Nancy Stair Part 3

"But," she persisted, "are you sure you understand? You tell me you are Lord of Stair, and I've no doubt of it, for truth shines from your eyes; but what do you ken of me? I who have no name, who was left by some gipsy folk at the inn door, and whose breeding--what I've of it--came from a Jacobite priest who teaches by the Cairn Mills."

There was never another voice so full of music, so caressing or so feminine, as Marian Ingarrach's, none, not even Nancy Stair's; and as she uttered these depreciations of herself, I exclaimed:

"You are as I would have you."

"Entirely?"

"Entirely."

"And you'll not be ashamed of me?"

It was in this question that I had her first teasing of me, for she was woman, and knew as well as I of the beauty, which gave her a queen's right to the hearts of men.

"Ashamed of you," I cried. "Ah, girl, dinna ye see I canna get my breath for wantin' ye?"

She stood looking at me, her chin well up and an amused and a glad look in her eyes.

"Ah," she said at length, "you are the one who is worth all that a woman has to give, and the blood of all the lawless folk of which I come speaks for you, Jock Stair! For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be won, because she has no will left to choose."

And she turned her face toward mine.

"I'm just yours for the asking, Jock."

I drew her to me, and we kissed each other beneath the starlit blue, with the sea wind blowing our hair and the gipsy singing coming, in broken bits of melody, up through the gorse and heather.

I made a song of it after, in my limping verse, which Nancy found one day, and laughed at, I remember:

The gipsies are out, I can see their lights moving, Race answers to race, 'neath the stars and the blue; They are living and laughing and mating and loving, As I stand in the midnight with you, love, with you!

CHAPTER III

THE TREASURE BECOMES MINE, BUT IS CLAIMED BY ITS OWNER

There was no sleep for me that night, and I lay awake till the clear day, watching the gulls fly across the window and waiting the time when I might see her once again. Early as it was when I arose, the wee bit la.s.sie who brought me the hot water said in answer to my inquiry that the other gentlemen had been gone since the daybreak, and declining her offer of breakfasting in my room, I went down to the spence, hoping that Marian might be there before me. I found the room empty, however, save for Dame d.i.c.kenson, who had spread a table for me between the fire and the window, through which I could see the waves curl on the lower beach and the sunshine break into flying sparks over the fine blue sea.

I was never one to mince words when there was aught to be said, nor to put off settling until another time a thing which could be fixed upon the moment.

"Sit ye down," I said to the little body, who was plainly of a rank and comprehension above the vulgar. "Sit ye down! There are a few words that I would like to have with ye."

She remained standing, but paused in her employ to give me a wordless attention as I went on:

"I am John Stair, Lord of Stair and Alton in the Mearns, and I want to marry your ward, Marian Ingarrach."

She set the rest of the dishes before me as though not hearing my speech, but I saw the corners of her mouth twitch a bit and, after removing the cover of the haddie, she cast a glance over the top of my head rather than directly at me, as she said:

"Ye're a cautious body, Lord Stair."

"I know what I intend to do," I answered, and there was a silence between us for a s.p.a.ce.

"Ye're a quare man," she broke forth presently, looking at me humorously over her gla.s.ses. "Aye, a quare man! Ye come here with a pack of riotous livers from Edinburgh, clap your eyes on my young lady for the first time last night, and are for marryin' her off hand this morning with no more to do over it than if marryin' was a daily performance of yours."

I said no words, but regarded her with a smile.

"Sure," she went on, looking at me with great equanimity, "ye canna soften my heart by your smilin'. Ye're a handsome man, my lord, and ye've the strong way with ye that black men often have; but I've met in with handsome men afore now, and the handsomer the more to be feared.

d.i.c.kenson was a dark man himself," she added, with a twinkle in her eye. Another silence fell between us, as I watched her needles click in and out and catch the firelight.

"Perhaps," she said presently, "ye'd like to have a little knowledge of the girl you're wantin' for a wife."

"It's the matter which lies nearest my heart at the moment," I answered her; and at this her voice and face became more serious, and she stopped her knitting, looking directly at me as she spoke.

"There's little to tell," she began, "little that I could take book-oath to, I mean, for one bad night in March, eighteen years back, I heard a wail at the door, and opening it found a gipsy-hamper with the baby inside. She was finely dressed and there was a note pinned on her little shirt, which--wait a bit," she said, "I can show it ye." At this she crossed the room to a wooden cupboard, unlocked the door, and took from it a small box, the key of which she had in her bosom.

Opening this she handed me a slip of paper, upon which was written, in a coa.r.s.e male hand:

"HARRIET d.i.c.kENSON:

"If you will keep the child money will be sent for you and her. I want her brought up a lady."

"There was a roll of gold in the basket with her, forty pounds, my lord. And the writer has kept his word. Money has been sent ever since, sometimes from Italy, once from Russia, and then from the Far East.

That is all that I know."

"But you have beliefs concerning the matter?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "though the truth of them could not be proved. Twenty years ago, when I was maid at Squire Eglinton's, on the Irish coast, near Carrickfergus, he had one daughter, a flower of a girl, who ran away with a gipsy man she met in her father's park. The young lady loved me and knew where my home in Scotland was. I have thought, my lord, that mayhap she died, and 'twas the father-man who brought the baby to my door. I have told you all but this: if Miss Eileen ever had a daughter, it could not be more like her than Marian is."

A hundred questions came to me at once, but before one of them was asked I had a sight of the girl herself, coming from the country side of the house, the wind blowing her hair about her face and carrying away swarms of white petals from the hawthorn-blooms she held in her arms. As she was hid from my sight by the corner of the house, Sandy Carmichael entered the room, his hands thrust far into his pockets, and his pipe held at a curious angle between his teeth.

"What!" I cried in amazement. "You here! I thought you were gone at daylight."

"Did ye now?" he asked, with raillery in his voice. "Did ye think," and he put his hand on my shoulder after his own fashion, "did you think I'd leave you, Jock, in this, your last extremity? Ye're not married yet?" he went on jokingly, "I'm not too late for the wedding? Oh," he broke out with a laugh, "how have the mighty fallen!"

"Not yet," I answered him; "but it will be no fault of mine if I'm not a married man by night."

He changed color at this, and getting the dame on his side the two of them urged a waiting--I know not for what; and more thought, which would have brought me to the same conclusion; but their talk and their arguments went high over my head, for I was fixed as fate that nothing but Marian's mind against it could move me from the wish I had. As the three of us stood thus, the talk going back and forth, the girl came into the room, and at sight of me went white, changing on the instant to a glorious pink, which flushed her face all over like a rose.

"Good morning, Lord Stair," she said.

I crossed the room, and took her hand and kissed it.

"Marian," I said, "will you marry me to-day?"

She sent a hurried look around the three of us, and as a woman discovers things, knew that they were against me in the matter. It took her not one second to decide for me, and my being leaped toward her as she spoke.

"When you will, my lord," she said. "I have no wishes that are not your own."

It was a little past noon of the same day, with none to see save Sandy Carmichael, Dame d.i.c.kenson, and Uncle Ben, that Father Pierre, from the Cairn Mills, made Marian and myself one in a marriage such as the G.o.ds intended when the world was young and the age of gold.