DANVERS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH NANCY

There were two reasons why Danvers was able to see Nancy almost uninterruptedly the next two or three weeks, the first being that we were but late returned from London, with old ties to be formed anew; and the second, a law affair among the Burn-folk, the trouble of which took much of Nancy's time, and eventually brought into our lives the great Duke of Borthwicke, of whom I shall have more to say. These left Danvers a fair field where Nancy was concerned, and no man living ever covered his ground better or made a braver wooing. From the minute his eye lighted upon her in the doorway it seemed as though it were "all by with him," as the country folk say, for he seemed to have no thoughts but for her, with the world welcome to a knowledge of the fact.

Every day the conservatories of Arran were stripped for her, hampers of fruit, and books, and notes which sent the blood rioting to her cheeks, were over every morning; and before they could be forgotten, Danvers was there in person, a handsome, passionate, dominating lover, whose nature was one I could understand and whose love-making was as headlong and impetuous as my own had been.

I remember watching him bending over her one night as they stood together before going in to dinner, and Marian's words came back to me at sight of him:

"For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be won — because she has no will to choose."

Talk of Danvers fell between Sandy and me quite naturally at this time, and one night, when I was praising his boy to him with much enthusiasm, he answered with a laugh:

"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 passing 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 grass 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 passed 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 passing 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 circumvent 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."

As she went over the grass with Jamie, Danvers Carmichael turned an astonished face toward us.

"What is it all about?" he asked.

"It's a long tale," I answered, "which, stripped of its trappings, runs like this: Meenie is Jamie's adopted sister, and the Lapraik man is a sweetheart of hers who owns a bit farm in the Highlands next to Borthwicke Castle —— "

"For Heaven's sake," Sandy exclaimed, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the sky, "don't tell that tale again, Jock Stair."

" — And the Duke of Borthwicke wants the farm to add to his land," I went on, unperturbed, "and Lapraik will not sell. So one fine day he is accused of theft by the duke's factor, some of the Montrose silver is found under his roof, and he is arrested and convicted, as you have just heard. Common rumor has it that the duke wants him out of the country — the fact that he was brought to Edinburgh to be tried shows that there is a powerful influence pushing the thing along. Pitcairn is the duke's man of business, which makes the handling of it easier here where he is counsel for the crown."

"It will make it an odd affair if Nancy takes the matter in hand, considering she's Pitcairn's own pupil," Sandy suggested.

"Is it true she's studied the law under Pitcairn?" Danvers inquired.

"Scots and English," I answered.

"In the name of smitten C æ sar," he cried, for that was a word of the time, "what for?"

"We've never come to any settlement of it between us, but your father holds that she studied it to circumvent it," I answered, with a laugh. "She told us once that the more law one knew the safer one could break it."

"I think," Danvers returned, rising and looking away from us to the burn — "I think she needs some one to look after her."

"It has dawned upon us that that was your opinion," Sandy rejoined drolly.

"Lawing with Pitcairn, managing an army of poor folk on the burn, attending to charities, settling disputes — it's not right. The poor child has a headache all the time, for it's a man's work she's doing. Women are for better things. A woman should save her vitality."

"For what?" asked his father.

"For wifehood and motherhood," Danvers responded.

It sounded like a leaf from Pitcairn's book, but while his whole talk was disrespectful to us as older men, it had a rare manly quality fine to see. In the very midst of it Nancy was with us again, and, minding Danvers Carmichael no more than she did the wooden benches, came over to me.

"I'm going to see the Duke of Borthwicke," said she.

"Is it your intention," I inquired, "to send out scouts for his grace that ye may interview him? I understand him to be a peripatetic body, who travels a great deal in furtherance of his nefarious schemes. He may not even be in Scotland."

"He is in Edinburgh at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at eleven to-morrow leaves in his private coach for the Highlands."

"The Government should employ you, Nancy Stair," Sandy broke in with a laugh. "The country is just now needing people who can pick up such accurate information."

"It was no great matter to do," she explained. "When people whose lives are hanging on the duke's acts have been watching him for days they are like to know his movements. I will go to-night, before the ball; and if you'll excuse me now, I'll try to get some rest," and with no further word she left us.

She had scarce turned the box-hedge when Danvers Carmichael gave us a taste of his nature and had his say with us in language free and skirting the profane.

"Suppose," he began, "suppose she goes to see the duke, and suppose, which is far from likely, that she is able to obtain an audience with him, what is there for her to say? She can not very well just call the man a scoundrel! And as for the Lapraik affair, if he has the rascality to do the act, it's not likely that he will flinch at the naming of it."

Getting no answer to this from either of us he went on at white heat, stating in violent and unshaded English the wrong of allowing a girl, little more than a child, to visit a man of the duke's repute, and giving it as his opinion that his father and I were the ones to take the affair upon our shoulders. He even volunteered to visit the duke himself in Tod's behalf.

"And in your own tongue," asked Sandy, "what would ye say when ye got there?"

"Ye might just call him a scoundrel, as ye suggested Nancy's doing. His grace might receive it better coming from a man," I said cheerfully.

"Sit ye down, lad," Sandy said at length; "sit ye down. And stop making a windmill of your arms as ye stand on that rise, or we may think we are all Dutch folk together; and just give over thinking ye know all women, because ye've made love to some senseless London fillies with no brains in their heads whatever. It's a wise man that understands that no two women are alike. John Stair and I have seen something of life in our time, aye, and something of women; but Nancy's a different creature from anything in our ken. Ye might just trust a little to our judgment of her."

If Danvers were abashed by this speech he showed it never a whit, but stood very erect, his brows drawn into a scowl not unlike Nancy's own, glowering first at his father and then at me. Sandy, who was, in his mind's eye, re-rigging a schooner, went on with his paper-and-pencil work, unconscious of his son's scrutiny. I dropped my eyes to the Allan Ramsay, which I had opened at random, but lost nothing of Danvers's conduct, and liked him for it. He had known but the women who needed protection, and his attitude to my mind bespoke the chivalrous gentleman.

"Will she go alone?" he inquired abruptly.

"She will probably take Father Michel."

"And might I inquire without discourtesy who Father Michel is?"

"He is a priest who came up with us from Landgore, and the best man I ever knew," said I. "'Tis he who attends to the burn people."

"And will he tell her what to say to his Grace of Borthwicke?"

"She will not need to be told," I answered. "Indeed, Dandy Carmichael, this is not the first time she has gone on such errands."

"And does she get her way?"

"She has never failed yet."

"It's true," Danvers went on, "that I've met none of her kind, but if she go to the Duke of Borthwicke, as man to man —— "

"She will not go as man to man," Sandy broke in with a smile. "She will go as woman to man. There's a mighty differ."

"You see, Dandy," said I, trying to smooth the talk a bit, "although she's my own, there's sure no harm in my saying that she is an extraordinary creature. That she has great beauty a blind man could see; but that's the least of her, for she has the heart and the principles of the purest and the best. But, oh, laddie, in her dealings with men she has the knowledge of the deil himself. Mayhap she'll cry a bit, or flout the duke, or laugh at his ways. She'll do the thing which she finds his mood and the hour suit, and she'll come away with the pardon in her hand, and say ever after that the duke is maligned and that at heart he is a very good man. And she'll believe it, too."

Dinner without Nancy was a tasteless affair, and we spent little time at table, having the pipes and wine brought into the library. As we sat there the sound of Jamie's violin came sobbing up from the Burnside as he played for his stricken sister in the old low house where three hearts were praying for Nancy Stair. Sitting there with a silence, save for the music, between us, we heard a door open on the floor above and the sound of light footsteps on the stair. She came to the doorway, looked in to see if we were alone, and then, with neither shyness nor self-consciousness, came in to "show us how she looked."

"I've put on my best frock — the one the girls made for me on the burn — in the lace work," she said.

It was cobwebby stuff over white satin, the neck, cut in the free fashion of the time, showing her dimpled shoulders and the turn of the breast. She had dressed her hair in a bunch of curls, high on the head, and over her forehead she wore the circlet of diamonds which my great-grandfather had given to that French ancestress of ours with the uncommendable but frank conduct. Around her neck was the famous necklace of diamonds and emeralds, and at the bosom a cluster of diamonds winked and twinkled at every breath. She stood for one minute near me, her eyes like misty gray stars shining over the bloom of roses, her slender arms bared, and one slight hand, shining with rings, laid on the table.

"Do I look pretty, Jock?" she said, as I raised the little hand to my lips and kissed it, with what a passion of love only he can know whose nature is a tempestuous loving one like mine, and whose only daughter is his sweetheart and his wife.

"Well," she said, satisfied with my expressions, "the coach is at the door," and then, holding out her hand to Danvers, "Will ye not wish me luck, Mr. Carmichael?"

Danvers Carmichael had spoken no word and made no sign since her entrance until he was thus directly addressed, and the three of us turned suddenly toward him as he stood by the chimney-piece. A look of unfettered admiration of her was in his eyes as he answered:

"There's no one wishing you that more than I, Miss Nancy."

Father Michel's grave face looked at us serenely from the coach window for a minute, and we stood on the steps watching them drive away and listening to the horses' hoofs growing fainter and fainter along the outer road.

Before they had died away entirely Danvers turned toward me.

"Lord Stair," he said, "may I call myself so much at home as to ring for a groom? I want my horse. I'm going to ride after her."

"What for?" Sandy inquired.

"To protect her," he answered.

"Well," observed Sandy, dryly, "ye may as well go and be on hand in case there's need of help. Nancy," he added with a laugh, "won't need it. But you may be called in to protect the duke."

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