The Revellers Part 48

"Do you understand a map?" inquired Fritz.

"Yes. I love maps. They tell you everything, when you can read them properly."

"Not everyding," and the man smiled. "Some day I want to visit one of dose big farms. Can you mark a few?"

He spread an Ordnance map--a clean sheet--and gave his guide a pencil.

Soon Martin had dotted the paper with accurate information, such as none but one reared in that wild country could have supplied. He was eager to prove his familiarity with a map, and followed each bend and twist of the prehistoric glacier beds, where the lowland becks had their origin.

He was not "showing off" before a foreigner. He loved this brown moor and was only too pleased to have found a sympathetic listener.

"The heather is losing its color now," he said, pausing for a moment in his task. "You ought to see it early in August, when it is all one ma.s.s of purple flowers, with here and there a bunch of golden gorse--'whin,'

we call it. Our moor is almost free from bog-holes, so you can walk or ride anywhere with safety. I have often thought what a fine place it would be for an army."

"Wa.s.s ist das?" cried Fritz sharply. He corrected the slip with a laugh.

"An army?" he went on, though his newly acquired accent escaped him.

"Vot woot an army pe toing here?"

"Oh, just a camp, you know. We hold maneuvers every year in England."

"Yez. You coot pud all your leedle army on dis grount. Bud dere iss von grade tefecd. Dere iss no water. A vell, in eej farm, yez; bud nod enough for a hundret dousand men, und de horses of four divisions."

This point of view was novel to the boy. He knit his brows.

"I hadn't thought of that," he confessed. "But, wait a bit. There's far more water here than you would imagine. Stocks have to be watered, you know. Some of the farmers dam the becks. Why, in the d.i.c.kenson place over there," and out went a hand, "they have quite a large reservoir, with trout in it. You'd never guess it existed, if you weren't told."

Fritz nodded. He had turned against the breeze to s.h.i.+eld a match for a cigarette, and his face was hidden.

"You surprise me," he murmured, speaking slowly and with care again.

"And dere are odders, you say?"

"Five that I know of. Mrs. Walker, at the Broad Ings, rears hundreds of ducks on her pond."

Fritz took the map and pencil.

"You show me," he chuckled. "I write an essay on Yorks.h.i.+re moor farms, and perhaps earn a new suit of clo'es, yes? Our Cherman magazines print dose tings."

That same afternoon a party of guns on a Scottish moor had been shooting driven grouse flying low and fast over the b.u.t.ts before a strong wind.

The sportsmen, five in number, were all experts. Around each shelter, with its solitary marksman and his attendant loader, lay a deep crescent of game, every bird shot cleanly.

The last drive of the day was the most successful. One man, whose bronzed skin and military bearing told his profession, handed the empty 12-bore to the gillie when the line of beaters came over the crest of the hill, and betook himself, filling his pipe the while, to a group of ponies waiting on the moorland road in the valley beneath.

He joined another, the earliest arrival.

"Capital ground, this," he said. "I don't know whose lot is the more enviable, Heronsdale--yours, who have the pains as well as the pleasure of owners.h.i.+p, or that of wandering vagabonds like myself whom you make your guests."

Lord Heronsdale smiled.

"You may call yourself a wandering vagabond, Grant--the envy rests with me," he said. "It's all very well to have large estates, but I feel like degenerating into a sort of head gamekeeper and farm bailiff combined.

Of course, I'm proud of Cairn-corrie, yet I pine sometimes for the excitement of a life that does not travel in grooves."

The other shook his head.

"Don't tempt fate," he said. "My life has been spent among the outer beasts. It isn't worth it. For a few years of a man's youth, yes--perhaps. But I am forty, and I live in a club. There, you have my career in a nutsh.e.l.l."

"There is a fine kernel within. By Gad! Grant, why don't you pretend I meant that pun? I didn't, but I'll claim it at dinner. Gad, it's fine!"

Colonel Grant laughed. His mirth had a pleasant, wholesome ring.

"If you bribe me with as good a berth to-morrow," he said, "I'll give you the chance of throwing it off spontaneously during the first lull in the conversation. The best impromptus are always prepared beforehand, you know."

Others came up. The shooters mounted, and the wise ponies picked their way with cautious celerity over an uneven track. Colonel Grant again found himself riding beside his host.

"Tell you what," said Lord Heronsdale suddenly, "you're a bit of an enigma, Grant."

"I have often been told that."

"Gad, I don't doubt it. A chap like you, with five thousand a year, to chuck the Guards for the Indian Staff Corps, exchange town for the Northwest frontier, go in for potting Afghans instead of running a drag to Sandown; and, to crown all, remain a bachelor. I don't understand it."

"Yet, ten minutes ago you were growling about the monotony of existence at Cairn-corrie and half a dozen other places."

"Not even a _tu quoque_ like that explains the mystery."

"Some day I'll tell you all about it. When the time comes I must ask Lady Heronsdale to find me a nice wife, with a warranty."

"Gad, that's the job for Mollie. _She'll_ put the future Mrs. Grant through her paces. You're not flying off to India again, then?"

"No. I heard last week that a post is to be found for me in the Intelligence Department."

"Capital! You'll soon have a K. before the C. B."

"Possibly. Some fellows wear themselves to the bone in trying for those things. My scheming for years has been to avoid the humdrum of cantonment life. And, behold! I am spotted for promotion. I don't know how the deuce they ever heard of me in Pall Mall."

"Gad! Don't you read the papers?"

"Never."

"My dear fellow, they were full of you last year. That march through the snow, pulling those guns through the pa.s.s, the final relief of the fort--Gad, Molly has the cuttings. She'll show 'em to you after dinner."

"I sincerely hope Lady Heronsdale will do no such thing. Why on earth does she keep such screeds?"

His lords.h.i.+p dropped his bantering air.

"Do you really imagine, Grant," he said seriously, "that either she or I will ever forget what you did for Arthur at Peshawar?"

The other man reddened.

"A mere schoolboy episode," he growled.