Nancy Stair Part 10

"Do you stay now?" she asked.

"I had intended to go back at the end of the week, but I have changed my mind. With my father's leave, I'll spend the summer----"

"It does not take you long to change your mind," Nancy returned with a smile.

"No," he said, and here he leaned forward, took her hand and kissed it.

"No! It took me just one second."

I knew that she was not to be moved by any admiration which happened to come by. She paid a gracious attention to Danvers Carmichael, it is true, insisting, though he stoutly affirmed to the contrary, that she knew him to be hungry, that one could not _dine_ at The Star and Garter, ordering a small table with some cold fowl and a bottle of wine for him, all as though it were the thing nearest her heart. I, who knew her, understood that if it had been a tramp body from the lowlands who had come upon us she would have given the same thought to him and forgotten him by morning; but to a man, London bred and unaware as yet with whom his dealings lay, her solicitude for him might readily be interpreted as having something more purely personal in its nature.

And this day was to be marked by another event than the home-coming of Danvers; an event which, if it had occurred six weeks later, might have changed the destiny of many lives, and given England another Premier than William Pitt. Before we parted for the night, Danvers took from his pocket a book, which he handed to Nancy with a bow.

"It's not family jewels; nor yet a trifling necklace of pearls; nor can I honestly affirm it was intended as a gift, but if you will accept it from me as a birthday token it will make me very glad," and he handed the volume to her.

"Poetry," she said with a pleased smile, "and in the Scot. Robert Burns! Is he a new man?"

"He's a plowman in Ayr, somewhere, and I have it that his verses are something fine. I've not read them myself, and the thought comes to me a little late that they may not be the fittest reading for a young lady, but your father will judge of it for you."

Sandy and I laughed aloud at this.

"The reason these ill-natured gentlemen laughed at you as they did was because of the lax way they have brought me up," Nancy explained.

"They've let me 'gang my ain gate' since I was five. I've had no right raising," she said, and the very sweetness of her as she said it would have made any man keen for the rearing which produced her. "So, considering my superior knowledge of evil, I'll look the book over myself and see if it is the kind of reading I should like to put in the hands of Sandy and Jock."

Danvers Carmichael's eyes glowed with humor as he joined in the laugh with us.

"Under your careful bringing up they should be fine fellows, these fathers of ours," he laughed.

"I've done the best I could by them," Nancy answered demurely; "but on the whole, Mr. Carmichael, I think I have succeeded better with Jamie Henderlin."

When Nancy withdrew, Danvers went with her to the foot of the stairs, holding her in talk for a few minutes, with looks of pa.s.sionate approval in his eyes.

Before we went to our rooms, for I insisted that they should remain all night at Stair, the talk turned upon marriage in some way, and Sandy rallied his son upon his bachelorhood.

"Twenty-four years old," he said, "and a bachelor still! Why, I was a father at that time. Never mind," he continued, "never mind, my lad.

Your time is coming!"

"In truth, I think it has come," Danvers returned, simply, and the glance that went with the words was not toward his father, but toward me.

I was lying in my bed with eyes staring wide at the ceiling, recalling Nancy's real birthday more than eighteen years gone by; thinking of Marian; wondering if she knew the beauty of the child we had; demanding from the Great Father of all that she should know--should remember Nancy and me; that she, the mother and wife, might, in some way unknown to us, still be a part of our earthly living; recalling Danvers with approval, dreaming perhaps that Nancy and he, at no far date, might marry and so cement a friendship between two middle-aged gentlemen who had foregathered with each other many years before, when I heard a light tap at my door.

"Who is it?" I cried.

"It's Nancy," answered the voice. "May I come in?"

She pushed the door ajar and entered in a long white dressing-gown, carrying in one hand a branch of candles and in the other a book, with her finger marking the place.

It is exceedingly hard for me to describe the beauty of her, the uplifted look on her face and the shine of her eye, for this beauty seemed kindled by a fire from within, and she had with it an excitement as of one who had heard pleasant news or to whom great treasures have just been given.

"Jock," she asked, "have you been sleeping?"

"No," said I.

"Oh, listen then," she cried, "for indeed it was not possible that I should sleep without telling you what's come to me. It's this Burns man," she went on; "no one, not even Shakespeare, has spoken so. It's as though he taught a new religion. It's kindness all through, and charity and love; with rhymes upon rhymes, as if it were child's play for him to make verses. It's raised me out of myself. It's what I've always known was true. It's the liberty, equality, and fraternity of France. It's the 'all men were born free and equal' of the colonies.

It's all, and more, that I've tried to work out on the burn-side. It's like a great voice calling. Oh," she cried, "Ramsay's nothing to him, and Fergusson but a gusty child."

"Nancy, darling," I said, "have ye risen in the middle of the night to tear down the idols of your childhood? Let me see the book," I cried, for a bit of rhyme was a choicer draught to me than a gla.s.s of an old vintage.

"Let me read ye this," she said--I can remember now the slant white light of a late moon coming in through the cas.e.m.e.nt, the honeysuckle's breath, and her face, half in light, half in shadow, as she read the Epistle to Davie. As I listened I sat upright, more engrossed, wider eyed; and when she came to those two stanzas, the greatest of their kind ever penned, I was off my feet with her, and on my oath we sat till the purpling flush came in the east, in an ecstasy of appreciation of him "who walked in glory and in joy behind his plow upon the mountain-side":

"What tho', like commoners of air, We wander out, we know not where, _But_ either house or hall _without_ Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, The sweeping vales, an' foaming floods Are free alike to all In days when daisies deck the ground, And blackbirds whistle clear, With honest joy our hearts will bound, To see the coming year: On _braes_ when we please then, _heights_.

We'll sit an' _sowth_ a tune; _whistle softly_ _Syne_ rhyme till't, we'll time _till't_, _afterwards. to it._ An' sing't when we hae done."

"Oh, Jock," she says, "I've done it often; haven't you?"

"It's no in t.i.tles nor in rank; It's no in wealth like Lon'non bank.

To purchase peace and rest; It's no in makin' muckle mair It's no in books, it's no in _lear_ _learning_ To make us truly blest: If happiness hae not her seat An' centre in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest; Nae treasures nor pleasures Could make us happy lang; The heart ay's the part ay That makes us right or wrang."

--BURNS, 1785.

"It's just grand," I said, "Nancy; and there're no two ways of it."

"There's about all there is of life in this little book, and it's made my rhyming-ware cheap. Do you think," she says, coming over to kiss me before I sent her off to bed, "do you think I can ever meet wi' Mr.

Burns?"

"If you want it, you shall," I said; "unless the man himself objects.

We'll have him up to Stair; and now forget him and get some rest, Little Flower."

She went away and left me, and I turned to sleep with that great couplet going over and over in my head like the clatter of horses'

hoofs:

"The heart ay's the part ay That makes us right or wrong."

CHAPTER IX

DANVERS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH NANCY

There were two reasons why Danvers was able to see Nancy almost uninterruptedly the next two or three weeks, the first being that we were but late returned from London, with old ties to be formed anew; and the second, a law affair among the Burn-folk, the trouble of which took much of Nancy's time, and eventually brought into our lives the great Duke of Borthwicke, of whom I shall have more to say. These left Danvers a fair field where Nancy was concerned, and no man living ever covered his ground better or made a braver wooing. From the minute his eye lighted upon her in the doorway it seemed as though it were "all by with him," as the country folk say, for he seemed to have no thoughts but for her, with the world welcome to a knowledge of the fact.

Every day the conservatories of Arran were stripped for her, hampers of fruit, and books, and notes which sent the blood rioting to her cheeks, were over every morning; and before they could be forgotten, Danvers was there in person, a handsome, pa.s.sionate, dominating lover, whose nature was one I could understand and whose love-making was as headlong and impetuous as my own had been.

I remember watching him bending over her one night as they stood together before going in to dinner, and Marian's words came back to me at sight of him:

"For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be won--because she has no will to choose."

Talk of Danvers fell between Sandy and me quite naturally at this time, and one night, when I was praising his boy to him with much enthusiasm, he answered with a laugh: