Nancy Stair.

by Elinor Macartney Lane.

PREFACE

Two excellent accounts of the beautiful Nancy Stair have already been published; the first by Mrs. George Opie, in the Scots News, giving a detailed account of the work on the burnside, and a more recent one by Professor Erskine, of our own University, which is little more than a critical dissertation upon Nancy as a poet; the heart of the matter with him being to commend her English verses, as well as those in "gude braid Scot."

With these accounts to be secured so easily it may seem presumptuous, as well as superfluous, for me to undertake a third. I state at the outset, therefore, that it is beyond my ambition and my abilities to add a word to stories told so well. Nor do I purpose to mention either the work on the burn or Nancy's song-making, save when necessary for clearness.

For me, however, the life of Nancy Stair has a far deeper significance than that set forth by either of these gifted authors. My knowledge of her was naturally of the most intimate; I watched her grow from a wonderful child into a wonderful woman; and saw her, with a man's education, none but men for friends, and no counselings save from her own heart, solve most wisely for the race the problem put to every woman of gift; and with sweetest reasoning and no bitter renouncings enter the kingdom of great womanhood.

To tell this intimate side of her life with what skill I have is the chief purpose of my writing, but there are two other motives almost as strong. The first of these is to clear away the mystery of the murder which for so long clouded our lives at Stair. To do this there is no man in Scotland to-day so able as myself. It was I who bid the Duke to Stair; the quarrel which brought on the meeting fell directly beneath my eyes; I heard the shots and found the dead upon that fearful night, and afterward went blindfolded through the bitter business of the trial. I was the first, as well, to scent the truth at the bottom of the defense, and have in my possession, as I write, the confession which removed all doubt as to the manner in which the deed was committed.

The second reason is to set clear Nancy's relation to Robert Burns, of which too much has been made, and whose influence upon her and her writings has been grossly exaggerated. Her observation of natural genius in him changed her greatly, and I have tried to set this forth with clearness; but it affected her in a very different manner from that which her two famous biographers have told, and I have it from her own lips that it was because of the Burns episode that she stopped writing altogether.

If it be complained against me that the tale has my own life's story in it, I would answer to the charge that only a great and pa.s.sionate first love could have produced a child like Nancy, and I believe that the world is ever a bit interested in the line of people whose loves and hates have produced a recognized genius. Then, too, the circ.u.mstances attending her birth had more influence on her after life than may at first be seen, giving me as they did such a tenderness for her that I have never been able to cross her in any matter whatever.

Much of the story, of which I was not directly a witness, comes from Nancy herself. I have sent the tale to Alexander Carmichael as well, and in all important matters his recollections accord with mine.

There came to me but yesterday, in this queer old city, a letter from him urging me back to Stair, closed with a stanza that was not born to die:

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min', Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And the days of Auld Lang Syne?"

They should not, Sandy, and none know it better than we; and I long for a grip of your hand, lad, and to feel the winds blow through the rowans at Stair and the copper birches of Arran; to hear the blackbirds whistle across the gowan-tops; to see the busy burn-folk through the break in the old south wall; and with the ending of these writings my steps are turned toward home.

ROME, 1801.

NANCY STAIR

CHAPTER I

AT STAIR HOUSE, NEAR EDINBURGH, IN 1768

By reason of a breakneck ride through the Pentlands, I entered the dining-room at Stair very late one morning to find Huey MacGrath in a state of deepest gloom waiting to serve my breakfast.

"Good morning, Huey," I said, opening The Glasgow Sentinel which had come by the post.

"Good morning, my lord," he returned, in a grudging tone.

"It's a fine morning," said I.

"Ye think sae!" with a show of great surprise.

"Why, man!" I cried, "can not ye see for yourself?"

"We've the spring rains to come yet."

"They're by these ten days," I answered.

"Nae, nae," he said quietly. "That was jest the equinoctial, I'm thinking."

"The equinoctial comes in March, man!" I observed with some surprise.

"Tammas was telling me yesterday that the roads to London were fair impa.s.sable."

"Nonsense," said I. "The summer's here, Huey."

"There's a chill at the gloamin', yet. Nae, nae," he went on earnestly, "simmer's far awa',--I've seen snaw's late's this!"

"Ye've had wonderful eyesight," I laughed, seeing the point toward which this talk was aimed. "And did ye hear nothing of tidal waves, Huey?" I asked; "with impa.s.sable roads to London, and snow in June, you've surely heard of some disasters by sea."

"Ah!" he cried, "ye can tell of what I'm thinking, for I've seen the signs of it in ye for a fortnight back. You're like your father before you, and your grandfather, as weel, for the curse of wandering seems to follow the name of Stair. With the first warm day ye have your windows wide open; and next your beds are into a draught fit to blaw ye from between the sheets; and then ye're up in the morning, aff on a hoorse scouring the hills as tho' ye were gyte; and at the end your valise's packed, the coach stopped, and ye aff amang the heathen, Gude alane kens wheer!

"Ah, laddie!" he continued, his voice changed to an affectionate wail, "dinna be gane awa'! Ye've niver seen Stair in the simmer time; but when the elderberries and lilacs flower on the burn; and the gilly flowers and hollyhocks are bloomin' by the north tower; when the wind blows soft through the rowans, and the pineys' pink and white faces, as big as cabbages, nod against the old south wall, there's no bonnier place in Scotland than your own place of Stair."

He was so moved at the thought of my leaving him, that I answered in some haste,

"In truth, Huey, I've no thought of going away."

"Ah," he answered, "ye don't know it, but ye have. It's been in ye for a week back,"--and casting his eye out of the window, "there's Mr.

Carmichael now, riding in by the Holm gate. I'll jest open the door till him."

This was an entirely unnecessary attention on Huey's part, as Sandy Carmichael, whose estate of Arran Towers joins my own on the west, generally opened the door of Stair for himself, or the windows either, for the matter of that, if the latter were more convenient entrance from the place he happened to be.

My recollections of Sandy begin with my recollections of myself. As lads together, indeed before we were long out of skirts, we guddled for fish in the burn-water; went birds' nesting, raced our ponies, fought each other behind the stables and made a common stock of our money for the purchase of dimpies, peoys and jelly-tarts. We attended the High School together and upon leaving it chose the same college, where Sandy ran a merry pace, throwing his money out of the windows, as it were, and gaining for himself the reputation of wearing more waistcoats, drinking more whisky, making love to more women, and writing better verses, than any other man in the University.

He was a big, athletic, clean-limbed fellow, with brown hair, a bright face, warm eyes, and friendly genial ways which came from the kindest heart in the world. Five years before the time of which I write, which would be in 1763, he had married the Honorable Miss Llewellyn from the north, a pitiable pale-colored lady, who, half crazed by jealousy and ill health, was sending him back to unmarried ways again. Being only sister to Lord Glenmore, who had no heirs and was subject to seizures of a very malignant type, it was yearly expected that the t.i.tle would come to Sandy's bit of a boy, a handsome-faced little fellow of four, who paid me long visits at self-selected times, demanding my watch, a pipe to smoke, and horses to ride.

Before Huey had time to reach the door, Sandy, in his riding clothes, with his cap on the back of his head, stood looking in at me. There was a scowl between his brows, and by this as well as other certain signs, I knew that all was not well with him.

"Will ye go on a cruise with me?" says he from the doorway with no introduction whatever.

"Would it be an unseemly prying into your affairs to ask where to?" I inquired with a smile.

"North or south," said he, still keeping his place by the door. "It's immaterial to me, so I escape accompanying my womenfolk to London."

"And if I go with ye," says I, "your wife will like me less than she does now."

"That would be impossible, so ye needn't worry over it," he returned dryly. "The only good word ye ever had from her was that if ye'd been a less handsome man ye might have been a better one."

"And even that could scarce be termed fulsome flattery," I observed.