Nancy Stair: A Novel

by Elinor Macartney Lane

"It's not like this with Mistress Stair! For she has a grasp of things, and the fearlessness of an unbroken colt, and a mind for the big thoughts of life, and you and I have led her forward in her conduct.

"In the matter of Danvers she is following out the strongest law that we know. 'Tis the natural attraction of the sexes—of the young for the young; but her mind calls for something besides. And 'tis here the duke appeals to her more. Aye! it's all a difficult business," he concluded, "and fate will have to settle it after all, as I've said many a time."

One day when the Little Flower was by me with her sewing I put the matter to her with what deftness I could. Her answers were brief, but directly aimed at the text. She said in effect that marriage was a serious affair, and that she had been bred up with so much liberty that it made the embarking on such an expedition more perilous to her than to most women. She also set forth that in nearly every other enterprise in life one might take a preliminary jaunt, and finding the business little to one's liking, might give it over and start without prejudice in some other.

"In this one affair alone," she ended, "the one of most moment in all of our existence, there is no retracing one's steps with honor if it be found that one has taken the wrong road."

For these reasons she averred it her privilege to look around her with all the intelligence she had in order to make no mistake, both for herself and her future husband.

"For I'm thinking," she said, "there would be trouble afoot if I found, after marriage, the love of which I am capable given over to a man who was not my husband.

"Besides which," she laughed, "I'm not certain whom I am going to marry. There's Robert Burns, now," she cried. "How would you like to have a plowman for a son-in-law, Jock Stair, my daddy O?" and she started off to the Burnside, singing as she went; which was all I could get from her on the subject, one way or another.

It was near the end of September that there began the serious trouble between the duke and Danvers. I was come around from Zachary Twombly's mill, where I had been to pay the hop-pickers, riding alone through the Dead Man's Holm, intending to enter the garden by the break in the south wall. Doubts of the wisdom of the way this child of mine had been reared were going over and over in my mind. I had indeed aimed to make her the finely elemental thing which I conceived a real woman to be; but I found with some perturbation of spirit that the plan would have served better for the general happiness if the men with whom she had to deal had been less accustomed to the conventional woman. They were forever drawing conclusions from her actions which would have held with sound logic had they been applied to any other woman, but with Nancy they were frequently as little to the point as if they had been drawn from the conduct of a Chinese lady.

Thinking these things over, I came by the group of pear-trees, at which point I heard voices on the other side of the wall, and raising myself in the stirrups looked over into the garden.

It was a sunny, warm corner, and a low table, with some chairs, had been placed there, together with a basket of lace-work which Nancy had evidently been overlooking. She was not to be seen, however, although her flowered hat hung on the back of a chair near by.