndicate
+he proposed to start.  Some he possessed himself; his bank was quite
+prepared to give him accommodation up to a point; and there was a third
+source he tapped with glee.  That source was Captain Royal.  Alf was in
+a position to squeeze the Captain; and he was not the man to forego an
+advantage, however acquired.
+
+Royal put a fifth of his patrimony into the venture, and was by no
+means displeased to do so.  Thereby he became the principal shareholder
+in the concern, with a predominant voice in its affairs.  That gave him
+the leverage against Alf, which, with the instinct of a commander, he
+had seen to be necessary for the security of his future directly that
+young man showed a blackmailing tendency.  Moreover Royal was not blind
+to the consideration that the new Syndicate, under able management, bid
+fair to be a singularly profitable investment.
+
+Backed then by Royal and his bank, Alf bought up certain of the garages
+of the defaulting company at knockout prices.  Thereafter, if he still
+coveted Ruth, he was far too occupied to worry her; while she on her
+side, purged by the busyness and natural intercourse of married life of
+all the disabling morbidities that had their roots in a sense of
+outlawry and the forced restraint put upon a roused and powerful
+temperament, had completely lost her fear of him.
+
+Ruth, surely, was changing rapidly now.  At times in family life she
+assumed the reins not because she wished to, but because she must; and
+on occasion she even took the whip from the socket.
+
+Ernie had, indeed, climbed a mountain peak and with unbelievable effort
+and tenacity won to the summit, which was herself.  But then, instead
+of marching on to the assault of the peak which always lies beyond, he
+had sat down, stupidly content; with the inevitable consequence that he
+tended to slither down the mountain-side and lose all he had gained in
+growth and character by his hard achievement.
+
+The pair had been married four years now; and Ruth knew that her house
+was built on sand.  That comfortable sense of security which had
+accompanied the first years of her married life, affording her
+incalculable relief after the hazards which had preceded them, had long
+passed.  Dangers, less desperate perhaps in the appearance than in the
+days of her darkness, but none the less real, were careering up from
+the horizon over a murky sea like breakers, roaring and with wrathful
+manes, to overwhelm her.  In particular the threat that haunts through
+life the working-woman of all lands and every race beset her
+increasingly.  Her man was always skirting now the bottomless pit of
+unemployment.  One slip and he might be over the edge, hurtling heavily
+down into nothingness, and dragging with him her and the unconscious
+babes.
+
+The home, always poor, began to manifest the characteristics of its
+tenants, as homes will.  When the young man came for the rent on Monday
+mornings, Ruth would open just a crack so that he might not see inside,
+herself peeping out of her door, wary as a woodland creature.  Apart
+from Joe Burt, whom she did not count, there was indeed only one
+visitor whom Ruth now received gladly; and that was Mr. Edward Caspar,
+whose blindness she could depend upon.
+
+There had grown up almost from the first a curious intimacy between the
+dreamy old gentleman, fastidious, scholarly, refined, and the young
+peasant woman whom destiny had made the mother of his grandchildren.
+Nothing stood between them, not even the barrier of class.  They
+understood each other as do the children of Truth, even though the
+language they speak is not the same.
+
+The old man was particularly devoted to little Alice.
+
+"She's like a water-sprite," he said,--"so fine and delicate."
+
+"She's different from Ernie's," answered Ruth simply.  "I reck'n it was
+the suffering when I was carrying her."
+
+"She's a Botticelli," mused the old man.  "The others are Michael
+Angelos."
+
+Ruth had no notion what he meant--that often happened; but she knew he
+meant something kind.
+
+"I'd ha said Sue was more the bottled cherry kind, myself," she
+answered gently.
+
+Her visitor came regularly every Tuesday morning on the way to the
+Quaker meeting-house, shuffling down Borough Lane past the _Star_, his
+coat-tails floating behind him, his gold spectacles on his nose, with
+something of the absorbed and humming laziness of a great bee.  Ruth
+would hear the familiar knock at the door and open.  The old man would
+sit in the kitchen for an hour by the latest baby's cot, saying
+nothing, the child playing with his little finger or listening to the
+ticking of the gold watch held to its ear.
+
+After he was gone Ruth would always find a new shilling on the dresser.
+When she first told Ernie about the shilling, he was surly and ashamed.
+
+"It's his tobacco money," he said gruffly.  "You mustn't keep it."
+
+Next Tuesday she dutifully handed the coin back to the giver,
+
+"I don't like to take it, sir," she said.
+
+The old man was the grandfather of her children, but she gave him
+always, and quite naturally, the title of respect.
+
+He took it from her and laid it back on the dresser with the other he
+had brought.  Then he put his hand on her arm, and looked at her
+affectionately through dim spectacles.
+
+"You go to the other extreme," he said.  "_You're_ too kind."
+
+After that she kept the money and she was glad of it too, for she was
+falling behind with her rent now.
+
+Then one Monday morning, the rent-collector making his weekly call,
+little brown book in hand, gave her a shock.
+
+He was a sprightly youth, cocky and curly, known among his intimates as
+Chirpy; and with a jealously cherished reputation for a way with the
+ladies.
+
+"Say, this is my last visit," he announced sentimentally, as he made
+his entry in the book, and poised his pencil behind his ear.  "We can't
+part like this, can we?--you and me, after all these years.  Too cold
+like."  He drew the back of his hand significantly across his mouth.
+
+Ruth brushed his impertinence aside with the friendly insouciance which
+endeared her to young men.
+
+"Got the sack for sauce, then?" she asked.
+
+Chirpy shook his head ruefully.
+
+"Mr. Goldmann's sold the house."
+
+"Over our heads!" cried Ruth, aghast.
+
+She hated change, for change spelt the unknown, which in its turn meant
+danger.
+
+"Seems so," the youth replied.  "No fault o mine, I do assure you."  He
+returned to his point.  "Anythink for Albert?"
+
+Ruth was thoroughly alarmed.  Even in those days cottages in Old Town
+were hard to come by.
+
+"Who's our new landlord?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Caspar, I heard say in the office."
+
+Ruth felt instant relief.
+
+"Mr. Edward Caspar?--O, _that's_ all right."
+
+"No; Alf--of the Garridges.  Him they call All-for-isself Alfie!"
+
+Ruth caught her breath.
+
+"Thank you," she said, and closed the door swiftly.
+
+The youth was left titupping on the door-step, his nose against the
+panel like a seeking spaniel.
+
+Within, Ruth put her hand to her heart to stay its tumult.  She was
+thankful Ernie was not there to witness her emotion, for she felt like
+a rabbit in the burrow, the stoat hard on its heels.  All her old
+terrors revived....
+
+The new landlord soon paid his first visit, and Ruth was ready for him.
+
+"You want to see round?" she asked, with the almost aggressive
+briskness of the woman who feels herself threatened.
+
+"Yes, as your landlord I got the right of entry."  He made the
+announcement portentously like an emperor dictating terms to a
+conquered people.
+
+Ruth showed him dutifully round.  He paid no attention to his property:
+his eyes were all for her; she did not look at him.
+
+Then they went upstairs where it was dark.
+
+There was a closed door on the left.  Alf thrust it open without asking
+leave; but Ruth barred his passage with an arm across the door.
+
+"What's that?" he asked, prying.
+
+"Our room.  You can't go in there.  That's where my children was born."
+
+Alf tilted his chin at her knowingly.
+
+"All but little Alice," he reminded her.  His eyes glittered in the
+dark.  "Does _he_ stand you anything for her?" he continued
+confidentially.  "Should do--a gentleman.  Now if you could get an
+affiliation order against him that'd be worth five or six bob a week to
+you.  And that's money to a woman in your position--pay me my rent and
+all too.  Only pity is," he ended, thoughtfully, "can't be done.  You
+and me know that if Ern don't."
+
+Ruth broke fiercely away.
+
+Leisurely he followed her down the stairs with loud feet.  He was
+greatly at his ease.  His hat, which he had never taken off, was on the
+back of his big head.  He was sucking a dirty pencil, and studying his
+rent-book, as he entered the kitchen.
+
+"You're a bit behind, I see," casually.
+
+"Only two weeks," as coldly.
+
+"As yet."
+
+He swaggered to the door with a peculiar roll of his shoulders.
+
+"If you was to wish to wipe it off at any time you've only got to say
+the word.  I might oblige."
+
+He stood with his back to her, looking out of the door, and humming.
+
+She was over against the range.
+
+"What's that?" she panted.
+
+Standing on the threshold he turned and leered back at her out of
+half-closed eyes.
+
+She sneered magnificently.
+
+"Ah, I knaw you," she said.
+
+"What's it all about?" he answered, cleaning his nails.  "Only a little
+bit of accommodation.  No thin out o the way."
+
+"Thank you.  I knaw your accommodation," she answered deeply.
+
+"Well," he retorted, picking his teeth.  "There's no harm in it.
+What's the fuss about?"
+
+"I'll tell Mr. Trupp," Ruth answered.  "That's all."
+
+Alf turned full face to her, jeering.
+
+"What's old Trupp to me, then?" he cried.  "I done with him.  I done
+with em all.  I'm me own master, I am--Alfred Caspar, Hesquire, of
+Caspar's Garridges, Company promoter.  Handlin me thousands as you
+handle coppers."
+
+He folded his arms, thrust out a leg, and looked the part majestically
+without a snigger.  It was clear he was extraordinarily impressive to
+himself.
+
+Ruth relaxed slowly, deliciously, like an ice-pack touched by the
+laughing kiss of spring.
+
+She eyed her enemy with the amused indifference of some big-boned
+thoroughbred mare courted by an amorous pony.
+
+"You're mad," she said.  "That's the only why I don't slosh the
+sauce-pan over you.  But I shall tell Ern all the same.  And he'll tell
+em all."
+
+"And who's goin to believe Ern?" jeered her tormentor.  "'Old Town
+Toper,' they call him.  Fairly sodden."
+
+"Not to say Archdeacon Willcocks and Mr. Chislehurst," continued Ruth,
+calmly.
+
+Alf shot his finger at her like a crook in a melodrama, looking along
+it as it might have been a pistol and loving his pose.
+
+"And would they believe _you_ against me?  Do you attend mass?  Are you
+a sidesman?"
+
+"I was confirmed Church afore ever you was," retorted Ruth with spirit.
+"I've as good a right to the sacraments, as you have then.  And I'll
+take to em again if I'm druv to it--that I will!"
+
+Something about this declaration tickled Alf.  The emperor was
+forgotten in the naughty urchin.
+
+"So long, then!" he tittered.  "Appy au-revoir!  Thank-ye for a
+pleasant chat.  This day week you can look forward to.  I'll collect me
+rent meself because I know you'd like me to."
+
+He turned, and as he was going out ran into a man who was entering.
+
+"Now then!" said a surly voice.  "Who are you?  O, it's _you_, is
+it?--I know all about you."
+
+"What you know o me?" asked Alf, aggressively.
+
+"Why, what a beauty you are."
+
+The two men eyed each other truculently.  Then Joe barged through the
+door.  The entrance cleared, Alf went out, but as he passed on the
+pavement outside he beat a rat-tan on the window with insolent knuckles.
+
+Joe leaped back to the door and scowled down the road at the back of
+the little chauffeur retreating at the trot.  Alf excelled physically
+in only one activity: he could run.
+
+The engineer returned to the kitchen, savage and smouldering.  Ruth,
+amused at the encounter, met him with kind eyes.  There was in this man
+the quality of the ferocious male she loved.  He marched up to her, his
+head low between his shoulders like a bull about to charge.
+
+"Is yon lil snot after you?" he growled, almost menacing.
+
+She regarded him with astonishment, amused and yet defensive.
+
+"_You're_ not my husband, Mr. Burt," she cried.  "_You've_ no grievance
+whoever has."
+
+The engineer retreated heavily.
+
+"Hapen not," he answered, surly and with averted eyes.  "A coom next
+though."
+
+She looked up, saw his face, and trembled faintly.
+
+He prowled to the door without a word, without a look.
+
+"Won't you stop for Ern?" she asked.
+
+"Nay," he said, and went out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE GRANDMOTHER
+
+Ruth and her mother-in-law frequently met in the steep and curling
+streets of Old Town as they went about their business.  They knew and
+tacitly ignored each other.  But Ernie's children were not to be
+ignored.  They knocked eternally at their granny's heart.  When of
+summer evenings their mother took her little brood to Saffrons Croft
+and sat with them beneath the elms, her latest baby in her arms, the
+others clouding her feet like giant daisies, Anne Caspar, limping by on
+flat feet with her string bag, would be wrung to the soul.
+
+She hungered for her grand-children, longed to feel their limbs, and
+see their bodies, to hold them in her lap, to bathe them, win their
+smiles, and hear their prattle.
+
+Pride, which she mistook for principle, stood between her and happiness.
+
+Ruth knew all that was passing in the elder woman's heart, and felt for
+the other a profound and disturbing sympathy.  She had the best of it;
+and she knew that Anne Caspar, for all her pharisaic air of
+superiority, knew it too.  Ruth had learnt from Mrs. Trupp something of
+the elder woman's story.  Anne Caspar too, it seemed, had loved out of
+her sphere; but she, unlike Ruth, had achieved her man.  Had she been
+happy?  That depended on whether she had brought happiness to her
+husband--Ruth never doubted that.  And Ruth knew that she had not; and
+knew that Anne Caspar knew that she had not.
+
+Moreover, all that Ernie told her about his mother interested her
+curiously: the elder woman's pride, her loneliness, her passion for her
+old man.
+
+"Alf's mother over again," Ern told Ruth, "with all her qualities only
+one--but it's the one that matters.  He's a worker same as she is.  He
+means to get on, same as she done.  There's just this difference atween
+em: Alf can't love; Mother can--though it's only one." ...
+
+A week after his first visit Alf appeared again on Ruth's door-step.
+
+Ruth opened to him with so bright a smile that he was for once taken
+completely by surprise.  He had expected resistance and come armed to
+meet it.
+
+"Come in, won't you?" she said.
+
+Then he understood.  She had thought better of her foolishness.
+
+"That's it, is it?" he said, licking his lips.  "That's a good gurl."
+
+"Yes," said Ruth.  "Very pleased to see you, I'm sure."  She was
+smarter than usual too, he noticed--to grace the occasion no doubt.
+And the plain brown dress, the hue of autumn leaves, with the tiny
+white frill at the collar, revealed the noble lines of her still
+youthful figure.
+
+The conqueror, breathing hard, entered the kitchen, to be greeted by a
+cultivated voice from the corner.
+
+"Well, Alfred," it said.
+
+Alf, whose eyes had been on the floor, glanced up with a start.
+
+His father was sitting beside the cradle, beaming mildly on him through
+gold spectacles.
+
+"Hullo, dad," said Alf, surlily.  This large ineffectual father of his
+had from childhood awed him.  There was a mystery about even his
+mildness, his inefficiency, which Alf had never understood and
+therefore feared.  "I didn't expect to find you here."
+
+It seemed to Alf that the bottle-imp was twinkling in the old man's
+eyes.  Alf remembered well the advent of that imp to the blue haunts he
+had never quitted since.  That was during the years of Ern's absence in
+India.  Now it struck him suddenly that his father, so
+seeming-innocent, so remote from the world, was in the joke against him.
+
+A glance at Ruth, malicious and amused, confirmed his suspicion.
+
+"I'm glad you come and visit your sister sometimes, Alfred," said the
+old man gently.
+
+"Yes," purred Ruth, "he comes reg'lar, Alf do now--once a week.  And
+all in the way of friendship as the savin is.  See, he's our landlord
+now."
+
+"That's nice," continued the old man with the dewy innocence of a babe.
+"Then he can let you off your rent if you get behind."
+
+"So he could," commented Ruth, "if only he was to think of it.  Do you
+hear your dad, Alf?"
+
+She paid the week's rent into his hand, coin by coin, before his
+father's eyes.  Then he turned and slouched out.
+
+"Good-night, Alf," Ruth said, almost affectionately.  "It 'as been nice
+seein you and all."
+
+Determined to enjoy her triumph to the full, she followed him to the
+door.  In the street he turned to meet her mocking glance, in which the
+cruelty gleamed like a half-sheathed sword.  His own eyes were impudent
+and familiar as they engaged hers.
+
+"Say, Ruth, what's he after?" he asked, cautiously, in lowered voice.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"That feller I caught you with the other night--when Ern wasn't there.
+Black-ugly.  What's he after?"
+
+"Same as you, hap."
+
+He sniggered feebly.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Me."
+
+She stood before him; a peak armoured through the ages in eternal ice
+and challenging splendidly in the sun.
+
+He hoiked and spat and turned away.
+
+"Brassy is it?" he said.  "One thing, my lass, you been in trouble
+once, mind.  I saved you then.  But I mightn't be able to a second
+time."
+
+Behind Ruth's shoulder a dim face, bearded and spectacled, peered at
+him with the mild remorselessness of the moon.
+
+"Alfred," said a voice, dreadful in its gentle austerity.
+
+When the old man said good-bye to Ruth ten minutes later he kissed her
+for the first time.
+
+She smiled up at him gallantly.
+
+"It's all right, dad," she said, consolingly.  "I'm not afraid o _him_
+whatever else."
+
+It was the first time she had called him dad, and even now she did it
+unconsciously.
+
+Edward Caspar ambled home.
+
+He did not attempt to conceal from his wife where he went on Tuesday
+mornings.  Indeed, as he soared on mysterious wings, he seemed to have
+lost all fear of the woman who had tyrannised over him for his own good
+so long.  Time, the unfailing arbitrator, had adjusted the balance
+between the two.  And sometimes it seemed to Mrs. Trupp, observing
+quietly as she had done for thirty years, that in the continuous
+unconscious struggle that persists inevitably between every pair from
+the first mating till death, the victory in this case would be to the
+man intangible as air.
+
+That morning, as Edward entered the house, his wife was standing in the
+kitchen before the range.
+
+Anne Caspar was white-haired now.  Her limbs had lost much of their
+comeliness, her motions their grace.  She was sharp-boned and gaunt of
+body as she had always been of mind--not unlike a rusty sword.
+
+As the front-door opened, and the well-trained man sedulously wiped his
+boots upon the mat, she looked up over her spectacles, dropping her
+chin, grim and sardonic.
+
+"I know where you been, dad," she taunted.
+
+He stayed at the study-door, like a great pawing bear.
+
+Then he answered suddenly and with a smile.
+
+"I've been in heaven."
+
+She slammed the door of the range; smiling, cruel, the school-girl who
+teases.
+
+"I know where your tobacco money goes, old dad," she continued.
+
+His mind was far too big and vague and mooning often to be able to
+encounter successfully the darts his wife occasionally shot into his
+large carcase.
+
+"He's a beautiful boy," was all he now made answer, as he disappeared.
+
+Whether the wound he dealt was deliberately given in self-defence, or
+unconsciously because he had the power over her, his words stung Anne
+Caspar to the quick.
+
+She turned white, and sat down in the lonely kitchen her wrung old
+hands twisted in her lap, hugging her wound.
+
+Then she recovered enough to take reprisals.
+
+"Alf's their landlord, now," she cried after him, the snakes in her
+eyes darting dreadful laughter.
+
+Edward Caspar turned in the door.
+
+"Anne," he said, "I wish you to pay Ruth's rent in future out of the
+money my father left you."
+
+The voice was mild but there was a note of authority, firm if faint,
+running through it.
+
+Anne rose grimly to her feet, thin as a stiletto, and almost as
+formidable.
+
+"That woman!"
+
+He nodded at her down the passage.
+
+"My daughter."
+
+Anne turned full face.
+
+"D'you know she's had a love-child?" she shrilled, discordant as a
+squeaking wheel.
+
+The old gentleman, fumbling at the door of his study, dropped his
+bearded chin, and beamed at the angry woman, moonwise over his
+spectacles.
+
+"Why shouldn't she?" he asked.
+
+There was something crisp, almost curt, in the interrogation.
+
+"But she's not respectable!"
+
+Again he dropped his chin and seemed to gape blankly.
+
+"Why should she be?" he asked.
+
+She heard the key turn, and knew that she was locked out for the night.
+
+Later she crept in list-slippers to the door and knocked with the slow
+and solemn knuckles of fate, a calculated pause between each knock.
+
+"Alf's going up, Ern's going down," she said, nodding with grim relish.
+"_Good_-night, old dad."
+
+
+Next evening Joe called at the cottage, to fetch Ernie for the class.
+He arrived as he sometimes had done of late, a little before Ernie was
+due home from the yard.  At this hour the little ones had already been
+put to bed; and Ruth would be alone with Alice, between whom and the
+engineer there had sprung up a singular intimacy ever since the evening
+on which he had carried her home like a dead thing in his arms from
+Saffrons Croft.
+
+Ruth had not seen him since his clash with Alfred in the door; and he
+had obviously avoided her.
+
+Now she thrilled faintly.  Was he in love with her?--she was not sure.
+
+He entered without speaking and took his seat as always before the
+fire, broad-spread and slightly huddled in his overcoat, chin on chest,
+staring into the fire.
+
+Ruth, busy baking, her arms up to the elbow in dough, made her decision
+swiftly.  She would meet him, face him, fight him.
+
+"Well, Joe," she said, not looking at him.
+
+It was the first time she had called him that.
+
+He peeped up at her, only his eyes moving, small, black-brown, and
+burning like a bear's.
+
+"That's better," he muttered.
+
+She flashed up at him.  Innocence and cunning, the schoolboy and the
+brute, Pan and Silenus fought, leered, and frolicked in his face.
+
+Ruth dropped her gaze and kneaded very deliberately.
+
+Yes ... it was so ... Now she would help him; and she could hold him.
+She would transmute his passion into friendship.  She would bridle her
+bull, ride him, tame him.  It was dangerous, and she loved danger.  It
+was sport; and she loved sport.  It was an adventure after the heart of
+a daring woman.  He was a fine man, too, and fierce, warrior and
+orator; worth conquering and subduing to her will.  His quality of a
+fighting male called to her.  She felt the challenge and answered it
+with singing blood.
+
+That laughing hidalgo who in Elizabethan days had landed from his
+galleon in the darks at the Haven to bring terror and romance to some
+Sussex maid; that Spaniard who lurked obscurely in her blood, gave her
+her swarthy colouring, her indolent magnificence and surprising
+quality, was stirring uneasily within her once again.
+
+She lifted her eyes from the froth of yeast and looked across at him,
+accepting battle--if he meant battle.  And he did: there was no doubt
+of that.  He sat there, hunched, silent, breathing heavily.  Then
+little Alice slipped down from the kitchen table on which she had been
+sitting at her mother's side, danced across to her friend, and climbed
+up on his knee.  Ruth took her arms out of the bowl, white to the elbow
+with flour, came across to the pair, firm-faced, and deliberately
+removed the child.
+
+Joe rose and went out.  In the outer door he stumbled on a man
+half-hidden on the threshold.
+
+"That you, Joe?" said Ernie quietly.  "There he is!  Alf--on the spy.
+See his head bob--there!  At the bottom of Borough Lane--It's her he's
+after."
+
+Joe peeped over his friend's shoulder, his bullet head thrust out like
+a dog who scents an enemy.
+
+"That sort; is he?" he muttered.  "I'll after him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE CHALLENGE
+
+Joe Burt had that passion for saving souls which is the hall-mark of
+the missionary in every age.  Had he been a child of the previous
+generation he would have become a minister in some humble denomination
+and done his fighting from the pulpit, Bible in hand, amid the
+pot-banks of a Black Country township or the grimy streets of a
+struggling mining village in the North.  As it was he appealed to the
+mass from the platform, and, a true fisher of men, flung his net about
+the individual in the class-room and at conferences.
+
+Always seeking fresh fields to conquer, he had established a political
+footing now even in Tory Old Town.  He had opened a discussion at the
+Institute, and actually given an address to the local Church of
+England's Men's Society on Robert Owen and early English Socialists;
+and he owed his triumph in the main to Bobby Chislehurst.
+
+It is not without a pang that we part from the most cherished of our
+prejudices, and as Joe launched out into an always larger life it had
+come to him as something of a shock to find amongst the younger clergy
+some who preserved an attitude of firm and honest neutrality in the
+great battle to which he had pledged his life, and even a few, here and
+there, who took their stand on the side of the revolutionaries of the
+Spirit.
+
+And such a one was Bobby.
+
+Because of that, the young curate, who was up and down all day amid the
+humble dwellers in the Moot, innocent and happy as a child, was
+forgiven his solitary sin.  For Bobby was a Scout-master, unashamed;
+and Joe Burt, like most of his battle-fellows of that date looked
+askance on the Boy-Scout Movement as one of the many props of
+militarist Toryism none the less effective because it was unavowed.
+
+The Cherub, bold, almost blatant in sin, passed his happiest hours in a
+rakish sombrero, shorts, and a shirt bedizened with badges, tramping
+the Downs at the head of the Old Town Troop of devoted Boy-Scouts,
+lighting forbidden fires in the gorse, arguing with outraged farmers,
+camping in secluded coombes above the sea.
+
+Up there on the hill, between sky and sea, Joe Burt, he too with his
+little flock of acolytes from the East-end, would sometimes meet the
+young shepherd on Saturday afternoons, trudging along, in his hand a
+pole in place of a crook.
+
+"I forgive you Mr. Chislehurst, because I know you don't know what
+you're doing," he once said, gravely.  "You're like the
+Israelite--without guile."
+
+"The greatest of men have their little failings," giggled the sinner.
+
+The two men, besides their political sympathies, had another point in
+common: they meant to save Ernie from himself.  But Joe was no longer
+single-eyed.  He saw now in Ernie two men--a potential recruit of value
+for the cause of Labour, and the man who possessed the woman he loved.
+
+In the troubled heart of the engineer there began to be a confused
+conflict between the fisher of men and the covetous rival.  Ernie was
+entirely unconscious of the tumult in the bosom of his friend of which
+he was the innocent cause.  Not so Ruth.
+
+She was rousing slowly now like a hind from her lair in the bracken,
+and sniffing the air at the approach of the antlered stranger.  As he
+drew always nearer with stops and starts and dainty tread, and she
+became increasingly aware of his savage presence, his fierce
+intentions, she withdrew instinctively for protection towards her
+rightful lord.  He grazed on the hill-side blind to his danger, blind
+to hers, blind to the presence of his enemy.  Ernie's indeed was that
+innocence, that simplicity, which rouses in the heart of primitive
+woman not respect but pity; and in the rose-bud of pity, unless it be
+virgin white, lurks always the canker of contempt and the worm of
+cruelty.
+
+Sometimes of evenings, as Ernie dozed before the fire in characteristic
+negligé, collarless, tie-less, somnolent as the cat, she watched him
+with growing resentment, comparing him to that Other, so much the
+master of himself and his little world.
+
+"You _are_ slack," she said once, more to herself than him.
+
+"I got a right to be, I reck'n, a'ter my day's work," he answered
+sleepily.
+
+"Joe's not like that," she answered, wetting her thread.  "He's spry,
+he is.  Doos a long day's work too--and earns big money, Joe do.
+Brings home more'n twice as much what you do Saraday--and no wife nor
+children neether."
+
+Ernie looked up and blinked.  For a moment she hoped and feared she had
+stung him to eruption.  Then he nodded off again.  That was what
+annoyed Ruth.  He would not flare.  He was like his father.  But
+qualities a woman admires in an old man she may despise in her lover.
+As she retired upon him she felt him giving way behind her.  She was
+seeking support and finding emptiness.
+
+And as that Other, shaggy-maned and mighty, stole towards her with his
+air of a conqueror, trampling the heather under-foot, the inadequacy of
+her own mate forced itself upon her notice always more.
+
+Ruth, now thirty, was in the full bloom of her passionate womanhood;
+drawing with her far-flung fragrance the pollen-bearing bee and drawn
+to him.  The girl who had been seized and overthrown by a passing
+brigand was a woman now who looked life in the face with steadfast eyes
+and meant to have her share of the fruits of it.  The old Christian
+doctrines of patience, resignation, abnegation of the right to a full
+life, made no appeal to her.  Richly dowered herself, she would not
+brook a starved existence.  She who was empty yearned for fulness.
+After her catastrophe, itself the consequence of daring, Ern had come
+into her life and given her what she had needed most just then--rest,
+security, above all children.  On that score she was satisfied now; and
+perhaps for that very reason her spirit was all the more a-thirst for
+adventure in other fields.  She was one of those women who demand
+everything of life and are satisfied with nothing less.  Like many such
+her heart was full of children but her arms were empty.  For her
+fulfilment she needed children and mate.  Some women were content with
+one, some with the other.  Great woman that she was, nothing less than
+both could satisfy her demands; and her emptiness irked her
+increasingly.
+
+Ruth's in fact was the problem of the unconquered woman--a problem at
+least as common among married women who have sought absorption and
+found only dissatisfaction as amongst the unmarried.  Royal had seized
+her imagination for a moment; to Ernie she had submitted.  But that
+complete immersion in a man and his work which is for a full woman
+love, she had never experienced, and longed to experience.  After five
+years of marriage Ernie was still outside her, an accretion, a
+circumstance, a part of her environment, necessary perhaps as her
+clothes, but little more: for there was no purpose in his life.
+
+And then just at the moment her lack was making itself most felt, the
+Man had come--a real man too, with a work; a pioneer, marching a-head,
+axe in hand, hewing a path-way through the Forest, and calling to her
+with ever increasing insistency to come out to him and aid him in his
+enterprise.
+
+But always as she fingered in her dreams the bolts of the gate that,
+once opened, would leave her face to face with the importunate
+adventurer, there came swarming about her, unloosing her fingers as
+they closed upon the bolts, the children.  And as one or other of them
+stirred or called out in sleep in the room above her, she would start,
+wake, and shake herself.  Yet even the pull of the children was not
+entirely in one direction.  There were four of them now; and they were
+growing, while Ernie's wages were standing still.  That was one of the
+insistent factors of the situation.  Were they too to be starved?
+
+Often in her dim kitchen she asked herself that question.  For if in
+her dreams she was always the mate of a man, she was in fact, and
+before all things, the mother of children.  Who then was to save them
+and her?--Ernie? who was now little more than a shadow, an irritating
+shadow, wavering in the background of her life?  If so, God help them
+all....
+
+One evening she was in the little back-yard taking down the washing,
+when she heard a man enter the kitchen.  She paid no heed.  If it was
+Joe he could wait; if it was Ernie she needn't bother.  Then she heard
+a second man enter, and instantly a male voice, harsh with challenge.
+
+She went in hastily.  There was nobody in the kitchen; but Ern was
+standing at the outer door.  His back was to her, but she detected
+instantly in the hunch of his shoulders a rare combativeness.
+
+"You know me," he was growling to somebody outside.  "None of it now!"
+
+He turned slowly, a dark look in his face which did not lighten when he
+saw her.
+
+"Who was it, Ern?" she asked.
+
+"Alf," he answered curtly.
+
+That night as he sat opposite her she observed him warily as she worked
+and put to herself an astonishing question: Was there another
+Ernie?--an Ernie asleep she had not succeeded in rousing?  Was the
+instrument sound and the fault in her, the player?
+
+A chance phrase of Mrs. Trupp's now recurred to her.
+
+"There's so much in Ernie--if you can only get it out."
+
+The man opposite rose slowly, came slowly to her, bent slowly and
+kissed her.
+
+"I ask your pardon if I was rough with you this evening, Ruth," he
+said.  "But Alf!--he fairly maddens me.  I feel to him as you shouldn't
+feel to any human being, let alone your own brother.  You know what
+he's after?" he continued.
+
+She stirred and coloured, as she lifted her eyes to his, dark with an
+unusual tenderness.
+
+"Reckon so, Ern," she said.
+
+He stood before the fire, for once almost handsome in his vehemence.
+
+"Layin his smutty hands on you!" he said.
+
+That little scene, with its suggestion of passion suppressed, steadied
+Ruth....  And it was time.  That Other was always drawing nearer.  And
+as she felt his approach, the savage power of him, his fierce virility,
+and was conscious of the reality of the danger, she resolved to meet it
+and fend it off.  He should save Ernie instead of destroying her.  And
+the way was clear.  If this new intellectual life, the seeds of which
+the engineer had been sowing so patiently for so long in the unkempt
+garden of Ernie's spirit became a reality for him, a part of himself,
+growing in such strength as to strangle the weeds of carelessness, he
+was saved--so much Ruth saw.
+
+"Once he was set alight to, all his rubbish'd go up in a flare, and
+he'd burn bright as aflame," she told the engineer once seizing her
+chance; and ended on the soft note of the turtle-dove--"There's just
+one could set him ablaze--and only one.  And that's you, Joe."
+
+At the moment Joe was sitting before the fire in characteristic
+attitude, hands deep in his pockets, legs stretched out, the toes of
+his solid boots in the air.
+
+For a moment he did not answer.  It was as though he had not heard.
+Then he turned that slow, bull-like glare of his full on her.
+
+"A'm to save him that he may enjoy you--that's it, is it?" he said.
+"A'm to work ma own ruin."
+
+It was the first time he had openly declared himself.  Now that it had
+come she felt, like many another woman in such case, a sudden instant
+revulsion.  Her dreams blew away like mist at the discharge of cannon.
+She was left with a sense of shock as one who has fallen from a height.
+At the moment of impact she was ironing, and glad of it.  Baring her
+teeth unconsciously she pressed hard down on the iron with a little
+hiss.
+
+"You've no call to talk to me like that, Joe.  It's not right."
+
+Deliberately he rose and turned his back.
+
+"A don't know much," he growled in his chest, "but A do know that then."
+
+Her heart thumped against her ribs.
+
+"I thart you were straight, Joe," she said.
+
+He warmed his hands at the blaze; and she knew he was grinning, and the
+nature of the grin.
+
+"A thought so maself till A found A wasn't," he answered.  "No man
+knows what's in him till he's tried--that's ma notion of it.  Then
+he'll have a good few surprises, same as A've done.  A man's a very
+funny thing when he's along of a woman he loves--that's ma experience."
+
+Ruth trembled, and her hand swept to and fro with the graceful motions
+of a circling eagle over the child's frock she was ironing.
+
+"You make me feel real mean," she said.
+
+He kept a sturdy back to her.
+
+"Then A make you feel just same gate as A feel maself."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You ought to marry, Joe--a man like you with all that nature in you."
+
+"Never--only if so be A can get the woman A want."
+
+She said with a gulp,
+
+"And I thart you was Ern's friend!"
+
+He looked up at the ceiling.
+
+"So A am--trying to be."
+
+There was another silence.  Then the woman spoke again, this time with
+the hushed curiosity of a child.
+
+"Are all men like that?"
+
+"The main of em, A reck'n."
+
+Her hand swooped rhythmically; and there was the gentle accompanying
+thud of the iron taking the table and circling smoothly about its work.
+
+"My Ern isn't."
+
+"Your Ern's got what he wants--and what A want too."
+
+Boots brushing themselves on the mat outside made themselves heard.
+Then the door opened.
+
+Joe did not turn.
+
+"Coom in, Ern," he said.  "Just right.  Keep t' peace atween us.  She
+and me gettin across each other as usual."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A SKIRMISH
+
+A few days later Ernie came home immediately after work instead of
+repairing to the _Star_.  As he entered the room Ruth saw there was
+something up.  He was sober--terribly so.
+
+"I done it, Ruth, old lass," he said.
+
+She knew at once.
+
+"Got the sack?" she asked.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I've no one to blame only meself," he said, disarming her, as he
+disarmed everyone by his Christian quality.
+
+Ruth did not reproach him: that was not her way.  Nor did she sit down
+and cry: she had expected the catastrophe too long.  She took the boy
+from the cradle and opened her bodice.
+
+"You shan't suffer anyways," she said, half to herself, half to the
+child, and stared out of the window, babe at breast, rocking gently and
+with tapping foot.
+
+Ern slouched out; and Ruth was left alone, to face as best she could
+the spectre that haunts through life the path of the immense majority
+of the human race.  She had watched its slinking approach for years.
+Now with a patter of hushed feet, dreadful in the fury of its assault,
+it was on her.  Remorseless in attack as in pursuit it was hounding her
+and hers slowly down a dreary slope to a lingering death, of body and
+spirit alike, in that hungry morass, the name of which is Unemployment.
+
+Two days later when Joe entered the cottage he found Ruth for once
+sitting, listless.  All the children were in bed, even little Alice.
+He saw at once why.  There was no fire, though it was January.
+
+"Where's Ern, then?" he asked.
+
+"Lookin for work," Ruth answered.
+
+Joe stared, aghast.
+
+"Is he out?" he asked.
+
+Ruth rose and turned her shoulder to him.
+
+"Yes.  They've stood him off.  And I don't blame em."
+
+"What for?" Joe was genuinely concerned.
+
+"He didn't say.  Bad time, I reckon.  Only don't tell anyone, Joe, for
+dear's sake, else they'll stop my credit at the shop--and I'll be done."
+
+Her eyes filled and she bit her lip.
+
+"Four of em," she said.  "And nothing a week to do it on--let alone the
+rent" ...
+
+She might hush it up; but the news spread.
+
+Alf, with his ears of a lynx, was one of the first to hear.  For a
+moment he hovered in a dreadful state of trepidation.  It was a year
+and a half since he had stalked his white heifer, bent on a kill, only
+to be scared away by the presence of that mysterious old man he had
+found at her side in the heart of the covert.  But his lust was by no
+means dead because it had been for the time suppressed.  Ruth had
+baffled him; and Alf had not forgotten it.  Ern possessed a beautiful
+woman he longed for; and Alf had not forgiven him.
+
+Perhaps because he had beaten down his desire for so long, it now
+rushed out ravening from its lair, and drove all else before it.
+Throwing caution to the winds, he came stealing along like a stoat upon
+the trail, licking his lips, wary yet swift.  First he made sure that
+Ernie was out, looking for a job of work.  Then he came down the street.
+
+Ruth met her enemy blithely and with taunting eyes.  In battle she
+found a certain relief from the burthen of her distress.  And here she
+knew was no question of pity or consideration.
+
+"Monday's your morning, isn't it?" she said.  "Come along then, will
+you, Alf?  And you'll see what I got for you."
+
+Alf shook a sorrowful head, studying his rent-book.
+
+"It can't go on," he said in the highly moral tone he loved to adopt.
+"It ain't right."  He raised a pained face and looked away.  "Of course
+if you was to wish to wipe it off and start clean----"
+
+Ruth was cold and smiling.  She handled Alf always with the caressing
+contempt with which a cat handles a mouse.
+
+"Little bit of accommodation," she said.  "No thank you, Alf.  I
+shouldn't feel that'd help me to start clean."
+
+"See Ern's down and out," continued the tempter in his hushed and
+confidential voice.  "Nobody won't give him a job."
+
+Ruth trembled slightly, though she was smiling still and self-contained.
+
+"You'll see to that now you're on high, won't you?" she said--"for my
+children's sake."
+
+"It'd be doin Ern a good turn, too," Alf went on in the same low
+monotone.
+
+"Brotherly," said Ruth.  "But he mightn't see it that way."
+
+"He wouldn't mind," continued Alf gently.  "See he's all for Joe Burt
+and the classes now.  Says you're keeping him back.  Nothin but a
+burthen to him, he says.  _Her and her brats_, as he said last night at
+the Institute.  _Don't give a chap a chance_."  Alf wagged his head.
+"Course he shouldn't ha said it.  I know that.  Told him so at the time
+afore them all.  _Tain't right_--I told him straight--_your own wife
+and all_."
+
+"My Ern didn't say that, Alf," Ruth answered simply.
+
+His eyes came seeking hers furtively, and were gone instantly on
+meeting them.
+
+"Then you won't do him a good turn?"
+
+Ruth's fine eyes flashed and danced, irony, laughter, scorn, all
+crossing swords in their brown deeps.  There were aspects of Alf that
+genuinely amused her.
+
+"Would you like to talk it over with him?" she asked.
+
+"And supposing I have?"
+
+"He'll be back in a moment," she said, sweet and bright.  "I'll ask
+him."
+
+Alf was silent, fumbling with his watch-chain.  Then he began again in
+the same hushed voice, and with the same averted face.
+
+"And there's another thing between us."  His eyes were shut, and he was
+weaving to and fro like a snake in the love-dance.  "Sorry you're
+trying to make bad blood between me and my old dad," he said.  "Very
+sorry, Ruth."
+
+"I aren't," Ruth answered swiftly.  "You was always un-friends from the
+cradle, you and dad.  See he don't think you're right."  She added a
+little stab of her own--"No one does.  That's why they keep you on as
+sidesman, Mr. Chislehurst says.  Charity-like.  They're sorry for you.
+So'm I."
+
+The words touched Alf's vital spot--the conceit that was the most
+obvious symptom of his insanity.  His face changed, but his voice
+remained as before, stealthy and insinuating.  He came a little closer,
+and his eyes caressed her figure covetously.
+
+"You see I wouldn't annoy me, not too far, not if I was you, Ruth.  You
+can go too far even with a saint upon the cross."
+
+Ruth put out the tip of her tongue daintily.
+
+"Crook upon the cross, don't you mean, Alf?"
+
+He brushed the irrelevancy aside, shooting his head across to hers.
+His face was ugly now, and glistening.  With deliberate insolence he
+flicked a thumb and finger under her nose.
+
+"And I do know what I do know, and what nobody else don't know only you
+and me and the Captin, my tuppenny tartlet."
+
+She was still and white, formidable in her very dumbness.  He proceeded
+with quiet stealth.
+
+"See that letter I wrote you used to hold over against me before you
+married--that's destroyed now.  And a good job, too, for it might have
+meant trouble for Alfured.  But it's gone!  I _know_ that then.  Ern
+told me.  He's a drunkard, old Ern is; but he's not a liar.  I will say
+that for my brother; I will stick up for him if it was ever so; I will
+fight old Ern's battles for him."
+
+"As you're doin now," said Ruth.
+
+Alf grinned.
+
+"And the short of it all is just this, Ruthie," he continued, and
+reaching forth a hand, tapped her upon the shoulder--"I got you, and
+you ain't got me.  And I can squeeze the heart out of that great bosom
+o yours"--he opened and clenched his hand in pantomine--"if I don't get
+my way any time I like.  So just you think it over!  Think o your
+children if you won't think of nothing else!"
+
+Outside in the road he ran into Joe, who gripped him.
+
+"What you come after?" asked the engineer ferociously.
+
+"After my rent," answered Alf, shouting from fear.  Joe looked
+dangerous, but loosed his hold.
+
+"How much?" he asked, taking a bag from his pocket.
+
+"Sixteen shilling.  You can see for yourself."
+
+Obliging with the obligingness of the man who is scared to death, Alf
+produced his book.  Joe, lowering still, examined it.  Then he paid the
+money into the other's hand.  That done he escorted Alf policemanwise
+to the bottom of Borough Lane.
+
+"If A find you mouchin round here again A'll break your bloody little
+back across ma knee," he told the other, shouldering over him.  "A mean
+it, sitha!"
+
+Alf withdrew up the hill towards the _Star_.  At a safe distance he
+paused and called back confidentially, his face white and sneering,
+
+"Quite the yard-dog, eh?  Bought her, ain't yer?"
+
+Joe returned to the cottage and entered.
+
+At the head of the stairs a lovely little figure in a white gown that
+enfolded her hugely like a cloud, making billows about the woolly red
+slippers which had been Bess Trupp's Christmas gift, smiled at him.
+
+"Uncle Joe," little Alice chirped, "please tell Mum I are ready."
+
+He ran up the stairs, gathered her in his arms, and bore her back to
+bed in the room where Susie and Jenny already slept.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered, laying a tiny finger on his lips--"The little
+ones!"
+
+He tucked her up and kissed her.
+
+"You're the proper little mother, aren't you?" he whispered.
+
+In the kitchen he found Ruth, a row of tin-tacks studding her lips,
+soling Alice's boots.  The glint of steel between her lips, and the
+inward curl of her lips, gave her a touch of unusual grimness.
+
+"Always at it," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered between muffled lips.  "Got to be.  Snob this time.
+Only the soles are rotten.  It's like puttin nails into wet brown
+paper."
+
+She was suffering terribly--he felt it; and suppressed accordingly.
+But if her furnaces were damped down, he could hear the flames roaring
+behind closed doors; and her passion, which typified for him the
+sufferings of those innocent millions to the redemption of whom he had
+consecrated his life, moved him profoundly.
+
+He flung the bag on the table before her almost savagely.  It jingled
+as it fell and squatted there, dowdy, and lackadaisical as a dumpling
+in a swoon.
+
+Ruth eyed it, her lips still steel-studded.
+
+"How much?" she mumbled.
+
+"Ten pound," he answered.
+
+"That's not what I mean."
+
+"What _do_ you mean, then?"
+
+"What's the price?"
+
+He glared at her; then thumped the table with a great fist.
+
+"Nothin then!" he shouted.  "What doest' take me for?"
+
+She munched her tin-tacks sardonically, regarding him.
+
+How sturdy he was, with his close curly black hair, and on his face the
+set and resolute look of the man approaching middle-age, who knows that
+he wants and how to win it!
+
+"A man, Joe."
+
+He snorted sullenly.
+
+"Better'n a no-man any road," he sneered.
+
+The words stung her.  All the immense and tender motherliness of her
+nature rose up like a wave that curls in roaring majesty to a fall.
+She swept the tin-tacks from her mouth and met him, flashing and
+glorious.
+
+"See here, Joe!" she cried, deep-voiced as a bloodhound.  "Ne'er a word
+against my Ern!  I won't have it."
+
+"_Your_ Ern!"
+
+She was white and heaving.
+
+"Yes, my Ern!  He's down and out, and you take advantage to come up
+here behind his back and insult him--and me.  You're the one to call
+anudder man a no-man, aren't you?"  Taking the bag of money she tossed
+it at him with a flinging scorn that was magnificent.
+
+"Take your filth away--and yourself with it!"
+
+He went, humbled and ashamed.
+
+She watched him go--this sanguine, well-conditioned man, with his good
+boots, his sensible clothes, his air of solid prosperity.
+
+Then she sat down, spent.  Her savagery had been largely defensive.
+Like the brave soldier she was she had attacked to hide the weakness of
+her guard.  She was sick at heart; worn out.  These men ... first Alf,
+then Joe ...  This champing boar, foam in the corner of his lips ...
+that red-eyed weasel squealing on the trail....
+
+An hour later Ern came home.
+
+She knew at once from the wan look of him that he had been tramping all
+day on an empty stomach.  That, with all his faults, was Ern.  So long
+as there was a crumb in the cupboard she and the children should share
+it: he would tighten his belt.  Even now he just sat down, an obviously
+beaten man, and did not ask for a bite.  What she had she put before
+him; and it was not much.
+
+"Any luck, Ern?" she asked with a touch of tenderness.
+
+Sullenly he shook his head.
+
+"Walked my bloody legs off on an empty belly, and got a mouthful of
+insults at the end of it," he muttered.  "That's all I got.  That's all
+they give the working man in Old England.  Joe's right.  Sink the
+country!  Blast the bloody Empire!  That's all it's good for!"
+
+It was the first time he had ever used bad language in her presence.
+That gradual demoralisation which unemployment, however caused, and its
+consequences brings inevitably in its train was already showing its
+corrupt fruits.  The tragedy of it moved her.
+
+"Joe's been up," she said after a bit.
+
+"I met him," he answered.  He was warmer after his meal, less sullen,
+and drew up his chair from habit before the fireless range.  "He wants
+me to go North--to his folk.  Says his brother-in-law can find me a
+job.  Runs a motor-transport business in Oldham."
+
+Her back was to him at the moment.
+
+"Does he?" she asked quietly.  "What about me and my children?"
+
+"That's what I says to him."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"Said he'd look after you and them."
+
+Ruth was still as a mouse awaiting the cat's pounce.
+
+"And what did you say to that?"
+
+"Told him to go to hell."
+
+Ruth stirred again and resumed her quiet busyness.
+
+"Alf's been up again," she told him.  "Messin round."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+PITCHED BATTLE
+
+Mrs. Trubb happened on Ernie's mother next day in Church Street.  The
+surgeon's wife, whenever she met Mrs. Edward Caspar, acted always
+deliberately on the assumption, which she knew to be unfounded, that
+relations between Ruth and her mother-in-law were normal.
+
+"It's a nuisance this about Ernie," she now said.  "Such a worry for
+Ruth."
+
+The hard woman with the snow-white hair and fierce black eye-brows made
+a little sardonic moue.
+
+"She's all right," she answered.  "You needn't worry for her.  There's
+a chap payin her rent."
+
+Mrs. Trupp changed colour.
+
+"I don't believe it," she said sharply.
+
+"You mayn't believe it," retorted the other sourly.  "It's true all the
+same.  Alf's her landlord.  He told me."
+
+Mrs. Trupp, greatly perturbed, reported the matter to her husband.  He
+tackled Alf, who at the moment was driving for his old employer again
+in the absence of the regular chauffeur.
+
+Alf admitted readily enough that the charge against his sister-in-law
+was true.
+
+"That's it, sir," he said.  "It's that chap Burt.  And he don't do what
+he done for nothin, I'll lay; a chap like that don't."
+
+He produced his book from his pocket, and held it out for the other to
+see, half turning away with becoming modesty.
+
+"I don't like it, sir--me own sister-in-law.  And I've said so to
+Reverend Spink.  Makes talk, as they say.  Still it's no concern of
+mine."
+
+Mrs. Trupp, on hearing her husband's report, went down at once to see
+Ruth and point out the extraordinary unwisdom of her action.
+
+Ruth met her, fierce and formidable as Mrs. Trupp had never known her.
+
+"It's a lie," she said, deep and savage as a tigress.
+
+"It may be," Mrs. Trupp admitted.  "But Alfred did show Mr. Trupp his
+book.  And the rent had been paid down to last Monday.  I think you
+should ask Mr. Burt."
+
+That evening when Joe came up Ruth straightway tackled him.
+
+She was so cold, so terrible, that the engineer was frightened, and
+lied.
+
+"Not as I'd ha blamed you if you had," said Ruth relaxing ever so
+little.  "It's not your fault I'm put to it and shamed afore em all."
+
+The bitterness of the position in which Ern had placed her was eating
+her heart away.  That noon for the first time she had taken the three
+elder children to the public dinner for necessitous children at the
+school.  Anne Caspar who had been there helping to serve had smirked.
+
+When Joe saw that the weight of her anger was turned against Ernie and
+not him, he admitted his fault.
+
+"A may ha done wrong," he said.  "But A acted for the best.  Didn't
+want to see you in young Alf's clutches."
+
+"You bide here," Ruth said, "and keep house along o little Alice.  I'll
+be back in a minute."
+
+Hatless and just as she was, she marched up to the Manor-house.
+
+"You were right, 'M," she told Mrs. Trupp.  "It were Joe.  He just tell
+me.  Only I didn't knaw nothin of it."
+
+"It'll never do for you to be in his debt, Ruth," said the lady.
+
+"No," Ruth admitted sullenly.
+
+Mrs. Trupp went to her escritoire and took out sixteen shillings.  Ruth
+took it.
+
+"Thank-you," was all she said, and she said that coldly.  Then she
+returned home with the money and paid Joe.
+
+An hour later Ernie came in.
+
+Ruth was standing at the table waiting him, cold, tall, and inexorable.
+
+"Anything?" she asked.
+
+Surly in self-defence, he shook his head and sat down.
+
+She gave him not so much as a crumb of sympathy.
+
+"No good settin down," she told him.  "You ain't done yet.  You'll take
+that clock down to Goldmann's after dark, and you'll get sixteen
+shillings for it.  If he won't give you that for it, you'll pop your
+own great coat."
+
+Ernie stared at her.  He was uncertain whether to show fight or not.
+
+"Dad's clock?--what he give me when I married?"
+
+"Yes.  Dad's clock."
+
+She regarded him with eyes in which resentment flamed sullenly.
+
+"Can I feed six on the shilling a week he gives me--rent and all?"
+
+Ernie went out and brought back the money.  She took it without a word,
+and wrapping it up in a little bit of paper, left it at the Manor-house.
+
+Mrs. Trupp, who was holding a council with Bess and Bobby Chislehurst,
+unwrapped the packet and showed the money.
+
+"She's put something up the spout," said the sage Bobby.
+
+The three talked the situation over.  There was only one thing to be
+done.  Somebody must go round to Mr. Pigott and intercede for Ernie.
+Bobby was selected.
+
+"You'll get him round if anybody can," Bess told her colleague
+encouragingly.
+
+Bobby, shaking a dubious head, went.  Mr. Pigott, like everybody else
+in Old Town, was devoted to the young curate; but he presented a firm
+face now to the other's entreaties.
+
+"Every chance I've given him."  he said, and scolded and growled as he
+paced to and fro in the little room looking across Victoria Drive on to
+the allotments.  "He's a lost soul, is Ernie Caspar.  That's my view,
+if you care for it."
+
+Bobby retreated, not without hope, and bustled round to Ruth.
+
+"You must go and see him!" he rapped out almost
+imperiously--"yourself--this evening--after work--at 6.30--to the
+minute."  He would be praying at that hour.
+
+Ruth, who was fighting for her life now, went.
+
+Mr. Pigott, at the window, saw her coming.
+
+"Here she comes," he murmured.  "O dear me!  You women, you know,
+you're the curse of my life.  I'd be a good and happy man only for you."
+
+Mrs Pigott was giggling at his elbow.
+
+"She'll get round you, all right, my son," she said.  "She'll roll you
+up in two ticks till you're just a little round ball of nothing in
+particular, and then gulp you down."
+
+"She won't!" the other answered truculently.  "You don't know me!"  And
+he swaggered masterfully away to meet the foe.
+
+Mrs. Pigott proved, of course, right.
+
+Ruth's simplicity and beauty were altogether too much for the
+susceptible old man.  He put up no real fight at all; but after a
+little bluff and bounce surrendered unconditionally with a good many
+loud words to salve his conscience and cover his defeat.
+
+"It's only postponing the evil day, I'm afraid," he said; but he agreed
+to take the sinner back at a lower wage to do a more menial job--if
+he'd come.
+
+"He'll come, sir," said Ruth.  "He's humble.  I will say that for Ern."
+
+"Send him to me," said the old schoolmaster threateningly.  "I'll dress
+him down.  What he wants is to get religion."
+
+"He's got religion, sir," answered simple Ruth.  "Only where it is it's
+no good to him."
+
+That evening, when Ern entered, heavy once again with defeat, she told
+him the news.  At the moment she was standing at the sink washing up,
+and did not even turn to face him.  He made as though to approach her
+and then halted.  Something about her back forbade him.
+
+"It shan't happen again, Ruth," he said.
+
+She met him remorseless as a rock of granite.
+
+"No, not till next time," she answered.
+
+He stood a moment eyeing her back hungrily.  Then he went out.
+
+He was hardly gone when his father lumbered into the kitchen.  The old
+gentleman's eyes fell at once on the clock-deserted mantel-piece.
+
+"Gone to be mended," he said to himself, and took out of his waistcoat
+pocket the huge old gold watch with a coat of arms on the back, beloved
+of the children, that had itself some fifteen years before made a
+romantic pilgrimage to Mr. Goldmann's in Sea-gate.  Then he bustled to
+the cupboard where was the box containing a hammer and a few tools.  He
+put a nail in the wall, hammered his thumb, sucked it with a good deal
+of slobber, but got the nail in at last.
+
+"Without any help too," he said to himself, not without a touch of
+complacency as he hung the watch on it.  Ruth watched him with wistful
+affection.  Pleased with himself and his action, as is only the man who
+rarely uses his hands, he stood back and admired his work.
+
+"There!" he said.  "Didn't know I was a handy man, did you?  It'll keep
+you going anyway till the clock comes back."
+
+He left more hurriedly than usual, and when he was gone Ruth found two
+shillings on the mantel-piece.
+
+The old man's kindness and her own sense of humiliation were too much
+for Ruth.  She went out into the back-yard; and there Joe found her,
+standing like a school-girl, her hands behind her, looking up at the
+church-tower.
+
+Quietly he came to her and peeped round at her face, which was crumpled
+and furrowed, the tears pouring down.
+
+"I'd as lief give up all together for all the good it is," she gulped
+between her sobs.
+
+He put out his hand to gather her.  She turned on him, her eyes
+smouldering and sullen beneath the water-floods.
+
+"Ah, you, would you?" she snarled.
+
+As she faced him he saw that the brooch she usually wore at her throat
+was gone, and her neck, round and full, was exposed.
+
+She saw the direction of his eyes.
+
+"Yes," she said, "that's gone too.  I'll be lucky soon if I'm left the
+clothes I stand up in."
+
+He put out a sturdy finger and stroked her bare throat.  She struck it
+aside with ferocity.
+
+"What _do_ you want then?" he asked.
+
+"You know what I want," she answered huskily.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"A man--to make a home and keep the children."
+
+"Well, here's one a-waitin."
+
+She flung him off and moved heavily into the kitchen.
+
+Just then there was a tap at the window.  It was little Alice calling
+for her mother to come and tuck her up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE VANQUISHED
+
+When Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor called at the Manor-house a few days
+later, Mrs. Trupp told them what had happened.
+
+"Burt paid her rent?" queried the Colonel.
+
+"Without her knowledge," said Mrs. Trupp.
+
+The Colonel shrugged.
+
+"I'm afraid our friend Ernie's a poor creature," he said.
+"Wishy-washy!  That's about the long and short of it."
+
+"And yet he's got it in him!" commented Mrs. Trupp.
+
+"That's what I say," remarked Mrs. Lewknor with a touch of
+aggressiveness.  The little lady, with the fine loyalty that was her
+characteristic, never forgot whose son Ernie was, nor her first meeting
+with him years before in hospital at Jubbulpur.  "He's got plenty in
+him; but she don't dig it out."
+
+"He got a good fright though, this time," said Bess.  "It may steady
+him."
+
+Mr. Trupp shot forth one of his short epigrams, solid and chunky as a
+blow from a hammer.
+
+"Men won't till they must," he said.  "It's Must has been the making of
+Man.  He'll try when he's got to, and not a moment before."
+
+Ten minutes later Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor were walking down Church
+Street towards the station.  Just in front of them a woman and two men
+were marching a-breast.  The woman was flanked by her comrades.
+
+"What a contrast those two men make," remarked the Colonel.  "That
+feller Burt's like a bull!"
+
+"Too like," retorted Mrs. Lewknor sharply.  "Give me the fellow who's
+like a gentleman."
+
+The Colonel shook his head.
+
+"Flame burns too feebly."
+
+"But it burns pure," snapped the little lady.
+
+Both parties had reached the foot of the hill at the Goffs when the
+woman in front swerved.  It was the motion of the bird in flight
+suddenly aware of a man with a gun.  She passed through the stile and
+fled swiftly across Saffrons Croft.  The men with her, evidently taken
+by surprise, followed.
+
+Only the Colonel saw what had happened.
+
+A tall man, coming from the station, had turned into Alf's garage.
+
+"Royal," he said low to his companion.
+
+
+Captain Royal had come down to Beachbourne to see Alf Caspar, who
+wanted more capital for his Syndicate which was prospering amazingly.
+Alf, indeed, now that he had established his garages in every important
+centre in East Sussex, was starting a Road-touring Syndicate to exploit
+for visitors the hidden treasures of a country-side amazingly rich in
+historic memories for men of Anglo-Saxon blood.  The Syndicate was to
+begin operations with a flourish on the Easter Bank Holiday, if the
+necessary licence could be obtained from the Watch Committee; and Alf
+anticipated little real trouble in that matter.
+
+Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, who had never forgiven Alf for being Alf,
+watched the growing prosperity of the Syndicate and its promoter with
+undisguised annoyance.
+
+"It beats me," said Bess, "why people back the little beast.  Everybody
+knows all about him."
+
+Next day as they rode down the valley towards Birling Gap, Mr. Trupp
+expounded to his daughter the secret of Alf's success.
+
+"When you're as old as I am, my dear, and have had as long an
+experience as I have of this slip-shod world, you'll know that people
+will forgive almost anything to a man who gets things done and is
+reliable.  Alf drove me for nearly ten years tens of thousands of
+miles; and I never knew him to have a break-down on the road.
+Why?--because he took trouble."
+
+Alf, indeed, with all his amazing deficiencies, mental and moral, was a
+supremely honest workman.  He never scamped a job, and was never
+satisfied with anything but the best.  He was gloriously work-proud.  A
+hard master, he was hardest on himself, as all the men in his yard
+knew.  One and all they disliked him; one and all they respected
+him--because he could beat them at their own job.  His work was his
+solitary passion, and he was an artist at it.  Here he was not even
+petty.  Good work, and a good workman, found in him their most
+wholehearted supporter.
+
+"That's a job!" he'd say to a mechanic.  "I congratulate you."
+
+"You should know, Mr. Caspar," the man would answer, pleased and
+purring.  For Alf's reputation as the best motor-engineer in East
+Sussex was well-established and well-earned.  And because he was
+efficient and thorough the success of his Syndicate was never in doubt.
+
+Alf was on the way now, in truth, to becoming a rich man.  Yet he lived
+simply enough above his original garage in the Goffs at the foot of Old
+Town.  And from that eyrie, busy though he was, he still made time to
+watch with interest and pleasure his brother's trousers coming down and
+indeed to lend a helping hand in the process: for he worked secretly on
+his mother, who regarded Ernie when he came to Rectory Walk to take his
+father out with eyes of increasing displeasure; for her eldest son was
+shabby and seedy almost now as in the days when he had been out of work
+after leaving the Hohenzollern.  The word failure was stamped upon him
+in letters few could mis-read.  And Anne Caspar had for all those who
+fail, with one exception, that profound sense of exasperation and
+disgust which finds its outlet in the contemptuous pity that is for
+modern man the camouflaged expression of the cruelty inherent in his
+animal nature.  It seemed that all the love in her--and there was love
+in her as surely there is in us all--was exhausted on her own old man.
+For the rest her attitude towards the fallen in the arena was always
+_Thumbs down_--with perhaps an added zest of rancour and resentment
+because of the one she spared.
+
+"She has brought you low," she commented one evening to Ernie in that
+pseudo-mystical voice, as of one talking in her sleep, from the covert
+of which some women hope to shoot their poisoned arrows with impunity.
+This time, however, she was not to escape just punishment.
+
+Ernie flared.
+
+"Who says she has then?"
+
+Anne Caspar had struck a spark of reality out of the moss-covered
+flint; and now--as had happened at rare intervals throughout his
+life--Ernie made his mother suddenly afraid.
+
+"Everyone," she said, lamely, trying vainly to cover her retreat.
+
+"Ah," said Ernie, nodding.  "I knaw who, and I'll let him knaw it too."
+
+"Best be cautious," replied his mother with a smirk.  "He's your
+landlord now.  And you're behind."
+
+Ernie rose.
+
+"He may be my landlord," he cried.  "But I'm the daddy o he yet."
+
+Sullenly he returned to the house that was now for him no home: for the
+woman who had made it home was punishing not without just cause the man
+who had betrayed it.
+
+
+Ruth was standing now like a rock in the tide-way, the passions of men
+beating about her, her children clinging to her, the grey sky of
+circumstance enfolding her.
+
+She had sought adventure and had found it.  Battle now was hers; but it
+was battle stripped of all romance.  Danger beset her; but it was
+wholly sordid.  The battle was for bread--to feed her household; and
+soap--to keep her home and children clean.  The danger was lest all the
+creeping diseases and hideous disabilities contingent upon penury,
+unknown even by name except in their grossest form to the millions
+whose lot it is to face and fight them day in, day out, should sap the
+powers of resistance of her and hers, and throw them on the scrap-heap
+at the mercy of Man, the merciless.
+
+Tragic was her dilemma.  To Ruth her home was everything because it
+meant the environment in which she must grow the souls and bodies of
+her children.  And her home was threatened.  That was the position,
+stark and terrible, which stared her in the eyes by day and night.  The
+man provided her by the law had proved a No-man, as Joe called it.  He
+was a danger to the home of which he should have been the support.  And
+while her own man had failed her, another, a true man as she believed,
+was offering to take upon his strong and capable shoulders the burthen
+Ernie was letting fall.
+
+Ruth agonised and well she might.  For Joe was pressing in upon her,
+overpowering her, hammering at her gate with always fiercer insistence.
+Should she surrender?--should she open the gate of a citadel of which
+the garrison was starved and the ammunition all but spent?--should she
+fight on?
+
+Through the muffled confusion and darkness of her mind, above the
+tumult of cries old and new besetting her, came always the still small
+voice, heard through the hubbub by reason of its very quiet, that
+said--Fight.  Inherently spiritual as she was, Ruth gave ear to it,
+putting forth the whole of her strength to meet the enemy, who was too
+much her friend, and overthrow him.
+
+Yet she could not forget that she owed her position to Ernie, since at
+every hour of every day she was being pricked by the ubiquitous pin of
+poverty.  Fighting now with her back to the wall, for her home and
+children, and stern because of it, she did not spare him.  When Ernie
+called her hard, as he was never tired of doing, she answered simply,
+
+"I got to be."
+
+"No need to bully a chap so then," Ernie complained.  "A'ter all I am a
+human being though I may be your husband."
+
+"You're not the only one I got to think of," replied Ruth
+remorselessly.  "And it's no good talking.  I shan't forgive you till
+you've won back the position you lost when he sack you.  Half a dollar
+a week makes just the difference between can and can't to me.  See, I
+can't goo to the wash-tub now as I could to make up one time o day when
+I'd only the one.  So I must look to you.  And if I look in vain you
+got to hear about it.  I mean it, Ernie," she continued.  "I'm fairly
+up against it.  There's no gettin round me this time.  And if you won't
+think o me, you might think o the children.  It's they who suffer."
+
+She had touched the spot this time.
+
+"Steady with it then!" cried Ernie angrily.  "Don't I think o you and
+the children?"
+
+"Not as you should," answered Ruth calmly.  "Not by no means.  We
+should come first.  Four of them now--and twenty-two bob to keep em on.
+Tain't in reason."
+
+She faced him with calm and resolute eyes.
+
+"And it mustn't happen again, Ern," she said.  "See, it's too much.
+Nobody's fault but your own."
+
+Ernie went out in sullen mood, and for the first time since the smash
+turned into the _Star_.  He had not been there many minutes when a
+navvy, clouded with liquor, leaned over and inquired friendly how his
+barstards were.
+
+Ern set down his mug.
+
+"What's this then?" he asked, very still.
+
+The fellow leaned forward, leering, a great hand plaistered on either
+knee.
+
+"Don't you know what a bloody barstard is?" he asked.  He was too drunk
+to be afraid; too drunk to be accountable.  Ernie dealt with him as a
+doctor deals with a refractory invalid--patiently.
+
+"Who's been sayin it?" he asked.
+
+"Your own blood-brother--Alf."
+
+Ernie tossed off his half-pint, rose, and went out.
+
+He walked fast down the hill to the Goffs.  People marked him as he
+passed, and the look upon his face: he did not see them.
+
+Alf was in his garage, talking to a man.  The man wore a burberry and a
+jaeger hat, with a hackle stuck in the riband.  There was something
+jaunty and sword-like about him.  Ern, as he drew rapidly closer,
+recognised him.  It was Captain Royal.  The conjunction of the two men
+at that moment turned his heart to steel.
+
+He was walking; but he seemed to himself to be sliding over the earth
+towards his enemies, swift and stealthy as a hunting panther.  As he
+went he clutched his fists and knew that they were damp and very cold.
+
+When Ernie was within a hundred yards of him Royal, all unconscious of
+the presence of his enemy, swung out of the garage and walked off in
+his rapid, resolute way.
+
+Alf went slowly up the steps into his office.
+
+He was grinning to himself.
+
+"'Alf a mo then!" said Ernie quietly, hard on his heels.  "Just a word
+with you, Alf."
+
+Alf turned, saw his brother crossing the yard, marked the danger-flare
+on his face, remembered it of old, and bolted incontinently, without
+shame, locking the house door behind him.
+
+Ern hammered on the door.
+
+Alf peeped out of an upper window, upset a jug of water over his
+brother, and in his panic fury flung the jug after it.  It broke on
+Ernie's head and crashed to pieces on the step.
+
+Ernie, gasping, and bleeding from the head, staggered back into the
+road, half-stunned.  Then he began to tear off his sopping clothes and
+throw them down into the dust at his feet.  His voice was quiet as his
+face, smeared with blood, was moved.
+
+"You've got to ave it!" he called up to his brother.  "May as well come
+and ave it now as wait for it."
+
+There had been a big football match on the Saffrons, and the crowd were
+just flocking away, in mood for a lark.  The drenched and bleeding man
+stripping in the road, the broken crockery on the door-step, the
+white-faced fellow at the window, promised just the sensation they
+sought.  Joyfully they gathered to see.  Here was just the right finale
+pleasant Saturday afternoon.
+
+"I'm your landlord!" screamed Alf.  "Remember that!  I'll make you pay
+for this!"
+
+"Will you?" answered Ernie, truculent and cool.  "Then I'll have my
+money's worth first."
+
+This heroic sentiment was loudly applauded by the crowd, who felt an
+added sympathy for Ern now they knew he was attacking his landlord, one
+of a class loathed by all good men.
+
+Just then Joe Burt emerged from the crowd and took the tumultuous
+figure of Ernie in his arms.
+
+"Coom, then!" he said.  "This'll never do for a Labour Leader.  This
+isna the Highway you should be trampin along."
+
+The crowd protested.  It was an exhilarating scene--better than the
+pictures, some opined.  And here was a blighter, who talked funny talk,
+interfering.
+
+"Just like these hem furriners," said an old man.  "Ca-a-n't let well
+a-be."
+
+Then, happily, or unhappily, the police, who exist to spoil the
+people's fun, appeared on the scene.
+
+They made a little blue knot round Ernie, who stood in the midst of
+them, stripped and dripping, with something of the forlorn look of a
+shorn ewe that has just been dipped.
+
+Alf, secure now in the presence of the officers of the law, descended
+from his window and came down the steps of his house towards the
+growing crowd.  A tall man joined him.  The pair forced their way
+through the press to the police.
+
+"I'm Captain Royal," said the tall man, coldly.  "I saw what happened."
+
+Joe turned on the new-comer.  His clothes, his class, a touch of
+insolence about his tone and bearing, roused all the combative
+instincts of the engineer.
+
+"You wasn't standin by then!" he said ferociously.  "You only just come
+up.  A saw you."
+
+The other ignored him, drawing a card from an elegant case.
+
+"Here's my card," he said to the police.  "If you want my evidence
+you'll know where to find me."
+
+Joe boiled over.
+
+"That's the gentleman of England touch!" he sneered.  "Swear away a
+workin man's life for the price of half a pint, they would!"
+
+"Ah!  I know him!" muttered Ernie, white still, and trembling.
+
+"Enough of it now," growled a big policeman, making notes in his
+pocket-book.
+
+Just then the crowd parted and a woman came through.  A shawl was
+wrapped about her head and face.  Only her eyes were seen, dark under
+dark hair.
+
+A moment she stood surrounded by the four men who had desired or
+possessed her.  Then she put her hand on the shirt-sleeve of her
+husband.
+
+"Ern," she said, and turned away.
+
+He followed her submissively through the crowd, slipping his shirt over
+his head.
+
+Swiftly the woman walked away up the hill.  Her scarecrow, his trousers
+sopping and sagging about his boots, trudged behind.
+
+The crowd looked after them in silence.  Then Joe broke away and
+followed at a distance.
+
+Ruth looked back and saw him.
+
+"Let us be, Joe," she called.
+
+Joe turned away.  His eyes were full of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THUNDER
+
+The two brothers had to appear before the Bench on Monday.  As it
+chanced Mr. Pigott, Colonel Lewknor and Mr. Trupp were the only
+magistrates present.
+
+Ernie, who appeared with his head bandaged, admitted his mistake.
+
+"Went to pass the time o day with my brother," he said.  "And all he
+done was to lean out of the window and crash the crockery down on the
+roof o me head.  Did upset me a bit, I admit."
+
+"He meant murder all right," was Alf's testimony, sullenly given.  "He
+knows that."
+
+Joe corroborated Ernie's statement.
+
+He had been in the Saffrons on Saturday afternoon and had seen Ernie
+coming down the hill from Old Town.  Having a message to give him he
+had started to meet him.  Ernie had gone up the steps of his brother's
+house; and as he did so, Alf had leaned out of the upper window and
+thrown a jug down on his brother.
+
+Alf's solicitor cross-examined the engineer at some length.
+
+"What were you doing on the Saffrons?"
+
+"Watching the football."
+
+"You were watching the football; and yet you saw Caspar coming down
+Church Street?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"I suggest that you did nothing of the sort; and that you only appeared
+on the scene at the last moment."
+
+"Well," retorted Joe, good-humouredly.  "A don't blame you for that.
+It's what you're paid to suggest."
+
+A witness who was to have given evidence for Alf did not appear; and
+the Bench agreed without retiring.  Neither of the brothers had been up
+before the magistrates before and both were let off with a caution,
+Ernie having to pay costs.
+
+"_Your_ tongue's altogether too long, Alfred Caspar," said Mr. Pigott,
+the Chairman, and added--quite unjudicially--"always was.  And _you're_
+altogether too free with your fists, Ernest Caspar."
+
+Ernie left the court rejoicing; for he knew he had escaped lightly.
+Outside he waited to thank his friend for his support.
+
+"Comin up along?" he coaxed.
+
+"Nay, ma lad," retorted the engineer with the touch of brutality which
+not seldom now marked his intercourse with the other.  "You must face
+the missus alone.  Reck'n A've done enough for one morning."
+
+Ern went off down Saffrons Road in the direction of Old Town,
+crest-fallen as is the man whose little cocoon of self-defensive humbug
+has suddenly been cleft by a steel blade.
+
+Joe marched away down Grove Road.  Alf caught him up.  The little
+chauffeur was smiling that curds-and-whey smile of his.
+
+"Say, Burt!--you aren't half a liar, are you?" he whispered.
+
+Joe grinned genially.
+
+"The Church can't have it all to herself," he said.  "Leave a few of
+the lies to the laity."
+
+Ern trudged back from the Town Hall, across Saffrons Croft, to the
+Moot, in unenviable mood; for he was afraid, and he had cause.
+
+Ruth was who standing in the door came stalking to meet him, holding
+little Alice by the hand.
+
+Ern slouched up with that admixture of bluff, lordly insouciance, and
+aggrieved innocence that is the honoured defence of dog and man alike
+on such occasions.
+
+"You've done us," she said almost vengefully.
+
+"What are I done then?" asked the accused, feigning abrupt indignation.
+
+Ruth dismissed the child, and turned on Ernie.
+
+"Got us turn into the street--me and my babies," she answered,
+splendidly indignant.  "A chap's been round arter the house, while you
+was up before the beaks settlin whether you were for Lewes Gaol or not.
+Says Alf's let it him a week from Saraday, and we got to go.  I
+wouldn't let him in."
+
+"Ah," said Ernie stubbornly, "don't you worry.  Alf's got to give us
+notice first.  And he daren't do that."
+
+Ruth was not to be appeased.
+
+"Why daren't he, then?" she asked.
+
+"I'll tell you for why," answered Ernie.  "He's goin up before the
+Watch Committee come Thursday to get his licence for his blessed
+Touring Syndicate.  We've friends on that Committee, good friends--Mr.
+Pigott, and the Colonel, not to say Mr. Geddes; and Alf knaws it.  He
+ain't goin to do anythink to annoy them just now.  Knaws too much, Alf
+do."
+
+Ruth was not convinced.
+
+"We got no friends," she said sullenly.  "We shall lose em all over
+this.  O course we shall, and I don't blame em.  A fair disgrace on
+both of you, I call it.  You're lucky not to have to do a stretch.  And
+as to Alf, they've sack him from sidesman over it, and he'll never
+forgive us."
+
+They were walking slowly back to the cottage, the man hang-dog, the
+woman cold.
+
+Outside the door she paused.
+
+"All I know is this," she said.  "If you're out again through your own
+fault I'm done with it, and I'll tell you straight what I shall do,
+Ern."
+
+She was very quiet.
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I shall leave you with your children and go away with mine."  She
+stood with heaving bosom, immensely moved.  "I ca-a'nt keep the lot.
+But I can keep one.  And you know which one that'll be."
+
+Ernie, the colour of dew, went indoors without a word.
+
+
+The rumour that Alf had been dismissed from his position as sidesman at
+St. Michael's, owing to the incident in the Goffs, was not entirely
+true, but there was something in it.
+
+The Archdeacon had his faults, but there was no more zealous guardian
+of the fair fame of the Church and all things appertaining to her.
+
+Alf's appearance before the magistrates was discussed at the weekly
+conference of the staff at the Rectory.
+
+Both Mr. Spink and Bobby Chislehurst were present.  The former stoutly
+defended his protégé, and the Archdeacon heard him out.  Then he turned
+to Bobby.
+
+"What d'you say, Chislehurst?" he asked.
+
+Bobby, in fact, could say little.
+
+Ernie had no scruples whatever in suggesting what was untrue to the
+magistrates, who when on the Bench at all events were officials, and to
+be treated accordingly, but he would never lie to a man who had won his
+heart.  He had, therefore, in answer to the Cherub's request given an
+unvarnished account of what had occurred.  Bobby now repeated it
+reluctantly, but without modification.
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Spink.  "There's not a tittle of evidence that
+Alfred really did say what he's accused of saying.  And he denies it,
+point-blank."
+
+"I think I'd better see him," said the Archdeacon.
+
+Alf came, sore and sulking.
+
+Mottled and sour of eye, he stood before the Archdeacon who flicked the
+lid of his snuff-box, and asked whether he had indeed made the remark
+attributed to him.
+
+"I never said nothing of the sort," answered Alf warmly, almost rudely.
+"Is it likely?  me own sister-in-law and all!  See here!" He produced
+his rent-book.  "I'm her landlord.  She's months behind.  See for
+yourself!  Any other man only me'd have turned her out weeks ago.  But,
+of course, she takes advantage.  She would.  She's that sort.  I never
+said a word against her."
+
+"And there is plenty you could say," chimed in Mr. Spink, who had
+escorted his friend.
+
+"Maybe there is," muttered Alf.
+
+The Archdeacon made a grimace.  In the matter of sex indeed if in no
+other, he was and always had been a genuine aristocrat--sensitive,
+refined, fastidious.
+
+"Two of them get soaking together in the _Star_," continued Alf.  "Then
+they start telling each other dirty stories and quarrellin.  Ern
+believes it all and comes and makes a fuss.  Mr. Pigott's chairman on
+the Bench.  Course he lays it all on me--Mr. Pigott would.  Ern can't
+do no wrong in his eyes--never could.  Won't listen to reason and
+blames me along of him--because I'm a Churchman.  See, he's never
+forgiven me leaving the Chapel, Mr. Pigott hasn't; and that's the whole
+story."
+
+It was a good card to play; and it did its work.
+
+"It's a cleah case to my mind of more sinned against than sinning,"
+said the Archdeacon with a genuinely kind smile.  "You had bad luck,
+Caspar--but a good friend."  He shook hands with both young men.  "I
+wish you well and offer you my sympathy.  I think you should go and
+have a word of explanation with our friend, Mr. Pigott, though."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Alf.  "I'm goin now.  I couldn't let it rest there."
+
+Alf went straight on to interview the erring chairman in the little
+villa in Victoria Drive.
+
+The latter, summing up his old pupil with shrewd blue eye in which
+there was a hint of battle, refused to discuss the case or his judgment.
+
+"What's done is done," he said.  "The law's the law and there's no goin
+back on it.  You were lucky to get off so light; that's my notion of
+it."
+
+Alf stood before him, hang-dog and resentful.
+
+"He'll kill me one of these days," he muttered.  "Little better than a
+bloody murderer."
+
+There was a moment's pause, marked by a snort from Mr. Pigott.
+
+Then the jolly, cosy man, with his trim white beard and neat little
+paunch, rose and opened the window with some ostentation.
+
+"First time that word's ever crossed my threshold," he said.  "And I've
+lived in this house ten year come Michaelmas."  He turned with dignity
+on the offender.  "Is that what they teach you in the Church of
+England, then, Alfred Caspar?" he asked.  "It wasn't what we taught you
+in the Wesleyan Chapel in which you was bred.  Never heard the like of
+it for language in all me life--never!"  Before everything else in life
+Mr. Pigott was a strong chapel-man; and in his judgment Ern's weakness
+was as nothing to Alf's apostasy.
+
+Alf looked foolish and deprecatory.
+
+"I didn't mean in it the swearin way," he said--"not as Ernest would
+have meant it.  I never been in the Army meself.  I only meant he'll be
+the end o me one of these days.  Good as said he would in the _Star_
+Saturday."
+
+Mr. Pigott turned away to hide the twinkle in his eye.  He knew Alf
+well, and his weakness.
+
+"He don't like you, I do believe," he admitted.  "And he's a very funny
+fellow, Ern, when his hackle's up."
+
+Alf's eyes blinked as they held the floor.
+
+"And now," he said, "I suppose the Watch Committee'll not grant my
+licence for the Road-Touring Syndicate when it comes up afore em on
+Thursday.  And I'll be a ruined man."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised," answered Mr. Pigott, who was an alderman
+and a great man on the Town Council.
+
+Alf was furious.  He was so furious, indeed, that he did a thing he had
+not done for years: he took his trouble to his mother.
+
+"It's a regular plot," he said, "that's what it is.  To get my licence
+stopped and ruin me.  Raised the money; ordered the buses; engaged the
+staff and all.  And then they spring this on me!--It ain't Ernie.  I
+will say that for him.  I know who's at the bottom of it."
+
+"Who then?" asked his mother, faintly interested.
+
+"Her Ern keeps."
+
+Mrs. Caspar roused instantly.
+
+"Isn't she married to him then?" she cried, peering over her spectacles.
+
+"Is she?" sneered Alf.  "That's all."
+
+He leaned forward, his ugly face dreadful with a sneer.
+
+"Do you know where she'd be if everyone had his rights?"
+
+"Where then?"
+
+"Lewes Gaol."
+
+His message delivered, he sat back with a nod to watch its effect.
+
+"And she would be there too," continued Alf, "only for me."
+
+"What do you mean?" Mrs. Caspar asked.
+
+"I mean," answered Alf, "as I keep her out of prison by keepin me mouth
+shut."  He dropped his voice.  "And that ain't all.  She's at it again
+... Her home's a knockin-shop....  All the young men....  The police
+ought to interfere....  I shall tell the Archdeacon....  A kept
+woman....  That chap Burt....  That's how Ern makes good....  She makes
+the money he spends at the _Star_....  And your grand-children brought
+up in that atmosphere!"  He struck the table.  "But I'm her landlord
+all the same; and I'll make her know it yet."
+
+Anne Caspar was genuinely disturbed not for the sake of Ruth, but for
+that of the children.
+
+"You could never turn her out!" she said--"not your own sister-in-law
+and four children!  Look so bad and all--and you a sidesman too."
+
+Alf snorted.
+
+"Ah, couldn't I?" he said.  "You never know what a man can do till he
+tries."
+
+
+That evening the Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked over to the
+Manor-house to discuss Ern's latest misadventure.  They found Mr.
+Pigott there clearly on the same errand; but the old Nonconformist rose
+to go with faintly exaggerated dignity on seeing his would-be enemy.
+
+"There's only one thing'll save him now," he announced in his most
+dogmatic style.
+
+"What's that?" asked Mrs. Trupp.
+
+"H'a h'earthquake," the other answered.
+
+When the Colonel and his wife left the Manor-house half-an-hour later
+there were three people walking abreast down the hill before them, just
+as there had been on a previous occasion.  Now, as then, the centre of
+the three was Ruth.  Now, as then, on her left was Joe.  But on her
+right instead of Ern was little Alice.
+
+The Colonel pointed to the three.
+
+"I'll back Caspar all the way," said Mrs. Lewknor firmly.
+
+"Myself," replied the Colonel shrewdly, "I'll back the winner."
+
+Then he paused to read a placard which gave the latest news of the
+Ulster campaign.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+TROUBLED DAWN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE BETRAYAL
+
+The Ulster Campaign was moving forward now with something of the shabby
+and theatrical pomp of a travelling circus parading the outskirts of a
+sea-side town before a performance.  A dromedary with an elongated
+upper lip, draped in the dirty trappings of a pseudo-Oriental satrap,
+led the procession, savage and sulking.  Behind the dromedary came the
+mouldy elephant, the mangy bear, the fat woman exposing herself in
+tights on a gilt-edged Roman chariot, the sham cow-boys with gaudy
+cummerbunds, and Cockney accents, on untamed bronchos hired from the
+local livery stables, the horse that was alleged to have won the Derby
+in a by-gone century, etc.  And the spectators gaped on the pavement,
+uncertain whether to jeer or to applaud.
+
+As the Campaign rolled on its way, the wiser Conservatives shook their
+heads, openly maintaining that the whole business was a direct
+abnegation of everything for which their party had stood in history,
+while the Liberals became increasingly restive: Mr. Geddes, uneasy at
+the inaction of the Government, Mr. Geddes truculent to meet the
+truculence of the enemy.  The only man who openly rejoiced was Joe Burt.
+
+"The Tory Reds have lit such a candle by God's grace in England as'll
+never be put out," he said to Ernie.
+
+The engineer had always now a newspaper cutting in his waistcoat
+pocket, and a quotation pat upon his lips.
+
+"They're all shots for the locker in the only war that matters," he
+told the Colonel.  "And they'll all coom in handy one day.  A paste em
+into a lil book nights: _Tips for Traitors; an ammunition magazine_, A
+call it."
+
+For him Sir Edward Carson's famous confession of faith, _I despise the
+Will of the People_--words Joe had inscribed as motto on the cover of
+his ammunition magazine--gave the key to the whole movement.  And he
+never met the Colonel now but he discharged a broadside into the
+helpless body of his victim.
+
+It was not, however, till early in 1914, just when his pursuit of Ruth
+was at the hottest, that he woke to the fact that the Tories were
+tampering with the Army.  That maddened Joe.
+
+"If this goes on A shall go back to ma first love," he told Ruth with a
+characteristic touch of impudence.
+
+"And a good job too," she answered tartly.  "I don't want you."
+
+"And you can go back to your Ernie," continued the engineer, glad to
+have got a rise.
+
+"I shan't go back to him," retorted Ruth, "because I never left him."
+
+The statement was not wholly true: for if Ruth had not left Ernie,
+since the affair of the Goffs she had according to her promise turned
+her back on him.  When on the first opportunity that offered she had
+announced his fate to the offender, he had blinked, refused to
+understand, argued, insisted, coaxed--to no purpose.
+
+"You got to be a man afoor I marry you again," she told him coldly.
+"I'm no'hun of a no-man's woman."
+
+Ernie at first refused to accept defeat.  He became eloquent about his
+rights.
+
+"They're nothing to my wrongs," Ruth answered briefly; and turned a
+deaf ear to all his pleas.
+
+Thereafter Ernie found himself glad to escape the home haunted by the
+woman he still loved, who tantalised and thwarted him.  That was why
+when Joe girded on his armour afresh and went forth to fight the old
+enemy in the new disguise, Ernie accompanied him.
+
+The pair haunted Unionist meetings, Ernie quiescent, the other
+aggressive to rowdiness.  Young Stanley Bessemere, who had returned
+from Ireland (where he now spent all his leisure caracoling on a
+war-horse at the distinguished tail of the caracoling Captain Smith) to
+address a series of gatherings in his constituency in justification of
+the Ulster movement, and his own share in it, was the favoured target
+for his darts.  Joe followed him round from the East-end to Meads, and
+from Meads to Old Town, and even pursued him into the country.  He
+acquired a well-earned reputation as a heckler, and was starred as
+dangerous by the Tory bloods.  Mark that man! the word went round.
+
+Joe knew it, and was only provoked to increased aggressiveness.
+
+"Go on, ma lad!" he would roar from the back of the hall.  "Yon's the
+road to revolution aw reet!"
+
+There came a climax at a meeting in the Institute, Old Town.  Joe at
+question time had proved himself unusually bland and provocative.  The
+stewards had tried to put him out; and there had been a rough and
+tumble in the course of which somebody had hit the engineer a crack on
+the head from behind with the handle of a motor-car.  Joe dropped; and
+Ernie stood over him in the ensuing scuffle.  The news that there was
+trouble drew a little crowd.  Ruth, on her evening marketings in Church
+Street, looked in.  She found Joe sitting up against the wall, dazed;
+and Ernie kneeling beside him and having words with Stanley Bessemere,
+who was strolling towards the door.
+
+"Brought his troubles on his own head," said the young member casually.
+
+"Hit a man from behind!" retorted Ernie, quiet but rather white.
+"English, ain't it?"
+
+"It was your own brother, then!" volunteered an onlooker.
+
+Joe rallied, rubbed his head, looked up, saw Ruth and reassured her.
+
+"A'm maself," he said.
+
+He rose unsteadily on Ernie's arm.
+
+"He must come home along of us," said Ruth.
+
+"Of course he must then," Ernie answered with the asperity of the
+thwarted male.
+
+The night-air revived the wounded man.  Arrived at the cottage he sat
+in the kitchen, still a little stupid, but amused with his adventure.
+
+"They'd ha kicked me in stoomach when A was down only for you, Ern," he
+said.  "That's the Gentlemen of England's notion of politics, that is."
+
+"You'd ha done the same by them, Joe, if you'd the chance," answered
+Ern.
+
+The other grinned.
+
+"A would that, by Guy--and all for loov," he admitted.
+
+Ruth brought him a hot drink.  He sipped it, one eye still on his
+saviour.
+
+"I owe this to you, Ern.  Here's to you!"
+
+"Come to that, Joe, I owe you something," Ernie answered.
+
+"What's that then?" Joe sat as a man with a stiff neck, screwing up his
+eye at the other.
+
+Ern nodded significantly at Ruth's back.
+
+"Why that little bit o tiddley you done for me afore the beaks," he
+whispered.
+
+"That's nowt," answered Joe sturdily.  "What was it Saul said to
+Jonathan--_If a feller can't tiddle it a liddel bit for his pal, what
+the hell use is he?_--Book o Judges."
+
+Ruth in the background watched the two men.  It was as though she were
+weighing them in the balance.  There was a touch of masterful
+tenderness about Ern's handling of his damaged friend that surprised
+and pleased her.
+
+Joe made an effort to get up.
+
+"A'd best be shiftin," he said.
+
+"Never!" cried Ern, authoritatively.  "You'll bide the night along o
+us.  She'll make you a bed on the couch here."
+
+"Nay," said Ruth.  "You'll sleep in the bed along o Ernie."
+
+Joe eyed her.
+
+"Where'll you sleep then?" he asked.
+
+"In the spare room," Ruth answered, winking at Ernie.
+
+There was no spare room; but she made up a shake-down for herself on
+the settle in the kitchen.  Ernie, after packing away the visitor
+upstairs, came down to help her.  It also gave him an opportunity to
+ventilate his grievance.
+
+"One thing.  It won't make much difference to me," he said.
+
+"Your own fault," Ruth answered remorselessly.  "And you aren't the
+only one, though I know you think you are.  Men do ... We'd be out in
+the street now, the lot of us, only for Joe telling lies for you."
+
+Next morning she took her visitor breakfast in bed and kept him there
+till Mr. Trupp had come, who told Joe he must not return to work for a
+week.
+
+The engineer got up that afternoon and was sitting in the kitchen still
+rather shaky, when Alf, who had not fulfilled his threat and given Ruth
+notice, called for the rent.
+
+Ruth greeted him with unusual friendliness.
+
+"Come in, won't you?" she said--"while I get the money."
+
+Alf, who in some respects was simple almost as Ernie, entered the trap
+to find Joe, huddled in a chair and glowering murder at him.  He tried
+to withdraw, but Ruth stood between him and the door, twice his size,
+and with glittering eyes.
+
+"There's a friend of yours," she said.  "Saw him last night, at the
+meeting, didn't you?--I thart you'd be glad to meet him."
+
+Alf quaked.
+
+"Been in the wars then?" he said shakily.
+
+"What d'you know about it?" rumbled Joe.
+
+"I don't know nothin," answered Alf sharply, almost shrilly.
+
+Just then little Alice entered.  Alf took advantage of her entrance to
+establish his line of retreat.  Once set in the door with a clear run
+for the open his courage returned to him.
+
+"And what may be your name?" he asked the child with deliberate
+insolence.
+
+"Alice Caspar," she answered, staring wide-eyed.
+
+Alf sneered.
+
+"That it ain't--I know," he said, and went out without his rent, and
+laughing horribly.
+
+Little Alice ran out again.
+
+"What's he mean?" asked Joe.
+
+Ruth regarded him with wary curiosity.
+
+"Didn't Ern never tell you then?" she asked.
+
+"Never!" said Joe.
+
+Ruth was thoughtful.  That was nice of Ern--like Ern--the gentleman in
+him coming out.
+
+That night she softened to him.  He noticed it in a flash and
+approached her--only to be repulsed abruptly.
+
+"No," she said.  "I don't care about you no more.  You've lost me.
+That's where it is."
+
+"O, I beg pardon," answered Ernie, quivering.  "I thart we was married."
+
+"So we was one time o day, I believe," Ruth answered.  "And might be
+again yet.  Who knaws?"
+
+He stood over her as she composed herself for the night on the settle.
+
+"How long's that Joe going to stop in my house?" he asked.
+
+"Just as long as I like," she answered coolly.
+
+Next day when Joe came in for tea he found Ruth sitting in the kitchen,
+nursing little Alice, who was crying her heart out on her mother's
+shoulder.
+
+"They've been tormenting her at school," Ruth explained.  "It's Alf."
+
+"I'll lay it is," muttered Joe.  "Ern and me, we'll just go round when
+he comes back from work."
+
+Ruth looked frightened.
+
+"Don't tell Ern for all's sake, Joe!" she whispered.
+
+"Why not then?"
+
+"He'd kill Alf."
+
+Joe's face betrayed his scepticism.
+
+"Ah, you don't knaw Ern, when he's mad," Ruth warned him.
+
+An hour later Ernie came home.  He was still, suppressed, as often now.
+There was nobody in the kitchen but Ruth.
+
+"Where's your Joe, then?" he asked.
+
+"He's left," Ruth answered.
+
+Ernie relaxed ever so little.
+
+"He might ha stopped to say good-bye," he muttered.
+
+Ruth rose.
+
+"I got something to tell you, Ern," she said.
+
+He turned on her abruptly.
+
+"It's little Alice.  They've been getting at her at
+school--_that!_--you knaw."
+
+Ernie was breathing hard.
+
+"Who split?"
+
+"Alf.  He told Mrs. Ticehurst--I see him; and she told the lot."
+
+Ern went out slowly, and slowly up the stairs in the dark to the
+children's room.
+
+A little voice called--"Daddy!"
+
+"I'm comin, sweet-heart," he answered tenderly.
+
+He felt his way to the child's bed, knelt beside it, and struck a
+match.  A tear like a star twinkled on her cheek.  She put out her
+little arms to him and clasped him round the neck.
+
+"Daddy, you _are_ my daddy, aren't you?" she sobbed, her heart breaking
+in her voice.
+
+He laid his cheek against hers.  Both were wet.
+
+"Of course I am," he answered, the water floods sounding in his throat.
+"I'm your daddy; and you're my darling.  And if we got nobody else we
+got each other, ain't we?"
+
+Ruth, in the dark at the foot of the stairs, heard, gave a great gulp,
+and crept back to the kitchen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT
+
+The Colonel, who throughout his life while making a great show of
+radical opinions in the mess for the benefit of his brother-officers
+had always voted quietly for the Conservative party on the ground that
+they made upon the whole less of a hash of Imperial affairs than their
+Liberal opponents was profoundly troubled by the proceedings in Ulster.
+
+"The beggars are undermining the _morale_ of Ireland," he told Mr.
+Trupp.  "And only those who've been quartered there know what that
+means."
+
+"If you said they were undermining the foundations of Society I'd
+agree," the other answered.  "Geddes says they've poisoned the wells of
+civilisation, and he's about right."
+
+The Presbyterian minister, indeed, usually so sane and moderate, had
+been roused to unusual vehemence by the general strike against the law
+engineered by the Conservative leaders.
+
+"It's a reckless gamble in anarchy with the country's destiny at
+stake," he said.
+
+"And financed by German Jews," added Joe Burt.
+
+As the Campaign developed and the success of the Unionists in tampering
+with the Army became always more apparent, the criticisms of the two
+men intensified.  They hung like wolves upon the flank of the Colonel,
+pertinacious in pursuit, remorseless in attack.
+
+"You can't get away from the fact that the whole Campaign is built on
+the power of the Unionists to corrupt the officers of the Army," said
+the minister.  "Without that the whole thing collapses."
+
+"And so far," chimed in Joe, "A must say it looks as if they were
+building on a sure foundation."
+
+The Colonel, outwardly gay, was inwardly miserable that his beloved
+Service should be dragged in the mud.
+
+"What can you say to them?" he groaned to Mr. Trupp.
+
+"Why," said the old surgeon brusquely, "tell em to tell their own
+rotten Government to govern or get out.  Let em hang half a dozen
+politicians for treason, and shoot the same number of soldiers for
+sedition--and the thing's done."
+
+And the bitterness of it was that it looked increasingly as if the
+critics were right.
+
+The Colonel came home one night from a rare visit to London in black
+despair.
+
+"The British officer never grows up," he complained to his wife.  "He's
+a perfect baby."  His long legs writhed themselves into knots, as he
+sucked at his pipe.  "Do you remember that charming little feller
+Cherry Dugdale, who commanded the Borderers at Umballa?"
+
+"The shikari?--rather."
+
+"He's joined the Ulster Volunteers as a private."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor chuckled.  She was a Covenanter sans phrase, fierce almost
+as the Archdeacon and delighting in the embarrassments of the
+Government.
+
+"Just like him," she said.  "Little duck!"
+
+Then came the crash.
+
+The Commander-in-Chief in Ireland sent for General Gough, commanding
+the 3rd Cavalry Brigade at the Curragh, and asked him what his action
+would be in the event of the Government giving him and his Brigade the
+alternative of serving against Ulster or resigning.  Gough forthwith
+called a conference of his officers, and seventy out of seventy-five
+signified their intention to resign.
+
+"We would rather not shoot Irishmen," they said.
+
+On the evening after the news came through the Colonel was walking down
+Terminus Road when he heard a provocative voice behind him.
+
+"What about it, Colonel?"
+
+He turned to find Joe Burt at his heels.
+
+"What about what?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"This mutiny of the officers at the Curragh."
+
+The Colonel affected a gaiety he by no means felt.
+
+"Well, what's your view?"
+
+Joe was enthusiastic.
+
+"Why, it's the finest example of Direct Action ever seen in this
+coontry.  And it's been given by the Army officers!--That's what gets
+me."
+
+"What's Direct Action?" asked the Colonel.  The phrase in those days
+was unknown outside industrial circles.
+
+"A strike, and especially a strike for political purposes," answered
+Joe.  "General Gough and his officers have struck to prevent Home Rule
+being placed on the Statute Book.  What if a Trade Union had tried to
+hold up the coontry same road?  It's what A've always said," the
+engineer continued, joyously aggressive.  "The officers of the British
+Army aren't to be trusted except when their own party's in power."
+
+The Colonel walked on to the club.
+
+There he found young Stanley Bessemere, just back from Ireland, sitting
+in a halo of cigar-smoke, the hero of an amused and admiring circle,
+recording his latest military exploits.
+
+"We've got the swine beat," he was saying confidently between puffs.
+"The Army won't fight.  And the Government can do nothing."
+
+The Colonel turned a vengeful eye upon him.
+
+"Young man," he said, "are you aware that Labour's watching you?
+Labour's learning from you?"
+
+"Labour be damned!" retorted the other with jovial brutality.  "We'll
+deal with Labour all right when we've got this lot of traitors out of
+office."
+
+"Traitors!" called Mr. Trupp, harshly from his chair.  "You talk of
+traitors!--you Tories!--I voted for you at the last General Election
+for the first time in my life on the sole ground of national defence.
+D'you think I or any self-respecting man would have done so if we'd
+known the jackanape tricks you'd be up to?"
+
+The two elderly men retired in dudgeon to the card-room.
+
+"There's only one thing the matter with Ireland," grumbled the old
+surgeon.  "And its always been the same thing."
+
+"What's that?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"The English politician," replied the other--"Ireland's curse."
+
+Hard on the heels of the Curragh affair came the landing of arms from
+Krupp's, with the connivance, if not with the secret co-operation of
+the German Government, at Larne under the cover of the rebel Army,
+mobilised for the purpose.  The Government wept a few patient tears
+over the outrage and did nothing.
+
+The Colonel was irritated; Mr. Trupp almost vituperative.
+
+"Geddes may say what he likes," remarked the former.  "But I can't
+acquit the Government.  They're encouraging the beggars to play it up."
+
+"Acquit them!" fulminated the old surgeon.  "I'd impeach them on the
+spot.  The law in abeyance!  British ports seized under the guns of the
+British fleet!  Gangs of terrorists patrolling the roads and openly
+boasting they'll assassinate any officer of the Crown who does his
+duty; and the Episcopalian Church blessing the lot!  And the Government
+does nothing.  It's a national disgrace!"
+
+"It's all very well, Mr. Trupp," said Mr. Glynde, the senior member for
+the Borough, who was present.  "But Ulster has a case, and we must
+consider it."
+
+"Of course Ulster has a case," the other answered sharply.  "Nobody but
+a fool denies it.  I'm attacking the Government, not Ulster.  Let them
+restore law and order in Ireland.  That's their first job.  When
+they've done that it'll be time enough to consider Ulster's grievances.
+Where's all this going to lead us?"
+
+"Hell," said the Colonel gloomily.
+
+He was, indeed, more miserable than he had ever been in his life.
+
+Other old Service men he met, who loathed the Government, looked on
+with amused or spiteful complacency at the part the Army was playing in
+the huge conspiracy against the Crown.  The Colonel saw nothing but the
+shame of it, its possible consequences, and effect on opinion,
+domestic, imperial and European.
+
+He walked about as one in a maze: he could not understand.
+
+Then Mr. Geddes came to see him.
+
+The tall minister was very grave; and there was no question what he
+came about--the Army Conspiracy.
+
+The Colonel looked out of the window and twisted his long legs as he
+heard the other out.
+
+"Dear little Gough-y!" he murmured at the end.  "The straightest thing
+that walks the earth."
+
+He felt curiously helpless, as he had felt throughout the Campaign;
+unable to meet his adversaries except by the evasion and casuistical
+tricks his spirit loathed.
+
+Mr. Geddes rose.
+
+"Well, Colonel," he said.  "I see no alternative but to resign my
+membership of the League.  It's perfectly clear that if your scheme
+goes through it must be run by officers at the War Office.  And I'm
+afraid I must add that it seems equally clear now that it will be run
+for political purposes by men who put their party before their country."
+
+The Colonel turned slowly round.
+
+"You've very kindly lent us St. Andrew's Hall for a meeting of the
+League next Friday.  Do you cancel that?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly not, Colonel," answered the minister.  "By all means hold
+your meeting.  I shall be present, and I shall speak." ...
+
+It was not a happy meeting at St. Andrew's Hall, but it was a crowded
+one: for the vultures had sniffed the battle from afar.  The Liberals
+came in force, headed by Mr. Pigott; while Joe Burt led his wolves from
+the East-end.  Ernie was there, very quiet now as always, with Ruth;
+and Bobby Chislehurst, seeing them, took his seat alongside.
+
+Fighting with his back to the wall, and well aware of it, the Colonel
+was at his very best: witty, persuasive, reasonable.  What the National
+Service League advocated was not aggression in any shape, but insurance.
+
+He sat down amid considerable and well-earned applause.
+
+Then Mr. Geddes rose.
+
+He had joined the League after Agadir, he said, after much perturbation
+and questioning of spirit, because he had been reluctantly convinced at
+last that the German menace was a reality.  Yet what was the position
+to-day?  The Conservative Party, which had preached this menace for
+years, had been devoting the whole of its energies now for some time
+past to fomenting a civil war in Ireland.  They had gone so far as to
+arm a huge force that was in open rebellion against the Crown with
+rifles and machine-guns from the very country which they affirmed was
+about to attack us.  And more remarkable still certain Generals at the
+War Office--he wouldn't mention names--
+
+"Why not?" shouted Mr. Pigott.
+
+It was not expedient; but he had in his pocket a letter from Mr.
+Redmond giving the name of the General who was primarily responsible
+for the sedition among the officers of the Army--a very highly placed
+officer indeed.
+
+"Shame!" cried someone.
+
+He thought so too.  And this General, who was in the somewhat anomalous
+position of being both technical military adviser to the rebel army in
+Ulster and the trusted servant of the Government at the War Office, was
+a man who for years past, so he understood, had preached the doctrine
+that war with Germany was inevitable, and had been for many years
+largely responsible for the preparation of our forces against attack
+from that quarter.  To suggest that this officer and his colleagues
+were traitors was downright silly.  What, then, was the only deduction
+a reasonable man could draw?  The minister paused: Why, that the German
+peril was not a reality.
+
+The conclusion was greeted with a howl of triumph from the wolves at
+the back.
+
+"Hear! hear!" roared Mr. Pigott.
+
+Joe Burt had jumped up.
+
+"A'll tell you the whole truth about the German Bogey!" he bawled.
+"It's a put-up game by the militarists to force conscription on the
+coontry for their own purposes.  Now you've got it straight!"
+
+As he sat down amid tumultuous applause at one end of the hall a figure
+on the platform bobbed up as it were automatically.  It was Alf.
+
+"Am I not right in thinking that the gentleman at the back of the hall
+is about to pay a visit to Germany?" he asked urbanely.
+
+"Yes, you are!" shouted Joe.  "And A wish all the workin-men in England
+were comin too.  That'd put the lid on the nonsense pretty sharp."
+
+Then ensued something of a scene; the hub-bub pierced by Alf's shrill
+scream,
+
+"_Who's payin for your visit?_"
+
+The Archdeacon, a most capable chairman, restored order; and Mr. Geddes
+concluded his speech on a note of quiet strength.  When he finally sat
+down man after man got up and announced his intention of resigning his
+membership of the League.
+
+
+Outside the hall the Colonel stood out of the moon in the shadow of one
+of those trees which make the streets of Beachbourne singular and
+lovely at all times of the year.  His work of the last six years had
+been undone, and it was clear that he knew it.
+
+Ruth, emerging from the hall, looked across at the forlorn old man
+standing like a dilapidated pillar amid the drift of the dissipating
+crowd.  She had herself no understanding of the rights and wrongs of
+the controversy to which she had just listened; her sympathies were not
+enlisted by either side.  Only the human element, and the clash of
+personalities which had made itself apparent at the meeting, had
+interested her.  But she realised that the tall figure across the road
+was the vanquished in the conflict; and her heart went out to him.
+
+"They aren't worth the worrit he takes over them," she said
+discontentedly.  "Let them have their war if they want it, I says.  And
+when they've got it let those join in as likes it, and those as don't
+stay out.  That's what I say....  A nice man like that, too--so gentle
+with it....  Ought to be ashamed of emselves; some of em."
+
+Then she saw Mr. Chislehurst cross the road to his cousin, and she was
+comforted.
+
+"He'll walk home with him.--Come on, Ernie."
+
+It was striking ten o'clock.  Ruth, who was in a hurry to get back to
+her babes, left in the charge of a neighbour, walked a-head.  Ernie, on
+the other hand, wished to saunter, enjoying the delicious freshness of
+the spring night.
+
+"Steady on then!" he said.  "That's the Archdeacon in front, and Mr.
+Trupp and all."
+
+"I knaw that then," replied Ruth with the asperity she kept for Ernie
+alone.
+
+"Well, you don't want to catch them up."
+
+They entered Saffrons Croft, which lay black or silver-blanched before
+them, peopled now only with tall trees.  The groups of elms, thickening
+with blossoms, gathered the stars to their bosoms, and laid their
+shadows like patterns along the smooth sward.  Beyond the threadbare
+tapestry of trees rose the solid earth-work of the Downs, upholding the
+brilliant night, encircling them as in a cup, and keeping off the
+hostile world.  Ernie felt their strength, their friendship, the
+immense and unfailing comfort of them.  A great quiet was everywhere,
+brooding, blessed.  The earth lay still as the happy dead, caressed by
+the moon.  But behind the stillness the thrust and stir and aspiration
+of new life quickening in the darkness, seeking expression, made itself
+manifest.  Ernie was deliciously aware of that secret urge.  He opened
+his senses to the rumour of it, and filled his being with the breath of
+this mysterious renaissance.
+
+He stopped and sniffed.
+
+"It's coming," he said.  "I can smell it."
+
+"It's come more like," answered Ruth.  "The lilacs are out in the
+Manor-garden, and the brown birds singing in the ellums fit to choke
+theirsalves."
+
+They walked on slowly across the turf.  The lights of the Manor-house
+twinkled at them friendly across the ha-ha.  Ernie's heart, which had
+been hardening of late to meet Ruth's hardness, thawed at the touch of
+spring.  The doors of his being opened and his love leapt forth in
+billows to surround her.  The woman in front paused as if responding to
+that profound sub-conscious appeal.  Ern did not hurry his pace; but
+she stayed for him in a pool of darkness made by the elms.  Quietly he
+came up alongside.
+
+"Ruth," he began, shy and stealthy as a boy-lover.
+
+She did not answer him, but the moon lay on her face, firm-set.
+
+"Anything for me to-night?"
+
+He came in upon her with a quiet movement as of wings.  She elbowed him
+off fiercely.
+
+"A-done!" she said.  "You're not half-way through yet--nor near it."
+
+He pleaded, coaxing.
+
+"I am a man, Ruth."
+
+She was adamant.
+
+"It's just what you are not," she retorted.  He knew she was breathing
+deep; he did not know how near to tears she was.  "You was one time o
+day--and you might be yet.--You got to work your ticket, my lad."
+
+He drew back.
+
+She walked on swiftly now, passing out of Saffrons Croft into the road.
+He followed at some distance down the hill past the Greys to the _Star_
+corner.  A man standing there pointed.  He turned round to see Joe
+pounding after him.
+
+"The tickets and badges coom to-night," the engineer explained.  "A
+meant to have given you yours, as A did Mr. Geddes, at the meeting.
+But you got away.  Good night!  Friday!  Three o'clock sharp!  Don't
+forget."
+
+Ruth had turned and was coming swiftly back towards them.
+
+"Ain't you coming along then, Joe?" she called after him.
+
+"Not to-night, thank-you, Ruth.  A got to square up afore we go."
+
+"I am disappointed," said Ruth disconsolately, and turned away down
+Borough Lane.
+
+Ernie came up beside her quietly.
+
+"That night!" he said.  "Almost a pity you didn't stay where you was in
+bed and let Joe take my place alongside you."
+
+"Hap it's what I've thart myself times," Ruth answered sentimentally.
+
+"Only thing," continued Ernie in that same strangely quiet voice, "Joe
+wouldn't do it.  D'is no fault of his'n.  He is a man Joe is; even if
+so be you're no'hun of a woman."
+
+The two turned into the house that once had been their home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE PILGRIMS
+
+Spring comes to Beachbourne as it comes to no other city of earth,
+however fair; say those of her children who after long sojourning in
+other lands come home in the evenings of their days to sleep.
+
+The many-treed town that lies between the swell of the hills and the
+foam and sparkle of the sea sluicing deliciously the roan length of
+Pevensey Bay unveils her rounded bosom in the dawn of the year to the
+kind clear gaze of heaven and of those who to-day pass and repass along
+its windy ways.  Birds thrill and twitter in her streets.  There
+earlier than elsewhere the arabis calls the bee, and the hedge-sparrow
+raises his thin sweet pipe to bid the hearts of men lift up: for winter
+is passed.  Chestnut and laburnum unfold a myriad lovely bannerets on
+slopes peopled with gardens and gay with crocuses and the laughter of
+children.  The elms in Saffrons Croft, the beeches in Paradise, stir in
+their sleep and wrap themselves about in dreamy raiment of mauve and
+emerald.  The air is like white wine, the sky of diamonds; and the
+sea-winds come blowing over banks of tamarisk to purge and exhilarate.
+
+On the afternoon of such a day of such a spring in May, 1914, at
+Beachbourne station a little group waited outside the barrier that led
+to the departure platform.
+
+The group consisted of Joe Burt, Ernie, and Ruth.
+
+Ruth was peeping through the bars on to the platform, at the far end of
+which was a solitary figure, waiting clearly, he too, for the Lewes
+train, and very smart in a new blue coat with a velvet collar.
+
+"It's Alf," she whispered, keen and mischievous to Joe, "Ain't arf
+smart and all."
+
+Joe peered with her.
+
+"He's the proper little Fat," said the engineer.  "I'll get Will Dyson
+draw a special cartoon of him for the _Leader_."
+
+Ruth preened an imaginary moustache in mockery of her brother-in-law.
+
+"I'm the Managing Director of Caspar's Touring Syndicate, I am, and
+don't you forget it!" she said with a smirk.
+
+"Where's he off to now?"
+
+"Brighton, I believe, with the Colonel.  Some meeting of the League,"
+replied Ernie dully.
+
+Just then Mr. Geddes joined them, and the four moved on to the platform.
+
+The train came in and Alf disappeared into it.
+
+A few minutes later the Colonel passed the barrier.  He marked the
+little group on the platform and at once approached them.
+
+Something unusual about the men struck him at once.  All three had
+about them the generally degagé air of those on holiday bent.  The
+minister wore a cap instead of the habitual wide-awake; and carried a
+rucksack on his back.  Joe swung a parcel by a string, and Ernie had an
+old kit-bag slung across his shoulder.  Rucksack, parcel, and kit-bag
+were all distinguished by a red label.  The Colonel stalked the party
+from the rear and with manifold contortions of a giraffe-like neck
+contrived to read on the labels printed in large black letters, ADULT
+SCHOOL PEACE PARTY.  Then he speared the engineer under the fifth rib
+with the point of his stick.
+
+"Well, what y'up to now?" he asked sepulchrally.
+
+"Just off to Berlin, Colonel," cried the other with aggressive
+cheerfullness, "Mr. Geddes and I and this young gentleman"--thrusting
+the reluctant Ernie forward--"one o your soldiers, who knows better
+now."
+
+The Colonel began to shake hands all round with elaborate solemnity.
+
+"Returning to your spiritual home while there is yet time, Mr. Geddes,"
+he said gravely.  "Very wise, I think.  You'll be happier there than in
+our militarist land, you pacifist gentlemen."
+
+The minister, who was in the best of spirits, laughed.  The two men had
+not met since the affair of St. Andrew's Hall: and each was relieved at
+the open and friendly attitude of the other.
+
+"Cheer up, Colonel," he said.  "It's only a ten-days' trip."  They
+moved towards the train and Ernie got in.
+
+Mr. Geddes was telling the Colonel something of the origin and aims of
+the Adult School Union in general and of the Peace Party in particular.
+
+"How many of you are going?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Round about a hundred," his informant answered--"working men and women
+mostly, from every county in England.  Most trades will be
+represented."  They would be billeted in Hamburg and Berlin on people
+of their own class and their own ideals.  And next year their visit
+would be returned in strength by their hosts of this year.
+
+"Interesting," said the Colonel.  "But may I ask one question?--What
+good do you think you'll do?"
+
+"We hope it will do ourselves some good anyhow," Joe answered in fine
+fighting mood.  "Get to know each other.  Draw the two peoples together.
+
+_Nation to nation, land to land._
+
+
+"Stand oop on the seat, Ernie, and sing em your little Red-Flag
+piece.--He sings that nice he do.--And I'll give you a bit of
+chocolate."
+
+Ernie did not respond and the Colonel came to his rescue.
+
+"Well, I wish you luck," he sighed.  "I wish all well-meaning idealists
+luck.  But the facts of life are hard; and the idealists usually break
+their teeth on them.--Now I must join my colleague."
+
+He moved on, catching up Ruth who had prowled along the platform to see
+if Alf was tucked safely away.  The Colonel had not seen his companion
+since her husband had been up before the Bench.
+
+"Well, how's he getting on?" he asked; and turned shrewdly to Ruth.
+"Have you been doing him down at home?"  Something suppressed about
+Ernie had struck him.
+
+Ruth dropped her eyelids suddenly.  For a moment she was silent.  Then
+she flashed up at him swift brown eyes in which the lovely lights
+danced mischievously.
+
+"See I've hung him on the nail," she murmured warily; and nodded her
+head with the fierce determination of a child.  "And I shan't take him
+off yet a bit.  He's got to learn, Ern has."  She was in delicious
+mood, sportive, sprightly, as a young hunter mare turned out into May
+pastures after a hard season.
+
+They had come to Alf's carriage.  He had taken his seat in a corner and
+pretended not to see them.  Ruth tapped sharply at the window just
+opposite his face.
+
+"Hullo, Alf!" she called and fled.
+
+The little chauffeur rose and followed her swift and retreating figure
+down the platform.  Far down the train Joe who was leaning out of a
+window exchanged words with her as she came up.
+
+"I don't like it, sir," Alf said, low.  "Dirty business I call it.
+Somebody ought to interfere if pore old Ern won't."
+
+Joe now looked along the train at him with a scowl.
+
+"Ah, you!" came the engineer's scolding voice, loud yet low.  "Dirty
+tyke!  Drop it!"
+
+"Well, between you she ought to be well looked after," muttered the
+Colonel getting into the carriage.
+
+
+A fortnight later the Colonel was being driven home by Alf from a
+meeting of the League at Battle.  Mrs. Lewknor, whose hostel was
+thriving now, had stood him the drive and accompanied him.  It was a
+perfect evening as they slid along over Willingdon Levels and entered
+the outskirts of the town.  Opposite the Recreation Ground Alf slowed
+down and, slewing round, pointed.
+
+On a platform a man, bareheaded beneath the sky, was addressing a
+larger crowd than usually gathered at that spot on Saturday evenings.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"The German party back," answered Alf.  "That's Burt speaking, and Mr.
+Geddes alongside him."
+
+The engineer's voice, brazen from much bawling, and yet sounding
+strangely small and unreal under the immense arch of heaven, came to
+them across the open.
+
+"We've ate with em; we've lived with em; we've talked with em; and we
+can speak for em.  I tell you _there can't be war and there won't be
+war with such a people_.  It'd be the crime of Cain.  Brothers we are;
+and brothers we remain.  And not all the politicians and profiteers and
+soldiers can make us other."
+
+The Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor got down and joined the crowd.  As they
+did so the engineer, who had finished his harangue, was moving a
+resolution: That this meeting believes in the Brotherhood of Man and
+wishes well to Germany.
+
+"I second that," said the Colonel from the rear of the crowd.
+
+Just then Alf, who had left his car and followed the Colonel, put a
+question.
+
+"Did not Lord Roberts say in 1912 at Manchester that Germany would
+strike when her hour struck?"
+
+The man on the platform was so furious that he did not even rise from
+his chair to reply.
+
+"Yes he did!" he shouted.  "And he'd no business to!  Direct
+provocation it was."
+
+"Will not Germany's hour have struck when the Kiel Canal is open to
+Dreadnoughts?" continued the inquisitor smoothly.  "And is it not the
+fact that the Canal is to be opened for this purpose in the next few
+days?"
+
+These questions were greeted with booings mingled with cheers.
+
+Mr. Geddes was rising to reply when Joe Burt leapt to his feet, roused
+and roaring.
+
+He said men had the choice between two masters--Fear or Faith?--Which
+were we for?--Were we the heirs of Eternity, the children of the
+Future, or the slaves and victims of the Past?
+
+"For maself A've made ma choice.  A'm not a Christian in the ordinary
+sense: A don't attend Church or Chapel, like soom folk.  But A believe
+we're all members one of another, and that the one prayer which
+matters--if said from the heart of men who believe in it and work for
+it--is _Our Father_: the Father of Jew and Gentile, English and German.
+And ma recent visit to Germany has confirmed me in ma faith in the
+people, although A couldna say as much for their rulers.  Look about
+you!  What do you see?--The sons and daughters of God rotting away from
+tuberculosis in every slum in Christendom, and the money and labour
+that should go to redeeming them spent on altar-cloths and armaments.
+Altar-cloths and armaments!  Do your rulers never turn their thoughts
+and eyes to Calvary?  There are plenty of em in your midst and plenty
+to see on em if you want to."
+
+The engineer sat down.
+
+"Muck!" said Mrs. Lewknor in her husband's ear.
+
+"I'm not sure," replied the Colonel who had listened attentively; but
+he didn't wholely like it.  Joe had always been frothy; but of old
+beneath the froth there had been sound liquor.  Now somehow the Colonel
+saw the froth but missed the liquor.  To his subtle and critical mind
+it seemed that the speaker's fury was neither entirely simulated nor
+entirely real.  Habit was as much the motive of it as passion.  It
+seemed to him the expression of an emotion once entirely genuine and
+now only partly so.  An alloy had corrupted the once pure metal.  He
+saw as clearly as a woman that Joe was no longer living simply for one
+purpose.  _Turgid_ his wife had once called the engineer.  For the
+first time the Colonel realised the aptness of the epithet.
+
+Then he noticed Ruth on the fringe of the crowd.  He was surprised: for
+it was a long march from Old Town, and neither Ernie nor the children
+were with her.
+
+"Come to be converted by the apostles of pacifism, Mrs. Caspar?" he
+chaffed.
+
+"No, sir," answered Ruth simply, her eyes on the platform.  "I just
+come along to hear Joe.  That's why I come."  Her face lighted
+suddenly, "There he is!" she cried.
+
+The engineer had jumped down from the platform and was making straight
+for her.  Ruth joined him; and the two went off together, rubbing
+shoulders.
+
+The Colonel strolled back towards the car: he was thoughtful, even
+grave.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor met him with a little smile.
+
+"It's all right, Jocko," she told him.  "She's only playing with the
+man."
+
+The Colonel shook his head.
+
+"She's put up the shutters, and said she's out--to her own husband.
+It's a dangerous game."
+
+"Trust Ruth," replied the other.  "She knows her man."
+
+"Perhaps," retorted the Colonel.  "Does she know herself?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+RED IN THE MORNING
+
+Joe Burt's rhetoric might not affect the Colonel greatly; but the
+impressions of Mr. Geddes, conveyed to him quietly a few days later in
+friendly conversation, were a different matter.
+
+The Presbyterian minister was a scholar, broad-minded, open, honest.
+He had moreover finished his education at Berlin University, and had,
+as the Colonel knew, ever since his student days maintained touch with
+his German friends.  Mr. Geddes had come home convinced that Germany
+was not seeking a quarrel.
+
+"Hamburg stands to lose by war," he told the Colonel, "And Hamburg
+knows it."
+
+"What about Berlin?" the other asked.
+
+"Berlin's militarist," the other admitted.  "And Berlin's watching
+Ulster as a cat watches a mouse--you find that everywhere; professors,
+soldiers, men in the street, even my old host, Papa Schumacher, the
+carpenter, was agog about it.--Was Ulster in Shetland?--Was the Ulster
+Army black?--Would it attack England?--Well, our War Office must know
+all about the stir there.  And that makes me increasingly confident
+that something's happened to eliminate whatever German menace there may
+ever have been."
+
+"Exactly what Trupp was saying the other day," the Colonel commented.
+"Something's happened.  You and I don't know what.  You and I never do.
+Bonar Law and the rest of em wouldn't be working up a Civil War on this
+scale unless they were certain Germany was muzzled; and what's more the
+Government wouldn't let em.  The politicians may be fools, but they
+aren't lunatics."
+
+A few evenings after this talk as the Colonel sat after supper in the
+loggia with his wife, overlooking the sea wandering white beneath the
+moon, he ruminated between puffs upon the political situation, domestic
+and international, with a growing sense of confidence at his heart.
+Indeed there was much to confirm his hopes.
+
+The year had started with Lloyd George's famous pronouncement that the
+relations between Germany and England had never been brighter.  Then
+again there was the point Trupp had made: the astonishing attitude of
+the Unionist leaders, and the still more astonishing tolerance of the
+Government.  Lastly, and far more significant from the old soldier's
+point of view, there was the action of Mr. Geddes's mystery-man who was
+no mystery-man at all.  Everybody on the outermost edge of affairs knew
+the name of the General in question.  Every porter at the military
+clubs could tell you who he was.  Asquith had never made any bones
+about it.  Redmond and Dillon had named him to Mr. Geddes.  Yet if
+anybody could gauge the military situation on the Continent it was
+surely the man who, as Mr. Geddes had truly pointed out, had
+specialized in co-ordinating our Expeditionary Force with the Armies of
+France in the case of an attack by Germany.  There he was sitting at
+the War Office, as he had sat for years past, in touch with the English
+Cabinet, _lié_ with the French General Staff, his ear at the telephone
+listening to every rumour in every camp in Europe, and primed by a
+Secret Service so able that it had doped the public at home and every
+chancellery abroad to believe that it was the last word in official
+stupidity.  This was the man who had thrown in his lot with the gang of
+speculating politicians who had embarked upon the campaign that had so
+undermined discipline in the commissioned ranks of the Army that for
+the first time in history a British Government could no longer trust
+its officers to do their duty without question.
+
+Now no one could say this man was hot-headed; nobody could say he was a
+fool.  Moreover he was a distinguished soldier and to call his
+patriotism in question was simply ridiculous, as even Geddes admitted.
+
+The Colonel had throughout steadfastly refused to discuss with friend
+or foe the ethics of this officer's attitude, and its effect on the
+reputation of the Army.  But of one thing he was certain.  No man in
+that officer's position of trust and responsibility would gamble with
+the destinies of his country--a gamble that might involve hundreds and
+thousands of innocent lives.  His action might be reprehensible--many
+people did not hesitate to describe it in plainer terms; but he would
+never have taken it in view of its inevitable reaction on military and
+political opinion on the Continent unless he had been certain that the
+German attack, which he of all men had preached for so long as
+inevitable, would not mature or would not mature as yet.
+
+What then was the only possible inference?
+
+"Something had happened."
+
+The words his mind had been repeating uttered themselves aloud.
+
+"What's that, my Jocko?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+The Colonel stretched his long legs, took his pipe out of his mouth,
+and sighed.
+
+"If nothing has happened by Christmas 1915 I shall resign the
+secretaryship of the League and return with joy to the garden and the
+history of the regiment."  He rose in the brilliant dusk like a
+spectre.  "Come on, my lass!" he said.  "I would a plan unfold."
+
+She took his arm and they strolled across the lawn past the hostel
+towards the solid darkness of the Downs which enfolded them.
+
+The long white house stood still and solitary in the great coombe that
+brimmed with darkness and was crowned with multitudinous stars.  Washed
+by the moon, and warm with a suggestion of human busyness, the hostel
+seemed to be stirring in a happy sleep, as though conscious of the good
+work it was doing.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor paused to look at it, a sense of comfort at her heart.
+
+The children's beds out on the balcony could be seen; and the nurses
+moving in the rooms behind.  Groups of parents, down from London for
+the week-end, strolled the lawn.  A few older patients still lounged in
+deck-chairs on the terrace, while from within the house came the sound
+of laughter and someone playing rag-time.  The little lady regarded the
+work of her hands not without a just sense of satisfaction.  The hostel
+was booming.  It was well-established now and had long justified
+itself.  She was doing good work and earning honest money.  This year
+she would not only pay for the grandson's schooling, but she hoped at
+Christmas to make a start in reducing the mortgage.
+
+"Well," she said, "what about it now, doubting Thomas?"
+
+"Not so bad for a beginning," admitted the Colonel.
+
+"Who's going to send Toby to Eton?" asked the lady, cruelly triumphant.
+"And how?"
+
+"Why, I am," replied the Colonel brightly--"out of my pension of five
+bob a week minus income tax."
+
+Hugging each other's arms, they climbed the bank to the vegetable
+garden, which six years before had been turned up by the plough from
+the turf which may have known the tread of Caesar's legionaries.  The
+raw oblong which had then patched the green with a lovely mauve was
+already peopled with trees and bushes, and rank with green stuff.  The
+Colonel paused and sniffed.
+
+"Mrs. Simpkins coming on ... I long to be back among my cabbages ... I
+bet if I took these Orange Pippins in hand myself I'd win first prize
+at the East Sussex Show....  That duffer, old Lingfield--He's no good."
+
+They turned off into the yard where Mrs. Lewknor was erecting a garage,
+now nearly finished.  The Colonel paused and stared up at it.
+
+"My dear," he said, "I've got an idea.  We'll dig the Caspars out of
+that hole in Old Town and put them in the rooms above the garage.  I'll
+take him on as gardener and odd-job man.  He's a first-rate rough
+gardener.  He was showing me and Bobby his allotment only the other
+day.  And as you know, the solitary ambition of my old age has been to
+have an old Hammer-man about me."
+
+"And mine for you, my Jocko," mused Mrs. Lewknor, far more wary than
+her impulsive husband.  "There are only three rooms though, and she's
+got four children already and is still only thirty or so."
+
+The Colonel rattled on, undismayed.
+
+"He'll be half a mile from the nearest pub here," he said.
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Lewknor--"and further from the clutches of that
+Burt man, who's twice as bad as any pub."
+
+"Ha, ha!" jeered the Colonel.  "So you're coming round to my way of
+thinking at last, are you?"
+
+Next evening, the Colonel, eager always as a youth to consummate his
+purpose, bicycled with his wife through Paradise to Old Town.
+
+At the corner opposite the Rectory they met Alf Caspar, who was clearly
+in high feather.  The Colonel dismounted for a word with the convener
+of the League.
+
+"Well, Caspar," he said.  "So you've got your licence from the Watch
+Committee, I hear."
+
+Alf purred.
+
+"Yes, sir.  All O.K.--down to the men that'll blow the horn to give em
+a bit o music."
+
+"When do you start?"
+
+"Bank Holiday, sir.  I was just coming up to tell mother we were
+through.  Last char-a-banc came this afternoon--smart as paint."
+
+The Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked on towards Church Street.  At
+Billing's Corner, waiting for the bus, was Edward Caspar.  He was
+peering at a huge placard advertising expeditions by Caspar's
+Road-touring Syndicate, to start on August 3rd.
+
+The Colonel, mischievous as a child, must cross the road to his old
+Trinity compeer.
+
+"Your boy's getting on, Mr. Caspar," he observed quietly.
+
+The old man made a clucking like a disturbed hen.
+
+"Dreadful," he said.  "Dreadful."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor laid two fingers on his arm.
+
+"Mr. Caspar," she said.
+
+He glanced down at her like a startled elephant.  Then he seemed to
+thrill as though a wind of the spirit was blowing through him.  The
+roses of a forgotten youth bloomed for a moment in his mottled cheeks.
+An incredible delicacy and tenderness inspired the face of this flabby
+old man.
+
+"Miss Solomons!" he said, and lifting her little hand kissed it.
+
+The Colonel withdrew discreetly; and in a moment his wife joined him,
+the lights dancing in her eyes.
+
+"Pretty stiff!" grinned the Colonel--"in the public street and all."
+
+They turned down Borough Lane by the _Star_ and knocked Ruth up.
+
+She was ironing and did not seem best pleased to see the visitors.
+Neither did Joe Burt, who was sitting by the fire with little Alice on
+his knees.
+
+The little lady ignored the engineer.
+
+"Where are the other children?" she asked Ruth pleasantly.
+
+"Where they oughrer be," Joe answered--"in bed."
+
+The Colonel came to the rescue.
+
+"Is Caspar anywhere about?" he asked.
+
+"He's on his allotment, I reck'n," Ruth answered coldly.  "Mr. Burt
+joins him there most in general every evening."
+
+"Yes," said Joe, "and was on the road now when A was interfered with."
+He kissed little Alice, put her down, and rose.  "Good evening,
+Colonel."  And he went out sullenly.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor, aware that negotiations had not opened auspiciously, now
+broached her project.  Ruth, steadily ironing, never lifted her eyes.
+She was clearly on the defensive, suspicious in her questions, evasive
+and noncommittal in her replies.  The Colonel became impatient.
+
+"Mrs. Caspar might accept our offer--to oblige," he said at last.
+
+Ruth deliberately laid down her iron, and challenged him: she said
+nothing.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor felt the tension.
+
+"Well, think it over, will you?" she said to Ruth.  "There's no hurry."
+
+She went out and the Colonel followed.
+
+"That man's the biggest humbug unhung even for a Labour man," snapped
+the little lady viciously.  "Preaching the Kingdom of Heaven on earth
+and then this!"
+
+"I'm not sure," replied the Colonel, "not sure.  I think he's much the
+same as most of us--an honest man who's run off the rails."
+
+They were bicycling slowly along Victoria Drive.  On the far side of
+the allotments right under the wall of the Downs, blue in the evening,
+a solitary figure was digging.
+
+"The out-cast," said the Colonel.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor dismounted from her bicycle and began wheeling it along
+the unfenced earthen path between the gardens, towards the digger.
+Ernie barely looked up, barely answered her salutation, wiping the
+sweat off his brow with the back of his hand as he continued his
+labour.  The lady retired along the way she had come.
+
+"There's something Christ-like about the feller," said the Colonel
+quietly as they reached the road.
+
+"Yes," the little lady answered.  "Only he's brought his troubles on
+his own head."
+
+The Colonel drew up in haste.
+
+"Hullo," he said, and began to read a newspaper placard, for which
+class of literature he had a consuming passion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE AVALANCHE MOVES
+
+The placard, seen by the Colonel, announced the opening of a new scene
+in the Irish tragedy.
+
+The King had summoned a Conference at Buckingham Palace in order if
+possible to find a solution of the difficulty.  When the Conference met
+the King opened it in person and, speaking as a man weighed down by
+anxiety, told the members that for weeks he had watched with deep
+misgivings the trend of events in Ireland.  "To-day the cry of Civil
+War is on the lips of the most responsible of my people," he said; and
+had added, so Mr. Trupp told the Colonel, in words not reported in the
+Press, that the European situation was so ominous as imperatively to
+demand a solution of our domestic differences in order that the nation
+might present a solid front to the world.
+
+"And I bet he knows," ended the old surgeon, as he said good-bye on the
+steps of the Manor-house.
+
+"I bet he does," replied the Colonel.  "Thank God there's one man in
+the country who's above party politics."  He climbed thoughtfully on to
+the top of the bus outside the _Star_, and, as it chanced, found
+himself sitting beside Ernie, who was deep in his paper and began to
+talk.
+
+"They ain't got it all their own way, then," he said, grimly.  "I see
+the Irish Guards turned out and lined the rails and cheered Redmond as
+he came down Birdcage Walk back from the Conference."
+
+"I don't like it," replied the Colonel gloomily.  "Rotten discipline.
+The Army has no politics."
+
+"What about the officers at the Curragh?" asked Ernie almost
+aggressively.  "They begun it.  Give the men a chance too."
+
+"Two wrong things don't make a right," retorted the Colonel sharply.
+
+Ernie got down at the station without a word.  Was it an accident the
+Colonel, sensitive as a girl, asked himself? was it a deliberate
+affront?  What was the world coming to?  That man an old Hammer-man!
+One of Bobby Bermondsey yahoos wouldn't treat him so!
+
+Indeed the avalanche was now sliding gradually down the mountain-side,
+gathering way as it went, to overwhelm the smiling villages sleeping
+peacefully in the valley.
+
+Next day oppressed by imminent catastrophe, the Colonel, climbing
+Beau-nez in the afternoon to take up his habitual post of vigil by the
+flag-staff, found Joe Burt and Mr. Geddes already there.
+
+Both men, he marked, greeted him almost sombrely.
+
+"It looks to me very serious," he said.  "Austria means to go for
+Serbia, that's clear; and if she does Russia isn't going to stand by
+and see Serbia swallowed up.  What d'you think, Mr. Geddes?"
+
+The other answered him on that note of suppressed indignation which
+characterised increasingly his utterance when he touched on this often
+discussed subject.
+
+"I think Colonel, what I've thought all along," he answered: "that if
+we're in the eve of a European eruption the attitude of the officers of
+the British Army is perfectly _inexplicable_."
+
+He was firm almost to ferocity.
+
+"Hear! hear!" growed Joe.
+
+"But they don't know, poor beggars!" cried the Colonel, exasperated yet
+appealing.  He felt as he had felt throughout the controversy that he
+was fighting with his hands tied behind his back.  "Do be just, Mr.
+Geddes.  They are merely the playthings of the politicians.  O, if you
+only knew the regimental officer as I know him!  He's like that St.
+Bernard dog over there by the coast-guard station--the most foolish and
+faithful creature on God's earth.  Smith pats him on the head and tells
+him he's a good dorg, and he'll straightway beg for the privilege of
+being allowed to die for Smith.  What's a poor ignorant devil of a
+regimental officer quartered at Aldershot or the Curragh or Salisbury
+Plain likely to know of the European situation?"
+
+The tall minister was not to be appeased.
+
+"Ignorance seems to me a poor justification for insubordination in an
+Army officer," he said.  "And even if one is to accept that excuse for
+the regimental officers, one can't for a man like the Director of
+Military Strategics, who is said to have specialised in war with
+Germany.  Yet that is the man who has co-operated, to put it at the
+mildest, in arming a huge rebel force with guns from the very country
+he has always affirmed _we're bound to fight_.  It's stabbing the
+Empire in the back, neither more nor less."
+
+He was pale, almost dogmatic.
+
+Then Joe barged in, surly and brutal.
+
+"The whole truth is," he said, "that the officers of the British Army
+to-day don't know how to spell the word Duty.  Havelock did.  Gordon
+did.  And all the world respected them accordingly.  These men don't.
+They've put their party before their coontry as A've always said they
+would when the pinch came."
+
+The Colonel was trembling slightly.
+
+"If the test comes," he said, "we shall see."
+
+"The test _has_ come," retorted the other savagely, "And we _have_
+seen."
+
+The Colonel walked swiftly away.  In front of him half a mile from the
+flag-staff, he marked a man standing waist-deep in a clump of gorse.
+There was something so forlorn about the figure that the Colonel
+approached, only to find that it was Ernie, who on his side, seeing the
+other, quitted the ambush, and came slowly towards him.  To the Colonel
+the action seemed a cry of distress.  All his resentment at the
+incident on the bus melted away in a great compassion.
+
+"She and me used to lay there week-ends when first we married," Ern
+said dreamily, nodding towards the gorse he had just left.
+
+"And she and you will live _there_ for many happy years, I hope,"
+replied the Colonel warmly, pointing towards the garage in the coombe
+beneath them.
+
+Ernie regarded him inquiringly.
+
+"What's that, sir?"
+
+"Aren't you coming?"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"My garage?"
+
+Ernie did not understand and the Colonel explained.
+
+"Didn't Mrs. Caspar tell you?"
+
+"Ne'er a word," the other answered blankly.
+
+
+The Colonel dropped down to Carlisle Road.  There Mr. Trupp picked him
+up and drove him on to the club for tea.  Fresh news from Ulster was
+just being ticked off on the tape.  An hour or two before, a rebel
+unit, the East Belfast regiment of volunteers, some 5,000 strong, armed
+with Mausers imported from Germany, and dragging machine-guns warm from
+Krupp's, had marched through the streets of Belfast.  The police had
+cleared the way for the insurgents; and soldiers of the King, officers
+and men, had looked on with amusement.
+
+The Colonel turned away.
+
+"Roll up the map of Empire!" he said.  "We'd better send a deputation
+to Lajput Rai and the Indian Home Rulers and beg them to spare us a few
+baboos to govern us.  Its an abdication of Government."
+
+He went into the ante-room.
+
+There was Stanley Bessemere back from Ulster once more.  As usual he
+sat behind a huge cigar, retailing amidst roars of laughter to a
+sympathetic audience his exploits and those of his caracoling chief.
+The European situation had not overclouded him.
+
+"There's going to be a Civil War and Smith and I are going to be in it.
+We shall walk through the Nationalists like so much paper.  They've got
+no arms; and they've got no guts either."  He laughed cheerily.  "Bad
+men.  Bad men."
+
+The Colonel stood, an accusing figure in the door, and eyed the
+fair-haired giant with cold resentment.
+
+"You know Kuhlmann from the German Embassy is over with your people in
+Belfast?" he asked.
+
+The other waved an airy cigar.
+
+"You can take it from me, my dear Colonel, that he's not," he answered.
+
+"I'll take nothing of the sort from you," the Colonel answered acridly.
+"He's there none the less because he's there incognito."
+
+The young man winced; and the Colonel withdrew.
+
+"Jove!" he said.  "I'd just like to know how far these beggars have
+trafficked in treason with Germany."
+
+"Not at all," replied Mr. Trupp.  "They've humbugged emselves into
+believing they're 'running great risks in a great cause,' as they
+say--or doing the dirty to make a party score, as you and I'd put it.
+That's all."
+
+The Colonel walked home, oppressed.  After supper, as he sat with his
+wife in the loggia, he told her of Ruth's strange secretiveness in the
+matter of the garage.
+
+"There she is!" said Mrs. Lewknor quietly nodding over her work.  Ruth,
+indeed, was strolling slowly along the cliff from the direction of the
+Meads in the gorgeous evening.  Opposite the hostel a track runs down
+to the beach beneath.  At that point she paused as though waiting for
+somebody; and then disappeared from view.
+
+Ten minutes later Mrs. Lewknor spoke again in the same hushed voice.
+
+"Here's the other!"
+
+The Colonel looked up.  Joe was coming rapidly along the cliff from the
+direction of Beau-nez.  He too disappeared down the way Ruth had
+already taken.
+
+The Colonel removed his glasses.
+
+"I shall give em a quarter of an hour to make emselves quite
+comfortable," he muttered "and then--"
+
+"Spy," said Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+A moment later, Anne, the parlour-maid, showed Mr. Alfred Caspar on to
+the loggia.
+
+The face of the Manager of Caspar's Syndicate was very long.  Alf,
+cherishing the simple faith that the Colonel because he had been a
+soldier must be in the secrets certainly of the War Office and possibly
+of the Government, had come to ask what he thought of the European
+situation.
+
+The Colonel was not reassuring, but he refused to commit himself.  Alf
+turned away almost sullenly.
+
+"See, it matters to me," he said.  "I start Bank Holiday.  Don't want
+no wars interfering with my Syndicate."
+
+"It matters to us all a bit," replied the Colonel.
+
+Alf departed aggrieved, and obviously suggesting that the Colonel was
+to blame.  He walked away with downward eyes.  Suddenly the Colonel saw
+him pause, creep to the cliff-edge, and peep over.  Then he came back
+to the hostel in a stealthy bustle.
+
+"Go and look for yourself then, sir, if you don't believe me!" he cried
+in the tone of one rebuffing an unjust accusation.  "You're a
+Magistrate.  Police ought to stop it I say.  Public 'arlotry I call it."
+
+The Colonel's face became cold and very lofty.  "No, Caspar.  I don't
+do that sort of thing," he said.
+
+Alf, muttering excuses, departed.  The Colonel watched him walk along
+the dotted coast-guard track and disappear round the shoulder of the
+coombe.  Then he rose and strolled out to meet Ernie who was
+approaching.
+
+As he did so he heard voices from the beach beneath him and peeped
+over.  Ruth, on her hands and knees amid the chalk boulders at the foot
+of the cliff, was smoothing the sand and spreading something on it.
+
+A few yards away Joe was standing at the edge of the tide, which was
+almost high, flinging pebbles idly into the water.  Some earth
+dislodged from the Colonel's feet and made a tiny land-slide.  The
+woman on her hands and knees in the growing dusk beneath looked up and
+saw the man standing above her.  She made no motion, kneeling there;
+facing him, fighting him, mocking him.
+
+"Having a nice time together?" he asked genially.
+
+"Just going to, thank-you kindly," Ruth replied and resumed her
+occupation of sweeping with her hands.
+
+The Colonel turned to find Ernie standing beside him and burning his
+battle-flare.
+
+"Lucky I see you coming, sir," he said, trembling still.  "Else I might
+ha done him a mischief."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Alf.  Insultin her and me.  Met him just along back there in Meads by
+the _Ship_."
+
+"Go easy, Caspar," said the Colonel quietly.  "I remember that
+left-handed punch of yours of old.  It's a good punch too; but keep it
+for the enemies of your country."
+
+Ernie was hugging a big biscuit-box under his arm.
+
+"What you got there?" asked the other.
+
+Ernie grinned a thought sheepishly.
+
+"It's Joe's birthday," he said.  "We are having a bit of a do under the
+cliff."
+
+He hovered a moment as though about to impart a confidence to the
+other; and then disappeared down the little track to the beach beneath
+at the trot, his shoulders back, and heels digging in, carrying a
+slither of chalk with him.
+
+"'Come into my parlour,' said the spider to the fly," muttered the
+Colonel as he turned into Undercliff.  "Poor fly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE GROWING ROAR
+
+The avalanche, once started, was moving fast now.  The Irish
+Nationalists who had lost faith in the power of the Government and the
+will of the Army to protect them, had decided at last to arm in view of
+the default of the law that they might resist invasion from the
+North-East.
+
+On the very day after the parade of insurrectionaries in Belfast a
+famous Irishman, soldier, sailor, statesman, man of letters, who in his
+young manhood had served throughout the long-drawn South African War
+the Empire which had refused liberty to his country alone of all her
+Colonies, and in the days to come, though now in his graying years, was
+to be the hero of one of the most desperate ventures of the Great War,
+ran the little _Asgarde_, her womb heavy with strange fruit, into Howth
+Harbour while the Sunday bells peeled across the quiet waters, calling
+to church.
+
+The arms were landed and marched under Nationalist escort towards
+Dublin.  The police and a company of King's Own Scottish Borderers met
+the party and blocked the way.  After a parley the Nationalists
+dispersed and the soldiers marched back to Dublin through a hostile
+demonstration.  Mobbed, pelted, provoked to the last degree, at
+Bachelor's Walk, on the quay, where owing to the threatening attitude
+of the crowd they had been halted, the men took the law into their own
+hands and fired without the order of their officer.  Three people were
+killed.
+
+The incident led to the first quarrel that had taken place between
+Ernie and Joe Burt in a friendship now of some years standing.
+
+"Massacre by the military," said Joe.  "That's what it is."
+
+The old soldier in Ernie leapt to the alert.
+
+"Well, what would you have had em do?" he cried hotly.  "Lay down and
+let emselves be kicked to death?"
+
+"If the soldiers want to shoot at all let em shoot the armed rebels,"
+retorted Joe.
+
+"Let em shoot the lot, I says," answered Ernie.  "I'm sick of it.
+Ireland!  Ireland!  Ireland all the time.  No one's no time to think of
+poor old England.  Yet we've our troubles too, I reck'n."
+
+Joe went out surlily without saying good-night.  When he was gone, Ruth
+who had been listening, looked up at Ernie, a faint glow of amusement,
+interest, surprise, in her eyes.
+
+"First time ever I knaw'd you and Joe get acrarst each other," she said.
+
+Ernie, biting home on his pipe, did not meet her gaze.
+
+"First," he said.  "Not the last, may be."
+
+She put down dish-cloth and dish, came to him, and put her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Let me look at you, Ern!"
+
+His jaw was set, almost formidable: he did not speak.
+
+"Kiss me, Ern," she said.
+
+For a moment his eyes hovered on her face.
+
+"D'you mean anything?" he asked.
+
+"Not that," she answered and dropped her hand.
+
+"Then to hell with you!" he cried with a kind of desperate savagery and
+thrust her brutally away.  "Sporting with a man!"
+
+He put on his cap and went out.
+
+In a few minutes he was back.  Paying no heed to her, he sat down at
+the kitchen-table and wrote a note, which he put on the mantel-piece.
+
+"You can give this to Alf next time he comes round for the rent," he
+said.
+
+"What is it?" asked Ruth.
+
+"Notice," Ern answered.  "We're going to shift to the Colonel's garage."
+
+Ruth gave battle instantly.
+
+"Who are?" she cried, facing him.
+
+He met her like a hedge of bayonets.
+
+"I am," he answered.  "Me and my children."
+
+
+The volley fired on Bachelor's Walk, as it echoed down the long valleys
+of the world, seemed to serve the purpose of Joshua's trumpet.
+Thereafter all the walls of civilisation began to crash down one after
+another with the roar of ruined firmaments.
+
+Forty-eight hours later Austria declared war.
+
+On Thursday Mr. Asquith, speaking in a crowded and quiet house,
+proposed the postponement of the Home Rule Bill.
+
+Even the hotheads were sober now.
+
+Stanley Bessemere discarded his uniform of an Ulster Volunteer in
+haste, and turned up at the club in chastened mood.  He was blatant
+still, a little furtive, notably less truculent.  The martial refrain
+_Smith and I_ had given place to the dulcet coo _We must all pull
+together_.
+
+"Is he ashamed?" Mrs. Lewknor asked her husband, hushed herself, and
+perhaps a little guilty.
+
+"My dear," the Colonel replied.  "Shame is not a word known to your
+politician.  He's thoroughly frightened.  All the politicians are.
+There're bluffing for all they're worth."
+
+On the Saturday morning the Colonel went to the club.  The junior
+member for Beachbourne, who was there, and for once uncertain of
+himself, showed himself childishly anxious to forget and forgive.
+
+"Now look here, Colonel!" he said, charming and bright.  "If there's an
+almighty bust-up now, shall you _really_ blame it all on Ulster?
+Honest Injun!"
+
+The Colonel met him with cold flippancy.
+
+"Every little helps," he said.  "A whisper'll start an avalanche, as
+any mountaineer could tell you."
+
+He took up the _Nation_ of August 1st and began to read the editor's
+impassioned appeal to the country to stand out.  The Colonel read the
+article twice over.  There could be no question of the white-hot
+sincerity of the writer, and none that he voiced the sentiments of an
+immense and honest section of the country.
+
+He put the paper down and walked home.
+
+"If we don't go in," he said calmly to his wife at luncheon, "all I can
+say is, that I shall turn my back on England for ever and go and hide
+my head for the rest of my days on the borders of Thibet."
+
+In those last days of peace good men and true agonised in their various
+ways.  Few suffered more than the Colonel; none but his wife knew the
+agony of his doubt.
+
+Then Mr. Trupp telephoned to say that Germany had sent an ultimatum to
+Russia, and that France was mobilising.  Mr. Cambon had interviewed the
+King.  The Government was still wavering.
+
+The Colonel's course was evident.  The little organisation for which he
+was responsible must express itself, if only in the shrill sharp voice
+of a mosquito.  A meeting of the League must be convened.  Tingling
+with hope, doubt, fear, shame, he set off in the evening to interview
+Alfred Caspar.  Swiftly he crossed the golf-links and turned into
+Saffrons Croft.  There he paused.
+
+It was one of those unforgettable evenings magnificently calm, which
+marked with triumphant irony the end of the world.  The green park with
+its cluster of elms presented its usual appearance on a Saturday
+afternoon.  The honest thump of the ball upon the bat, so dear to
+English hearts, resounded on every side: the following cry--Run it out!
+the groups of youths sprawling about the scorers, the lounging
+spectators.  Not a rumour of the coming storm had touched those serene
+hearts.  Close to him a bevy of women and children were playing a kind
+of rounders.  The batter was a big young woman whom he recognised at
+once as Ruth.
+
+One of the the fielders was little Alice scudding about the surface of
+green on thin black legs like a water-beetle on a pond.  Then Ernie saw
+him and came sauntering towards him, a child clinging solemnly to one
+finger of each hand.  There was an air of strain about the old
+Hammer-man, as of one waiting on the alert for a call, that
+distinguished him, so the Colonel thought, from the gay throng.
+
+"What about it, sir?" he asked gravely.
+
+"It's coming, Caspar," the Colonel answered.  "That's my belief."
+
+"And I shan't be sorry if it does," said Ernie with a quiet
+vindictiveness.
+
+"Shall you go?" asked the Colonel.  He knew the other's time as a
+reservist was up.
+
+"Sha'n't I?" Ernie answered with something like a snort.
+
+The Colonel was not deceived.  It was not the patriot, not the old
+soldier, who had uttered that cry of distress: it was the human being,
+bruised and suffering, and anxious to vent his pain in violence on
+something or somebody, no matter much who.
+
+"Yes, sir, I shall go, if it's only as cook in the Army Service Corps."
+
+The Colonel shook his head.
+
+"If it comes," he said, "every fighting man'll be wanted in his right
+place.  Would you like to rejoin the old battalion at Aldershot, if I
+can work it for you?  Then you'd go out with the Expeditionary Force."
+
+Ernie's eyes gleamed.
+
+"Ah, just wouldn't I?" he said.
+
+Just then there was a shout from the players.  Ruth was out and
+retired.  She came towards them, glowing, laughing, her fingers
+touching her hair to order.  She was thirty now, but at that moment she
+did not look twenty-five.  Then she saw the Colonel and deliberately
+turned away.  Susie and Jenny pursued their mother.
+
+The Colonel walked off through the groups of white-clad players towards
+Alf's garage in the Goffs.  A tall man was standing at the gate on to
+Southfields Road, contemplating the English scene with austere gaze.
+
+It was Royal--the man who would know.
+
+"You think it's going to be all right?" asked the Colonel so keen as to
+forget his antipathy.
+
+"Heaven only knows with this Government," the other replied.  "I've
+just been on the telephone.  Haldane's going back to the War Office,
+they say."
+
+"Thank God for it!" cried the Colonel.
+
+His companion shrugged.
+
+"Henry Wilson's in touch with Maxse and the Conservative press," he
+said.  "He's getting at the Opposition.  There's to be a meeting at
+Lansdowne House to-night.  H.W.'s going to ginger em."
+
+The Colonel looked away.
+
+"And what are you doing down here?" he asked.
+
+"They sent me down to Newhaven last night--embarkation.  I'm off in two
+minutes."  He jerked his head towards a racing car standing outside the
+garage, white with dust.  "Got to catch the 7 o'clock at Lewes, and be
+back at the War Office at 9 p.m.  An all-night sitting, I expect."
+That austere gaze of his returned to the playing-fields.  "Little they
+know what they're in for," he said, as though to himself.
+
+For the first time the Colonel found something admirable, almost
+comforting, in the hardness of his old adjutant.  He followed the
+other's gaze and then said quietly, almost tenderly, as one breathing a
+secret in the ear of a dying man.
+
+"That's the child, Royal--that one in the white frock and black legs
+running over by the elms.  And that's her mother in the brown
+dress--the one waving.  And there's her husband under the trees--that
+shabby feller."
+
+Royal arched his fine eyebrows in faint surprise.
+
+"Is she married?" he asked coolly.
+
+"Yes," replied the Colonel.  "The feller who seduced her wouldn't do
+the straight thing by her."
+
+Again the eyebrows spoke, this time with an added touch of sarcasm,
+almost of insolence.
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+The Colonel was roused.
+
+"Well, did you?" he asked, with rare brutality.
+
+Royal shrugged.  Then he turned slow and sombre eyes on the other.
+There was no anger in them, no hostility.
+
+"Perhaps I shall make it up to them now, Colonel," he said....
+
+The Colonel crossed the road to the garage.  There was a stir of
+busyness about two of the new motor char-a-bancs of the Touring
+Syndicate.  Alf was moving amid it all in his shirt-sleeves, without
+collar or tie, his hands filthy.  His moustache still waxed, and his
+hair parted down the middle and plastered, made an almost comic
+contrast to the rest of his appearance.  But there was nothing comic
+about his expression.  He looked like a dog sickening for rabies;
+ominous, surly, on the snarl.  He did not seem to see the Colonel, who
+tackled him at once, however, about the need for summoning a meeting of
+the League.
+
+"Summon it yourself then," said Alf.  "I got something better to do
+than that.  Such an idea!  Coming botherin me just now.  Start on
+Monday.  Ruin starin me in the face.  Who wants war?  Might ha done it
+on purpose to do me down."
+
+The Colonel climbed the hill to the Manor-house to sup with the Trupps.
+
+Two hours later, as he left the house, Ernie Caspar turned the corner
+of Borough Lane, and came towards him, lost in dreams.  The Colonel
+waited for him.  There was about the old Hammer-man that quality of
+forlornness which the Colonel had noted in him so often of late.  He
+took his place by the other's side.  They walked down the hill together
+silently until they were clear of the houses, and Saffrons Croft lay
+broad-spread and fragrant upon their right.
+
+In the growing dusk the spirits of the two men drew together.  Then
+Ernie spoke.
+
+"It's not Joe, sir," he said.  "He's all right, Joe is."
+
+The Colonel did not fence.
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked with quiet emphasis.
+
+"Certain sure," the other answered with astonishing vehemence.  "It's
+Ruth.  She won't give me ne'er a chance."
+
+The Colonel touched him in the dusk.
+
+"Bad luck," he muttered.  "She'll come round."
+
+It was an hour later and quite dark when he rounded the shoulder of
+Beau-nez and turned into the great coombe, lit only by the windows of
+his own house shining out against Beau-nez.
+
+Walking briskly along the cliff, turning over eternally the question
+whether England would be true to herself, he was aware of somebody
+stumbling towards him, talking to himself, probably drunk.  The Colonel
+drew aside off the chalk-blazed path to let the other pass.
+
+"A don't know justly what to make on't," came a broad familiar accent.
+
+"Why, it's fight or run away," replied the Colonel, briskly.  "No two
+twos about it."
+
+A sturdy figure loomed up alongside him.
+
+"Then it's best run away, A reckon," answered the other, "afore worse
+comes on't.  What d'you say, Colonel?"
+
+The darkness drew the two men together with invisible bonds just as an
+hour before it had drawn the Colonel and Ernie.
+
+"What is it, Burt?" asked the Colonel, gently.
+
+He felt profoundly the need of this other human being standing over
+against him in the darkness, lonely, suffering, riven with conflicting
+desires.
+
+Joe drew closer.  He was sighing, a sigh that was almost a sob.  Then
+he spoke in the hushed and urgent mutter of a schoolboy making a
+confession.
+
+"It's this, Colonel--man to man.  Hast ever been in love with a woman
+as you oughtn't to be?"
+
+Not for the first time in these last months there was strong upon the
+Colonel the sense that here before him was an honest man struggling in
+the toils prepared for him by Nature--the Lion with no mouse to gnaw
+him free.  Yet he was aware more strongly than ever before of that deep
+barrier of class which in this fundamental matter of sex makes itself
+more acutely felt than in any other.  A man of quite unusual breadth of
+view, imagination, and sympathy, this was the one topic that some inner
+spirit of delicacy had always forbidden him to discuss except with his
+own kind.  He was torn in two; and grateful to the kindly darkness that
+covered him.  On the one hand were all the inhibitions imposed upon him
+by both natural delicacy and artificial yet real class-restraint; on
+the other there was his desire to help a man he genuinely liked.
+Should he take the line of least resistance, the line of the snob and
+the coward?  Was it really the fact that because this man was not a
+gentleman he could not lay bare before him an experience that might
+save him?
+
+"Yes," he said at last with the emphasis of the man who is forcing
+himself.
+
+There was a lengthy silence.
+
+"Were you married?"
+
+"No," abruptly.  "Of course not."
+
+"Was she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"She wired me to come--in India--years ago."
+
+"Did you go?"
+
+"No--thank God."  The honest man in him added: "I never got the wire."
+
+Again there was a pause.
+
+"Are you glad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Had she children."
+
+"No."
+
+The engineer breathed deep.
+
+"Ah," he said.  "I'd ha gone."
+
+"Then you'd have done wrong."
+
+"Happen so," stubbornly.  "I'd ha gone though--knowing what I know now."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"What loov is."
+
+The Colonel paused.
+
+"She'd never have forgiven you," he said at last.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For taking advantage of her hot fit."
+
+The arrow shot in the dark had clearly gone home.  The Colonel followed
+up his advantage.
+
+"Is she in love with you?"
+
+"She's never said so."
+
+"But you think so?"
+
+"Nay, A don't think so," the other answered with all the old violence.
+"A know it.  A've nobbut to reach out ma hand to pluck the flower."
+
+His egotism annoyed the Colonel.
+
+"Seems to me," he said, "we shall all of us soon have something better
+to do than running round after each other's wives.  Seen the evening
+paper?"
+
+"Nay, nor the morning for that matter."
+
+"And you a politician!"
+
+"A'm two men--same as most: politician and lover.  Now one's a-top; now
+t'other.  It's a see-saw."
+
+"And the lover's on top now?" said the Colonel.
+
+"Yes," said the engineer, "and like to stay there too--blast him!"  And
+he was gone in the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+OLD TOWN
+
+Next day was Sunday.
+
+The Colonel waited on the cliff for his paper, which brought the
+expected news.  The die was cast.  Germany had proclaimed martial law:
+she was already at war with Russia; France had mobilised.
+
+"She's in it by now," he said to himself, as he walked across the
+golf-links towards Old Town.
+
+The threat of danger was arousing in every individual a passionate need
+for communication, for re-assurance, for the warmth and comfort of the
+crowd.  The herd, about to be attacked, was drawing together.  Its
+out-posts were coming back at the trot, heads high, ears alert,
+snorting the alarm.  Even the rogue and outcast were seeking
+re-admission and finding it amid acclamation.  The main body were
+packing in a square, heads to the danger, nostrils quivering, antlers
+ready.  An enemy was a-foot just beyond the sky-line.  He has not
+declared himself as yet.  But the wind betrayed his presence; and the
+secret stir of the disturbed and fearful wilderness was evidence enough
+that the Flesh-eater was abroad.
+
+The turf sprang deliciously beneath the Colonel's feet.  His youth
+seemed to have returned to him.  He felt curiously braced and high of
+heart.  Once he paused to look about him.  Beyond the huge smooth bowl
+of the links with its neat greens and the little boxes of sand, its
+pleasant club-house, its evidence of a smooth and leisurely
+civilisation, Paradise rippled at the touch of a light-foot breeze.
+The Downs shimmered radiantly, their blemishes hidden in the mists of
+morning.  On his right, beyond the ha-ha, the Duke's Lodge stood back
+in quiet dignity amid its beeches, typical of the England that was
+about to fade away like a cinema picture at a touch.
+
+A lark sang.  The Colonel lifted his face to the speck poised and
+thrilling in the blue.
+
+What a day to go to war on! was his thought.
+
+At the deserted club-house he dropped down into Lovers' Lane and
+climbed up towards Old Town between high flint walls, ivy-covered.
+
+As he emerged into Rectory Walk the Archdeacon was coming out of his
+gate.  He was in his glory.  His faded eyes glittered like those of an
+old duellist about to engage, and confident of his victim.
+
+"I've been waiting this day for forty-five yeahs," he announced.
+
+The Colonel was aware of the legend that in 1870 the Archdeacon, then a
+lad at Cambridge, had only been restrained from fighting for his hero,
+the Emperor of the French, by a brutal father.
+
+"It certainly looks as if you might get back a bit of your own," he
+said wearily.  The other's dreadful exaltation served only to depress
+him.  "Russia going at em one side and France the other."
+
+"And England!" cried the Archdeacon.
+
+"You think we shall go in?"
+
+To the Colonel's horror, the Archdeacon took him by the arm.
+
+"Can you doubt it?" he cried, rolling his eyes to see the impression he
+was making on the grocer in the door of the little corner-shop.  "Are
+we rotten to the heart?"
+
+They were walking down Church Street now, arm-in-arm, in the middle of
+the road.
+
+"The pity of it is," he cried in his staccato voice, "we've no Emperah
+to lead us to-day.  Ah! there was a man!"  He made a dramatic halt in
+mid-street.  "_Thank Gahd for Carson--what!_" he whispered.
+
+"And Smith," said the Colonel meekly.  "Let us give thanks for Smith
+too--
+
+  _Great in counsel, great in war,
+  Foremost Captain of our time,
+  Rich in saving common sense,
+  And, as the greatest only are,
+  In his simplicity sublime._"
+
+
+They had reached the door of the parish-church.
+
+The Archdeacon entered; and the Colonel turned with relief to greet
+Bobby Chislehurst.  The lad's open face was unusually grave.
+
+"There are sure to be pacifist demonstrations in London to-morrow," he
+began, blurting out his confidences like a a school-boy.  "It's my day
+off.  I shall go."
+
+"Don't," said the Colonel.
+
+"I must," the other replied.  "It's all I can do."
+
+"Bobby," said the Colonel grimly.  "This is my advice.  If you go up to
+London at all wire to Billy to come and meet you.  He may be able to
+get an hour off, though I expect they're pretty busy at Aldershot."
+Billy was Bobby's twin-brother and in the Service.
+
+Bobby winced.
+
+"Yes," he said, "if Billy goes, Billy won't come back.  I know Billy."
+
+A few yards down the street the Colonel met Alf Caspar in the stream of
+ascending church-goers.
+
+The little sidesman was dapper as usual: he wore a fawn coloured
+waist-coat, his moustache was waxed, his hair well-oiled; but his face
+was almost comically a-wry.  He looked like the villain in a picture
+play about to burst into tears.  Directly he saw the Colonel he roused
+to new and hectic life, crossing to him, entirely forgetful of their
+meeting on the previous evening.
+
+"Is it war, sir?" he asked feverishly and with flickering eyes.
+
+"If we are ever to hold up our heads and look the world in the face
+again," the Colonel answered.
+
+"But what's it got to do with us?" Alf almost screamed.  "Let em fight
+it out among themselves if they want to, I says.  Stand aside--that's
+our part.  That's the manly part.  And then when it's all over slip
+in--"
+
+"And collar the loot," suggested the Colonel.
+
+"And arbitrate atween em.  If we don't there'll be nobody to do it,
+only us.  I don't say it'll be easy to make the sacrifice o standing
+aside when you want to help your friends, of course you do.  But I say
+we ought to do it, and let em say what they like--if it's right and it
+is right.  Take up the cross and face the shame--that's what I says.
+Where's the good o being Christians else, if you're going to throw it
+all overboard first time you're put to the test?  We won't be the
+first, I says.  What about the martyrs and them?  Didn't they go
+through it?  Not to talk o the expense!  Can we afford it?  Course we
+can't.  Who could?  Income tax at a shilling in the pound, and my
+petrol costing me another six-pence the can.  And then ask us to sit
+down to a great war!"
+
+He poured out his arguments as a volcano in eruption pours out lava.
+
+The Colonel listened.
+
+"You'd better give your views to your Rector, I think," he remarked.
+
+Alf's face turned ugly.
+
+"One thing," he said, with an ominously vicious nod, "if there is war I
+resign my position in the League--that's straight."
+
+"O dear!" said the Colonel, and he turned into the Manor-house.
+
+Bess opened to him herself.
+
+"Joe come?" he asked, knowing she was expecting her brother for the
+week-end.
+
+"No.  A post-card instead.  We don't quite know where he is."
+
+The Colonel nodded.
+
+"Leave stopped.  Sure to be."
+
+Then Mrs. Trupp came down the stairs.  About her was the purged and
+hallowed air of one who faces death without fear and yet without
+self-deception as to the price that must be paid.  The Colonel felt he
+was standing upon holy ground.
+
+Mrs. Trupp handed him a post-card.  The postmark was Dover.  It ran:
+
+_All well.  Very busy._
+
+"I think it'll be all right, don't you?" said Mrs. Trupp, raising
+wistful eyes to his.  The mother in her longed for him to say _No_: the
+patriot _Yes_.
+
+"It must be," replied Bess, ferociously.  "If it isn't Joe will chuck
+the Service.  They all will.  The pacifists can defend their own rotten
+country!"
+
+The Colonel moved into the consulting-room, where Mr. Trupp was
+burrowing short-sightedly into his Sunday paper.
+
+The old surgeon at least had no doubts.
+
+"We shall fight all right," he said comfortably.  "We must.  And Must's
+the only man who matters in real life."
+
+The Colonel felt immensely comforted.
+
+"But what a position my poor old party'd have been in now if our
+leaders hadn't queered the pitch!" he remarked.  "_We told you so_!
+_We told you so_!   How we _could_ have rubbed it in."
+
+"Thank God you can't," replied the other grimly.  "No party's got the
+chuckle over another.  So there's some hope that we may act as a
+country for once."
+
+Outside the Manor-house the Colonel met Mr. Pigott in his frock-coat on
+the way to chapel.  The two men had never spoken for years past except
+to spar.  Now in the presence of the common fear they stopped, and then
+shook hands.
+
+Mr. Pigott was a brave man, but there was no doubt he was shaken to the
+roots.
+
+"My God, Colonel!" he muttered.  "It's _awful_."
+
+"It don't look too pleasant," the old soldier admitted.
+
+"But we can't go in!" cried the old Nonconformist.  "It's no affair of
+ours.  Who _are_ the Serbs?"
+
+"It's go in or go under, I'm afraid," the other answered.  "That's the
+alternative."
+
+He dropped down Borough Lane past the _Star_.
+
+On the hill Edward Caspar ambling rapidly along with flying coat-tails
+caught him up.
+
+"Well, Mr. Caspar, what do _you_ think about it?" asked the Colonel.
+
+The old man emerged from his brown study and looked up with scared eyes
+through his gold spectacles.  He did not recognise the questioner: he
+never did--but he answered eagerly, and with wonderful firmness.
+
+"It's Love.  It can't be anything else."
+
+"I don't know.  War seems to me a funny sort of Love," the Colonel
+muttered.
+
+"What's that?" asked the other.
+
+"War," replied the Colonel.  "There's a great European war on."
+
+The old man, blind, puzzled, seeking, stopped dead.
+
+"War?" he said.  "What war's that?"
+
+The Colonel explained.
+
+"Austria's gone to war with Serbia.  Russia's chimed in.  Germany's
+having a go at Russia.  And France is rushing to the rescue of her
+ally.  Europe's ablaze from the Bay of Biscay to the Caucasus."
+
+Edward Caspar blinked at the road as he absorbed the news.  Then he
+gathered himself and went droning down the hill at increased speed with
+the erratic purposefulness of a great bumble-bee.  There was something
+lofty, almost majestic about his bearing.  In a moment he had increased
+in spiritual stature; and he was trying to straighten his rounded
+shoulders.
+
+"It must work itself out," he said emphatically.  "It's only an
+incident on the march.  We mustn't lose our sense of proportion.  We
+shall get there all the quicker in the end because of it."
+
+"We shall if we go this pace," muttered the Colonel, pretending to pant
+as they turned into the Moot.
+
+The Quaker meeting-house lay just in front of them, a group of staid
+figures at the door.  On their left was a row of cottages at the foot
+of the Church-crowned Kneb.  The door of one of them was open, and in
+it stood Ernie in his shirt-sleeves, towel in hand, scrubbing his head.
+A word passed between father and son; then the old man shuffled on his
+way.
+
+Ernie turned in a flash to the Colonel, who saw at once that here the
+miracle of sudden conversion had been at work.  This man who for months
+past had been growing always graver and more pre-occupied was suddenly
+gay.  A spring had been released; and a spirit had been tossed into the
+air.  He seemed on the bubble, like an eager horse tugging at its
+bridle.
+
+Now he held up a warning finger and moved down the road till he was out
+of ear-shot of his own cottage.
+
+"Have you worked it, sir?" he asked.  His question had reference to his
+conversation with the Colonel in Saffrons Croft the evening before, and
+in his keenness he was oblivious of the fact that nothing could have
+been achieved in the few brief hours that had elapsed since their last
+meeting.
+
+"I've written," replied the Colonel.  "You'll be wanted.  Every man who
+can stand on his hind-legs will.  That's what I came about: If you have
+to join up it'll punish your feet much less if you've done a bit of
+regular route-marching first.  Now I'm game to come along every evening
+and march with you.  Begin to-night.  Five to ten miles steady'd soon
+tell.  What about it?"
+
+"I'm at it, sir!" cried Ernie.  "Thank you kindly all the same.
+Started last night after we'd read the news.  There's a little bunch of
+us in Old Town--old sweats.  Marched to Friston, we did.  One hour's
+marching; ten minutes halt.  Auston to-night.  We'll soon work into it."
+
+"That's the style," said the Colonel.  "Are the other men keen?"
+
+Ernie grinned.
+
+"Oh, they're for it, if it's got to be," he said.
+
+"And Burt?--seen him?"
+
+"No sir, not yet.  But he's all right at heart, Joe is.  I'm expectin
+him round every minute."
+
+At the moment a thick-set man came swishing round the corner of Borough
+Lane on a bicycle.  His shoulders were hunched, and he was pedalling
+furiously.  The sweat shone on his face, which was red and set.  It was
+clear that he had come far and fast.  Seeing the two men in the road he
+flung off his bicycle and drew up beside them at a little pattering run.
+
+Out here under the beat of the sun the Colonel hardly recognised in
+this solid fellow, dark with purpose, the wavering lover of the cliff
+last night.  Was the change wrought in this man as by magic typical of
+a like change in the heart of the country?  The thought flashed into
+the Colonel's mind and brought him relief.
+
+The engineer, who was heaving, came straight to his point without a
+word, without a greeting.
+
+"Philip Blackburn's coomin down on the rush to address a great
+Stop-the-war meeting at the Salvation Army Citadel this afternoon," he
+panted.  "We must counter it.  A'm racin round to warn the boys to roll
+up.  You must be there, Colonel, and you, Ern, and all of you.  It's
+all out this time, and no mistake."
+
+The door behind the Colonel opened.  He turned to find Ruth standing in
+the door, drying her hands.
+
+Joe paid no heed, already sprawling over his bicycle as he pushed it
+off.
+
+"What time?" she called after him.
+
+"Two-thirty," he answered back, and was gone round the corner.
+
+"Right," she yodled.  "I'll be there."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+FOLLOW YOUR LEADER
+
+Philip Blackburn's meeting had not been advertised, for it was only in
+the small hours of the morning that a motor-bicyclist scaring the hares
+and herons in the marshes, had brought the news from Labour
+Headquarters that P.B. was bearing the Fiery Cross to Beachbourne in
+the course of a whirlwind pilgrimage of the Southern Counties.  But the
+hall was crammed.
+
+Philip Blackburn was a sure draw at any time.  A Labour M.P. and
+stalwart of the Independent Labour Party, it was often said that he was
+destined to be the Robespierre of the new movement.  Certainly he was
+an incorruptible.  A cripple from his youth, and a fanatic, with the
+face of a Savonarola, in the House and on the platform he asked no
+quarter and gave none.
+
+Half an hour later the dusty Ford car which bore the fighting pacifist
+was signalled panting down Stone Cross hill over the Levels: a
+half-hour the audience passed singing _God save the People_ and _The
+Red Flag_.
+
+A few minutes later he came limping on to the platform: a little man,
+of the black-coated proletariat obviously, with the face of a steel
+blade, keen and fine, and far-removed from the burly labour agitator,
+hoarse of voice, and raw of face, of a previous generation.  His
+reception was impressively quiet.  The man's personality, his courage,
+his errand, the occasion, awed even the most boisterous.
+
+He looked dead-beat, admitted as much, and apologised for being late.
+
+"You know where I come from (cheers) and where I'm bound for to-night.
+And you know what I've come about--_Is it Peace or War?_"
+
+And he launched straightway into that famous _Follow-your-leader_
+speech, the ghost of which in one form or another was to haunt the
+country, as the murdered albatross haunted the blood-guilty mariner,
+all through the war, and will haunt England for generations still after
+we are gone:--
+
+The danger long-preached was on them at last.  It must be faced and
+fought.  They must take a leaf out of Carson's book.  The Conservatives
+had shown the way: they must follow their leaders of the ruling class.
+They must dish the Government if it proposed to betray the country just
+as the Unionists had done--by persuading the Army not to fight.  They
+must undermine the _morale_ of the private soldiers--just as the Tories
+had undermined that of the officers.  They must have their agents in
+every barrack-room, their girls at every barrack-gate--just as the
+Tories had done.  The men must apply the sternest "disciplinary
+pressure" to scabs--just as the officers had done.  They must stop
+recruiting--as Garvin and the Yellow Press had advocated.  The famous
+doctrine of "optional obedience," newly introduced into the Army by
+Tory casuists, must be carried to its logical conclusion.  And if the
+worst came to the worst they must follow their leaders of the ruling
+class, arm, and "fight the fighters.  _Follow your leaders_--that is
+the word."
+
+He spoke with cold and bitter passion in almost a complete hush--a
+white-hot flame of a man burning straight and still on the altar of a
+packed cathedral.  Then he sank back into his chair, spent, his eyes
+closed, his face livid, his fine fingers twitching.  He had achieved
+that rarest triumph of the orator: beaten his audience into silence.
+
+The Colonel stood up against the wall at the back.  Peering over
+intervening heads he saw Joe Burt sitting in front.
+
+Then a voice at his ear, subdued and deep and vibrating, floated out on
+the hush as it were on silver wings.
+
+"Now, Joe!" it said, like a courser urging on a greyhound.
+
+There was a faint stir in the stillness: the eyes of the orator on the
+platform opened.  A chair scraped; the woman beside the Colonel sighed.
+There was some sporadic cheering, and an undercurrent of groans.
+
+Joe Burt rose to his feet slowly and with something of the solemn
+dignity of one rising from the dead.  Everybody present knew him;
+nobody challenged his right to speak.  A worker and a warrior, who had
+lived in the East-end for some years now, he had his following, and he
+had his enemies.  The moderate men were for him, the extremists had
+long marked him down as suspect--in with the capitalists--too fond of
+the classy class.  But they would hear him; for above all things he was
+that which the Englishman loves best in friend or enemy--a fighter.
+
+Standing there, thick-set and formidable as a bull, he began the speech
+of his life.
+
+"Two wrongs don't make a right.  Because the officers have sold the
+pass, are the men to do the same?"
+
+"Never!" came a shout from the back.  It was Ernie's voice.  The
+Colonel recognised it and thrilled.
+
+"We all know," continued the speaker, "that the gentry have put their
+coontry after their party.  It's for the People to show them the true
+road, and put Democracy before even their coontry."
+
+"Hear! hear!" from Philip Blackburn.
+
+The speaker was growing to his task, growing as it grew.
+
+"This is a great spiritual issue.  Are we to save our lives to lose
+them? or lose them to save them?  The People are in the Valley of
+Decision.  God and the Devil are standing on a mountain-top on either
+side the way crying--_Who is on my side?_"  His great voice went
+billowing through the hall, borne, it seemed, on some huge wind of the
+spirit.  He was holding the audience, carrying them.  The Colonel felt
+it: the man with the closed eyelids in the chair on the platform felt
+it too.
+
+"Jaures, the beloved leader of our cause in France, has already made
+his choice--the first man to fall for Democracy.  Shall he lie alone?"
+
+It was a dramatic touch, and told.
+
+"A have chosen ma part," the speaker went on more quietly.  "A loov ma
+coontry; but there's something greater even than the fate of the
+coontry hanging in the balance now.  Democracy's at stake!"
+
+A roar of applause greeted the remark.
+
+"It's the Emperors agin the People!"
+
+This time the roar was pierced by a shrill scream,
+
+"What about Russia?"
+
+The booming voice over-rode the interruption as a hurricane over-rides
+a blade of grass that stands in its track.
+
+"Look at little Serbia!--a handful of peasants standing up against a
+great militarist Empire.  Look at Belgium!--the most peaceful nation on
+God's earth about to be over-run by the Kaiser's hordes.  Look at
+France, the mother of Revolution, and the home of Democracy!--Could we
+forsake them now?"
+
+"Never!" in a growing thunder.
+
+"If so we forsook our own ideals, betrayed our past, turned our back on
+our future.  Yea.  The People must fight or perish."
+
+"He's got em," sobbed Ruth, her handkerchief tight in her mouth.  The
+Colonel could feel her trembling.
+
+"The question to ma mind," continued the speaker, "is not whether we
+_should_ fight, but whether the officers of the Army--who have failed
+us once, mind!--_will_ fight."
+
+The blow went home and hammered a few dissentients into silence.
+
+"If not then we must find our own officers--roosset-coated captains who
+know what they're fighting for, and love what they know."
+
+The words were lost in a hurricane of cheering.
+
+"And ma last word to you," ended the speaker, drawing the back of his
+hand across his mouth, "is much that of the Great Apostle--_Stand and
+Fight!_"  He flung the words at his audience with a power and a
+conviction that were overwhelming.
+
+A great bell was tolling in the Colonel's mind.
+
+"That's a great man," he found himself murmuring.
+
+"Aye, that's Joe," came the deep voice beside him.
+
+The heat, the crush, the tumult of sound, his own intense emotion
+proved almost too much for the Colonel.  He leaned against the wall
+with closed eyes, but there was joy in his heart.
+
+"Done it," he muttered.  "That was England speaking."  Then somebody
+led him out into the fresh air.
+
+"They're all right, sir," said a voice comfortably in his ear.  "Joe
+done the trick.  Grand he was."
+
+Some of the Labour extremists recognised him as he lolled against the
+wall, hat over his eyes, recalled his work for the National Service
+League, and gathered round for the worry.
+
+"That's him.--Militarist!--Brought the trouble on us!  He won't
+pay.--Leaves that for us to do!--Drunk as a lord!--On the blood of the
+workers."
+
+The Colonel heard the words, but paid no heed.  They fell on his mind
+like rain-drops on a sea which absorbs them unconsciously as it sways
+and drifts listlessly to and fro.
+
+Then another voice, familiar this time, and strangely fierce, clashed
+with those of his would-be persecutors.
+
+"None of it now!  Want one for yourself, do you?  Stand back there!
+Give him a chance to breathe!  Ought to be ashamed, some of you."
+
+The Colonel opened his eyes to find Ernie standing over him.
+
+"Ah, Caspar," he said faintly.
+
+Then Ruth came swiftly out of the dissipating crowd towards them.  She
+was flashing, glorious, with tumultuous bosom.  Swept by her emotion
+she forgot for the moment the undeclared war that was raging between
+this lean old man and herself: she did not even notice his distress.
+
+"He's such a battler, Joe is!" she cried.
+
+All that was combative in the Colonel rose desperately to grip and
+fight the same qualities in her.
+
+"He's not the only one," he said feebly, and musing with a vacuous
+smile on the strange medley of vast world-tragedy and tiny domestic
+drama sank slowly into unconsciousness, Ernie's arm about him, Ernie's
+kind face anxious above him.  "Watch it, Caspar!" he whispered.
+"Danger!"
+
+
+He came round slowly to hear voices wrangling above him.
+
+"I had to come to the meeting.  I promised Joe," the woman was saying.
+
+"What about the children?"
+
+There was silence: then the man went on with a cold sneer.
+
+"Little Alice, I suppose.  Little Alice got to do it all these days."
+
+"Little Alice is mine," the woman retorted.  "If you're not satisfied
+with the way your--"
+
+The Colonel sat up.
+
+"For God's sake!" he cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE END OF THE WORLD
+
+The next day was Bank Holiday; and such a holiday as no living man had
+known or would ever know again.  Half the world had already tumbled
+into hell; and the other half was poised breathless on the brink,
+awaiting the finger-push that should send it too roaring down to death.
+
+On that brilliant summer day nations crouched in the stubble like
+coveys of partridges beneath the shadow of some great hawk hovering far
+away in the blue.
+
+A silence like a cloud enveloped England.
+
+The tocsin was about to sound that was to call millions of rosy lads
+from their mothers, splendid youths from their girls, sober middle-aged
+men away from their accustomed place in church and chapel, from the
+office stool, from the warm companionable bed and the lovely music of
+children's voices, to strange destinies in unknown seas, on remote
+deserts, beside alien rivers; calling them in a voice that was not to
+be denied to lay their bones far from the village church-yard and the
+graves of innumerable ancestors, in rotting swamps, on sun-bleached
+mountains, with none to attend their obsequies save the nosing jackal
+and raw-necked vulture.
+
+Early in the morning the Colonel walked across to Old Town to see Bobby
+Chislehurst, and put the curb on him if possible; for the _Daily
+Citizen_ had come out with a full-page appeal to lovers of peace to
+attend an anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar-square.
+
+On his way the Colonel gleaned straws of news; and the gleaning was not
+hard.  The most reserved were expansive; the most exclusive sociable.
+For the moment all barriers of class were down.  By the time he had
+reached the _Star_ he was _au courant_ with all the happenings, local
+and general.
+
+The Archdeacon who, when he put his snuff-box aside, and took the
+gloves off, could be really moving, had from his hill thundered a
+magnificent call to arms--"purely pagan, of course."  Mr. Trupp, whom
+he met, told the Colonel, "but fine for all that."  Mr. Geddes in the
+plain had answered back in an appeal which had moved many to tears on
+behalf of Him, Whose sad face on the Cross looks down on This after the
+passion of a thousand years.
+
+The Fleet had gone to war-stations; the Territorials had been
+mobilised.  Haldane had returned to the War Office.
+
+As the Colonel dropped down the steep pitch to Church-street, under the
+chesnuts of the Manor-house garden, he met a couple of toddlers
+climbing the hill shepherded by an efficient little maiden of seven or
+eight, who smiled at him with familiar eyes.
+
+"Hullo, little Alice," he said.  "Where you off to so busily with your
+little flock?"
+
+"Saffrons Croft for the day--me and my little ones," she answered, not
+without a touch of self-importance.  "I got the dinner here.  Dad and
+Mother's taking baby a drive on the bus to see Granny at Auston."
+
+She turned and waved to her mother, who was standing at the top of
+Borough Lane with Ernie, amongst a little group opposite the _Star_,
+where was one of the char-a-bancs of the Touring Syndicate picking up
+passengers from the Moot.
+
+The Colonel walked down the hill towards them.  Ruth, seeing him
+approach, climbed to her place on the char-a-banc.  Ernie handed little
+Ned to her, and then turned to meet the Colonel.
+
+"Givin Alf the benefit," he said, with a grin.  "Backin the family and
+baptizin the bus.  Goin the long drive over the hill to Friston and
+Seaford; then up the valley to Auston.  Dinner there.  And home by
+Hailsham and Langney in the evening.--I wanted her to ask Joe.  But she
+wouldn't.  Fickle I call her."
+
+The Colonel glanced up; but Ruth steadfastly refused to meet his eye.
+
+"I suppose one wants the family to one-salf some-times, even a
+workin-woman doos," she muttered.
+
+And the Colonel saw that Ern had made his remark to show that the
+tension between him and his wife, so marked yesterday, had eased.
+
+"My wife's right," he thought.  "Caspar is a gentleman.  Blood _does_
+tell."
+
+Just then Alf came down the steps of the Manor-house opposite, looking
+smug and surly.  He crossed the road to the char-a-banc and said a word
+to the driver.
+
+Ruth leaned over, glad of the diversion.
+
+"Ain't you comin along then, Alf?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Caspar's my name," the Managing Director answered, never lifting his
+eyes to his tormentor.
+
+The young woman bent down roguishly, disregarding Ern's warning glances.
+
+"Not to your own sister, Alfie," she answered, demure and intimate.
+
+They were mostly Old Town folk on the char-a-banc, many from the Moot;
+and they all tittered, even the driver.
+
+Alf stood back in the road and said deliberately, searching with his
+eye the top of the bus.
+
+"Where is he, then?"
+
+Ern flashed round on him.
+
+"Who?"
+
+Alf sneered.
+
+"You!--You're only her husband!" and decamped swiftly.
+
+Ernie did not move.  He stood with folded arms, rather white, following
+his retreating brother with his eyes.  Then he said to the Colonel
+quietly,
+
+"Yes, sir.  That's Alf.  Now you know."
+
+"I'm beginning to," said the Colonel.
+
+"And time too," came Ruth's voice cold and quivering.
+
+
+In the cool of the evening the Colonel walked down Terminus Road.
+
+Outside the office of Caspar's Road-Touring Syndicate Alf was standing,
+awaiting the return of his argosies.  He was scanning the evening paper
+and still wore the injured and offended air of one who has a personal
+grievance against his Creator and means to get his own back some day.
+
+"Any news, sir?" he asked.
+
+The Colonel stopped.
+
+"Germany sent Belgium an ultimatum last night demanding right of way.
+And the King of Belgium took the field this morning."
+
+"Then he ought to be shot," snarled Alf.  "Provoking of em on, I call
+it."
+
+The Colonel walked on to the East-end, his eyes about him, and heart
+rising.
+
+The country was facing the situation with dignity and composure.
+
+The streets were thronged.  Everywhere men and women gathered in knots
+and talked.  There was no drunken-ness, no rioting, no Jingo
+manifestations--and that though it was August Bank Holiday.  The
+gravity of the situation had sobered all men.
+
+The Colonel passed on into Seagate to find the hero of Sunday
+afternoon's battle.
+
+Joe Burt stood in his shirt-sleeves in the door of his lodgings with
+folded arms and cocked chin.  His pipe was in his mouth and he was
+sucking at it fiercely with turned-in lips and inflated nostrils.
+
+The engineer was clearly on the defensive; the Colonel saw it at once
+and knew why.  On the main issue Joe had proved fatally, irretrievably
+wrong.  But he had been "on the platform" now for twenty years.  In
+other words he was a politician, and in the Colonel's view no
+politician ever admitted that he was wrong.  To cover his retreat he
+would almost certainly resort to the correct tactical principle of a
+counter-offensive.
+
+"That was a great speech of yours, Burt," the Colonel began.
+
+The engineer sucked and puffed unmoved.
+
+"We must fight," he said.  "There's no two ways about it.  The Emperors
+have asked for it; and they shall have it.  No more crowned heads!
+We've had enoof o yon truck!"
+
+In his elemental mood accent had coarsened, phrase become colloquial.
+He took his pipe from his mouth.
+
+"Sitha!--this'll be a fight to a finish atween the Old Order and the
+New--atween what you stand for and what A do."
+
+"And what do I stand for?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Imperialism--Capitalism--call it what you will.  It's the domination
+of the workers by brute force."
+
+The Colonel turned a quiet eye upon him.
+
+"Is that fair?" he asked.
+
+The engineer stuffed his pipe back into his mouth.
+
+"Happen not of you.  Of your class, yes."  He felt he had been on
+dangerous ground and came off it.  "_We_ shall fight because we must,"
+he said.  "What about you?"
+
+He was making a direct offensive now, and turned full face to his
+adversary.
+
+"Us?" asked the Colonel puzzled.
+
+"Yes," retorted the other.  "The officers of the Army?--shall you
+fight?"
+
+The Colonel looked away.
+
+Joe eyed him shrewdly.
+
+"Last time you were asked to, you refused," he remarked.  "Said you'd
+resign rather.  One General said if there was war he'd fight against
+England.  It was a piece in the _Daily Telegraph_.  A've got it pasted
+in ma Ammunition Book.  Coom in and see!"
+
+The Colonel did not move.
+
+"I think the officers will be there or thereabouts all right if the're
+wanted," he said.
+
+Joe appeared slightly mollified.
+
+"Well, you came out against the railway-men in 1911," he said.  "A will
+say that for you.  A wasn't sure you'd feel same gate when it coom to
+Emperors."
+
+They strolled back together to Pevensey Road; and for the first time
+the Colonel actively disliked the man at his side.  That wind of the
+spirit which had blown through the engineer yesterday purging him of
+his dross had passed on into the darkness.  To-day he was both
+politically dishonest and sexually unclean.
+
+In fact his life that had been rushing down the mountain like a spate
+with extraordinary speed and power, confined between narrow banks, just
+as it was emerging at the estuary into the sea had met suddenly the
+immense weight of the returning ocean-tide, advancing irresistible--to
+be swamped, diverted, turned back on itself.  This man once so strong,
+of single purpose, and not to be deflected from it by any human power,
+was now spiritually for all his bluff a tumbling mass of worry and
+confusion and dirty yellow foam....
+
+The pair had passed into the main thoroughfare.
+
+"What about that woman?" asked the Colonel moodily.
+
+Joe was chewing his pipe-stem.
+
+"What woman'll that be?"
+
+"Why the one you were talking about to me on Saturday night,--whether
+you should bolt with her or not."
+
+Joe halted on the kerb-stone and regarded the traffic imperturbably.
+
+"A know nowt o no such woman," he said.
+
+The Colonel glanced at him.  Just then he heard the sound of a horn and
+looking back saw one of the new motor-char-a-bancs of the Touring
+Syndicate returning crowded to the brim.  A man stood on the step with
+a horn and tootled.  Ernie sat in front with Ruth, the boy in her lap
+asleep against her breast.  The Colonel marked the strength and
+tranquillity of her pose, her arms clasped around the sleeping child.
+Father, mother, and child were profoundly at peace; one with each
+other, so it seemed to him, one with life.  Joe took his pipe out of
+his mouth and pointed with the stem.
+
+"Yon's her," he said, with stunning impudence.
+
+"I know that then," answered the Colonel.  "Your own friend's wife."
+
+Ernie who had seen Joe waved and winked and nudged Ruth.  She could not
+or would not see.  Joe waved back casually.  Then he turned to the
+Colonel with a Silenus-like twinkle, his little black eyes of a bear
+glittering.
+
+"He'll have to go now," he said, gurgling like an amused baby.
+
+The Colonel looked him in the eyes.  "Devil!" he said.
+
+The engineer peeped up at him with something of the chuckle of the
+young cuckoo.
+
+"Ah, don't you talk, Colonel!  I'm not the only one."
+
+"What you mean?" fiercely.
+
+"What you told me Saturday night."
+
+"I never betrayed my pal, whatever else."
+
+"You would ha done," remorselessly.  "Only you lost your nerve at the
+last moment.  That's nothing to boast on."
+
+The man's brazen cynicism revolted the Colonel.
+
+"Ah, you don't know me," he muttered.
+
+"A know maself," the other answered.  "And that's the same."
+
+The Colonel felt as feels a man who watches the casual immoralities of
+a big and jolly dog.  Then he came to himself and broke away, firing a
+last shot over his shoulder.
+
+"I suppose you'll wait till he has gone," he sneered.
+
+"A doubt," the other answered, cool and impudent to the last.
+
+The Colonel tramped home, sore at heart.
+
+Opposite the Wish he stumbled on Mr. Trupp, who brought him up with a
+jerk.
+
+"There's going to be a Coalition Government," the old surgeon told his
+friend.  "Lloyd George and the pacifists are leaving the Cabinet; and
+Smith and Carson and Bonar Law coming in."
+
+Just then Stanley Bessemere rushed by in a powerful car.  He waved to
+the two men, neither of whom would see him.
+
+"You know what he's after?" said Mr. Trupp.
+
+"What?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"Spreading it round that Haldane's holding up the Expeditionary Force."
+
+The Colonel struck the ground.
+
+"My God!" he cried.  "Party politics even at this hour!"
+
+The other shrugged.
+
+"They've got to find a scape goat or take it in the neck themselves,"
+he said.
+
+The Colonel walked home in the twilight along the deserted brick-walk,
+under the tamarisk bank stirring gracefully in the evening breeze.  At
+the extreme end of the bricks where a path climbs up a chalk-pit to
+Holywell he came on a tall dark solitary figure looking out over the
+sea.
+
+It was Mr. Geddes.
+
+The old soldier approached him quietly and touched his arm.
+
+"Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently.  "What you thinking of?"
+
+The tall man turned his fine face.
+
+"I was thinking about a carpenter," he said.
+
+"Of Nazareth?"
+
+"No, of Berlin.  Of Papa Schumacher and that boy Joseph, who was trying
+so hard to be an English sport--and black-eyed Joanna and the old
+Mutter."
+
+The Colonel swallowed.
+
+"Let's shake hands, Geddes," he said.
+
+"With all my heart, Colonel," the other answered.
+
+Then the old soldier went up the slope laboriously, his hands upon his
+knees.
+
+His wife was waiting him on the cliff, a little figure, distinguished
+even in the dusk, about her shoulders the scarlet cape that had been
+the gift of a Rajput Princess.
+
+"I pray it will be all right," he said.
+
+"I pray so," the little lady answered.
+
+War meant ruin for her and the destruction of all her hopes for
+Toby.--And her own Jock!--but she never wavered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE COLONEL
+
+That night Sir Edward Grey made the historic speech, which swung the
+nation into line like one man, and launched Great Britain on the
+supreme adventure of her history.
+
+_The one bright spot in the situation is Ireland._
+
+Redmond had followed in a speech which filled the Colonel's eyes with
+tears and his heart with gladness as he read it next morning, so
+generous it was, so chivalrous.
+
+_I say to the Government they may withdraw every one of their troops
+from Ireland.  Ireland will be defended by her armed sons from
+invasion, and for that purpose Catholics in the South will join the
+Protestants in the North._
+
+The Colonel paced to and fro on his lawns, the paper flapping in his
+hand.
+
+Not even the spectacle of Carson, sulking in his tent, and answering
+never a word to his opponent's magnanimous appeal, could mar that
+vision splendid.
+
+All day long the Colonel never left his garden, hovering round the
+telephone.  Anything might happen at any moment.
+
+Then news came through.
+
+The Government had sent Germany an ultimatum.  If she failed to give us
+an assurance before 11 p.m. that she would not violate the neutrality
+of Belgium, England would go to war.
+
+The Colonel sighed his thankfulness.
+
+All day he quarter-decked up and down the loggia, Zeiss glasses in
+hand.  His telescope he arranged on the tripod on the lawn, and with it
+swept earth and sky and sea.  Towards evening he marked a bevy of men
+swing round the shoulder of the hill from Meads into the coombe.  They
+were in mufti, and not in military formation; but they marched, he
+noted, and kept some sort of order, moving rhythmically, restrained as
+a pack of hounds on the way to the meet, and yet with riot in their
+hearts.  He turned the telescope full on them, marked Ernie among them,
+and knew them forthwith for the Reservists from Old Town training for
+_IT_.  A wave of emotion surged through him.  He went down to the fence
+and stood there with folded arms, and high head, his sparse locks grey
+in the evening light, watching them go by.  Then he saluted.
+
+They saw the old soldier standing bare-headed at the fence, recognised
+him, and shouted a greeting.
+
+"Good-evening, sir."
+
+"That's the style!" he cried gruffly.  "Getting down to it."
+
+Then Ernie broke away and came across the grass to him at the double,
+grinning broadly, and gay as a boy.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Old Town Troop we call ourselves.  Long march to-night.
+Through Birling Gap to the Haven and home over Windhover about
+midnight.  What I stepped across to say, sir, was I'm thinkin Ruth'd
+better stay where she is for the time being--if it's all the same to
+you, sir; and not move to the garage."
+
+"As you like," replied the Colonel.  "Undercliff's the most exposed
+house in Beachbourne--that's certain.  If there's trouble from the sea
+we shall catch it; or if their Zeppelins bomb the signalling station on
+the Head some of it may come our way."
+
+Ernie looked shy.
+
+"That little turn-up with Alf in the road yesterday, sir," he said
+confidentially.  "I was glad you was there."  He came forward
+stealthily.  "See, I know what you thought, sir.  It's not Joe after
+her.  It's Alf--always has been; from before we married.  Joe's all
+right."
+
+The Colonel stared grimly over the sea.
+
+"I think you're wrong," he said.
+
+"Then I know I'm not, sir," Ernie flashed.
+
+
+The Colonel returned to his watch.
+
+That night he did not go to bed.  Instead he sat up in his pyjamas in
+the corner-room that looked out over the sea, and on to Beau-nez.  If
+we went in the news would be flashed at once to the coastguard on the
+Head; and the petty officer on duty up there had promised to signal it
+down to the house in the coombe beneath.
+
+The Colonel watched and waited.
+
+The window was open.  It was a still and brilliant night.  He could
+hear the fall, and swish, and drone of the sea, rhythmical and
+recurrent, at the foot of the cliff.  From the crest of the hill behind
+the house came the occasional tinkle of the canister-bell of some old
+wether of the flock.
+
+Then the silence was disturbed by a growing tumult in the darkness.
+
+A squadron of destroyers was thrashing furiously round the Head, not a
+light showing, close inshore, too, only an occasional smudge of white
+in the darkness revealing their position and the feather of foam they
+bore along like a plume before them.
+
+Out of the darkness they came at a speed incredible, and into the
+darkness they were gone once more like a flash.
+
+The Colonel breathed again.
+
+At least the Navy was ready, thanks to Churchill.
+
+Was the Army?
+
+He recalled a remark reported to him as having been made at a P.S.A. in
+the East-end some weeks since: that the Army no longer trusted its
+officers, and the country no longer trusted its Army.  Could it be true?
+
+His thoughts turned with passionate sympathy to Gough and the simple
+regimental officers who had been lured by politicians into the dreadful
+business of the Army Conspiracy.  But that other feller!--that yappin
+chap at the War Office, who ought to have known better! ...
+
+Away on the crest of Beau-nez, humping a huge black back against the
+brilliant darkness, someone was swinging a lantern--once, twice.
+
+The Colonel flashed his electric torch in answer.
+
+The gaunt figure at the window turned.
+
+"Rachel," he said low, to the woman in the bed beneath him.
+
+"Jocko," came the answering voice, quiet as his own.
+
+"We're going in."
+
+"Thank God."
+
+In the darkness she reached up arms, white and trembling as a bride's,
+and drew him to her.
+
+He kissed her eyelids and found them wet.
+
+"I can't help it, Jocko," she sobbed.  "Jock!"
+
+Her boy was in India with the second battalion; but she knew very well
+that now the crash had come every battalion in the Service would be
+flung into the furnace.
+
+The Colonel went back to the window and she came to his side.  His arm
+crept about her, and she trembled in the curve of it.  A mild but
+ghastly beam, as of the moon, fell on them standing at the window.  A
+battleship was playing its searchlight full on them.  The cold wan beam
+roamed along the hill-side callous and impersonal, exposing every bush
+and scar.  It fell on the white bluff of Beau-nez and came creeping,
+like the fingers of a leper, along the cliff.  Just opposite the
+hostel, at the spot where the path ran down to the beach, it stayed,
+pointing as it were, at a little pillar of solid blackness erect on the
+cliff edge.
+
+The Colonel caught his breath with a gasp.
+
+"Don't look!" he cried sharply and snatched his wife away.  As he did
+so the pillar broke up in two component parts, as though dissolved by
+the white encircling flood of light.
+
+A woman's stifled scream came through the open window.
+
+"Joe!"
+
+Then there was a slither of chalk as the pair stampeded down the path
+out of sight, and crashed into the beach beneath.  The Colonel let down
+the blind with a rattle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT
+
+Ernie clattered into the kitchen at a busy trot, and stumbled upstairs
+without a word to his wife at the sink.
+
+There was such an air of stir and secret purposefulness about him that
+Ruth followed him up to the bedroom.  There she found him on his knees
+in a litter of things, packing a bundle frantically.
+
+A dish-cloth in her hand, she watched his efforts.
+
+"Where away then?" she asked.
+
+"Berlin this journey.  Hand me them socks!"
+
+Her eyes leapt.  "Is it war?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+She sat down ghastly, wrapping her hands in her apron as if they had
+been mutilated and she wished to hide the stumps.
+
+
+Men abuse the Army when they are in it and take their discharge at the
+earliest possible moment; but when the call comes they down tools with
+avidity, and leaving the mill, the mine, the shunting yard, and the
+shop, they troop back to the colours with the lyrical enthusiasm of
+those who have re-discovered youth on the threshhold of middle-age.
+
+Ern, you may be sure, was no exception to the rule.
+
+Packing and unpacking his bundle on his knees, he was busy, happy,
+important.  But there was no such desperate hurry after all: for he did
+not join the crowds which thronged the recruiting stations in those
+first days: he waited for the Colonel to arrange matters so that he
+could join his old battalion at Aldershot direct.
+
+Ruth watched him with deep and jealously guarded eyes in which
+wistfulness and other disturbing emotions met and mingled.
+
+Once only she put to him the master question.
+
+"What about us, Ern?"
+
+He was standing at the time contemplating the patient and tormented
+bundle.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Me and the children."
+
+"There's one Above," said Ernie.  "He'll see to you."
+
+"He don't most in general not from what I've seen of it," answered
+Ruth.  "What if He don't?"
+
+There was a moment's pause.  Then Ern dropped a word as a child may
+drop a stone in a well.
+
+"Joe."
+
+Ruth caught her breath.
+
+In those days Ernie grew on her as a mountain looming out of the
+dawn-mist grows on the onlooker.  Joe did not even come to see her; and
+she was glad.  For all his virility and bull-like quality, now that the
+day of battle had come, Ern was proving spiritually the bigger man.
+
+And his very absorbtion in the new venture appealed to Ruth even while
+it wounded.  Ern had been "called" as surely as Clem Woolgar, the
+bricklayer's labourer, her neighbour in the Moot, who testified every
+Sunday afternoon in a scarlet jersey at the _Star_ corner to the clash
+of cymbals.  Clem it was true, spoke of his call as Christ; to Ernie it
+went by the name of country.  In Ruth's view the name might differ but
+the Thing was the same.  A voice had come to Ern which had spoken to
+him as she had not, as the children had not.  Because of it he was a
+new man--"converted," as Clem would say, prepared to forsake father and
+mother, and wife, and child, and follow, follow.
+
+England was calling; and he seemed deaf to every other voice.  She
+seemed to have gone clean out of his life; but the children had
+not--she noticed it with a pang of jealousy and a throb of hope.  For
+each of the remaining nights after dark, he went round their cots.  She
+was not to know anything about that, she could see, from the stealthy
+way in which he stole upstairs when her back was supposed to be turned.
+But the noises in the room overhead, the murmur of his voice, the
+shuffling of his feet as he got up from the bedsides betrayed his every
+action.
+
+On the third night, as he rejoined her, she rose before him in the
+dusk, laying down her work.
+
+"Anything for me too, Ern," she asked humbly--"the mother of em?"
+
+"What d'you mean?" he asked almost fiercely.
+
+"D'you want me, Ern?"
+
+He turned his back on her with an indifference that hurt far more than
+any brutality, because it signified so plainly that he did not care.
+
+"You're all right," he said enigmatically, and went out.
+
+He could ask anything of her now, and she would give him all, how
+gladly!  But he asked nothing.
+
+In another way, too, he was torturing her.  It was clear to her that he
+meant to do his duty by her and the children--to the last ounce; and
+nothing more.  He cared for their material wants as he had never done
+before.  All his spare moments he spent handying about the house,
+hammer in hand, nails in mouth, doing little jobs he had long promised
+to do and had forgotten; putting little Ned's mail-cart to rights,
+screwing on a handle, setting a loose slate.  She followed him about
+with wistful eyes, holding the hammer, steadying the ladder, and
+receiving in return a few off-hand words of thanks.  She did not want
+words: she wanted him--himself.
+
+Then news came through, and he was straightway full of mystery and
+bustle.
+
+"Join at Aldershot to-morrow.  Special train at two," he told Ruth in
+the confidential whisper beloved of working-men.  "Don't say nothing to
+nobody."  As though the news, if it reached the Kaiser, would
+profoundly affect the movements of the German armies.
+
+That evening Ernie went up to the Manor-house to say good-bye.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was far more to him than his god-mother: she was a friend
+known to him from babyhood, allied to him by a thousand intimate ties,
+and trusted as he trusted no one else on earth, not even his dad.
+
+Now he unbosomed to her the one matter that was worrying him on his
+departure--that he should be leaving Ruth encumbered with debt.
+
+Mrs. Trupp met him with steady eyes.  It was her first duty, the first
+duty of every man, woman and child in the nation to see that the
+fighting-men went off in good heart.
+
+"You needn't worry about Ruth," she said, quietly.  "She'll have the
+country behind her.  All the soldiers' wives will."
+
+Ernie shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"Ah, I don't hold much by the country," he said.
+
+The lady's grave face, silver-crowned, twinkled into sudden mischievous
+life.  She rippled off into the delicious laughter he loved so dearly.
+
+"I know who's been talking to you!" she cried.
+
+Ernie grinned sheepishly.
+
+"Who then?"
+
+"Mr. Burt."
+
+Ernie admitted the charge.
+
+"If you don't trust the country, will you trust Mr. Trupp and me?" the
+other continued.
+
+Ernie rose with a sigh of relief.
+
+"Thank you kindly, 'm," he said.  "That's what I come after."
+
+
+Ernie went on to Rectory Walk, to find that his mother too had joined
+the crucified.  In the maelstrom of emotion that in those tragic hours
+was tossing nations and individuals this way and that, the hard woman
+had been humbled at last.  Stripped to the soul, she saw herself a twig
+hurled about in the sea of circumstance she could no more control than
+a toy-boat a-float on the Atlantic can order the tides.  No longer an
+isolated atom hard and self-contained, she was one of a herd of
+bleating sheep being driven by a remorseless butcher to the
+slaughter-house.  And the first question she put to him revealed the
+extent of the change that had been wrought in her.
+
+"What about Ruth?" she asked.
+
+It was the only occasion on which his mother had named his wife to Ern
+during his married life.
+
+"She's all right, mother," Ernie replied.  "She's plenty of friends."
+
+"Mrs. Trupp," jealously.  "Well, why don't ye say so?  What about the
+children?"
+
+"They'll just stay with their mother," answered Ernie.
+
+"I could have em here if she was to want to go out to work," Anne said
+grudgingly; and must add, instigated by the devil who dogged her all
+her life--"Your children, of course."
+
+Ernie answered quite simply:
+
+"No, thank-you, mother," and continued with unconscious
+dignity--"They're all my children."
+
+A gleam of cruelty shone in his mother's eyes.
+
+"She's behind with her rent.  You know that?  And Alf's short.  He says
+he's dropped thousands over his Syndicate.  Ruined in his country's
+cause, Alf says."
+
+"If he's dropped thousands a few shillings more or less won't help
+him," said Ernie curtly.
+
+"And yet he'll want em," Anne pursued maliciously.  "He was sayin so
+only last night.  _Every penny_, he said."
+
+"He may want," retorted Ernie.  "He won't get."
+
+His mother made a little grimace.
+
+"If Alf wants a thing he usually gets it."
+
+Ernie flashed white.
+
+"Ah," he said.  "We'll see what dad says."
+
+It was a new move in the family game, and unexpected.  Anne was
+completely taken a-back.  She felt that Ernie was not playing fair.
+There had always been an unwritten family law, inscribed by the mother
+on the minds of the two boys in suggestible infancy, that dad should be
+left outside all broils and controversies; that dad should be spared
+unpleasantness, and protected at any cost.
+
+She was shocked, almost to pleading.
+
+"You'd never tell him!"
+
+"He's the very one I would tell then!" retorted Ernie, rejoicing in his
+newly-discovered vein of brutality.
+
+"Only worry him," she coaxed.
+
+"He ain't the only one," Ern answered.  "I'm fairly up against it,
+too."  Grinning quietly at his victory, he turned down the passage to
+the study.
+
+His father was sitting in his favourite spot under the picture of his
+ancestor, watching the tree-tops blowing in the Rectory garden
+opposite.  The familiar brown-paper-clad New Testament was on his knee.
+
+Ernie marked at once that here was the one tranquil spirit he had met
+since the declaration of war.  And this was not the calm of stagnation.
+Rather it was the intense quiet of the wheel which revolves so swiftly
+that it appears to be still.
+
+He drew his chair beside his father's.
+
+"What d'you make of it all, dad?" he asked gently.
+
+The old man took his thumb out of his New Testament, and laid his hand
+upon his son's.
+
+"_And behold there was a great earthquake,_" he quoted.  "_For the
+Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the
+stone from the door of the Tomb._"
+
+Ernie nodded thoughtfully.  For the first time perhaps the awful
+solemnity of the drama in which he was about to play his part came home
+to him in all its overwhelming power.
+
+"Yes, dad," he said deeply.  "Only I reck'n it took some rolling."
+
+The old man gripped and kneaded the hand in his just as Ruth would do
+in moments of stress.
+
+"True, Boy-lad," he answered.  "But it had to be rolled away before the
+Lord could rise."
+
+Ernie assented.
+
+Hand-in-hand they sat together for some while.  Then Ernie rose to go.
+In the silence and dusk father and son stood together on the very spot
+where fourteen years before they had said good-bye on Ernie's departure
+for the Army.  The Edward Caspar of those days was old now; and the boy
+of that date a matured man, scarred already by the wars of Time.
+
+"It won't be easy rolling back the stone, Boy-lad," said the old man.
+"But they that are for us are more than they that are against us."
+
+It was not often that Ernie misunderstood his father; but he did now.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "And they say the Italians are coming in too."
+
+"The whole world must come in," replied the other, his cheeks rosying
+faintly with an enthusiasm which made him tremble.  "And we must all
+push together."  He made a motion with his hand--"English and Germans,
+Russians and Austrians, and roll it back, back, back! and topple it
+over into the abyss.  And then the Dawn will break on the risen Lord."
+
+Ernie went out into the passage.  His mother in the kitchen was waiting
+for him.  She looked almost forlorn, he noticed.
+
+"Give me a kiss, Ern," she pleaded in sullen voice that quavered a
+little.  "Don't let's part un-friends just now--you and me--After all,
+you're my first."
+
+Ernie's eyes filled.  He took her in his arms, this withered old woman,
+patted her on the back, kissed her white hair, her tired eyelids.
+
+"There!" he said.  "I should knaw you arter all these years, Mum.
+Always making yourself twice the terror you are--and not meaning it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+BEAU-NEZ
+
+He returned to the Moot to find little Alice crying in the door.  A
+pathetic little shrimp of a creature she looked, huddled against the
+door-post, her face hidden, her shoulders quivering, her back to the
+hostile world.  Some children who had been mocking her drew away on
+Ernie's approach.
+
+"What's up, Lal?" he asked tenderly, bending over her.
+
+She would not look up.
+
+"It's nothing, daddy," she sobbed and crept away up the street, like a
+wounded animal.
+
+Ernie went in.  Ruth was sitting alone in the kitchen forlorn and
+wistful as he had never known her.  It was clear to him that the
+sorrow, whatever it might be, was shared by mother and daughter.  He
+watched her quietly for a minute; then came to her.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he asked with unusual gentleness.
+
+His tone touched the spring of tears in her heart.  She bit her lip.
+
+"Its Alf," she said with gasps.  "He's been settin em on to her
+again...  He's spiteful because the war's spoilt his Syndicate...  So
+he takes it out of her...  They've been tormenting her...  Only she
+wouldn't tell you because she wanted your last day to be happy."
+
+Ern went out, found little Alice once again in the door, her pinafore
+still to her eyes, took her up in his arms and put her in her mother's
+lap.
+
+"Love one another," he said huskily.  "And don't forget me."
+
+Then he went out again, burning his battle-flare.
+
+In half an hour he was back with Joe Burt.
+
+There was a strange hushed dignity about him as he entered the kitchen.
+He might have been a priest about to conduct a ceremony at the altar of
+the Most High.  Joe lagged behind sullen and with downward eyes,
+twisting his cap.  Somehow he looked strangely common beside his
+friend.  Ruth, as she rose to meet the two men, was profoundly
+conscious of the contrast between them.
+
+"Joe," said Ernie, still and solemn, "I bequeath Ruth to you..."
+
+In a flash the woman seized the situation.
+
+"--to have and to hold," she murmured quietly, her head down to stifle
+sobs and laughter.
+
+Ernie with that love of ritual which characterises his class continued
+with the smile-less intensity of a child.
+
+"Yes, to have and to hold ... her and her children ... for me ... till
+I return."
+
+Joe was obviously staggered.  His eyes roved the floor; his head weaved
+to and fro.
+
+"Here, I didn't bargain for this," he muttered.
+
+Ruth thrust out her hand almost sternly, as though to silence him.  He
+took it grudgingly, and then Ern's.
+
+"A suppose A'll do ma best," he said, and slouched out hasty as a
+schoolboy escaping from the schoolroom.
+
+When he was gone Ruth laid both hands on Ernie's shoulders and looked
+at him her eyes dazzled with laughter and tears.
+
+"You should never ha done it, Ern!" she said.  "Never!"
+
+"There was nothing for it only that," Ern answered sturdily.  "It's a
+world of wolves.  Somebody must see to you while I'm away."
+
+She withdrew her hands and stood before him, defenceless now, humble,
+beautiful, appealing.
+
+"Ern," she said with a little sob, "will you take me up along to the
+Ambush--our last night and all?"
+
+He looked at her steadily.  Then he caught her hand.
+
+"All right, old lass," he said.
+
+They had not visited their couching-place that summer and the romance
+of old and intimate association was on them both now as they came to
+the tryst in the scented dusk.  The gorse, unpruned, had grown over the
+track that led to the heart of the covert.  Ernie forced his way
+through, Ruth following him, anchored jealously to his hand.  Behind
+her the bushes closed, blocking the way; and she was glad.  Her eyes
+were on the shoulders of her man, wistful still but triumphant; and she
+found herself smiling secretly as she marked how bride-like she felt,
+how warm and shy and tremulous.  In this great hour the tides of her
+ebbing youth had returned with power and the desert bloomed afresh.
+The world-catastrophe had wrought a miracle.  Spring had quickened the
+stale summer air.  Here at the parched noon was a hint of dawn,
+dew-drenched and lovely.
+
+Waist-deep in the dark covert, the man and woman stood on the summit of
+the hill, under the sky, the sea spread like a dulled shield beneath
+them.
+
+It was already nine o'clock; a perfect evening of that
+never-to-be-forgotten August.  The sun had long gone down behind the
+Seven Sisters.  In Paradise a nightjar was thrumming harshly.  Below in
+the coombe the lights of Undercliff began to twinkle.  On the Head
+Brangwyn-like figures were moving heavily.  A night-shift was working
+there behind windy flares, screened by tarpaulins from enemy eyes at
+sea.  Ernie knew what they were doing.
+
+"They're building a battery to protect the new wireless station against
+aircraft attack," he told Ruth.  "That dark thing in the road's a
+fire-engine to dowse the flares if a night attack's made."
+
+Then above the noise of the navvies busy with pick and shovel, and the
+pleasant gargle of the night-jar, blended another sound.  A hollow
+ominous rumbling like the voice of a great ghost laughing harshly in
+his grave came rolling across the sea out of the darkness.
+
+"Guns," said Ernie.  "They're at it in the Bight."
+
+Ruth drew closer and took his arm.  One finger was to her lips.  She
+was a little bit afraid.  He felt it, and pressed her arm.
+
+From the distance, muffled by the shoulder of the hill, came the
+hammer-hammer that would endure all night of the emergency gangs,
+rushed down in special trains from the North, to run up a huge camp in
+the great coombe at the end of Rectory Walk where of old lambs had
+often roused Ernie as a lad on bleak March mornings by their forlorn
+music of spirits exiled and crying for home.
+
+He stood and looked and listened.
+
+"Who'd ever ha beleft it'd ha come to this when we first lay out here
+six years ago?" he mused.
+
+"Or now for that matter," answered Ruth, her voice deep and hushed as
+the evening.  "All so good and quiet as it looks."
+
+She pulled him down into the darkness of the covert.
+
+"D'is safer here, I reck'n," she said, and nuzzled up against him.
+
+Ernie peeped though the gorse at the lights flickering on the Head.
+
+"They ca-a-n't see us here," he said.
+
+"And a good job, too, I reck'n," answered Ruth sedately, fingering her
+hair.
+
+Ernie chuckled.
+
+"Listen!" he said.
+
+They sat close in their ambush, walled about with prickly darkness,
+roofed in by the living night.
+
+Beneath them the sea came and went, rose and fell, rhythmical and
+somnolent, as it had done in the days when badger and wolf and bear
+roamed the hill, with none to contest their sovereignty but the hoary
+old sea-eagle from the cliffs; as it might still do when man had long
+passed away.  Sounds ancient almost as the earth on which they lay,
+which had lulled them and millions of their forefathers to sleep, were
+crossed by others, new, man-made, discordant.
+
+Down the road at the back of the covert, not a hundred yards away, came
+a sudden bustling phut-phut-phut.
+
+"Despatch-rider," said Ernie, peering.  "Light out and all.  Rushin it
+to Birling Gap.  There's a company of Territorials there, diggin
+emselves in behind barbed wire to guard the deep-sea cables."
+
+"The Boy-Scouts were layin out all day on the road to Friston, Mr.
+Chislehurst told me," remarked Ruth.  "They took the number of every
+motor and motor-bike on the road to Newhaven."
+
+She unloosed her hair that fell about her like a torrent of darkness.
+
+A huge beetle twanged by above them; and then in the covert close at
+hand there was a snuffling and grunting, so loud, so close, so
+portentous that Ruth, creature of the earth though she was, was
+startled and paused in her undoing.
+
+"What-ever's that?" she asked, laying a hand on Ernie.
+
+"Hedge-pig, I allow."
+
+"Sounds like it might be a wild boar routin and snoutin and carryin
+on," she laughed.
+
+Ruth reclined on the bed of sand.  The calm blessedness of night
+embraced her; and the stars lay on her face.  She lifted her lips to
+them, seeming to draw them down with each breath, and blow them away
+again, babe-like.  A dreamy amazement still possessed her.
+
+"Who'd ever ha beleft it?" she said quietly.
+
+Then she turned her face to him and laughed.
+
+"Ernie!" she called.
+
+"Whose are you now?" he said fiercely in her ear.
+
+She chuckled and gathered him to her bosom.
+
+He sighed his content.
+
+"That's better," he murmured.  "Now, never no more of it!"
+
+A great mate, Ruth was a still greater mother; and this living, pulsing
+creature in her arms was her child, her first-born cub.
+
+In the stress and conflict of the last few years necessity had
+compelled her to discard the royal indolence that was her natural
+habit.  The lioness in her, roused by conflict, had made her fierce and
+formidable in any battle.  Six months ago she had fought Ernie--because
+he was weak; now she would shield him--because he was strong.
+
+Jealously she pressed him to her.
+
+"They shan't get you, my lad," she said between her teeth.  "I'll see
+to that."
+
+"I'm not afraid o them," answered Ernie drowsily.  "I knaw the Germans.
+All you got to do is to say Shoo!--and goo with your arms and they're
+off like rabbits from the garden."
+
+She thrust his head back till she saw it as a dim blob against the
+shining night; and looked up into his eyes, her own so close to his, so
+deep, so dear.
+
+"You're my soldier," she murmured in his ear.  "I always knew you was."
+
+Then she drew his face down to hers, till their lips met.
+
+"I got something to tell you, Ern."
+
+Now she leaned over him.  The moon shone on the smooth sweep of her
+shoulders, rounded and luminous.
+
+"I only deceived you the once, Ern," she whispered, her voice murmuring
+like a stream that issued from the slowly-heaving ocean of her chest.
+"Afore we were married.  He ne'er wrote me ne'er a letter."
+
+"I knew that then," muttered Ernie, sleepily, his head beside her own.
+
+"It was Madame," Ruth continued.  "She come over in a car and told the
+tale."
+
+Her confession made she waited; but in a moment his breathing told her
+that he had fallen off to sleep.
+
+She stroked him rhythmically, just as she would her children when they
+were tired.
+
+He was going back to the regiment--to Captain Royal--to the Unknown.
+She was not afraid for him--nor for herself--nor for the children.  An
+immense peace had fallen on her.
+
+Then all about her a murmur as of wings grew.  There was a whispering
+patter as of rain upon the turf that ringed the covert; but no rain
+fell.  Through the patter came the tinkle of a bell.  An immense flock
+of sheep was rippling dimly like a flood over the parched turf to the
+dew-pond by the old wall on the brow.  The whisper grew louder, as
+though the rain had turned to hail.  The flock was crossing the road.
+Then there was almost a silence, and in the silence the leader
+ba-a-a-d.  The flock had reached the waters of refreshing.
+
+Ruth slept, strangely comforted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE STATION
+
+Next day Ernie was to join up.
+
+After dinner he kissed Susie and Jenny, gave them each a penny, and
+despatched them to play.  Hand in hand they stamped away to Motcombe
+Garden with clacking heels, roguish backward glances and merry tongues.
+
+Then he asked Ruth to go into the backyard.  Left alone with Alice he
+lifted her on to the kitchen-table, took her hands in his, and looked
+gravely into her eyes.
+
+"I trust you to look after mother and the little ones when I'm gone,
+Lal," he said.
+
+The little maid, swift and sympathetic as her mother, nodded at him,
+nibbling her handkerchief, her heart too full for words.  Then she
+raised her crumpled face, that at the moment was so like her mother's,
+for a last kiss, and as she wreathed her arms round his neck she
+whispered,
+
+"You are my daddy, aren't you, daddy?"
+
+"Of course I am," he murmured, and lifted her down.
+
+She ran away swiftly, not trusting herself to look back.
+
+A moment later Ruth entered the kitchen, slowly and with downcast eyes.
+He was standing before the fire, awaiting her.
+
+"Ruth," he said quietly.  "I've tried to do well by your child; I'll
+ask you to do the same by mine."
+
+She came to him and hung about his neck, riven with sobs, her head on
+his shoulder.
+
+"O Ern!" she cried.  "And is that your last word to me?"
+
+She lifted anguished eyes to him and clung to him.
+
+"I love them all just the same, only we been through so much together,
+she and me.  That's where it is."
+
+His arms were about her and he was stroking her.
+
+"I knaw that then," he said, husky himself.
+
+"See, they got you and each other and all the world," Ruth continued.
+"Little Alice got nobody only her mother."
+
+"And me," said Ernie.
+
+She steadied and drew her hand across rain-blurred eyes.
+
+"Ern," she said, deeply.  "I do thank you for all your lovin kindness
+to that child.  I've never forgot that all through--whatever it seemed."
+
+"She's mine just as well as yours," he answered, smiling and uncertain.
+"Always has been.  Always will be."
+
+She pressed her lips on his with a passion that amazed him.
+
+Then he took the boy from the cot and rocked him.  The tears poured
+down his face.  This, then, was War!--All his light-heartedness, his
+detachment, had gone.  He was a husband and a father torn brutally away
+from the warmth and tenderness of the home that was so dear to him, to
+be tossed into the arena among wild beasts who not long since had been
+men just like himself, and would be men still but for the evil power of
+their masters to do by them as his masters had done by him.  Then he
+put the child back and turned to say good-bye to Ruth.
+
+The passionate wife of a few minutes since had changed now into the
+mother parting from her schoolboy.  She took him to her heart and
+hugged him.
+
+"You'll be back before you know," she told him, cooing, comforting,
+laughing through her tears.  "They all say it'll be over soon, whatever
+else.  A great war like this ca'an't go on.  Too much of it, like."
+
+"Please God, so," said Ernie.  "It's going to be the beginning of a new
+life for me--for you--for all of us, as Joe says....  God keep you till
+we meet again."
+
+Then he walked swiftly down the street with swimming eyes.
+
+The neighbours, who were all fond of Ern, stood in their doors and
+watched him solemnly.
+
+He was going into _IT_.
+
+Like as not they would never see him again.
+
+Many of the women had handkerchieves to their lips, as they watched,
+and over the handkerchieves their eyes showed awed.  Some turned away,
+hands to their hearts.  Others munched their aprons and wept.  A
+mysterious rumour in the deeps of them warned them of the horror that
+had him and them and the world in its grip.
+
+They could not understand, but they could feel.
+
+And this working man with the uncertain mouth and blurred eyes--this
+man whose walk, whose speech, whose coal-grimed face, and the smell
+even of his tarry clothes, was so familiar to them--was the symbol of
+it all.
+
+A big navvy came sheepishly out of the last house in the row and
+stopped him.  It was the man who had insulted Ernie in the _Star_ six
+months before.
+
+"I ask your pardon, Ern," he said.  "I didn't mean what I said."
+
+Ern shook hands.  Years before the two had been at school together
+under Mr. Pigott.
+
+"It wasn't you, Reube," he said.  "I knaw who spread the dung you
+rolled in."
+
+"I shan't be caught again," replied the other.  "That's a sure thing."
+
+Ern jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
+
+"Keep an eye to her!" he whispered.
+
+"You may lay to it," the big man answered.
+
+At the corner a young girl of perhaps fifteen ran out suddenly, flung
+herself into his arms, kissed him, with blind face lifted to the sky,
+and was gone again.
+
+At the bottom of Borough Lane a troop of Boy-Scouts in slouch hats,
+knickers, and with staves, drawn up in order, saluted.  A tiny boy in
+his mother's arms blew him shy kisses.  Just outside the yard of the
+Transport Company his mates, who had been waiting him, came out and
+shook him by the hand.  Most were very quiet.  As he passed on the man
+among them he disliked most called for three cheers.  A ragged noise
+was raised behind him.
+
+
+At the _Star_ corner a beery patriot, wearing the South African medals,
+mug to his lips, hailed him.
+
+"Gor bless the Hammer-men!" he cried.  "Gor bless the old ridgiment!"
+and tried to lure Ernie into the familiar bar-parlour.
+
+"Not me, thank ye!" cried Ernie stoutly.  "This ain't a beano, my boy!
+This is War!"
+
+As he rounded the corner he glanced up at the sturdy old church with
+its tiny extinguisher spire, standing on the Kneb behind him,
+four-square to the centuries, the symbol of the rough and ready England
+which at that moment was passing away, with its glories and its shames,
+into the limbo of history.
+
+
+At the station all that was most representative in Beachbourne had
+gathered to see the reservists off.
+
+The Mayor was there in his chain of office; the Church Militant in the
+person of the Archdeacon; Mr. Glynde, the senior member for
+Beachbourne, middle-aged, swarthy, his hair already white, making a
+marked contrast to his junior colleague, the fair-haired young giant,
+talking to the Archdeacon.
+
+The old gentleman looked ghastly; his face colourless save for the
+shadows of death which emphasised his pallor.  Then he saw Bobby
+Chislehurst busy among the departing soldiers, and beckoned him
+austerely.
+
+"I thought you were a pacifist, Chislehurst!" he said, his smile more
+kindly and less histrionic than usual.
+
+"So I am, sir," answered Bobby, brightly.  "But there are several of
+our men from the Moot going off.  It's not their fault they've got to
+go, poor beggars!"
+
+"Their _fault_!" cried the Archdeacon.  "It's their privilege."  He
+added less harshly, "We must all stand by the country now, Chislehurst."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Bobby.  "I shan't give the show away," and he bustled
+off.
+
+Then the Colonel stalked up.
+
+"Well, Archdeacon, what d'you make of it all?" he asked, curious as a
+child to gather impressions.
+
+The Archdeacon drew himself up.
+
+"Just retribution," he answered in voice that seemed to march.  "If a
+nation will go a-whoring after false gods in the wilderness what can
+you expect?  Gahd does not forget."
+
+The Colonel listened blankly, his long neck elongated like a questing
+schoolboy.
+
+"What you mean?" he asked.
+
+"Welsh Disestablishment Bill," the other answered curtly.
+
+Mr. Trupp now entered the station, and the Colonel, who though quiet
+outwardly, was in a condition of intense spiritual exaltation that made
+him restless as dough in which the yeast is working, joined his pal.
+He had cause for his emotion.  The Cabinet had stood.  The country had
+closed its ranks in a way that was little short of a miracle.  All men
+of all parties had rallied to the flag.  In Dublin the Irish mob which
+had provoked the King's Own Scottish Borderers to bloody retaliation,
+had turned out and cheered the battalion as it marched down to the
+transports for embarkation.
+
+"Well, we're roused at last," said the Colonel, as he looked round on
+that humming scene.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Trupp.  "It's taken a bash in the face to do it
+though."
+
+"Should be interesting," commented the Colonel, hiding his emotion
+behind an air of detachment.  "An undisciplined horde of men who
+believe themselves to be free against a disciplined mass of slaves."
+
+Just then Mr. Pigott approached.  The old Nonconformist had about him
+the air of a boy coming up to the desk to take his punishment.  He was
+at once austere and chastened.
+
+"Well, Colonel," he said.  "You were right."
+
+The Colonel took the other's hand warmly.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" he cried.  "That's the one blessed thing about the
+whole situation.  _We've all been wrong_.  I believed in the German
+menace--till a month or two ago.  And then...."
+
+"That's it," said Mr. Trupp.  "We must all swing together, and a good
+job too.  If there's any hanging done Carson and Bonar Law, Asquith and
+Haldane, Ramsay Macdonald and Snowden ought to grace the same gallows
+seems to me.  And when we've hanged our leaders for letting us in we
+must hang ourselves for allowing them to let us in."
+
+The old surgeon had turned an awkward corner with the gruff tact
+peculiar to him; and Mr. Pigott at least was grateful to him.
+
+"You've heard Carson's committed suicide?" he said.  "Shot himself this
+morning on St. Stephen's Green."
+
+"Not a bit of it," replied the Colonel.  "He's far too busy holding up
+recruiting in Ulster while he haggles for his terms, to do anything so
+patriotic."
+
+"Besides why should he?" interposed a harsh and jeering voice.
+"Treason's all right if you're rich and powerful.  Jim Larkin got six
+months a year ago for sedition and inciting to violence.  What'll these
+chaps get for provoking the greatest war that ever was or will be?
+I'll tell ye, _Fat jobs_.  Where'll they be at the end of the war?
+under the sod alongside the millions of innocent men who've had to pay
+the price of their mistakes?  No fear!  They'll be boolgin money, oozin
+smiles, fat with power, and big-bellied wi feedin on the carcases of
+better men."
+
+It was Joe Burt who had come up with Mr. Geddes.
+
+The Colonel, giving his shoulder to the engineer, turned to the tall
+minister, who was stiff, a little self-conscious, and very grave.
+
+Possessed of a far deeper mind than Mr. Pigott, Mr. Geddes was still
+haunted by doubts.  Were we wholly in the right?
+
+The Colonel, intuitive as a girl, recognised the other's distress, and
+guessed the cause of it.
+
+"Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently.  "Evil has triumphed for the moment
+at least."
+
+"Yes," replied the other.  "Liebknecht's shot, they say."
+
+"All honour to him!" said the Colonel.  "He was the one man of the lot
+who stood to his guns when the pinch came.  All the rest of the Social
+Democrats stampeded at the first shot."
+
+Joe Burt edged up again.  Like Mr. Pigott he had made his decision
+irrevocably and far sooner than the old Nonconformist; but there was a
+vengeful background still to his thoughts.  He refused to forget.
+
+"I hear the Generals are in uproarious spirits," he said.
+
+"One of them," answered the Colonel quietly.
+
+"They won't pay the price," continued Joe.  "They'll make--trust them.
+_There's_ the man they'll leave to take the punishment they've brought
+on the coontry."  He nodded to Ernie who was busy with some mates
+extracting chocolates from a penny-in-the-slot-machine.
+
+The Colonel's eye glittered.  He had spied Stanley Bessemere doing,
+indeed over-doing, the hearty amongst the men by the barrier.
+
+"After all it's nothing to what we owe our friend there and the
+politicians," he said brightly, and made towards his victim, with an
+almost mincing motion.
+
+Since the declaration of war his solitary relief from intolerable
+anxieties had been baiting the junior member for the Borough.  He left
+him no peace, hanging like a gadfly on his flank.  At the club, in the
+street, on committees at the Town-hall there rose up to haunt the young
+man this inexorable spectre with the death's head, the courteous voice,
+and the glittering smile.
+
+"Ah, Bessemere!" he said gently.  "Here still!--I heard you had
+enlisted, you and Smith."
+
+The other broke away and, seeing Ernie close by, shook hands with him.
+The move was unfortunately countered by Joe Burt.
+
+"You've shook 'ands with Mr. Caspar five times since I've been here,"
+he remarked tartly.  "Can't you give somebody else a turn now?"
+
+Just then, mercifully, Mr. Trupp rolled up, coughing.
+
+Summer or winter made no difference to the great man's cold, which was
+always with him, and lovingly cherished; but he liked to mark the
+change between the two seasons by exchanging the long woollen muffler
+of winter for a silken wrapper in which he swaddled his neck in the
+summer months.
+
+"Good luck, Ernie," he said in his brief way, his eyes shrewd and sweet
+behind his pince-nez.
+
+"Keep an eye to Ruth, won't you, sir?" said Ernie in his most
+confidential manner.
+
+"We'll do our best," replied the other hoarsely.  "Here's Mr. Pigott.
+Quite a jingo these days."
+
+"Who isn't?" the old school-master answered with an attempt at the
+familiar truculence.  "Well, you look like it, Ern."  He added almost
+with admiration.  "Quite a changed man."
+
+
+Then the Colonel joined the little group.
+
+"Coming along sir?" asked Ernie keenly.
+
+"No luck," replied the other gloomily.  "Too old at sixty...  What
+about that brother of yours?"
+
+Ern's face darkened.
+
+"Ah, I ain't seen him," he said.
+
+"There he is by the bookstall," muttered Mr. Pigott.  "Envying the men
+who are going to fight his battles!  I know him."
+
+Alf, indeed, who had clearly recovered from the first shock of war, was
+very much to the fore, modest, fervent, the unassuming patriot.  Now he
+approached his brother with a mixture of wariness and manly frankness.
+
+"Will you shake 'ands, Ernest?" he asked.
+
+"I will _not_," said Ern.  "It was you who done the dirty on our Lal."
+
+"Never!" cried Alf and came a step closer.  "I'll tell you who it
+were."  He nodded stealthily in the direction of Joe.  "That's the chap
+that's out to spoil your home.  Wrecker I call him.  I tell you what,
+Ern," he whispered.  "I'll watch out against him for you while you are
+away so you don't suffer."
+
+"I thank you," said Ern, unmoved.
+
+Just then Joe came up, took him by the arm, and bustled him off to the
+departure platform.
+
+"You'll be late else, ma lad," said the engineer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+IN THE EVENING
+
+The Archdeacon and his sidesman walked back to Old Town from the
+station together.
+
+Mr. Trupp and Mr. Pigott followed behind.
+
+"The Archdeacon lags a bit," said the former.
+
+"Yes," answered the other.  "And I don't wonder.  This war'll be the
+end of him yet.  You heard about last night?"
+
+The veteran had sallied out at midnight with an electric torch and the
+Reverend Spink to deal with spies who had been signalling from the top
+of the Downs.
+
+Unhappily the stalker had himself been stalked by another patriot bent
+on the same errand.  The two old gentlemen had arrested each other by
+the dew-pond on Warren Hill; and report had it that words and worse had
+passed between the two.  In the small hours of the morning Anne Caspar,
+hearing voices, had risen and seen from her window the Archdeacon
+stalking down the road, dusty, draggled, his curate trotting with
+sullen barks at the heels of his chief.  The Archdeacon had no
+prisoner, but he had lumbago, a scratch or two, and an indignant sense
+that his curate had proved both disloyal and inefficient.  The two had
+parted at the Rectory gate wrathfully, the Reverend Spink offering his
+resignation.
+
+Opposite his garage in the Golfs, Alf now said goodbye to his Rector,
+and crossed the road with an almost aggressively sprightly air.  Mr.
+Trupp noticed it.
+
+"What about him and his Touring Syndicate?" he asked.
+
+"He's all right," answered Mr. Pigott.  "Trust him for that.  Artful
+isn't in it with Alf.  Called his drivers together on the declaration
+of war, and made em a speech.  Said he knew where they wanted to
+be--where he wanted to be himself: in the fighting line.  He'd be the
+last to stand between them and their duty.  He wouldn't keep them to
+their contract.  The Motor Transport was crying for them--five bob a
+day and glory galore.  All he could do was to say God bless you and
+wish he could go himself--only his responsibilities...."
+
+Mr. Trupp grinned.
+
+"Did they swallow it down?" he asked.
+
+"Like best butter," said Mr. Pigott.  "He's got the tongue.  He twisted
+em.  Parliament's the place for Alf."
+
+"Ah!" committed the other.  "We're only beginning.  This war'll find us
+all out too before we're through." ...
+
+Alf turned into his yard.
+
+A little group of broken down old men were waiting him there.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked fiercely.  "What you want?"
+
+"We've come on behalf of the cleaners, sir," said the spokesman, in the
+uncertain voice of the half-starved.  "What about us?--The Army don't
+want us."
+
+The group tittered a feeble deprecatory titter.
+
+"H'every man for himself in these days!" cried Alf, brief and brisk.
+"I'm not the Charity Organisation Society."
+
+The old man, a-quaver in voice and body, doddered forward, touching his
+hat.  Undersized and shrunken through starvation during infancy, and
+brutal usage throughout his growing years, he was an example of the
+great principle we Christians have enforced and maintained throughout
+the centuries: that the world's hardest work should be done by the
+weakest.  Tip, as he was called, had been a coal-porter till at
+fifty-five he dislocated his shoulder shifting loads too heavy for him.
+Thereafter he was partially disabled, a casualty of the Industrial War,
+and to be treated as such.
+
+"Would you give us a week's money or notice, sir?" he said now in his
+shaking voice.
+
+"Did I take you on by the week?" asked Alf ferociously.
+
+"No, sir; by the day."
+
+"Then what ye talking about?--Ain't I paid you up?"
+
+"You paid us up, sir.  Only we got to live."
+
+"Very well then.  There's the House at the top of the hill for such as
+you.  Ain't that good enough?  This is a Christian country, this is."
+
+Alf was half-way up the steps to his office, and he pointed in the
+direction of the Work-house.
+
+A curious tawny glow lit the old man's eyes.  His lips closed over his
+gums.
+
+"Bloody Bastille," he muttered.
+
+Alf heard him and ran down the steps.  He was still with the stillness
+of the born bully.
+
+"None of that now," he said quietly.  "No filthy language in my yard!
+And no loiterin eether!--Off you go or I send for the police.  The
+country's got something better to think of than you and your likes, I
+reckon, just now."
+
+He stood in the gate of the yard with the cold domineering air of the
+warder in charge of convicts.
+
+The cleaners shambled away like a herd of mangy donkeys past work and
+turned out on waste land to die at their leisure.
+
+They were broken men all, old and infirm, drawn from the dregs of that
+Reserve of Labour on which the capitalist system has been built.  They
+belonged to no Union; they were incapable of organisation and therefore
+of defence against the predatory class ...
+
+"We got no bloody country, men like us ain't."
+
+"Nor no bloody Christ."
+
+"The rich got Him too."
+
+"Same as they got everythink else" ...
+
+The last of them gone, Alf skipped up the steps into his office.  He
+was not afraid of them, was not even depressed by their uncalled-for
+consideration of themselves.
+
+Indeed he was extraordinarily uplifted.
+
+His great scheme had, it is true, been brought low--through no omission
+on his part; but he had got out with a squeeze after a dreadful period
+of panic fury, and now experienced the lyrical exhilaration of the man
+who has escaped by his own exertions from sudden unexpected death.
+
+He had unloaded his drivers on the Army; and sold his buses to the
+Government.  The only big creditor was Captain Royal, and Alf could
+afford to laugh at him.  Besides Captain Royal would be off to the
+war--and might not come back.  Moreover, unless he was much mistaken,
+the war meant all manner of chances of which the man with his eyes open
+would take full advantage: world convulsions always did.
+
+Meanwhile he had the garages on which he could rebuild his original
+edifice at any moment, add to it, alter it as opportunity offered.  The
+war would not last for ever; but it would un-make businesses and devour
+men--some of them his rivals.  While they were away at the Front he
+would be quietly, ceaselessly strengthening his position at home.  And
+when peace came, as it must some day, he would be ready to reap where
+he had sown in enterprise and industry.
+
+On his way up to Old Town that evening he met the Reverend Spink and
+asked him how long the Franco-Prussian war had lasted.
+
+The curate still had the ruffled and resentful air of a fighting
+cockerel who has a grievance against the referee.  Lady Augusta,
+indeed, had passed a busy morning smoothing his plumage and inducing
+him to withdraw his resignation.  His meeting with Alf served as
+further balm to his wounded spirit; for above all else the Reverend
+Spink loved to be appealed to as a scholar.
+
+Now he answered Alf with a learned frown,
+
+"Six months.  It began at the same date as this.  They were in Paris by
+January."
+
+"As long as that!" said Alf surprised.  "Looks as if they'd be quicker
+this time!"
+
+A thought struck him.  He turned down Borough Lane, and went to call on
+Ruth.
+
+She was at home, alone in the kitchen, her babes in bed.  He did not
+enter, but stood in the door awhile before she was aware of him,
+watching her with sugary and secretive smile.
+
+Then he chirped.
+
+She looked up, saw him; and the light faded out of her face.
+
+"So Ern's gone to the wars," he said.  "You'll be a bit lonely like o
+nights, the evenings drawing in and all.  Say, I might drop in on you
+when I got the time.  I'm not so busy, as I was.  Likely I'll be goin
+back to drive for Mr. Trupp now."
+
+She rose, formidable as a lioness at bay in the mouth of her cave.
+
+"Out of it!" she ordered, and flung an imperious hand towards the door.
+
+Alf fled incontinently.
+
+A navvy, who had been watching him from a door opposite, shouldered
+heavily across the street to meet him.  He was a very big man with a
+very small head, dressed in corduroys; of the type you still meet in
+the pages of Punch but seldom in real life.  His hands were deep in his
+pockets, and he said quietly without so much as removing his pipe.
+
+"Stow the bloody truck then!"
+
+Alf paused, astonished.  Then he thought the other must have mistaken
+his man in the dusk.
+
+"Here! d'you know who you're talkin to?" he asked.
+
+The navvy showed himself quite undisturbed.
+
+"Oughter," he said, "seein you and me was dragg'd oop same school
+togedder along o Mr. Pigott back yarnderr.  You're Alf Caspar, and I be
+Reuben Deadman.  There's an old saying these paarts you may have
+heard--_When there isn't a Deadman in Lewes Gaol you may knaw the end
+o't world's at hand_.  I've not been in maself, not yet.  When I goos
+I'll goo for to swing--for you--for old times sake; let alone the dirty
+dish you done Old Tip and them this arternoon."
+
+Alf walked up the hill, breathing heavily and with mottled face.
+
+The bubble of his exaltation had burst.  He felt a curious sinking away
+within him, as though he were walking on cold damp clouds which were
+letting him through.
+
+The war was changing things already, and not to his liking.
+
+Three weeks ago who'd have talked to the Managing Director of Caspar's
+Syndicate like that?
+
+Brooding on his troubles, he ran into Joe Burt who was coming swiftly
+round the corner of Borough Lane, brooding too.
+
+Alf darted nimbly back.  Joe stood with lowered head, glaring at his
+enemy.  Then he thought better of it and turned on his way.
+
+Alf, standing in the middle of the road with jeering eyes, called after
+him furtively.
+
+"Want her all to yourself, don't you?"
+
+Joe marched on unheeding to the cottage Alf had just left.
+
+Ruth must have been awaiting him: for he entered at once without
+knocking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+RUTH FACES THE STORM
+
+That night as the Colonel sat on the loggia chewing his pipe, long
+after Mrs. Lewknor had retired, he was aware of a pillar of blackness,
+erect against the dull sea and star-lit sky, on the edge of the cliff,
+at the very spot where he had seen it on the night of the declaration
+of war.
+
+Electric torch in hand, he stole out on the pair.  Oblivious of all
+things save each other, they remained locked in each other's arms.  He
+flashed the torch full in their faces.
+
+"O, Joe!" came a familiar voice.
+
+The Colonel was taken a-back.
+
+"That you, Anne?" he muttered.
+
+"Yes, sir," his parlour-maid answered.  "Me and my Joe.  He come up to
+say goodbye.  Joining up to-morrow, he is."
+
+The Colonel mumbled something about spies, and apologised.
+
+"No harm done, sir," laughed Anne, quietly.  "It's nothing to some of
+them.  Turn their search-light full glare on you just when you don't
+want, and never a by-your-leave--same as they done war-night!  _If
+that's war_, I says to Joe, _better ha done with it afore you begin_, I
+says."
+
+The Colonel retired indoors, doubly humiliated: he had made a fool of
+himself before his own parlour-maid, and in his mind he had gravely
+wronged Ruth Caspar.
+
+Next day he started off for Old Town to find out if there was any way
+by which he could make amends to his own conscience and, unknown to
+her, to the woman he had maligned.
+
+She met him with kind eyes, a little wistful.
+
+"We're all friends now, sir," she said, as she shook hands.  "Got to
+be, I reckon."
+
+If it is true, as is said to-day, that old men make wars and young men
+pay for them, it is also true that the mothers, wives, sisters, and
+sweethearts of the young men bear their share of the burthen.
+
+Ruth was left with four children and a debt.
+
+She faced the situation as hundreds of thousands of women up and down
+Europe in like case were doing at that moment--quiet, courageous,
+uncomplaining as an animal under the blows that Life, the inexplicable,
+rained upon her.  One thought constantly recurred to her.  In her first
+tragedy she had stood alone against the world.  Now there were millions
+undergoing the same experience.  And she derived from that thought
+comfort denied to others.
+
+There were no complications about her economic situation.
+
+That at least was very simple.
+
+She owed several weeks' rent, had debts outstanding to the tune of
+several shillings--mostly boots for the children; and a little cash in
+coppers in hand.
+
+Two nights after Ernie's departure, Alf came round for his back-rent.
+He came stealthily, Ruth noticed; and she knew why.  Public opinion in
+the Moot, which might at any moment find explosive self-expression
+through the fists of Reuben Deadman, was against him.  It was against
+all landlords.  Ern moreover was still a hero in the eyes of the Moot
+and would remain so for several days yet; and Ruth received the
+consideration due to the wife of such.
+
+Alf was dogged, with downcast eyes.  There was no nonsense, no
+persiflage about him.  He went straight to the point.
+
+"I come for my money," he said.
+
+Ruth rallied him maliciously.
+
+"Money!" she cried, feigning surprise.  "I thart it was accommodation
+you was a'ter."
+
+"And I mean to have it," Alf continued sullenly.
+
+"Even a landlord's got to live these times.  I got to have it or you
+got to go.  That's straight."
+
+Ruth had her back to the wall.
+
+"Ah, you must have that out with the Government," she said coolly.
+"It's got nothing to do with me."
+
+"Government!" cried Alf sharply.  "What's the Government got to do with
+it."
+
+"They're passin some law to protect the women and children of them
+that's joined up," Ruth answered.
+
+"Who said so?"
+
+"The Colonel."
+
+"Anyway it's not passed yet."
+
+"No," retorted Ruth.  "So you'd best wait till it is.  Make you look a
+bit funny like to turn me out, and put some one else in, and then have
+to turn them out and put me back again, say in a fortnight, and all out
+o your own pocket.  Not to talk o the bit of feeling, and them and me
+taking damages off o you as like as not, I should say."
+
+That evening Ruth went up to see Mr. Pigott.
+
+The Manager said he would pay her half Ern's wages while the war
+lasted; and he paid her the first instalment then and there.
+
+"Will the Government do anything for the women and children sir?" she
+asked.
+
+Mr. Pigott shook his grizzled head.
+
+As the years went by he had an always diminishing faith in the power
+and will of Governments to right wrongs.
+
+"The old chapel's the thing," he would say.
+
+Ruth put the same question to Mr. Trupp whom she met on her way home to
+the Moot.
+
+"They will if they're made to," the doctor answered, and as he saw the
+young woman's face fall, he added more sympathetically, "They're trying
+to do something locally.  I don't know what'll come of it.  Keep in
+touch with Mrs. Trupp.  She'll let you know.  I believe there's to be a
+meeting at the Town Hall."
+
+He rolled on, grumbling and grousing to himself.  Call ourselves a
+civilised country, and leave the women and children to take their luck!
+Chaos--as usual! ... Chaos backed and justified by cant! ... Would cant
+organise Society? ... Would cant feed the women and children? ... Would
+cant take the place of Scientific Method? ...
+
+Ruth went home with her eleven shillings and sixpence and an aching
+heart, to find that little Alice had already arranged her brood in
+their bibs around the tea-table, and was only waiting for mother to
+come and tilt the kettle which she might not touch.
+
+The other fledgelings hammered noisily on the table with their spoons.
+
+"My dears," she said, as she went round the table, kissing the rosy
+faces uplifted to hers.
+
+"What is it, Mum?" asked little Alice, who had something of her
+mother's quick sympathy and power of intuition.  "Is daddy shotted at
+the war?"
+
+"Not yet, my pretty," her mother answered.  "It's only nothing you can
+understand.  Now help me get the tea."
+
+Next day brought a lawyer's letter giving her notice to quit.
+
+That evening Ruth took the letter up to the Manor-house.
+
+The maid told her Mr. and Mrs. Trupp had just started off to a meeting
+at the Town Hall.
+
+"Something to do with the women and children, I believe," she added.
+"Prince o Wales's Fund or something."
+
+Ruth turned down the steps disconsolate.
+
+Just then she saw Joe Burt getting off the motor-bus opposite the
+_Star_.  She had not seen him since he had come up on the evening of
+Ern's departure to give her the latest news of her husband.  Now he
+came striding towards her, blowing into her life with the vigour of
+Kingsley's wild Nor'-easter.  At the moment the politician was on
+top--she noted it with thankful heart.
+
+"Coom on, ma lass!" he said.  "You're the very one I'm after.  We want
+you.  We want em all.  You got to coom along o me to this meeting."
+
+"But I aren't got my hat, Joe!" pleaded Ruth, amused yet deprecating.
+
+The engineer would take no excuses.
+
+"Your children are worth more'n your hat, I reck'n," he said.  "Coom
+on!--Coom on!--No time to be lost!"
+
+And in a moment she was walking briskly at his side down the hill up
+which he had just come.
+
+The strength, the resolution, the certainty of her companion swept all
+her clouds away and renewed her faith.
+
+She told him of the notice she had received.
+
+"All the better," he said.  "Another trump for us to play.  Don't you
+worrit.  The Labour Party in Parliament's disappointed all its
+supporters so far, but it's going to justify itself at last.  One
+thing.  They can't trample on us this time, the Fats canna.  We're too
+well organised."
+
+They walked down the hill together.
+
+At the stile opposite the Drill Hall where six months before she had
+rescued Ernie, drenched and dripping, from the police, they turned off
+into Saffrons Croft in the direction of the Town Hall.
+
+Joe, as he trod the grass beneath his feet, became sombre, silent.  The
+woman sweeping along at his side, her shawl about her head, felt his
+change of mood.  The Other was coming to the top again--the One she
+feared.  She was right.  The Other it was who spoke surlily and
+growling, out of his deeps, like the voice of a yard-dog from his
+kennel.
+
+"Well, what's it going to be?"
+
+Her heart galloped but she met him gaily.
+
+"What you mean, Joe?"
+
+"You know what I mean," bearing down on her remorselessly.
+
+She made a half halt.
+
+"O Joe!"
+
+"Aye, you may O Joe me!  That wunna better it."
+
+"And after what you promised him solemn that night and all."
+
+He answered moodily.
+
+"He forced me to it.  Took advantage.  Shouldn't ha done it.  Springin
+it on me without a word.  That's not the game."
+
+Ruth turned on him.
+
+"You're the one to talk, aren't you?" she said, flashing the corner of
+an eye at him.  "Playing the game prarper, you are?"
+
+He barged ahead, sullen as a bull and as obstinate.
+
+"A don't know; and A don't care.  A know what A want and A know A'm
+going to get it."
+
+She met him light as a rapier thrust.
+
+"I thart you was a man, Joe."
+
+"Better'n a no-man anyway."
+
+She stopped dead and faced him.
+
+"Where's my no-man now then?" she cried.  "And where are you?"
+
+That time she had planted her dart home.  He glared at her savage,
+sullen, and with lowered head.
+
+"Thou doesna say A'm a coward?"
+
+Slowly she answered,
+
+"I'm none so sure.--Ern's my soldier, Ern is."
+
+He gripped her arm.
+
+"I'll go home," she said, curt as the cut of a whip.
+
+He relaxed.
+
+"Nay," he answered.  "If we're to fight for your children yo mun help."
+
+She threw off his arm with a gesture of easy dignity.  Then they walked
+on again together down Saffrons Road towards the Town Hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+MRS. LEWKNOR
+
+The Town Hall was crowded.
+
+The Mayor, who was in the chair, had spoken on behalf of the Prince of
+Wales's Fund and announced that subscriptions would be received by the
+Town Clerk.
+
+Thereafter an indescribable orgie of patriotism had taken place.
+Red-necked men outbid fat women.  The bids mounted; the bidders grew
+fiercer; the cheers waxed.  And all the while a little group of Trade
+Unionists at the back of the hall kept up a dismal chaunt--
+
+  We don't want charity,
+  We won't have charity.
+
+
+Then a little dapper figure in the blue of a chauffeur rose in the body
+of the hall.
+
+"I'm only a workin chauffeur," he said, wagging his big head, "but I
+got a conscience, and I got a country.  And I'm not ashamed of em
+eether.  I can't do much bein only a worker as you might say.  But I
+can do me bit.  Put me down for fifty guineas, please, Mr. Town-clerk."
+
+He sat down modestly amidst loud applause.
+
+"Who's that?" whispered the Colonel on the platform.
+
+"Trupp's chauffeur," the Archdeacon, who had a black patch over his
+eye, answered with a swagger--"my sidesman, Alfred Caspar.  Not so bad
+for a working-man?"  He cackled hilariously.
+
+Then a voice from Lancashire, resonant and jarring, came burring across
+the hall.
+
+"Mr. Chairman, are you aware that Alfred Caspar is turning his
+sister-in-law out of his house with four children."
+
+Alf leapt to his feet.
+
+"It's a lie!" he cried.
+
+A big young woman sitting just in front of Joe rose on subdued wings.
+She was bare-headed, be-shawled, a dark Madonna of English village-life.
+
+"Yes, you are, Alf," she said, and sat down quietly as she had risen.
+
+There was a dramatic silence.  Then the Archdeacon started to his feet
+and pointed with accusing claw like a witch-doctor smelling out a
+victim.
+
+"I know that woman!" he cawed raucously.
+
+A lady sitting in the front row just under the platform rose.
+
+"So do I," she said.
+
+It was Mrs. Trupp, and her voice, still and pure, fell on the heated
+air like a drop of delicious rain.
+
+She sat down again.
+
+The Archdeacon too had resumed his seat, very high and mighty; and
+Bobby Chislehurst was whispering in his ear from behind.
+
+The Colonel had risen now, calm and courteous as always, in the
+suppressed excitement.
+
+"Am I not right in thinking that Mrs. Caspar is the wife of an old
+Hammer-man who joined up at once on the declaration of war and is at
+this moment somewhere in France fighting our battles for us?"
+
+The question was greeted with a storm of applause from the back of the
+hall.
+
+"Good old Colonel!" some one called.
+
+"Mr. Chairman, d'you mean to accept that man's cheque?" shouted Joe.
+"Yes or no?"
+
+In the uproar that followed, Alf rose again, white and leering.
+
+"I'd not have spoken if I'd known I was to be set upon like this afore
+em all for offering a bit of help to me country.  As to my character
+and that, I believe I'm pretty well beknown for a patriot in
+Beachbourne."
+
+"As to patriotism, old cock," called Joe, "didn't you sack your
+cleaners without notice on the declaration of war?"
+
+"No, I didn't then!" shouted Alf with the exaggerated ferocity of the
+man who knows his only chance is to pose as righteously indignant.
+
+The retort was greeted with a howl of _Tip_!  There was a movement at
+the back of the hall; and suddenly an old man was lifted on the
+shoulders of the Trade Unionists there.  Yellow, fang-less, creased, he
+looked, poised on high above the crowd against the white background of
+wall, something between a mummy and a monkey.  As always he wore no
+tie; but he had donned a collar for the occasion, and this had sprung
+open and made two dingy ass-like ears on either side of his head.
+
+"Did he sack you, Tip?" called Joe.
+
+"Yes, he did," came the quivering old voice.  "Turned us off at a day.
+Told us to go to the Bastille; and said he'd put the police on us."
+
+The tremulous old voice made people turn their heads.  They saw the
+strange figure lifted above them.  Some tittered.  The ripple of
+titters enraged the men at the back of the hall.
+
+"See what you've made of him!" thundered Joe.  "And then jeer! ...
+Shame!"
+
+"Shame!" screamed a bitter man.  "Do the Fats know shame?"
+
+"Some of em do," said a quiet voice.
+
+It was true too.  Mrs. Trupp was looking pale and miserable in the
+front-row, so was the Colonel on the platform, Bobby Chislehurst and
+others.  The titterers, indeed, howled into silence by the storm of
+indignation their action had aroused, wore themselves the accusing air
+of those who hope thereby to fix the blame for their mistake on others.
+
+In the silence a baggy old gentleman rose in the body of the hall,
+slewed round with difficulty, and mooned above his spectacles at the
+strange idol seated on men's shoulders behind him.
+
+"_And He was lifted up_," he said in a musing voice more to himself
+than to anybody else.
+
+The phrase, audible to many, seemed to spread a silence about it as a
+stone dropped in a calm pond creates an ever-broadening ripple.
+
+In the silence old Tip slid gently to the ground and was lost once more
+amid the crowd of those who had raised him for a brief moment into
+fleeting eminence.
+
+The meeting broke up.
+
+Outside the hall stood Mr. Trupp's car, Alf at the wheel: for the old
+surgeon's regular chauffeur had been called up.
+
+Mrs. Trupp, coming down the steps, went up to Ruth who was standing on
+the pavement.
+
+"So glad you spoke up, Ruth," she said, and pressed her hand.
+
+"Come on!" said Mr. Trupp.  "We'll give you a lift home, Ruth."
+
+Alf was looking green.  The two women got in, and the old surgeon
+followed them.  He was grinning, Mrs. Trupp quietly malicious, and Ruth
+amused.  The people on the pavement and streaming out of the hall saw
+and were caught by the humour of the situation, as their eyes and
+comments showed.
+
+Then Colonel Lewknor made his way to the car.
+
+"Just a word, Mrs. Caspar!" he said.  "Things are squaring up.  Mrs.
+Lewknor's taking the women and children in hand.  Could you come and
+see her one morning at Under-cliff?"
+
+
+The hostel that Mrs. Lewknor had built upon the cliff boomed from the
+start.  It was full to over-flowing, winter and summer; and Eton was in
+sight for Toby when war was declared.
+
+Then things changed apace.
+
+Beachbourne, for at least a thousand years before William the Norman
+landed at Pevensey on his great adventure, had been looked on as the
+likeliest spot for enemy invasion from the Continent.  Frenzied parents
+therefore wired for their children to be sent inland at once; others
+wrote charming letters cancelling rooms taken weeks before.  In ten
+days the house was empty; and on the eleventh the mortgagee intimated
+his intention to fore-close.
+
+It was a staggering blow.
+
+The Colonel, with that uncannie cat-like intuition of his she knew so
+well, prowled in, looked at her with kind eyes, as she sat in her
+little room the fatal letter in her hand, and went out again.
+
+Throughout it had been her scheme, not his, her responsibility, her
+success; and now it was her failure.
+
+Then Mr. Trupp was shown in, looking most unmilitary in his uniform of
+a Colonel of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
+
+"It's all right," he said gruffly.  "I know.  Morgan and Evans rang me
+up and told me.  Unprofessional perhaps, but these are funny times.  I
+let you in.  You built the hostel at my request.  I shall take over the
+mortgage."
+
+"I couldn't let you," answered the little lady.
+
+"You won't be asked," replied the other.  "I ought to have done it from
+the start; but it wasn't very convenient then.  It's all right now."
+The old man didn't say that the reason it was all right was because he
+was quietly convinced in his own mind that his boy Joe would need no
+provision now.
+
+Just then the Colonel entered, looking self-conscious.  He seemed to
+know all about it, as indeed he had every right to do, seeing that Mr.
+Trupp had informed him at length on the telephone half an hour before.
+
+"You know who the mortgagee is?" he asked.
+
+"Who?" said both at once.
+
+The Colonel on tiptoe led them out into the hall, and showed them
+through a narrow window Alf sitting at his wheel, looking very funny.
+
+"Our friend of the scene in the Town Hall yesterday," he whispered.
+"When I went to the bank yesterday to insure the house against
+bombardment, the clerk looked surprised and said--_You know it's
+already insured_.  I said--_Who by_?  He turned up a ledger and showed
+me the name."
+
+Mr. Trupp got into his car, wrapping himself round with much
+circumstance.
+
+"To Morgan and Evans," he said to Alf.
+
+In the solicitors' office he produced his cheque-book.
+
+"I've been seeing Mrs. Lewknor," he said.  "I'll pay off your client
+now and take over the mortgage myself."
+
+He wrote a cheque then and there, and made it out to Alfred Caspar, who
+was forthwith called in.
+
+"I'm paying you off your mortgage, Alf," he said.  "Give me a receipt,
+will you?"
+
+Alf with the curious simplicity that often threw his cunning into
+relief signed the receipt quite unabashed and with evident relief.
+
+"See, I need the money, sir," he said gravely, as he wiped the pen on
+his sleeve.  "The Syndicate's let me in--O, you wouldn't believe!  And
+I got to meet me creditors somehow."
+
+"Well, you've got the money now," answered Mr. Trupp.  "But I'm afraid
+you've made an enemy.  And that seems to me a bit of a pity just now."
+
+"Colonel Lewknor?" snorted Alf.  "I ain't afraid o him!"
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Trupp.  "It's the day of the soldier."
+
+That evening, after the day's work, Alf was summoned to his employer's
+study.
+
+Mrs. Trupp was leaving it as he entered.
+
+"I've been thinking things over, Alfred," said the old man.  "There's
+no particular reason why you shouldn't drive for me for the present if
+you like--until you're wanted out there.  But I shall want you to
+destroy this."
+
+He handed his chauffeur Ruth's notice to quit.
+
+Alf tore the paper up without demur.
+
+"That's all right, sir," he said cheerfully.  "That was a mistake.  I
+understood the Army Service Corps was taking over my garage; and I
+should want a roof over my head to sleep under."
+
+He went back to his car.
+
+Another moment, and the door of the Manor-house opened.  Ruth emerged
+briskly and gave him a bright nod.
+
+"Can't stop now, Alf," she said.  "I'm off to see Mrs. Lewknor.  See
+you again later."
+
+"That's right," Alf answered.  "She's on the committee for seeing to
+the married women ain't she?--them and their _lawful_ children.
+Reverend Spink's on it too."
+
+He stressed the epithet faintly.
+
+A moment Ruth looked him austerely in the eyes.  Then she turned up the
+hill with a nod.  She understood.  There was danger a-foot again.
+
+
+The matter of the hostel settled, Mrs. Lewknor, before everything an
+Imperialist, and not of the too common platform kind, was free to
+serve.  And she had not far to look for an opening.
+
+The Mayor summoned a meeting in his parlour to consider the situation
+of the families of soldiers called to the colours.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor was by common consent appointed honorary secretary of the
+Association formed; and was given by her committee a fairly free
+discretion to meet the immediate situation.
+
+Nearly sixty, but still active as a cat, she set to work with a will.
+
+Her sitting room at Undercliff she turned into an office.  Her mornings
+she gave to interviewing applicants and her afternoons to visiting.
+
+Ruth Caspar was one of the first to apply.
+
+The little slight Jewish lady with her immense experience of life
+greeted the beautiful peasant woman who had never yet over-stepped the
+boundaries of Sussex with a brilliant smile.
+
+"There's not much I want to know about you," she said.  "We belong to
+the same regiment.  Just one or two questions that I may fill up this
+form."
+
+How many children had Mrs. Caspar.
+
+"Three, 'M ... and a fourth."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor waited.
+
+"Little Alice," continued Ruth, downcast and pale beneath her
+swarthiness.  "Before I were married."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor wrote on apparently unconcerned.
+
+She knew all about little Alice, had seen her once, and had recognised
+her at a glance as Royal's child, the child for which, with her
+passionate love for the regiment, she felt herself in part responsible.
+On the same occasion she had seen Ruth's other babies and their
+grandfather with them--that troubadour who forty years before had swept
+the harp of her life to sudden and elusive music.
+
+"I think that'll be all right now, Ruth," she said with a re-assuring
+look.  "I'm going to call you that now if I may.  I'll come round and
+let you know directly I know myself."
+
+Ruth retired with haunted eyes.  She guessed rather than knew the
+forces that were gathering against her, and the strength of them.
+
+Outside in the porch she met Lady Augusta with her mane of thick bobbed
+white hair and rosy face; and on the cliff, as she walked home, other
+ladies of the Committee and the Reverend Spink.
+
+How hard they looked and how complacent! ...
+
+Mrs. Lewknor put the case before her committee, telling them just as
+much as she thought it good for them to know.
+
+There was of course the inevitable trouble about little Alice.
+
+"We don't even know for certain that she is the child of the man the
+mother afterwards married," objected Lady Augusta Willcocks in her
+worst manner.  "She mayn't be a soldier's child at all."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor turned in her lips.
+
+"Our business surely is to support the women and children while the men
+are away fighting our battles," she said.
+
+"Need we form ourselves into a private enquiry office?" asked Mrs.
+Trupp quietly.
+
+The old lady's eyes flashed.  Mrs. Trupp of course didn't care.  Mrs.
+Trupp never went to church.  "Putting a premium on immorality!" she
+cried with bitter laughter--"as usual."
+
+"We must look a little into character surely, Mrs. Lewknor," said a
+honied virgin from St. Michael's.
+
+"I'll go bail for this woman's character," answered Mrs. Lewknor,
+flashing in her turn.
+
+"I believe she _is_ more respectable than she used to be," said a dull
+spinster with a dogged eye.
+
+"_Damn_ respectability," thought Mrs. Lewknor, but she said, "Are we to
+deprive this child of bread in the name of respectability?  Whatever
+else she is she's a child of the Empire."
+
+Then the Reverend Spink spoke.  He and Lady Augusta Willcocks were
+there to represent the point of view of the Church.
+
+He spoke quietly, his eyes down, and lips compressed, mock-meekly aware
+of the dramatic significance of his words.
+
+"Perhaps I ought to tell the committee that the man this woman is now
+living with is not her husband."
+
+The silence that greeted this announcement was all that the reverend
+gentleman could have desired.  It was only broken by the loud
+triumphant cry of the Lady Augusta Willcocks.
+
+"Then all _four_ children are illegitimate!"
+
+"Oh, that _would_ be joyful!" cried Mrs. Lewknor with a little titter.
+
+It was the great moment of the Reverend Spink's life.
+
+"She married some yeahs ago," he continued, so well-pleased with the
+cumulative effect of the impression he was making, as even to venture
+an imitation of the Archdeacon's accent.  "And her husband is still
+alive."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor challenged swiftly.
+
+"Where did she marry?" she asked, lest another question should be asked
+first: for the honour of the regiment was involved.
+
+"At the Registrar's Office, Lewes."
+
+"When?"
+
+"September 14th, 1906."
+
+The man had his story pat enough to be sure.
+
+"Who told you?" asked Mrs. Lewknor aggressively.
+
+Mr. Spink pursed his lips.
+
+"I have it on reliable information."
+
+"I know your authority, I think," said Mrs. Trupp quietly.
+
+"Did you check it?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+"It was unnecessary," replied the curate insolently.  "I can trust my
+authority.  But if you doubt me you can check it yourself."
+
+"I shall of course," retorted the little lady.
+
+Then the Chairman interposed.
+
+"It looks like a case for the police," he said.
+
+"Certainly," Lady Augusta rapped out.
+
+"It's very serious," said the Chairman.
+
+"For somebody," retorted Mrs. Lewknor.
+
+By common consent the case was adjourned.
+
+The Reverend Spink retired to Old Town.
+
+The fierce hostility of Mrs. Lewknor, and the no less formidable
+resistance of Mrs. Trupp, made the curate uneasy.
+
+After dark he went round to Alf Caspar's garage.
+
+"You're sure of your facts?" he asked.
+
+"Dead cert," said Alf.  "Drove em there meself."
+
+"And the date?"
+
+"Marked it down at the time, sir....  I can show it you in me ledger.
+Always make a note of me engagements.  You never know when it mayn't
+come in handy."
+
+He went down to his office, followed by the curate, and was proceeding
+to take a bulky folio down from the shelf, when the telephone bell rang.
+
+It was Mr. Trupp to say the car would be wanted at four to-morrow
+afternoon.
+
+"Is it a long run, sir?" asked Alf.
+
+"No," came the answer.  "Lewes--Mrs. Trupp."
+
+Alf determined to send a man and not drive himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+SUSPENSE
+
+Ruth walked home across the golf links, at her heart the agony of the
+beaten vixen who, crawling across a ploughed field still far from her
+earth, glances round to see a white wave of hounds breaking over the
+fence at her brush.
+
+At Billing's Corner she nearly ran into her mother-in-law.
+
+For the first time Anne paused deliberately to address her.
+
+"That you, Mrs. Caspar?" she said, and looked away a sour smirk on her
+face.  At the moment, beautiful old woman though she was, with her
+porcelain complexion of a girl, her snow-white hair, and broad-splashed
+dark brows, there was a suggestion of Alf about her--Ruth noticed it at
+once and was afraid.
+
+"They're puttin away all the chance children the mothers can't support
+in there," the elder woman said casually, nodding at the blue roofs of
+the old cavalry barracks at the back of Rectory Walk that was now the
+Work-house.  "To save expense, I suppose--the war or something.  If you
+didn't want yours to go I might take my son's children off your hands.
+Then you could go out and char for her."
+
+Ruth sickened.
+
+"No, thank-you, Mrs. Caspar," she said.
+
+Just then a nurse came by pushing a wicker spinal chair in which were a
+host of red-cloaked babies packed tight as fledgelings in a nest.
+Behind them trooped, two by two and with clattering heels, a score of
+elder children from the Work-house, all in the same straw hats, the
+same little capes.  Ruth glanced at them as she had often done before.
+Those children, she remarked with ironic bitterness, were well-soaped,
+wonderfully so, well-groomed, well-fed, with short hogged hair, and
+stout boots; but she noted about them all, in spite of their apparent
+material prosperity, the air of spiritual discontent which is the
+hallmark, all the world over, of children who know nothing of a
+mother's jealous and discriminating care.
+
+"The not-wanteds," said Anne.  "They'll put yours along with them, I
+suppose."
+
+Ruth shook.  Then she lifted up her eyes and saw help coming.  Old Mr.
+Caspar was bundling down the road towards her, crowding on all sail and
+waving his umbrella as though to tell her that he had seen her mute
+S.O.S.
+
+Anne drew away.
+
+"There's my husband," she said.
+
+"Yes," answered Ruth, "that's dad," and walked away down Church Street,
+trembling still but faintly relieved that she had planted her pin in
+the heart of her enemy before disengaging.
+
+She reached home and turned the key behind her.  That vague enemy,
+named _They_, who haunts each one of us through life, was hard on her
+heels.  She was in her earth at last; but _They_ could dig her out.
+Before now she had seen them do it on Windhover, with halloos, the men
+and women standing round with long-lashed cruel whips to prevent
+escape.  She had seen them throw the wriggling vixen to the pack ...
+and the worry ... and the huntsman standing amid a foam of leaping
+hounds, screaming horribly and brandishing above his head a bloody rag
+that a few minutes since had been a warm and breathing creature.
+Horrible--but true ... That was the world.  She knew it of old; and
+could almost have thanked that hard old woman with eyes the blue of
+steel who had just reminded her of what _They_ and life were compact.
+
+Then she noted there was silence in the house.
+
+What if in her absence _They_ had kidnapped her child--little Alice,
+born in agony of flesh and spirit, so different from those other
+babies, the heirs of ease and security; little Alice, the child for
+whom she had fought and suffered and endured alone.  It was her They
+were after: Ruth never doubted that.  She had seen it in Lady Augusta's
+eyes, as she passed her in the porch of the hostel; in the downward
+glances of those other members of the committee she had met upon the
+cliff; in the voice and bearing of her mother-in-law.
+
+She rushed upstairs.
+
+Alice, busiest of little mothers, had tucked the other three away in
+bed a little before their time because she wanted to do it all alone
+and without her mother's help.  Now she was turning down her own bed.
+Her aim successfully achieved she was free to bestow on her mother a
+happy smile.
+
+Ruth swept her up in her arms, and bore her away into her own room,
+devouring her with passionate eyes.
+
+"You shall sleep along o me place o daddy," she said, and kissed her
+hungrily.
+
+"What about Susie and Jenny, mum?" asked the child.
+
+"We'll leave the door open so we can hear," answered Ruth, remarking
+even then the child's thoughtfulness.  "See, daddy wants you to take
+care o mother."
+
+Alice gave a quick nod of understanding.
+
+Next morning Ruth refused to let her go to school with the others,
+would not let her leave the house.
+
+"You'll stay along with me," she said, fierce for once.
+
+At eleven o'clock there came a knock.  Ruth hustled the child out into
+the backyard, shoved her into the coal-shed, turned the key on her, and
+locked the backdoor.  Then she went very quietly not to the front-door
+but to the window, opening it a crack with the utmost stealth.
+Kneeling she listened.  Whoever was at the door was very quiet, not a
+man.  If it had been he would have spat by now, or sworn.
+
+"Who is it?  she asked.
+
+"Mrs. Lewknor," came the reply.
+
+Ruth opened.  The little lady entered, and followed into the kitchen.
+
+"Is it all right, 'M?" asked Ruth anxiously.
+
+"It's going to be," replied the other, firm and confident.  "You've got
+your marriage-certificate if we should want it?"
+
+Ruth sighed her relief.
+
+"O yes, 'M.  I got my lines all right.  They're in the tin box under
+the bed."  She was running upstairs to fetch them when the other stayed
+her.
+
+"There's just one thing," said Mrs. Lewknor gravely.  "It would help
+Mrs. Trupp and me very much, if you could give us some sort of idea
+where you were on September 14th, 1906--if you can throw your mind back
+all that great way."
+
+"I was with _him_!" Ruth answered in a flash.  She was fighting for her
+best-beloved: everything must be sacrificed to save her--even Royal.
+"It was _the day_!" she panted.  "It were the first time ever I was in
+a car--that's one why I remember: Alf drove us."
+
+"D'you happen to remember at all where you went?" tentatively.
+
+"All wheres," Ruth answered.  "Hailsham--Heathfield.  I hardly rithely
+knaws the names.  We'd tea at Lewes--I remembers that."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor raised her keen eyes.
+
+"You don't remember where you had tea?"
+
+Ruth shook her head, slowly.
+
+"I can't justly remember where.  See Lewes is such a tarrabul great
+city these days--nigh as big as Beachbourne, I reck'n.  It was over the
+Registrar's for births and deaths and such like--I remember that along
+o the plate at the door."
+
+Mrs. Lewknor rose, her fine eyes sparkling.
+
+"That's splendid, Ruth!" she said.  "All I wanted."
+
+All that afternoon Ruth waited behind locked doors--she did not know
+what for; she only knew that _They_ were prowling about watching their
+chance.  She had drawn the curtains across the windows though the sun
+was still high in the heaven, and sat in the darkness, longing for
+Ernie as she never would have believed she could have longed for him.
+Every now and then little Alice came in a tip-toe from the backyard to
+visit her.  The child thought her mother had one of her rare
+head-aches, and was solicitous accordingly.
+
+About three o'clock Ruth crept upstairs and peeped through her window.
+It was as she had thought.  Alf was there, strolling up and down the
+pavement opposite, watching the house.  Then he saw her, half-hidden
+though she was, crossed the street briskly and knocked.
+
+She went down at once to give him battle.
+
+He met her with his sly smile, insolently sure of himself.
+
+"Police come yet?" he asked.
+
+She banged the door in his face; and the bang brought her strange
+relief.  With mocking knuckles he rapped on the window on to the street
+as he withdrew.
+
+After that nobody came but the children back from school.  Ruth packed
+them off to bed early.  She wanted to be alone with little Alice.
+
+In the kitchen she waited on in the dark.
+
+Then she heard solid familiar feet tramping down the pavement towards
+her cottage.  She knew whose feet they were, and knew their errand.
+The hour of decision had come.  One way or the other it must be.
+
+In the confusion and uncertainty only one thing was clear to her.
+There was a way--and a price to be paid; if she took it.
+
+Joe knocked.
+
+Ruth slipped to her knees.  She did not pray consciously.  Kneeling on
+the stone-slabs, her face uplifted in the darkness, her hands pale on
+the Windsor chair before her, she opened wide the portals of her heart
+to the voice of the Spirit, if such voice there were.
+
+And there was.  It came to her from above in the silence and the dusk.
+Ruth knew it so well, that still small voice with the gurgle in it.
+
+It was Susie laughing in her sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE VALLEY OF DECISION
+
+The answer she had sought had been given her.  Comforted and
+strengthened she rose, went to the door and unlocked it.  Joe had
+strolled a yard or two down the street.  She did not call him, but
+retired to await him in the kitchen, leaving the door a-jar.
+
+In a few minutes his feet approached slowly.  She heard him brush his
+boots in the passage, and turn the key of the outer door behind him.
+Then he entered.
+
+An immense change had been wrought in him since last they had met.  The
+bull-moose of Saffrons Croft had given place to a man, humbled, solemn,
+quiet, the heir of ages of self-discipline and the amassed spiritual
+treasure of a world-old civilisation.
+
+He stood afar off, with downward eyes.  Then he held out both arms to
+her.
+
+"Ruth, A've come to claim thee--or say good-bye."
+
+She gripped the mantelpiece but did not answer.  Her head was down, her
+eyes closed.
+
+"Then it's goodbye, Joe," she said in a voice so small that she hardly
+recognised it herself.
+
+He dropped his hands, darkening.
+
+"And who'll keep thee and children now Ern's gone?"
+
+A note of harshness had crept into his voice.
+
+She murmured something about the Government.
+
+He laughed at her hardly.
+
+"The Government!  What's Government ever done for the workers?  _They_
+make wars: the workers pay for em.  That law's old as the capitalist
+system.  What did Government do for women and children time o South
+Africa?--Left em to the mercy o God and the ruling class.  If your
+children are to trust for bread to the Government, heaven help em!"
+
+Ruth knew that it was true.  She remembered South Africa.  In those
+days there had been a neighbour of theirs at Aldwoldston, the wife of a
+ploughman, a woman with six children, whose husband had been called up.
+Ruth had only been a girl then; but she remembered that woman, and that
+woman's children, and her home, and that woman's face.
+
+"There's the ladies," she said feebly.
+
+Joe jeered.
+
+"You know the ladies.  So do I.  Might as lief look for help to the
+Church straight off."
+
+"There's One Above."
+
+"Aye, there's One Above.  And He stays there too and don't fash Himself
+over them below--not over you and me and our class any road."
+
+His tone that had been mocking became suddenly serious.
+
+"Nay, there's nobbut one thing now atween you and them and Work-house."
+
+She peeped, faintly inquisitive.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The arm of a Lancasheer lad."
+
+There came into her eyes the tenderness tinged with irony of the woman
+amused at the eternal egoism of the male.  He noted the change in her,
+thought she had relaxed, and came in upon her, instantly, appealing
+now--
+
+"Coom and live with me, brother and sister, the lot of you ... A swear
+to thee a wunna touch thee."
+
+She laughed at him, low and tender.
+
+"Never do, Joe--never!" shaking her head and swallowing.
+
+"Why not then?"
+
+"There's far over much nature in us--two valiant great chaps like you
+and me be."
+
+Then little Alice entered and went to Joe, who put a sheltering arm
+about her.
+
+"Her and me and you!" he said huskily to Ruth.  "Us three against the
+world!  Laugh at em then!"
+
+Ruth motioned to the child to go on up to bed.  She went; and the two
+striving creatures were left alone once more.
+
+"Ern bequeathed thee to me."
+
+"Aye, but he didn't rithely knaw you, and he didn't rithely knaw me
+eether."
+
+He caught at the straw.
+
+"Then you do loov me?"
+
+She shook her head, and the tears from her long lashes starred her
+cheek.
+
+"Nay, Joe: Ern's my man--always was and always will be."
+
+He stood before her, firm on his feet, and solid as a rock, his fists
+clenched, his eyes on her, brilliant, dark, and kindly.  She felt the
+thrill of him, his solidity, his sincerity, above all his strength, and
+thrilled to him again.
+
+"A'm the mon for thee," he said.
+
+She did not answer.  In her ears was the roar of cataracts.
+
+"Thoo dursena say me nay."
+
+The words came from far off, from another world.  Wavering like a flame
+in the wind, she heard but could make no reply.
+
+"Thoo canna."
+
+Then a voice spoke through her, a voice that was not hers, coming from
+far away over waste seas, a voice she had never heard before and did
+not recognise.
+
+"I can--Lord Jesus helpin me."
+
+At that the mists began to float away.  She saw more clearly now.  The
+worst perhaps was over.
+
+"You want a mon with a purpose in his life."
+
+Ah, how well he knew her!
+
+"A mon who knows what he wants to do and means to do it.--And you must
+have it or dee.  The bairns arena enough for a woman like you."
+
+He was putting forth the whole of his huge strength to overwhelm her:
+she was aware of it and of her own weakness.
+
+"A've got a purpose.  You can help me fulfill it--none else, only you.
+Time was A thought A could go on alone.  You learnt me better.  A
+canna.  God didna make mon that way--not _this_ mon any gate.  Mon
+needs Woman for his work.  A need you."
+
+Quietly she was gathering her forces.
+
+"Ern's my man, Joe," she repeated.  "I need him; and none other."
+
+Baffled for the moment, her assailant paused in his assault.
+
+"And has Ern got a purpose in his life?"
+
+"He has now."
+
+"What's that then?"
+
+"What you said at the Citadel that Sunday--the war, and what it stands
+for."
+
+"The war won't last for ever.  What when that's over?"
+
+"He'll come back a made man."
+
+He regarded her with a kind of sardonic pity.
+
+"He'll never coom back--never."
+
+She lifted her eyes to his, steadfast and tender.
+
+"Hap he'll not, Joe.  If so be he doosn't, I shan't grudge him.  A
+soldier in a soldier's grave.  Liefer that than he should linger here
+now.  He's such a battler, Ern is.  That's why I love him."
+
+He took the blows she dealt him, unflinching.
+
+"You don't loov, Ern."
+
+"I'm learning to."
+
+His lips curled in scorn.
+
+"You don't know what loov is.  See here!--This is loov."  He tapped his
+outspread palm, as often when lecturing.
+
+"Ern's ma familiar friend--has been for years.  He trusts me--look at
+what he did that last night.  And sitha!  A'm a mon men do trust.
+That's ma reputation--earned too.  A never sold a pal yet, big or
+little.  And now--A'll betray ma own mate behind his back; ma mate
+that's gone fightin ma battles in the cause for which A've lived twenty
+years; ma mate that trusts me--and all for the sake of loov."  The
+great fellow was trembling himself now.  "Am A a rotter?--You know A'm
+none.  Am A a mon?  You know A am.  The measure o ma sin is the measure
+o ma loov.  Judge for yourself."
+
+He was battening down the furnace behind steel-doors; but she could
+hear the roar of the flames.
+
+"That's loov.  A'll lose all to win all; and A've more than most to
+lose.  A'll lose ma life to save ma soul--and that's you.  Are you for
+it?--Was a time A thought nowt o women: now A think o nought but the
+One Woman....  Now then!--Take it or leave it!--Choose your path!--Will
+you throw a loov like that away--the loov of a mon--for what?--A chap
+you don't trust, a chap you can't respect, a chap who's let you and the
+children down and will again, a chap you're never like to see again--a
+feeble feckless sot, and son of a sot--"
+
+She put both hands to her ears.  He wrenched them fiercely aside and
+held them.  She stood before him, her hands imprisoned in his, her eyes
+shut, on her face the look of one awaiting the blows about to rain down
+in her defencelessness.
+
+"I may ha doubted him once, Joe.  But I knaw him better now.  May he
+forgive me--and you too; all the wrong I done you both.  I knaw him,
+and myself, better than I did a while back.  And now he's won me, I'll
+never loose him, _never_."
+
+She spoke with a passion which convinced even that stubborn lover.
+
+He drew back, and she knew from the sound of his breathing that she had
+beaten him.
+
+"Then you was playin wi me?"
+
+He brooded over her, sullen and smouldering.
+
+She put out her hands to him with something of the appeal of a child.
+
+"Hap a while back when you called me so strong I _did_ answer
+you--more'n I should--not knawin you cared so much, Joe.  And may be I
+thart if Ernie saw there was anudder man around hap it'd ginger him
+jealous and help us along.  I was fighting for my home ... and my
+children ... and for him, Joe.... And when a woman's fighting..."
+
+She broke off and gasped.
+
+He met her remorselessly.
+
+"Then yo've chosen ... It's goodbye."
+
+She laid her hands upon his shoulders.
+
+"But not like that.--Kiss me, Joe."
+
+She lifted her face.
+
+Slowly he dropped his hands upon her arms.
+
+And as they stood thus, entwined, the window opened quickly from
+outside, the curtains parted, and a voice low at first and rising to a
+horrible scream shrilled,
+
+"Caught em at it!--_Mr. Spink_.--Come and see for yourself then!  _Mr.
+Spink_."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+VICTORY AND REVENGE
+
+In the fury of his excitement Alf thrust his head and shoulders far
+into the room.
+
+"Got you this time!" he screamed to Joe, his face distorted with hate.
+"_Mr. Spink!_" he cried to somebody who must have been near by.
+
+The engineer made a grab at him and seized him by the head.
+
+"Got _you_, ye mean!" he bellowed and jerked the other bodily into the
+room.  "Ah, ye dirty spyin tyke!--I'll learn you!"
+
+He heaved his enemy from his knees to his feet and closed with him.
+The struggle was that of a parrot in the clutch of a tiger.
+
+Joe carried his enemy to the door and slung him out head first.  Alf
+brought up with a bang against a big car which had just drawn up
+outside.
+
+A little lady sat in it.
+
+"Will you get out of my way, please?" she said coldly to the man
+sprawling on his hands and knees in the dust at her feet, as she
+proceeded to descend.
+
+The prostrate man raised his eyes and blinked.  The lady passed him by
+as she might have passed a dead puppy lying in the road.
+
+Joe crossed the path and examined with a certain detached interest, the
+door of the car against which Alf's head had crashed.
+
+"Why, yo've made quite a dent in your nice car," he said.  "Pity."  And
+he walked away down the street after Mr. Spink who was retiring
+discreetly round the corner.
+
+Mrs. Lewknor entered the cottage.
+
+Ruth was sitting in the kitchen, her hands in her lap, dazed.
+
+The lady went over to her.
+
+"It's all right, Ruth," she said gently in the other's ear.
+
+Slowly Ruth recovered and poured the tale of the last twenty-four hours
+into the ear of her friend.  It was the cruelty of her mother-in-law
+more than anything else that troubled her: for it was to her
+significant of the attitude of the world.
+
+"That's her!" she said.  "And that's them!--and that's how it is!"
+
+Mrs. Lewknor comforted her; but Ruth refused to be comforted.
+
+"Ah, you don't know em," she said.  "But I been through it, me and
+little Alice.  See I'm alone again now Ernie's gone.  And so they got
+me.  And they know it and take advantage--and Mrs. Caspar, that sly and
+cruel, she leads em on."
+
+"I think perhaps she's not as bad as she likes to make herself out,"
+Mrs. Lewknor answered.
+
+She opened her bag, took out a letter, and put it in Ruth's hand.  It
+was from Anne Caspar, angular as the writer in phrase alike and
+penmanship, and in the pseudo-business vein of the daughter of the
+Ealing tobacconist.
+
+
+_Dear Madam,--If your Committee can help Mrs. Caspar in the Moot, board
+for herself and four children, I will pay rent of same._
+
+  _Yours faithfully,
+      Anne Caspar._
+
+
+Later just as twilight began to fall Ruth went up to Rectory Walk.
+Anne was standing on the patch of lawn in front of the little house
+amid her tobacco plants, sweet-scented in the dusk, a shawl drawn tight
+about her gaunt shoulders.
+
+Ruth halted on the path outside.
+
+"I do thank you, Mrs. Caspar," she said, deep and quivering.
+
+The elder woman did not look at her, did not invite her in.  She tugged
+at the ends of her shawl and sniffed the evening with her peculiar
+smirk.
+
+"Must have a roof over them, I suppose," she said.  "Even in war-time."
+
+
+The visit of Mrs. Trupp and Mrs. Lewknor to the Registrar at Lewes had
+proved entirely satisfactory.  No marriage had taken place on the day
+in question, so examination disclosed.  Mrs. Lewknor reported as much
+to her husband on her return home that evening.
+
+The Colonel grinned the grin of an ogre about to take his evening meal
+of well-cooked children.
+
+"We must twist Master Alf's tail," he said; "and not forget we owe him
+one ourselves."
+
+At the next Committee meeting, which the Colonel attended, there was
+heavy fighting between the Army and the Church; and after it even
+graver trouble between Alf and the Reverend Spink.
+
+"It's not only my reputation," cried the indignant curate.  "It's the
+credit of the Church you've shaken."
+
+"I know nothing only the facts," retorted Alf doggedly--"if they're any
+good to you.  I drove them there meself--14th September, 1906, four
+o'clock of a Saturday afternoon and a bit foggy like.  You can see it
+in the entry-book for yourself.  They went into the Registrar's office
+single, and they walked out double, half-an-hour later.  I see em
+myself, and you can't get away from the facts of your eyes, not even a
+clergyman can't."
+
+Alf was additionally embittered because he felt that the curate had
+left him disgracefully in the lurch in the incident of the Moot.  The
+Reverend Spink on his side--somewhat dubious in his heart of the part
+he had played on the fringe of that affair--felt that by taking the
+strong and righteous line now he was vindicating himself in his own
+eyes at least for any short-comings then.
+
+"I shall report the whole thing to the Archdeacon," he said.  "It's a
+scandal.  He'll deal with you."
+
+"Report it then!" snapped Alf.  "If the Church don't want me, neether
+don't I want the Church."
+
+
+The war was killing the Archdeacon, as Mr. Trupp had said it must.
+
+The flames of his indomitable energy were devouring the old gentleman
+for all the world to see.  He was going down to his grave, as he would
+have wished, to the roll of drums and roar of artillery.
+
+Thus when the Reverend Spink went up to the Rectory to report on the
+delinquencies of the sidesman, he found his chief in bed and obviously
+spent.
+
+The old gentleman made a pathetic figure attempting to maintain his
+dignity in a night-gown obviously too small for him, which served to
+emphasize his failing mortality.
+
+His face was ghastly save for a faint dis-colouration about one eye;
+but he was playing his part royally still.  His bitterest enemy must
+have admired his courage; his severest critic might have wept, so
+pitiful was the old man's make-believe.
+
+On a table at his side were all the pathetic little properties that
+made the man.  There was his snuff-box; there the filigree chain; a
+scent-bottle; a rosary; a missal.  On his bed was the silver-mounted
+ebony cane; and beneath his pillow, artfully concealed to show, the
+butt-end of his pistol.
+
+Over his head was the photograph of a man whom the curate recognised
+instantly as Sir Edward Carson; and beneath the photograph was an
+illuminated text which on closer scrutiny turned out to be the Solemn
+League and Covenant.
+
+Facing the great Unionist Leader on the opposite wall was the Emperor
+of the French.  The likeness between the two famous Imperialists was
+curiously marked; and they seemed aware of it, staring across the room
+at each other over the body of their prostrate admirer with intimacy,
+understanding, mutual admiration.  Almost you expected them to wink at
+each other--a knowing wink.
+
+Mr. Spink now told his chief the whole story as it affected Alf.  Much
+of it the Archdeacon had already heard from his wife.
+
+"I'd better see him," he now said grimly.
+
+And the Archdeacon was not the only one who wanted to see Alf just
+then.  That afternoon, just as he was starting out with the car, he was
+called up on the telephone.
+
+The Director of Recruiting wished to see him at the Town
+Hall--to-morrow--11 a.m., sharp.  The voice was peremptory and somehow
+familiar.  Alf was perturbed.  What was up now?
+
+"Who is the Director of Recruiting here?" he asked Mr. Trupp a few
+minutes later.
+
+"Colonel Lewknor," the old surgeon answered.  "Just appointed.  All you
+young men of military age come under him now."
+
+Alf winced.
+
+
+The Colonel's office was in the Town Hall, and one of the first men to
+come and sign on there was Joe Burt.
+
+The Colonel, as he took in the engineer, saw at once that the hurricane
+which was devastating the world had wrought its will upon this man too.
+The Joe Burt he had originally known four years ago stood before him
+once again, surly, shy, and twinkling.
+
+"Good luck to you," said the Colonel as they shook hands.  "And try to
+be an honest man.  You were meant to be, you know."
+
+"A'm as honest as soom and honester than most, A reckon," the engineer
+answered dogged as a badgered schoolboy.
+
+The Colonel essayed to look austere.
+
+"You'd better go before you get into worse trouble," he said.
+
+Joe went out, grinning.
+
+"Ah, A'm not the only one," he mumbled.
+
+Outside in the passage he met Alf, and paused amazed.
+
+"You goin to enlist!" he roared.  "Never!" and marched on, his laughter
+rollicking down the corridor like a huge wind.
+
+Alf entered the Colonel's office delicately: he had reasons of his own
+to fear everything that wore khaki.
+
+The Colonel sat at his desk like a death's head, a trail of faded
+medal-ribands running across his khaki chest.
+
+He was thin, spectral, almost cadaverous.  But his voice was gentle, as
+always; his manner as always, most courteous.  Nothing could be more
+remote from the truculence of the Army manner of tradition.
+
+He was the spider talking to the fly.
+
+"I'm afraid this is a very serious matter, Mr. Caspar," he began; and
+it was a favourite opening of his.  "It seems you've been taking away
+the character of the wife of a member of His Majesty's forces now in
+France..."
+
+The interview lasted some time, and it was the Colonel who did the
+talking.
+
+"And now I won't detain you further, Mr. Caspar," he said at the end.
+"My clerk in the next room will take all your particulars for our index
+card register, so that we needn't bother you again when conscription
+comes."
+
+"Conscription!" cried Alf, changing colour.
+
+"Yes," replied the Colonel.  "There's been no public announcement yet.
+But there's no reason you shouldn't know it's coming.  It's got to."
+
+Alf went out as a man goes to execution.  He returned to his now almost
+deserted garage to find there a note from the Archdeacon asking him to
+be good enough to call at the Rectory that afternoon.
+
+Alf stood at the window and looked out with dull eyes.  Now that the
+earth which three weeks since had felt so solid beneath his feet was
+crumbling away beneath him, he needed the backing of the Church more
+than ever; and for all his brave words to Mr. Spink, he was determined
+not to relinquish his position in it without a fight.
+
+That afternoon he walked slowly up the hill to the Rectory.
+
+Outside the white gate he stood in the road under the sycamore trees,
+gathering courage to make the plunge.
+
+If was five o'clock.
+
+A man got off the bus at Billing's Corner and came down the road
+towards him.  Alf was aware of him, but did not at first see who he was.
+
+"Not gone yet then?" said the man.
+
+"No," Alf answered.  "Got about as far as you--and that ain't very far."
+
+"I'm on the way," answered Joe.  "Going up to the camp in Summerdown
+now; and join up this evening."
+
+"Ah," said Alf.  "I'll believe it when I see it."
+
+Swag on back, Joe tramped sturdily on towards the Downs.
+
+Alf watched him.  Then a gate clicked; and Edward Caspar came
+blundering down the road.  Alf in his loneliness was drawn towards him.
+
+"Good evening, father," he said.
+
+The old gentleman blinked vaguely through his spectacles, and answered
+most courteously,
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Er-um-ah!" and rolled on down the road.
+
+So his own father didn't know him!
+
+Overhead an aeroplane buzzed by.  From the coombe came the eternal
+noise of the hammers as the great camp there took shape.  Along
+Summerdown Road at the end of Rectory Walk a long convoy of Army
+Service Corps wagons with mule-teams trailed by.  A big motor passed
+him.  In it was Stanley Bessemere and three staff-officers with red
+bands round their caps.  They were very pleased with themselves and
+their cigars.  The member for Beachbourne West did not see his
+supporter.  Then there sounded the tramp of martial feet.  It was
+Saturday afternoon.  The Old Town Company of Volunteers, middle-aged
+men for the most part, known to Alf from childhood, was marching by on
+the way to drill on the Downs.  A fierce short man was in charge.
+Three rough chevrons had been sewn on to his sleeve to mark his rank as
+sergeant; and he wore a belt tightly buckled about his ample waist.
+All carried dummy rifles.
+
+"Left-right, left-right," called the sergeant in the voice of a
+drill-instructor of the Guards.  "Mark time in front!  Forward!
+Dressing by your left!"
+
+It was Mr. Pigott.
+
+Alf's eyes followed the little party up the road.  Then they fell on
+his home covered with ampelopsis just beginning to turn.  His mother
+was at the window, looking at him.  Whether it was that the glass
+distorted her face, or that his own vision was clouded, it seemed to
+Alf that she was mocking him.  Then she drew down the blind as though
+to shut him out--his own mother.
+
+Alf shivered.
+
+A young woman coming from Billing's Corner crossed the road to him.
+
+"Well, Alf," she said gaily, "you're getting em all against you!"
+
+Alf raised his eyes to hers, and they were the eyes of the rabbit in
+the burrow with the stoat hard upon its heels.
+
+"Yes," he said more to himself than her.  "Reckon I'm done."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+THE COMFORTER
+
+Ruth passed down the lane towards the golf links, the laughter
+sparkling in her brown eyes.
+
+She was merry, malicious, mischievously prim.  Then suddenly, as at the
+shutting of a door, her mood changed.  Something warm and large and
+tremulous surged up unbidden out of the ocean-deeps of her.
+
+To her own amazement she found herself sorry for the forlorn little
+figure with the eyes haunting and haunted, she had left standing in the
+road outside the Rectory gate.
+
+A sense of the dramatic vicissitudes of life caught her by the throat.
+Three weeks ago that little man had been conquering the world with a
+swagger, the master of circumstance, over-riding destiny, sweeping
+obstacles aside, a domineer, with all the attributes of his
+kind--brutal, blatant, sure of himself, indifferent to others, scornful
+of the humble.  Now he stood there at the cross-roads like some old
+tramp of the world, uncertain which way to turn--a mouse tossed
+overboard in mid-Atlantic by the cook's boy, the sport of tides and
+breakers, swimming round and round with ghastly eyes in ever-shortening
+circle.
+
+The tempest which had all the world in grip, which had snatched Ernie
+from her arms, and hurled him across the seas, which had set millions
+of men to killing and being killed, had caught this insignificant gnat
+too, flying with such a fuss and buzz of wings under ominous skies, and
+then swaggered on its great way indifferent to the tiny creature it had
+crushed.
+
+Ruth crossed the links, almost deserted now, and walked along over the
+crisp smooth turf, her eyes on the township of yellow huts rising out
+of the green in the great coombe across Summerdown Road.
+
+Then she was aware of Mr. Chislehurst coming swiftly towards her beside
+the ha-ha of the Duke's Lodge.  He looked, Ruth noticed at once, less
+harassed than he had done since the outbreak of war.
+
+"I am glad I've met you, Mrs. Caspar," he began with the old boyish
+enthusiasm.  "I'm off to-morrow and wasn't sure I should have time to
+come round and say goodbye to you and the babes."
+
+Ruth stared.
+
+"_You're_ never going out there, sir!"
+
+"Only as military chaplain."
+
+Ruth refused to believe.
+
+"But I thart you was against war and all that."
+
+"So I am," Bobby answered gravely.  He looked away towards Paradise.
+"But I feel Our Lord is there, or nowhere--just now."
+
+Ruth felt profoundly moved.  The young man's words, his action, brought
+home to her with a sudden pang, as not even the departure of Ernie had
+done, the change that had rushed upon the world.
+
+Ruth looked at the smooth young face before her, brown and goodly, with
+all the hope and promise of the future radiant in it.
+
+A passionate desire to take the boy in her arms, to shield him, to
+cry--You _shan't!_ came over her.  Then she gulped and said,
+
+"Goodbye, sir," and moved on rapidly.
+
+
+Passing through Meads, she turned the shoulder of the hill, and walked
+along the cliff, till she came to the long low house in the coombe.
+
+It had a strangely deserted air, no spinal chairs and perambulators on
+the terrace, no nurses on the lawns, no beds on the balconies.  All
+that busyness of quiet recreation which had been going on here for some
+years past had been brought to a sudden halt.  Mrs. Lewknor came out to
+her and the two women sat a while on the terrace, talking.  They had
+drawn very close in these few days, the regiment an ever-present bond
+between them.  The husband of one was "out there" with the 1st
+battalion; the son of the other was racing home with the 2nd battalion
+in the Indian Contingent.  Mrs. Lewknor felt a comfortable sense that
+once the two battalions were aligned on the West Front all would be
+well.
+
+"Then let em all come!" the little lady said in her heart with almost
+vindictive glee.
+
+As Ruth left she saw the Colonel in khaki, returning from his office.
+He came stalking along the cliff, his head on his left shoulder,
+looking seawards.  There was about the gaunt old man that air of
+austere exaltation which had marked him from the moment of the outbreak
+of war.  In his ears, indeed, ever since that hour, there had sounded a
+steady note, deep and pulsing like the throb of an engine--the heart of
+England beating on, beating eternally, tireless, true, from generation
+to generation.
+
+And for one brief moment he had doubted her--might God forgive him!
+
+Ruth asked him how recruiting was going.
+
+"Well," replied the Colonel.  "They're flocking in--men of all ages,
+classes, and creeds.  I shipped off Burt this morning; and he's forty.
+Wanted to join the Hammer-men or Manchesters with his friend Tawney;
+but I said _No: every man his own job_, and sent him off to the flying
+folk as air-mechanic.  He's joining up at Newhaven to-night, and in a
+week he'll be out there."
+
+Ruth asked if there was any news of the Expeditionary Force.
+
+"They're landed all right," the Colonel replied.  "We should soon hear
+more.  Our battalion's with the Fourth Division.  If you go up on the
+Head you can see the transports crossing from Newhaven with the stuff."
+
+"Think it'll be all right, sir?" asked Ruth.
+
+"If we can stop their first rush," the Colonel answered.  "Every day
+tells.  We can't be too thankful for Liége, though Namur's a nasty
+knock."
+
+Ruth looked across the sea.
+
+"I wish we could do something for em," she said wistfully.
+
+"We can," answered the Colonel sharply, almost sternly.
+
+The old soldier took off his cap and stood there bare-headed on the
+edge of the white cliff, the wisps of silver hair lifting in the
+evening breeze.
+
+"May the God of our fathers be with them in the day of battle!" he
+prayed, and added with quiet assurance as he covered again--"He will
+too."
+
+Then he asked the woman at his side if she had heard from her husband.
+
+Ruth dropped her eyes, sudden and secretive as a child.
+
+"Ern's all right, I reckon," she said casually.
+
+In fact a letter from him on the eve of sailing lay unopened in her
+pocket.  She was treasuring it jealously, as a child treasures a sweet,
+to devour it with due ritual at the appointed hour in the appropriate
+place.
+
+Ten minutes later she was standing waist-deep in the gorse of the
+Ambush looking about her.
+
+Far away a silver-bellied air-ship was patrolling leisurely somewhere
+over the Rother Valley; and once she heard a loud explosion seawards
+and knew it for a mine.
+
+Like a hind on the fell-side she stood up there, sniffing the wind.
+Behind her on the far horizon was a forest fire.  She could smell it,
+see the glow of it, and the rumour of its coming was all a-round her:
+overhead the whistle and pipe of birds hard-driven, while under-foot
+the heather was alive with the stealthy migration of the
+under-world--adder and weasel, snake and hare, flying from the torment
+to come.  But for her as yet the conflagration devouring the world was
+but an ominous red glare across the water.  She breathed freely: for
+she had shaken off her immediate enemy--the Hunter.
+
+Then she looked up and saw a man coming over the brow of Warren Hill
+towards her.
+
+She dropped as though shot.
+
+_He_ was at her heels again.  Face down, flat on the earth, she lay
+panting in her form.
+
+And as she crouched there, listening to the thumping of her own heart,
+she was aware of another sound that came rollicking down to her, born
+on the wind.  The Hunter was laughing, that huge gusty laughter of his
+she knew so well.  Had he tracked her down?
+
+She heard his feet approaching on the turf.  Was the earth trembling at
+the touch of them or was it the beating of her own heart that shook it?
+
+Prone on the ground, spying through the roots of the gorse, she could
+see those feet--those solid familiar boots that had dangled so often
+before her fire; and the bottoms of the trousers, frayed at the edges
+and rather short, betraying the absence of a woman's care.
+
+Was it her he was after?
+
+No: he passed, still rollicking.  He was not mocking her: he was
+tossing off his chest in cascades of giant laughter the seas that had
+so long threatened to overwhelm him, tossing them off into the blue in
+showers of spray.
+
+_I am free once more_! that was what his laughter said.
+
+She sat up: she knelt: warily she peeped over the green wall.  His back
+was moving solidly away in the evening, his back with the swag on it.
+He reached the flag-staff and dropped away down into Hodcombe, that
+lies between Beau-nez and the Belle-tout light-house.  She watched him
+till only his round dark head was visible.  Then that too disappeared.
+She rose and filled her chest as the breeze slowly fills the sails of a
+ship that has long hovered uncertainly in stays.
+
+He too was gone--into _IT_.
+
+That Other was gone--like the rest--and the past with him.
+
+How queer it all was! and how differently each man had met the huge
+tidal wave that had swept the whole world off its feet!
+
+Joe, paddling in the muddy shallows, had been caught up, and was
+swimming easily now on the crest of it.  Alf, snatched up unawares as
+he grubbed for bait upon the flats, had been tumbled over and over like
+a pebble, smashed down upon the remorseless beach, and drawn back with
+a sickening scream by the undersuck into the murderous riot of it.
+Last of all, Ern, asleep and snoring under the sunny sea-wall, had
+risen suddenly, girded on his strength, and waded out to meet it with
+rejoicing heart.
+
+Dear Ern!
+
+Sinking down into the harbourage of this deep and quiet covert where,
+under the stars, all his children, conceived in ecstasy, had come to
+her, she took out his letter, opened it, and began to read.
+
+It was dated _In the train_, and began full of affection for her and
+the children.
+
+"Now we made it up I don't mind what comes.  I feel like it was a new
+beginning.  There's a lot of married men joined up feel the very same.
+I feel uplifted like and that whatever comes nothing can ever come
+atween us no more really.  Even when it was dark I felt that--that it
+wasn't _really real_ between us--only a shadow like that would surely
+pass away--as it has passed away--thank God for His great mercies."
+
+There followed love and kisses to all the children and especially
+little Alice, underlined, and fraternal greetings to old Joe.
+
+"We shall push em back where they belong all right, I expect.  And if
+we don't I shall send for him to lend a shove.  He's all right, old Joe
+is.  There's not many of em I'd trust, but you can trust him.  I knew
+that all along."
+
+The letter finished,
+
+"It's an end and a beginning, as old dad says.  And whatever else
+_that's_ finished, and I don't care."
+
+It was true too.
+
+She folded the letter and slipped it in her bosom.
+
+The second volume of her life had ended, and ended well.  The sudden
+hand of destiny had reached forth to save her, to save the children, to
+save Ernie, to save Joe.
+
+Had she ever wavered?--Who shall say?--Perhaps she could not say
+herself.
+
+She cast her mind back over her married life.  Six years in September
+since she and Ern had ridden back to Old Town in Isaac Woolgar's cart.
+Six years of struggle, worry, and deep joy.  She was thankful for them,
+thankful for the crowding babes, and most of all, she sometimes
+thought, thankful for Ernie ... His unfailing love and solicitude for
+little Alice!  She could never be grateful enough to him for that.
+Dear Ern:--so affectionate, so always loveable.  She regretted nothing,
+not even his weakness now.  Because of his weakness strength had come
+to her, growth, and the consummation of deep unconscious desire.
+
+Had she been too hard on him?--A great voice of comfort, the voice of
+Ernie, so it seemed to her, only swollen to gigantic proportions, till
+the sound of it was like the sound of the Sou-West wind billowing
+through the beach-tops in Paradise, surged up within her crying No.
+
+Then she turned back to the first volume of her life, completed now so
+many years ago.
+
+For the second time she had been left thus, man-less, a new life
+quickening within her.  But what a difference between then and now!
+Then the fierce thief of her virginity had stolen away in the night,
+leaving her to meet the consequences, alone, an outcast, the hand of
+all men against her; and she recalled now with a shudder the afternoon
+on which she had gone forth to the Crumbles and there amid the jeers of
+the remorseless sea had faced the situation.  Now it was true her
+accustomed mate had been snatched from her side; but the world was
+behind her.  She was marching with the hosts, a mighty concourse, one
+of them, and uplifted on their songs.
+
+She had nothing to fear, much to be thankful for.  How calm she felt,
+how strong, how confident of herself, above all of Ernie!  His
+punishment had made him and completed her own life.  She had won her
+man and in winning him had won herself.  And she would never lose him
+now.  His pain, her pain, had been worth while.  Smiles were in her
+eyes as she recalled the fuss that he had made--his struggles, his
+temper, his wiles of a naughty and thwarted child; and tears where she
+recalled the anguish of his time of purgation.  And yet because of his
+suffering he had been strong when the day of battle came, and he would
+be strong.  She had no doubt of that.  And it was all over now.
+
+Rising she stood up and looked about her, absorbing the down-land,
+familiar and beloved from childhood.  The sky, grey now and mottled,
+drooped about her quietly with the soft wings of a mothering bird
+settling soft-breasted on her nest.  The good green earth, firm beneath
+her feet, lifted her up into the quiet refuge of that welcoming bosom,
+lifted her to meet it like a wave gently swelling.  So it had always
+been: so it always would be.  This earth she knew and loved so well was
+not alien, it was not hostile; rather it was flesh of her flesh and
+soul of her soul.  It gave her strength and comfort.  Her bosom rose
+and fell in time, so it seemed to her, with the rise and fall of the
+breast of this virgin-mother, whose goodness she assimilated through
+heart and eyes and nostrils.  She felt utterly at home.  All sense of
+separation, of dissent, had left her.
+
+Absorbed she stood, and absorbing.
+
+These woman-bodied hills, sparsely clad in rags of gorse that served
+only to enhance their loveliness, brought her solace and content as did
+nothing else.  So it had always been: so it always would be.  The
+beauty and wonder of them rolled in upon her in waves of sound-less
+music, sluicing over the sands of her life in foaming sheets of
+hyacinth, drowning the resentment, filling and fulfilling her with the
+grand harmony of life.
+
+Sometimes down in the Moot, amid the worry, and the tumult, and the
+exasperations, she became empty, a discord, a desert.  Then she would
+get away for an hour among the hills and her parched spirit found
+instant refreshment.  She brimmed again.  The quiet, the comfort, the
+deep abiding wonder of it all came back to her; even the words which
+she always associated with it--_I am the Resurrection and the Life_.
+
+Since Ernie's departure the Comforter had come thus to her with renewed
+power; as if knowing her need and resolute to fortify her in the hour
+of her ordeal.
+
+Standing there upon the brow, Ernie's letter lying like his hand upon
+her breast in the old dear way, she gazed across the waters, dimming in
+the dusk, and sent out her heart towards him, strong and pulsing as the
+sun's rays at dawn seen by some mountaineer from his native peak.  She
+could shield him so that no evil thing could come nigh him.  She had no
+fear for him and was amazed at her own triumphant faith.
+
+Established on the rock herself, earth in earth, spirit in spirit,
+invincibly secure, she had him safe in her keeping, safe, aye safe as
+his child quickening in the warm and sheltered darkness of her womb.
+
+
+
+Headley Bros., Ashford, Kent, & 18 Devonshire St., E.C.2.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of One Woman, by Alfred Ollivant
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57641 ***