CHAPTER XIV.
THE TWO FINELLAS.
Next day, when the grouse-shooting had been in progress for an hour or two, a mishap occurred to Hammersley. He twisted his ankle in a turnip-field, fell heavily on one side, and staggered up too lame to take further share in the sport for that day at least.
'When Finella comes with the lunch in the pony-phaeton, she will drive you home,' said Lord Fettercairn, who then desired one of the beaters to give Hammersley the assistance of an arm to the well, where the repast was to be laid out as before.
When Shafto saw his rival limping he was delighted, and thought, 'This will mar his waltzing for a time at least;' but he was less delighted when he heard of Lord Fettercairn's natural suggestion.
'It is likely a cunning dodge,' was his next thought, 'to get a quiet drive with her to Craigengowan.'
And Finella's look and exclamation of alarm and interest were not lost upon him when she arrived and found Hammersley seated on the grass by the side of the well, and saw the difficulty with which he rose to greet her, propping himself upon his unloaded gun as he did so; and soft, indeed, was the blush of pleasure that crossed her delicate face when she heard of 'grandpapa's arrangement;' and certainly it met, secretly, with the entire approbation of Hammersley, who anticipated with delight the drive home with such a companion.
After a time the luncheon—though skilfully protracted by Shafto—was over, and Finella and her 'patient' were together in the phaeton, and she, with a smile and farewell bow, whipped up her petted ponies, Flirt and Fairy, whom every day she fed with apples and carrots.
Shafto thought jealously and sulkily that she was in great haste to be gone; but more sulky would he have been had he seen, or known that when once an angle of the glen was reached where the road dipped out of sight, the ponies were permitted to go at their own pace, which ere long dwindled into a walk, till they passed the vast ruined castle of Fettercairn. Finella and Hammersley were, however, if very happy, very silent, though both enjoyed the drive in the bright sunshine amid such beautiful scenery, and he quite forgot his petty misfortune in contemplating the delicate profile and long drooping eyelashes of the girl who sat beside him, and who, with a fluttering heart, was perhaps expecting the avowal that trembled on his lips, especially when he placed his hand on hers, in pretence of guiding the ponies, which broke into a rapid trot as the lodge gates were passed; and glorious as the opportunity accorded him had been, Hammersley's heart, while burning with passionate ardour, seemed to have lost all courage, for he had a sincere dread of Lady Fettercairn, and suspected that her interests were naturally centred in Shafto.
At seven-and-twenty a man, who has knocked about the world, with a regiment especially, for some nine years or so, does not fall over head and ears in love like a rash boy, or without calculating his chances of general success; and poor Hammersley, though he did not doubt achieving it with Finella herself, saw deadly rocks and breakers ahead with her family, and his spirit was a proud one. To make a declaration was to ruin or lose everything, for if the family were averse to his suit he must, he knew, quit their roof for ever, and Finella would be lost to him, for heiresses seldom elope now, save in novels; and he knew that in her circle the motives for marriage are more various and questionable than with other and untitled ranks of life. Rank and money were the chief incentives of such people as the Melforts of Fettercairn. 'Venal unions,' says an essayist, 'no doubt occur in the humbler classes, but love is more frequently the incentive, while with princes and patricians the conjugal alliance is, in nine instances out of ten, a mere matter of expedience.'
Craigengowan was reached, and not a word of the great secret that filled his heart had escaped him, for which he cursed his own folly and timidity when the drive ended, and a groom took the ponies' heads.
Yet the day was not over, nor was a fresh opportunity wanting. Lady Fettercairn and all her female quests had driven to a flower-show at the nearest town—even Mrs. Prim was gone, and the house was empty!
Everything in and about Craigengowan seemed conducive to love-talk and confidences. The great and picturesque house itself was charming. The old orchards would ere long be heavy with fruit, and were then a sight to see; on the terrace the peacocks were strutting to and fro; there were fancy arbours admirably adapted for flirtation, and a quaint old Scottish garden (with a sun and moon dial) now gay with all the flowers of August.
On a lounge near an open window facing the latter Hammersley was reclining, when Finella, after changing her driving dress, came into the drawing-room, and finely her costume suited her dark and piquante style of beauty. She wore a cream-coloured silk, profusely trimmed with filmy lace, and a cluster of scarlet flowers on the left shoulder among the lace of the collarette that encircled her slender neck; and Hammersley, as he looked at her, thought that 'beauty unadorned' was rather a fallacy.
His undisguised expression of admiration as he partly rose to receive her caused her to colour a little, as she inquired if his hurt was easier now; but, instead of replying, he said, while venturing slightly to touch her hand:
'Tell me, Miss Melfort, how you came by your dear pretty name of Finella? Not from Finella in "Peveril of the Peak"?'
'Ah, I am very unlike her!'
'You are certainly quite as charming!'
'But neither dumb nor pretending to be so,' said the girl, with one of her silvery little laughs.
'Finella!' said Hammersley, as if to himself, in a low and unconsciously loving tone; 'whence the name? Is it a family one?'
'Don't you know?' she asked.
'How could I know? I know only that I will never forget it.'
'Of course you could not know. The origin of my name is one of the oldest legends of the Howe of the Mearns.'
'Howe—that is Scotch for "hollow," I believe.'
'No; "hollow" is the English for howe,' replied Finella, laughing, as she recalled a quip of Boucicault's to the same purpose. 'You saw the great old castle we passed in our drive home?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I am called Finella from a lady who lived there.'
'After it fell into ruin?'
'No; before it.'
'Then she must have lived a precious long time ago.'
'She certainly did—some—nearly a thousand years ago.'
'What a little quiz you are! Now, Miss Melfort, what joke is this?'
'No joke at all,' said she, quite seriously; 'you can read about it in our family history—or I shall read it to you in the "Book of Fettercairn."'
She took from a table near a handsome volume, which her grandfather—to please whom she was named Finella—had in a spirit of family vanity prepared for private circulation, and as if to connect his title with antiquity, prefaced by a story well known in ancient Scottish history, though little known to the Scots of the present day.
We give it from his Lordship's book verbatim as she read it to Vivian Hammersley, who—cunning rogue—was not indisposed with such a charming and sympathetic companion as Finella to make the most of his fall, and reclined rather luxuriously on the velvet lounge, while she, seated in a dainty little chair, read on; but he scarcely listened, so intent was he on watching her sweet face, her white and perfect ears, her downcast eyelids with their long lashes—her whole self!
The Melforts, Lords Fettercairn (Strathfinella) and of that Ilk, take their hereditary title from the old castle of that name, which stands in the Howe of the Mearns, and is sometimes called the Castle of Finella. It is situated on an eminence, and is now surrounded on three sides by a morass. It is enclosed within an inner and an outer wall of oblong form, and occupying half an acre of ground. The inner is composed of vitrified matter, but no lime has been used in its construction. The walls are a congeries of small stones cemented together by some molten matter, now harder than the stones themselves; and the remarkable event for which this castle is celebrated in history is the following:
When Kenneth III., a wise and valiant king (who defeated the Danes at the battle of Luncarty, and created on that field the Hays, Earls of Errol, Hereditary Constables of Scotland, and leaders of the Feudal cavalry, thus originating also the noble families of Tweeddale and Kinnoull), was on the throne, his favourite residence was the castle of Kincardine, the ruins of which still remain about a mile eastward of the village of Fettercairn, and from thence he went periodically to pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Palladius, Apostle of the Scots, to whom the latter had been sent by Pope Celestine in the sixth century to oppose the Pelagian heresy, and whose bones at Fordoun were enclosed in a shrine of gold and precious stones in 1409 by the Bishop of St. Andrews.
The king had excited the deadly hatred of Finella, the Lady of Fettercairn, daughter of the Earl of Angus, by having justly put to death her son, who was a traitor and had rebelled against him in Lochaber; and, with the intention of being revenged, she prepared at Fettercairn a singular engine or 'infernal machine,' with which to slay the king.
This engine consisted of a brass statue, which shot out arrows when a golden apple was taken from its hand.
Kenneth was at Kincardine, engaged in hunting the deer, wolf, the badger and the boar, when she treacherously invited him to her castle of Fettercairn, which was then, as Buchanan records, 'pleasant with shady groves and piles of curious buildings,' of which there remained no vestiges when he wrote in the days of James VI.; and thither the king rode, clad in a rich scarlet mantle, white tunic, an eagle's wing in his helmet, and on its crest a glittering clach-bhuai, or stone of power, one of the three now in the Scottish regalia.
Dissembling her hate, she entertained the king very splendidly, and after dinner conducted him out to view the beauties of the place and the structure of her castle; and Kenneth, pleased with her beauty (which her raiment enhanced), for she wore a dress of blue silk, without sleeves, a mantle of fine linen, fastened by a brooch of silver, and all her golden hair floating on her shoulders, accompanied her into a tower, where, in an upper apartment, and amid rich festooned arras and 'curious sculptures' stood the infernal machine.
She courteously and smilingly requested the king to take the golden apple from the right hand of the statue; and he, amazed by the strange conceit, did so; on this a rushing sound was heard within it as a string or cord gave way, and from its mouth there came forth two barbed arrows which mortally wounded him, and he fell at her feet.
Finella fled to Den Finella, and Kenneth was found by his retinue 'bullerand in his blude.'
Den Finella, says a writer, is said, in the genuine spirit of legendary lore, to have obtained its name from this princess, who, the more readily to evade her pursuers, stepped from the branches of one tree to those of another the whole way from her castle to this den, which is near the sea, in the parish of St. Cyres, as all the country then was a wild forest.
Buchanan deems all this story a fable, though asserted by John Major and Hector Boece, and thinks it more probable that the king was slain near Fettercairn in an ambush prepared by Finella.
So ended the legend.
As the girl read on, Vivian Hammersley had bent lower and lower over her, till the tip of his moustache nearly touched her rich dark hair, and his arm all but stole round her. Finella Melfort was quite conscious of this close proximity, and though she did not shrink from it, that consciousness made her colour deepen and her sweet voice become unsteady.
'That is the story of Finella of Fettercairn,' said she, closing the book.
'And to this awful legend of the dark ages, which only wants blue-fire, lime-light, and a musical accompaniment to set it off, you owe your name?' said he, laughingly.
'Yes—it was grandfather's whim.'
'It is odd that you—the belle of the last London season, should be named after such a grotesque old termagant!'
She looked up at him smilingly, and then, as their eyes met, the expression of that glance exchanged beside the well on the hills came into them again; heart spoke to heart; he bent his face nearer hers, and his arm went round her in earnest.
'Finella, my darling!' escaped him, and as he kissed her unresisting lips, her blushing face was hidden on his shoulder.
And this tableau was the result of the two days' shooting—a sudden result which neither Shafto nor Hammersley had quite foreseen.
Of how long they remained thus neither had any idea. Time seemed to stand still with them. Finella was only conscious of his hand caressing hers, which lay so willingly in his tender, yet firm, clasp.
Hammersley in the gush of his joy felt oblivious of all the world. He could think of nothing but Finella, while the latter seemed scarcely capable of reflection at all beyond the existing thought that he loved her, and though the avowal was a silent and unuttered one, the new sense of all it admitted and involved, seemed to overwhelm the girl; her brightest day-dreams had come, and she nestled, trembling and silent, by his side.
The unwelcome sound of voices and also of carriage-wheels on the terrace roused them. He released her hand, stole one more clinging kiss, and forgetful of his fall and all about it started with impatience to his feet.
Lady Fettercairn and her lady guests had returned from the flower-show, and to avoid them and all the world, for a little time yet, the lovers, with their hearts still beating too wildly to come down to commonplace, tacitly wandered hand in hand into the recesses of a conservatory, and lingered there amid the warm, flower-scented atmosphere and shaded aisles, in what seemed a delicious dream.
Finella was conscious that Vivian Hammersley was talking to her lovingly and caressingly, in a low and tender voice as he had never talked before, and she felt that she was 'Finella'—the dearest and sweetest name in the world to him—and no more Miss Melfort.
* * * *
It would be difficult, and superfluous perhaps, to describe the emotions of these two during the next few days.
Though now quite aware that Finella and Hammersley had met each other frequently before, Shafto's surprise at their intimacy, though apparently undemonstrative, grew speedily into suspicious anger. He felt intuitively that his presence made not the slightest difference to them, though he did not forget it; and he failed to understand how 'this fellow' had so quickly gained his subtle and familiar position with Finella.'
It galled him to the quick to see and feel all this, and know that he could never please her as she seemed to be pleased with Hammersley; for her colour heightened, her eyes brightened, and her eyelashes drooped and flickered whenever he approached or addressed her.
Shafto thought of his hopes of gaining Finella and her fortune against any discovery that might be made of the falsehood of his position, and so wrath and hatred gathered in his heart together.
He was baffled at times by her bright smiles and pretty, irresistible manner, but nevertheless he 'put his brains in steep' to scheme again.