CHAPTER XXIV
ALF
If Ernie was now the working-man, Alf on his side was very much the gentleman.
He dressed the part to the best of his ability; and—when he remembered—even tried to talk it.
But he had not arrived at his present position without a struggle.
When he was through his apprenticeship, he left Hewson & Clarke, and inducing his mother to lend him a little capital, started a car and garage of his own in the Chestnuts between Old Town and the station.
At first he did not prosper. The horse-industry, with a tradition of tens of thousands of years behind it, would not yield its pride of place without a struggle. Competitors were many and fierce. And just when he believed that he was finding his feet at last, a big London Syndicate started the Red Cross Garages throughout Kent and Sussex.
Alf for the first time felt the full weight of capitalism—the Juggernaut with Mammon at the wheel that crushes beneath its rollers the bodies and souls of the weak and impotent.
His sense of helplessness embittered him.
His garage was empty; his car in little request; he had few repairs. Old Town at one end of Beachbourne and Holywell on the foot-hills under Beau-nez at the other were the quarters of the resident aristocracy amongst whom it was the convention to avoid "the front" as bad form. These clung to their sleek pairs and cockaded coachmen just as they clung to the Church and Joseph Chamberlain and the belief, so often re-affirmed by Archdeacon Willcocks, that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was the one man living who knew how to rule the masses. The firm hand, sir!