THE ALLISONS' BALL AND THAT WHICH FOLLOWED IT
As I have written, save for Huey MacGrath, we should have been away
from Scotland at the time of the Allisons' ball, and by this absence
should have missed the visit of the Duke of Borthwicke concerning the
Light-House Commission, which fell at the same time.
His grace's letter to Nancy just previous to this return was filled
with a droll cataloguing of all the good deeds which he was doing, in
the manner of an exact invoice.
"I hope you will not be forgetting any of these, not even the
smallest," he concluded this epistle, "for it is because of these I am
going to ask you a favor, a great favor--the greatest favor on earth."
For the two or three days before this merrymaking Nancy was in a
strange mood, of which I could make nothing, her gaiety being more
pronouncedly gay, and her silences continuing longer than I had ever
noted them. She spent much of her time in her own room, trying on and
having refitted a wonderful gown which Lunardi had sent up from London
by special carrier the week before. I knew women well enough to
understand that she wished to outshine even herself in this first
meeting with Danvers since his marriage, perhaps to show him that she
wore no willows on his account, or perchance to make him a bit
regretful of what he had missed.
On the evening of the rout the duke dined at Stair, purposing to go
with us to the ball and to be set down at his tavern on our way home.
Nancy, in a short-waisted black frock, sat with us at the meal, merry
as a child, chattering of the coming party and her "braw new claes," as
she called them, as if there were no trouble in the world, or as if she
were exempted from it, if it existed. She spent an hour or more upon
her dressing, returning to us a lovelier, fairer, more radiant Nancy
than she had ever seemed before, even to my infatuated fatherly eyes.
Nor was this thought mine alone, for I saw the start of surprise which
Montrose gave at sight of her, and heard the sudden breath he drew as
she came toward us from the hall.
Her skin, always noticeably white and transparent, seemed this night to
have a certain luminous quality. Her cheeks were flushed, her gray eyes
shone mistily under the black lashes and blacker brows, and the scarlet
outline of her lips was marked as in a drawing. She wore a gown of
palest rose, covered with yellow cob-webby lace, which was her
grandmother's, the satin of the gown showing through the film which
covered it like "morning light through mist," as I told her, to be
poetical. The frock was low and sleeveless, the bodice of it ablaze
with gems, and there was another thing I noticed with surprise and
admiration. She wore her hair high, though loose and soft about the
brows, and in the coil of it a large comb set with many precious
stones. This jewel, originally designed to wear at the back of the
head, she had turned forward, making a coronet over her brows,
beautiful in itself, becoming in the extreme, and I noted that his
Grace of Borthwicke let his eyes rest upon it with a peculiar pleasure.
He rose at her entrance and bowed very low, with pretended servility,
resuming his usual manner before he said, with significance:
"The coronet becomes you, Nancy Stair."
And she looked back at him, with a low laugh, with no
self-consciousness in it, however, as she answered:
"There is none more competent to judge of that than yourself, your
grace."
We arrived late at the ball, to find the rooms already crowded, and the
Arran party, with Sir Patrick Sullivan, gathered in a group by the
large window of the music-room.
Jane Gordon held me in talk a minute as I passed her, and for this
reason his grace offered his arm to Nancy, and as the two of them
passed together a hush fell on the people at the sight of them, and I
could see by significant glances and the jogging of elbows that
Edinburgh folks would take the news of a betrothal between them with
small surprise. Gordon told me later that some one suggested this in a
veiled fashion to his Grace of Borthwicke, who might easily have turned
the matter aside or noted it not at all, but that he laughed openly,
saying:
"If it had lain with me, my engagement to Mistress Stair would have
been announced the evening I saw her first. 'Tis the lady herself who
refuses me," an attitude which, from one of his rank, was surely
gentlemanly in the extreme.
As soon as I was disengaged from the Gordons I made my way toward the
Carmichael family with joy in my heart to see my lad once more. He
greeted me with affection, folding my hand in his as a loving son might
do, rallying me on my good looks, patting me on the shoulder, and
showing by every sign an honest fondness for me which touched me
deeply. I could have wished that he looked better himself. He had lost
no flesh; he carried himself with a jauntiness and elasticity which
comes from strength, but the expression of his mouth was changed and
his eyes had a restless, uninterested expression which showed him
unsettled and unhappy.
Isabel looked ill at ease. She had lost her color, had taken on much
flesh, and it seemed, as I observed her more, that it was from the
father rather than the son that she obtained what comfort she had, for
it was to Sandy she turned in all of the talk, and it was his arm upon
which she leaned. Her manner to me was constrained, but not lacking in
cordiality, and when I proposed that they should join our party she
assented willingly enough. Because of this suggestion it fell that we
met Nancy walking toward us on the duke's arm, and at the sudden sight
of her Danvers Carmichael turned white and set his jaw as one who
endures a physical hurt in silence.
And the rest of the evening was of a piece with life, wherein none can
tell what latent qualities of our neighbor may be brought suddenly to
the fore, upsetting every plan which we have made for years.
Whether Danvers lost every thought of behavior through his present
unhappiness, or for the first time recognized what he had missed;
whether the presence of his Grace of Borthwicke in such devoted
attendance upon Nancy roused his jealousy, none could know, but he
seemed to throw obligations to the wind, and bore himself as one who
has a mind to drink his fill of present pleasure, no matter how
extortionate the reckoning may be.
So it fell that from the first word spoken between Nancy and Danvers it
was he who, by sheer recklessness, took the upper hand with her, the
duke being pushed back, as it were, upon Sir Patrick or myself for
company.
"I did not think to forget any of your loveliness, Miss Stair," Danvers
said as Nancy's hand met his, "but I find I had; or mayhap you've added
to it during my absence. A thing which I had held to be impossible."
"'Tis in France we learn such speeches," Nancy answered, lifting her
brows.
"Wherever you are such speeches would be the natural talk," Danvers
replied, and though he used a jesting tone in the words, his passion
for her was so inflamed that the impression of the words was of great
earnestness, and we--at least I speak for myself--were given a feeling
of looking at love-making not intended for our eyes.
The entire evening was a most uncomfortable time, filled for me with
fear of coming trouble as I noted Sandy's knit brows and his efforts to
keep Isabel from the dancing-room where Nancy and Danvers were walking
together through one quadrille after another, until the gossip of the
town was like to take hold of the matter. It was a curious thing that
in my anxiety I should turn for help against Danvers to the duke
himself.
"Your grace," I said, trying to keep the tone a merry one, "you are
neglecting the lady you escorted here to-night, are you not?" and he
laughed in a dry way before he answered:
"In faith I think that it is the lady who is neglecting me. I'll stop
it," he added. There was no "perhaps" or "if possible" in his tone.
"It would be best, I think, for all concerned," I answered at a sight
of Isabel's pale face and Sandy's anxious eyes.
Upon the instant Montrose started toward the place where Nancy stood, a
little apart from a group of gay people, so that her talk with Danvers
could be in the nature of a private one, if desired. As the duke made
his way toward her I followed a little in the rear. He was, as always,
smiling, calm, master of himself and of others, and as he came toward
her he asked, in a low tone of penetrating quality, which by intention
conveyed both affection and the rights of ownership:
"You are not tiring yourself?" and turning to Danvers, he added, "You
must help Lord Stair and myself to take care of her, Mr. Carmichael.
She has not been well of late."
I can set the words out, but the solicitation, such as a lover, nay, a
husband might have shown, are impossible to convey with any nicety; and
at his coming, Nancy, who had had one experience of the clash of
tempers between these two men, temporized the affair by saying:
"My father and his grace are surely right. I have not been well of
late, and find it indeed time for me to say 'Good night.'"
* * * * *
Toward morning I was awakened by the noise of a loosened blind, and
slipping into a dressing-gown went through the passage to fasten the
latch. Passing Nancy's room I heard a moan, and, startled out of
myself, listened to hear another, and still another, as though a heart
were breaking. There was a light in the room, and through a small
window in the door, the curtain of which was drawn a bit aside, I saw
the little one whom I would gladly die to save from any pain, lying
face down upon the floor, her arms stretched out, the hands clutched
tightly together, and her whole body shaking as in mortal illness.
"Nancy, Nancy, let me in! Open the door to me," I cried.
She started to a sitting position, tried to arrange her disordered hair
and gown, and I saw her cast a look in the mirror as she came toward
the door, to see how far she could make me believe that nothing unusual
was the matter with her.
"What is it?" I asked, my heart bursting with love and sympathy as I
drew her to my breast.
She turned her eyes toward me, eyes which held the despair in them
which only women know.
"Oh," she cried, clutching me to keep from falling, "didn't you see?"
"I saw nothing," I answered.
"I can't speak it," she says; "but another of life's lessons has come
to me to-night. Do you remember the time I told you that I had learned
something with my head? I learned it with my heart to-night, and it's
like to kill me. Oh, what have I done?" she cried, "what have I ever
done to deserve such punishment as this?"
"Tell me, Nancy," I said. "There is nothing in God's world that can't
be helped by sympathy."
"I can't tell you. I can't put words to it. See!" she said, standing a
bit apart from me. "Look at me! Do you know a girl more to be envied?
Handsomer? Richer? More gifted? Think, too, of the advantages that I've
had with Father Michel and Hugh Pitcairn to teach me! Think of the stir
my songs have made! And at the end what am I?
"Ah!" she went on, "take any woman, _any_ woman, educate her in the
highest knowledges known, keep her with men, and far from her own sex,
and at the end of it, what is she? A creature who wants the man she
loves and babies of her own," and at these last words she broke into
another storm of weeping which drove me wild with dread.
"Nancy," I cried, "think of your recent illness. For my sake try to
control yourself more. There is the poor head to be thought of always."
"It's been this head of mine that's been my undoing, Jock," she
answered, between her sobs. "All the trouble has come from that."
MacColl was off for Dr. McMurtrie before daybreak, and I sat holding
Nancy's hand waiting for his coming, with Pitcairn's ancient statement
going round and round clatter-mill in my brain:
"Ye can't educate a woman as ye can a man. With six thousand years of
heredity, the physiology of the female sex, and the Lord himself
against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter reared
like other women, to fulfil woman's great end," and pondering over the
fact that the great lawyer and Nancy herself seemed to have come to
exactly the same conclusion.
I was alarmed by her pallor and exhaustion, but McMurtrie assured me
that a sleeping potion would set her far along the road to recovery;
and at breakfast, after Nancy had fallen into an induced sleep, unknown
to himself he gave me what I felt to be the key to the whole bitter
suffering she was enduring, suffering, I feared, which came from a love
learned too late.
"Your friend Sandy will be a grandfather soon, I see," said the old
doctor, beaming at me over his glasses as he drank his tea.
This was the beginning of a troubled time for all of us, and one which
a partial biographer of Danvers Carmichael would like to slur over or
leave untold entirely, for it seemed that neither reason nor
self-respect could do anything with him in his thirst for Nancy's
society. As soon as she was about again he was over at Stair, the
excuse being some presents which he had brought us from the strange
lands he had been visiting; his constant thought of her, even upon his
bridal tour, being plainly shown by these: a ring from Venice, of
wrought gold with aquamarines, some Spanish embroideries, quaint
carvings; and finally he put the cap upon his extravagance by producing
from an inner pocket a girdle of Egyptian workmanship, too valuable by
far for her to accept from him.
"Surely, Dandy," I broke in at this, "ye must see that Nancy, no matter
what the old-time affection between us may be, can not take such gifts
from you?"
"Why not?" he answered, looking straight at me.
"It might be misinterpreted," I began, lamely.
"By whom?" he inquired.
"Not by us," I replied, "but by others."
"And what others are to know?" he demanded. "I am not going to make the
matter of a gift public business."
There was something in me which made it impossible to mention his wife
to him, but Nancy said, with gentleness and great wisdom, as it seemed
to me:
"They are beautiful, and I would love to have them from you, Danvers;
and some time, when Isabel and I become great friends, I'll ask them of
you, maybe; but I can not take them now."
The next morning brought him back, with some strange translations and
stranger foreign prints, where he knew my weakness; and I sat with the
two of them, laughing and criticising the pictures or the writings
until the luncheon time came, when it was impossible to turn a friend
out of one's house, and I urged him myself to stay with us, by which it
was near three when he set back to Arran Towers.
On the following morning he came again, with a flimsy excuse concerning
a mare he was thinking of purchasing; and so, by this and by that, he
managed to spend most of his time at Stair, and in Nancy's society,
seemingly unconscious of a wife he left at Arran for Sandy to console.
I grew so anxious that I lost sleep, my appetite went from me; I would
waken in the morning with a load on my breast as of guilt, and the
thought before me of having a situation to handle which by a mistake of
mine might be turned to a tragedy.
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 passed 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 Dickenson, 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-damned-to-you
attitude 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 God! 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 spaced might pass
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.