THE LADS IN THE HEATHER
Patsy came into her uncle Julian's drawing-room in her most tempestuous
manner. She had been for a gallop along the sands on Stair Garland's
pony and had beaten Louis de Raincy's Honeypot by a length. She was in
high feather, and as she tramped along the cool parqueted hall she kept
calling out, "Uncle Ju--where are you, Uncle Ju?"
When she opened the door and dashed in she disturbed the conference of
three men by the window, one of whom was in uniform, and the other two
dressed in the latest fashion, of which Patsy had as yet only seen
prints at the end of her uncle's _Town and Country Magazine_--a review
which, curiously enough, always lacked some of its pages by the time
Patsy was allowed to see it.
"Oh," said Patsy, no ways abashed, "you have come to see my uncle--will
you be seated?"
Patsy noticed that the tallest of the young men made a slight sign to
his companions, and that they sat down as if in answer to that signal
instead of accepting her invitation at once.
"We have indeed come a long distance in order to call on Mr. Julian
Wemyss," said the young man of the signal. "I knew him at Vienna, and as
I was passing through from Ireland, I took this opportunity of paying my
respects to him. But it is better still to find such a charming young
lady installed in his house to do the honours!"
"Oh," said Patsy, "I do not live here, but with my father at the other
end of the glen. I only come every day to cheer him up--Uncle Ju is so
apt to get the 'pokes'!"
"The 'pokes'--what are they?" exclaimed the tall and ruddy young man,
who continued to stare at her in a manner which would have
discountenanced any other than Patsy.
"The 'pokes' are what you get if you are left too long alone with all
these shelves, especially if you stop indoors to read them. Then I come
and take Uncle Julian out, and he feels better before I have gone a mile
with him!"
"So you are a remedy for the 'pokes,'" said the young man, drawing his
chair nearer to that of Patsy, as if to show his interest. "I often have
the disease, though with me it does not come from reading too many
books. But I should gladly take the malady that I might taste of the
antidote!"
And Patsy felt her face flush with the intensity of his regard. She cast
down her eyes, and the young man took advantage of the fact to signal
slightly to his friends. One after the other they rose and, with an
excuse, left the room.
The tall young man came gradually closer to Patsy till she started to
her feet, merely to break the nervous tension. An instinctive repulsion
sent her to the window, and, then, though he followed her, she somehow
felt safe. There were the familiar sands, and in a moment she could be
outside where none could touch her. After all, she thought, as she
looked at the white line of the breakers and heard the familiar clatter
of the servants in the kitchen below, she was a fool to be so
idiotically nervous, like a fine smelling-salts lady. What could happen
to her? What if she did not like this very forward young man? He was a
guest of her Uncle Julian's--he might even be his friend. Very likely he
meant no harm, and she would treat him just like anybody else. Yes, that
would be best.
"Ah," said the young man, leaning over her as she stood looking out, "if
only I had been at that cottage on the hills with the officers the other
day! I would have given a thousand guineas for their luck. But now that
I am fortunate enough to have you to myself for a moment, let me say how
much I admire you, Miss Patsy--that is your name, I think?"
Patsy did not answer. She had one hand on the sill and was wondering if
the young man were mad or only drunk--also how long it would take for
her to be safe among the heather.
"You are far too fine and beautiful," he continued, "too bewitching and
original to remain here. You must come to London and take your place
among our reigning beauties. Ah, if only you would trust to one who
adores you, one who would do anything in the world for you--"
"If you mean yourself, will you help me to wind wool?" said Patsy. "I
have a pair of heather-mixture stockings to make for uncle. I promised
to make them for him last Christmas and I only began them yesterday."
"Certainly," said the young man, visibly discountenanced, "but can your
uncle not wait a little longer? I wish to talk to you. It was solely for
that purpose I came here, believe me. I had heard of you from Captain
Laurence, and young Everard, one of the officers of the _Britomart_, in
which I came from Ireland. I was over there governing the island for my
father!"
"Ah, were you?" said Patsy, "well, here is the wool. Can you wind it?
No! Then you had better hold it. That, at least, you can do.--Well,
there you are, remember I shall find you out if you are boasting."
"But I have got much to say to you!" the young man objected.
"I can listen better on my feet. I must be doing something. There--sit
down on that three-legged 'creepie,' and, whatever you do, do not tangle
the wool."
Patsy was resolved that, whatever she might do in the future, she would
now take the matter lightly, and not insult her uncle's guest in the
drawing-room of Abbey Burnfoot.
* * * * *
When Julian Wemyss returned in haste from Miss Aline's, he found no less
a person than H.R.H. the Duke of Lyonesse seated on a stool holding wool
for Patsy, who wound a ball with rapid, nimble fingers while she scolded
a delighted Great Personage for his mismanagement. Two gentlemen, of
whom one was Captain Laurence, stood outside and waited gravely, as
indeed became them. But the Duke of Lyonesse was in the highest spirits
and really gave himself to his task, knitting his brows and striving to
follow Patsy's instructions to the letter.
"It is a long time since I heard so much truth about myself," said the
Duke. "I own I am both stupid and awkward, but then, by gad, I am
willing to learn!"
"People who are stupid and awkward ought not to offer," said Patsy. "I
am sure that Captain Laurence, whom you sent away, could do it a great
deal better."
"I can't give up the honour even to my friend Laurence," said the
Prince. "In for a penny, in for a pound. I must conquer this art or be
for ever disgraced in this lady's eyes, and, therefore, in my own!"
"You should practise before boasting of what you can do," said Patsy.
"Make Captain Laurence wind for you an hour each morning, and in a
little while you will be able to knit your own stockings."
"By gad," said his Highness, "that is a good idea. Will you teach me?
Often when I was at Constantinople and also at sea I wished I had
something to help the time to pass besides stupid books!"
He glanced about him at the crowded shelves. "Though I know your uncle
does not think them stupid," he added, with some sense of an apology
due; "but then we cannot all be so clever as he!"
"I should think not, indeed," said Patsy sharply, "nor half so
handsome!"
The two gentlemen at the door glanced at one another, but the Duke of
Lyonesse did not wince. He went on carefully slanting his hands time
about to let the wool slip round, bending his thumbs to act as a drag
and obeying his task-mistress to the best of his ability.
"That has always been the opinion of your sex all the world over," he
said gravely, "if Julian Wemyss entered for a race, what was left for
the others but the Consolation Stakes? But you, at least, are a stake
for which he cannot enter!"
A quick, light footstep passed through the hall and the door opened.
"Ah, Wemyss," cried the Duke, "don't interrupt, like a good fellow. I am
on my promotion. Your niece has been dressing me down. I hope to do
better after a while. Besides, we have just been saying how perfectly
irresistible you are, and how the ladies love you. You ought to be
grateful for that at any rate."
The last threads ran swiftly over the opened fingers, and Patsy deftly
slid the end into the ball, said "Thank you," and, with a curtsey, went
out by the way of the French window leading to the garden, leaving the
men to themselves.
"Jove," said the Duke, looking after her through the window, "where and
how did you find such a treasure? No wonder you gave up Paris for this.
Like Henry of Navarre, I should give up both Paris and France for such a
mass--a real exile's consolation, good faith. Wemyss, you used to make
me read about Ovid starving for years in the Danube swamps, but this
would be consolation for an exile if he had to roof in the pole to make
himself a house."
"I am sorry," said Julian, somewhat formally, "that I was not in time to
introduce you to my only sister's only daughter, my niece and heiress,
Miss Patricia Wemyss Ferris of Cairn Ferris."
"I beg your pardon," said his Highness. "Captain Laurence made us laugh
so much at a tale he was telling, that I fear the introductions were a
little slipshod. I shall make my apologies to the young lady when I have
the opportunity of bettering the acquaintance."
Julian Wemyss knew very well what was the story which Laurence had been
retailing--that of the disappointed man-hunters at the bothy in the Wild
of Blairmore. But he said nothing, and proceeded to make his young
friend at home in his house of Abbey Burnfoot. He made no apologies.
There was need of none. At Varna and in the little towns along the
Illyrian coast his pupil and he had often had to share far humbler
accommodation.
For though Julian Wemyss lived apart from the world, he kept a small
yacht to keep him in comfortable touch with the outside markets. The
passage to Glasgow was an easy one. Dumfries and the Cumberland ports
were open to him, and so, with the foreign articles which were found in
his outer cellars after a trip of the _Good Intent_ (master and owner,
Captain Penman), no house in the county could produce at short notice so
excellent and various a bill of fare.
A place had been set at dinner for Patsy, but it remained empty. Patsy
had simply disappeared. No one had seen her about the shore, nor had she
been met with along the dusky alders and dimpling birches of the path by
the burnside. Neither had it pleased her to reappear at Cairn Ferris,
whither Julian had been careful to send an inquiry.
Such conduct, however, did not seriously disquiet anybody, for Patsy's
ways were too erratic and the country too safe (so long, at least, as
she kept to the Ferris properties) for any one to harbour serious fears
about her.
And, indeed, there was no cause. Patsy had no idea of going off her
father's lands. She had simply taken a scamper over the Rig of
Blairmore, keeping to the deeper cover of the hollows till she came to
the nook that sheltered the bothy. Here she glanced within, but all was
empty, swept and garnished. There was no sign about the place of any
recent occupation.
All was trim and well-kept as she had left it--dust being unknown on the
Wild of Blairmore. But in the little hiding-place which ordinarily held
the key, a small rock-cupboard beneath a couple of great boulders,
fallen thwart-wise across one another like drunken men embracing, she
found a strip of twisted paper. Patsy thought that it contained a
message from Jean, but in a moment she recognized the aggressive
penmanship of Stair Garland.
_"If you want me, stand five minutes on Peden's Stone!"_
That was all, but Patsy knew that Stair had all the time been watching
over her in some wild, sudden-swooping, peregrine falcon-fashion of his
own. He had left the warning if she should happen to visit the Bothy
while it was being watched for the return of the young men whom the
"press" had missed on the day of Patsy's wild race in the yellow
sandals.
Now, save that it might pleasure the boy, Patsy had no special reason
for wishing to see Stair Garland. But it would certainly be well for her
to talk with his sister Jean. She wished to do this without going to the
farm itself. Her absence from her uncle would soon be noticed, and as
she had not appeared at her father's house of Cairn Ferris, it was to
Glenanmays that any searchers would go first. She was therefore wishful
to speak to Jean and ask her opinion of the visitors who had taken
possession of her uncle's house at the Burnfoot.
So with circumspection she crossed the pebbly bed of the Mays Water and
climbed up into a crater-like amphitheatre from the edge of which a flat
block of stone jutted out. It was told in the "persecuting" lore of the
parish that the great "Peden the Prophet" had often used it as a pulpit,
his congregation being seated round the semi-circle and the Mays Water
birling and singing handily below in case of children to be baptized.
Patsy stood on the stone, all trodden smooth by the restless feet of the
hill lambs which in spring came from the most distant parts of the moor
to gambol there. She could look both up and down the water, but for a
while she saw nothing of Stair.
But the five minutes were not up, when, from a thick tuft of broom, she
heard the call of the whin-chat, like a tiny hammer ringing on hard
stone. The sound came from up the water and Patsy moved towards it,
stepping deftly from stone to stone in the bed of the stream.
"Stair," she said softly, "where are you, Stair?" A full swathe of broom
moved itself aside, and she could see Stair Garland lying in a rocky
niche which he had prepared long before, in case of such a very probable
emergency as the officers of the excise coming after him.
The barrel of his long gun looked over his shoulder.
"Go on, Patsy," he said, "walk on up the burn as if you had seen nothing
and I shall be with you in a moment."
She had reached a little knoll, crowned with alder bushes, when she
found him entering from the opposite side. Sitting down, she told him of
the Duke's coming to Abbey Burnfoot, and of the two gentlemen who were
with him, Captain Laurence and Lord Wargrove.
"Ah," said Stair, "so it is for that we have a full squadron of dragoons
camped in our barns at Glenanmays, the stable emptied of our own horses
to make room for those of the dragoons, and the whole house turned
upside down. I thought it was too big a force to be sent after the three
of us."
"Fergus and Agnew are still away, then?" queried Patsy, sure that they
were.
Stair grinned.
"They are in the heather, like myself," he chuckled, "but neither of
them has such a choice of hidie-holes as I have. I can hide better and
lie closer, besides keeping a watch on the farm and on you, Miss Patsy,
with the soldiers all about within the shot of a gun."
"Can you bring Jean to me, Stair?" said Patsy, "it will be hard, I know,
with all those men on the watch at Glenanmays."
Stair flushed a little with the joy of a difficult commission. He
whistled shrilly three times, and then sat quite still listening. Then
he whistled thrice more and the echoes had hardly died away before the
wise, towsy head of a rough collie with the big, brown eyes of the
genuine Galloway sheep-dog peered out of the bracken and long grass of
the burnside. He came silently and expectantly to his master, as if he
enjoyed the game as much as any one.
"Here, Whitefoot," said Stair, and the dog came obediently to his side.
He wore on his neck a plain leather collar, which his master undid. In
one place the inside leather was doubled but held tight when worn by
Whitefoot, owing to the roughness of the dog's mane of hair. Stair
pushed back the understrap, and taking a piece of paper from his
waistcoat wrote upon it the figure "2" very large and clear. Then he
shook a forefinger before Whitefoot's moist nose, and said with emphasis
the single word "Jean."
The dog lifted his forepaws a little clear of the ground, and, as it
were, barked without noise, making an eager, half-strangled noise in his
throat to show he understood.
"Jean!" Stair repeated.
"A-owch!" whispered the dog, his tail wagging violently and his eyes
fairly blazing.
"Go!" said Stair, and the next moment the tall bracken had closed on
Whitefoot. Not the tremor of a leaf, not the swaying of a rag-weed told
Patsy which way he had gone. In these days the very dogs had been
trained to run invisibly and to bark under their breaths. The Traffic
and the "press," but especially the latter, had silenced much of the
immemorial mirth of the farm-towns. The shadow of the war cloud rested
on the ancient Free Province. The lads might 'list, but they would not
be "pressed." "A lad gaen to the wars" or "a lassie fa'en wrang" were
the utmost shame that could fall upon any Galloway household, and of the
two the lassie was more readily forgiven than the lad with the colours.
"I shall wait till Jean comes," said Stair, a little shame-facedly,
because he understood that the girls would naturally wish to talk of
their own affairs. "I must see how the spurred gentry are behaving
themselves up at the farm."
But to assure Patsy of his complete disinterestedness, he went to the
edge of alder-clump and stood there leaning on his gun. He watched
keenly the twisting links of the Mays Water, a silver chain flung
carelessly in the sun, cut with gun-metal coloured patches where it
sulked a while in shadowy pools. Whitefoot would do his duty. Of that
there was no doubt whatever. He would find Jean. He would attract her
attention. Jean would go out to the dairy, whither Whitefoot would
follow. There the collar would be opened, the paper taken out, and she
would soon be on her way for that one of Stair's trysting-places which
bore the number "2" on the list he had given her.
Presently out of the tall grass of the lower meadow the head and
shoulders of Jean Garland appeared. He could see her wading breast-deep
along the rag-weed and the meadow-sweet. The faint wind-furrow which
preceded her showed where Whitefoot, still invisible, guided the girl to
the exact clump of undergrowth where Patsy and Stair were waiting.
After a little they could see, emerging likewise, the cocked ears, the
shaggy head and eager brown eyes of Whitefoot as he turned at every
other yard to make sure that Jean was following, and appreciating all
his cleverness. At the edge of the clump of dull green alders he drew
back to let her pass, as much as to say, "There now--you can do the
rest--go on and see for yourself if I have not guided you aright."
Jean came upon her brother first. He was still leaning with one hand on
his gun and the opposite elbow crooked about the hole of a tree.
"All right up there?" he demanded in a low tone, indicating the farm
with a jerk of his head.
Jean nodded without speaking. She was sure it was not merely to ask this
that he had sent Whitefoot to bring her to him.
"No insolence?"
"No," said Jean, "they are all as little troublesome as they can help.
There is some general or great person over at the Abbey Burn House--"
"A Royal Prince," said Stair bitterly, "go on, Jean. I think it is about
him that Patsy wishes to speak to you! Keep Whitefoot by you, and if you
want me he will know where to find me."
Jean disappeared, and in another moment had found her friend. In the
snuggest nook of the shelter afforded by the alder undergrowth the two
sat down.
Then Patsy revealed to Jean her invincible fear and dislike of the royal
visitor whom she had seen at her uncle's. She had seen something glitter
for a moment in his eyes which had frightened her, and though she had
played her part out to the end, she had fled the moment after to consult
with Jean, a wise maid for her years and the only soul in the world
fully in Patsy's confidence.
"Uncle Julian cannot help me this time," she said, "he is the man's
friend. He would believe no ill of him. And, indeed, I have nothing
really to put before him. Men want evidence, not impressions. If I were
to say to my Uncle Julian that I was afraid of the man's eyes, he would
only call me a little fool and tell me to look the other way!"
Patsy found Jean exceedingly comforting. Jean understood without having
to have things explained, without asking questions. She shelved the
doubt as to whether Patsy was under a misapprehension. Patsy was afraid.
Patsy had seen, therefore, the thing was so. That is the reason why
girls reveal themselves one to the other and why their friendships are
often durable. They may quarrel like two little spitfires, and mostly
do, but--they respect each other's intuitions.
So that as soon as Jean was in possession of Patsy's fear of an unknown
hovering danger, she called out to Stair, "Don't go far away--we may
need you!"
To understand Patsy's feeling it must be remembered that she had been
accustomed from her earliest infancy to hear of the wild deeds of the
King's sons--how this one had carried off an actress, another made prize
of a young lady of fashion--the Regent, the Dukes of York and Cumberland
had set the fashion. The younger princes had out-princed their elders,
and there was not a gossip in the countryside but could retail their
latest enormities with loud outcries of horror, yet with an undercurrent
of the curious popular feeling that, after all, it rather became young
princes so to misconduct themselves.
If the Duke of Lyonesse had been less talked about than his brothers, it
was only because his long residence abroad had blunted the edge of
calumny. For in his case the women were French or Austrians, and it
seemed quite natural that such things should befall "foreigners."
All this made a background to Patsy's fear of the Prince, but there
remained something else as well. Patsy had never been afraid before--and
she was not quite sure whether she liked it or not.