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.
"Ere, Alf!" 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 naïve self-satisfaction of the megalomaniac, 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, he'll raise your rent against you."
"Like em," said Ern. "They're all 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.
"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," 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, emerging 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."
"That's all over now, Ruth," 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 vindication 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 caressingly, 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.
"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 Ern'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 provocative. 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 Ern'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, and 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 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 soothingly. "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.