HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
In spite of her black, close-clustering hair Patsy had the dark blue
eyes of her Uncle Julian. Young men and older ones also (who ought to
have known better) were in the habit of calling them violet when they
walked with Patsy in the twilight, when many unforeseen things happen.
Then Patsy knew exactly what to think. For her Uncle Julian had told her
that when a man is in love, he becomes colour blind. When asked how he
knew, Julian said that once on a time he had friends who used to confide
their love affairs to him. But he smiled as he said it--the
believe-as-much-of-that-as-you-like smile which was Patsy's own, and was
her heritage from a less grave race than the Ferrises of Cairn Ferris.
Julian had the same smile when he condemned the Free Trade as an
interference with the financial policy of King George, and at the same
time drew a jug from a jar of "special" Hollands, or from such an anker
of cognac as could not be found elsewhere in Scotland. He had found
both, as it were dropped from heaven, in a corner of his stable, but Tam
Eident, whom he had carefully catechized, knew nothing about the matter.
He had, he averred, been asleep at the time in his bed in the
stable-loft.
Doubtless the Free Traders thought they were paying for some
complaisance on the part of the master of Abbey Burnfoot. But his light
burned steadily up in his study window. He had never looked down on the
flitting torches, the turmoil of the loading, the black figures crossing
and recrossing the glimmering strips of sand, the clinking of shod feet
on the banks of pebble, the jingling of the chains of the pack saddles.
He had been wisely deaf and had carried his lamp upstairs to the little
turret chamber, where he chose to sleep on wild nights, that he might
the better hear the wind swirl about him, the wind thresh and the sea
roar and churn on the beaches and snore in the spouting-crags of the
Burnfoot.
So on nights when strange noises came from without, and the wild birds
keckled with a sound that might be mistaken for the neighing of horses,
Julian Wemyss betook himself to his strong tower, and, locking the door
at the top of the stone staircase, went peacefully to sleep, till the
morrow showed up wide wet sands, whipped by the wind, many tracks of
horses among the dunes, and, dipping far down the channel towards St.
Bees, the top-sails of a schooner, which might be the much-sought-for
_Good Intent_, or, again, might not.
Julian Wemyss was not so old as you might expect from a man so learned
and so apart from the world. Various reasons had been given for his
retirement to this lonely spot when, during the truce, an appointment as
ambassador extraordinary to Paris was within his grasp. He had acquitted
himself highly on several "missions" already, and there was no doubt
that Vienna was only a step to a permanency in Paris, so soon as the war
should cease. But suddenly Julian Wemyss resigned all his appointments
into the King's hands, and it was whispered that he had done so on
account of a lady so highly placed that even to name her was something
like high treason. This was already years ago and even the memory of it
had grown dim.
Now, Julian Wemyss might be somewhere near fifty years of age, but did
not look a day more than forty, and with certain lights on his face and
that kindly smile of his, wise and tolerant, he looked younger still.
He was erect and slender, not very tall beside Adam, his brother-in-law,
but moving with a light, easy carriage something between that of an
athlete and a favourite of drawing-rooms.
He had the noticeable dark blue eyes that twinkled merrily, yet with
something gloomy in their darkness, as of hyacinths in a woodland glade,
drifting and smoky, like the kind of smoke that comes from weed-burning
or a peat-fire lit on a still day.
His niece, who had heard from Jean Garland some of the talk of the
country, for long dared not ask her uncle point-blank if it were true
about the princess, but she showed such continual curiosity about his
love affairs, that he would keep her waiting while he made an entry in
his diary, or other book of written notes, and then declare solemnly
that the only girl he had ever loved was named Patsy, and was a
thankless brat, unworthy of the care and affection of the best of
uncles.
"Nonsense," his niece would cry, happy, however, all the same to have
him say so.
"A girl named Patsy," he would continue, "who was put into my arms an
hour old to take what care I could of, her father being ill-suited for
the task! I am the only relative she has on her mother's side, and Adam
Ferris is equally solitary on the other. So we must take good care of
the minx, Adam and I. She is all we have, little as she deserves that we
should waste a thought on her--though she threatens to run away with the
first gipsy that comes to the yett, as did the Countess of Cassillis in
the ballad."
"My father has been telling tales--oh, shame of him!" cried Patsy,
reddening. "I said that I would run away with you, if you were not my
uncle, but then I did not know about--"
She stopped suddenly. Her tongue had betrayed her.
"About what? Out with it," said Julian.
"About the princess!" Patsy answered, her eyes in his.
"Who has been listening to gossip now?" said Julian Wemyss.
"I--I," cried Patsy, "and I would give all I have to know what is true
and what is clatter of the country."
"There is little to hide," said Julian quietly, looking past his niece
out of the windows giving on the sea; "but that little is not my own to
tell. If some day I am at liberty to speak, I promise that little Patsy
Ferris shall be the first to hear."
Then he patted her head reproachfully. "Little Curiosity," he said with
tenderness, "it is not good for girls to be told everything. Old fellows
like me ought to know, so as to keep their wards out of mischief. The
world is a strange and dangerous place, full of traps and quicksands,
and for this reason see that you always come to me with your troubles.
Do not bother Adam Ferris with them. He has never ventured beyond the
Plainstones of Dumfries on a cattle-fair day. Besides many women have
told me their sorrows."
"Yes," promised Patsy. "I don't know about princesses, but I do know
that many girls must have loved you, Uncle Julian, for that is the
reason you are so sweet to me now!"
* * * * *
Julian's chief ally in the county was Miss Aline Minto of Balmacminto,
who lived at Ladykirk. She was wealthy, but had been so shy of men that
she had escaped numberless wooers, sorely enamoured of the Balmacminto
estates, and now at the age of forty-five showed the prettiest fringes
of white curls in the world, a complexion of seventeen, and something so
trustful and rare in the way of brown eyes that Raeburn, at the height
of his fame, had painted her for the mere love of winsomeness in growing
old.
She knew Julian's reputation and at first had kept out of his way. But
when once she met him, the two had become comrades on the spot. Miss
Aline saw that this man had no designs either upon her or upon the
estates. A kindly aloofness from all such mean projects, an ease and
grace that spoke of worlds quite unrealized by Miss Aline, somehow urged
her to confide in him. In a month he had become indispensable. Miss
Aline asked his advice and called upon Julian Wemyss for aid in all
circumstances.
He found her a new factor, carrying on the duties till the new young man
(from his own solicitor's office) was installed. He waited with Miss
Aline the portentous visit of Sir Bunny Bunny, Bart., of Crawhall. He
came to demand the honour of her hand for his clodhopping son, George
Bunny Bunny, who hitherto had only distinguished himself by shooting a
keeper in the leg, by frightening village children gathering violets and
daisies, and by going to the wars with a troop of horse raised in the
neighbourhood, only to be sent back again for incompetence. He had,
since then, been the chief support of the press-gang in the
neighbourhood, and, if he had not been so much despised, might have been
hated. But he had enough sense to restrain from active interference with
the Free Traders, for, owing to a personal dislike for violence in any
form which might endanger his skin, he kept clear of press-gang
scrimmages, confining himself to assisting Superintendent McClure with
such information as the Easterhall coast-line afforded.
The baronet himself was a keen-eyed, long-nosed old gentleman, with many
times the spirit of his son. He had been accustomed all his life to
getting his own way, except with his wife. Even at Castle Raincy he had
known how to cow the gentle mother of Louis Raincy, though something
dangerous in the boy's eye had led him to let Louis alone.
"The spark of mad Raincy blood is in the whelp," he confided to his
friends; "the same his grandfather has. They can look positively
murderous sometimes."
Sir Bunny was taken aback to find Julian waiting for him in Miss Aline's
white and gold drawing-room at Ladykirk.
"Am I, then, to congratulate you?" he said to Julian Wemyss, with false
good nature.
"You are," said Julian calmly, "upon the friendship and trust of the
best woman in the world. Anything else I should consider impertinence
and know how to resent as such!"
"I desire to see Miss Aline," said Sir Bunny, to cut short a
conversation which might easily become unpleasant.
"Certainly," said Julian carelessly, as if he were saying the lightest
of nothings; "but I think you will find that I could have answered you
quite as well."
"How so?" said the baronet, glowering at him, his fingers twitching to
take this courtly, easy-spoken man by the throat.
"Because you come to propose your son, Mr. George, for the honour of the
hand of Miss Aline Minto. Miss Aline can say 'No' for herself. But I
think you had better not trouble her and content yourself with the
indication I give you."
"And what is that?"
"That Miss Aline prefers to remain as she is!"
The baronet, however, insisted on a personal answer. Miss Aline came in
and stood shyly while Sir Bunny pointed out the advantages of his
proposal--the estates joined, the parish under control, and the family
name changed by poll deed to Minto-Bunny-Bunny.
"I am obliged for your thinking of me," said Miss Aline sweetly, "but
for the present I have no intention of marrying."
"I warn you," said Sir Bunny Bunny, "that by continuing to act as you
are doing, you are exposing yourself to misconstruction--"
Julian Wemyss, who had been looking out of the window, turned suddenly
and caught his eye.
Old Sir Bunny was no coward, but he shrank from the look of Julian
Wemyss as if it had been a knife at his breast.
"I mean," he said, "that Miss Aline, gracious and youthful as she is,
ought to remember that youth does not last for ever!"
He thought he had turned the matter off rather neatly, and was surprised
when Julian merely shrugged his shoulders and turned again to the
window. Presently Sir Bunny Bunny made his bow and departed, cursing the
interference of Julian Wemyss in what had long been the desire of his
heart, the union of the Bunny Bunny properties with those of
Balmacminto. He had thought about it so long that it had become to his
mind an accomplished fact. Indeed, he had only been waiting for his
loutish son George to finish his wild-oat sowing before communicating
the news of her good fortune to Miss Aline.
He was still more astonished on the way home from Ladykirk. An officer,
riding, checked at his approach, and, with a sketched salute, reined his
steed long enough to ask, "Do you know where Mr. Julian Wemyss is to be
found? He is to go home immediately. His Royal Highness the Duke is at
Abbey Burnfoot!"
"What duke?" the baronet fairly gasped.
"The Duke of Lyonesse, of course, on his way from Ireland," said the
officer, "he was junior _attaché_ to Mr. Wemyss at Vienna!"
"Good God!" said the baronet, "I wonder if Wemyss will bring him to
Bunny House."
And he offered to ride with the officer to where Julian might be found.
The adjutant took one look at the plethoric proportions of the baronet's
mount, and answered that he was in a hurry. A simple indication would be
enough for him. Whereupon, with some reluctance, Sir Bunny pointed to
the chimneys of Ladykirk quietly reeking through the trees, and with a
hasty lift of his reins the officer rode on, leaving the baronet staring
after him, wondering whether he ought to tell his wife, or if he should
leave her to find out for herself.
His brain wheeled. For Julian Wemyss, whom none of them, except Miss
Aline, had chosen to know, was receiving at his house, hitherto the
eyesore and scandal of the neighbourhood, a Prince of the blood Royal.
After all, there must have been something in that talk of great ladies
heartbroken because of this Julian Wemyss, in whom the county saw
nothing, and in whose ambassadorship they had refused to believe, even
though his resignation of it so unexpectedly had been commented upon in
the _Edinburgh Magazine_, which was taken in by Sir Bunny and passed
round afterwards from house to house.
What could so great a man find to do there? In a distant and disdainful
fashion Sir Bunny knew Abbey Burnfoot. It was not even a mansion--merely
a new-fangled sort of cottage at the best--built in Italian fashion,
they said, but after all, only two score yards of garden, with a narrow
rim of links overgrown with sea pink and ground holly. It was stuck
ridiculously in between the white sands and the pour of the Abbey
Burn--no drives or pleasances, no cropped hedges and trim
parterres--nothing, in short, which Royalty had a right to expect when
visiting a real gentleman's country seat, such as he flattered himself
could be found at Bunny House in the shire of Wigton.
It did not occur to Sir Bunny Bunny, with his poor little squireen's
point of view, that His Royal Highness might possibly come to see, not
long avenues and close cropped hedges, but his old kind chief of
Constantinople and Vienna.
So he was forced to content himself with many shakings of his head, and
muttering that the country was going to the dogs when princes consorted
with beggars or little better, as he rode off home to Bunny House in
desperate fear of what his wife Lady Bunny would say when he got there.