The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 39

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 gra.s.shoppers 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 gra.s.s-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, h.o.a.ry-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 G.o.d had made her. How different she was from that savagely s.h.a.ggy 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 gra.s.s 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; pa.s.sed 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 cl.u.s.ter of Army officers, as he told his story--stonily incredulous, grimly silent, some sn.i.g.g.e.ring, others jeering openly. The boy's head had been turned by his first brus.h.!.+-- 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 mult.i.tude 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, rea.s.sured him. There was nothing to be feared from this chap, and nothing to be got from him. Abraham was s.h.a.ggy, 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 ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, heaving up there in a little hillock that stood out from the beach as a b.u.mp 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.