CHAPTER LII

THE RETURN OF THE OUTCAST

It was in Mrs. Trupp's home, in a back-water of the East-end, that Ruth's child was born.

The babe was beautiful, but over the mother a shadow lay.

"It's her people," Mr. Trupp told his wife. "She hasn't broken it to them yet."

"I know," Mrs. Trupp answered. "I must talk to her about it."

Ruth, curled in her bed, giving satisfaction to the babe in the hollow of her arm, showed every sign of distress when the other broached the topic.

"Will you trust me to tell them?" asked the lady gently. Ruth raised her fine eyes, brimming with gratitude to the elder woman's face.

Mrs. Trupp went.

Before she started on her pilgrimage of love she passed an hour in the parish-church, which was her favourite resort in all the crises of her life.

There the Archdeacon came on her, to his surprise.

"I'm glad to see you here, Mrs. Trupp," he said with slight inevitable patronage.

"I'm often here," she answered, smiling.

"Ah," said the Archdeacon. "I've missed you."

She could not tell him that this was because she avoided the church when he and his fellow-priests were ministering there.

"I love the atmosphere," she said.

"Thank-you. It is nice, I think," he answered with a little bow; taking to himself, with childish ingenuousness, the credit for the conditions that six centuries of prayer and worship had created.

An hour later Mrs. Trupp was face to face with Ruth's mother in the kitchen of Frogs' Hall.

Hard by, the church-bell tolled for evening service. Through the open window came the noise of homing rooks drifting up the valley from the Haven; and under the hedge on the far side the Brooks a cow bellowed.

It was Mrs. Boam who began.

"I allow you've come to tell me about our Ruth," she said at last.

"Have you heard anything?" asked Mrs. Trupp.

The other shook her head.

"We'd be the last to hear," she said. "That's sure. But I knaw there's been something. It's seven month since she's been anigh us. That's not our maid--our Ruth: so good and kind and considerate for her dad and me as she's always been."

"There has been something," answered Mrs. Trupp, and told her tale....

The mother listened in silence, the tears streaming down her face, her hands upon her lap.

When the story was finished, she rose.

"Thank you kindly, 'm," she said. "If you'll excuse me I'll tell dad. He's in the back."

She went out, a big unwieldy woman, walking with the unconscious majesty of grief, and was absent some time.

Mrs. Trupp sat in the kitchen with a somnolent rust-coloured cat, and listened to the willows rustling by the stream and the voices of children playing by the bridge.

Once she went to the window and looked across the cattle-dotted Brooks to the long low foothill that raises a back like a bow, green now with young corn, against the bleak shaven flanks of old Wind-hover.

Then Reuben Boam entered, erect as a soldier, and with the face of a puritan and prophet.

Mrs. Trupp wondered, as she often had of late years, why the men of her own class never attained the dignity of the great amongst the simple poor.

She rose humiliated, conscious of her own spiritual inferiority; and took his rough paw between her two delicate hands.

"Won't you sit down, Boam?" she suggested, quite modern enough to realize what a topsy-turvy world it was in which she should have to make such a request to an old man in his own home.

His long bare upper lip trembled and nibbled as he spoke.

"She's a good maid," he said huskily--"our Ruth. The Mistus says it were a gentleman. It's hard for a working girl to stand up agen a gentleman that's set on despoilin her. But in my day gentlemen were gentlemen and kept emselves accardin. They tell me it's different now. Accounts for the bit o bitterness, hap." The great hand lying in hers twitched. "She must come back home soon so ever she can move. There's not much. But we'll make out somehow. Rebecca must goo to her. She'll need her mother now. They was always very close--mother and daughter."

The old woman entered, tying her bonnet-strings beneath her chin.

"Yes, I'll take carrier's cart to Ratton. Then I can walk to the Decoy and take train to the East-end."

"Won't you come with me?" said Mrs. Trupp. "I've got the car in the Tye." ...

She dropped her companion at the door of the house in Sea-gate, and herself took a tram home. When Mrs. Boam emerged from the house an hour later a car was still at the door.

The old lady looked about her, a little bustled.

"Could you tell me the way to the tram?" she asked the chauffeur.

He touched his hat and smiled.

If Alf had a soft spot in his heart, it was for old women.

"This is your tram, ma," he said, and helped her in.

A fortnight later the same car stood at the same door, when Ruth emerged, her baby in her arms.

It was dusk, and she did not see the chauffeur, who leaned out towards her.

"Would you come up in front alongside me?" he said. "I put your box inside."

Ruth obeyed.

They drove through the gathering shadows in the sweet-scented June evening, past Ratton and Polefax, all along the foot of the Downs, the Wilmington Giant with his great staff gleaming wan and ogre-like on the hillside, and at the Turn-pike, just where the spire of B'rick church is seen pricking out of trees, turned for the gap and ran down the valley towards the Haven.

A sea-wind with a sparkle in it blowing up the Brooks seemed to meet the softer breezes of the Weald and penetrate them. A young moon hung over the sharp crest of Wind-hover.

Ruth, her baby in her arms, picked up familiar objects as they swung by: the long-backed barn on the left, the little red pillar-box on the wall, and occasionally the glimmer of a light in one of the homesteads among trees across the stream. On her right, unhedged cornlands swept away in a rustling sea towards the foot of the Downs which made a bulwark of darkness against the firmament; while on the near rise a row of stacks, like immense bee-hives, stood sentinel under the stars.

The car slid down a hill and up again. The valley lay naked alongside them now, cattle moving darkly in the moonlight and the tower of the church upon the hill black against the night in front.

The chauffeur took out his clutch. The car was running so noiselessly that Ruth could hear the ghostly stir and murmur of the willows that line the river-bank and cover the feet of the village with a green girdle.

"You don't remember me then?" said the man beside her.

They were the first words he had spoken.

Ruth glanced at the face beside her own, smooth and smiling in the moon, and clutched her baby to her so fiercely that it gave a little cry.

"Ah," said Alf, "I thought you would then."

The impression he had made seemed to please and satisfy him. He put his engine into gear, and was soon running through the village-street.

At the foot of the hill, where a group of mighty elms on a high bank guard the seaward entrance to the village, he turned sharply to the left under a row of pollarded poplars, and bumped over Parson's Tye quiet in the moonlight, the church four-square among its trees upon the mound on the right.

Then he drew up by the stile leading into the Brooks.

Ruth descended swiftly, and her babe lying like a snowdrift in her arms, disappeared in the darkness through the stile.

Alf waited beside his car, watching the river like a snake crawling and curling away in gleams of sudden silver under stark trees into the night.

A few minutes later the bulk of a big woman in a white apron appeared at the stile.

"Could you take the box in?" said a gentle voice. "Dad's crippled."

Alf swaggered.

"Very well. This once. To oblige."

The job accomplished, he looked round the little plain kitchen with a proprietary air.

"Nice little place," he said.

"Would you take a cup of tea?" asked Mrs. Boam.

Ruth had disappeared.

"No'w, thank you," said Alf in his cockiest manner. "I dare say you'll see me round here again next time I'm this way."