WHICH TREATS OF LOVE-LETTERS.
The middle of July had come, and matters remained almost unchanged in
the family circle at Craigengowan. Lady Fettercairn had not yet
carried out her threat of getting rid of Dulcie Carlyon, though a
vague sense of dislike of the latter was fast growing in her mind.
Hammersley seemed to be effectually removed from Finella's sphere,
though by what means Lady Fettercairn knew not; but still Shafto made
no progress with the heiress; thus she feared some secret influence
was exerted over him by 'this Miss Carlyon,' and would gladly have
had old Mrs. Prim back again.
It was July now, we say; and July in London, though Byron says,
'The English winter ending in July,
To recommence in August,'
to the lady's mind was associated only with dinners, concerts, races,
balls, the opera, garden parties, and so forth, all of which she was
relinquishing for an apparently hopeless purpose, while she knew that
all her fashionable friends would be having strange surmises on the
cause of this most unusual rustication, and inquiring of each other,
'What are the Fettercairns about?'
Dulcie was painfully sensible that the lady of the house had become
cold, stiff, and most exacting in manner to her, even condescending
to sneer at times, with a well-bred tone and bearing that some
high-born ladies can assume when they wish to sting dependants or
equals alike.
Finella's other grandmother, my Lady Drumshoddy, had ceased to be
quite so indignant at her repulsion to Shafto, as she had a
nephew--son of a sister--coming home on leave from India; and she
thought perhaps the heiress might see her way to present herself and
her thousands to young Major Ronald Garallan, of the Bengal Lancers,
who had the reputation of being a handsome fellow and a regular
'lady-killer.'
Days and days and long weary weeks passed by--weeks of longing--and
no word of hope, of love, or apology came to Finella across the seas
from distant Africa, evolved as she hoped by the letter of Dulcie to
Florian, and her heart grew sick with hope deferred, while more
battles and skirmishes were fought, and she knew not that a vessel
with the mail containing that missive which Florian posted at the
orderly-room tent had been cast away in the Bight of Benin, and that
the bags had been saved with extreme difficulty.
She contemplated Vivian Hammersley facing danger in battle and
sickness in camp, marching and toiling in trackless regions, with one
belief ever in his angry heart that she had been false to him--she
who loved him more truly and passionately every day. So time seemed
to pass monotonously on, and her unsatisfied longing to be justified
grew almost to fever heat; and death might take him away before he
knew of her innocence. She tried to be patient, though writhing
under the evil eyes of Shafto, the author of all this mischief.
Could it be that Vivian had been driven away from her for ever?
Daily she brooded over the unhappy story of her apparent fault and
its bitter punishment, and she would seem to murmur in her heart,
'Come back to me, my darling. Oh, how am I to live on thus without
you?'
And amid all this no sense of pride or mortification came to support
her.
By the two girls the Cape news was, of course, closely and nervously
watched. The tidings of Florian's promotion stirred the hearts of
both; but to anyone else in Craigengowan it was, of course, a matter
of profound indifference, if remarked at all.
A telegram briefly announced, without details, that Captain
Hammersley had been wounded after the skirmish at the Euzangonyan
Hill, but nothing more, as the papers were filled by the death of the
Prince Imperial; so, in the absence of other information, the heart
of Finella was wrung to its core.
At last there came a morning when, in the house postal-bag, among
others at breakfast, Shafto drew forth a letter for Dulcie.
'A letter for Miss Carlyon from the Cape,' he exclaimed; 'what a lot
of post-marks! Have you a friend there?'
'One,' said Dulcie in a low voice; and, with a sigh of joyous
expectation, like a throb in her bosom, she thrust it into her bodice
for perusal by-and-by, when no curious or scrutinizing eyes were upon
her, after she had duly performed the most important duty of the day,
washing and combing Snap, the pug; and the action was seen by Shafto,
who smiled one of his ugly smiles.
When, after a time, she was at leisure, Finella drew near her,
expectant of some message.
'Come with me, quick,' said Dulcie; 'I have a letter for you!'
'For me?'
'Enclosed in Florian's.'
Quick as their little feet could take them, the girls hurried to a
secluded part of the shrubberies, where stood a tree known as Queen
Mary's Thorn. Often when visiting her nobles, the latter had been
requested to plant a tree, as if emblematical of prosperity, or in
order that its owners might tend and preserve it in honour of their
illustrious guest.
Such a tree had been planted there by Queen Mary in the days of the
old and previous family, when on her way north to Aberdeen in the
eventful year 1562, when she rode to Inverness on horseback. Her
room is still pointed out in the house of Craigengowan, and tradition
yet tells in the Howe of the Mearns that, unlike the beer-drinking
Elizabeth (who boxed her courtiers' ears, and would have made Mrs.
Grundy grow pale when she swore like a trooper), thanks to her
exquisite training at the court of Catharine de Medici, her grace and
bearing at table were different from those of her rival, who helped
herself from a platter without fork or spoon, and tore the flesh from
the roast with her teeth, like a Soudanese of the present day.
But, as Lord Fettercairn was greatly bored by tourists and artists
coming in quest of this thorn-tree, under which the girls now seated
themselves, and he could not make money out of it, at a shilling a
head, like his Grace of Athole for a glimpse of the Falls of Bruar,
he frequently threatened (as he cared about as much for Queen Mary as
he did for the Queen of Sheba) to have it cut down, and would have
done so long since, but for the intervention of old Mr. Kippilaw the
nationalist.
The delight of Dulcie on unfolding her epistles was only equalled by
the delight and gratitude of Finella on receiving hers.
'Oh Dulcie, Dulcie!' ran the letter of Florian (with the whole of
which we do not mean to afflict the reader), 'while here--thousands
of miles away from you--how often my heart sickens with hungry
longing for a sight of your face--for the sound of your voice, the
sound I may never hear again; for in war time we know not what an
hour may bring forth, or on each day if we shall see to-morrow. But,
for all that, don't be alarmed about me. I have not the smallest
intention of departing this life prematurely, if I can help it. I'll
turn up again, never fear, darling--assegais, rifles, and so forth,
nevertheless. The chances of our lives ever coming together again
seemed very small when first we parted, yet somehow, dear Dulcie, I
am more hopeful now; and something more may turn up when we least
expect it; and we never know what a day may bring forth.'
Florian was far, far away from her, yet the sight of his letter,
perhaps the first he had ever written to her, gave the lone Dulcie,
for a time, a blissful sense of love and protection she had never
felt since that fatal morning when she found her father dead 'in
harness'--dead at his desk. Oh, that she could but lay her head on
Florian's breast!
And as Finella read and re-read Hammersley's letter a bright, sweet,
happy smile curved her lips--the lips that he had kissed in that
first time of supreme happiness, that now seemed so long, long ago.
'I have been cruel, hard, suspicious,' wrote Hammersley, 'till that
fine young fellow, then a sergeant of ours--the sergeant of my
squadron--a lad of birth and breeding evidently, showed me the letter
of Miss Carlyon--at least that part of it which referred to us,
darling. I did not know till then how bitterly I had been deceived,
and how we had both been imposed upon. Pardon me for the cruel note
I wrote you, and forgive me. But, Finella, as we have often said
before, what view will your people take of us--of me? I am not quite
a poor man, though very much so when compared with you. Think if
monetary matters were reversed, and you accepted a rich man who asked
you to wed him, would not people say it was his money you wanted?'
'Fiddlesticks!' whispered Finella parenthetically; 'what matters it
what people say, if we love each other? We marry to please
ourselves, Vivian, not them!'
'There are some arts that come by intuition to some people,'
continued Hammersley, 'and, by Jove! darling, that of soldiering has
come to your friend Miss Carlyon's admirer. His career will be a
sure one; not that I believe the marshal's baton is often found in
the knapsack of Tommy Atkins. He was an enigma to me; his youth and
all that belonged thereto seemed dead and buried--his past a secret,
which he cared about revealing to none; but such are the influences
of camp life and camaraderie that I drew to him, and now I am as
familiar with the name of little Dulcie with the golden hair--golden,
is it not?--as yourself; so give her a kiss for me. I owe her
much--I owe her the happiness of my life in dispelling the dark cloud
that rose between us--in taking the load from my heart that made me
blind and desperate, so that it is a marvel that I have not been
killed long ago.'
As she read on, to Finella it seemed that it was all a dream that
there ever had been any bitterness between them at all; that his
fierce, short note, pencilled in haste and delivered by the butler,
had ever existed, or that he had left her abruptly and hastily,
without a word or a glance of tenderness--not even uttering her name,
perhaps, the musical name he was wont to linger over so lovingly;
that he had ever gone from her in a natural and pardonable tempest of
anger and jealousy.
And now how well and fondly she could recall their first introduction
in London, though it seemed so long ago, when their eyes first met
with a sudden and subtle understanding, 'and their glances seemed to
mingle as two gases meet and take fire,' as a writer says quaintly;
and though they had spoken but little then, and well-bred
commonplaces only, each had felt that there were looks and tones
untranslatable, yet full of sweet and hidden meaning to the sensitive.
For a time, as if loth to go back to the work-a-day world, both girls
sat under Queen Mary's Thorn, each with letter in hand, lost in a
maze of happy dreams. They could see the shrubberies and the woods
about the mansion in all the glory of midsummer, the smooth spaces of
emerald greensward, the balustraded terrace with its stately flights
of steps, and the pool below it, where the white waterlilies and the
white swans floated in sunshine; but all was seen dreamily, and to
their ears like drowsy music came the hum of the honey-bee and the
twittering and voices of the birds, while a beloved name hovered on
the soft lips of each, and seemed to be reproduced in the songs of
the linnet and thrush.
'You will write to Captain Hammersley, Finella,' said Dulcie,
suddenly breaking the silence; 'write to him and supplement all I
have written to Florian. You see he is too good, too brave, not to
be completely forgiving.'
'He has nothing to forgive,' said Finella, with just a little soupçon
of pride.
'Well, of course not; and his heart has come back to you again, if it
ever left you, when he knows that you love him only, and loved him
always.'
'He sends you a kiss, Dulcie!' said Finella, pressing her lips to the
girl's soft cheek.
'Be brave, Vivian,' urged Finella, when she wrote her letter; 'I mean
to be so, so far as I am concerned, and do not be discouraged by any
opposition on the part of grandmamma. I am rich enough to please
myself. Let us have perfect confidence in each other, and we shall
realize our dearest hopes, if God spares you to me. Oh, you dear,
old, passionate silly!--to run away in a furious pet, as you did from
Craigengowan, without seeking a word of explanation. How much all
this has cost me, Heaven alone knows; but it is all over now.'
Her long and loving letter was despatched--posted by her own hand.
'But his wound--his wound--when shall I hear more of that?' was her
ever-recurring thought.
Now Shafto had seen the Cape letter ere Dulcie had time to conceal it
in her bosom, and watching both girls, he had seen them intent on
their missives under the shade of Queen Mary's Thorn. So, knowing
that Dulcie's letter could only be from Florian, intent on making
mischief, he went to Lady Fettercairn, whom he found in her luxurious
boudoir, and asked her if she 'approved of her companion
corresponding with private soldiers.'
'Certainly not,' replied the dame sharply; 'was her letter this
morning from such?'
'I am certain of it.'
'This is excessively bad form!' she exclaimed, reclining in a blue
satin easy-chair, with one slim white hand caressing the smooth,
round head of her goggle-eyed pug dog. 'Send her here.'
'So you have a military correspondent, Miss Carlyon, I understand?'
said she, when the culprit appeared.
'Yes, my Lady Fettercairn,' replied Dulcie, colouring painfully.
'Is he a relation?'
'No; you saw, and--and were struck with his likeness in my locket,'
faltered poor Dulcie.
'Well--I do not approve, while under my roof, of your corresponding
with private soldiers, or sergeants, and so forth!'
'But my letter is from an officer of the 24th Regiment,' said Dulcie,
with a little pardonable pride.
'So much the worse perhaps--an officer?'
'Lieutenant Florian MacIan.'
'Indeed,' said Lady Fettercairn, languidly fanning herself; 'I
remember the name now--he was so called after the girl MacIan,' she
added half to herself. 'MacIan! what a name! It is quite a
calamity. I do not care to have you corresponding with these
people--while here,' she added vaguely.
Dulcie was on the point of reminding her that the unfriended Florian
was the cousin-german of Shafto, but disdained to do so when the
latter so selfishly forgot that matter herself, and bowing, withdrew
in silence--too happy to feel mortified.
When she and Finella went to bed that night, though each knew every
word of her letter by heart--they slept with them under their
pillows--yea and for many a night--that they might have them at hand
to read the first thing in the morning, so simply sentimental had the
proud Finella and the fond little Dulcie become!
Dulcie's head was on her pillow, over which her red-golden hair was
tossed in glorious confusion; but no eyes saw it, save perhaps those
of the man in the moon, the silver light of which shone on the
carpeted floor, and then slowly stole upward in a white line upon her
white coverleted bed, and ere long its soft and tender radiance fell
upon the equally soft and tender face of the young girl, whose heavy
dark lashes lay close on her rounded cheeks, and whose rosebud lips
were parted and smiling, for she had a happy dream, born of her
letter--a dream of Revelstoke and the old days there with Florian,
ere grief, sorrow, separation, and the bitter realities of life came
upon them.