Next day Ernie was to join up.

After dinner he kissed Susie and Jenny, gave them each a penny, and despatched them to play. Hand in hand they stamped away to Motcombe Garden with clacking heels, roguish backward glances and merry tongues.

Then he asked Ruth to go into the backyard. Left alone with Alice he lifted her on to the kitchen-table, took her hands in his, and looked gravely into her eyes.

"I trust you to look after mother and the little ones when I\'m gone, Lal," he said.

The little maid, swift and sympathetic as her mother, nodded at him, nibbling her handkerchief, her heart too full for words. Then she raised her crumpled face, that at the moment was so like her mother\'s, for a last kiss, and as she wreathed her arms round his neck she whispered,

"You are my daddy, aren\'t you, daddy?"

"Of course I am," he murmured, and lifted her down.

She ran away swiftly, not trusting herself to look back.

A moment later Ruth entered the kitchen, slowly and with downcast eyes. He was standing before the fire, awaiting her.

"Ruth," he said quietly. "I\'ve tried to do well by your child; I\'ll ask you to do the same by mine."

She came to him and hung about his neck, riven with sobs, her head on his shoulder.

"O Ern!" she cried. "And is that your last word to me?"

She lifted anguished eyes to him and clung to him.

"I love them all just the same, only we been through so much together, she and me. That\'s where it is."

His arms were about her and he was stroking her.

"I knaw that then," he said, husky himself.

"See, they got you and each other and all the world," Ruth continued. "Little Alice got nobody only her mother."

"And me," said Ernie.

She steadied and drew her hand across rain-blurred eyes.

"Ern," she said, deeply. "I do thank you for all your lovin kindness to that child. I\'ve never forgot that all through—whatever it seemed."

"She\'s mine just as well as yours," he answered, smiling and uncertain. "Always has been. Always will be."

She pressed her lips on his with a passion that amazed him.

Then he took the boy from the cot and rocked him. The tears poured down his face. This, then, was War!—All his light-heartedness, his detachment, had gone. He was a husband and a father torn brutally away from the warmth and tenderness of the home that was so dear to him, to be tossed into the arena among wild beasts who not long since had been men just like himself, and would be men still but for the evil power of their masters to do by them as his masters had done by him. Then he put the child back and turned to say good-bye to Ruth.

The passionate wife of a few minutes since had changed now into the mother parting from her schoolboy. She took him to her heart and hugged him.

"You\'ll be back before you know," she told him, cooing, comforting, laughing through her tears. "They all say it\'ll be over soon, whatever else. A great war like this ca\'an\'t go on. Too much of it, like."

"Please God, so," said Ernie. "It\'s going to be the beginning of a new life for me—for you—for all of us, as Joe says.... God keep you till we meet again."

Then he walked swiftly down the street with swimming eyes.

The neighbours, who were all fond of Ern, stood in their doors and watched him solemnly.

He was going into IT.

Like as not they would never see him again.

Many of the women had handkerchieves to their lips, as they watched, and over the handkerchieves their eyes showed awed. Some turned away, hands to their hearts. Others munched their aprons and wept. A mysterious rumour in the deeps of them warned them of the horror that had him and them and the world in its grip.

They could not understand, but they could feel.

And this working man with the uncertain mouth and blurred eyes—this man whose walk, whose speech, whose coal-grimed face, and the smell even of his tarry clothes, was so familiar to them—was the symbol of it all.

A big navvy came sheepishly out of the last house in the row and stopped him. It was the man who had insulted Ernie in the Star six months before.

"I ask your pardon, Ern," he said. "I didn\'t mean what I said."

Ern shook hands. Years before the two had been at school together under Mr. Pigott.

"It wasn\'t you, Reube," he said. "I knaw who spread the dung you rolled in."

"I shan\'t be caught again," replied the other. "That\'s a sure thing."

Ern jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Keep an eye to her!" he whispered.

"You may lay to it," the big man answered.

At the corner a young girl of perhaps fifteen ran out suddenly, flung herself into his arms, kissed him, with blind face lifted to the sky, and was gone again.

At the bottom of Borough Lane a troop of Boy-Scouts in slouch hats, knickers, and with staves, drawn up in order, saluted. A tiny boy in his mother\'s arms blew him shy kisses. Just outside the yard of the Transport Company his mates, who had been waiting him, came out and shook him by the hand. Most were very quiet. As he passed on the man among them he disliked most called for three cheers. A ragged noise was raised behind him.


At the Star corner a beery patriot, wearing the South African medals, mug to his lips, hailed him.

"Gor bless the Hammer-men!" he cried. "Gor bless the old ridgiment!" and tried to lure Ernie into the familiar bar-parlour.

"Not me, thank ye!" cried Ernie stoutly. "This ain\'t a beano, my boy! This is War!"

As he rounded the corner he glanced up at the sturdy old church with its tiny extinguisher spire, standing on the Kneb behind him, four-square to the centuries, the symbol of the rough and ready England which at that moment was passing away, with its glories and its shames, into the limbo of history.


At the station all that was most representative in Beachbourne had gathered to see the reservists off.

The Mayor was there in his chain of office; the Church Militant in the person of the Archdeacon; Mr. Glynde, the senior member for Beachbourne, middle-aged, swarthy, his hair already white, making a marked contrast to his junior colleague, the fair-haired young giant, talking to the Archdeacon.

The old gentleman looked ghastly; his face colourless save for the shadows of death which emphasised his pallor. Then he saw Bobby Chislehurst busy among the departing soldiers, and beckoned him austerely.

"I thought you were a pacifist, Chislehurst!" he said, his smile more kindly and less histrionic than usual.

"So I am, sir," answered Bobby, brightly. "But there are several of our men from the Moot going off. It\'s not their fault they\'ve got to go, poor beggars!"

"Their fault!" cried the Archdeacon. "It\'s their privilege." He added less harshly, "We must all stand by the country now, Chislehurst."

"Yes, sir," said Bobby. "I shan\'t give the show away," and he bustled off.

Then the Colonel stalked up.

"Well, Archdeacon, what d\'you make of it all?" he asked, curious as a child to gather impressions.

The Archdeacon drew himself up.

"Just retribution," he answered in voice that seemed to march. "If a nation will go a-whoring after false gods in the wilderness what can you expect? Gahd does not forget."

The Colonel listened blank............