7
A thousand thanks for the verses,And the thoughts that they bring from you,But it's only a gipsy-womanWho can feel how the trail holds true.You of the Pilgrim fathers,With your face so proud and pale,And the birth born pain of a fettered brain,What can ye know of the trail?By the lawless folk who bore me,By their passion and pain, and loss,By their swords which strove and their Lights o' Love,I've a right to the gipsy cross.
A thousand thanks for the verses,And the thoughts that they bring from you,But it's only a gipsy-womanWho can feel how the trail holds true.
A thousand thanks for the verses,
And the thoughts that they bring from you,
But it's only a gipsy-woman
Who can feel how the trail holds true.
You of the Pilgrim fathers,With your face so proud and pale,And the birth born pain of a fettered brain,What can ye know of the trail?
You of the Pilgrim fathers,
With your face so proud and pale,
And the birth born pain of a fettered brain,
What can ye know of the trail?
By the lawless folk who bore me,By their passion and pain, and loss,By their swords which strove and their Lights o' Love,I've a right to the gipsy cross.
By the lawless folk who bore me,
By their passion and pain, and loss,
By their swords which strove and their Lights o' Love,
I've a right to the gipsy cross.
Poems by Nancy Stair. Edinburgh Edition, 1796.
CHAPTER XX
DANVERS GIVES US A GREAT SURPRISE
A fortnight passed with no news of the Arran folks whatever, when one morning Sandy appeared at the door of the small dining-room where we were breakfasting, his sudden appearance recalling that memorable day when he asked me on the cruise which brought my girl to me. In the first glance I had of him I saw trouble; twice before he had worn such a look, once at his mother's death, and again when his wife had left him, taking the boy to London, and he knew the separation to be final. His face was very pale, the pallor showing strangely through his tanned skin, and his mouth was set, and twitching at the corners as beyond his control.
"Are ye ill, Sandy?" I cried, going toward him hurriedly.
"No," he answered, sitting down at the table and hiding his face in his hands; "but I've had a blow! I've had a blow!" he repeated. "It's Danvers," he went on, when he could speak. "He went off to Lanure yesterday and married Isabel Erskine!"
"Married Isabel Erskine!" I cried, like a parrot.
"Married Isabel Erskine!" repeated Nancy, who stood staring at him as if she doubted his saneness.
"Married Isa——" I was beginning again, in a highly intelligent manner, when Huey MacGrath suddenly dropped the tray of dishes he was bringing in and carried his hands to his face, beginning to moan and cry like a woman, for it had been the wish of his heart to have these two children, who in some way he believed to be his own, married to each other.
The disturbance was a good thing for all, for it broke the unnatural tension between us, and after MacColl had assisted Huey into the pantry, where I could see him standing, listening at the doorway, Sandy continued:
"It was all that talking, grape-eyed woman! It was for that she fetched her daughter to Arran. It's been going on right under my eye, and I too blind and taken up with my own affairs to see it The poor laddie," he cried. "The poor fool laddie!"
Understanding that a discussion of the marriage in her presence was an impossibility, Nancy left us, with a white face, on some pretense of business at the Burnside, and Sandy and I talked it out between us. Midnight found us going back and forth over the matter and arriving at the same point, that the chances of happiness for a man wedded to one woman and in love with another are just nothing at all. I could feel that there was one question in Sandy's mind which he could scarce bring himself to ask, and I took the suggestion of it upon myself.
"It will bring many changes to us," I said, "and to none more than Nancy."
"Do you think she cares for him?" Sandy asked, putting his thought plainly.
"To be frank with ye, Sandy," said I, "it's a matter I've been far from deciding. I believe that the visit to Mauchline changed her more than any other event in her life. Before it she'd idealized gift and the possession of it. When she came back she was changed in a way. 'It's a great thing to be a gentleman; I think it's more in the end than being a genius, Jock,' she said, and by this, as well as other speeches of hers, I am convinced that her mind had turned toward Danvers, and if he had come to her with any kindness at all, things would have been settled between them; but he burst in storming, poor fellow, like a crazy loon, and a fine quarrel they had of it, with this marriage as a resulting."
"There's one small good comes out of it all, which is that the paste-covered woman gets out of Arran to-day," Sandy ended. "It's a thing she had not counted upon, but Danvers wrote that they were off to the Continent, and it's not respectable for her to stay alone with me, and she packs for Carlisle to-morrow."
Of the next five months there is little to tell which bears directly upon my tale, except to make some mention of the "intellectual reform" of the Duke of Borthwicke, a name he put himself upon his altered conduct. News we had of him in plenty, and if rumor could be relied upon, he was a changed man. The first note of his new behavior was struck by his relieving the poor tenant-bodies on his Killanarchie estates from their rentals for three years because of the losses from a cattle blight. And before the sound of this had died away another bit was added to the tune of his reformation by his coming out strong against the crown for the repeal of the tax on Scotch whisky. And the full song of his praises began to be sung in public when he, being one of the Scotch Sixteen in the English House of Peers, declared for the inadequacy of representation which Scotland had in the House of Commons, and moved for an election of fifty-four, after the English manner8.
His letters to Nancy and myself at this time were of a piece with him, for he spoke with quaint sarcasm of that which he termed his "change of heart," and of the curious pleasure he obtained from marking his life out along another line. He wrote with detail as well of a new Paisley industry which he had started on one of his estates, asking Nancy's advice concerning a teacher for the lace-work, it being his purpose to have the young women round Borthwicke Castle turned toward making a livelihood after this manner. During all of this time his letters came frequently, and Nancy read them with much pleasure and many comments, but her private feelings toward the writer of them she confided to none.
There was a talk which set Nancy's state of mind with some clearness, however, which fell between us directly after the offer of marriage made to her by McMurtrie of Ainswere.
"Dearest," she said, "I am beginning to see with my mind that every woman flies in the face of the Almighty not to take into her life's reckoning the instinct of her sex for love and motherhood. It seems to me that a great love must be the best thing of all; but I'm just here, I don't dare to marry because I'm afraid of myself; and I don't dare to stay unmarried for fear of that great and unrelenting thing called Nature."
"Nancy," said I, with an earnestness that came straight from the heart, "if ye feel like that, your hour has not yet struck. For when the great love comes, it's not a question of what you want, but what ye can't help; and I wouldn't think anything more about it, for ye'll know when it comes, my dear," I cried; "ye'll know when it comes!"
There was an odd scrap of business, trifling in itself, and yet leading to great trouble, which fell about this time, and I set it down as of interest to those who note the way fate uses all as instruments.
Nancy, Sandy, and I had planned a jaunt to Ireland. There had been no intention whatever of taking Huey with us, for he was the last person on earth to take upon a pleasure outing, as he regarded all strangers as rogues and villains, and the Irish people as heathen papists, worshiping idols in the few moments unoccupied in breaking each other's heads with shillalahs. He had for me and mine a devotion at once touching and uncomfortable; but as he grew older he interfered in all manner of matters beyond his province, offered advices absurd and impertinent, and never once in the whole sixty years of our acquaintance can I recall his agreeing entirely with a statement made by any body except Nancy. If he couldn't contradict one flatly, and the uncongenial part of acquiescence was forced upon him by his love of truth, he held a grudging silence or affected an absent mind, or no interest in the matter whatever.
As the years went by and his health became feebler he followed me about until he was like to drive me to Bedlam, and I used to discharge him from my service about once a fortnight. I had never realized how highly absurd our relations were until Nancy drew them to my attention.
"Ye can't go to Alton on Thursday, Jock," she said.
"Why?" I inquired.
"'Tis your day for discharging Huey," she answered with a laugh, making up a funny face at me.
I would not set any one to thinking that I had a lack of affection for my old serving-man, for I had seen his old age provided against in a manner to prove my care; but I knew that he loved me in spite of my conduct rather than because of it, and with no hope whatever of my eternal salvation.
The plans for our Irish trip were being discussed one day when Nancy found him weeping bitterly over the silver he was counting, when he told her that his grief came from fear lest we should get murdered or kidnapped in that strange country without him to look after us, and that the whole matter was taking the very life out of him.
The little one's heart was so touched by his sorrow and his age that she came back to Sandy and me with tears in her eyes, saying that if Huey couldn't go she would stay at home herself.
As he was too old and broken to travel with safety to himself, and as Nancy remained fixed as death, the Irish trip was not taken; by which, but for the whim of this old serving-man, we might have been from Scotland and avoided the bitter trouble which began at the Allisons' rout given in honor of the home-coming of Danvers and his bride.
8Scotland had but 16 Peers and 48 Representatives in Parliament at this time.
CHAPTER XXI
THE ALLISONS' BALL AND THAT WHICH FOLLOWED IT
As I have written, save for Huey MacGrath, we should have been away from Scotland at the time of the Allisons' ball, and by this absence should have missed the visit of the Duke of Borthwicke concerning the Light-House Commission, which fell at the same time.
His grace's letter to Nancy just previous to this return was filled with a droll cataloguing of all the good deeds which he was doing, in the manner of an exact invoice.
"I hope you will not be forgetting any of these, not even the smallest," he concluded this epistle, "for it is because of these I am going to ask you a favor, a great favor—the greatest favor on earth."
For the two or three days before this merrymaking Nancy was in a strange mood, of which I could make nothing, her gaiety being more pronouncedly gay, and her silences continuing longer than I had ever noted them. She spent much of her time in her own room, trying on and having refitted a wonderful gown which Lunardi had sent up from London by special carrier the week before. I knew women well enough to understand that she wished to outshine even herself in this first meeting with Danvers since his marriage, perhaps to show him that she wore no willows on his account, or perchance to make him a bit regretful of what he had missed.
On the evening of the rout the duke dined at Stair, purposing to go with us to the ball and to be set down at his tavern on our way home. Nancy, in a short-waisted black frock, sat with us at the meal, merry as a child, chattering of the coming party and her "braw new claes," as she called them, as if there were no trouble in the world, or as if she were exempted from it, if it existed. She spent an hour or more upon her dressing, returning to us a lovelier, fairer, more radiant Nancy than she had ever seemed before, even to my infatuated fatherly eyes. Nor was this thought mine alone, for I saw the start of surprise which Montrose gave at sight of her, and heard the sudden breath he drew as she came toward us from the hall.
Her skin, always noticeably white and transparent, seemed this night to have a certain luminous quality. Her cheeks were flushed, her gray eyes shone mistily under the black lashes and blacker brows, and the scarlet outline of her lips was marked as in a drawing. She wore a gown of palest rose, covered with yellow cob-webby lace, which was her grandmother's, the satin of the gown showing through the film which covered it like "morning light through mist," as I told her, to be poetical. The frock was low and sleeveless, the bodice of it ablaze with gems, and there was another thing I noticed with surprise and admiration. She wore her hair high, though loose and soft about the brows, and in the coil of it a large comb set with many precious stones. This jewel, originally designed to wear at the back of the head, she had turned forward, making a coronet over her brows, beautiful in itself, becoming in the extreme, and I noted that his Grace of Borthwicke let his eyes rest upon it with a peculiar pleasure.
He rose at her entrance and bowed very low, with pretended servility, resuming his usual manner before he said, with significance:
"The coronet becomes you, Nancy Stair."
And she looked back at him, with a low laugh, with no self-consciousness in it, however, as she answered:
"There is none more competent to judge of that than yourself, your grace."
We arrived late at the ball, to find the rooms already crowded, and the Arran party, with Sir Patrick Sullivan, gathered in a group by the large window of the music-room.
Jane Gordon held me in talk a minute as I passed her, and for this reason his grace offered his arm to Nancy, and as the two of them passed together a hush fell on the people at the sight of them, and I could see by significant glances and the jogging of elbows that Edinburgh folks would take the news of a betrothal between them with small surprise. Gordon told me later that some one suggested this in a veiled fashion to his Grace of Borthwicke, who might easily have turned the matter aside or noted it not at all, but that he laughed openly, saying:
"If it had lain with me, my engagement to Mistress Stair would have been announced the evening I saw her first. 'Tis the lady herself who refuses me," an attitude which, from one of his rank, was surely gentlemanly in the extreme.
As soon as I was disengaged from the Gordons I made my way toward the Carmichael family with joy in my heart to see my lad once more. He greeted me with affection, folding my hand in his as a loving son might do, rallying me on my good looks, patting me on the shoulder, and showing by every sign an honest fondness for me which touched me deeply. I could have wished that he looked better himself. He had lost no flesh; he carried himself with a jauntiness and elasticity which comes from strength, but the expression of his mouth was changed and his eyes had a restless, uninterested expression which showed him unsettled and unhappy.
Isabel looked ill at ease. She had lost her color, had taken on much flesh, and it seemed, as I observed her more, that it was from the father rather than the son that she obtained what comfort she had, for it was to Sandy she turned in all of the talk, and it was his arm upon which she leaned. Her manner to me was constrained, but not lacking in cordiality, and when I proposed that they should join our party she assented willingly enough. Because of this suggestion it fell that we met Nancy walking toward us on the duke's arm, and at the sudden sight of her Danvers Carmichael turned white and set his jaw as one who endures a physical hurt in silence.
And the rest of the evening was of a piece with life, wherein none can tell what latent qualities of our neighbor may be brought suddenly to the fore, upsetting every plan which we have made for years.
Whether Danvers lost every thought of behavior through his present unhappiness, or for the first time recognized what he had missed; whether the presence of his Grace of Borthwicke in such devoted attendance upon Nancy roused his jealousy, none could know, but he seemed to throw obligations to the wind, and bore himself as one who has a mind to drink his fill of present pleasure, no matter how extortionate the reckoning may be.
So it fell that from the first word spoken between Nancy and Danvers it was he who, by sheer recklessness, took the upper hand with her, the duke being pushed back, as it were, upon Sir Patrick or myself for company.
"I did not think to forget any of your loveliness, Miss Stair," Danvers said as Nancy's hand met his, "but I find I had; or mayhap you've added to it during my absence. A thing which I had held to be impossible."
"'Tis in France we learn such speeches," Nancy answered, lifting her brows.
"Wherever you are such speeches would be the natural talk," Danvers replied, and though he used a jesting tone in the words, his passion for her was so inflamed that the impression of the words was of great earnestness, and we—at least I speak for myself—were given a feeling of looking at love-making not intended for our eyes.
The entire evening was a most uncomfortable time, filled for me with fear of coming trouble as I noted Sandy's knit brows and his efforts to keep Isabel from the dancing-room where Nancy and Danvers were walking together through one quadrille after another, until the gossip of the town was like to take hold of the matter. It was a curious thing that in my anxiety I should turn for help against Danvers to the duke himself.
"Your grace," I said, trying to keep the tone a merry one, "you are neglecting the lady you escorted here to-night, are you not?" and he laughed in a dry way before he answered:
"In faith I think that it is the lady who is neglecting me. I'll stop it," he added. There was no "perhaps" or "if possible" in his tone.
"It would be best, I think, for all concerned," I answered at a sight of Isabel's pale face and Sandy's anxious eyes.
Upon the instant Montrose started toward the place where Nancy stood, a little apart from a group of gay people, so that her talk with Danvers could be in the nature of a private one, if desired. As the duke made his way toward her I followed a little in the rear. He was, as always, smiling, calm, master of himself and of others, and as he came toward her he asked, in a low tone of penetrating quality, which by intention conveyed both affection and the rights of ownership:
"You are not tiring yourself?" and turning to Danvers, he added, "You must help Lord Stair and myself to take care of her, Mr. Carmichael. She has not been well of late."
I can set the words out, but the solicitation, such as a lover, nay, a husband might have shown, are impossible to convey with any nicety; and at his coming, Nancy, who had had one experience of the clash of tempers between these two men, temporized the affair by saying:
"My father and his grace are surely right. I have not been well of late, and find it indeed time for me to say 'Good night.'"
Toward morning I was awakened by the noise of a loosened blind, and slipping into a dressing-gown went through the passage to fasten the latch. Passing Nancy's room I heard a moan, and, startled out of myself, listened to hear another, and still another, as though a heart were breaking. There was a light in the room, and through a small window in the door, the curtain of which was drawn a bit aside, I saw the little one whom I would gladly die to save from any pain, lying face down upon the floor, her arms stretched out, the hands clutched tightly together, and her whole body shaking as in mortal illness.
"Nancy, Nancy, let me in! Open the door to me," I cried.
She started to a sitting position, tried to arrange her disordered hair and gown, and I saw her cast a look in the mirror as she came toward the door, to see how far she could make me believe that nothing unusual was the matter with her.
"What is it?" I asked, my heart bursting with love and sympathy as I drew her to my breast.
She turned her eyes toward me, eyes which held the despair in them which only women know.
"Oh," she cried, clutching me to keep from falling, "didn't you see?"
"I saw nothing," I answered.
"I can't speak it," she says; "but another of life's lessons has come to me to-night. Do you remember the time I told you that I had learned something with my head? I learned it with my heart to-night, and it's like to kill me. Oh, what have I done?" she cried, "what have I ever done to deserve such punishment as this?"
"Tell me, Nancy," I said. "There is nothing in God's world that can't be helped by sympathy."
"I can't tell you. I can't put words to it. See!" she said, standing a bit apart from me. "Look at me! Do you know a girl more to be envied? Handsomer? Richer? More gifted? Think, too, of the advantages that I've had with Father Michel and Hugh Pitcairn to teach me! Think of the stir my songs have made! And at the end what am I?
"Ah!" she went on, "take any woman,anywoman, educate her in the highest knowledges known, keep her with men, and far from her own sex, and at the end of it, what is she? A creature who wants the man she loves and babies of her own," and at these last words she broke into another storm of weeping which drove me wild with dread.
"Nancy," I cried, "think of your recent illness. For my sake try to control yourself more. There is the poor head to be thought of always."
"It's been this head of mine that's been my undoing, Jock," she answered, between her sobs. "All the trouble has come from that."
MacColl was off for Dr. McMurtrie before daybreak, and I sat holding Nancy's hand waiting for his coming, with Pitcairn's ancient statement going round and round clatter-mill in my brain:
"Ye can't educate a woman as ye can a man. With six thousand years of heredity, the physiology of the female sex, and the Lord himself against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter reared like other women, to fulfil woman's great end," and pondering over the fact that the great lawyer and Nancy herself seemed to have come to exactly the same conclusion.
I was alarmed by her pallor and exhaustion, but McMurtrie assured me that a sleeping potion would set her far along the road to recovery; and at breakfast, after Nancy had fallen into an induced sleep, unknown to himself he gave me what I felt to be the key to the whole bitter suffering she was enduring, suffering, I feared, which came from a love learned too late.
"Your friend Sandy will be a grandfather soon, I see," said the old doctor, beaming at me over his glasses as he drank his tea.
This was the beginning of a troubled time for all of us, and one which a partial biographer of Danvers Carmichael would like to slur over or leave untold entirely, for it seemed that neither reason nor self-respect could do anything with him in his thirst for Nancy's society. As soon as she was about again he was over at Stair, the excuse being some presents which he had brought us from the strange lands he had been visiting; his constant thought of her, even upon his bridal tour, being plainly shown by these: a ring from Venice, of wrought gold with aquamarines, some Spanish embroideries, quaint carvings; and finally he put the cap upon his extravagance by producing from an inner pocket a girdle of Egyptian workmanship, too valuable by far for her to accept from him.
"Surely, Dandy," I broke in at this, "ye must see that Nancy, no matter what the old-time affection between us may be, can not take such gifts from you?"
"Why not?" he answered, looking straight at me.
"It might be misinterpreted," I began, lamely.
"By whom?" he inquired.
"Not by us," I replied, "but by others."
"And what others are to know?" he demanded. "I am not going to make the matter of a gift public business."
There was something in me which made it impossible to mention his wife to him, but Nancy said, with gentleness and great wisdom, as it seemed to me:
"They are beautiful, and I would love to have them from you, Danvers; and some time, when Isabel and I become great friends, I'll ask them of you, maybe; but I can not take them now."
The next morning brought him back, with some strange translations and stranger foreign prints, where he knew my weakness; and I sat with the two of them, laughing and criticising the pictures or the writings until the luncheon time came, when it was impossible to turn a friend out of one's house, and I urged him myself to stay with us, by which it was near three when he set back to Arran Towers.
On the following morning he came again, with a flimsy excuse concerning a mare he was thinking of purchasing; and so, by this and by that, he managed to spend most of his time at Stair, and in Nancy's society, seemingly unconscious of a wife he left at Arran for Sandy to console.
I grew so anxious that I lost sleep, my appetite went from me; I would waken in the morning with a load on my breast as of guilt, and the thought before me of having a situation to handle which by a mistake of mine might be turned to a tragedy.
Walking from the burn with Father Michel one day we saw Danvers Carmichael striding through the Holm gate toward Stair House, and the glance that passed between us told me without words that the holy father's thought was mine, which was that two people near Edinbro' Town were playing very close to the fire.
"I've had some thought to speak to him of his conduct," Father Michel said, "but it would have more effect coming from you, my lord."
As I entered the house, with a purpose half formed, I found Danvers in the hall talking to Dickenson, by whom Nancy had sent word that one of her headaches was upon her, and that she was, by reason of it, unable to see any one.
The concern in Danvers's manner, the unconscious exhibition of tenderness in his voice, stiffened my half-formed resolution, and I did just what the impulse bade me.
"Step into the library here, Danvers," said I. "I want a word with ye."
He gave me a questioning look, following me with no words and stood waiting for me to speak after I had cautiously closed the door.
"It's just come to this, Dandie," I said, "you must stop coming to this house as ye do! Until ye had a wife there was never one who entered the door more welcome, but as long as I have Nancy Stair to think about, ye'll just have to end these visits entirely. With the matter of an old love between you, an affair known to the whole town as well, your conduct is fair impossible, and, what is more, misunderstood!"
And here again a difficult thing in him to handle appeared; never in his life had he known fear and a lie was a stranger to his lips, for his birth, gear, and rearing had given him a secured position in which he did as he chose, with excuses to none, and a be-damned-to-you attitude to all who found fault with him, and it was with the candor and shamelessness resulting from these that my dealings lay.
"Misunderstood—how?" he repeated after me like an echo.
"Well," said I, "the gossips will be having it that ye're in love with my daughter still."
"Lord Stair," says he, "whether the gossips speak it or not is of little moment to me, but it's the truth before God! There was never another woman in the world like her, and from the moment I set eyes upon her I've loved her and wanted her for my wife. I love her more now since I have known what I missed; what I missed!" he repeated, his face working in a kind of agony and his eyes swimming with tears. "Oh," he continued, "what a wreck I have made of my life!"
"There's no need, by the same token," I cried, "to make a wreck of another's as well. Ye've a wife at home, a wife who loves you and whom you swore to love and honor. I have my daughter's reputation to think of, and the end of the whole matter is you'll just have to make your visits less frequent."
He had never come to me for sympathy before when he had not found it, and the sorrow in his face melted me more than was wise.
"Say once a fortnight, or such like," I said weakly. "Considering the relations between your father and me, visits so spaced might pass unnoticed. But I tell you honestly, Danvers Carmichael, when a man loves a woman whom he can't have, there is nothing for it but a good run and a far one. You'd better stay away altogether, laddie. It's the wisest course."
He left me with no further word, and I hoped that he had come to my way of thinking, when Satan himself took a hand in the affairs between Nancy and himself.
CHAPTER XXII
A STRANGE MEETING
Upon the day following that on which I denied Danvers the house, a letter came to us from a hamlet on the west coast, near Allan-lough, saying that Janet McGillavorich was sick unto death and desired that Nancy should come to her immediately.
It was a tedious journey, and while I sorrowed for the cause of it, I was glad to have her away from Stair for a while, and hastened her departure with Dickenson on the afternoon coach of the same day upon which the letter arrived. Even with this speed it was far into the second day before she came to the house in which Janet was lying; a house which seemed to have straggled back from the sea and stood lonesomely by itself in a small fenced garden having a gate-and-chain opening to the graveled path. It was a double-storied dwelling of pink brick, with small-paned windows and ivy creeping over it everywhere, even upon the wooden cap of the doorway, which hung over the two broad stone steps of the entrance.
There was no time to knock before the door was opened to Nancy by the old woman who had been for many years Janet's maid, companion, and housekeeper, whose eyes were red with weeping and whose whole bearing denoted the greatest anxiety.
"She's took worse," she said. "It's thought she will not last the night."
"Will she know me?" Nancy asked.
"Oh, aye! She's her wits about her still. She knew Mr. Danvers," the old wife replied.
"Mr. Danvers," Nancy repeated after her. "Is Mr. Danvers here?" And at the words Danvers himself came forward to greet her.
"Are you cold?" he inquired, in the whispering tone used when sickness is near. "This has been a dreadful trip for you to take. You must have some hot tea at once." And, as the old woman bustled away to prepare it:
"Were you sent for, Danvers?" asked Nancy.
He nodded acquiescence, answering:
"The two of us are named in the will," the tears coming to his eyes as he spoke of Janet's kindness.
Tea had scarce been brewed when the old doctor came from above to say that Mrs. McGillavorich had heard of Nancy's arrival and wanted to see her immediately, adding, with some philosophy:
"It excites her so not to get her own way, that it couldn't excite her more to have it; so just go up, my dear, go right up!"
In this way, at the time of their lives when each was least prepared for trial and bitterly unhappy, it fell that Danvers and Nancy were thrown together in an intimacy impossible under other circumstances; relieving each other in the watching, sitting together by the bedside through the long hours of the night, or walking back and forth in each other's company to the little village on needful errands for the small household. In the tiny dining-room Nancy served at one side of the table while Danvers carved at the other, the suggestiveness of such an arrangement sending disordered longings to the hearts of both.
One dreadful night when Janet, who was barely conscious, clung to Nancy's hand, although the girl's head ached miserably and she had had no sleep for forty-eight hours, she showed by a sign to Danvers her intention to remain by the bedside in the great arm-chair. Her weariness and suffering made his heart yearn over her, and he leaned forward from the place he sat to put his hand upon her aching brow. His soothing touch, or perhaps a cause more subtle still, comforted her, and she fell asleep, to find the gray light of morn and Danvers, motionless beside her, having sat all those weary hours with his arm in a position which it must have tortured him to maintain. On the instant of her awakening she said, in a whisper:
"Your poor arm, Danvers! Your poor arm!"
And the strain of his mind showed in the answer:
"I would lose an arm altogether for what I have had to-night."
At the end of the fifth day Janet was so far recovered that she was able to sit up for a while against the pillows, and from this on her convalescence was a rapid one, although the tenth day had gone by when she told Danvers, with her customary frankness, to be off about his business. The evening before his departure, Nancy and he sat in Janet's room, fearful of being alone together for even a minute, and past eleven they parted for the night, in the old lady's presence, speaking their farewells in gay voices, with many assurances of meeting again in Edinburgh at some near time.
"I went to my room, Jock," Nancy said, when she told me this tale, "locked and bolted the door, and built a great fire in the chimney, for I was shivering from head to foot. And I thought of you! Only of you! Your love for me! The touch of your kind hands! Your dear gray head!—and before every other thing in life was the thought to do nothing to shame you, nor to cause a pain to that true heart of yours. And then I got down on my knees at the bedside like a little child and prayed to God.
"'O God,' I cried, 'take this pain from my heart, for I can no longer endure it. It's killing me. It's killing me, here, all alone! away from Jock Stair! And if You will do this thing I will never ask another of You in all my days!' Trying to make a compact with my Maker," she finished, "like a foolish child——"
She heard the clock strike four, and knowing the hour near when he must leave, crept to the window to see if enough light had come for her to have a sight of him as he went down the path. While she stood peering out into the darkness, she heard a rap at the bedroom door.
"Who is it?" she cried.
"It's I—Danvers Carmichael!" came a voice, low but very distinct; at sound of which she unbarred the door and slipped into the hallway.
He had made himself ready for his departure; his great coat, with the cape drawn up, already on, his cap upon his head, and a lighted lantern beside him, casting an eerie gleam along the black passage. He was white to the lips, his eyes sunken and reckless, and at sight of him Nancy cried in alarm:
"What is it, Danvers? What is it?"
"Oh, my girl!" said he. "It's just this! I can't go away and leave you here! I can never go and leave you any more! The thought of it chokes me! I love you, love you, love you!" he went on, "with all there is of me. Last year I offered you love and honor. This year it's love and dishonor, maybe, but love still, love that is greater than shame or death. Will ye come away with me? There are other lands than ours and other laws. Bigbie's lugger is lying at the foot of the hill with sail up for Glasgow, and from there the world lies open for us.
"Oh, best beloved," he went on, "think of it! Does it mean anything to you?—to be alone together, forever more? Do you know what it is to waken with outstretched arms, longing for another, to——"
"I have suffered, Danvers," Nancy interrupted him. "I made mistakes, bitter mistakes, my head being so engaged with other matters that I lost the chart of woman's nature. And when I saw——" she paused at this, for it was something she could not bring herself to speak out; but words were unneeded between them, for his eyes sought hers hungrily, and they stood at gaze with each other for a space before Danvers cried:
"And to think it's not you—to think it's not you!" he repeated, with a moan like an animal in pain. "God!" he went on in his raving, "I can not and will not stand it longer! Why is a love like this given to a man? Do we choose? Have I had any choice in the matter? Whoever it was who designed the peculiar hell of my own nature can take the consequences of it. Speak to me, Nancy!" he cried; "speak to me! Do not stand there looking at me like a statue! For God's sake, speak—for it seems as though I should kill you and myself, and so make an end."
His grief had so worked upon him by this time that Nancy was beside herself with fear for him, although she spoke quietly and in as natural a voice as she could summon.
"I'll go with you, Dandie," she said; "I'll go with you. Wait for me," reentering her room; "just wait for me!"
It took her but a moment to get some stout walking-boots, a dark skirt, and the scarlet Connemara cloak which she had worn on many of their walks together, and pulling the hood of it over her head, she stepped softly back into the hallway.
"I am ready," she said, slipping her hand into his; "I am ready. Let us go."
There was no further word spoken between them. In silence they walked, hand in hand, along the frozen passage and down the twisting stairs, closing the house door noiselessly behind them. Outside it was very dark, save in the far east, where there was a rim of white showing in the sky like a line on a slate. The cold was biting, and a wind which had not reached the ground blew through the tree-tops with a rushing sound and sent a scurry of leaves before them on their path. Danvers had prepared himself by a lantern, and there seemed something significant of the business in hand in his determination to leave it behind; it was in the blackness of midnight, with a silent country stretching away from them in every direction and the stillness of the dead, that the two walked the narrow path and turned into the lane which led by a cut over the rise toward the Dumfries road. At the coming out of the close-way a chill wind struck them, and Nancy, taken suddenly from the warmth of bed, drew back and shivered, at which Danvers put his arm around her, throwing part of his cape over her. Still in silence, they walked until they came to the brow of the hill, at which place the path divides, one part of it winding across the bridge to the stage road, and the other dropping down by a clump of sailors' homes, west, to the sea. Enough light had come by this time to see the boats lying at anchor in the cove and to distinguish Bigbie's lugger from the rest, as she bobbed up and down, her sails spread and ready to be off. At the sight of this boat Danvers turned suddenly, as if recalled to his senses, and faced Nancy, as they stood at the parting of the ways.
"God forgive me!" he cried. "Oh, God forgive me, but I can't do it! I can't take ye. Not though you begged me on your knees; not though I knew you'd die without me. Oh, can you ever forgive the words I've said to you this morning? Will ye think rather that I'd choose to see ye dead than gone with me in the way I've asked? That I'd rather die myself than take ye; and that I love you, love you enough to give you up! And it's I," he went on in a bitter self-scorn, "who have prated of honor, and the conduct of gentlemen, who have made a beast of myself before the best woman who ever lived! Who through selfishness have tried to make her life a blacker ruin than I've made my own! Can you forget it, Nancy? Can you ever forgive me for it?"
"Dandie," she said softly, "ye needn't worry about that. I knew you wouldn't take me! I knew 'twas just that you were carried beyond yourself by your sorrows that made you talk as you did at the bedroom door. Look!" she said, opening the throat of the Connemara cloak and showing him the neck of her thin white dressing blouse, "one doesn't start to the Americas in clothes like that. I knew what you were and understood; knew that, given your way, you would choose the best, as you have done!" she cried, with the tears in her eyes. "Ye've stood before temptation! You've done the thing that's right when it was hard to do! and I'm proud to have seen you as I have this morning."
They were both crying by this time as they stood with hands clasped, on one side the calls of the sailors coming up the slope, on the other the echoes of a horn rolling along the frozen ground from the coach which came to carry Danvers away.
"I may kiss you before I go?" he asked, with a longing in his tone pitiable to hear.
"If ye think it's right," she answered. "If ye think that when ye look back to this time in the years to come you will be happier to remember that ye kissed me, than to think you kept the vows you swore before God, ye may kiss me if ye choose!"
The choice was made in silence, and he dropped her hands, picked up the valise which had fallen by his feet, and turned to go. At sight of this resolution Nancy burst into tears.
"Oh," she cried, "God bless you! God bless you, dear! And give you peace!" as, without touching even her hand, Danvers Carmichael fared forth alone, along the stage road which lay lonesome and frozen in the shadow of the night.
CHAPTER XXIII
A FALSE RUMOR CAUSES TROUBLE
While these events were going forward at Allan-lough I sat in an ignorant complacency at Stair, pleased with the advices of Janet's convalescence, and with no knowledge whatever of Danvers Carmichael's whereabouts save that he was from Arran Towers. My lack of knowledge concerning his movements occurred by reason of a new trouble which broke out at this time between his father and Hugh Pitcairn concerning a watercourse which crossed the adjoining lands of both, somewhere back in the country. The water was of no use to Sandy, and equally valueless to Hugh; but the fact that one of them wanted it heightened its value to the other, and talk went back and forth, with Sandy deaving my ears concerning his rights on Monday, and Hugh going over the same ground, looking the other way, on Tuesday, until I was driven from Stair and avoided both, spending my time at the clubs, the coffee-houses, or with Creech and his queer old books.
Coming down the steps of his shop on the morning of the twelfth of February—I recall the date because it was the beginning of all the troublous times at Stair—I encountered James Gordon, looking both worried and perplexed.
"John," said he, "you are the very man to help me from an embarrassing position. My wife and daughter have been taken with a fever; our town-house is small, and I have invited Borthwicke to stay with us during the meeting of the Lighthouse Commission——"
"Let me have him at Stair," I cried. "Nancy is from home, I am leading a bachelor life, and you will be showing a kindness to send me such good company as John Montrose."
In this entirely unplanned manner the duke became my visitor, and I found him a merry companion, easy, accessible, agreeable; praising my wines, naming my house the most attractive place in Scotland, and my daughter the most wonderful woman in the world; and I wandered abroad no more, but stayed at home, like a cream-fed cat by the fireside, his grace making the time gay with his tales, his wit, and his worldly wisdom. He urged me to accompany the commission to the northern coasts, and one day, when I was debating whether to join in this expedition or to go down to the West and visit Nancy, the girl settled the question for me herself by appearing at Stair, and at the first sight of her my heart sank within me. She had become much thinner, there was the pallor of sickness in her face, and a weakness both in voice and body as she clung to me, telling me her joy at seeing me again and that she would never leave me more. The news of Borthwicke's presence in the house she received with some surprise, which showed neither pleasure nor regret, going immediately to her rooms, however, making her long journey an excuse for dining alone.
It was after luncheon on the following day that old Dr. McMurtrie came into the library and addressed me, with some heat and scant apology.
"John," said he, looking at me over his glasses, "I am going to make myself disagreeable. I am going to be that damned nuisance, a candid friend; but somebody's got to speak to you, for you're just letting that girl of yours kill herself."
I stared at him in speechless wonderment.
"She's killing herself," he went on, relentlessly. "And when it's too late you'll see the truth of it. No girl's body is equal to the excitement she's had for years, ever since she was a baby, in fact, with her charities and her Burn-folking and her verse-writing. It's all damned nonsense," he summed up, succinctly, "and it's for you to stop it.
"Instead of helping her get out a second edition of poems," he went on, "ye'd show more sense if you put your mind to considering the problem of how much work a woman can do in justice to the race. Every female creature is in all probability the repository of unborn generations, and should be trained to think of that solemn fact as a man is taught to think of his country."
"Some women," I answered, testily, "are forced to work daily at laborious tasks to support families——"
"And others," he interrupted, "squeeze their feet and give each other poison; but they are not my patients, and Nancy Stair is. And I think you'll find that the women who work, as ye say, do most of it with their bodies, not with their heads or their nerves, and it's in work of this kind the trouble of female labor lies. Nancy should save her vitality. She should store it up for wifehood and motherhood. She'll be a spent woman before she has a husband, and your grandchildren puny youngsters as a resulting. Think it over, John," he concluded; "think it over."
He was scarce out of the house when Nancy appeared from the garden, coming over to the place I sat to put her hand on my shoulder.
"I'm thinking of marrying John Montrose, Jock," she said, with no introduction whatever.
"Ye have my own gentle way of breaking news to people, Little Flower," I said; and then: "Do you love him, Nancy? Or, what is more to the point, are you in love with him?"
"Neither," she responded; "but I have grown to believe in him, in spite of his past, and love may come," and here she clasped her hands together and her eyes widened with pain as she said: "I have had a great temptation, Daddy. A great temptation, and I want to put away any chance of it ever coming to me again. I could be true to another always when I might not——"
"Nancy," I interrupted, drawing her down on my knee, "there is no greater mistake a woman can make than to think that marrying one man will help her to forget another; for there is just one thing worse than not having the man you want, and that is having the man you don't want. And if you're not in love with Montrose, you'll never get my consent to the wedding, not if he were the Prince himself."
On the morning following these talks the duke, who was still with us, sent excuses to the breakfast-room that he had passed an uneasy night and would rest until noon; and his valet, who brought this message, ended by saying:
"His grace is not well. His grace should have a doctor, for he had the bleeding from the lungs again last night, although it would be worth my place if he knew I mentioned it to your lordship."
In our foggy country a little throat trouble is no great matter, but I ordered my horse for town, meaning to get McMurtrie out, as if by accident, to see what attentions the duke might require; and riding in some haste by the Bridge end, found a group of men, with papers in their hands, discussing some bit of news with much interest. As I drew near them, Dundas waved the journal at me and called out:
"Our congratulations, John."
I reined in my horse, asking the very natural question, upon what I was to be congratulated, when Blake handed me a copy of The Lounger, indicating a certain paragraph for me to read. The notice began:
"We understand that the long-expected betrothal between his Grace of Borthwicke and Mistress Nancy Stair, only daughter of Lord Stair, is announced," the penny-a-liner going on with much wordiness to state the time and place fixed for the coming marriage, and even the shops in London from which the trousseau was to come.
"Gentlemen," I cried, "upon my honor there is not a word of truth in all of this," and, securing a copy of the miserable sheet, turned back to Stair to discover from Nancy whether to deny the announcement by direct statement or let the rumor die in silence.
I entered the house by the side door which leads to the music-room, outside of which I paused, astonished at the sound of angry and excited voices within the apartment. As I listened, wondering if some new trouble was upon us, I recognized Danvers Carmichael's tone, and almost upon the instant of this recognition, heard him cry out:
"I will save you the promising, for I swear he shall never live to marry you!"
His Grace of Borthwicke being within possible earshot of this altercation, I decided to leave Danvers to Nancy's management, and hurried up the winding stairs to hold the duke's attention until Danvers had left the house.
Looking down into the main hall as I ascended the stair I saw Hugh Pitcairn rise from a couch upon which he had been lying and cross to the far window with some suddenness of manner, and knew by instinct that he had realized the talk was not intended for his ears, and had hastily changed his position, like the man of honor that he was.
Finding that the duke had not left his apartment in my absence I crossed to my own room, where I was not alone above five minutes before Nancy joined me.
"Mr. Pitcairn is below, waiting for the duke to affix some signatures," she said; and then:
"Danvers Carmichael has been here, too. He saw an announcement in The Lounger that I was betrothed to his Grace of Borthwicke, and came by to tell me—as you did yourself," she ended, with a smile, "that the wedding would have to take place without his approval."