Captain Royal was the son of his father; but very few people knew anything about that father. And those few knew little more than that he had made money in business in the North.
The business in fact was that of an unregistered dentist at Blackpool.
Albert Ryle was a curious little fellow. He lived more like a machine than it was possible to conceive a human being could live. He was so regular as to be almost automatic: he had no virtues, and his vices were vigorously suppressed. Early in life he planned out his career according to Programme, and he stuck to it with methodical precision throughout. During his working life, happily for him, there were no such seismic disturbances, utterly beyond his control, as have completely upset the Programme of like automaton men in our own day.
Nor did the unexpected and catastrophic in the way of illness or sudden love ever overwhelm him.
He did not marry: that was part of the Programme. He did not enjoy himself. He lived meanly; but his practice grew and grew, especially among the well-to-do artisans. The middle and upper class he left in the main to the qualified practitioners.
He was extraordinarily efficient, thorough, and precise in his work; he was daring too. He would administer gas himself, and happily had no accidents. He spent nothing on himself, and studied the stock-markets with the same meticulous care which he gave to the human mouth.
On his fiftieth birthday he totted up his capital account and found he had made £25,000—just six months ahead of scheduled time.
His end had been attained. The first part of the Programme had now been accomplished.
Next day—or as near as it was possible—he sold his practice, took down his brass-plate, said good-bye to no one, for he knew no one except in the way of business; and for the first time in his life crossed the Trent, never to recross it.
Albert Ryle never looked back: he moved forward steady as a caterpillar on the trail.
In the North he left behind him everything but the accent which, to his own no small grief, and the unending anguish of his wife, he carried to the grave, and the money he had made in gloomy Lancashire.
He bought a villa in Croydon, modified his name under expert advice, and in the sun of the South country began to live.
Mr. Royal of Deepdene had made money in business in the North. Now he was going to spend it in the South.
Here began the second part of the Programme.
He married a middle-class woman, who had been a companion, and possessed some not very well-founded pretensions to family.
He entered the Church, ignoring formal admission by baptism, and took an active part in the life of the Town.
Capable and tireless, he became in time a Town Councillor, and, better still, a Justice of the Peace for Surrey. His grand ambition, never to be fulfilled in this world, was to be a Deputy Lieutenant of the county of his adoption.
There was one child of the marriage, who was christened at his wife's request, and with his full approval, Hildebrand.
The boy was sent to a first-rate preparatory school, where, being an aggressive youngster, he more than held his own.
Mr. Albert Royal was determined that his son should go to one of "our ancient public schools."
When he broached the subject, the headmaster of the preparatory school was in a dilemma.
Mr. Royal was an admirable parent from the commercial point of view. He paid the fees and never made a fuss; but there was no getting away from Mr. Royal's accent.
Mr. Wortley, an Etonian himself, didn't somehow think Eton was quite the school for Hildebrand. Too damp. There wasn't much chance of a boy getting into Winchester unless his father had been there before him. Had Mr. Royal been at Winchester?—Ah, bad luck. Then Rugby?—But Mr. Royal wouldn't send his son to a North country school. Mr. Royal's home was in the South; and so was his heart. What about Harrow?—Mr. Wortley's face brightened. Harrow was the very thing. He could see Hildebrand at Harrow in his mind's eye.
Later when his partner came into the study, after Mr. Royal's departure, Mr. Wortley announced the news with a little grin.
"Arrow for Ildebrand," he said.
"And quite good enough too," replied the other, who was also an Etonian, with a little snort.
To Harrow, then, Hildebrand went.
And just at the appropriate moment Mr. Royal Senior died.
That was not part of the Programme, but it was consummately tactful.
"My father didn't do much. He was a magistrate in Surrey," sounded so much better than the reality incarnate, rough and red and rather harsh—with the Blackpool accent.
Mr. Royal's opportune death was, in fact, an immense relief to his suffering wife and perhaps to young Hildebrand, who was beginning to know what was what in the world in which he proposed to live and move and have his being.
His school career was a great success. Many admired, not a few envied, nobody liked him; but as a master said—"He likes himself enough to make up for that."
An extremely good-looking boy, full of self-confidence, he was an unusually fine athlete, played racquets for the school, and notched a century against Eton at Lords in a style that made men talk of F. S. Jackson at his best.
His mother was presentable and dressed extremely well.
Young Royal had no objection to being seen about with her, and even invited her down to Speech-day and introduced her to his friends at Lords. It was not to be wondered at that when she died she left the whole of the £25,000 to her only-born.
Hildebrand bore this second bereavement with characteristic fortitude. He was just at the age when the possession of money was rare as it was useful.
He passed high into Sandhurst, and became an Under-Officer. His record there as an athlete, his bit of money, and the use he made of it, enabled him to secure a commission in the coveted Hammer-men. He joined the Regiment with a considerable and deserved reputation, which he more than maintained.
He was not popular with his brother-officers, who said quietly among themselves that he was not a Sahib; while Conky Joe went so far as to assert that he was not even a "white man"; but he was an asset to the Regiment and accepted as such.
Now he had come home on six months' leave with two objects in view. He meant to work for the Staff College—and there were few more ambitious men; and he meant to enjoy himself.
When he returned to England, there was no question where he would settle down.
He knew all about the Hohenzollern, and indeed would boast to his few intimates—and he was fond of boasting—that Madame was an old friend of his, and that he had paid his first visit to the Third Floor when still at Harrow.
Beachbourne indeed suited him very well. It possessed a first-rate crammer; if he wanted Society there was the Club at the West-end, full always of Service men retired or on leave; and he could get as much golf and cricket as he liked.
A terrific worker, he would have no distractions: for he knew very few people socially. There would be no country-house invitations for him; nor did he court them. When he had passed through the Staff College and settled down in London for a spell at the War Office he knew very well that doors, now shut to him, would open. There was no hurry about that. He didn't mean to marry yet: he meant to enjoy himself.
In a word, Captain Royal was an adventurer of a kind by no means uncommon in our day. A Tory in his opinions and his prejudices he lacked the one thing that can make a Tory admirable, and that is Tradition.
When Colonel Lewknor once defined him as "A first-rate officer and a first-class cad," Conky Joe, the kindest of men but a first-rate hater, who had never quite got over the bias imbibed in the atmosphere of the "greatest of all schools," replied with scorn, rare scorn,
"Well, what d'you expect of Harrow?"
The morning after Captain Royal's advent, Ernie, going his round of the Third Floor, dropping boots at various doors, stopped outside No. 72.
The door was open; and Ruth stood at the window looking sea-wards.
It was early yet, scarcely seven, but clearly the Captain was already up and out. Ernie stood in the door, admiring the lines of the girl's big young figure, the curve of her neck and shoulders and the glossy black of her hair. He made a little whistling sound.
Ruth turned, saw who it was, and beckoned to him.
The window looked out over the lawns and foreshore on to the sea, brisk and broken in the sun.
The tide was brimming, and swinging in, green-hued, white-tipped, and splashed with shadows.
The bathing-raft was wobbling in the short chop. There were no bobbing heads about it now. It was too early in the season, too early in the morning, and the sea was too rough. But a figure, white in the sun, balanced on the unsteady raft, then shot arrow-wise into the sea.
Another moment and a black head bounced up out of the water. Then there was the flash of an arm, rising and falling swiftly, as the swimmer strode away for the horizon.
"Straight out to sea!" cried Ernie. "That's the Captain!—Buffet em!"
"I wish I was a man," mused Ruth. "Go in like that—just as you are."
She took up her duster, and resumed her work. The bed was already made.
"You're early at it," said Ernie, glancing round.
"Yes," answered Ruth. "I'm to do his room every morning while he's in the water. He's going to work up here after breakfast."
"Hot stuff!" said Ernie, trying to work up enthusiasm. "He'll command the old Battalion one day, the skipper will. Good old Hammer-men!"
Half an hour later the Captain was back. His hair still wet, was crisp still and very dark; while the brine crusted his handsome face. He had run up the stairs, three at a stride, too impetuous to await the lift. In flannels, a sweater with a broad collar, and white shoes, he looked cool and clean and strenuous as the water from which he just emerged. At the top of the stairs he met the shabby porter with his collarless shirt, his scrubby hair, and rough hands.
Ruth, coming down the corridor, marked the meeting of the two men.
"Mornin," said the Captain, brief as his own moustache.
"Morning, sir," grinned Ernie, rolling by, full of self-consciousness.
An hour later, he saw Ruth coming out of 72 with a tray.
Ernie stopped.
"Havin breakfast in his own room?" he asked.
"Yes," said Ruth quietly.
The monosyllable seemed to knock at Ernie's heart.
He hesitated a moment.
"I'm sorry you're leaving the Third Floor, Ruth," he said. "For me own sake like."
"Thank you," answered Ruth.
He noticed she was strangely curt.
A week later Madame sent for the girl.
"Ruth, are you still in any hurry to change your Floor?" she asked.
The girl looked down, colouring faintly.
"Think it over, vill you?" said Madame. "There is no hurry."
"Thank you, Ma'am," said Ruth, quivering.
She returned to her work. A bell was ringing. It was 72.
Ruth went.
The Captain was manicuring his nails at the window. He looked up as she entered.
"Shut the door!" he said.
She obeyed.
"Come here!" he ordered.
She went.
He looked at her, in his blue eyes a laughing sternness.
"What's this?" he asked.
"What, sir?"
"I hear you're thinking of deserting."
She stood before him, her bosom rising and falling.
"Ruth," he said gravely, "you've got to make a home for me while I'm here. I'm a pore lone orphan—no mother, or sister, or friends. You've got to mend me and mind me, as my old nurse used to say. D'you see? I look to you."
"Very well, sir," answered Ruth.
Whatever else Ruth might feel about Captain Royal, there was no doubt that she admired him. And to do the man justice, there was not a little to admire. In any company, except the best, he shone. And on the Third Floor, in that meretricious atmosphere of fat-necked Jews, dubious foreigners, and degenerate Englishmen, Royal with his strenuous ways of the public-school boy, his athletic figure, and keen walk stood out like a sword among gamps in an umbrella-stand.
He lived too with the deliberate speed of the man who knows his goal and means to get there.
There was no need to call him. He was up every morning at 6.15, and into the sea, rain or fine, rough or smooth, at 6.30. At 7 he was back again in his room, stripped, and doing physical exercises. At 8 Ruth brought his breakfast; and by 9 he had settled to his morning's work. After lunch he golfed; then to his crammer; and in the evening he relaxed over a billiard-table or in the card-room.
Sometimes he went off for the night to Town.
On the first of these occasions Ernie carried his bag to the taxi with a joy for which he himself could not account.
"What!—are you off, sir?" he asked gaily. "I thought we was going to keep you all your leave."
"Only for the week-end," answered the other, with his little hard laugh. "See me back on Monday."
Ernie's heart fell.
He went upstairs, saw Ruth, and feigned surprise.
"What, still here, Ruth?"
"Yes," the girl answered in her quiet way. "I shan't move now till the Captain's gone."
She said it quite simply. She was too great, too spiritual, to be provocative: Ernie knew that.
He stopped full. There was a sea of fire lifting his chest and lighting his eye.
"Ruth," he said.
She saw his emotion, and stayed with the courtesy natural to her.
"Will you walk out with me?"
She met his eyes with the courage, dark, flashing, and kind, he loved so much.
"I couldn't do that, Ernie," she said so gently that he loved her all the more.
"Why not then?"
"I'm afraid."
"What of?"
"Afraid you might ask me more'n what I can give."
"I'll run the risk!" cried Ernie. "I'm ready!"
She shook her head.
He took her hand.
"I'm a good man, Ruth," he said with the almost divine simplicity of the class to which he now belonged.
She overwhelmed him with tenderness.
"O, I know you are, Ernie!" she said in her purring voice of a wood-pigeon at evening. "But I'm not thinking of settling—not yet."
The love-passage relieved Ernie immensely. He would face defeat, face Captain Royal, face the future with confidence now.
Thereafter for some time he went about his work whistling, so that Don John, the Austrian, winked at his mates behind his back, and said,
"He thinks she's for him! No fool like an English fool!"
When he came back from his week-end away, Captain Royal went straight to Madame's private sitting-room, which was at the end of the Third Floor. As he came out and passed along the corridor he saw Ruth sitting on the window-sill in the passage, where Ernie had suddenly known himself in love with her.
He stopped. There was a bundle of mending beside her, and among it he recognized his own pyjamas.
Royal knew there was a sitting-room for the maids, called by the habitués of the Third Floor, "the Nunnery," and wondered.
That evening, when she came to put out his evening clothes, he said to her,
"You don't care about using the maids' sitting-room, Ruth?"
She did not answer.
"The other girls aren't your sort? too rowdy—what?"
Again she fell back on characteristic silence.
Each of the bed-rooms on the Third Floor had a dressing-room attached.
"Well, you know my hours," he continued. "You use my dressing-room to work in whenever you like. I never use it myself; and I know you've a lot to do for me."
Ruth thanked him; and after that in the afternoons, when he was out, and in the evenings, when he was at dinner, she would sit in his dressing-room and work.
One evening, as she sat beside the window, her dark head bent over her work, she was aware that he was standing over her.
He had come in on her very quietly from behind, not through his bed-room but through the door of the dressing-room that opened into the corridor.
She rose to go, gathering her work.
He put his hand upon her shoulder, and pressed her gently back into the chair. She trembled beneath his touch.
"No," he said. "Don't go. I like to have you there."
She glanced swiftly at the door behind her.
"That's all right," he laughed. "It's shut." Then he moved into the bed-room.
"I'm not going to close the door," he said, "because I like to see you there when I look up from my work."
She lifted her eyes to his, full of confidence and affection. He was not a man; he was a God—and to be treated as such: he could do no wrong.
He smiled at her friendly from his chair.
"I'm going to read Jomini," he said. "Ever hear of Jomini, Ruth?—nice name, isn't it? Joe-mine-eye."
After that Captain Royal was less regular in his attendance at the billiard-room after dinner.
He read in his bed-room; Ruth worked in the dressing-room; sometimes the door between the two rooms was open; and sometimes they talked.
One evening Ernie, descending from a higher floor in the lift, marked Céleste listening at the dressing-room door. She saw him, winked, and tripped away.
"It's a caise!" she whispered, making a hollow of her hand. "A h'iceberg's hot stuff once it begins to go."
One morning, after Captain Royal had been at the Hotel two months, Ernie missed the familiar soft thud of his feet as he came up the stairs three at a time after his bathe.
Ernie looked at his watch.
It was half-past seven; and the Captain was regular as the seasons. He wondered what was up. The strange dis-ease which possessed him, whenever his thoughts turned to Royal, was on him strong.
Then Ruth came out of the Captain's room. Her face, always grave, was graver than usual. The note of restraint Ernie had marked in it of late, whenever he met her, had given place to one of anxiety.
"What's up?" he asked.
"He's not getting up," she answered. "He's not well. Looks to me like the hot-chills."
The sick man heard the voices outside.
"Caspar!" he called.
"Sir."
Ernie entered. Captain Royal lay in bed, a touch of colour in his cheeks, his skin dry, his hair bristling, his eyes suffused.
"I've got a touch of fever," he said. "And my head's stupid. You don't remember the prescription they used to give us in India. Quinine and—what?"
Ernie was far too vague to be of any help, and was testily dismissed. He left the sick-room. The Captain's helplessness roused the woman in him and disarmed the jealous male.
"It's nothing much," he told Ruth. "Only a go of malaria. He used to get it in India. Don't you worry."
Later in the morning Madame visited the sick man, and summed him up with those fine shrewd eyes of hers that let so little escape them.
The Captain was clearly running a temperature.
Madame put her plump be-ringed hand on his lean one, and then rang.
Ruth came.
"Have you a thermometer, Ruth?"
Ruth had—a legacy from Miss Caryll's days. In a moment she re-appeared with it, washed it, and put it into the Captain's mouth. Then she plucked it out, and took it to the window. It marked 102.
"What is it?" asked the sick man.
"It's a little up," answered Ruth, shaking the thermometer down.
"What is it?" repeated the other.
Ruth had not nursed Miss Caryll for two years in vain.
"It's a shade over normal," she said. "Hap it'll be a bit higher this evening."
Outside she told Madame.
"I shall send for Mr. Trupp," that lady said, and telephoned at once.
The great man came, grumbling and grousing. What did he—who loved to describe his surgery as carpentry, and himself as a mechanic—know of Indian fevers?
Madame took him herself to the Captain's room. Ruth brought a jug of hot water.
"You must just stop in bed till it's burned itself out," said the Doctor, wiping his hands and coughing.
The sick man cursed.
"You won't want a nurse," said Madame. "Ruth'll do everything you want."
Mr. Trupp looked up and for the first time noticed the girl by the wash-stand. He seemed put out and glanced at Madame.
"I didn't know you were on this floor, Ruth," he said, and added to the Captain—"Ruth nursed a patient of mine for two years in this very Hotel, didn't you, Ruth? She can take a temperature, feel a pulse, and keep a chart with the best of em, and you'll be all right in a day or two."
Ruth, who loved Mr. Trupp, as she loved no one else on earth, blushed and smiled.
"That's settled then," said the Captain from his bed.
Outside in the corridor Mr. Trupp, busy winding his comforter about his neck, saw Ernie and shook hands with him.
"Well, Ernie," he said gruffly. "I forgot you were here. Howyougetting on?"
"Nicely, thank you, sir," answered Ernie, forgetful for the moment of all his trouble. "Nothing much amiss with the Captain, I hope, sir?"
"D'you know him?" asked Mr. Trupp.
"Why, sir!" cried Ernie, aggrieved. "He was our adjutant. And a fine officer too. Mr. George'll tell you all about him, though they was in different Battalions. He's well be-known all over India because of his cricket."
"O, he's a Hammer-man too, is he?" said Mr. Trupp, interested. "Quite a collection of you here. D'you know Colonel Lewknor?"
"Know him, sir!" cried Ernie. "The Colonel!—The best officer and nicest gentleman we had. Is he down here?"
"Yes, he's taking a house in Holywell, I believe.... Take my bag down to the car, will you?—You'll find Alf outside. I must just wait and speak to the Manageress."
Ernie willingly obeyed.
Outside was the familiar chocolate-coloured car; and a little way off was Alf standing in the grass exchanging confidences with some one in the boothole in the basement.
He saw Ernie and broke off his conversation at once to come lurching towards his brother, licking his lips, and on his colourless face the familiar leer.
"Say, Ern!" he began confidentially.
Ernie, paying no heed, opened the door of the car, and put the bag inside.
"That was a pretty pick-up you got hold of top of the bus that time," Alf continued quietly.
Ern faced his brother.
"What's this then?" he asked, rather white.
"That tart top o the bus that night."
Ernie was breathing deep as he shut the door of the car elaborately.
"I thought you was a churchman then," he said. "Took the sacraments, marched in processions and carried the bag, from what I hear of it."
Alf looked round warily. Then he came boring in upon the other, as though determined to penetrate his secret.
"What if I do!" he said. "'Taint Sunday to-day, is it?—'Taint Sundayallthe time."
Some one buried in the boot-hole laughed.
"What's that got to do with it?" Ernie asked. "D'you keep a dirty tongue all the week, and put on a clean one o Sunday with yer change o clothes?"
"Who was she?" persisted Alf, his eyes like the waters of a canal at night glittering in the murk of some desolate industrial quarter.
Ernie folded his arms. He said nothing; but the lightning flickered about his face.
"I know who she was then," continued Alf, his great head weaving from side to side. "She was one of the totties from the Third Floor—where you work." He thrust his head forward, and his eyes were cruel. "D'youthink she's for you?—Earning twenty-two a week, aren't you?—and what the German Jews toss you. Why, I doubt if she'd fall to ME—and I'm a master-man."
Jeering laughter from the bowels of the earth punctuated his words.
Just then Mr. Trupp came through the great swing-doors. He stopped for a word with the hall-porter.
"You settled down here, Ernie?" he asked.
"Pretty fair, sir, thank you," Ernie answered without enthusiasm.
Mr. Trupp entered the car. He seemed perturbed.
"Well, if you want to make a change at any time, let me know," he said. "I only suggested this as a make-shift for you, till we could fix you up in something better, you know."
The Doctor drove home in surly mood.
It was not till the evening that his wife arrived at the root of the trouble.
"You remember Miss Caryll's maid?" he said.
"Ruth Boam?" cried Mrs. Trupp. "That charming girl who used to bring us over strawberries from the Dower-house at Aldwoldston."
Mr. Trupp stirred his coffee.
"She's on the Third Floor at the Hohenzollern."
Mrs. Trupp put down her work.
"Temporarily," continued the other, "But she oughtn't to be there at all, a good girl like that. I told Madame as much."
"I should think you did!" cried Mrs. Trupp, flashing out like a sword from a scabbard. "It's a crime!"
"Madame's not a criminal," replied her husband quietly. "She's kind. But she's one of the people who carries her kindness altogether too far."
Ernie, who was never very fond of work, had on the Captain's arrival stored his trunks in the dressing-room to save himself the trouble of carting them up to the box-room in the roof.
Now it occurred to him that if a nurse was called in to attend the sick man there might be trouble about the trunks.
On the morning after Mr. Trupp's visit he determined, therefore, to move them before he was found out.
Very early he opened the dressing-room door and blundered in.
A girl with bare arms was standing before the looking-glass, dressing her dark hair; and the bed had been slept in.
"O, beg pardon, Miss," said Ernie, genuinely abashed.
The girl smiled and held up a hushing finger.
"I didn't know, Miss," continued Ernie, still caught in his own confusion.
"Why d'you call me Miss?" asked Ruth calmly.
Ernie laughed lamely.
"Did I?" he said. "I don't know." He found relief in bustle. "I was just a-goin to shift some o them trunks."
"Thank you kindly," answered Ruth. "It'd make more room like."
Ernie set to work.
"How's the Captain?" he asked.
"Middlin or'nary," Ruth replied. "He didn't sleep unaccountable well."
"You look a bit tired yourself, Ruth," said Ernie.
"I was up to him time or two in the night," the girl answered. "I shall go off this afternoon. Madame's very kind."
Ernie went out, swallowing his misery as best he could.
The fever took its normal course. The Captain needed very little attention. Ruth gave him his medicine, tidied his bed, took his temperature, and saw to his food.
He lay in a fog, amused with her, angry with himself.
"You're top-hole at this job, Ruth," he would say.
On the third night, in the small hours, he rang. The bell was on a chair at Ruth's side. She rose at once. The dressing-gown in which she wrapped herself was a flimsy affair, and showed the lines of her large young body. The light beside the Captain's bed was switched on.
"Ruth," he said, "I'm better. I've broken out in a muck-sweat. I'm dripping. Get me some fresh pyjamas and a towel."
His face was shining with perspiration, his hair dark.
She went to a drawer.
"Bring me a towel," he said. "And give me a rub down."
She obeyed and clothed him in his new pyjamas.
He lay back, dry and contented.
The dawn was breaking. She lit the spirit-lamp and crouched beside it, graceful and brooding, her nightdress spread on the floor about her like a train of snow.
"I'll chill you a drop o milk," she said in her deep voice, with the coo of comfort in it. "It comes over cold towards dawn."
He drank readily and seemed refreshed.
"That's better," he said.
Ruth watched him with kind eyes.
"Now you'll sleep, I reck'n," she said.
"Ruth," he answered, "come here."
She came.
He took her hand and kissed it.
"That's all," he said. "Thank you. Good-night."
She went back to the dressing-room and closed the door behind her. Then she went to the window.
The tide was low, the sea still dark, and on the horizon of it a bank of saffron, from which in time the sun would appear.
On the far edge of the sands, pearl-hued and desolate, the waves stirred faintly. All else was stillness and immensity. Not a soul, not a ship, not a movement.
The sweep, the nakedness, the inexorable passivity of earth and sky and sea, man-forsaken and forlorn, seemed for once to affect the girl with fear. She retired hastily to her bed and sought the shelter of sleep.
In a week the Captain was in the sea again, and living the same fiercely strenuous life he had done before his attack.
Ernie congratulated him upon his recovery with a cheerfulness he by no means felt.
A question haunted him.
Was Ruth still sleeping in the dressing-room? ...
Could the girl be so indiscreet? ...
Nothing could have been easier for him than to answer the question for himself by peeping. But he would not do it, for the hotel-porter was a gentleman.
The question that troubled him was, however, soon to answer itself.
One afternoon, when Ruth was out to Ernie's knowledge, he was surprised to hear in the dressing-room the familiar voices of Céleste and another maid, hushed and whispering.
"She keeps the key her side," one was saying.
"What's it matter who keeps the key?" the other answered. "That's only a bluff."
The door was slightly ajar.
"He don't seem to have give her nothing," said the one at the dressing-table discontentedly.
"Only cash. Cash is the thing. Then you can get what you like for yourself."
"Here's her Bible and pray-book!Look!—Ain't she just the little limit?—and that close with it too."
"It's always the same. It's the dark uns are the deep uns."
"Don't you dare to chip her then," warned the other. "She's Madame's own ducky-darlin-doodle-day."
Ernie opened the door.
The two girls turned in a scared flutter.
"There!—It's only old Ernie Boots!" cried Céleste relieved. "He don't count, Ernie don't.—But you give me the palpitations though."
Ernie held the door wide.
"You've no business in here," he said sternly.
"No one has—only the Captain, old cock," retorted Céleste flippantly.
The two girls flirted away with high noses and a rustle of silken underwear.
Ernie looked round the little room with the eyes of a furtive watch-dog. He had no business there; and being there he ought to make it his duty to see nothing. But he did see; and what he saw was that the bed was not in use.
Thrown carelessly upon it was a regimental blazer, obviously awaiting repair, and a pair of socks in like case. Beside them was a work-bag. He moved the blazer and saw beneath it a silver cigarette-case. Then in the grate he saw the burnt end of a cigarette.
With beating heart, but unruffled air, he went out.
The two mocking-birds were perched on a window-sill at the end of the corridor.
"Pore old Ernie boy!" they cried in chorus. "Did he think she was for him?" ...
The story trickled down to the boot-room in the basement, which was a kind of cess-pool into which all the moral filth in the Hotel poured and finally accumulated.
Don John openly mocked Ernie.
"Here's Caspar!—Thought he'd have a chance against the toff!"
Ernie flashed round on him.
"Stow it!" he ordered.
The Austrian was afraid.
"Soldier! soldier!" he croaked, hiding his fear behind hideous laughter, and reported his enemy to Salvation Joe.
That worthy, swollen and stiff with righteousness as the Jehovah of the Israelites, and glad of his chance, tackled Ernie on the subject.
"What's this then?" he said, stopping the other.
"What, sir?" asked Ernie.
"Fighting in the boot-hole," answered Jehovah in his voice of thunder, subdued and distant.
"I don't know nothing of it," said Ernie, honestly taken aback.
Jehovah, the majestic, in his flaming jersey, could sneer.
"Ah, don't you, my lad?" he said. "Well, I do. Let's have no more of it."
The two men went on their way: Salvation Joe to the Manager's office to make his report.
"Always the same with these old soldiers," he said. "It's up with their fists at the first onset. No reasonableness in em. Can't keep em off of it."
"Better keep him anyway till the end of the season," said the Manager. "We don't want a change now."
"No, sir. I don't want a change any time," said the head-porter, on the defensive. "But order is order. That's all I says."
The pressure of necessity was indeed squeezing the softness out of Ernie.
Enemies thronged his path. He was becoming wary and watchful. Of old, when in the course of life he had come up against hostility and obstruction, he had met it either by evasion or the non-resistance so fatally easy to a man of his temperament. It was different now. His enemies were leagued together to rob him of something dearer than himself. Therefore he would stand: therefore he would fight.
There grew upon him a dignity, a restraint, above all a sternness that men and women alike remarked and respected.
Céleste ceased to mock him; Don John kept his distance; and the Captain was on his guard.
Ernie was sure of it: for Royal was nothing of a diplomatist when dealing with an enemy whom he despised.
Ruth, too, avoided Ernie now.
He noticed it, and did not attempt to approach her.
The two were drawing away, and yet, Ernie sometimes thought, coming closer—for all the girl's grave reserve.
He at least was climbing heights where he had never been before.
Up there in the eternal snows it was lonely but bracing. He was putting on an armour of ice. Clothed thus, knew that nothing could hurt him. He could bear all things, conquer all men.
Once at that time Mr. Pigott met him in Old Town.
"Ern," he said, eyeing the other curiously, "I've got a job for you in my yard, if you like it. What about it?"
"No, sir," answered Ernie, almost aggressively. "I'm going to stick where I am."
"No offence anyway," growled the other, striding huffily on his way.... "I might have been insulting him instead of trying to help him," the aggrieved man reported to Mr. Trupp later.
"Yes," said the Doctor. "He's under the Lash again. I see that. And he's growing because of it. Men do—if they are men. If they aren't they just break."
"You and your Lash," grumbled the other. "There are other stimulants in the world."
Mr. Trupp pursed his lips.
"Perhaps," he grinned. "But none so effective."
His father, too, noticed the change in his elder son.
Once as they were sitting together, above the chalk-pit, on one of Ern's afternoons off, after a long silence, he said,
"How goes it, Boy-lad?"
"What, dad?"
"The affair."
Ernie looked away, teasing the bent between his teeth.
"None too well, dad."
The old man laid a hand on his.
"Wade out into it!" he said. "Trust the stream! It'll carry you—if you'll let it."
Ernie's mother too, curiously sure in some of her intuitions, felt his trouble, was aware of his new-found courage, and came to him.
It had always been so with her from his childhood.
Whenever he put out his strength she rallied to him in full force. When in weakness he fell away she left him. It was as though all her woman's power of buttressing had been given to the father, so that there was nothing left to satisfy the demands of her seeking elder son.
That evening she gave him roses from her little garden before he went, and watched him round the corner.
Then she retreated indoors, and standing thin-shouldered in the door of the study, shot at the long loose figure by the fire one of her customary crude remarks.
"He's hanging on the Cross," she said.
Edward Caspar stared into the grate.
"He'll rise again," he answered.
Ernie, carrying his roses, mounted the bus.
Opposite theStar, he marked a gaunt figure, standing on the steps of the Manor-house. There was something of the kindly vulture about the figure's pose that was strangely familiar. Ernie leapt to sudden life. It was the Colonel—without his sun-helmet. Ernie was off the bus in a moment, and sidling shyly up to the object of his worship.
The Colonel, waiting on the steps, watched the antics of the approaching devotee with satirical indifference.
"Contemplating assault or adoration?" he asked mildly. Then he stooped, extending a skinny claw.
"What, Caspar!" he called, his cadaverous face lighting up.
"That's me, sir," grinned Ernie, wagging his tail with furious enthusiasm.
Just then a chocolate-bodied car drove up, and Ernie was aware of Alf looking at him. The door of the car opened; and Captain Royal stepped out.
"Ah, Colonel!" he cried in his brisk hearty voice.
The Colonel laid a finger on the other's sleeve.
"You remember Caspar, Royal?" he said.
"I do," replied Royal briefly. "Coming in, sir?" as Mr. Trupp's door opened at last.
Ernie turned down the hill, burning his white flare. The Captain's brutal insolence had gone home.
The Colonel reported the incident to his wife that evening.
"I could have struck the swine!" he said with unusual ferocity. "Conky Joe was right. He never was a white man. A piebald from birth, that feller."
Mrs. Lewknor churned the incident in her mind. It was a slur on the Regiment, and therefore a capital offence.
"What a cad!" she said. "Our dear Caspar too! Royal's the only officer in the Regiment would behave like that. Where's he stopping?"
"My dear, where would Royal stop?" said the Colonel. "The Hohenzollern—Third Floor—where Caspar's working."
He nodded his big head discreetly.
"How do you know?" asked Mrs. Lewknor, eyeing him.
"Trupp told me," replied the Colonel.
Ernie returned to the Hotel with his roses.
Later that evening he went to the door of the dressing-room of 72 and knocked quietly.
There was no answer. He entered and laid the roses on the table.
As he did so the door between the two rooms opened, and Ruth stood in it, watching him with hostile eyes.
In the room behind her Ernie could see the Captain in his smoking-jacket before the fire with a cigarette between his lips. Then the Captain saw him too. His easy expression changed in a flash; and he acted as always without a moment's hesitation.
He strode towards the open door between the two rooms, brushing Ruth almost rudely aside.
"Now no more of it!" he said with brutal savagery. "I've had enough!"
There was no light in the dressing-room but that which came through the uncurtained window from the moonlit sea, and the beam from the bed-room.
In the dimness the eyes of the two men clashed.
For a second the habit of discipline, of inferiority, of bowing to the other's artificially imposed authority, overwhelmed Ernie and he wavered. Then strength came to him like a tidal wave: he steadied and stood his ground.
In the eyes of his enemy he recognized in a flash the Eternal Brute, domineering, all-devouring, ruthless in the greed of its unbridled egotism, whose familiar features had been stamped indelibly, from the beginnings of Time, upon the retentive tablets of his race-memory.
Ernie was face to face with something in which he had never entirely believed—the Ogre of whom the Socialists spoke: Capitalism incarnate, stripped of its Church-trimmings, the Monster remorseless and obscene, to whom the Children of Men were but as the grass of the fields that went to feed the unquenchable fires in its sagging belly.
Quite suddenly the veil had been drawn aside, the roseate mists of sentimentality dispersed; and he beheld Human Nature, naked and terrible—the Animal who called himself Man—an Animal inspired beyond belief by the Devil of Lust and Cruelty, glowering out at him now from the ambush of a face created after the likeness of the Son of God.
He said slowly, more to himself than to his enemy:
"My Christ!" and left the room.
In the basement, Don John, bare-necked as a bird of prey, his cheek bulging with cheese, sat in a dingy apron and expounded his philosophy to a little group of disciples as tired and dirty as himself.
"Take advantage!—Of course dey take advantage! So would I, so would you—if we was in their shoes. Dey would be just pluddy fools not to. Dere is only so much in de world. Dey take what dey can get; and the veak to the vall. Shentlemen and Christians! Dere is no such tings. Tell the tale to mugs!—Dere is just Man and Woman, both worms, wriggled up out of the mud. Man wants Woman; and Woman wants it cushie. So de rich man buys her. Can you compete against him?—Is your body sleek with food and wine and lying in bed?—Is your spirit nourished on books and music and plays?—Can you fill her eye with your fatness, and clothe her body in furs, and adorn her hair with jewels, and fill her lap with gold?—No; de rich man buys what he wants, and he wants de best all de time. For you and me what is left over when he haf finished. Dat is so all de way through—women, wine, horses, what you vill. Touch your hat and say—Tank you, sair. Vair much obliged. It is always de same." He wagged a yellow fore-finger. "Dere is only two tings Ruling Class leaves to you and me." He cackled horribly. "One is Work"—he pronounced it vurk—"and de udder is War."
After the battle between the two men, Ruth retired into the fortress from which Ernie had lured her before the Captain's arrival.
The old restraint was on her, and hostility was now added.
She barely noticed him when they met, and he, wary for once and wise, made no advances to her.
But hope was quickening in his heart, for September was on them now, and the leave-season was drawing to an end.
One afternoon Céleste flitted past him like a wagtail.
"Cheer, Ernie-boy," she mocked. "He's going away."
"Who is?"
"Captain, my Captain."
"When?"
"At once." She halted. "But—he's taking her away with him."
Ernie turned grey.
"Who told you?"
"One of the girls. They take it in turns to sit in the dressing-room of evenings to hear the latest. It's like an aviary, they say.Coo-bird! coo! now me! now you! You was good to me when I was ill, Ruth,he says last night.Now I am going to give you a treat. I'm going to take you to Paree for the week-end on my way back to India."
Ernie came closer. He looked ugly.
"If I catch any of you girls in there——"
"Baa-a-a!" mocked the naughty one. "Who was caught in there himself?"
Ernie was now extraordinarily alert and vivid. The old sleepy benevolence had vanished: he was listening at last to that voice which none of us can afford to neglect, the voice which says at all times, to all men in all places—
Beware!
Salvation Joe took a professional and proprietory interest in the change, which for some obscure reason he attributed to his own direct intervention in heavenly places.
"What is it then?" he asked. "Has HE found you at last?"
Ernie, who as he gathered strength, gained also in flippancy, replied:
"There was ninety-and-nine, you mean. That lay. No, sir, He ain't found me. I've found IT though."
"Well, then, come round to the 'appy 'our on Sunday next and tell us all about it," growled the great man. "There's none so 'umble and lowly but we can learn from them, as I often says."
He tramped on his reverberating way....
That night, as Ernie was on lift-duty, the telephone bell rang in the passage. He went.
"Who's that?" he asked.
"Mr. Caspar from the Garage, Old Town," came the answer. "Could I speak to Captain Royal?"
The Captain had given orders that when he was in his room of evenings after dinner, he was not to be disturbed.
"He's engaged," answered Ernie. "Could I give him a message?"
For a moment there was a pause. Then the voice began again.
"Who'm I speaking to?"
"One of the porters, sir," Ernie answered.
There was no need for him to disguise his voice: for the telephone was out of repair, and speech muffled and uncertain accordingly.
"Well, will you take down this message and see it gets to him to-night.The car will be at the Decoy Park, East Gate, to-morrow afternoon at 2.30."
Ernie wrote the message down, and repeated it.
"Very good, sir," he said briskly.
"Thank ye," answered Alf, and rang off.
Later, when Captain Royal came down to the smoking-room for a last cigarette before bed, Ernie took him the message.
The Captain, who had brought the art of insolence to his inferiors to a height that only a certain type of officer, sheltered by Military Law, attains, took the note without a word, glanced at it, and tossed it into the fire.
Ernie retired with burning heart.
The conjunction of Captain Royal and Alf seemed to him sinister. But he had his armour on now, his lance in rest. His brain was working with a swiftness and precision that astonished him. He was ready for whatever might come....
The old Decoy was a survival of the remote days when Beachbourne was a fishing-village, famous only for the duck-shooting on the Levels hard by. When Ernie was a lad the Decoy Pond, in its rough ambush of trees and thick undergrowth, was still the haunt of duck and snipe, and his favourite hunting-ground in the bird-nesting season. During Ernie's absence in India the Corporation had acquired it, and made of the tangled wilderness, formerly the home of fox and snipe and the shy creatures of the jungle, a fair pleasure-ground for their conquerors. Green lawns now ran down amid forest-trees and clumps of flowering shrubs to a shining ornamental water on which floated stately swans, while moor-hen scudded here and there, and flotillas of foreign ducks paddled about islands gorgeous with crimson willow. A broad road ran from gate to gate; and in the woods of summer evenings young men now chased rarer game than ducks.
It was at the Eastern Gate of this resort that Alf was to meet the Captain with a car.
Ernie would meet them there too. On that he was determined.
It was not his afternoon off, but he arranged to change with a mate.
A light railway ran from the East-end of the Town along the edge of the Levels to join the main line at the wayside station known as the Decoy Park between Beachbourne and Polefax.
Ernie took the two o'clock train, and, ensconced in a third-class smoker, watched. Very soon the Captain came swinging along the platform, a light burberry over his arm, athletic, resolute, and quite the English gentleman, his coloured tie striking a charming note of gaiety in his otherwise fresh but sober costume.
Ernie watched him critically. In externals the Captain was the typical representative of a Service in which men move, like Wordsworth's cloud, all together or not at all.
For the skilled observer, indeed, the history of the British Army during the last seventy years is to be read in the evolution of the moustaches of its officers. At the moment now recorded the flowingbeau-sabreurmoustache which dominated the Service from Balaclava to Paardeberg had long gone out; while the tuft moustache which commemorated for the British Army the advent of the Great War had not yet come in. The tooth-brush or touch-me-not or crawling-caterpillar moustache, brief, severe, and bristling, which had held its own against all comers since South Africa, was still the rage; and gave the wearer that suggestion of something between a hog-maned horse-in-training and a rough-haired terrier on the look-out for a row with a rat which was the fashionable pose for the British officer in the years between the two Wars.
To be quitecomme-il-fautRoyal should have had trailing at his heels a little bustling terrier, rather like himself, harsh in manner, but virile, aggressive and keen.
But Captain Royal did not like dogs.
Ernie, chewing a fag in a corner, as he watched his enemy march by, remembered that; remembered too and suddenly that it had been common talk in the lines that Royal was not popular among his brother-officers—"not class enough" the whisper went. Ernie, who had wondered then, understood that now.
At the Decoy Park the Captain got out.
Ernie saw him off the platform, and well started down the road to the Decoy Woods before he followed.
A chilly wind blew from across the Levels.
The Captain marched along towards the Park, the tail of his burberry floating out, his green hat with the feather in it cocked to meet the breeze, the shapely curves of his legs exposed by the wind.
Just outside the Park he looked sharply behind him, but saw only a shabby figure slouching casually along some two hundred yards away.
Once inside the Park Ernie left the road and, walking swiftly among the trees at the wayside, drew closer.
Here in the woods peacocks strutted, and close by was an aviary in which parrots chuckled, golden pheasants preened themselves, and birds with gay plumage fluttered.
On the rustic bridge across the ornamental water the Captain paused and looked about him. Nominally he was observing the swans; really he was looking to see if he was being watched.
Ernie, alert in every inch of him, recognized the ruse; and drew the correct deduction that his enemy had been at this game before.
He waited in the shadow of the trees.
The Captain, satisfied, made now for the East Gate. Outside it a car was waiting. Ern recognized that chocolate body; and he recognized too that little figure in the shining black gaiters who stood beside it, and touched his hat with a furtive grin.
The two men exchanged a brief word. Alf opened the door of the car, produced something, and held it out. Ernie saw that it was a lady's fur coat.
Then Captain Royal climbed into the car, and Alf put the hood up.
Ernie approached.
Just inside the East Gate was a little wooden chalet, where teas were served.
In this Ernie took cover.
A crowded motor-bus from Beachbourne drove up.
On the front seat was a girl in a terra-cotta-coloured felt hat.
She got down and walked towards the car.
Ernie watched, quivering.
There was only one woman in the world who walked with that direct and compelling grace.
It was clear to him that the girl was happy—lyrically so—and shy. The flow and rhythm of her every motion betrayed it abundantly.
Alf touched his hat as she approached, and opened the door.
The Captain did not descend. He was waiting inside—the spider in the background lurking to pounce upon the fly, a spider who shot forth sudden grey tentacles to enfold his prey. Ruth, clasped by the tentacles, was sucked out of sight.
Ernie was overwhelmed with a sudden desire to leap out into the road and cry:
"Don't!"
He sweated and trembled.
Then the door of the car slammed. Ruth was fast inside; and Alf, wonderfully brisk, had hopped into his seat, and was fingering the levers.
Then the car stole forward swiftly, secretly, like a cat upon the stalk.
It passed through the gate, would cross the Park, strike the Lewes road at Ratton on the way to—Lewes—Brighton—where?...
Ern was standing up now, forgetful of concealment. As the car swept by, Alf saw him and made a mocking downward motion with his hand, as of one pressing to earth an enemy struggling to his feet.
Ern was aware of it, of the look on Alf's face, of the two in the car.
They did not see him. The Captain was bending over Ruth, buttoning the fur coat round her throat.
Just then there rang through the silence a dreadful cry as of evil triumphant.
A peacock in the wood had screamed.
That night Ernie was on late lift-duty.
He was just about to lock the lift when the missing Captain came striding across the empty hall with a peremptory finger raised.
"You're late, sir," said Ernie, unlocking grudgingly.
"Third Floor," the other answered, curt as a blow.
When the lift stopped, Ernie went along the corridor to deliver a note to Madame in her room.
"Thank-you, Caspar," she said. "Good-night."
She had always felt a kindness for this soft-spoken son of the people, and the fact that he was reported to be of gentle birth had interested her.
As he was going back to the lift he met Ruth, still in her hat, coming along the corridor, bearing a tray.
She had the merry, mischievous air of a girl just back from a Sunday school treat, and still brimming with the laughter of primroses and April woods. His heart leapt up in joy and thankfulness as he beheld her.
She gave him the old gay look of affectionate intimacy, which she had withheld from him for weeks past.
"Good-night, Ernie," she said as she passed him, in a voice so low that but for its deep ringing quality he might almost have missed it.
He half hesitated.
"Good-night, Ruth," he answered, and as he disappeared down the shaft of the lift saw her, glowing with health and happiness, enter the Captain's room with her tray.
He locked the lift.
In the hall the Manager was shutting his desk in the office. He saw Ernie and called:
"Has Captain Royal come in?"
"Yes, sir."
"There's a telegram for him somewhere."
He hunted about and at last found it.
"Take it up to him now, will you?" he said, "It's been waiting since three."
Ernie toiled up the stairs, and knocked at the door of 72.
There was no answer.
He opened it slightly.
The light was on, and he entered. The room was empty. He stood a moment, quivering. Then voices from the dressing-room came to him quietly and at intervals.
He stood still, with head down, listening.
The Captain was speaking softly, insistently.
Ruth was dumb. Ernie thought she was crying.
Then he heard her voice, panting and very low,
"A-done, sir, do!"
In a moment Ernie was in eruption.
He flung against the door and tore rabidly at the handle. There was no answer from within. Ernie brought his fist down upon a panel with a left-handed punch that seemed to shake the Hotel.
"Telegram, sir!" he called in stentorian tones, threw the flimsy envelope on to the bed, and was gone.
Next morning the Captain was up early.
Ernie met him coming back from the bath-room, a towel over his arm.
Royal did not meet the eyes of his enemy.
"Have a taxi at the door at 6.45," he ordered.
"Yes, sir," answered Ernie.
A few minutes before that hour the Captain rang for the lift. Ernie found him waiting on the landing with his suitcase and took him down.
In the hall Royal, with averted shoulder, thrust a sovereign towards him.
"Here!"
Ernie flared white, and swept the outstretched hand aside with a gesture that was almost a blow.
"Never!" he cried.
For the second time the two men's eyes met and clashed; and in a flash Ernie knew that he had conquered. The Captain had run up the sullen flag of spiritual catastrophe.
Then he turned away and marched rapidly across the hall.
Ernie went straight back to 72. The room showed every sign of a hasty departure. The floor was littered; the drawers open and still half full of clothes. Under the dressing-table were boots and shoes, on it a pair of hair-brushes, a case of studs, and the lesser paraphernalia of a man's toilet. It was clear that the late occupant had stuffed a few things into his suit-case and bolted.
The dressing-room door was shut.
Ernie went to it and listened.
There was no sound within.
"Ruth," he called gently, and opened. She was lying across the bed in her simple print-gown as though she had been felled.
It was clear that she had entered the room and been faced with—emptiness.
Her eyes were shut, and her face swam pale as the moon and still in the black circle of her hair. One foot had lost its shoe, and dangled black-stockinged and pathetic over the bed. In her hand, listlessly held, was a piece of crumpled paper—as it might have been her death-warrant.
She did not seem to breathe.
At first Ernie thought that she was dead, so wan she was, so quiet, so unaware. He did not mind very much, because he had died too; and they were together still, and closer than they had ever been.
Quietly he knelt beside her.
"Ruth," he said, and kissed the hand that lay limp at her side.
She stirred beneath his touch.
"It's all right, Ruth," he whispered.
She opened her eyes. They lay like pools of beauty, dark in her white face, and fringed with black. They spoke to him in the silence, appealing to him. They drew him, they undid him, they purged him by their suffering of all sin, lifting him into a white heaven, where was no stain of earth, no discord, no breaking despair.
He smiled at her through his tears.
"It's all right, Ruth," he repeated.