"What difference did that make?" her father asked.
"Oh, none to you, father," Patsy answered saucily, "but to them it seemed to make quite a lot of difference."
Adam Ferris shook his head in reproof.
"You grow reckless, Patsy," he said, "either I must send you away where you will have ladies of your own position to look after you, or we must marry you out of hand and let your husband be responsible for you!"
"If you want me to run away, dad, just keep on talking to me like that.
I won"t have any old "camel" women to rule over me. I am not going to leave home, but when I want to get married I shall make my own arrangements and then--tell you afterwards."
"Surely you will ask my permission?"
"The same sort of permission you asked when you ran away with my mother from the door of the Edinburgh a.s.sembly rooms!"
Adam Ferris smiled grimly.
"What is allowable for a man does not always become a woman," he said.
"But what holds for one Ferris becomes another," his daughter retorted.
"Jeddart justice," said her father, still smiling; "then you will marry first, and ask permission afterwards."
"Exactly," said Patsy, cheerfully. "I knew I could make you understand."
CHAPTER VI
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
In spite of her black, close-cl.u.s.tering 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 amba.s.sador 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 Ca.s.sillis 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 circ.u.mstances.
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 a.s.sisting 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."