CHAPTER IX.
THE PICNIC AT DUNSINANE.
Ambling on together and urging their horses, but at an easy pace, they soon drew near the object of their destination—Macbeth's famous castle of Dunsinane—whither the portly old butler, Mr. Tappleton, had preceded them in a wagonette, freighted with a luxurious luncheon; and, leaving their cattle in charge of the grooms, they began the ascent of that peak of the Sidlaw Hills which has been immortalised by Shakespeare.
With her riding-skirt thrown over her left arm, Eveline acted as their guide, and it may easily be supposed that she solicited the assistance of Cameron's arm, rather than that of Sir Paget Puddicombe, who had quite enough to do in assisting himself up a path which proved to him, as he said, 'rather a breather.'
It was a winding road cut in the rock, all the other sides being steep and difficult of access, and ere long, on reaching the flat and fertile summit, which commands a magnificent view of Strathmore and Blairgowrie, they found themselves within the strong rampart and deep fosse of what has once been a great military station of oval form, two hundred and ten feet long, by one hundred and thirty broad; and there they found Allan and Ruby Logan, who had preceded them, in full possession of the highest point, whence he was directing her attention to the chief features in the scenery, including, of course, Birnam Wood, fifteen miles distant, 'The Lang Man's Grave,' a great stone, under which Macbeth is said to lie—Ruby the while clinging to his arm in the exuberance of her delight, and carrying her riding-hat in her hand, as she was quite aware that her hair alone, in its wonderful luxuriance, made her very attractive, it being an unruly mass of rich, rippling golden amber in hue, shot with a redder and brighter tint at times when the sunlight struck it.
Under the splendour of a glorious noon, while a soft breeze rippled the verdant grass, the luncheon was proceeded with; fowls were dissected, pies investigated, champagne and hock, cool from the ice-pails, uncorked; all the requisites for a merry party were there, and yet in the party itself the chief element of high spirits was wanting, unless in the instance of Ruby Logan, who began to flatter herself that she had made—or nearly so—a conquest of the Master of Aberfeldie.
Oppressed with the tenor of the conversation that had so recently passed between herself and Mr. Holcroft, Olive Raymond was unusually silent, and, for her, distraite; and he, remembering the somewhat decided 'snub' she had so unexpectedly given him, was somewhat silent too, but sought consolation in champagne, while listening rather abstractedly to Sir Paget Puddicombe descanting on the traditions of the neighbourhood, as, in guide-book fashion, he knew all about the predictions of the weird sisters, the defeat and death of the usurper, and was full of the probability that the great dramatist had visited Dunsinane in person.
But Holcroft only quaffed his liquor, tugged his tawny moustache from time to time, and listened with an air of boredom, mingled with a quizzical expression of mistrust in his pale grey shifty eyes.
He had seen Macbeth on the stage, of course, and endured him more than once; but of the Thane of Cawdor he knew no more than what he had seen of him behind the footlights, and had cared to learn no more; and now it was with some genuine Cockney bewilderment, as he looked at the massive trenches around him, he began to think that 'some such fellow had existed then.'
Eveline and young Cameron, under Sir Paget's eye, were both reserved and triste, and no wine seemed capable of rousing animation in the lover. He had but one thought—the end of his leave was approaching, and when he left Dundargue he might never again see Eveline Graham. His heart was heavy.
When the trio were riding together, it was not that the eyes of Eveline disappointed him, or that she did not converse with him fully and earnestly; but he had detected in the manner of Sir Paget a provoking air of proprietary and confidence with regard to her that keenly piqued him, and could only have been born, he rightly conjectured, of some recent confidential arrangement with Lord Aberfeldie; but the young girl herself was sweetly unconscious of it all.