CONCERNING DANVERS CARMICHAEL AND HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE
It was from the time of the garden party on that Danvers Carmichael and
his Grace of Borthwicke were, to speak rudely, walking into each other
at every turn of Stair, and it is a task beyond me to tell the strain
which came into our affairs with the entrance of Montrose.
Subtle, subtle, subtle! It was the word which followed him everywhere,
and it was as difficult to manage him as to handle quicksilver. He
flattered with a contradiction; saw nothing unmeant for him to see;
bent to the judgment of him with whom he talked; was supple in speech;
modest, even to the point of regarding himself as a somewhat humorous
failure; told long stories with something of a stagelike jauntiness, of
fights in his boyhood, in India, in the House of Lords--and by his own
telling was ever the one worsted, the one upon whom the laugh had
turned.
For myself, I confessed openly then, as I do now, that I found him the
most diverting person I have ever met, and took such pleasure in his
company that upon me should rest much of the dirdum of having him at
Stair.
There were two things, however, which annoyed me no little concerning
his frequent visits to my home. The first of these was the attitude
toward him of Father Michel. I was coming out of the new chapel with
his grace one morning when we encountered the good father, and I was
struck with amazement to see the duke grow suddenly white and give a
start backward, with a quick indrawing of the breath which made a
choking sound in his throat, and that Father Michel on the instant
seemed as a stone man, save for the eyes, which, if I were anything of
an interpreter, showed a live hate and an old-time grudge. During this
meeting, which was brief to abruptness, Father Michel spoke no word,
but bowed low at the first silence which fell between us, taking his
way down the braeside upon such business as he had in hand, and no
questions were asked after his departure concerning either his origin
or his labors, for the duke was ever one who knew the protective power
of silence.
After this encounter between them I played a clumsy detective in
proving that the two avoided each other and that there had been some
interwovenness of interests in the past. Several times when I asked
Father Michel to join us at table he gave me flimsy excuses, and once
the duke pleaded indisposition when I proposed that he should accompany
Father Michel on an inspection of some stained glass which Nancy was
having put in the altar windows of the new chapel.
In many ways, therefore, I became fixed in a belief that there was
hatred in Father Michel for John Montrose, and a distaste for the good
father in the Duke of Borthwicke, such as a man might cherish against
one whom he has greatly wronged.
The second trouble, however, was more acute, for it involved the duke's
treatment of Dandy Carmichael. While we were of a party Montrose was
civil enough, but when the two of them were thrown together the duke
would relapse into an insulting silence, such as one carries in the
presence of servants; would require to be spoken to twice before
answering a question, as though his thoughts were far away; would even
hum to himself as though entirely alone; or put the cap to his
insolence by taking a book from his pocket and reading, sometimes even
marking the rhythm of a verse aloud. So from day to day there was
growing a hatred for the duke in Danvers by reason of his jealousy and
the accumulative discourtesy which he was obliged to endure.
As for Nancy's conduct to the two of them, if it seemed strange to me,
who was her father, it was but natural that it should require some
explanation to those less partial to her, and she had the whole town
talking over which was the favored suitor. She rode with his grace in
the morning, played at billiards with Danvers in the afternoon, perhaps
to be off in the evening with McMurtree of Ainswere, who was maudlin in
his infatuation for her and whom she pronounced the best dancer out of
France.
There were seasons when I could have sworn that she had no thought save
for Danvers. I have known her to watch for his coming, to grow restless
if his visits were a bit later than expected, to regard him with happy
and glowing eyes, and to rest in his presence in a way that flattered
him and drew him to her with such a passion of love showing in his fine
face that I had joy in the mere sight of him. But these times would
pass, and mayhap in a week or less she would be at the Latinity with
the duke, heated in her enthusiasm for him, encouraging him in his
tale-telling, with gleaming eyes and audacious rejoinders. At these
times Dandy fell back for company upon his cousin Isabel, and I have
met them frequently riding or driving together, she with a happy,
radiant face, and he with the brooding devil in his eye and a sullen
look in the smile with which he greeted me.
In his frequent absences from Edinburgh the duke never allowed Nancy's
thoughts to wander from him long. A book by special post, an exquisite
volume of Fergusson, hand-printed, some foreign posies in a pot, an
invitation to come with a party of his English friends to the
Highlands, and he added:
"I am sending the list of the guests to your Royal Highness, and if
there be some who are not to your liking, I pray you cross them off.
Following here," he went on, "the custom usual when one invites Royalty
to one's home," playing all the moves which a man knows who has wooed
and won many times, but, as it seemed to me, with a real feeling in the
game.
At this sort of thing Dandy was a poor rival by reason of his pride,
and matters were at something like a gloomy standstill between him and
Nancy when I called Sandy into consultation.
"Tragedy will come of it," I tried at length; "but by my hope of Heaven
I know no way to handle the affair. Deny the duke the house, and what
have ye done to a girl of spirit? Urged her into his arms, and nothing
else----"
Sandy's talk was all on Nancy's side, however, which made the situation
a bit easier for me.
"You see, it's thiswise with most women," said he. "Give them a husband
to dandle them, and some children for them to dandle themselves, and a
house to potter round, with some baubles to wear when they're young,
and some money in the bank when they're old, and they go along with
small agitation of mind until the grave. Not that I'm discounting their
value. They're a good conservative element to society, and God intended
them for the reproduction of the race, and perhaps they're kept stupid
in their minds so that they will not rebel against their manifest
destiny.
"It's not like this with Mistress Stair! For she has a grasp of things,
and the fearlessness of an unbroken colt, and a mind for the big
thoughts of life, and you and I have led her forward in her conduct.
"In the matter of Danvers she is following out the strongest law that
we know. 'Tis the natural attraction of the sexes--of the young for the
young; but her mind calls for something besides. And 'tis here the duke
appeals to her more. Aye! it's all a difficult business," he concluded,
"and fate will have to settle it after all, as I've said many a time."
One day when the Little Flower was by me with her sewing I put the
matter to her with what deftness I could. Her answers were brief, but
directly aimed at the text. She said in effect that marriage was a
serious affair, and that she had been bred up with so much liberty that
it made the embarking on such an expedition more perilous to her than
to most women. She also set forth that in nearly every other enterprise
in life one might take a preliminary jaunt, and finding the business
little to one's liking, might give it over and start without prejudice
in some other.
"In this one affair alone," she ended, "the one of most moment in all
of our existence, there is no retracing one's steps with honor if it be
found that one has taken the wrong road."
For these reasons she averred it her privilege to look around her with
all the intelligence she had in order to make no mistake, both for
herself and her future husband.
"For I'm thinking," she said, "there would be trouble afoot if I found,
after marriage, the love of which I am capable given over to a man who
was not my husband.
"Besides which," she laughed, "I'm not certain whom I am going to
marry. There's Robert Burns, now," she cried. "How would you like to
have a plowman for a son-in-law, Jock Stair, my daddy O?" and she
started off to the Burnside, singing as she went; which was all I could
get from her on the subject, one way or another.
It was near the end of September that there began the serious trouble
between the duke and Danvers. I was come around from Zachary Twombly's
mill, where I had been to pay the hop-pickers, riding alone through the
Dead Man's Holm, intending to enter the garden by the break in the
south wall. Doubts of the wisdom of the way this child of mine had been
reared were going over and over in my mind. I had indeed aimed to make
her the finely elemental thing which I conceived a real woman to be;
but I found with some perturbation of spirit that the plan would have
served better for the general happiness if the men with whom she had to
deal had been less accustomed to the conventional woman. They were
forever drawing conclusions from her actions which would have held with
sound logic had they been applied to any other woman, but with Nancy
they were frequently as little to the point as if they had been drawn
from the conduct of a Chinese lady.
Thinking these things over, I came by the group of pear-trees, at which
point I heard voices on the other side of the wall, and raising myself
in the stirrups looked over into the garden.
It was a sunny, warm corner, and a low table, with some chairs, had
been placed there, together with a basket of lace-work which Nancy had
evidently been overlooking. She was not to be seen, however, although
her flowered hat hung on the back of a chair near by.
Sitting before the table was Danvers Carmichael, the cards spread
before him, making a solitaire, and at a little distance, holding the
bridle of his gray horse, stood the Duke of Borthwicke, who, I judge,
had interrupted by his entrance a morning talk between Danvers and
Nancy. There was a peculiar gleam in the eyes of Montrose, and a jaunty
self-possession which became him well, as he stood and looked down at
the man whose temper he had surely tried to the breaking point.
"'Tis a lonesome game you play, Mr. Carmichael," he said, with a
significance in his tone which the printed words can not convey.
"There are times when I prefer lonesomeness to the only company
available," Danvers returned, and he raised his eyes from the cards and
looked Montrose full in the eye as he said it.
"Ah," the duke murmured, and there was a shadow of a smile around his
lips, "'tis fortunate to be so pliable. For myself I prefer to play a
game with a partner. In fact, the solitariness of my life has been such
that I have thought to change it. To be frank with you, I am thinking
of marriage."
"The Three Kingdoms will be interested," Danvers returned suavely.
Again the duke smiled. "You compliment me," he said, with a bow. "It
all depends on the lady now. There is for me no longer any power of
choice; for I think none could see her but to love her," and here he
raised his hat with something of a theater's gallantry. "It is Mistress
Stair, of course, of whom I speak."
Dandy Carmichael was on his feet in a minute.
"It is but fair to you, your Grace of Borthwicke, to tell you that
Mistress Nancy Stair is already bespoken."
"Indeed?" said the duke. "And whom shall I believe? The lady herself
denies it."
"She has promised that if she sees none within the year whom she likes
better she will be my wife."
"Ah," returned the duke, and again there was a smile. "Am I to gather,
then, that Mr. Carmichael considers himself so attractive that he
believes it impossible the lady should find, in a whole year, one whom
she could prefer?"
There was in the tone that which no man of spirit could have borne,
least of all Danvers Carmichael, who knew that for two months the path
of the duke had been leading up to this, and there was no hesitation in
him. He held several of the unplayed cards in his hand and he struck
the duke across the mouth with them.
"Since you are wanting a quarrel, I'll give you cause for one," he
said, and I joyed to hear him say it.
Borthwicke took his kerchief from his pocket and drew it across his
lips.
"My friends will wait upon you," he said.
"They will be welcomed," Danvers answered, and as the words were spoken
I saw Nancy come from the porch door holding a book in her hand, and I
rode hastily to the main entrance rather than to place further present
embarrassment upon them by having them fear that I had overheard the
quarrel between them.
If the duke showed any change whatever in his manner of greeting me it
was to appear a bit more frank and careless than ordinary, his voice a
trifle smoother, and his countenance more open than I had ever noted it
before. He asked me to ride to town with him to look at some old prints
which he was for purchasing, and, as we rode off together, turned
toward me as a schoolboy might have done, inquiring:
"Did you ever have an old song go over and over in your head, without
rhyme or reason, Lord Stair?"
"Many's the time," I answered.
"This morning," he continued, "I woke with one of these attacks, which
are o'er frequent with me, and a bit of a rhyme of one of my father's
serving-men has been ranting through my brain all the day," and here he
broke forth and sang:
"I hae been a devil the most of life,
O, but the rue grows bonny wi' thyme,
But I ne'er was in hell till I met wi' my wife,
And the thyme it is withered and rue is in prime."
"'Tis an up-country tune," I answered in words, but my thought was one
of wonderment that a man who had just planned and set on foot the
taking of another's life should be so gay and could talk so
interestedly on trivial affairs.
Whatever other faults may be mine, indirectness of speech nor a
slothful gait when something has to be done were never accredited to
me, and I determined to let the duke know exactly what I had heard, as
well as my opinion of him in the business which he had stirred up.
Turning toward him, with no introduction to the matter whatever, I
said:
"Your grace, I am a man old enough to be your father; something of a
philosopher and a dreamer, who has let the current of this world's
affairs swim by him unnoted for many years--another, more dependent on
present issues, might hesitate to speak to a man of such power as
yourself in the manner which I have planned to do; but I would forever
lose my own self-respect, which I state honestly is of far greater
value to me than any opinion which you or another may have of me, if at
this time I failed to be open with you. I was an unintentional observer
of the scene which just occurred between you and Mr. Carmichael--one in
which, to my thinking, you showed to monstrous poor advantage."
If he had denied, or stormed, or affected a hurt honor at the words,
they would have but fallen in with the idea I had of him. He did none
of these; but, turning, said to me openly and as one in no wise
affronted:
"I hate the man for the best reason on earth, Lord Stair."
"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 Cock, 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."