CHAPTER LV
THE POOL

Ernie was up and away early next morning.

It was Sunday; and there was nobody about except the few hurrying to early service in the parish-church.

Amongst these he noted Alf turning into the porch.

At Billing's Corner he met the Archdeacon, who passed him with disapproving eye, and the sour remark,

"You're off early, Caspar."

"Yes, sir," brightly. "I'm away over the hill."

"Ah," smirked the Archdeacon, "there are better ways of passing the Sabbath, I believe."

"Yes, sir," answered Ernie. "You'll find Alf awaitin you inside. He's doin it for us both."

The Archdeacon had never quite made up his mind whether Ernie was ingenuous or impertinent or both. But then he had never made up his mind about Ernie's father, though he had disliked his impalpable neighbour and feared him secretly for thirty years.

Ernie now turned into Rectory Walk, and paused outside No. 60.

The habits of the inmates he knew to a minute, and had timed himself accordingly.

His mother would be in the kitchen, preparing breakfast in her blue wrapper, while his father would be dressing.

Standing in the tiny square of garden among the tall tobacco plants, he tossed a cautious pebble through the upper window which was open.

"Dad!" he called, low.

The old man, spectacled, but collarless, in all the purity of a clean Sunday shirt, thrust out a touzled head.

"Found her," whispered Ernie.

His father nodded down benevolently. Then there sparkled in his eyes that remote and frosty twinkle which was the outward and visible sign of the change that had been wrought in him.

"And finding's keeping," he said.

In the glorious morning Ernie took the hill, marching through the gorse to the song of larks. On the one hand the Weald lay spread beneath him like a green lagoon, dimming to blue; and on the other the great waters rose up to meet and mingle with the greater sky.

It was still early when he dropped down kestrel-haunted Wind-hover, over the corn-covered foothills, into the Brooks.

A white hand-bridge on red girders crossed the stream just under the mound on which stood the short-backed cathedral church with its thick-set tower, half-hidden by ash and sycamore.

On the bridge Ernie paused and looked across towards the village lying in the morning sunlight, a tumble of russet roofs hugger-mugger among gardens on the hill, the old brown tiles crudely patched here and there with raw red ones; beyond the roofs the bare Downs; and at the foot of the hill, just across the green, tiny Frogs' Hall with the honeysuckle about the door, and Mus Boam sitting as always on his bricks, spectacles on nose, and Book spread on his knees.

Then Ernie was aware of a movement in the water underneath him and glanced down. Just beside the bridge a willow leaned over the stream.

Here in a pool, sheltered by bridge and tree, a young woman stood, her skirts kilted, and the water to her knees.

She wore the same orange scarf as on the previous evening, and the same earth-coloured gabardine; but her arms were bare; and in them was a naked babe.

Standing amid water-weeds, the stream glancing in the sunshine about her, and the lights and shadows dappling her face as the willow above her stirred, she dipped the child and cooed, and dipped and cooed again, while the babe kicked and flung its arms and laughed.

Beyond the stream heifers, black and red and white, moved leisurely in the flat green water-meadow or flicked their tails in the shadow of the straggling hedge that divided the Brooks from the long foot-hill, of the form and colour of a rainbow, which curved against the background of smooth Windhover.

Ernie, on the bridge, himself unseen, watched the young woman, with contented eyes.

Happy in her motherhood, Ruth had clearly forgotten for the moment her troubles and her tragedy.

Quietly Ernie moved off the bridge and took his stand beside the willow on the bank.

Ruth saw him now, smiled a casual greeting, and continued her labours.

Suffering, it was clear, had crushed all self-consciousness out of her. She knew no shyness, no false shame; performing her natural functions simple as a creature of the Wilderness.

Then she came wading towards him, her baby wet and slippery in her arms. The sun had burnt her a rich olive hue, deepening the red in her cheek, touching her throat to gold. With her orange turban crowning her swarthy hair she looked a gypsy Juno.

More massive than of old, matured in face and figure, she was a woman now and not a girl: one who had fought and suffered and endured, and bore on her body the stigmata of her ordeal. There was no laughter in her, and no trace of coquetry. Almost austere, nobly indifferent, she was facing life without fear and with little hope.

Ernie was shy and self-conscious as she was the reverse.

"You don't go to the Lock then?" he said stupidly.

"Nay," Ruth answered. "The Lock's for the lads. This'n's for baby and me. More loo like."

"She seems to favour it," said Ernie.

"Aye, she's unaccountable fond of the water, same as her mother." Her speech had taken once again the tone of her village environment.

The young mother sat down on the bank, and turning the child face down, began to stroke her back with strong caressing rhythmical sweep.

Ernie, watching, was amazed at the skill and easy masterfulness of her motions.

"Who learned you that?" he asked.

"Seems to coom like," she answered. "I doos it most days in general."

"She likes that," said Ernie wisely, watching the squirming rogue.

"Doosn't do her no harm anyways," answered the mother.

She put the little naked thing to sprawl and crawl and scramble on the grass beside her.

"Sun and wind and water," she said. "Give a child them three; and she wun't need for no'hun else—only food. That's what Mr. Trupp says. And I reck'n he says right."

Standing up, the water still covering her feet, she dropped her skirt.

He gave her his hand to help her on to the bank.

"The sun's burnt you," he remarked.

"Aye," she answered. "I been in the hay these three weeks past. We've carried all now, only Pook's Pasture."

Her humming voice soothed and satisfied him as of old. He listened to it as to a familiar song heard again after many years. He did not catch the words of the song, nor care to. It was the air and its associations that held his heart. Then he woke from his dream to find the woman at his side saying:

"I shall wait over harvest. I promised Mr. Gander that. See I work good as a man. Better'n some, hap," with a gleam of the old Ruth and a little backward toss of the head. "Then I shall goo."

Ernie roused swiftly.

"Where'll you goo then?"

"Back to service."

Ernie was staggered.

"And what about her?" nodding at the baby gurgling and squirming in the grass.

Ruth answered nothing, but her face stiffened.

He felt in her the fierce and formidable power he had felt on the previous evening beside the stream.

Here was not the Ruth he had known. Nature had roused in the mother forces, beautiful but terrible, of which the maid had not been conscious.

She stood with high head, like a roused stag, looking across the water-meadows to the foothills.

Then her chest began to heave.

"There's not enough," she said deeply. "I been home more'n a twal month now. Dad's got the pension, and there's what the Squire allows him and the cottage; and I doos the milkin at the Barton and earns well at whiles in the hay and harvest. But 'taren't enough. We can't make out—not the four of us and a growin child. I must just goo back to service. I made the mistake, and I must pay—not them."

Ernie came closer.

"No, you won't," he said masterfully. "You'll marry me."

She shook her head, swallowing her tears. Then she laid her hand upon his arm.

"Thank-you, Ernie," she said. "I just can't do that."

"Why not then?" fiercely.

"Ern," she panted, "if I married any I'd marry you. But I'll marry no'hun now."

She sat down under the willow and began to dress her babe.

Ern stood above her, dogged and determined.

"Say! why can't you marry me then?" he persisted.

As though in answer she dandled the child. Then she lifted her face to his, and in her eyes there was the flash and challenge of a love so fierce that Ernie felt himself suddenly afraid.

"I doosn't regret it," she said. "Never!—I'd goo through it all again for her sake and glad. She's worth it—every dimple of her!" And she laid her lips upon the child's with a passion that was almost terrible.

"You done no wrong, whoever did," mumbled Ernie, awed still by this eruption of reality. "'Twarn't no fault o yours—or hers for the matter of that."

Ruth rose and tossed her baby over her shoulder with an easy careless motion that frightened Ernie as much as it thrilled him. The child lying now face down, and doubled like a sack, sucked her thumb and regarded him with the blue eyes of her father.

Together they walked across the field towards the yellow-daubed cottage with the steep brown roof and mass of honeysuckle over the door, standing with its back to the tumbled houses on the hill behind.

"Mind, Ruth. I won't take no," insisted Ernie. "You need protection. A young woman like you do."

"Never!" said Ruth.

Ernie, unconscious of his companion's irony, ploughed on his ox-like way.

"You don't know what men are," he continued.

Her brown eyes flashed, and then dwelt on him with wistful humour.

"I should," she said. "This last two year and all," she added with solemn bitterness. "I knaw now why girls go down. They makes one mistake, then the Alfs get em. And when the Alfs get em they're done. They're like stoats, Alfs are; and we're the rabbits. Hunt you down, jump on you, and then suck the blood out of your brain. Often I've seen em at it in the hawth."

"Alf!" cried Ernie, his blood a maelstrom within him.

He tried to halt, but she marched on.

"What's he been doin to you?" hoarsely pursuing.

She answered painfully.

"You knaw yesterday?"

"Yes."

There was a harsh, almost cruel note in his voice.

She turned on him, anger and laughter battling in her eyes. Then she saw a look upon his face, dark, sullen, and suffering, such as she had never seen there before.

"I done no wrong, Ern," she said. "No need to be that savage wi me."

He became quiet; and she resumed.

"He's been goin on at me a year now—tryin to get me."

"Does he want to marry you?"

Ruth drew back her upper lip till the teeth gleamed white. She looked splendidly scornful.

"Marry me!" she sneered. "That isn't Alf. He wants me—for his sport. Alfs don't marry—not the likes o' me anyways. That ties em down. They want the pleasure, but they won't pay the price."

They had reached Frogs' Hall, mounted the high step, and entered.

Ruth put the child to bed, and then rejoined Ernie in the kitchen.

"Tell the rest," said Ernie. He was white and dogged.

Again she gave him battle with her eyes; and again marked the look upon his face and relented.

"Last week he wrote. Asked me to meet him in the willow-clump by the Lock at sun-down. I thought best goo and have it out with him. It's been goin on over a year now."

"Wasn't you afraid?" asked Ernie in awe and admiration.

"Afraid of him?" she scoffed, and stripped her arm that was smooth as marble, thick as a cable, and sinuous as a snake. "I can load against the men in the hay. You ask Mus Gander. And I knaw Alf." ...

An envelope was in her hand.

"Here's the latter."

She gave it him.

It was undated, and typewritten, and torn, but on the top there was still left enough of the heading to be decipherable—Caspar's Garage, Saffrons Croft, Beachbourne.

The letter contained an assignation, an indecent suggestion, and a threat; and it was signed Little Cock Robin.

A small fire spluttered in the grate.

Ernie flung the letter on to it, and held it down in the flame with vicious heel.

Ruth was on her knees in a moment, trying to rescue the charred fragments.

"Eh, but you shouldn't ha done that, Ernie!" she cried.

"Why not then?" flashed the other. "Hell's filth, flame's food."

Ruth rose, her attempt at salvage having failed.

"Ah," she said, "you're simple. You doosn't knaw men. You think they're all same as you. I've learned other. There's a kind of man who when he's got the sway over you there's only one way with him."

"And what's that?"

"Get the sway over him."

He looked at her sternly and with devouring eyes.

"Has Alf got the sway over you?"

She was stirred and tumultuous, the chords of her being swept by a mighty wind.

"He thinks he has," she panted. "That's one why I'm gooin into service—to get away."

"You could never leave the child!" cried Ernie.

"It's just her I'm thinking of."

He came closer.

"I claim her!" he cried passionately. "I've a right to her—and to her mother too."

She smiled at him wistfully.

"Ah, you think you're strong!"

"Aye, I'm strong enough when I like. Trouble with me is I don't often like."

She shook her head; but he felt the resistance dying out of her.

"Goo away now, Ernie!" she pleaded, choking. "Don't tempt a poor girl! There's a dear lad!"

"I'll goo away if you'll think it over."

"I'll think it over—if you'll goo away."

She threw up her head.

Beneath her eyelids the tears welled down.

He drew her to him: his lips were close to hers; his eyes on hers.

Gently she disengaged.

"Nay, lad, you mustn't," she said. "I must just reap where I've sown, as the old Book says, and make amends as best I can. No need to drag down all I love along o me." She added on that new note which thrilled him so strangely, "Not as I regrets my child. Never!"

CHAPTER LVI
FROGS' HALL

It was just about the time of Ernie's discovery of Ruth that Mrs. Trupp announced firmly to her husband one evening, a propos of nothing in particular,

"I shall tell him where she is now."

"She mustn't be let down again," grunted Mr. Trupp, who was devoted to Ruth.

"Ernie won't let her down," answered Mrs. Trupp with bright confidence. "He's an absolute gentleman. All the Beauregards are."

"Alf, for instance," commented the curmudgeon across the hearth.

"So that's that," continued the lady with the emphasis of one who scents opposition. "She wants help; and he wants her. And he's been true to her for a year and a half now. That's a long time in that class," she went on with fine inconsistency. "So that's settled."

"Pity," grumbled the recalcitrant. "He's doing nicely now, Pigott tells me—and will so long as he doesn't get what he wants. If she marries him she'll make him happy and comfortable. She's just the sort of woman who would. And he'll go to pieces at once. There's nothing to muck a man's career like a happy marriage."

Mrs. Trupp looked severely at the wicked man over her spectacles.

"It's lucky your marriage has proved such a failure, William Trupp," she said.

The other drank his coffee and licked his lips.

"What's done can't be undone, my dear," he grinned. "Bess, ask your mother to give me another cup of cawfee."

Mrs. Trupp had no need to send for Ernie after all. For he called, and sitting in the dusk of the great French-windowed drawing-room in the very chair in which eighteen months before he had told of his loss, he told now of his treasure trove.

There was no reserve or concealment between the two. What one did not know of the story the other could add. They were friends, intimates, made one by their common feeling for a woman who had suffered and endured.

"One thing I knaw," said Ernie deeply. "She didn't commit adultery, whoever did."

Mrs. Trupp, as often, wondered at and was made ashamed by the direct and spiritual insight of a rough-handed working man.

"She loved him," said Ernie. "That's just all about it. Didn't know what he was, no more than a lamb knows what a tiger is till he's got her."

"She's a good woman," responded Mrs. Trupp soberly; and added on a note, half-mischievous, half-cautious, not a little provocative—"I wonder if she'll have you."

Whatever fears for the outcome of his enterprise Mrs. Trupp might entertain, Ernie himself had none.

Indeed for so diffident a man he was astonishingly confident in a quiet way; and besieged his lady with a conquering sense of victory that would brook no doubt and little delay.

Every Sunday morning found him crossing the white bridge at Aldwoldston; and many a week-day evening saw him in Frogs' Hall.

It took him just an hour to trundle an ancient bicycle, lent by Mr. Pigott, from Billing's Corner to the Market Cross after his day's work was done; and an hour back, with the moon hanging over Wind-hover and the night-jars purring in the woods under the northern escarpment of the Downs. But he was young; the August evenings were long-drawn and full of scents and the cries of partridges; and the hour he spent with Ruth in the Brooks, strolling along the tow-path under the pollarded willows to the sound of rooks homing and high-strewn in the heaven, was worth the toil.

The time was between the hay and the straw; and Ruth, apart from her milking at the Barton, was not pressed with work.

She liked his visits, and looked for them; but she drew no nearer to him, nor ever invited him to come. Friendly always, even affectionate, she kept between them a cloud, impalpable and impenetrable. At the end of a month he knew that he was no closer to his goal than when he had met her first upon the river-bank.

The old folks grew to love the constant visitor, nor did he disguise the errand on which he was bent; while little Alice, with her father's eyes peeping from beneath her mother's curls, greeted her new friend with screams of joy, bangings on her drum, and the loveliest and most intimate of smiles.

Ernie made the child a cradle-swing of willow-withes, hung it from the bough of an apple-tree, in the garden, and passed many a happy hour alone with her.

One evening Ruth, returning from the Dower-house, her yoke upon her shoulders, found him in the garden on the hill at the back of the cottage, swinging the child and singing.

She bent her knees and lowered her milk-cans to the ground. The clanking of the cans on the stone caught Ernie's ears. He turned from his labour of love to see Ruth standing in the door in her earth-coloured gabardine.

She smiled at him; and in her eyes there was the gleam, mysterious and darkling, with which good men are sometimes blessed by their women.

Ernie bent over the cradle.

"Who'm I, baby?" he asked.

The little singing voice from the basket-cradle made answer sweetly in one brief bubble-word.

Ruth heard it, put her hand to her heart, and turned slowly away, the chains of the yoke upon her shoulders jingling faintly.

Ernie came to her.

"You mustn't, Ernie," she murmured.

"I must then," he whispered in her ear, "my dear love—my lady."

His arm stole about her; but she put it aside, and regarded him with eyes that were great and grieved under the evening sky.

"Ernie," she said in her gently thrilling voice. "Goo away, there's a dear lad—afoor worse comes of it. You can't help me; and I might harm you."

He took her hands in his, and kissed them.

A working-man in speech, in habit, and in garb, he made love always as a Beauregard. Indeed in the great moments of his life it was always one of those pale chivalrous gentlemen who stood out amid the motley and tumultuous concourse of the forbears who thronged his path.

"But you can help me, Ruth," he told her. "I got my weakness. I dare say you've heard tell."

For the first time the girl in her, long hidden, peeped out at him, shy yet shrewd.

"I remember what they used to say at the Hotel," she answered, with the overwhelming simplicity of the pure in heart.

"You can help me conquer that," he urged. "No one else can, only you."

She said nothing, but gazed at him with new eyes, sweet and very grave, that seemed to sum him up.

At last he had moved her. Swift and sensitive almost as was she, he saw it instantly; and with the profound wisdom of the true lover said no more.

A few evenings later, he dropped off the lorry in the market-square, determined to pay Ruth a surprise visit two hours before his time, and walk home over Wind-hover afterwards.

He ran down River Lane at the back of the slaughter-house, grinning to himself. At the bottom of the lane a group of young willows bending plume-like over the wall at the corner ambushed him from Frogs' Hall. Covered thus he approached the cottage on tip-toe with the grins, the conspicuous elbow-work and elaborate stealth of the happy conspirator.

Ruth would have put the babe to bed. He would surprise her alone.

Frogs' Hall stood on a bank a foot or two above the Brooks to lift it over the winter floods and high leap-tides. Two windows only, one above the other, looked out over the river. Ernie peeped from his ambush. The lower window was open; and a voice came through it.

The voice was not that of Ruth, nor of her father or mother, but it was strangely familiar.

"You don't want me," it was urging. "Very well. So be it. And I don't want to do you no harm. Why should I?—I shan't tell no one what I know. Only you must give me back that letter in exchange. Fair is fair. See, we've both made mistakes, you and me. That's the short of it. But there's no reason any one should know if you'll only be sensible."

Ernie heard Ruth's answer, low and passionate.

"I wun't give it you then!—I'll hold it over you. Then I'll know I got you safe. Show it your Church friends and Mrs. Trupp and all."

Alf laughed harshly.

"Think it over, my lass," he said. "I'll call again in a day or two. I can twist your tail, and I will if you want."

He came out of the low-browed door, his eyes down, a thwarted look upon his face. It was not till he had descended the steps into the Brooks that he was aware of the man standing against the bunch of willows on his left.

He turned about with a grunt and made off in the direction of Parson's Tye.

A few yards away he turned again and came back swiftly, his eyes down, and face troubled.

"Say, Ernie!" he began.

Ernie, under the tossing willow-plumes, awaited him coldly.

Alf seemed to feel that he had run up against the wall of the other's hostility. He stopped short, turned abruptly once more, and bustled away, jerking a handful of words over his shoulder.

"All right," he said. "Have it your own way. Only don't blame me. That's all. But there is a law in the land."

Ernie stood with folded arms, and watched his brother across the Tye and out of sight.

Then thoughtfully he mounted the steps of the cottage, knocked at the door, and entered the kitchen.

Ruth sat by the fire, staring into it, on her face that formidable look of an animal driven to bay he had before remarked.

He stood in the door and watched her.

"Ruth," he said at last.

Her profile was to him, her hands bound about her knees. She did not stir, but she was aware of his presence.

"He ain't got nothing against you, Alf ain't?" Ernie continued.

His face was wrung, his voice thick and unnatural.

Ruth rose slowly; slowly she came to him, and put both hands on his shoulders.

She lifted her face, and it was blind and quivering.

"O, Ernie!" she cried. "It was him drove me that day."

Ernie smiled, in his relief his hands clasping her elbows, his eyes dwelling on her twittering lids.

"I knaw'd that then," he answered broadly.

She opened her eyes on him swiftly, and stared aghast.

"Did you?" she panted. "How?"

"I saw ye."

She huddled closer to him, and laid her head upon his shoulder as though to hide her face.

"Where did you see me?" she whispered.

"At the Decoy. East Gate. That afternoon."

Suddenly she drooped, and seemed to hang about him. He put his arms about her; otherwise she would surely have fallen.

He sank into a chair; and it was some while before she gathered herself and rose.

One hand on the mantel-piece, she stood gazing into the fire, panting.

"Alf's the only one as knows who he was—only you and Madame," she said at last. "And you're safe." She lifted her eyes to his and continued appealingly. "He done me wrong, Ernie. But he's her father all said. And I wouldn't for worlds any harm come to him through me. He was mine one time o day, tany rate. And I must protect him, best I can."

"He can protect himself, I reck'n," said Ernie bitterly. "Don't ardly need you to see to him, I reck'n."

She looked up swiftly.

"It'd wreck his career if it was known. They'd bowl him out of the Army surely."

"Who told you that?" asked Ernie.

For a fraction of a second she hesitated.

"He did," she said: and instantly saw her mistake.

Ernie rose, slow and white.

"Does he write then still?"

She felt the storms beating about her, and her bosom heaved.

"Only that once," she answered at length and lamely.

Ernie came pressing in on her with ruthless determination.

"May I see the letter?"

She flashed up at him with astonishing ferocity.

"No," and added heavily—"It's burnt."

She was clearly fencing with him; clearly not telling all the truth. He did not blame her. But he felt that helplessness, that irritation, of the male whose bull-headed rush is baffled by the woman's weapon, imponderable as air, elusive as twilight, soft and blinding as a fog; the weapons she has wrought in self-defence upon the anvil of her necessities through the immemorial ages of her evolution.

"He asked you to burn it, I suppose?" said Ernie bitterly.

Her bosom heaved. She did not answer him.

"Ah," continued Ernie remorselessly. "He knew you. Took advantage to the end."

Ernie was troubled for the moment by the incident, but the emotion it aroused in him was pity rather than anger.

Ruth had deceived him, he was sure. He did not believe that Royal had written her a letter. So skilled an adventurer, so expert a cad, would be little likely to commit himself on paper in such a matter. That ten-pound note had wound up the incident for him.

But the shifts to which a girl in Ruth's position must inevitably be driven seemed to him excusable, even in this case, admirable. Royal had betrayed and deserted her; and she repaid his treachery by a steadfastness beyond words.

With the capacity of true love, he made beauty out of an obvious blemish.

Here was a woman indeed!—Here was a lover!

Quietly he persevered.

CHAPTER LVIII
THE DOWER-HOUSE

When his father asked him how the chase went, Ernie answered with a grin,

"She hangs back a bit, dad. I spun and I pounced. What next?"

"Spin again," said the old man. "First the web; then the fly; and last the cocoon."

Ernie chuckled. Lying on the hillside amid the gorse and scrub he had often watched the spider at his work. The method was exactly as described by his father. The hunter spun his web and then retired to an ambush to wait. When the prey was caught and the wires brought the message to the citadel, he pounced. Next with incredible speed he wrapped his victim round in silk till it was but a swathed mummy to be absorbed at leisure.

"It's what I am a-doin, dad," said Ernie, and continued to wind his silken meshes about his prey; while others aided in the pleasant conspiracy.

One August afternoon Mrs. Trupp, after calling at the Dower-house, looked in at Frogs' Hall.

The little river ran like a white riband across the Brooks under shaggy willows tossing silvery tails. A flotilla of ducks came down the stream and landed quacking under the white bridge clumsily to climb the bank and waddle towards Parson's Tye. On the lower slopes of Wind-hover the corn still stood in sheaves, the stubble ruddy in the sunset on the bow-backed foothill across the stream.

Ruth sat and listened to her friend; on her face the perturbed look of the good woman genuinely determined to do what is right and honestly puzzled as to her course.

"Don't you love him, Ruth?" asked the other. "Is that the trouble?"

The young woman was deeply moved.

"I've left my heart behind me," she said. "I shall never love a man again—not like that. All that's left of me has gone to the child."

"Ruth," said the elder woman, "d'you know that most of the successful marriages I know are based on friendship? It's very few who pull off the Big Thing. And those that do often come to grief. They expect too much, and are disappointed."

She found herself, as always, talking to Ruth as she would have done to a girl of her own kind. There was no sense of class or caste between the two. They met simply on the ground of common humanity.

"Aye, I could be his friend," said Ruth slowly. "And more than his friend. There's none like Ernie. I'd give him all I got to give. That's a sure thing. I'd be that grateful to him and all."

"And there's little Alice," continued Mrs. Trupp.

"That's just it," cried Ruth passionately. "It's little Alice is all I think on. It's that makes me afear'd—lest I should be unfair to Ernie. See, I do love Ernie. You ca'an't help it. He's that good and unselfish. And I wouldn't hurt him for all the world—not if it was ever so."

"He's the kind of man who needs a woman to help him along the way," said Mrs. Trupp.

Ruth peeped at the other warily, even a thought jealously. What did she know of Ernie's weakness? For Ruth, if she was not in love with Ernie, felt for him that profound protective sense which the mother-woman invariably feels for a man who has shown himself dependent on her.

"Cerdainly it aren't as if he were one of the ambitious ones," she mused. "Cerdainly not. All for himself and gettin to de top, no matter about no one else."

"Like his brother," said Mrs. Trupp crisply.

"Aye," Ruth agreed, "like Alf. That's where it is. Both brothers want me, only they want me different. Alf thought I was his for the askin. Because I made my mistake he thought I was anybody's wench—to be had for money. That's where the difference lays atween him and Ernie. You could trust Ernie anywheres, a woman could."

"And that's the whole battle from the woman's point of view," said Mrs. Trupp, rising. "To trust your man. To know that, wherever he is and whatever he's doing, he won't let you down."

After her visitor had left, Ruth took the child and walked up River Lane to the butcher's at the top.

Marching thoughtfully between high walls, she met Miss Eldred, the daughter of a neighbouring Vicar.

Miss Eldred was an austere and lonely young woman, with a reputation for learning and advanced views, who took no part in the church life of the locality, and was even said to be a rationalist.

She and Ruth had known each other from childhood, and had always been somewhat antipathetic.

As the young woman coming down the lane saw the young woman coming up it, babe perched on shoulder, her lavender-grey eyes, remote and almost smouldering, kindled suddenly. The veil fell from before her face, and the spirit behind the clouds shone forth in wistful radiance.

She stopped.

"Ruth," she said in her staccato voice, "I envy you."

The young mother experienced a swift revulsion of feeling. A profound sympathy stirred her for this ungainly fellow-creature, the slave of circumstances, for whom the door of what Ruth now knew to be Eternity was little likely ever to open, unless forced.

Her instinct told her truly that she could best succour the other in her distress by herself seeking aid.

"See, I got the chance to marry, Miss," she began with beautiful awkwardness. "I don't rightly knaw what to be at."

The other's eyes became shrewd and critical.

"D'you like the man?" she asked harshly.

"We fits in pretty fair like," Ruth made answer without enthusiasm.

"Is he fond of the child?" continued the inquisitor.

"O, aye. He fairly dotes on her."

"I should take the chance," said the other with a gasp. "You've got the child.... That's the thing that matters.... You must put the child first.... Nothing else counts.... She'll be the better for a father."

Next Saturday Ernie strolled across the Brooks, as his custom on that evening was, to meet Ruth on her return from milking.

Her course never varied. She milked at the Barton, and carried the milk to the Dower-house. There she emptied her cans and filled them again with water which she carried home to Frogs' Hall to serve the uses of the cottage.

Ernie wandered across Parson's Tye, with the long green-backed clergy-house showing its thatch and black and white timber work above the hedge of arbor vitae, and out on to the main road at the sea-ward end of the village.

Here the Dower-house lay on the left of the road behind a wall. A solid building, comfortable and warm, with russet roof and dormer-windows under a dark sycamore, it had changed little maybe since the great days of old when Aldwoldston on the Ruther, with its tannery, its brewery, its river traffic, and procession of pilgrims passing through from Sea-foord to Michelham Priory, had challenged the supremacy of Lewes on the Ouse, and been something of a city when Beachbourne was still but a tiny hamlet on the hill between the sheep-runs of Beau-nez and the snipe-haunted Levels.

Ernie walked soberly along the dry moat that separated the garden-wall from the road. In the middle of the wall was a gate of open ironwork, wrought from Sussex ore, smelted by a Hammer Pond on Ashdown Ridge, and dating from the days when Heathfield was the centre of England's Black Country. The gate, high and narrow, made an eye in the wall with a heavy brow of ivy overhanging it. Ernie crossed the little bridge that spanned the moat between box-hedges, and half-hidden under a lilac against the ivy-covered wall, he peered through the open-work of the gate.

From his feet a long grass-path ran up between rank herbaceous borders to the house, ambushed by trees.

The clink of cans told him he had timed himself aright. At the far end of the walk was a thick bower over which the leaves of a vine, already turning, scrambled.

From the rich darkness of this bower Ruth now emerged, marching solemnly down the path. Her yoke was on her shoulders, her pails swinging, clanking, slopping.

She walked very deliberately, dressed in the worn earth-coloured gabardine that fell in nobly simple lines about her figure. Her eyes were down, her face grave; and the rakish orange turban wound about her head contrasted strangely with the noble seriousness of her face.

Ernie breathed deep as he watched her coming towards him down the grass-walk under pergolas crowned with roses and honeysuckle. From his covert his eyes followed her with tender content, for he thought she was not aware of his presence. But he was wrong.

A few yards from him, with a graceful dipping motion of the knees, she lowered her shining cans to the ground, disengaged them, and came to him, paler than her wont, the chains of the yoke she still carried now swinging free.

He opened the gate and approached her.

"Ernie," she said with a little sigh, "I'll marry you if you wish it." She paused. Her bosom was heaving, her eyes shuttered. Then she raised her head. "And I'm sure I thank you very much—me and baby."

Hard by a young fig-tree grew against the wall, low-branched and with long-fingered leaves. He drew her beneath the shelter of it, and gathered her slowly in his arms like a sheath of corn. He kissed her patient lips, her eyes; his tears bedewed her cheek; his hand was in hers, and she was kneading it.... Both hands were rough with toil.

Then she opened her eyes; and down in the brown deeps of them shone a lovely star.

"I pray I done you no wrong, Ern," she said, and smiled at him through mists.

Tenderly he removed the yoke from her shoulders and placed it on his own.

Then he bowed to the burden, and taking the road trudged solemnly homeward by her side, the cans clinking and water spilling as he moved.

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."

CHAPTER LX
THE END OF A CHAPTER

The char-a-banc, called by courtesy a coach, which was bound for what is known locally as "the long drive," waited at Billing's Corner for any Old Town passengers.

It had started from Holywell, and Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor sat beside the driver.

A ramshackle old gentleman came rambling furtively across the road.

The coachman nudged the Colonel.

"That's old Mr. Caspar," he whispered. He had for learning the profound respect of the illiterate. "They say he knows so much he don't know all he do know. Talks Hebrew in his sleep, they say."

The Colonel answered musingly.

"Is that Caspar?" and thought how little this old man had changed from the young man who forty years before had shambled just thus about the courts of Trinity.

The old gentleman, who had the air of being pursued, climbed to his place at the back of the char-a-banc.

Mrs. Lewknor turned. She knew that for some reason Fear had laid hold once more of her Man of Faith.

"Ah, Mr. Caspar!" she called in her gay voice. "I thought it was you!—I forget if you've ever met my husband."

"I knew your boy in India, Mr. Caspar," said the Colonel in his delightful manner. "He was one of the best cricketers in the regiment."

The friendly voices and kind eyes appeared to soothe the old man.

"He's going to be married to-morrow," he panted. "I'm just going over to Aldwoldston to see the lady."

In the village the char-a-banc drew up under the great chestnut-tree by the market-cross; while the passengers descended for tea in the black-and-white-timbered Lamb.

Mr. Caspar, too, got down. Mrs. Lewknor heard him ask the way to Frogs' Hall, and saw him lumber off in that flurried way of his as if pursued.

She followed him into River Lane.

He heard her and turned with eyes aghast behind his gold-rimmed spectacles.

She met him with swiftest sympathy.

"May I come with you, Mr. Caspar?" she asked.

He seemed relieved.

"Yes," he panted, and started off down the steep lane, between the high flint-walls embedded in nettles, at a shuffling trot regardless of the little lady following at his heels.

In the silence she gave him of her strength.

In the Brooks he paused and mooned helplessly across at the river and the hills squandered in the sunshine beyond and the cattle who mooned back.

"This is it," said Mrs. Lewknor in her cool confident voice. "This yellow-washed one, the man said."

"Yes," grunted Edward, once again relieved, and trotted off to the little cottage on the bank beside the willows.

He went up the steps and knocked.

Mrs. Lewknor loitered down to the stream.

Ruth opened. Her visitor glanced at her through dim spectacles; and strength came to him.

"Are you Ruth?" he asked.

The young woman's face lit up.

"Yes, sir," she said. "And I know who you are. I been hopin you might happen along. Come you in and sit down."

The old man mopped his neck.

"I mustn't," he said in tones that meant "I daren't," and continued hurriedly, "I should be getting back. I'm expected home. But I had to come and wish you well." He touched her arm tremulously. "Bless you, my dear!—He's a good lad, only weak." He lowered his voice. "Keep him on the curb a bit," he whispered hurriedly. "But not too much. That's where his mother made her mistake. Drove him away from her."

Mrs. Lewknor, standing by a willow on the river-bank, saw the old man turn.

Slowly she walked across the field to the cottage.

The young woman in the door watched her with uncertain eyes that seemed to leap towards her and then retreat and leap again.

"Is that.... That aren't Ern's mother?" she asked.

The lady paused, her fine eyes dwelling on a distant roof.

"No," said Mr. Caspar. "That's a friend."

Mrs. Lewknor, who had the love of her race for beautiful things, allowed her eyes to rest on the noble creature in the door.

"I know your Ernie though," she said charmingly. "He's a very old friend of mine."

The two women exchanged friendly glances and a few words.

Then Edward Caspar and his companion moved off into Parson's Tye.

The church stood four-square on the mound above them, the red tiles of the roof peeping through the trees.

"Shall we go in?" said Mrs. Lewknor.

"Let's," replied the other.

They sat together side by side in the aisle, amid the haunting memories of centuries.

When they emerged the Man of Fear had given place once more to the Child of Faith.

It was a very small party that started next day from Old Town for the wedding.

Besides Mr. and Mrs. Trupp there were in the chocolate-bodied car Mr. and Mrs. Pigott.

The great surgeon was at his surliest.

Mrs. Pigott noted it at once, and of course must take advantage.

"Do you like weddings, Mr. Trupp?" she asked brightly.

"Call it a wedding!" growled the other. "I call it a funeral. It's the end of a good man. He'll go to pieces now he's got all he wants. No: if you want to get the most out of a man, keep him asking. Once he's sated he's done.... What does Mrs. Pigott say?"

Mrs. Pigott said:

"Bob the cherry near his lips, but don't let him gobble it." The young woman gave a bird-like toss of her head and threw a teasing glance at her husband. "Bob the cherry. That's it."

When the car swung off the road at the foot of the village into Parson's Tye, Mr. Trupp was in more sober mood.

As the other three crossed the green to the church, he lingered behind.

"Comin in then, Alf?" he asked.

The chauffeur shook his head.

"I know's too much, sir," he said firmly. "No good won't come of evil—as ever I heard tell."

Mr. Trupp rolled away, coughing.

"Alf turned moralist!" he muttered.

The pair were to be married in church. For Ruth herself was "church" in the sense the working-class understand that word. Miss Caryll had taken considerable pains to effect her conversion, while her people, with the quiet tolerance of their kind, had made no objection.

Ruth herself had been profoundly indifferent, and underwent the change mainly to oblige. But while she rarely attended divine service herself, and was neither interested in the religious community to which she belonged nor affected by it, on the vital occasions of her life she expected it to do its duty by her—-to marry her, bury her, baptize and confirm her children; and she would have been astonished and aggrieved had it refused her the rites which were in her judgment her due.

The great church with its hollow-timbered roof like the bottom of an upturned ship, its bell-ropes looped and hanging from the central tower above the transept, is called by some the Cathedral of the Downs.

It was quiet now as a forest at evening, and empty save for Mr. and Mrs. Boam, straight-backed in black, Ruth sitting subdued between her father and mother, little Alice on her Granny's lap, and Ernie alone in the pew upon the right.

There was about the little gathering something of the solemnity of the hills which hemmed them round.

Mrs. Trupp, walking in the stillness up the aisle, was aware of it as she took her place at Ernie's side.

Then in the silence the singing voice of a little child floated out like a silver bubble of sound.

"Daddy," it said.

Ruth shot at the man across the aisle a sudden lovely look of affection and intimate confidence; and one soul at least, kneeling there in the sunshine, felt that the word sealed the covenant between this wayfaring couple, still only starting on their pilgrimage, as no offices of any priest could do.

THE END

Doubleday, Page & Co. hope to publish One Woman: being the sequel to Two Men, next spring.

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N.Y.