Ernie Caspar after his marriage with Ruth Boam settled down with his bride in Old Town to enjoy the fruits of victory.
The young couple had been lucky to find a cottage in the Moot2; for even in those days accommodation for the working-class was as hard to find in Beachbourne as elsewhere. The cottage, too, was appropriately situated3 for them in every way. It was close to the yard of the Southdown Transport Company, where Ernie's work lay; and at the bottom of Borough4 Lane, at the top of which was the Manor-house, where lived Mr. and Mrs. Trupp, who had seen Ruth through her trouble, and had befriended Ernie from his boyhood.
"D'you remember that first time ever we rode up to Old Town together tarp o the bus?" asked Ernie of his bride, one evening as they passed the great doctor's house on the way to Beau-nez.
"Hap5 I do," Ruth answered, amused at her lover's intense seriousness.
"And do you remember what I said to you?" insistently6.
"Ne'er a word," answered Ruth, casual and teasing—"only it was no-account talk. That's all I remember."
"I pointed7 you out Mr. Trupp's house," Ernie continued solemnly, "and I says to you—He brought me into the world, I says. That's what he done."
The old roguish black-bird look, which after her winter of despair had been creeping slowly back to Ruth's face in this new spring, gleamed sedately8 now.
"I mind me now," she said. "Leastwise I don't remember what you said, but I remembers what I answered."
"What did you answer then?" asked Ernie, suspiciously.
"He done well, was what I says," answered the young woman gravely.
"He did," replied Ernie with exaggerated pomp. "And he done better to settle issalf at my door so I could be his friend if so be he ever gotten into trouble."
"One thing I knaw," said Ruth, serious in her turn now. "They're the two best friends e'er a workin woman had."
"They are," Ernie agreed. "And she's my god-mother."
It was the fact in his life of which on the whole he was most proud and certainly the one for which he was least responsible. "And she aren't yours," he continued, puffed9 up and self-complacent. "And never will be." He added finally to curb10 her arrogance11. "See she was dad's friend afore ever they married, eether of them."
Ruth checked her husband's snobbishness12 with a tap.
"You are grand," she said.
Close to the cottage of the young couple was the lovely old Motcombe garden, public now, pierced by the bourne from which the town derives13 its name. The garden with its ancient dove-cot, ivy-crowned, its splendid weeping ashes, its ruined walls, compact of native flint and chalk, the skeletons of afore-time barns and byres, stands between the old parsonage house and older parish-church that crowns the Kneb above and, with its massive tower, its squat14 shingled15 spire16 peculiar17 to Sussex, set four-square to the winds of time, seems lost in a mist of memories.
Beyond the church, a few hundred yards further up the hill, at the back of Billing's Corner in Rectory Walk, Ernie's parents still dwelt.
Anne Caspar did not visit Ruth. Indeed, she ignored the presence of her daughter-in-law; but those steel-blue eyes of hers sought out and recognized in a hard flash the majestic18 peasant girl who now haunted Church Street at shopping hours as the woman who had married her son. Ernie's mother was in fact one of those who make it a point of duty, as well as a pleasure, never to forgive. She had neither pardoned Ruth for daring to be her daughter-in-law, nor forgotten her sin. And both offences were immeasurably accentuated19 by Ruth's crime in establishing herself in the Moot.
"Settlin on my door-step," she said. "Brassy slut!"
"Just like her," her second son answered; and added with stealthy malice20, "Dad visits em. I seen im."
Alf, for all his acuteness, had never learned the simple lesson that his mother would not tolerate the slightest criticism of her old man.
"And why shouldn't he?" she asked sharply. "Isn't Ern his own flesh-and-blood? He's got a heart, dad has, if some as ought to ave aven't."
"No reason at all," answered Alf, looking down his nose. "Why shouldn't he be thick in with her—and with her child for the matter of that? I see him walkin in the Moot the other day near the Quaker meeting-house hand-in-hand with little Alice. Pretty as a Bible picture it struck me."
Anne Caspar stared stonily21.
"Who's little Alice?" she asked.
"Her love-child," answered Alf. "Like your grand-child as you might say—only illegit o course."
His mother breathed heavily.
"Is Ern the father?" she asked at last in a sour flat voice.
"Not him!" jeered22 Alf. "She's a rich man's cast-off, Ruth is. Made it worth Ern's while. That's where it was. See, cash is cash in this world."
Anne laid back her ears as she rummaged23 among her memories,
"I thought you told me," she began slowly, "as Ern—"
"Never!" cried Alf. "Ern had nothin to do with it, who-ever had."
"Who was the father?" asked Anne, not above a little feminine curiosity.
Alf shook his head cunningly.
"Ah," he said, "now you're askin!" and added after a moment's pause:—
"She was all-the-world's wench one time o day, your daughter was. That's all I can tell you."
Anne stirred a saucepan thoughtfully. She did not believe Alf: for she knew that Ernie was far too much his father's son to be bought disgracefully, and she remembered suddenly a suggestion that Mr. Pigott had lately thrown out to the effect that Alf himself had not been altogether proof against the seductions of this seductive young woman his brother had won. It struck her now that there might be something in the story after all, unlikely as it seemed: for she remarked that Alf always pursued his sister-in-law with the covert24 rancour and vindictiveness25 of the mean spirit which has met defeat.
But however doubtful she might be in her own heart of Alf's tale, the essential facts about Ruth were not in dispute: her daughter-in-law was the mother of an illegitimate child and had settled down with that child not a quarter of a mile away. Everybody knew the story, especially of course the neighbours she would least wish to know it—the Archdeacon and Lady Augusta in the Rectory across the way. For over thirty years Anne had lived in her solid little blue-slated house, the ampelopsis running over its good red face, the tobacco plants sweet on summer evenings in the border round the neat and tidy lawn, holding her nose high, too high her enemies averred26, and priding herself above all women on her respectability—and now!
No wonder Ernie, bringing home his bride and his disgrace, infuriated her.
"Shamin me afore em all!" she muttered time and again with sullen27 wrath28 to the pots and pans she banged about on the range.
She never saw the offender29 now except on Sundays when he came up to visit his father, which he did as regularly as in the days before his marriage. The ritual of these visits was always the same. Ernie would come in at the front-door; she would give him a surly nod from the kitchen; he would say quietly—"Hullo, mum!" and turn off into the study where his dad was awaiting him.
The two, Anne remarked with acrimony, grew always nearer and—what annoyed her most—talked always less. Edward Caspar was an old man now, in body if not in years; and on the occasion of Ernie's visits father and son rarely strolled out to take the sun on the hill at the back or lounge in the elusive30 shade of Paradise as in former days. They were content instead to sit together in the austere31 little study looking out on to the trees of the Rectory, Lely's famous Cavalier, the first Lord Ravensrood, glancing down from the otherwise bare walls with wistful yet ironic32 eyes on his two remote descendants enjoying each other beneath in a suspicious communion of silence.
Thus Anne always found the pair when she brought them their tea; and the mysterious intimacy33 between the two was all the more marked because of her husband's almost comical unawareness34 of his second son. The genuine resentment35 Anne experienced in the matter of Edward's unvarying attitude towards his two sons she visited, regardless of justice, upon Alf.
"Might not be a son to your father the way you go on!" she said censoriously.
"And what about him," cried Alf, not without reason. "Might not be a father to your son, seems to me."
It would, however, have taken more than Anne Caspar's passionate36 indignation at the action of Ernie and his bride in establishing themselves in the Moot to cloud the lives of the newly-married couple. Ern was now twenty-eight, and Ruth four years younger. They had the present, which they enjoyed; they did not worry about the future; and the past inevitably37 buries itself in time.
"We're young yet, as Mr. Trupp says," remarked Ernie. "We've got it all afore us. Life's not so bad for all they say. I got you: and you got me; and the rest don't matter."
They were lying on Beau-nez in the dusk above Cow Gap, listening to the long-drawn swish of the sea, going and coming with the tranquil38 rhythm that soothes39 the spirit of man, restless in Time, with rumours40 of forgotten Eternity41.
"And we both got little Alice," murmured Ruth, eyes resting on his with affectionate confidence, sure of his love for her and the child that was not his.
"Keep me cosy42, Ern," whispered the luxurious43 creature with a delicious mixture of entreaty44 and authority snuggling up against him. She was lying, her face lifted flower-wise to the moon that hung above her bubble-like and benignant, her eyes closed, her lips tilted45 to tempt46 the pollen-bearing bee, while about them the lovely laughter brimmed and dimpled.
"I'll keep you cosy, my beauty," replied Ernie, with the busy seriousness of the male intent on love. "I'll give you plenty beside little Alice to think of afore I'm done with you. I'll learn you. Don't you worrit. I know what you want."
"What then?" asked Ruth, deep and satisfied.
"Why, basketfuls o babies—armfuls of em, like cowslips till you're fairly smothered47, and spill em over the field because you can't hold em all."
Perhaps he was right. Certainly after the battle and conflict of the last two years Ruth felt spiritually lazy. She browsed48 and drowsed, content that Ernie for the time being should master her. It was good for him, too, she saw, so long as he would do it, correcting his natural tendency to slackness; and she had little doubt that she could assume authority at will in the future, should it prove necessary. Meanwhile that spirit of adventure which lurked49 in her; distinguished50 her from her class; and had already once led her into danger and catastrophe51, was lulled52 to sleep for the moment.
The hill at the back of Cow Gap is steep, and towards the crest53 the gorse grows thick and very high. In the heart of this covert, dense54 enough to satisfy the most jealous lovers, Ernie had made a safe retreat. He had cut away the resisting gorse with a bill-hook, rooted up the stumps55, stripped the turf and made a sleeping-place of sand brought up from the shore. In a rabbit-hole hard by, he hid a spirit-lamp and sundry56 stores of tea and biscuits; while Mrs. Trupp routed out from her coach-house an immense old carriage umbrella dating from Pole days which, when unfurled, served to turn a shower.
Ruth and Ernie called their hiding-place the Ambush57; for in it they could harbour, seeing all things, yet themselves unseen. And there, through that brilliant autumn, they would pass their week-ends, watching Under-cliff, as the hostel58 was called, rising up out of the saucer of the coombe beneath them. They would leave little Alice with a neighbour, and lock up the cottage in the Moot, which Ruth was swiftly transfiguring into a home. On Saturday evenings, after a hard afternoon's work, stripping, papering, painting, making the old new and the dull bright, the pair would walk up Church Street, turn to the left at Billing's Corner, and dropping down Love Lane by the Rectory, cross the golf links and mount the hill by the rabbit-walk that leads above Paradise, past the dew-pond, on to the broad-strewn back of Beau-nez. Up there, surrounded by the dimming waters and billowing land, they would wait till the Head was deserted59 by all save a tethered goat and watchful60 coastguard; till in the solitude61 and silence the stars whispered, and the darkening turf, grateful for the falling dew, responded sweetly to their pressing feet. Then the young couple, taking hands, would leave the crest and find their way with beating hearts along the track that led through the covert to their couching-place, where none would disturb them except maybe a hunting stoat; and only the moon would peep at them under the shaggy eyebrow62 of the gorse as they rejoiced in their youth, their love, their life.
And then at dawn when the sun glanced warily63 over the brim of the sea and none was yet astir save the kestrel hovering64 in the wind; and the pair of badgers—who with the amazing tenacity65 of their kind still tenanted the burrows66 of their ancestors within a quarter of a mile of the tents and tabernacles of man—rooted and sported clumsily on the dewy hillside beneath; they would rise and slip bare-foot down the hill, past the hostel, on to the deserted beach, there to become one with the living waters, misty67 and lapping, as at night they had entered into communion with earth and sky and the little creaking creatures of the dark.
"This is life," Ernie said on one such Sabbath dawn, sinking into the waters with deep content. "Wouldn't old dad just love this?"
"If it were like this all the time!" Ruth answered a thought wistfully as she floated with paddling hands, sea and sky, as it was in the beginning, enveloping68 her. "Like music in church. Just the peace that passeth understanding, as my Miss Caryll'd say."
"Ah," said Ernie, speaking with the profound sagacity that not seldom marks the words of the foolish. "Might be bad for us. If there was nothing to fight we'd all be like to go to sleep. That's what Mr. Trupp says."
"Some of us might," said Ruth, the girl slyly peeping forth69 from her covering womanhood.
"Look at Germany!" continued the wise man, surging closer. "Look at what the Colonel said the other night at the Institute. We're the rabbits; and Germany's the python, the Colonel says."
"That for Germany!" answered Ruth, splashing the water with the flat of her hand in the direction of the rising sun.
"And she's all the while a-creepin—a-creepin—closer acrarst the sea," said Ernie, edging nearer—"for to SWALLOW US UP!" And with a rush he engulfed70 her young body in his arms.
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1
honeymoons
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| 蜜月( honeymoon的名词复数 )； 短暂的和谐时期； 蜜月期； 最初的和谐时期 | |
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moot
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| v.提出；adj.未决议的；n.大会；辩论会 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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hap
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| n.运气；v.偶然发生 | |
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insistently
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| ad.坚持地 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sedately
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| adv.镇静地，安详地 | |
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puffed
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| adj.疏松的v.使喷出( puff的过去式和过去分词 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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derives
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| v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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14
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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15
shingled
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| adj.盖木瓦的；贴有墙面板的v.用木瓦盖(shingle的过去式和过去分词形式) | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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19
accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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stonily
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| 石头地，冷酷地 | |
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jeered
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| v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23
rummaged
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| 翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查 | |
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covert
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| adj.隐藏的；暗地里的 | |
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vindictiveness
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| 恶毒；怀恨在心 | |
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averred
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| v.断言( aver的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出 | |
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sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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offender
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| n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者 | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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33
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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unawareness
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| 不知觉；不察觉；不意；不留神 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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39
soothes
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| v.安慰( soothe的第三人称单数 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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40
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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41
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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42
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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43
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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44
entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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45
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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47
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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48
browsed
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| v.吃草( browse的过去式和过去分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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49
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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51
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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52
lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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53
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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54
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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55
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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56
sundry
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| adj.各式各样的，种种的 | |
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57
ambush
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| n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵；v.埋伏；伏击 | |
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58
hostel
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| n.（学生）宿舍，招待所 | |
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59
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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61
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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64
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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65
tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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66
burrows
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| n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 )；翻寻 | |
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67
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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68
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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69
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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engulfed
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| v.吞没，包住( engulf的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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