CHAPTER XII

ALF SHOWS HIS COLOURS

In fact, as Ernie said, the two were brothers, and in some sort complementary.

Ern had to the full the chivalrous qualities of the Beauregards. He never forgot that he was Alf's elder brother, or that Alf was a poor little creature with a chest in which Mr. Trupp took an abnormal interest. He fought many battles, bore many blows for his young brother. Alf took it all as a matter of course, regarding himself as a little god whom Ernie was privileged to serve and suffer for. Ern accepted the other's constant suggestion of superiority without revolt, and took the second place with the lazy good-nature characteristic of him.

Ern indeed was nothing of a leader. In all the adventurous vicissitudes of boy-life the initiative lay with Alf, who planned the mischief; while Ern, obedient to his brother, for whose brains he had the profoundest admiration, carried it out and paid the penalty, as a rule uncomplainingly, at home and abroad.

Old Town was now creeping west along the foot of the Downs towards Lewes. On its outskirts and in the corn-fields where are to-day rows of red-brick villas, were still to be found flint cottages, long blue-roofed barns, and timbered farmsteads among elms. As little by little the town, with its border of allotment gardens, flooded along the New Road, sweeping up Rodmill and brimming over towards Ratton and the Decoy on the edge of the marshes, these buildings that dated from another age were gradually diverted from their pristine use to be the habitations of those who no longer drew their living from the earth.

Thus in the house which had once been the huntsman's lodge, beside the now abandoned kennels, lived Mr. Pigott--one foot in the country, as he said, one in the town.

Every morning he walked across the foot-path, past Moot Farm, to school. Mr. Pigott's house stood in a hollow coombe a long way back from the road. The gorse-clad sides of the Down rose steeply at the back of it. In front was an orchard in which a walnut-tree lorded it, conspicuous over the lesser trees.

It was towards the end of their school time, when Ern was nearly fourteen, that Alf planned a raid upon this tree, famous in the locality for its beauty and fruitfulness.

The adventure needed careful thinking out.

The approach to the house was along an unscreened path that led across the arable land. Between the path and the house was the orchard in which stood the tree with its coveted treasure.

The trouble was that Mrs. Pigott's window overlooked the orchard, and she was always in that window--so much Alf, in his many reconnaissances of the position, discovered.

Now it was well known in the school that Mrs. Pigott had but one eye, and that of glass, which accounted perhaps for its extraordinary powers of vision. And besides Mrs. Pigott with her one sharp eye, there was Mrs. Pigott's little dog with his many sharp teeth. There was also in the background Mr. Pigott, who, outside the chapel, was athletic and regrettably fierce.

Alf waited long for his opportunity, in terror lest the tree should be beaten before he had worked his will upon it, but his chance came at last.

One Saturday afternoon he and Ern were loitering in Church Street, marching along with the starts and stops, the semi-innocent and semi-surreptitious manner of boys waiting for Satan to enter into them and prompt them to definite action, when Alf dug his brother with a warning elbow.

Mrs. Pigott was staring with her glass eye into the ironmonger's opposite the church. On her arm was a basket and at her feet her dog. It was clear that she was doing her week-end shopping.

Alf, swift to seize his opportunity, set off up the hill, hot-foot, silent, with a bustle of arms and legs, his brow puckered as he concentrated ruthlessly upon his purpose.

Ern followed the fierce, insistent, little figure more leisurely.

"Steady on!" he called. "Where away then?"

"Walnut-tree," panted Alf. "Now's yer chance."

Ern, who knew from experience that the dirty and dangerous work would fall to his lot, lagged.

"Mr. Pigott's there," he grumbled.

"Now he ayn't then," cried Alf, spurring the laggard on. "He's gone over to Lewes for the Conference. Didn't you hear mother at breakfast?"

There had been in truth a split in the chapel. The Established Methodists were breaking away from the Foundation Methodists, and the Primitive Methodists were thinking of following suit. The little community was therefore a tumult of warring tongues.

Alf led up the hill, past the chalk-pit, along the side of the Downs, and dropped down on his objective from the rear. Coming to the fence that ran round the orchard, he peeped at the low house lying in the background under the green flank of the hill.

Ern followed reluctantly, as one drawn to his doom by a fate he cannot withstand.

He wanted the walnuts; he wanted to be brave; but he liked Mr. Pigott, and, usually obedient to his brother's suggestions, had qualms in this case.

"Go on then!" urged Alf. It was a favourite phrase of his. "There ayn't no one there."

"Come on yourself," answered Ern without enthusiasm.

"Now, I'll stay and watch the path for you against her," piped Alf.

But for once Ern was firm.

"I aren't a-gooin unless you cooms too," he said doggedly.

"What's the good of me, then?" scoffed Alf in his fierce and feverish way. "Can I climb the tree? Only wish I could. I'd show you. I suppose you'll be throwin that up at me next! My belief you're afraid."

But Ernie was not to be moved from the position which he had taken up. Just now and then Alf had remarked that his brother for all his softness became hard--adamant indeed--in a way that rather frightened Alf.

"I'll goo up the tree and shake em down to you," Ern said in his slow, musical voice. "You stand at the foot of her and gather em."

"Fine!" jeered Alf. "And when Mr. Pigott comes out you'll be up the tree safe as dysies, and I'll be on the floor for him to paste!"

"I thart you said he'd gone to Lewes," retorted Ern, unusually alert.

"So he has," replied Alf sourly. "Only I suppose he won't stay there for ever, will he?"

Ern, however, was proof against all the other's logic; and finally the two boys climbed the fence together.

The walnut was a majestic tree, with boughs that dropped almost to the ground, making a splendid pavilion of green.

Ern swarmed the tree. Alf stood at the foot, sheltered by the drooping branches. Thus he could watch the house, while nobody in the house could see anything of him but a pair of meagre black legs.

He was fairly safe and knew it, but even so his heart pattered, he bit his nails continually, and kept a furtive eye on the line of his retreat.

"Hurry!" he kept on calling.

Ern, up aloft, went to work like a man. He tossed the branches to and fro. The ripe walnuts came rattling down. Alf, underneath, gathered rich harvest. He filled his pockets, his cap, his handkerchief. Opening his shirt, he stuffed the brown treasure into his bosom and grew into a portly urchin who rattled when he moved.

"I got nigh a bushel!" he cried keenly. "Throw your coat down, and I'll fill the pockets!"

The little devil darted to and fro, tumbling spiderlike upon the falling riches, absorbed in accumulation. His heart and eyes burned. There was money in this--money. And money was already taking its appointed place in Alf's philosophy.

He would sell the nuts at so much a pound--some wholesale to a fruiterer he knew in the remote East End; some retail to his schoolfellows.

The quality and quantity of the loot so absorbed him that he forgot his fears. And when he glanced up through the screen of thick branches to see a pair of grey-stockinged legs, thick and formidable to a degree, advancing upon the tree with dreadful deliberation, his heart stopped.

The enemy was on them.

Alf emptied handkerchief, pockets, cap: he emptied himself by a swift ducking motion that sent the treasure heaped against his heart pouring forth with a rattle about his neck and head and ears.

Then he cast fearful eyes to the rear. It was thirty yards to the fence and beyond there was but the unscreened path without a scrap of cover, leading across the plough, past the Moot Farm and abandoned kennels to the New Road.

Alf saw at a glance that escape was impossible. Mr. Pigott, for all his forty years, could sprint.

Swift as a cornered rat, Alf made his decision.

He marched out from his shelter towards the approaching legs, a puny little creature with pale peaked face, and Ern's coat flung over his arm.

Mr. Pigott was advancing, very grim and grey, across the rough grass, his hands behind him, dragging something. He seemed in no hurry, and not in the least surprised to see Alf, whom he ignored.

"Please, sir," said Alf, perking his face up with an air of frankness, "there's a boy up your tree. Here's his coat."

Mr. Pigott walked slowly on, drawing behind him a sixty-foot hose, which issued like a white snake from the scullery window.

"I know," he said with suppressed quiet. "And I know who set him on to it. I can't beat you because you'd break if I touched you. But I'll take your brother's skin off him though he's twice the man you are, you dirty little cur!"

He brought the hose to bear on the brigand in the tree, and loosed the water-spout and the vials of his wrath together.

"Ah, you young scoundrel!" he roared, finding joy in explosive self-expression. "I'll teach you come monkeying after my nuts!"

Swish went the stream of water through the branches.

Ern hid as best he could on the leeward side of the trunk.

Mr. Pigott brought his artillery mercilessly to bear upon the boy's clasping hands. Ern, spluttering and sprawling, came down the tree with a rush and made a bolt for the fence.

Mr. Pigott, roaring jovially, played the stream full on him. It was a powerful gush, and floored the boy. The avenger knew no mercy and drenched his victim as he lay.

It was a sodden little figure who crept home disconsolately ten minutes later.

Alf had been back some time and had already told his tale, gibbering with excitement and fear.

Ern's mother, in a white fury, was awaiting the boy in the kitchen.

"I'll learn you disgrace me!" she cried. "Robbing your own chapel-manager's orchard--and then come home like a drownded rat!"

She set about the lad in good earnest.

Alf, perched upon the dresser to be out of the way, watched the fun, biting his nails.

"You mustn't hit her back then!" he screamed. "Your own mother!"

"I aren't hittin' her back then!" cried Ern, dogged, dazed, and warding off the blows as best he might. "I'm only defendin of mesalf."

The noise of the scuffle was considerable.

Outside in the passage was the sound of slippered feet. Then some one tried the door.

"It's only dad!" cried the devil on the dresser, white and with little black eyes that danced.

"What's up?" called an agitated voice from outside. "Hold on, mother! Give the boy a chance."

Some one rattled the door.

"Go about your business!" cried Mrs. Caspar. "There's a pair of you!"

Her anger exhausted and shame possessing her, she was going out into the yard to shelter herself in the little shed against the Workhouse wall, when Alf's sudden scream stayed her.

"Mum!--down't leave me!--he'll kill me!"

She turned to mark a white flare burning in the face of her elder son.

She had seen it before and had been afraid.

When Ern looked like that he ceased to be Ern: he became transfigured--yes, and terrible: like, she sometimes thought, the cavalier in the picture must have been in anger.

"Take them sopping duds off," she said quietly, "and then go up and put your Sundays on."

Half an hour later Ern, wearing dry clothes, entered the study.

He was sweet, smiling, and a thought abashed.

His father, on the other hand, evinced signs of terrible emotion.

His face was mottled, and he was shaking.

Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he stood before the fire, trying pitifully to preserve his dignity, and moving uneasily from leg to leg like a chained elephant.

"Did she hurt you?" he asked, seeking to steady his voice.

Ern shook his head.

"She laid about me middlin tidy," he admitted. "But she didn't not to say hurt me. She don't know how--a woman don't. Too much flusteration along of it."

Edward Caspar collapsed into a chair.

"What happened?" he asked.

Ern recounted the story truthfully, the white glimmer in his face coming and going between pants as he told.

"Why d'you let him lead you astray?" asked the father irritably, at the end.

Ern wagged his head slowly and began to scrape once more with his foot.

"Alf's artfuller nor me!" he said at last in a shamefaced way.