CHAPTER XLVI

ERNIE TURNS PHILOSOPHER

Ernie was now steadily ablaze. His heart was set; his purpose resolved; there was no faltering in his faith. The armour in which his spirit was cased revealed no fissures under strain. He was amazed at his own strength, and at the illimitable resources on which he could draw at will.

People who saw him at this time, swept by the March winds, haggard and pinched at the _Star_ corner, wondered at the flame of determination burning in his face.

"He seems always waiting for some one," said Elsie Pigott, who, like many another woman, was haunted by his wistful eyes at night.

"Perhaps he is," answered Mrs. Trupp.

It was the slackest season of the year--between Christmas and Easter; and there was no work obtainable. Building was held up by the frosts; visitors were sporadic; and in the East-end a strike of engineers in the great railway shops had dislocated trade.

Elsie Pigott pleaded with her husband for her favourite; but for once she could not tease or taunt the Manager of the Southdown Transport Company in acquiescence with her wishes.

"No," he said, sturdily, "if he wants my help he must come and ask for it. Last time I offered him a job he snubbed me brutally. I've got my self-respect same as others."

That evening she came to his door.

"Please, sir," she said, dropping a curtsey, "Mr. Ernest Caspar!--will you see him?"

He scowled at her over his _Christian Commonwealth_.

"You've done this," he said.

"No, sir," demurely bobbing. "He came."

"Show him in."

Ernie entered, shining and unshorn, a tatterdemalion with the face of a saint.

The old schoolmaster thought how like his father he was growing: the same untidy garden of flesh, the same spirit at work behind the weeds.

"Well," he said, laying down his paper, "I don't see much of you at chapel these days."

Ernie smiled.

"I'm in chapel all the time, sir," he said. "That's what I come about. I wanted you to know." He sat down suddenly. "You know what you used to tell me about prayer when I was a nipper. _Ask, and it shall be given you_, and that." He leaned forward. "That's true--every word of it. You can have what you want for the askin--if you'll wait. Now I want something; and I shall get it in time, because I'll be faithful."

Mr. Pigott looked into the rapt eager eyes of the scare-crow opposite him.

For some reason he felt humiliated, even afraid; and, man-like, he concealed his qualms behind an added gruffness.

"Your father's been talking to you," he said.

"Ah," said Ernie. "But I been talking to myself, too. No one else can't teach you, only yourself." He began to expound his philosophy with tapping finger in the half-hushed voice of the priest revealing the mysteries of life and death to the neophyte. "See there's two minds in Man," he began. "There's the Big Mind and the Little One. The Big Mind's like a Great Dream--it's beautiful, like clouds, but it can't do much by itself: the Little Mind's like a tintack, sharp and to the point. Now Alf's got the one kind of Mind, and me and Dad the other. This here Little Mind helps you to get on: it thinks it's on its own, being conceited. But the Big Mind behind does the real work." His eyes burned. He spoke with a solemnity, a conviction that was overwhelming.

Mr. Pigott was awed in spite of himself.

"The Little Mind's clever like Alf. And the Big Mind's wise like your father. That's it, is it?" he said lamely.

Ernie nodded.

"And what about Mr. Trupp?" the other inquired.

"Ah," said Ernie, with enthusiasm, "he's a great man, Mr. Trupp is. He lives by both Minds--as a full man should. He don't neglect neether. They're meant to work together. Ye see the Little Mind should be like a lantern for the Big Mind to work with--like a miner's lamp in the pit like. It's got no real life of its own--only what the miner chooses to give it. Most folks neglect one or the other. Dad and me neglect the Little Mind--so we don't do much; but we aren't afraid of nothin. Alf, now, he neglects the Big; so he's in fear of his life always, and good cause why, too. For he lives by the Little Mind. And sooner or later the Little Mind'll go out snuff. And then where'll Alf be?"

Elsie Pigott, in an apron, stood in the door.

"We're discussing prayer," her husband informed her.

"Indeed," said the lady. "And now you'll discuss a plate of beef. At least Ernie will."

The starveling rose.

"No, thank you, 'm," he said.

"Aren't you hungry then?" asked the young woman.

"Not as I'm aware of," laughed Ernie.

"Nonsense," the other answered, "you can live by the Spirit, but not on it." And she took him firmly by the arm and led him into the kitchen.

Her guest established, she returned to her husband.

"Have you found him a job, Samuel Pigott?" she asked.

"I have not, Elsie Pigott. Nor has he asked me for one."

"Mr. Pigott," his wife retorted, "if you were not twenty years my senior I should call you the beast you undoubtedly are."

All the same, when his wife had gone to bed that night, Mr. Pigott rang up the Hohenzollern Hotel and asked the Manager why Ernie had been dismissed.

"Got fighting drunk," replied the Manager. "He'd been warned before."

After that Mr. Pigott set his face like a flint.

"It's now or never," he admitted to Mr. Trupp, and added reluctantly, "There may be something in your Big Stick sometimes, after all."