The Revellers

“I heerd tell she was at your pleäce all hours. What beautiful frocks she has, but I should be asheämed te show me legs like her.”

“That’s the way she dresses,” said Martin curtly.

“How funny. Is she fond of you?”

“How do I know?” He tried to edge away.

Evelyn tossed her head.

“Oh, I don’t care. Why should I?”

“There’s no reason that I can tell.”

“You soon forget yer friends. On’y last Whit Monday ye bowt me a packet of chocolates.”

There was truth in this. Martin quitted her sheepishly. He drew near some men, one of whom was Fred, the groom, and Fred had been drinking, as a preliminary to the deeper potations of the coming week.

“Ay, there she is!” he muttered, with an angry leer at Kitty. “She thinks what’s good eneuf fer t’ sister is good eneuf fer her. We’ll see. Oad John Bollan’ sent ’im away wiv a flea i’ t’ lug a-Tuesday. I reckon he’ll hev one i’ t’ other ear if ’e comes after Kitty.”

One of the men grinned contemptuously.

“Gan away!” he said. “George Pickerin’ ’ud chuck you ower t’ top o’ t’ hotel if ye said ‘Booh’ to ’im.”

But Fred, too, grinned, blinking like an owl in daylight.

“Them as lives t’ longest sees t’ meäst,” he muttered, and walked toward the stables, passing close to Kitty, who looked through him without seeing him.

Suddenly there was a stir among the loiterers. Mrs. Saumarez was walking through the village with Mr. Beckett-Smythe. Behind the pair came the squire’s two sons and Angèle. The great man had called on the new visitor to Elmsdale, and together they strolled forth, while he explained the festivities of the coming week, and told the lady that these “feasts” were the creation of an act of Charles II. as a protest against the Puritanism of the Commonwealth.

Martin stood at the side of the road. Mrs. Saumarez did not notice him, but Angèle did. She lifted her chin and dropped her eyelids in clever burlesque of Elsie Herbert, the vicar’s daughter, but ignored him otherwise. Martin was hurt, though he hardly expected to be spoken to in the presence of distinguished company. But he could not help looking after the party. Angèle turned and caught his glance. She put out her tongue.

He heard a mocking laugh and knew that Evelyn Atkinson was telling her sisters of the incident, whereupon he dug his hands in his pockets and whistled.

A shooting gallery was in process of erection, and its glories soon dispelled the gloom of Angèle’s snub. The long tube was supported on stays, the target put in place, the gaudy front pieced together, and half a dozen rifles unpacked. The proprietor meant to earn a few honest pennies that night, and some of the men were persuaded to try their prowess.

Martin was a born sportsman. He watched the competitors so keenly that Angèle returned with her youthful cavaliers without attracting his attention. Worse than that, Evelyn Atkinson, scenting the possibility of rustic intrigue, caught Martin’s elbow and asked quite innocently why a bell rang if the shooter hit the bull’s-eye.

Proud of his knowledge, he explained that there was a hole in the iron plate, and that no bell, but a sheet of copper, was suspended in the box at the back where the lamp was.

Both Angèle and Evelyn appreciated the situation exactly. The boy alone was ignorant of their tacit rivalry.

Angèle pointed out Martin to the Beckett-Smythes.

“He is such a nice boy,” she said sweetly. “I see him every day. He can fight any boy in the village.”

“Hum,” said the heir. “How old is he?”

“Fourteen.”

“I am fifteen.”

Angèle smiled like a seraph.

“Regardez-vous donc!” she said. “He could twiddle you round – so,” and she spun one hand over the other.

“I’d like to see him try,” snorted the aristocrat. The opportunity offered itself sooner than he expected, but the purring of a high-powered car coming through the village street caused the pedestrians to draw aside. The car, a new and expensive one, was driven by a chauffeur, but held no passengers.

Mr. Beckett-Smythe gazed after it reflectively.

“Well, I thought I knew every car in this district,” he began.

“It is mine, I expect,” announced Mrs. Saumarez. “I’ve ordered one, and it should arrive to-day. I need an automobile for an occasional long run. For pottering about the village lanes, I may buy a pony cart.”

“What make is your car?” inquired the Squire.

“A Mercedes. I’m told it is by far the best at the price.”

“It’s the best German car, of course, but I can hardly admit that it equals the French, or even our own leading types.”

“Oh, I don’t profess to understand these things. I only know that my banker advised me to buy none other. He explained the matter simply enough. The German manufacturers want to get into the trade and are content to lose money for a year or so. You know how pushful they are.”

Beckett-Smythe saw the point clearly. He was even then hesitating between a Panhard and an Austin. He decided to wait a little longer and ascertain the facts about the Mercedes. A month later he purchased one. Mrs. Saumarez’s chauffeur, a smart young mechanic from Bremen, who spoke English fluently, demonstrated that the buyer was given more than his money’s worth. The amiable Briton wondered how such things could be, but was content to benefit personally. He, in time, spread the story. German cars enjoyed a year’s boomlet in that part of Yorkshire. With nearly every car came a smart young chauffeur mechanic. Surely, this was wisdom personified. They knew the engine, could effect nearly all road repairs, demanded less wages than English drivers, and were always civil and reliable.

“Go-ahead people, these Germans!” was the general verdict.

CHAPTER IV

THE FEAST

An Elmsdale Sunday was a day of rest for man and beast alike. There could be no manner of doubt that the horses and dogs were able to distinguish the Sabbath from the workaday week. Prince, six-year-old Cleveland bay, the strongest and tallest horse in the stable, when his headstall was taken off on Sunday morning, showed his canny Yorkshire sense by walking past the row of carts and pushing open a rickety gate that led to a tiny meadow kept expressly for odd grazing. After him, in Indian file, went five other horses; yet, on any other day in the week they would stand patiently in the big yard, waiting to be led away singly or in pairs.

Curly and Jim, the two sheep-dogs – who never failed between Monday and Saturday to yawn and stretch expectantly by the side of John Bolland’s sturdy nag in the small yard near the house – on the seventh day made their way to the foreman’s cottage, there attending his leisure for a scamper over the breezy moorland.

For, Sunday or weekday, sheep must be counted. If any are missing, the almost preternatural intelligence of the collie is invoked to discover the hollow in which the lost ones are reposing helplessly on their backs. They will die in a few hours if not placed on their legs again. Turn over unaided they cannot. Man or dog must help, or they choke.

Even the cocks and hens, the waddling geese and ducks, the huge shorthorns, which are the pride of the village, seemed to grasp the subtle distinction between life on a quiet day and the well-filled existence of the six days that had gone before. At least, Martin thought so; but he did not know then that the windows of the soul let in imageries that depend more on mood than on reality.

Personally he hated Sunday, or fancied he did. He had Sunday clothes, Sunday boots, Sunday food, a Sunday face, and a Sunday conscience. Things were wrong on Sunday that were right during the rest of the week. Though the sky was as bright, the grass as green, the birds as tuneful on that day as on others, he was supposed to undergo a metamorphosis throughout all the weary waking hours. His troubles often began the moment he quitted his bed. As his “best” clothes and boots were so little worn, they naturally maintained a spick-and-span appearance during many months. Hence, he was given a fresh assortment about once a year, and the outfit possessed three distinct periods of use, of which the first tortured his mind and the third his body.

He being a growing lad, the coat was made too long in the sleeves, the trousers too long in the legs, and the boots too large. At the beginning of this epoch he looked and felt ridiculous. Gradually, the effect of roast beef and suet dumplings brought about a better fit, and during four months of the year he was fairly smart in appearance. Then there came an ominous shrinkage. His wrists dangled below the coat cuffs, there was an ever-widening rim of stocking between the tops of the boots and the trousers’ ends, while Mrs. Bolland began to grumble each week about the amount of darning his stockings required. Moreover, there were certain quite insurmountable difficulties in the matter of buttons, and it was with a joy tempered only by fear of the grotesque that he beheld the “best” suit given away to an urchin several sizes smaller than himself.

Happily for his peace of mind, the Feast occurred in the middle stage of the current supply of raiment, so he was as presentable as a peripatetic tailor who worked in the house a fortnight at Christmas could make him.

But this Sunday dragged terribly. The routine of chapel from 10:30 A.M. to noon, Sunday-school from 3 P.M. to 4:30 P.M., and chapel again from 6:30 P.M. to 8 P.M., was inevitable, but there were compensations in the whispered confidences of Jim Bates and Tommy Beadlam, the latter nicknamed “White Head,” as to the nature of some of the shows.

The new conditions brought into his life by Angèle Saumarez troubled him far more than he could measure. Her mere presence in the secluded village carried a breath of the unknown. Her talk was of London and Paris, of parks, theatres, casinos, luxurious automobiles, deck-cabins, and Pullman cars. She seemed to have lived so long and seen so much. Yet she knew very little. Her ceaseless chatter in French and English, which sounded so smart at first, would not endure examination.

She had read nothing. When Martin spoke of “Robinson Crusoe” and “Ivanhoe,” of “Treasure Island” and “The Last of the Mohicans” – a literary medley devoured for incident and not for style – she had not even heard of them, but produced for inspection an astonishingly rude colored cartoon, the French comments on which she translated literally.