Patsy Part 42

CHAPTER XL

"WHY DO THEY LOVE YOU?"

With the coming of Eben the Spy to Isle Rathan a new life began there.

At first Patsy was filled with indignation at the trust Stair placed in him. She knew that he had been with Uncle Julian and Stair in the Bothy of Blairmore. She had heard the tale of the test--the test of life or death. But somehow, because she had not seen it--because she had not been with the ex-spy day after day, she could not believe in the reality of his repentance. His deep-rooted admiration for Stair remained in her eyes peculiarly suspect. He seemed to be presuming too much. If she, to whom Stair belonged by right of purchase at so great a price, did not manifest her feelings--what right had he? Of course he had a purpose to serve, and that purpose was to betray them. How else should he have guessed about the island, and why should he come swimming out and interrupting their picnic like that?

Still there was a pleasant side to the matter. The cows were milked, the meals prepared. Fresh water was brought to every chamber by this man who never showed his face outside the house during the day. Patsy and Stair had nothing to do but to stray from one safe cove to another on the seaward side all through these long days, and so, resentment falling away, by and by Patsy fell into talk with Eben. He called her "madame,"

and rarely concluded a sentence without a reference to "Your husband, madame!"

This Patsy thought a great liberty. What could he know about the matter?

He had not seen Saunders Duff's registers, and of a certainty G.o.dfrey McCulloch had not spoken. Still, she finished by liking to hear him say the words, and often left the real Stair idly tossing stones into the water, in order to go into the cool kitchen of Tower Rathan, to sit on one of the ancient oaken chests, a row of which ran round the walls, and hear tales of the dare-devil Stair, and especially to listen for the respectful repet.i.tion of her favourite phrase, "Your husband, madame!"

She loved to hear how her husband (she could say the word to herself now sometimes) had accepted the outcast and had treated him like a man when he was trodden under foot. She could not listen often enough to the history of the rest.i.tution of the money and jewels with which Eben had ridden away from the White Loch. Stair had insisted on that, though he had no reason to love the Duke of Lyonesse.

Then she would go back and lo! there--p.r.o.ne on the sand, his rough muzzle on Stair's knees, his big brown eyes under s.h.a.ggy bristles of eyebrow, gazing up into his master's face, lay Whitefoot. Only, such was the fineness of his breeding and the delicacy of his sheep-dog instinct, that he rose instantly when he heard Patsy's returning footsteps, and took himself out of the way. He worshipped none the less, only at a greater distance. Patsy's was now the first right.

"Why do they love you so much, Stair?" said Patsy abruptly, as she sat down beside him after one of these kitchen visits.

"They--who?" said Stair, sleepily. For warm pebbles, warm sands, the lee of a rock and the gentle lap of a sheltered sea make for drowsiness.

"Well," said Patsy, "Eben and Whitefoot there--they don't care a straw about me."

"Whitefoot would defend you with his life," put in Stair, sitting up.

"Yes, because you tell him," said Patsy, pulling discontentedly at a blade of gra.s.s, "and as for Eben--he simply cannot keep from singing your praises!"

Stair laughed, gaily for him. He did not often laugh aloud.

"Patsy," he answered, "how many have loved you--Princes and Princesses, men and women in another world than mine? Now, none of these love me--and strange as it may seem, I am not disquieted about the matter."

"I daresay not," snapped Patsy, who this morning for some reason was easily irritated, "but they are not here. Eben and Whitefoot are, and they go about worshipping you. Now, if you expect me to do the same, you are mistaken!"

"I am not expecting anything of the sort," said Stair patiently, looking past Patsy, away out to sea to the poised top of Snaefell lording it above the low-lying channel mists.

"Well then you ought!" cried Patsy, and turning on her heel she sped to the house to keep from crying, she did not in the least know why. And when Stair followed her to ask what was the matter, it stood to reason that he was met by silence and a locked door. If he had had more experience he would have remained where he was and let Patsy find her way back of her own accord.

One morning, a week or two after, Patsy had gone out with her books and Stair was getting ready to follow her to the seaward looking side of the Isle, when Eben called him to the window of the kitchen which overlooked the long ridge of sand, shingle, and razor-like mussel sh.e.l.ls which in the deeps of the ebb, const.i.tuted a practicable pathway across to the mainland.

For half-a-dozen tides each month, three in the middle of each neap, unless there were heavy winds from the south-west, Isle Rathan became a tidal island, and the ridge could be crossed on foot by those who made haste. This was not, however, often attempted, for the tides and currents were exceedingly tricky in these parts.

Eben pointed with his finger to a faint horizontal ridge on the mainland.

"Do you see anything there, sir?" he asked.

"No," said Stair, anxious to be off to Patsy, "some shepherds on the mainland have been making a new sheep-fold, I suppose."

"A sheep-fold is mostly round, sir," said Eben, "and if you will notice there are two turf d.y.k.es one behind the other. I don't like that.

Besides, have you seen anybody working there? I have not. And would herds cover their work so neatly with turf? From here it might be twenty years old--only I know it was not there when I pa.s.sed that way down to the Orraland Point where I began to swim out."

"I see you have an idea," said Stair, "out with it! Tell me what you think!"

"Sir," said Eben McClure, "I have every need to serve you faithfully, and I should never forgive myself if by chance I had brought the enemy on you. I learned from my uncle where you were. He also has grown to trust me, sir, because you found me trustworthy, and he was willing that I should come, in order to be of what help to you I could. He cherishes the lady your wife above all others in the world. I had thought Kennedy McClure a hard, selfish old man, and so he might have been but for her.

But he is never tired of telling how she saved him in London, and how she was not ashamed of him even in the company of Princes and all the great folk of the town. Ah, she was counted a world's wonder, sir--our Miss Patsy, if I may make so bold as to call her so--when she was in London. There was no one like her--and it's not coronets she could have married, my uncle says, but crowns!"

"I know--I know," said Stair, somewhat impatiently, "but what is it you are afraid of?"

"The sappers, sir--the little burrowing men. They have far more sense than whole regiments of soldiers, and it is as likely as not that some one of them, anxious for promotion, followed me across country, and watched me down to the point of Orraland. I wish I had been more careful of my footprints, but the woods were soft and I kept under shelter till the last moment!"

"Well, what of it--get on, Eben!"

"Sir, these are sappers' trenches, or I am no judge! And what's more, they are made to command the approach by the ridge to the tail of the island."

"But we are almost at the height of the flood tides, and there can be nothing to fear from that direction till the neaps come, and not then if the south-west wind blows as it has done ever since we came here. Why, we have hardly ever seen the back of the ridge black for half-an-hour."

"I know," said Eben, shaking his head, "but they are long-patienced fellows, these sappers--not like cavalrymen or lazy Preventives, who want nothing better than to lie up with a pipe and a mutchkin!"

"Some night we shall row over and see, Eben," said Stair, preparing to depart. "If they are lying in their rabbit-hutches we might give them a rare fright!"

"No," said Eben, "I don't mind going myself, but what would that child do without you? Answer me that, sir! No, what I want you to do is to send Whitefoot with a message to my uncle and get the _Good Intent_ here by the next neaps. Could the dog do that, sir? They say he is wise."

"Well," said Stair, considering, "I don't think that Whitefoot could go directly to Supsorrow and find out your uncle. But he could take a message to Jean, if he were put a little bit on the road--say through the Blue Hills glen and over the old bridge of Dee. I daresay he could make it even from here, but he has never been past Dee Bridge by land.

Then Jean would send on the note to your uncle by Agnew--he is the youngest and fleetest!"

"He and I shall start to-night," said Eben the Spy. "I shall be back before the morning. I shall see him safe across Tongland Bridge and be home before daybreak. The nights are lengthening."

"If you think it is necessary," said Stair, stepping out.

"It _is_ necessary," said Eben, emphatically. "It is so important that I would run all the way myself, if I could do the journey as fast and as surely."

Stair and Patsy spent the day in the usual way out on the cliffs, coming in for their meals as leisurely as to an hotel and as certain that they would find everything in order.

Stair said nothing to Patsy about his talk with Eben. He did not mention the curious ridges so carefully turfed with green which were gradually penning in the end of the sh.o.r.e pa.s.sage. But in spite of this, he thought a good deal. Who could be at the back of this steady pursuit?

Surely not Louis Raincy. No, Raincy was a Galloway man, and even if Patsy were not there to be considered, he would not hunt Stair Garland.

He might have his own quarrel with him, but he would not take this way of avenging himself.

That night, as soon as Patsy said good-night and went upstairs, Eben made a parcel of his clothes, and at a sign from his master Whitefoot stood ready to plunge in and swim across along with Eben. His collar, duly charged with Jean's letter, was tied in the bundle along with the ex-spy's clothes, and would be put upon him after the moorland winds had dried the mane of hair about his neck.

"_To Jean_--you hear, Whitefoot--_to Jean!_"

And Whitefoot leaped up to lick Stair's face in token of complete understanding.

It was not a long swim, and the pair took the water at the very height of the tide. They would hardly lose any way as they pushed towards the strand beneath the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, which was the nearest point on their road to the old Bridge of Tongland, beyond which Whitefoot knew his trail.

Stair watched them out of sight. They swam silently and evenly into the darkness, and in a quarter of an hour he heard the signal agreed upon--Whitefoot's singing yelp with which he a.s.sisted the precentor in starting such minor tunes as Martyrs and Coleshill. Then he turned and went slowly back to the old Tower of Rathan. Patsy's light was not out, and he stood a long while in the courtyard looking up at it.

Many were making sacrifices for Patsy's sake, but none, he thought, such great ones as he. Still, so it was nominated in the bond. And, touched by a memory, he took out his Shakespeare and read the "Merchant of Venice" till he fell asleep.