The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 32

Kit stayed on hands and knees on the gra.s.s plateau, his forehead bowed to the ground in att.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.sive, 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. He _was_ loved.

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 b.u.t.tress 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 ma.s.sive 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 d.i.c.k 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.

h.e.l.l?--What need of h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d'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-d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d, 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, G.o.d ran with him?

The others huddled together like thunder-frightened cattle. Bandy d.i.c.k c.o.c.ked 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 h.e.l.l they feared. Their punishment was _now_. They had long been d.a.m.ned. While they lived G.o.d, the Avenger, would punish them inexorably. When they died, G.o.d, 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.

II

_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 gra.s.s.

On hands and knees he set out. The gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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. b.u.t.terflies 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?