From Pump Court, in the Temple, it is a long way to the banks of a
little loch in Scotland, surrounded by hills, covered with heather, and
populous with grouse--that is, of course, in the season. The grouse in
this early Summer were but babies, chirping among the big roots of the
ling, like barndoor chickens; the heather was not purple but only
greening over through the grey husks of last year’s bloom. The gorse
blossoms were forming; the birch-trees shaking out their folded leaves a
little more and more day by day against the sky, which was sometimes so
blue, and sometimes so leaden. At that time of the year, or at any
other, it is lovely at Loch Arroch. Seated on the high bank behind the
little inn, on the soft grass, which is as green as emeralds, but soft
as velvet, you can count ten different slopes of hills surrounding the
gleaming water, which receives them all impartially; ten distinct
ridges, all as various as so many sportsmen, distinct in stature and
character--from the kindly birch-crowned heads in front here, away to
the solemn distant altitudes, folded in snow-plaids or cloud-mantles,
and sometimes in glorious sheen of sunset robes, that dazzle you--which
fill up the circle far away. The distant giants are cleft into three
peaks, and stand still to have their crowns and garments changed, with a
benign patience, greeting you across the loch. There are no tourists,
and few strangers, except the fishermen, who spend their days not
thinking of you or of the beauties of nature, tossed in heavy cobbles
upon the stormy loch, or wading up to their waist in ice-cold pools of
the river. The river dashes along its wild channel through the glen,
working through rocks, and leaping precipitous corners, shrouding
itself, like a coy girl, with the birchen tresses which stream over it,
till it comes to another loch--a big silvery clasp upon its foaming
chain. Among these woods and waters man is still enough; but Nature is
full of commotion. She sings about all the hillsides in a hundred burns,
with delicatest treble; she makes her own bass under the riven rocks,
among the foam of the greater streams; she mutters over your head with
deep, sonorous melancholy utterance in the great pine-trees, and
twitters in the leaflets of the birch. Lovely birks!--sweetest of all
the trees of the mountains! Never were such haunts for fairies, or for
mountain girls as agile and as fair as those sweet birchen woods. ‘Stern
and wild,’ do you say? And surely we say it, for so Sir Walter said
before us. But what an exquisite idea was that of Nature--what a sweet,
fantastic conceit, just like her wayward wealth of resource, to clothe
the slopes of those rude hills with the Lady of the Woods! She must have
laughed with pleasure, like a child, but with tears of exquisite poet
satisfaction in her eyes, when she first saw the wonderful result. And
as for you poor people who have never seen Highland loch or river shine
through the airy foliage, the white-stemmed grace and lightness of a
birch-wood, we are sorry for you, but we will not insult your ignorance;
for, soft in your ear, the celebrated Mr. Cook, and all his satellites
who make up tours in the holiday season, have never, Heaven be praised!
heard of Loch Arroch; and long may it be before the British tourist
finds out that tranquil spot.
I cannot tell how Mrs. Anderson and her daughter found it out. The last
Consul, it is true, had been from Perthshire, but that of itself gave
them little information. They had gone to Edinburgh first, and then,
feeling that scarcely sufficiently out of the way, had gone further
north, until at last Kinloch-Arroch received them; and they stayed
there, they could not tell why, partly because the people looked so
kind. The note which Kate received on her birthday had no date, and the
post-mark on it was of a distant place, that no distinct clue might be
given to their retreat; but Ombra always believed, though without the
slightest ground for it, that this note of her mother’s, like all her
other injudicious kindnesses to Kate, had done harm, and been the means
of betraying them. For it was true that they were now in a kind of
hiding, these two women, fearing to be recognised, not wishing to see
any one, for reasons which need not be dwelt upon here. They had left
Langton-Courtenay with a miserable sense of friendlessness and
loneliness, and yet it had been in some respects a relief to them to get
away; and the stillness of Loch Arroch, its absolute seclusion, and the
kind faces of the people they found there, all concurred in making them
decide upon this as their resting-place. They were to stay all the
summer, and already they were known to everybody round. Old Francesca
had already achieved a great _succès_ in the Perthshire village. The
people declared that they understood her much better than if she had
been ‘ane o’ thae mincing English.’ She was supposed to be French, and
Scotland still remembers that France was once her auld and kind alley.
The women in their white mutches wondered a little, it is true, at the
little old Italian’s capless head, and knot of scanty hair; but her
kind little brown face, and her clever rapid ways, took them by storm.
When she spoke Italian to her mistress they gathered round her in
admiration. ‘Losh! did you ever hear the like o’ that?’ they cried, with
hearty laughs, half restrained by politeness--though half of them spoke
Gaelic, and saw nothing wonderful in that achievement.
Ombra, the discontented and unhappy, had never in her life before been
so gentle and so sweet. She was not happy still, but for the moment she
was penitent, and subdued and at peace, and the admiration and the
interest of their humble neighbours pleased her. Mrs. Anderson had given
a description of her daughter to the kind landlady of the little inn,
which did not tally with the circumstances which the reader knows; but
probably she had her own reasons for that, and the tale was such as
filled everybody with sympathy. ‘You maunna be doon-hearted, my bonnie
lamb,’ the old woman would say to her; and Ombra would blush with
painful emotion, and yet would be in her heart touched and consoled by
the homely sympathy. Ah! if those kind people had but known how much
harder her burden really was! But yet to know how kindly all these poor
stranger folk felt towards them was pleasant to the two women, and they
clung together closer than ever in the enforced quiet. They were very
anxious, restless, and miserable, and yet for a little while they were
as nearly happy as two women could be. This is a paradox which some
women will understand, but which I cannot pause to explain.
Things were going on in this quiet way, and it was the end of May, a
season when as yet few even of the fishers who frequent that spot by
nature, and none of the wise wanderers who have discovered Loch Arroch
had begun to arrive, when one evening a very tall man, strong and heavy,
trudged round the corner into the village, with his knapsack over his
shoulders. He was walking through the Highlands alone at this early
period of the year. He put his knapsack down on the bench outside the
door, and came into the little hall, decorated with glazed cases, in
which stuffed trout of gigantic proportions still seemed to swim among
the green, green river weeds, to ask kind Mrs. Macdonald, the landlady,
if she could put him up. He was ‘a soft-spoken gentleman,’ courteous,
such as Highlanders love, and there was a look of sadness about him
which moved the mistress of the ‘Macdonald Arms.’ But all at once, while
he was talking to her, he started wildly, made a dart at the stair,
which Francesca at that moment was leisurely ascending, and upset, as he
passed, little Duncan, Mrs. Macdonald’s favourite grandchild.
‘The man’s gane gyte!’ said the landlady.
Francesca for her part took no notice of the stranger. If she saw him,
she either did not recognise him, or thought it expedient to ignore him.
She went on, carrying high in front of her a tray full of newly-ironed
fine linen, her own work, which she was carrying from the kitchen. The
stranger stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her, with his face
lifted to the light, which streamed from a long window opposite. There
was an expression in his countenance (Mrs. Macdonald said afterwards)
which was like a picture. He had found what he sought!
‘That is old Francesca,’ he said, coming back to her, ‘Mrs. Anderson’s
maid. Then, of course, Mrs. Anderson is here.’
‘Ou ay, sir, the leddies are here,’ said Mrs. Macdonald--‘maybe they are
expecting you? There was something said a while ago about a gentleman--a
brother, or some near friend to the young goodman.’
‘The young goodman?’
‘Ou ay, sir--him that’s in India, puir gentleman!--at sic a time, too,
when he would far rather be at hame. But ye’ll gang up the stair?
Kath’rin, take the gentleman up the stair--he’s come to visit the
leddies--and put him into No. 10 next door. Being so near the leddies, I
never put no man there that I dinna ken something aboot. You’ll find
Loch Arroch air, sir, has done the young mistress good.’
The stranger followed upstairs, with a startled sense of other wonders
to come; and thus it happened that, without warning, Mr. Sugden suddenly
walked into the room where Ombra lay on a sofa by the fireside, with her
mother sitting by. Both the ladies started up in dismay. They were so
bewildered that neither could speak for a moment. The blood rushed to
Ombra’s face in an overpowering blush. He thought he had never seen her
look so beautiful, so strange--he did not know how; and her look of
bewildered inquiry and suspicion suddenly showed him what he had never
thought of till that moment--that he had no right to pry into their
privacy--to hunt her, as it were, into a corner--to pursue her here.
‘Mr. Sugden!’ Mrs. Anderson cried in dismay; and then she recovered her
prudence, and held out her hand to him, coming between him and Ombra.
‘What a very curious meeting this is!--what an unexpected pleasure! Of
all places in the world, to meet a Shanklin friend at Loch Arroch!
Ombra, do not disturb yourself, dear; we need not stand on ceremony with
such an old friend as Mr. Sugden. My poor child has a dreadful cold.’
And then he took her hand into his own--Ombra’s hand--which he used to
sit and watch as she worked--the whitest, softest hand. It felt so small
now, like a shadow, and the flush, had gone from her face. He seemed to
see nothing but those eyes, watching him with fear and suspicion--eyes
which distrusted him, and reminded him that he had no business here.
And he sat down by the sofa, and talked ordinary talk, and told them of
Shanklin, which he had left. He had been making a pedestrian tour in
Scotland. Yes, it was early, but he did not mind the weather, and the
time suited him. It was a surprise to him to see Francesca, but he had
heard that Mrs. Anderson had left Langton-Courtenay----
‘Yes,’ she said, briefly, without explanation; and added--‘We were
travelling, like you, when Ombra fell in love with this place. You must
have seen it to perfection if you walked down the glen to-day--the
Glencoe Hills were glorious to-day. Which is your next stage? I am
afraid Mrs. Macdonald has scarcely room----’
‘Oh! yes, she has given me a room for to-night,’ he said; and he saw the
mother and daughter look at each other, and said to himself, in an agony
of humiliation, what a fool he had been--what an intrusive, impertinent
fool!
When he took his leave, Mrs. Anderson went after him to the door; she
asked, with trepidation in her voice, how long he meant to stay. This
was too much for the poor fellow; he led the way along the passage to
the staircase window, lest Ombra should hear through the half-open door.
‘Mrs. Anderson,’ he said hoarsely, ‘once you promised me if she should
ever want a brother’s help or a brother’s care--not that it is what I
could have wished----’
‘Mr. Sugden, this is ridiculous; I can take care of my own child. You
have no right to come and hunt us out, when you know--when you can see
that we wish--to be private.’ Then, with a sudden change, she
added--‘Oh, you are very good--I am sure you are very good, but she
wants for nothing. Dear Mr. Sugden, if you care for her or me, go away.
‘I will go away to-morrow,’ he said, with a deep sigh of disappointment
and resignation.
She looked out anxiously at the sky. It was clouding over; night was
coming on--there was no possibility of sending him away that night.
‘Mr. Sugden,’ she said, wringing her hands, ‘when a gentleman thrusts
himself into anyone’s secrets he is bound not to betray them. You will
hear news here, which I did not wish to be known at present--Ombra is
married.’
‘Married!’ he said, with a groan, which he could not restrain.
‘Yes, her husband is not able to be with her. We are waiting till he can
join us--till he can make it public. You have found this out against our
will; you must give me your word not to betray us.’
‘Why should I betray you?’ he said; ‘to whom? I came, not knowing. Since
ever I knew her I have been her slave, you know. I will be so now. Is
she--happy, at least?’
‘She is very happy,’ said Mrs. Anderson; and then her courage failed
her, and she cried. She did not burst into tears--such an expression
does not apply to women of her age. The tears which were, somehow, near
the surface, fell suddenly, leaving no traces. ‘Everything is not
so--comfortable as might be wished,’ she said, ‘but, so far as _that_
goes, she is happy.’
‘May I come again?’ he said. His face had grown very long and pale; he
looked like a man who had just come back from a funeral. ‘Or would you
rather I went away at once?’
She gave another look at the sky, which had cleared; night was more
distant than it had seemed ten minutes ago. And Mrs. Anderson did not
think that it was selfishness on her part to think of her daughter
first. She gave him her hand and pressed his, and said--
‘You are the kindest, the best friend. Oh, for her sake, go!’
And he went away with a heavy heart, striding over the dark unknown
hills. It was long past midnight before he got shelter--but what did
that matter? He would have done much more joyfully for her sake. But his
last hope seemed gone as he went along that mountain way. He had hoped
always to serve her sometime or other, and now he could serve her no
more!