A few Cocks and some Rabbits.
The shooting season is drawing to a close. One can almost fancy that there is a touch of spring in the air. The long frost has gone at last, and the thoughts of bird and beast are turning once more towards love and war. Far above us in the rocking elms, the rooks are noisily putting their own houses in order, and thievishly beggaring their neighbours. The partridges, no longer huddled together in thinned coveys, their feathers so fluffed out that they look double their natural size, have here and there already paired off. Old George, the keeper, reports that another twenty or thirty cocks can be spared, and that during the frost the hungry rabbits have been working havoc among the young trees. They must be thinned, or something is sure to be said presently on the subject of damages.
So a day is fixed for a last shoot, and, making an early start, four old friends walk across the quiet fields towards the Big Wood. Two guns are placed forward, and two walk with the beaters. I am one of the former, and, left to myself, the mystery of the Big Wood gets into my bones, and I begin to dream dreams. The silence is absolute. Presently, a tinted cloud of long-tailed tits invade the bushes round me, eager to discover an atom of greenery, and, if they do, quite prepared—if I may be allowed a forlorn little joke—to nip it in the bud. They remind one of a troop of lesson-freed children raiding the strawberry beds, in the hope that some early fruit may happily be found, ripe enough, in their very liberal interpretation of the term, to eat. My covert is drawn blank, so the tits are off, with a scolding complaint, to try their luck elsewhere.... Two rabbits, unconscious of impending fate, chase each other far down the ride which stretches before me. Silence reigns once more. Then, long before I can hear the beaters, pat, pat, pat, come some halting footsteps over the carpet of leaves. It is a wary old cock pheasant, already on the alert, and by no means unconscious of trouble ahead. He looks inky black in the shadow. He runs forward a few yards, then stops to listen; on again to the right, but, not satisfied, bustles back. An excursion to the left, but scenting danger there, he is back again. Then, irresolute, he stands facing me in the sunlight, with his bright eyes and gorgeous coat of many colours. He has played this game many times, and so far his head has kept his life. With my back to a tree, I do not move an eyelid, but he sees me, or smells my pipe, and back for good and all he scuttles, head down, with the evident intention of executing a flank movement to the rear. There is a cry of “cock back,” in the direction in which my friend disappears, but no answering gun. I like to think that the wicked old rascal has once more out-manœuvred us, and saved his skin. As the beaters push on, all the guns become busy. The bunnies are hustled noisily forward, and in the comparatively open space are bowled over, or, bolting back, have a shade of odds in their favour, some of them, I am afraid, being “picked off the beaters’ toes.” Hens come whistling over, offering most tempting shots. B., on my left, crumples up a very high one, because, he says, she had a leg down. Beaters and the other guns now emerge, and the slain are laid out and counted. Twenty-five rabbits, two cocks, a hare, and B.’s hen. Old George eyes her and B. suspiciously, and, feeling her all over, mutters “he didn’t see no leg down.” Nearly all the cocks have run on, but will be cornered presently. So the day wears on, monotonously delightful, one beat in the Big Wood being very much like another. But at lunch there seems to be some mystery in the air. Our host and old George are to be seen whispering together like conspirators; old George’s ribston pippin of a face screwed up into something as near a grin as it ever wears, while our host looks humorously perplexed. I notice afterwards that we leave out a certain beat, and call old George’s attention to the omission. “Never you mind Muster A., you go where you’re told,” is all I get for my pains. The old man still treats me as if I were about ten, the age at which he began to teach me to shoot. The mystery remained one until after dinner that night, when our host let the cat out of the bag, under solemn vows of secrecy. That beat was left out because in it lay a fine dog fox, shot through the head by the Master who was out with us, and who had shot at a rabbit in the thick undergrowth. Thus was the blood of many a bunny avenged, and poor “Charlie” met an inglorious end in the house of his friends. Old George, and no one else, happened to see the tragedy, and notwithstanding my protest that it was much too good a story to keep to ourselves, the Master knows nothing of the murder to this day.
As I have said, George and I are very old friends, but we are also very old antagonists. He is a great politician; a Radical of the Radicals, while of course with him I am a Tory of the Tories. To-day I manage to score off him; no easy matter at any time. He had picked up some early primroses in the wood, and put them into his button-hole, to keep for a certain young lady, a prime favourite of his, who, with our hostess, is to join us at lunch. Before he could give them to her I caught him by the sleeve, and, pointing to the flowers, cried:—
“Hullo, George, I’ve always said that you would see the error of your ways some day. So you’ve actually joined the League. Who captured you? Lady Mary?”
Now, Lady Mary is the energetic wife of our Conservative Member, and it is a matter of common knowledge that there is no love lost between her and George. First game of the rubber to me! But we were soon all square. In the afternoon, coming through a thick hazel copse, stooping and worming myself along, half blinded with the irritating blows from the whippy twigs, a five-pound note worked out of my waistcoat pocket, into which I had carelessly stuffed it. Old George, whom nothing escapes, picked it up, but said nothing. When the beat was over, and, before moving on again, guns and beaters were gathered round the game, he asked me, “Be you dropped hanything, Muster A.?”
“Not that I know of, George,” I replied. “Why?”
“’Cos I picked up this here, which I think come out of your pocket.”
“Yes, by jove, it’s mine,” I cried.
“I reckon they lie a bit thicker in Lunnon than down hereabout. When I seed it fust I thought it must be”—he paused for effect—“a luv-letter.”
As my aspirations in a certain quarter, not quite unconnected with the aforesaid young lady, were pretty well known, this sally was greeted with a loud guffaw at my expense, and the game was “one all.”
Later in the day he won the rubber. I was one of the forward guns in the last beat, and having placed my gun at safety against a tree was lighting my pipe, when, for the first time during the day, there was a cry of “woodcock forward,” and he flitted past me in his usual silent, ghostly fashion, quite close. I grabbed my gun, covered him, and pressed, then frantically pulled at the trigger. Long before I realised what was the matter, and had slipped up the safety-bolt, the cock had placed a thick tree between us, and my shot hummed harmlessly through Hampshire. I hoped against hope that I had not been detected. But as we gathered round I soon realised that I was lost.
“Did you see that there woodcock, Muster A.?” asked old George.
“Yes,” I replied with assumed carelessness. “I think I saw it: wide of me on the right.”
“Oh!” grunted the old man, “wide o’ you, was it? Where might you be a-standin’, then?”
“Oh, somewhere over there,” said I, waving my hand vaguely, and, trying desperately to create a diversion, added, “That was a high cock to wind up with, B., a regular clinker.”
“But,” persisted old George, “wasn’t you a-standin’ by that there hold hoak?”
“I believe I was, George,” I yawned, “somewhere there.... What did we get this beat?”
The old scoundrel walked off to my “hold hoak,” and picked up a cartridge. I was the only gun using a 16-bore.
“Bain’t this your cartridge?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, George,” I said.... “Shall we make tracks, it’s getting rather chilly.”
“Hout of range, was he,” said the imperturbable old chap. “Why, that there woodcock comed out by that there holly, and you could ha’ knocked ’un down with a stick.”
I ran up the white flag, and said humbly: “I was lighting a pipe, George, and was at safety.”
“I knowed that,” replied my tormentor, looking round in triumph, “for I see’d yer.”
The stars are shining frostily as we finish, and the full moon rides above the tree-tops, “like a rick a-fire.” Each beater gets a couple of rabbits and an extra shilling, as it’s the last day. Pipes are lit, and we walk home out of the Big Wood, more ghostly than ever in the moonlight, across the stubble and the plough, on to the open road. Bag: 28 pheasants, 7 hares, 120 rabbits, a couple of jays, and a rat.
A. H. B.