Jovial and laughing was the party which assembled at breakfast next day, in the bright morning-room of Eaglescraig, though the December landscape looked bleak enough without.
Mary, in all the freshness of her morning beauty, presided at one end of the loaded table, and Mrs. Garth at the other. Sir Piers was still in his room; but there was Cecil Falconer, in a shooting-suit of the best taste, and having of course innumerable pockets; Hew in rather 'loud'-patterned knickerbockers; a couple of jolly, red-faced country gentlemen, the village doctor, and old Mr. John Balderstone (of whom much more anon), the trusted land agent and local factor of Sir Piers, and deemed one of the best shots in the Bailiwick of Cunninghame, a hale, hearty, ruddy-faced man, with an ample paunch and short sturdy legs encased in long brown gaiters.
'How is Sir Piers this morning, Mr. Hew?' he asked that personage, who was intent on a pile of grouse pie, for the breakfast was a genuine Scottish one, a veritable dinner, with the addition of tea and coffee pots covered with elaborate cosies of Mary's handiwork. 'Well, I hope, and that he goes to shoot with us?'
'Well?—I should think so; hearty and lively,' replied Hew, with his mouth full; 'by Jove, he looks as if he was likely to live for ever! He's got the receipt for old Parr's life pills, and the secret of Methuselah too,' was the ungenerous—even coarse—response of Hew, half spoken to himself, and speaking volumes as to his secret thoughts; a response which made worthy old John Balderstone first raise and then knit his shaggy grey eyebrows; 'but here he comes, to answer for himself.'
Laughing and smiling, he greeted all in rapid succession, Cecil Falconer perhaps first of all, and then he kissed Mary; and anyone who saw how old Sir Piers held her hand and gazed into her tender hazel eyes, might have seen and known that she was the one hope of his now childless old age, and I doubt if he would have dined or breakfasted comfortably without her.
He bowed over the hand of Annabelle Erroll, with something of stately, old-fashioned courtesy; he patted Hew on the head as if he had been a boy, and then took a place beside him, after a glance at the weather without, with reference to the shooting. He wore a suit of rough grey tweed, with strong shoes and long brown leather leggings, that had seen service many a time and oft among the beans and turnip-fields all round Eaglescraig; and yet in this—the plainest of all costumes—he looked every inch what he was, a grand-looking and aristocratic old gentleman.
Shooting anecdotes, the qualities of certain dogs, guns, cartridges, new shot-belts, and so forth, were being discussed on all sides, together with eggs, ham, cold pie and steaming coffee; amid all of which Cecil Falconer strove in vain, even by the offer of a chicken-bone, to win the favour of Mary's pet terrier Snarley, which he was disposed for her sake to view and approach tenderly; but in return her favourite showed a whole set of sharp white teeth, and retreating under his mistress's chair, snarled and repelled the least attempt at familiarity, even when she caught the little brute up in her arms and bestowed upon it kisses, which to Cecil's eye seemed a great waste of something very charming.
'My pet, my own pet!' she called it, Snarley the while eyeing Falconer as if he was his natural enemy or future rival.
'Hope you slept well, Falconer?' said Sir Piers.
'Thanks—like a veritable top,' replied Cecil.
'Right! a regular soldier should be able to sleep anywhere, and never be surprised on awakening in new quarters.'
'Been ever in this part of the world before, sir?' asked Mr. John Balderstone, with his mouth full.
'Never,' replied Cecil.
'Ah, you'll soon learn to like Eaglescraig,' added the factor.
'I am enchanted with it already,' said Cecil, as his eye involuntarily wandered in Mary's direction; 'and believe that I shall like it more and more, till it will be quite a wrench when the time comes to tear myself away.'
'Then come back, Falconer, for some rod-fishing after Candlemas,' suggested his host, with a bright smile.
'Duty, I fear, may clash with your great hospitality; but I thank you, Sir Piers.'
'Call me general; I like it better.'
'To be always called so is my uncle's pet fancy, Mr. Falconer,' said Mary.
'All great men have their weaknesses, and I always respect them,' remarked Hew, with one of his scarcely perceptible sneers, for now Sir Piers, to his irritation, had plunged into some reminiscences of snipe-shooting at Dumdum, where he was wont to be for some hours up to the waist in water under a burning Bengal sun, necessitating frequent libations of brandy-pawnee; then, by some rapid transition of thought, he found himself detailing a march of the Cameronians through the jungles of Arcot, with the rain pouring in torrents, the road knee-deep in mud and mire, the men drenched, the tents soaked through, the mess and baggage animals miles in the rear, the column having to cross a nullah where the water ran like a mill-race, and there was the devil to pay!
Other anecdotes would have followed, but Hew, who had seen enough of India in reality too, proposed a move to the gun-room and thence to the covers.
'Time indeed to be off, gentlemen,' said the general, looking at his watch. 'Tunley, fill those flasks.'
'And have more sandwiches cut,' added Mrs. Garth.
'I shall cut them for Mr. Falconer; he is the only stranger here,' said Mary Montgomerie, hurrying to the sideboard, and proceeding deftly with her pretty hands to do so; while Cecil murmured his thanks, and tendered his silver case, or sandwich-box.
'Can't the cook do this?' growled Hew in her ear.
'Yes, but not half so well as I,' replied the girl, laughingly. 'I can be so expert when I choose, Hew.'
In the hall, where hung all manner of hats and greatcoats, plaids, whips, salmon-listers, whips and walking-sticks, Sir Piers assumed an old and well-worn wideawake, the band of which was usually garnished with hooks and flies, for he was as keen a sportsman with his rod and line as with his double-barrelled gun. And now the whole party set forth from the house, Cecil looking more than once to the soft faces of the two smiling girls, who, from the breakfast-room window, watched their departure.
His mind already was full of sweet Mary Montgomerie, and he would rather, a thousand times, have remained, to sun himself in the light of her winning eyes, than to toil through the damp covers to knock over a few rabbits or a brace of harmless birds; and he could but console himself by counting the hours that must inevitably elapse ere he could meet her again, and strive to endure them as best he might.
Hew detected one of these glances thrown back to 'the face at the window,' and remembering his ramble with Mary in the Dovecot Park, bit his nether lip; and before the day's shooting was over, Falconer had a specimen of what the amiable Hew might be capable of doing if provoked.
Preoccupied thus, Cecil Falconer thought that on this particular morning 'the Land of Burns' seemed uncommonly dreary. Mist was rolling along the valleys, and the landscape looked dank and moist through its medium.
Hew, who, though not ungentlemanlike in bearing, was, as we have said, naturally coarse in mind, and sometimes blunt in manner, the result of association with billiard-markers and stablemen, on seeing Falconer give another glance towards the house, said abruptly, and with what he meant to be a laugh:
'I don't think you can see her now.'
'Her—who?' asked Falconer, with surprise.
'Well, my cousin; for I think you evidently admire her.'
'An odd remark!' thought Cecil, looking a little annoyed; but he said, cordially:
'I do indeed admire her; who could fail to do so? But what leads you to infer that I do so more particularly?'
'By Jove! I saw that your eyes were seldom off her; but it is no use, Mr. Falconer,' said Hew, with a pretended genial laugh, 'as she has no eyes in reality—save for one fellow.'
'What the deuce can he mean?' thought Falconer, a little annoyed by the speaker's manner, which seemed to indicate advice or warning, or impertinence.
'You are cousins, then?' he merely said coldly.
'Well, of course, in a manner of way—rather remote, you know,' replied Hew, his closely-set eyes looking more shifty than ever, as he scraped a match and lighted a huge cigar; 'but blood is thicker than water, and it goes a long way in Scotch reckonings; and thus she naturally looks to me as the future head of the house,' he added complacently, 'as the heir of entail. And Mary is indeed handsome! There was no girl handsomer out last season, or when she was presented—I mean in the quiet and thoroughbred style.'
'What a cad this fellow is!' thought Falconer.
'Ah, you have looked admiringly back at the house,' said Sir Piers, who had another theory on the subject; 'the old tower is the part of it that is most to my taste. The cliff was called Eaglescraig, because ages ago a couple of gigantic eagles built a nest there every summer—a nest of branches and great sticks on the giddy verge of the cliff—and the vicinity of it was always found strewed with the bones of muirfowl, ptarmigan, rabbits, and even lambs. A poor man who lived near it made quite a subsistence for himself and his family, during a famine consequent on an English invasion, by robbing the eaglets of the food brought by the parents; and one day he found a little fair-skinned and golden-haired child therein, brought no one knew from where, by the male bird, but safe and sound. It grew to be a man of vast strength and stature, and he carried the banner of the Bailiwick at the battle of Largs—and certainly that field was not fought and won yesterday.'
The day was unquestionably a bleak one. The last few leaves were fluttering down from the bare trees, the branches and twigs of which stood blankly and darkly up against the dull grey sky; elsewhere the red and brown remnant of rustling foliage that still lingered on the oaks and ashes was thinned by every passing breeze; and even the gay cock pheasant, as he skimmed over the gorse to seek his food in the untilled land, might be heard to croak as he went.
Grim old Sandy Swanshot, the head-keeper, and his staff, had already traversed the covers; the muzzled ferrets had been down in the rabbit burrows, scaring forth the occupants; firm, stealthy, and quick-eyed, they drove them into the gorse or elsewhere, and now the earth had been stopped everywhere, barring all return to their well-known holes, which they would never find again.
The cottage of the keeper, old Sandy, a veteran sportsman, silver-haired and wrinkled, who had often carried the general's game-bag when they were both 'school laddies,' was a busy scene that morning. It was a thatched edifice, garlanded round with dead wild-cats, weasels, foumarts, hawks, and 'other vermin,' which in their decay tainted the winter air, and its occupant was old enough to remember when the system of shooting with muzzle-loaders was very different from what it is to-day; when a cover was beaten with a precision quite military, and when the order 'Halt! reload!' went down the line, every man, be he shooter or beater, had to stop where he was, until the last barrel had been charged anew; and the old man had a supreme contempt for the perilous style of blazing away that had come in with arms of precision and the slaughter of battues.
All the dogs around him seemed to know instinctively that they were about to take the field, and kept up a chorus of mingled whining and barking; and all the beaters were there, somewhat motley in aspect and appearance, but all doffing their bonnets respectfully, as Sir Piers came up with his 'guns' from the manor-house; and each of the latter underwent, unknown to himself, a critical scrutiny under the keen eyes of these practised fellows—his dress, his gun, his gaiters, his shot-belt, every buckle and strap being duly noticed and commented on.
We may hope that Cecil Falconer's bearing and equipment carried him through this unknown ordeal; but the old keeper, who had an instinctive dislike of Hew Montgomerie, whispered to him as a stranger, though Sandy was, in Scottish parlance, a dour carl:
'Gie him a wide berth in the cover, sir! Shooting? he might as well be ballooning!'
Sandy knew some of Hew's vagaries when at cover, such as shooting down the line of the beaters and his companions, letting fly at a bird whose flight was no higher than a man's head, fingering his trigger, heedless of whether the muzzle was pointed to the sky or the earth, and as careless of his friends as if they were clad in Milan mail; for he was one of those awkward fellows who had not even the simple prudence which Charles Dickens ascribes to the obese Mr. Tracy Tupman, when that personage discovered that his chief object was to fire his gun without danger to his friends, himself, or the dogs.
The covers of Eaglescraig were of considerable extent, and were well preserved and carefully looked after; and though Sir Piers, as he said, thought it very slow work compared with pig-sticking in six-foot-high jungle-grass, or potting a man-eater from a howdah, it was what suited him now, and in less than five minutes he had all his 'guns' in 'order of battle,' marshalled apart in a line of about a hundred and forty yards or so, the beaters being chequered in the gaps between the sportsmen.
Advancing thus, like skirmishers in extended order, on the right flank of the line, were masses of whin-bush (or gorse as it is called in England), displaying still here and there a golden flower; and away on the left the cover went deep into the dark recesses of a copse, under the tall red stems of Scottish firs, larch, and ash-trees.
Hew and Cecil were in this quarter, and a little in the rear was the keeper, the latter scanning the whole, as far as he well could, from flank to flank, rebuking from time to time, in his deep, broad Ayrshire Doric, any stupid beater who lagged behind, while the sharp crack of the guns woke the echoes of the dingles, which occasionally seemed to reply to quite an irregular volley.
Among the gorse the chief victims were ground game, but amid the coppice the ruddy golden-hued pheasants were momentarily flurried up, and arrested in their whirring flight by the crack of the fatal breechloader.
Ever and anon, the voice of the keeper was heard, with the prohibitory cry of—
''Ware hen—'ware hen, Master Hew!'
Among much other spoil, Cecil knocked over a fine cock-pheasant, which fell crashing down among the underwood in the agonies of death—a charge of shot in his gold-speckled breast.
'Why the deuce did you shoot my bird, sir?' demanded Hew with un courteous abruptness of Falconer.
'He thocht, perhaps, ye war gaun to miss it, as ye did the last twa, and the hare,' said the old keeper, drily.
'I beg your pardon,' replied Cecil quietly, as he reloaded; 'but that bird was mine.'
'It was not!' was the blunt and rude rejoinder.
Falconer coloured and bit his lip; but thought of his courtly old host, and desirous of avoiding a scene, simply said:
'Let us keep further apart, Mr. Montgomerie.'
'As far off as you please,' added Hew ungraciously, and moving further away to his left.
Cecil continued to work his way between the crowded fir and larch stems, which, by receiving many a charge of shot, saved the birds that hovered beyond them, the voice of the keeper crying ever and anon: 'Mark cock!' 'Hare forward!' ''Ware hen.' 'A hare for you, Master Hew—a miss again!' 'Come to heel, Countess—come to heel!' the latter, with the vicious whack of a whip, was directed to one of the pointers.
While Cecil was inwardly laughing at Hew's wild shooting, a charge of shot from the right whizzed past his face and tore away the rim of his hat.
A natural exclamation of rage and alarm escaped him, as he had so narrowly escaped having his sight destroyed or his face disfigured for life, and looking whence the shot came, he saw Hew gently slipping another cartridge into the breech of his gun, under cover of a great Scottish fir with a red gnarled stem.
'I shall thank you, sir, to keep your muzzle up, or quit the ground!' said Falconer, angrily.
'It was a devil of a mistake—and I beg your pardon,' replied Hew, giving his cold damp hand to Cecil, who saw—or thought he saw—a quiet twinkle of mingled malice and amusement in the speaker's bilious eye.
'Blundering fool! Could he have meant it? Looks deuced like it—but why?' thought the young officer more angrily, as he thought over the matter.
'He weel-nigh shot Sir Piers in the same unco fashion, sir,' grumbled the old keeper; while Cecil now changed his ground again, and for actual safety kept closer to Hew than ever.
Four long beats through the covers brought luncheon-time, and while flasks and sandwiches were produced, the slain were counted as they were laid in long rows on the side of a grassy bank, each keeper, as he came up in succession, adding his quota to the general stock, all furred and feathered victims from the covers of Eaglescraig, and so numerous, that the sportsmen thought enough had been done for one day.
'I may deem myself lucky that I was not added to your bag to-day, Mr. Montgomerie,' said Cecil, laughing, but not with genuine hilarity.
'What! has Hew been at his old tricks again?' asked Sir Piers, with an air of annoyance.
'E'en sae, sir,' said Sandy, taking a flask from his mouth, 'firing doon the line as before.'
'My gun exploded unexpectedly, sir,' said Hugh, with a sullen look; 'I explained to Mr. Falconer, and he has accepted my apology.'
Something in his manner caused this episode to rankle in the memory of Cecil.
'By Jove, I think the cad had intended to pot me, after all!' was his occasional thought, and he never precisely forgot or forgave the suspicion—one too grave in its diabolical spirit of mischief and cruelty to be dismissed lightly; and though he laughed at some jokes made by old Mr. Balderstone on the matter, he really saw nothing to laugh at in it, and was very well pleased when the whole party bent their steps homeward—all the more pleased when he thought of the pleasant society that awaited him.
Falconer began to wonder whether he was actually falling in love already with the beautiful grand-niece of his host. He had never believed much in 'that sort of thing,' at first sight especially; but he was young and impressionable; he possessed a keen imagination, and he already caught himself weaving mental conversations with her—conversations in which tender little speeches came involuntarily, though unuttered, to his lips, and soft smiles hovered on hers, when she seemed to hear them; but when—after changing his muddy shooting-costume for another—he joined the ladies in the drawing-room, remembering the almost rude remarks of Hew Montgomerie, Cecil, in approaching Mary, or conversing with her, had an angry sense of being watched, or observed, by that personage; though a time came when he ceased to think or care on the subject.
And who was 'the one fellow' for whom she had only eyes, as Hew had vulgarly phrased it? Most probably Hew meant himself! If so, Cecil thought that she cloaked or concealed her partiality with wonderful discretion.
To avoid interfering with that gentleman's views or wishes, Cecil gave much of his attention to Annabelle Erroll, and even to 'the old soldier,' as Hew called Mrs. Garth; but Mary summoned him to her side to see Snarley put through all his performances, such as leaping over her interlaced hands as through a ring, walking erect round the room for a lump of sugar, tossing another high off his sharp nose at the word of command, to catch it with a snap in its descent, and so forth, all the while he did so eyeing Cecil with undisguised hostility.
And eventually the evening closed in like the preceding one (save that old Sir Piers, worn out with his day's sport, had fallen asleep in an easy-chair, with a handkerchief spread over his face), with music and duet-singing, and pleasant conversation, ere some of the visitors rose to depart.
That there should be so much duet-singing, and Mary's occupation with the stranger, and that the general conversation was of a kind in which he could bear no prominent part, disgusted Hew, who was in a detestable humour; yet he had the policy to conceal it pretty well (though his bilious eye was more bilious than ever) till once, he drew near Mary, while Cecil, in another part of the room, was occupied with old Mrs. Garth, who was relating with great unction some memory of the Cameronians in her day; and now Hew's ready jealousy became painfully apparent.
'Good heavens, Hew!' said Mary, in a low voice, her dark eyes dilating as she spoke; 'what is this Mr. Balderstone has told us?'
'Can't say, for the life of me; the old pump!'
'That you nearly shot Mr. Falconer to-day in the Fir Wood.'
'Did I? Well, the blundering fellow was out of his proper place, I suppose,' was the sulky rejoinder.
'What a dreadful thing if you had injured him! Hew! you are positively dangerous.'
'My dear Mary, you deem him an Admirable Crichton, I doubt not,' said he, smilingly, in her ear.
'What do you deem him?'
'Slow and deuced ugly.'
'Ugly—oh, come, Hew!' said Mary, laughing very merrily at such undisguised jealousy, which somehow did not flatter her in the least—it was too comical.
'I have no doubt our "old soldier" here deems him a very eligible parti for anyone; a subaltern, with two shirts a week and a few dickies, by Jove!' he continued.
'How—how coarse you are!' said Mary, with her silvery laugh again; 'but don't let grand-uncle hear you sneering thus. He, too, was a subaltern once.'
'Yes, but with the rent-roll of Eaglescraig! I wish him well out of our neighbourhood anyway,' he added threateningly.
'Why, what harm has he done you?'
'None as yet,' replied Hew, getting more sulky than ever; 'but I may harm him!’
'If he comes in my way with you, Mary, or anyone else—understand that clearly, cousin.'
Mary's brow darkened, and a haughty expression, not unmixed with alarm, stole into her hazel eyes and soft face, as she said, while quickly using her fan:
'Hew, you forget yourself, and me too! How dare you adopt this tone?'
'Don't think to make a fool of me, Mary.'
'Impossible, sir!'
'You think so?'
'Yes. Nature has been before me,' she replied, as she rose and swept across the room to the side of old Mr. Balderstone.
The eyes of Hew, like those of Uriah Heep, 'seemed to take any shade of colour that could make eyes ugly,' as they followed her beautiful figure, and a savage emotion gathered in his avaricious heart as he felt that the chances of his wooing with success—a wooing that was without pure love—were receding further away than ever; but whatever were his thoughts, to show that there was no bad feeling between Cecil Falconer and himself, after all had retired to rest that night, he invited the former to have a quiet little game of écarté in the smoking-room—a game from which the Cameronian did not, somehow, come away a winner.