Part 19 (2/2)
Lord Fareborough glared at the culprit as if he expected to see the heavens fall upon him; but Lady Adela observed, with a touch of dignity,
”I hope I know Captain Waveney well enough not to believe that he would turn any religious service into a practical joke.”
”I hope so, too, Lady Adela,” the dapper little captain instantly replied, though without any great embarra.s.sment. ”That's hardly my line of country. But there's another thing: Sir Hugh may ask you to believe anything, but he won't make you believe that I could trifle with such a sacred subject as the morning of the Twelfth.”
”Faith, you're right there, Waveney,” Sir Hugh said, with a laugh.
”Well, we've done our best to make up for the loss of time. And now, Rose, if you want to have your sketch, fire away! I'm going to light a pipe; but, mind, we sha'n't stop here very long. You'd better put in us men at once; and then you can draw in the ladies and the game and the luncheon at your leisure.”
”And if you want me, Rose,” Honnor Cunyngham said, ”please put me in at once, too; for I'm going away back to the Horseshoe Pool.”
”My dear child,” Lady Adela protested, ”you'll break your neck some day going down that Bad Step. I really think Hugh should have a windla.s.s at the top and let people down by a rope. Now look alive, Rose, and get your sketch begun; I can see the gentlemen are all impatient to be off.
And mind you have Mr. Moore rolling up a cigarette: it won't be natural otherwise.”
She was right about one thing, anyway; the sportsmen were undoubtedly impatient to be off; and it is to be feared that Lady Rosamund's sketch suffered by the restlessness of her models. Indeed, after a very little while, Lord Fareborough indignantly rose, and declared he never had known a Twelfth of August so shamelessly sacrificed. He, for one, would have no more of it. He called to the under-keeper to bring along the gillies and the dogs; whereupon Lady Rosamund, who had a temper not quite in consonance with the calm and statuesque beauty of her features, closed her sketch-book and threw it aside, saying she would make the drawing some other day when she found the gentlemen a little more considerate.
And soon Lionel and his two companions were at their brisk occupation again; though ever and anon his thoughts would go wandering away to the Horseshoe Pool, and his fancy was picturing the fisher-maiden on the summit of a great gray boulder, while a fifteen-pounder raced and chased in the black deeps below. Sometimes he tried to get a glimpse of the upper stretches of the river; but this was a dangerous trick when all his attention was demanded by the work on hand. In any case his scrutiny of those far regions was unavailing; for the Horseshoe Pool is on the Geinig, a tributary of the Aivron, and not visible from the hill-slopes along which they were now shooting.
The bag mounted up steadily; for the afternoon, despite the threats of the morning, remained fine and clear and still; the birds lay close, and the two outside guns were skilful performers. As for Lionel, he had now acquired a certain confidence; he took no shame that he reserved for himself the easy shots; the nasty ones he could safely leave to his companions. At last, as they came in sight of a lovely little tarn lying under a distant hillock, and could descry two small dots floating on the surface of the water, Sir Hugh said to his head keeper,
”See here, Roderick, are those duck or mergansers?”
The keeper took a long look before he made reply.
”I'm not sure, Sir Hugh, but I am thinking they are mergansers, for I was seeing two or three lately.”
”Very well, call in the dogs. I'm going to sit down and have a pipe. I suppose you'll do the same, Mr. Moore--though I must say this for you that you can walk. You have the advantage of youth, and you haven't as much to carry as I have. Well, I propose we have a few minutes' rest?
and we will occupy ourselves in watching Waveney stalk those mergansers.
There's a job for you, Waveney. They are the most detestable birds alive to have near a forest or a salmon-stream.”
”Why, what harm can they do to the salmon?” Lionel asked, as he saw Captain Waveney at once change the cartridges in his gun for No. 4's and set off down the hillside.
”They snap up the parr, of course,” said his heavy-shouldered host, as he drew out a wooden pipe and a pouch of black Cavendish, ”but that isn't the worst: they disturb the pools most abominably--swimming about under water they frighten the salmon out of their senses. But when you get them about a deer-forest they are a still more intolerable nuisance; you are never safe; just as you are getting up to the stag, creeping along the course of a burn, perhaps, bang! goes one of those brutes like a sky-rocket, and the whole herd are instantly on the alert. Oh, that's a job old Waveney likes well enough; and it will give the dogs a rest as well as ourselves.”
By this time the stalker had got out of sight. He was making a considerable detour, so as to get round by the back of the hillock un.o.bserved; and when he came into view again, he was on the other side of the valley. The mergansers, if they were mergansers, were still swimming about unsuspectingly, though sometimes at a considerable distance apart.
”Does Miss Cunyngham shoot as well as fish?” Lionel ventured to ask.
”She has tried it,” her brother said, as he called up Roderick and gave him a dram out of his capacious flask. ”And I think she might shoot very well, but she doesn't care about it. It is too violent, she says. The sudden bang disturbs the charm of the scenery--something of that kind--I'm not up in these things; but she's an odd kind of girl.
Tremendously fond of quietude and solitude; we've found her in the most unexpected places--and there _are_ some lonely places about these hills.
I tell her she shouldn't go on these long excursions without taking old Robert with her; supposing she were to sprain her ankle, she might have to remain there all night and half the next day before we could find her. Sooner or later I know she'll startle some solitary shepherd out of his senses: he'll come back to his hut swearing that he has seen a Gray Lady where no mortal woman could be. Hullo, there's Waveney again--he'll soon be on them.”
They could see him stealing across the top of the hillock, and then making his way down behind certain rocks that served as a screen between him and the birds. Then he disappeared again.
”Why doesn't he fire?” Lionel asked, presently. ”He must be quite close to them.”
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