Patsy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (read aloud TXT) 📖

neck and hanging as low as his knee.
"Cousin," he said, laughing his innocent's giggle, "what do you think? My brother Clarence says that you have been dancing with a mightily pretty girl, but that Lyonesse led her a prettier dance than you! What did he mean, eh, cousin?"
"Go to your brothers, Clarence and Lyonesse, and tell them from me that they are damned, lying scoundrels, and that if they want a foot of steel through them, they have only to say as much in my hearing. Now say it over--don't forget."
The "natural" was delighted with his commission.
"No, Eitel, I shall tell them every word. I like you, Eitel. You never call me 'Silly Billy' like the rest. If you _could_ put some more swears in--I should like that still better!"
"I am sorry I cannot oblige," said Prince Eitel, "but the one there is, will suffice if you shout it loud enough. Thank you, Duke! that will do perfectly."
And the little man trotted off to deliver his message, jerking his arms and cracking his fingers with a real delight. It was not often that he got the chance of swearing at his brothers under the protection of Prince Eitel of Altschloss.
Meanwhile Louis Raincy had not been misusing his time. He knew he had come late in the day, and he was conscious of the queue of aspirants forming behind him.
At first Patsy listened with indifference, her eyes on the other side of the room and her chin in the air. She was so sorry, but she thought that of course Louis had all his arrangements made long before. She had seen him from the time they came in, yet while she was sitting beside his mother, he had never seen fit to come near them!
Whereupon Louis explained. He had been busy--the onerous duties of an attache--and so forth.
Patsy kept him awhile on the tenterhooks. He went on to remind her of the burn of the Glen-wood. He described their nests in the beech-butt and under the shelter of the great march dyke. He would have spoken of the race across the moors and the rescue at the White Gates, save that by instinct he knew that her thoughts would at once be carried to Stair Garland, the man who _was_ a man and as such had played the leading part on these occasions. He hated even to see the Duke of Lyonesse limp and to think that he had not even done _that_ himself!
"Well, the one after next!" said Patsy carelessly, after consulting the list of dances for those she had marked with her own hieroglyphic.
"Meanwhile, stay here with Lady Lucy till I am ready. I am certainly not going to seek you up and down the ball-room."
This she said because she noticed that the Arlington was beginning to waft signals in the young man's direction with her fan. Therefore, before she took her next partner's arm, she saw Louis sit down beside his delighted mother, and talking to her in a manner so completely absorbed that he never so much as raised his eyes.
Patsy proved perfectly entrancing when it came to be Louis's turn to dance with her, but before the end of the music they dropped out, for Patsy said, "Now we shall climb the bank till we find our nook!"
And taking the young man's hand they ran nimbly up the stairs till they came to a dimly curtained recess which, if the truth must be told, Patsy had just vacated.
"Oh," said Louis, delighted, "you are as clever at finding hidie-holes in Hertford House as you used to be in the brows of the Abbey Water!"
"Draw the curtains closer," said Patsy, "or we shall have your Mrs. Arlington spying us out and carrying you off with a single wave of her fan. She reminds me of Circe--a fat, curly-wurly Circe--like that picture Uncle Ju brought back from Italy. _Why_ do you run after her, Louis? I told you to go and make love to as many pretty girls as would let you, and here you go and break the tables of affinity by making love to your grandmother!"
At this Louis was vaguely offended--or perhaps rather hurt than offended. He had not come there to be lectured--at least not about Mrs. Arlington. But Patsy had the good sense to administer the cooling bitter medicine immediately after the waltz, when men are never quite themselves. She would give him time to get over it.
"I am not making love to Mrs. Arlington," he retorted abruptly.
"I should think not," said Patsy, as instantaneously. "As an officer and a gentleman I should hope that you know better what England expects of you--Patsy Ferris also. What does the man suppose he is here for, that he should begin by telling me that? But seriously, Louis, you used to be always one to strike out new paths for yourself--why do you stick to the dusty highway--or, perhaps one might say in Mrs. Arlington's case, the old military road?"
"Patsy," said Louis, "_you_ do not need to say things like that. You are too pretty. Mrs. Arlington is a kind woman, much spoken against and abominably maligned. Besides, she is a great admirer of yours, and would give anything to be introduced to you! She told me so!"
Patsy whistled a mellow but mocking blackbird's note which very nearly brought the Duke of Kent, and half-a-dozen of his compeers, upon them. However, they passed on, in spite of royal instructions to "stop and search--some of these little she-vixens are signalling us!"
While the danger lasted, Patsy had gripped Louis by the wrist as she used to do in the woods when her uncle or some prowling gamekeeper went by. And the pressure of her fingers made his pulses fly. Patsy sighed, for she knew well that she was laying up wrath against herself, but for the present she disregarded the future. She was saving Louis, and in order to do this she must attach him to herself. It was a pity, of course, because it would inevitably lead to entanglements. Louis would blame her. Lady Lucy would blame her, and perhaps, at least till she had an occasion to explain, the Earl would also be angry. But of this last she was in no very deadly fear. Of all the explanations which fall to be made in this weary world, she found those with well-affected old gentlemen to be the easiest. And indeed, she was not very particular whether they were well-affected or not--that is, to begin with. The shikar was only the more interesting if the tiger growled and showed his teeth a bit at first.
Thereafter Patsy laid herself out to tease Louis, to bedazzle the poor boy's brain, and to reduce him to the state of drivelling incompetence induced by disobedience to the Arlington and dancing with herself. She went so far that Louis, filled with a spirit more heady than wine, got down on his knees and was trying to make Patsy understand his undying devotion, when the curtain was pushed furiously aside and Mrs. Arlington appeared menacing in the brilliant illumination of the stairs. Behind, having no connection with her, but equally there on a mission of vengeance, loomed up the chubby giant, Prince Eitel of Altschloss.
"Ah, Prince," said Patsy, not in the least ruffled, "is it time for our dance already?"
"No," said the Prince austerely, "our dance was five or six back!"
Patsy glanced at her programme. She had carried it out to the very hieroglyph. All those dances which she had specially marked, she had sat out with Louis in the niche on the stairs. And now she did not mean to leave the spoil in the hands of the enemy.
She rose to her feet, shook out her skirts, and said, "Now, Louis, give me your arm and take me back to Lady Lucy. I don't think I shall dance any more to-night. You had better come with us to Raincy House! Good-night, Prince! I suppose we shall see you to-morrow!"
And so departed with the honours of war, leaving Eitel and Mrs. Arlington to console each other as best they might.


CHAPTER XXX
A CREDIT TO THE "GREEN DRAGON"
The average riverine loafer about the Kew Waterfront, really a potential cheat, robber, and occasional murderer, looked upon the recent arrival at the "Green Dragon" as a prey specially destined by Providence for his necessities. He was never more completely mistaken. Kennedy McClure was, in the loafer's own language, "fly to the tricks of all wrong coves." Had he not held his own (and more) for thirty years in a hundred markets with horse-fakers and cattle-drovers? He did not "go after the lush"--still less "follow the molls." He never walked by the waterside by night, and on the one occasion when a rush had been tried as he strolled back in the twilight from Hanover Lodge, he had cracked Jem Simcoe's head so thoroughly, that there was little likelihood of its ever being much good to him in this world--a pretty thing for a man living by his wits and with a family of three or four young wives intermittently depending upon his efforts.
It was soon known that Mr. Kennedy McClure did not carry his money about with him. He had deposited his pocket book with the city correspondents of Sir Willliam Forbes's bank, and now walked about with a light step, his blackthorn cudgel in his hand, and a glad light of battle in his eye.
"Tell me the day before your bill is due and I shall have the money," he said to the landlord of the "Green Dragon." And on the appointed morning a messenger from the city brought the amount, which Kennedy would open in the presence of Mr. Wormit himself, pay him, and send back the receipt to his correspondents in the city, thus gaining the reputation of being a man who knew his way about, and making a devoted slave of the landlord, who liked all ready-money men as much as he hated all fools.
In this way, by the free speech of the admiring landlord of the "Green Dragon," whose words admitted of no reply, Kennedy McClure grew daily in honour and stature. To Mr. Wormit, himself no mean man, he had at first appeared as a mere pensioner on the bounty of the inhabitant of the royal Lodge. But he soon grew into the Superintendent of her Estates. He became "her confidential man"--"him as looks after her business." He ended by being the Princess's adviser on all her affairs, and in addition a mint of power and wisdom on his own account.
Had he not got the landlord's second son James Wormit into the Lodge gardens, where he had been appointed auxiliary to Miss Aline? Had he not, though declaring himself wholly ignorant of English law, furnished the hint which led to the favourable settlement of the long-disputed case of H. M. Excise Board _versus_ Wormit? Altogether a wonderful man, the landlord declared Kennedy to be, and a credit to the house any way you looked at it.
He knew a thing or two, he did. Would he have all these sailor-men from the docks sent to take their orders from him every day or two if he were an ordinary country gull? Would the young lady from the Lodge--she who went to the Court at Windsor, and drove out with the Princess--be walking all the way back with him if he were a nobody? And no fool either--carried just enough money to get him a bit to eat and a pint, when he wanted them--while there was that great oaf Jem Simcoe lying with his broken head which he was fool enough to trust within reach of such a man's cudgel. "Sarve him right," said