"Royal," he said low to his companion.
Captain Royal had come down to Beachbourne to see Alf Caspar, who wanted more capital for his Syndicate which was prospering amazingly. Alf, indeed, now that he had established his garages in every important centre in East Sussex, was starting a Road-touring Syndicate to exploit for visitors the hidden treasures of a country-side amazingly rich in historic memories for men of Anglo-Saxon blood. The Syndicate was to begin operations with a flourish on the Easter Bank Holiday, if the necessary licence could be obtained from the Watch Committee; and Alf anticipated little real trouble in that matter.
Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, who had never forgiven Alf for being Alf, watched the growing prosperity of the Syndicate and its promoter with undisguised annoyance.
"It beats me," said Bess, "why people back the little beast. Everybody knows all about him."
Next day as they rode down the valley towards Birling Gap, Mr. Trupp expounded to his daughter the secret of Alf's success.
"When you're as old as I am, my dear, and have had as long an experience as I have of this slip-shod world, you'll know that people will forgive almost anything to a man who gets things done and is reliable. Alf drove me for nearly ten years tens of thousands of miles; and I never knew him to have a break-down on the road. Why?—because he took trouble."
Alf, indeed, with all his amazing deficiencies, mental and moral, was a supremely honest workman. He never scamped a job, and was never satisfied with anything but the best. He was gloriously work-proud. A hard master, he was hardest on himself, as all the men in his yard knew. One and all they disliked him; one and all they respected him—because he could beat them at their own job. His work was his solitary passion, and he was an artist at it. Here he was not even petty. Good work, and a good workman, found in him their most wholehearted supporter.
"That's a job!" he'd say to a mechanic. "I congratulate you."
"You should know, Mr. Caspar," the man would answer, pleased and purring. For Alf's reputation as the best motor-engineer in East Sussex was well-established and well-earned. And because he was efficient and thorough the success of his Syndicate was never in doubt.
Alf was on the way now, in truth, to becoming a rich man. Yet he lived simply enough above his original garage in the Goffs at the foot of Old Town. And from that eyrie, busy though he was, he still made time to watch with interest and pleasure his brother's trousers coming down and indeed to lend a helping hand in the process: for he worked secretly on his mother, who regarded Ernie when he came to Rectory Walk to take his father out with eyes of increasing displeasure; for her eldest son was shabby and seedy almost now as in the days when he had been out of work after leaving the Hohenzollern. The word failure was stamped upon him in letters few could mis-read. And Anne Caspar had for all those who fail, with one exception, that profound sense of exasperation and disgust which finds its outlet in the contemptuous pity that is for modern man the camouflaged expression of the cruelty inherent in his animal nature. It seemed that all the love in her—and there was love in her as surely there is in us all—was exhausted on her own old man. For the rest her attitude towards the fallen in the arena was always Thumbs down—with perhaps an added zest of rancour and resentment because of the one she spared.