Dorrien of Cranston

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 him almost or 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 a duenna of 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.”