The advent of Bobby Chislehurst to Old Town made a considerable difference to Bessie Trupp. She was not at all in love with him and he only pleasantly so with her; but as she told her friend the Colonel,
"He's the first curate we've ever had in Old Town you can be like that with."
"Like that is good," said the Colonel. "Give me my tables. Meet it is I write it down.--It says nothing and expresses everything."
Now if the clergy in Old Town with the exception of Bess's pet antipathy, the Reverend Spink, were honest men worthy of respect, as everybody admitted, they were also old-fashioned; and Bobby Chislehurst was a new and disturbing element in their midst. Shy and unassuming though he was, the views of the Cherub, as the Colonel called his cousin, when they became known, created something of a mild sensation in the citadel which had been held for Conservatism against all comers by the Archdeacon and his lady for nearly forty years.
Even Mr. Pigott was shocked.
"He's a Socialist!" he confided to Mr. Trupp at the Bowling Green Committee.
The old Nonconformist had passed the happiest hours of a militant life in battle with the Church as represented by his neighbour, the Archdeacon, but of late it had been borne in upon him with increasing urgency that the time might come when Church and Chapel would have to join forces and present a common front against the hosts of Socialism which he feared more than ever he had done the Tory legions.
But if the Church was going Socialist! ...
And Mr. Chislehurst said it was...
The new curate and Bess Trupp had much in common, especially Boy Scouts, their youth and the outstanding characteristic of their generation--a passionate interest and sympathy for their poorer neighbours. Both spent laborious and happy hours in the Moot, listening a great deal, learning much, even helping a little. Bess, who had known most of the dwellers in the hollow under the Kneb all her life, had of course her favourites whom she commended to the special care of Bobby on his arrival; and first of these were the young Caspars.
She told him of Edward Caspar, her mother's old friend, scholar, dreamer, gentleman, with the blood of the Beauregards in his veins, who had married the daughter of an Ealing tobacconist, and lived in Rectory Walk; of Anne Caspar, the harsh and devoted tyrant; of the two sons of this inharmonious couple, and the antagonism between them from childhood; of Alf's victory and Ernie's enlistment in the Army; his sojourn in India and return to Old Town some years since; and she gave him a brief outline of Ruth's history, not mentioning Royal's name but referring once or twice through set teeth to "that little beast."
"Who's that?" asked the Cherub.
"Ernie's brother," she answered. "Alfred, who drives for dad."
"Not the sidesman?"
"Yes."
Bobby looked surprised.
"Mr. Spink," Bess explained darkly. "He got him there."
Apart from Bess's recommendation, Mr. Chislehurst's contact with Ruth was soon established through little Alice, who attended Sunday School. Ruth, moreover, called herself a church-woman, and was sedately proud of it, though the Church had no apparent influence upon her life, and though she never attended services.
On the latter point, the Cherub, when he had rooted himself firmly in her regard, remonstrated.
"See, I ca-a-n't, sir," said Ruth simply.
"Why not?" asked Bobby.
"He's always there," Ruth answered enigmatically.
Bobby was puzzled and she saw it.
"Alf," she explained. "See, he wanted me same as Ernie. Only not to marry me. Just for his fun like and then throw you over. That's Alf, that is. There's the difference atween the two brothers." She regarded the young man before her with the lovely solicitude of the mother initiating a sensitive son into the cruelties of a world of which she has already had tragic experience. "Men are like that, sir--some men." She added with tender delicacy, "Only you wouldn't know it, not yet."
The Cherub might be innocent, but no man has lived and worked in the back-streets of Bermondsey without learning some strange and ugly truths about life and human nature.
"He's not worrying you now?" he asked anxiously.
"Nothing to talk on," answered Ruth. "He wants me still, I allow. Only he won't get me--not yet a bit anyways." She seemed quite casual about the danger that threatened her, Bobby noticed; even, he thought, quietly enjoying it.
That evening, when the Cherub touched on the point to his colleague, Mr. Spink turned in his india-rubber lips.
"It's an honour to be abused by a woman like that," he said. "She's a bad character--bad."
"She's not that, I swear!" cried Bobby warmly. "She may have exaggerated, or made a mistake, but bad she's not."
"I believe I've been in the parish longer than you have, Chislehurst," retorted the other crisply. "And presumably I know something about the people in it."
"You've not been in as long as Miss Trupp," retorted Bobby. "She's been here all her life."
Mr. Spink puffed at his cigar with uplifted chin and smiled.
"How's it getting on?" he asked.
"Pah!" muttered Bobby--"Cad!" and went out, rather white.
That was not the end of the matter, however.
A few days later Joe Burt and Bobby had paused for a word at the Star corner when Mr. Spink and Alf Caspar came down Church Street together.
"Birds of a feather," said Alf loudly, nudging his companion, just as they passed the standing couple.
"That's not very courteous, Caspar," called Bobby quietly after him.
Mr. Spink walked on with a smirk; but Alf came back with hardly dissimulated truculence.
"Sorry you've been spreading this about me, Mr. Chislehurst," he said, his sour eyes blinking.
"What?" asked the Cherub, astonished.
"Dirt," Alf retorted. "And I know where you got it from too."
"I haven't," cried Bobby with boyish indignation. "What d'you mean?"
"I know you have though," retorted Alf. "So it's no good denying it." He was about to move on with a sneer when Joe Burt struck in.
"That's a foonny way to talk," he said.
"Foonny it may be," mocked Alf. "One thing I'll lay: it's not so foonny as your lingo."
The engineer shouldered a pace nearer.
"Throw a sneer, do you?"
"Ah," said Alf, secure in the presence of the clergyman. "I know all about you."
"Coom to that," retorted the Northerner, "I know a little about you. One o Stan's pups, aren't you?"
Bobby moved on and Alf at once followed suit.
"You keep down in the East-end, my lad!" he called over his shoulder. "We don't want none of it in Old Town. Nor we won't have it, neether."
Joe stood four-square at the cross-roads, bristling like a dog.
"Called yourself a Socialist when yo were down, didn't you?" he shouted. "And then turned Church and State when yo began to make. I know your sort!"
He dropped down Borough Lane, hackles still up, on the way to meet Ernie by appointment in the Moot.
At the corner he waited, one eye on Ern's cottage, which he did not approach. Then Ruth's face peeped round her door, amused and malicious, to catch his dark head bobbing back into covert as he saw her. The two played I spy thus most evenings to the amusement of one of them at least.
"He's there," she told Ernie in the kitchen--"Waitin at the corner.--Keeps a safe distance, don't he?--What's he feared on?"
"You," answered Ernie, and rose.
Ruth snorted. The reluctance to meet her of this man with the growing reputation as a fighter amused and provoked her. Sometimes she chaffed with Ernie about it; but a ripple of resentment ran always across her laughter.
Ern now excused his friend.
"He's all for his politics," he said. "No time for women."
"Hap, he'll learn yet," answered Ruth with a fierce little nod of her head.
