Nancy Stair Part 38

"Father," he cried.

The word made me wax in his hand, and I compromised. "Ye can have the rooms next to mine and stay with us to-night," I gave in.

"I shall stay till the wedding. I'm going to live here," he returned with a laugh, at which I carried him off to my own rooms, though he went back twice to Nancy's door to say something he'd forgotten.

I knew that "forgotten thing." I had gone back often to say it myself.

What lover has not? But at the third announcement of his forgettings I lost patience with him.

"Danvers Carmichael! Many's the time in our college days that I have thrown your father down and sat on him to keep him from some piece of deviltry, and despite my years, I fear I'll have to treat ye the same way," I cried, upon which we ordered the pipes and some brandy, and sat till the clear day was come, talking the past over, going back and forth over our many mistakes, and making happy plans for the future, with Nancy the centre of every plan.

A month later the marriage took place in the little chapel on the Burnside, on a morning so fair and bright and joyous that it seemed made for such a happening. All the old friends were there--Janet and Hugh, Dame d.i.c.kenson and Uncle Ben, the girls from the lace-school, Jeanie Henderlin with the Lapraiks, and Huey MacGrath, who cried without intermission from the time he arose in the morning until late in the day, when, overcome by the punch, he was found asleep with his head on the Hall Bible.

Jamie played the violin, and as Nancy and I entered the church, Danvers and Billy Deuceace were waiting for us at the railing. It was such a misty, glorified, radiant Nancy I had upon my arm, that Danvers waited no longer after the first look, his impatience being such that he left Billy Deuceace, and, coming down the aisle, took her from me before we were half-way to the altar. Somewhat set back by the suddenness of this, I turned to Sandy, who was near--Sandy, with a face as glad, as overjoyed as my own--who, seeing the position I was left in, joined me, and we walked together to the altar-rail and stood shoulder to shoulder as our two children were united until G.o.d do them part.

Looking down the years to come we saw other Sandy Carmichaels and other Jock Stairs together in the bare old playground we had known; saw splendid men and women, born of our son and daughter, making the world better and stronger for our having lived, and the joy within me was so strong that the tears stood in my eyes and trembled down my face.

Turning suddenly, I found Sandy as moist-eyed as myself, and while the service was being read I reached toward him, and we stood, hands gripped, until the end, in memory of our dead youth and of our friendship that could never die.

And like an old man who tells a tale limpingly, and covers the ground again to make its points clear to the listener, I set down a scene some five years later in the grounds of Stair. We were all there, Nancy and Danvers, Sandy, Pitcairn, and myself--and two Newcomers, the most spoiled and petted children, it is my belief, upon the entire earth.

"I had a letter from Pailey to-day, Nancy," said I, "proposing a third edition of your poems."[11]

[11] The last published poems written by Nancy Stair Carmichael (afterward Countess of Glenmore) were:

"And will ye go Love's Way with me"--written directly after the visit to Allan-Lough--and

"Here awa! There awa! Daffy-Down-Dilly O!" one of the quaintest bits of loving child rhyme in all the Scots tongue, composed soon after the birth of her first child, Danvers Carmichael, Jr.

She shook her head.

"That's by with forever, Jock; I shall never write again," she answered.

"No more verse-making?" I inquired.

"Never any more--unless it be to say to women this."

She stood, with her hands folded before her, a beautiful fulfilled Nancy, looking down at us with sweetest earnestness, her children leaning against her as she spoke.

"I should write: I, Nancy Stair-Carmichael, have learned that verse-making and verse-singing and the publicity that goes with them do not make me a finer woman; I have learned that my woman's body is not strong enough for the mental excitement of that existence, and to be a daughter, a wife and a mother, as well, and that G.o.d in his goodness sent a certain great poet into my life to show me that gift is nothing beside womanhood.

"And I would reason with all these dear other women like this:

"Suppose I write certain verses! Where will my lines be two hundred years from now? Forgotten words of unimmediate things. But suppose my heart spoke to me, and knowing I could do but one work well, I put all childish ambition aside to become the mother of men, that centuries from now thousands of my children may be fighting for the right of present issues and hastening that Divine Outcome for which G.o.d made us all.

"And I would say to them: the night I knew another woman was to be the mother----" she paused abruptly, for she had been so carried away by her own thought as to forget where this might lead. She was a great woman, but to the end of her life could never bring herself to name the fact that Danvers had had another wife.

"That night," she continued, slurring the statement over, "I learned more about life than the cla.s.sics ever taught me.

"And I would write, as well, something about the trial, to say to them that when Danvers's life was at stake I had no thought but to save him.

Right or wrong, innocent or guilty, the only thing I wanted was that he might be free.

"And by this thing I found the unfitness of women to handle public affairs, for the tender hearts, which make good wives and mothers and daughters, unfit us for the judicial conduct needed in public matters--and I'm glad they do," she finished, with a smile.

"It's not," Danvers amended, as he stood with his arm about her, "that women have not the ability to do anything they want," for he was ever chivalrous, "but that G.o.d in his wisdom gave them a great and special work, and they should be kept strong and safe and holy for its fulfilment."

"But it is not given to all women to choose what they shall do," said Sandy.

"And few of them are gifted creatures, anyhow," said Hugh.

"And one life can never be as another," said I; but the older baby, who looked up just then, said, "Mother."

"And that one word tells the whole story," cried Nancy, with a pa.s.sion of tenderness in her voice, laying the child's head against her bosom.

THE END