Patsy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (read aloud TXT) 📖

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 illustrated 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 circumstances 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-ambassador.
"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 foreshore was the property of the Government, though on the "heuchs" above the butt of the separating march dyke, 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 assistance 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.
But from the beach below the barrier seemed of the last truculence and efficacy.
The old Earl took off his three-cornered hat with the gold button on a white rosette at the side. Adam did the same with his more modern broad-brimmed, low-crowned white beaver.
"I have the honour to announce to you," said Earl Raincy, bowing formally, "that your daughter is at my house under the care of my daughter-in-law. My grandson Louis, with, I believe, the help of several of your tenants, conveyed her safely back, and I congratulate myself that Louis had the good sense to bring her to Castle Raincy. You will pardon him, I feel sure. He went first to your house of Cairn Ferris, but finding it dismantled, he made up his mind that she could not safely return to Miss Aline's at Ladykirk. So I came off to see you at once, and to say to you how highly I feel myself honoured that one of your name should sojourn under my roof. Time is a great healer, and by gad, sir, if you will permit me to say so, I shall stand by you in this affair, and between us we shall crack the rascals' skulls!"
He held out his hand, which Adam, who had listened sympathetically to the old man's speech, instantly took. Then after one solid grip, they dropped each other's palms with a slight feeling of awkwardness.
"I thank you, my Lord," said Adam Ferris, "I appreciate your coming to me. I knew some time ago by a messenger from Stair Garland that my daughter was safe. I was starting to run down the villains, but my brother-in-law begged that he might be allowed to settle the family quarrel. He was anxious that nothing should appear about my daughter which might hurt her future. Here, of course, in our own country, the poorest and most ignorant would not make any mistake in judgment. But Julian said it would certainly be otherwise in London, especially with those who know the doings of our Royal Dukes. He begged that in the first instance I should leave the affair to him and if he did not settle matters to my satisfaction, I could then take what action I chose. So, because he knew more of these courtly circles than I shall ever know or desire to know, I bade him go."
"Put that way," said my Lord, "you were quite right. The man was, I understand, a guest in the house of Mr. Wemyss. He sent from there to borrow my horses, damn his impudence. He shall answer to me for that some day. Oh, I forgot--yes, your daughter. But I have been in London and at Court. I have been honoured by the King's commands, but I can only say that this new age--these young men--are rotten to the core. Therefore I agree that for Miss Ferris's sake, the less said the better. When, think you, will your brother be back? I should wish to pay my respects to him as soon as might be!"
"That," said Adam, "I cannot say. I wait any summons from London, but as yet I have heard nothing from Mr. Wemyss."
The earl was silent a while, now tapping imaginary dust from his breeches and again patting his flowered waistcoat to settle the long flaps in their places. He looked away across the shore, pale amber and white at the sandy edge and deep blue beyond. Then frowning with the effort, he spoke.
"Sir," he said, "our young people are wiser than we. My boy brought your girl to Castle Raincy as to a city of refuge, and why should not you and I, sir, copy them? Will you do me the honour to walk to Castle Raincy with me and take dinner? 'Zounds, sir, we ought to have thought of this long before. They put us to shame, these helter-skelter youngsters of ours."
"I accept your invitation, my Lord," said Adam gravely.
"Come now, Ferris," cried the Earl, with characteristic impulsiveness, "we are neighbours and gentlemen--I pray you let there be no 'Lordships' between us. Call me 'Raincy,' and be done with it!"
"I fear," said Adam, smiling, "that with the best will in the world it would be difficult for me to get my stubborn Galloway tongue round the word. But I am glad to hear you call me by my name, though I fear me, my Lord, that you must e'en let a thrawn Scots hermit gang his ain gait. If I were to call you 'Raincy' I should feel like a boy who threw a stone at election time. Why, sir, my father would rise from his grave and floor me with the lid of his coffin!"
"By gad, sir," said the Earl, "I believe you are right. That comes of English public schools and all the rest of it. Add to which that small daughter of yours is a witch and will make a man say anything--even a man of my age. But since we are both Galloway men, we may surely call each other by the names of our holdings. If you are 'Cairn Ferris' to everybody--well, I am 'Castle Raincy.'"
"To that I see no objection," said Adam, smiling, "though you wear your rue with a difference!"
"Eh, what's that?" cried the Earl, who did not read Shakespeare--"oh, something out of a book--I thought such things were your brother-in-law's perquisite. But I understand--you mean the handle to my name. That is very well for outside use, but never mind handles to-day. Let us be young again to-day. Come and see Patsy!"
"Patsy!" that young person's father muttered to himself, "so it has come to Patsy! Evidently she does not take after me. I have no doubt that the vixen will be calling him 'Raincy' by the week's end."


CHAPTER XV
THE FECHTIN' FOOL
These were hard days for Stair Garland. He alone had planned and carried out the deliverance of Patsy. He had dared the spilling of the blood royal, yet he had given all the profit of it over into the hands of another. And now Louis Raincy had Patsy safe within the walls of his grandfather's castle, and all that remained for Stair was liberty to keep watch and ward outside.
I do not imagine that Louis cared much about the matter. Why should he? He had other things to think about--bright, young, heart-stirring things that danced and glistened, flitting up before him just as a sudden wind-gust may for a moment turn a petal-strewn garden path all rosy.
But, to make up for such ingrate forgetfulness, Patsy thought a good deal. She knew--no woman could have helped knowing--the fact of Stair's devotion. But then she had always accepted it as quite natural, which it was. Also as calling for no particular notice, except, as it were, for a certain graceful obliviousness on her part, modified by a possessive glance or two from her fearless black eyes--glances for which Stair watched more alertly than he had ever gazed into the night for the signal flashes from the _Good Intent_.
But now he, Stair the doer, was without while Patsy was within with Louis the dreamer. At this time Stair had more liberty to come and go. He could now spend some of his days at Glenanmays helping his brothers and sisters in any emergency. The attack upon the Duke of Lyonesse had been hushed up--so far, that is, as any official inquiry was concerned. The matter was not even referred to in Parliament.
It had been announced that the Prince had been hurt somewhat seriously in a carriage accident, frequent in travelling through such wild lands as Ireland and the south of Scotland. People averred that he would find himself safer on the Mall or climbing the slopes of Primrose Hill.
And meanwhile McCarthy, the Irish doctor who attended him, said nothing about the gunshot wound in the thigh which caused the Duke to walk with a slight limp ever after.
Stair, of course, knew nothing of this in detail. But he was keenly alive to the results. With the disappearance of McClure the Spy the press-gang work was suspended for a time, and, though a party of light horse lay in Captain Laurence's old quarters at Stranryan, they confined their trips to sending recruiting parties in an above-board way to the fairs and market towns.
At the end of harvest they would doubtless make a good haul among the foolish young men who had been at the southern reaping. These, having spent their cash in Carlisle or Dumfries, would be afraid to face their people at home, and might be expected to take his Majesty's shilling with alacrity.
Without the support of the military, led by so experienced a man as Eben McClure, with local knowledge and connections, the Preventive men displayed no initiative, and seldom ventured far from their barracks on the cliff. They might surround an alehouse in a village with all the pomp and circumstance which shows zeal and is put down to the