The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 34

"By no means--yet," said McTavish. "I was only speculating. It's all in the air. Suppose uncle, that Miss MacNish throws me down!"

"Throws you down!" Traquair was shocked.

"Well," said McTavish humbly, "you told me to charge."

"To charge," said Traquair testily, "but not to grapple."

"In my country," said McTavish, "when a girl refuses to marry a man they call it throwing him down, giving him the sack, or handing him a lemon."

"Yours is an exceptional country," said Traquair.

Miss MacNish appeared in the doorway behind them. "I'm sorry to have been so long," she said; "I had to give out the linen for luncheon."

McTavish flung away his cigarette, and sprang to his feet as if some one had stuck a pin into him. Traquair, according to the schedule, vanished.

"It seemed very, very long," said McTavish.

"Miss McTavish," said Miss MacNish, "has consented to see you."

"Good Heavens!--when?"

"Now."

"But I don't want to see her _now_."

"But you told me"--Miss MacNish looked thoroughly puzzled--"you told me just what you were going to say to her. You said it was all predestined."

"Miss MacNish, it was not Miss McTavish I was thinking of--I'm sure it wasn't. It was you."

"Are you proposing to me?" she asked.

"Of course, I am. Come into the garden--I can't talk on these steps, right on top of a gravel walk with a distant vista of three gardeners and a cartful of sand."

"I must say," said Miss MacNish, "that this is the suddenest thing that ever happened to me."

"But you said you believed in love at first sight," McTavish explained.

"You knew yesterday what had happened to me--don't say you didn't, because I saw you smiling to yourself. You might come into the garden and let me say my say."

She didn't budge.

"Very well then. I will make a scene--right here--a terrible scene." He caught her two hands in his, and drew her toward him so that the keys at her belt jangled and clashed.

"This is preposterous!" she exclaimed.

"Not so preposterous as you think. But what's your first name?"

"I think I haven't any at the moment."

"Don't be ridiculous. There--there--"

She tore her hands from him and struck at him wildly. But he ducked like a trained boxer.

"With everybody looking!" she cried, crimson with mortification.

"I had a cable," he said, "calling me back to America. That is why I have to hurry over the preliminaries."

"The preliminaries," she cried, almost in tears. "Do you know who I am that you treat me like a barmaid?"

"Ladies," said McTavish, "who masquerade as housekeepers ought to know what to expect."

Her face was a blank of astonishment. "Traquair told," she said indignantly. "Wait till I--"

"No," said McTavish; "the porter at Brig O'Dread told. He said that you yourself would show me the chapel. He said not to be surprised if you pretended to be some one else. He said you had done that kind of thing before. He seemed nettled about something."

In spite of herself Miss McTavish laughed. "I told him," she said, "that if you crossed my hand with silver, I would give it to him; but if you crossed my hand with gold, I would keep it for myself. That made him furious, and he slammed the door when he left. So you knew all along?"

"Yes--Mrs. Nevis MacNish McTavish, I did; and when you had the faint spell in the chapel, I almost proposed then. I tell you, your voice and your face, and the way you walked--oh, they did for this young man on the spot! Do you know how much hunger and longing and loving can be crowded into a few days? I do. You think I am in a hurry? It seems to me as if there'd been millions of years of slow waiting."

"I have certainly played the fool," said Miss McTavish, "and I suppose I have let myself in for this." Her voice was gentler. "Do you know, too, why I turned white in the chapel?"

"Yes," he said, "I know that."

"Traquair told you."

"Yes."

"And if you hadn't liked me this way, would you have turned me out of house and home?"

He drew her hand through his arm, and they crossed the gravel path into the garden. "What do _you_ think?" he asked.

"I think--no," said she.

"Thank you," said he. "Do you read Tennyson?"

"No," said she, "Burns."

McTavish sighed helplessly. Then a light of mischief came into his eye.

"As _Burns_ says," said he:

"'If you are not the heiress born, And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir, We two will wed to-morrow morn, And you shall still be Lady Clare,'"

"I love every word Burns wrote," she said enthusiastically, and McTavish, though successful, was ashamed.

"McTavish," she said, "the other day, when I felt that I had to get here before you, I promised my driver ten pounds if he beat your car,"

"Yes," said McTavish, "I guessed what was up, and told my man to go slower. It wasn't the psychological moment for either of us to break our necks, was it?"

"No; but I promised the man ten pound, McTavish--and I hay'na got it."