A FATAL SHOT.
When the shooting party, after being somewhat delayed by Skene's
unexpected departure, was setting forth, Roland and Elliot, with no
small indignation, and confounded by his profound assurance, saw
Hawkey Sharpe join them, belted, accoutred, gaitered, and gun in
hand, looking quite sobered and fresh, having doubtless just had from
Mr. Funnell 'a hair of the dog that bit him' overnight.
'That fellow here, actually--after all!' said Roland through his
clenched teeth, though Elliot had given him but a vague outline of
Sharpe's rudeness, remembering Maude's earnest desire and evident
anxiety.
While somewhat 'dashed' by the coolness of his reception by all--even
to old Ponto the setter, who gave him a wide berth--Mr. Hawkey Sharpe
was mean enough--or subtle enough--to hammer a kind of excuse for
'some mistake' he had made last night, attributing it to the wine he
had taken--mixing champagne and claret-cup with brandies and soda--of
all of which he had certainly imbibed freely, as his still
yellow-balled and bloodshot eyes bore witness.
Elliot heard him with a fixed stare of calm disdain; while Roland,
writhing in his soul, still temporized--despising himself heartily
the while--for the sake of appearances, but determined now, before
twenty-four hours were past, to get at the bottom of the mystery--to
ascertain the real state of his affairs.
There was something in Jack Elliot's well-bred and steady stare, as
he focussed him with his eye-glass, that expressed vague wonder,
_insouciance_, and no small contempt; it enraged Hawkey Sharpe and
made his whole heart seem to burn in his breast with hate and
suppressed passion, while fixing his own eyeglass defiantly and
attempting suavely to say:
'Good-morning, Captain Lindsay--good-morning, gentlemen, _all_.'
Roland could scarcely master his passion or the impulse to club his
fowling-piece and knock the fellow down.
'Mr. Sharpe,' said he in a low voice that seemed all unlike his own,
so low and husky was it, as he beckoned Hawkey aside, 'considering
the rudeness of which I understand you were guilty last night, I
wonder that you have the bad taste to address me at all, or thrust
yourself upon our society.'
'Thrust--Captain Lindsay!' exclaimed Sharpe, in turn suppressing his
rage.
'Yes--I repeat that considering there was something--I scarcely know
what--amounting to a fracas between my friend Captain Elliot and you,
I also wonder--nathless your relative and assumed position in this
house--that you venture to join my party this morning.'
It was the first time that Roland had spoken so plainly to this
obnoxious personage.
'I don't quite understand all your words imply,' replied the latter
with an assumption of dignity and would-be _hauteur_ that sat
grotesquely upon him. 'I am in the house of my sister, Mrs. Lindsay
of Earlshaugh, who has accorded me permission to shoot, and shoot I
shall whether you like it or not!'
'For the last time, I trust,' muttered Roland under his moustache.
'That we shall see,' was the mocking remark of Hawkey, who overheard
him.
Roland turned abruptly away, loth to excite comment or surprise among
his friends by the strange bearing of one deemed by them his mere
dependent.
So the shooting progressed, and for a time without let or impediment.
Away through the King's Wood and the Fairy's Den went the sportsmen,
over the harvest fields, so rich in beauty to the picture-loving eye,
by the green and scented hawthorn hedgerows, where the golden spoil
of the passing corn carts remained for the gleaner; among brambles
and red fern--the crimson bracken that, according to the Scottish
proverb, brings milk and butter in October; firing in line, as
adjusted by old Gavin Fowler; and as their guns went off, bang, bang,
bang, in the clear and ambient air, when the startled coveys went
whirring up, the brown birds came tumbling down with outspread wings,
before the double barrels.
If the autumn sunset in Scotland is lovely, not less so is the autumn
sunrise, when seen from the slope of some green hill, like the spur
of the Ochils that looks down on Logic, while through pastoral valley
and wooded haugh the white silver mist is rolling. 'Then the tops of
the trees seem at first to rise above a country that is flooded,
while the kirk spire appears like some sea mark heaving out of the
mist. Then comes a great wedge-like beam of gold, cutting deep down
into the hollows, showing the stems of the trees and the roofs of the
cottages, gilding barn and outhouse, making a golden road through a
land of white mist that seems to rise on either side like the sea
which Moses divided to pass through dryshod. The dew-drops on the
sun-lighted summit the feet rest upon, are coloured like precious
stones of every dye, and every blade of grass is beaded with the
gorgeous gems.'
And never do the deer look more graceful and beautiful than when in
autumn they leave their lair among the bracken, when the blue
atmosphere is on a Scottish mountain side, and changing hues are on
leafy grove and heath-clad slope.
As the sportsmen, now pretty far apart, after beating successfully up
the slope of a stubble field on a hill-side, came upon some aged and
irregular hedgerows, full of gaps and interspersed with stunted
thorn-trees, and having on each side a wet grassy ditch, the warning
voice of the old keeper was heard some paces in the rear:
'Tak' tent, gentlemen; tak' tent. Nae cross shots here. There is a
different ground owre beyond.'
A covey of some twenty birds whirred up from a gap in the hedge, and
both Elliot and Hawkey Sharpe seemed to fire at it. We say seemed,
as the former fired straight to his front, the latter, who was on his
right, obliquely to the left; and then there came a sharp cry of
anguish and pain but seldom or never heard among a group of gay
sportsmen.
'By the Lord, but he's done it at last,' cried old Fowler.
'I aye thocht he wad be the death on the field o' somebody,' cried
Jamie Spens, the ex-poacher, who was acting as a beater.
'Sharpe's dune it at last,' cried Fowler again.
'What--who--what?' said a dozen voices.
'Murdered some ane--hang me if it isna Captain Elliot. Sharpe's a
devilish gleed gunner, if ever there was ane.'
Hawkey Sharpe heard these excited exclamations as if in a dream, and
as if heard by another and not himself.
He had unexpectedly seen Jack Elliot come, if not in his line of
fire, unseen by others, within range of it; and though hitherto
vaguely intent on mischief, a sudden, a devil-born impulse came like
a flash of lightning over him.
He fired, and Jack Elliot dropped like a stone!
The moment he had done so the heart of Hawkey Sharpe seemed to stand
still; enmity, rivalry, and affront were all forgotten--seemed never
to have existed. There was a roaring or surging of the blood in his
ears, while a sudden darkness seemed to fall upon the sunshiny
landscape.
Was it accident or murder, he thought, and then felt keenly that
'Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.'