THE CLIMB
I
_"There's nowt here,"_ called a voice from below. _"A fall of
the cliff belike."_
The boat put back.
Kit stayed on hands and knees on the grass plateau, his forehead bowed
to the ground in attitude 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 God 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 massive, 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 buttress 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 massive 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 Dick 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.
Hell?--What need of Hell 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 God'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-damned
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 God, 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, God ran with him?
The others huddled together like thunder-frightened cattle. Bandy Dick
cocked 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 Hell they feared. Their punishment was
_now_. They had long been damned. While they lived God, the
Avenger, would punish them inexorably. When they died, God, 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 grass.
On hands and knees he set out. The grass 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 grass 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 shining 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. Butterflies 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?
Once he looked up.
He was climbing into heaven.
The cliff bluffed up into the sky. He could see the bearded crest dark
against the light. Up there a pair of kestrels floated--two living
cross-bows bent above him. They were almost transparent and very
still: a tremble of the wings, a turn of the broad steering tail, a
motion of the blunt head, a swoop and a sway and a glint of russet
back.
They had wings too! Everything in the world had wings but himself, the
only one who really needed them.
Once he slipped, and hung sprawling over Eternity. The grass, tough as
wire, and wound about his hands, stood his friend. He recovered
foothold.
On again with battering heart. The top was not far now.
Hope began to flutter in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards.
The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so
far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer,
the chalk darkening to the blackness of soil, and the crest of grass
making a rusty _chevaux-de-frise_ at the summit.
Cautiously he crept on, his hands feeling the blank wall. Now his
fingers touched the top.
He drew himself up.
His struggling toes found some sort of foot-hold. The wind blew on his
wet forehead. His eyes were on a level with the summit.
He could see over.
A man was sitting by the edge.
Kit could have stroked his back.
II
THE MAN ON THE CLIFF