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:

"'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."

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