The Ulster Campaign was moving forward now with something of the shabby and theatrical pomp of a travelling circus parading the outskirts of a sea-side town before a performance. A dromedary with an elongated upper lip, draped in the dirty trappings of a pseudo-Oriental satrap, led the procession, savage and sulking. Behind the dromedary came the mouldy elephant, the mangy bear, the fat woman exposing herself in tights on a gilt-edged Roman chariot, the sham cow-boys with gaudy cummerbunds, and Cockney accents, on untamed bronchos hired from the local livery stables, the horse that was alleged to have won the Derby in a by-gone century, etc. And the spectators gaped on the pavement, uncertain whether to jeer or to applaud.
As the Campaign rolled on its way, the wiser Conservatives shook their heads, openly maintaining that the whole business was a direct abnegation of everything for which their party had stood in history, while the Liberals became increasingly restive: Mr. Geddes, uneasy at the inaction of the Government, Mr. Geddes truculent to meet the truculence of the enemy. The only man who openly rejoiced was Joe Burt.
"The Tory Reds have lit such a candle by God's grace in England as'll never be put out," he said to Ernie.
The engineer had always now a newspaper cutting in his waistcoat pocket, and a quotation pat upon his lips.
"They're all shots for the locker in the only war that matters," he told the Colonel. "And they'll all coom in handy one day. A paste em into a lil book nights: Tips for Traitors; an ammunition magazine, A call it."
For him Sir Edward Carson's famous confession of faith, I despise the Will of the People--words Joe had inscribed as motto on the cover of his ammunition magazine--gave the key to the whole movement. And he never met the Colonel now but he discharged a broadside into the helpless body of his victim.
It was not, however, till early in 1914, just when his pursuit of Ruth was at the hottest, that he woke to the fact that the Tories were tampering with the Army. That maddened Joe.
"If this goes on A shall go back to ma first love," he told Ruth with a characteristic touch of impudence.
"And a good job too," she answered tartly. "I don't want you."
"And you can go back to your Ernie," continued the engineer, glad to have got a rise.
"I shan't go back to him," retorted Ruth, "because I never left him."
The statement was not wholly true: for if Ruth had not left Ernie, since the affair of the Goffs she had according to her promise turned her back on him. When on the first opportunity that offered she had announced his fate to the offender, he had blinked, refused to understand, argued, insisted, coaxed--to no purpose.
"You got to be a man afoor I marry you again," she told him coldly. "I'm no'hun of a no-man's woman."
Ernie at first refused to accept defeat. He became eloquent about his rights.
"They're nothing to my wrongs," Ruth answered briefly; and turned a deaf ear to all his pleas.
Thereafter Ernie found himself glad to escape the home haunted by the woman he still loved, who tantalised and thwarted him. That was why when Joe girded on his armour afresh and went forth to fight the old enemy in the new disguise, Ernie accompanied him.
The pair haunted Unionist meetings, Ernie quiescent, the other aggressive to rowdiness. Young Stanley Bessemere, who had returned from Ireland (where he now spent all his leisure caracoling on a war-horse at the distinguished tail of the caracoling Captain Smith) to address a series of gatherings in his constituency in justification of the Ulster movement, and his own share in it, was the favoured target for his darts. Joe followed him round from the East-end to Meads, and from Meads to Old Town, and even pursued him into the country. He acquired a well-earned reputation as a heckler, and was starred as dangerous by the Tory bloods. Mark that man! the word went round.
Joe knew it, and was only provoked to increased aggressiveness.
"Go on, ma lad!" he would roar from the back of the hall. "Yon's the road to revolution aw reet!"
There came a climax at a meeting in the Institute, Old Town. Joe at question time had proved himself unusually bland and provocative. The stewards had tried to put him out; and there had been a rough and tumble in the course of which somebody had hit the engineer a crack on the head from behind with the handle of a motor-car. Joe dropped; and Ernie stood over him in the ensuing scuffle. The news that there was trouble drew a little crowd. Ruth, on her evening marketings in Church Street, looked in. She found Joe sitting up against the wall, dazed; and Ernie kneeling beside him and having words with Stanley Bessemere, who was strolling towards the door.
"Brought his troubles on his own head," said the young member casually.
"Hit a man from behind!" retorted Ernie, quiet but rather white. "English, ain't it?"
"It was your own brother, then!" volunteered an onlooker.
Joe rallied, rubbed his head, looked up, saw Ruth and reassured her.
"A'm maself," he said.
He rose unsteadily on Ernie's arm.
"He must come home along of us," said Ruth.
"Of course he must then," Ernie answered with the asperity of the thwarted male.
The night-air revived the wounded man. Arrived at the cottage he sat in the kitchen, still a little stupid, but amused with his adventure.
"They'd ha kicked me in stoomach when A was down only for you, Ern," he said. "That's the Gentlemen of England's notion of politics, that is."
"You'd ha done the same by them, Joe, if you'd the chance," answered Ern.
The other grinned.
"A would that, by Guy--and all for loov," he admitted.
Ruth brought him a hot drink. He sipped it, one eye still on his saviour.
"I owe this to you, Ern. Here's to you!"
"Come to that, Joe, I owe you something," Ernie answered.
"What's that then?" Joe sat as a man with a stiff neck, screwing up his eye at the other.
Ern nodded significantly at Ruth's back.
"Why that little bit o tiddley you done for me afore the beaks," he whispered.
"That's nowt," answered Joe sturdily. "What was it Saul said to Jonathan--If a feller can't tiddle it a liddel bit for his pal, what the hell use is he?--Book o Judges."
Ruth in the background watched the two men. It was as though she were weighing them in the balance. There was a touch of masterful tenderness about Ern's handling of his damaged friend that surprised and pleased her.
Joe made an effort to get up.
"A'd best be shiftin," he said.
"Never!" cried Ern, authoritatively. "You'll bide the night along o us. She'll make you a bed on the couch here."
"Nay," said Ruth. "You'll sleep in the bed along o Ernie."
Joe eyed her.
"Where'll you sleep then?" he asked.
"In the spare room," Ruth answered, winking at Ernie.
There was no spare room; but she made up a shake-down for herself on the settle in the kitchen. Ernie, after packing away the visitor upstairs, came down to help her. It also gave him an opportunity to ventilate his grievance.
"One thing. It won't make much difference to me," he said.
"Your own fault," Ruth answered remorselessly. "And you aren't the only one, though I know you think you are. Men do ... We'd be out in the street now, the lot of us, only for Joe telling lies for you."
Next morning she took her visitor breakfast in bed and kept him there till Mr. Trupp had come, who told Joe he must not return to work for a week.
The engineer got up that afternoon and was sitting in the kitchen still rather shaky, when Alf, who had not fulfilled his threat and given Ruth notice, called for the rent.
Ruth greeted him with unusual friendliness.
"Come in, won't you?" she said--"while I get the money."
Alf, who in some respects was simple almost as Ernie, entered the trap to find Joe, huddled in a chair and glowering murder at him. He tried to withdraw, but Ruth stood between him and the door, twice his size, and with glittering eyes.
"There's a friend of yours," she said. "Saw him last night, at the meeting, didn't you?--I thart you'd be glad to meet him."
Alf quaked.
"Been in the wars then?" he said shakily.
"What d'you know about it?" rumbled Joe.
"I don't know nothin," answered Alf sharply, almost shrilly.
Just then little Alice entered. Alf took advantage of her entrance to establish his line of retreat. Once set in the door with a clear run for the open his courage returned to him.
"And what may be your name?" he asked the child with deliberate insolence.
"Alice Caspar," she answered, staring wide-eyed.
Alf sneered.
"That it ain't--I know," he said, and went out without his rent, and laughing horribly.
Little Alice ran out again.
"What's he mean?" asked Joe.
Ruth regarded him with wary curiosity.
"Didn't Ern never tell you then?" she asked.
"Never!" said Joe.
Ruth was thoughtful. That was nice of Ern--like Ern--the gentleman in him coming out.
That night she softened to him. He noticed it in a flash and approached her--only to be repulsed abruptly.
"No," she said. "I don't care about you no more. You've lost me. That's where it is."
"O, I beg pardon," answered Ernie, quivering. "I thart we was married."
"So we was one time o day, I believe," Ruth answered. "And might be again yet. Who knaws?"
He stood over her as she composed herself for the night on the settle.
"How long's that Joe going to stop in my house?" he asked.
"Just as long as I like," she answered coolly.
Next day when Joe came in for tea he found Ruth sitting in the kitchen, nursing little Alice, who was crying her heart out on her mother's shoulder.
"They've been tormenting her at school," Ruth explained. "It's Alf."
"I'll lay it is," muttered Joe. "Ern and me, we'll just go round when he comes back from work."
Ruth looked frightened.
"Don't tell Ern for all's sake, Joe!" she whispered.
"Why not then?"
"He'd kill Alf."
Joe's face betrayed his scepticism.
"Ah, you don't knaw Ern, when he's mad," Ruth warned him.
An hour later Ernie came home. He was still, suppressed, as often now. There was nobody in the kitchen but Ruth.
"Where's your Joe, then?" he asked.
"He's left," Ruth answered.
Ernie relaxed ever so little.
"He might ha stopped to say good-bye," he muttered.
Ruth rose.
"I got something to tell you, Ern," she said.
He turned on her abruptly.
"It's little Alice. They've been getting at her at school--that!--you knaw."
Ernie was breathing hard.
"Who split?"
"Alf. He told Mrs. Ticehurst--I see him; and she told the lot."
Ern went out slowly, and slowly up the stairs in the dark to the children's room.
A little voice called--"Daddy!"
"I'm comin, sweet-heart," he answered tenderly.
He felt his way to the child's bed, knelt beside it, and struck a match. A tear like a star twinkled on her cheek. She put out her little arms to him and clasped him round the neck.
"Daddy, you are my daddy, aren't you?" she sobbed, her heart breaking in her voice.
He laid his cheek against hers. Both were wet.
"Of course I am," he answered, the water floods sounding in his throat. "I'm your daddy; and you're my darling. And if we got nobody else we got each other, ain't we?"
Ruth, in the dark at the foot of the stairs, heard, gave a great gulp, and crept back to the kitchen.
