Patsy Part 23

"Eh?" cried the old lady, cramming the letter into her pocket; "wha's Miss Ferris?--I dinna ken her--and I thought that you didna either!"

"Well then," said Louis, withdrawing into his sulks, "she bade me tell you that the Prince is with her and will be glad to see you!"

"Oh, he will, will he noo," quoth Miss Aline; "weel, there's a heap o'

princes. I hae been meeting them rayther thick thae last twa-three months. And this yin can juist wait."

"But, Miss Aline, I think--it will be better for you to go at once--I am not going back to--to be insulted and treated like a child. I want to go, Miss Aline."

The old lady held up her hands from which the deep lace sleeves hung gracefully, while the half-mitts clung to the narrow wrists.

"Hoots--hoots, laddie! What's a' this? Ye hae been quarrelling with Patsy. For shame, Louis--eh, what's that? My puir lad, dinna tak' things to heart. She's a guid la.s.s--what should onybody ken aboot her that I do not ken? Laddie, stop greetin'--Patsy would be terrible angry if she kenned I telled ye--but she wants ye to be a strong man--'a leader and not a follower.' Says she, 'I shall never care for a man that I can maister.'"

"Then she will never care for me," mourned poor Louis. "I can do things for her sake--I can do as she bids me, and I am always ready. But, Miss Aline, it does not seem to be the least good. That prince--"

"Never ye mind aboot princes--they are kittle-cattle, and Patsy was juist letting you see that ye should carry a speerit in ye that no prince in ony land could daunt."

"Oh, if it were only fighting," said Louis, "I should not be afraid. But as it is, I shall not set my foot here again till Patsy sends for me--"

"Which she is like to do the morn's mornin', just to see if ye are still in the sulks! Laddie, can ye no see that it is just an amus.e.m.e.nt to her?

She doesna mean to be cruel, but only wants ye to be a man amang men--and mair parteeclar amang weemen!"

"Yes, I know," said Louis, disconsolately, "she does it for my good. She has explained that to me several times. But somehow it does not seem to help much!"

"Louis Raincy," said the old lady, severe for the first time, "be a worthy son of your forbears. There are forty of them in the Raincy chapel up yonder in the wood. It wad be an awesome thing to be carried in among them and you not worthy. I am a woman--an auld maid if you like--but I am a Minto, and here I am braving the great ones of the earth to look after Patsy--me that would a thousand times raither be at Ladykirk with Eelen Young and that silly Babby Latheron, weighing out the sugar and spices for the late conserves--the bramble and the damsons and the elderberry wine."

In spite of all this good advice, or perhaps because of it, Louis Raincy went off without returning to the drawing-room, and with what he took to be despair in his heart. Patsy was by no means the old Patsy. She would never be again. Yet when he began to turn matters over in his head after he had reached his quarters, he could not remember a time when Patsy had not tyrannized over him, trampled him under foot, and variously abused him, even from the time of their infantile plays with sand castles and sea-sh.e.l.ls built, architected, and ornamented on the seash.o.r.e between the Black Head and the estuary of the Mays Water.

But somehow when Patsy did the same thing in London, and in the face of other men, Louis did not enjoy the process so much.

"Hech, my daisy," said Miss Aline, as she and Patsy went back to her parlour after the Prince of Altschloss had taken his leave, "that laddie, Louis, has ower muckle o' his mither in him. She's a McBride, and guid blood, but Dame Lucy is juist like some preserves. Ye put in good berries. Ye strain to perfection. The sugar and the spice and the correct time for boiling--skimming and stirring done with your own hand--yet after all the stuff will not jell. It will harden in no mould because it is unstable as water. That is the boy's mother, the Lady Lucy. As for the lad, G.o.d send him something that will harden him, so that when his grandfather dies, another De Raincy of the right breed may rule in his stead. At present he is overly much after the pattern of his mother!"

"Well," said Patsy, with her hands rolled in the fluffy ends of her muslin scarf, "don't blame me, Miss Aline. I do my best to toughen him, and then he goes and cries to you!"

"I wonder, dear," said the old lady, after a silence which lasted quite five minutes, "if you could not try giving him a good conceit of himself. My father used to say that if ye tell a dog all the time that he is a worthless puppy and will never be good for anything, he will herd the sheep but poorly on the hill."

CHAPTER XXI

THE CAVE OF ADULLAM

Night by night the mists came up from the sea. Morning by morning the gusts from the hills blew them back again. Winter began to settle on the rugged confines of the moors, and still Julian Wemyss stayed on with Stair Garland at the Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore. First, because it agreed with the mystery-loving side of his nature, and also because, so long as the weight of Napoleon's rule pressed upon Europe, he did not know where he could be safer. At Vienna, perhaps, but so long as the Princess Elsa remained at Hanover Lodge, he could not bring himself to make the long and circuitous journey by Gibraltar and Trieste.

And, indeed, he was in no great hurry to move. He had been outlawed for failing to appear, even as he had expected, to answer for the killing of Lord Wargrove. Also he knew that the wounding of the Duke of Lyonesse had been laid to his charge. The word which had gone forth that his capture would be grateful to the Regency and its camarilla of Dukes, would naturally sharpen the pursuit.

Fresh bodies of cavalry were still occasionally drafted from Glasgow and Carlisle to override the moors. But the lack of any local intelligencer of the calibre of Eben McClure, the natural secretiveness of the people as to "lads among the heather" and all folk in trouble, caused the search to be spun out so long, that the general opinion was that Julian Wemyss had escaped in an emigrant s.h.i.+p to America.

Stair occasionally showed himself at Glenanmays, and even made bold to walk in the High Street of Cairnryan on a fair-day, none daring to meddle with him, and the very officers of local justice turning aside for a dram at the first sight of him. He was believed never to move without such a body-guard as could cut its way through a squadron.

He was thus enabled to go about apparently alone, disquieted by none, for the people were on his side, and it would have proved a dear bargain to any man who had "sold" him. Stair made these appearances as often as he knew that the soldiers were off on an expedition in a safe direction.

His object was to draw away attention from the Wild of Blairmore, and to give the people of Cairnryan the idea that he was lying up in the immediate neighbourhood of their town.

Meanwhile he and Julian Wemyss had added greatly to the comfort of the Bothy. A solid rampart of turf, doubled on the western side, protected it against the fierce winds of the moors. The whole of one end was filled with an abundant stock of firewood and peat which his brothers had cut, cast and prepared, and the troop had brought in one night of full moon. The peat-cutting had increased the difficulty of reaching the central fastness of the Wild, for the ink-black tarns had been cunningly united, and the wide mora.s.s in front, where from black pools great bubbles for ever rose and lazily burst, had been dammed till it overflowed the meadows and lapped the sand-dunes behind the house of Abbey Burnfoot. Of course a pathway was left, indeed more than one, to provide a way of escape if the Bothy should happen to be blockaded. For all which reasons Julian Wemyss was exceedingly content to abide on this little platform of hard turf mixed with sea-sh.e.l.ls, with the misty water-logged bog all about.

He had many books, for his own house was not so far off, and his good Joseph remained in charge of everything at Abbey Burnfoot. On dark nights, at the edge of the Wild, Joseph met Stair always with a large parcel of provender and a small parcel of books.

Joseph was in great trouble because he had not been allowed to accompany his master to his hiding-place, but he retained his self-respect and kept himself so fine that his black court-dress and immaculate white cravat made a blur before Stair's eyes in the upward phosph.o.r.escent s.h.i.+ning of the sea.

"The master sent no message by you, sir?" he would inquire, always with a wistful hope that "His Excellency" might relent.

"You will find all that he wishes you to do set down in that letter,"

Stair would say, handing the doc.u.ment over.

"But--he said nothing about my coming to him?"

"Not a word, Joseph!" Stair would answer, as carelessly as might be.

"Then who looks after Mr. Julian? Who lays out his s.h.i.+rts and sees to his studs? Oh, Mr. Stair, that it should come to this! Sometimes I cannot sleep for thinking of it!"

"Mr. Julian looks after himself," said Stair, brusquely; "at present he is wearing one of my grey woollen s.h.i.+rts, and I have not heard him complain. Go home, Joseph, and look after the house. Keep the doors locked, the guns loaded, and the dogs loose. Mr. Julian was never better in his life!"

After this Joseph complained less, and probably slept better. It had always been in his mind that perhaps this unknown Stair Garland might supplant him in the personal service of his master. But when once he understood that Stair was of a breed so extraordinary that he recognized no difference in rank between himself and his guest, that instead of proffering service, he exacted that Mr. Julian should do his fair share of the work, and finally, that many of the books he carried were designed for the enlightenment of Stair Garland, whom his master had taken as a pupil, he ceased to be jealous and became again merely serviceable.

Stair had his full share of the local thirst for knowledge, and the determination to get it in one way or another. So with the self-a.s.sertion without which a Scot ceases to be a Scot, he had fastened upon those winter months with Julian Wemyss to fill in the lacunes of Dominie McAll's instruction. A good good deal of cla.s.sics, daily readings in the French and German tongues, conversation after the Socratic method--these were the pillars of Stair's temple of learning at the Bothy. And because the root of the matter had always been in him--which is the determination to excel--he progressed with a rapidity that astounded his teacher.

Every morning Julian Wemyss said to himself, "It is impossible that he can have remembered and a.s.similated all that we went over yesterday!"

But once the breakfast-things cleared away, he found Stair as sharp-set as a terrier at a rat-hole, as it were, nosing after knowledge. Nothing seemed to come wrong to him, and if he did not understand anything, an apt question set him right, and when Stair flung up his head, his eye misty and his intelligence withdrawn, Julian Wemyss stopped also, because he understood.

"He is filing that away where he can find it," he thought to himself.

And far into the night he could see reflected on the roof a faint glimmer from Stair's dark-lantern. His curiosity was aroused, and he looked into the gloomy kitchen with the heaped peats filling all the s.p.a.ce even to the roof. There, with his feet to the smouldering fire of red ashes, lay Stair Garland, his notebooks in front of him and a volume propped against an upturned pot, thres.h.i.+ng his way pioneer-wise through the work of the next day. Julian Wemyss went softly back to bed, but did not sleep for a long while.

"If that fellow fights for the Emperor," he said to himself, "he will do it with his head. Yet they call him the 'fechtin' fool' in these parts.

The boy has never had a chance, that is all. His ambition and facility have given him the leading-place among these smugglers and defiers of the press-gang, because no other career opened itself to him. We shall see when the _Good Intent_ comes in the spring. In the meanwhile, never tutor had such a pupil!"

Yet more marvellous were the weeks as they went past for Stair Garland.

Every morning he woke fresh to the romantic adventure of books. His eyes flashed down marvellous pages, taking in their gist, and then he settled himself with a happy sigh to a.n.a.lyze line upon line, to warehouse precept upon precept.

Yet he did not leave any of his outside duties unattended to. He knew of every change made in the garrison at Stranryan. Fergus and Agnew came nightly to the verge of the Wild. He met with Jean at the alder copse.

His father talked with him standing upon Peden's Stone, and (as he said) "tairged him tightly" for his occasional neglect in reading the Bible, which was the root of all things of good report in this world as well as in the next.

To which Julian Wemyss added that it was also the foundation of good manners and good style. For all which reasons and also because of the reverence natural to his people, Stair Garland read a good deal in the Bible, and it was the only book concerning which he asked no enlightenment from his master, Julian Wemyss.

Stair heard extracts from the letters from London which Patsy sent to her father and uncle under the frank of the Earl Raincy, but he had one or two altogether his own, and these he judged more precious than gold.

They came to him by way of his sister Jean, and the trysting-place in the alder copse by the side of the Mays Water.

On such occasions, Stair, being in furious haste, took the bundle of clean clothes Jean had brought him, and strode away over the rough fells in the direction of the Wild. Half-way, however, he changed his course.