THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1884.
_All rights reserved._
Contents
Chapter
I. Stalking the Deer
II. Hawke Holcroft
III. Uncle Raymond's Will
IV. The Grahams of Dundargue
V. Olive and Allan
VI. The Chagrin of Love
VII. Le Chagrin d'Amour
VIII. The Riding-Party
IX. The Picnic at Dunsinane
X. The Golden Bangle
XI. Eveline's Suitor
XII. A Revelation to Holcroft
XIII. Allan Proves Mysterious
XIV. Olive Changes Her Mind
XV. The Carpet-Dance, and What Came of It
THE MASTER OF ABERFELDIE.
CHAPTER I.
STALKING THE DEER.
'I don't know what Olive will think, or how she may view my loitering
here, after all these years of absence, instead of hastening home to
meet her; but, truth to tell, the temptation to have a shot on the
purple heather after sweltering so long in India was so great----'
'What does it matter what she thinks?' interrupted the elder man,
laughing. 'When two persons are to spend the whole term of their
natural lives together, they can surely spare a few days for pleasure
apart!'
'But consider, I have not seen my little _fiancée_ for seven years.'
'You will find her a pretty tall _fiancée_ now,' replied the other,
'and as handsome as any girl in Scotland, Allan.'
The speakers were Lord Aberfeldie (he was viscount in the Peerage)
and his son Allan, the Master, then at home on leave from the Black
Watch, in which he was a captain; and now, side by side, they were
creeping up a steep and stony corrie in search of the red deer, but
paused for a few minutes to breathe and converse.
The Master--so entitled as the son of a Scottish baron (we may add
for the information of most English readers even in these days)--was,
like his father, a tall and soldier-like fellow, with closely-shorn
dark brown hair, straight features, and an almost black moustache,
which partly concealed lips that were handsomely curved, and
expressive of no small degree of firmness and decision. He carried
his head erect, and spoke rather with the air of one used to command
when addressing men, but with great and subtle softness when
conversing with women of every station and degree; and already, under
home influences, his dark hazel eyes were losing the keen and
somewhat hawk-like expression they had worn when daily facing death
and suffering on active service.
Both father and son were handsome, though there were nearly thirty
years between them in age, and both were, from head to foot,
unmistakably thorough-bred men--the latter tanned deeply by a
tropical sun, and his forehead scarred by a wound from a tulwar blade.
Lord Aberfeldie, now above fifty, had taken a turn of service for a
few years in the Black Watch till his succession to the title
required his presence at home, though an enthusiastic soldier; and
soon after his place in the regiment which he loved so well was taken
by his only son and heir, the Master, then fresh from college.
Father and son both wore plain shooting-kilts and jackets of coarse
heather-coloured stuff, with handsomely-mounted sporans and skeins;
other ornaments they had none, unless we except the crest of
Graham--their surname--an eagle taloning a stork, in their
glengarries; and the peer, who was a keen fisherman, had his
head-dress further garnished by various flies and old fish-hooks.
When _en route_ home to the family seat at Dundargue, in the Carse of
Gowrie, the Master had been tempted by his father to join him at
their shooting-box among the lovely Perthshire hills, where, at
present, the party consisted of only four--Mr. Hawke Holcroft, an
English guest, and Evan Cameron, a sub. of the Black Watch, also on
leave; and these two, attended by a keeper and gillies, were creeping
up another corrie, rifle in hand, about half a mile distant.
'You have had this--a--Mr. Holcroft with you for some time at
Dundargue!' said Allan Graham, questioningly.
'Yes--for some weeks--before we came up to the hills here.'
'He cannot know anything about the implied engagement--that of Olive
Raymond with me?'
'Implied?'
'Well--the peculiar arrangements that exist under her father's
eccentric will.'
'Probably not--nay, undoubtedly not,' replied his father, eyeing him
keenly; 'it is no business of his--so, whence the question, Allan?'
'Because he showed me, rather vauntingly, a very fine photo he keeps
in his pocket-book.'
'A photo of Olive?'
'Yes.'
'The deuce he does. I have thought her sometimes too _épris_ with
our horsey friend Hawke Holcroft, and thus longed for your return.
They renewed at Dundargue, an acquaintance formed last season in
London, when Olive made some sensation, I assure you; and, now that
you have seen her photo, what do you think of her--pretty?'
'Pretty! She is downright beautiful!'
'Ah--wait till you have seen her. She does credit to your mother's
rearing and her governess's tutelage; but you have not exhibited much
impatience hitherto. Gad, when I was your age----'
'You forget that she was such a child when we parted,' interrupted
Allan, stroking out his long dark moustache. 'But was it not rather
cool of him to show me her likeness?'
'Perhaps; but then it was done in ignorance of the situation, and it
is probably the result of some conservatory flirtation.'
'But just as he showed it to me, was it not strange that I heard the
cry of a plover overhead, and----'
Lord Aberfeldie interrupted his son by a hearty laugh, and tossed
away the end of his cigar.
'After eight years' soldiering with the Black Watch, do you actually
retain the superstition that the plover is a type of inconstancy, and
the bird of ill-omen Burns, Scott, and Leyden describe it as being?'
Allan laughed, too; but now, when among his native mountains and the
scenes of his childhood, he could not help old Scottish impressions
returning to him, though certainly the ranks of his regiment were the
last place in which he was likely to forget them.
The silver-haired and silver-bearded old game-keeper, Dugald Glas
(whose real name was Mackinnon), a hawk-eyed Celt, with a
weather-beaten visage, and bare knees that were brown as mahogany,
now urged silence and no more smoking. He had discovered by the aid
of his binoculars a couple of deer grazing, but pretty far apart,
upon the hill-side; and once again by private signal the two parties
began mutually their stealthy approach upward in the two corries that
concealed them in the _forest_, for so it was called, though
destitute now of trees.
'A forest, as the word was strictly taken in ancient times,' says Sir
Thomas Dick Lauder, 'could not be in the hands of anyone but the
king, yet in later periods forests have become the property of
subjects, or have been erected by them, though without being
protected by forest laws. The royal forest in the Isle of Wight, in
which there is not a single tree, is not the only English example
remaining of the view taken of this old meaning of the word.' Hence,
he adds, 'Let not the Cockney suppose that the word forest
necessarily implies a district covered with oaks, chestnuts, or trees
of any other description.'
A powerful and gigantic staghound, wiry, sinewy, and iron-grey--the
noble dog that Landseer loved to depict--saw the deer already without
the aid of glasses and strained hard upon his leash, an iron chain,
which was twisted round the muscular wrist of the old keeper, who
soothed and patted him, while muttering in Gaelic, '_Mar e Bran, is e
braithair!_' (If it is not Bran, it is his brother), alluding to
Fingal's favourite staghound, which he was thought to resemble, as
his hair was iron-grey, his feet were yellow, with erect ears of a
ruddy tinge.
The forenoon was brilliantly clear, so the deer-stalkers had not the
weather to contend with, as that, if untoward, may render all
strategy vain.
Lord Aberfeldie and his son were as well aware as their skilled old
keeper that in stalking the chief things to regard are the eyes and
nose of the deer. His vision, quick as that of an eagle, can detect
a human head above a ridge of rock or belt of bracken, and he can
scent an intruder on his 'native heath,' if the breeze blows _from_
the former, at a wonderful distance; and old Dugald Glas, who had
brought the father and son to the forest at dawn with us much care
and secresy as if an assassination was in hand, had long scanned the
vicinity with his glasses before he discovered the stags in question,
and gave the concealed stalkers the signal to approach them.
The two animals were rather far apart; both were quietly feeding,
and--as the season was considerably advanced--both in colour were
marvellously like the grey stone and brown heather around them, and
both were, as yet, all unalarmed as Lord Aberfeldie, the Master, and
Dugald Glas, while pausing and holding ever and anon a council of war
in low whispers, crept up the stony corrie, keeping carefully to
leeward of the quarry they had selected, leaving Cameron of
Stratherroch and Hawke Holcroft to approach the other as best they
might; but it was in the present instance absolutely necessary that
both parties should fire at the same instant, or one of the stags
would vanish at a gallop, perhaps to the most distant limit of the
forest.
In crawling after such game the head must be foremost when going up a
hill, and the feet foremost when going down, and the stalker must
creep on his stomach and knees; and all this, when done in the kilt,
over rough rocks, sharply-pointed heather, and mossy bog, is not to
be effected without considerable toil and even discomfort.
Nearly an hour of this kind of work had gone on, the father and son
creeping side by side, softly and in silence, dragging their rifles
after them, old Dugald following in the same fashion, with Bran
straining on his iron chain; and once or twice they had actually to
traverse the bed of a mountain burn that brawled hoarsely downward
over its brown-worn pebbles and boulders.
The stag was still feeding quietly, and all unconscious of the
approach of death; and the stalkers were, they thought, within a safe
distance now, and that it could not escape them; so Dugald Glas
dropped behind, after whispering to the Master in Gaelic,
'Blood upon the skein, Allan!'
Then the heart of the latter began to beat highly as the moment for
shooting drew near, for after all their care and toil it was quite
possible that a grouse might whirr up from the heather, and with a
warning cry scare the stag to full speed.
'You take aim, Allan,' whispered Lord Aberfeldie, 'and I shall
reserve my fire. It is years since you had a shot at a dun cow, my
boy.'
Inch by inch the Master cautiously inserted his double-barrelled
rifle between the stiff tufts of purple heather that fringed the bank
of the hollow up which they had been creeping, and brought the sights
to bear upon the beautiful and graceful animal that cropped the
herbage, with his branching antlers lowered; and Allan, in the
excitement of the moment, felt his pulses beating wildly.
'If I miss--if I fail!' he muttered.
'Tut---there is no such word as fail!' replied his father,
unconsciously quoting 'Richelieu.'
Allan drew a long breath, while his dark eye seemed to flash along
the barrel, and fired. Bang went a couple of rifles in the distant
corrie, but Aberfeldie and his son took no heed of them. The
latter's single shot had sped true, piercing the stag above the left
eye, and now it lay prone on the heather, tearing up tufts and sandy
earth with its hoofs in the agonies of death.
Allan's skein-dhu was promptly in his hand; the stag was
_gralloched_, and Dugald Glas, waving his bonnet, shouted loudly for
Alister Bane and Hector Crubach (or lame Hector), two gillies, to
bring up the pony, on which the dead animal was slung, and then the
party set out for the place appointed for luncheon, as raid-day was
now long since past.
'What the deuce are Stratherroch and Holcroft about?' exclaimed Lord
Aberfeldie, while shading his eyes with his hand; and to their
success in sport we shall refer in the next chapter.