Nancy Stair Part 8

"My lord," he said, after listening to my tale, "it's a peculiar case, and one which, I openly state, is beyond me. In every bout with her I am routed by a certain lawless sincerity of utterance, or by her fastening her eyes upon me and asking, 'Why?' or 'Who says that?' She is gentleness and sweetness itself; but any attempt which I have ever made to instruct her in religion has been utterly without results.

Sometimes she goes to sleep, other whiles she laughs and questions me in a way that makes the flesh crawl. When I told her of the crucifixion of our blessed Lord, she fell into such a frenzy that it brought on the aching head and fever, which you will remember caused your lords.h.i.+p such alarm. We have the raising of a genius upon us, and by that I mean one who knows more, sees deeper, feels more keenly than is given to most or to any except the few. Miss Nancy is a fearless soul, a pa.s.sionate, loving, powerful nature, and my belief is that the only way to control her is to let her develop her own powers in her own way. It is a hard question, a subtle question, my lord; but I believe it is the only way."

Sandy was in London at the time, but the same day on which I had the talk with Father Michel I sent for Hugh Pitcairn, asking him to dine with me and talk over the Problem of Nancy.

"It's like this, Hugh," said I, as we sat over some wine of his particular fancy, "G.o.d has been kind enough to send me a wonderful child, and I want to do what's right by her. I want her to have the reasonable education of a man and to keep her as far as possible from the influence of the usual unthinking female. I neither want her instructed in false modesty, lying, nor the deception of the male s.e.x.

It is on the male virtues that I want the accent placed; bravery, honesty, self-knowledge, and responsibility for her words and conduct; good manly virtues that most women know only as words of the dictionary."

Hugh stared across at me, and there was a look in his eyes of being tolerant toward cra.s.s ignorance as he answered:

"There are whiles when you are more humorous than others, Jock Stair.

This is your most fanciful time yet. There's no such thing possible, and ye can just rest by that! Ye can't make a woman into a man by any method of rearing, for there are six thousand years of ancestry to overcome. That's somewhat, and with the female physiology and the Lord himself against you, I'm thinking it wise for you to have your daughter reared like other women and to fulfil woman's great end."

"And what's that?" I asked.

"To marry and bring children into the world," he returned, as certainly as he would have stated the time of day.

"When all's said and done and theorized over concerning the female s.e.x," he went on, "ye just find yourself back at that. Ye can't educate a woman as ye can a man; she's not got the same faculties to take in the information that ye offer her. Why," he cried, "ye can't give her any sense of abstract right or wrong. In order to protect her young she has inherited certain keen faculties and instincts which we poor male creatures are without; but from the minute she becomes a wife or mother she ceases in some degree to have a conscience. No," he finished, "when a woman's emotions are stirred you can't believe a word she says."

"Ye've seen for yourself that Nancy's different from the girl children ye've known," I said, with some remonstrance in my voice.

"She has power, true. And magnetism, true. And great beauty," he answered, counting these on his fingers as though they were points in law; "but give her a man's education, and what have ye done? Simply made a dangerous contrivance of her to get her own way. I tell ye, Jock," he said in conclusion, "ye can't civilize women. They are not intended to be civilized."

The longer I thought this talk over, the more firmly I became fixed in the belief that Hugh knew nothing concerning the matter, and that my own ideas on the subject were the best, and in less than a week I had my own old school-books down, and was casting around for a tutor for Nancy, firm in my intention of "bringing her up a perfect gentleman,"

as Hugh derisively stated. I fixed on Latin for her, and sound mathematics, and later Greek and Logic, and when I showed this list of studies to Pitcairn, I recall that he looked at me, with the usual pity in his glance, and asked dryly:

"Why not tiger shooting and the high-jump?"

Sandy was from home at this time, having been called to a dying wife, poor fellow, or I should have taken advice with him concerning a certain old teacher of his boy Danvers, for whom I had a great liking.

While awaiting his return I took the Little Flower into my confidence, and found her delighted that she was to be "teached." There was one point upon which she was firm, however, which was that none but Father Michel should be her instructor, and the good man, with many a dubious shake of his head, entered upon his work the following week.

Often after this time I would come upon them in the small writing-room where the studies were conducted, to find the little one standing by the father's knee, as he held the book for her, or sitting in his lap looking up at him with a funny earnestness, as though they were playing together, going over

----rego ----regere ----rexi ----rectus

or some such work, and amazing us both by her capacities.

On her ninth birthday Hugh gave her the ponderous tome from which so much of Mrs. Opie's facts have been obtained, and into this volume she put her verses and her thoughts just as they came into her curly head, standing upon a stool to make her high enough to reach the writing-table with comfort. There was an unspoken understanding between us that I was at liberty to read this book, but never in her presence.

One night after she had spent the afternoon at work upon it, I drew it toward me, to find a new set of verses beginning:

The heifer by the milking pail, Whose neck-cloth is so white, etc.

and underneath the following, in which the influence of the Good Book was surely visible:

"MY COMANDMENCE!

1. I must love Jock Stair first of all created things, for he was my mother's friend and mine.

2. Since the Lord has cast the poor from him I must do what I can for them.

3. I must not be afraid of any livving thing, for no gentleman can show forth fear.

4. I must not wish Huey Macrath from Stair, tho' he snuffles and his ears are large, for he was here before I was and is very ritechus.

5. I must not swear, tho' Sandy does, and to say dam is not G.o.dly, for a girl.

More to morrow,

L. F. S."

I was prouder of these than I have words to tell, seeing that already she was beginning to consider conduct. And an event which followed soon after made me plume myself still further. I had taught her to play chess, and Danvers Carmichael being home from his English school, Sandy and I made a merry wager of a game for a guinea a side, each of us backing the talent of our own offspring. Nancy, who was about half Danvers' height, drew the whites, and led off by the good conservative opening of the king's knight, the boy replying well and putting the pieces out after the usual fas.h.i.+on. Nancy unexpectedly played her queen. "Check," she said. Dand interposed a p.a.w.n. Nancy moved a knight.

"Check," she said again. Dand was forced to move his king, and in three moves I could see the game was hers. Suddenly she retreated and began a process which never in my whole experience with her had I seen duplicated. She trifled ineffectually with her men, moving them hither and thither with no purpose or aim; and, to crown all, after one of these fruitless moves, the boy cried, "Mate," placing his queen triumphantly from one side of the board to the other. Nancy's eyes shone with pleasure.

"You beat me," she cried. "Sandy won the guinea, Jock."

I can not recall when a small thing annoyed me as much as this one did, and the next morning, finding the Little Flower making verses on the west wall, I sat down to get some explanation from her.

"Nancy," I began, "why did you play so badly at chess last night?"

The shy look with which I was familiar came into her face.

"He can't play chess, Jock," she said.

"I know it," I cried; "I saw that; but why did you disgrace your father, young woman, answer me that?"

"Oh," she answered, with great earnestness, "do you no see? He's a man-child, and his father was looking on; and it would have been a fair disgrace for him to be beaten at the game by me, who am only a girl, and younger. I couldn't do it, Jock," she cried, and her cheeks flushed with a glorious pink color. "I couldn't do it. No gentleman could!"

I glowed with pride at the sight of her, my hopes rose high, and I told the story, together with her "Comandmence," to Hugh Pitcairn for his admiration and approval.

He was as unmoved, however, at the end of my narration as at the beginning of it.

"She's no a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest.

They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye can't change their natures any more than ye can stop fire from burning."

Later he began to alter his opinion of her, however, and it fell, I think, largely through his own vanity. I have told of the scene in the court which resulted in Jeanie Henderlin and her two children coming to be Burn-folk, and from that time Nancy would turn back every little while to her interest in the law. There were some compilations of celebrated cases among my books, and for a while her talk ran of the trials for murder and poisoning and the scuttling of s.h.i.+ps, until I wondered where the thing would lead. Part of these accounts were briefed; others contained the evidence entire, indictments, questions and answers, the judges' instructions, and the verdict rendered, all with much legal verbiage and twisting.

One night, in her twelfth year, she asked Hugh Pitcairn some questions concerning a poison case, which happened to be one he had studied with interest himself, and he denounced the verdict as one unlawful and obtained by sentiment rather than from the evidence itself, promising to send another book to her containing his own view of the matter. Here was a ground in which a friends.h.i.+p with Hugh could take firm root, and from that time on there were heavy volumes coming to Nancy from the great barrister constantly, and to hear her quizzed by him concerning the law on certain points was one of the most humorous bits of my life.

I never rightly understood this trend of Nancy's mind. In her talks with me I found it was never to discover the naked law on a point, but how punishment might be evaded, that interested her. "If he'd said this," or "had he left that unsaid," or "if the defense had proven,"

was the burden of her remarks, and I thought at times that if Hugh saw the thing as I did he would find at bottom of all her lawing only a woman's desire to discover how people could be got out of trouble, whether deserving punishment or not.

In her fifteenth year, when I was obliged to go to London concerning the Forfeited Estates, I had her with me; but even then the lawing between Pitcairn and herself did not cease, for packets pa.s.sed between them constantly, and soon after our return, Nancy's being eighteen at the time, I found that she had wrought a change in him, as well as in the rest of us.

"Jock Stair," he said to me one night, as though addressing a jury, "I told you once that it was impossible to civilize a woman, that all education just went over their heads and affected their natures none at all; that it was beyond them to conceive an abstract right or wrong; that I had never seen one who had a jot of public spirit. I feel a sense of duty in telling you I've changed. I have seen one. It's your daughter, Nancy Stair!"

Chapter VIII