CHAPTER VIII
ON LOCH LOMOND
A bright brilliant day on glorious Loch Lomond, which, with its wooded islands, is one of the most picturesque of all the Scottish lakes.
The grey little steamer, which that morning had left Balloch Pier at the southern end of the loch, was slowly threading its way through the green islets in the afternoon sunshine. Crowded as it always is in fine weather with visitors from the south, all full of admiration as at every turn there came into view fresh aspects of the woods and mountains around Ben Lomond, standing high and majestic, Ben Vane, Ben Vorlick, the twin peaks of Ben Cruachan, and the tent-shaped Ben More.
The silent grandeur of the loch, where in the deep waters, smooth as glass, the heron fishes undisturbed, is always impressive. Even on that unusually clear autumn day—for mists and rains are more often than not drifting up and down that twenty-five miles or so of picturesque water, which is sometimes as wide as five miles—those who had come up from Edinburgh or Glasgow to make the trip, stood open-mouthed at the ever-changing scene as the steamer wended its way up the loch after leaving the remote little village of Luss.
Among those on board, seated in a deck-chair and enjoying the beautiful afternoon, was a well-dressed woman of middle-age, with auburn hair, and rather sad-faced, but very well preserved. Once or twice her maid, a short, stout little Scotchwoman, whose speech was that of a Glaswegian, came to wait upon her, afterwards retiring to another part of the boat.
The lady's eyes were fixed upon the gorgeous panorama. Beside her chair was a well-worn dressing-bag in dark-green cover, which showed that she was not a mere day traveller, but had come to Loch Lomond to stay at one of the unpretentious lakeside hotels, of which there are several at Tarbet and at Inversnaid. Though she was greatly enjoying the scenery, it was not in the least fresh to her. Indeed, Mrs. Morrison, of Carsphairn, was an annual visitor to Loch Lomond, staying a fortnight each year at the little hotel at Ardlui, a spot which her late husband had loved so well.
Though an extremely wealthy man, the summer attractions of Harrogate, Dinard, Aix, or Ostend, had never appealed to him. Bluff and hearty, he loved Loch Lomond in the days of his prosperity just as when, in his youth, he used to save his coppers to enable him to have a one-day trip from Glasgow each summer—red-letter days in his otherwise grey workaday life.
It had, indeed, been in his mind to build a fine summer residence on the shore of the loch at Ardlui, and he had actually bought the site—one that gave a magnificent view of Ben Lomond and a wide-reaching expanse of the lake—when a sudden illness cut him off, and his wife was left to mourn his loss.
Augusta Morrison was thinking of the last occasion when she and her devoted husband had come for the annual fortnight at Ardlui, and of how daily they walked to the site on the mountain-side where their new home was to be.