CHAPTER X.
ALONE IN THE WORLD.
'And you were bred to the law, you say, Mr. Melfort?' remarked the old Writer to the Signet after a pause.
'Yes, in Lawyer Carlyon's office.'
'Very good—very good indeed; that is well! We generally think in Scotland that a little knowledge of the law is useful, as it teaches the laird to haud his ain; but I forgot that you are southland bred, and born too—the more is the pity—and can't understand me.'
Shafto did not understand him, but thought that his time spent in Lawyer Carlyon's office had not been thrown away now; experience there had 'put him up to a trick or two.'
'I shall write to Craigengowan by the first post,' said Mr. Kippilaw after another of those thoughtful pauses during which he attentively eyed his visitor. 'Lord and Lady Fettercairn—like myself now creeping up the vale of years—(Hope they may soon see the end of it! thought Shafto) will, I have no doubt, be perfectly satisfied by the sequence and tenor of the documents you have brought me that you are their grandson—the son of the expatriated Lennard—and when I hear from them I shall let you know the result without delay. You are putting up at—what hotel?'
'At the Duke of Rothesay, in Princes Street.'
'Ah! very well.'
'Thanks; I shall be very impatient to hear.'
'And your cousin—he will, of course, go with you to Craigengowan?'
Shafto hesitated, and actually coloured, as Florian could detect.
'What are your intentions or views?' Mr. Kippilaw asked the latter.
'He failed to pass for the army,' said Shafto bluntly and glibly, 'so I don't know what he means to do now. I believe that he scarcely knows himself.'
'Have you no friends on your mother's side, Mr. Florian?'
'None!' said Florian, with a sad inflection of voice.
'Indeed! and what do you mean to do?'
'Follow the drum, most probably,' replied Florian bitterly and a little defiantly, as Shafto's coldness, amid his own great and good fortune, roused his pride and galled his heart, which sank as he thought of Dulcie Carlyon, sweet, golden-haired English Dulcie, so far away.
Mr. Kippilaw shook his bald head at the young man's answer.
'I have some little influence in many ways, and if I can assist your future views you may command me, Mr. Florian,' said he with fatherly kindness, for he had reared—yea and lost—more than one fine lad of his own.
It has been said that one must know mankind very well before having the courage to be solely and simply oneself; thus, as Shafto's knowledge of mankind was somewhat limited, he felt his eye quail more than once under the steady gaze of Mr. Kippilaw.
'It is a very strange thing,' said the latter, 'that after the death of Mr. Cosmo in Glentilt, when Lord and Lady Fettercairn were so anxious to discover and recall his younger brother as the next and only heir to the title and estates, we totally failed to trace him. We applied to the War Office for the whereabouts of Major Lennard Melfort, but the authorities there, acting upon a certain principle, declined to afford any information. Advertisements, some plainly distinct, others somewhat enigmatical, were often inserted in the Scotsman and Times, but without the least avail.
'As for the Scotsman,' said Shafto, 'the Major——'
'Your father, you mean?'
'Yes,' said he, reddening, 'was no more likely to see such a provincial print in Devonshire than the Roman Diritto or the Prussian Kreuz Zeitung; and the Times, if he saw it—which I doubt—he must have ignored. Till the time of his death drew near, his feelings were bitter, his hostility to his family great.'
'I can well understand that, poor fellow!' said Mr. Kippilaw, glancing at his watch, as he added—'You must excuse me till to-morrow: I am already overdue at the Parliament House.'
He bowed his visitors out into the sun-lit square.
'You seem to have lost your tongue, Florian, and to have a disappointed look,' said Shafto snappishly, as they walked slowly towards the hotel together.
'Disappointed I am in one sense, perhaps, but I have no reason to repine or complain save at our change of relative positions, but certainly not at your unexpected good fortune, Shafto. It is only right and just that your father's only son should inherit all that is legally and justly his.'
Even at these words Shafto never winced or wavered in plans or purpose.
It was apparent, however, to Florian, that he had for some time past looked restless and uneasy, that he started and grew pale at any unusual sound, while a shadow rested on his not usually very open countenance.
Betimes next morning a note came to him at the Duke of Rothesay Hotel from Mr. Kippilaw, requesting a visit as early as possible, and on this errand he departed alone.
He found the old lawyer radiant, with a letter in his hand from Lord Fettercairn (in answer to his own) expressive of astonishment and joy at the sudden appearance of this hitherto unknown grandson, whom he was full of ardour and anxiety to see.
'You will lose no time in starting for Craigengowan,' said Mr. Kippilaw. 'You take the train at the Waverley Station and go viâ Burntisland, Arbroath, and Marykirk—or stay, I think we shall proceed together, taking your papers with us.'
'Thanks,' said Shafto, feeling somehow that the presence of Mr. Kippilaw at the coming interview would take some of the responsibility off his own shoulders.
'Craigengowan, your grandfather says, will put on its brightest smile to welcome you.'
'Very kind of Craigengowan,' said Shafto, who felt but ill at ease in his new role of adventurer, and unwisely adopted a free-and-easy audacity of manner.
'A cheque on the Bank of Scotland for present emergencies,' said Mr. Kippilaw, opening his cheque-book, 'and in two hours we shall meet at the station.'
'Thanks again. How kind you are, my dear sir.'
'I would do much for your father's son, Mr. Shafto,' said the lawyer, emphatically.
'And what about Florian?'
'The letter ignores him—a curious omission. In their joy, perhaps Lord and Lady Fettercairn forgot. But, by the way, here is a letter for him that came by the London mail.'
'A letter for him!' said Shafto, faintly, while his heart grew sick with apprehension, he knew not of what.
'Mr. Florian's face is strangely familiar to me,' said Mr. Kippilaw aloud; but to himself, 'Dear me, dear me, where can I have seen features like his before? He reminds me curiously of Lennard Melfort.'
Shafto gave a nervous start.
The letter was a bulky one, and bore the Wembury and other post-marks, and to Shafto's infinite relief was addressed in the familiar handwriting of Dulcie Carlyon.
He chuckled, and a great thought worthy of himself occurred to him.
In the solitude of his own room at the hotel, he moistened and opened the gummed envelope, and drew forth four closely written sheets of paper full of the outpourings of the girl's passionate heart, of her wrath at the theft of her locket by Shafto, and mentioning that she had incidentally got the address of Mr. Kippilaw from her father, and desiring him to write to her, and she would watch for and intercept the postman by the sea-shore.
'Bosh,' muttered Shafto, as he tore up and cast into the fire Dulcie's letter, all save a postscript, written on a separate scrap of paper, and which ran thus:—
'You have all the love of my heart, Florian; but, as I feel and fear we may never meet again, I send you this, which I have worn next my heart, to keep.'
This was a tiny tuft of forget-me-nots.
'Three stamps on all this raggabash!' exclaimed Shafto, whom the girl's terms of endearment to Florian filled with a tempest of jealous rage. He rolled the locket he had wrenched from Dulcie's neck in soft paper, and placed it with the postscript in the envelope, which he carefully closed and re-gummed, placed near the fire, and the moment it was perfectly dry he gave it to Florian.
If the latter was surprised to see a letter to himself, addressed in Dulcie's large, clear, and pretty handwriting, to the care of 'Lawyer Kippilaw,' as she called him, he was also struck dumb when he found in the envelope the locket, the likeness, and the apparently curt farewell contained in one brief sentence!
For a time he stood like one petrified. Could it all be real? Alas! there was no doubting the postal marks and stamps upon this most fatal cover; and while he was examining it and passing his hand wildly more than once across his eyes and forehead, Shafto was smoking quietly at a window, and to all appearance intent on watching the towering rock and batteries of the Castle, bathed in morning sunshine—batteries whereon steel morions and Scottish spears had often gleamed of old.
Though his soul shrank from doing so, Florian could not resist taking Shafto into his confidence about this unexplainable event; and the latter acted astonishment to the life!
Was the locket thus returned through the post in obedience to her father's orders, after he had probably discovered the contents of it?
But Shafto demolished this hope by drawing his attention to the tenor of the pithy scrap of paper, which precluded the idea that it had been done under any other influence than her own change of mind.
'Poor Florian!' sneered Shafto, as he prepared to take his departure for Craigengowan; 'now you had better proceed at once to cultivate the wear-the-willow state of mind.'
Florian made no reply. His ideas of faith and truth and of true women were suddenly and cruelly shattered now!
'She has killed all that was good in me, and the mischief of the future will be at her door!' he exclaimed, in a low and husky voice.
'Oh, Florian, don't say that,' said Shafto, who actually did feel a little for him; and just then, when they were on the eve of separation, even his false and artful heart did feel a pang, with the sting of fear, at the career of falsehood to which he had committed himself; but his ambition, innate greed, selfishness, and pride urged him on that career steadily and without an idea of flinching.
After Mr. Kippilaw's remarks concerning how the face of Florian interested him, and actually that he bore a likeness to the dead Major—to his own father, in fact—Shafto became more than desirous to be rid of him in any way. He thought with dread of the discovery and fate of 'the Claimant,' and of the fierce light thrown by the law on that gigantic imposture; but genuine compunction he had none!
'Well,' he muttered, as he drove away from the hotel with his portmanteau, 'I must keep up this game at all hazards now. I have stolen—not only Florian's name—but his place, so let him paddle his own canoe!'
'I'll write you from Craigengowan,' were his parting words—a promise which he never fulfilled. Shafto, who generally held their mutual purse now, might have offered to supply the well-nigh penniless lad with money, but he did not. He only longed to be rid of him—to hear of him no more. He had a dread of his presence, of his society, of his very existence, and now had but one hope, wish, and desire—that Florian Melfort should cross his path never again. And now that he had achieved a separation between him and Dulcie, he conceived that Florian would never again go near Revelstoke, of which he—Shafto—had for many reasons a nervous dread!
Full of Dulcie and her apparently cruel desertion of him, which he considered due to calm consideration of his change of fortune—or rather total want of it—Florian felt numbly indifferent to the matter Shafto had in hand and all about himself.
While very nearly moved to girlish tears at parting from one with whom he had lived since infancy—with whom he had shared the same sleeping-room, shared in the same sports and studies—with whom he had read the same books to some extent, and had ever viewed as a brother—Florian was rather surprised, even shocked, by the impatience of that kinsman, the only one he had in all the wide world, to part from him and begone, and to see he was calm and hard as flint or steel.
'Different natures have different ways of showing grief, I suppose,' thought the simple Florian; 'or can it be that he still has a grudge at me because of the false but winsome Dulcie? If affection for me is hidden in his heart, it is hidden most skilfully.' No letter ever came from Craigengowan. The pride of Florian was justly roused, and he resolved that he would not take the initiative, and attempt to open a correspondence with one who seemed to ignore him, and whose manner at departing he seemed to see more clearly and vividly now.
The fact soon became grimly apparent. He could not remain idling in such a fashionable hotel as the Duke of Rothesay, so he settled his bill there, and took his portmanteau in his hand, and issued into the streets—into the world, in fact.