One Woman: Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex

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."