Nancy Stair Part 28

CHAPTER XX

DANVERS GIVES US A GREAT SURPRISE

A fortnight pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sisted 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 manner[8].

[8] Scotland had but 16 Peers and 48 Representatives in Parliament at this time.

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 s.e.x 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 sc.r.a.p 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.

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 p.r.o.nouncedly 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."