Nancy Stair. Elinor Macartney Lane
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 impassable."
"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 impassable 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 title 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.
"Will ye go!" he repeated, his mind set on the one point.
A sudden thought, bred of some news in the paper which I had just received, came to me upon the instant.
"Let us take the boat from Leith, and go north by the Orkney and Hebrides Islands, through the Minch to the west coast. There are all kinds of stories afloat concerning the gipsies and free traders who live in those deep coves; we might fall in with a pirate ship——"
"Or find a hidden treasure!" he said scoffingly, as he seated himself on the other side of the table and took some coffee, the frown gone, and the Sandy I knew with the bright face and laughing eye back again.
"Aye," he went on in his humorous way, "I am convinced 'twill be hidden treasure we'll find, Jock. We'll go ashore at midnight, and under a stunted pine will be a sailor's chest. Hidden treasures are always found in sailors' chests, ye know. And taking a three-foot bar of iron, which every gentleman in tales carries concealed upon his person, we, you and I—none of the others, of course—will pry this chest open—to find ducats and doubloons, and piastres, and sous-marquees—and a map of the Spanish Main and the Dry Tortugas—with crosses in blood. I'll tell you, ye can have my share of it now," he cried, laughing at me.
"Ye're over generous," says I, for jesting of this kind was a thing to which I was accustomed in him.
He dropped the raillery on the moment, however, to take a note-book from his pocket.
"Whom shall we ask?" he inquired in his natural voice.
Now I had one other friend, almost as dear to me as Sandy, named Hugh Pitcairn. But while there could be no doubt of the affection each had for me, there could be equally