CHAPTER XX

THE VANQUISHED

When Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor called at the Manor-house a few days later, Mrs. Trupp told them what had happened.

"Burt paid her rent?" queried the Colonel.

"Without her knowledge," said Mrs. Trupp.

The Colonel shrugged.

"I'm afraid our friend Ernie's a poor creature," he said. "Wishy-washy! That's about the long and short of it."

"And yet he's got it in him!" commented Mrs. Trupp.

"That's what I say," remarked Mrs. Lewknor with a touch of aggressiveness. The little lady, with the fine loyalty that was her characteristic, never forgot whose son Ernie was, nor her first meeting with him years before in hospital at Jubbulpur. "He's got plenty in him; but she don't dig it out."

"He got a good fright though, this time," said Bess. "It may steady him."

Mr. Trupp shot forth one of his short epigrams, solid and chunky as a blow from a hammer.

"Men won't till they must," he said. "It's Must has been the making of Man. He'll try when he's got to, and not a moment before."

Ten minutes later Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor were walking down Church Street towards the station. Just in front of them a woman and two men were marching a-breast. The woman was flanked by her comrades.

"What a contrast those two men make," remarked the Colonel. "That feller Burt's like a bull!"

"Too like," retorted Mrs. Lewknor sharply. "Give me the fellow who's like a gentleman."

The Colonel shook his head.

"Flame burns too feebly."

"But it burns pure," snapped the little lady.

Both parties had reached the foot of the hill at the Goffs when the woman in front swerved. It was the motion of the bird in flight suddenly aware of a man with a gun. She passed through the stile and fled swiftly across Saffrons Croft. The men with her, evidently taken by surprise, followed.

Only the Colonel saw what had happened.

A tall man, coming from the station, had turned into Alf's garage.

"Royal," he said low to his companion.

Captain Royal had come down to Beachbourne to see Alf Caspar, who wanted more capital for his Syndicate which was prospering amazingly. Alf, indeed, now that he had established his garages in every important centre in East Sussex, was starting a Road-touring Syndicate to exploit for visitors the hidden treasures of a country-side amazingly rich in historic memories for men of Anglo-Saxon blood. The Syndicate was to begin operations with a flourish on the Easter Bank Holiday, if the necessary licence could be obtained from the Watch Committee; and Alf anticipated little real trouble in that matter.

Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, who had never forgiven Alf for being Alf, watched the growing prosperity of the Syndicate and its promoter with undisguised annoyance.

"It beats me," said Bess, "why people back the little beast. Everybody knows all about him."

Next day as they rode down the valley towards Birling Gap, Mr. Trupp expounded to his daughter the secret of Alf's success.

"When you're as old as I am, my dear, and have had as long an experience as I have of this slip-shod world, you'll know that people will forgive almost anything to a man who gets things done and is reliable. Alf drove me for nearly ten years tens of thousands of miles; and I never knew him to have a break-down on the road. Why?--because he took trouble."

Alf, indeed, with all his amazing deficiencies, mental and moral, was a supremely honest workman. He never scamped a job, and was never satisfied with anything but the best. He was gloriously work-proud. A hard master, he was hardest on himself, as all the men in his yard knew. One and all they disliked him; one and all they respected him--because he could beat them at their own job. His work was his solitary passion, and he was an artist at it. Here he was not even petty. Good work, and a good workman, found in him their most wholehearted supporter.

"That's a job!" he'd say to a mechanic. "I congratulate you."

"You should know, Mr. Caspar," the man would answer, pleased and purring. For Alf's reputation as the best motor-engineer in East Sussex was well-established and well-earned. And because he was efficient and thorough the success of his Syndicate was never in doubt.

Alf was on the way now, in truth, to becoming a rich man. Yet he lived simply enough above his original garage in the Goffs at the foot of Old Town. And from that eyrie, busy though he was, he still made time to watch with interest and pleasure his brother's trousers coming down and indeed to lend a helping hand in the process: for he worked secretly on his mother, who regarded Ernie when he came to Rectory Walk to take his father out with eyes of increasing displeasure; for her eldest son was shabby and seedy almost now as in the days when he had been out of work after leaving the Hohenzollern. The word failure was stamped upon him in letters few could mis-read. And Anne Caspar had for all those who fail, with one exception, that profound sense of exasperation and disgust which finds its outlet in the contemptuous pity that is for modern man the camouflaged expression of the cruelty inherent in his animal nature. It seemed that all the love in her--and there was love in her as surely there is in us all--was exhausted on her own old man. For the rest her attitude towards the fallen in the arena was always _Thumbs down_--with perhaps an added zest of rancour and resentment because of the one she spared.

"She has brought you low," she commented one evening to Ernie in that pseudo-mystical voice, as of one talking in her sleep, from the covert of which some women hope to shoot their poisoned arrows with impunity. This time, however, she was not to escape just punishment.

Ernie flared.

"Who says she has then?"

Anne Caspar had struck a spark of reality out of the moss-covered flint; and now--as had happened at rare intervals throughout his life--Ernie made his mother suddenly afraid.

"Everyone," she said, lamely, trying vainly to cover her retreat.

"Ah," said Ernie, nodding. "I knaw who, and I'll let him knaw it too."

"Best be cautious," replied his mother with a smirk. "He's your landlord now. And you're behind."

Ernie rose.

"He may be my landlord," he cried. "But I'm the daddy o he yet."

Sullenly he returned to the house that was now for him no home: for the woman who had made it home was punishing not without just cause the man who had betrayed it.

Ruth was standing now like a rock in the tide-way, the passions of men beating about her, her children clinging to her, the grey sky of circumstance enfolding her.

She had sought adventure and had found it. Battle now was hers; but it was battle stripped of all romance. Danger beset her; but it was wholly sordid. The battle was for bread--to feed her household; and soap--to keep her home and children clean. The danger was lest all the creeping diseases and hideous disabilities contingent upon penury, unknown even by name except in their grossest form to the millions whose lot it is to face and fight them day in, day out, should sap the powers of resistance of her and hers, and throw them on the scrap-heap at the mercy of Man, the merciless.

Tragic was her dilemma. To Ruth her home was everything because it meant the environment in which she must grow the souls and bodies of her children. And her home was threatened. That was the position, stark and terrible, which stared her in the eyes by day and night. The man provided her by the law had proved a No-man, as Joe called it. He was a danger to the home of which he should have been the support. And while her own man had failed her, another, a true man as she believed, was offering to take upon his strong and capable shoulders the burthen Ernie was letting fall.

Ruth agonised and well she might. For Joe was pressing in upon her, overpowering her, hammering at her gate with always fiercer insistence. Should she surrender?--should she open the gate of a citadel of which the garrison was starved and the ammunition all but spent?--should she fight on?

Through the muffled confusion and darkness of her mind, above the tumult of cries old and new besetting her, came always the still small voice, heard through the hubbub by reason of its very quiet, that said--Fight. Inherently spiritual as she was, Ruth gave ear to it, putting forth the whole of her strength to meet the enemy, who was too much her friend, and overthrow him.

Yet she could not forget that she owed her position to Ernie, since at every hour of every day she was being pricked by the ubiquitous pin of poverty. Fighting now with her back to the wall, for her home and children, and stern because of it, she did not spare him. When Ernie called her hard, as he was never tired of doing, she answered simply,

"I got to be."

"No need to bully a chap so then," Ernie complained. "A'ter all I am a human being though I may be your husband."

"You're not the only one I got to think of," replied Ruth remorselessly. "And it's no good talking. I shan't forgive you till you've won back the position you lost when he sack you. Half a dollar a week makes just the difference between can and can't to me. See, I can't goo to the wash-tub now as I could to make up one time o day when I'd only the one. So I must look to you. And if I look in vain you got to hear about it. I mean it, Ernie," she continued. "I'm fairly up against it. There's no gettin round me this time. And if you won't think o me, you might think o the children. It's they who suffer."

She had touched the spot this time.

"Steady with it then!" cried Ernie angrily. "Don't I think o you and the children?"

"Not as you should," answered Ruth calmly. "Not by no means. We should come first. Four of them now--and twenty-two bob to keep em on. Tain't in reason."

She faced him with calm and resolute eyes.

"And it mustn't happen again, Ern," she said. "See, it's too much. Nobody's fault but your own."

Ernie went out in sullen mood, and for the first time since the smash turned into the _Star_. He had not been there many minutes when a navvy, clouded with liquor, leaned over and inquired friendly how his barstards were.

Ern set down his mug.

"What's this then?" he asked, very still.

The fellow leaned forward, leering, a great hand plaistered on either knee.

"Don't you know what a bloody barstard is?" he asked. He was too drunk to be afraid; too drunk to be accountable. Ernie dealt with him as a doctor deals with a refractory invalid--patiently.

"Who's been sayin it?" he asked.

"Your own blood-brother--Alf."

Ernie tossed off his half-pint, rose, and went out.

He walked fast down the hill to the Goffs. People marked him as he passed, and the look upon his face: he did not see them.

Alf was in his garage, talking to a man. The man wore a burberry and a jaeger hat, with a hackle stuck in the riband. There was something jaunty and sword-like about him. Ern, as he drew rapidly closer, recognised him. It was Captain Royal. The conjunction of the two men at that moment turned his heart to steel.

He was walking; but he seemed to himself to be sliding over the earth towards his enemies, swift and stealthy as a hunting panther. As he went he clutched his fists and knew that they were damp and very cold.

When Ernie was within a hundred yards of him Royal, all unconscious of the presence of his enemy, swung out of the garage and walked off in his rapid, resolute way.

Alf went slowly up the steps into his office.

He was grinning to himself.

"'Alf a mo then!" said Ernie quietly, hard on his heels. "Just a word with you, Alf."

Alf turned, saw his brother crossing the yard, marked the danger-flare on his face, remembered it of old, and bolted incontinently, without shame, locking the house door behind him.

Ern hammered on the door.

Alf peeped out of an upper window, upset a jug of water over his brother, and in his panic fury flung the jug after it. It broke on Ernie's head and crashed to pieces on the step.

Ernie, gasping, and bleeding from the head, staggered back into the road, half-stunned. Then he began to tear off his sopping clothes and throw them down into the dust at his feet. His voice was quiet as his face, smeared with blood, was moved.

"You've got to ave it!" he called up to his brother. "May as well come and ave it now as wait for it."

There had been a big football match on the Saffrons, and the crowd were just flocking away, in mood for a lark. The drenched and bleeding man stripping in the road, the broken crockery on the door-step, the white-faced fellow at the window, promised just the sensation they sought. Joyfully they gathered to see. Here was just the right finale pleasant Saturday afternoon.

"I'm your landlord!" screamed Alf. "Remember that! I'll make you pay for this!"

"Will you?" answered Ernie, truculent and cool. "Then I'll have my money's worth first."

This heroic sentiment was loudly applauded by the crowd, who felt an added sympathy for Ern now they knew he was attacking his landlord, one of a class loathed by all good men.

Just then Joe Burt emerged from the crowd and took the tumultuous figure of Ernie in his arms.

"Coom, then!" he said. "This'll never do for a Labour Leader. This isna the Highway you should be trampin along."

The crowd protested. It was an exhilarating scene--better than the pictures, some opined. And here was a blighter, who talked funny talk, interfering.

"Just like these hem furriners," said an old man. "Ca-a-n't let well a-be."

Then, happily, or unhappily, the police, who exist to spoil the people's fun, appeared on the scene.

They made a little blue knot round Ernie, who stood in the midst of them, stripped and dripping, with something of the forlorn look of a shorn ewe that has just been dipped.

Alf, secure now in the presence of the officers of the law, descended from his window and came down the steps of his house towards the growing crowd. A tall man joined him. The pair forced their way through the press to the police.

"I'm Captain Royal," said the tall man, coldly. "I saw what happened."

Joe turned on the new-comer. His clothes, his class, a touch of insolence about his tone and bearing, roused all the combative instincts of the engineer.

"You wasn't standin by then!" he said ferociously. "You only just come up. A saw you."

The other ignored him, drawing a card from an elegant case.

"Here's my card," he said to the police. "If you want my evidence you'll know where to find me."

Joe boiled over.

"That's the gentleman of England touch!" he sneered. "Swear away a workin man's life for the price of half a pint, they would!"

"Ah! I know him!" muttered Ernie, white still, and trembling.

"Enough of it now," growled a big policeman, making notes in his pocket-book.

Just then the crowd parted and a woman came through. A shawl was wrapped about her head and face. Only her eyes were seen, dark under dark hair.

A moment she stood surrounded by the four men who had desired or possessed her. Then she put her hand on the shirt-sleeve of her husband.

"Ern," she said, and turned away.

He followed her submissively through the crowd, slipping his shirt over his head.

Swiftly the woman walked away up the hill. Her scarecrow, his trousers sopping and sagging about his boots, trudged behind.

The crowd looked after them in silence. Then Joe broke away and followed at a distance.

Ruth looked back and saw him.

"Let us be, Joe," she called.

Joe turned away. His eyes were full of tears.