THE MAN IN POSSESSION
"Is _that_ Loquhariot!" asked Sallie.
The weatherly little steamer on which she had been travelling along that
wonderful coast since leaving the train had just rounded a high, bluff
headland and all at once opened out the wide waters of Loch Jura,
mirror-like in the still afternoon among the frowning mountains about
them. Mr. Jobling and Slyne were with her on the bridge. Captain Dove
strolled up at that moment, his hands in his pockets, his soft felt hat
on the back of his head, a cigar cocked between his teeth at an equally
rakish angle. Sallie was staring straight ahead, with wide, apprehensive
eyes.
"Is _that_ Loquhariot!" she asked again, almost in a whisper, as she
gazed helplessly at the high battlements of the ancient stronghold which
looks from its lofty promontory down the whole length of the loch,
unchanged in its seaward face since the date of its building. Even
Captain Dove was impressed by the picture it made.
"That's your Castle of Loquhariot, Lady Josceline," Mr. Jobling at
length replied, and went on to tell her its history, learned from the
guide-book and locally when he had been there before.
The Castle of Loquhariot dates back to the sixteenth century. But for
long ere that, a squat, four-square fortalice had occupied its site.
Legend has it that the grim, grey keep which to-day covers the whole
surface of what was then a high rocky island but is now a mere peninsula
of the mainland, was first conceived in the mind of the then Lord Jura,
a plain Scots baron of piratical tendencies, who had brought back from
the Spanish Main--whither he had sailed in the company of another of the
same kidney as himself, one Francis Drake--a veritable shipload of
doubloons and pieces-of-eight; and that its ramparts had first been
armed and manned, in haste, when the remains of the Great Armada came
drifting southward from Cape Wrath on its hapless way home to Spain,
after that same Francis Drake had done with it.
To-day, at any rate, may be seen in more than one of the embrasures on
those ramparts, some culverin or falconet salved from the wreck of a
great galleon which went to pieces on the Small Isles, at the mouth of
the loch. And in a little graveyard on the smallest of the Small Isles
stands a weather-beaten stone which says that round about it lie buried
the bones of a great mort of Spaniards there interred by their sworn
enemies in August, A. D. 1588.
It must undoubtedly have cost at least a shipload of doubloons to build
the castle. But the then baron did not build it all, for there are
towers and wings and bastions added, on the landward side, during the
next two centuries; whose cost would seem to show that his piratical
lordship did not leave his descendants quite penniless. The circular
North Keep alone--where the billiard-room is nowadays--must undoubtedly
have cost its imaginative progenitor a small fortune.
The whole edifice, as it now stands, is a monument, apparently
imperishable, to the greatness and grandeur, past, present, and to
come, of the Jura family. And Sallie, staring at it with wide,
apprehensive eyes, from the bridge of the busy little coaster, listening
to Mr. Jobling's descriptive quotations, with Captain Dove of the _Olive
Branch_, and Jasper Slyne for company, felt infinitely dispirited by the
knowledge that she and none other was the present representative of that
proud race.
The steamer drew in toward the anchorage and a ferryboat put off from
the shore to meet it. The kilted Highlandmen therein looked askance at
Ambrizette and crossed themselves quite openly as she was handed down
into it from the gangway. Slyne followed and held out his arms to
Sallie, but she needed no such assistance. And the men in the boat
seemed better content after a glance or two at her as she sat down and
slipped a warm arm around Ambrizette, who was shivering in the winter
afternoon.
The two remaining travellers jumped in, the baggage was transshipped,
and the steamer swung about on her way to the farther north. The captain
sounded his steam-whistle and waved his cap in parting salute as the
ferry made its slow way ashore to the further accompaniment of a
dirge-like chorus from the crew at its heavy sweeps; at which music
Captain Dove snorted his disgust very audibly. He had awoke with a
headache and had been in a bad temper all day.
By the way Slyne held a low-toned conversation with Mr. Jobling. And
when the big boat was at length beached beside a rude pier, he paid the
ferryman liberally, distributed some small change among the oarsmen, and
bade them bring the baggage along to the little inn on the roadside at a
short distance.
"Better send Ambrizette with me," he said to Sallie, and the black
dwarf trotted off after him in obedience to a few words from her
mistress, while Mr. Jobling turned the other way, toward the Castle.
"We'll just have time to see over the old place before it's dark, Lady
Josceline," the lawyer explained, and Sallie followed him with Captain
Dove.
Slyne rejoined them before they were half-way up the long hill on the
road which leads from the shore-level to the plateau. Sallie was still
staring with troubled eyes at the huge, picturesque, rambling pile which
seemed to grow always more immense as they drew nearer to it. It dwarfed
into proportions almost infinitesimal the cluster of white cottages
nestling cosily at the base of the great rock which formed its
foundation. It seemed to dominate the whole visible world, to challenge
even the mighty mountains which shut it in with the sea.
"That's the water-gate," Mr. Jobling mentioned and pointed out a black,
oblong opening in the cliff-face at some height above even high-water
mark and protected against possible intrusion by a heavy iron grating
whose bars must have been as thick as a grown man's wrist. "I suppose
the sea would be right up to its sill when the place was built.
"There's an underground passage connecting it with the interior of the
castle, and they'd no doubt use that a good deal in the old days.
"And this is the North Keep, as it's called; newer, you'll maybe notice,
than the west frontage, although it looks just as ancient. We'll soon
have the Jura house-flag afloat again from the Warder's Tower, Lady
Josceline, and the beacon-fire alight after dark. It always burns at
night, you know, when the head of the family's in residence--a custom
dating back to the days when there were no other lights on the coast.
"You'll see the moat now. Long ago it was always full, even at low tide.
But now it's as dry as--"
"As I am!" grumbled Captain Dove, spitting down into the deep fosse
which had formerly cut the castle off from the mainland but is now no
more than an empty ravine spanned by an ornate drawbridge of modern
date.
They crossed that, their footsteps producing an eerie clank on the
planking, and came to a halt before the main entrance, over whose heavy,
iron-studded oak doors still hung, a mute reminder of more stormy times,
a massive portcullis armed with _chevaux-de-frise_ of long, pointed
spikes.
Slyne rang the electric door-bell.
It was some time before that summons was answered, but no one of the
waiting group seemed to have anything to say to the others during the
interval. The mystery of time itself was in the atmosphere. Some
brooding spirit of the past might have been peering out at them from the
watchman's wicket in the bartizan above. They stood still and silent
until, at last, the postern in the big double-doorway was unlatched from
within and a grey-haired, elderly woman with a hard-featured face, much
lined and seamed, in the stiffly rustling garb of a superior servant,
appeared in the narrow opening and dropped them an old-fashioned curtsy
after a quick, shrewd glance at them.
"If it isn't too late, we'd like to be allowed to look over the castle,"
Slyne said politely raising his cap.
The woman was gazing intently at Sallie. She started as Mr. Jobling
coughed, with intention, after they had waited a second or two for an
answer.
"You will be very welcome, sirs," she said hastily. "I have authority to
admit visitors. Will you be pleased to step in."
She looked long and very closely at Sallie again as the girl crossed the
threshold; and then at the others in turn as they entered, one at a
time, by the narrow postern. She closed it behind them, and led the way
through a low, arched passage into a dimly lighted but spacious hall.
"We've just passed through the walls," Mr. Jobling informed them
patronisingly, of his superior knowledge. "They're twelve feet thick on
this front. Loquhariot would still be a hard nut to crack, eh?"
"I'd sooner crack a bottle than a nut," commented Captain Dove aside to
Slyne, who frowned reprovingly at him.
The great hall they entered next could almost have housed a regiment.
But it, like the guard-room through which they had come, was peopled
only in dusky corners by fearsomely lifelike suits of armour. Its empty
fireplaces made it seem still more desolate and deserted. War-worn flags
hung from the gallery overhead, to which a wide stairway with many
shallow steps gave access. Dead and gone Justices and St. Justs and
Juras looked coldly down, from out of dark, tarnished frames, at the
whispering intruders.
"You're Mrs. M'Kissock, aren't you?" Mr. Jobling remarked with affable
condescension as they followed that hard-featured personage into a
seemingly endless passage lined and hung with heads and horns and other
trophies of the chase from all parts of the world.
She glanced sharply round at him again and bowed in silent assent.
"I've been here before, you know," he mentioned as she ushered the
little party into the first of an extensive suite of rooms at the far
end of the corridor they had traversed. Sallie could scarcely repress
the exclamation of pleasure that rose to her lips; for the rooms, all
opening into each other and with the doors wide, stretched across the
entire breadth of the building, so that their furthest windows looked
straight out to sea. There was nothing between them and the wide
Atlantic but a cluster of miniature islets, emerald-green, at the
distant mouth of the loch.
"This was her late ladyship's favourite suite," said Mrs. M'Kissock
precisely. "The outermost room was her boudoir once. But his lordship
had that altered--afterwards."
Sallie listened like one in a dream. She could scarcely believe that
these had once been her own mother's rooms, that this gaunt, austere
serving-woman was stating matters of fact in that dry, lifeless voice of
hers. She longed to get Mrs. M'Kissock alone and question her
about--everything. But she had been warned by both Mr. Jobling and
Jasper Slyne that she must contain every symptom of curiosity till they
could grant her permission to speak for herself.
She passed, with a little, impatient sigh, from one range of rooms to
another, each with its own tag of story or history duly related by Mrs.
M'Kissock, until they reached the great hall again from a further
passage, and very glad of her expert guidance through such a maze.
From there the housekeeper took them, by way of the central staircase
and gallery up a steep corkscrew stair in a turret to the top of what
had been the main tower before the North Keep had been built, and out on
to the battlements, where the Spanish guns still stand guard, among a
multitude of other obsolete pieces, including a carronade or two from
the ancient foundry at Falkirk, over the equally futile suits of mail in
the halls below.
She offered to show them the dungeons and torture-chamber and oubliette,
on the way to the water-gate, but Mr. Jobling declared that it was too
late by then to go underground that day, and she led them instead along
the north corridor, through the late earl's private study and library
and smoking-room, through a dozen other equally superfluous apartments,
till they regained the corridor at the end where an open doorway led
through into the spacious circular hall at the base of the North Keep.
"This part of the castle is private, sir," Mrs. M'Kissock informed Mr.
Jobling, who had already stepped in.
"I'd like my friends to see the sunset from the Warder's Tower," he
returned, "if you don't mind. We won't disturb anyone on our way
upstairs."
Mrs. M'Kissock still looked uncertain, but Slyne had already followed
the lawyer's lead and Captain Dove was calmly pushing past her. She
glanced at Sallie again, and then bowed her also in. And they all
proceeded quietly up the carpeted winding staircase, past several
landings, the doors of which were closed.
But the door at the turret-top was wide, and Mrs. M'Kissock was
obviously a good deal disturbed in her mind as Mr. Jobling stepped to
one side and politely gave Sallie precedence out into the open air.
Sallie smiled careless thanks for the courtesy and was still smiling
when she emerged from the low doorway and stopped just beyond its
threshold, so that Mr. Jobling and the others behind her had to wait
patiently where they were while she gazed, enraptured and forgetful of
all else, at the scene before her.
The sun was setting, blood-red, over the far sea-rim, and there was no
least cloud in the radiant sky. The clear-cut mountains on either hand,
the still loch and the broad Atlantic beyond it were all aglow with a
marvellous, mystic light; the little cottages on the shore, three
hundred sheer feet below her, were crimson instead of white; the very
smoke which came from their chimneys seemed somehow ethereal and unreal.
She stood alone for a moment or two in a world transformed, till the
quick, keen, exquisite pleasure of it brought a mist to her eyes that
blurred it all, and, as she raised a hand to brush that away, she
suddenly realized that she was not alone. There was a young man leaning
over an embrasure at one corner of the battlements, who had been gazing,
like her, at the sunset till she had come forth.
He was gazing at her now, and with even more admiration, however
unconscious, than he had been bestowing on the beauties of nature
inanimate; for the waning light had transfigured her sweet, sensitive
features also, and into a semblance such as one might imagine an angel
would wear.
Her eyes met his, and they two stood regarding each other so for the
space of five fateful seconds. She had recognised him at once, but it
was apparent that he did not yet know who she was.
He came forward then, limping a little, and bowed, bareheaded, to her; a
sufficiently self-confident youth, straight and limber, good-looking
enough, with smiling grey eyes and a mobile mouth, somewhat wistful at
that moment in spite of his eyes.
"I'm sorry if I'm in the way," he said pleasantly. "Won't you come out
and look round? The view all about is beyond any words of mine--and
you're only seeing part of it there."
He hesitated slightly, regarding her with a very puzzled expression,
before plunging further, and then, "I'm Justin Carthew," he continued,
since she made no move at all, "although my lawyers would have me
believe that I'm the ninth Earl of Jura now!" He laughed aloud, as if
that idea were amusing. "In any case," he concluded naively, "the sunset
doesn't belong to me."
She stepped out into the afterglow, still without a word, her mind full
of vague misgivings. And, as Mr. Jobling followed her from the doorway,
with Slyne and Captain Dove at his heels, and Mrs. M'Kissock, nervously
fumbling with her chatelaine, last of all, Justin Carthew drew back a
couple of paces.
"Your lawyers have misinformed you, Mr. Carthew," said Mr. Jobling in
his most dogmatic manner. "You are no more the ninth Earl of Jura than I
am, because--Let me introduce you--more formally!--to Lady Josceline
Justice, the late earl's daughter, on whose property you are trespassing
here."