CHAPTER XLV

OLD MUS BOAM

Ernie was not adventurous except where his heart was concerned.

He had the homing tendency of the affectionate nature.

When he left the Hohenzollern Hotel in Sea-gate he made straight as a bird for Old Town. But he did not go to Rectory Walk. He was out of work now, at the slack season of the year, too. He knew very well what his brother Alf's attitude towards him would be, and was by no means certain of his mother's: for she, too, worshipped success and efficiency in all men but the one dependent on her.

Therefore he went to an old school-fellow of his, married now, and established in the Moot at the back of the _Star_, and made arrangements to lodge with him.

His immediate future was secure, for he still had a pound or two in hand. And long ago he had adopted the outlook on life of the class which had absorbed him--an outlook natural to them, because inevitable, and acquired by him--the outlook that sees To-day but shuts its eyes to save itself from To-morrow.

Old Town is small and has long ears. It was soon known that Ernie Caspar was "out," and the cause of his dismissal was discussed by all and hinted at by not a few.

Alf, sitting behind his wheel at Mr. Trupp's door, was one of the first to note his brother hanging about the street-corner.

He reported the fact to his mother.

"He's back on us," he said briefly.

"Who is?"

"Ernie." He laughed bitterly as he chewed his cigarette. "Lost his job again and turned corner-boy. Takes his stand opposite the _Star_ so everybody may know he's my brother."

Mrs. Caspar banged the pans upon the range.

"Why's he lost his job?" violently.

Alf lifted his hand to his mouth.

His mother eyed him, and Alf felt criticism in her stare.

"I see Joe Conklin, the head-porter at the Hotel," he said. "They give him one or two chances. But it was all no good. Never is with that sort."

Anne Caspar looked at him sharply.

"Are you tellin the tale, Alfred?"

Her son looked up fiercely.

"Why ain't he come home then?--Answer that."

"He did come home Saturday same as usual to take dad a walk."

"That's his cunning--to bluff you he wasn't out," jeered Alf. "He's lodging in Borough Lane. Has been ten days past. Mrs. Ticehurt told the Reverend Spink. If he done nothing he ain't ashamed of, why not come home?"

To do her justice, Anne Caspar was convinced against her will; but subsequent cogitation caused her to accept Alfred's story as true.

She felt that Ernie had deceived her. Why had he not told her that he was out when he came as usual on Saturday for his dad?

Yet in reality the answer was very simple. It was that Ernie chose to keep his troubles to himself.

Thereafter mother and son, by tacit consent, avoided each other in the steep streets of Old Town; and when Ernie called next Saturday he found the kitchen-door locked against him.

He was not surprised, nor indeed greatly grieved. His heart was high and very steady as he turned into his father's study. The winter had tried the old man, who was no longer now able to take the hill as formerly. Instead the pair dawdled along to Beech-hangar; and there, sitting among the tree-roots, under the fine web of winter beech-twigs, Ernie told his father the essential fact about his love.

"I've lost her, dad," he said in his simple way.

The old man's blue eyes, that seemed to brighten as his body dulled, shone on him mysteriously.

"Feel for her," he said, reaching out his hands like a blind man. "You'll find her." He added after a pause. "I don't think she's far."

Ernie chewed a grass-blade.

"I shall find her," he said with quiet confidence, "because my heart ain't fell down--and won't."

The old man was still blind and feeling.

"Spin," he said. "Then pounce."

Ernie nodded.

"That's it, and sooner or later my fly'll fall into the web."

"It must," said the other, "if you keep on spinning till you cover the uttermost parts of heaven and earth."

His father's words, as always, made a deep impression on Ernie's suggestible mind.

Ruth was not far: dad had said so; and dad knew.

Next day was Sunday. He determined to walk over the hill to Aldwoldston to see what he could find.

True, Madame at the Hotel had told him that the girl had not gone home; but did Madame know?

He started early, passed Moot Farm, where the turkey-cocks, stately and with spreading tails, played that they were peacocks, and disdained him for a vulgar fellow in spite of old acquaintance.

It was February, and the beeches in the coombe at the back of Ratton Hall had not yet begun to warm and colour with the rising sap. The feel of the turf beneath his feet, the glimpse of shrouded waters beyond the Seven Sisters, uplifted and inspired him as of old.

He could conquer; he could find.

Descending the long slope into Cuckmere, he crossed the road at the racing-stables, took the hill again, and marched along, his head in the sky, and a song on his lips, to greet that of the lark pouring down on him from the unbroken dimness of the heavens.

It was still early as he dropped down the bare bleak flank of Wind-hover, scrawled upon with gorse; and came over the cultivated foot-hills into the valley, bright with brooks and the narrow Ruther that winds like a silver slug down the green-way towards the sea.

He crossed the stream by a white hand-bridge, passed along an upraised path under an avenue of willows, across the open field called Parson's Tye; up the narrow chapel-lane between back-gardens and high walls, into Aldwoldston High Street, curling narrow as a defile between crowding houses, yellow-washed, brown-timbered, amber-tiled.

Conspicuous by its air of age and dignity stood out the _Lamb_, swarthy as the smugglers who once haunted it; a mass of black timber won, perhaps, from high-beaked galleons in Elizabethan days, with small projecting upper windows through the leaded panes of which eyes watched the street of old, while ears strained for the clatter of the hoofs of tub-laden pack-horses hard-driven from the Haven in the darks. A roof of Horsham slats bowed it to earth; while a huge red ship's figure-head, scarred and hideous as an ogre, propped with its dreadful bulk the corner of the street as it had done for the hundred and fifty years since the vessel of which it was the guardian and the god had been lured to destruction against the ghastly wall of the Seven Sisters. And the carvings, quaint and coloured, on the centre-board reminded Ernie that his father, when once of old their rambles had taken them thus far, had told him that the inn had been in days gone by a sanctuary under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle and the next house of call after the _Star_ at Beachbourne for pilgrims on their way from Pevensey to visit the shrine and relics of holy St. Richard-de-la-Wych at Chichester.

Just beyond the _Lamb_ in the little market-square, filled almost by a solitary chestnut-tree, stood the Cross.

Around it, their backs against the brick pediment, gathered the village worthies as they and their fathers had gathered at that hour, under those skies, amid those hills, on Sabbath mornings for centuries innumerable. Standing round the four sides of it, men all, in Sunday negligé and easy attitudes, buttressing the Cross, they smoked and chewed and spat and ruminated. On the fringe of the centre-piece were groups of youths and boys, silent as their elders and as absorbed, whose age and worth did not yet entitle them to a place among the buttresses. No women or girls joined the sacred circle. These stood in the doors of their houses round the square, or sat on their doorsteps, or peeped through the low latticed windows of the _Smugglers' House_ at their masters expectorating round the Cross.

But for a little white terrier, curled on the pediment at his owner's back, who bit his flank with furious zeal, Ernie could have believed that here was a group of rustic statuary set up appropriately to embody the spirit of the place.

A twinkle lurking in his eyes, he asked the most ancient of the buttresses the way to Mr. Boam's cottage.

Very slowly the group stirred to life with grunts, groans, and a shuffling of feet.

Then the ancient one removed his pipe, and, after a preliminary exercise, spoke.

"Old Mus Boam, t' chapel-maaster," he said. "Down River Lane yarnder. Frogs' Hall in t' Brooks. I expagt yo'll find he a-settin on his bricks. Most generally doos o Sunday. For why? Ca'an't get no furderer dese day, I rack'n. Ate up with rheumatiz, he am. Ca'an't goo to Chapel. So Chapel has to goo to he!--he!--he!----" A jest clearly almost as old as the toothless one who made it.

Ernie dropped down River Lane into the valley again. Just behind the willows at the foot of the lane stood a yellow-washed cottage, with a high-pitched roof like a truncated spire.

Sheltering the door from the sea-winds was a fine bay-tree, and in front of the house a little space of bricks on which sat an old man looking out across the stream towards Wind-hover's bare dun flank, pale in the wintry sun.

He, too, seemed pale and wintry, sitting there, one big hand on his ash-stick: a beautiful old fellow, very tall and sparse, his ruffled beard curling stubbornly up from beneath his chin towards the long shaven upper lip that added severity to his natural dignity.

There was no question where Ruth got her stature or her bearing from, if her colouring was all her own.

Ernie felt awkward in the presence of the still old man, but he introduced himself shyly as one who had been in service with Ruth at the Hotel.

Mus Boam eyed him keenly, kindly, but with obvious reserve.

"She'll ha left there now, I expagd," he said briefly, and called--"Mother!"

A woman came to the door. She was big, too, with the warm skin of her daughter, and the same distinguished foreign air. Her hair was snow-white, her eye-brows black, her eyes and colouring of the South. Surely she was descended from some Spanish adventurer who had made of Ruther Haven a base for raids up the valley into the Weald. But England, it was clear, and Sussex in particular, had impressed their staid and ponderous selves upon the riotous foreign blood to the exclusion of all else. A gypsy queen, the mother of Madonnas, bred among the Baptists and saturated with their faith, there was about her the same atmosphere of large and quiet strength that characterized her man. And Ernie could well understand that the pair had taught chapel, as Ruth had once told him, for thirty years in the building at the back.

Mrs. Boam stood in the door and looked at the visitor.

He noticed at once about her the same cloud of reserve that he had remarked in her husband.

She was clearly too well-bred to show hostility, but equally clearly she was exercising restraint.

"She'll ha gone into service," she said in deep and humming voice, like an echo of her daughter's, but somewhat dulled and flat with wear.

"In Beachbourne?" asked Ernie.

"Of course we doosn't see her as often as we used when she was at the Hotel. D'idn't to be expected, surely," said the mother parrying.

"And it bein winter and all," continued the old man, taking up the tale. "No coaches at this time o year. And dis a tidy traipse over the hill for a maid." He turned the conversation. "You'll ha walked, Mr., to judge from yer boots." ...

Ernie trudged home over the greasy hills with certain clear impressions in his mind.

The old folk were anxious: they did not know where Ruth was: and they would not talk.

Was she writing?

Was she still in Beachbourne?