"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 crepe 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 Caesar," 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.