CHAPTER LXXXII

BACK TO THE DOOR

I

The lock creaked; the door opened.

A face of yellow clay, bandaged about, peered forth.

"That you, Mr. Joy?" came the ghostly voice, terrible in its remoteness.

The Parson dropped his point.

"Knapp?"

The little bandaged figure, in grey shirt and bloody drawers, wrapped about with an old horse-blanket, looked at him with stagnant eyes.

"What's left o me."

There was no gladness in his voice, no light of welcome in his eyes.

The merry little fighter of the morning, then cockiest of men, was now no more than a yellow shadow; dead, you would have said, but for that ghost of a voice, dribbling dreadfully out of his corpse.

The Parson went towards him.

"I never thought to see you alive again, Knapp."

"I'm a little alive," said the man wearily. "They done me--all but."

The Cockney snap was out of his voice. His words came like a drunkard's: he was slurring them, running them together, skipping hard consonants.

"I'll never be a man no more, I won't," he added with a dry sob.

The Parson gripped his hand.

A look of beastly rage darted into the other's eyes.

"Blast ye!" he screamed, and struck at the Parson's face with his elbow. "I'm one--great wownd, you--." He spewed out a torrent of hideous names. "And yet you must go for to wring my and!"

He lifted his foot to stamp it. His wounds twitched at him. He lowered it gingerly and with a groan.

"I ain't a man," he sobbed. "I'm one--great wownd."

"My poor chap," choked the Parson.

The other turned, body, legs, neck, and head moving all of a piece, and shuffled into the cottage on his heels.

The Parson followed.

"Don't touch me!" screamed the other, striking back with his elbows. "Don't come anigh me, my God! or I'll--"

He hobbled in, muffled to the feet in bandages.

II

He led into the parlour.

It was much the same, save that now a great clothes-horse, hung with soldiers' cloaks, made as it were a Sanctuary at one end of the room.

Piper's wheel-chair stood empty in the twilight Knapp let himself down in it with screwed face.

For a time he whimpered tearlessly. He was too weak to weep, and not strong enough to contain himself.

The Parson bent over him.

"Your heroism has not been in vain, my brave fellow," he said. "But for you Lord Nelson would be now in the hands of the French."

"Blast Nelson!" snarled the little rifleman. "What's Nelson to me? Blame fool that I were."

The heroic soul was quenched for the moment. He was flesh distraught--no more.

A flask of brandy was on the window-sill. The Parson poured from it into a glass and gave it him.

Knapp revived.

The Parson took down the shutters, and the evening light streamed in, calm and healing.

"Take your time," said the Parson gently. "Tell us what you can when you can."

Knapp sipped his brandy.

"It was the knives--when they closed. That done me up. Ow, my God!" He shuddered. "If it hadn't been for the Genelman."

"Yes?" said Kit eagerly.

A glow lit the man's eye. The yellow of his cheek flushed ever so faintly.

"I'd die for im," he said, "only he's died for me--what pull his nose and all."

"Is he dead then?" asked Kit.

"Who's tellin this tale?--you or me?"

He put down his glass.

"That there's a genelman."

His eyes were down, and his hands upon his knees. He began to tell the story over in his own mind, but only here and there his tongue took fire and flashed a light upon the tale for the outsider to read by.

"Drew em off o me.... I couldn't tell you.... Cursin em and killin em.... Down on his knees, aside o me.... Give me his arm same as I might ha been a lady....

"So we goes back to the cottage, me no better nor dead meat on his arm.... I can't tell you.... I don't know.... I'll never forget it."

He drew the back of his hand across his eyes.

"They kep doggin on him--unduds on em.... Sich faces on em.... Ow, my God!--I sees em now." He shivered and glanced behind him. "And he talkin back at em, easy as you please, chaffin em like.... Seem they dursn't go for to touch him.... Round to the back door.... Old Piper."

Parson and boy were hanging over him.

"Slipp'd out of his chair ... layin on the ground ... all anyhow ... no legs and all.

"'Ullo, Sailor!' says the Genelman. 'Ow are ye?'

"'I'm done, sir,' says pore old Pipes, smotherified. He were layin on his face.

"'Done, be d'd!' says the Genelman, and whips round sudden with his sword.

"Course they run,--curs!

"Round he come again, quick as light, catches old Piper under the arm-pits, and pops him in his chair.

"'Run him in, Soldier!' says he. 'Sharp's the word. I'll keep em off.'

"So I run him in best I could. I weren't stiff yet, so every twitch tears you."

"'Don't bother about me,' says old Pipes. 'Back to the door, Knapp. They're all on to him.'

"Back I obbles all I knoo.... Ah, I'll never forget it."

He lifted his face to the Parson.

"They used to say in the rigimint you was the best sword in Europe, sir." He laid a finger on the other's arm. "This mornin you was the second-best."

"I'm sure of it," says the Parson quietly.

Knapp stumbled on.

"He stood just outside the door.... I did a bit behind him with the baynit, when they got inside his guard.... He kep on killin em.... It was like the Lord Amighty makin lightnins out of His eyes and blastin em.... I never see the like--blessed if I did!"

The long-lost tears poured down his cheek. He was living again.

"They couldn't make nothing of it, and drew back a bit.

"'What!' cries the Genelman, laughin. 'A round dozen of you, and wopp'd by one! I wonder what Black Diamond'd think o you?'

"At that Fat George truss Dingy Joe by the arms.

"'Ow's this?' he squeals, and runs him on the Genelman's blade, dodgin back himself into Red Beard's arms.

"'Good idee!' kughs old Red Beard, and he throws his arms round the fat chap.

"'This'll smother him!' he roars. 'Now, boys, follow up!'

"And down he charge on the Genelman, Fat George in his arms."

For a moment the ghost of the old Knapp walked.

"Fat George weren't for avin it, Fat George weren't," he sniggered, shaking his head. "And I don't blame Fat George neether. Talk!--talk o talkin!--and the face on him!"

He lifted one hand and tittered.

"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.

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