III
Rolling up his sleeves, he was looking through the seaward window.
The Gang were streaming across the greensward, and round the cottage, pointing, shouting.
Behind them came the Gentleman. He was swinging his sword, and chopping at the daisies. Whoever else was disturbed, it was not he.
Last the Grenadiers who formed the lugger-guard came toppling over the shingle-bank.
The Gentleman stayed them with imperious hand.
The Parson saw it and grinned. The chap, for all his high-faluting ways, was a soldier through and through. He missed no point, not the smallest. The Parson respected him.
The other, crossing the sward, raised his head and saw the man at the window. The eyes of the two met. Each smiled. Each knew the other's heart.
"No, no," cried the Gentleman with a little wave. "I give nothing away. I can't afford to. I know my opponent."
The Parson bowed, tightening his belt. And after all it was a pretty compliment from the first light cavalry-man in Europe.
The Gentleman passed round the cottage and out of sight.
"What shall you do?" asked Kit hoarsely at the Parson's elbow.
"Why, the only thing there is to be done—and that's nothing."
He sat down on a broken box, took out a handkerchief and began to furbish his blade with the delicate tenderness of a woman bathing a child.
Kit, fretted almost to tears, watched him with angry admiration. The crisis had come, and this curly grey-head sat, calm as a village Solomon in his door of summer evenings, and talked baby to his sword.
"I don't see that helps much," sneered the boy—"cleaning the plate!"
"Nor does fussing for that matter," retorted the other tranquilly. "In war, as in the world, you must do as you're done by. That mayn't be parson's truth; but it is soldier's. And I'm a soldier for the time being. The cards lie with the Gentleman. We shall have to follow suit —or trump. If he's got a card up his sleeve he must play it—now or never."
The boy turned to the window.
The Gentleman was standing upon the broken wall, hand over his eyes, taking in the situation.
He flung a finger here, an order there.
The Grenadiers threw forward across the plain in skirmishing order.
"Looks like business," muttered the Parson, tucking in his shirt.
"What's it going to be?"
He had not long to wait.
The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came swiftly across the grass towards them.