THE PICT'S WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY
The deed being done, the doers soon dispersed. A strong body-guard
composed of Back Shore men and the lads from the Stewartry seaboard rode
with Patsy and Stair to the small unfrequented landing-place of Port
Luce, where a boat was waiting for them. Patsy dismounted from Honeypot
and bade Stair Garland get on board.
"I am in command still, Stair," she cried, smiling at his bewilderment.
"Besides, I am running off with you, as Uncle Ju says the Pictish women
always did!"
And Stair humbly obeyed, for the thing he heard was too marvellous for
him to believe. Though his heart beat hard, he kept his head, and did
not allow his imagination to run away with him. He scented one of
Patsy's jests. That she should come from London in the _Good Intent_,
that she should raise the country, that she should head the
prison-breakers--these things he could understand. Still he remembered
what she had said when she had been run away with by the Duke of
Lyonesse.
"I was in no danger: when it is my fate to love a man, it is I, Patsy
Ferris, who shall run away with him!"
But he was a wise lad and had lived too long among the Will-o'-the-Wisps
on the Wild of Blairmore to be easily led astray by them. So he took
Patsy's speech as merely her way and thought no more about it--at least
not more than he could help.
It was already high day, brisk and clean-blowing, when they reached the
little herring smack which lay waiting for them out in the bay. Godfrey
McCulloch went with them, dark-browed, silent. When he lifted his eyes
he could see, across the plain of the middle Rhynns, the reek of the
accursed prison-house of Stranryan still going up to heaven. Then he
laughed a little, also silently.
"They will have to shift," he said: "John Knox was in the right o't.
'Pull down the nests and the craws will fly away.' No more cells for
lads from the ploughtail and the heather. No more bloody whipping-posts,
where one or two are killed out of every draft to put the fear of death
into the others! All gone up in yon puff of smoke!" Then he subsided
into silence and his hard features relaxed as his mind fell upon other
thoughts.
Stair and he were working the little boat while Patsy steered. They were
going up the Solway and the wind behind them was strong and equal. Still
no indication of their destination had been made to Stair. At five of
the afternoon they had passed all the familiar landmarks known to him,
but by the alertness of young McCulloch he judged that they must be near
the haunts allotted to his part of the Band.
The Isle of Man lay faintly blue far to the south, and the hills about
Skiddaw and Helvellyn began to uplift themselves in amethystine ridges.
Towns and villages ran white along the Cumberland coast, and once it
seemed to Stair as if they might be going to land somewhere to the east
of St. Bees. But they were only keeping well out till the twilight of
the evening drew down. They came about in mid-channel and lay some hours
with lowered sail in the lee of a cliffy island. During all this time
Patsy watched the shore intently, and did not speak to him at all. She
held what colloquy was necessary with Godfrey McCulloch, on whose face
there was a quite inscrutable smile. He seemed to be turning over in his
mind some jest known only to himself, perhaps no more than the burning
of the Castle of Stranryan and how well MacJannet's firewood blazed up
when he put the torch to it. But ever and anon he glanced at the
unconscious Stair Garland, when he was looking another way, with an
expression so humorsome that it was evident he considered that in some
way the joke was against him.
At six of the evening, the tide aiding, they had drifted across many
headlands and past carven cliffs of marvellous designs to a long sickle
sweep of strand on which two men could be seen solemnly walking up and
down. Then, at a signal from Patsy, Godfrey McCulloch let down the
anchor and pulled in hand over hand the little skiff which they had been
dragging in their wake all day.
Stair thought that it was a reckless thing to put ashore while the sun
was still high above the horizon. Still the spot was a lonely one--on
one side great heathy tracts rising slowly away towards the foothills of
Criffel--on the other a turmoil of huge cliffs and purple summits to the
west, while behind them all the expanse of Solway lay like polished
silver, clean as a platter ready for the service of a great house.
The two men walked steadily to and fro. The boat, propelled lustily by
Godfrey of the saturnine smile, bounded towards the land. It grounded on
a rapidly shelving beach on which they sprang ashore. Godfrey attached
the boat to a stone, and gave her plenty of rope to ride.
Then all three went to the encounter of the two men. Both of them were
dressed in decent black with something vaguely official about it, and
the taller of the two had a scrap of black cloth after the fashion of a
college gown but infinitely shorter, thrown over his shoulders. The
other was a smaller and tubbier man, pleasant to look upon, a man
evidently who lived for and by good eating and drinking. He had a large
book under his arm, so heavy that as often as the two paused in their
walk he laid it carefully down on the sand and sat upon it--while the
tall man, undisturbed, continued his monologue over his comrade's head.
The two parties met at last, their shadows thrown far beyond them on the
moist sand and mingling ludicrously as they altered their positions.
"Aweel," said the tall man, "what's a' this?"
His voice was not at all unkindly, and it was to Patsy he spoke. He
turned in time to catch the little round man in the act of plumping down
his big book on the sand, and he lifted him up again by inserting the
hook of a huge forefinger in his collar as if he had been a deep-sea
catch.
"Stand up there, Saunders Duff! God made man to stand erect on his two
feet, but you would be for ever hunkering like a monkey eatin' nuts.
Chin up, and shoulders back, man! If you dinna ken your duty to King and
Country, I ken mine!"
"Aye, aye, skipper," said Saunders Duff, shaking his head sadly, "but
this vollum is a plaguey heavy cargo and 'tis a long time between
ports!"
"It had need to be," said the tall man, "it contains weighty
matters--matters that shall not run away as unprofitable water, as is so
well said in the 'Book of the Wisdom.' But it appears to me, by what I
have learned, that this young lady had some questions to ask in my
presence. Well, Mistress Headstrong, if you will take my advice,
refrain. I am of Paul's faction. It is meet for a woman to be silent. I
say that without the least hope of having my advice attended to. Get ye
up from off that book, Saunders Duff, or I, that am a 'Magister Artium'
of the College of Edinburgh, will kick you into the salt tide, carefully
retaining the folio which is worth many scores of Saunders Duffs!"
Stair understood not one word of his speech. He even began to think he
had fallen among a collection of amiable lunatics, when Patsy turned
swiftly upon him and, without a quiver of the voice, with her eyes dark
and level upon his face, demanded point blank--
_"Will you, Stair Garland, take me, Patricia Ferris, for your wife?"_
The world spun round the astonished Stair. He clutched at the thing
which happened to be nearest. This chanced to be the arm of Godfrey
McCulloch, who seemed to wear a smile of diabolic sarcasm on his face.
"Steady there--stand up and say 'Yes' or 'No!' Will you or won't you?"
"I WILL!" cried Stair Garland, finding his voice in a manner that scared
the gulls on the cliff ledges, so wild and raucous it was.
_"Then I, Patricia Ferris, take you for my husband!"_
"Before God and these witnesses!" added the man with the ragged college
cloak: "to wit, before me, James Fraser, Magister Artium, minister of
this pairish, and of the unworthy Saunders Duff, session clerk of the
same. Saunders, ye were braw at the sittin' afore. Clatch doon noo, man,
and make your entry. Get all the names and surnames, while I collect the
fees. The business is, ecclesiastically speaking, a little irregular
(though perfectly legal), but that will doubtless be considered in the
matter of the marital dues. If I am duly satisfied as to these, I shall
know how to arrange with the Presbytery."
"Let me attend to this business," said Godfrey McCulloch, suddenly
alive, and forestalling Stair Garland. "Step this way, minister."
And while the session clerk, cross-legged like a Turk on the sand, made
his entries with much dipping of ink out of a tax-collector's bottle
swung from his breast pocket, weird screechings of goose-quill, and
dabbings of pounce box, the sound of confused argumentation came from
the other group.
"I tell ye I will not risk the scandal for less than half-a-dozen
kegs--all the best Hollands--cheap at the price. Think of the
Presbytery!"
"Minister, the thing is done and in your presence. I will promise no
such quantity. But three of Hollands and three of Isle of Man brandy, as
was agreed upon. Consider, it will be worse, for you to be denounced as
art and part in an irregular marriage--a laird's daughter, too--a
pretty-like thing to come before the Presbytery and you the moderator!"
"Let it be as you will, Godfrey McCulloch, but if ye have a spark of
human kindness in your hard heart let it be Hollands! Your Isle of Man
brandy agrees but ill with my stammack, and if I dee o't my ghost will
haunt ye. I will preach to ye, one by one, all my forty sermons on the
King's birthday!"
Godfrey McCulloch threw up his hands.
"Hollands let it be--six kegs at the next run, only lift the interdict.
I would rather be hanged at once and be done with it."
"You are not polite, young man," said the minister. "The sermons have
been pronounced excellent by the very best judges, but I was right in
supposing that you would not care to listen to forty of the best sermons
ever preached! Six of Hollands be it then, lad, and put in the auld
place--I shall see that the clerk is duly paid to hold his tongue! _Whom
God hath joined, let no man put asunder!_ I nearly forgot, and indeed it
is in nowise necessary, being but a Popish formula. Guid nicht to ye,
and mind the Hollands!"