CHAPTER XXVIII.
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.