Patsy Part 9

"I can't give up the honour even to my friend Laurence," said the Prince. "In for a penny, in for a pound. I must conquer this art or be for ever disgraced in this lady's eyes, and, therefore, in my own!"

"You should practise before boasting of what you can do," said Patsy.

"Make Captain Laurence wind for you an hour each morning, and in a little while you will be able to knit your own stockings."

"By gad," said his Highness, "that is a good idea. Will you teach me?

Often when I was at Constantinople and also at sea I wished I had something to help the time to pa.s.s besides stupid books!"

He glanced about him at the crowded shelves. "Though I know your uncle does not think them stupid," he added, with some sense of an apology due; "but then we cannot all be so clever as he!"

"I should think not, indeed," said Patsy sharply, "nor half so handsome!"

The two gentlemen at the door glanced at one another, but the Duke of Lyonesse did not wince. He went on carefully slanting his hands time about to let the wool slip round, bending his thumbs to act as a drag and obeying his task-mistress to the best of his ability.

"That has always been the opinion of your s.e.x all the world over," he said gravely, "if Julian Wemyss entered for a race, what was left for the others but the Consolation Stakes? But you, at least, are a stake for which he cannot enter!"

A quick, light footstep pa.s.sed through the hall and the door opened.

"Ah, Wemyss," cried the Duke, "don't interrupt, like a good fellow. I am on my promotion. Your niece has been dressing me down. I hope to do better after a while. Besides, we have just been saying how perfectly irresistible you are, and how the ladies love you. You ought to be grateful for that at any rate."

The last threads ran swiftly over the opened fingers, and Patsy deftly slid the end into the ball, said "Thank you," and, with a curtsey, went out by the way of the French window leading to the garden, leaving the men to themselves.

"Jove," said the Duke, looking after her through the window, "where and how did you find such a treasure? No wonder you gave up Paris for this.

Like Henry of Navarre, I should give up both Paris and France for such a ma.s.s--a real exile's consolation, good faith. Wemyss, you used to make me read about Ovid starving for years in the Danube swamps, but this would be consolation for an exile if he had to roof in the pole to make himself a house."

"I am sorry," said Julian, somewhat formally, "that I was not in time to introduce you to my only sister's only daughter, my niece and heiress, Miss Patricia Wemyss Ferris of Cairn Ferris."

"I beg your pardon," said his Highness. "Captain Laurence made us laugh so much at a tale he was telling, that I fear the introductions were a little slipshod. I shall make my apologies to the young lady when I have the opportunity of bettering the acquaintance."

Julian Wemyss knew very well what was the story which Laurence had been retailing--that of the disappointed man-hunters at the bothy in the Wild of Blairmore. But he said nothing, and proceeded to make his young friend at home in his house of Abbey Burnfoot. He made no apologies.

There was need of none. At Varna and in the little towns along the Illyrian coast his pupil and he had often had to share far humbler accommodation.

For though Julian Wemyss lived apart from the world, he kept a small yacht to keep him in comfortable touch with the outside markets. The pa.s.sage to Glasgow was an easy one. Dumfries and the c.u.mberland ports were open to him, and so, with the foreign articles which were found in his outer cellars after a trip of the _Good Intent_ (master and owner, Captain Penman), no house in the county could produce at short notice so excellent and various a bill of fare.

A place had been set at dinner for Patsy, but it remained empty. Patsy had simply disappeared. No one had seen her about the sh.o.r.e, nor had she been met with along the dusky alders and dimpling birches of the path by the burnside. Neither had it pleased her to reappear at Cairn Ferris, whither Julian had been careful to send an inquiry.

Such conduct, however, did not seriously disquiet anybody, for Patsy's ways were too erratic and the country too safe (so long, at least, as she kept to the Ferris properties) for any one to harbour serious fears about her.

And, indeed, there was no cause. Patsy had no idea of going off her father's lands. She had simply taken a scamper over the Rig of Blairmore, keeping to the deeper cover of the hollows till she came to the nook that sheltered the bothy. Here she glanced within, but all was empty, swept and garnished. There was no sign about the place of any recent occupation.

All was trim and well-kept as she had left it--dust being unknown on the Wild of Blairmore. But in the little hiding-place which ordinarily held the key, a small rock-cupboard beneath a couple of great boulders, fallen thwart-wise across one another like drunken men embracing, she found a strip of twisted paper. Patsy thought that it contained a message from Jean, but in a moment she recognized the aggressive penmans.h.i.+p of Stair Garland.

_"If you want me, stand five minutes on Peden's Stone!"_

That was all, but Patsy knew that Stair had all the time been watching over her in some wild, sudden-swooping, peregrine falcon-fas.h.i.+on of his own. He had left the warning if she should happen to visit the Bothy while it was being watched for the return of the young men whom the "press" had missed on the day of Patsy's wild race in the yellow sandals.

Now, save that it might pleasure the boy, Patsy had no special reason for wis.h.i.+ng to see Stair Garland. But it would certainly be well for her to talk with his sister Jean. She wished to do this without going to the farm itself. Her absence from her uncle would soon be noticed, and as she had not appeared at her father's house of Cairn Ferris, it was to Glenanmays that any searchers would go first. She was therefore wishful to speak to Jean and ask her opinion of the visitors who had taken possession of her uncle's house at the Burnfoot.

So with circ.u.mspection she crossed the pebbly bed of the Mays Water and climbed up into a crater-like amphitheatre from the edge of which a flat block of stone jutted out. It was told in the "persecuting" lore of the parish that the great "Peden the Prophet" had often used it as a pulpit, his congregation being seated round the semi-circle and the Mays Water birling and singing handily below in case of children to be baptized.

Patsy stood on the stone, all trodden smooth by the restless feet of the hill lambs which in spring came from the most distant parts of the moor to gambol there. She could look both up and down the water, but for a while she saw nothing of Stair.

But the five minutes were not up, when, from a thick tuft of broom, she heard the call of the whin-chat, like a tiny hammer ringing on hard stone. The sound came from up the water and Patsy moved towards it, stepping deftly from stone to stone in the bed of the stream.

"Stair," she said softly, "where are you, Stair?" A full swathe of broom moved itself aside, and she could see Stair Garland lying in a rocky niche which he had prepared long before, in case of such a very probable emergency as the officers of the excise coming after him.

The barrel of his long gun looked over his shoulder.

"Go on, Patsy," he said, "walk on up the burn as if you had seen nothing and I shall be with you in a moment."

She had reached a little knoll, crowned with alder bushes, when she found him entering from the opposite side. Sitting down, she told him of the Duke's coming to Abbey Burnfoot, and of the two gentlemen who were with him, Captain Laurence and Lord Wargrove.

"Ah," said Stair, "so it is for that we have a full squadron of dragoons camped in our barns at Glenanmays, the stable emptied of our own horses to make room for those of the dragoons, and the whole house turned upside down. I thought it was too big a force to be sent after the three of us."

"Fergus and Agnew are still away, then?" queried Patsy, sure that they were.

Stair grinned.

"They are in the heather, like myself," he chuckled, "but neither of them has such a choice of hidie-holes as I have. I can hide better and lie closer, besides keeping a watch on the farm and on you, Miss Patsy, with the soldiers all about within the shot of a gun."

"Can you bring Jean to me, Stair?" said Patsy, "it will be hard, I know, with all those men on the watch at Glenanmays."

Stair flushed a little with the joy of a difficult commission. He whistled shrilly three times, and then sat quite still listening. Then he whistled thrice more and the echoes had hardly died away before the wise, towsy head of a rough collie with the big, brown eyes of the genuine Galloway sheep-dog peered out of the bracken and long gra.s.s of the burnside. He came silently and expectantly to his master, as if he enjoyed the game as much as any one.

"Here, Whitefoot," said Stair, and the dog came obediently to his side.

He wore on his neck a plain leather collar, which his master undid. In one place the inside leather was doubled but held tight when worn by Whitefoot, owing to the roughness of the dog's mane of hair. Stair pushed back the understrap, and taking a piece of paper from his waistcoat wrote upon it the figure "2" very large and clear. Then he shook a forefinger before Whitefoot's moist nose, and said with emphasis the single word "Jean."

The dog lifted his forepaws a little clear of the ground, and, as it were, barked without noise, making an eager, half-strangled noise in his throat to show he understood.

"Jean!" Stair repeated.

"A-owch!" whispered the dog, his tail wagging violently and his eyes fairly blazing.

"Go!" said Stair, and the next moment the tall bracken had closed on Whitefoot. Not the tremor of a leaf, not the swaying of a rag-weed told Patsy which way he had gone. In these days the very dogs had been trained to run invisibly and to bark under their breaths. The Traffic and the "press," but especially the latter, had silenced much of the immemorial mirth of the farm-towns. The shadow of the war cloud rested on the ancient Free Province. The lads might 'list, but they would not be "pressed." "A lad gaen to the wars" or "a la.s.sie fa'en wrang" were the utmost shame that could fall upon any Galloway household, and of the two the la.s.sie was more readily forgiven than the lad with the colours.

"I shall wait till Jean comes," said Stair, a little shame-facedly, because he understood that the girls would naturally wish to talk of their own affairs. "I must see how the spurred gentry are behaving themselves up at the farm."

But to a.s.sure Patsy of his complete disinterestedness, he went to the edge of alder-clump and stood there leaning on his gun. He watched keenly the twisting links of the Mays Water, a silver chain flung carelessly in the sun, cut with gun-metal coloured patches where it sulked a while in shadowy pools. Whitefoot would do his duty. Of that there was no doubt whatever. He would find Jean. He would attract her attention. Jean would go out to the dairy, whither Whitefoot would follow. There the collar would be opened, the paper taken out, and she would soon be on her way for that one of Stair's trysting-places which bore the number "2" on the list he had given her.

Presently out of the tall gra.s.s of the lower meadow the head and shoulders of Jean Garland appeared. He could see her wading breast-deep along the rag-weed and the meadow-sweet. The faint wind-furrow which preceded her showed where Whitefoot, still invisible, guided the girl to the exact clump of undergrowth where Patsy and Stair were waiting.

After a little they could see, emerging likewise, the c.o.c.ked ears, the s.h.a.ggy head and eager brown eyes of Whitefoot as he turned at every other yard to make sure that Jean was following, and appreciating all his cleverness. At the edge of the clump of dull green alders he drew back to let her pa.s.s, as much as to say, "There now--you can do the rest--go on and see for yourself if I have not guided you aright."

Jean came upon her brother first. He was still leaning with one hand on his gun and the opposite elbow crooked about the hole of a tree.

"All right up there?" he demanded in a low tone, indicating the farm with a jerk of his head.

Jean nodded without speaking. She was sure it was not merely to ask this that he had sent Whitefoot to bring her to him.

"No insolence?"