CHAPTER XXI

THUNDER

The two brothers had to appear before the Bench on Monday. As it chanced Mr. Pigott, Colonel Lewknor and Mr. Trupp were the only magistrates present.

Ernie, who appeared with his head bandaged, admitted his mistake.

"Went to pass the time o day with my brother," he said. "And all he done was to lean out of the window and crash the crockery down on the roof o me head. Did upset me a bit, I admit."

"He meant murder all right," was Alf's testimony, sullenly given. "He knows that."

Joe corroborated Ernie's statement.

He had been in the Saffrons on Saturday afternoon and had seen Ernie coming down the hill from Old Town. Having a message to give him he had started to meet him. Ernie had gone up the steps of his brother's house; and as he did so, Alf had leaned out of the upper window and thrown a jug down on his brother.

Alf's solicitor cross-examined the engineer at some length.

"What were you doing on the Saffrons?"

"Watching the football."

"You were watching the football; and yet you saw Caspar coming down Church Street?"

"I did."

"I suggest that you did nothing of the sort; and that you only appeared on the scene at the last moment."

"Well," retorted Joe, good-humouredly. "A don't blame you for that. It's what you're paid to suggest."

A witness who was to have given evidence for Alf did not appear; and the Bench agreed without retiring. Neither of the brothers had been up before the magistrates before and both were let off with a caution, Ernie having to pay costs.

"_Your_ tongue's altogether too long, Alfred Caspar," said Mr. Pigott, the Chairman, and added--quite unjudicially--"always was. And _you're_ altogether too free with your fists, Ernest Caspar."

Ernie left the court rejoicing; for he knew he had escaped lightly. Outside he waited to thank his friend for his support.

"Comin up along?" he coaxed.

"Nay, ma lad," retorted the engineer with the touch of brutality which not seldom now marked his intercourse with the other. "You must face the missus alone. Reck'n A've done enough for one morning."

Ern went off down Saffrons Road in the direction of Old Town, crest-fallen as is the man whose little cocoon of self-defensive humbug has suddenly been cleft by a steel blade.

Joe marched away down Grove Road. Alf caught him up. The little chauffeur was smiling that curds-and-whey smile of his.

"Say, Burt!--you aren't half a liar, are you?" he whispered.

Joe grinned genially.

"The Church can't have it all to herself," he said. "Leave a few of the lies to the laity."

Ern trudged back from the Town Hall, across Saffrons Croft, to the Moot, in unenviable mood; for he was afraid, and he had cause.

Ruth was who standing in the door came stalking to meet him, holding little Alice by the hand.

Ern slouched up with that admixture of bluff, lordly insouciance, and aggrieved innocence that is the honoured defence of dog and man alike on such occasions.

"You've done us," she said almost vengefully.

"What are I done then?" asked the accused, feigning abrupt indignation.

Ruth dismissed the child, and turned on Ernie.

"Got us turn into the street--me and my babies," she answered, splendidly indignant. "A chap's been round arter the house, while you was up before the beaks settlin whether you were for Lewes Gaol or not. Says Alf's let it him a week from Saraday, and we got to go. I wouldn't let him in."

"Ah," said Ernie stubbornly, "don't you worry. Alf's got to give us notice first. And he daren't do that."

Ruth was not to be appeased.

"Why daren't he, then?" she asked.

"I'll tell you for why," answered Ernie. "He's goin up before the Watch Committee come Thursday to get his licence for his blessed Touring Syndicate. We've friends on that Committee, good friends--Mr. Pigott, and the Colonel, not to say Mr. Geddes; and Alf knaws it. He ain't goin to do anythink to annoy them just now. Knaws too much, Alf do."

Ruth was not convinced.

"We got no friends," she said sullenly. "We shall lose em all over this. O course we shall, and I don't blame em. A fair disgrace on both of you, I call it. You're lucky not to have to do a stretch. And as to Alf, they've sack him from sidesman over it, and he'll never forgive us."

They were walking slowly back to the cottage, the man hang-dog, the woman cold.

Outside the door she paused.

"All I know is this," she said. "If you're out again through your own fault I'm done with it, and I'll tell you straight what I shall do, Ern."

She was very quiet.

"What then?"

"I shall leave you with your children and go away with mine." She stood with heaving bosom, immensely moved. "I ca-a'nt keep the lot. But I can keep one. And you know which one that'll be."

Ernie, the colour of dew, went indoors without a word.

The rumour that Alf had been dismissed from his position as sidesman at St. Michael's, owing to the incident in the Goffs, was not entirely true, but there was something in it.

The Archdeacon had his faults, but there was no more zealous guardian of the fair fame of the Church and all things appertaining to her.

Alf's appearance before the magistrates was discussed at the weekly conference of the staff at the Rectory.

Both Mr. Spink and Bobby Chislehurst were present. The former stoutly defended his protégé, and the Archdeacon heard him out. Then he turned to Bobby.

"What d'you say, Chislehurst?" he asked.

Bobby, in fact, could say little.

Ernie had no scruples whatever in suggesting what was untrue to the magistrates, who when on the Bench at all events were officials, and to be treated accordingly, but he would never lie to a man who had won his heart. He had, therefore, in answer to the Cherub's request given an unvarnished account of what had occurred. Bobby now repeated it reluctantly, but without modification.

"Exactly," said Mr. Spink. "There's not a tittle of evidence that Alfred really did say what he's accused of saying. And he denies it, point-blank."

"I think I'd better see him," said the Archdeacon.

Alf came, sore and sulking.

Mottled and sour of eye, he stood before the Archdeacon who flicked the lid of his snuff-box, and asked whether he had indeed made the remark attributed to him.

"I never said nothing of the sort," answered Alf warmly, almost rudely. "Is it likely? me own sister-in-law and all! See here!" He produced his rent-book. "I'm her landlord. She's months behind. See for yourself! Any other man only me'd have turned her out weeks ago. But, of course, she takes advantage. She would. She's that sort. I never said a word against her."

"And there is plenty you could say," chimed in Mr. Spink, who had escorted his friend.

"Maybe there is," muttered Alf.

The Archdeacon made a grimace. In the matter of sex indeed if in no other, he was and always had been a genuine aristocrat--sensitive, refined, fastidious.

"Two of them get soaking together in the _Star_," continued Alf. "Then they start telling each other dirty stories and quarrellin. Ern believes it all and comes and makes a fuss. Mr. Pigott's chairman on the Bench. Course he lays it all on me--Mr. Pigott would. Ern can't do no wrong in his eyes--never could. Won't listen to reason and blames me along of him--because I'm a Churchman. See, he's never forgiven me leaving the Chapel, Mr. Pigott hasn't; and that's the whole story."

It was a good card to play; and it did its work.

"It's a cleah case to my mind of more sinned against than sinning," said the Archdeacon with a genuinely kind smile. "You had bad luck, Caspar--but a good friend." He shook hands with both young men. "I wish you well and offer you my sympathy. I think you should go and have a word of explanation with our friend, Mr. Pigott, though."

"Yes, sir," said Alf. "I'm goin now. I couldn't let it rest there."

Alf went straight on to interview the erring chairman in the little villa in Victoria Drive.

The latter, summing up his old pupil with shrewd blue eye in which there was a hint of battle, refused to discuss the case or his judgment.

"What's done is done," he said. "The law's the law and there's no goin back on it. You were lucky to get off so light; that's my notion of it."

Alf stood before him, hang-dog and resentful.

"He'll kill me one of these days," he muttered. "Little better than a bloody murderer."

There was a moment's pause, marked by a snort from Mr. Pigott.

Then the jolly, cosy man, with his trim white beard and neat little paunch, rose and opened the window with some ostentation.

"First time that word's ever crossed my threshold," he said. "And I've lived in this house ten year come Michaelmas." He turned with dignity on the offender. "Is that what they teach you in the Church of England, then, Alfred Caspar?" he asked. "It wasn't what we taught you in the Wesleyan Chapel in which you was bred. Never heard the like of it for language in all me life--never!" Before everything else in life Mr. Pigott was a strong chapel-man; and in his judgment Ern's weakness was as nothing to Alf's apostasy.

Alf looked foolish and deprecatory.

"I didn't mean in it the swearin way," he said--"not as Ernest would have meant it. I never been in the Army meself. I only meant he'll be the end o me one of these days. Good as said he would in the _Star_ Saturday."

Mr. Pigott turned away to hide the twinkle in his eye. He knew Alf well, and his weakness.

"He don't like you, I do believe," he admitted. "And he's a very funny fellow, Ern, when his hackle's up."

Alf's eyes blinked as they held the floor.

"And now," he said, "I suppose the Watch Committee'll not grant my licence for the Road-Touring Syndicate when it comes up afore em on Thursday. And I'll be a ruined man."

"I shouldn't be surprised," answered Mr. Pigott, who was an alderman and a great man on the Town Council.

Alf was furious. He was so furious, indeed, that he did a thing he had not done for years: he took his trouble to his mother.

"It's a regular plot," he said, "that's what it is. To get my licence stopped and ruin me. Raised the money; ordered the buses; engaged the staff and all. And then they spring this on me!--It ain't Ernie. I will say that for him. I know who's at the bottom of it."

"Who then?" asked his mother, faintly interested.

"Her Ern keeps."

Mrs. Caspar roused instantly.

"Isn't she married to him then?" she cried, peering over her spectacles.

"Is she?" sneered Alf. "That's all."

He leaned forward, his ugly face dreadful with a sneer.

"Do you know where she'd be if everyone had his rights?"

"Where then?"

"Lewes Gaol."

His message delivered, he sat back with a nod to watch its effect.

"And she would be there too," continued Alf, "only for me."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Caspar asked.

"I mean," answered Alf, "as I keep her out of prison by keepin me mouth shut." He dropped his voice. "And that ain't all. She's at it again ... Her home's a knockin-shop.... All the young men.... The police ought to interfere.... I shall tell the Archdeacon.... A kept woman.... That chap Burt.... That's how Ern makes good.... She makes the money he spends at the _Star_.... And your grand-children brought up in that atmosphere!" He struck the table. "But I'm her landlord all the same; and I'll make her know it yet."

Anne Caspar was genuinely disturbed not for the sake of Ruth, but for that of the children.

"You could never turn her out!" she said--"not your own sister-in-law and four children! Look so bad and all--and you a sidesman too."

Alf snorted.

"Ah, couldn't I?" he said. "You never know what a man can do till he tries."

That evening the Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked over to the Manor-house to discuss Ern's latest misadventure. They found Mr. Pigott there clearly on the same errand; but the old Nonconformist rose to go with faintly exaggerated dignity on seeing his would-be enemy.

"There's only one thing'll save him now," he announced in his most dogmatic style.

"What's that?" asked Mrs. Trupp.

"H'a h'earthquake," the other answered.

When the Colonel and his wife left the Manor-house half-an-hour later there were three people walking abreast down the hill before them, just as there had been on a previous occasion. Now, as then, the centre of the three was Ruth. Now, as then, on her left was Joe. But on her right instead of Ern was little Alice.

The Colonel pointed to the three.

"I'll back Caspar all the way," said Mrs. Lewknor firmly.

"Myself," replied the Colonel shrewdly, "I'll back the winner."

Then he paused to read a placard which gave the latest news of the Ulster campaign.