CHAPTER TWO

1

When Colonel Hicks left Jean to her brother in the out-kitchen, he went to the sideboard in the dining-room and brought out his own whisky bottle with its beribboned clinking monogram. Having poured himself a stiff one, he raised his head and caught his face in the mirror. He looked at it a moment with attention, at the severity gloomed with annoyance. The skin was tanned, with a faint wash of purple just beginning to show through a fullness here and there. This fullness that might some day run to pouches now held the features to a steady strength. In this face the eyes were small but blue-green, clear, and alive, and at the moment shone intolerantly. The hair was grey with no least suggestion of baldness. It was combed neatly back in a way that left the upper part of the brow smooth and intelligent like an impress from far public-school days. The Colonel was sixty-four.

He withdrew his eyes without any alteration in their expression and stooping again lifted out his own soda-syphon. He swallowed his drink without taking the glass from his lips, then returning bottle and syphon to their own compartment, left the dining-room and went upstairs to dress.

On his chair he sat a moment thoughtful and motionless, before beginning to take off boots and stockings.

Each foot fell with a thud, four toes stuck together and white, the big toe reddish-purple and apart. He waggled all his toes, then lifted his eyes from them and, again motionless, decided that that fellow Ewan was damned insolent. Like a dark flush Ewan’s past swept his mind. He had never been able to stomach him. Behind his quietness he was so pretentious and cunning. His face at the door had been so—so—hm! The Colonel did not even think of Jean.

When he got to the bathroom he found it locked. He shook the knob firmly and as he retired decided that the splashings were made by lawyer Stansfield. The fellow shaved there, if he wasn’t mistaken. He must say something to McAlpine about this. It was happening too often. As if he weren’t late enough at least to find the bathroom disengaged!

His bare legs stumped the room, the toilet ware on the washstand and the door of the wardrobe clicking and creaking as he crossed certain spots on the floor. A current of air fanned his legs coldly. He listened at the door, his brows gathering, then turned into the room and started walking up and down again. His restraint began to lag behind his anger. The aimless walking maddened him. An oath came explosively. The bathroom door clicked, and as he got into the corridor he saw the retreating jazz dressing wrap of one of the Miss Sandersons, her reddish ankles twinkling beneath. She threw a swift look back as she vanished into her bedroom.

Presently through the hiss of the bath-taps Colonel Hicks heard approaching the unmistakable footsteps of Mr. Stansfield. The knob rattled firmly; the footsteps retreated. Very leisurely, with luxury of puffings and gruntings, the Colonel proceeded to the not unpleasant task of washing away the day’s stains.

He met Mr. Stansfield as he came out.

‘Hullo, Stansfield—not dressed yet?’

‘No,’ said Stansfield tonelessly.

The Colonel entered his room and began to dress with some satisfaction and, remembering the occasion, not a little care.

The occasion was the company of his niece, Clare Marlowe, who was awaiting him in the lounge, which was half glass-porch and half entrance-hall.

He greeted her charmingly, his body neatly braced in its dark jacket. Had she had a good day? Yes, she had had a splendid day. Her eyes were full of light:

‘Did you see the trout I caught?’

‘I did. I asked specially when I came in—and went through and had a look at them. Not at all bad—for a beginner!’

‘Oh, you needn’t mock me. I shall surprise you yet.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Not for a moment.’

‘And if you’d seen the one I lost!’

‘Ah!’ said the Colonel, and chuckled richly. ‘There is certainly hope for you now!’

‘No, but it’s true, really. You ask Ewan. And see how quickly I’m developing the fisherman’s selfishness! Tell me, had you a good day?’

‘No,’ said the Colonel, as they found chairs. ‘As a matter of fact I had a very bad day. However . . .’ His lips pursed and he gave a dismissive shrug.

His voice, at its usual pitch, penetrated the small lounge. The three Glasgow Sanderson ladies were inclined to speak in undertones, and the newly-married young couple, birds of passage, in the far angle of the glass porch, had their faces to the hills.

The Colonel was hardly even disturbed by the day’s misadventures. After his long residence in the North, he found again in his niece the lost virtues of quality and breeding. In the presence of her quiet, distinguished air and voice, the others were common, the Sanderson women being beneath consideration. The Colonel warmed to his niece. His neatly brushed hair left his courteous forehead more intelligent than ever. He was proud of this glimmering young woman, not only for her own sake but for his. She made it so clear where he belonged. And now she wanted to know how he had had such a bad day.

He would rather have avoided the subject, yet there was in it too a certain attraction, for he had a singular knowledge of his surroundings and their people. ‘You don’t know Donald, my ghillie,’ he said.

‘Didn’t I see him this morning?’

‘Yes. I said you don’t know him.’

‘Oh.’ She smiled too. ‘What did he do?’

‘You mean what didn’t he do? As it so happened I was particularly anxious to land a trout I hooked, a big fellow about three pounds. Nothing half so big ever been seen before on Lochanathar. Well, he missed him.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Missed him with the net. Scooped up—like that—missed the trout, fouled the cast, and—’ The Colonel snapped imaginary gut.

‘What hard luck! But surely a ghillie should know how to net a trout?’

‘Quite,’ said the Colonel with an enigmatic air.

Clare was trying to penetrate this, when Alfred Stansfield, a man of forty-five to fifty, entered uprightly, his Times under his arm. His greying hair was neatly brushed over his ears, his face weathered and firm, his body tall and with an unhurried confident movement. He acknowledged Clare to whom he had previously been introduced, and took a chair by the glass front for the light.

‘What luck, Stansfield?’ asked the Colonel.

‘Pretty fair, thanks.’ He lowered the paper to his knees. ‘I hope you had a good opening day, Miss Marlowe?’

‘Splendid, thanks. I enjoyed it immensely.’ She half turned. ‘And caught some trout.’

‘Good. Macleod knows about fishing.’

It took a moment to fix Macleod to Ewan.

‘Ah—yes. And Mr. McAlpine says I may have Lochdhu tomorrow.’ She paused. ‘That is, if I’m not—’

‘No,’ smiled Stansfield, and his eyes found a merry gleam. ‘I don’t think anyone will grudge you Lochdhu.’

‘How? Is it . . .? ’

‘It’s all right really,’ he said plainly; ‘quite a lot of trout in it, but for some reason they rarely run to any weight.’

‘Oh, and I have just been telling how I lost a monster!’

‘Ah, bad luck!’

Just as the Colonel was about to speak the dinner bell went. The Colonel and his niece had their small table by the double window. Stansfield sat alone well back in the room and against a wall where he was not disturbed. He rarely spoke unless directly addressed. The three Sandersons had their corner—a white-haired, pleasant-faced, elderly lady, a thin, raffish woman about forty, fair and full of merriment and a Kelvinside-English accent (a source of considerable amusement to the Colonel), and an anaemic-looking girl emerging from her teens, with a languid manner, a short red tartan kilt, and a pale eye which fell away slowly from a man’s face (the combination of hill and sea air, together with the bracing austerity of the heights, was supposed to be doing her good). Six persons sat at a corner table; a young widow (to whom the Colonel had for a time been gallant) in the party of a well-conditioned man and his wife with their son who wore publicschool colours, and the young married couple who had arrived in a two-seater. At another table an artist and his wife were discussing the fishing with two jolly young men with whom they played bridge at night and who owned a sports two-seater which they tortured into all sorts of hill-climbing feats (they had penetrated to the shores of Lochdhu by an obliterated cart track). A final table was occupied by three quiet-mannered sportsmen, whose talk showed an intimate knowledge of most Scots fishing hotels; they were about to move on after a three-weeks’ trial of Ardnacloich.

Of all this company, Colonel Hicks and Stansfield were the only old-timers. Stansfield was a London solicitor, and though his month was as fixed as the summer sun, and more dependable in its habits, it was at the best but an isolated event compared with the Colonel’s now almost continuous residence. It was the Colonel who had had the big, old, solid dining-room table displaced by the small private tables, with the commanding position of the window as his headquarters.

To this table he now gravely ushered Clare.

Presently a half-bottle of wine was brought. Having read the label, she looked across at her uncle. She had arrived in time for dinner last night, and had happened to mention claret. McAlpine reported he had run out of it. The Colonel said to Clare that he had probably never had it. She had laughed.

‘But how kind of you!’ she now exclaimed.

‘It’s a pleasure.’

It was. It was an excellent pleasure. ‘You’ll forgive me if I stick to my own. It’s the only thing one can be quite sure of here.’

Clare glanced with interest at the silver monogram.

She enjoyed her meal, talking quietly and appreciatively. Already there were sluggish stirrings of a new vitality.

The Colonel finally raised his eyebrows. Coffee in the lounge?

‘Yes,’ she assented readily, and, preceding her uncle, felt that they would not be disturbed.

‘This is delightful,’ she sighed, as she let her head fall back and her hands droop over the chair-arms.

The Colonel had a pleasant weakness for young women. Life at that moment grew rich for him. No, she would not smoke.

‘Quite right, my dear.’ He thought of the pale Sandersonian affair in the red kilt. ‘This smoking amongst certain women—just getting a bit too much.’ He lit a black juicy cheroot and as he stretched back, the wickerwork fondly protested. ‘So you enjoyed your day?’ He crossed his legs.

‘I did—immensely—more than I can say.’ She spoke with an earnestness that trailed off into a lingering smile. ‘I still see that loch; and the wind—it’s all about my body. I feel drowsed.’

‘You’ll sleep to-night.’

‘I know I shall. And I haven’t been sleeping too well.’

‘No. But we’ll buck you up here. That’s what you’ve come for. We mayn’t have much—’

‘Ah, but you have. Indeed I wonder if you haven’t everything.’

The Colonel smiled in a certain way. Here he was on his own ground; had indeed such special knowledge that he could afford to be tolerant. ‘You don’t know very much about it, I’m afraid, but a month of it should do you no harm.’

‘I’m sure it won’t,’ she said lightly. ‘And I’ll tell them when I go back that they need not waste any pity on you.’

Her innocent words might have been a whip severing gaiety from silence. The Colonel slowly drew himself back from contemplation of the silence, the better to let his voice come round and penetrating, ‘Oh, they pity me, do they?’

‘No,’ said Clare, with innocence so casual that it was superb. Her eyes appeared to glimmer in a far reminiscence. But the Colonel was not deceived. He had a genius for the dark laceration.

‘I didn’t know they exactly pitied me,’ he said. I may have had my own ideas as to what they thought. But it never struck me that they—ah—pitied me.’ It was the sort of joke that one could enjoy. He even withdrew his cigar to have a good look at it.

Clare’s eyes moved in her head until the Colonel was secretly focussed, then moved away.

‘I didn’t mean anything like that at all, of course,’ she said, with the lazy smile that implied her uncle was having a game. ‘Although, as you know, they think that everyone who isn’t doing what they’re doing is to be pitied!’

‘I know.’ The Colonel nodded. ‘I am aware exactly of what they think. Exactly. Quite.’ The humour in his tone was like a creeping wind.

Clare lifted her wrap about her shoulders. ‘I’m sure what they think doesn’t matter,’ she said in good-humoured dismissal. ‘Indeed,’ she added, ‘you would be surprised to know what they think about me!’

‘At least it’s nice,’ responded the Colonel, ‘to be a sinner in such company.’

Clare’s smile lit up. ‘At least that’s clever of you.’

His chair creaked. He blew smoke. Clare saw that the subject, which she had so unfortunately raised, fascinated him. His chance stroke of wit, too, excited him. But his normal methods of approach were forthright, and now his lips pressed together as if they could no longer find anything to say that would not be too much. Altogether it was an uncomfortable moment. A certain sympathy towards letting him unburden himself moved generously in Clare. There always had been in him something quick-tempered, tormented; in a sense, jealous. But this was hardly the place or the time. Besides, he was really going too far. As he perfectly well knew, many retired men like himself, with no more money, contrived to live down south. She summoned the slow magnanimous smile that comes out of a woman’s wisdom.

‘And, in any case, you aren’t quite fair to them, poor people!’

‘Amn’t I?’

Clare, smiling still, leaned back, and, turning her head, looked out through the glass upon the hillside of crofts across the valley, her eyes lingering on the view and showing no slightest sign of personal stress.

‘Anyhow, they don’t matter,’ he said suddenly.

‘No,’ she murmured almost gravely, and turning from her contemplation of the view, finished her coffee. ‘That was quite nice,’ she said, lifting a bright face. ‘They do you rather well here, don’t they?’

‘Might be worse, I suppose.’ The Colonel gulped the last of his coffee. It was easy, he supposed internally, to dismiss the subject.

‘But I think they do do you well,’ she insisted, bent on reviving the pleasant note.

But he could at least counter this. ‘I’m afraid what they do do, they’ve been driven to.’

‘Surely not as bad as that?’

‘You think not?’ He almost smiled. ‘They have about as much initiative as—as a mule.’ That it wasn’t quite the perfect comparison brought a gleam to his eyes. He went on, ‘When I came here first there were little more than four walls and four bedrooms. And there would never have been more if McAlpine had been left to it. The wing with our bathroom, the old rackety Ford, a number of the fishing lochs—I had to drive him to get ’em. And now he has to come trooping in to get my advice on any da—on—everything.’

‘Really. I had no idea you had made the place.’

He dismissed the remark. ‘It was their laziness got me. Wanted to lounge about in their poverty.’ His tone was curiously concentrated.

‘They don’t look like that, do they?’

‘Take it from me—you’ll never know what they look like.’

His tone compelled her glance. In the gleam in his eyes she caught something not so much sarcastic as malign. It affected her like a shocking and intimate revelation. She lowered her head. The enchanted world she had moved in all day slid away from her and left her silent.

The Colonel had more to say. ‘Behind their laziness, they’re cunning. There’s something in them that’s crooked. But that’s only the beginning of it.’ Clearly the depth of his knowledge was beyond sounding. There had come, too, into his voice with these words an abrupt, husky note of conspiracy. Clare felt drawn by it, attracted despite herself. It was all a horrible exaggeration, of course, brought about by her unfortunate reference to those who ‘pitied’ him, so that he was merely finding here an outlet for his private humour. Or was it she herself who was over-responsive, because of her day’s exquisite impressions, impressions like secret flowers that would shiver when any sort of serpent slid through?

‘But take the ghillie I had to-day. Ewan—Ewan Macleod, is it?’ she asked impersonally.

‘Yes. I know him too.’ The Colonel remembered the insolent look in the kitchen.

Clare waited, her eyes on the croft houses, lying still in the first smother of dusk.

‘What about him?’ she had to ask.

‘Oh, nothing much. Only that in addition he’s a bit of a rotter.’

Clare’s face turned slowly with wide-open eyes.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ The Colonel’s humour drew taut. ‘All right as a ghillie. Supposed to be pretty good at teaching a woman to throw a line.’

‘Yes, I can say he’s good at that!’

‘But otherwise,’ and the Colonel’s teeth fixed in the cigar and the lips curled away. Then he removed the cigar and looked at it. He said suddenly: ‘He thinks such a damned lot of himself. If I were a fellow like that I’d have cleared out and hidden myself for good.’

‘Oh,’ murmured Clare.

‘His father—a fisherman-crofter down there. His mother—sort of thing you sometimes find here—aspiring to get a son through the university. University career, y’know.’ The humour of it was worth restraint. ‘He gave them a university career all right!’

The far evening quiet touched Clare’s spirit to a suspense of listening. The evening listened. The wind had completely fallen. The deepening dusk was like shadow from the slow meeting of wings of silence, imponderable, above their world, folding. The Colonel chewed his cigar. The juice ran about his gums with tonic astringency.

‘So he didn’t make good at the university?’ came Clare’s detached voice.

‘No, he didn’t!’ The Colonel’s short laugh was oiled with the cigar juice. ‘His mother has a brother who runs a pub in some slum in Edinburgh. A very religious man. He said he would put Ewan through the university if he would go in for the Church. They are much given to the Church here,’ remarked the Colonel.

‘He didn’t graduate?’

‘One night this religious publican cut off supplies, after your ghillie had used them for about two years.’

‘Why?’

‘He discovered how the young man lived. It was not according to the teaching of the holy Scotch Church.’

‘In what way?’

The Colonel hesitated.

‘You mean he was loose—drink an’ that?’ suggested Clare.

The Colonel met her look.

‘I suppose others have gone that way. But did you ever know of anyone who, after being kicked out like that, bringing disgrace on his parents—after all that—came back home. To a small povertyhole like this. What? They say his mother has never gone over her doorstep since.’

Clare’s face came curiously alive.

‘Really?’ she said, watching the Colonel.

‘And that’s not all.’ As he nodded, the Colonel’s neck thickened. Then he crushed his cigar-stub in the ash-tray and took another from his case. Clare saw his sucking mouth in the match spurts. The cigar glowing, his eyebrows lifted again, disclosing the eyes and leaving the upright furrows above the nose with their suggestion of imperious temper. ‘No,’ puffed the Colonel, ‘that’s not all.’

Clare waited. The Colonel took a careless look around the empty lounge.

‘We don’t say anything about this. Only—it was odd, to say the least. When he came back from the university he went to sea with his father. One night in a storm his mother found him naked on the beach, but of his father and the boat—no sign—gone.’

‘But—’ stammered Clare, fascinated.

‘Anyway, he managed to save himself,’ and the Colonel’s expression closed.

2

The following morning Donald MacCrimmon came on Jean in the back premises.

‘Is he not up yet?’ he asked.

‘I think he’s up,’ answered Jean, ‘but he hasn’t come down for breakfast.’

Donald stood in the doorway looking at her, his face alive with a half-humorous, half-irritable expression.

‘He’s the damnedest one,’ he said.

‘Now Donald!’ She smiled faintly but without looking at him.

He was never quite sure of her. There was a secret life behind her eyes that teased him, and about her clothes, her hair, a suggestion of untidiness that attracted like a warm overspilling of life; a suppressed life—that usually gave the skin an odd glow, a gipsy moodiness. This morning, however, Donald noted a faint discoloration of the skin here and there, and the inner glow seemed dead. He thought in his own mind that she was unwell, yet there was a haggard something more in it than that, as if she had stared long at a point fixed and dreadful and had forgotten how to sleep.

A certain movement of her head made him aware of his silence.

‘Here’s the best part of the morning gone. What’s the good of going out now?’ he declared.

‘Did he say he was going?’

‘I wouldn’t mind if he had only said it.’

She half smiled again.

‘Was he late going to bed?’ he asked, after a moment.

‘How could I know?’

If you didn’t know you might have heard him,’ he suggested. ‘It wouldn’t be that difficult to hear him sometimes.’

She lifted her head as though she had caught a step approaching from within, then went on with her potato-peeling.

‘I doubt if there’s to be any fishing for you today.’

‘That’s fine,’ returned Donald, blustering comically. ‘I’ll be having a holiday to myself. It’s the grand weather for it.’ He withdrew his eyes from her.

She gazed at him.

‘I could do with a holiday,’ he rushed on. ‘I could do with a good long one.’

‘What would you do with it?’

‘If I had the power to do what I liked with it,’ he answered, assuming his precise ‘English’ tone, ‘I would make the Colonel my ghillie.’

The potato slipped out of her hand.

‘I would say to him,’ proceeded Donald, ‘when he didn’t net a trout, I would say, what the—’

‘Go on!’ said the Colonel from the doorway behind.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ muttered Donald, blood darkening his face.

‘Let us hear exactly how you would put it,’ the Colonel encouraged him.

‘I couldn’t put it—before ladies,’ blustered Donald, affecting a half-laugh.

After an astonished moment, the Colonel’s throat gave way.

‘What’s that?’

‘Just a joke, sir.’ And Donald slid out through the door and backed away a yard or two, with the least possible appearance of either backing or sliding. The Colonel followed him.

‘A joke, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Colonel laughed. ‘You’re an absolute jackass!’

‘I may be all that,’ Donald replied. ‘Everyone is entitled to his opinion. You can—’

‘Will you shut up?’

‘There’s no law to make a man shut up,’ Donald declared. ‘A man may be poor but he can open his mouth. Besides that, I have been waiting for you all the morning.’ In spite of his words, his tone contrived to be propitiating.

They had both paused.

‘So you thought, after the exhibition you gave yesterday, that I would trust you with a net again.’

‘Well, you said—’

But the Colonel’s look stopped him. Then the Colonel exploded him with a word and turned away.

Donald drew himself up.

‘You can go to hell with you,’ he muttered harshly —in Gaelic. The Colonel looked back at him; but Donald, head up, was marching into the garage.

There was no one in the outkitchen as the Colonel passed the open door. He continued round the hotel and entered at the front door, fully awake and ready for his breakfast. Several times he chuckled as he chewed the succulent bacon. ‘Before ladies!’ It was rich!

Donald, his clown and jester, could be relied upon. The thought amused the Colonel at odd moments. Without him, life would be stale. He pottered about in pleasant and aimless fashion, yet was never at his ease for long because of something ever ready to prick him. An interview with McAlpine was a cheerful break. He informed McAlpine, apropos of his lack of claret, that his cellar was a disgrace. All sorts of wines would have to be laid down, not in a miserly one or two but in dozens.

‘Yes,’ said McAlpine.

The Colonel regarded his meek expression and knew that the yes meant that he wouldn’t think about it just yet. The soft, flabby face so like a woman’s, the drooping moustache, the mild manner—how clearly they could be read!

The Colonel had an excellent ten minutes, finishing up, ‘Yes, I know, it’s your money,’ then withdrew his penetrating look and turned round and left him.

Except for the Sandersons, he was alone for lunch. To a ‘Goodday’ from the oldest, he bowed, courtly and cold.

Thereafter his restlessness set him off on a walk. His humour kept pricking him on. It had even interfered with his sleep in the first part of the night. The truth was, he realised, that Clare’s advent had upset him, had jogged him out of his groove. It brought back them too vividly. They pitied him now. A good joke that!

There were times in bed when the maddening joke had created fantasies of revenge. In the close night he had sweated, turning futilely. Already he was out of touch, out of class. By her reticence, by her consideration for him, in a thousand trivial ways, she had made him feel his ostracism, without her being in the least aware of it, without his being aware of any definite attitude or act himself. It was well into the morning before he had fallen asleep, and when the knock came to his door he dismissed it with a spent anger.

Now as he went down the road to the stone bridge he felt fresher, but the aftermath of the night was behind his thought and found outlet in his attitude to the life about him.

The Colonel reckoned he knew that life. His position gave him a peculiar insight. Donald he could see through to his last shift. The evasiveness that tried to have a proud front, the speech that went on and on blowing him up, his whole air of being independent, of being a gentleman even though he was a ghillie, of being important, the effort at manners positively—‘before ladies!’ . . .

Colonel Hicks got the satisfaction that comes from all penetration. Seeing what he believed so many of them pretended to be and how their position thwarted that pretension appealed to him particularly, gave him a perverted pleasure. He searched for it, and no shift of hotelkeeper or ghillie or crofter but could be read by him. When he met a man who accepted his position humbly, he secretly despised him. He wanted the ‘gentleman,’ the fiery or evasive humours that could be pierced or cowed.

This baiting was the only game of intelligence left to the Colonel, and out of it he often extracted much mirth. Sometimes, too, it sharpened his wits to a demoniac degree, and in a following moment his pleasure would receive its rich overflow in an imperious gesture or, even better, in physical violence. A royal clean sweep!

Much of which was no doubt understandable enough, if not indeed inevitable, once it was recognised that the Colonel was a voluntary outcast from his own class through his own particular brand of independence. All the evasions that moved his ‘natives’ were already by a profound intuition in himself. In them, he was, as it were, continually coming up against himself. The game (this thing in life that touched him most jealously, at times to the quick) was ever ready to his hand. No wonder he was almost morbidly critical of them, as though out of his tormented superiority he must forever laugh at them and bear them a grudge.

Yet the pleasure was as real as his flesh, for his position allowed him to indulge even the weaknesses of his humours royally. This life had its peculiar parallel to the past army life. And if it ever came to the point that he had to lead men, he knew that he would elect to lead these, and with a ferocious humour curse and dragoon them to victory. As though their hidden twists had twisted into his blood.

His blood—probably his Scotch blood! At least, thank God, he could honestly despise that. But certainly it was a thought that his insight might be a result not of an overdose of intelligence but of a Scotch ancestry!

But everything was humour to the Colonel in a certain mood. It had been sticky in bed and now it was stuffy. Because it wasn’t yet raining! What a blasted apology for a climate! He wiped his forehead and turned round. At a slant below him in the glen he saw old Angie Sutherland, bent double with rheumatics, move across a green strip of pasture leading an old reluctant cow. Distance and the slope made the figures look curiously toylike, diminutive. The Colonel knew old Angie, and now regarded this thrilling spectacle of the old man and his cow with attention. The toy figures looked isolated and as if moved by fate. Philosophy moved the Colonel. What in the name of heaven, he marvelled, did they live for? Of what use were they? Not even able to support themselves! The old man would talk like a prophet—in Gaelic. ‘Och, och, la preea!’ muttered the Colonel. ‘Hey flooch!’

A spot of rain pricked his hot forehead. He hadn’t taken his coat. Colin McKinnon’s cottage was up the corrie there in front of him. He knew Colin and that pretty wench of his. The way she came on the village platform—countrified, but quality. The Colonel was always brightened by a good-looking young woman.

He started on again. Quite large drops of rain spattered his forehead. Curious hanging weather. Clouds heavy, motionless, blotting out the hill-tops. All at once it was raining. The Colonel quickened his pace. By the time he reached Colin’s door he felt quite wet. He knocked, and opening the door came face to face with Colin, who smiled hospitably.

‘Is it you, Colonel?’

‘Dashed wet!’ replied Colonel Hicks affably.

‘Yes indeed, it’s a heavy shower. Please to come in out of it—this way.’

He led the Colonel into the parlour, and the first thing that greeted them there was Ewan Macleod’s unfinished bottle of whisky in solitary prominence on the round mahogany table. The Colonel eyed it jocularly, ‘Ho! ho!’ The last part of his walk had quickened heart and breath, and his mouth was blown dry. As he moistened his mouth it clacked. Colin hardly appeared to hesitate.

‘You would like a refreshment, Colonel?’

‘Why, I should, Colin, thanks.’

‘I’ll just get a glass for you. You’ll excuse me.’

As he entered the kitchen, Mary gave her father a quick look. ‘Where’s a glass?’ he asked quietly.

‘There—on the dresser. You’ll want some fresh water?’

‘It would be as well.’

When Mary returned with the jug of water, she found her father standing thoughtfully with the tumbler in his hand.

‘That’s it,’ he said, laying hold of the jug.

She did not look at him. He hesitated a moment, lifting his thoughtful face to the window through which his eyes travelled to a great distance. Then he turned, saying ‘That’s fine,’ and went through to the parlour. Mary remained very still, her bright eyes to the window, listening acutely, lips apart.

‘Thanks, Colin. Good health!’

‘Good health, Colonel!’

‘Ah-h—that’s better. Didn’t want to get wet. Not as young as I was!

‘No.’

‘Do you think it’s going to be much?’

‘I don’t think it’s going to be more than a shower.’

‘Oh, well, in that case—if you don’t mind—’

‘It’s a pleasure, Colonel.’

‘Hm. Feel dampish, though. What about that kitchen fire of yours?’

‘Surely. If you don’t mind . . .’

Mary blew through the back door. The Colonel looked about him as he entered the kitchen; walked up to the hearth and stood with his back to it.

‘This is better; what!’ He straddled his legs and shook the ample folds of his grey-check plus-fours, then wriggled his shoulders and blew a breath, ‘Pf-f-f!’

Colin stood by the dresser.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ requested the Colonel. ‘Don’t mind me.’

‘Ho, it’s all right,’ said Colin pleasantly. ‘There’s plenty of time for sitting.’

The Colonel regarded Colin with reflective humour. ‘Do sit down!’

‘Well,’ smiled Colin, ‘excuse me,’ and he sat down.

The Colonel looked about him.

‘Haven’t you your daughter with you—what’s her name?’

‘Mary, is it? Oh yes. She’ll be out about somewhere, I’m sure.’

‘A good voice. I see she’s to be singing at the concert.’

‘Yes, so I believe.’

The Colonel shook his legs and turned his front to the fire.

‘You could take off your jacket and dry it,’ suggested Colin.

‘Oh—well—what?’ The Colonel hesitated, then hunched his shoulders. ‘Pf-f-f . . . nothing. Is the shower passing?’

‘It’s thinning,’ said Colin. ‘I’ll go to the door and see.’

The Colonel looked about the kitchen. Trophies of the chase! The sight of Colin through the window leisurely regarding the heavens was bright as a joke. The way the blessed fellow looked this way and that as though he knew better than a weather-glass! What? As Colin came in the Colonel called to him with excellent good humour:

‘Well, is it over?’

‘Practically. It’s clearing to the west and there will be a fair interval, but there’s a lot of rain to come yet.’

‘You’re a prophet! I had better get going.’

‘I’m sure there’s no hurry,’ said Colin hospitably.

‘Well, I am in a bit of a hurry.’

‘Oh, well . . .’

The Colonel laughed.

‘You think no one should be in a hurry?’

Colin smiled before the Colonel’s good humour.

‘Indeed there are times when everyone must be in a hurry, I suppose.’

‘But as seldom as possible, eh?’

‘Oh, well . . .’ murmured Colin, and remained perfectly still and faintly smiling.

The Colonel eyed him quizzically, then shook his shoulders.

‘Pf-f-f, I am damp!’ He stamped on the hearth, braced himself, and as he started for the door, said, ‘Thanks for your refreshment. I needed it.’

‘You’re welcome,’ replied Colin, and followed directly behind the stumping body, the red thick neck and exposed head before his eyes.

As they came out at the front door, Mary emerged from the hen-house on the near side of the byre. The Colonel stopped and called to her.

‘Mary, how are you?’

She had to come up, and her smile flashed from a quickening red, a stormy shyness. She was living flesh; she was a flame; soft flesh and red blood. The Colonel did not care for women much older. His face was welcoming, courteous, the flesh melting graciously . . . only the eyes could not help from staring a little and exposing a thin light.

‘Very well, thank you,’ Mary acknowledged.

‘Been gathering eggs?’

‘One or two.’ Her head was up to answer any remark, yet equally ready to retire. Light-coloured stockings, tweed skirt, and knitted jumper showing the swaying curves of a figure a little above middle height. Dusky hair and restless eyes under sweeping lashes. An ebb and flow of colour and light. Alive so disturbingly, against that background of hen-house, byre, and peeping dung-heap. The Colonel knew an internal disturbance. He mentioned the concert, the only thing he could think of. He paid her a compliment with a gallant air. He didn’t much care for concerts as a rule, but now—they would have to turn up, eh Colin? . . . But there was no way of keeping her there indefinitely; in fact, when he had said his few words about the concert he brusquely apostrophised the weather, shrugged, lifted his hat, smiled entrancingly again, and left them.

He was disturbed, quite deliciously, provocatively disturbed, on the way down.

Colin watched him for a little, then went into the kitchen, where Mary was busy banking up the fire with peat. Neither spoke. Colin turned and went into the parlour. Mary heard him pause. He would be staring at the empty glasses. His footsteps crossed the floor. She caught the click of the drone pipes; heard them being laid away again. Colin left the parlour and went out at the front door. Going to the window, Mary saw him drift over towards the byre and disappear from view. Down the glen the body of the Colonel stumped steadily on . . . drew to a halt . . . began flailing something with his walking-stick.

For the Colonel had reached the point where delightful provocation had increased to an uncomfortable warmth. Such sultry weather. There was the background of a hot East. There were memories of colour, of the close smell of human flesh. Not always unpleasant—that smell! He swung his walking stick, he paused, he wiped his forehead. A man was a man out there—harem an’ all! He gripped his stick convulsively. A tall thistle was growing at the roadside. He stopped and with one swipe unthinkingly beheaded it. . . . As his imagination grew active, he slew the thistle, branch by branch, to the ground. A certain spluttering humour came to his face as he went on. Colin’s wench kept in front of him. Tugging at a trousers-leg, he eased the grip of his clothing about his body.

And that night the Colonel was in a splendid humour and gallant in a quiet way to Clare. When at last she bade him good-night, he remained in the lounge to finish his cigar, given over to vague but pleasant reflections. A feeling of well-being pervaded him, soothed and comforted his body to a certain reserve. The hotel grouped about him like his castle and in the silence he gazed through the window towards the dim dusk of the distant hillside. For a time there dwelt an odd reflectiveness in his eyes, lit by a glint of challenge. This was his home. There was no power to interdict him here. After all, he had more outlet here than many of those—those who pitied him—had on their polite lawns! It was a seductive mood. The sarcasm, faint as an evening haze, touched his mind to reverie, to a scarce discernible smile. He drew closer together; presently pulled his waistcoat down, blew specks off it, and got to his feet.

He seemed reluctant to leave the lounge, even if the dining-room would contain no more than lawyer Stansfield (for from ten p.m. it was tacitly understood to be their private den, a reminder of the old days when it carried the whole honour of ‘public rooms’). Lighting a fresh cigar, he gazed for a moment through the smoke at Colin McKinnon’s cottage so secretly remote on the edge of its corrie, then with a veiled air turned towards Stansfield’s company. Outside his fishing—and his Times, yes!—Stansfield had no interests; no general sense of life, of culture. But at least he knew how to behave. Colonel Hicks appreciated the middle-class professional status. It had its limitations. It could never, so to speak, flower. But it was entrenched solidly and looked after the estates where the flowers grew! Naturally there were moments when Stansfield’s quiet demeanour and efficiency irritated him. At moments, too, he had surprised a slight gleam of presumption in an attitude of studied indifference; and more than once a silent withdrawal into hostile criticism. All understandable manifestations. Stansfield was basically a decent fellow.

In this magnanimous mood the Colonel opened the door and, entering, was taken aback to find his own chair occupied by a stranger. The man was dressed in a blue lounge suit, had his dusty boots stretched out in front of him, his jacket loosely open disclosing a whole battery of fountain-pen tops and pencil tops in the left upper waistcoat pocket. His rather pale broad face was bent abstractedly on Stansfield who was making up a fishing cast. The face lifted to the Colonel and steadied, until the eyes came alive and the face drooped without any haste. The Colonel continued to regard the full body in the creased blue serge, then went to the sideboard.

That the stranger was neither a fisher nor a commercial traveller was clear from the first glance. Before the Colonel had poured out his drink he decided that this must be the Trade Union fellow come up about the raid in Ardbeg, where a few crofters had banded together and broken up for cultivation land belonging to the sheep-farmer. The sheep-farmer, not disposed to resign any of his rights, had naturally appealed for legal protection. Very naturally, the Colonel thought. Indeed the sheep-farmer’s action was understood by all. Yet a certain vague popular sympathy went out to the crofters who complained that they could not get sufficient soil on which to grow what at the best would but provide the bare essentials of existence. There was, however, a consideration that was vaguer even than the sympathy and yet took the shape of a claim to the land on the grounds that forefathers had cultivated it from time immemorial, or certainly from a time when under the tribal system the land had been held in common. In short, almost a claim that in the dark processes of history the land had been filched from them. And here, like a scavenging crow, prepared to caw still vaguer stuff, was a representative of Trade Unionism.

The Colonel looked around for a chair, for there were but two with arms, and at last drew up a stiff-backed one which poised him ridiculously between Stansfield and the intruder. His face reflected the firmness of his mind and he opened the newspaper which had been folded for him on the sideboard.

Stansfield, with flybooks and scissors, continued his delicate task of cast-making. The stranger took out a notebook, and the Colonel, as he arranged his paper, saw him writing in it. The sight annoyed him, and he turned to Stansfield.

Stansfield had had fair luck, ‘but the trout on Ardbeg have gone down in weight.’

‘Oh! Have they?’

‘Yes. That damming up of the loch—I was always a bit doubtful about it.’ Then he added, ‘Of course, it was a good experiment.’

The final note, as if excusing someone, was not lost on Colonel Hicks, who had driven McAlpine to the experiment. ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said.

‘In damming up the outlet the way they did they may have deepened the loch, but they also deepened the gravelly spawning beds at the intake. That’s often fatal.’

‘I see. But if they couldn’t spawn how did you get a fair basket?’

‘That looks difficult,’ replied Stansfield with an inner humour on his weathered face.

‘Quite,’ agreed Colonel Hicks.

‘Anyhow,’ said Stansfield, forced to it, ‘where spawning grounds have been affected for the worse, where the normal feeding depths and so on have been altered, and where the stock is definitely poorer it is natural to assume that—well—that the higher water level has something to do with the weight.’

‘Usual court evidence for hanging a man!’

‘It’s pretty good evidence,’ said Stansfield, a shade firmly.

‘I have heard better excuses for a doubtful basket. Hardly does your legal mind credit!’ The Colonel chuckled, his eyes now alight.

Stansfield, smiling, concentrated on tying a fly.

‘I’m afraid,’ concluded the Colonel, ‘I shall have to try it myself.’

‘Do,’ said Stansfield. ‘I should like to have your opinion then.’

The Colonel looked at him. ‘I shall—to-morrow.’ And added, ‘It might also let me see how the Ardbeg gentry are getting on. Any news?’

‘No.’ Raising his head, Stansfield unthinkingly glanced across at the stranger. The Colonel regarded him also. He had put his notebook in his pocket and though clearly conscious of their interest showed no embarrassment. Indeed for a moment he met the Colonel’s eyes levelly—then removed his own, his face perceptibly hardening. The Colonel’s annoyance deepened into a desire to draw him, to bait him.

‘I heard to-day,’ he remarked casually, ‘that Trade Unionism is sending a fellow to egg the miserable devils on.’

‘Oh,’ said Stansfield.

‘Yes,’ nodded the Colonel. ‘I suppose he’ll stuff some more ideas into their heads—for which they’ll have to pay. It shouldn’t be allowed.’

‘This is a free country,’ Stansfield replied dryly.

‘Quite. You can dam as much as you like—and spawn. But when they begin to lose weight—to run to seed—’ As he pregnantly paused, his eyes turned on the stranger, who finished the sentence, ‘You could always let the loch revert to its original condition.’

The Colonel continued to look at him. But the stranger was not cowed. The pallor of his reserve held its own sarcasm as though he knew quite well how he had been spoken at.

‘What do you mean?’ asked the Colonel.

‘That there may be something even in Trade Unionism, not to mention the lives of miserable crofters.’ His tone was quite cool and edged with the sarcasm.

‘So you’re the Trade Union representative?’ said the Colonel slowly, taking complete stock of him. ‘I see.’ Then he asked, ‘Have you ever been a crofter?’

‘That doesn’t arise.’

‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ The Colonel raised heavy eyebrows. ‘You are up here to egg on these fellows in a matter you know nothing about.’

‘On the contrary, I know a lot about it,’ replied Mr. James Duffy. ‘Possibly more than you.’

‘Seeing you don’t know what I know, I consider that a damned impertinence.’

‘It’s been my business to study small holdings for years. That’s all.’

To keep hold on himself, the Colonel turned on his chair and caught up his glass. This sort of fellow maddened him at a stroke. Having drunk, he carefully laid his glass aside, saying:

‘Being paid to study small holdings, you naturally believe in them.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t what?’

‘I don’t believe in them—not as an economic proposition.’

The Colonel looked squarely at him. Mr. Duffy remained silent. This silence irritated the Colonel acutely.

‘But if you don’t believe in them, what the deuce are you up here about?’ Then his voice narrowed: ‘Or do I understand that you are advising them to clear off the land they’ve stolen?’

‘That’s another matter,’ observed Mr. Duffy.

The Colonel’s lips closed slowly and tightly, his face darkening as it lowered.

‘By gad,’ he burst out, ‘that’s pretty cool! Eh, Stansfield? He doesn’t believe in small holdings as an economic proposition, but he comes up here to incite these ignorant crofters into smashing your law in order to become small holders!

Stansfield snipped a piece of gut with a constrained smile.

The Colonel chuckled richly.

Mr. Duffy’s face grew paler. ‘Seeing you don’t know what I have come up here for,’ he said, ‘I consider your remarks a damned impertinence.’ He spoke without any heat and, taking out his watch, got to his feet.

‘You what?’ spluttered Colonel Hicks, also rising.

‘Oh nothing,’ said Mr. Duffy, turning away.

‘But yes, something!’ rapped the Colonel. ‘You come up here with your damned sewer poison and try to stuff it into the heads of—of—’ His voice was getting out of control. His flesh shook.

‘Sewer poison nothing! You’re more like a sewer yourself.’ Mr. Duffy’s pallor at last betrayed his intense excitement and his final words caught a broad Clydeside accent. Yet he turned away with a tolerable air of indifference and left the Colonel stationary and mute. When the door closed the Colonel followed for a stumbling step or two on stumbling oaths. Stansfield lifted a hidden look of acute interest wherein his humour glittered; then his head drooped as the Colonel came back.

The sight of the non-committal Stansfield steadied the Colonel’s incoherence. He glared at him.

‘Doesn’t believe in small holdings. But when it comes to the Ardbeg small holdings he believes in them—because it gives him a chance to break the law. To break your law, Stansfield; your precious law!’

‘Yes,’ said Stansfield.

‘And what’s your law doing about it?’

‘It’ll get the crofters prison, I expect.’

‘And what about this fellow?’

‘Oh, he’ll be all right.’

The Colonel’s hand shook as it groped for his glass. But Stansfield murmured about having something to see to before turning in and walked out, leaving Colonel Hicks to the silent room.

The Colonel helped himself to another drink; lit a fresh cigar; felt the room half choking him. In a murderous mood he walked through the empty lounge, heard voices in the drawing-room. A Sandersonian ‘Hee! hee!’ drew a smothered, ‘Oh, shut up, you bitch!’ He went out on to the gravel, his cigar glowing, and met the night.

The air was cool and invigorating. Intensely he regretted having let Duffy escape. He should have twisted the fellow’s filthy guts. He looked about him ardently. The pebbles pressed up through the thin soles of his slippers with an exasperating hurt. The figure of a woman noiselessly passed him going towards the back premises. It was undoubtedly the kitchen-maid Jean. Where the devil had she been? . . . It was a place this, by God! He expelled great gusts of breath and smoke. Footsteps were approaching. And voices. Could he be mistaken? . . . The voice of Clare? Undoubtedly the voice of Clare—here beside him—with another shape—a man’s.

‘Is that you, uncle?’

‘Yes,’ affirmed Colonel Hicks.

Clare laughed.

‘And you thought I was in bed!’

But the Colonel had made out the person of her companion. It was Ewan Macleod. And he could find no more wind for any sort of words whatsoever.

‘But I couldn’t resist it, for far away some one was playing such music,’ continued Clare, ‘I thought the night was bewitched!’

The Colonel cleared his throat heavily, and at that moment, and unobtrusively, Ewan Macleod muttered ‘Good-night,’ and walked off into the darkness, Clare’s voice calling after him, ‘Thank you so much, Ewan.’

‘Somehow you do contrive to make me feel like a naughty girl who has stolen out after hours,’ said Clare. Her voice trembled in its merriment.

‘Hm,’ said Colonel Hicks. ‘Ha. Yes.’ His voice was thick, harsh; sounded as if he were in such a choking rage that he could hardly articulate.

‘My window looks out across there. It is such a perfect night. I heard these pipes—they had quite a different sound from the sound in daylight. Positively unreal. They did bewitch me. So down I came and out!’ Clare found herself talking rather rapidly and slightly at random. She stopped. She would presently be making palpable excuses—for being out alone—with Ewan Macleod . . . whence her dear old uncle’s rage! . . . She laughed suddenly and, as it seemed to Colonel Hicks, more than irrelevantly. Yet her humour must be met.

‘Huh!’ said Colonel Hicks. Clare’s voice rippled. She caught his arm. All this was a perfectly new experience to her. They moved back towards the hotel.

‘But—look here, m’dear. You must remember I’m your guardian—while you’re here.’

‘I remember.’

‘And your health—you must remember—you must remember your health.’ Colonel Hicks was getting his agreeable voice again.

‘Of course, my health!’ echoed Clare.

‘And going out like this at night—dangerous—not knowing your way an’ that.’

‘Yes. I rather think I lost my way when I hailed footsteps that turned out to be Ewan’s. So he was good enough to put me on the right path again.’ That should finally appease him! ‘I’m not used to the dark.’ And she smiled more inwardly than ever.

‘Hm, keep unused to it.’

Her smile came out.

‘Clever of you, uncle!’

‘Hm.’ After all, one’s company did make a difference. Streetcorner gutter like Duffy and peat-bog muck like Macleod, what could anyone expect from them but their own oozings? Yet he would forget it. Sometimes came precious near being an ass. Result of this one-eyed hole.

They entered the lounge and before sitting down the Colonel looked about him, his face fixed in an inflamed and bellicose dignity. Its warmth suggested a profound emotional stirring.

‘There’s a chap here,’ he said curtly. ‘He rather annoyed me to-night.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ His mouth closed. He crossed his legs, gripped the ends of his chair, and in the momentary silence threw a glance at Clare.

The light had been slightly turned down, and in the dim glow Clare looked radiant; all the more radiant for the hint of fragility, of an exquisite mantling of convalescence. And as this radiance now stilled in sympathetic enquiry, there came a final impression of purity. All in a moment the Colonel was glad he hadn’t opened out on the road. He was immensely relieved, as if by a fluke he had fought back for his breeding and proved it. He might have disproved it so drenchingly. The last large whisky began to warm him softly, to incline him towards radiant sympathy.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s one of those fellows—absolutely uneducated—some sort of Trade Union job. I don’t mind the men—but these fellows! . . . He’s here about those crofters—over there in Ardbeg. You know, they’ve dug up some land and been ordered off by old Innes, who has the sheep-farm there, bought it, decent fellow. Well, unless we’re going to go absolutely Bolshy, something’s got to be done about it. And I know all about them here.’ He turned to his elbow for a glass which wasn’t there.

‘Yes, you must,’ murmured Clare.

‘Into the dining-room, which old Stansfield and myself, you know, for years . . . in he comes and squats down in my chair and stretches his feet out. Well, damme, you expect a man at least to know how to behave. But not only that—he butts into our talk. And when I outargue him, he gets to his feet and is damned rude. Unmentionable.’ His lips closed tightly for a moment. ‘I’m afraid I was a bit ruffled—just when I met you.’

‘You hid it well,’ said Clare, with a friendly smile. ‘I didn’t think you were troubled so far out of the world with—that sort of thing. I think I know the type. It wants to be as good as anyone else. One needn’t really be annoyed. Though at the moment —I know—it’s difficult.’

‘Hm. Very difficult. And, what’s more, take an old experienced man’s word for it, m’dear, what they need is not pity.’ Brows gathered ruthlessly. As an old soldier he had knowledge and memories. He might be in a position to be pitied, but damnation. . . . He suddenly got up. He was under the influence of his feelings. He took a turn or two about the lounge. With his buttoned, close-fitting, dark jacket, his fingers in his pockets and thumbs out, he looked soldierly, carried a certain reminiscent dignity. . . .

But to Clare his appearance was quite suddenly extraordinarily pathetic. Something rose to her throat. The soldierly bearing, the vertical commanding eyebrow furrows, the restrained facial red . . . futile, lost. Something in the essence of him gone wrong. Landed here, stranded, upset by mere professional agitators, tortured in his dignity by the most trivial pinpricks, his half-corrupted flesh wallowing like a stranded mammal stung by any chance gnat. . . .

Her charity felt immense, suffused her with a melting glow. Life, the night outside, that strange mesmeric night of dark hidden earth and haunting sea, set deep in the heart of which something within her opened like a secret rose . . . life was leaving him, throwing him aside, half-corrupted. . . .

When he could bring himself to throw her a glance, he surprised the upwelling of her sympathy, her commiseration, warm, softly engulfing. Her tender eyes fell away to her finger-tips. She heard his chair creak as he sat down again. There was silence for several seconds. He turned once more to the drink which wasn’t there; cleared his throat. ‘Though I’m no use any more for quelling anything —much less the Bolshies!’ His voice was bravely ironic. It chuckled. ‘There’s nothing for me to do but hang out here, among these cattle—until I pop off.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, Uncle Jack.’

Her low voice moved him like a caress.

‘Life, m’dear. Race is run. I know.’ His throat swelled in the surge of his feelings; he felt himself uprising, breasting warm salt seas.

Divination moved in Clare. The drawing-room was too near. He mustn’t let himself go—not too far. Her expression did not alter, but her voice rose a tone, gathered understanding cheerfulness.

‘No, no.’ She smiled gently. ‘You mustn’t say—’ But a sudden movement of feet and laughing voices in the drawing-room made her pause. Presently the Sanderson girls and the English family appeared. A last breath of fresh air was voted sound. While they were trooping to the front door, Colonel Hicks and Clare arose.

‘Good-night, my dear,’ said Colonel Hicks.

‘Good-night, uncle.’

As she moved to the stairs he turned towards the dining-room, and found he had it to himself. He closed the door and walked with congested dignity to his bottle. He poured himself a stiff one; took a pull at it; sat down and let his eyes sink into the fireplace. Gradually something welled and gleamed in his eyes. He got to his feet, his face working convulsively. He finished his drink. He swore senselessly. He dashed a hand across his eyes. Rage mounted in him. He tugged the bell-pull so that it slapped back into position with the sound of a pistol shot. A maid appeared.

‘Tell your master I want to see him!’

While in her bedroom Clare stood before her mirror, her face pale and quite flawless. The eyes looked large and dreamily sombre—as though they were dark brown instead of summer blue. But she did not smile, wishing for a moment more to hold her flawlessness serene. She held it quite a few seconds; looked into the sombre eyes until the surrounding face went out of focus, and through its blurred pallor the eyes stared back. Staring eyes, holding her; disembodied eyes, penetrating. . . . She blinked her eyes into her pale face, looked at it critically, detachedly; then smiled slowly to it, slowly turning away, watching the face as it turned.

She went and sat on her bed, hands falling limply to her lap. What next? This curious state of restlessness, of indecision—why? Slowly her gaze became fixed on nothing, and she sat as though lost in profoundest reverie for minutes. Then her head perceptibly uptilted, her lips came apart, and she listened. Nothing. What was she listening for? Holding her breath at it too. . . . Nothing. There had not been even reverie. But in a vague fathoming way, how restful . . . and how deliciously troubled by restlessness, satisfaction dying out in a sigh, sighing far and faint and sad. . . . Delicious ecstasy of the night. Why? She listened. Nothing.

She began slowly to undress. She saw herself, in another mood, laughing at herself. But not in this enchanted mood now. Her uncle’s face unable to speak—and Ewan’s melting into the dark. An unreal picture of a meeting in a dark light. Ewan’s face dying into the darkness as into its natural element; her uncle’s coming into the lamplight, fleshy, disturbed, the blood congested as though anger gorged the veins. The face of Ewan, her ghillie, leaving nothing but darkness. The darkness of peat and loch water. The warm, soft loch water. She felt it on her hands. The fingers stirred, caressing one another.