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

pushed back his chair and rose. “Oh, that! In Edinburgh last autumn he picked up a glove which Alison had dropped and returned it to her. I took it from her and threw it into the gutter. He must have seen me do it . . . I thought he had not . . . though I should have done it just the same. . . . Well, ’tis all one . . . and perhaps he is even with me now.”

      CHAPTER IV

       THE LADY FROM THE LOCH

       Table of Contents

      § 1

      June 19th—21st.

      The tide was running out very strongly from Loch Leven at Ballachulish two evenings later, and the passage across the ferry was consequently prolonged, so hard did the rowers have to strain to keep the ferry-boat even moderately in her course. Between the necessity of coaxing his mare to stand quiet for longer than usual in this craft, and the memory of the day before yesterday’s scene at Ardroy, which continued to play itself over in his brain, Ian Stewart had little thought to spare for the sunset across Loch Linnhe, which was transmuting to red gold the sentinel heights at the entrance to Glencoe. If he noticed it at all, it was but to be reminded of that, even more splendid, by the Loch of the Eagle, and what it had witnessed.

      One could not disembark on the Appin side of the passage without seeing what dangled from the gibbet on the hillock there; a thing which had once been a man, and a Stewart too—chained bones which testified to Campbell vengeance for a murdered Campbell. To-day Ian hardly looked up, but took the road by the gate of Ballachulish House and under the flanks of Lettermore, past the very spot where Campbell of Glenure had fallen, without thought of that three-year old tragedy. Another tragedy was engaging his mind—Archibald Cameron’s—and the incredible part which Finlay MacPhair seemed to have played therein. Really it was less abhorrent to think that Ewen had been mistaken, that his strong affection for his dead kinsman had led him into fixing the guilt of his judicial murder on a man who had indeed behaved in an equivocal fashion, but who, in his position and with his traditions, surely could not have deliberately betrayed a comrade. Besides, as even Ewen had admitted, there was always the actual informer to account for. If Finlay’s hands were smeared, his were dripping.

      The cousins had not spoken again of that black business. The whole of yesterday had been spent in trying to find the man who had so smirched his young laird’s honour by cattle-stealing, but all attempts had proved fruitless, and had only tended to injure the good feeling which existed between Ardroy and his dependents. Ian’s belief that the culprit must have been tracked by one of Glenshian’s people was shaken by the universal denials, not only of the theft, but of any smallest knowledge of it. The mystery of the stolen steers raged like a plague through the house as well; it seemed as if no one could talk of anything else—save, naturally, Ewen’s infant daughter, whom Ian had been allowed to see, and even, to his secret terror, to hold. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable, even unhappy day, and had, Ian feared, sown seeds of mistrust and ill-feeling between Ewen and his tenantry whose harvest might not easily be rooted up. Finlay MacPhair could hardly have planned a better revenge, upon a petty scale, than this which Fate had planned for him.

      But had the planning been entirely Fate’s? Ian went so far as to wonder whether the Chief of Glenshian could possibly have bribed some very poor gillie of Ewen’s to steal the animals, so that he, as owner, could come to Ardroy with the triumphant foreknowledge that he should find them there? Surely no Cameron or MacMartin would have lent himself to such a transaction! And yet . . . it had all fallen out so pat. . . .

      Immersed in these speculations, Ian rode on at a good pace. Duror of Appin was behind him; he would be home before long. The sunset had withered slowly, but now the mountains across Loch Linnhe were once more cloaking themselves in the grape-hued mystery of twilight. Young Invernacree, who loved them, and had something of the poet in him, came for a moment out of his absorption, some Gaelic verses about the high hilltops recurring to his memory; and then poetry and cattle-lifting were alike driven out of his mind by a distant sound ahead of him resembling that of horses galloping at a rate very unusual on this rough road, accompanied by a rumbling noise such as a heavy vehicle might make. He rounded a corner and saw that his ears had heard aright. Swaying and banging, a coach was fleeing away in front of him along the loch-bordered road—and fleeing was really the word for its progress behind its obviously runaway horses. Ian decided that he must already have heard the hoofs of these before they had broken into their mad gallop, but had been too preoccupied to realise the fact. Now . . . he struck spurs into his mare and sent her forward after the receding vehicle.

      It was instinctive, his pursuit, though even in its course he knew that he could do little good. The ill-fated coach had had too much start of him. He could not see the postillion for its bulk, and wondered whether the latter had lost his seat, and that this accounted for the coach’s wild career; but in that case he must have come upon him by the roadside. Now he saw a man’s head emerge for a moment from the left-hand window, the furthest from the loch and go back again; then a hand sought for the handle of the door and opened it.

      “Is he going to jump out? Uncommon dangerous!” thought the pursuer. “And is he alone in there, or is there another occupant?” For the man was with one hand keeping the door open, no easy task at that rate of progress; yet, as his head and shoulders remained within, it almost seemed as if he were occupied with some other person in the interior of the conveyance. And then, before he could jump—if such were his intention—the end came, and in a more catastrophic manner than the rider behind had anticipated. For the road again made a slight bend, and, to Ian’s horror, the rocking coach, instead of following it round the curve, plunged straight ahead. The horseman uttered a shout of dismay as he saw the vehicle go clear over the brink; it lurched, half stopped, then toppled over on to its side on the stones of the shore. There was a splash as it struck the shallow water—luckily the tide was out. Nor was the actual drop from the road, mercifully, more than a very few feet.

      But, before it actually went over, the man who had been trying to get out had succeeded in doing so—half scrambling, half thrown—and was now picking himself up out of the road. The postillion—he was there after all—had stuck to the horses, and by the time Ian arrived he was cutting the traces of one, which was lying struggling. The other had wrenched itself free and was making off. Seeing that the gentleman on the road was, if not altogether unhurt, at least able to get to his feet, Ian, as he swung himself off his own mount, was for making to the assistance of the postillion. But he found his arm gripped, and a hoarse, desperate voice said in his ear:

      “Help me, for God’s sake! There’s a lady—my daughter, inside the coach . . . drowning perhaps . . .”

      Horrified, Ian ran down to the shore. A lady in there—how was one going to get her out? The upper wheels of the coach as it lay on its side reared themselves at about the level of his head; one could only see the underneath of the vehicle, and its great springs.

      “I’ll climb up, sir,” he said to the traveller, now at his elbow. He perceived him to be spare, middle-aged, rather harsh-featured, with a grey wig somewhat awry from his tumble.

      Young and agile, Ian swung himself up and clambered on to the side of the coach, now become a roof, and stood there like a mariner boarding a derelict. In the accident the door had slammed itself to. Ian stooped, wrenched it open and looked in.

      Down at the bottom of the species of large, ill-lighted box thus presented to his gaze, amid fallen cushions and wraps—and a glimmer of water also—there was a lady in a blue cloak. She lay on her side without stirring—yet surely there had not been time or water enough to drown her! She must have been thrown against something hard and have struck her head as the coach went over. But which was the quickest and best method of getting her out?

      A distracted voice below was saying, “Is she hurt? Help me up . . . get her out, man! Why, the coach is half in the water!” And there was the elderly traveller trying vainly to emulate his own gymnastic feat.

      “Stay where you are, sir,”