CHAPTER LIII

THE FIND

It was rather more than a year later.

Ernie, in grimy overall strapped over his waistcoat, and grey shirt without a tie, was climbing the lower slopes of High-'nd-Over from Sea-foord in an empty lorry.

Beneath him lay the Haven, buttressed by a gleam of white cliff, the Old River blue-winding to the sea at Exeat, and the New laid like a sword-blade across the curves of the Old.

The lorry bumped over the crest of the hill, austere and bare even in the sunshine, the sea broad-shining at its back, and dropped down out of the brilliant bleakness into the best wooded of the river-valleys that pierce the South Downs.

It was Saturday evening early in July.

There had been a fierce and prolonged drought. In the Brooks all along the banks of the slug-like stream the hay had already been carried fine in quality and light in weight. On the sun-burnt foothills a belated farmer was working overtime to carry the last load before Sunday. The long blue wain proceeded in lurches across the hill-side to the guttural exhortations of the wagoner, all about it a little busy knot of men and women raking and pitching.

Ernie sat with his back to the hill, his arms folded, looking across the valley to the tiny hamlets clustered round a spire, the huge black barns and clumps of wood beyond the stream, and the deep hedges running caterpillar-wise up the flank of the opposing Down.

The air was still keen and sparkling, yet full of scents rising from the fields that looked save in the Brooks brown for once and parched instead of fresh and green as of wont after being shorn of their crop.

Ernie enjoyed those scents. There was nothing like them in the East, he remembered. Was there indeed anywhere outside of England?

The lorry ran past the Dower-house in its rich old garden, the grey-shingled spire of the church opening to view at the back of the village across Parson's Tye.

They rattled under the elms at the foot of the hill and up the steep street, where the same brown spaniel lay always in the same place asking to be run over.

A jumble of houses pressed in upon them. Sudden dormer-windows peeped from unexpected roofs. Chimney-stacks would have tumbled on them but for the brilliant creeper that bound their old bricks together. While in odd corners behind the high brick path tall hollyhocks bowed as they passed.

The High Street was fuller than usual. Labourers slouched along it, tired and contented. A wain, with a pole at each corner pointing to heaven, the carter with patched corduroys and long whip plodding at the head of his team, was carrying a party of haymakers home. Under the great chestnut in the market-square a group of dusty horses stood, the sweat drying on them. Wages had been paid--the best wages of the year too: for all had worked overtime; Sunday was ahead of man and woman and beast alike; the most strenuous weeks of the year were over, and the most quiet to come.

The lorry ran swiftly down the hill, out of the village.

At the spot where a lane runs off to Littlington, it swerved suddenly to the right. Ernie, sitting on the rail, swayed over the side to look.

They were passing a girl, walking soberly along, her back to the village. Clearly she had just come from the fields, for she wore an orange-coloured turban wisped about her black hair, a long loose earth-coloured gabardine, stained with toil, and short enough to disclose the heavy boots of the agricultural worker.

She was a big young woman, broad of shoulder, large of limb, who walked in spite of her heavy foot-wear with an easy rhythm that caused Ernie's heart to leap.

The lorry flashed by.

The girl did not look up, marching steadfastly forward, careless of the passing vehicle; but Ernie caught a glimpse of her profile.

In a moment he was on his feet.

The lorry was travelling fast. Ernie tapped at the partition which divided the body of the car from the driver, and peered through the glass.

The man at the wheel heard, but shook a grim head. He did not mean to stop. Home and beer and the week-end rest lay before him.

Ernie, far too impetuous to think, did not hesitate.

He jumped at the road, fleeting swiftly away beneath him.

It rose up like a careering wave and struck him viciously.

Whether he fell on his feet, his hands and knees, or his back, he never afterwards knew.

That he was shocked into unconsciousness is clear, and that his body continued its ordinary functions unconcerned and guided he knew not by what mysterious power.

He woke, as it were, still jarred from shock, and aching throughout him, to find himself steadily tramping along a road.

The objective world surged in on him. He put up his hand to ward off the huge green seas that came lolloping along to overwhelm him.

Riding the charging billows were a host of immense black ogres, dreadful in their impassivity, and with blind eyes, who yet had seen him and were set on his destruction.

Then he resumed himself. The billows were the hills; the careering ogres the row of bee-hive stacks dumped peacefully on the rise upon his right.

He could not have been unconscious many minutes, for the sun still hung on the crest of the hill much where he had seen it last; but he was walking along the road on which he had fallen and must so have walked during his unconsciousness, seeing that he was now perhaps a quarter of a mile from the spot where he had jumped, and proceeding in the opposite direction to that in which the lorry had been travelling. His face was towards the sea and the village through which he had recently passed, his back to the Weald.

On his left was a wood, darkened by firs. A dusty motor-bicycle lay up against the bank.

Ernie was aware of the machine, as one is aware of something in a book. It was not real to him: he was not real to himself. Indeed he was conscious of one thing only: that some power was guiding him and bidding him keep quiet.

He did not attempt to take control. His brain, except as a mirror which reflected passing objects, was passive; and he was content that this should be so.

Dimly he wondered if he was dead. Then he realized that the question had no interest for him, and he retired once more into the No Man's Land of the hypnoidal state.

A villager was approaching.

He saw the man marching towards him as on the screen of a cinema.

The man said good evening.

Ernie answered, and found himself listening with interest to his own voice. It sounded so loud and alien.

He was a puppet in a play, watching his own performance--actor and audience in one.

Except for a certain diffused physical discomfort on the remote circumference of his being, he was not happy or unhappy. He was a headache, and that was all he was. But he was a headache which could walk and if necessary talk.

Then, still obeying his unseen guide, he turned off the dusty road into the wood upon his left that stretched across the Brooks down towards the stream.

On the fringe of the wood he was bidden to stay....

The river ran in front of him a few yards away. On the other bank, immediately opposite him, was a clump of willows. There too was a big young woman in a tan overall.

She was sitting on the tow-path, her back against a tree, her arms bound about her knees, her feet in heavy boots pressed close together in an attitude expressing doggedness. She was bare-headed; and her orange turban lay at her feet. Ernie marked her gypsy colouring, red and gold, and the yellow necklace that bound her throat. The sullen expression of her face was enhanced by the gleam of teeth which her lips, drawn back almost to a snarl, revealed.

Here surely was a tigress, trapped and resentful.

Above her stood a little man in the shining black gaiters and great goggles of a chauffeur.

He was talking and smiling. The young woman sat beneath him, her tense arms binding her knees, her eyes down.

But this was not the usual drama when the Serpent and the Woman meet. Here the Serpent was taunting Eve, not tempting her. So much her face betrayed.

Ernie watched the picture-play with absorbed interest. A great while ago he had known both actor and actress intimately, and still took an impersonal interest in them and their doings.

Then the little man's voice came to him across the stream, sharp and strident. He had a peculiar swaggering motion of the head and shoulders as he spoke, truculent yet furtive, that Ernie knew well; and all the time his eyes were wandering uneasily about the Brooks, searching for enemies.

"You'll ask me to marry you next!" he sneered. "_ME marry YOU!_"

The young woman rose, ominous and passionate. She stood in her tan-coloured gabardine, like some noble barbarian at bay, a creature of the earth and elements, yet conquering them.

She seemed to tower above the little man, and in her hand was the orange turban like a sling that swung heavily to and fro.

Ernie watched the scene with fascinated eyes, and, most of all, that bright slow-swinging thing that sagged so dreadfully.

The little man watched its pendulum-like action too. He did not seem to like the curious slow swing of it, or the look upon the face of the swinger, for he withdrew a pace or two.

"Any more of it," said the girl, her voice deep and vibrating, "and I'll tell Mr. Trupp."

The name struck Ernie's subconsciousness with the disturbing effect of a pebble dropped into a still pool. Ripples spread over the torpid surface of his mind, rousing it in ever-growing circles to life. The view was dissolving with extraordinary speed. It remained the same and yet was entirely changed. The play was becoming real....

The little man was now walking swiftly away along the tow-path. Suddenly he turned and came back a pace or two, his hand out.

The woman had not stirred. She stood bare-headed on the river-bank, one foot on a twisted root, one knee bent.

"Give me back my letter," said the man. "And I'll let it go at that."

She met him squarely.

"That I wun't then!"

The little man hesitated and then turned about.

Ernie came to himself with a pop, as a man comes to the surface after long submersion in the deeps.