Chapter Thirteen.Breakers Ahead.“I sat, Nell,” said Hubert Dorrien, coming into the morning-room, where his sister sat alone. “What the very dickens is wrong now? The veteran’s in an exemplary state of grumps.”“Well, he isn’t particularly amiable this morning; but then he isn’t always, you know,” answered Nellie.Hubert shook his head moodily.“Ah, yes, but there’s something in the wind. He’s far worse than usual, and now he and the missis are hobnobbing together in the library. Now, Nell, be a good girl and tell a fellow what it’s all about.”“But, Hu, I give you my word I haven’t an idea. It may be nothing, after all.”“Pooh!” exclaimed her brother irascibly. “I believe you do know, though. You women dearly love beating about the bush and all that sort of thing,” and throwing his leg over the arm of a chair, he flung himself back, his face a picture of unreasonable peevishness. Nor could he afford to await with indifference the paternal storm, for Master Hubert’s conscience was a tolerably blemished article, and now he was speculating with a troubled mind as to which of his peccadilloes might have come to the paternal knowledge.The girl made no reply, as she bent over her work, while her brother sat uneasily swinging his legs, the apprehensive frown deepening on his brow. Then they heard the door of the study open and their father’s voice saying:”—And send Hubert here; I want to talk to him. If he is out, he had better come directly he returns.” And the door closed as Mrs Dorrien replied in the affirmative.“Oh, Lord!” groaned Hubert. “Well, it’s of no use putting off the evil day. Here goes. Oh, it’s nice to have a father! Well, mother, and what’s it all about?” as Mrs Dorrien entered the room.“I don’t know for certain, dear,” she said anxiously. “But I think your father only wants to talk to you about your allowance.”A very blank look came into his face. “Couldn’t be much worse,” he muttered, and went to meet his fate.And soothly, a bad quarter of an hour was in store for him, for it happened that the General had received certain bills on his account—not University duns, but long outstanding London debts, and, as to one, a letter of demand. Cold, sarcastic and incisive was the lecture he poured forth on the head of the luckless Hubert. He reminded him of former scrapes of the kind, of the fact that he would have little or nothing hereafter but what he obtained by his own exertions, and wound up by recommending him to apply himself to his reading with renewed determination.Hubert, who thought he was getting into smooth water again, began to promise, but once more his father cut him ruthlessly short.“And now, for the third time,” he said, “I shall have to get you out of the embarrassment into which your own folly has plunged you—but I shall not do so without exacting some guarantee that you will make a good use of your time in return. Your mother tells me that you and Roland are invited to spend a fortnight at Ardleigh Court.”“Oho!” thought Hubert, noting a slight frown which came over his father’s face at the mention of his brother. “Oho!—so Roland’s in the veteran’s black books, too! Wonder what about.””—This invitation you will decline,” went on the hard, condemnatory voice. “Amusement and work in your case don’t agree—and work you must. Every morning from breakfast time till luncheon during the next six weeks I shall expect you to be at your books, unless I see special reason to make an exception. You have done literally no work at all since your return home this vacation, and it is high time you began. And for the last time these”—tapping the bills lying upon his desk—“shall be paid. Are there any more of them outstanding, by the way?”Now why had not Hubert the courage to make a clean breast of it. Here was an opportunity such as would not occur again. Ah I that slightly receding chin.“Only two or three, for small amounts,” he faltered.“Very good. Make a list of them here,” handing him a piece of paper.”—And that is all? Yes? Then I need not detain you here any further—except again to impress upon you the necessity of attending to what I have been saying.”Hubert went out of his father’s presence with hot, seething rage at his heart. He to be confined to the house every morning like a schoolboy, with a set task to do. “Gated,” in fact—and that by his own father, and in his home. It was humiliating in the extreme. And there was no way in which the devil within him could find vent.“Well, dear?” said his mother enquiringly, as he burst into the morning-room, where she had been anxiously awaiting the result of the interview. “And now I hope things are all right.”“All right?” echoed Hubert, his countenance ablaze with wrath and disgust. “All right? No, they’re not, they’re as wrong as they can be. Here am I set down to work every morning like a wretched schoolboy. I swear, it’s damnable the way in which he treats me.”“Oh, Hubert—hush!” cried his mother and sister in one breath, both horror-stricken.“Hush? Oh yes! Aren’t we horrified?” he said jeeringly. “Women are so very easily shocked, I know. Faugh?” and he flung himself from the room.But it was not on his younger son’s account that General Dorrien had come down that morning “in a state of thundercloud,” as that graceless delinquent had facetiously put it; and to let the reader into the real cause, it will be necessary for him or her to assist in the discussion which took place previous to the unlucky Hubert being summoned to the library.“I don’t really know what to think, much less what toBayor do,” said the General. “You saw for yourself, Eleanor; you saw them together. Now, what do you make of it?”“Well, I do think it’s too bad of Roland, and shows a great want of proper feeling on his part. After all these years he has been away he does not give us much of his society. He seems to be quite taken up with those—people,” answered Mrs Dorrien, though, to do her justice, she answered with some reserve. Her heart was cold towards her eldest son, and not one spark of love had she for him; all was lavished on the younger. Yet, she told herself, she hoped she had a conscience.“You are right,” said the General decisively. “It shows a complete want of proper feeling. To be hanging about the public roads like that with the girl! Why, I believe he was about to—pah! It is disgraceful—disgusting and disgraceful, absolutely. Who are these Ingelows, by the way, Eleanor?”“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered loftily, as if the bare suspicion of her knowing anything about them was an imputation to be resented. “I believe they are well-connected and all that. But that anything serious should be the outcome of this would be most deplorable, I should think.”“It would, indeed. Highly deplorable, and in fact I won’t entertain the idea of anything of the kind. Moreover, if what I hear is true, Roland spends a very great deal of his time in the society of this girl.”By which remark it will appear that the town of Wandsborough was in no way behind its provincial contemporaries in its passion for gossip.“He may be only amusing himself. There may be nothing serious in it, after all,” hazarded Mrs Dorrien, her conscience prompting her to try and urge a plea for the absent one. But she could not have struck upon a more unlucky chord.“Amusing himself! Well, I am surprised at you, Eleanor,” cried the General, firing up. “Amusing himself? And do you remember what came of it on the last occasion of his similarly ‘amusing himself’? Disgrace—pure and simple. Is that a prospect to contemplate with ordinary coolness, I ask you?”“It strikes me forcibly that this young woman is well able to take care of herself,” was the acid reply. “And I don’t see what we—what you can do in the matter. Roland is different now and, I fear, terribly difficult to deal with.”“As to what I can do—well, never mind,” answered the General very grimly. “But it seems to me that Roland has not left off his old ways—or, at any rate, is fast returning to them. Why, we shall have another action for breach of promise threatened before we know where we are; these professional people are keen upon the main chance, and that Jesuitical brood above any,” he continued, with a sneer. “And what I now say is that Roland had better be careful—for I will not be disgraced through him a second time with impunity. He has his own means, of course, but if he intends to take up his ultimate position in the county, let him show himself worthy of it.”Very decisive and stern and uncompromising was the General’s tone and attitude as he concluded this last remark, and his wife, listening, was conscious of a warring tumult of feelings. Yet she dared not sacrifice right and justice to the cause of the one ruling passion of her life—her love for her younger son. So again she spoke in extenuation.“It is a pity. But he will be going to Ardleigh Court next week—and there’s no telling what change in his fancy his stay there may effect.”This time she touched the right spring. For she knew that her husband ardently desired a match between his eldest son and Clara Neville—a match that would bring about the union of the two fine old estates into one magnificent property. Hence he had “sounded” Roland on the subject, as we saw earlier in this narrative.“There may be something in that,” was the mollified reply. “Clara can be exceedingly engaging when she likes, and I know Neville would be delighted. He seemed to take a great fancy to Roland.”“I think he did.”“And if only Roland would throw himself into his future interest here. He ought to live here and help to look after things, but he seems to prefer an idle life, and the society of those Rectory people to that of his own family,” said the General, relapsing again into ire over the thought.“It is most unnatural of him, I must say, to dislike his home as he does,” assented Mrs Dorrien. Yet they forgot, did that worthy couple, how it would have been difficult indeed for anyone to feel any love for a home thus constituted.“Well, it is useless discussing the matter further at present,” was the decisive rejoinder. “But mark my words. Never—never, I say—while I can prevent it, shall Roland bring into this house a daughter of that despicable popish renegade. So he can act as he thinks fit. My mind is made up.”
“I sat, Nell,” said Hubert Dorrien, coming into the morning-room, where his sister sat alone. “What the very dickens is wrong now? The veteran’s in an exemplary state of grumps.”
“Well, he isn’t particularly amiable this morning; but then he isn’t always, you know,” answered Nellie.
Hubert shook his head moodily.
“Ah, yes, but there’s something in the wind. He’s far worse than usual, and now he and the missis are hobnobbing together in the library. Now, Nell, be a good girl and tell a fellow what it’s all about.”
“But, Hu, I give you my word I haven’t an idea. It may be nothing, after all.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed her brother irascibly. “I believe you do know, though. You women dearly love beating about the bush and all that sort of thing,” and throwing his leg over the arm of a chair, he flung himself back, his face a picture of unreasonable peevishness. Nor could he afford to await with indifference the paternal storm, for Master Hubert’s conscience was a tolerably blemished article, and now he was speculating with a troubled mind as to which of his peccadilloes might have come to the paternal knowledge.
The girl made no reply, as she bent over her work, while her brother sat uneasily swinging his legs, the apprehensive frown deepening on his brow. Then they heard the door of the study open and their father’s voice saying:
”—And send Hubert here; I want to talk to him. If he is out, he had better come directly he returns.” And the door closed as Mrs Dorrien replied in the affirmative.
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Hubert. “Well, it’s of no use putting off the evil day. Here goes. Oh, it’s nice to have a father! Well, mother, and what’s it all about?” as Mrs Dorrien entered the room.
“I don’t know for certain, dear,” she said anxiously. “But I think your father only wants to talk to you about your allowance.”
A very blank look came into his face. “Couldn’t be much worse,” he muttered, and went to meet his fate.
And soothly, a bad quarter of an hour was in store for him, for it happened that the General had received certain bills on his account—not University duns, but long outstanding London debts, and, as to one, a letter of demand. Cold, sarcastic and incisive was the lecture he poured forth on the head of the luckless Hubert. He reminded him of former scrapes of the kind, of the fact that he would have little or nothing hereafter but what he obtained by his own exertions, and wound up by recommending him to apply himself to his reading with renewed determination.
Hubert, who thought he was getting into smooth water again, began to promise, but once more his father cut him ruthlessly short.
“And now, for the third time,” he said, “I shall have to get you out of the embarrassment into which your own folly has plunged you—but I shall not do so without exacting some guarantee that you will make a good use of your time in return. Your mother tells me that you and Roland are invited to spend a fortnight at Ardleigh Court.”
“Oho!” thought Hubert, noting a slight frown which came over his father’s face at the mention of his brother. “Oho!—so Roland’s in the veteran’s black books, too! Wonder what about.”
”—This invitation you will decline,” went on the hard, condemnatory voice. “Amusement and work in your case don’t agree—and work you must. Every morning from breakfast time till luncheon during the next six weeks I shall expect you to be at your books, unless I see special reason to make an exception. You have done literally no work at all since your return home this vacation, and it is high time you began. And for the last time these”—tapping the bills lying upon his desk—“shall be paid. Are there any more of them outstanding, by the way?”
Now why had not Hubert the courage to make a clean breast of it. Here was an opportunity such as would not occur again. Ah I that slightly receding chin.
“Only two or three, for small amounts,” he faltered.
“Very good. Make a list of them here,” handing him a piece of paper.
”—And that is all? Yes? Then I need not detain you here any further—except again to impress upon you the necessity of attending to what I have been saying.”
Hubert went out of his father’s presence with hot, seething rage at his heart. He to be confined to the house every morning like a schoolboy, with a set task to do. “Gated,” in fact—and that by his own father, and in his home. It was humiliating in the extreme. And there was no way in which the devil within him could find vent.
“Well, dear?” said his mother enquiringly, as he burst into the morning-room, where she had been anxiously awaiting the result of the interview. “And now I hope things are all right.”
“All right?” echoed Hubert, his countenance ablaze with wrath and disgust. “All right? No, they’re not, they’re as wrong as they can be. Here am I set down to work every morning like a wretched schoolboy. I swear, it’s damnable the way in which he treats me.”
“Oh, Hubert—hush!” cried his mother and sister in one breath, both horror-stricken.
“Hush? Oh yes! Aren’t we horrified?” he said jeeringly. “Women are so very easily shocked, I know. Faugh?” and he flung himself from the room.
But it was not on his younger son’s account that General Dorrien had come down that morning “in a state of thundercloud,” as that graceless delinquent had facetiously put it; and to let the reader into the real cause, it will be necessary for him or her to assist in the discussion which took place previous to the unlucky Hubert being summoned to the library.
“I don’t really know what to think, much less what toBayor do,” said the General. “You saw for yourself, Eleanor; you saw them together. Now, what do you make of it?”
“Well, I do think it’s too bad of Roland, and shows a great want of proper feeling on his part. After all these years he has been away he does not give us much of his society. He seems to be quite taken up with those—people,” answered Mrs Dorrien, though, to do her justice, she answered with some reserve. Her heart was cold towards her eldest son, and not one spark of love had she for him; all was lavished on the younger. Yet, she told herself, she hoped she had a conscience.
“You are right,” said the General decisively. “It shows a complete want of proper feeling. To be hanging about the public roads like that with the girl! Why, I believe he was about to—pah! It is disgraceful—disgusting and disgraceful, absolutely. Who are these Ingelows, by the way, Eleanor?”
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know,” she answered loftily, as if the bare suspicion of her knowing anything about them was an imputation to be resented. “I believe they are well-connected and all that. But that anything serious should be the outcome of this would be most deplorable, I should think.”
“It would, indeed. Highly deplorable, and in fact I won’t entertain the idea of anything of the kind. Moreover, if what I hear is true, Roland spends a very great deal of his time in the society of this girl.”
By which remark it will appear that the town of Wandsborough was in no way behind its provincial contemporaries in its passion for gossip.
“He may be only amusing himself. There may be nothing serious in it, after all,” hazarded Mrs Dorrien, her conscience prompting her to try and urge a plea for the absent one. But she could not have struck upon a more unlucky chord.
“Amusing himself! Well, I am surprised at you, Eleanor,” cried the General, firing up. “Amusing himself? And do you remember what came of it on the last occasion of his similarly ‘amusing himself’? Disgrace—pure and simple. Is that a prospect to contemplate with ordinary coolness, I ask you?”
“It strikes me forcibly that this young woman is well able to take care of herself,” was the acid reply. “And I don’t see what we—what you can do in the matter. Roland is different now and, I fear, terribly difficult to deal with.”
“As to what I can do—well, never mind,” answered the General very grimly. “But it seems to me that Roland has not left off his old ways—or, at any rate, is fast returning to them. Why, we shall have another action for breach of promise threatened before we know where we are; these professional people are keen upon the main chance, and that Jesuitical brood above any,” he continued, with a sneer. “And what I now say is that Roland had better be careful—for I will not be disgraced through him a second time with impunity. He has his own means, of course, but if he intends to take up his ultimate position in the county, let him show himself worthy of it.”
Very decisive and stern and uncompromising was the General’s tone and attitude as he concluded this last remark, and his wife, listening, was conscious of a warring tumult of feelings. Yet she dared not sacrifice right and justice to the cause of the one ruling passion of her life—her love for her younger son. So again she spoke in extenuation.
“It is a pity. But he will be going to Ardleigh Court next week—and there’s no telling what change in his fancy his stay there may effect.”
This time she touched the right spring. For she knew that her husband ardently desired a match between his eldest son and Clara Neville—a match that would bring about the union of the two fine old estates into one magnificent property. Hence he had “sounded” Roland on the subject, as we saw earlier in this narrative.
“There may be something in that,” was the mollified reply. “Clara can be exceedingly engaging when she likes, and I know Neville would be delighted. He seemed to take a great fancy to Roland.”
“I think he did.”
“And if only Roland would throw himself into his future interest here. He ought to live here and help to look after things, but he seems to prefer an idle life, and the society of those Rectory people to that of his own family,” said the General, relapsing again into ire over the thought.
“It is most unnatural of him, I must say, to dislike his home as he does,” assented Mrs Dorrien. Yet they forgot, did that worthy couple, how it would have been difficult indeed for anyone to feel any love for a home thus constituted.
“Well, it is useless discussing the matter further at present,” was the decisive rejoinder. “But mark my words. Never—never, I say—while I can prevent it, shall Roland bring into this house a daughter of that despicable popish renegade. So he can act as he thinks fit. My mind is made up.”
Chapter Fourteen.“The Ban of Craunston.”“Well, Miss Ingelow. All alone and wrapped in meditation! Hope I haven’t disturbed the solution of some knotty problem.”“Oh, no, Mr Dorrien,” answered Margaret gaily, turning away from the window. “I haven’t been long back from evensong, and the only problem I was trying to solve was, what can have become of father. He ought to have been back by now. And it has set in wet, and he didn’t take an umbrella.”“He will be sure to borrow one, I should think. But are your sisters out in the rain, too?”“I’m afraid I can’t answer for that, they’re too far away,” said Margaret, with a laugh. “They went up to London yesterday, to stay with an aunt of ours.”“Went up to London? I had no idea of that,” echoed Roland, with a momentary flash of surprise, strongly dashed with disappointment, crossing his face. “And do they make a long stay?”“About a fortnight or three weeks. Ah—there is father!”“Upon my word, Dorrien,” began the rector, as Roy unceremoniously pushed past him while entering, “I must again impress upon you the slur you cast upon my hospitable gates by leaving this chap outside the same. Now, Roy, old man, make yourself at home.”“No fear of his not doing that,” laughed Roy’s master, as the dog deliberately curled himself up on the softest rug in the room. “But he was rather wet, so I thought he’d better wait outside.”“Father, go at once and change your cassock,” interrupted Margaret. “It’s wet through.”“Not a bit of it,” replied the rector, stooping to inspect his flowing skirt. “Brown lent me the very father of all ginghams. He buttonholed me in his dim, mysterious way, and said he hoped I wouldn’t be above, etc, etc. I told him I should be more than glad to be beneath it, and accordingly came along the street under full sail and a complete shelter. Brown is the prince of opportune and considerate vergers. And now, Dorrien, don’t hurry off. Stay and have a chop with us, and cheer an old man in his loneliness. My two youngest girls are away disporting themselves in the gay metropolis, so I can promise you a little less noise than usual. You’ve got your bicycle, I see, so you’re independent.”Roland accepted with pleasure. He and the rector were great friends, and he was quite upon the “dropping in” footing by this time.“Right. Margaret, take care of him for half an hour or so, during which period inexorable duty will keep your humble servant in his study chair.” And the rector left the room, humming a bar or two of the old plainsong hymn, whose melody lingered in his mind fresh from the dimly lighted choir at the close of the evening office.If disappointment as to the absent was weighing upon Roland’s mind, he was unconsciously exemplifying the axiom as to a compensating element in all things. It was a few days after The Skegs exploration episode, and he had been making up his mind to take an opportunity of getting the rector to tell him the whole story of the legendary Ban, not that he believed in it himself, or was inclined to, but it would be interesting to hear the so-called facts. Here was just such an opportunity, as they would be alone together after dinner.“You’ll have a wet ride back, Mr Dorrien, I’m afraid,” said Margaret, as they sat down to table. “It’s coming down harder than ever.”“Oh, that’s nothing to some of my old privations,” he laughed, “except that the very snugness now will make it all the rougher to turn out.”And snug it was. The drawn curtains only deadened the constant patter of the rain upon the windows, and the suggestion of the sort of evening outside thrown out by the sound, enhanced the sense of comfort and restfulness within. Under these circumstances, three people, sufficiently well known to each other to be able to converse without restraint, are in a position to pass a thoroughly pleasant evening. Yet to one, at any rate, of these three there was a sense of something wanting—a vacant place, perhaps, as of somebody absent, whose absence was really missed. Roy, the irrepressible, with his wonted off-handedness, was begging impartially from everybody in turn.“Bother that post!” exclaimed the rector, as a sharp double knock cut across the conversation. “A man can’t dine in peace without this age of progress chucking its reprehensible invention into the flavour of his sirloin. Here we are—a whole stack of hopes and fears”—he went on, contemplating, with a whimsical expression, the sheaf of letters at that moment brought in. “First, diocesan—that’ll keep. Item—invitation to preach—ditto, ditto. That’s yours, Margaret—and—this is mine—from Olive. No, it’s for me, all for me,” he cried gleefully. “Not for you at all, Margaret, this time. Let’s see what she says. Excuse me, Dorrien—sink ceremony. By the way, I promised you a quiet dinner in the absence of those two chatterboxes, and one of them sends us two sheets of clatter by post—ha-ha!”It was very pleasant to watch the affectionate delight with which the old man read through his favourite child’s letter.“Why, they’re only going to stay ten days after all,” he cried in astonishment. “The child isn’t generally so eager to get back to her old dad, after the joys and glories of the metropolis. Here’s a message for you, Dorrien: ‘Tell Mr Dorrien, I saw a love of a dog the other day, that almost outshines Roy. Almost—not quite—mind you tell himalmostor he’ll never speak to me again.’”Roland, who had been inwardly startled at the juxtaposition of ideas, quickly recovered himself, and made some pleasant remark. Two things occurred to him. It might be that there was some reason underlying Olive’s anxiety to return speedily, and the message, innocent as it read, was to remind him that she did not forget him.“Dad, Eustace is coming home next week,” remarked Margaret, looking up from a letter she had been reading.“Is he? The rascal! it’s about time he did. Dorrien, you will have the dubious pleasure of making the acquaintance of my hopeful at the date just named. He has been away yachting with a friend, and by this time doubtless considers himself fully competent to take command of the Channel Fleet.”Thus conversation flowed on, and at last Margaret rose. No, she would not be lonely, she said, in response to an intimation to that effect. She had more than enough to do to occupy all her time.“Draw round the fire, Dorrien—fancy requiring one at this time of year,” said the rector, as the door closed upon his daughter. “Now to try and unearth some cigars,” diving into a chiffonier in the corner. “Ah! here we are. Light up. Oh, and we’ll put the decanters at the corner here, where we can reach them.”Roland blew out a long puff of smoke, and lay back in easy content.“I wish you’d tell me something, Dr Ingelow,” he said.“And that?”“Why, I want to know the true version of that ridiculous story attached to our family. You know—the ghost on The Skegs. You are sure to have it at your fingers’ ends.”“Does not your father know it?”“I believe he does, but he promptly shelves the topic if you moot it. And, you know, he isn’t the sort of man to get anything out of that he’s bent on keeping dark.”“H’m! Well, the original version of the tradition is to be found in Surinn’s ‘Legends and Myths of Baronial Europe,’ a very scarce and bulky book, which came out between forty and fifty years ago, and the incident occurred, if I remember rightly, in the middle of the last century. The narrative is entitled ‘The Ban of Craunston.’ It was a wild and lawless period in out-of-the-way parts, and this corner of the world came in no wise behind the spirit of the age, for the coast was the happy hunting ground of wreckers and smugglers, and the roads of highwaymen and other freebooters. At that time, one Richard Dorrien was Squire of Cranston. He was a bachelor, and his younger brother lived at the Hall with him. The latter, Hubert by name, was an open-hearted, bright-spirited youngster, immensely popular with both sexes; whereas Richard, the Squire, seems to have been a gloomy, violent-tempered man, disliked and feared on all sides. Well, the brothers got on rather well together—possibly on account of the total dissimilarity of their characters—until the apple of discord was thrown into their midst in the shape of a young lady who came to take up her abode in Wandsborough, then a straggling little place, consisting of a score of houses. She was a foreigner—though of what nationality the chronicle omits to state—of extraordinary beauty, and lived alone with aduennaof regulation age and hideosity. It is said that this young woman was a Jacobite emissary, and it was in that capacity that she and Richard Dorrien became acquainted, for he was an ardent Jacobite, and over head and ears involved in the plots of the day. But be this as it may, it was a case of love at first sight. The churlish and misanthropical Squire became violently enslaved; unfortunately, however, the lady declined his addresses. More unfortunately still, she did not decline those of his brother—quite the reverse. Well, now, this position of affairs could but have one ending, in a state of society wherein men ran each other through on far less provocation than would induce you in these days to knock a fellow down. But there was no open quarrel. On the contrary, the Squire was so studiously cordial to his brother that the latter was thrown quite off his guard. Not so one or two of his intimates, who went so far as to warn him—and nearly got run through for their pains. Matters went on in this way till the day before Hubert was to wed the fair unknown. On the afternoon of that day the two brothers put off in their sailing cutter to tack about the bay. They were alone together, and seemed on the best of terms. The afternoon closed in squally and rough, and the boat and its occupants were lost to view in the mist. Darkness came on, and still the Dorriens did not return. The seafaring people at Minchkil began to get anxious, and talked of going in search, but there was a high sea running and every sign of a rising gale; moreover, they knew that the missing men were nearly as amphibious as they themselves. Then suddenly there sounded through the night the wild unearthly howling of a dog. Awed to the heart, it was some time before the superstitious seafarers could make up their minds to investigate further. The sound came from the cliff above them to westward, and thither at last they all proceeded. There, at the very extremity of the headland which looks down on The Skegs, stood a huge boar-hound, which they recognised as the Squire’s favourite dog, Satan, a savage brute, of whom the whole neighbourhood stood in terror. The animal stood there on the brink of the cliff—his neck stretched out over the churning waves below—throwing out his long-drawn, deep-voiced bay into the misty darkness. Then the men knew that something had happened. And now mark this. At the very moment this discovery was made, Richard Dorrien appeared suddenly before the young foreign lady, dripping and soaked from head to foot, and told her, without the slightest warning, that her lover was drowned. She seemed turned to stone. She gazed at him for a moment with a wild stare, gasped out one word—‘Murdered!’—and, still fixing him with that glassy stare, fell prone to the floor in a swoon. He never saw her again.“A terrible gale raged all that night, and in the morning fragments of the missing boat were washed ashore. The craft had been splintered almost to matchwood. It was not till many days afterwards that Hubert Dorrien’s corpse came to light. At first the survivor would hardly mention the subject, much less give any account of it. Eventually, however, it leaked out that the boat had been driven upon The Skegs by the gale, and its occupants, thrown into the water, were forced to swim for their lives. And now, although nothing can be more reasonable and probable than this solution of the matter, it was not long before dark rumours began to get about. Of course, there could be no vestige of proof either way; for the tragedy out there in the black and storm-lashed bay was witnessed by no mortal eye. Months went by. The survivor became more and more morose, shunned everybody, and took to hard drinking. The cause of all the turmoil left the neighbourhood the week following on the tragedy. One morning. Cranston was in a state of alarm. The Squire was missing. Enquiry at length elicited that he had put out to sea the previous night accompanied only by his huge hound. Richard Dorrien was never seen again, neither was his dog. The night was wild and tempestuous, and it was at first thought that his boat had been swamped. But days and weeks went by, and no trace of wreckage came to light—and finally all hope was abandoned.“Then suddenly an awful state of scare arose among the seafaring population. Ghostly bayings began to be heard at night on the cliff in the neighbourhood of The Skegs. They were heard by fishermen in their boats at sea and by belated wanderers out on the down. Some had even made out the shape of a large dog resting on the summit of the loftier of The Skegs. Forthwith, the theory took root that Richard Dorrien had, beyond doubt, murdered his brother, and in expiation was doomed to haunt the scene of the tragedy and take the shape of his huge and savage boar-hound. Those who have any idea to what depths of superstition the country population was in those days plunged, can easily imagine the frantic terror which such an apparition would have for the pliers of a dangerous calling. Why, to this day you can’t induce one of the fisher folk to venture too near The Skegs—let alone land there.”“But wasn’t there a death warning conveyed by the apparition?” asked Roland.“Ah! now we come to the strangest part of the whole story. There got about soon afterwards a curious prophecy; no one has ever been able to tell with whom it originated. Perhaps you know it?”“I know that this shape is said to appear whenever one of us had lived long enough, and that it is predicted that we are none of us to die in our beds, but yet bloodlessly, which is a consolation to any of us who may be engaged in a scrimmage. But the prediction has been falsified—on the last occasion at any rate. My brother Vernon tumbled into a crevasse, you know, and as the poor chap must have been dashed to pieces the tradition fails.”“Well, I don’t want to encourage you in any uncomfortable apprehensions, Dorrien; but what you say does not necessarily follow.”“Now you mention it, no more it does. And it is undoubtedly a queer thing that we should all have come to grief by water. I suppose, as a glacier is frozen water, the last instance holds good. Then there was my uncle, who died suddenly on deck, and was buried at sea. My grandfather, again, was drowned while skating, and they say the tradition carries itself further back still. However, as we seem all born to be drowned we can none of us be hanged, so there’s a bright side to even that situation. By the way, was the ‘Ban’ to the fore on the last occasion?”“I only know that so it was reported. A shepherd came running in from Durnley Downs one night, with a white face and chattering teeth, and vowed he had seen and heard the dog on The Skegs. Two days afterwards the news of the disaster arrived. But I wouldn’t trouble my head about the affair, if I were you.”“Not I. Life is a precious deal too prosaic and tangible a concern for a man to bother himself about local superstitions.”“Well, I should have imagined that would be your idea, or I would not have opened my mind upon a gruesome tradition which is supposed to concern you and yours,” was the rector’s reply, in a more careless tone than he had adopted yet.One side of the prophecy, however, he withheld from his questioner. This was, that though every male Dorrien should under it meet with a bloodless death—presumably by water—the power of the “Ban” would at last be broken—broken by some terrible and tragic eventuality, obscurely and ambiguously hinted at.“By Jove, Doctor, but you do know how to tell a ghost story,” laughed Roland, when the other had done. “Why, you spun that yarn as if you believed every word of it yourself.”“Well? That’s the right way to tell any story, isn’t it?” said the rector carelessly. And then, as it was getting late, Roland got up to leave.Later, as he was sending his bicycle through the pouring rain at a pace which should make short work of the three miles of smooth but hilly road which lay between the Rectory and Cranston—Roy, a draggled mass of woolly mud, galloping behind—the incidents of the strange and gruesome tale seemed to take hold of his mind in the darkness.“Looks as if the prediction was going to be fulfilled again in my own case at the rate this infernal rain’s coming down,” he said to himself, half jocosely, half grimly.
“Well, Miss Ingelow. All alone and wrapped in meditation! Hope I haven’t disturbed the solution of some knotty problem.”
“Oh, no, Mr Dorrien,” answered Margaret gaily, turning away from the window. “I haven’t been long back from evensong, and the only problem I was trying to solve was, what can have become of father. He ought to have been back by now. And it has set in wet, and he didn’t take an umbrella.”
“He will be sure to borrow one, I should think. But are your sisters out in the rain, too?”
“I’m afraid I can’t answer for that, they’re too far away,” said Margaret, with a laugh. “They went up to London yesterday, to stay with an aunt of ours.”
“Went up to London? I had no idea of that,” echoed Roland, with a momentary flash of surprise, strongly dashed with disappointment, crossing his face. “And do they make a long stay?”
“About a fortnight or three weeks. Ah—there is father!”
“Upon my word, Dorrien,” began the rector, as Roy unceremoniously pushed past him while entering, “I must again impress upon you the slur you cast upon my hospitable gates by leaving this chap outside the same. Now, Roy, old man, make yourself at home.”
“No fear of his not doing that,” laughed Roy’s master, as the dog deliberately curled himself up on the softest rug in the room. “But he was rather wet, so I thought he’d better wait outside.”
“Father, go at once and change your cassock,” interrupted Margaret. “It’s wet through.”
“Not a bit of it,” replied the rector, stooping to inspect his flowing skirt. “Brown lent me the very father of all ginghams. He buttonholed me in his dim, mysterious way, and said he hoped I wouldn’t be above, etc, etc. I told him I should be more than glad to be beneath it, and accordingly came along the street under full sail and a complete shelter. Brown is the prince of opportune and considerate vergers. And now, Dorrien, don’t hurry off. Stay and have a chop with us, and cheer an old man in his loneliness. My two youngest girls are away disporting themselves in the gay metropolis, so I can promise you a little less noise than usual. You’ve got your bicycle, I see, so you’re independent.”
Roland accepted with pleasure. He and the rector were great friends, and he was quite upon the “dropping in” footing by this time.
“Right. Margaret, take care of him for half an hour or so, during which period inexorable duty will keep your humble servant in his study chair.” And the rector left the room, humming a bar or two of the old plainsong hymn, whose melody lingered in his mind fresh from the dimly lighted choir at the close of the evening office.
If disappointment as to the absent was weighing upon Roland’s mind, he was unconsciously exemplifying the axiom as to a compensating element in all things. It was a few days after The Skegs exploration episode, and he had been making up his mind to take an opportunity of getting the rector to tell him the whole story of the legendary Ban, not that he believed in it himself, or was inclined to, but it would be interesting to hear the so-called facts. Here was just such an opportunity, as they would be alone together after dinner.
“You’ll have a wet ride back, Mr Dorrien, I’m afraid,” said Margaret, as they sat down to table. “It’s coming down harder than ever.”
“Oh, that’s nothing to some of my old privations,” he laughed, “except that the very snugness now will make it all the rougher to turn out.”
And snug it was. The drawn curtains only deadened the constant patter of the rain upon the windows, and the suggestion of the sort of evening outside thrown out by the sound, enhanced the sense of comfort and restfulness within. Under these circumstances, three people, sufficiently well known to each other to be able to converse without restraint, are in a position to pass a thoroughly pleasant evening. Yet to one, at any rate, of these three there was a sense of something wanting—a vacant place, perhaps, as of somebody absent, whose absence was really missed. Roy, the irrepressible, with his wonted off-handedness, was begging impartially from everybody in turn.
“Bother that post!” exclaimed the rector, as a sharp double knock cut across the conversation. “A man can’t dine in peace without this age of progress chucking its reprehensible invention into the flavour of his sirloin. Here we are—a whole stack of hopes and fears”—he went on, contemplating, with a whimsical expression, the sheaf of letters at that moment brought in. “First, diocesan—that’ll keep. Item—invitation to preach—ditto, ditto. That’s yours, Margaret—and—this is mine—from Olive. No, it’s for me, all for me,” he cried gleefully. “Not for you at all, Margaret, this time. Let’s see what she says. Excuse me, Dorrien—sink ceremony. By the way, I promised you a quiet dinner in the absence of those two chatterboxes, and one of them sends us two sheets of clatter by post—ha-ha!”
It was very pleasant to watch the affectionate delight with which the old man read through his favourite child’s letter.
“Why, they’re only going to stay ten days after all,” he cried in astonishment. “The child isn’t generally so eager to get back to her old dad, after the joys and glories of the metropolis. Here’s a message for you, Dorrien: ‘Tell Mr Dorrien, I saw a love of a dog the other day, that almost outshines Roy. Almost—not quite—mind you tell himalmostor he’ll never speak to me again.’”
Roland, who had been inwardly startled at the juxtaposition of ideas, quickly recovered himself, and made some pleasant remark. Two things occurred to him. It might be that there was some reason underlying Olive’s anxiety to return speedily, and the message, innocent as it read, was to remind him that she did not forget him.
“Dad, Eustace is coming home next week,” remarked Margaret, looking up from a letter she had been reading.
“Is he? The rascal! it’s about time he did. Dorrien, you will have the dubious pleasure of making the acquaintance of my hopeful at the date just named. He has been away yachting with a friend, and by this time doubtless considers himself fully competent to take command of the Channel Fleet.”
Thus conversation flowed on, and at last Margaret rose. No, she would not be lonely, she said, in response to an intimation to that effect. She had more than enough to do to occupy all her time.
“Draw round the fire, Dorrien—fancy requiring one at this time of year,” said the rector, as the door closed upon his daughter. “Now to try and unearth some cigars,” diving into a chiffonier in the corner. “Ah! here we are. Light up. Oh, and we’ll put the decanters at the corner here, where we can reach them.”
Roland blew out a long puff of smoke, and lay back in easy content.
“I wish you’d tell me something, Dr Ingelow,” he said.
“And that?”
“Why, I want to know the true version of that ridiculous story attached to our family. You know—the ghost on The Skegs. You are sure to have it at your fingers’ ends.”
“Does not your father know it?”
“I believe he does, but he promptly shelves the topic if you moot it. And, you know, he isn’t the sort of man to get anything out of that he’s bent on keeping dark.”
“H’m! Well, the original version of the tradition is to be found in Surinn’s ‘Legends and Myths of Baronial Europe,’ a very scarce and bulky book, which came out between forty and fifty years ago, and the incident occurred, if I remember rightly, in the middle of the last century. The narrative is entitled ‘The Ban of Craunston.’ It was a wild and lawless period in out-of-the-way parts, and this corner of the world came in no wise behind the spirit of the age, for the coast was the happy hunting ground of wreckers and smugglers, and the roads of highwaymen and other freebooters. At that time, one Richard Dorrien was Squire of Cranston. He was a bachelor, and his younger brother lived at the Hall with him. The latter, Hubert by name, was an open-hearted, bright-spirited youngster, immensely popular with both sexes; whereas Richard, the Squire, seems to have been a gloomy, violent-tempered man, disliked and feared on all sides. Well, the brothers got on rather well together—possibly on account of the total dissimilarity of their characters—until the apple of discord was thrown into their midst in the shape of a young lady who came to take up her abode in Wandsborough, then a straggling little place, consisting of a score of houses. She was a foreigner—though of what nationality the chronicle omits to state—of extraordinary beauty, and lived alone with aduennaof regulation age and hideosity. It is said that this young woman was a Jacobite emissary, and it was in that capacity that she and Richard Dorrien became acquainted, for he was an ardent Jacobite, and over head and ears involved in the plots of the day. But be this as it may, it was a case of love at first sight. The churlish and misanthropical Squire became violently enslaved; unfortunately, however, the lady declined his addresses. More unfortunately still, she did not decline those of his brother—quite the reverse. Well, now, this position of affairs could but have one ending, in a state of society wherein men ran each other through on far less provocation than would induce you in these days to knock a fellow down. But there was no open quarrel. On the contrary, the Squire was so studiously cordial to his brother that the latter was thrown quite off his guard. Not so one or two of his intimates, who went so far as to warn him—and nearly got run through for their pains. Matters went on in this way till the day before Hubert was to wed the fair unknown. On the afternoon of that day the two brothers put off in their sailing cutter to tack about the bay. They were alone together, and seemed on the best of terms. The afternoon closed in squally and rough, and the boat and its occupants were lost to view in the mist. Darkness came on, and still the Dorriens did not return. The seafaring people at Minchkil began to get anxious, and talked of going in search, but there was a high sea running and every sign of a rising gale; moreover, they knew that the missing men were nearly as amphibious as they themselves. Then suddenly there sounded through the night the wild unearthly howling of a dog. Awed to the heart, it was some time before the superstitious seafarers could make up their minds to investigate further. The sound came from the cliff above them to westward, and thither at last they all proceeded. There, at the very extremity of the headland which looks down on The Skegs, stood a huge boar-hound, which they recognised as the Squire’s favourite dog, Satan, a savage brute, of whom the whole neighbourhood stood in terror. The animal stood there on the brink of the cliff—his neck stretched out over the churning waves below—throwing out his long-drawn, deep-voiced bay into the misty darkness. Then the men knew that something had happened. And now mark this. At the very moment this discovery was made, Richard Dorrien appeared suddenly before the young foreign lady, dripping and soaked from head to foot, and told her, without the slightest warning, that her lover was drowned. She seemed turned to stone. She gazed at him for a moment with a wild stare, gasped out one word—‘Murdered!’—and, still fixing him with that glassy stare, fell prone to the floor in a swoon. He never saw her again.
“A terrible gale raged all that night, and in the morning fragments of the missing boat were washed ashore. The craft had been splintered almost to matchwood. It was not till many days afterwards that Hubert Dorrien’s corpse came to light. At first the survivor would hardly mention the subject, much less give any account of it. Eventually, however, it leaked out that the boat had been driven upon The Skegs by the gale, and its occupants, thrown into the water, were forced to swim for their lives. And now, although nothing can be more reasonable and probable than this solution of the matter, it was not long before dark rumours began to get about. Of course, there could be no vestige of proof either way; for the tragedy out there in the black and storm-lashed bay was witnessed by no mortal eye. Months went by. The survivor became more and more morose, shunned everybody, and took to hard drinking. The cause of all the turmoil left the neighbourhood the week following on the tragedy. One morning. Cranston was in a state of alarm. The Squire was missing. Enquiry at length elicited that he had put out to sea the previous night accompanied only by his huge hound. Richard Dorrien was never seen again, neither was his dog. The night was wild and tempestuous, and it was at first thought that his boat had been swamped. But days and weeks went by, and no trace of wreckage came to light—and finally all hope was abandoned.
“Then suddenly an awful state of scare arose among the seafaring population. Ghostly bayings began to be heard at night on the cliff in the neighbourhood of The Skegs. They were heard by fishermen in their boats at sea and by belated wanderers out on the down. Some had even made out the shape of a large dog resting on the summit of the loftier of The Skegs. Forthwith, the theory took root that Richard Dorrien had, beyond doubt, murdered his brother, and in expiation was doomed to haunt the scene of the tragedy and take the shape of his huge and savage boar-hound. Those who have any idea to what depths of superstition the country population was in those days plunged, can easily imagine the frantic terror which such an apparition would have for the pliers of a dangerous calling. Why, to this day you can’t induce one of the fisher folk to venture too near The Skegs—let alone land there.”
“But wasn’t there a death warning conveyed by the apparition?” asked Roland.
“Ah! now we come to the strangest part of the whole story. There got about soon afterwards a curious prophecy; no one has ever been able to tell with whom it originated. Perhaps you know it?”
“I know that this shape is said to appear whenever one of us had lived long enough, and that it is predicted that we are none of us to die in our beds, but yet bloodlessly, which is a consolation to any of us who may be engaged in a scrimmage. But the prediction has been falsified—on the last occasion at any rate. My brother Vernon tumbled into a crevasse, you know, and as the poor chap must have been dashed to pieces the tradition fails.”
“Well, I don’t want to encourage you in any uncomfortable apprehensions, Dorrien; but what you say does not necessarily follow.”
“Now you mention it, no more it does. And it is undoubtedly a queer thing that we should all have come to grief by water. I suppose, as a glacier is frozen water, the last instance holds good. Then there was my uncle, who died suddenly on deck, and was buried at sea. My grandfather, again, was drowned while skating, and they say the tradition carries itself further back still. However, as we seem all born to be drowned we can none of us be hanged, so there’s a bright side to even that situation. By the way, was the ‘Ban’ to the fore on the last occasion?”
“I only know that so it was reported. A shepherd came running in from Durnley Downs one night, with a white face and chattering teeth, and vowed he had seen and heard the dog on The Skegs. Two days afterwards the news of the disaster arrived. But I wouldn’t trouble my head about the affair, if I were you.”
“Not I. Life is a precious deal too prosaic and tangible a concern for a man to bother himself about local superstitions.”
“Well, I should have imagined that would be your idea, or I would not have opened my mind upon a gruesome tradition which is supposed to concern you and yours,” was the rector’s reply, in a more careless tone than he had adopted yet.
One side of the prophecy, however, he withheld from his questioner. This was, that though every male Dorrien should under it meet with a bloodless death—presumably by water—the power of the “Ban” would at last be broken—broken by some terrible and tragic eventuality, obscurely and ambiguously hinted at.
“By Jove, Doctor, but you do know how to tell a ghost story,” laughed Roland, when the other had done. “Why, you spun that yarn as if you believed every word of it yourself.”
“Well? That’s the right way to tell any story, isn’t it?” said the rector carelessly. And then, as it was getting late, Roland got up to leave.
Later, as he was sending his bicycle through the pouring rain at a pace which should make short work of the three miles of smooth but hilly road which lay between the Rectory and Cranston—Roy, a draggled mass of woolly mud, galloping behind—the incidents of the strange and gruesome tale seemed to take hold of his mind in the darkness.
“Looks as if the prediction was going to be fulfilled again in my own case at the rate this infernal rain’s coming down,” he said to himself, half jocosely, half grimly.
Chapter Fifteen.At Ardleigh.In due course, Roland availed himself of the invitation to which we heard his father make reference, and transferred himself and his luggage to the ancestral home of the Nevilles.There the cordiality of his reception surprised and pleased him. The Colonel was, as we have seen, very well disposed towards the son of his old friend and comrade-in-arms, and, moreover, was delighted to have a companion for the smoking-room and the morning lounge; one, too, who was such a capital listener; for to Roland the old man’s stories were all new, and being good in themselves when not heard too often, the normal quiet of Ardleigh was apt to be disturbed by much uproarious mirth when the two got together. As for Clara, she seemed to have quite forgotten any little unpleasantness which had taken place when they last met, and had put on her most gracious and agreeable manner for their guest’s benefit; and as she knew how to show to advantage when she chose, and was exceedingly clever and well informed, Roland found himself beginning to feel rather ashamed of his former bad opinion of her. Mrs Neville, who was somewhat of an invalid and of an argumentative—not to say contradictious—turn, forbore to snub him as she was wont to snub everything male under the age of fifty. “Young men want continually putting down, even when they are right”—was her creed, and, truth to say, she acted up to it most religiously. But in Roland’s favour exception was made; whether it was that he was known to possess “a queer temper”—his father’s own son, in fact—or that there was some ulterior reason for making his stay a particularly attractive one, his conversational remarks were allowed to pass unchallenged by his hostess to an extent which caused the girls to exchange frequent glances of surprise. Even Roy’s presence was not only tolerated, but welcomed, and the woolly rascal, before he had been twenty-four hours at Ardleigh, ran in and out as he pleased, according to his usual way of making himself perfectly at home wherever he went.“By the way, how does our reformed black sheep, Steve Devine, get on in the capacity of a thief set to catch a thief?” asked Roland, as he and his host were smoking their after-breakfast cigars on the terrace one morning.“All right as yet,” replied the latter, who being in want of an under-keeper, had, on Roland’s representations partly, appointed the ex-poacher to that office a few days after his release from gaol—“in order to give him a fair chance of starting afresh,” as the kind-hearted old soldier put it. The latter’s friends, indeed, shook their heads over the arrangement, and prophesied that it would lead to no good—but the Colonel was not to be upset in his benevolent scheme once he had made up his mind. So Devine found himself installed in a snug berth with good wages, and if, being in such a fair way to doing well, he did not do it, why, he would have himself only to thank for it as an ungrateful rascal.Now the ex-poacher knew perfectly well that he owed this piece of luck largely to Roland’s good word for him, for his employer had told him as much; and this being so, of course, by all the rules of that maudlin and slobbery optimism which usually characterises human nature in fiction—especially cad human nature—he should have become eternally grateful, and his former hostility straightway have been metamorphosed to lifelong devotion. But was this the case?Not even a little bit. No idea of gratitude ever entered his head. It was only for his own purposes that the young Squire of Cranston had helped him, argued this ruffian, with the low suspicious cunning of his class, but he, Devine, would keep a weather eye open, never fear.He was right in a way. Roland had acted to serve his own purposes, but in a directly opposite sense to that suspected by Gipsy Steve.“By the way, Roland,” went on the Colonel, “that daughter of his is a monstrously pretty girl, eh! By Jove, sir, but I don’t believe you’d have bothered your head about them if she’d had a snub nose and a squint, eh?”“No, I shouldn’t. Beauty in distress appeals to the susceptibilities of man, whereas hideosity in similar case does not—unchivalric, even brutal as the confession may sound. But as the girl is only on a visit to her father—doesn’t live with him—my character may be regarded as clear.”“Ha-ha! You dog!” laughed the jolly Colonel. “That reminds me of—”But what it reminded him of did not transpire, for at that moment they were joined by Clara, basket in hand. She was going to gather some roses, she said. Roland, however much he might or might not have preferred his cigar and his host’s more or less sporting stories, could do nothing less than offer to help her. Which offer was graciously accepted.“Ha-ha! Roland, she’ll make you do all the finger-licking part of the business,” jocosely cried the Colonel after them.“By the bye, what was the sequel to that unlucky smash in the conservatory?” said Clara, as they turned into the garden path. “The orchid, I mean. Did you get frightfully scolded?”This in reference to a casualty which had befallen during the speaker’s stay at Cranston, when again the sweep of Roy’s blundering tail had wrought mischief, breaking a fairly valuable orchid.“No—I was let down rather easily. The veteran said it wasn’t a very rare one, and only remarked in his glum way that he supposed dogs would be happier outside conservatories than in them.”“Ah! I’m glad of that; I was afraid the General would have been dreadfully vexed. Can you reach that, Mr Dorrien? There, if I hold down the bough—so—thanks. Now that other one.”Her tall, elegant figure showed to advantage in the light morning dress, as in easy attitude she reached up to hold the refractory bough—Clara Neville was not one to indulge in unbecoming exertions. Her voice was low and well modulated, and fell pleasantly upon the ear—around them blossoming rose-bushes and the fragrant scents of the garden—and in the background bits of the red-brick Elizabethan house peeped at them through the trees. In no wise was he insensible to the influences of the picture and its central figure, the graceful, handsome girl talking to him in easy, familiar manner and with her most attractive smile; and then for the first time his father’s words, spoken on the evening of the day he first saw Clara Neville, darted across his mind, “She will have Ardleigh Court”—and now it also dawned upon him that the words had been spoken with design.Yet how many men would willingly have changed places with him! And, even as things stood, his father’s cherished scheme, for now he felt instinctively that such it was, would not have come adversely to him—if—ah! that little “if!”“Oh, Mr Dorrien—there, look, you’ve splashed me all over by letting go of that branch too soon,” cried Clara, with a little shiver. “And it has all gone up my sleeve, and it’s rather cold. But never mind,” she added with a laugh, “you’ve come off second best. How you’ve scratched yourself!”“Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied hastily, apologising for his remissness and feeling guilty. The branch which he had let go of was thorny, and had torn his hand at the same time as it had sprinkled his fair companion with the rain-drops which hung upon its leaves.“I think we’ve picked enough now, so we can go in. By the way, papa warned you that you would find the thorns your portion, didn’t he?” she said, with a smile.In his present train of thought the phrase struck him as prophetic. He feared that many thorns would encompass the path by which he was to reach his desired goal, yet none the less was he determined to reach it.“Mr Dorrien,” said Maud Neville, at luncheon, “the Fates have ordained that you shall go to a tennis party with us at the Pagnells’ this afternoon. Now, don’t swear—secretly, I mean.”“Maud!” ejaculated her mother.“If you only knew how urgently Isabel entreats us to bring you, Mr Dorrien,” said Clara, “you would be far too much flattered—or ought to be.”“Ho-ho! Roland,” laughed the Colonel. “No slipping away to smoke a quiet weed this time, no matter how heavy in hand the entertainment.”“I don’t think it’ll be heavy,” said Clara. “Isabel generally manages to get together a lively enough set. Too lively sometimes, for it is a favourite trick of hers to ask all the people to meet each other who are most ‘at dead cuts.’”“Very bad taste of her,” put in Mrs Neville. “But I don’t know what girls are coming to now-a-days.”Bankside, the Pagnells’ house, was a pretty, old-fashioned box, perched on the side of a hill and commanding a lovely view of the Wandsborough valley. A snug, leafy retreat, all shrubbery and flowers and smooth lawns—it was just the place for open-air festivities. We have already made the acquaintance of its lord on the magisterial bench, which is as well, as we shall not see him here. He has a horror of social gatherings, and leaves all duties of entertaining to his eldest daughter, Isabel—a tall, handsome girl of five-and-twenty.“So here you are at last, Clara,” was the latter’s greeting, as she came forward to receive the Ardleigh party. “You disappointing girl! I particularly asked you to come rather early, and so you wait until the last moment. How are you, Mr Dorrien? And now—come and have some tea.”“You seem to have got together a good many new people, Isabel,” said Clara, as they made their way to the tennis ground. “First of all, who is that tall young fellow in white flannels over there, laughing as if he would never stop?”“Where? Oh, that. That’s Eustace Ingelow. Nice looking boy, isn’t he? Odd you’ve never met him—and hasn’t he grown handsome? I’ll introduce him,” and in obedience to her beckoning signal, the subject under discussion hastened lip and was introduced in due course. Even Clara, who was not fond of the family, readily admitted that in appearance the rector’s son bore out her friend’s eulogium. Tall and well-made, his sun-browned, handsome face wearing the brightest and merriest of expressions, and his manner, though perfectly free and unaffected, devoid of all approach to bumptiousness, the young fellow had been winning golden opinions from everybody.“Ah, Mr Dorrien, I’ve heard of you,” he said, turning his dark eyes upon this new acquaintance. “Awfully glad to meet you,” and a hearty hand-grip cemented their friendship on the spot.“Now, Mr Dorrien, no shirking, if you please,” cried Isabel laughingly. “It has been my sole object in life this afternoon to let no two men hang together; so come along and be introduced all round, and do your duty. Can’t help it, Clara, must be done,” she added, with the faintest possible significance in her tone as she turned away.Roland felt rather savage. He wanted to elicit some information from Eustace Ingelow, by dint of a few carelessly worded questions, but no opportunity was vouchsafed him. However, he descried Margaret on the other side of the lawn, and upon her presently he bore down.”—Expecting them home? But they are home, Mr Dorrien,” said Margaret in surprise, answering a question as to her sisters’ return. “They came back yesterday. Olive is rather unwell to-day, and is staying at home. Have you met my brother?” as the latter passed them, talking to Nellie Dorrien, to whom he had obtained an introduction.“I say, Margaret,” said the graceless youth, stopping a moment, “old mother Frewen seems as sulphurous as ever. Look at her over there, ‘testifying.’ You ought to have converted her by this time,” with a quizzical glance in the direction of an old lady, who was an “aggrieved parishioner” of a perfervid type.“Don’t talk nonsense, Eusty. Someone will hear you.”“Ha! ha! Let’s go and hear her, at a respectful distance, eh, Miss Dorrien?—it’ll be fun,” suggested crafty Eustace, with the object of beguiling Nellie for a walk round the shrubberies—an object in which he succeeded; and judging from the frequency with which the fair, sweet face was convulsed with laughter, it seemed that they managed to make the time pass right merrily.“Nellie, your mother has been looking for you everywhere. It’s time to go home,” said a cold voice at her elbow, and turning with a little start of dismay, she found herself face to face with her father, who was looking very stern and gloomy.“Yes, papa. I’m so sorry,” and, with a hurried farewell to her companion, she proceeded to obey the implied injunction, her experience warning her that there were squalls ahead; while her late escort, disconsolately anathematising the lord of Cranston as a cantankerous old ruffian, betook himself once more to the assemblage of his fellows.“Who was that boy with whom you spent the afternoon, Nellie?” asked General Dorrien, in the carriage on the way home.“I didn’t know I had spent the afternoon with anyone, papa,” she replied, as gently as she could. “But if you mean who was I talking to when you came up, it was Mr Eustace Ingelow.”“Was it? A most impertinent boy, I call him,” went on her father, with a very dark look. “Because he meets anyone in society, that seems a sufficient reason for monopolising them for the rest of the afternoon. An impudent, pushing, and most forward young cub, to come thrusting himself upon us, and you to encourage him! Who is he, I should like to know? We’ve never seen him before, and, if I can help it, we shall never see him again.”Poor Nellie made no reply, beyond a weary little sigh. What had she done? Why, the duration of their harmless little walk had barely exceeded half an hour. And in her heart of hearts she owned to herself that the said half-hour had flown very quickly indeed.“I say, dad,” cried Eustace Ingelow that evening at the dinner-table. “I like that man Dorrien. Rather reserved and—er—quiet at first—the sort of man who wants knowing, eh?”“H’m, so that’s your opinion, is it?” said the rector, somewhat attentively. “Now I shouldn’t have thought he’d have been at all the sort of fellow you’d have taken to at first sight, Eustace.”“Yes, he is,” replied the Oxonian decidedly. “He’s a man with a lot in him, I should think. Now that brother of his—the one that’s at Queen’s—he’s a—a—well, a scrubby sort, but I like this one. Roland, don’t they call him, eh?”“It strikes me, from all accounts, that you like his sister a great deal more,” cried Sophie. “Why, Eusty, you disgraceful boy, you know you flirted outrageously with her all the afternoon.”“Bosh! What next?” he protested, growing very red. “You girls think a fellow can’t speak to another girl without—er—without—. Besides you weren’t there, and you should never take hearsay evidence, Sophonisba, my jewel.”“Never mind her, Eusty,” struck in Olive, who had recovered her spirits simultaneously with the return of her brother full of the doings at the Pagnells’. “Never mind her—Nellie Dorrien’s a dear, sweet girl, and you might do worse.”“What do you think of that, dad? Just listen to them, how they badger a fellow.”“No—no—I won’t come to your rescue,” cried the rector, with a hearty laugh. “You must fight them single-handed. What’s the good of going to Oxford if it doesn’t teach you to take care of yourself, and against a pack of women, too?”
In due course, Roland availed himself of the invitation to which we heard his father make reference, and transferred himself and his luggage to the ancestral home of the Nevilles.
There the cordiality of his reception surprised and pleased him. The Colonel was, as we have seen, very well disposed towards the son of his old friend and comrade-in-arms, and, moreover, was delighted to have a companion for the smoking-room and the morning lounge; one, too, who was such a capital listener; for to Roland the old man’s stories were all new, and being good in themselves when not heard too often, the normal quiet of Ardleigh was apt to be disturbed by much uproarious mirth when the two got together. As for Clara, she seemed to have quite forgotten any little unpleasantness which had taken place when they last met, and had put on her most gracious and agreeable manner for their guest’s benefit; and as she knew how to show to advantage when she chose, and was exceedingly clever and well informed, Roland found himself beginning to feel rather ashamed of his former bad opinion of her. Mrs Neville, who was somewhat of an invalid and of an argumentative—not to say contradictious—turn, forbore to snub him as she was wont to snub everything male under the age of fifty. “Young men want continually putting down, even when they are right”—was her creed, and, truth to say, she acted up to it most religiously. But in Roland’s favour exception was made; whether it was that he was known to possess “a queer temper”—his father’s own son, in fact—or that there was some ulterior reason for making his stay a particularly attractive one, his conversational remarks were allowed to pass unchallenged by his hostess to an extent which caused the girls to exchange frequent glances of surprise. Even Roy’s presence was not only tolerated, but welcomed, and the woolly rascal, before he had been twenty-four hours at Ardleigh, ran in and out as he pleased, according to his usual way of making himself perfectly at home wherever he went.
“By the way, how does our reformed black sheep, Steve Devine, get on in the capacity of a thief set to catch a thief?” asked Roland, as he and his host were smoking their after-breakfast cigars on the terrace one morning.
“All right as yet,” replied the latter, who being in want of an under-keeper, had, on Roland’s representations partly, appointed the ex-poacher to that office a few days after his release from gaol—“in order to give him a fair chance of starting afresh,” as the kind-hearted old soldier put it. The latter’s friends, indeed, shook their heads over the arrangement, and prophesied that it would lead to no good—but the Colonel was not to be upset in his benevolent scheme once he had made up his mind. So Devine found himself installed in a snug berth with good wages, and if, being in such a fair way to doing well, he did not do it, why, he would have himself only to thank for it as an ungrateful rascal.
Now the ex-poacher knew perfectly well that he owed this piece of luck largely to Roland’s good word for him, for his employer had told him as much; and this being so, of course, by all the rules of that maudlin and slobbery optimism which usually characterises human nature in fiction—especially cad human nature—he should have become eternally grateful, and his former hostility straightway have been metamorphosed to lifelong devotion. But was this the case?
Not even a little bit. No idea of gratitude ever entered his head. It was only for his own purposes that the young Squire of Cranston had helped him, argued this ruffian, with the low suspicious cunning of his class, but he, Devine, would keep a weather eye open, never fear.
He was right in a way. Roland had acted to serve his own purposes, but in a directly opposite sense to that suspected by Gipsy Steve.
“By the way, Roland,” went on the Colonel, “that daughter of his is a monstrously pretty girl, eh! By Jove, sir, but I don’t believe you’d have bothered your head about them if she’d had a snub nose and a squint, eh?”
“No, I shouldn’t. Beauty in distress appeals to the susceptibilities of man, whereas hideosity in similar case does not—unchivalric, even brutal as the confession may sound. But as the girl is only on a visit to her father—doesn’t live with him—my character may be regarded as clear.”
“Ha-ha! You dog!” laughed the jolly Colonel. “That reminds me of—”
But what it reminded him of did not transpire, for at that moment they were joined by Clara, basket in hand. She was going to gather some roses, she said. Roland, however much he might or might not have preferred his cigar and his host’s more or less sporting stories, could do nothing less than offer to help her. Which offer was graciously accepted.
“Ha-ha! Roland, she’ll make you do all the finger-licking part of the business,” jocosely cried the Colonel after them.
“By the bye, what was the sequel to that unlucky smash in the conservatory?” said Clara, as they turned into the garden path. “The orchid, I mean. Did you get frightfully scolded?”
This in reference to a casualty which had befallen during the speaker’s stay at Cranston, when again the sweep of Roy’s blundering tail had wrought mischief, breaking a fairly valuable orchid.
“No—I was let down rather easily. The veteran said it wasn’t a very rare one, and only remarked in his glum way that he supposed dogs would be happier outside conservatories than in them.”
“Ah! I’m glad of that; I was afraid the General would have been dreadfully vexed. Can you reach that, Mr Dorrien? There, if I hold down the bough—so—thanks. Now that other one.”
Her tall, elegant figure showed to advantage in the light morning dress, as in easy attitude she reached up to hold the refractory bough—Clara Neville was not one to indulge in unbecoming exertions. Her voice was low and well modulated, and fell pleasantly upon the ear—around them blossoming rose-bushes and the fragrant scents of the garden—and in the background bits of the red-brick Elizabethan house peeped at them through the trees. In no wise was he insensible to the influences of the picture and its central figure, the graceful, handsome girl talking to him in easy, familiar manner and with her most attractive smile; and then for the first time his father’s words, spoken on the evening of the day he first saw Clara Neville, darted across his mind, “She will have Ardleigh Court”—and now it also dawned upon him that the words had been spoken with design.
Yet how many men would willingly have changed places with him! And, even as things stood, his father’s cherished scheme, for now he felt instinctively that such it was, would not have come adversely to him—if—ah! that little “if!”
“Oh, Mr Dorrien—there, look, you’ve splashed me all over by letting go of that branch too soon,” cried Clara, with a little shiver. “And it has all gone up my sleeve, and it’s rather cold. But never mind,” she added with a laugh, “you’ve come off second best. How you’ve scratched yourself!”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied hastily, apologising for his remissness and feeling guilty. The branch which he had let go of was thorny, and had torn his hand at the same time as it had sprinkled his fair companion with the rain-drops which hung upon its leaves.
“I think we’ve picked enough now, so we can go in. By the way, papa warned you that you would find the thorns your portion, didn’t he?” she said, with a smile.
In his present train of thought the phrase struck him as prophetic. He feared that many thorns would encompass the path by which he was to reach his desired goal, yet none the less was he determined to reach it.
“Mr Dorrien,” said Maud Neville, at luncheon, “the Fates have ordained that you shall go to a tennis party with us at the Pagnells’ this afternoon. Now, don’t swear—secretly, I mean.”
“Maud!” ejaculated her mother.
“If you only knew how urgently Isabel entreats us to bring you, Mr Dorrien,” said Clara, “you would be far too much flattered—or ought to be.”
“Ho-ho! Roland,” laughed the Colonel. “No slipping away to smoke a quiet weed this time, no matter how heavy in hand the entertainment.”
“I don’t think it’ll be heavy,” said Clara. “Isabel generally manages to get together a lively enough set. Too lively sometimes, for it is a favourite trick of hers to ask all the people to meet each other who are most ‘at dead cuts.’”
“Very bad taste of her,” put in Mrs Neville. “But I don’t know what girls are coming to now-a-days.”
Bankside, the Pagnells’ house, was a pretty, old-fashioned box, perched on the side of a hill and commanding a lovely view of the Wandsborough valley. A snug, leafy retreat, all shrubbery and flowers and smooth lawns—it was just the place for open-air festivities. We have already made the acquaintance of its lord on the magisterial bench, which is as well, as we shall not see him here. He has a horror of social gatherings, and leaves all duties of entertaining to his eldest daughter, Isabel—a tall, handsome girl of five-and-twenty.
“So here you are at last, Clara,” was the latter’s greeting, as she came forward to receive the Ardleigh party. “You disappointing girl! I particularly asked you to come rather early, and so you wait until the last moment. How are you, Mr Dorrien? And now—come and have some tea.”
“You seem to have got together a good many new people, Isabel,” said Clara, as they made their way to the tennis ground. “First of all, who is that tall young fellow in white flannels over there, laughing as if he would never stop?”
“Where? Oh, that. That’s Eustace Ingelow. Nice looking boy, isn’t he? Odd you’ve never met him—and hasn’t he grown handsome? I’ll introduce him,” and in obedience to her beckoning signal, the subject under discussion hastened lip and was introduced in due course. Even Clara, who was not fond of the family, readily admitted that in appearance the rector’s son bore out her friend’s eulogium. Tall and well-made, his sun-browned, handsome face wearing the brightest and merriest of expressions, and his manner, though perfectly free and unaffected, devoid of all approach to bumptiousness, the young fellow had been winning golden opinions from everybody.
“Ah, Mr Dorrien, I’ve heard of you,” he said, turning his dark eyes upon this new acquaintance. “Awfully glad to meet you,” and a hearty hand-grip cemented their friendship on the spot.
“Now, Mr Dorrien, no shirking, if you please,” cried Isabel laughingly. “It has been my sole object in life this afternoon to let no two men hang together; so come along and be introduced all round, and do your duty. Can’t help it, Clara, must be done,” she added, with the faintest possible significance in her tone as she turned away.
Roland felt rather savage. He wanted to elicit some information from Eustace Ingelow, by dint of a few carelessly worded questions, but no opportunity was vouchsafed him. However, he descried Margaret on the other side of the lawn, and upon her presently he bore down.
”—Expecting them home? But they are home, Mr Dorrien,” said Margaret in surprise, answering a question as to her sisters’ return. “They came back yesterday. Olive is rather unwell to-day, and is staying at home. Have you met my brother?” as the latter passed them, talking to Nellie Dorrien, to whom he had obtained an introduction.
“I say, Margaret,” said the graceless youth, stopping a moment, “old mother Frewen seems as sulphurous as ever. Look at her over there, ‘testifying.’ You ought to have converted her by this time,” with a quizzical glance in the direction of an old lady, who was an “aggrieved parishioner” of a perfervid type.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Eusty. Someone will hear you.”
“Ha! ha! Let’s go and hear her, at a respectful distance, eh, Miss Dorrien?—it’ll be fun,” suggested crafty Eustace, with the object of beguiling Nellie for a walk round the shrubberies—an object in which he succeeded; and judging from the frequency with which the fair, sweet face was convulsed with laughter, it seemed that they managed to make the time pass right merrily.
“Nellie, your mother has been looking for you everywhere. It’s time to go home,” said a cold voice at her elbow, and turning with a little start of dismay, she found herself face to face with her father, who was looking very stern and gloomy.
“Yes, papa. I’m so sorry,” and, with a hurried farewell to her companion, she proceeded to obey the implied injunction, her experience warning her that there were squalls ahead; while her late escort, disconsolately anathematising the lord of Cranston as a cantankerous old ruffian, betook himself once more to the assemblage of his fellows.
“Who was that boy with whom you spent the afternoon, Nellie?” asked General Dorrien, in the carriage on the way home.
“I didn’t know I had spent the afternoon with anyone, papa,” she replied, as gently as she could. “But if you mean who was I talking to when you came up, it was Mr Eustace Ingelow.”
“Was it? A most impertinent boy, I call him,” went on her father, with a very dark look. “Because he meets anyone in society, that seems a sufficient reason for monopolising them for the rest of the afternoon. An impudent, pushing, and most forward young cub, to come thrusting himself upon us, and you to encourage him! Who is he, I should like to know? We’ve never seen him before, and, if I can help it, we shall never see him again.”
Poor Nellie made no reply, beyond a weary little sigh. What had she done? Why, the duration of their harmless little walk had barely exceeded half an hour. And in her heart of hearts she owned to herself that the said half-hour had flown very quickly indeed.
“I say, dad,” cried Eustace Ingelow that evening at the dinner-table. “I like that man Dorrien. Rather reserved and—er—quiet at first—the sort of man who wants knowing, eh?”
“H’m, so that’s your opinion, is it?” said the rector, somewhat attentively. “Now I shouldn’t have thought he’d have been at all the sort of fellow you’d have taken to at first sight, Eustace.”
“Yes, he is,” replied the Oxonian decidedly. “He’s a man with a lot in him, I should think. Now that brother of his—the one that’s at Queen’s—he’s a—a—well, a scrubby sort, but I like this one. Roland, don’t they call him, eh?”
“It strikes me, from all accounts, that you like his sister a great deal more,” cried Sophie. “Why, Eusty, you disgraceful boy, you know you flirted outrageously with her all the afternoon.”
“Bosh! What next?” he protested, growing very red. “You girls think a fellow can’t speak to another girl without—er—without—. Besides you weren’t there, and you should never take hearsay evidence, Sophonisba, my jewel.”
“Never mind her, Eusty,” struck in Olive, who had recovered her spirits simultaneously with the return of her brother full of the doings at the Pagnells’. “Never mind her—Nellie Dorrien’s a dear, sweet girl, and you might do worse.”
“What do you think of that, dad? Just listen to them, how they badger a fellow.”
“No—no—I won’t come to your rescue,” cried the rector, with a hearty laugh. “You must fight them single-handed. What’s the good of going to Oxford if it doesn’t teach you to take care of yourself, and against a pack of women, too?”
Chapter Sixteen.The Die is Cast.“Rather perfect? I should just think it was,” cries Olive, gazing around. “Confess now, you hardened cynic, that in all your wanderings you never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this.”“I’ll own up readily enough. I never did,” is her companion’s reply.“But—you are not looking at it,” turning to find that his glance has been fixed upon herself while he spoke, and colouring softly at the discovery.“Oh, yes, I am. I repeat, I never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this. What a distrustful little article it is, to require so much reassuring!” and his hand, which has been toying with her small fingers, closes upon them with a fond pressure, as looking straight into her eyes he repeats her words.From their heathery resting-place on the summit of Minchkil Beacon, they gaze idly upon the glories of the panorama unfolded beneath and around. The great slopes of the downs are gorgeous with flaming gorse and crimson heather. A rich summer haze lying over the landscape adds distance to meadow and woodland, alternating in many an undulating roll—the latter just perceptibly assuming its first autumnal tints; and cosy homesteads, nestling among their sheltering trees, look doubly snug and prosperous as contrasted with their counterparts of the upland farms, whose corn-ricks and a few stunted firs form the only shade. Villages, too, and tiny hamlets, dropped about, as it were. Frondesham, beyond the lofty steeple of Wandsborough Church, which latter rises above that long, grassy ridge as if refusing to be hidden, and on the further side of the valley, the hamlets of Cranston and Ardleigh; the mile and a half of straight, dusty road connecting them looking like a mere streak of whitewash—and, higher up, Cranston Hall, half hidden in its noble park.And turning to seaward—space. The broad expanse of limitless sea, far down, four hundred feet beneath—blue and placid as the firmament overhead. Two or three brown specks—fishing boats lying with listless sails—are the only signs of life upon its motionless waters. Not even a gull is on the wing, and the wavelets have forgotten to break on the shingly beach. The sun drives on his flaming chariot, slowly, slowly towards the west, and the great cliffs of the bold coastline reflect his lengthening rays in many a ruddy gleam—Hadden’s Slide, and beyond, Smugglers’ Ladder, a black fissure, rending the whole face of the cliff from brow to base. Then on the other side The Skegs, tranquil, and forgetting to look grim and dour, as they start sleepily from their setting of still, blue water—and above them the lofty headland where looms the grey tower of Durnley Castle—a mouldering ruin. Farther and farther recedes the outline of the rugged coast, in rocky bay and bold promontory, with here a strip of shingle, there a line of seaweed-covered reefs, till it loses itself in a faint confusion of distant blue.It is golden August now—rich, glowing, sensuous, lovely August—when summer, as if suddenly awaking to a sense of opportunities neglected and to the consciousness that her days are nearly numbered, would fain crowd all her accumulated glories into the few yet remaining to her, pouring out her choicest gifts with a lavish hand, as though anxious that we should think kindly of her when she is no more, by virtue of her sudden repentance and amendment at the eleventh hour.Should you, while taking your walks abroad some fine summer’s day, chance, unexpectedly, and in a secluded spot, to light upon about six foot of Young England taking it remarkably easy in a reclining attitude among the soft and fragrant heather; and should you, moreover, descry seated in very close juxtaposition to Young England aforesaid, a sweetly pretty girl, occupied mainly in dividing the shelter of her sunshade with the male and recumbent head, while listening attentively to words of wisdom—or the reverse—emanating from the male lips; you would, we trow, if of a kindly disposition, retire as you came, leaving the idyllic pair undisturbed. If of a cynical turn you would, we trow, chuckle, as you went, over one more instance of human fatuity. But whatever your nature you would decide that affairs between this particular couple had gone tolerably far.Well—and so they had.There are, we take it, about three ways which lead to what the provincial reporter delights to term “the hymeneal altar.” The first is the ordinary “proposal,” wherein John is conventionally supposed to sue humbly for the privilege of maintaining Mary for the term of her natural life, eke Mary’s prospective lineal descendants in any number—not exceeding seventeen—peradventure with a mother-in-law thrown in, and to count life as not worth living, in the event of these multifold advantages—we will not call them liabilities—being denied him. The second may be termed the extraordinary “proposal,” wherein the overtures are precisely the other way about, barring, it may be, the maintenance condition and the mother-in-law; and this, by the bye, is not so uncommon as Mrs Grundy affects to believe. The third differsin totofrom the other two, in that it does not deal with “proposals” at all, but is the result of evolution—taking rise in a tacit and intangible understanding, and culminating in an arrangement neither more nor less definite than anyentente à deuxcan be said ever to be. This way, on the face of it, is the most risky of the three, but it has its advantages.Whatever its risks, however, just such an understanding exists between the pair whom we find alone here on the summit of Minchkil Beacon. Roy, curled up there among the heather and apparently asleep, will take good care that the intruding steps of any afternoon wayfarer shall not approach unsignalled—and meanwhile to all purposes these two have the world to themselves.“Am I distrustful?” says Olive softly, in comment on her companion’s last remark.“No, you’re not,” is the vehement reply, “but I am. I thought you were never coming back, and was very nearly going up to Town myself. Now look here. I can’t let you go again!”“But I must go again,” she objected demurely, but with a flash of mirth in her dark eyes. “I shall have to go soon, too.”“You shan’t.” His hand closes, on hers, as if the prohibition was to be put in force at that moment and by physical agency.“Diddums teasums then!” says the girl in tones of mock soothing, passing her little hand over his forehead and hair caressingly. “You know, dear, I like sometimes to arouse the savage in your composition. It amuses me, because I can send him back into his shell in a minute. But it’s all very well. You had a very good time of it while I was away. At Ardleigh, for instance!”For all answer he laughs—quietly, almost inarticulately, as a man will laugh over some proposition manifestly, absurdly preposterous.“That’s all very well, but I hear the Nevilles are very delightful people, and—”“Broomsticks.””—And Clara and Maud, you know, were very sweet to you, and Isabel Pagnell—””—And Mother Frewen, and Miss Munch and Mrs Bunch. Go on. Run through the whole list—of broomsticks.”“And then you used to have snug talks with Margaret over the fire on wet afternoons, and I don’t believe poor little me was missed a bit. Margaret can be very entertaining when she likes.”“A broomstick!”“Mr Dorrien! That’s rude.”“Excessively. But in evoking the latent barbarian, for whom you just now expressed—er—a flattering partiality—you have once more provided yourself with further amusement.”Her only answer is a merry laugh, and for a few minutes neither speak. The whirr of a reaping machine—for the early harvest has already begun—and the sound of reapers’ voices is borne up from the valley, with now and then the barking of a farmhouse dog. The rallying note of a covey of scattered partridges, the distant cawing of rooks, and the hum of bees gathering their stores from the cells of the blossoming heather, all blend into a luxurious harmony, well in keeping with the still witchery of the waning afternoon. They are outside the world, for the time being, these two—away in a cloudland of their own, bounded by the purple heather around and the sapphire sea below, the ordinary considerations of mere prosaic, everyday life as far removed as the distant sights and sounds in the valley beneath. Stay, though. One of them cannot altogether shut out these obtrusive considerations. Roland, cool and cynical beyond his years, cannot forget that the brightest picture has its reverse side, and that there will be a morrow to this cloudless day of radiance and of love.He has striven to cherish a vague and desperate hope that something may occur tending to smooth matters—yet it is hardly likely. That unlucky stay at Ardleigh—how far back it looked now—seemed somehow to have committed him to the fulfilment of his father’s wish; in the latter’s eyes, that is, for he stood committed in nobody else’s. Moreover, as General Dorrien’s hints on the subject grew plainer, so did his animosity towards the Ingelows increase, and this to such a pitch that more than once a terrible rupture was imminent, as Roland found himself compelled to listen to his father’s violent and unreasoning tirades. Still, he managed to conceal his feelings. But every hour confirmed him in the certainty that the day he decisively announced his intention of running counter to his father’s cherished scheme, that day would see him disinherited.And now a sweet, serious look has come over Olive’s face, and it seems as if the bright, merry-hearted girl had been changed, all in a minute, into a tender, thoughtful, loving woman, who knew the world and its sorrows well.“Darling?” she exclaims softly. “There is something I want to say to you, and I don’t quite know how to say it; however, I must try. I have been thinking so much lately whether you are not making a great mistake—whether I have any right to let you risk your future, whether it would not have been much better for you had we never met. Wait—don’t interrupt—let me say all, it’s difficult enough, Heaven knows. Why should you imperil your interests and perhaps be for ever separated from others you love—and all for me? Why should I bring sorrow upon you? Roland, darling, think well of what I say. Remember it is not too late now. The day may come when you will look back upon this sweet—this beautiful time”—a quiver in her voice—“with nothing but bitterness. What then?”Has her love for him at its climax given her a sudden and magical insight into the future? Is the time coming when he will remember her prophetic words—but their fulfilment, it may be, in a different sense to that in which they are uttered?“What then?” is the vehement reply. “Only this, that—that”—(the strong, cool-headed man finds himself helplessly stuttering)—“that this understanding of ours—delicious as it is to have it all to ourselves—must become public property to-morrow. You must never be in a position to say such things to me again.”“Oh, my darling! I am only thinking of you and your happiness.” Then, with a warm rush of feeling: “Can such a day as this ever come again in a lifetime? It is very foolish of me, but I have a presentiment that there is trouble before us, and that even now it would be better for you had we never met. I want you to do nothing in a hurry. Better to wait—to go on as we are—than to risk your prospects for me.”He finds no great difficulty in reassuring her as they sit there in their golden lotus-dream, with all the glories of earth and air spreading around them. The busy world lies far beneath; here, silence and the evensong of birds, and the flood of dazzling sheen on the purple sea, as the sun dips down nearer and nearer to his liquid bed. Just then, in silvery chimes, distant yet clear, the bells of Wandsborough steeple ring out the Angelus.Then they descend the heather-clad slope, and make their way through the dewy, silent fields. And now a great orb of fire touches the farther edge of the glowing sea, tingeing it blood-red, and the horizon is all aflame. A passing gleam, as a ray from an enchanted world, strikes broadly over hill and lea, then fades, leaving the earth in shadow, and the fragrant breaths of gathering night fall thickly around. There is a scent as of crushed roses in the air, and the grass is already wet with dew. The distant bark of a sheep-dog from an upland farm, the lowing of kine wending their way to the milking yard, the whistle of the reapers leaving their labour—only these sounds breaking musically now and again upon this stillness of rural peace.So ends the day. But what of the morrow?
“Rather perfect? I should just think it was,” cries Olive, gazing around. “Confess now, you hardened cynic, that in all your wanderings you never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this.”
“I’ll own up readily enough. I never did,” is her companion’s reply.
“But—you are not looking at it,” turning to find that his glance has been fixed upon herself while he spoke, and colouring softly at the discovery.
“Oh, yes, I am. I repeat, I never saw anything so perfectly lovely as this. What a distrustful little article it is, to require so much reassuring!” and his hand, which has been toying with her small fingers, closes upon them with a fond pressure, as looking straight into her eyes he repeats her words.
From their heathery resting-place on the summit of Minchkil Beacon, they gaze idly upon the glories of the panorama unfolded beneath and around. The great slopes of the downs are gorgeous with flaming gorse and crimson heather. A rich summer haze lying over the landscape adds distance to meadow and woodland, alternating in many an undulating roll—the latter just perceptibly assuming its first autumnal tints; and cosy homesteads, nestling among their sheltering trees, look doubly snug and prosperous as contrasted with their counterparts of the upland farms, whose corn-ricks and a few stunted firs form the only shade. Villages, too, and tiny hamlets, dropped about, as it were. Frondesham, beyond the lofty steeple of Wandsborough Church, which latter rises above that long, grassy ridge as if refusing to be hidden, and on the further side of the valley, the hamlets of Cranston and Ardleigh; the mile and a half of straight, dusty road connecting them looking like a mere streak of whitewash—and, higher up, Cranston Hall, half hidden in its noble park.
And turning to seaward—space. The broad expanse of limitless sea, far down, four hundred feet beneath—blue and placid as the firmament overhead. Two or three brown specks—fishing boats lying with listless sails—are the only signs of life upon its motionless waters. Not even a gull is on the wing, and the wavelets have forgotten to break on the shingly beach. The sun drives on his flaming chariot, slowly, slowly towards the west, and the great cliffs of the bold coastline reflect his lengthening rays in many a ruddy gleam—Hadden’s Slide, and beyond, Smugglers’ Ladder, a black fissure, rending the whole face of the cliff from brow to base. Then on the other side The Skegs, tranquil, and forgetting to look grim and dour, as they start sleepily from their setting of still, blue water—and above them the lofty headland where looms the grey tower of Durnley Castle—a mouldering ruin. Farther and farther recedes the outline of the rugged coast, in rocky bay and bold promontory, with here a strip of shingle, there a line of seaweed-covered reefs, till it loses itself in a faint confusion of distant blue.
It is golden August now—rich, glowing, sensuous, lovely August—when summer, as if suddenly awaking to a sense of opportunities neglected and to the consciousness that her days are nearly numbered, would fain crowd all her accumulated glories into the few yet remaining to her, pouring out her choicest gifts with a lavish hand, as though anxious that we should think kindly of her when she is no more, by virtue of her sudden repentance and amendment at the eleventh hour.
Should you, while taking your walks abroad some fine summer’s day, chance, unexpectedly, and in a secluded spot, to light upon about six foot of Young England taking it remarkably easy in a reclining attitude among the soft and fragrant heather; and should you, moreover, descry seated in very close juxtaposition to Young England aforesaid, a sweetly pretty girl, occupied mainly in dividing the shelter of her sunshade with the male and recumbent head, while listening attentively to words of wisdom—or the reverse—emanating from the male lips; you would, we trow, if of a kindly disposition, retire as you came, leaving the idyllic pair undisturbed. If of a cynical turn you would, we trow, chuckle, as you went, over one more instance of human fatuity. But whatever your nature you would decide that affairs between this particular couple had gone tolerably far.
Well—and so they had.
There are, we take it, about three ways which lead to what the provincial reporter delights to term “the hymeneal altar.” The first is the ordinary “proposal,” wherein John is conventionally supposed to sue humbly for the privilege of maintaining Mary for the term of her natural life, eke Mary’s prospective lineal descendants in any number—not exceeding seventeen—peradventure with a mother-in-law thrown in, and to count life as not worth living, in the event of these multifold advantages—we will not call them liabilities—being denied him. The second may be termed the extraordinary “proposal,” wherein the overtures are precisely the other way about, barring, it may be, the maintenance condition and the mother-in-law; and this, by the bye, is not so uncommon as Mrs Grundy affects to believe. The third differsin totofrom the other two, in that it does not deal with “proposals” at all, but is the result of evolution—taking rise in a tacit and intangible understanding, and culminating in an arrangement neither more nor less definite than anyentente à deuxcan be said ever to be. This way, on the face of it, is the most risky of the three, but it has its advantages.
Whatever its risks, however, just such an understanding exists between the pair whom we find alone here on the summit of Minchkil Beacon. Roy, curled up there among the heather and apparently asleep, will take good care that the intruding steps of any afternoon wayfarer shall not approach unsignalled—and meanwhile to all purposes these two have the world to themselves.
“Am I distrustful?” says Olive softly, in comment on her companion’s last remark.
“No, you’re not,” is the vehement reply, “but I am. I thought you were never coming back, and was very nearly going up to Town myself. Now look here. I can’t let you go again!”
“But I must go again,” she objected demurely, but with a flash of mirth in her dark eyes. “I shall have to go soon, too.”
“You shan’t.” His hand closes, on hers, as if the prohibition was to be put in force at that moment and by physical agency.
“Diddums teasums then!” says the girl in tones of mock soothing, passing her little hand over his forehead and hair caressingly. “You know, dear, I like sometimes to arouse the savage in your composition. It amuses me, because I can send him back into his shell in a minute. But it’s all very well. You had a very good time of it while I was away. At Ardleigh, for instance!”
For all answer he laughs—quietly, almost inarticulately, as a man will laugh over some proposition manifestly, absurdly preposterous.
“That’s all very well, but I hear the Nevilles are very delightful people, and—”
“Broomsticks.”
”—And Clara and Maud, you know, were very sweet to you, and Isabel Pagnell—”
”—And Mother Frewen, and Miss Munch and Mrs Bunch. Go on. Run through the whole list—of broomsticks.”
“And then you used to have snug talks with Margaret over the fire on wet afternoons, and I don’t believe poor little me was missed a bit. Margaret can be very entertaining when she likes.”
“A broomstick!”
“Mr Dorrien! That’s rude.”
“Excessively. But in evoking the latent barbarian, for whom you just now expressed—er—a flattering partiality—you have once more provided yourself with further amusement.”
Her only answer is a merry laugh, and for a few minutes neither speak. The whirr of a reaping machine—for the early harvest has already begun—and the sound of reapers’ voices is borne up from the valley, with now and then the barking of a farmhouse dog. The rallying note of a covey of scattered partridges, the distant cawing of rooks, and the hum of bees gathering their stores from the cells of the blossoming heather, all blend into a luxurious harmony, well in keeping with the still witchery of the waning afternoon. They are outside the world, for the time being, these two—away in a cloudland of their own, bounded by the purple heather around and the sapphire sea below, the ordinary considerations of mere prosaic, everyday life as far removed as the distant sights and sounds in the valley beneath. Stay, though. One of them cannot altogether shut out these obtrusive considerations. Roland, cool and cynical beyond his years, cannot forget that the brightest picture has its reverse side, and that there will be a morrow to this cloudless day of radiance and of love.
He has striven to cherish a vague and desperate hope that something may occur tending to smooth matters—yet it is hardly likely. That unlucky stay at Ardleigh—how far back it looked now—seemed somehow to have committed him to the fulfilment of his father’s wish; in the latter’s eyes, that is, for he stood committed in nobody else’s. Moreover, as General Dorrien’s hints on the subject grew plainer, so did his animosity towards the Ingelows increase, and this to such a pitch that more than once a terrible rupture was imminent, as Roland found himself compelled to listen to his father’s violent and unreasoning tirades. Still, he managed to conceal his feelings. But every hour confirmed him in the certainty that the day he decisively announced his intention of running counter to his father’s cherished scheme, that day would see him disinherited.
And now a sweet, serious look has come over Olive’s face, and it seems as if the bright, merry-hearted girl had been changed, all in a minute, into a tender, thoughtful, loving woman, who knew the world and its sorrows well.
“Darling?” she exclaims softly. “There is something I want to say to you, and I don’t quite know how to say it; however, I must try. I have been thinking so much lately whether you are not making a great mistake—whether I have any right to let you risk your future, whether it would not have been much better for you had we never met. Wait—don’t interrupt—let me say all, it’s difficult enough, Heaven knows. Why should you imperil your interests and perhaps be for ever separated from others you love—and all for me? Why should I bring sorrow upon you? Roland, darling, think well of what I say. Remember it is not too late now. The day may come when you will look back upon this sweet—this beautiful time”—a quiver in her voice—“with nothing but bitterness. What then?”
Has her love for him at its climax given her a sudden and magical insight into the future? Is the time coming when he will remember her prophetic words—but their fulfilment, it may be, in a different sense to that in which they are uttered?
“What then?” is the vehement reply. “Only this, that—that”—(the strong, cool-headed man finds himself helplessly stuttering)—“that this understanding of ours—delicious as it is to have it all to ourselves—must become public property to-morrow. You must never be in a position to say such things to me again.”
“Oh, my darling! I am only thinking of you and your happiness.” Then, with a warm rush of feeling: “Can such a day as this ever come again in a lifetime? It is very foolish of me, but I have a presentiment that there is trouble before us, and that even now it would be better for you had we never met. I want you to do nothing in a hurry. Better to wait—to go on as we are—than to risk your prospects for me.”
He finds no great difficulty in reassuring her as they sit there in their golden lotus-dream, with all the glories of earth and air spreading around them. The busy world lies far beneath; here, silence and the evensong of birds, and the flood of dazzling sheen on the purple sea, as the sun dips down nearer and nearer to his liquid bed. Just then, in silvery chimes, distant yet clear, the bells of Wandsborough steeple ring out the Angelus.
Then they descend the heather-clad slope, and make their way through the dewy, silent fields. And now a great orb of fire touches the farther edge of the glowing sea, tingeing it blood-red, and the horizon is all aflame. A passing gleam, as a ray from an enchanted world, strikes broadly over hill and lea, then fades, leaving the earth in shadow, and the fragrant breaths of gathering night fall thickly around. There is a scent as of crushed roses in the air, and the grass is already wet with dew. The distant bark of a sheep-dog from an upland farm, the lowing of kine wending their way to the milking yard, the whistle of the reapers leaving their labour—only these sounds breaking musically now and again upon this stillness of rural peace.
So ends the day. But what of the morrow?