Dorrien of Cranston

But what had it all been about? “Ah! haven’t you heard?” And then the mysterious nods and winks would increase tenfold, and the whispered communication would be received in various ways according to the temperament or capacity for humbug of the hearer – but always with a thirst for more particulars. For instance, why should Mr Dorrien have interested himself on behalf of that precious rascal, Gipsy Steve? Must it not have been on Lizzie’s account, and, of course, all young men were desperately wicked, and anyone with half an eye could see through that brick wall; and so the matter had come to the General’s ears. But this story was very soon improved upon, and presently it was that Gipsy Steve had sworn to shoot the young Squire unless he did justice to Lizzie – and it was while Roland was making this announcement to his father, that the latter had hurled an inkstand at his head, and now he had made himself scarce, fearing the ex-poacher’s vengeance. Others again scouted this version. Roland Dorrien was not the man to be afraid of anyone – rightly or wrongly – not he. Besides, Lizzie had no more to do with the concern than they, the speakers, had. It was Olive Ingelow who was the real apple of discord. Couldn’t anyone see that the two were never apart, that the young Squire spent most of his evenings at the Rectory, and how he and the young lady wandered about the lanes together, or sat on the beach all day long! – and now, it turned out that they had been privately married, and that the General had sworn he would never recognise it or set eyes on his son again.

This rumour, once let loose, ranged at will, and these and a dozen other stories, each more preposterous than its predecessor, were circulated throughout Wandsborough, and all the region round about, and gained more or less of ready credence. Among those by whom they were accepted, opinions were divided anent the respective conduct of the General and his son in connection with the affair. Some held that the former was a domestic tyrant of the very worst order, and that the latter had, at last, justifiably rebelled – others again extolled the General as a model parent and a high-principled Christian man, while poor Roland, it was declared, had always been a depraved reprobate and an irreclaimable scamp; in short – and whatever had happened now, he had been rightly served. Then there were not wanting a few who held that between the two it was six of one and half a dozen of the other – that the Dorriens were at best an ill-conditioned, quarrelsome lot, and the less one had to do with them the better.

At Ardleigh Court the tidings of the Dorrien quarrel were received with surprise and dismay. The Colonel warmly espoused the cause of the absent, wherein his wife differed with him wholly. Young men were so intolerably self-opinionated now-a-days, she declared, that no doubt General Dorrien had not been unjustified in what he did. However, having so far vindicated her principles of contradictiousness, she was fain to admit that Roland seemed far more sensible than most young men of his age, and she liked what she had seen of him. Whatever Clara may have thought, she said very little, though on one or two occasions she had stood up – rather warmly for her – for the exile; and Maud, albeit she had wrangled a good deal with him during his stay there, was really sorry for him, though being of a romantic turn she was inclined to feel very angry with him on her sister’s account, her lively imagination having long since settled all that.

“A pack of infernal lies?” cried the Colonel with heat, referring to some of the reports which had come to his ears concerning the absent. “Pooh! I don’t believe a word of them. Dorrien’s a quick-tempered fellow – always was, by Jove! and Roland’s a chip of the old block. I suppose they lost their tempers with each other, and came to high words. As for all that slander, and bringing girls’ names into the concern, why, it’s scandalous.”

“Well, where there’s smoke there must be some fire,” suggested his wife, with characteristic originality.

“Fire be damned, ahem! I beg your pardon,” exploded the good-hearted Colonel. “And I tell you what it is. That libellous old Jezebel – what’s her name? – Frewen, for instance, will find herself in Court if she doesn’t look out. Libel’s a criminal offence, and if she comes before us, I’ll commit her for trial – I will, by Jove, as sure as I’m Chairman of Petty Sessions!”

“I think you’re rather hard on her,” objected Mrs Neville, true to her colours. “She didn’t originate these stories, remember.”

“It’s my belief she did!” retorted the Colonel. “She hates the Ingelows, and would move heaven and earth to injure them – spiteful, canting old harridan. I think Ingelow mistaken, and his vestments and candles and popish fal-lal great bosh – but hang it! he’s a thoroughly good fellow in private life, and I’m not going to stand by and see him worried and his girls’ characters taken away by that slanderous old Gamp, who probably began life in a chandler’s shop – and I’ll let him know that I’m not. I’ll call on him this very afternoon, by George, I will?”

At Cranston, as may be supposed, cheerful times did not prevail. Always gloomy and constrained, the gloom and constraint deepened tenfold in the days following upon the rupture. The General’s ill-humour was now chronic, and when he did speak it was usually to make some incisive remark calculated to render everyone thoroughly ill at ease. Mrs Dorrien was freezingly acid, and the household saw no one and went nowhere, and, needless to say, all reference to the erring one was strictly taboo. Hubert heartily wished the Vacation would be quick and come to an end, and being considerably bored, and proportionately irritable, his sister had to bear the brunt of his – among other – ill-tempers. As for poor Nellie, she felt the separation terribly. She had little thought that morning that she had seen the last of Roland, without even saying goodbye, too. And now she was forbidden even to write to him. Life was very hard – would better times ever come?

Chapter Twenty Three.

Dorrien of – Nowhere

A pair of dingy rooms in a dingy London street, communicating with each other by means of a folding door, which is at present shut. A table, decidedly unsteady on its pins and bedight in a chequered breakfast cloth, whereon is a war-worn tea-pot – which article, by the way, knives and forks, dish-covers and spoons seem to have been made specially to match – cloudy delf, cruets not guiltless of defunct flies, an uninviting loaf and a pat of butterine or oleo-margarine, or whatever is the London lodging-house equivalent for butter, and, perchance, when that cover is lifted, a brace of leathery fried eggs, undoubtedly not of to-day’s or yesterday’s origin, will be disclosed to view. And this appetising repast, and this glaringly-vulgar and soul-depressing abode must soon be exchanged for something more nauseous, for something more vulgar and soul-depressing still, for even this is somewhat beyond Roland’s means – beyond the miserable pittance he has managed to save from the wreck. There had been an accumulation of interest on the capital in the fallen Bank, which in a fortunate moment, somewhat earlier, he had been induced to invest in a small speculation, and this, together with a little which still remained out of his last year’s dividend, just availed to save him from immediate destitution.

He enters, and listlessly draws a chair to the table. There is a smell of escaped gas in the room, which, mingling with a vaporous whiff from the kitchen of unmistakable cabbage in process of boiling, nearly upsets him. Quickly he throws open the window, admitting a rush of air from the dark, misty street, that makes him shiver; but anything is better than the abominable atmosphere of the house, and again he draws his chair in and attempts to breakfast – attempts. Even Roy, who comes in for most of his master’s share, and who has an especial weakness for bread and butter, feeds with a lack of enthusiasm which shows that he, too, is not unaffected by the change of circumstances. And why not he as well as his master? Here, no scamper over breezy downs, no life in the strong, pure air of the salt sea, no sunshine and green fields, and at other times no snug, cheerful rooms, where he may make himself thoroughly at home. His walks are taken in gloomy streets, where he is continually jostled and trodden on – his beautiful coat would seem to have been given him expressly for the purpose of collecting pailsful of metropolitan mud, and he himself is treated as the natural enemy of mankind. Sticks and stones are slily hurled at him from alleys and doorways; twice has a desperate attempt been made to steal him, only failing the second time by great good luck, the fastening of the muzzle into which his nose had been deftly betrayed, having given way, and he, taking prompt advantage of the casualty, had nearly bitten off three of the enemy’s fingers, and made good his retreat. Park-keepers eye him with no benevolent glance when he indulges in a scamper in those elysian fields of public recreation, and, even there, other dogs resent his intrusion, and would carry out the canine equivalent for “’eaving ’arf a brick” far more than they do, were it not that Master Roy, good-tempered as he naturally is, can make great and effective play with his eye-teeth when roused – as more than one quarrelsome bull-terrier or black retriever could testify in pain and sorrow for a fortnight after.

Roland Dorrien’s reflections as he sits in this dismal hole, trying to imagine that he is breakfasting, are of the very gloomiest. More than a month has gone by since he learned the worst, and as yet he is without plans for the future. Of his own free will and by his own act he has cut himself adrift from all who might have befriended him in his extremity. No, rather he prefers to sink or swim – probably the former – alone. A few days after we last saw him, Venn received a few lines notifying that he thought it better under the circumstances to take himself out of everybody’s way for a time – most likely he should go abroad, but anyhow, had settled nothing; and Venn, on receipt thereof, had repaired post haste to his friend’s lodgings, only to find he had kept his word. He had disappeared, literally, leaving no trace. And the good-hearted stock-broker had been sorely apprehensive. Men had been known to do queer things with far less excuse than Dorrien might show, and his pulse would beat quicker more than once when he came upon newspaper reports of any of those ghastly “finds” only too common in the metropolis. And Dr Ingelow, too, who had run up to Town for the purpose, had enquired so anxiously, and seemed so distressed, that he, Venn, could give him absolutely no tidings. Dorrien was a queer fellow, to go and cut all his friends in that way, but then, he was always given to making the worst of things; however, it was to be hoped that some day he would turn up again, and things might come right; and so honest Venn, if he did not altogether dismiss the matter from his thoughts, soon brought himself to regard it with no great anxiety, and plied his daily avocations as if nothing had happened. “Every man for himself” is the world’s motto – and vae victis!

And now, within a few streets of him – yet as completely hidden as if on a solitary rock in the Northern Hebrides – Roland sits, engaged in his usual occupation – brooding. What is there left that makes this wretched life worth dragging on any longer? Why should he not end it? Even if he will prolong it, he must toil hard at some uncongenial drudgery till the end of his days – harder than the broad-arrow-wearing wretch, wheeling his barrow in the quarries of Portland. He must sink into a mere machine, – lose sight of the fact that he had ever known better things, as completely as if it had been a dream. He must be prepared to place himself at the beck and call of others – of low, repellant cads, it might be – in order to earn a scanty wage, to put up with the bumptiousness, the insolence of some snob in authority, and be thankful for the privilege of existing. No – never! Better perpetual sleep – oblivion – annihilation. Then he would laugh bitterly to himself. Why, even such a mill-horse lot was barred to him. He was quite useless. His neglected, pitch-and-toss kind of “dragging-up” had been such as to fit him for nothing, and here, in the fierce competition for the morsels that enabled men just to keep body and soul together, where would he be? Nowhere. He was not of the material to hold his own amongst the raying, hungry crowd competing for a starvation pittance. At times a plan would suggest itself as his thoughts turned towards the Western wilds, where five years of his life had been spent. There, at any rate, he might be free. There life might be just worth living. He was fond of shooting – might he not adopt the life of a professional hunter, supporting himself by the proceeds of his rifle? The rolling plains and the vast silent forests, the serrated ridges of the distant sierras crowned with their dazzling snowcaps, the blue sky and the free air of heaven – surely this would be a good exchange for the gloom and filth and indescribable desolation of the great, murky city! Twice he had been on the point of sailing, and both times he had thought better of it – or worse – at the last moment, and had stayed. An insane, yet overmastering, impulse made him cling to the land which contained his heart’s shrine, and, although utterly without hope, yet he could not bring himself to place the ocean between them – not yet.

And now this morning the dingy room, with its glaring, vulgar adornments (!), fades from his gaze, as in imagination he is back at Wandsborough. Every one of those hours, too lightly valued at the time, he has mentally gone through again and again. Every tone of a certain voice – every expression of a certain very sweet and bewitching face, from the moment he first espied that latter in Wandsborough Church, is present in his memory now as vividly as though he were actually living through the bygone time all over again.

“Please, sir, Missus says can I clear away?”

The whole picture fades as suddenly as did its reality a few weeks ago, as in a rich cockney twang the unkempt, down-at-heel slavey prefers the above request.

He moves to the window. The outlook is about as inspiriting as that of a London by-street usually is. A barrel organ, grinding out a popular melody, as though it were a dirge, heaves in sight and sound; and a gang of woeful and decrepit bipeds from a neighbouring Union is discharging its burden upon the ratepayers by shovelling the mud and slush from the middle of the street in mechanical and dejected fashion. He glances at the clock, but there is relief rather than consternation in his mind as he awakens to the lateness of the hour – relief, that he should already have got through so much of the morning. How many mornings were to be got through on this side of – what?

“Come, Roy. Out!”

The dog jumps up and works himself into something like his usual state of excitement attendant upon the welcome summons, and they sally forth. The street is one of those in the vicinity of Hyde Park, and thither they turn their steps. At any rate it is open – and away tears Roy, trying perhaps to imagine himself on the turfy slopes about Minchkil Beacon as he scampers over the grass, scattering the few sooty disconsolate sheep right and left. Entering near the Marble Arch, Roland walks straight across, nor pauses till the bridge on the Serpentine is reached. It is a dull grey day, and the air is steely and cold. He stands on the bridge, lazily trying to imagine that he is gazing upon a broad river with its green sloping banks shaded by feathery elms, away in the heart of the sweet, peaceful country. The leaves have hardly begun to fall, and save for the muffled din of traffic, there is little to betoken the proximity of a mighty city. Then he wanders on, and eventually reaches the Round Pond.

“That’s a fine dog of yours, sir.”

Quickly he looks up at the speaker, a man of about his own age, and who wears the appearance of most well-to-do English gentlemen with nothing remarkable about them, and assents. Then the other, who is evidently of a communicative disposition, launches out into a dissertation upon dogs in general and dogs in London in particular, and the drawbacks attendant upon their comfort and well-being in the metropolis; and Roland, nothing loth, finds himself conversing with something like zest. It is long since he has exchanged an idea with anybody, and now he finds a certain amount of diversion in this stranger’s talk. Roy, too, seems to take to him, for he wags his tail and suffers himself to be patted in a way that is remarkable; for of late, like his master, though with different reasons, he has taken to viewing all mankind with suspicion.

“And so he comes from America, does he?” says the stranger again. “Do you know, I haven’t seen a dog I fancied so for a long time, and I’ve often seen you and him here before to-day. Now, I hope it’s no offence – and, if it is, I really beg pardon – but you wouldn’t feel disposed to part with him, I suppose?”

Part with him! Part with Roy – dear, true-hearted Roy, his second self, the one faithful friend who shared his exile. The idea seemed to sting him like a lash! Yet, why should it? He need only answer in the negative, and there wae no harm done. But the question had seemed to come significantly at this moment, for of late he had been haunted by a growing conviction that the time for such a parting was not far distant.

“Oh, no offence, of course,” he replied quietly, but there is a troubled look in his eyes which the other sees and makes a mental note of. “But I don’t want to part with him.”

“Of course. I can quite understand your not relishing the question,” says the stranger good-humouredly. “I hate to be asked to sell a favourite dog myself. But – at the risk of being importunate – if ever you should want to sell him, would you mind giving me the first offer? You shall name your own price. Fact is, I’ve taken an extraordinary fancy to him. Here’s an address that’ll always find me.”

Under the circumstances Roland thinks there is no harm in accepting the card which the other tenders him, and which bears an address in Kensington, and the name of his new acquaintance, he learns through the same agency, is Frank Marsland. But he does not feel bound to reciprocate the confidence, and after a little more conversation they part: Roland, to dismiss the matter completely from his mind, as he makes his way back to his rooms, and the stranger to wonder who the deuce that good-looking fellow can be who seems to haunt the Round Pond with that splendid dog, and who always looks, by Jove! as if he had committed a murder or was about to commit one.

Chapter Twenty Four.

A Trespasser

“Nellie,” said Hubert Dorrien to his sister, as he was hurrying through an early breakfast on the morning of his departure for Oxford, “do you ever hear from Roland?”

“No – why?” said the girl, with a startled glance around.

“Because – well, do you know anything about the state of his affairs? I mean, had he any interest in this Tynnestop Bank? I’ve a sort of hazy idea he had, don’t you see?”

Nellie turned very pale.

“Is – is there anything wrong with it?”

“By jingo!” replied Hubert with a whistle and stare of surprise. “Ra-ther! Why, it went up the gum – bang – smash. Heaps of fellows ruined – one that I know. But that was more than a month ago. Surely you had heard.”

“Never – until this moment. Hubert, I wonder if papa knows. Why, every shilling Roland had was invested in it.”

“No!”

“It was, though. Oh Hubert, and now he may be – starving perhaps!” cried the girl, choking down a sob. “What is to be done? We don’t even know where he is?”

“By Jove!” muttered Hubert gloomily. “If the veteran knew he might arrange something, eh? It’s hard luck on a fellow to be suddenly cleaned out.”

He was thinking of that cheque which his brother had sent him on the very day of his ruin. Comparing notes, Hubert now saw that Roland must have heard the fatal news immediately after – probably the same day – yet he had made no attempt to back out of his promise. Hubert Dorrien was by nature bad all round, shallow, intensely selfish and thoroughly mean; yet even he felt uncomfortable as he thought of how sorely his brother might be in need of that very sum he had so generously lent – if not given – him. And yet to-day he was no more in a position to repay it than he had been at the time to satisfy the demand to meet which it was borrowed. But he strove to quiet his conscience. He would repay it some day; besides, now it was impossible, for no one knew where the deuce Roland was to be found – in fact, it was his own fault for hiding himself away from everybody. Yes – that would do. It was Roland’s own fault. And conscience slumbered anon.

But all further discussion of the wanderer’s affairs was arrested by the entrance of their parents, and immediately the dog-cart drove round to the door to take Hubert to the station. A cold hand-shake from his father, and many final injunctions from his mother about avoiding draughts, sitting back to the engine, etc, all of which were somewhat impatiently received, and Master Hubert was bowling away at the rate of ten miles per hour towards Wandsborough Road Station, whence his brother had departed some weeks earlier, bearing with him a crushing load of heart-break and unexpected ruin. But no thought of this crossed the mind of this amiable youth, as he lounged back in a first-class smoking compartment, puffing at a choice Cabana. If he thought of his unfortunate brother at all, it was only with an uneasy fear lest he should ever be reinstated at Cranston, which would make all the difference in the world to his – Hubert’s – prospects.

Poor Nellie was in a grievous state of woe, and yet she must stifle her feelings. More than once in the course of breakfast the General coldly asked her if she was unwell, and her mother, guessing her grief was not on account of the brother who had just driven away from the door, and resenting the fact, made one or two amiable comments thereon in her most withering of tones. But at last the dismal meal came to an end, and she was free to wander away and indulge her grief when and where she chose.

Assuredly she had known nothing of this last blow which had fallen upon her unhappy brother – until this morning. She knew of the awful quarrel between him and their father, of course, and she guessed that Olive Ingelow was the subject of dispute – but this last stroke of Fate she had never even dreamt of. Roland was apt to be close about his private affaire, and it was only by the merest chance he had mentioned to her that he intended some day to withdraw from the ill-fated investment, and that, just before the crash. Probably her father knew, but beyond themselves no one in the neighbourhood would have any idea that the rather sensational financial crash could affect her or hers, and as she seldom took up a newspaper the knowledge of it had escaped her.

She threw a wrap around her and strolled out of doors. How desolate the ornamental water looked on this chill, grey, autumn morning! The swans greeted her approach with a resentful croak, and floated ill-humouredly away to a reed-sheltered corner. The boats, drawn up high and dry within their shed, looked forlorn and neglected, and the rustic bench where she and the absent brother had lounged away many a sunny hour of sultry morning or drowsy afternoon, was bestrewn with damp, fallen leaves. All the surroundings combined to strike a cold and desolate chill to poor Nellie’s heart. If only that brother were back again. She might have made much more of him, and now it was too late. The result of this dreadful quarrel was a foregone issue. Neither would ever relent, of that there could be not the smallest doubt. She sank down upon the rustic seat, and, secure in this secluded spot from all intrusion, gave way to her grief.

But it happened that not so far from this spot, though concealed from it by a thick belt of shrubbery, ran a public road. It further happened, that on this particular morning, the figure of a tall pedestrian, a gun under his arm, might have been descried upon this road, clearly bent on reaching the arena of slaughter, wherever it was, at the rate of four and a half miles an hour. He was whistling, too, with all the light-heartedness of a healthy, energetic undergraduate, with whom Black Care has never yet shaken hands. Suddenly this pedestrian stopped short, and stood listening intently. A sound as of low sobbing – there could be no mistake about it.