The Revellers Part 1

The Revellers.

by Louis Tracy.

CHAPTER I

QUESTIONINGS

"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 G.o.d 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 surpa.s.sing interest, portraying as truthfully the lives of the men and women of to-day as of the nomad race which a personal G.o.d 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 s.h.a.ggy eyebrows overhanging horn-rimmed spectacles, the beetling forehead and bull-like head sunk between ma.s.sive 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 st.u.r.dy 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 thunder-cloud, of which the upper rim of gold and silver, s.h.i.+ning gloriously against a cerulean sky, was Heaven, and the sullen blackness beneath, from which thunder bellowed and lightning flashed, was h.e.l.l.

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 circ.u.mstances, 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 G.o.d to save his son, if he wished him to live?"

"Nay, lad, I doan't kno. 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 pa.s.son 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 st.u.r.dy, 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 whe 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 kno?" 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 whe 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.