The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

Uncle Alexander found anyone?”

      “Two,” said Ian with a little grimace. “Miss MacLaren, and Maclean of Garroch’s second daughter—the eldest is promised. I have no objection to either of them . . . save that I do not desire to marry either. I want someone of my own choice. Now do not, Ewen, tell me that arranged matches generally turn out very well, as I can see that you are upon the point of doing, for you have no right to possess an opinion on that subject, you who had the luck to marry the woman you chose for yourself and waited for!”

      Ewen Cameron smiled and, coming round, threw himself into the chair on which he had been leaning. “I was not going to say anything of the sort. I wish I could help you, Ian; and I am sure that Alison would if she could. She’d not be a true woman if she did not hanker after the chance.”

      “If only I had the means to travel a little!” said his cousin regretfully. “Still and on, to go from place to place looking for a wife as one might search for a brood mare would not content me neither. A spaewife once told me that I should love a woman who would be other than she seemed—not a very pleasant prophecy, was it?—But enough of my affairs. Tell me, Ewen, how are matters between you and the new Chief of Glenshian since he succeeded his father last autumn, and is now become almost your neighbour?”

      Very likely Ewen Cameron of Ardroy could prevent his sentiments from appearing on his face if he so wished—he looked as though he could—but with his present companion there was evidently no need to hide the signs of a most uncompromising antipathy to the individual just named. His bright blue eyes seemed to change colour till they were the match of his cousin’s dark blue ones; his already decided chin appeared still more decided. “I am glad to say that I have not seen even his shadow near Ardroy, and I think it will be many a long day before Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian comes near my house. I know too much about him.”

      Ian looked at him curiously. “But is he aware of that?”

      “Very well aware of it. I sometimes wonder that in the couple of years which have passed since I was enlightened as to his true character he has neither made overtures to me nor——” Ewen paused.

      “Nor what?”

      “—Nor found means to send a gillie behind me some dark night with a sgian dubh. We were both in Edinburgh last autumn—in fact I saw him, though he did not see me.” Ardroy seemed to be going to add something else, but apparently changed his mind. “However, I know now that he will not touch me, and I have sworn not to touch him. It is checkmate.”

      Ian had got off the bed. “Ewen,” he said, and his tone was grave, “are you jesting? Do you indeed go in danger of that man, because if so——”

      “No, no,” said Ardroy lightly. “I was not meaning that about the gillie; my tongue ran away with me.”

      “Then ’tis the first time I have ever known it do so,” retorted his cousin, surveying him doubtfully. “And what is the discreditable secret that you know about Glenshian?”

      Ewen put his elbow on the arm of the chair and shaded his brow with his hand. “There is nothing to be gained by sharing it.” His voice had grown all at once very sombre. Ian stood still and looked at him.

      “Oh, very well,” he said at length, a trifle piqued. “I have no wish to pry into your relations with Glenshian, though they seem devilish uncomfortable ones. And why you should have sworn not to defend yourself against him passes my comprehension. I always thought you had more common sense than most.”

      “I did not swear that,” answered Ewen after a pause. “I made a vow, two years ago, that it was not for me to take vengeance.” He dropped his hand now, and young Stewart could see that he was very pale. “I cannot explain why I took such an oath . . . perhaps I was fey with grief . . . but I have never regretted it, and even if I should regret it in the future, still I must hold by it.”

      “Two years ago,” “fey with grief”—Ian realised to what his cousin must be referring, to the execution of his kinsman, Archibald Cameron, which had been so great a sorrow to him and which he had risked his life to avert. His own slight resentment vanished; he laid a hand for a moment on Ewen’s shoulder, and then went past him and, drawing the window-curtains aside, looked out. Yet he wondered what could possibly be Finlay MacPhair’s connection with the tragedy—no, he must have misunderstood Ewen; there could be none. And he would not reopen so painful a subject.

      “I hope we do not disturb Uncle Alexander by our talk,” observed Ewen, rousing himself. “Is not this room of yours next to his?”

      “My father grows a little hard of hearing,” said Ian in reply. He dropped the curtain. “And the wind blows to-night. Speaking of my father’s deafness, by the way, I think that was the reason why I overheard you telling him something about your brother-in-law, Hector Grant—that he had come into an inheritance; or was I mistaken?”

      “No, you were not mistaken,” answered his cousin, and rose suddenly to his towering height. “Hector has been left a small property in Glenmoriston by some remote kinsman of his father’s, and he will soon be coming over from his regiment in France to visit it. Indeed, Alison wonders whether he will not resign his commission and settle in Glenmoriston.”

      “Oh, indeed,” said Ian drily. “But Mr. Grant will find the existence of a Highland laird but a poor thing after his life as an officer in France. Would he not be better advised to think twice before taking such a plunge?”

      Ewen swung round on him. “I never knew that you disliked Hector!” he exclaimed in a tone of surprise.

      “My dear Ewen, I don’t. But I cannot think him, somehow, suited to the Highlands.”

      “He’s as Highland as yourself, laochain; his mother was a Macrae.”

      “Maybe. But a lifetime spent in France has given him . . . too much French polish for my taste.”

      “Is that your objection?” said Ewen, laughing. “I had not noticed the defect myself; and as to a ‘lifetime,’ why, he is only about two years older than you. He is younger than my wife.”

      Ian made a gesture to dismiss Mr. Hector Grant. “Talking of Lady Ardroy, is the daughter like you or like her, Ewen? Your boys, I think, favour you both, one apiece.”

      “You had better come with me when I return and see for yourself,” answered his cousin. “I shall insist upon Uncle Alexander sparing you for a night or two. You have not visited us, I think, since you gave Donald that claymore hilt which Keithie threw into the loch, two years ago last autumn. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I am going to bed!”

      On that announcement his host remorsefully snatched up a candle to light him to his room, excusing himself for having selfishly, as he declared, called him into his, by the fact that he saw him so rarely.

      But, coming back, Ian Stewart did not follow his kinsman’s example and go to bed. He sat down on the window-seat, where the curtain was already drawn aside, and gazed for a long time at the silver road which led across Loch Linnhe to the mountains beyond. The Celt in him had gone dreaming; dreaming as a girl is supposed to dream of the ideal lover. But his romance had never come to him, and soon it would be too late for it. He must mate, since it was his duty to beget children to come after him, without ever knowing that high rapture of which the poets sang, and the moonlight, and the flight of wild swans over the pool. There would be no Deirdre or white-breasted Bronwen for him, only a decorous young housewife, a MacLaren or a Maclean, whom he would respect and cherish, and to whom he would be faithful. In time, perhaps, would come affection too. Well, perhaps that was better in the end than passion, but youth was slipping away, and he had never known youth’s prerogative, to give, and hazard everything in the giving. His marriage would be as tepid an affair as that impassive moon now looking at him over the mountains of Ardgour.

      Yet under that same roof, up in her little turret room, Ian’s young sister Jacqueline was smiling in her sleep, having heard something that evening which had pleased her. For her sentiments about Lieutenant—now Captain—Hector Grant differed entirely from her brother’s. In