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

      “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 her dreams she did not seek the ideal lover, for it seemed to her that she had already met him, here in her father’s house, more than two years ago. She had been but seventeen then. If, on his way to his recent inheritance in Glenmoriston, he should come this way again? . . . She was dreaming that he had.

      And away in northern France, where the same moon was silvering the steep-pitched roofs of Lille, a handsome young man in uniform was going home to his quarters, after a game of cards, with pockets somewhat lightened. But what did that matter? He was almost a man of substance now—no longer, at any rate, a mere landless Jacobite. In the deserted streets, whence all good burghers had long ago departed, and where his footfalls woke such echoes on the cobbles, he began to whistle a Scots air. And who knows whether, when at last he reached his couch, he was not visited by the image of a girl in far away Appin? But the moon could not be sure of this, for she sank to rest before he did.

      She missed, therefore, by the hour of her setting, the conclusion of a novel and most interesting experiment in cattle-lifting not far from Ewen Cameron’s home at Ardroy in Lochaber.

      CHAPTER II

       ON HIS VERY HEARTHSTONE

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      June 17th.

      “Eh, Alison, my lass, she’s going to be a beauty!” declared Miss Margaret Cameron, indicating a red and puckered object in which only the eye of faith or of close kinship could discern any such promise. Both these requirements, however, were fulfilled by the keen gaze of Miss Cameron, the infant’s great-aunt, who had brought up Ewen Cameron himself from a child.

      “You really think so?” asked Alison Cameron as, propped up in bed, she stooped her pretty becapped head with a smile over the sleeping baby in the crook of her arm. “I am afraid that Donald and Keithie may not be of that opinion when they return to-morrow. It was to-morrow that Ewen said, was it not, Aunt Marget?”

      “To-morrow it was, my dear. Now, shall I open your window a wee, since ’tis such a fine afternoon?” Erect, silver-haired and comely, she went to the window for that purpose, and gave an exclamation. “Preserve us, there’s about half a score of gillies or what not down below there! Now, might they but wear the tartan again, one could tell whose they were.”

      She continued to look out, uttering various surmises as to the identity of the invaders, until bent old Marsali, who had the entrée, came into the bedchamber.

      “There’s a gentleman below asking for Mac ’ic Ailein, and he from home,” she announced in the Gaelic and unemotionally.

      “A gentleman? Who is it?” inquired Miss Cameron with interest.

      “By what he says, it will be MacPhair of Glenshian.”

      Alison uttered a little exclamation, and her arm tightened round Miss Cameron the younger.

      “Glenshian!” exclaimed the elder lady. “And what’s Glenshian wanting here?”

      “He’s wanting the laird on an affair of business,” replied the old woman. “Then he asked could he see Lady Ardroy.”

      “The idea!” exclaimed Miss Cameron. “I will come down, Marsali, and find out what he desires. Am I sufficiently à la mode, think you, Alison? This is the first time the present Glenshian has set foot in this house, and I must not disgrace its master.”

      Alison beckoned her to the bed. “Aunt Margaret,” she said in a rather troubled voice, “I do not know how much you know, but Ewen and Glenshian are . . . not good friends. I wonder what has brought him?”

      “Not good friends? Since when?—Aye, I have fancied something of the sort. Then ’tis as well that Ewen is away,” deduced Miss Cameron briskly. “Glenshian can’t but be polite to an old woman, and he a young man too.”

      “But you say he has brought a number of gillies with him!”

      “Isn’t he but nine months or so Chief, and likes to swagger about with his tail on? Never fash yourself for that, Alison, my doo,” replied Aunt Margaret, and, after setting her cap carefully to rights at the mirror, she left the bedchamber.

      As she entered the big living-room below, a tall, red-haired young man turned round from his contemplation either of the antlers over the hearth or, possibly, of the worn escutcheon on the stone, where the motto Fideliter could more clearly be read than the half defaced bearings of the shield. For a second or two he stared at the elderly lady as if surprised; then he bowed politely in response to her rustling curtsey.

      “Good day to you, sir,” said Aunt Margaret pleasantly. “My nephew Ardroy is from home, as I expect you’ll have been told already, and his wife lies upstairs with a newborn bairn, so the task of welcoming you here falls upon me. I am Miss Cameron. Will you not be seated?”

      “When you are, madam,” replied the Chief of Glenshian politely, and waited until Miss Cameron had disposed herself. Then he sat down at no great distance and looked at her, drawing his light eyebrows together in a contraction that was half puzzled, half annoyed.

      “Ardroy will be sorry to miss you,” observed Miss Cameron after a moment. “We do not expect him back before the morrow.”

      “Aye, that makes my errand the more awkward,” responded the visitor, fingering his chin.

      “Perhaps your errand can wait, sir?” suggested Aunt Margaret. “Though I would not wish to give you the trouble of bringing yourself and your tail”—she gave a glance through the window—“these many miles again. Can I not give my nephew a message?”

      Finlay