CHAPTER XXVI

MR. PIGOTT

Ernie, bag in hand, and sore of heart, sauntered along to the end of Rectory Walk.

There Beech-hangar, swirling in the wind under the shoulder of the Downs that shut off Beau-nez, called to his wounded spirit.

He walked slowly along the New Road, away from the houses, across the Golf Links towards this favourite retreat of his boyhood where of old, when in trouble with his mother, he would retire.

There on the slope amid the beech-trees, the Links billowing away before him to the woods that ambushed the Duke's Lodge, he lay down. The smooth stems rose about him like columns in the choir of a church. The wind strayed amid a sea of sun-lit leaves. The cool, the comfort, the bright graciousness of these comrades of his youth soothed and satisfied him. He studied them with kind eyes. The harsh male quality of the oak was not theirs. They could not stand the buffeting of Time as did the fierce old warriors of the Weald; but they could sustain the spirit in the hour of need. They were for him the women among trees.

Ernie lay with his eyes shut, and his hands behind his head, listening to the wind flowing through the tree-tops. The murmur of flies, the under-song of birds, the moving stillness, the secret stir of life, filled him to overflowing.

Alf had made him feel an isolated atom, the sport of incredibly cruel devils. Now he knew that he was part of an immense and harmonious whole. The sense of dislocation, exile and disease passed away. His mind was an open cistern into which a myriad healing streams were pouring from an unknown source.

Who was Alf to disturb his peace of mind? Alf, the puny, the pretentious, who was not really alive at all. There was something greater in the world than Alf, and that something was on his side. He was sure of it.

He sat up and laughed.

Then above the murmur of insects and birds the louder hum of Man and his machinery, setting the world to rights, stole in upon his mind.

Two groundmen were mowing the green just under the Hangar.

It was time to be moving.

He sauntered back along the New Road, eyeing the spruce villas on the northern side, where of old allotment gardens had been.

At the corner of Church Street he asked a policeman where Mr. Pigott lived now.

The man pointed down the Lewes Road, now fringed with houses.

The old schoolmaster had, it seemed, left Huntsman's Lodge at the foot of the Downs, and moved in nearer to his work when he became Manager of the South Downs Transport Co.

Ernie rambled down the dusty hill, the Downs upon his left, picking up familiar objects as he went--the Moot Farm standing up like an elm-girt island from the sea of arable, the long low backs of the Duke's piggeries, the path that wound across the plough and led over the hill to far Aldwoldston in the Ruther Valley.

A young woman with provocative eyes and brightly burnished hair came to the door at his knock and scanned him friendly.

"Is Mr. Pigott in?" Ernie asked.

"He's at his office."

"Could I see Mrs. Pigott then?"

She eyed him merrily.

"You are seeing her," she said; and added, enjoying his embarrassment, "I'm number two. My predecessor sleeps at the back." She tossed her bright head in the direction of the cemetery on Rodmill seen through the open back-door.

Ernie blushed and fumbled.

"I'm Ernie Caspar, Miss--I would say Ma'am."

The young woman regarded him with swift and sympathetic interest.

"Oh, I know _you_," she said. "You used to write from India.... So Mr. Pigott never mentioned _me_! I'll just speak to him when he comes in."

She saw the bag in his hand, and her mouth became firm.

"Been to see your people?"

"Just looked in on dad, 'm."

She eyed him sharply.

"And your brother?"

Ern said nothing.

"Well then, you leave your bag here, and step across the Moot to the office. _Southdown Transport Co._, back of the _Star_ by the Quaker Meeting-house. You'll sleep the night here."

Ernie crossed the brickfields, passed his old school where the children were singing the evening hymn, under the church upon the Kneb, through what the old inhabitants still called Ox-steddle Bottom, where once his father had pointed out to him the remains of Roman byres.

The office was in Borough Lane.

Mrs. Pigott had warned her husband by telephone.

Ernie therefore was shown into the inner sanctum at once.

Mr. Pigott, grizzled now, but with the old almost aggressive air of integrity, summed his erstwhile pupil up with the eyes of the appraising schoolmaster.

"It's the old Ernie. I see that," he grunted. "So Alf's been playing it up already. You needn't tell me. He's a masterpiece, that young man. Even _she_ admits that." He paused and began again, confidential and communicative like one naughty boy whispering to another. "What d'ye think of her? She's church--more shame to her. But I forgive her. I forgive her a lot. You have to when you're married to em--as you'll find some day. And what I don't forgive I pass by. For why?--If I didn't she'd sauce me." He suddenly became aware that he was being indiscreet, even undignified, and broke off gruffly--"Well, what did they teach you in the Army?"

Ernie laughed.

"It's not so bad as they make out, sir. I like the old Regiment well enough."

"They tell me," said Mr. Pigott solemnly, "that in South Africa none of the unpopular officers came home--_and they weren't shot by the Boers_!"

"It depends on the Regiment, I expect," replied Ernie. "There's not much of that in the Hammer-men. Our officers were mostly all right. More gentlemen than most, from what I could see of it. They were sports, and they tried to be just. Of course there wasn't none of em like dad--only the Colonel. Hadn't the education. But some of these snotty little jumped-ups like what they had in the Welsh Liverpools that lay alongside us in Pindi ... Why I wouldn't salute em if I met em in the lines."

Mr. Pigott listened to this audacious statement with the hostile interest of the radical.

"A rotten system," he said. "Built on make-believe and lies."

"It fairly rots some of em," Ernie admitted. "Gives em more power nor what they can carry. But in the hands of the right men it don't work so bad. All depends on that."

Then Mr. Pigott asked him what he proposed to do.

"That's what I come to you about, sir."

"Of course your brother won't help!"

"No, sir; nor I wouldn't ask him," flashed Ernie.

"And I don't blame you," answered Mr. Pigott. "Alf's too busy taking the Mass and walking in processions to help his brother.... Now I'll tell you what to do. You go up and see Mr. Trupp. He can do anything he likes now he's disembowelled Royalty. And if he can't help you, I must; though I haven't got a vacant job in the yard just now. You're to sleep at my place, _she_ says."

He followed Ernie to the door.

"What d'you make of your father?" he asked mysteriously.

"I don't rightly understand him, sir," Ernie answered.

"Don't you?" said Mr. Pigott. "I do." He dropped his voice. "He's waiting the Second Coming, I'm sure of it."

When Ernie presented himself at the Manor, Mr. Trupp was out. Ernie thought Mrs. Trupp would see him. The smart maid thought not. Ernie, however, proved right.

Mrs. Trupp was sitting in the long drawing-room, with her daughter, and greeted him with pleasure.

"Ernie!" cried Mrs. Trupp. "This is a sight for sair e'en. What a man you've become!"

"Was Alfred decent to you?" blurted Bess.

Mrs. Trupp shot a warning glance at her impetuous daughter.

"And have you seen the new Mrs. Pigott?" she asked.

"She's top-hole," cried Bess. "He never stops talking about her. Really after that other old thing always sitting on his head----"

Then Mr. Trupp entered, smiling, and cocking his face to sum up his visitor through his pince-nez.

"You needn't introduce yourself, Ernie," he growled. "You've taken no harm, I see."

Later the two men retired to the consulting-room to talk business.

"Would you care for a temporary job at the Hohenzollern?" asked Mr. Trupp; "the German Hotel on the Crumbles. It was building in your time. They want a lift-man, I know."

"Anything, sir," answered Ernie with easy enthusiasm.

Mr. Trupp rang up the Hotel and arranged the matter there and then.

"It will do as a stop-gap, anyway," he said, "until we can fix you up in a permanent job. You don't want to be knocking about at home, twiddling your thumbs."

"That I don't, sir!" laughed Ernie a thought ironically, and returned to Deep-dene to tell his luck.

Mr. Pigott glanced at his wife.

"The Hohenzollern," he said gruffly. "Well, give it a try."

Next day Mr. Pigott met the Doctor in the street.

"Well," he said, "what d'you think of your soldier?"

"Done him no harm anyway," replied Mr. Trupp, quite impenitent.

"I don't know," retorted the other. "He left here a gentleman: he comes back a labourer--fit to work a lift."

"None the worse for that," said Mr. Trupp. "Mr. Wyndham's been telling us we want fewer clerks and more working-men. There's no satisfying you radicals."

"Better than a jumped-up jackanapes in black leggings and a pilot coat, I will admit," answered the other. "Yes, you've got a lot to answer for, Mr. Trupp. First you send him off to the army; and directly that's finished you pack him off to the Hohenzollern Hotel."

"Might be worse places," muttered Mr. Trupp.

Mr. Pigott held up a hand in horror.

"Doctor!" he cried, "I tell you what it is. Ever since you saved that Tsar you've been a changed man."

"I don't know about that," said Mr. Trupp. "I only know that Tsars forget to pay their Doctor's bills."

"I'm glad to hear it," answered Mr. Pigott. "_Very_ glad," with emphasis. "A lesson to you to leave the insides of Royalty to emselves in future."