The Parson arranged what food there was on the floor.
""Honour and salt-beef--campaigners" fare!" as Nelson used to say in Corsica....
"And while you"re at that, I"ll get on with my story."
II
He went to the gable-end and took down a tarpaulin bag hanging on a staple.
"Kit, that was a great haul you made."
He took a packet from the bag.
"What d"you think this contains?" stripping the india-rubber from it.
There crept into his eyes again that steely look.
"It contains," he continued in the still voice of the man so moved that he dare hardly trust himself, "a list of all those gentlemen of Kent and Suss.e.x who are _a nous_, as the paper says."
The boy dropped his knife.
"Traitors in fact!"
"That"s the ugly word," said the Parson between set teeth. "And may G.o.d have mercy on them as they deserve!... When I read that list," he continued, breathing hard, "for the first time in my life I was sick, _sick_ to call myself an Englishman.... There are men down there I"ve dined with, gamed with, chaffed with, may heaven forgive me for it! true men as I honestly believed, men I"ve seen drink the King"s health and d.a.m.nation to the French with three times three, as a Christian and a gentleman should. There are magistrates, squires, a peer or two, one sheriff, a deputy-lieutenant, and small fry-- publicans, carriers, smugglers, and the like--by the score."
He spread squares of paper on the floor, piecing them.
"And here"s a map in sections of the whole country from Pevensey to Westminster--farms, inns, cottages, all put down, see!--where guides can be got; the wells marked, bakers" shops, mills; roads, metalled and unmetalled; and in the margin here and there a Church or what-not drawn out pretty as you please for a sign-post."
The boy looked. Yes, it was the hand that had written the scent-bottle note.
"There"s enough in that bag to hang some of the best names in England," continued the Parson with gloating delight. "And I hope to have that bag in Pitt"s hands before many hours are out."
The colour stole back to his cheeks, and he began to rub his hands together.
"Kit, my boy, we"ll have such a hanging as was never before seen in England--G.o.d helping us.... That"s what we"re here for."
The boy"s eyes were raised to his.
"No, sir, please. What we"re here for is to save Nelson."
III
The Parson staggered.
"Nelson!" he cried, ghastly.
His mind clutched in the dark at something it had lost.
"The plot, sir.... Beachy Head."
"My _G.o.d_!" cried the Parson, and died against the wall.
The despatch-bag and its contents had so possessed him that Nelson"s need had for the moment slipped his mind.
"And I call myself a soldier!"
He leapt to life again.
"What"s to-day?" savagely.
"Wednesday, sir."
"Is it to-morrow?"
"Yes, sir."
The life faded out of his blue eyes.
Till that moment he had been hugging the comfortable belief that Time, the soldier"s best ally and worst enemy, was on his side. Sooner or later relief must come. Cosy in their tiny fortress, they could afford to wait for it. The Gentleman could not. Now for the first time the Parson learned that his antic.i.p.ated ally was his foeman"s.
"Talk of Knapp!--I"m the one ought to be shot."
"How soon shall we be relieved, sir?" asked the boy feverishly at his side. "When may we expect the soldiers?"
The words revived the Parson like a whip-lash. Knapp, a soldier, had betrayed his trust. He, a soldier, had let slip thirty golden hours.
He was bitterly jealous for his dear Service.
"We shan"t be relieved," he snarled. "How can the soldiers relieve us when they don"t know we want relief? Knapp didn"t get through--told you so already once."
"But the country-folk, sir! Surely they"ll report."
"No, they won"t," stonily. "This is Suss.e.x. We aren"t alive in Suss.e.x: we"re dead-alive.... If they did see anything was up they"d only think it was one of the ordinary rows between the blockade-men and the gentlemen, as they call the smugglers."
He looked out of the Downward window. There was little comfort. Tall men in French uniforms swaggered about England"s greensward as though already it was theirs. He could catch their beastly foreign lingo. The sight and sound made him mad. Grim old watchdog that he was, he felt the bristles at the back of his neck rising. What right had these strange folk in his back-yard?--O to make his teeth meet in their gaitered legs!
Besides the Frenchmen, not a soul stirring.
English rooks cawing over English green, and an English sheepdog answering them.
A lonely land at the best of times, it was a desert now.
Westward in a cloud of beeches, a grey house glimmered--George Cavendish"s--empty. The Seahouses over by Splash Point--empty too. So was every house of any size for ten miles inland from Fair-light to Selsea Bill. Everybody bolted who could afford it. The old lady of Hailsham quite a proverb for pluck in these parts; and they said she looked under her bed every night to see if the French had come.
And the luck! where was the luck?