THE FIRST OF OCTOBER.
'As weel try to sup soor dook wi' an elshin as shoot in comfort wi'
that coofor waur--that gowk Hawkey Sharpe--so thank gudeness he's no
wi' us this day!' snorted old Gavin Fowler, the gamekeeper, when, on
the morning of the all-important 1st of October, he shouldered his
gun and whistled forth the dogs.
But Hawkey Sharpe was fated to be cognisant of one grim feature in
that day's sport in a way none knew save himself.
So October had come--'the time,' says Colonel Hawker, 'when the
farmer has leisure to enjoy a little sport after all his hard labour
without neglecting his business; and the gentleman, by a day's
shooting at that time, becomes refreshed and invigorated, instead of
wearing out himself and his dogs by slaving after partridges under
the broiling sun of the preceding month. The evenings begin to
close, and he then enjoys his home and fireside, after a day's
shooting of sufficient duration to brace his nerves and make
everything agreeable.'
'We'll make good bags to-day,' was the opinion of all.
Despite Maude's entreaties, Jack Elliot was too keen a sportsman to
forego the first day of the pheasant shooting, though his scar was
scarcely healed, and thought, though he did not say so to her, that
next October might see him 'potting' a darker kind of game in the
Soudan.
'Get me a golden pheasant's wing for my hat, dear Roland,' said Annot
laughingly, as he came forth with his favourite breechloader from the
gun-room; and though such birds were scarce in the East Neuk, the
request proved somewhat of a fatal one, as we shall show; but Annot
had no foreboding of that when, with her usual childish effusiveness,
she bade Roland farewell, as he went to join the group of sportsmen
and dogs at the _porte-cochère_.
'You have no father, I believe, Miss Drummond?' said Mrs. Lindsay,
who had been observing her.
'No; poor papa died quite suddenly about two years ago,' was the
reply.
'Suddenly?' queried Mrs. Lindsay, becoming interested.
'Yes,' said Annot hesitatingly.
'In what way--by an accident?'
'Oh, dear--no.'
'How then?'
'Of disease of the heart; we never suspected it, but he dropped down
dead--quite dead--while poor mamma was speaking to him about a drive
in the park--but oh! what have I said to startle you so?' she added,
on perceiving that Mrs. Lindsay grew pale as ashes, and half closing
her eyes, pressed her hand upon her left breast, a custom she had
when excited.
'Nothing--nothing--only a faintness,' she said, with something of
irritation; 'it is the wind without.'
'But there is none,' urged Annot.
'I often feel this when stormy weather is at hand,' replied the other
with an attempt at a smile, but a ghastly one; and Annot said no
more, as she had already seen that the slightest reference to her
secret ailment irritated Mrs. Lindsay, who abruptly left her.
'There is not much liking lost between us,' thought the young lady,
as she adjusted in the breast of her morning dress a bunch of
stephanotis Roland had given her. 'It is evident, too, that Mrs.
Lindsay knows little of county society, and is one with whom county
society is shy of associating. Well, well; when Roland and I are
married, this grim matron shall be relegated from Earlshaugh to the
Dower House at King's Wood. It is a pity we shall not be able to
send her farther off.'
Meanwhile the sportsmen were getting to work, and the guns began to
bang in the coverts.
Autumn was rapidly advancing now; every portion of the beautiful
landscape told the eye so. The summer look was gone, and the sound
of the leaves fluttering down was apt to make one thoughtful. Then
even the sun seems older; he rises later, and goes to bed earlier.
The singing birds had gone from the King's Wood and the Earl's Haugh
to warmer climes. The swallows were preparing to leave, assembling
at their own places on the banks of the burn, waiting till thousands
mustered for their mysterious southern flight. Elsewhere, as Clare
has it, might be seen--
'The hedger stopping gaps, amid the leaves,
Which time o'erhead in every colour weaves;
The milkmaid passing, with a timid look,
From stone to stone across the brimming brook;
The cottar journeying with his noisy swine
Along the wood side, where the branches twine;
Shaking from many oaks the acorns brown,
Or from the hedges red haws dashing down.'
But the scenery was lost on the sportsmen, who had eyes and ears for
the pheasants alone!
The keepers and beaters were waiting at the corner of the King's Wood
when Roland and his friends made their appearance.
Though the copses had not lost all their autumnal glory, the season
was an advanced one; a cold breeze swept down the grassy glens, and
frost rime hung for a time on boughs and thick undergrowth, sparkling
like diamonds in the bright morning sunshine, till melted away; and
in the clear air was heard that which someone describes as the
indescribable and never-to-be-forgotten sound for the sportsman--that
of the pheasant as he rises before the advancing line of
beaters--when the cock bird, roused by the tapping of their sticks on
the tree trunks, whirrs high over the tops to some sanctuary in the
wood, which the gun beneath him fates him never to reach.
A spirt of smoke spouts upward, some brown feathers puff out in the
air, and with closed wings the beautiful bird falls within some
thirty yards of its killer.
Though the shooting was most successful, other coverts than the
King's Wood were tried, some of which gave pheasants, others rabbits
and hares, till fairly good bags were made; and so the sportsmen shot
down the side of a remote spur of the Ochil hills--save the banging
of the guns no other sounds being heard but the beating of sticks
against trees or whin bushes, and the voices of Gavin and the beaters
shouting, 'Mark cock,' ''Ware hen,' 'Hare forward,' and so on, till a
dark dell was reached--a regular zeriba (Roland called it) of
bracken, briars, and gorse--where luncheon was to meet the party--one
of the not least pleasant features of a day's shooting; but the
sportsmen had become so intent on their work that they now realized
fully for the first time that the day had become overcast; masses of
dark gathered cloud had enveloped the sun; that dense gray mist was
rolling along the upper slopes of the hills, and in the distant
direction of Earlshaugh, the dark and blurred horizon showed that
rain was pouring aslant, and so heavily that Maude and Hester, who
had promised to bring the viands in the pony phaeton, would not dream
of leaving the shelter of the house.
'Homeward' was now the word, but not before the last beat of the
day--reserved as a _bonne bouche_--was made, though noon was past and
gloom was gathering speedily.
At the upper end of a little glen a long belt of firs bounded a field
beyond which rose another belt, and in the field the guns were
posted, while the pheasants could be seen making for the head of the
wood.
Nearer and more near came the tapping of the beaters' rods, until one
gallant bird rose at the edge and was knocked over by Roland, who was
far away on the extreme right of the line. The tapping went gently
on lest too many birds should be put up at once. Some rapid firing
followed--all the more rapidly that the mist and rain were coming
down the hill-slopes together.
In quick succession the birds left the covert, some flying to one
flank, some to the other, while others rose high in the air, and some
remained grovelling amid the undergrowth, never to leave it alive.
It was no slaughter--no _battue_--however; about a dozen brace were
knocked over and picked up ere the mist descended over the field and
its boundary belts of fir trees, and drawing their cartridges, in
twos and threes, with their guns under their arms and their coat
collars up, for the rain was falling now, the sportsmen began to take
their way back towards the house, which was then some miles distant:
and all reached it, in the gathering gloom of a prematurely early
evening--weary, worn, yet in high spirits, and--save for the contents
of their flasks--unrefreshed, when they discovered that Roland
Lindsay was _not_ with them--that in some unaccountable way they had,
somehow, lost or missed him on the mountain side.