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?

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."

CHAPTER XLVII
ALF TRIES TO HELP

Ernie was now in a bad way materially.

He became seedy and slipshod, with hollow eyes, and clothes that hung loosely upon his diminishing frame.

Alf resented his presence and appearance as a personal injury.

"Does it to spite me, it's my belief," he told his mother furiously. "Always at the Star corner lookin like a scare-crow and askin for pity. A fair disgrace on the family. Of course all the folks want to know why I don't help him. What's the good of helping him? He's the sort the more you help the less he'll help himself. Help him downhill, as Reverend Spink says."

The thing became a scandal locally, and Anne Caspar shared something of the feeling of her younger son.

If Ern must starve, why do it at her door?

Happily her husband was, as always, blind to what was going on beneath his nose; and so long as he was not disturbed Anne could stifle any pangs of conscience that might trouble her.

Alf, on the other hand, had no pangs to stifle: for to the hardness of the egoist he added the mercilessness of the degenerate. His mental attitude towards the weak was that of the lower animals towards the wounded of their kind. He wanted them out of the way. Indeed, but for his ever-present sense of the Man in Blue at the corner of the street he would have dealt with Ernie, dragging a broken wing, as the maimed rook is dealt with by its mates.

He eased himself, however, and took characteristic revenge on his brother for the spiritual wrongs that the needy can inflict upon the prosperous by direct action.

At a meeting of the Church of England Men's Society in Old Town, he asked in laboured words and with obvious emotion for the prayers of those present for "a dear one who had gone astrye"; squeezing his eyes and contorting his features in a fashion that led certain ladies of the congregation of St. Michael to whisper among themselves that Mr. Caspar was a very earnest young man.

Even in the C.E.M.S. Alf had few friends and some enemies; and Ernie heard from one of these—whom a sense of duty had compelled to speak—what had passed at the meeting in the Church-room.

Ernie accordingly stopped his brother in the street next day. He looked white and dangerous. Alf knew that look and halted. His heart, too, brought up with a jolt, and then began to patter furiously.

"What's all this, then?" began Ernie, breathing heavily through his nose.

"What's what?"

"At the Men's Society last night. Can't do nothing to help your brother...."

Alf held up a deprecatory hand.

"You don't know what you're talkin about, Ernest," he said solemnly. "I'm doin more for you nor what you know."

Ernie came closer. There was in his eyes a surprising flash and glitter as of steel suddenly unsheathed; and he was kneading his hands. Ern's "punch" had been famous in certain circles in Old Town long before he went into the Army.

Now Alf had a spot upon his soul. He, too, possessed a weakness of a sort that Civilization in its kindest mood covers except in times of extraordinary and brutal stress.

"I know just what you're doing for me, Alf," said Ernie quietly. "Let's have no more of it, see, or I'll bloody well bash you!"

There was no question that Ernie meant what he said. Easy-going though he was, all his life he had been subject to these sudden eruptions which flooded the sunny and somnolent landscape with white-hot lava; as his brother knew to his cost of old.

Alf put his hand up as though he had been already bashed.

"Ow!" he gasped, "Ow!" and passed on swiftly.

That evening he went, as was very proper, to see and consult his spiritual director.

The origin of the Reverend Spink was known to few. He was in reality the son of a Nonconformist grocer in the North, and had been educated with a view to the ministry. His mother had been a governess, a fact of which her son at the outset of his career was perhaps unduly proud; though later in life, when referring to it, he would say with quite unnecessary ferocity, "And I'm not ashamed of it, eether."

After his father's death the superior attraction of what his mother truly called "the church of the gentry" seduced him from his old-time allegiance. With the aid of the local Bishop he was sent to a Theological College, and shortly received what he was fond of naming in militarist moments, "a commission" in the Established Church.

He did not like his brother-curates to have been public-schoolmen, and, when asked, would say that he himself had been educated privately. The Archdeacon, who was not jealous of him, spoke of him to those of his staff he considered on his own social level as "dear brother Spink." On the rare occasions when the Lady Augusta Willcocks asked him to supper, he oiled his hair before the great event and prayed fervently for guidance at his bed-side.

He was a small man, plump and rather puffy, who wore pince-nez, was spruce in his person, and walked about in a brisk, rather bustling way, as though he could not afford to lose a minute if all the souls waiting for him to save them were to be gathered in.

He and Alf were of much the same class if of somewhat different calibre. It was, indeed, from a close observation and imitation of the facial activities of the Reverend Spink at devotion that Alf had been enabled to win the benedictions of the virgins of St. Michael's.

Alf now called on his friend and pitched his tale.

"Past ope," he said lugubriously. "I'm sorry to say it of any man, let alone me own blood brother. But it's my true belief all the same."

"To man, my dear friend," said the Reverend Spink, rising heavenward on his toes with a splendid smile, "much is impossible. Not so to Go-urd."

Alf looked into the fire very religiously. Then he nodded his head and said after an impressive pause,

"I believe you, sir." He lifted his face with a frankness the curate thought beautiful. "Of course I ain't told you all I know about our Ern," he said. "After all, he is me own brother. And, as I often says, blood is thickerer nor what water is."

It was some months later that Alf swaggered into his mother's kitchen late one night.

The knowing look upon his face was mingled with one of obvious relief.

He sat down before the fire and smiled secretively. Once he sighed, and then chuckled till his mother's attention was attracted.

"What is it?" she asked.

Alf nodded his great head.

"Ah," he said. "He'll be easier now, you'll see. That's all. She's left."

His mother, who was stirring something in a saucepan, looked up.

"Who's left?"

"Her Ern got into trouble with."

Anne Caspar ceased to stir.

"What's that?" she asked sharply.

Alf smirked as he stared into the fire.

"One of the flash-girls from the Hotel. I see her off to-day for Mr. Trupp."

Anne Caspar was breathing deep.

"Was Mr. Trupp seeing to her?"

"That's it," said Alf. "Sea View. You know."

Yes, Anne Caspar knew all about Sea View.

"Was that why Ernie left the Hotel?" she asked at last, white as a sword.

"Ah," said Alf, significantly. "It was one why, I reck'n."

Anne Caspar was not critical nor logical nor even just.

Next Saturday, when Ern called to take his father out, his mother met him with terrible hostility.

"She won't come on you now," she said with a white sneer. "You needn't worry no more."

Ernie was taken aback.

"Who won't come on me?" he asked.

"That girl you got into trouble."

Ern turned ghastly. His mother's eyes held his face with cruel tenacity, although she was trembling.

"She's gone away to London," Anne continued,—"with her child."

Ernie threw back his head with a little hoary smile.

"Ah," he said, "Alf," and went out slowly.

His mother's voice pursued him, dreadful in its caressing cruelty.

"I shan't tell dad," she said.

It was not often Ernie drew his sword. Now he knew no mercy.

"You can," he retorted. "He won't believe you."

CHAPTER XLVIII
TWO MEETINGS

After thirty years of following the wagon, Colonel Lewknor and his wife had returned home from India on a pittance of a pension.

There was a grandson now, and that grandson had to be sent to Eton like his father and his grandfather before him. Mrs. Lewknor was determined upon that. But the grandson's father was only a Captain in the Indian Army; ways and means had to be found; and openings are not many in modern life for a retired couple on the wrong side of fifty.

Then the Colonel's health became uncertain, and he was sent down to Trupp of Beachbourne.

While there Mrs. Lewknor caught influenza, and Mr. Trupp attended both.

A delightful intimacy sprang up between the three. The Colonel's sardonic humour and detached outlook upon life appealed to the great surgeon almost as much as did Mrs. Lewknor's experience and width of view to his wife.

Mr. Trupp attended his patients once a day for a fortnight.

When he paid his last visit, Mrs. Lewknor thanked him and asked him for his account.

"I'll see," answered Mr. Trupp. "What are you going to do when you leave here?"

"Go back to London and look out for a job, I suppose."

Mr. Trupp shook his head.

"The Colonel mustn't go back to London," he said. "Why not stay here and find your job here?"

He expounded his pet plan, cherished faithfully for years, of an Open-Air Hostel for his tuberculous patients.

"There's a site available in Coombe-in-the-Cliff," he said, "just at the back. Build a Home. I'll fill it for you. You'll make a lot of money."

Mrs. Lewknor was thrilled at the project. It was at least a great adventure; and, coming of the lion-hearted race that conquered Canaan, she had no fears.

The Colonel, it is true, was more tempered in his enthusiasm, but then, as he was fond of saying,

"I haven't the courage of a louse. No man has."

And he was content to stand aside, as often before, and watch his wife's audacities with admiration not untinged with irony.

She took a tiny house in Holywell for herself and her husband, set out to raise money with which to buy the site in Coombe-in-the-Cliff, and sat down in earnest to work out the scheme in co-operation with the inspirer of it.

Her visits to Old Town to consult Mr. Trupp were almost daily. In fine weather she would walk across the Golf Links; and when the turf was like a soaped sponge she would go round by the road through Beech-hangar.

Here one bitter April afternoon she marked a tall bowed old man walking dreamily under the beech-trees, the light falling through the fine net-work of twigs on his uplifted face. His hands were behind him, and he wore an old-fashioned roomy tail-coat.

Mrs. Lewknor's swift feminine eyes took him in at a glance.

He was a gentleman; he lived out of the world; and there was somebody at home who cared for him: for it was clear that he was not the kind of man who would care for himself.

As she drew near, she glanced away, and yet confirmed her impression with that trick of the well-bred woman who somehow sees without looking.

Then, as she passed him, a wave of recognition overwhelmed her, and she stopped suddenly.

"Mr. Edward Caspar!" she cried.

He, too, had half turned.

"I was wondering if you'd remember me," he rumbled, beaming kindly down on the little lady through gold-rimmed spectacles. "You still walk as if you were dancing."

"Who am I?" she asked.

"I don't know," he answered. "Thirty years ago you were Rachel Solomons."

The profound spiritual affinity which had made itself felt in that unforgettable moment under the palms in Grosvenor Square long ago manifested itself instantly.

Time was not. Only two spirits were, who recognized the familiar beat of each other's wings in the dark spaces of Eternity.

She regarded him affectionately.

"How's it gone?" she asked.

"Not so bad, I suppose," he mused. "Better than I expected, if worse than I hoped. I'm dreaming still instead of doing."

"Any big things in your life?"

"One."

"A woman?" fearlessly.

"No. My son. And he was taken from me—for ever, I thought at the time. And after that I made the Discovery."

The little lady nodded.

"It's worth making," she said.

"Yes," replied the old man with the sudden leaping enthusiasm she remembered so well of old, and the same spreading flush, "and you don't make it till you've lost everything. That's the condition."

He had turned and was rambling along at her side, as if he had belonged to her for the thirty years in which they had not met.

They walked together thus down the New Road, along Rectory Walk, and turned into Church Street.

Anne Caspar from the bedroom-window saw them pass and wondered.

They were not talking: Anne was glad of that. Her Ned was ambling along, apparently unaware of the little lady, strong as she was fine, walking at his side.

The pair turned down the hill at Billing's Corner.

It was afternoon, and the street was almost empty save for a shabby man walking up the hill towards them from the Star.

They did not see him, absorbed more in themselves than in each other; but he saw them and stepped into the porch of the parish-church as though to avoid them.

Just opposite the porch Edward Caspar came to himself and said good-bye with grunts.

Mrs. Lewknor looked after his heavy figure toiling laboriously up the hill.

Then her eyes caught the eyes peeping at her from the porch—eyes that possessed the same wistful quality as those of the man who had just left her side: eyes somehow familiar that were smiling at her.

"Why, Caspar!" she cried, and crossed the road.

The man left the beam against which he was leaning, and came towards her suddenly. There was a curious wan smile upon his face. He lurched, held out his hand like a child for help, and fell his length in the road.

A man from the iron-monger's shop opposite came out.

"He's out of work," he said. "He's half-starved. There's a lot the same. Funny world."

Mrs. Lewknor was horrified.

"Take him into the porch," she cried, "out of the road. He'll be run over here."

"No, not into the church!" came an authoritative voice. "I know the man. The church is a sacred edifice."

It was the Archdeacon. He bent his somewhat dandiacal figure elaborately, put his nose close to Ernie's lips, and sniffed deliberately.

"No, sir, it's not that," said the iron-monger shortly. "It's food he wants."

"Ah," said the Archdeacon, rising in gaitered majesty, his painful duty done. "I'm glad to heah it."

Mrs. Lewknor was trembling with fury.

Ernie, on his back in the mud, stirred and opened his eyes.

He saw wavering faces all about him.

"Guess I'm all right now," he said.

"Give him air!" ordered the Archdeacon magnificently. "Ayah, I say!" and he made a sweeping gesture with his arm to brush away the crowd who were not there.

"He's had plenty of air," retorted Mrs. Lewknor with the curt brutality that distinguished her on rare occasions. "What he wants is something more solid than he gets from the pulpit."

The Archdeacon eyed her de-haut-en-bas. From his undergraduate days he had believed implicitly in the power of his eye to master and demoralize his enemies and those of his Church, and the Lady Augusta Willcocks had loyally fostered his belief.

Now, however, his antagonist refused to be demoralized.

He saw that she was a lady, suspected that she might be "somebody," and with that fine flair for the things of this world which characterize the successful of his profession, he retired on gaitered legs with a somewhat theatrical dignity.

Ernie was helped to his feet.

A car, coming slowly down the hill, ground to a halt.

Mr. Trupp leaned out and took in the scene.

"Ernie, get up alongside your brother, will you?" he said. "Mrs. Lewknor!"

The car rolled on its way with its two new occupants.

"He don't want me," muttered Mr. Trupp in his companion's ear. "He wants my cook."

Mrs. Lewknor, still seething, recorded the incident.

"The Church is the limit," she snapped. "I could have pushed that man over in the mud."

"Yes," said Mr. Trupp soothingly. "But you mustn't take the Church too seriously. The right way to look on it is as rather a bad joke."

That evening, after his coffee, Mr. Trupp laid down his evening paper and stared long into the fire as his manner was.

His wife and daughter waited for the word that was slowly brewing.

It came in time.

"Men grow when they've got to," he announced at last with humorous sententiousness.

"They can't grow much without food," said Bess with warmth. The incident of the afternoon had stirred her generous young soul to the deeps. "It's monstrous!"

"It is," her father agreed. "And it's all because Civilization has thrown up a class that's above the Discipline it imposes upon others."

Mrs. Trupp eyed her husband sternly.

"William Trupp!" she said, "I believe you're a Socialist."

"My dear," he answered, "I've been told that before."

"Bess and I don't want to hear your viewy views," continued the lady. "We want to talk about flesh-and-blood Ernie and how to help him."

"Hear! hear!" said Bess.

"My dears," replied the annoying man, "it's just Ernie I'm talking about. He's growing again. My old friend Necessity's at work on him once more."

CHAPTER XLIX
ALF MARKS TIME

The scene outside the parish-church in Old Town, when Mrs. Lewknor challenged the Archdeacon, marked the turn in Ernie's material fortunes.

The Reverend Spink handed on his version of the affair to Mr. Pigott at the Relief Committee that evening.

"He was laying on his face in the road dead drunk opposite the church-door when his brother picked him up," he reported, round-eyed and spectacled. "His poor, poor people!"

"Ah," said Mr. Pigott, "was he?—I know where you got that story from."

The curate tried to be rude in his turn, but he was not so good at it as the more experienced man.

"Such a place to choose!" he continued, turning to Colonel Lewknor. "Opposite the church-door! Just like him!"

"Such a place, indeed!" echoed the Colonel, quiet and courteous. "What's the good of lying down to die of starvation at the door of the Church of all places? Will she open to you?"

Mr. Pigott disliked the Reverend Spink almost as much as he disliked the curate's protÉgÉ. Next day the contrary man sent for Ernie and offered him a job as lorry-man in the Transport Company.

"I know you and you know me," he said in his most aggressive manner. "So it's no good telling a pack o lies to each other that I can see. Start at twenty-three a week, with chances of a rise if you keep at it steady. Begin Monday.... And it's your last chance, mind!"

Ernie ignored the insults and leapt at the offer.

The Southdown Transport Company ran motor-lorries between Newhaven and Beachbourne, carrying seaborne coal and other merchandise from the harbour on the Ouse to the town under Beau-nez.

Ernie liked the work.

It kept him out of doors, under the sky, and in touch with the old-world elemental things he loved. The breath and bustle of the harbour at Newhaven; the long ride on the motor-lorry through the hill-country at all seasons of the year; even the pleasant acrid smell of the coal and coke in the lorry and on his overalls was pleasant and satisfying to him.

He worked steadily, paid his debts, and for the first time in his life began gradually to save money.

That autumn his father asked him if he wouldn't return home to live.

"Alfred's left us," said the old man.

"Has he?" asked Ernie surprised. "Where's he gone then?"

"He's gone to live above his garage," replied the other. "Something's happening to Alfred," he added. "I don't know what."

Alf, in fact, was changing; and Mr. Trupp was watching the evolution of his chauffeur with a detached scientific interest that his wife defined as inhuman.

And that evolution was proceeding apace. Alf was living alone above his garage; he had introduced a girl into his office; and he was no longer getting on.

Mr. Trupp noted the last as far the most significant symptom of the three.

Alf had climbed in his career to a certain point, and there he stuck fast. His business neither went ahead nor back. He was still doing well and saving money. The wonder was that he was not doing better.

But the reason was clear enough to the penetrating eye of the old surgeon, to whom his chauffeur was an absorbing study in mental pathology: Alf was no more a man of one idea; his energies were no longer concentrated solely on getting on to the exclusion of all else. The emotional side of him, battered down from infancy, was revenging itself at last. Desperately it was seeking an outlet, no matter how perverted: certainly it would find one.

"He's suffering from life-long repression," the Doctor told his wife. "Now he's got to find a safety-valve."

In his own mind Mr. Trupp had no doubt as to the form the safety-valve would take.

About that time Mrs. Trupp, meeting Mr. Pigott in the Moot, asked him how his new hand was getting on.

"Working steady as Old Time," replied the other with satisfaction.

"I like the look upon his face," Mrs. Trupp remarked. "He's always expecting."

"Yes," replied the old school-master, "expecting angels—like his father."

"Perhaps he'll find them," smiled Mrs. Trupp.

That evening, as it chanced, she met her godson under the elms in Saffrons Croft, and stopped him.

It was May now. The hope illuminating air and sky and every living thing was reflected in Ernie's face. Indeed the young man looked inspired.

The two regarded each other affectionately.

"Ernie," said the lady, colouring faintly.

"Yes, 'm."

"Are you still thinking of that girl you told me about?"

The other's face glowed like the moon.

"I never hardly think of nothing else, 'm."

"I knew you were," answered Mrs. Trupp. She added with a sudden lovely smile: "You'll find her—if you're faithful."

"That's what dad keeps on, 'm," Ernie answered. "And I know I shall too. See, I keep all the while a-drawin her to me." He made the motion of one hauling on a line. "She can't escape me—not nohows."

He turned on her the earnest eyes of the evangelist, and began to wag an impressive finger in the way she loved.

"See, you can draw down what you want—only you must want it with all your heart. 'Taint no good without that. Alf, now, he draws down money. For why?—that's what he wants. Now I want something else."

The lady regarded him with wise shrewd interest.

This New Thought, as the foolish called it, how old it was, how universal, how deeply embedded in the primitive consciousness of the common man! Ernie, to be sure, did not read Edward Carpenter nor the works of any of that school; but instinct and experience had led him to knock at the same door.

"And if Alf wanted something different, too?" she asked.

Ernie shook a sceptical head.

"He wouldn't—not really. That ain't Alf. Money's what Alf wants and what he gets by consequence. He's only for himself, Alf is. If he went out a'ter anything else he'd only go half-hearted like, therefore he wouldn't get it. He'd be a house divided against hissalf. So he'd fall."

The two brothers now rarely met and never spoke.

Just sometimes Ernie in his grimy overall, sitting with arms crossed and sooty face upon a load of coal in the jolting lorry, would be passed by Alf at the wheel of his thirty horse-power car, stealing by without an effort or a sound, swift as the wind, silent as the tide.

On these occasions Ernie, perched aloft on his load, would detect the smirk on his brother's face, and knew that Alf was feeling his own superiority and hoping that Ernie felt it too.

In those days Ernie learned to know the corner of England in the triangle between Lewes, the Seven Sisters, and Beau-nez as he had never known it before. And the closer grew his intimacy the greater became his love.

The quiet, the strength, the noble rounded comeliness of the hills reminded him of the woman he sought. True, she disturbed him, present or absent; while they, in act or retrospect, comforted. But their full round breasts, rising clean and clear before him, stubble-crowned, green, purple, or golden against the blue, gave him a sense of earth rooted in the immensity of spirit and washed by the winds of heaven as did nothing else he knew but the woman he had lost.

"Wish I were a poet," he sometimes said to his father. "To put it all down what I feel, so others could see it too."

"Perhaps you are," his father replied.

And certainly if to be a poet is to love the familiar objects of the road, a poet Ernie was: for he loved them all—Lewes with its narrow streets, its steep hill to which you cling like a fly on a pane and look across to Mount Caburn for help; the old Pelham Arms, its walnut-tree at the back, the Fox, the Barley Mow, the Newmarket on the Brighton road; the hills running down in glorious nakedness to the highway, the tanned harvesters sitting among their sheaves; peeps of the blue Weald islanded with woods; and always accompanying him the long wall of the Downs, gloomy or gleaming, here smooth as the flanks of a race-horse, there scarred, grim, weather-worn and pocked, in winter dazzling white beneath the blue, ruddy in autumn sunsets, emerald in April days; and all the year gathering the shadows at evening in the Northward coombes to spill them over the expectant Weald like purple wine when the door of night had closed upon the sun.

The lorries to and from Newhaven always took their way through the valley of the Ruther. Once or twice in that winter, as they bumped down High'nd Over from Sea-foord into Aldwoldston at evening, Ernie was surprised to find the chocolate-bodied car lying apparently derelict in the roadway at the steep entrance to the village; and wondered if the surviving Miss Caryll who still lived in the Dowerhouse at the foot of the hill was ill.

And again one evening in the spring, as he jolted through the village-street, past the great chestnut lit with a thousand tapers in the market-square, he was aware of a man on a motor-bicycle pelting past him up the hill. The man wore motor-goggles; but there was no mistaking Alf, bowed over his handles, flashing past the Lamb, down the hill, and out of sight.

What was Alf doing at that hour of the evening on the