'Go I must,' murmured Dulcie, when in the solitude of her own room she said her nightly prayers on her knees. 'I cannot help it. I may come to want bread by the step I am about to take, but better death than enduring this system of mortification and degradation.'
She had received her slender quarterly allowance some time before that crisis, and as yet luckily none of it had been spent. How small a sum it looked to face the world with!
She packed and prepared all her clothes, intending to write to the housekeeper for them when she found another home. In an ample Gladstone bag she placed carefully all that was requisite for her immediate need, and, weary with rapid exertion and heavy thought, laid her head on the pillow of a sofa, fearing to undress or trust herself in bed, lest a deep sleep might fall upon her.
All was silent in the great house, and no sound broke the stillness of the warm summer night save when some dog bayed at the moon from the quadrangle of the stable-yard.
Midnight struck on a great and sonorous clock in an adjacent corridor; anon a little French clock on her chimney-piece chimed out two on its silver bell, but no sleep came to Dulcie's eyes, nor did she desire to court it.
Her mind was full of rambling fancies. She thought of her parents lying so peacefully side by side in old Revelstoke churchyard, within sound of the sobbing sea, and of what their emotions would have been could they have foreseen all that was before her of doubt and unhappiness; and with the memory of them she tenderly turned over some withered leaves that lay in a little prayer-book Mr. Pentreath had given her, and while doing so recalled the sweet lines that seemed so apropos to them:
'Only a bunch of withered leaves,
Brought by a stranger's hand,
But they grew on a spot she dearly loved—
They bloomed in the dear old land.
Father and mother lie there at rest
Beneath the soft emerald sod,
Under the shelter of the cross,
And close to the house of God,'
close to the time-worn church of Revelstoke. She thought of Shafto and the thorn he had proved in her path, and felt a satisfaction from the conviction that after this night too probably she would never more look upon his face.
She thought again and again of Florian. Where was he then, and what doing? Too probably sleeping the sleep of the weary and worn, on the bare earth in some tented field, awaiting the coming perils of the morrow, and then with the idea of Finella came fresh tears for parting thus from the only friend she had.
After three had struck she dressed herself quickly in the costume in which she meant to travel, assured herself that her purse was safe, that her hat, gloves, and sunshade were at hand, and sat down by a window to watch for the earliest streak of dawn.
With all this earnestness of preparation and of purpose she had no settled plan for the future—no very defined one at least; her sole desire was to anticipate the final mortification of dismissal, and to get away from the vicinity of Lady Fettercairn, of Shafto, and of Craigengowan.
Save the Rev. Paul Pentreath, far away in her native Devonshire, and the vicar in London through whom he had befriended her, she had no one to whom to look forward, and, save for Florian's sake, she felt at times, as if she cared little what became of her. She would reach London, take a little lodging there, and look about her for some employment while her money lasted; and when it was gone—gone, what then?
Again came the thought of Finella, whom she loved with all the passionate earnestness of an impulsive young heart thrust back upon itself, and yearning for friendship and affection. Even with her regard it was impossible that she could stay longer in the same house with him who was now returning—Shafto—even were dismissal not hanging over her. She could but go away; her presence was necessary to no one's happiness, and none would miss her—perhaps not even Finella after a time, for the latter lived in a world—the world of wealth and rank—a sphere apart from that of poor Dulcie Carlyon.
Amid these thoughts she started: dawn was breaking in the east, but the world around her was still involved in gloom and sleep.
How long, long and chill, the night had seemed; yet it was a short and warm one of July, when there is only a total darkness of four hours, especially in a region so far north as the Howe of the Mearns.
Red light stole along the waters of the distant German Sea; it began to tip the hilltops and crept gradually down into the woods and glens below, where the Bervie, the Finella, and the Cowie brawled on their way to the ocean.
As one in a dream, she sat for a little time watching the dawn till the light of the half-risen sun was streaming over the tree-tops and through the parted curtains of her windows, when she started up with all the resolution she had taken overnight yet full in her mind.
With rapid and trembling fingers she assumed the last details of her travelling costume, smoothed her golden hair, gave a final glance at herself in the mirror, and saw how pale and unslept she looked after her past night's vigil, tied her veil tightly across her face, fitted on her gloves with accuracy, took her travelling bag, and with a prayer on her lips prepared to go out into the world—alone!
The clustering roses and clematis were about the windows of the square turret-room, notwithstanding its great height from the ground; the birds were twittering among them, and diamond dewdrops gemmed every leaf.
Light and shadowy clouds of mist, exhaled upwards by the early morning sun, hung about the summit of Moelmannoch and other hills, and in the sunshine the insect world was all astir: the bees were already abroad, and the blackbirds were hopping about the gravelled terraces. To Dulcie it seemed that they at least were at home.
She leaned for a moment out of the window and drank—for the last time—a deep draught of the pure air that came from the lovely Scottish landscape over which her eyes wandered, as it stretched away down the fertile and peaceful Howe of the Mearns, the corn deepening into gold, the picturesque houses, luxuriant orchards and gardens; and she bade to each and all farewell, with little regret, perhaps, for with all their beauty they were too intimately associated with the idea of Lady Fettercairn and many a humiliation.
Opening her room-door she stole swiftly down the great carpeted staircase, passed through the drawing-rooms into the conservatory, the door of which she knew she could unlock more easily than that of the great door which opened to the porte cochère. There was no one yet astir in all that numerous household, so, hurrying across the dewy lawn, she turned her face resolutely towards the station, where she knew she would reach the early Aberdeen train for the South.
The country highway was deserted; she met no one but a gamekeeper returning from a night's watch, perhaps, with his gun under his arm. She thought he looked at her curiously as she passed him, sorely weighted by her travelling bag, but he did not address her; and so without other adventures she reached the little wayside station of Craigengowan just as the gates were being unclosed, and, quickly securing her ticket, retired to the seclusion of the waiting-room.
Her heart had but one aching thought—the parting with Finella.
In her pride and indignation we must admit that Dulcie, ever a creature of impulse, was not acting judiciously. She had not stopped to ask a letter of recommendation—'a character,' she mentally and bitterly phrased it—from Lady Fettercairn; neither had she risked the opposition and kind advice of Finella, but had thus left her present life of irritation and humiliation to rush into a new and unknown world, that now, even when she had barely crossed the rubicon, was beginning, as she sat in the lonely and empty wayside station, to chill and dismay her.
'In the future that is before me, whom am I to trust in again? How am I to fight the world's battle alone?' she was beginning to think, even while the clanking train for the South came sweeping across the echoing Howe.
Ay, she so pure, so artless, so unsuspecting of evil in others!
At last she was in the train and off. She gave one long farewell glance at the lofty turrets of haunted Craigengowan, because Finella was there, and felt that never again would they ramble together by Queen Mary's Thorn, the Swan's Pool, the old gate through which the fated Lord rode forth to battle, or by the old ruined Castle of Fettercairn with all its legends.
Dulcie experienced a kind of relief in the swiftness of the speed with which the express train flew past station after station, outstripping the wind apparently; villages and thatched farms were seen and gone; trees, bridges, ruined towers, those features so common in the Scottish landscape, fields and hedgerows, swept rearward, telegraph wires seemed to sink and rise and twist themselves in one, the poles apparently pursuing each other in the fury of the pace.
Now it was Arbroath, where the train, paused for a little time—Arbroath with its mills, tall chimneys, and substantial houses, amid which tower the remains of that noble abbey which held the bones of William the Lion, with its huge round window, for seven hundred years a landmark from the sea; anon came Droughty Craig with its ancient tower, under the walls of which have been shed the blood of English, French, and Germans, with Dundee, 'the gift of God,' amid the haze of its manufactories, to the westward.
Here a kindly old railway guard—who whilom as a 1st Royal Scot had shed his blood at Alma and Inkermann—taking pity on the pale and weary girl, brought her a cup of warm tea from the buffet, and, as he said, 'a weel-buttered bap, ye ken,' and most acceptable they were.
A little time and her train was sweeping through Fife, and she saw the woods of Falkland—those lovely woods wherein 'the bonnie Earl of Gowrie' flirted with Anne of Denmark. Soon Cupar was left behind, and the Eden, flowing through its green and fertile valley; and then, worn with the vigil of the past night and her own heavy thoughts, Dulcie fell asleep, without the coveted satisfaction of a dream of Florian or Finella.