CHAPTER XIV

SHADOWS

Ern was not called up after all.

The trap-door through which men had peered aghast into the fires of hell, closed suddenly as it had opened. Only the clang of the stokers working in the darkness under the earth could still be heard day and night at their infernal busyness by any who paused and laid ear to the ground.

England and the world breathed again.

"Touch and go," said Mr. Trupp, who felt like a man coming to the surface after a deep plunge.

"Dress rehearsal," said the Colonel.

"It'll never be so near again!" Mr. Pigott announced pontifically to his wife. "Never!"

"Thank you," replied that lady. "May we take it from you?"

When it was over the Colonel found that the walls of Jericho had fallen: the Liberal Citadel had been stormed. Mr. Geddes took the chair at a meeting at St. Andrew's Hall to discuss the programme of the League.

"It looks as if you were right after all," the tall minister said to the Colonel gravely.

"Pray heaven I'm not," the other answered in like tones.

The second significant incident of this time, which occurred during a lull before the final flare-up of the long-drawn Agadir crisis, had less happy results from the point of view of the old soldier.

In August, suddenly and without warning, the railway-men came out. The Colonel had been up to London for the night on the business of the League, and next morning had walked into Victoria Street Station to find it in possession of the soldiers: men in khaki in full marching order, rifle, bayonet, and bandolier; sentries everywhere; and on the platform a Union official in a blue badge urging the guard to come out.

The guard, a heavy-shouldered middle-aged fellow, was stubbornly lumping along the platform on flat feet, swinging his lantern.

"I've got a heart," he kept on reiterating. "I've got a wife and children to think of."

"So've I," replied the official, dogging him. "It's because I am thinking of them that I'm out."

"Silly 'aound!" said a bystander

"No, he ain't then!" retorted a second.

"Yes, he is!" chipped in a third. "Makin trouble for isself and everybody else all round. Calls isself the workers' friend!--Hadgitator, I call him!"

All the way down to Beachbourne in the train the Colonel marked pickets guarding bridges; a cavalry patrol with lances flashing from the green covert of a country lane; a battery on the march; armies on the move.

Joe Burt's right, he reflected, it's war.

"I never thought to see the like of that in England," said a fellow-traveller, eyes glued to the window.

"Makes you think," the Colonel admitted.

Arrived home he found there was a call for special constables. That evening he went to the police station to sign on, and found many of the leading citizens of Beachbourne there on like errand. Bobby Chislehurst, his open young face clouded for once, and disturbed, was pressing the point of view of the railway-men on Stanley Bessemere, who was listening with the amused indifference of the man who knows.

"I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," the politician was saying, shaking the sagacious head of the embryo statesmen. "They're taking advantage of the international situation to try to better themselves."

"But they say it's the Government and the directors who are taking advantage of it to try and put them off--as they've been doing for years!" cried Bobby, finely indignant.

"I believe I know what I am talking about," replied the other, unmoved from the rock of his superiority. "I don't mind telling you that the European situation is still most precarious. The men know that, and they're trying to squeeze the Government. I should like to think it wasn't so."

Then the Archdeacon's voice loudly uplifted overwhelmed all others.

"O, for an hour of the Kaiser!--He'd deal with em. The one man left in Europe--now my poor Emperah's gone. Lloyd George ... Bowing the knee to Baal ... Traitors to their country ... Want a lesson ... What can you expect?" He mouthed away grandiloquently in detached sentences to the air in general; and nobody paid any attention to him.

Near by, Mr. Pigott, red and ruffled, was asking what the Army had to do with it?--who wanted the soldiers?--why not leave it to the civilians?--with a provocative glance at the Colonel.

Then there was a noise of marching in the street, and a body of working-men drew up outside the door.

"Who are those fellows?" asked the Archdeacon loudly.

"Workers from the East-end, old cock," shouted one of them as offensively through the door. "Come to sign on as Specials! And just as good a right here as you have...."

The leader of the men in the street broke away from them and shouldered into the yard, battle in his eye.

It was Joe Burt, who, as the Colonel had once remarked, was sometimes a wise statesman, and sometimes a foaming demagogue. To-day he was the latter at his worst.

"What did I tell yo?" he said to the Colonel roughly. "Bringin oop the Army against us. Royal Engineers driving trains and all! It's a disgrace."

The Colonel reasoned with him.

"But, my dear fellow, you can't have one section of the community holding up the country."

"Can't have it!" surly and savage. "Yo've had five hundred dud plutocrats in the House of Lords holding up the people for years past. Did ye shout then? If they use direct action in their own interests why make a rout when 500,000 railway men come out for a living wage?--And _then_ you coom to the workers and ask them to strengthen the Army the Government'll use against them!--A wonder yo've the face!" He turned away, shaking.

Just then happily there was a diversion. The yard-door, which a policeman had shut, burst open; and a baggy old gentleman lumbered through it with the scared look of a bear lost in a busy thoroughfare and much the motions of one.

Holding on to his coat-tails like a keeper came Ruth. She was panting, and a little dishevelled; in her arms was her baby, and her hat was a-wry.

"He would come!" she said, almost in tears. "There was no stoppin him. So I had just to come along too."

Joe, aware that he had gone too far, and glad of the interruption, stepped up to Ruth and took the baby from her arms. The distressed woman gave him a look of gratitude and began to pat and preen her hair.

At this moment Ernie burst into the yard. He was more alert than usual, and threw a swift, almost hostile, glance about him. Then he saw Ruth busy tidying herself, and relaxed.

"Caught him playing truant, didn't you, in Saffrons Croft?" he said. "The park-keeper tell me."

Ruth was recovering rapidly.

"Yes," she laughed. "I told him it was nothing to do with him--strikes and riots and bloodshed!--Such an idea!"

A baby began to wail; and Ernie turned to see Joe with little Ned in his arms.

"Hallo! Joe!" he chaffed. "_My_ baby, I think."

He took his own child amid laughter, Joe surrendering it reluctantly.

Just then Edward Caspar appeared in the door of the office. He looked at them over his spectacles and said quietly, as if to himself.

"It's Law as well. We must never forget that."

The Colonel turned to Ernie.

"What's he mean?" he asked low.--"Law as well."

Ernie, dandling the baby, drew away into a corner where he would be out of earshot of the Archdeacon.

"It's a line of poetry, sir," he explained in hushed voice--

"_O, Love that art remorseless Law, So beautiful, so terrible._"

"Go on!" said the Colonel, keenly. "Go on!--I like that."

But Ernie only wagged a sheepish head.

"That's all," he said reluctantly. "It never got beyond them two lines." He added with a shy twinkle--"That's dad, that is."

A chocolate-bodied car stopped in the street opposite.

Out of it stepped Mr. Trupp.

In it the Colonel saw a lean woman with eyes the blue of steel, fierce black brows, and snow-white hair.

She was peering hungrily out.

"It's mother come after dad," Ernie explained. "In Mr. Trupp's car. That's my brother driving."

The old surgeon, crossing the yard, now met the run-agate emerging from the office and took him kindly by the arm.

"No, no, Mr. Caspar," he scolded soothingly. "They don't want old fellows like you and me to do the bludgeon business. Our sons'll do all that's necessary in that line."

He packed the elderly truant away in the car.

Mr. Caspar sat beside his wife, his hands folded on the handle of his umbrella, looking as determined as he knew how.

Mrs. Caspar tucked a rug about his knees.

Ernie, who had followed his father out to the car, and exchanged a word with his brother sitting stiff as an idol, behind his wheel, now returned to the yard, grinning.

"Well!" said Joe.

Ernie rolled his head.

"Asked Alf if _he_ was goin to sign on?" he grinned.

"Is he?" asked the Colonel ingenuously.

Ernie laughed harshly.

"Not Alf!" he said. "He's a true Christian, Alf is, when there's scrapping on the tape..."

At the club a few days later, when the trouble had blown over, the Colonel asked Mr. Trupp if Ernie was ill.

"He seemed so slack," he said, with a genuine concern.

"So he is," growled the old surgeon. "He wants the Lash--that's all."

"Different from his brother," mused the Colonel--"that chauffeur feller of yours. He's keen enough from what I can see."

Mr. Trupp puffed at his cigar.

"Alf's ambitious," he said. "That's his spur. Starting in a big way on his own now. Sussex is going to blossom out into Caspar's Garages, he tells me. I'm going to put money in the company. Some men draw money. Alf's one."