FLIGHT.
'Go I must,' murmured Dulcie, when in the solitude of her own room
she said her nightly prayers on her knees. 'I cannot help it. I may
come to want bread by the step I am about to take, but better death
than enduring this system of mortification and degradation.'
She had received her slender quarterly allowance some time before
that crisis, and as yet luckily none of it had been spent. How small
a sum it looked to face the world with!
She packed and prepared all her clothes, intending to write to the
housekeeper for them when she found another home. In an ample
Gladstone bag she placed carefully all that was requisite for her
immediate need, and, weary with rapid exertion and heavy thought,
laid her head on the pillow of a sofa, fearing to undress or trust
herself in bed, lest a deep sleep might fall upon her.
All was silent in the great house, and no sound broke the stillness
of the warm summer night save when some dog bayed at the moon from
the quadrangle of the stable-yard.
Midnight struck on a great and sonorous clock in an adjacent
corridor; anon a little French clock on her chimney-piece chimed out
two on its silver bell, but no sleep came to Dulcie's eyes, nor did
she desire to court it.
Her mind was full of rambling fancies. She thought of her parents
lying so peacefully side by side in old Revelstoke churchyard, within
sound of the sobbing sea, and of what their emotions would have been
could they have foreseen all that was before her of doubt and
unhappiness; and with the memory of them she tenderly turned over
some withered leaves that lay in a little prayer-book Mr. Pentreath
had given her, and while doing so recalled the sweet lines that
seemed so _apropos_ to them:
'Only a bunch of withered leaves,
Brought by a stranger's hand,
But they grew on a spot she dearly loved--
They bloomed in the dear old land.
Father and mother lie there at rest
Beneath the soft emerald sod,
Under the shelter of the cross,
And close to the house of God,'
close to the time-worn church of Revelstoke. She thought of Shafto
and the thorn he had proved in her path, and felt a satisfaction from
the conviction that after this night too probably she would never
more look upon his face.
She thought again and again of Florian. Where was he then, and what
doing? Too probably sleeping the sleep of the weary and worn, on the
bare earth in some tented field, awaiting the coming perils of the
morrow, and then with the idea of Finella came fresh tears for
parting thus from the only friend she had.
After three had struck she dressed herself quickly in the costume in
which she meant to travel, assured herself that her purse was safe,
that her hat, gloves, and sunshade were at hand, and sat down by a
window to watch for the earliest streak of dawn.
With all this earnestness of preparation and of purpose she had no
settled plan for the future--no very defined one at least; her sole
desire was to anticipate the final mortification of dismissal, and to
get away from the vicinity of Lady Fettercairn, of Shafto, and of
Craigengowan.
Save the Rev. Paul Pentreath, far away in her native Devonshire, and
the vicar in London through whom he had befriended her, she had no
one to whom to look forward, and, save for Florian's sake, she felt
at times, as if she cared little what became of her. She would reach
London, take a little lodging there, and look about her for some
employment while her money lasted; and when it was gone--gone, what
then?
Again came the thought of Finella, whom she loved with all the
passionate earnestness of an impulsive young heart thrust back upon
itself, and yearning for friendship and affection. Even with her
regard it was impossible that she could stay longer in the same house
with him who was now returning--Shafto--even were dismissal not
hanging over her. She could but go away; her presence was necessary
to no one's happiness, and none would miss her--perhaps not even
Finella after a time, for the latter lived in a world--the world of
wealth and rank--a sphere apart from that of poor Dulcie Carlyon.
Amid these thoughts she started: dawn was breaking in the east, but
the world around her was still involved in gloom and sleep.
How long, long and chill, the night had seemed; yet it was a short
and warm one of July, when there is only a total darkness of four
hours, especially in a region so far north as the Howe of the Mearns.
Red light stole along the waters of the distant German Sea; it began
to tip the hilltops and crept gradually down into the woods and glens
below, where the Bervie, the Finella, and the Cowie brawled on their
way to the ocean.
As one in a dream, she sat for a little time watching the dawn till
the light of the half-risen sun was streaming over the tree-tops and
through the parted curtains of her windows, when she started up with
all the resolution she had taken overnight yet full in her mind.
With rapid and trembling fingers she assumed the last details of her
travelling costume, smoothed her golden hair, gave a final glance at
herself in the mirror, and saw how pale and unslept she looked after
her past night's vigil, tied her veil tightly across her face, fitted
on her gloves with accuracy, took her travelling bag, and with a
prayer on her lips prepared to go out into the world--alone!
The clustering roses and clematis were about the windows of the
square turret-room, notwithstanding its great height from the ground;
the birds were twittering among them, and diamond dewdrops gemmed
every leaf.
Light and shadowy clouds of mist, exhaled upwards by the early
morning sun, hung about the summit of Moelmannoch and other hills,
and in the sunshine the insect world was all astir: the bees were
already abroad, and the blackbirds were hopping about the gravelled
terraces. To Dulcie it seemed that they at least were at home.
She leaned for a moment out of the window and drank--for the last
time--a deep draught of the pure air that came from the lovely
Scottish landscape over which her eyes wandered, as it stretched away
down the fertile and peaceful Howe of the Mearns, the corn deepening
into gold, the picturesque houses, luxuriant orchards and gardens;
and she bade to each and all farewell, with little regret, perhaps,
for with all their beauty they were too intimately associated with
the idea of Lady Fettercairn and many a humiliation.
Opening her room-door she stole swiftly down the great carpeted
staircase, passed through the drawing-rooms into the conservatory,
the door of which she knew she could unlock more easily than that of
the great door which opened to the _porte cochère_. There was no one
yet astir in all that numerous household, so, hurrying across the
dewy lawn, she turned her face resolutely towards the station, where
she knew she would reach the early Aberdeen train for the South.
The country highway was deserted; she met no one but a gamekeeper
returning from a night's watch, perhaps, with his gun under his arm.
She thought he looked at her curiously as she passed him, sorely
weighted by her travelling bag, but he did not address her; and so
without other adventures she reached the little wayside station of
Craigengowan just as the gates were being unclosed, and, quickly
securing her ticket, retired to the seclusion of the waiting-room.
Her heart had but one aching thought--the parting with Finella.
In her pride and indignation we must admit that Dulcie, ever a
creature of impulse, was not acting judiciously. She had not stopped
to ask a letter of recommendation--'a character,' she mentally and
bitterly phrased it--from Lady Fettercairn; neither had she risked
the opposition and kind advice of Finella, but had thus left her
present life of irritation and humiliation to rush into a new and
unknown world, that now, even when she had barely crossed the
rubicon, was beginning, as she sat in the lonely and empty wayside
station, to chill and dismay her.
'In the future that is before me, whom am I to trust in again? How
am I to fight the world's battle alone?' she was beginning to think,
even while the clanking train for the South came sweeping across the
echoing Howe.
Ay, she so pure, so artless, so unsuspecting of evil in others!
At last she was in the train and off. She gave one long farewell
glance at the lofty turrets of haunted Craigengowan, because Finella
was there, and felt that never again would they ramble together by
Queen Mary's Thorn, the Swan's Pool, the old gate through which the
fated Lord rode forth to battle, or by the old ruined Castle of
Fettercairn with all its legends.
Dulcie experienced a kind of relief in the swiftness of the speed
with which the express train flew past station after station,
outstripping the wind apparently; villages and thatched farms were
seen and gone; trees, bridges, ruined towers, those features so
common in the Scottish landscape, fields and hedgerows, swept
rearward, telegraph wires seemed to sink and rise and twist
themselves in one, the poles apparently pursuing each other in the
fury of the pace.
Now it was Arbroath, where the train, paused for a little
time--Arbroath with its mills, tall chimneys, and substantial houses,
amid which tower the remains of that noble abbey which held the bones
of William the Lion, with its huge round window, for seven hundred
years a landmark from the sea; anon came Droughty Craig with its
ancient tower, under the walls of which have been shed the blood of
English, French, and Germans, with Dundee, 'the gift of God,' amid
the haze of its manufactories, to the westward.
Here a kindly old railway guard--who whilom as a 1st Royal Scot had
shed his blood at Alma and Inkermann--taking pity on the pale and
weary girl, brought her a cup of warm tea from the buffet, and, as he
said, 'a weel-buttered bap, ye ken,' and most acceptable they were.
A little time and her train was sweeping through Fife, and she saw
the woods of Falkland--those lovely woods wherein 'the bonnie Earl of
Gowrie' flirted with Anne of Denmark. Soon Cupar was left behind,
and the Eden, flowing through its green and fertile valley; and then,
worn with the vigil of the past night and her own heavy thoughts,
Dulcie fell asleep, without the coveted satisfaction of a dream of
Florian or Finella.