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PATSY
BY S. R. CROCKETT
AUTHOR OF "THE RAIDERS," "THE STICKIT MINISTER," "LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM,"
"ANNE OF THE BARRICADES," ETC.
SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1913.
Reprinted February, 1913; April, December, 1913.
[Illustration: "Yes, I," said Patsy.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. HEIRESS AND HEIR
CHAPTER II. THE MAIDENS' COVE
CHAPTER III. THE BOTHY
CHAPTER IV. BY FORCE OF ARMS
CHAPTER V. PATSY'S CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER VI. HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
CHAPTER VII. THE LADS IN THE HEATHER
CHAPTER VIII. THE BLACK PEARL OF CAIRN FERRIS
CHAPTER IX. HIS LIFE IN HIS HAND
CHAPTER X. THE WICKED LAYETH A SNARE
CHAPTER XI. THE TRAMPLING OF HORSE IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XII. PATSY'S RESCUE
CHAPTER XIII. PLOTS AND PRINCES
CHAPTER XIV. THE END OF AN OLD FEUD
CHAPTER XV. THE FECHTIN' FOOL
CHAPTER XVI. A RIDER COMES TO CASTLE RAINCY
CHAPTER XVII. PATSY HELD IN HONOUR
CHAPTER XVIII. UNCLE JULIAN'S PRINCESS
CHAPTER XIX. MISS ALINE TAKES COMMAND
CHAPTER XX. LOUIS RAINCY ENDURES HARDNESS
CHAPTER XXI. THE CAVE OF ADULLAM
CHAPTER XXII. WINTER AFTERNOON
CHAPTER XXIII. PATSY HAS GREATNESS THRUST UPON HER
CHAPTER XXIV. THE LOST FOLK'S ACRE
CHAPTER XXV. THE HIGH STILE
CHAPTER XXVI. THE GIBBET RING
CHAPTER XXVII. THE DUKES ... AND SUPSORROW
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE "GREEN DRAGON"
CHAPTER XXIX. ENEMY'S COUNTRY
CHAPTER XXX. A CREDIT TO THE "GREEN DRAGON"
CHAPTER XXXI. THE NIGHT LANDING
CHAPTER XXXII. ORDEAL BY FIRE
CHAPTER XXXIII. PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRISON-BREAKERS
CHAPTER XXXV. THE PICTS' WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY
CHAPTER XXXVI. STIFF-NECKED AND REBELLIOUS
CHAPTER XXXVII. A PICTISH HONEYMOON
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE LAND OF ALWAYS AFTERNOON
CHAPTER XXXIX. REBEL GALLOWAY
CHAPTER XL. "WHY DO THEY LOVE YOU?"
CHAPTER XLI. THE BATTLE OF THE CAUSEWAY
CHAPTER I
HEIRESS AND HEIR
They stood high on the Abbey cliff-edge--an old man, eagle-profiled,
hawk-beaked, cockatoo-crested, with angry grey eyebrows running peakily
upwards towards his temples at either side ... and a boy.
They were the Earl Raincy and his grandson Louis--all the world knew
them in that country of the Southern Albanach. For Leo Raincy was a
great man, and the lad the heir of all he possessed.
For all--or almost all--they looked upon belonged to the Earl of Raincy.
Even those blue hills bounding the meadow valleys to the north hid a
fair half of his property, and he was sorry for that. Because he was a
land miser, hoarding parishes and townships. He grudged the sea its
fringe of foam, the three-mile fishing limit, the very high-and-low mark
between the tides which was not his, but belonged to the crown--along
which the common people had a right to pass, and where fisherfolk from
the neighbouring villages might fish and dry their nets, when all ought
to have been his.
The earl's dark eyes passed with carelessness over hundreds of
farm-towns, snug sheltered villages, mills with little threads of white
wimpling away from the unheard constant clack of the wheel, barns, byres
and stackyards--all were his, but of these he took no heed.
Behind them Castle Raincy itself stood up finely from the plain of
corn-land and green park, an artificial lake in front, deep trees all
about, patterned gardens, the fiery flash of hot-house glass where the
sun struck, and pinnacles high in air, above all the tall tower from
which Margaret de Raincy had defied the English invader during the
minority of James the Fifth. The earl's eyes passed all these over. He
did not see them as aught to take pride in.
What he lingered upon was the wide pleasant valley beneath him, with a
burn running and lurking among twinkling birches, interspersed with
alders, many finely drained fields with the cows feeding belly-deep with
twitching tails, and the sweep of the ripening crops which ran off to
either side over knolls carefully planed down--and so back and back to
the shelter of dark fir woods. Twelve hundred acres--and not his! Not a
Raincy stone upon it, nor had been for four hundred years.
There were two houses on this twelve hundred acres of good land. First
came Cairn Ferris, at the head of the glen of the Abbey Water. Close to
the road that, under the lee of the big pines, a plain, douce,
much-ivied house; and down in a nook by the sea, Abbey Burnfoot, called
"The Abbey," a newer and brighter place, set like a jewel on the very
edge of the sea, the white sand in front and the blue sweep of the bay
widening out on either hand. Horrible--oh, most horrible! Not his--nor
ever would be!
This was the blot which blackened all the rest--the property of the
Ferrises of Cairn Ferris, of Adam, chief of the name at the top of the
Glen, and of his brother Julian--he who had cursed the noble
scythe-sweep of the Abbey Bay, which all ought to have been untouched
Raincy property, with crow-stepped gables and beflowered verandahs.
"They stole it, boy, stole it!" muttered old Earl Raincy, setting a
shaking hand on the boy's shoulder, "four hundred years ago they stole
it. They came with the Stuart king who had nothing to do in the Free
Province, and we stood for the Douglases, as was our duty. Your ancestor
and mine was killed at Arkinholm with three earls and twenty barons, he
not the least noble!"
He paused a moment to control his senile anger and then went quavering
on.
"This Ferris was a mercenary--a fighter for his own hand, and they gave
him _this_ while we were exiled. And they have held it ever since--the
pick of our heritage--the jewel in the lotus. Often we have asked it
back--often taken it. But because they married into the Fife
Wemysses--yes, even this last of them, they have always retaken and held
it, to our despite!"
The boy on the stile, sprawling and thinking of something else (for he
had heard all this fifty times before), yawned.
"Well, there's plenty more--why worry, grandfather?" he said, fanning
himself with the blue velvet college cap that had a bright gold badge in
front.
The old man started as if stung. He frowned and blinked like an angry
bald eagle.
"There speaks the common wash of Whiggish blood. MacBryde will out!--No
Raincy would thus have sold his birthright for a mess of pottage."
The eyes of the lad were still indolent, but also somewhat impudent in
schoolboy fashion, as he answered, "Still, grandfather, mother's
MacBryde money has paid off a good many Raincy--encumbrances, don't you
call them here?--mortgages is the name for them in England! And more
than that, don't go back and worry mother about these old cow-pastures.
You know you are really very fond of her. As for me, I may not be a real
Raincy, for I was born to do something in life, not to idle through it.
You won't let me go into the navy, and fight as a man ought. If I go
into the army, we shall have mother in a permanent fit. So I must just
stop on and lend a hand where I can, till I am old enough to turn out
that thief of an estate agent of yours and do something to help
you--really, I mean!"
"Remember you are a Raincy by name, whatever you may be by nature," said
the old man. Suddenly the boy stood up straight and firm before him,
with a dourness on his face which was clearly not akin to the swoop and
dash of his vulturine grandfather.
"If you don't let me do as I like here--do something real which will
show that I have not been to school and the university for nothing, I
shall go straight to the ship-building yard and get my uncle, mother's
brother David, to take me on as an apprentice! We still own enough of
the business to make him ready to do that."
Like one who hears and rebukes blasphemy, the old man made a gesture of
despair with his hands, as though abandoning his grandson to his own
evil courses, and then turned on his heel and walked slowly away towards
the Castle.
* * * * *
With a sigh of relief the young man stretched himself luxuriously out on
the broad triple plank of the stile, and drew from his pocket a brass
spy-glass which he had been itching to make use of for the past ten
minutes. He also had his reasons for being interested in the Ferris
properties which lay beneath him, every field and dyke and hedgerow,
every curve of coast and curvet of breaking wave as clear and near as if
he could have touched them merely by reaching out his finger. But Louis
Raincy nourished no historical wraths nor feudal jealousies.
"I am sorry the old fellow is savage with me," he muttered as he looked
about to make sure that his grandfather was not turning round to forgive
him. "I'm sure I don't mean to make him angry. I promise mother every
day. But why he wants to be for ever trotting out a grievance four
hundred years old--hang me if I see. Anyway, Dame Comfort will soon put
him all right. He gets on with her--he and I never hit it off ... quite.
I fear I wasn't born lordly, even though my father was a Raincy. They
say he disgraced his family by being an artist, and that it was when he
was painting Dame Comfort's portrait that--oh, I say, there's Patsy, or
I'm the son of a Dutchman!"
As only the moment before he had been declaring himself the son of a De
Raincy, this could hardly be. So there was good prima facie evidence
that, in Louis's opinion, there _was_ Patsy, whoever Patsy might be.
In a moment he had the spy-glass to his eye. He stilled the boyish
flailing of his legs in the air as he lay prone on the stile-top,
leaning on his elbows, and intently studying something that flashed and
was lost among the birches that shaded the path up the glen of the Abbey
Burn.
"Patsy it is, by Jove of the Capitol!" he proclaimed triumphantly, and
shutting up the brass telescope with a facile snap of sliding tubes, he
slipped it into his pocket and sprang off the stile. In three seconds he
was on Ferris territory--and a trespasser. Louis Raincy was quick,
impulsive, with fair Norse hair blown in what the country folk called a
"birse" about his face, and dark-blue western eyes--the eyes of the
island MacBrydes who had built ships to ride the sea, and whose younger
branches had captained and made fortunes out of far sea adventuring. So
with the thoroughness of these same privateer shipbuilders, Louis
precipitated himself down the steep breakneck cliff, catching the trunk
of a pine here, or snatching at a birch and swinging right round it
there to keep his speed from becoming a mere avalanche, till at last,
breathed a little and with a scraped hand, of which he took not the
slightest notice, he stood on the winding, hide-and-seek path which
meanders along the side of the Abbey Burn, as it were, keeping step with
it.
The pines stood about still and solemn. The light breeze from the sea
made no difference to them, but the birches quivered, blotting the white
of the path with myriads of purple splashes, none of which were distinct
or ever for a second stood still, criss-crossing and melting one into
the other, all equally a-dither with excitement.
Louis checked for a moment to breathe and listen. He said to himself
that Patsy, for whose sake he had torn through the underbrush at the
imminent danger of life and limb, was still far away down the glen.
"I shall go a bit farther till I find a snug corner and then--wait for
Patsy!"
What Louis Raincy meant was that he would find a place equally sheltered
from the eyes of his grandfather and from possible spies in the front
windows of Cairn Ferris, the quiet ivy-grown house at the head of the
glen, against which his grandfather had hurled so many anathemas in
vain.
At last he found his place--a chosen nook. The sound of voices would be
drowned by the splash of the little waterfall. The pool into which it
fell was deep enough to keep any one from breaking in upon them too
suddenly, and through a rift in the leaves a piece of bluest sky peered
down. White of waterfall, sleepy brown of pool, dusky under an eyelash
of bracken, and blue of sky--Patsy, who noticed all things, would like
that.
But Patsy did not come. Could she have passed and he not seen? Clearly
not, for Louis had come downhill as fast as a big boulder set a-rolling.
What, then, could she be doing?
Ah, who could ever tell what Patsy might be doing or call her to account
afterwards for the deed? Louis only knew that he dared not even try. All
the same he left his nook with some disrelish--it would have been so
capital a conjuncture to have met her just there, and he had taken such
pains! However, there was no choice. He must go to seek Patsy if Patsy
would not come to him.
She was returning from her daily lesson at her uncle Julian's. He knew
that she would most likely have a book under her arm, and an ashplant in
her hand. She would come along quietly, whistling low to herself,
tickling the tails of the trout in the shallows with her stick and
laughing aloud as they scudded away into the Vandyke-brown shadows of
the bank.
The glen opened out a little and Louis paused at the corner, standing
still in shadow.
Twenty yards away Patsy was talking to a young man in a shabby grey
suit, a broad blue bonnet set on his head, and they were conferring
profoundly over a book which Patsy held in her hands. The young man in
the shabby suit appeared to be instructing Patsy, or at least explaining
a difficult passage, which he did with more zeal and gusto than Louis
cared about.
He knew him in a moment, for of course the heir of Raincy knew everybody
within thirty miles.
"Only Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar!" he said to himself, his jealousy
melting like a summer cloud, "of course--what a fool I was. He's on his
way home from teaching the Auchenmore brats. Though it is a miracle that
he should happen to cross the glen at the same point exactly. Perhaps he
had a spy-glass, too!"
What Louis noticed most of all was the pretty shape of Patsy's small
head, the dense quavering blackness of the little curls that frothed
about her brow, and the sidelong way she had of appealing to the giant
who bent over her with his finger on the line of Virgil he was
expounding.
Presently with a squaring of the shoulders and a grasp at the blue
bonnet which lifted it clear of his head, the Poor Scholar strode away.
He crossed the Abbey Burn in a couple of leaps, his feet hardly seeming
to touch the stones, and in a moment more his tall figure was hoisting
itself up the opposite bank, his hands grasping rock and tree-trunk,
root and dry bent-grass indiscriminately, till presently, without once
turning round, he was out of sight.
Louis Raincy detached himself from the rock by which he had stood silent
during the interview with the Poor Scholar. He swung himself lightly up
into the Y-shaped crotch of a willow that overhung the big pool.
The girl came along, her lips moving as she repeated the words of the
passage she had just had explained. Then Louis Raincy whistled an air
well known to both of them, "Can ye sew cushions, can ye sew sheets?"
Instantly the girl looked up, turning a vivid, scarlet-lipped face,
crowned with a ripple of ink-black locks, to the notch of the willow,
and said easily, "Hillo, Louis Raincy! What are you doing here, a mile
off your own ground?"
"Watching you turn the head of that poor boy Francis Airie!"
"His head will not turn so easy as yours, Louis, lad," Patsy retorted;
"there is a deal more in it!"
Louis Raincy was not in any way put out. Of course Patsy was different.
You never knew in the least what she was going to say, and it would have
grieved him exceedingly not to be abused. He would have been sure,
either that the girl was sickening for a serious illness, or that he had
mortally offended her.
"How did you leave the Wise Uncle this morning?" he asked, with a nod of
his head in the direction of the house by the Abbey Burnfoot. Both had
begun to climb a little way up out of the path by the waterside. They
did so without any words. It was the regular order of things, as they
both knew. For in the valley bottom Uncle Julian or Adam Ferris might
come round the corner upon them in a moment, and being young, they
wanted to talk without restraint. Besides, there was a constant coming
and going of messengers between the two houses. A carriage road led
along the highway to the cliffs, and then bent sharply down steep
zigzags to the stables of the Abbey, but all ordinary intercourse
between the houses was conducted along the footpath by the Abbey Burn.
"Uncle Julian," said the girl, as if continuing some former
conversation, "is quite different from father. He has seen the world and
can tell tales of black savages and Arab chiefs and piracy in the China
seas. But father has just lived in his own house of Cairn Ferris all his
life. You know he called me Patricia after my mother--Patricia Wemyss
Ferris. Oh, not even your grandfather is better known than my father.
They made him a justice of the peace, too, but because he can do no good
to the poor folk against the great landlords, he mostly stays at home.
You know our house? From the outside--yes, of course. Well, when your
grandfather will let you, you shall know it from the inside too. But not
till then. Oh, it is big, roomy and quite comfortable, and though it
would not hold an army like Castle Raincy, it is quite big enough to get
lost in."
"Of course," said Raincy, vaguely feeling the necessity of defending
himself and those who were his, "if it were not for grandfather and his
wretched old feud, mother and I would come and see you to-morrow. She
is--well, she would love you!"
"Would she, I doubt?" said Patsy, giving her bonnet a vicious jerk to
bid it stay on her head; "mothers seldom like those whom their sons--"
"Adore!" put in Louis Raincy smilingly.
"Out, traitor!" cried the girl with a quick, scornful upthrow of the
chin, "it is the smile that saves you, Louis, lad. Easy it is to see
that you have had little experience of talking to women, when you come
firing off words that ought to mean great things into the middle of a
talk about smuggling cases and justices of the peace."
"But I do mean--" began Louis, preparing to take solemn oath.
"You mean nothing of the sort, and well it is for you, little boy.
Quiet, now, and listen! I am a Pict--yes, I, Patsy Ferris! Uncle Julian
says so. I am (so he tells me) a throwback to my grandmother's folk who
were Fingauls--and her father the Laird of Kirkmaiden was the chief of
them. That is why I do nothing, say nothing, think nothing like a
scone-faced maid of the Scots. I am centuries older than they. If it
ever arrives to me to fall in love with any man--it seems impossible,
but Uncle Julian says it will come--it is I who will seek that man and
make him love me, and if he ever leaves me or is untrue, I shall kill
him. For that is the way of the Fingaul. Uncle Julian says so."
As she explained her lot in life Patsy was peeling and eating a sappy
root of rush which she had plucked. With this and a piece of clear brown
gum, the exudation of a smooth-barked wild cherry tree, she made a
delicious repast. She offered his share to Louis, who was in no mood for
frivolities. In spite of his smile he had been hurt to the quick. But
Patsy was perfectly calm, and having fixed a large lump of cherry-gum on
a thorn, she licked round and round it with relish, occasionally holding
it between her eye and the twinkle of the sun to see the effect of the
deep amber hue.
Still she was circumspect, and when a figure in grey appeared tramping
sturdily up the glen swinging a stick, she nudged her companion into
sulky kind of attention.
"Uncle Julian," she said, after the tall clean-shaved man had turned the
corner. "I wish you could see his house--properly, I mean, not just from
the road."
"I have seen it from the sea!" said Louis, still grumpily.
"And that is no wise way to see it. There are always gentlemen of the
Free Trade hanging about in the offing these days, and if they thought
that the heir of Raincy was spying on them--well, they might take the
liberty of throwing him overboard to sink or swim."
"But surely your uncle has nothing to do with smuggling or smugglers? My
grandfather says that it is no business for a gentleman to dip his
fingers in!"
"Your grandfather says a great many other things to which you do not pay
great heed--else you would not be sitting here looking as gloomy as the
raven that croaked when the old cow wouldn't die. No, sir, you would be
sitting up on the stile yonder, cursing the Ferrises with bell, book and
candle--and the old man helping you out when you forgot the words."
The girl went on sucking her cherry-gum without the least concern as to
whether Louis Raincy was hurt in his feelings or no. If he were, the
obvious alternative was before him. He could return to Castle Raincy the
way he had come. About this or about him Patsy gave herself no trouble.
Indeed, Patsy gave herself no trouble about anything or anybody, and so
accustomed herself to the management of men. Women, she knew, were
different.