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Page 123
XVI. The House by the Loch
There was a snapping fire in the chimney. I was cold through and
I was glad to stand close beside it on the stone hearth. My
greatcoat had kept out the rain, but it had not kept out the
chill of the West Highland night. I shivered before the fire, my
hands held out to the flame.
It was a long, low room. There was an ancient guncase on one
side, but the racks were empty except for a service pistol
hanging by its trigger-guard from the hook. There were some
shelves of books on the other side. But the conspicuous thing in
the room was an image of Buddha in a glass box on the
mantelpiece.
It was about four inches high, cast in silver and, I thought, of
immense age.
I had to wait for my uncle to come in. But I had enough to think
about. Every event connected with this visit seemed to touch on
some mystery. There was his strange letter to me in reply to my
note that I was in England and coming up to Scotland. Surely no
man ever wrote a queerer letter to a nephew coming on a visit to
him.
It dwelt on the length of the journey and the remoteness of the
place. I was to be discouraged in every sentence. I was to
carry his affectionate regards to the family in America and say
that he was in health.
It stood out plainly that I was not wanted.
This was strange in itself, but it was not the strangest thing
about this letter. The strangest thing was a word written in a
shaky cramped hand on the back of the sheet: the letters huddled
together: "Come!"
I would have believed my uncle justified in his note. It was a
long journey. I had great difficulty to find anyone to take me
out from the railway station. There were idle men enough, but
they shook their heads when I named the house. Finally, for a
double wage, I got an old gillie with a cart to bring me as far
on the way as the highroad ran. But he would not turn into the
unkept road that led over the moor to the house. I could neither
bribe nor persuade him. There was no alternative but to set out
through the mist with my bag on my shoulder.
Night was coming on. The moor was a vast wilderness of gorse.
The house loomed at the foot of it and beyond the loch that made
a sort of estuary for the open sea. Nor was this the only thing.
I got the impression as I tramped along that I was not alone on
the moor. I don't know out of what evidences the impression was
built up. I felt that someone was in the gorse beyond the road.
The house was closed up like a sleeping eye when I got before it.
It was a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines
half torn away by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally
an aged man-servant holding a candle high above his head let me
in.
This was the manner of my coming to Saint Conan's Landing.
I had some supper of cold meat brought in by this aged servant.
He was a shrunken derelict of a human figure. He was disturbed
at my arrival and ill at ease. But I thought there was relief
and welcome in his expression. The master would be in directly;
he would light a fire in the drawing-room and prepare a
bedchamber for me.
One would hardly find outside of England such faithful creatures
clinging to the fortunes of descending men. He was at the end of
life and in some fearful perplexity, but one felt there was
something stanch and sound in him.
I had no doubt that there, under my eye, was the hand that had
added the cramped word to my uncle's letter.
I stood now before the fire in the long, low room. The flames
and a tall candle at either end of the mantelpiece lit it up. I
was looking at the Buddha in the glass box. I could not imagine
a thing more out of note. Surely of all corners of the world
this wild moor of the West Highlands was the least suited to an
Oriental cult. The elements seemed under no control of Nature.
The land was windswept, and the sea came crying into the loch.
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