PERSECUTION.
Shafto felt, with no small satisfaction, that he could, to a certain
extent, control the actions of both these girls. Finella could not
reveal the secret of her quarrel with him without admitting the terms
on which she had been with Hammersley; and Dulcie, he thought, dared
not resent his conduct, lest--through his influence with Lady
Fettercairn--she might be cast into the world, without even a
certificate that would enable her to procure another situation of any
kind. Thus, to a certain extent, he revelled in security so far as
both were concerned.
And deeming now that all must be at an end between Finella and
Hammersley, he thought to pique the former perhaps by attentions to
Dulcie--attentions by which he might ultimately gain some little
favours for himself.
In both instances vain thoughts!
He was aware that he had an ample field of old and mutual interest or
associations to go back upon with Dulcie; thus he thought if he could
entangle her into an apparent flirtation for the purpose of
mortifying Finella, and catching her heart on the rebound, sore as it
must be with the seeming indifference of Hammersley, he would gain
his end; and this mutual intimacy eventually annoyed and surprised
Lady Fettercairn, and was likely to prove fatal to the interests and
position of Dulcie, whom he felt he must either win for himself in
some fashion, and, if not, in revenge have her expelled from
Craigengowan.
One day the girl was alone. She was feeding the swans in the
artificial lakelet that lay below the terrace. It was a serene and
sunny forenoon; the water was smooth as crystal, and reflected the
old house with all its turrets, crow-stepped gables, and
dormer-gablets line for line. It mirrored also the swans swimming
double, bird and shadow, like beautiful drifting boats, and the great
white water-lilies that seemed to sleep rather than float on its
surface.
It was indeed a drowsy, golden afternoon, and Dulcie Carlyon, an
artist at heart, was fully impressed by the loveliness of her
surroundings, when Shafto stood before her.
Shafto!--she quite shivered.
'Oh!' she exclaimed, as if a toad had crossed her path.
'A penny for your thoughts, Dulcie.' said that personage smilingly,
seeing that she had been pondering so deeply that his approach had
been unnoticed by her.
'They might startle you more than you think,' replied Dulcie, with
undisguised annoyance.
'Indeed; are you weaving out a romance?'
'Perhaps.'
'With yourself for the heroine, or Finella; and that fellow Florian
for the hero? Then there must be the requisite villain.'
'Oh, he is ready to hand,' said she daringly, with a flash in her
blue eyes.
Shafto's brow grew black as midnight, and what coarse thing he might
have said we know not, but policy made him ignore her reply.
'Please not to remain speaking to me,' said she, glancing nervously
at the windows of the house; 'your doing so may displease the friends
of Finella.'
'It is of her I wish to speak. Listen, Dulcie. I have not the
influence over her I had hoped to have before you came among us. If
that interloper Hammersley had not absorbed her interest, no doubt,
as matters once looked, she might have pleased her relations and
bound herself to me, provided she had never found out that I had
loved a dear one, far away in Devonshire, and had but a
half-concealed fancy for herself.'
Dulcie listened to this special pleading in contemptuous silence.
'I don't want to marry her now, any more than she wants to marry me,'
he resumed unblushingly; 'but I may tell you it is rather hard to be
ordered to play the lover to a girl who will scarcely throw me a
civil word.'
'After the cruel trick you played her, is it to be expected?'
'So--you are in her confidence, then?'
But Dulcie only thought, 'What paradox is this? He dared again to
make love to herself, after all that had passed with reference to
Florian, and yet to be jealous of Finella's profound disdain of him.'
'Won't you try and love me a little, Dulcie?' said he, attempting his
most persuasive tone.
'What do you mean, Shafto?' demanded the girl in great anger and
perplexity; 'even if I would take you, which I would rather die than
do, with all your wealth and prospective title, you could not marry
me and Finella too!'
'Who speaks of marriage?' growled Shafto, under his breath, while a
malicious smile glittered in his cold eyes, as he added aloud, 'You
know which I wish to marry.'
'Then it cannot be me, nor shall it be Finella either, for the matter
of that.'
'Does she act under your influence?'
'Do not think of it--she is under a more potent influence than I
possess,' replied Dulcie, who, bewildered by his manner and remarks,
was turning away, when he again confronted her, and the girl glanced
uneasily at the windows, where, although she knew it not, the eyes of
those she dreaded most were observing them both.
To marry Dulcie, even if she would have him, certainly did not suit
'the book' of Shafto; but, as he admired her attractive person, and
hated Florian with unreasoning rancour, as some men do who have
wronged others, he would gladly have lured her into a _liaison_ with
himself. He knew, however, her pride and purity too well, but he was
not without the hope of blunting them, and eventually bending her to
his will, under the threat or pressure of getting her expelled from
Craigengowan, and thrown penniless, friendless, and with, perhaps, a
tainted name, upon a cold, bitter, and censorious world.
'I know you better than to believe that you love me any more than I
do you,' said Dulcie, with ill-concealed scorn; 'love is not in your
nature, even for the brilliant Finella. You love her money--not
herself.'
Dissembling his rage, he said in a suppliant tone:
'Why are you so cold and repellant to me, Dulcie?'
'I do not know that I am markedly so.'
'But I do: beyond the affair of the locket, born of my very regard
for you, what is my offence?'
'What you are doing now, following me about--forcing your society on
me, and tormenting as you do. I shall be compromised with Lady
Fettercairn if you do not take care.'
'I think you treat me with cruel coldness, considering the love I
have borne you so long. Why should not we be even the friends we
once were at Revelstoke, and like each other always?'
'After all you have done to Florian!'
'What _have_ I done to Florian?' he demanded, changing colour under
the influence of his own secret thoughts.
'Cast him forth into the world penniless.'
'Oh, is that all?' said he, greatly relieved.
'Yes, that is all, so far as I know as yet.'
Again his brow darkened at this chance shot; but, still dissembling,
he said:
'My dear little Dulcie, what is the use of all this foolish regard
for Florian and revengeful mood at me? We shall never see him again.'
'Oh, Shafto, how can you talk thus coldly of Florian, with whom you
went to school and college together, played together as boys, and
read together as men--were deemed almost brothers rather than
cousins! Shame on you!' and she stamped her little foot on the
ground as she spoke.
'How pretty you look when angry! You do not care for me just now,
perhaps; but in time you will, Dulcie.'
'Never, Shafto.'
'Surely you don't mean to carry on this game ever and always?'
'Ever and always, while I am a dependant here.'
'But I will take you away from here, and you need be a dependant no
longer,' said he, while his countenance brightened and his manner
warmed, as he utterly mistook her meaning. 'My allowance is most
handsome, thanks to Lord--Lord--to my grandfather, and he can't last
for ever. The old fellow is sixty-eight if he is a day. Forget all
past unpleasantness; think only of the future, and all I can make it
for you. I will give you any length of time if you will only give me
your love.'
'Never, I tell you. Oh, this is intolerable!' exclaimed the girl
passionately, finding that he still barred her way.
'Beware, Dulcie,' said he, as his shifty eyes flashed. 'The world
and success in it are for him who knows how to wait; meantime, let us
be friends. Friendship is said to be more enduring than love.'
'Well--we shall never be even friends again, Shafto.'
'Why?'
'Well do you know _why_. And let me remind you that all sin brings
its own punishment in this world.'
'If found out,' he interrupted.
'And in the next, whether found out here or not.'
'Why the deuce do you preach thus to me?' he asked savagely, his
fears again awakened, so true is it that
'Many a shaft at random sent
Finds mark the archer never meant.'
'And what do you take me for that you treat me thus, and talk to me
in this manner?'
'What do I take you for? By your treatment of me I take you to be an
insolent, cruel, and heartless fellow, who can be worse at times.'
'Take care! the pedestal you stand on may give way. It lies with me
to smash it, and some fine day you may be sorry for the way in which
you have dared to treat me, Shafto----'
'Gyle,' interrupted Dulcie almost spitefully.
'Melfort, d--n you!' he retorted coarsely, and losing all command
over himself.
Tears now sprang to her eyes, and then, as he half feared to carry
the matter so far with her, he apologized.
'Let me pass, sir,' said she.
'Won't you give me one little kiss first, Dulcie?'
She made no reply, but fixed her lovely dark blue eyes upon him with
an expression of such loathing and contempt that even he was stung to
the heart by it.
'Let me pass, sir!' she exclaimed again.
He stood aside to let her do so, and she swept by, holding her golden
head haughtily erect; but Dulcie feared him now more than ever, and
certainly she had roused revenge in his heart, with certain vague
emotions of alarm.
Of all the thousands of homes in Scotland and England how miserable
and unlucky was the chance that cast her under the same roof with the
evil-minded Shafto! thought the girl in the solitude of her own room.
But then, otherwise, she would never have known and shared the sweet
and flattering friendship of Finella Melfort; and, as she never knew
what wicked game Shafto might play, he would perhaps succeed in
depriving her even of that solace as the end of his persecution.
The whole tenor of the conversation or interview forced upon her by
Shafto impressed her with a keen and deep sense of humiliation that
made her weep bitterly; how much more keen would the sense of that
have been had she known what in the purity of her nature she never
suspected, that, amid all his grotesque love-making, marriage was no
way comprehended in his scheme!
Much as she disliked Shafto, an emotion of delicacy, with a timid
doubt of the future with regard to Captain Hammersley, and what was
behind that future with regard to 'the cousins,' as she of course
deemed them to be, induced Dulcie to remain silent with Finella on
the subject of his persistent and secret attentions to herself,
though she would have deplored to see Finella the wife of Shafto.
The interview we have described had not passed without observers, we
have said.
'Fettercairn, look how Miss Carlyon and Shafto are flirting near the
Swan's Pool!' said the Lady of that Ilk, drawing her husband's
attention to the pair from a window of the drawing-room.
'What makes you think they are doing so?' he asked, but nevertheless
with knitted brows.
'Cannot you see it?'
'No; it is so long since I did anything in that way myself that
really I--aw----'
'See with what _empressement_ he bends down to address her, and she
keeps her head down, too, though she seems to crest it up at times.'
'But she edges away from him palpably, as if she disliked what he is
saying, and, by Jove, she looks indignant, too!'
'That may be all acting, in suspicion that she is observed, or it may
be to lure him on; one never knows what may be passing in a girl's
mind--if she thinks herself attractive especially.'
'Well--to me they seem quarrelling,' said Lord Fettercairn.
'Quarrelling--and with my companion! How could Shafto condescend to
do so?'
'That is more than I can tell you--he is rather a riddle to me; but
the girl is decidedly more than pretty, and very good style, too.'
'And hence the more dangerous. I must speak with Shafto on this
subject seriously, or----'
'What then?'
'Get rid of her.'
'If we fail in marrying Shafto to Finella, who can say whom he may
marry, as his instincts seem somewhat low, and after we are gone
there may be a whole clan of low and sordid prodigals here in
Craigengowan.'
'And Radicals!' suggested Lady Fettercairn.
'Desecrating the spots rendered almost sacred by association with a
great and famous past,' said Lord Fettercairn loftily.
What this great and famous 'past' was, he could scarcely have told.
It was not connected with his own mushroom line, whatever it might
have been with the former lords of Craigengowan, whose guests had at
times been Kings of Scotland and Princes of France and Spain.
'Finella is young, and does not know her own heart,' he resumed;
'besides, I believe it is enough generally to recommend a girl to
marry a certain man, for her to set her face against him
unreasoningly. But I think--and hope--that our Finella is different
from the common run of girls.'
'Not in contriving, perhaps, to fall in love with the wrong man.'
'You mean that young fellow Hammersley?'
'Yes; I must own to having most grave suspicions,' replied Lady
Fettercairn.
'She is a Melfort, and as such has no notion of being coerced.'
Lady Fettercairn thought of Lennard and Flora MacIan and remained
silent, remembering that _he_ too, the disowned and the outcast, was
a genuine Melfort in the same sense.