Dulcie Carlyon: A novel. Volume 1 (of 3)

IN THE HOWE OF THE MEARNS.

'This will end in a scene, Fettercairn, and you know how I hate scenes.'

'So do I, they are such deuced bad form.'

'I shall need all my self-possession to get over the esclandre this affair may cause,' exclaimed the lady, fanning herself violently.

'Well, life is made up of getting over things,' responded her husband.

'But not things so disgraceful as this, Fettercairn!'

'Is this son of yours in his senses?'

'Who is that loves? it has been asked,' said the culprit referred to.

'A marriage between you and a penniless girl in her rank of life is not to be thought of, Lennard.'

'Her rank of life, father?'

'Yes!'

'Her father's rank was superior to that of the first of our family, when life began with him.'

'What is that to you or to me now?'

'Much to me.'

'Too much, it would seem.'

The excited speakers were a Peer, Cosmo, Lord Fettercairn, his wife, the Lady thereof, and their youngest son, Lennard Melfort, a captain of the line, home on leave from India, who had been somewhat timidly venturing to break--knowing the inordinate family vanity of his parents--we say to break the news of his love for a girl possessed of more beauty than this world's goods; and, in his excitement and indignation, his lordship's usual easy, indolent, and drawling way was forgotten now when addressing his son.

Cosmo, Lord Fettercairn of that Ilk (and Strathfinella in the Mearns) was by nature a proud, cold, selfish, and calculating man, whose chief passion in life was a combined spirit of enormous vanity and acquisitiveness, which he inherited from his predecessors, whom he resembled in political caution and selfishness, and also in personal appearance, to judge from the portraits of three generations, by Sir John de Medina, Aikman, and Raeburn, adorning the walls of the stately room in the house of Craigengowan, where this rather stormy interview took place.

Tall and thin in figure, with flat square shoulders and sandy-coloured hair, cold grey eyes, and irregular features, he was altogether a contrast to his son Lennard, who inherited his slightly aquiline nose and perfect face from his mother, but his firm dark eyes and rich brown hair from a previous generation; and these, together with an olive complexion, rendered more dusky by five years' exposure to an Indian sun, made his aspect a very striking one.

My Lady Fettercairn's birth and breeding were, as Sir Bernard Burke had recorded, irreproachable, and she certainly seemed a grande dame to the tips of her long slender fingers. She was about forty-five years of age, but looked ten younger. The upper part of her aristocratic face was strikingly handsome; but the lower, with its proud and firm lips, was less pleasant to look at. Her complexion was almost colourless, her hair of the lightest brown, like her eyebrows and lashes; while her eyes were clear and blue as an Alpine sky, and, as Lennard often thought with a sigh, they seemed quite as--cold.

Her manner was always calm, assured, and self-possessed. She would smile, but that smile never degenerated into honest laughter, while her pale and impressive face was without a line--especially on her forehead--that seemed to indicate either thought or reflection, and certainly she had never known care or sorrow or even annoyance until now.

'She is beautiful, mother,' urged the young man, breaking an ominous silence, with reference to the object of his love.

'Perhaps; but she is not one of us,' exclaimed Lady Fettercairn, cresting up her handsome head haughtily, and a whole volume of intense pride and hauteur was centred in the last word she spoke.

'Who is this Flora MacIan, as she calls herself?' asked his father in a similar tone; 'but I need not ask. You have already told us she is the governess in a house you have been recently visiting--that of Lady Drumshoddy--a governess, with all her beauty, poor and obscure.'

'Not so obscure,' said Lennard, a wave of red passing under the tan of his olive cheek; 'her father was a gallant old officer of the Ross-shire Buffs, who earned his V.C. at the battle of Khooshab, in Persia, and her only brother and support fell when leading on his Grenadiers at the storming of Lucknow. The old captain was, as his name imports, a cadet of the Macdonalds of Glencoe.'

'With a pedigree of his family, no doubt, from the grounding of the Ark to the battle of Culloden,' sneered his father.

'Then his family would end soon after ours began,' retorted the son, becoming greatly ruffled now. 'You know, father, we can't count much beyond three generations ourselves.'

Lord Fettercairn, wounded thus in his sorest point, grew white with anger.

'We always suspected you of having some secret, Lennard,' said his mother severely.

'Ah, mother, unfortunately, as some one says, a secret is like a hole in your coat--the more you try to hide it, the more it is seen.'

'An aphorism, and consequently vulgar; does she teach you this style of thing?' asked the haughty lady, while Lennard reddened again with annoyance, and gave his dark moustache a vicious twist, but sighed and strove to keep his temper.

'I have found and felt it very bitter, father, to live under false colours,' said he gently and appealingly, 'and to keep that a secret from you both, which should be no secret at all.'

'We would rather not have heard this secret,' replied Lord Fettercairn sternly, while tugging at his sandy-coloured mutton-chop whiskers.

'Then would you have preferred that I should be deceitful to you, and false to the dear girl who loves and trusts me?'

'I do not choose to consider her,' was the cold reply.

'But I do, and must, now!'

'Why?'

'Because we are already married--she is my wife,' was the steady response.

'Married!' exclaimed his father and mother with one accord, as they started from their chairs together, and another ominous silence of a minute ensued.

'My poor, lost boy--the prey of an artful minx!' said Lady Fettercairn, looking as if she would like to weep; but tears were rather strangers to her cold blue eyes.

'Mother, dear mother, if you only knew her, you would not talk thus of Flora,' urged Lennard almost piteously. 'If we had it in our power to give love and to withhold it, easy indeed would our progress be through life.'