SAINT PRISSY, PEACEMAKER.
This is the letter which, according to his promise, General Napoleon
Smith despatched to the accredited leader of the Smoutchy boys--or, as
they delighted to call themselves, the Comanche Cowboys.
WINDY STANDARD HOUSE, BORDERSHIRE.
_Mistr. Nippr. Donnan, Esqr.,_
_DEAR SIR,--This is to warn you that on Saturday the 18th,
between the hours of ten in the morning and six in the evening,
we, the rightful owners of the Castle of Windy Standard, will
take possession of our proppaty. Prevent us at your peril. You
had better get out, for we're coming, and our motty is 'Smith
for ever, and No Quarter!'_
_Given under our hand and seal._
(_Signed_) _NAPOLEON SMITH_,
_General-Feeld-Marshall-Commanding._
_P.S.--I'll teach you to kick my legs with tacketty butes and
put me in nasty dunguns. Wait till I catch you, Nipper
Donnan._
The reply came back on a piece of wrapping paper from the butcher's
shop, rendered warlike by undeniable stains of gore. It had, to all
appearance, been written with a skewer, and contrasted ill with the
blue official paper purloined out of Mr. Picton Smith's office, on
which the challenge had been sent. It ran thus:----
_Matthew Donnan & Co.,
Butchers and Cattle Salesmen,
21 High Street, Edam, Bordershire._
_DEAR SIR.--Yours of the 13th received, and contents noted.
Come on, you stuck-up retches. We can fight you any day with
our one hand tied behind us. Better leave girls and childer at
home, for we meen fightin' this time--and no error.--We'll nock
you into eternal smash._
_Hoping to be favoured with a continuance of your esteemed
orders,--I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient
servant to command,_
_N. DONNAN._
The high contracting parties having thus agreed upon terms of mutual
animosity, to all appearance there remained only the arbitrament of
battle.
But other thoughts were working in the tender heart of Prissy Smith.
She had no sympathy with bloodshed, and had she been in her father's
place she would at once have given the town all their desires at any
price, in order that the peace might be kept. Deeply and sincerely she
bewailed the spirit of quarrelling and bloodshed which was abroad. She
had her own intentions as to the enemy, Hugh John had his--which he
had so succinctly summed up in the "favour of the 13th," acknowledged
with such businesslike precision by Mr. Nipper Donnan in his reply to
General Napoleon's blue official cartel.
Without taking any one into her confidence (not even Sammy Carter, who
might have laughed at her), Priscilla Smith resolved to set out on a
mission of reconciliation to the Comanche Cowboys. Long and deeply she
prepared herself by self-imposed penances for the work that was before
her. She was, she knew, no Joan of Arc to lead an army in battle array
against a cruel and taunting enemy. She was to be a St. Catherine of
Siena rather, setting out alone and unfriended on a pilgrimage of
mercy. She had read all she could lay her hands on about the tanner's
daughter, and a picture of the great barn-like brick church of San
Dominico where she had her visions, hung over the wash-stand in
Prissy's little room, and to her pious eyes made the plain deal table
seem the next thing to an altar.
Prissy wanted to go and have visions too; and so, three times a day
she went in pilgrimage to the tool-house where the potatoes were
stored, as being the next best thing to the unattainable San Dominico.
This was a roomy place more than half underground, and had a vaulted
roof which was supported by pillars--the remains, doubtless, of some
much more ancient structure.
Here Prissy waited, like the Scholar Gipsy, for the light from heaven
to fall; but, alas, the light refused to come to time. Well, then, she
must just go on without it as many another eager soul had done before
her. There only remained to make the final preparations.
On the morrow therefore she waited carefully after early dinner till
General Smith and Toady Lion had gone off in the direction of the
mill-dam. Then she took out the little basket which she had concealed
in the crypt of San Dominico--that is to say in the potato house. It
stood ready packed and covered with a white linen cloth.
It was a basket which had been prepared upon the strictest missionary
models. She had no printed authorities which went the length of
telling her what provision for the way, what bribes and presents Saint
Catherine carried forth to appease withal the enemies of her city and
country. But there was on record the exact provision of the
mission-chest of a woman, who in her time went forth to turn to
gentleness the angry hearts of brigands and robbers--one Abigail, the
wife of a certain churl of Maon, a village near to the roots of Mount
Carmel.
True, Prissy could not quite make up the tale of her presents on the
same generous and wholesale scale. She had to preach according to her
stipend, like the Glasgow wife of the legend, who, upon the doctor
ordering her husband champagne and oysters, informed a friend that
"poor folk like us couldna juist gie Tammas champeen-an'-ighsters, but
we did the next best thing--we gied him whelks-an'-ginger-beer."
So since it might have attracted some attention, even on pastures so
well stocked as those of Mr. Picton Smith of Windy Standard, if Prissy
had taken with her "five sheep ready dressed," she had to be content
with half of a sheep's-head-pie, which she had begged "to give away"
from Janet Sheepshanks. To this she added a four pound loaf she had
bought in Edam with her own money (Abigail's two hundred being
distinctly out of her reach)--together with the regulation cluster of
raisins and cake of figs which were both well within her means. In
addition, since Prissy was a strict teetotaler, she took with her a
little apparatus for making tea, some sugar and cream from the pantry,
and her largest and best set of dolls' cups and saucers.
All this occupied a good deal of room and was exceedingly heavy, so
that Prissy had very often to rest on the way towards the castle. She
might have failed altogether, but that she saw Mike raking the gravel
of the path near the edge of the water, and asked him to carry the
basket for her over the stepping-stones.
Prince Michael, who as he often remarked was "spoiling for another
taste of Donnybrook," conveyed the basket over Edam Water for his
young mistress, without the least idea of the strange quest upon which
the girl was going.
He laid it down and looked at the linen cover.
"Faix," he said, "sure 'tis a long road to sind a young lady wid a
heavy load like that!"
Now, this was his mode of inviting an explanation, but Prissy was far
too wise to offer one. She merely thanked him and went on her way
towards the castle.
"Don't go near thim ruins till after Saturday, when we will clean
every dirty spalpeen out of the place like thunder on the mountains,"
cried Mike, who, like some other people, loved to round off his
sentences with sounding expressions without troubling himself much as
to whether they fitted the place or not.
"Thank you!" cried Prissy over her shoulder, with a sweet and
grateful, but quite uninforming smile.
She continued on her way till Mike was out of sight, without altering
her course from the straight road to the wooden bridge which led into
the town of Edam. Then at the edge of the hazel copse she came upon a
small footpath which meandered through lush grass meadows and patches
of the greater willow herb to the Castle of Windy Standard. The willow
herb flourished in glorious red-purple masses on the ancient masonry
of the outer defences, for it is a plant which loves above all things
the disintegrating lime of old buildings from which its crown of
blossom shoots up three or four, or it may be even six feet.
She skirted the moat, green with the leaves of pond-weed floating like
small veined eggs on the surface. From the sluggish water at the side,
iris and bog-bean stood nobly up, and white-lilies floated on the
still surface in lordly pride among the humbler wrack and scum of
duckweed and water buttercup. The light chrome heads of
"Go-to-bed-John" flaunted on the dryer bank beyond.
Prissy eyed all these treasures with anxious glances.
"I want just dreadfully to gather you," she said. "I hope all this
warring and battling will be over before you have done blooming, you
nice waterside things."
And indeed I agree with her, for there is nothing much nicer in the
world than wayside and riverside flowers--except the little children
who play among them; and nothing sweeter than a bairns' daisy-chain,
save the fingers which weave it, and the neck about which it hangs.
Prissy had arrived within sight of the castle now. She saw the
flaunting of the red republican flag which in staggery capitals
condemned her parent to instant dissolution. She stood a moment with
the basket on her arm in front of the great ruined gate. A sentry was
pacing to and fro there. Bob Hetherington was his name, and there were
other lads and boys lounging and pretending to smoke in the deep
embrasures and recesses of the walls. Clearly the castle was occupied
in force by the enemy.
Prissy stopped somewhat embarrassed, and set down her basket that she
might have a good look, and think what she was to do next. As she did
so she caught the eye of Nosie Cuthbertson, a youth whom Nipper Donnan
permitted in his corps because his father had a terrier which was
undoubtedly the best ratter in Edam. But the privilege of association
with such a distinguished dog was dear at the price, for no meaner nor
more "ill-set" youth than Nosie Cuthbertson cumbered honest
Bordershire soil. Nosie was seated trying to smoke dry dock-leaf
wrapped in newspaper without being sick, when his eye caught the trim
little figure on the opposite side of the moat.
"Hey, boys!" he cried, "here's the Smith lass. Let's go and hit her!"
Now Master Nosie had not been prominent on the great day of the
battle of the Black Sheds, but he felt instinctively that against a
solitary girl he had at last some chance to assert himself. So he
threw away his paper cigar, and ran round the broken causeway to the
place where Prissy was standing.
[Illustration: "'OH, PLEASE DON'T, SIR!'"]
"If you please, sir," began Prissy sweetly, "I've come to ask you not
to fight any more. It isn't right, you know, and God will be angry."
Nosie Cuthbertson did not at all attend to the appeal so gently and
courteously made to him. He only caught Prissy by the hand, and began
twisting her wrist and squeezing her slender fingers till the joints
ground against each other, and Prissy bit her lips and was ready to
cry with pain.
"Oh, _please_ don't, sir!" she pleaded softly, trying to smile as at a
famous jest. "I came because I wanted to speak to your captain, and
I've brought a lot of nice things for you all. I think you will be
sure to like them."
"Humbug," cried Nosie Cuthbertson, performing another yet more painful
twist, "the basket's ours anyway. I captured it. Hey, Bob, catch hold
of this chuck, while I give the girl _toko_--I'll teach her to come
spying here about our castle!"