The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 45

"'The same to you, my lord,' I answered. 'And the sooner the better.'

"And that's the last I saw of him.... And now what I want to know is _where is he?_--for I'm after him."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE FACE ON THE WALL

"It's a long story," said Kit.

The Parson took him by the arm, and led the way into the kitchen.

It was more like a guard-room than a parlour. Clearly no woman reigned here. All was wood, or stone, or steel, clean as a s.h.i.+p, and as comfortless. Arms on the wall; iron-barred windows; no carpets, no curtains, no fal-lals.

The only soft thing in the room was the bed in the corner, piled high with clothes; the only ornament a print above the chimney-piece.

"It looks more like a fort than a kitchen," whispered Kit, awed.

"Ah, thereby hangs a tale!" replied the Parson.

He drew up before the face on the wall.

"You know who that is?" he asked, one hand on the boy's shoulder.

Kit laughed.

It was the face that had hung in old Ding-dong's cabin, that was hanging at that hour in thousands of English homes.

"A Colonel of Marines," continued the Parson--"Nelson by name."

[Footnote: In 1795 Nelson was appointed Honorary Colonel of Marines in recognition of his services in the Mediterranean.]

"Indeed," said the boy ironically. "I'd a notion he was a sailor."

The other made no answer. Indeed he did not hear. He stood before the print, wors.h.i.+pping it.

"Every night and morning I say my prayers before that picture," he continued quietly, all the laughter out of his voice. And there was something profoundly stirring about the solemnity with which he added,

"If it's G.o.d's will that our country shall be saved, there is the man will save it!"

The boy looked up at him.

"Sir," he said, "Nelson will save the country, if we can save Nelson."

IV

THE GARRISON

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE SOLDIER'S MOTHER

Kit told his tale.

The Parson listened without a word, his hands folded, and face inscrutable.

His silence chilled the boy.

"D'you believe me, sir?" he flashed out at last.

"Believe the boy!" cried the Parson fiercely. "Why, I _saw_ the fight. I was dancing mad at the foot of the cliff. Great heavens, sir!--didn't you hear me holloa? I should have thought they'd have heard me in France. Why, for the first and last time in my life, I wanted to be a sailor myself!"

Kit finished with a free heart, withholding nothing: the death of Black Diamond; the fight with the privateers; the end of old Ding- dong; and the scene with the Gentleman on the cliff.

The Parson drank in the lad's words. His eyes were grave; his brow furrowed. So stern he seemed, his face so smileless under those laughing curls, that Kit hardly recognised in him the boy-hearted swordsman of a few minutes since.

The story finished, he sat long unmoving; his mouth set, and eyes inward.

Then he began to pace up and down again.

"My prayer is heard," he said at last, and stopping turned to the boy.

"Kit Caryll, d'you know what I am?"

"You look like a--kind of a clergyman, sir."

"And that is what I am," replied the other a touch defiantly. "I am in Holy Orders in my own humble way."

He began pacing once more.

"We all have our weaknesses, sir.... My mother was mine.... She should have been the mother of saints rather than of a--' bully swordsman!'-- I think that was the phrase?" c.o.c.king a blue eye at the boy.

"After Egypt I came home to find her dying.... Well, she entreated me to forsake my profession and become a Christian--'for my sake, Harry,'

says she.... I argued it with her. I told her it was good work, G.o.d's work, to kill the French. I said I looked on myself as a Crusader fighting the Moors, as indeed I did. But she wouldn't hear of it. She said the Moors were black and the French white, and that made just all the difference.... And she begged so hard--and--and--"

His back was to the boy, and he was looking out of the window.

It was some time before he went on.

"I couldn't say her no then. So I told her I'd do as she wished and take Orders. But I made one condition. 'I won't go to the French; but if the French come to me, then,' I said, 'surely, mother, I may up and smite!' She gave me that. You see, she never thought they would come."