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