CHAPTER XXXV

IN THE EVENING

The Archdeacon and his sidesman walked back to Old Town from the station together.

Mr. Trupp and Mr. Pigott followed behind.

"The Archdeacon lags a bit," said the former.

"Yes," answered the other. "And I don't wonder. This war'll be the end of him yet. You heard about last night?"

The veteran had sallied out at midnight with an electric torch and the Reverend Spink to deal with spies who had been signalling from the top of the Downs.

Unhappily the stalker had himself been stalked by another patriot bent on the same errand. The two old gentlemen had arrested each other by the dew-pond on Warren Hill; and report had it that words and worse had passed between the two. In the small hours of the morning Anne Caspar, hearing voices, had risen and seen from her window the Archdeacon stalking down the road, dusty, draggled, his curate trotting with sullen barks at the heels of his chief. The Archdeacon had no prisoner, but he had lumbago, a scratch or two, and an indignant sense that his curate had proved both disloyal and inefficient. The two had parted at the Rectory gate wrathfully, the Reverend Spink offering his resignation.

Opposite his garage in the Golfs, Alf now said goodbye to his Rector, and crossed the road with an almost aggressively sprightly air. Mr. Trupp noticed it.

"What about him and his Touring Syndicate?" he asked.

"He's all right," answered Mr. Pigott. "Trust him for that. Artful isn't in it with Alf. Called his drivers together on the declaration of war, and made em a speech. Said he knew where they wanted to be--where he wanted to be himself: in the fighting line. He'd be the last to stand between them and their duty. He wouldn't keep them to their contract. The Motor Transport was crying for them--five bob a day and glory galore. All he could do was to say God bless you and wish he could go himself--only his responsibilities...."

Mr. Trupp grinned.

"Did they swallow it down?" he asked.

"Like best butter," said Mr. Pigott. "He's got the tongue. He twisted em. Parliament's the place for Alf."

"Ah!" committed the other. "We're only beginning. This war'll find us all out too before we're through." ...

Alf turned into his yard.

A little group of broken down old men were waiting him there.

"Who are you?" he asked fiercely. "What you want?"

"We've come on behalf of the cleaners, sir," said the spokesman, in the uncertain voice of the half-starved. "What about us?--The Army don't want us."

The group tittered a feeble deprecatory titter.

"H'every man for himself in these days!" cried Alf, brief and brisk. "I'm not the Charity Organisation Society."

The old man, a-quaver in voice and body, doddered forward, touching his hat. Undersized and shrunken through starvation during infancy, and brutal usage throughout his growing years, he was an example of the great principle we Christians have enforced and maintained throughout the centuries: that the world's hardest work should be done by the weakest. Tip, as he was called, had been a coal-porter till at fifty-five he dislocated his shoulder shifting loads too heavy for him. Thereafter he was partially disabled, a casualty of the Industrial War, and to be treated as such.

"Would you give us a week's money or notice, sir?" he said now in his shaking voice.

"Did I take you on by the week?" asked Alf ferociously.

"No, sir; by the day."

"Then what ye talking about?--Ain't I paid you up?"

"You paid us up, sir. Only we got to live."

"Very well then. There's the House at the top of the hill for such as you. Ain't that good enough? This is a Christian country, this is."

Alf was half-way up the steps to his office, and he pointed in the direction of the Work-house.

A curious tawny glow lit the old man's eyes. His lips closed over his gums.

"Bloody Bastille," he muttered.

Alf heard him and ran down the steps. He was still with the stillness of the born bully.

"None of that now," he said quietly. "No filthy language in my yard! And no loiterin eether!--Off you go or I send for the police. The country's got something better to think of than you and your likes, I reckon, just now."

He stood in the gate of the yard with the cold domineering air of the warder in charge of convicts.

The cleaners shambled away like a herd of mangy donkeys past work and turned out on waste land to die at their leisure.

They were broken men all, old and infirm, drawn from the dregs of that Reserve of Labour on which the capitalist system has been built. They belonged to no Union; they were incapable of organisation and therefore of defence against the predatory class ...

"We got no bloody country, men like us ain't."

"Nor no bloody Christ."

"The rich got Him too."

"Same as they got everythink else" ...

The last of them gone, Alf skipped up the steps into his office. He was not afraid of them, was not even depressed by their uncalled-for consideration of themselves.

Indeed he was extraordinarily uplifted.

His great scheme had, it is true, been brought low--through no omission on his part; but he had got out with a squeeze after a dreadful period of panic fury, and now experienced the lyrical exhilaration of the man who has escaped by his own exertions from sudden unexpected death.

He had unloaded his drivers on the Army; and sold his buses to the Government. The only big creditor was Captain Royal, and Alf could afford to laugh at him. Besides Captain Royal would be off to the war--and might not come back. Moreover, unless he was much mistaken, the war meant all manner of chances of which the man with his eyes open would take full advantage: world convulsions always did.

Meanwhile he had the garages on which he could rebuild his original edifice at any moment, add to it, alter it as opportunity offered. The war would not last for ever; but it would un-make businesses and devour men--some of them his rivals. While they were away at the Front he would be quietly, ceaselessly strengthening his position at home. And when peace came, as it must some day, he would be ready to reap where he had sown in enterprise and industry.

On his way up to Old Town that evening he met the Reverend Spink and asked him how long the Franco-Prussian war had lasted.

The curate still had the ruffled and resentful air of a fighting cockerel who has a grievance against the referee. Lady Augusta, indeed, had passed a busy morning smoothing his plumage and inducing him to withdraw his resignation. His meeting with Alf served as further balm to his wounded spirit; for above all else the Reverend Spink loved to be appealed to as a scholar.

Now he answered Alf with a learned frown,

"Six months. It began at the same date as this. They were in Paris by January."

"As long as that!" said Alf surprised. "Looks as if they'd be quicker this time!"

A thought struck him. He turned down Borough Lane, and went to call on Ruth.

She was at home, alone in the kitchen, her babes in bed. He did not enter, but stood in the door awhile before she was aware of him, watching her with sugary and secretive smile.

Then he chirped.

She looked up, saw him; and the light faded out of her face.

"So Ern's gone to the wars," he said. "You'll be a bit lonely like o nights, the evenings drawing in and all. Say, I might drop in on you when I got the time. I'm not so busy, as I was. Likely I'll be goin back to drive for Mr. Trupp now."

She rose, formidable as a lioness at bay in the mouth of her cave.

"Out of it!" she ordered, and flung an imperious hand towards the door.

Alf fled incontinently.

A navvy, who had been watching him from a door opposite, shouldered heavily across the street to meet him. He was a very big man with a very small head, dressed in corduroys; of the type you still meet in the pages of Punch but seldom in real life. His hands were deep in his pockets, and he said quietly without so much as removing his pipe.

"Stow the bloody truck then!"

Alf paused, astonished. Then he thought the other must have mistaken his man in the dusk.

"Here! d'you know who you're talkin to?" he asked.

The navvy showed himself quite undisturbed.

"Oughter," he said, "seein you and me was dragg'd oop same school togedder along o Mr. Pigott back yarnderr. You're Alf Caspar, and I be Reuben Deadman. There's an old saying these paarts you may have heard--_When there isn't a Deadman in Lewes Gaol you may knaw the end o't world's at hand_. I've not been in maself, not yet. When I goos I'll goo for to swing--for you--for old times sake; let alone the dirty dish you done Old Tip and them this arternoon."

Alf walked up the hill, breathing heavily and with mottled face.

The bubble of his exaltation had burst. He felt a curious sinking away within him, as though he were walking on cold damp clouds which were letting him through.

The war was changing things already, and not to his liking.

Three weeks ago who'd have talked to the Managing Director of Caspar's Syndicate like that?

Brooding on his troubles, he ran into Joe Burt who was coming swiftly round the corner of Borough Lane, brooding too.

Alf darted nimbly back. Joe stood with lowered head, glaring at his enemy. Then he thought better of it and turned on his way.

Alf, standing in the middle of the road with jeering eyes, called after him furtively.

"Want her all to yourself, don't you?"

Joe marched on unheeding to the cottage Alf had just left.

Ruth must have been awaiting him: for he entered at once without knocking.