Patsy Part 15

The Duke thought it safest to make as little of the occurrence as possible. He had many debts, and the present loss of his treasures seemed a good chance to get the Government to pay off his creditors. He had, he was willing to swear, been bringing over from Ireland the moneys with which to conclude the arrangement. And now he had lost not only the treasure but his jewels as well, in the discharge of his duty to the King and the Houses of Parliament. What more fitting, therefore, than that the loss should be made good to him, together with some compensation for the wounds he had sustained in the defence of his creditors' property?

During the rest at Carlisle it was agreed that Lord Wargrove, in consultation with Mr. Robert Adam, the Duke's legal adviser and boon companion, should draw up a schedule of his losses--such as might be expected to pa.s.s the House of Commons without any of the unpleasant rakings up of the past which usually distinguished these periodical cleanings of the slate.

Only a couple of years had elapsed since the Commons had been engaged for weeks in the examination of the Duke of York's affair with Mrs.

Clarke, and the Duke of Lyonesse felt that he must not allow his application to be handicapped by the account of an attempt at abduction, such as that of which the daughter of Adam Ferris had been the object.

It became highly necessary, therefore, that the mouths of the girl's relatives should be closed, and it seemed to the Prince and his advisers that the delicate negotiations could better be conducted through Julian Wemyss, who at least could not fail to know the character of his former attache.

"Besides, I know something about _him_," said the Duke, "which will make him think twice before denouncing me."

Lord Wargrove put an eager question. He would have rejoiced to be able to repeat in society the tale of some disgraceful and unpublished scandal attached to the name of the ex-amba.s.sador.

"No, no," said the Duke, promptly, "nothing of that sort. There is nothing against him personally. But he will hold his peace for the sake of a certain great lady. Oh, Wemyss is a man. He quitted his post at Vienna rather than bring a lady's name into a quarrel, in course of which he was challenged. Now amba.s.sadors do not fight duels, so he resigned and killed his man. I was there at the time."

"Ah," said my Lord Wargrove, thoughtfully, "so he is a wine of that vintage, is he? Then we shall probably hear more of the little adventure which went to smash when that old thief's horses blundered into those white gates."

"You do not suppose," cried the Prince, startled into raising himself incautiously on his elbow so that he grimaced with pain, "that it was Wemyss who pursued us?"

"Certainly not," said Wargrove. "If he is the man you describe, he would never have fired a blunderbuss into a dark carriage. He would have stopped the horses and shot us one after the other at twenty paces like a gentleman."

"What, without seconds! That would have been murder!" exclaimed the Duke of Lyonesse, who liked well enough running away with pretty maids, but much deprecated the interference of inconvenient relatives afterwards.

As, for that matter, did most of the royal princes of that time.

_Who did their ill by stealth,_ _But blushed to find it fame._

"A man who can resign an amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p to pink his man is never in want of a second, specially in his own country. He would have fought us--be sure of that--and so far as I am concerned, the pleasure is only postponed. As for you, your Highness had better get to Windsor or Carlton House, as soon as may be."

"I cannot go to Carlton House," the Duke answered sadly, "though I dare say George would be glad enough to see me. We always had a great deal in common, but all that is of no use. The Fitz does not like me and she is ruling the roost there again."

"Well," said Wargrove, quaintly, "I shall be jotting down the provisions of my last will and testament as we are jogging along southward."

"I wonder," said his Royal Highness, pensively, "what has become of the little baggage. She would have been entrancing if we only could have got her safely trapped."

"Well," said my Lord, "you would not listen before, but I tell you now that if you _had_ trapped her, as you say, you would certainly have died in bed with a dagger in your throat. That was what she meant by 'Oh, if I only had it!' You heard her say that. I remember my cousin Southwald getting hold of an Italian girl--a little minx from Apulia, fine as silk but dusky as a Brazil nut. She fought wild and bitter like a trapped wild cat. It was at Lecce in Murat's time, but Southwald was conceited that he could gentle her. He did not care for what he called the 'full-uddered kine.' He liked them parched and lithe with eyes like smouldering fires--"

"Ah, like Patsy!" said the Duke, not yet cured of his love-sickness.

"Exactly," countered my Lord, "like Miss Patsy to a hair. Well, when we went into his tent the next morning--Murat had excused him service--he--well, he was not pretty to see. To begin with, his throat was cut and the girl nowhere to be seen. Yet I could be sworn I tied her wrists tightly enough. One look at Southwald spoilt more breakfasts than mine that day, and Murat himself, who did not stick at trifles, brought all his available officers, a whole camp of them, and made poor Southwald the text for a little discourse. No, Murat did not say anything, he only pointed, but my cousin made a better homily and application than parson ever preached."

"And pray what were either of you doing in Apulia with the brother-in-law of Buonaparte?" cried the Duke, who compounded for the sin of private cowardice by excessive public patriotism.

"You were at Vienna at the time, and ought to remember," said my Lord, quite calmly. "Murat was keen to emanc.i.p.ate himself from the yoke of the Emperor, and was playing for his own hand. Southwald and I had been sent informally from Malta to Naples to discover what lengths he was prepared to go."

"Nonsense, Wargrove, I know better," the Duke exclaimed. "That was not your real reason."

"It was that which was marked on our pa.s.sports and safe-conducts. But"

(here he yawned courteously behind his hand) "perhaps your Highness has remarked that though the Buonapartes are doubtless all great rascals, their female kind have a habit of being deucedly pretty and liberal-minded women!"

"But why then did your cousin mix himself up with little blackamoors?"

"_Chacun a son gout!_" said Wargrove, lightly. "I always knew that my taste in women was better than Southies. So he got what I tell you, and I"--(he fingered at a ribbon), "I got the Order of the Golden Fleece--Murat's own, which he had brought from Madrid after the Dos de Mayo. Murat was pleased with me. I read the burial service over Southwald out of a prayer-book his mother had written his name in, with Murat and his Frenchmen standing round with bared heads like gentlemen, though they could never have seen a priest before in a Guards' uniform."

"And the girl?" demanded the Duke. "Of course she was sought for and punished?"

Wargrove sighed long and then paused to give his words wing. "Not at all," he said. "I think the general feeling was that Southwald was a fool and deserved what he got. I know that was my own impression!"

"Jove!" cried the Duke, suddenly wroth, "I shall not suffer this, Wargrove. You mean me!"

"That," said Wargrove, with a face like a statue hewn in granite, "is precisely as your Highness pleases."

CHAPTER XIV

THE END OF AN OLD FEUD

Since the looting of his house by Laurence's dragoons, Adam Ferris had lived mostly at Abbey Burnfoot, the property of his brother-in-law Julian Wemyss. Julian was not there. He had gone to London upon unknown business. At least if Adam Ferris knew of his kinsman's mission, he would have been the very last man to speak of it.

Nor indeed, did any try to wind the secret out of him. Adam had always been a silent man, distantly smiling and peaceable, but even then there was something about the man which caused his neighbours to be careful how they meddled with him.

But now he brooded darkly, wandering much on the moor and along the sh.o.r.e. Only the old Earl dared to front him, and as there had been enmity between the houses for four hundred years, the first meeting was not without some piquancy.

It happened the first morning after Louis had taken Patsy to Castle Raincy. The old gentleman stood upon the point of etiquette, and though he was stiff with rheumatism, he drilled his shoulders and strode down the glen, crossing by the stile from which he had so often cursed the lands of Cairn Ferris and every soul who dwelt therein. But now that he had called up his men and shut the gates of Castle Raincy upon the heiress of his enemy's house, he pa.s.sed into Ferris territory as if he carried the white banner of envoy extraordinary.

There was something fresh and almost childish in the delight with which he noted every twist and turn of the long Glen burn, the trouts whisking in the brown pools or floating with their noses just showing under the shade of rugged willow roots which wind and water had undercut. He had observed these things all his life--from above, but his feet had never been set upon Ferris ground. His eyes had never looked (as it were) upon Zion, and now the goodly things were goodlier, the bunches of Eshcol grapes heavier and more purple, the pine trees n.o.bler and higher, the peeps of corn-land more enthralling to the spirit, than ever they had appeared seen from above as if marked on a chart.

Presently he came in sight of the house of Cairn Ferris with its doors and windows wrecked and broken, at the mending of which the joiners of the estate and others from Stranryan were at that moment busy. He pa.s.sed a heap of broken furniture still huddled together and smoking in a corner, at which he stood still and cursed as he if had been Adam Ferris himself.

He did not love the man nor his family. But Ferris was a gentleman and a neighbour. Only let him get to London. He would make the ears of these Hanover rats lie back when he told them an honest man's opinion of them on some day of great debate. Oh, it was not the first time he had spoken. Hear him they must and hear him they should.

Earl Raincy reached the new house of Abbey Burnfoot in safety. As he came out of the birches of the glen among which the path played hide and seek, he saw the climbing roses and red tropeolum mounting almost to the roof, the full dusky green of the hops twining to the chimney tops and setting a-swing questing tendrils from every balcony. The old man had never before seen such a building, but in an ill.u.s.trated book of travels he had come across something like it. So his heart expanded when he thought of his own austere baronial keep and the crow-stepped bluestone gables of his ancestors' many additions. The newest of those was four hundred years old, and was only beginning to lose its look of having been finished yesterday.

He shrugged his shoulders at Julian's foreign-appearing palace of pleasure.

"Very well, I dare say," he muttered; "but what will it be after a few hundred winters?"

He did not pause to think what in such circ.u.mstances he would be himself. Raincy ground would still uphold Castle Raincy. Raincys would still dwell there, but this little dainty playhouse on the sands of the Abbey Burn would long ago have been swept away by centuries of Solway storms. The thought re-established him in his own esteem, and even the Ferris rule of the coveted Twin Valleys seemed evanescent and fleeting as a cloud on a mountain side beside the invincible eternity of the Raincy dominion.

He knocked at the door and waited. The man who came was Julian's Austrian valet Joseph, courteous, grave, and exquisitely "styled," as was fitting for the house of an ex-amba.s.sador.

"Would his excellency enter? Joseph regretted much that the Earl should not find Mr. Julian. But he had been summoned to London. Yes, certainly, Mr. Adam was somewhere on the beach. He had gone out after breakfast and was still absent. If my Lord would wait, Mr. Adam should be at once informed."

But my Lord greatly preferred to see Mr. Ferris at once, and would walk along the sands till he met with him.

"As his Excellency wills," said Joseph, bowing low, and Earl Raincy went his way, tall, whitehaired and slender, to meet Patsy's father. Within tide-mark they met, at the exact point where the Raincy properties join the valley possessions of the Ferrises. Therefore in the most fitting spot--a true no-man's land, in that the foresh.o.r.e was the property of the Government, though on the "heuchs" above the b.u.t.t of the separating march d.y.k.e, built with masonry and bound and spiked with iron, testified that the Jews of the hills had no dealings with the Samaritans of the valleys. The lesson, seen close at hand, was a little marred by the fact that Louis and Stair with the a.s.sistance of a forehammer had converted certain of the spikes into a very practicable ladder which either of them, when pressed for time, could take at racing pace.