Walking from the burn with Father Michel one day we saw Danvers Carmichael striding through the Holm gate toward Stair House, and the glance that pa.s.sed between us told me without words that the holy father's thought was mine, which was that two people near Edinbro' Town were playing very close to the fire.

"I've had some thought to speak to him of his conduct," Father Michel said, "but it would have more effect coming from you, my lord."

As I entered the house, with a purpose half formed, I found Danvers in the hall talking to d.i.c.kenson, by whom Nancy had sent word that one of her headaches was upon her, and that she was, by reason of it, unable to see any one.

The concern in Danvers's manner, the unconscious exhibition of tenderness in his voice, stiffened my half-formed resolution, and I did just what the impulse bade me.

"Step into the library here, Danvers," said I. "I want a word with ye."

He gave me a questioning look, following me with no words and stood waiting for me to speak after I had cautiously closed the door.

"It's just come to this, Dandie," I said, "you must stop coming to this house as ye do! Until ye had a wife there was never one who entered the door more welcome, but as long as I have Nancy Stair to think about, ye'll just have to end these visits entirely. With the matter of an old love between you, an affair known to the whole town as well, your conduct is fair impossible, and, what is more, misunderstood!"

And here again a difficult thing in him to handle appeared; never in his life had he known fear and a lie was a stranger to his lips, for his birth, gear, and rearing had given him a secured position in which he did as he chose, with excuses to none, and a be-d.a.m.ned-to-you att.i.tude to all who found fault with him, and it was with the candor and shamelessness resulting from these that my dealings lay.

"Misunderstood--how?" he repeated after me like an echo.

"Well," said I, "the gossips will be having it that ye're in love with my daughter still."

"Lord Stair," says he, "whether the gossips speak it or not is of little moment to me, but it's the truth before G.o.d! There was never another woman in the world like her, and from the moment I set eyes upon her I've loved her and wanted her for my wife. I love her more now since I have known what I missed; what I missed!" he repeated, his face working in a kind of agony and his eyes swimming with tears. "Oh," he continued, "what a wreck I have made of my life!"

"There's no need, by the same token," I cried, "to make a wreck of another's as well. Ye've a wife at home, a wife who loves you and whom you swore to love and honor. I have my daughter's reputation to think of, and the end of the whole matter is you'll just have to make your visits less frequent."

He had never come to me for sympathy before when he had not found it, and the sorrow in his face melted me more than was wise.

"Say once a fortnight, or such like," I said weakly. "Considering the relations between your father and me, visits so s.p.a.ced might pa.s.s unnoticed. But I tell you honestly, Danvers Carmichael, when a man loves a woman whom he can't have, there is nothing for it but a good run and a far one. You'd better stay away altogether, laddie. It's the wisest course."

He left me with no further word, and I hoped that he had come to my way of thinking, when Satan himself took a hand in the affairs between Nancy and himself.

CHAPTER XXII

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 d.i.c.kenson 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 a.s.surances 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 G.o.d.

"'O G.o.d,' 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 pa.s.sage. 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 s.p.a.ce 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. "G.o.d!" 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d's sake, speak--for it seems as though I should kill you and myself, and so make an end."