CHAPTER XXXIX

THE LASH AGAIN

In a week the Captain was in the sea again, and living the same fiercely strenuous life he had done before his attack.

Ernie congratulated him upon his recovery with a cheerfulness he by no means felt.

A question haunted him.

Was Ruth still sleeping in the dressing-room? ...

Could the girl be so indiscreet? ...

Nothing could have been easier for him than to answer the question for himself by peeping. But he would not do it, for the hotel-porter was a gentleman.

The question that troubled him was, however, soon to answer itself.

One afternoon, when Ruth was out to Ernie's knowledge, he was surprised to hear in the dressing-room the familiar voices of Céleste and another maid, hushed and whispering.

"She keeps the key her side," one was saying.

"What's it matter who keeps the key?" the other answered. "That's only a bluff."

The door was slightly ajar.

"He don't seem to have give her nothing," said the one at the dressing-table discontentedly.

"Only cash. Cash is the thing. Then you can get what you like for yourself."

"Here's her Bible and pray-book! _Look!_--Ain't she just the little limit?--and that close with it too."

"It's always the same. It's the dark uns are the deep uns."

"Don't you dare to chip her then," warned the other. "She's Madame's own ducky-darlin-doodle-day."

Ernie opened the door.

The two girls turned in a scared flutter.

"There!--It's only old Ernie Boots!" cried Céleste relieved. "He don't count, Ernie don't.--But you give me the palpitations though."

Ernie held the door wide.

"You've no business in here," he said sternly.

"No one has--only the Captain, old cock," retorted Céleste flippantly.

The two girls flirted away with high noses and a rustle of silken underwear.

Ernie looked round the little room with the eyes of a furtive watch-dog. He had no business there; and being there he ought to make it his duty to see nothing. But he did see; and what he saw was that the bed was not in use.

Thrown carelessly upon it was a regimental blazer, obviously awaiting repair, and a pair of socks in like case. Beside them was a work-bag. He moved the blazer and saw beneath it a silver cigarette-case. Then in the grate he saw the burnt end of a cigarette.

With beating heart, but unruffled air, he went out.

The two mocking-birds were perched on a window-sill at the end of the corridor.

"Pore old Ernie boy!" they cried in chorus. "Did he think she was for him?" ...

The story trickled down to the boot-room in the basement, which was a kind of cess-pool into which all the moral filth in the Hotel poured and finally accumulated.

Don John openly mocked Ernie.

"Here's Caspar!--Thought he'd have a chance against the toff!"

Ernie flashed round on him.

"Stow it!" he ordered.

The Austrian was afraid.

"Soldier! soldier!" he croaked, hiding his fear behind hideous laughter, and reported his enemy to Salvation Joe.

That worthy, swollen and stiff with righteousness as the Jehovah of the Israelites, and glad of his chance, tackled Ernie on the subject.

"What's this then?" he said, stopping the other.

"What, sir?" asked Ernie.

"Fighting in the boot-hole," answered Jehovah in his voice of thunder, subdued and distant.

"I don't know nothing of it," said Ernie, honestly taken aback.

Jehovah, the majestic, in his flaming jersey, could sneer.

"Ah, don't you, my lad?" he said. "Well, I do. Let's have no more of it."

The two men went on their way: Salvation Joe to the Manager's office to make his report.

"Always the same with these old soldiers," he said. "It's up with their fists at the first onset. No reasonableness in em. Can't keep em off of it."

"Better keep him anyway till the end of the season," said the Manager. "We don't want a change now."

"No, sir. I don't want a change any time," said the head-porter, on the defensive. "But order is order. That's all I says."

The pressure of necessity was indeed squeezing the softness out of Ernie.

Enemies thronged his path. He was becoming wary and watchful. Of old, when in the course of life he had come up against hostility and obstruction, he had met it either by evasion or the non-resistance so fatally easy to a man of his temperament. It was different now. His enemies were leagued together to rob him of something dearer than himself. Therefore he would stand: therefore he would fight.

There grew upon him a dignity, a restraint, above all a sternness that men and women alike remarked and respected.

Céleste ceased to mock him; Don John kept his distance; and the Captain was on his guard.

Ernie was sure of it: for Royal was nothing of a diplomatist when dealing with an enemy whom he despised.

Ruth, too, avoided Ernie now.

He noticed it, and did not attempt to approach her.

The two were drawing away, and yet, Ernie sometimes thought, coming closer--for all the girl's grave reserve.

He at least was climbing heights where he had never been before.

Up there in the eternal snows it was lonely but bracing. He was putting on an armour of ice. Clothed thus, knew that nothing could hurt him. He could bear all things, conquer all men.

Once at that time Mr. Pigott met him in Old Town.

"Ern," he said, eyeing the other curiously, "I've got a job for you in my yard, if you like it. What about it?"

"No, sir," answered Ernie, almost aggressively. "I'm going to stick where I am."

"No offence anyway," growled the other, striding huffily on his way.... "I might have been insulting him instead of trying to help him," the aggrieved man reported to Mr. Trupp later.

"Yes," said the Doctor. "He's under the Lash again. I see that. And he's growing because of it. Men do--if they are men. If they aren't they just break."

"You and your Lash," grumbled the other. "There are other stimulants in the world."

Mr. Trupp pursed his lips.

"Perhaps," he grinned. "But none so effective."

His father, too, noticed the change in his elder son.

Once as they were sitting together, above the chalk-pit, on one of Ern's afternoons off, after a long silence, he said,

"How goes it, Boy-lad?"

"What, dad?"

"The affair."

Ernie looked away, teasing the bent between his teeth.

"None too well, dad."

The old man laid a hand on his.

"Wade out into it!" he said. "Trust the stream! It'll carry you--if you'll let it."

Ernie's mother too, curiously sure in some of her intuitions, felt his trouble, was aware of his new-found courage, and came to him.

It had always been so with her from his childhood.

Whenever he put out his strength she rallied to him in full force. When in weakness he fell away she left him. It was as though all her woman's power of buttressing had been given to the father, so that there was nothing left to satisfy the demands of her seeking elder son.

That evening she gave him roses from her little garden before he went, and watched him round the corner.

Then she retreated indoors, and standing thin-shouldered in the door of the study, shot at the long loose figure by the fire one of her customary crude remarks.

"He's hanging on the Cross," she said.

Edward Caspar stared into the grate.

"He'll rise again," he answered.