One Woman: Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex

She hungered for her grand-children, longed to feel their limbs, and see their bodies, to hold them in her lap, to bathe them, win their smiles, and hear their prattle.

Pride, which she mistook for principle, stood between her and happiness.

Ruth knew all that was passing in the elder woman's heart, and felt for the other a profound and disturbing sympathy. She had the best of it; and she knew that Anne Caspar, for all her pharisaic air of superiority, knew it too. Ruth had learnt from Mrs. Trupp something of the elder woman's story. Anne Caspar too, it seemed, had loved out of her sphere; but she, unlike Ruth, had achieved her man. Had she been happy? That depended on whether she had brought happiness to her husband--Ruth never doubted that. And Ruth knew that she had not; and knew that Anne Caspar knew that she had not.

Moreover, all that Ernie told her about his mother interested her curiously: the elder woman's pride, her loneliness, her passion for her old man.

"Alf's mother over again," Ern told Ruth, "with all her qualities only one--but it's the one that matters. He's a worker same as she is. He means to get on, same as she done. There's just this difference atween em: Alf can't love; Mother can--though it's only one." ...

A week after his first visit Alf appeared again on Ruth's door-step.

Ruth opened to him with so bright a smile that he was for once taken completely by surprise. He had expected resistance and come armed to meet it.

"Come in, won't you?" she said.

Then he understood. She had thought better of her foolishness.

"That's it, is it?" he said, licking his lips. "That's a good gurl."

"Yes," said Ruth. "Very pleased to see you, I'm sure." She was smarter than usual too, he noticed--to grace the occasion no doubt. And the plain brown dress, the hue of autumn leaves, with the tiny white frill at the collar, revealed the noble lines of her still youthful figure.

The conqueror, breathing hard, entered the kitchen, to be greeted by a cultivated voice from the corner.

"Well, Alfred," it said.

Alf, whose eyes had been on the floor, glanced up with a start.

His father was sitting beside the cradle, beaming mildly on him through gold spectacles.

"Hullo, dad," said Alf, surlily. This large ineffectual father of his had from childhood awed him. There was a mystery about even his mildness, his inefficiency, which Alf had never understood and therefore feared. "I didn't expect to find you here."

It seemed to Alf that the bottle-imp was twinkling in the old man's eyes. Alf remembered well the advent of that imp to the blue haunts he had never quitted since. That was during the years of Ern's absence in India. Now it struck him suddenly that his father, so seeming-innocent, so remote from the world, was in the joke against him.

A glance at Ruth, malicious and amused, confirmed his suspicion.

"I'm glad you come and visit your sister sometimes, Alfred," said the old man gently.

"Yes," purred Ruth, "he comes reg'lar, Alf do now--once a week. And all in the way of friendship as the savin is. See, he's our landlord now."

"That's nice," continued the old man with the dewy innocence of a babe. "Then he can let you off your rent if you get behind."

"So he could," commented Ruth, "if only he was to think of it. Do you hear your dad, Alf?"

She paid the week's rent into his hand, coin by coin, before his father's eyes. Then he turned and slouched out.

"Good-night, Alf," Ruth said, almost affectionately. "It 'as been nice seein you and all."

Determined to enjoy her triumph to the full, she followed him to the door. In the street he turned to meet her mocking glance, in which the cruelty gleamed like a half-sheathed sword. His own eyes were impudent and familiar as they engaged hers.

"Say, Ruth, what's he after?" he asked, cautiously, in lowered voice.

"Who?"

"That feller I caught you with the other night--when Ern wasn't there. Black-ugly. What's he after?"

"Same as you, hap."

He sniggered feebly.

"What's that?"

"Me."

She stood before him; a peak armoured through the ages in eternal ice and challenging splendidly in the sun.

He hoiked and spat and turned away.

"Brassy is it?" he said. "One thing, my lass, you been in trouble once, mind. I saved you then. But I mightn't be able to a second time."

Behind Ruth's shoulder a dim face, bearded and spectacled, peered at him with the mild remorselessness of the moon.

"Alfred," said a voice, dreadful in its gentle austerity.

When the old man said good-bye to Ruth ten minutes later he kissed her for the first time.

She smiled up at him gallantly.

"It's all right, dad," she said, consolingly. "I'm not afraid o him whatever else."