Red Rowan Berry by Frances Murray

Author:Frances Murray [Murray, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Frances Murray
Published: 2013-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE ELLIS-MARTINS described their Torridon retreat as 'our little shooting-box in the North'. Lady Ellis-Martin had inherited the estate from her grandfather, a thousand acres of rocky shore and pathless heather moor, and a ruined tower above a bay. Her husband, who had amassed a fortune based on the supply of cheap boots to the armies of other nations, built a new castle beside the ruin with a wealth of towers and turrets, battlements and shot-windows which the builder of the original fortalice would have been puzzled to defend. He also stocked the heather moor with grouse and gamekeepers, very obligingly providing the crofters he' was forced to dispossess in the process with their fares to Canada in an elderly sailing craft chartered for the purpose. The new castle could accommodate more than twenty guests, whose needs were met by a host of servants drawn from the little town of Oban thirty miles away. To reach this fastness it was necessary to take the, train to Oban and there, in' good weather, the Ellis-Martins' steam launch would be waiting at the pier to take visitors and their luggage round the point and up the tiny Loch of the Rowans to the castle bay. In bad weather a light car drawn by a plodding garron would jolt the visitor over thirty miles of moorland track. For those hardy enough there was a steep path over the hill to the head of the loch, five miles of sheep- track and from there either a long row down the loch or a tramp along the rocky shore.

Janet and her husband arrived at the castle by sea on a golden evening. The tide was making and there was no wind so that the Princess Deirdre slipped almost silently up the loch, a feather of smoke from her funnel, her gay red and white awning reflected in the silken water and a wake spreading behind her like a peacock's tail. She nudged gently along the little stone jetty where two gillies were waiting to take the baggage up to the castle in a handbarrow. Beyond the boathouse, where half a dozen rowing boats lay waiting for those who preferred fishing to shooting, a governess-cart drawn by a garron, another kilted gillie at its head, was ready to take the passengers. Janet cramped from half a day in the train and the boat looked at the broad grassy track and said she would prefer to walk the half mile or so to the imposing stone terrace on which the parasols and self-conscious tweeds of earlier arrivals could be seen. Staindrop signified that he would walk with her by a long-suffering shrug and handed their two fellow-travellers up into the cart.

These were a widow, one Mrs Baberton, and her daughter who were invited to a number of such parties on account of their skill at whist. In view of the unreliability of the weather it was advisable to have some form of indoor amusement: moreover, Miss

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