Nancy Stair: A Novel

by Elinor Macartney Lane

But the italicizing lady was routed, and as Janet watched her departure from the window she said:

"Mark my words, John Stair! she's fetched that girl here to marry her to Danvers Carmichael. I've not known Anne Erskine all these years for nothing. The old cat!" she cried.

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CHAPTER XV

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.