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Read Ebook: One Woman: Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex by Ollivant Alfred

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Ebook has 2368 lines and 89070 words, and 48 pages

Ernie across the road watched him with eyes in which affection and amusement mingled. Then the door opened, and the scholar-penitent-youth was being greeted with glee by Bess Trupp.

Ernie turned to his wife.

"My old Colonel," he said confidentially. "What I was in India with. Best Colonel the Hammer-men ever had--and that's saying something."

"Colonel Lewknor, aren't it?" asked Ruth.

"That's him," said Ernie keenly. "Do you knaw him?"

"He was over at Auston last summer," answered Ruth, "lecturin we got to fight Germany or something. I went, but I didn't pay no heed to him. No account talk, I call that."

Together they dropped down Borough Lane and turned to the left along the Moot where dwelt the workers of Old Town--a few in flint cottages set in gardens, rank with currant bushes, a record of the days, not so long ago, when corn flowed down both sides of Water Lane, making a lake of gold between the village on the hill and the Sea-houses by the Wish; and most in the new streets of little red houses that looked up, pathetically aware of their commonness, to the calm dignity of the old church upon the Kneb above.

At one of these latter Ernie stopped and made believe to fumble with a key. Ruth, who had not seen her new home, was thrilling quietly, as she had been throughout the journey, though determined not to betray her emotion to her mate.

The door opened and they entered.

A charming voice from the kitchen greeted them.

"Ah, there you are--punctual to the minute!"

A woman, silver-haired and gracious, turned from deft busy-ness at the range.

"Oh, Mrs. Trupp!" cried Ruth, looking about her.

The table was laid already, and gay with flowers; the fire lit, the kettle on the boil, the supper ready.

"It is kind," said Ruth. "Was this you and Miss Bess?"

"Perhaps we had a hand in it," laughed the other. "She couldn't be here, as she's got a meeting of her Boy Scouts. But she sent her best wishes. Now I hand over the key to the master; and my responsibilities are over!" And she was gone with the delicious ripple of laughter Ernie had loved from babyhood.

Ruth was now thirsting to explore her new home, but Ernie insisted on supping first. This he did with malicious deliberation. When at length he was satisfied they went upstairs together, he leading the way.

"This is our room!" he said with ill-disguised complacency, stepping aside.

The bridal chamber was swept and garnished. In it were more flowers, bowls of them; and the furniture simple, solid, and very good, was of a character rarely found in houses of that class.

Ernie enjoyed the obvious pleasure of his bride as she touched and glanced and dipped like some large bird flitting gracefully from piece to piece.

Then she paused solemnly and looked about her.

"Reckon it must ha cost a tidy penny," she said.

"It did," Ernie answered.

She cocked a soft brown eye at him.

"Could you afford it, Ernie?"

"I could not," said Ernie, standing grimly and with folded arms.

"It's like them," she said. "None o your cheap trash."

"Ah," answered Ernie. "Trust them. They're just all right, they are."

Before the looking-glass on the chest of drawers Ruth now took off her hat.

She was perhaps too simple, too natural, too near to earth to be shy at this the supreme moment of a woman's life. At least she was too wary to show it.

"Rich folks they have two little beds laid alongside, these days," she said, speaking from her experience as a maid. "I wouldn't think it was right myself. Only you mustn't judge others." She added in her slow way, as she patted her hair--"I wouldn't feel prarperly married like only in a prarper two-bed."

Ernie drew down the blind.

Then he marched upon his bride deliberately and with remorseless eyes. Suddenly she turned and met him with a swift and lovely smile, dropping her mask, and discovering herself to him in the surprising radiance of a moon that reveals its beauty after long obscurity. She laid her hands upon his shoulders in utter surrender. He gathered her gradually in his arms; and closing his eyes, dwelt on her lips with the slow and greedy passion of a bee, absorbed in absorption, and drinking deep in the cloistered seclusion of a fox-glove bell,

"You're prarperly married all right," he said. "And you ca-a-n't get out of it--not no-ways."

PART I

DEEPENING DUSK

THE HOSTEL

Dr. Trupp of Beachbourne, as he was generally known--Mr. Trupp, to give him his correct title--was a genuinely great man.

His father had been a book-seller in Torquay; and he himself never lost the greater qualities of the class from which he sprang. He was very simple and very shrewd. Science had not blunted the fine intuitions which his brusque manner half concealed. Moreover, he trusted those intuitions perhaps unconsciously as do few men of his profession; and they rarely played him false. In early manhood his integrity, his sound common sense, and practical idealism had won for him the love of a singularly noble girl who might have married one of the best of her inevitably artificial class. Later in life indeed Evelyn Trupp often would amuse her father and annoy her mother by affirming that she was far prouder of being the wife of Mr. Trupp of Beachbourne than of having been Miss Moray of Pole. And she had good cause. For her husband was no longer the country doctor at whom the county families had sniffed. He was "Trupp of Beachbourne," whose fame had spread, quietly it is true, from Sussex, through England to the outer world. And if there was some difference of opinion as to whether Mr. Trupp had made Beachbourne, or Beachbourne had made him, there was no question that the growth of the town, and its deserved popularity as a health-resort was coincident with his residence there.

He was, moreover, one of the men who in the last years of the nineteenth century and the earlier years of this set himself to stem the tide of luxury which in his judgment was softening the spines of the younger generation. And the helpful buffets which gave him his name, and were responsible at least for some of his triumphs, were not the outcome of spasms of irritability but of a deliberate philosophy.

For Mr. Trupp, despite his kind heart, never forgot that Man with all his aspirations after heaven had but yesterday ceased to be an animal and still stood on the edge of the slough from which he had just emerged, up to his hocks in mud, the slime yet trickling from his shaggy sides.

He saw his country, so he believed, sinking into a dropsical coma before his eyes, just for want of somebody to kick it awake; and the sight made him sick and fearful.

Often riding with his daughter of evenings after the day's work he would pause a moment beside the flag-staff on Beau-nez and look North East across the waste of sea dull or shining at his feet.

"Can you hear him growling, Bess?" he asked his companion once.

"Who?"

"The Brute."

Bess knew her father's ogre, and the common talk.

"Is Germany the Brute?" she asked.

Her father shook his head.

"One of them," he answered. "Wherever Man is there the Brute is--keep that in mind when you're married, my dear. And he's always sleeping after a gorge or ravenous before one. Our Brute's asleep now he's got his belly full. Theirs"--nodding across the water--"is prowling for his prey."

To Mr. Pigott he confided his belief that there was only one thing that could save England.

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