The Revellers

Mrs. Saumarez rescued him from one horn of the dilemma. She extended a hand and asked if Mr. Bolland were not pleased that the rain had ceased.

“Now, Martin,” said the vicar briskly, “shin up the pole and tie the ropes to the center-piece. These strong-armed giantesses have smashed a chunk of timber as thick as your wrist. Don’t allow either of them to hit you. They’ll pulverize you at a stroke.”

“I fear it was I who broke it,” admitted Elsie.

“Then it is you he must beware of.”

The vicar, in the midst of this chaff, gave Martin a “leg-up” the pole, and repairs were effected.

When the swing was in order he slid to the ground. Mr. Herbert resumed the stroll with Mrs. Saumarez. There was an awkward pause before Martin said:

“You girls get in. I’ll start you.”

He spoke collectively, but addressed Elsie. He wondered why her air was so distant.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’ve done damage enough already.”

“Martin,” murmured Angèle, “she is furious because I said you kissed me.”

This direct attack was a crude blunder. Mischievous and utterly unscrupulous though the girl was, she could not measure this boy’s real strength of character. The great man is not daunted by great difficulties – he grapples with them; and Martin had in him the material of greatness. He felt at once that he must now choose irrevocably between the two girls, with a most unpromising chance of ever again recovering lost ground with one of them. He did not hesitate an instant.

“Did you say that?” he demanded sternly.

“Ma foi! Isn’t it true?”

“The truth may be an insult. You had no right to thrust your schemes into Elsie’s knowledge.”

“My schemes, you – you pig. I spit at you. Isn’t it true?”

“Yes – unfortunately. I shall regret it always.”

Angèle nearly flew at him with her nails. But she contrived to laugh airily.

“Eh bien, mon cher Martin! There will come another time. I shall remember.”

“There will come no other time. You dared me to it. I was stupid enough to forget – for a moment.”

“Forget what?”

“That there was a girl in Elmsdale worth fifty of you – an English girl, not a mongrel!”

It was a boyish retort, feeble, unfair, but the most cutting thing he could think of. The words were spoken in heat; he would have recalled them at once if that were possible, but Angèle seized the opening with glee.

“That’s you!” she cried, stabbing her rival with a finger. “Parbleu! I’m a mixture, half English, half German, but really bad French!”

“Please don’t drag me into your interesting conversation,” said Elsie with bitter politeness.

“I am sorry I said that,” put in the boy. “I might have had two friends. Now I have lost both.”

He turned. His intent was to quit the place forthwith. Elsie caught his arm with an alarmed cry.

“Martin,” she almost screamed, “look at your left hand. It is covered with blood!”

Surprised as she, he raised his hand. Blood was streaming down the fingers.

“It’s nothing,” he said coolly. “I must have opened a deep cut by climbing the swing.”

“Quelle horreur!” exclaimed Angèle. “I hate blood!”

“I’m awfully sorry – ” began Martin.

“Nonsense! Come at once to the kitchen and have it bound up,” said Elsie.

They hurried off together. Angèle did not offer to accompany them. Martin glanced at Elsie through the corner of his eye. Her set mouth had relaxed somewhat. Anger was yielding to sympathy.

“I was fighting another wildcat, so was sure to get scratched,” he whispered.

“You needn’t have kissed it, anyhow,” she snapped.

“That, certainly, was a mistake,” he admitted.

She made no reply. Once within the house she removed the stained bandage without flinching from the ugly sight of half-healed scars, one of which was bleeding profusely. Cold water soon stopped the outflow, and one of the maids procured some strips of linen, with which Elsie bound the wound tightly.

They had a moment to themselves in recrossing the hall. Martin ventured to touch the girl’s shoulder.

“Look here, Elsie,” he said boldly, “do you forgive me?”

Something in his voice told her that mere verbal fencing would be useless.

“Yes,” she murmured with a wistful smile. “I’ll forgive, but I can’t forget – for a long time.”

On the lawn they encountered Mrs. Saumarez. Learning from Angèle why the trio had dispersed so suddenly, she was coming to attend to Martin herself.

The vicar joined them.

“Really,” he said, “some sort of ill luck is attached to that swing to-day.”

And then Françoise appeared, to tell them that tea was ready.

“What curious French she talks,” commented the smiling Elsie.

“Yes,” cried Angèle tartly. “Bad French, eh? And I know heaps and heaps of it.”

She caught Mr. Herbert’s eye, and added an excuse:

“I’m going to change all that. People think I’m naughty when I speak like a domestic. And I really don’t mean anything wrong.”

“We all use too much slang,” said the tolerant-minded vicar. “It is sheer indolence. We refuse to bother our brains for the right word.”

CHAPTER XVII

TWO MOORLAND EPISODES

Though all hands were needed on the farm in strenuous endeavor to repair the storm’s havoc, Dr. MacGregor forbade Martin to work when he examined the reopened cut. Thus, the boy was free to guide Fritz, the chauffeur, on the morning the man came to look at Bolland’s herd.

Fritz Bauer – that was the name he gave – had improved his English pronunciation marvelously within a fortnight. He no longer confused “d’s” and “t’s.” He had conquered the sibilant sound of the “s.” He was even wrestling with the elusive “th,” substituting “d” for “z.”

“I learnt from a book,” he explained, when Martin complimented him on his mastery of English. “Dat is goot – no, good – but one trains de ear only in de country where de people spik – speak – de language all de time.”

The sharp-witted boy soon came to the conclusion that his German friend was more interested in the money value of the cattle as pedigreed stock than in the “points” – such as weight, color, bone, level back, and milking qualities – which commended them to the experienced eye. Bauer asked where he could obtain a show catalogue, and jotted down the printer’s address. When they happened on a team of Cleveland bays, however, Fritz was thoroughly at home, and gratified his hearer by displaying a horseman’s knowledge of a truly superb animal.

“Dey are light, yet strong,” he said, his eyes roving from high-set withers to shapely hocks and clean-cut fetlocks. “Each could pull a ton on a bad road – yes?”

Martin laughed. He was blind to the cynical smile called forth by his amusement.

“A ton? Two tons. Why, one day last winter, when a pair of Belgians couldn’t move a loaded lorry in the deep snow, my father had the man take out both of ’em, and Prince walked away with the lot.”

“So?” cried the German admiringly.

“But you understand horses,” went on Martin. “Yet I’ve read that men who drive motors don’t care for anything else, as a rule.”

“Ah, dat reminds me,” said the other. “It is a fine day. Come wid me in de machine.”

“That’ll be grand,” said Martin elatedly. “Can you take it out?”

“Oh, yes. Any time I – dat is, I’ll ask Mrs. Saumarez, and she will permit – yes.”

Quarter of an hour later the chauffeur was explaining, in German, that he was going into the country for a long spin, and Mrs. Saumarez was listening, not consenting.

“Going alone?” she inquired languidly.

“No, madam,” he answered. “Martin Bolland will come with me.”

“Why not take Miss Angèle?”

The man smiled.

“I want the boy to talk,” he explained.

Mrs. Saumarez nodded. She treated the matter with indifference. Not so Angèle, who heard the car purring down the drive, and inquired Fritz’s errand. She was furious when her mother blurted out the news that Martin would accompany Bauer.

“Ce cochon d’Allemand!” she stormed, her long lashes wet with vexed tears. “He has done that purposely. He knew I wanted to go. But I’ll get even with him! See if I don’t.”

“Angèle!” and Mrs. Saumarez reddened with annoyance; “if ever you say a word about such matters to Fritz I’ll pack you off to school within the hour. I mean it, so believe me.”

Angèle stamped a rebellious foot, but curbed her tongue and vanished. She ran all the way to the village and was just in time to see the Mercedes bowling smoothly out of sight, with Martin seated beside the chauffeur. She was so angry that she stamped again in rage, and Evelyn Atkinson came from the inn to inquire the cause. But Angèle snubbed her, bought some chocolates from Mr. Webster, and never offered the other girl a taste.

It happened that Martin, for his part, had suggested a call at the vicarage. Fritz vetoed the motion promptly.

“Impossible!” he grinned. “I had to dodge de odder one, yes.”

Evidently Fritz had kept both eyes and ears open.

They headed for the moors. Wise Martin had counseled a slow speed in the village to allay Mrs. Bolland’s dread of a new-fangled device which she “couldn’t abide”; but once on the open road the car breasted a steep hill at a rate which the boy thought neck-breaking.

“Dat is nodding,” said Fritz nonchalantly. “Twenty – twenty-five. Wait till we are on de level. Den I show you fifty.”

Within six minutes Martin flew past Mrs. Summersgill’s moor-edge farm. Never before had he reached that point in less than half an hour. The stout party was in the porch, peeling potatoes for the midday meal. She lifted her hands in astonishment as her young friend sped by. Martin waved a greeting. He could almost hear her say:

“That lad o’ Bolland’s must ha’ gone clean daft. I’m surprised at Martha te let him ride i’ such a conthraption.”

On the hedgeless road of the undulating moor, even after the ravages of the gale, fifty miles an hour was practicable for long stretches. Fritz was a skilled driver. He seemed to have a sixth sense which warned him of rain-gullies, and slowed up to avoid straining the car. He began explaining the mechanism, and halted on the highest point of a far-flung tableland to lift the bonnet and show the delighted boy the operations of the Otto cycle. In those days the self-starter was unknown, but Martin found he could start the heated engine without any difficulty. Fritz permitted him to drive slowly, and taught him the use of the brakes. Finally, this most agreeable Teuton produced a packet of sandwiches. He was in no hurry to return.

“Dese farms,” he said, pointing to a low-built house with tiled roof, and a cluster of stables and haymows, “dey do not raise stock, eh? Only little sheep?”

“They all keep milk-cows, and bring butter to the market, so they often have calves and yearlings,” was the ready answer.

“And horses?”

“Always a couple, and a nag for counting the sheep.”

“How many sheep?”

“Never less than a hundred. Some flocks run to three or four hundred.”

“Ah. Where are dey?”

Martin, proud of his knowledge, indicated the position and approximate distance of the hollows, invisible for the most part, in which lay the larger holdings.

“Do you understand a map?” inquired Fritz.

“Yes. I love maps. They tell you everything, when you can read them properly.”

“Not everyding,” and the man smiled. “Some day I want to visit one of dose big farms. Can you mark a few?”

He spread an Ordnance map – a clean sheet – and gave his guide a pencil. Soon Martin had dotted the paper with accurate information, such as none but one reared in that wild country could have supplied. He was eager to prove his familiarity with a map, and followed each bend and twist of the prehistoric glacier beds, where the lowland becks had their origin. He was not “showing off” before a foreigner. He loved this brown moor and was only too pleased to have found a sympathetic listener.

“The heather is losing its color now,” he said, pausing for a moment in his task. “You ought to see it early in August, when it is all one mass of purple flowers, with here and there a bunch of golden gorse – ‘whin,’ we call it. Our moor is almost free from bog-holes, so you can walk or ride anywhere with safety. I have often thought what a fine place it would be for an army.”

“Wass ist das?” cried Fritz sharply. He corrected the slip with a laugh. “An army?” he went on, though his newly acquired accent escaped him. “Vot woot an army pe toing here?”

“Oh, just a camp, you know. We hold maneuvers every year in England.”

“Yez. You coot pud all your leedle army on dis grount. Bud dere iss von grade tefecd. Dere iss no water. A vell, in eej farm, yez; bud nod enough for a hundret dousand men, und de horses of four divisions.”

This point of view was novel to the boy. He knit his brows.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he confessed. “But, wait a bit. There’s far more water here than you would imagine. Stocks have to be watered, you know. Some of the farmers dam the becks. Why, in the Dickenson place over there,” and out went a hand, “they have quite a large reservoir, with trout in it. You’d never guess it existed, if you weren’t told.”

Fritz nodded. He had turned against the breeze to shield a match for a cigarette, and his face was hidden.

“You surprise me,” he murmured, speaking slowly and with care again. “And dere are odders, you say?”

“Five that I know of. Mrs. Walker, at the Broad Ings, rears hundreds of ducks on her pond.”

Fritz took the map and pencil.

“You show me,” he chuckled. “I write an essay on Yorkshire moor farms, and perhaps earn a new suit of clo’es, yes? Our Cherman magazines print dose tings.”

That same afternoon a party of guns on a Scottish moor had been shooting driven grouse flying low and fast over the butts before a strong wind. The sportsmen, five in number, were all experts. Around each shelter, with its solitary marksman and his attendant loader, lay a deep crescent of game, every bird shot cleanly.

The last drive of the day was the most successful. One man, whose bronzed skin and military bearing told his profession, handed the empty 12-bore to the gillie when the line of beaters came over the crest of the hill, and betook himself, filling his pipe the while, to a group of ponies waiting on the moorland road in the valley beneath.

He joined another, the earliest arrival.

“Capital ground, this,” he said. “I don’t know whose lot is the more enviable, Heronsdale – yours, who have the pains as well as the pleasure of ownership, or that of wandering vagabonds like myself whom you make your guests.”

Lord Heronsdale smiled.

“You may call yourself a wandering vagabond, Grant – the envy rests with me,” he said. “It’s all very well to have large estates, but I feel like degenerating into a sort of head gamekeeper and farm bailiff combined. Of course, I’m proud of Cairn-corrie, yet I pine sometimes for the excitement of a life that does not travel in grooves.”

The other shook his head.

“Don’t tempt fate,” he said. “My life has been spent among the outer beasts. It isn’t worth it. For a few years of a man’s youth, yes – perhaps. But I am forty, and I live in a club. There, you have my career in a nutshell.”

“There is a fine kernel within. By Gad! Grant, why don’t you pretend I meant that pun? I didn’t, but I’ll claim it at dinner. Gad, it’s fine!”

Colonel Grant laughed. His mirth had a pleasant, wholesome ring.

“If you bribe me with as good a berth to-morrow,” he said, “I’ll give you the chance of throwing it off spontaneously during the first lull in the conversation. The best impromptus are always prepared beforehand, you know.”

Others came up. The shooters mounted, and the wise ponies picked their way with cautious celerity over an uneven track. Colonel Grant again found himself riding beside his host.

“Tell you what,” said Lord Heronsdale suddenly, “you’re a bit of an enigma, Grant.”

“I have often been told that.”

“Gad, I don’t doubt it. A chap like you, with five thousand a year, to chuck the Guards for the Indian Staff Corps, exchange town for the Northwest frontier, go in for potting Afghans instead of running a drag to Sandown; and, to crown all, remain a bachelor. I don’t understand it.”

“Yet, ten minutes ago you were growling about the monotony of existence at Cairn-corrie and half a dozen other places.”

“Not even a tu quoque like that explains the mystery.”

“Some day I’ll tell you all about it. When the time comes I must ask Lady Heronsdale to find me a nice wife, with a warranty.”

“Gad, that’s the job for Mollie. She’ll put the future Mrs. Grant through her paces. You’re not flying off to India again, then?”

“No. I heard last week that a post is to be found for me in the Intelligence Department.”

“Capital! You’ll soon have a K. before the C. B.”

“Possibly. Some fellows wear themselves to the bone in trying for those things. My scheming for years has been to avoid the humdrum of cantonment life. And, behold! I am spotted for promotion. I don’t know how the deuce they ever heard of me in Pall Mall.”

“Gad! Don’t you read the papers?”

“Never.”

“My dear fellow, they were full of you last year. That march through the snow, pulling those guns through the pass, the final relief of the fort – Gad, Molly has the cuttings. She’ll show ’em to you after dinner.”

“I sincerely hope Lady Heronsdale will do no such thing. Why on earth does she keep such screeds?”

His lordship dropped his bantering air.

“Do you really imagine, Grant,” he said seriously, “that either she or I will ever forget what you did for Arthur at Peshawar?”

The other man reddened.

“A mere schoolboy episode,” he growled.

“Yes, in a sense. Yet Arthur told me that he had a revolver in his pocket when you met him that night at the mess and persuaded him to leave the business in your hands. You saved our boy, Grant. Gad, ask Mollie what she thinks!”

“Has he been steady since?”

“A rock, my dear chap – adamant where women are concerned. His mother is beginning to worry about him; he wouldn’t look at Helen Forbes, and Madge Bolingbrooke does her skirt-dances in vain. Both deuced nice girls, too.”

Colonel Grant had navigated the talk into a safe channel, and kept it there. He never spoke of the past.

At dinner a man asked him if he was reading the Elmsdale sensation. He had not even heard of it, so the tale of Betsy and George Pickering, of Martin Bolland and Angèle Saumarez was poured into his ears.

“I am interested,” said his neighbor, “because I knew poor Pickering. He hunted regularly with the York and Ainsty.”

“Saumarez!” murmured Colonel Grant. “I once met a man of that name. He was shot on the Modder River.”

“This girl may be his daughter. The paper describes her mother as a lady of independent means, visiting the moors for her health.”

“Poor Saumarez! From what I remember of his character, the child must be a chip of the same block – he was an irresponsible daredevil, a terror among women. But he died gallantly.”

“There’s a lot about her in the local paper, which reached me this morning. Would you care to see it?”

“Newspapers are so inaccurate. They never know the facts.”

Yet the colonel, not caring to play bridge, asked later for the loan of the journal named by his informant, and read therein the story of the village tragedy. As fate willed it, the writer was the reporter of the Messenger, and his account was replete with local knowledge.

Yes, Mrs. Saumarez was the widow of Colonel Saumarez, late of the Hussars. But – what was this?

“Martin Court Bolland, a bright-faced boy, of an intelligence far greater than one looks for in rustic youth, has himself a somewhat romantic history. He is the adopted son of the sturdy yeoman whose name he bears. Mr. and Mrs. Bolland were called to London thirteen years ago to attend the funeral of the farmer’s brother. One evening while seeing the sights of the great metropolis they found themselves in Ludgate Hill. They were passing the end of St. Martin’s Court, when a young woman named Martineau – ”

The colonel laid aside his cigar and twisted his body sideways, so that the light of the billiard-room lamps should fall clearly on the paper yet leave his face in the shade.

“ – a young woman named Martineau threw herself, with a baby in her arms, from the fourth story of a house in the court, and was killed by the fall. The baby’s frock was caught by a projecting sign, and the child hung perilously in air. John Bolland, whose strong, stern face reveals a character difficult to surprise, impossible to daunt, jumped forward and caught the tiny mite as it dropped a second time. Mrs. Bolland still treasures a letter written by the infant’s unhappy mother, and prizes to the utmost the fine boy whom she and her husband adopted from that hour. The old couple are childless, though with Martin calling them ‘father’ and ‘mother,’ they would scoff at the statement. This, then, is the well-knit, fearless youngster who fought the squire’s son on that eventful night, and whose evidence is of the utmost importance in the police theory of crime, as opposed to accident.”

Colonel Grant went steadily through the neat sentences on which the Messenger correspondent prided himself. He was a man of bronze; he showed no more emotion than a statue, though the facts staring from the printed page might well have produced external signs of the tempest which sprang into instant being in his soul.

He read each line of descriptive matter and report. For the sorrows of Betsy, the final daring of George Pickering, he had no eyes. It was the boy he sought in the living record: the boy who fought young Beckett-Smythe to rescue the thoughtless child – for so Angèle figured in the text; the boy who repudiated with scorn the solicitor’s suggestion that he formed part and parcel of the crowd of urchins gathered in the hotel yard; the farmer’s adopted son, who spoke so fearlessly and bore himself so well that the newspaper noted his intelligence, his bright looks.

At last Colonel Grant laid down the sheet and lighted a fresh cigar. He smoked for a few minutes, watching the pool players, and declining an invitation to join in the game. He seemed to be planning some line of action; soon he went to the library and unrolled a large scale map of England. He found Nottonby – Elmsdale was too small a place to be denoted – and, after consulting a railway timetable, wrote a long telegram.

These things accomplished, he seized an opportunity to tell Lord Heronsdale that business of the utmost importance would take him away by the first train next morning.

Of course, his host was voluble in protestations, so the soldier explained matters.

“You asked me to-day,” he said, “why I turned my back on town thirteen years ago. I meant telling you at a more convenient season. Will it suffice now to say that a kindred reason tears me away from your moor?”

“Gad, I hope there is nothing wrong. Can I help?”

“Yes; by letting me go. You will be here until October. May I return?”

“My dear Grant – ”

So they settled it that way.

About three o’clock on the second day after the colonel’s departure from Cairn-corrie he and an elderly man of unmistakably legal appearance walked from Elmsdale station to the village. The station master, forewarned, had procured a dogcart from the “Black Lion,” but the visitors preferred dispatching their portmanteaux in the vehicle, and they followed on foot.

Thus it happened – as odd things do happen in life – that the two men met a boy walking rapidly from the village, and some trick of expression in his face caused the colonel to halt him with a question:

“Can you tell me where the ‘Black Lion’ inn is?”

“Yes, sir. On the left, just beyond the bend in the road.”

“And the White House Farm?”

The village youth looked at the speaker with interest.

“On the right, sir; after you cross the green.”

“Ah!”

The two men stood and stared at Martin, who was dressed in a neat blue serge suit, obtained by post from York, the wildcat having ruined its predecessor. The older man, who reminded the boy of Mr. Stockwell, owing to the searching clearness of his gaze, said not a word; but the tall, sparsely-built soldier continued – for Martin civilly awaited his pleasure —

“Is your name, by any chance, Martin Court Bolland?”

The boy smiled.

“It is, sir,” he said.