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 Patsy seriously, "take my word for it, Uncle Julian has
not had the manhood all taken out of him by his life at courts. Even now
who can cross swords with him? Besides, I have heard him say that if he
were a year or two younger he would be out on the bleak Pyrenees with
the other gallant gentlemen, his friends, driving Soult and his
Frenchmen back out of Spain. And compared to what our army has to suffer
lying out on these frozen rocks--why, the Bothy of Blairmore is a
palace!"
The Princess was silent but not convinced. She knew that of course
Julian Wemyss was brave, but she felt that it was one thing to stand up
to your enemy and kill him like a gentleman, and another to hide among
frozen hags and sleep under a roof of snow.
Nevertheless she brought away a certain sense of physical warmth and
well-being from the description which Patsy had given her, which
comforted her. It was pleasant in the Bothy of Blairmore. Men had a
strain in their blood, something primitive and savage, which made them
like such things, at least for a time and as a change. She remembered
her father saying that he was never happier than in the corner of a
forest clearing waiting for the wild boar to charge, a flask of white
brandy in his pocket and a forest-guard with a couple of spare rifles at
his back.
At that moment the door opened softly and, with her smelling bottle in
her hand, Miss Aline came in. She went to the window where a furious
rush of snow driven by the Channel wind saluted her. She sniffed
appreciatively as the hasps rattled, for even through the well-fitting
windows the snell bite of the winter storm entered.
"Eh, but that's hamelike," she said, going closer, "it will be brave
weather on Solwayside the noo. I mind when it would hae driven me out to
play amang the wreaths like a daft year-auld collie--. Aye, and I am no
sure that I wad not like a turn the noo--not o' that saft stuff that
will melt and be gane the morn's mornin', but the fine kind that sifts
up your sleeve and down your neck!--But for the puir herds on the hill,
wae's me, it will be a wakerife time for them. Little sleep will they
get if the snaw begins to drift in the hollows!"
Patsy looked at the Princess mischievously.
"You see, dear lady," she said, "our Miss Aline knows of worse places
than the Bothy of Blairmore, even in such weather."
"But I do not understand," said the Princess. "Julian never told me
anything of this. Do the sheep in your country stay out in all
weathers--even in the winter storms, and are men to be hired who will
look after them?"
"'Deed there are," said Miss Aline, "and what for no'? A finer,
buirdlier set o' lads than the herds of the Hills neither you nor me are
likely to see. And as for storms and biding oot at nicht--there's Willie
McKerlie that herded the Lagganmore for forty year, and in the Saxteen
Drifty days he wasna hame for a week. And when he got all his sheep oot,
they asked him how it came that he wasna dead. 'Deid! Deid!' says he,
'what for should I be deid? I juist hadna time, man. But I grant ye, I
was mair nor a wee thocht hungry, and I never kenned afore what a heap
o' crumbs a man carried in his pooches when they are a' turned oot!'"