CHAPTER XIII.
AMONG THE GROUSE.
Nathless the vengeful thoughts of the unamiable Shafto and his threats muttered in secret, the shooting next day passed off without any peril being encountered by the unconscious Hammersley—unconscious at least of the enmity his presence was inspiring. However, it was not so the second; and Finella and her fair friends agreed that if he looked so well and handsome in his heather-coloured knickerbocker shooting-dress, with ribbed stockings of Alloa yarn, his gun under his arm, and shot-belt over his shoulder, how gallant must he look when in full uniform.
In the field the vicinity of Shafto was avoided as much as possible, as he shot wildly indeed. By the gamekeepers, servants, and people generally on the estate he was simply detested for the severity of his manner, his tyranny, his disposition to bully, and meanness in every way; though at first, when he came to Craigengowan, they had laboured in vain, and vied with each other in their attempts to initiate him into those field-sports so dear to Britons generally, and to the Scots in particular; but when shooting grouse especially, the beaters or 'drivers' had genuine dread of him, and, when fog was on, sometimes refused to attend him, and he was, as they said among themselves, 'a new experience i' the Howe o' the Mearns.'
'I've seen as fu' a haggis toomed on a midden,' said the old head-gamekeeper wrathfully, as he drew his bonnet over his beetling brows, 'but I'll keep my mind to mysel', and tell my tale to the wind that blaws o'er Craigengowan.'
Though well past sixty now, Lord Fettercairn, hale and hearty, was in the field with his central-fire gun with fine Damascus barrels. Shafto, Hammersley, young Kippilaw, and four others made up the party.
The morning was a lovely one, and lovely too was the scenery, for August is a month richly tinted with the last touches of summer, blended with the russet tones of autumn; the pleasant meadows are yet green, and over the ripened harvest the breeze murmurs like the ocean when nearly asleep.
Apart from the joyous exhilaration of shooting, and that out-door exercise so dear to every English gentleman, Vivian Hammersley felt all that which comes from the romantic beauty of his surroundings—the scenery of the Howe of the Mearns, which is a low champaign and highly cultivated country, studded with handsome mansions, and ornamented by rich plantations and thriving villages.
Ere long the open muirs were reached, and the hill-sides, the steep, purple ridges of which the sportsmen had to breast; and, keen sportsman though he was, Hammersley had soon to admit that grouse-shooting was the most fatiguing work he had yet encountered; but soon came the excitements of the first point, the first brood, and the first shot or two.
To the eye chiefly accustomed to brown partridges, grouse look dusky and even black, and they seem to hug the purple heather, but when one becomes accustomed to them they are as easy to knock over as the tame birds; and now the crack of the guns began to ring out along the hill-slopes.
Shafto and Hammersley were about twenty yards apart, and twice when a bird rose before the latter, it was brought down wounded but not killed by the former.
Hammersley felt that this was 'bad form,' as Shafto should not have fired, unless he had missed or passed it; but he only bit his lip and smiled disdainfully. Lord Fettercairn remarked the discourtesy, and added,
'Shafto, I do wish you would take an example from Captain Hammersley.'
'In what way?' grumbled Shafto.
'He kills his game clean—few birds run from him with broken wings and so forth.'
'I am glad to hit when I can,' said Shafto, whose mode of life in Devonshire had made him rather soft, and he was beginning to think that nerves of iron and lungs like a bagpipe were requisite for breasting up the hill-slopes, and then shoot straight at anything.
Hammersley worked away silently, neither looking to his right nor left, feeling that though several elements are requisite for 'sport,' the chief then was to kill as much grouse as possible in a given time, but was more than once irritated and discomposed by Shafto, and even young Kippilaw, shooting in a blundering way along the line even when the birds were not flying high; and he proceeded in a workmanlike way to bring down one bird as it approached, the next when it was past him, and so on.
The first portion of the day the Fettercairn party shot to points, and then to drivers, and in their fear of Shafto's wild shooting, the latter kept shouting while driving, and, as he loathed the whole thing, and was now 'completely blown—pumped out,' as he phrased it, he was not sorry when the magic word 'lunch' was uttered; and Hammersley certainly hailed it, for with the lunch came Finella, and with her arrival—to him—the most delightful part of the day.
She came tooling along the sunny pathway that traversed the bottom of a glen, driving with her tightly gauntleted and deft little hands a pair of beautiful white ponies, which drew the daintiest of basket-phaetons, containing also Mr. Grapeston and an ample luncheon-basket; and the place chosen for halting was a green oasis amid the dark heather, where a spring of deliciously cool water was bubbling up, called Finella's Well.
'Now, gentlemen,' said Lord Fettercairn, 'please to draw your cartridges. I was once nearly shot in this very place by a stupid fellow who omitted to do so. So glad you have come, Finella darling, we are all hungry as hawks, and thirsty too.'
Lovely indeed did the piquante girl look in her coquettish hat and well-fitting jacket, while the drive, the occasion, and the touch of Hammersley's hand as he assisted her to alight gave her cheek an unwonted colour, and lent fresh lustre to her dark eyes, and the soldier thought that certainly there was nothing in the world so pleasant to a man's eye as a young, well-dressed, and beautiful girl.
'You have had good sport,' said she to the group, while her eye rested on Hammersley, and then on the rows of grouse laid by braces on the grass; and she 'brought a breeze with her,' as the gentlemen thought, and had a pleasant remark for each. Her mode of greeting the members of the party was different, as to some she gave her hand like a little queen, while to others she smiled, or simply bowed; but provoked an angry snort from Shafto by expressing a hope that he 'had not shot anyone yet.'
And then he grew white as he recalled his angry thoughts of the preceding night.
'Why did you take the trouble to drive here?' he asked her, in a low voice.
'Because I chose to come; and I do so love driving these plump darlings of ponies,' replied the girl, patting the sleek animals with her tiny, slim hand.
'Old Grapeston would have done well enough; and why did you not bring one of the Kippilaw girls?'
'They are at lawn-tennis. If I thought I could please you—not an easy task—I should have tried to bring them all, though that is rather beyond the capacities of my phaeton.'
Shafto never for a moment doubted that she had come over to superintend the luncheon because 'that fellow Hammersley' was one of the party; and in this suspicion perhaps he was right.
As for Hammersley, being ignorant of Shafto's antecedents, his present hopes, and those of Lady Fettercairn, he could not comprehend how the grandson and heir-apparent of a peer came to be 'such bad form—bad style, and all that sort of thing,' as he thought; and all that became rather worse when Shafto was under the influence of sundry bumpers of iced Pommery Greno administered by Mr. Grapeston.
As the sportsmen lounged on the grass, and the luncheon proceeded under the superintendence of old Jasper Grapeston, Finella, the presiding goddess, looked unusually bright and happy—a consummation which Shafto never doubted, in his rage and jealousy, came of the presence of Vivian Hammersley, and that her brilliance was all the result of another man's society—not his certainly, and hence he would have preferred that she was not light-hearted at all.
He could see that with all her espieglerie Finella found no occasion to laugh at Hammersley or tease or snub that gentleman as she did himself, but the attentions of Hammersley were delicately and seductively paid. Deferential and gentle at all times, to all women, he had always been so to Finella Melfort, and she was able to feel more than his words, looks, or manner suggested to others; and he imagined—nay, he was becoming certain—and a glow of great joy came with the certainty—that Finella's sweet dark eyes grew brighter at his approach; that a rose-leaf tinge crossed her delicate cheek, and there came a slight quiver into her voice when she replied to him,
'Was it all really so?'
Fate was soon to decide that which he had been too slow or timid to decide for himself.
As he said one of the merest commonplaces to her, their eyes met.
It was only one lingering glance!
But looks can say so much more than the voice, the eyes surpassing the lips, breaking or revealing what the silence of months, it may be years, has hidden, and leading heart to heart.
'Grandpapa,' said Finella, suddenly, and just before driving off, 'do you shoot over this ground to-morrow?'
'To a certain extent we shall—but why?'
'Shall I bring the luncheon here?'
'Yes, pet, to Finella's Well.'
'So, then, this shall be our trysting-place!' said she, with a bow to all, and a merry glance which included most certainly Vivian Hammersley, to whom the landscape seemed to darken with her departure.
'Now is the time for shooting to advantage,' said Lord Fettercairn, who knew by old experience that when the afternoon shadows, and more especially those of evening, begin to lengthen, the slopes of the hills are seen better, that the birds, too, lie better, and that as the air becomes more fresh and cool, men can shoot with greater care and deliberation than in the heat of noon. But Hammersley, full of his own thoughts, full of the image of Finella and that tale-telling glance they had exchanged, missed nearly every bird, to the great exultation of Shafto, who made an incredible number of bad and clumsy jokes thereon—jokes which the young Englishman heard with perfect indifference and equanimity.
Shafto, however, scarcely foresaw the result of the next day's expedition, and certainly Hammersley did not do so either.