Nancy Stair. Elinor Macartney Lane
Ingarrach, an Irish gipsy-girl, with a beauty beyond the natural, and a voice of music like the sounding of an old harp.
I stood under the great tree, the blood of a man and a lover pulsing sweet and feverishly through my veins, when I saw her come out on the balcony, over the sea door, where some posies grew, which she had come to move back from the wind. I was not one to lose an opportunity like this, for nature in me was strong and impulse-driven. I crossed the space which divided us and spoke up to her.
"Will you come down?" I called to her; "I have that which I would say to you to-night."
She started at the sound of my voice, hesitated for a moment, and with no answer in words disappeared from the porch, coming out of the door near which I stood.
Her hair, in two long plaits, hung almost to her knees, and by the moonlight I could see the flush of her cheek and the silver sheen of her eyes as she looked up at me with questioning in her glance, and I remember now the clutch at my throat which seemed to hold back all I would say, as I took off my cap and stood before her.
"I love you," I said headily, "I love you, and I want you for my wife," and, seeing the highness of the absurdity that my first words to her should be a proposal of marriage, I cried,
"Oh, my dear! my dear! ye'll think me daft to talk thus; but we men of Stair go gyte in these affairs. 'Tis love at first sight with us, or none at all; but if ye'll have me, I'll make ye Lady Stair; and what's far more, I'll try to make you a happy woman the rest of your days.
"It seems wild enough for me to be talking so," I went on, "to you, who do not even know my name," and here she interrupted me with a shy smile.
"Jock!" she said, reaching forth her hand, and the door of heaven opened, as it seemed.
"How did you know?" I asked.
"Sure," she said, "I listened for it. The other big man called you that."
"You cared to know?" I whispered, for my arm was around her by this time, and the world had slipped away.
"Very much."
"And you think you could learn to love me, Marian?"
I felt the little body quiver in my arms, and when she spoke there was fear in her voice.
"Do you think it is right?" she asked. "Do you think it can be right? It seems as though for years, for all my life, I had waited for your coming, and I loved you the minute I saw you—you whom a few hours agone I did not know to be a living man. Tell me," she went on excitedly, "you who are a man and of the world, can this be all good?"
"It is as God meant such things to fall," I answered her, "and He deal so with me as I shall deal with thee."
"But," she persisted, "are you sure you understand? You tell me you are Lord of Stair, and I've no doubt of it, for truth shines from your eyes; but what do you ken of me? I who have no name, who was left by some gipsy folk at the inn door, and whose breeding—what I've of it—came from a Jacobite priest who teaches by the Cairn Mills."
There was never another voice so full of music, so caressing or so feminine, as Marian Ingarrach's, none, not even Nancy Stair's; and as she uttered these depreciations of herself, I exclaimed:
"You are as I would have you."
"Entirely?"
"Entirely."
"And you'll not be ashamed of me?"
It was in this question that I had her first teasing of me, for she was woman, and knew as well as I of the beauty, which gave her a queen's right to the hearts of men.
"Ashamed of you," I cried. "Ah, girl, dinna ye see I canna get my breath for wantin' ye?"
She stood looking at me, her chin well up and an amused and a glad look in her eyes.
"Ah," she said at length, "you are the one who is worth all that a woman has to give, and the blood of all the lawless folk of which I come speaks for you, Jock Stair! For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be won, because she has no will left to choose."
And she turned her face toward mine.
"I'm just yours for the asking, Jock."
I drew her to me, and we kissed each other beneath the starlit blue, with the sea wind blowing our hair and the gipsy singing coming, in broken bits of melody, up through the gorse and heather.
I made a song of it after, in my limping verse, which Nancy found one day, and laughed at, I remember:
The gipsies are out, I can see their lights moving,
Race answers to race, 'neath the stars and the blue;
They are living and laughing and mating and loving,
As I stand in the midnight with you, love, with you!
CHAPTER III
THE TREASURE BECOMES MINE, BUT IS CLAIMED BY ITS OWNER
There was no sleep for me that night, and I lay awake till the clear day, watching the gulls fly across the window and waiting the time when I might see her once again. Early as it was when I arose, the wee bit lassie who brought me the hot water said in answer to my inquiry that the other gentlemen had been gone since the daybreak, and declining her offer of breakfasting in my room, I went down to the spence, hoping that Marian might be there before me. I found the room empty, however, save for Dame Dickenson, who had spread a table for me between the fire and the window, through which I could see the waves curl on the lower beach and the sunshine break into flying sparks over the fine blue sea. I was never one to mince words when there was aught to be said, nor to put off settling until another time a thing which could be fixed upon the moment.
"Sit ye down," I said to the little body, who was plainly of a rank and comprehension above the vulgar. "Sit ye down! There are a few words that I would like to have with ye."
She remained standing, but paused in her employ to give me a wordless attention as I went on:
"I am John Stair, Lord of Stair and Alton in the Mearns, and I want to marry your ward, Marian Ingarrach."
She set the rest of the dishes before me as though not hearing my speech, but I saw the corners of her mouth twitch a bit and, after removing the cover of the haddie, she cast a glance over the top of my head rather than directly at me, as she said:
"Ye're a cautious body, Lord Stair."
"I know what I intend to do," I answered, and there was a silence between us for a space.
"Ye're a quare man," she broke forth presently, looking at me humorously over her glasses. "Aye, a quare man! Ye come here with a pack of riotous livers from Edinburgh, clap your eyes on my young lady for the first time last night, and are for marryin' her off hand this morning with no more to do over it than if marryin' was a daily performance of yours."
I said no words, but regarded her with a smile.
"Sure," she went on, looking at me with great equanimity, "ye canna soften my heart by your smilin'. Ye're a handsome man, my lord, and ye've the strong way with ye that black men often have; but I've met in with handsome men afore now, and the handsomer the more to be feared. Dickenson was a dark man himself," she added, with a twinkle in her eye. Another silence fell between us, as I watched her needles click in and out and catch the firelight.
"Perhaps," she said presently, "ye'd like to have a little knowledge of the girl you're wantin' for a wife."
"It's the matter which lies nearest my heart at the moment," I answered her; and at this her voice and face became more serious, and she stopped her knitting, looking directly at me as she spoke.
"There's little to tell," she began, "little that I could