ONE WOMAN 
 
<Br THE SAME 
 DANNY 
 OWD BOB 
 BOY WOODBURN 
 THE GENTLEMAN 
 THE ROYAL ROAD 
 THE BROWN MARE 
 THE NEXT STEP 
 THE TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT 
 
 TWO MEN 
 
 Being the First Part of a Romance ^^ 
 
 of Sussex ' 
 
 " One of the most notable novels of the year .... comes 
 so near being something very big that the chief thing to be guarded 
 against is unwise enthusiasm." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 " There is not a character in this book that does not stand out 
 with the vividness of an etching." Truth. 
 
 14 If every author had the success he has earned, Alfred Ollivant 
 would be much more popular than he is. His latest novel ' Two 
 Men ' the third story he has written of Sussex life, is attracting a 
 good deal of attention and the signs of a general awakening of 
 interest in his work seem to indicate that be is at length coming 
 into his own." Globe. 
 
 " Unquestionably the best book he has yet written, the characters 
 are drawn with the vividness of life itself . . . the women are 
 drawn with the hand of a master." Country Life. 
 
 " An arresting novel .... there is an exhilirating atmos- 
 sphere pervading the book which Mr. Ollivant has captured from the 
 Downs." Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " Anne is a piece of portraiture that would alone make this superb 
 novel unforgettable . . . brilliant in its characterisation and 
 intensely engrossing in its human interest." Sussex Daily News. 
 
 " The characters, sharply contrasted as they are, are admirably 
 drawn and the narrative is never allowed to become tedious or 
 lacking in interest." Westminster Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Ollivant's story contains a great deal of lively observation." 
 Daily Mail. 
 
ONE WOMAN 
 
 Being the Second Part 
 of a Romance of Sussex 
 
 liY 
 
 ALFRED OLLIVANT 
 
 < 
 
 Aprh atoir souffert it faut souffnr encore 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 RUSKIN HOUSE, 40, MUSEUM STREET, W.C.i 
 
First published in 1921 
 
 \ 
 
TO 
 MY COUNTRY 
 
 4795 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE CARRIER'S CART 
 
 PART I 
 DEEPENING DUSK 
 
 I THE HOSTEL 21 
 
 II COW GAP - 30 
 
 III THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD 39 
 
 IV ALF --- 45 
 
 V THE CREEPING DEATH 5 1 
 
 VI THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET - 58 
 
 VII THE MAN FROM THE NORTH - 64 
 
 VIII THE CHERUB 71 
 
 IX THE SHADOW OF ROYAL - 76 
 
 X BOBS - 8l 
 
 XI THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN - 88 
 
 XII RUTH WAKES - 93 
 
 XIII NIGHTMARE - 98 
 
 XIV SHADOWS IO6 
 XV THE LANDLORD - - - 112 
 
 XVI THE GRANDMOTHER - I2O 
 
 XVII THE CHALLENGE 127 
 
 XVIII . A SKIRMISH - - 135 
 
 XIX PITCHED BATTLE 143 
 
 XX THE VANQUISHED - 149 
 
 XXI THUNDER - 159 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 TROUBLED DAWN 
 
 XXII THE BETRAYAL 
 
 XXIII THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 
 
 XXIV THE PILGRIMS 
 
 XXV RED IN THE MORNING 
 
 XXVI THE AVALANCHE MOVES 
 
 XXVII THE GROWING ROAR 
 
 XXVIII OLD TOWN 
 
 XXIX FOLLOW YOUR LEADER 
 
 XXX. THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 XXXI THE COLONEL 
 
 XXXII THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 
 
 XXXIII BEAU-NEZ 
 
 XXXIV THE STATION 
 XXXV IN THE EVENING 
 
 XXXVI RUTH FACES THE STORM 
 
 XXXVII MRS. LEWKNOR 
 
 XXXVIII SUSPENSE 
 
 XXXIX THE VALLEY OF DECISION 
 
 XL VICTORY AND REVENGE 
 
 I6 9 
 176 
 
 186 
 193 
 
 200 
 207 
 217 
 225 
 231 
 240 
 245 
 253 
 26O 
 269 
 
 275 
 28l 
 292 
 298 
 304 
 
 THE COMFORTER 
 
THE CARRIER'S CART 
 
 AN old-fashioned carrier's cart, such as you may still meet 
 on the roads of Sussex, tilted, one-horsed, and moving at 
 the leisurely pace of a bye-gone age, turned East at the 
 Turnpike, and made slowly along the Lewes-Beachbourne 
 road under the northern scarp of the Downs one evening 
 of autumn in 1908. In it, at the back of the driver, were a 
 young man and a young woman, the only passengers, 
 ensconced among hen-coops, flitches of bacon, and baskets 
 of greens. 
 
 They sat hand-in-hand. 
 
 The woman was a noble creature, about her the majestic 
 tranquillity of a great three-decker that comes to rest in 
 sunset waters after its Trafalgar. The man, but for a 
 certain wistfulness about his eyes which betokened undue 
 sensibility, was not remarkable. Till he spoke you would 
 have said he was a gentleman that is to say if your eyes 
 confined their scrutiny to his face and refused to see his 
 hands, his boots, his clothes. When he spoke you would 
 have recognised at once that he was Sussex of the soil as, 
 surely, was the woman beside him ; though the speech of 
 both was faintly marred with the all-pervading cockney 
 accent of those who have passed beyond the village-green 
 into the larger world of the England of to-day. 
 
 Both ca-a-ad musically enough ; but less by far than the 
 little carrier, whose round back blocked the view of the road, 
 and the twitching ears of old mare Jenny. For nearly 
 fifty years, man and boy, Isaac Woolgar had travelled twice 
 a day, six days a week, the road on which he was travelling 
 now. He had seen the long-horns those " black runts " 
 
io ONE WOMAN 
 
 so familiar to old- world Sussex give place to horses in the 
 plough upon the hill ; the horses in their turn supplanted on 
 the road by motors ; and men using the legs God had given 
 them to trundle wheels instead of walk. Undisturbed, he 
 plodded on his way, accompanied always by the wires 
 lifted on tall black poles, crowned with tiers of tiny porcelain 
 chimney-pots unknown in his youth, which had linked 
 Lewes with Beachbourae these forty years ; and he would 
 so plod until he died. The Star on the hill in Old Town, 
 Beachbourne, marked one end of his day's journey ; and 
 the equally ancient Lamb, at Aldwoldston, black-timbered 
 and gabled too, marked the other. He had never been 
 further " oop country/' as he called it, than Heathfield. 
 Lewes was the utmost term of his wanderings West, 
 Beau-nez East ; while the sea at Newhaven had bounded 
 him on the South. Within this tiny quadrilateral, which 
 just about determined also the wanderings of an old dog-fox 
 in Abbot's Wood, he had passed his life ; and nothing now 
 would ever induce him to pass the bounds he had allotted 
 himself. 
 
 To the man and woman in the cart old Mus. Woolgar 
 had been a familiar figure from childhood. The little girl 
 skipping by the market-cross in Aldwoldston would stop to 
 watch him start ; the little boy would wait at Billing's 
 Corner on the top of the hill to see him come along the New 
 Road past Mot combe at the end of his journey. Long 
 before either had been aware of the other's existence the 
 old carrier had served as an invisible link between them. 
 
 Now the two were married. 
 
 Ruth Boam had become Mrs. Ernie Caspar that after- 
 noon in the cathedral-church of Aldwoldston, on the mound 
 among the ash-trees above Parsons' Tye and the long 
 donkey-backed clergy-house that dates from the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 It had been a very quiet wedding. The father and 
 mother of the bride had stumped across from Frogs' Hall, 
 
THE CARRIER'S CART n 
 
 at the foot of the village, Ruth accompanying them, her 
 little daughter in her arms. For the rest, Dr. and Mrs. 
 Trupp had come over from Beachbourne with Mr. Pigott 
 and his wife in the chocolate-bodied car driven by the 
 bridegroom's brother. 
 
 Alf had not entered the church to see Ernie married. 
 He had mouched sullenly down to the river instead, and 
 stood there during the service, his back to the church, 
 looking across the Brooks to old Wind-hover's dun and shaven 
 flank with eyes that did not see, and ears that refused to 
 hear. 
 
 After the ceremony the car-party returned to Beach- 
 bourne by way of the sea climbing High-'nd-over, to drop 
 down into Sea-ford, and home by Birling Gap and Beau- 
 nez. From the almost violent gesture with which Alf had 
 set his engines in motion and drawn out of the lane under 
 the pollarded willows of Parson's Tye, he at least had been 
 glad to turn his back on the scene. 
 
 Ruth and her husband had returned to Frogs' Hall with 
 the old folk. 
 
 Later, as the sun began to lower behind Black Cap into 
 the valley of the Ouse, they went up River Lane and picked 
 up the carrier's cart by the market-cross. 
 
 For the moment they were leaving little Alice with her 
 grandmother while they settled into the Moot, Old Town, 
 where Ernie had found a cottage close to his work, not a 
 quarter of a mile from the home of his father and mother in 
 Rectory Walk. 
 
 The carrier's cart moved slowly on under the telegraph 
 wires on which the martins were already gathering : for 
 it was September. Now and then Ernie raised the flap that 
 made a little window in the side of the tilt, and looked out 
 at the accompanying Downs, mysterious in the evening. 
 
 " They're still there," he announced comfortably, 
 " and like to be yet a bit, I reckon." 
 
12 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " They move much same pace as us doos, seems to me/' 
 said Ruth. 
 
 " We should get there afoor them yet though/ 1 answered 
 Ernie. 
 
 " Afoor the Day of Judgment we might, if so be we 
 doosn't die o breathlessness first/ 1 the woman replied. 
 
 " You'd like a car to yourself you would/' chaffed 
 Ernie. " And Alf drivin you." 
 
 Ruth turned in her lips. 
 
 They moved leisurely forward, leaving Folkington 
 clustered about its village-green upon the right, passing the 
 tea-gardens at Wannock, and up the long pull to Willingdon, 
 standing among old gardens and pleasant fig-trees. Once 
 through the village the woods of Hampden Park green- 
 bosomed upon the left, blocked out the marshes and 
 the splendid vision of Pevensey Bay. Now the road 
 emerged from the shelter of hedges and elm-trees and 
 flowed with a noble billowy motion between seas of 
 corn that washed the foot of the Downs and swept 
 over Rodmill to the outposts of Beachbourne. Between 
 the road and the Downs stood Motcombe, islanded 
 in the ruddy sea, amongst its elms and low piggeries. 
 Behind the farm, at the very foot of the hill, was Hunts- 
 man's Lodge where once, when both were boys, Alf had 
 betrayed his brother on the occasion of the looting of the 
 walnut-tree. 
 
 Ern pointed out the spot to his bride and told the tale. 
 Ruth listened with grim understanding. 
 
 " That's Alf," she said. 
 
 " Mr. Pigott lived there that time o day," Ern con- 
 tinued. " One of the five Manors of Beachbourne, used to 
 be I've heard dad say. Belonged to the Salwyns of 
 Friston Place over the hill the clergy-folk. The farm's 
 where the Manor-house used to be ; and the annual sheep- 
 fair was held in a field outside from William the Conqueror 
 till a few years back." 
 
THE CARRIER'S CART 13 
 
 He pointed to one of a little row of villas on the left 
 which looked over the allotment gardens to the Downs. 
 
 " That's where Mr. Pigott lives now. My school-master 
 he were that time o day/' 
 
 " Who's Mr. Pigott ? " Ruth asked. 
 
 Ernie rootled her with a friendly elbow. 
 
 * My guv'nor, stoopid ! Manager of the Southdown 
 Transport Company. Him that was at the wedding 
 with the beard. Settin along o Mrs. Trupp." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Pigott / " answered Ruth. Now that the 
 strain of the last two years was over at last, she brimmed 
 over with a demure naughtiness. " Well, why couldn't you 
 say so, then ? You are funny, men are." 
 
 The cart climbed the steep hill to Billing's Corner and 
 Ernie looked down the familiar road to the Rectory and even 
 caught a peep of the back of his old home. Then they 
 turned down Church Street with its old-world fragrance of 
 lavender and yesterday. 
 
 On the left the parish-church, long-backed and massive- 
 towered upon the Kneb, brooded over the centuries it had 
 seen come and go. 
 
 " Dad says the whole history of Beachbourne's centred 
 there," said Ernie in awed voice. " Steeped in it, he says." 
 
 Ernie, who had been leaning forward to peep at the Arch- 
 deacon posed in the entrance of St. Michael's, now dropped 
 back suddenly, nudging his companion. 
 
 A lean woman with white hair and wrathful black eye- 
 brows, her complexion still delicate as a girl's, was coming 
 up the hill, 
 
 " Mother," whispered Ernie. 
 
 It was Ruth's turn to raise the flap and peer forth 
 stealthily at the figure passing so close and so unconsciously 
 on the pavement. 
 
 So that was the woman who had opposed her marriage 
 with such malevolent persistency ! 
 
 Ruth observed her enemy with more curiosity than 
 
14 ONE WOMAN 
 
 hostility, and received a passing impression of a fierce 
 unhappy face. 
 
 " She don't favour you no-ways, " she said, as she 
 relapsed into a corner. " Where's dad though ? " 
 
 Ernie shook his head. 
 
 " He's never with her/' he said. " I ca-a-n't call to mind 
 as ever I've seen them out together, not the pair of them." 
 
 " I'd ha liked him to have been at the wedding," mur- 
 mured Ruth a thought discontentedly. 
 
 " And he'd ha liked it too, I'll lay," Ernie answered. 
 " Only she'd never have let him." 
 
 The cart stopped ; and the two passengers descended 
 at the old Star opposite the Manor-house, which bore the 
 plate of Mr. William Trupp, the famous surgeon. 
 
 On the Manor-house steps a tall somewhat cadaverous 
 man was standing. He was so simply dressed as almost 
 to be shabby ; and his straw hat, tilted on the back of his 
 head, disclosed a singularly fine forehead. There was 
 something arresting about the man and his attitude : a 
 delicious mixture of mischievous alertness and philosophical 
 detachment. He might have been a mediaeval scholar 
 waiting at the door of his master ; or a penitent seeking 
 absolution ; or, not least, a youth about to perpetrate a 
 run-away knock. 
 
 Ernie across the road watched him with eyes in which 
 affection and amusement mingled. Then the door opened, 
 and the scholar-penitent-youth was being greeted with glee 
 by Bess Trupp. 
 
 Ernie turned to his wife. 
 
 " My old Colonel," he said confidentially. " What I 
 was in India with. Best Colonel the Hammer-men ever 
 had and that's saying something." 
 
 " Colonel Lewknor, aren't it ? " asked Ruth. 
 
 " That's him/' said Ernie keenly. " Do you knaw him ? " 
 
 " He was over at Auston last summer," answered Ruth, 
 " lecturin we got to fight Germany or something. I went, 
 
THE CARRIER'S CART 15 
 
 but I didn't pay no heed to him. No account talk, I 
 call that/' 
 
 Together they dropped down Borough Lane and turned 
 to the left along the Moot where dwelt the workers of Old 
 Town a few in flint cottages set in gardens, rank with 
 currant bushes, a record of the days, not so long ago, when 
 corn flowed down both sides of Water Lane, making a lake 
 of gold between the village on the hill and the Sea-houses by 
 the Wish ; and most in the new streets of little red houses 
 that looked up, pathetically aware of their commonness, to 
 the calm dignity of the old church upon the Kneb above. 
 
 At one of these latter Ernie stopped and made believe 
 to fumble with a key. Ruth, who had not seen her new 
 home, was thrilling quietly, as she had been throughout the 
 journey, though determined not to betray her emotion to 
 her mate. 
 
 The door opened and they entered. 
 
 A charming voice from the kitchen greeted them. 
 
 " Ah, there you are punctual to the minute ! " 
 
 A woman, silver-haired and gracious, turned from deft 
 busy-ness at the range. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Trupp ! " cried Ruth, looking about her. 
 
 The table was laid already, and gay with flowers ; the 
 fire lit, the kettle on the boil, the supper ready. 
 
 " It is kind," said Ruth. " Was this you and Miss 
 Bess ? " 
 
 " Perhaps we had a hand in it," laughed the other. 
 " She couldn't be here, as she's got a meeting of her Boy 
 Scouts. But she sent her best wishes. Now I hand over the 
 key to the master ; and my responsibilities are over ! " 
 And she was gone with the delicious ripple of laughter Ernie 
 had loved from babyhood. 
 
 Ruth was now thirsting to explore her new home, 
 but Ernie insisted on supping first. This he did with 
 malicious deliberation. When at length he was satisfied 
 they went upstairs together, he leading the way. 
 
16 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " This is our room ! " he said with ill-disguised com- 
 placency, stepping aside. 
 
 The bridal chamber was swept and garnished. In it 
 were more flowers, bowls of them ; and the furniture simple, 
 solid, and very good, was of a character rarely found in 
 houses of that class. 
 
 Ernie enjoyed the obvious pleasure of his bride as she 
 touched and glanced and dipped like some large bird flitting 
 gracefully from piece to piece. 
 
 Then she paused solemnly and looked about her. 
 
 " Reckon it must ha cost a tidy penny," she said. 
 
 " It did/' Ernie answered. 
 
 She cocked a soft brown eye at him. 
 
 " Could you afford it, Ernie ? " 
 
 " I could not," said Ernie, standing grimly and with 
 folded arms. 
 
 At the moment her eyes fell on a card tied to the bed- 
 post on which was written : From Mr., Mrs. and Miss 
 Trupp. Ruth's eyes caressed the bed, and her fingers 
 stroked the smooth wood. 
 
 " It's like them," she said. " None o your cheap 
 trash." 
 
 " Ah," answered Ernie. " Trust them. They're just 
 all right, they are." 
 
 Before the looking-glass on the chest of drawers Ruth 
 now took off her hat. 
 
 She was perhaps too simple, too natural, too near to earth 
 to be shy at this the supreme moment of a woman's life. 
 At least she was too wary to show it. 
 
 " Rich folks they have two little beds laid alongside, 
 these days," she said, speaking from her experience as a maid. 
 " I wouldn't think it was right myself. Only you mustn't 
 judge others." She added in her slow way, as she patted 
 her hair " I wouldn't feel prarperly married like only in 
 a prarper two-bed." 
 
 Ernie drew down the blind. 
 
THE CARRIER'S CART 17 
 
 Then he marched upon his bride deliberately and with 
 remorseless eyes. Suddenly she turned and met him with 
 a swift and lovely smile, dropping her mask, and discover- 
 ing herself to him in the surprising radiance of a moon that 
 reveals its beauty after long obscurity. She laid her hands 
 upon his shoulders in utter surrender. He gathered her 
 gradually in his arms ; and closing his eyes, dwelt on her 
 lips with the slow and greedy passion of a bee, absorbed in 
 absorption, and drinking deep in the cloistered seclusion of 
 a fox-glove bell, 
 
 " You're prarperly married all right," he said. " And 
 you ca-a-n't get out of it not no-ways." 
 
PART I 
 DEEPENING DUSK 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE HOSTEL 
 
 DR. TRUPP of Beachbourne, as he was generally known 
 Mr. Trupp, to give him his correct title was a genuinely 
 great man. 
 
 His father had been a book-seller in Torquay ; and he 
 himself never lost the greater qualities of the class from 
 which he sprang. He was very simple and very shrewd. 
 Science had not blunted the fine intuitions which his brusque 
 manner half concealed. Moreover, he trusted those 
 intuitions perhaps unconsciously as do few men of his 
 profession ; and they rarely played him false. In early man- 
 hood his integrity, his sound common sense, and practical 
 idealism had won for him the love of a singularly noble girl 
 who might have married one of the best of her inevitably 
 artificial class. Later in life indeed Evelyn Trupp often 
 would amuse her father and annoy her mother by affirming 
 that she was far prouder of being the wife of Mr. Trupp of 
 Beachbourne than of having been Miss Moray of Pole. And 
 she had good cause. For her husband was no longer the 
 country doctor at whom the county families had sniffed. 
 He was " Trupp of Beachbourne/' whose fame had spread, 
 quietly it is true, from Sussex, through England to the outer 
 world. And if there was some difference of opinion as to 
 whether Mr. Trupp had made Beachbourne, or Beachbourne 
 had made him, there was no question that the growth of the 
 town, and its deserved popularity as a health-resort was 
 coincident with his residence there. 
 
 At least the event justified the young surgeon's courage 
 and originality in the choice of a site for his life-long 
 
22 ONE WOMAN 
 
 campaign . Indeed had he stayed in London it is certain that 
 he would never have achieved the work he was able to 
 consummate in the town girdled by the southern hills and 
 washed by Northern Seas. And that work was no mean 
 contribution to the welfare of the race. Mr. Trupp was a 
 pioneer in the organized attack on perhaps the deadliest 
 and most pertinacious enemy that threatens the supremacy 
 of Man the tubercle bacillus. And his choice of a point- 
 d'appui from which to conduct his offensive was no small 
 factor in his success. 
 
 He was, moreover, one of the men who in the last years 
 of the nineteenth century and the earlier years of this set 
 himself to stem the tide of luxury which in his judgment 
 was softening the spines of the younger generation. And 
 the helpful buffets which gave him his name, and were 
 responsible at least for some of his triumphs, were not the out- 
 come of spasms of irritability but of a deliberate philosophy. 
 
 For Mr. Trupp, despite his kind heart, never forgot that 
 Man with all his aspirations after heaven had but yesterday 
 ceased to be an animal and still stood on the edge of the 
 slough from which he had just emerged, up to his hocks in 
 mud, the slime yet trickling from his shaggy sides. 
 
 " Don't give him sympathy," he would sometimes say 
 to an astonished father. "What he wants is the Big 
 Stick . . . Stop his allowance. Hell soon get well. 
 Necessity's the best doctor. . . . Take her mother away 
 from her. The mothers make half the invalids. . . . 
 Let her get up early in the morning and take the kitchen- 
 maid tea in bed. She's a useful citizen at all events." 
 
 He saw his country, so he believed, sinking into a dropsi- 
 cal coma before his eyes, just for want of somebody to kick 
 it awake ; and the sight made him sick and fearful. 
 
 Often riding with his daughter of evenings after the day's 
 work he would pause a moment beside the flag-staff on 
 Beau-nez and look North East across the waste of sea dull 
 or shining at his feet. 
 
THE HOSTEL 23 
 
 " Can you hear him growling, Bess ? " he asked his 
 companion once. 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " The Brute/' 
 
 Bess knew her father's ogre, and the common talk. 
 
 " Is Germany the Brute ? " she asked. 
 
 Her father shook his head. 
 
 " One of them/' he answered. " Wherever Man is there 
 the Brute is keep that in mind when you're married, my 
 dear. And he's always sleeping after a gorge or ravenous 
 before one. Our Brute's asleep now he's got his belly full. 
 Theirs " nodding across the water " is prowling for 
 his prey." 
 
 To Mr. Pigott he confided his belief that there was only 
 one thing that could save England. 
 
 " What's that ? " asked the old school-master. 
 
 " A bloody war," replied Mr. Trupp. 
 
 Many other men were saying the same thing, but few 
 of his intellectual calibre, and none of his radical views. 
 
 His own part in staying the rot that in his belief 
 threatened to corrupt the country he loved with such a deep 
 if critical love, was clear enough. It was the business of him 
 and his colleagues to give the nation the health that made 
 for character, just as it was that of the school-master to 
 give them the character that made for health. And he 
 tackled his side of national education with a will : the 
 Sun, the Sea, the Air being the assistants in whom he 
 trusted. 
 
 His old idea, cherished through a life-time, of an open- 
 air hostel, where he could have under his immediate 
 supervision children without their mothers, and wives without 
 their husbands, sought always more urgently for expression 
 as the years slipped by. It was not, however, till the 
 twentieth century was well upon its way, that all the 
 conditions necessary for the safe launching of his project 
 were fulfilled. 
 
24 ONE WOMAN 
 
 His chance came when Colonel Lewknor and his wife 
 crossed his path on retirement from the Sendee. 
 
 Rachel Lewknor took up the old surgeon's plan with the 
 fierce yet wary courage of her race. 
 
 Here was her chance, heaven-sent. Thus and thus 
 would she fulfil her cherished dream and make the money 
 to send her grandson, Toby, to Eton like his father and 
 grandfather before him. 
 
 Like most soldiers, she and the Colonel were poor. All 
 through their working lives any money they might have 
 saved against old age they had invested in the education of 
 their boy ; stinting themselves in order to send young Jock 
 to his father's school and afterwards to start him in his 
 father's regiment. On retirement therefore they had 
 little but a pittance of a pension on which to live. The 
 question of how to raise the capital to buy the site and 
 build the hostel was therefore the most urgent of the earlier 
 difficulties that beset Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 Mr. Trupp said frankly that he could lend the money 
 and would do so at a pinch ; but he made it clear that he 
 would rather not. He, too, was starting his boy Joe in the 
 Hammer-men, and like all civilians of those days had an 
 exaggerated idea of the expenses of an officer in the Army. 
 Moreover, he had determined that when the time and the 
 man came Bess should marry where she liked ; and the 
 question of money should not stand in her way. 
 
 Happily Mrs. Lewknor's problem solved itself as by 
 miracle. 
 
 Alf Caspar, who had his garage in the Goffs at the 
 foot of Old Town and, in spite 01 the continued protests of 
 Mrs. Trupp and Bess, still drove for Mr. Trupp (the old 
 surgeon refusing steadfastly to keep a car of his own), had 
 from the start evinced an almost prurient interest in the 
 
THE HOSTEL 25 
 
 conception of the hostel. In the very earliest days when 
 Mr. Trupp and Mrs. Lewknor talked it over as they drove 
 through Paradise, the beech-hangar between old Town and 
 Meads, to visit the prospective site in Cow Gap, he would 
 sit at his wheel manipulating his engine to ensure the 
 maximum of silent running, his head screwed round and big 
 left ear reaching back to lick up what was passing between 
 the two occupants of the body of the car. 
 
 Later, when it had actually been decided to embark 
 upon the scheme, he said to Mr. Trupp one day in his 
 brightest manner : 
 
 " Should be a paying proposition, sir, with you behind 
 it." 
 
 The old surgeon eyed his chaffeur through his pince-nez 
 shrewdly. 
 
 " If you like to pat 3.000 or so into it, Alfred, you 
 wouldn't do yourself any harm," he said. 
 
 Alf sheathed his eyes in that swift bird-like way of his, 
 and tittered. 
 
 " Three thousand pounds! "he said. "Me!" 
 
 A few days later when Mr. Trupp called at the Colonel's 
 tiny villa in Meads, Mrs. Lewknor ran out to him, eager as 
 a girl. 
 
 She had received from Messrs. Morgan and Evans, 
 the solicitors in Terminus Road, an offer of the sum required 
 on behalf of a client on the security of a first mortgage. 
 1 1 's a miracle ! " she cried, her eyes sparkling like jewels. 
 
 " Or a ramp ! " said the Colonel from behind. " D'you 
 know anything about the firm, Trupp ? " 
 
 " I've known and employed em ever since I've been 
 here," replied the old surgeon. " They're as old as Beach- 
 bourne and a bit older. A Lewes firm really, and they still 
 have an office there. But as the balance of power shifted 
 East they shifted with it." 
 
 They don't say who their client is," commented the 
 Colonel. 
 
26 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " I'll ask em," the other answered. 
 
 That afternoon he drove down to Terminus Road, 
 and leaving Alf in the car outside, entered the office. 
 
 He and Mr. Morgan were old friends who might truly 
 be accounted among the founders of modern Beachbourne. 
 
 " Who's your client ? " asked Mr. Trupp, gruff and 
 grinning. " Out with it ! " 
 
 Mr. Morgan shook his smooth grey head, humour and 
 mystery lurking about his mouth and in his eyes. 
 
 " Wishes to remain anonymous," he said. " We're 
 empowered to act on his behalf." 
 
 He strolled to the window and peeped out, tilting on his 
 toes to overlook the screen which obscured the lower half of it. 
 
 What he saw seemed to amuse him, and his amusement 
 seemed to re-act in its turn on Mr. Trupp. 
 
 " Is he a solid man ? " asked the surgeon. 
 
 " As a rock," came the voice from the window. 
 
 The other seemed satisfied ; the contract forthwith was 
 signed ; and Mrs. Lewknor bought her site. 
 
 Cow Gap was an ideal spot for the hostel. 
 
 It is carved out of the flank of Beau-nez ; the gorse- 
 covered hill encircling it in huge green rampart that shelters 
 it from the prevailing Sou- West gales. Embedded in the 
 majestic bluff that terminates 'the long line of the South 
 Downs and juts out into the sea in the semblance of a lion 
 asleep, head on his paws, it opens a broad green face to the 
 sea and rising sun. The cliff here is very low, and the chalk- 
 strewn beach, easy of access from above, is seldom out- 
 raged by skirmishers from the great army peopling the 
 sands along the front towards the Redoubt and the far 
 Crumbles. A spur of the hill shuts it off from the aristo- 
 cratic quarter of the town, known as Meads, which 
 covers with gardened villas the East-ward foot-hills of 
 Beau-nez and ceases abruptly at the bottom of the Duke's 
 Drive that sweeps up the Head in graceful curves. 
 
THE HOSTEL 27 
 
 In this secluded coombe, that welcomes the sun at dawn, 
 at dusk holds the lingering shadows, and is flecked all day 
 with the wings of passing sea-birds, after many months of 
 delay and obstructions victoriously overcome, Mrs. Lewknor 
 began to build her house of bricks and mortar in the spring 
 of the year Ruth and Ernie Caspar set out together to 
 construct the future in a more enduring medium. 
 
 The house, long and low, with balconies broad as streets, 
 and windows everywhere to catch the light, rose layer by 
 layer out of the turf on the edge of the cliff. All the 
 summer and on into the autumn it was a-building. A 
 white house with a red roof, plain yet picturesque, it might 
 have been a coastguard station and was not. Partaking 
 of the character of the cliffs on which it stood and the 
 green Downs in which it was enclosed, it seemed a fitting 
 tenant of the great coombe in which, apart from a pair of 
 goal-posts under the steep of the hill at the back, it was the 
 only evidence of the neighbourhood of Man. 
 
 Mr. Trupp watched the gradual realisation of the dream 
 of a lifetime with the absorbed content of a child who 
 observes the erection of a house of wooden bricks. And 
 he was not alone. 
 
 When at the end of the day's work Alf now drove his 
 employer, as he often did, to Cow Gap to study progress, 
 he, too, would descend and poke and pry amid skeleton walls 
 and crude dank passages with sharp eyes and sharper 
 whispered questions to labourers, foreman, and even the 
 architect. Never a Sunday passed but found him bustling 
 across the golf-links before church, to ascend ladders, walk 
 along precarious scaffoldings, and march with proprietory 
 air and incredible swagger along the terraces of the newly 
 laid-out gardens that patched with brown the green quilt 
 of the coombe. 
 
 Once, on such a Sunday visit, he climbed the hill at the 
 back to obtain a bird's-eye view of the building. Amid 
 spurting whin-chats and shining gossamers, he climbed in 
 
28 ONE WOMAN 
 
 the brilliant autumn morning till he had almost reached the 
 crest. He was lost to the world and the beauty lavished 
 all about him ; his eyes shuttered to the whispered sugges- 
 tions of the infinite ; his heart closed to the revealing 
 loveliness of Earth, round-limbed and bare, as he revolved 
 in the dark prison-house of self the treadmill of his insect 
 projects. The sidesman of St. Michael's, spruce, scented, 
 oiled, in fancy waistcoat, with boots of glace kid, and waxed 
 moustache, moving laboriously between sky and sea, was 
 civilised man at the height of his imperfection and vain- 
 glorious in his fatuous artificiality. 
 
 Suddenly a bare head and collarless stark neck blurted 
 up out of a deep gorse-clump before him. 
 
 " Who goes there ? " came a challenge, deep and for- 
 midable, as the roar of some jungle lord disturbed in his 
 covert. 
 
 Alf collapsed as a soap-bubble, blown from a clay pipe 
 and brilliant in the sunshine, bursts at the impact of an 
 elemental prickle. He fled down the hill incontinently. 
 
 The man who had barked, shoulder-deep in gorse, his 
 eyes still flashing, turned to the woman squandered beneath 
 him in luxurious splendour. Native of the earth on which 
 she lay, and kin to it as some long-limbed hind of the forest, 
 she regarded him with amused content. The sudden battle- 
 call of her male roused what there was of primitive in her, 
 soothed, and flattered her womanhood. Comfortably she 
 fell back upon the sense of security it called up, delighting 
 behind half-drawn lids in the surprising ferocity of her 
 man. That roar of his, startling the silence like a trumpet- 
 note, had spoken to her deeps. Swiftly, and perhaps for 
 the first time, she recognised what the man above her 
 stood for in her life, and why one with whom she did not 
 pretend to be in love so completely satisfied her most 
 urgent present need. He was a break-water behind which 
 she lay with furled sails after a hazardous voyage over 
 uncharted deeps. Outside was still the roar and batter of 
 
THE HOSTEL 29 
 
 seas. The sound of guns booming overhead as she lay, 
 stripped of her canvas, and rocking pleasantly in the inner 
 waters, did not alarm, rather indeed lulled, her to sleep : 
 for they spoke to her of protection at last. 
 
 " Who was it, Ernie ? " she murmured, raising a lazy 
 head from the hands on which they were pillowed, the 
 dark hair strewn about her like wind-slashed rain. 
 
 The man turned, outraged still and bristling. 
 
 " Alf ! " he snorted. " Just bob me head over the 
 hawth at him. That was enough quite enough ! I 
 knaw the colour of Alf 's liver." 
 
 He stood above her with his air of a fighting male. 
 
 She had never seen him like that before ; and she 
 regarded him critically and with approval. 
 
 " Ern," she called quietly, with a chuckle, deep and 
 secret as the gurgle of water pouring from a long-throated 
 jug ; and with a faint movement of her hips she made room 
 for him in the sand beside her. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 COW GAP 
 
 HONEYMOONS are not for the class that does the world's 
 dirty work ; but joy can be seized by the simple of heart 
 even in the conditions we impose upon the poor. 
 
 Ernie Caspar after his marriage with Ruth Boam settled 
 down with his bride in Old Town to enjoy the fruits of 
 victory. 
 
 The young couple had been lucky to find a cottage in 
 the Moot ; for even hi those days accommodation for the 
 working-class was as hard to find in Beachbourne as else- 
 " where. The cottage, too, was appropriately situated for them 
 in every way. It was close to the yard of the Southdown 
 Transport Company, where Ernie's work lay ; and at the 
 bottom of Borough Lane, at the top of which was the Manor- 
 house, where lived Mr. and Mrs. Trupp, who had seen Ruth 
 through her trouble, and had befriended Ernie from his 
 boyhood. 
 
 " D'you remember that first time ever we rode up to 
 Old Town together tarp o the bus ? " asked Ernie of his 
 bride, one evening as they passed the great doctor's house 
 on the way to Beau-nez. 
 
 " Hap I do," Ruth answered, amused at her lover's 
 intense seriousness. 
 
 " And do you remember what I said to you ? " in- 
 sistently. 
 
 " Ne'er a word," answered Ruth, casual and teasing 
 " only it was no-account talk. That's all I remember." 
 
 " I pointed you out Mr. Trupp's house," Ernie continued 
 solemnly, " and I says to you He brought me into the world, 
 I says. That's what he done." 
 
 30 
 
COW GAP 31 
 
 The old roguish black-bird look, which after her winter 
 of despair had been creeping slowly back to Ruth's face 
 in this new spring, gleamed sedately now. 
 
 " I mind me now/ 1 she said. " Leastwise I don't remem- 
 ber what you said, but I remembers what I answered." 
 
 " What did you answer then ? " asked Ernie, 
 suspiciously. 
 
 " He done well, was what I says/' answered the young 
 woman gravely. 
 
 " He did/' replied Ernie with exaggerated pomp. 
 " And he done better to settle issalf at my door so I could 
 be his friend if so be he ever gotten into trouble." 
 
 " One thing I knaw/' said Ruth, serious in her turn 
 now. " They're the two best friends e'er a workin woman 
 had." 
 
 "They are," Ernie agreed. "And she's my god- 
 mother." 
 
 It was the fact in his life of which on the whole he was 
 most proud and certainly the one for which he was least 
 responsible. " And she aren't yours," he continued, 
 puffed up and self-complacent. " And never will be." He 
 added finally to curb her arrogance. " See she was dad's 
 friend afore ever they married, eether of them." 
 
 Ruth checked her husband's snobbishness with a tap. 
 
 " You are grand," she said. 
 
 Close to the cottage of the young couple was the lovely 
 old Motcombe garden, public now, pierced by the bourne 
 from which the town derives its name. The garden with 
 its ancient dove-cot, ivy-crowned, its splendid weeping 
 ashes, its ruined walls, compact of native flint and chalk, 
 the skeletons of afore-time barns and byres, stands between 
 the old parsonage house and older parish-church that crowrjs 
 the Kneb above and, with its massive tower, its squat 
 shingled spire peculiar to Sussex, set four-square to the 
 winds of time, seems lost in a mist of memories. 
 
 Beyond the church, a few hundred yards further up the 
 
32 ONE WOMAN 
 
 hill, at the back of Billing's Corner in Rectory Walk, 
 Ernie's parents still dwelt. 
 
 Anne Caspar did not visit Ruth. Indeed, she ignored 
 the presence of her daughter-in-law ; but those steel-blue 
 eyes of hers sought out and recognized in a hard flash the 
 majestic peasant girl who now haunted Church Street at 
 shopping hours as the woman who had married her son. 
 Ernie's mother was in fact one of those who make it a point 
 of duty, as well as a pleasure, never to forgive. She had 
 neither pardoned Ruth for daring to be her daughter-in- 
 law, nor forgotten her sin. And both offences were im- 
 measurably accentuated by Ruth's crime in establishing 
 herself in the Moot. 
 
 " Settlin on my door-step/' she said. " Brassy slut ! " 
 
 " Just like her/' her second son answered ; and added 
 with stealthy malice, " Dad visits em. I seen im." 
 
 Alf, for all his acuteness, had never learned the simple 
 lesson that his mother would not tolerate the slightest 
 criticism of her old man. 
 
 " And why shouldn't he ? " she asked sharply. " Isn't 
 Ern his own flesh-and-blood ? He's got a heart, dad has, 
 if some as ought to ave aven't." 
 
 " No reason at all," answered Alf, looking down his 
 nose. " Why shouldn't he be thick in with her and 
 with her child for the matter of that ? I see him walkin in 
 the Moot the other day near the Quaker meeting-house 
 hand-in-hand with little Alice. Pretty as a Bible picture 
 it struck me." 
 
 Anne Caspar stared stonily. 
 
 " Who's little Alice ? " she asked. 
 
 " Her love-child," answered Alf. " Like your grand- 
 child as you might say only illegit o course." 
 
 His mother breathed heavily. 
 
 " Is Ern the father ? " she asked at last in a sour flat 
 voice. 
 
 " Not him ! " jeered Alf. " She's a rich man's cast-off, 
 
COW GAP 33 
 
 Ruth is. Made it worth Ern's while. That's where it 
 was. See, cash is cash in this world/' 
 
 Anne laid back her ears as she rummaged among her 
 memories, 
 
 " I thought you told me/ 1 she began slowly, " as Ern " 
 
 " Never ! " cried Alf . " Ern had nothin to do with it, 
 who-ever had." 
 
 " Who was the father ? " asked Anne, not above a little 
 feminine curiosity. 
 
 Alf shook his head cunningly. 
 
 "Ah," he said, "now you're askin! " and added after a 
 moment's pause : 
 
 " She was all-the-world's wench one time o day, your 
 daughter was. That's all I can tell you." 
 
 Anne stirred a saucepan thoughtfully. She did not 
 believe Alf : for she knew that Ernie was far too much his 
 father's son to be bought disgracefully, and she remembered 
 suddenly a suggestion that Mr. Pigott had lately thrown out 
 to the effect that Alf himself had not been altogether proof 
 against the seductions of this seductive young woman his 
 brother had won. It struck her now that there might be 
 something in the story after all, unlikely as it seemed : 
 for she remarked that Alf always pursued his sister-in-law 
 with the covert rancour and vindictiveness of the mean 
 spirit which has met defeat. 
 
 But however doubtful she might be in her own heart of 
 Alf 's tale, the essential facts about Ruth were not in dispute : 
 her daughter-in-law was the mother of an illegitimate 
 child and had settled down with that child not a quarter of a 
 mile away. Everybody knew the story, especially of course 
 the neighbours she would least wish to know it the Arch- 
 deacon and Lady Augusta in the Rectory across the way. 
 For over thirty years Anne had lived in her solid little 
 blue-slated house, the ampelopsis running over its good red 
 face, the tobacco plants sweet on summer evenings in the 
 border round the neat and tidy lawn, holding her nose high, 
 
 3 
 
34 ONE WOMAN 
 
 too high her enemies averred, and priding herself above all 
 women on her respectability and now ! 
 
 No wonder Ernie, bringing home his bride and his dis- 
 grace, infuriated her. 
 
 " Shamin me afore em all ! " she muttered time and 
 again with sullen wrath to the pots and pans she banged 
 about on the range. 
 
 She never saw the offender now except on Sundays when 
 he came up to visit his father, which he did as regularly as 
 in the days before his marriage. The ritual of these visits 
 was always the same. Ernie would come in at the front- 
 door ; she would give him a surly nod from the kitchen ; 
 he would say quietly " Hullo, mum ! " and turn off into 
 the study where his dad was awaiting him. 
 
 The two, Anne remarked with acrimony, grew always 
 nearer and what annoyed her most talked always less. 
 Edward Caspar was an old man now, in body if not in years ; 
 and on the occasion of Ernie's visits father and son rarely 
 strolled out to take the sun on the hill at the back or 
 lounge in the elusive shade of Paradise as in former 
 days. They were content instead to sit together in the 
 austere little study looking out on to the trees of the 
 Rectory, Lely's famous Cavalier, the first Lord Ravens- 
 rood, glancing down from the otherwise bare walls with 
 wistful yet ironic eyes on his two remote descendants 
 enjoying each other beneath in a suspicious communion 
 of silence. 
 
 Thus Anne always found the pair when she brought them 
 their tea ; and the mysterious intimacy between the two 
 was all the more marked because of her husband's almost 
 comical unawareness of his second son. The genuine 
 resentment Anne experienced in the matter of Edward's 
 unvarying attitude towards his two sons she visited, regard- 
 less of justice, upon Alf . 
 
 " Might not be a son to your father the way you go on ! " 
 she said censoriously. 
 
COW GAP 35 
 
 " And what about him/' cried Alf , not without reason. 
 " Might not be a father to your son, seems to me." 
 
 It would, however, have taken more than Anne Caspar's 
 passionate indignation at the action of Ernie and his bride 
 in establishing themselves in the Moot to cloud the lives of 
 the newly-married couple. Ern was now twenty-eight, 
 and Ruth four years younger. They had the present, which 
 they enjoyed ; they did not worry about the future ; and 
 the past inevitably buries itself in time. 
 
 " We're young yet, as Mr. Trupp says," remarked Ernie. 
 " We've got it all afore us. Life's not so bad for all they say. 
 I got you : and you got me ; and the rest don't matter." 
 
 They were lying on Beau-nez in the dusk above Cow Gap, 
 listening to the long-drawn swish of the sea, going and 
 coming with the tranquil rhythm that soothes the spirit of 
 man, restless in Time, with rumours of forgotten Eternity. 
 
 " And we both got little Alice," murmured Ruth, eyes 
 resting on his with affectionate confidence, sure of his love 
 for her and the child that was not his. 
 
 " Keep me cosy, Ern," whispered the luxurious 
 creature with a delicious mixture of entreaty and authority 
 snuggling up against him. She was lying, her face lifted 
 flower-wise to the moon that hung above her bubble- like 
 and benignant, her eyes closed, her lips tilted to tempt 
 the pollen-bearing bee, while about them the lovely laughter 
 brimmed and dimpled. 
 
 "I'll keep you cosy, my beauty," replied Ernie, with 
 the busy seriousness of the male intent on love. " I'll 
 give you plenty beside little Alice to think of afore I'm done 
 with you. I'll learn you. Don't you worrit. I know 
 what you want." 
 
 " What then ? " asked Ruth, deep and satisfied. 
 
 " Why, basketfuls o babies armfuls of em, like cow- 
 slips till you're fairly smothered, and spill em over the field 
 because you can't hold em all." 
 
36 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Perhaps he was right. Certainly after the battle and 
 conflict of the last two years Ruth felt spiritually lazy. 
 She browsed and drowsed, content that Ernie for the time 
 being should master her. It was good for him, too, she 
 saw, so long as he would do it, correcting his natural ten- 
 dency to slackness ; and she had little doubt that she could 
 assume authority at will in the future, should it prove 
 necessary. Meanwhile that spirit of adventure which 
 lurked in her ; distinguished her from her class ; and had 
 already once led her into danger and catastrophe, was lulled 
 to sleep for the moment. 
 
 The hill at the back of Cow Gap is steep, and towards the 
 crest the gorse grows thick and very high. In the heart of 
 this covert, dense enough to satisfy the most jealous lovers, 
 Ernie had made a safe retreat. He had cut away the 
 resisting gorse with a bill-hook, rooted up the stumps, stripped 
 the turf and made a sleeping-place of sand brought up from 
 the shore. In a rabbit-hole hard by, he hid a spirit-lamp 
 and sundry stores of tea and biscuits ; while Mrs. Trupp 
 routed out from her coach-house an immense old carriage 
 umbrella dating from Pole days which, when unfurled, 
 served to turn a shower. 
 
 Ruth and Ernie called their hiding-place the Ambush ; 
 for in it they could harbour, seeing all things, yet them- 
 selves unseen. And there, through that brilliant autumn, 
 they would pass their week-ends, watching Under-cliff, as 
 the hostel was called, rising up out of the saucer of the 
 coombe beneath them. They would leave little Alice with 
 a neighbour, and lock up the cottage in the Moot, which 
 Ruth was swiftly transfiguring into a home. On Saturday 
 evenings, after a hard afternoon's work, stripping, papering, 
 painting, making the old new and the dull bright, the pair 
 would walk up Church Street, turn to the left at Billing's 
 Corner, and dropping down Love Lane by the Rectory, 
 cross the golf links and mount the hill by the rabbit-walk 
 that leads above Paradise, past the dew-pond, on to the 
 
COW GAP 37 
 
 broad-strewn back of Beau-nez. Up there, surrounded by 
 the dimming waters and billowing land, they would wait 
 till the Head was deserted by all save a tethered goat and 
 watchful coastguard ; till in the solitude and silence the stars 
 whispered, and the darkening turf, grateful for the falling 
 dew, responded sweetly to their pressing feet. Then the 
 young couple, taking hands, would leave the crest and find 
 their way with beating hearts along the track that led 
 through the covert to their couching-place, where none 
 would disturb them except maybe a hunting stoat ; and 
 only the moon would peep at them under the shaggy 
 eyebrow of the gorse as they rejoiced in their youth, their 
 love, their life. 
 
 And then at dawn when the sun glanced warily over 
 the brim of the sea and none was yet astir save the kestrel 
 hovering in the wind ; and the pair of badgers who with 
 the amazing tenacity of their kind still tenanted the bur- 
 rows of their ancestors within a quarter of a mile of the tents 
 and tabernacles of man rooted and sported clumsily on the 
 dewy hillside beneath ; they would rise and slip bare-foot 
 down the hill, past the hostel, on to the deserted beach, there 
 to become one with the living waters, misty and lapping, as 
 at night they had entered into communion with earth and 
 sky and the little creaking creatures of the dark. 
 
 " This is life," Ernie said on one such Sabbath dawn, 
 sinking into the waters with deep content. " Wouldn't 
 old dad just love this ? " 
 
 "If it were like this all the time ! " Ruth answered a 
 thought wistfully as she floated with paddling hands, sea 
 and sky, as it was in the beginning, enveloping her. " Like 
 music in church. Just the peace that passeth under- 
 standing, as my Miss CarylTd say/' 
 
 " Ah," said Ernie, speaking with the profound sagacity 
 that not seldom marks the words of the foolish. " Might 
 be bad for us. If there was nothing to fight we'd all be like 
 to go to sleep. That's what Mr. Trupp says." 
 
38 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Some of us might," said Ruth, the girl slyly peeping 
 forth from her covering womanhood. 
 
 " Look at Germany ! " continued the wise man, surging 
 closer. " Look at what the Colonel said the other night at 
 the Institute. We're the rabbits ; and Germany's the 
 python, the Colonel says/ 1 
 
 " That for Germany ! " answered Ruth, splashing the 
 water with the flat of her hand in the direction of the rising 
 sun. 
 
 " And she's all the while a-creepin a-creepin closer 
 acrarst the sea," said Ernie, edging nearer " for to 
 SWALLOW us UP ! " And with a rush he engulfed her young 
 body in his arms. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD 
 
 ON one of the last days of that brilliant October, just 
 before the grey curtain of rains descended to blot out 
 autumn fields and twinkling waters, Colonel Lewknor and 
 his wife moved into the hostel. 
 
 On that first evening Mrs. Lewknor came down the 
 broad stair-case in " review order," as she called it, to 
 celebrate the consummation of the first stage of her pro- 
 ject, and found her husband standing at the sea-ward 
 window of the hall, a Mestophelian figure, holding back 
 the curtain and peeping out. Quietly she came and stood 
 beside him, about her shoulders the scarlet cape a Rajput 
 Princess had given her after Lord Curzon's durbar. 
 
 The house, which was the solitary building in the great 
 coombe, stood back some hundred yards from th e cliff along 
 which the coast-guard's path to Beau-nez showed up white- 
 dotted in the darkness. The Colonel was staring out over 
 the misty and muffled waters, mumbling to himself, as was 
 his way. 
 
 " We shall get a nice view from here, anyway," he said 
 with his satyr-like chuckle. 
 
 She laid her hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 "Of what ? "she asked. 
 
 " The landing," he replied. 
 
 She rippled off into a delicious titter. After thirty years 
 of married life her Jocko was still for Rachel Lewknor the 
 most entertaining of men. 
 
 " You and Mr. Trupp ! " she said. " A pair of you ! " For 
 the two men had drawn singularly close since the Colonel 
 on retirement had established himself in Meads. 
 
40 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The old soldier in truth came as something of a revela- 
 tion to the great surgeon, who delighted in the other's 
 philosophical mind, his freedom from the conventional 
 limitations and prejudices of the officer-caste, his wide 
 reading and ironical humour. 
 
 On his evening ride one day about this time Mr. Trupp 
 and Bess came upon the Colonel halted at the flag-staff 
 on the top of the Head, and gazing out over the wide- 
 spread waters with solemn eyes, as though watching for a 
 tidal wave to sweep up out of the East and overwhelm his 
 country. Mr. Trupp knew that the old soldier was often 
 at that spot in that attitude at that hour, a sentinel on guard 
 at the uttermost end of the uttermost peninsula that 
 jutted out into the Channel ; and he knew why. 
 
 " Well, is it coming ? " the doctor growled, half serious, 
 half chaffing. 
 
 The Colonel, standing with his hat off, his fine forehead 
 and cadaverous face thrusting up into the blue, answered 
 with quiet conviction. 
 
 " It's coming all right/ 1 
 
 " It's been coming all my time/ 1 answered the other 
 sardonically. "If it don't come soon I shall miss it. In 
 the seventies it was Russia. Any fool, who wasn't a criminal 
 or a traitor or both, could see that a clash was inevitable. 
 Two great races expanding at incredible speed in Asia, 
 etc., etc. Then in the nineties it was France. Any man 
 in his right mind could see it. It was mathematically 
 demonstrable. Two great races expanding in Africa, etc., 
 etc. . . . And now it's Germany . . ." He 
 coughed and ended gruffly, " Well, you may be right this 
 time/' 
 
 " We were right about William the Conqueror," said the 
 Colonel urbanely. " He came/' 
 
 " But that was some time ago, my daughter tells me/' 
 replied Mr. Trupp. " And you've been wrong every time 
 since." 
 
THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD 41 
 
 Bess giggled ; and the Colonel adjusted his field-glasses 
 with delicate precision. 
 
 " If you say it's going to rain and keep on saying it 
 long enough you'll probably prove right in the end," he 
 remarked. " It's dogged as does it in the realm of specu- 
 lation as elsewhere in my experience." 
 
 The old surgeon and his daughter turned their backs 
 on the flagstaff and the solitary watchman beside it, and 
 jogged towards the sunset red-strewn behind the white 
 bluff of the Seven Sisters Newhaven-way. 
 
 Two figures topped the brow of Warren Hill in front 
 and came swiftly over the short turf towards them. It was 
 Saturday : Ruth and Ernie were on their way to their secret 
 covert above Cow Gap as usual. 
 
 " About your last week-end up here before the weather 
 breaks, I should say," chaffed the old surgeon as he passed 
 them. 
 
 Ernie laughed a little nervously. 
 
 11 Yes, sir. Just what I were a-sayin to Ruth," he 
 answered. He had thought his secret known to none. 
 
 " Well, I hope the police won't catch you," remarked the 
 other with a grin as he rode on. 
 
 " Never ! not unless someone was to give us away, 
 sir ! " said Ruth demurely, as she looked across the sea under 
 lowered brows. 
 
 Bess called back reassuringly over her shoulder : 
 
 " You're all right, Ruth. I'll square Mr. Trupp." 
 
 The riders struck Duke's Drive and dropped down into 
 Meads. 
 
 " How happy Ernie looks now ! " said Bess. " It's 
 delightful to see him." 
 
 " Yes," replied her father " too happy. He's going 
 to sleep again just what I told you. And when he's well 
 away in the land of dreams IT'll pounce on him once more." 
 
 That evening over his coffee Mr. Trupp returned to the 
 subject, which was a favourite with him. 
 
42 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " I always knew how it would be," he said with gloomy 
 complacency. 
 
 " Of course/ 1 answered Mrs. Trupp, glancing mis- 
 chievously at Bess. 
 
 " Makes him too comfortable," the wise man continued. 
 " Fatal mistake. What he wants is an occasional flick with 
 the whip to keep him up to the mark. We all do." 
 
 It was not, indeed, in Ruth's nature to use the whip or 
 inspire the fear which few of us as yet are able to do with- 
 out. And at present she did not bother much. For at 
 first her beauty and spiritual power were quite enough to 
 hold Ernie. He found in her the comfort and the stay 
 the tree finds in the earth it is rooted in. She was the 
 element in which he lived and moved and had his being. 
 She satisfied his body and his spirit as the sea satisfies the 
 fish which dwells in it. She steadied him and that was 
 what he needed. 
 
 The marriage, indeed, proved as successful as are 
 most. That is to say it was not a failure, in that 
 both the contracting parties were on the whole the 
 happier for it. Certainly Ern was : for there was no 
 doubt that he was in love with Ruth, nor that his love was 
 real ana enduring. 
 
 Ruth on her side was fond of Ern, and grateful to him, 
 if only because of little Alice ; although her feeling was 
 more that of the mother for the child than of the woman for 
 her mate. She was full of pity for him and occasionally 
 unuttered resentment. That was inevitable because Ern 
 was weak. She had continually to prop him up, though 
 she would rather have let him do the propping. And 
 perhaps for her own growth it was good that she must give 
 support rather than receive it. 
 
 In a way she was not the ideal wife for Ern : her strength 
 was her weakness. She appeared almost too big of soul 
 and tranquil of spirit. But there was another side of her, 
 largely undeveloped, that had as yet only revealed itself in 
 
THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD 43 
 
 gleams, or rather, to be exact, in one lurid flash of lightning 
 which had thrown her firmament into ghastly and twittering 
 relief. Her quiet was the hushed and crouching quiet 
 of the young lilac in winter, lying secretly in wait for the 
 touch of April sun, to leap forth from its covert in an amaz- 
 ing ecstasy of colour, fragrance, loveliness and power. 
 
 For the time being Ruth was glad to lie up, as a tigress 
 in whelp, after long hunting, is content to harbour in the 
 green darkness, drinking in draughts of refreshing through 
 sleep, while her mate prowls out at dusk to find meat. But 
 that would not last for ever. Her life must be full and 
 brimming over or her insatiable vitality and that all-devdfif- 
 ing spirit of hers, reaching out like a creeper to embrace the 
 world, might find outlet in mischief, innocent enough in the 
 intention, and yet, as experience had already proved, 
 catastrophic in its consequences. 
 
 In her secret deeps, indeed, Ruth was one to whom 
 danger was the breath of life, although she was still un- 
 aware of it : an explorer and pioneer, gay and gallant, 
 sailing her skiff over virgin oceans, reckless of the sunken 
 reefs that might at any moment rip the bottom out of her 
 frail craft. The outward sedateness of the Sussex peasant 
 was liable at any moment to sudden overthrow, as some 
 chance spark caused the southern blood in her veins to leap 
 and frolic into flame ; and that Castilian hidalgo, her remote 
 ancestor, who lurked behind the arras of the centuries, 
 called her away from the timid herd to some dear and 
 desperate enterprise of romance. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp alone was aware of this buccaneer quality 
 hidden in the young woman's heart and undiscovered of the 
 world. Ruth's Miss Caryll had told her friend of it long 
 ago when the girl was in her service at the Dower-house, 
 Aldwoldston. 
 
 " It's the Spaniard in her," Miss Caryll had said. 
 
 And when at the time of her distress Ruth had told her 
 story to the wife of the great surgeon who had succoured 
 
44 ONE WOMAN 
 
 her, Mrs. Trupp, keen-eyed for all her gentleness, had 
 more than once detected the flash of a sword in the murk 
 of the tragedy. 
 
 The girl had dared and been defeated. She would 
 dare again until she found her conqueror : thus Mrs. Trupp 
 envisaged the position. 
 
 Was Ernie that man ? 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 ALF 
 
 THEN a child lifted its tiny sail on the far horizon. Its 
 rippling approach across the flood-tides absorbed Ruth and 
 helped Ernie : for he had in him much of his father's 
 mysticism, and was one of those men who go through life 
 rubbing their eyes as the angels start up from the dusty 
 road, and they see miracles on every side where others only 
 find the prosaic permutations and combinations of mud. 
 And this particular miracle, taking place so deliberately 
 beneath his roof, a miracle of which he was the unconscious 
 agent, inspired and awed him. 
 
 " Makes you sweat to think of it," he said to a mate in 
 the yard. 
 
 " By then you've had half-a-dozen and got to keep em, 
 you'll sweat less," retorted his friend, who had been married 
 several years. 
 
 Mr. Trupp looked after Ruth. 
 
 Great man as he was now, he still attended faithfully 
 those humble families who had supported him when first 
 he had established himself in Old Town thirty years before, 
 young, unknown, his presence fiercely resented by the older 
 practitioners. 
 
 When Ruth's time came, Ernie sat in the kitchen, 
 shaken to the soul, and listening to the feet in the room 
 above. 
 
 It was a dirty night, howling, dark and slashed with rain. 
 Outside in the little dim street that ran below the Kneb 
 on which loomed the shadowy bulk of the parish-church, 
 solid against the cloud-drift, stood the doctor's car. 
 
 Once Ernie went to the rain-sluiced window and saw Alf 
 with his collar turned up crouching behind the wheel. 
 
 Ernie went out into the flapping night. 
 
 45 
 
46 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Ere, AH ! " he said hoarsely. " We can't go on like 
 this. Tain't in nature. After all, we're brothers." 
 
 The two had not spoken since the one had possessed 
 the woman the other had desired. 
 
 Alf now showed himself curiously complacent. 
 
 " I am a Christian all right/' he confided to his brother ; 
 and added with the naive self-satisfaction of the megalo- 
 maniac, as he shook hands : "I wish there was more like 
 me, I do reelly." 
 
 " Come in, then," said Ern, who was not listening. " I 
 can't abear to see you out here such a night as this and all." 
 
 Alf came in. 
 
 The two brothers sat over the fire in the kitchen, Alf 
 uplifted, his gaitered legs crossed. He looked about him 
 brightly with that curious proprietory air of his. 
 
 " You've a decent little crib here, Ern, I see," he said. 
 
 " None so bad," Ernie answered briefly. 
 
 " Done it up nice too," the other continued. " Did 
 your landlord do that now ? " 
 
 " No ; me and Ruth atween us." 
 
 " Ah, hell raise your rent against you." 
 
 " Like em," said Ern. " They're aU the same." 
 
 Somebody moved overhead. 
 
 Ern, stirred to his deeps, rose and stood, leaning his 
 forehead on the mantel-piece, his ears aloft. 
 
 " This is a bad job, Ern," said Alf" a shockin bad 
 job." 
 
 " It's killin me," Ern answered with the delicious 
 egoism of the male at such moments. 
 
 There was a lengthy silence. Then Alf spoke again 
 casually this time. 
 
 " She never said nothin to you about no letter, did she ? " 
 
 " It's burned," replied Ernie curtly. 
 
 Alf glanced at his brother sharply. Then, satisfied that 
 the other was in fact telling the truth, he resumed his study of 
 the fire. 
 
ALF 47 
 
 " Not as there was anythink in it there shouldn't have 
 been/' he said complacently. " You can ask anyone." 
 He was silent for a time. Then he continued confidentially, 
 leaning forward a little " When you see her tell her I'm 
 safe. May be that'll ease her a bit." 
 
 Ernie came to himself and glowered. 
 
 " What ye mean ? " he asked. 
 
 Alf cocked his chin, knowing and mysteriously. 
 
 " Ah, 1 ' he said. " You just tell her what I tell you 
 Alf won't let on ; Alf s safe. Just that. You'll see." 
 
 There was a stir and a movement in the room above : 
 then the howl of a woman in travail. 
 
 Ern was panting. Silence succeeded the storm. Then 
 a tiny miaowing from the room above came down to them. 
 
 Alf started to his feet. 
 
 " What's that ? " he cried. 
 
 " My child," answered Ernie deeply, lifting a blind face 
 to the ceiling. 
 
 Alf was afraid of many things ; but most of all he 
 feared children, and was brutal to them consequently, less 
 from cruelty, as the unimaginative conceived, than in self- 
 defence. And the younger the child the more he feared 
 it. The presence in the house of this tiny creature, emerg- 
 ing suddenly into the world from the darkness of the Beyond 
 with its mute and mysterious message, terrified him. 
 
 " Here ! I'm off ! " he said. " This ain't the place for 
 me," and he left the house precipitately. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp of course went to visit the young mother. 
 Ruth in bed, nursing her babe, met her with a smile that was 
 radiant yet wistful. 
 
 " It's that different to last time," she said, and nodded 
 at little Alice playing with her beads at the foot of the bed. 
 " See, she'd no one only her mother . . . and you 
 . . . and Mr. Trupp. They were all against her poor 
 lamb ! as if it was fault of her'n." She gasped, choking- 
 back a sob. " This'n's got em all on her side." 
 
48 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " That's all over now, Ruth/ 1 said Mrs. Trupp gently. 
 
 " I pray so, with all my heart I do," answered Ruth. 
 " You never knaw. Seems to me some things are never 
 over not in this world anyways/' 
 
 She blinked back tears, drew her hand across her eyes, 
 and flashed up bravely. 
 
 " Silly, ain't it ? " she laughed. " Only times it all come 
 back so what we went through, she and me. And not 
 through any fault of mine only foolishness like." 
 
 Ruth was one of those women who are a standing vindi- 
 cation of our civilisation and a challenge to all who indict 
 it. She was up and about in an incredibly short time, the 
 firmer in body and soul for her adventure. 
 
 One morning Alf came round quietly to see her. She 
 was at the wash-tub, busy and bare-armed ; and met him 
 with eyes that were neither fearful nor defiant. 
 
 " I'm not a-goin to hurt you, Ruth," he began caress- 
 ingly, with a characteristic lift of his chin. " I only come 
 to say it's all right. You got nothink against me now and 
 I'll forget all I know about you. A bargain's a bargain. 
 And now you've done your bit I'll do mine." 
 
 The announcement, so generous in its intention, did not 
 seem to make the expected impression. 
 
 " I am a gentleman," continued Alf, leaning against the 
 door-post. " Always ave been. It's in me blood, see ? 
 Can't help meself like even if I was to wish to." He started 
 off on a favourite theme of his. " Lord Ravensrood him 
 that made that speech on the Territorials the other night 
 in the House of Lords, he's my second cousin. I daresay 
 if enough was to die I'd be Lord Ravensrood meself. Often 
 whiles I remember that. I'm not like the rest of them. I 
 got blue blood running through me veins, as Reverend 
 Spink says. You can tell that by the look of me. I'm not 
 the one to take advantage." 
 
 Ruth, up to her elbows in soap-suds, lifted her face. 
 
ALF 49 
 
 " I'm not afraid o you, Alf ," she said quite simply. 
 " Now I got my Ern." 
 
 The announcement annoyed Alf. He rolled his head 
 resentfully. 
 
 " No one as does right has anythink to fear from me," 
 he said harshly. " It's only wrong-doers I'm a terror to. 
 Don't you believe what they tell you. So long as you keep 
 yourself accordin and don't interfere with nobody, nobody 
 won't interfere with you, my gurl." 
 
 Ruth mocked him daintily. 
 
 " I'm not your girl," she said, soaping her beautifully 
 moulded arms. " I'm Em's girl, and proud of it." Her 
 lovely eyes engaged his, teasing and tempting. " That's 
 our room above his and mine. It's cosy." 
 
 " Ah," said Alf, smouldering. " I'd like to see it." 
 
 " You can't do that," answered Ruth gravely. 
 " Besides, there's nothing to see only the double-bed Mrs. 
 Trupp gave us and the curtains to close it at night and 
 that, so that no one shan't peep at what they should'nt." 
 
 The touch of southern blood, wild and adventurous, 
 which revealed itself in her swarthy colouring and black 
 hair, stung her on to darings demure as they were pro- 
 vocative. Alf, sour of eye, changed the subject. 
 
 " Yes, it's a nice little bit of a crib," he said, glancing 
 round. " What might be your rent ? " 
 
 " More'n it ought to be," answered Ruth. 
 
 "That's a pity," said Alf. "What's Em's money 
 now ? " 
 
 " I shan't tell you." 
 
 Alf thrust his huge head forward with an evil grin. 
 
 " I'll tell you," he said. " It's twenty-four, *nd that's 
 the limit. Pigott won't raise him no more. I know 
 Pigott." He gloated over his victim. " Yes, old Ern 
 makes in the week what I'd make in a day if I was to do 
 nothink only loll against the wall with me mouth open to 
 catch the interest on me money that'd roll into it. And 
 
50 ONE WOMAN 
 
 I'm makin all the time : for God's give me brains and I'm 
 usin em. I'm not a-going to drive for somebody else all 
 my life. I'm the comin man in this town you ask my 
 bankers. There's plenty doin you don't know nothin of, 
 and more to come. And I'm at the back of it ! I'm the 
 man what makes things move that's what I am ! " He 
 swelled like a little bull-frog. " I'm a gentleman that's 
 Alf." He shot his face forward and wagged a finger at her. 
 " And that's just the difference between Ern and me. I'm 
 in the position to live on me own money and never do a 
 hand's turn for it : while Ern has to sweat for his handful 
 of coppers. And then it ain't enough to keep his wife from 
 the wash-tub. I'd like to see my wife at that ! Now 
 then ! " He folded his arms and struck an attitude. 
 
 Ruth soused and wrung and rinsed quite unmoved. 
 
 " That aren't the only difference, Alf," she said sooth- 
 ingly. " See, Ern's got me. That makes up to him a lot, 
 he says. He says he don't care nothing so long as he's 
 got me to issalf , he says. . . > Strawberries and cream and 
 plenty of em, he calls me when he's got the curtains draw'd 
 up there, and me a-settin on his knee." 
 
 Alf retreated, burning and baffled. She came to the 
 door drying her arms, and pursued her victim with eyes in 
 which the lightning played with laughter ; as fastidious 
 and dainty in her cruelty as a cat sporting with a mouse. 
 
 A little way down the street he paused and turned. 
 Then he came back a pace or two stealthily. His face 
 was mottled and he was tilting his chin, mysterious and 
 confidential. 
 
 " Never hear e'er a word from the Captain ? " he asked, 
 in a hushed voice. 
 
 Ruth flashed a terrible white and her bosom surged. 
 
 " I do times," continued the tormentor, and bustled on 
 his way with a malignant chuckle. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 THE CREEPING DEATH 
 
 ONE evening at the club, Mr. Trupp asked the Colonel what 
 had happened to Captain Royal. 
 
 " He went through the Staff College, and now he's at 
 the War Office, I believe/' the other answered curtly. 
 
 " Ever hear from him ? " asked Mr. Trupp, warily. 
 
 " No," said the Colonel. " He's not a friend of mine." 
 And to save himself and an old brother-officer for whom he 
 had neither liking nor respect, he changed the conversation 
 to the theme that haunted him. 
 
 Mr. Trupp might chaff the Colonel about his idee fixe, 
 but he, too, like most men of his class, had the fear of 
 Germany constantly before his eyes and liked nothing 
 better than to discuss the familiar topic with his friend over 
 a cigar. 
 
 " Well, how are we getting on ? " he asked encouragingly. 
 
 " Not so bad," the Colonel answered through the smoke. 
 " Haldane's sent for Haig from India." 
 
 " Who's Haig ? ' puffed the other. 
 
 " Haig's a soldier who was at Oxford," the Colonel 
 answered. ''You didn't know there was such a variety, 
 did you ? " 
 
 " Never mind about Oxford," grunted the great surgeon. 
 " Oxford turns out as many asses as any other institution 
 so far as I can see. Does he know his job ? That's the 
 point." 
 
 " As well as you can expect a soldier to know it," replied 
 the other, still in the ironic vein. " Sound but slow's his 
 reputation. He and Haldane are the strongest combination 
 there's been at the War Office in my time." He added 
 more seriously "They ought to get a move on between 
 'em, if anybody can." 
 
52 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " In time ? " asked Mr. Trupp. 
 
 The Colonel, in spite of the recurrent waves of despair, 
 which inundated him, was at heart an unrepentant optimist. 
 
 " I don't see why not/ 1 he said. " Bobs says Germany 
 can't strike till the Kiel Canal's open for battleships. 
 That won't be till 1912 or so." 
 
 The old doctor moved into the card-room with a cough. 
 
 " Gives you time to get on with your job, too, Colonel," 
 he said. " I wish you well. Good-night." . . : : 
 
 The Colonel was retired now ; but his brain was as 
 active as ever, his heart as big, if his body was no longer so 
 sure an instrument as it once had been. And Lord Roberts, 
 when he asked his old comrade in arms to undertake work 
 which he did not hesitate to describe as vital to the Empire, 
 knew that the man to whom he was appealing possessed 
 in excelsis the quality which has always made the British 
 Army the nursery of spirits who put the good of the Service 
 before their own advancement. The little old hero, like all 
 great soldiers, had his favourite regiments, the result of 
 association and experience ; and it was well known that the 
 Hammer-men stood at the top of the list. Fifty years 
 before the date of this story they had sweated with him on 
 the Ridge before Delhi ; under his eyes had stormed the 
 Kashmir Gate ; with him had watched Nicholson die. 
 Twenty years later they had gone up the Kurrum with the 
 young Major-Gen eral, and made with him the famous 
 march from Kabul to Kandahar. Another twenty years 
 and they were making the pace for the old Field Marshal in 
 the great trek from Paardeberg to Bloemfontein. He 
 knew most of the officers, some of them intimately. And 
 on hearing that Jocko Lewknor had settled down at Beach- 
 bourne wrote at once and asked him to become Secretary 
 of the local branch of the National Service League, which 
 existed to establish in England universal military training 
 on the lines of Switzerland's Militia. 
 
 The Colonel made one of his rare trips to London and 
 
THE CREEPING DEATH 53 
 
 lunched at the Rag with the leader who had been his hero 
 ever since as a lad he had gone up the Peiwar Khotal with 
 the First Hammer-men at the order of Bahadur Bobs. 
 
 The Field Marshal opened the Colonel's eyes to the 
 danger threatening the Empire. 
 
 " The one thing in our favour is this/' he said, as they 
 parted at the hall-door. " We've yet time." 
 
 The Colonel, inspired with new life, returned to Beach- 
 bourne and told his wife. She listened with vivid interest. 
 
 " You've got your work cut out, my Jocko," she said. 
 " And I shan't be able to help you much." 
 
 " No," replied the Colonel. " You must stick to the 
 hostel. I'll plough my own furrow." 
 
 Forthwith he set to work with the quiet tenacity peculiar 
 to him. From the start he made surprising headway, 
 perhaps because he was so unlike the orthodox product 
 of the barrack-square ; and like his leader he eschewed 
 the party politics he had always loathed. 
 
 When he took up the work of the League he found it 
 one of the many non-party organisations, run solely by the 
 Conservatives quartered in Meads and Old Town, because, 
 to do them justice, nobody else would lend a hand. 
 Liberalism, camped in mid-town about Terminus Road, 
 was sullenly suspicious ; Labour, at the East-end, openly 
 hostile. The opposition of Liberalism, the Colonel soon 
 discovered, centred round the leader of Nonconformity in 
 the town, Mr. Geddes, the powerful Presbyterian minister 
 at St. Andrew's ; the resistance of Labour, inchoate as yet 
 and ineffective as the Labour Party from which it sprang, 
 was far more difficult to tackle as being more vague and 
 imponderable. 
 
 In those days, always with the same end in view, the 
 Colonel spent much time in the East-end, winding his way 
 into the heart of Industrial Democracy. He sloughed some 
 old prejudices and learnt some new truths, especially the 
 one most difficult for a man of his age and tradition to 
 
54 ONE WOMAN 
 
 imbibe that he knew almost nothing of modern England. 
 Often on Sundays he would walk across from Meads to 
 Sea-gate and spend his afternoon wandering in the Recre- 
 ation Ground, gathering impressions on the day that Labour 
 tries to become articulate. 
 
 On one such Sunday afternoon he came on a large old 
 gentleman in gold spectacles, fair linen, and roomy tail- 
 coat, meandering on the edge of a dirty and tattered crowd 
 who were eddying about a platform. The old gentleman 
 seemed strangely out of place and delightfully unconscious 
 of it ; wandering about, large, benevolent and undisturbed, 
 like a moon in a stormy sky. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Caspar/ 1 said the Colonel quietly. " What 
 do you make of it all ? " 
 
 The large soft man turned his mild gaze of a cow in calf 
 on the lean tall one at his side. It was clear he had no 
 notion who the speaker was ; or that they had been at 
 Trinity together forty years before. 
 
 " To me it's extraordinarily inspiring/' he said with an 
 earnestness that was almost ridiculous. " I feel the 
 surge of the spirit beating behind the bars down here as 
 I do nowhere else. ... It fills me with an immense 
 hope." 
 
 The Colonel, standing by the other like a stick beside a 
 sack, sighed. 
 
 " They fill me with a fathomless despair/' he said gently. 
 " One wants to help them, but they won't let you." 
 
 The other shook a slow head. 
 
 " I don't look at it like that/' he replied. " I go to them 
 for help." 
 
 The Colonel made a little moue. 
 
 " D'you get it ? "he asked 
 
 " I do," Mr. Caspar replied with startling conviction. 
 
 The Colonel moved sorrowfully upon his way. He was 
 becoming a man of one idea Germany. . . . 
 
 A few nights later, after supper, he strolled up Beau-nez 
 
THE CREEPING DEATH 55 
 
 under a harvest-moon spreading silvery wings moth- 
 like over earth and sea. He was full of his own thoughts, and 
 and for once heavy, almost down-hearted, as he took up 
 his familiar post of vigil beside the flagstaff on the Head and 
 looked out over the shining waters. The Liberals were 
 moving at last, it seemed. The great cry for Dreadnoughts, 
 more Dreadnoughts, 
 
 We want eight! 
 We won't wait! 
 
 had gone up to the ears of Government from millions of 
 middle-class homes ; but the Working Man still slept. 
 
 Would nothing rouse him to the Terror that stalked by 
 night across those quiet waters ? . . . The Working 
 Man, who would have to bear the brunt of it when the 
 trouble came. . . . The Working Man . . . ? 
 
 The Head was deserted save for the familiar goat 
 tethered outside the coast-guard station. The moon 
 beamed down benignantly on the silver-sabled land, broad- 
 bosomed about him, and the waters stirring far beneath him 
 with a rustle like wind in corn. Then he heard a movement 
 at his back, and turned to see behind him, shabby, collarless, 
 sheepish, the very Working Man of whom he had been 
 thinking. 
 
 The Colonel regarded the mystic figure, gigantic in the 
 moonlight, a type rather than an individual, with an interest 
 that was half compassionate and half satirical. 
 
 Yes. That was the feller ! That was the chap who would 
 take it in the neck ! That man with the silly smile God help 
 him ! 
 
 " Come to look for it ? " he said to the shadow, half to 
 himself " wiser than your kind ? " 
 
 " Look for what, sir ? " 
 
 " The Creeping Death that's stealing across the sea to 
 swallow you and yours." 
 
 The shadow sidled towards him. 
 
 " Is that you, sir ? " a voice said. " I thought it were/' 
 
56 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The Colonel emerged from his dream. 
 
 " What, Caspar ! " he replied. " What are you doing up 
 here at this time of night ? " 
 
 " Just come up for a look round before turning in, me 
 and my wife, sir," the other answered. " Ruth/' he called, 
 " it's the Colonel." 
 
 A young woman with an orange scarf about her hair 
 issued from the shadow of the coast-guard station and came 
 forward slowly. 
 
 " I've heard a lot about you from Ern, sir," she said 
 in a deep voice that hummed like a top in the silvery silence. 
 " When you commanded his battalion in India and all." 
 
 The Colonel, standing in the dusk, listened with a deep 
 content as to familiar music, the player unseen ; and was 
 aware that his senses were stirred by a beauty felt rather 
 
 than seen Then he dropped down the hill 
 
 to the hostel twinkling solitary in the coombe beneath. 
 
 " Your friend Caspar's married," he told his wife on 
 joining her in the loggia. The little lady scoffed . 
 
 " Married ! " she cried. " He's been married nearly a 
 year. They spent their honeymoon on the hill at the back 
 last autumn. I could see them from my room." 
 
 " Why ever didn't you tell me ? " asked the Colonel. 
 "I'd have run em in for vagrancy." 
 
 " No, you wouldn't," answered Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Because, my Jocko, she's a peasant Madonna. You 
 couldn't stand up against her. No man could." 
 
 " A powerful great creature from what I could see of her," 
 the Colonel admitted. " A bit of a handful for Master Ernie, 
 I should guess." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor's fine face became firm. She thought 
 she scented a challenge in the words and dropped her eyes 
 to her work to hide the flash in them. 
 
 " Ernie'll hold her," she said. " He could hold any 
 woman. He's a gentleman like his father before him." 
 
THE CREEPING DEATH 57 
 
 He reached a long arm across to her as he sat and 
 raised her fingers to his lips. 
 
 Years ago a bird had flashed across the vision of his 
 wife, coming and going, in and out of the darkness, like 
 the sparrow of the Saxon tale ; but this had been no 
 sparrow, rather a bird of Paradise. The Colonel knew that ; 
 and he knew that the fowler who had loosed the jewel-like 
 bird was that baggy old gentleman who lived across the 
 golf links in the little house that overlooked the Rectory. 
 He knew and understood : for years ago the same bird had 
 flashed with radiant wings across the chamber of his life 
 too, swiftly coming, swiftly going. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET 
 
 IF the Colonel in his missionary efforts for the National 
 Service League made little impression on the masses in the 
 East-end, he was astonishingly successful with such labour 
 as existed in Old Town ; which in political consciousness 
 lagged fifty years behind its tumultuous neighbour on the 
 edge of the Levels, and retained far into this century much 
 of the atmosphere of a country village. There the Church 
 was still a power politically, and the workers disorganised. 
 The Brewery in the Moot and the Southdown Transport 
 Company were the sole employers of labour in the bulk ; 
 and Mr. Pigott the only stubborn opponent of the pro- 
 gramme of the League. 
 
 Archdeacon Willcocks backed the Colonel with whole- 
 hearted ferocity, and lent him the services of the Reverend 
 Spink, who, flattered at working with a Colonel D.S.O., 
 showed himself keen and capable, and proposed to run the 
 Old Town branch of the League in conjunction with the 
 Church of England's Men's Society. 
 
 " I've got a first-rate secretary as a start/' he told the 
 Colonel importantly. 
 
 "Who's that?" 
 
 " Caspar." 
 
 " Ernest Caspar ! " cried the Colonel. " The old 
 Hammer-man ! " 
 
 " No, his brother. Twice the man. Alfred Mr. 
 Trupp's chauffeur." 
 
 A few days later, when leaving the curate's lodgings, 
 the Colonel ran up against Ernie in Church Street. 
 
 58 
 
THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET 59 
 
 " Your brother's joined us," he said. " Are you 
 going to ? " 
 
 Ernie's charming face became sullen at once. 
 
 " I would, sir/ 1 he said. " Only for that/' 
 
 " Only for what ? " 
 
 " Alf ." 
 
 " You won't join because your brother has ! " grinned 
 the Colonel. 
 
 Ernie rolled a sheepish head. 
 
 " It's my wife, sir," he muttered. " See, he persecutes 
 her somethink shameful." 
 
 Next afternoon the Colonel was crossing Saffrons Croft 
 on his way to the Manor-house for tea, when a majestic 
 young woman, a baby in her arms, sauntering under the elms 
 watching the cricket, smiled at him suddenly. 
 
 He stopped, uncertain of her identity. 
 
 " I'm Mrs. Caspar, sir," she explained. " We met you 
 the other night on the Head Ern and me." 
 
 " Oh, I know all about you ! " replied the Colonel, glanc- 
 ing at the baby who lifted to the sky a face like a sleeping 
 rose. " My word ! she's a bonny un." 
 
 " She grows, sir," replied Ruth, cooing and contented. 
 " We gets her all the air we can. So we come here with 
 the children for a blow of the coolth most in general 
 Saraday afternoons. More air than in the Moot." 
 
 " Where's Caspar ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Yonder under the ellums, sir, along with a friend. 
 Come about the classes or something I did hear." 
 
 "The class-war? " asked the Colonel grimly. 
 
 "No, sir," answered Ruth. "Classes for learning you 
 learning, I allow. Man from the North, I yeard say. Talks 
 funny foreign talk I call it." 
 
 Just then the Colonel's glance fell on a child, slim as a 
 daisy stalk, and with the healthy pallor of a wood-anemone, 
 hiding behind Ruth's skirt and peeping at the stranger with 
 fearless blue eyes that seemed somehow strangely familiar. 
 
60 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " And what's your name, little Miss Hide-away ? " he 
 asked, delighted. 
 
 " Little Alice/ 1 the child replied, bold and delicate as a 
 robin. 
 
 The fact that the child was obviously some four years old 
 while Ernie had not been married half that time did not 
 occur to the Colonel as strange. He glanced at the young 
 mother, noble in outline, and in her black and red beauty 
 of the South so unlike the child. 
 
 " She doesn't take after her mother and father/ 1 he said, 
 with the reckless indiscretion of his sex. 
 
 Then he saw his mistake. Ruth has run up signals of 
 distress. Ernie, who had now joined them, as always at 
 his best in an emergency, came quickly to the rescue. 
 
 " Favours her grandmother, sir, I say," he remarked. 
 
 " Like my boy/ 1 commented the Colonel, recovering 
 himself. " I don't think anybody 'd have taken our Jock 
 for his father's son when he joined us at Pindi in 1904 
 eh, Caspar ? " 
 
 The two old Hammer-men chatted over days in India. 
 Then the Colonel went on up the hill, the eyes of the child 
 still haunting him. 
 
 The Manor-house party were having tea on the lawn, 
 under the laburnum, looking over the sunk fence on to 
 Saffrons Croft beyond, when the Colonel joined them. 
 Mrs. Lewknor was already there ; and young Stanley 
 Bessemere, the Conservative candidate for Beachbourne 
 East. He and Bess were watching a little group of people 
 gathered about a man who was standing on a bench in 
 Saffrons Croft haranguing. 
 
 " Lend me your bird-glasses, Miss Trupp," said her 
 companion eagerly. 
 
 He stood up, a fine figure of a man, perfectly tailored, 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I thought so. It's my friend." 
 
 " Who's that ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Our bright particular local star of Socialism," the 
 
THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET 61 
 
 other answered. " The very latest thing from Ruskin 
 College. I thought he confined himself to the East-end, 
 but I'm glad to find he gives you Old Towners a turn now 
 and then, Miss Trupp. And I hope he won't forget you up 
 at Meads, Colonel." 
 
 " What's his name ? " asked Bess, amused. 
 
 " Burt," replied the other. " He comes from the 
 North and he's welcome to go back there to-morrow so 
 far as I'm concerned." 
 
 " You're from the North yourself, Mr. Bessemere," Mrs. 
 Trupp reminded him. 
 
 " 1 am," replied the young man," and proud of it. 
 But for political purposes, I prefer the South. That's why 
 I'm a candidate for Beachbourne East." 
 
 A few minutes later he took his departure. The Colonel 
 watched him go with a sardonic grin. Philosopher though 
 he might be, he was not above certain of the prejudices 
 common to his profession, and possessed in an almost 
 exaggerated degree the Army view of all politicians as the 
 enemies of Man at large and of the Services in particular. 
 
 Bess was still observing through her glasses the little 
 group about the man on the bench. 
 
 " There's Ruth I " she cried " and Ernie ! " 
 
 " Listening to the orator ? " asked the Colonel, joining her. 
 
 " Not Ruth ! " answered Bess with splendid scorn. 
 " No orators for her, thank you ! She's listening to the 
 baby. Ernie can listen to him." 
 
 The Colonel took the glasses and saw Ruth and Ernie 
 detach themselves from the knot of people and come slowly 
 up the hill making for Borough Lane. 
 
 " That really is a magnificent young woman of Caspar's," 
 he said to his host. 
 
 " She's one in a million," replied the old surgeon. 
 
 " William's always been in love with her," said his wife. 
 
 " All the men are/' added Mrs. Lewknor, with a 
 provocative little nod at her husband. 
 
62 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Where did he pick up his pearl ? " asked the Colonel. 
 " I love that droning accent of hers. It's like the music 
 of a rookery/' 
 
 " She can ca-a-a away with the best of them when she 
 likes/' chuckled Bess. " You should hear her over the 
 baby ! " 
 
 " An Aldwolston girl/' said Mrs. Trupp. " She's Sussex 
 to the core with that Spanish strain so many of them have/' 
 She added with extreme deliberation, " She was at the 
 Hohenzollern for a bit one time o day, as we say in these parts/' 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor coloured faintly and looked at her feet. 
 Next to her Jocko and his Jock the regiment was the most 
 sacred object in her world. But the harm was done. The 
 secret she had guarded so long even from her husband was 
 out. The word Hohenzollern had, she saw, unlocked the 
 door of the mystery for him. 
 
 Instantly the Colonel recalled Captain Royal's stay at 
 the hotel on the Crumbles a few years before . . . 
 Ernie Caspar's service there . . . the clash of the two 
 men on the steps of the house where he was now having tea 
 . . . Royal's sudden flight, and the rumours that had 
 reached him of the reasons for it. 
 
 The eyes which had looked at him a few minutes since 
 in Saffrons Croft from beneath the fair brow of little Alice 
 were the eyes of his old adjutant. 
 
 Then Mr. Trupp's voice broke in upon his reverie. 
 
 " Ah," said the old surgeon, " I see you know." 
 
 " And I'm glad you should," remarked Mrs. Trupp 
 with the almost vindictive emphasis that at times character- 
 ised this so gentle woman. 
 
 " Everybody does, mother," Bess interjected quietly. . . 
 
 As the Colonel and his wife walked home across the 
 golf links he turned to her. 
 
 " Did you know that, Rachel ? " he inquired. 
 
 She looked straight in front of her as she walked. 
 
 " I did, my Jocko . . . Mrs. Trupp told me." 
 
THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET 63 
 
 The Colonel mused. 
 
 " What a change ! from Royal to Caspar ! " he said. 
 
 She glanced up at him. 
 
 " You don't understand, Jocko/ 1 she said quietly. 
 " Ruth was never Royal's mistress. She was a maid on the 
 Third Floor at the Hohenzollern when he was there. He 
 simply raped her and bolted." 
 
 The Colonel shrugged. 
 
 " Like the cad/' he said. 
 
 They walked on awhile. Then the Colonel said more to 
 himself than to his companion, 
 
 " I wonder if she's satisfied ? " 
 
 The little lady at his side made a grimace that sug- 
 gested " Is any woman ? " 
 
 But all she said was, 
 
 " She's a good woman." 
 
 " She's come a cropper once," replied the Colonel. 
 
 " She was tripped," retorted the other almost tartly. 
 " She didn't fall." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 A FEW days later, on a Saturday afternoon, the Colonel was 
 sitting in the loggia of the hostel looking out over the sea 
 when he saw two men coming down the shoulder of Beau- 
 nez along the coast-guard path. 
 
 The tall man in black with flying coat-tails he recog- 
 nised at once. It was Mr. Geddes, the one outstanding 
 minister of the Gospel in Beachbourne : a scholar, yet in 
 touch with his own times, eloquent and broad, with a more 
 than local reputation as a Liberal leader. His companion 
 was a sturdy fellow in a cap, with curly black hair and 
 a merry eye. 
 
 The Colonel, who never missed a chance, went out to 
 waylay the pair. Mr. Geddes introduced his friend Mr. 
 Burt, who'd come down recently from Mather and Platt's 
 in the North to act as foreman fitter at Hewson and 
 Clarke's in the East-end. 
 
 The Colonel reached out a bony hand, which the other 
 gripped fiercely. 
 
 " I know you're both conspirators/' he said with a wary 
 smile. " What troubles are you hatching for me now ? " 
 
 Mr. Geddes laughed, and the engineer, surly a little 
 from shyness and self-conscious as a school-boy, grinned. 
 
 " Mr. Burt and I are both keen on education," said the 
 minister. " He's been telling me of Tawney's tutorial 
 class at Rochdale. We're hatching a branch of the W.E.A. 
 down here. That's our only conspiracy." 
 
 " What's the W.E.A. ? " asked the Colonel, always keen. 
 
 " It's the Democratic wing of the National Service 
 League," the engineer answered in broad Lancashire 
 " Workers' Education Association." 
 
 64 
 
THE MAN FROM THE NORTH 65 
 
 The Colonel nodded. 
 
 " He's getting at me ! " he said. " I'm always being 
 shot at. Will you both come in to tea and talk ? I should 
 like you to meet my wife, Burt. She'll take you on. She's 
 a red-hot Tory and a bonnie fighter." 
 
 But Mr. Geddes had a committee, and "A must get on 
 with the Revolution," said Burt gravely. 
 
 " What Revolution's that ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " The Revolution that begun in 1906 and that's been 
 going on ever since ; and will go on till we're through! " 
 He said the last words with a kind of ferocity; and then burst 
 into a sudden jovial roar as he saw the humour of his own 
 ultra-seriousness. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor, who had been watching the interview 
 from the loggia, called to her husband as he returned to 
 the house. 
 
 " Who was that man with Mr. Geddes ? " she asked. 
 
 " Stanley Bessemere's friend," the Colonel answered. 
 " A red Revolutionary from Lancasheer on the bubble ; 
 and a capital good fellow too, I should say." 
 
 That evening the Colonel rang up Mr. Geddes to ask 
 about the engineer. 
 
 " He's the new type of intellectual artizan," the minister 
 informed him. " The russet-coated captain who knows 
 what he's fighting for and loves what he knows. Unless 
 I'm mistaken he's going to play a considerable part in our 
 East-end politics down here." He gave the other the 
 engineer's address, adding with characteristic breadth, 
 
 " It might be worth your while to follow him up 
 perhaps, Colonel." 
 
 Joe Burt lodged in the East-end off Pevensey Road in 
 the heart of the new and ever-growing industrial quarter 
 of Seagate, which was gradually transforming a rather 
 suburban little town of villas with a fishing-station attached 
 into a manufacturing city, oppressed with all the thronging 
 problems of our century. There the Colonel visited his 
 
66 ONE WOMAN 
 
 new friend. Burt was the first man of his type the old 
 soldier, who had done most of his service in India, had met. 
 The engineer himself, and even more the room in which he 
 lived, with its obvious air of culture, was an eye-opener 
 to the Colonel. 
 
 There was an old sideboard, beautifully kept, and on it 
 a copper kettle and spirit lamp ; a good carpet, decent 
 curtains. On the walls were Millais's Knight Errant, 
 Greiffenhagen's Man with a Scythe, and Clausen's Girl at 
 the Gate. But it was the books on a long deal plank that 
 most amazed the old soldier ; not so much the number of 
 them but the quality. He stood in front of them and read 
 their titles with grunts. 
 
 Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics lolled up against 
 the Webbs' Industrial Democracy ; Bradley's lectures on 
 the tragedies of Shakespeare hobnobbed with Gilbert 
 Murray's translations from Euripides. Few of the standard 
 books on Economics and Industrial History, English or 
 American, were missing. And the work of the modern 
 creators in imaginative literature, Wells, Shaw, Arnold 
 Bennett were mixed with Alton Locke, Daniel Deronda, 
 Sybil, and the essays of Samuel Butler and Edward 
 Carpenter. 
 
 " You're not married then ? " said the Colonel, throwing 
 a glance round the well-appointed room. 
 
 " Yes, A am though," the engineer answered, his 
 black-brown eyes twinkling. " A'm married to Democracy. 
 She's ma first loov and like to be ma last." 
 
 " What you doing down South ? " asked the Colonel, 
 tossing one leg over the other as he sat down to 
 smoke. 
 
 " Coom to make trouble," replied the other. 
 
 " Good for you ! " said the Colonel. " Hotting things 
 up for our friend Stan. Well, he wants it. All the 
 politicians do." 
 
 His first visit to Seagate Lane was by no means his last : 
 
THE MAN FROM THE NORTH 67 
 
 for the engineer's courage, his integrity, his aggressive 
 tactics, delighted and amused the scholarly old soldier ; 
 but when he came to tackle his man seriously on the busi- 
 ness of the National Service League he found he could not 
 move him an inch from the position he invariably took up : 
 The Army would be used by the Government in the only 
 war that matters the Industrial war ; and therefore the 
 Army must not be strengthened. 
 
 " If the Army was used for the only purpose it ought to 
 be used for defence A'd be with you. So'd the boolk of 
 the workers. But it's not. They use it to croosh strikes ! " 
 And he brought his fist down on the table with a character- 
 istic thump. " That's to croosh us 1 For the strike's 
 our only weapon, Colonel." 
 
 The power, the earnestness, even the savagery he dis- 
 played, amazed the other. Here was a reality, an elemental 
 force of which he had scarcely been aware. This was 
 Democracy incarnate. And whatever else he might think 
 he could not but admire the sincerity and strength of it. 
 But he always brought his opponent back to what was for 
 him the only issue. 
 
 " Germany ! " he said. 
 
 "That's blooff!" replied the other. " They'll get the 
 machine-guns for use against Germany, and when they've 
 got em they'll use them against us. That's the capitalists' 
 game. Then there's the officers." 
 
 " What about em ? " said the Colonel cheerfully. 
 " They're harmless enough, poor devils." 
 
 "Tories to a man. Coom from the capitalist class." 
 
 " What if they do ? " 
 
 " The Army does what the capitalist officer tells it. 
 And he knows where his interest lies aw reet." 
 
 " Well, of course you know the British officer better than 
 I do, Burt," replied the Colonel, nettled for once. 
 
 His opponent was grimly pleased to have drawn 
 blood. 
 
68 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " In the next few years if things go as they look like 
 goin we shall see/' was his comment. " Wait till we get a 
 Labour Government in power ! " 
 
 The Colonel knocked out his pipe. 
 
 " WeU, Burt, I'll say this," he remarked. " If we could 
 get half the passion into our cause you do into yours, we 
 should do." 
 
 " We're fighting a reality, Colonel," the other answered. 
 " You're fighting a shadow, that's the difference." 
 
 " I hope to God it may prove so ! " said the Colonel, 
 as they shook hands. 
 
 The two men thoroughly enjoyed their spars. And the 
 battle was well matched : for the soldier of the Old Army 
 and the soldier of the New were both scholars, well-read, 
 logical, and fair-minded. 
 
 On one of his visits the Colonel found Ernie Caspar in 
 the engineer's room standing before the book-shelf, handling 
 the books. Ernie showed himself a little shame-faced in 
 the presence of his old Commanding Officer. 
 
 " How do they compare to your father's, Caspar ? " 
 asked the Colonel, innocently unaware of the other's 
 mauvaise honte and the cause of it. 
 
 " Dad's got ne'er a book now, sir," Ernie answered 
 gruffly. " Only just the Bible, and Wordsworth, and 
 Troward's Lectures. Not as he'd ever anythink like this 
 only Carpenter. See, dad's not an economist. More 
 of a philosopher and poet like." 
 
 " I wish they were mine," said the Colonel, turning over 
 Zimmeni's Greek Commonwealth. 
 
 " They're aU right if so be you can afford em," answered 
 Ernie shortly, almost sourly. 
 
 " Books are better'n beer, Ernie," said Joe Burt, a 
 thought maliciously ; and added with the little touch of 
 priggishness that is rarely absent from those who have 
 acquired knowledge comparatively late in life " They're 
 the bread of life and source of power." 
 
THE MAN FROM THE NORTH 69 
 
 " Maybe/' retorted Ernie with a snort ; " but they 
 aren't the equal of wife and children, I'll lay." 
 
 He left the room surlily. 
 
 Burt grinned at the Colonel. 
 
 " Ern's one o the much-married uns," he said. 
 
 " D'you know his wife ? " the Colonel asked. 
 
 Joe shook his bull-head. 
 
 " Nay," he said. " And don't wish to." 
 
 " She's a fine woman all the same," replied the Colonel. 
 
 " Happen so," the other answered. " All the more 
 reason a should avoid her. They canna thole me, the 
 women canna. And A don't blame em." 
 
 " Why can't they thole you ? " asked the Colonel 
 curiously. 
 
 " Most Labour leaders rise to power at the expense of 
 their wives," the other explained. " They go on ; but the 
 wives stay where they are at the wash-tub. The women 
 see that ; and they don't like it. And they're right." 
 
 " What's the remedy ? " 
 
 " There's nobbut one." Joe now not seldom honoured 
 the Colonel by relapsing into dialect when addressing 
 him. " And that's for the Labour leader to remain un- 
 married. They're the priests of Democracy or should be." 
 
 " You'll never make a Labour leader out of Caspar," 
 said the Colonel genially. " I've tried to make an N.C.O. 
 of him before now and failed." 
 
 " A'm none so sure," Joe said, and added with genuine 
 concern : " He's on the wobble. Might go up ; might go 
 down. Anything might happen to yon lad now. He's 
 just the age. But he's one o ma best pupils if he'll nobbut 
 work." 
 
 " Ah," said the Colonel with interest. " So he's joined 
 your class at St. Andrew's Hall, has he ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied the other. " Mr. Chislehurst brought 
 him along the new curate in Old Town. D'ye know 
 him ? " 
 
70 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " He's my cousin/' replied the Colonel. " I got him 
 here. He'd been overworking in Bermondsey in con- 
 nection with the Oxford Bermondsey Mission/ 1 
 
 "Oh, he's one of ihem\" cried the other. "That 
 accounts for it. A know them. They were at Oxford when 
 A was at Ruskin. They're jannock, and so yoong with 
 it. They think they're going to convert the Church to 
 Christianity I " He chuckled . 
 
 " In the course of history," remarked the Colonel, 
 "many Churchmen have thought that. But the end of 
 it's always been the same." 
 
 " What's that ? " asked the engineer. 
 
 " That the Church has converted them." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE CHERUB 
 
 THE advent of Bobby Chislehurst to Old Town made a 
 considerable difference to Bessie Trupp. She was not at 
 all in love with him and he only pleasantly so with her ; 
 but as she told her friend the Colonel, 
 
 " He's the first curate we've ever had in Old Town you 
 can be like that with." 
 
 " Like that is good," said the Colonel. " Give me my 
 tables. Meet it is I write it down. It says nothing and 
 expresses everything." 
 
 Now if the clergy in Old Town with the exception of 
 Bess's pet antipathy, the Reverend Spink, were honest men 
 worthy of respect, as everybody admitted, they were also 
 old-fashioned ; and Bobby Chislehurst was a new and 
 disturbing element in their midst. Shy and unassuming 
 though he was, the views of the Chreub, as the Colonel 
 called his cousin, when they became known, created some- 
 thing of a mild sensation in the citadel which had been held 
 for Conservatism against all comers by the Archdeacon and 
 his lady for nearly forty years. 
 
 Even Mr. Pigott was shocked. 
 
 " He's a Socialist 1 " he confided to Mr. Trupp at the 
 Bowling Green Committee. 
 
 The old Nonconformist had passed the happiest hours 
 of a militant life in battle with the Church as represented 
 by his neighbour, the Archdeacon, but of late it had been 
 borne in upon him with increasing urgency that the time 
 might come when Church and Chapel would have to join forces 
 and present a common front against the hosts of Socialism 
 which he feared more than ever he had done the Tory legions. 
 
 But if the Church was going Socialist ! . . . 
 
 And Mr. Chislehurst said it was . . . 
 
 71 
 
72 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The new curate and Bess Trupp had much in common, 
 especially Boy Scouts, their youth and the outstanding 
 characteristic of their generation a passionate interest 
 and sympathy for their poorer neighbours. Both spent 
 laborious and happy hours in the Moot, listening a great deal, 
 learning much, even helping a little. Bess, who had known 
 most of the dwellers in the hollow under the Kneb all her 
 life, had of course her favourites whom she commended to 
 the special care of Bobby on his arrival ; and first of these 
 were the young Caspars. 
 
 She told him of Edward Caspar, her mother's old friend, 
 scholar, dreamer, gentleman, with the blood of the Beau- 
 regards in his veins, who had married the daughter of an 
 Ealing tobacconist, and lived in Rectory Walk ; of Anne 
 Caspar, the harsh and devoted tyrant ; of the two sons of 
 this inharmonious couple, and the antagonism between them 
 from childhood ; of Alf 's victory and Ernie's enlistment in 
 the Army ; his sojourn in India and return to Old Town 
 some years since ; and she gave him a brief outline of 
 Ruth's history, not mentioning Royal's name but referring 
 once or twice through set teeth to " that little beast." 
 
 " Who's that ? " asked the Cherub. 
 
 " Ernie's brother," she answered. " Alfred, who drives 
 for dad." 
 
 " Not the sidesman ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Bobby looked surprised. 
 
 " Mr. Spink," Bess explained darkly. " He got him there." 
 
 Apart from Bess's recommendation, Mr. Chislehurst's 
 contact with Ruth was soon established through little Alice, 
 who attended Sunday School. Ruth, moreover, called her- 
 self a church-woman, and was sedately proud of it, though 
 the Church had no apparent influence upon her life, and 
 though she never attended services. 
 
 On the latter point, the Cherub, when he had rooted 
 himself firmly in her regard, remonstrated. 
 
THE CHERUB 73 
 
 " See, I ca-a-n't, sir/' said Ruth simply. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Bobby. 
 
 " He's always there/' Ruth answered enigmatically. 
 
 Bobby was puzzled and she saw it. 
 
 " Alf," she explained. "See, he wanted me same as 
 Ernie. Only not to marry me. Just for his fun like and 
 then throw you over. That's Alf, that is. There's the 
 difference atween the two brothers." She regarded the 
 young man before her with the lovely solicitude of the 
 mother initiating a sensitive son into the cruelties of a world 
 of which she has already had tragic experience. " Men are 
 like that, sir some men." She added with tender deli- 
 cacy. " Only you wouldn't know it, not yet." 
 
 The Cherub might be innocent, but no man has lived and 
 worked in the back-streets of Bermondsey without learning 
 some strange and ugly truths about life and human nature. 
 
 " He's not worrying you now ? " he asked anxiously. 
 
 "Nothing to talk on," answered Ruth. "He wants 
 me still, I allow. Only he won't get me not yet a bit 
 anyways." She seemed quite casual about the danger 
 that threatened her, Bobby noticed; even, he thought, 
 quietly enjoying it. 
 
 That evening, when the Cherub touched on the point 
 to his colleague, Mr. Spink turned in his india-rubber lips. 
 
 " It's an honour to be abused by a woman like that," 
 he said. " She's a bad character bad." 
 
 " She's not that, I swear ! " cried Bobby warmly. " She 
 may have exaggerated, or made a mistake, but bad she's 
 not." 
 
 " I believe I've been in the parish longer than you have, 
 Chislehurst," retorted the other crisply. " And presumably 
 I know something about the people in it." 
 
 " You've not been in as long as Miss Trupp," retorted 
 Bobby. " She's been here all her life." 
 
 Mr. Spink puffed at his cigar with uplifted chin and 
 smiled. 
 
74 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " How's it getting on ? " he asked. 
 
 " Pah ! " muttered Bobby" Cad ! " and went out, 
 rather white. 
 
 That was not the end of the matter, however. 
 
 A few days later Joe Burt and Bobby had paused for a 
 word at the Star corner when Mr. Spink and Alf Caspar 
 came down Church Street together. 
 
 " Birds of a feather/ 1 said Alf loudly, nudging his 
 companion, just as they passed the standing couple. 
 
 "That's not very courteous, Caspar," called Bobby 
 quietly after him. 
 
 Mr. Spink walked on with a smirk ; but Alf came back 
 with hardly dissimulated truculence. 
 
 " Sorry you've been spreading this about me, Mr. 
 Chislehurst," he said, his sour eyes blinking. 
 
 " What ? " asked the Cherub, astonished. 
 
 " Dirt," Alf retorted. " And I know where you got it 
 from too." 
 
 " I haven't," cried Bobby with boyish indignation. 
 " What d'you mean ? " 
 
 " I know you have though," retorted Alf. " So it's no 
 good denying it." He was about to move on with a sneer 
 when Joe Burt struck in. 
 
 " That's a foonny way to talk," he said. 
 
 " Foonny it may be," mocked Alf. " One thing I'll lay : 
 it's not so foonny as your lingo." 
 
 The engineer shouldered a pace nearer. 
 
 " Throw a sneer, do you ? " 
 
 " Ah," said Alf, secure in the presence of the clergyman. 
 " I know all about you." 
 
 "Coomto that," retorted the Northerner, "I know a 
 little about you. One o Stan's pups, aren't you ? " 
 
 Bobby moved on and Alf at once followed suit. 
 
 " You keep down in the East-end, my lad ! " he called 
 over his shoulder. " We don't want none of it in Old 
 Town. Nor we won't have it, neether." 
 
THE CHERUB 75 
 
 Joe stood four-square at the cross-roads, bristling like 
 a dog. 
 
 " Called yourself a Socialist when yo were down, 
 didn't you ? " he shouted. " And then turned Church and 
 State when yo began to make. I know your sort ! " 
 
 He dropped down Borough Lane, hackles still up, on the 
 way to meet Ernie by appointment in the Moot. 
 
 At the corner he waited, one eye on Em's cottage, 
 which he did not approach. Then Ruth's face peeped round 
 her door, amused and malicious, to catch his dark head 
 bobbing back into covert as he saw her. The two played / spy 
 thus most evenings to the amusement of one of them at least. 
 
 " He's there," she told Ernie in the kitchen" Waitin 
 at the corner. Keeps a safe distance, don't he ? What's 
 he feared on ? " 
 
 " You," answered Ernie, and rose. 
 
 Ruth snorted. The reluctance to meet her of this man 
 with the growing reputation as a fighter amused and pro- 
 voked her. Sometimes she chaffed with Ernie about it ; 
 bijt a ripple of resentment ran always across her laughter. 
 
 Ern now excused his friend. 
 
 " He's all for his politics," he said. " No time for 
 women." 
 
 " Hap, he'll learn yet," answered Ruth with a fierce little 
 nod of her head. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE SHADOW OF ROYAL 
 
 THAT evening Alf called at Bobby's lodgings and apolo- 
 gised frankly. 
 
 " I know I said what I shouldn't, sir," he admitted. 
 " But it fairly tortured me to see you along of a chap 
 like that Burt." 
 
 " He's all right," said Bobby coldly. 
 
 Alf smiled that sickly smile of his. 
 
 " Ah, you're innocent, Mr. Chislehurst," he said. " Only 
 wish I knew as little as you do." 
 
 Alf in fact was moving on and up again in his career ; 
 walking warily in consequence, and determined to do 
 nothing that should endanger his position with the powers 
 that be. This was the motive that inspired his apology to 
 Mr. Chislehurst and caused him likewise to make approaches 
 to his old schoolmaster, Mr. Pigott. 
 
 The old Nonconformist met the advances of his erst- 
 while pupil with genial brutality. 
 
 " What's up now, Alf ? " he asked. " Spreading the 
 treacle to catch the flies. Mind ye don't catch an hornet 
 instead then ! " 
 
 The remark may have been made in innocence, but Alf 
 looked sharply at the speaker and retired in some disorder. 
 His new stir of secret busyness was in fact bringing him into 
 contact with unusual company, as Mrs. Trupp discovered 
 by accident. One evening she had occasion to telephone 
 on behalf of her husband to the garage. A voice that 
 seemed familiar replied. 
 
 " Who's that ? " she asked. 
 
 The answer came back, sharp as an echo, 
 
THE SHADOW OF ROYAL 77 
 
 " Who's that f " 
 
 " I'm Mrs. Trupp. I want to speak to Alfred Caspar/' 
 
 Then the voice muttered and Alfred took the receiver. 
 
 Later Mrs. Trupp told her husband of the incident. 
 
 "I'm certain it was Captain Royal/' she said with 
 emphasis. 
 
 The old surgeon expressed no surprise. 
 
 " I daresay/' he said. " Alf's raising money for some 
 business scheme. He told me so." 
 
 Now if Alf's attempts on Ruth in the days between the 
 birth of the child and her marriage to Ernie were known to 
 Mrs. Trupp, the connection of the little motor-engineer and 
 Royal was only suspected by her. A chance word of Ruth's 
 had put her on guard ; and that was all. Now with the 
 swift natural intuition for the ways of evil-doers, which the 
 innocent woman, once roused, so often reveals as by miracle, 
 she flashed to a conclusion. 
 
 " Alf's blackmailing him ! " she said positively. 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised," her husband answered 
 calmly. 
 
 His wife put her hand upon his shoulder. 
 
 " How can you employ a man like that, William ? " 
 she said, grave and grieved. 
 
 It was an old point of dispute between them. Now he 
 took her hand and stroked it. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " when a bacteriologist has had a 
 unique specimen under the microscope for years he's not 
 going to abandon it for a scruple." 
 
 A few days later Mrs. Trupp was walking down Borough 
 Lane past the Star when she saw Alf and Ruth cross each 
 other on the pavement fifty yards in front. Neither stopped, 
 but Alf shot a sidelong word in the woman's ear as he slid 
 by serpent-wise. Ruth marched on with a toss of her 
 head, and Mrs. Trupp noted the furtive look in the eyes of 
 her husband's chaffeur as he met her glance and passed, 
 touching his cap. 
 
78 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Mindful of her conversation with her husband, she 
 followed Ruth home and boarded her instantly. 
 
 " Ruth," she asked, " I want to know something. You 
 must tell me for your own good. Alfred's got no hold over you ? " 
 
 Ruth drew in her breath with the sound, almost a hiss, of a 
 sword snatched from its scabbard. Then slowly she relaxed. 
 
 " He's not got the sway over me not now," she said in 
 a still voice, with lowered eyes. " Only thing he's the only one 
 outside who knaws Captain Royal's the father of little Alice." 
 
 Mrs. Trupp eyed her under level brows. 
 
 " Oh, he does know that ? " she said. 
 
 Ruth was pale. 
 
 " Yes, 'M," she said. " See Alf used to drive him 
 that summer at the Hohenzolleni." 
 
 Mrs. Trupp was not entirely satisfied. 
 
 " I don't see how Alfred can hold his knowledge over 
 you," she remarked. 
 
 "Not over me," answered Ruth, raising her eyes. 
 "Over him." 
 
 " Over who ? " 
 
 " Captain Royal," said Ruth ; and added slowly 
 " And I'd be sorry for anyone Alf got into his clutches 
 let alone her father." 
 
 Her dark eyes smouldered ; her colour returned to her, 
 swarthy and glowing ; a gleam of teeth revealed itself 
 between faintly parted lips. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp not for the first time was aware of a secret 
 love of battle and danger in this young Englishwoman 
 whose staid veins carried the wild blood of some remote 
 ancestress who had danced in the orange groves of Seville, 
 watched the Mediterranean blue flecked with the sails of 
 Barbary corsairs, and followed with passionate eyes the 
 darings and devilries of her matador in the ring among the 
 bulls of Andalusia. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp returned home, unquiet at heart, and with 
 a sense that somehow she had been baffled. She knew 
 
THE SHADOW OF ROYAL 79 
 
 Ruth well enough now to understand how that young woman 
 had fallen a prey to Royal. It was not the element of class 
 that had been her undoing, certainly not the factor of money : 
 it was the soldier in the man who had seized the girl's 
 imagination. And Mrs. Trupp, daughter herself of a line 
 of famous soldiers, recognised that Royal with all his faults, 
 was a soldier, fine as a steel-blade, keen, thorough, searching. 
 It was the hardness and sparkle and frost-like quality of this 
 man with a soul like a sword which had set dancing the 
 girl's hot Spanish blood. Royal was a warrior ; and to 
 that fact Ruth owned her downfall. 
 
 Was Ernie a warrior too ? 
 
 Not for the first time she asked herself the question as 
 she turned out of the Moot into Borough Lane. And at 
 the moment the man of whom she was thinking emerged 
 from the yard of the Transport Company, dusty, draggled, 
 negligent as always, and smiling at her with kind eyes too 
 kind, she sometimes thought. 
 
 As she crossed the road to the Manor-house Joe Burt 
 passed her and gave his cap a surly hitch by way of salute. 
 Mrs. Trupp responded pleasantly. Her husband, she knew, 
 respected the engineer. She herself had once heard him 
 speak and had admired the fire and fearlessness in him. 
 Moreover, genuine aristocrat that she was, she followed with 
 sympathy his lonely battle against the hosts of Toryism 
 in the East-end, none the less because she was herself a Con- 
 servative by tradition and temperament. 
 
 That man was a warrior to be sure. . . . 
 
 That evening the old surgeon dropped his paper and 
 looked over his pince-nez at his wife and daughter. 
 
 " My dears," he said, " I've some good news for you/ 1 
 
 " I know/' replied Bess, scornfully. " Your Lloyd 
 George is coming down in January to speak on his iniqui- 
 tous Budget. I knew that, thank you ! " 
 
 " Better even than that," her father answered. " Alfred 
 Caspar's leaving me of his own accord." 
 
8o ONE WOMAN 
 
 The girl tossed her skein of coloured silk to the ceiling 
 with a splendid gesture. 
 
 " Chuck-her-up I " she cried. " Do you hear, mother ? " 
 
 " I do/' answered Mrs. Trupp severely. " Better late 
 than never." 
 
 "And I'm losing the best chauffeur in East Sussex/ 1 
 Mr. Trupp continued. 
 
 Alf , indeed, who had paddled his little canoe for so long 
 and so successfully on the Beachbourne mill-pond, was 
 now about to launch a larger vessel on the ocean of the world 
 in obedience to the urge of that ambition which, apart from a 
 solitary lapse, had been the consuming passion of his life. 
 Unlike most men, however, who, as they become increasingly 
 absorbed in their own affairs, tend to drop outside interests, 
 he persisted loyally in old-time activities. Whether it was 
 that his insatiable desire for power forbade him to abandon 
 any position, however modest, which afforded him scope ; or 
 that he felt it more necessary than ever now, in the interests 
 of his expanding career, to maintain and if possible improve 
 his relations with the Church and State which exercised so 
 potent a control in the sphere in which he proposed to 
 operate ; or that the genuinely honest workman in him 
 refused to abandon a job to which he had once put his hand, 
 it is the fact that he continued diligent in his office at St. 
 Michael's, and manifested even increased zeal in his labours 
 for the National Service League. 
 
 Alf, indeed, so distinguished himself by his services to 
 the League that at the annual meeting at the Town Hall, 
 he received public commendation both from the Archdeacon 
 and the Colonel, who announced that "the admirable and 
 indefatigable secretary of our Old Town branch, Mr. Alfred 
 Caspar, has agreed to become District Convener/' 
 
 That meeting was a red-letter day in the history of the 
 Beachbourne National Service League, for at it the Colonel 
 disclosed that Lord Roberts was coming down to speak. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 BOBS 
 
 THE old Field-Marshal, wise and anxious as a great doctor, 
 was sitting now at the bedside of the patient that was his 
 country. His finger was on her pulse, his eye on the hour- 
 glass, the sands of which were running out ; and he was 
 listening always for the padding feet of that Visitor whose 
 knock on the door he expected momentarily. 
 
 After South Africa he had sheathed at last the sword 
 which had not rested in its scabbard for fifty years ; and 
 from that moment his eyes were everywhere, watching, 
 guiding, cherishing the movement to which he had given 
 birth. 
 
 He followed the activities and successes of Colonel 
 Lewknor on the South Coast with a close attention of which 
 the old Hammer-man knew nothing ; and to show his 
 appreciation of the Colonel's labours, he volunteered to 
 come down to Beachbourne and address a meeting. 
 
 The offer was greedily accepted. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor, who, now that the hostel was in full 
 swing, was more free to interest herself in her husband's 
 concerns, flung herself into the project with enthusiasm. 
 And the Colonel went to work with tact and resolution. On 
 one point he was determined : this should not be a Con- 
 servative demonstration, run by the Tories of Old Town and 
 Meads. Mr. Glynde, a local squire, the member for Beach- 
 bourne West, might be trusted to behave himself. But 
 young Stanley Bessemere, who, as the Colonel truly said, 
 was for thrusting his toe into the crack of every door, would 
 need watching he and his cohorts of lady-workers. 
 
 81 
 
82 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The Committee took the Town Hall for the occasion, 
 and arranged for the meeting to be at eight in the 
 evening so that Labour might attend if it would. 
 
 The Colonel journeyed down to the East-end to ask 
 Joe Burt to take an official part in the reception ; but the 
 engineer refused, to the Colonel's chagrin. 
 
 " A shall coom though/' said Joe. 
 
 "And bring your mates along," urged the Colonel. 
 "The old gentleman's worth seeing at all events. Mr. 
 Geddes is coming." 
 
 " I was going to soop with Ernie Caspar and his missus," 
 replied the engineer, looking a little foolish. " And we were 
 coomin along together afterwards." 
 
 "Ah," laughed the Colonel, as he went out. "She's 
 beat you ! I knew she would. Back the woman ! " 
 
 Joe grinned in the door. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Best get it over. That's my notion 
 of it." 
 
 Bobs was still the most popular of Englishmen, if no 
 longer the figure of romance he had been in the eyes of the 
 British public for a few minutes during the South African 
 war. His name drew; and the Town Hall was pleasantly 
 full without being packed. Many came to see the old hero 
 who cared little for his subject. Amongst these was Ruth 
 Caspar who at Ernie's request for once had left her babes 
 to the care of a friend. She stood at the back of the hall 
 with her husband amongst her kind. Mrs. Trupp, passing, 
 invited her to come forward ; but Ruth had spied Alf at the 
 platform end, a steward with a pink rosette, very smart, and 
 deep in secret counsel with the Reverend Spink. Joe Burt, 
 with critical bright eye everywhere, supported the wall next 
 to her. The Colonel, hurrying by, threw a friendly glance 
 at him. 
 
 " Ah," he said, " so you've found each other." 
 
BOBS 83 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied Ruth mischievously. " He's faced 
 me at last, Mr. Burt has." 
 
 " And none the worse for it, I hope/' said the Colonel. 
 
 " That's not for me to say, sir/' answered Ruth, who 
 was in gay mood. 
 
 Joe changed the subject awkwardly. 
 
 " A see young Bessemere's takin a prominent part in the 
 proceedings," he said, nodding towards the platform. 
 " He's two oughts above nothing, that young mon." 
 
 " Yes, young ass," replied the Colonel cheerfully. 
 " Now if you'd come on the Committee as I asked you, 
 you'd be there to keep him in his place. You play into the 
 hands of your enemy ! " 
 
 Then Bobby Chislehurst stopped for a word with Ruth 
 and Ernie and their friend. 
 
 " Coom, Mr. Chislehurst ! " chaffed the engineer. " A'm 
 surprised to see you here. A thought you was a Pacifist." 
 
 " So I am," replied the other cheerily. " That's why I've 
 come. I want to hear both sides." 
 
 Joe shook his bullet-head gravely. 
 
 " There's nobbut two sides in life," he said. " Right 
 and Wrong. Which side is the Church on ? " 
 
 Then the little Field-Marshal came on to the platform 
 with the swift and resolute walk of the old Horse-gunner. 
 He was nearly eighty now, but his figure was that of a youth, 
 neat, slight, alert. Ruth remarked with interest that the 
 hero was bow-legged, which she did not intend her children 
 to be. For the rest, his kindly face of a Roman-nosed 
 thoroughbred in training, his deep wrinkles, and close- 
 cropped white hair, delighted her. 
 
 The great soldier proved no orator ; but his earnestness 
 more than compensated for his lack of eloquence. 
 
 After the meeting he came down into the body of the 
 hall and held an informal reception. The Colonel intro- 
 duced Mr. Geddes, and left the two together while he edged 
 his way down to Joe Burt. 
 
84 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " WeU, what d'you think of him ? " he asked. 
 
 The engineer, his hands glued to the wall behind him, 
 rocked to and fro. 
 
 " A like him better than his opinions/' he grinned. 
 
 " You come along and have a word with him/' urged the 
 Colonel. 
 
 Joe shook a wary head. 
 
 " He's busy with Church and State," he said, nodding 
 down the hall. " He don't need Labour." 
 
 Then Ruth chimed in almost shrilly for once. 
 
 " There's young Alf shook hands with him ! " 
 
 " Always shovin of issalf ! " muttered Ernie sourly. 
 " He and Reverend Spink." 
 
 The old Field-Marshal was now coming slowly down the 
 hall with a word here and a handshake there. Church and 
 State, as Joe had truly said, were pressing him. Mrs. 
 Trupp, indeed, and Mrs. Lewknor were fighting a heavy 
 rearguard action against the Archdeacon and Stanley 
 Bessemere and his cohorts, to cover the old soldier's retire- 
 ment. 
 
 As the column drifted past Ernie and Ruth the Colonel 
 stopped. 
 
 " An old Hammer-man, sir," he said. " And the mother 
 of future Hammer-men." 
 
 Lord Roberts shook hands with Ruth, and turned to 
 Ernie. 
 
 " What battalion ? " he asked in his high-pitched 
 voice. 
 
 " First, sir," answered Ernie, rigid at attention, in a 
 voice Ruth had never heard before. 
 
 " Ah," said the old Field-Marshal. " They were with 
 me in the march to Kandahar. Never shall I forget them ! " 
 He ran his eye shrewdly over the other. " Are you keeping 
 fit?" 
 
 " Pretty fair, considering, sir," answered Ernie, relaxing 
 suddenly as he had braced. 
 
BOBS 85 
 
 " Well, you'll be wanted soon/' said Bobs, and passed 
 on. " How these men run to seed, directly they leave the 
 service, Lewknor ! " he remarked to the Colonel on the stairs. 
 " Now I daresay that fellow was a smart upstanding man 
 when he was with you." 
 
 Ernie, thrilled at his adventure, went out into the cool 
 night with Ruth, quietly amused at his excitement, beside 
 him. 
 
 " Didn't 'alf look, All didn't, when he talked to you I " 
 chuckled Ruth. 
 
 That was the main impression she had derived from the 
 meeting, that and LordRoberts's ears and the way they were 
 stuck on to his head ; but Ernie's mind was still in tumult. 
 
 " Where's Joe then ? " he cried suddenly, and turned to 
 see his pal still standing somewhat forlorn on the steps of 
 the Town Hall. 
 
 He whistled and beckoned furiously. 
 
 " Come on, Joe ! " he called. "Just down to the Wish 
 and have a look at the sea." 
 
 But the engineer shook his head and turned slowly 
 away down Grove Road. 
 
 " Nay, A know when A'm not wanted," he called. 
 " Yoong lovers like to be alone." 
 
 " Sauce ! " said Ruth, marching on with a little smile. 
 
 Ernie rejoined her. 
 
 " What d'you think of him ? " he asked keenly. 
 
 " O, I liked him," said Ruth, cool and a trifle mischievous. 
 " He's like a little bird so alife like. And that tag of white 
 beard to his chin like a billy-goat ! I did just want to 
 pluck it ! " She tittered and then recollected herself. 
 
 " I didn't mean Lord Roberts, fat-ead," retorted Ernie. 
 " I meant Joe." 
 
 " O, that chap ! " answered Ruth casually. " I didn't 
 pay much heed to him. There's a lot o nature to him, 
 
86 ONE WOMAN 
 
 I should reckon. Most in general there is them black 
 chaps, bull-built, wi curly tops to em." 
 
 She drifted back to Lord Roberts and the meeting. 
 
 " Only all that about war ! I don't like that. Don't 
 seem right, not to my mind. There's a plenty enough 
 troubles seems to me without them a-shoving great wars on 
 top o you all for love." 
 
 Ernie felt that the occasion demanded a lecture and that 
 he was pointed out as the man to give it. The chance, 
 moreover, might not recur ; and he must therefore make the 
 most of it. He had this feeling less often perhaps than most 
 men, and for that reason when he had it he had it strong. 
 At the moment he was profoundly aware of the immense 
 superiority of his sex ; the political sagacity of Man ; his 
 power of taking statesmanlike views denied apparently to 
 Woman. 
 
 " And what if Germany attacks us ! " he asked cen- 
 soriously. " Take it laying down, I suppose ! Spread your- 
 self on the beach and let em tread on you as they land, so 
 they don't wet their feet ! " 
 
 " Germany won't interfere with you if you don't inter- 
 fere with her, I reckon," Ruth answered calmly. " It's just 
 the same as .neighbours in the street. You're friends or un- 
 friends, accordin as you like." 
 
 " What about Mrs. Ticehurst ? " cried Ernie, feeling 
 victory was his for once. " You didn't interfere with her, 
 did you ? Yet she tip the dust bin a-top o little Alice over 
 the back-wall to show she loved you, I suppose." 
 
 Ruth tilted a knowing chin. 
 
 " She aren't a neighbour, Mrs. Ticehurst aren't not 
 prarperly." 
 
 They were relapsing into broad Sussex as they always 
 would when chaffing. 
 
 " What are she then ? " 
 
 "She's a cat, sure-ly." 
 
 The night air, the thronged and brilliant sky, the rare 
 
BOBS 87 
 
 change, the little bit of holiday, inspired and stimulated her. 
 The Martha of much busyness had given place to the girl 
 again. Immersed in the splendid darkness, she was in a 
 delicious mood, cool, provocative, ironical ; as Ernie had 
 known her in that brief April of her life before Captain 
 Royal had thrown a shadow across her path. 
 
 He threaded his arm through hers. Together they 
 climbed the little Wish hill on the sea-front. From the top, 
 by the old martello tower, they looked across the sea, white 
 beneath the moon. Ernie's mood of high statesmanship 
 had passed already. 
 
 " I don't see this Creeping Death they talk on," he said 
 discontentedly. 
 
 "Ah," Ruth answered, sagacious in her turn. "Hap 
 it's there though." 
 
 Ernie turned on her. 
 
 " I thart you just said . . ." 
 
 %< No, I didn't then," she answered with magnificent 
 unconcern. " All I say is War and that, what's it got to 
 do wi' we ? " 
 
 As they came off the hill they met Colonel and Mrs. 
 Lewknor crossing Madeira Walk on their way home. 
 
 " Where's your friend ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Gone back to his books and learning, sir, I reckon," 
 replied Ruth. " He don't want us." 
 
 " Ah, you scared him, Mrs. Caspar," chaffed the Colonel. 
 
 " Scared him back to his revolution," commented Mrs. 
 Lewknor. 
 
 Ruth laughed that deep silvery bell-like laughter of 
 hers that seemed to make the night vibrate. 
 
 " He'd take some scaring, I reckon, that chap would," 
 she said. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN 
 
 JOE BURT had been born at Rochdale of a mother whose 
 favourite saying was : 
 
 " With a rocking-chair and a piece o celery a Lancasheer 
 lass is aw reet." 
 
 At eight, she had entered the mill, doffing. Joe had 
 entered the same mill at about the same age, doffing too. 
 He worked bare-footed in the ring-room in the days when 
 overlookers and jobbers carried straps and used them. 
 
 When he was fifteen his mother died, and his father 
 married again. 
 
 " Thoo can fend for self/' his step-mother told him 
 straightway, with the fine directness of the North. 
 
 Joe packed his worldly possessions in a chequered 
 handkerchief, especially his greatest treasure a sixpenny 
 book bought off a second-hand bookstall at infinite cost to 
 the buyer and called The Hundred Best Thoughts. Then 
 he crossed the common at night, falling into a ditch on the 
 way, to find the lodging-house woman who was to be his 
 mother for the next ten years drinking her Friday pint o 
 beer. He was earning six shillings a week at the time in a 
 bicycle-shop. Later he entered a big engineering firm and, 
 picking up knowledge as he went along, was a first-class 
 fitter when he was through his time. 
 
 Those were the days when George Barnes was Secretary 
 of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and leading the 
 great engineers' strike of the early nineties. Labour was 
 still under the heel of Capital, but squealing freely. 
 Socialism, apart from a few thinkers, was the gospel of noisy 
 and innocuous cranks ; and advanced working-men still 
 called themselves Radicals. 
 
THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN 89 
 
 Young Joe woke up sooner than most to the fact that he 
 was the slave of an environment that was slowly throttling 
 him because it denied him opportunity to be himself which 
 is to say to grow. He discarded chapel for ever on finding 
 that his step-mother was a regular worshipper at Little 
 Bethel, and held in high esteem amongst the congregation. 
 He read Robert Blatchford in the Clarion, went to hear 
 Keir Hardie, who with Joey Arch was dodging in and out of 
 Parliament during those years, heralds of the advancing 
 storm, and took some part in founding the local branch of 
 the newly-formed Independent Labour Party. When his 
 meditative spirit tired of the furious ragings of the Labour 
 Movement of those early days, he would retire to the Friends' 
 Meeting-house on the hill and ruminate there over the plain 
 tablet set in the turf which marks appropriately the resting 
 place of the greatest of modern Quakers. 
 
 The eyes of the intelligent young fitter were opening 
 fast now ; and the death of the head of his firm completed 
 the process and gave him sight. 
 
 " Started from nothing. Left 200,000. Bequeathed 
 each of his servants 2 for every year of service ; but 
 nothing for us as had made the money." 
 
 Joe was now a leading man in the local A.S.E. His 
 Society recognised his work and sent him in the early years of 
 our century to Ruskin College, Oxford. The enemies of that 
 institution are in the habit of saying that it spoils good 
 mechanics to make bad Labour leaders. The original aim 
 of the College was to take men from the pit, the mill, the 
 shop, pour into them light and learning in the rich atmo- 
 sphere of the most ancient of our Universities, and then 
 return them whence they came to act amongst their fellows 
 as lamps in the darkness and living witnesses of the redeem- 
 ing power of education. The ideal, noble in itself, appealed 
 to the public ; but like many such ideals, it foundered on 
 the invincible rock of human nature. The miners, weavers, 
 and engineers, who were the students, after their 
 
go ONE WOMAN 
 
 year amid the towers and courts of Oxford, showed little 
 desire to return whence they came. Rather they made their 
 newly-acquired power an instrument to enable them to 
 evade the suffocating conditions under which they were 
 born ; and who shall blame them ? They became officials 
 in Labour Bureaux, Trade Union leaders, Secretaries of 
 Clubs, and sometimes the hangers-on of the wealthy sup- 
 porters of the Movement. 
 
 Burt was a shining exception to the rule. At the end 
 of his academic year he returned to the very bench in the 
 very shop he had left a year before, with enlarged vision, 
 ordered mind, increased conviction ; determined from that 
 position to act as Apostle to the Gentiles of the Old Gospel in 
 its new form. 
 
 He was the not uncommon type of intellectual artisan 
 of that day who held as the first article of his creed that no 
 working-man ought to marry under the economic con- 
 ditions that then prevailed ; and that if Nature and cir- 
 cumstance forced him to take a wife that he was not morally 
 justified in having children. This attitude involving as it 
 inevitably must a levy on the only capital that is of enduring 
 value to a country its Youth was thrust upon thought- 
 ful workers, as Joe was never tired of pointing out, by the 
 patriotic class, who refused their employees the leisure, the 
 security, the material standards of life necessary to modern 
 man for his full development. 
 
 Joe practised what he preached, and was himself 
 unmarried. Apart, indeed, from, an occasional fugitive 
 physical connection as a youth with some passing girl, 
 he had never fairly encountered a woman ; never sought 
 a woman ; never, certainly, heard the call that refuses to 
 be denied, spirit calling to spirit, flesh to flesh, was never 
 even aware of his own deep need. Women for him were 
 still a weakness to be avoided. They were the necessaries 
 of the feeble, an encumbrance to the strong. That was his 
 view, the view of the crude boy. And he believed himself 
 
THE RUSSET COATED-CAPTAIN 91 
 
 lucky to be numbered among the uncalled for he was in 
 fact a sober fanatic, living as selflessly for his creed as ever 
 did those first preachers of unscientific Socialism, the 
 Apostles and Martyrs of the first centuries of our era. 
 Even in the shop he had his little class of students, pouring the 
 milk of the word into their ears as he set their machines, and 
 the missionary spirit drove him always on to fresh enterprise. 
 
 The Movement, as he always called it, was well ablaze 
 by the second decade of the century in the Midlands and 
 the North, but in the South it still only smouldered. 
 And when Hewson and Clarke started their aeroplane 
 department at Beachbourne, and began to build machines 
 for the Government, Joe Burt, a first-rate mechanic, leapt 
 at the chance offered him by the firm and crossed the 
 Thames with his books, his brains, his big heart, to carry 
 the Gospel of Redemption by Revolution to the men 
 of Sussex as centuries before, his spiritual ancestor, St. 
 Wilfrid, he too coming from the North, had done. In that 
 strange land with its smooth-bosomed hills, its shining sea, 
 its ca-a-ing speech, he found everything politically as he 
 had expected. And yet it was in the despised South that 
 he discovered the woman who was to rouse in him the fierce 
 hunger of which till then he had been unaware except as 
 an occasional crude physical need. 
 
 As on Saturday or Sunday afternoons at the time the 
 revelation was coming to him he roamed alone, moody and 
 unmated, the rogue-man, amid the round-breasted hills 
 he often paused to mark their resemblance to the woman 
 who was rousing in his deeps new and terrible forces of 
 which he had previously been unaware. In her majestic 
 strength, her laughing tranquillity, even in her moods, 
 grave or gay, the spirit mischievously playing hide-and- 
 seek behind the smooth appearance, she was very much 
 the daughter of the hills amid which she had been bred. 
 
 Ruth was as yet deliciously unaware of her danger. 
 She was, indeed, unaware of any danger save that which 
 
92 ONE WOMAN 
 
 haunts the down-sitting and up-rising of every working 
 woman throughout the world the abiding spectre of 
 insecurity. 
 
 She liked this big man, surly and self-conscious, and 
 encouraged his visits. Not seldom as she moved amid her 
 cups and saucers in the back-ground of the kitchen, she 
 would turn eye or ear to the powerful stranger with the 
 rough eloquence sucking his pipe by the fire and holding 
 forth to Ernie on his favourite theme. It flattered her 
 that he who notoriously disliked women should care to 
 come and sit in her kitchen, lifting an occasional wary eye- 
 lid as he talked to look at her. And when she caught his 
 glance he would scowl like a boy detected playing truant. 
 
 " I shan't hurt you then, Mr. Burt," she assured him 
 with the caressing tenderness that is mockery. 
 
 His chin sunk on his chest. 
 
 " A'm none that sure," he growled. 
 
 Ernie winked at Ruth. 
 
 " Call him Joe/ 1 he suggested. " Then hap he'll be less 
 frit." 
 
 " Wilta ? " asked Ruth, daintly mimicking the accent 
 of her guest. 
 
 "Thoo's mockin a lad," muttered Joe, delighted and 
 relapsing into broader Lancashire. 
 
 " Nay, ma lad," retorted Ruth. " A dursena. A'm 
 far ower scared." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 RUTH WAKES 
 
 APART from such occasional sallies Ruth paid little atten- 
 tion to her husband's friend or, indeed, to anything outside 
 her home. Now that she had dropped her anchor in the 
 quiet waters of love sheltered by law, and had her recovered 
 self-respect to buttress her against the batterings of a 
 wayward world, she was snug, even perhaps a little selfish 
 with the self-absorption of the woman who is wrapped up 
 in that extension of herself which is her home, her children, 
 and the man who has given them her. 
 
 After her stormy flight she had settled down in her nest, 
 and seldom peeped over at the cat prowling beneath or at 
 anybody, indeed, but the cock-bird bringing back a grub 
 for supper ; and him she peeped for pretty often. She 
 was busy too with the unending busyness of the woman 
 who is her own cook, housekeeper, parlourmaid, nurse 
 and laundress. And happily for her she had the qualities 
 that life demands of the woman who bears the world's 
 burden a magnificent physique to endure the wear and 
 tear of it all, the invaluable capacity of getting on well with 
 her neighbours, method in her house, tact with her husband, 
 a way with her children. 
 
 And there was no doubt that on the whole she was happy. 
 The reaction from the sturm-und-drang period before her 
 marriage was passing but had not yet wholly passed. Her 
 spirit still slept after the hurricane. Naturally a little 
 indolent, and living freely and fully, if without passion, 
 her nature flowed pleasantly through rich pastures along 
 the channels grooved in earth by the age-long travail of the 
 spirit. 
 
 Jenny and little Ned followed Susie, just a year between 
 each child. Ernie loved his children, especially always 
 
 93 
 
94 ONE WOMAN 
 
 the last for the time being ; but the element of wonder 
 had vanished and with it much of the impetus that had 
 kept him steady for so long. 
 
 " How is it now ? " asked his mate, on hearing of the 
 birth of the boy. 
 
 " 0, it's all right/' answered Ernie, wagging his head. 
 " Only it ain't quite the same like. You gets used to it, 
 as the sayin is." 
 
 " And you'll get use-ter to it afore you're through, 
 you'll see," his friend answered, not without a touch of 
 triumphant bitterness. He liked others to suffer what he 
 had suffered himself. 
 
 As little by little the romance of wife and children 
 began to lose its glamour, and the economic pressure steadily 
 increased, the old weakness began at times to re-assert 
 itself in Ernie. He haunted the Star over much. Joe 
 Burt chaffed him. 
 
 " Hitch your wagon to a star by all means, Ern," he 
 said. " But not that one." 
 
 Mr. Pigott too cautioned him once or twice, alike as 
 friend and employer. 
 
 " Family man now, you know, Ernie," he said. 
 
 The sinner was always disarming in his obviously 
 sincere penitence. 
 
 " I knaw I've unbuttoned a bit of late, sir," he admitted. 
 " I'll brace up. I will and I can." 
 
 And at the critical moment the fates, which seemed as 
 fond of Ernie as was everybody else, helped him. 
 
 Susie, his first-born, caught pneumonia. The shock 
 stimulated Ernie ; as shock always did. The steel that was 
 in him gleamed instantly through the rust. 
 
 " Say, we shan't lose her ! " he asked Mr. Trupp in 
 staccato voice. 
 
 Mr. Trupp knew Ernie, knew his weakness, knew human 
 nature. 
 
 " Can't say," he muttered. " Might not." 
 
RUTH WAKES 95 
 
 Ern went to the window and looked out on the square 
 tower of the old church on the Kneb above him. His 
 eyes were bright and his uncollared neck seemed strangely 
 long and thin. 
 
 " She's got to live," he muttered defiantly. 
 
 The doctor nodded grimly. 
 
 The Brute had pounced on Ernie sleeping and was 
 shaking him as a dog shakes a rat. Mr. Trupp, who had 
 no intention of losing Susie, was by no means sorry. 
 
 " If it's got to be, it's got to be/' said Ruth, busy with 
 poultices. " Only it won't be if I can help it." 
 
 She was calm and strong as Ernie was fiercely resentful. 
 That angered Ernie, who was seeking someone to punish 
 in his pain. 
 
 When Mr. Trupp had left he turned on Ruth. 
 
 " You take it cool enough ! " he said with a rare sneer. 
 
 She looked at him, surprised. 
 
 " Well, where's the sense in wearin yourself into a 
 fret ? " answered Ruth. " That doosn't help any as I 
 can see." 
 
 " Ah, I knaw ! " he said. " You needn't tell me." 
 
 She put down the poultice and regarded him with eyes 
 in which there was a thought of challenge. 
 
 " What d'you knaw, Ern ? " 
 
 There was something formidable about her very quiet. 
 
 " What I do, then," he said, and turned his back on 
 her. " If it was somebody else, we should soon see." 
 
 She came to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and 
 turned him so that she could read his face. He did not 
 look at her. 
 
 She turned slowly away, drawing in her breath as one 
 who rouses reluctantly from sleep. 
 
 " That's it, is it ? " she said wearily. " I thart it'd 
 come to that some day." 
 
 Just then little Alice danced in from the street, delicate, 
 pale sprite, with anemone-like health and beauty. 
 
96 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Daddy-paddy ! " she said, smiling up at him, as she 
 twined her fingers into his. 
 
 He bent and kissed her with unusual tenderness. 
 
 " Pray for our little Sue, Lai," he muttered. 
 
 The child looked up at him with fearless eyes of forget- 
 me-not blue. 
 
 "I be/' she said. 
 
 He gave her a hand, and they went out together into 
 Mot combe Garden : for they were the best of friends. 
 
 Ruth was left. In her heart she had always known 
 that this would come : he would turn on her some day. 
 And she did not blame him : she was too magnanimous. 
 Men were like that, men were. They couldn't help their- 
 salves. Any one of them but Ernie would have thrown 
 her past up at her long before. She was more grateful for 
 his past forbearance than resentful at his present vindictive- 
 ness. Now that the blow, so long hovering above her in 
 the dimness of sab-consciousness, had fallen she felt the 
 pain of it, dulled indeed by the fact that she was already 
 suffering profoundly on Susie's account. But the impact 
 braced her ; and it was better so. There was no life without 
 suffering and struggle. If you faced that fact with your 
 eyes open, never luxuriating in the selfishness of make- 
 believe, compelling your teeth to meet on the granite 
 realities of life, then there would be no dreadful shock as you 
 fell out of your warm bed and rosy dreams into an icy pool. 
 
 Ruth went back to her hum-drum toil. She had been 
 dreaming. Now she must awake. It was Ernie who had 
 roused her from that dangerous lethargy with a brutal slash 
 across the face ; and she was not ungrateful to him. 
 
 When he returned an hour later with little Alice she was 
 unusually tender to him, though her eyes were rainwashed. 
 He on his side was clearly ashamed and stiff accordingly. 
 He said nothing ; instead he was surly in self-defence. 
 
 To make amends he sat up with the child that night and 
 the next. 
 
RUTH WAKES 97 
 
 " Shall you save her, sir ? " asked the scare-crow on the 
 third morning. 
 
 " I shan't/' replied the doctor. " Her mother may." 
 
 Next day when Mr. Trupp came he grunted the grunt, 
 so familiar to his patients, that meant all was well. 
 
 When the corner was turned Ern did not apologise to 
 Ruth, though he longed to do so ; nor did she ask it of him. 
 To save himself without undergoing the humiliation of 
 penance, and to satisfy that most easily appeased of human 
 faculties, his conscience, he resorted to a trick ancient as 
 Man : he went to chapel. 
 
 Mr. Pigott who had stood in that door at that hour 
 in that frock-coat for forty years past, to greet alike the 
 sinner and the saved, welcomed the lost sheep, who had 
 not entered the fold for months. 
 
 " I know what this means," he said, shaking hands. 
 " You needn't tell me. I congratulate you. Go in and 
 give thanks." 
 
 Ern bustled in. 
 
 " I shall come regular now, sir," he said. "I've had my 
 lesson. You can count on me." 
 
 " Ah," said Mr. Pigott, and said no more. 
 
 Next Sunday indeed he waited grimly and in vain 
 for the prodigal. 
 
 " Soon eased off," he muttered, as he closed the door 
 at last. " One with a very sandy soil." 
 
 The Manager of the Southdown Transport Company 
 went home that evening to the little house on the Lewes Road 
 in unaccomodating mood. 
 
 11 His trousers are coming down all right," he told his 
 wife. " I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Once 
 you let go o God " 
 
 " God lets go o you," interposed Mrs. Pigott. " Tit 
 for tat." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 NIGHTMARE 
 
 A FEW days later on his way back to the Manor-house 
 from visiting his little patient in the Moot, the old surgeon 
 met Mr. Pigott, who stopped to make enquiries. 
 
 " She'll do now/' said Mr. Trupp. 
 
 " And that fellow ? " 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Her father." 
 
 Mr. Trupp looked at the windy sky, torn to shreds and 
 tatters by the Sou-west wind above the tower of the parish- 
 church. 
 
 " He wanted the Big Stick and he got it," he said. 
 "If it came down on his shoulders once a week regularly 
 for a year he'd be a man. Steady pressure is what a fellow 
 like that needs. And steady pressure is just what you 
 don't get in a disorganised society such as ours." 
 
 The old Nonconformist held up a protesting hand. 
 
 " You'd better go to Germany straight off ! " he cried. 
 " That's the only place you'd be happy in." 
 
 Mr. Trupp grinned. 
 
 " No need," he said. " Germany's coming here. Ask 
 the Colonel ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " scolded the other. " You and your Colonels ! 
 You go and hear Norman Angell on the Great Illusion at 
 the Town Hall on Friday. You go and hear a sensible 
 man talk sense. That'll do you a bit of good. Mr. Geddes 
 is going to take the chair." 
 
 The old surgeon turned on his way, grinning still. 
 
 " The Colonel's squared Mr. Geddes," he said. " He's 
 all right now." 
 
 What Mr. Trupp told Mr. Pigott, more it is true in chaff 
 than in earnest, was partially true at least. Liberalism was 
 
 98 
 
NIGHTMARE 99 
 
 giving way beneath the Colonel's calculated assault. After 
 Lord Roberts's visit to Beachbourne the enemy dropped 
 into the lines of the besiegers sometimes in single spies and 
 sometimes in battalions. Only Mr. Pigott held out 
 stubbornly, and that less perhaps from conviction than from 
 a sense of personal grievance against the Colonel. For three 
 solid years the pugnacious old Nonconformist had been 
 trying to fix a quarrel on the man he wished to make his 
 enemy ; but his adversary had eluded battle with grace and 
 agility. That in itself happily afforded a good and unfor- 
 giveable cause of offence. 
 
 " They won't fight, these soldiers ! " he grumbled to 
 his wife. 
 
 "They leave that to you pacifists," replied the lady, 
 brightly. 
 
 " Pack o poltroons ! " scolded the old warrior. " One 
 can respect the Archdeacon at least because he has the courage 
 of his opinions. But this chap ! " 
 
 Yet if Liberalism as a whole was finding grace at last, 
 Labour in the East-end remained obdurate, as only a mollusc 
 can ; and Labour was gaining power for all men to see. 
 
 In the general elections of 1910, indeed, the two Con- 
 servative candidates, Stanley Bessemere, East, and Mr. 
 Glynde, West, romped home. The Colonel was neither 
 surprised nor deceived by the results of the elections. He 
 knew now that in modern England in the towns at all events, 
 among the rising generation, there were few Conservative 
 working men though there were millions who might and 
 in fact did vote for Conservative candidates ; and not many 
 Radicals apart from a leaven of sturdy middle-aged 
 survivors of the Gladstonian age. The workers as a whole, 
 it was clear, as they grew in class-consciousness, were 
 swinging slow as a huge tide, and almost as unconscious, 
 towards the left. But they were not articulate ; they were 
 not consistent ; they changed their labels as they changed 
 their clothes, and as yet they steadfastly refused to call 
 
I00 ONE WOMAN 
 
 themselves Socialists. Indeed, in spite of the local Con- 
 servative victory, the outstanding political feature of the 
 moment, apart from the always growing insurgency of 
 Woman, was the advance of Labour, as the Colonel and many 
 other thoughtful observers noted. He began, moreover, 
 to see that behind the froth, the foam, and arrant nonsense 
 of the extreme section of the movement, there was gathering 
 a solid body of political philosophy. The masses were 
 becoming organised an army, no longer a rabble ; with 
 staff, regimental officers, plan of campaign, and an always 
 growing discipline. And, whether you agreed with it or 
 not, there was no denying that the Minority Report of the 
 Poor Law Commission was a political portent. 
 
 When Joe Burt came up to Undercliff, as he sometimes 
 did, to smoke and chat with the Colonel, Mrs. Lewknor, a 
 whole-hearted Tory, would attack him on the tyranny of 
 Trade Unions with magnificent fury. 
 
 She made no impression on the engineer, stubborn as 
 herself. 
 
 " War is war ; and discipline is discipline. And in war 
 it's the best disciplined Army that wins. A should have 
 thought a soldier 'd have realised that much. And this 
 isna one o your little wars, mind ye ! This is the Greatest 
 War that ever was or will be. And we workers are fighting 
 for our lives/' 
 
 " Discipline is one thing and tyranny is quite another ! " 
 cried Mrs. Lewknor, with flashing eyes. 
 
 The Colonel, who delighted in these pitched battles, 
 sat and sucked his pipe on the fringe of the hub-bub ; only 
 now and then turning the cooling hose of his irony on the 
 combatants. 
 
 "It is," he said in his detached way. " Discipline is 
 pressure you exert on somebody else. And tyranny is 
 pressure exerted by somebody else upon you." 
 
 And it was well he was present to introduce the leaven 
 of humour into the dough of controversy, for Mrs. Lewknor 
 
NIGHTMARE ,';.: ; : ; ; * . joi; 
 
 found the engineer a maddening opponent. He was so 
 cool, so logical, and above all so dam provocative, as the 
 little lady remarked with a snap of her still perfect teeth. 
 He gave no quarter and asked none. 
 
 " I don't like him/' she said with immense firmness to 
 the Colonel after one of these encounters, standing in 
 characteristic attitude, her skirt a little lifted, and one foot 
 daintily poised on the fender-rail. " I don't trust him one 
 inch." 
 
 " He is a bit mad-doggy/' the other said, entwining 
 his long legs. " But he is genuine/ 1 
 
 Then two significant incidents cast the shadow of coming 
 events on the screen of Time. 
 
 In July, 1911, Germany sent the Panther to Agadir. 
 There ensued a sudden first-class political crisis ; and a 
 panic on every Stock Exchange in Europe. 
 
 Even Ernie was moved. This man who, in spite of 
 Joe Hurt's teaching, took as yet little more account of 
 political happenings than does the field-mouse of the 
 manoeuvres of the reaping machine that will shortly destroy 
 its home, crossed the golf links one evening and walked 
 through Meads to find out what the Colonel thought. 
 
 " What's it going to be, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 The other refused to commit himself. 
 
 " Might be anything," he said. " Looks a bit funny." 
 
 " Think the reservists will be called up ? " 
 
 The old soldier evinced a curious restrained keenness 
 as of a restive horse desiring to charge a fence and yet 
 uncertain of what it will find on the far side. The Colonel, 
 appraising him with the shrewd eyes of the man used to 
 judging men, was satisfied. 
 
 " I shouldn^t be surprised," was all he would say. 
 
 The old Hammer-man walked away along the cliff in the 
 direction of Meads, and dropped down on to the golf links 
 to go home by the ha-ha outside the Duke's Lodge. Then he 
 swung away under the elms of Compton Place Road and 
 
- Z '*': ONE WOMAN 
 
 turned into Saffrons Croft, where Ruth and the children 
 were to have met him. He looked about for them in vain. 
 The cricketers were there as always, the idlers strolling from 
 group to group, but no Ruth. Ernie who had been looking 
 forward to a quiet half -hour's play with little Alice and Susie 
 on the turf in the shade of the elms before bed-time felt 
 himself thwarted and resentful. Ruth as a rule was 
 reliable ; but of late, ever since his unkindness to her at 
 the time of Susie's illness, three weeks since, he had marked 
 a change hi her, subtle perhaps but real. True she denied 
 him nothing ; but unlike herself, she gave without generosity, 
 coldly and as a duty. 
 
 Nursing his grievance, he dropped down the steep hill 
 under the Manor-house wall, past the Greys, into Church 
 Street. 
 
 At the Star a little group was gossiping, heads together. 
 As he crossed the road they turned and looked at him with 
 curiosity and in silence. Then a mate of his in the Transport 
 Company called across, 
 
 " Sorry to hear this, Ern." 
 
 Ernie, thinking the man referred to the probabilities 
 that he would be called back to the Army, and proud of 
 his momentary fortuitous importance, shouted back with 
 an air of appropriate nonchalance, 
 
 " That's all right, Guy. I wouldn't mind a spell with the 
 old regiment again that I wouldn't." 
 
 At the foot of Borough Lane he met Alf bustling along. 
 His brother did not pause, but gave Ernie a searching 
 look as he passed and said, " Watch it, Ern ! " 
 
 Ern experienced a strange qualm as he approached his 
 home. The door was open ; nobody was about ; there 
 was not a sound in the house neither the accustomed 
 chirp of the children, nor the voice and movements of 
 their mother. 
 
 The nightmare terrors that are wont to seize the sensitive 
 at such times, especially if their conscience is haunted, 
 
NIGHTMARE 103 
 
 laid hold of him. The emptiness, the silence appalled him. 
 Death, so it seemed to his imaginative mind, reigned where 
 the life and warmth and pleasant human busyness the 
 woman and her children create had formerly been. Ever 
 since that dark moment when he had let loose those foul 
 and treacherous words, he had been uneasy in his mind ; 
 and yet, though usually the humblest of men, some stubborn 
 imp of pride had possessed him and refused to allow him 
 to express the contrition he genuinely felt. Perhaps the 
 very magnitude of his offence had prevented him from 
 making just amends. 
 
 Ruth on her side had said nothing ; but she had felt 
 profoundly the wound he had inflicted on her heart. So 
 much her silence and unusual reserve had told him. Had 
 he gone too far ? Had her resentment been deeper than 
 he had divined ? Had he by his stupid brutality in a 
 moment of animal panic and animal pain snapped the light 
 chain that bound him to this woman he loved so dearly and 
 knew so little ? And none was more conscious than he how 
 fragile was that chain. Ruth had never been immersed in 
 love for him : she had never pretended to be. He knew 
 that. She had been an affectionate and most loyal friend ; 
 and that was all. 
 
 On the threshold of his home he paused and stared 
 down with the frightened snort of a horse suddenly aware 
 of an abyss gaping at his feet. 
 
 For the first time in his married life the instant sense 
 of his insecurity, always present in his subconsciousness, 
 leapt into the light of day. 
 
 He gathered himself and marched upstairs as a man 
 marches up the steps of the scaffold to pay the merited 
 punishment for his crimes. 
 
 Then he heard a little noise. The door of the back room 
 where the children, all but the baby, slept, was open. He 
 peeped in. Susie was there, and Jenny with her. Hope 
 returned to him. They were sitting up in bed still in 
 
io 4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 outdoor clothes. Then he noticed that the baby's cot 
 which stood of wont in the front room beside the big bed 
 was here too. His sudden relief changed to anguish. He 
 saw it all : Us children, the three of them, packed away 
 together like fledgelings in a nest for him to mother ; and 
 the mother-bird herself and her child flown ! 
 
 And he had brought his punishment on to his own 
 head! 
 
 Susie waved a rag-doll at him and giggled. 
 
 " Neddy seeps with Susie ! " she cried. " Susie nurse 
 him ! Mummy's gone with man ! " 
 
 Brutally Ernie burst into the bedroom. 
 
 Two people stood beside the bed his wife and a man ; 
 one on either side of it. 
 
 The man was Joe Hurt ; the woman Ruth. 
 
 On the bed between them lay little Alice, wan as a lily, 
 her eyes closed apparently in death. 
 
 As he entered Joe raised a hushing finger. 
 
 " It's all right, Ern. She isna dead," said the engineer, 
 comfortably. 
 
 Ruth, who was the colour of the child on the bed, had 
 turned to him and now wreathed her arms about him. 
 
 " O Ern ! " she cried in choking voice. " I am that glad 
 you've come." 
 
 For a moment she hung on him, dependent as he had 
 never known her. 
 
 Then the child stirred, opened her eyes, saw Ernie at the 
 foot of the bed, and smiled. 
 
 " Daddy," came her sweet little voice. 
 
 Her eyes fell on Joe ; her lovely brow crumpled and she 
 wailed, 
 
 " Don't want man." 
 
 " That's me," said Joe gently, and stole towards the 
 door on tip-toe. Ern followed him out. 
 
 Mr. Trupp met them on the stairs. 
 
 At the outer door Joe gave a whispered account of what 
 
NIGHTMARE 105 
 
 had happened He had been crossing Saffrons Croft on the 
 way up to see Ernie, when he had noticed Ruth and the 
 children under the elms. Little Alice had seen him and come 
 rushing through the players towards her friend. A cricket- 
 ball had struck her on the forehead ; and he had carried 
 her home like a dead thing. Outside the cottage they had 
 met Alf, and Ruth had asked him to go for Mr. Trupp. 
 
 Ernie ran back upstairs. 
 
 The old surgeon, bending over the child, gave him a 
 reassuring glance. 
 
 " The child's all right/' he said. " See to the mother ! " 
 and nodded to Ruth, who was holding on to the mantel- 
 piece. 
 
 She was swaying. Ern gathered her to him. The 
 whole of her weight seemed on him. His eyes hung on her 
 face, pale beneath its dark crown as once, and only once, 
 he had seen it before that time she lay on the bed in Royal's 
 dressing-room on the dawn of her undoing. 
 
 " Ruth," he called quietly. 
 
 Slowly she returned to life, opening her eyes, and drawing 
 her hand across them. 
 
 " Is that you, Ern ? " she sighed. " O, that's right. I 
 come all over funny like. Silly ! I'm all right now." 
 
 Ernie lowered her into a chair. 
 
 She sat a moment, gathering herself. Then she looked 
 up at him and remembered. She had been caught. Fear 
 came over her, and she began to tremble. 
 
 He bent and kissed her. 
 
 " I'm sorry I said that, Ruth," he whispered in her ear. 
 
 A lovely light welled up into her eyes. At that moment 
 she was nearer-loving him than she had ever been. Regard- 
 less of Mr. Trupp's presence, she put a hand on either of 
 his shoulders, and regarded him steadfastly, a baffling look 
 on her face. 
 
 " Dear Ern ! " she said. " Only I'd liefer you didn't 
 say it again. See, it do hurt from you." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 SHADOWS 
 
 ERN was not called up after all. 
 
 The trap-door through which men had peered aghast 
 into the fires of hell, closed suddenly as it had opened. 
 Only the clang of the stokers working in the darkness under 
 the earth could still be heard day and night at their infernal 
 busyness by any who paused and laid ear to the ground. 
 
 England and the world breathed again. 
 
 " Touch and go/' said Mr. Trupp, who felt like a man 
 coming to the surface after a deep plunge. 
 
 " Dress rehearsal/' said the Colonel. 
 
 " It'll never be so near again ! " Mr. Pigott announced 
 pontifically to his wife. " Never ! " 
 
 " Thank you/' replied that lady. " May we take it 
 from you ? " 
 
 When it was over the Colonel found that the walls of 
 Jericho had fallen : the Liberal Citadel had been stormed. 
 Mr. Geddes took the chair at a meeting at St. Andrew's 
 Hall to discuss the programme of the League. 
 
 " It looks as if you were right after all/' the tall minister 
 said to the Colonel gravely. 
 
 " Pray heaven I'm Hot," the other answered in like 
 tones. 
 
 The second significant incident of this time, which 
 occurred during a lull before the final flare-up of the long- 
 drawn Agadir crisis, had less happy results from the point 
 of view of the old soldier. 
 
 In August, suddenly and without warning, the railway- 
 men came out. The Colonel had been up to London for 
 the night on the business of the League, and next morning 
 had walked into Victoria Street Station to find it in 
 
 106 
 
SHADOWS 107 
 
 possession of the soldiers : men in khaki in full marching 
 order, rifle, bayonet, and bandolier ; sentries everywhere ; 
 and on the platform a Union official in a blue badge urging 
 the guard to come out. 
 
 The guard, a heavy-shouldered middle-aged fellow, was 
 stubbornly lumping along the platform on flat feet, swinging 
 his lantern. 
 
 " I've got a heart/' he kept on reiterating. " I've got 
 a wife and children to think of." 
 
 " So've I," replied the official, dogging him. " It's 
 because I am thinking of them that I'm out." 
 
 " Silly 'aound ! " said a bystander 
 
 " No, he ain't then ! " retorted a second. 
 
 " Yes, he is ! " chipped in a third. " Makin trouble 
 for isself and everybody else all round. Calls isself the 
 workers' friend ! Hadgitator, I call him ! " 
 
 All the way down to Beachbourne in the train the Colonel 
 marked pickets guarding bridges ; a cavalry patrol with 
 lances flashing from the green covert of a country lane ; 
 a battery on the march ; armies on the move. 
 , Joe Burt's right, he reflected, it's war. 
 
 " I never thought to see the like of that in England," 
 said a fellow-traveller, eyes glued to the window. 
 
 " Makes you think," the Colonel admitted. 
 
 Arrived home he found there was a call for special 
 constables. That evening he went to the police station 
 to sign on, and found many of the leading citizens of Beach- 
 bourne there on like errand. Bobby Chislehurst, his open 
 young face clouded for once, and disturbed, was pressing 
 the point of view of the railway-men on Stanley Bessemere, 
 who was listening with the amused indifference of the man 
 who knows. 
 
 " I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," the politician 
 was saying, shaking the sagacious head of the embryo 
 statesmen. " They're taking advantage of the international 
 situation to try to better themselves." 
 
io8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " But they say it's the Government and the directors 
 who are taking advantage of it to try and put them off as 
 they've been doing for years ! " cried Bobby, finely indignant. 
 
 " I believe I know what I am talking about," replied 
 the other, unmoved from the rock of his superiority. " I 
 don't mind telling you that the European situation is still 
 most precarious. The men know that, and they're trying 
 to squeeze the Government. I should like to think it 
 wasn't so." 
 
 Then the Archdeacon's voice loudly uplifted over- 
 whelmed all others. 
 
 " O, for an hour of the Kaiser ! He'd deal with em. 
 The one man left in Europe now my poor Emperah's 
 gone. Lloyd George . . . Bowing the knee to Baal 
 . . . Traitors to their country . . . Want a lesson 
 . . . What can you expect ? " He mouthed away 
 grandiloquently in detached sentences to the air in 
 general ; and nobody paid any attention to him. 
 
 Near by, Mr. Pigott, red and ruffled, was asking what 
 the Army had to do with it ? who wanted the soldiers ? 
 why not leave it to the civilians ? with a provocative 
 glance at the Colonel. 
 
 Then there was a noise of marching in the street, and a 
 body of working-men drew up outside the door. 
 
 " Who are those fellows ? " asked the Archdeacon 
 loudly. 
 
 " Workers from the East-end, old cock," shouted one of 
 them as offensively through the door. "Gome to sign 
 on as Specials ! And just as good a right here as you 
 have. . . ." 
 
 The leader of the men in the street broke away from them 
 and shouldered into the yard, battle in his eye. 
 
 It was Joe Burt, who, as the Colonel had once remarked, 
 was sometimes a wise statesman, and sometimes a foaming 
 demagogue. To-day he was the latter at his worst. 
 
 " What did I tell yo ? " he said to the Colonel roughly. 
 
SHADOWS 109 
 
 " Bringin oop the Army against us. Royal Engineers 
 driving trains and all ! It's a disgrace." 
 
 The Colonel reasoned with him. 
 
 " But, my dear fellow, you can't have one section of 
 the community holding up the country/' 
 
 " Can't have it ! " surly and savage. " Yo've had five 
 hundred dud plutocrats in the House of Lords holding up 
 the people for years past. Did ye shout then? If they 
 use direct action in their own interests why make a 
 rout when 500,000 railway men come out for a living 
 wage? And then you coom to the workers and ask 
 them to strengthen the Army the Government'll use 
 against them ! A wonder yo've the face ! " He turned 
 away, shaking. 
 
 Just then happily there was a diversion. The yard- 
 door, which a policeman had shut, burst open ; and a baggy 
 old gentleman lumbered through it with the scared look of 
 a bear lost in a busy thoroughfare and much the motions 
 of one. 
 
 Holding on to his coat-tails like a keeper came Ruth. 
 She was panting, and a little dishevelled ; in her arms was 
 her baby, and her hat was a-wry. 
 
 " He would come ! " she said, almost in tears. " There 
 was no stoppin him. So I had just to come along too." 
 
 Joe, aware that he had gone too far, and glad of the 
 interruption, stepped up to Ruth and took the baby from 
 her arms. The distressed woman gave him a look of 
 gratitude and began to pat and preen her hair. 
 
 At this moment Ernie burst into the yard. He was more 
 alert than usual, and threw a swift, almost hostile, glance 
 about him. Then he saw Ruth busy tidying herself, and 
 relaxed. 
 
 " Caught him playing truant, didn't you, in Saffrons 
 Croft ? " he said. " The park-keeper tell me." 
 
 Ruth was recovering rapidly. 
 
 " Yes," she laughed. " I told him it was nothing to 
 
no ONE WOMAN 
 
 do with him strikes and riots and bloodshed ! Such an 
 idea ! " 
 
 A baby began to wail ; and Ernie turned to see Joe 
 with little Ned in his arms. 
 
 " Hallo ! Joe ! " he chaffed. " My baby, I think." 
 
 He took his own child amid laughter, Joe surrendering 
 it reluctantly. 
 
 Just then Edward Caspar appeared in the door of the 
 office. He looked at them over his spectacles and said 
 quietly, as if to himself. 
 
 " It's Law as well. We must never forget that." 
 
 The Colonel turned to Ernie. 
 
 " What's he mean ? " he asked low. " Law as well." 
 
 Ernie, dandling the baby, drew away into a corner 
 where he would be out of earshot of the Archdeacon. 
 
 " It's a line of poetry, sir," he explained in hushed 
 voice 
 
 " 0, Love that art remorseless Law, 
 So beautiful, so terrible." 
 
 " Go on ! " said the Colonel, keenly. " Go on ! I 
 like that." 
 
 But Ernie only wagged a sheepish head. 
 
 " That's all," he said reluctantly. " It never got 
 beyond them two lines." He added with a shy twinkle 
 " That's dad, that is." 
 
 A chocolate-bodied car stopped in the street opposite. 
 
 Out of it stepped Mr. Trupp. 
 
 In it the Colonel saw a lean woman with eyes the blue 
 of steel, fierce black brows, and snow-white hair. 
 
 She was peering hungrily out. 
 
 " It's mother come after dad," Ernie explained. " In 
 Mr. Trupp's car. That's my brother driving." 
 
 The old surgeon, crossing the yard, now met the run-agate 
 emerging from the office and took him kindly by the 
 arm. 
 
 " No, no, Mr. Caspar," he scolded soothingly. " They 
 
SHADOWS in 
 
 don't want old fellows like you and me to do the bludgeon 
 business. Our sons'll do all that's necessary in that line." 
 
 He packed the elderly truant away in the car. 
 
 Mr. Caspar sat beside his wife, his hands folded on the 
 handle of his umbrella, looking as determined as he knew 
 how. 
 
 Mrs. Caspar tucked a rug about his knees. 
 
 Ernie, who had followed his father out to the car, and 
 exchanged a word with his brother sitting stiff as an idol, 
 behind his wheel, now returned to the yard, grinning. 
 " WeU ! " said Joe. 
 
 Ernie rolled his head. 
 
 " Asked Alf if he was goin to sign on ? " he grinned. 
 
 " Is he ? " asked the Colonel ingenuously. 
 
 Ernie laughed harshly. 
 
 "Not Alf!" he said. "He's a true Christian, Alf is, 
 when there's scrapping on the tape . . ." 
 
 At the club a few days later, when the trouble had blown 
 over, the Colonel asked Mr. Trupp if Ernie was ill. 
 
 " He seemed so slack," he said, with a genuine concern. 
 
 "So he is," growled the old surgeon. " He wants the 
 Lash that's all." 
 
 " Different from his brother," mused the Colonel " that 
 chauffeur feller of yours. He's keen enough from what 
 I can see." 
 
 Mr. Trupp puffed at his cigar. 
 
 " Alf 's ambitious," he said. " That's his spur. Starting 
 in a big way on his own now. Sussex is going to blossom 
 out into Caspar's Garages, he tells me. I'm going to put 
 money in the company. Some men draw money. Alf's 
 one." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 THE LANDLORD 
 
 ALF'S great scheme indeed was prospering. 
 
 Thwarted by the Woman, and driven back upon himself, 
 he had taken up the career of action at the point where he 
 had left it to pursue an adventure that had brought him 
 no profit and incredible bitterness. 
 
 Fortune had favoured him. 
 
 Just at the moment Ruth had baffled him, another 
 enemy of his, the Red Cross Garage Syndicate, which in 
 the early days of his career had throttled him, came to 
 grief. 
 
 Alf saw his chance, and flung himself into the new 
 project with such characteristic energy as to drown the 
 bitterness of sex-defeat. He had no difficulty in raising 
 the necessary capital for the little Syndicate he proposed 
 to start. Some he possessed himself ; his bank was quite 
 prepared to give him accommodation up to a point ; and there 
 was a third source he tapped with glee. That source was 
 Captain Royal. Alf was in a position to squeeze the 
 Captain ; and he was not the man to forego an advantage, 
 however acquired. 
 
 Royal put a fifth of his patrimony into the venture, 
 and was by no means displeased to do so. Thereby he 
 became the principal shareholder in the concern, with a 
 predominant voice in its affairs. That gave him the 
 leverage against Alf, which, with the instinct of a commander, 
 he had seen to be necessary for the security of his future 
 directly that young man showed a blackmailing tendency. 
 Moreover Royal was not blind to the consideration that 
 the new Syndicate, under able management, bid fair to be a 
 singularly profitable investment. 
 
THE LANDLORD 113 
 
 Backed then by Royal and his bank, Alf bought up 
 certain of the garages of the defaulting company at knock- 
 out prices. Thereafter, if he still coveted Ruth, he was 
 far too occupied to worry her ; while she on her side, purged 
 by the busyness and natural intercourse of married life 
 of all the disabling morbidities that had their roots in a 
 sense of outlawry and the forced restraint put upon a 
 roused and powerful temperament, had completely lost her 
 fear of him. 
 
 Ruth, surely, was changing rapidly now. At times in 
 family life she assumed the reins not because she wished 
 to, but because she must ; and on occasion she even took 
 the whip from the socket. 
 
 Ernie had, indeed, climbed a mountain peak and with 
 unbelievable effort and tenacity won to the summit, which 
 was herself. But then, instead of marching on to the 
 assault of the peak which always lies beyond, he had sat 
 down, stupidly content ; with the inevitable consequence 
 that he tended to slither down the mountain-side and lose 
 all he had gained in growth and character by his hard 
 achievement. 
 
 The pair had been married four years now ; and Ruth 
 knew that her house was built on sand. That comfortable 
 sense of security which had accompanied the first years of 
 her married life, affording her incalculable relief after the 
 hazards which had preceded them, had long passed. 
 Dangers, less desperate perhaps in the appearance than in 
 the days of her darkness, but none the less real, were 
 careering up from the horizon over a murky sea like breakers, 
 roaring and with wrathful manes, to overwhelm her. In 
 particular the threat that haunts through life the 
 working-woman of all lands and every race beset her 
 increasingly. Her man was always skirting now the bottom- 
 less pit of unemployment. One slip and he might be over 
 the edge, hurtling heavily down into nothingness, and 
 dragging with him her and the unconscious babes. 
 
n 4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The home, always poor, began to manifest the charac- 
 teristics of its tenants, as homes will. When the young man 
 came for the rent on Monday mornings, Ruth would open 
 just a crack so that he might not see inside, herself peeping 
 out of her door, wary as a woodland creature. Apart from 
 Joe Burt, whom she did not count, there was indeed only 
 one visitor whom Ruth now received gladly ; and that 
 was Mr. Edward Caspar, whose blindness she could depend 
 upon. 
 
 There had grown up almost from the first a curious 
 intimacy between the dreamy old gentleman, fastidious, 
 scholarly, refined, and the young peasant woman whom 
 destiny had made the mother of his grandchildren. Nothing 
 stood between them, not even the barrier of class. They 
 understood each other as do the children of Truth, even 
 though the language they speak is not the same. 
 
 The old man was particularly devoted to little Alice. 
 
 " She's like a water-sprite/' he said, " so fine and 
 delicate." 
 
 " She's different from Ernie's/' answered Ruth simply. 
 " I reck'n it was the suffering when I was carrying her." 
 
 " She's a Botticelli," mused the old man. " The others 
 are Michael Angelos." 
 
 Ruth had no notion what he meant that often 
 happened ; but she knew he meant something kind. 
 
 " I'd ha said Sue was more the bottled cherry kind, 
 myself," she answered gently. 
 
 Her visitor came regularly every Tuesday morning on 
 the way to the Quaker meeting-house, shuffling down 
 Borough Lane past the Star, his coat-tails floating behind 
 him, his gold spectacles on his nose, with something of the 
 absorbed and humming laziness of a great bee. Ruth would 
 hear the familiar knock at the door and open. The old 
 man would sit in the kitchen for an hour by the latest baby's 
 cot, saying nothing, the child playing with his little finger 
 or listening to the ticking of the gold watch held to its ear. 
 
THE LANDLORD 115 
 
 After he was gone Ruth would always find a new shilling 
 on the dresser. When she first told Ernie about the 
 shilling, he was surly and ashamed. 
 
 " It's his tobacco money/' he said gruffly. " You mustn't 
 keep it." 
 
 Next Tuesday she dutifully handed the coin back to the 
 giver, 
 
 " I don't like to take it, sir," she said. 
 
 The old man was the grandfather of her children, but she 
 gave him always, and quite naturally, the title of respect. 
 
 He took it from her and laid it back on the dresser with 
 the other he had brought. Then he put his hand on her 
 arm, and looked at her affectionately through dim spectacles. 
 
 " You go to the other extreme," he said. " You're 
 too kind." 
 
 After that she kept the money and she was glad of it 
 too, for she was falling behind with her rent now. 
 
 Then one Monday morning, the rent-collector making 
 his weekly call, little brown book in hand, gave her a shock. 
 
 He was a sprightly youth, cocky and curly, known 
 among his intimates as Chirpy ; and with a jealously 
 cherished reputation for a way with the ladies. 
 
 " Say, this is my last visit," he announced sentimentally, 
 as he made his entry in the book, and poised his pencil 
 behind his ear. " We can't part like this, can we ? you 
 and me, after all these years. Too cold like." He drew 
 the back of his hand significantly across his mouth. 
 
 Ruth brushed his impertinence aside with the friendly 
 insouciance which endeared her to young men. 
 
 " Got the sack for sauce, then ? " she asked. 
 
 Chirpy shook his head ruefully. 
 
 " Mr. Goldmann's sold the house." 
 
 " Over our heads ! " cried Ruth, aghast. 
 
 She hated change, for change spelt the unknown, which 
 in its turn meant danger. 
 
 " Seems so," the youth replied. " No fault o mine, I 
 
n6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 do assure you/' He returned to his point. " Anythink 
 for Albert ? " 
 
 Ruth was thoroughly alarmed. Even in those days 
 cottages in Old Town were hard to come by. 
 
 " Who's our new landlord ? " she asked. 
 
 " Mr. Caspar, I heard say in the office." 
 
 Ruth felt instant relief. 
 
 " Mr. Edward Caspar ? O, that's all right/' 
 
 " No ; Alf of the Garridges. Him they call All-for- 
 isself Alfie ! " 
 
 Ruth caught her breath. 
 
 " Thank you/' she said, and closed the door swiftly. 
 
 The youth was left titupping on the door-step, his nose 
 against the panel like a seeking spaniel. 
 
 Within, Ruth put her hand to her heart to stay its tumult. 
 She was thankful Ernie was not there to witness her 
 emotion, for she felt like a rabbit in the burrow, the stoat 
 hard on its heels. All her old terrors revived. . . . 
 
 The new landlord soon paid his first visit, and Ruth was 
 ready for him. 
 
 " You want to see round ? " she asked, with the almost 
 aggressive briskness of the woman who feels herself 
 threatened. 
 
 " Yes, as your landlord I got the right of entry." He 
 made the announcement portentously like an emperor 
 dictating terms to a conquered people. 
 
 Ruth showed him dutifully round. He paid no attention 
 to his property : his eyes were all for her ; she did not 
 look at him. 
 
 Then they went upstairs where it was dark. 
 
 There was a closed door on the left. Alf thrust it open 
 without asking leave ; but Ruth barred his passage with 
 an arm across the door. 
 
 " What's that ? " he asked, prying. 
 
 " Our room. You can't go in there. That's where 
 my children was born." 
 
THE LANDLORD 117 
 
 Alf tilted his chin at her knowingly. 
 
 "All but little Alice/' he reminded her. His eyes 
 glittered in the dark. " Does he stand you anything for 
 her ? " he continued confidentially. " Should do a 
 gentleman. Now if you could get an affiliation order 
 against him that'd be worth five or six bob a week 
 to you. And that's money to a woman in your position 
 pay me my rent and all too. Only pity is," he ended, 
 thoughtfully, " can't be done. You and me know that if 
 Ern don't." 
 
 Ruth broke fiercely away. 
 
 Leisurely he followed her down the stairs with loud 
 feet. He was greatly at his ease. His hat, which he had 
 never taken off, was on the back of his big head. He was 
 sucking a dirty pencil, and studying his rent-book, as he 
 entered the kitchen. 
 
 " You're a bit behind, I see," casually. 
 
 " Only two weeks/' as coldly. 
 
 " As yet." 
 
 He swaggered to the door with a peculiar roll of his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " If you was to wish to wipe it off at any time you've 
 only got to say the word. I might oblige." 
 
 He stood with his back to her, looking out of the door, 
 and humming. 
 
 She was over against the range. 
 
 " What's that ? " she panted. 
 
 Standing on the threshold he turned and leered back 
 at her out of half-closed eyes. 
 
 She sneered magnificently. 
 
 " Ah, I knaw you," she said. 
 
 " What's it all about ? " he answered, cleaning his nails. 
 " Only a little bit of accommodation. Nothin out o the 
 way." 
 
 " Thank you. I knaw your accommodation," she 
 answered deeply. 
 
u8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Well," he retorted, picking his teeth. " There's no 
 harm in it. What's the fuss about ? " 
 
 " TU tell Mr. Trupp," Ruth answered. " That's all." 
 
 Alf turned full face to her, jeering. 
 
 " What's old Trupp to me, then ? " he cried. " I done 
 with him. I done with em all. I'm me own master, I 
 am Alfred Caspar, Hesquire, of Caspar's Garridges, 
 Company promoter. Handlin me thousands as you handle 
 coppers." 
 
 He folded his arms, thrust out a leg, and looked the part 
 majestically without a snigger. It was clear he was 
 extraordinarily impressive to himself. 
 
 Ruth relaxed slowly, deliciously, like an ice-pack touched 
 by the laughing kiss of spring. 
 
 She eyed her enemy with the amused indifference of some 
 big-boned thoroughbred mare courted by an amorous pony. 
 
 " You're mad," she said. " That's the only why I 
 don't slosh the sauce-pan over you. But I shall tell Ern 
 all the same. And he'll tell em all." 
 
 " And who's goin to believe Ern ? " jeered her tormentor. 
 ' ' Old Town Toper,' they call him. Fairly sodden." 
 
 " Not to say Archdeacon Willcocks and Mr. Chislehurst/ 
 continued Ruth, calmly. 
 
 Alf shot his finger at her like a crook in a melodrama, 
 looking along it as it might have been a pistol and loving 
 his pose. 
 
 " And would they believe you against me ? Do you 
 attend mass ? Are you a sidesman ? " 
 
 " I was confirmed Church afore ever you was," retorted 
 Ruth with spirit. " I've as good a right to the sacraments, 
 as you have then. And I'll take to em again if I'm druv 
 to it that I will ! " 
 
 Something about this declaration tickled Alf. The 
 emperor was forgotten in the naughty urchin. 
 
 " So long, then ! " he tittered. " Appy au-revoir ! 
 Thank-ye for a pleasant chat. This day week you can 
 
THE LANDLORD 119 
 
 look forward to. I'll collect me rent meself because I know 
 you'd like me to/' 
 
 He turned, and as he was going out ran into a man 
 who was entering. 
 
 " Now then ! " said a surly voice. " Who are you ? 
 0, it's you, is it ? I know all about you." 
 
 " What you know o me ? " asked Alf, aggressively. 
 
 " Why, what a beauty you are." 
 
 The two men eyed each other truculently. Then Joe 
 barged through the door. The entrance cleared, Alf went 
 out, but as he passed on the pavement outside he beat a 
 rat-tan on the window with insolent knuckles. 
 
 Joe leaped back to the door and scowled down the road 
 at the back of the little chauffeur retreating at the trot. 
 Alf excelled physically in only one activity : he could run. 
 
 The engineer returned to the kitchen, savage and 
 smouldering. Ruth, amused at the encounter, met him 
 with kind eyes. There was in this man the quality of the 
 ferocious male she loved. He marched up to her, his head 
 low between his shoulders like a bull about to charge. 
 
 "Is yon lil snot after you ? " he growled, almost 
 menacing. 
 
 She regarded him with astonishment, amused and yet 
 defensive. 
 
 " You're not my husband, Mr. Burt," she cried. 
 " You've no grievance whoever has." 
 
 The engineer retreated heavily. 
 
 " Hapen not," he answered, surly and with averted eyes. 
 " A coom next though." 
 
 She looked up, saw his face, and trembled faintly. 
 
 He prowled^to the door without a word, without a look. 
 " Won't you stop for Ern ? " she asked. 
 " Nay," he said, and went out. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE GRANDMOTHER 
 
 RUTH and her mother-in-law frequently met in the steep and 
 curling streets of Old Town as they went about their 
 business. They knew and tacitly ignored each other. But 
 Ernie's children were not to be ignored. They knocked 
 eternally at their granny's heart. When of summer 
 evenings their mother took her little brood to Saffrons 
 Croft and sat with them beneath the elms, her latest baby 
 in her arms, the others clouding her feet like giant daisies, 
 Anne Caspar, limping by on flat feet with her string bag, 
 would be wrung to the soul. 
 
 She hungered for her grand-children, longed to feel their 
 limbs, and see their bodies, to hold them in her lap, to bathe 
 them, win their smiles, and hear their prattle. 
 
 Pride, which she mistook for principle, stood between 
 her and happiness. 
 
 Ruth knew all that was passing in the elder woman's 
 heart, and felt for the other a profound and disturbing 
 sympathy. She had the best of it ; and she knew that 
 Anne Caspar, for all her pharisaic air of superiority, knew 
 it too. Ruth had learnt from Mrs. Trupp something of the 
 elder woman's story. Anne Caspar too, it seemed, had 
 loved out of her sphere ; but she, unlike Ruth, had achieved 
 her man. Had she been happy ? That depended on 
 whether she had brought happiness to her husbandRuth 
 never doubted that. And Ruth knew that she had not ; 
 and knew that Anne Caspar knew that she had not. 
 
 Moreover, all that Ernie told her about his mother 
 interested her curiously : the elder woman's pride, her 
 loneliness, her passion for her old man. 
 
 " Alf's mother over again," Ern told Ruth, " with all her 
 qualities only one but it's the one that matters. He's a 
 
THE GRANDMOTHER 121 
 
 worker same as she is. He means to get on, same as she 
 done. There's just this difference atween em : Alf can't 
 love ; Mother can though it's only one." . . . 
 
 A week after his first visit Alf appeared again on Ruth's 
 door-step. 
 
 Ruth opened to him with so bright a smile that he was for 
 once taken completely by surprise. He had expected 
 resistance and come armed to meet it. 
 
 " Come in, won't you ? " she said. 
 
 Then he understood. She had thought better of her 
 foolishness. 
 
 " That's it, is it ? " he said, licking his lips. " That's 
 a good gurl." 
 
 " Yes," said Ruth. " Very pleased to see you, I'm sure." 
 She was smarter than usual too, he noticed to grace the 
 occasion no doubt. And the plain brown dress, the hue of 
 autumn leaves, with the tiny white frill at the collar, 
 revealed the noble lines of her still youthful figure. 
 
 The conqueror, breathing hard, entered the kitchen, to 
 be greeted by a cultivated voice from the corner. 
 
 " Well, Alfred," it said. 
 
 Alf, whose eyes had been on the floor, glanced up with a 
 start. 
 
 His father was sitting beside the cradle, beaming mildly 
 on him through gold spectacles. 
 
 " Hullo, dad," said Alf, surlily. This large ineffectual 
 father of his had from childhood awed him. There was a 
 mystery about even his mildness, his inefficiency, which Alf 
 had never understood and therefore feared. " I didn't 
 expect to find you here." 
 
 It seemed to Alf that the bottle-imp was twinkling in the 
 old man's eyes. Alf remembered well the advent of that imp 
 to the blue haunts he had never quitted since. That was 
 during the years of Ern's absence in India. Now it struck 
 him suddenly that his father, so seeming-innocent, so remote 
 from the world, was in the joke against him. 
 
122 ONE WOMAN 
 
 A glance at Ruth, malicious and amused, confirmed his 
 suspicion. 
 
 " I'm glad you come and visit your sister sometimes, 
 Alfred," said the old man gently. 
 
 " Yes/' purred Ruth, " he comes reg'lar, Alf do now 
 once a week. And all in the way of friendship as the savin 
 is. See, he's our landlord now." 
 
 " That's nice," continued the old man with the dewy 
 innocence of a babe. " Then he can let you off your rent 
 if you get behind." 
 
 "So he could," commented Ruth, " if only he was to 
 think of it. Do you hear your dad, Alf ? " 
 
 She paid the week's rent into his hand, coin by coin, 
 before his father's eyes. Then he turned and slouched out. 
 
 " Good-night, Alf," Ruth said, almost affectionately. 
 " It 'as been nice seein you and all." 
 
 Determined to enjoy her triumph to the full, she 
 followed him to the door. In the street he turned to meet 
 her mocking glance, in which the cruelty gleamed like a half- 
 sheathed sword. His own eyes were impudent and familiar 
 as they engaged hers. 
 
 " Say, Ruth, what's he after ? " he asked, cautiously, in 
 lowered voice. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " That feller I caught you with the other night when 
 Ern wasn't there. Black-ugly. What's he after ? " 
 
 " Same as you, hap." 
 
 He sniggered feebly. 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " Me." 
 
 She stood before him ; a peak armoured through the ages 
 in eternal ice and challenging splendidly in the sun. 
 He hoiked and spat and turned away. 
 " Brassy is it ?" he said. " One thing, my lass, you been 
 in trouble once, mind. I saved you then. But I mightn't 
 be able to a second time." 
 
THE GRANDMOTHER 123 
 
 Behind Ruth's shoulder a dim face, bearded and 
 spectacled, peered at him with the mild remorselessness of 
 the moon. 
 
 " Alfred/' said a voice, dreadful in its gentle austerity. 
 
 When the old man said good-bye to Ruth ten minutes 
 later he kissed her for the first time. 
 
 She smiled up at him gallantly. 
 
 " It's all right, dad," she said, consolingly. " I'm not 
 afraid o Mm whatever else." 
 
 It was the first time she had called him dad, and even now 
 she did it unconsciously. 
 
 Edward Caspar ambled home. 
 
 He did not attempt to conceal from his wife where he 
 went on Tuesday mornings. Indeed, as he soared on 
 mysterious wings, he seemed to have lost all fear of the 
 woman who had tyrannised over him for his own good so 
 long. Time, the unfailing arbitrator, had adjusted the 
 balance between the two. And sometimes it seemed to 
 Mrs. Trupp, observing quietly as she had done for thirty 
 years, that in the continuous unconscious struggle that per- 
 sists inevitably between every pair from the first mating 
 till death, the victory in this case would b$ to the man 
 intangible as air. 
 
 That morning, as Edward entered the house, his wife 
 was standing in the kitchen before the range. 
 
 Anne Caspar was white-haired now. Her limbs had 
 lost much of their comeliness, her motions their grace. She 
 was sharp-boned and gaunt of body as she had always been 
 of mind not unlike a rusty sword. 
 
 As the front-door opened, and the well- trained man 
 sedulously wiped his boots upon the mat, she looked up 
 over her spectacles, dropping her chin, grim and sardonic. 
 
 " I know where you been, dad," she taunted. 
 
 He stayed at the study-door, like a great pawing bear. 
 
 Then he answered suddenly and with a smile. 
 
 " I've been in heaven." 
 
124 ONE WOMAN 
 
 She slammed the door of the range ; smiling, cruel, the 
 school-girl who teases. 
 
 " I know where your tobacco money goes, old dad," she 
 continued. 
 
 His mind was far too big and vague and mooning often 
 to be able to encounter successfully the darts his wife 
 occasionally shot into his large carcase. 
 
 " He's a beautiful boy/' was all he now made answer, as 
 he disappeared. 
 
 Whether the wound he dealt was deliberately given in 
 self-defence, or unconsciously because he had the power 
 over her, his words stung Anne Caspar to the quick. 
 
 She turned white, and sat down in the lonely kitchen her 
 wrung old hands twisted in her lap, hugging her wound. 
 
 Then she recovered enough to take reprisals. 
 
 " Alf's their landlord, now/' she cried after him, the 
 snakes in her eyes darting dreadful laughter. 
 
 Edward Caspar turned in the door. 
 
 " Anne," he said, " I wish you to pay Ruth's rent in 
 future out of the money my father left you." 
 
 The voice was mild but there was a note of authority, 
 firm if faint, running through it. 
 
 Anne rose grimly to her feet, thin as a stiletto, and 
 almost as formidable. 
 
 " That woman ! " 
 
 He nodded at her down the passage. 
 
 " My daughter/' 
 
 Anne turned full face. 
 
 " D'you know she's had a love-child ? " she shrilled, 
 discordant as a squeaking wheel. 
 
 The old gentleman, fumbling at the door of his study, 
 dropped his bearded chin, and beamed at the angry woman, 
 moonwise over his spectacles. 
 
 " Why shouldn't she ? " he asked. 
 
 There was something crisp, almost curt, in the interro- 
 gation. 
 
THE GRANDMOTHER 125 
 
 " But she's not respectable ! " 
 
 Again he dropped his chin and seemed to gape blankly. 
 
 " Why should she be ? "he asked. 
 
 She heard the key turn, and knew that she was locked out 
 for the night. 
 
 Later she crept in list-slippers to the door and knocked 
 with the slow and solemn knuckles of fate, a calculated 
 pause between each knock. 
 
 " Alf's going up, Era's going down/' she said, nodding 
 with grim relish. " Goo^-night, old dad." 
 
 Next evening Joe called at the cottage, to fetch Ernie for 
 the class. He arrived as he sometimes had done of late, a 
 little before Ernie was due home from the yard. At this 
 hour the little ones had already been put to bed ; and Ruth 
 would be alone with Alice, between whom and the engineer 
 there had sprung up a singular intimacy ever since the even- 
 ing on which he had carried her home like a dead thing in 
 his arms from Saffrons Croft. 
 
 Ruth had not seen him since his clash with Alfred in the 
 door ; and he had obviously avoided her. 
 
 Now she thrilled faintly. Was he in love with her ? she 
 was not sure. 
 
 He entered without speaking and took his seat as always 
 before the fire, broad-spread and slightly huddled in his 
 overcoat, chin on chest, staring into the fire. 
 
 Ruth, busy baking, her arms up to the elbow in dough, 
 made her decision swiftly. She would meet him, face him, 
 fight him. 
 
 " Well, Joe," she said, not looking at him. 
 
 It was the first time she had called him that. 
 
 He peeped up at her, only his eyes moving, small, 
 black-brown, and burning like a bear's. 
 
 " That's better," he muttered. 
 
 She flashed up at him. Innocence and cunning, the 
 
I 2 6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 schoolboy and the brute, Pan and Silenus fought, leered, and 
 frolicked in his face. 
 
 Ruth dropped her gaze and kneaded very deliberately. 
 
 Yes ... it was so ... Now she would help 
 him ; and she could hold him. She would transmute his 
 passion into friendship. She would bridle her bull, ride him, 
 tame him. It was dangerous, and she loved danger. It 
 was sport ; and she loved sport. It was an adventure 
 after the heart of a daring woman. He was a fine man, too, 
 and fierce, warrior and orator ; worth conquering and 
 subduing to her will. His quality of a fighting male called 
 to her. She felt the challenge and answered it with singing 
 blood. 
 
 That laughing hidalgo who in Elizabethan days had 
 landed from his galleon in the darks at the Haven to bring 
 terror and romance to some Sussex maid ; that Spaniard 
 who lurked obscurely in her blood, gave her her swarthy 
 colouring, her indolent magnificence and surprising quality, 
 was stirring uneasily within her once again. 
 
 She lifted her eyes from the froth of yeast and looked 
 across at him, accepting battle if he meant battle. And 
 he did : there was no doubt of that. He sat there, hunched, 
 silent, breathing heavily. Then little Alice slipped down 
 from the kitchen table on which she had been sitting at her 
 mother's side, danced across to her friend, and climbed 
 up on his knee. Ruth took her arms out of the bowl, 
 white to the elbow with flour, came across to the pair, 
 firm-faced, and deliberately removed the child. 
 
 Joe rose and went out. In the outer door he stumbled 
 on a man half-hidden on the threshold. 
 
 " That you, Joe ? " said Ernie quietly. "There he is I 
 Alf on the spy. See his head bob there 1 At the bottom 
 of Borough Lane It's her he's after." 
 
 Joe peeped over his friend's shoulder, his bullet head 
 thrust out like a dog who scents an enemy. 
 
 " That sort ; is he ? " he muttered. " I'll after him ! " 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 THE CHALLENGE 
 
 JOE BURT had that passion for saving souls which is the 
 hall-mark of the missionary in every age. Had he been a 
 child of the previous generation he would have become a 
 minister in some humble denomination and done his 
 fighting from the pulpit, Bible in hand, amid the pot-banks 
 of a Black Country township or the grimy streets of a 
 struggling mining village in the North. As it was he 
 appealed to the mass from the platform, and, a true fisher of 
 men, flung his net about the individual in the class-room 
 and at conferences. 
 
 Always seeking fresh fields to conquer, he had established 
 a political footing now even in Tory Old Town. He had 
 opened a discussion at the Institute, and actually given 
 an address to the local Church of England's Men's Society 
 on Robert Owen and early English Socialists ; and he owed 
 his triumph in the main to Bobby Chislehurst. 
 
 It is not without a pang that we part from the most 
 cherished of our prejudices, and as Joe launched out into an 
 always larger life it had come to him as something of a shock 
 to find amongst the younger clergy some who preserved 
 an attitude of firm and honest neutrality in the great battle to 
 which he had pledged his life, and even a few, here and there, 
 who took their stand on the side of the revolutionaries of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 And such a one was Bobby. 
 
 Because of that, the young curate, who was up and down 
 all day amid the humble dwellers in the Moot, innocent and 
 happy as a child, was forgiven his solitary sin. For Bobby 
 was a Scout-master, unashamed ; and Joe Burt, like most 
 
 197 
 
128 ONE WOMAN 
 
 of his battle-fellows of that date looked askance on the Boy- 
 Scout Movement as one of the many props of militarist 
 Toryism none the less effective because it was unavowed. 
 
 The Cherub, bold, almost blatant in sin, passed his 
 happiest hours in a rakish sombrero, shorts, and a shirt 
 bedizened with badges, tramping the Downs at the head 
 of the Old Town Troop of devoted Boy-Scouts, lighting 
 forbidden fires in the gorse, arguing with outraged farmers, 
 camping in secluded coombes above the sea. 
 
 Up there on the hill, between sky and sea, Joe Burt, he 
 too with his little flock of acolytes from the East-end, would 
 sometimes meet the young shepherd on Saturday afternoons, 
 trudging along, in his hand a pole in place of a crook. 
 
 " I forgive you Mr. Chislehurst, because I know you don't 
 know what you're doing," he once said, gravely. " You're 
 like the Israelite without guile." 
 
 " The greatest of men have their little failings, "giggled 
 the sinner. 
 
 The two men, besides their political sympathies, had 
 another point in common : they meant to save Ernie from 
 himself. But Joe was no longer single-eyed. He saw now 
 in Ernie two men a potential recruit of value for the cause 
 of Labour, and the man who possessed the woman he loved. 
 
 In the troubled heart of the engineer there began to be a 
 confused conflict between the fisher of men and the covetous 
 rival. Ernie was entirely unconscious of the tumult in the 
 bosom of his friend of which he was the innocent cause. 
 Not so Ruth. 
 
 She was rousing slowly now like a hind from her lair in 
 the bracken, and sniffing the air at the approach of the ant- 
 lered stranger. As he drew always nearer with stops and 
 starts and dainty tread, and she became increasingly aware 
 of his savage presence, his fierce intentions, she withdrew 
 instinctively for protection towards her rightful lord. He 
 grazed on the hill-side blind to his danger, blind to hers, 
 blind to the presence of his enemy. Ernie's indeed was that 
 
THE CHALLENGE 129 
 
 innocence, that simplicity, which rouses in the heart of 
 primitive woman not respect but pity and in the rose-bud 
 of pity, unless it be virgin white, lurks always the canker of 
 contempt and the worm of cruelty. 
 
 Sometimes of evenings, as Ernie dozed before the fire in 
 characteristic neglig6, collarless, tie-less, somnolent as the 
 cat, she watched him with growing resentment, comparing 
 him to that Other, so much the master of himself and his 
 little world. 
 
 " You we slack," she said once, more to herself than him. 
 
 " I got a right to be, I reck'n, a'ter my day's work/' he 
 answered sleepily. 
 
 " Joe's not like that," she answered, wetting her thread. 
 " He's spry, he is. Doos a long day's work too and earns 
 big money, Joe do. Brings home more'n twice as much 
 what you do Saraday and no wife nor children neether." 
 
 Ernie looked up and blinked. For a moment she hoped 
 and feared she had stung him to eruption. Then he nodded 
 off again. That was what annoyed Ruth. He would not 
 flare. He was like his father. But qualities a woman 
 admires in an old man she may despise in her lover. As she 
 retired upon him she felt him giving way behind her. She 
 was seeking support and finding emptiness. 
 
 And as that Other, shaggy-maned and mighty, stole 
 towards her with his air of a conqueror, trampling the 
 heather under-foot, the inadequacy of her own mate forced 
 itself upon her notice always more. 
 
 Ruth, now thirty, was in the full bloom of her passionate 
 womanhood ; drawing with her far-flung fragrance the 
 pollen-bearing bee and drawn to him. The girl who had 
 been seized and overthrown by a passing brigand was a 
 woman now who looked life in the face with steadfast 
 eyes and meant to have her share of the fruits of it. The old 
 Christian doctrines of patience, resignation, abnegation of 
 the right to a full life, made no appeal to her. Richly 
 dowered herself, she would not brook a starved existence. 
 
I 3 o ONE WOMAN 
 
 She who was empty yearned for fulness. After her catas- 
 trophe, itself the consequence of daring, Ern had come into 
 her life and given her what she had needed most just then 
 rest, security, above all children. On that score she was 
 satisfied now ; and perhaps for that very reason her spirit 
 was all the more a-thirst for adventure in other fields. She 
 was one of those women who demand everything of life and 
 are satisfied with nothing less. Like many such her heart 
 was full of children but her arms were empty. For her 
 fulfilment she needed children and mate. Some women 
 were content with one, some with the other. Great woman 
 that she was, nothing less than both could satisfy her 
 demands ; and her emptiness irked her increasingly. 
 
 Ruth's in fact was the problem of the unconquered 
 woman a problem at least as common among married 
 women who have sought absorption and found only dis- 
 satisfaction as amongst the unmarried. Royal had seized 
 her imagination for a moment ; to Ernie she had sub- 
 mitted. But that complete immersion in a man and his 
 work which is for a full woman love, she had never experi- 
 enced, and longed to experience. After five years of 
 marriage Ernie was still outside her, an accretion, a 
 circumstance, a part of her environment, necessary perhaps 
 as her clothes, but little more : for there was no purpose in 
 his life. 
 
 And then just at the moment her lack was making 
 itself most felt, the Man had come a real man too, with 
 a work ; a pioneer, marching a-head, axe in hand, hewing 
 a path-way through the Forest, and calling to her with ever 
 increasing insistency to come out to him and aid him in 
 his enterprise. 
 
 But always as she fingered in her dreams the bolts of 
 the gate that, once opened, would leave her face to face with 
 the importunate adventurer, there came swarming about 
 her, unloosing her fingers as they closed upon the bolts, 
 the children. And as one or other of them stirred or called 
 
THE CHALLENGE 131 
 
 out in sleep in the room above her, she would start, wake, 
 and shake herself. Yet even the pull of the children was 
 not entirely in one direction. There were four of them 
 now ; and they were growing, while Ernie's wages were 
 standing still. That was one of the insistent factors of the 
 situation. Were they too to be starved ? 
 
 Often in her dim kitchen she asked herself that question. 
 For if in her dreams she was always the mate of a man, 
 she was in fact, and before all things, the mother of children. 
 Who then was to save them and her ? Ernie ? who was 
 now little more than a shadow, an irritating shadow, 
 wavering in the background of her life ? If so, God help 
 them all. ... 
 
 One evening she was in the little back-yard taking down 
 the washing, when she heard a man enter the kitchen. 
 She paid no heed. If it was Joe he could wait ; if it was 
 Ernie she needn't bother. Then she heard a second man 
 enter, and instantly a male voice, harsh with challenge. 
 
 She went in hastily. There was nobody in the kitchen ; 
 but Ern was standing at the outer door. His back was to 
 her, but she detected instantly in the hunch of his shoulders 
 a rare combativeness. 
 
 " You know me/ 1 he was growling to somebody outside. 
 " None of it now ! " 
 
 He turned slowly, a dark look in his face which did not 
 lighten when he saw her. 
 
 " Who was it, Ern ? " she asked. 
 
 " Alf," he answered curtly. 
 
 That night as he sat opposite her she observed him warily 
 as she worked and put to herself an astonishing question : 
 Was there another Ernie ? an Ernie asleep she had not 
 succeeded in rousing ? Was the instrument sound and the 
 fault in her, the player ? 
 
 A chance phrase of Mrs. Trupp's now recurred to her. 
 
 " There's so much in Ernie if you can only get it 
 out." 
 
I32 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The man opposite rose slowly, came slowly to her, bent 
 slowly and kissed her. 
 
 " I ask your pardon if I was rough with you this evening, 
 Ruth/' he said. " But Alf ! he fairly maddens me. I 
 feel to him as you shouldn't feel to any human being, let 
 alone your own brother. You know what he's after ? " 
 he continued. 
 
 She stirred and coloured, as she lifted her eyes to his, 
 dark with an unusual tenderness. 
 
 " Reckon so, Ern," she said. 
 
 He stood before the fire, for once almost handsome in 
 his vehemence. 
 
 " Layin his smutty hands on you ! " he said. 
 
 That little scene, with its suggestion of passion suppressed, 
 steadied Ruth. . . . And it was time. That Other was 
 always drawing nearer. And as she felt his approach, the 
 savage power of him, his fierce virility, and was conscious 
 of the reality of the danger, she resolved to meet it and 
 fend it off. He should save Ernie instead of destroying her. 
 And the way was clear. If this new intellectual life, the seeds 
 of which the engineer had been sowing so patiently for so 
 long in the unkempt garden of Ernie's spirit became a reality 
 for him, a part of himself, growing in such strength as to 
 strangle the weeds of carelessness, he was saved so much 
 Ruth saw. 
 
 " Once he was set alight to, all his rubbish'd go up in a 
 flare, and he'd burn bright as aflame," she told the engineer 
 once seizing her chance ; and ended on the soft note of the 
 turtle-dove " There's just one could set him ablaze 
 and only one. And that's you, Joe." 
 
 At the moment Joe was sitting before the fire in 
 characteristic attitude, hands deep in his pockets, legs 
 stretched out, the toes of his solid boots in the air. 
 
 For a moment he did not answer. It was as though 
 he had not heard. Then he turned that slow, bull-like 
 glare of his full on her. 
 
THE CHALLENGE 133 
 
 " A'm to save him that he may enjoy you that's it, 
 is it ? " he said. " A'm to work ma own ruin/' 
 
 It was the first time he had openly declared himself. 
 Now that it had come she felt, like many another woman 
 in such case, a sudden instant revulsion. Her dreams blew 
 away like mist at the discharge of cannon. She was left 
 with a sense of shock as one who has fallen from a height. 
 At the moment of impact she was ironing, and glad of it. 
 Baring her teeth unconsciously she pressed hard down on 
 the iron with a little hiss. 
 
 " You've no call to talk to me like that, Joe. It's not 
 right." 
 
 Deliberately he rose and turned his back. 
 
 " A don't know much," he growled in his chest, " but 
 A do know that then." 
 . Her heart thumped against her ribs. 
 
 " I thart you were straight, Joe," she said. 
 
 He warmed his hands at the blaze ; and she knew he 
 was grinning, and the nature of the grin. 
 
 " A thought so maself till A found A wasn't," he answered. 
 " No man knows what's in him till he's tried that's ma 
 notion of it. Then he'll have a good few surprises, same as 
 A've done. A man's a very funny thing when he's along 
 of a woman he loves that's ma experience." 
 
 Ruth trembled, and her hand swept to and fro with 
 the graceful motions of a circling eagle over the child's 
 frock she was ironing. 
 
 " You make me feel real mean," she said. 
 
 He kept a sturdy back to her. 
 
 " Then A make you feel just same gate as A feel maself." 
 
 There was.ja pause. 
 
 " You ought to marry, Joe a man like you with all 
 that nature in you." 
 
 " Never only if so be A can get the woman A want." 
 
 She said with a gulp, 
 
 " And I thart you was Em's friend ! " 
 
i 3 4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 He looked up at the ceiling. 
 
 " So A am trying to be." 
 
 There was another silence. Then the woman spoke 
 again, this time with the hushed curiosity of a child. 
 
 " Are all men like that ? " 
 
 " The main of em, A reck'n." 
 
 Her hand swooped rhythmically ; and there was the 
 gentle accompanying thud of the iron taking the table and 
 circling smoothly about its work. 
 
 "My Ern isn't." 
 
 " Your Ern's got what he wants and what A want 
 too." 
 
 Boots brushing themselves on the mat outside made 
 themselves heard. Then the door opened. 
 
 Joe did not turn. 
 
 "Coom in, Ern," he said. "Just right. Keep t' 
 peace atween us. She and me gettin across each other 
 as usual." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A SKIRMISH 
 
 A FEW days later Ernie came home immediately after 
 work instead of repairing to the Star. As he entered the 
 room Ruth saw there was something up. He was sober 
 terribly so. 
 
 " I done it, Ruth, old lass/' he said. 
 
 She knew at once. 
 
 " Got the sack ? " she asked. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " I've no one to blame only meself," he said, disarming 
 her, as he disarmed everyone by his Christian quality. 
 
 Ruth did not reproach him : that was not her way. 
 Nor did she sit down and cry : she had expected the 
 catastrophe too long. She took the boy from the cradle 
 and opened her bodice. 
 
 " You shan't suffer anyways," she said, half to herself, 
 half to the child, and stared out of the window, babe at 
 breast, rocking gently and with tapping foot. 
 
 Ern slouched out ; and Ruth was left alone, to face as 
 best she could the spectre that haunts through life the path 
 of the immense majority of the human race. She had 
 watched its slinking approach for years. Now with a patter 
 of hushed feet, dreadful in the fury of its assault, it was on 
 her. Remorseless in attack as in pursuit it was hounding 
 her and hers slowly down a dreary slope to a lingering 
 death, of body and spirit alike, in that hungry morass, the 
 name of which is Unemployment. 
 
 Two days later when Joe entered the cottage he found 
 Ruth for once sitting, listless. All the children were in 
 bed, even little Alice. He saw at once why. There was 
 no fire, though it was January. 
 
 " Where's Ern, then ? " he asked. 
 
 135 
 
136 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Lookin for work/' Ruth answered. 
 
 Joe stared, aghast. 
 
 " Is he out ? " he asked. 
 
 Ruth rose and turned her shoulder to him. 
 
 " Yes. They've stood him off. And I don't blame em." 
 
 " What for ? " Joe was genuinely concerned. 
 
 " He didn't say. Bad time, I reckon. Only don't 
 tell anyone, Joe, for dear's sake, else they'll stop my credit 
 at the shop and I'll be done." 
 
 Her eyes filled and she bit her lip. 
 
 " Four of em," she said. " And nothing a week to do 
 it on let alone the rent "... 
 
 She might hush it up ; but the news spread. 
 
 Alf, with his ears of a lynx, was one of the first to hear. 
 For a moment he hovered in a dreadful state of trepidation. 
 It was a year and a half since he had stalked his white 
 heifer, bent on a kill, only to be scared away by the presence 
 of that mysterious old man he had found at her side in the 
 heart of the covert. But his lust was by no means dead 
 because it had been for the time suppressed. Ruth had 
 baffled him ; and Alf had not forgotten it. Ern possessed 
 a beautiful woman he longed for ; and Alf had not forgiven 
 him. 
 
 Perhaps because he had beaten down his desire for so 
 long, it now rushed out ravening from its lair, and drove all 
 else before it. Throwing caution to the winds, he came 
 stealing along like a stoat upon the trail, licking his lips, 
 wary yet swift. First he made sure that Ernie was out, 
 looking for a job of work. Then he came down the street. 
 
 Ruth met her enemy blithely and with taunting eyes. 
 In battle she found a certain relief from the burthen of 
 her distress. And here she knew was no question of pity 
 or consideration. 
 
 " Monday's your morning, isn't it ? " she said. " Come 
 along then, will you, Alf ? And you'll see what I got for 
 you." 
 
A SKIRMISH 137 
 
 Alf shook a sorrowful head, studying his rent-book. 
 
 " It can't go on/' he said in the highly moral tone he 
 loved to adopt. " It ain't right." He raised a pained face 
 and looked away. " Of course if you was to wish to wipe 
 it off and start clean " 
 
 Ruth was cold and smiling. She handled Alf always 
 with the caressing contempt with which a cat handles a 
 mouse. 
 
 " Little bit of accommodation," she said. " No thank 
 you, Alf. I shouldn't feel that'd help me to start clean." 
 
 " See Em's down and out," continued the tempter in 
 his hushed and confidential voice. " Nobody won't give 
 him a job." 
 
 Ruth trembled slightly, though she was smiling still 
 and self-contained. 
 
 " You'll see to that now you're on high, won't you ? " 
 she said " for my children's sake." 
 
 " It'd be doin Ern a good turn, too," Alf went on in the 
 same low monotone. 
 
 "Brotherly," said Ruth. "But he mightn't see it 
 tHat way." 
 
 " He wouldn't mind," continued Alf gently. " See he's 
 all for Joe Burt and the classes now. Says you're keeping 
 him back. Nothin but a burthen to him, he says. Her and 
 her brats, as he said last night at the Institute. Don't give 
 a chap a chance." Alf wagged his head. " Course he 
 shouldn't ha said it. I know that. Told him so at the 
 time afore them all. Tain't right I told him straight 
 your own wife and all." 
 
 " My Ern didn't say that, Alf," Ruth answered simply. 
 
 His eyes came seeking hers furtively, and were gone 
 instantly on meeting them. 
 
 " Then you won't do him a good turn ? " 
 
 Ruth's fine eyes flashed and danced, irony, laughter, 
 scorn, all crossing swords in their brown deeps. There 
 were aspects of Alf that genuinely amused her. 
 
138 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Would you like to talk it over with him ? " she asked. 
 
 " And supposing I have ? " 
 
 " He'll be back in a moment/' she said, sweet and 
 bright. " I'll ask him." 
 
 Alf was silent, fumbling with his watch-chain. Then 
 he began again in the same hushed voice, and with the same 
 averted face. 
 
 " And there's another thing between us." His eyes were 
 shut, and he was weaving to and fro like a snake in the love- 
 dance. " Sorry you're trying to make bad blood between 
 me and my old dad," he said. " Very sorry, Ruth." 
 
 " I aren't," Ruth answered swiftly. " You was always 
 un-friends from the cradle, you and dad. See he don't 
 think you're right." She added a little stab of her own 
 " No one does. That's why they keep you on as sidesman, 
 Mr. Chislehurst says. Charity-like. They're sorry for 
 you. So'm I." 
 
 The words touched Alf's vital spot the conceit that 
 was the most obvious symptom of his insanity. His face 
 changed, but his voice remained as before, stealthy and 
 insinuating. He came a little closer, and his eyes caressed 
 her figure covetously. 
 
 " You see I wouldn't annoy me, not too far, not if I 
 was you, Ruth. You can go too far even with a saint 
 upon the cross." 
 
 Ruth put out the tip of her tongue daintily. 
 
 " Crook upon the cross, don't you mean, Alf ? " 
 
 He brushed the irrelevancy aside, shooting his head 
 across to hers. His face was ugly now, and glistening. 
 With deliberate insolence he flicked a thumb and finger 
 under her nose. 
 
 " And I do know what I do know, and what nobody 
 else don't know only you and me and the Captin, my 
 tuppenny tartlet." 
 
 She was still and white, formidable in her very dumbness. 
 He proceeded with quiet stealth. 
 
f 
 
 A SKIRMISH 139 
 
 " See that letter I wrote you used to hold over against 
 me before you married that's destroyed now. And a 
 good job, too, for it might have meant trouble for Alfured. 
 But it's gone ! I know that then. Ern told me. He's a 
 drunkard, old Ern is but he's not a liar. I will say that 
 for my brother ; I will stick up for him if it was ever so ; 
 I will fight old Ern's battles for him." 
 
 " As you're doin now," said Ruth. 
 
 Alf grinned. 
 
 " And the short of it all is just this, Ruthie," he con- 
 tinued, and reaching forth a hand, tapped her upon the 
 shoulder " I got you, and you ain't got me. And I can 
 squeeze the heart out of that great bosom o yours " he 
 opened and clenched his hand in pantomine " if I don't 
 get my way any time I like. So just you think it over ! 
 Think o your children if you won't think of nothing else ! " 
 
 Outside in the road he ran into Joe, who gripped him. 
 
 " What you come after ? " asked the engineer ferociously. 
 
 " After my rent," answered Alf, shouting from fear. 
 Joe looked dangerous, but loosed his hold. 
 
 " How much ? " he asked, taking a bag from his pocket. 
 
 " Sixteen shilling. You can see for yourself." 
 
 Obliging with the obligingness of the man who is scared 
 to death, Alf produced his book. Joe, lowering still, examined 
 it. Then he paid the money into the other's hand. That 
 done he escorted Alf policemanwise to the bottom of 
 Borough Lane. 
 
 " If A find you mouchin round here again A'll break 
 your bloody little back across ma knee," he told the other, 
 shouldering over him. " A mean it, sitha ! " 
 
 Alf withdrew up the hill towards the Star. At a safe 
 distance he paused and called back confidentially, his face 
 white and sneering, 
 
 " Quite the yard-dog, eh ? Bought her, ain't yer ? " 
 
 Joe returned to the cottage and entered. 
 
 At the head of the stairs a lovely little figure in a white 
 
I4 o ONE WOMAN 
 
 gown that enfolded her hugely like a cloud, making billows 
 about the woolly red slippers which had been Bess Trupp's 
 Christmas gift, smiled at him. 
 
 " Uncle Joe/' little Alice chirped, " please tell Mum I 
 are ready." 
 
 He ran up the stairs, gathered her in his arms, and bore 
 her back to bed in the room where Susie and Jenny already 
 slept. 
 
 " Hush ! " she whispered, laying a tiny finger on his 
 lips" The little ones ! " 
 
 He tucked her up and kissed her. 
 
 " You're the proper little mother, aren't you ? " he 
 whispered. 
 
 In the kitchen he found Ruth, a row of tin-tacks studding 
 her lips, soling Alice's boots. The glint of steel between her 
 lips, and the inward curl of her lips, gave her a touch of 
 unusual grimness. 
 
 " Always at it," he said. 
 
 " Yes," she answered between muffled lips. " Got to 
 be. Snob this time. Only the soles are rotten. It's like 
 puttin nails into wet brown paper." 
 
 She was suffering terribly he felt it ; and suppressed 
 accordingly. But if her furnaces were damped down, he 
 could hear the flames roaring behind closed doors ; and her 
 passion, which typified for him the sufferings of those inno- 
 cent millions to the redemption of whom he had consecrated 
 his life, moved him profoundly. 
 
 He flung the bag on the table before her almost savagely. 
 It jingled as it fell and squatted there, dowdy, and lacka- 
 daisical as a dumpling in a swoon. 
 
 Ruth eyed it, her lips still steel-studded. 
 
 " How much ? " she mumbled. 
 
 " Ten pound," he answered. 
 
 " That's not what I mean." 
 
 " What do you mean, then ? " 
 
 " What's the price ? " 
 
A SKIRMISH 141 
 
 He glared at her ; then thumped the table with a great 
 fist. 
 
 " Nothin then ! " he shouted. " What doest' take me 
 for ? " 
 
 She munched her tin- tacks sardonically, regarding him. 
 
 How sturdy he was, with his close curly black hair, and 
 on his face the set and resolute look of the man approaching 
 middle-age, who knows that he wants and how to win it ! 
 
 " A man, Joe/' 
 
 He snorted sullenly. 
 
 " Better'n a no-man any road," he sneered. 
 
 The words stung her. All the immense and tender 
 motherliness of her nature rose up like a wave that curls in 
 roaring majesty to a fall. She swept the tin-tacks from her 
 mouth and met him, flashing and glorious. 
 
 " See here, Joe ! " she cried, deep- voiced as a blood- 
 hound. " Ne'er a word against my Em ! I won't have it. " 
 
 " Your Em \ " 
 
 She was white and heaving. 
 
 " Yes, my Ern ! He's down and out, and you take advan- 
 tage to come up here behind his back and insult him and 
 me. You're the one to call anudder man a no-man, aren't 
 you ? " Taking the bag of money she tossed it at him with 
 a flinging scorn that was magnificent. 
 
 " Take your filfth away and yourself with it ! " 
 
 He went, humbled and ashamed. 
 
 She watched him go this sanguine, well-conditioned 
 man, with his good boots, his sensible clothes, his air of solid 
 prosperity. 
 
 Then she sat down, spent. Her savagery had been 
 largely defensive. Like the brave soldier she was she had 
 attacked to hide the weakness of her guard. She was sick 
 at heart ; worn out. These men . . . first Alf, then Joe . . . 
 This champing boar, foam in the corner of his lips . . . that 
 red-eyed weasel squealing on the trail. . . . 
 
 An hour later Ern came home. 
 
I 4 2 ONE WOMAN 
 
 She knew at once from the wan look of him that he had 
 been tramping all day on an empty stomach. That, with 
 all his faults, was Era. So long as there was a crumb in the 
 cupboard she and the children should share it : he would 
 tighten his belt. Even now he just sat down, an obviously 
 beaten man, and did not ask for a bite. What she had she 
 put before him ; and it was not much. 
 
 " Any luck, Era ? " she asked with a touch of tenderness. 
 
 Sullenly he shook his head. 
 
 " Walked my bloody legs off on an empty belly, and got 
 a mouthful of insults at the end of it," he muttered. " That's 
 all I got. That's all they give the working man in Old 
 England. Joe's right. Sink the country ! Blast the 
 bloody Empire ! That's all it's good for ! " 
 
 It was the first time he had ever used bad language in 
 her presence. That gradual demoralisation which unem- 
 ployment, however caused, and its consequences brings 
 inevitably in its train was already showing its corrupt 
 fruits. The tragedy of it moved her. 
 
 " Joe's been up," she said after a bit. 
 
 " I met him," he answered. He was warmer after his 
 meal, less sullen, and drew up his chair from habit before 
 the fireless range. " He wants me to go North to 
 his folk. Says his brother-in-law can find me a job. Runs 
 a motor-transport business in Oldham." 
 
 Her back was to him at the moment. 
 
 " Does he ? " she asked quietly. " What about me and 
 my children ? " 
 
 " That's what I says to him." 
 
 " What did he say ? " 
 
 " Said he'd look after you and them." 
 
 Ruth was still as a mouse awaiting the cat's pounce. 
 
 " And what did you say to that ? " 
 
 " Told him to go to hell." 
 
 Ruth stirred again and resumed her quiet busyness. 
 
 " Alf's been up again," she told him. " Messin round." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 PITCHED BATTLE 
 
 MRS. TRUPP happened on Ernie's mother next day in 
 Church Street. The surgeon's wife, whenever she met Mrs. 
 Edward Caspar, acted always deliberately on the assump- 
 tion, which she knew to be unfounded, that relations between 
 Ruth and her mother-in-law were normal. 
 
 " It's a nuisance this about Ernie," she now said. " Such 
 a worry for Ruth." 
 
 The hard woman with the snow-white hair and fierce 
 black eye-brows made a little sardonic moue. 
 
 " She's all right," she answered. " You needn't worry 
 for her. There's a chap payin her rent." 
 
 Mrs. Trupp changed colour. 
 
 " I don't believe it," she said sharply. 
 
 " You mayn't believe it," retorted the other sourly. 
 " It's true all the same. Alf's her landlord. He told me." 
 
 Mrs. Trupp, greatly perturbed, reported the matter to 
 her husband. He tackled Alf, who at the moment was 
 driving for his old employer again in the absence of the 
 regular chauffeur. 
 
 Alf admitted readily enough that the charge against 
 his sister-in-law was true. 
 
 " That's it, sir," he said. " It's that chap Burt. And 
 he don't do what he done for nothin, I'll lay ; a chap like 
 that don't." 
 
 He produced his book from his pocket, and held it out 
 for the other to see, half turning away with becoming 
 modesty. 
 
 " I don't like it, sir me own sister-in-law. And I've 
 said so to Reverend Spink. Makes talk, as they say. Still 
 it's no concern of mine." 
 
 143 
 
i 4 4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Mrs. Trupp, on hearing her husband's report, went down 
 at once to see Ruth and point out the extraordinary 
 unwisdom of her action. 
 
 Ruth met her, fierce and formidable as Mrs. Trupp had 
 never known her. 
 
 " It's a lie," she said, deep and savage as a tigress. 
 
 " It may be," Mrs. Trupp admitted. " But Alfred did 
 show Mr. Trupp his book. And the rent had been paid 
 down to last Monday. I think you should ask Mr. Burt." 
 
 That evening when Joe came up Ruth straightway 
 tackled him. 
 
 She was so cold, so terrible, that the engineer was 
 frightened, and lied. 
 
 " Not as I'd ha blamed you if you had/' said Ruth 
 relaxing ever so little. " It's not your fault I'm put to it 
 and shamed afore em all." 
 
 The bitterness of the position in which Ern had placed 
 her was eating her heart away. That noon for the first time 
 she had taken the three elder children to the public dinner 
 for necessitous children at the school. Anne Caspar who 
 had been there helping to serve had smirked. 
 
 When Joe saw that the weight of her anger was turned 
 against Ernie and not him, he admitted his fault. 
 
 " A may ha done wrong," he said. " But A acted for the 
 best. Didn't want to see you in young Alf's clutches." 
 
 " You bide here," Ruth said, " and keep house along o 
 little Alice. I'll be back in a minute." 
 
 Hatless and just as she was, she marched up to the 
 Manor-house. 
 
 " You were right, 'M," she told Mrs. Trupp. " It were 
 Joe. He just teU me. Only I didn't knaw nothin of it." 
 
 " It'll never do for you to be in his debt, Ruth," said 
 the lady. 
 
 " No," Ruth admitted sullenly. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp went to her escritoire and took out sixteen 
 shillings. Ruth took it. 
 
PITCHED BATTLE 145 
 
 " Thank-you," was all she said, and she said that 
 coldly. Then she returned home with the money and paid 
 Joe. 
 
 An hour later Ernie came in. 
 
 Ruth was standing at the table waiting him, cold, tall, 
 and inexorable. 
 
 " Anything ? " she asked. 
 
 Surly in self-defence, he shook his head and sat down. 
 
 She gave him not so much as a crumb of sympathy. 
 
 " No good settin down/' she told him. " You ain't 
 done yet. You'll take that clock down to Goldmann's 
 after dark, and you'll get sixteen shillings for it. If he 
 won't give you that for it, you'll pop your own great coat." 
 
 Ernie stared at her. He was uncertain whether to show 
 fight or not. 
 
 " Dad's clock ? what he give me when I married ? " 
 
 " Yes. Dad's clock." 
 
 She regarded him with eyes in which resentment flamed 
 sullenly. 
 
 " Can I feed six on the shilling a week he gives me 
 rent and all ? " 
 
 Ernie went out and brought back the money. She took 
 it without a word, and wrapping it up in a little bit of 
 paper, left it at the Manor-house. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp, who was holding a council with Bess and 
 Bobby Chislehurst, unwrapped the packet and showed the 
 money. 
 
 " She's put something up the spout," said the sage 
 Bobby. 
 
 The three talked the situation over. There was only 
 one thing to be done. Somebody must go round to Mr. 
 Pigott and intercede for Ernie. Bobby was selected. 
 
 " You'll get him round if anybody can," Bess told her 
 colleague encouragingly. 
 
 Bobby, shaking a dubious head, went. Mr. Pigott, like 
 everybody else in Old Town, was devoted to the young 
 
 10 
 
I4 6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 curate ; but he presented a firm face now to the other's 
 entreaties. 
 
 " Every chance IVe given him/' he said, and scolded and 
 growled as he paced to and fro in the little room looking 
 across Victoria Drive on to the allotments. " He's a 
 lost soul, is Ernie Caspar. That's my view, if you care 
 for it." 
 
 Bobby retreated, not without hope, and bustled round 
 to Ruth. 
 
 " You must go and see him ! " he rapped out almost 
 imperiously " yourself this evening after work at 6.30 
 to the minute." He would be praying at that hour. 
 
 Ruth, who was fighting for her life now, went. 
 
 Mr. Pigott, at the window, saw her coming. 
 
 " Here she comes," he murmured. " O dear me ! You 
 women, you know, you're the curse of my life. I'd be a 
 good and happy man only for you." 
 
 Mrs Pigott was giggling at his elbow. 
 
 " She'll get round you, all right, my son," she said. 
 " She'll roll you up in two ticks till you're just a little 
 round ball of nothing in particular, and then gulp you 
 down." 
 
 " She won't ! " the other answered truculently. " You 
 don't know me ! " And he swaggered masterfully away to 
 meet the foe. 
 
 Mrs. Pigott proved, of course, right. 
 
 Ruth's simplicity and beauty were altogether too much 
 for the susceptible old man. He put up no real fight at 
 all ; but after a little bluff and bounce surrendered uncon- 
 ditionally with a good many loud words to salve his 
 conscience and cover his defeat. 
 
 " It's only postponing the evil day, I'm afraid," he said ; 
 but he agreed to take the sinner back at a lower wage to 
 do a more menial job if he'd come. 
 
 " He'll come, sir," said Ruth. " He's humble. I will 
 say that for Ern." 
 
PITCHED BATTLE 147 
 
 " Send him to me," said the old schoolmaster threaten- 
 ingly. " I'll dress him down. What he wants is to get 
 religion." 
 
 " He's got religion, sir," answered simple Ruth. " Only 
 where it is it's no good to him." 
 
 That evening, when Ern entered, heavy once again with 
 defeat, she told him the news. At the moment she 
 was standing at the sink washing up, and did not 
 even turn to face him. He made as though to approach 
 her and then halted. Something about her back forbade 
 him. 
 
 " It shan't happen again, Ruth," he said. 
 
 She met him remorseless as a rock of granite. 
 
 " No, not till next time," she answered. 
 
 He stood a moment eyeing her back hungrily. Then he 
 went out. 
 
 He was hardly gone when his father lumbered into the 
 kitchen. The old gentleman's eyes fell at once on the 
 clock-deserted mantel-piece. 
 
 " Gone to be mended," he said to himself, and took out 
 of his waistcoat pocket the huge old gold watch with a 
 coat of arms on the back, beloved of the children, that had 
 itself some fifteen years before made a romantic pilgrimage 
 to Mr. Goldmann's in Sea-gate. Then he bustled to the 
 cupboard where was the box containing a hammer and a 
 few tools. He put a nail in the wall, hammered his thumb, 
 sucked it with a good deal of slobber, but got the nail in at 
 last. 
 
 " Without any help too," he said to himself, not without 
 a touch of complacency as he hung the watch on it. Ruth 
 watched him with wistful affection. Pleased with himself 
 and his action, as is only the man who rarely uses his hands, 
 he stood back and admired his work. 
 
 " There ! " he said. " Didn't know I was a handy 
 man, did you ? It'll keep you going anyway till the clock 
 comes back." 
 
I 4 8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 He left more hurriedly than usual, and when he was 
 gone Ruth found two shillings on the mantel-piece. 
 
 The old man's kindness and her own sense of humiliation 
 were too much for Ruth. She went out into the back-yard ; 
 and there Joe found her, standing like a school-girl, her 
 hands behind her, looking up at the church-tower. 
 
 Quietly he came to her and peeped round at her face, 
 which was crumpled and furrowed, the tears pouring down. 
 
 " I'd as lief give up all together for all the good it is," 
 she gulped between her sobs. 
 
 He put out his hand to gather her. She turned on him, 
 her eyes smouldering and sullen beneath the water-floods. 
 
 " Ah, you, would you ? " she snarled. 
 
 As she faced him he saw that the brooch she usually 
 wore at her throat was gone, and her neck, round and full, 
 was exposed. 
 
 She saw the direction of his eyes. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " that's gone too. I'll be lucky soon if 
 I'm left the clothes I stand up in." 
 
 He put out a sturdy finger and stroked her bare throat. 
 She struck it aside with ferocity. 
 
 " What do you want then ? " he asked. 
 
 " You know what I want," she answered huskily. 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " A man to make a home and keep the children." 
 
 " Well, here's one a-waitin." 
 
 She flung him off and moved heavily into the kitchen. 
 
 Just then there was a tap at the window. It was little 
 Alice calling for her mother to come and tuck her up. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 THE VANQUISHED 
 
 WHEN Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor called at the Manor-house 
 a few days later, Mrs. Trupp told them what had happened. 
 
 " Burt paid her rent ? " queried the Colonel. 
 
 " Without her knowledge/' said Mrs. Trupp. 
 
 The Colonel shrugged. 
 
 " I'm afraid our friend Ernie's a poor creature/' he 
 said. " Wishy-washy ! That's about the long and short 
 of it." 
 
 " And yet he's got it in him ! " commented Mrs. Trupp. 
 
 " That's what I say," remarked Mrs. Lewknor with a 
 touch of aggressiveness. The little lady, with the fine 
 loyalty that was her characteristic, never forgot whose 
 son Ernie was, nor her first meeting with him years before 
 in hospital at Jubbulpur. " He's got plenty in him ; but 
 she don't dig it out." 
 
 " He got a good fright though, this time," said Bess. 
 " It may steady him." 
 
 Mr. Trupp shot forth one of his short epigrams, solid 
 and chunky as a blow from a hammer. 
 
 " Men won't till they must," he said. " It's Must has 
 been the making of Man. He'll try when he's got to, and 
 not a moment before." 
 
 Ten minutes later Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor were 
 walking down Church Street towards the station. Just in 
 front of them a woman and two men were marching a-breast. 
 The woman was flanked by her comrades. 
 
 " What a contrast those two men make," remarked the 
 Colonel. " That feller Burt's like a bull ! " 
 
 149 
 
ISO ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Too like/ retorted Mrs. Lewknor sharply. " Give 
 me the fellow who's like a gentleman." 
 
 The Colonel shook his head. 
 
 " Flame burns too feebly." 
 
 " But it burns pure/' snapped the little lady. 
 
 Both parties had reached the foot of the hill at the Goffs 
 when the woman in front swerved. It was the motion of 
 the bird in flight suddenly aware of a man with a gun. 
 She passed through the stile and fled swiftly across Saffrons 
 Croft. The men with her, evidently taken by surprise, 
 followed. 
 
 Only the Colonel saw what had happened. 
 
 A tall man, coming from the station, had turned into 
 Alf's garage. 
 
 " Royal," he said low to his companion. 
 
 Captain Royal had come down to Beachbourne to see 
 Alf Caspar, who wanted more capital for his Syndicate 
 which was prospering amazingly. Alf, indeed, now that he 
 had established his garages in every important centre in 
 East Sussex, was starting a Road-touring Syndicate to 
 exploit for visitors the hidden treasures of a country-side 
 amazingly rich in historic memories for men of Anglo-Saxon 
 blood. The Syndicate was to begin operations with a 
 flourish on the Easter Bank Holiday, if the necessary licence 
 could be obtained from the Watch Committee ; and Alf 
 anticipated little real trouble in that matter. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, who had never forgiven 
 Alf for being Alf, watched the growing prosperity of the 
 Syndicate and its promoter with undisguised annoyance. 
 
 " It beats me," said Bess, " why people back the little 
 beast. Everybody knows all about him." 
 
 Next day as they rode down the valley towards Birling 
 Gap, Mr. Trupp expounded to his daughter the secret of 
 Alf s success. 
 
 " When you're as old as I am, my dear, and have had as 
 
THE VANQUISHED 151 
 
 long an experience as I have of this slip-shod world, you'll 
 know that people will forgive almost anything to a man who 
 gets things done and is reliable. Alf drove me for nearly 
 ten years tens of thousands of miles ; and I never knew him 
 to have a break-down on the road. Why ? because he 
 took trouble." 
 
 Alf, indeed, with all his amazing deficiencies, mental and 
 moral, was a supremely honest workman. He never scamped 
 a job, and was never satisfied with anything but the best. 
 He was gloriously work-proud. A hard master, he was 
 hardest on himself, as all the men in his yard knew. One 
 and all they disliked him ; one and all they respected him 
 because he could beat them at their own job. His 
 work was his solitary passion, and he was an artist at it. 
 Here he was not even petty. Good work, and a good work- 
 man, found in him their most wholehearted supporter. 
 
 " That's a job ! " he'd say to a mechanic. " I con- 
 gratulate you." 
 
 " You should know, Mr. Caspar," the man would answer, 
 pleased and purring. For Alf s reputation as the best 
 motor-engineer in East Sussex was well-established and 
 well-earned. And because he was efficient and thorough 
 the success of his Syndicate was never in doubt. 
 
 Alf was on the way now, in truth, to becoming a rich 
 man. Yet he lived simply enough above his original 
 garage in the Goffs at the foot of Old Town. And from that 
 eyrie, busy though he was, he still made time to watch with 
 interest and pleasure his brother's trousers coming down 
 and indeed to lend a helping hand in the process : for he 
 worked secretly on his mother, who regarded Ernie when he 
 came to Rectory Walk to take his father out with eyes of 
 increasing displeasure ; for her eldest son was shabby and 
 seedy almost now as in the days when he had been out of 
 work after leaving the Hohenzollern. The word failure 
 was stamped upon him in letters few could mis-read. And 
 Anne Caspar had for all those who fail, with one exception, 
 
I 5 2 ONE WOMAN 
 
 that profound sense of exasperation and disgust which finds 
 its outlet in the contemptuous pity that is for modern man 
 the camouflaged expression of the cruelty inherent in his 
 animal nature. It seemed that all the love in her and 
 there was love in her as surely there is in us all was 
 exhausted on her own old man. For the rest her attitude 
 towards the fallen in the arena was always Thumbs down 
 with perhaps an added zest of rancour and resentment 
 because of the one she spared. 
 
 " She has brought you low/' she commented one evening 
 to Ernie in that pseudo-mystical voice, as of one talking in 
 her sleep, from the covert of which some women hope to 
 shoot their poisoned arrows with impunity. This time, 
 however, she was not to escape just punishment. 
 
 Ernie flared. 
 
 " Who says she has then ? " 
 
 Anne Caspar had struck a spark of reality out of the moss- 
 covered flint ; and now as had happened at rare intervals 
 throughout his life Ernie made his mother suddenly 
 afraid. 
 
 " Everyone/' she said, lamely, trying vainly to cover 
 her retreat. 
 
 " Ah/' said Ernie, nodding. " I knaw who, and I'll 
 let him knaw it too." 
 
 " Best be cautious," replied his mother with a smirk. 
 " He's your landlord now. And you're behind." 
 
 Ernie rose. 
 
 " He may be my landlord," he cried. " But I'm the 
 daddy o he yet." 
 
 Sullenly he returned to the house that was now for him 
 no home : for the woman who had made it home was punish- 
 ing not without just cause the man who had betrayed it. 
 
 Ruth was standing now like a rock in the tide-way, the 
 passions of men beating about her, her children clinging to 
 her, the grey sky of circumstance enfolding her. 
 
THE VANQUISHED 153 
 
 She had sought adventure and had found it. Battle now 
 was hers ; but it was battle stripped of all romance. Danger 
 beset her ; but it was wholly sordid. The battle was for 
 bread to feed her household ; and soap to keep her home 
 and children clean. The danger was lest all the creeping 
 diseases and hideous disabilities contingent upon penury, 
 unknown even by name except in their grossest form to the 
 millions whose lot it is to face and fight them day in, day out, 
 should sap the powers of resistance of her and hers, and 
 throw them on the scrap-heap at the mercy of Man, the 
 merciless. 
 
 Tragic was her dilemma. To Ruth her home was 
 everything because it meant the environment in which she 
 must grow the souls and bodies of her children. And her 
 home was threatened. That was the position, stark and 
 terrible, which stared her in the eyes by day and night. 
 The man provided her by the law had proved a No-man, 
 as Joe called it. He was a danger to the home of which he 
 should have been the support. And while her own man 
 had failed her, another, a true man as she believed, was 
 offering to take upon his strong and capable shoulders the 
 burthen Ernie was letting fall. 
 
 Ruth agonised and well she might. For Joe was pressing 
 in upon her, overpowering her, hammering at her gate with 
 always fiercer insistence. Should she surrender ? should 
 she open the gate of a citadel of which the garrison was 
 starved and the ammunition all but spent ? should she 
 fight on ? 
 
 Through the muffled confusion and darkness of her 
 mind, above the tumult of cries old and new besetting her, 
 came always the still small voice, heard through the hubbub 
 by reason of its very quiet, that said Fight. Inherently 
 spiritual as she was, Ruth gave ear to it, putting forth the 
 whole of her strength to meet the enemy, who was too much 
 her friend, and overthrow him. 
 
 Yet she could not forget that she owed her position to 
 
154 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Ernie, since at every hour of every day she was being pricked 
 by the ubiquitous pin of poverty. Fighting now with her 
 back to the wall, for her home and children, and stern 
 because of it, she did not spare him. When Ernie called 
 her hard, as he was never tired of doing, she answered 
 simply, 
 
 " I got to be." 
 
 " No need to bully a chap so then/ 1 Ernie complained. 
 " A'ter all I am a human being though I may be your 
 husband/' 
 
 " You're not the only one I got to think of," replied 
 Ruth remorselessly. " And it's no good talking. I shan't 
 forgive you till you've won back the position you lost when 
 he sack you. Half a dollar a week makes just the difference 
 between can and can't to me. See, I can't goo to the wash- 
 tub now as I could to make up one time o day when I'd only 
 the one. So I must look to you. And if I look in vain 
 you got to hear about it. I mean it, Ernie," she continued. 
 " I'm fairly up against it. There's no gettin round me this 
 time. And if you won't think o me, you might think o 
 the children. It's they who suffer." 
 
 She had touched the spot this time. 
 
 " Steady with it then ! " cried Ernie angrily. " Don't 
 I think o you and the children ? " 
 
 " Not as you should," answered Ruth calmly. " Not by 
 no means. We should come first. Four of them now 
 and twenty-two bob to keep em on. Tain't in reason." 
 
 She faced him with calm and resolute eyes. 
 
 " And it mustn't happen again, Ern," she said. " See, 
 it's too much. Nobody's fault but your own." 
 
 Ernie went out in sullen mood, and for the first time 
 since the smash turned into the Star. He had not been 
 there many minutes when a navvy, clouded with liquor, 
 leaned over and inquired friendly how his barstards were. 
 
 Ern set down his mug. 
 
 " What's this then ? " he asked, very still. 
 
THE VANQUISHED 155 
 
 The fellow leaned forward, leering, a great hand plaistered 
 on either knee. 
 
 " Don't you know what a bloody barstard is ? "he asked. 
 He was too drunk to be afraid ; too drunk to be accountable. 
 Ernie dealt with him as a doctor deals with a refractory 
 invalid patiently. 
 
 " Who's been sayin it ? " he asked. 
 
 " Your own blood-brother Alf." 
 
 Ernie tossed off his half -pint, rose, and went out. 
 
 He walked fast down the hill to the Goffs. People 
 marked him as he passed, and the look upon his face : he 
 did not see them. 
 
 Alf was in his garage, talking to a man. The man wore 
 a burberry and a jaeger hat, with a hackle stuck in the 
 riband. There was something jaunty and sword-like about 
 him. Ern, as he drew rapidly closer, recognised him. It 
 was Captain Royal. The conjunction of the two men at 
 that moment turned his heart to steel. 
 
 He was walking ; but he seemed to himself to be sliding 
 oyer the earth towards his enemies, swift and stealthy as a 
 hunting panther. As he went he clutched his fists and knew 
 that they were damp and very cold. 
 
 When Ernie was within a hundred yards of him Royal, 
 all unconscious of the presence of his enemy, swung out of 
 the garage and walked off in his rapid, resolute way. 
 
 Alf went slowly up the steps into his office. 
 
 He was grinning to himself. 
 
 " 'Alf a mo then ! " said Ernie quietly, hard on his heels. 
 " Just a word with you, Alf." 
 
 Alf turned, saw his brother crossing the yard, marked 
 the danger-flare on his face, remembered it of old, and bolted 
 incontinently, without shame, locking the house door 
 behind him. 
 
 Ern hammered on the door. 
 
 Alf peeped out of an upper window, upset a jug of water 
 over his brother, and in his panic fury flung the jug after 
 
156 ONE WOMAN 
 
 it. It broke on Ernie's head and crashed to pieces on 
 the step. 
 
 Ernie, gasping, and bleeding from the head, staggered 
 back into the road, half-stunned. Then he began to tear 
 off his sopping clothes and throw them down into the dust 
 at his feet. His voice was quiet as his face, smeared with 
 blood, was moved. 
 
 " You've got to ave it ! " he called up to his brother. 
 " May as well come and ave it now as wait for it." 
 
 There had been a big football match on the Saffrons, 
 and the crowd were just flocking away, in mood for a lark. 
 The drenched and bleeding man stripping in the road, the 
 broken crockery on the door-step, the white-faced fellow at 
 the window, promised just the sensation they sought. Joy- 
 fully they gathered to see. Here was just the right finale 
 pleasant Saturday afternoon. 
 
 "I'm your landlord!" screamed Alf. "Remember 
 that ! I'll make you pay for this ! " 
 
 " Will you ? " answered Ernie, truculent and cool. 
 " Then I'll have my money's worth first." 
 
 This heroic sentiment was loudly applauded by the 
 crowd, who felt an added sympathy for Ern now they knew 
 he was attacking his landlord, one of a class loathed by all 
 good men. 
 
 Just then Joe Burt emerged from the crowd and took 
 the tumultuous figure of Ernie in his arms. 
 
 " Coom, then ! " he said. " This'll never do for a Labour 
 Leader. This isna the Highway you should be trampin 
 along." 
 
 The crowd protested. It was an exhilarating scene- 
 better than the pictures, some opined. And here was a 
 blighter, who talked funny talk, interfering. 
 
 " Just like these hem furriners," said an old man. 
 " Ca-a-n't let well a-be," 
 
 Then, happily, or unhappily, the police, who exist to 
 spoil the people's fun, appeared on the scene. 
 
THE VANQUISHED 157 
 
 They made a little blue knot round Ernie, who stood 
 in the midst of them, stripped and dripping, with something 
 of the forlorn look of a shorn ewe that has just been dipped. 
 
 Alf , secure now in the presence of the officers of the law, 
 descended from his window and came down the steps of 
 his house towards the growing crowd. A tall man joined 
 him. The pair forced their way through the press to the 
 police. 
 
 " I'm Captain Royal/' said the tall man, coldly. " I 
 saw what happened." 
 
 Joe turned on the new-comer. His clothes, his class, a 
 touch of insolence about his tone and bearing, roused all 
 the combative instincts of the engineer. 
 
 "You wasn't standin by then!" he said ferociously. 
 " You only just come up. A saw you." 
 
 The other ignored him, drawing a card from an elegant 
 case. 
 
 " Here's my card," he said to the police. " If you want 
 my evidence you'll know where to find me." 
 
 Joe boiled over. 
 
 " That's the gentleman of England touch ! " he sneered. 
 " Swear away a workin man's life for the price of half a 
 pint, they would ! " 
 
 " Ah ! I know him ! " muttered Ernie, white still, and 
 trembling. 
 
 " Enough of it now," growled a big policeman, making 
 notes in his pocket-book. 
 
 Just then the crowd parted and a woman came through. 
 A shawl was wrapped about her head and face. Only her 
 eyes were seen, dark under dark hair. 
 
 A moment she stood surrounded by the four men who 
 had desired or possessed her. Then she put her hand on 
 the shirt-sleeve of her husband. 
 
 " Em," she said, and turned away. 
 
 He followed her submissively through the crowd, 
 slipping his shirt over his head. 
 
158 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Swiftly the woman walked away up the hill. Her scare- 
 crow, his trousers sopping and sagging about his boots, 
 trudged behind. 
 
 The crowd looked after them in silence. Then Joe broke 
 away and followed at a distance. 
 
 Ruth looked back and saw him. 
 
 " Let us be, Joe/' she called. 
 
 Joe turned away. His eyes were full of tears. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 THUNDER 
 
 THE two brothers had to appear before the Bench on Monday. 
 As it chanced Mr. Pigott, Colonel Lewknor and Mr. Trupp 
 were the only magistrates present. 
 
 Ernie, who appeared with his head bandaged, admitted 
 his mistake. 
 
 " Went to pass the time o day with my brother/' he said. 
 " And all he done was to lean out of the window and crash 
 the crockery down on the roof o me head. Did upset me 
 a bit, I admit." 
 
 " He meant murder all right/' was Alf's testimony, 
 sullenly given. " He knows that/' 
 
 Joe corroborated Ernie's statement. 
 
 He had been in the Saffrons on Saturday afternoon and 
 had seen Ernie coming down the hill from Old Town. Having 
 a message to give him he had started to meet him. Ernie 
 had gone up the steps of his brother's house ; and as he did 
 so, Alf had leaned out of the upper window and thrown a 
 jug down on his brother. 
 
 Alf's solicitor cross-examined the engineer at some 
 length. 
 
 " What were you doing on the Saffrons ? " 
 
 "Watching the football." 
 
 " You were watching the football ; and yet you saw 
 Caspar coming down Church Street ? " 
 
 " I did." 
 
 " I suggest that you did nothing of the sort ; and that 
 you only appeared on the scene at the last moment." 
 
 " Well," retorted Joe, good-humouredly. " A don't 
 blame you for that. It's what you're paid to suggest." 
 
 159 
 
160 ONE WOMAN 
 
 A witness who was to have given evidence for Alf did 
 not appear; and the Bench agreed without retiring. Neither 
 of the brothers had been up before the magistrates before 
 and both were let off with a caution, Ernie having to pay 
 costs. 
 
 " Your tongue's altogether too long, Alfred Caspar, 11 
 said Mr. Pigott, the Chairman, and added quite unjudicially 
 " always was. And you're altogether too free with your 
 fists, Ernest Caspar." 
 
 Ernie left the court rejoicing ; for he knew he had 
 escaped lightly. Outside he waited to thank his friend for 
 his support. 
 
 " Comin up along ? " he coaxed. 
 
 " Nay, ma lad," retorted the engineer with the touch of 
 brutality which not seldom now marked his intercourse with 
 the other. " You must face the missus alone. Reck'n 
 A've done enough for one morning." 
 
 Ern went off down Saffrons Road in the direction of Old 
 Town, crest-fallen as is the man whose little cocoon of self- 
 defensive humbug has suddenly been cleft by a steel blade. 
 
 Joe marched away down Grove Road. Alf caught him 
 up. The little chauffeur was smiling that cur ds-and- whey 
 smile of his. 
 
 " Say, Burt ! you aren't half a liar, are you ? " he 
 whispered. 
 
 Joe grinned genially. 
 
 " The Church can't have it all to herself," he said. 
 " Leave a few of the lies to the laity." 
 
 Ern trudged back from the Town Hall, across Saffrons 
 Croft, to the Moot, in unenviable mood ; for he was afraid, 
 and he had cause. 
 
 Ruth was who standing in the door came stalking to 
 meet him, holding little Alice by the hand. 
 
 Ern slouched up with that admixture of bluff, lordly 
 insouciance, and aggrieved innocence that is the honoured 
 defence of dog and man alike on such occasions. 
 
THUNDER 161 
 
 "You've done us," she said almost vengefully. 
 
 " What are I done then ? " asked the accused, feigning 
 abrupt indignation. 
 
 Ruth dismissed the child, and turned on Ernie. 
 
 " Got us turn into the street me and my babies/' she 
 answered, splendidly indignant. " A chap's been round 
 arter the house, while you was up before the beaks settlin 
 whether you were for Lewes Gaol or not. Says Alf s let 
 it him a week from Saraday, and we got to go. I wouldn't 
 let him in." 
 
 " Ah," said Ernie stubbornly, " don't you worry. Alf's 
 got to give us notice first. And he daren't do that." 
 
 Ruth was not to be appeased. 
 
 " Why daren't he, then ? " she asked. 
 
 " I'll tell you for why," answered Ernie. " He's goin up 
 before the Watch Committee come Thursday to get his 
 licence for his blessed Touring Syndicate. We've friends 
 on that Committee, good friends Mr. Pigott, and the 
 Colonel, not to say Mr. Geddes ; <lnd Alf knaws it. He 
 ain't goin to do any think to annoy them just now. Knaws 
 too much, Alf do." 
 
 Ruth was not convinced. 
 
 " We got no friends," she said sullenly. " We shall 
 lose em all over this. O course we shall, and I don't 
 blame em. A fair disgrace on both of you, I call it. 
 You're lucky not to have to do a stretch. And as to 
 Alf, they've sack him from sidesman over it, and he'll 
 never forgive us." 
 
 They were walking slowly back to the cottage, the man 
 hang-dog, the woman cold. 
 
 Outside the door she paused. 
 
 " All I know is this," she said. " If you're out again 
 through your own fault I'm done with it, and I'll tell you 
 straight what I shall do, Ern." 
 
 She was very quiet. 
 
 " What then ? " 
 
 11 
 
162 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " I shall leave you with your children and go away with 
 mine. 19 She stood with heaving bosom, immensely moved. 
 " I ca-a'nt keep the lot. But I can keep one. And you 
 know which one that'll be." 
 
 Ernie, the colour of dew, went indoors without a word. 
 
 The rumour that Alf had been dismissed from his 
 position as sidesman at St. Michael's, owing to the incident 
 in the Goffs, was not entirely true, but there was something 
 in it. 
 
 The Archdeacon had his faults, but there was no more 
 zealous guardian of the fair fame of the Church and all 
 things appertaining to her. 
 
 Alf's appearance before the magistrates was discussed 
 at the weekly conference of the staff at the Rectory. 
 
 Both Mr. Spink and Bobby Chislehurst were present. 
 The former stoutly defended his protege, and the Arch- 
 deacon heard him out. Then he turned to Bobby. 
 
 " What d'you say, Chislehurst ? " he asked. 
 
 Bobby, in fact, could say little. 
 
 Ernie had no scruples whatever in suggesting what was 
 untrue to the magistrates, who when on the Bench at all 
 events were officials, and to be treated accordingly, but he 
 would never lie to a man who had won his heart. He had, 
 therefore, in answer to the Cherub's request given an 
 unvarnished account of what had occurred. Bobby now 
 repeated it reluctantly, but without modification. 
 
 " Exactly," said Mr. Spink. " There's not a tittle of 
 evidence that Alfred really did say what he's accused of 
 saying. And he denies it, point-blank." 
 
 " I think I'd better see him," said the Archdeacon. 
 
 Alf came, sore and sulking. 
 
 Mottled and sour of eye, he stood before the Archdeacon 
 who flicked the lid of his snuff-box, and asked whether he 
 had indeed made the remark attributed to him. 
 
THUNDER 163 
 
 " I never said nothing of the sort/' answered All 
 warmly, almost rudely. " Is it likely ? me own sister-in- 
 law and all ! See here ! " He produced his rent-book. 
 " I'm her landlord. She's months behind. See for your- 
 self ! Any other man only me'd have turned her out weeks 
 ago. But, of course, she takes advantage. She would. 
 She's that sort. I never said a word against her." 
 
 " And there is plenty you could say/' chimed in Mr. 
 Spink, who had escorted his friend. 
 
 " Maybe there is," muttered Alf. 
 
 The Archdeacon made a grimace. In the matter of sex 
 indeed if in no other, he was and always had been a genuine 
 aristocrat sensitive, refined, fastidious. 
 
 " Two of them get soaking together in the Star," con- 
 tinued Alf. " Then they start telling each other dirty 
 stories and quarrellin. Ern believes it all and comes and 
 makes a fuss. Mr. Pigott's chairman on the Bench. Course 
 he lays it all on me Mr. Pigott would. Ern can't do no 
 wrong in his eyes never could. Won't listen to reason and 
 blames me along of him because I'm a Churchman. See, 
 he's never forgiven me leaving the Chapel, Mr. Pigott 
 hasn't ; and that's the whole story." 
 
 It was a good card to play ; and it did its work. 
 
 " It's a cleah case to my mind of more sinned against 
 than sinning," said the Archdeacon with a genuinely kind 
 smile. " You had bad luck, Caspar but a good friend." 
 He shook hands with both young men. " I wish you well 
 and offer you my sympathy. I think you should go and have 
 a word of explanation with our friend, Mr. Pigott, though." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Alf. " I'm goin now. I couldn't let 
 it rest there." 
 
 Alf went straight on to interview the erring chairman in 
 the little villa in Victoria Drive. 
 
 The latter, summing up his old pupil with shrewd blue 
 eye in which there was a hint of battle, refused to discuss 
 the case or his judgment. 
 
164 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " What's done is done/' he said. " The law's the law 
 and there's no goin back on it. You were lucky to get off 
 so light ; that's my notion of it." 
 
 Alf stood before him, hang-dog and resentful. 
 
 " He'll kiU me one of these days," he muttered. " Little 
 better than a bloody murderer." 
 
 There was a moment's pause, marked by a snort from 
 Mr. Pigott. 
 
 Then the jolly, cosy man, with his trim white beard and 
 neat little paunch, rose and opened the window with some 
 ostentation. 
 
 " First time that word's ever crossed my threshold," he 
 said. " And I've lived in this house ten year come Michael- 
 mas." He turned with dignity on the offender. " Is that 
 what they teach you in the Church of England, then, Alfred 
 Caspar ? " he asked. " It wasn't what we taught you in 
 the Wesleyan Chapel in which you was bred. Never heard 
 the like of it for language in all me life never ! " Before 
 everything else in life Mr. Pigott was a strong chapel-man ; 
 and in his judgment Ern's weakness was as nothing to Alf's 
 apostasy. 
 
 Alf looked foolish and deprecatory. 
 
 " I didn't meaninittheswearin way," he said " not as 
 Ernest would have meant it. I never been in the Army 
 meself. I only meant he'll be the end o me one of these 
 days. Good as said he would in the Star Saturday." 
 
 Mr. Pigott turned away to hide the twinkle in his eye. 
 He knew Alf well, and his weakness. 
 
 " He don't like you, I do believe," he admitted. " And 
 he's a very funny fellow, Ern, when his hackle's up." 
 
 Alf's eyes blinked as they held the floor. 
 
 " And now," he said, " I suppose the Watch Committee'll 
 not grant my licence for the Road-Touring Syndicate when 
 it comes up afore em on Thursday. And I'll be a ruined man. ' ' 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised," answered Mr. Pigott, who 
 was an alderman and a great man on the Town Council. 
 
THUNDER 165 
 
 Alf was furious. He was so furious, indeed, that he did 
 a thing he had not done for years : he took his trouble to 
 his mother. 
 
 " It's a regular plot/' he said, " that's what it is. To 
 get my licence stopped and ruin me. Raised the money ; 
 ordered the buses ; engaged the staff and all. And then they 
 spring this on me ! It ain't Ernie. I will say that for him. 
 I know who's at the bottom of it." 
 
 " Who then ? " asked his mother, faintly interested. 
 
 " Her Ern keeps." 
 
 Mrs. Caspar roused instantly. 
 
 " Isn't she married to him then ? " she cried, peering 
 over her spectacles. 
 
 " Is she ? " sneered Alf. " That's all." 
 
 He leaned forward, his ugly face dreadful with a 
 sneer. 
 
 " Do you know where she'd be if everyone had his 
 rights ? " 
 
 " Where then ? " 
 
 " Lewes Gaol." 
 
 His message delivered, he sat back with a nod to watch 
 its effect. 
 
 " And she would be there too," continued Alf, " only 
 for me." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " Mrs. Caspar asked. 
 
 " I mean," answered Alf, " as I keep her out of prison 
 by keepin me mouth shut." He dropped his voice. " And 
 that ain't all. She's at it again . . . Her home's a 
 knockin-shop. ... All the young men. . . . The 
 police ought to interfere. ... I shall tell the Arch- 
 deacon. . . . A kept woman. . . . That chap Burt. 
 . . . That's how Ern makes good. . . . She makes 
 the money he spends at the Star. . . . And your grand- 
 children brought up in that atmosphere ! " He struck the 
 table. " But I'm her landlord all the same ; and I'll make 
 her know it yet." 
 
166 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Anne Caspar was genuinely disturbed not for the sake 
 of Ruth, but for that of the children. 
 
 " You could never turn her out ! " she said " not 
 your own sister-in-law and four children ! Look so bad 
 and all and you a sidesman too/' 
 
 Alf snorted. 
 
 " Ah, couldn't I ? " he said. " You never know what a 
 man can do till he tries." 
 
 That evening the Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked 
 over to the Manor-house to discuss Ern's latest misadven- 
 ture. They found Mr. Pigott there clearly on the same 
 errand ; but the old Nonconformist rose to go with faintly 
 exaggerated dignity on seeing his would-be enemy. 
 
 " There's only one thing'll save him now/' he announced 
 in his most dogmatic style. 
 
 " What's that ? " asked Mrs. Trupp. 
 
 " H'a h'earthquake," the other answered. 
 
 When the Colonel and his wife left the Manor-house 
 half-an-hour later there were three people walking 
 abreast down the hill before them, just as there had been 
 on a previous occasion. Now, as then, the centre of the three 
 was Ruth. Now, as then, on her left was Joe. But on her 
 right instead of Ern was little Alice. 
 
 The Colonel pointed to the three. 
 
 " I'll back Caspar all the way," said Mrs. Lewknor 
 firmly. 
 
 " Myself," replied the Colonel shrewdly, " I'll back the 
 winner." 
 
 Then he paused to read a placard which gave the latest 
 news of the Ulster campaign. 
 
PART II 
 TROUBLED DAWN 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 THE BETRAYAL 
 
 THE Ulster Campaign was moving forward now with 
 something of the shabby and theatrical pomp of a travelling 
 circus parading the outskirts of a sea-side town before a 
 performance. A dromedary with an elongated upper lip, 
 draped in the dirty trappings of a pseudo-Oriental satrap, 
 led the procession, savage and sulking. Behind the drome- 
 dary came the mouldy elephant, the maingy bear, the fat 
 woman exposing herself in tights on a gilt-edged Roman 
 chariot, the sham cow-boys with gaudy cummerbunds, and 
 Cockney accents, on untamed bronchos hired from the local 
 livery stables, the horse that was alleged to have won the 
 Derby in a by-gone century, etc. And the spectators gaped 
 on the pavement, uncertain whether to jeer or to applaud. 
 
 As the Campaign rolled on its way, the wiser Con- 
 servatives shook their heads, openly maintaining that the 
 whole business was a direct abnegation of everything for 
 which their party had stood in history, while the Liberals 
 became increasingly restive : Mr. Geddes, uneasy at the 
 inaction of the Government, Mr. Geddes truculent to meet 
 the truculence of the enemy. The only man who openly 
 rejoiced was Joe Burt. 
 
 " The Tory Reds have lit such a candle by God's grace 
 in England as'U never be put out," he said to Ernie. 
 
 The engineer had always now a newspaper cutting in 
 his waistcoat pocket, and a quotation pat upon his lips. 
 
 " They're all shots for the locker in the only war that 
 matters," he told the Colonel. "And they'll all coom in 
 handy one day. A paste em into a lil book nights : Tips 
 for Traitors; an ammunition magazine, A call it." 
 
 For him Sir Edward Carson's famous confession of 
 faith, / despise the Will of the People words Joe had inscribed 
 
 169 
 
170 ONE WOMAN 
 
 as motto on the cover of his ammunition magazine gave the 
 key to the whole movement. And he never met the Colonel 
 now but he discharged a broadside into the helpless body 
 of his victim. 
 
 It was not, however, till early in 1914, just when his 
 pursuit of Ruth was at the hottest, that he woke to the fact 
 that the Tories were tampering with the Army. That 
 maddened Joe. 
 
 " If this goes on A shall go back to ma first love/' he 
 told Ruth with a characteristic touch of impudence. 
 
 " And a good job too/' she answered tartly. " I don't 
 want you." 
 
 " And you can go back to your Ernie," continued the 
 engineer, glad to have got a rise. 
 
 " I shan't go back to him," retorted Ruth, " because I 
 never left him." 
 
 The statement was not wholly true : for if Ruth had 
 not left Ernie, since the affair of the Goffs she had 
 according to her promise turned her back on him. When 
 on the first opportunity that offered she had announced his 
 fate to the offender, he had blinked, refused to understand, 
 argued, insisted, coaxed to no purpose. 
 
 " You got to be a man afoor I marry you again," she 
 told him coldly. " I'm no'hun of a no-man's woman." 
 
 Ernie at first refused to accept defeat. He became 
 eloquent about his rights. 
 
 " They're nothing to my wrongs," Ruth answered 
 briefly ; and turned a deaf ear to all his pleas. 
 
 Thereafter Ernie found himself glad to escape the home 
 haunted by the woman he still loved, who tantalised and 
 thwarted him. That was why when Joe girded on his 
 armour afresh and went forth to fight the old enemy in the 
 new disguise, Ernie accompanied him. 
 
 The pair haunted Unionist meetings, Ernie quiescent, 
 the other aggressive to rowdiness. Young Stanley Besse- 
 mere, who had returned from Ireland (where he now spent 
 
THE BETRAYAL 171 
 
 all his leisure caracoling on a war-horse at the distinguished 
 tail of the caracoling Captain Smith) to address a series 
 of gatherings in his constituency in justification of the 
 Ulster movement, and his own share in it, was the favoured 
 target for his darts. Joe followed him round from the East- 
 end to Meads, and from Meads to Old Town, and even 
 pursued him into the country. He acquired a well-earned 
 reputation as a heckler, and was starred as dangerous by 
 the Tory bloods. Mark that man I the word went round. 
 
 Joe knew it, and was only provoked to increased 
 aggressiveness. 
 
 " Go on, ma lad ! " he would roar from the back of the 
 hall. " Yon's the road to revolution aw reet ! " 
 
 There came a climax at a meeting in the Institute, Old 
 Town. Joe at question time had proved himself unusually 
 bland and provocative. The stewards had tried to put him 
 out ; and there had been a rough and tumble in the course 
 of which somebody had hit the engineer a crack on the head 
 from behind with the handle of a motor-car. Joe 
 dropped ; and Ernie stood over him in the ensuing scuffle. 
 The news that there was trouble drew a little crowd. Ruth, 
 on her evening marketings in Church Street, looked in. She 
 found Joe sitting up against the wall, dazed ; and Ernie 
 kneeling beside him and having words with Stanley Besse- 
 mere, who was strolling towards the door. 
 
 " Brought his troubles on his own head/' said the 
 , young member casually. 
 
 " Hit a man from behind ! " retorted Ernie, quiet but 
 rather white. " English, ain't it ? " 
 
 " It was your own brother, then ! " volunteered an 
 onlooker. 
 
 Joe rallied, rubbed his head, looked up, saw Ruth and 
 reassured her. 
 
 " A'm maself," he said. 
 
 He rose unsteadily on Ernie's arm. 
 
 " He must come home along of us/' said Ruth. 
 
172 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Of course he must then/ 1 Ernie answered with the 
 asperity of the thwarted male. 
 
 The night-air revived the wounded man. Arrived at 
 the cottage he sat in the kitchen, still a little stupid, but 
 amused with his adventure. 
 
 " They'd ha kicked me in stoomach when A was down 
 only for you, Ern," he said. " That's the Gentlemen of 
 England's notion of politics, that is." 
 
 " You'd ha done the same by them, Joe, if you'd the 
 chance," answered Ern. 
 
 The other grinned. 
 
 " A would that, by Guy and all for loov," he admitted. 
 
 Ruth brought him a hot drink. He sipped it, one eye 
 still on his saviour. 
 
 " I owe this to you, Ern. Here's to you ! " 
 
 " Come to that, Joe, I owe you something," Ernie 
 answered. 
 
 " What's that then ? " Joe sat as a man with a stiff 
 neck, screwing up his eye at the other. 
 
 Ern nodded significantly at Ruth's back. 
 
 " Why that little bit o tiddley you done for me afore the 
 beaks," he whispered. 
 
 " That's nowt," answered Joe sturdily. " What was it 
 Saul said to Jonathan If a feller can't tiddle it a liddel bit 
 for his pal, what the hell use is he ? Book o Judges." 
 
 Ruth in the background watched the two men. It was 
 as though she were weighing them in the balance. There 
 was a touch of masterful tenderness about Ern's handling 
 of his damaged friend that surprised and pleased her. 
 
 Joe made an effort to get up. 
 
 " A'd best be shiftin," he said. 
 
 "Never! " cried Ern, authoritatively. "You'll bide the 
 night along o us. She'll make you a bed on the couch here." 
 
 " Nay," said Ruth. " You'll sleep in the bed along 
 o Ernie." 
 
 Joe eyed her. 
 
THE BETRAYAL 173 
 
 " Where'U you sleep then ? " he asked. 
 
 " In the spare room/' Ruth answered, winking at Ernie. 
 
 There was no spare room ; but she made up a shake- 
 down for herself on the settle in the kitchen. Ernie, after 
 packing away the visitor upstairs, came down to help 
 her. It also gave him an opportunity to ventilate his 
 grievance. 
 
 " One thing. It won't make much difference to me/' 
 he said. 
 
 " Your own fault/' Ruth answered remorselessly. 
 " And you aren't the only one, though I know you think 
 you are. Men do ... We'd be out in the street now, the 
 lot of us, only for Joe telling lies for you." 
 
 Next morning she took her visitor breakfast in bed and 
 kept him there till Mr. Trupp had come, who told Joe he 
 must not return to work for a week. 
 
 The engineer got up that afternoon and was sitting in 
 the kitchen still rather shaky, when Alf, who had not 
 fulfilled his threat and given Ruth notice, called for the rent. 
 
 Ruth greeted him with unusual friendliness. 
 , " Come in, won't you ? " she said " while I get the 
 money." 
 
 Alf, who in some respects was simple almost as Ernie, 
 entered the trap to find Joe, huddled in a chair and glowering 
 murder at him. He tried to withdraw, but Ruth stood 
 between him and the door, twice his size, and with glittering 
 eyes. 
 
 " There's a friend of yours," she said. " Saw him last 
 night, at the meeting, didn't you ? I thart you'd be glad 
 to meet him." 
 
 Alf quaked. 
 
 " Been in the wars then ? " he said shakily. 
 
 " What d'you know about it ? " rumbled Joe. 
 
 " I don't know nothin," answered Alf sharply, almost 
 shrilly. 
 
 Just then little Alice entered. Alf took advantage of her 
 
174 ONE WOMAN 
 
 entrance to establish his line of retreat. Once set in the door 
 with a clear run for the open his courage returned to him. 
 
 " And what may be your name ? " he asked the child 
 with deliberate insolence. 
 
 " Alice Caspar/' she answered, staring wide-eyed. 
 
 Alf sneered. 
 
 " That it ain't I know," he said, and went out without 
 his rent, and laughing horribly. 
 
 Little Alice ran out again. 
 
 " What's he mean ? " asked Joe. 
 
 Ruth regarded him with wary curiosity. 
 
 " Didn't Ern never tell you then ? " she asked. 
 
 " Never ! " said Joe. 
 
 Ruth was thoughtful. That was nice of Ern like Ern 
 the gentleman in him coming out. 
 
 That night she softened to him. He noticed it in a 
 flash and approached her only to be repulsed abruptly. 
 
 " No," she said. " I don't care about you no more. 
 You've lost me. That's where it is." 
 
 " O, I beg pardon," answered Ernie, quivering. " I 
 thart we was married." 
 
 " So we was one time o day, I believe," Ruth answered. 
 " And might be again yet. Who knaws ? " 
 
 He stood over her as she composed herself for the night 
 on the settle. 
 
 " How long's that Joe going to stop in my house ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Just as long as I like," she answered coolly. 
 
 Next day when Joe came in for tea he found Ruth 
 sitting in the kitchen, nursing little Alice, who was crying 
 her heart out on her mother's shoulder. 
 
 "They've been tormenting her at school," Ruth 
 explained. " It's Alf." 
 
 " I'll lay it is," muttered Joe. " Ern and me, we'll just 
 go round when he comes back from work." 
 
 Ruth looked frightened. 
 
THE BETRAYAL 175 
 
 " Don't tell Ern for all's sake, Joe ! " she whispered. 
 
 " Why not then ? " 
 
 " He'd kill Alf." 
 
 Joe's face betrayed his scepticism. 
 
 " Ah, you don't knaw Ern, when he's mad/' Ruth 
 warned him. 
 
 An hour later Ernie came home. He was still, suppressed, 
 as often now. There was nobody in the kitchen but Ruth. 
 
 " Where's your Joe, then ? " he asked. 
 
 " He's left," Ruth answered. 
 
 Ernie relaxed ever so little. 
 
 " He might ha stopped to say good-bye," he muttered. 
 
 Ruth rose. 
 
 " I got something to tell you, Ern," she said. 
 
 He turned on her abruptly. 
 
 " It's little Alice. They've been getting at her at school 
 that ! you knaw." 
 
 Ernie was breathing hard. 
 
 " Who split ? " 
 
 " Alf. He told Mrs. Ticehurst I see him ; and she told 
 the lot." 
 
 Ern went out slowly, and slowly up the stairs in the dark 
 to the children's room. 
 
 A little voice called " Daddy ! " 
 
 " I'm comin, sweet-heart," he answered tenderly. 
 
 He felt his way to the child's bed, knelt beside it, and 
 struck a match. A tear like a star twinkled on her cheek. She 
 put out her little arms to him and clasped him round the neck. 
 
 " Daddy, you are my daddy, aren't you ? " she sobbed, 
 her heart breaking in her voice. 
 
 He laid his cheek against hers. Both were wet. 
 
 " Of course I am," he answered, the water floods sounding 
 in his throat. " I'm your daddy ; and you're my darling. 
 And if we got nobody else we got each other, ain't we ? " 
 
 Ruth, in the dark at the foot of the stairs, heard, gave a 
 great gulp, and crept back to the kitchen. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 
 
 THE Colonel, who throughout his life while making a great 
 show of radical opinions in the mess for the benefit of his 
 brother-officers had always voted quietly for the Conserva- 
 tive party on the ground that they made upon the whole 
 less of a hash of Imperial affairs than their Liberal opponents 
 was profoundly troubled by the proceedings in Ulster. 
 
 " The beggars are undermining the morale of Ireland/' 
 he told Mr. Trupp. " And only those whoVe been quartered 
 there know what that means." 
 
 " If you said they were undermining the foundations of 
 Society I'd agree," the other answered. " Geddes says 
 they've poisoned the wells of civilisation, and he's about 
 right." 
 
 The Presbyterian minister, indeed, usually so sane and 
 moderate, had been roused to unusual vehemence by the 
 general strike against the law engineered by the Conserva- 
 tive leaders. 
 
 " It's a reckless gamble in anarchy with the country's 
 destiny at stake," he said. 
 
 " And financed by German Jews," added Joe Burt. 
 
 As the Campaign developed and the success of the 
 Unionists in tampering with the Army became always more 
 apparent, the criticisms of the two men intensified. They 
 hung like wolves upon the flank of the Colonel, pertinacious 
 in pursuit, remorseless in attack. 
 
 " You can't get away from the fact that the whole 
 Campaign is built on the power of the Unionists to corrupt 
 the officers of the Army," said the minister. " Without 
 that the whole thing collapses." 
 
 " And so far," chimed in Joe, " A must say it looks as 
 if they were building on a sure foundation." 
 
 176 
 
THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 177 
 
 The Colonel, outwardly gay, was inwardly miserable 
 that his beloved Service should be dragged in the mud. 
 " What can you say to them ? " he groaned to Mr. Trupp. 
 " Why/' said the old surgeon brusquely, " tell em to 
 tell their own rotten Government to govern or get out. Let 
 em hang half a dozen politicians for treason, and shoot the 
 same number of soldiers for sedition and the thing's 
 done." 
 
 And the bitterness of it was that it looked increasingly 
 as if the critics were right. 
 
 The Colonel came home one night from a rare visit to 
 London in black despair. 
 
 " The British officer never grows up/' he complained to 
 his wife. " He's a perfect baby/' His long legs writhed 
 themselves into knots, as he sucked at his pipe. " Do you 
 remember that charming little feller Cherry Dugdale, who 
 commanded the Borderers at Umballa ? " 
 " The shikari ? rather." 
 
 " He's joined the Ulster Volunteers as a private." 
 Mrs. Lewknor chuckled. She was a Covenanter sans 
 phrase, fierce almost as the Archdeacon and delighting in 
 the embarrassments of the Government. 
 
 " Just like him," she said. " Little duck ! " 
 Then came the crash. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief in Ireland sent for General 
 Gough, commanding the 3*rd Cavalry Brigade at the 
 Curragh, and asked him what his action would be in the 
 event of the Government giving him and his Brigade the 
 alternative of serving against Ulster or resigning. Gough 
 forthwith called a conference of his officers, and seventy 
 out of seventy-five signified their intention to resign. 
 "We would rather not shoot Irishmen," they said. 
 On the evening after the news came through the Colonel 
 was walking down Terminus Road when he heard a provoca- 
 tive voice behind him. 
 
 " What about it, Colonel ? " 
 
 12 
 
178 ONE WOMAN 
 
 He turned to find Joe Burt at his heels. 
 
 " What about what ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " This mutiny of the officers at the Curragh." 
 
 The Colonel affected a gaiety he by no means felt. 
 
 " Well, what's your view ? " 
 
 Joe was enthusiastic. 
 
 "Why, it's the finest example of Direct Action ever 
 seen in this coontry. And it's been given by the Army 
 officers ! That's what gets me." 
 
 " What's Direct Action ? " asked the Colonel. The 
 phrase in those days was unknown outside industrial circles. 
 
 " A strike, and especially a strike for political purposes," 
 answered Joe. " General Gough and his officers have struck 
 to prevent Home Rule being placed on the Statute Book. 
 What if a Trade Union had tried to hold up the coontry 
 same road ? It's what A've always said," the engineer 
 continued, joyously aggressive. " The officers of the British 
 Army aren't to be trusted except when their own party's 
 in power. " 
 
 The Colonel walked on to the club. 
 
 There he found young Stanley Bessemere, just back 
 from Ireland, sitting in a halo of cigar-smoke, the hero of an 
 amused and admiring circle, recording his latest military 
 exploits. 
 
 " We've got the swine beat," he was saying confidently 
 between puff s. " The Army won't fight. And the Govern- 
 ment can do nothing." 
 
 The Colonel turned a vengeful eye upon him. 
 
 " Young man," he said, " are you aware that Labour's 
 watching you ? Labour's learning from you ? " 
 
 " Labour be damned ! " retorted the other with jovial 
 brutality. " We'll deal with Labour all right when we've 
 got this lot of traitors out of office." 
 
 " Traitors ! " called Mr. Trupp, harshly from his chair. 
 " You talk of traitors ! you Tories ! I voted for you at 
 the last General Election for the first time in my life on the 
 
THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 179 
 
 sole ground of national defence. D'you think I or any 
 self-respecting man would have done so if we'd known the 
 jackanape tricks you'd be up to ? " 
 
 The two elderly men retired in dudgeon to the card-room. 
 
 " There's only one thing the matter with Ireland," 
 grumbled the old surgeon. " And its always been the 
 same thing." 
 
 " What's that ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " The English politician," replied the other " Ireland's 
 curse." 
 
 Hard on the heels of the Curragh affair came the landing 
 of arms from Krupp's, with the connivance, if not with the 
 secret co-operation of the German Government, at Larne 
 under the cover of the rebel Army, mobilised for the purpose. 
 The Government wept a few patient tears over the outrage 
 and did nothing. 
 
 The Colonel was irritated ; Mr. Trupp almost vituperative. 
 
 " Geddes may say what he likes," remarked the former. 
 " But I can't acquit the Government. They're encouraging 
 the beggars to play it up." 
 
 " Acquit them ! " fulminated the old surgeon. " I'd 
 impeach them on the spot. The law in abeyance ! British 
 ports seized under the guns of the British fleet ! Gangs of 
 terrorists patrolling the roads and openly boasting they'll 
 assassinate any officer of the Crown who does his duty ; 
 and the Episcopalian Church blessing the lot ! And the 
 Government does nothing. It's a national disgrace ! " 
 
 " It's all very weU, Mr. Trupp," said Mr. Glynde, the 
 senior member for the Borough, who was present. " But 
 Ulster has a case, and we must consider it." 
 
 " Of course Ulster has a case," the other answered 
 sharply. " Nobody but a fool denies it. I'm attacking 
 the Government, not Ulster. Let them restore law and 
 order in Ireland. That's their first job. When they've 
 done that it'll be time enough to consider Ulster's grievances. 
 Where's all this going to lead us ? " 
 
i8o ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Hell/ 1 said the Colonel gloomily. 
 
 He was, indeed, more miserable than he had ever been 
 in his life. 
 
 Other old Service men he met, who loathed the Govern- 
 ment, looked on with amused or spiteful complacency at 
 the part the Army was playing in the huge conspiracy 
 against the Crown. The Colonel saw nothing but the shame 
 of it, its possible consequences, and effect on opinion, 
 domestic, imperial and European. 
 
 He walked about as one in a maze : he could not under- 
 stand. 
 
 Then Mr. Geddes came to see him. 
 
 The tall minister was very grave ; and there was no 
 question what he came about the Army Conspiracy. 
 
 The Colonel looked out of the window and twisted his 
 long legs as he heard the other out. 
 
 " Dear little Gough-y ! " he murmured at the end. 
 " The straightest thing that walks the earth." 
 
 He felt curiously helpless, as he had felt throughout the 
 Campaign ; unable to meet his adversaries except by the 
 evasion and casuistical tricks his spirit loathed. 
 
 Mr. Geddes rose. 
 
 " Well, Colonel," he said. " I see no alternative but to 
 resign my membership of the League. It's perfectly clear 
 that if your scheme goes through it must be run by officers 
 at the War Office. And I'm afraid I must add that it seems 
 equally clear now that it will be run for political purposes 
 by men who put their party before their country." 
 
 The Colonel turned slowly round. 
 
 " You've very kindly lent us St. Andrew's Hall for a 
 meeting of the League next Friday. Do you cancel that ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Certainly not, Colonel," answered the minister. " By 
 all means hold your meeting. I shall be present, and I 
 shall speak." . . . 
 
THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 181 
 
 It was not a happy meeting at St. Andrew's Hall, but it 
 was a crowded one : for the vultures had sniffed the battle 
 from afar. The Liberals came in force, headed by Mr. 
 Pigott ; while Joe Burt led his wolves from the East-end. 
 Ernie was there, very quiet now as always, with Ruth ; and 
 Bobby Chislehurst, seeing them, took his seat alongside. 
 
 Fighting with his back to the wall, and well aware of 
 it, the Colonel was at his very best : witty, persuasive, 
 reasonable. What the National Service League advocated 
 was not aggression in any shape, but insurance. 
 
 He sat down amid considerable and well-earned applause. 
 
 Then Mr. Geddes rose. 
 
 He had joined the League after Agadir, he said, after 
 much perturbation and questioning of spirit, because he 
 had been reluctantly convinced at last that the German 
 menace was a reality. Yet what was the position to-day ? 
 The Conservative Party, which had preached this menace 
 for years, had been devoting the whole of its energies now 
 for some time past to fomenting a civil war in Ireland. 
 They had gone so far as to arm a huge force that was in 
 open rebellion against the Crown with rifles and machine- 
 guns from the very country which they affirmed was about 
 to attack us. And more remarkable still certain Generals 
 at the War Office he wouldn't mention names " 
 
 " Why not ? " shouted Mr. Pigott. 
 
 It was not expedient ; but he had in his pocket a 
 letter from Mr. Redmond giving the name of the General 
 who was primarily responsible for the sedition among the 
 officers of the Army a very highly placed officer indeed. 
 
 " Shame ! " cried someone. 
 
 He thought so too. And this General, who was in the 
 somewhat anomalous position of being both technical military 
 adviser to the rebel army in Ulster and the trusted servant 
 of the Government at the War Office, was a man who for 
 years past, so he understood, had preached the doctrine that 
 war with Germany was inevitable, and had been for many 
 
182 ONE WOMAN 
 
 years largely responsible for the preparation of our forces 
 against attack fronrthat quarter. To suggest that this officer 
 and his colleagues were traitors was downright silly. What, 
 then, was the only deduction a reasonable man could draw ? 
 The minister paused : Why, that the German peril was not 
 a reality. 
 
 The conclusion was greeted with a howl of triumph from 
 the wolves at the back. 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! " roared Mr. Pigott. 
 
 Joe Burt had jumped up. 
 
 " A'll tell you the whole truth about the German Bogey ! " 
 he bawled. " It's a put-up game by the militarists to force 
 conscription on the coontry for their own purposes. Now 
 you've got it straight ! " 
 
 As he sat down amid tumultuous applause at one end 
 of the hall a figure on the platform bobbed up as it were 
 automatically. It was Alf. 
 
 " Am I not right in thinking that the gentleman at the 
 back of the hall is about to pay a visit to Germany ? " he 
 asked urbanely. 
 
 " Yes, you are ! " shouted Joe. " And A wish all the 
 workin-men in England were comin too. That'd put the 
 lid on the nonsense pretty sharp." 
 
 Then ensued something of a scene ; the hub-bub pierced 
 by Alf s shrill scream, 
 
 " Who's pay in for your visit ? " 
 
 The Archdeacon, a most capable chairman, restored 
 order ; and Mr. Geddes concluded his speech on a note of 
 quiet strength. When he finally sat down man after man 
 got up and announced his intention of resigning his member- 
 ship of the League. 
 
 Outside the hall the Colonel stood out of the moon in 
 the shadow of one of those trees which make the streets of 
 Beachbourne singular and lovely at all times of the year. 
 
THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 183 
 
 His work of the last six years had been undone, and it was 
 clear that he knew it. 
 
 Ruth, emerging from the hall, looked across at the forlorn 
 old man standing like a dilapidated pillar amid the drift 
 of the dissipating crowd. She had herself no understanding 
 of the rights and wrongs of the controversy to which she had 
 just listened ; her sympathies were not enlisted by either 
 side. Only the human element, and the clash of person- 
 alities which had made itself apparent at the meeting, had 
 interested her. But she realised that the tall figure across 
 the road was the vanquished in the conflict ; and her heart 
 went out to him. 
 
 " They aren't worth the worrit he takes over them," 
 she said discontentedly. " Let them have their war if 
 they want it, I says. And when they've got it let those 
 join in as likes it, and those as don't stay out. That's what 
 I say. ... A nice man like that, too so gentle with 
 it. ... Ought to be ashamed of emselves ; some of 
 em." 
 
 Then she saw Mr. Chislehurst cross the road to his 
 cousin, and she was comforted. 
 
 " He'll walk home with him. Come on, Ernie." 
 
 It was striking ten o'clock. Ruth, who was in a hurry 
 to get back to her babes, left in the charge of a neighbour, 
 walked a-head. Ernie, on the other hand, wished to 
 saunter, enjoying the delicious freshness of the spring night. 
 
 " Steady on then ! " he said. " That's the Archdeacon 
 in front, and Mr. Trupp and all." 
 
 " I knaw that then," replied Ruth with the asperity she 
 kept for Ernie alone. 
 
 " Well, you don't want to catch them up." 
 
 They entered Saffrons Croft, which lay black or silver- 
 blanched before them, peopled now only with tall trees. 
 The groups of elms, thickening with blossoms, gathered the 
 stars to their bosoms, and laid their shadows like patterns 
 along the smooth sward. Beyond the threadbare tapestry 
 
i8 4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 of trees rose the solid earth-work of the Downs, upholding 
 the brilliant night, encircling them as in a cup, and keeping 
 off the hostile world. Ernie felt their strength, their 
 friendship, the immense and unfailing comfort of them. A 
 great quiet was everywhere, brooding, blessed. The earth 
 lay still as the happy dead, caressed by the moon. But 
 behind the stillness the thrust and stir and aspiration of 
 new life quickening in the darkness, seeking expression, 
 made itself manifest. Ernie was deliciously aware of that 
 secret urge. He opened his senses to the rumour of it, and 
 filled his being with the breath of this mysterious renaissance. 
 
 He stopped and sniffed. 
 
 " It's coming/' he said. " I can smell it." 
 
 " It's come more like," answered Ruth. " The lilacs 
 are out in the Manor-garden, and the brown birds singing 
 in the ellums fit to choke theirsalves." 
 
 They walked on slowly across the turf. The lights of 
 the Manor-house twinkled at them friendly across the 
 ha-ha. Ernie's heart, which had been hardening of late to 
 meet Ruth's hardness, thawed at the touch of spring. The 
 doors of his being opened and his love leapt forth in billows 
 to surround her. The woman in front paused as if respond- 
 ing to that profound sub-conscious appeal. Ern did not 
 hurry his pace ; but she stayed for him in a pool of darkness 
 made by the elms. Quietly he came up alongside. 
 
 " Ruth," he began, shy and stealthy as a boy-lover. 
 
 She did not answer him, but the moon lay on her face, 
 firm-set. 
 
 " Anything for me to-night ? " 
 
 He came in upon her with a quiet movement as of wings. 
 She elbowed him off fiercely. 
 
 " A-done ! " she said. " You're not half-way through 
 yet nor near it." 
 
 He pleaded, coaxing. 
 
 " I am a man, Ruth." 
 
 She was adamant. 
 
THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT 185 
 
 " It's just what you are not," she retorted. He knew 
 she was breathing deep ; he did not know how near to 
 tears she was. " You was one time o day and you might 
 be yet. You got to work your ticket, my lad/ 1 
 
 He drew back. 
 
 She walked on swiftly now, passing out of Saffrons 
 Croft into the road. He followed at some distance down the 
 hill past the Greys to the Star corner. A man standing 
 there pointed. He turned round to see Joe pounding after 
 him. 
 
 " The tickets and badges coom to-night," the engineer 
 explained. " A meant to have given you yours, as A did 
 Mr. Geddes, at the meeting. But you got away. Good 
 night ! Friday ! Three o'clock sharp ! Don't forget." 
 
 Ruth had turned and was coming swiftly back towards 
 them. 
 
 " Ain't you coming along then, Joe ? " she called after 
 him. 
 
 " Not to-night, thank-you, Ruth. A got to square up 
 afore we go." 
 
 " I am disappointed," said Ruth disconsolately, and 
 turned away down Borough Lane. 
 
 Ernie came up beside her quietly. 
 
 " That night ! " he said. " Almost a pity you didn't 
 stay where you was in bed and let Joe take my place 
 alongside you." 
 
 " Hap it's what I've thart myself times," Ruth answered 
 sentimentally. 
 
 " Only thing," continued Ernie in that same strangely 
 quiet voice, " Joe wouldn't do it. D'is no fault of his'n. 
 He is a man Joe is ; even if so be you're no'hun of a woman." 
 
 The two turned into the house that once had been their 
 home. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 THE PILGRIMS 
 
 SPRING comes to Beachbourne as it comes to no other city 
 of earth, however fair ; say those of her children who after 
 long sojourning in other lands come home in the evenings of 
 their days to sleep. 
 
 The many-treed town that lies between the swell of 
 the hills and the foam and sparkle of the sea sluicing 
 deliciously the roan length of Pevensey Bay unveils her 
 rounded bosom in the dawn of the year to the kind clear 
 gaze of heaven and of those who to-day pass and repass 
 along its windy ways. Birds thrill and twitter in her 
 streets. There earlier than elsewhere the arabis calls the 
 bee, and the hedge-sparrow raises his thin sweet pipe to bid 
 the hearts of men lift up : for winter is passed. Chestnut 
 and laburnum unfold a myriad lovely bannerets on slopes 
 peopled with gardens and gay with crocuses and the laughter 
 of children. The elms in Saffrons Croft, the beeches in 
 Paradise, stir in their sleep and wrap themselves about 
 in dreamy raiment of mauve and emerald. The air is like 
 white wine, the sky of diamonds ; and the sea-winds come 
 blowing over banks of tamarisk to purge and exhilarate. 
 
 On the afternoon of such a day of such a spring in 
 May, 1914, at Beachbourne station a little group waited 
 outside the barrier that led to the departure platform. 
 
 The group consisted of Joe Burt, Ernie, and Ruth. 
 
 Ruth was peeping through the bars on to the platform, 
 at the far end of which was a solitary figure, waiting clearly, 
 he too, for the Lewes train, and very smart in a new blue 
 coat with a velvet collar. 
 
 " It's Alf," she whispered, keen and mischievous to Joe, 
 " Ain't arf smart and all." 
 
 186 
 
THE PILGRIMS 187 
 
 Joe peered with her. 
 
 " He's the proper little Fat," said the engineer. 
 " I'll get Will Dyson draw a special cartoon of him for the 
 Leader" 
 
 Ruth preened an imaginary moustache in mockery of 
 her brother-in-law. 
 
 " I'm the Managing Director of Caspar's Touring Syndi- 
 cate, I am, and dont you forget it ! " she said with a smirk. 
 
 " Where's he off to now ? " 
 
 " Brighton, I believe, with the Colonel. Some meeting 
 of the League," replied Ernie dully. 
 
 Just then Mr. Geddes joined them, and the four moved 
 on to the platform. 
 
 The train came in and Alf disappeared into it. 
 
 A few minutes later the Colonel passed the barrier. He 
 marked the little group on the platform and at once 
 approached them. 
 
 Something unusual about the men struck him at once. 
 All three had about them the generally degage air of those 
 on holiday bent. The minister wore a cap instead of 
 the habitual wide-awake ; and carried a rucksack on his 
 back. Joe swung a parcel by a string, and Ernie had an 
 old kit-bag slung across his shoulder. Rucksack, parcel, 
 and kit-bag were all distinguished by a red label. The 
 Colonel stalked the party from the rear and with manifold 
 contortions of a giraffe-like neck contrived to read on the 
 labels printed in large black letters, ADULT SCHOOL 
 PEACE PARTY. Then he speared the engineer under the 
 fifth rib with the point of his stick. 
 
 " Well, what .y'up to now ? " he asked sepulchrally. 
 
 "Just off to Berlin, Colonel," cried the other with 
 aggressive cheerfulness, " Mr. Geddes and I and this young 
 gentleman " thrusting the reluctant Ernie forward " one o 
 your soldiers, who knows better now." 
 
 The Colonel began to shake hands all round with elaborate 
 solemnity. 
 
i88 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Returning to your spiritual home while there is yet time, 
 Mr. Geddes," he said gravely. " Very wise, I think. You'll 
 be happier there than in our militarist land, you pacifist 
 gentlemen/' 
 
 The minister, who was in the best of spirits, laughed. 
 The two men had not met since the affair of St. Andrew's 
 Hall : and each was relieved at the open and friendly 
 attitude of the other. 
 
 "Cheer up, Colonel/' he said. "It's only a ten-days' 
 trip." They moved towards the train and Ernie got in. 
 
 Mr. Geddes was telling the Colonel something of the origin 
 and aims of the Adult School Union in general and of the 
 Peace Party in particular. 
 
 " How many of you are going ?" asked the Colonel. 
 
 "Round about a hundred," his informant answered 
 " working men and women mostly, from every county 
 in England. Most trades will be represented. ' ' They would 
 be billeted in Hamburg and Berlin on people of their own 
 class and their own ideals. And next year their visit 
 would be returned in strength by their hosts of this year. 
 
 " Interesting," said the Colonel. " But may I ask one 
 question ? What good do you think you'll do ?" 
 
 " We hope it will do ourselves some good anyhow," 
 Joe answered in fine fighting mood. " Get to know each 
 other. Draw the two peoples together. 
 Nation to nation, land to land. 
 
 " Stand oop on the seat, Ernie, and sing em your little 
 Red-Flag piece. He sings that nice he do. And I'll 
 give you a bit of chocolate." 
 
 Ernie did not respond and the Colonel came to his rescue. 
 
 " Well, I wish you luck," he sighed. " I wish all 
 well-meaning idealists luck. But the facts of life are hard ; 
 and the idealists usually break their teeth on them. Now I 
 must join my colleague." 
 
 He moved on, catching up Ruth who had prowled along 
 the platform to see if Alf was tucked safely away. The 
 
THE PILGRIMS 189 
 
 Colonel had not seen his companion since her husband had 
 been up before the Bench. 
 
 " Well, how's he getting on ? " he asked ; and turned 
 shrewdly to Ruth. " Have you been doing him down 
 at home ? " Something suppressed about Ernie had struck 
 him. 
 
 Ruth dropped her eyelids suddenly. For a moment 
 she was silent. Then she flashed up at him swift brown 
 eyes in which the lovely lights danced mischievously. 
 
 " See I've hung him on the nail/' she murmured warily; 
 and nodded her head with the fierce determination of a child. 
 " And I shan't take him off yet a bit. He's got to learn, 
 Ern has." She was in delicious mood, sportive, sprightly, 
 as a young hunter mare turned out into May pastures 
 after a hard season. 
 
 They had come to Alf's carriage. He had taken his 
 seat in a corner and pretended not to see them. Ruth tapped 
 sharply at the window just opposite his face. 
 
 " Hullo, Alf ! " she called and fled. 
 
 The little chauffeur rose and followed her swift and 
 retreating figure down the platform. Far down the train 
 Joe who was leaning out of a window exchanged words 
 with her as she came up. 
 
 "I don't like it, sir," Alf said, low. "Dirty business I 
 call it. Somebody ought to interfere if pore old Ern won't." 
 
 Joe now looked along the train at him with a scowl. 
 
 " Ah, you ! " came the engineer's scolding voice, loud 
 yet low. " Dirty tyke ! Drop it ! " 
 
 " Well, between you she ought to be well looked after," 
 muttered the Colonel getting into the carriage. 
 
 A fortnight later the Colonel was being driven home 
 by Alf from a meeting of the League at Battle. Mrs. 
 Lewknor, whose hostel was thriving now, had stood him 
 the drive and accompanied him. It was a perfect evening 
 as they slid along over Willingdon Levels and entered the 
 
igo ONE WOMAN 
 
 outskirts of the town. Opposite the Recreation Ground 
 Alf slowed down and, slewing round, pointed. 
 
 On a platform a man, bareheaded beneath the sky, was 
 addressing a larger crowd than usually gathered at that 
 spot on Saturday evenings. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 " The German party back/' answered Alf. " That's 
 Burt speaking, and Mr. Geddes alongside him/' 
 
 The engineer's voice, brazen from much bawling, and 
 yet sounding strangely small and unreal under the immense 
 arch of heaven, came to them across the open. 
 
 " We've ate with em ; we've^lived with em ; we've talked 
 with em ; and we can speak for em. I tell you there 
 cant be war and there won't be war with such a people. It'd 
 be the crime of Cain. Brothers we are ; and brothers 
 we remain. And not all the politicians and profiteers 
 and soldiers can make us other." 
 
 The Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor got down and joined the 
 crowd. As they did so the engineer, who had finished 
 his harangue, was moving a resolution : That this 
 meeting believes in the Brotherhood of Man and wishes 
 well to Germany. 
 
 " I second that," said the Colonel from the rear of the 
 crowd. 
 
 Just then Alf, who had left his car and followed the 
 Colonel, put a question. 
 
 " Did not Lord Roberts say in 1912 at Manchester that 
 Germany would strike when her hour struck ? " 
 
 The man on the platform was so furious that he did not 
 even^rise from his chair to reply. 
 
 " Yes he did ! " he shouted. " And he'd no business to ! 
 Direct provocation it was." 
 
 " Will not Germany's hour have struck when the Kiel 
 Canal is open to Dreadnoughts ? " continued the inquisitor 
 smoothly. " And is it not the fact that the Canal is to 
 be opened for this purpose in the next few days ? " 
 
THE PILGRIMS 191 
 
 These questions were greeted with booings mingled 
 with cheers. 
 
 Mr. Geddes was rising to reply when Joe Burt leapt 
 to his feet, roused and roaring. 
 
 He said men had the choice between two masters 
 Fear or Faith ? Which were we for ? Were we the heirs 
 of Eternity, the children of the Future, or the slaves and 
 victims of the Past ? 
 
 " For maself A've made ma choice. A'm not a Christian 
 in the ordinary sense : A don't attend Church or Chapel, 
 like soom folk. But A believe we're all members one of 
 another, and that the one prayer which matters if said from 
 the heart of men who believe in it and work for it is Our 
 Father : the Father of Jew and Gentile, English and German. 
 And ma recent visit to Germany has confirmed me in ma 
 faith in the people, although A couldna say as much for 
 their rulers. Look about you ! What do you see ? The sons 
 and daughters of God rotting away from tuberculosis in 
 every slum in Christendom, and the money and labour that 
 should go to redeeming them spent on altar-cloths and 
 armaments. Altar-cloths and armaments ! Do your rulers 
 never turn their thoughts and eyes to Calvary ? There 
 are plenty of em in your midst and plenty to see on em 
 if you want to." 
 
 The engineer sat down. 
 
 " Muck I " said Mrs. Lewknor in her husband's ear. 
 "I'm not sure, "replied the Colonel who had listened 
 attentively ; but he didn't wholely like it. Joe had always 
 been frothy ; but of old beneath the froth there had been 
 sound liquor. Now somehow the Colonel saw the froth but 
 missed the liquor. To his subtle and critical mind it seemed 
 that the speaker's fury was neither entirely simulated 
 nor entirely real. Habit was as much the motive of it 
 as passion. It seemed to him the expression of an emotion 
 once entirely genuine and now only partly so. An alloy 
 had corrupted the once pure metal. He saw as clearly 
 
I 9 2 ONE WOMAN 
 
 as a woman that Joe was no longer living simply for one 
 purpose. Turgid his wife had once called the engineer. 
 For the first time the Colonel realised the aptness of the 
 epithet. 
 
 Then he noticed Ruth on the fringe of the crowd. He 
 was surprised : for it was a long march from Old Town, 
 and neither Ernie nor the children were with her. 
 
 " Come to be converted by the apostles of pacifism, 
 Mrs. Caspar ? " he chaffed. 
 
 " No, sir/ 1 answered Ruth simply, her eyes on the 
 platform. " I just come along to hear Joe. That's why I 
 come." Her face lighted suddenly, " There he is ! " she cried. 
 
 The engineer had jumped down from the platform 
 and was making straight for her. Ruth joined him ; and 
 the two went off together, rubbing shoulders. 
 
 The Colonel strolled back towards the car : he was 
 thoughtful, even grave. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor met him with a little smile. 
 
 "It's all right, Jocko/ 1 she told him. "She's only 
 playing with the man." 
 
 The Colonel shook his head. 
 
 "She's put up the shutters, and said she's out to her 
 own husband. It's a dangerous game." 
 
 "Trust Ruth," replied the other. "She knows her 
 man." 
 
 "Perhaps," retorted the Colonel. "Does she know 
 herself?" 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 RED IN THE MORNING 
 
 JOE HURT'S rhetoric might not affect the Colonel greatly ; 
 but the impressions of Mr. Geddes, conveyed to him quietly 
 a few days later in friendly conversation, were a different 
 matter. 
 
 The Presbyterian minister was a scholar, broad- 
 minded, open, honest. He had moreover finished his 
 education at Berlin University, and had, as the Colonel 
 knew, ever since his student days maintained touch with his 
 German friends. Mr. Geddes had come home convinced 
 that Germany was not seeking a quarrel. 
 
 " Hamburg stands to lose by war/' he told the Colonel, 
 " And Hamburg knows it." 
 
 " What about Berlin ? " the other asked. 
 
 ' ' Berlin's militarist, ' ' the other admitted. ' ' And Berlin's 
 watching Ulster as a cat watches a mouse you find that 
 everywhere; professors, soldiers, men in the street, even 
 my old host, Papa Schumacher, the carpenter, was agog 
 about it. Was Ulster in Shetland ? Was the Ulster Army 
 black ? Would it attack England ? WeU, our War Office 
 must know all about the stir there. And that makes me 
 increasingly confident that something's happened to elimin- 
 ate whatever German menace there may ever have been." 
 
 " Exactly what Trupp was saying the other day," 
 the Colonel commented. ' ' Something's happened. You and 
 I don't know what. You and I never do. Bonar Law and 
 the rest of em wouldn't be working up a Civil War on this 
 scale unless they were certain Germany was muzzled ; and 
 what's more the Government wouldn't let em. The 
 politicians may be fools, but they aren't lunatics." 
 
 A few evenings after this talk as the Colonel sat after 
 supper in the loggia with his wife, overlooking the sea 
 
 193 18 
 
i 94 ONE WOMAN 
 
 wandering white beneath the moon, he ruminated between 
 puffs upon the political situation, domestic and inter- 
 national, with a growing sense of confidence at his heart. 
 Indeed there was much to confirm his hopes. 
 
 The year had started with Lloyd George's famous 
 pronouncement that the relations between Germany and 
 England had never been brighter. Then again there was 
 the point Trupp had made : the astonishing attitude 
 of the Unionist leaders, and the still more astonishing 
 tolerance of the Government. Lastly, and far more 
 significant from the old soldier's point of view, there was 
 the action of Mr. Geddes's mystery-man who was no mystery- 
 man at all. Everybody on the outermost edge of affairs 
 knew the name of the General in question. Every porter 
 at the military clubs could tell you who he was. Asquith 
 had never made any bones about it. Redmond and Dillon 
 had named him to Mr. Geddes. Yet if anybody could 
 gauge the military situation on the Continent it was surely 
 the man who, as Mr. Geddes had truly pointed out, had 
 specialized in co-ordinating our Expeditionary Force with 
 the Armies of France in the case of an attack by Germany. 
 There he was sitting at the War Office, as he had sat for 
 years past, in touch with the English Cabinet, lie with 
 the French General Staff, his ear at the telephone listening 
 to every rustour in every camp in Europe, and primed 
 by a Secret Service so able that it had doped the public 
 at home and every chancellery abroad to believe that 
 it was the last word in official stupidity. This was the 
 man who had thrown in his lot with the gang of speculating 
 politicians who had embarked upon the campaign that 
 had so undermined discipline in the commisioned ranks 
 of the Army that for the first time in history a British 
 Government could no longer trust its officers to do their 
 duty without question. 
 
 Now no one could say this man was hot-headed ; 
 nobody could say he was a fool. Moreover he was a 
 
RED IN THE MORNING 195 
 
 distinguished soldier and to call his patriotism in question 
 was simply ridiculous, as even Geddes admitted. 
 
 The Colonel had throughout steadfastly refused to discuss 
 with friend or foe the ethics of this officer's attitude, and 
 its effect on the reputation of the Army. But of one thing 
 he was certain. No man in that officer's position of trust 
 and responsiblity would gamble with the destinies of his 
 country a gamble that might involve hundreds and 
 thousands of innocent lives. His action might be repre- 
 hensible many people did not hesitate to describe it in 
 plainer terms ; but he would never have taken it in view 
 of its inevitable reaction on military and political opinion 
 on the Continent unless he had been certain that the German 
 attack, which he of all men had preached for so long as inevit- 
 able, would not mature or would not mature as yet. 
 
 What then was the only possible inference ? 
 
 " Something had happened." 
 
 The words his mind had been repeating uttered them- 
 selves aloud. 
 
 " What's that, my Jocko ? " asked Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 The Colonel stretched his long legs, took his pipe out 
 of his mouth, and sighed. 
 
 " If nothing has happened by Christmas 1915 I shall 
 resign the secretaryship of the League and return with 
 joy to the garden and the history of the regiment." He 
 rose in the brilliant dusk like a spectre. " Come on, my 
 lass ! " he said. " I would a plan unfold." 
 
 She took his arm and they strolled across the lawn 
 past the hostel towards the solid darkness of the Downs 
 which enfolded them. 
 
 The long white house stood still and solitary in the 
 great coombe that brimmed with darkness and was crowned 
 with multitudinous stars. Washed by the moon, and 
 warm with a suggestion of human busyness, the hostel 
 seemed to be stirring in a happy sleep, as though conscious 
 of the good work it was doing. 
 
I9 6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor paused to look at it, a sense of comfort at 
 her heart. 
 
 The children's beds out on the balcony could be seen ; 
 and the nurses moving in the rooms behind. Groups of 
 parents, down from London for the week-end, strolled the 
 lawn. A few older patients still lounged in deck-chairs 
 on the terrace, while from within the house came the sound 
 of laughter and someone playing rag-time. The little 
 lady regarded the work of her hands not without a just sense 
 of satisfaction. The hostel was booming. It was well- 
 established now and had long justified itself. She was doing 
 good work and earning honest money. This year she would 
 not only pay for the grandson's schooling, but she hoped 
 at Christmas to make a start in reducing the mortgage. 
 
 "Well/* she said, "what about it now, doubting 
 Thomas ? " 
 
 " Not so bad for a beginning/' admitted the Colonel. 
 
 " Who's going to send Toby to Eton ? " asked the lady, 
 cruelly triumphant. " And how ? " 
 
 " Why, I am," replied the Colonel brightly-" out of 
 my pension of five bob a week minus income tax." 
 
 Hugging each other's arms, they climbed the bank to the 
 vegetable garden, which six years before had been turned 
 up by the plough from the turf which may have known 
 the tread of Caesar's legionaries. The raw oblong which had 
 then patched the green with a lovely mauve was already 
 peopled with trees and bushes, and rank with green stuff. 
 The Colonel paused and sniffed. 
 
 " Mrs. Simpkins coming on ... I long to be back 
 among my cabbages . . . I bet if I took these Orange 
 Pippins in hand myself I'd win first prize at the East Sussex 
 Show. . . . That duffer, old Lingfield He's no good." 
 
 They turned off into the yard where Mrs. Lewknor 
 was erecting a garage, now nearly finished. The Colonel 
 paused and stared up at it. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " I've got an idea. We'll dig the 
 
RED IN THE MORNING 197 
 
 Caspars out of that hole in Old Town and put them in the 
 rooms above the garage. I'll take him on as gardener and 
 odd-job man. He's a first-rate rough gardener. He was 
 showing me and Bobby his allotment only the other day. 
 And as you know, the solitary ambition of my old age has 
 been to have an old Hammer-man about me." 
 
 " And mine for you, my Jocko," mused Mrs. Lewknor, 
 far more wary than her impulsive husband. " There are 
 only three rooms though, and she's got four children already 
 and is still only thirty or so." 
 
 The Colonel rattled on, undismayed. 
 
 " He'll be half a mile from the nearest pub here," he said. 
 
 " Yes," replied Mrs. Lewknor " and further from the 
 clutches of that Burt man, who's twice as bad as any pub." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " jeered the Colonel. " So you're coming 
 round to my way of thinking at last, are you ? " 
 
 Next evening, the Colonel, eager always as a youth to 
 consummate his purpose, bicycled with his wife through 
 Paradise to Old Town. 
 
 At the corner opposite the Rectory they met Alf Caspar, 
 who was clearly in high feather. The Colonel dismounted 
 for a word with the convener of the League. 
 
 " Well, Caspar," he said. " So you've got your 
 licence from the Watch Committee, I hear." 
 
 Alf purred. 
 
 " Yes, sir. All O.K. down to the men that'll blow the 
 horn to give em a bit o music." 
 
 " When do you start ? " 
 
 " Bank Holiday, sir. I was just coming up to tell 
 mother we were through. Last char-a-banc came this 
 afternoon smart as paint." 
 
 The Colonel and Mrs. Lewknor walked on towards 
 Church Street. At Billing's Corner, waiting for the bus, 
 was Edward Caspar. He was peering at a huge placard 
 advertising expeditions by Caspar's Road-touring Syndi- 
 cate, to start on August 3rd. 
 
198 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The Colonel, mischievous as a child, must cross the road 
 to his old Trinity compeer. 
 
 " Your boy's getting on, Mr. Caspar/' he observed quietly. 
 
 The old man made a clucking like a disturbed hen. 
 
 " Dreadful," he said. " Dreadful/' 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor laid two fingers on his arm. 
 
 " Mr. Caspar/' she said. 
 
 He glanced down at her like a startled elephant. Then 
 he seemed to thrill as though a wind of the spirit was blow- 
 ing through him. The roses of a forgotten youth bloomed 
 for a moment in his mottled cheeks. An incredible delicacy 
 and tenderness inspired the face of this flabby old man. 
 
 " Miss Solomons ! " he said, and lifting her little hand 
 kissed it. 
 
 The Colonel withdrew discreetly ; and in a moment 
 his wife joined him, the lights dancing in her eyes. 
 
 " Pretty stiff ! " grinned the Colonel" in the public 
 street and all/' 
 
 They turned down Borough Lane by the Star and knocked 
 Ruth up. 
 
 She was ironing and did not seem best pleased to see the 
 visitors. Neither did Joe Burt, who was sitting by the fire 
 with little Alice on his knees. 
 
 The little lady ignored the engineer. 
 
 " Where are the other children ? " she asked Ruth 
 pleasantly. 
 
 " Where they oughrer be," Joe answered " in bed/' 
 
 The Colonel came to the rescue. 
 
 " Is Caspar anywhere about ? " he asked. 
 
 " He's on his allotment, I reck'n," Ruth answered 
 coldly. " Mr. Burt joins him there most in general every 
 evening/' 
 
 " Yes," said Joe, " and was on the road now when A 
 was interfered with." He kissed little Alice, put her down, 
 and rose. " Good evening, Colonel." And he went out 
 sullenly. 
 
RED IN THE MORNING 199 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor, aware that negotiations had not opened 
 auspiciously, now broached her project. Ruth, steadily 
 ironing, never lifted her eyes. She was clearly on the 
 defensive, suspicious in her questions, evasive and non- 
 committal in her replies. The Colonel became impatient. 
 
 " Mrs. Caspar might accept our offer to oblige/' he 
 said at last. 
 
 Ruth deliberately laid down her iron, and challenged 
 him : she said nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor felt the tension. 
 
 " Well, think it over, will you ? " she said to Ruth. 
 " There's no hurry." 
 
 She went out and the Colonel followed. 
 
 " That man's the biggest humbug unhung even for a 
 Labour man," snapped the little lady viciously. " Preach- 
 ing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and then this! " 
 
 " I'm not sure," replied the Colonel, " not sure. I 
 think he's much the same as most of us an honest man 
 who's run off the rails." 
 
 They were bicycling slowly along Victoria Drive. On 
 the far side of the allotments right under the wall of the 
 Downs, blue in the evening, a solitary figure was digging. 
 
 " The out-cast," said the Colonel. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor dismounted from her bicycle and began 
 wheeling it along the unfenced earthen path between the 
 gardens, towards the digger. Ernie barely looked up, 
 barely answered her salutation, wiping the sweat off his 
 brow with the back of his hand as he continued his labour. 
 The lady retired along the way she had come. 
 
 " There's something Christ-like about the feller," said 
 the Colonel quietly as they reached the road. 
 
 " Yes," the little lady answered. " Only he's brought 
 his troubles on his own head." 
 
 The Colonel drew up in haste. 
 
 " Hullo," he said, and began to read a newspaper placard, 
 for which class of literature he had a consuming passion. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE AVALANCHE MOVES 
 
 THE placard, seen by the Colonel, announced the opening 
 of a new scene in the Irish tragedy. 
 
 The King had summoned a Conference at Buckingham 
 Palace in order if possible to find a solution of the difficulty. 
 When the Conference met the King opened it in person 
 and, speaking as a man weighed down by anxiety, told 
 the members that for weeks he had watched with deep 
 misgivings the trend of events in Ireland. " To-day the 
 cry of Civil War is on the lips of the most responsible of my 
 people," he said ; and had added, so Mr. Trupp told the 
 Colonel, in words not reported in the Press, that the 
 European situation was so ominous as imperatively to 
 demand a solution of our domestic differences in order 
 that the nation might present a solid front to the world. 
 
 "And I bet he knows," ended the old surgeon, as he 
 said good-bye on the steps of the Manor-house. 
 
 " I bet he does," replied the Colonel. " Thank God 
 there's one man in the country who's above party politics." 
 He climbed thoughtfully on to the top of the bus outside 
 the Star, and, as it chanced, found himself sitting beside 
 Ernie, who was deep in his paper and began to talk. 
 
 " They ain't got it all their own way, then," he said, 
 grimly. " I see the Irish Guards turned out and lined 
 the rails and cheered Redmond as he came down Birdcage 
 Walk back from the Conference." 
 
 " I don't like it," replied the Colonel gloomily. " Rotten 
 discipline. The Army has no politics." 
 
 " What about the officers at the Curragh ? " asked Ernie 
 almost aggressively. " They begun it. Give the men 
 a chance too." 
 
THE AVALANCHE MOVES 201 
 
 " Two wrong things don't make a right/ 1 retorted the 
 Colonel sharply. 
 
 Ernie got down at the station without a word. Was 
 it an accident the Colonel, sensitive as a girl, asked himself ? 
 was it a deliberate affront ? What was the world 
 coming to ? That man an old Hammer-man ! One 
 of Bobby Bermondsey yahoos wouldn't treat him so ! 
 
 Indeed the avalanche was now sliding gradually down 
 the mountain-side, gathering way as it went, to overwhelm 
 the smiling villages sleeping peacefully in the valley. 
 
 Next day oppressed by imminent catastrophe, the 
 Colonel, climbing Beau-nez in the afternoon to take up 
 his habitual post of vigil by the flag-staff, found Joe Burt 
 and Mr. Geddes already there. 
 
 Both men, he marked, greeted him almost sombrely. 
 
 " It looks to me very serious/' he said. "Austria means 
 to go for Serbia, that's clear ; and if she does Russia isn't 
 going to stand by and see Serbia swallowed up. What 
 d'you think, Mr. Geddes ? " 
 
 The other answered him on that note of suppressed 
 indignation which characterised increasingly his utterance 
 when he touched on this often discussed subject. 
 
 " I think Colonel, what I've thought all along," he 
 answered : " that if we're in the eve of a European erup- 
 tion the attitude of the officers of the British Army is 
 perfectly inexplicable . ' ' 
 
 He was firm almost to ferocity. 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! " growed Joe. 
 
 " But they don't know poor beggars ! " cried the 
 Colonel, exasperated yet appealing. He felt as he had 
 felt throughout the controversy that he was fighting with 
 his hands tied behind his back. " Do be just Mr. Geddes. 
 They are merely the playthings of the politicians. O, 
 if you only knew the regimental officer as I know him ! He's 
 like that St. Bernard dog over there by the coast-guard 
 station the most foolish and faithful creature on God's 
 
202 ONE WOMAN 
 
 earth. Smith pats him on the head and tells him he's a 
 good dorg, and he'll straightway beg for the privilege of 
 being allowed to die for Smith. What's a poor ignorant devil 
 of a regimental officer quartered at Aldershot or the Curragh 
 or Salisbury Plain likely to know of the European situation ? " 
 
 The tall minister was not to be appeased. 
 
 " Ignorance seems to me a poor justification for insubor- 
 dination in an Army officer," he said. "And even if one is 
 to accept that excuse for the regimental officers, one can't 
 for a man like the Director of Military Strategics, who is 
 said to have specialised in war with Germany. Yet that 
 is the man who has co-operated, to put it at the mildest, in 
 arming a huge rebel force with guns from the very country 
 he has always affirmed were 'bound, to fight. It's stabbing 
 the Empire in the back, neither more nor less." 
 
 He was pale, almost dogmatic. 
 
 Then Joe barged in, surly and brutal. 
 
 " The whole truth is," he said, " that the officers of 
 the British Army to-day don't know how to spell the word 
 Duty. Havelock did. Gordon did. And all the world 
 respected them accordingly. These men don't. They've 
 put their party before their coontry as A've always said they 
 would when the pinch came." 
 
 The Colonel was trembling slightly. 
 
 " If the test comes," he said, " we shall see." 
 
 " The test has come," retorted the other savagely, 
 " And we have seen." 
 
 The Colonel walked swiftly away. In front of him 
 half a mile from the flag-staff, he marked a man standing 
 waist-deep in a clump of gorse. There was something 
 so forlorn about the figure that the Colonel approached, 
 only to find that it was Ernie, who on his side, seeing the 
 other, quitted the ambush, and came slowly towards him. 
 To the Colonel the action seemed a cry of distress. All 
 his resentment at the incident on the bus melted away in 
 a great compassion. 
 
THE AVALANCHE MOVES 203 
 
 " She and me used to lay there week-ends when first 
 we married/' Ern said dreamily, nodding towards the 
 gorse he had just left. 
 
 " And she and you will live there for many happy 
 years, I hope/' replied the Colonel warmly, pointing 
 towards the garage in the coombe beneath them. 
 
 Ernie regarded him inquiringly. 
 
 "What's that, sir?' 1 
 
 " Aren't you coming ? " 
 
 " Where to ? " 
 
 " My garage ? " 
 
 Ernie did not understand and the Colonel explained. 
 
 " Didn't Mrs. Caspar tell you ? " 
 
 " Ne'er a word, " the other answered blankly. 
 
 The Colonel dropped down to Carlisle Road. There 
 Mr. Trupp picked him up and drove him on to the club 
 for tea. Fresh news from Ulster was just being ticked 
 off on the tape. An hour or two before, a rebel unit, 
 th,e East Belfast regiment of volunteers, some 5,000 strong, 
 armed with Mausers imported from Germany, and dragging 
 machine-guns warm from Krupp's, had marched through 
 the streets of Belfast. The police had cleared the way 
 for the insurgents ; and soldiers of the King, officers and 
 men, had looked on with amusement. 
 
 The Colonel turned away. 
 
 " RoU up the map of Empire ! " he said. " We'd better 
 send a deputation to Lajput Rai and the Indian Home 
 Rulers and beg them to spare us a few baboos to govern 
 us. Its an abdication of Government." 
 
 He went into the ante-room. 
 
 There was Stanley Bessemere back from Ulster once 
 more. As usual he sat behind a huge cigar, retailing 
 amidst roars of laughter to a sympathetic audience his 
 exploits and those of his caracoling chief. The European 
 situation had not overclouded him. 
 
204 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " There's going to be a Civil War and Smith and I are 
 going to be in it. We shall walk through the Nationalists like 
 so much paper. They've got no arms ; and they've got no 
 guts either/' He laughed cheerily. " Bad men. Bad men." 
 
 The Colonel stood, an accusing figure in the door, and 
 eyed the fair-haired giant with cold resentment. 
 
 " You know Kuhlmann from the German Embassy 
 is over with your people in Belfast ? " he asked. 
 
 The other waved an airy cigar. 
 
 " You can take it from me, my dear Colonel, that he's 
 not," he answered. 
 
 " I'll take nothing of the sort from you/ 1 the Colonel 
 answered acridly. " He's there none the less because he's 
 there incognito." 
 
 The young man winced ; and the Colonel withdrew. 
 
 " Jove ! " he said. " I'd just like to know how far these 
 beggars have trafficked in treason with Germany." 
 
 " Not at all," replied Mr. Trupp. " They've hum- 
 bugged emselves into believing they're ' running great risks 
 in a great cause,' as they say or doing the dirty to make a 
 party score, as you and I'd put it. That's all." 
 
 The Colonel walked home, oppressed. After supper, 
 as he sat with his wife in the loggia, he told her of Ruth's 
 strange secretiveness in the matter of the garage. 
 
 " There she is ! " said Mrs. Lewknor quietly nodding 
 over her work. Ruth, indeed, was strolling slowly 
 along the cliff from the direction of the Meads in the 
 gorgeous evening. Opposite the hostel a track runs down 
 to the beach beneath. At that point she paused as though 
 waiting for somebody ; and then disappeared from view. 
 
 Ten minutes later Mrs. Lewknor spoke again in the 
 same hushed voice. 
 
 " Here's the other ! " 
 
 The Colonel looked up. Joe was coming rapidly 
 along the cliff from the direction of Beau-nez. He too 
 disappeared down the way Ruth had already taken. 
 
THE AVALANCHE MOVES 205 
 
 The Colonel removed his glasses. 
 
 " I shall give em a quarter of an hour to make emselves 
 quite comfortable/' he muttered " and then " 
 
 " Spy/' said Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 A moment later, Anne, the parlour-maid, showed Mr. 
 Alfred Caspar on to the loggia. 
 
 The face of the Manager of Caspar's Syndicate was very 
 long. Alf, cherishing the simple faith that the Colonel 
 because he had been a soldier must be in the secrets 
 certainly of the War Office and possibly of the Government, 
 had come to ask what he thought of the European situation. 
 
 The Colonel was not reassuring, but he refused to commit 
 himself. Alf turned away almost sullenly. 
 
 " See, it matters to me/' he said. " I start Bank 
 Holiday. Don't want no wars interfering with my 
 Syndicate." 
 
 " It matters to us all a bit," replied the Colonel. 
 
 Alf departed aggrieved, and obviously suggesting that 
 the Colonel was to blame. He walked away with down- 
 ward eyes. Suddenly the Colonel saw him pause, creep 
 to the cliff-edge, and peep over. Then he came back to 
 the hostel in a stealthy bustle. 
 
 " Go and look for yourself then, sir, if you don't believe 
 me ! " he cried in the tone of one rebuffing an unjust accusa- 
 tion. " You're a Magistrate. Police ought to stop it I say. 
 Public 'arlotry I call it." 
 
 The Colonel's face became cold and very lofty. 
 " No, Caspar. I don't do that sort of thing," he said. 
 
 Alf, muttering excuses, departed. The Colonel watched 
 him walk along the dotted coast-guard track and disappear 
 round the shoulder of the coombe. Then he rose and strolled 
 out to meet Ernie who was approaching. 
 
 As he did so he heard voices from the beach beneath 
 him and peeped over. Ruth, on her hands and knees amid 
 the chalk boulders at the foot of the cliff, was smooth- 
 ing the sand and spreading something on it. 
 
206 ONE WOMAN 
 
 A few yards away Joe was standing at the edge of the 
 tide, which was almost high, flinging pebbles idly into the 
 water. Some earth dislodged from the Colonel's feet and 
 made a tiny land-slide. The woman on her hands and 
 knees in the growing dusk beneath looked up and saw the 
 man standing above her. She made no motion, kneeling 
 there ; facing him, fighting him, mocking him. 
 
 " Having a nice time together ? " he asked genially. 
 
 " Just going to, thank-you kindly/' Ruth replied 
 and resumed her occupation of sweeping with her hands. 
 
 The Colonel turned to find Ernie standing beside him 
 and burning his battle-flare. 
 
 " Lucky I see you coming, sir/' he said, trembling still. 
 " Else I might ha done him a mischief/' 
 
 "Who? " 
 
 " Alf . Insultin her and me. Met him just along back 
 there in Meads by the Ship." 
 
 " Go easy, Caspar/' said the Colonel quietly. " I 
 remember that left-handed punch of yours of old. It's 
 a good punch too ; but keep it for the enemies of your 
 country." 
 
 Ernie was hugging a big biscuit-box under his arm. 
 
 " What you got there ? " asked the other. 
 
 Ernie grinned a thought sheepishly. 
 
 "It's Joe's birthday," he said. "We are having a 
 bit of a do under the cliff." 
 
 He hovered a moment as though about to impart a con- 
 fidence to the other ; and then disappeared down the little 
 track to the beach beneath at the trot, his shoulders back, 
 and heels digging in, carrying a slither of chalk with him. 
 
 " 'Come into my parlour/ said the spider to the fly," 
 muttered the Colonel as he turned into Undercliff. " Poor 
 fly!" 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 THE GROWING ROAR 
 
 THE avalanche, once started, was moving fast now. The 
 Irish Nationalists who had lost faith in the power of the 
 Government and the will of the Army to protect them, had 
 decided at last to arm in view of the default of the law 
 that they might resist invasion from the North-East. 
 
 On the very day after the parade of insurrectionaries in 
 Belfast a famous Irishman, soldier, sailor, statesman, 
 man of letters, who in his young manhood had served through- 
 out the long-drawn South African War the Empire which 
 had refused liberty to his country alone of all her Colonies, 
 and in the days to come, though now in his graying years, 
 was to be the hero of one of the most desperate ventures 
 of the Great War, ran the little Asgarde, her womb heavy 
 with strange fruit, into Howth Harbour while the Sunday 
 bells peeled across the quiet waters, calling to church. 
 
 The arms were landed and marched under Nationalist 
 escort towards Dublin. The police and a company of 
 King's Own Scottish Borderers met the party and blocked 
 the way. After a parley the Nationalists dispersed and the 
 soldiers marched back to Dublin through a hostile demon- 
 stration. Mobbed, pelted, provoked to the last degree, 
 at Bachelor's Walk, on the quay, where owing to the 
 threatening attitude of the crowd they had been halted, 
 the men took the law into their own hands and fired without 
 the order of their officer. Three people were killed. 
 
 The incident led to the first quarrel that had taken 
 place between Ernie and Joe Burt in a friendship now of 
 some years standing. 
 
 " Massacre by the military/' said Joe. ''That's what 
 it is." 
 
 The old soldier in Ernie leapt to the alert. 
 
 207 
 
208 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Well, what would you have had em do ? " he cried 
 hotly. " Lay down and let emselves be kicked to death ? " 
 
 " If the soldiers want to shoot at all let em shoot the 
 armed rebels/ 1 retorted Joe. 
 
 " Let em shoot the lot, I says, 1 ' answered Ernie. " I'm 
 sick of it. Ireland ! Ireland ! Ireland all the time. No 
 one's no time to think of poor old England. Yet we've our 
 troubles too, I reck'n." 
 
 Joe went out surlily without saying good-night. When 
 he was gone, Ruth who had been listening, looked up at 
 Ernie, a faint glow of amusement, interest, surprise, in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " First time ever I knaw'd you and Joe get acrarst 
 each other," she said. 
 
 Ernie, biting home on his pipe, did not meet her gaze. 
 
 " First," he said. " Not the last, may be." 
 
 She put down dish-cloth and dish, came to him, and 
 put her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " Let me look at you, Ern ! " 
 
 His jaw was set, almost formidable : he did not speak. 
 
 " Kiss me, Ern," she said. 
 
 For a moment his eyes hovered on her face. 
 
 " D'you mean anything ? " he asked. 
 
 " Not that," she answered and dropped her hand. 
 
 " Then to hell with you ! " he cried with a kind of 
 desperate savagery and thrust her brutally away. " Sport- 
 ing with a man ! " 
 
 He put on his cap and went out. 
 
 In a few minutes he was back. Paying no heed to her, 
 he sat down at the kitchen-table and wrote a note, which 
 he put on the mantel-piece. 
 
 " You can give this to Alf next time he comes round for 
 the rent," he said. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Ruth. 
 
 " Notice," Ern answered. " We're going to shift to the 
 Colonel's garage . ' ' 
 
THE GROWING ROAR 209 
 
 Ruth gave battle instantly. 
 
 " Who are ? " she cried, facing him. 
 
 He met her like a hedge of bayonets. 
 
 " I am/' he answered. " Me and my children." 
 
 The volley fired on Bachelor's Walk, as it echoed down 
 the long valleys of the world, seemed to serve the purpose 
 of Joshua's trumpet. Thereafter all the walls of civil- 
 isation began to crash down one after another with the 
 roar of ruined firmaments. 
 
 Forty-eight hours later Austria declared war. 
 
 On Thursday Mr. Asquith, speaking in a crowded and 
 quiet house, proposed the postponement of the Home Rule 
 Bill. 
 
 Even the hotheads were sober now. 
 
 Stanley Bessemere discarded his uniform of an Ulster 
 Volunteer in haste, and turned up at the club in chastened 
 mood. He was blatant still, a little furtive, notably 
 less truculent. The martial refrain Smith and I had 
 given place to the dulcet coo We must all pull together. 
 
 " Is he ashamed ? " Mrs. Lewknor asked her husband, 
 hushed herself, and perhaps a little guilty. 
 
 " My dear," the Colonel replied. " Shame is not a word 
 known to your politician. He's thoroughly frightened. 
 All the politicians are. There're bluffing for all they're 
 worth." 
 
 On the Saturday morning the Colonel went to the club. 
 The junior member for Beachbourne, who was there, and for 
 once uncertain of himself, showed himself childishly 
 anxious to forget and forgive. 
 
 " Now look here, Colonel ! " he said, charming and bright. 
 "If there's an almighty bust-up now, shall you -really 
 blame it all on Ulster ? Honest Injun ! " 
 
 The Colonel met him with cold flippancy. 
 
 "Every little helps," he said. "A whisper '11 start an 
 avalanche, as any mountaineer could tell you." 
 
 14 
 
2io ONE WOMAN 
 
 He took up the Nation of August ist and began to re 
 the editor's impassioned appeal to the country to stand 
 out. The Colonel read the article twice over. There 
 could be no question of the white-hot sincerity of the writer, 
 and none that he voiced the sentiments of an immense 
 and honest section of the country. 
 
 He put the paper down and walked home. 
 
 " If we don't go in," he said calmly to his wife at luncheon, 
 " all I can say is, that I shall turn my back on England 
 for ever and go and hide my head for the rest of my days 
 on the borders of Thibet." 
 
 In those last days of peace good men and true agonised 
 in their various ways. Few suffered more than the Colonel ; 
 none but his wife knew the agony of his doubt. 
 
 Then Mr. Trupp telephoned to say that Germany had 
 sent an ultimatum to Russia, and that France was mobil- 
 ising. Mr. Cambon had interviewed the King. The 
 Government was still wavering. 
 
 The Colonel's course was evident. The little organisation 
 for which he was responsible must express itself, if only 
 in the shrill sharp voice of a mosquito. A meeting of the 
 League must be convened. Tingling with hope, doubt, fear, 
 shame, he set off in the evening to interview Alfred Caspar. 
 Swiftly he crossed the golf-links and turned into Saffrons 
 Croft. There he paused. 
 
 It was one of those unforgettable evenings magnificently 
 caJm, which marked with triumphant irony the end of the 
 world. The green park with its cluster of elms presented 
 its usual appearance on a Saturday afternoon. The honest 
 thump of the ball upon the bat, so dear to English hearts, 
 resounded on every side : the following cry Run it out ! the 
 groups of youths sprawling about the scorers, the lounging 
 spectators. Not a rumour of the coming storm had touched 
 those serene hearts. Close to him a bevy of women and 
 children were playing a kind of rounders. The batter was 
 a big young woman whom he recognised at once as Ruth. 
 
THE GROWING ROAR 211 
 
 One of the the fielders was little Alice scudding about the 
 surface of green on thin black legs like a water-beetle on a 
 pond. Then Ernie saw him and came sauntering towards 
 him, a child clinging solemnly to one finger of each hand. 
 There was an air of strain about the old Hammer-man, as of 
 one waiting on the alert for a call, that distinguished him, so 
 the Colonel thought, from the gay throng. 
 
 " What about it, sir ? " he asked gravely. 
 
 "It's coming Caspar/' the Colonel answered. "That's 
 my belief." 
 
 "And I shan't be sorry if it does," said Ernie with a 
 quiet vindictiveness. 
 
 ' ' Shall you go ? " asked the Colonel. He knew the other's 
 time as a reservist was up. 
 
 " Sha'n't I ? " Ernie answered with something like a snort. 
 
 The Colonel was not deceived. It was not the patriot, 
 not the old soldier, who had uttered that cry of distress : 
 it was the human being, bruised and suffering, and anxious 
 to vent his pain in violence on something or somebody, no 
 matter much who. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I shall go, if it's only as cook in the Army 
 Service Corps." 
 
 The Colonel shook his head. 
 
 " If it comes," he said, " every fighting man'll be wanted 
 in his right place. Would you like to rejoin the old 
 battalion at Aldershot, if I can work it for you? Then 
 you'd go out with the Expeditionary Force." 
 
 Ernie's eyes gleamed. 
 
 " Ah, just wouldn't I ? " he said. 
 
 Just then there was a shout from the players. Ruth 
 was out and retired. She came towards them, glowing, 
 laughing, her fingers touching her hair to order. She was 
 thirty now, but at that moment she did not look twenty-five. 
 Then she saw the Colonel and deliberately turned away. 
 Susie and Jenny pursued their mother. 
 
 The Colonel walked off through the groups of white-clad 
 
212 ONE WOMAN 
 
 players towards All's garage in the Goffs. A tall man 
 was standing at the gate on to Southfields Road, contempla- 
 ting the English scene with austere gaze. 
 
 It was Royal the man who would know. 
 
 " You think it's going to be all right ? " asked the 
 Colonel so keen as to forget his antipathy. 
 
 " Heaven only knows with this Government," the other 
 replied. " I've just been on the telephone. Haldane's 
 going back to the War Office, they say." 
 
 " Thank God for it ! " cried the Colonel. 
 
 His companion shrugged. 
 
 " Henry Wilson's in touch with Maxse and the Con- 
 servative press," he said. " He's getting at the Opposition. 
 There's to be a meeting at Lansdowne House to-night. 
 H.W.'s going to ginger em." 
 
 The Colonel looked away. 
 
 " And what are you doing down here ? " he asked. 
 
 " They sent me down to Newhaven last night embarka- 
 tion. I'm off in two minutes." He jerked his head towards 
 a racing car standing outside the garage, white with dust. 
 " Got to catch the 7 o'clock at Lewes, and be back at 
 the War Office at 9 p.m. An all-night sitting, I expect." 
 That austere gaze of his returned to the playing-fields. 
 " Little they know what they're in for," he said, as though 
 to himself. 
 
 For the first time the Colonel found something admirable, 
 almost comforting, in the hardness of his old adjutant. He 
 followed the other's gaze and then said quietly, almost 
 tenderly, as one breathing a secret in the ear of a dying 
 man. 
 
 " That's the child, Royal that one in the white frock 
 and black legs running over by the elms. And that's her 
 mother in the brown dress the one waving. And there's 
 her husband under the trees that shabby feller." 
 
 Royal arched his fine eyebrows in faint surprise. 
 
 " Is she married ? " he asked coolly. 
 
THE GROWING ROAR 213 
 
 " Yes/' replied the Colonel. " The feller who seduced 
 her wouldn't do the straight thing by her/' 
 
 Again the eyebrows spoke, this time with an added 
 touch of sarcasm, almost of insolence. 
 
 " How d'you know ? " 
 
 The Colonel was roused. 
 
 " Well, did you ? " he asked, with rare brutality. 
 
 Royal shrugged. Then he turned slow and sombre 
 eyes on the other. There was no anger in them, no 
 hostility. 
 
 " Perhaps I shall make it up to them now, Colonel/' 
 he said. . . . 
 
 The Colonel crossed the road to the garage. There was 
 a stir of busyness about two of the new motor char-a-bancs 
 of the Touring Syndicate. Alf was moving amid it all in 
 his shirt -sleeves, without collar or tie, his hands filthy. 
 His moustache still waxed, and his hair parted down the 
 middle and plastered, made an almost comic contrast to 
 the rest of his appearance. But there was nothing comic 
 about his expression. He looked like a dog sickening for 
 rabies ; ominous, surly, on the snarl. He did not seem to 
 see the Colonel, who tackled him at once, however, about 
 the need for summoning a meeting of the League. 
 
 " Summon it yourself then/' said Alf. " I got something 
 better to do than that. Such an idea ! Coming botherin 
 me just now. Start on Monday. Ruin starin me in the 
 face. Who wants war? Might ha done it on purpose 
 to do me down." 
 
 The Colonel climbed the hill to the Manor-house to sup 
 with the Trupps. 
 
 Two hours later, as he left the house, Ernie Caspar 
 turned the corner of Borough Lane, and came towards him, 
 lost in dreams. The Colonel waited for him. There was 
 about the old Hammer-man that quality of forlornness 
 which the Colonel had noted in him so often of late. He 
 took his place by the other's side. They walked down the 
 
2i4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 hill together silently until they were clear of the houses, 
 and Saffrons Croft lay broad-spread and fragrant upon their 
 right. 
 
 In the growing dusk the spirits of the two men drew 
 together. Then Ernie spoke. 
 
 " It's not Joe, sir," he said. " He's all right, Joe is." 
 
 The Colonel did not fence. 
 
 " Are you sure ? " he asked with quiet emphasis. 
 
 " Certain sure," the other answered with astonishing 
 vehemence. " It's Ruth. She won't give me ne'er a 
 chance." 
 
 The Colonel touched him in the dusk. 
 
 " Bad luck, " he muttered. " She'll come round." 
 
 It was an hour later and quite dark when he rounded 
 the shoulder of Beau-nez and turned into the great coombe, 
 lit only by the windows of his own house shining out against 
 Beau-nez. 
 
 Walking briskly along the cliff, turning over eternally 
 the question whether England would be true to herself, 
 he was aware of somebody stumbling towards him, talking 
 to himself, probably drunk. The Colonel drew aside off 
 the chalk-blazed path to let the other pass. 
 
 " A don't know justly what to make on't," came a broad 
 familiar accent. 
 
 " Why, it's fight or run away," replied the Colonel, 
 briskly. " No two twos about it." 
 
 A sturdy figure loomed up alongside him. 
 
 " Then it's best run away, A reckon," answered the 
 other, " afore worse comes on't. What d'you say, Colonel ? ' ' 
 
 The darkness drew the two men together with invisible 
 bonds just as an hour before it had drawn the Colonel 
 and Ernie. 
 
 " What is it, Burt ? " asked the Colonel, gently. 
 
 He felt profoundly the need of this other human being 
 standing over against him in the darkness, lonely, suffering, 
 riven with conflicting desires. 
 
THE GROWING ROAR 215 
 
 Joe drew closer. He was sighing, a sigh that was almost 
 a sob. Then he spoke in the hushed and urgent mutter of 
 a schoolboy making a confession. 
 
 " It's this, Colonel man to man. Hast ever been in 
 love with a woman as you oughtn't to be ? " 
 
 Not for the first time in these last months there was 
 strong upon the Colonel the sense that here before him was 
 an honest man struggling in the toils prepared for him by 
 Nature the Lion with no mouse to gnaw him free. Yet 
 he was aware more strongly than ever before of that deep 
 barrier of class which in this fundamental matter of sex 
 makes itself more acutely felt than in any other. A man of 
 quite unusual breadth of view, imagination, and sympathy, 
 this was the one topic that some inner spirit of delicacy 
 had always forbidden him to discuss except with his own 
 kind. He was torn in two ; and grateful to the kindly 
 darkness that covered him. On the one hand were all the 
 inhibitions imposed upon him by both natural delicacy and 
 artificial yet real class-restraint ; on the other there was his 
 desire to help a man he genuinely liked. Should he take 
 the line of least resistance, the line of the snob and the 
 coward ? Was it really the fact that because this man was 
 not a gentleman he could not lay bare before him an 
 experience that might save him ? 
 
 " Yes/' he said at last with the emphasis of the man who 
 is forcing himself. 
 
 There was a lengthy silence. 
 
 " Were you married ? " 
 
 " No," abruptly. " Of course not." 
 
 " Was she ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What happened ? " 
 
 " She wired me to come in India years ago." 
 
 " Did you go ? " 
 
 " No thank God." The honest man in him added : 
 " I never got the wire." 
 
2i6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Again there was a pause. 
 
 " Are you glad ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Had she children." 
 
 " No." 
 
 The engineer breathed deep. 
 
 " Ah," he said. " I'd ha gone." 
 
 " Then you'd have done wrong." 
 
 "Happen so," stubbornly. "I'd ha gone though 
 knowing what I know now." 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " What loov is." 
 
 The Colonel paused. 
 
 " She'd never have forgiven you," he said at last. 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 " For taking advantage of her hot fit." 
 
 The arrow shot in the dark had clearly gone home. The 
 Colonel followed up his advantage. 
 
 " Is she in love with you ? " 
 
 " She's never said so." 
 
 " But you think so ? " 
 
 " Nay, A don't think so," the other answered with all 
 the old violence. " A know it. A've nobbut to reach out 
 ma hand to pluck the flower." 
 
 His egotism annoyed the Colonel. 
 
 " Seems to me," he said, " we shall all of us soon have 
 something better to do than running round after each 
 other's wives. Seen the evening paper ? " 
 
 " Nay, nor the morning for that matter." 
 
 " And you a politician ! " 
 
 " A'm two men same as most : politician and lover. 
 Now one's a-top ; now t'other. It's a see-saw." 
 
 " And the lover's on top now ? " said the Colonel. 
 
 " Yes," said the engineer, " and like to stay there too 
 blast him ! " And he was gone in the darkness. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 OLD TOWN 
 
 NEXT day was Sunday. 
 
 The Colonel waited on the cliff for his paper, which 
 brought the expected news. The die was cast. Germany 
 had proclaimed martial law : she was already at war 
 with Russia ; France had mobilised. 
 
 " She's in it by now, " he said to himself, as he walked 
 across the golf-links towards Old Town. 
 
 The threat of danger was arousing in every individual 
 a passionate need for communication, for re-assurance, 
 for the warmth and comfort of the crowd. The herd, about 
 to be attacked, was drawing together. Its out-posts were 
 coming back at the trot, heads high, ears alert, snorting the 
 alarm. Even the rogue and outcast were seeking re-admis- 
 sion and finding it amid acclamation. The main body 
 were packing in a square, heads to the danger, nostrils 
 quivering, antlers ready. An enemy was a-foot just beyond 
 the sky-line. He has not declared himself as yet. But 
 the wind betrayed his presence ; and the secret stir of the 
 disturbed and fearful wilderness was evidence enough that 
 the Flesh-eater was abroad. 
 
 The turf sprang deliciously beneath the Colonel's feet. 
 His youth seemed to have returned to him. He felt curiously 
 braced and high of heart. Once he paused to look about 
 him. Beyond the huge smooth bowl of the links with 
 its neat greens and the little boxes of sand, its pleasant 
 club-house, its evidence of a smooth and leisurely civil- 
 isation, Paradise rippled at the touch of a li ght-foot breeze. 
 The Downs shimmered radiantly, their blemishes hidden in 
 the mists of morning. On his right, beyond the ha-ha, the 
 
2i8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Duke's Lodge stood back in quiet dignity amid its beeches, 
 typical of the England that was about to fade away like 
 a cinema picture at a touch. 
 
 A lark sang. The Colonel lifted his face to the speck 
 poised and thrilling in the blue. 
 
 What a day to go to war on ! was his thought. 
 
 At the deserted club-house he dropped down into Lovers' 
 Lane and climbed up towards Old Town between high flint 
 walls, ivy-covered. 
 
 As he emerged into Rectory Walk the Archdeacon was 
 coming out of his gate. He was in his glory. His faded 
 eyes glittered like those of an old duellist about to engage, 
 and confident of his victim. 
 
 " I've been waiting this day for forty-five yeahs," 
 he announced. 
 
 The Colonel was aware of the legend that in 1870 the 
 Archdeacon, then a lad at Cambridge, had only been 
 restrained from fighting for his hero, the Emperor of the 
 French, by a brutal father. 
 
 " It certainly looks as if you might get back a bit of your 
 own/' he said wearily. The other's dreadful exaltation 
 served only to depress him. " Russia going at em one 
 side and France the other/' 
 
 " And England ! " cried the Archdeacon. 
 
 " You think we shall go in ? " 
 
 To the Colonel's horror, the Archdeacon took him by 
 the arm. 
 
 " Can you doubt it ? " he cried, rolling his eyes to see 
 the impression he was making on the grocer in the door of 
 the little corner-shop. " Are we rotten to the heart ? " 
 
 They were walking down Church Street now, arm-in-arm, 
 in the midle of the road. 
 
 "The pity of it is," he cried in his staccato voice, " we've 
 no Emperah to lead us to-day. Ah ! there was a man I" 
 He made a dramatic halt in mid-street. " Thank Gahd 
 for Carson what ! " he whispered. 
 
OLD TOWN 219 
 
 " And Smith/' said the Colonel meekly. " Let us give 
 thanks for Smith too 
 
 Great in counsel, great in war, 
 Foremost Captain of our time, 
 Rich in saving common sense, 
 And, as the greatest only are, 
 In his simplicity sublime." 
 
 They had reached the door of the parish-church. 
 
 The Archdeacon entered ; and the Colonel turned with 
 relief to greet Bobby Chislehurst. The lad's open face 
 was unusually grave. 
 
 " There are sure to be pacifist demonstrations in London 
 to-morrow," he began, blurting out his confidences like a 
 a school-boy. " It's my day off. I shall go." 
 
 " Don't/ 1 said the Colonel. 
 
 " I must," the other replied. " It's all I can do." 
 
 " Bobby," said the Colonel grimly. " This is my advice. 
 If you go up to London at all wire to Billy to come and meet 
 you. He may be able to get an hour off, though I expect 
 they're pretty busy at Aldershot." Billy was Bobby's 
 twin-brother and in the Service. 
 
 Bobby winced. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " if Billy goes, Billy won't come back. 
 I know Billy." 
 
 A few yards down the street the Colonel met Alf Caspar 
 in the stream of ascending church-goers. 
 
 The little sidesman was dapper as usual : he wore a 
 fawn coloured waist-coat, his moustache was waxed, his 
 hair well-oiled ; but his face was almost comically a-wry. 
 He looked like the villain in a picture play about to burst 
 into tears. Directly he saw the Colonel he roused to new 
 and hectic life, crossing to him, entirely forgetful of their 
 meeting on the previous evening. 
 
 " Is it war, sir ? " he asked feverishly and with flickering 
 eyes. 
 
 " If we are ever to hold up our heads and look the world 
 in the face again," the Colonel answered. 
 
220 ONE WOMAN f 
 
 " But what's it got to do with us ? " Alt almost screamed. 
 " Let em fight it out among themselves if they want to, 
 I says. Stand aside that's our part. That's the manly 
 part. And then when it's all over slip in " 
 
 " And collar the loot," suggested the Colonel. 
 
 " And arbitrate atween em. If we don't there'll be nobody 
 to do it, only us. I don't say it'll be easy to make the 
 sacrifice o standing aside when you want to help your 
 friends, of course you do. But I say we ought to do it, 
 and let em say what they like if it's right and it is right. 
 Take up the cross and face the shame that's what I says. 
 Where's the good o being Christians else, if you're going 
 to throw it all overboard first time you're put to the test ? 
 We won't be the first, I says. What about the martyrs 
 and them ? Didn't they go through it ? Not to talk 
 o the expense ! Can we afford it ? Course we can't. Who 
 could ? Income tax at a shilling in the pound, and my petrol 
 costing me another six-pence the can. And then ask us 
 to sit down to a great war ! " 
 
 He poured out his arguments as a volcano in eruption 
 pours out lava. 
 
 The Colonel listened. 
 
 " You'd better give your views to your Rector, I think," 
 he remarked. 
 
 Alf's face turned ugly. 
 
 " One thing," he said, with an ominously vicious nod, 
 " if there is war I resign my position in the League that's 
 straight." 
 
 "O dear!" said the Colonel, and he turned into the 
 Manor-house. 
 
 Bess opened to him herself. 
 
 " Joe come ? " he asked, knowing she was expecting 
 her brother for the week-end. 
 
 " No. A post-card instead. We don't quite know 
 where he is." 
 
 The Colonel nodded. . 
 
OLD TOWN 221 
 
 " Leave stopped. Sure to be/' 
 
 Then Mrs. Trupp came down the stairs. About her was 
 the purged and hallowed air of one who faces death without 
 fear and yet without self-deception as to the price that must 
 be paid. The Colonel felt he was standing upon holy ground. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp handed him a post-card. The postmark 
 was Dover. It ran : 
 
 All well. Very busy. 
 
 " I think it'll be all right, don't you? " said Mrs. Trupp, 
 raising wistful eyes to his. The mother in her longed for 
 him to say No : the patriot Yes. 
 
 " It must be/' replied Bess, ferociously. " If it isn't 
 Joe will chuck the Service. They all will. The pacifists 
 can defend their own rotten country ! " 
 
 The Colonel moved into the consulting-room, where Mr. 
 Trupp was burrowing short-sightedly into his Sunday paper. 
 
 The old surgeon at least had no doubts. 
 
 " We shall fight all right/' he said comfortably. " We 
 must. And Must's the only man who matters in real life." 
 
 The Colonel felt immensely comforted. 
 
 " But what a position my poor old party'd have been in 
 now if our leaders hadn't queered the pitch ! " he remarked. 
 " We told you so ! We told you so ! How we could have 
 rubbed it in." 
 
 " Thank God you can't," replied the other grimly. 
 " No party's got the chuckle over another. So there's 
 some hope that we may act as a country for once." 
 
 Outside the Manor-house the Colonel met Mr. Pigott 
 in his frock-coat on the way to chapel. The two men had 
 never spoken for years past except to spar. Now in the 
 presence of the common fear they stopped, and then shook 
 hands. 
 
 Mr. Pigott was a brave man, but there was no doubt 
 he was shaken to the roots. 
 
 " My God, Colonel ! " he muttered. " It's awful." 
 
 " It don't look too pleasant," the old soldier admitted. 
 
222 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " But we cant go in ! " cried the old Nonconformist. 
 " It's no affair of ours. Who are the Serbs ? " 
 
 " It's go in or go under, I'm afraid," the other answered. 
 " That's the alternative." 
 
 He dropped down Borough Lane past the Star. 
 
 On the hill Edward Caspar ambling rapidly along with 
 flying coat-tails caught him up. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Caspar, what do you think about it ? " 
 asked the Colonel. 
 
 The old man emerged from his brown study and looked 
 up with scared eyes through his gold spectacles. He did 
 not recognise the questioner : he never did but he answered 
 eagerly, and with wonderful firmness. 
 
 " It's Love. It can't be anything else." 
 
 " I don't know. War seems to me a funny sort of 
 Love," the Colonel muttered. 
 
 " What's that ? " asked the other. 
 
 " War," replied the Colonel. " There's a great European 
 war on." 
 
 The old man, blind, puzzled, seeking, stopped dead. 
 
 " War ? " he said. " What war's that ? " 
 
 The Colonel explained. 
 
 " Austria's gone to war with Serbia. Russia's chimed 
 in. Germany's having a go at Russia. And France is 
 rushing to the rescue of her ally. Europe's ablaze from the 
 Bay of Biscay to the Caucasus." 
 
 Edward Caspar blinked at the road as he absorbed the news. 
 Then he gathered himself and went droning down the hill at in- 
 creased speed with the erratic purposef ulness of a great bumble- 
 bee. There was something lofty, almost majestic about his 
 bearing. In a moment he had increased in spiritual stature ; 
 and he was trying to straighten his rounded shoulders. 
 
 " It must work itself out," he said emphatically. " It's 
 only an incident on the march. We mustn't lose our sense 
 of proportion. We shall get there all the quicker in the 
 end because of it." 
 
OLD TOWN 223 
 
 " We shall if we go this pace/' muttered the Colonel, 
 pretending to pant as they turned into the Moot. 
 
 The Quaker meeting-house lay just in front of them, 
 a group of staid figures at the door. On their left was a 
 row of cottages at the foot of the Church-crowned Kneb. 
 The door of one of them was open, and in it stood Ernie in 
 his shirt-sleeves, towel in hand, scrubbing his head. A 
 word passed between father and son ; then the old man 
 shuffled on his way. 
 
 Ernie turned in a flash to the Colonel, who saw at once 
 that here the miracle of sudden conversion had been at 
 work. This man who for months past had been growing 
 always graver and more pre-occupied was suddenly gay. 
 A spring had been released ; and a spirit had been tossed 
 into the air. He seemed on the bubble, like an eager horse 
 tugging at its bridle. 
 
 Now he held up a warning finger and moved down the 
 road till he was out of ear-shot of his own cottage. 
 
 " Have you worked it, sir ? " he asked. His question 
 had reference to his conversation with the Colonel in Saffrons 
 Croft the evening before, and in his keenness he was oblivious 
 of the fact that nothing could have been achieved in the few 
 brief hours that had elapsed since their last meeting. 
 
 " I Ve written," replied the Colonel. " You'll be wanted. 
 Every man who can stand on his hind-legs will. That's 
 what I came about : If you have to join up it'll punish 
 your feet much less if you've done a bit of regular route- 
 marching first. Now I'm game to come along every evening 
 and march with you. Begin to-night. Five to ten miles 
 steady'd soon tell. What about it ? " 
 
 " I'm at it, sir ! " cried Ernie. " Thank you kindly all 
 the same. Started last night after we'd read the news. 
 There's a little bunch of us in Old Town old sweats. 
 Marched to Friston, we did. One hour's marching ; ten 
 minutes halt. Auston to-night. We'll soon work into 
 it." 
 
224 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " That's the style/' said the Colonel. " Are the other 
 men keen ? " 
 
 Ernie grinned. 
 
 " Oh, they're for it, if it's got to be," he said. 
 
 " And Burt ? seen him ? " 
 
 " No sir, not yet. But he's all right at heart, Joe is. 
 I'm expectin him round every minute." 
 
 At the moment a thick-set man came swishing round the 
 corner of Borough Lane on a bicycle. His shoulders were 
 hunched, and he was pedalling furiously. The sweat shone 
 on his face, which was red and set. It was clear that he had 
 come far and fast. Seeing the two men in the road he flung 
 off his bicycle and drew up beside them at a little pattering 
 run. 
 
 Out here under the beat of the sun the Colonel hardly 
 recognised in this solid fellow, dark with purpose, the 
 wavering lover of the cliff last night. Was the change 
 wrought in this man as by magic typical of a like change in 
 the heart of the country ? The thought flashed into the 
 Colonel's mind and brought him relief. 
 
 The engineer, who was heaving, came straight to his 
 point without a word, without a greeting. 
 
 " Philip Blackburn's coomin down on the rush to address 
 a great Stop-the-war meeting at the Salvation Army 
 Citadel this afternoon," he panted. " We must counter 
 it. A'm racin round to warn the boys to roll up. You 
 must be there, Colonel, and you, Ern, and all of you. It's 
 all out this time, and no mistake." 
 
 The door behind the Colonel opened. He turned to 
 find Ruth standing in the door, drying her hands. 
 
 Joe paid no heed, already sprawling over his bicycle as 
 he pushed it off. 
 
 " What time ? " she called after him. 
 
 " Two-thirty," he answered back, and was gone round 
 the corner. 
 
 " Right," she yodled. " I'll be there." 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 FOLLOW YOUR LEADER 
 
 PHILIP Blackburn's meeting had not been advertised, for 
 it was only in the small hours of the morning that a motor- 
 bicyclist scaring the hares and herons in the marshes, had 
 brought the news from Labour Headquarters that P.B. 
 was bearing the Fiery Cross to Beachbourne in the course 
 of a whirlwind pilgrimage of the Southern Counties. But 
 the hall was crammed. 
 
 Philip Blackburn was a sure draw at any time. A Labour 
 M.P. and stalwart of the Independent Labour Party, 
 it was often said that he was destined to be the Robespierre 
 of the new movement. Certainly he was an incorruptible. 
 A cripple from his youth, and a fanatic, with the face of 
 a Savonarola, in the House and on the platform he asked 
 no quarter and gave none. 
 
 Half an hour later the dusty Ford car which bore the 
 fighting pacifist was signalled panting down Stone Cross 
 hill over the Levels : a half -hour the audience passed singing 
 God save the People and The Red Flag. 
 
 A few minutes later he came limping on to the platform : 
 a little man, of the black-coated proletariat obviously, 
 with the face of a steel blade, keen and fine, and far-removed 
 from the burly labour agitator, hoarse of voice, and raw 
 of face, of a previous generation. His reception was 
 impressively quiet. The man's personality, his courage, 
 his errand, the occasion, awed even the most boisterous. 
 
 He looked dead-beat, admitted as much, and apologised 
 for being late. 
 
 " You know where I come from (cheers) and where I'm 
 bound for to-night. And you know what I've come about 
 7s it Peace or War ? " 
 
226 ONE WOMAN 
 
 And he launched straightway into that famous Follow- 
 your -leader speech, the ghost of which in one form or 
 another was to haunt the country, as the murdered 
 albatross haunted the blood-guilty mariner, all through the 
 war, and will haunt England for generations still after we 
 are gone : 
 
 The danger long-preached was on them at last. It must 
 be faced and fought. They must take a leaf out of Carson's 
 book. The Conservatives had shown the way : they must 
 follow their leaders of the ruling class. They must dish 
 the Government if it proposed to betray the country just 
 as the Unionists had done by persuading the Army not 
 to fight. They must undermine the morale of the private 
 soldiers just as the Tories had undermined that of the 
 officers. They must have their agents in every barrack- 
 room, their girls at every barrack-gate just as the Tories 
 had done. The men must apply the sternest "disciplinary 
 pressure " to scabs just as the officers had done. They 
 must stop recruiting as Garvin and the Yellow Press had 
 advocated. The famous doctrine of "optional obedience," 
 newly introduced into the Army by Tory casuists, must 
 be carried to its logical conclusion. And if the worst 
 came to the worst they must follow their leaders of the 
 ruling class, arm, and " fight the fighters. Follow your 
 leaders that is the word." 
 
 He spoke with cold and bitter passion in almost a complete 
 hush a white-hot flame of a man burning straight and still 
 on the altar of a packed cathedral. Then he sank back 
 into his chair, spent, his eyes closed, his face livid, his fine 
 fingers twitching. He had achieved that rarest triumph 
 of the orator : beaten his audience into silence. 
 
 The Colonel stood up against the wall at the back. 
 Peering over intervening heads he saw Joe Burt sitting in 
 front. 
 
 Then a voice at his ear, subdued and deep and vibrating, 
 floated out on the hush as it were on silver wings. 
 
FOLLOW YOUR LEADER 227 
 
 " Now, Joe ! " it said, like a courser urging on a grey- 
 hound. 
 
 There was a faint stir in the stillness : the eyes of the 
 orator on the platform opened. A chair scraped ; the 
 woman beside the Colonel sighed. There was some sporadic 
 cheering, and an undercurrent of groans. 
 
 Joe Burt rose to his feet slowly and with something of 
 the solemn dignity of one rising from the dead. Everybody 
 present knew him ; nobody challenged his right to speak. 
 A worker and a warrior, who had lived in the East-end 
 for some years now, he had his following, and he had his 
 enemies. The moderate men were for him, the extremists 
 had long marked him down as suspect in with the 
 capitalists too fond of the classy class. But they would 
 hear him ; for above all things he was that which the English- 
 man loves best in friend or enemy a fighter. 
 
 Standing there, thick-set and formidable as a bull, he 
 began the speech of his life. 
 
 " Two wrongs don't make a right. Because the officers 
 have sold the pass, are the men to do the same ? " 
 
 " Never ! " came a shout from the back. It was Ernie's 
 voice. The Colonel recognised it and thrilled. 
 
 " We all know/' continued the speaker, " that the gentry 
 have put their coontry after their party. It's for the People 
 to show them the true road, and put Democracy before 
 even their coontry." 
 
 " Hear ! hear ! " from Philip Blackburn. 
 
 The speaker was growing to his task, growing as it 
 grew. 
 
 " This is a great spiritual issue. Are we to save our 
 lives to lose them ? or lose them to save them ? The People 
 are in the Valley of Decision. God and the Devil are 
 standing on a mountain-top on either side the way crying 
 Who is on my side P " His great voice went billowing 
 through the hall, borne, it seemed, on some huge wind of 
 the spirit. He was holding the audience, carrying them. 
 
228 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The Colonel felt it : the man with the closed eyelids in the 
 chair on the platform felt it too. 
 
 " Jaures, the beloved leader of our cause in France, 
 has already made his choice the first man to fall for 
 Democracy. Shall he lie alone ? " 
 
 It was a dramatic touch, and told. 
 
 " A have chosen ma part/' the speaker went on more 
 quietly. " A loov ma coon try ; but there's something 
 greater even than the fate of the coontry hanging in the 
 balance now. Democracy's at stake !" 
 
 A roar of applause greeted the remark. 
 
 " It's the Emperors agin the People ! " 
 
 This time the roar was pierced by a shrill scream, 
 
 " What about Russia ? " 
 
 The booming voice over-rode the interruption as a 
 hurricane over-rides a blade of grass that stands in its track. 
 
 " Look at little Serbia ! a handful of peasants standing 
 up against a great militarist Empire. Look at Belgium ! 
 the most peaceful nation on God's earth about to be over-run 
 by the Kaiser's hordes. Look at France, the mother of 
 Revolution, and the home of Democracy ! Could we 
 forsake them now ? " 
 
 " Never ! " in a growing thunder. 
 
 " If so we forsook our own ideals, betrayed our past, 
 turned our back on our future. Yea. The People must 
 fight or perish." 
 
 " He's got em," sobbed Ruth, her handkerchief tight in 
 her mouth. The Colonel could feel her trembling. 
 
 " The question to ma mind," continued the speaker, 
 " is not whether we should fight, but whether the officers 
 of the Army who have failed us once, mind ! will fight." 
 
 The blow went home and hammered a few dissentients 
 into silence. 
 
 " If not then we must find our own officers roosset- 
 coated captains who know what they're fighting for, and love 
 what they know." 
 
FOLLOW YOUR LEADER 229 
 
 The words were lost in a hurricane of cheering. 
 
 " And ma last word to you/' ended the speaker, drawing 
 the back of his hand across his mouth, " is much that of the 
 Great Apostle Stand and Fight I " He flung the words 
 at his audience with a power and a conviction that were 
 overwhelming. 
 
 A great bell was tolling in the Colonel's mind. 
 
 " That's a great man/' he found himself murmuring. 
 
 " Aye, that's Joe," came the deep voice beside him. 
 
 The heat, the crush, the tumult of sound, his own 
 intense emotion proved almost too much for the Colonel. 
 He leaned against the wall with closed eyes, but there was 
 joy in his heart. 
 
 " Done it," he muttered. " That was England speaking." 
 Then somebody led him out into the fresh air. 
 
 " They're all right, sir," said a voice comfortably in his 
 ear. " Joe done the trick. Grand he was." 
 
 Some of the Labour extremists recognised him as he 
 lolled against the wall, hat over his eyes, recalled his work 
 for the National Service League, and gathered round for the 
 worry. 
 
 " That's him. Militarist ! Brought the trouble on us ! 
 He won't pay. Leaves that for us to do ! Drunk as a 
 lord ! On the blood of the workers." 
 
 The Colonel heard the words, but paid no heed. They 
 fell on his mind like rain-drops on a sea which absorbs them 
 unconsciously as it sways and drifts listlessly to and fro. 
 
 Then another voice, familiar this time, and strangely 
 fierce, clashed with those of his would-be persecutors. 
 
 " None of it now I Want one for yourself, do you ? 
 Stand back there ! Give him a chance to breathe ! Ought 
 to be ashamed, some of you." 
 
 The Colonel opened his eyes to find Ernie standing over 
 him. 
 
 " Ah, Caspar," he said faintly. 
 
 Then Ruth came swiftly out of the dissipating crowd 
 
230 ONE WOMAN 
 
 towards them. She was flashing, glorious, with tumultuous 
 bosom. Swept by her emotion she forgot for the moment 
 the undeclared war that was raging between this lean old 
 man and herself : she did not even notice his distress. 
 
 " He's such a battler, Joe is ! " she cried. 
 
 All that was combative in the Colonel rose desperately 
 to grip and fight the same qualities in her. 
 
 " He's not the only one/' he said feebly, and musing 
 with a vacuous smile on the strange medley of vast world- 
 tragedy and tiny domestic drama sank slowly into uncon- 
 sciousness, Ernie's arm about him, Ernie's kind face anxious 
 above him. " Watch it, Caspar ! " he whispered. 
 " Danger ! " 
 
 He came round slowly to hear voices wrangling above 
 him. 
 
 " I had to come to the meeting. I promised Joe/' the 
 woman was saying. 
 
 " What about the children ? " 
 
 There was silence : then the man went on with a cold 
 sneer. 
 
 " Little Alice, I suppose. Little Alice got to do it all 
 these days." 
 
 " Little Alice is mine," the woman retorted. " If you're 
 not satisfied with the way your " 
 
 The Colonel sat up. 
 
 " For God's sake ! " he cried. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 THE END OF THE WORLD 
 
 THE next day was Bank Holiday ; and such a holiday as 
 no living man had known or would ever know again. Half 
 the world had already tumbled into hell ; and the other 
 half was poised breathless on the brink, awaiting the finger- 
 push that should send it too roaring down to death. 
 
 On that brilliant summer day nations crouched in the 
 stubble like coveys of partridges beneath the shadow of 
 some great hawk hovering far away in the blue. 
 
 A silence like a cloud enveloped England. 
 
 The tocsin was about to sound that was to call millions 
 of rosy lads from their mothers, splendid youths from their 
 girls, sober middle-aged men away from their accustomed 
 place in church and chapel, from the office stool, from the 
 warm companionable bed and the lovely music of children's 
 voices, to strange destinies in unknown seas, on remote 
 deserts, beside alien rivers ; calling them in a voice that 
 was not to be denied to lay their bones far from the village 
 church-yard and the graves of innumerable ancestors, in 
 rotting swamps, on sun-bleached mountains, with none to 
 attend their obsequies save the nosing jackal and raw- 
 necked vulture. 
 
 Early in the morning the Colonel walked across to Old 
 Town to see Bobby Chislehurst, and put the curb on him 
 if possible ; for the Daily Citizen had come out with a 
 full-page appeal to lovers of peace to attend an anti-war 
 demonstration in Trafalgar-square. 
 
 On his way the Colonel gleaned straws of news ; and the 
 gleaning was not hard. The most reserved were expansive ; 
 the most exclusive sociable. For the moment all barriers 
 
232 ONE WOMAN 
 
 of class were down. By the time he had reached the Star 
 he was au courant with all the happenings, local and general. 
 
 The Archdeacon who, when he put his snuff-box aside, 
 and took the gloves off, could be really moving, had from 
 his hill thundered a magnificent call to arms " purely 
 pagan, of course," Mr. Trupp, whom he met, told the 
 Colonel, " but fine for all that." Mr. Geddes in the plain 
 had answered back in an appeal which had moved many to 
 tears on behalf of Him, Whose sad face on the Cross looks 
 down on This after the passion of a thousand years. 
 
 The Fleet had gone to war-stations ; the Territorials 
 had been mobilised. Haldane had returned to the War 
 Office. 
 
 As the Colonel dropped down the steep pitch to Church- 
 street, under the chesnuts of the Manor-house garden, he 
 met a couple of toddlers climbing the hill shepherded by an 
 efficient little maiden of seven or eight, who smiled at him 
 with familiar eyes. 
 
 " Hullo, little Alice," he said. " Where you off to so 
 busily with your little flock ? " 
 
 " Saffrons Croft for the day me and my little ones," 
 she answered, not without a touch of self-importance. " I 
 got the dinner here. Dad and Mother's taking baby a drive 
 on the bus to see Granny at Auston." 
 
 She turned and waved to her mother, who was standing 
 at the top of Borough Lane with Ernie, amongst a little 
 group opposite the Star, where was one of the char-a-bancs 
 of the Touring Syndicate picking up passengers from the 
 Moot. 
 
 The Colonel walked down the hill towards them. Ruth, 
 seeing him approach, climbed to her place on the char-a-banc, 
 Ernie handed little Ned to her, and then turned to meet 
 the Colonel. 
 
 " Givin Alf the benefit," he said, with a grin. " Backin 
 the family and baptizin the bus. Goin the long drive over 
 the hill to Friston and Seaford ; then up the valley to 
 
THE END OF THE WORLD 233 
 
 Auston. Dinner there. And home by Hailsham and 
 Langney in jthe evening. I wanted her to ask Joe. But 
 she wouldn't. Fickle I call her." 
 
 The Colonel glanced up ; but Ruth steadfastly refused 
 to meet his eye. 
 
 " I suppose one wants the family to one-salf some-times, 
 even a workin-woman doos," she muttered. 
 
 And the Colonel saw that Ern had made his remark to 
 show that the tension between him and his wife, so marked 
 yesterday, had eased. 
 
 " My wife's right," he thought. " Caspar is a gentle- 
 man. Blood does tell." 
 
 Just then Alf came down the steps of the Manor-house 
 opposite, looking smug and surly. He crossed the road 
 to the char-a-banc and said a word to the driver. 
 
 Ruth leaned over, glad of the diversion. 
 
 " Ain't you comin along then, Alf ? " she asked quietly. 
 
 " Caspar's my name," the Managing Director answered, 
 never lifting his eyes to his tormentor. 
 
 The young woman bent down roguishly, disregarding 
 Ern's warning glances. 
 
 " Not to your own sister, Alfie," she answered, demure 
 and intimate. 
 
 They were mostly Old Town folk on the char-a-banc, 
 many from the Moot ; and they all tittered, even the driver. 
 
 Alf stood back in the road and said deliberately, 
 searching with his eye the top of the bus. 
 
 " Where is he, then ? " 
 
 Ern flashed round on him. 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 Alf sneered. 
 
 YOU ! You're only her husband!" and decamped 
 swiftly. 
 
 Ernie did not move. He stood with folded arms, rather 
 white, following his retreating brother with his eyes. Then 
 he said to the Colonel quietly, 
 
234 O NE WOMAN 
 
 " Yes, sir. That's Alf. Now you know." 
 
 " Fm beginning to," said the Colonel. 
 
 " And time too," came Ruth's voice cold and quivering. 
 
 In the cool of the evening the Colonel walked down 
 Terminus Road. 
 
 Outside the office of Caspar's Road-Touring Syndicate 
 Alf was standing, awaiting the return of his argosies. He 
 was scanning the evening paper and still wore the injured 
 and offended air of one who has a personal grievance 
 against his Creator and means to get his own back some 
 day. 
 
 " Any news, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 The Colonel stopped. 
 
 " Germany sent Belgium an ultimatum last night 
 demanding right of way. And the King of Belgium took 
 the field this morning." 
 
 " Then he ought to be shot," snarled Alf, " Provoking of 
 em on, I call it." 
 
 The Colonel walked on to the East-end, his eyes about 
 him, and heart rising. 
 
 The country was facing the situation with digrity and 
 composure. 
 
 The streets were thronged. Everywhere men and 
 women gathered in knots and talked. There was no 
 drunken-ness, no rioting, no Jingo manifestations and that 
 though it was August Bank Holiday. The gravity of 
 the situation had sobered all men. 
 
 The Colonel passed on into Seagate to find the hero of 
 Sunday afternoon's battle. 
 
 Joe Burt stood in his shirt-sleeves in the door of his lodge- 
 ings with folded arms and cocked chin. His pipe was in 
 his mouth and he was sucking at it fiercely with turned-in 
 lips and inflated nostrils. 
 
 The engineer was clearly on the defensive ; the Colonel 
 saw it at once and knew why. On the main issue Joe had 
 
THE END OF THE WORLD 235 
 
 proved fatally, irretrievably wrong. But he had been 
 " on the platform " now for twenty years. In other words 
 he was a politician, and in the Colonel's view no poli- 
 tician ever admitted that he was wrong. To cover his 
 retreat he would almost certainly resort to the correct 
 tactical principle of a counter-offensive. 
 
 " That was a great speech of yours, Burt," the Colonel 
 began. 
 
 The engineer sucked and puffed unmoved. 
 
 " We must fight/' he said. " There's no two ways 
 about it. The Emperors have asked for it ; and they 
 shall have it. No more crowned heads ! We've had 
 enoof o yon truck !" 
 
 In his elemental mood accent had coarsened, phrase 
 become colloquial. He took his pipe from his mouth. 
 
 " Sitha! this'll be a fight to a finish atween the Old 
 Order and the New atween what you stand for and what 
 A do." 
 
 "And what do I stand for ? " asked the Colonel. 
 , " Imperialism Capitalism call it what you will. It's 
 the domination of the workers by brute force." 
 
 The Colonel turned a quiet eye upon him. 
 
 " Is that fair ? " he asked. 
 
 The engineer stuffed his pipe back into his mouth. 
 
 " Happen not of you. Of your class, yes." He felt he 
 had been on dangerous ground and came off it. " We shall 
 fight because we must," he said. " What about you ? " 
 
 He was making a direct offensive now, and turned 
 full face to his adversary. 
 
 " Us ? " asked the Colonel puzzled. 
 
 " Yes," retorted the other. " The officers of the Army ? 
 shall you fight ? " 
 
 The Colonel looked away. 
 
 Joe eyed him shrewdly. 
 
 " Last time you were asked to, you refused," he remarked. 
 " Said you'd resign rather. One General said if there was 
 
236 ONE WOMAN 
 
 war he'd fight against England. It was a piece in the 
 Daily Telegraph. A've got it pasted in ma Ammunition 
 Book. Coom in and see 1 " 
 
 The Colonel did not move. 
 
 " I think the officers will be there or thereabouts all right 
 if the're wanted," he said. 
 
 Joe appeared slightly mollified. 
 
 " Well, you came out against the railway-men in 1911," 
 he said. " A will say that for you. A wasn't sure you'd 
 feel same gate when it coom to Emperors/' 
 
 They strolled back together to Pevensey Road ; and 
 for the first time the Colonel actively disliked the man 
 at his side. That wind of the spirit which had blown 
 through the engineer yesterday purging him of his dross had 
 passed on into the darkness. To-day he was both politi- 
 cally dishonest and sexually unclean. 
 
 In fact his life that had been rushing down the mountain 
 like a spate with extraordinary speed and power, confined 
 between narrow banks, just as it was emerging at the 
 estuary into the sea had met suddenly the immense weight 
 of the returning ocean-tide, advancing irresistible to be 
 swamped, diverted, turned back on itself. This man 
 once so strong, of single purpose, and not to be deflected 
 from it by any human power, was now spiritually for all 
 his bluff a tumbling mass of worry and confusion and 
 dirty yellow foam. . .- . 
 
 The pair had passed into the main thoroughfare. 
 
 " What about that woman ? " asked the Colonel 
 moodily. 
 
 Joe was chewing his pipe-stem. 
 
 " What woman'll that be ? " 
 
 " Why the one you were talking about to me on Saturday 
 night, whether you should bolt with her or not." 
 
 Joe halted on the kerb-stone and regarded the traffic 
 imperturbably. 
 
 " A know nowt o no such woman," he said. 
 
THE END OF THE WORLD 237 
 
 The Colonel glanced at him. Just then he heard the 
 sound of a horn and looking back saw one of the new motor- 
 char-a-bancs of the Touring Syndicate returning crowded 
 to the brim. A man stood on the step with a horn and 
 tootled. Ernie sat in front with Ruth, the boy in her lap 
 asleep against her breast. The Colonel marked the strength 
 and tranquillity of her pose, her arms clasped around the 
 sleeping child. Father, mother, and child were profoundly 
 at peace ; one with each other, so it seemed to him, one 
 with life. Joe took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed 
 with the stem. 
 
 " Yon's her/ 1 he said, with stunning impudence. 
 
 " I know that then/' answered the Colonel. " Your 
 own friend's wife/' 
 
 Ernie who had seen Joe waved and winked and nudged 
 Ruth. She could not or would not see. Joe waved 
 back casually. Then he turned to the Colonel with a Silenus- 
 like twinkle, his little black eyes of a bear glittering. 
 
 " He'll have to go now," he said, gurgling like an amused 
 baby. 
 
 The Colonel looked him in the eyes. " Devil ! " he said. 
 
 The engineer peeped up at him with something of the 
 chuckle of the young cuckoo. 
 
 " Ah, don't you talk, Colonel ! I'm not the only one." 
 
 " What you mean ? " fiercely. 
 
 " What you told me Saturday night." 
 
 " I never betrayed my pal, whatever else." 
 
 " You would ha done," remorselessly. " Only you lost 
 your nerve at the last moment. That's nothing to boast on." 
 
 The man's brazen cynicism revolted the Colonel. 
 
 " Ah, you don't know me," he muttered. 
 
 "A know maself," the other answered. " And that's 
 the same." 
 
 The Colonel felt as feels a man who watches the casual 
 immoralities of a big and jolly dog. Then he came to 
 himself and broke away, firing a last shot over his shoulder. 
 
238 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " I suppose you'll wait till he has gone/ 1 he sneered. 
 
 " A doubt/' the other answered, cool and impudent 
 to the last. 
 
 The Colonel tramped home, sore at heart. 
 
 Opposite the Wish he stumbled on Mr. Trupp, who 
 brought him up with a jerk. 
 
 " There's going to be a Coalition Government," the 
 old surgeon told his friend. " Lloyd George and the pacifists 
 are leaving the Cabinet ; and Smith and Carson and Bonar 
 Law coming in." 
 
 Just then Stanley Bessemere rushed by in a powerful 
 car. He waved to the two men, neither of whom would 
 see him. 
 
 "You know what he's after ? " said Mr. Trupp. 
 
 " What ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Spreading it round that Haldane's holding up 
 the Expeditionary Force." 
 
 The Colonel struck the ground. 
 
 " My God ! " he cried. " Party politics even at this 
 hour ! " 
 
 The other shrugged. 
 
 " They've got to find a scape goat or take it in the neck 
 themselves," he said. 
 
 The Colonel walked home in the twilight along the 
 deserted brick-walk, under the tamarisk bank stirring grace- 
 fully in the evening breeze. At the extreme end of the bricks 
 where a path climbs up a chalk-pit to Holywell he came 
 on a tall dark solitary figure looking out over the sea. 
 
 It was Mr. Geddes. 
 
 The old soldier approached him quietly and touched 
 his arm. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently. " What you think- 
 ing of ? " 
 
 The tall man turned his fine face. 
 
 " I was thinking about a carpenter," he said. 
 
 " Of Nazareth ? Z 
 
THE END OF THE WORLD 239 
 
 " No, of Berlin. Of Papa Schumacher and that boy 
 Joseph, who was trying so hard to be an English sport 
 and black-eyed Joanna and the old Mutter." 
 
 The Colonel swallowed. 
 
 " Let's shake hands, Geddes/' he said. 
 
 " With all my heart, Colonel/' the other answered. 
 
 Then the old soldier went up the slope laboriously, his 
 hands upon his knt.es. 
 
 His wife was waiting him on the cliff, a little figure, 
 distinguished even in the dusk, about her shoulders the 
 scarlet cape that had been the gift of a Rajput Princess. 
 
 " I pray it will be all right," he said. 
 
 " I pray so/' the little lady answered. 
 
 War meant ruin for her and the destruction of all her 
 hopes for Toby. And her own Jock! but she never 
 wavered. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 THE COLONEL 
 
 THAT night Sir Edward Grey made the historic speech, 
 which swung the nation into line like one man, and launched 
 Great Britain on the supreme adventure of her history. 
 
 The one bright spot in the situation is Ireland. 
 
 Redmond had followed in a speech which filled the 
 Colonel's eyes with tears and his heart with glad- 
 ness as he read it next morning, so generous it was, so 
 chivalrous. 
 
 / say to the Government they may withdraw every one of 
 their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended by her 
 armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose Catholics in 
 the South will join the Protestants in the North. 
 
 The Colonel paced to and fro on his lawns, the paper 
 flapping in his hand. 
 
 Not even the spectacle of Carson, sulking; in his tent, 
 and answering never a word to his opponent's magnanimous 
 appeal, could mar that vision splendid. 
 
 All day long the Colonel never left his garden, hovering 
 round the telephone. Anything might happen at any 
 moment. 
 
 Then news came through. 
 
 The Government had sent Germany an ultimatum. If 
 she failed to give us an assurance before n p.m. that she 
 would not violate the neutrality of Belgium, England would 
 go to war. 
 
 The Colonel sighed his thankfulness. 
 
 All day he quarter-decked up and down the loggia, 
 
THE COLONEL 241 
 
 Zeiss glasses in hand. His telescope he arranged on the 
 tripod on the lawn, and with it swept earth and sky and sea. 
 Towards evening he marked a bevy of men swing round 
 the shoulder of the hill from Meads into the coombe. They 
 were in mufti, and not in military formation ; but they 
 marched, he noted, and kept some sort of order, moving 
 rhythmically, restrained as a pack of hounds on the way to 
 the meet, and yet with riot in their hearts. He turned the 
 telescope full on them, marked Ernie among them, and 
 knew them forthwith for the Reservists from Old Town 
 training for IT. A wave of emotion surged through him. 
 He went down to the fence and stood there with folded 
 arms, and high head, his sparse locks grey in the evening 
 light, watching them go by. Then he saluted. 
 
 They saw the old soldier standing bare-headed at the 
 fence, recognised him, and shouted a greeting. 
 
 " Good-evening, sir/' 
 
 " That's the style ! " he cried gruffly. " Getting down 
 to it." 
 
 Then Ernie broke away and came across the grass to 
 him at the double, grinning broadly, and gay as a boy. 
 
 " Yes, sir. Old Town Troop we call ourselves. Long 
 march to-night. Through Birling Gap to the Haven and 
 home over Windhover about midnight. What I stepped 
 across to say, sir, was I'm thinkin Ruth'd better stay where 
 she is for the time being if it's all the same to you, sir ; 
 and not move to the garage." 
 
 " As you like," replied the Colonel. " Undercliff s the 
 most exposed house in Beachbourne that's certain. If 
 there's trouble from the sea we shall catch it ; or if their 
 Zeppelins bomb the signalling station on the Head some 
 of it may come our way." 
 
 Ernie looked shy. 
 
 " That little turn-up with Alf in the road yesterday, 
 sir," he said confidentially. " I was glad you was there." 
 He came forward stealthily. " See, I know what you 
 
 16 
 
242 ONE WOMAN 
 
 thought, sir. It's not Joe after her. It's Alf always has 
 been ; from before we married. Joe's all right." 
 
 The Colonel stared grimly over the sea. 
 
 " I think you're wrong," he said. 
 
 " Then I know I'm not, sir," Ernie flashed. 
 
 The Colonel returned to his watch. 
 
 That night he did not go to bed. Instead he sat up in 
 his pyjamas in the corner-room that looked out over the 
 sea, and on to Beau nez. If we went in the news would be 
 flashed at once to the coastguard on the Head ; and the 
 petty officer on duty up there had promised to signal it 
 down to the house in the coombe beneath. 
 
 The Colonel watched and waited. 
 
 The window was open. It was a still and brilliant 
 night. He could hear the fall, and swish, and drone of the 
 sea, rhythmical and recurrent, at the foot of the cliff. From 
 the crest of the hill behind the house came the occasional 
 tinkle of the canister-bell of some old wether of the flock. 
 
 Then the silence was disturbed by a growing tumult in 
 the darkness. 
 
 A squadron of destroyers was thrashing furiously round 
 the Head, not a light showing, close inshore, too, only an 
 occasional smudge of white in the darkness revealing their 
 position and the feather of foam they bore along like a plume 
 before them. 
 
 Out of the darkness they came at a speed incredible, 
 and into the darkness they were gone once more like a flash. 
 
 The Colonel breathed again. 
 
 At least the Navy was ready, thanks to Churchill. 
 
 Was the Army ? 
 
 He recalled a remark reported to him as having been 
 made at a P.S.A. in the East-end some weeks since : that the 
 Army no longer trusted its officers, and the country no 
 longer trusted its Army. Could it be true ? 
 
 His thoughts turned with passionate sympathy to Gough 
 
THE COLONEL 243 
 
 and the simple regimental officers who had been lured 
 by politicians into the dreadful business of the Army 
 Conspiracy. But that other feller ! that yappin chap at 
 the War Office, who ought to have known better ! . . . 
 
 Away on the crest of Beau-nez, humping a huge black 
 back against the brilliant darkness, someone was swinging 
 a lantern once, twice. 
 
 The Colonel flashed his electric torch in answer. 
 
 The gaunt figure at the window turned. 
 
 " Rachel/' he said low, to the woman in the bed beneath 
 him. 
 
 " Jocko/' came the answering voice, quiet as his own. 
 
 " We're going in." 
 
 " Thank God." 
 
 In the darkness she reached up arms, white and trembling 
 as a bride's, and drew him to her. 
 
 He kissed her eyelids and found them wet. 
 
 " I can't help it, Jocko," she sobbed. " Jock ! " 
 
 Her boy was in India with the second battalion ; but 
 she knew very well that now the crash had come every 
 battalion in the Service would be flung into the furnace. 
 
 The Colonel went back to the window and she came to 
 his side. His arm crept about her, and she trembled in the 
 curve of it. A mild but ghastly beam, as of the moon, 
 fell on them standing at the window. A battleship was 
 playing its searchlight full on them. The cold wan beam 
 roamed along the hill-side callous and impersonal, exposing 
 every bush and scar. It fell on the white bluff of 
 Beau-nez and came creeping, like the fingers of a leper, 
 along the cliff. Just opposite the hostel, at the spot where 
 the path ran down to the beach, it stayed, pointing as it 
 were, at a little pillar of solid blackness erect on the cliff 
 edge. 
 
 The Colonel caught his breath with a gasp. 
 
 " Don't look ! " he cried sharply and snatched his wife 
 away. As he did so the pillar broke up in two component 
 
244 ONE WOMAN 
 
 parts, as though dissolved by the white encircling flood of 
 light. 
 
 A woman's stifled scream came through the open window. 
 
 " Joe ! " 
 
 Then there was a slither of chalk as the pair stampeded 
 down the path out of sight, and crashed into the beach 
 beneath. The Colonel let down the blind with a rattle. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 
 
 ERNIE clattered into the kitchen at a busy trot, and stumbled 
 upstairs without a word to his wife at the sink. 
 
 There was such an air of stir and secret purposef ulness about 
 him that Ruth followed him up to the bedroom. There 
 she found him on his knees in a litter of things, packing a 
 bundle frantically. 
 
 A dish-cloth in her hand, she watched his efforts. 
 
 " Where away then ? " she asked. 
 
 " Berlin this journey. Hand me them socks ! " 
 
 Her eyes leapt. " Is it war ? " 
 
 "That's it." 
 
 She sat down ghastly, wrapping her hands in her apron 
 as if they had been mutilated and she wished to hide the 
 stumps. 
 
 Men abuse the Army when they are in it and take their 
 discharge at the earliest possible moment ; but when the 
 call comes they down tools with avidity, and leaving the mill, 
 the mine, the shunting yard, and the shop, they troop back 
 to the colours with the lyrical enthusiasm of those who have 
 re-discovered youth on the threshhold of middle-age. 
 
 Em, you may be sure, was no exception to the rule. 
 
 Packing and unpacking his bundle on his knees, he was 
 busy, happy, important. But there was no such desperate 
 hurry after all : for he did not join the crowds which 
 thronged the recruiting stations in those first days : he 
 waited for the Colonel to arrange matters so that he could 
 join his old battalion at Aldershot direct. 
 
 345 
 
246 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Ruth watched him with deep and jealously guarded eyes 
 in which wistfulness and other disturbing emotions met 
 and mingled. 
 
 Once only she put to him the master question. 
 
 " What about us, Ern ? " 
 
 He was standing at the time contemplating the patient 
 and tormented bundle. 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Me and the children." 
 
 " There's one Above," said Ernie. "He'll see to you. 1 ' 
 
 " He don't most in general not from what I've seen of 
 it," answered Ruth. " What if He don't ? " 
 
 There was a moments' pause. Then Ern dropped a 
 word as a child may drop a stone in a well. 
 
 " Joe." 
 
 Ruth caught her breath. 
 
 In those days Ernie grew on her as a mountain looming 
 out of the dawn-mist grows on the onlooker. Joe did not 
 even come to see her ; and she was glad. For all his virility 
 and bull-like quality, now that the day of battle had come, 
 Ern was proving spiritually the bigger man. 
 
 And his very absorbtion in the new venture appealed 
 to Ruth even while it wounded. Ern had been "called " as 
 surely as Clem Woolgar, the bricklayer's labourer, her 
 neighbour in the Moot, who testified every Sunday afternoon 
 in a scarlet jersey at the Star corner to the clash of cymbals. 
 Clem it was true, spoke of his call as Christ ; to Ernie it went 
 by the name of country. In Ruth's view the name might 
 differ but the Thing was the same. A voice had come to 
 Ern which had spoken to him as she had not, as the children 
 had not. Because of it he was a new man " converted," 
 as Clem would say, prepared to forsake father and mother, 
 and wife, and child, and follow, follow. 
 
 England was calling ; and he seemed deaf to every 
 other voice. She seemed to have gone clean out of his life ; 
 but the children had not she noticed it with a pang of 
 
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 247 
 
 jealousy and a throb of hope. For each of the remaining 
 nights after dark, he went round their cots. She was not 
 to know anything about that, she could see, from the stealthy 
 way in which he stole upstairs when her back was supposed 
 to be turned. But the noises in the room overhead, the 
 murmur of his voice, the shuffling of his feet as he got up 
 from the bedsides betrayed his every action. 
 
 On the third night, as he rejoined her, she rose before 
 him in the dusk, laying down her work. 
 
 " Anything for me too, Ern," she asked humbly " the 
 mother of em ? " 
 
 " What d'you mean ? " he asked almost fiercely. 
 
 " D'you want me, Ern ? " 
 
 He turned his back on her with an indifference that hurt 
 far more than any brutality, because it signified so plainly 
 that he did not care. 
 
 " You're all right," he said enigmatically, and went out. 
 
 He could ask anything of her now, and she would give 
 him all, how gladly ! But he asked nothing. 
 
 In another way, too, he was torturing her. It was 
 clear to her that he meant to do his duty by her and the 
 children to the last ounce ; and nothing more. He cared 
 for their material wants as he had never done before. All 
 his spare moments he spent handying about the house, 
 hammer in hand, nails in mouth, doing little jobs he had 
 long promised to do and had forgotten ; putting little Ned's 
 mail-cart to rights, screwing on a handle, setting a loose 
 slate. She followed him about with wistful eyes, holding 
 the hammer, steadying the ladder, and receiving in return 
 a few off-hand words of thanks. She did not want words : 
 she wanted him himself. 
 
 Then news came through, and he was straightway full 
 of mystery and bustle. 
 
 " Join at Aldershot to-morrow. Special train at two/ 1 
 he told Ruth in the confidential whisper beloved of working- 
 men. " Don't say nothing to nobody." As though the 
 
248 ONE WOMAN 
 
 news, if it reached the Kaiser, would profoundly affect the 
 movements of the German armies. 
 
 That evening Ernie went up to the Manor-house to say 
 good-bye. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp was far more to him than his god-mother : 
 she was a friend known to him from babyhood, allied to 
 him by a thousand intimate ties, and trusted as he trusted 
 no one else on earth, not even his dad. 
 
 Now he unbosomed to her the one matter that was 
 worrying him on his departure that he should be leaving 
 Ruth encumbered with debt. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp met him with steady eyes. It was her first 
 duty, the first duty of every man, woman and child in the 
 nation to see that the fighting-men went off in good heart. 
 
 " You needn't worry about Ruth/ 1 she said, quietly. 
 " She'll have the country behind her. All the soldiers' 
 wives will." 
 
 Ernie shook his head doubtfully. 
 
 " Ah, I don't hold much by the country," he said. 
 
 The lady's grave face, silver-crowned, twinkled into 
 sudden mischievous life. She rippled off into the delicious 
 laughter he loved so dearly. 
 
 " I know who's been talking to you ! " she cried. 
 
 Ernie grinned sheepishly. 
 
 " Who then ? " 
 
 "Mr. Burt." 
 
 Ernie admitted the charge. 
 
 " If you don't trust the country, will you trust Mr. Trupp 
 and me ? " the other continued. 
 
 Ernie rose with a sigh of relief. 
 
 " Thank you kindly, 'm," he said. " That's what I 
 come after." 
 
 Ernie went on to Rectory Walk, to find that his mother 
 too had joined the crucified. In the maelstrom of emotion 
 
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 249 
 
 that in those tragic hours was tossing nations and individuals 
 this way and that, the hard woman had been humbled at 
 last. Stripped to the soul, she saw herself a twig hurled 
 about in the sea of circumstance she could no more control 
 than a toy-boat a-float on the Atlantic can order the tides. 
 No longer an isolated atom hard and self-contained, she was 
 one of a herd of bleating sheep being driven by a remorse- 
 less butcher to the slaughter-house. And the first question 
 she put to him revealed the extent of the change that had 
 been wrought in her. 
 
 " What about Ruth ? " she asked. 
 
 It was the only occasion onVhich his mother had named 
 his wife to Ern during his married life. 
 
 " She's all right, mother/' Ernie replied. " She's plenty 
 of friends." 
 
 " Mrs. Trupp," jealously. " Well, why don't ye say so ? 
 What about the children ? " 
 
 " They'll just stay with their mother," answered 
 Ernie. 
 
 " I could have em here if she was to want to go out to 
 work," Anne said grudgingly ; and must add, instigated 
 by the devil who dogged her all her life " Your children, 
 of course." 
 
 Ernie answered quite simply : 
 
 " No, thank-you, mother," and continued with uncon- 
 scious dignity " They're all my children." 
 
 A gleam of cruelty shone in his mother's eyes. 
 
 " She's behind with her rent. You know that ? And 
 Alf's short. He says he's dropped thousands over his 
 Syndicate. Ruined in his country's cause, Alf says." 
 
 " If he's dropped thousands a few shillings more or less 
 won't help him," said Ernie curtly. 
 
 " And yet he'll want em," Anne pursued maliciously. 
 " He was sayin so only last night. Every penny, he said." 
 
 " He may want," retorted Ernie. " He won't get." 
 
 His mother made a little grimace. 
 
2 5 o ONE WOMAN 
 
 " If Alf wants a thing he usually gets it." 
 
 Ernie flashed white. 
 
 " Ah/ 1 he said. " We'll see what dad says." 
 
 It was a new move in the family game, and unexpected. 
 Anne was completely taken a-back. She felt that Ernie 
 was not playing fair. There had always been an unwritten 
 family law, inscribed by the mother on the minds of the 
 two boys in suggestible infancy, that dad should be left 
 outside all broils and controversies ; that dad should be 
 spared unpleasantness, and protected at any cost. 
 
 She was shocked, almost to pleading. 
 
 " You'd never tell him ! " 
 
 " He's the very one I would tell then ! " retorted Ernie, 
 rejoicing in his newly-discovered vein of brutality. 
 
 " Only worry him," she coaxed. 
 
 " He ain't the only one," Ern answered. " I'm fairly 
 up against it, too." Grinning quietly at his victory, he 
 turned down the passage to the study. 
 
 His father was sitting in his favourite spot under the 
 picture of his ancestor, watching the tree-tops blowing in 
 the Rectory garden opposite. The familiar brown-paper- 
 clad New Testament was on his knee. 
 
 Ernie marked at once that here was the one tranquil 
 spirit he had met since the declaration of war. And this 
 was not the calm of stagnation. Rather it was the intense 
 quiet of the wheel which revolves so swiftly that it appears 
 to be still. 
 
 He drew his chair beside his father's. 
 
 " What d'you make of it all, dad ? " he asked gently. 
 
 The old man took his thumb out of his New Testament, 
 and laid his hand upon his son's. 
 
 11 And behold there was a great earthquake,'' he quoted. 
 " For the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came 
 and rolled back the stone from the door of the Tomb.' 1 
 
 Ernie nodded thoughtfully. For the first time perhaps 
 the awful solemnity of the drama in which he was about to 
 
THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT 251 
 
 play his part came home to him in all its overwhelming 
 power. 
 
 " Yes, dad," he said deeply. " Only I reck'n it took 
 some rolling." 
 
 The old man gripped and kneaded the hand in his just 
 as Ruth would do in moments of stress. 
 
 "True, Boy-lad/' he answered. "But it had to be 
 rolled away before the Lord could rise. 1 ' 
 
 Ernie assented. 
 
 Hand-in-hand they sat together for some while. Then 
 Ernie rose to go. In the silence and dusk father and son 
 stood together on the very spot where fourteen years before 
 they had said good-bye on Ernie's departure for the Army. 
 The Edward Caspar of those days was old now ; and the 
 boy of that date a matured man, scarred already by the 
 wars of Time. 
 
 " It won't be easy rolling back the stone, Boy-lad," 
 said the old man. " But they that are for us are more than 
 they that are against us." 
 
 It was not often that Ernie misunderstood his father ; 
 but he did now. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " And they say the Italians are 
 coming in too." 
 
 " The whole world must come in," replied the other, 
 his cheeks rosying faintly with an enthusiasm which made 
 him tremble. " And we must all push together." He made 
 a motion with his hand " English and Germans, Russians 
 and Austrians, and roll it back, back, back ! and topple 
 it over into the abyss. And then the Dawn will break 
 on the risen Lord." 
 
 Ernie went out into the passage. His mother in the 
 kitchen was waiting for him. She looked almost forlorn, 
 he noticed. 
 
 " Give me a kiss, Ern," she pleaded in sullen voice that 
 quavered a little. " Don't let's part un-friends just now 
 you and me After all, you're my first." 
 
252 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Ernie's eyes filled. He took her in his arms, this withered 
 old woman, patted her on the back, kissed her white hair, 
 her tired eyelids. 
 
 " There ! " he said. " I should knaw you arter all these 
 years, Mum. Always making yourself twice the terror you 
 are and not meaning it." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 BEAU-NEZ 
 
 HE returned to the Moot to find little Alice crying in the 
 door. A pathethetic little shrimp of a creature she looked, 
 huddled against the door-post, her face hidden, her shoulders 
 quivering, her back to the hostile world. Some children 
 who had been mocking her drew away on Ernie's approach. 
 
 " What's up, Lai ? " he asked tenderly, bending over 
 her. 
 
 She would not look up. 
 
 " It's nothing, daddy," she sobbed and crept away up 
 the street, like a wounded animal. 
 
 Ernie went in. Ruth was sitting alone in the kitchen 
 forlorn and wistful as he had never known her. It was 
 clear to him that the sorrow, whatever it might be, was 
 shared by mother and daughter, He watched her 
 quietly for a minute ; then came to her. 
 
 " What is it, mother? " he asked with unusual gentleness. 
 
 His tone touched the spring of tears in her heart. She bit 
 her lip. 
 
 " Its Alf," she said with gasps. " He's been settin em 
 on to her again. . . He's spiteful because the war's 
 spoilt his Syndicate. . . So he takes it out of her. . . 
 They've been tormenting her. . . Only she wouldn't 
 tell you because she wanted your last day to be happy." 
 
 Ern went out, found little Alice once again in the door, 
 her pinafore still to her eyes, took her up in his arms and 
 put her in her mother's lap. 
 
 " Love one another," he said huskily. " And don't 
 forget me." 
 
 Then he went out again, burning his battle-flare. 
 
 In half an hour he was back with Joe Burt. 
 
 353 
 
254 ONE WOMAN 
 
 There was a strange hushed dignity about him as he 
 entered the kitchen. He might have been a priest about 
 to conduct a ceremony at the altar of the Most High. Joe 
 lagged behind sullen and with downward eyes, twisting 
 his cap. Somehow he looked strangely common beside 
 his friend. Ruth, as she rose to meet the two men, was 
 profoundly conscious of the contrast between them. 
 
 " Joe/' said Ernie, still and solemn, " I bequeath Ruth 
 to you ..." 
 
 In a flash the woman seized the situation. 
 
 " to have and to hold/' she murmured quietly, her head 
 down to stifle sobs and laughter. 
 
 Ernie with that love of ritual which characterises his 
 class continued with the smile-less intensity of a child. 
 
 " Yes, to have and to hold . . . her and her 
 children ... for me * . till I return/' 
 
 Joe was obviously staggered. His eyes roved the 
 floor ; his head weaved to and fro. 
 
 " Here, I didn't bargain for this," he muttered. 
 
 Ruth thrust out her hand almost sternly, as though to 
 silence him. He took it grudgingly, and then Era's. 
 
 " A suppose A'll do ma best," he said, and slouched out 
 hasty as a schoolboy escaping from the schoolroom. 
 
 When he was gone Ruth laid both hands on Ernie's 
 shoulders and looked at him her eyes dazzled with laughter 
 and tears. 
 
 " You should never ha done it, Ern ! " she said. " Never ! " 
 
 " There was nothing for it only that," Ern answered 
 sturdily. " It's a world of wolves. Somebody must see 
 to you while I'm away." 
 
 She withdrew her hands and stood before him, defenceless 
 now, humble, beautiful, appealing. 
 
 " Ern," she said with a little sob, " will you take me up 
 along to the Ambush our last night and all ? " 
 
 He looked at her steadily. Then he caught her hand. 
 
 " All right, old lass," he said. 
 
BEAU-NEZ 255 
 
 They had not visited their couching-place that summer 
 and the romance of old and intimate association was on them 
 both now as they came to the tryst in the scented dusk. 
 The gorse, unpruned, had grown over the track that led to 
 the heart of the covert. Ernie forced his way through, 
 Ruth following him, anchored jealously to his hand. Behind 
 her the bushes closed, blocking the way ; and she was glad. 
 Her eyes were on the shoulders of her man, wistful still 
 but triumphant ; and she found herself smiling secretly as 
 she marked how bride-like she felt, how warm and shy and 
 tremulous. In this great hour the tides of her ebbing youth 
 had returned with power and the desert bloomed afresh. 
 The world-catastrophe had wrought a miracle. Spring had 
 quickened the stale summer air. Here at the parched noon 
 was a hint of dawn, dew-drenched and lovely. 
 
 Waist-deep in the dark covert, the man and woman 
 stood on the summit of the hill, under the sky, the sea spread 
 like a dulled shield beneath them. 
 
 It was already nine o'clock ; a perfect evening of that 
 never-to-be-forgotten August. The sun had long gone 
 down behind the Seven Sisters. In Paradise a nightjar 
 was thrumming harshly. Below in the coombe the lights 
 of Undercliff began to twinkle. On the Head Brangwyn- 
 like figures were moving heavily. A night-shift was working 
 there behind windy flares, screened by tarpaulins from 
 enemy eyes at sea. Ernie knew what they were doing. 
 
 " They're building a battery to protect the new wireless 
 station against aircraft attack," he told Ruth. "That 
 dark thing in the road's a fire-engine to dowse the flares if 
 a night attack's made." 
 
 Then above the noise of the navvies busy with pick and 
 shovel, and the pleasant gargle of the night-jar, blended 
 another sound. A hollow ominous rumbling like the 
 voice of a great ghost laughing harshly in his grave 
 came rolling across the sea out of the darkness. 
 
 " Guns," said Ernie. " They're at it in the Bight." 
 
256 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Ruth drew closer and took his arm. One finger was to 
 her lips. She was a little bit afraid. He felt it, and pressed 
 her arm. 
 
 From the distance, muffled by the shoulder of the hill, 
 came the hammer-hammer that would endure all night 
 of the emergency gangs, rushed down in special trains from 
 the North, to run up a huge camp in the great coombe at 
 the end of Rectory Walk where of old lambs had often 
 roused Ernie as a lad on bleak March mornings by their 
 forlorn music of spirits exiled and crying for home. 
 He stood and looked and listened. 
 
 " Who'd ever ha beleft it'd ha come to this when we first 
 lay out here six years ago ? " he mused. 
 
 " Or now for that matter/' answered Ruth, her voice deep 
 and hushed as the evening. " All so good and quiet as it 
 looks." 
 
 She pulled him down into the darkness of the covert. 
 " D'is safer here, I reck'n " she said, and nuzzled up 
 against him. 
 
 Ernie peeped though the gorse at the lights flickering 
 on the Head. 
 
 " They ca-a-n't see us here/ 1 he said. 
 " And a good job, too, I reck'n/' answered Ruth sedately, 
 fingering her hair. 
 Ernie chuckled. 
 " Listen ! " he said. 
 
 They sat close in their ambush, walled about with 
 prickly darkness, roofed in by the living night. 
 
 Beneath them the sea came and went, rose and fell, 
 rhythmical and somnolent, as it had done in the days when 
 badger and wolf and bear roamed the hill, with none to 
 contest their sovereignty but the hoary old sea-eagle from 
 the cliffs ; as it might still do when man had long passed 
 away. Sounds ancient almost as the earth on which they lay, 
 which had lulled them and millions of their forefathers to 
 sleep, were crossed by others, new, man-made, discordant. 
 
BEAU-NEZ 257 
 
 Down the road at the back of the covert, not a hundred 
 yards away, came a sudden bustling phut-phut-phut. 
 
 " Despatch-rider/' said Ernie, peering. " Light out 
 and all. Rushin it to Birling Gap. There's a company of 
 Territorials there, diggin emselves in behind barbed wire 
 to guard the deep-sea cables." 
 
 " The Boy-Scouts were layin out all day on the road to 
 Friston, Mr. Chislehurst told me," remarked Ruth. " They 
 took the number of every motor and motor-bike on the road 
 to Newhaven." 
 
 She unloosed her hair that fell about her like a torrent 
 of darkness. 
 
 A huge beetle twanged by above them ; and then in 
 the covert close at hand there was a snuffling and grunting, 
 so loud, so close, so portentous that Ruth, creature of the 
 earth though she was, was startled and paused in her 
 undoing. 
 
 " What-ever's that ? " she asked, laying a hand on 
 Ernie. 
 
 " Hedge-pig, I allow." 
 
 " Sounds like it might be a wild boar routin and snoutin 
 and carryin on," she laughed. 
 
 Ruth reclined on the bed of sand. The calm blessedness 
 of night embraced her ; and the stars lay on her face. 
 She lifted her lips to them, seeming to draw them down 
 with each breath, and blow them away again, babe-like. 
 A dreamy amazement still possessed her. 
 
 " Who'd ever ha beleft it ? " she said quietly. 
 
 Then she turned her face to him and laughed. 
 
 " Ernie ! " she called. 
 
 " Whose are you now ? " he said fiercely in her ear. 
 
 She chuckled and gathered him to her bosom. 
 
 He sighed his content. 
 
 " That's better," he murmured. " Now, never no 
 more of it ! " 
 
 A great mate, Ruth was a still greater mother ; and 
 
 17 
 
258 ONE WOMAN 
 
 this living, pulsing creature in her arms was her child, her 
 first-born cub. 
 
 In the stress and conflict of the last few years necessity 
 had compelled her to discard the royal indolence that was 
 her natural habit. The lioness in her, roused by conflict, 
 had made her fierce and formidable in any battle. Six 
 months ago she had fought Ernie because he was weak ; 
 now she would shield him because he was strong. 
 
 Jealously she pressed him to her. 
 
 " They shan't get you, my lad/' she said between her 
 teeth. " I'll see to that. 1 ' 
 
 " I'm not afraid o them," answered Ernie drowsily. 
 " I knaw the Germans. All you got to do is to say Shoo ! 
 and goo with your arms and they're off like rabbits from 
 the garden." 
 
 She thrust his head back till she saw it as a dim blob 
 against the shining night ; and looked up into his eyes, her 
 own so close to his, so deep, so dear. 
 
 " You're my soldier," she murmured in his ear. " I 
 always knew you was." 
 
 Then she drew his face down to hers, till their lips met. 
 
 " I got something to tell you, Ern." 
 
 Now she leaned over him. The moon shone on the 
 smooth sweep of her shoulders, rounded and luminous. 
 
 " I only deceived you the once, Ern," she whispered, 
 her voice murmuring like a stream that issued from the 
 slowly-heaving ocean of her chest. " Afore we were 
 married. He ne'er wrote me ne'er a letter." 
 
 " I knew that then," muttered Ernie, sleepily, his head 
 beside her own. 
 
 " It was Madame," Ruth continued. " She come over 
 in a car and told the tale." 
 
 Her confession made she waited ; but in a moment his 
 breathing told her that he had fallen off to sleep. 
 
 She stroked him rhythmically, just as she would her 
 children when they were tired. 
 
BEAU-NEZ 259 
 
 He was going back to the regiment to Captain Royal 
 to the Unknown. She was not afraid for him nor for 
 herself nor for the children. An immense peace had fallen 
 on her. 
 
 Then all about her a murmur as of wings grew. There 
 was a whispering patter as of rain upon the turf that ringed 
 the covert ; but no rain fell. Through the patter came the 
 tinkle of a bell. An immense flock of sheep was rippling 
 dimly like a flood over the parched turf to the dew-pond 
 by the old wall on the brow. The whisper grew louder, 
 as though the rain had turned to hail. The flock was 
 crossing the road. Then there was almost a silence, and in 
 the silence the leader ba-a-a-d. The flock had reached the 
 waters of refreshing. 
 
 Ruth slept, strangely comforted. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 THE STATION 
 
 NEXT day Ernie was to join up. 
 
 After dinner he kissed Susie and Jenny, gave them each 
 a penny, and despatched them to play. Hand in hand 
 they stamped away to Motcombe Garden with clacking 
 heels, roguish backward glances and merry tongues. 
 
 Then he asked Ruth to go into the backyard. Left 
 alone with Alice he lifted her on to the kitchen-table, took 
 her hands in his, and looked gravely into her eyes. 
 
 " I trust you to look after mother and the little ones 
 when I'm gone, Lai/' he said. 
 
 The little maid, swift and sympathetic as her mother, 
 nodded at him, nibbling her handkerchief, her heart too full 
 for words. Then she raised her crumpled face, that at the 
 moment was so like her mother's, for a last kiss, and as 
 she wreathed her arms round his neck she whispered, 
 
 " You are my daddy, aren't you, daddy ? " 
 
 " Of course I am," he murmured, and lifted her down. 
 
 She ran away swiftly, not trusting herself to look back. 
 
 A moment later Ruth entered the kitchen, slowly and 
 with downcast eyes. He was standing before the fire, 
 awaiting her. 
 
 " Ruth," he said quietly. " I've tried to do well by 
 your child ; I'll ask you to do the same by mine." 
 
 She came to him and hung about his neck, riven with 
 sobs, her head on his shoulder. 
 
 " O Ern ! " she cried. " And is that your last word 
 to me ? " 
 
 She lifted anguished eyes to him and clung to him. 
 260 
 
THE STATION 261 
 
 " I love them all just the same, only we been through 
 so much together, she and me. That's where it is." 
 
 His arms were about her and he was stroking her. 
 
 " I knaw that then," he said, husky himself. 
 
 " See, they got you and each other and all the world/' 
 Ruth continued. " Little Alice got nobody only her mother." 
 
 " And me," said Ernie. 
 
 She steadied and drew her hand across rain-blurred 
 eyes. 
 
 " Ern," she said, deeply. " I do thank you for all your 
 lovin kindness to that child. I've never forgot that all 
 through whatever it seemed." 
 
 " She's mine just as well as yours," he answered, smiling 
 and uncertain. " Always has been. Always will be." 
 
 She pressed her lips on his with a passion that amazed 
 him. 
 
 Then he took the boy from the cot and rocked him. 
 The tears poured down his face. This, then, was War ! 
 All his light-heartedness, his detachment, had gone. He 
 was a husband and a father torn brutally away from the 
 warmth and tenderness of the home that was so dear to 
 him, to be tossed into the arena among wild beasts who not 
 long since had been men just like himself, and would be men 
 still but for the evil power of their masters to do by them 
 as his masters had done by him. Then he put the child 
 back and turned to say good-bye to Ruth. 
 
 The passionate wife of a few minutes since had changed 
 now into the mother parting from her schoolboy. She took 
 him to her heart and hugged him. 
 
 " You'll be back before you know," she told him, cooing, 
 comforting, laughing through her tears. " They all say it'll 
 be over soon, whatever else. A great war like this ca'an't 
 go on. Too much of it, like." 
 
 " Please God, so," said Ernie. " It's going to be the 
 beginning of a new life for me for you for all of us, as 
 Joe says. . . . God keep you till we meet again." 
 
262 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Then he walked swiftly down the street with swimming 
 eyes. 
 
 The neighbours, who were all fond of Ern, stood in their 
 doors and watched him solemnly. 
 
 He was going into IT. 
 
 Like as not they would never see him again. 
 
 Many of the women had handkerchieves to their lips, 
 as they watched, and over the handkerchieves their eyes 
 showed awed. Some turned away, hands to their hearts. 
 Others munched their aprons and wept. A mysterious 
 rumour in the deeps of them warned them of the horror 
 that had him and them and the world in its grip. 
 
 They could not understand, but they could feel. 
 
 And this working man with the uncertain mouth and 
 blurred eyes this man whose walk, whose speech, whose 
 coal-grimed face, and the smell even of his tarry clothes, 
 was so familiar to them was the symbol of it all. 
 
 A big navvy came sheepishly out of the last house in 
 the row and stopped him. It was the man who had 
 insulted Ernie in the Star six months before. 
 
 " I ask your pardon, Ern/' he said. " I didn't mean 
 what I said." 
 
 Ern shook hands. Years before the two had been at 
 school together under Mr. Pigott. 
 
 " It wasn't you, Reube," he said. " I knaw who spread 
 the dung you rolled in." 
 
 " I shan't be caught again," replied the other. " That's 
 a sure thing." 
 
 Ern jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 
 
 " Keep an eye to her ! " he whispered. 
 
 " You may lay to it," the big man answered. 
 
 At the corner a young girl of perhaps fifteen ran out 
 suddenly, flung herself into his arms, kissed him, with blind 
 face lifted to the sky, and was gone again. 
 
 At the bottom of Borough Lane a troop of Boy-Scouts 
 in slouch hats, knickers, and with staves, drawn up in order, 
 
THE STATION 263 
 
 saluted. A tiny boy in his mother's arms blew him shy 
 kisses. Just outside the yard of the Transport Company 
 his mates, who had been waiting him, came out and shook 
 him by the hand. Most were very quiet. As he passed on 
 the man among them he disliked most called for three cheers. 
 A ragged noise was raised behind him. 
 
 At the Star corner a beery patriot, wearing the South 
 African medals, mug to his lips, hailed him. 
 
 " Gor bless the Hammer-men ! " he cried. " Gor bless 
 the old ridgiment I " and tried to lure Ernie into the 
 familiar bar-parlour. 
 
 " Not me, thank ye ! " cried Ernie stoutly. " This 
 ain't a beano, my boy ! This is War ! " 
 
 As he rounded the corner he glanced up at the sturdy 
 old church with its tiny extinguisher spire, standing on the 
 Kneb behind him, four-square to the centuries, the symbol 
 of the rough and ready England which at that moment was 
 passing away, with its glories and its shames, into the limbo 
 of history. 
 
 At the station all that was most representative in 
 Beachbourne had gathered to see the reservists off. 
 
 The Mayor was there in his chain of office ; the Church 
 Militant in the person of the Archdeacon ; Mr. Glynde, the 
 senior member for Beachbourne, middle-aged, swarthy, his 
 hair already white, making a marked contrast to his 
 junior colleague, the fair-haired young giant, talking to 
 the Archdeacon. 
 
 The old gentleman looked ghastly ; his face colourless 
 save for the shadows of death which emphasised his pallor. 
 Then he saw Bobby Chislehurst busy among the departing 
 soldiers, and beckoned him austerely. 
 
 " I thought you were a pacifist, Chislehurst ! " he said, 
 his smile more kindly and less histrionic than usual. 
 
264 ONE WOMAN 
 
 "So I am, sir/' answered Bobby, brightly. " But 
 there are several of our men from the Moot going off. It's 
 not their fault they've got to go, poor beggars ! " 
 
 " Their fault ! " cried the Archdeacon. " It's their 
 privilege/' He added less harshly, " We must all stand by 
 the country now, Chislehurst." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Bobby. " I shan't give the show 
 away," and he bustled off. 
 
 Then the Colonel stalked up. 
 
 " Well, Archdeacon, what d'you make of it all ? " he 
 asked, curious as a child to gather impressions. 
 
 The Archdeacon drew himself up. 
 
 " Just retribution," he answered in voice that seemed 
 to march. " If a nation will go a- whoring after false gods 
 in the wilderness what can you expect ? Gahd does not 
 forget." 
 
 The Colonel listened blankly, his long neck elongated 
 like a questing schoolboy. 
 
 " What you mean ? " he asked. 
 
 " Welsh Disestablishment Bill," the other answered 
 curtly. 
 
 Mr. Trupp now entered the station, and the Colonel, 
 who though quiet outwardly, was in a condition of intense 
 spiritual exaltation that made him restless as dough in which 
 the yeast is working, joined his pal. He had cause for his 
 emotion. The Cabinet had stood. The country had closed 
 its ranks in a way that was little short of a miracle. All 
 men of all parties had rallied to the flag. In Dublin the Irish 
 mob which had provoked the King's Own Scottish Borderers 
 to bloody retaliation, had turned out and cheered the 
 battalion as it marched down to the transports for 
 embarkation. 
 
 " Well, we're roused at last," said the Colonel, as he 
 looked round on that humming scene. 
 
 " Yes," answered Mr. Trupp. " It's taken a bash in 
 the face to do it though." 
 
THE STATION 265 
 
 "Should be interesting/' commented the Colonel, hiding 
 his emotion behind an air of detachment. " An undisci- 
 plined horde of men who believe themselves to be free 
 against a disciplined mass of slaves." 
 
 Just then Mr. Pigott approached. The old Noncon- 
 formist had about him the air of a boy coming up to the desk 
 to take his punishment. He was at once austere and 
 chastened. 
 
 " Well, Colonel/' he said. " You were right." 
 
 The Colonel took the other's hand warmly. 
 
 " Not a bit of it ! " he cried. " That's the one blessed 
 thing about the whole situation. We've all been wrong. 
 I believed in the German menace till a month or two 
 ago. And then ... ." 
 
 " That's it," said Mr. Trupp. " We must all swing 
 together, and a good job too. If there's any hanging done 
 Carson and Bonar Law, Asquith and Haldane, Ramsay 
 Macdonald and Snowden ought to grace the same gallows 
 seems to me. And when we've hanged our leaders for 
 letting us in we must hang ourselves for allowing them to 
 let us in." 
 
 The old surgeon had turned an awkward corner with the 
 gruff tact peculiar to him ; and Mr. Pigott at least was 
 grateful to him. 
 
 " You've heard Carson's committed suicide ? " he said. 
 " Shot himself this morning on St. Stephen's Green." 
 
 " Not a bit of it," replied the Colonel. " He's far too 
 busy holding up recruiting in Ulster while he haggles for 
 his terms, to do anything so patriotic." 
 
 " Besides why should he ? " interposed a harsh and jeer- 
 ing voice. "Treason's all right if you're rich and powerful. 
 Jim Larkin got six months a year ago for sedition 
 and inciting to violence. What'll these chaps get for 
 provoking the greatest war that ever was or will be ? 
 I'll tell ye, Fat jobs. Where'll they be at the end of 
 the war ? under the sod alongside the millions of 
 
266 ONE WOMAN 
 
 innocent men who've had to pay the price of their 
 mistakes ? No fear ! They'll be boolgin money, oozin 
 smiles, fat with power, and big-bellied wi feedin on the 
 carcases of better men." 
 
 It was Joe Burt who had come up with Mr. Geddes. 
 
 The Colonel, giving his shoulder to the engineeer, turned 
 to the tall minister, who was stiff, a little self-conscious, 
 and very grave. 
 
 Possessed of a far deeper mind than Mr. Pigott, Mr. 
 Geddes was still haunted by doubts. Were we wholly in 
 the right ? 
 
 The Colonel, intuitive as a girl, recognised the other's 
 distress, and guessed the cause of it. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Geddes," he said gently. " Evil has triumphed 
 for the moment at least." 
 
 " Yes," replied the other. " Liebknecht's shot, they 
 say." 
 
 " All honour to him ! " said the Colonel. " He was the 
 one man of the lot who stood to his guns when the pinch 
 came. All the rest of the Social Democrats stampeded 
 at the first shot." 
 
 Joe Burt edged up again. Like Mr. Pigott he had made 
 his decision irrevocably and far sooner than the old Non- 
 conformist ; but there was a vengeful background still 
 to his thoughts. He refused to forget. 
 
 " I hear the Generals are in uproarious spirits, " he said. 
 
 " One of them," answered the Colonel quietly. 
 
 "They won't pay the price," continued Joe. "They'll 
 make trust them. There's the man they'll leave to take 
 the punishment they've brought on the coontry." He 
 nodded to Ernie who was busy with some mates extract- 
 ing chocolates from a penny-in-the-slot-machine. 
 
 The Colonel's eye glittered. He had spied Stanley 
 Bessemere doing, indeed over-doing, the hearty amongst 
 the men by the barrier. 
 
 " After all it's nothing to what we owe our friend there 
 
THE STATION 267 
 
 and the politicians/' he said brightly, and made towards 
 his victim, with an almost mincing motion. 
 
 Since the declaration of war his solitary relief from 
 intolerable anxieties had been baiting the junior member 
 for the Borough. He left him no peace, hanging like a 
 gadfly on his flank. At the club, in the street, on committees 
 at the Town-hall there rose up to haunt the young man this 
 inexorable spectre with the death's head, the courteous 
 voice, and the glittering smile. 
 
 "Ah, Bessemere ! " he said gently. "Here still! I 
 heard you had enlisted, you and Smith/' 
 
 The other broke away and, seeing Ernie close by, shook 
 hands with him. The move was unfortunately countered 
 by Joe Burt. 
 
 " You've shook 'ands with Mr. Caspar five times since 
 I've been here," he remarked tartly. " Can't you give 
 somebody else a turn now ? " 
 
 Just then, mercifully, Mr. Trupp rolled up, coughing. 
 
 Summer or winter made no difference to the great man's 
 cold, which was always with him, and lovingly cherished ; 
 but he liked to mark the change between the two seasons 
 by exchanging the long woollen muffler of winter for a silken 
 wrapper in which he swaddled his neck in the summer 
 months. 
 
 " Good luck, Ernie," he said in his brief way, his eyes 
 shrewd and sweet behind his pince-nez. 
 
 "Keep an eye to Ruth, won't you, sir? "said Ernie 
 in his most confidential manner. 
 
 " We'll do our best," replied the other hoarsely. " Here's 
 Mr. Pigott. Quite a jingo these days." 
 
 "Who isn't?" the old school-master answered with an 
 attempt at the familiar truculence. " Well, you look like it, 
 Ern." He added almost with admiration. "Quite a 
 changed man." 
 
 Then the Colonel joined the little group. 
 
268 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Coming along sir ? " asked Ernie keenly. 
 
 "No luck/' replied the other gloomily. " Too old at 
 sixty. . . What about that brother of yours ? " 
 
 Ern's face darkened. 
 
 "Ah, I ain't seen him," he said. 
 
 " There he is by the bookstall," muttered Mr. Pigott. 
 " Envying the men who are going to fight his battles ! I 
 know him." 
 
 Alf , indeed, who had clearly recovered from the first shock 
 of war, was very much to the fore, modest, fervent, the 
 unassuming patriot. Now he approached his brother 
 with a mixture of wariness and manly frankness. 
 
 " Will you shake 'ands, Ernest ? " he asked. 
 
 " I willwctf," said Ern. " It was you who done the dirty 
 on our Lai." 
 
 " Never ! " cried Alf and came a step closer. " I'll tell 
 you who it were." He nodded stealthily in the direction 
 of Joe. " That's the chap that's out to spoil your home. 
 Wrecker I call him. I tell you what, Ern," he whispered. 
 " I'll watch out against him for you while you are away 
 so you don't suffer." 
 
 " I thank you," said Ern, unmoved. 
 
 Just then Joe came up, took him by the arm, and 
 bustled him off to the departure platform. 
 
 " You'll be late else, ma lad," said the engineer. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 IN THE EVENING 
 
 THE Archdeacon and his sidesman walked back to Old 
 Town from the station together. 
 
 Mr. Trupp and Mr. Pigott followed behind. 
 
 " The Archdeacon lags a bit," said the former. 
 
 " Yes," answered the other. " And I don't wonder. 
 This war'll be the end of him yet. You heard about last 
 night ? " 
 
 The veteran had sallied out at midnight with an electric 
 torch and the Reverend Spink to deal with spies who had 
 been signalling from the top of the Downs. 
 
 Unhappily the stalker had himself been stalked by 
 another patriot bent on the same errand. The two old 
 gentlemen had arrested each other by the dew-pond on 
 Warren Hill ; and report had it that words and worse 
 had passed between the two. In the small hours of the 
 morning Anne Caspar, hearing voices, had risen and seen 
 from her window the Archdeacon stalking down the road, 
 dusty, draggled, his curate trotting with sullen barks at 
 the heels of his chief. The Archdeacon had no prisoner, 
 but he had lumbago, a scratch or two, and an indignant 
 sense that his curate had proved both disloyal and inem- 
 cient. The two had parted at the Rectory gate wrathfully, 
 the Reverend Spink offering his resignation. 
 
 Opposite his garage in the Golfs, Alf now said goodbye 
 to his Rector, and crossed the road with an almost aggres- 
 sively sprightly air. Mr. Trupp noticed it. 
 
 " What about him and his Touring Syndicate ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " He's all right," answered Mr. Pigott. " Trust him ' 
 
 269 
 
270 ONE WOMAN 
 
 for that. Artful isn't in it with Alf . Called his drivers to- 
 gether on the declaration of war, and made em a speech. 
 Said he knew where they wanted to be where he wanted 
 to be himself : in the fighting line. He'd be the last to 
 stand between them and their duty. He wouldn't keep 
 them to their contract. The Motor Transport was crying 
 for them five bob a day and glory galore. All he could 
 do was to say God bless you and wish he could go himself 
 only his responsibilities . . ." 
 
 Mr. Trupp grinned. 
 
 " Did they swallow it down ? " he asked. 
 
 " Like best butter/ 1 said Mr. Pigott. " He's got the 
 tongue. He twisted em. Parliament's the place for 
 Alf." 
 
 " Ah ! " committed the other. " We're only beginning. 
 This war'll find us all out too before we're through." . . . 
 
 Alf turned into his yard. 
 
 A little group of broken down old men were waiting 
 him there. 
 
 " Who are you ? " he asked fiercely. " What you 
 want ? " 
 
 " We've come on behalf of the cleaners, sir," said the 
 spokesman, in the uncertain voice of the half-starved. 
 " What about us ? The Army don't want us." 
 
 The group tittered a feeble deprecatory titter. 
 
 " H' every man for himself in these days ! " cried Alf, 
 brief and brisk. " I'm not the Charity Organisation 
 Society." 
 
 The old man, a-quaver in voice and body, doddered 
 forward, touching his hat. Undersized and shrunken 
 through starvation during infancy, and brutal usage 
 throughout his growing years, he was an example of the 
 great principle we Christians have enforced and main- 
 tained throughout the centuries: that the world's hardest 
 work should be done by the weakest. Tip, as he was called, 
 had been a coal-porter till at fifty-five he dislocated his 
 
IN THE EVENING 271 
 
 shoulder shifting loads too heavy for him. Thereafter 
 he was partially disabled, a casualty of the Industrial 
 War, and to be treated as such. 
 
 " Would you give us a week's money or notice, sir ? " 
 he said now in his shaking voice. 
 
 " Did I take you on by the week ? " asked Alf 
 ferociously. 
 
 " No, sir ; by the day/' 
 
 " Then what ye talking about ? Ain't I paid you up ? " 
 
 " You paid us up, sir. Only we got to live." 
 
 " Very well then. There's the House at the top of the 
 hill for such as you. Ain't that good enough ? This is a 
 Christian country, this is." 
 
 Alf was half-way up the steps to his office, and he pointed 
 in the direction of the Work-house. 
 
 A curious tawny glow lit the old man's eyes. His 
 lips closed over his gums. 
 
 " Bloody Bastille," he muttered. 
 
 Alf heard him and ran down the steps. He was still 
 with the stillness of the born bully. 
 
 " None of that now," he said quietly. " No filthy 
 language in my yard ! And no loiterin eether ! Off you 
 go or I send for the police. The country's got something 
 better to think of than you and your likes, I reckon, just 
 now." 
 
 He stood in the gate of the yard with the cold domineer- 
 ing air of the warder in charge of convicts. 
 
 The cleaners shambled away like a herd of maingy 
 donkeys past work and turned out on waste land to die at 
 their leisure. 
 
 They were broken men all, old and infirm, drawn from 
 the dregs of that Reserve of Labour on which the capitalist 
 system has been built. They belonged to no Union ; 
 they were incapable of organisation and therefore of defence 
 against the predatory class . . . 
 
 " We got no bloody country, men like us ain't." 
 
272 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " Nor no bloody Christ." 
 
 " The rich got Him too." 
 
 " Same as they got everythink else . . . 
 
 The last of them gone, Alf skipped up the steps into his 
 office. He was not afraid of them, was not even depressed 
 by their uncalled-for consideration of themselves. 
 
 Indeed he was extraordinarily uplifted. 
 
 His great scheme had, it is true, been brought low 
 through no omission on his part ; but he had got out 
 with a squeeze after a dreadful period of panic fury, and 
 now experienced the lyrical exhilaration of the man who 
 has escaped by his own exertions from sudden unexpected 
 death. 
 
 He had unloaded his drivers on the Army ; and sold his 
 buses to the Government. The only big creditor was 
 Captain Royal, and Alf could afford to laugh at him. 
 Besides Captain Royal would be off to the war and might 
 not come back. Moreover, unless he was much mistaken, 
 the war meant all manner of chances of which the man 
 with his eyes open would take full advantage : world 
 convulsions always did. 
 
 Meanwhile he had the garages on which he could re- 
 build his original edifice at any moment, add to it, alter it 
 as opportunity offered. The war would not last for ever ; 
 but it would un-make businesses and devour men some 
 of them his rivals. While they were away at the Front 
 he would be quietly, ceaselessly strengthening his position 
 at home. And when peace came, as it must some day, 
 he would be ready to reap where he had sown in enter- 
 prise and industry. 
 
 On his way up to Old Town that evening he met the 
 Reverend Spink and asked him how long the Franco- 
 Prussian war had lasted. 
 
 The curate still had the ruffled and resentful air of a 
 fighting cockerel who has a grievance against the referee. 
 Lady Augusta, indeed, had passed a busy morning smoothing 
 
IN THE EVENING 273 
 
 his plumage and inducing him to withdraw his resigna- 
 tion. His meeting with Alf served as further balm to his 
 wounded spirit ; for above all else the Reverend Spink 
 loved to be appealed to as a scholar. 
 
 Now he answered Alf with a learned frown, 
 
 " Six months. It began at the same date as this. 
 They were in Paris by January." 
 
 " As long as that ! " said Alf surprised. " Looks as 
 if they'd be quicker this time ! " 
 
 A thought struck him. He turned down Borough 
 Lane, and went to call on Ruth. 
 
 She was at home, alone in the kitchen, her babes in 
 bed. He did not enter, but stood in the door awhile 
 before she was aware of him, watching her with sugary 
 and secretive smile. 
 
 Then he chirped. 
 
 She looked up, saw him ; and the light faded out of 
 her face. 
 
 " So Ern's gone to the wars," he said. " You'll be 
 a bit lonely like o nights, the evenings drawing in and all. 
 Say, I might drop in on you when I got the time. I'm 
 not so busy, as I was. Likely I'll be goin back to drive 
 for Mr. Trupp now." 
 
 She rose, formidable as a lioness at bay in the mouth 
 of her cave. 
 
 " Out of it ! " she ordered, and flung an imperious 
 hand towards the door. 
 
 Alf fled incontinently. 
 
 A navvy, who had been watching him from a door 
 opposite, shouldered heavily across the street to meet him. 
 He was a very big man with a very small head, dressed 
 in corduroys ; of the type you still meet in the pages of 
 Punch but seldom in real life. His hands were deep in 
 his pockets, and he said quietly without so much as remov 
 ing his pipe. 
 
 " Stow the bloody truck then ! " 
 
274 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Alf paused, astonished. Then he thought the other 
 must have mistaken his man in the dusk. 
 
 " Here ! d'you know who you're talkin to ? " he asked. 
 
 The navvy showed himself quite undisturbed. 
 
 " Oughter," he said, " seein you and me was dragg'd oop 
 same school togedder along o Mr. Pigott back yarnderr. 
 You're Alf Caspar, and I be Reuben Deadman. There's 
 an old saying these paarts you may have heard When 
 there isn't a Deadman in Lewes Gaol you may knaw the end 
 o't world's at hand. I've not been in maself, not yet. 
 When I goos I'll goo for to swing for you for old times 
 sake ; let alone the dirty dish you done Old Tip and them 
 this arternoon." 
 
 Alf walked up the hill, breathing heavily and with 
 mottled face. 
 
 The bubble of his exaltation had burst. He felt a 
 curious sinking away within him, as though he were walking 
 on cold damp clouds which were letting him through. 
 
 The war was changing things already, and not to his 
 liking. 
 
 Three weeks ago who'd have talked to the Managing 
 Director of Caspar's Syndicate like that ? 
 
 Brooding on his troubles, he ran into Joe Burt who was 
 coming swiftly round the corner of Borough Lane, brooding 
 too. 
 
 Alf darted nimbly back. Joe stood with lowered head, 
 glaring at his enemy. Then he thought better of it and 
 turned on his way. 
 
 Alf, standing in the middle of the road with jeering 
 eyes, called after him furtively. 
 
 " Want her all to yourself, don't you ? " 
 
 Joe marched on unheeding to the cottage Alf had 
 just left. 
 
 Ruth must have been awaiting him : for he entered 
 at once without knocking. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 RUTH FACES THE STORM 
 
 THAT night as the Colonel sat on the loggia chewing his 
 pipe, long after Mrs. Lewknor had retired, he was aware 
 of a pillar of blackness, erect against the dull sea and 
 star-lit sky, on the edge of the cliff, at the very spot where 
 he had seen it on the night of the declaration of war. 
 
 Electric torch in hand, he stole out on the pair. Oblivious 
 of all things save each other, they remained locked in each 
 other's arms. He flashed the torch full in their faces. 
 
 " O, Joe ! " came a familiar voice. 
 
 The Colonel was taken a-back. 
 
 " That you, Anne ? " he muttered. 
 
 " Yes, sir," his parlour-maid answered. " Me and 
 my Joe. He come up to say goodbye. Joining up to- 
 morrow, he is." 
 
 The Colonel mumbled something about spies, and 
 apologised. 
 
 " No harm done, sir/' laughed Anne, quietly. " It's 
 nothing to some of them. Turn their search-light full 
 glare on you just when you don't want, and never a by- 
 your-leave same as they done war-night ! // that's war, I 
 says to Joe, better ha done with it afore you begin, I says." 
 
 The Colonel retired indoors, doubly humiliated : he 
 had made a fool of himself before his own parlour-maid, 
 and in his mind he had gravely wronged Ruth Caspar. 
 
 Next day he started off for Old Town to find out if there 
 was any way by which he could make amends to his own 
 conscience and, unknown to her, to the woman he had 
 maligned. 
 
 She met him with kind eyes, a little wistful. 
 
 " We're all friends now, sir," she said, as she shook 
 hands. " Got to be, I reckon." 
 
276 ONE WOMAN 
 
 If it is true, as is said to-day, that old men make wars 
 and young men pay for them, it is also true that the mothers, 
 wives, sisters, and sweethearts of the young men bear 
 their share of the burthen. 
 
 Ruth was left with four children and a debt. 
 
 She faced the situation as hundreds of thousands of 
 women up and down Europe in like case were doing at that 
 moment quiet, courageous, uncomplaining as an animal 
 under the blows that Life, the inexplicable, rained upon her. 
 One thought constantly recurred to her. In her first 
 tragedy she had stood alone against the world. Now there 
 were millions undergoing the same experience. And she 
 derived from that thought comfort denied to others. 
 
 There were no complications about her economic 
 situation. 
 
 That at least was very simple. 
 
 She owed several weeks' rent, had debts outstanding 
 to the tune of several shillings mostly boots for the 
 children ; and a little cash in coppers in hand. 
 
 Two nights after Ernie's departure, Alf came round 
 for his back-rent. He came stealthily, Ruth noticed ; 
 and she knew why. Public opinion in the Moot, which 
 might at any moment find explosive self-expression through 
 the fists of Reuben Deadman, was against him. It was 
 against all landlords. Ern moreover was still a hero in 
 the eyes of the Moot and would remain so for several days 
 yet ; and Ruth received the consideration due to the wife 
 of such. 
 
 Alf was dogged, with downcast eyes. There was no 
 nonsense, no persiflage about him. He went straight to 
 the point. 
 
 " I come for my money/' he said. 
 
 Ruth rallied him maliciously. 
 
 " Money ! " she cried, feigning surprise. " I thart it 
 was accommodation you was a'ter." 
 
 " And I mean to have it," Alf continued sullenly. 
 
RUTH FACES THE STORM 277 
 
 " Even a landlord's got to live these times. I got to have 
 it or you got to go. That's straight." 
 
 Ruth had her back to the wall. 
 
 " Ah, you must have that out with the Government/' 
 she said coolly. " It's got nothing to do with me." 
 
 " Government ! " cried Alf sharply. " What's the 
 Government got to do with it." 
 
 " They're passin some law to protect the women and 
 children of them that's joined up," Ruth answered. 
 
 " Who said so ? " 
 
 " The Colonel." 
 
 " Anyway it's not passed yet." 
 
 "No," retorted Ruth. "So you'd best wait till it is. 
 Make you look a bit funny like to turn me out, and put 
 some one else in, and then have to turn them out and put 
 me back again, say in a fortnight, and all out o your own 
 pocket. Not to talk o the bit of feeling, and them and 
 me taking damages off o you as like as not, I should say." 
 
 That evening Ruth went up to see Mr. Pigott. 
 
 The Manager said he would pay her half Ern's wages while 
 the war lasted ; and he paid her the first instalment then 
 and there. 
 
 " Will the Government do anything for the women and 
 children sir ? " she asked. 
 
 Mr. Pigott shook his grizzled head. 
 
 As the years went by he had an always diminishing 
 faith in the power and will of Governments to right wrongs. 
 
 " The old chapel's the thing," he would say. 
 
 Ruth put the same question to Mr. Trupp whom she 
 met on her way home to the Moot. 
 
 " They will if they're made to," the doctor answered, 
 and as he saw the young woman's face fall, he added more 
 sympathetically, " They're trying to do something locally. 
 I don't know what '11 come of it. Keep in touch with 
 Mrs. Trupp. She'll let you know. I believe there's to be 
 a meeting at the Town Hall." 
 
2 ;8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 He rolled on, grumbling and grousing to himself. Call 
 ourselves a civilised country, and leave the women and 
 children to take their luck ! Chaos as usual ! . . . 
 Chaos backed and justified by cant ! . . . Would 
 cant organise Society ? . . . Would cant feed the 
 women and children ? . . . Would cant take the 
 place of Scientific Method ? . . . 
 
 Ruth went home with her eleven shillings and sixpence 
 and an aching heart, to find that little Alice had already 
 arranged her brood in their bibs around the tea-table, and 
 was only waiting for mother to come and tilt the kettle 
 which she might not touch. 
 
 The other fledgelings hammered noisily on the table 
 with their spoons. 
 
 " My dears," she said, as she went round the table, 
 kissing the rosy faces uplifted to hers. 
 
 " What is it, Mum ? " asked little Alice, who had 
 something of her mother's quick sympathy and power of 
 intuition. " Is daddy shotted at the war ? " 
 
 " Not yet, my pretty," her mother answered. " It's only 
 nothing you can understand. Now help me get the tea/' 
 
 Next day brought a lawyer's letter giving her notice 
 to quit. 
 
 That evening Ruth took the letter up to the Manor-house. 
 
 The maid told her Mr. and Mrs. Trupp had just started 
 off to a meeting at the Town Hall. 
 
 " Something to do with the women and children, I 
 believe, ' ' she added. ' ' Prince o Wales's Fund or something. ' ' 
 
 Ruth turned down the steps disconsolate. 
 
 Just then she saw Joe Burt getting off the motor-bus 
 opposite the Star. She had not seen him since he had come 
 up on the evening of Ern's departure to give her the latest 
 news of her husband. Now he came striding towards her, 
 blowing into her life with the vigour of Kingsley's wild 
 Nor'-easter. At the moment the politician was on top 
 she noted it with thankful heart. 
 
RUTH FACES THE STORM 279 
 
 " Coom on, ma lass ! " he said. " You're the very 
 one I'm after. We want you. We want em all. You 
 got to coom along o me to this meeting." 
 
 " But I aren't got my hat, Joe I " pleaded Ruth, 
 amused yet deprecating. 
 
 The engineer would take no excuses. 
 
 " Your children are worth more'n your hat, I reck'n, ' 
 he said. " Coom on ! Coom on ! No time to be lost ! " 
 
 And in a moment she was walking briskly at his side 
 down the hill up which he had just come. 
 
 The strength, the resolution, the certainty of her com- 
 panion swept all her clouds away and renewed her faith. 
 
 She told him of the notice she had received. 
 
 " All the better," he said. " Another trump for us to 
 play. Don't you worrit. The Labour Party in Parlia- 
 ment's disappointed all its supporters so far, but it's going 
 to justify itself at last. One thing. They can't trample 
 on us this time, the Fats canna. We're too well organised." 
 
 They walked down the hill together. 
 
 At the stile opposite the Drill Hall where six months 
 before she had rescued Ernie, drenched and dripping, from 
 the police, they turned off into Saffrons Croft in the direction 
 of the Town Hall. 
 
 Joe, as he trod the grass beneath his feet, became 
 sombre, silent, The woman sweeping along at his side, 
 her shawl about her head, felt his change of mood. The 
 Other was coming to the top again the One she feared. 
 She was right. The Other it was who spoke surlily 
 and growling, out of his deeps, like the voice of a yard- 
 dog from his kennel. 
 
 " Well, what's it going to be ? " 
 
 Her heart galloped but she met him gaily. 
 
 " What you mean, Joe ? " 
 
 " You know what I mean," bearing down on her 
 remorselessly. 
 
 She made a half halt. 
 
2 8o ONE WOMAN 
 
 "O Joe!" 
 
 " Aye, you may O Joe me ! That wunna better it." 
 
 " And after what you promised him solemn that night 
 and all." 
 
 He answered moodily. 
 
 " He forced me to it. Took advantage. Shouldn't 
 ha done it. Springin it on me without a word. That's 
 not the game." 
 
 Ruth turned on him. 
 
 " You're the one to talk, aren't you ? " she said, 
 flashing the corner of an eye at him. " Playing the game 
 prarper, you are ? " 
 
 He barged ahead, sullen as a bull and as obstinate. 
 
 " A don't know ; and A don't care. A know what A 
 want and A know A'm going to get it." 
 
 She met him light as a rapier thrust. 
 
 " I thart you was a man, Joe." 
 
 " Better'n a no-man anyway." 
 
 She stopped dead and faced him. 
 
 " Where's my no-man now then ? " she cried. " And 
 where are you ? " 
 
 That time she had planted her dart home. He glared 
 at her savage, sullen, and with lowered head. 
 
 " Thou doesna say A'm a coward ? " 
 
 Slowly she answered, 
 
 " I'm none so sure. Ern's my soldier, Ern is." 
 
 He gripped her arm. 
 
 " I'll go home," she said, curt as the cut of a whip. 
 
 He relaxed. 
 
 " Nay," he answered. " If we're to fight for your 
 children yo mun help." 
 
 She threw off his arm with a gesture of easy dignity. 
 Then they walked on again together down Saffrons Road 
 towards the Town Hall. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 MRS. LEWKNOR 
 
 THE Town Hall was crowded. 
 
 The Mayor, who was in the chair, had spoken on behalf 
 of the Prince of Wales's Fund and announced that sub- 
 scriptions would be received by the Town Clerk. 
 
 Thereafter an indescribable orgie of patriotism had 
 taken place. Red-necked men outbid fat women. The 
 bids mounted ; the bidders grew fiercer ; the cheers waxed. 
 And all the while a little group of Trade Unionists at the 
 back of the hall kept up a dismal chaunt 
 
 We don't want charity, 
 We won't have charity. 
 
 Then a little dapper figure in the blue of a chauffeur 
 rose in the body of the hall. 
 
 "I'm only a workin chauffeur/' he said, wagging his 
 big, head, " but I got a conscience, and I got a country. 
 And I'm not ashamed of em eether. I can't do much 
 bein only a worker as you might say. But I can do me 
 bit. Put me down for fifty guineas, please, Mr. Town- 
 clerk." 
 
 He sat down modestly amidst loud applause. 
 
 " Who's that ? " whispered the Colonel on the platform. 
 
 " Trupp's chauffeur," the Archdeacon, who had a 
 black patch over his eye, answered with a swagger 
 " my sidesman, Alfred Caspar. Not so bad for a working- 
 man ? " He cackled hilariously. 
 
 Then a voice from Lancashire, resonant and jarring, 
 came burring across the hall. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman, are you aware that Alfred Caspar 
 is turning his sister-in-law out of his house with four 
 children." 
 
 Alf leapt to his feet. 
 
 381 
 
282 ONE WOMAN 
 
 " It's a lie !" he cried. 
 
 A big young woman sitting just in front of Joe rose 
 on subdued wings. She was bare-headed, be-shawled, 
 a dark Madonna of English village-life. 
 
 " Yes, you are, All," she said, and sat down quietly 
 as she had risen. 
 
 There was a dramatic silence. Then the Archdeacon 
 started to his feet and pointed with accusing claw like a 
 witch-doctor smelling out a victim. 
 
 " I know that woman ! " he cawed raucously. 
 
 A lady sitting in the front row just under the platform 
 rose. 
 
 " So do I," she said. 
 
 It was Mrs. Trupp, and her voice, still and pure, fell 
 on the heated air like a drop of delicious rain. 
 
 She sat down again. 
 
 The Archdeacon too had resumed his seat, very high and 
 mighty ; and Bobby Chislehurst was whispering in his 
 ear from behind. 
 
 The Colonel had risen now, calm and courteous as always, 
 in the suppressed excitement. 
 
 " Am I not right in thinking that Mrs. Caspar is the 
 wife of an old Hammer-man who joined up at once on the 
 declaration of war and is at this moment somewhere in 
 France fighting our battles for us ? " 
 
 The question was greeted with a storm of applause from 
 the back of the hall. 
 
 " Good old Colonel ! " some one called. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman, d'you mean to accept that man's 
 cheque ? " shouted Joe. " Yes or no ? " 
 
 In the uproar that followed, Alf roSe again, white and 
 leering. 
 
 " I'd not have spoken if I'd known I was to be set upon 
 like this afore em all for offering a bit of help to me 
 country. As to my character and that, I believe I'm pretty 
 well beknown for a patriot in Beachbourne." 
 
MRS. LEWKNOR 283 
 
 " As to patriotism, old cock," called Joe, " didn't you 
 sack your cleaners without notice on the declaration of 
 war? " 
 
 " No, I didn't then ! " shouted Alf with the exaggerated 
 ferocity of the man who knows his only chance is to pose 
 as righteously indignant. 
 
 The retort was greeted with a howl of Tip I There 
 was a movement at the back of the hall ; and suddenly 
 an old man was lifted on the shoulders of the Trade 
 Unionists there. Yellow, fang-less, creased, he looked, 
 poised on high above the crowd against the white back- 
 ground of wall, something between a mummy and a monkey. 
 As always he wore no tie ; but he had donned a collar for 
 the occasion, and this had sprung open and made two 
 dingy ass-like ears on either side of his head. 
 
 " Did he sack you, Tip ? " called Joe. 
 
 " Yes, he did/ 1 came the quivering old voice. " Turned 
 us off at a day. Told us to go to the Bastille ; and said 
 he'd put the police on us." 
 
 The tremulous old voice made people turn their heads. 
 They saw the strange figure lifted above them. Some 
 tittered. The ripple of titters enraged the men at the 
 back of the hall. 
 
 " See what you've made of him ! " thundered Joe. 
 " And then jeer ! . . . Shame ! " 
 
 " Shame ! " screamed a bitter man. " Do the Fats 
 know shame ? " 
 
 " Some of em do," said a quiet voice. 
 
 It was true too. Mrs. Trupp was looking pale and 
 miserable in the front-row, so was the Colonel on the 
 platform, Bobby Chislehurst and others. The titterers, 
 indeed, howled into silence by the storm of indignation 
 their action had aroused, wore themselves the accusing 
 air of those who hope thereby to fix the blame for their 
 mistake on others. 
 
 In the silence a baggy old gentleman rose in the body 
 
284 ONE WOMAN 
 
 of the hall, slewed round with difficulty, and mooned 
 above his spectacles at the strange idol seated on men's 
 shoulders behind him. 
 
 " And He was lifted up," he said in a musing voice 
 more to himself than to anybody else. 
 
 The phrase, audible to many, seemed to spread a silence 
 about it as a stone dropped in a calm pond creates an 
 ever-broadening ripple. 
 
 In the silence old Tip slid gently to the ground and was 
 lost once more amid the crowd of those who had raised him 
 for a brief moment into fleeting eminence. 
 
 The meeting broke up. 
 
 Outside the hall stood Mr. Trupp's car, Alf at the 
 wheel : for the old surgeon's regular chauffeur had been 
 called up. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp, coming down the steps, went up to Ruth 
 who was standing on the pavement. 
 
 " So glad you spoke up, Ruth/' she said, and pressed 
 her hand. 
 
 " Come on ! " said Mr. Trupp. " We'll give you a 
 lift home, Ruth." 
 
 Alf was looking green. The two women got in, and the 
 old surgeon followed them. He was grinning, Mrs. Trupp 
 quietly malicious, and Ruth amused. The people on the 
 pavement and streaming out of the hall saw and were 
 caught by the humour of the situation, as their eyes and 
 comments showed. 
 
 Then Colonel Lewknor made his way to the car. 
 
 " Just a word, Mrs. Caspar ! " he said. " Things are 
 squaring up. Mrs. Lewknor's taking the women and 
 children in hand. Could you come and see her one morning 
 at Under-cliif ? " 
 
 The hostel that Mrs. Lewknor had built upon the cliff 
 boomed from the start. It was full to over-flowing, winter 
 
MRS. LEWKNOR 285 
 
 and summer ; and Eton was in sight for Toby when war 
 was declared. 
 
 Then things changed apace. 
 
 Beachbourne, for at least a thousand years before 
 William the Norman landed at Pevensey on his great 
 adventure, had been looked on as the likeliest spot for 
 enemy invasion from the Continent. Frenzied parents 
 therefore wired for their children to be sent inland at 
 once ; others wrote charming letters cancelling rooms 
 taken weeks before. In ten days the house was empty ; 
 and on the eleventh the mortgagee intimated his intention 
 to fore-close. 
 
 It was a staggering blow. 
 
 The Colonel, with that uncannie cat-like intuition of 
 his she knew so well, prowled in, looked at her with kind 
 eyes, as she sat in her little room the fatal letter in her 
 hand, and went out again. 
 
 Throughout it had been her scheme, not his, her respon- 
 sibility, her success ; and now it was her failure. 
 
 Then Mr. Trupp was shown in, looking most unmilitary 
 in his uniform of a Colonel of the Royal Army Medical 
 Corps. 
 
 " It's all right," he said gruffly. " I know. Morgan 
 and Evans rang me up and told me. Unprofessional 
 perhaps, but these are funny times. I let you in. You 
 built the hostel at my request. I shall take over the 
 mortgage/' 
 
 " I couldn't let you," answered the little lady. 
 
 " You won't be asked," replied the other. " I ought 
 to have done it from the start ; but it wasn't very con- 
 venient then. It's all right now." The old man didn't 
 say that the reason it was all right was because he was 
 quietly convinced in his own mind that his boy Joe would 
 need no provision now. 
 
 Just then the Colonel entered, looking self-conscious. 
 He seemed to know all about it, as indeed he had every 
 
286 ONE WOMAN 
 
 right to do, seeing that Mr. Trupp had informed him at 
 length on the telephone half an hour before. 
 
 " You know who the mortgagee is ? " he asked. 
 
 " Who ? " said both at once. 
 
 The Colonel on tiptoe led them out into the hall, and 
 showed them through a narrow window Alf sitting at his 
 wheel, looking very funny. 
 
 " Our friend of the scene in the Town Hall yesterday/' he 
 whispered. " When I went to the bank yesterday to insure 
 the house against bombardment, the clerk looked surprised 
 and said You know it's already insured. I said Who 
 by P He turned up a ledger and showed me the name." 
 
 Mr. Trupp got into his car, wrapping himself round 
 with much circumstance. 
 
 " To Morgan and Evans," he said to Alf. 
 
 In the solicitors' office he produced his cheque-book. 
 
 " I've been seeing Mrs. Lewknor," he said. " I'll 
 pay off your client now and take over the mortgage myself." 
 
 He wrote a cheque then and there, and made it out to 
 Alfred Caspar, who was forthwith called in. 
 
 " I'm paying you off your mortgage, Alf," he said. 
 " Give me a receipt, will you ? " 
 
 Alf with the curious simplicity that often th'rew his 
 cunning into relief signed the receipt quite unabashed 
 and with evident relief. 
 
 " See, I need the money, sir," he said gravely, as he 
 wiped the pen on his sleeve. " The Syndicate's let me in 
 O, you wouldn't believe ! And I got to meet me creditors 
 somehow." 
 
 " Well, you've got the money now," answered Mr. 
 Trupp. " But I'm afraid you've made an enemy. And 
 that seems to me a bit of a pity just now." 
 
 "Colonel Lewknor?" snorted Alf. "I ain't afraid 
 o him ! " 
 
 " I don't know," said Mr. Trupp. " It's the day of 
 the soldier." 
 
MRS. LEWKNOR 287 
 
 That evening, after the day's work, Alf was summoned 
 to his employer's study. 
 
 Mrs. Trupp was leaving it as he entered. 
 
 " I've been thinking things over, Alfred," said the old 
 man. " There's no particular reason why you shouldn't 
 drive for me for the present if you like until you're wanted 
 out there. But I shall want you to destroy this." 
 
 He handed his chauffeur Ruth's notice to quit. 
 
 Alf tore the paper up without demur. 
 
 " That's all right, sir," he said cheerfully. " That was 
 a mistake. I understood the Army Service Corps was 
 taking over my garage ; and I should want a roof over 
 my head to sleep under." 
 
 He went back to his car. 
 
 Another moment, and the door of the Manor-house 
 opened. Ruth emerged briskly and gave him a bright 
 nod. 
 
 " Can't stop now, Alf," she said. " I'm off to see Mrs. 
 Lewknor. See you again later." 
 
 " That's right," Alf answered. " She's on the committee 
 for seeing to the married women ain't she? them and 
 their lawful children. Reverend Spink's on it too." 
 
 He stressed the epithet faintly. 
 
 A moment Ruth looked him austerely in the eyes. 
 Then she turned up the hill with a nod. She understood. 
 There was danger a-foot again. 
 
 The matter of the hostel settled, Mrs. Lewknor, before 
 everything an Imperialist, and not of the too common 
 platform kind, was free to serve. And she had not far to 
 look for an opening. 
 
 The Mayor summoned a meeting in his parlour to 
 consider the situation of the families of soldiers called to 
 the colours. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor was by common consent appointed 
 honorary secretary of the Association formed ; and was 
 
288 ONE WOMAN 
 
 given by her committee a fairly free discretion to meet 
 the immediate situation. 
 
 Nearly sixty, but still active as a cat, she set to work 
 with a will. 
 
 Her sitting room at Undercliff she turned into an office. 
 Her mornings she gave to interviewing applicants and her 
 afternoons to visiting. 
 
 Ruth Caspar was one of the first to apply. 
 
 The little slight Jewish lady with her immense experi- 
 ence of life greeted the beautiful peasant woman who had 
 never yet over-stepped the boundaries of Sussex with a 
 brilliant smile. 
 
 " There's not much I want to know about you" she 
 said. " We belong to the same regiment. Just one or 
 two questions that I may fill up this form." 
 
 How many children had Mrs. Caspar. 
 
 "Three, 'M ... and a fourth." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor waited. 
 
 " Little Alice/ 1 continued Ruth, downcast and pale 
 beneath her swarthiness. " Before I were married." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor wrote on apparently unconcerned. 
 
 She knew all about little Alice, had seen her once, and 
 had recognised her at a glance as Royal's child, the child 
 for which, with her passionate love for the regiment, she 
 felt herself in part responsible. On the same occasion she 
 had seen Ruth's other babies and their grandfather with 
 them that troubadour who forty years before had 
 swept the harp of her life to sudden and elusive music. 
 
 " I think that'll be all right now, Ruth," she said 
 with a re-assuring look. " I'm going to call you that now 
 if I may. I'll come round and let you know directly I 
 know myself." 
 
 Ruth retired with haunted eyes. She guessed rather 
 than knew the forces that were gathering against her, 
 and the strength of them. 
 
 Outside in the porch she met Lady Augusta with her 
 
MRS. LEWKNOR 289 
 
 mane of thick bobbed white hair and rosy face ; and on 
 the cliff, as she walked home, other ladies of the Committee 
 and the Reverend Spink. 
 
 How hard they looked and how complacent ! . . . 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor put the case before her committee, telling 
 them just as much as she thought it good for them to 
 know. 
 
 There was of course the inevitable trouble about little 
 Alice. 
 
 " We don't even know for certain that she is the child 
 of the man the mother afterwards married/' objected 
 Lady Augusta Willcocks in her worst manner. " She 
 mayn't be a soldier's child at all." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor turned in her lips. 
 
 " Our business surely is to support the women and 
 children while the men are away fighting our battles," 
 she said. 
 
 " Need we form ourselves into a private enquiry office ? 
 asked Mrs. Trupp quietly. 
 
 The old lady's eyes flashed. Mrs. Trupp of course 
 didn't care. Mrs. Trupp never went to church. " Putting 
 a premium on immorality ! " she cried with bitter laughter 
 " as usual." 
 
 " We must look a little into character surely, Mrs. 
 Lewknor," said a honied virgin from St. Michael's. 
 
 "I'll go bail for this woman's character," answered 
 Mrs. Lewknor, flashing in her turn. 
 
 " I believe she is more respectable than she used to be," 
 said a dull spinster with a dogged eye. 
 
 " Damn respectability," thought Mrs. Lewknor, but 
 she said, " Are we to deprive this child of bread in the name 
 of respectability ? Whatever else she is she's a child of the 
 Empire." 
 
 Then the Reverend Spink spoke. He and Lady Augusta 
 Willcocks were there to represent the point of view of the 
 Church. 
 
 19 
 
290 ONE WOMAN 
 
 He spoke quietly, his eyes down, and lips compressed, 
 mock-meekly aware of the dramatic significance of his 
 words. 
 
 " Perhaps I ought to tell the committee that the man 
 this woman is now living with is not her husband/ 1 
 
 The silence that greeted this announcement was all that 
 the reverend gentleman could have desired. It was only 
 broken by the loud triumphant cry of the Lady Augusta 
 Willcocks. 
 
 " Then all four children are illegitimate I " 
 
 " Oh, that would be joyful ! " cried Mrs. Lewknor 
 with a little titter. 
 
 It was the great moment of the Reverend Spink's life. 
 
 " She married some yeahs ago/' he continued, so well- 
 pleased with the cumulative effect of the impression he 
 was making, as even to venture an imitation of the Arch- 
 deacon's accent. " And her husband is still alive/' 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor challenged swiftly. 
 
 " Where did she marry ? " she asked, lest another 
 question should be asked first : for the honour of the 
 regiment was involved. 
 
 " At the Registrar's Office, Lewes." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " September I4th, 1906." 
 
 The man had his story pat enough to be sure. 
 
 " Who told you ? " asked Mrs. Lewknor aggressively. 
 
 Mr. Spink pursed his lips. 
 
 " I have it on reliable information." 
 
 " I know your authority, I -think," said Mrs. Trupp 
 quietly. 
 
 " Did you check it ? " asked Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 " It was unnecessary," replied the curate insolently. 
 " I can trust my authority. But if you doubt me you can 
 check it yourself." 
 
 " I shall of course," retorted the little lady. 
 
 Then the Chairman interposed. 
 
MRS. LEWKNOR 291 
 
 " It looks like a case for the police," he said. 
 
 " Certainly/' Lady Augusta rapped out. 
 
 " It's very serious/' said the Chairman. 
 
 " For somebody/' retorted Mrs. Lewknor. 
 
 By common consent the case was adjourned. 
 
 The Reverend Spink retired to Old Town. 
 
 The fierce hostility of Mrs. Lewknor, and the no less 
 formidable resistance of Mrs. Trupp, made the curate 
 uneasy. 
 
 After dark he went round to Alf Caspar's garage. 
 
 " You're sure of your facts ? " he asked. 
 
 " Dead cert," said Alf. " Drove em there meself." 
 
 " And the date ? " 
 
 " Marked it down at the time, sir. ... I can show 
 it you in me ledger. Always make a note of me engage- 
 ments. You never know when it mayn't come in handy." 
 
 He went down to his office, followed by the curate, 
 and was proceeding to take a bulky folio down from the 
 shelf, when the telephone bell rang. 
 
 It was Mr. Trupp to say the car would be wanted at 
 four to-morrow afternoon. 
 
 " Is it a long run, sir ? " asked Alf. 
 
 " No," came the answer. " Lewes Mrs. Trupp." 
 
 Alf determined to send a man and not drive himself. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 SUSPENSE 
 
 RUTH walked home across the golf links, at her heart the 
 agony of the beaten vixen who, crawling across a ploughed 
 field still far from her earth, glances round to see a white 
 wave of hounds breaking over the fence at her brush. 
 
 At Billing's Corner she nearly ran into her mother- 
 in-law. 
 
 For the first time Anne paused deliberately to address 
 her. 
 
 " That you, Mrs. Caspar ? " she said, and looked 
 away a sour smirk on her face. At the moment, beautiful 
 old woman though she was, with her porcelain complexion 
 of a girl, her snow-white hair, and broad-splashed dark 
 brows, there was a suggestion of Alf about her Ruth 
 noticed it at once and was afraid. 
 
 " They're puttin away all the chance children the 
 mothers can't support in there," the elder woman said 
 casually, nodding at the blue roofs of the old cavalry 
 barracks at the back of Rectory Walk that was now the 
 Work-house. "To save expense, I suppose the war 
 or something. If you didn't want yours to go I might 
 take my son's children off your hands. Then you could 
 go out and char for her." 
 Ruth sickened. 
 
 " No, thank-you, Mrs. Caspar," she said. 
 Just then a nurse came by pushing a wicker spinal chair 
 in which were a host of red-cloaked babies packed tight 
 as fledgelings in a nest. Behind them trooped, two by two 
 and with clattering heels, a score of elder children from 
 the Work-house, all in the same straw hats, the same 
 little capes. Ruth glanced at them as she had often done 
 before. Those children, she remarked with ironic 
 
 298 
 
SUSPENSE 
 
 293 
 
 bitterness, were well-soaped, wonderfully so, well-groomed, 
 well-fed, with short hogged hair, and stout boots ; but 
 she noted about them all, in spite of their apparent material 
 prosperity, the air of spiritual discontent which is the hall- 
 mark, all the world over, of children who know nothing 
 of a mother's jealous and discriminating care. 
 
 " The not-wanteds," said Anne. " They'll put yours 
 along with them, I suppose." 
 
 Ruth shook. Then she lifted up her eyes and saw help 
 coming. Old Mr. Caspar was bundling down the road 
 towards her, crowding on all sail and waving his umbrella 
 as though to tell her that he had seen her mute S.O.S. 
 
 Anne drew away. 
 
 " There's my husband/ 1 she said. 
 
 "Yes," answered Ruth, "that's dad," and walked 
 away down Church Street, trembling still but faintly 
 relieved that she had planted her pin in the heart of her 
 enemy before disengaging. 
 
 She reached home and turned the key behind her. 
 That vague enemy, named They, who haunts each one of 
 us through life, was hard on her heels. She was in her 
 earth at last ; but They could dig her out. Before now 
 she had seen them do it on Windhover, with halloos, the 
 men and women standing round with long-lashed cruel 
 whips to prevent escape. She had seen them throw the 
 wriggling vixen to the pack . . . and the worry . . . 
 and the huntsman standing amid a foam of leaping hounds, 
 screaming horribly and brandishing above his head a bloody 
 rag that a few minutes since had been a warm and breathing 
 creature. Horrible but true . . . That was the 
 world. She knew it of old ; and could almost have thanked 
 that hard old woman with eyes the blue of steel who had 
 just reminded her of what They and life were compact. 
 
 Then she noted there was silence in the house. 
 
 What if in her absence They had kidnapped her child 
 little Alice, born in agony of flesh and spirit, so different 
 
294 ONE WOMAN 
 
 from those other babies, the heirs of ease and security ; 
 little Alice, the child for whom she had fought and suffered 
 and endured alone. It was her They were after : Ruth 
 never doubted that. She had seen it in Lady Augusta's 
 eyes, as she passed her in the porch of the hostel ; in the 
 downward glances of those other members of the committee 
 she had met upon the cliff ; in the voice and bearing of her 
 mother-in-law. 
 
 She rushed upstairs. 
 
 Alice, busiest of little mothers, had tucked the other 
 three away in bed a little before their time because she 
 wanted to do it all alone and without her mother's help. 
 Now she was turning down her own bed. Her aim success- 
 fully achieved she was free to bestow on her mother a happy 
 smile. 
 
 Ruth swept her up in her arms, and bore her away into 
 her own room, devouring her with passionate eyes. 
 
 " You shall sleep along o me place o daddy," she said, 
 and kissed her hungrily. 
 
 " What about Susie and Jenny, mum ? " asked the 
 child. 
 
 " We'll leave the door open so we can hear," answered 
 Ruth, remarking even then the child's thought fulness. 
 11 See, daddy wants you to take care o mother." 
 
 Alice gave a quick nod of understanding. 
 
 Next morning Ruth refused to let her go to school with 
 the others, would not let her leave the house. 
 
 " You'll stay along with me," she said, fierce for once. 
 
 At eleven o'clock there came a knock. Ruth hustled 
 the child out into the backyard, shoved her into the coal- 
 shed, turned the key on her, and locked the backdoor. 
 Then she went very quietly not to the front-door but to the 
 window, opening it a crack with the utmost stealth. 
 Kneeling she listened. Whoever was at the door was very 
 quiet, not a man. If it had been he would have spat by 
 now, or sworn. 
 
SUSPENSE 295 
 
 " Who is it ? she asked. 
 
 " Mrs. Lewknor," came the reply. 
 
 Ruth opened. The little lady entered, and followed 
 into the kitchen. 
 
 " Is it all right, 'M ? " asked Ruth anxiously. 
 
 " It's going to be/' replied the other, firm and confident. 
 " You've got your marriage-certificate if we should want 
 it? " 
 
 Ruth sighed her relief. 
 
 " O yes, 'M. I got my lines all right. They're in the 
 tin box under the bed." She was running upstairs to fetch 
 them when the other stayed her. 
 
 " There's just one thing," said Mrs. Lewknor gravely. 
 " It would help Mrs. Trupp and me very much, if you could 
 give us some sort of idea where you were on September 
 I4th, 1906 if you can throw your mind back all that great 
 way." 
 
 " I was with him \ " Ruth answered in a flash. She 
 was fighting for her best-beloved : everything must be 
 sacrifice! to save her even Royal. " It was the day \ " she 
 panted. " It were the first time ever I was in a car that's 
 one why I remember : Alf drove us." 
 
 " D'you happen to remember at all where you went ? " 
 tentatively. 
 
 " All wheres," Ruth answered. " Hailsham Heath- 
 field. I hardly rithely knaws the names. We'd tea at 
 Lewes I remembers that." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor raised her keen eyes. 
 
 " You don't remember where you had tea ? " 
 
 Ruth shook her head, slowly. 
 
 " I can't justly remember where. See Lewes is such 
 a tarrabul great city these days nigh as big as Beach- 
 bourne, I reck'n. It was over the Registrar's for births 
 and deaths and such like I remember that along o the plate 
 at the door." 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor rose, her fine eyes sparkling. 
 
296 ONE WOMAN 
 
 "|That's splendid, Ruth ! " she said. " All I wanted." 
 
 All that afternoon Ruth waited behind locked doors 
 she did not know what for ; she only knew that They were 
 prowling about watching their chance. She had drawn 
 the curtains across the windows though the sun was still 
 high in the heaven, and sat in the darkness, longing for 
 Ernie as she never would have believed she could have 
 longed for him. Every now and then little Alice came in 
 a tip-toe from the backyard to visit her. The child thought 
 her mother had one of her rare head-aches, and was solic- 
 itous accordingly. 
 
 About three o'clock Ruth crept upstairs and peeped 
 through her window. It was as she had thought. Alf 
 was there, strolling up and down the pavement opposite, 
 watching the house. Then he saw her, half-hidden though 
 she was, crossed the street briskly and knocked. 
 
 She went down at once to give him battle. 
 
 He met her with his sly smile, insolently sure of himself. 
 
 " Police come yet ? " he asked. 
 
 She banged the door in his face ; and the bang brought 
 her strange relief. With mocking knuckles he rapped on 
 the window on to the street as he withdrew. 
 
 After that nobody came but the children back from 
 school. Ruth packed them off to bed early. She wanted 
 to be alone with little Alice. 
 
 In the kitchen she waited on in the dark. 
 
 Then she heard solid familiar feet tramping down the 
 pavement towards her cottage. She knew whose feet they 
 were, and knew their errand. The hour of decision had 
 come. One way or the other it must be. 
 
 In the confusion and uncertainty only one thing was 
 clear to her. There was a way and a price to be paid ; 
 if she took it. 
 
 Joe knocked. 
 
 Ruth slipped to her knees. She did not pray consciously. 
 Kneeling on the stone-slabs, her face uplifted in the darkness, 
 
SUSPENSE 297 
 
 her hands pale on the Windsor chair before her, she opened 
 wide the portals of her heart to the voice of the Spirit, if 
 such voice there were. 
 
 And there was. It came to her from above in the silence 
 and the dusk. Ruth knew it so well, that still small voice 
 with the gurgle in it. 
 
 It was Susie laughing in her sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 THE VALLEY OF DECISION 
 
 THE answer she had sought had been given her. Com- 
 forted and strengthened she rose, went to the door and 
 unlocked it. Joe had strolled a yard or two down the street. 
 She did not call him, but retired to await him in the kitchen, 
 leaving the door a-jar. 
 
 In a few minutes his feet approached slowly. She 
 heard him brush his boots in the passage, and turn the key 
 of the outer door behind him. Then he entered. 
 
 An immense change had been wrought in him since 
 last they had met. The bull-moose of Saffrons Croft had 
 given place to a man, humbled, solemn, quiet, the heir of 
 ages of self-discipline and the amassed spiritual treasure 
 of a world-old civilisation. 
 
 He stood afar off, with downward eyes. Then he held 
 out both arms to her. 
 
 " Ruth, A've come to claim thee or say good-bye. " 
 
 She gripped the mantelpiece but did not answer. Her 
 head was down, her eyes closed. 
 
 " Then it's goodbye, Joe/' she said in a voice so small 
 that she hardly recognised it herself. 
 
 He dropped his hands, darkening. 
 
 " And who'll keep thee and children now Ern's gone ? " 
 
 A note of harshness had crept into his voice. 
 
 She murmured something about the Government. 
 
 He laughed at her hardly. 
 
 " The Government ! What's Government ever done 
 for the workers ? They make wars : the workers pay for 
 em. That law's old as the capitalist system. What did 
 Government do for women and children time o South 
 Africa ? Left em to the mercy o God and the ruling class. 
 
THE VALLEY OF DECISION 299 
 
 If your children are to trust for bread to the Government, 
 heaven help em ! " 
 
 Ruth knew that it was true. She remembered South 
 Africa. In those days there had been a neighbour of theirs 
 at Aldwoldston, the wife of a ploughman, a woman with 
 six children, whose husband had been called up. Ruth 
 had only been a girl then ; but she remembered that 
 woman, and that woman's children, and her home, and 
 that woman's face. 
 
 " There's the ladies/' she said feebly. 
 
 Joe jeered. 
 
 " You know the ladies. So do I. Might as lief look 
 for help to the Church straight off." 
 
 " There's One Above." 
 
 " Aye, there's One Above. And He stays there too 
 and don't fash Himself over them below not over you 
 and me and our class any road." 
 
 His tone that had been mocking became suddenly 
 serious. 
 
 " Nay, there's nobbut one thing now atween you and 
 them and Work-house." 
 
 She peeped, faintly inquisitive. 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " The arm of a Lancasheer lad." 
 
 There came into her eyes the tenderness tinged with 
 irony of the woman amused at the eternal egoism of the 
 male. He noted the change in her, thought she had 
 relaxed, and came in upon her, instantly, appealing now 
 
 " Coom and live with me, brother and sister, the lot 
 of you ... A swear to thee a wunna touch thee." 
 
 She laughed at him, low and tender. 
 
 " Never do, Joe never ! " shaking her head and 
 swallowing. 
 
 " Why not then ? ' 
 
 ''There's far over much nature in us two valiant 
 great chaps like you and me be." 
 
300 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Then little Alice entered and went to Joe, who put 
 a sheltering arm about her. 
 
 " Her and me and you I " he said huskily to Ruth. 
 " Us three against the world ! Laugh at em then ! " 
 
 Ruth motioned to the child to go on up to bed. She 
 went ; and the two striving creatures were left alone once 
 more. 
 
 " Ern bequeathed thee to me." 
 
 " Aye, but he didn't rithely knaw you, and he didn't 
 rithely knaw me eether." 
 
 He caught at the straw. 
 
 " Then you do loov me ? " 
 
 She shook her head, and the tears from her long lashes 
 starred her cheek. 
 
 " Nay, Joe : Em's my man always was and always 
 will be." 
 
 He stood before her, firm on his feet, and solid as a rock, 
 his fists clenched, his eyes on her, brilliant, dark, and 
 kindly. She felt the thrill of him, his solidity, his sincerity, 
 above all his strength, and thrilled to him again. 
 
 " A'm the mon for thee," he said. 
 
 She did not answer. In her ears was the roar of 
 cataracts. 
 
 " Thoo dursena say me nay." 
 
 The words came from far off, from another world. 
 Wavering like a flame in the wind, she heard but could 
 make no reply. 
 
 "Thoo canna." 
 
 Then a voice spoke through her, a voice that was not 
 hers, coming from far away over waste seas, a voice she 
 had never heard before and did not recognise. 
 
 " I can Lord Jesus helpin me." 
 
 At that the mists began to float away. She saw more 
 clearly now. The worst perhaps was over. 
 
 " You want a mon with a purpose in his life." 
 
 Ah, how well he knew her ! 
 
THE VALLEY OF DECISION 301 
 
 " A mon who knows what he wants to do and means 
 to do it. And you must have it or dee. The bairns arena 
 enough for a woman like you." 
 
 He was putting forth the whole of his huge strength to 
 overwhelm her : she was aware of it and of her own 
 weakness. 
 
 " AVe got a purpose. You can help me fulfill it none 
 else, only you. Time was A thought A could go on alone. 
 You learnt me better. A canna. God didna make mon 
 that way not this mon any gate. Mon needs Woman for 
 his work. A need you/' 
 
 Quietly she was gathering her forces. 
 
 " Em's my man, Joe/' she repeated. " I need him ; 
 and none other/' 
 
 Baffled for the moment, her assailant paused in his 
 assault. 
 
 " And has Ern got a purpose in his life ? " 
 
 " He has now." 
 
 " What's that then ? " 
 
 "What you said at the Citadel that Sunday the 
 war, and what it stands for." 
 
 " The war won't last for ever. What when that's 
 over ? " 
 
 " He'll come back a made man." 
 
 He regarded her with a kind of sardonic pity. 
 
 " He'll never coom back never." 
 
 She lifted her eyes to his, steadfast and tender. 
 
 "Hap he'll not, Joe. If so be he doosn't, I shan't 
 grudge him. A soldier in a soldier's grave. Liefer that 
 than he should linger here now. He's such a battler, Ern 
 is. That's why I love him." 
 
 He took the blows she dealt him, unflinching. 
 
 " You don't loov, Ern." 
 
 " I'm learning to." 
 
 His lips curled in scorn. 
 
 " You don't know what loov is. See here ! This is 
 
302 ONE WOMAN 
 
 loov." He tapped his outspread palm, as often when 
 lecturing. 
 
 " Em's ma familiar friend has been for years. He 
 trusts me look at what he did that last night. And 
 sitha ! A'm a mon men do trust. That's ma reputation 
 earned too. A never sold a pal yet, big or little. And 
 now A'll betray ma own mate behind his back ; ma mate 
 that's gone fightin ma battles in the cause for which AVe 
 lived twenty years ; ma mate that trusts me and all for 
 the sake of loov." The great fellow was trembling himself 
 now. " Am A a rotter ? You know A'm none. Am A 
 a mon ? You know A am. The measure o ma sin is the 
 measure o ma loov. Judge for yourself." 
 
 He was battening down the furnace behind steel-doors ; 
 but she could hear the roar of the flames. 
 
 " That's loov. A'll lose all to win all ; and A've more 
 than most to lose. A'll lose ma life to save ma soul 
 and that's you. Are you for it ? Was a time A thought 
 nowt o women : now A think o nought but the One Woman. 
 .... . Now then ! Take it or leave it ! Choose 
 your path ! Will you throw a loov like that away 
 the loov of a mon for what ? A chap you don't 
 trust, a chap you can't respect, a chap who's let 
 you and the children down and will again, a chap you're 
 never like to see again a feeble feckless sot, and son of 
 a sot " 
 
 She put both hands to her ears. He wrenched them 
 fiercely aside and held them. She stood before him, her 
 hands imprisoned in his, her eyes shut, on her face the look 
 of one awaiting the blows about to rain down in her def ence- 
 lessness. 
 
 " I may ha doubted him once, Joe. But I knaw him 
 better now. May he forgive me and you too ; all the 
 wrong I done you both. I knaw him, and myself, better 
 than I did a while back. And now he's won me, I'll never 
 loose him, never" 
 
THE VALLEY OF DECISION 303 
 
 She spoke with a passion which convinced even that 
 stubborn lover. 
 
 He drew back, and she knew from the sound of his 
 breathing that she had beaten him. 
 
 " Then you was playin wi me ? " 
 
 He brooded over her, sullen and smouldering. 
 
 She put out her hands to him with something of the 
 appeal of a child. 
 
 " Hap a while back when you called me so strong 
 I did answer you more'n I should not knawin you 
 cared so much, Joe. And may be I thart if Ernie saw 
 there was anudder man around hap it'd ginger him jealous 
 and help us along. I was fighting for my home . . . and 
 my children . . . and for him, Joe. . . . And when 
 a woman's fighting . . ." 
 
 She broke off and gasped. 
 
 He met her remorselessly. 
 
 "Then yo've chosen . . . It's goodbye." 
 
 She laid her hands upon his shoulders. 
 
 " But not like that. Kiss me, Joe." 
 
 She lifted her face. 
 
 Slowly he dropped his hands upon her arms. 
 
 And as they stood thus, entwined, the window opened 
 quickly from outside, the curtains parted, and a voice 
 low at first and rising to a horrible scream shrilled, 
 
 " Caught em at it ! Mr. Spink.Come and see 
 for yourself then ! Mr. Spink." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 VICTORY AND REVENGE 
 
 IN the fury of his excitement Alf thrust his head and 
 shoulders far into the room. 
 
 " Got you this time ! " he screamed to Joe, his face 
 distorted with hate. " Mr. Spink ! " he cried to somebody 
 who must have been near by. 
 
 The engineer made a grab at him and seized him by the 
 head. 
 
 " Got you, ye mean ! " he bellowed and jerked the other 
 bodily into the room. " Ah, ye dirty spyin tyke ! I'll 
 learn you ! " 
 
 He heaved his enemy from his knees to his feet and 
 closed with him. The struggle was that of a parrot hi the 
 clutch of a tiger. 
 
 Joe carried his enemy to the door and slung him out 
 head first. Alf brought up with a bang against a big car 
 which had just drawn up outside. 
 
 A little lady sat in it. 
 
 " Will you get out of my way, please ? " she said coldly 
 to the man sprawling on his hands and knees in the dust at 
 her feet, as she proceeded to descend. 
 
 The prostrate man raised his eyes and blinked. The 
 lady passed him by as she might have passed a dead puppy 
 lying in the road. 
 
 Joe crossed the path and examined with a certain 
 detached interest, the door of the car against which Alf s 
 head had crashed. 
 
 " Why, yo've made quite a dent in your nice car/ 1 
 he said. " Pity." And he walked away down the street 
 after Mr. Spink who was retiring discreetly round the 
 corner. 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor entered the cottage. 
 304 
 
VICTORY AND REVENGE 305 
 
 Ruth was sitting in the kitchen, her hands in her lap, 
 dazed. 
 
 The lady went over to her. 
 
 " It's all right, Ruth/' she said gently in the other's 
 ear. 
 
 Slowly Ruth recovered and poured the tale of the last 
 twenty-four hours into the ear of her friend. It was the 
 cruelty of her mother-in-law more than anything else that 
 troubled her : for it was to her significant of the attitude 
 of the world. 
 
 "That's her! " she said. "And that's them! and 
 that's how it is ! " 
 
 Mrs. Lewknor comforted her ; but Ruth refused to be 
 comforted. 
 
 " Ah, you don't know em," she said. " But I been 
 through it, me and little Alice. See I'm alone again now 
 Ernie's gone. And so they got me. And they know it 
 and take advantage and Mrs. Caspar, that sly and cruel, 
 she leads em on." 
 
 " I think perhaps she's not as bad as she likes to make 
 herself out," Mrs. Lewknor answered. 
 
 She opened her bag, took out a letter, and put it in 
 Ruth's hand. It was from Anne Caspar, angular as the 
 writer in phrase alike and penmanship, and in the psuedo- 
 business vein of the daughter of the Ealing tobacconist. 
 
 Dear Madam, If your Committee can help Mrs. Caspar 
 in the Moot, board for herself and four children, I will pay 
 rent of same. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Anne Caspar. 
 
 Later just as twilight began to fall Ruth went up to 
 Rectory Walk. Anne was standing on the patch of lawn 
 in front of the little house amid her tobacco plants, sweet- 
 scented in the dusk, a shawl drawn tight about her gaunt 
 shoulders. 
 
 20 
 
306 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Ruth halted on the path outside. 
 
 " I do thank you, Mrs. Caspar/' she said, deep and 
 quivering. 
 
 The elder woman did not look at her, did not invite her 
 in. She tugged at the ends of her shawl and sniffed the 
 evening with her peculiar smirk. 
 
 " Must have a roof over them, I suppose/' she said. 
 " Even in war-time." 
 
 The visit of Mrs. Trupp and Mrs. Lewknor to the Regis- 
 trar at Lewes had proved entirely satisfactory. No marriage 
 had taken place on the day in question, so examination 
 disclosed. Mrs. Lewknor reported as much to her husband 
 on her return home that evening. 
 
 The Colonel grinned the grin of an ogre about to take 
 his evening meal off well-cooked children. 
 
 " We must twist Master Alf's tail," he said ; " and 
 not forget we owe him one ourselves." 
 
 At the next Committee meeting, which the Colonel 
 attended, there was heavy fighting between the Army 
 and the Church ; and after it even graver trouble between 
 Alf and the Reverend Spink. 
 
 " It's not only my reputation," cried the indignant 
 curate. " It's the credit of the Church you've shaken." 
 
 '' I know nothing only the facts," retorted Alf doggedly 
 " if they're any good to you. I drove them there me- 
 self I4th September, 1906, four o'clock of a Saturday 
 afternoon and a bit foggy like. You can see it in the entry- 
 book for yourself. They went into the Registrar's office 
 single, and they walked out double, half-an-hour later. 
 I see em myself, and you can't get away from the facts 
 of your eyes, not even a clergyman can't." 
 
 Alf was additionally embittered because he felt that 
 the curate had left him disgracefully in the lurch in the 
 incident of the Moot. The Reverend Spink on his side 
 somewhat dubious in his heart of the part he had played 
 
VICTORY AND REVENGE 307 
 
 on the fringe of that affair f elt that by taking the strong and 
 righteous line now he was vindicating himself in his own 
 eyes at least for any short-comings then. 
 
 "I shall report the whole thing to the Archdeacon/' 
 he said. " It's a scandal. He'll deal with you." 
 
 "Report it then!" snapped Alf. "If the Church 
 don't want me, neether don't I want the Church." 
 
 The war was killing the Archdeacon, as Mr. Trupp had 
 said it must. 
 
 The flames of his indomitable energy were devouring 
 the old gentleman for all the world to see. He was going 
 down to his grave, as he would have wished, to the roll of 
 drums and roar of artillery. 
 
 Thus when the Reverend Spink went up to the Rectory 
 to report on the delinquencies of the sidesman, he found his 
 chief in bed and obviously spent. 
 
 The old gentleman mao^e a pathetic figure attempting 
 to maintain his dignity in a night-gown obviously too small 
 for him, which served to emphasize his failing mortality. 
 
 His face was ghastly save for a faint dis-colouration 
 about one eye ; but he was playing his part royally still. 
 His bitterest enemy must have admired his courage ; his 
 severest critic might have wept, so pitiful was the old man's 
 make-believe. 
 
 On a table at his side were all the pathetic little proper- 
 ties that made the man. There was his snuff-box ; there 
 the filigree chain ; a scent-bottle ; a rosary ; a missal. 
 On his bed was the silver-mounted ebony cane ; and beneath 
 his pillow, artfully concealed to show, the butt-end of his 
 pistol. 
 
 Over his head was the photograph of a man whom the 
 curate recognised instantly as Sir Edward Carson ; and 
 beneath the photograph was an illuminated text which on 
 closer scrutiny turned out to be the Solemn League and 
 Covenant. 
 
3 o8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 Facing the great Unionist Leader on the opposite wall 
 was the Emperor of the French. The likeness between 
 the two famous Imperialists was curiously marked ; and 
 they seemed aware of it, staring across the room at each 
 other over the body of their prostrate admirer with intimacy, 
 understanding, mutual admiration. Almost you expected 
 them to wink at each other a knowing wink. 
 
 Mr. Spink now told his chief the whole story as it affected 
 Alf. Much of it the Archdeacon had already heard from 
 his wife. 
 
 " I'd better see him," he now said grimly. 
 
 And the Archdeacon was not the only one who wanted 
 to see Alf just then. That afternoon, just as he was start- 
 ing out with the car, he was called up on the telephone. 
 
 The Director of Recruiting wished to see him at the 
 Town Hall to-morrow n a.m., sharp. The voice was 
 peremptory and somehow familiar. Alf was perturbed. 
 What was up now ? 
 
 "Who is the Director of Recruiting here?" he asked 
 Mr. Trupp a few minutes later. 
 
 " Colonel Lewknor," the old surgeon answered. " Just 
 appointed. All you young men of military age come under 
 him now." 
 
 Alf winced. 
 
 The Colonel's office was in the Town Hall, and one of 
 the first men to come and sign on there was Joe Burt. 
 
 The Colonel, as he took in the engineer, saw at once 
 that the hurricane which was devastating the world had 
 wrought its will upon this man too. The Joe Burt he had 
 originally known four years ago stood before him once again, 
 surly, shy, and twinkling. 
 
 " Good luck to you," said the Colonel as they shook 
 hands. " And try to be an honest man. You were meant 
 to be, you know." 
 
 " A'm as honest as soom and honest er than most, A 
 
VICTORY AND REVENGE 309 
 
 reckon/ 1 the engineer answered dogged as a badgered 
 schoolboy. 
 
 The Colonel essayed to look austere. 
 
 " You'd better go before you get into worse trouble/' 
 he said. 
 
 Joe went out, grinning. 
 
 " Ah, A'm not the only one," he mumbled. 
 
 Outside in the passage he met Alf, and paused amazed. 
 
 " You goin to enlist ! " he roared. " Never ! " and 
 marched on, his laughter rollicking down the corridor like 
 a huge wind. 
 
 Alf entered the Colonel's office delicately : he had 
 reasons of his own to fear everything that wore khaki. 
 
 The Colonel sat at his desk like a death's head, a trail 
 of faded medal-ribands running across his khaki chest. 
 
 He was thin, spectral, almost cadaverous. But his 
 voice was gentle, as always ; his manner as always, most 
 courteous. Nothing could be more remote from the 
 truculence of the Army manner of tradition. 
 
 He was the spider talking to the fly. 
 
 " I'm afraid this is a very serious matter, Mr. Caspar," 
 he began ; and it was a favourite opening of his. " It 
 seems you've been taking away the character of the wife of 
 a member of His Majesty's forces now in France . . ." 
 
 The interview lasted some time, and it was the Colonel 
 who did the talking. 
 
 " And now I won't detain you further, Mr. Caspar," 
 he said at the end. " My clerk in the next room will take 
 all your particulars for our index card register, so that 
 we needn't bother you again when conscription comes." 
 
 " Conscription ! " cried Alf, changing colour. 
 
 " Yes," replied the Colonel. " There's been no public 
 announcement yet. But there's no reason you shouldn't 
 know it's coming. It's got to." 
 
 Alf went out as a man goes to execution. He returned 
 to his now almost deserted garage to find there a note from 
 
3 io ONE WOMAN 
 
 the Archdeacon asking him to be good enough to call at 
 the Rectory that afternoon. 
 
 Alf stood at the window and looked out with dull eyes. 
 Now that the earth which three weeks since had felt so solid 
 beneath his feet was crumbling away beneath him, he 
 needed the backing of the Church more than ever; and 
 for all his brave words to Mr. Spink, he was determined 
 not to relinguish his position in it without a fight. 
 
 That afternoon he walked slowly up the hill to the 
 Rectory. 
 
 Outside the white gate he stood in the road under the 
 sycamore trees, gathering courage to make the plunge. 
 
 If was five o'clock. 
 
 A man got off the bus at Billing's Corner and came 
 down the road towards him. Alf was aware of him, but 
 did not at first see who he was. 
 
 " Not gone yet then ? " said the man. 
 
 " No," Alf answered. " Got about as far as you 
 and that ain't very far." 
 
 "I'm on the way," answered Joe. " Going up to the 
 camp in Summerdown now ; and join up this evening." 
 
 " Ah," said Alf. " I'll believe it when I see it." 
 
 Swag on back, Joe tramped sturdily on towards the 
 Downs. ;. 
 
 Alf watched him. Then a gate clicked ; and Edward 
 Caspar came blundering down the road. Alf in his loneli- 
 ness was drawn towards him. 
 
 " Good evening, father," he said. 
 
 The old gentleman blinked vaguely through his spec- 
 tacles, and answered most courteously, 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Er-um-ah ! " and rolled on down 
 the road. 
 
 So his own father didn't know him ! 
 
 Overhead an aeroplane buzzed by. From the coombe 
 came the eternal noise of the hammers as the great camp 
 there took shape. Along Summerdown Road at the end 
 
VICTORY AND REVENGE 311 
 
 of Rectory Walk a long convoy of Army Service Corps 
 wagons with mule-teams trailed by. A big motor passed 
 him. In it was Stanley Bessemere and three staff-officers 
 with red bands round their caps. They were very pleased 
 with themselves and their cigars. The member for Beach- 
 bourne West did not see his supporter. Then there sounded 
 the tramp of martial feet. It was Saturday afternoon. 
 The Old Town Company of Volunteers, middle-aged men 
 for the most part, known to Alf from childhood, was 
 marching by on the way to drill on the Downs. A fierce 
 short man was in charge. Three rough chevrons had been 
 sewn on to his sleeve to mark his rank as sergeant ; and he 
 wore a belt tightly buckled about his ample waist. All 
 carried dummy rifles. 
 
 " Left-right, left-right," called the sergeant in the 
 voice of a drill-instructor of the Guards. " Mark time in 
 front ! Forward ! Dressing by your left ! " 
 
 It was Mr. Pigott. 
 
 Alf s eyes followed the little party up the road. Then 
 they fell on his home covered with ampelopsis just beginning 
 to turn. His mother was at the window, looking at him. 
 Whether it was that the glass distorted her face, or that 
 his own vision was clouded, it seemed to Alf that she was 
 mocking him. Then she drew down the blind as though 
 to shut him out his own mother. 
 
 Alf shivered. 
 
 A young woman coming from Billing's Corner crossed 
 the road to him. 
 
 "- Well, Alf," she said gaily, " you're getting em all 
 against you ! " 
 
 Alf raised his eyes to hers, and they were the eyes of 
 the rabbit in the burrow with the stoat hard upon its 
 heels. 
 
 " Yes," he said more to himself than her. " Reckon 
 I'm done." 
 
THE COMFORTER 
 
 RUTH passed down the lane towards the golf links, the 
 laughter sparkling in her brown eyes. 
 
 She was merry, malicious, mischievously prim. Then 
 suddenly, as at the shutting of a door, her mood changed. 
 Something warm and large and tremulous surged up 
 unbidden out of the ocean-deeps of her. 
 
 To her own amazement she found herself sorry for the 
 forlorn little figure with the eyes haunting and haunted, 
 she had left standing in the road outside the Rectory 
 gate. 
 
 A sense of the dramatic vicissitudes of life caught her 
 by the throat. Three weeks ago that little man had been 
 conquering the world with a swagger, the master of cir- 
 cumstance, over-riding destiny, sweeping obstacles aside, 
 a domineer, with all the attributes of his kind brutal, 
 blatant, sure of himself, indifferent to others, scornful of 
 the humble. Now he stood there at the cross-roads like 
 some old tramp of the world, uncertain which way to turn 
 a mouse tossed overboard in mid- Atlantic by the cook's 
 boy, the sport of tides and breakers, swimming round and 
 round with ghastly eyes in ever-shortening circle. 
 
 The tempest which had all the world in grip, which 
 had snatched Ernie from her arms, and hurled him across 
 the seas, which had set millions of men to killing and being 
 killed, had caught this insignificant gnat too, flying with 
 such a fuss and buzz of wings under ominous skies, and then 
 swaggered on its great way indifferent to the tiny creature 
 it had crushed. 
 
 Ruth crossed the links, almost deserted now, and 
 walked along over the crisp smooth turf, her eyes on the 
 township of yellow huts rising out of the green in the great 
 coombe across Summerdown Road. 
 
 3ia 
 
THE COMFORTER 313 
 
 Then she was aware of Mr. Chislehurst coming swiftly 
 towards her beside the ha-ha of the Duke's Lodge. 
 He looked, Ruth noticed at once, less harassed than he had 
 done since the outbreak of war. 
 
 " I am glad I've met you, Mrs. Caspar/' he began with 
 the old boyish enthusiasm. " I'm off to-morrow and wasn't 
 sure I should have time to come round and say goodbye 
 to you and the babes." 
 
 Ruth stared. 
 
 " 'You've never going out there, sir ! " 
 
 " Only as military chaplain." 
 
 Ruth refused to believe. 
 
 " But I thart you was against war and all that." 
 
 "So I am," Bobby answered gravely. He looked 
 away towards Paradise. " But I feel Our Lord is there, 
 or nowhere just now." 
 
 Ruth felt profoundly moved. The young man's words, 
 his action, brought home to her with a sudden pang, as not 
 even the departure of Ernie had done, the change that had 
 rushed upon the world. 
 
 Ruth looked at the smooth young face before her, 
 brown and goodly, with all the hope and promise of the 
 future radiant in it. 
 
 A passionate desire to take the boy in her arms, to 
 shield him, to cry You shan't! came over her. Then 
 she gulped and said, 
 
 " Goodbye, sir," and moved on rapidly. 
 
 Passing through Meads, she turned the shoulder of the 
 hill, and walked along the cliff, till she came to the long 
 low house in the coombe. 
 
 It had a strangely deserted air, no spinal chairs and 
 perambulators on the terrace, no nurses on the lawns, 
 no beds on the balconies. All that busyness of quiet re- 
 creation which had been going on here for some years past 
 had been brought to a sudden halt. Mrs. Lewknor came 
 
3 i4 ONE WOMAN 
 
 out to her and the two women sat a while on the terrace, 
 talking. They had drawn very close in these few days, 
 the regiment an ever-present bond between them. The 
 husband of one was "out there " with the ist battalion ; 
 the son of the other was racing home with the 2nd battalion 
 in the Indian Contingent. Mrs. Lewknor felt a comfort- 
 able sense that once the two battalions were a-ligned 
 on the West Front all would be well. 
 
 " Then let em all come ! " the little lady said in her 
 heart with almost vindictive glee. 
 
 As Ruth left she saw the Colonel in khaki, returning 
 from his office. He came stalking along the cliff, his head 
 on his left shoulder, looking seawards. There was about 
 the gaunt old man that air of austere exaltation which 
 had marked him from the moment of the outbreak of war. 
 In his ears, indeed, ever since that hour, there had sounded 
 a steady note, deep and pulsing like the throb of an engine 
 the heart of England beating on, beating eternally, 
 tireless, true, from generation to generation. 
 
 And for one brief moment he had doubted her might 
 God forgive him ! 
 
 Ruth asked him how recruiting was going. 
 
 " Well," replied the Colonel. " They're flocking in 
 men of all ages, classes, and creeds. I shipped off Burt 
 this morning ; and he's forty. Wanted to join the Hammer- 
 men or Manchesters with his friend Tawney ; but I said 
 No : every man his own job, and sent him off to the flying 
 folk as air-mechanic. He's j oining up at Newhaven to-night, 
 and in a week he'll be out there." 
 
 Ruth asked if there was any news of the Expeditionary 
 Force. 
 
 " They're landed all right," the Colonel replied. " We 
 should soon hear more. Our battalion's with the Fourth 
 Division. If you go up on the Head you can see the trans- 
 ports crossing from Newhaven with the stuff." 
 
 " Think it'll be all right, sir ? " asked Ruth. 
 
THE COMFORTER 315 
 
 " If we can stop their first rush/' the Colonel answered. 
 " Every day tells. We can't be too thankful for Li6ge, 
 though Namur's a nasty knock." 
 
 Ruth looked across the sea. 
 
 " I wish we could do something for em/' she said wist- 
 fully. 
 
 " We can," answered the Colonel sharply, almost 
 sternly. 
 
 The old soldier took off his cap and stood there bare- 
 headed on the edge of the white cliff, the wisps of silver 
 hair lifting in the evening breeze. 
 
 " May the God of our fathers be with them in the day 
 of battle ! " he prayed, and added with quiet assurance 
 as he covered again " He will too." 
 
 Then he asked the woman at his side if she had heard 
 from her husband. 
 
 Ruth dropped her eyes, sudden and secretive as a child. 
 
 " Ern's all right, I reckon," she said casually. 
 
 In fact a letter from him on the eve of sailing lay un- 
 opened in her pocket. She was treasuring it jealously, 
 as a child treasures a sweet, to devour it with due ritual 
 at the appointed hour in the appropriate place. 
 
 Ten minutes later she was standing waist-deep in the 
 gorse of the Ambush looking about her. 
 
 Far away a silver-bellied air-ship was patrolling leisurely 
 somewhere over the Rother Valley ; and once she heard 
 a loud explosion seawards and knew it for a mine. 
 
 Like a hind on the fell-side she stood up there, sniffing 
 the wind. Behind her on the far horizon was a forest 
 fire. She could smell it, see the glow of it, and the rumour 
 of its coming was all a-round her : overhead the whistle 
 and pipe of birds hard-driven, while under-foot the heather 
 was alive with the stealthy migration of the under-world 
 adder and weasel, snake and hare, flying from the torment 
 to come. But for her as yet the conflagration devouring 
 the world was but an ominous red glare across the water. 
 
3 i6 ONE WOMAN 
 
 She breathed freely : for she had shaken off her immediate 
 enemy the Hunter. 
 
 Then she looked up and saw a man coming over the brow 
 of Warren Hill towards her. 
 
 She dropped as though shot. 
 
 He was at her heels again. Face down, flat on the earth, 
 she lay panting in her form. 
 
 And as she crouched there, listening to the thumping 
 of her own heart, she was aware of another sound that 
 came rollicking down to her, born on the wind. The Hunter 
 was laughing, that huge gusty laughter of his she knew so 
 well. Had he tracked her down ? 
 
 She heard his feet approaching on the turf. Was the 
 earth trembling at the touch of them or was it the beating 
 of her own heart that shook it ? 
 
 Prone on the ground, spying through the roots of the 
 gorse, she could see those feet those solid familiar boots 
 that had dangled so often before her fire ; and the bottoms 
 of the trousers, frayed at the edges and rather short, 
 betraying the absence of a woman's care. 
 
 Was it her he was after ? 
 
 No : he passed, still rollicking. He was not mocking 
 her : he was tossing off his chest in cascades of giant laughter 
 the seas that had so long threatened to overwhelm him, 
 tossing them off into the blue in showers of spray. 
 
 / am free once move \ that was what his laughter said. 
 
 She sat up : she knelt : warily she peeped over the 
 green wall. His back was moving solidly away in the 
 evening, his back with the swag on it. He reached the 
 flag-staff and dropped away down into Hodcombe, that lies 
 between Beau-nez and the Belle-tout light-house. She 
 watched him till only his round dark head was visible. 
 Then that too disappeared. She rose and filled her chest 
 as the breeze slowly fills the sails of a ship that has long 
 hovered uncertainly in stays. 
 
 He too was gone into IT. 
 
THE COMFORTER 317 
 
 That Other was gone like the rest and the past 
 with him. 
 
 How queer it all was ! and how differently each man 
 had met the huge tidal wave that had swept the whole 
 world off its feet ! 
 
 Joe, paddling in the muddy shallows, had been caught 
 up, and was swimming easily now on the crest of it. Alf, 
 snatched up unawares as he grubbed for bait upon the 
 flats, had been tumbled over and over like a pebble, smashed 
 down upon the remorseless beach, and drawn back with 
 a sickening scream by the undersuck into the murderous 
 riot of it. Last of all, Ern, asleep and snoring under the 
 sunny sea-wall, had risen suddenly, girded on his strength, 
 and waded out to meet it with rejoicing heart. 
 
 Dear Ern ! 
 
 Sinking down into the harbourage of this deep and 
 quiet covert where, under the stars, all his children, con- 
 ceived in ecstasy, had come to her, she took out his letter, 
 opened it, and began to read. 
 
 It was dated In the train, and began full of affection 
 for her and the children. 
 
 " Now we made it up I don't mind what comes. I feel 
 like it was a new beginning. There's a lot of married men 
 joined up feel the very same. I feel uplifted like and that 
 whatever comes nothing can ever come atween us no 
 more really. Even when it was dark I felt that that it 
 wasn't really veal between us only a shadow like that 
 would surely pass away as it has passed away thank 
 God for His great mercies." 
 
 There followed love and kisses to all the children and 
 especially little Alice, underlined, and fraternal greetings 
 to old Joe. 
 
 " We shall push em back where they belong all right, 
 I expect. And if we don't I shall send for him to lend a 
 shove. He's all right, old Joe is. There's not many of em 
 I'd trust, but you can trust him. I knew that all along." 
 
3 i8 ONE WOMAN 
 
 The letter finished, 
 
 " It's an end and a beginning, as old dad says. And 
 whatever else that's finished, and I don't care." 
 
 It was true too. 
 
 She folded the letter and slipped it in her bosom. 
 
 The second volume of her life had ended, and ended 
 well. The sudden hand of destiny had reached forth to 
 save her, to save the children, to save Ernie, to save Joe. 
 
 Had she ever wavered ? Who shall say ? Perhaps 
 she could not say herself. 
 
 She cast her mind back over her married life. Six 
 years in September since she and Ern had ridden back 
 to Old Town in Isaac Woolgar's cart. Six years of struggle, 
 worry, and deep joy. She was thankful for them, thankful 
 for the crowding babes, and most of all, she sometimes 
 thought, thankful for Ernie . . . His unfailing love 
 and solicitude for little Alice ! She could never be grateful 
 enough to him for that. Dear Ern : so affectionate, so 
 always loveable. She regretted nothing, not even his 
 weakness now. Because of his weakness strength had come 
 to her, growth, and the consummation of deep unconscious 
 desire. 
 
 Had she been too hard on him ? A great voice of com- 
 fort, the voice of Ernie, so it seemed to her, only swollen to 
 gigantic proportions, till the sound of it was like the sound 
 of the Sou- West wind billowing through the beach-tops 
 in Paradise, surged up within her crying No. 
 
 Then she turned back to the first volume of her life, 
 completed now so many years ago. 
 
 For the second time she had been left thus, man-less, 
 a new life quickening within her. But what a difference 
 between then and now ! Then the fierce thief of her 
 virginity had stolen away in the night, leaving her to meet 
 the consequences, alone, an outcast, the hand of all men 
 against her ; and she recalled now with a shudder the after- 
 noon on which she had gone forth to the Crumbles and 
 
THE COMFORTER 319 
 
 there amid the jeers of the remorseless sea had faced the 
 situation. Now it was true her accustomed mate had been 
 snatched from her side ; but the world was behind her. 
 She was marching with the hosts, a mighty concourse, 
 one of them, and uplifted on their songs. 
 
 She had nothing to fear, much to be thankful for. How 
 calm she felt, how strong, how confident of herself, above 
 all of Ernie ! His punishment had made him and completed 
 her own life. She had won her man and in winning him 
 had won herself. And she would never lose him now. 
 His pain, her pain, had been worth while. Smiles were 
 in her eyes as she recalled the fuss that he had made 
 his struggles, his temper, his wiles of a naughty and thwarted 
 child ; and tears where she recalled the anguish of his time 
 of purgation. And yet because of his suffering he had been 
 strong when the day of battle came, and he would be strong. 
 She had no doubt of that. And it was all over now. 
 
 Rising she stood up and looked about her, absorbing 
 the down-land, familiar and beloved from childhood. The 
 sky, grey now and mottled, drooped about her quietly with 
 the soft wings of a mothering bird settling soft-breasted 
 on her nest. The good green earth, firm beneath her feet, 
 lifted her up into the quiet refuge of that welcoming bosom, 
 lifted her to meet it like a wave gently swelling. So it had 
 always been : so it always would be. This earth she knew 
 and loved so well was not alien, it was not hostile ; rather 
 it was flesh of her flesh and soul of her soul. It gave her 
 strength and comfort. Her bosom rose and fell in time, 
 so it seemed to her, with the rise and fall of the breast 
 of this virgin-mother, whose goodness she assimilated 
 through heart and eyes and nostrils. She felt utterly at 
 home. All sense of separation, of dissent, had left her. 
 
 Absorbed she stood, and absorbing. 
 
 These woman-bodied hills, sparsely clad in rags of gorse 
 that served only to enhance their loveliness, brought her 
 solace and content as did nothing else. So it had always 
 
320 ONE WOMAN 
 
 been : so it always would be. The beauty and wonder 
 of them rolled in upon her in waves of sound-less music, 
 sluicing over the sands of her life in foaming sheets of 
 hyacinth, drowning the resentment, filling and fulfilling 
 her with the grand harmony of life. 
 
 Sometimes down in the Moot, amid the worry, and the 
 tumult, and the exasperations, she became empty, a discord, 
 a desert. Then she would get away for an hour among 
 the hills and her parched spirit found instant refreshment. 
 She brimmed again. The quiet, the comfort, the deep 
 Abiding wonder of it all came back to her ; even the words 
 which she always associated with it / am the Resurrection 
 and the Life. 
 
 Since Ernie's departure the Comforter had come thus 
 to her with renewed power ; as if knowing her need and 
 resolute to fortify her in the hour of her ordeal. 
 
 Standing there upon the brow, Ernie's letter lying like 
 his hand upon her breast in the old dear way, she gazed 
 across the waters, dimming in the dusk, and sent out her 
 heart towards him, strong and pulsing as the sun's rays 
 at dawn seen by some mountaineer from his native peak. 
 She could shield him so that no evil thing could come 
 nigh him. She had no fear for him and was amazed at 
 her own triumphant faith. 
 
 Established on the rock herself, earth in earth, spirit 
 in spirit, invincibly secure, she had him safe in her keeping, 
 sate, aye safe as his child quickening in the warm and 
 sheltered darkness of her womb. 
 
 Headley Bros., Ashford, Kent, & 18 Devonshire St.,E.C.2. 
 
YB 68206 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY