The Revellers

“My Dear Lad – Yours to hand, and this leaves your mother and self in good health. We were glad to hear that the box arrived all right and that your mates think well of Yorkshire cakes. You may learn a lot of useful things at school, but you will not often meet with a better cook than your mother. She is sore upset just now about a mishap we have had on the farm. I turned out nearly all my shorthorns to graze on the low pastures. The ground was a bit damp, and a strange cow broke in at night to join them. I don’t rightly know what to blame, but next day they showed signs of rinderpest. I sent for the vet, and they had to be slaughtered – all but one two-year-old bull, Bainesse Boy IV., and Mr. Pickering’s cow, which were not with them in the meadow. It is a great loss, but I don’t repine, now that you are provided for, and it is not quite like starting all over again, as I have my land and my Cleveland bays, and I am in no debt. In such matters I turn to the Lord for consolation. I have just read this verse to Martha: ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ If you are minded to look it up, you will find it in the Thirty-seventh Psalm.

“I don’t want to pretend that the blow has not been a hard one, but, God willing, there will be a hamper for you at Christmas, if Colonel Grant is too busy to bring you North. Your mother joins in much love.

“Your affect.,”John Bolland.”

“P. S. – Maybe you will not have forgotten that Mrs. Saumarez said the land needed draining. She was a clever woman in some ways.”

The boy’s eyes filled with tears. He understood only too well the far-reaching misfortune which had befallen the farmer. The total value of the herd was £5,000, and he remembered that experts valued the young surviving bull at £300 as a yearling. In all, twenty-three animals had been slaughtered by the law’s decree, and the compensation payable to Bolland would not cover a twentieth part of the actual loss.

Martin not only wrote a letter of warm sympathy to his adopted parents but sent Bolland’s letter to his father, with an added commentary of his own. Colonel Grant obtained short leave and traveled to Elmsdale next day. It took some trouble to bring John round to his point of view, but the argument that the farm should be restocked in Martin’s interests prevailed, and negotiations were opened with prominent breeders elsewhere which resulted in the purchase of a notable bull and eight heifers, for which Bolland and the colonel each found half the money. The farmer would listen to no other arrangement, though he promised that if he experienced any tightness for money he would not hesitate to apply for further help.

The need never made itself felt. The first animal to produce successful progeny was George Pickering’s cow! No man in the North Riding was more pleased than John that day. Throughout the whole of his life the only person who ever brought a charge of unfair dealing against him was Pickering. The memory rankled, and its sting was none the less bitter because of a secret dread that he had perhaps been guilty of a piece of sharp practice. Now his character was cleared.

Pattison, his old crony, asked him, by way of a joke, how much “he’d tak’ for t’ cauf.”

John blazed into unexpected anger.

“At what figger de you reckon yer own good neäm, Mr. Pattison?”

“I don’t knoä as I’d care te sell it at onny price, Mr. Bollan’.”

“Then ye’ll think as I do aboot yon cauf. Neyther it nor any other of its dam’s produce will ivver leave my farm if I can help it.”

CHAPTER XIX

OUT OF THE MISTS

This record of a Yorkshire village – a true chronicle of life among the canny folk who dwell on the “moor edge” – might well be left at the point it reached when one of its chief characters saw before him the smooth and sunlit road of a notable career.

But history, though romantic, is not writ as romance, and the story of Elmsdale is fact, not fiction. After eight years of somnolence the village awoke again. It was roused from sleep by the tumult of a world at war; mayhap the present generation shall pass away before the hamlet relapses into its humdrum ways.

Martin was twenty-two when his father and he journeyed north to attend the annual sale of the Elmsdale herd, which was fixed for the two opening days of July, 1914. Each year Colonel Grant brought his son to the village for six weeks prior to the twelfth of August; this year there was a well-founded rumor in the little community that the colonel meant to buy The Elms.

The announcement of Bolland’s sale brought foreign agents from abroad and well-known stock-raisers from all parts of the Kingdom. No less than forty animals entered the auction ring. One bull, Bainesse Boy IV., realized £800. Bainesse Boy IV. held a species of levee in a special stall. He had grown into a wonder. On a table, over which Sergeant Benson mounted guard, were displayed five championship cups he had carried off, while fifteen cards, arranged in horseshoe pattern on the wall, each bore the magic words, “First Prize,” awarded at Islington, Birmingham, the Royal, and wherever else in Britain shorthorns and their admirers most do congregate.

The village hummed with life; around the sale ring gathered a multitude of men arrayed in Melton cloth and leather leggings, whose general appearance betokened the wisdom of Dr. Johnson’s sarcastic dictum: “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.”

Martha and a cohort of maids boiled hams by the dozen and baked cakes in fabulous quantities. John graced the occasion by donning a new suit and new boots, in which the crooked giant was singularly ill at ease.

Mrs. Pickering drove over from Nottonby – Kitty was married two years before to a well-to-do farmer at Northallerton – and someone rallied her on “bein’ ower good-lookin’ te remain a widow all her days.”

She laughed pleasantly.

“I’m far too busy at Wetherby to think of adding a husband to my cares,” she said; but those who knew her best could have told that she had refused at least two excellent offers of matrimony and meant to remain Mrs. Pickering during the rest of her days.

At the close of the second day’s sale, when the crowd was thinned by the departure of a fleet of cars and a local train at five o’clock, the White House was thronged by its habitués, who came to make a meal of the “high tea.”

Colonel Grant and John had just concluded an amicable wrangle whereby it was decided that they should jointly provide the considerable sum needed to acquire The Elms and some adjoining land. The house and grounds were to be remodeled and the property would be deeded to Martin forthwith.

The young gentleman himself, as tall as his father now, and wearing riding breeches and boots, was standing at the front door, turning impatient eyes from a smart cob, held by a groom, to the bend in the road where it curved beyond the “Black Lion.”

A smartly-dressed young lady passed, and although Martin lifted his hat with a ready smile his glance wandered from her along the road again. Evelyn Atkinson wondered who it was that thus distracted his attention.

A few yards farther on, Elsie Herbert, mounted on a steady old hunter, passed at a sharp trot. Evelyn’s pretty face frowned slightly.

“If she is home again, of course, he has eyes for nobody else,” she said to herself.

And, indeed, it was true. Elsie had been to Dresden for two years. She had returned to Elmsdale the previous day, and a scribbled note told Martin to look for her after tea.

The two set off together through the village, bound for the moor. Many a critical look followed them.

“Eh, but they’re a bonny pair,” cried Mrs. Summersgill, who became stouter each year. “Martin allus framed to be a fine man, but I nivver thowt yon gawky lass o’ t’ vicar’s ’ud grow into a beauty.”

“This moor air is wonderful. Look at the effect it has on you, Mrs. Summersgill,” said Colonel Grant with a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, go on wi’ ye, Colonel, pokin’ fun at a poor owd body like me. But I deän’t ho’d wi’ skinny ’uns. Martha, what’s become o’ Mrs. Saumarez an’ that flighty gell o’ hers. What did they call her – Angel? My word! – a nice angel – not that she wasn’t as thin as a sperrit.”

“Miss Walker told me, last Christmas twel’month, they were i’ France,” said Martha.

“France? Ay, maist like; it’s a God-forsaken place, I’ll be boun’.”

“Nay,” interposed Bolland, “that’s an unchristian description of onny counthry, ma’am. Ye’ll find t’ Lord ivverywhere i’ t’ wide wulld, if ye seek Him. There’s bin times when He might easy be i’ France, for He seemed, iv His wisdom, to be far away frae Elmsdale.”

Mrs. Summersgill snorted contempt for all “furriners,” but Martha created a diversion.

“Goodness me!” she cried, “yer cup’s empty. I nivver did see sike a woman. Ye talk an’ eat nowt.”

Martin, now in his third year at Oxford, was somewhat mystified by the change brought about in Elsie by two years of “languages and music” passed in the most attractive of German cities. Though not flippant, her manner nonplussed him. She was distinctly “smart,” both in speech and style. She treated a young gentleman who had already taken his degree and was reading for honors in history with an easy nonchalance that was highly disconcerting. The last time they parted they had kissed each other, she with tears, and he with a lump in his throat. Now he dared no more offer a cousinly, or brotherly, or any other sort of salute in which kissing was essential, than if she were a royal princess.

“You’ve altered, old girl,” he said by way of a conversational opening when their horses were content to walk, after a sharp canter along a moorland track.

“I should hope so, indeed,” came the airy retort. “Surely, you didn’t expect to find the Elmsdale label on me after two years of kultur?”

“Whatever the label, the vintage looks good,” he said.

“You mean that as a compliment,” she laughed. “And, now that I look at you carefully, I see signs of improvement. Of course, the Oxford swank is an abomination, but you’ll lose it in time. Father told me last night that you were going in for the law and politics. Is that correct?”

Martin, masterful as ever, was not minded to endure such supercilious treatment at Elsie’s hands. He had looked forward to this meeting with a longing that had almost interfered with his work; it was more than irritating to find his divinity modeling her behavior on the lines of the Girton “set” at the University.

They had reached a point of the high moor which overlooked Thor ghyll. Martin pulled up his cob and dismounted.

“Let’s give the nags a breather here,” he said. “Shall I help you?”

“No, thanks.”

Elsie was out of the saddle promptly. She rode astride. In a well-fitting habit, with divided skirt and patent-leather boots, she looked wonderfully alluring, but her air of aloofness was carried almost to the verge of indifference.

She showed some surprise when Martin took her horse’s reins and threw them over his left arm.

“Are you going to lecture me?” she said, arching her eyebrows. “It would be just like a fledgling B. A., who is doubtless a member of the Officers’ Training Corps, to tell me that my German riding-master taught me to sit too stiffly.”

“He did,” said Martin, meeting the sarcastic blue eyes without flinching. “But a few days with the York and Ainsty and Lord Middleton’s pack will put that right. You’ll come a purler at your first stone wall if you ride with such long stirrup leathers. However, I want you to jump another variety of obstacle to-day. You asked me just now, Elsie, if I was going in for the law. Yes. But I’m going in for you first. You know I love you, dear. You know I have been your very humble but loyal knight ever since I won your recognition down there in the valley, when I was only a farmer’s son and you were a girl of a higher social order. I have never forgotten that you didn’t seem to heed class distinctions then, Elsie, and it hurts now to have you treat me with coldness.”

Elsie, trying valiantly to appear partly indignant and even more amused at this direct attack, failed most lamentably. First she flushed; then she paled.

She faced Martin’s gaze confidently enough at the outset, but her eyes dropped and her lips quivered when she heard the words which no woman can hear without a thrill. Still, she made a brave attempt to rally her forces.

“I didn’t – quite mean – what you say,” she faltered, which was a schoolgirl form of protest for one who had achieved distinction in a course of English literature.

Martin took her by the shoulders. The two horses nosed each other. They, perforce, were dumb, but their wise eye’s seemed to exchange the caustic comment: “What fools these mortals be! Why don’t they hug, and settle the business?”

“I must know what you do mean,” said Martin, almost fiercely. “I love you, Elsie. Will you marry me?”

She lifted her face. The blue eyes were dim with tears, but the adorable mouth trembled in a smile.

“Yes, dear,” she murmured. “But what did you expect? Did you – think I would – throw my arms around you – in the village street?”

After that Martin had no reason to accuse Elsie of being either stiff or cold. When the vicar heard the news that night – for Martin and the colonel dined at the Vicarage – he stormed into mock dissent.

“God bless my soul,” he cried, “my little girl has been away two whole years, and you come and steal her away from me before she has been home twenty-four hours!”

Then he produced a handkerchief and yielded, apparently, to a violent attack of hay fever. Yet it was a joyous company which gathered around the dinner table, for Elsie herself, casting off the veneer of Dresden, drove posthaste to summon the Bollands to the feast.

John was specially deputed by Colonel Grant to make a significant announcement.

“We’re all main pleased you two hev sattled matters so soon,” he said, peering alternately at Martin’s attentive face and Elsie’s blushing one. “Yer father an’ me hev bowt The Elms, an’ a tidy bit o’ land besides, so ye’ll hev a stake i’ t’ county if ivver ye’re minded te run for Parlyment. The Miss Walkers (John pronounced the name “Wahker”) are goin’ te live in a small hoos i’ Nottonby. They’ve gotten a fine lot o’ Spanish mahogany an’ owd oak which they’re willin’ te sell by vallyation; so the pair of ye can gan there i’ t’ mornin’ an’ pick an’ choose what ye want.”

Elsie looked at her father, but neither could utter a word. Martha Bolland put an arm around the girl’s neck.

“Lord luv’ ye, honey!” she said brokenly, “it’ll be just like crossin’ the road. May I be spared te see you happy and comfortable in yer new home, for you’ll surely be one of the finest ladies i’ Yorkshire.”

No shadow darkened their joy in that cheerful hour. Even next day, when a grim specter flitted through Elmsdale, the ominous vision evoked only a passing notice. Colonel Grant and the vicar, each an expert in old furniture, accompanied the young people to The Elms and examined its antique dressers, sideboards, tables, and the rest. Many of the bedroom chests were of solid mahogany. The Misses Walker had cleared the drawers of the lumber of years, so that the prospective purchasers could note the interior finish.

Miss Emmy, not so tactful as her elder sister, brought in a name which the others present wished to forget.

“Mrs. Saumarez used this room as a dressing-room,” she said, “and while turning out rubbish from a set of drawers I came across this.”

She displayed a small red-covered folding road-map, such as cyclists and motorists use. Martin thought he recognized it.

“I believe that is the very map lost by Fritz Bauer, Mrs. Saumarez’s chauffeur,” he said.

“Probably, sir. He made a rare row with Miss Angèle about it. I was half afraid he meant to shake her. No one knew what had become of it, but either Miss Angèle or her mother must have hidden it. Why, I can’t guess.”

Elsie helped to smooth over an awkward incident. She took the map and began to open it.

“It couldn’t have been such an important matter,” she said. Then she shook apart the folded sheet, and they all saw that it bore a number of entries and signs in faded ink, black and red. The written words were in German, and Elsie scanned a few lines hurriedly. She looked puzzled, even a trifle perturbed, but recovered her smiling self-possession instantly.

“The poor man, being a foreigner, jotted down some notes for his guidance,” she said. “May I have it?”

“With pleasure, miss,” said the old lady.

It was not until the party had returned to the vicarage that Elsie explained her request. She spread the map on a table, and her smooth forehead wrinkled in doubt.

“This is serious,” she said. “I have lived in Germany long enough to understand that one cannot mix with German girls in the intimacy of school and at their homes without knowing that an attack on England is simply an obsession of their menfolk, and even of the women. They regard it as a certainty in the near future, pretending that if they don’t strike first England will crush them.”

“I wish to Heaven she would!” broke in Colonel Grant emphatically. “In existing conditions this country resembles an unarmed policeman waiting for a burglar to fire at him out of the darkness.”

Mr. Herbert, man of peace that he was, might have voiced a mild disclaimer, had not Elsie stayed him.

“Listen, father,” she said seriously. “Here is proof positive. That chauffeur was a military spy. See what is written across the top of the map: ‘Gutes Wasser; Futter in Fülle; Überfluss von Vieh, Schafen und Pferden. Einzelheiten auf genauen Ortlichkeiten angegeben.’ That means ‘Good water; abundance of fodder; plenty of cattle, sheep, and horses. Details given on exact localities.’ And, just look at the details! Could a child fail to interpret their meaning?”

Elsie’s simile was not far-fetched, yet gray-headed statesmen, though they may have both known and understood, refused to believe. That little road-map, on a scale of one mile to an inch, contained all the information needed by the staff of an invading army.

The moor bore the legend:

“Platz für Lager, leicht verschanzt; beherrscht Hauptstrassen von Whitby und Pickering nach York. Rote Kreise kennzeichnen reichlichen Wasservorrat für Kavallerie und Artillerie.” (Site for camp, easily entrenched. Commands main roads from Whitby and Pickering to York. Red circles show ample water supply for cavalry and artillery.)

Every road bore its classification for the use of troops, showing the width, quality of surface, and gradients. Each bridge was described as “stone” or “iron.” Even cross-country trails were indicated when fordable streams rendered such passage not too difficult.

The little group gazed spellbound at the extraordinarily accurate synopsis of the facilities offered by the placid country of Yorkshire for the devilish purposes of war. Martin, in particular, devoured the entries relating to the moor. On Metcalf’s farm he saw: “Six hundred sheep here,” and at the Broad Ings, “Four hundred sheep, three horses, four cows.” Well he knew who had given the spy those facts. His glowing eyes wandered to the village. A long entry distinguished the White House, and though he knew a good deal of German he was beaten by the opening technical word.

“What is that, Elsie?” he said, and even his father wondered at the hot anger in his utterance.

The girl read:

“Stammbaum Vieh hier; drei Stiere, achtzehn Kühe und Färsen, nicht zum Schlachten, sehr wertvoll. Neben bei sechs Stuten, besten Types zur Zucht.”

Then she translated:

“Pedigree cattle here; three bulls, eighteen cows and heifers, not to be slaughtered; very valuable. Also six brood mares of best type for stud.”

“The infernal scoundrel!” blazed out Martin. “So the Bolland stock must be taken to the Fatherland, and not eaten or drafted into service! And to think that I gave him nearly all that information!”

“You, Martin?” cried Elsie.

“Yes. He pumped me dry. I even showed him the site of every pond on the moor.”

“Don’t blame the man,” put in Colonel Grant. “I knew him as a Prussian officer at the first glance. But he was simply doing his duty. Blame our criminal carelessness. We cannot stop foreigners from prowling about the country, but we can and should make it impossible for any enemy to utilize such data as are contained in this map.”

“But, consider,” put in the perturbed vicar. “This evil work was done eight years ago, and what has all the talk of German preparation come to? Isn’t it the bombast of militarism gone mad?”

“It comes to this,” said the colonel. “We are just eight years nearer war. I am convinced that the break must occur before 1916 – and for two reasons: Germany’s financial state is dangerous, and in 1916 Russia will have completed on her western frontier certain strategic lines which will expedite mobilization. Germany won’t wait till her prospective foes are ready. France knows it. That is why she has adopted the three years’ service scheme.”

“Then why won’t you let me join the army, dad?” demanded Martin bluntly.

Colonel Grant spread his hands with the weary gesture of a man who would willingly shirk a vital decision.

“In peace the army is a poor career,” he said. “The law and politics offer you a wider field. But not you only – every young man in the country should be trained to arms. As matters stand, we have neither the men nor the rifles. Our artillery, excellent of its type, is about sufficient for an army corps, and we have a fortnight’s supply of ammunition. I am not an alarmist. We have enough regiments to repel a raid, supposing the enemy’s transports dodged the fleet; but Heaven help us if we dream of sending an expeditionary force to France or Egypt, or any single one of a score of vulnerable points outside the British Isles!”

“Beckett-Smythe retained one of those German chauffeurs in his service for a whole year,” said the vicar, on whom a new light had dawned with the discovery of the telltale map.

“Are there many of the brood in the district now?” inquired the colonel.

“I fancy not.”

“There is no need, they have done their work,” said Elsie. “Last winter I met a young officer in Dresden, and he told me he had taken a walking tour through this part of Yorkshire during the summer. He knew Elmsdale quite well. He remembered the vicarage, The Elms, and the White House. Yet he said he was here only a day!”

“Fritz Bauer’s maps are the best of guides,” commented Colonel Grant bitterly.

The vicar was literally awe-stricken. He stooped over the map.

“Is this sort of thing going on all over the country?” he gasped.

“More or less. Naturally, the east coast has been the chief hunting ground, as that must provide the terrain of any attack. Of course, so long as the political sky remains fairly clear, as it is at this moment, there is always a chance that humanity will escape Armageddon for another generation. The world is growing more rational and its interests are becoming ever more identical. Even the Junkers are feeling the pressure of public opinion, and the great masses of the people demand peace. That is why I want Martin to learn the power of voice and pen rather than of the sword. I have been a soldier all my life, and I hate war!”

The man who had so often faced death in his country’s cause spoke with real feeling. He longed to make war impossible by making victory impossible for an aggressor. He claimed no rights for Britain that he would deny Germany or any other country in the comity of nations.

Suddenly he took the map off the table and folded it.

“I’ll send this curio to Whitehall,” he said with a smile. “It will form part of a queer collection. Now, let’s talk of something else… Martin, after the valuer has inspected that furniture, you might see to it that the whole lot is stored in the east bedrooms. The architect will not disturb that part of the house.”

“Oh, when can we look at the plans?” chimed in Elsie.

These four people, who in their way fairly represented the forty millions of Great Britain, discussed the spy’s map in the drawing-room of Elmsdale vicarage on July 6th, 1914. On the sixth of August, exactly one month later, two German army corps, with full artillery and commissariat trains, were loaded into transports and brought to the mouth of the Elbe. They hoped to avoid the British fleet, and their objective was the Yorkshire coast between Whitby and Filey. Once ashore, they meant entrenching a camp on the Elmsdale moor. Obviously, they did not dream of conquering England by one daring foray. Their purpose was to keep the small army of Britain fully occupied until France was humbled to the dust. They would lose the whole hundred thousand men. But what of that? German soldiers are regarded as cannon fodder by their rulers, and the price in human lives would not be too costly if it retained British troops at home.