DULCIE CARLYON.
A Novel.
BY
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR,' ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1886.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
NEW NOVELS AT EVERY LIBRARY.
FROM THE SILENT PAST. By Mrs. HERBERT MARTIN. 2 Vols.
COWARD AND COQUETTE. By the Author of 'The Parish of Hilby.' 1 vol.
MIND, BODY, AND ESTATE. By the Author of 'Olive Varcoe.' 3 vols.
AT THE RED GLOVE. By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. 3 vols.
WHERE TEMPESTS BLOW. By the Author of 'Miss Elvester's Girls.' 3
vols.
IN SIGHT OF LAND. By Lady DUFFUS HARDY. 3 vols.
AS IN A LOOKING-GLASS. By F. C. PHILIPS. 1 vol.
LORD VANECOURT'S DAUGHTER. By MABEL COLLINS. 3 vols.
WARD AND DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER
I. SEPARATED
II. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
III. A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS
IV. THE CAMP
V. THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA
VI. 'HAS SHE DISCOVERED ANYTHING?'
VII. FEARS AND SUSPICIONS
VIII. BY THE BUFFALO RIVER
IX. ON THE KARROO
X. FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY
XI. DULCIE'S NEW FRIEND
XII. GIRLS' CONFIDENCES
XIII. THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO
XIV. NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF WAR
XV. PERSECUTION
XVI. A THREAT
XVII. WITH THE SECOND DIVISION
XVIII. ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI
XIX. FINDING THE BODY
XX. THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN
DULCIE CARLYON.
CHAPTER I.
SEPARATED.
'Something must be done, and deuced soon too, to separate this pair
of spoons, or else they will be corresponding by letter, somehow or
anyhow, after he has taken himself off; and Lady Fettercairn is
always saying it is high time that something was definitely arranged
between the girl and me! But, of course, Finella thinks _him_
handsome enough to be the hero of a three-volume novel.'
Thus muttered Shafto, who, after a long absence, had returned to
Craigengowan again, believing that Hammersley must now be gone; but
he found, to his extreme annoyance, that two days of that officer's
visit yet remained; so, with the futile _fracas_ about the cards in
his mind, Shafto avoided him as much as possible, and the house and
grounds were ample enough to give him every scope for doing so.
He was sedulously bent on working mischief, and Fate so arranged
that, on the second day, he had the power to do so.
They were on the very eve of separation now, yet Finella knew their
love was mutual and true, and a glow of exultation was mingled with
the sadness of her heart--a glow which had a curious touch of fear in
it, as if such joy in his faith and truth could not be lasting. It
was a kind of foreboding of evil about to happen, and when the time
came that foreboding was remembered.
On the day of Hammersley's departure, he was to leave Craigengowan
before dinner: thus, after luncheon, he contrived, unseen, to slip a
little note into her hand. It contained but two lines:--
'Darling, meet me in the Howe of Craigengowan an hour hence, for the
last time. Do not fail.
'V. H.'
She read it again and again, kissed it, of course, and slipped it
into her bosom.
To avoid everyone and to be alone with her own thoughts, she ran
upstairs to the top of the house--to the summit of the old Scottish
square tower, which was the nucleus whereon much had been engrafted
even before the Melforts came to hold it, and going through a turret
door which opened on the stone bartizan--a pleasant promenade--she
sat down breathlessly, not to enjoy the lovely landscape which
stretched around her, where Bervie Brow and Gourdon Hill were already
casting their shadows eastward, but to wait and re-read her tiny note.
She put her hand into her bosom to draw it forth; but it was
gone--she had lost it--and her first thought was, into whose hands
might it fall!
She had a kind of stunned feeling at first, and then a glow of
indignation that she should be treated like a child, in awe of Lady
Fettercairn, and in a state of tutelage.
Vincent Hammersley went to the trysting-place betimes--the shady Howe
of Craigengowan. The evening air was heavy with the fresh pungent
fragrance of the Scottish pines, the flat boughs of which nearly met
overhead thickly enough to exclude the sunshine, which here and there
found its way through breaks in the bronze-green canopy, and fell
like rays of gold on the thick grass and pine cones below; but there
was no appearance of Finella.
Shafto had resolved to achieve a separation between these two, we
have said, and evil fortune put the power to do so completely in his
hands.
Before Finella could reach the meeting-place among the shrubberies in
the lawn, she came face to face with Shafto.
'Shafto!' she exclaimed, with intense annoyance, as she recoiled,
'you here--I did not know that you had returned.'
'And didn't care, no doubt? Yes--you are on the way to meet someone
else?'
'How do you know that?'
'I found his little note to you.'
'Where?'
'At the foot of the turret stair.'
'And you dared to read it.'
'It was open. Dared!--well, I like that. Let us be friends at
least.'
'I have much to pardon in you, Shafto,' said she, remembering the
unpleasant trick he had played Hammersley about the cards.
'Let us understand each other, Finella.'
'I thought we did so already,' said she defiantly, and impatiently at
his untimely presence; 'surely we have spoken plainly enough before
this.'
His face was pale, and there was an expression of mischief in his
eyes that startled her. It was mere jealous rage that acted love.
He caught her hand, and, fearing him at that moment, she did not
withdraw it, but did so eventually and sharply.
'What folly is this?' exclaimed Shafto; 'do not shrink from me thus,
Finella, but allow me to make a last appeal to you. I cannot think
that you are so utterly changed towards me, but that you are wilfully
blinding yourself.'
'This is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl passionately, knowing that
precious time was passing, that Vivian had but a minute or two to
spare to receive a farewell kiss and last assurance of her love.
'You used to love me, I think, in past days, before this man
Hammersley came here?'
'I knew and loved him in London before I ever heard of your
existence,' she exclaimed, wound up to a pitch of desperation. 'Give
me up my note--I see it in your hand.'
'His note?'
'Mine, I say.'
'You shall not have it for nothing then.'
'What do you mean?'
'Precisely what I say, pretty cousin. I must have some reward,' and
holding the note before her at arm's length he again captured her
right hand.
'Restore my property. Would you be guilty of theft?'
'No,' replied Shafto, laughing now with triumphant malice, as he
remembered Dulcie Carlyon and her locket. 'But what will you give me
for it?'
'What _can_ I give you?'
'Something better than your grandmother will for it--a kiss, freely,'
said he softly, as he saw what Finella did _not_ see--Vivian
Hammersley between the shrubberies, pausing in his approach, loth to
compromise her, yet perplexed and startled by the presence of Shafto
and the bearing of both.
Finella flashed a defiant glance at her tormentor, but aware that he
was capable of much mischief, lest he might make some troublesome use
of the note with her grand-parents, of whom she certainly stood in
some awe, she was inclined to temporise with him.
'If I give you a kiss, cousin Shafto, will you please give me my
note?' she asked.
'Yes,' said he, and his heart leaped.
'Take it, then.'
She put up her sweet and innocent face to his, but instead of taking
one, he clasped her close to his breast, and holding her tightly, he
daringly and roughly kissed again and again the soft lips that he had
never touched before save in his day-dreams, and all this was in
sight of Vivian Hammersley, as he very well knew, and the latter, to
Shafto's secret and intense exultation, silently drew back and
disappeared.
Shafto had certainly then his moment of triumph!
Finella was greatly relieved when she obtained possession of her
note; but her proud little heart was full of fury and indignation at
the unwarrantable proceedings of Shafto, who hung or hovered about
her just long enough to preclude all hope of her meeting with
Hammersley, and when, full of sorrow, she returned to the house, she
could see nothing of him, but was told by Grapeston, the old butler,
that his departure had been suddenly hastened; that the trap was
already at the hall-door to take him to the station, and the captain
had charged him with a note for her.
It was hastily written in pencil, and a pencilled address was on the
envelope. It ran thus:--
'I went at the appointed time. You did not come, but I saw you
_elsewhere_ in the arms of your cousin, who doubtless has been
hereabout for some time past, unknown to me. _Those were no cousinly
kisses you gave him_. God may forgive your falsehood, but I never
will!
The room seemed to swim round her as she read and re-read the lines
like one in a dream. As she did so for the second time and took in
the whole situation, a cry almost escaped her. Then she heard some
farewells hastily exchanged on the terrace, and the sound of wheels
on gravel as the departing waggonette swept Hammersley away to the
railway station, and no power or chance of explanation was left her.
The false light through which he--so brave, so true and
honourable--must now view her tortured and humiliated her, and
unmerited shame, mingled with just anger, burned in her heart. And
Shafto had brought all this about!
Oh for language to describe her loathing of him! His was the
mistake--the crime to be explained; but would it ever be explained?
And she dared not complain to Lord or Lady Fettercairn, who openly
abetted Shafto's avaricious aspirations as regarded herself.
She rushed away to her own room, lighted candles, and locked herself
in. She sat down by the dressing-table; was that wan face reflected
in the mirror hers? She leaned her elbows on the former, with her
face in her hands, and sat there sobbing heavily in grief and rage
without ever sighing, though her heart felt full to bursting.
She pleaded a headache as an excuse for non-appearance at dinner, and
Lord and Lady Fettercairn exchanged a silent glance of mutual
intelligence and annoyance, not unmingled, perhaps, with satisfaction.
Finella sat in her room as if turned to stone; at last she heard the
stable clock strike midnight, and mechanically she proceeded to
undress without summoning her maid.
A rosebud was in the rich cream-tinted lace about her pretty neck.
_He_ had given it to her but that morning, as they lingered on the
terrace, and with haggard eyes she looked at it, kissed it, and put
it in her white bosom.
This morning she was with him--her lover, her affianced husband--her
own--and he was hers--all to each other in the world--and now!
'He hates me, most probably,' she murmured.
A few days stole away, and she tried to act a part, for watchful eyes
were upon her. Hammersley was gone! Doubly gone! How she missed
his presence was known only to herself. He was ever so sweetly but
not obtrusively tender; so quick of wit, ready in attention and
speech, though the envious Shafto phrased it, 'he would coax a bird
off a tree.' He was so gentlemanly and gallant--every way such
irreproachably good style, that she loved him with all the strength
of her loving and passionate nature. The memory of the past--of her
lost happiness--lost more than she might ever know, through the
deliberate villainy of Shafto, rose ever before her with vivid
distinctness; the evening on which their love was avowed in the
drawing-room--the evening in the Howe of Craigengowan, when he gave
her the two rings, and many other chance or concerted meetings, were
before her now, and she could but clasp her hands tightly, while a
heavy sob rose in her throat.
The wedding ring, he had given her to keep, was often drawn forth
fondly, and slipped on her wedding finger in secret--a temptation of
Fate, as any old Scotchwoman would have told her. She would have
written a letter of explanation to Hammersley, but knew not where to
address him; and ere long the announcement in a public print that he
had sailed from Plymouth with a strong detachment of the 2nd
Warwickshire, for the seat of war in South Africa, put it out of her
power to do so, and she had but to bear her misery helplessly.
More than ever were they now separated!