Ruth passed down the lane towards the golf links, the laughter sparkling in her brown eyes.
She was merry, malicious, mischievously prim. Then suddenly, as at the shutting of a door, her mood changed. Something warm and large and tremulous surged up unbidden out of the ocean-deeps of her.
To her own amazement she found herself sorry for the forlorn little figure with the eyes haunting and haunted, she had left standing in the road outside the Rectory gate.
A sense of the dramatic vicissitudes of life caught her by the throat. Three weeks ago that little man had been conquering the world with a swagger, the master of circumstance, over-riding destiny, sweeping obstacles aside, a domineer, with all the attributes of his kind--brutal, blatant, sure of himself, indifferent to others, scornful of the humble. Now he stood there at the cross-roads like some old tramp of the world, uncertain which way to turn--a mouse tossed overboard in mid-Atlantic by the cook's boy, the sport of tides and breakers, swimming round and round with ghastly eyes in ever-shortening circle.
The tempest which had all the world in grip, which had snatched Ernie from her arms, and hurled him across the seas, which had set millions of men to killing and being killed, had caught this insignificant gnat too, flying with such a fuss and buzz of wings under ominous skies, and then swaggered on its great way indifferent to the tiny creature it had crushed.
Ruth crossed the links, almost deserted now, and walked along over the crisp smooth turf, her eyes on the township of yellow huts rising out of the green in the great coombe across Summerdown Road.
Then she was aware of Mr. Chislehurst coming swiftly towards her beside the ha-ha of the Duke's Lodge. He looked, Ruth noticed at once, less harassed than he had done since the outbreak of war.
"I am glad I've met you, Mrs. Caspar," he began with the old boyish enthusiasm. "I'm off to-morrow and wasn't sure I should have time to come round and say goodbye to you and the babes."
Ruth stared.
"You're never going out there, sir!"
"Only as military chaplain."
Ruth refused to believe.
"But I thart you was against war and all that."
"So I am," Bobby answered gravely. He looked away towards Paradise. "But I feel Our Lord is there, or nowhere--just now."
Ruth felt profoundly moved. The young man's words, his action, brought home to her with a sudden pang, as not even the departure of Ernie had done, the change that had rushed upon the world.
Ruth looked at the smooth young face before her, brown and goodly, with all the hope and promise of the future radiant in it.
A passionate desire to take the boy in her arms, to shield him, to cry--You shan't! came over her. Then she gulped and said,
"Goodbye, sir," and moved on rapidly.
Passing through Meads, she turned the shoulder of the hill, and walked along the cliff, till she came to the long low house in the coombe.
It had a strangely deserted air, no spinal chairs and perambulators on the terrace, no nurses on the lawns, no beds on the balconies. All that busyness of quiet recreation which had been going on here for some years past had been brought to a sudden halt. Mrs. Lewknor came out to her and the two women sat a while on the terrace, talking. They had drawn very close in these few days, the regiment an ever-present bond between them. The husband of one was "out there" with the 1st battalion; the son of the other was racing home with the 2nd battalion in the Indian Contingent. Mrs. Lewknor felt a comfortable sense that once the two battalions were aligned on the West Front all would be well.
"Then let em all come!" the little lady said in her heart with almost vindictive glee.
As Ruth left she saw the Colonel in khaki, returning from his office. He came stalking along the cliff, his head on his left shoulder, looking seawards. There was about the gaunt old man that air of austere exaltation which had marked him from the moment of the outbreak of war. In his ears, indeed, ever since that hour, there had sounded a steady note, deep and pulsing like the throb of an engine--the heart of England beating on, beating eternally, tireless, true, from generation to generation.
And for one brief moment he had doubted her--might God forgive him!
Ruth asked him how recruiting was going.
"Well," replied the Colonel. "They're flocking in--men of all ages, classes, and creeds. I shipped off Burt this morning; and he's forty. Wanted to join the Hammer-men or Manchesters with his friend Tawney; but I said No: every man his own job, and sent him off to the flying folk as air-mechanic. He's joining up at Newhaven to-night, and in a week he'll be out there."
Ruth asked if there was any news of the Expeditionary Force.
"They're landed all right," the Colonel replied. "We should soon hear more. Our battalion's with the Fourth Division. If you go up on the Head you can see the transports crossing from Newhaven with the stuff."
"Think it'll be all right, sir?" asked Ruth.
"If we can stop their first rush," the Colonel answered. "Every day tells. We can't be too thankful for Liége, though Namur's a nasty knock."
Ruth looked across the sea.
"I wish we could do something for em," she said wistfully.
"We can," answered the Colonel sharply, almost sternly.
The old soldier took off his cap and stood there bare-headed on the edge of the white cliff, the wisps of silver hair lifting in the evening breeze.
"May the God of our fathers be with them in the day of battle!" he prayed, and added with quiet assurance as he covered again--"He will too."
Then he asked the woman at his side if she had heard from her husband.
Ruth dropped her eyes, sudden and secretive as a child.
"Ern's all right, I reckon," she said casually.
In fact a letter from him on the eve of sailing lay unopened in her pocket. She was treasuring it jealously, as a child treasures a sweet, to devour it with due ritual at the appointed hour in the appropriate place.
Ten minutes later she was standing waist-deep in the gorse of the Ambush looking about her.
Far away a silver-bellied air-ship was patrolling leisurely somewhere over the Rother Valley; and once she heard a loud explosion seawards and knew it for a mine.
Like a hind on the fell-side she stood up there, sniffing the wind. Behind her on the far horizon was a forest fire. She could smell it, see the glow of it, and the rumour of its coming was all a-round her: overhead the whistle and pipe of birds hard-driven, while under-foot the heather was alive with the stealthy migration of the under-world--adder and weasel, snake and hare, flying from the torment to come. But for her as yet the conflagration devouring the world was but an ominous red glare across the water. She breathed freely: for she had shaken off her immediate enemy--the Hunter.
Then she looked up and saw a man coming over the brow of Warren Hill towards her.
She dropped as though shot.
He was at her heels again. Face down, flat on the earth, she lay panting in her form.
And as she crouched there, listening to the thumping of her own heart, she was aware of another sound that came rollicking down to her, born on the wind. The Hunter was laughing, that huge gusty laughter of his she knew so well. Had he tracked her down?
She heard his feet approaching on the turf. Was the earth trembling at the touch of them or was it the beating of her own heart that shook it?
Prone on the ground, spying through the roots of the gorse, she could see those feet--those solid familiar boots that had dangled so often before her fire; and the bottoms of the trousers, frayed at the edges and rather short, betraying the absence of a woman's care.
Was it her he was after?
No: he passed, still rollicking. He was not mocking her: he was tossing off his chest in cascades of giant laughter the seas that had so long threatened to overwhelm him, tossing them off into the blue in showers of spray.
I am free once more! that was what his laughter said.
She sat up: she knelt: warily she peeped over the green wall. His back was moving solidly away in the evening, his back with the swag on it. He reached the flag-staff and dropped away down into Hodcombe, that lies between Beau-nez and the Belle-tout light-house. She watched him till only his round dark head was visible. Then that too disappeared. She rose and filled her chest as the breeze slowly fills the sails of a ship that has long hovered uncertainly in stays.
He too was gone--into IT.
That Other was gone--like the rest--and the past with him.
How queer it all was! and how differently each man had met the huge tidal wave that had swept the whole world off its feet!
Joe, paddling in the muddy shallows, had been caught up, and was swimming easily now on the crest of it. Alf, snatched up unawares as he grubbed for bait upon the flats, had been tumbled over and over like a pebble, smashed down upon the remorseless beach, and drawn back with a sickening scream by the undersuck into the murderous riot of it. Last of all, Ern, asleep and snoring under the sunny sea-wall, had risen suddenly, girded on his strength, and waded out to meet it with rejoicing heart.
Dear Ern!
Sinking down into the harbourage of this deep and quiet covert where, under the stars, all his children, conceived in ecstasy, had come to her, she took out his letter, opened it, and began to read.
It was dated In the train, and began full of affection for her and the children.
"Now we made it up I don't mind what comes. I feel like it was a new beginning. There's a lot of married men joined up feel the very same. I feel uplifted like and that whatever comes nothing can ever come atween us no more really. Even when it was dark I felt that--that it wasn't really real between us--only a shadow like that would surely pass away--as it has passed away--thank God for His great mercies."
There followed love and kisses to all the children and especially little Alice, underlined, and fraternal greetings to old Joe.
"We shall push em back where they belong all right, I expect. And if we don't I shall send for him to lend a shove. He's all right, old Joe is. There's not many of em I'd trust, but you can trust him. I knew that all along."
The letter finished,
"It's an end and a beginning, as old dad says. And whatever else that's finished, and I don't care."
It was true too.
She folded the letter and slipped it in her bosom.
The second volume of her life had ended, and ended well. The sudden hand of destiny had reached forth to save her, to save the children, to save Ernie, to save Joe.
Had she ever wavered?--Who shall say?--Perhaps she could not say herself.
She cast her mind back over her married life. Six years in September since she and Ern had ridden back to Old Town in Isaac Woolgar's cart. Six years of struggle, worry, and deep joy. She was thankful for them, thankful for the crowding babes, and most of all, she sometimes thought, thankful for Ernie ... His unfailing love and solicitude for little Alice! She could never be grateful enough to him for that. Dear Ern:--so affectionate, so always loveable. She regretted nothing, not even his weakness now. Because of his weakness strength had come to her, growth, and the consummation of deep unconscious desire.
Had she been too hard on him?--A great voice of comfort, the voice of Ernie, so it seemed to her, only swollen to gigantic proportions, till the sound of it was like the sound of the Sou-West wind billowing through the beach-tops in Paradise, surged up within her crying No.
Then she turned back to the first volume of her life, completed now so many years ago.
For the second time she had been left thus, man-less, a new life quickening within her. But what a difference between then and now! Then the fierce thief of her virginity had stolen away in the night, leaving her to meet the consequences, alone, an outcast, the hand of all men against her; and she recalled now with a shudder the afternoon on which she had gone forth to the Crumbles and there amid the jeers of the remorseless sea had faced the situation. Now it was true her accustomed mate had been snatched from her side; but the world was behind her. She was marching with the hosts, a mighty concourse, one of them, and uplifted on their songs.
She had nothing to fear, much to be thankful for. How calm she felt, how strong, how confident of herself, above all of Ernie! His punishment had made him and completed her own life. She had won her man and in winning him had won herself. And she would never lose him now. His pain, her pain, had been worth while. Smiles were in her eyes as she recalled the fuss that he had made--his struggles, his temper, his wiles of a naughty and thwarted child; and tears where she recalled the anguish of his time of purgation. And yet because of his suffering he had been strong when the day of battle came, and he would be strong. She had no doubt of that. And it was all over now.
Rising she stood up and looked about her, absorbing the down-land, familiar and beloved from childhood. The sky, grey now and mottled, drooped about her quietly with the soft wings of a mothering bird settling soft-breasted on her nest. The good green earth, firm beneath her feet, lifted her up into the quiet refuge of that welcoming bosom, lifted her to meet it like a wave gently swelling. So it had always been: so it always would be. This earth she knew and loved so well was not alien, it was not hostile; rather it was flesh of her flesh and soul of her soul. It gave her strength and comfort. Her bosom rose and fell in time, so it seemed to her, with the rise and fall of the breast of this virgin-mother, whose goodness she assimilated through heart and eyes and nostrils. She felt utterly at home. All sense of separation, of dissent, had left her.
Absorbed she stood, and absorbing.
These woman-bodied hills, sparsely clad in rags of gorse that served only to enhance their loveliness, brought her solace and content as did nothing else. So it had always been: so it always would be. The beauty and wonder of them rolled in upon her in waves of sound-less music, sluicing over the sands of her life in foaming sheets of hyacinth, drowning the resentment, filling and fulfilling her with the grand harmony of life.
Sometimes down in the Moot, amid the worry, and the tumult, and the exasperations, she became empty, a discord, a desert. Then she would get away for an hour among the hills and her parched spirit found instant refreshment. She brimmed again. The quiet, the comfort, the deep abiding wonder of it all came back to her; even the words which she always associated with it--I am the Resurrection and the Life.
Since Ernie's departure the Comforter had come thus to her with renewed power; as if knowing her need and resolute to fortify her in the hour of her ordeal.
Standing there upon the brow, Ernie's letter lying like his hand upon her breast in the old dear way, she gazed across the waters, dimming in the dusk, and sent out her heart towards him, strong and pulsing as the sun's rays at dawn seen by some mountaineer from his native peak. She could shield him so that no evil thing could come nigh him. She had no fear for him and was amazed at her own triumphant faith.
Established on the rock herself, earth in earth, spirit in spirit, invincibly secure, she had him safe in her keeping, safe, aye safe as his child quickening in the warm and sheltered darkness of her womb.
