CHAPTER VIII.
THE SILVER LOCKET.
Shafto had just been with her father. How contemptuously he had eyed the corner and the high old stool on which he had sat in the latter's legal establishment, and all its surroundings; the fly-blown county maps of Devon and Cornwall; advertisements of sales—property, mangold wurzel, oats and hay, Thorley's food for cattle, and so forth; the tin boxes of most legal aspect; dockets of papers in red tape; the well-thumbed ledgers; day and letter books, and all the paraphernalia of a country solicitor's office.
Ugh! How well he knew and loathed them all. Now it was all over and done with.
The three poor lads in the office, whose cheap cigars and beer he had often shared at the Ashburton Arms, he barely condescended to notice, while they regarded him with something akin to awe, as he gave Lawyer Carlyon his final 'instructions' concerning the disposal of the lease of the Major's pretty cottage, and of all the goods and chattels that were therein.
Had Florian been present he would have felt only shame and abasement at the tone and manner Shafto adopted on this occasion; but worthy Lawyer Carlyon, who did not believe a bit in the rumoured accession of Shafto to family rank and wealth, laughed softly to himself, and thought his 'pride would have a sore fall one of these fine days.'
And even now, when face to face with Dulcie, his general bearing, his coolness and insouciance, rendered her, amid all her grief, indignant and defiant ultimately.
How piquant, compact, and perfect the girl looked, from the smart scarlet feather in her little hat to her tiny Balmoral boots. Her veil was tightly tied across her face, showing only the tip of her nose, her ripe red lips, and pretty white chin—its point, like her cheeks, reddened somewhat by the winter breeze from the Channel. Her gloved hands were in her small muff, and the collar of her sealskin jacket was encircled by the necklet at which her silver locket hung—the locket Shafto had seen her kiss when Florian had bestowed it on her, while he looked close by, with his heart full of envy, jealousy, and hatred, and now it was the first thing that attracted his eye.
'And you actually leave us to-night, Shafto?' she said softly.
'Yes, Dulcie, by the train for Worcester and the north. My estates, you know, are in Scotland.'
'These changes are all strange and most startling,' said she, with a sob in her slender throat.
'We live in whirligig times, Dulcie; but I suppose it is the result of progress,' he added sententiously. 'I wonder how our grandfathers and grandmothers contrived to mope over and yawn out their dull and emotionless existence till they reached threescore and ten years.'
'I shall never see that age, Shafto.'
'Who knows; though life, however sweet now, won't be worth living for then, I fancy.'
Dulcie sighed, and he regarded her in admiring silence, for he had a high appreciation of her bright and delicate beauty, and loved her—if we may degrade the phrase—in his own selfish and peculiar way, though now resolved—as he had often thought vainly—to 'fly at higher game;' and so, full of ideas, hopes, and ambitions of his own, if he had ceased to think of Dulcie, he had, at least, ceased for a space to trouble her.
'Florian will be writing to you, of course?' said he, after a pause.
'Alas! no, we have made no arrangement; and then, you know, papa——'
'Wouldn't approve, of course. My farewell advice to you, Dulcie, is—Don't put off your time thinking of Florian—his ship will never come home.'
'Nor yours either, perhaps,' said Dulcie, angrily.
'You think so—but you are wrong.'
'Ah! I know these waited for ships rarely do.'
'I have read somewhere that ships of the kind rarely do come home in this prosaic and disappointing world; that some get wrecked almost within sight of land; others go down without the flapping of a sail, and sometimes after long and firm battling with adverse winds and tides; but my ship is a sure craft, Dulcie,' he added, as he thought of the packet in his possession—that precious packet on which all his hopes rested and his daring ambition was founded.
Dulcie looked at him wistfully and distrustfully, and thought—
'Why is he so sure? But his ideas were always selfish and evil. Tide what may,' she added aloud, 'I shall wait twenty years and more for Florian.'
'The more fool you, then! And so die an old maid?'
'I am, perhaps, cut out for an old maid.'
'And if he never can marry you—or marries some one else when he can?' asked Shafto viciously.
'Oh, then I'll take to æstheticism, or women's rights, and all that sort of thing,' said the poor girl, with a ghastly and defiant attempt at a jest, which ended in tears, while Shafto eyed her angrily.
'How fond you are of that silver locket—you never wear any other!'
'I have so few ornaments, Shafto.'
'And none you prize so much?'
'None!' said Dulcie, with a sweet, sad smile.
'Is that the reason you wear it with all kinds of dresses? What is in it—anything?'
'That is my secret,' replied Dulcie, putting her right hand on it and instinctively drawing back a pace, for there was a menacing expression in the cold grey eyes of Shafto.
'Allow me to open it,' said he, taking her hand in his.
'No.'
'You shall!'
'Never!' exclaimed Dulcie, her eyes sparkling now as his grasp upon her hand tightened.
An imprecation escaped Shafto, and with his eyes aflame and his cheeks pale with jealousy and rage he tore her hand aside and wrenched by brutal force the locket from her, breaking the silver necklet as he did so.
'Coward!' exclaimed Dulcie; 'coward and thief—how dare you? Surrender that locket instantly!'
'Not if I know it,' said he, mockingly, holding the prized trinket before her at arm's length.
'But for Florian's sake, I would at once apply to the police.'
'A vulgar resort—no, my pretty Dulcie, you wouldn't.'
'Why?'
'Not for Florian's sake?'
'Whose, then?'
'Your own, for you wouldn't like to have your old pump of a father down on you; and so you dare not make a row about it, my pretty little fury.'
'Shafto, I entreat you, give me back that photo,' said Dulcie, her tears welling forth.
'No; I won't.'
'Of what interest or use can it be to you?'
'More than you imagine,' said Shafto, to whom a villainous idea just then occurred.
'I entreat you,' said Dulcie, letting her muff drop and clasping her slim little hands.
'Entreat away! I feel deucedly inclined to put my heel upon it—but I won't.'
'This robbery is cruel and infamous!' exclaimed Dulcie, trembling with grief and just indignation; but Shafto only laughed in anger and bitterness—and a very hyena-like laugh it was, and as some one was coming down the secluded lane, he turned away and left her in the twilight.
He felt himself safe from opprobrium and punishment, as he knew well she was loth to make any complaint to her father on the subject; and just then she knew not how to communicate with Florian, as the darkness was falling fast, and the hour of his departure was close at hand. She thought it not improbable that Shafto would relent and return the locket to her; but the night was far advanced ere that hope was dissipated, and she attained some outward appearance of composure, though her father's sharp and affectionate eyes detected that she had been suffering.
He had heard from her some confused and rambling story about the family secret, the packet, and the peerage, a story of which he could make nothing, though Shafto's bearing to himself that evening seemed to confirm the idea that 'there was something in it.' Anyway, Mr. Carlyon was not indisposed to turn the event to account in one sense.
'Likely—likely enough, Dulcie lass,' said he; 'and so you'll hear no more of these two lads, if they are likely to become great folks, and belong to what is called the upper ten; they'll never think again of a poor village belle like you, though there is not a prettier face in all Devonshire than my Dulcie's from Lyme Regis to Cawsand Bay.'
He meant this kindly, and spoke with a purpose; and his words and the warning they conveyed sank bitterly into the tender heart of poor Dulcie.
By this time the cousins were sweeping through the darkness in the express train by Exeter, Taunton, and so forth; both were very silent, and each was full of his own thoughts, and what these were the reader may very well imagine.
Heedless of the covert and sneering smiles of Shafto, Florian, from time to time, drew forth the photo of Dulcie, and her shining lock of red-golden hair, his sole links between the past and the present; and already he felt as if a score of years had lapsed since they sat side by side upon the fallen tree.
Then, that he might give his whole thoughts to Dulcie, he affected to sleep; but Shafto did not sleep for hours. He sat quietly enough with his face in shadow, his travelling-cap of tweed-check pulled well down over his watchful and shifty grey-green eyes, the lamp overhead giving a miserable glimmer suited to the concealment of expression and thought; and as the swift train sped northward, the cousins addressed not a word to each other concerning those they had left behind, what was before them, or anything else.
After a time, Shafto really slept—slept the slumber which is supposed to be the reward of the just and conscientious, but which is much more often enjoyed by those who have no conscience at all.
Dulcie contrived to despatch a letter to Florian detailing the outrage to which she had been subjected by Shafto; but time passed on, and, for a reason we shall give in its place, the letter never reached him.
Again and again she recalled and rehearsed her farewell with Florian, and thought regretfully of his passionate pride, and desperate poverty too probably, if he quarrelled with Shafto; and she still seemed to see his beautiful dark eyes, dim with unshed tears, while her own welled freely and bitterly.
When could they meet again, if ever, and where and how? Her heart and brain ached with these questions.
Dulcie did not bemoan her fate, though her cheek paled a little, and she felt—even at her early years—as if life seemed over and done with, and in her passionate love for the absent, that existence alone was left to her, and so forth.
And as she was her father's housekeeper now, kept the keys and paid all the servants, paid all accounts and made the preserves, he was in no way sorry that the young men were gone; that the 'aimless philandering,' as he deemed it, had come to an end; and that much would be attended to in his cosy little household which he suspected—but unjustly—had been neglected hitherto.
To Dulcie, the whole locality of her native place, the breezy moors, the solitary hills, the mysterious Druid pillars and logan stones, the rocky shore, and the pretty estuary of the Yealm, where they had been wont to boat and fish for pilchards in summer and autumn, were all full of the haunting presence of the absent—the poor but proud and handsome lad who from boyhood, yea from infancy, had loved her, and who now seemed to have slipped out of her existence.
Spring melted into summer; golden sunshine flooded hill and dale, and lit up the waters of the Erm, the Yealm, and the far-stretching Channel, tinting with wondrous gleams and hues the waves that rolled upon the shore, or boiled about the Mewstorre Rock, and the sea-beaten promontory of Revelstoke; but to Dulcie the glory was gone from land and water: she heard no more, by letter or otherwise, of the love of her youth; he seemed to have dropped utterly out of her sphere; and though mechanically she gathered the fragrant leaves of the bursting June roses—the Marshal Neil and Gloire de Dijon—and treasured them carefully in rare old china jars and vases, a task in which she had often been assisted by Florian, she felt and thought—'Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory has departed!’