Nancy Stair: A Novel
by Elinor Macartney Lane · English · Gutenberg #28366 · 423,453 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Nancy Stair: A Novel
Author: Elinor Macartney Lane
Release date: March 20, 2009 [eBook #28366]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NANCY STAIR: A NOVEL ***
Produced by Steve Schulze and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
_Nancy Stair_
_A NOVEL_
_By ELINOR MACARTNEY LANE_
_Author of "Mills of God"_
_A. L. BURT COMPANY, Publishers
NEW YORK_
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published May, 1904_
_To_ Frank Brett Noyes
_Who accepted, with a kind letter,
The first story I ever wrote,
This tale of_ Nancy Stair _is dedicated,
As a tribute of affection,
From one old friend to another._
"For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference."
TENNYSON.
"Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears,
Her noblest work she classes, O,
Her 'prentice hand she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O."
ROBERT BURNS.
"Ye can't educate women as you can men. They're
elemental creatures; and ye can no more change their
natures than ye can stop fire from burning."
HUGH PITCAIRN.
PREFACE BY LORD STAIR
Two excellent accounts of the beautiful Nancy Stair have already been
published; the first by Mrs. George Opie, in the Scots News, giving a
detailed account of the work on the burnside, and a more recent one by
Professor Erskine, of our own University, which is little more than a
critical dissertation upon Nancy as a poet; the heart of the matter
with him being to commend her English verses, as well as those in "gude
braid Scot."
With these accounts to be secured so easily it may seem presumptuous,
as well as superfluous, for me to undertake a third. I state at the
outset, therefore, that it is beyond my ambition and my abilities to
add a word to stories told so well. Nor do I purpose to mention either
the work on the burn or Nancy's song-making, save when necessary for
clearness.
For me, however, the life of Nancy Stair has a far deeper significance
than that set forth by either of these gifted authors. My knowledge of
her was naturally of the most intimate; I watched her grow from a
wonderful child into a wonderful woman; and saw her, with a man's
education, none but men for friends, and no counselings save from her
own heart, solve most wisely for the race the problem put to every
woman of gift; and with sweetest reasoning and no bitter renouncings
enter the kingdom of great womanhood.
To tell this intimate side of her life with what skill I have is the
chief purpose of my writing, but there are two other motives almost as
strong. The first of these is to clear away the mystery of the murder
which for so long clouded our lives at Stair. To do this there is no
man in Scotland to-day so able as myself. It was I who bid the Duke to
Stair; the quarrel which brought on the meeting fell directly beneath
my eyes; I heard the shots and found the dead upon that fearful night,
and afterward went blindfolded through the bitter business of the
trial. I was the first, as well, to scent the truth at the bottom of
the defense, and have in my possession, as I write, the confession
which removed all doubt as to the manner in which the deed was
committed.
The second reason is to set clear Nancy's relation to Robert Burns, of
which too much has been made, and whose influence upon her and her
writings has been grossly exaggerated. Her observation of natural
genius in him changed her greatly, and I have tried to set this forth
with clearness; but it affected her in a very different manner from
that which her two famous biographers have told, and I have it from her
own lips that it was because of the Burns episode that she stopped
writing altogether.
If it be complained against me that the tale has my own life's story in
it, I would answer to the charge that only a great and passionate first
love could have produced a child like Nancy, and I believe that the
world is ever a bit interested in the line of people whose loves and
hates have produced a recognized genius. Then, too, the circumstances
attending her birth had more influence on her after life than may at
first be seen, giving me as they did such a tenderness for her that I
have never been able to cross her in any matter whatever.
Much of the story, of which I was not directly a witness, comes from
Nancy herself. I have sent the tale to Alexander Carmichael as well,
and in all important matters his recollections accord with mine.
There came to me but yesterday, in this queer old city, a letter from
him urging me back to Stair, closed with a stanza that was not born to
die:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min',
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of Auld Lang Syne?"
They should not, Sandy, and none know it better than we; and I long for
a grip of your hand, lad, and to feel the winds blow through the rowans
at Stair and the copper birches of Arran; to hear the blackbirds
whistle across the gowan-tops; to see the busy burn-folk through the
break in the old south wall; and with the ending of these writings my
steps are turned toward home.
ROME, 1801.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--AT STAIR HOUSE, NEAR EDINBURGH, IN 1768 1
II.--I GO ON A CRUISE AND FIND A HIDDEN TREASURE 15
III.--THE TREASURE BECOMES MINE, BUT IS CLAIMED BY ITS OWNER 29
IV.--ENTER NANCY STAIR 41
V.--I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A STRANGE CHILD 53
VI.--NANCY BEGINS HER STUDY OF THE LAW 61
VII.--I TAKE NANCY'S EDUCATION IN HAND 74
VIII.--THE DAFT DAYS 86
IX.--DANVERS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH NANCY 105
X.--NANCY VISITS HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE 124
XI.--DANVERS CARMICHAEL MAKES A PROPOSAL 142
XII.--I MEET A GREAT MAN 159
XIII.--THE DUKE VISITS STAIR FOR THE FIRST TIME 166
XIV.--NANCY MEETS HER RIVAL 174
XV.--CONCERNING DANVERS CARMICHAEL AND HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE 185
XVI.--NANCY STAIR ARRANGES MATTERS 204
XVII.--"THE SWAP O' RHYMING WARE" 213
XVIII.--I GO DOWN TO MAUCHLINE 232
XIX.--THE QUARREL BETWEEN DANVERS AND NANCY 241
XX.--DANVERS GIVES US A GREAT SURPRISE 259
XXI.--THE ALLISONS' BALL AND THAT WHICH FOLLOWED IT 268
XXII.--A STRANGE MEETING 286
XXIII.--A FALSE RUMOR CAUSES TROUBLE 298
XXIV.--THE MURDER 307
XXV.--THE TRIAL 324
XXVI.--THE DEFENSE 351
XXVII.--THE MISTS ALL CLEARED AWAY 361
NANCY STAIR
CHAPTER I
AT STAIR HOUSE, NEAR EDINBURGH, IN 1768
By reason of a breakneck ride through the Pentlands, I entered the
dining-room at Stair very late one morning to find Huey MacGrath in a
state of deepest gloom waiting to serve my breakfast.
"Good morning, Huey," I said, opening The Glasgow Sentinel which had
come by the post.
"Good morning, my lord," he returned, in a grudging tone.
"It's a fine morning," said I.
"Ye think sae!" with a show of great surprise.
"Why, man!" I cried, "can not ye see for yourself?"
"We've the spring rains to come yet."
"They're by these ten days," I answered.
"Nae, nae," he said quietly. "That was jest the equinoctial, I'm
thinking."
"The equinoctial comes in March, man!" I observed with some surprise.
"Tammas was telling me yesterday that the roads to London were fair
impassable."
"Nonsense," said I. "The summer's here, Huey."
"There's a chill at the gloamin', yet. Nae, nae," he went on earnestly,
"simmer's far awa',--I've seen snaw's late's this!"
"Ye've had wonderful eyesight," I laughed, seeing the point toward
which this talk was aimed. "And did ye hear nothing of tidal waves,
Huey?" I asked; "with impassable roads to London, and snow in June,
you've surely heard of some disasters by sea."
"Ah!" he cried, "ye can tell of what I'm thinking, for I've seen the
signs of it in ye for a fortnight back. You're like your father before
you, and your grandfather, as weel, for the curse of wandering seems to
follow the name of Stair. With the first warm day ye have your windows
wide open; and next your beds are into a draught fit to blaw ye from
between the sheets; and then ye're up in the morning, aff on a hoorse
scouring the hills as tho' ye were gyte; and at the end your valise's
packed, the coach stopped, and ye aff amang the heathen, Gude alane
kens wheer!
"Ah, laddie!" he continued, his voice changed to an affectionate wail,
"dinna be gane awa'! Ye've niver seen Stair in the simmer time; but
when the elderberries and lilacs flower on the burn; and the gilly
flowers and hollyhocks are bloomin' by the north tower; when the wind
blows soft through the rowans, and the pineys' pink and white faces, as
big as cabbages, nod against the old south wall, there's no bonnier
place in Scotland than your own place of Stair."
He was so moved at the thought of my leaving him, that I answered in
some haste,
"In truth, Huey, I've no thought of going away."
"Ah," he answered, "ye don't know it, but ye have. It's been in ye for
a week back,"--and casting his eye out of the window, "there's Mr.
Carmichael now, riding in by the Holm gate. I'll jest open the door
till him."
This was an entirely unnecessary attention on Huey's part, as Sandy
Carmichael, whose estate of Arran Towers joins my own on the west,
generally opened the door of Stair for himself, or the windows either,
for the matter of that, if the latter were more convenient entrance
from the place he happened to be.
My recollections of Sandy begin with my recollections of myself. As
lads together, indeed before we were long out of skirts, we guddled for
fish in the burn-water; went birds' nesting, raced our ponies, fought
each other behind the stables and made a common stock of our money for
the purchase of dimpies, peoys and jelly-tarts. We attended the High
School together and upon leaving it chose the same college, where Sandy
ran a merry pace, throwing his money out of the windows, as it were,
and gaining for himself the reputation of wearing more waistcoats,
drinking more whisky, making love to more women, and writing better
verses, than any other man in the University.
He was a big, athletic, clean-limbed fellow, with brown hair, a bright
face, warm eyes, and friendly genial ways which came from the kindest
heart in the world. Five years before the time of which I write, which
would be in 1763, he had married the Honorable Miss Llewellyn from the
north, a pitiable pale-colored lady, who, half crazed by jealousy and
ill health, was sending him back to unmarried ways again. Being only
sister to Lord Glenmore, who had no heirs and was subject to seizures
of a very malignant type, it was yearly expected that the title would
come to Sandy's bit of a boy, a handsome-faced little fellow of four,
who paid me long visits at self-selected times, demanding my watch, a
pipe to smoke, and horses to ride.
Before Huey had time to reach the door, Sandy, in his riding clothes,
with his cap on the back of his head, stood looking in at me. There was
a scowl between his brows, and by this as well as other certain signs,
I knew that all was not well with him.
"Will ye go on a cruise with me?" says he from the doorway with no
introduction whatever.
"Would it be an unseemly prying into your affairs to ask where to?" I
inquired with a smile.
"North or south," said he, still keeping his place by the door. "It's
immaterial to me, so I escape accompanying my womenfolk to London."
"And if I go with ye," says I, "your wife will like me less than she
does now."
"That would be impossible, so ye needn't worry over it," he returned
dryly. "The only good word ye ever had from her was that if ye'd been a
less handsome man ye might have been a better one."
"And even that could scarce be termed fulsome flattery," I observed.
"Will ye go!" he repeated, his mind set on the one point.
A sudden thought, bred of some news in the paper which I had just
received, came to me upon the instant.
"Let us take the boat from Leith, and go north by the Orkney and
Hebrides Islands, through the Minch to the west coast. There are all
kinds of stories afloat concerning the gipsies and free traders who
live in those deep coves; we might fall in with a pirate ship----"
"Or find a hidden treasure!" he said scoffingly, as he seated himself
on the other side of the table and took some coffee, the frown gone,
and the Sandy I knew with the bright face and laughing eye back again.
"Aye," he went on in his humorous way, "I am convinced 'twill be hidden
treasure we'll find, Jock. We'll go ashore at midnight, and under a
stunted pine will be a sailor's chest. Hidden treasures are always
found in sailors' chests, ye know. And taking a three-foot bar of iron,
which every gentleman in tales carries concealed upon his person, we,
you and I,--none of the others, of course,--will pry this chest
open--to find ducats and doubloons, and piastres, and sous-marquees--and
a map of the Spanish Main and the Dry Tortugas--with crosses in blood.
I'll tell you, ye can have my share of it now," he cried, laughing at
me.
"Ye're over generous," says I, for jesting of this kind was a thing to
which I was accustomed in him.
He dropped the raillery on the moment, however, to take a note-book
from his pocket.
"Whom shall we ask?" he inquired in his natural voice.
Now I had one other friend, almost as dear to me as Sandy, named Hugh
Pitcairn. But while there could be no doubt of the affection each had
for me, there could be equally no doubt of the dislike they bore each
other, this feeling having grown from the first day they met in the
hockey grounds of the High School, where almost at sight of each other
they fell to fighting, until finally pulled apart by some of the older
lads.
"In this connection," said I, getting back at him a bit, for his
jeering at my plans, "what do you think of Hugh Pitcairn?"
"In this connection," he returned dryly, "I do not think of Hugh
Pitcairn at all."
"It's strange," I went on, in the same remote tone, as though it were a
subject mentioned for the first time, "that ye should dislike him so."
"It can not match the strangeness of any one's enduring his society,"
he replied with heat.
"Well, well," said I, putting Pitcairn out of the talk. "What do you
say to Geordie MacAllister?"
"The very man," he cried, writing the name in the book.
"And Graham Annesley," I went on.
"Good again."
"And Donald McDonald."
"He won't do at all!" Sandy broke out in a determined way. "He's gone
the way of all trouble, which is the way of women. He's crazed about
the Lady Mary Llewellyn and we'll have no one along who is sighing for
a woman, be she his own or another man's wife. That's what I like in
you, Jock Stair," he said, gazing at me with approval. "Ye've your
faults----"
"No?" I said, with pretended amazement.
"Ye'd gamble on the flight of angels----"
"Ye're speaking of some one else, maybe," I suggested.
"And ye drink more than ye should,--but you're my own man where the
women are concerned; for never since I knew ye,--and that's ever since
ye were born,--have I seen ye look with wanting at maid, wife, or
widow, and ye're wise in that," he added in a tone whose bitterness
came from the unhappiness of his own wedded life.
To put the talk into a brighter channel, I hastened to suggest a fourth
and fifth companion for the cruise, upon which we fell to passing
judgment on the companionable men of our acquaintance, weighing their
congeniality to us and to each other until one o'clock was past before
we set about the business of delivering our invitations.
Offering to accompany Sandy on these errands, I thought I heard a
groan, and on leaving the dining-room I made sure of another, and on
the instant knew that they came from Huey MacGrath.
This expedition falling so quickly on the heels of his warning was an
odd occurrence and for some reason, perhaps in remembrance of my recent
assertion that I had no heart to leave Stair, there fell a funny
performance between us. He handed me my cap and coat, determined to
catch my eye, and I, having no desire to see the reproach which his
glance contained, was equally set to avoid it; so that I received my
cap with my eyes on my boots, my gloves with an averted head, and my
riding-stick looking out of the doorway, and mounted my horse with no
small resentment in my breast at this surveillance from a servant which
would never be borne in any spot outside of Scotland.
"I'm thinking," said I to Sandy as we rode toward the town gate, "I'm
thinking of discharging Huey when I come back."
"That will make the fifty-third time," said Sandy, with a grin, as he
started his horse off at a gallop.
After the visits with Sandy, I kept an engagement with Hugh Pitcairn at
the Star and Garter, just around the corner from the Tron Church, at
four o'clock of the same day. It was a few minutes past the hour as I
neared the place, to find him standing by the doorway, his back to the
passers by, a French cap pulled low over his eyes, reading from a
ponderous book which he was balancing with some difficulty against the
door-rail.
"I hope I've not kept ye waiting!" said I.
"Ye have kept me waiting," he answered, but with no resentment.
"I've been seeing some men about a cruise, and it took more time than I
thought," I explained by way of apology.
"You're off on a cruise?" he asked, as we seated ourselves at one of
the tables.
I nodded.
"With the Carmichael fellow, I suppose?" he asked.
"I am going with Mr. Carmichael," said I.
"Well, it's just _no_ thing for you to be doing at all," he
returned; "you should stay at home and look after your affairs. The
Carlyles have broken the entail, and you may be able to buy the land on
the other side of Burnwater that you've been wanting so long."
"And why can't you attend to the matter?" I cried. "Ye handle all my
business, and do it far better than I ever could, beside, I can leave
procuration----"
He smiled at this in an exasperatingly superior way as though I had
used the word loosely, and went on: "The estate itself is to be looked
to," and here he seemed to have learned his lesson out of Huey
MacGrath's book.
"As for the house," I broke in, "it's taken better care of in my
absence than when I am in it; and it's money in my pocket to leave
matters with MacGrath to manage. I can not see," I said with some heat,
perhaps helped by the brandy I was drinking, "why in heaven's name I
shouldn't go on a cruise if I desire to! If I'd ties of any kind, a
wife or children----"
This was Pitcairn's chance, and he broke my talk to take it.
"Your friend Carmichael has both, and to them his first duty lies." And
any one with his wits about him can imagine the rest of the talk, for
he fell into an attitude of strong disapproval of the whole plan;
stating in a cold legal way that Sandy had already let me in for more
than one trouble; had caused me to spend large sums of money, foolishly
doing the like himself; that we were both incapable of good husbandry;
given to drinking more than was wise, and over fond of the society of
persons whom we were pleased to call men of talent, but who were, by
his judgment, doggerel-making people, of loose morals, with no respect
for fact, the conduct which became the general, or the laws of Christ.
He went over for the twentieth time Sandy's arrest for pulling off most
of the door-knockers in Edinburgh; this event having occurred when the
lad was but sixteen and home for the vacation; as well as the scandal
of his having bid the Lord President in a high and excited voice to
stick his head out of the window, and upon that venerable gentleman
complying, shouting: "Now stick it in again!"
At the end of this discourse he invited me to remain at home with him
and spend the evenings over a new treatise on the Laws of Evidence
which he had just brought from the University, at which I laughed in
his face and told him that I had neither the wit nor the inclination
for such an enterprise. His last words were to the effect that there
would be trouble bred of the expedition, and he closed his harangue in
the following manner, as we stood on the South Bridge, where our ways
parted:
"The Carmichael man has no judgment either for your affairs or his own.
His heart may be all right, but he's got no common sense, and a man
like that is little better than a fool."
CHAPTER II
I GO ON A CRUISE AND FIND A HIDDEN TREASURE
In spite of Hugh Pitcairn we were off the following Monday, going out
of Leith, with a clear sky, a stiff breeze, and six men of our own
feather, caring little where our destination lay, if the cards turned
well, the drink held plenty, and the ocean rolled beneath us. North we
went; north till the sea itself seemed quieter and lonelier; north
where the twilight held far into the night, to be back by two of the
morning; north by John o' Groats and the Pentland Skerries; till one
June day found us turned far down the wild west coast; a colorless
cruise behind us, with never a storm, a pirate ship, nor a sight of the
jolly roger.
At the end of the day of which I speak we were lying in toward shore,
and I was aft with a pipe for company, when Sandy came from behind the
pile of sail-cloth against which I sat to say that the brig would have
to lay by for repairs and to inquire what I thought of going ashore for
an adventure.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"Somewhere above Landgore. 'Tis the very place for treasure," he added,
with a laugh.
"There's nothing would suit me better than a night ashore," said I with
truth, for I had had enough of the drink, the slack language, and the
rough sea life, and looked forward to the land with a pleasant hurry of
thoughts.
The moon shone bright in a sky of plain dark blue, making a path of
swaying gold toward the beach, where we could see the water curl upon
the sands like suds. A little back was a steep rise of granite rocks,
with gorse and heather growing on the sides, at the bottom of which
some gipsies, or free-traders, had built a great fire, and we heard
them singing a drunken catch in chorus, and saw them whirling round and
round the fire in a circle, as we stepped ashore from the boat.
An ugly silence fell as we approached them, and their women drew off,
thinking that we were government men, no doubt; but finding that we had
no weightier business than to get some information as to our
whereabouts, one of them gave us word that the path up the cliff led to
the Cuckoo Tavern, kept by Mother Dickenson, where we could obtain what
refreshment we needed as well as lodgment for the night. We had gone
some fifty feet when one of the men cried after us:
"An' if luck's wi' ye, ye may have a glyff of the handsomest lass in
Scotland," at which a woman cuffed him with a ringing sound. There
followed a muttered curse and a roar of laughter, which was the last we
had of them.
The path up the cliff twisted and roved in such a manner to avoid the
many boulders that the inn-light proved little better than a
will-o'-the-wisp to guide us, and it was in a breathless condition that
we reached the quaint low house, which was both neat and comfortable,
seeming peculiarly so perhaps after our long voyage.
A queer old woman, with a humorous wry face, yellow and deeply lined,
sharp black eyes, and a ready manner, stood behind a small bar and took
note of us upon our entrance, with the air of one well able to judge
our rank and bearing.
The rest went off with her to inspect the chambers which she was able
to offer, laughing and chaffing each other as was their way, leaving me
alone in the main room with my back to the fire. As I stood thus I
heard a sudden noise, saw the curtain of a door at the side raised, and
a girl in a black robe with a lighted candle in her hand looked in at
me.
For twenty-seven years I had waited for a sight of that girl!
She was tall and slight, and carried herself with the careless grace of
a child; her hair was of a bronze color, parted over the brows and
rippling back into a great knot low on the head; her skin was cream,
with a faint, steady pink burning in the cheeks, but as is the way of
men, it was the eyes and lips I noted most; eyes of gray, filled with
poetry and passion; eyes which looked out under brows black and heavy
and between lashes, curled and long, giving a peculiar significance to
the glance. The lips were scarlet, the upper one being noticeably short
and full; lips mutable and inviting, lips that were made for mine--and
all this I knew in the first minute that our eyes met, when, as it
seemed to me, our two souls rushed together.
At gaze with each other we stood, no word spoken between us, for a full
minute of time, when the noise of the men coming back disturbed her;
she dropped the curtain and the light of her candle disappeared, a
little at a time, as though she were walking from me down some long
passage-way.
I do not know how love comes to other natures than my own, and men of
notable integrity have told me how leisurely they strolled into the
condition of loving; but for me, by one questioning glance from a pair
of eyes, half gray, half blue, I was sunk fathoms deep in love, in love
that knows nothing, cares for nothing but the one beloved. Soul and
body I was signed, sealed, and delivered, "hers," in that first sight I
had of her in the doorway with the candle in her hand and the crimson
curtain framing her as if she were a picture.
We had supper, of which I ate nothing; liquor, of which I drank
nothing; and merry talk, in which I took no part, Sandy jeering at me
for a dull ass, I remember, and pretending regret at not having asked
the Reverend Slowboy in my place; but his talk was of no moment to me,
for my pulse was going like a trip-hammer, my brain reeled with that
headiest wine of Nature's brewing, and I wanted to get out under the
stars and be alone.
Having some skill at singing, Geordie MacAllister urged that I recall
the catch we had heard on the beach; but finding me adamant against
such an exhibition, Dame Dickenson offered a suggestion for our
entertainment.
"There's a ward of mine here, a young lady, who has the music, and,
seeing ye're all gentlemen, might be urged to a song."
Five minutes from the time that she was seated with us, I had heard her
voice, our eyes had held each other again, and I saw a carnation flush
bloom suddenly in her cheek as our hands touched. She brought with her
a curious old instrument, like a lute with many strings, and upon this
she struck chords to the song she sang, "The Wronged Love of Great
Laird Gregory," the melody of which seems ever to be with me; and
yesterday, when I heard Nancy crooning it to herself, I cried aloud as
a woman might, for the unfulfilled in all our lives, and my dead youth,
and Marian Ingarrach.
And at her singing, the four of us--or five it may be, for I can not
now rightly recall whether Sawney MacAllister came ashore that night or
not--sat before her beauty as though it were a part of witchery, for
there was a bookish strangeness to it that on this wild coast, in a
nest of smugglers and free-traders, after a cruise of rough living and
deep drinking, we should be listening to the voice of a girl whose
beauty was upsetting to the senses of man and whose bearing denoted
breeding of the highest order.
She left us after a second singing, bidding us good-night in a
laughing, friendly fashion, and looking at every one, save me, full in
the eyes, as a child might have done; but when her hand touched mine,
her eyes fell before me, and I, who knew something of woman's ways,
felt with a leaping heart that she knew.
The rest were gone from the room when Sandy Carmichael, who had made
the pretense of another pipe, came back to me as I stood looking into
the fire.
"You saw her first!" he said.
"Aye," I answered, "and it's all over with me!"
"Is it to the church door?" he asked.
"It's to the foot of the Throne itself," I answered. "It's wherever she
leads," for I was young and phrase-making was in the blood.
"Well," he says, "ye're Lord Stair, and if ye choose to marry a
gips----"
"Choose!" I cried. "I have no choice. The men who stand balancing as to
whether they will or they won't, with 'Would it be wise?' or
'Acceptable to the world?' I have no knowledge of, and want none, as I
have told you often."
"Well," said he, "I've always called you crazy, Jock Stair," and here
he put his hand lovingly on my shoulder, "but I never discovered until
to-night how crazy you are. I'm not denying there's something fine
about it; but is it sensible? Think o' Pitcairn," he said, with a
laughing devil in his eye.
"Pitcairn may go to perdition," I answered with some heat.
"It's not Pitcairn that's on his way there, I'm thinking," he returned,
with a droll look; "but we must all learn by experience, so gang your
own gate. We're off at five in the morning. Do you go?"
He saw by my manner that nothing save an earthquake could get me from
the house, and whistling, with some significance, "The Deil Has Nae Got
all the Fools," he left me without a good-by word. After he had gone I
went forth into the open to be alone. The stars were shining brightly
through white clouds, which the sea winds drove across the sky, and far
down the cliff I could see the great beach fire and catch the laughter
and song of the gipsy folk and free-traders.
Tales were not wanting of the men of Stair who had lost their wits when
crossed in love; who had run away with other men's wives and had abided
with some jauntiness the world's dispraise, cleaving until death did
them part to the one woman who seemed God-made for them. I had thought
before this, in a slighting manner, of the strange doings of my
forebears; but the thing was upon me, and, come life, come death, I
knew that there was henceforward for me but one woman in the world,
Marian 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 take
book-oath to, I mean, for one bad night in March, eighteen years back,
I heard a wail at the door, and opening it found a gipsy-hamper with
the baby inside. She was finely dressed and there was a note pinned on
her little shirt, which--wait a bit," she said, "I can show it ye." At
this she crossed the room to a wooden cupboard, unlocked the door, and
took from it a small box, the key of which she had in her bosom.
Opening this she handed me a slip of paper, upon which was written, in
a coarse male hand:
"HARRIET DICKENSON:
"If you will keep the child money will be sent for you and her. I
want her brought up a lady."
"There was a roll of gold in the basket with her, forty pounds, my
lord. And the writer has kept his word. Money has been sent ever since,
sometimes from Italy, once from Russia, and then from the Far East.
That is all that I know."
"But you have beliefs concerning the matter?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, "though the truth of them could not be proved. Twenty
years ago, when I was maid at Squire Eglinton's, on the Irish coast,
near Carrickfergus, he had one daughter, a flower of a girl, who ran
away with a gipsy man she met in her father's park. The young lady
loved me and knew where my home in Scotland was. I have thought, my
lord, that mayhap she died, and 'twas the father-man who brought the
baby to my door. I have told you all but this: if Miss Eileen ever had
a daughter, it could not be more like her than Marian is."
A hundred questions came to me at once, but before one of them was
asked I had a sight of the girl herself, coming from the country side
of the house, the wind blowing her hair about her face and carrying
away swarms of white petals from the hawthorn-blooms she held in her
arms. As she was hid from my sight by the corner of the house, Sandy
Carmichael entered the room, his hands thrust far into his pockets, and
his pipe held at a curious angle between his teeth.
"What!" I cried in amazement. "You here! I thought you were gone at
daylight."
"Did ye now?" he asked, with raillery in his voice. "Did ye think," and
he put his hand on my shoulder after his own fashion, "did you think
I'd leave you, Jock, in this, your last extremity? Ye're not married
yet?" he went on jokingly, "I'm not too late for the wedding? Oh," he
broke out with a laugh, "how have the mighty fallen!"
"Not yet," I answered him; "but it will be no fault of mine if I'm not
a married man by night."
He changed color at this, and getting the dame on his side the two of
them urged a waiting--I know not for what; and more thought, which
would have brought me to the same conclusion; but their talk and their
arguments went high over my head, for I was fixed as fate that nothing
but Marian's mind against it could move me from the wish I had. As the
three of us stood thus, the talk going back and forth, the girl came
into the room, and at sight of me went white, changing on the instant
to a glorious pink, which flushed her face all over like a rose.
"Good morning, Lord Stair," she said.
I crossed the room, and took her hand and kissed it.
"Marian," I said, "will you marry me to-day?"
She sent a hurried look around the three of us, and as a woman
discovers things, knew that they were against me in the matter. It took
her not one second to decide for me, and my being leaped toward her as
she spoke.
"When you will, my lord," she said. "I have no wishes that are not your
own."
It was a little past noon of the same day, with none to see save Sandy
Carmichael, Dame Dickenson, and Uncle Ben, that Father Pierre, from the
Cairn Mills, made Marian and myself one in a marriage such as the gods
intended when the world was young and the age of gold.
About three o'clock Sandy left us, going on horse to join his party,
which was to lay by for him at Landgore. Marian and I walked with him
far beyond the sea light, he leading his horse and telling us that it
was but the strong remembrance that he had a wife at home which
prevented his carrying her away with him. He had great joy in my
happiness, and his strong laugh rolled round and round in echoes among
the rocks as we went along together. Before we parted his mood changed
a bit, and he turned suddenly and laid his arm across my shoulder.
"You'll not forget me, laddie?" he said earnestly, with his head turned
a bit from me so that his eyes could not be seen.
Our hands gripped each other at the end, as though we could not speak
the word of good-by, and my dear, who knew the thought--that my
marriage might in some way make the friendship between us less
close--took our locked hands between her little ones and held them to
her breast.
"Believe me," she said, as though making a vow, "that all I can ever do
to make this friendship stronger I shall do; oh, believe me in that!"
Sandy kissed her on the cheek, she stuck a piece of pink heather in his
coat, and he mounted his horse and was off at a bolt. Twice we saw him
turn and wave his cap toward us; we called to him, and he shouted back
something in return, the meaning of which we were unable to discover,
and so went down a sudden turn of the rocks and was lost to sight.
* * * * *
There are some parts of every life that can not be set forth. The first
sacred months of my marriage are of these. The little inn, which was no
longer in Dame Dickenson's possession, I purchased, and we made it into
a home. And the time is all of Marian! Marian standing in white in the
going down of the braeside to welcome me; Marian on my knee in the
twilight looking out seaward and starward; Marian with her brown head
and face, such as the angels have, resting on my breast in the gold of
the dawning; Marian--Marian--Marian--I, an old man, who was once that
bonny Jock Stair, all your own, call to you. Can you come? Will it ever
be again! See! I stretch my hands, wrinkled, old, to that far off blue,
and ask you, as I have a thousand times, to send me peace.
* * * * *
All that summer we lived in the little house, and toward autumn there
were reasons why my wife should not be troubled with new cares. Sandy
came to see us frequently; whiles I ran up to Edinburgh to tend to
needful matters. One day in March, because of some wish my dear had
half expressed, I went to town to get some of the jewels with which the
Ladies Stair had adorned themselves in days gone by. I had promised a
short absence, but there was a matter of some fastenings to be mended
at the goldsmith's, and my stay was three days. Riding backward as fast
as a postboy, I came on the porch suddenly to find a weeper, as if one
were dead, hanging upon the knocker. Dropping the box and riding-whip I
pushed the door ajar with a great shove and entered, upon Dame
Dickenson, who was coming out of her room, from which place I heard a
faint cry. Her eyes were red with weeping; she looked scared and went
white at the sight of me, and with a horrid presentiment of trouble, I
cried on the instant, in a voice which I heard myself as coming from
some other:
"Where is she?"
"Oh, my lord," she said, and her voice broke and went off into a
shriek, "did ye no meet wi' Mr. Carmichael? He's gone for ye."
"I met nobody," I cried, and again there was a tiny wail as of a
new-born babe from the next room.
"Oh, my lord!" she cried again, springing forward and putting herself
between me and the doorway which I made to enter. "Ask God for strength
to bear what's been sent ye. Say a prayer, my lord. Ask Him to let ye
remember the baby that's come to you. Pray, O my lord," she cried;
"prepare yourself."
I pushed her from me and threw the door wide open.
There was a body in the room laid out for burial, with candles burning
at the head and foot--a slim, young, girlish body; and as Father
Pierre, who was kneeling by it, turned his face toward mine I knew that
Marian, because of me, had gone forever. Something seemed to strike me
at the back of the head and a black vapor fell before my eyes and
stopped my breath--I knew that Father Pierre caught me in his arms, a
merciful unconsciousness seized me, and everything faded away.
* * * * *
When I came to myself I was in my own sleeping-room at Stair, a
night-light burning on the table, and some one on the other side of the
screen sat reading by the fire. I saw the top of the head over the
chair-rail, and knew it was Sandy Carmichael's. Five weeks longer I lay
there, and on toward midsummer, my fever having lasted four months,
Sandy proposed I should start as soon as I was able and tour the world.
It had been an old dream of mine, but with little taste for life, I set
sail from Glasgow for Gibraltar some time in August, 1769, to visit
other lands and see new lives with old sorrows like my own.
CHAPTER IV
ENTER NANCY STAIR
I had been from Scotland near five years, when two letters were handed
to me as I sat in The British Sailors' Tavern, in Calcutta; one of
which was from Hugh Pitcairn and the other from Sandy Carmichael. I
thought as I read them what characteristic epistles they were, for
Hugh's read as though I had parted from him but the day before, and
urged my return to look after some land interest which he as my
solicitor felt should have my immediate supervision.
"There is another thing," he added, "which should bring you home. Huey
MacGrath is ailing and I fear is sickening to die."
Sandy spoke, as was his way, of our old affection and his wish to see
me once again, and he ended by a tender reference to the baby of mine
who was growing a big girl and needed me, he said.
God knows how lonely I was when these two letters came to me, and the
thoughts of home and a child dependent upon me brought, for the first
time since my dread trouble, a sense of comfort. Huey sick unto death
was another call to my heart, and in four days' time I was homeward
bound.
Before I stepped ashore at Leith it was Sandy who waved to me from the
quay; Sandy whose hand gripped mine so hard the fingers ached for days;
Sandy whose eyes beamed with joy as he looked at me and took me back to
Stair.
"I've been living on the docks awaiting your return until the town
doubtless thinks I'm going for a sailor," he cried. "Well, it's good to
have you back, Jock Stair--and I believe that Huey MacGrath's illness
is little more than a longing for the sight of you."
On our ride homeward his whole talk turned about his boy Danvers, of
whom he spoke with unfettered approval and satisfaction, which came
from a strange source.
"He looks like you, Jock Stair! It's heaven's truth that he's the image
of you! It seems odd that I, who am a brown man, should have a son with
an olive skin and hair like ink, but it's a fact. And he's like ye in
other ways, for he rides like a monkey and can thrash any one of his
weight in the county. Aye," he concluded, "ye'll be proud of Danvers!"
"And what of my girl?" I asked.
"Nancy," he said, a curious look coming into his face as he smiled;
"she's one you must see to judge of for yourself. I've raised her up as
well as I could. I've spent time with her!"
His determined reticence, which had some humor in it, put me on my
metal concerning the child, and the day after my arrival I sent Tam
MacColl with a written request to Dame Dickenson to fetch the little
one immediately to Stair.
Six days later Tam returned bringing a large sheet of paper, which I
have before me as I write. It was folded after a curious fashion, with
no address, and opening it I found the following:
[Illustration: I am not comming.
Nancy Stair.]
For the first time in five years I laughed aloud. This was something
worth. Here was an atom, not yet five, who took her pen in hand and
misspelled her firm intention to do as she chose. I folded the paper
and laid it aside, wondering what kind of offspring I had begotten, and
the following morning took horse to Landgore to see this very
determined little body for myself.
As I came in sight of the place after my long ride, strange voices
called to me from the sea, from the heather, from the great copper
birch over the house. Eyes long dead seemed looking into mine, hands
were on my hair, and there came to me, with the feeling of mortal
sickness, the terrible, sweet remembrances of an early passion and of
things to be known to none save Marian and me and the One who does most
wisely for the Great End, but bitterly to us who see but a little of
the way.
Reaching the porch, my strength left me utterly, and I leaned against
one of the wooden pillars for support. Standing thus, I saw a child
running down the braeside at the top of her speed, with no knowledge of
my presence, but coming at her fastest to reach the house. She wore a
short-waisted black frock, with a very long skirt, which almost touched
the ground. On her feet were red shoes, which twinkled in and out of
the black, as with great dexterity and lightness, she clambered up the
steps of the porch and stood before me, one of the miracles of God
before which we human folk stand abashed. For here was Marian again.
Marian to the turn of an eyelash; to the finger tips; in the bronze
chestnut curls which stood like a halo round the face; in the supple
little woman-body; in all the dear, quaint, beautiful baby who stood
before me devouring me with gray eyes, and looking at me with a
radiant, shy smile as she held a kitten tail up against her breast.
After a few seconds' regard of me, during which I could see by her face
that she was piecing some bits of knowledge together, she clapped her
hands.
"Jock!" she cried, with a rapturous smile.
I can never tell the joy and horror of the moment, for my name was the
first word my beloved had ever spoken to me, and at the sound of it
from this, her child, my heart leaped into my throat; there came a
whirring in the top of my head and a singing in my ears, and as I sank
upon the old stone settle something like a moan escaped me.
In the next minute I knew Nancy Stair for all time. The sight of
suffering seemed to put her past herself, and, dashing toward me, she
climbed up on the seat. I could feel the warmth of her body and the
clinging of her dimpled arm as she drew my head against her naked,
palpitating little breast as though to defend me from suffering against
the whole world.
"Oh, you poor fing!" she cried. "You poor fing! Does you hurt?"
When I had in some degree recovered my self-control, the child sat down
beside me, so close that she pushed her small body against mine, with
one rose-leaf of a hand laid upon my knee in a protective fashion,
every little while giving me a pat, as a mother soothes a child.
Sitting thus, my arm around her, my soul stirred to its depths, my eyes
brooded over all her baby charms.
She was of a slender, round figure, with dimpled neck and arms. Her
head was broad, her forehead low, with noticeably black brows, and she
had a way, when perplexed, I very soon discovered, of drawing these
together, the right one falling a bit lower than the left. It was the
eyes which struck one first, however; brooding, passionate, observant,
quick to look within or without, and fearless in their glance. Mrs.
Opie states that they were black, and Reynolds painted them bright
blue; but the truth is, that they were like her mother's, clear gray,
with pupils of unusual size, and heavy lashed, especially on the under
lid.
She was still under five, but I had not been with her a quarter of an
hour before I recognized a potent and wonderful personality and knew
that there was something which this small soul had in her keeping to
give the world which others have not.
"Sandy was here," I heard her sweet voice saying when I had recovered
myself. "Sandy was here one day. He fetched the drey hen you sent me."
Here she patted my knee, looking up as though to assure me of her
protection.
"He said the rabbits were from you," she went on; "and the owl got
broke that was in the box. It was too little for him."
"Sandy brought me," she said finally, "the child that stares so," and
she pointed, her eyebrows puckered together, at a rag-doll, with
painted cheeks and round, offensive eyes, sitting head down in a corner
of the porch.
Beyond money, I had not sent even a message to the child in all these
years of absence, and my heart filled with gratitude to that friend who
had made me a fairy-grandfather and won a child's love for me, who was
so unthoughtful and so far away.
As we sat thus, Dame Dickenson heard the sound of voices, and came from
the house to welcome me with a smile, though the tears were in her eyes
as she spoke her words of welcome.
Her life of ease and freedom from money-care had changed her greatly,
and with her black silk frock, her lace kerchief and cap, she seemed
quite like some old gentlewoman. I tried, knowing the inadequacy of
words, even while speaking, to thank her for my wonderful child, when
she interrupted me.
"I should have died but for her--after"--she broke off here, not
wishing to name the sorrow between us. "But you've not seen the wonder
of her yet; she has the whole Cairn Mills bewitched, and if she were a
queen on her throne could not have her way more than she does now."
It was of a piece with the Dame's thoughtfulness to have prepared for
me a room which I had never known, and where no memories dwelt; a
low-raftered apartment on the land-side of the house, with a window
looking over the garden and a fire burning cheerily in the corner
chimney. Dropping off to sleep, happier than I thought it possible for
me to be again, I became aware that there was some one in the room with
me. Opening my eyes, I found Nancy, with her long white gown gathered
on her breast to keep it from the floor, standing looking at me, her
head about level with my own as it lay on the pillow.
"What is it?" I asked.
"_GetinwifJock_," she answered.
"What?" I inquired again, for she had slipped her words all together.
"Get--in--wif--Jock," she repeated, with an unmistakable movement of
her small hand to turn back the bed covers.
"You darling!" I cried, and drew her in beside me.
The tenderness I felt for her as she lay on my breast was akin to
agony. I trembled at the touch of her, and what she meant to me, and
all that I had missed. And long after she fell asleep, I lay, seeing
the past with new eyes, understanding new truths, and making myself,
please God, a better man.
I woke the next morning about eight, to find her gone, but as I was
dressing by the window I saw her below me in the garden, busy with some
hens that were clucking all about her.
"Hello, Little Flower," I called to her.[1]
[1] The name came to me with no thought, but for years it was the
one she fancied most, and many of her early poems were signed
L.F.S., or sometimes by nothing save a queer little drawing, half
rose and half daisy.
(The manuscript of the "Maid with the Wistfu' Eye" in the
Edinburgh collection has only this mark as signature.)
She smiled up at me, blinking in the strong sunshine, and I hastened
down to join her.
"Are you willing to come back with me to Stair?" I asked.
"We're getting ready, Jock," she answered, putting her hand in mine.
"We?" I inquired. "Whom do you mean?"
"Nancy Stair," she said, touching herself on the breast with her small
forefinger, "Dame Dickenson, Father Michel, Uncle Ben, the two or three
dogs, the kittens, the one without a name, the drey hen, and the broken
owl----"
"Nancy Stair," I broke in, with some firmness in my voice, "it will be
utterly impossible to take all these folk up to Stair Castle."
She looked at me and went white, as grown people do when news which
chills the blood is suddenly brought to them, and struck her little
hands together as though in pain. Turning suddenly she left me and
trotted off through a cleft in the stone wall of the kitchen garden, to
which place I followed her, with remorse in my heart for the rough way
in which I had spoken.
I found her lying flat in the grass, her face hidden in her arms, her
body trembling, but she made no sound.
"What is it, dear?" I asked.
"I can't go," she said, without looking up, "I can't go, Jock."
"Why?" I inquired.
She arose at this and leaned against me, her head but little above my
knee and her eyes looking straight up into mine.
"Oh, don't you see?" she cried. "I can't go!--I can't go and leave my
people, Jock!"
I can see now that then was the time I should have been firm with her,
and have escaped the tyranny of latter years. Firm with her! Firm!
while Nancy stood leaning against me with her baby curls under my hand.
Firm! with eyes that held tears in them, tears which I had caused.
"Take them," I cried, "take the free-traders, the old wreck, the Cairn
Mills, and the new light-house, for all of me; but never let me see
that look in your face again, my little one!" and I had her in my arms,
as weak a father as I had been as lover and as husband, with the
resulting that I, John Stair, Lord of Stair and Alton in the Mearns, in
company with Dame Dickenson, Father Michel, Uncle Ben, the two or three
dogs, the kittens, the Nameless One, the "drey hen," and a small child
holding a dissipated-looking owl with but one whole feather in its
tail, drove up to the gateway of Stair Castle in a gipsy wagon of an
abandoned character, on the afternoon of a day in late February, in the
year 1773.
CHAPTER V
I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A STRANGE CHILD
Several days after this strange home-coming some business called me to
the far woods, where I was detained until the afternoon sun was well on
its way behind the hills. Nearing the house I discovered Nancy huddled
in a little bunch, sitting by her lee-lane in a spot of sunshine on the
west steps--such a lovable, touchable little bundle as she sat there,
with her chin in her hand. I looked for the exuberant welcome which I
had always received, but it was wanting; and as I stood waiting some
greeting from her, she made a quaint gesture of dismissal to me:
"Jock mustn't disturb Nancy now," she said; "Nancy's making verses."
There was in the atom's voice nothing but a statement of her wishes.
That I was her father and one to be obeyed never entered her curly
head, and her tone implied the belief that I would respect her lights
as she would mine. I can honestly state that I never was more dismayed
in my life. I entered the library, wondering what had happened in my
absence, and considering whether to send for Dickenson and make some
inquiries.
It was gone a half hour perhaps before Nancy came in through the low
window, and crossing the room to the place I sat, leaned herself
against my knee.
"Listen," she said:
Jock Stair's gone away,
Where I cannot fancy.
Jock Stair's gone away,
Gone and left his Nancy.
O, Jock, I cannot say
How much I miss you,
If you were here to-day
Nancy would kiss you.
Her cheeks were roses, her eyes shone with a misty light, and the verse
so rapturous to herself that she struck her little hands together when
she had finished.
"Do you like it, Jock? Is it pretty?" she asked.
"You blessed baby," I answered, "who taught you?"
"They _come_," she said, "and afterward Nancy's head-iks," and she
put her morsel of a hand to her forehead, as a grown person with
headache does.
"_Head-iks!_" she said again with emphasis.
The second day after this remarkable event, Sandy, who was riding by,
called over the wall to me, as I stood with Nancy by my side.
"Well," he cried, "what do you think of my girl, Nancy Stair?"
"The same that you do yourself," I retorted. "Come in and lunch with
us, won't you?"
He made no answer in words, but turning his horse toward the south
gate, entered the policy, and I sent Nancy off to tell Kirstie that Mr.
Carmichael would dine with us, for I thought it no right part of a
child's rearing that she should hear herself discussed.
As she took her small body around the boxwood, lifting it up on the
toes at every step--a way she had when pleased--"You've raised up a
wonderful child for me, Sandy," I said, and I told him of the verses
she writ the day before.
"Aye," he answered, "I didn't tell ye of them, for I wanted that ye
should find out about her verses yourself. I've a book full of them,
and she but five. But after all's said and done," he went on, "'tis the
heart of her that's more wonderful than the head. Christmas a year back
I was walking out with her, and some shiftless beggars got in the path
and asked for money. 'In truth,' I answered, knowing what frauds they
were, 'I haven't a penny in the world!' I thought the child had let the
incident pass unnoticed, but that evening the door to my bedroom opened
and Nancy, in her white nightgown, walked in. She came to the
writing-table shyly, and after putting a large copper penny on the edge
of the table, pushed it toward me with her forefinger.
"'You tan have it,' she said; 'I tan dit anover.'
"There it is, the copper penny," he cried, with a laugh, though there
were tears in his eyes, showing me the end of his watch-fob from which
the bit of money hung.
"The dear little thing had thought I really had not a penny in the
world and had brought her only one to sacrifice upon the altar of our
friendship. Oh, Jock Stair," and the union between us spoke in the
words, "how are you and I to raise up a soul like this and keep it
unspotted from the world?"
As I stated at the beginning of my story, I have no intention of saying
a word of Nancy's charities or of her verse-making save when necessary
for the clearness of my tale, but I find the time has now come when
some mention of the first must be made. It could be judged from the
anecdote already told, of her bringing "her people" to Stair, that she
formed strong attachments; but as time went by I found that this
affection extended to almost everything that lived. She was a lawless
little body, going around the grounds at her own pleasure, and bringing
back some living thing at every expedition to be cared for at the
house. These findings included lame dogs, rabbits, cats, and finally
she came into the library, breathless:
"I got a boy to-day, Jock," she said, exactly as I might have stated I
had caught a fish. "A boy," she repeated, every feature in her face
alight; "Father Michel's got him."
"For Heaven's sake, Nancy," I inquired, "what do you intend to do with
him?"
"Keep him," she answered.
Going down with her to inspect this new treasure, I found a lad eight
or ten years of age, very sickly, with a hump upon his back, and of a
notably unprepossessing appearance, carrying a fiddle, and evidently
forsaken by some strolling player. She had set her mind upon his
staying, and he stayed; but finding the trouble her accumulated
possessions were giving at Stair, she showed me within the week a bit
of her power to get her own way; a thought which afterward bore such
large results for the whole of Scotland.
The former lord, my honored father, had erected under some trees far
off by the burn water several small stone houses for the servants which
my beautiful Irish mother brought with her from her own country.
Because my bachelor ways had needed little service these dwellings had
gradually fallen into disuse and disrepair, the few serving people I
required finding abundant lodgment in the attic chambers. These tiny
houses, built of gray stone, with ivy growing around the windows, had
taken Nancy's fancy from the instant her eyes first lighted on them.
The evening before her sixth birthday, as we stood together watching
the sun go down, a thought for the following day came to me.
"And what do you want for your birthday, Little Flower!" I asked.
"The little houses," she said, leaning her head against me.
"What for?" I inquired, thinking perhaps that she believed them play
houses.
"Dame Dickenson, Father Michel, Uncle Ben----" she stopped.
"To live in?" I inquired.
"To keep," she answered quietly.
The more I thought it over the more pleased I became with the idea that
these devoted people, who gave their lives to Nancy, should be
rewarded. I was perhaps especially pleased at the thought of doing
something for Father Michel, of whom I would now be speaking.
He was at this time a young man, still under twenty-five, who had come,
none knew from what place, to live at the Cairn Mills with the dear old
priest who married Marian and me. What tragedy had been behind him none
knew, but Dickenson told me that from the time he first saw the child
his heart went out to her, and that after the meeting there was no
keeping him from the old inn, where he finally took up his residence as
one of the family.
Old Uncle Ben, whose sea tales were one of Nancy's chiefest joys, and
whose wooden leg was her greatest perplexity, I felt deserved some
recognition of his service, and, to shorten the telling, in less than a
month these houses were occupied as Nancy had desired they should
be--Father Michel being given the large one, with Nancy's dwarfed boy,
Dame Dickenson the next, and Uncle Ben becoming the proud occupant of a
third. It seemed a sort of child's play to me at first, and Mrs. Opie's
statement that I built these houses at this period for the work on the
Burnside, is entirely without foundation.
Some credit has been bestowed upon me as well for the working out of a
labor problem here, but it is honor undeserved, for the thing began in
the entirely unintentional manner which I have set down, and the
working out of it came at a later date through Nancy's thinking and the
zeal and goodness of Father Michel.[2]
[2] It was about this period that the "Lace School" was regularly
begun, which occurred by no plan of mine, but in the following
way: Sandy had had two young women from the north for house
service at Arran, and finding them unused to labor, proposed that
Dame Dickenson should teach them the Irish lace making which she
had learned in her own country. And in a short time there were
nine or ten young girls of the neighborhood under regular
instruction in this industry.
CHAPTER VI
NANCY BEGINS HER STUDY OF THE LAW
There has been some delay in bringing Hugh Pitcairn into my story, and,
as I read that which I have written, I seem to have set him down in a
scant and dry manner little calculated to do justice to his many
virtues. These virtues, however, were of the kind which made him a fine
citizen rather than a jolly companion over a bowl of brose. He was a
tall man, heavily built, with a large face, thick bristly hair, and
blue eyes set extraordinarily far apart. The bridge of his nose being
noticeably low, this peculiarity gave the upper part of his face the
appearance of being very sparsely settled. It was Robert Burns, I
remember, who made this descriptive observe concerning him. A lowland
body, but kin to the Pitcairns of the north, he had come to the High
School dependent for his education upon the generosity of a rich uncle,
and from the time he entered was easily first in all of his classes. Of
an unbending rectitude, unmerciful in his judgments, analytical,
penetrating, and accumulative, he was at an early age destined for two
things--success and unpopularity. He left the High School with us, to
enter upon the study of the law with Maxwell, of Dalgleish, and rising
rapidly in his profession was at the age of thirty-three recognized as
the soundest, most learned, and bitterest tongued lawyer in Auld
Reekie.
Justice to his mind was a simple thing; a man had either broken the law
or he had not; if he had, he should be punished. "Extenuating
circumstances" was a phrase used only by the sentimental and the
guilty. I recall, as I write, his telling me with some pride and an
amused smile of a certain occasion, when he had wrung a verdict from a
jury against their sympathies, that the spectators had hissed him on
his way out of court.
"He's not a man at all. He's only a Head," Sandy Carmichael said of him
once, and I find enough truth in the statement to make it worth setting
down.
His conceit of himself was high, as is the case with many self-made
men, but he had a fine code of conduct for the direction of his private
affairs, was aggressively honest and fearless, and an earnest believer
in God, himself, and the Scots law.
Like other great men he had his failings, however, and he set up to be
a judge of music and poetry, for which he had as vile an ear as could
be conceived; and to hear him read from Ramsay or Fergusson was an
infliction not unnecessarily to be borne. One night, I remember, in
'86, Burns and I stopped at Pitcairn's on our way home from Creech's
and got him to read Leith Races and Caller Oysters, and Rab afterward
went out and rolled over and over in a snow-drift, roaring with
laughter, till some of the town-guard, who chanced to be going by, were
for arresting him on the charge of drunkenness.
It may be easily judged from this description that my friend Sandy and
he were at opposite poles from each other, as I have said, and as time
passed this dislike increased until it became the chiefest vexation of
my life. If I mentioned Hugh's name to Sandy, he would maintain a
disdainful silence or turn the talk with abruptness; while if Sandy's
name was spoken before Pitcairn, the great lawyer would raise his
eyebrows, shrug his shoulders, or make some biting criticism which
rendered me resentful and highly uncomfortable as well.
As soon as I was firmly fixed in my old home again, Pitcairn began to
drop in on me, as his practise had been before my marriage, and his
attitude to Nancy was a thing humorous to see. Hers to him was not
without its droll side as well, for when he was present, especially if
he talked of his cases, the child would sit on a stool, with some live
thing held in her lap, literally devouring him with her eyes as he
narrated the story of some criminal whom he had hanged or transported.
I have seen her imitate his gesture as he talked, and sigh with relief
when the jury handed in its verdict and the culprit's doom was finally
settled. It was not long, however, before she evinced a strong dislike
to being left alone with him, and if I had occasion to leave the room
where the three of us were together she would invariably follow me.
In an unfortunate moment, driving by the old court in a pony chaise, I
stopped, knowing that Pitcairn had a case on, and took Nancy in "to see
him at his work." Every little while after that I would find her
disappeared from the house, and on going to the court would see her
midget pony fastened outside, and the little chestnut head and big gray
eyes looking over the back of the high bench in front; for the
officers, who knew she was my daughter, soon grew to understand her
ways and let her in without parley. I can solemnly affirm that I
thought this a most unwise way for a child to spend her time, but there
was something about Nancy herself which prevented my giving orders. I
can not say that she ever disobeyed me, and yet, I knew then, as I know
now, that had I tried to stop her she would have evaded me, and as it
turned out in the end, it was all for the best.
I who was with her day by day could feel her growing dislike of Hugh
Pitcairn, and once she came to me after a visit to the court, her
cheeks flaming, her eyes dilated, and her body literally shaking with
emotion.
"He cursed at Pitcairn as they dragged him out," she said, and then
bringing her little fists down on my knee, she cried with apparent
irrelevancy:
"It's not the way, Jock! It's not the way!"
Less than a fortnight after I was sitting over some accounts in the
east room, when Hugh Pitcairn entered unannounced.
"Well, Jock Stair," he said, "that daughter of yours lost me as pretty
a case to-day as I ever had."
"Indeed, Hugh," I returned, "I'm in no way answerable for that."
"I don't know about that!" he broke in. "This case was one of a young
woman who had taken a purse. She established the fact that she was a
widow with two small children, one of whom was dying and needed
medicine. I thought at first that she borrowed one of the children,
they frequently do, but it was established hers. I drew attention to
the anarchy which would inevitably follow if each individual were
allowed to help himself to his neighbor's belongings, and the jury was
with me. As I was concluding, that child of yours slipped from her
place, climbed the steps on the side, and heeding judges and jury less
than Daft Jamie, went straight toward the prisoner, pulled herself up
on a chair beside the woman, and putting her arms around the culprit's
neck, as though to defend her against the devil himself, turned her
eyes in my direction and fairly glowered at me.
"The spectators cheered, and a woman in the front cried, 'God bless the
baby,' while the judge--Carew it was, a sentimentalist and a menace to
the bar--dried the tears from his eyes openly, _and the jury decided
against me without leaving the box_," he thundered, as though I were
in some way responsible.
I groaned. Taking this for sympathy, he went on:
"I'm glad ye feel about it as I do."
"To be frank with you, Pitcairn," I answered, "I don't; and it's not
for your lost case I groan, but for what is likely to come to me
because of it."
Nor was I mistaken. Just at the gloaming time, while there was still a
little of the yellow hanging in the west, I saw the figure of a woman
with a baby in her arms outlined clear against the sky on the top of
the hill, and by her side trotted the little creature who had all my
heart, leading her home.
"There," said I to Pitcairn, pointing to them, "that's what your
inadequacy at the law has cost me. There are three more people whom
Nancy has fetched home for me to support."
"I wonder at ye sometimes, Jock Stair," he cried at this, "I wonder at
ye!--for in many ways ye seem an intelligent man--that ye can let a
small girl-child have her way with you as ye do."
The outer door closed as he spoke, and I heard the patter of little
feet.
"She's not being raised right. She'll be a creature of no breeding. Ye
should take her----"
At this the door opened and Nancy came in. At the sight of Pitcairn she
stopped on her way toward me, and her black brows came together in an
ecstasy of rage. Putting her little body directly in front of him she
looked him full in the eye.
"Devil!" she said, and walked out of the room, leaving us standing
staring at each other, speechless, and I noted with glee that, on one
occasion at least, I saw Hugh Pitcairn abashed.
This occurrence in the court did not pass in the town unnoticed, for
Bishop Ames, of St. Margaret's, on the following Sunday preached from
the text: "And a little child shall lead them," telling the story from
the pulpit; while the Sentinel of the next week spoke of Nancy with
flattery and tenderness. The publicity given to the affair alarmed me
in no small degree, and I reasoned with myself that a child who had
such fearlessness and such disrespect for established ways was a
problem which somebody wiser than myself should have the handling of.
There were three other occurrences which fell about this time which
brought this thought still more vividly to my mind, the first of these
bringing the knowledge that she had no religion. Entering the hall one
morning I met the little creature coming from the stairway, dragging an
enormous book behind her as though it were a go-cart. She had put a
stout string through the middle of the volume, and with this passed
round her waist was making her way with it toward the library.
"Jock," she said, backing at sight of me and sitting down upon the
great volume as though it were a footstool, "did you ever read a book
called Old Testament?"
"Not so much as I should," I answered, realizing with a strange jolt of
mind that it was the Bible she was dragging after her.
"I got it in the attic," she said, as she climbed upon my knee, "and I
thought at first it was a joke-book. And after I thought it was a
fairy-book; but as I go on, _there seems more to it_."
And the second of these episodes was as disconcerting:
The dwarfed boy was Nancy's peculiar care among the Burnside people,
and the question as to why he was made "crookit," as she called it, was
one which I had never been able to answer to her satisfaction.
Coming in one day with a little bunch of violets for me, she stopped
before leaving the room, and said, as though telling me a funny secret:
"Jamie Henderlin took Nancy's money."
"What?" I cried.
"Yes," she said, "took it out of the little bag when he thought I was
not looking."
"What did you do?" I inquired.
"I?" she turned away shyly, "I made out that I didn't see him."
"But, Nancy," I said, "that was not really kind. As he grows older he
will steal."
"Take," she interrupted firmly.
"He will take from other people."
"He is a dwarf, Jock," she said, with a sweet irrelevance, which had
its logic, however, in her kind heart.
"That doesn't make it right."
"He wanted it more than I did," she went on; "I don't need it----"
"That doesn't excuse him, either."
"Perhaps," she said, "if you and I, mine Jock, were made as he is we
might do something worse than he has done. _People laugh at him!_ He
mayn't be right. I'm not saying that he is right; but I _am_ saying
that _I_ am not going to hurt his feelings. The Lord has done that
enough already."
And the third one, never told by Mrs. Opie, and a fortunate thing it
was for us, had to do with her skill in the use of a pen. She was still
a very little child, lying on a rug by the fire, reading out of the
Bible, as I sat at the desk looking over some accounts which would not
come right. There was the matter of a draft for five pounds, with my
own name to it, which I had certainly no remembrance of ever having
signed.
"What's the matter, Jock?" said Nancy, seeing my knit brow.
"They won't come right, Little Flower," I answered.
She came over to me and looked at the accounts.
"Nancy made one just like Jock's," she said.
"What?" I cried, with consternation.
"Nancy--made--one--just--like--Jock's," she repeated. "A poor lady who
was very sick," she explained, "was by here one day you had gone. I
made one for her."
"Nancy," I said, taking her on my knee, "do you know that it is a crime
to sign another person's name without his leave?"
"How crime?"
"Well, it's the thing people get locked in jails for----"
She laughed out loud and lay back on my arm at this.
"It's all mine, isn't it?" she asked.
I had told this so often that I couldn't gainsay it.
"_Wrong to write Sandy's name, not wrong to write Jock's_," she
crooned in a sort of song; and this was as far as I got with her
concerning it.
I told Sandy these three tales, and he roared with glee.
"Her morals are all tail first," he said, "though very sound! But
she'll have us in the poor farm and herself in jail if she keeps this
up."
CHAPTER VII
I TAKE NANCY'S EDUCATION IN HAND
Father Michel, Sandy, and Hugh Pitcairn were the only ones who knew
enough of the child to make their advices on the subject of an
education for her of any value, and it was the priest whom I consulted
first.
"My lord," he said, after listening to my tale, "it's a peculiar case,
and one which, I openly state, is beyond me. In every bout with her I
am routed by a certain lawless sincerity of utterance, or by her
fastening her eyes upon me and asking, 'Why?' or 'Who says that?' She
is gentleness and sweetness itself; but any attempt which I have ever
made to instruct her in religion has been utterly without results.
Sometimes she goes to sleep, other whiles she laughs and questions me
in a way that makes the flesh crawl. When I told her of the crucifixion
of our blessed Lord, she fell into such a frenzy that it brought on the
aching head and fever, which you will remember caused your lordship
such alarm. We have the raising of a genius upon us, and by that I mean
one who knows more, sees deeper, feels more keenly than is given to
most or to any except the few. Miss Nancy is a fearless soul, a
passionate, loving, powerful nature, and my belief is that the only way
to control her is to let her develop her own powers in her own way. It
is a hard question, a subtle question, my lord; but I believe it is the
only way."
Sandy was in London at the time, but the same day on which I had the
talk with Father Michel I sent for Hugh Pitcairn, asking him to dine
with me and talk over the Problem of Nancy.
"It's like this, Hugh," said I, as we sat over some wine of his
particular fancy, "God has been kind enough to send me a wonderful
child, and I want to do what's right by her. I want her to have the
reasonable education of a man and to keep her as far as possible from
the influence of the usual unthinking female. I neither want her
instructed in false modesty, lying, nor the deception of the male sex.
It is on the male virtues that I want the accent placed; bravery,
honesty, self-knowledge, and responsibility for her words and conduct;
good manly virtues that most women know only as words of the
dictionary."
Hugh stared across at me, and there was a look in his eyes of being
tolerant toward crass ignorance as he answered:
"There are whiles when you are more humorous than others, Jock Stair.
This is your most fanciful time yet. There's no such thing possible,
and ye can just rest by that! Ye can't make a woman into a man by any
method of rearing, for there are six thousand years of ancestry to
overcome. That's somewhat, and with the female physiology and the Lord
himself against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter
reared like other women and to fulfil woman's great end."
"And what's that?" I asked.
"To marry and bring children into the world," he returned, as certainly
as he would have stated the time of day.
"When all's said and done and theorized over concerning the female
sex," he went on, "ye just find yourself back at that. Ye can't educate
a woman as ye can a man; she's not got the same faculties to take in
the information that ye offer her. Why," he cried, "ye can't give her
any sense of abstract right or wrong. In order to protect her young she
has inherited certain keen faculties and instincts which we poor male
creatures are without; but from the minute she becomes a wife or mother
she ceases in some degree to have a conscience. No," he finished, "when
a woman's emotions are stirred you can't believe a word she says."
"Ye've seen for yourself that Nancy's different from the girl children
ye've known," I said, with some remonstrance in my voice.
"She has power, true. And magnetism, true. And great beauty," he
answered, counting these on his fingers as though they were points in
law; "but give her a man's education, and what have ye done? Simply
made a dangerous contrivance of her to get her own way. I tell ye,
Jock," he said in conclusion, "ye can't civilize women. They are not
intended to be civilized."
The longer I thought this talk over, the more firmly I became fixed in
the belief that Hugh knew nothing concerning the matter, and that my
own ideas on the subject were the best, and in less than a week I had
my own old school-books down, and was casting around for a tutor for
Nancy, firm in my intention of "bringing her up a perfect gentleman,"
as Hugh derisively stated. I fixed on Latin for her, and sound
mathematics, and later Greek and Logic, and when I showed this list of
studies to Pitcairn, I recall that he looked at me, with the usual pity
in his glance, and asked dryly:
"Why not tiger shooting and the high-jump?"
Sandy was from home at this time, having been called to a dying wife,
poor fellow, or I should have taken advice with him concerning a
certain old teacher of his boy Danvers, for whom I had a great liking.
While awaiting his return I took the Little Flower into my confidence,
and found her delighted that she was to be "teached." There was one
point upon which she was firm, however, which was that none but Father
Michel should be her instructor, and the good man, with many a dubious
shake of his head, entered upon his work the following week.
Often after this time I would come upon them in the small writing-room
where the studies were conducted, to find the little one standing by
the father's knee, as he held the book for her, or sitting in his lap
looking up at him with a funny earnestness, as though they were playing
together, going over
----rego
----regere
----rexi
----rectus
or some such work, and amazing us both by her capacities.
On her ninth birthday Hugh gave her the ponderous tome from which so
much of Mrs. Opie's facts have been obtained, and into this volume she
put her verses and her thoughts just as they came into her curly head,
standing upon a stool to make her high enough to reach the
writing-table with comfort. There was an unspoken understanding between
us that I was at liberty to read this book, but never in her presence.
One night after she had spent the afternoon at work upon it, I drew it
toward me, to find a new set of verses beginning:
The heifer by the milking pail,
Whose neck-cloth is so white, etc.
and underneath the following, in which the influence of the Good Book
was surely visible:
"MY COMANDMENCE!
1. I must love Jock Stair first of all created things, for he was
my mother's friend and mine.
2. Since the Lord has cast the poor from him I must do what I can
for them.
3. I must not be afraid of any livving thing, for no gentleman can
show forth fear.
4. I must not wish Huey Macrath from Stair, tho' he snuffles and
his ears are large, for he was here before I was and is very
ritechus.
5. I must not swear, tho' Sandy does, and to say dam is not godly,
for a girl.
More to morrow,
L. F. S."
I was prouder of these than I have words to tell, seeing that already
she was beginning to consider conduct. And an event which followed soon
after made me plume myself still further. I had taught her to play
chess, and Danvers Carmichael being home from his English school, Sandy
and I made a merry wager of a game for a guinea a side, each of us
backing the talent of our own offspring. Nancy, who was about half
Danvers' height, drew the whites, and led off by the good conservative
opening of the king's knight, the boy replying well and putting the
pieces out after the usual fashion. Nancy unexpectedly played her
queen. "Check," she said. Dand interposed a pawn. Nancy moved a knight.
"Check," she said again. Dand was forced to move his king, and in three
moves I could see the game was hers. Suddenly she retreated and began a
process which never in my whole experience with her had I seen
duplicated. She trifled ineffectually with her men, moving them hither
and thither with no purpose or aim; and, to crown all, after one of
these fruitless moves, the boy cried, "Mate," placing his queen
triumphantly from one side of the board to the other. Nancy's eyes
shone with pleasure.
"You beat me," she cried. "Sandy won the guinea, Jock."
I can not recall when a small thing annoyed me as much as this one did,
and the next morning, finding the Little Flower making verses on the
west wall, I sat down to get some explanation from her.
"Nancy," I began, "why did you play so badly at chess last night?"
The shy look with which I was familiar came into her face.
"He can't play chess, Jock," she said.
"I know it," I cried; "I saw that; but why did you disgrace your
father, young woman, answer me that?"
"Oh," she answered, with great earnestness, "do you no see? He's a
man-child, and his father was looking on; and it would have been a fair
disgrace for him to be beaten at the game by me, who am only a girl,
and younger. I couldn't do it, Jock," she cried, and her cheeks flushed
with a glorious pink color. "I couldn't do it. No gentleman could!"
I glowed with pride at the sight of her, my hopes rose high, and I told
the story, together with her "Comandmence," to Hugh Pitcairn for his
admiration and approval.
He was as unmoved, however, at the end of my narration as at the
beginning of it.
"She's no a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she
begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest.
They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye
can't change their natures any more than ye can stop fire from
burning."
Later he began to alter his opinion of her, however, and it fell, I
think, largely through his own vanity. I have told of the scene in the
court which resulted in Jeanie Henderlin and her two children coming to
be Burn-folk, and from that time Nancy would turn back every little
while to her interest in the law. There were some compilations of
celebrated cases among my books, and for a while her talk ran of the
trials for murder and poisoning and the scuttling of ships, until I
wondered where the thing would lead. Part of these accounts were
briefed; others contained the evidence entire, indictments, questions
and answers, the judges' instructions, and the verdict rendered, all
with much legal verbiage and twisting.
One night, in her twelfth year, she asked Hugh Pitcairn some questions
concerning a poison case, which happened to be one he had studied with
interest himself, and he denounced the verdict as one unlawful and
obtained by sentiment rather than from the evidence itself, promising
to send another book to her containing his own view of the matter. Here
was a ground in which a friendship with Hugh could take firm root, and
from that time on there were heavy volumes coming to Nancy from the
great barrister constantly, and to hear her quizzed by him concerning
the law on certain points was one of the most humorous bits of my life.
I never rightly understood this trend of Nancy's mind. In her talks
with me I found it was never to discover the naked law on a point, but
how punishment might be evaded, that interested her. "If he'd said
this," or "had he left that unsaid," or "if the defense had proven,"
was the burden of her remarks, and I thought at times that if Hugh saw
the thing as I did he would find at bottom of all her lawing only a
woman's desire to discover how people could be got out of trouble,
whether deserving punishment or not.
In her fifteenth year, when I was obliged to go to London concerning
the Forfeited Estates, I had her with me; but even then the lawing
between Pitcairn and herself did not cease, for packets passed between
them constantly, and soon after our return, Nancy's being eighteen at
the time, I found that she had wrought a change in him, as well as in
the rest of us.
"Jock Stair," he said to me one night, as though addressing a jury, "I
told you once that it was impossible to civilize a woman, that all
education just went over their heads and affected their natures none at
all; that it was beyond them to conceive an abstract right or wrong;
that I had never seen one who had a jot of public spirit. I feel a
sense of duty in telling you I've changed. I have seen one. It's your
daughter, Nancy Stair!"
Chapter VIII
THE DAFT DAYS
We came back to Scotland in July, 1786, and one day, late in the month,
Nancy came in to tell me that she intended having a birthday party that
same evening.
"Whose?" said I.
"Mine," she answered.
"It's all very well, but your birthday is not in July----"
"I never fancied March to be born in," she replied imperturbably, "and
I've changed it."
"And who are you going to bid to the feast of your adopted birthday?"
"You," she said, "and Sandy, and Jamie Henderlin, for he's back from
Germany, and I want to hear him play."[3]
[3] After Jamie Henderlin became famous for his violin playing it
was noised abroad that I alone was his patron. But the truth of
the matter is that Sandy shared with me the expense of his German
studies.
It is altogether hopeless to set in cold words the charm of her as she
stood before me that morning in her white frock, her hair in a bunch of
curls on top of her head and some posies in her hand. I have seen many
pretty women in my time, some few handsome ones, but Nancy Stair is the
only one I ever saw who deserved to be described as beautiful. The
fashion-prints of the day were full of her, and I have one account
before me, printed at the very time of which I write, 1786:
"Miss Stair," it reads, "is just back from London, where for two years
she has studied her voice with Trebillini.
"Her beauty is bewildering; her gowns the acme of elegance and feminine
grace; her wit, her eyes, her lips, the toast of the town. Her songs, a
second printing of which is being clamored for, are being read over the
Three Kingdoms, with a letter from his Royal Majesty, George III, on
the fly-leaf commending them. When it is known that she is to attend
service at St. Giles the clubs are emptied and half the beaux of the
town may be found on their knees where they can have a view of her. The
greatest statesmen and lawyers of the day are her intimate friends, and
the crowds follow her in admiration when she drives through the
streets."
A good picture, but scant, for there is not a word in it of her heart,
the kindest and bravest that ever beat in woman's breast, nor her great
love and tenderness to all created things.
On the afternoon of this dinner I fixed my mind definitely upon a
matter upon which I had been pondering for some time. Coming in from
the bank about five, I called Nancy to me, and handed her the box I
carried.
"Is it a present for me?" she asked, her face aglow.
"A present for you, Little Flower, from the proudest father in the
world."
As I spoke she opened the casket and her eyes fell on the gems of which
I have already written--the ornaments of the ladies of Stair for
hundreds of years gone by--but for none, save one, so fair as she. I
would have sold Stair itself, if need be, to give her such joy. The
emerald necklace, which had been a year in the making, a brooch of the
same stones, with diamonds glittering in flower clusters, I found, were
the ones she liked the best, and she brought a mirror to sit beside me
as she tried them all, one by one, upon her hair, her neck, and arms,
demanding that Dame Dickenson and Huey be brought to look at her.
And a curious thing fell, that, as she was engaged with the jewels, a
note was brought from Mr. Pitcairn, which she read without interest,
saying after;
"Does he think I care anything about 'Lorimer _vs._ The Crown' with a
necklace like this?" and I fell to wondering, with some dismay, what
Hugh would think concerning her masculine mind if he had heard the
speech.
We were awaiting a summons to the meal that evening when Nancy entered;
a new Nancy, and one so wondrous to behold that Sandy and I started at
the sight of her. She wore a gown of yellow crêpe embroidered in gold,
low and sleeveless, with a fold in the back, after the fashion of the
ladies of Watteau, and a long train falling far behind. Her hair was
gathered high and dressed with jewels which sparkled as well upon her
throat and hands. The thing that marked her most, an alluring
touchableness, was doubly present as she came toward us, laughing, with
a profound courtesy.
"My Lord Stair and Mr. Carmichael, you who have had the raising of me,
how do you like the work of your hands?"
"Ye can not throw us off our guard by braw clothes, Lady," Sandy
responded, with a laugh, "for we know you only too well, and to our
distress of mind and pocket. Ye're a spoiled bit, in spite of the
severe discipline your father and I have reared ye by. Here's a thing I
got from a peddler-body for ye," he ended.
She opened the morocco case which he handed her, to find a necklet of
pearls with diamonds clasping them, and the tears came into her eyes as
she kissed him for the gift.
"I can not thank ye enough!--never, in all my life--for all ye've done
for me, Sandy. I love you," she says, "and well you know it; and with
that we'll go to dinner. I go with Jamie," she added, slipping her arm
through his, "for ye must learn that genius ever goes before wealth and
titles," and with a laugh she and Jamie Henderlin went out before us.
After dinner we sat outside for a while, Sandy and I smoking, as Nancy
and Jamie talked of the outer world and the celebrities of London and
Paris. The lamps from the little settlement on the burn twinkled
through the trees, while farther off the lights from the town of
Edinburgh shone soft and silvery beneath the glimmering moon. We could
hear the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cows in the long
lane down by the Holm and the bells of the old Tron deaving our ears by
striking the hour of eight.
There is little use, with Jamie playing to the greatest people of the
world at the moment of my writing, for me to tell the surprise and
delight we had in his music; or the new joy that Sandy felt in Nancy's
singing, it being the first time he had heard her voice for over two
years.
"Do you want to hear some of my own verses?" she asked him at length.
"Mr. Thomson has been kind enough to set some of them to music." And
then she sang, for the first time to my hearing, those two songs of
hers which were afterward whistled, sung, hummed, or shouted by every
one in Scotland, from the judge on the bench to the caddie on the
streets:
Soutar Sandy,
Wed wi' Mandy
On a Monday morning,
and the set of three double verses, since published in the Glasgow
Sentinel, "The Maid wi' the Wistfu' Eye,"[4] which, as I hope for
Heaven, Rab Burns told me one night at Creech's he envied her for
having written.
[4] Poems by Nancy Stair, Pailey Edition, pages 44, 67.
Suddenly, as she was looking over the music, she began to hum, and Dame
Dickenson and I exchanged a look of strange remembrance, as, with no
accompaniment whatever, and as though the thought had just seized her,
she poured forth her soul and her voice together in that old gipsy
tune--Marian's song, as I have always called it:
"Love that is life
Love that is death,
Love that is mine--"
changed at the last into:
"Love that is wrong,
Love that is strong,
Love that is death--"
and as we listened, taken out of ourselves by her beauty and the
tragedy of her voice, a figure came from the gloom into the light of
the doorway, and a gay voice cried:
"Shall I be arrested for trespass, Lord Stair?" and to our amazement
Danvers Carmichael stood before us.
I had never seen the lad since the day it was determined to make an
Oxford man of him, instead of following out his father's wishes and
fetching him home to our own University, and the surprise I felt at
sight of him, a grown man and a monstrous fine one, gave me something
of a jolt in my mind at the rapid passing of the years.
He was tall and handsome, with bright, brave ways, a distinguished
carriage, and a delightful speaking voice. His face was clean shaven,
showing a chin heavy but with fine lines, and lips which curved back
complacently over teeth of singular whiteness. His mouth denoted pride
as well as obstinacy, which, taken with the brooding look in the eye,
gave me the impression of a nature both jealous and passionate. One of
his greatest charms, and I felt it on the instant of our meeting, was a
gay but unassertive manner, possible only to those who have had a
secured position from birth. I noted as well a fine sense in his
relation to others, and believe that if he had come a-begging we would
have known him to be gently born. He wore high boots, a broad hat, and
a handsome riding suit of light cloth, with a cloak hanging from one
shoulder. He carried himself with jauntiness and surety; gave one's
hand a hearty grip, and, to sum it all up, was one of the finest men I
have ever seen, and a son of whom even Sandy Carmichael had a right to
be proud, in spite of the fact that he was a man of fashion and
something of a dandy. He had as well a certain romantic appearance and
a glance which made young girls drop their eyes before him and set old
ladies to talking of their first loves.
"When Dand Carmichael goes up High Street I never saw a woman looking
down it," Bob Blake said of him once, which sums it all up very well.
Upon being asked by his father as to the suddenness of his appearance
among us, he said with a laugh:
"I came with some men to Leith, and the Leith fly set me down at the
door of The Star and Garter by the Tron church about an hour ago. I
asked mine host of the inn if I could get a horse from him to ride to
Arran House; upon which he told me that there would be no use in my
going to Arran as Mr. Carmichael was from home, being bid to dinner at
Lord Stair's; that it was the eighteenth birthday of Mistress Nancy
Stair, and that Jamie Henderlin had come from Germany with his violin
the week before and was to play at Stair House after the dinner; that
the Lord Stair, who was a fond father, had but this afternoon given the
family jewels to Mistress Nancy, and that one ruby alone would buy the
inn; that Mr. Carmichael had brought a present for her of a pearl
necklace with diamonds in it of great value; that Mistress Nancy Stair,
who was the handsomest girl in three kingdoms, had a yellow gown, a
great deal of which lay on the floor, the stuff of which he understood
had come from France; that Dame Dickenson had made a birthday cake, and
there was a salmon for the dinner with egg sauce, and that eggs were
uncommon high and the tax on whisky a thing not to be borne. There were
some other trifling details he mentioned," he said with a wave of his
hand and a laugh, "which have unfortunately escaped my memory."
There was much real humor in his relation of the inn gossip, and the
brightness of his presence caused a gayer air to our small festivity.
Our talk brought Nancy to the door, where she stood in a shaft of light
looking down at us.
"What are you laughing about?" she cried.
At the sound of her voice Danvers sprang to his feet and went toward
her with outstretched hand, but at the sight of her beauty or her
jewels, I know not which, he changed his mind and made a sweeping bow
instead.
"And this," he said, "is the Miss Nancy of whom I have heard so
much----"
"Sandy's apt to mention me," she answered demurely.
"He never did you justice," he responded, with a smile toward his
father. "In all but this he's the best parent in the world, but he's
fallen short in the matter of letting me know about you."
"If ye'd stayed in ye're own country ye'd have known," retorted Sandy,
from behind his pipe.
"I have been away too long," Dand answered him, but the look was at
Nancy.
"Do you stay now?" she asked.
"I had intended to go back at the end of the week, but I have changed
my mind. With my father's leave, I'll spend the summer----"
"It does not take you long to change your mind," Nancy returned with a
smile.
"No," he said, and here he leaned forward, took her hand and kissed it.
"No! It took me just one second."
I knew that she was not to be moved by any admiration which happened to
come by. She paid a gracious attention to Danvers Carmichael, it is
true, insisting, though he stoutly affirmed to the contrary, that she
knew him to be hungry, that one could not _dine_ at The Star and
Garter, ordering a small table with some cold fowl and a bottle of wine
for him, all as though it were the thing nearest her heart. I, who knew
her, understood that if it had been a tramp body from the lowlands who
had come upon us she would have given the same thought to him and
forgotten him by morning; but to a man, London bred and unaware as yet
with whom his dealings lay, her solicitude for him might readily be
interpreted as having something more purely personal in its nature.
And this day was to be marked by another event than the home-coming of
Danvers; an event which, if it had occurred six weeks later, might have
changed the destiny of many lives, and given England another Premier
than William Pitt. Before we parted for the night, Danvers took from
his pocket a book, which he handed to Nancy with a bow.
"It's not family jewels; nor yet a trifling necklace of pearls; nor can
I honestly affirm it was intended as a gift, but if you will accept it
from me as a birthday token it will make me very glad," and he handed
the volume to her.
"Poetry," she said with a pleased smile, "and in the Scot. Robert
Burns! Is he a new man?"
"He's a plowman in Ayr, somewhere, and I have it that his verses are
something fine. I've not read them myself, and the thought comes to me
a little late that they may not be the fittest reading for a young
lady, but your father will judge of it for you."
Sandy and I laughed aloud at this.
"The reason these ill-natured gentlemen laughed at you as they did was
because of the lax way they have brought me up," Nancy explained.
"They've let me 'gang my ain gate' since I was five. I've had no right
raising," she said, and the very sweetness of her as she said it would
have made any man keen for the rearing which produced her. "So,
considering my superior knowledge of evil, I'll look the book over
myself and see if it is the kind of reading I should like to put in the
hands of Sandy and Jock."
Danvers Carmichael's eyes glowed with humor as he joined in the laugh
with us.
"Under your careful bringing up they should be fine fellows, these
fathers of ours," he laughed.
"I've done the best I could by them," Nancy answered demurely; "but on
the whole, Mr. Carmichael, I think I have succeeded better with Jamie
Henderlin."
When Nancy withdrew, Danvers went with her to the foot of the stairs,
holding her in talk for a few minutes, with looks of passionate
approval in his eyes.
Before we went to our rooms, for I insisted that they should remain all
night at Stair, the talk turned upon marriage in some way, and Sandy
rallied his son upon his bachelorhood.
"Twenty-four years old," he said, "and a bachelor still! Why, I was a
father at that time. Never mind," he continued, "never mind, my lad.
Your time is coming!"
"In truth, I think it has come," Danvers returned, simply, and the
glance that went with the words was not toward his father, but toward
me.
I was lying in my bed with eyes staring wide at the ceiling, recalling
Nancy's real birthday more than eighteen years gone by; thinking of
Marian; wondering if she knew the beauty of the child we had; demanding
from the Great Father of all that she should know--should remember
Nancy and me; that she, the mother and wife, might, in some way unknown
to us, still be a part of our earthly living; recalling Danvers with
approval, dreaming perhaps that Nancy and he, at no far date, might
marry and so cement a friendship between two middle-aged gentlemen who
had foregathered with each other many years before, when I heard a
light tap at my door.
"Who is it?" I cried.
"It's Nancy," answered the voice. "May I come in?"
She pushed the door ajar and entered in a long white dressing-gown,
carrying in one hand a branch of candles and in the other a book, with
her finger marking the place.
It is exceedingly hard for me to describe the beauty of her, the
uplifted look on her face and the shine of her eye, for this beauty
seemed kindled by a fire from within, and she had with it an excitement
as of one who had heard pleasant news or to whom great treasures have
just been given.
"Jock," she asked, "have you been sleeping?"
"No," said I.
"Oh, listen then," she cried, "for indeed it was not possible that I
should sleep without telling you what's come to me. It's this Burns
man," she went on; "no one, not even Shakespeare, has spoken so. It's
as though he taught a new religion. It's kindness all through, and
charity and love; with rhymes upon rhymes, as if it were child's play
for him to make verses. It's raised me out of myself. It's what I've
always known was true. It's the liberty, equality, and fraternity of
France. It's the 'all men were born free and equal' of the colonies.
It's all, and more, that I've tried to work out on the burn-side. It's
like a great voice calling. Oh," she cried, "Ramsay's nothing to him,
and Fergusson but a gusty child."
"Nancy, darling," I said, "have ye risen in the middle of the night to
tear down the idols of your childhood? Let me see the book," I cried,
for a bit of rhyme was a choicer draught to me than a glass of an old
vintage.
"Let me read ye this," she said--I can remember now the slant white
light of a late moon coming in through the casement, the honeysuckle's
breath, and her face, half in light, half in shadow, as she read the
Epistle to Davie. As I listened I sat upright, more engrossed, wider
eyed; and when she came to those two stanzas, the greatest of their
kind ever penned, I was off my feet with her, and on my oath we sat
till the purpling flush came in the east, in an ecstasy of appreciation
of him "who walked in glory and in joy behind his plow upon the
mountain-side":
"What tho', like commoners of air,
We wander out, we know not where,
_But_ either house or hall _without_
Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, an' foaming floods
Are free alike to all
In days when daisies deck the ground,
And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound,
To see the coming year:
On _braes_ when we please then, _heights_.
We'll sit an' _sowth_ a tune; _whistle softly_
_Syne_ rhyme till't, we'll
time _till't_, _afterwards. to it._
An' sing't when we hae done."
"Oh, Jock," she says, "I've done it often; haven't you?"
"It's no in titles nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'non bank.
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in makin' muckle mair
It's no in books, it's no in _lear_ _learning_
To make us truly blest:
If happiness hae not her seat
An' centre in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest;
Nae treasures nor pleasures
Could make us happy lang;
The heart ay's the part ay
That makes us right or wrang."
--BURNS, 1785.
"It's just grand," I said, "Nancy; and there're no two ways of it."
"There's about all there is of life in this little book, and it's made
my rhyming-ware cheap. Do you think," she says, coming over to kiss me
before I sent her off to bed, "do you think I can ever meet wi' Mr.
Burns?"
"If you want it, you shall," I said; "unless the man himself objects.
We'll have him up to Stair; and now forget him and get some rest,
Little Flower."
She went away and left me, and I turned to sleep with that great
couplet going over and over in my head like the clatter of horses'
hoofs:
"The heart ay's the part ay
That makes us right or wrong."
CHAPTER IX
DANVERS BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH NANCY
There were two reasons why Danvers was able to see Nancy almost
uninterruptedly the next two or three weeks, the first being that we
were but late returned from London, with old ties to be formed anew;
and the second, a law affair among the Burn-folk, the trouble of which
took much of Nancy's time, and eventually brought into our lives the
great Duke of Borthwicke, of whom I shall have more to say. These left
Danvers a fair field where Nancy was concerned, and no man living ever
covered his ground better or made a braver wooing. From the minute his
eye lighted upon her in the doorway it seemed as though it were "all by
with him," as the country folk say, for he seemed to have no thoughts
but for her, with the world welcome to a knowledge of the fact.
Every day the conservatories of Arran were stripped for her, hampers of
fruit, and books, and notes which sent the blood rioting to her cheeks,
were over every morning; and before they could be forgotten, Danvers
was there in person, a handsome, passionate, dominating lover, whose
nature was one I could understand and whose love-making was as headlong
and impetuous as my own had been.
I remember watching him bending over her one night as they stood
together before going in to dinner, and Marian's words came back to me
at sight of him:
"For ye woo as a man should woo; and I'm won as a woman should be
won--because she has no will to choose."
Talk of Danvers fell between Sandy and me quite naturally at this time,
and one night, when I was praising his boy to him with much enthusiasm,
he answered with a laugh:
"Of course you like him! Why shouldn't you? You're of a piece, the two
of you. You are both primeval creatures, not far removed in your
love-making from the time when men lived in caves, and if they wanted a
woman they knocked her down with a club and carried her home, and the
wooing was over."
"Barring the knocking down," I answered, "it's not so bad a way."
"That's well enough," he retorted, "where women are but gentle female
animals. But take a woman with a mind or gift--such as Nancy Stair
has--and ye'll find a complication in the affair not to be solved with
a club."
The two of us had no small sport with Danvers over his condition, for
he had fallen in love to such an extent that he would start sentences
which he forgot to finish, make the most irrelevant remarks, or drop
into a-dreaming in the midst of talk, so that his father fell to
recalling him by shouting:
"View Halloo!" in a very loud voice, as they do on the hunting field,
following it up by talk full of a jeering seriousness, as it were:
"Do you think, Danvers, in--er--your present state, you would be able
to get this letter to the post?"
Or,
"Would ye be like to fall into a sound slumber if ye started to ring
for a stable-boy, Dand?"
Or,
"Do you think you could charge your mind, without danger to it, with
passing me the brandy?" all of which the lad bore with an amused smile
and open shamelessness.
One night, after dinner, during this time, I recall that there was a
discussion over the cutting of a roadway between our houses, and after
Sandy had thrown in the fatherly suggestion that if Danvers remained at
Arran much longer the road would be worn by his footsteps with no
expense to us, Danvers, who was awaiting Nancy to walk on the porch
with him, began:
"I think----"
"Ye need go no further," Sandy broke in, with a laugh. "You flatter
yourself! You _think_," he continued; "you've been incapable of
thought for nearly two weeks. Neither of us would give a boddle for
your opinion on any subject save one. I'll wager," he said, coming over
to his son and putting a hand on each of his shoulders, "that ye could
not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And
to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered
about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark,
Bedlam crazy!"
On the moment of his speaking Nancy came to the door with mutinous
eyes, a riot of color in her cheeks, and some filmy white stuff drawn
round her head and shoulders, and as she stood Danvers turned to us.
"Look at her!" he cried. "How else would ye have me be?"
We were out of doors one afternoon, perhaps a week later, sitting in
the shadow of the great tower. Nancy, in a frock of green, cut out at
the neck, and a bewildering big hat with pink flowers upon it, was
pouring tea for us, with Danvers Carmichael lying at full length on the
grass beside her, smoking and inventing excuses at intervals to touch
her hand.
The talk drifted round to Robert Burns, and when I stated the manner in
which Nancy and I had spent the first night we had had his book,
Danvers regarded us with no small degree of amazement.
"Did you," he inquired, after a pause, "sit up all night reading rhyme,
the two of you?"
"We did," said I; "and it's not the first night we have passed so,
Nancy Stair and I."
"But why," he went on, "couldn't you wait till the morning?"
"We're no made that way," I answered, with a laugh.
"Well," he returned, "the thing is as incomprehensible to me as if
you'd tattooed yourself; but," he added philosophically, clasping his
hands behind his head and staring up into the sky, "every man knows his
own fun. There's a friend of mine who knows this Burns," he added.
"What does he say of him?" I inquired with interest.
"Billy's hardly one to appreciate poetry," he answered, "but he fell in
with Burns somewhere at a masons' meeting. He said he was a handsome
pirate, who had sent the clergy of his native place into despair; that
he made love to every woman he saw, and that his name was the scandal
of the county; but that personally he considered the man a wonder and
liked him fine."
"Jock's going to have him here," Nancy said, with a pleased smile and
shining eyes.
"No, no," cried Danvers Carmichael, vehemently, sitting upright. "I
wouldn't do that, my lord."
"Why not?" Nancy inquired.
"It's a matter," he said, "that I could explain better to Lord Stair
than to you, Miss Nancy," and there was a consideration for her in his
tone which warmed my heart toward him.
"You mean," Nancy said, with a smile, "that he's not a good man and
will make love to me, mayhap, or that it might harm me in some way. You
don't appreciate the rearing I've had, I'm afraid," she said, handing
down another cup of tea to him. "Lawing with Pitcairn and dealing with
all manner of roguery and villainy on the burn-side have taught me many
things. These two gentlemen have reared me up in a strange way. Once I
heard Sandy say:
"'She's a filly that's got to be given her head, and she'll soon learn
the fences that it is wise to take and the ones that it is wise to let
alone.'"
"And were we not wise?" Sandy interrupted, "were we not wise? Ye know,
Mistress Stair, ye were no easy matter to bring up. Always like a
flower, gentle as a ewe lamb, seeing into everybody's heart,
verse-making till your poor little head ached, joining gipsy folk,
foregathering with tramps and criminals, wheedling the heart out of
every one of us, but under it all, fixed in a determination to have
your own way in spite of the deil himself. Ye were a pretty problem for
two lone men to handle."
"Don't be believing them, Dandy," she said, turning the light of those
wonderful gray eyes down on him. "Ye will not, will ye? They are not
always truthful," she said, with a side-glance toward us both.
"In spite of your training?" Dandy laughed.
"In spite of my training," Nancy answered demurely.
As we sat thus, the bright warm day passing lazily toward the twilight,
I saw a figure come from one of the houses on the burn, and start at
the top of speed along the ford-rift, which led through the harrowed
field. As it neared the south gate I saw that it was Jamie Henderlin,
who broke into our group, his pallor and anxiety forming abundant
excuse for the interruption to our talk.
"Miss Nancy," he cried, "they've convicted him!"
"Convicted Lapraik?" Nancy asked, as though it were impossible.
"Yes, in an hour or less. Pitcairn had another witness--and Tod's
sentenced to transportation!"
No happening which I can think of would have set Nancy Stair more
plainly before Danvers than this one, which fell directly beneath his
eye.
"But," she said, and her eyes blackened as she spoke, "the man is
innocent."
"Every one knows it," Jamie cried; "but Meenie's like to go to the
grave because of the trouble, which means naught to Pitcairn or to him
called the Duke of Borthwicke."
"Ah, well, Jamie," said Nancy soothingly, "you must not worry over it.
There is more than one way to circumvent Mr. Pitcairn; and a few
jurymen, more or less, are nothing to fash one's soul about one way or
another. Who was the new witness?"
"His name was McGuirk."
"A Hieland body?" Nancy inquired.
"In the service of the duke himself."
"What did he swear to?"
"He swore to Tod's having threated the duke's life, and that Tod had
said to him there was a way to even the matter of the raised rent."
"Ah," said Nancy, and there was a bit of admiration in her tone, "the
duke's a clever man. In all his law-suiting he finds out just what bit
of testimony is needed and gets it."
"If you'll excuse me," she said, rising, "I'll go down and see Meenie,
who probably thinks everything in life is over."
As she went over the grass with Jamie, Danvers Carmichael turned an
astonished face toward us.
"What is it all about?" he asked.
"It's a long tale," I answered, "which, stripped of its trappings, runs
like this: Meenie is Jamie's adopted sister, and the Lapraik man is a
sweetheart of hers who owns a bit farm in the Highlands next to
Borthwicke Castle----"
"For Heaven's sake," Sandy exclaimed, blowing a cloud of smoke toward
the sky, "don't tell that tale again, Jock Stair."
"--And the Duke of Borthwicke wants the farm to add to his land," I
went on, unperturbed, "and Lapraik will not sell. So one fine day he is
accused of theft by the duke's factor, some of the Montrose silver is
found under his roof, and he is arrested and convicted, as you have
just heard. Common rumor has it that the duke wants him out of the
country--the fact that he was brought to Edinburgh to be tried shows
that there is a powerful influence pushing the thing along. Pitcairn is
the duke's man of business, which makes the handling of it easier here
where he is counsel for the crown."
"It will make it an odd affair if Nancy takes the matter in hand,
considering she's Pitcairn's own pupil," Sandy suggested.
"Is it true she's studied the law under Pitcairn?" Danvers inquired.
"Scots and English," I answered.
"In the name of smitten Cæsar," he cried, for that was a word of the
time, "what for?"
"We've never come to any settlement of it between us, but your father
holds that she studied it to circumvent it," I answered, with a laugh.
"She told us once that the more law one knew the safer one could break
it."
"I think," Danvers returned, rising and looking away from us to the
burn--"I think she needs some one to look after her."
"It has dawned upon us that that was your opinion," Sandy rejoined
drolly.
"Lawing with Pitcairn, managing an army of poor folk on the burn,
attending to charities, settling disputes--it's not right. The poor
child has a headache all the time, for it's a man's work she's doing.
Women are for better things. A woman should save her vitality."
"For what?" asked his father.
"For wifehood and motherhood," Danvers responded.
It sounded like a leaf from Pitcairn's book, but while his whole talk
was disrespectful to us as older men, it had a rare manly quality fine
to see. In the very midst of it Nancy was with us again, and, minding
Danvers Carmichael no more than she did the wooden benches, came over
to me.
"I'm going to see the Duke of Borthwicke," said she.
"Is it your intention," I inquired, "to send out scouts for his grace
that ye may interview him? I understand him to be a peripatetic body,
who travels a great deal in furtherance of his nefarious schemes. He
may not even be in Scotland."
"He is in Edinburgh at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the
Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and
two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second
floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at
eleven to-morrow leaves in his private coach for the Highlands."
"The Government should employ you, Nancy Stair," Sandy broke in with a
laugh. "The country is just now needing people who can pick up such
accurate information."
"It was no great matter to do," she explained. "When people whose lives
are hanging on the duke's acts have been watching him for days they are
like to know his movements. I will go to-night, before the ball; and if
you'll excuse me now, I'll try to get some rest," and with no further
word she left us.
She had scarce turned the box-hedge when Danvers Carmichael gave us a
taste of his nature and had his say with us in language free and
skirting the profane.
"Suppose," he began, "suppose she goes to see the duke, and suppose,
which is far from likely, that she is able to obtain an audience with
him, what is there for her to say? She can not very well just call the
man a scoundrel! And as for the Lapraik affair, if he has the rascality
to do the act, it's not likely that he will flinch at the naming of
it."
Getting no answer to this from either of us he went on at white heat,
stating in violent and unshaded English the wrong of allowing a girl,
little more than a child, to visit a man of the duke's repute, and
giving it as his opinion that his father and I were the ones to take
the affair upon our shoulders. He even volunteered to visit the duke
himself in Tod's behalf.
"And in your own tongue," asked Sandy, "what would ye say when ye got
there?"
"Ye might just call him a scoundrel, as ye suggested Nancy's doing. His
grace might receive it better coming from a man," I said cheerfully.
"Sit ye down, lad," Sandy said at length; "sit ye down. And stop making
a windmill of your arms as ye stand on that rise, or we may think we
are all Dutch folk together; and just give over thinking ye know all
women, because ye've made love to some senseless London fillies with no
brains in their heads whatever. It's a wise man that understands that
no two women are alike. John Stair and I have seen something of life in
our time, aye, and something of women; but Nancy's a different creature
from anything in our ken. Ye might just trust a little to our judgment
of her."
If Danvers were abashed by this speech he showed it never a whit, but
stood very erect, his brows drawn into a scowl not unlike Nancy's own,
glowering first at his father and then at me. Sandy, who was, in his
mind's eye, re-rigging a schooner, went on with his paper-and-pencil
work, unconscious of his son's scrutiny. I dropped my eyes to the Allan
Ramsay, which I had opened at random, but lost nothing of Danvers's
conduct, and liked him for it. He had known but the women who needed
protection, and his attitude to my mind bespoke the chivalrous
gentleman.
"Will she go alone?" he inquired abruptly.
"She will probably take Father Michel."
"And might I inquire without discourtesy who Father Michel is?"
"He is a priest who came up with us from Landgore, and the best man I
ever knew," said I. "'Tis he who attends to the burn people."
"And will he tell her what to say to his Grace of Borthwicke?"
"She will not need to be told," I answered. "Indeed, Dandy Carmichael,
this is not the first time she has gone on such errands."
"And does she get her way?"
"She has never failed yet."
"It's true," Danvers went on, "that I've met none of her kind, but if
she go to the Duke of Borthwicke, as man to man----"
"She will not go as man to man," Sandy broke in with a smile. "She will
go as woman to man. There's a mighty differ."
"You see, Dandy," said I, trying to smooth the talk a bit, "although
she's my own, there's sure no harm in my saying that she is an
extraordinary creature. That she has great beauty a blind man could
see; but that's the least of her, for she has the heart and the
principles of the purest and the best. But, oh, laddie, in her dealings
with men she has the knowledge of the deil himself. Mayhap she'll cry a
bit, or flout the duke, or laugh at his ways. She'll do the thing which
she finds his mood and the hour suit, and she'll come away with the
pardon in her hand, and say ever after that the duke is maligned and
that at heart he is a very good man. And she'll believe it, too."
Dinner without Nancy was a tasteless affair, and we spent little time
at table, having the pipes and wine brought into the library. As we sat
there the sound of Jamie's violin came sobbing up from the Burnside as
he played for his stricken sister in the old low house where three
hearts were praying for Nancy Stair. Sitting there with a silence, save
for the music, between us, we heard a door open on the floor above and
the sound of light footsteps on the stair. She came to the doorway,
looked in to see if we were alone, and then, with neither shyness nor
self-consciousness, came in to "show us how she looked."
"I've put on my best frock--the one the girls made for me on the
burn--in the lace work," she said.
It was cobwebby stuff over white satin, the neck, cut in the free
fashion of the time, showing her dimpled shoulders and the turn of the
breast. She had dressed her hair in a bunch of curls, high on the head,
and over her forehead she wore the circlet of diamonds which my
great-grandfather had given to that French ancestress of ours with the
uncommendable but frank conduct. Around her neck was the famous
necklace of diamonds and emeralds, and at the bosom a cluster of
diamonds winked and twinkled at every breath. She stood for one minute
near me, her eyes like misty gray stars shining over the bloom of
roses, her slender arms bared, and one slight hand, shining with rings,
laid on the table.
"Do I look pretty, Jock?" she said, as I raised the little hand to my
lips and kissed it, with what a passion of love only he can know whose
nature is a tempestuous loving one like mine, and whose only daughter
is his sweetheart and his wife.
"Well," she said, satisfied with my expressions, "the coach is at the
door," and then, holding out her hand to Danvers, "Will ye not wish me
luck, Mr. Carmichael?"
Danvers Carmichael had spoken no word and made no sign since her
entrance until he was thus directly addressed, and the three of us
turned suddenly toward him as he stood by the chimney-piece. A look of
unfettered admiration of her was in his eyes as he answered:
"There's no one wishing you that more than I, Miss Nancy."
Father Michel's grave face looked at us serenely from the coach window
for a minute, and we stood on the steps watching them drive away and
listening to the horses' hoofs growing fainter and fainter along the
outer road.
Before they had died away entirely Danvers turned toward me.
"Lord Stair," he said, "may I call myself so much at home as to ring
for a groom? I want my horse. I'm going to ride after her."
"What for?" Sandy inquired.
"To protect her," he answered.
"Well," observed Sandy, dryly, "ye may as well go and be on hand in
case there's need of help. Nancy," he added with a laugh, "won't need
it. But you may be called in to protect the duke."
CHAPTER X
NANCY VISITS HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE
At the time of which I write John Montrose, Duke of Borthwicke,
Ardvilarchan, and Drumblaine, was the most noticed man in the Three
Kingdoms, and held by many to be the greatest scoundrel in the politics
of Europe. He was a picturesque and stately devil, tall, clean shaven,
with fine features and damnable light blue eyes with a baffling gleam
in them. He had a singular grace in the use of his body, especially in
the movement of his hands, which were markedly expressive and
attractive; and whether drawn to him or not, one could deny neither his
potency nor his distinction of bearing, which was one of race as well
as breeding. The first view I ever had of him was in Parliament House,
where I noted on the instant the magnificent carriage of his head and
chest, his extraordinary pallor, and the strange eyes, reflecting the
light from without rather than revealing anything within.
In London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, the tide of gossip overflowed with
his name and carried in its current tales of his greatness, his
cruelty, his lawless loves and his quick forgettings. It was libeled
against him that he had magnetic power over all with whom he came in
contact, bending them to his will by the sheer dominance of his
presence. There was, I recall, a story rife that upon my Lord Thurlow's
opposition to the bill for the restoration of the forfeited estates
becoming known, it was the Duke of Borthwicke who was sent to treat
with him concerning it, and immediately after this visit the bill
passed the House of Lords with small opposition.
It was whispered as well that Pitt himself was afraid of his Grace of
Borthwicke, and was no match for the man, who had a peculiar power by
reason of being unhampered either by truth or precedent. Blake, who was
the duke's secretary in '84, told me at the club one night, that on one
occasion his grace had needed some statistics to clinch an argument.
After investigation the statistics were found to disprove his point.
Upon this being presented to him, he remarked dryly, "Alter the
statistics."
Ugly tales were abroad in all classes of society concerning his life in
India, his conduct in the Highlands, and his moral idiocy, but he held
them under with a strong hand, and more than one hinted that he had
eyes for the premiership.
Dressed for the evening, the duke was alone in his sitting-room,
attending to his private correspondence, when he heard a rap at the
door.
"Enter," he called, in a careless voice, thinking it one of his men.
Nancy lifted the latch and came forward into the room.
"The Duke of Borthwicke will pardon my intrusion, will he not?" she
asked, "as well as my lack of courtesy? I was afraid his grace might
refuse to see me if I were announced to him in the ordinary manner."
Montrose had been writing at an oaken table, on either side of which
was a bracket of lights. At the sound of the voice he turned, and, at
the sight of Nancy, he rose and stood looking at her as though she were
an apparition.
Many times since, in her description of this interview, she told me
that she received from him an impression as though he stretched forth
his hand and touched her. She said, as well, that the erectness of his
body and the fulness of his chest gave him the air of a conqueror who
was invincible, while the pallor of his face and the glitter of his eye
set him still further apart from anything usual.
It seemed a full minute that they stood thus taking notes openly of
each other before she spoke again.
"I am Nancy Stair," she said quietly.
"Ah," the duke returned, coming forward with a smile, "the
verse-maker?"
"I make verses," Nancy answered.
"Which have given me more pleasure than I have the power to tell," the
duke responded with a bow.
"It is praise indeed, coming from John Montrose, who is no mean poet
himself," Nancy said with a smile.
"I," the duke returned, "am no poet, Mistress Stair; but I have a
'spunk enough of glee' to enjoy the gift of others."
"One might think who overheard us, my lord duke," Nancy broke in with a
laugh and the light of humor in her eyes by which she could make
another smile at any time, "that we were collegians having a critical
discussion. It was not concerning poetry that I came to you to-night,
your grace. It was to ask a favor."
"Pitcairn said you would come," the duke answered her blandly, taking
out his watch and looking at it with a smile. "He said you would come
before you went to the Duchess of Gordon's rout. He even named the
exact time within a quarter of an hour."
"Mr. Pitcairn is a very wonderful man," Nancy returned.
"He's a poor hand at description," responded the duke, with a heat of
admiration for her in his tone.
"It depends somewhat," said Nancy, "upon what he has the describing
of." And in this speech the way women know how to belittle an enemy is
clearly to be seen. "He can describe a barn to a farmer, a road to a
surveyor, or a church to an architect, so that they fall into an
ecstasy of admiration of his parts. When it comes to a woman it's a
different matter. Mr. Pitcairn doesn't know a woman. He's not, rightly
speaking, a man. As Mr. Carmichael says, 'He's just a head.'"
"It's a curious head," the duke answers, "a curious head and a very
clear one."
"A clear head to prosecute; never to defend," Nancy responded; "which
leads me to the cause of my visit. I have come to ask for the pardon of
Timothy Lapraik."
The duke dropped his eyelids, and a strange light shone from under
them.
"You compliment me, Mistress Stair, in thinking I have the power to
undo that which was settled by the law of your country and a jury tried
and true. I took no part in the affair; the prosecution was not mine;
in a word, the thing is perhaps beyond my power, had I the desire to
get him a pardon, which, however, I have not."
All this time neither had made any motion toward sitting down, but
stood regarding each other, alert and watchful. It was Nancy Stair who
took the first move. Coming over to the duke she put one of her hands
on his breast and stood looking up at him out of those gray eyes of
whose power she was not unconscious.
"My lord," she said, "I, who have had the handling of people much of my
life, have learned to recognize power when I see it, and I see it in
you. There's just naught you can't do that you set your mind to."
None ever claimed that in his relation with women the duke was
afflicted with Pitcairn's trouble, and a blue heat came in his eye at
her touch of him.
"You're not afraid of me, Nancy Stair?"
She looked up at him from under her eyelids and laughed.
"Not the least bit in the world, your grace."
"And ye think, mayhap, that just because ye're a beautiful woman--aye,
the most beautiful woman I have ever seen--that ye can come to me and
ask favors, thinking that I shall expect nothing in return?"
"What I have heard of you would lead me far from such conclusion,"
Nancy answered, with a smile.
He looked at her in silence, with an amused expression in his face.
"I like you," he said at length, and a dare-devil look came into his
eyes, a look which showed at once his strength and his weakness. "I
like your fearlessness as well as your honesty. I can mate your
frankness by my own. I have long desired to know what is said of me,
and have a mind to make a compact with you, if you will. I hear lies on
every side. They are the stuff of which my daily bread is baked. Come,"
he cried, "a bargain between us. The naked truth which ye have heard
concerning me in return for the pardon of Timothy Lapraik."
"It's a bargain between us, your grace."
"There will be no slurring over, no soft adjustments?"
"You need have no fear. If you knew me better you would not ask that,"
Nancy answered with a smile. "You shall have the unsoftened truth, so
far as it is mine to speak."
The duke motioned her to a seat by the fire and stood opposite to her,
changing the candles on the shelf above to throw the light full upon
her face as she sat before the fire.
"'Tis an awkward position you put me in," Nancy laughed.
"'Tis grace itself compared to the awkwardness of mine," the duke
returned with a dry smile.
"The first thing I ever heard of you," she began, "was that you were
known by common repute as the 'Lying Duke of the Highlands.'"
The duke bowed.
"I have heard from high and low that you have neither the code of a
gentleman nor the common honesty of business affairs. It is even argued
that you have not the moral perception to see your own lack in such
matters."
The duke looked at her steadily for a moment again and his lips curled
back into a smile.
"You are openly accused of thefts in India--of defrauding the ignorant
natives of their lands."
The duke made a little outward motion with his hand, as though to
intimate that these charges were already known to him.
"It is said--and this seems to me one of the worst charges--that you
assail the names of those whose places you desire for yourself or your
friends, under cover, and in ways impossible for them to circumvent."
The duke shrugged his shoulders as if this charge were one of small
moment.
"But 'tis of your treatment of women that the worst stories of you are
abroad, and 'tis said that your conduct toward them is that of a brute
rather than of a man. There is a tale of one woman, the wife of a
baronet, who left her husband for you, and whom ye after deserted to
poverty and disgrace."
She paused a moment and turned to recapitulate.
"Liar," she said.
The duke bowed slightly.
"Thief."
The duke bent his head a bit lower.
"Defrauder, blackmailer, and betrayer of women."
The duke rose and made a profound salutation, and Nancy regarded him
with a smile.
"I do not think of any other thing," she concluded; and then, as though
there was still hope for him, "I have never heard your grace accused of
open murder."
"'Tis strange," the duke answered her with a queer look. "I have enough
of the artist in me to see that the open murder would have been finely
climactic. There is but one of these charges that I desire to deny to
you," looking at the fire through his eyeglass as he spoke; "I don't
lie," he said, adding, with the shadow of a smile, "I don't have to.
And may I ask, Mistress Stair, do you believe these things of me?"
Nancy rose and looked into the fire.
"I like you," she answered.
"In spite of my crimes?"
"Because of your power," she responded.
They stood for a moment regarding each other steadily before another
word was spoken.
"Ah, my lord," she said, "I must be going," and there was a shade of
regret in her voice, which Borthwicke was not the man to let pass
unnoticed, "I have kept my word."
"True," the duke answered, "you have kept your word."
"You will keep yours to me?" she asked, extending her hand.
"By this time to-morrow Lapraik shall be a free man," the duke
answered, holding the extended hand in his.
"Thank you," she said, and another silence fell between them as they
stood thus, nearer together, dominated by magnetic attraction so strong
that a full minute passed unnoted by either.
"It is my turn to ask favors," the duke said headily. "The rose in your
breast."
"Shall I fasten it on your coat?" she asked.
So for a moment more they stood almost touching each other, his breath
moving the curls of her hair as she reached toward him.
"Good night," he said, extending his hand again.
"Good night," she said, putting hers into it.
"You have your people with you?"
"Yes."
"It is better then I should not come down?"
"Much better," she answered, after a second; and then, turning to him:
"You are coming to the Duchess of Gordon's?"
"I had intended to remain away till I saw you. What do you think I
shall do now?" his grace asked.
"How should I know, my lord duke?" Nancy inquired, with a smile.
"What do you think I am going to do now?" he repeated with insistence.
"I think you will come to the Gordons'," Nancy answered in a low voice.
"I may kiss your hand?" the duke asked; and, as he did so, the act
having in it more of a caress than a salutation, "Believe me," he said,
"I could not stay away."
* * * * *
After Nancy and Dandy had left us, Carmichael and I sat smoking, and by
reason of the talk falling along some interesting lines we arrived at
the Gordons' long past the time set for our party to meet. Nearing the
house we heard the music of the fiddles filling the air with glee and
sadness, and saw the caddies darting hither and thither, the link-boys
with their torches, and the flare of lights on the dazzling toilets of
the ladies descending from their chairs and coaches. My own position in
Edinburgh society was stated to me quite by accident, as I entered, by
a group of young dandies at the ballroom door, who made way for me with
a pronounced salute and whispered:
"'Tis her father."
Jane Gordon welcomed me with a gay and genuine friendship, and as Sandy
and I made our salutations to her I saw Nancy at some little distance
from us, literally surrounded by fatuous cipher-faced youths, who stood
in some awe before her misty beauty and reputed power. There was pride
in me that the girl was mine, a pride which Sandy Carmichael shared
with me, and as Hugh Pitcairn crossed the long room to salute her
gravely but with marked respect, I saw that there was at least one
emotion which they held in common.
Standing by the great window soon after my arrival, a bit removed from
a group of talking persons to whom I was giving but scant attention, I
became conscious that some one was addressing me, and turned to find
the Duke of Borthwicke, his hand laid lightly on my shoulder, his
countenance of baffling serenity, and his voice mellow and of a
conciliating quality. He wore gray satin of an elegant finish, but
neither embroidery nor jewels, and, notwithstanding his position and
power, conveyed the impression in some adroit way, subtler than I can
set forth, that he deprecated his temerity in addressing so austere a
person as myself. I had seen women use this essence of flattery, but it
was the first time I ever found it employed by a man.
"Will my Lord Stair allow me to introduce myself to him?" he inquired,
with a smile, extending his hand. "I am John Montrose, and there are
many reasons why we should determine to be good friends."
"We are both Highland folk," I answered.
"Which is one excellent reason," he interrupted; "yet there are several
more moving than that. Your father, Lord Stair, and mine were out
together in the forty-fives, on which side I need scarcely mention; and
again, your grandfather and mine both loved and fought for the
beautiful Nancy Hamilton, and, but for the preference of the lady
herself, she might have been my own grandmother. These things call for
a friendly feeling between us, Lord Stair, but that which drives me
forward most to your acquaintancy is the admiration I have for the
writings of your daughter, Mistress Nancy, whose lines ring through my
head more often than I care to tell, and whose poems have been upon my
writing-table ever since they were published."
In this pleasant way we fell to talk of Nancy, of her gifts, her
beauty, her loving tenderness for all things, her strange up-bringing,
her people on the Burnside; and to a doting father such as I was the
time flew quickly by.
I noted at length that there was some stir in the circle around her,
and watched her cross the room with her Grace of Gordon and Danvers
Carmichael in attendance, to the musicians' place in the great window.
I have wondered at times if folk who dwell on the temptations male
creatures have think ever of those which come to women of great
attractiveness to men. The thought came to me as Nancy took her place
beside the harp and violins, which were to accompany her singing, and I
sent a prayer to Heaven to keep my child unspotted from the world,
uttering it none the less fervently because his Grace of Borthwicke,
with lids veiling the fire of his eyes, was looking at her.
Twice she sang, her songs being of her own land, one of the highlands,
with the perfume of the gorse and the heather in the lilt of it, and
the second, by demand of Sandy, the gipsy song which had been handed
down from woodland mother to woodland child for hundreds of years; a
song which sent Nancy's lawless blood to her cheeks and set her heart
beating with an inherited remembrance of raids and sea-fights, and
lawless loves; which made her eyes misty with tears and unawakened
passion; the song which I had learned to dread, Marian's song:
"Love that is Life,
Love that is Death,
Love that is mine"----
And as she finished, carried off her feet by her own feelings, she
looked toward us for a moment; but it was neither upon me nor Danvers
Carmichael that the look fell; for, as one who knows she will be
understood, her glance turned to his Grace of Borthwicke, whose eyes
told a tale so openly that he who ran might read. I was more disturbed
by this occurrence than I cared to admit, and after the supper, when
Nancy, attended still by Danvers Carmichael, came back to us, I was
glad to hear her say that she wished to go home. His Grace of
Borthwicke being still near us, it fell upon me to present Danvers
Carmichael to him, an introduction which Dandy acknowledged by a
perfunctory bow and scant courtesy, and the duke by turning his eyes
for one second in Dandy's direction and repeating his name as
"McMichael" in the exasperating manner of one who neither knows nor
cares who the person is who has been presented to him; and although at
the time of the murder the lawyers tried to have it that the
acquaintance between these two men was of London breeding, I can vouch
for it, from my own knowledge and the testimony of Danvers Carmichael
to me on our way home, that this was the first time he and the duke
ever set eyes on each other.
In just the manner in which I have set it forth, in the compass of a
few days, the three most important factors in Nancy's life came to the
working out of it, Robert Burns, though but by book; Danvers
Carmichael, a gentleman; and that splendid devil, John Montrose, Duke
of Borthwicke, Ardvilarchan and Drumblaine in the Muirs.
CHAPTER XI
DANVERS CARMICHAEL MAKES A PROPOSAL
Whether the conduct of the Duke of Borthwicke brought a climax to the
affairs between Danvers and Nancy I can not state for a surety, but the
next morning as I sat alone on the south porch the boy came upon me
with some suddenness.
"Lord Stair," he said, "it is with my father's knowledge and
pleasurable consent that I come to ask your permission to have Nancy
for my wife, if she can fancy me as a husband."
He turned very white as he spoke, but his bearing was manly and brave
as that of his father's son should be, and my heart went out to him.
"Sit ye down, laddie," I said, "sit ye down. We'll have a smoke
together and talk it over. I'm not denying that I like you for the two
best reasons in the world. The first, for yourself; and the second,
that ye're your father's son. And to pretend that a wedding between you
two children would not give me the greatest pleasure in life would be
idiot foolishness. I feel it my duty to you, however, as well as to my
girl, to talk the thing over plainly. Have you any notion now," I
asked, "as to Nancy's feeling toward you?"
"None whatever," he answers, gloomily enough.
"You've not questioned her in any way----"
"I'm a man of honor, Lord Stair," he responded, a bit in the air.
"Well, then," said I, "it will do no harm to set some of the obstacles
before you that you may be allowed to deal with the situation
bare-handed.
"Ye must see, Dandy, that Nancy Stair is different from other women and
has been raised in a strange way. I'm no saying it's either a good way
or a bad. I am saying that it's far from the accepted way women are
bred up generally. It's no mere talent she has--for in a woman that's
not harmful and frequently helps to entertain the children, as they
come along; but with a girl, raised by men, whose name is ringing
throughout the kingdom, who baffles every one by unfailing love and
kindness, who has only the religion of making things better for others;
a bit of a coquette, with such magnetism that one wants to touch her as
one does a flower--I tell ye frankly, Danvers, as Pitcairn says, she's
a dangerous contrivance of the Almighty's, and a man had best think
many times before he takes her to his bosom as a wife."
"It's a singular state of affairs," Danvers answers, with a short
laugh, "and one for which, I venture, even Nancy could find no bookish
parallel. You tell me that you'd like me for a son-in-law, but warn me
against your own daughter as a wife; while my father takes the other
view of it: that he would like Nancy for his daughter, but thinks I'm
far from being the one suited to her as a husband. Parents are not
usually so dispassionate," he added, somewhat bitterly. I felt for the
lad, and took a step along a side path.
"Ye're both over young as yet," I said, "and it's been less than a
month since ye've known each other." And it was here that I had a taste
of his fine temper, for he turned upon me in a sudden heat that made
him splendid and natural to the eye.
"I have not heard that my Lord Stair was over-deliberate in his own
wooing," he said.
I laughed aloud as he glowered at me, and put my hand on his shoulder,
for I liked his impetuous ways and his deil's temper.
"There, there," I said, "gang your own gate. I but wanted ye to know
what ye might expect in a wife. She'll contradict ye----"
"I don't want a wife who is an echo of myself," he retorted.
"She's jealous----"
"I wouldn't give a groat for a woman who wasn't," he responded.
"She is so extravagant," I went on, "that I never let even Sandy know
her bills."
He made no answer to this whatever, as though it were a matter beneath
discussion.
"She will forget you for days at a time while she's rhyme-making," I
went on. "She will be interested in other men until the day she dies--"
his eye darkened at this--"and to sum it up, I don't know any woman
more unsuited to you; but if she will have you, you've my consent," and
I reached out my hand to him. "God bless you," I cried, and before our
hands had parted Sandy came around the turn of the path.
"You've done just what I knew you'd do, Jock Stair," he said, glowering
first at his son and then at me, "and ye know as well as I the
foolishness of it. Take a man like this lad, who has been spoiled by an
overfond mother, and a woman like Nancy, who has had her own way since
birth, marry them to each other, and you've a magnificent basis for
trouble. Why don't you marry your cousin Isabel? You'd thoughts of it
before you left London!" he ended, in a futile way.
"I'm going to marry Nancy Stair, if she'll have me," Danvers replied,
doggedly.
"Well, well, she may not have you," Sandy replied, soothingly. "And as
she's under the lilacs you may care to join her."
Nothing passed between Danvers and Nancy on the subject of marriage
that morning, and I found at luncheon a probable explanation of the
fact by reason of her absorption in the labor training idea and the
building of an extension on the Burnside.
Between this scheme, her talk of Robert Burns, her interest in his
Grace of Borthwicke, and an absolute and unnatural silence concerning
Danvers, I was in some anxiety, and could come to no conclusion
whatever concerning the state of her feelings. I mentioned Danvers'
good looks, and she quoted me back "The Cotter's Saturday Night." I
praised his conduct, and she answered with "The Epistle to Davie." It
was the name of Burns that was constantly upon her lips; she set his
verses to the music of old songs, singing them softly to herself in the
gloaming, and I could see had made a god of him by her own imaginings.
"That Burns book was a bad investment for you," I said to Danvers one
evening.
"Why," says he, "it's naught but a book!"
"True," I answered, "but the maker of it is a man--and she's idealized
him into a god. Ye just brought trouble for yourself when you brought
that volume among us," I cried.
To the best of my recollection it was about a week after my talk with
Danvers concerning a marriage between them that the three of us sat at
the dinner together, and there never was a more bewitching or dangerous
Nancy than we had with us that night. A tender, brilliant, saucy,
flattering Nancy, who moved us male creatures about as though we were
chessmen.
"Jock, tell about the old minister and the goose," she said. "There's
no one can tell that story like you."
Or,
"Danvers, do you recall the anecdote of Billy Deuceace and the
opera-singer? It's one of the best jokes I ever heard." And it was
after the laugh that followed this narration that Danvers said, with
some abruptness, I thought:
"We had bad news to-day. The Honorable Mrs. Erskine and her daughter
are coming to Arran. My father invited them over a year ago, and had
forgotten all about it when their letter of acceptance came."
"Is it Isabel Erskine whom your father advises you to marry?" Nancy
asked.
"It is the very same," Dandy answered with a careless laugh; "and I'm
warning you you are to have a rival in the same house with me!"
"Is she pretty?"
"She's well enough," he replied indifferently.
"I believe," said Nancy, looking through her wine-glass far off
somewhere, "that she'll suit you better than I."
"She treats me better."
"She doesn't write verses?" this with a glance from under her eyelids.
"She does not."
"Nor think her own way always the best?"
"She's very sweet and yielding, as becomes a woman," Danvers answered
teasingly.
"She's just without sin at all," Nancy continued with apparent
dejection.
"Entirely," Danvers returned solemnly, but with a laugh shining through
his long black lashes.
"Then I'd better not meet with her--I, who have so many failings."
"Have you failings?" Dandy asked, and the teasing tone left him. "I've
yet to find them."
And at this Nancy broke into a laugh so funny and contagious that the
two of us joined with her.
"Have I failings?" she repeated. "That I have! And so many 'twould be a
day's work to name them.
"Sometimes," she began, "I make light of other folks' religion when I
disagree with it--and that's little short of scandalous. And I belittle
the people whom I don't like--and there's no breeding in that; and
where a friend is concerned I'm like the Stewarts, 'Back to back, and a
claymore in each hand,' and----"
"Ye're right in that," Danvers and I broke in like a chorus.
"And sometimes," she went on, and the humor she found in these
revelations concerning herself was a droll thing to see, "sometimes I
use bad language----"
We men broke into a roar of laughter at this.
"Once, I remember," she said, with the gleam in her eye, "I danced till
three in the morning at Peggy MacBride's wedding, and getting out of
the coach twisted my arm till I thought I'd broken it. About four of
the same morning I rose with a raging tooth, and crossing the room for
laudanum, I struck the elbow of the injured arm against a chest of
drawers, and before I thought I said----"
"What?" Danvers cried, his face lit up with merriment.
"Nothing will ever make me tell," she said firmly, "nothing!"
"Whatever it was, it was moderate. You haven't a vocabulary sufficient
for that situation, Nancy Stair," I laughed.
"Then, too, I'm no respecter of family," she went on, as though set for
complete absolution. "It's mayhap because my own mother was an Irish
gipsy----"
"Nancy!" Dandy cried with amazement.
"She was so," Nancy insisted, "and the present lord's grandfather was a
strange old cummer who ran away with another man's wife----"
"Nancy!" I expostulated, "Nancy, you mustn't talk in that way of your
forbears----"
"Why not?" she inquired.
"It's a thing ye can't explain, my dear; but it just isn't done," Dandy
said.
"Is it not?" she asked, and there was a look in her eyes of amused
amazement. "Is it not? You see, I, in my poor blind way, can not
understand why the naming of a thing is worse than the being of it--but
if ye say it is, I'm amiable. I'll give out that my forbears were all
kings and queens of the Egyptians, and that I ate my haggis when I was
a child from the seat of the throne. It makes no difference to me, for
I'm something more than the Laird of Stair's daughter."
"Meaning the future Countess of Glenmore, mayhap?" I suggested.
"I'm not meaning any such thing, and it's perhaps not becoming for me
to explain what I do mean; but whether I say it of myself or 'tis said
of me in the Glasgow Sentinel, it makes little differ, for I have the
verse-making, and 'tis more to me than lands or titles.
"Aye," she said, after a pause, with a laugh as though making fun of
her conceit of herself, "I have the genius----"
At the end of the meal, before she left us, bewildered by her vivacity
and charm, she stopped at the door.
"Am I nice?" she asked.
"Very," said Danvers and I.
"And will ye give me," she asked, as a child might have done, "the
thousand pounds for Father Michel?"
"I will not," I answered, the yielding in me showing through the words.
Danvers saw his chance and took it with the spur.
"I will," he said, going toward her to open the door, but it looked
more as though he meant to take her in his arms, "I will, Nancy."
She looked at him with a softness in her eyes.
"Thank you, Danvers," she said, and the glance made me think that, even
did I allow such a manifest impossibility, he could never have invested
money in any way to bring him a richer return.
It was a task beyond me to get sensible talk from him with Nancy
waiting in the moonlight, a moonlight fragrant with honeysuckle and
climbing roses; and I bade him to be off to her; and I opened the
papers which had come by a late post.
I heard a merry talk between them as Huey came in to say that the white
night-flowers were in bloom by the fountain, and I went off with him to
have a look at them. As I came back I turned into the path which led to
the porch, intending to tell them of these wonderful blooms, when I saw
the two of them on the steps, standing near together, and Danvers's
arms were around the girl he loved, and he was looking down into her
eyes with rapture in his fond, handsome face, and I heard him say:
"When, when, _when_?"
"When do you want it?" she asked.
"When do I want it! Now, to-night," and he drew her lips to his.
"Wife!" he said.
* * * * *
When I reentered the library I found it occupied by Sandy, who had
walked across country from his own place with some news concerning the
whisky tax. As we sat in dispute over it, upward of an hour later, I
heard Nancy go to her room without coming in to wish us a good night,
and a second later Danvers Carmichael stood in the doorway. It was good
for us older men to see the lad, and at the sight of him I was out
under the stars of Landgore; the sound of gipsy singing, the salt from
the sea, and the odor of blown hawthorn were in the room, and I was
young again with Marian Ingarrach folded in my arms. The brooding look
was gone from his eyes and his face bore a strange illumination. He had
added something to, rather than lost any of the cocksureness of his
manner; but the happiness of him, combined with the love and passion of
his ardent nature, made him a singularly handsome creature as he came
toward us.
"Will you not congratulate me?" he said, looking from one to the other
of us.
"Is she willing to marry you?" his father asked, with exaggerated
amazement.
"If she finds none whom she fancies more, she said she would marry me
within the year----"
"Well, well, there's some hope for you," Sandy went on. "She may meet
in with some one else."
"You've my pity," I laughed, but I took his hand in mine with the
words.
His joy radiated itself to us, and his talk was just as it should be
for his years. He patronized us a bit for being older and out of the
way of it all, spoke of Nancy as though she were the only woman since
Eve, and discussed a betrothal ring as though it were a thing for
empires to rise and fall by.
"She fancies rubies; she cares for gems, you know," he said, as though
the information was new to us instead of having been anciently and
expensively bought.
He must have the best ruby in Scotland, he went on. He wished he could
attend to the matter himself. "But," he stood with his thumbs in the
arms of his waistcoat as he spoke, with a conscious smile--"but no
fellow would be such a bally ass as to dash to London for a ring under
present conditions." There were the four thousand pounds his
grandmother had given him. They might all be spent for this. There was
a fellow named Billy Deuceace, an Oxford man, with taste in such
matters. He would write him concerning it to-night, he said.
"Faith," said Sandy, drolly, "you talk as if married life were all a
ring. Ye'll find it different when your wife has the genius and is
taken up wi' other men."
And Danvers faced the two of us here by a statement which has never
left me from the night he uttered it till the minute of my setting it
down.
"I am far from believing," he said, "that genius is a thing which
rightly belongs to women. 'Tis to me but an issue on one side. And the
woman who has enough of her husband's kisses and his babies at her
breast has little time to write verses or think of other men."
With these words still ringing in my ears I rapped at Nancy's door on
my way to bed, to find her sitting by a glaring light with the
everlasting Burns book in her hand. I was a bit dashed in spirit by her
occupation, for it seemed unnatural that a girl should be spending the
time immediately after her betrothal in such an employ, and I affected
a gaiety I was far from feeling.
"Is it to Nancy Stair or the possible Countess of Glenmore that I
speak?"
She stood by the table, her finger still marking her place in the book.
"Dandy told you, then?" she asked.
"Told us!" I echoed. "It's my opinion he'll tell the town-crier
to-night and have it in all the prints of the realm within the week."
"He told you just what the understanding was?"
I repeated what he had said, and she nodded at the end in acquiescence.
"You see," she said, coming toward me and putting her head on my
shoulder, "I'm not sure of myself. My mind's ill redd up for marriage
with any one. I've had too much freedom, perhaps; and while one side of
my nature, probably the strongest one, loves Danvers Carmichael, I am
drawn to the writer of these lines, this Burns man, in a way I can not
tell; and at the very foot of the matter I am mightily taken up with
the power of John Montrose. It's no highly moral, is it?" she asked,
with an amused smile, "to feel ye could be in love with two--three men
at once? But my nature's many sided, and on one of these sides I find a
most 'treacherous inclination' toward his Grace of Borthwicke."
CHAPTER XII
I MEET A GREAT MAN
"With knowledge so vast and with judgment so strong
No man with the half of them e'er could go wrong;
With passion so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of them e'er could go right."
I passed as miserable a night as my worst enemy could have wished and
was up at the dawning for a jaunt in the open. The gowans so white and
bonny were swinging their dewy heads in the morning wind; the sea-fog
was lifting skyward, and whether the message came from them I can not
say, but a mystical white word floated between me and my troubled
thoughts of Nancy--a word which means the changing of baser metal into
pure gold, the returning of the balance to nature, the fine adjustment
of spirit to mind and body--the great word Motherhood. Nancy as a
mother. My Little Flower with a floweret of her own might be the
solution of a happy marriage for her more than compensating for the
independence and adulation which she had always had.
As I tramped along I came to a definite thought concerning the Burns
poems as well, which was that I would set fire to them, as if by
accident, that very day, and have them by and done with. And as for the
man himself, it would, I thought, be no hard matter to keep him out of
our lives; in which conclusions I left out just two things--the throw
of Fate, which none of us can reckon upon, and my own rhyme-loving
nature and fondness for being entertained.
It was Fate's throw with which I had to reckon first. I had come in my
musings to a side-path which led from the old Abbey to the foot-bridge,
when I heard the sound of a man's singing:
"As I cam in by Glenap,
I met wi' an ancient woman,
Who told me to cheer my heart up
For the best of my days were comin'."
The singer was sitting upon a fallen tree, beside a smoking fire, with
the women, children, aye, and the very dogs, gathered about him as
though he carried a charm. He was a thick-set man, dark and swarthy,
with a pair of eyes literally glowing. His hat was cocked upon the back
of his head, and he had his plaid thrown around him in a certain manner
known to himself alone. He was eating and drinking with these
gipsy-folk, for he'd a bannock in one hand and a mug of hot drink in
the other, but at sight of me he set them down and came forward to
greet me; and my amazed eyes rested on Robert Burns himself, as though
raised up by some of his own witches to fit into my thoughts--Robert
Burns whom I had met at Mauchline before he was famous, the year
before.
He inquired if I were stepping townward, and on the instant I asked him
to breakfast with me at the Star and Garter, and this, you will
remember, within five short minutes of my resolve to burn his book and
keep him out of our lives.
It was charged against me later that I was lax in this Burns affair
and, because of my own infatuation for men of parts, took too little
thought for the temptation to which I exposed my daughter. I answer the
accusation by telling the circumstances exactly as they fell, and he
who reads may judge the truth of these charges for himself. As we came
to the door of the inn, I asked Creech and Dundas, who happened to be
passing, to join us at the breakfast, and a merry feast it was, and one
for the three of us to hold as a lifelong memory, for only those who
had the honor to know Burns could understand that the "best of him was
in his talk." In the year of which I write all the eyes of Edinburgh
were fixed upon him, and his toasts, his epigrams, his love affairs
were the scandal of the town and his own countryside. There was some
flouting of him at this very meal, I recall, by Creech, who was deep in
his affairs, concerning a Mauchline lassie who had thrown his love back
at him with some violence and scandal; but he was not in the least
dashed either by the event or the naming of it, and, seizing a glass,
he called out, with the jolliest laugh in the world:
"Their tricks and crafts hae put me daft,
They've ta'en me in--and a' that,
But clear your decks! and here's 'The Sex,'
I like the jades for a' that,"----
the applause which greeted this sally bringing the servants to the
window, though, in fact, when it was known that Burns was in the house
there was no keeping them out of the room.
I do not feel, even at this late day, that I need an excuse for the
admiration I have of Burns, the greatest poet, in my judgment, who ever
lived. I knew his faults, if faults they were, but, before God, I knew
his temptations as well, and can speak with greatest thankfulness of
one he put behind him.
Pastor Muirkirk, of the New Light, in one of his more relaxed moments,
said to me:
"The Lord cast seven devils out of the man in the scriptures because
his nature was big enough to hold seven devils. Most of us, laddie," he
went on, "are not big enough to hold half a devil," which explains the
thought I have of Burns to a nicety, for it was surely the very bigness
of his nature, the instant sympathy with all who lived, which brought
many of the troubles to him for which he has been greatly blamed. But
this can be said of him: that no man I ever knew, from the highest lord
in the land down, presented himself to the world in a saner or more
balanced manner. I have known him to breakfast with tramps at an
ale-house in the morning, walk arm in arm with a duke down High Street
in the afternoon, and leave him perchance to dine with some poor
country acquaintance up from Ayr for a day's buying.
It was after Creech and his friend had left us that Burns turned toward
me.
"There is a matter upon which I am undecided whether it is good taste
for me to speak to you, Lord Stair," he said, "but there is such
sincerity of admiration at the root of it that ye'll can just be
forgiving me if I trespass on your sense of the proprieties. 'Tis of
your daughter, Mistress Stair. I was carried off my feet by her singing
at the charity ball, and the verses she writes are as unstudied as the
song of a lark. But she will never write a poem that is so great as
herself. All her accomplishments seem to me but a set of warbles or
trills to the true song of her great womanhood. 'Where she is,'" he
quoted prettily, "'man will be more than his wont, because of her
belief.'"
And at these words my resolutions were clean forgotten in my pride in
his praises of her.
"She wants to know you, Mr. Burns. Your book is by her day and night,"
I cried, at which he looked flattered, but said he was for Ayr that
afternoon, and the pleasure of an acquaintance with her must be put by
until some later date.
I told him at this that a friend had invited us down to his part of the
country for the fair, where we might meet again, on which he took a
slip from his pocket, putting his Edinburgh address on one side of it,
like this:
"It is in the house of Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter Close, Town market:
first scale-stair on the left hand going down; first door on the
stair,"
and on the other:
"To Mistress Nancy, Mistress Stair,
At Mauchline race or Mauchline fair,
I shall be glad to meet you there.
We'll give one night's discharge to care,
If we forgither,
And have 'a-swap-of-rhyming-ware,'
With ane anither."
And it was this "swap o' rhyming ware" which brought about the tragedy
toward which I draw.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DUKE VISITS STAIR FOR THE FIRST TIME
On my return to Stair I found Nancy on the south steps with a letter in
her hand. In her white frock, with her hair bobbing in a bunch of curls
on the top of her head, she looked scarce older than the day I had
found her there "making verses" years agone.
"You went away," she said, with reproach in her tone.
"Guess whom I fell in with," I answered.
She hesitated a minute.
"Robin," said I.
"Robin who?" she inquired.
"Who but Robin Burns?"
"Oh, did ye?" she cried, her face aglow on the instant; "did ye, Jock?
Why didn't ye bring him back with ye?"
"He's for Ayr this afternoon," I answered; "but he sent a word to ye,"
and I gave her the card in Burns' own hand.
"That's funny," she said, putting it in the bosom of her gown, and she
went on after a bit of musing, "if he swap his rhyming ware for mine it
will be a losing bargain for him."
Before I had time to answer, Dandy Carmichael came in view with a troop
of dogs at his heels, and at sight of him I recalled an arrangement
made the evening before to have a tea drinking on the lawn, and that he
was bidden to luncheon to help with the cards of invitation.
The rest of the day was spent with pen and ink and address books, and
this jostle of circumstance put the Burns meeting out of my mind
entirely, nor did I mention it to Danvers one way or another, which
turned out to be a more unfortunate occurrence than I can tell.
On the day set for the festivity Danvers came early, with the Arran
grooms behind him carrying flowers from the conservatories for the
decoration of the great hall, and all of the morning the house was
filled with gay young voices and merry preparations for the
entertainment of friends. Stands of scarlet droopers were set on the
porch, the hot-house flowers being placed against the tapestry and the
old armor; bowls of drink were brewed and set to cool, and two o'clock
found Dame Dickenson in sober black silk, with a canny eye for the
refreshments, and myself in black as well, and a state of what might be
described as pleasurable anxiety.
Dandy's last words to Nancy before leaving to bring the Erskines back
with him were these: "You are to look your very best; I desire the Hon.
Mrs. Erskine struck mute with admiration," and when she came down the
stairs I could but think that she had taken his counsel to heart,
whether because she was to meet "her rival," as she laughingly called
Isabel Erskine, or by reason of the expected presence of his Grace of
Borthwicke, I was far from deciding.
She wore a huge black hat and a black lace gown, with a kerchief tied
in front and falling near to the ground. Her gloves were black as well,
coming almost to the shoulder, her only touch of color being a cluster
of roses in the knot of lace upon her bosom.
"How handsome you are, Jock Stair," she said, coming toward me. "How
handsome you are! I did well when I selected you for a father," she
finished with a laugh.
The Arran party were among the first to arrive, and in spite of the
restless character of the entertainment I found time for a short talk
with Isabel Erskine, a modishly attired, fair girl, with round blue
eyes and many meaningless phrases, for which I saw no necessity. She
had one sincere emotion in her life, however; one which she took small
pains to conceal, and this was an infatuation for Danvers Carmichael.
It was he who presented the two young women to each other, and I noted
with pride the bearing of my daughter at this meeting, for she was
genuinely glad to meet Miss Erskine, and with much gentleness and
gravity explained the reasons which had prevented her from coming over
the day before to pay her respects. Isabel, who was not at her ease,
responded that Danvers had told them how busy every one was at Stair,
and that the omission of a visit on Nancy's part was, under the
circumstances, but natural.
That Isabel Erskine did not like Nancy I knew on the instant I saw them
together, and that Nancy was unaware of it, and would have cared
nothing about her dislike had she known of it, was a thing of which I
was equally certain.
The pretty picture of the gaily gowned ladies with their furbelows and
parasols in shifting groups under the beeches, the sunlight falling
through the leaves in broken golden shapes upon the shining silks and
satins of the dresses, the merry chatter of the younger folk and the
more demure coquetry of the older ones, are still a pleasant picture in
my memory of that far-by day.
Upon a demand from some of the guests to see the "lace school," and the
labor teaching as well, Danvers took it on himself to act as conductor
of these merry inquisitive parties, and the wonder and interest of the
ladies in the school was remarkable to see; and I recall now that Mrs.
Opie made her first visit to the burn that afternoon, and within a
month had planned her written work concerning it.
It was nearly four before the Duke of Borthwicke arrived, Hugh Pitcairn
and Sir Patrick Sullivan coming with him, unannounced, through the west
entrance.
His grace looked younger than he did at the time of our last meeting:
but his eyes were the same; misty, unholy, and bland. He wore gray
cloth of the same accented plainness, and from the time of his entrance
stood with his head uncovered in an attitude of great deference to the
women-folk; a bearing which accorded poorly with the tales afloat
concerning the manner of his private life.
To us, who for the most part knew London but by name, the bearing of
this celebrated personage was a matter for interest and study, and if
it were in my power to set him forth as he showed himself to us that
day there would be none of fair judgment who could blame Nancy for her
conduct toward him afterward I can affirm that never from the moment
that his eyes fell on her did he remove them from her face. He was
accosted by several gentlemen in his progress toward us, but it was
with a fixed glance of absorbed admiration of her that he answered
them, curtly, as I thought, and as one who brooks no interruption.
Crossing the space toward us he came alone, the forward poise of the
body, and more than all the power of his head and chest, fixing the
idea I already had of a splendid kind of devil who would make
ill-fortune for any who crossed him.
"It is a great pleasure to see you again," he said, bowing low before
Nancy.
"You have been away a long time," she answered.
"The longest month that I have ever spent," he returned.
"The Highlands were not merry?" she asked.
"I had no heart for them."
"No?" she said. "I am sorry."
"I should rather, were it mine to choose, that you were glad to have me
find them dull," he answered.
"Would that be quite friendly?" she inquired, with a smile of
intentional misunderstanding.
"I am scarce asking for friendship," he returned, and there was no
mistaking the intent of either word or eye.
"By the way," he continued, "I have ridden half over Scotland and laid
by four horses to be here this afternoon; for which," he added, with
the little outward wave of his hand which became him so well, "I am
claiming no merit; for is there a man who knows you who would have done
otherwise?"
A look passed between them, a look which I was at a complete loss to
understand, as she answered, with a laugh:
"I think Mr. Pitcairn might successfully have struggled with the
temptation of laming horses to see me."
"But," the duke retorted, "as you told me yourself on that memorable
night we first met, 'Pitcairn's not rightly a man; he's just a head.'"
"In many ways," responded Nancy, and her eyelids drooped at her own
audacity, "in many ways he reminds me of you, your grace!"
The duke smiled back at her with a little drawing together of the
eyelids, which I had learned to know so well.
"I have," he said, "nearly a fortnight to spend in Edinburgh, in which
I shall make it the effort of my life to show you the difference
between us."
CHAPTER XIV
NANCY MEETS HER RIVAL
It was the morning after the outdoor party that Danvers came into the
breakfast-room with a pleasant excitement showing in his face.
"I've a present for you," he said, going over to Nancy, who had not
left the table.
"For me?" she asked.
"For you--though I'm far from sure that you deserve it, for if there's
a man in Edinburgh this morning whom ye haven't in love with ye, he's
blind. However," he laughed, "we'll waive that," and he took a box from
his pocket and held it above his head.
"Will ye kiss me for it?" he cried.
"I will not," said she decisively.
"Then you sha'n't have it," he said with great determination, moving as
though to put it in his pocket.
"I'll go and write some letters, then," she remarked calmly, starting
toward the door.
Afraid of losing her society for the morning, mayhap, he put the box on
the table and pushed it toward her.
It was a small silver case, strong and firm, with a smaller box of
white velvet inside, in which lay a ruby ring--a gem for which men
commit crimes and women sin; a gorgeous, sparkling, rosy stone, sending
rainbow spots upon the wall, and rendering Nancy radiant and speechless
as she slipped it on her finger.
"Is it for me, Dand?" she asked, almost in a whisper.
"For whom else would it be, Little Girl?" he answered, and the delight
he had in her pleasure was a beautiful and husband-like thing to see.
"But why!" she asked. "Can I take it from him, Jock Stair?" she said,
turning to me suddenly.
"A woman can surely take a gift from her future husband with no
impropriety," I answered.
"That's true," she said; "but you see there is no betrothal between us,
and at the year's end I might have to send it back for some other woman
to wear, which would go far toward bringing me to my grave. I am afraid
I can't take it yet, Danvers."
"Wear it," he answers. "If ye can't wear it as my betrothed wife, wear
it in sign that I love you. Lord Stair hears that I hold it as token of
nothing save my own love for you. If it gives you pleasure, Nancy, it's
all I ask." At which she did the thing least expected of her by putting
her head suddenly down on her hands and bursting into a flood of tears.
"Oh," she cried, "these things are just putting me out of my mind. I
wish I was in Heaven, where there is no marrying or giving in
marriage!"
There was one point gained, however, for she wore the ring; and with it
upon her finger Danvers could never be kept long from her thoughts.
At luncheon of this same day, old Janet McGillavorich, from Mauchline,
whom Nancy ranked the chiefest of all her female friends, surprised us
by a visit. She was a far-removed cousin of Sandy's, who was constantly
back and forth between her own home and Edinburgh by reason of her
everlasting lawing.
It seems that her father had left her some property, and by the advices
of Hugh Pitcairn she had turned this to great advantage, owning bits of
land all over Scotland, from Solway side to John o' Groats.
She was a masculine-looking female, with hair of no particular shade
parted over a face very red in color, and with high cheekbones and
small gray eyes set at an angle like the Chinese folks. She was above
sixty years of age at this time, with a terrible honesty of conduct,
great violence of language, and carried things with a high hand
wherever she went.
Having heard of Nancy from Hugh Pitcairn four or five years before
this, she had demanded to make her acquaintance, upon which Hugh
fetched her over to tea one afternoon, and from that time forth she
bore an unending grudge against me, that Nancy was not her own.
"And so ye write," she had asked at this first interview; "I never read
anything ye wrote, but I'm glad to meet in with any woman who has an
aim 'beyond suckling fools and chronicling small-beer.' But ye must be
careful what ye write, my dear," she went on, "or ye'll have the whole
female population of Scotland clattering after ye. Be orthodox, and
never trifle with tales concerning the seventh command. Stick to rhymes
like 'fountain and mountain' and 'airy and fairy,' and such like
things; for ye'll find that the women who tell tales that would make ye
blush, who lead dissolute, unthinking lives, who deceive their
husbands, and smell themselves up with Lily-of-the-Valley-water when
they go to the kirk, will be the hardest upon ye if ye stray from any
accepted thought. They require the correctest thinking in print ye
know!"
I never saw Nancy more pleased with any human being than with this
fire-eating old lady; and when Janet finished her discourse by the
statement, "God be praised! I never read poetry. Shakespeare sickened
me of that. This thing of not saying right out what you mean turns my
stomach. Padding out some lines to make them a bit longer, and chopping
off ends of words to make others shorter, ought to be beneath any
reasoning creature." Nancy put her head on the table and laughed until
I was afraid she would make herself ill.
It was after the luncheon, while Janet was still with us, that the Hon.
Mrs. Erskine and her daughter came to pay us a visit of congratulation
on the success of our entertainment. Danvers had gone off to walk, and
so it fell upon the three of us to receive these visitors in the
music-room, where we were having tea.
The elder lady, whom Sandy insisted had come to Edinburgh to marry me,
was an intentional female, with much hair, much rouge, and a pallor
heightened by rice-powder, which gave her a very floury and unclean
appearance. Her eyes were an indescribable color, resembling the pulp
of a grape, and near-set, a thing which I have never been able to abide
in man, woman, or child. Her nose was long and peaked, and her mouth
dropped at the corners. But it was the strange set of her whole figure
which struck my notice again and again. For she was, to use a lumbering
expression, all in front of her spine, with neither backward curve to
her head, nor her shoulders nor hips, which gave her a peculiarly
unpliable appearance. Her voice was high and of a singular penetrating
quality, and she had an over-civil manner to us, as of one who has
something to gain. Her gown, of blue, had many strange kinds of
trimming which seemed both needless and inexpressive, and what with the
rouge and the chains and hangings around her neck, she reminded me of
nothing so much as a grotesque figure for a Christmas-tree decoration.
When it be added to all of this that she had a fearful habit of
emphasizing certain words in a senseless and flippant style, and of
waving a lace kerchief constantly, after the manner of a flag, it may
be imagined with what joy I relished her society.
"Ah!" she said, "you are alone after the party. What a success it was!
A positive triumph, positive! Isabel and I had been told how delightful
Edinburgh society was, but we were not prepared for the gaiety we
found. It was charming! Positively charming! And how beautiful you
looked, my dear," she went on, turning to Nancy. "Of course we'd heard
of you--every one in any society at all has heard of you, you know; but
you've such style, my dear--positively the belle-air, positively!
"I know you're pleased to hear how your daughter is adored, aren't you,
Lord Stair? It's what I say to the dear duchess (the Duchess of Mont
Flathers, you know--we're just like sisters!). 'Maria,' I say to her,
'of course I am pleased to have Isabel the rage, as she is--it's only
natural, she being my daughter, that I should feel so.' I am enchanted
at all the attention she receives, and at the way men rave over her.
It's a mother's feeling. One night, I recall, when Danvers Carmichael
had positively compromised Isabel by his attentions, for he's always
after her, the dear duchess said to me:
"'Anne, this is going too far!' And I said:
"'Dearest, it may be; but I have no heart to stop them. They both look
so happy.' And the duchess replied:
"'Anne, your feelings do you credit; and I think it's so sweet and
womanly to be so honest about it.'
"'We naturally like to have our children beloved,' I answered, stiffly.
"That's just what I say all of the time!" she went on, as though some
one might stop her by a speech of his own. "Just what I say, Lord
Stair; both to Alexander Carmichael and his son. How beautiful, how
very beautiful the friendship between you is. And between your children
as well! Danvers is quite like a brother to your daughter, isn't he?
"I really believe--now don't contradict me," she said, waving her
handkerchief at her daughter, "I really believe that Isabel was
inclined to be jealous yesterday. Danvers has always been so devoted to
her--always, since she was quite a little, little girl; and I am
afraid--just a tiny morsel afraid--that it was hard for her to share
him.
"Not that you were to blame, dearest," she said, turning to Nancy, "not
the very least bit in the world. It was quite plain who claimed your
time! Quite plain! His Grace of Borthwicke is positively the most
fascinating creature I ever saw--positively. We never can get him in
London at all; so I never took my eyes from him; and all the town
bowing before him--and he absolutely on his knees before you, my dear!
Absolutely!
"Pardon me for mentioning it--forgive me, won't you?--but what a
beautiful, exquisite ring! Look, Isabel! Quite like an engagement ring.
Now could it--I wonder--could it," peering at it and then at Nancy
through her glasses--Nancy, whose eyes had the significant darkness in
them which I have mentioned so often.
"It is not an engagement ring," she answered quietly.
And here Janet, who had watched the Hon. Mrs. Erskine in much the same
manner as she would have regarded a foolish old cat, came into the
talk.
"Since you think so highly of Danvers, Mrs. Erskine, ye must say a good
word for him to Nancy Stair. He's my choice for her to marry," she
said, looking around with a bland smile.
"And does he want to marry her?" Mrs. Erskine asked, abashed by this
directness.
"He told me that he had asked her three times a day ever since they
met, and I, for one, hope that she'll think twenty times of him to once
she thinks of that devilish John Montrose."
I cared nothing for the silly old Mrs. Erskine, but my heart bled for
her daughter, who became a piteous white at the turn the talk had
taken, and put her handkerchief to her face, affecting a cough. Nancy
saw this and her heart spoke.
"Dandy Carmichael," she says, "talks to you, Mrs. MacGillavorich, to
please ye--you lay too much stress by what he says."
But the italicizing lady was routed, and as Janet watched her departure
from the window she said:
"Mark my words, John Stair! she's fetched that girl here to marry her
to Danvers Carmichael. I've not known Anne Erskine all these years for
nothing. The old cat!" she cried.
CHAPTER XV
CONCERNING DANVERS CARMICHAEL AND HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE
It was from the time of the garden party on that Danvers Carmichael and
his Grace of Borthwicke were, to speak rudely, walking into each other
at every turn of Stair, and it is a task beyond me to tell the strain
which came into our affairs with the entrance of Montrose.
Subtle, subtle, subtle! It was the word which followed him everywhere,
and it was as difficult to manage him as to handle quicksilver. He
flattered with a contradiction; saw nothing unmeant for him to see;
bent to the judgment of him with whom he talked; was supple in speech;
modest, even to the point of regarding himself as a somewhat humorous
failure; told long stories with something of a stagelike jauntiness, of
fights in his boyhood, in India, in the House of Lords--and by his own
telling was ever the one worsted, the one upon whom the laugh had
turned.
For myself, I confessed openly then, as I do now, that I found him the
most diverting person I have ever met, and took such pleasure in his
company that upon me should rest much of the dirdum of having him at
Stair.
There were two things, however, which annoyed me no little concerning
his frequent visits to my home. The first of these was the attitude
toward him of Father Michel. I was coming out of the new chapel with
his grace one morning when we encountered the good father, and I was
struck with amazement to see the duke grow suddenly white and give a
start backward, with a quick indrawing of the breath which made a
choking sound in his throat, and that Father Michel on the instant
seemed as a stone man, save for the eyes, which, if I were anything of
an interpreter, showed a live hate and an old-time grudge. During this
meeting, which was brief to abruptness, Father Michel spoke no word,
but bowed low at the first silence which fell between us, taking his
way down the braeside upon such business as he had in hand, and no
questions were asked after his departure concerning either his origin
or his labors, for the duke was ever one who knew the protective power
of silence.
After this encounter between them I played a clumsy detective in
proving that the two avoided each other and that there had been some
interwovenness of interests in the past. Several times when I asked
Father Michel to join us at table he gave me flimsy excuses, and once
the duke pleaded indisposition when I proposed that he should accompany
Father Michel on an inspection of some stained glass which Nancy was
having put in the altar windows of the new chapel.
In many ways, therefore, I became fixed in a belief that there was
hatred in Father Michel for John Montrose, and a distaste for the good
father in the Duke of Borthwicke, such as a man might cherish against
one whom he has greatly wronged.
The second trouble, however, was more acute, for it involved the duke's
treatment of Dandy Carmichael. While we were of a party Montrose was
civil enough, but when the two of them were thrown together the duke
would relapse into an insulting silence, such as one carries in the
presence of servants; would require to be spoken to twice before
answering a question, as though his thoughts were far away; would even
hum to himself as though entirely alone; or put the cap to his
insolence by taking a book from his pocket and reading, sometimes even
marking the rhythm of a verse aloud. So from day to day there was
growing a hatred for the duke in Danvers by reason of his jealousy and
the accumulative discourtesy which he was obliged to endure.
As for Nancy's conduct to the two of them, if it seemed strange to me,
who was her father, it was but natural that it should require some
explanation to those less partial to her, and she had the whole town
talking over which was the favored suitor. She rode with his grace in
the morning, played at billiards with Danvers in the afternoon, perhaps
to be off in the evening with McMurtree of Ainswere, who was maudlin in
his infatuation for her and whom she pronounced the best dancer out of
France.
There were seasons when I could have sworn that she had no thought save
for Danvers. I have known her to watch for his coming, to grow restless
if his visits were a bit later than expected, to regard him with happy
and glowing eyes, and to rest in his presence in a way that flattered
him and drew him to her with such a passion of love showing in his fine
face that I had joy in the mere sight of him. But these times would
pass, and mayhap in a week or less she would be at the Latinity with
the duke, heated in her enthusiasm for him, encouraging him in his
tale-telling, with gleaming eyes and audacious rejoinders. At these
times Dandy fell back for company upon his cousin Isabel, and I have
met them frequently riding or driving together, she with a happy,
radiant face, and he with the brooding devil in his eye and a sullen
look in the smile with which he greeted me.
In his frequent absences from Edinburgh the duke never allowed Nancy's
thoughts to wander from him long. A book by special post, an exquisite
volume of Fergusson, hand-printed, some foreign posies in a pot, an
invitation to come with a party of his English friends to the
Highlands, and he added:
"I am sending the list of the guests to your Royal Highness, and if
there be some who are not to your liking, I pray you cross them off.
Following here," he went on, "the custom usual when one invites Royalty
to one's home," playing all the moves which a man knows who has wooed
and won many times, but, as it seemed to me, with a
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