The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 115

He lifted one hand and t.i.ttered.

"Old Red Beard stagger in along--just his beard, and his eyes, and his legs beneath, and them hairy arms of is'n like ropes round the fat chap's belly.

"'Your turn now, ole pal,' says he. 'How d'ye like it yourself?' And somehow I fancies he and Fat George hadn't been best friends.

"Well, I see it was all up then, and the Genelman see it too.

"'Shut the door, Soldier,' says he, very calm, 'and yourself inside of it.'

"'What, sir?' says I, 'and leave--'

"'Do what you're told!' says he, sharp-like."

The little rifleman looked up into the face of his old company commander.

"Well, sir, I'm a soldier. I know my officer. In I goes!"

III

The Parson was stamping up and down like a man in mortal pain.

"And I wasn't there," he moaned. "I left him to do my dirty work--and ran!"

Opening the back-door, he gazed out on the encircling Downs, the light white now behind their blackness.

Outside the door was a fairy circle--just such a circle as a long-armed man with a sweeping sword would make--and round it not twinkling fairies but dead men. It was as though this was a magic ring, fatal to all who crossed it.

In the centre of the ring he could detect heel-marks, where the Gentleman had stood.

Fitting his own heels to the dents, he stood with crouching knees, making play with Polly among the ghosts of the smugglers.

He saw it all: the swarming satyrs, the closing door, the white-faced rifleman at the crack, and the Gentleman, back to the door, face to the Downs, his blade leaping out to scorch intruders within the pale.

"O Polly!" he cried. "We three--we three could have held the door against ten thousand."

The tears flowed down his face. The thought of this young man spending himself for a legless sailor, and a wounded rifleman, his enemies, who half-an-hour before had stood between him and his life's success, touched him to the quick.

"What a man!" he cried.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIII

PIPER PRAYS

I

He turned back into the kitchen.

Knapp was continuing his tale.

"'Pull em off,' says one, black and bitter. 'Don't spoil your own sport.'

"'The sogers are comin,' says another.

"'It's only the foot,' says the first. 'We've ten minutes afore we need slip it. Roll him on his back,' says he."

The Parson turned to Kit listening with dreadful-eyed fascination.

"Kit, go and tell Blob to come here."

The boy went giddily.

"'Then Fat George chime in,

"'Let him be, boys,' says he, in a fainty kind of a voice. 'He only done what he ought.' And he goes off in a sort of a croak,

"'It ain't been all my fault, my G.o.d,' says he. 'You made me that way, only You knows why.'

"And Red Beard chime in usky from underneath somewhere,

"'That's it, ole pal,' he says. 'It's for Him as made, us to explain us.'

"And I reck'n he pop off and the fat chap too.'"

II

"Then he groan, does the Genelman."

The Parson groaned too.

Knapp lifted his face.

"Ah," said he. "And fancy me layin there listenin, just the thick of the door a-tween us."

He stared at the hands upon his knees.

"I made s.h.i.+ft to get on my legs, but lor bless you! I couldn't stir. It was all, 'O my G.o.d, send a thunder-bolt and put him out of his pain!'

"Then he groan again.