I TAKE NANCY'S EDUCATION IN HAND
Father Michel, Sandy, and Hugh Pitcairn were the only ones who knew
enough of the child to make their advices on the subject of an
education for her of any value, and it was the priest whom I consulted
first.
"My lord," he said, after listening to my tale, "it's a peculiar case,
and one which, I openly state, is beyond me. In every bout with her I
am routed by a certain lawless sincerity of utterance, or by her
fastening her eyes upon me and asking, 'Why?' or 'Who says that?' She
is gentleness and sweetness itself; but any attempt which I have ever
made to instruct her in religion has been utterly without results.
Sometimes she goes to sleep, other whiles she laughs and questions me
in a way that makes the flesh crawl. When I told her of the crucifixion
of our blessed Lord, she fell into such a frenzy that it brought on the
aching head and fever, which you will remember caused your lordship
such alarm. We have the raising of a genius upon us, and by that I mean
one who knows more, sees deeper, feels more keenly than is given to
most or to any except the few. Miss Nancy is a fearless soul, a
passionate, loving, powerful nature, and my belief is that the only way
to control her is to let her develop her own powers in her own way. It
is a hard question, a subtle question, my lord; but I believe it is the
only way."
Sandy was in London at the time, but the same day on which I had the
talk with Father Michel I sent for Hugh Pitcairn, asking him to dine
with me and talk over the Problem of Nancy.
"It's like this, Hugh," said I, as we sat over some wine of his
particular fancy, "God has been kind enough to send me a wonderful
child, and I want to do what's right by her. I want her to have the
reasonable education of a man and to keep her as far as possible from
the influence of the usual unthinking female. I neither want her
instructed in false modesty, lying, nor the deception of the male sex.
It is on the male virtues that I want the accent placed; bravery,
honesty, self-knowledge, and responsibility for her words and conduct;
good manly virtues that most women know only as words of the
dictionary."
Hugh stared across at me, and there was a look in his eyes of being
tolerant toward crass ignorance as he answered:
"There are whiles when you are more humorous than others, Jock Stair.
This is your most fanciful time yet. There's no such thing possible,
and ye can just rest by that! Ye can't make a woman into a man by any
method of rearing, for there are six thousand years of ancestry to
overcome. That's somewhat, and with the female physiology and the Lord
himself against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter
reared like other women and to fulfil woman's great end."
"And what's that?" I asked.
"To marry and bring children into the world," he returned, as certainly
as he would have stated the time of day.
"When all's said and done and theorized over concerning the female
sex," he went on, "ye just find yourself back at that. Ye can't educate
a woman as ye can a man; she's not got the same faculties to take in
the information that ye offer her. Why," he cried, "ye can't give her
any sense of abstract right or wrong. In order to protect her young she
has inherited certain keen faculties and instincts which we poor male
creatures are without; but from the minute she becomes a wife or mother
she ceases in some degree to have a conscience. No," he finished, "when
a woman's emotions are stirred you can't believe a word she says."
"Ye've seen for yourself that Nancy's different from the girl children
ye've known," I said, with some remonstrance in my voice.
"She has power, true. And magnetism, true. And great beauty," he
answered, counting these on his fingers as though they were points in
law; "but give her a man's education, and what have ye done? Simply
made a dangerous contrivance of her to get her own way. I tell ye,
Jock," he said in conclusion, "ye can't civilize women. They are not
intended to be civilized."
The longer I thought this talk over, the more firmly I became fixed in
the belief that Hugh knew nothing concerning the matter, and that my
own ideas on the subject were the best, and in less than a week I had
my own old school-books down, and was casting around for a tutor for
Nancy, firm in my intention of "bringing her up a perfect gentleman,"
as Hugh derisively stated. I fixed on Latin for her, and sound
mathematics, and later Greek and Logic, and when I showed this list of
studies to Pitcairn, I recall that he looked at me, with the usual pity
in his glance, and asked dryly:
"Why not tiger shooting and the high-jump?"
Sandy was from home at this time, having been called to a dying wife,
poor fellow, or I should have taken advice with him concerning a
certain old teacher of his boy Danvers, for whom I had a great liking.
While awaiting his return I took the Little Flower into my confidence,
and found her delighted that she was to be "teached." There was one
point upon which she was firm, however, which was that none but Father
Michel should be her instructor, and the good man, with many a dubious
shake of his head, entered upon his work the following week.
Often after this time I would come upon them in the small writing-room
where the studies were conducted, to find the little one standing by
the father's knee, as he held the book for her, or sitting in his lap
looking up at him with a funny earnestness, as though they were playing
together, going over
----rego
----regere
----rexi
----rectus
or some such work, and amazing us both by her capacities.
On her ninth birthday Hugh gave her the ponderous tome from which so
much of Mrs. Opie's facts have been obtained, and into this volume she
put her verses and her thoughts just as they came into her curly head,
standing upon a stool to make her high enough to reach the
writing-table with comfort. There was an unspoken understanding between
us that I was at liberty to read this book, but never in her presence.
One night after she had spent the afternoon at work upon it, I drew it
toward me, to find a new set of verses beginning:
The heifer by the milking pail,
Whose neck-cloth is so white, etc.
and underneath the following, in which the influence of the Good Book
was surely visible:
"MY COMANDMENCE!
1. I must love Jock Stair first of all created things, for he was
my mother's friend and mine.
2. Since the Lord has cast the poor from him I must do what I can
for them.
3. I must not be afraid of any livving thing, for no gentleman can
show forth fear.
4. I must not wish Huey Macrath from Stair, tho' he snuffles and
his ears are large, for he was here before I was and is very
ritechus.
5. I must not swear, tho' Sandy does, and to say dam is not godly,
for a girl.
More to morrow,
L. F. S."
I was prouder of these than I have words to tell, seeing that already
she was beginning to consider conduct. And an event which followed soon
after made me plume myself still further. I had taught her to play
chess, and Danvers Carmichael being home from his English school, Sandy
and I made a merry wager of a game for a guinea a side, each of us
backing the talent of our own offspring. Nancy, who was about half
Danvers' height, drew the whites, and led off by the good conservative
opening of the king's knight, the boy replying well and putting the
pieces out after the usual fashion. Nancy unexpectedly played her
queen. "Check," she said. Dand interposed a pawn. Nancy moved a knight.
"Check," she said again. Dand was forced to move his king, and in three
moves I could see the game was hers. Suddenly she retreated and began a
process which never in my whole experience with her had I seen
duplicated. She trifled ineffectually with her men, moving them hither
and thither with no purpose or aim; and, to crown all, after one of
these fruitless moves, the boy cried, "Mate," placing his queen
triumphantly from one side of the board to the other. Nancy's eyes
shone with pleasure.
"You beat me," she cried. "Sandy won the guinea, Jock."
I can not recall when a small thing annoyed me as much as this one did,
and the next morning, finding the Little Flower making verses on the
west wall, I sat down to get some explanation from her.
"Nancy," I began, "why did you play so badly at chess last night?"
The shy look with which I was familiar came into her face.
"He can't play chess, Jock," she said.
"I know it," I cried; "I saw that; but why did you disgrace your
father, young woman, answer me that?"
"Oh," she answered, with great earnestness, "do you no see? He's a
man-child, and his father was looking on; and it would have been a fair
disgrace for him to be beaten at the game by me, who am only a girl,
and younger. I couldn't do it, Jock," she cried, and her cheeks flushed
with a glorious pink color. "I couldn't do it. No gentleman could!"
I glowed with pride at the sight of her, my hopes rose high, and I told
the story, together with her "Comandmence," to Hugh Pitcairn for his
admiration and approval.
He was as unmoved, however, at the end of my narration as at the
beginning of it.
"She's no a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she
begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest.
They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye
can't change their natures any more than ye can stop fire from
burning."
Later he began to alter his opinion of her, however, and it fell, I
think, largely through his own vanity. I have told of the scene in the
court which resulted in Jeanie Henderlin and her two children coming to
be Burn-folk, and from that time Nancy would turn back every little
while to her interest in the law. There were some compilations of
celebrated cases among my books, and for a while her talk ran of the
trials for murder and poisoning and the scuttling of ships, until I
wondered where the thing would lead. Part of these accounts were
briefed; others contained the evidence entire, indictments, questions
and answers, the judges' instructions, and the verdict rendered, all
with much legal verbiage and twisting.
One night, in her twelfth year, she asked Hugh Pitcairn some questions
concerning a poison case, which happened to be one he had studied with
interest himself, and he denounced the verdict as one unlawful and
obtained by sentiment rather than from the evidence itself, promising
to send another book to her containing his own view of the matter. Here
was a ground in which a friendship with Hugh could take firm root, and
from that time on there were heavy volumes coming to Nancy from the
great barrister constantly, and to hear her quizzed by him concerning
the law on certain points was one of the most humorous bits of my life.
I never rightly understood this trend of Nancy's mind. In her talks
with me I found it was never to discover the naked law on a point, but
how punishment might be evaded, that interested her. "If he'd said
this," or "had he left that unsaid," or "if the defense had proven,"
was the burden of her remarks, and I thought at times that if Hugh saw
the thing as I did he would find at bottom of all her lawing only a
woman's desire to discover how people could be got out of trouble,
whether deserving punishment or not.
In her fifteenth year, when I was obliged to go to London concerning
the Forfeited Estates, I had her with me; but even then the lawing
between Pitcairn and herself did not cease, for packets passed between
them constantly, and soon after our return, Nancy's being eighteen at
the time, I found that she had wrought a change in him, as well as in
the rest of us.
"Jock Stair," he said to me one night, as though addressing a jury, "I
told you once that it was impossible to civilize a woman, that all
education just went over their heads and affected their natures none at
all; that it was beyond them to conceive an abstract right or wrong;
that I had never seen one who had a jot of public spirit. I feel a
sense of duty in telling you I've changed. I have seen one. It's your
daughter, Nancy Stair!"