A COCK PHEASANT

There came the whir of wings from the edge of the Long Copse on the northern boundary of Staple Farm, followed immediately by the sharp report of a gun, and a bird came hurtling down through the deepening dusk of the November day and fell with a thud on the ploughed land that stretched away from the copse to the sky-line in a low even rise. The man with the gun spoke to his dog who plunged forward in a hustle of swift obedience and brought the dead bird to his master's feet. There was a movement in the copse as he stooped to pick it up, and another man came out into the open and moved over the heavy ground towards him.

"A fine cock pheasant that!" he remarked, as he drew near. "I thought you'd get him."

"It wasn't much of a shot," said the man with the gun.

"I've seen worse," said the other. He took the bird and turned to mount the rise. "I suppose you'll knock off now."

"I'd have liked a brace," said the man with the gun.

"Can't always have what you want," observed his companion, beginning to trudge up the hill.

The man with the gun turned to his dog. "Just you remember that, Nero!" he said.

Nero, a pleasant cocker-spaniel of superlative intelligence and almost unimaginable greed, shook his ears with vehemence in obvious disagreement. His master stooped and patted his head. "You're nothing but an earth-worm, my boy," he said. "You've never wanted the moon."

Nero had not. He was of a generally contented disposition notwithstanding his rapacity for food, and beyond this a walk-up with the gun was all he asked of life. He considered Silas Hickory the supreme It of existence. So far as Nero was concerned, he controlled the whole world, and Nero was completely satisfied with the way he did it.

He followed him now very closely through the November twilight, still keenly alert to obey his slightest bidding though aware that the shooting was over for the day.

They reached the top of the rise and found the other man awaiting them, with the evening's sport--a couple of rabbits and the pheasant--slung on his shoulder.

"I'll take the rabbits," said Hickory. "You take the pheasant round to Little Staple, Peter, and leave it with my compliments!"

"Right O!" said Peter.

He turned to go by way of a stile that led through the copse, but was detained by Silas Hickory's voice. "And by the way, Peter, if you should see Miss Bobby, tell her I'll be pleased to give her a lift into Bode market to-morrow if she cares for one! Got that?"

Peter stood with his hand on the rail, considering. "It seems to me," he said slowly, "that as you've got such a lot to say to her it wouldn't be altogether unreasonable to go and say it yourself."

Silas Hickory threw up his head with a gesture which, though wholly unconscious, had in it a hint of arrogance. It was the action of a well-bred animal resenting the spur.

"You get on with the job!" he said curtly, and turned on his heel in the other direction.

Peter got over the stile with thoughtful movements and walked away along the little winding path that led through the Long Copse.

There was another stile at the further end, and when he reached it he paused again and made a grave remark into the bleak silence around him. It was the summing-up of his meditation.

"And he's not such a damn' fool neither!" he said.

Silas, walking quietly along the ridge with his dog behind him, was also deep in thought. The winter day was closing in with a cold, misty rain and his boots squelched drearily over the muddy ground. But it was obvious that the weather had no sort of effect upon him. His progress had something irresistible, even fateful about it. His big square form moved with machine-like steadiness. His square face with its blunt features and somewhat blue chin had the massive look of a carving in bronze. Whatever the end he had in view, Silas Hickory was not the man to be lightly turned aside from it. He had a long bare upper lip, also rather blue, that betokened an obstinate will. His eyes were hard and direct under black brows of exceeding abundance. Undoubtedly a black beard should have completed his equipment, but this was denied expression in spite of unceasing efforts to assert itself. It was said of him by village wags, behind his back, that Silas was covered with hair wherever he could not reach to shave. There was certainly no denying that his shaving was of a very rigorous and drastic description and was sometimes performed twice a day--a fact of which his step-sister and housekeeper, Mary Flight, strongly disapproved. She said that hairy men were the pick of the race and it was a pity that Silas did not make the best of himself. But no criticisms ever made any difference to Silas who continued doggedly to refuse to countenance the beard that thrust itself upon him. If Mary liked beards, why didn't she get a husband with one? He wasn't standing in her way.

Not that he regarded her as one of the marrying sort in the least! Somehow he never had, probably on account of her five years' seniority which had always given her a middle-aged status in his eyes. In any case she was well over forty now and looked it. Her stout comeliness allowed of no misunderstanding on that point. She had managed for Silas and Peter for the past twelve years, and seemed likely to do so for the rest of her life. It was an oddly-assorted household, and the curious part of it was that though they all passed as brothers and sister, there was no actual blood-relationship between any of them. Mary Flight was the step-daughter of Peter Garnet's mother who in her turn had become the stepmother of Silas Hickory. Silas and Peter were foster-brothers as well as step-brothers, the marriage between their respective parents having been accomplished as a pure matter of convenience some eighteen months after Silas's mother had died in giving him birth. Not much was known of Silas's mother beyond the fact that she was of high birth and had married his father after a holiday spent in the West of England in face of the most strenuous opposition from her family. Of his father everyone knew everything. A great John Bull of a man had been Silas Hickory the elder, black-bearded, loud-voiced and assertive as a prize-fighter, jealous of his yeoman stock and yielding pride of place to none. His wife, very gentle and retiring, had made no very lasting impression upon anyone, and her memory had quickly died. Mrs. Garnet, Peter's mother, the wife of one of Silas Hickory's labourers, had been requisitioned for the nurture and care of his motherless babe, and had filled the gap with a cheery efficiency which on the death of her own husband a little later had induced Farmer Silas, as they called him over at Bode, to install her in his first wife's place as mistress of Staple Farm. The two boys and Mary had grown up together, and save for the fact that Silas had been given a sound Grammar School education whereas the other two children had received the usual tuition at the local Board School, there had been small difference in their general upbringing.

Yet, now that both the elder Hickory and his wife were gone and the three who had been children together lived on in the old home, there was between them a difference of which all who knew them were aware. Though they were universally regarded as belonging to the same family, Silas Hickory was never classed in the same category as Mary and Peter. They were plain country-folk, and Peter, though recognized as being something better than a mere farm-hand, was certainly something very much less than the foster-brother for whom he worked. Peter belonged to the soil, and no other career than that of farming had ever presented itself to him. He was slow and very sure, like one of his own plodding cart-horses, laconic of speech yet not without a certain humour upon occasion, possessing for Silas a dumb devotion which seldom found expression but which was one of his most salient characteristics none the less.

It had always been the same, his attitude to Silas. Even as lads, it had existed in the form of a mute, instinctive deference which no adventures or pursuits shared in common had ever eradicated. And even Mary, who had mothered them both from infancy, manifested it in a modified degree. An invisible line was drawn between them which placed Silas apart. He was the master, and by a law as rigid as Court etiquette he was invariably treated as such. What was good enough for the two others was emphatically not good enough for Silas, and though he never made any stand on his own account Mary was strenuous in her observance of this ceremonial preferment.

Moreover, their friends were not his friends though to the outward eye they might appear to be. Silas had his own sittingroom at the Farm, and here he was quite undisturbed at all times, by Mary's unalterable decree. If she had company in the kitchen with which she deemed that he might not desire to mix, she brought his meal to him here herself. Like Peter, she never expressed her devotion in words, but her vigilance for his comfort had an eagle-like quality that never failed. Emphatically, Silas was not to be bothered by trivial things.

On ordinary occasions they lived and ate together, but Silas was never allowed to wait upon himself, still less upon Mary. Peter might help her sometimes in the evenings if she were hard pressed, but Silas never. He was the king of that household, and he was kept rigidly within his royal limits, so far as Mary was concerned. If he elected to spend a night with a sick animal, that was a different matter, though even then Peter was usually hanging round until express command drove him away. But that was work within his province which any gentleman-farmer might undertake; but nothing of a menial nature, such as carrying a bucket of water or a scuttle of coal, was ever countenanced by Mary.

"Leave that for them whose work it is!" she would say, and Silas, realizing that to transgress her rules of etiquette gave her actual pain, was usually goodnatured enough to observe them, at least when her eye was upon him.

He was very fond of Mary, whose buxom presence was always full of good cheer. If he found her a little obvious and downright in her ways, he knew her for the soul of honesty and valued her accordingly. She did not profess to be intellectual, but she was an excellent housekeeper and her cooking left nothing to be desired. All that she did was well done.

Yet, though he knew that hot tea and a blazing fire awaited him on his return from the dripping fields on that chill November evening, Silas did not hasten his steps or display any eagerness to reach those physical comforts. His gait was thoughtful and his head bent.

Staple Farm stood in a hollow up a narrow lane that led off the old turnpike road to Bode. No traffic ever passed it except the farm-carts, for beyond it lay only fields and woods. But between the farm and the main road another lane, grass-grown, scarcely more than a winding track between hedges, led up a steep slope, and it was near the entrance of this that he eventually found himself upon descending the hill.

A rough stile gave access to it from the sodden field he had just traversed, and this he crossed almost without checking his stride, then stood abruptly still, staring up through the darkness as though he listened for something.

There was no sound however, beyond the drip of the branches overhead and the faint tinkle of a hidden spring that ran down a ditch near by. Night had fallen, and it was one of inexpressible desolation.

He stood motionless for several seconds, Nero waiting, forlornly patient, at his heels. Then he heaved a sigh of which he was plainly unconscious and wheeled in the other direction.

"Yes, I wish it had been a brace, Nero," he said.