CHAPTER XVI

FATHER, MOTHER AND SON

There was no difficulty with Edward Caspar.

He had made an immense effort and fought about the Colonies. Easily spent, he would not fight again. Moreover, Ernie committed to the Army was committed for a few years only, and not for life; and some of his service might very well be passed in England. In Edward Caspar too, pacifist though he personally inclined to be, there was no inherited prejudice to overcome: for the Beauregards had been soldiers for generations.

Mr. Trupp came to talk things over; and that evening, as father and son sat together in the study, Edward Caspar said out of the silence, very quietly,

"Boy-lad, it's best you should go."

"I shall go all right, dad," the boy answered, feigning a cheerfulness he by no means felt. "Don't you worry."

"Mother wants it," the other continued.

"She's all right, mother is," said the lad.

It was settled that the boy should go over to Lewes and enlist in the Hammer-men at the depot there, on Saturday.

The decision made, his mother relaxed somewhat. While she still kept Ernie without money, she allowed him cigarettes.

Father and son sat together and smoked in the evenings, watching the trees swaying against the blue in the Rectory Garden across the road.

Alf reported surreptitiously to his mother that Ern was smoking with dad.

"What's it to do with you if he is?" answered the other tartly.

The catastrophe which had severed the frayed string that joined the mother and her eldest son had reacted unfavourably on her relations with Alf.

The few days before Ern's departure went with accustomed speed.

On the last evening, as he and his father sat together, studying their toes in the twilight, a small fire flickering in the grate, Edward Caspar spoke out of the dark which he had been waiting to cover him.

"Boy-lad, I can't do by you as I should wish," he said tremulously. "But here's a bit of something to show you I mean well."

In the half light he thrust an envelope towards his son.

Ern opened it and saw that it contained a five-pound note.

The great waters surged up into his throat and filled his eyes.

"Here! I can't keep this, dad," he said chokily. "I'm all right. I've got..."

The old man--for such he was to his son, though not yet fifty--waved his hand irritably.

"Put it away," he said, "put it away. Let's hear no more of it."

Ernie sat dumb, moved and wondering.

Where had dad got the money from?

He knew very well that his mother jealously controlled the family purse, doling out rare sixpences or shillings to his father; and he knew why.

The boy's brain moved swiftly.

"What's the time, dad?" he asked, and lit the gas.

The clock on the mantel-piece never went: for it was Edward Caspar's solitary household task to wind it up.

The father, by no means a match for his artful son, produced from a baggy pocket a five-shilling Waterbury watch in place of the old gold hunter that had come to him from Lady Blanche's father, the twelfth Earl Ravensrood.

His ruse successful, Ernie delivered a direct attack.

"Where's the ticket, dad?" he asked casually.

"What ticket?"

"The pawn-ticket."

"I don't know," irritably. "Don't worry me. Turn out the light. I want to get a nap."

Ernie obeyed.

Soon Edward Caspar's breathing told its own tale.

Ernie rose, and, knowing his father's habits well as he knew his own, put his hand into the Jacobean tankard that stood on the book-shelf.

There he found what he sought.

Quietly he went out into the passage.

On the ticket was the name he expected: Goldmann, the Jew pawn-broker in the East-end off the Pevensey Road.

For a moment he paused, fingering the brown cardboard ticket under the gas light.

It would not take him an hour to get down to Goldmann's and back; for the tram almost passed the door; but he hadn't got the redemption money. He hadn't got a penny in the world. Alf had seen to that.

With the impetuous gallantry peculiar to him he made up his mind and opened the kitchen-door. Where Ernie loved he would risk anything, face anybody--even his mother.

She sat in her Windsor chair by the fire, a Puritan, still beautiful, reading her Bible as she always did at this hour; and her silvering hair added to her distinction.

All their married life the pair had sat thus of evenings, Edward in the study, Anne Caspar in the kitchen.

The strange couple rarely met indeed except at night. And the arrangement was not of Edward Caspar's making, but of his wife's. It may be that in part the woman preferred the kitchen as the environment to which she was most used: it was still more that she had determined from the outset of their union never to intrude upon her husband's spiritual life, or attempt to encroach upon a mind she could not understand. Her duty was as clear to her from the first as were her limitations. She could and would cherish, support, protect, and even chasten her husband where it was necessary for his good. For the rest she was resolved to be no hindrance or inconvenience to him. He should gain by his marriage and not lose by it. Therefore from the start she had slammed the door without mercy or remorse on her own relatives.

When Ern entered, she looked up at him not unkindly through her spectacles.

"What is it, Ernie?" she asked.

He rushed out his request.

"Please, mum," he panted, "could you let me have a shilling?"

He was determined not to give his father away.

To his relief his mother rose without a word, went to a drawer, unlocked it, took out half a sovereign and gave it to him.

Ernie ran out without his hat, took the old horse-bus at Billing's Corner, and riding on the top under a night splendid with stars that hung in the elms of Saffrons Croft, he went down the hill, through the Chestnuts, past the railway station, and along the gay main-street.

Just before Cornfield Road reaches the sea he exchanged the horse-bus for the electric tram that swung him down Pevensey Road through the thronged and always thickening East-end.

At the _Barbary Corsair_ in Sea-gate he descended, turned down a side-street, and entered a door over which hung the three golden balls taken from the coat-of-arms of the banker Medici.

Mr. Goldmann was a short, fair Jew, without a neck, immensely thick throughout, though still under thirty. When he walked he carried his arms away from his side as though to aid him to inflate; and winter or summer he could be found behind his counter, perspiring freely. His trousers were always too short, and his little legs protruded from them like pillars. He spoke Cockney without a trace of Yiddish. His manner was hearty; but he was honest of his kind. The police had nothing against him, while his innumerable clients complained less of him than of his rivals.

Ern in the past had dealt with him.

"How much?" he asked, presenting the ticket.

"Only two-pence," said Goldmann, and took the watch out of the case.

He handled it with care, almost covetously, burnishing it on his sleeve.

"What arms is them?" he asked, displaying the back.

Ernie didn't know.

"If it had been any man but your father left it, I'd have communicated with the police," said the pawn-broker cheerfully.

"Will you do it up in a piece of paper, please?" Ern requested.

The Jew obeyed.

"Lend me your stylo alf a mo," said Ernie, and wrote on the paper covering the word _Dad_.

Then he raced home and re-entered the kitchen.

It was after ten, but his mother was still up, and apparently unconscious of the lateness of the hour.

Ern, panting from the speed at which he had travelled, paid nine shillings and four pence into his mother's lap.

Tram and bus had cost him sixpence, and the redemption money the rest.

"Eightpence all told," he gasped, "what I wanted. Only a little something for dad. I'll send you the odd money when I draw me first pay." He put the little packet on the mantel-piece. "Will you give that to dad, please, when I'm gone, mum?"

His mother looked at him, a rare sweetness in her eyes.

"You may keep the change, Ern," she said gently.

Collecting the money from her lap, she handed it back to him.

A moment he demurred, taken aback; then slipped the cash into his trouser pocket, mumbling and deeply moved.

"Thank you kindly, mum," he muttered.

Her eyes were still on his face, and he could not meet them.

"You're a good lad, Ern," she said quietly.

The words, and the way of saying them, moved the lad more than all her rebuffs and brutalities in the past had done. His chest began to heave. She stood before him stiff as a blade of steel, as slight and straight.

For a second she laid her hand, fine still for all its toil, upon his arm.

"Go up to bed now," she said in the same very quiet way.

He went hurriedly.

There were few things which happened in that house of which Anne Caspar was not aware. That morning on rising she had missed her husband's watch on the dressing-table--and had said nothing. Later she had found the pawn-ticket in the tankard--and again had held her peace.

A wife before all things, yet to some extent a mother, she had known, had understood, had perhaps sympathized.