Nancy Stair Part 11

"Of course you like him! Why shouldn't you? You're of a piece, the two of you. You are both primeval creatures, not far removed in your love-making from the time when men lived in caves, and if they wanted a woman they knocked her down with a club and carried her home, and the wooing was over."

"Barring the knocking down," I answered, "it's not so bad a way."

"That's well enough," he retorted, "where women are but gentle female animals. But take a woman with a mind or gift--such as Nancy Stair has--and ye'll find a complication in the affair not to be solved with a club."

The two of us had no small sport with Danvers over his condition, for he had fallen in love to such an extent that he would start sentences which he forgot to finish, make the most irrelevant remarks, or drop into a-dreaming in the midst of talk, so that his father fell to recalling him by shouting:

"View Halloo!" in a very loud voice, as they do on the hunting field, following it up by talk full of a jeering seriousness, as it were:

"Do you think, Danvers, in--er--your present state, you would be able to get this letter to the post?"

Or,

"Would ye be like to fall into a sound slumber if ye started to ring for a stable-boy, Dand?"

Or,

"Do you think you could charge your mind, without danger to it, with pa.s.sing me the brandy?" all of which the lad bore with an amused smile and open shamelessness.

One night, after dinner, during this time, I recall that there was a discussion over the cutting of a roadway between our houses, and after Sandy had thrown in the fatherly suggestion that if Danvers remained at Arran much longer the road would be worn by his footsteps with no expense to us, Danvers, who was awaiting Nancy to walk on the porch with him, began:

"I think----"

"Ye need go no further," Sandy broke in, with a laugh. "You flatter yourself! You _think_," he continued; "you've been incapable of thought for nearly two weeks. Neither of us would give a boddle for your opinion on any subject save one. I'll wager," he said, coming over to his son and putting a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark, Bedlam crazy!"

On the moment of his speaking Nancy came to the door with mutinous eyes, a riot of color in her cheeks, and some filmy white stuff drawn round her head and shoulders, and as she stood Danvers turned to us.

"Look at her!" he cried. "How else would ye have me be?"

We were out of doors one afternoon, perhaps a week later, sitting in the shadow of the great tower. Nancy, in a frock of green, cut out at the neck, and a bewildering big hat with pink flowers upon it, was pouring tea for us, with Danvers Carmichael lying at full length on the gra.s.s beside her, smoking and inventing excuses at intervals to touch her hand.

The talk drifted round to Robert Burns, and when I stated the manner in which Nancy and I had spent the first night we had had his book, Danvers regarded us with no small degree of amazement.

"Did you," he inquired, after a pause, "sit up all night reading rhyme, the two of you?"

"We did," said I; "and it's not the first night we have pa.s.sed so, Nancy Stair and I."

"But why," he went on, "couldn't you wait till the morning?"

"We're no made that way," I answered, with a laugh.

"Well," he returned, "the thing is as incomprehensible to me as if you'd tattooed yourself; but," he added philosophically, clasping his hands behind his head and staring up into the sky, "every man knows his own fun. There's a friend of mine who knows this Burns," he added.

"What does he say of him?" I inquired with interest.

"Billy's hardly one to appreciate poetry," he answered, "but he fell in with Burns somewhere at a masons' meeting. He said he was a handsome pirate, who had sent the clergy of his native place into despair; that he made love to every woman he saw, and that his name was the scandal of the county; but that personally he considered the man a wonder and liked him fine."

"Jock's going to have him here," Nancy said, with a pleased smile and shining eyes.

"No, no," cried Danvers Carmichael, vehemently, sitting upright. "I wouldn't do that, my lord."

"Why not?" Nancy inquired.

"It's a matter," he said, "that I could explain better to Lord Stair than to you, Miss Nancy," and there was a consideration for her in his tone which warmed my heart toward him.

"You mean," Nancy said, with a smile, "that he's not a good man and will make love to me, mayhap, or that it might harm me in some way. You don't appreciate the rearing I've had, I'm afraid," she said, handing down another cup of tea to him. "Lawing with Pitcairn and dealing with all manner of roguery and villainy on the burn-side have taught me many things. These two gentlemen have reared me up in a strange way. Once I heard Sandy say:

"'She's a filly that's got to be given her head, and she'll soon learn the fences that it is wise to take and the ones that it is wise to let alone.'"

"And were we not wise?" Sandy interrupted, "were we not wise? Ye know, Mistress Stair, ye were no easy matter to bring up. Always like a flower, gentle as a ewe lamb, seeing into everybody's heart, verse-making till your poor little head ached, joining gipsy folk, foregathering with tramps and criminals, wheedling the heart out of every one of us, but under it all, fixed in a determination to have your own way in spite of the deil himself. Ye were a pretty problem for two lone men to handle."

"Don't be believing them, Dandy," she said, turning the light of those wonderful gray eyes down on him. "Ye will not, will ye? They are not always truthful," she said, with a side-glance toward us both.

"In spite of your training?" Dandy laughed.

"In spite of my training," Nancy answered demurely.

As we sat thus, the bright warm day pa.s.sing lazily toward the twilight, I saw a figure come from one of the houses on the burn, and start at the top of speed along the ford-rift, which led through the harrowed field. As it neared the south gate I saw that it was Jamie Henderlin, who broke into our group, his pallor and anxiety forming abundant excuse for the interruption to our talk.

"Miss Nancy," he cried, "they've convicted him!"

"Convicted Lapraik?" Nancy asked, as though it were impossible.

"Yes, in an hour or less. Pitcairn had another witness--and Tod's sentenced to transportation!"

No happening which I can think of would have set Nancy Stair more plainly before Danvers than this one, which fell directly beneath his eye.

"But," she said, and her eyes blackened as she spoke, "the man is innocent."

"Every one knows it," Jamie cried; "but Meenie's like to go to the grave because of the trouble, which means naught to Pitcairn or to him called the Duke of Borthwicke."

"Ah, well, Jamie," said Nancy soothingly, "you must not worry over it.

There is more than one way to circ.u.mvent Mr. Pitcairn; and a few jurymen, more or less, are nothing to fash one's soul about one way or another. Who was the new witness?"

"His name was McGuirk."

"A Hieland body?" Nancy inquired.

"In the service of the duke himself."

"What did he swear to?"

"He swore to Tod's having threated the duke's life, and that Tod had said to him there was a way to even the matter of the raised rent."

"Ah," said Nancy, and there was a bit of admiration in her tone, "the duke's a clever man. In all his law-suiting he finds out just what bit of testimony is needed and gets it."

"If you'll excuse me," she said, rising, "I'll go down and see Meenie, who probably thinks everything in life is over."