CHAPTER XXXIII

BEAU-NEZ

He returned to the Moot to find little Alice crying in the door. A pathetic little shrimp of a creature she looked, huddled against the door-post, her face hidden, her shoulders quivering, her back to the hostile world. Some children who had been mocking her drew away on Ernie's approach.

"What's up, Lal?" he asked tenderly, bending over her.

She would not look up.

"It's nothing, daddy," she sobbed and crept away up the street, like a wounded animal.

Ernie went in. Ruth was sitting alone in the kitchen forlorn and wistful as he had never known her. It was clear to him that the sorrow, whatever it might be, was shared by mother and daughter. He watched her quietly for a minute; then came to her.

"What is it, mother?" he asked with unusual gentleness.

His tone touched the spring of tears in her heart. She bit her lip.

"Its Alf," she said with gasps. "He's been settin em on to her again... He's spiteful because the war's spoilt his Syndicate... So he takes it out of her... They've been tormenting her... Only she wouldn't tell you because she wanted your last day to be happy."

Ern went out, found little Alice once again in the door, her pinafore still to her eyes, took her up in his arms and put her in her mother's lap.

"Love one another," he said huskily. "And don't forget me."

Then he went out again, burning his battle-flare.

In half an hour he was back with Joe Burt.

There was a strange hushed dignity about him as he entered the kitchen. He might have been a priest about to conduct a ceremony at the altar of the Most High. Joe lagged behind sullen and with downward eyes, twisting his cap. Somehow he looked strangely common beside his friend. Ruth, as she rose to meet the two men, was profoundly conscious of the contrast between them.

"Joe," said Ernie, still and solemn, "I bequeath Ruth to you..."

In a flash the woman seized the situation.

"--to have and to hold," she murmured quietly, her head down to stifle sobs and laughter.

Ernie with that love of ritual which characterises his class continued with the smile-less intensity of a child.

"Yes, to have and to hold ... her and her children ... for me ... till I return."

Joe was obviously staggered. His eyes roved the floor; his head weaved to and fro.

"Here, I didn't bargain for this," he muttered.

Ruth thrust out her hand almost sternly, as though to silence him. He took it grudgingly, and then Ern's.

"A suppose A'll do ma best," he said, and slouched out hasty as a schoolboy escaping from the schoolroom.

When he was gone Ruth laid both hands on Ernie's shoulders and looked at him her eyes dazzled with laughter and tears.

"You should never ha done it, Ern!" she said. "Never!"

"There was nothing for it only that," Ern answered sturdily. "It's a world of wolves. Somebody must see to you while I'm away."

She withdrew her hands and stood before him, defenceless now, humble, beautiful, appealing.

"Ern," she said with a little sob, "will you take me up along to the Ambush--our last night and all?"

He looked at her steadily. Then he caught her hand.

"All right, old lass," he said.

They had not visited their couching-place that summer and the romance of old and intimate association was on them both now as they came to the tryst in the scented dusk. The gorse, unpruned, had grown over the track that led to the heart of the covert. Ernie forced his way through, Ruth following him, anchored jealously to his hand. Behind her the bushes closed, blocking the way; and she was glad. Her eyes were on the shoulders of her man, wistful still but triumphant; and she found herself smiling secretly as she marked how bride-like she felt, how warm and shy and tremulous. In this great hour the tides of her ebbing youth had returned with power and the desert bloomed afresh. The world-catastrophe had wrought a miracle. Spring had quickened the stale summer air. Here at the parched noon was a hint of dawn, dew-drenched and lovely.

Waist-deep in the dark covert, the man and woman stood on the summit of the hill, under the sky, the sea spread like a dulled shield beneath them.

It was already nine o'clock; a perfect evening of that never-to-be-forgotten August. The sun had long gone down behind the Seven Sisters. In Paradise a nightjar was thrumming harshly. Below in the coombe the lights of Undercliff began to twinkle. On the Head Brangwyn-like figures were moving heavily. A night-shift was working there behind windy flares, screened by tarpaulins from enemy eyes at sea. Ernie knew what they were doing.

"They're building a battery to protect the new wireless station against aircraft attack," he told Ruth. "That dark thing in the road's a fire-engine to dowse the flares if a night attack's made."

Then above the noise of the navvies busy with pick and shovel, and the pleasant gargle of the night-jar, blended another sound. A hollow ominous rumbling like the voice of a great ghost laughing harshly in his grave came rolling across the sea out of the darkness.

"Guns," said Ernie. "They're at it in the Bight."

Ruth drew closer and took his arm. One finger was to her lips. She was a little bit afraid. He felt it, and pressed her arm.

From the distance, muffled by the shoulder of the hill, came the hammer-hammer that would endure all night of the emergency gangs, rushed down in special trains from the North, to run up a huge camp in the great coombe at the end of Rectory Walk where of old lambs had often roused Ernie as a lad on bleak March mornings by their forlorn music of spirits exiled and crying for home.

He stood and looked and listened.

"Who'd ever ha beleft it'd ha come to this when we first lay out here six years ago?" he mused.

"Or now for that matter," answered Ruth, her voice deep and hushed as the evening. "All so good and quiet as it looks."

She pulled him down into the darkness of the covert.

"D'is safer here, I reck'n," she said, and nuzzled up against him.

Ernie peeped though the gorse at the lights flickering on the Head.

"They ca-a-n't see us here," he said.

"And a good job, too, I reck'n," answered Ruth sedately, fingering her hair.

Ernie chuckled.

"Listen!" he said.

They sat close in their ambush, walled about with prickly darkness, roofed in by the living night.

Beneath them the sea came and went, rose and fell, rhythmical and somnolent, as it had done in the days when badger and wolf and bear roamed the hill, with none to contest their sovereignty but the hoary old sea-eagle from the cliffs; as it might still do when man had long passed away. Sounds ancient almost as the earth on which they lay, which had lulled them and millions of their forefathers to sleep, were crossed by others, new, man-made, discordant.

Down the road at the back of the covert, not a hundred yards away, came a sudden bustling phut-phut-phut.

"Despatch-rider," said Ernie, peering. "Light out and all. Rushin it to Birling Gap. There's a company of Territorials there, diggin emselves in behind barbed wire to guard the deep-sea cables."

"The Boy-Scouts were layin out all day on the road to Friston, Mr. Chislehurst told me," remarked Ruth. "They took the number of every motor and motor-bike on the road to Newhaven."

She unloosed her hair that fell about her like a torrent of darkness.

A huge beetle twanged by above them; and then in the covert close at hand there was a snuffling and grunting, so loud, so close, so portentous that Ruth, creature of the earth though she was, was startled and paused in her undoing.

"What-ever's that?" she asked, laying a hand on Ernie.

"Hedge-pig, I allow."

"Sounds like it might be a wild boar routin and snoutin and carryin on," she laughed.

Ruth reclined on the bed of sand. The calm blessedness of night embraced her; and the stars lay on her face. She lifted her lips to them, seeming to draw them down with each breath, and blow them away again, babe-like. A dreamy amazement still possessed her.

"Who'd ever ha beleft it?" she said quietly.

Then she turned her face to him and laughed.

"Ernie!" she called.

"Whose are you now?" he said fiercely in her ear.

She chuckled and gathered him to her bosom.

He sighed his content.

"That's better," he murmured. "Now, never no more of it!"

A great mate, Ruth was a still greater mother; and this living, pulsing creature in her arms was her child, her first-born cub.

In the stress and conflict of the last few years necessity had compelled her to discard the royal indolence that was her natural habit. The lioness in her, roused by conflict, had made her fierce and formidable in any battle. Six months ago she had fought Ernie--because he was weak; now she would shield him--because he was strong.

Jealously she pressed him to her.

"They shan't get you, my lad," she said between her teeth. "I'll see to that."

"I'm not afraid o them," answered Ernie drowsily. "I knaw the Germans. All you got to do is to say Shoo!--and goo with your arms and they're off like rabbits from the garden."

She thrust his head back till she saw it as a dim blob against the shining night; and looked up into his eyes, her own so close to his, so deep, so dear.

"You're my soldier," she murmured in his ear. "I always knew you was."

Then she drew his face down to hers, till their lips met.

"I got something to tell you, Ern."

Now she leaned over him. The moon shone on the smooth sweep of her shoulders, rounded and luminous.

"I only deceived you the once, Ern," she whispered, her voice murmuring like a stream that issued from the slowly-heaving ocean of her chest. "Afore we were married. He ne'er wrote me ne'er a letter."

"I knew that then," muttered Ernie, sleepily, his head beside her own.

"It was Madame," Ruth continued. "She come over in a car and told the tale."

Her confession made she waited; but in a moment his breathing told her that he had fallen off to sleep.

She stroked him rhythmically, just as she would her children when they were tired.

He was going back to the regiment--to Captain Royal--to the Unknown. She was not afraid for him--nor for herself--nor for the children. An immense peace had fallen on her.

Then all about her a murmur as of wings grew. There was a whispering patter as of rain upon the turf that ringed the covert; but no rain fell. Through the patter came the tinkle of a bell. An immense flock of sheep was rippling dimly like a flood over the parched turf to the dew-pond by the old wall on the brow. The whisper grew louder, as though the rain had turned to hail. The flock was crossing the road. Then there was almost a silence, and in the silence the leader ba-a-a-d. The flock had reached the waters of refreshing.

Ruth slept, strangely comforted.