Patsy

They stood high on the Abbey cliff-edge-an old man, eagle-profiled, hawk-beaked, cockatoo-crested, with angry grey eyebrows running peakily upwards towards his temples at either side ... and a boy.

They were the Earl Raincy and his grandson Louis-all the world knew them in that country of the Southern Albanach. For Leo Raincy was a great man, and the lad the heir of all he possessed.

For all-or almost all-they looked upon belonged to the Earl of Raincy. Even those blue hills bounding the meadow valleys to the north hid a fair half of his property, and he was sorry for that. Because he was a land miser, hoarding parishes and townships. He grudged the sea its fringe of foam, the three-mile fishing limit, the very high-and-low mark between the tides which was not his, but belonged to the crown-along which the common people had a right to pass, and where fisherfolk from the neighbouring villages might fish and dry their nets, when all ought to have been his.

The earl's dark eyes passed with carelessness over hundreds of farm-towns, snug sheltered villages, mills with little threads of white wimpling away from the unheard constant clack of the wheel, barns, byres and stackyards-all were his, but of these he took no heed.

Behind them Castle Raincy itself stood up finely from the plain of corn-land and green park, an artificial lake in front, deep trees all about, patterned gardens, the fiery flash of hot-house glass where the sun struck, and pinnacles high in air, above all the tall tower from which Margaret de Raincy had defied the English invader during the minority of James the Fifth. The earl's eyes passed all these over. He did not see them as aught to take pride in.

What he lingered upon was the wide pleasant valley beneath him, with a burn running and lurking among twinkling birches, interspersed with alders, many finely drained fields with the cows feeding belly-deep with twitching tails, and the sweep of the ripening crops which ran off to either side over knolls carefully planed down-and so back and back to the shelter of dark fir woods. Twelve hundred acres-and not his! Not a Raincy stone upon it, nor had been for four hundred years.

There were two houses on this twelve hundred acres of good land. First came Cairn Ferris, at the head of the glen of the Abbey Water. Close to the road that, under the lee of the big pines, a plain, douce, much-ivied house; and down in a nook by the sea, Abbey Burnfoot, called "The Abbey," a newer and brighter place, set like a jewel on the very edge of the sea, the white sand in front and the blue sweep of the bay widening out on either hand. Horrible-oh, most horrible! Not his-nor ever would be!

This was the blot which blackened all the rest-the property of the Ferrises of Cairn Ferris, of Adam, chief of the name at the top of the Glen, and of his brother Julian-he who had cursed the noble scythe-sweep of the Abbey Bay, which all ought to have been untouched Raincy property, with crow-stepped gables and beflowered verandahs.

"They stole it, boy, stole it!" muttered old Earl Raincy, setting a shaking hand on the boy's shoulder, "four hundred years ago they stole it. They came with the Stuart king who had nothing to do in the Free Province, and we stood for the Douglases, as was our duty. Your ancestor and mine was killed at Arkinholm with three earls and twenty barons, he not the least noble!"

He paused a moment to control his senile anger and then went quavering on.

"This Ferris was a mercenary-a fighter for his own hand, and they gave him this while we were exiled. And they have held it ever since-the pick of our heritage-the jewel in the lotus. Often we have asked it back-often taken it. But because they married into the Fife Wemysses-yes, even this last of them, they have always retaken and held it, to our despite!"

The boy on the stile, sprawling and thinking of something else (for he had heard all this fifty times before), yawned.

"Well, there's plenty more-why worry, grandfather?" he said, fanning himself with the blue velvet college cap that had a bright gold badge in front.

The old man started as if stung. He frowned and blinked like an angry bald eagle.

"There speaks the common wash of Whiggish blood. MacBryde will out!-No Raincy would thus have sold his birthright for a mess of pottage."

The eyes of the lad were still indolent, but also somewhat impudent in schoolboy fashion, as he answered, "Still, grandfather, mother's MacBryde money has paid off a good many Raincy-encumbrances, don't you call them here?-mortgages is the name for them in England! And more than that, don't go back and worry mother about these old cow-pastures. You know you are really very fond of her. As for me, I may not be a real Raincy, for I was born to do something in life, not to idle through it. You won't let me go into the navy, and fight as a man ought. If I go into the army, we shall have mother in a permanent fit. So I must just stop on and lend a hand where I can, till I am old enough to turn out that thief of an estate agent of yours and do something to help you-really, I mean!"

"Remember you are a Raincy by name, whatever you may be by nature," said the old man. Suddenly the boy stood up straight and firm before him, with a dourness on his face which was clearly not akin to the swoop and dash of his vulturine grandfather.

"If you don't let me do as I like here-do something real which will show that I have not been to school and the university for nothing, I shall go straight to the ship-building yard and get my uncle, mother's brother David, to take me on as an apprentice! We still own enough of the business to make him ready to do that."

Like one who hears and rebukes blasphemy, the old man made a gesture of despair with his hands, as though abandoning his grandson to his own evil courses, and then turned on his heel and walked slowly away towards the Castle.

* * *

With a sigh of relief the young man stretched himself luxuriously out on the broad triple plank of the stile, and drew from his pocket a brass spy-glass which he had been itching to make use of for the past ten minutes. He also had his reasons for being interested in the Ferris properties which lay beneath him, every field and dyke and hedgerow, every curve of coast and curvet of breaking wave as clear and near as if he could have touched them merely by reaching out his finger. But Louis Raincy nourished no historical wraths nor feudal jealousies.

"I am sorry the old fellow is savage with me," he muttered as he looked about to make sure that his grandfather was not turning round to forgive him. "I'm sure I don't mean to make him angry. I promise mother every day. But why he wants to be for ever trotting out a grievance four hundred years old-hang me if I see. Anyway, Dame Comfort will soon put him all right. He gets on with her-he and I never hit it off ... quite. I fear I wasn't born lordly, even though my father was a Raincy. They say he disgraced his family by being an artist, and that it was when he was painting Dame Comfort's portrait that-oh, I say, there's Patsy, or I'm the son of a Dutchman!"

As only the moment before he had been declaring himself the son of a De Raincy, this could hardly be. So there was good prima facie evidence that, in Louis's opinion, there was Patsy, whoever Patsy might be.

In a moment he had the spy-glass to his eye. He stilled the boyish flailing of his legs in the air as he lay prone on the stile-top, leaning on his elbows, and intently studying something that flashed and was lost among the birches that shaded the path up the glen of the Abbey Burn.

"Patsy it is, by Jove of the Capitol!" he proclaimed triumphantly, and shutting up the brass telescope with a facile snap of sliding tubes, he slipped it into his pocket and sprang off the stile. In three seconds he was on Ferris territory-and a trespasser. Louis Raincy was quick, impulsive, with fair Norse hair blown in what the country folk called a "birse" about his face, and dark-blue western eyes-the eyes of the island MacBrydes who had built ships to ride the sea, and whose younger branches had captained and made fortunes out of far sea adventuring. So with the thoroughness of these same privateer shipbuilders, Louis precipitated himself down the steep breakneck cliff, catching the trunk of a pine here, or snatching at a birch and swinging right round it there to keep his speed from becoming a mere avalanche, till at last, breathed a little and with a scraped hand, of which he took not the slightest notice, he stood on the winding, hide-and-seek path which meanders along the side of the Abbey Burn, as it were, keeping step with it.

The pines stood about still and solemn. The light breeze from the sea made no difference to them, but the birches quivered, blotting the white of the path with myriads of purple splashes, none of which were distinct or ever for a second stood still, criss-crossing and melting one into the other, all equally a-dither with excitement.

Louis checked for a moment to breathe and listen. He said to himself that Patsy, for whose sake he had torn through the underbrush at the imminent danger of life and limb, was still far away down the glen.

"I shall go a bit farther till I find a snug corner and then-wait for Patsy!"

What Louis Raincy meant was that he would find a place equally sheltered from the eyes of his grandfather and from possible spies in the front windows of Cairn Ferris, the quiet ivy-grown house at the head of the glen, against which his grandfather had hurled so many anathemas in vain.

At last he found his place-a chosen nook. The sound of voices would be drowned by the splash of the little waterfall. The pool into which it fell was deep enough to keep any one from breaking in upon them too suddenly, and through a rift in the leaves a piece of bluest sky peered down. White of waterfall, sleepy brown of pool, dusky under an eyelash of bracken, and blue of sky-Patsy, who noticed all things, would like that.

But Patsy did not come. Could she have passed and he not seen? Clearly not, for Louis had come downhill as fast as a big boulder set a-rolling. What, then, could she be doing?

Ah, who could ever tell what Patsy might be doing or call her to account afterwards for the deed? Louis only knew that he dared not even try. All the same he left his nook with some disrelish-it would have been so capital a conjuncture to have met her just there, and he had taken such pains! However, there was no choice. He must go to seek Patsy if Patsy would not come to him.

She was returning from her daily lesson at her uncle Julian's. He knew that she would most likely have a book under her arm, and an ashplant in her hand. She would come along quietly, whistling low to herself, tickling the tails of the trout in the shallows with her stick and laughing aloud as they scudded away into the Vandyke-brown shadows of the bank.

The glen opened out a little and Louis paused at the corner, standing still in shadow.

Twenty yards away Patsy was talking to a young man in a shabby grey suit, a broad blue bonnet set on his head, and they were conferring profoundly over a book which Patsy held in her hands. The young man in the shabby suit appeared to be instructing Patsy, or at least explaining a difficult passage, which he did with more zeal and gusto than Louis cared about.

He knew him in a moment, for of course the heir of Raincy knew everybody within thirty miles.

"Only Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar!" he said to himself, his jealousy melting like a summer cloud, "of course-what a fool I was. He's on his way home from teaching the Auchenmore brats. Though it is a miracle that he should happen to cross the glen at the same point exactly. Perhaps he had a spy-glass, too!"

What Louis noticed most of all was the pretty shape of Patsy's small head, the dense quavering blackness of the little curls that frothed about her brow, and the sidelong way she had of appealing to the giant who bent over her with his finger on the line of Virgil he was expounding.

Presently with a squaring of the shoulders and a grasp at the blue bonnet which lifted it clear of his head, the Poor Scholar strode away. He crossed the Abbey Burn in a couple of leaps, his feet hardly seeming to touch the stones, and in a moment more his tall figure was hoisting itself up the opposite bank, his hands grasping rock and tree-trunk, root and dry bent-grass indiscriminately, till presently, without once turning round, he was out of sight.

Louis Raincy detached himself from the rock by which he had stood silent during the interview with the Poor Scholar. He swung himself lightly up into the Y-shaped crotch of a willow that overhung the big pool.

The girl came along, her lips moving as she repeated the words of the passage she had just had explained. Then Louis Raincy whistled an air well known to both of them, "Can ye sew cushions, can ye sew sheets?"

Instantly the girl looked up, turning a vivid, scarlet-lipped face, crowned with a ripple of ink-black locks, to the notch of the willow, and said easily, "Hillo, Louis Raincy! What are you doing here, a mile off your own ground?"

"Watching you turn the head of that poor boy Francis Airie!"

"His head will not turn so easy as yours, Louis, lad," Patsy retorted; "there is a deal more in it!"

Louis Raincy was not in any way put out. Of course Patsy was different. You never knew in the least what she was going to say, and it would have grieved him exceedingly not to be abused. He would have been sure, either that the girl was sickening for a serious illness, or that he had mortally offended her.

"How did you leave the Wise Uncle this morning?" he asked, with a nod of his head in the direction of the house by the Abbey Burnfoot. Both had begun to climb a little way up out of the path by the waterside. They did so without any words. It was the regular order of things, as they both knew. For in the valley bottom Uncle Julian or Adam Ferris might come round the corner upon them in a moment, and being young, they wanted to talk without restraint. Besides, there was a constant coming and going of messengers between the two houses. A carriage road led along the highway to the cliffs, and then bent sharply down steep zigzags to the stables of the Abbey, but all ordinary intercourse between the houses was conducted along the footpath by the Abbey Burn.

"Uncle Julian," said the girl, as if continuing some former conversation, "is quite different from father. He has seen the world and can tell tales of black savages and Arab chiefs and piracy in the China seas. But father has just lived in his own house of Cairn Ferris all his life. You know he called me Patricia after my mother-Patricia Wemyss Ferris. Oh, not even your grandfather is better known than my father. They made him a justice of the peace, too, but because he can do no good to the poor folk against the great landlords, he mostly stays at home. You know our house? From the outside-yes, of course. Well, when your grandfather will let you, you shall know it from the inside too. But not till then. Oh, it is big, roomy and quite comfortable, and though it would not hold an army like Castle Raincy, it is quite big enough to get lost in."

"Of course," said Raincy, vaguely feeling the necessity of defending himself and those who were his, "if it were not for grandfather and his wretched old feud, mother and I would come and see you to-morrow. She is-well, she would love you!"

"Would she, I doubt?" said Patsy, giving her bonnet a vicious jerk to bid it stay on her head; "mothers seldom like those whom their sons-"

"Adore!" put in Louis Raincy smilingly.

"Out, traitor!" cried the girl with a quick, scornful upthrow of the chin, "it is the smile that saves you, Louis, lad. Easy it is to see that you have had little experience of talking to women, when you come firing off words that ought to mean great things into the middle of a talk about smuggling cases and justices of the peace."

"But I do mean-" began Louis, preparing to take solemn oath.

"You mean nothing of the sort, and well it is for you, little boy. Quiet, now, and listen! I am a Pict-yes, I, Patsy Ferris! Uncle Julian says so. I am (so he tells me) a throwback to my grandmother's folk who were Fingauls-and her father the Laird of Kirkmaiden was the chief of them. That is why I do nothing, say nothing, think nothing like a scone-faced maid of the Scots. I am centuries older than they. If it ever arrives to me to fall in love with any man-it seems impossible, but Uncle Julian says it will come-it is I who will seek that man and make him love me, and if he ever leaves me or is untrue, I shall kill him. For that is the way of the Fingaul. Uncle Julian says so."

As she explained her lot in life Patsy was peeling and eating a sappy root of rush which she had plucked. With this and a piece of clear brown gum, the exudation of a smooth-barked wild cherry tree, she made a delicious repast. She offered his share to Louis, who was in no mood for frivolities. In spite of his smile he had been hurt to the quick. But Patsy was perfectly calm, and having fixed a large lump of cherry-gum on a thorn, she licked round and round it with relish, occasionally holding it between her eye and the twinkle of the sun to see the effect of the deep amber hue.

Still she was circumspect, and when a figure in grey appeared tramping sturdily up the glen swinging a stick, she nudged her companion into sulky kind of attention.

"Uncle Julian," she said, after the tall clean-shaved man had turned the corner. "I wish you could see his house-properly, I mean, not just from the road."

"I have seen it from the sea!" said Louis, still grumpily.

"And that is no wise way to see it. There are always gentlemen of the Free Trade hanging about in the offing these days, and if they thought that the heir of Raincy was spying on them-well, they might take the liberty of throwing him overboard to sink or swim."

"But surely your uncle has nothing to do with smuggling or smugglers? My grandfather says that it is no business for a gentleman to dip his fingers in!"

"Your grandfather says a great many other things to which you do not pay great heed-else you would not be sitting here looking as gloomy as the raven that croaked when the old cow wouldn't die. No, sir, you would be sitting up on the stile yonder, cursing the Ferrises with bell, book and candle-and the old man helping you out when you forgot the words."

The girl went on sucking her cherry-gum without the least concern as to whether Louis Raincy was hurt in his feelings or no. If he were, the obvious alternative was before him. He could return to Castle Raincy the way he had come. About this or about him Patsy gave herself no trouble.

Indeed, Patsy gave herself no trouble about anything or anybody, and so accustomed herself to the management of men. Women, she knew, were different.

* * *