Читать книгу Patsy - S. R. Crockett - Страница 12

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Patsy had said nothing at home about her race over the moors to save the Glenanmays lads from the press-gang, and when her Uncle Julian, having talked to Captain Laurence, approached her on the subject, my lady replied that she was at the Bothy of Blairmore to help her friend Jean Garland.

"And where was Jean when the 'press' found you there alone?" said Julian Wemyss, smiling.

"She was outside, keeping watch for her brothers," said Patsy, looking at him with bright, clear eyes that could not be other than truthful.

But Uncle Julian had had much experience, and he only smiled more knowingly than ever.

"And the famous costume which so witched the men of war?" he asked.

"Oh, that," said Patsy, "I had to run, and you can't run fast in a frieze coat with many capes!"

"No." Uncle Julian nodded his head; "sandals cross-gartered, a bathing dress and a sash! I would that I had been one of His Majesty's officers to see you."

"I shall dress up for you some time," affirmed Patsy soothingly, "if you will give me the yellow sandals for my very own."

"Ah," said Uncle Julian, "of that I am not sure. They recall something which makes them precious to me."

The girl clasped her hands delightedly.

"Oh, a story at last," she cried, nestling against him. "I shall not tell a soul. You shall see how I can keep a secret."

"But I shall see still better if I do not tell it you!"

"Oh, how abominable of you, Uncle Julian! And I thought you loved me."

"The yellow sandals remind me of a time when I was young—young as you, and a great deal more foolish!"

"But they are a girl's sandals, Uncle Julian—you said so yourself when you lent them to me."

"Indeed, both of them would hardly cover a man's foot!"

"Who was she? Oh, where did you meet her? Did you love her very much?"

"I met her on a little coasting boat belonging to her father, on which I had taken passage from Chios to Smyrna. She knew no English. I knew only one sentence of modern Greek, and I was not sure of the meaning even of that. So I had to be careful. I had it from a poem which was making a noise at the time."

"Oh, I know," cried Patsy, "Louis is always saying it over to me: Zoë mou, sas agapo! What does it mean?"

"That I did not know at the time, but I know what I meant the words to mean."

"Was she very lovely?"

"Very," said Uncle Julian. "I see you want a description, but I can only indicate. She had great dark eyes into which every sort of languid delight seemed to have been melted and concentrated, and eyelashes like the fringed awnings of a tent. When she lowered them they swept the ground, and when she lifted them it was slowly, as if their very weight fought against her will!"

"Oh-o-o-h!" said Patsy, feeling with her fingers, "I have regular scrubs. You won't ever love me when you think of her, Uncle Julian."

"I might," he answered, "if you had only the yellow sandals—"

"No, no, tell me about her! What did you say to her?"

"I said 'Zoë mou' half a dozen times, sitting closer to her every time. I spoke lower and lower, till the last 'Zoë mou' was whispered into her ear.

"Then I risked the other part, 'sas agapo'—and expected a box on the ear, or perhaps an appeal to her father, but instead she turned and kissed me!"

"Hurrah, Uncle Julian, I'm sure so should I—if any one had the sense to talk to me like that, low and in my ear (that tickles anyway) and in an unknown tongue."

"But you see the point was that the tongue was not unknown to her. She was a Greek girl and—"

"But what, after all, did it mean? She told you afterwards, of course."

"Well," said Uncle Julian, meditating, "not exactly. I found out. I had said, 'Zoë mine, I love you!"

"But what does 'Zoë' mean?"

"My life!"

"Life of mine, I love you!" Patsy repeated, trying various tones. "Uncle Julian, you must have made love like an archangel. Without knowing it, you had said about all that there was to say, and changing your voice like that—oh, I do wish I had been that girl. I don't wonder you don't want to give me the yellow sandals. I should not even have lent them for five minutes. You must not. I shall bring them back to you. It would be a sacrilege!"

"No," said Uncle Julian, "you are the brightest thing in my world, the likest the Greek girl and all the young things I once loved. It is your turn now, you small, black-headed Pictish woman!"

"I am not 'small.' I am taller than you, Uncle Julian!"

"I daresay, but you are slim as a willow branch. I could take you up between my finger and thumb."

"If you could catch me, Uncle Julian; but, see—you could not!"

With a swift spring she threw herself out of the low French window and stood on the lawn, ready poised for flight.

A brightness came into her uncle's eyes.

"I have known many and learned much," he thought, "but I have missed the best."

"Come, Uncle," she said, tapping the grass with her shoe, "I can't run as well as in kilt and sandals, or like the girl who played ball on the sands, but I can beat you—yes, I could run in circles about you!"

"I know, I know, you swallow!" proclaimed an admiring uncle. "But the day is past when I ran after agreeable young women. Generally they have to pocket their pride and come to see me—you do every day, you know!"

"Yes," said Patsy, "but do not think it is to see you, even if you are my mother's brother—"

"Half-brother—"

"My mother's brother, I say," persisted Patsy. "It is because you teach me to speak French and to read Latin books, and the mathematic (though that I love not so well), and also chiefly because you lend me many books to read up in dull old Cairn Ferris."

"Do not blaspheme the habitation of your fathers," said Julian Wemyss. "Here is a house all ready for you when you marry. If it were not for the table of affinities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!"

"Oh," said Patsy, "that would be splendid. You are far the nicest man and the most interesting I ever talked to. Don't ask me, for I should say 'yes' in a minute."

Usually Patsy Ferris and her father had not much to say to one another.

"Good morning, daughter!" quoth Adam, coming in from his early inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow and black like a wasp?"

"I have done my work, father," Patsy would answer. "I promised to go help Jean at Glenanmays. The lads are all in the heather and the maids have to do the heavy work of the field."

"But not you—I cannot have you handling the hoe and rake like a field worker!"

"No, no, father; Jean is always indoors or at the dairy."

Adam Ferris looked thoughtful and his dark brows drew together. He detested the press-gang and all it meant to the young men of the parish.

"I could send over a man or two, but my grieve or I myself would require to accompany them for protection against seizure."

"No need," said his daughter, hastily. "Diarmid would not wish to draw you into his sons' quarrels and, I think, Stair's band ran a big cargo last night from the Burnfoot Bay. There were twenty preventive men there, they say. Yet they stood aside and let the pack horses go by like men in a dream!"

Adam grew a little paler. He did not like this open defiance of the forces of law and order.

"How was that?" he demanded, "where was the military?"

"There were two hundred lads, all masked and all armed, a hundred pack horses and another hundred to ride upon. What could twenty customs men do with the like of these? Stair Garland left enough good lads to herd them close under the cliff till the Good Intent had her anchor up and the caravan was out of all reach of danger."

This was by far the most serious news Adam Ferris had received for a long time, but there was worse still to come.

"Uncle Julian says I ought to tell you, father," Patsy began with quite unusual gravity, "that when the press-gang went to the Bothy of Blairmore to take the lads of Glenanmays, they found me. I could run much faster than Jean, so I got there first."

Her father grew grey under the olive of his skin. "The men were not insolent?" he asked, for he knew the manners and customs of his Majesty's press in lonely shielings.

"I only saw the officers—Captain Laurence and a naval lieutenant—besides that smooth rascal McClure from Stonykirk!"

Even then Patsy hardly dared tell her father how unconventionally she had been clad, but she plucked up heart and went through with it.

"I ran from the Maidens' Cove at the foot of the Mays glen along the sands, and through the heather. I had Uncle Julian's yellow sandals on my feet and I got there in time for the lads to scatter, though I had started after the boat had passed out of sight round the Black Point."

"They knew who you were?" her father asked.

"Certainly, I told them," said Patsy, eagerly. "I said also that they had no right on my father's land. We had no sailors or fisher folk on Cairn Ferris."

"Right enough," said her father, "but I hope you were not hasty with the men. Laurence is an honest enough fellow, doing an unpleasant duty, and the others—well, they are apt to find ways of revenging themselves."

"Oh," said Patsy, suddenly radiant, poising her small black head, "I think they rather liked talking to me. I had Jean's dress kilted below the knee. It was blue, and went well with the yellow cross leathers of the sandals. I had a broad sash about my waist, too."

"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 Assembly 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."