Nancy Stair: A Novel

by Elinor Macartney Lane

"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.