CHAPTER XVIII

A SKIRMISH

A few days later Ernie came home immediately after work instead of repairing to the _Star_. As he entered the room Ruth saw there was something up. He was sober--terribly so.

"I done it, Ruth, old lass," he said.

She knew at once.

"Got the sack?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I've no one to blame only meself," he said, disarming her, as he disarmed everyone by his Christian quality.

Ruth did not reproach him: that was not her way. Nor did she sit down and cry: she had expected the catastrophe too long. She took the boy from the cradle and opened her bodice.

"You shan't suffer anyways," she said, half to herself, half to the child, and stared out of the window, babe at breast, rocking gently and with tapping foot.

Ern slouched out; and Ruth was left alone, to face as best she could the spectre that haunts through life the path of the immense majority of the human race. She had watched its slinking approach for years. Now with a patter of hushed feet, dreadful in the fury of its assault, it was on her. Remorseless in attack as in pursuit it was hounding her and hers slowly down a dreary slope to a lingering death, of body and spirit alike, in that hungry morass, the name of which is Unemployment.

Two days later when Joe entered the cottage he found Ruth for once sitting, listless. All the children were in bed, even little Alice. He saw at once why. There was no fire, though it was January.

"Where's Ern, then?" he asked.

"Lookin for work," Ruth answered.

Joe stared, aghast.

"Is he out?" he asked.

Ruth rose and turned her shoulder to him.

"Yes. They've stood him off. And I don't blame em."

"What for?" Joe was genuinely concerned.

"He didn't say. Bad time, I reckon. Only don't tell anyone, Joe, for dear's sake, else they'll stop my credit at the shop--and I'll be done."

Her eyes filled and she bit her lip.

"Four of em," she said. "And nothing a week to do it on--let alone the rent" ...

She might hush it up; but the news spread.

Alf, with his ears of a lynx, was one of the first to hear. For a moment he hovered in a dreadful state of trepidation. It was a year and a half since he had stalked his white heifer, bent on a kill, only to be scared away by the presence of that mysterious old man he had found at her side in the heart of the covert. But his lust was by no means dead because it had been for the time suppressed. Ruth had baffled him; and Alf had not forgotten it. Ern possessed a beautiful woman he longed for; and Alf had not forgiven him.

Perhaps because he had beaten down his desire for so long, it now rushed out ravening from its lair, and drove all else before it. Throwing caution to the winds, he came stealing along like a stoat upon the trail, licking his lips, wary yet swift. First he made sure that Ernie was out, looking for a job of work. Then he came down the street.

Ruth met her enemy blithely and with taunting eyes. In battle she found a certain relief from the burthen of her distress. And here she knew was no question of pity or consideration.

"Monday's your morning, isn't it?" she said. "Come along then, will you, Alf? And you'll see what I got for you."

Alf shook a sorrowful head, studying his rent-book.

"It can't go on," he said in the highly moral tone he loved to adopt. "It ain't right." He raised a pained face and looked away. "Of course if you was to wish to wipe it off and start clean----"

Ruth was cold and smiling. She handled Alf always with the caressing contempt with which a cat handles a mouse.

"Little bit of accommodation," she said. "No thank you, Alf. I shouldn't feel that'd help me to start clean."

"See Ern's down and out," continued the tempter in his hushed and confidential voice. "Nobody won't give him a job."

Ruth trembled slightly, though she was smiling still and self-contained.

"You'll see to that now you're on high, won't you?" she said--"for my children's sake."

"It'd be doin Ern a good turn, too," Alf went on in the same low monotone.

"Brotherly," said Ruth. "But he mightn't see it that way."

"He wouldn't mind," continued Alf gently. "See he's all for Joe Burt and the classes now. Says you're keeping him back. Nothin but a burthen to him, he says. _Her and her brats_, as he said last night at the Institute. _Don't give a chap a chance_." Alf wagged his head. "Course he shouldn't ha said it. I know that. Told him so at the time afore them all. _Tain't right_--I told him straight--_your own wife and all_."

"My Ern didn't say that, Alf," Ruth answered simply.

His eyes came seeking hers furtively, and were gone instantly on meeting them.

"Then you won't do him a good turn?"

Ruth's fine eyes flashed and danced, irony, laughter, scorn, all crossing swords in their brown deeps. There were aspects of Alf that genuinely amused her.

"Would you like to talk it over with him?" she asked.

"And supposing I have?"

"He'll be back in a moment," she said, sweet and bright. "I'll ask him."

Alf was silent, fumbling with his watch-chain. Then he began again in the same hushed voice, and with the same averted face.

"And there's another thing between us." His eyes were shut, and he was weaving to and fro like a snake in the love-dance. "Sorry you're trying to make bad blood between me and my old dad," he said. "Very sorry, Ruth."

"I aren't," Ruth answered swiftly. "You was always un-friends from the cradle, you and dad. See he don't think you're right." She added a little stab of her own--"No one does. That's why they keep you on as sidesman, Mr. Chislehurst says. Charity-like. They're sorry for you. So'm I."

The words touched Alf's vital spot--the conceit that was the most obvious symptom of his insanity. His face changed, but his voice remained as before, stealthy and insinuating. He came a little closer, and his eyes caressed her figure covetously.

"You see I wouldn't annoy me, not too far, not if I was you, Ruth. You can go too far even with a saint upon the cross."

Ruth put out the tip of her tongue daintily.

"Crook upon the cross, don't you mean, Alf?"

He brushed the irrelevancy aside, shooting his head across to hers. His face was ugly now, and glistening. With deliberate insolence he flicked a thumb and finger under her nose.

"And I do know what I do know, and what nobody else don't know only you and me and the Captin, my tuppenny tartlet."

She was still and white, formidable in her very dumbness. He proceeded with quiet stealth.

"See that letter I wrote you used to hold over against me before you married--that's destroyed now. And a good job, too, for it might have meant trouble for Alfured. But it's gone! I _know_ that then. Ern told me. He's a drunkard, old Ern is; but he's not a liar. I will say that for my brother; I will stick up for him if it was ever so; I will fight old Ern's battles for him."

"As you're doin now," said Ruth.

Alf grinned.

"And the short of it all is just this, Ruthie," he continued, and reaching forth a hand, tapped her upon the shoulder--"I got you, and you ain't got me. And I can squeeze the heart out of that great bosom o yours"--he opened and clenched his hand in pantomine--"if I don't get my way any time I like. So just you think it over! Think o your children if you won't think of nothing else!"

Outside in the road he ran into Joe, who gripped him.

"What you come after?" asked the engineer ferociously.

"After my rent," answered Alf, shouting from fear. Joe looked dangerous, but loosed his hold.

"How much?" he asked, taking a bag from his pocket.

"Sixteen shilling. You can see for yourself."

Obliging with the obligingness of the man who is scared to death, Alf produced his book. Joe, lowering still, examined it. Then he paid the money into the other's hand. That done he escorted Alf policemanwise to the bottom of Borough Lane.

"If A find you mouchin round here again A'll break your bloody little back across ma knee," he told the other, shouldering over him. "A mean it, sitha!"

Alf withdrew up the hill towards the _Star_. At a safe distance he paused and called back confidentially, his face white and sneering,

"Quite the yard-dog, eh? Bought her, ain't yer?"

Joe returned to the cottage and entered.

At the head of the stairs a lovely little figure in a white gown that enfolded her hugely like a cloud, making billows about the woolly red slippers which had been Bess Trupp's Christmas gift, smiled at him.

"Uncle Joe," little Alice chirped, "please tell Mum I are ready."

He ran up the stairs, gathered her in his arms, and bore her back to bed in the room where Susie and Jenny already slept.

"Hush!" she whispered, laying a tiny finger on his lips--"The little ones!"

He tucked her up and kissed her.

"You're the proper little mother, aren't you?" he whispered.

In the kitchen he found Ruth, a row of tin-tacks studding her lips, soling Alice's boots. The glint of steel between her lips, and the inward curl of her lips, gave her a touch of unusual grimness.

"Always at it," he said.

"Yes," she answered between muffled lips. "Got to be. Snob this time. Only the soles are rotten. It's like puttin nails into wet brown paper."

She was suffering terribly--he felt it; and suppressed accordingly. But if her furnaces were damped down, he could hear the flames roaring behind closed doors; and her passion, which typified for him the sufferings of those innocent millions to the redemption of whom he had consecrated his life, moved him profoundly.

He flung the bag on the table before her almost savagely. It jingled as it fell and squatted there, dowdy, and lackadaisical as a dumpling in a swoon.

Ruth eyed it, her lips still steel-studded.

"How much?" she mumbled.

"Ten pound," he answered.

"That's not what I mean."

"What _do_ you mean, then?"

"What's the price?"

He glared at her; then thumped the table with a great fist.

"Nothin then!" he shouted. "What doest' take me for?"

She munched her tin-tacks sardonically, regarding him.

How sturdy he was, with his close curly black hair, and on his face the set and resolute look of the man approaching middle-age, who knows that he wants and how to win it!

"A man, Joe."

He snorted sullenly.

"Better'n a no-man any road," he sneered.

The words stung her. All the immense and tender motherliness of her nature rose up like a wave that curls in roaring majesty to a fall. She swept the tin-tacks from her mouth and met him, flashing and glorious.

"See here, Joe!" she cried, deep-voiced as a bloodhound. "Ne'er a word against my Ern! I won't have it."

"_Your_ Ern!"

She was white and heaving.

"Yes, my Ern! He's down and out, and you take advantage to come up here behind his back and insult him--and me. You're the one to call anudder man a no-man, aren't you?" Taking the bag of money she tossed it at him with a flinging scorn that was magnificent.

"Take your filth away--and yourself with it!"

He went, humbled and ashamed.

She watched him go--this sanguine, well-conditioned man, with his good boots, his sensible clothes, his air of solid prosperity.

Then she sat down, spent. Her savagery had been largely defensive. Like the brave soldier she was she had attacked to hide the weakness of her guard. She was sick at heart; worn out. These men ... first Alf, then Joe ... This champing boar, foam in the corner of his lips ... that red-eyed weasel squealing on the trail....

An hour later Ern came home.

She knew at once from the wan look of him that he had been tramping all day on an empty stomach. That, with all his faults, was Ern. So long as there was a crumb in the cupboard she and the children should share it: he would tighten his belt. Even now he just sat down, an obviously beaten man, and did not ask for a bite. What she had she put before him; and it was not much.

"Any luck, Ern?" she asked with a touch of tenderness.

Sullenly he shook his head.

"Walked my bloody legs off on an empty belly, and got a mouthful of insults at the end of it," he muttered. "That's all I got. That's all they give the working man in Old England. Joe's right. Sink the country! Blast the bloody Empire! That's all it's good for!"

It was the first time he had ever used bad language in her presence. That gradual demoralisation which unemployment, however caused, and its consequences brings inevitably in its train was already showing its corrupt fruits. The tragedy of it moved her.

"Joe's been up," she said after a bit.

"I met him," he answered. He was warmer after his meal, less sullen, and drew up his chair from habit before the fireless range. "He wants me to go North--to his folk. Says his brother-in-law can find me a job. Runs a motor-transport business in Oldham."

Her back was to him at the moment.

"Does he?" she asked quietly. "What about me and my children?"

"That's what I says to him."

"What did he say?"

"Said he'd look after you and them."

Ruth was still as a mouse awaiting the cat's pounce.

"And what did you say to that?"

"Told him to go to hell."

Ruth stirred again and resumed her quiet busyness.

"Alf's been up again," she told him. "Messin round."