A STRANGE MEETING

Upon the day following that on which I denied Danvers the house, a letter came to us from a hamlet on the west coast, near Allan-lough, saying that Janet McGillavorich was sick unto death and desired that Nancy should come to her immediately.

It was a tedious journey, and while I sorrowed for the cause of it, I was glad to have her away from Stair for a while, and hastened her departure with Dickenson on the afternoon coach of the same day upon which the letter arrived. Even with this speed it was far into the second day before she came to the house in which Janet was lying; a house which seemed to have straggled back from the sea and stood lonesomely by itself in a small fenced garden having a gate-and-chain opening to the graveled path. It was a double-storied dwelling of pink brick, with small-paned windows and ivy creeping over it everywhere, even upon the wooden cap of the doorway, which hung over the two broad stone steps of the entrance.

There was no time to knock before the door was opened to Nancy by the old woman who had been for many years Janet's maid, companion, and housekeeper, whose eyes were red with weeping and whose whole bearing denoted the greatest anxiety.

"She's took worse," she said. "It's thought she will not last the night."

"Will she know me?" Nancy asked.

"Oh, aye! She's her wits about her still. She knew Mr. Danvers," the old wife replied.

"Mr. Danvers," Nancy repeated after her. "Is Mr. Danvers here?" And at the words Danvers himself came forward to greet her.

"Are you cold?" he inquired, in the whispering tone used when sickness is near. "This has been a dreadful trip for you to take. You must have some hot tea at once." And, as the old woman bustled away to prepare it:

"Were you sent for, Danvers?" asked Nancy.

He nodded acquiescence, answering:

"The two of us are named in the will," the tears coming to his eyes as he spoke of Janet's kindness.

Tea had scarce been brewed when the old doctor came from above to say that Mrs. McGillavorich had heard of Nancy's arrival and wanted to see her immediately, adding, with some philosophy:

"It excites her so not to get her own way, that it couldn't excite her more to have it; so just go up, my dear, go right up!"

In this way, at the time of their lives when each was least prepared for trial and bitterly unhappy, it fell that Danvers and Nancy were thrown together in an intimacy impossible under other circumstances; relieving each other in the watching, sitting together by the bedside through the long hours of the night, or walking back and forth in each other's company to the little village on needful errands for the small household. In the tiny dining-room Nancy served at one side of the table while Danvers carved at the other, the suggestiveness of such an arrangement sending disordered longings to the hearts of both.

One dreadful night when Janet, who was barely conscious, clung to Nancy's hand, although the girl's head ached miserably and she had had no sleep for forty-eight hours, she showed by a sign to Danvers her intention to remain by the bedside in the great arm-chair. Her weariness and suffering made his heart yearn over her, and he leaned forward from the place he sat to put his hand upon her aching brow. His soothing touch, or perhaps a cause more subtle still, comforted her, and she fell asleep, to find the gray light of morn and Danvers, motionless beside her, having sat all those weary hours with his arm in a position which it must have tortured him to maintain. On the instant of her awakening she said, in a whisper:

"Your poor arm, Danvers! Your poor arm!"

And the strain of his mind showed in the answer:

"I would lose an arm altogether for what I have had to-night."

At the end of the fifth day Janet was so far recovered that she was able to sit up for a while against the pillows, and from this on her convalescence was a rapid one, although the tenth day had gone by when she told Danvers, with her customary frankness, to be off about his business. The evening before his departure, Nancy and he sat in Janet's room, fearful of being alone together for even a minute, and past eleven they parted for the night, in the old lady's presence, speaking their farewells in gay voices, with many assurances of meeting again in Edinburgh at some near time.

"I went to my room, Jock," Nancy said, when she told me this tale, "locked and bolted the door, and built a great fire in the chimney, for I was shivering from head to foot. And I thought of you! Only of you! Your love for me! The touch of your kind hands! Your dear gray head! — and before every other thing in life was the thought to do nothing to shame you, nor to cause a pain to that true heart of yours. And then I got down on my knees at the bedside like a little child and prayed to God.

"'O God,' I cried, 'take this pain from my heart, for I can no longer endure it. It's killing me. It's killing me, here, all alone! away from Jock Stair! And if You will do this thing I will never ask another of You in all my days!' Trying to make a compact with my Maker," she finished, "like a foolish child —— "

She heard the clock strike four, and knowing the hour near when he must leave, crept to the window to see if enough light had come for her to have a sight of him as he went down the path. While she stood peering out into the darkness, she heard a rap at the bedroom door.

"Who is it?" she cried.

"It's I — Danvers Carmichael!" came a voice, low but very distinct; at sound of which she unbarred the door and slipped into the hallway.

He had made himself ready for his departure; his great coat, with the cape drawn up, already on, his cap upon his head, and a lighted lantern beside him, casting an eerie gleam along the black passage. He was white to the lips, his eyes sunken and reckless, and at sight of him Nancy cried in alarm:

"What is it, Danvers? What is it?"

"Oh, my girl!" said he. "It's just this! I can't go away and leave you here! I can never go and leave you any more! The thought of it chokes me! I love you, love you, love you!" he went on, "with all there is of me. Last year I offered you love and honor. This year it's love and dishonor, maybe, but love still, love that is greater than shame or death. Will ye come away with me? There are other lands than ours and other laws. Bigbie's lugger is lying at the foot of the hill with sail up for Glasgow, and from there the world lies open for us.

"Oh, best beloved," he went on, "think of it! Does it mean anything to you? — to be alone together, forever more? Do you know what it is to waken with outstretched arms, longing for another, to —— "

"I have suffered, Danvers," Nancy interrupted him. "I made mistakes, bitter mistakes, my head being so engaged with other matters that I lost the chart of woman's nature. And when I saw —— " she paused at this, for it was something she could not bring herself to speak out; but words were unneeded between them, for his eyes sought hers hungrily, and they stood at gaze with each other for a space before Danvers cried:

"And to think it's not you — to think it's not you!" he repeated, with a moan like an animal in pain. "God!" he went on in his raving, "I can not and will not stand it longer! Why is a love like this given to a man? Do we choose? Have I had any choice in the matter? Whoever it was who designed the peculiar hell of my own nature can take the consequences of it. Speak to me, Nancy!" he cried; "speak to me! Do not stand there looking at me like a statue! For God's sake, speak — for it seems as though I should kill you and myself, and so make an end."

His grief had so worked upon him by this time that Nancy was beside herself with fear for him, although she spoke quietly and in as natural a voice as she could summon.

"I'll go with you, Dandie," she said; "I'll go with you. Wait for me," reentering her room; "just wait for me!"

It took her but a moment to get some stout walking-boots, a dark skirt, and the scarlet Connemara cloak which she had worn on many of their walks together, and pulling the hood of it over her head, she stepped softly back into the hallway.

"I am ready," she said, slipping her hand into his; "I am ready. Let us go."

There was no further word spoken between them. In silence they walked, hand in hand, along the frozen passage and down the twisting stairs, closing the house door noiselessly behind them. Outside it was very dark, save in the far east, where there was a rim of white showing in the sky like a line on a slate. The cold was biting, and a wind which had not reached the ground blew through the tree-tops with a rushing sound and sent a scurry of leaves before them on their path. Danvers had prepared himself by a lantern, and there seemed something significant of the business in hand in his determination to leave it behind; it was in the blackness of midnight, with a silent country stretching away from them in every direction and the stillness of the dead, that the two walked the narrow path and turned into the lane which led by a cut over the rise toward the Dumfries road. At the coming out of the close-way a chill wind struck them, and Nancy, taken suddenly from the warmth of bed, drew back and shivered, at which Danvers put his arm around her, throwing part of his cape over her. Still in silence, they walked until they came to the brow of the hill, at which place the path divides, one part of it winding across the bridge to the stage road, and the other dropping down by a clump of sailors' homes, west, to the sea. Enough light had come by this time to see the boats lying at anchor in the cove and to distinguish Bigbie's lugger from the rest, as she bobbed up and down, her sails spread and ready to be off. At the sight of this boat Danvers turned suddenly, as if recalled to his senses, and faced Nancy, as they stood at the parting of the ways.

"God forgive me!" he cried. "Oh, God forgive me, but I can't do it! I can't take ye. Not though you begged me on your knees; not though I knew you'd die without me. Oh, can you ever forgive the words I've said to you this morning? Will ye think rather that I'd choose to see ye dead than gone with me in the way I've asked? That I'd rather die myself than take ye; and that I love you, love you enough to give you up! And it's I," he went on in a bitter self-scorn, "who have prated of honor, and the conduct of gentlemen, who have made a beast of myself before the best woman who ever lived! Who through selfishness have tried to make her life a blacker ruin than I've made my own! Can you forget it, Nancy? Can you ever forgive me for it?"

"Dandie," she said softly, "ye needn't worry about that. I knew you wouldn't take me! I knew 'twas just that you were carried beyond yourself by your sorrows that made you talk as you did at the bedroom door. Look!" she said, opening the throat of the Connemara cloak and showing him the neck of her thin white dressing blouse, "one doesn't start to the Americas in clothes like that. I knew what you were and understood; knew that, given your way, you would choose the best, as you have done!" she cried, with the tears in her eyes. "Ye've stood before temptation! You've done the thing that's right when it was hard to do! and I'm proud to have seen you as I have this morning."

They were both crying by this time as they stood with hands clasped, on one side the calls of the sailors coming up the slope, on the other the echoes of a horn rolling along the frozen ground from the coach which came to carry Danvers away.

"I may kiss you before I go?" he asked, with a longing in his tone pitiable to hear.

"If ye think it's right," she answered. "If ye think that when ye look back to this time in the years to come you will be happier to remember that ye kissed me, than to think you kept the vows you swore before God, ye may kiss me if ye choose!"

The choice was made in silence, and he dropped her hands, picked up the valise which had fallen by his feet, and turned to go. At sight of this resolution Nancy burst into tears.

"Oh," she cried, "God bless you! God bless you, dear! And give you peace!" as, without touching even her hand, Danvers Carmichael fared forth alone, along the stage road which lay lonesome and frozen in the shadow of the night.

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