“And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!”
The voice of the reader was strident, his utterance uneven, his diction illiterate. Yet he concluded the 18th chapter of the second Book of Samuel with an unctuous force born of long familiarity with the text. His laborious drone revealed no consciousness of the humanism of the Jewish King. To suggest that the Bible contained a mine of literature, a series of stories of surpassing interest, portraying as truthfully the lives of the men and women of to-day as of the nomad race which a personal God led through the wilderness, would have provoked from this man’s mouth a sluggish flood of protest. The slow-moving lips, set tight after each syllabic struggle, the shaggy eyebrows overhanging horn-rimmed spectacles, the beetling forehead and bull-like head sunk between massive shoulders, the very clutch of the big hands on the Bible held stiffly at a distance, bespoke a triumphant dogmatism that found as little actuality in the heartbroken cry of David as in a description of a seven-branched candlestick.
The boy who listened wondered why people should “think such a lot about” high priests and kings who died so long ago. David was interesting enough as a youth. The slaying of Goliath, the charming of Saul with sweet music on a harp, appealed to the vivid, if unformed, imagination of fourteen. But the temptation of the man, the splendid efforts of the monarch to rule a peevish people—these were lost on him. Worse, they wearied him, because, as it happened, he had a reasoning brain.
He refused to credit all that he heard. It was hard to believe that any man’s hair could catch in an oak so that he should be lifted up between heaven and earth, merely because he rode beneath the tree on the back of a mule. This sounded like the language of exaggeration, and sturdy little Martin Court Bolland hated exaggeration.
Again, he took the winged words literally, and the ease with which David saw, heard, spoke to the Lord was disturbing. Such things were manifestly impossible if David resembled other men, and that there were similarities between the ruler of Israel and certain male inhabitants of Elmsdale was suggested by numberless episodes of the very human history writ in the Book of Kings.
“The Lord” was a terrific personality to Martin—a personality seated on a thunder-cloud, of which the upper rim of gold and silver, shining gloriously against a cerulean sky, was Heaven, and the sullen blackness beneath, from which thunder bellowed and lightning flashed, was Hell. How could a mere man, one who pursued women like a too susceptible plowman, one who “smote” his fellows, and “kissed” them, and ate with them, hold instant communion with the tremendous Unseen, the ruler of sun and storm, the mover of worlds?
“David inquired of the Lord”; “David said to the Lord”; “The Lord answered unto David”—these phrases tortured a busy intelligence, and caused the big brown eyes to flash restlessly toward the distant hills, while quick ears and retentive brain paid close heed to the text.
For it was the word, not the spirit, that John Bolland insisted on. The boy knew too well the penalty of forgetfulness. During half an hour, from five o’clock each day, he was led drearily through the Sacred Book; if he failed to answer correctly the five minutes’ questioning which followed, the lesson was repeated, verse for verse, again, and yet again, as a punishment.
At half-past four o’clock the high tea of a north-country farmhouse was served. Then the huge Bible was produced solemnly, and no stress of circumstances, no temporary call of other business, was permitted to interfere with this daily task. At times, Bolland would be absent at fairs or detained in some distant portion of the farm. But Martin’s “portion of the Scriptures” would be marked for careful reading, and severe corporal chastisement corrected any negligence. Such was the old farmer’s mania in this regard that his portly, kind-hearted wife became as strict as John himself in supervising the boy’s lesson, merely because she dreaded the scene that would follow the slightest lapse.
So Martin could answer glibly that Ahimaaz was the son of Zadok and that Joab plunged three darts into Absalom’s heart while the scapegrace dangled from the oak. Of the love that David bore his son, of the statecraft that impelled a servant of Israel to slay the disturber of the national peace, there was never a hint. Bolland’s stark Gospel was harshly definite. There was no channel in his gnarled soul for the turbulent life-stream flowing through the ancient text.
The cold-blooded murder of Absalom, it is true, induced in the boy’s mind a certain degree of belief in the narrative, a belief somewhat strained by the manner of Absalom’s capture. Through his brain danced a tableau vivant of the scene in the wood. He saw the gayly caparisoned mule gallop madly away, leaving its rider struggling with desperate arms to free his hair from the rough grasp of the oak.
Then, through the trees came a startled man-at-arms, who ran back and brought one other, a stately warrior in accouterments that shone like silver. A squabble arose between them as to the exact nature of the King’s order concerning this same Absalom, but it was speedily determined by the leader, Joab, snatching three arrows from the soldier’s quiver and plunging them viciously, one after the other, into the breast of the man hanging between the heaven and the earth.
Martin wondered if Absalom spoke to Joab. Did he cry for mercy? Did his eyes glare awfully at his relentless foe? Did he squeal pitiful gibberish like Tom Chandler did when he chopped off his fingers in the hay-cutter? How beastly it must be to be suspended by your own hair, and see a man come forward with three barbed darts which he sticks into your palpitating bosom, probably cursing you the while!
And then appeared from the depths of the wood ten young men, who behaved like cowardly savages, for they hacked the poor corpse with sword and spear, and made mock of a gallant if erring soldier who would have slain them all if he met them on equal terms.
This was the picture that flitted before the boy’s eyes, and for one instant his tongue forgot its habitual restraint.
“Father,” he said, “why didn’t David ask God to save his son, if he wished him to live?”
“Nay, lad, I doan’t knoä. You mun listen te what’s written i’ t’ Book—no more an’ no less. I doan’t ho’d wi’ their commentaries an’ explanations, an’ what oor passon calls anilitical disquisitions. Tak’ t’ Word as it stands. That’s all ’at any man wants.”
Now, be it observed that the boy used good English, whereas the man spoke in the broad dialect of the dales. Moreover, Bolland, an out-and-out Dissenter, was clannish enough to speak of “our” parson, meaning thereby the vicar of the parish, a gentleman whom he held at arm’s length in politics and religion.
The latter discrepancy was a mere village colloquialism; the other—the marked difference between father and son—was startling, not alone by reason of their varying speech, but by the queer contrast they offered in manners and appearance.
Bolland was a typical yeoman of the moor edge, a tall, strong man, twisted and bent like the oak which betrayed Absalom, slow in his movements, heavy of foot, and clothed in brown corduroy which resembled curiously the weatherbeaten bark of a tree. There was a rugged dignity in his bearded face, and the huge spectacles he had now pushed high up on his forehead lent a semblance of greater age than he could lay claim to. Yet was he a lineal descendant of Gurth, the swineherd, Gurth, uncouth and unidealized.
The boy, a sturdy, country-built youngster in figure and attire, had a face of much promise. His brow was lofty and open, his mouth firm and well formed, his eyes fearless, if a trifle dreamy at times. His hands, too, were not those of a farmer’s son. Strong they were and scarred with much use, but the fingers tapered elegantly, and the thumbs were long and straight.
Certainly, the heavy-browed farmer, with his drooping nether lip and clumsy spatulate digits, had not bequeathed these bucolic attributes to his son. As they sat there, in the cheerful kitchen where the sunbeams fell on sanded floor and danced on the burnished contents of a full “dresser,” they presented a dissimilarity that was an outrage on heredity.
Usually, the reading ended, Martin effaced himself by way of the back door. Thence, through a garden orchard that skirted the farmyard, he would run across a meadow, jump two hedges into the lane which led back to the village street, and so reach the green where the children played after school hours.
He was forced early to practice a degree of dissimulation. Though he hated a lie, he at least acted a reverent appreciation of the chapter just perused. His boyish impulses lay with the cricketers, the minnow-catchers, the players of prisoner’s base, the joyous patrons of well-worn “pitch” and gurgling brook. But he knew that the slightest indication of grudging this daily half-hour would mean the confiscation of the free romp until supper-time at half-past eight. So he paid heed to the lesson, and won high praise from his preceptor in the oft-expressed opinion:
“Martin will make a rare man i’ time.”
To-day he did not hurry away as usual. For one reason, he was going with a gamekeeper to see some ferreting at six o’clock, and there was plenty of time; for another, it thrilled him to find that there were episodes in the Bible quite as exciting as any in the pages of “The Scalp-Hunters,” a forbidden work now hidden with others in the store of dried bracken at the back of the cow-byre.
So he said rather carelessly: “I wonder if he kicked?”
“You wunner if wheä kicked?” came the slow response.
“Absalom, when Joab stabbed him. The other day, when the pigs were killed, they all kicked like mad.”
Bolland laid down the Bible and glanced at Martin with a puzzled air. He was not annoyed or even surprised at the unlooked-for deduction. It had simply never occurred to him that one might read the Bible and construct actualities from the plain-spoken text.
“Hoo div’ I knoä?” he said calmly; “it says nowt about it i’ t’ chapter.”
Then Martin awoke with a start. He saw how nearly he had betrayed himself a second time, how ready were the lips to utter ungoverned thoughts.
He flushed slightly.
“Is that all for to-day, father?” he said.
Before Bolland could answer, there came a knock at the door.
“See wheä that is,” said the farmer, readjusting his spectacles.
A big, hearty-looking young man entered. He wore clothes of a sporting cut and carried a hunting-crop, with the long lash gathered in his fingers.
“Oah, it’s you, is it, Mr. Pickerin’?” said Bolland, and Martin’s quick ears caught a note of restraint, almost of hostility, in the question.
“Yes, Mr. Bolland, an’ how are ye?” was the more friendly greeting. “I just dropped in to have a settlement about that beast.”
“A sattlement! What soart o’ sattlement?”
The visitor sat down, uninvited, and produced some papers from his pocket.
“Well, Mr. Bolland,” he said quietly, “it’s not more’n four months since I gave you sixty pounds for a thoroughbred shorthorn, supposed to be in calf to Bainesse Boy the Third.”
“Right enough, Mr. Pickerin’. You’ve gotten t’ certificates and t’ receipt for t’ stud fee.”
Martin detected the latent animosity in both voices. The reiterated use of the prefix “Mr.” was an exaggerated politeness that boded a dispute.
“Receipts, certificates!” cried Pickering testily. “What good are they to me? She cannot carry a calf. For all the use I can make of her, I might as well have thrown the money in the fire.”
“Eh, but she’s a well-bred ’un,” said Bolland, with sapient head-shake.
“She might be a first-prize winner at the Royal by her shape and markings; but, as matters stand, she’ll bring only fifteen pounds from a butcher. I stand to lose forty-five pounds by the bargain.”
“You canna fly i’ t’ feäce o’ Providence, Mr. Pickerin’.”
“Providence has little to do with it, I fancy. I can sell her to somebody else, if I like to work a swindle with her. I had my doubts at the time that she was too cheap.”
John Bolland rose. His red face was dusky with anger, and it sent a pang through Martin’s heart to see something of fear there, too.
“Noo, what are ye drivin’ at?” he growled, speaking with ominous calmness.
“You know well enough,” came the straight answer. “The poor thing has something wrong with her, and she will never hold a calf. Look here, Bolland, meet me fairly in the matter. Either give me back twenty pounds, and we’ll cry ‘quits,’ or sell me another next spring at the same price, and I’ll take my luck.”
Perhaps this via media might have been adopted had it presented itself earlier. But the word “swindle” stuck in the farmer’s throat, and he sank back into his chair.
“Nay, nay,” he said. “A bargain’s a bargain. You’ve gotten t’ papers——”
It was the buyer’s turn to rise.
“To the devil with you and your papers!” he shouted. “Do you think I came here without making sure of my facts? Twice has this cow been in calf in your byre, and each time she missed. You knew her failing, and sold her under false pretenses. Of course, I cannot prove it, or I would have the law of you; but I did think you would act squarely.”
For some reason the elder Bolland was in a towering rage. Martin had never before seen him so angry, and the boy was perplexed by the knowledge that what Pickering said was quite true.
“I’ll not be sworn at nor threatened wi’ t’ law in my own house,” bellowed the farmer. “Get out! Look tiv’ your own business an’ leave me te follow mine.”
Pickering, too, was in a mighty temper. He took a half stride forward and shook out the thong of the whip.
“You psalm-singing humbug!” he thundered. “If you were a younger man——”
Martin jumped between them; his right hand clenched a heavy kitchen poker.
Pickering half turned to the door with a bitter laugh.
“All right, my young cub!” he shouted. “I’m not such a fool, thank goodness, as to make bad worse. It’s lucky for you, boy, that you are not of the same kidney as that old ranter there. Catch me ever having more to do with any of his breed.”
“An’ what affair is it of yours, Mr. Pickerin’, who the boy belongs to? If all tales be true, you can’t afford to throw stones at other folks’s glass houses!”
Mrs. Bolland, stout, hooded, aproned, and fiery red in face, had come from the dairy, and now took a hand in the argument.
Pickering, annoyed at the unlooked-for presence of a woman, said sternly:
“Talk to your husband, not to me, ma’am. He wronged me by getting three times the value for a useless beast, and if you can convince him that he took an unfair advantage, I’m willing, even now——”
But Mrs. Bolland had caught the flicker of amazement in Martin’s eye and was not to be mollified.
“Who are you, I’d like to know?” she shrilled, “coomin’ te one’s house an’ scandalizin’ us? A nice thing, to be sure, for a man like you to call John Bolland a wrongdoer. The cow won’t calve, won’t she? ’Tis a dispensation on you, George Pickerin’. You’re payin’ for yer own misdeeds. There’s plenty i’ Elmsdale wheä ken your char-ak-ter, let me tell you that. What’s become o’ Betsy Thwaites?”
But Pickering had resigned the contest. He was striding toward the “Black Lion,” where a dogcart awaited him, and he laughed to himself as the flood of vituperation swelled from the door of the farm.
“Gad!” he muttered, “how these women must cackle in the market! One old cow is hardly worth so much fuss!”
Still smiling at the storm he had raised, he gathered the reins, gave Fred, the ostler, a sixpence, and would have driven off had he not seen a pretty serving-maid gazing out through an upper window. Her face looked familiar.
“Hello!” he cried. “You and I know each other, don’t we?”
“No, we doan’t; an’ we’re not likely to,” was the pert reply.
“Eh, my! What have I done now?”
“Nowt to me, but my sister is Betsy Thwaites.”
“The deuce she is! Betsy isn’t half as nice-looking as you.”
“More shame on you that says it.”
“But, my dear girl, one should tell the truth and shame the devil.”
“Just listen to him!” Yet the window was raised a little higher, and the girl leaned out, for Pickering was a handsome man, with a tremendous reputation for gallantry of a somewhat pronounced type.
Fred, the stable help, struck the cob smartly with his open hand. Pickering swore, and bade him leave the mare alone and be off.
“I was sorry for Betsy,” he said, when the prancing pony was quieted, “but she and I agreed to differ. I got her a place at Hereford, and hope she’ll be married soon.”
“You’ll get me no place at Hereford, Mr. Pickerin’”—this with a coquettish toss of the head.
“Of course not. When is the feast here?”
“Next Monday it starts.”
“Very well. Good-by. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He blew her a kiss, and she laughed. As the smart turnout rattled through the village she looked after him.
“Betsy always did say he was such a man,” she murmured. “I’ll smack his feäce, though, if he comes near me a-Monday.”
And Fred, leaning sulkily over the yard gate, spat viciously on Pickering’s sixpence.
“Coomin’ here for t’ feäst, is he?” he growled. “Happen he’d better bide i’ Nottonby.”
Pickering left ruffled breasts behind him. The big farm in the center of the village was known as the White House, and had been owned by a Bolland since there were Bollands in the county. It was perched on a bank that rose steeply some twenty feet or more from the main road. Cartways of stiff gradient led down to the thoroughfare on either hand. A strong retaining wall, crowned with gooseberry bushes, marked the confines of the garden, which adjoined a row of cottages tenanted by laborers. Then came the White House itself, thatched, cleanly, comfortable-looking; beyond it, all fronting on the road, were stables and outbuildings.
Behind lay the remainder of the kitchen garden and an orchard, backed by a strip of meadowland that climbed rapidly toward the free moor with its whins and heather—a far-flung range of mountain given over to grouse and hardy sheep, and cleft by tiny ravines of exceeding beauty.
Across the village street stood some modern iron-roofed buildings, where Bolland kept his prize stock, and here was situated the real approach to the couple of hundred acres of rich arable land which he farmed. The house and rear pastures were his own; he rented the rest. Of late years he had ceased to grow grain, save for the limited purposes of his stock, and had gone in more and more for pedigree cattle.
Pickering’s words had hurt him sorely, since they held an element of truth. The actual facts were these: One of his best cows had injured herself by jumping a fence, and a calf was born prematurely. Oddly enough, a similar accident had occurred the following year. On the third occasion, when the animal was mated with Bainesse Boy III, Bolland thought it best not to tempt fortune again, but sold her for something less than the enhanced value which the circumstances warranted. From a similar dam and the same sire he bred a yearling bull which realized £250, or nearly the rent of his holding, so Pickering had really overstated his case, making no allowance for the lottery of stock-raising.
The third calf might have been normal and of great value. It was not. Bolland suspected the probable outcome and had acted accordingly. It was the charge of premeditated unfairness that rankled and caused him such heart-burning.
When Mrs. Bolland, turkey-red in face, and with eyes still glinting fire, came in and slammed the door, she told Martin, angrily, to be off, and not stand there with his ears cocked like a terrier’s.
The boy went out. He did not follow his accustomed track. He hesitated whether or not to go rabbiting. Although far too young to attach serious import to the innuendoes he had heard, he could not help wondering what Pickering meant by that ironical congratulation on the subject of his paternity.
His mother, too, had not repelled the charge directly, but had gone out of her way to heap counter-abuse on the vilifier. It was odd, to say the least of it, and he found himself wishing heartily that either the unfortunate cow had not been sold or that his father had met Mr. Pickering’s protests more reasonably.
A whistle came from the lane that led up to the moor. Perched on a gate was a white-headed urchin.
“Aren’t ye coomin’ te t’ green?” was his cry, seeing that Martin heard him.
“Not this evening, thanks.”
“Oah, coom on. They’re playin’ tig, an’ none of ’em can ketch Jim Bates.”
That settled it. Jim Bates’s pride must be lowered, and ferrets were forgotten.
But Jim Bates had his revenge. If he could not run as fast as Martin, he made an excellent pawn in the hands of fortune. Had the boy gone to the rabbit warren, he would not have seen the village again until after eight o’clock, and, possibly, the current of his life might have entered a different runnel. In the event, however, he was sauntering up the village street, when he encountered a lady and a little girl, accompanied by a woman whose dress reminded him of nuns seen in pictures. The three were complete strangers, and although Martin was unusually well-mannered for one reared in a remote Yorkshire hamlet, he could not help staring at them fixedly.
The Normandy nurse alone was enough to draw the eyes of the whole village, and Martin knew well it was owing to mere chance that a crowd of children was not following her already.
The lady was tall and of stately carriage. She was dressed quietly, but in excellent taste. Her very full face looked remarkably pink, and her large blue eyes stared out of puffy sockets. Beyond these unfavorable details, she was a handsome woman, and the boy thought vaguely that she must have motored over from the castle midway between Elmsdale and the nearest market town of Nottonby.
Yet it was on the child that his wondering gaze dwelt longest. She looked about ten years old. Her elfin face was enshrined in jet-black hair, and two big bright eyes glanced inquiringly at him from the depths of a wide-brimmed, flowered-covered hat. A broad blue sash girdled her white linen dress; the starched skirts stood out like the frills of a ballet dancer.
Her shapely legs were bare from above the knees, and her tiny feet were encased in sandals. At Trouville she would be pronounced “sweet” by enthusiastic admirers of French fashion, but in a north-country village she was absurdly out of place. Nevertheless, being a remarkably self-possessed little maiden, she returned with interest Martin’s covert scrutiny.
He would have passed on, but the lady lifted a pair of mounted eyeglasses and spoke to him.
“Boy,” she said in a flute-like voice, “can you tell me which is the White House?”
Martin’s cap flew off.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, pointing. “That is it. I live there.”
“Oh, indeed. And what is your name?”
“Martin Court Bolland, ma’am.”
“What an odd name. Why were you christened Martin Court?”
“I really don’t know, ma’am. I didn’t bother about it at the time, and since then have never troubled to inquire.”
Now, to be candid, Martin did not throw off this retort spontaneously. It was a little effusion built up through the years, the product of frequent necessity to answer the question. But the lady took it as a coruscation of rustic wit, and laughed. She turned to the nurse:
“Il m’a rendu la monnaie de ma pièce, Françoise.”
“J’en suis bien sûr, madame, mais qu’est-ce qu’il a dit?” said the nurse.
The other translated rapidly, and the nurse grinned.
“Ah, il est naïf, le petit,” she commented. “Et très gentil.”
“Oh, maman,” chimed in the child, “je serais heureuse si vous vouliez me permettre de jouer avec ce joli garçon.”
“Attendez, ma belle. Pas si vite.... Now, Martin Court, take me to your mother.”
Not knowing exactly what to do with his cap, the boy had kept it in his hand. The foregoing conversation was, of course, so much Greek in his ears. He realized that they were talking about him, and was fully alive to the girl’s demure admiration. The English words came with the more surprise, seeing that they followed so quickly on some remark in an unknown tongue.
He led the way at once, hoping that his mother had regained her normal condition of busy cheerfulness.
Silence reigned in the front kitchen when he pressed the latch. The room was empty, but the clank of pattens in the yard revealed that the farmer’s thrifty wife was sparing her skirts from the dirt while she crossed to the pig tub with a pailful of garbage.
“Will you take a seat, ma’am?” said Martin politely. “I’ll tell mother you are here.”
With a slight awkwardness he pulled three oaken chairs from the serried rank they occupied along the wall beneath the high-silled windows. Feeling all eyes fixed on him quizzically, he blushed.
“Ah, v’là le p’tit. Il rougit!” laughed the nurse.
“Don’t tease him, nurse!” cried the child in English. “He is a nice boy. I like him.”
Clearly this was for Martin’s benefit. Already the young lady was a coquette.
Mrs. Bolland, hearing there were “ladies” to visit her, entered with trepidation. She expected to meet the vicar’s aunt and one of that lady’s friends. In a moment of weakness she had consented to take charge of the refreshment stall at a forthcoming bazaar in aid of certain church funds. But Bolland was told that the incumbent was adopting ritualistic practices, so he sternly forbade his better half to render any assistance whatsoever. The Established Church was bad enough; it was a positive scandal to introduce into the service aught that savored of Rome.
Poor Mrs. Bolland therefore racked her brain for a reasonable excuse as she crossed the yard, and it is not to be wondered at if she was struck almost dumb with surprise at sight of the strangers.
“Are you Mrs. Bolland?” asked the lady, without rising, and surveying her through the eyeglasses with head tilted back.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ah. Exactly. I—er—am staying at The Elms for some few weeks, and the people there recommended you as supplying excellent dairy produce. I am—er—exceedingly particular about butter and milk, as my little girl is so delicate. Have you any objection to allowing me to inspect your dairy? I may add that I will pay you well for all that I order.”
The lady’s accent, no less than the even flow of her words, joined to unpreparedness for such fashionable visitors, temporarily bereft Mrs. Bolland of a quick, if limited, understanding.
“Did ye say ye wanted soom bootermilk?” she cried vacantly.
“No, mother,” interrupted Martin anxiously. For the first time in his life he was aware of a hot and uncomfortable feeling that his mother was manifestly inferior to certain other people in the world. “The lady wishes to see the dairy.”
“Why?”
“She wants to buy things from you, and—er—I suppose she would like to see what sort of place we keep them in.”
No manner of explanation could have restored Mrs. Bolland’s normal senses so speedily as the slightest hint that uncleanliness could harbor its microbes in her house.
“My goodness, ma’am,” she cried, “wheä’s bin tellin’ you that my pleäce hez owt wrong wi’t?”
Now it was the stranger’s turn to appeal to Martin, and the boy showed his mettle by telling his mother, in exact detail, the request made by the lady and her reference to the fragile-looking child.
Mrs. Bolland’s wrath subsided, and her lips widened in a smile.
“Oah, if that’s all,” she said, “coom on, ma’am, an’ welcome. Ye canna be too careful about sike things, an’ yer little lass do look pukey, te be sure.”
The lady, gathering her skirts for the perilous passage of the yard, followed the farmer’s wife.
Martin and the girl sat and stared at each other. She it was who began the conversation.
“Have you lived here long?” she said.
“All my life,” he answered. Pretty and well-dressed as she was, he had no dread of her. He regarded girls as spiteful creatures who scratched one another like cats when angry and shrieked hysterically when they played.
“That’s not very long,” she cried.
“No; but it’s longer than you’ve lived anywhere else.”
“Me! I have lived everywhere—in London, Berlin, Paris, Nice, Montreux—O, je ne sais—I beg your pardon. Perhaps you don’t speak French?”
“No.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“Yes, very much.”
“I’ll teach you. It will be such fun. I know all sorts of naughty words. I learnt them in Monte Carlo, where I could hear the servants chattering when I was put to bed. Watch me wake up nurse. Françoise, mon chou! Cré nom d’un pipe, mais que vous êtes triste aujourd’hui!”
The bonne started. She shook the child angrily.
“You wicked girl!” she cried in French. “If madame heard you, she would blame me.”
The imp cuddled her bare knees in a paroxysm of glee.
“You see,” she shrilled. “I told you so.”
“Was all that swearing?” demanded Martin gravely.
“Some of it.”
“Then you shouldn’t do it. If I were your brother, I’d hammer you.”
“Oh, would you, indeed! I’d like to see any boy lay a finger on me. I’d tear his hair out by the roots.”
Naturally, the talk languished for a while, until Martin thought he had perhaps been rude in speaking so brusquely.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said.
The saucy, wide-open eyes sparkled.
“I forgive you,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen. And you?”
“Twelve.”
He was surprised. “I thought you were younger,” he said.
“So does everybody. You see, I’m tiny, and mamma dresses me in this baby way. I don’t mind. I know your name. You haven’t asked me mine.”
“Tell me,” he said with a smile.
“Angèle. Angèle Saumarez.”
“I’ll never be able to say that,” he protested.
“Oh, yes, you will. It’s quite easy. It sounds Frenchy, but I am English, except in my ways, mother says. Now try. Say ‘An’——”
“Ang——”
“Not so much through your nose. This way—‘An-gèle.’”
The next effort was better, but tuition halted abruptly when Martin discovered that Angèle’s mother, instead of being “Mrs. Saumarez,” was “the Baroness Irma von Edelstein.”
“Oh, crikey!” he blurted out. “How can that be?”
Angèle laughed at his blank astonishment.
“Mamma is a German baroness,” she explained. “My papa was a colonel in the British army, but mamma did not lose her courtesy title when she married. Of course, she is Mrs. Saumarez, too.”
These subtleties of Burke and the Almanach de Gotha went over Martin’s head.
“It sounds a bit like an entry in a stock catalogue,” he said.
Angèle, in turn, was befogged, but saw instantly that the village youth was not sufficiently reverent to the claims of rank.
“You can never be a gentleman unless you learn these things,” she announced airily.
“You don’t say,” retorted Martin with a smile. He was really far more intelligent than this pert monitress, and had detected a curious expression on the stolid face of Françoise when the Baroness von Edelstein’s name cropped up in a talk which she could not understand. The truth was that the canny Norman woman, though willing enough to take a German mistress’s gold, thoroughly disliked the lady’s nationality. Martin could only guess vaguely at something of the sort, but the mere guess sufficed.
Angèle, however, wanted no more bickering just then. She was about to resume the lesson when the Baroness and Mrs. Bolland re-entered the house. Evidently the inspection of the dairy had been satisfactory, and the lady had signified her approval in words that pleased the older woman greatly.
The visitor was delighted, too, with the old-world appearance of the kitchen, the heavy rafters with their load of hams and sides of bacon, the oaken furniture, the spotless white of the well-scrubbed ash-topped table, the solemn grandfather’s clock, and the rough stone floor, over which soft red sandstone had been rubbed when wet.
By this time the tact of the woman of society had accommodated her words and utterance to the limited comprehension of her hearer, and she displayed such genuine interest in the farm and its belongings that Mrs. Bolland gave her a hearty invitation to come next morning, when the light would be stronger. Then “John” would let her see his prize stock and the extensive buildings on “t’ other side o’ t’ road.... T’ kye (the cows) were fastened up for t’ neet” by this time.
The baroness was puzzled, but managed to catch the speaker’s drift.
“I do not rise very early,” she said. “I breakfast about eleven”—she could not imagine what a sensation this statement caused in a house where breakfast was served never later than seven o’clock—“and it takes me an hour to dress; but I can call about twelve, if that will suit.”
“Ay, do, ma’am,” was the cheery agreement. “You’ll be able te see t’ farmhands havin’ their dinner. It’s a fair treat te watch them men an’ lads puttin’ away a beefsteak pie.”
“And this is your little boy?” said the other, evidently inclined for gossip.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He is a splendid little fellow. What a nice name you gave him—Martin Court Bolland—so unusual. How came you to select his Christian names?”
The question caused the farmer’s wife a good deal of unnoticed embarrassment. The baroness was looking idly at an old colored print of York Castle, and the boy himself was far too taken up with Angèle to listen to the chat of his elders.
Mrs. Bolland laughed confusedly.
“Martin,” she said. “Tak t’ young leddy an’ t’ nurse as far as t’ brig, an’ show ’em t’ mill.”
The baroness was surprised at this order, but an explanation was soon forthcoming. In her labored speech and broad dialect, the farmer’s wife revealed a startling romance. Thirteen years ago her husband’s brother died suddenly while attending a show at Islington, and the funeral took John and herself to London. They found the place so vast and noisy that it overwhelmed them; but in the evening, after the ceremony at Abney Park, they strolled out from their hotel near King’s Cross Station to see the sights.
Not knowing whither they were drifting, they found themselves, an hour later, gazing at St. Paul’s Cathedral from the foot of Ludgate Hill. They were walking toward the stately edifice, when a terrible thing happened.
A young woman fell, or threw herself, from a fourth-floor window onto the pavement of St. Martin’s Court. In her arms was an infant, a boy twelve months old. Providence saved him from the instant death met by his mother. A projecting signboard caught his clothing, tore him from the encircling arms, and held him a precarious second until the rent frock gave way.
But John Bolland’s sharp eyes had noted the child’s momentary escape. He sprang forward and caught the tiny body as it dropped. At that hour, nearly nine o’clock, the court was deserted, and Ludgate Hill had lost much of its daily crowd. Of course, a number of passers-by gathered; and a policeman took the names and address of the farmer and his wife, they being the only actual witnesses of the tragedy.
But what was to be done with the baby? Mrs. Bolland volunteered to take care of it for the night, and the policeman was glad enough to leave it with her when he ascertained that no one in the house from which the woman fell knew anything about her save that she was a “Mrs. Martineau,” and rented a furnished room beneath the attic.
The inquest detained the Bollands another day in town. Police inquiries showed that the unfortunate young woman had committed suicide. A letter, stuck to a dressing-table with a hatpin, stated her intention, and that her name was not Martineau. Would the lady like to see the letter?
“Oh, dear, no!” said the baroness hastily. “Your story is awfully interesting, but I could not bear to read the poor creature’s words.”
Well, the rest was obvious. Mrs. Bolland was childless after twenty years of married life. She begged for the bairn, and her husband allowed her to adopt it. They gave the boy their own name, but christened him after the scene of his mother’s death and his own miraculous escape. And there he was now, coming up the village street, leading Angèle confidently by the hand—a fine, intelligent lad, and wholly different from every other boy in the village.
Not even the squire’s sons equaled him in any respect, and the teacher of the village school gave him special lessons. Perhaps the lady had noticed the way he spoke. The teacher was proud of Martin’s abilities, and he tried to please her by not using the Yorkshire dialect.
“Ah, I see,” said the baroness quietly. “His history is quite romantic. But what will he become when he grows up—a farmer, like his adopted father?”
“John thinks te mak’ him a minister,” said Mrs. Bolland with genial pride.
“A minister! Do you mean a preacher, a Nonconformist person?”
“Why, yes, ma’am. John wouldn’t hear of his bein’ a parson.”
“Grand Dieu! Quelle bêtise! I beg your pardon. Of course, you will do what is best for him.... Well, ma belle, have you enjoyed your little walk?”
“Oh, so much, mamma. The miller has such lovely pigs, so fat, so tight that you can’t pinch them. And there’s a beautiful dog, with four puppy dogs. I’m so glad we came here. J’en suis bien aise.”
“She’s a queer little girl,” said Mrs. Bolland, as Martin and she watched the party walking back to The Elms. “I couldn’t tell half what she said.”
“No, mother,” he replied. “She goes off into French without thinking, and her mother’s a German baroness, who married an English officer. The nurse doesn’t speak any English. I wish I knew French and German. French, at any rate.”
Preparations for the forthcoming “Feast” were varied by gossip concerning “the baroness,” her daughter, and the Normandy bonne. Elmsdale had never before set eyes on any human beings quite so foreign to its environment. At first, the canny Yorkshire folk were much intrigued by the lady’s title. A princess or a duchess they had read of; a marchioness and a countess they had seen, because the county of broad acres finds room for a great many noble houses; and baronets’ wives, each a “Lady” by perspective right, were so plentiful as to arouse no special comment.
But a “baroness” was rather un-English, while Elmsdale frankly refused to pronounce her name other than “Eedelsteen.” The village was ready to allude to her as “her ladyship,” but was still doubtful whether or not to grant her the prefix “Lady,” when the question was settled in a wholly unexpected way by the announcement that the baroness preferred to be addressed as “Mrs. Saumarez.” In fact, she was rather annoyed that Angèle should have flaunted the title at all.
“I am English by marriage, and proud of my husband’s name,” she explained. “He was a gallant officer, who fell in the Boer War, and I have long since left the use of my German rank for purely official occasions. It is no secret, of course, but Angèle should not have mentioned it.”
Elmsdale liked this democratic utterance. It made these blunt Yorkshire folk far readier to address her as “your ladyship” than would have been the case otherwise, and, truth to tell, she never chided them for any lapse of the sort, though, in accordance with her wish, she became generally known as Mrs. Saumarez.
She rented a suite at The Elms, a once pretentious country mansion owned by a family named Walker. The males had died, the revenues had dwindled, and two elderly maiden ladies, after taking counsel with the vicar, had advertised their house in a society newspaper.
Mrs. Saumarez said she was an invalid. She required rest and good air. Françoise, since Angèle had outgrown the attentions of a nurse, was employed mainly as her mistress’s confidential servant. Françoise either could not or would not speak English; Mrs. Saumarez gave excellent references and no information as to her past, while Angèle’s volatile reminiscences of continental society had no meaning for Elmsdale.
But it was abundantly clear that Mrs. Saumarez was rich. She swept aside the arrangements made by the Misses Walker for her comfort, chose her own set of apartments, ordered things wholly her own way, and paid double the terms originally demanded.
The day following her visit to the White House she descended on the chief grocer, whose shop was an emporium of many articles outside his trade, but mostly of a cheap order.
“Mr. Webster,” she said in her grand manner, “few of the goods you stock will meet my requirements. I prefer to deal with local tradesmen, but they must meet my wants. Now, if you are prepared to cater for me, you will not only save me the trouble of ordering supplies from London, but make some extra profit. You have proper agents, no doubt, so you must obtain everything of the best quality. You understand. I shall never grumble at the prices; but the least inferiority will lead me to withdraw my custom.”
It was a sore point with Mr. Webster that “the squire” dealt with the Stores. He promised implicit obedience, and wrote such instructions to Leeds, his supply town, that the wholesale house there wondered who had come to live at Elmsdale.
The proprietress of the “Black Lion,” hearing the golden tales that circulated through the village, dressed in her best one afternoon and called at The Elms in the hope of obtaining patronage for wines, bottled beer, and mineral waters. Mrs. Saumarez was resting. The elder Miss Walker conveyed Mrs. Atkinson’s name and business. Some conversation took place between Mrs. Saumarez and Françoise, with the result that Mrs. Atkinson was instructed to supply Schweppe’s soda water, but “no intoxicants.”
So Mrs. Saumarez was a teetotaller. The secretary of the local branch of the Good Templars donned a faded black coat and a rusty tall hat and sent in a subscription list. It came out with a guinea. The vicar was at The Elms next day. Mrs. Saumarez received him graciously and gave him a five-pound note toward the funds of the bazaar which would be opened next week. Most decidedly the lady was an acquisition. When Miss Martha Walker was enjoined by her sister, Miss Emmy, to find out how long Mrs. Saumarez intended to remain at Elmsdale—on the plausible pretext that the terms would be lowered for a monthly tenancy—she was given a curt reply.
“I am a creature of moods. I may be here a day, a year. At present the place suits me. And Angèle is brimming over with health. But it is fatal if I am told I must remain a precise period anywhere. That is why I never go to Carlsbad.”
Miss Martha did not understand the reference to Carlsbad; but the nature of the reply stopped effectually all further curiosity as to Mrs. Saumarez’s plans. It also insured unflagging service.
Hardly a day passed that the newcomer did not call at the White House. She astounded John Bolland by the accuracy of her knowledge concerning stock, and annoyed him, too, by remarking that some of his land required draining.
“Your lower pastures are too rank,” she said. “So long as there is a succession of fine seasons it does not matter, but a wet spring and summer will trouble you. You will have fifty acres of water-sodden meadows, and nothing breeds disease more quickly.”
“None o’ my cattle hev had a day’s illness, short o’ bein’ a trifle overfed wi’ oil cake,” he said testily.
“Quite so. You told me that in former years you raised wheat and oats there. I’m talking about grass.”
Martin and Angèle became close friends. The only children of the girl’s social rank in the neighborhood were the vicar’s daughter, Elsie Herbert, and the squire’s two sons, Frank and Ernest Beckett-Smythe. Mr. Beckett-Smythe was a widower. He lived at the Hall, three-quarters of a mile away, and had not as yet met Mrs. Saumarez. Angèle would have nothing to do with Elsie.
“I don’t like her,” she confided to Martin. “She doesn’t care for boys, and I adore them. She’s trop reglée for me.”
“What is that?”
“Well, she holds her nose—so.”
Angèle tilted her head and cast down her eyes.
“Of course, I don’t know her, but she seems to be a nice girl,” said Martin.
“Why do you say, ‘Of course, I don’t know her’? She lives here, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, but my father is a farmer. She has a governess, and goes to tea at the Hall. I’ve met her driving from the Castle. She’s above me, you see.”
Angèle laughed maliciously.
“O là là! c’est pour rire! I’m sorry. She is—what do you say—a little snob.”
“No, no,” protested Martin. “I think she would be very nice, if I knew her. You’ll like her fine when you play with her.”
“Me! Play with her, so prim, so pious. I prefer Jim Bates. He winked at me yesterday.”
“Did he? Next time I see him I’ll make it hard for him to wink.”
Angèle clapped her hands and pirouetted.
“What,” she cried, “you will fight him, and for me! What joy! It’s just like a story book. You must kick him, so, and he will fall down, and I will kiss you.”
“I will not kick him,” said the indignant Martin. “Boys don’t kick in England. And I don’t want to be kissed.”
“Don’t boys kiss in England?”
“Well ... anyhow, I don’t.”
“Then we are not sweethearts. I shan’t kiss you, and you must just leave Jim Bates alone.”
Martin was humiliated. He remained silent and angry during the next minute. By a quick turn in the conversation Angèle had placed him in a position of rivalry with another boy, one with whom she had not exchanged a word.
“Look here,” he said, after taking thought, “if I kiss your cheek, may I lick Jim Bates?”
This magnanimous offer was received with derision.
“I forbid you to do either. If you do, I’ll tell your father.”
The child had discovered already the fear with which Martin regarded the stern, uncompromising Methodist yeoman—a fear, almost a resentment, due to Bolland’s injudicious attempts to guide a mere boy into the path of serious and precise religion. Never had Martin found the daily reading of Scripture such a burden as during the past few days. The preparations for the feast, the cricket-playing, running and jumping of the boys practicing for prizes—these disturbing influences interfered sadly with the record of David’s declining years.
Even now, with Angèle’s sarcastic laughter ringing in his ears, he was compelled to leave her and hurry to the front kitchen, where the farmer was waiting with the Bible opened. At the back door he paused and looked at her. She blew him a kiss.
“Good boy!” she cried. “Mind you learn your lesson.”
“And mind you keep away from those cowsheds. Your nurse ought to have been here. It’s tea time.”
“I don’t want any tea. I’m going to smell the milk. I love the smell of a farmyard. Don’t you? But, there! You have never smelt anything else. Every place has its own smell. Paris smells like smoky wood. London smells of beer. Here there is always the smell of cows....”
“Martin!” called a harsh voice from the interior, and the boy perforce brought his wandering wits to bear on the wrongdoing of David in taking a census of the people of Israel.
He read steadily through the chapter which described how a pestilence swept from Dan to Beersheba and destroyed seventy thousand men, all because David wished to know how many troops he could muster.