Ern loved that, but he was far too indolent to pursue the readings himself. When his father had finished, he would return the book to its place and say,
"You should read a bit yourself, Boy-lad," and Ern's invariable reply would be,
"I will, dad, when I got the time."
But Ern was one of those who never had the time and never would have.
Then the two would relapse into smoke and silence and vague dreams, out of which Edward Caspar's voice would emerge,
"Where's Alfred?"
To which Ern would answer with a faint smirk,
"Studyin in the kitchen."
Ern's tendency to be a masher, as the phrase of the day went, delighted Mr. Pigott. He looked on it as the best sign he had yet detected in the boy.
"Who's the lady, Ern?" he chaffed, meeting the lad.
The boy smiled shyly. At such moments, in spite of his plainness, he looked beautiful.
"Haven't got one, sir," he said.
It was true, too. His attitude towards girls was unlike that of his mates. He neither chirped at them in the streets, nor avoided them aggressively, nor was self-conscious in their presence. He was always friendly with them, even affectionate; but he went no farther. Some of the Old Town maidens wished he would. But, in fact, this was not Ern's weakness.
The Destroyer, who lies in wait to undo us all, if we give him but a crevice through which to creep into our citadel, was taking the line of least resistance, as he does in every case.
There began to be rumours in Old Town. His father's weakness, known to all, lent these rumours wing. In Churchy Beachbourne, as the enemy called the town by reason of the number and variety of its consecrated buildings, people were swift to believe, eager to hand on their beliefs.
Prebendary Willcocks—which was his proper title—or Canon Willcocks—as he had taught the locality to call him—who had reasons of his own for disliking Edward Caspar, heard and shook his aristocratic head, repeating the rumour to all and sundry in a lowered voice. The Lady Augusta Willcocks, that indefatigable worker in the parish for God and the Tory Party, entirely lacking in her husband's delicate feeling, echoed it resonantly.
Mr. Pigott was honestly aghast.
"Never!" he cried, and added—"God help him if his mother hears!"
He was so genuinely concerned indeed that he went round to 60 Rectory Walk to find out by indirect examination if Mrs. Caspar had heard.
She had; and was distraught.
"If he takes to that, I'll turn him out of the house!" she cried savagely. "Straight I will!"
And there was no question that she meant what she said.
"The best way to make trouble is to meet it half-way," muttered the schoolmaster, cowed for once by the woman's terrible emotion. "Give the boy a chance—even if he is your own son."
"Alf says he was blind at the match," the other answered doggedly.
"Alf!" scoffed Mr. Pigott, savage in his turn. "I wouldn't care that what Alf says about his brother. I know your Alf."
"And I don't then," said Mrs. Caspar. "I try to keep it fair between em—for all what folks may say different."
That evening Mr. Pigott met Alf in Church Street.
The schoolmaster stopped, holding with his eye the youth in the stained blue overall. Alf approached him delicately, with averted face and a sly smile.
It was clear that he courted the encounter.
Mr. Pigott came to the point at once.
"How's Ern?" he boomed in a voice of challenge.
Alf dropped his eyes.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "our Ern's goin the same way as dad."
Mr. Pigott gazed at him as one stupefied.
Then in a flash he understood ... Mr. Trupp was right. The boy was abnormal: his spirit dwarfed and stunted by the miserable tenement in which it was forced to dwell.
This sudden peep into one of the sewers of Nature, this illumination of what before had been to him obscure, this swift suggestion of Evil lurking obscenely in the dusk to leap on the unwary, brought him up abruptly. His anger passed for the moment. Something between fear and pity laid hold of him.
"I suppose you're glad," he said quietly.
Alf smiled that satyr-like smile of his, sickly and uncertain.
"Ah, you never did like me, Mr. Pigott!" he sneered.
"I don't," answered Mr. Pigott. "I never did. But I'm beginning to understand you. You're possessed."
He went on down the street and called at the Manor-house.
Mrs. Trupp was, he knew, a staunch friend of Ernie's.
The lady was playing with her children in the garden. But she gave both her ears to her visitor when she knew his errand. Had she heard anything?
Mrs. Trupp coloured. Shehadheard something which greatly perturbed her pure and beautiful spirit.
Her Joe, home from Rugby, had reported that on the way back from a match at Lewes Ernie Caspar had taken a drop which had made him funny.
"It was only a little," the lady ended. "Joe said it wasn't enough to make an ordinary canary queer. But it upset Ernest for the moment."
Mr. Pigott marched on down the hill to the railway station.
It was shutting-up time, and the object of his concern was just leaving the office.
Mr. Pigott unceremoniously seized the boy by the hand.
"For God's sake take a pull, Ern!" he said, most seriously.
Ernie looked up surprised, read the distress in the other's bearded face, and burned one of those sudden white flares of his.
"I see!" he said. "Alf's been at it again!" and he broke away.
Swiftly he went home, passed the study door, and entered the kitchen.
His mother was out.
Alf, his elbows on the table, and his chin on his hands, was studying a model-engine under the gas-light.
He looked up surlily as Ern entered.
"Keep out of it!" he ordered. "You've heard what mother says. The kitchen's mine at this time. I don't want you."
"But I want you, my lad," answered Ernie, brutal in his bitterness.
He locked the door, and took off his coat.
"Been tellin the tale again!" he trembled, as he rolled up his sleeves. "I've had more'n enough of it. Put em up! You're for it this journey!"
Alf had risen. He knew that look upon his brother's face, and was afraid.
"You mustn't touch me!" he screamed, shaking a crooked finger at the other. "I'm delicit, I am."
It was the ancient ruse which had stood him in good stead many a time at home and in the playground.
"Else you'll tell mother!" sneered Ern. "Very well. Have it your own way!"
He seized the model engine on the table, and smashed it down on to the floor. It lay at his feet, a broken mass, with spinning wheels.
Then Ern unlocked the door and went out.
At supper that evening he was still burning his white flare.
Alf saw it and was cowed; Mrs. Caspar saw it too and held her peace. Edward Caspar was, as always, away in the clouds and aware of nothing unusual when he looked in to say good-night.
Alf took no overt steps to avenge himself. Like old Polonius he went round to work, lying in wait for the chance he knew would come. He had not to wait long.
On the August Bank Holiday there was a big dance at the Rink in Cornfield Road. Ern attended. He danced well and was sought after as a partner.
Alf went too.
Ern was surprised to see his brother there, and pleased: for it was not in his nature to bear malice long.
"Hullo, Alf!" he chaffed. "Didn't know you was a dancing-man. Let me find you a partner then."
Alf shook his head, smiling that shifty smile of his.
"I ain't," he said. "I only come to watch."
That was true; but the words carried no sinister meaning to Ern's innocent ear.
Alf watched.
He sat by himself on one of the faded plush-seats that went round the hall. Nobody spoke to him, nobody heeded him. The seats on either side of him were left vacant.
Sour, shabby, ill at ease, yet sure of himself, he watched with furtive eyes the flow of boys and girls swirling by him in the dance.
One of Ern's friends pointed his brother out to him.
"I know," laughed Ern. "Let him alone. He don't want us. He's above larking, Alf is."
"Never seen him at a hop before," remarked the friend. "And now he don't look happy."
The evening was hot, the dancers thirsty, the drinks good. Alf observed his brother go to the bar once, twice, and again. Then he rose to go home, nodding to himself.
Ern passed him in the dance and stopped.
"What, Alf! You're off early!"
"I got a bit of reading to do," answered Alf.
"So long, then," said Ernie. "Shan't be long first myself." And he joined the current again, with flushed face and loquacious tongue.
It was just ten when Alf entered the kitchen.
His father had already retired to bed; his mother was sitting up.
"You're late," she remarked sharply. "Where's Ern?"
"Heard em say he was at the Rink," Alf answered sheepishly.
Mrs. Caspar's face darkened. The Puritan in her rose in arms.
"Dancing?" she asked.
Alf feigned uneasiness.
"I'll stay and let him in," he said. "He mayn't be back yet a bit."
Mrs. Caspar took her candle.
Regular as a machine, she rose always at six, and expected to be in bed by ten.
Anything that disturbed her routine she resented, surly as an animal.
"Let me know when he comes in," she said. "I'll speak to him. Keepin us up to all hours and disturbin dad's rest while he carries on. Might be a disorderly house."
She left the room.
Alf turned out the gas, and sat in the darkness, watching the dying fire, and waiting for his mouse.
A crisis in his life had come.
He was about to take the first big step along the road that was going to lead him to success or ruin.
He was aware of it, and calm as a practised gambler.
Once he rose and locked the front door to make sure his brother could not enter without his knowledge.
It was eleven o'clock when he heard feet outside.
Those feet told their own tale.
Alf turned up the light in the passage and opened the door.
His brother lolled against the side-wall like a mortally wounded man.
"Take my arm, old chap," said Alf, and supported his brother into the kitchen.
Ern sat down suddenly at the table. Alf lit the gas.
The light fell on his brother's foolish face and clearly irritated him. He put up his hand to brush it away.
"Arf a mo'," said Alf soothingly, skipped light-footed upstairs, and knocked at his mother's door.
She was half-undressed, brushing her hair, her neck and shoulders bare in the moonlight.
Alf glanced at them and even in that moment of excitement thought how beautiful they were.
Mrs. Caspar raised a finger.
Her husband was in bed and apparently asleep, Lady Blanche upon the mantelpiece staring vacantly at the form of her recumbent son.
"Ern!" whispered Alf, and jerked his head significantly. "You'd best come."
Anne Caspar slipped on a wrap. Candle in hand she descended the stairs and entered the kitchen.
Alf followed stealthily. Like a gnome he stood in the shadow at the foot of the stairs, biting his nails uneasily, as he watched with lewd, malignant eyes.
Ern sat at the table with the dreadful blind face of the living dead.
He saw his mother enter and paid no heed to her. He was too much occupied. A troubled look crossed his face, and clouded it. Then he was very sick.
That amused Alf.
His mother shut the kitchen-door.
But Alf was not to be defrauded of his spectacle.
He opened the door quietly.
His mother, busy on her knees, with a slop pail and cloth, looked up.
"It's only me, mum," muttered Alf.
Her face frightened him: so did her breathing: so did her quiet.
"Come in then," she said. "And shut the door."
Ern still sat at the table.
"You little og!" said Alf fiercely, and shook his brother.
His mother, still on her hands and knees, restrained him.
"Let him be," she said. "It's past that. It's past all."
The door opened slowly.
Mr. Caspar stood in it in the faded quilted dressing-gown that had once graced historic rooms at Trinity.
He stood there, dishevelled from sleep, a tall, round-shouldered ruin of a man, every sign of distress upon his face.
"What is it?" he asked nervously.
"Im!" said Alf.
Mr. Caspar saw Ern, and marked his wife busy on her knees. Then he understood.
The distress on his face deepened.
Anne Caspar rose sharply from her knees, the filthy rag still in her hands.
"Two of you!" she cried thickly. "It's too much!" and shoved him out of the room.
The father's slippered feet shuffled along the passage.
"Take your brother up to bed," ordered Mrs. Caspar.
Alf, too discreet to argue, obeyed.
Anne Caspar locked the door, and sat down at the table.
There was no doubt that Anne Caspar was a woman of character.
"Too much character," said Mr. Trupp.
His wife was somewhat shocked.
"Can you have too much character?" she asked.
Her husband was in one of his philosophical moods.
"Character's only will," he growled. "It's the repression or direction of energy. You may misdirect your energies. Most so-called strong men do. Look at this fellow Chamberlain. Willed us into this war. If it hadn't been for his superfluous character we should never have heard of South Africa."
"And your investments would never have gone down," said Mrs. Trupp delicately.
The Doctor may have been unjust to the Colonial Secretary, but he was right about Anne Caspar, whom he knew rather better.
That dour woman had, indeed, just two friends in Beachbourne. One was Mr. Trupp, and the other was Mr. Trupp's wife. Neither had ever failed her; and she knew quite well that neither ever would.
The day after the calamity she went round to see the Doctor.
"He's got to go," she said, tight-lipped and trembling. "That's flat. You know what I been through with his father, Mr. Trupp. You're the only one as does. I'm not going through it again with him. Ned's my man, and I'm going to see him through. But Ern must go his own way. Stew in his own juice, as Alf says. They say I've been hard with the boy. So I have. Because I've seen it a-comin ever since he was so high. And I've fought it and been beaten."
The gruff man was wonderfully tender with her. He saw the woman's distress and understood its cause as no other could have done.
"Don't do anything in a hurry," he said soothingly. "Think it over for a week and then come and see me again."
That evening he reported the interview to his wife.
"She'll never turn him out!" cried the kind woman.
"She will though," said Mr. Trupp.
Mrs. Trupp, pink and white with indignation, dropped her eyes to her work to hide the flash in them.
"I'll never forgive her if she does," she said.
"Yes, you will," retorted Mr. Trupp.
Mrs. Trupp answered nothing for a time.
"I shall go round to see her," she said at last with determination.
"You won't move her," the Doctor answered, grimly cheerful.
"No," said Mrs. Trupp. "She hasn't got a heart. As Mr. Pigott says, she's hard as the nether millstone in a frost."
Mr. Trupp put down his coffee-cup and licked his lips like a cat.
"My dear," he said, "you haven't been through her mill."
"Perhaps not," the other answered warmly. "But I am a mother."
The sympathetic creature, all love and pity, was as good as her word.
Mrs. Trupp was always full of indignation against Mrs. Caspar when away from her, and in her presence touched by the tragedy of the woman's loneliness.
She found things at Rectory Walk as she had expected or worse.
Ern had lost his job. His escapade at the Rink had reached his employers' ears. None too satisfied with the quality of the lad's work, they had seized the excuse to dismiss him.
"There he is!" cried Mrs. Caspar. "Just turn eighteen and back on my hands. Nobody won't have him, and I don't blame em neether."
"Where is he?" asked Mrs. Trupp.
The interview between the two women was taking place in the back sitting-room, where Mrs. Caspar always saw her rare visitors.
Anne nodded in the direction of the study.
"Settin along o dad," she said briefly. "Nothing but trouble along of it all. I took his cigarettes away.If he don't earn neether shan't he smoke, as Alf says. And now dad won't smoke because Ern can't.Sympathetic strike, Alf calls it. And it's dad's one pleasure. I allow him a shilling bacca-money a week. It's just all I do allow him."
"We all make mistakes—especially when we're young," said Mrs. Trupp gently.
The other was adamant.
"There's slips and slips," she retorted. "If he'd gone with a girl I'd have said nothing. Butthis!"
Mrs. Trupp was steadfast in her tranquil way, as her opponent was dogged.
"I know if my Joe made a mistake what I should do," she said.
"What then?" sharply.
"Forgive him," replied the other.
Mrs. Caspar flared up.
"You wouldn't, not if your Joe's father——"
She pulled up short.
Loyalty to her husband was the soul of Anne Caspar.
On her way home the Doctor's wife met Mr. Pigott.
The sanguine little man stopped short.
"You've heard?" said Mrs. Trupp.
The other nodded, surly as a baited bear.
"Ern was round at my place first thing Sunday to tell me. He kept nothing back." Mr. Pigott dropped his voice like a stage-conspirator. "That young Alf's at the bottom of this, I'll lay."
Mrs. Trupp was shocked.
"Did Ernie say so?"
"No," fiercely. "He wouldn't give his brother away—not he. But I know." He came closer. "I tell you the Devil's in that boy. I can see him leering at me from behind the mask of Alf's face. There is no Alf Caspar. He's only a blind. But there is a Devil!"
"O, Mr. Pigott!" murmured the lady.
"Yes, you may O Mr. Pigott me!" cried the wrathful man. "But I've watched. I know. He's the cuckoo kind, Alf is. He wants the place to himself. It's me and mum all the time. His father don't count; and Ern's to be jostled out of the nest. Then there'll be room for him to grow. I curse the day Mr. Trupp saved his miserable little life."
"Hush! hush! hush!" said the lady.
"Yes, I know Alf's one of Mr. Trupp's darlings," continued the other. "And I know why. You know my old bicycle they all laugh at. I bought it for ten shillings from a pedlar and patched it up myself. It's the worst bike in Old Town, but I saved it from the scrap-heap, so I think the world of it. Same with Mr. Trupp and young Alf."
Mrs. Trupp reported to her husband that Mr. Pigott had become almost blasphemous over Alf.
"I know," grunted the Doctor. "He's not fair to the boy. Alf's stunted; of course he's stunted. He's grown up all wrong. The wonder is he's grown up at all. He's a standing witness to the power of Nature to make the most of a bad job."
It was next day that Mrs. Caspar came round, as appointed, to see the Doctor, who was much more to her than a physician.
Mr. Trupp had now come to a decision as to the best course to be taken.
"You must send him right away," he said. "That's his best chance."
"Dad won't hear of the Colonies," the other replied. "Says it's so far and he'll never see the boy again once he gets out there. Stood up and fought me fairly!" And it was clear from the way she said it that the resistance encountered from her husband had been as rare as it was astonishing.
"I didn't mean the Colonies," the other replied.
"What then?"
"The Army."
Mrs. Caspar's face fell. She was momentarily shocked: for she belonged to a sect that had for generations been despitefully used by the powers that be. And the weapon of the powers that be is always in the last resort the Army.
"Discipline is what the boy wants," said Mr. Trupp. "It's what we all want."
Anne Caspar nodded dubiously.
"If it's the right sort," she said.
"It may save him," continued her mentor. "It can't do him any harm. And anyway, it's worth trying. You send Ernie round to me. I'll have a talk with him, and I'll drop in to-morrow and have a chat with his father."
Ernie, when approached, made no difficulty.
He was young; his enthusiasms were easily stirred; and the most famous of South Country regiments, the Forest Rangers, known in history as the Hammer-men, had been more than living up to its reputation in South Africa.
"You'll travel," Mr. Trupp told him. "Go to India as like as not and see a bit of the world. Our Joe's going to Sandhurst next year. Nothing'll do but he must be a Hammer-man—like his grandfather before him. I dare say he'll join you out there."
But if Ern was too young to fight his own battles, there was one doughty warrior who meant to fight them for him.
Mr. Pigott came round to see the Doctor in roaring wrath.
The South African War was in full swing. The frenzy of lusty paganism, called Imperialism, which was sweeping the country, had revolted the schoolmaster and many more. In the estimation of these, the horrors enacted at home in the name of God and Empire surpassed the obscenities of the war itself. Mr. Pigott saw Militarism as a raddled prostitute dancing on the souls and bodies of men.
He burst like a tempest into Mr. Trupp's consulting room.
"The Army!" he cried. "You're going to send that boy into the Army! Take him a first-class ticket to Hell at once! Where's your Militarism led us? The war's costing us half a million a week! Over a thousand casualties at Paardeberg alone! Rowntree stoned in York; Leonard Courtney boycotted in London; Lloyd George escaping for his life over the house-tops for daring to preach Christ! And you call yourself a Radical, Mr. Trupp!—Shame on you!"
Mr. Trupp listened, amused and patient.
"It's discipline he wants," he said at last. "He's soft and slack. He'll never do any good without it. The artist type like his father."
The other began to blaze again.
"Discipline!" he cried. "You talk like a Prussian drill-sergeant. I tell you that lad's got a soul. Youdisciplinebeasts of the field—with a Big Stick; but yougrowsouls."
Mr. Trupp shook his head.
"We're only just emerging from the mud," he said. "The Brute still lurks in all of us. Watch him or he'll catch you out. And remember the only thing the Brute understands is the Big Stick. Without it he'll either go to sleep—like Ernie; or pounce on some one who has gone to sleep—like Alf."
Mr. Pigott drew himself up. There was about him the dignity of conviction.
"Mr. Trupp," he said. "Fear never made a man yet. Faith's the thing."
The Doctor lifted his shrewd kind face, and eyed the other through his pince-nez.
"Fear plays its part too," he said. "We none of us can do without the Lash as yet."
There was no difficulty with Edward Caspar.
He had made an immense effort and fought about the Colonies. Easily spent, he would not fight again. Moreover, Ernie committed to the Army was committed for a few years only, and not for life; and some of his service might very well be passed in England. In Edward Caspar too, pacifist though he personally inclined to be, there was no inherited prejudice to overcome: for the Beauregards had been soldiers for generations.
Mr. Trupp came to talk things over; and that evening, as father and son sat together in the study, Edward Caspar said out of the silence, very quietly,
"Boy-lad, it's best you should go."
"I shall go all right, dad," the boy answered, feigning a cheerfulness he by no means felt. "Don't you worry."
"Mother wants it," the other continued.
"She's all right, mother is," said the lad.
It was settled that the boy should go over to Lewes and enlist in the Hammer-men at the depot there, on Saturday.
The decision made, his mother relaxed somewhat. While she still kept Ernie without money, she allowed him cigarettes.
Father and son sat together and smoked in the evenings, watching the trees swaying against the blue in the Rectory Garden across the road.
Alf reported surreptitiously to his mother that Ern was smoking with dad.
"What's it to do with you if he is?" answered the other tartly.
The catastrophe which had severed the frayed string that joined the mother and her eldest son had reacted unfavourably on her relations with Alf.
The few days before Ern's departure went with accustomed speed.
On the last evening, as he and his father sat together, studying their toes in the twilight, a small fire flickering in the grate, Edward Caspar spoke out of the dark which he had been waiting to cover him.
"Boy-lad, I can't do by you as I should wish," he said tremulously. "But here's a bit of something to show you I mean well."
In the half light he thrust an envelope towards his son.
Ern opened it and saw that it contained a five-pound note.
The great waters surged up into his throat and filled his eyes.
"Here! I can't keep this, dad," he said chokily. "I'm all right. I've got..."
The old man—for such he was to his son, though not yet fifty—waved his hand irritably.
"Put it away," he said, "put it away. Let's hear no more of it."
Ernie sat dumb, moved and wondering.
Where had dad got the money from?
He knew very well that his mother jealously controlled the family purse, doling out rare sixpences or shillings to his father; and he knew why.
The boy's brain moved swiftly.
"What's the time, dad?" he asked, and lit the gas.
The clock on the mantel-piece never went: for it was Edward Caspar's solitary household task to wind it up.
The father, by no means a match for his artful son, produced from a baggy pocket a five-shilling Waterbury watch in place of the old gold hunter that had come to him from Lady Blanche's father, the twelfth Earl Ravensrood.
His ruse successful, Ernie delivered a direct attack.
"Where's the ticket, dad?" he asked casually.
"What ticket?"
"The pawn-ticket."
"I don't know," irritably. "Don't worry me. Turn out the light. I want to get a nap."
Ernie obeyed.
Soon Edward Caspar's breathing told its own tale.
Ernie rose, and, knowing his father's habits well as he knew his own, put his hand into the Jacobean tankard that stood on the book-shelf.
There he found what he sought.
Quietly he went out into the passage.
On the ticket was the name he expected: Goldmann, the Jew pawn-broker in the East-end off the Pevensey Road.
For a moment he paused, fingering the brown cardboard ticket under the gas light.
It would not take him an hour to get down to Goldmann's and back; for the tram almost passed the door; but he hadn't got the redemption money. He hadn't got a penny in the world. Alf had seen to that.
With the impetuous gallantry peculiar to him he made up his mind and opened the kitchen-door. Where Ernie loved he would risk anything, face anybody—even his mother.
She sat in her Windsor chair by the fire, a Puritan, still beautiful, reading her Bible as she always did at this hour; and her silvering hair added to her distinction.
All their married life the pair had sat thus of evenings, Edward in the study, Anne Caspar in the kitchen.
The strange couple rarely met indeed except at night. And the arrangement was not of Edward Caspar's making, but of his wife's. It may be that in part the woman preferred the kitchen as the environment to which she was most used: it was still more that she had determined from the outset of their union never to intrude upon her husband's spiritual life, or attempt to encroach upon a mind she could not understand. Her duty was as clear to her from the first as were her limitations. She could and would cherish, support, protect, and even chasten her husband where it was necessary for his good. For the rest she was resolved to be no hindrance or inconvenience to him. He should gain by his marriage and not lose by it. Therefore from the start she had slammed the door without mercy or remorse on her own relatives.
When Ern entered, she looked up at him not unkindly through her spectacles.
"What is it, Ernie?" she asked.
He rushed out his request.
"Please, mum," he panted, "could you let me have a shilling?"
He was determined not to give his father away.
To his relief his mother rose without a word, went to a drawer, unlocked it, took out half a sovereign and gave it to him.
Ernie ran out without his hat, took the old horse-bus at Billing's Corner, and riding on the top under a night splendid with stars that hung in the elms of Saffrons Croft, he went down the hill, through the Chestnuts, past the railway station, and along the gay main-street.
Just before Cornfield Road reaches the sea he exchanged the horse-bus for the electric tram that swung him down Pevensey Road through the thronged and always thickening East-end.
At theBarbary Corsairin Sea-gate he descended, turned down a side-street, and entered a door over which hung the three golden balls taken from the coat-of-arms of the banker Medici.
Mr. Goldmann was a short, fair Jew, without a neck, immensely thick throughout, though still under thirty. When he walked he carried his arms away from his side as though to aid him to inflate; and winter or summer he could be found behind his counter, perspiring freely. His trousers were always too short, and his little legs protruded from them like pillars. He spoke Cockney without a trace of Yiddish. His manner was hearty; but he was honest of his kind. The police had nothing against him, while his innumerable clients complained less of him than of his rivals.
Ern in the past had dealt with him.
"How much?" he asked, presenting the ticket.
"Only two-pence," said Goldmann, and took the watch out of the case.
He handled it with care, almost covetously, burnishing it on his sleeve.
"What arms is them?" he asked, displaying the back.
Ernie didn't know.
"If it had been any man but your father left it, I'd have communicated with the police," said the pawn-broker cheerfully.
"Will you do it up in a piece of paper, please?" Ern requested.
The Jew obeyed.
"Lend me your stylo alf a mo," said Ernie, and wrote on the paper covering the wordDad.
Then he raced home and re-entered the kitchen.
It was after ten, but his mother was still up, and apparently unconscious of the lateness of the hour.
Ern, panting from the speed at which he had travelled, paid nine shillings and four pence into his mother's lap.
Tram and bus had cost him sixpence, and the redemption money the rest.
"Eightpence all told," he gasped, "what I wanted. Only a little something for dad. I'll send you the odd money when I draw me first pay." He put the little packet on the mantel-piece. "Will you give that to dad, please, when I'm gone, mum?"
His mother looked at him, a rare sweetness in her eyes.
"You may keep the change, Ern," she said gently.
Collecting the money from her lap, she handed it back to him.
A moment he demurred, taken aback; then slipped the cash into his trouser pocket, mumbling and deeply moved.
"Thank you kindly, mum," he muttered.
Her eyes were still on his face, and he could not meet them.
"You're a good lad, Ern," she said quietly.
The words, and the way of saying them, moved the lad more than all her rebuffs and brutalities in the past had done. His chest began to heave. She stood before him stiff as a blade of steel, as slight and straight.
For a second she laid her hand, fine still for all its toil, upon his arm.
"Go up to bed now," she said in the same very quiet way.
He went hurriedly.
There were few things which happened in that house of which Anne Caspar was not aware. That morning on rising she had missed her husband's watch on the dressing-table—and had said nothing. Later she had found the pawn-ticket in the tankard—and again had held her peace.
A wife before all things, yet to some extent a mother, she had known, had understood, had perhaps sympathized.
Next day, after dinner, when she heard Ern's feet slowly descending the stairs, and knew he was coming to say good-bye, Anne Caspar shoved Alf roughly out of the kitchen.
"You wait your brother outside," she said. "Take his bag now, and carry it to the bus for him. Be a brother for once!"
"Well, I was going to," answered Alf, aggrieved.
Since the catastrophe he had kept discreetly in the background.
Ern entered the kitchen, uncertain of himself, uncertain of his reception; but, true to the best that was in him, trying to carry a pale feather of gallantry.
"I guess it's about time to be off, mum," he remarked huskily.
His mother shut the door behind him gently, and drew him to her.
"Kiss me, Ern," she said.
The boy gasped and obeyed.
"Now go and say good-bye to dad," continued his mother, quiet, firm, authoritative.
As he went into the passage, he heard the kitchen-door close behind him.
Ern was his father's son, and nothing was to be allowed to intrude in the parting between the two.
Edward Caspar stood before the fire in quilted dressing-gown, somewhat faded now.
In its appointed place on the chair beside his chair lay the familiar manuscript, much as Ern had known it since his childhood, save that the titles on the covering page were typewritten now—The Philosophy of Mysticism, Part I, The Basis of Animism.
His father's colourless hair was greying fast and becoming sparse; while his always ungainly figure was losing any shape it had ever possessed.
At fifty Edward Caspar was already old. But age had enhanced the wistfulness which had marked him, even in youth. His was the face of a man who has failed, and is conscious of his failure; but it was the face of a Christian, gentle and very sad. Here clearly was a man of immense parts, scholar, thinker, artist, who, somehow baffled by the wiles of Nature, had failed to make good.
Yet in spite of his failure there were few who could more surely rely upon the limitless resources of the Spirit in the hour of his need than Edward Caspar.
And now in this great moment of his life, when he was parting from his dearest, he summoned to his aid all the powers that, massed unseen in the silence, await our call.
There was a wonderful dignity and restraint about him.
Ern, the most intuitive of lads, felt it and drew from his father's strength.
Simply and beautifully father and son kissed.
A moment the eyes of each rested in the other's.
Then it was over.
No one of us is entirely inhuman.
Something of the spirit of the scene enacted in the study had conveyed itself even to Alf awaiting in the road outside, Ern's bag at his feet.
He was blinking when his brother, blowing his nose, joined him.
Ern glanced at the green rampart of the Downs rising like a wall at the end of the road, and huge Shadow Coombe where the lambs were folded in March and where once he had passed a night in the shepherd's hut.
Ern waved to them and Beech-hangar beyond.
"Good-bye, old Downs!" he called. "You and me been good old pals!"
Then they set off for the bus at Billing's Corner, neither speaking, neither wishing to, Alf carrying his brother's bag. Both youths were slight and colt-like, yet with loose unshackled limbs; Ern rather smart, Alf distinctly shabby.
The Rector, tall and titupping, emerged from his gate as they passed, but refrained from seeing them. He did not approve of the two Caspar boys—in the main because they were the sons of their father.
Canon Willcocks aped—successfully enough—the walk and deportment of a thoroughbred weed. His face—which was aquiline—inspired his pose, which was aristocratic and satirical. His solitary hero was Louis Napoleon, whom he had worshipped from childhood. And he bore himself habitually as one who is too fine for the coarse world in which he dwells perforce. The two brothers nudged each other as he stalked by. Then they climbed to the box-seat of the old bus and established themselves beside the driver.
"Where away then?" he asked, seeing the bag.
"Off to see the world, Mr. Huggett," answered Ern, already cheering up. "Goin for the week-end to the North Pole, me and Alf!"
The bus jolted down the street, past the long-backed church with its mighty tower looking down upon the Moot as it had done for five centuries, and stopped opposite theStar. Ern for the last time touched the old coaching bell with the driver's whip. As it clanged sonorously, a window in the Manor-house opened.
Ern looked up to see Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, a fair flapper now, waving at him with eyes that smiled and shone.
"Good-bye!" they called. "Good luck!"
Saffrons Croft was white with cricketers as they passed. The honest thump of the ball upon the bat, the recumbent groups under the elms, even the imperious voice of Mr. Pigott umpiring on Lower Pitch, moved Ern strangely.
Alf's presence somehow helped him to be hard.
At the Central Station the boys got down.
They paced the platform, waiting for the train.
Alf babbled at large, his brother paying little heed.
"Be the making of you!" Alf was saying in his rather patronizing way. "See the world!—knock about!—come home a full-blown Hammer-man with a fat pension and a V.C. on your chest and a Colonel's commission! And we'll all meet you at the stytion with a brass band playingSee the Conquering Hero Comes!and be proud of you. I'd come along meself for company, only I'm too small."
Ern roused from his dreams.
"What will you do then?" he asked, faintly ironical.
"Me?" cried Alf, starting off on his favourite topic. "I ain't a-goin to stop in Beachbourne all me life, you lay. When I'm through me apprentice they may send me to the River Plate. Got a big branch there. England's used up. There's chances in a new country for a chap that means to get on."
Ern installed himself in a smoking carriage.
"O, reservoir," said Alf, facetious to the end.
"See ye again some day," answered Ern, puffing away and exhibiting a man-of-the-world-like stoicism he did not feel.
He took off his Trilby hat, unbuttoned the overcoat with the velvet collar, and opened his orange-colouredAnswers.
The train moved on. The brothers waved. Alf stood on the platform, a mean little figure with a dishonest smile; his clothes rather shabby, his trousers too short and creased behind the knees.
Then he turned to the bookstall and asked ifMotor Mems, the paper on the new industry, had arrived yet.
Ern leaned back in his corner; and his eyes sought, between hoardings and roofs of crowded railway-shops, the familiar outline of the Downs which would accompany him to Lewes—and far beyond.
The Army did for Ernie neither what Mr. Trupp hoped nor what Mr. Pigott feared.
Ernie was in truth very much the modern man, and had absorbed unconsciously the spirit of industrial democracy. He was open-minded, intelligent and sincere. The false idealism that is at the back of all Militarism, the bully-cum-bluff principle that has been the creed of the barrack-square at all times all over the world, from Sparta to Potsdam, made no appeal to him. In the British Army, it is true, there was even at that date little of the spirit of orthodox Militarism, but the shadow of the Continental System and the heritage of a false tradition still hung over it.
He found himself plucked out of the world of to-day with its quick flow of ideas, its give and take, its elasticity, its vivid unconscious spirituality, and plunged back into the darkness of medievalism: forced labour, forced worship, forced obsequiousness, a feudal lord against whom there was no appeal, with corrupt retainers who squeezed the serf without mercy.
When his first drill-instructor in a moment of patronizing confidence informed the squad of which Ernie was a member that "It's swank as makes the soldier," others were amused; but Ernie, who giggled dutifully with the rest, thought how silly and how disgusting.
Ernie always remembered that drill-sergeant's illuminating remark, and placed it alongside that of a veteran Colonel, dating from Crimean days, who said in Ernie's hearing with the offensive truculence that a certain type of officer still thinks he owes it to himself and to his position to cultivate,
"That man's no good to me." He was speaking of a Company Sergeant-Major who had the manners of a gentleman. "Take him away and shoot him. I want a man who'll chuck his chest, and beat his leg, and own the barrack square."
Ernie saw very soon that the Army system was based on the old two-class conception with an insuperable barrier between the two classes, and the underclass deprived of the right to appeal, the right to combine, the right to strike. And he saw equally clearly, and with far more surprise, that in spite of its obvious limitations, and openness to brutality and abuse, the system worked astonishingly well, given good officers—and his own were unusually good upon the whole.
Ernie did not know that the barrack was in fact the heir of the old monastic habit and tradition with its herding together of males, its little caste of priests who alone possessed the direct access to God denied to common men, its sacrosanct dogmas, its insuperable prejudices, its life of unquestioning obedience to authority with the consequent thwarting of intellectual and spiritual development that is the outcome of free communion between man and man; and on the other hand its genuine religious fervour, its abnegation, its devotion to duty, and disinterested service of the Commonwealth.
Ern, it is true, who realized some of these things and was dimly conscious of others, was different from most of his mates and superior to them: rather more intelligent and much more refined. The bulk of them were the conscripts of Necessity; some, like himself, had made mistakes; a few, nearly always themselves the sons of old soldiers, were genuine volunteers.
And yet Ern was by no means unhappy. If he was something of a critic, he was not in the least a rebel. At first the pressure of discipline served to brace the boy, as Mr. Trupp had anticipated. Moreover, if he vaguely apprehended what was vicious in the military system, there was much he could not fail to enjoy, because he was young, virile and healthy; and not a little he could honestly admire. He loved the drill: the rhythmical marchingen masse, the movements of great bodies of men swinging this way and that like one, actuated by a single purpose, directed by a single mind, worshipping a single God enthroned at the saluting-point, satisfied his religious spirit, exalted and transfigured him as did nothing he was to know in later days. The outdoor existence, the hard athleticism, the good fellowship, and above all the communal life, appealed to all that was best in him. Indeed in this organization, abused by advanced thinkers in Press and Parliament alike, he was to find a fullness of corporate life, an absorption of the individual in the mass, a bee-like enthusiasm for the hive, such as he was never to discover outside the Army in after years.
Moreover there was a goal held before his eyes, as it is held before the eyes of all young English soldiers.
That goal was India.
The Shiny was the Private Soldier's Paradise, the old hands would tell the young in the canteens at night.
"Things are different there, my boy. In the Shiny a swoddy's a gentleman. Punkah-wallahs to pull the cords in the hot weather, a tiger curled at your feet to keep the snakes at bay, bearer to clean your boots, shooting parties, bubbly by the barrel, I don't know what all."
Because of this jewel that was for ever dangled before his eyes, Ernie bore a good deal without complaining.
A youth who had enlisted with him, and for much the same reason, induced his people to buy him out after six months.
Ernie made no such attempt.
"I'm going through with it now," he said. "Want to see a bit before I'm done and take em home a tale or two."
After a spell of service in Ireland, at the close of the South African War, when Ernie was turned twenty, the expected call came.
A draft was going out to join the First Battalion of the Hammer-men at Jubbulpore, and Ernie went with it.
The cheering transport dropped down the Thames one misty November afternoon, passing hay-laden barges, timber ships from the Baltic, and rusty tramps from all over the world.
The smell of the sea, so familiar and so good, thrilled Ernie's susceptible heart. It spoke to him of home, of the unforgotten things of childhood, of his passing youth, of much that was intimate and dear. He spent most of that first evening on deck, long after dark, in spite of the drizzle, watching the coast lights.
Once they passed quite close to a light-ship, swinging desolately on the tide.
"What's that?" he asked a sailor.
"Sovereign Light," the man told him.
Ernie leapt to the name familiar to him from childhood.
How often had he not climbed the hill behind his home of winter evenings, and waited in the chalk-pit above the larch spinney for that far-off spark to leap out of the darkness and warm his expectant heart.
He swung about and stared keenly through the gloom at a light winking at them from the land.
"Then that's the light-house under Beau-nez!" he said, pointing.
"That's it," the man answered. "And Beachbourne underneath. All them lights strung out like a necklace along the coast,—Bexhill, Hastings, Beachbourne. It's growing into a great place. D'you know it?"
Ernie's heart and eyes were full.
"My home's there," he said. "And my old dad."
He stayed on deck peering through the darkness, till the last light had disappeared and they had swung round Beau-nez into the Channel and he could see the Seven Sisters, the gap that marks the mouth of the Ruther, and the cliffs between Newhaven and Rotting-dean. Then he went below and turned in.
Thereafter, his home behind him, he began to taste the new life, the life of adventure.
He felt the surge of the Atlantic, saw whales spouting in the Bay, marked off the coast of Portugal a lateen sail which first whispered of the East; gazed up at the Rock of Gibraltar, noted there caparisoned Barbs, their head-stalls studded with turquoises to keep the Evil One away, welcomed the Mediterranean sun, and gazed at the snow-capped hills of Crete.
In Port Said he landed and saw his first mosque. He examined it with interest.
Very bleak-like, he wrote home to Mr. Pigott.More like a chapel than a church. And more like the Quaker Meeting-house in the Moot than either. No stained glass or crucifixes or nothing. I was more at home there than the Catholics.
In the Canal he marked the black hair-tents of the travelling Bedouins, and saw a British Camel Corps trekking slowly across the desert against the hills beyond. He sweated in the Red Sea and gazed with awe at the sultry rocks of Aden, and followed with delight the flying-fish skimming across the Indian Ocean.
Then one dawn the engines stopped; the ship lay at rest; and in his nostrils, blown from the land, there was the smell of incense.
"Makes you think of the Queen of Sheba," said Ernie. "Spices and Tyre and Sidon and all the rest," and he closed his eyes and saw Mr. Pigott standing with the pointer before the black-board, addressing his class.
"Not alf," said his unimaginative friend. "Give me the Pevensey Road o Sadaday nights. Fried fish and chips."
They went on deck to find themselves lying in the lovely island-sprinkled harbour of Bombay; boats with curved bamboo yards and brown-skinned crews of pirates under the ship's side; and Parsee money-lenders in shining hats on deck offering to change the money of those who had any.
Ernie looked across to the land, lifting blue in the wondrous dawn—the land that was to be his home for the next six years.
Ernie joined his Battalion in the Central Provinces. The Forest Rangers, as famous in the South Country as the Black Watch in the Highlands, and of far longer pedigree, was first raised from the iron-ore workers by the Hammer Ponds on the Forest Ridge in the heart of the then Black Country of England to meet the imminent onslaught of the Spanish Armada. In those days the Hammer-men, as they were called familiarly from the start, watched the coast from the mouth of the Adur to Rye and Winchelsea; and in the succeeding centuries they left their bloody mark upon the pages of history, the memories of their fellow-countrymen, and the bodies of the King's enemies.
The most ancient of English regiments, it carries on its colours more honours than any but the 60th. For more than three tumultuous centuries it has been distinguished even in that British Infantry which has never yet encountered in war its match or its master. The splendid foot-soldiers of Spain broke in Flanders before its thundering hammer-strokes; in Flanders and elsewhere in later times the legions of Imperial France surged in vain against its bayonets; and in our own day the Prussian Guard, as insolent and vain-glorious as the veterans of Napoleon, has recoiled before the invincible stubbornness of the peasants of Sussex.
The officers were drawn almost exclusively from two or three of the oldest public-schools. Ernie found they were keen soldiers, and efficient, immensely proud of their regiment, athletic, and better-mannered than most. But as a whole they were singularly stupid men, deliberately blind to the wonders of the country in which they lived, proud of their blindness, and cultivating their insularity. There was one shining exception.
When the new draft paraded for inspection, a scarecrow Major wearing the South African ribands walked slowly up and down the ranks with a word for each man. He was very tall, and so lean as to be almost spectral. His voice was charming and leisured, reminding Ernie of his father. He was friendly too, almost genial. It was obvious that he based his authority on his own spiritual qualities and not on the accident of his position. There was no rattling of the sabre, no fire-eating, no attempt to put the fear of God into the hearts of the recruits.
When he came to Ernie, he asked,
"What name?"
"Caspar, Sir."
The Major looked at the lad from beneath his sun-helmet with sudden curiosity.
"Are you ..." he began, and pulled himself up short. "I hope you'll be happy as a Hammer-man," he said, and passed on.
Later he addressed the draft in a gentle little speech of the kind that annoyed his brother-officers almost past bearing.
"You have all heard of Death and Glory," he began. "Well, in this country there's a certain amount of Death going about, if you care to look out for it, but very little Glory. You have also heard no doubt from your mothers and the missionaries that the black man is your brother. It may be so. But in this country there are no black men and therefore no brothers. There are brown men who are your remote cousins; and they aren't bad fellows if you keep them in their place, and remember your own. On Sundays there is church for those who like it; and the same for those who don't. For the rest, whether you are happy or the reverse depends in the main upon your health, and your health depends in the main on yourselves. Be careful what you drink, and don't suck every stick of sugar-cane a native offers you. Remember you are Hammer-men and not monkeys. Most of you are men of Sussex, as are most of your officers; and we all know that the Sussex man wunt be druv. But discipline is discipline and must be maintained. We don't hammer each other more than we can help, nor do we hammer the natives more than is good for them. We exist to hammer the King's enemies. And now I wish you all well and hope you'll find the Regiment a real home."
Major Lewknor's long spidery legs carried him back to the bungalow where his wife awaited him.
She was a little woman, clearly Semitic, fine as she was strong, with eyes like jewels and the nose of an Arab.
"My dear," said the Major, "in your young days did you ever hear of one Hans Caspar?"
"My Jock, did I ever hear of one Napoleon Buonaparte?" mocked his mate. "What about him?"
"I was at Trinity with his son," replied the Colonel.
"We used to call him Hathri. A charming fellow, and a brilliant scholar, but——"
"What about him?" said Mrs. Lewknor, who seemed suddenly on the defensive.
"His son has just joined us," answered the Major. "In the ranks."
The lady handled the sugar-tongs thoughtfully. Her memory travelled back more than twenty years to a great ball in Grosvenor Square, and the timid son of the house, a gawky, awkward fellow with a reputation for shyness and brilliance. He could not dance, but under the palms in the conservatory, tête-à-tête, he could talk—as Rachel Solomons had never heard a man talk yet—of things she had never heard talked about: of a place called Toynbee Hall somewhere in the East End; of a little parson named Samuel Barnett; of the group of young University men—Alfred Milner, Arnold Toynbee, Lewis Nettleship—he and his wife were gathering about them there with the aim of bridging the gulf between Disraeli's Two Nations; of the hopes of a redeemed England and a new world that were rising in the hearts of many. That young man saw visions and had made her see them too. She had cut two dances to listen to that talk, and when at last an outraged partner had torn her away and Edward had said in his sensitive stuttering way, his face shining mysteriously,
"Shall we ever meet again?"
She had answered with astonishing emphasis,
"We must."
But they never did. Fate swung his scythe; her father died and she had to abandon her London season. Edward Caspar went abroad to study at Leipzig. And next winter she met her Hammer-man and launched her boat on the great waters.
But she had never forgotten that mysterious half-hour in which the trembling young man had knocked at her door, entered her sanctuary; and she, Rachel the reserved, had permitted him to stay.
At that moment Reality had entered her life—unforgettable and unforgotten.
India from the first tantalized Ernie. It was for him a mysterious and beautiful book, its pages for ever open inviting him to read, yet keeping its secret inviolate from him; for he could not read himself and there was no one to read to him. His officers, capable at their work, and good fellows enough in the main, Ernie soon discovered to be illiterate to an almost laughable degree. They not only knew nothing outside the limited military field, but they took a marked professional pride in their ignorance.
Ernie, used to his father's large philosophical outlook on any subject, his scholarly talk, his learning, was amazed at the intellectual apathy and crustacean self-complacency, sometimes ludicrous, more often naïf, occasionally offensive, of those set in authority over him.
Major Lewknor was the solitary exception. He was the one University man in the Regiment, and, whether as the result of a more catholic education or a more original temperament, he always stood slightly apart from his brother-officers. When he was a young man they had mocked at him quietly; now that he was a field officer they stood somewhat in awe of his ironical spirit. Some of his more dubious sayings were handed on religiously from last-joined subaltern to last-joined subaltern. The worst of them—his famous—Patriotism is the last refuge of every scoundrel—was happily attributed by the Army at large to a chap called Johnston who, thank God! was not a Hammer-man at all, but a Gunner or a Sapper or something like that. A Sapper probably. It was just the sort of thing you would expect a Sapper to say: for Sappers wore flannel shirts and never washed.
But if the Major was undoubtedly critical of what was obsolete and theatrical in the Service that he loved, few possessed a deeper reverence or more intimate understanding of the much that was noble in it.
"After the really grand ritual of a big ceremonial parade," he would say, "when you actually do transcend yourself and become one with the Larger Life, for grown men in an age like ours, to be herded at the point of the bayonet into a tin-pot temple to hear a gramophone in a surplice droning out an unintelligible rigmarole every Sunday in the name of religion—why it is not only redundant, it's a blasphemous farce that every decent manmustkick against."
In spite of his caustic humour the Major's passion for the Regiment, to which he had given his life, steadfastly refusing all those staff-appointments for which he was so admirably fitted, was genuine as it was profound. Because of it, his much-tried brother officers, who loved him deeply if they feared him not a little, forgave him all. And if he was sadly unorthodox in many respects, as for instance that he was not a hard and fast Conservative, he was jealously orthodox in others as in that contempt for politicians which is almost an obsession amongst the men of his profession, perhaps because to them it falls to pay the price of the mistakes of their masters at Westminster.
The Major and his wife were in brief distinguished from their kind by the fact that they were mentally alive, sympathetic, keen, and knowledgeable. They had passed most of their lives in the East, and were of the few of their fellow-countrymen who had made the most of the opportunities vouchsafed to them. Indeed it was said in the Regiment that what the pair didn't know about India was not worth knowing.
Once at a halt on a route-march Ernie saw the Major, standing gaunt and helmeted in the shade of a banyan tree, take a pace out into the road.
A native, carrying two sealed pitchers slung from the ends of a bamboo, was padding down the road in the dust between the ranks of the soldiers who had fallen out.
The Major spoke to him, then turned to Ernie who was standing by.
"See that man, Caspar," he said quietly. "He's a pilgrim. He's tramped all the way from Hardwar, the source of the Ganges, to get holy water—seven hundred miles. What about that for faith?"
"Fine, sir," said Ernie, with quiet enthusiasm.
"In the days of Chaucer we used to do the same kind of thing in England," continued the Major. "Ever read the 'Canterbury Tales'?"
"Dad's read em to me, sir—in bits like."
The Major moved away.
Close by a group of officers, whose faces clearly showed how profoundly they disapproved of this conversation, were sprawling in the shade.That was the way to lose caste with the men. Amongst them was a last-joined lad, chubby still; the other was Mr. Royal of Ernie's company.
"What did the Major say he was?" asked the Boy keenly.
"I don't know what the Major said he was," answered Mr. Royal coolly. "And between ourselves I don't greatly care.Iknow what he was. And if you'll ask me prettily I might impart my information."
"What was he?" asked the Boy.
"He was a coolie," said Mr. Royal. "India's full of them. In fact they're the dominant class."
"I thought he looked something a bit out of the ordinary," said the snubbed Boy.
"Did you?" retorted Mr. Royal. "I thought myself he looked as if he wanted kicking. And as I've got five years' service to your three months it may be presumed that I'm right."