CHAPTER XXXVII

MRS. LEWKNOR

The Town Hall was crowded.

The Mayor, who was in the chair, had spoken on behalf of the Prince of Wales's Fund and announced that subscriptions would be received by the Town Clerk.

Thereafter an indescribable orgie of patriotism had taken place. Red-necked men outbid fat women. The bids mounted; the bidders grew fiercer; the cheers waxed. And all the while a little group of Trade Unionists at the back of the hall kept up a dismal chaunt--

We don't want charity, We won't have charity.

Then a little dapper figure in the blue of a chauffeur rose in the body of the hall.

"I'm only a workin chauffeur," he said, wagging his big head, "but I got a conscience, and I got a country. And I'm not ashamed of em eether. I can't do much bein only a worker as you might say. But I can do me bit. Put me down for fifty guineas, please, Mr. Town-clerk."

He sat down modestly amidst loud applause.

"Who's that?" whispered the Colonel on the platform.

"Trupp's chauffeur," the Archdeacon, who had a black patch over his eye, answered with a swagger--"my sidesman, Alfred Caspar. Not so bad for a working-man?" He cackled hilariously.

Then a voice from Lancashire, resonant and jarring, came burring across the hall.

"Mr. Chairman, are you aware that Alfred Caspar is turning his sister-in-law out of his house with four children."

Alf leapt to his feet.

"It's a lie!" he cried.

A big young woman sitting just in front of Joe rose on subdued wings. She was bare-headed, be-shawled, a dark Madonna of English village-life.

"Yes, you are, Alf," she said, and sat down quietly as she had risen.

There was a dramatic silence. Then the Archdeacon started to his feet and pointed with accusing claw like a witch-doctor smelling out a victim.

"I know that woman!" he cawed raucously.

A lady sitting in the front row just under the platform rose.

"So do I," she said.

It was Mrs. Trupp, and her voice, still and pure, fell on the heated air like a drop of delicious rain.

She sat down again.

The Archdeacon too had resumed his seat, very high and mighty; and Bobby Chislehurst was whispering in his ear from behind.

The Colonel had risen now, calm and courteous as always, in the suppressed excitement.

"Am I not right in thinking that Mrs. Caspar is the wife of an old Hammer-man who joined up at once on the declaration of war and is at this moment somewhere in France fighting our battles for us?"

The question was greeted with a storm of applause from the back of the hall.

"Good old Colonel!" some one called.

"Mr. Chairman, d'you mean to accept that man's cheque?" shouted Joe. "Yes or no?"

In the uproar that followed, Alf rose again, white and leering.

"I'd not have spoken if I'd known I was to be set upon like this afore em all for offering a bit of help to me country. As to my character and that, I believe I'm pretty well beknown for a patriot in Beachbourne."

"As to patriotism, old cock," called Joe, "didn't you sack your cleaners without notice on the declaration of war?"

"No, I didn't then!" shouted Alf with the exaggerated ferocity of the man who knows his only chance is to pose as righteously indignant.

The retort was greeted with a howl of _Tip_! There was a movement at the back of the hall; and suddenly an old man was lifted on the shoulders of the Trade Unionists there. Yellow, fang-less, creased, he looked, poised on high above the crowd against the white background of wall, something between a mummy and a monkey. As always he wore no tie; but he had donned a collar for the occasion, and this had sprung open and made two dingy ass-like ears on either side of his head.

"Did he sack you, Tip?" called Joe.

"Yes, he did," came the quivering old voice. "Turned us off at a day. Told us to go to the Bastille; and said he'd put the police on us."

The tremulous old voice made people turn their heads. They saw the strange figure lifted above them. Some tittered. The ripple of titters enraged the men at the back of the hall.

"See what you've made of him!" thundered Joe. "And then jeer! ... Shame!"

"Shame!" screamed a bitter man. "Do the Fats know shame?"

"Some of em do," said a quiet voice.

It was true too. Mrs. Trupp was looking pale and miserable in the front-row, so was the Colonel on the platform, Bobby Chislehurst and others. The titterers, indeed, howled into silence by the storm of indignation their action had aroused, wore themselves the accusing air of those who hope thereby to fix the blame for their mistake on others.

In the silence a baggy old gentleman rose in the body of the hall, slewed round with difficulty, and mooned above his spectacles at the strange idol seated on men's shoulders behind him.

"_And He was lifted up_," he said in a musing voice more to himself than to anybody else.

The phrase, audible to many, seemed to spread a silence about it as a stone dropped in a calm pond creates an ever-broadening ripple.

In the silence old Tip slid gently to the ground and was lost once more amid the crowd of those who had raised him for a brief moment into fleeting eminence.

The meeting broke up.

Outside the hall stood Mr. Trupp's car, Alf at the wheel: for the old surgeon's regular chauffeur had been called up.

Mrs. Trupp, coming down the steps, went up to Ruth who was standing on the pavement.

"So glad you spoke up, Ruth," she said, and pressed her hand.

"Come on!" said Mr. Trupp. "We'll give you a lift home, Ruth."

Alf was looking green. The two women got in, and the old surgeon followed them. He was grinning, Mrs. Trupp quietly malicious, and Ruth amused. The people on the pavement and streaming out of the hall saw and were caught by the humour of the situation, as their eyes and comments showed.

Then Colonel Lewknor made his way to the car.

"Just a word, Mrs. Caspar!" he said. "Things are squaring up. Mrs. Lewknor's taking the women and children in hand. Could you come and see her one morning at Under-cliff?"

The hostel that Mrs. Lewknor had built upon the cliff boomed from the start. It was full to over-flowing, winter and summer; and Eton was in sight for Toby when war was declared.

Then things changed apace.

Beachbourne, for at least a thousand years before William the Norman landed at Pevensey on his great adventure, had been looked on as the likeliest spot for enemy invasion from the Continent. Frenzied parents therefore wired for their children to be sent inland at once; others wrote charming letters cancelling rooms taken weeks before. In ten days the house was empty; and on the eleventh the mortgagee intimated his intention to fore-close.

It was a staggering blow.

The Colonel, with that uncannie cat-like intuition of his she knew so well, prowled in, looked at her with kind eyes, as she sat in her little room the fatal letter in her hand, and went out again.

Throughout it had been her scheme, not his, her responsibility, her success; and now it was her failure.

Then Mr. Trupp was shown in, looking most unmilitary in his uniform of a Colonel of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

"It's all right," he said gruffly. "I know. Morgan and Evans rang me up and told me. Unprofessional perhaps, but these are funny times. I let you in. You built the hostel at my request. I shall take over the mortgage."

"I couldn't let you," answered the little lady.

"You won't be asked," replied the other. "I ought to have done it from the start; but it wasn't very convenient then. It's all right now." The old man didn't say that the reason it was all right was because he was quietly convinced in his own mind that his boy Joe would need no provision now.

Just then the Colonel entered, looking self-conscious. He seemed to know all about it, as indeed he had every right to do, seeing that Mr. Trupp had informed him at length on the telephone half an hour before.

"You know who the mortgagee is?" he asked.

"Who?" said both at once.

The Colonel on tiptoe led them out into the hall, and showed them through a narrow window Alf sitting at his wheel, looking very funny.

"Our friend of the scene in the Town Hall yesterday," he whispered. "When I went to the bank yesterday to insure the house against bombardment, the clerk looked surprised and said--_You know it's already insured_. I said--_Who by_? He turned up a ledger and showed me the name."

Mr. Trupp got into his car, wrapping himself round with much circumstance.

"To Morgan and Evans," he said to Alf.

In the solicitors' office he produced his cheque-book.

"I've been seeing Mrs. Lewknor," he said. "I'll pay off your client now and take over the mortgage myself."

He wrote a cheque then and there, and made it out to Alfred Caspar, who was forthwith called in.

"I'm paying you off your mortgage, Alf," he said. "Give me a receipt, will you?"

Alf with the curious simplicity that often threw his cunning into relief signed the receipt quite unabashed and with evident relief.

"See, I need the money, sir," he said gravely, as he wiped the pen on his sleeve. "The Syndicate's let me in--O, you wouldn't believe! And I got to meet me creditors somehow."

"Well, you've got the money now," answered Mr. Trupp. "But I'm afraid you've made an enemy. And that seems to me a bit of a pity just now."

"Colonel Lewknor?" snorted Alf. "I ain't afraid o him!"

"I don't know," said Mr. Trupp. "It's the day of the soldier."

That evening, after the day's work, Alf was summoned to his employer's study.

Mrs. Trupp was leaving it as he entered.

"I've been thinking things over, Alfred," said the old man. "There's no particular reason why you shouldn't drive for me for the present if you like--until you're wanted out there. But I shall want you to destroy this."

He handed his chauffeur Ruth's notice to quit.

Alf tore the paper up without demur.

"That's all right, sir," he said cheerfully. "That was a mistake. I understood the Army Service Corps was taking over my garage; and I should want a roof over my head to sleep under."

He went back to his car.

Another moment, and the door of the Manor-house opened. Ruth emerged briskly and gave him a bright nod.

"Can't stop now, Alf," she said. "I'm off to see Mrs. Lewknor. See you again later."

"That's right," Alf answered. "She's on the committee for seeing to the married women ain't she?--them and their _lawful_ children. Reverend Spink's on it too."

He stressed the epithet faintly.

A moment Ruth looked him austerely in the eyes. Then she turned up the hill with a nod. She understood. There was danger a-foot again.

The matter of the hostel settled, Mrs. Lewknor, before everything an Imperialist, and not of the too common platform kind, was free to serve. And she had not far to look for an opening.

The Mayor summoned a meeting in his parlour to consider the situation of the families of soldiers called to the colours.

Mrs. Lewknor was by common consent appointed honorary secretary of the Association formed; and was given by her committee a fairly free discretion to meet the immediate situation.

Nearly sixty, but still active as a cat, she set to work with a will.

Her sitting room at Undercliff she turned into an office. Her mornings she gave to interviewing applicants and her afternoons to visiting.

Ruth Caspar was one of the first to apply.

The little slight Jewish lady with her immense experience of life greeted the beautiful peasant woman who had never yet over-stepped the boundaries of Sussex with a brilliant smile.

"There's not much I want to know about you," she said. "We belong to the same regiment. Just one or two questions that I may fill up this form."

How many children had Mrs. Caspar.

"Three, 'M ... and a fourth."

Mrs. Lewknor waited.

"Little Alice," continued Ruth, downcast and pale beneath her swarthiness. "Before I were married."

Mrs. Lewknor wrote on apparently unconcerned.

She knew all about little Alice, had seen her once, and had recognised her at a glance as Royal's child, the child for which, with her passionate love for the regiment, she felt herself in part responsible. On the same occasion she had seen Ruth's other babies and their grandfather with them--that troubadour who forty years before had swept the harp of her life to sudden and elusive music.

"I think that'll be all right now, Ruth," she said with a re-assuring look. "I'm going to call you that now if I may. I'll come round and let you know directly I know myself."

Ruth retired with haunted eyes. She guessed rather than knew the forces that were gathering against her, and the strength of them.

Outside in the porch she met Lady Augusta with her mane of thick bobbed white hair and rosy face; and on the cliff, as she walked home, other ladies of the Committee and the Reverend Spink.

How hard they looked and how complacent! ...

Mrs. Lewknor put the case before her committee, telling them just as much as she thought it good for them to know.

There was of course the inevitable trouble about little Alice.

"We don't even know for certain that she is the child of the man the mother afterwards married," objected Lady Augusta Willcocks in her worst manner. "She mayn't be a soldier's child at all."

Mrs. Lewknor turned in her lips.

"Our business surely is to support the women and children while the men are away fighting our battles," she said.

"Need we form ourselves into a private enquiry office?" asked Mrs. Trupp quietly.

The old lady's eyes flashed. Mrs. Trupp of course didn't care. Mrs. Trupp never went to church. "Putting a premium on immorality!" she cried with bitter laughter--"as usual."

"We must look a little into character surely, Mrs. Lewknor," said a honied virgin from St. Michael's.

"I'll go bail for this woman's character," answered Mrs. Lewknor, flashing in her turn.

"I believe she _is_ more respectable than she used to be," said a dull spinster with a dogged eye.

"_Damn_ respectability," thought Mrs. Lewknor, but she said, "Are we to deprive this child of bread in the name of respectability? Whatever else she is she's a child of the Empire."

Then the Reverend Spink spoke. He and Lady Augusta Willcocks were there to represent the point of view of the Church.

He spoke quietly, his eyes down, and lips compressed, mock-meekly aware of the dramatic significance of his words.

"Perhaps I ought to tell the committee that the man this woman is now living with is not her husband."

The silence that greeted this announcement was all that the reverend gentleman could have desired. It was only broken by the loud triumphant cry of the Lady Augusta Willcocks.

"Then all _four_ children are illegitimate!"

"Oh, that _would_ be joyful!" cried Mrs. Lewknor with a little titter.

It was the great moment of the Reverend Spink's life.

"She married some yeahs ago," he continued, so well-pleased with the cumulative effect of the impression he was making, as even to venture an imitation of the Archdeacon's accent. "And her husband is still alive."

Mrs. Lewknor challenged swiftly.

"Where did she marry?" she asked, lest another question should be asked first: for the honour of the regiment was involved.

"At the Registrar's Office, Lewes."

"When?"

"September 14th, 1906."

The man had his story pat enough to be sure.

"Who told you?" asked Mrs. Lewknor aggressively.

Mr. Spink pursed his lips.

"I have it on reliable information."

"I know your authority, I think," said Mrs. Trupp quietly.

"Did you check it?" asked Mrs. Lewknor.

"It was unnecessary," replied the curate insolently. "I can trust my authority. But if you doubt me you can check it yourself."

"I shall of course," retorted the little lady.

Then the Chairman interposed.

"It looks like a case for the police," he said.

"Certainly," Lady Augusta rapped out.

"It's very serious," said the Chairman.

"For somebody," retorted Mrs. Lewknor.

By common consent the case was adjourned.

The Reverend Spink retired to Old Town.

The fierce hostility of Mrs. Lewknor, and the no less formidable resistance of Mrs. Trupp, made the curate uneasy.

After dark he went round to Alf Caspar's garage.

"You're sure of your facts?" he asked.

"Dead cert," said Alf. "Drove em there meself."

"And the date?"

"Marked it down at the time, sir.... I can show it you in me ledger. Always make a note of me engagements. You never know when it mayn't come in handy."

He went down to his office, followed by the curate, and was proceeding to take a bulky folio down from the shelf, when the telephone bell rang.

It was Mr. Trupp to say the car would be wanted at four to-morrow afternoon.

"Is it a long run, sir?" asked Alf.

"No," came the answer. "Lewes--Mrs. Trupp."

Alf determined to send a man and not drive himself.