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.