Patsy Part 38

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE PICT'S WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY

The deed being done, the doers soon dispersed. A strong body-guard composed of Back Sh.o.r.e 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. G.o.dfrey 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 s.h.i.+ft," 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.u.mberland 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 sh.o.r.e intently, and did not speak to him at all. She held what colloquy was necessary with G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey 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 ash.o.r.e 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 l.u.s.tily by G.o.dfrey of the saturnine smile, bounded towards the land. It grounded on a rapidly shelving beach on which they sprang ash.o.r.e. G.o.dfrey 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 sc.r.a.p of black cloth after the fas.h.i.+on 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! G.o.d 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.dfrey 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 quant.i.ty. 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, G.o.dfrey 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!"

G.o.dfrey 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d 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!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

STIFF-NECKED AND REBELLIOUS

The breeze quickened from the south. The lugger sped through the water, and Stair Garland still sat dazed. Never had any man felt such a fool.

Here he was firmly and legally wedded, and he dare not even address a word to his bride. He had spoken no syllable of gladness or affection--triple dolt--quadruple fool--prize-winner among idiots! He had nothing to say--he could say nothing. Nor was it the presence of a third person which prevented him. Perhaps, rather, something in Patsy's eye, and, though that he would not acknowledge, a lurking grimness in the smile about the wicks of G.o.dfrey's mouth.

It was not courage that Stair lacked--only everything about Patsy awed him. He did not yet understand her. The whys and the wherefores of her actions were still completely dark to him.

But Patsy was not a young woman to wrap up her mind. When she had anything to say, she said it. So after they had turned about and were beating up against wind and tide for their island, under the lee of which they had been laid to all the afternoon, she vouchsafed an explanation--or at least as much of a vindication as Patsy ever permitted herself.

"Stair Garland," she said, "listen to me; and you, G.o.dfrey McCulloch, take that Satanic leer off your face. You have no idea how unattractive it makes you look! You should be framed and hung up to frighten naughty children.

"I am sick of being looked after. I am weary of being educated and leading-stringed and chaperoned. Now I am going to chaperon myself for ever and ever. I told father I should do this if he pestered me with his princesses. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of coddling--I hate Hanover Lodge. I hate all the things Uncle Julian loves, except only some few books. I cannot even have little Miss Aline put over me. It is too cruel to tag her round after me, jigging this way and that like the skiff there in our wake. She was made and invented to abide at Ladykirk, and to rule over Eelen Young and the bra.s.s preserving-pans. Why, because I am a girl, should the poor lady be traiked all over the world in an agony of dispeace? So I married you, Stair. It is hard on you, I know. Being a gentleman you could not very well refuse when I asked you before the minister--"