Patsy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (read aloud TXT) 📖

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 "Coleshill.")
"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 pass 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
grass, 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, washing 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 morasses 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 brass 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 fashion, 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 masses 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 pass 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 pass 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 reassured.
"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 balls. 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 shines down on his book from the four little panes of glass. These are open to the sky but carefully masked from the sight of any passer-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 pass 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 ambassador--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