第110章

He and Gerald reached Crummie-Toddie late on the evening of August the eleventh, and found Reginald Dobbes alone. That was on Wednesday. Popplecourt and Niddledale ought to have made their appearance on that morning, but had telegraphed to say that they would be detained two days on their route. Tregear, whom hitherto Dobbes had never seen, had left his arrival uncertain. This carelessness on such matters was very offensive to Mr Dobbes, who loved discipline and exactitude. He ought to have received the two young men with open arms because they were punctual; but he had been somewhat angered by what he considered the extreme youth of Lord Gerald. Boys who could not shoot were, he thought, putting themselves forward before their time. And Silverbridge himself was by no means a first-rate shot. Such a one as Silverbridge had to be endured because from his position and wealth he could facilitate such arrangements as these. It was much to have to do with a man who could not complain if an extra fifty pounds were wanted. But he ought to have understood that he was bound in honour to bring down competent friends. Of Tregear's shooting Dobbes had been able to learn nothing. Lord Gerald was a lad from the Universities; and Dobbes hated University lads. Popplecourt and Niddledale were known to be efficient. They were men who could work hard and do their part of the required slaughter. Dobbes proudly knew that he could make up for some deficiency by his own prowess; but he could not struggle against three bad guns. What was the use of so perfecting Crummie-Toddie as to make it the best bit of ground for grouse and deer in Scotland, if the men who came there failed by their own incapacity to bring up the grand total of killed to a figure which would render Dobbes and Crummie-Toddie famous throughout the whole shooting world? He had been hard at work on other matters. Dogs had gone amiss;--or guns, and he had been made angry by the champagne which Popplecourt had caused to be sent down. He knew what champagne meant. Whisky-and-water, and not much of it, was the liquor which Reginald Dobbes loved in the mountains.

'Don't you call this a very ugly country?' Silverbridge asked as soon as he arrived. Now it is the case that the traveller who travels into Argyleshire, Perthshire, and Inverness, expects to find lovely scenery; and it was also true that the country through which they had passed for the last twenty miles had been not only bleak and barren, but uninteresting and ugly. It was all rough open moorland, never rising into mountains, and graced by no running streams, by no forest scenery, almost by no foliage. The lodge itself did indeed stand close upon a little river, and was reached by a bridge that crossed it; but there was nothing pretty either in the river or the bridge. It was a placid black little streamlet, which in that portion of its course was hurried by no steepness, had not broken rocks in its bed, no trees on its low banks, and played none of those gambols which make running water beautiful. The bridge was a simple low construction with a low parapet, carrying an ordinary roadway up to the hall door. The lodge itself was as ugly a house could be, white, of two stories, with the door in the middle and windows on each side, with a slate roof, and without a tree near it. It was in the middle of the shooting, and did not create a town round itself as do sumptuous mansions, to the great detriment of that seclusion which is favourable to game. 'Look at Killancodlem,' Dobbes had been heard to say--'a very fine house for ladies to flirt in; but if you find a deer within six miles of it I will eat him first and shoot him afterwards.' There was a Spartan simplicity about Crummie-Toddie which pleased the Spartan mind of Reginald Dobbes.

'Ugly do you call it?'

'Infernally ugly,' said Lord Gerald.

'What did you expect to find? A big hotel, and a lot of cockneys.

If you come after grouse, you must come to what the grouse think pretty.'

'Nevertheless, it is ugly,' said Silverbridge, who did not choose to be 'sat upon'. 'I have been at shootings in Scotland before, and sometimes they are not ugly. This I call beastly.' Whereupon Reginald Dobbes turned upon his heel and walked away.

'Can you shoot?' he said afterwards to Lord Gerald.

'I can fire off a gun, if you mean that,' said Gerald.

'You have never shot much?'

'Not what you call very much. I'm not so old as you are, you know.