"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 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.

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."

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-admission 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

civilisation, Paradise rippled at the touch of a light-foot breeze.

The Downs shimmered radiantly, their blemishes hidden in the mists of

morning. On his right, beyond the ha-ha, the 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 middle 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!" He made a dramatic halt in

mid-street. "_Thank Gahd for Carson--what!_" he whispered.

"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," 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.

"But what's it got to do with us?" Alf 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.

"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.

"But we can't 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 increased speed with

the erratic purposefulness 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."

"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."

"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--_Is it Peace or War?_"

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.

"Now, Joe!" it said, like a courser urging on a greyhound.

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 Englishman 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?_" 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. 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

coontry; 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."

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!_" 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! 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 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 unconsciousness, 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 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 Auston. Dinner there. And home by

Hailsham and Langney in the 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 gentleman. 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,

"Yes, sir. That's Alf. Now you know."

"I'm 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 dignity 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 lodgings 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 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

politician 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 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!"

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

politically 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 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," 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.

"I suppose you'll wait till he has gone," 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 gracefully 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 thinking of?"

The tall man turned his fine face.

"I was thinking about a carpenter," he said.

"Of Nazareth?"

"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

knees.

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 gladness as he read it next morning, so

generous it was, so chivalrous.

_I 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 11 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, 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 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 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 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 purposefulness 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.

Ern, 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.

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."

"He don't most in general not from what I've seen of it," answered

Ruth. "What if He don't?"

There was a moment's 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 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," he told Ruth in

the confidential whisper beloved of working-men. "Don't say nothing to

nobody." As though the 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," 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 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 remorseless 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 on which 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 unconscious

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.

"If Alf wants a thing he usually gets it."

Ernie flashed white.

"Ah," 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.

"_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._"

Ernie nodded thoughtfully. For the first time perhaps the awful

solemnity of the drama in which he was about to 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."

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."

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

pathetic 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, Lal?" 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.

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 Ern'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.

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."

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," 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.

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 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."

"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.

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,

Lal," 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.

"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."

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, 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!"

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.

"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."

"Should be interesting," commented the Colonel, hiding his emotion

behind an air of detachment. "An undisciplined horde of men who

believe themselves to be free against a disciplined mass of slaves."

Just then Mr. Pigott approached. The old Nonconformist 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 jeering 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 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 engineer, 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 Nonconformist; 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

extracting 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 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.