CHAPTER XXX

REALITY

A few days after his conversation with his father, Ernie took a telegram up to the Third Floor in the afternoon, and was about to descend when he heard a bedroom bell ring violently for the maid on duty.

There was no maid visible.

He went along the corridor. At the end of it was a passage-landing with a window looking over the sea.

On the window-sill Ruth was sitting in the sun, perched as a woman riding, her work beside her.

She did not see him, and for a moment he watched her fascinated: the lines of her figure, almost majestic for so young a woman; the dignity of her face; the lovely curve of her neck and shoulders; the warmth of her colouring. Her thimbled finger flashed to and fro; and the sun caught her hair, simply massed beneath her cap, and revealing in its blackness just a note of tan.

Every now and then, as the sea thumped and hissed and poured on the fore-shore, she looked up.

There was for once a wonderful content upon her face, the look that Ernie had often sought and never found there before. The strain had vanished. This girl possessed her soul in love and peace for the moment at least.

Ernie was reluctant to disturb her, for she gave him the impression of one who prays.

"The bell's going, Ruth," he said at last gently.

She put down her work and dismounted from the sill in that swift business-like way of hers. There was a rhythm about her every movement that satisfied the deepest need of Ernie's soul.

"What number?" she asked.

"Seventy-seven."

Her face clouded.

It was the sodden Jew, clamant once more.

"I'll go," said Ernie.

It was no job of his, but go he did. And he was glad he had, for Soly surpassed himself.

"You!" stertorously. "What good are you to me? Send that Spanish gypsy here! She's the one I want. I like 'em brown."

Just outside the door Ernie met Céleste.

"He wants you, Miss," he said, and admired the readiness of his lie.

Then he walked thoughtfully back to Ruth, who had resumed her work.

"It's all right," he said shyly.

She lifted her face to him slowly, almost stealthily.

Then there flashed a lovely light into her eyes.

"Thank-you, Mr. Boots," she said.

He advanced a step on her.

"That ain't my name."

She hid again in her work.

"What is then?" she asked.

"Ernie," he said. "Call me that."

He was curiously peremptory, almost imperious.

She did not answer him--threading her needle deliberately against the light.

Suddenly doors flung wide, and his whole being leapt forth as from a furnace, caught her up, and rapt her in a living flame of love.

She seemed to feel it beating about her, devouring her, and stirred as a tired bird stirs in its nest at night after a long flight.

Ernie was trembling till it seemed to him that his heels rat-a-tatting on the floor must betray him.

Then he went on his way.

The transfiguring experience that comes perhaps once in a life-time to the pure in heart had come to him in full flood. A new life was his, sweeping away old land-marks, and bearing him he knew not whither. He drifted with that mighty tide, content to be borne along. He had been alive for twenty-five years, yet dead. Now he rose from the tomb, at this his astounding Ascension-tide. In a second he had been rapt up from the earth, had suffered miraculous conversion, and would never again see life as he had once seen it.

It was curious, wonderful, and above all it revolutionized old values.

The men and women he met in the passage looked different, especially the women.

They were coarse, commonplace.

Céleste passed him with a quip.

What she said he didn't know, but he thought how opaque and material she was in such a spiritual world; and what a pity it was; and how sorry he was for her.

Madame stopped him and gave him orders. He heard and carried them out.

But all the while this new spirit was at work on its own business in the deeps of him. His intellect, a mere cockle-shell afloat on an Ocean of Mind, dealt with the superficial mechanism of life.

_He_ was elsewhere. For the first time Ernie became aware of a Double Life going on within him, of Two Minds, related, yet apart, each pursuing its own ends.

He entered the room in the basement where the men cleaned the knives, blacked the boots and ate their hurried meals. It was cool, almost cavernous. He was amazed that he had never before seen beauty in this bleak room, the beauty of the woods for which he longed.

He sat down and was glad.

About him were men of all nationalities, some in aprons, some in their shirt-sleeves, some snatching a desultory snack, chattering or silent.

Ernie, aware of them, yet deep in himself, was conscious of two impressions: These men were monkeys--and knew it; and they were Sons of God--and as yet unconscious of it.

One of the men, a sallow Austrian with a stringy moustache, who went by the name of Don John among his mates, put down the _Arbeiter Zeitung_ which he had been reading, watched Ernie awhile sardonically, and then made a jeering remark to a neighbour, who replied.

Ernie caught the words "Third Floor."

Instantly he emerged from his deeps, his intellect alert, paramount, and defensive.

Don John continued caressingly, his cheek bulging with cheese, and a clasp-knife in his hand.

"Pluddy mug!" he jeered. "Thinks they're for him. They're for de toffs on de top--not for _you_! You're unter-tog. Nozzing for unter-tog in this world only de crumbs that _don't_ fall from de rich man's table. De girls are for de Chairman Jews. They can buy em. Can you?--Nice English girls are cheap."