Apart from such occasional sallies Ruth paid little attention to her husband's friend or, indeed, to anything outside her home. Now that she had dropped her anchor in the quiet waters of love sheltered by law, and had her recovered self-respect to buttress her against the batterings of a wayward world, she was snug, even perhaps a little selfish with the self-absorption of the woman who is wrapped up in that extension of herself which is her home, her children, and the man who has given them her.
After her stormy flight she had settled down in her nest, and seldom peeped over at the cat prowling beneath or at anybody, indeed, but the cock-bird bringing back a grub for supper; and him she peeped for pretty often. She was busy too with the unending busyness of the woman who is her own cook, housekeeper, parlourmaid, nurse and laundress. And happily for her she had the qualities that life demands of the woman who bears the world's burden--a magnificent physique to endure the wear and tear of it all, the invaluable capacity of getting on well with her neighbours, method in her house, tact with her husband, a way with her children.
And there was no doubt that on the whole she was happy. The reaction from the sturm-und-drang period before her marriage was passing but had not yet wholly passed. Her spirit still slept after the hurricane. Naturally a little indolent, and living freely and fully, if without passion, her nature flowed pleasantly through rich pastures along the channels grooved in earth by the age-long travail of the spirit.
Jenny and little Ned followed Susie, just a year between each child. Ernie loved his children, especially always the last for the time being; but the element of wonder had vanished and with it much of the impetus that had kept him steady for so long.
"How is it now?" asked his mate, on hearing of the birth of the boy.
"O, it's all right," answered Ernie, wagging his head. "Only it ain't quite the same like. You gets used to it, as the sayin is."
"And you'll get use-ter to it afore you're through, you'll see," his friend answered, not without a touch of triumphant bitterness. He liked others to suffer what he had suffered himself.
As little by little the romance of wife and children began to lose its glamour, and the economic pressure steadily increased, the old weakness began at times to re-assert itself in Ernie. He haunted the Star over much. Joe Burt chaffed him.
"Hitch your wagon to a star by all means, Ern," he said. "But not that one."
Mr. Pigott too cautioned him once or twice, alike as friend and employer.
"Family man now, you know, Ernie," he said.
The sinner was always disarming in his obviously sincere penitence.
"I knaw I've unbuttoned a bit of late, sir," he admitted. "I'll brace up. I will and I can."
And at the critical moment the fates, which seemed as fond of Ernie as was everybody else, helped him.
Susie, his first-born, caught pneumonia. The shock stimulated Ernie; as shock always did. The steel that was in him gleamed instantly through the rust.
"Say, we shan't lose her!" he asked Mr. Trupp in staccato voice.
Mr. Trupp knew Ernie, knew his weakness, knew human nature.
"Can't say," he muttered. "Might not."
Ern went to the window and looked out on the square tower of the old church on the Kneb above him. His eyes were bright and his uncollared neck seemed strangely long and thin.
"She's got to live," he muttered defiantly.
The doctor nodded grimly.
The Brute had pounced on Ernie sleeping and was shaking him as a dog shakes a rat. Mr. Trupp, who had no intention of losing Susie, was by no means sorry.
"If it's got to be, it's got to be," said Ruth, busy with poultices. "Only it won't be if I can help it."
She was calm and strong as Ernie was fiercely resentful. That angered Ernie, who was seeking someone to punish in his pain.
When Mr. Trupp had left he turned on Ruth.
"You take it cool enough!" he said with a rare sneer.
She looked at him, surprised.
"Well, where's the sense in wearin yourself into a fret?" answered Ruth. "That doosn't help any as I can see."
"Ah, I knaw!" he said. "You needn't tell me."
She put down the poultice and regarded him with eyes in which there was a thought of challenge.
"What d'you knaw, Ern?"
There was something formidable about her very quiet.
"What I do, then," he said, and turned his back on her. "If it was somebody else, we should soon see."
She came to him, put her hand on his shoulder, and turned him so that she could read his face. He did not look at her.
She turned slowly away, drawing in her breath as one who rouses reluctantly from sleep.
"That's it, is it?" she said wearily. "I thart it'd come to that some day."
Just then little Alice danced in from the street, delicate, pale sprite, with anemone-like health and beauty.
"Daddy-paddy!" she said, smiling up at him, as she twined her fingers into his.
He bent and kissed her with unusual tenderness.
"Pray for our little Sue, Lal," he muttered.
The child looked up at him with fearless eyes of forget-me-not blue.
"I be," she said.
He gave her a hand, and they went out together into Motcombe Garden: for they were the best of friends.
Ruth was left. In her heart she had always known that this would come: he would turn on her some day. And she did not blame him: she was too magnanimous. Men were like that, men were. They couldn't help theirsalves. Any one of them but Ernie would have thrown her past up at her long before. She was more grateful for his past forbearance than resentful at his present vindictiveness. Now that the blow, so long hovering above her in the dimness of sab-consciousness, had fallen she felt the pain of it, dulled indeed by the fact that she was already suffering profoundly on Susie's account. But the impact braced her; and it was better so. There was no life without suffering and struggle. If you faced that fact with your eyes open, never luxuriating in the selfishness of make-believe, compelling your teeth to meet on the granite realities of life, then there would be no dreadful shock as you fell out of your warm bed and rosy dreams into an icy pool.
Ruth went back to her hum-drum toil. She had been dreaming. Now she must awake. It was Ernie who had roused her from that dangerous lethargy with a brutal slash across the face; and she was not ungrateful to him.
When he returned an hour later with little Alice she was unusually tender to him, though her eyes were rainwashed. He on his side was clearly ashamed and stiff accordingly. He said nothing; instead he was surly in self-defence.
To make amends he sat up with the child that night and the next.
"Shall you save her, sir?" asked the scare-crow on the third morning.
"I shan't," replied the doctor. "Her mother may."
Next day when Mr. Trupp came he grunted the grunt, so familiar to his patients, that meant all was well.
When the corner was turned Ern did not apologise to Ruth, though he longed to do so; nor did she ask it of him. To save himself without undergoing the humiliation of penance, and to satisfy that most easily appeased of human faculties, his conscience, he resorted to a trick ancient as Man: he went to chapel.
Mr. Pigott who had stood in that door at that hour in that frock-coat for forty years past, to greet alike the sinner and the saved, welcomed the lost sheep, who had not entered the fold for months.
"I know what this means," he said, shaking hands. "You needn't tell me. I congratulate you. Go in and give thanks."
Ern bustled in.
"I shall come regular now, sir," he said. "I've had my lesson. You can count on me."
"Ah," said Mr. Pigott, and said no more.
Next Sunday indeed he waited grimly and in vain for the prodigal.
"Soon eased off," he muttered, as he closed the door at last. "One with a very sandy soil."
The Manager of the Southdown Transport Company went home that evening to the little house on the Lewes Road in unaccomodating mood.
"His trousers are coming down all right," he told his wife. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Once you let go o God----"
"God lets go o you," interposed Mrs. Pigott. "Tit for tat."
