Forbes and Stewart instinctively regarded each other as enemies from the first. Frank and open to a fault, the new keeper chafed under the reticence and duplicity of the sub-factor; and to every unreasonable command he returned a hot and indignant refusal; to every malicious word an angry, contemptuous retort. Thoroughly acquainted with his own duties, he would brook no interference; and to Forbes’s utter confusion, on one occasion, when that worthy had attempted to meddle in some matter affecting the dogs, he boldly threatened, in presence of several underlings, to report him to Inchgarry for obstructing his work. Before two months had passed, it was war to the knife between them. As was natural, the majority of the natives secretly rejoiced to find that the young stranger meant to beard the tyrant; while the great man’s favourites and the constitutionally envious nursed a bitter enmity against him as an interloper. The despotism was now broken up into two struggling factions; and the contest was a protracted and unhappy one.
But more fierce and implacable even than Forbes’s hatred of the keeper was that conceived by his henchman, Ian Dhu. To the keenness of partisanship he added a violent personal animosity, which only ended with the tragic event hereafter detailed. Ian had long been suspected of deer-poaching; but hitherto the friendship of the sub-factor had screened him from conviction if not from detection. At last Stewart caught him red-handed in the act of ‘gralloching’ a stag in one of the favourite ‘passes’ of the forest. He reported the fact at once to Inchgarry, who, if not exactly claiming his ancestral power of ‘pit and gallows,’ reserved to himself the right of deciding whether or not any of his ‘people’ should be handed over to the civil authorities. His decision was a most merciful one—merely requiring Sutherland to surrender his gun to the keeper. The sentence nevertheless rankled with deadly purpose in his heart; and but for one singular circumstance, would doubtless have earlier taken the form of the terrible revenge he ultimately sought.
That circumstance was his love for Effie Stewart. He too had been smitten by the sheach’s bewitching face and smile—smitten as only such dark, troublous natures can be smitten. His love was to him a terrible torture. The better thoughts which this new and powerful passion awakened, only goaded and stabbed, being too intermittent to subdue the darker passions which they illumined. From the moment he first saw Effie, a marked change came over him, or, more properly speaking, his idiosyncrasies became intensified. Always taciturn, he was now morose and brooding; his surliness became vehement irascibility, and his roving stealthy movements were now erratic and purposeless. He would hang for hours around the kennels, pass and repass the keeper’s cottage a dozen times a day, inventing trifling excuses for calling there, that he might look upon the girl whose unconscious influence had so strongly affected him. In her presence his misery was complete. He would crouch on a settle by the fireside, silent and burning with the unquenchable fire within him, his furtive impassioned glances following her every movement, as Effie flitted about the house. Whenever the little woman paused from her work, and with piquant, gracious vivacity addressed some pleasant remark to him, the heavy brows would unbend, and the dark eyes lift themselves to her face with a transient gleam of supreme pleasure, only to be averted again in increased gloom and depression. On those occasions when the young neighbours extemporised a merry-making at one or other of their houses, or, as was oftener the case, in the roomy cottage of the keeper, Ian Dhu’s torture was beyond description. There he was compelled to witness the object of his infatuation surrounded by a number of youths, many of whom he instinctively knew were fascinated by her. He listened entranced when she sung—but, then, other ears also drank in the sweet sounds; he watched the slight elfish figure move in the merry dance, but was she not observed with admiration by every one? First one and then another of the strapping young Highlanders became her partner, would hold her hands, clasp her waist, and whirl with her in the freedom of the old-fashioned reels; every incident adding a fresh torment to the jealous heart of Ian Dhu.
Time went on, and Ian Dhu was thus fain to curb the rebellious desire for revenge upon Donald Stewart. The gratification of looking upon Effie was only possible under conditions which his revenge would entirely destroy. Like a hungry spaniel, he crouched and fawned when he would otherwise have snapped. He submitted to obey many overbearing behests of the haughty young keeper, to assist him about the croft or go on messages; and acted generally so as to gain Stewart’s tolerance, if not his confidence. These tactics were not unobserved by Forbes, who, however, satisfied of the genuineness of the hatred with which his henchman viewed Donald, for a time attributed them to crafty zeal in his own service.
As for the sub-factor himself, time only increased his detestation of the keeper. Inchgarry was in London attending to his parliamentary duties; and Forbes did not neglect the opportunity of wreaking his malice in every possible way upon his proud-spirited subordinate. In his letters to the chief, the sub-factor conveyed many hints derogatory to Stewart, and succeeded to some extent in his unworthy purpose.
The young man, who was not only conscious of his abilities, but enthusiastic in his desire to acquit himself creditably in all that concerned his craft, one morning received a cold sharp letter from Inchgarry, recounting a charge of permitting poaching in the forest, and commenting severely upon his negligence. The chief circumstantially stated that the interior portions of a deer had been found in a ‘pass’ through a certain hill, where it had been ‘gralloched.’ The astonishment of Stewart was for the moment fully equal to his chagrin. He had had that very pass carefully watched by the under-keepers, and especially by his favourite and friend, a young sandy-haired blue-eyed lad from Lochaber, whose surname of Grant had been familiarised, in Highland fashion, into ‘Grantoch’ on account of his popularity. After the first burst of angry surprise, Stewart sought Grantoch, who in his laconic way repudiated the possibility of the thing, and after a deliberate study of the subject, as he leant upon his gun, quietly delivered himself of his opinion. About ten days previous, he said, while cutting open a hind, which in accordance with orders he had shot for the dogs, Ian Dhu had been present. Chancing to return to the same place about half an hour later in search of the knife which he had dropped, he was not a little surprised to find the refuse portions removed; and was completely puzzled when he observed, by the traces of blood amongst the heather, that they had evidently been carried up the forest. He was certain now that Sutherland had, with the connivance of Forbes, taken this method of throwing suspicion of negligence upon Stewart. The head-keeper’s quick intelligence grasped the whole affair before Grantoch had finished. He directed his assistant to state the facts as they were, in a letter to the chief; and wrote himself a respectful but firm repudiation of the charge. The effect was this: Forbes received a freezing order from Inchgarry to turn Ian Dhu out of his service. Nothing further was said; no reflection made as to his possible complicity in a design to injure the keeper’s character.
But the incident had rendered the sub-factor’s desire for revenge incontrollable. He goaded on his discharged henchman to be the instrument of wreaking their common hatred on the keeper. To his surprise, Ian Dhu was sullenly intractable. Forbes was at first furious, but incidentally learning the obstacle which existed in Sutherland’s passion for Effie Stewart, he resolved to use this as the very means of bringing him round to his purpose. He had heard, amongst other gossip, that Archie Guthrie’s attentions to the girl were received with favour. Ian was now completely under his control, and accident unfortunately favoured the factor in working upon his jealousy. Returning home from a visit to the post-town one evening in his dog-cart, Forbes observed, on a part of the road near Stewart’s cottage, the lovers standing together arm-in-arm, in the moonlight, evidently transacting a lengthened and agreeable parting for the night. Ian, whom he still sheltered, was waiting his arrival and assisted him to alight. With a malignance worthy of the worst part of his evil nature, he immediately despatched the unsuspecting Sutherland upon a message which should take him past the spot where Archie and Effie were standing. The effect was terrible. Ian Dhu on reaching the place discovered the pair in the act of embracing; staggering for a moment as if shot, he fled from the spot and disappeared, to return, after several weeks, to consummate the tragedy which forms the sequel of the tale.
PART II.—INCHGARRY’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
Three weeks elapsed, during which no one in Inchgarry had set eyes on Ian Dhu. The story of his love for the sheach was commonly known, and speculation was rife as to his proceedings since the night of his disappearance. This was set at rest one evening by his sudden appearance in the kitchen of the sub-factor’s house, lean and gaunt as a famished hound. His face was haggard and hunger-pinched, and a gleam very like insanity lit up the dark scowling eyes. His hair and beard were matted and tangled, and his clothes were soiled and rent. It was conjectured that he had spent the interval since his flight, in the fastnesses of the mountains—a prey to the throes of that passion which his powerful nature had conceived. What a picture might not imagination draw of the terrible human struggle enacted in those solitudes! Perhaps some such thought occurred to the frightened women-servants as Ian stood before them. At anyrate, they received him with silent sympathy, and invited him to take refreshment. It does seem strange that the revenge which succeeded his paroxysm of disappointed love should not first have been directed against the young gardener and his sweetheart. Various theories exist to account for this; one being that it really was his purpose to include them among his victims. My informant, however, held the very plausible opinion that Ian Dhu’s reason had given way under the great strain on his feelings, that his love was thereafter mercifully a blank to him, while the old grudge against Stewart had assumed unnatural proportions.
Forbes had an interview that night in his own parlour with his quondam henchman as the investigation which afterwards took place proved; and it was late when Ian Dhu slunk from the house by the private door, carrying with him a gun, and was seen to disappear in the belt of firs that skirts the loch. It is mentioned, with that morbid zest for details which a tragedy never fails to excite, that only a few minutes previous to Ian’s plunging into the wood, Archie Guthrie and Effie Stewart (now formally betrothed) had passed the sub-factor’s house arm-in-arm. What would have been the consequences of a rencontre between the lovers and Black Sutherland is a favourite topic for surmise amongst the people of Inchgarry to this day.