From London Far (12 page)

‘Minnie Martin’s things?’ Meredith appeared scarcely relieved. ‘I really greatly fear–’

But Jean was gone. And Meredith crossed to the window and peered thoughtfully across the square. It occurred to him to count the plane trees; he had never done so before; he felt it unlikely that he would have the chance again. Then his glance strayed over familiar objects: a shelter, a ruined house, a great tank of water filmed with rust and oil. He turned at a sound behind him and found that it was Jean who had re-entered the room. Obscurely perplexed, he studied her as she stood fully equipped for travel.
‘Minnie’s
clothes?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

He shook his head. ‘I always understood that clothes, although they may be very simple, must be
good
. To give a certain effect, that is to say. And I am sure that Minnie, although an excellent child–’

‘You have been misinformed.’ Jean produced the two inches of mirror once more. ‘It’s not the quality. It’s the way one puts them on.’

‘Is that so?’ Meredith was interested and impressed. ‘I am afraid that I know far too little of the
mundus mulierum
.’

‘Unlike Higbed, to whom all things womanly are an open book.’

‘Dear me! I had entirely forgotten him. Have you any idea of what befell the poor man?’

Jean shook her head. ‘None whatever. We were separated quite early on. I have no more idea of what they did with him than I have – or these clerkly men had – of why he was wanted. Or requisitioned, as they liked to say.’

‘Well, well!’ said Meredith. ‘I wonder if we shall meet him in Moila?’

THE FLYING FOXES OF MOILA

The Isle of Moila lies off the west coast of Scotland at a point not remote from Loch Torridon, and is separated from the mainland by the Sound of Moila, a shallow and stormy channel, treacherously strewn with submerged rock, which at its narrowest point shows a breadth of little more than a quarter of a mile. The coast is here precipitous, the island being but an outlying spur to the central massif of Ben Carron, from which some prehistoric cataclysm has sundered it by the narrow gash of the Sound. It thus comes about that the cliffs of the mainland are higher than, and dominate, those of the Isle – so that were warfare to be supposed in these well-nigh solitary fastnesses it would appear that a light artillery could quickly subdue the few hundred acres to which Moila extends and destroy whatever of human artifice had been here reared amid the solemn architecture of Nature.

But such building as Moila shows antedates by far the effective exploitation of gunpowder; and Castle Moila was for centuries second only to Tantallon in the impregnability which its situation conferred. For the westermost tip of the island is formed by a precipitous peninsula, somewhat the shape of a gaping beak or lobster’s claw, to which the only access is by a short and winding causey dizzily poised above a seething sea some hundred feet below. On this peninsula the castle is built, its massive keep facing towards the island, and its two main courts occupying each a limb or jaw of the peninsula and crowning these naturally inexpugnable ramparts with a further
vallum
of frowning and crenellated stone. It thus comes about that from the inner embrasures of the building the prospect is of a small and secluded natural anchorage nestling within the foundations of the castle far below. Beyond this the view is of sea and the dimness of distant islands, with, however, the little islet of Inchfarr scarcely more than a furlong’s length away.

The greater part of Castle Moila had been a ruin for centuries – and indeed anyone studying the beautiful series of steel-faced etchings of the building which Robert Billings included in his
Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities
just a hundred years ago would suppose that no corner of it could remain inhabitable. A habitation, however, it has always been, and its tenant the hereditary Captain holding from the Marquis of Raasay. Only at the beginning of the present century, and when Fortune possessed this dignitary of another castle altogether more eligible for residence – substantially weatherproof indeed – did this venerable disposition cease to obtain. The hereditary Captain moved out, taking all his possessions with him in three market wains and a governess cart, and Castle Moila was for a time delivered over to the gulls and the gannets.

These fowl had for centuries proliferated on Inchfarr (a fact, this, which was to be peculiarly fateful for the history we relate) and now upon the abandonment of the castle they extended the boundaries of their domain. Soon the dark and towering walls of the great ruin were everywhere white with their droppings, and gleamed like an inexplicable fantasy of snow against the long green rigs of poppy-sprinkled oats on the body of the island. And regularly once a fortnight in the tourist season there would appear from Oban a far-ranging paddle steamer, its decks supporting some hundreds of trippers, two or three favoured rams or ewes in pens, and an old man who played Hebridean music on a xylophone. This argosy would thump its way cautiously between Moila and Inchfarr, and at an appropriate moment a long wail from its siren would start myriads of seafowl from the rocks and battlements to circle and scream in the air. Whereupon the paddle steamer, its mission accomplished, would waddle round Inchfarr and head for home, while the passengers, their thirst for natural beauty slaked, would retire to a cold luncheon in the saloon. At irregular intervals, too, there would come a smaller steamer, decently propelled by a screw, and devoted to that transporting of flocks of sheep from island to island which is one of the few observable activities of the region. This steamer would tie up within the very foundations of the castle – up and through which and across the causey to the island its baaing and bleating cargo would then be discharged. For some years these were the only human activities that Castle Moila saw. Had there been anything to shoot on the island, the place might have been called a shooting-box and let to some guileless American. Had there been a stream to fish, some financier from Glasgow might have been found to sophisticate the ruins into a hydropathic or a hotel. As it was, the birds had it all their own way.

There came a time, however, when the hereditary Captain found his well-roofed mainland domicile increasingly embarrassed by the characterful behaviour of a number of elder sisters. When the finally disruptive moment arrived, two of these ladies – whose names were Miss Isabella and Miss Dorcas Macleod – flatly declined to retire to the dower house of the estate, maintaining that the great-aunt who held sway there was a witch. Whereupon the hereditary Captain bethought himself of what he held from the Marquis of Raasay, consulted with his factor on certain quantities of floor-board, wainscoting, and slate, with his grieve on a due provision of goats, pigs, and chickens, and, finally, with the Misses Isabella and Dorcas themselves on a convenient date for their early remove to the island. Then, and by way of graceful afterthought, he moved sundry Writers to the Signet, Advocates, and Solicitors to the Supreme Courts in Edinburgh to effect a transference of staff and baton. Miss Isabella Macleod had barely ceased coping with the more obtrusive impertinences of the gulls and gannets about her new abode when she was informed that the Marquis of Raasay had gained the Royal concurrence in a notable change in feudal tenure. She was herself hereditary Captain of the Castle of Moila.

To hold the office, however, it proved to be necessary that Miss Isabella should in person present the Marquis with a pair of velvet breeches yearly – and as this nobleman (with great public spirit) had agreed to govern one of his sovereign’s remoter colonies, the feudal service thus required was not merely rather indelicate, but quite impracticable as well; and the matter was finally adjusted by the lady’s despatching a substantial cheque annually to her overlord’s bankers. Her purse being already in the straitened case usual with those offshoots of the Highland aristocracy who have failed to attach themselves in some way to the prosperity of the
Sasunnach
, the charge was a considerable burden. Nor was Miss Isabella’s displeasure in any way mitigated when the Marquis from his antipodean retreat ingeniously turned himself into a Limited Company. That the descendant of an earl who fell on Flodden Field should be periodically in need of velvet breeches is in itself not probable; nevertheless, there was about the transaction a colouring of antiquity that had rendered tolerable even the compounding for it with a cheque that would have bought several complete wardrobes. But Limited Companies, while they live on cheques and indeed for them, are inconceivable in breeches, velvet or otherwise; and Miss Isabella never put her signature to this yearly quittance without following it with a Gaelic curse upon the composition of which, pacing her battlements in the long twilight of the Islands, she was accustomed to bestow considerable literary skill. But as the cheque made its way direct to Leadenhall Street and was there dealt with by a resident of Plumstead not particularly well-traded in tongues these careful exercises in a language admirably adapted for imprecation were taken to represent merely so many styles and titles which this remote Celtic lady thought proper to append to her name.

Moreover, no amount of cursing could mitigate the drastic effect upon the bank balance of the Misses Macleod. It was this that gave Mr Properjohn his chance.

Mr Properjohn, although a person of no particular nationality, might be classed as a
Sasunnach
– and it seemed very likely that he was himself a limited company as well. Moreover, he was – or had been on the occasion of his first appearance – a tourist, staying at a mainland hotel some ten miles away with an orthodox paraphernalia of brand new guns and rods (on the chance of making the acquaintance of the gentry) and golf clubs (on a calculation that he probably would not). Or so the inhabitants read him – and not the kindlier for his appearing in a kilt, something of a solecism even where kilts are worn, and very definitely so where they are not.

To be a tourist was to fall, in the estimation of the Misses Macleod and of their housekeeper, into a middling category difficult to deal with. Travellers – whom the ladies thought of vaguely as country gentlemen sequacious of Antiquities and the Picturesque, traversing the country in a chariot or a chaise – travellers were to be received at any time and shown over the castle by Mrs Cameron. Etiquette required that the Misses Macleod should be declared not in residence, and to maintain this fiction they would lurk for half an hour on end in a servant’s bedroom or a privy. Should some mischance, however, actually bring about an encounter with a Traveller it was necessary that courtesies should be interchanged, and a glass of whisky and an oatcake offered and discussed. Travellers were thus definitely of the eighteenth century.

Trippers belonged equally definitely to the twentieth. They used paddle steamers and chars-à-bancs. They moved in droves. The Misses Macleod had no doubts about Trippers. They were a menacing tide in no circumstances to be let break against the rocks of Moila.

Tourists came in between. Their aura was of Birmingham and the later Victorian age. It was known that people had been marrying their sons and even daughters to the children of Tourists for quite a long time. The advent of a Tourist was thus regularly the occasion of anxious debate. And it was in this category that Mr Properjohn was provisionally placed when Hamish Macleod rowed him across to Moila in his boat.

Mr Properjohn, as has been mentioned, was wearing a kilt – and this attracted the eye of Miss Dorcas Macleod, one of whose favourite bedside books was the
Vestiarium Scoticum
of Sobieski Stuart. It was late afternoon and Miss Dorcas had been walking on the keep, whither it was her custom to repair at this hour in order to feed a small flock of pigeons who there led a somewhat harried existence amid the ocean fowl. The season was autumnal and the mists were chill. Miss Dorcas was dressed in a balaclava helmet and British warm abandoned by her brother, the former hereditary Captain, some twenty-five years before. Her figure was thus not particularly suggestive of the Celtic Twilight; pacing the crumbling battlements, she looked rather more like Marcellus or Bernardo about to meet the Ghost in a modern-dress production of the tragedy of
Hamlet
. And when Mr Properjohn came into view approaching the causey she halted as abruptly as if about to demand that he should stand and unfold himself.

The curiosity of Miss Dorcas was scientific rather than personal, for the fact was that the tartan sported by Mr Properjohn was unknown to her. Momentarily, indeed, she took that mingling of greens crossed by a narrow yellow line to betoken the approach of a Campbell of Breadalbane; and then – the darker green taking on a bluish tinge in the level light of early evening – she conjectured that the visitor might even be a Gordon. But then there was scarlet too, and what looked uncommonly like lines of ultramarine. Miss Dorcas was puzzled and disturbed. She set down the pannikin of breadcrumbs which she had brought for the pigeons and leant precariously over the keep for better observation. Meanwhile, Mr Properjohn (whose tartan had, in fact, been invented some six months previously by a tailor within reasonable hail of Savile Row) approached the castle and walked confidently across the drawbridge. He looked as if he were about to buy the place. And, as it happened, it was approximately this that was in his mind.

It would have been customary upon such an occasion for Miss Dorcas to make her way hurriedly to the castle’s flagstaff and there lower the little standard which indicated that the hereditary Captain and herself were at home. The ladies would then have retired to their bedchambers – or to the kitchen if the day was chilly – and thus permit Mrs Cameron or the man Tammas to show the visitor round. But Miss Dorcas was so interested in the new tartan – the wearer of which, as she could now see, further sported an outsize dirk, or
skeandhu
, in his stocking – that she hurried down the long winding-stair of the keep, strode across the base-court and herself threw open the wicket in the great door of the castle. No sooner had she done this than she was overwhelmed with a sense of the temerity and impropriety of her conduct.