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.