Patsy Part 24

And many a night wanderer on land and many a benighted fisherman bearing up Loch Ryan-ward on the northward set of the tide, was awed by a strange light in the Corpse Yard above the Elrich Strand, where the Blacksh.o.r.e folk bury the drowned who come to them from the sea. Here among the wooden head-boards (bearing dates only) of the unknown dead, Stair Garland read his first letter from Patsy in London.

"Stair" (it began without qualitative either formal or affectionate), "I did not promise to write to you, so I am doing it. London is very full of gay things which are not so gay as they look. I would rather see you and Whitefoot (give him a kiss from me!) than the procession of the Regent to open Parliament.

"The Princess would spoil me were I spoilable. But you know I am made of the guinea gold that does not need gilding. However, she does her best. I have a maid to wait on me, but I think I do very much more for her. Still, she mends the holes that I dance in the heels of my stockings--all of silk, Stair, and smuggled from France! For they 'run' things here, just as they do in Galloway--in Suss.e.x and Cornwall mainly. They have only luggers, however--at least so one of my partners told me last night. He had seen John Carter himself down at Prussia Cove! Think of that, Stair! And the old man had preached him a sermon!

"I have dresses in Valenceens lace over pale-blue silk, and all sorts of lovely things; don't you wish you could see me? I see Louis often, but not so often as I used to. They say he is in love with Mrs. Arlington, a great beauty at the Regent's court. You know that Louis is now aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, who is Commander-in-Chief, so his chief duty is to draw up ball programmes and write dinner invitations, which I have no doubt he does in a very warlike manner.

"When he remembers he comes round to tell me that he loves me still. But, alas! he mostly forgets. Whitefoot is more faithful than that, eh, Stair? I could wager that at the moment you are reading this nonsense, he is sitting with his head on your knees, looking up in your face."

(Stair put down his hand from the edge of the paper and touched the rough head, and at the caress Whitefoot whined joyously, as he did in church when the congregation sang "Coles.h.i.+ll.")

"Stair" (the letter went on), "I hold the Princess and you responsible for Uncle Julian. I hear from him sometimes and he tells me that you are getting to be a wonderful scholar. Well, playing with your books will pa.s.s the time for both of you, and keep you from thinking too much about me. As to my welfare, do not pine away with worrying about that. I, Patricia Wemyss Ferris, swear on the old oath, that I am fat and fair to see. I find that I can answer the fool according to his folly, and leave wherewithal to talk on terms of some quality with the few poor lost and forwandered wise men whom one meets in these parts. The dear old king with his David-and-Solomon beard, is really the most sensible person I have yet talked with. So they shut him up, take his crown from him, and say that he is mad.

"The Wise Young People who bear rule drink each other under the table, race to Brighthelmstone, killing half-a-dozen children by the way, and ruin themselves at play during the night. Altogether it is a fine place, this London, and if you were here you might very well say, with the witty Frenchman, 'The more I see of human beings, the more I love my dog!'

"But you must not tell all this to Uncle Julian. I am learning fast--though perhaps not quite what he expected me to learn. His Princess is most kind to me, and, indeed, so is everybody. There is a Prince, a rosy young man who walks delicately like a cat on wet gra.s.s, and they say that he would like to lay his Princedom at my feet. Which do you think I would rather be, Stair, a Princess with her chin in the air (Ho! Menial, fetch me my crown. No, the one in the left-hand drawer, most ignorant of varlets! Now I pose it on my princessly locks! So!), or just Patsy Ferris, in blue gown and yellow sandals, very much out of breath, was.h.i.+ng the dishes in the Bothy of the Wild of Blairmore?

"Tell me which you think I should like best. I deliver this subject to your meditations. You are not to show my letter to Jean nor allow her to read a single word of hers to you. If you do, I shall hold you for ever faithless and mansworn!

"Your obedient, faithful scullery-maid _or_ princess,

"PATSY."

CHAPTER XXII

WINTER AFTERNOON

The winter was lying heavy and sore on the Wild of Blairmore. The storms from the North-west brought down the scouring snow, and even to go to the edge of the sand-dunes to meet Joseph was an undertaking. Only by continual endeavours with the great iron 'gellick' was the well kept from freezing. The frost had long ago laid hands upon the inky ponds and mora.s.ses and bound them as it had been with solid iron.

But at Hanover Lodge the fires glowed warm in open grates. The rich, solid, early Georgian furniture gave back reflections ripe and fruity, and the bra.s.s fenders shone in the flicker of the firelight. The Princess used sea-coal fires, to which, as a daughter of the land of pines, she added split and well-dried logs of resinous wood. These she would arrange with her own hands after the Bohemian fas.h.i.+on, pausing often to tell her guest tales of the times when, at the convent, she and Marie Louise had stolen from the Mother Superior's woodpile to keep from freezing.

Patsy knitted diligently and before her a book lay open, but she read little. For the Princess, recalling old things and speaking copiously, looked often at her for sympathy and understanding. Miss Aline had gone to lie down with a book, so the two younger ladies were alone, and, as it seemed little likely that any visitors would venture so far from home that day they had settled themselves in the comfort of the Princess's boudoir, content with each other and content with the weather. Patsy had been teaching her companion such phrases as "a blatter o' sleet," an "on-ding o' snaw," and a "thresh o' rain."

The Princess had a peculiar pleasure in learning such things and would often subtly misapply them in order to be corrected. She would tempt Patsy into further descriptions of the Twin Valleys, the Bay of the Abbey Burn, the bold deeds of the smugglers, and the fights of the Free Bands against the press-gangs. But always, by all roads and bypaths, she would bring her back to the Bothy of the Wild of Blairmore. Was she sure that there was the possibility of any decent comfort in such a place at such a season?

Patsy shut her eyes, visualized the Wild as she had often seen it when she made a short cut from her Uncle Julian's to the sheltered valley of the Mays Water. More than once when the lads were in hiding after some offence against the revenue laws, which had brought troops into the district, Jean and she had been guided by Stair to the fastness, where they had been royally entertained, before being convoyed each to her home by the genial outlaws.

She spoke of the wild white moor, cut with deep hags, the arms of the "scroggie" thorns blown away from the sea and clawing at the ground like spectral hands, black beneath, but every gnarled knuckle and digit outlined in purest white above. Sometimes the clean tablecloth of white which covered a little loch, was cut by a round black "well-eye" through which a spring oozed oilily, refusing to freeze.

These must be known and avoided, for the ice was always thin thereabouts and a heedless night-wanderer might very easily vanish, never to be heard of more.

Then there was the Bothy. Little could be seen of that. Gone the summer creepers which had made it a bower. It crouched low, almost level with the snowladen tops of the heather bushes, which grew high about, hidden and banked behind immense ma.s.ses of sods, all now covered with the uniform mantle of the snow. Great wreaths formed in the first swirl of the storms had piled themselves up so as to overhang the low chimney.

You might pa.s.s it a score of times, and if you missed the faint blue reek stealing up along the side of the precipitous Knock Hill, you would see nothing of it, nor so much as suspect that there was a habitation of living men within miles.

As Patsy talked, the Princess had gradually been leaning further and further forward, her lips parted, and shuddering a little as the wind lashed the snow against the great windows of Hanover Lodge.

"Oh," she said at length, as if to herself, "to think of him there in that terrible place and of us here. It makes me hate all this comfort.

Are you not ashamed, Patsy?"

Patsy the frank had some difficulty in repressing the ungrateful speech which came to her lips but did not pa.s.s them. "I would rather be with them than with you!" But she refrained and entered into new explanations. The Princess had heard the most part before, but she never wearied of being rea.s.sured.

"Now, listen! Uncle Ju is with Stair Garland. No one will hurt him for that reason. In our country Stair Garland has more real power than the Lord Lieutenant, or even my father. No, he is no ignorant peasant. I do not think he could dance so well, but he could talk better than any of the partners who fall to my lot at the court b.a.l.l.s. The Bothy on the Wild? Well, I will try and tell you. It is certainly dark inside, but on the side opposite to the wind a little window is always kept open, and on the table where they read, write, and take their meals a lamp will certainly be lit. Uncle Ju will be stretched on the long couch among the pillows, reading. That is where Stair sleeps at night. His feet are towards the fire and the light s.h.i.+nes down on his book from the four little panes of gla.s.s. These are open to the sky but carefully masked from the sight of any pa.s.ser-by (if such a thing could be thought of on the Wild of Blairmore) by a firmly packed wall of snow.

"Stair moves about getting ready the next meal, and as like as not he calls on Uncle Ju to take his turn at scouring the pans or peeling the potatoes."

At this flight of imagination the Princess suppressed a cry of indignation.

"Oh, that is nothing," Patsy went on, unsympathetically, "of course he is glad to do it. It is good wholesome exercise and helps to pa.s.s the time, though digging themselves out in the morning when the drift is over the chimney top is better, besides the making of little paths to the outside peatstack and--"

"But your uncle--an amba.s.sador--a favourite at courts--not a court like our dear Sleepy Hollow there at Windsor or the Rout of Circe at Carlton House, but the Court of the Hapsburgs, the Court of Austria--to think of Julian Wemyss there for your sake!--Why, Patsy, though I love you dearly, I declare that you are hardly worth it!"

"Well, Stair Garland is there also," Patsy retorted, instantly, "and just as much for my sake as Uncle Ju. And now the Duke has got his debts paid, in far greater danger, for Uncle Ju would get off with a year in prison, but Stair they would hang for those slugs in the Prince's thigh, which, thank Heaven, they can't dig out!"

"But your Stair Garland is accustomed to such a life, while my poor Julian--"

"Princess," said Patsy seriously, "take my word for it, Uncle Julian has not had the manhood all taken out of him by his life at courts. Even now who can cross swords with him? Besides, I have heard him say that if he were a year or two younger he would be out on the bleak Pyrenees with the other gallant gentlemen, his friends, driving Soult and his Frenchmen back out of Spain. And compared to what our army has to suffer lying out on these frozen rocks--why, the Bothy of Blairmore is a palace!"

The Princess was silent but not convinced. She knew that of course Julian Wemyss was brave, but she felt that it was one thing to stand up to your enemy and kill him like a gentleman, and another to hide among frozen hags and sleep under a roof of snow.

Nevertheless she brought away a certain sense of physical warmth and well-being from the description which Patsy had given her, which comforted her. It was pleasant in the Bothy of Blairmore. Men had a strain in their blood, something primitive and savage, which made them like such things, at least for a time and as a change. She remembered her father saying that he was never happier than in the corner of a forest clearing waiting for the wild boar to charge, a flask of white brandy in his pocket and a forest-guard with a couple of spare rifles at his back.

At that moment the door opened softly and, with her smelling bottle in her hand, Miss Aline came in. She went to the window where a furious rush of snow driven by the Channel wind saluted her. She sniffed appreciatively as the hasps rattled, for even through the well-fitting windows the snell bite of the winter storm entered.

"Eh, but that's hamelike," she said, going closer, "it will be brave weather on Solwayside the noo. I mind when it would hae driven me out to play amang the wreaths like a daft year-auld collie--. Aye, and I am no sure that I wad not like a turn the noo--not o' that saft stuff that will melt and be gane the morn's mornin', but the fine kind that sifts up your sleeve and down your neck!--But for the puir herds on the hill, wae's me, it will be a wakerife time for them. Little sleep will they get if the snaw begins to drift in the hollows!"

Patsy looked at the Princess mischievously.

"You see, dear lady," she said, "our Miss Aline knows of worse places than the Bothy of Blairmore, even in such weather."

"But I do not understand," said the Princess. "Julian never told me anything of this. Do the sheep in your country stay out in all weathers--even in the winter storms, and are men to be hired who will look after them?"

"'Deed there are," said Miss Aline, "and what for no'? A finer, buirdlier set o' lads than the herds of the Hills neither you nor me are likely to see. And as for storms and biding oot at nicht--there's Willie McKerlie that herded the Lagganmore for forty year, and in the Saxteen Drifty days he wasna hame for a week. And when he got all his sheep oot, they asked him how it came that he wasna dead. 'Deid! Deid!' says he, 'what for should I be deid? I juist hadna time, man. But I grant ye, I was mair nor a wee thocht hungry, and I never kenned afore what a heap o' crumbs a man carried in his pooches when they are a' turned oot!'"

CHAPTER XXIII

PATSY HAS GREATNESS THRUST UPON HER

At Hanover Lodge, in spite of the good will of the Princess, all did not go smoothly. Every day the ladies drove out in one of the royal carriages drawn by four beautiful bays, but with the servants and outriders in the black liveries of Saxe-Brunswick.