Nancy Stair Part 21

"And is it your way to try to kill all you hate?"

"Oh, no," he answered, "it is not often necessary."

I can not set down the ease with which he spoke, for it seemed to me that I was listening to some theatric person behind the foot-lights making a speech to the pit rather than to a man who was as earnest as a man could well be.

"The truth at the root of the whole trouble is that Mr. Carmichael and I have the misfortune to love the same woman.

"I have wanted for some time to have a private talk with you, Lord Stair," he continued. "If your time is at your command, will you do me the honor to have a bottle of wine with me at the Red c.o.c.k, where we can talk with something more of ease?"

Ten minutes from that we were seated by a window of the inn, the duke on one side of a table with a bottle of his own, I on the other with a bottle of mine, while he, with a frankness impossible to a less gifted person, was dazzling me by his wisdom and his wickedness.

I wish it were possible for me to put down the gesture, the grace of language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least, state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or the clash of some great event.

"I was a poor boy," the duke began, "at fourteen, a poor Highland body with estates in a begging condition, and a sickly frame--a stoop and haggled lungs, but something, _something_ within me that would not down, that would accept no defeat. I made this body of mine over. I trained myself until I could endure hardship like the Indians and bear pain like a stoic. It took four years of my life for this, and it was upon its completion that I began to mend the fortunes of the family. I looked out into the world with more cynical eyes than generally do the observing boys of my age, and found self-interest to be the lever which moves the human thing we call man. _Man!_" he cried, with a laugh.

"Lord! there aren't ten men in England to-day, or do you think I would be where I am? There was shamelessness, even a touch of villainy in my creed; but it was, after all, admirably adapted to the folk with whom I had to deal. But with my fortune and my increase of power my ambition rose higher and higher. I could handle men at my will; but I began to ask myself questions as to the use of doing it at all. I was honest with myself, and I saw, I think, clearly that I got my power by using the _worst_ in men.

"Well, my lord, I met your daughter, and it seemed to me I found she had a better power than my own. As I have said, my ambition is boundless. I desire always the best. I believe she is a fine philosopher, she can win at my own game. Oh," he interrupted himself, "I would not be setting it out to you that it's my head alone she's touched, for I am as daft in my love for her as any schoolboy could be, but I'm just telling you that, both from my ambition and my love, I want her for my wife.

"The first thing," he went on, "which I have to face beside yourself is this Carmichael man. If I had met him in any other relation in life I should have forgotten him within a fortnight; but he has been forced upon my notice--there are things about him I can not understand."

"They are his principles, perhaps," I suggested dryly.

The duke laughed aloud.

"That was worthy of Mistress Stair herself," he said, his eyes filled with laughter.

"It all comes to this in the end, John Montrose--if you know anything of women. If ye kill Dandy Carmichael you need never expect to see Nancy's face again. The boy is one of her first remembrances, and his father is almost as dear to her as I am myself. What kind of place are you making with her to kill one who, by all old ties, has become dear?"

"I've no intention of killing him," he said. "I intend to let him have a thrust at me with his sword, and then get him sent from the country for it."

I saw his plan in a minute.

"And suppose I tell Nancy what ye've just told me?" I cried.

He leaned across the table and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

"That is my power," he said, "my knowledge of people. I know your code, Lord Stair, and though I were the greatest scoundrel on earth, 'tis not in you to betray the confidence which I have reposed in you, even to help a friend."

CHAPTER XVI

NANCY STAIR ARRANGES MATTERS

I rode back to Stair, having accomplished nothing whatever with the duke, sick at heart and baffled completely by the shameless honesty of the man. Whiles I made up my mind to ride on to Arran and tell Sandy of the whole matter, and next to find Dand and see what common sense might do with him, though his deil's temper argued against any satisfaction being obtained by this move.

As I turned into the policy I was met by one of the grooms, who rode in some haste with a letter in the band of his hat. Instinct told me that his errand was relative to the trouble brewing, and I immediately jumped at a conclusion, which was that Nancy had heard of the quarrel and had sent for one or other of her fire-eating friends to come to her.

With no small interest, therefore, I watched the man close the Holm gate and set off at a breakneck speed toward Edinburgh, where the duke lay.

At the dinner I asked Nancy what she had been doing in my absence.

"I read some Fergusson and some of the rhymes of that idiot King James VI, and then I went over Mr. Pitcairn's indictment of Mungo Armstrong.

Jock, it is written with the fairness of the judge himself. It is great work! He's a wonderful man, Pitcairn!" which occupations surely showed no great perturbation of mind.

After the meal she told me that she had sent for the duke "concerning some matters," and I lay on the leather couch in the hall, the very same bit of furniture, by the way, which we called Pitcairn's sofa, which made a bitter time for us all later, and fell asleep.

I was recalled to consciousness by singing in the grounds, and although the whole town knew the song, it was the first time I had ever heard it--"The Duke's Tune," it was called far and wide:

[Ill.u.s.tration (music)]

at the last note of which, Borthwicke himself, jaunty, bareheaded, and smiling, stood before Nancy in the window-way.

"How is your Royal Highness to-night?" he cried gaily.

"My Royal Highness," she replied, with a little laugh, "is not in a happy frame of mind. Things have gone very wrong with me to-day."

"Indeed?" returned his grace. "Things may be changed by human endeavor.

I myself," very lightly, "have been able to change a few. It is perhaps superfluous for me to mention that my time and abilities are at your service always."

"If that be true, my troubles have disappeared entirely," Nancy returned. "They were all of your breeding. I have been thinking of your grace the day long."

"I am honored," he said.

"Perhaps you should know my thoughts before you say that. They were not complimentary in the extreme," she said, looking directly at him with very honest eyes.

"You might," and there was the caressing tone in his voice of which I have already spoken, "tell me wherein I displease you. It would be the effort of my life to change."

He came directly toward her at this, o'er close, it seemed to me, and stood looking down into her eyes, which were fixed upon his.

"You mean it?" she asked.

"By the love I bear you, the best thing my life has ever known--I mean it to the last letter. In fact, I spoke of it this afternoon to your father, Lord Stair. You've made a change in me. I'm not promising too much, but I am intending a reform of myself. Let me put it to you, not too earnestly, lest nothing come of it, but so you can get the drift of my thoughts.

"I have come to believe that your creed of love and helpfulness to every one is a stronger one than mine. It is not a proven thing to me yet, but I think one gets more in a subtler way than I can name from living by it. My head has got me so far in the working out of it. My heart----"

"Your heart will help you the most," said Nancy. "And it is there I am hoping for help from you." And here, perhaps to avoid the avowal which she felt might be coming, she took a tangent:

"Will your new wisdom carry you so far as to write a letter for me, one with your signature at the bottom?"

"It will," his grace answered, without a second's hesitation seating himself at the writing-table.

"It is for you to dictate it," he went on, with the paper spread before him, pen in hand.

"My dear Mr. Carmichael," Nancy began.