Nancy Stair: A Novel

by Elinor Macartney Lane

"Acted well to ye!" he cried. "Acted well to ye! Do you know what I did for you at that time, Jock Stair, or rather for that bit lassie of yours, who has so wound herself about my heart that her illness has made me a broken man? I didn't give over the case when ye asked me, for I believed Danvers Carmichael a guilty man; but I meant to be as lenient to him as consistent with exact duty. Ye'll learn perhaps that in law, a friend prosecuting is better than a friend defending! Do you think I did not know what was done at that trial? Oh! not at the first, for she tricked and befooled me to the clear end of the prosecution; but when the letter was read I knew it had been changed, and did for that bit of a girl what the rest of the world might have tried to get me to do in vain. I was afraid for her—for her! do you understand?—for, on my soul, I thought him guilty in the way she did, a sudden duel perhaps, for the young man has a look of honesty not compatible with murder. But when I thought of what might come to her as accessory after the fact—accessory—after—the—fact—do you understand?—I shivered before a Scotch justice for the first time in my life.

"But the thing that galls me," he went on, and his pride spoke, "is that yon London-man, Magendie, may never know I had the truth concerning the affair. With Ferrars vs. Lorrimer, Annesly vs. Ingraham, and Cobham, Greenly, and Spencer vs. the Crown[¹⁰]at my tongue's end, did he think I'd let a case of resting on letter-evidence like his pass as I did without some weighty reason for my silence?

"But the queer thing of it is that I feel a better man somehow for having done my duty loosely; for, John, I had at home, when that letter was produced in court, one sent by messenger, dated a half-hour later by the duke himself, asking me to meet him the following morning to overlook some papers before he signed them, which, had I produced, would have ended the whole defense.

"She's just upset all my creeds and conduct. I could no more have hurt her as she sat looking at me with those big soft eyes of hers than I could have murdered a baby. What did I tell you years agone?" he cried, turning upon me with some fierceness—"That ye can't do anything with women folks. Inherited mother instincts make them protect anything, and when it comes to one they love, they'll falsify, not knowing that they're doing it, and justify the lies by Scripture, if need be.

"But when a man comes to die it's his mother he calls for; 'tis the touch of her hand he wants, and her breast to lean against as when he was a wee bit bairn, for he knows the worth of a heart that is all for him, right or wrong, through sickness, disgrace, and death. And in the long nights I watched by the child's bedside I learned more, Jock Stair, than any intellectual work could ever bring me, for the love I had for her, and the thought of woman's love as mother, wife, and daughter, raised me more, made me a finer man, a more uplifted one than I have ever been, even when it made me soft about my duty. It seems a bit muddled, but it's a solemn truth."

"I knew you'd find it out, Hugh Pitcairn, and you'd have known what ye've been trying to tell me years ago if you'd had a wife and children of your own. You're such a splendid fellow," I cried, "it's a pity you haven't."

"I've been wishing I had," he said simply.

"And why not?" I cried; "you're a young man yet."

He shook his head at this, but made no answer in words, and left me with some abruptness and no further speech.

Now that the confession was in my hands I knew not what course to pursue, and fell to wondering how much reviewing it might cause of the testimony which had cleared Danvers Carmichael, and what possible trouble from that might come home to Nancy's door. It was but nine o'clock; a thought seized me before I reached the house, and I sent MacColl to Arran Towers with a request that Mr. Danvers come to me immediately. It had been over a year since he had crossed my threshold, and although he was back in the country above three months, with Nancy's conduct still unexplained, friendly intercourse between the houses was impossible.