The peer plucked at his cap, which had special peaks before and behind.
“Well, well!” he said. “H’m!”
“That sounds as if you did. Shall I go?”
“No, no! That’s all right. Can’t touch a feather today, anyway. You’ll bring me luck.”
Dinny seated herself on her stick alongside the retriever, and began playing with its ears.
“That American chap has wiped my eye three times.”
“What bad taste!”
“He shoots at the most impossible birds, but, dash it, he hits ’em. All the birds I miss he gets on the horizon. Got the style of a poacher; lets everything go by, then gets a right and left about seventy yards behind him. Says he can’t see them when they sit on his foresight.”
“That’s funny,” said Dinny, with a little burst of justice.
“Don’t believe he’s missed today,” added Lord Saxenden, resentfully. “I asked him why he shot so darned well, and he said: ‘Why! I’m used to shoot for the pot, where I can’t afford to miss.’”
“The ‘beat’s’ beginning, my lord,” said the young keeper’s voice.
The retriever began to pant slightly. Lord Saxenden grasped a gun; the keeper held the other ready.
“Covey to the left, my lord,” Dinny heard a creaky whirring, and saw eight birds stringing towards the lane. Bang-bang… bang—bang!
“God bless my soul!” said Lord Saxenden: “What the deuce—!”
Dinny saw the same eight birds swoop over the hedge at the other end of the grass field.
The retriever uttered a little choked sound, panting horribly.
“The light,” she said, “must be terribly puzzling!”
“It’s not the light,” said Lord Saxenden, “it’s the liver!”
“Three birds coming straight, my lord.”
Bang!… Bang—bang! A bird jerked, crumpled, turned over and pitched four yards behind her. Something caught Dinny by the throat. That anything so alive should be so dead! Often as she had seen birds shot, she had never before had that feeling. The other two birds were crossing the far hedge; she watched them vanish, with a faint sigh. The retriever, with the dead bird in his mouth, came up to the keeper, who took it from him. Sitting on his haunches, the dog continued to gaze at the bird, with his tongue out. Dinny saw the tongue drip, and closed her eyes.
Lord Saxenden said something inaudibly.
Lord Saxenden said the same word more inaudibly, and, opening her eyes, Dinny saw him put up his gun.
“Hen pheasant, my lord!” warned the young keeper.
A hen pheasant passed over at a most reasonable height, as if aware that her time was not yet.
“H’m!” said Lord Saxenden, resting the butt on his bent knee.
“Covey to the right; too far, my lord!”
Several shots rang out, and beyond the hedge Dinny saw two birds only flying on, one of which was dropping feathers.
“That’s a dead bird,” said the keeper, and Dinny saw him shade his eyes, watching its flight. “Down!” he said; the dog panted, and looked up at him.
Shots rang out to the left.
“Damn!” said Lord Saxenden, “nothing comes my way.”
“Hare, my lord!” said the keeper, sharply. “Along the hedge!”
Lord Saxenden wheeled and raised his gun.
“Oh, no!” said Dinny, but her words were drowned by the report. The hare, struck behind, stopped short, then wriggled forward, crying pitifully.
“Fetch it, boy!” said the keeper.
Dinny put her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.
“Blast!” muttered Lord Saxenden. “Tailored!” Through her eyelids Dinny felt his frosty stare. When she opened her eyes the hare was lying dead beside the bird. It looked incredibly soft. Suddenly she rose, meaning to go, but sat down again. Until the beat was over she could go nowhere without interfering with the range of the shots. She closed her eyes again; and the shooting went on.
“That’s the lot, my lord.”
Lord Saxenden was handing over his gun, and three more birds lay beside the hare.
Rather ashamed of her new sensations, she rose, closed her shooting stick, and moved towards the stile. Regardless of the old convention, she crossed it and waited for him.
“Sorry I tailored that hare,” he said. “But I’ve been seeing spots all day. Do you ever see spots?”
“No. Stars once in a way. A hare’s crying is dreadful, isn’t it?”
“I agree—never liked it.”
“Once when we were having a picnic I saw a hare sitting up behind us like a dog—and the sun through its ears all pink. I’ve always liked hares since.”
“They’re not a sporting shot,” admitted Lord Saxenden; “personally I prefer ’em roast to jugged.”
Dinny stole a glance at him. He looked red and fairly satisfied.
‘Now’s my chance,’ she thought.
“Do you ever tell Americans that they won the war, Lord Saxenden?”
He stared frostily.
“Why should I?”
“But they did, didn’t they?”
“Does that Professor chap say so?”
“I’ve never heard him, but I feel sure he thinks so.”
Again Dinny saw that sharp look come on his face. “What do you know about him?”
“My brother went on his expedition.”
“Your brother? Ah!” It was just as if he had said to himself out loud: ‘This young woman wants something out of me.’
Dinny felt suddenly that she was on very thin ice.
“If you read Professor Hallorsen’s book,” she said, “I hope you will also read my brother’s diary.”
“I never read anything,” said Lord Saxenden; “haven’t time. But I remember now. Bolivia—he shot a man, didn’t he, and lost the transport?”
“He had to shoot the man to save his own life, and he had to flog two for continual cruelty to the mules; then all but three men deserted, stampeding the mules. He was the only white man there, with a lot of Indian half-castes.”
And to his frosty shrewd eyes she raised her own suddenly, remembering Sir Lawrence’s: ‘Give him the Botticellian eye, Dinny!’
“Might I read you a little of his diary?”
“Well, if there’s time.”
“When?”
“To-night? I have to go up after shooting tomorrow.”
“Any time that suits you,” she said, hardily.
“There won’t be a chance before dinner. I’ve got some letters that must go.”
“I can stay up till any hour.” She saw him give her a quick, all-over glance.
“We’ll see,” he said, abruptly. And at this minute they were joined by the others.
Escaping the last drive, Dinny walked home by herself. Her sense of humour was tickled, but she was in a quandary. She judged shrewdly that the diary would not produce the desired effect unless Lord Saxenden felt that he was going to get something out of listening to it; and she was perceiving more clearly than ever before how difficult it was to give anything without parting from it. A fluster of wood-pigeons rose from some stooks on her left and crossed over to the wood by the river; the light was growing level, and evening sounds fluttered in the crisper air. The gold of sinking sunlight lay on the stubbles; the leaves, hardly turned as yet, were just promising colour, and away down there the blue line of the river glinted through its bordering trees. In the air was the damp, slightly pungent scent of early autumn with wood smoke drifting already from cottage chimneys. A lovely hour, a lovely evening!
What passages from the diary should she read? Her mind faltered. She could see Saxenden’s face again when he said: “Your brother? Ah!” Could see the hard direct calculating insensitive character behind it. She remembered Sir Lawrence’s words: “Were there not, my dear?… Most valuable fellows!” She had just been reading the memoirs of a man, who, all through the war, had thought in moves and numbers, and, after one preliminary gasp, had given up thinking of the sufferings behind those movements and those numbers: in his will to win the war, he seemed to have made it his business never to think of its human side, and, she was sure, could never have visualised that side if he HAD thought of it. Valuable fellow! She had heard Hubert talk, with a curling lip, of ‘armchair strategists’—who had enjoyed the war, excited by the interest of combining movements and numbers and of knowing this and that before someone else did, and by the importance they had gained therefrom. Valuable fellows! In another book she had lately read, she remembered a passage about the kind of men who directed what was called progress: sat in Banks, City offices, Governmental departments, combining movements and numbers, not bothered by flesh and blood, except their own; men who started this enterprise and that, drawing them up on sheets of paper, and saying to these and those: ‘Do this, and see you dam’ well do it properly.’ Men, silk-hatted or plus-foured, who guided the machine of tropic enterprise, of mineral getting, of great shops, of railway building, of concessions here and there and everywhere. Valuable fellows! Cheery, healthy, well-fed, indomitable fellows with frosty eyes. Always dining, always in the know, careless of the cost in human feelings and human life. ‘And yet,’ she thought, ‘they really must be valuable, or how should we have rubber or coal, or pearls or railways or the Stock Exchange, or wars and win them!’ She thought of Hallorsen; he at least worked and suffered for his ideas, led his own charges; did not sit at home, knowing things, eating ham, tailoring hares, and ordering the movements of others. She turned into the Manor grounds and paused on the croquet lawn. Aunt Wilmet and Lady Henrietta appeared to be agreeing to differ. They appealed to her: