Nancy Stair Part 12

As she went over the gra.s.s 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 circ.u.mvent 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 att.i.tude 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sion 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."