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 besidethat,his head pillowed on a chalk boulder. The huddle of clothes, sprawling there so unconcerned, comforted him.Theyweren't afraid:theytook 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.
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 motherXmas1755be 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.
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.
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.
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, "thatwereme. 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 squareyou, 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 bestyoucan 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 menhaddone evil, and theyhadcome 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? himandthe 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 theCurlew!" 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.
"Avast there, Red Beard!" he tittered. "You're that asty. Can't you take a little joke?"
"I can take one o your little jokes about as easy as you can take one o my little bullets in the belly," rumbled the giant. "Come in now. Get out o that boat. You'd sell us as you sold the Gentleman. That bit o wood's all that stands atween us and Kingdom Come."
"Easy all," chimed in Bandy Dick. "Only one thing's sure in our present interestin sitiwation; and that is if we don't ang together, we'll ang separate."
Crouched behind the boulder, Kit listened.
Surely they must hear his heart! It was thumping so that he took his hand off the boulder before him lest it should betray him by its shaking.
Black Diamond!—Fat George!—the Gentleman!
There could be no question as to the identity of these kites. They were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind them lay the gallows; before them the sea—and nothing to cross it in but the lugger's long-boat, and that water-logged.
Their condition was desperate; but what about his own?
He could not round the Head. They stood between him and his goal. Could he go back along the bay? He glanced back at the line of headlands, shimmering in the sun. The tide in places already lapped the foot of the cliff. And even as he pondered, a chill something startled his feet. He looked down. It was the water, stealing in upon him, quiet as a cat. He could not stay where he was. To do so was to drown.
There was but one thing for it—to climb.
He glanced up. Things were not so hopeless as he had feared. The mists were drifting seaward. He could see the dark crest of grass rimming the cliff-edge above him.
Thank heaven!—this was no longer the blank and aweful wall, hundreds of feet high and sheer as a curtain, which he had found above him last night. The cliff must have fallen away towards the point. That dark crest of grass, shivering in the wind, was not so far away; and the cliff itself was by no means sheer.
The tide was already lapping the point. The smugglers had drifted away before it. He could hear their voices on the other side. Now was his chance.
On tiptoe he crept off the betraying shingle, and began to climb, the scent-bottle in his mouth.
A recent fall of cliff helped him, making a ramp. Up it he went, a tiny trickle of dislodged shale dribbling away beneath his feet.
At the top of the fall a mat of weeds had grown. On this he stayed.The cliff arched out blue-white over him like the inside of a shell.There was no hope there.
He looked about him. On his right a narrow ledge, grass-grown, trickled darkly across the face of the cliff, inclining upwards and out of sight. It would give him foothold, and no more.
He took it tremblingly, sidling along, his face pressed close to the cliff, his hands finding finger-hold on the ridges and irregularities above his head.
The track led up and up. He dared not look down: all there was sheer now, he knew, and the sea lapping among the dead bones of the cliff. He could not look up: to have done so, he must have craned backwards; and little thing as that might seem, it would have been enough to upset his balance on that skimpy track.
Up and up he sidled to the noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface. He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off. It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!—it shouldn't beat him—beast!
All the same his fingers were getting tired and sore. He was whimpering as he went. The great horror was overwhelming him. He shut his mind against it: still it crept in. Head swirled: brain lost grip of body: all was dissipation.
O—o—oh!
The voice of one of the Gang rose to his ears. It steadied him; recalling all that hung on him … old Ding-dong's trust … Nelson … Duty….
The track led round a corner—and ran away into nothing.
Retreat along that path or headlong death—these seemed his alternatives. Of the two the latter appeared just then least horrible, as swifter, and more certain: he had no need to look down to make sure of that.
Biting his nails, he listened to his own breathing. A tiny shell had become incrusted in the great blind face, so close to his own. Putting out his tongue, he licked it, and hardly knew he had.
Suddenly he saw his mother. She was sitting in her particular little low chair beside the fire in the Library, reading aloud a favourite passage from her favourite Sunday book, Gwen sprawling at her feet.
To go back is nothing but Death, came the familiar voice, pure and tranquil;to go forward is fear of Death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.
The book snapped softly; his mother's eyes lifted to his as she repeated,
I will yet go forward.
Yes, if there's a way!
On his right, some ten feet distant, a little table-land of grass projected from the face of the cliff—the green top of a flying buttress, as it were.
Once there he could at least lie down and recover himself. And, unless he was mistaken, the cliff above there was no longer sheer.
But how to get there?—a ten-foot jump to be attempted off one leg at a stand and sideways.
Half-way between him and the plateau a bush with feathery green plumes grew out of a crevice overhead. Those green plumes stirred deliciously in the breeze; the little stem, thick as his wrist, and reddish of hue, thrust out sturdily over the sea. It was three feet out of reach, and above him.
He scanned the distance. Without wings he certainly could not do it.
A butterfly settled on a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It poised there with fanning wings, so languid, so unconcerned.Itdidn't mind.
A bitter anger surged up in the boy's heart. It was sitting there flopping its wings out of swagger—to show it had them. He'd teach it to swagger!
He put up his thumb to crush it.
Then he remembered himself. He must be just in this that might be his last moment on earth. After all the butterfly couldn't help itself. It was made that way; and perhaps it didn't mean it. To kill it was spiteful—worthy of a girl, worthy of Gwen, as he would have told her had she been present. That would get Gwen into one of her states. His eyes twinkled, and grew haggard again.
He observed the butterfly with extraordinary intensity. Its body and wings were the colour of the sea; the undersides of the wings a silvery-brown. The face was white, with large black eyes, and long antennae. Lovely furry down clothed body, thighs, and lower wings. On the nose two tiny horns stuck up….
He would have given all he possessed to be that butterfly just then. Yet after all—could the butterfly venture for his country?—and would he if he could?
Suddenly the boy's soul broke through the darkness shrouding it, and bubbled up, a sea of twinkling, tumbling light. Standing there, clawing the cliff, death at his feet, Eternity within touch of him, he laughed.
At the crisis his humour, heaven's best gift, had saved him.
I will yet go forward.
A knob of chalk, swelling out of the side of the cliff, caught his eye. He saw it, and too wise to pause for thought, sprang. His foot touched the knob. He thrust back. As he thrust, it gave beneath him, and fell with a resounding splash into the sea.
But it had done its work; and he was swinging with one hand on the stem of the green-plumed bush….
Curiously familiar this swinging in space with fluttering heart….Was it only in dreams?…
The splash of the falling boulder set the gulls screaming.
"There!" shrilled a voice, faint and far beneath. "What did I tell you?"
"Take the boat, Red Beard, and have a look."
Kit, swinging, heard the dip of oars. Another second and the boat would be round the Head, and he, hanging there, black against the white cliff, as easy to kill as a fly on a window-pane.
He reached up his left arm, swung once and again, and loosed his hold.
He flung through the air, the sea glancing sickeningly miles below, and landed on hands and knees on the green carpet.
Hallowed be Thy Name.
"There's nowt here,"called a voice from below."A fall of the cliff belike."
The boat put back.
Kit stayed on hands and knees on the grass plateau, his forehead bowed to the ground in attitude of prayer.
He was sick with humility and thankfulness.
Already the boy began to have that sense which distinguishes the great man from the herd, swinging him over obstacles to others insurmountable, the sense that God is with him, and therefore he cannot fail.
A fly was buzzing somewhere near. It comforted him amazingly. It was earthy and every-day, that solid buz-z-z-z; reminding him of the kitchen at home, fat Maria kneading dough, and the smell of fly- papers. It steadied him as a feast of bread and meat steadies a man heady with long fasting.
Rolling over on his back, he lay flat, panting.
How good it was to feel the earth beneath him once more! Faithful old thing! she wouldn't give way beneath her child. He hammered her with his heels; he patted her with his hands; he wriggled his shoulders into her: all massive, all motherly, all good.
Turning on his side, he kissed her.
A while he lay there, arms and legs wide, eyes shut, breathing in security and peace. Angels fanned him; strong arms held him up. Yes, yes. It was all true. Hewasloved.
The sea rustled beneath him, flowing on and on. How happy it was in its work! He could have listened to it for ever. The sun, labouring too, was climbing upwards in a shroud of glory. It stared him fiercely in the face, bidding him rise and get to business.
He sat up and looked round.
It was as he had thought. He was on a flying buttress of the cliff, at his feet a floor of water, silvery-ruffled.
On his right cathedral cliffs blocked out the light. Mighty-towering, they made a white and awful gloom between him and heaven. The shadow of them darkened his heart. Crouching fly-like there, he cowered as he peered up at them. They were terrible: so stern, so white, so inexorable. Had he wronged them?—They seemed to stand over him in fearful and affronted majesty. Yet with the awe there came a pride, the pride of possession. They were his, these tremendous battlements; they were England's. With what a high and massive steadfastness they challenged France! Surely they knew themselves impregnable.
Beneath him the sea, a vast plain of silver-blue, merged in a sky white as diamonds. The one drifted, the other was still; the one sparkled, the other shone: for the rest there was no distinction, no dividing line. Each ran into the other; and all was splendid with light and life.
Below, those dark dead men still scavenged on the edge of the tide. He could have dropped a pebble on them. Dingy Joe's whine floated up to him….
"This cove's rings won't come off."
"Ain't you got a knife, then?" growled the brutal Toadie— "talks like a Miss."
"Say! look at this chap's lady-bird."
Bandy Dick held something aloft.
"He won't want no lady-bird no more. She'll ave to get another fancy-man."
Followed filthiest jests on women … love…. Such love!
Pah!—Were they men?—The beasts were purer.
The boy straight from his own white home and gayhearted mother sickened as he heard.
Hell?—What need of Hell hereafter for these men, when they had plunged into it on earth?
The words of a greater than Bunyan rang in his ears—
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
Servants! slaves rather; slaves of themselves.
From his perch in the high heavens the boy looked down on them as an angel may look down on souls in torment.
An aweful anger seized his heart. He longed to do God's work for Him— to avenge.
"Vengeance is mine," came a voice. "I will repay."
He started back, amazed.
Had he spoken? had the Lord?
The lightning words flashed down out of the heavens on the self-damned below.
Dingy Joe flung up a ghastly face, screamed, and falling on his knees in the water, began to babble about his Redeemer.
Fat George took to his heels. Furiously he splashed along, yellow locks flopping. Kit could hear him snorting as he ran. All his life the fat man had been running away from God, the Great Enemy; and still He was there. Some day He would catch him—Fat George never doubted that … some day … but not while he had legs.
How should he know that as he ran, God ran with him?
The others huddled together like thunder-frightened cattle. Bandy Dick cocked a scared snook, while Red Beard was man enough to loose his musket at the zenith.
"Not yet, Governor!" he shouted with a roaring laugh—"not yet!"
Fools!—they were living in the Hell they feared. Their punishment wasnow. They had long been damned. While they lived God, the Avenger, would punish them inexorably. When they died, God, the merciful Saviour, would take them and make them clean.
Death, the death they feared and fled from, would be their Salvation, as it is every man's.
I will yet go forward.Kit turned to a reconsideration of his enterprise.
The top was far yet, but the cliff was no longer sheer; a precipitous slope rather, patched with grass.
On hands and knees he set out. The grass trickled down like a dark torrent from above, cutting as it were a channel between two bastions, sheer on either side of him, and naked as the moon.
Up that dark trickle he climbed, and the sun climbed with him.
The grass gave him hand-hold. The chalk was rough and shale-like. He dug knees and toes into it. There was a constant dribble of stuff away from beneath his feet, and once a little land-slide, slithering seaward.
Beneath was nothing but a shining waste, waiting for him. He rather felt than saw it: for he dared not look down. He must think of what lay above. Therein was his hope. He clung to it, as he clung to the cliff-face, desperately.
The sun blazed on his back. The sweat trickled down his face. He kept his mind to his work, and his nose to the cliff. A bee with an orange tail sucked at a purple thistle. Butterflies chased, loved, and sipped all round him. O for Gwen, and her killing-bottle!
Up and up; the sun fierce upon his back; the earth bulging beneath his nose, the splash and ripple of the sea growing fainter and more faint below.
Blue above him, blue beneath, blue in his brain, blue everywhere, save for this dull leprous white beneath his nose—blue emptiness, calling him, clutching him, waiting for him. Would it never end?
Once he looked up.
He was climbing into heaven.
The cliff bluffed up into the sky. He could see the bearded crest dark against the light. Up there a pair of kestrels floated—two living cross-bows bent above him. They were almost transparent and very still: a tremble of the wings, a turn of the broad steering tail, a motion of the blunt head, a swoop and a sway and a glint of russet back.
They had wings too! Everything in the world had wings but himself, the only one who really needed them.
Once he slipped, and hung sprawling over Eternity. The grass, tough as wire, and wound about his hands, stood his friend. He recovered foothold.
On again with battering heart. The top was not far now.
Hope began to flutter in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards. The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer, the chalk darkening to the blackness of soil, and the crest of grass making a rustychevaux-de-friseat the summit.
Cautiously he crept on, his hands feeling the blank wall. Now his fingers touched the top.
He drew himself up.
His struggling toes found some sort of foot-hold. The wind blew on his wet forehead. His eyes were on a level with the summit.
He could see over.
A man was sitting by the edge.
Kit could have stroked his back.
The man was babbling French and weeping; weeping over a dead woman.
So much was clear.
His back was against the light. He wore no hat; and here and there a hair caught the sun and flashed like the sword of a fairy.
The dead girl must be lying with her head in his lap.
Unaware of anybody by, the young man poured out his heart: the dead woman was his little one, his darling of the chestnut hair, his petite pit-a-pat.
There was something so desolate about the grief of man, perched up there between sea and sky, nobody near but a floating sea-gull, that Kit almost wept to hear him.
But he had his own affairs to think about.
The man was a Frenchman: therefore an enemy.
What should he do?
As often happens, the question was decided for him.
Suddenly the projection on which his feet had found resting-place gave way.
A lurch, and he was dangling at arms' length. His toes could find no foothold. To drop even an inch or two was certain death: for he would land on a slope almost sheer; and the impetus must carry him—down— down—down….
"Sir!" he gasped.
A face flashed over the cliff, eagle-beaked and beautiful.
A young man knelt above him.
"Hullo!" he said in voice of quiet amusement, peering down at the boy beneath him. "May I ask what you are doing here?"
If he was a Frenchman, he spoke English without a trace of accent.
"Hanging on for dear life!" gurgled Kit, the scent-bottle between his teeth.
The young man broke into a ripple of boyish laughter.
"Flew so far: then the wings gave out, eh?"
He rose to his feet, and Kit saw he was wearing buck-skin breeches and top-boots.
Bending, he grasped the boy's wrists.
"One—two—and—h'up she comes!"
He staggered back, and fell with a gay laugh, the boy on top of him.
"Thank you," said Kit between his teeth. "Let go my wrists, please."
The man, lying on his back, smiled up at him.
How strong he was! how young! and how handsome!
Tears still bedewed his lashes, and his eyes had the sparkle and colour of the sword he wore at his side.
"What have you got between those nice milk-teeth of yours, LittleChap?"
"Nothing for you," stammered the boy. "That is—only eggs. I've been birds-nesting. Let go, please. I must get home. I'm late. I'll get into a row as it is."
The other loosed his wrists suddenly; a long arm swept about him; the thumb and forefinger of a hand like a steel-vice pressed his jaws asunder.
"Parrdon," said a voice, half tender, half teasing, the roll of the r for the first time betraying an alien strain.
Perforce the boy must open.
The scent-bottle rolled out upon the grass, and trundled towards the edge.
Lithe as a panther, the young man pounced and snatched it.
As he did so, Kit leapt on his back.
"Give it up or I dirk!" he panted.
For all answer the man fell back on top of him with the merriest laughter.
The boy's breath was shaken out of him. Two hands loosed his; and he was left gasping on his back.
"I say! did I hurt you?" came an anxious voice.
Kit scrambled to his feet.
"Give it up!" he cried passionately, thrusting out a hand. "It was given me. It's a trust."
"It's only eggs," the other reminded him, twinkling.
"I don't care what it is!" cried the boy. "It's mine!"
He was almost in tears, stamping his foot, much as in old days when Gwen, a born tease, had stolen his woolly bear, and refused to give it up.
The man made him feel like a baby—he, a King's officer.
"Forgive me," replied the other. "It is mine."
"Finding's keeping, I suppose!" sneered the boy, ablaze. "You take it by brute force—you steal it—and it's yours! And I daresay you call yourself a gentleman!"
"When I said it was mine," replied the other with the grave tenderness of a gentleman dealing with an angry woman, "I meant it was mine. It was given me by a lady. These are her initials on the stopper—E.H., d'you see?—If I was to surrender this bottle to you, two things would happen. My work of weeks past would be undone, and a noble woman would be hung unjustly." He put the bottle into his pocket. "And now to prove to you that it really is mine I will tell you what it contains, shall I?—A letter on tissue paper signed A. F. Is it not so?"
The flames in the boy's soul were beaten back.
"How d'you know?" sullenly.
"I wrote it."
Breathing through his nostrils, Kit eyed him.
"Then you're the Gentleman."
The young man bowed with an action that was altogether French.
He stood bareheaded in the sun in long black riding-coat and muddied boots and breeches.
"What's that red riband in your button-hole?" asked the boy in a kind of awe.
"That! that's the Legion of Honour." He came a step forward. "Put your finger on it. That little bit of riband once lay upon the heart of Napoleon."
The boy began to tremble. That tiny square of red from which he could not take his eyes had once throbbed to the heart-beats of the Arch- enemy!
"D'you know him?"
"Little Boney!" laughing. "Yes, I know him."
The boy listened without hearing. It was all too dreamlike.
"D'you—d'you like him?"
The other chuckled.
"Likehim?—I don't know that I exactlylikehim. You see he's not what you and I should call a gentleman. Still he serves me, so I serve him."
The boy's thumb was to his mouth, baby-like. All his anger had passed.He was gazing at the other with brooding admiration.
This was the man who had kept three counties agog these two months past!
He was an enemy, but O! he was a hero.
Strangely young too, almost a boy; tall and slight as his own sword, the grey eyes big under dark brows, the face sun-golden and lean almost to gauntness.
"Howdidyou do it?" murmured the boy.
The other's eyes clouded; the lids fell.
"I could not have done it but for her," he said.
Then for the first time the boy remembered the dead woman.
But it was no dead woman the Gentleman was standing over now; it was a chestnut mare, the sun glistening on a coat that shone like a girl's hair. She lay along the turf with lank neck, belly exposed, and shoes flashing; strangely pathetic as a horse seen in such position always looks.
There was not a stain of sweat on her coat, not a trace of froth about her muzzle. A plain snaffle bridle lay beside her. Her head was bare and fine as a lady's; the eyes wide, the nostrils still.
Strangely like somehow, mare and man; and about both faces something of the length and strength of the eagle.
There was one marked difference. In the man life still rippled gloriously; the mare was quiet for ever.
Born to the saddle as to the sea, the boy's eye ran over her.
"What a beauty!" he gasped.
"I couldn't have attempted it but for her," replied the other quietly. "When the Emperor asked me to undertake it—'Sire,' I said, 'if I may take my Bonnet Rouge!'… I tell you," he cried, turning almost fiercely on the boy, "I've left Merton as the first star peeped, and seen the sun rise out of the sea from here!… But I forgot…."
A cold shadow swept over him. Kit could feel the change—it was like passing from day to night; and it chilled the boy's heart.
Up there in the lonely stillness, sea beneath, heaven above, earth around, the two faced each other.
All the laughter had ebbed from the man's being. He was still and cold as his sword.
"D'you know what is in here?" tapping the scent-bottle.
His eyes, frosty now, seemed to bore down to the boy's soul.
Kit froze too.
"Why?"
"Because if you will give me your word that you do not know, I will let you go."
Those eyes of his were terrible.
"Will you give me your word?"
The boy was pale as ice.
Death in cold blood here on the quiet hillside—death like a pig's in a sty…. Ugh!…
"No, thank you."
"Then prepare to meet your Maker."
He turned and fiddled with a pistol, snapped it, cursed in an undertone, and thrust it back in his pocket.
Then he turned again.
The boy stood before him with dark eyes. Slight as a lily, and the colour of one, he seemed to sway in the breeze.
"Give me your word not to speak of what you know till after Thursday next—and you may go."
The boy shook his head.
"I mustn't."
The man flashed the hue of lightning.
"Then I must."
An arm swept about the boy. A hand at his waist was fumbling for his dirk.
For a second the lad struggled: then he felt himself helpless as a rabbit in a python's grip, and lay back quite still.
Once face to face with God, his heart calmed strangely.
There was a horrible breathing in his ear.
A face, all eyes, was bending over him.
"My God!how like a girl he is!" came a far whisper.
"Go on, please, and don't insult me," gurgled the boy. And as he said it, his mind flashed back to Gwen: Gwen with her pride of sex, standing before him, fists closed, challenging him to fight—"cad!"
"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.
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. SoI 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."