Nancy Stair Part 4

About three o'clock Sandy left us, going on horse to join his party, which was to lay by for him at Landgore. Marian and I walked with him far beyond the sea light, he leading his horse and telling us that it was but the strong remembrance that he had a wife at home which prevented his carrying her away with him. He had great joy in my happiness, and his strong laugh rolled round and round in echoes among the rocks as we went along together. Before we parted his mood changed a bit, and he turned suddenly and laid his arm across my shoulder.

"You'll not forget me, laddie?" he said earnestly, with his head turned a bit from me so that his eyes could not be seen.

Our hands gripped each other at the end, as though we could not speak the word of good-by, and my dear, who knew the thought--that my marriage might in some way make the friendship between us less close--took our locked hands between her little ones and held them to her breast.

"Believe me," she said, as though making a vow, "that all I can ever do to make this friendship stronger I shall do; oh, believe me in that!"

Sandy kissed her on the cheek, she stuck a piece of pink heather in his coat, and he mounted his horse and was off at a bolt. Twice we saw him turn and wave his cap toward us; we called to him, and he shouted back something in return, the meaning of which we were unable to discover, and so went down a sudden turn of the rocks and was lost to sight.

There are some parts of every life that can not be set forth. The first sacred months of my marriage are of these. The little inn, which was no longer in Dame d.i.c.kenson's possession, I purchased, and we made it into a home. And the time is all of Marian! Marian standing in white in the going down of the braeside to welcome me; Marian on my knee in the twilight looking out seaward and starward; Marian with her brown head and face, such as the angels have, resting on my breast in the gold of the dawning; Marian--Marian--Marian--I, an old man, who was once that bonny Jock Stair, all your own, call to you. Can you come? Will it ever be again! See! I stretch my hands, wrinkled, old, to that far off blue, and ask you, as I have a thousand times, to send me peace.

All that summer we lived in the little house, and toward autumn there were reasons why my wife should not be troubled with new cares. Sandy came to see us frequently; whiles I ran up to Edinburgh to tend to needful matters. One day in March, because of some wish my dear had half expressed, I went to town to get some of the jewels with which the Ladies Stair had adorned themselves in days gone by. I had promised a short absence, but there was a matter of some fastenings to be mended at the goldsmith's, and my stay was three days. Riding backward as fast as a postboy, I came on the porch suddenly to find a weeper, as if one were dead, hanging upon the knocker. Dropping the box and riding-whip I pushed the door ajar with a great shove and entered, upon Dame d.i.c.kenson, who was coming out of her room, from which place I heard a faint cry. Her eyes were red with weeping; she looked scared and went white at the sight of me, and with a horrid presentiment of trouble, I cried on the instant, in a voice which I heard myself as coming from some other:

"Where is she?"

"Oh, my lord," she said, and her voice broke and went off into a shriek, "did ye no meet wi' Mr. Carmichael? He's gone for ye."

"I met n.o.body," I cried, and again there was a tiny wail as of a new-born babe from the next room.

"Oh, my lord!" she cried again, springing forward and putting herself between me and the doorway which I made to enter. "Ask G.o.d for strength to bear what's been sent ye. Say a prayer, my lord. Ask Him to let ye remember the baby that's come to you. Pray, O my lord," she cried; "prepare yourself."

I pushed her from me and threw the door wide open.

There was a body in the room laid out for burial, with candles burning at the head and foot--a slim, young, girlish body; and as Father Pierre, who was kneeling by it, turned his face toward mine I knew that Marian, because of me, had gone forever. Something seemed to strike me at the back of the head and a black vapor fell before my eyes and stopped my breath--I knew that Father Pierre caught me in his arms, a merciful unconsciousness seized me, and everything faded away.

When I came to myself I was in my own sleeping-room at Stair, a night-light burning on the table, and some one on the other side of the screen sat reading by the fire. I saw the top of the head over the chair-rail, and knew it was Sandy Carmichael's. Five weeks longer I lay there, and on toward midsummer, my fever having lasted four months, Sandy proposed I should start as soon as I was able and tour the world.

It had been an old dream of mine, but with little taste for life, I set sail from Glasgow for Gibraltar some time in August, 1769, to visit other lands and see new lives with old sorrows like my own.

CHAPTER IV

ENTER NANCY STAIR

I had been from Scotland near five years, when two letters were handed to me as I sat in The British Sailors' Tavern, in Calcutta; one of which was from Hugh Pitcairn and the other from Sandy Carmichael. I thought as I read them what characteristic epistles they were, for Hugh's read as though I had parted from him but the day before, and urged my return to look after some land interest which he as my solicitor felt should have my immediate supervision.

"There is another thing," he added, "which should bring you home. Huey MacGrath is ailing and I fear is sickening to die."

Sandy spoke, as was his way, of our old affection and his wish to see me once again, and he ended by a tender reference to the baby of mine who was growing a big girl and needed me, he said.

G.o.d knows how lonely I was when these two letters came to me, and the thoughts of home and a child dependent upon me brought, for the first time since my dread trouble, a sense of comfort. Huey sick unto death was another call to my heart, and in four days' time I was homeward bound.

Before I stepped ash.o.r.e at Leith it was Sandy who waved to me from the quay; Sandy whose hand gripped mine so hard the fingers ached for days; Sandy whose eyes beamed with joy as he looked at me and took me back to Stair.

"I've been living on the docks awaiting your return until the town doubtless thinks I'm going for a sailor," he cried. "Well, it's good to have you back, Jock Stair--and I believe that Huey MacGrath's illness is little more than a longing for the sight of you."

On our ride homeward his whole talk turned about his boy Danvers, of whom he spoke with unfettered approval and satisfaction, which came from a strange source.

"He looks like you, Jock Stair! It's heaven's truth that he's the image of you! It seems odd that I, who am a brown man, should have a son with an olive skin and hair like ink, but it's a fact. And he's like ye in other ways, for he rides like a monkey and can thrash any one of his weight in the county. Aye," he concluded, "ye'll be proud of Danvers!"

"And what of my girl?" I asked.

"Nancy," he said, a curious look coming into his face as he smiled; "she's one you must see to judge of for yourself. I've raised her up as well as I could. I've spent time with her!"

His determined reticence, which had some humor in it, put me on my metal concerning the child, and the day after my arrival I sent Tam MacColl with a written request to Dame d.i.c.kenson to fetch the little one immediately to Stair.

Six days later Tam returned bringing a large sheet of paper, which I have before me as I write. It was folded after a curious fashion, with no address, and opening it I found the following:

[Ill.u.s.tration: I am not comming.

Nancy Stair.]

For the first time in five years I laughed aloud. This was something worth. Here was an atom, not yet five, who took her pen in hand and misspelled her firm intention to do as she chose. I folded the paper and laid it aside, wondering what kind of offspring I had begotten, and the following morning took horse to Landgore to see this very determined little body for myself.

As I came in sight of the place after my long ride, strange voices called to me from the sea, from the heather, from the great copper birch over the house. Eyes long dead seemed looking into mine, hands were on my hair, and there came to me, with the feeling of mortal sickness, the terrible, sweet remembrances of an early pa.s.sion and of things to be known to none save Marian and me and the One who does most wisely for the Great End, but bitterly to us who see but a little of the way.

Reaching the porch, my strength left me utterly, and I leaned against one of the wooden pillars for support. Standing thus, I saw a child running down the braeside at the top of her speed, with no knowledge of my presence, but coming at her fastest to reach the house. She wore a short-waisted black frock, with a very long skirt, which almost touched the ground. On her feet were red shoes, which twinkled in and out of the black, as with great dexterity and lightness, she clambered up the steps of the porch and stood before me, one of the miracles of G.o.d before which we human folk stand abashed. For here was Marian again.

Marian to the turn of an eyelash; to the finger tips; in the bronze chestnut curls which stood like a halo round the face; in the supple little woman-body; in all the dear, quaint, beautiful baby who stood before me devouring me with gray eyes, and looking at me with a radiant, shy smile as she held a kitten tail up against her breast.

After a few seconds' regard of me, during which I could see by her face that she was piecing some bits of knowledge together, she clapped her hands.

"Jock!" she cried, with a rapturous smile.

I can never tell the joy and horror of the moment, for my name was the first word my beloved had ever spoken to me, and at the sound of it from this, her child, my heart leaped into my throat; there came a whirring in the top of my head and a singing in my ears, and as I sank upon the old stone settle something like a moan escaped me.

In the next minute I knew Nancy Stair for all time. The sight of suffering seemed to put her past herself, and, dashing toward me, she climbed up on the seat. I could feel the warmth of her body and the clinging of her dimpled arm as she drew my head against her naked, palpitating little breast as though to defend me from suffering against the whole world.

"Oh, you poor fing!" she cried. "You poor fing! Does you hurt?"

When I had in some degree recovered my self-control, the child sat down beside me, so close that she pushed her small body against mine, with one rose-leaf of a hand laid upon my knee in a protective fashion, every little while giving me a pat, as a mother soothes a child.

Sitting thus, my arm around her, my soul stirred to its depths, my eyes brooded over all her baby charms.

She was of a slender, round figure, with dimpled neck and arms. Her head was broad, her forehead low, with noticeably black brows, and she had a way, when perplexed, I very soon discovered, of drawing these together, the right one falling a bit lower than the left. It was the eyes which struck one first, however; brooding, pa.s.sionate, observant, quick to look within or without, and fearless in their glance. Mrs.

Opie states that they were black, and Reynolds painted them bright blue; but the truth is, that they were like her mother's, clear gray, with pupils of unusual size, and heavy lashed, especially on the under lid.

She was still under five, but I had not been with her a quarter of an hour before I recognized a potent and wonderful personality and knew that there was something which this small soul had in her keeping to give the world which others have not.

"Sandy was here," I heard her sweet voice saying when I had recovered myself. "Sandy was here one day. He fetched the drey hen you sent me."

Here she patted my knee, looking up as though to a.s.sure me of her protection.