F Erb's experience of life had been greater, if his knowledge of the trend of events had been more extensive, he would have been helped by the assurance that in this world, mist and sunshine alternate, and that rarely a fog descends on the life of an energetic man and remains there always. But had Erb known this, there would still have remained the undeniable fact that, for the time at any rate, the atmosphere was murky. He showed temper. He sent in his keys to the acting-secretary, and, knowing that the accounts were all in order, declined the request that he should attend to explain money matters to his successor; he decided to leave London (having indeed very little there to leave) and to go down to Worthing, giving no one but Payne his address.
“Looks as though you had turned sulky,” remonstrated Payne.
“I have!” said Erb.
The new number of The Carman, which he himself had made up, contained a brief paragraph, to make room for which a quotation from Ruskin had been deleted.
More stings came on the way up the Borough to London Bridge station. Four railway carmen he met, driving their vans, instead of the “Hello!” and the mystic twist of the whip, there was first a glance of cautious recognition, then a steady look ahead, with an air of absorbed interest, as though realising for the first time the horse's presence. At the station itself, men of his old Society, on seeing him, hurried round to the tails of their vans, and commenced sorting parcels there with industry. All this sent Erb into the deeper depths, and it was not until he reached Worthing, and found on the platform Rosalind and Aunt Emma and his sister, Louisa, Louisa's white face becoming pink with excitement, that he forgot his worries.
“Well,” said Aunt Emma, “what's the best news?”
“There isn't any best news,” replied Erb.
They went, arm-in-arm, down the long road to the sea front, and in a shelter there, Erb sat between them, and for the first time since the downfall found the luxury of detailed description and frank avowal. When the account came of the worst Rosalind touched his sleeve sympathetically.
“And there you are!” said Erb when he had finished. He found himself now inclined to look on the disasters as though they had occurred to someone else with whom he had nothing in common. “And here I am, in about as awkward a situation as I've ever been in in all my life.”
“Complimentary to us,” said Rosalind brightly.
He took her hand and patted it.
“You know what I mean,” he whispered.
“They'd no right to sell up the 'ome,” said Louisa fiercely.
“Yes they had,” said Erb. “By the law.”
“But that Spanswick's the one that should have suffered.”
“An oven in a oast house,” suggested Aunt Emma, “would finish him off. That's how he'll be treated in the next world, anyway.”
“I ought to have verified the information he gave me about the first affair.”
“And in the second affair you were perfectly right.”
“That don't make any difference to the law of libel. Besides, I was in a temper when I wrote it. I let my feelings get the better of me.”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Haven't a single idea,” declared Erb exultantly. “Go back on me hands and knees and get a berth as carman again, I s'pose.”
“That you never shall,” said the two young women emphatically.
“You have some long walks whilst you're down here,” counselled Rosalind, “and think it over by yourself.”
“If a bit of money's wanted,” began Aunt Emma. “you may as well have it now as later on.”
“All this time,” he said, turning to Louisa and pinching her white cheek, “all this time I haven't inquired how you are pulling along.”
“I'm as right as rain, Erb.”
“Ah!” he remarked doubtfully, “so you've always said. Heard anything of Alice?”
“Not a word from the overgrown minx,” said Louisa with wrath. “If she was here I'd speak my mind to her, and pretty quick about it, too. Oh, yes, I know,” Louisa went on, not to be deterred by an interruption from the rare luxury of an access of temper, “she may have a lot to think of; she takes jolly good care not to think of us.”
“Has anyone written to tell her?” asked Rosalind quietly.
“Why should we?” demanded Erb's young sister illogically. “It's her business to find out! But, of course, she wouldn't care if we was both in the workhouse.”
“I wouldn't go so far as that.”
“I shouldn't let you,” said Aunt Emma.
“Meanwhile,” interrupted Rosalind, “we're not giving your brother anything to eat. Let me run off to our rooms and get something ready.”