CHAPTER XLIII

THE EBB-TIDE

Three days later Ernie met in the hall of the Hotel a man he had known and disliked in the Regiment in India.

The two shook hands, Ernie grinning feebly. He was not so keen about the Regiment as he had been a few months before.

"What you doin here then, Mooney?" he asked.

"I've come for Captain Royal's heavy baggage," the other answered. "Say, which was his room?"

"I'll show you," said Ernie, and took him up.

Ruth helped in the packing.

Ernie, who came and went throughout the morning, was amazed at her.

Her heart was being eaten away; and yet she might have been packing for a stranger, so calm was she, so methodical and self-oblivious.

Once, when Ernie looked in, he saw her kneeling by the window, her back to the door, her arms deep in a half-empty trunk.

Mooney winked at him and nodded over his shoulder.

Ernie, standing in the door, met him with the face of a hostile stone.

"Can I help?" he asked.

"No, thank-you," Ruth answered. "We're nearly through."

By noon the task was finished, and the baggage downstairs piled at the back-door.

Mooney and Don John lunched together in the basement. Ernie, passing, saw them, and heard his own name mentioned. Don John was telling a story. Mooney, following Ernie with his eyes, was unpleasantly amused.

Later Ernie helped to put the luggage on a cab. He volunteered for the work and did it gladly. As the cab moved off, his heart seemed to lift and lighten. The burden he had carried for so many months was being borne away on the top of that oppressed and heavy-laden vehicle. Then his eye caught Mooney's. The man, smart almost as his master, was sitting back in the cab, his eyes half shut, and his lips slightly parted. Between them protruded the tip of his tongue.

Mooney was mocking him.

A few days later Ernie missed Ruth from the Third Floor.

He asked Céleste where she had gone.

"Gone to the Second Floor," the girl answered. "She's waiting on a missionary. Makes a nice change after the Captain."

Ernie was glad, yet sorry.

He saw little of the girl thereafter; and she avoided him.

But he still possessed the ten-pound note she had cast away on the morning of Captain Royal's departure, and was worried as to what he should do with it.

He could not send it to her, for she would know the sender. He could not give it her, for it was the price of--what?

And there was no one whom he could consult. His dad in such matters was a child; his mother would be unsympathetic; Mr. Pigott would be too simple to understand.

Then one autumn afternoon, as he was walking home across Saffrons Croft through rustling gold-drifts beneath the elms, he met Mrs. Trupp coming down the hill silvery-haired, gracious, and smiling in upon his gloom.

"Well, dreamer," she said. "Not hard to know whose son you are!"

Ernie looked up, and made one of those lightning resolutions of his.

"Beg pardon, 'm," he said. "Could I come and see you this evening?"

"You could, Ernie," answered the other. "And about time too!"

That evening, when the blinds were drawn, and the lamps lit, Ernie found himself alone with his godmother in the long-windowed drawing-room, telling his story.

Mrs. Trupp, whom cruelty, in its manifold forms, could rouse to a white-hot anger that surprised those who did not know her, listened quivering and with downward eyes.

"What was the man's name?" she asked at last.

"Captain Royal," Ernie answered without hesitation.

She nodded.

The Captain had called at the Manor-house once or twice during his stay, and his easy attentions to her Bess had disquieted her for the moment; for she had disliked him from the first. But Bess, sound in her intuitions, as she was strong in her antipathies, had proved well able to care for herself.

"She's a good girl," said Ernie, still rapt in his story. "Too good for this world."

"You won't tell me her name?" asked Mrs. Trupp.

Ernie shook his head doggedly, twisting the ten-pound note between his knees. It was his father's son who refused to speak.

"Of course," she went on slowly, "your friend has not been wise, Ernie. The world would say she'd brought her troubles on her own head."

Ernie, well aware of the truth, looked at the note, and changed the subject clumsily.

"What are I to do with this?" he asked.

Mrs. Trupp had no doubts on that score.

"The proper thing to do is to return it to Captain Royal," she said.

Ernie was quite gentleman enough to understand.

"What'll be his address, I wonder?" he asked.

Mrs. Trupp went to the telephone, rang up Colonel Lewknor, and made her inquiry.

"Army and Navy Club, Piccadilly, will find him," replied the Colonel.

Mrs. Trupp went to her writing-table, addressed and stamped an envelope, and put the note inside.

"Register that, please, Ernie," she said....

That evening, as she handed her husband his coffee, she remarked to him casually:

"William, who looked after Captain Royal when he was ill?"

Mr. Trupp shot two words at her.

"Ruth Boam."

Mrs. Trupp put down her sugar-tongs, quivering.

"What about her?" grunted Mr. Trupp.

"Nothing," said the lady. She added after a pause with apparent irrelevance--"Did she like you?"

"I don't know," replied Mr. Trupp shortly. "All I know is that girl ought never to have been on the Third Floor. I told Madame as much."

The next time Mrs. Lewknor came to call, Mrs. Trupp told her the whole story, as Ernie had told it her; but, like him, concealing the woman's name.

Her suppressed indignation made her almost terrible.

Mrs. Lewknor listened doggedly, looking at her toes.

She had her own views about Captain Royal, but he was in the Regiment, and the Regiment was her god, to whom she owed unquestioning allegiance.

"There's no reason to suppose it was more than a stupid flirtation," she said lamely.

"It was a _crime_ on his part!" cried Mrs. Trupp with a vehemence that astounded her visitor. "A man in his position, and a girl in hers!"

That evening Mrs. Lewknor rehearsed the tale to her husband.

"Swine-man!" said the Colonel. "Just like him. And that man going about the country calling himself a Hammerman! Makes you sick."