The Gentleman

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The Parson's face darkened. He thrust forward.

"And may I ask how _you_ know Nelson got to Dover last night?"

The other shrugged.

"I have agents."

The Parson nodded grimly.

"Yes; I've a list of em."

"_Your_ countrymen, _my_ friends"--with a malicious little
bow--"the Friends of Freedom."

The Parson leaned out, black as night.

"Friends of Freedom be d-----d!" he thundered--"bloody traitors!"

The other raised a shocked hand.

"Holy Padre! Reverend Father! _Virginibus puerisque_, if you
please."

The Parson turned to find Kit at his elbow.

"I'm only a deacon," he grumbled. And it's only what you French gentry
call a _fashion de polly_."

"I am not French--or only on my mother's side," replied the other
gently.

"Well, Frenchified then--it's all the same, ain't it?--all that bowin
and scrapin and humbuggin business--you know what I mean."

"Yes, yes, I know, my polished friend.... And as to these same
_couleur-de-rose_ gentry I understand your feelings entirely, and
for the very good reason that I share them. And I don't mind telling
you in confidence that as to the bulk of them your description is not
too highly-coloured."

"And if _they're_ that, what are _you_, I'd like to know?"
shouted the Parson.

"I am an Irishman. I serve my country--I do not sell her."

"And are all Irishmen traitors?"

A gleam came into the other's eyes. He smiled frostily.

"All who are worthy of the name," he said....

"But to return to our sheep. They have served me, these sanguinary
gentlemen, so I can't stand by and see them hanged, when I can save
em. And to put it shortly--I want that despatch-bag, please!"

He came forward like a child, hand outstretched, and smiling
charmingly.

The Parson flung out a finger and volleyed laughter.

"And he thinks he's going to get it! Ask pretty; don't forget to say
please; and he shall have everything he wants, he shall, he shall.
There's a lambkin! there's a little lovey!" He leaned out again. "And
what you going to give us for it?"

"Why, a free pass-out, with all the honours of war."

"Thank you for nothing. Seems to me I can have a free pass-out
whenever I like. I've just free-passed out a man. And I'm only a
minute or two back myself from a little stroll with a lady."

III

The Gentleman sauntered forward.

"I am sorry to be so importunate," he said gravely, "but I _must_
have those despatches and I mean to have them."

He stopped.

"The position is this: Nelson is _mine_." He brought down his
right fist on his left. "_Nothing_ can save him now--_nothing_.
This time to-morrow, so sure as that sun will rise, he will be
dead or on the way to Verdun. That has been arranged."

"_How?_" thundered the Parson. "_How_ has it been arranged?"

The Gentleman was pacing to and fro before the window; and his eyes
were down.

"It's enough for you to know," he said at last, "that I--I have
influence with a lady, who--who has influence with Nelson."

"What _does_ he mean?" whispered Kit.

The Parson had turned very white.

He knew that woman, by nature so noble; and he knew something of her
history--the history of the shame of man.

"D'you mean to tell me _She's_ going to sell _her_ Nelson to
that organ-grinder's monkey from Corsica?" he roared. "Because if
you'll tell me that, I'll tell you you're a liar."

The Gentleman still paced before the window.

"I'll tell you nothing of the sort," he said. "She believes herself to
be serving her country." He was speaking very slowly, almost mincing
his words. "She has--has come into possession of information...."

The man, usually so self-possessed, stuttered and stopped dead.

"And how did she come into possession of that information, I wonder?"
asked the Parson, slow and white.

The Gentleman flashed his face up.

"I'll put it in brutal English so that even _you_ can understand.
_I made a fool of a woman who thought she was making a fool of
me_."

There was a lengthy silence.

"And they call him the Gentleman!" came the Parson's voice at last--
"the _Gentleman_!"

The other had resumed his pacing.

"He sneaks himself into the confidence of a lady," continued the
Parson quietly. "He conceals his identity--"

Again the other flashed his eyes up.

"I did not!" he shouted, hammering with his hand. "The first words I
ever spoke to her in the drawing-room at Merton were to tell her who I
was. That night she told Pitt over his port. And Pitt told her--but
there!--I needn't go into that.... And when she asked me what brought
me to Merton, I answered truthfully--'Love of adventure and the
fairest face in Europe.'"

The Parson leaned out.

"I understand you now. You take advantage of that face of yours; you
worm yourself into the confidence of a woman, a noble woman; and you--"

The Gentleman blazed appalling eyes up at him.

"And _you_ have not seen my Ireland suffer!"

The Parson quailed before the white blast of the other's anger. It was
as though a hail of lightnings had struck him.

"_His_ Ireland! ass!" was the only retort he could think of.

"Nelson then let us put aside," continued the other, cold again.
"There remain--you and the despatches. I want the despatches. You want
yourselves. Shall we exchange?"

"No, we shan't," snapped the Parson.

"I know your straits," continued the other. "You're short of
provisions--"

"Short of provisions!" guffawed the Parson. "Why, step this way, and
I'll show you a boy with the bellyache."

"And short of men," the other continued, quite himself again. "What
does your garrison consist of?--one holy padre, one half an old
sailor, Monsieur Mooncalf, and Little Chap."

"And what's your own lot?" bellowed the Parson--"one dozen of
sweepings of France, one dozen of the picked scum of our country, and
one conceited young whipper-snapper, who swaggers about in breeches
and boots all day _and was never on a horse in his life to my
certain knowledge!_"

The Gentleman waved his hand.

"Take the consequences then," he said. "A rivederci."

"Take the consequences yourself!" roared the Parson--"you and your
river dirties. I'll see your friends hung high as Haman yet."

The other shook his head.

"You won't live to see that, dear man," he said quietly, and turned
away.

CHAPTER LVIII

THE PLANK CAPONIER

Kit was in the cellar stripping his belt and cartridge-pouch from
Blob's Grenadier.

As he rose from his knees Piper hailed him.

"Mr. Joy callin you, sir."

The boy ran up the ramp. The old man, handling his musket, was peering
through the Northward loop-hole.

"What is it?"

"Summat up yonder, sir."

The boy raced up the ladder.

The Parson was at the dormer looking towards the Downs, shimmering now
in the fair evening.

"What's the meaning of this?" he said, pointing.

A great Sussex wain, top-heavy with hay, was drawing out of a farmyard
among trees, a quarter of a mile away. A white horse was in the
shafts, and a black in the lead. Two Grenadiers were at the head of
the black leader, who was giving trouble. Others in shirt-sleeves were
mounting to the top of the load.

"Old Gander's wain," said the Parson. "That's old mare Jenny in the
shafts, and her three-year-old daughter in the lead. Ha, Miss
Blossom!--That's your sort!--Knock em sprawling!--Teach the Mossoos to
handle an English lady!"

A tall man ran out of the farmyard, a snow-storm of white-frocked
children pursuing him; and even at that distance Parson and boy could
hear them screaming laughter. The tall man snatched up one and kissed
her. Then he took off his hat with an enormous sweep to the others,
and turned.

"Humph! posing rather prettily this time!" muttered the Parson,
watching kind-eyed.

On the top of the wain, clear against the sky, a tall figure now rose,
and gathered the rope-reins in his hand.

The men at the leader's head jumped aside.

Up she went, sky-high.

The coachman handled her as a mother handles a wilful child. The wind
was towards them, and they could hear him singing to her.

"Hum! he can handle the ribands a bit," muttered the Parson, watching
intently. "Miss Blossom's never tasted a bit before."

The filly dropped, and flung forward with the shock of a breaking
wave.

The slope was with them. The old mare, with snarling head and backward
ears, broke into a lumbering trot, snatching at her daughter's tail.
The wain began to gather weigh, creaking, jolting, jerking along.

The filly was tearing into her collar; the old mare, swept along by
the pursuing wain, broke into a heavy gallop. The Gentleman, holding
them hard, was singing to them as they came.

"Mean mischief, sir," called Piper from below.

"Jove, they do!" muttered the Parson, chin forward, and eyes flaming
as he watched. "Like a Horse Artillery battery coming into action."

The wain leapt and swung and bounced along like a live thing.

"Ah, I thought so.... Pace too good.... He's dropping his load....
Ah!--there goes another!"

A Grenadier was seen to fall with flapping tails, and another, and
another; till the track of the thundering wain was strewn with men,
who picked themselves up and pursued.

Only the intrepid coachman, his feet set deep, held his place, swaying
to the swing of the wain.

The Parson gnawed his lip as he watched.

"What's it all mean, Piper?"

"Don't justly know what to make of it, sir."

"You can't get a line on him?"

"No, sir. He's slewed aside out o my range."

And indeed the Gentleman had swung his team to the left, as though to
avoid the old man's fire. They were lurching along at a thundering
gallop. It seemed as though the horses were fleeing from the wain.

The Parson was leaning far out of the window to watch.

"Round he comes!"

As he spoke, the Gentleman flung back with all his strength, and
wrenched to the right.

Round came the leader; the wheeler, slithering, jerking, almost swept
off her legs, as the wain came on top of her. Then the whole came
thundering across the greensward at the gable-end of the cottage.

"Ca'ant be going to ram us, sir, surely?" shouted Piper.

The old man could see nothing now, but he could hear the roar of the
approaching wain.

"I believe he is!" cried the Parson.

It was the boy's swift mind that first leapt to the Gentleman's plan.

"No, sir!" he screamed. "Don't you see?--He'll bring the waggon
alongside at a gallop, jam it against the wall, and then----"

And then! the Parson saw it in a flash:--axemen at work on the door
beneath the wain, and stormers through the dormer-window over the top.

"By God, you've got it!"

It must be stopped at all costs.

But how?

The wain was coming at the cottage from the flank. A shot from the
left shoulder at an impossible angle at a galloping target--was that
their only hope?

The Parson glanced wildly round.

The thunder of the wain and the singing voice of the coachman was in
his ears.

An old plank was lying in the loft.

"Plank Caponier!" he yelled, pounced on it, and thrust it out of the
window. "Now, Kit!--You're lightest!--There's your musket--loaded!--
Blob, sit on this end with me!"

Kit, musket in hand, ran out on the plank.

He was standing on air.

"Steady!" hoarsed the Parson, blue eyes gleaming through the window.
"Don't look down! Aim at her chest! Wait till you can see the roll of
her eye!"

Kit heard nothing, saw nothing, but a foam-splashed breast, a nodding
head, racing knees, and reaching feet.

All the world for him was in that black and shining bosom. It grew
upon him as he looked. It was no more a chest. It was a cloud, about
to burst on the world. He fired into the heart of it, sure he could
not miss.

Up went the filly, fighting the air.

The boy saw her belly, her thighs, and the swish of her tail between
her hocks.

Down she came in roaring ruin, the old mare an avalanche of snow
burying her.

"In, Kit!" screamed the Parson.

"No, sir!" yelled the boy.

In a blinding light he saw the thing to do, and flashed to do it.

"The lynch-pins!"

Down he jumped, and dirk in hand raced for the tangle of horseflesh,
black and white and heaving like an angry sea.

Swift as he was, the Gentleman was swifter.

Before the boy had touched ground, he was down from his perch,
slashing at the tackle with his sword. Now he leapt to the mare's
head, hurling her back into her breeching.

While Kit was yet twenty yards away, he was up again, standing on the
shafts, reins in hand.

"Now, my lady!" came the high singing voice.

The brave old thing answered to it as though to a lover. She flung
forward with a sob.

"I'll take the mare and the man!" panted the Parson, racing up behind,
his curls almost cracking. "You go for the lynch-pins!"

He swept past, Polly in hand.

"Forgive me, Jenny!" he cried; and thrust home.

A spout of blood seemed to darken the sky, and deluge all. The wain
brought up with a dreadful jerk.

"Home, sir, if you can!" shouted Piper from his loop-hole. "Here's the
Grannydears!"

"Kit!" bawled the Parson. "Where are you?"

The lad crept out from under the wain.

"Got the lynch-pins?"

"Yes."

"Then come on!"

Under the fore-wheel the Gentleman was lying on his back, with closed
eyes.

The boy stopped.

"Are you hurt, sir?"

The other shook a smiling head.

"Only shocked. Jerked off my box. Run, Little Chap, run!--or they'll
bottle you."

"Kit, damn you!" stormed the Parson. "_Will_ you run?"

Across the greensward half a dozen Grenadiers were hurling. The
nearest dropped on his knee, and took deliberate aim at the boy.

The loop-hole clouded suddenly.

Out of it Death spoke.

The Grenadier toppled over on to his back with flapping hands. A
moment he sat bolt-erect, a foolish-familiar look on his face--Kit
somehow expected him to put his tongue out--then collapsed ghastly.

The boy made for the cottage.

Blob, leaning out of the dormer, chewing an apple, watched him with
spiteful amusement.

"Say, Maaster Sir," he cried, as he spat and slobbered, "reck'n
they'll catch you."

"Shall I unbolt the door, sir?" shouted Piper.

"You do, by God!" roared the wrathful Parson. "They're on our heels,
fool!"

"How'll you manage then, sir?"

"Leave that to me, and stick to your shooting!"

A great water-butt stood at the corner, empty now.

The Parson, man of myriad resource, had trundled it beneath the
dormer, and turned it upside down in a second.

"Up, boy!"

Kit was on it, and in through the window in a twinkle. The Parson
followed.

The leading Grenadier came at him, bayonet at the charge. The Parson
put the steel aside with his blade, and met the man fair in the face
with his heel.

"Good punch!" he cried cheerily, and kicking the butt away from under
him, scrambled into the loft.

He stood awhile both hands on his knees, heaving. Then he looked up,
his blue eyes good and grinning.

"Prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!" he panted. "But, you young
scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter to that
chap?"

"I thought he was hurt," gasped the boy panting against the wall.
"He's my friend."

CHAPTER LIX

MISS BLOSSOM

"Pistol, please."

The Gentleman was standing beneath the dormer, one hand uplifted.

The Parson looked down at him.

"Well, you're a calm chap," he said with slow delight.

Better than anything in the world he loved a brave man.

"I know my man," replied the other in the same still voice.

He was far away in April twilight-land.

The fine face, gay as the morning a few minutes since, had now a
wistful evening look. The shadows had fallen on it: rain was not far.

Even the Parson, blind-eyed Englishman that he was, noticed it, and
was touched. After all the man was a boy, and a beaten boy.

"Are you hurt?" he gruffed.

"No--not hurt."

The Parson thought he understood.

"It was the pluckiest attempt I ever saw!" he cried with the
generosity of the victor. "That black filly had never known the feel
of a collar, till twenty minutes since.... I was to have broken her
this autumn."

"She was the least bit awkward at the start," mused the other. "But
she handled sweetly all the same."

"We had all the luck," continued the Parson. "But for that plank,
you'd have brought it off. It'll be your turn next time!"

The other lifted his face swiftly.

"Ah, no," he cried, "you mistake. _That's_ nothing! It's
_this!_"

He pointed.

Fifty yards away the wain lay wrecked on the greensward, the old white
mare crumpled in the shafts. She was stone-dead, and her muzzle, with
its coarse long hairs, was resting on the quarters of her daughter.

"That's the worst of war," said the Gentleman in that remote voice of
his. "_We_ know; _they_ don't."

"I expect it's all fairer than it seems," said the Parson huskily.

The other nodded.

"Have you a pistol?"

The filly was not dead. Lying on her side, she was lifting her head
and craning back to gaze at her dead dam.

Something clutched the Parson by the throat. A veil was rent. For a
moment he seemed to see the tragedy as the man beneath him saw it--the
passion, the pathos of that blind suffering in the cause of another.

"Here!" he said hoarsely, handing down a pistol.

The Gentleman took it, and seeing a pale face peering behind the
other's shoulder,

"She's not suffering, I think. Don't look, Little Chap."

He walked back to the filly.

Lying still now, her head along the greensward, she watched him
coming; snorting through full-blown nostrils.

He knelt at her head, pulling her ear, and caressing her.

"There, then, there!--It's all over now, little woman. I've come to
comfort you."

CHAPTER LX

THE TWO PRAYERS

I

The Gentleman was walking away into the sunset.

The Parson turned from the dormer, and his eyes were wet.

"And, now, my boy," he cried, "you know what a gentleman is."

The words loosed the fountains of laughter in the lad's heart.

"I thought, sir, that you said--"

"You thought wrong," snapped the Parson. "I said nothing of the sort."

He swung round on Blob and kicked him.

"What fur why?" whimpered Blob.

"Teach you!" cried the Parson. "Want some more, eh? Then behave
yourself. I'm sick o your nonsense."

He reached up to the rafter.

"Eat and sleep--that's the whole duty of man just at present. Blob,
take Piper his rations, and ask him to forgive an old soldier who's a
bit short in the temper in action--and do the same yourself, my boy.
Here, Kit."

They snatched a hasty meal.

Outside the dusk was falling.

The Parson brushed the crumbs off his cravat.

"And now will you take first watch, or shall I?"

"I will, sir. I don't feel like sleep."

"Very well. Wake me when the moon dips behind the Downs, or earlier if
there's a sign of the soldiers."

Kit took his post at the dormer. The other slipped off his coat.

"I'm not much of a Parson as you may have found out," he muttered,
"still I am an Englishman." And he plumped down on his knees
defiantly.

His was a very short and simple prayer; the prayer tens of thousands
of Englishmen were praying from their hearts at that time.

Kneeling in his shirt, Polly shining before him against the wall, he
repeated it most earnestly.

The whispered words, so simple and heart-felt, reached the ears of the
boy at the dormer.

"God bless our dear country; and God d--- the French."

The waters of laughter came roaring up the boy's throat, and surged
over, irresistible.

The Parson rose from his knees, and scowled at the lad's shaking
shoulders.

"I suppose they're too proud to pray in _his_ Service," he
sneered. "Pack o pirates!" He took off his coat and folded it with
thumps. "Yet I know one sailor who's not above paying his respects to
his Maker--and that's Lord Nelson, of whom you may have heard. Seen
him myself in the trenches at Calvi. I remember a great buck of a
Dragoon Guardsman asking him,

"'Why d'you pray, little man?' 'Why,' says Nelson, simple as a child,
'because mother taught me.' Yes, sir," fiercely, "and that's why I
pray--and jolly good reason too."

"Did she teach you that prayer?" asked Kit demurely.

"Bah! blurry young tarry-breeks!" muttered the other; and curling on
the floor, his rolled jacket beneath his head, the old campaigner was
off to sleep, Polly fair and faithful beside him.

II

The boy had the house to himself, and the world too. At last he could
retire once more upon the Love within him.

He could pray--without words.

The sea was a plain shining beneath the moon. Against the light, inky
sycamores ruffled, stars entangled in their leaves. On the shingle-
bank the bear-skinn'd sentinel showed black against white waters.

The plain beauty of the night stole upon his mind. All was jewelled
silence, save for the jar-r-r of the familiar goat-sucker from the
foot of the hills, and the wash of the sea.

How calm it was, how strong, how radiant!

He had been far away. Now he was drawing near again. It was his once
more. He possessed it all, all, all, and loved it as his own.

All day he had been the prisoner of his own distraught senses. And how
comfortable it was, after the darkness of that life which is death, to
resume the large loveliness of Life Unending.

Space and Time had no more meaning for him. He was again eternal and
infinite. All this beauty of earth and sky and moon-wan water, it was
not outside him, it was himself. He reached out a hand to pluck a
handful of stars, and could not--because they were too close. You
cannot pluck the jewels of your own heart.

Yet however deep he plunged into Eternity, the ache of Time was still
present to his mind, remote indeed, on the farthest shores of memory,
but always there, an ache that would not still. He felt the pain of
it, and still more the pettiness. To him, sitting at the heart of
things, drinking in the great night, they seemed strangely mean and
tawdry now, the excitements of the past day.

_Let not your heart be troubled_, came the voice of the Poet of
Truth down the ages.

Was it worthy of a Son of God so to vex himself with the trivialities
of this world?

What was war? what victory? what defeat?

True he must do his best for conscience' sake, but God would swing the
stars across the heaven whether Napoleon landed or not. He would still
march on His great way, though Nelson were lost.

Smiling to himself, the lad was wondering whether to the Maker of
those stars, this earth, that sea, the issue of this business might be
more than the issue of a squabble between two sparrows would be to
him.

III

He crossed to the northward window.

The Downs surged before him like a wave, dull against the brilliant
darkness. Overhead the slow stars trailed by, dipping, one after one,
behind the dark curtain of hills. The moon climbed above the
sycamores. Out on the plain something sparkled frostily. It was the
bayonet of a sentinel, lonely-pacing in the moonlight.

The sight brought the lad back to earth.

How would it all end? Were these few bearskinn'd trespassers only the
spray of seas to follow?

In a little while would England be flooded with them? Aghast, he
peered seaward: and seemed to behold a black tide of men sweeping
across the moon-drift. They deluged England. The fringe of them lapped
about his own northern home. A man in a tree was shooting at Gwen
running for her life, her hair behind her, screaming, "Kit!"

Something fell on the floor with a sharp tap, and stopped the shriek
on the verge of his lips.

What was it?

Another tap. Something was bobbing briskly across the floor. He picked
it up. It was a pebble, and must have come through the window.

Cocking his pistol, he rose.

"Down't shoot," said a low voice.

CHAPTER LXI

KNAPP'S RETURN

Beneath the window stood the little rifleman, white in the shadow of
the house, and grinning up at him.

"How did you get through?"

"Slip through em, sir--h'easy as a h'eel."

"Don't talk so loud," whispered the boy. "Just hop on to the sill of
the lower window. I'll see if I can haul you in."

"No, sir. I won't come in. I may be more usefuller outside. Keep em on
the Key Whiff as the sayin is."

"Then keep still! don't jig! hug in here in the shadow of the house!
I'll call Mr. Joy."

The Parson was at the window in a minute and listening to the man's
story.

According to his own account Knapp had done the twelve miles to Lewes
under the hour.

"Went slap away, as your orders was, sir, no foolin nor nothin, just
slap bang through em--you ask Mr. Caryll."

"Never mind about your feats," said the Parson shortly. "Did you see
the Commandant?"

"O yes, sir. Ran straight away through the camp to his tent, where the
flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as
I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent,
and when she see me--'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a
niked man! _Do_ come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle
her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword
and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into
the tent. Then he run at me, roarin."

The little man was sniggering.

"I see by his eyes he meant it all, so--

"'Here, sir,' says I, 'somethin for yourself!' and chucks the note in
his mug."

The Parson was breathing deep.

"And what then?"

"Why, sir, I'd nothin on me ony the dooks me God give me. So I up and
I skip it."

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