The Mystery of the Green Ray

“He’s got a beautiful Wolseley launch,” said Myra jealously, “a perfect beauty. He calls her the Baltimore II. She was lying alongside the Hermione at Mallaig when we left. Oh! look up the loch, Ron! Isn’t it a wonderful view?”

And so the magnificent purple-gray summit of Sgor na Ciche, at the head of Loch Nevis, claimed our attention – (that and other matters of a personal nature) – and J. G. Hilderman went completely from our minds. Myra was a real Highlander of the West. She lived for its mountains and lochs, its rivers and burns, its magnificent coast and its fascinating animal life. She knew every little creek and inlet, every rock and shallow, every reef and current from Fort William to the Gair Loch. I have even heard it said that when she was twelve she could draw an accurate outline of Benbecula and North Uist, a feat that would be a great deal beyond the vast majority of grown-ups living on those islands themselves. As we turned to cross the head of Loch Hourn, Myra pointed out Glasnabinnie, nestling like a lump of grey lichen at the foot of the Croulin Burn. Anchored off the point was a small steam yacht, either a converted drifter or built on drifter lines.

“Our friend has visitors,” said Myra, “and he’s not there to receive them. How very rude! That yacht is often there. She only makes about eight knots as a rule, although she gives you the impression she could do more. You see, she’s been built for strength and comfort more than for looks. She calls at Glasnabinnie in the afternoons sometimes, and is there after dark, and sails off before six.” (Myra was always out of doors before six in the morning, whatever the weather.) “From which I gather,” she continued, “that the owner lives some distance away and sleeps on board. She can’t be continuously cruising, or she would make a longer stay sometimes.”

“You seem to know the ways of yacht-owners, dear,” I said. “Hullo! what is that hut on the cliff above the falls? That’s new, surely.”

“Oh! that beastly thing,” said Myra in disgust. “That’s his, too. A smoking-room and study, I believe. He had it built there because he has an uninterrupted view that sweeps the sea.”

“Why ‘beastly thing’?” I asked. “It’s too far away to worry you, though it isn’t exactly pretty, and I know you hate to see anything in the shape of a new building going up.”

“Oh! it annoys me,” she answered airily, “and somehow it gets on daddy’s nerves. You see, it has a funny sort of window which goes all round the top of the hut. This is evidently divided into several small windows, because they swing about in the wind, and when the sun shines on them they catch the eye even at our distance. And, as I say, they get on daddy’s nerves, which have not been too good the last week or two.”

“Never mind,” I consoled her; “he’ll be all right when his friends come up for the Twelfth. I think the doctors are wrong to say that he should never have a lot of people hanging round him, because there can surely be no harm in letting him see a few friends. I certainly think he’s right to make an exception for the grouse.”

“Grouse!” sniffed Myra. “They come for the Twelfth because they like to be seen travelling north on the eleventh! And I have to entertain them. And some of the ones who come for the first time tell me they suppose I know all the pretty walks round about! And in any case,” she finished, in high indignation, “can you imagine me entertaining anybody?”

“Yes, my dear, I can,” I replied; and the “argument” kept us busy till we reached Invermalluch. The old General came down to the landing-stage to meet us, and was much more honestly pleased to see me than I had ever known him before.

“Ah! Ronald, my boy!” he exclaimed heartily. “’Pon my soul, I’m glad to see you. It’s true, I suppose? You’ve heard the news?”

The question amused me, because it was so typical of the old fellow. Here had I come from London, where the Cabinet was sitting night and day, to a spot miles from the railway terminus, to be asked if I had heard the news!

“You mean the war, of course?” I replied.

“Yes; it’s come, my boy, at last. Come to find me on the shelf! Ah, well! It had to come sooner or later, and now we’re not ready. Ah, well, we must all do what we can. Begad, I’m glad to see you, my boy, thundering glad. It’s a bit lonely here sometimes for the little woman, you know; but she never complains.” (In point of fact, she even contrived to laugh, and take her father’s arm affectionately in her’s.) “And besides, there are many things I want to have a talk with you about, Ronald – many things. By the way, had lunch?”

“We lunched at Mallaig, thank you, sir,” I explained.

“Well, well, Myra will see you get all you want – won’t you, girlie?” he said.

“I say, Ronnie,” Myra asked, as we reached the house, “are you very tired after your journey, or shall we have a cup of tea and then take our rods for an hour or so?”

I stoutly declared I was not the least tired – as who could have been in the circumstances? – and I should enjoy an hour’s fishing with Myra immensely. So I ran upstairs and had a bath, and changed, and came down to find the General waiting for me. Myra had disappeared into the kitchen regions to give first-aid to a bare-legged crofter laddie who had cut his foot on a broken bottle.

“Well, my boy,” said the old man, “you’ve come to tell us something. What is it?”

“Oh!” I replied, as lightly as I could, “it is simply that we are in for a row with Germany, and I’ve got a part in the play, so to speak. I’m enlisting.”

“Good boy,” he chuckled, “good boy! Applying for a commission, I suppose – man of your class and education, and all that – eh?”

“Oh, heavens, no!” I laughed. “I shall just walk on with the crowd, to continue the simile.”

“Glad to hear it, my boy – I am, indeed. ’Pon my soul, you’re a good lad, you know – quite a good lad. Your father would have been proud of you. He was a splendid fellow – a thundering splendid fellow. We always used to say, ‘You can always trust Ewart to do the straight, clean thing; he’s a gentleman.’ I hope your comrades will say the same of you, my boy.”

“By the way, sir,” I added, “I also intended to tell you that in the circumstances I – I – Well, I mean to say that I shan’t – shan’t expect Myra to consider herself under – under any obligations to me.”

However difficult it was for me to say it, I had been quite certain that the old General would think it was the right thing to say, and would be genuinely grateful to me for saying it off my own bat without any prompting from him. So I was quite unprepared for the outburst that followed.

“You silly young fellow!” he cried. “’Pon my soul, you are a silly young chap, you know. D’you mean to tell me you came here intending to tell my little girl to forget all about you just when you are going off to fight for your country, and may never come back? You mean to run away and leave her alone with an old crock of a father? You know, Ewart, you – you make me angry at times.”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” I apologised, though I had no recollection of having made him angry before.

“Oh! I know,” he said, in a calmer tone. “Felt it was your duty, and all that – eh? I know. But, you see, it’s not your duty at all. No. Now, there are one or two things I want to tell you that you don’t know, and I’ll tell you one of ’em now and the rest later. The first thing – in absolute confidence, of course – is that – ”

But at this point Myra walked in, and the General broke off into an incoherent mutter. He was a poor diplomatist.

“Ah! secrets? Naughty!” she exclaimed laughingly. “Are you ready, Ronnie?”

“He’s quite ready, my dear,” said the old man graciously. “I’ve said all I want to say to him for the time being. Run along with girlie, Ewart. You don’t want to mess about with an old crock.”

“Daddy,” said Myra reproachfully, “you’re not to call yourself names.”

“All right, then; I won’t,” he laughed. “You young people will excuse me, I’m sure. I should like to join you; but I have a lot of letters to write, and I daresay you’d rather be by yourselves. Eh? – you young dog!”

It was a polite fiction between father and daughter that when the old fellow felt too unwell to join her or his guests he “had a lot of letters to write.” And occasionally, when he was in the mood to overtax his strength, she would never refer to it directly, but often she would remark, “You know you’ll miss the post, daddy.” And they both understood. So we set out by ourselves, and I naturally preferred to be alone with Myra, much as I liked her father. We went out on to the verandah, and while I unpacked my kit Myra rewound her line, which had been drying on the pegs overnight.

“Are you content with small mercies, Ron?” she asked, “or do you agree that it is better to try for a salmon than catch a trout?”

“It certainly isn’t better to-day, anyway,” I answered. “I want to be near you, darling. I don’t want the distance of the pools between us. We might walk up to the Dead Man’s Pool, and then fish up stream; and later fish the loch from the boat. That would bring us back in nice time for dinner.”

“Oh! splendid!” she cried; and we fished out our fly-books. Her’s was a big book of tattered pig-skin, which reclined at the bottom of the capacious “poacher’s pocket” in her jacket. The fly-book was an old favourite – she wouldn’t have parted with it for worlds. Having followed her advice, and changed the Orange I had tied for the “bob” to a Peacock Zulu, which I borrowed from her, we set out.

“Just above the Dead Man’s Pool you get a beautiful view of Hilderman’s hideous hut,” Myra declared as we walked along. I may explain here that “Dead Man’s Pool” is an English translation of the Gaelic name, which I dare not inflict on the reader.

“See?” she cried, as we climbed the rock looking down on the gorgeous salmon pool, with its cool, inviting depths and its subtle promise of sport. “Oh! Ronnie, isn’t it wonderful?” she cried. “Almost every day of my life I have admired this view, and I love it more and more every time I see it. I sometimes think I’d rather give up my life than the simple power to gaze at the mountains and the sea.”

“Why, look!” I exclaimed. “Is that the window you meant?”

“Yes,” Myra replied, with an air of annoyance, “that’s it. You can see that light when the sun shines on it, which is nearly all day, and it keeps on reminding us that we have a neighbour, although the loch is between us. Besides, for some extraordinary reason it gets on father’s nerves. Poor old daddy!”

It may seem strange to the reader that anyone should take notice of the sun’s reflection on a window two and a quarter miles away; but it must be remembered that all her life Myra had been accustomed to the undisputed possession of an unbroken view.

“Anyhow,” she added, as she turned away, “we came here to fish. One of us must cross the stream here and fish that side. We can’t cross higher up, there’s too much water, and there’s no point in getting wet. I’ll go, and you fish this side; and when we reach the loch we’ll get into the boat. See, Sholto’s across already.”

And she tripped lightly from boulder to boulder across the top of the fall which steams into the Dead Man’s Pool, while I stood and admired her agile sureness of foot as one admires the graceful movements of a beautiful young roe. Sholto was pawing about in a tiny backwater, and trying to swallow the bubbles he made, until he saw his beloved mistress was intent on the serious business of fishing, and then he climbed lazily to the top of a rock, where he could keep a watchful eye on her, and sprawled himself out in the sun. I have fished better water than the Malluch river, certainly, and killed bigger fish in other lochs than the beautiful mountain tarn above Invermalluch Lodge; but I have never had a more enjoyable day’s sport than the least satisfying of my many days there.

There was a delightful informality about the sport at the Lodge. One fished in all weathers because one wanted to fish, and varied one’s methods and destination according to the day. There was no sign of that hideous custom of doing the thing “properly” that the members of a stockbroker’s house-party seem to enjoy – no drawing lots for reaches or pools overnight, no roping-in a gillie to add to the chance of sending a basket “south.” When there was a superfluity of fish the crofters and tenants were supplied first, and then anything that was left over was sent to friends in London and elsewhere. At the end of the day’s sport we went home happy and pleased with ourselves, not in the least depressed if we had drawn a blank, to jolly and delightful meals, without any formality at all. And if we were wet, there was a great drying-room off the kitchen premises where our clothes were dried by a housemaid who really understood the business. As for our tackle, we dried our own lines and pegged them under the verandah, and rewound them again in the morning, made up our own casts, and generally did everything for ourselves without a retinue of attendants. And thereby we enjoyed ourselves hugely.

Angus and Sandy, the two handy-men of the place, would carry the lunch-basket or pull the boats on the loch or stand by with the gaff or net – and what experts they are! – but the rest we did for ourselves. By the time I had got a pipe on and wetted my line, Myra was some fifty yards or so up stream making for a spot where she suspected something. She has the unerring instinct of the inveterate poacher! I cast idly once or twice, content to revel in the delight of holding a rod in my hand once more, intoxicated with the air and the scenery and the sunshine (What a good thing the fish in the west “like it bright!”), and after a few minutes a sudden jerk on my line brought me back to earth. I missed him, but he thrilled me to the serious business of the thing, and I fished on, intent on every cast.

I suppose I must have fished for about twenty minutes, but of that I have never been able to say definitely. It may possibly have been more. I only know that as I was picking my way over some boulders to enable me to cast more accurately for a big one I had risen, I heard Myra give a sharp, short cry. I turned anxiously and called to her.

I could not distinguish her at first among the great gray rocks in the river. Surely she could not have fallen in. Even had she done so, I hardly think she would have called out. She was extraordinarily sure on her feet, and, in any case, she was an expert swimmer. What could it be? Immediately following her cry came Sholto’s deep bay, and then I saw her. She was standing on a tall, white, lozenge-shaped rock, that looked almost as if it had been carefully shaped in concrete. She was kneeling, and her arm was across her face. With a cry I dashed into the river, and floundered across, sometimes almost up to my neck, and ran stumbling to her in a blind agony of fear. Even as I ran her rod was carried past me, and disappeared over the fall below.

“Myra, my darling,” I cried as I reached her, and took her in my arms, “what is it, dearest? For God’s sake tell me – what is it?”

“Oh, Ronnie, dear,” she said, “I don’t know, darling. I don’t understand.” Her voice broke as she lifted her beautiful face to me. I looked into those wonderful eyes, and they gazed back at me with a dull, meaningless stare. She stretched out her arm to grasp my hand, and her own hand clutched aimlessly on my collar.