Читать книгу Patsy - S. R. Crockett - Страница 6

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Castle Raincy was a great lord's mansion, and the best of the neighbouring county folk were glad of a rare invitation there. Cairn Ferris was the ancient home of an ancient family, the house of a "bonnet" laird, but then the feather in the side of the Ferris bonnet had always been worn very proudly and gallantly indeed.

Abbey Burnfoot was the picturesque modern fancy of a cultured man of the world, who had come thither to live his life between his books, his paintings, his music, and the eternally fresh wash of the sea in the little white bay of pebble and shell underneath his windows.

But half a mile or a little more over the heuchs stood the farm of Glenanmays, which, with two or three smaller holdings and his own farm of Cairn Ferris, constituted the whole landed estate of Adam Ferris. The Garlands of Glenanmays had been holders of that farm and liegemen of Cairn Ferris almost from the days when the first Ferris settled on that noble brace of seaward-looking valleys, through which the Mays Water and the Abbey Burn trundled, roared and soughed to the sea.

The early years of the nineteenth century looked on no more characteristic farmhouse than that where dwelt Diarmid Garland and his brood, on the bank above the swift-running water-race which turned the corn-mill with such deftness that people came from as far as Stranryan to admire.

A large farm it was, needing many hands to work it—byre, stable, plough-lands, hill pasture, flat and heathery in appearance and outline, but satisfactory for sheep-feeding—that was Glenanmays. Diarmid had three sons and four daughters, with most of whom this history must one time or another concern itself.

Diarmid also was no mean citizen of any state, hard to be driven, temperate, humorous and dour. He held for the old ways, and each day presided at meals, his bonnet of blue on his head, broad as a barrow-wheel, and brought all the way from Kilmarnock. All the rest of the table sat bareheaded—the sons and daughters whom God had given him, as well as the hired servant, and even the stranger within his gates.

For at Glenanmays there was no master but old Diarmid Garland. To each man and maid there was set down a plate of earthenware, a horn spoon, a knife and fork—that is, for all who fed at the high table, over which the blue Kilmarnock bonnet of the master presided. For the minute or so while he said grace or "returned thanks," Diarmid took off his bonnet, but resumed it the moment after. He doffed his blue crown of his to God alone, and even his liege lord, Adam Ferris, had to content himself with a hand carried half military fashion to its weather-beaten brim.

When Adam dined, as he often did, at the bountiful table of Glenanmays, he also found his horn spoon, his knife and fork beside his plate, and he was always careful to set his hat, his riding-whip and his gloves and cape behind the door. Then, bareheaded, he took his place on the right hand of his host at the long oaken table, to which in due order came son, daughter, house-maiden, out-lass, ploughman and herd. The only difference was that when it came to the blessing upon the food to be partaken of, Adam the Laird stood up, while the others sat still with bowed heads. Why this was, no one knew, not even Adam or Diarmid. But so it had been in the time of their fathers, and so it would continue till there was not a Ferris in Cairn Ferris—a time which neither liked to consider—for the same thought came to both—how that Patsy being an heiress, Patsy would marry, and the lands that had so long been those of Ferris of Cairn Ferris would pass to children of another name.

At the end of the long red-tiled kitchen in which the family meals were served opened out a sort of back-kitchen to which a wooden extension had been added. It was a sort of Court of the Young Lions, where herd-boys, out-workers of the daily-wage sort, turnip-singlers, Irish harvesters, Stranryan "strappers" and "lifters," crow-boys, and all the miscellany of a Galloway farm about the end of the Napoleonic wars ate from wooden platters, with only their own horn spoon and pocket-knife to aid their nimble fingers. There was no complaint, for Glenanmays was "a grand meat house," and with the broth served without stint and the meats rent asunder by the hands of the senior ploughman, the Young Lions did very well.

If quarrels arose, the senior ploughman kept a stick of grievous crab-tree handy, and was not loath to use it. Usually, however, his voice upraised in threatening sufficed. For Rob Dickson could stir the Logan Stone with his little finger. He had escaped from the press-gang on his way from Stanykirk Sacrament, and had carried away the slash of a cutlass with him, the scar of which was plain to be seen of all, beginning as it did a little below his ear and running to the point of the shoulder-blade. This made the prestige of Rob Dickson notable, especially among the Irish. Had he not resisted authority? So of him chiefly they sought counsel and direction—so much so that old Diarmid, quick to notice what made for the good of his farm, caused Rob Dickson to act as a kind of "grieve" during the time of harvest, when the land was overrun with "Islanders," "Paddies" and "Paipes"—for the religious hatred, though never crossing the North Channel, has yet made of the Irish Catholic in Wigtonshire a hewer of wood and a drawer of water to his Presbyterian masters.

Few things Adam Ferris liked better than a look at the Court of the Lions during feeding time, when Rob Dickson rose in his place to salute him and the Young Lions bent lower over their wooden platters, "eating away like murther" lest any neighbour should get ahead of them in the race. When their own proper broth was finished and the flesh sodden in it had all been distributed, the Young Lions were made free of the debris of the high table, and never were bones cleaned with greater dispatch. Scarce did those which were saved for the rough-tailed, soft-eyed collies, waiting expectant outside, emerge with a higher polish. The herds had to see to this final distribution themselves, each feeding his own pair at different corners of the yard, ready to check growlings which might end in fights with the stern toe of a mountain boot, very proper to the purpose.

Even oftener than her father, Patsy came to Glenanmays. It was good to get away from the dear but dull house of Cairn Ferris, the schooled and disciplined servants, the gentle but constant and masterful supervision of her old nurse, Annie McQuilliam.

She loved her home. She loved all who were in it. But there was no one of her own age at Cairn Ferris, and here at Glenanmays she could dip deep in the fountain of youth. Of the four girls, Faith and Elspeth were her seniors, and she looked up to them, sitting at their feet and keeping her secrets as carefully from them as she would have done from her own father.

But the third, Jean, a tall slight girl with head coiled about by swathes of fair hair, was year for year, month for month, Patsy's own age. And neither had any secrets from the other. Hopes, fears, anticipations were exchanged, but cautiously and in whispers, like young bathers who test the chill of the sea with bent, temerarious toes. So they touched and paused, shivering on the brink of the incoming tide of life.

Ménie Garland, the youngest of all, was then a slim girl still at Stranryan Grammar School, with the softest eyes and the most wonderful voice, round-throated and full-chested even at the ungrateful age of fourteen.

Not the three brothers Garland, Fergus, Stair and Agnew, stalwart and brown, nor yet the two elder girls—not little Ménie coming singing like a linnet over the moor, brought Patsy so often that way. But the quiet talks with Jean—Jean who had learned wisdom from her sisters' love affairs, from the escapades of her brothers, and who, by the rude rule of fact, could reduce to cautious verity the fiction which Patsy had learned from her Uncle Julian's books.

So Patsy went often to Glenanmays, and without interrupting the busy round of the afternoon's duties, prescribed by Diarmid for each member of his family, she made her way to the little shed hidden by the burnside, on the green in front of which the clothes-lines were strung, and clean garments fluttered in the sea-wind, fresh and glad as ship's bunting.

"Yes," Jean Garland would say after the girls had kissed one another, "I was up early this morning—soon after dawn. Madge Blair and I had our arms in the tubs by half-past three, and she had got the pot to boil before that. So now I am ready for the ironing, and—"

"Oh, let me help!" cried Patsy.

"Very well," Jean acquiesced, "you are getting to be none so ill with the goffering iron and the pliers—"

"Better with the fancy than the plain!" laughed Patsy.

"It is to be expected, you have the light hand, and you have taste—most have neither one nor the other, but iron for all the world like a roller going over a wet field."

They worked a while in silence, only looking up occasionally and smiling at each other, or Jean might throw in a hint as to a frill or tucker which must be dealt with in a particular way.

Suddenly Jeanie Garland came nearer, a pile of folded linen over her arm.

"Have you heard anything of the press-gang at your house, Patsy?"

"Nothing," said Patsy, busy with a best Sunday cap, all lace frills and furbelows. "Of course there is always Captain Laurence at Stranryan. On clear nights you can hear his fifes and drums by standing on the stile above our house, and they say there is a King's ship or two about Belfast Lough—but why do you ask?"

Jean Garland paused yet nearer to Patsy and spoke in her ear.

"It's the lads!" she murmured. "They are in it. I am feared for them."

"What?" exclaimed Patsy, but checked by a glance she instantly lowered her voice—"not Fergus and Stair and Agnew?"

Jean nodded slightly.

"Does their father know?" Patsy whispered back. Jean preserved a grave face.

"Not any one of us, his own family, can guess what Diarmid Garland knows and does not know. He had his time of the Free Trading. He was at the head of it, and if the boys head a clean run from the Dutch coast or the Isle of Man—why, if father is ignorant of the business, it is because he wishes to be."

"But there is nothing new in all that," said Patsy; "there have always been smugglers and shore lads who helped them—always King's cutters and preventive men to chase and lose them—what danger do the boys run more than at other times?"

"This," said Jean Garland, very gravely, "there is a new superintendent of enlistments at Stranraer. He is just a spy, one Eben McClure from Stonykirk, a man of our own country. He works with the preventive superintendent, and when they cannot or dare not meddle with the cargo-runners, as they dare not with my brothers, they set the press upon them—and the soldiers' press is the worst by far."

No more was said. The girls worked quietly for an hour till all was finished. The hedges and clothes-lines were cleared of their burden, and with a whisper of "Shall we go down to the cove—the tide is nearly full," the girls slipped each a cotton gown and a towel apiece into Patsy's little reticule and made off to the bathing cove, a well-hidden nook of sand, half cavern, half high shell-bank, which bygone tides had excavated in the huge flank of the Black Head. Fergus and his brothers knew about it, of course, and saw to it that none about the farm interfered with the girls at their play.

In a minute their young figures were lost among the birches of the valley, a wider and an opener one than that of the Abbey Burn, the banks higher and farther off, and from their ridges giving glimpses of the distant Mull of Galloway and the blue shores of Ireland.

They kept in the bottom of the glen, splashing and springing from stone to stone, with mirthful enjoyment of each other's slips. Far off on a heathery knoll Diarmid watched them go. He had noted the swift intaking of the white cleading on the hedges, the disappearance of fluttering garmentry from the clothes-lines. He approved of young people enjoying themselves, after their work was done—Diarmid's emphasis on the "after" was strong.

As they went Jean Garland pointed out a pony track high on the fells. "Careless fellows," she said, "that must have been Stair's band. For both Fergus and Agnew are more careful!"

Indeed, the trail by which the laden ponies had passed was still clearly evident, and Jean was roused to anger against the headstrong brother who had risked bringing all about the house into trouble.

"The others went by the bed of the burn," she said, "why could not Stair?"

Looking seaward, they saw all things more clearly than usual—the pause before a storm from the west, prophesied Jean Garland. The island at the Abbey Burnfoot divided itself into two peaks. They could see the houses at Donnahadee, and the boats turning sharply about to make for Belfast Lough, showing a sudden broadside of white canvas as they did so. But little they minded. At present the sky was glorious, the sea a mirror, and here was the Maidens' Cove, into which they dipped from the cliff edge, as suddenly as a kite swoops from the sky. In a moment they were lost to sight, and only the tinkle of their laughter among the blue, purple and creamy reflected lights of the cove told where they were.

Outside the sheltered sea rocked and laved the sands with a pleasant swishing invitation. Presently they looked out from the low mouth of the cove. All seemed still and lonely, and they were about to step down into the clear green water of the Atlantic, when a noise came to their ears. It was the sound of men rowing—many men, and many men at that time and place meant the pinnace of a King's ship. The thought of Stair's careless bridle-track high on the heathery side of the fell tortured the mind of his sister. What could they want? It was too early in the day for any surprise work in the interests of the Excise. There were no smuggling cellars near to search—but at that moment the girls of one accord drew in their heads. They moved stealthily into the dark of the cove. Here they could not be observed, but they could see a boat's crew of seamen which went past rapidly in the direction of Abbey Burnfoot, the salt water sparkling in a rain of silver and pearl from the oars, and an officer sitting spick and span at the tiller-ropes.

The next moment they were gone and in the clear submerged dark of the purple dulse that shaded the cavern mouth the girls looked at one another with dismay in their eyes.

"Can they be going to take Uncle Julian?" said Patsy.

"Uncle Julian—no," exclaimed Jean Garland, "of course not—what would they be doing with a learned man and a gentleman? It is that silly Stair who has set them on the track of my brothers. They will land at the Burnfoot and catch them all at the Bothy of Blairmore, where they gather to take their "four hours"—I must run and warn them—"

"Jean," said Patsy, "I can run two yards for your one. Lend me your scarf and I shall go and warn the lads."

"You—the laird's daughter!"

"Yes, I," said Patsy, girding her waist with the red sash, and looking to the criss-crossed ties of the bathing-sandals her uncle had given her out of his store of foreign things. Her kilted skirt came but a little way below her knee and her blouse of fine blue linen let her arms be seen to the elbow. Patsy looked more Pictish than ever thus, with a loose blown tassel of ink-black hair on her brow. Jean offered some faint objections but did not persist. After all, it was the main thing that the lads should be warned in time.

So Patsy, trim and slim as your forefinger with a string of red tied about it, sped eastward over the hills to the Bothy of Blairmore.