CHAPTER LIX

ALF TRIES TO SAVE A SOUL

Of course there was trouble: Alf saw to that.

It was very seldom he came to Rectory Walk now; but he did come one evening after the news was common property in Old Town.

He marched straight into the kitchen, kicked a chair into its place before the fire, and sat down without a word to his mother. It was dusk in there, but Anne could see that he was terribly moved.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothin," Alf answered. "Only my cart's broke."

The mother waited for more, grimly amused.

"He's done it this time," Alf continued at last.

"Who has?"

"Old Ern."

The epithet of affection roused Anne to swift suspicion.

"What's he done then?"

Alf chewed the end of a cigarette.

"Don't ask me," he said. "Talk o the town!--I could 'ide me ead with shyme." He looked up suddenly and stared his mother blankly in the face.

"Little better nor a common you know."

"Common what?" asked his mother harshly.

Alf, like many another sinner, had a genuine and almost child-like belief in his mother's innocence and lack of knowledge of those processes of nature with which she might be assumed to be familiar. He raised a deprecatory hand as though to brush her irritably aside.

"You wouldn't understand if I was to tell you," he groaned, screwing up his little yellow face as he did when wrestling in prayer for sinners. "Nor I wouldn't wish you to. My heart's fair broke. That's enough for you." He buried his face in his hands. "He's been a bad brother to me, very bad. Couldn't well ha been worse. Anybody could tell you that. But blood is blood, and blood is thicker nor what water is, as I'm finding now to my cost."

Anne Caspar came closer.

"Is he goin to marry her?" she asked.

"Ah," said Alf. "And that ain't all. Not by no means--nor the lesser 'alf of it eether."

His mother was still fiercely cold.

"Is she the one he got into trouble?"

Alf evaded her swiftly.

"It ain't his child though."

"What?" she snarled. "Is there a brat?"

She turned on the gas.

The tears were rolling down Alf's cheeks as he nodded assent.

"Me own blood-brother and all!" was what he said. "I can't look folks in the face, I can't."

Just then the study-door opened and shut again.

Ernie came out into the darkened passage.

The kitchen-door was wide.

Through it the two brothers stared at each other, Ernie standing in the dusk, Alf sitting in the gas-light.

Then Ernie spoke.

"Tellin the tale, Alf?" he said with quiet irony. Alf waved his brother away.

"You've broke my eart," he said, "and your mother's. Not as you care, not you!"

"If that's all I've broke I ain't done much 'arm, old son," came the still voice out of the dusk; and the outer door shut.

His wife was the one creature in the world to whom Edward Caspar was consistently hard; and her husband the only one to whom Anne was unfailingly considerate.

In her inmost consciousness she knew the reason of her husband's attitude, and bowed to it as to an inexorable ordinance of Nature. Throughout her married life she had paid the penalty of the woman who has taken the lead in matters of sex. Fierce though she was, there were few more old-fashioned than Anne Caspar, and from the start she had seemed to recognize and be resigned to the justice of her fate.

That night as the couple went to bed, Edward said from the dressing-room with a touch of tenderness he rarely showed his wife:

"Mother, Ern's going to be married."

"You needn't tell me," said Anne harshly. "There's a bastard. Did he tell you that?"

It was seldom that Anne allowed herself to indulge in coarseness when addressing her husband.

He gave his familiar little click of disgust, and shut the door between the two rooms.

That night he did not join her but slept, if he slept at all, on the camp-bed in the dressing-room.

Next day, Anne Caspar went round to interview Mrs. Trupp.

The years had brought the two women no nearer, rather the reverse indeed.

Mrs. Trupp was soaring always into heaven: Mrs. Caspar chained to her prison-cell on earth.

"She's a good woman," said Mrs. Trupp of Ruth, with stubborn gentleness. "I don't know a better."

"But she's had a illegitimate child. It's sin! It's wickedness!"

"I know she's made a mistake," replied the other in her even voice. "But it's not for you and me to judge her. You and I were able to marry the men we loved. If we hadn't been...."

"I should have stood up!" harshly.

"You can't say," said Mrs. Trupp, calm as the other was ferocious. "You don't know. We've never been tested." Then the devil entered into her as it does sometimes into the holiest of women, a naughty devil, very mischievous, who loathed Pharisaism and loved to persecute it.... "_Besides, should we have been right to stand up?_"

Anne Caspar gasped.

The lady wetted her cotton delicately, and threaded her needle against the dying light.

"It's a nice point," she added in her charming voice.

Anne tramped home, meeting Mr. Pigott on the hill. He stopped to speak to her, but she trudged on surlily.

"The world's gone mad," she said. "It's time it come to an end. It's a bad un."

Mr. Pigott went on to the Manor-house to put his question.

"Is she all right?" he asked--"This girl of Ernie's."

"Right as rain," answered Mrs. Trupp. "But she's had a _rotten_ time."

There was no doubt that Alf was deeply stirred by this new happening in his brother's life.

The whole of him resented it with the fury of a baffled sea.

Ern was about to possess a beautiful woman Alf had desired, and Ern was Alf's brother. That deep-seated sense of competition and ineradicable jealousy that exists between members of a family--as profound and disruptive a force as any to be found in human consciousness, dating back as it does to the fierce struggles of nursery days--was at work within him.

As always in moments of conflict, he had recourse to his spiritual director.

The Reverend Spink was a sleek little man, solid in body if not in mind, and full of rather shoddy enthusiasms.

"Poor old Ernie!" said Alf. "He's been a bad brother to me. I will say that for him. But I wouldn't wish my worst friend to come to _that_."

"But you must save him from himself!" cried the curate. "Go out into the highways and hedges and _drag them in!_--that's the command. Fling out the life-line!" and he flung out a plump little arm clothed in best broadcloth to show how it was done.

Alf nodded solemnly.

"Yes," he said. "I'll save him--if he is to be saved." He rose up grandly, loving himself. "Cover me with hinsults; crucify me 'ands and feet; strike me in the face like as not. But I'll face it all. No cross, no crown, as the s'yin is."

He went out on his errand of mercy.

In a few moments he was round at the rooms of the lost sheep.

Ernie was at home.

"You know I wish you well, Ernest, don't you?" he began painfully.

The other had not risen.

"I know all about that," he answered enigmatically.

Alf drew a little nearer and dropped his voice, looking about him.

"You can't marry her, Ern," he whispered.

Ern was quite unmoved.

"Can't I?" he said. "And why not then?"

"_Because you can't!_" Alf almost screamed.

Ernie was still amused.

"I mustn't have her because you can't," he said. "That's the short of it."

Alf cackled horribly.

"Me!--Want her?--I like that."

"I know you did then!"

"Likely!" sneered Alf, his pride swift to arms. "Likely she'd ha took you and said no to me." He pressed closer, his face mottled. "_Do_ you know what I'm worth as I stand here in me shoes? I got £3,000 saved away in the Bank, and makin all the time. If I liked I could retire on meself--at 28--and be a gentleman. That's what I am! That's what I done! That's Alf Caspar! And you tell me she'd ha took up with a dirty coal-porter at 23s. 6d. a week when she could have had _Me_!"

Ernie flared up.

He leapt to his feet.

"Out of it!" he ordered. "What the bloody l's my marriage got to do with you?"

Alf tumbled down the wooden stairs with such a furious clatter as to bring the landlady to the kitchen-door.

Later that evening he reported his brother's saying to the Reverend Spink.

"Swore something fearful!" he said. "I couldn't tell you what he _did_ say. I couldn't reelly. Couldn't defile me lips with the words. That's the Army, I suppose. Pick up a lot of dirt there, some of em."

The Reverend Spink, who boasted a moustache he believed to be military, rocked judicially to and fro before the fire. Since he had been ordained a Minister of the Established Church, and had lived in touch with the Archdeacon and Lady Augusta Willcocks, he felt very profoundly that the maintenance of the aristocratic and imperial tradition had been entrusted to his special keeping.

"Had I not been called to a Higher Service," he said, enunciating his words with the meticulous care of one to whom correct pronunciation has always been a difficulty, "I should have gone into the Army, meself." He added--"An officer, of course."

"Of course," repeated Alf, "as is only befitting a gentleman of your rank and stytion in life. No, I got nothing against the Army. Armies must be, as I tell them, and Navies too--if you're an Island. Only all I say is--_Leave it to others_, I says. You don't want your own family mixed up with _that_."

But Alf was not done yet.

He went over to Aldwoldston and tried to see Ruth.

She refused, and reported him to Mrs. Trupp, who spoke very seriously to her husband.

"William," she said, "you'll have to sack that man."

He shook his head, grimly amused.

"Can't be done," he replied. "Too interesting a study and too good a chauffeur," but he spoke to Alf all the same.

"You must let that girl be," he said gruffly. "Ern's got her; and he's going to keep her."

"Ah," said Alf, swaggering. "I know what I know, and what no one else don't know, only me; and I don't like it."

"Brothers never do," retorted Mr. Trupp. "Especially if they wanted the girl themselves."

"Ah, 'taint that," said Alf, sour and white. "I shan't marry off the streets, whatever else. No, sir. He's not been a good brother to me--nobody can't throw that up against him. But that's no reason why when I see him askin' for trouble I shouldn't try to save him. Me own blood brother and all."

Mr. Trupp got into the car.

"I'll tell you what," he muttered. "You're a true churchman, Alf, if you're nothing else. I will say that for you."