ON THE MOORS
Nearly a year had passed since Nasmyth’s return when Lisle at length reached England. Soon after his arrival, he was, as Nasmyth’s guest, invited to join a shooting party, and one bright afternoon he stood behind a bank of sods high on a grouse-moor overlooking the wastes of the Border. The heath was stained with the bell-heather’s regal purple, interspersed with the vivid red of the more fragile ling, and where the uplands sloped away broad blotches of the same rich colors checkered the grass. In the foreground a river gleamed athwart the picture, and overhead there stretched an arch of cloudless blue. There was no wind; the day was still and hot.
A young lad whose sunburned face already bore the stamp of self-indulgence was stationed behind the butt with Lisle, and the latter was not favorably impressed with his appearance or conversation.
“Look out,” he cautioned by and by. “You were a little slow last time. They travel pretty fast.”
Lisle picked up his gun; he had used one in the West, though he was more accustomed to the rifle. Cutting clear against the dazzling sky, a straggling line of dark specks was moving toward him, and a series of sharp cracks broke out from the farther wing of the row of butts, which stretched across the moor. Lisle watched the birds, with fingers tightening on his gun; one cluster was coming his way, each flitting body growing in size and distinctness with marvelous rapidity. Then there was a flash beside him, and another crash as he pitched up his gun. Something struck the heather with a thud not far away, and swinging the muzzle a little, he pulled again. He was not surprised to hear a second thud, and laying down his gun he turned to his youthful companion, while a thin cloud of acrid vapor hung about him.
“Get anything?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” was the sullen answer. “Couldn’t expect it with the second barrel, after you’d filled the place with smoke. Wonder why Gladwyne’s man gave you the old black powder?”
As nearly everybody else used smokeless, this was a point that had aroused Lisle’s curiosity, though it was not a matter of much importance. Nasmyth had provided him with cartridges, but they had somehow been left behind, and on applying to Gladwyne’s keeper he had been supplied with ammunition which, it seemed, was out of date.
“After all, you have done well enough,” his companion resumed. “We’d better get on to our next station—it’s right across the moor on the high ridge yonder. Don’t bother about the birds.”
“Shall I leave them there?”
“Certainly! Do you want to carry them all the afternoon? One of the keeper fellows will bring them along.”
The lad’s tone was half contemptuous; he had already shown that he considered the Canadian what he would have called an outsider; but he was willing to make use of him.
“You might look after Bella; she’s alone in the next butt—and I’ve something else to do,” he said. “There’s an awkward ghyll to cross and she won’t carry anything lighter than a 14-gun. See she doesn’t leave the cartridges in it.”
He strode away across the heather, and Lisle turned toward the turf shelter indicated. As he approached it, a girl appeared and glanced at him with very obvious curiosity; but as he supposed that she was the sister of his late companion he did not expect any diffidence from her. She was short in stature and slight in figure, and dressed in grayish brown; hat, coat, and remarkably short skirt all of the same material. Her hair was of a copper color; her eyes, which were rather narrow, of a pale grayish-green. He would have called them hard, and there was a hint of arrogance in her expression. Yet she was piquantly pretty.
“I suppose you’re Nasmyth’s Canadian friend?” she began, and went on without waiting for an answer: “As we occupy adjoining butts on the next drive, you may take my gun. Teddy has deserted me.”
“Teddy?” queried Lisle, who wondered if she were referring to her brother. “I thought his name was Jim.”
“It’s Marple’s stout friend with the dyed hair I mean. I told him what would happen if he ate as he persisted in doing at lunch. It’s too hot to gormandize; I wasn’t astonished when he collapsed at the steep place on the last walk. Reflecting that it was his own fault, I left him.”
Lisle was not charmed with the girl’s manners, but he could not check a smile.
“Are you tired? You oughtn’t to be,” she continued with another bold glance at him.
“No,” he replied; “if it’s any consolation to you, I’m far from exhausted yet.”
“That’s reassuring,” she retorted. “You haven’t taken my gun.”
Having forgotten it for the moment, he flushed a little, and she watched him with unconcealed amusement while he opened the weapon and took out the cartridges.
“What’s that for?” she asked impertinently. “It’s hammerless; there’s nothing to catch.”
“The pull-off’s probably very light, if it’s been made for a lady’s use. It’s sometimes possible to jar the strikers down when they set the springs to yield at a touch.”
“Then you know something about guns?” she said, as if she had not expected this.
“Not a great deal about the scatter kind, though I’ve stripped a few.”
“We never do that,” she informed him. “We send them to London. Still, you’re right; the gun did go off when I knocked it jumping down from a wall.”
“If you’ll let me have it to-night, I’ll alter that. I understand we’re going out again to-morrow.”
She considered a moment.
“Well,” she consented, with the air of one conferring a favor, “you may take it when we’ve finished.”
Lisle wondered what had prompted him to make the offer. The way she had addressed him was not ingratiating, but he delighted in examining any fine mechanism and he had never handled such a beautifully made weapon.
They plodded on side by side through the heather, which was long and matted, and presently, seeing that she was breathless, he stopped on the crest of a higher rise and once more looked about with keen appreciation.
In front of him the crimson and purple heath was rent and fissured, and in the deep gaps washed out by heavy rains the peat gleamed a warm chocolate-brown. Elsewhere, patches of moss shone with an emerald brightness, and there were outcrops of rock tinted lustrous gray and silver with lichens. Below, near the foot of the moor, ran a straight dark line of firs, the one coldly-somber streak in the scene; but beyond it the rolling, sunlit plain ran back, fading through ever varying and softening colors to the hazy blue heights of Scotland.
Lisle’s companion noticed his intent expression.
“It is rather fine up here,” she conceded. “I sometimes feel it’s almost a pity one couldn’t live among the heather. Certain things would be easier on these high levels.”
“Yes?” interrogated Lisle, slightly puzzled and astonished.
“You’re obviously from the woods,” she smiled. “If you had spent a few years among my friends, you would understand. I was referring to the cultivation of ideas and manners which seem to be considered out of date now.”
Lisle made no reply to this, but he glanced too directly at a red stain on her hand.
“Blood,” she explained. “I had a bet with Alan that I’d get a brace more than Flo; that’s why I went after a cripple running in the ling. It wasn’t dead when I picked it up—rather horrid, wasn’t it?”
The man was conscious of some disgust. She looked very young and, slight as she was, her figure was prettily rounded and she had a soft, kittenish gracefulness; but she spoke with the assurance of a dowager. Though he had killed and cut up many a deer, he shrank from the small red stain on her delicate hand. She saw it and laughed, and then with a sudden change of mood she stooped and swiftly rubbed her fingers in the heather.
“Now,” she said sharply, “if you’re sufficiently rested, we’ll go on.”
Lisle moved away, but he asked a question:
“Do many girls shoot in this country?”
“No,” she answered with a mocking smile; “not so many, after all. That’s comforting, isn’t it? This kind of thing is hard work, and damaging to the complexion.”
Presently they came to a wall, and Lisle stopped in some uncertainty. It was as high as his shoulders and built of loose, rough stones.
“Get over,” she ordered him. “Then pull a lot of it down.”
He did so, making, though he endeavored to avoid this, a rather wide hole.
She scrambled through agilely and then regarded him with surprise as he proceeded to replace the stones.
“Why are you doing that?” she asked.
“There are sheep up here.”
“Too many, considering that it’s a grouse-moor; but what of it? They don’t belong to us.”
“They belong to somebody who would rather they didn’t stray,” Lisle rejoined. “In the country I come from, it’s considered a serious transgression to knock over another person’s fence and not put it up again.”
He calmly went on with his task, and sitting down she took out a silver cigarette-case. After a minute or two she looked up at him.
“You’re doing that very neatly,” she remarked.
“I’ve done something of the kind for a living,” Lisle informed her.
“Oh! It’s curious that you seem proud of it. In this case, I don’t mind your keeping me, because they can’t drive up the birds until we have crossed the higher moor. It will annoy Gladwyne and his keeper, and I’m not pleased with either of them. I wanted Flo Marple’s station at the first butts.”
Lisle considered this. He had wondered why she had favored him with her company, when, although her previous companion had deserted her, she could by hurrying a little have joined the others. The butts were not spaced very far apart. Their late occupants had, however, now vanished into a dip of the moor. He asked himself why a girl with her assurance should have troubled to offer him an explanation.
When he had finished the repairs to the wall, they went on, and a little later he heard a sharp “Cruck—cruck-curruck,” to one side of him. Swinging around, he saw a grouse skimming the heather.
“A pair of gloves to a sovereign that you miss!” cried his companion.
The bird was flying fast; Lisle had to load, and by the time he had snapped in a cartridge it was a long range. This, however, was somewhat in his favor, as he was better used to the rifle. There was a flash and the bird struck the heath. The girl glanced at him in unveiled appreciation.
“A clean kill!” she exclaimed. “You have won the gloves; and you’ll deserve them before you have heard the last of this incident. I suppose you don’t know that you shouldn’t have fired a shot except from behind the butts.”
She watched his expression with open amusement.
“You don’t like to ask why I tempted you,” she went on. “It was to vex the keeper; you may have turned back the birds the beaters are driving up.”
“Thanks for the information,” Lisle said coolly. “Do you mind my inquiring whether you would have taken the sovereign in case I’d missed? As you suggested, I’m lately from the wilds.”
“Of course!” she mocked. “I could have had it drilled and worn it on a chain!”
The man made no comment as they went on. Presently they came to a deep rift in the moor through which a stream leaped sparkling. The girl scrambled down, waist-deep in yellow fern, but the other side was steep and stony and she was glad of help when he held out his hand. They made the ascent with some difficulty and on reaching the summit she looked around, breathless.
“This is a romantic spot, if you’re interested in the legends of the Border,” she told him.
“I am,” Lisle said; and she sat down among the heather.
“It’s an excuse for a rest,” she confessed. “The old moss-troopers used to ride this way to ravage Cumberland. It was advisable for them to follow hidden paths among the moors, and once an interesting little skirmish took place among those brakes down the hollow.”
She pointed toward a spot where the ravine widened into a level strip of quaggy grass and moss which glowed a brilliant emerald. On either side of it a gnarled and stunted growth of alders and birches fringed the foot of the steep slopes, and between them the stream spread out across a stretch of milk-white stones. The hollow was flooded with light and filled with the soft murmur of running water.
“It would be a strong place to hold, if the defenders had time to choose their ground,” Lisle remarked.
“So it proved,” replied his companion. “Well, once upon a time, a bold Scots reaver, riding south, saw a maid who pleased him near a Cumberland pele. His admiration was not reciprocated, but he came again, often, though being an armed thief by profession there was a price upon his head. It is stated that on each occasion he returned unaccompanied by any of the cattle belonging to his lady’s relatives, which was an unusual piece of forbearance. In those days, men must have been able to disassociate business from their love-making.”
“Don’t they do so now?” Lisle inquired lazily.
She looked at him with a smile which had a hint of real bitterness in its light mockery.
“Not often, one would imagine. Perhaps they can’t be blamed—I’m afraid we’re all given to cultivating dreadfully expensive tastes. No doubt, when it was needful, the Border chieftain of the story could live on oatmeal and water, and instead of buying pedigree hunters he probably stole his pony. He haunted the neighborhood of the pele until the maid became afraid and urged her kinsmen to rid her of him. Several of them tried and failed—which wasn’t surprising.”
“Love made him invulnerable?” Lisle suggested.
“No,” retorted his companion. “A man with a heart constant and stout enough to face the risks he ran would be hard to kill. When you read between the lines, it’s a moving tale. Think of the long, perilous rides he made through an enemy’s land, all for a glance at his disdainful lady! They watched the fords in those days, but neither brawling rivers nor well-mounted horsemen could stop him. At last, he came one night with a dozen spears, broke in the barmkin gate and carried her off. All her relatives rode hard after them and came up with them in this ghyll. Then there happened what was, in one way, a rather remarkable thing—the abducted maid firmly declined to be rescued. There was a brisk encounter, I believe two or three were killed; but she rode off to Scotland with her lover. I suppose I needn’t point the moral?”
“I can see only the ancient one—that it’s unwise to take a lady’s ‘No’ as conclusive,” Lisle ventured.
She laughed at him in a daring manner.
“The pity is that we haven’t often a chance of saying it to any one worth while. But I’ll express the moral in a prettier way—sometimes disinterested steadfastness and real devotion count with us. Unfortunately, they’re scarce.”
There was a challenge in her glance, but the man, not knowing what was expected of him, made no answer. At first he had been almost repelled by the girl, but he was becoming mildly interested in her. She could, he thought, be daring to the verge of coarseness, and he did not admire her pessimism, which was probably a pose; but there was a vein of elfish mischief in her that appealed to him. Sitting among the heather, small, lithe, and felinely graceful, watching him with a provocative smile in her rather narrow eyes, she compelled his attention.
“Well,” she laughed, “you’re not much of a courtier. But doesn’t that story bring you back into touch with elemental things—treacherous mosses, dark nights, flooded rivers, passion, peril, dauntlessness? Now we’re wrapped about with empty futilities.”
He understood part of what was in her mind and sympathized with it. He had lived close to nature in stern grapple with her unbridled forces. From women he demanded no more than beauty or gentleness; but a man, he thought, should for a time, at least, be forced to learn the stress and joy of the tense struggle with cold and hunger, heat and thirst, on long marches or in some dogged attack on rock and flood. He had only contempt for the well-fed idlers who lounged through life, not always, as he suspected, even gracefully. These, however, were ideas he had no intention of expressing.
“There are still people who have to face realities in the newer lands; and I dare say you have some in this country, on your railroads and in your mines, for example,” he said. “But hadn’t we better be getting on?”
They left the brink of the hollow and plodded through the heather toward where a row of butts stood beneath a lofty ridge of the moor. A man appeared from behind one as they approached and glanced at them with unconcealed disapproval.
“Couldn’t you have got here earlier, Bella?” he asked. “In another few minutes you’d have spoiled the drive—the birds can’t be far off the dip of the ridge. Hardly fair to the keepers or the rest of us to take these risks, is it?”
“When I do wrong, I never confess it, Clarence,” the girl replied. “You ought to know that by now.”
Lisle heard the name and became suddenly intent—this was Clarence Gladwyne! There was no doubt that he was a handsome man. He was tall and held himself finely; he had a light, springy figure, with dark eyes and hair. Besides, there was a certain stamp of refinement or fastidiousness upon him which was only slightly spoiled by the veiled hint of languid insolence in his expression.
“I heard a shot,” he resumed.
“I’ve no doubt you did,” the girl agreed. “An old cock grouse got up in front of us—it was irresistibly tempting.”
Gladwyne turned to Lisle with a slight movement of his shoulders which was somehow expressive of half-indulgent contempt.
“You’re Nasmyth’s friend from Canada? I guess you don’t understand these things, but you might have made the birds break back,” he said. “However, we must get under cover now—there’s your butt. I’ll see you later.”
He turned away and Lisle took up his station behind the wall of turf pointed to. He had once upon a time been forcibly rebuked for his clumsiness at some unaccustomed task in the Canadian bush and had not resented it, but the faint movement of Gladwyne’s shoulders had brought a warmth to his face. The girl noticed this.
“Clarence can be unpleasant when he likes, but there are excuses for him,” she said. “A day’s shooting is one of the things we take seriously, and manners are not at a higher premium here than I suppose they are in the wilds.”
Lisle made no response, and there was silence on the sun-steeped moor until a row of small dark objects skimming the crest of the ridge above became silhouetted against the sky. Then a gun cracked away to the right and in another moment a dropping fusillade broke out.