Thwarted by the Woman, and driven back upon himself, he had taken up the career of action at the point where he had left it to pursue an adventure that had brought him no profit and incredible bitterness.
Fortune had favoured him.
Just at the moment Ruth had baffled him, another enemy of his, the Red Cross Garage Syndicate, which in the early days of his career had throttled him, came to grief.
Alf saw his chance, and flung himself into the new project with such characteristic energy as to drown the bitterness of sex-defeat. He had no difficulty in raising the necessary capital for the little Syndicate he proposed to start. Some he possessed himself; his bank was quite prepared to give him accommodation up to a point; and there was a third source he tapped with glee. That source was Captain Royal. Alf was in a position to squeeze the Captain; and he was not the man to forego an advantage, however acquired.
Royal put a fifth of his patrimony into the venture, and was by no means displeased to do so. Thereby he became the principal shareholder in the concern, with a predominant voice in its affairs. That gave him the leverage against Alf, which, with the instinct of a commander, he had seen to be necessary for the security of his future directly that young man showed a blackmailing tendency. Moreover Royal was not blind to the consideration that the new Syndicate, under able management, bid fair to be a singularly profitable investment.
Backed then by Royal and his bank, Alf bought up certain of the garages of the defaulting company at knockout prices. Thereafter, if he still coveted Ruth, he was far too occupied to worry her; while she on her side, purged by the busyness and natural intercourse of married life of all the disabling morbidities that had their roots in a sense of outlawry and the forced restraint put upon a roused and powerful temperament, had completely lost her fear of him.
Ruth, surely, was changing rapidly now. At times in family life she assumed the reins not because she wished to, but because she must; and on occasion she even took the whip from the socket.
Ernie had, indeed, climbed a mountain peak and with unbelievable effort and tenacity won to the summit, which was herself. But then, instead of marching on to the assault of the peak which always lies beyond, he had sat down, stupidly content; with the inevitable consequence that he tended to slither down the mountain-side and lose all he had gained in growth and character by his hard achievement.
The pair had been married four years now; and Ruth knew that her house was built on sand. That comfortable sense of security which had accompanied the first years of her married life, affording her incalculable relief after the hazards which had preceded them, had long passed. Dangers, less desperate perhaps in the appearance than in the days of her darkness, but none the less real, were careering up from the horizon over a murky sea like breakers, roaring and with wrathful manes, to overwhelm her. In particular the threat that haunts through life the working-woman of all lands and every race beset her increasingly. Her man was always skirting now the bottomless pit of unemployment. One slip and he might be over the edge, hurtling heavily down into nothingness, and dragging with him her and the unconscious babes.
The home, always poor, began to manifest the characteristics of its tenants, as homes will. When the young man came for the rent on Monday mornings, Ruth would open just a crack so that he might not see inside, herself peeping out of her door, wary as a woodland creature. Apart from Joe Burt, whom she did not count, there was indeed only one visitor whom Ruth now received gladly; and that was Mr. Edward Caspar, whose blindness she could depend upon.
There had grown up almost from the first a curious intimacy between the dreamy old gentleman, fastidious, scholarly, refined, and the young peasant woman whom destiny had made the mother of his grandchildren. Nothing stood between them, not even the barrier of class. They understood each other as do the children of Truth, even though the language they speak is not the same.
The old man was particularly devoted to little Alice.
"She's like a water-sprite," he said,--"so fine and delicate."
"She's different from Ernie's," answered Ruth simply. "I reck'n it was the suffering when I was carrying her."
"She's a Botticelli," mused the old man. "The others are Michael Angelos."
Ruth had no notion what he meant--that often happened; but she knew he meant something kind.
"I'd ha said Sue was more the bottled cherry kind, myself," she answered gently.
Her visitor came regularly every Tuesday morning on the way to the Quaker meeting-house, shuffling down Borough Lane past the Star, his coat-tails floating behind him, his gold spectacles on his nose, with something of the absorbed and humming laziness of a great bee. Ruth would hear the familiar knock at the door and open. The old man would sit in the kitchen for an hour by the latest baby's cot, saying nothing, the child playing with his little finger or listening to the ticking of the gold watch held to its ear.
After he was gone Ruth would always find a new shilling on the dresser. When she first told Ernie about the shilling, he was surly and ashamed.
"It's his tobacco money," he said gruffly. "You mustn't keep it."
Next Tuesday she dutifully handed the coin back to the giver,
"I don't like to take it, sir," she said.
The old man was the grandfather of her children, but she gave him always, and quite naturally, the title of respect.
He took it from her and laid it back on the dresser with the other he had brought. Then he put his hand on her arm, and looked at her affectionately through dim spectacles.
"You go to the other extreme," he said. "You're too kind."
After that she kept the money and she was glad of it too, for she was falling behind with her rent now.
Then one Monday morning, the rent-collector making his weekly call, little brown book in hand, gave her a shock.
He was a sprightly youth, cocky and curly, known among his intimates as Chirpy; and with a jealously cherished reputation for a way with the ladies.
"Say, this is my last visit," he announced sentimentally, as he made his entry in the book, and poised his pencil behind his ear. "We can't part like this, can we?--you and me, after all these years. Too cold like." He drew the back of his hand significantly across his mouth.
Ruth brushed his impertinence aside with the friendly insouciance which endeared her to young men.
"Got the sack for sauce, then?" she asked.
Chirpy shook his head ruefully.
"Mr. Goldmann's sold the house."
"Over our heads!" cried Ruth, aghast.
She hated change, for change spelt the unknown, which in its turn meant danger.
"Seems so," the youth replied. "No fault o mine, I do assure you." He returned to his point. "Anythink for Albert?"
Ruth was thoroughly alarmed. Even in those days cottages in Old Town were hard to come by.
"Who's our new landlord?" she asked.
"Mr. Caspar, I heard say in the office."
Ruth felt instant relief.
"Mr. Edward Caspar?--O, that's all right."
"No; Alf--of the Garridges. Him they call All-for-isself Alfie!"
Ruth caught her breath.
"Thank you," she said, and closed the door swiftly.
The youth was left titupping on the door-step, his nose against the panel like a seeking spaniel.
Within, Ruth put her hand to her heart to stay its tumult. She was thankful Ernie was not there to witness her emotion, for she felt like a rabbit in the burrow, the stoat hard on its heels. All her old terrors revived....
The new landlord soon paid his first visit, and Ruth was ready for him.
"You want to see round?" she asked, with the almost aggressive briskness of the woman who feels herself threatened.
"Yes, as your landlord I got the right of entry." He made the announcement portentously like an emperor dictating terms to a conquered people.
Ruth showed him dutifully round. He paid no attention to his property: his eyes were all for her; she did not look at him.
Then they went upstairs where it was dark.
There was a closed door on the left. Alf thrust it open without asking leave; but Ruth barred his passage with an arm across the door.
"What's that?" he asked, prying.
"Our room. You can't go in there. That's where my children was born."
Alf tilted his chin at her knowingly.
"All but little Alice," he reminded her. His eyes glittered in the dark. "Does he stand you anything for her?" he continued confidentially. "Should do--a gentleman. Now if you could get an affiliation order against him that'd be worth five or six bob a week to you. And that's money to a woman in your position--pay me my rent and all too. Only pity is," he ended, thoughtfully, "can't be done. You and me know that if Ern don't."
Ruth broke fiercely away.
Leisurely he followed her down the stairs with loud feet. He was greatly at his ease. His hat, which he had never taken off, was on the back of his big head. He was sucking a dirty pencil, and studying his rent-book, as he entered the kitchen.
"You're a bit behind, I see," casually.
"Only two weeks," as coldly.
"As yet."
He swaggered to the door with a peculiar roll of his shoulders.
"If you was to wish to wipe it off at any time you've only got to say the word. I might oblige."
He stood with his back to her, looking out of the door, and humming.
She was over against the range.
"What's that?" she panted.
Standing on the threshold he turned and leered back at her out of half-closed eyes.
She sneered magnificently.
"Ah, I knaw you," she said.
"What's it all about?" he answered, cleaning his nails. "Only a little bit of accommodation. No thin out o the way."
"Thank you. I knaw your accommodation," she answered deeply.
"Well," he retorted, picking his teeth. "There's no harm in it. What's the fuss about?"
"I'll tell Mr. Trupp," Ruth answered. "That's all."
Alf turned full face to her, jeering.
"What's old Trupp to me, then?" he cried. "I done with him. I done with em all. I'm me own master, I am--Alfred Caspar, Hesquire, of Caspar's Garridges, Company promoter. Handlin me thousands as you handle coppers."
He folded his arms, thrust out a leg, and looked the part majestically without a snigger. It was clear he was extraordinarily impressive to himself.
Ruth relaxed slowly, deliciously, like an ice-pack touched by the laughing kiss of spring.
She eyed her enemy with the amused indifference of some big-boned thoroughbred mare courted by an amorous pony.
"You're mad," she said. "That's the only why I don't slosh the sauce-pan over you. But I shall tell Ern all the same. And he'll tell em all."
"And who's goin to believe Ern?" jeered her tormentor. "'Old Town Toper,' they call him. Fairly sodden."
"Not to say Archdeacon Willcocks and Mr. Chislehurst," continued Ruth, calmly.
Alf shot his finger at her like a crook in a melodrama, looking along it as it might have been a pistol and loving his pose.
"And would they believe you against me? Do you attend mass? Are you a sidesman?"
"I was confirmed Church afore ever you was," retorted Ruth with spirit. "I've as good a right to the sacraments, as you have then. And I'll take to em again if I'm druv to it--that I will!"
Something about this declaration tickled Alf. The emperor was forgotten in the naughty urchin.
"So long, then!" he tittered. "Appy au-revoir! Thank-ye for a pleasant chat. This day week you can look forward to. I'll collect me rent meself because I know you'd like me to."
He turned, and as he was going out ran into a man who was entering.
"Now then!" said a surly voice. "Who are you? O, it's you, is it?--I know all about you."
"What you know o me?" asked Alf, aggressively.
"Why, what a beauty you are."
The two men eyed each other truculently. Then Joe barged through the door. The entrance cleared, Alf went out, but as he passed on the pavement outside he beat a rat-tan on the window with insolent knuckles.
Joe leaped back to the door and scowled down the road at the back of the little chauffeur retreating at the trot. Alf excelled physically in only one activity: he could run.
The engineer returned to the kitchen, savage and smouldering. Ruth, amused at the encounter, met him with kind eyes. There was in this man the quality of the ferocious male she loved. He marched up to her, his head low between his shoulders like a bull about to charge.
"Is yon lil snot after you?" he growled, almost menacing.
She regarded him with astonishment, amused and yet defensive.
"You're not my husband, Mr. Burt," she cried. "You've no grievance whoever has."
The engineer retreated heavily.
"Hapen not," he answered, surly and with averted eyes. "A coom next though."
She looked up, saw his face, and trembled faintly.
He prowled to the door without a word, without a look.
