But it was not Lionel who needed any incitement to go forward; he was far more eager than any of his companions, now that he had been acquitting himself none so ill. Moreover, he had youth on his side and a sound chest, while nature had not given him a pair of well-formed calves for nothing; so that he faced the steep hillsides or got over the rough ground with comparative ease, rejoicing the while in the unwonted freedom of knickerbockers. It was Sir Hugh, with his bulky habit of body, who got blown now and again; as for Captain Waveney, he was a pretty tough subject and wiry. So they fought bravely on, to atone for the inhuman detention of the morning; and by the time it was necessary to make for the appointed luncheon rendezvous they had the wherewithal to give a very excellent account of themselves.
Now, several times during the morning they had come in view of the Aivron, winding far below them through the wide strath, or narrowing to a thread as it rose towards the high horizon-line in the west; and always, when there was a momentary chance, Lionel"s eye had sought these distant sweeps and bends for some glimpse of the lonely angler-maiden, and sought in vain. The long valley seemed empty; and some little feeling of shyness prevented his asking his companions to point out the Junction Pool, whither, as he understood, she had been bound in the morning. And as they now approached the appointed place of meeting, he was quite disturbed by the fancy that she might have strayed away into unknown regions and be absent from this general picnic; and the moment they came in sight of the group of people who were strolling about, or looking on while the servants spread out the table-cloth on the heather and brought forth the various viands, one swift glance told him she was not present. Here was a disappointment! He wanted to tell her how he had got on, under her kind instruction--this was his own explanation of the pang her absence caused him; but presently he had found another; for Lady Rosamund was grouping the people for her sketch; and what would the sketch be without Honnor Cunyngham in it? He made bold to say so.
"Oh, you can"t depend on Honnor," Lady Adela said. "She may have risen a fish, or may have got hold of one. But if you want to know whether she is likely to turn up, you might go out to that point, Mr. Moore, and then you"ll be able to see whether she is coming anywhere near the Bad Step."
Willingly enough he went down through the scattered birch-trees to a projecting point overlooking the river from a very considerable height; and there, right below him, he discovered what it was they called the Bad Step. The precipice on which he stood going sheer down into the Aivron, the path along the stream left the banks some distance off, came up to where he stood, and then descended again by a deep gorge probably cut by water-power through the slaty rock. And even as he was regarding this twilit chasm it suddenly appeared to him that there were two figures away down there, crossing the burn at the foot; and then one of them, in gray--unmistakably the fisher-maiden herself--began the ascent.
How she managed to obtain a footing he could not make out; for the path was no path, but merely a zig-zag track on the surface of the loose shingle--shingle so loose that he could see it yield to her every step, while the debris rolled away down to the bed of the burn. But still she fought her way upward, and at last she stood face to face with him, smiling, but a little breathless.
"That"s a frightful place to come up," said he.
"Oh, it"s nothing, when you know it," she said, lightly. "Tell me, how did you get on this morning?"
"Thanks to you, I think I did pretty well," said he.
"I"m awfully glad of that," said she; and the soft, clear hazel eyes repeated her words in their own transparent way.
"I remembered all your instructions," he continued (and he was in no hurry that Miss Cunyngham should go on to the luncheon-party; while old Robert stood patiently by). "And I was very fortunate in getting easy shots. Then when I did miss, either Sir Hugh or Captain Waveney was sure to get the bird? I never saw such smart shooting."
"What have you done?"
"Altogether?"
"Yes."
"I don"t know. The panniers are being emptied, to make a show for Lady Rosamund"s sketch. I fancy there are close on sixty brace of grouse, with some blue hares and a snipe and a wild duck."
"What has Lord Fareborough"s party done?"
"I don"t know? they have just shown up--so you needn"t hurry on unless you are hungry."
"But I am--very hungry," said she, with a laugh. "I have been hard at work all the morning."
"Oh, in that case," he said, eagerly, "by all means come along, and I"ll get you something at once. You and I needn"t wait for the emptying of the other panniers. Oh, yes, that will do first-rate; I"m a duffer at shooting, you know, Miss Cunyngham, but I"m a splendid forager at a picnic. Let me carry the gaff for you."
"Oh, no, thank you," she said, "I merely use it as a walking-stick coming up the Bad Step."
"And there," he exclaimed, as they went on through the birch-wood, "look at the selfishness of men! You ask all about my shooting; but I never asked what luck you had with your fishing."
"Well, I"ve had rather bad luck," she said, simply. "I lost a fish in the Geinig Pool, after having him on for about five minutes, and I rose another in the Horse-Shoe Pool and couldn"t get him to come again all I could do. But I mean to call upon him in the afternoon."
A sudden inspiration flashed into his brain.
"I should like to come and see you try for him," he said, quickly. "I suppose they wouldn"t mind my sending home my gun?"
"Mr. Moore!" she said, with her eyes downcast. "They"d think you were mad to leave a shooting-party on the Twelfth. You can see a salmon caught, or catch one yourself, any time."
He felt a little bit snubbed, he hardly knew why; but of course she knew what was right in all such things; and so he humbly acquiesced. Indeed, he could not contest the point, for now they had come upon the picnic-party, where luncheon was in full swing. Lord Fareborough had declared on his arrival that he would not wait for the completion of his daughter"s sketch; his nervous system was not to be tried in any such fashion; luncheon must be proceeded with at once, and Lady Rosamund could make her drawing when the gentlemen were smoking afterwards. Lady Adela wanted to wait for Mr. Moore, but she, too, was overruled by the impatient hypochondriac. So Lionel set to work to form a seat for Miss Honnor, out of some bracken that the gillies had cut and brought along; and also he exclusively looked after her--to Miss Georgie Lestrange"s chagrin; for Lord Rockminster was too lazy to attend to any one but himself, and what girl likes being waited on by her brother when other young men are about?
And now the burly and broad-shouldered host of all these people called on them to unanimously forgive the minister for the injury he had unintentionally done them in the morning.
"It wasn"t the good man"s fault at all; it was Waveney"s," Sir Hugh continued, as he got hold of a spoon and delved it into a pigeon-pie. "I a.s.sure you it was a practical joke that Captain Waveney played upon the whole of you. He gave the minister a little hint--and the thing was done."
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."