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.
"Yourtongue's altogether too long, Alfred Caspar," said Mr. Pigott, the Chairman, and added—quite unjudicially—"always was. Andyou'realtogether 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 theStar," 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 theStarSaturday."
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 theStar.... 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.
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, youaremy 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.
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 themoraleof 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 theStarcorner. 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.
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 theLeader."
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 youthere 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—isOur 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.Turgidhis 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?"
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,liéwith 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.