The Gentleman
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Alfred Ollivant >> The Gentleman
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"What are you chuckling about?"
"Gwen--my sister.... She thinks a girl's as good as a boy.... Go on."
The hand upon his forehead quitted its hold.
"I can't," said the Gentleman.
The arm about the boy relaxed.
Kit stood up.
"Thank you," he said, and readjusted his collar.
The Gentleman rippled off into laughter.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOLLOW IN THE COOMBE
For the first time Kit glanced round him.
On the top of the cliff, they were by no means on the top of the
Downs. A great dun wave of earth, patched with gorse, surged up into
the sky before him.
It flopped and flowed down to the edge of the cliff, swelling up round
and steep towards the brow, a quarter of a mile back from the sea. He
was standing at the foot of a prominent shoulder, curving away above
him. On the right was a deep coombe, the hill at the blind-end of it
sheer-seeming. On his left the jagged edge of the cliff ran up and up
and out of sight. Beneath him the sea was a sparkling plain.
The Gentleman was kneeling beside his dead. He closed her eyes, and
kissed the cold muzzle.
_"Adieu, ma mie,_" he whispered. "_L'Irlande n'oubliera
jamais."_
Then he put on his hat, and braved the sunshine.
"Take my arm, Little Chap."
So the two faced the hill.
A question bubbled to the lad's lips. At last it blurted out.
"How did they catch you, sir?"
"They didn't catch me. They murdered her."
The arm within the boy's trembled, but the voice continued quietly.
"Yesterday I had words with some old friends of mine in the Gap
yonder. We parted in a hurry, and I rode up to the Head to watch the
fight--your fight."
He flashed his grey eyes on the boy.
"You were in it, weren't you?"
"Yes--a bit."
The other drew a sighing breath.
"I'd have given all I had to have been there....
"From noon to sundown I watched the fight, and never stirred. My body
was asleep. I was aware of nothing but those three black dots, miles
beneath me on that plain of silver, spurting flame at each other.
Bonnet Rouge grazed beside me. And when she heard the guns, she
neighed, shaking her bridle. For she loved brave men and War, and knew
it too. Yes, she led the Green Brigade at Marengo."
He came to a halt.
"When they came right under the cliff, I couldn't see from the top. So
I came down here."
He lifted his face to the sun.
"And that was how they caught me--cornered me here--while I was
watching--the sea on all sides but one--and they on that."
His face was dusky now.
"Her whinny was the first thing that woke me. I turned to see her
coming towards me at a stumbling canter--like a hurt child running to
its mother."
His eyes were shut, his voice strangely still.
"They'd run her through--a lady--who thought them friends."
A great vein stood out blue on his temple.
"I wouldn't have believed it of an Englishman."
He sighed profoundly.
"But they paid for it."
Slanting off the shoulder, he led down towards the coombe on his
right.
The boy on his arm was trembling.
In the deep bosom of the coombe was a green hollow.
On the brink they paused. Above them a lark sang.
A little circle of men lay round the saucer in the sun, the flies upon
their faces. In front of the others a big man sprawled across a great
black horse.
He flung forward over the saddle-bow, face down. One fat hand was
crumpled on the turf. His bob-wig had slipped awry.
There was no mistaking that bald red neck with the crease across it.
It was Big Jerry Ram, the riding-officer.
The Gentleman toed the body.
"It was this carrion. 'Got you this time, sir,' said he, grinning his
fat beef-steak British grin. 'Clipped your wings at last, I guess.'
"I said nothing. I was mad....
"He was a brave man--an extraordinarily brave man. You English, you
are brave. But he was no soldier. He rode at me alone, handling that
sabre of his like a flail. We'd hardly crossed blades before he knew
his fate. 'You've got me, sir,' said he, splashing about with his
sword. I said nothing. 'Maybe I hadn't ought to ha stuck her,' he
gasped. He wasn't whining. He wasn't that sort. He knew he had to have
it. 'It was tit for tat: your blood-mare--my old Robin. 'Tain't
Christian, but 'tis sweet.' Then as he saw it coming--in a kind of
scream--'Through the heart if you're a gentleman, sir.'... So much I
permitted him. You see he was brave."
Kit's brow was dank. The man's calm terrified him.
"The others gave little trouble. They'd sabres; but only one had a
pistol, and it wouldn't go off--English-like....
"Then they formed a rallying group. Yes, they formed a rallying group.
You see they were afraid....
"It was no good. I walked round them with my pistols."
Shuddering, the boy saw it all: the group of ghastly men, back to back
in the hollow; silence, butterflies, and Death in breeches and boots
stalking round.
"Then they broke. They couldn't run: I could. I would have spared
them, mud that they were--but for her.
"You see," his voice was still again, "I loved her."
He dreamed, his eyes upon the hills.
"Yes," he said, "I was terrible."
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD
I
The Gentleman led up the shoulder of the hill, the tails of his long
riding-coat flapping about his legs.
Kit, panting behind, admired him as he had never admired even Uncle
Jacko. The man seemed to know no fear, striding rapidly on, his enemy
behind him.
True, the boy's dirk still flashed in the other's hand; but the lad
had his jack-knife; and his eyes dwelt on the place where he could
plant it home and home in that black back--there by the seam, where it
was a little worn.
And the man had the scent-bottle!
Surely a fellow would be justified....
"Now's your chance, Little Chap!" came the gay voice.
Kit, betrayed to his own soul, sniggered and put the dark thought away
with shuddering disgust.
The man was a gentleman, the man trusted him. Once he had saved his
life; and once spared it. Should he pay his debt with the jack-knife?
The long-striding figure went up the hill as though on wings.
Kit clambered at his spurs.
Escape he knew was vain. As well might a canary attempt to escape a
hawk.
The scabbard of the other's sword poking and peeping between his tails
caught the boy's eye and fascinated it. It had seen plenty that sword,
he would bet! What tales it could tell!
How he should like to know!...
"Have you ever fought a duel?" he blurted out.
"Used to a bit. Not now."
"Why?--d'you think it wrong?"
The other flung back a merry laugh.
"No, my little Puritan. I gave it up, because it gave me up. You see,
I never quite met my match with the small-sword. Or rather I did meet
my match once, but the beggar wouldn't fight."
"Do tell," panted Kit, scenting a story.
"It was in Egypt--during the occupation. He was said to be the finest
sword in the British Army--Abercromby's Black Cock, they called him.
He'd a standing challenge out against any man of ours who'd take it
up. Killed seven of our fellows in seven days, a man a morning, in
single combat, between the outpost lines--all fair and square and
according to Cocker, and the staffs of both Armies looking on. Sounds
like a legend, don't it?--The eighth day I appeared to do battle with
him. I was twenty-one at the time, and looked seventeen. It was to
have been the great day of my life--and was the bitterest. Directly he
saw me--'I don't fight with children,' says he, high and mighty as a
turkey-cock, and turned on his heel. I wept." He laughed joyously at
the reminiscence.
"Curious how small the world is," he continued. "Five years passed--
five years full of things. Then one fine day, a few weeks back, I was
over yonder at Birling Gap, waiting for a friend, when who should come
strolling round the corner, smelling of roast beef and Old England,
but my old friend of the curly pate and ruddy cheeks. I'd a minute or
two to spare. So I introduced myself, and we adjourned to the beach at
once."
"What happened that time?" asked the boy keenly.
"Why, Fat George!" replied the other. "And deuced lucky for Master
Black Cock too. You see, he was fat and scant o breath."
II
They had climbed to the top of the world.
It lay spread before them, wide and wonderful; head in the heavens,
feet in the sea miles beneath on every side.
On the brow beside them the blackened skeleton of a building stood up
stark against the light.
The charred stump of a flag-staff pricked up out of the turf. On the
scorched grass lay a singed red flag and tattered pendant.
"What's this?" whispered Kit.
The ghastly desolation of the ruins amid the sea of light and living
green appalled him. Moreover he smelt death.
"Signal-station," said the Gentleman, hurrying by. "Black Diamond
stormed it at dusk on Saturday night--just before I came along. They
took it and burnt the men inside. Black Diamond did the storming--Fat
George the burning, he and old Toadie."
"Brutes!" hissed Kit.
"I don't much care for Fat George and old Toadie myself," replied the
Gentleman, rather white. "They seem to me scarcely--what shall I say?
--_spirituels_.... Black Diamond was quite a different pair of
shoes. A curious nature--three parts sheer devil, one part pure
gentleman. I could tell you some strange tales about him."
III
They had turned their backs on the dark scene.
Before them the land rolled away, fold upon fold, the sea encircling
it.
Big Jerry's coombe lay vast and vault-like beneath them on the right,
certain dark specks in the centre of it.
They were not sheep, those specks: Kit knew what they were.
Over the shoulder of the coombe, a great flat bay, the sea white along
the brown edge of it, swept away scimitar-wise into the mist.
The Gentleman stopped, his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Pevensey Bay! That is where the first Frenchman who ever conquered
England landed. Hastings yonder! Battle Abbey over there!--my name on
its Roll. Such a wonderful old Church!"
He stopped abruptly.
A ship, lying inshore beneath him, tiny on the plain of sea, had
caught his eye.
He flashed round on the boy.
"What nationality?" fiercely, and with pointing finger.
Kit knew at a glance. Even at that distance the ship had something of
the dishevelled appearance of a virago after a street-fight. She was
the privateer.
"Double Dutchman."
A hand clutched his throat. Eyes of steel pierced him to the heart.
"Frenchman or English? tell, or take the consequences!"
"I couldn't tell you that," choking.
A python arm swept about him.
A face smiled into his.
"I knew you wouldn't. And I wouldn't have liked you if you had. But--"
The boy snapped his eyes. After all he couldn't blame the man!
It was no quick stab that he felt, no maddening darkness that drowned
him; but a swift forward thrust that shot him down the slope of the
coombe.
It was steep as the roof of a house. Down he pelted, headlong, his
legs attempting to catch up his falling body. In vain: head over
heels, rolling, bumping, tumbling, a ripple of mocking laughter
pursuing him.
There was no danger, he knew. The bottom of the coombe was flat as a
floor, the cliff running athwart it a quarter of a mile away.
At last he fetched up, battered and breathless.
Above him he could see the figure of the Gentleman tiny against the
sky.
"Forgive me, Little Chap," came a far voice. "I am in a hole, and have
to get out as best I can. _Il faut que je file_. Here is your
little prodder."
His arm swung. Something flashed in the sky, fell, always flashing,
and stuck in the hillside above him, quivering there.
It was the boy's dirk.
III
ABERCROMBY'S BLACK COCK
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FLAG OF HIS COUNTRY
I
The Gentleman had gone, and the scent-bottle with him.
The boy stood on a track that ran among the gorse, and looked about
him.
The wind was at his back, and the sun on his cheek. Above him the
brow, rough with gorse, swelled up against the light.
He rushed up the hill into the sky.
On the top, he hunted the landscape with anxious eyes. There was
nothing to be seen; no round but the zig-a-zig of the heartless
grasshoppers, merry all about him, and the thunder of his own heart.
He swung round. About him, above him, below him, dumb earth, blind
sea, deaf heaven.
What was his agony to them?
His hopes died, and he with them. Here was the end of his mission and
the end of him.
Old Ding-dong had trusted him--and now!
Mother believed in him--and now!
There would be no Lewes before breakfast; no London before night; no
Nelson to-morrow morning.
A jackdaw chuckled overhead; a far sheep bleated; a great beetle, with
black wing-cases flung back, roared by.
For the rest, all was silence and despair.
He had hoped greatly; he had tried hard; and failed utterly.
Above all he had not eaten for twenty-four hours.
The boy sat down and wept.
II
About him in the turf the grasshoppers kept up their accursed zig-a-
zig. Little cads! At least they might be gentlemen enough not to crack
their jokes just now.
The thought tickled him. He began to smile. Plucking a grass-blade, he
smote one of his annoyers across the tail. It hopped gloriously. The
boy laughed, and rose to his feet, his heart rising with him.
After all he had done his best. Now he must get to Lewes and make his
report.
He started.
About him the turf was bare and brown. Here a patch of tall thistles,
hoary-crowned, stood out among grey bents. There a clump of gorse and
bramble darkened the turf.
Before him a sea of long smooth hills, billow behind billow, rolled in
on him out of Infinity. It seemed to him that a giant wind had crept
beneath the carpet of green and lifted it. Smooth as water it flowed
down to the sea on every side. There were no trees, no hedges, no
habitations. It was the loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of
the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined
at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she
was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang!
But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and
the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been
an uninhabited land.
Here he was alone with the Eternal.
A poet to the heart, the boy's soul rose within him. For the moment he
forgot his troubles. He was walking on the back of the world, his head
in heaven. Beneath him rose the sea, sheer as a wall. The sight of it,
dropped from heaven, as it seemed, filled him with awe. It was so
near, and yet so far.
The breeze had fallen; all was still. He could hear the rustle of the
tide, and the chuckle of jackdaws. Overhead a raven flapped by with
slow-skewing head.
Horror of loneliness swept upon the boy. He shrank into his body. The
windows of his spirit shut with a bang. Night came down.
All was darkness, mortality, and fear.
Somewhere at the bottom of the coombe beneath lay that ring of still
things. Behind rose the blackened skeleton of the signal-station--and
heaven knew what inside! He glanced back fearfully. They weren't after
him--yet.
He took to his heels, and ran, screaming.
A familiar face greeted him. In a flash he recognised it--a meadow-
brown come all the way from Northumberland to comfort him. That was
beautiful of the meadow-brown, it was Christian of the meadow-brown,
seeing the war to the death that he and Gwen had waged against it at
home.
The butterfly gave its message to the boy's heart and settling on a
blue flower, began to sip leisurely. Dash it!--the meadow-brown wasn't
afraid. Need he be?
His soul took charge again with a smile.
III
Over there on the left that sheer white bluff, thrusting out into the
sea, would be Seaford Head.
Beyond it lay Newhaven; behind it somewhere Lewes. To get there he had
only to keep along the highlands.
He held on at a steady jog-trot. The grass sparkled with dew; mushroom
bulbs shoved through the turf at his toes; above him and beneath all
was blaze.
He crossed a shoulder, threading the gorse; skirted the edge of
another huge coombe, troughed out beneath him; passed an ancient
withered elder, squatting crone-like on the brow, and climbed a knoll
that rose up bald out of the gorse.
He topped the crest, and stopped suddenly. A little dewy-eyed pond,
blue as the sky, was staring at him out of a saucer of green.
In a moment he was on his knees at the edge of it, and drinking
greedily. Then he took off his coat and laid it on the edge of the
saucer to dry.
That done he flung himself on his back to think.
After all there was no hurry. Young as he was, he knew his England
well enough to know the reception that awaited him at Lewes. He could
see them about him, that cluster of Army officers, as he told his
story--stonily incredulous, grimly silent, some sniggering, others
jeering openly. The boy's head had been turned by his first brush!--
You'd only to look at him to see his sort--the romantic sort, commonly
called liars! Great eyes like a girl! What did a chap with eyes like
that want in the Service?--Scent-bottle--loss of the _Tremendous_
--kidnapping Nelson! Lorlumme, what a yarn!
A clamour of feet close by startled his heart. He leapt up, expecting
cavalry.
But no: it was a patter-footed multitude of sheep, who welled in
staring yellow flood over the edge of the saucer and down to the pond.
Behind them stalked Abraham, a black and white bobtail at heel.
The patriarch wore a slouch-hat and old cloak, loose as a cloud. A
wild beard flamed all about him; and in his hand was a long crook. He
stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down at his drinking flock.
Kit expected him to raise his hands and bless somebody. Instead he
spat luxuriously, and addressed his dog in gibberish.
"Ge ou tha go!" he growled, and only the dog knew he was being desired
to get out of that gorse.
Kit watched the man placidly. Instinct, which is inherited experience,
reassured him. There was nothing to be feared from this chap, and
nothing to be got from him. Abraham was shaggy, he was unintelligible,
he was harmless.
In his few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one
great truth: that every man is exactly what he _looks_. The face
always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of
storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one of
his own sheep.
The man threw at the boy one shy glance of a woodland creature, and
then ignored him. Another moment and he was stalking on his way, with
floating cloak, tall crook, dog at heel, a mass of yellow backs
rippling along in front of him.
IV
The boy stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down.
Dim green lowlands lay beneath him, spurs of the Downs thrusting out
into them.
Beyond, the bay swept away saucer-wise, the sea white along its brown
edge. From his feet a shoulder, dark with gorse, plunged seaward.
Beneath the swell of it, a level plain ran away to the shore, heaving
up there in a little hillock that stood out from the beach as a bump
of green.
Off the hillock lay the privateer hove-to. Another boat hung at her
stern. The boy recognised it at once. It was the lugger _Kite_.
Behind the hillock, upon the plain, stood a solitary cottage.
At that cottage, lonely in a sea of turf, the boy stared long and
earnestly.
It was flying a flag out of the chimney.
And that flag--yes--no--yes--was the Union Jack.
CHAPTER XXX
AN OLD SONG
I
He was off the rim and rushing down through the gorse with thumping
heart.
True, Ding-dong had ordered him with his last breath to steer clear of
human habitation--"They're all in it," the old man had said. But then
he possessed the scent-bottle. Now he had nothing but his skin to
lose, and as things were he could afford to lose that. Here at any
rate was a straw to catch at. Moreover he was in no hurry to get to
Lewes to be called a liar.
Of course it might only prove to be some loyal old lady, flying her
colours dauntlessly in the face of the Frenchman. Just such a thing
his mother might do; and there were thousands of her like up and down
the country--thank heaven for it!
On the other hand it might be a temporary signal-station. After the
sacking of the station on Beachy Head, what more likely than that this
cottage should be seized for Government purposes and garrisoned?--his
own chaps too, sailors--not those swaggering snobs in red coats.
If so, he saw his course clear as day.
There was the privateer. Somewhere among these huge smooth hills
lurked the Gentleman, primed with his fatal message. Between the two
was one boat, and so far as he knew one only--the long-boat of the
smugglers.
If his surmise were correct, and this should prove a blockade-house,
he would take the garrison, though it consisted of only half-a-dozen
men, attack the Gang, and smash the boat at all costs.
II
The boy plunged down the hill.
The sun beat fiercely on his head, but he hardly felt it.
Along a track that snaked through the gorse, he pushed his way, flies
buzzing about him. A shining gossamer lay across his path, bosom-high.
From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met,
a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey.
The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about
him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as
though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's
apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had _had_ to--
and so no doubt had the Almighty.
He turned as he ran.
"Cheer up, old chap!" he hollaed back to his friend, crouching among
the ruins of his home. "It'll all come out in the washing."
III
Fluffy thistle-heads, reminding him of Gwen's young chickens, stood up
out of the gorse all about him. The bunched blackberries were ripening
now: he almost expected to see Gwen's face, purple-mouthed, peering at
him from a bramble. All about him the silver-downed gorse-pods were
snapping like pistols. A stone-chat with ruddy breast spurted out of
the gorse, and flirted upwards.
The path broadened; the gorse grew scantier. His feet crushed
sweetness out of the thyme. Here and there a young ash thrust up
feathery.
Of a sudden he found himself again at the top of one of those almost
sheer descents to which he was becoming used.
At its foot grew a hanger of beeches, already bronzing to autumn.
Down he went, slithering on hands and tail, picked himself up towards
the bottom, and ran away into the shade of the wood to find himself
among silver-grey beech-stems.
How refreshing it was after the glare, how rich, how dark!
Till he was out of it, he had not known how hot it had been on the
bare hill-side. Now he was aware of the sweat on his forehead, and a
dripping shirt.
Beech-stems rose in stately columns all about him. The floor was red
and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light.
Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon
was praying.
Out of the aisle once again into the glare.
Now the Downs lay behind him, barren and dun. On his left-front the
rounded bosom of another beech-wood rose, in its midst a single
chestnut already rusting. Across the valley, behind a ridge, a blunt
church-tower and yellow-lichened roofs peeped. On the hill beyond, a
windmill cocked up against the sky.
He paid little attention, making straight for the flag of his country.
The cottage stood about a quarter of a mile away, conspicuously
solitary in the greensward, the Union Jack brave above it.
The boy approached, wary but swift. Out here on the open plain there
was no cover. He was exposed as a fly on a sheet of paper. Still
things couldn't be worse--he comforted himself with that most
comfortable of thoughts.
Some two hundred yards from the cottage a ruined wall ran across the
greensward. Behind it the boy took cover and spied.
The cottage was very small; yet, small as it was it was grim to a
degree. The flint in rows, tier upon tier, grinned at him fiercely,
reminding him of a dog showing its teeth. The colour of steel, the
rows of set teeth, the shaggy roof of thatch, the flag ruffling it
from the chimney, all bespoke the same sturdy fighting character.
Indeed it was so small, and yet so truculent, that Kit laughed to see
it.
Chained there a dumb watch-dog on the threshold of its country, it
seemed to be saying as it crouched--
"You can all go to sleep: I'm watching."
Kit crossed the wall, and almost expected to hear the cottage growl.
Warily he approached. As he did so, the warrior aspect of the cottage
grew upon him. It was less a cottage than a tiny fort. There were only
three windows, one on each side the door, and a dormer. The lower
windows though latticed were cross-barred; and the door of massive
oak, iron-studded, was heavy enough for a castle. Through it, ajar, he
caught the gleam of arms.
Certainly this was no peasant's cottage. What was it then?--a signal-
station?--
There was no flag-staff, no signal-tackle.
Some lonely smuggler's hold?--not likely: for there was the flag.
Could the flag be a decoy?
There was nothing for it but to go and see.
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