NANCY BEGINS HER STUDY OF THE LAW
There has been some delay in bringing Hugh Pitcairn into my story, and,
as I read that which I have written, I seem to have set him down in a
scant and dry manner little calculated to do justice to his many
virtues. These virtues, however, were of the kind which made him a fine
citizen rather than a jolly companion over a bowl of brose. He was a
tall man, heavily built, with a large face, thick bristly hair, and
blue eyes set extraordinarily far apart. The bridge of his nose being
noticeably low, this peculiarity gave the upper part of his face the
appearance of being very sparsely settled. It was Robert Burns, I
remember, who made this descriptive observe concerning him. A lowland
body, but kin to the Pitcairns of the north, he had come to the High
School dependent for his education upon the generosity of a rich uncle,
and from the time he entered was easily first in all of his classes. Of
an unbending rectitude, unmerciful in his judgments, analytical,
penetrating, and accumulative, he was at an early age destined for two
things--success and unpopularity. He left the High School with us, to
enter upon the study of the law with Maxwell, of Dalgleish, and rising
rapidly in his profession was at the age of thirty-three recognized as
the soundest, most learned, and bitterest tongued lawyer in Auld
Reekie.
Justice to his mind was a simple thing; a man had either broken the law
or he had not; if he had, he should be punished. "Extenuating
circumstances" was a phrase used only by the sentimental and the
guilty. I recall, as I write, his telling me with some pride and an
amused smile of a certain occasion, when he had wrung a verdict from a
jury against their sympathies, that the spectators had hissed him on
his way out of court.
"He's not a man at all. He's only a Head," Sandy Carmichael said of him
once, and I find enough truth in the statement to make it worth setting
down.
His conceit of himself was high, as is the case with many self-made
men, but he had a fine code of conduct for the direction of his private
affairs, was aggressively honest and fearless, and an earnest believer
in God, himself, and the Scots law.
Like other great men he had his failings, however, and he set up to be
a judge of music and poetry, for which he had as vile an ear as could
be conceived; and to hear him read from Ramsay or Fergusson was an
infliction not unnecessarily to be borne. One night, I remember, in
'86, Burns and I stopped at Pitcairn's on our way home from Creech's
and got him to read Leith Races and Caller Oysters, and Rab afterward
went out and rolled over and over in a snow-drift, roaring with
laughter, till some of the town-guard, who chanced to be going by, were
for arresting him on the charge of drunkenness.
It may be easily judged from this description that my friend Sandy and
he were at opposite poles from each other, as I have said, and as time
passed this dislike increased until it became the chiefest vexation of
my life. If I mentioned Hugh's name to Sandy, he would maintain a
disdainful silence or turn the talk with abruptness; while if Sandy's
name was spoken before Pitcairn, the great lawyer would raise his
eyebrows, shrug his shoulders, or make some biting criticism which
rendered me resentful and highly uncomfortable as well.
As soon as I was firmly fixed in my old home again, Pitcairn began to
drop in on me, as his practise had been before my marriage, and his
attitude to Nancy was a thing humorous to see. Hers to him was not
without its droll side as well, for when he was present, especially if
he talked of his cases, the child would sit on a stool, with some live
thing held in her lap, literally devouring him with her eyes as he
narrated the story of some criminal whom he had hanged or transported.
I have seen her imitate his gesture as he talked, and sigh with relief
when the jury handed in its verdict and the culprit's doom was finally
settled. It was not long, however, before she evinced a strong dislike
to being left alone with him, and if I had occasion to leave the room
where the three of us were together she would invariably follow me.
In an unfortunate moment, driving by the old court in a pony chaise, I
stopped, knowing that Pitcairn had a case on, and took Nancy in "to see
him at his work." Every little while after that I would find her
disappeared from the house, and on going to the court would see her
midget pony fastened outside, and the little chestnut head and big gray
eyes looking over the back of the high bench in front; for the
officers, who knew she was my daughter, soon grew to understand her
ways and let her in without parley. I can solemnly affirm that I
thought this a most unwise way for a child to spend her time, but there
was something about Nancy herself which prevented my giving orders. I
can not say that she ever disobeyed me, and yet, I knew then, as I know
now, that had I tried to stop her she would have evaded me, and as it
turned out in the end, it was all for the best.
I who was with her day by day could feel her growing dislike of Hugh
Pitcairn, and once she came to me after a visit to the court, her
cheeks flaming, her eyes dilated, and her body literally shaking with
emotion.
"He cursed at Pitcairn as they dragged him out," she said, and then
bringing her little fists down on my knee, she cried with apparent
irrelevancy:
"It's not the way, Jock! It's not the way!"
Less than a fortnight after I was sitting over some accounts in the
east room, when Hugh Pitcairn entered unannounced.
"Well, Jock Stair," he said, "that daughter of yours lost me as pretty
a case to-day as I ever had."
"Indeed, Hugh," I returned, "I'm in no way answerable for that."
"I don't know about that!" he broke in. "This case was one of a young
woman who had taken a purse. She established the fact that she was a
widow with two small children, one of whom was dying and needed
medicine. I thought at first that she borrowed one of the children,
they frequently do, but it was established hers. I drew attention to
the anarchy which would inevitably follow if each individual were
allowed to help himself to his neighbor's belongings, and the jury was
with me. As I was concluding, that child of yours slipped from her
place, climbed the steps on the side, and heeding judges and jury less
than Daft Jamie, went straight toward the prisoner, pulled herself up
on a chair beside the woman, and putting her arms around the culprit's
neck, as though to defend her against the devil himself, turned her
eyes in my direction and fairly glowered at me.
"The spectators cheered, and a woman in the front cried, 'God bless the
baby,' while the judge--Carew it was, a sentimentalist and a menace to
the bar--dried the tears from his eyes openly, _and the jury decided
against me without leaving the box_," he thundered, as though I were
in some way responsible.
I groaned. Taking this for sympathy, he went on:
"I'm glad ye feel about it as I do."
"To be frank with you, Pitcairn," I answered, "I don't; and it's not
for your lost case I groan, but for what is likely to come to me
because of it."
Nor was I mistaken. Just at the gloaming time, while there was still a
little of the yellow hanging in the west, I saw the figure of a woman
with a baby in her arms outlined clear against the sky on the top of
the hill, and by her side trotted the little creature who had all my
heart, leading her home.
"There," said I to Pitcairn, pointing to them, "that's what your
inadequacy at the law has cost me. There are three more people whom
Nancy has fetched home for me to support."
"I wonder at ye sometimes, Jock Stair," he cried at this, "I wonder at
ye!--for in many ways ye seem an intelligent man--that ye can let a
small girl-child have her way with you as ye do."
The outer door closed as he spoke, and I heard the patter of little
feet.
"She's not being raised right. She'll be a creature of no breeding. Ye
should take her----"
At this the door opened and Nancy came in. At the sight of Pitcairn she
stopped on her way toward me, and her black brows came together in an
ecstasy of rage. Putting her little body directly in front of him she
looked him full in the eye.
"Devil!" she said, and walked out of the room, leaving us standing
staring at each other, speechless, and I noted with glee that, on one
occasion at least, I saw Hugh Pitcairn abashed.
This occurrence in the court did not pass in the town unnoticed, for
Bishop Ames, of St. Margaret's, on the following Sunday preached from
the text: "And a little child shall lead them," telling the story from
the pulpit; while the Sentinel of the next week spoke of Nancy with
flattery and tenderness. The publicity given to the affair alarmed me
in no small degree, and I reasoned with myself that a child who had
such fearlessness and such disrespect for established ways was a
problem which somebody wiser than myself should have the handling of.
There were three other occurrences which fell about this time which
brought this thought still more vividly to my mind, the first of these
bringing the knowledge that she had no religion. Entering the hall one
morning I met the little creature coming from the stairway, dragging an
enormous book behind her as though it were a go-cart. She had put a
stout string through the middle of the volume, and with this passed
round her waist was making her way with it toward the library.
"Jock," she said, backing at sight of me and sitting down upon the
great volume as though it were a footstool, "did you ever read a book
called Old Testament?"
"Not so much as I should," I answered, realizing with a strange jolt of
mind that it was the Bible she was dragging after her.
"I got it in the attic," she said, as she climbed upon my knee, "and I
thought at first it was a joke-book. And after I thought it was a
fairy-book; but as I go on, _there seems more to it_."
And the second of these episodes was as disconcerting:
The dwarfed boy was Nancy's peculiar care among the Burnside people,
and the question as to why he was made "crookit," as she called it, was
one which I had never been able to answer to her satisfaction.
Coming in one day with a little bunch of violets for me, she stopped
before leaving the room, and said, as though telling me a funny secret:
"Jamie Henderlin took Nancy's money."
"What?" I cried.
"Yes," she said, "took it out of the little bag when he thought I was
not looking."
"What did you do?" I inquired.
"I?" she turned away shyly, "I made out that I didn't see him."
"But, Nancy," I said, "that was not really kind. As he grows older he
will steal."
"Take," she interrupted firmly.
"He will take from other people."
"He is a dwarf, Jock," she said, with a sweet irrelevance, which had
its logic, however, in her kind heart.
"That doesn't make it right."
"He wanted it more than I did," she went on; "I don't need it----"
"That doesn't excuse him, either."
"Perhaps," she said, "if you and I, mine Jock, were made as he is we
might do something worse than he has done. _People laugh at him!_ He
mayn't be right. I'm not saying that he is right; but I _am_ saying
that _I_ am not going to hurt his feelings. The Lord has done that
enough already."
And the third one, never told by Mrs. Opie, and a fortunate thing it
was for us, had to do with her skill in the use of a pen. She was still
a very little child, lying on a rug by the fire, reading out of the
Bible, as I sat at the desk looking over some accounts which would not
come right. There was the matter of a draft for five pounds, with my
own name to it, which I had certainly no remembrance of ever having
signed.
"What's the matter, Jock?" said Nancy, seeing my knit brow.
"They won't come right, Little Flower," I answered.
She came over to me and looked at the accounts.
"Nancy made one just like Jock's," she said.
"What?" I cried, with consternation.
"Nancy--made--one--just--like--Jock's," she repeated. "A poor lady who
was very sick," she explained, "was by here one day you had gone. I
made one for her."
"Nancy," I said, taking her on my knee, "do you know that it is a crime
to sign another person's name without his leave?"
"How crime?"
"Well, it's the thing people get locked in jails for----"
She laughed out loud and lay back on my arm at this.
"It's all mine, isn't it?" she asked.
I had told this so often that I couldn't gainsay it.
"_Wrong to write Sandy's name, not wrong to write Jock's_," she
crooned in a sort of song; and this was as far as I got with her
concerning it.
I told Sandy these three tales, and he roared with glee.
"Her morals are all tail first," he said, "though very sound! But
she'll have us in the poor farm and herself in jail if she keeps this
up."