The Gentleman

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It was splendid. Kit's blood danced to it. He thought of old-time
tournays, the champion riding into the ring at the last moment. He was
half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the
moment when he stormed with the crew of the _Tremendous_ at the
heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill
treble, now a hoarse bass.

The Parson was chewing his lip.

"Horse or foot, I wonder?"

"Foot," cried Kit, stamping up and down.

"Damnation!" grumbled the Parson. "Are they doubling?"

"Not they!" cried Kit, mad to insolence--"doing the goose-step by
numbers so far as I can see. Good old leather-stocks!"

Knapp might have heard him: for the bugle close at hand blew the
charge furiously.

"Now they've broken into a double. Come on, you chaps! come on!"

"Well done, Knapp!" muttered the Parson, swallowing his excitement.
"Good little boy! Good little b-o-y! If he lives through this, he
shall have a pint o beer to his breakfast to-morrow, by God he shall.
Piper! how long'll they take getting here?"

"Why, sir, a little better'n half an hour, I reckon. Drop down by
Motcombe, through Upperton, and down along Water Lane."

The Parson turned to Kit.

"How long will it be before the tide will float the lugger, think
you?"

"Twenty minutes, sir."

The Parson grunted.

"Pot begins to boil," he said, and took off his coat.

"O, if they're too late!" cried Kit in swift agony, and turned to
glance at the far frigate.

"God's never too late, my boy," answered the Parson, folding his coat
carefully.

III

Rolling up his sleeves, he was looking through the seaward window.

The Gang were streaming across the greensward, and round the cottage,
pointing, shouting.

Behind them came the Gentleman. He was swinging his sword, and
chopping at the daisies. Whoever else was disturbed, it was not he.

Last the Grenadiers who formed the lugger-guard came toppling over the
shingle-bank.

The Gentleman stayed them with imperious hand.

The Parson saw it and grinned. The chap, for all his high-faluting
ways, was a soldier through and through. He missed no point, not the
smallest. The Parson respected him.

The other, crossing the sward, raised his head and saw the man at the
window. The eyes of the two met. Each smiled. Each knew the other's
heart.

"No, no," cried the Gentleman with a little wave. "I give nothing
away. I can't afford to. I know my opponent."

The Parson bowed, tightening his belt. And after all it was a pretty
compliment from the first light cavalry-man in Europe.

The Gentleman passed round the cottage and out of sight.

"What shall you do?" asked Kit hoarsely at the Parson's elbow.

"Why, the only thing there is to be done--and that's nothing."

He sat down on a broken box, took out a handkerchief and began to
furbish his blade with the delicate tenderness of a woman bathing a
child.

Kit, fretted almost to tears, watched him with angry admiration. The
crisis had come, and this curly grey-head sat, calm as a village
Solomon in his door of summer evenings, and talked baby to his sword.

"I don't see _that_ helps much," sneered the boy--"cleaning the
plate!"

"Nor does fussing for that matter," retorted the other tranquilly. "In
war, as in the world, you must do as you're done by. That mayn't be
parson's truth; but it is soldier's. And I'm a soldier for the time
being. The cards lie with the Gentleman. We shall have to follow suit
--or trump. If he's got a card up his sleeve he must play it--now or
never."

The boy turned to the window.

The Gentleman was standing upon the broken wall, hand over his eyes,
taking in the situation.

He flung a finger here, an order there.

The Grenadiers threw forward across the plain in skirmishing order.

"Looks like business," muttered the Parson, tucking in his shirt.
"What's it going to be?"

He had not long to wait.

The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came swiftly across the grass
towards them.

CHAPTER LXVII

THE ACE OF TRUMPS

I

He came rapidly across the lawn, the sun upon him.

Kit thought him the fairest figure of a man he had ever seen.

The Parson was comely with the comeliness of an apple, this man was
beautiful with the beauty of sun and sword in one.

But the boy noticed that there was more of the sword and less of the
sun than of old about him.

Was the strain telling on him too?

"Forgive me for disturbing you so early," called the gay voice. "The
Reverend Father was at his devotions doubtless!"

"No, sir," retorted the Parson. "The Reverend Father was watching the
Horse, Foot, and Artillery, pelting down the hill on top o you."

"I've been watching em too," replied the other. "And sorry I am I
shan't be here to entertain em--I've a soft place for the soldiers
myself. But I'm just off for a day on the water. A pretty morning!"

"Yes; as pretty a morning to hang a play-actor on as ever I saw."

The other waved a hand.

"Ah, but I'm not going to hang you, dear Padre. I have other views for
you."

He was fascinating, but somehow he was fearful too. He was the python:
they were the rabbits. He had power: and that power was none the less
terrible because it was mysterious.

The Parson leaned out, bold and bluffing.

"I take you. The game's up. And you've come to surrender, eh?"

The other shook his head.

"No. I just stepped across to say good-bye, and see if I couldn't
perhaps persuade you to come with me."

"No, sir, thank you all the same. I'm a land-animal myself. Besides
I'm too cosy here."

The other stood silent a full minute, nodding a slow head.

"Alas, poor ghost!" he said at length half to himself, and made as
though to turn.

The Parson was staggered.

Had he no card then? was he merely bluffing?

"What's it mean?" he whispered fiercely to Kit.

"It means he's going--and Nelson's last chance with him!" panted the
boy. "O, _make_ him stay!"

The Parson leaned out again.

"I hope you'll come back to see your friends hung, my lord!" he
bawled.

The Gentleman turned again.

"Friends?"

"Well, aren't they your friends?--Lord Alfiriston, Sir Harry Dene, and
the rest. I gathered they were from the despatch-bag you're so good as
to leave in my hands."

"I'm leaving no despatch-bag in your hands."

The Parson jumped round.

What did the fellow mean? Had he somehow?...

No, there it was on the staple, the tarpaulin bag stamped with the
Imperial Eagle.

He took it down.

"This is the boy I meant. Won't you leave this with us?"

The Gentleman shook his head.

"What you going to do with it?" mockingly.

"What I'm going to do with you."

Man and boy, hugging close in the window, each felt the other tauten.

"What's that?"

The other rolled his eyes heavenward.

The Parson was breathing through his nose.

"What ye mean?"

A tiny smile broke about the Gentleman's lips. He raised a finger, and
drew nearer on his toes, stealthy as a child about to reveal a secret
to its mother; and there was a horror about him.

"_Hush, and I'll whisper you!_"

The horror grew upon the man. The Parson shivered.

The very air was listening.

"_Powder-mine._"

"_A what?_"

"_A powder-mine._"

The laughter bubbled up in his eyes, and rippled about his face. He
was a child, a cruel child, who springs a carefully-prepared surprise
on a comrade, and dwells wantonly on the effect.

"Not vairy nice, is it?" he bantered. "I _do_ feel for you."

He stood beneath the window, hands clasped before him, chin down, the
little maiden, demure yet malicious: the little maiden and yet--the
Devil.

"So sorray. But I do not want those despatches to fall into the hands
of bad men. You forgive?" winningly.

The Parson drew a great breath. It was so sudden, so aweful, so utter.

It was Piper who broke the silence from below.

"We're settin on a powder-mine, sir. Is that it?"

"That's it."

"Ah, well," came the philosophic voice. "Short and sweet--bless God.
Better'n lingerin on it out."

Kit panted,

"Nelson!" and swooned.

II

When he came round the Gentleman was approaching slowly across the
grass.

He bantered no more. Maiden and Devil were dead. He was man, and grey
as dew.

"Captain Joy," he was saying quietly. "Let us face facts. Samson is
bound. Over there," pointing to Beachy Head, "are the liers in wait.
That frigate's the _Medusa_. Nelson's aboard of her. She can't
escape."

The words stung Kit to new life.

"She can't escape perhaps," he shouted. "But can't she fight?"

The other shook his head.

"Why?" persisted Kit, hot for the honour of his Service. "Why can't
she fight?"

"She can't fight," said the Gentleman slowly, "because her powder's
wet."

"What!" bellowed the Parson--"more traitors!"

"The Gunner is mine," replied the Gentleman briefly.

"Oh, the Navy! the Navy!" cried the Parson, rocking.

"But, I don't believe it!" screamed Kit. "Let him prove it! Let him
tell us how he's worked it."

The Gentleman walked slowly up and down before the window.

"We needn't enter into that," he said, cold as death.

The Parson launched a slow laughing sneer, terrible to hear.

"What! more gentlemanliness from our Gentleman!"

The words whipped the other's face white.

He stopped in his walk, and lifted slow eyes.

"It may be that I have loved my country better than my God," he said.
A smile flashed across his face--"_But what a country to be damned
for!_"

Slowly he came towards the cottage.

"To return to the point. Nelson is lost. No power on earth can save
him now."

"I do not look to any power on earth for help," replied the Parson
solemnly.

"Let us talk as men," answered the other as solemn. "You have nothing
to gain by holding out, and everything to lose. All that an honourable
soldier could do you have done. Is it not now the part of true courage
to accept the inevitable? For the last time, will you surrender?"

The great veins started on the Parson's forehead.

"Never!" he bawled. "Do your d'dest!"

The Gentleman turned and turned again.

"The blood of those boys be on your head, Mr. Joy!"

"Let the boys answer for themselves," retorted the Parson, short and
sullen.

The Gentleman paused.

"Little Chap," he called, "will you come?--France is a fair country.
You shall have Monsieur Moon-calf there for squire. Myself I will see
to it that you are happy."

"I would rather be dead in England than alive in France," the boy
answered passionately. "What about you, Blob?"

"Here Oi be and here Oi boide," replied Blob doggedly, and dulled the
romance of the statement by adding--"Oi aren't got ma money yet."

"Think twice, Little Chap!" called the Gentleman. "You are young. You
are happy. The day is before you. The night is not yet. It is early to
draw down the blinds."

The Parson had turned his back to the window.

"Ask the ass for time," he whispered. "We must have time."

The boy leaned out.

"May I have ten minutes to think it over, sir?"

"Two, my boy."

"Oh, sir!" pitiful, appealing.

The Gentleman glanced across his shoulder, and turned again.

"Ah, well! five be it."

He took out his watch, and sat on the wall with dangling legs.

CHAPTER LXVIII

THE BLESSING

I

"I must have a word with Piper."

The Parson was down the ladder in a flash.

The old foretop-man, humming his hymn in the eternal twilight, turned.

"Well, sir?"

"You've heard, Piper?"

"I've hard, sir. And if so be a common seaman might make so bold,
there's but one thing for it, and that's the cold steel."

He laid his Bible aside and took up his cutlass.

"It's a forlorn hope, Piper."

"It's the only one, sir."

The Parson swung round.

"And there's another thing," he cried in terrible agony. "What about
you, Piper? We shall take it in the open; but _you_, you'll have
to wait for it. I _can't_ leave you to fall alive into the hands
of those--those--O my God! my God!" stamping up and down.

There was quiet thrill in the voice that answered,

"They ca'an't touch me, sir. I'm safe in Jesus." The old man seemed to
shine in the darkness.

"It's not death I fear for you!" cried the Parson. "No Christian fears
that for his friend. It's--it's the old game--the Gap Gang."

"Ah, they won't have no time for no larks," interposed the other with
a comfortable chuckle. "They can do their muckiest. It won't last
long. The soldiers'll stop that."

The words, and the way of saying them, quickened the Parson to
tremendous life.

"You're right, old friend," he cried, his voice naming in the gloom.
"Death to face, but nothing to fear."

"Death to face," echoed the old man, "and Christ to follow."

II

"I'm distressed to disturb you," came a cold voice from without. "But
time's nearly up."

"You said five minutes, sir!" called Kit.

"You've had three, my boy. You've got two."

"And we'll make good use of em," gasped the Parson, and raced up the
ladder.

Snatching the despatch-bag from the staple, he tumbled the contents on
the floor, and set the whole ablaze. The papers curled and crackled;
and their dreadful secret escaped joyfully in merry little flames.

"May God deal so with all traitors in his own good time!" prayed the
Parson.

He trod out the flames, and turned to the boys.

"I'm goin for em."

"So'm I, sir--and Blob."

"So be it!" said the Parson, short and fierce. "Out knives. Off coats.
Tighten belly-bands."

He was on his knees, stuffing his coat into the empty despatch-bag,
working in a white fury.

"Now ask no questions, but listen, and obey! I'm going to undo the
back door _noisily_. You'll undo the front door _quietly_. I
shall sally, the despatch-bag slung across my shoulders--so--see?--
Give me a good start. Choose your moment. Then follow."

The words came swift as hail. The Parson was at his best--the
Englishman in action, back to the door, face to Eternity. The shock
and storm of circumstance made lightning in the dark of his mind. He
saw all before him clear as a landscape at night in the flashes of a
thunderstorm.

"Directly they begin to close on you, you'll get a panic--a screaming
panic. Bolt back for the cottage; slam the door; lock and bar; through
the house, out at the front, and make for the lugger! You may not be
seen--the cottage'll cover you: and I'll keep em occupied as long as I
can. If all goes as I hope, you'll find the lugger unguarded. The rest
I must leave to you and the Almighty. It's a poor chance, but the only
one."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" came the warning voice from without.

III

The Parson slid down into the darkness.

"Piper," he cried, hoarse and dry. "I believe--I believe these lads
will win through. It's God's battle. He _must_ help."

"He will, sir," replied the old man, firm as faith.

"I'm a clergyman. You're a good man. This is a desperate business.
Will you give us your blessing?"

He was down on his knees, in his white shirt, his sword a gleam of
silver on the slabs before him.

"Kit."

The boy, swift to grasp his meaning, knelt beside him, pulling Blob
after him.

An arm stole round him; his stole round Blob.

So they knelt in the twilight, hugging close in that aweful sense of
loneliness that comes to men when the Gates of Death are seen to swing
back to let them through.

Kit thought of his Confirmation six months ago.

Now the end was come--so soon.

Well, well, he had often died before. And how clearly it all came back
to him, this final stage in the little pilgrimage, these last few
steps, solemn, beautiful, and slow, up to the familiar threshold; then
the old door, the old smile, and--the old forgetfulness.

He had no regrets, and was strangely calm, strangely uplifted. He
could look back without shame, and forward without fear. Now he was
thankful that in these days of his ordeal he had been true to himself
and to his trust. He had done his best. There was little more to do.
That little should be done as became the son of his father.

IV

In the gloom they knelt before this unanointed Priest of Jehovah.

His office sat upon that white old man, native to him as his soul.

He spread his great-knuckled hands above them, a patriarch, a prophet,
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

"God bless you, sir--and you, Master Kit--and you, Boy Hoad." He drew
his hand across his mouth.

"So be. Amen," he added solemnly.

"Amen," said they all.

The Parson rose.

He gripped the old man's hand.

Blob he patted on the back.

"Kit," he said, and, drawing the boy towards him, kissed him.

CHAPTER LXIX

THE PARSON'S SORTIE

I

"Time!" came the stern voice from without.

The Parson slammed back the last bolt with a clang, and whipped up his
sword.

"_Ready?_"

The man was in a white flame, roaring for battle.

"_Yes_."

Time had stopped: Eternity was there.

"_Then God help us all to die!_"

He flung back the door and plunged.

It was a venture of despair; but there was no despair in that heart of
oak.

Swift as a flood, and as silent, he made for the wall, the despatch-
bag flopping in the small of his back. And his silence added to the
terror of his coming.

The white-hearted crew huddling behind the wall felt it. Here and
there a scared head dodged up only to duck again.

One man alone left cover and went out to meet the solitary swordsman.

The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came across the sward with steady
eyes, twisting his sword-knot about his wrist.

There was a rimy look about his face, and a snarl in the voice that
shouted to the crew behind him,

"Come! close in there! You've got to finish this job before you go.
The soldiers are on your heels, remember."

Close at hand a sudden drum rolled.

It smote the guilty hearts of the Gang like a summons to the Last
Judgment.

"_What's that?_"

They rose up like dead men and looked behind them. It was not much
they saw, but it was sufficient.

Close in their rear, on a rise of the ground, a man stood against the
sky, thundering fatally on a monster drum.

He wore a red coat; he was a soldier.

And as they gazed, he beat a furious rat-a-tan-tan and charged.

That was enough. The Gang broke.

II

The Gentleman flashed round to meet the new danger.

He saw a pair of twinkling legs, a huge drum, belly-borne, and two
drum-sticks, brandished vaingloriously, driving a rout of men before
them.

The humour of the thing seized him.

"Well done, Soldier!" he laughed, and was back over the wall in a
trice, attempting to stop the rout.

He might as well have attempted to stay the tide. A torrent of men
tumbled past him in howling tumult.

He stood like a lighthouse in the tide-way.

"What! one man lick the lot o you!" came the whipping voice. "O, good
God!" with a passion of scorn--"you sweeps! you swine!"

His blade flashed and fell.

"Pretty stroke!" shouted the Parson, flying the wall. "At em again,
sir!" He cut in fiercely on the flank. "Come on, Knapp!--That's the
style! Bellyful for once! Bellyful for the boy!"

"I'm there, sir!" cried Knapp, very brisk and bright.

He had flung aside his drum, and was tearing up, wielding his drum-
sticks like battle-axes.

"Into em!" bellowed the Parson. "Give em the glory o God! Give em the
Lord's own delight!"

He was hounding at the heels of the last smuggler, and the Gentleman
was hounding at his.

"Ow's that-a-tat-tat? ow's that?" cried Knapp, racing up from behind,
and came down with a flourish and a thump on the swordsman's head as
he thrust.

Down went the Gentleman in sprawling ruin.

"That's a little bit o better, ain't it?" chirped the Cockney, and
skipping over the fallen man, he was at the Parson's side, in the
thick and fury of it, bringing down his drum-sticks to the battle-cry
of,

"Ow's that-a-tat-tat? ow's that?"

III

The old man and the boys watched from the cottage. The door was ajar.
They huddled behind it, peering. Beside them lay the table, a musket
across it. In the silence they could hear each other's hearts.

"Say, Maaster Sir!" whispered Blob. "Be you fear'd?"

"Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies," replied Kit. "Be you?"

"Oi dun knaw," replied the cautious lad. "Moi insoide seems koind o
swimmy loike."

"Then stand by to lend a hand with this table when I give the word,"
was all Kit's answer.

He was watching with all his eyes.

Parson and Gentleman were about to clash.

Then a little figure rose out of the earth, and sullen thunder smote
on the silence.

Piper drew a deep breath.

"I thart so," he said, comfortably.

"Who is it?" asked Kit.

"Jack Knapp, sir," said the old man, picking his teeth. "Sneaked a
drum from a travellin showman by the look on it, and tow-rowin like a
rigiment. See him thump it. Ho! ho! That's joy to Jack, I knaw. Now
he's for chargin em, drum and all. Ha! ha!"

Whoever else might escape there was no hope for that wingless old man.
His fate was certain, his end was already come. Within five minutes at
most the great doors would have slammed on him for ever. And here he
sat chuckling like a boy at a fair.

It is something to be a saint, thought Kit, something to be as sure as
that. This old man had built his house upon the Rock indeed.

They watched the stampede, and the Gentleman's vain attempt to stay
it. Their hearts surged to the Parson's battle-cry, and sank to the
Gentleman's thrust, to surge again as Knapp felled his man.

"Knapp'd him a nice un," chuckled the old man, not above a pun at
death's door. "Reglar revellin in it is Knapp, I knaw."

"Our time's coming!" panted Kit. "Stand by, Blob!"

The Gentleman was down, the Gang upon the run. "Now, sir!" cried
Piper. "Now's your chance."

IV

"Now, Blob!--nippy with the table there!"

Out they rushed, and dumped the table down on the left of the door.

"That'll do, sir, thank you," said the old man, trundling out after
them. "That'll cover my flank nicely.... Butter-my-wig!" with kindling
eyes on the battle, "but Mr. Joy's busy."

"Come on, Blob!" yelled Kit.

"Come along, boys!" roared the Parson. "Pretty work forrad, and plenty
for all!"

The Gentleman rose white-faced from his knees.

"A moil a moil" he shouted, waving.

Behind him Kit heard a yell, and the crash and scatter of men storming
down the shingle-bank.

Then silence as they took the grass.

He flung his head across his shoulder as he ran.

The lugger-guard, loosed at last, were hurling across the greensward
at him, bayonets at the charge.

Such tall and terrible men!--and how they strode along, bearskins a-
bob, savage eyes smouldering, snapping fierce phrases at each other
as they came!

Kit loosed his soul in a ghastly scream.

"Back, Blob!"

It was well done, and not difficult to do. He had but to utter the
horror that was in him.

"O, Kit!" came the Parson's resentful bellow.

"I'm afraid!" screamed the lad. "I can't help it. O-o-o-h!"

He ran with huddled head, clutching at the boy before him.

"_Attrapez ces gaillards! Ne tirez pas!_" shouted the Gentleman.
"_Un deux d'entre vous leur coupent le chemin! Les autres, par
ici!_"

"_Ah, oui, mon General!_" panted the Corporal. "_Francois!
Albert!_"

Two men sprang away from the rest and raced to intercept the boys.

What a pace they ran! Their black-gaitered legs seemed to skim the
ground.

The boy had not allowed for such speed.

"_Toi de l'autre cote de la chaumiere. Moi ici!_" called the
swifter of the two.

He flashed behind the cottage, and flashed up again round the gable-
end.

Kit recognised him. It was Francois, his friend of the dawn.

"Tiens! c'est toi, mon gars!" cried the man, with a quick smile.

A simple countryman, this Francois, he was a soldier because he had to
be. That business beyond the wall, where the swords and shouts were,
was little to his liking. This was a job after his own heart. He was a
boy playing prisoner's base with another boy. Neither would be hurt.

So as he slewed round the gable-end he smiled.

Kit saw the smile and resented it. It angered him that this fellow did
not take him seriously. He had not to resent it for long.

The smile died a swift and terrible death on Francois' face.

"_Dame!_" he screamed, and slithered back on his heels. A musket
barrel was thrusting into his flank.

"_Pray!_" said a solemn voice.

There was a horrible plop as the man collapsed, coughing.

CHAPTER LXX

THE LAST OF OLD FAITHFUL

The old man clapped his smoking musket down, and snatched his cutlass.

"Any more for me, sir?"

"Another on your right, Piper!"

"Very good, sir."

The old man spun himself to the corner, and waited behind the wall.

The boy, running with all his might, watched fascinated.

Round the corner the doomed man whirled with a grin. The cutlass
swooped. The fellow sprawled over his slayer, the shock of the onset
rolling the chair back. The old man shook off the body, as he might
have shaken off a cloak, and backed himself, cutlass bloody in his
mouth.

"In with you, Master Kit!"

"You too!" panted Kit, thrusting the chair before him.

"No, sir, no!" fiercely. "I can do a bit o business here yet." He was
loading swiftly, eyes on the battle. "Starn agin the door, larboard in
the loo'th, and cutlass-room all round--what better can a seaman
want?"

"But--"

"Sharp, sir!--No time to waste. Here they come."

The Gentleman had gathered his Grenadiers in his hand, and was
swinging them back at the cottage.

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