The Revellers

“Do you always descend the ghyll in that fashion, Martin?” cried the vicar.

“Yes, sir. It is the nearest way.”

“A man might say that who fell out of a balloon.”

“But I have been up and down there twenty times, sir.”

“Well, well; my imaginary balloonist could make no such answer. Sit down and have some tea. Elsie, this is young Martin Bolland, of whom I have been telling you.”

The girl smiled in a very friendly way and brought Martin a cup of tea and a plate of cakes. So he was a guest, and introduced by the vicar to his daughter! How kind this was of Mr. Herbert! How delighted Mrs. Bolland would be when she heard of it, for, however strict her Nonconformity, the vicar was still a social power in the village, and second only to the Beckett-Smythes in the estimation of the parish.

At first poor Martin was tongue-tied. He answered in monosyllables when the vicar or Mrs. Johnson, the old lady, spoke to him; but to Elsie he said not a word. She, too, was at a loss how to interest him, until she noticed a book in his pocket. When told that it was Scott’s poems she said pleasantly that a month ago she went with her father to a place called Greta Bridge and visited many of the scenes described in “Rokeby.”

Unhappily, Martin had not read “Rokeby.” He resolved to devour it at the first opportunity, but for the nonce it offered no conversational handle. He remained dumb, yet all the while he was comparing Elsie with Angèle, and deciding privately that girls brought up as ladies in England were much nicer than those reared in the places which Angèle named so glibly.

But his star was propitious that day. One of the young men happened to notice a spot where a large patch of heather had been sliced off the face of the moor.

He asked Mr. Herbert what use the farmers made of it.

“Nothing that I can recall,” said the vicar, a man who, living in the country, knew little of its ways; “perhaps Martin can tell you.”

“We make besoms of it, sir,” was the ready reply, “but that space has been cleared by the keepers so that the young grouse may have fresh green shoots to feed on.”

Here was a topic on which he was crammed with information. His face grew animated, his eyes sparkled, the words came fast and were well chosen. As he spoke, the purple moor, the black firs, the meadows, the corn land red with poppies, became peopled with fur and feather. On the hilltops the glorious black cock, in the woods the dandy pheasant and swift pigeon, among the meadows and crops the whirring partridge, became actualities, present, but unseen. There were plenty of hares on the arable land and the rising ground; as for rabbits, they swarmed everywhere.

“This ghyll will be alive with them in little more than an hour,” said Martin confidently. “I shouldn’t be surprised, if we had a dog and put him among those whins, but half-a-dozen rabbits would bolt out in all directions.”

“Please, can I be a little bow-wow?” cried Elsie. She sprang to her feet and ran toward the clump of gorse and bracken he had pointed out, imitating a dog’s bark as she went.

“Take care of the thorns,” shouted Martin, making after her more leisurely.

She paused on the verge of the tangled mass of vegetation and said, “Shoo!”

“That’s no good,” he laughed. “You must walk through and kick the thick clumps of grass – this way.”

He plunged into the midst of the gorse. She followed. Not a rabbit budged.

“That’s odd,” he said, rustling the undergrowth vigorously. “There ought to be a lot here.”

“You know Angèle Saumarez?” said the girl suddenly.

“Yes.”

He ceased beating the bushes and looked at her fixedly, the question was so unexpected. Yet Angèle had asked him the selfsame question concerning Elsie Herbert. One girl resembled another as two peas in a pod.

“Do you like her?”

“I think I do, sometimes.”

“Do you think she is pretty?”

“Yes, often.”

“What do you mean by ‘sometimes,’ ‘often?’ How can a girl be pretty – ‘often’?”

“Well, you see, I think she is nice in many ways, and that if – she knew you – and copied your manner – your voice, and style, and behavior – she would improve very greatly.”

Martin had recovered his wits. Elsie tittered and blushed slightly.

“Really!” she said, and recommenced the kicking process with ardor.

Suddenly, with a fierce snarl, an animal of some sort flew at her. She had a momentary vision of a pair of blazing eyes, bared teeth, and extended claws. She screamed and turned her head. In that instant a wildcat landed on her back and a vicious claw reached for her face. But Martin was at her side. Without a second’s hesitation he seized the growling brute in both hands and tore it from off her shoulders. His right hand was around its neck, but he strove in vain to grasp the small of its back in the left. It wriggled and scratched with the ferocity of an undersized tiger. Martin’s coat sleeves and shirt were slashed to shreds, his waistcoat was rent, and deep gashes were cut in his arms, but he held on gamely.

Mr. Herbert and the others ran up, but came unarmed. They had not even a stick. The vicar, with some presence of mind, rushed back and wrenched a leg from the camp table, but by the time he returned the cat was moving its limbs in its final spasms, for Martin had choked it to death.

The vicar danced about with his improvised weapon, imploring the boy to “throw it down and let me whack the life out of it,” but Martin was enraged with the pain and the damage to his clothing. In his anger he felt that he could wrench the wretched beast limb from limb, and he might have endeavored to do that very thing were it not for the presence of Elsie Herbert. As it was, when the cat fell to the ground its struggles had ended, but Mr. Herbert gave it a couple of hearty blows to make sure.

It was a tremendous brute, double the size of its domestic progenitors. At one period in its career it had been caught in a rabbit trap, for one of its forelegs was removed at the joint, and the calloused stump was hard as a bit of stone.

A chorus of praise for Martin’s promptitude and courage was cut short when he took the table leg and went back to the clump of gorse.

“I thought it was curious that there were no rabbits here,” he said. “Now I know why. This cat has a litter of kittens hidden among the whins.”

“Are you gug-gug-going to kuk-kuk-kill them?” sobbed Elsie.

He paused in his murderous search.

“It makes no matter now,” he said, laughing. “I’ll tell the keeper. Wildcats eat up an awful lot of game.”

His coolness, his absolute disregard of the really serious cuts he had received, were astounding to the town-bred men. The vicar was the first to recover some degree of composure.

“Martin,” he cried, “come this instant and have your wounds washed and bound up. You are losing a great deal of blood, and that brute’s claws may have been venomous.”

The boy obeyed at once. He presented a sorry spectacle. His arms and hands were bathed in blood and his clothes were splashed with it.

Elsie Herbert’s eyes filled with tears.

“This is nothing,” he said to cheer her. “They’re only scratches, but they look bad.”

As a matter of fact, he did not realize until long afterwards that were it not for the fortunate accident which deprived the cat of her off foreleg, some of the tendons of his right wrist might have been severed. From the manner in which he held her she could not get the effective claws to bear crosswise.

The vicar looked grave when a first dip in the brook revealed the extent of the boy’s injuries.

“You are plucky enough to bear the application of a little brine, Martin?” he said.

Suiting the action to the word, he emptied the contents of a paper of salt into a teacup and dissolved it in hot water. Then he washed the wounds again in the brook and bound them with handkerchiefs soaked in the mixture. It was a rough-and-ready cauterization, and the pain made Martin white, but later on it earned the commendation of the doctor. Mr. Herbert was pallid himself when Elsie handed him the last handkerchief they could muster, while Mrs. Johnson was already tearing the tablecloth into strips.

“It is bad enough to have your wrists scored in this way, my lad,” he murmured, “but it will be some consolation for you to know that otherwise these cuts would have been in my little girl’s face, perhaps her eyes – great Heaven! – her eyes!”