'Good evening, Shafto; you are very unpleasant, to say the least of it,' said Dulcie, as she gathered up her wools and sailed into the house, while his eyes followed her with a menacing and very ugly expression indeed.
The broken health brought by Lennard from the miasmatic Terai of Nepaul was rapidly becoming more broken than ever, and, though not yet fifty, he was a premature old man, and it seemed as if the first part of Florian's presentiment or prevision of coming sorrow would soon be fulfilled.
His steps became very feeble, and he could only get about, in the autumn sunshine, with the aid of a stick and Florian's arm; and the latter watched him with grief and pain, tottering like the aged, panting and leaning heavily on his cane, as ever and anon he insisted on being led up a steep slope from which he could clearly see the old church of Revelstoke on its wave-beaten promontory, overlooked by sad and solitary hills, and his hollow eyes glistened as he gazed on it, with a kind of yearning expression, as if he longed to be at peace, and by the side of her he had laid there, it seemed long years ago—a lifetime ago.
Poor Lennard was certainly near his tomb, and all who looked upon him thought so; yet his calm eye, ever looking upward, betrayed no fear.
One day when Florian was absent—no doubt sketching, boating with Dulcie on the Yealm, or idling with her on the moors—Lennard besought Shafto to stay beside him as he sat feeble and languid in his easy chair, sinking with the wasting and internal fever, with which the country practitioners were totally incapable of grappling; and on this day, for the first time, he began to speak to him of Scotland and the home he once had there; and he was listened to with the keenest interest by Shafto, who had ever—even as a child—been cunning, selfish, and avaricious, yet wonderfully clever and complaisant in his uncle's prejudiced eyes, as he remembered only Flora's dead and devoted sister.
'I have been thinking over old times and other days, Shafto,' said he, with his attenuated hands crossed on the head of his bamboo cane; 'and, all things considered, it seems an occupation I had better avoid did the memory concern myself alone: but I must think of others and their interests—of Florian and of you—so I can't help it, boy, in my present state of health, or rather want of health,' he added, as a violent fit of spasmodic coughing came upon him.
After a pause he spoke again.
'You, Shafto, are a couple of years older than Florian, and are, in many ways, several years older in thought and experience by the short training you have received in Carlyon's office.'
The Major paused again, leaving Shafto full of wonder and curiosity as to what this preamble was leading up to.
The former had begun to see things more clearly and temperately with regard to the sudden death of Cosmo, and to feel that, though he had renounced all family ties, name, and wealth, so far as concerned himself, to die, with the secret of all untold, would be to inflict a cruel wrong on Florian. At one time Lennard thought of putting his papers and the whole matter in the hands of Mr. Lewellen Carlyon, and it was a pity he did not do so instead of choosing to entrust them to his long-headed nephew.
'Hand here my desk, and unlock it for me—my hands are so tremulous,' said he.
When this was done he selected a packet from a private drawer, and briefly and rapidly told the story of his life, his proper name, and rank to Shafto, who listened with open-eyed amazement.
When the latter had thoroughly digested the whole information, he said, after a long pause:
'This must be told to Florian!'
And with Florian came the thought of Dulcie, and how this sudden accession of her lover to fortune and position would affect her.
'Nay, Shafto—not yet—not till I am gone—a short time now. I can trust you, with your sharpness and legal acumen, with the handling of this matter entirely. When I am gone, and laid beside your aunt Flora, by the wall of the old church yonder,' he continued with a very broken voice—one almost a childish treble, 'you will seek the person to whom this packet is addressed, Kenneth Kippilaw, a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh—he is alive still; place these in his hands, and he will do all that is required; but treasure them, Shafto—be careful of them as you would of your soul's salvation—for my sake, and more than all for the sake of Florian! Now, my good lad, give me the composing draught—I feel sleepy and so weary with all this talking, and the thoughts that have come unbidden—unbidden, sad, bitter, and angry thoughts—to memory.'
Shafto locked the desk, put it aside, and, giving his uncle the draught, stole softly away to his own room with the papers, to con them over and to—think!
He had not sat at a desk for three years in Lawyer Carlyon's office without having his wits sharpened. He paused as he put the documents away.
'Stop—stop—let me think, let me consider!' he exclaimed to himself, and he certainly did consider to some purpose. He was cold and calculating; he was never unusually agitated or flustered, but he became both with the thoughts that occurred to him now.
Among the papers and letters entrusted to him were the certificates of the marriage of Lennard and Flora, and another which ran thus:
'Certificate of entry of birth, under section 37 of 17 and 18 Vict., cap. 80.' It authenticated the birth of their child Florian at Revelstoke, with the date thereof to a minute.
These documents were enclosed in a letter written in a tremulous and uncertain hand by Lennard Melfort to Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, part of which was in these terms:
The child was baptized by a neighbouring clergyman—the Rev. Paul Pentreath—who has faithfully kept the promise of secrecy he gave me, and, dying as I now feel myself to be, I pray earnestly that my father and mother will be kind to my orphan son. Let them not—as they one day hope for mercy at that dread throne before which I am soon to appear—visit upon his innocent head my supposed and most heavily punished offence. Let him succeed in poor Cosmo's place to that which is his due; let him succeed to all I renounced in anger—an anger that has passed away, for now, my dear old friend, I am aged beyond my years, and my hair is now white as snow through ill-health contracted in India, where, to procure money necessary for my poor Flora, I volunteered on desperate service, and in seasons destructive to existence. In your hands I leave the matter with perfect hope and confidence. The bearer will tell you all more that may be necessary.'
After having read, reread, and made himself thoroughly master of the contents of this to him certainly most astounding packet, he requested the Major to re-address it in his own tremulous and all but illegible handwriting, and seal it up with his long-disused signet ring, which bore the arms of Fettercairn.
Prior to having all this done, Shafto had operated on one of the documents most dexterously and destructively with his pen-knife!
'A peerage! a peerage!—rank, wealth, money, mine—all mine!' he muttered under his breath, as he stored the packet away in a sure and secret place, and while whistling softly to himself, a way he had when brooding (as he often did) over mischief, he recalled the lines of Robert Herrick:
'Our life is like a narrow raft,
Afloat upon the hungry sea;
Hereon is but a little space,
And all men, eager for a place,
Do thrust each other in the sea.'
'So why should I not thrust him into the hungry briny? If life is a raft—and, by Jove, I find it so!—why should one not grasp at all one can, and make the best of life for one's self, by making the worst of it for other folks? Does such a chance of winning rank and wealth come often to any one's hands? No! and I should be the biggest of fools—the most enormous of idiots—not to avail myself to the fullest extent. I see my little game clearly, but must play warily. "Eat, drink, and be merry," says Isaiah, "for to-morrow we die." They say the devil can quote Scripture, and so can Shafto Gyle. But I don't mean to die to-morrow, but to have a jolly good spell for many a year to come!'
And in the wild exuberance of his spirits he tossed his hat again and again to the ceiling.
From that day forward the health of Lennard Melfort seemed to decline more rapidly, and erelong he was compelled by the chill winds of the season to remain in bed, quite unable to take his place at table or move about, save when wheeled in a chair to the window, where he loved to watch the setting sun.
Then came one evening when, for the last time, he begged to be propped up there in his pillowed chair. The sun was setting over Revelstoke Church, and throwing its picturesque outline strongly forward, in a dark indigo tint, against the golden and crimson flush of the west, and all the waves around the promontory were glittering in light.
But Lennard saw nothing of all this, though he felt the feeble warmth of the wintry sun as he stretched his thin, worn hands towards it; his eyesight was gone, and would never come again! There was something very pathetic in the withered face and sightless eyes, and the drooping white moustache that had once been a rich dark-brown, and waxed à l'Empereur.
His dream of life was over, and his last mutterings were a prayer for Florian, on whose breast his head lay as he breathed his last.
The two lads looked at each other in that supreme moment—but with very different thoughts in their hearts. Florian felt only desolation, blank and utter, and even Shafto, in the awful presence of Death, felt alone in the world.
As he lay dead, that old-looking, wasted, and attenuated man, whose hair was like the thistledown, none would have recognised in him the dark-haired, bronzed, and joyous young subaltern who only twenty-four years before had led his company at the storming of the Redan, who had planted the scaling-ladder against the scarp, and shouted in a voice heard even amid the roar of the adverse musketry:
'Come on, men! ladders to the front, eight men per ladder; up and at them, lads, with the bayonet,' and fought his way into an embrasure, while round-shot tore up the earth beneath his feet, and men were swept away in sections of twenty; or the hardy soldier who faced fever and foes alike in the Terai of Nepaul.
How still and peaceful he lay now as the coffin-lid was closed over him.
Snow-flakes, light and feathery, fell on the hard ground, and the waves seemed to leap and sob heavily round the old church of Revelstoke, when Lennard Melfort was laid beside the now old and flattened grave of Flora, and keen and sharp the frosty wind lifted the silver hair of the Rev. Paul Pentreath, whistled among the ivy or on the buttresses, and fluttered the black ribbon of the pall held by Florian, who felt as one in a dreadful dream—amid a dread and unreal phantasmagoria; and the same wind seemed to twitch angrily the pall-ribbon from the hand of Shafto, nor could he by any effort recover it, as more than one present, with their Devonian superstition, remarked, and remembered when other things came to pass.
At last all was over; the mourners departed, and Lennard Melfort was left alone—alone with the dead of yesterday and of ages; and Florian, while Dulcie was by his side and pressed his hand, strove to commit to memory the curate's words from the Book of Revelation, 'There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor sighing; for God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'
Shafto now let little time pass before he proceeded to inform Florian of what he called their 'relative position,' and of their journey into Scotland to search out Mr. Kippilaw.
It has been said that in life we have sometimes moments so full of emotion that they seem to mark a turn in it we can never reach again; and this sharp turn, young and startled Florian seemed to pass, when he learned that since infancy he had been misled, and that the man, so tender and so loving, whom he had deemed his father was but his uncle!
How came it all to pass now? Yet the old Major had ever been so kind and affectionate to him—to both, in fact, equally so, treating them as his sons—that he felt only a stunning surprise, a crushing grief and bitter mortification, but not a vestige of anger; his love for the dead was too keen and deep for that.
The packet, sealed and addressed to Mr. Kippilaw, though its contents were as yet unknown to him, seemed to corroborate the strange intelligence of Shafto; but the question naturally occurred to Florian, 'For what end or purpose had this lifelong mystery and change in their positions been brought about?'
He asked this of Shafto again and again.
'It seems we have been very curiously deluded,' said that personage, not daring to look the sorrowful Florian straight in the face, and pretended to be intent on stuffing his pipe.
'Deluded—how?'
'How often am I to tell you,' exclaimed Shafto, with petulance and assumed irritation, 'that the contents of this packet prove that I am the only son of Major Melfort (not MacIan at all), and that you—you——'
'What?'
'Are Florian Gyle, the nephew—adopted as a son. Mr. Kippilaw will tell you all about it.'
'And you, Shafto?' queried Florian, scarcely knowing, in his bewilderment, what he said.
'Mean to go in for my proper position—my title, and all that sort of thing, don't you see?'
'And act—how!'
'Not the proverbial beggar on horseback, I hope. I'll do something handsome for you, of course.'
'I want nothing done for me while I have two hands, Shafto.'
'As you please,' replied the latter, puffing vigorously at his pipe. 'I have had enough of hopeless drudgery for a quarterly pittance in the dingy office of old Carlyon,' said he, after a long pause; 'and, by all the devils, I'll have no more of it now that I am going to be rich.'
Indeed, from the day of Lennard Melfort entrusting him with the packet, Shafto had done little else at the office but study the laws of succession in Scotland and England.
'How much you love money, Shafto!' said Florian, eying him wistfully.
'Do I? Well, I suppose that comes from having had so precious little of it in my time. I am a poor devil just now, but,' thought he exultantly, 'this "plant" achieved successfully, how many matrons with daughters unmarried will all be anxious to be mother to me! And Dulcie Carlyon I might have for asking; but I'll fly at higher game now, by Jove!'
As further credentials, Shafto now possessed himself of Major Melfort's sword, commissions, and medals, while Florian looked in blank dismay and growing mortification—puzzled by the new position in which he found himself, of being no longer his father's son—a source of unfathomable mystery.
Shafto was in great haste to be gone, to leave Revelstoke and its vicinity behind him. It was too late for regrets or repentance now. Not that he felt either, we suppose; and what he had done he would do again if there was no chance of being found out. In the growing exuberance of his spirits, he could not help, a day or two after, taunting Florian about Dulcie till they were on the verge of a quarrel, and wound up by saying, with a scornful laugh:
'You can't marry her—a fellow without a shilling in the world; and I wouldn't now, if she would have me, which I don't doubt.'
Poor Dulcie! She heard with undisguised grief and astonishment of these events, and of the approaching departure of the cousins.
The cottage home was being broken up; the dear old Major was in his grave; and Florian, the playmate of her infancy, the lover of her girlhood, was going away—she scarcely knew to where. They might be permitted to correspond by letter, but when, thought Dulcie—oh, when should they meet again?
The sun was shedding its light and warmth around her as usual, on woodland and hill, on wave and rock; but both seemed to fade out, the perfume to pass from the early spring flowers, the glory from land and sea, and a dim mist of passionate tears clouded the sweet and tender blue eyes of the affectionate girl.
He would return, he said, as he strove to console her; but how and when, and to what end? thought both so despairingly. Their future seemed such a vague, a blank one!
'I am penniless, Dulcie—a beggar on the face of the earth—twice beggared now, I think!' exclaimed Florian, in sorrowful bitterness.
'Don't speak thus,' said she imploringly, with piteous lips that were tremulous as his own, and her eyes drowned in tears.
They had left the road now, and wandered among the trees in a thicket, and seated themselves on a fallen trunk, a seat and place endeared to them and familiar enough in past time.
He gazed into her eyes of deep pansy-blue, as if his own were striving to take away a memory of her face—a memory that would last for eternity.
'And you really go to-night?' she asked, in piteous and broken accents.
'Yes—with Shafto. I am in a fever, darling, to seek out a position for myself. Surely Shafto may assist me in that—though I shrink from asking him.'
'Your own cousin?'
'Yes—but sometimes he looks like a supplanter now, and his bearing has been so unpleasant to me, especially of late,' said Florian. 'But you will wait for me, Dulcie, and not be persuaded to marry anyone else?' he added imploringly, as he clasped each of her hands in his.
'I shall wait for you, Florian, if it should be for twenty years!' exclaimed the girl, in a low and emphatic voice, scarcely considering the magnitude and peril of such a promise.
'Thank you, darling Dulcie!' said he bending down and kissing her lips with ardour, and, though on the eve of parting, they felt almost happy in the confidence of the blissful present.
'How often shall I recall this last meeting by the fallen tree, when you are far, far away from Revelstoke and—me,' said Dulcie.
'You will often come here to be reminded of me?'
'Do you think, Florian, I will require to be reminded of you?' asked the girl, with a little tone of pain in her sweet voice, as she kissed the silver locket containing his likeness, and all the sweet iteration of lover-talk, promises, and pledges went on for a time, and new hopes began to render this last interview more bearable to the young pair who were on the eve of separation, without any very distinct arrangement about correspondence in the interval of it.
The sun was setting now redly, and amid dun winter clouds, beaming on each chimney-head, on Revelstoke Church, and the leafless tree-tops his farewell radiance.
Florian took a long, long kiss from Dulcie, and with the emotion of a wrench in his heart, was gone, and she was alone.
A photo and a lock of red-golden hair were all that remained to him of her—both to be looked upon again and again, till his eyes ached, but never grew weary.
Dulcie's were very red with weeping, and the memory of that parting kiss was still hovering on her quivering lips when, in a lonely lane not far from her home, she found herself suddenly face to face with Shafto.
She had known him from his boyhood, ever since he came an orphan to Lennard Melfort's cottage; and although she always distrusted and never liked him, his face was a familiar one she might never see more; thus she resolved to part with him as with the best of friends, and to remember that he was the only kinsman of Florian, whose companion and fellow-traveller he was to be on a journey the end of which she scarcely understood. So, frankly and sweetly, with a sad smile in her eyes, she proffered her pretty hand, which Shafto grasped and retained promptly enough.
Shafto had just been with her father. How contemptuously he had eyed the corner and the high old stool on which he had sat in the latter's legal establishment, and all its surroundings; the fly-blown county maps of Devon and Cornwall; advertisements of sales—property, mangold wurzel, oats and hay, Thorley's food for cattle, and so forth; the tin boxes of most legal aspect; dockets of papers in red tape; the well-thumbed ledgers; day and letter books, and all the paraphernalia of a country solicitor's office.
Ugh! How well he knew and loathed them all. Now it was all over and done with.
The three poor lads in the office, whose cheap cigars and beer he had often shared at the Ashburton Arms, he barely condescended to notice, while they regarded him with something akin to awe, as he gave Lawyer Carlyon his final 'instructions' concerning the disposal of the lease of the Major's pretty cottage, and of all the goods and chattels that were therein.
Had Florian been present he would have felt only shame and abasement at the tone and manner Shafto adopted on this occasion; but worthy Lawyer Carlyon, who did not believe a bit in the rumoured accession of Shafto to family rank and wealth, laughed softly to himself, and thought his 'pride would have a sore fall one of these fine days.'
And even now, when face to face with Dulcie, his general bearing, his coolness and insouciance, rendered her, amid all her grief, indignant and defiant ultimately.
How piquant, compact, and perfect the girl looked, from the smart scarlet feather in her little hat to her tiny Balmoral boots. Her veil was tightly tied across her face, showing only the tip of her nose, her ripe red lips, and pretty white chin—its point, like her cheeks, reddened somewhat by the winter breeze from the Channel. Her gloved hands were in her small muff, and the collar of her sealskin jacket was encircled by the necklet at which her silver locket hung—the locket Shafto had seen her kiss when Florian had bestowed it on her, while he looked close by, with his heart full of envy, jealousy, and hatred, and now it was the first thing that attracted his eye.
'And you actually leave us to-night, Shafto?' she said softly.
'Yes, Dulcie, by the train for Worcester and the north. My estates, you know, are in Scotland.'
'These changes are all strange and most startling,' said she, with a sob in her slender throat.
'We live in whirligig times, Dulcie; but I suppose it is the result of progress,' he added sententiously. 'I wonder how our grandfathers and grandmothers contrived to mope over and yawn out their dull and emotionless existence till they reached threescore and ten years.'
'I shall never see that age, Shafto.'
'Who knows; though life, however sweet now, won't be worth living for then, I fancy.'
Dulcie sighed, and he regarded her in admiring silence, for he had a high appreciation of her bright and delicate beauty, and loved her—if we may degrade the phrase—in his own selfish and peculiar way, though now resolved—as he had often thought vainly—to 'fly at higher game;' and so, full of ideas, hopes, and ambitions of his own, if he had ceased to think of Dulcie, he had, at least, ceased for a space to trouble her.
'Florian will be writing to you, of course?' said he, after a pause.
'Alas! no, we have made no arrangement; and then, you know, papa——'
'Wouldn't approve, of course. My farewell advice to you, Dulcie, is—Don't put off your time thinking of Florian—his ship will never come home.'
'Nor yours either, perhaps,' said Dulcie, angrily.
'You think so—but you are wrong.'
'Ah! I know these waited for ships rarely do.'
'I have read somewhere that ships of the kind rarely do come home in this prosaic and disappointing world; that some get wrecked almost within sight of land; others go down without the flapping of a sail, and sometimes after long and firm battling with adverse winds and tides; but my ship is a sure craft, Dulcie,' he added, as he thought of the packet in his possession—that precious packet on which all his hopes rested and his daring ambition was founded.
Dulcie looked at him wistfully and distrustfully, and thought—
'Why is he so sure? But his ideas were always selfish and evil. Tide what may,' she added aloud, 'I shall wait twenty years and more for Florian.'
'The more fool you, then! And so die an old maid?'
'I am, perhaps, cut out for an old maid.'
'And if he never can marry you—or marries some one else when he can?' asked Shafto viciously.
'Oh, then I'll take to æstheticism, or women's rights, and all that sort of thing,' said the poor girl, with a ghastly and defiant attempt at a jest, which ended in tears, while Shafto eyed her angrily.
'How fond you are of that silver locket—you never wear any other!'
'I have so few ornaments, Shafto.'
'And none you prize so much?'
'None!' said Dulcie, with a sweet, sad smile.
'Is that the reason you wear it with all kinds of dresses? What is in it—anything?'
'That is my secret,' replied Dulcie, putting her right hand on it and instinctively drawing back a pace, for there was a menacing expression in the cold grey eyes of Shafto.
'Allow me to open it,' said he, taking her hand in his.
'No.'
'You shall!'
'Never!' exclaimed Dulcie, her eyes sparkling now as his grasp upon her hand tightened.
An imprecation escaped Shafto, and with his eyes aflame and his cheeks pale with jealousy and rage he tore her hand aside and wrenched by brutal force the locket from her, breaking the silver necklet as he did so.
'Coward!' exclaimed Dulcie; 'coward and thief—how dare you? Surrender that locket instantly!'
'Not if I know it,' said he, mockingly, holding the prized trinket before her at arm's length.
'But for Florian's sake, I would at once apply to the police.'
'A vulgar resort—no, my pretty Dulcie, you wouldn't.'
'Why?'
'Not for Florian's sake?'
'Whose, then?'
'Your own, for you wouldn't like to have your old pump of a father down on you; and so you dare not make a row about it, my pretty little fury.'
'Shafto, I entreat you, give me back that photo,' said Dulcie, her tears welling forth.
'No; I won't.'
'Of what interest or use can it be to you?'
'More than you imagine,' said Shafto, to whom a villainous idea just then occurred.
'I entreat you,' said Dulcie, letting her muff drop and clasping her slim little hands.
'Entreat away! I feel deucedly inclined to put my heel upon it—but I won't.'
'This robbery is cruel and infamous!' exclaimed Dulcie, trembling with grief and just indignation; but Shafto only laughed in anger and bitterness—and a very hyena-like laugh it was, and as some one was coming down the secluded lane, he turned away and left her in the twilight.
He felt himself safe from opprobrium and punishment, as he knew well she was loth to make any complaint to her father on the subject; and just then she knew not how to communicate with Florian, as the darkness was falling fast, and the hour of his departure was close at hand. She thought it not improbable that Shafto would relent and return the locket to her; but the night was far advanced ere that hope was dissipated, and she attained some outward appearance of composure, though her father's sharp and affectionate eyes detected that she had been suffering.
He had heard from her some confused and rambling story about the family secret, the packet, and the peerage, a story of which he could make nothing, though Shafto's bearing to himself that evening seemed to confirm the idea that 'there was something in it.' Anyway, Mr. Carlyon was not indisposed to turn the event to account in one sense.
'Likely—likely enough, Dulcie lass,' said he; 'and so you'll hear no more of these two lads, if they are likely to become great folks, and belong to what is called the upper ten; they'll never think again of a poor village belle like you, though there is not a prettier face in all Devonshire than my Dulcie's from Lyme Regis to Cawsand Bay.'
He meant this kindly, and spoke with a purpose; and his words and the warning they conveyed sank bitterly into the tender heart of poor Dulcie.
By this time the cousins were sweeping through the darkness in the express train by Exeter, Taunton, and so forth; both were very silent, and each was full of his own thoughts, and what these were the reader may very well imagine.
Heedless of the covert and sneering smiles of Shafto, Florian, from time to time, drew forth the photo of Dulcie, and her shining lock of red-golden hair, his sole links between the past and the present; and already he felt as if a score of years had lapsed since they sat side by side upon the fallen tree.
Then, that he might give his whole thoughts to Dulcie, he affected to sleep; but Shafto did not sleep for hours. He sat quietly enough with his face in shadow, his travelling-cap of tweed-check pulled well down over his watchful and shifty grey-green eyes, the lamp overhead giving a miserable glimmer suited to the concealment of expression and thought; and as the swift train sped northward, the cousins addressed not a word to each other concerning those they had left behind, what was before them, or anything else.
After a time, Shafto really slept—slept the slumber which is supposed to be the reward of the just and conscientious, but which is much more often enjoyed by those who have no conscience at all.
Dulcie contrived to despatch a letter to Florian detailing the outrage to which she had been subjected by Shafto; but time passed on, and, for a reason we shall give in its place, the letter never reached him.
Again and again she recalled and rehearsed her farewell with Florian, and thought regretfully of his passionate pride, and desperate poverty too probably, if he quarrelled with Shafto; and she still seemed to see his beautiful dark eyes, dim with unshed tears, while her own welled freely and bitterly.
When could they meet again, if ever, and where and how? Her heart and brain ached with these questions.
Dulcie did not bemoan her fate, though her cheek paled a little, and she felt—even at her early years—as if life seemed over and done with, and in her passionate love for the absent, that existence alone was left to her, and so forth.
And as she was her father's housekeeper now, kept the keys and paid all the servants, paid all accounts and made the preserves, he was in no way sorry that the young men were gone; that the 'aimless philandering,' as he deemed it, had come to an end; and that much would be attended to in his cosy little household which he suspected—but unjustly—had been neglected hitherto.
To Dulcie, the whole locality of her native place, the breezy moors, the solitary hills, the mysterious Druid pillars and logan stones, the rocky shore, and the pretty estuary of the Yealm, where they had been wont to boat and fish for pilchards in summer and autumn, were all full of the haunting presence of the absent—the poor but proud and handsome lad who from boyhood, yea from infancy, had loved her, and who now seemed to have slipped out of her existence.
Spring melted into summer; golden sunshine flooded hill and dale, and lit up the waters of the Erm, the Yealm, and the far-stretching Channel, tinting with wondrous gleams and hues the waves that rolled upon the shore, or boiled about the Mewstorre Rock, and the sea-beaten promontory of Revelstoke; but to Dulcie the glory was gone from land and water: she heard no more, by letter or otherwise, of the love of her youth; he seemed to have dropped utterly out of her sphere; and though mechanically she gathered the fragrant leaves of the bursting June roses—the Marshal Neil and Gloire de Dijon—and treasured them carefully in rare old china jars and vases, a task in which she had often been assisted by Florian, she felt and thought—'Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory has departed!'
Shafto found himself a little nervous when he and Florian were actually in Edinburgh, a city in its beauty, boldness and grandeur of rock and mountain, fortress, terrace, and temple, so foreign-looking to English eyes, and so utterly unlike everything they had ever seen or conceived before.
Florian's thoughts were peculiarly his own. His father's death—though called an uncle now, but Florian always felt for and thought of him as a parent—the loss of Dulcie, their abrupt departure from Devonshire, and rough uprootal of all early associations, had made a kind of hiatus in the young fellow's life, and it was only now when he found himself amid the strange streets and picturesque splendour of Edinburgh that he began—like one recovering consciousness after a long illness—to gather up again the ravelled threads of thought, but with curious want of concern and energy; while Shafto felt that he personally had both, and that now he required to have all his wits about him.
Florian stood for a time that night at the door of their hotel in Princes Street looking at the wonderful lights of the Old Town sparkling in mid air, and some that were in the Castle must, he thought, be stars, they were so high above the earth. Scores of cabs and carriages went by, eastward and westward, but no carts or wains or lorries, such as one sees in London or Glasgow—vehicles with bright lamps and well muffled occupants, gentlemen in evening suits, and ladies in ball or dinner dresses, and crowds of pedestrians, under the brilliant gas lights and long boulevard-like lines of trees—the ever-changing human panorama of a great city street before midnight.
How odd, how strange and lonely poor Florian felt; he seemed to belong to no one, and, like the Miller o' Dee, nobody cared for him; and ever and anon his eyes rested on the mighty castled rock that towers above streets, monuments, and gardens, with a wonderous history all its own, 'where treasured lie the monarchy's last gems,' and with them the only ancient crown in the British Isles. 'Brave kings and the fairest of crowned women have slept and been cradled in that eyrie,' says an enthusiastic English writer; 'heroes have fought upon its slopes; English armies have stormed it; dukes, earls, and barons have been immured in its strong dungeons; a sainted Queen prayed and yielded up her last breath there eight centuries ago. It is an imperishable relic—a monument that needs no carving to tell its tale, and it has the nation's worship; and the different church sects cling round its base as if they would fight again for the guardianship of a venerable mother..... And if Scotland has no longer a king and Parliament all to herself, her imperial crown is at least safely kept up there amid strong iron stanchions, as a sacred memorial of her inextinguishable independence, and, if need were, for future use.'
Florian was a reader and a thinker, and he felt a keen interest in all that now surrounded him; but Shafto lurked in a corner of the smoke-room, turning in his mind the task of the morrow, and unwisely seeking to fortify himself by imbibing more brandy and soda than Florian had ever seen him take before.
After a sound night's rest and a substantial Scottish breakfast had fitted Shafto, as he thought, for facing anything, a cab deposited him and Florian (who was now beginning to marvel why he had travelled so far in a matter that concerned him not, in reality) at the residence of Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, W.S., in Charlotte Square—a noble specimen of Adams Street architecture, having four stately symmetrical corresponding façades, overlooked by the dome of St. George's Church.
'Lawyers evidently thrive in Scotland,' said Shafto, as he looked at the mansion of Mr. Kippilaw, and mentally recalled the modest establishment of Lawyer Carlyon; 'but foxes will flourish as long as there are geese to be plucked.'
Mr. Kippilaw was at home—indeed he was just finishing breakfast, before going to the Parliament House—as they were informed by the liveried valet, who led them through a pillared and marble-floored vestibule, and ushered them into what seemed a library, as the walls from floor to ceiling were lined with handsome books; but every professional man's private office has generally this aspect in Scotland.
In a few minutes Mr. Kippilaw appeared with a puzzled and perplexed expression in his face, as he alternatively looked at his two visitors, and at Shafto's card in his hand.
Mr. Kippilaw was now in his sixtieth year; his long since grizzled hair had now become white, and had shrunk to two patches far apart, one over each ear, and brushed stiffly up. His eyebrows were also white, shaggy, and under them his keen eyes peered sharply through the rims of a gold pince-nez balanced on the bridge of his long aquiline nose.
Shafto felt just then a strange and unpleasant dryness about his tongue and lips.
'Mr. Shafto Melfort?' said Mr. Kippilaw inquiringly, and referring to the card again. 'I was not aware that there was a Mr. Shafto Melfort—any relation of Lord Fettercairn?'
'His grandson,' said Shafto unblushingly.
'This gentleman with the dark eyes?' asked Mr. Kippilaw, turning to the silent Florian.
'No—myself,' said Shafto sharply and firmly.
'You are most unlike the family, who have always been remarkable for regularity of features. Then you are the son—of—of—'
'The late Major Lennard Melfort who died a few weeks ago——'
'Good Heavens, where?'
'On the west coast of Devonshire, near Revelstoke, where he had long resided under the assumed name of MacIan.'
'That of his wife?'
'Precisely so—my mother.'
'And this young gentleman, whose face and features seem curiously familiar to me, though I never saw him before, he is your brother of course.'
'No, my cousin, the son of my aunt Mrs. Gyle. I am an only son, but the Major ever treated us as if he had been the father of both, so great and good was his kindness of heart.'
'Be seated, please,' said the lawyer in a breathless voice, as he seated himself in an ample leathern elbow chair at his writing-table, which was covered with documents and letters all arranged by his junior clerk in the most orderly manner.
'This is very sudden and most unexpected intelligence,' said he, carefully wiping his glasses, and subjecting Shafto's visage to a closer scrutiny again. 'Have you known all these years past the real name and position of your father, and that he left Kincardineshire more than twenty years ago after a very grave quarrel with his parents at Craigengowan?'
'No—I only learned who he was, and who we really were, when he was almost on his deathbed. He confided it to me alone, as his only son, and because I had been bred to the law; and on that melancholy occasion he entrusted me with this important packet addressed to you.'
With an expression of the deepest interest pervading his well-lined face, Mr. Kippilaw took the packet and carefully examined the seal and the superscription, penned in a shaky handwriting, with both of which he was familiar enough, though he had seen neither for fully twenty years, and finally he examined the envelope, which looked old and yellow.
'If all be true and correct, these tidings will make some stir at Craigengowan,' he muttered as if to himself, and cut round the seal with a penknife.
'You will find ample proofs, sir, of all I have alleged,' said Shafto, who now felt that the crisis was at hand.
Mr. Kippilaw, with growing interest and wonder, drew forth the documents and read and re-read them slowly and carefully, holding the papers, but not offensively, between him and the light to see if the dates and water-marks tallied.
'The slow way this old devil goes on would exasperate an oyster!' thought Shafto, whose apparently perfect coolness and self-possession rather surprised and repelled the lawyer.
There were the certificate of Lennard's marriage with Flora MacIan, which Mr. Kippilaw could remember he had seen of old; the 'certificate of entry of birth of their son, born at Revelstoke at 6 h. 50 m. on the 28th October P.M., 18—,' signed by the Registrar, and the Major's farewell letter to his old friend, entrusting his son and his son's interests to his care.
'But, hallo!' exclaimed Mr. Kippilaw, after he had read for the second time, and saw that the letter of Lennard Melfort was undoubtedly authentic, 'how comes it that the whole of your Christian name is torn out of the birth certificate, and the surname Melfort alone remains?'
'Torn out!' exclaimed Shafto, apparently startled in turn.
'There is a rough little hole in the document where the name should be. Do you know the date of your birth?' asked Mr. Kippilaw, partly covering the document with his hand, unconsciously as it were.
'Yes—28th October.'
'And the year?'
Shafto gave it from memory.
'Quite correct—as given here,' said Mr. Kippilaw; 'but you look old for the date of this certificate.'
'I always looked older than my years,' replied Shafto.
Florian, who might have claimed the date as that of his own birth, was—luckily for Shafto—away at a window, gazing intently on a party of soldiers marching past, with a piper playing before them.
'Another certificate can be got if necessary,' said Mr. Kippilaw, as he glanced at the Registrar's signature, a suggestion which made Shafto's heart quake. 'It must have come from the Major in this mutilated state,' he added, re-examining with legal care and suspicion the address on the envelope and the seal, which, as we have said, he had cut round; 'but it is strange that he has made no mention of it being so in his letter to me. Poor fellow! he was more of a soldier than a man of business, however. Allow me to congratulate you, Mr. Melfort, on your new prospects. Rank and a very fine estate are before you.'
He warmly shook the hand of Shafto, who began to be more reassured; and saying, 'I must carefully preserve the documents for the inspection of Lord Fettercairn,' he locked them fast in a drawer of his writing-table, and spreading out his coat-tails before the fire, while warming his person in the fashion peculiar to the genuine 'Britisher,' he eyed Shafto benignantly, and made a few pleasant remarks on the Fettercairn family, the fertility and beauty of Craigengowan, the stables, kennels, the shootings, and so forth, and the many fine qualities of 'Leonard'—as he called him—and about whom he asked innumerable questions, all of which Shafto could answer truly and with a clear conscience enough, as he was master of all that.
The latter was asked 'what he thought of Edinburgh—if he had ever been there before,' and so forth. Shafto remembered a little 'Guide Book' into which he had certainly dipped, so as to be ready for anything, and spoke so warmly of the picturesque beauties and historical associations of the Modern Athens that the worthy lawyer's heart began to warm to so intelligent a young man, while of the silent Florian, staring out into the sun-lit square and its beautiful garden and statues, he took little notice, beyond wondering where he had seen his eyes and features before!
'And you were bred to the law, you say, Mr. Melfort?' remarked the old Writer to the Signet after a pause.
'Yes, in Lawyer Carlyon's office.'
'Very good—very good indeed; that is well! We generally think in Scotland that a little knowledge of the law is useful, as it teaches the laird to haud his ain; but I forgot that you are southland bred, and born too—the more is the pity—and can't understand me.'
Shafto did not understand him, but thought that his time spent in Lawyer Carlyon's office had not been thrown away now; experience there had 'put him up to a trick or two.'
'I shall write to Craigengowan by the first post,' said Mr. Kippilaw after another of those thoughtful pauses during which he attentively eyed his visitor. 'Lord and Lady Fettercairn—like myself now creeping up the vale of years—(Hope they may soon see the end of it! thought Shafto) will, I have no doubt, be perfectly satisfied by the sequence and tenor of the documents you have brought me that you are their grandson—the son of the expatriated Lennard—and when I hear from them I shall let you know the result without delay. You are putting up at—what hotel?'
'At the Duke of Rothesay, in Princes Street.'
'Ah! very well.'
'Thanks; I shall be very impatient to hear.'
'And your cousin—he will, of course, go with you to Craigengowan?'
Shafto hesitated, and actually coloured, as Florian could detect.
'What are your intentions or views?' Mr. Kippilaw asked the latter.
'He failed to pass for the army,' said Shafto bluntly and glibly, 'so I don't know what he means to do now. I believe that he scarcely knows himself.'
'Have you no friends on your mother's side, Mr. Florian?'
'None!' said Florian, with a sad inflection of voice.
'Indeed! and what do you mean to do?'
'Follow the drum, most probably,' replied Florian bitterly and a little defiantly, as Shafto's coldness, amid his own great and good fortune, roused his pride and galled his heart, which sank as he thought of Dulcie Carlyon, sweet, golden-haired English Dulcie, so far away.
Mr. Kippilaw shook his bald head at the young man's answer.
'I have some little influence in many ways, and if I can assist your future views you may command me, Mr. Florian,' said he with fatherly kindness, for he had reared—yea and lost—more than one fine lad of his own.
It has been said that one must know mankind very well before having the courage to be solely and simply oneself; thus, as Shafto's knowledge of mankind was somewhat limited, he felt his eye quail more than once under the steady gaze of Mr. Kippilaw.
'It is a very strange thing,' said the latter, 'that after the death of Mr. Cosmo in Glentilt, when Lord and Lady Fettercairn were so anxious to discover and recall his younger brother as the next and only heir to the title and estates, we totally failed to trace him. We applied to the War Office for the whereabouts of Major Lennard Melfort, but the authorities there, acting upon a certain principle, declined to afford any information. Advertisements, some plainly distinct, others somewhat enigmatical, were often inserted in the Scotsman and Times, but without the least avail.
'As for the Scotsman,' said Shafto, 'the Major——'
'Your father, you mean?'
'Yes,' said he, reddening, 'was no more likely to see such a provincial print in Devonshire than the Roman Diritto or the Prussian Kreuz Zeitung; and the Times, if he saw it—which I doubt—he must have ignored. Till the time of his death drew near, his feelings were bitter, his hostility to his family great.'
'I can well understand that, poor fellow!' said Mr. Kippilaw, glancing at his watch, as he added—'You must excuse me till to-morrow: I am already overdue at the Parliament House.'
He bowed his visitors out into the sun-lit square.
'You seem to have lost your tongue, Florian, and to have a disappointed look,' said Shafto snappishly, as they walked slowly towards the hotel together.
'Disappointed I am in one sense, perhaps, but I have no reason to repine or complain save at our change of relative positions, but certainly not at your unexpected good fortune, Shafto. It is only right and just that your father's only son should inherit all that is legally and justly his.'
Even at these words Shafto never winced or wavered in plans or purpose.
It was apparent, however, to Florian, that he had for some time past looked restless and uneasy, that he started and grew pale at any unusual sound, while a shadow rested on his not usually very open countenance.
Betimes next morning a note came to him at the Duke of Rothesay Hotel from Mr. Kippilaw, requesting a visit as early as possible, and on this errand he departed alone.
He found the old lawyer radiant, with a letter in his hand from Lord Fettercairn (in answer to his own) expressive of astonishment and joy at the sudden appearance of this hitherto unknown grandson, whom he was full of ardour and anxiety to see.
'You will lose no time in starting for Craigengowan,' said Mr. Kippilaw. 'You take the train at the Waverley Station and go viâ Burntisland, Arbroath, and Marykirk—or stay, I think we shall proceed together, taking your papers with us.'
'Thanks,' said Shafto, feeling somehow that the presence of Mr. Kippilaw at the coming interview would take some of the responsibility off his own shoulders.
'Craigengowan, your grandfather says, will put on its brightest smile to welcome you.'
'Very kind of Craigengowan,' said Shafto, who felt but ill at ease in his new role of adventurer, and unwisely adopted a free-and-easy audacity of manner.
'A cheque on the Bank of Scotland for present emergencies,' said Mr. Kippilaw, opening his cheque-book, 'and in two hours we shall meet at the station.'
'Thanks again. How kind you are, my dear sir.'
'I would do much for your father's son, Mr. Shafto,' said the lawyer, emphatically.
'And what about Florian?'
'The letter ignores him—a curious omission. In their joy, perhaps Lord and Lady Fettercairn forgot. But, by the way, here is a letter for him that came by the London mail.'
'A letter for him!' said Shafto, faintly, while his heart grew sick with apprehension, he knew not of what.
'Mr. Florian's face is strangely familiar to me,' said Mr. Kippilaw aloud; but to himself, 'Dear me, dear me, where can I have seen features like his before? He reminds me curiously of Lennard Melfort.'
Shafto gave a nervous start.
The letter was a bulky one, and bore the Wembury and other post-marks, and to Shafto's infinite relief was addressed in the familiar handwriting of Dulcie Carlyon.
He chuckled, and a great thought worthy of himself occurred to him.
In the solitude of his own room at the hotel, he moistened and opened the gummed envelope, and drew forth four closely written sheets of paper full of the outpourings of the girl's passionate heart, of her wrath at the theft of her locket by Shafto, and mentioning that she had incidentally got the address of Mr. Kippilaw from her father, and desiring him to write to her, and she would watch for and intercept the postman by the sea-shore.
'Bosh,' muttered Shafto, as he tore up and cast into the fire Dulcie's letter, all save a postscript, written on a separate scrap of paper, and which ran thus:—
'You have all the love of my heart, Florian; but, as I feel and fear we may never meet again, I send you this, which I have worn next my heart, to keep.'
This was a tiny tuft of forget-me-nots.
'Three stamps on all this raggabash!' exclaimed Shafto, whom the girl's terms of endearment to Florian filled with a tempest of jealous rage. He rolled the locket he had wrenched from Dulcie's neck in soft paper, and placed it with the postscript in the envelope, which he carefully closed and re-gummed, placed near the fire, and the moment it was perfectly dry he gave it to Florian.
If the latter was surprised to see a letter to himself, addressed in Dulcie's large, clear, and pretty handwriting, to the care of 'Lawyer Kippilaw,' as she called him, he was also struck dumb when he found in the envelope the locket, the likeness, and the apparently curt farewell contained in one brief sentence!
For a time he stood like one petrified. Could it all be real? Alas! there was no doubting the postal marks and stamps upon this most fatal cover; and while he was examining it and passing his hand wildly more than once across his eyes and forehead, Shafto was smoking quietly at a window, and to all appearance intent on watching the towering rock and batteries of the Castle, bathed in morning sunshine—batteries whereon steel morions and Scottish spears had often gleamed of old.
Though his soul shrank from doing so, Florian could not resist taking Shafto into his confidence about this unexplainable event; and the latter acted astonishment to the life!
Was the locket thus returned through the post in obedience to her father's orders, after he had probably discovered the contents of it?
But Shafto demolished this hope by drawing his attention to the tenor of the pithy scrap of paper, which precluded the idea that it had been done under any other influence than her own change of mind.
'Poor Florian!' sneered Shafto, as he prepared to take his departure for Craigengowan; 'now you had better proceed at once to cultivate the wear-the-willow state of mind.'
Florian made no reply. His ideas of faith and truth and of true women were suddenly and cruelly shattered now!
'She has killed all that was good in me, and the mischief of the future will be at her door!' he exclaimed, in a low and husky voice.
'Oh, Florian, don't say that,' said Shafto, who actually did feel a little for him; and just then, when they were on the eve of separation, even his false and artful heart did feel a pang, with the sting of fear, at the career of falsehood to which he had committed himself; but his ambition, innate greed, selfishness, and pride urged him on that career steadily and without an idea of flinching.
After Mr. Kippilaw's remarks concerning how the face of Florian interested him, and actually that he bore a likeness to the dead Major—to his own father, in fact—Shafto became more than desirous to be rid of him in any way. He thought with dread of the discovery and fate of 'the Claimant,' and of the fierce light thrown by the law on that gigantic imposture; but genuine compunction he had none!
'Well,' he muttered, as he drove away from the hotel with his portmanteau, 'I must keep up this game at all hazards now. I have stolen—not only Florian's name—but his place, so let him paddle his own canoe!'
'I'll write you from Craigengowan,' were his parting words—a promise which he never fulfilled. Shafto, who generally held their mutual purse now, might have offered to supply the well-nigh penniless lad with money, but he did not. He only longed to be rid of him—to hear of him no more. He had a dread of his presence, of his society, of his very existence, and now had but one hope, wish, and desire—that Florian Melfort should cross his path never again. And now that he had achieved a separation between him and Dulcie, he conceived that Florian would never again go near Revelstoke, of which he—Shafto—had for many reasons a nervous dread!
Full of Dulcie and her apparently cruel desertion of him, which he considered due to calm consideration of his change of fortune—or rather total want of it—Florian felt numbly indifferent to the matter Shafto had in hand and all about himself.
While very nearly moved to girlish tears at parting from one with whom he had lived since infancy—with whom he had shared the same sleeping-room, shared in the same sports and studies—with whom he had read the same books to some extent, and had ever viewed as a brother—Florian was rather surprised, even shocked, by the impatience of that kinsman, the only one he had in all the wide world, to part from him and begone, and to see he was calm and hard as flint or steel.
'Different natures have different ways of showing grief, I suppose,' thought the simple Florian; 'or can it be that he still has a grudge at me because of the false but winsome Dulcie? If affection for me is hidden in his heart, it is hidden most skilfully.' No letter ever came from Craigengowan. The pride of Florian was justly roused, and he resolved that he would not take the initiative, and attempt to open a correspondence with one who seemed to ignore him, and whose manner at departing he seemed to see more clearly and vividly now.
The fact soon became grimly apparent. He could not remain idling in such a fashionable hotel as the Duke of Rothesay, so he settled his bill there, and took his portmanteau in his hand, and issued into the streets—into the world, in fact.
About six months had elapsed since Shafto and Florian parted, as we have described, at Edinburgh.
It was June now. The luxurious woods around Craigengowan were in all their leafy beauty, and under their shadows the dun deer panted in the heat as they made their lair among the feathery braken; the emerald green lawn was mowed and rolled till it was smooth as a billiard-table and soft as three-pile velvet.
The air was laden with the wafted fragrance of roses and innumerable other flowers; and the picturesque old house, with its multitude of conical turrets furnished with glittering vanes, its crow-stepped gables and massive chimneys, stood boldly up against the deep blue sky of summer; and how sweetly peaceful looked the pretty village, seen in middle distance, through a foliated vista in the woodlands, with the white smoke ascending from its humble hearths, the only thing that seemed to be stirring there; and how beautiful were the colours some of its thatched roofs presented—greenest moss, brown lichen, and stonecrop, now all a blaze of gold, while the murmur of a rivulet (a tributary of the Esk), that gurgled under its tiny arch, 'the auld brig-stane' of Lennard's boyhood, would be heard at times, amid the pleasant voices of some merrymakers on the lawn, amid the glorious shrubberies, and belts of flowers below the stately terrace, that had long since replaced the moat that encircled the old fortified mansion, from whence its last Jacobite lord had ridden forth to fight and die for James VIII., on the field of Sheriffmuir—King of Scotland, England, France, and Ireland, as the unflinching Jacobites had it.
A gay and picturesquely dressed lawn-tennis party was busy tossing the balls from side to side among several courts; but apart from all, and almost conspicuously so—a young fellow, in a handsome light tennis suit of coloured flannels, and a beautiful girl were carrying on a very palpable flirtation.
The gentleman was Shafto, and his companion was Finella Melfort, Cosmo's orphan daughter (an heiress through her mother), who had returned a month before from a protracted visit in Tyburnia. They seemed to be on excellent terms with each other, and doubtless the natural gaiety of the girl's disposition, her vivacity of manner, and their supposed mutual relationship, had opened the way to speedy familiarity.
She was a dark-haired and dark-eyed, but very white-skinned little beauty, with a perfect mignonne face, a petite but round and compact figure, gracefully formed, and very coquettish and spirituelle in all her ways.
She had received her peculiar Christian name at the special request of her grandfather, that silly peer being desirous that her name might go down in the peerage in connection with that of the famous Finella of Fettercairn.
'A winsome pair they would make,' was the smiling remark of Mr. Kenneth Kippilaw, who was of the party (with three romping daughters from Edinburgh), to Lord Fettercairn, who smirked a grim assent, as if it was a matter of indifference to him, which it was not, as his legal adviser very well knew; and my Lady Drumshoddy, who heard the remark, bestowed upon him a bright and approving smile in return for a knowing glance through the glasses of his gold pince-nez.
In Craigengowan the adventurous Shafto Gyle had found his veritable Capua—he was literally 'in clover.' Yet he never heard himself addressed by his assumed name without experiencing a strange sinking and fluttering of the heart.
The once-despised Lennard Melfort's sword, his commission, and his hard-won medals earned in Central India and the Terai of Nepaul were now looked upon as precious relics in his mother's luxurious boudoir at Craigengowan, and reclaimed from the lumber-attic, his portrait, taken in early life, was again hung in a place of honour in the dining-hall.
'What a fool my old uncle was to lose his claim on such a place as this, and all for the face of a girl!' was the exclamation of Shafto to himself when first he came to Craigengowan, and then he looked fearfully around him lest the word uncle might have been overheard by some one; and he thought—'If rascally the trick I have played my simple and love-stricken cousin—and rascally it was and is—surely it was worth while to be the heir of this place, Craigengowan. To reckon as mine in future all this grand panorama of heath-clad hills, of green and golden fields, of purple muirland, and stately woods of oak and pine where the deer rove in herds; as mine the trout-streams that flow towards the Bervie; the cascades that roar down the cliffs; the beautiful old house, with its stables, kennels, and terrace; its cellars, pictures, plate, and jewellery, old china and vases of marble and jasper, china and Japanese work; and I possess all that rank and wealth can give!' and so thought this avaricious rascal, with a capacity for evil actions far beyond his years.
To the fair inheritance he had come to steal he could not, however, add as his the blue sky above it, or the waves of the German Sea, which the North Esk flowed to join; but he was not without sense appreciative enough to enjoy the fragrance of the teeming earth, of the pine forests where the brown squirrels leaped from branch to branch, and on the mountain side the perfume of the golden whin and gorse.
Appraising everything, these ideas were ever recurring to his mind, and it was full of them now as he looked around him, and at times, like one in a dream, heard the pretty babble of the high-bred, coquettish girl, who, to amuse herself, made œillades at him; who called him so sweetly 'Cousin Shafto,' and who, with her splendid fortune, he was now beginning to include among the many goods and chattels which must one day accrue to him.
Lord and Lady Fettercairn were, of course, fully twenty years older than when we saw them last, full of wrath and indignation at Lennard for his so-called mésalliance. Both were cold in heart and self-absorbed in nature as ever. The latter was determined to be a beauty still, though now upon the confines of that decade 'when the cunning of cosmetics can no longer dissemble the retribution of Time the avenger.' The former was bald now, and the remains of his once sandy-coloured hair had become grizzled, and a multitude of puckers were about his cold, grey eyes, while there was a perceptible stoop in his whilom flat, square shoulders.
He was as full of family pride as ever, and the discovery of an unexpected and authentic heir and grandson to his title, that had never been won in the field or cabinet, but was simply the reward of bribery and corruption, and for which not one patriotic act had been performed by four generations, had given him intense satisfaction, and caused much blazing of bonfires and consumption of alcohol about the country-side; and smiles that were bright and genuine frequently wreathed the usually pale and immobile face of Lady Fettercairn when they rested on Shafto.
We all know how the weak and easy adoption of a pretender by a titled mother in a famous and most protracted case not many years ago caused the most peculiar complications; thus Lady Fettercairn was more pardonable, posted up as she was with documentary evidence, in accepting Shafto Gyle as her grandson.
We have described her as being singularly, perhaps aristocratically, cold. As a mother, she had never been given to kissing, caressing, or fondling her two sons (as she did a succession of odious pugs and lap-dogs), but, throwing their little hearts back upon themselves, left nurses and maids to 'do all that sort of tiresome thing.'
So Finella, though an heiress, came in for very little of it either, with all her sweetness, beauty, and pretty winning ways, even from Lord Fettercairn. In truth, the man who cared so little for his own country and her local and vital interests was little likely to care much for any flesh and blood that did not stand in his own boots.
Lady Fettercairn heard from her 'grand-son' from time to time with—for her—deep apparent sympathy, and much genuine aristocratic regret and indignation, much of the obscure story of his boyhood and past life, at least so much as he chose to tell her; and she bitterly resented that Lennard Melfort should have sought to put the 'nephew of that woman, Flora MacIan,' into the army, while placing 'his own son' Shafto into the office of a miserable village lawyer, and so forth—and so forth!
Fortunate it was, she thought, that all this happened in an obscure village in Devonshire, and far away from Craigengowan and all its aristocratic surroundings.
She also thought it strange that Shafto—('Whence came that name?' she would mutter angrily)—should be so unlike her dark and handsome Lennard. His eyebrows were fair and heavy; his eyes were a pale, watery grey; his lips were thin, his neck thick, and his hair somewhat sandy in hue. Thus, she thought, he was not unlike what her husband, the present Lord Fettercairn, must have been at the same age.
As for the Peer himself, he was only too thankful that an heir had turned up for his ill-gotten coronet, and that now—so far as one life was concerned—Sir Bernard Burke would not rate it among the dormant and attainted titles—those of the best and bravest men that Scotland ever knew.
As for their mutual scheme concerning Shafto and their granddaughter Finella, with her beauty and many attractive parts, the former was craftily most desirous of furthering it, knowing well that, happen what might in the future, she was an heiress; that marriage with her would give him a firm hold on the Fettercairn family, though the money of her mother was wisely settled on the young lady herself.
Indeed, Finella had not been many weeks home from London, at Craigengowan, before Lady Fettercairn opened the trenches, and spoke pretty plainly to him on the subject.
Waving her large fan slowly to and fro, and eyeing Shafto closely over the top of it, she said:
'I hope, my dearest boy, that you will find your cousin Finella—the daughter of my dead darling Cosmo—a lovable kind of girl. But even were she not so—and all say she is—you must not feel a prejudice against her, because—because——'
'What, grandmother?'
'Because it is our warmest desire that you may marry her.'
'Why, haven't I money enough?' asked Shafto, with one of his dissembling smiles.
'Of course, as the heir of Fettercairn; but one is always the better to have more, and you must not feel——'
'What?' asked Shafto, with affected impatience.
'Please not to interrupt me thus. I mean that you must not be prejudiced against her as an expected parti.'
'Why should I?'
'One hears and reads so much of such things.'
'In novels, I suppose; but as she is so pretty and eligible, why the dickens——'
'Shafto!'
'What now?' he asked, with some irritability, as she often took him to task for his solecisms.
'Dickens is not a phrase to use. Exclamations that were suited to the atmosphere of Mr. Carlyon's office in Devonshire will not do in Craigengowan!'
'Well—she won't look at me with your eyes, grandmother.'