The Gentleman

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Hell had opened at his feet, and he was looking into it.

"She--"

It was the sigh of a dying soul.

"She--"

Each word was a gasp.

"She--"

He lifted his face, and a glimmer as of dawn broke over it.

"--can explain."

CHAPTER LXXVIII

NELSON'S HEART

In the quiet cabin they looked into each other's eyes, these two old
friends.

It was ten years since they had met.

The one was now the world's hero, the other a retired Captain of the
Line.

Nelson was thinking as his eyes dwelt upon his friend,

"Just the same."

The Parson,

"What a change!"

It was the old Nelson he saw, and yet only the wraith of the old Nelson.
There was a grey and ghastly darkness about him that made the Parson
afraid. It was the grey of snow at dusk, the darkness of a pool which was
haunted.

The Parson knew the tale, as all Europe knew it. Once he had doubted: now
he could doubt no longer. Nelson's story was graven on his face--the
story of the man who has betrayed himself. It was writ large there--the
struggle, the surrender, the quenching of his ideal in the cataract of
passion. He had run away from his best self, as many a man has run. He
had slammed a door behind him, hoping to shut out his soul. And now the
door had burst open. The ghost of himself, his old self, that had haunted
him so long, rapping at the door, refusing in God's name to be laid, had
rushed in upon him with a shriek.

He was wrestling with it now.

No wonder he was changed.

The Parson, almost in tears, recalled the Nelson with whom he had chewed
ships' biscuits and exchanged dreams in the trenches at Calvi--the Nelson
of Corsican days with a face like the morning and a school-boy's heart,
his eyes forward into the future. Now he had realised his dreams and
more. The young post-captain had become Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte: St.
Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen behind him.

And, and, and....

Suddenly, as though divining the thoughts of his old friend, Nelson fell
forward.

"O Joy!" he cried, "I have sinned."

He clutched the Parson's shoulder, hugging it.

"Ten minutes since I saw it all." He lifted a dreadful eye. "It was
_BLAZED_ upon me in a flash of lightning." His voice had the hollow
muffled sound of a man in a nightmare. "I saw myself: not the man the
world is looking to, but plain Horatio Nelson--the sinner."

The confession, shuddering forth from the lips of the great seaman,
sprang the horror in the other's heart.

"There, there!" he croaked. "There, there, Nelson!"

"Honours, Orders, Westminster Abbey, and the world's cheers are nothing,"
came the nightmare voice. "_That_ remains."

The Parson collected himself and cleared his throat.

"We all make mistakes, Nelson," he said gruffly. "Everybody stumbles, but
no man need lie in the mud."

"I must," cried the other hoarsely. "I must--in honour. Honour!"
he cried, throwing back his head with terrible laughter. "Nelson's
honour!--O, Joy, you knew me as I was: you see me as I am. _You_ can
judge. Is it not _hideous_ that it should come to this?--that men should
_snigger_ when Nelson and honour are coupled together."

The tears rolled down the Parson's face.

"Ah, my dear fellow," he kept on saying, patting the other's back, "my
dear, dear fellow."

"I have been hiding from my God all these years--and to-day He found me!"
sobbed the voice upon his shoulder. "O, He is just--terribly just. He
knows no mercy--none."

"None _here_" murmured the Parson. "_There_ there's plenty for all."

Nelson lifted a blurred face.

"You think that?"

"I'm sure of it," sturdily. "And I know all about that sort of thing now,
you know. I'm a parson."

Nelson held the other off.

"Are you a parson?"

"Yes, sir," a thought defiantly. "And why not?"

His heat brought no twinkle to the other's one wet eye.

The nightmare was passing: Nelson was drifting away into dreams.

"My father's a parson," he mused, as one talking to himself. "If I
hadn't gone to sea at twelve, I think I should have been. Nelson and
religion!--it sounds strange. Yet I always wished to give all to God."

"You have," cried the Parson fiercely. "Who dares say you've not?"

"I do," said Nelson, dreaming.

"And what would have come to God's world but for you?" shouted the
Parson. "Why, swamped by a pack of rackety French atheists."

Nelson seemed not to hear.

"_What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world, and lose
himself_?" he whispered.

The Parson gathered the other in his arms.

"Nelson," he said with tender sternness, "if you've wronged the Almighty,
you must make Him amends."

"How, Harry?" came the voice from his shoulder.

"Why," said the Parson with a grave smile, "you must arise and smite His
enemies."

Slowly Nelson composed himself. A great calm swept over him.

"You're right," he said at last, the light breaking about his face. "I am
England's David. It is for me to slay Goliath. Sinner as I am, He has
chosen me to do this work for Him, and I will do it. Yes, I will do it."

He turned to the port and gazed out.

To the Parson it seemed an hour before he turned again.

The nightmare madness had passed. His face was altogether changed. It was
that of a child who wakes from sleep in a panic. There was a startled
little smile about it.

"Harry," he said in shy waking voice, "have I been dreaming?--or have I
been talking a lot of nonsense?"

The Parson, for all his simplicity, was something of a man of the world.

"Why," he cried heartily, "you've been standing with your back to me,
mumbling and grumbling, and being damned rude."

Nelson laughed.

Was the Parson wrong?--or was there in that laugh a note of almost
hysterical relief?

"I'll make it up to you, Harry. I'll make it up to you, my boy." He
thrust his hand into his bosom, and produced a miniature. "Look here!" in
reverent voice--"my Guardian Angel."

CHAPTER LXXIX

IN THE CABIN AGAIN

Kit was in the gun-room, the centre of a group of rosy-faced lads,
eagerly questioning.

He could not eat; he could not answer.

"Caryll, the Admiral wants you."

The boy rose and went, trembling.

In the door of the cabin stood the Parson, his blue eyes very kind.

He put a hand on the boy's shoulder, and drew him in.

"Lord Nelson," he said, "I believe this is the most gallant lad in either
Service."

The great captain came towards him. The boy saw him through a mist.

"Kit," said Nelson, with that wonderful smile of his--"I may call you
Kit? Your father was always Kit to me--will you shake the hand of a
brother-officer, who's proud to call himself such?" He added, gazing into
the boy's eyes--"Your father was my friend. I hope his son will be."

Kit's heart surged. His knees began to give. He felt himself fading away.

Then the arm that was wont to encircle another waist was round his. His
head sank where another head, beloved of Romney, often cushioned.

He began to whimper.

They supported him to a chair, the white head and the curly dark one
mingling over his. And no woman could have been more tender than those
two men of war, each in his own way so great.

"That's all right, my boy," said the Parson, "my dear boy. Don't be
afraid to cry. All men cry--only we don't let the ladies know it."

"We won't tell the midshipmen," murmured Nelson at the other ear. "I'm
safe--I weep myself sometimes in confidence. You must just think of me as
of a father."

"Paws off, if you please, my lord," replied the Parson. "I'm his adopted
father and mother and all; aren't I, Kit?--old friends first, you know."

"Well," gasped Kit between sobs and laughter, "you see I've got a mother,
thank you."

"Have you?" cried Nelson, rising from his knees. "Is she like mine, I
wonder? If so, I love her already. But there! I love her for her son's
sake. And I'm going to write to her to tell her she has a son she can be
proud of."

He sat down at his desk.

"Ah, what would England be without her mothers?" he said, taking up a
pen.

* * * * *

The quill pen ceased to squeak.

Nelson thumped the letter with characteristic zeal, rose and gave it to
the boy.

Kit pocketed it, his eyes looking thanks through tears.

"Your father'd be proud of you," said Nelson. "He was a true seaman--as
his son will be."

"He's thinking of turning soldier, ain't you, Kit?" cut in the Parson.
"He's like me--got no use for the sea except as an emetic."

"No, no," said Nelson, smiling. "The Navy claims her cubs."

"Well, well," replied the other, "I won't dispute the point. But like
another young seaman I used to know perhaps some day he'll rise to be
Colonel of Marines, and win great victories at sea as the result of what
we've taught him on land."

"Soldier and sailor too, eh?" said Nelson, and added in a stage-whisper
to Kit--"He can never quite forgive us being the Senior Service."

A clock struck two.

"Come, Kit," said the Parson. "What d'you say? Shouldn't we be getting
back?"

"I'm ready, sir."

"What!" cried Nelson. "You're never going back?"

"The soldier is," said the Parson. "The sailor can speak for himself. In
_my_ Service a job half done is a job not done. _We_ like to see things
through.... Besides, there's Knapp, and old Piper."

"Ah, yes," said Nelson gravely. "I was forgetting. Dear old Piper!"

"He sent a message to you, my lord," said Kit, and gave it.

"Thank you," said Nelson quietly. "Old Agamemnons never forget each
other.... If by any mercy of God my old friend should be alive," he
continued, "give him my love--Nelson's love; and say his old captain's
proud to have sailed with such a man."

"We will indeed," said the Parson thickly. "Come, Kit."

"No, no," cried Nelson, staying him. "You'll leave me my midshipman. I
want all my best men by me now."

The Parson turned.

"What say you, Kit?"

The boy looked at Nelson.

"Take your choice, my boy."

"I should like to see the thing through, my lord."

Nelson patted him on the shoulder.

"There spoke the seaman," he said. "Never be satisfied with nearly.
Always go for quite."

CHAPTER LXXX

THE _MEDUSA_ DIPS HER ENSIGN

I

The _Medusa_ had gone about and was rocking lazily home, the land misty
on her larboard.

Forward a knot of tars were gathered, Blob's cherub-face for
centre-piece.

The lad was telling his tale in his slow, musical way.

A hoary old sea-dog with unlaughing eyes was putting leading questions.
The men crowded round with grins and thrusting heads. They spat; they
chewed; they nudged each other. Here and there a ripple rose to a roar.
One man turned his back, and hands deep in his pockets, laughed silently
in the face of heaven. Another was stuffing his pig-tail into his mouth
to stifle his merriment.

Blob held on his ghastly way unheeding.

His eyes, fresh as dew, had the round and staring look of a new-born
babe; the tulip face lolled forward on slender stalk; and a tip of pink
tongue played about a mouth, beautiful as a bud.

"And what did er say then?"

"Whoy," came the pure voice, "er said--'Dear! dear!' and Oi says--Theer!
theer!' and plops it in, and plops it in, and plops it in."

The Parson hailed him from the poop.

The little group broke up. Blob came through them, calm as the moon, and
as unconscious.

"Who is the lad?" whispered Nelson, as the boy lolloped up in laceless
boots, hands deep in his waistband.

"One of the garrison," replied the Parson. "Simple Sussex--with the face
of a cherub and the soul of a stoat."

"Ah," said Nelson, "another of the heroes."

He took a step towards the advancing boy.

"I don't know your name," said the Victor of the Nile with grave
courtesy. "But I may shake you by the hand?"

"Ye'," said Blob, mouth and eyes round.

"Thank you," said the hero, taking the other's limp paw. "I am Lord
Nelson."

"Ah," said Blob. "O'im Blob Oad what killed Nabowlin Bownabaardie."

"You've saved me a lot o trouble," replied Nelson, grave but for his
twinkling eye.

Blob stared, breathing like a beast.

"Don't you ave two arms on you?" he asked at last curiously.

"I get along very well with one, thank you."

"Mus. Poiper, he've got no legs--only ends loike," pursued Blob.

The Parson hailed him.

"Hi! are you coming ashore with us, or will you stay with this gentleman
to fight the French?"

The boy wagged his head cunningly.

"Oi'll goo with Maaster Sir. Oi'm his lad."

"He's coming with me later," said Nelson. "Won't you too?"

"Maybe," said Blob. "When Oi got ma money."

"Plenty o killing, you know, Blob," said the Parson slyly.

Blob rippled off into roguish laughter.

"Oi'll coom," he said. "Mate, pudden and killin--that's what Oi loike."

II

Nelson stood at the gangway.

"Good-bye, Kit. I shall hope to have the pleasure of your company aboard
the _Victory_ when I sail."

Kit tried to thank him, failed, and went over the side.

"Good-bye, Harry."

The two old friends stood eye to eye, hand to hand, the great sea wide
about them and the lugger bobbing beneath.

"Good-bye, Nelson," said the Parson, and added, "Good luck."

The other smiled.

"Trust Nelson," he said.

III

They cast off.

The slow and stately frigate began to draw away.

As she slid past, the boys fending her off, and the Parson already
composing himself at the bottom of the boat, Nelson leaned over the side.

"Thank you," he said, and swept off his cocked hat.

Then he turned.

The boys could see him no more. But that shrill voice, so familiar now,
twanged above them.

_"Now, my lads! I'll ask you to give three cheers for the crew of the
Kite. Hip! hip!--"

"Hooray!"_

A roaring cheer leapt from the silence. In a moment the shrouds were
black with waving men. The great hurrahing vessel drew away, curtseying
as she went.

Even the Parson lifted a languid head and peered.

"He's dipping his ensign to you, Kit. Take the salute."

Kit looked through swimming eyes.

The old sense of experience renewed was strong on him--the battle won,
the return home in the evening, the cheers of the saved, and his heart
drowned in love and glory.

Could it be true?

Yes. The Victor of the Nile had dipped his flag to a ten days'
midshipman.

"Ah," said the Parson, "there's Nelson!--God bless him!"

At the stern of the great ship, an empty sleeve pinned to his breast,
stood the greatest seaman of all time, one hand to his cocked hat.

II

KNAPP'S STORY

CHAPTER LXXXI

THE RETURN

I

A mile from shore, under the lee of the land, the wind fell away.

The lugger, with lolling mainsail, flowed down a path of gold. The shore
was dark and still before them, and the sun poised above the Downs, blue
at the back.

As they neared the land, the calm grew. Save for the lap of waters at the
bow, all was hushed in the gracious evening.

Kit, steering, peered under the swaying boom at the shore.

The Parson, Polly in hand, stood in the bows, viking-like.

The lugger was about to beach at the very spot where they had started
twelve hours since.

The tide was much as then; but otherwise what a change!

Then in the cold sunshine men had been busy with each other's lives; now
all was sunset peace and waters kissing the shore.

But for one grim reminder of what had been, they might have been
returning from a pleasure trip.

The Grenadier Kit had stabbed lay on the slope of the shingle, ghastly to
greet them. Just out of reach of the tide he sprawled as he had fallen.
No man had touched him. He lay then as now spread-eagled on his face,
with wide gaitered legs, and hands flung before him. His chin dug into
the shingle; and his shako had fallen askew over staring eyes. It was
almost as though he was making faces at them.

Kit saw it and sickened.

Beside the dead man there was none to greet them.

A wood-pigeon crooned itself to sleep among the sycamores on the knoll;
the sea fell with a lazy swish upon the shore; behind the orange-lichened
roof of the cottage, the Downs loomed black in the glow of sunset The
rest was silence and terror.

The lugger grounded, and crashed to a halt in the white fringe of the
tide.

The Parson leaped ashore, Polly twinkling in his hand.

"Stand by the boat, Blob!" he ordered, feeling the land with his feet.
"Kit, got your dirk? Then follow me."

II

Light and alert, he ran up the slope.

Kit followed with lagging feet.

Never a greedy fighter, for the time the lad had drunk his fill of
battle. He tired of hearing his own heart; and that heart tired of its
thumping. After twelve hours of the sea's large peace, here he was back
again on the evil earth, where the soul is always sick, amid dangers and
darkness, beastly men lurking to murder him.

Is it always so on land? he wondered. Is there no heaven on earth except
at sea?--where God is because man is not.

He longed to have the waters wide about him again.

Not so the Parson. The feel of the land, firm beneath his feet, thrilled
him to new life. He was on his element once more and in it: earth on
earth, the warrior at war. A natural fighter, loving it whole-heartedly
for its own sake, he was ready for a thousand, almost hoping for them.

Keen of eye, tight-curled, he took the slope at a brisk trot.

A path of stepping-stones led across the green towards the house; each
stepping-stone a dead man sprawling face down in a swirl of green.

Kit saw it all as he had seen it then: the tail of Grenadiers, the
pursuing Parson, the hounding Gentleman.

Then it had possessed him; now he only wanted to get away. Home, mother,
Gwen, and an apple in the loft; soft cheeks, kind eyes, the voices of
women loving him, chaffing him--these he longed for. He was tired of
being a man for the time being: he wanted to be a little boy again, to be
cuddled, to be loved.

And for him it was no new experience, this battle-sickness on the return
to the field at evening. He had been there before. When? Where? He could
not recall, yet somehow he remembered.

"One--two--three--four--five!" counted the Parson. "I thought I should
never catch the last. How he ran! When I was on him he snarled back like
a beaten wolf. Then he got it--whish-h-h!"

Kit trailed blindly at his heels.

That stink of dead men, would he never again get it out of his nostrils?

III

The cottage lay before them, just as they had left it. It was barricaded
still, and curiously dark.

"Ha!" muttered the Parson. "I don't like the look of this. Left incline,
Kit. Make for cover."

The old soldier, wary as a fox, sheered off for the sycamore knoll.

There was a touch of death and of autumn in the air. Already the leaves
on the sycamores were shrivelled; and a rusting chestnut was hung with
nuts prickly as sea-urchins. As they passed among the trees a robin
lifted its winter-sweet song.

The Parson peered out.

The cottage faced them, grey and grinning. There was no sign or stir of
life about it; but manifold evidence of death. On the greensward, all
about dead men lay crumpled, faces downwards, killed clearly in flight.

Kit's heart turned white.

Dead men as dung upon the grass here in the holiness of evening, and a
robin singing in the sycamores overhead.

Song and slaughter! God's work and man's! O, would the day never come
when men would _understand_?

"Pretty work," said the Parson, with the zeal of a professional, as he
stepped off the knoll. "Cavalry! See here!--a beautiful stroke. A big man
on a big horse, I should say, and putting _lots_ o beef into it Yes, yes,
yes," with the gusto of an expert. "They've used the edge--see! Got em on
the run, then cut em in collops--and all over my bowling-green, tool"
treading at the offending horse-hooves.

Kit gave a little cough.

He had seen the lower deck of the _Tremendous_ awash with blood; he had
dirked men, and shot them. But this was different. That was death in
battle: this was death in life.

The Parson looked up and saw the lad white as a woman in such
circumstance. He remembered himself.

"I forgot," he muttered. "You're not used to it. War ain't beautiful as
seen in the after-glow."

"It's the quiet," whispered Kit, ghastly. "Like a churchyard--the dead
unburied."

"Shut your eyes," said the Parson in steadying voice. "Take my arm. Don't
think. Repeat a hymn to yourself."

He walked delicately among the dead, Kit stumbling on his arm.

At the garden-gate they stayed.

The Parson hailed, and Kit started dreadfully.

A wood-pigeon with loud wings splashed out of the sycamores. The kitchen
clock within ticked. Other answer there was none.

"I must try the door," whispered the Parson. "Will you come?--or stop
here?"

"Come."

The Parson walked down the tiny path between trampled beds, Kit shivering
on his arm, and Polly leading him.

The cottage was blind; the windows shuttered; the glass in them
shattered.

It seemed more like a mortuary than a human habitation.

The Parson tried the door--in vain.

He laid his ear to it, and listened.

"There's some one there, I'll swear," he whispered, and knocked.

A chair rolled and rolled.

"Piper!"

"No," muttered Kit, with his truer instincts.

Somebody groaned. Broken feet dragged to the door.

The Parson edged off along the wall, hugging it with his shoulder.

"This'll do," he whispered. "Keep behind me. If it's a trick we shall do
very well here--flank covered, play for Polly, and the attack with us."

"I don't want any more fighting," whimpered Kit. "I--I want mother."

Bolts groaned, somebody groaning with them.

"Who's there?" husked a ghostly voice.

"Friend," called the Parson.

CHAPTER LXXXII

BACK TO THE DOOR

I

The lock creaked; the door opened.

A face of yellow clay, bandaged about, peered forth.

"That you, Mr. Joy?" came the ghostly voice, terrible in its remoteness.

The Parson dropped his point.

"Knapp?"

The little bandaged figure, in grey shirt and bloody drawers, wrapped
about with an old horse-blanket, looked at him with stagnant eyes.

"What's left o me."

There was no gladness in his voice, no light of welcome in his eyes.

The merry little fighter of the morning, then cockiest of men, was now no
more than a yellow shadow; dead, you would have said, but for that ghost
of a voice, dribbling dreadfully out of his corpse.

The Parson went towards him.

"I never thought to see you alive again, Knapp."

"I'm a little alive," said the man wearily. "They done me--all but."

The Cockney snap was out of his voice. His words came like a drunkard's:
he was slurring them, running them together, skipping hard consonants.

"I'll never be a man no more, I won't," he added with a dry sob.

The Parson gripped his hand.

A look of beastly rage darted into the other's eyes.

"Blast ye!" he screamed, and struck at the Parson's face with his elbow.
"I'm one--great wownd, you--." He spewed out a torrent of hideous names.
"And yet you must go for to wring my and!"

He lifted his foot to stamp it. His wounds twitched at him. He lowered it
gingerly and with a groan.

"I ain't a man," he sobbed. "I'm one--great wownd."

"My poor chap," choked the Parson.

The other turned, body, legs, neck, and head moving all of a piece, and
shuffled into the cottage on his heels.

The Parson followed.

"Don't touch me!" screamed the other, striking back with his elbows.
"Don't come anigh me, my God! or I'll--"

He hobbled in, muffled to the feet in bandages.

II

He led into the parlour.

It was much the same, save that now a great clothes-horse, hung with
soldiers' cloaks, made as it were a Sanctuary at one end of the room.

Piper's wheel-chair stood empty in the twilight Knapp let himself down in
it with screwed face.

For a time he whimpered tearlessly. He was too weak to weep, and not
strong enough to contain himself.

The Parson bent over him.

"Your heroism has not been in vain, my brave fellow," he said. "But for
you Lord Nelson would be now in the hands of the French."

"Blast Nelson!" snarled the little rifleman. "What's Nelson to me? Blame
fool that I were."

The heroic soul was quenched for the moment. He was flesh distraught--no
more.

A flask of brandy was on the window-sill. The Parson poured from it into
a glass and gave it him.

Knapp revived.

The Parson took down the shutters, and the evening light streamed in,
calm and healing.

"Take your time," said the Parson gently. "Tell us what you can when you
can."

Knapp sipped his brandy.

"It was the knives--when they closed. That done me up. Ow, my God!" He
shuddered. "If it hadn't been for the Genelman."

"Yes?" said Kit eagerly.

A glow lit the man's eye. The yellow of his cheek flushed ever so
faintly.

"I'd die for im," he said, "only he's died for me--what pull his nose and
all."

"Is he dead then?" asked Kit.

"Who's tellin this tale?--you or me?"

He put down his glass.

"That there's a genelman."

His eyes were down, and his hands upon his knees. He began to tell the
story over in his own mind, but only here and there his tongue took fire
and flashed a light upon the tale for the outsider to read by.

"Drew em off o me.... I couldn't tell you.... Cursin em and killin em....
Down on his knees, aside o me.... Give me his arm same as I might ha
been a lady....

"So we goes back to the cottage, me no better nor dead meat on his
arm.... I can't tell you.... I don't know.... I'll never forget it."

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