CHAPTER XIII

ALF MAKES A REMARK

Both boys turned up at Sunday-school next morning: Alf defiant, Ern abashed.

Mr. Pigott ignored the former, snubbed him brutally when occasion offered, and showed himself benignant to the prime sinner.

After chapel Mrs. Caspar spoke to him.

"I don't know what you think of my son, Mr. Pigott," she began.

"Which son?" asked the other in his bluff way.

"Why, Ernie to be sure. He's always bringing shame upon me."

"He's worth twice the other," cried Mr. Pigott, letting off steam.

"Ah, yes, you've got your favourites, Mr. Pigott!" retorted the woman.

"And I'm not the only one!" answered the outraged schoolmaster. "Ern's a boy. And boys will be boys, as we all know. But he's a little gentleman, Ern is. He's his father over again."

The comparison of Ernie to his father, however well intentioned, always touched Mrs. Caspar on the raw. Her eyes sparkled. Every now and then she reminded you forcibly that her grandmother had lived in a by-street--off Greyhound Road, Fulham.

"Ah," she muttered vengefully, "I'll cut his little liver out yet, you'll see."

Mr. Pigott rounded on her, genuinely shocked.

"And you a religious woman!" he cried. "Shame on you!"

"I don't care," answered Mrs. Caspar. "I see it coming. I always have. And it's just more than I can bear."

Mr. Pigott did not understand the cause of the woman's emotion, but he recognized that it was genuine and so respected it.

"Well, he's leaving school now," he said more gently. "He'll settle down once he's got his nose to the grindstone."

Later, at the meeting of the Bowling Green Committee, in the Moot, the schoolmaster reported Mrs. Caspar's saying to Mr. Trupp.

"She's a hard un," he commented.

"She's need to be," growled the other.

"What's that, Doctor?" asked Mr. Pigott.

"If she let go of him, he'd be dead in a month," mumbled Mr. Trupp.

"Mr. Caspar would?"

The Doctor looked at the grey church-tower bluff against the sky.

"But she won't let go," he added. "She's got her qualities."

"She has," said Mr. Pigott, treading the green. "She's a diamond--as hard, as keen."

The two always sparred when they met and loved their friendly bouts. Both were radicals; but they had arrived at their convictions by very different routes. The schoolmaster had inherited his opinions from tough, dissenting ancestors, the man of science had acquired them from Huxley and Darwin. Politics the pair rarely discussed, except at election time; for on that subject they were in rough agreement. But the two men wrangled genially over religion, the ethics of sport, even the two Caspar boys; for Mr. Trupp was the one man in Old Town who alleged a preference for the younger boy--mainly, his wife declared, because he must be "contrary."

Mr. Pigott now told the stubborn man almost with glee the story of Alf's treachery.

"What d'ye think of that now?" he asked defiantly.

"Why," grunted the Doctor, "what I should expect."

"Of course," said the sarcastic Mr. Pigott.

"He's got the faults of his physique," continued the other. "He's afraid of a thrashing because he knows it'd kill him. Self-preservation is always the first law of life."

"He's a little cur," said Mr. Pigott. "That's what your young Alf is."

"I've no doubt he is," replied the Doctor. "You would be too if you'd got that body to live in."

"I'd be ashamed," shouted the other. "I'd commit suicide offhand."

"The wonder is he's alive at all," continued Mr. Trupp, quite unmoved. "Must have some grit in him somewhere or he'd have died when he was born."

"That's you and his mother," said the schoolmaster censoriously. "Saving useless human material that ought to be scrapped. And you call yourself a Man of Science! In a properly ordered community you'd stand your trial at Lewes Assizes, the two of you--for adding to the criminal classes. Now if we were back in the good old days, they'd have exposed Alf at birth--and quite right, too."

"Quite so," said Mr. Trupp. "Your Christianity has a lot to answer for, as I've remarked before."

It fell to Mr. Pigott to find a job of work for Ernie when his favourite left school: for at that date there were no Labour Bureaux, no Juvenile Advisory Committees, no attempt to make the most of the country's one solid asset--its Youth. And the rich had not yet made their grand discovery of the last twenty-five years--that the poor have bodies; and that these bodies must be saved, even if it cost a little more than saving their souls, which can always be done upon the cheap.

Mr. Pigott had little difficulty in his self-imposed task, for he did not mean to remain a schoolmaster all his life, and was already dabbling in the commercial life of the growing town.

Ernie started as an office-boy in a coal-merchant's office in Cornfield Road by the Central Station, which formed the junction between the Old Town and the New.

Before the boy embarked on his career, Mr. Pigott invited him to tea and lecture.

"It's your own fault if you don't get on," said the schoolmaster aggressively after the muffins. "Rests with yourself. Office boy to President--like they do in America. Make a romance of it."

"I shall try, sir," cried Era, with the easy enthusiasm characteristic of him.

"I'll lay you won't, then!" retorted the other rudely. "I'll lay all the work I've put into you these ten years past goes down the drain. Now your grandfather..."

He stopped short, remembering Mrs. Caspar had told him that their origin had been kept from the two boys....

At his new job Ern did not work very hard. It was not in him to do that; for he had his father's complete lack of ambition. But he worked just enough to keep his place, to pay his mother for his keep by the time he was seventeen, and have some "spending money," as he called it, over, with which to buy cigarettes, and join the cricket club. In time he even attained to the dignity of an office stool: for his handwriting was excellent, his ability undoubted, and his education as good as most.

"Ern don't lick the stamps no more. He writes the letters," was Alf's report at home.

The younger brother too had now launched out upon the world. But Alf was very different from Ern. He had his own ideas from the start and went his own way. Somehow he had ferreted out the facts about his grandfather's career; and that career it was his deliberate determination to surpass.

Those were the early days of the motor industry and the petrol engine. Alf made his mother apprentice him to Hewson and Clarke, an enterprising young engineering firm in the East End, off Pevensey Road.

"No Old Town for me," he said knowingly. "New Town's the bird!"

And the boy worked with the undeviating energy of an insect. All day he was busy at the shop, and in the evening came home, grimy and tired, to have a wash and then settle down in the kitchen to study the theory of the petrol-engine.

His mother, ambitious as her son, watched him with admiration, guarding his hours of study jealously from interruption.

"He's his grand-dad over again," she confided to her husband in one of their rare moments of intimacy.

Edward Caspar shook his head. He was interested in his second son, although in his heart of hearts he disliked the boy. He disliked ambitious men--their restlessness, their unhappy egoism, their incapacity to give themselves to any cause from which they would not reap personal advantage, offended his spiritual sense; and he followed with amused benevolence the careers of his contemporaries at Harrow and Trinity who were reaping now the fruits of Orthodoxy, and just becoming Cabinet Ministers, Bishops, Judges, and the like.

"Alf hasn't got my father's physique," he said.

"You wait," Anne replied. "He'll conquer that too. Last time Mr. Trupp saw him he said he'd do now--if he took care."

Ern watched his brother's feverish activities with ironical smiles.

"He's like a little engine himself," he said. "No time to look around and take a little pleasure in life. All the while a-running along the lines--puff-puff-puff!--with his nose to the ground. Not knowin where he's goin or why; only set on getting somewhere, he don't know where, some day, he don't know when."

Himself he preferred the leisurely life, and was known among his friends as Gentleman Ernie. The office, which prided itself upon its tone, for in it worked a youth who said he had been at a public school, had taken the country accent off his tongue. Ern was indeed a bit of a dandy now, who oiled his hair, and took an interest in his ties; while Alf never spent a penny on his clothes, was always shabby, and seldom clean. The dapper young clerk and the grimy little mechanic, on the rare occasions when they appeared in the streets together, formed a marked contrast, of which Ernie at least was aware.

"You'd never know em for brothers," the passers-by would remark.

Both had arrived at the age when the young male joins a gang, curious about women, but inclining to be suspicious of them. Alf, however, strong in himself, continued on his prickly and independent way. He was not drawn to others, nor were others drawn to him. Companionable Ern, on the other hand, who was everybody's friend, was absorbed into a gang; but he was different from his gang-mates. He used less hair-oil than they did, and wore more modest ties. Moreover, there was nothing of the hooligan about him.

"Such a gentlemanly lad," said Mrs. Trupp. "That's his father coming out in him."

"May the resemblance end there," muttered Mr. Trupp.

The lady speared her husband on the point of her needle.

"Croakie!" she remarked.

Ern could have been a leader among his mates, had he chosen to assume authority. His quiet, his distinction, his happy manner, and above all the fact that he was a promising cricketer and had made half a century on the Frying Pan at Lewes for the Sussex Colts against the Canterbury Wanderers, marked him out. But Ern would not lead. He spent his evenings in the main at home rather than in the lighted streets, and was at his happiest sitting in the study opposite his father. On these occasions the two rarely spoke, but they enjoyed a silent communion that was eminently satisfying to them both. Just sometimes the father would touch the revolving book-case on his right; take out one of the little blue poetry books Ern knew so well, and read _The Scholar Gypsy_ or _The Happy Warrior_.

Ern loved that, but he was far too indolent to pursue the readings himself. When his father had finished, he would return the book to its place and say,

"You should read a bit yourself, Boy-lad," and Ern's invariable reply would be,

"I will, dad, when I got the time."

But Ern was one of those who never had the time and never would have.

Then the two would relapse into smoke and silence and vague dreams, out of which Edward Caspar's voice would emerge,

"Where's Alfred?"

To which Ern would answer with a faint smirk,

"Studyin in the kitchen."

Ern's tendency to be a masher, as the phrase of the day went, delighted Mr. Pigott. He looked on it as the best sign he had yet detected in the boy.

"Who's the lady, Ern?" he chaffed, meeting the lad.

The boy smiled shyly. At such moments, in spite of his plainness, he looked beautiful.

"Haven't got one, sir," he said.

It was true, too. His attitude towards girls was unlike that of his mates. He neither chirped at them in the streets, nor avoided them aggressively, nor was self-conscious in their presence. He was always friendly with them, even affectionate; but he went no farther. Some of the Old Town maidens wished he would. But, in fact, this was not Ern's weakness.

The Destroyer, who lies in wait to undo us all, if we give him but a crevice through which to creep into our citadel, was taking the line of least resistance, as he does in every case.

There began to be rumours in Old Town. His father's weakness, known to all, lent these rumours wing. In Churchy Beachbourne, as the enemy called the town by reason of the number and variety of its consecrated buildings, people were swift to believe, eager to hand on their beliefs.

Prebendary Willcocks--which was his proper title--or Canon Willcocks--as he had taught the locality to call him--who had reasons of his own for disliking Edward Caspar, heard and shook his aristocratic head, repeating the rumour to all and sundry in a lowered voice. The Lady Augusta Willcocks, that indefatigable worker in the parish for God and the Tory Party, entirely lacking in her husband's delicate feeling, echoed it resonantly.

Mr. Pigott was honestly aghast.

"Never!" he cried, and added--"God help him if his mother hears!"

He was so genuinely concerned indeed that he went round to 60 Rectory Walk to find out by indirect examination if Mrs. Caspar had heard.

She had; and was distraught.

"If he takes to that, I'll turn him out of the house!" she cried savagely. "Straight I will!"

And there was no question that she meant what she said.

"The best way to make trouble is to meet it half-way," muttered the schoolmaster, cowed for once by the woman's terrible emotion. "Give the boy a chance--even if he is your own son."

"Alf says he was blind at the match," the other answered doggedly.

"Alf!" scoffed Mr. Pigott, savage in his turn. "I wouldn't care that what Alf says about his brother. I know your Alf."

"And I don't then," said Mrs. Caspar. "I try to keep it fair between em--for all what folks may say different."

That evening Mr. Pigott met Alf in Church Street.

The schoolmaster stopped, holding with his eye the youth in the stained blue overall. Alf approached him delicately, with averted face and a sly smile.

It was clear that he courted the encounter.

Mr. Pigott came to the point at once.

"How's Ern?" he boomed in a voice of challenge.

Alf dropped his eyes.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "our Ern's goin the same way as dad."

Mr. Pigott gazed at him as one stupefied.

Then in a flash he understood ... Mr. Trupp was right. The boy was abnormal: his spirit dwarfed and stunted by the miserable tenement in which it was forced to dwell.

This sudden peep into one of the sewers of Nature, this illumination of what before had been to him obscure, this swift suggestion of Evil lurking obscenely in the dusk to leap on the unwary, brought him up abruptly. His anger passed for the moment. Something between fear and pity laid hold of him.

"I suppose you're glad," he said quietly.

Alf smiled that satyr-like smile of his, sickly and uncertain.

"Ah, you never did like me, Mr. Pigott!" he sneered.

"I don't," answered Mr. Pigott. "I never did. But I'm beginning to understand you. You're possessed."

He went on down the street and called at the Manor-house.

Mrs. Trupp was, he knew, a staunch friend of Ernie's.

The lady was playing with her children in the garden. But she gave both her ears to her visitor when she knew his errand. Had she heard anything?

Mrs. Trupp coloured. She _had_ heard something which greatly perturbed her pure and beautiful spirit.

Her Joe, home from Rugby, had reported that on the way back from a match at Lewes Ernie Caspar had taken a drop which had made him funny.

"It was only a little," the lady ended. "Joe said it wasn't enough to make an ordinary canary queer. But it upset Ernest for the moment."

Mr. Pigott marched on down the hill to the railway station.

It was shutting-up time, and the object of his concern was just leaving the office.

Mr. Pigott unceremoniously seized the boy by the hand.

"For God's sake take a pull, Ern!" he said, most seriously.

Ernie looked up surprised, read the distress in the other's bearded face, and burned one of those sudden white flares of his.

"I see!" he said. "Alf's been at it again!" and he broke away.

Swiftly he went home, passed the study door, and entered the kitchen.

His mother was out.

Alf, his elbows on the table, and his chin on his hands, was studying a model-engine under the gas-light.

He looked up surlily as Ern entered.

"Keep out of it!" he ordered. "You've heard what mother says. The kitchen's mine at this time. I don't want you."

"But I want you, my lad," answered Ernie, brutal in his bitterness.

He locked the door, and took off his coat.

"Been tellin the tale again!" he trembled, as he rolled up his sleeves. "I've had more'n enough of it. Put em up! You're for it this journey!"

Alf had risen. He knew that look upon his brother's face, and was afraid.

"You mustn't touch me!" he screamed, shaking a crooked finger at the other. "I'm delicit, I am."

It was the ancient ruse which had stood him in good stead many a time at home and in the playground.

"Else you'll tell mother!" sneered Ern. "Very well. Have it your own way!"

He seized the model engine on the table, and smashed it down on to the floor. It lay at his feet, a broken mass, with spinning wheels.

Then Ern unlocked the door and went out.

At supper that evening he was still burning his white flare.

Alf saw it and was cowed; Mrs. Caspar saw it too and held her peace. Edward Caspar was, as always, away in the clouds and aware of nothing unusual when he looked in to say good-night.