CHAPTER XII.
GIRLS' CONFIDENCES.
It was a sweet and mild spring morning, and Finella and Dulcie, each with a shawl over her pretty head, were again promenading on the terrace before the mansion. Lady Fettercairn was not yet down, and the breakfast-bell had not yet been rung. The trees were already making a show of greenery, with half-developed foliage; the oak was putting out its red buds; the laburnums were clothed in green and gold, and the voice of the cuckoo could be heard in the woods of Craigengowan.
'The cuckoo—listen!' said Dulcie, pausing in her walk.
'His note is, I believe, a call to love,' said Finella softly.
'The male only uses it; and see, yonder he sits on a bare bough.'
'You can wish: one can do so when they hear the cuckoo.'
'And wish, as I often do, in vain,' said Dulcie, with a tone of sadness unconsciously.
'For what?'
'To hear from one who is far—far away from me; the only friend I have in the world.'
'He of whom you spoke some time ago—a brother.'
'I have no brother, nor a relation on this side of the grave, Miss Melfort.'
'Call me Finella,' said the latter, again struck by Dulcie's desolate tone. 'Who is it—a lover?' she added, becoming, of course, deeply interested.
'A lover—yes,' replied Dulcie, with a fond smile. 'The dearest and sweetest fellow in the world!'
'Yet he left you because your papa died and you became penniless?'
'Oh!—no, no; do not say that. Do not think so hardly of Florian!'
'Florian!—what a funny, delightful name; just like one in a novel!' exclaimed Finella. 'So he is called Florian?'
'He, too, was poor. He could not marry me, and probably never can do so.'
'How sad!' said Finella, with genuine sympathy, though from her own experience she could not quite understand poverty.
'Florian—my poor Florian!' said Dulcie, quite borne away by this new sympathy, as she covered her face with her white and tremulous hands, and tried to force back her tears, while Finella kissed, caressed, and tried most sweetly to console her.
'See!' said Dulcie, after a pause, opening her silver locket.
'Oh, what a handsome young fellow!' exclaimed Finella. 'Are you engaged?'
'Hopelessly so.'
'Hopelessly?'
'I have said we are too poor to marry.'
'I don't understand this,' said Finella, greatly perplexed: 'won't he become rich in time?'
'Never: he is a soldier, fighting in Africa.'
'A soldier!' said Finella, becoming more deeply interested; 'not an officer?'
'His father or uncle was,' replied Dulcie confusedly. 'Poverty drove him into the ranks.'
'Of what regiment?'
'The 24th Warwickshire.'
Finella changed colour, and her breath seemed to be taken from her, when she heard the name of Hammersley's corps; and thus, after a time, a great gush of confidence took possession of both girls.
'I am rich,' said Finella; 'I will buy him back to you—I will, I will. Do not weep, dearest Dulcie. The memory of a past that has been happy is always sweet; is it not?'
'Yes, even if the present be sad.'
'I do believe, Dulcie, that tears agree with you.'
'Why?'
'Because they make those blue eyes of yours positively lovely.'
Dulcie for a moment felt pleasure. Florian had said the same thing once before, and she only half believed him; but to have it endorsed by such a girl as Finella made it valuable indeed to her.
'And Florian—I am quite au fait with his name,' said Finella; 'he is a gentleman?'
'Oh, yes—yes!' exclaimed Dulcie impetuously.
'Poor fellow! Then am I to understand that there is a kind of undefined engagement between you?'
'Something of that kind,' answered Dulcie, simply. 'We knew we might have to wait for each other for years, if, indeed, we ever meet again. We never spoke of marriage quite. How could we, hopeless and poor as we were?'
'But you spoke of love, surely?' said Finella, softly and archly.
'Of love for each other—oh, yes; many, many times.'
'Well, Dulcie, I shall purchase Florian's discharge, as I have said. This kind of thing can't go on,' said Finella decidedly, unaware that neither officer nor soldier can quit the service when face to face with an enemy or at the actual seat of war.
Finella was in the act of closing Dulcie's silver locket, when a voice said:
'Please to let me look at this, Miss Carlyon. I have remarked your invariable ornament.'
The speaker was Lady Fettercairn, who had approached them unnoticed.
Blushing deeply, Dulcie, with tremulous little fingers, re-opened the locket, expectant, perhaps, of reprehension; but Lady Fettercairn became strangely agitated.
'Lennard!' she exclaimed. 'This is my son Lennard as he looked when I saw him last.'
'Oh, no, madam, that cannot be,' said Dulcie.
'Where got you it?'
'At home in Devonshire, where the photograph was taken about a year ago.'
'Ah—true,' said Lady Fettercairn: 'when Lennard was that age—the age of this young man—the art was scarcely known. And who is he?'
Dulcie hesitated.
'I have no right to ask,' said Lady Fettercairn, hauteur blending with the certainly deep interest with which she regarded the contents of the still open locket.
'One who loved me,' said Dulcie, with a kind of sob.
'And whom you love?' said the lady, stiffly.
'Yes, madam.'
'It is the image of Lennard!' continued Lady Fettercairn musingly; 'but there sounds the breakfast-bell,' she added, and turned abruptly away.
What were the precise antecedents of this girl, Miss Carlyon, who had been recommended to her by her friend, the vicar, in London? thought Lady Fettercairn, as her cold, passive, and aristocratic frame of mind resumed its sway. Yet, though she remained silent on the subject, and disdained to inquire further about it, that miniature interested her deeply, and frequently at table and elsewhere Dulcie caught her eyes resting on the locket.
It filled her with a distinct and haunting memory of one seen long ago, and not in dreams, for Lady Fettercairn was not of an imaginative turn of mind.
It may seem strange that amid all this Dulcie never thought of mentioning that Florian was the cousin of Shafto; but she knew how distasteful to Lady Fettercairn was anyone connected with the family of Lennard's dead wife, Flora MacIan.
When Shafto heard of all this, as he did somehow, the qualms of alarm he experienced on seeing first Madelon Galbraith and then Dulcie at Craigengowan were renewed; and he resolved, if he could, to get possession of that locket, and deface or destroy the dangerous likeness it contained.
But Dulcie had an intuitive perception or suspicion of this; and finding that his evil gaze rested upon it repeatedly, after a time she ceased to wear it, but locked it away in a secure place, from whence she could draw it when she chose for her own private delectation.
When Finella, in mutual confidence, told Dulcie of the manner in which Shafto had brought about a separation between herself and Vivian Hammersley, the girl expressed her indignation, but no surprise. She knew all he was capable of doing, and related the two ugly episodes of the locket.
'Heavens!' exclaimed Finella; 'if Lord Fettercairn knew of this business he would surely expel him from Craigengowan.'
'No, no; the person expelled would to a certainty be poor me—an expulsion that Lady Fettercairn would endorse to the full on learning that Shafto had sought to make love to me. Then I should again be more than ever homeless; so let us be silent, dear Finella.'
'Do you ever ride, Dulcie?' asked the latter.
'How can I ride now? In papa's time I had a beautiful little Welsh cob, on which I used to scamper about the shady lanes and breezy moors in Devonshire. I can see still in fancy his dear little head, high withers, and short joints.'
'You shall ride with me,' said Finella, in her pretty, imperative way. 'I have three pads of my own.'
'But I have no habit.'
'Then you shall wear one of mine. I have several. A blue or green one will be most becoming to you; and though you are as plump as a little English partridge, I have one that will be sure to fit you.'
'Thanks. Oh, how kind you are.'
'Now, let us go to the stables. I go there once every day to feed "Fern," as you shall see.'
Sandy Macrupper, the head-groom, always thought the stables never looked so bright as during the time of Finella's visit. He had known her from her childhood, and taught her to ride her first Shetland pony. He was a hard-featured and sour-visaged old man, with that peculiarity of grooms, a very small head and puckered face. He was clad in an orthodox, long-bodied waistcoat, in one of the pockets of which a currycomb was stuck, and wore short corded breeches. He was always closely shaven, and wore a scrupulously white neckcloth, carefully tied. His grey eyes were bright and keen; his short legs had that peculiar curve that indicates a horsy individual. And when the ladies appeared, he came forth from the harness-room with smiling alacrity, a piece of chamois-leather in one hand and a snaffle-bit in the other.
'Good-morning, miss,' said he, touching his billycock.
'Good-morning, Sandy. I want Fern and Flirt for a spin about the country to-day after luncheon;' and the sound of Finella's voice was the signal for many impatient neighs of welcome and much rattling of stall-collars and wooden balls.
Fern, the favourite pad of Finella—a beautiful roan, with a deal of Arab blood in it—gave a loud whinny of delight and recognition, and thrust forward his soft tan-coloured muzzle in search of the carrot which she daily brought to regale him with; but Flirt preferred apples and sugar. Then, regardless of what stablemen might be looking on, she put her arms round Flirt's neck, and rubbed her peach-like cheek against his velvety nose.
On hearing of the projected ride, at luncheon, Lady Fettercairn's face grew cloudy, and she took an opportunity of saying:
'Finella, you are putting that girl, Miss Carlyon, quite out of her place, and I won't stand it.'
'Oh, grandmamma!' exclaimed Finella, deprecatingly, 'this is only a little kindness to one who has seen better times; and she had a horse of her own in Devonshire.'
'Ah! no doubt she told you so.'
The horses were duly brought round in time: Fern with his silky mane carefully and prettily plaited by the nimble little fingers of Finella—a process which old Sandy Macrupper always watched with delight and approval. And Dulcie, mounted on Flirt, a spotted grey, looked every inch a lady of the best style, in an apple-green habit of Finella's, with her golden hair beautifully coiled under a smart top-hat, put well forward over her forehead. She was perfect, to her little tan-coloured gauntlet gloves, and was—Lady Fettercairn, who glanced from the window, was compelled to admit silently—'very good form indeed.'
Escorted by Shafto and a groom, they set forth; and, save for the unwelcome presence of the former, to Dulcie it was a day of delight, which she thought she never should forget.
Dulcie, we have said, had been wont to scamper about the Devonshire lanes, where the clustered apples grew thick overhead, on her Welsh cob, and now on horseback she felt at home in her own sphere again; her colour mounted, her blue eyes sparkled, and the girl looked beautiful indeed.
She almost felt supremely happy; and Finella laughed as she watched her enjoying the sensations of power and management, and the independence given by horse-exercise—the life, the stir, the action, and joyous excitement of a thorough good 'spin' along a breezy country road.
Shafto, however, was in a sullen temper, and vowed secretly that never again would he act their cavalier, because the girls either ignored him by talking to each other, or only replied to any remarks he ventured to make and these were seldom of an amusing or original nature. Indeed, he felt painfully and savagely how hateful his presence was to both.
Despite Lady Fettercairn, other rides followed, for Finella was difficult to control, and in her impulsive and coaxing ways proved generally irrepressible. Thus she took Dulcie all over the country: to the ruined castle of Fettercairn, to Den Finella, and to the great cascade—a perpendicular rock, more than seventy feet high, over which the Finella River pours on its way from Garvock, where it rises, to the sea at Johnshaven.
Returning slowly from one of these rides, with their pads at a walking pace, with the groom a long way in their rear, Dulcie, breaking a long silence, during which both seemed to be lost in thought, said:
'Troubles are doubly hard to bear when we have to keep them to ourselves; thus I feel happier, at least easier in mind, now that I have told you all about poor Florian.'
'And I, that I have told you about Captain Hammersley,' replied Finella; 'though of course I shall never see him again.'
'Never—why so?'
'After what he saw, and what he no doubt thinks, how can I expect to do so? My greatest affliction is that I must seem so black in his eyes. Yet it is impossible for me not to feel the deepest and most tender interest in him—to watch with aching heart the news from the seat of war, and all the movements of his regiment—the movements in which he must have a share.'
'Things cannot, nay, must not, go on thus between you. The false position should be cleared up, explained away. What is to be done?'
'Grin and bear it, as the saying is, Dulcie. Nothing can avail us now—nothing,' said Finella, with a break in her voice.'
'Finella, let me help you and him.'
'How?'
'I shall write about it to Florian. I mean to write him now, at all events.'
Despite all she had been told about the antecedents of the latter, Finella blushed scarlet at the vision of what Hammersley—the proud and haughty Vivian Hammersley—would think of his love-affairs being put into the hands of one of his own soldiers; but Dulcie, thinking only of who Florian was, did not see it in this light, or that it would seem like a plain attempt to lure an angry lover back again.
'Unless you wish me to die of shame,' said Finella, after a bitter pause—'shame and utter mortification—you will do no such thing, Dulcie Carlyon!'
The latter looked at the speaker, and saw that her dark eyes were flashing dangerously as she added:
'He left me in a gust of rage and suspicion of his own free will; and of his own free will must he return.'
'Will he ever do so, if the cause for that just rage and suspicion, born of his very love for you, is not explained away?'
'No, certainly. He is proud, and so am I; but I will never love anyone else, and mean in time to come to invest in the sleekest of tom-cats and die an old maid,' she added, with a little sob in her throat.
'And meanwhile you are in misery?'
'As you see, Dulcie; but I will rather die than fling myself at any man's head, especially at his, through the medium of a letter of yours; but I thank you for the kind thought, dear Dulcie.'
So the latter said no more on the subject, yet made up her mind as to what she would do.
The circumstance that both their lovers, so dissimilar in rank and private means, were serving in the same regiment, facing the same dangers, and enduring the same hardships, formed a kind of sympathetic tie between these two girls, who could share their confidences with each other alone, though their positions in life, by present rank and their probable future, were so far apart.
They never thought of how young they were, or that, if both their lovers were slain or never seen by them again through the contingencies of life, others would come to them and speak of love, perhaps successfully. Such ideas never occurred, however. Both were too romantic to be practical; and both—the rich one and the poor one—only thought of the desolate and forlorn years that stretched like a long and gloomy vista before them, with nothing to look forward to, and no one to care for, unless they became Sisters of Charity; and Finella, with all her thousands, sometimes spoke bitterly of doing so.