The Gentleman

A >> Alfred Ollivant >> The Gentleman

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

"Ay, you may sarch," muttered the grim old man. "It's little you'll
find but your own carpses."

He rolled his head round. Kit marked the shine of his eyes, the blink
of pale lids, and the glimmer of his face.

"Look in ma breast-pocket. It's there."

The boy's scared fingers travelled over the other's sodden coat. It
was like searching a drowned man.

"Yes, sir. Here it is."

"Hod it oop."

The boy held the scent-bottle before the other's eyes. The old man
gazed at it, licking his lips.

Then he rolled his eyes up to the boy's.

"Kit Caryll," came the squeezed voice suddenly,
"are you your father's son?"

"I hope so, sir."

There was a thrilling silence.

"Then take charge."

Slowly the boy received the trust into his soul.

"Very good, sir."

He slipped the scent-bottle into his pocket.

"It's all in there," continued the ghastly voice. "It's a plot, see?--to
kidnap Nelson. There's a gal in it--o coorse. Thinks she can twiddle
the A'mighty round her thumb because her face ain't spotty. Lay that
in Nelson's hands--and we'll see."

The dusk was falling fast; the sea stilled; a breathing calm was
everywhere.

"This here's Beachy Head. Birling Gap's yonder--where there's a last
glimmer yet. Don't go that road. Soon as the tide's down, round the
Head, and climb t'other side. It falls away there. Make for Lewes along
the top o the Downs. There's a camp o soldiers there. Soldiers ain't
much account, but they'll serve to see you through to Merton. And once
there, and that in Nelson's hands--I ain't died in vain."

The hoarse voice grew hoarser.

"And mind! trust no one; don't go anigh farm, cottage, or village.
It's an enemy's land all this side o Lewes. Gap Gang country,
the folk call it. They're all in it--up to the neck."

"I'll do my best, sir," said the boy, licking up his tears.

"And not a bad best eether, as I know," came the squeezed voice.
"And when you've won through to Nelson, as win through it's my firm
faith you will--and laid that there in his hand"--his voice came in
pants, and pauses, and with little runs--"tell him I sarved him all
I was able and give him--my kind dooty--old Ding-dong's dooty."

There was a gasping silence.

"That's my revenge. He'll understand."

CHAPTER XIX

OLD DING-DONG HOMEWARD-BOUND

The light was ebbing fast, and old Ding-dong with it.

All was silence and a few pale stars.

The old seaman began to wander.

Scenes near, scenes far, drifted across his fading mind. Now he was
a tiny lad babbling in broadest dialect to his mother at the washing-tub;
now he was a pit boy yelling at Susannah, the one-eyed pit pony; anon
he was on the spar-deck of the Don, holding by the hand the father
of the boy who now held his.

Then there came a silence, and out of it the words, clean and quiet:

"I'm the old man Nelson never forgave for doin of his dooty."

His brain seemed to clear. He began to tell a story half to himself,
half to the stars--the story of the incident of his life.

"A'ter the Nile [Footnote: It was after the battle of the Nile, on
his return to Naples, that Nelson succumbed to the fascination of Lady
Hamilton.] it were--when we got back to Naples. Things got bad, very
bad. At last Tom Troubridge wrote to him--I saw the letter. Tom and
he'd been very thick--till then. Things got worse. It was in the papers
and all. Somebody had to tackle him. Nobody durst--only old Ding-dong."

The wind gathered round to listen. A few curious stars pricked the
darkness above. The old man's voice was gaining strength as he went on.

"So I goes aboord the _Vanguard_, and there in his own state-room
I says the thing that had to be said and I says it straight."

Kit was listening intently. The strange blurred voice coming to his
out of the darkness moved him to his deeps.

"Ooop joomps Nelson, raving mad. 'My God, Hardin!' he screams--'Ger
off o my ship!--_Ger off o my ship!_ GER OFF O MY SHIP!'

"'Pardon, my lord,' says I. 'I've done my dooty as a man, though I
may have exceeded it as a sailor!'

"He called me a blanky pit boy.

"'A pit boy I was, my lord,' says I, 'and not ashamed on it; and
powder-monkey to Hawke afoor your lordship was born. For nigh on
fifty years I've touched the King's pay, and ate the King's salt.
I'm the Father o this fleet, and all for the Service, as the sayin
is. And I can't stand by and see the first officer in the British Navy
lowerin himself in the eyes of Europe without a word.'"

The darkness hushed; the moon stared; the stars crept closer.

"He struck me. Nelson struck me in the mug. I wiped the blood away
with my cuff. 'That's not the Nelson I know, my lord,' says I, and
stumps out. And I never seen him from that day to this."

The boy could hear the old man's breath fluttering in the darkness.

"He was mad, ye see. She'd gone to his head; and she's stayed there
ever since. Mad--as a man. As a sailor he's still Nelson--the first
seaman afloat, ever was, or will be."

There was a thrill in the fading voice; a thrill of devotion
to the man who had destroyed him.

"So he broke me, Nelson did, and I don't blame him: discipline is
discipline, all said. Told the Admiralty they could choose between
him and me--between Lord Nelson of the Nile, that is, and old
Ding-dong, who'd climbed to the quarter-deck through the
hawse-holes.... So they chose."

The sea rustled; the night was sprinkled with stars.

"But I've paid him now," ended the old man comfortably. "Reck'n I've
paid him now."

Kit had heard the tale with puzzled but passionate interest.

"What was it all about, sir?" he asked at last in awed voice.

"Why; what it's always about," grunted the other. "One o them gals."

He coughed faintly.

"Thank the Lord there's been nobbut one woman in ma life, and that's
the one a man can't help.

"What did I want with a pack?--trashy wives?... Nay. Fear God; fight
to a finish; and steer clear o them gals--that's been old Ding-dong's
rule o life: and it's the whole duty of a British seaman."

The old man's hand stirred in the boy's.

"In ma breech-pocket you'll find a Noo Testament and the Articles o
War--all my readin these forty year; and all a sailor needs. Take em
and study em. It'll pay you. Happen they run a bit athwart here and
there; but that makes no odds, if you keep your head. There's always
light enough to steer by if your heart's right. 'Christ's my compass,'
your father'd say. 'He don't deviate.'"

The old man lay back, his eyes shut, the light on his uplifted face.

About him was stillness, hushed waters, and the moon a silver bubble.

In the quiet cove, beneath the quiet stars, after sixty years of
storm, his soul was slipping away into the Great Quiet.

"I like layin here," came the ghostly voice. "So calm-like a'ter
the trouble."

The cold fingers grew stiff; the eyes closed.

Kit laid a hand on the old man's forehead, and stroked his hair.

"I'm a-coomin," came a tiny chuckle as of a sleepy child--"Billy's
coomin."

Seaward something flapped.

The boy turned.

At first he thought the Angel of Death was hovering over the white
waters on sable wings.

Then he recognised what he saw for the flag on the splintered mizzen
of the _Tremendous_ saluting solemnly the dying seaman.

Old Ding-dong saw it too.

He raised his head. The moonlight was on his face, and the hand in
Kit's quivered.

"Them's my colours," he whispered. "I never struck em."

BOOK II

_BEACHY HEAD_

I

THE GAP GANG

CHAPTER XX

THE LAST OF A BRITISH SEAMAN

I

The dawn-wind blowing chilly on the boy's skin roused him.

All night he had slept like a child far from the world and its
terrible distresses. The weary body had brought peace to the worn
mind. The two had merged in sleep, neither demanding aught of the
other except to feed and to refresh.

He was coming to himself with a sore throat and a shiver.

His bed was hard; the bed-clothes had slipped off. He tried to pull
them round him. His groping hand found nothing but impossible lumps,
and stuff that trickled between his fingers. Why was he naked? where
was his night-shirt? and what was this small hard thing he clutched in
his hand?

With a puzzled frown he opened his eyes.

Overhead rose a dim white wall, a thin curtain swaying before it. At
first he took it for the white-washed wall of his attic at home, the
lace-curtains at the head of the bed blowing in the wind. Then a
slow-winged shadow, passing between him and the ceiling with puling
cry, startled him to the truth.

The memories surged back on him. He knew.

That white wall sheer above him was the cliff; that swaying curtain
was the mist; that passing shadow a sea-bird. The hard something he
was clutching so jealously was the scent-bottle; this still thing at
his side was--

The thought stabbed him awake. He sat up with a start.

About him drifted a white and waving mist. It shrouded him, chilly as
a winding-sheet. There was no shore, no sea--only a hiss and rustle in
the silence; and this still thing at his feet.

"Sir!" he gasped.

The still thing did not answer him.

The body leapt to his feet. He was alone; alone for ever in a blank
universe where nothing was--but the still thing!

A sodden heap of clothes caught his eye. Last night; he had doffed
them, dripping as they were, and slept naked beside _that,_ his
head pillowed on a chalk boulder. The huddle of clothes, sprawling
there so unconcerned, comforted him. _They_ weren't afraid:
_they_ took it calmly enough. Hang it! he was as good a man as
they.

And after all the old man was dead; and so long as he stayed dead the
boy didn't mind. It was the chance of his coming to life again, of his
stirring, winking an eye-lid, speaking, that he feared.

At length he dared to look at the old man's face. A sand-fly was
crawling on his nose. The boy sighed. He wasn't quite alone then: the
fly was there, and the fly was alive. His courage returned to him with
a leap. He flicked the fly off with joyful indignation. They knew no
reverence, these beastly little beasts! The old man lay upon his back, a
rusty stream running down his white shorts. The salt had dried in
scurfy ridges on hair and face. His head had slipped off Kit's coat;
the little tail of neat-tied hair peeped from beneath; the eyes, wide-
open, stared skyward.

Kit closed them; and the action cost him more than all his valours of
the day before. Almost he expected to hear the old man's harsh voice--
"Now then!"

The deed done, it seemed to the boy as if his action had eased the
dead man. The look of strain on the set and yellowing face passed. The
old man was tired: he had done with the world; he would shut his eyes
for ever on it. The kind wrinkles, deep-puckered about his mouth,
seemed to gather into a smile.

Lying there with set mouth, and stubborn chin, in death, as in life,
he was old Ding-dong still.

II

Kit could not bury the old man: he had no tools. He could not stay
with him: time pressed. What he could, he did with the tenderness of a
woman, and the respect of a midshipman for the bravest of the brave.

He arranged the body orderly, straightening the legs and pulling down
the coat.

As he did so, he felt something bulky in the flaps. He looked. It was
a little old leather-bound New Testament, sea-soaked; and between the
leaves of it the Articles of War.

The book fell open at the fly-leaf. On it three names were written,
each in a different hand.

_Horatio Nelson,
Christopher Caryll,
William Harding._

A bracket bound the three, and opposite the bracket, in the same hand
as the first name, the words,

_England and Duty_.

The date was a week before St. Vincent.

The fly-leaf turned. On the back of it, in the great vague hand of a
peasant-woman, rheumatic-ridden,

_bili from mother
Xmas_ 1755
_be a good boy_.

Kit read the inscription with full throat. In his chest, awaiting him
at the Bridge at Newhaven, there was such another book, with such
another inscription, from such another mother--given him the night
before his setting out on his life's voyage, she sitting on his bed
with rather a rainy smile.

The old man had left him that little sea-worn book with his last
breath; but he could not take it, perhaps the last gift from mother to
son. It had seen the old man through his life; in it were to be found
the Fighting Instructions which had led him on through fifty years of
battle to the last great Victory; in death the two should not be
divided.

He laid the book on the old man's breast, and his sword beside him, as
he remembered his mother had done when Uncle Jacko Gordon died.

What more could he do?

It seemed an ill thing to desert the old man; to leave him alone among
the sea-birds. Yet he must.

Putting his arm round the other, he raised his head; then thrust a
boulder between the dead man's shoulders to prop him.

A moment he knelt beside the old Commander with closed eyes. Then he
bent and kissed the chill forehead.

"Good-bye, sir," he said in breaking voice, and rising to his feet
saluted.

III

Old Ding-dong was left alone: his back against the white cliffs for
which he had lived and died; his head with a skyward cock; his gaze
seaward to where, when the mists rose with the morning, he would see
the Colours of his Country waving above those waters that he, and his
peers, had made hers for ever.

The old man asked no more.

Tired now, he wished to be alone with his sword, his Bible, and his
memories.

CHAPTER XXI

KIT STARTS ON HIS MISSION

The boy blew his nose, and set off along the foot of the cliff, the
scent-bottle in his hand.

Beneath the chalk boulders that strewed the bottom of the cliff, weird
in the white gloom, a band of shingle ran like a road before him. He
took it, the shingle crunching beneath his feet.

The tide was rising: he could hear its stealthy rustle beneath him. He
must reach the Head and round it before the water; and how far off the
ultimate point might be, he did not know, and could not see.

Once round it, if he had understood the old man aright, the cliffs
fell away. There he would climb them; and he hoped to be on the top of
the Downs before the mist rolled away and the frigate, were she still
lying off the wreck, could send boats to search the beach.

He was very hungry; but his heart soared. Youth, the great healer, had
done its work. Already the terrors of that fierce yesterday, the
tendernesses of that solemn night, were far away.

He laboured on as rapidly as the backward drag of the shingle would
permit; at every stride clutching the scent-bottle to make sure of it.

His was a tremendous mission.

Yet surely it was not for the first time he had set out on such an
errand? alone, journeying through perilous lands, the fate of the
world on his shoulders. No, no, no. Somewhere, somewhen.... He had
forgotten; yet somehow he remembered.

Well, he had won through then: he must have--else he would not be here
now. Yet not in this little life, these fifteen years of home-
experience. Death then, perhaps a thousand deaths, must have
intervened between him--and him. Such a strange mystery!--What was the
answer to it?--Was death a sham? was there no such thing?--did He, the
real He, go on for ever not merely in heaven, as the parsons affirmed,
but on earth? was this life of his One, One reiterated, One to
Everlasting, a tide ebbing and flowing between the night of Time and
the day of Eternity? these recurring deaths only barriers blocking off
terms of his Eternal Self?

Digging his toes into the shingle, he marched on, his heart strangely
uplifted, the sense of his immortality strong on him.

And besides, the darkness and danger lay behind. Discretion, sharp
eyes, and a nimble pair of feet should do the rest. Above all, his
experience of the last thirty-six hours had given him confidence, the
mother of success. He began to be aware of his own power. Action had
revealed him to himself. Responsibility now confirmed him. The boy was
merging in the man with extraordinary swiftness. There was in his soul
an aweful joy, the joy of dawn, the dawn of holy manhood.

Rejoicing in his newly found strength, he laboured on gallantly. With
luck, he would be in Lewes before the coach left; in London before
night; and at Merton before Nelson sat down to breakfast to-morrow
morning.

His, his, his, to save Nelson!

And O, mother? would not her heart be proud?

The mist grew thin before him, as though lace curtain after lace
curtain was being swept back by unseen hand. The sun, the colour of a
shilling, and as round, glimmered above the horizon. At his feet he
could distinguish the sea silvery-twinkling; and not a hundred yards
away the Head, bluff as a wall, loomed before him.

His heart leapt.... Hurrah!... Once round that....

He began to run with noisy feet.

A shadow stooping on the edge of the tide sprang up.

"_Hell_!" came a sudden scream.

CHAPTER XXII

FAT GEORGE & CO.

Kit's heart brought up with an appalling jerk.

He dropped behind a boulder.

A filthy little scarecrow of a man, trousers rolled about his knee,
was standing in the sea, holding some one by the hand not ten yards
away.

In the mist Kit thought at first that he was paddling with a child.
Then he saw his mistake. The scarecrow was holding a bare arm by the
hand. That arm thrust up horribly from the water: the body to which it
belonged was beneath the surface. Between his dirty teeth the man held
a knife. His business was obvious. He was spoiling the dead.

A huge fellow with a tawny beard spread fan-like on his chest strolled
round the Head, a musket beneath his arm.

"What, Dingy! got the jumps aboard again?" he growled.

"I thart I yeard a chap a-walkin," trembled the scarecrow.

He let the dead man's hand flop into the water.

"Plenty o chaps--not much walkin," chirped a voice of one unseen.

A treble laugh greeted the sally.

Round the Head a boat came paddling.

In it was a man fat as a sow, and not unlike one. Honey-coloured
ringlets hung down to his neck. He had slits for eyes, and the great
face, dough-like, was set in an ogreish smile.

Kit saw before him in the flesh the worst of the nightmare imaginings
of his nursery days. He began to dither like a monkey in the presence
of a snake. There was a horror of the unnatural about the man that
turned him faint. Here was Mammon, Mammon in the flesh; and so close
that the boy could smell him.

"Belike it's Black Diamond come after you, Jow!" wheezed the fat man--
"to pay you for what you done to him night afore last." The shrill
voice, squeezing from that vat-like carcass, added to the terror of
the man.

'"Twarn't me, I tall you!" screamed the scarecrow.

"It were you, Fat George; and now you're for puttin it on me."

The fat man backwatered in-shore; the smile set and horrible on his
face.

"None o that, my lad, if you please," he husked--"that's to say if
you're wishful to stay friends with George--ole George, who don't
forget."

Dingy Joe began to whimper.

"I suppose it were me flashed my knife on the Gentleman too?"

The fat man leaned on his oars.

"Now," he said with manly frankness, "that _were_ me. Every man
answers for his own work in this gang, and none needn't go short. I
faced the Gentleman plucky, didn't I, Bandy?"

"You faced him plucky from behind," chirped the voice of the man
unseen.

Hoarse laughter from behind the Head told that the shaft had gone
home.

Fat George held a deprecating hand to heaven.

"Now eark to that, my God!" he squeaked. "I risk my blessed neck for
em. I'm the only man o the lot got the guts to stand up to him. I
tells him straight, I says--'We've lost our leader and our lugger in
your service, my lord,' says I, 'and now you got to--well square
it.'"

"'--well square it!'" snorted the giant. "That's a pretty way to talk
to a gentleman, ain't it?"

Fat George pointed a derisive finger at him.

"Can't forget he was a gamekeeper!" he tittered. "Touch his at and
all, didn't you, Red Beard?"

"And wish I'd never stopped touchin it!" shouted the giant. "Blasted
young fool that I were!--Thought I'd take a short cut to fortune, same
as the rest.--And where's it landed me?"

He swept his hand around.

"Heark to Red Beard!" giggled Fat George. "Quite the Methody man,
ain't he?"

A gust of passion darkened the giant's face. He surged through the
water towards the boat.

"--well square it!" he foamed. "I'll--well square _you_, you lump o
lard with the heart of a maggot!" He stopped, steadying down to a
fierce scorn.

"And he would ha--well squared it only for you messin about with that
blasted knife o your'n be'ind him."

"He would ha--well squared it only for you knockin the blasted knife
up!" shrilled the fat man. "That's the best _you_ can do. Pretty
set for a man to be 'sociated with."

He bent over his hand; his locks fell about his face; and he rocked to
and fro like a weeping woman.

The sound of angry voices brought others trooping round the Head. Some
slopped along in the water, others trailed along the edge. The eyes of
all were down, hunting for prey.

Kit, watching them with shuddering heart, recalled that passage in his
mother's favourite Sunday book where Christian, at the mouth of Hell,
heard a company of fiends coming to meet him.

He found himself envying Christian. An honest fiend was an honest
fiend; but these were men! It was their humanity, the sense of his
kinship with them, that seemed to make his heart collapse.

And their names!

Toadie, the squat brute, with the front teeth; Whitey, the albino,
peering and prying; One-eye, Humpy, Bandy and the rest--all labelled
like dogs from some physical deformity.

Once and for all they slew in the boy's mind the Romance of Crime. Now
he understood what the old Book meant about the Wages of Sin. Death
indeed; death in life. He read it in their faces. Yes; it was all
true. These men _had_ done evil, and they _had_ come forth
unto the Resurrection of Damnation.

And not so very long ago he had wished to be one such!--a highwayman,
a smuggler, a gentlemanly villain of some sort, very devil-may-care
and gallant, robbing the rich, helping the poor, waving a scented
handkerchief to the ladies as he rode to Tyburn, debonair to the last.

Now he was face to face with criminals in real life. And what was
their distinguishing feature?--_Filth_.

They had not shaved for days, nor washed for years. The stink of them
blew off the clean sea towards him. It seemed to his imagination that
the water curdled with disgust as the brutes slushed through it.

A phrase of his laughing mother's occurred to him--_no soap, no
soul_. True too.

He would have given all he had for a look at one clean-fleshed, clear-
eyed Englishman, smelling of earth and honest tobacco.

"Listen to im!" grumbled Red Beard. "Might be Cock o the Gang the way
he carries on."

The fat man tossed back his locks.

"All mighty fine!" he shrilled. "But if you'd follow'd me, where'd you
be now?--why back in Boulon. And cause you didn't, where are you?--why
hung up on a dead foul leeshore: Diamond dead, lugger gone, the hue-
and-cry up after you--"

"And our only ope in eaven," chimed in Bandy of the chirpy voice.

"And how'd stickin the Gentleman elp us?" grumbled the brutal Toadie.
"I'd stuck him fast enough if I'd twigged that!"

Fat George leaned forward.

"What's the reward out agin him?--Thousand guineas, ain't it?"

"Go on!--We'd never ha took him alive. You know his hackle."

"Ah!" interposed the fat man, "but what d'ye think his corpse'd ha
been worth to the British Government? him _and_ the papers on
him, to say nothin o pickins for pore men, what nobody needn't know
nothin about--them rings, that pin, and the bundle o notes in his
tail-pocket." He combed his fingers through his locks. "What'd that ha
been worth? I'll tell you." He wagged a fat finger. "A free pardon to
h'every man h'all round, a free pass back to Boulon--"

"And the thanks o Parlyment for what we done to the crew o the
_Curlew_!" piped Bandy.

"It's God's truth, I'm talkin!" screamed the fat man. "And there's the
man what stood between you and it!" He flung a fat hand at Red Beard.

The giant turned.

"What, sell him!" he drawled. "Sell the man that made you; that
trusted you; that never turned his back on a rat yet--much less a
pal." He spat into the sea curling at his feet. "What was it old
Diamond says?--'We're all--traitors,' says he, poor old horse; 'but we
are men, only Fat George. And he's a--sow without a soul."

A murmur of approval ran round.

"You're right, Red Beard."

"The Genelman were a genelman."

"That he were!" came a chorus from the maingy crew.

"Gentleman!" put in Bandy. "He were better. He were a--lord. I ought
to know seein I rode for one--afore my misfortune."

The boat had drifted sea-ward, the fat man giving an occasional sly
dig.

Suddenly he flung back into the oars.

"Ave it your own way," he sang out. "Ole George ain't good enough for
you, I see. I'll say good-day."

The giant jerked his musket to his shoulder.

"Come in!" he thundered. "Or I'll plug a hole through that great
paunch o your'n."

The fat man saw himself covered. He paddled back, grinning ghastly.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22