CHAPTER XVII

ERNIE GOES FOR A SOLDIER

Next day, after dinner, when she heard Ern's feet slowly descending the stairs, and knew he was coming to say good-bye, Anne Caspar shoved Alf roughly out of the kitchen.

"You wait your brother outside," she said. "Take his bag now, and carry it to the bus for him. Be a brother for once!"

"Well, I was going to," answered Alf, aggrieved.

Since the catastrophe he had kept discreetly in the background.

Ern entered the kitchen, uncertain of himself, uncertain of his reception; but, true to the best that was in him, trying to carry a pale feather of gallantry.

"I guess it's about time to be off, mum," he remarked huskily.

His mother shut the door behind him gently, and drew him to her.

"Kiss me, Ern," she said.

The boy gasped and obeyed.

"Now go and say good-bye to dad," continued his mother, quiet, firm, authoritative.

As he went into the passage, he heard the kitchen-door close behind him.

Ern was his father's son, and nothing was to be allowed to intrude in the parting between the two.

Edward Caspar stood before the fire in quilted dressing-gown, somewhat faded now.

In its appointed place on the chair beside his chair lay the familiar manuscript, much as Ern had known it since his childhood, save that the titles on the covering page were typewritten now--_The Philosophy of Mysticism, Part I, The Basis of Animism_.

His father's colourless hair was greying fast and becoming sparse; while his always ungainly figure was losing any shape it had ever possessed.

At fifty Edward Caspar was already old. But age had enhanced the wistfulness which had marked him, even in youth. His was the face of a man who has failed, and is conscious of his failure; but it was the face of a Christian, gentle and very sad. Here clearly was a man of immense parts, scholar, thinker, artist, who, somehow baffled by the wiles of Nature, had failed to make good.

Yet in spite of his failure there were few who could more surely rely upon the limitless resources of the Spirit in the hour of his need than Edward Caspar.

And now in this great moment of his life, when he was parting from his dearest, he summoned to his aid all the powers that, massed unseen in the silence, await our call.

There was a wonderful dignity and restraint about him.

Ern, the most intuitive of lads, felt it and drew from his father's strength.

Simply and beautifully father and son kissed.

A moment the eyes of each rested in the other's.

Then it was over.

No one of us is entirely inhuman.

Something of the spirit of the scene enacted in the study had conveyed itself even to Alf awaiting in the road outside, Ern's bag at his feet.

He was blinking when his brother, blowing his nose, joined him.

Ern glanced at the green rampart of the Downs rising like a wall at the end of the road, and huge Shadow Coombe where the lambs were folded in March and where once he had passed a night in the shepherd's hut.

Ern waved to them and Beech-hangar beyond.

"Good-bye, old Downs!" he called. "You and me been good old pals!"

Then they set off for the bus at Billing's Corner, neither speaking, neither wishing to, Alf carrying his brother's bag. Both youths were slight and colt-like, yet with loose unshackled limbs; Ern rather smart, Alf distinctly shabby.

The Rector, tall and titupping, emerged from his gate as they passed, but refrained from seeing them. He did not approve of the two Caspar boys--in the main because they were the sons of their father.

Canon Willcocks aped--successfully enough--the walk and deportment of a thoroughbred weed. His face--which was aquiline--inspired his pose, which was aristocratic and satirical. His solitary hero was Louis Napoleon, whom he had worshipped from childhood. And he bore himself habitually as one who is too fine for the coarse world in which he dwells perforce. The two brothers nudged each other as he stalked by. Then they climbed to the box-seat of the old bus and established themselves beside the driver.

"Where away then?" he asked, seeing the bag.

"Off to see the world, Mr. Huggett," answered Ern, already cheering up. "Goin for the week-end to the North Pole, me and Alf!"

The bus jolted down the street, past the long-backed church with its mighty tower looking down upon the Moot as it had done for five centuries, and stopped opposite the _Star_. Ern for the last time touched the old coaching bell with the driver's whip. As it clanged sonorously, a window in the Manor-house opened.

Ern looked up to see Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, a fair flapper now, waving at him with eyes that smiled and shone.

"Good-bye!" they called. "Good luck!"

Saffrons Croft was white with cricketers as they passed. The honest thump of the ball upon the bat, the recumbent groups under the elms, even the imperious voice of Mr. Pigott umpiring on Lower Pitch, moved Ern strangely.

Alf's presence somehow helped him to be hard.

At the Central Station the boys got down.

They paced the platform, waiting for the train.

Alf babbled at large, his brother paying little heed.

"Be the making of you!" Alf was saying in his rather patronizing way. "See the world!--knock about!--come home a full-blown Hammer-man with a fat pension and a V.C. on your chest and a Colonel's commission! And we'll all meet you at the stytion with a brass band playing _See the Conquering Hero Comes!_ and be proud of you. I'd come along meself for company, only I'm too small."

Ern roused from his dreams.

"What will you do then?" he asked, faintly ironical.

"Me?" cried Alf, starting off on his favourite topic. "I ain't a-goin to stop in Beachbourne all me life, you lay. When I'm through me apprentice they may send me to the River Plate. Got a big branch there. England's used up. There's chances in a new country for a chap that means to get on."

Ern installed himself in a smoking carriage.

"O, reservoir," said Alf, facetious to the end.

"See ye again some day," answered Ern, puffing away and exhibiting a man-of-the-world-like stoicism he did not feel.

He took off his Trilby hat, unbuttoned the overcoat with the velvet collar, and opened his orange-coloured _Answers_.

The train moved on. The brothers waved. Alf stood on the platform, a mean little figure with a dishonest smile; his clothes rather shabby, his trousers too short and creased behind the knees.

Then he turned to the bookstall and asked if _Motor Mems_, the paper on the new industry, had arrived yet.

Ern leaned back in his corner; and his eyes sought, between hoardings and roofs of crowded railway-shops, the familiar outline of the Downs which would accompany him to Lewes--and far beyond.