The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster
Treig!” exclaimed Ewen, dismayed. “How do you know that, man?—and are you very sure of it?”
MacNichol was very sure. His own wife was ill; the doctor had visited her that same morning, and instead of returning to Maryburgh had departed along the south bank of the Spean—the only practicable way—for a lonely farm on Loch Treig. It was of no use waiting at the change-house for his return, since he would naturally go back to Maryburgh along the shorter road by Corriechoille and Lianachan. There was nothing then to be done but ride after him. MacNichol did not know how far along Loch Treig was the farm to which the doctor had gone, but he did know that the latter had said its occupant was very ill, and that he might be obliged to spend the night there.
Ewen’s heart sank lower and lower. It would be getting dusk by the time that he had covered the twelve or fourteen miles to the nearer end of that desolate loch. Suppose he somehow missed the doctor, or suppose the latter either could not or would not start back for Ardroy so late? Yet at least it would be better than nothing to have speech with him, and to learn what was the proper treatment for that little coughing, shivering, bright-cheeked thing at home.
So he went by Spean side where it hurried in its gorges, where it swirled in wide pools; by the dangerous ford at Inch, past the falls where it hurled itself to a destruction which it never met; he rode between it and the long heights of Beinn Chlianaig and finally turned south with the lessening river itself. And after a while there opened before him a narrow, steel-coloured trough of loneliness and menace imprisoned between unfriendly heights—Loch Treig. On its eastern side Cnoc Dearg reared himself starkly; on the other Stob Choire an Easain Mhóir, even loftier, shut it in—kinsmen of Ben Nevis both. The track went low by the shore under Cnoc Dearg, for there was no place for it on his steep flanks.
As there was no habitation anywhere within sight, Ewen concluded that the farm to which Doctor Kincaid had gone was probably at Loch Treig head, at the farther end of the lake, where the mountains relaxed their grip—another five or six miles. He went on. The livid surface of the water by which he rode was not ruffled to-day by any wind; a heavy, sinister silence lay upon it, as on the dark, brooding heights which hemmed it about. One was shut in between them with that malevolent water. It hardly seemed surprising that after a mile and a half of its company Ewen’s horse definitely went lame; the strain which he feared had developed—and no wonder. But he could not spare the time to lead him; he must push on at all costs.
The halting beast had carried him but a little way farther before he was aware of distant sounds like—yes, they were snatches of song. And soon he saw coming towards him through the September dusk the indistinct figure of a man walking with the uncertain gait of one who has been looking upon the wine-cup. And Ewen, thinking, ‘That poor fool will either spend the night by the roadside or fall into the loch’, pulled up his horse to a walk, for the drunkard was staggering first to one side of the narrow road and then to the other, and he feared to knock him down.
As he did so he recognised the air which the reveller was singing. . . . But the words which belonged to that tune were neither Gaelic, Scots nor English, so how should they be sung here, by one of the loneliest lochs in the Highlands?
“Aux nouvell’s que j’apporte
Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer . . .”
What was a Frenchman doing here, singing ‘Malbrouck’?
“Quittez vos habits roses,”
sang the voice, coming nearer:
“Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,
Quittez vos habits roses,
Et vos satins brochés.”
Cnoc Dearg tossed the words mockingly to the other warder of Loch Treig, and Ewen jumped off his horse. It was not perhaps, after all, a Frenchman born who was singing that song in so lamentable and ragged a fashion along this lonely track to nowhere.
The lurching figure was already nearly up to him, and now the singer seemed to become aware of the man and the horse in his path, for he stopped in the middle of the refrain.
“Laissez-moi passer, s’il vous plaît,” he muttered indistinctly, and tried to steady himself. He was hatless, and wore a green roquelaure.
Ewen dropped his horse’s bridle and seized him by the arm.
“Hector! What in the name of the Good Being are you doing here in this state?”
Out of a very white face Hector Grant’s eyes stared at him totally without recognition. “Let me pass, if you pl—please,” he said again, but in English this time.
“You are not fit to be abroad,” said Ewen in disgust. The revelation that Hector could ever be as drunk as this came as a shock; he had always thought him a temperate youth, if excitable . . . but it was true that he had seen nothing of him for the past two years. “Where have you been—what, in God’s name, have you been doing?”
The young officer of the régiment d’Albanie did indeed cut a sorry figure. His waistcoat hung open, his powdered hair was disordered and streaked with wet, there was mud on his breeches as well as on his boots.
“Answer me!” said Ewen sternly, giving him a little shake. “I am in haste.”
“So am I,” replied Hector, still more thickly. “Let me pass, I say, whoever you are. Let me pass, or I’ll make you!”
“Don’t you even know me?” demanded his brother-in-law indignantly.
“No, and have no wish to . . . O God, my head!” And, Ardroy having removed his grasp, the reveller reeled backwards against the horse, putting both hands to his brow.
“You had best sit down for a moment,” counselled Ewen drily, and with an arm round him guided him to the side of the path. Hector must be pretty far gone if he really did not know him, for it was still quite light enough for recognition. The best way to sober him would be to take him to the nearest burn tumbling down across the track and dip his fuddled head into it. But Ewen stood looking down at him in mingled disgust and perplexity, for now Hector had laid that head upon his knees and was groaning aloud.
As he sat hunched there the back of that same head was presented to Ardroy’s unsympathetic gaze. Just above the black ribbon which tied Hector’s queue the powder appeared all smirched, and of a curious rusty colour. . . . Ewen uttered a sudden exclamation, stooped, touched the patch, and looked at his fingers. Next moment he was down by the supposed tippler’s side, his arm round him.
“Hector, have you had a blow on the head? How came you by it?” His voice was sharp with anxiety. “My God, how much are you hurt—who did it?” But Hector did not answer; instead, as he sat there, his knees suddenly gave, and he lurched forward and sideways on to his mentor.
Penitent, and to spare, for having misjudged him, Ewen straightened him out, laid him down in the heather and bog-myrtle which bordered the track, brought water from the burn in his hat, dashed it in the young man’s face, and turning his head on one side tried to examine the injury. He could not see much, only the hair matted with dried blood; it was even possibly the fact of its being gathered thus into a queue and tied with a stout ribbon which had saved him from more serious damage—perhaps, indeed, had saved his life. The wound, great or small, was certainly not bleeding now, so it must either have been inflicted some time ago, or have been slighter than its consequences seemed to indicate; and as Ewen bathed the recipient’s face he detected signs of reviving consciousness. After a moment, indeed, the young soldier gave a little sigh, and, still lying in Ardroy’s arms, began to murmur something incoherent about stopping someone at all costs; that he was losing time and must push on. He even made a feeble effort to rise, which Ewen easily frustrated.
“You cannot push on anywhere after a blow like that,” he said gently. (Had he not had a presentiment of something like this last night!) “I’ll make you as comfortable as I can with my cloak, and when I come back from my errand to the head of the loch I’m in hopes I’ll have a doctor with me, and he can—Don’t you know me now, Hector?”
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