ONE WOMAN:
Being the Second Part of a Romance of Sussex
BY
ALFRED OLLIVANT
Après a'voir souffert il faut souffrir encore
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40, MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1
First published in 1921
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
DANNY OWD BOB BOY WOODBURN THE GENTLEMAN THE ROYAL ROAD THE BROWN MARE THE NEXT STEP THE TAMING OF JOHN BLUNT TWO MEN
TO MY COUNTRY
CONTENTS
THE CARRIER'S CART
PART I
DEEPENING DUSK
I THE HOSTEL II COW GAP III THE WATCHMAN ON THE HEAD IV ALF V THE CREEPING DEATH VI THE COLONEL LEARNS A SECRET VII THE MAN FROM THE NORTH VIII THE CHERUB IX THE SHADOW OF ROYAL X BOBS XI THE RUSSET-COATED CAPTAIN XII RUTH WAKES XIII NIGHTMARE XIV SHADOWS XV THE LANDLORD XVI THE GRANDMOTHER XVII THE CHALLENGE XVIII A SKIRMISH XIX PITCHED BATTLE XX THE VANQUISHED XXI THUNDER
PART II
TROUBLED DAWN
XXII THE BETRAYAL XXIII THE COLONEL FACES DEFEAT XXIV THE PILGRIMS XXV RED IN THE MORNING XXVI THE AVALANCHE MOVES XXVII THE GROWING ROAR XXVIII OLD TOWN XXIX FOLLOW YOUR LEADER XXX THE END OF THE WORLD XXXI THE COLONEL XXXII THE DAY OF JUDGMENT XXXIII BEAU-NEZ XXXIV THE STATION XXXV IN THE EVENING XXXVI RUTH FACES THE STORM XXXVII MRS. LEWKNOR XXXVIII SUSPENSE XXXIX THE VALLEY OF DECISION XL VICTORY AND REVENGE
THE COMFORTER
THE CARRIER'S CART
An old-fashioned carrier's cart, such as you may still meet on the roads of Sussex, tilted, one-horsed, and moving at the leisurely pace of a bye-gone age, turned East at the Turnpike, and made slowly along the Lewes-Beachbourne road under the northern scarp of the Downs one evening of autumn in 1908. In it, at the back of the driver, were a young man and a young woman, the only passengers, ensconced among hen-coops, flitches of bacon, and baskets of greens.
They sat hand-in-hand.
The woman was a noble creature, about her the majestic tranquillity of a great three-decker that comes to rest in sunset waters after its Trafalgar. The man, but for a certain wistfulness about his eyes which betokened undue sensibility, was not remarkable. Till he spoke you would have said he was a gentleman--that is to say if your eyes confined their scrutiny to his face and refused to see his hands, his boots, his clothes. When he spoke you would have recognised at once that he was Sussex of the soil as, surely, was the woman beside him; though the speech of both was faintly marred with the all-pervading cockney accent of those who have passed beyond the village-green into the larger world of the England of to-day.
Both ca-a-ad musically enough; but less by far than the little carrier, whose round back blocked the view of the road, and the twitching ears of old mare Jenny. For nearly fifty years, man and boy, Isaac Woolgar had travelled twice a day, six days a week, the road on which he was travelling now. He had seen the long-horns--those "black runts" so familiar to old-world Sussex--give place to horses in the plough upon the hill; the horses in their turn supplanted on the road by motors; and men using the legs God had given them to trundle wheels instead of walk. Undisturbed, he plodded on his way, accompanied always by the wires lifted on tall black poles, crowned with tiers of tiny porcelain chimney-pots unknown in his youth, which had linked Lewes with Beachbourne these forty years; and he would so plod until he died. The Star on the hill in Old Town, Beachbourne, marked one end of his day's journey; and the equally ancient Lamb, at Aldwoldston, black-timbered and gabled too, marked the other. He had never been further "oop country," as he called it, than Heathfield. Lewes was the utmost term of his wanderings West, Beau-nez East; while the sea at Newhaven had bounded him on the South. Within this tiny quadrilateral, which just about determined also the wanderings of an old dog-fox in Abbot's Wood, he had passed his life; and nothing now would ever induce him to pass the bounds he had allotted himself.
To the man and woman in the cart old Mus. Woolgar had been a familiar figure from childhood. The little girl skipping by the market-cross in Aldwoldston would stop to watch him start; the little boy would wait at Billing's Corner on the top of the hill to see him come along the New Road past Motcombe at the end of his journey. Long before either had been aware of the other's existence the old carrier had served as an invisible link between them.
Now the two were married.
Ruth Boam had become Mrs. Ernie Caspar that afternoon in the cathedral-church of Aldwoldston, on the mound among the ash-trees above Parsons' Tye and the long donkey-backed clergy-house that dates from the fourteenth century.
It had been a very quiet wedding. The father and mother of the bride had stumped across from Frogs' Hall, at the foot of the village, Ruth accompanying them, her little daughter in her arms. For the rest, Dr. and Mrs. Trupp had come over from Beachbourne with Mr. Pigott and his wife in the chocolate-bodied car driven by the bridegroom's brother.
Alf had not entered the church to see Ernie married. He had mouched sullenly down to the river instead, and stood there during the service, his back to the church, looking across the Brooks to old Wind-hover's dun and shaven flank with eyes that did not see, and ears that refused to hear.
After the ceremony the car-party returned to Beachbourne by way of the sea--climbing High-'nd-over, to drop down into Sea-ford, and home by Birling Gap and Beau-nez. From the almost violent gesture with which Alf had set his engines in motion and drawn out of the lane under the pollarded willows of Parson's Tye, he at least had been glad to turn his back on the scene.
Ruth and her husband had returned to Frogs' Hall with the old folk.
Later, as the sun began to lower behind Black Cap into the valley of the Ouse, they went up River Lane and picked up the carrier's cart by the market-cross.
For the moment they were leaving little Alice with her grandmother while they settled into the Moot, Old Town, where Ernie had found a cottage close to his work, not a quarter of a mile from the home of his father and mother in Rectory Walk.
The carrier's cart moved slowly on under the telegraph wires on which the martins were already gathering: for it was September. Now and then Ernie raised the flap that made a little window in the side of the tilt, and looked out at the accompanying Downs, mysterious in the evening.
"They're still there," he announced comfortably, "and like to be yet a bit, I reckon."
"They move much same pace as us doos, seems to me," said Ruth.
"We should get there afoor them yet though," answered Ernie.
"Afoor the Day of Judgment we might, if so be we doosn't die o breathlessness first," the woman replied.
"You'd like a car to yourself you would," chaffed Ernie. "And Alf drivin you."
Ruth turned in her lips.
They moved leisurely forward, leaving Folkington clustered about its village-green upon the right, passing the tea-gardens at Wannock, and up the long pull to Willingdon, standing among old gardens and pleasant fig-trees. Once through the village the woods of Hampden Park green-bosomed upon the left, blocked out the marshes and the splendid vision of Pevensey Bay. Now the road emerged from the shelter of hedges and elm-trees and flowed with a noble billowy motion between seas of corn that washed the foot of the Downs and swept over Rodmill to the outposts of Beachbourne. Between the road and the Downs stood Motcombe, islanded in the ruddy sea, amongst its elms and low piggeries. Behind the farm, at the very foot of the hill, was Huntsman's Lodge where once, when both were boys, Alf had betrayed his brother on the occasion of the looting of the walnut-tree.
Ern pointed out the spot to his bride and told the tale. Ruth listened with grim understanding.
"That's Alf," she said.
"Mr. Pigott lived there that time o day," Ern continued. "One of the five Manors of Beachbourne, used to be--I've heard dad say. Belonged to the Salwyns of Friston Place over the hill--the clergy-folk. The farm's where the Manor-house used to be; and the annual sheep-fair was held in a field outside from William the Conqueror till a few years back."
He pointed to one of a little row of villas on the left which looked over the allotment gardens to the Downs.
"That's where Mr. Pigott lives now. My school-master he were that time o day."
"Who's Mr. Pigott?" Ruth asked.
Ernie rootled her with a friendly elbow.
"My guv'nor, stoopid! Manager of the Southdown Transport Company. Him that was at the wedding--with the beard. Settin along o Mrs. Trupp."
"Oh, Mr. Pigott!" answered Ruth. Now that the strain of the last two years was over at last, she brimmed over with a demure naughtiness. "Well, why couldn't you say so, then? You are funny, men are."
The cart climbed the steep hill to Billing's Corner and Ernie looked down the familiar road to the Rectory and even caught a peep of the back of his old home. Then they turned down Church Street with its old-world fragrance of lavender and yesterday.
On the left the parish-church, long-backed and massive-towered upon the Kneb, brooded over the centuries it had seen come and go.