CHAPTER XXIII

THE CHANGED MAN

Ernie went to the study-door and knocked.

"Come in," said a voice that surprised him by its firmness.

He entered.

His father stood before the fireplace almost as he had left him, save that he had discarded his dressing-gown for a loose long-tailed morning-coat of the kind worn by country gentlemen in the eighties. Physically he had changed very little, spiritually it was clear at the first glance that he was another man. The dignity which had distinguished him at the moment of parting had become his permanent possession. Some shining wind of the spirit blowing through his stagnant streets had purged him thoroughly. His colour was fresh as a child's, his eyes steady and hopeful, and there was a note of quiet exaltation about him, of expectation.

"Boy-lad," he said in deeper tones than of old, as they shook hands.

Ernie looked round like one lost.

The room, too, was as greatly changed as its inmate. But for a bowl of crimson roses on the book-shelf it might have been called austere. The Persian rug had gone, the writing-table was bare of the familiar manuscript. The book-shelves had disappeared to make way for a piano. The walls were still brown, and from them Lely's Cavalier looked down with faintly ironical eyes upon his descendants. It was the only picture on the walls.

"Where are the books then, dad?" Ernie asked.

"I sent them down to Fowler's," the other answered. "I've done with books--all except those."

He pointed to a single row, perhaps a dozen in all, among which Ernie recognized the blue backs of the Golden Treasury Series, the old edition of Wordsworth, homely as the poet himself, and a little brown-paper bound new Testament.

Ernie sat down. Now he understood that pathetic look in his mother's eyes. His father was no longer dependent on her; and she was missing that dependency as only a woman who has given her life to propping an invalid can miss it.

"Have you joined the Friends, dad?" he asked earnestly.

The old man shook his head.

"I shall never join another sect. They're nearest the Truth, it seems to me--a long way nearest. But they aren't there yet. None of us are."

Ernie considered his father, sitting opposite him as of old, and yet how changed! In those familiar blue eyes he detected now a dry twinkle, as of an imp dancing amid autumn leaves.

Suddenly the imp leapt out and tickled him.

Ernie flung back in his chair and laughed.

The old man opposite nodded sympathetically.

Then the door in the hall opened.

Somebody had entered the passage, and was stumbling over the bag Ernie had left there.

Ernie ceased to laugh; and the imp to twinkle.

"That's your brother," said the old man almost harshly.

Ernie made no move. In the passage outside Alf was shifting the bag--with curses.

"Does he live here still?" asked Ernie, low.

"Yes," said his father. "He's got a garage of his own now. He's getting on."

"Shall I go and see him?" asked Ernie.

"There's nothing to see," his father answered in that new dry note of his. "But you'd better go and see it perhaps," he added.

Ernie rose reluctantly and went into the passage. Alf's voice came from the kitchen, dogmatic and domineering.

"Him or me. That's flat," he was saying. "House won't hold us both."

Ernie swaggered into the kitchen.

Alf was standing before the fire, very smart and well-groomed. He wore a double-breasted waistcoat, festooned by a watch-chain, from which hung a bronze cross. A little man still, with an immense head, his shoulders appeared broad in their padded coat; but the creases in his waistcoat betrayed his hollow chest and defective physique, and his legs were small and almost shrunken in their last year's Sunday trousers.

Ernie advanced on his brother.

"All right, Alf, old son," he said. "No need to get yer shirt out. I'm not a-goin to force myself on no one."

"Al-_fred_, if you please," answered Alf, planted before the fire and caressing a little waxed moustache, which had come into being during Ernie's absence.

"Oh, you are igh," laughed Ernie.

"I am Al-_fred_ to me own folk and Mr. Caspar to the rest," answered Alf, dogged and unbending.

"Come, Alf, shake hands with your brother!" scolded his mother.

Alf, his eyes still averted, extended a surly hand mechanically from the shoulder.

Ern, white and flashing, took the hand.

"There's for my brother!" he said. "And there's for Alf!" and tossed it from him.

Then he went out.

His bag was still in the hall. He was about to take it up when his father called him from the study.

"You're going to stop here?" he asked; and Ernie detected a touch of the old anxiety in his voice, a suggestion of the old tremulousness in his face and figure.

In all the tuzzles between the two brothers, Alf had over Ern the incalculable material advantage of the man who is not a gentleman over the man who is.

"I just got to go down and see Mr. Pigott after a job, dad," Ern answered soothingly. "I'll be round again later."

He went out of the house, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Anne Caspar heard it go, and looking out into the passage saw that the bag had vanished too.

"He's gone," she said.

"Army manners," muttered Alf.

"You've drove him out," continued his mother.

"Ave I?" said Alf, cleaning his nails with a penknife. "I got my way to make. I don't want no angers-on to me.... Comin back on us a common soldier--not so much as a stripe to his arm, let alone a full sergeant. A fair disgrace on the family, I call it."

"All for yourself always," said his mother censoriously.

"Who else'd I be for then?" asked Alf, genuinely indignant.

"You might be for the church," answered Anne grimly.